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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ColtonGang who wrote (53466)	10/27/2000 4:23:53 PM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 769667

You are quite mistaken.

To: ColtonGang who wrote (53466)	10/27/2000 5:02:22 PM
From: Elvis Jones	Respond to of 769667

They would prefer to pay no taxes than to fill the coffers of the Treasury. That would be a Libertarian viewpoint, not a Republican one.

To: ColtonGang who wrote (53466)	10/27/2000 5:26:24 PM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 769667

The price system is, in fact, the best "calculator" that we have for the efficient allocation of resources. Out of innumerable individual negotiations and transactions, the price system works up a rough estimate of consumer preferences and how they match with current resources. It signals which things might be in short supply, and represent opportunities for profit- seekers, and which things might be in a glut, and worth disinvesting in. Similarly, capital instruments, such as shares and bonds, contain important information in their prices. Anyway, distortions in the pricing system lead to ever greater inefficiency in the economy, and thus the waste of resources. Even granting that the government makes legitimate spending decisions, for example, in providing for defense, the more it uses instruments like subsidy, the tax code, and regulation to control elements of the economy, the more it distorts the pricing system and leads to inefficiency, such as recession and inflation.

To: ColtonGang who wrote (53466)	10/27/2000 5:29:43 PM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 769667

The idea behind libertarianism is that coercion is bad, and although some minimum might be a necessary evil, respect for the dignity of the individual means leaving most social transaction in the realm of voluntary behavior. Conservatives and liberals both agree, against libertarians, that society has a broad claim to ensure civility and a humane environment. Conservatives, however, are more prone to rely on voluntary transactions, and to consider governmental action ancillary to the spontaneous ordering of society, through mediating institutions like churches, clubs, corporations, and charitable foundations, and therefore are able to cooperate with all but the most fanatic libertarians. The main difference between government and such institutions is the blunt instrument of force. A charity persuades people to contribute to a worthy cause, a government implicitly holds a gun to their head. Obviously, one should be leery of wielding the instrument in a heavy handed way, regardless of whether the person is affluent or not, and regardless of the high mindedness of one's intention. That is the point, for example, in deploring confiscatory taxes: When one takes in excess of 50% of someone's property and/or income, it cannot be anything other than robbery, no reasonable person would agree to such treatment. Democratic participation in the process permits some rough calculation of fairness, but there is always the danger of the less affluent using the powers of the state to rob the rich, since they constitute the majority. One of the minorities that the Founder's wanted to protect was the one with substantial property.

To: ColtonGang who wrote (53466)	10/27/2000 5:39:33 PM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 769667

I am not a libertarian, but I agree with them that freedom means nothing if it does not mean that one is largely able to dispose of one's assets as one thinks fit, including through testament. Therefore, the bar to substantial interference with economic choices should be high, although I do not think it is absolute. Among the most intimate of transactions is that between doctor and patient. Therefore, I think that anyone who supported Clintoncare, which would have involved substantial penalties for private transactions, is an extremist, since the "health care crisis" was not of sufficient magnitude to lead to such measures. Similarly, the idea of self- government means little if more local forms of government are not respected. Municipalities and states allow those with the greatest concern with local issues to have the strongest voice in decision making, and to tailor responses to the situation at hand. A state with high unemployment and low pollution, for example, might very well choose to loosen environmental regulation in favor of business, while the opposite might be true in a tight labor market with high pollution. Thus, for self- government to mean much, the federal government must be reluctant to take on issues that can be addressed at lower levels of government. Anyone who thinks that it is the business of the federal government to determine the levels of cops on the beat or computers in the classroom is not very interested in self- government. Democracy, although it involves substantial protections of minority rights, still means that the majority (or its representatives) gets its way most of the time. It should be with trepidation that the courts overturn legislative decisions and substitute their judgment, and only for compelling reason, or they weaken democracy by trivializing it. That is why I think that overturning Roe v. Wade and giving the matter back to the states is the moderate position on abortion. The penumbras and emanations of Roe were far too fanciful a ground for determining the issue once and for all. These are the grounds upon which I claim that the Clinton Administration, far from being a moderate administration, was extremist, contemptuous of self- government, and not terribly democratic. In other words, it was a liberal administration........