The Goat Pen

Dr. Strangelove wrote:End all welfare programs. Tear down VA hospitals. Let the poor find work on their own. The market WILL PROVIDE. Hasn't that been proven by history? Oh, how every true American wishes it were 1888 again.

Lovely use of hyperbole. Of course nobody said end all welfare programs or tear down va hospitals, but please continue....

Bill Frezza, Contributor

I write of human folly seeking to give back to society. Good and hard.

OP/ED | 7/03/2012 @ 12:21PM |962 views

Lamenting The Lost Legacy Of Independence Day

http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/ ... dence-day/

"Can anyone honestly argue that our nation still honors the values, or practices the principles, for which our Founders fought?"

Why do we still celebrate Independence Day? Is it a lingering habit, a mindless bit of nostalgia, a time to indulge in fireworks and barbecues, devoid of any deeper meaning? Can anyone honestly argue that our nation still honors the values, or practices the principles, for which our Founders fought?

Today, most Americans have been trained to be embarrassed by the “extremist” individualist ethos that made the protection of liberty the primary purpose of government. They have been taught to apologize for the shortcomings of the “rich white men” who led the revolution. A majority of Americans now subscribe to an expansive view of government as both great provider and beneficent leveler. Its primary purpose is to redress unequal or unhappy outcomes, regardless of their source, through wealth redistribution on a scale so vast that it mocks the concept “private property.”

As for the causes of revolution, we’ve lost sight of them, too. King George III was a champion of laissez-faire compared to the modern cradle-to-grave entitlement state. The swollen capital city named after the man who won our freedom now claims the prize for erecting “a Multitude of new offices” bent on sending out “Swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” If there is a field of endeavor that the federal government does not yet regulate, subsidize, or penalize, just wait. A new law is only a “crisis” away.

Have these new offices been imposed on us by some malevolent force that has undermined the workings of democracy? No. We the people ceaselessly demand new offices at an accelerating rate. The majority of Americans vote as if they believe that massive new government programs—created by incomprehensibly complex laws and administered by increasingly unaccountable bureaucrats—can solve an expanding array of “problems” which our Founders would have surely concluded were the proper province of civil society and not the sovereign state.

The King was criticized for unjustly impressing seamen. Today, our federal and state governments imprison more of our fellow citizens than any totalitarian regime in history—the vast majority for violating a futile prohibition on the possession, sale, or consumption of substances our Founders would not have thought twice about. Vast portions of our youth are thus rendered permanently unemployable, branded as felons and outcasts with nowhere to turn but a life of crime. And yet we persist in this folly, unable to admit that drug prohibition has been as huge a failure as alcohol prohibition.

And taxes? The Founders knew a tax when they saw one—and there were very few they could abide, with or without representation. Thanks to a Supreme Court that long ago gave up defending the Constitution, we now have a chameleon levy that is not a tax when politically inconvenient yet magically becomes a tax when seeking constitutional muster. As if we didn’t have a wide enough variety of taxes, this new tax is designed to penalize anyone who refuses to participate in a great communal project designed to make every citizen even more deeply dependent on the government.

Little by little, the home of the brave and the land of the free has become a nation of rent-seeking dependents clamoring for their share of state largess. Even before the latest entitlement blowout called Obamacare, we crossed the line where more than half of Americans receive some kind of assistance from the government every month, paid for by the fewer than half that still pay income taxes. As we move into the future and the number of dependents grows while the taxpayer pool shrinks, we call the result social justice rather than its old name: theft.

Our forefathers shed blood rather than render unto King George. Yet today we madly mortgage our nation’s future to foreign powers, piling debt upon debt without limit or thought as to how it will be repaid. These debts ensnare our children and grandchildren even as we stop having them, confident in the knowledge that the government will take care of us in our old age, so why bother with the trouble and expense?

If we were still a nation capable of shame with enough intellectual integrity to call things as they are, if we hadn’t debauched our language as badly as our currency, if we had the courage to look in the mirror and see how woefully we have squandered our Founders’ legacy, this Fourth of July would be a day not of celebration but of atonement

Give some thought to what we have lost as we mark another In Dependence Day. May providence have mercy on our nation, lest we end up getting what we deserve.

puterbac wrote:

Dr. Strangelove wrote:End all welfare programs. Tear down VA hospitals. Let the poor find work on their own. The market WILL PROVIDE. Hasn't that been proven by history? Oh, how every true American wishes it were 1888 again.

