I tire of hearing people talk about "family values" while at the same time doing little to increase wages or provide affordable health care and housing.
I think the good senator must be reading his Steinbeck. Now if we could just get the Republicans to think more like Jim Casy and Tom Joad.
"I tire of hearing people talk about "family values" while at the same time doing little to increase wages or provide affordable health care and housing."
ReplyDeleteIt's a great statement, except that by "doing" Senator Johnson implies using the government to coerce a certain outcome. If he made the statement to a church congregation to prick their consciences into volunteer work, I would give him a standing ovation. But when he uses soft word to disguise the an agenda of tyranny, it gets my blood boiling.
What's the difference between a tax and a fine? Nothing, except that you have to pay taxes even when you don't commit a crime.
What's the difference between a fine and a bill from the eye doctor? Nothing, except I have to pay the bill even when I don't commit a crime.
ReplyDeleteThink about it... compare... get it?
har?
ReplyDeleteI know a lot of eye doctors (both good and bad people), but not one of them threatens you with imprisonment if you refuse to get an eye exam.
If I refuse to pay a speeding ticket, or refuse to pay for social security, medicare, or NASA, the government sends its warriors to knock on my door.
But after I've gotten my eye exam, my eye care provider expects payment and will send bill collectors, lawyers, or the Godfather to get it... just like my social contract provider does.
ReplyDeleteIf you get the exam, and then refuse to pay, you are stealing from optometrist, just like getting a watch and not paying the jeweler. That is a crime, and contrary to your original statement:
ReplyDelete"Nothing, except I have to pay the bill even when I don't commit a crime."
True, to have the services of the government and not pay for them in taxes is stealing (shame on illegal immigrants). But there are also a lot of taxes that we pay to the government for services we don't use or want to use... which is stealing from us.
And then some people take more from the government in entitlements than they put back in... which is stealing, too, isn't it? I mean, fiscally speaking what's the difference between someone who puts in less than their fair share (tax evasion) and someone who draws out more than their fair share (welfare)? Each has a negative balance with respect the government... but one is branded as a crime and the other a "social benefit".
And just to make things clear for any new readers, I'm not against the poor and I don't admire greed. My position is that all charity to the poor is wonderful, but in order for it to be charity, it must be voluntary. If it is not voluntary, it is theft, and therefore loses everything that makes it wonderful.
Don't be fooled, new readers. David essentially is against the poor, and the practical application of his thinking facilitates greed and undermines true family and community values.
ReplyDeleteanticipated response: Cory essentially is against the rich and the practical application of his thinking facilitates Marxist tyranny and undermines ____ (fill in the blank).
Readers! Your judgments are welcome! And while you're at it, weigh in with whether you think Senator Johnson is on to something about what "family values" really means in practice.
"David essentially is against the poor"
ReplyDeleteI'm not Cory. I love the poor. I donate substantially. I volunteer. I take them out to eat. I pick up hitchhikers and send them on their way with $100 (in gift cards so they can't spend it on drugs or alcohol). I pick up a hammer and help build them a home.
I'm against injustice and tyranny. I'm against politicians and special interest groups telling me what is a "social benefit" and coercing me to fund it. And I'm against corporations using eminent domain for their private benefit. As best we can, all money and property should be transacted or donated freely from the people who earn it.
If you two don't behave, I'm going to turn this Internet around and go straight home! LOL
ReplyDeleteAnd Senator Johnson loves the poor as well, and wants to see government act in practical ways to preserve their (and everyone's) family values. We don't get the choice between government and no government (remember, David, government and the social contract and all their inherent coercion as established by us are what allow scrawny intellectuals like us to hang onto wealth, not to mention good-looking wives, without having to fight off bears and thugs). Senator Johnson and I thus prefer to see government turn its coercion toward useful, practical results instead of the moral grandstanding of the right-wing radicals (Thune, Hunt, Unruh, et al).
