Barack said
Wednesday 1 October 2008 - Filed under Politics
From The Political Animal:
If you want the next four years looking just like the last eight, then I am not your candidate. But if you want real change – if you want an economy that rewards work, and that works for Main Street and Wall Street; if you want tax relief for the middle class and millions of new jobs; if you want health care you can afford and education that helps your kids compete; then I ask you to knock on some doors, make some calls, talk to your neighbors, and give me your vote on November 4th.
I DON’T want the next 4 years to look like the last 8. Obama represents a much, much better shot at that than John McCain. If people weren’t single issue voters or rabid ideologues, Obama would crush McCain. As it is we have to convince people that the party in charge of the last 8 years should not be in charge of the next 8. That should just be obvious.
2008-10-01 » lolife
1 October 2008 @ 12:16 pm
Indeed, but who controlled the Congress for the past 4? The people voted the Democrats into Congress to reign in a rogue president, end the war, and balance the budget. None of these things happened. Now, I’m certainly not making the fallacious claim that, just because the Dems suck at their job that we should naturally elect Republicans–they have both utterly failed at their jobs. America needs to quit voting for these two failed parties! Throw the lot of them out.
Now, clearly, no third-party candidate is going to win this year. But, it would be a crying shame if one of the Republicrats wins with any significant percentage. If they’re going to win, let them have it with %40 of the vote. Let them know we thoroughly disapprove of the false choice between Big Red Government and Big Blue Government.
Where is my anti-war, anti-occupation, anti-interventionism, anti-foreign-aid, anti-empire candidate?
Where it my anti-FED candidate?
Where is my personal liberties and property rights candidate?
Where is my candidate that understands the limits placed on them by our Constitution?
Where is my candidate that doesn’t consult his imaginary friend in the sky for advice?
The issues on which the Republicrats differ are entirely superficial. Despite the oh-so-dramatic narrative that is being broadcast, neither one offers any fundamental change in the current course of the Republic.
1 October 2008 @ 12:24 pm
On much of this I don’t disagree with you. We need more choice in our candidates. We know how to do it (instant run-off) but we still haven’t gotten it done. The two-party system is killing America. I agree.
But I have to have hope. Clinton, while I still disagreed with him on many things, was better than Bush. We were in better, but still flawed, hands.
I should be like you — I should be more active in 3rd parties. I really should. I agree with you on that.
But the reasons I like Obama are because I think he is a smart, honest guy who will try his best. I also have to vote against a continuation of Republicans running the executive branch.
The way out is instant run-off. We have to do it.
1 October 2008 @ 1:02 pm
“But the reasons I like Obama are because I think he is a smart, honest guy who will try his best.”
I do, in all honesty, completely agree with you here. (This is exactly how I felt about Bush in 2000.)
But, despite being smart, honest, and well-intentioned (not to mention articulate and persuasive), he’s dead wrong on policy. There are tons of folks who are otherwise smart, honest, and well-intentioned who will passionately, even articulately, defend their deeply held conviction that the earth is six thousand years old and was created in seven days. All of the smartness, honesty, and good intentions in the universe cannot change the fact that on this issue they are dead wrong or the fact that they are now disqualified from being taken seriously in adult conversations of the subject.
History and sound economics are conclusive. Socialism is a failed theory. Fiat money is a failed theory. Interventionism is a failed theory.
The nation is broke. We cannot afford to keep playing with funny money, we cannot afford to police the world, and we cannot afford to promise that the state will pay for everyone’s health insurance and retirement. These are not matters of opinion. No amount of wishing will make them otherwise. To continue to insist on these policies will bankrupt the country in short order.
And, if you listen to the Republicrats, they aren’t even up for discussion.
1 October 2008 @ 1:47 pm
Socialism works very well for many countries.
France is very happy with their medical system.
Norway is very happy with their Government. Granted Norwegians are taxed at about 50%..but then again, so are we….
To say that Socialsim is a failed theory is a flawed statement. Socialism workes very well in certain situations.
I am not sure I understand what you mean by Interventionalsim? I would agree that we do not need to be the policemen of the world. However deregulation at home has often led us into trouble.
1 October 2008 @ 10:14 pm
Greetings Fishdweeb.