Lovely use of hyperbole. Of course nobody said end all welfare programs or tear down va hospitals, but please continue....

Not really hyperbole...the very next article you post decries the existence of the welfare state. Another "things were better in 1880" article

If Obamacare and the Democrat agenda prevail, it won't be the end of the world. We will just become Europe, but without the quaint narrow cobblestone streets and outdoor cafes (footnote to Ann Coulter).

Reality- and math-averse states like California and Illinois have already become Greece. So economically sane states like Texas and North Dakota will become Germany, constantly bailing out their profligate neighbors.

BTW, Happy 4th to all.

Is DSL celebrating his Declaration of Dependence?

Dr. Strangelove wrote:Yer in da B1G now, Wiz. Try ta act wit a lil more class an' dignity, see?

Have a good holiday!

Wiz, did ya bring any homo/pedophile coaches with ya?

Bill Frezza, Contributor

I wonder. What has Bill really contributed? A stem-winder of a rant about now vs. the time of our Founding Fathers.

Bill. Who composed his rant on his laptop, inside his air-conditioned two-story, in the sunroom off of the Ikea-kitchen with the well-stocked fridge. Jonesin' for that pioneer spirit, he is.

"Little by little, the home of the free and the land of the brave has become a nation of rent-seeking dependents.."

Really, Bill? What did you contribute to this land of ours - what makes you the arbiter of propriety and moral turpitude.

Every holiday - without fail - brings out some asshole who considers it his sworn duty to tell us we're not worthy of celebrating ( for shame, reveling in mindless barbeques and fireworks) because we don't share the author's menopausal sense of lost values.

Jesus. Have a hotdog.

Once again....dumb ignert redneck teabaggers get the (skilled) jobs....Airbus to Alabamy.


But it's worth noting that Airbus didn't just pick the U.S. over France, Germany, or China. It chose Alabama over the rest of the U.S. Gee, there's plenty of factory space available in, say, California or New York. What's Alabama got that these famously "smart" states haven't got?

Not least, it's that the Yellowhammer State is one of 23 right-to-work states, which means workers are free to decide if they want to join a union. That not only makes the Alabaman labor market markedly freer than France, but also struggling states across the U.S.

Airbus isn't the first foreign enterprise to notice Alabama. The state also hosts Mercedes-Benz and Toyota production facilities. Airbus says its sister company, American Eurocopter, already operates in Mississippi and Texas—two more right-to-work states.

Alabama is reportedly also offering the European company millions in tax breaks and other incentives. Even so, Airbus's arrival in Alabama offers a look at the economic realities of doing business not only in western Europe, but also in much of the U.S.

....and VW is on like it's 3rd expansion in Chattanooga since it opened a couple years ago....

Oh geesh..


http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/05/opinion/g ... ?hpt=hp_t2

Declaration of Dependance.

Heh.

sardis wrote:Oh geesh..


http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/05/opinion/g ... ?hpt=hp_t2

Another sanctimonious "contributor" with twisted panties. Can't say 'illegal'? GTFO.

tick...serious question...are you a socialist?

Wiz, I am as God made me. I'm a perspectivist.

Job Market Perks Up in June - CNNMoney 7-5-2012 http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/05/news/ec ... aims-jobs/

Sounds like you are a socialist. So now that we have determined that...it all makes sense.

THE_WIZARD_ wrote:Sounds like you are a socialist. So now that we have determined that...

lol "We?" You and you're gay army? Or do you have that multiple personality disorder thingy?

It’s Collectivism vs. Individualism
Copyright © 2010 By Ray Thomas

People think the basic conflict today is between liberals and conservatives. It’s not. It’s between believers in collectivism and those who believe in individualism. They think that it is the difference between simply their own definition of “compassion” and “mean-spiritedness.” It isn’t that. at all. It’s the difference between collectivism and individualism.
Collectivism is really pretty simple, no matter how much collectivists want to complicate it so you will not understand what they’re trying to put over on you. It is defined thusly by one of the best known collectivists, Karl Marx, author of communism, in his “tome,” the “Communist Manifesto:” “From each according to his ability, and to each according to his need.” Meaning it is okay to :take from one who earned it and give that taken to those who did not. This gave permission for government to steal from one and give to another to gain power over both.