ReplyDeleteSo... essentially your argument is that because we have a police force to protect us from thugs, and park rangers to protect us from bears, we should let the government treat its citizens unfairly and put up with whatever they (bureaucrats, voting blocs, and special interest groups) think is socially beneficial?
ReplyDeleteI never said that I want government to go away. I just want it to limit itself to thugs, bears, and other social benefits we can unanimously agree on. Turning coercion into "useful practical results" is the first platform of any fascist regime. And it is exactly what you yourself despise in our government. You hate it when the government tries to legislate useful practical results like mandatory private health insurance or no child left behind. The only difference between you and me, is that when Cory Heidelberger finally agrees with the bureaucrats' agenda (or has something to gain from it), he suddenly insists that the government uses its full constitutional muscle to force everyone into that plan. I, on the other hand, only insist that the government uses its powers when 100% of the citizens agree on the agenda.
For Cory, it's a majority of 1. For me, it's a majority of all.
Using coercion to suppress reasonable dissension is tyranny.
No suppression of reasonable (or even unreasonable) dissent here. (I'm not the Bush Administration or the corporate media.) But unless you plan to revise the Constitution to require consensus voting on everything (which Amendment would only require a 2/3 vote of Congress and 3/4 of the state legislatures, thanks to the rules our tyranny-battling Founding Fathers thought were good enough), you'll have to accept some government action (or inaction) of which you disapprove. You can still keep dissenting; you can still keep trying to build a working coalition to reverse the law you view as tyranny; but the law is the law, the closest we can get to an expressed general will.
ReplyDeleteFamily values -- different citizens conceive of them differently and see different ways of putting them into practice. We may not ever achieve consensus. I'll work on convincing a majority first so we can do something to put real family values into practice; then I'll work on convincing everyone else.
Family values also inherently includes personal responsibility, something which those espousing more freebies for the poor seem to forget about or consider unimportant.
ReplyDeleteI agree with helping the poor. I also agree with the poor helping themselves, which many of them feel that don't have to do because by virtue of being poor they are "entitled" to having the gov't meet their every unmet need. And the libs (Dems) are going to promise everything they can in the next year or so to buy their vote.
"... a majority of all."
ReplyDeleteReally?
I mean, that is all cute and inclusive-sounding, but it's also a completely impractical way to run practically anything involving more than 4 or 5 people, let alone a national government. I don't think there is anything that everyone who considers themselves a part of the United States of America could agree upon as a unanimous mandate for the government. I mean, that's why the founding fathers adopted a representative democracy and a system of majority rule with minority rights, isn't it?
Even the example thrown out in this discussion -- receiving government protection from bears and thugs -- is not truly something to which every person in the country would subscribe. I can think of more than a few folks I've read about in national news -- or even talked to in western parts of SD -- who would be more than happy to have the government butt out of law enforcement ("This old shotgun's all the 'law enforcement' I need") and/or would be equally happy taking care of the bears (maybe mountain lions?) on their own with that same shotgun. They're still paying for sheriffs and game wardens, services they don't really want. By this new "majority of all" David espouses, it'd be time to tell the Custer County Sheriff's Department to start looking for jobs guarding corporate warehouses and to tell the GF&P folks to check out the want ads at the Great Plains Zoo.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to wade too deeply into the "family values"/health care discussion at the basis of the above-quoted comment at this particular point in time. I just thought it was called for to play "rhetoric police" for a moment. Contrary to trends in American politics today, I don't think that debates are in any way meaningful when they boil complex discussions down to oversimplified, inaccurate digs.
"For Cory, it's a majority of 1. For me, it's a majority of all." ... has a nice sloganeering ring to it ... but do we really have to reduce a debate to a slogan?
"that is all cute and inclusive-sounding, but it's also a completely impractical way to run practically anything involving more than 4 or 5 people, let alone a national government."
ReplyDeleteHi Toby,
Yeah... "all" is a strong word. I get in trouble when I let my hyperbole take over my keyboard. (I have a minor infection passed along from the blog's author.) Requiring unanimity would mean that 1 criminal could effectively keep the town from hiring a sheriff, and that's not my intent.
