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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ProDeath who wrote (8821)	8/29/2009 7:22:38 AM
From: Lane3	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

The magical thinking about the miracle of ownership in your statement is truly breathtaking, as nonsense goes, it's the best I've heard all day. If it's so good, perhaps you'd share it with me. I can't seem to find where I spoke to any "miracle of ownership." Or maybe the magic is in your seeing what's not there. I never gave up on the Constitution, I gave up on the superstitious attribution of all kind of wonderful things to something called capitalism. It sure seems like you've given up on the Constitution. You mention incidents where its promise wasn't perfectly implemented and seem to find that a basis for turning things over to the political oligarchy, the one that favors collectivism. There are several problems with that. It makes the rights and freedoms provided by the Constitution less relevant and therefore erodes their role as a critical touchstone. It makes the individual less relevant as a generator of wealth and energy and more of a drone consumer of public largesse. It reduces the total wealth and energy available to tap for public largesse. And, in a democracy, it gives control to those who dole out the most largesse to the majority of voters, creating a downward economic spiral. Which in turns creates disaffection among the recipients who display behavior that requires stronger and broader control by those in power. Which is most likely no longer concerned with the fortunes of the members of the collective but only with itself. So we have an oligarchy of brutes. Lovely. I gave up on the superstitious attribution of all kind of wonderful things to something called capitalism. What would you have instead? I cannot imagine a successful, large scale society with any other basis. Sure, pure capitalism has lots of warts but tame capitalism is the only way that humanity has come up with that's viable and stable. Like the Constitution, it isn't perfectly implemented but it is a critical foundation. I find hostility to it mind-boggling. Sure, hate the abuses and distortions, which happen, but appreciate the critical foundations. The common practice of this is most often an after the fact rationalization of whatever outcomes suit the rationalizer. Obviously this is a behavior that can be seen with other 'isms' as well. Indeed. There will always be stupid and shallow and even venal people. But we don't throw out any "ism" on the basis of it having a cadre of stupid and shallow and venal people. That makes no sense given that, as you say, they seem to occur broadly with "isms." They create baggage, for sure, but they aren't the idea. We can't let the baggage distract us from a clear evaluation of the ideas and the principles beneath the baggage or irritate us to the point where we can't objectively evaluate them. The left and the right have certain elements in their DNA. For the unthinking, those become mantras and rituals and clannishness. It's not pretty. Mindlessness never is. But reacting against that phenomenon in the other guys' behavior isn't any prettier. It sure isn't constructive. It could end up tragic. I always go with the guy with the guns, or the guy who owns the guy with the guns. Yep, that would for a really pretty society, one for which posterity would surely thank us. The abandonment of civilization is surely something to which we should aspire.