They want you to think the fight is between “right and left.” It is not. The real fight is, while it is still between right and left, on the left, counter to common belief, is always a despotic government, in complete control of its populace while on the right, contrary to what they want you to think, is not fascism or Nazism, but complete freedom, which is sometimes called anarchism.

Neither is something we want to have, for different reasons. We need to be somewhere in the middle, with just enough government to keep us from each other’s throats, but only that much.

It has always been thus: remember back when every country was ruled by a king or queen, who had a bunch of “lesser” officials called many things such as “barons” and such? The king or queen was a liberal who thought he/she was better, smarter than the “commoner.” The “barons” and such, too. They lived off the work and sweat of the “commoner.” They thought they had “the divine right of kings” to do that. They didn’t. Robin Hood has always gotten a “bad rap,” being pictured as “stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.” Not true, as is so with most of the “changed history” that has been written by those rulers. What he did was take back what was stolen by the king in the form of excessive taxes and give that to its rightful owners, the “commoners.”

Crisis Government

One of the most oft used methods, used to this day by those who would run your lives is taking advantage of any “crisis” that comes along, and if one doesn’t come along, creating one. Have you ever wondered why it seems like there is a new “crisis” announced just about every day? President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, is famously quoted as saying, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” That’s because to “cure” a crisis, those who wish to control you can get laws passed that they could not have hoped to pass without that “crisis.”

Massive Conspiracy

Some think there is some kind of a “massive conspiracy” to control the world, run by the international bankers. They’re wrong. But there are conspiracies, and that is one of them. A single conspiracy would soon collapse under the weight of individual egos. Many conspiracies based on a philosophy do not. Most of today’s conspiracies are based on the philosophy of collectivism. Which is the reason why they look like a “single conspiracy to many. But it doesn’t matter who is right. The answer is investigation and exposure. These conspiracies can’t stand the “light of day.”

Totalitarianism

Under whatever name it uses, altruism (which is collectivism, socialism, communism, liberalism, progressivism, fascism, etc., it requires totalitarian government, to ensure everybody’s rights are subordinate to that of the state. It amazed me how many people don’t even know what collectivism is. My own sister didn’t know until I explained it to her.

Anarchy Can’t Work

No more than can collectivism. Ayn Rand, author of that prophetic work, “Atlas Shrugged,” said this about anarchy: “Anarchy, as a political concept, is a naïve floating abstraction: . . .a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and would precipitate it into the chaos of gang warfare. It is the need for objective laws and for an arbiter of honest disagreements among men that necessitates the establishment of government.”

No More Than That

We need no more government than it takes to do that job. It has been said in Congress that there is nothing in the Constitution that says the government can take money and property from one person and give it to another, no matter how much he/she needs it. They want to make all your decisions for you. You should always be able to think for yourself. They don’t think you’re smart enough Don’t let them fool you! It isn’t logical. Use your own logic to reject their ideas.

No Logic, No Absolutes

Liberals (subjectivist collectivists) say there is no logic and no absolutes. They hope to prove that by making a “logical statement of an absolute,” which serves to illustrate their ignorance. That’s what Is love about debating liberals. Their sublime ignorance that causes them to have to use something they deny exists to illustrate their erroneous points.

THE_WIZARD_ wrote:It’s Collectivism vs. Individualism
Copyright © 2010 By Ray Thomas

Totalitarianism

Under whatever name it uses, altruism (which is collectivism, socialism, communism, liberalism, progressivism, fascism, etc., it requires totalitarian government, to ensure everybody’s rights are subordinate to that of the state. It amazed me how many people don’t even know what collectivism is. My own sister didn’t know until I explained it to her.

At least he used a spellchecker, so he's not a total idiot. Otherwise...he has no clue what altruism means, he is grammatically challenged, and he thinks he owns his sister.

Naturally these kinds of screeds appeal to the usual nabobs and mouth-breathers that make up the disintelligensia of the far-right. The Wizzards, if you will.

That means a lot...coming from a socialist...