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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter van Steennis who wrote (294422)	3/1/2009 3:40:08 AM
From: unclewest	7 Recommendations Respond to of 794397

'The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.' -Ronald Reagan The biggest problem I see is the tremendous on-going corruption of intellectual integrity and moral courage that is permeating every level of our government. The second biggest problem I see is an acute level of Constitutional ignorance in the preponderance of our citizens coupled with a huge level of greed for entitlements. Some days it seems everyone wants someone else to pay their way. I have been to 26 countries. Many of them were so corrupt to the core that family members at all levels of wealth cheated each other routinely. None of those countries are affluent today. The notion of using money to corrupt so-called public servants is nothing new. What is new are the high levels of such being exposed in our own society and the willingness of so many Americans to accept it as business as usual. It simultaneously astounds and confounds me that we can have a new Secretary of the Treasury, now presiding over the IRS, who did not pay a reported $26,000 of his own tax bill. In my mind, the fact that the US Senate confirmed him makes the integrity of those senators who so voted suspect. Somehow, we have fostered a gimme gimme gimme, I want it right now society that prefers chaos to orderliness. We are rapidly becoming our own worst enemy. I believe the solution to our financial ills is to take some pain. I see no evidence of any level of our society(financial, political or otherwise) being willing to volunteer to endure any amount of pain. The cavalier attitude and sense of entitlement of those who gained the most from government largesse and bank stupidity can be summed up in a bumper sticker I saw yesterday. HONK if you are paying my mortgage Mike

To: Peter van Steennis who wrote (294422)	3/1/2009 12:56:53 PM
From: KLP	2 Recommendations Respond to of 794397

I do miss Reagan, Peter! In view of what is happening today, rereading those quotes should make all of us miss him even more! <Government IS the problem> 'Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.' - Ronald Reagan

To: Peter van Steennis who wrote (294422)	3/1/2009 6:08:54 PM
From: TimF	3 Recommendations Respond to of 794397

"The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it." "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant." "What ever crushes individuality is despotism, no matter what name it is called." - John Stuart Mill --- "A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers. " "'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded." "We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice." - Friedrich August von Hayek --- "Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end." - Lord Acton --- "Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property." "Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." "When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will." - Frederique Bastiat --- "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." "We have a system that increasingly t axes work and subsidizes non-work." "Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion – the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals – the technique of the marketplace." - Milton Friedman --- "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong" - Voltaire --- ".... man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.” "Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself.." - Ronald Reagan --- "The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus --- "It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones." - Calvin Coolidge --- "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul." - George Bernard Shaw