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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (21717)	5/18/1998 10:46:00 PM
From: Father Terrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

X: People who are societies "leeches", who are encouraged by government programs to live off those who produce returning no value of their own, such as many adults on food stamp programs, the (thankfully being phased out social disaster) welfare programs, etc. Freedom "tempered" by socialism is like being "a little bit pregnant". Your idea of a pure democracy being exemplified by a mob shows how little you know, or think of real liberty. Mob rule rules by force which is the antithesis of freedom. Force negates freedom. Force and mob rule drive political/philosophical systems like Nazism or Stalinism. If you grew up in Scotland it is easy to see how you can embrace socialism since Scotland was never really free as was the U.S. -- at least from the 1770s to the mid-1850s. U.S. freedoms began to become eroded as early as Hamilton's Federalist papers were published and the Whiskey Rebellion failed. It took decades, however, to see just how much freedom was lost to the federalists. The culmination coming during the Civil War. Later, more freedoms were lost when restrictive government agencies were created (in the name of the public good -- but more so for private graft and political power) such as the ICC and Acts such as the Sherman Anti-trust Act (the bane of Microsoft today -- Give 'em hell, Bill!!). Still more freedoms were lost when a bill (that was introduced 6 times previously during the 1880s, 1890s and early 1900s) finally passed giving the U.S. Congress the power to tax individual income for the first time. The Governors of most states were against it until they were assured that it would only tax those who earned more than $5,000 (in those days, the rich) and would never be more than 1% anyway. With this reassurance, the fools passed it. The Internal Revenue Service was created in 1917 and the rest is infamy. As an addendum, an emergency measure during WWII enabled the government to withhold from payroll checks. This was gotten through under the promise that it would be rescinded after the war. Yet in 1946 it was discovered to be such a boon to the power of Congress and their ability to spend, they broke their word and never rescinded it. The worst President this Century was FDR, yet American revisionist history books (especially the ones used in high schools and universities) treat him as just one step below a god. The second worst President was Woodrow Wilson who enacted a lot of social programs that Teddy Roosevelt couldn't get through. The third worst President was LBJ with his "Great Society". Most remember him for escalating the Vietnam War, but his true evil was the huge expansion of federal socialist programs. The fourth worst President was JFK; many of his deadly errors are just being brought into the public light now. Father Terrence