@Abrupt, I was going to let my last comments be my last comments in the other thread but forgot to respond to one thing you pointed out in your second to last comments. I made a new thread because we're weren't talking about "Romney 2012" anymore. I really try to be brief but can't do it to save my life. So I'm sorry if this turns into a long essay again.
Again with your socialistic "collectively" argument.
It's not
my "socialistic 'collectively' argument", it's reality. Like I said, we have a balance between collectivism and individualism and there are plenty of things that you take part in and benefit from (roads, bridges, public schools, police, military, yadda, yadda, yadda) that are socialistic. You point out the constitution calls to provide some of these things but that doesn't change the fact that they are socialistic. You're absolutely fine with them until someone points out what they actually are. If reality conflicts with a conservatives ideology, they reject reality and substitute their own. I'm not saying this to be mean, I truly believe if there was a study done for cognitive dissonance, you'd find extremely high levels in the conservative population (then they'd dismiss the study as being conducted by a liberal think tank or something). Again, I'm not taking a jab, I genuinely believe this based on what I hear and see conservatives say and do all the time.
The mentality is pretty much to define
yourself as
always agreeing with A and
always rejecting B and you cannot veer from that. So when your acceptance of B is reality, you throw the baby out with the bath water and reject reality because you've been convinced, and convinced yourself, that you can never accept B no matter what.
Richard Nixon: When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal. (I can't accept illegality so I'll define myself as never accepting illegality therefore nothing I do is illegal by how I define myself)
Condi Rice: "The United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture, and so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture." (The US isn't
supposed to torture so I'll define the US government as a government that doesn't torture therefore making whatever we do not torture)
Elderly tea party member signs: Keep government out of medicare! (I can't accept anything socialized so I stay completely oblivious to the fact that medicare, which I love, is run by the government)
Craig T Nelson on government bailouts: "We're a capitalistic society. Ok, I go into business, I don't make it, I go bankrupt. They're not going to bail me out.
I've been on foodstamps and welfare, anyone help me out? No." (Foodstamps and welfare
are help... by the government no less, but I can't even entertain that thought because I'd have to rethink this idea of what our society
actually is.)
Conservative Christians: 1) Hatred for hippies and socialism... quote Jesus though he was clearly a hippie socialist. 2) Extol the virtues of capitalism while Jesus says I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. and ...any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. Hate handouts? Jesus doesn't "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." 3) Claim the nation was founded on Christianity and ignore the treaty of Tripoli "...the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." 4) Keep government out of peoples lives... except when it comes forcing your religious beliefs on others through policy in the form of school prayer, don't ask don't tell, same-sex marriage, etc. 5) Claim a need for a strict adherence to the constitution, ignore the establishment and free exercise clauses and article VI "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." 6) Pro-life ("thou shalt not kill")... support the death penalty and never ending wars.
That point is entirely moot at best since we would each have the exact same benefits and opportunities and that only the truly exceptional would rise above. From that sort of argument we can easily deduce that everyone should pay the exact same 'amount' of taxes and not just percent and it would reason then that the rich should pay no more than the poorest in dollar amounts (I know that isn't what you are arguing so you seriously need to rethink the implications of your ideology). Furthermore all the wrong and crime would also be a product of this government benevolence so at the best possible case (from your position) it could only be "a wash" with nobody owing the government anything nor it owing us.
If that's what you "deduced", I can deduce you are no Sherlock Holmes. If you start out with nothing, you haven't utilized anything to your advantage. If you climb up, you utilize more and more. The more you use, the more you should put back. The rich utilized more of what we all chipped in on to become rich and continue to use more than the rest of us to stay rich. Public schools continue to provide them with workers, roads and bridges have provided them a way to get their products back and forth and a way for their workers to commute and I could go on but you get the gist (or at least you should). So, no, you seriously need to rethink
your ideology.
Second, we didn't all start out on the same foot in this country. You know this and you know I can provide example after example to back up my point. Again, the problem with the conservative view point is that when reality conflicts with your ideology, ideology wins. You
want to believe what this country is
supposed to be so you ignore what it
actually is.
I liken it to looking at the tower of Pisa. I'm seeing it's construction while conservatives never pick their heads up from the blueprint. I see something wrong with building the foundation, so I suggest we do X (I know nothing about construction so solve for X and fill in whatever it is you do to correct a bad foundation). All you see is me veering from the blueprint that you never looked away from and not
why I'm veering from it. Getting back to the blueprint is fine, but you can't get there unless you correct mistakes made while trying to follow the blueprint. So now we have a leaning tower and any suggestion to fix the lean is seen by conservatives as an attempt to tear the tower down.
You mentioned slavery and something about me not being a slave. To even say something like that implies I'm trying to make some argument about currently being a slave which is just false. It also implies that you think events of the past don't effect the present which is also false. If you break someone's legs, they have to go through a healing process. The time it takes to heal takes much longer than the time it took to do the damage. Conservatives seem to think an act only has an effect in the time it happened. Bringing up a past event is an attempt to show you where current problems came from and why they persist today. You can't fix a problem unless you know its roots. Apply a cast to the broken legs or provide a crutch and you try to strip it away screaming about handouts and personal responisbility and standing on your own two ironically dismissing the responsibility of the one who broke the leg in the first place (file that under cognative dissonance). You call it special treatment because you completely ignore the mistreatment because, of course, if it's not happening now, it has no effect today. In the meantime, the legs never properly heal and you blame the person with the broken legs.
Lastly, you bring up an adherance to the constitution saying since it doesn't mention things like healthcare so the government shouldn't provide it. This is an example of following your GPS into a brick wall. It says turn right, so you just do. What could they have written about healthcare back then that would apply now? How was their healthcare "system" back then? They couldn't have forseen how our coutry would change, they only knew that it
would change. The constitution is not written in stone for a reason. There are amendments that remove things that no longer make sense or apply and added things that do.
I asked this in another thread: What is the difference between someone yelling "Help me! Help me! This guy is trying to kill me!" to a cop and someone saying "Help me! Help me! This cancer is trying to kill me!" to a docotor? What's the difference between a doctor giving you a check up when you're fine, and a cop patrolling the streets when there's no criminal activity happening? They're the same yet one is paid for by tax dollars and one is not. You're fine with one and not the other because your ideology forces you to ignore the contradiction.
My "ideology" is one of common sense. Money
should stand in the way of big screen tv's and Cancun vacations
not justice, health, education, and saftey. Also, when needed (like for correcting mistakes and broken promises), the government should have a presence, and when not needed, they should back off. Whatever is best for the situation is what I support, not rigidly adhering to an ideology no matter what.
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