@Mouse
Quote: "Gun control here is a key matter, but I'm primarily talking about extensive burgeoning of majority condoned theft in the form of grossly bloated taxation. It's grown to the point that the average low-middle class citizen is having more taken out of their tax dollar for welfare for those with 56k internet here in New Hampshire, because they're being "left behind" without broadband."
Errr...where is that happening?
Quote: "That is my greatest, most crucial grudge with the left wing: in their idyllic world, everyone is equal; since equality is judged by outcome rather than opportunity, no one can excel, be better, or quite frankly be unique. In a libertarian idyllic world, everyone has an equality of opportunity and possibility, but those who try hard can excel."
For the record, I consider myself firmly on the left and I do not believe in the former at all. I believe in the later, which I don't think is a libertarian position at all. In a libertarian world, it doesn't matter whether you are born poor and have no education/limited oppurtunities, or if you are born rich and have the finest education/many oppurtunties. All that matters is that property is respected and people don't interfer with each other's rights.
Now to me, it is painfully obvious that said poor person will never succeed in society because the odds are stacked against him. You need a good education to get by in this country. Also, the old adage
it takes money to make money applies and I highly doubt that that poor person will have any motivation to work hard in life as his chances of succeeding are slim. The result of all of this is that the poor stay poor and the rich stay rich. This has many negative effects such as hurting our economy(poor people can't buy goods. rich people can only buy so many) and creating instability(countries with high poverty rates are notoriously unstable).
To the libertarian(sorry if I'm mischaracterizing you or anything...) this is irrelevant. Whether you die in utter poverty or filthy stinking rich it doesn't matter. It is not the government's job to make sure we all get a fair chance. The government's job is to merely protect our rights and that is it. It is not a force for corrective social good. Merely, an impersonal body guard.
This is why I support such liberal concepts such as progressive taxation, as they help to correct these balances. Libertarians, if i recall correctly, believe in a flat tax. So the poor wind up shouldering most of the tax burden as 1,000 could mean life or death to someone who is poor where that same 1,000 dollors could be pocket change to the ultra-rich.
Quote: "but the party has undeniably been heading straight in that direction."
I'm not so sure that that is the case currently, but that is an issue I will have to get to at a later time as it requires some explaining. Unfortunately, I don't have the free time I once did. So I'll have to leave that point for a later date.
Quote: "My bad. I grabbed that from listening to Rush Limbaugh in passing-- I usually double check everything he says, and that just goes to show why ."
No worries. Everyone makes minor slip ups from time to time.
Quote: "I don't know what he was refering to (I doubt he'd lie directly on air) but the context was definatly misleading."
I wouldn't put it past him. I'm far more cynical when it comes to pundits left or right. As far as I'm concerened, I think they are all probably compulisive liars. After all, was it not Nietzche that said:
Quote: "<paraphrase>Never has a man lied more readily than in service of principles.</paraphrase>"
? I don't remember the exact quote but it was something to that effect.
Quote: "The welfare argument is a whole different bag of worms, but there's a very clear and simple violation of rights going on when a single mother can't afford to buy healthy food for her children because a large piece of her tax dollar is being used in institutions that not only have no relationship to the purpose of a government, but have no affect on her quality of life or even that of her neighbors."
I agree with you. However, I would ask that you provide a source citing where exactly this is happening.
Quote: "I'll probably get pigeonholed as an isolationist for bringing it up, but a fun fact is that if we cut half our foreign aid spending for one year, it would more than make up for our current deficit. (This is a sligthly old factoid but I believe it's still true.)"
I find that extremely unlikely. Our current deficit consumes almost more money than the budgets of NASA and the Departments of Interior, Energy, Justice, Homeland Security, Housing & Urban Affairs, Transportation, Labor, Education, and Agriculture
COMBINED! (375 bill FY 03 < 378 bill FY 04)
http://people.howstuffworks.com/election-issue4.htm
I'll get more up to date figuares if you need them, but since I last recall us spending at most about 1% of our budget on foriegn aid, I don't think it is likely that such a factoid is even remotely accurate.
Quote: " are a stronger cause of worry because they've pretty much just been going up for decades."
Actually, I think they've gone down in the past two decades though I'm not too sure about that. Unfortunately I've run out of time. I'll have to continue this tomorrow.