My point is that a simple majority makes it too easy to pass a law and thereby coerce a significant percentage (49%) of the dissenting population into doing something they don't want to do (or buying something they don't want to buy). Were the US constitution to require a higher percentage to pass such laws, we wouldn't have the huge libraries floor-to-ceiling with law books and legislative sessions that see-saw back and forth legislating and repealing on a whim or at the influence of a few lobbyists.
What should that higher percentage be? Well, how about 95.45%? Yes we know there will be statistical outliers dissenting to any law, but if you can't get a full 2 standard deviations of support, you shouldn't be able to force the rest of the population into obedience.
Ooo... or better yet... the percentage should change with the scope of the government. More scope = higher percentage. A national law would need 95.45%, but a city ordinance would only need 68.27% (1 SD from the mean). [And a state law would need 86.64% (1.5 SDs).]
This would encourage most legislation to occur at the local level and there are several reasons why I really like this approach.
1) The more local the jurisdiction, the more your particular vote counts. My 1 vote for mayor has more weight than my 1 vote for President. (My 1 vote for which movie to watch tonight has more weight than my 1 vote for mayor.) When my vote counts more, I have more invested, more influence, and more to gain or lose as a result.
2) On a local law, if I'm a dissenter, the people who are forcing me to obey their law are right in my neighborhood. I can go door-to-door much more easily to rally support for a local law than a state or national one. On the national level, a few large states can kick South Dakota around like a soccer ball. Legislatively, California and New York should have hardly any influence on my life. I can't petition them, I can't invite them over for dinner, and I can't wait for them to come home to give them a piece of my mind.
For instance, if John Edwards is elected President he has pledged that he will give us universal health care in the first year or two of his term. But why should any person (or group of people) who lives hundreds of miles away be able to force me to take care of my health in a certain way? Hypothetically, all of South Dakota could be satisfied with our health care as it is, and our pair of votes in the Senate won't do diddly in stopping Edwards from forcing a health plan on us that we don't want. That's too much power over too many lives.
3) If the laws are really unfavorable in a particular town, it's easier to move out of town than it is to move out of state or country.
4) Larger governmental jurisdictions should have more solidity in structure. A national law affects a lot of people, and so these laws should make up a concrete foundation of regularity and predictability. Local governments can build a room and then remodel it a year later to make sure it's comfortable for its citizens... but if the house's foundation is continually shifting, the local laws will always be in flux. For example, a particular school district might be perfectly happy with their results and their budget - and then some bureaucrats in DC decide to enact nationwide legislation. We know the results. It would have been much better if the bureaucrats had just gone to the few school districts they were concerned about and did some hands-on helping.
5) Government is necessary for certain things in our lives, but only the rarest of things need to be homogeneous from coast to coast. Every national law takes freedom away from states, cities, and individuals... we can't have our own law on abortion if the federal government insists that abortion is handled the same in Sioux Falls as it is in Los Angeles. Even if you agree with a national law as it is, all you have to do is imagine it being reversed to understand the handcuffs it puts on us. Whether you are for abortion or against it, at least you should be in favor of "us" making the law for "us." On the national scale, my one vote makes me an insignificant part of "us"... yet that national "us" has some very significant effects on my life. Legislative effects should be proportional to legislative influence.
6) Sensationalism should have no part in national legislation. Except in really obvious and necessary situations, the national government shouldn't monkey around with our lives... the laws of our national government should read like a boring page of geometric tautologies... laws so bland and obvious that only the morally depraved or certifiably insane would take issue. And with cobwebs collecting in the chambers of the House and Senate, only the most retired of all people would even bother running for national office. Politicians who want to make a difference would run in local elections where they know the people they serve.
I believe that setting the bar according to the tiers I suggested would make sure that it happens this way. But of course I'm willing to discuss any other opinions on the subject.
Kind regards,
David
"All politics is local."
"What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people."