Interventionism is one name for the United States current posture, policies, and actions around the world. We have over 750 bases in over 135 countries around the world at the cost of one trillion dollars annually. There isn’t a conflict or crisis that we don’t feel we should take a side in. Those of us that believe we should have peace and commerce will all nations and entangling alliances with none are derided as “isolationists,” so we tend to respond by saying that we are non-interventionists.
Deregulation itself is not the problem. At the heart of the matter, it is nonsense to talk about “deregulation”–nothing starts out regulated–at some point along the way, government came along and introduced regulation. The problems come when the government fails to uphold property rights–the only legitimate role of government.
To say that this country or that country is doing well these days with a little bit of socialism doesn’t prove much. Sure, socialism can survive and even thrive for a while, but, like any piece of data, you can’t take it in isolation or in short periods. When you look at the whole of human history, societies are incomparably more well-off when they are based on private ownership of capital operating in a free market driven by voluntary associations between free individuals acting in their own interest.
I’m happy that you can at least agree to call it socialism. It would be a huge step in the right direction for this country if we could actually have the debate out in the open: Socialism or Capitalism, which will it be? What we have instead is Socialism in the rhetoric of the Democrats or Socialism in the rhetoric of the Republicans.
It used to be that they took liberty, split in in two, and one stood for economic liberty while the other stood for social or personal liberty. As time goes on, though, the two sides have compromised more and more: we’ll cede a little bit of our principles on economic liberty if you cede a little bit of your principles on personal liberty. Our liberty then, which is indivisible, gets shaved down to nothing from both sides. What we’re left with is little but the very kernel of liberty while we descend farther into totalitarianism as the two parties jockey for power using nothing more than theatrics, rhetoric, propaganda, and outright lies and coercion to get us all swept up in the great dramatic narrative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Smallest_Political_Quiz
We are seeing the most flagrant and grotesque example of this compromise just today. One of the most ill-conceived piece of legislation ever to be proposed in the United States was (sadly, just barely) rejected by the House on Monday. So, in order to sway a few key Senators to ensure its passage in the Senate, they /added/ heaps more ill-conceived garbage and giveaways to convince the needed holdouts! “That’s the worst piece of fucking legislation I’ve ever seen! My constituents will hang me! Oh, I can have some pork to bring back home? Awww shucks…OK.”
This will hasten the oncoming destruction of the dollar and push this country over the edge into the abyss. And it is no accident. These guys may all play idiots on TV, but they don’t let you hold the purse strings of the largest government in the history of the planet without knowing /something/ about macroeconomics.
The economic school of thought that dominates the vast majority of modern American politics was championed by John Maynard Keynes. Here is a telling quote from Keynes:
“Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
To wish for Socialism is, to put it politely, misguided.
“In short, the wish for socialism is a wish for unparalleled human evil. If we really understood this, no one would express casual support for it in polite company. It would be like saying, you know, there is really something to be said for malaria and typhoid and dropping atom bombs on millions of innocents.”
Everything you love, you owe to capitalism.
http://mises.org/story/2982
2 October 2008 @ 11:27 am
I don’t agree at all now, mnphenow.
Capitalism becomes possible only when there has been enough social cooperation to provide the stability and infrastructure that it needs to be sustainable.
I think of it like this. Rewind 100,000 years. The tribes that survived were the ones that cooperated. The “every man for himself” tribes may have worked well for a few, but the many were thrown out or killed. The “market” overlooked the strengths of those who did not have the immediate skills to defend their interests.
I suspect in ancient human history we had great leaders arise that saw the benefit of social cooperation. These leaders threw out the “every man for himself” people and kept the people who saw the power of social cooperation.
I’d go so far as to say that everything you love you owe to social cooperation.
I’m a capitalist and I think the US actually has about the right balance of free market forces and social cooperation. I think the future you dream of would, in reality, but a nightmare of the powerful crushing the weak and the rich bulldozing the poor.
2 October 2008 @ 1:29 pm
For an increasing number of our uninsured citizens, health care is socialized.
This bailout is a socialization of debt (granted they are trying to hold off a crash that may occur even with the 700 billion)
Friends in France and in Norway can not believe that the US gets its shorts in a twist over socializing health care. (and the idea that the US has some sort of corner on decent health care is a farce…)
Maybe after we re-open the “peoples republic of wallstreet” it won’t be such a leap.