America Before the Entitlement State

[occupied]

Create a society where there is adequate work to go around and then start callously reneging on the social contract.

^Closet Communist^

LOL. god, I love it when closet nazis call me a communist.

 

[The T]

Create a society where there is adequate work to go around and then start callously reneging on the social contract.

^Closet Communist^

LOL. god, I love it when closet nazis call me a communist.

Asswipe. Couldn't help yourself, could you? There's nothing remotely NAZI of defending true liberty. But plod on, will you?

 

[Katzndogz]

After looking at the picture of the dust bowl, our concept of needy has certainly changed! The needy today are overweight, slobs who spend their days smoking pot pretending they are sick.

 

[occupied]

^Closet Communist^

LOL. god, I love it when closet nazis call me a communist.

Asswipe. Couldn't help yourself, could you? There's nothing remotely NAZI of defending true liberty. But plod on, will you?

If you can make wild accusations so can I.

 

[The T]

That picture was from the dust bowl. It was the dust bowl that kicked off the entitlement society. It was too big a natural disaster and lasted too long for local charities to handle. The government saved millions of lives

moron

It was really a sad time in our history. People had no crops for almost ten years. Their family farms literally blew away. You sucked dust all day, every day. Children with dust blocked lungs

Of course Conservatives said let it play it's course, let the farmers take care of themselves. FDR stepped in and put the power of the government to save millions. People were more important than profits

And why did that happen? Piss poor planning of farming the lands by thier own hand.

 

[WillowTree]

After looking at the picture of the dust bowl, our concept of needy has certainly changed! The needy today are overweight, slobs who spend their days smoking pot pretending they are sick.

 

[Dragon]

Asswipe. Couldn't help yourself, could you? There's nothing remotely NAZI of defending true liberty. But plod on, will you?

Neither is there anything remotely Marxist or Communist about social democracy. If you're going to engage in irrational tar-brushing, you should expect to get it back.

Personally, I don't consider you a "closet Nazi." But I do see your "argument" which basically consists of calling someone else's position an unpleasant name without any rationale to back it up, as deserving of nothing but scorn. And people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

 

[rightwinger]

moron

It was really a sad time in our history. People had no crops for almost ten years. Their family farms literally blew away. You sucked dust all day, every day. Children with dust blocked lungs

Of course Conservatives said let it play it's course, let the farmers take care of themselves. FDR stepped in and put the power of the government to save millions. People were more important than profits

Was FDR fifteen trillion dollars in debt? moron

If you ever get a chance to look at a graph of national debt there is nothing like the 30s and 40s. But then again, FDR considered peoples lives above what was best for the bankers

 

[rightwinger]

After looking at the picture of the dust bowl, our concept of needy has certainly changed! The needy today are overweight, slobs who spend their days smoking pot pretending they are sick.

While we are at it, why don't we all applaud the idea of sending people back to starvation

What always amazes me is how irate conservatives get because poor people do not suffer enough to suit them

 

[occupied]

Social programs are anti-guillotine insurance.

 

[The T]

Asswipe. Couldn't help yourself, could you? There's nothing remotely NAZI of defending true liberty. But plod on, will you?

Neither is there anything remotely Marxist or Communist about social democracy. If you're going to engage in irrational tar-brushing, you should expect to get it back.

Personally, I don't consider you a "closet Nazi." But I do see your "argument" which basically consists of calling someone else's position an unpleasant name without any rationale to back it up, as deserving of nothing but scorn. And people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Socialism too...deserves scorn. It flies in the face of Liberty.

 

[The T]

Social programs are anti-guillotine insurance.

And an insult.

 

[Dragon]

Socialism too...deserves scorn. It flies in the face of Liberty.

Whose liberty to do what?

 

[occupied]

Social programs are anti-guillotine insurance.

And an insult.

Are you personally insulted by the state of the world? They call that megalomania.

 

[Foxfyre]

Those who lived through the first couple of winters when the first settlers arrived in America and those who lived through the dust bowl had probably the worst of any group of Americans in our history. But they got through it, and as a result formed the backbone of an amazing uniquely American culture that propelled us to be the greatest nation the world has ever known. Actually we didn't start retreating from that until the entitlement mentality started kicking in.

That picture was from the dust bowl. It was the dust bowl that kicked off the entitlement society. It was too big a natural disaster and lasted too long for local charities to handle. The government saved millions of lives

moron

As we now ponder our $15 trillion dollar debt, our increasingly miserable legacy from government entitlements, charity, benevolence, largesse, an amount that translates to $133,000 for EVERY American household, we still see the leftists thinking the solution is the federal government and that nothing good or right or compassionate was ever done before the government did it. Nor can they imagine a world that would just keep turning and people managing to make things work if the government stayed out of it.

 

[Dragon]

[
As we now ponder our $15 trillion dollar debt, our increasingly miserable legacy from . . .

. . . our government's pandering to the very rich and refusal to demand they pay a realistic share of the nation's expenses, coupled with its insistence on having a military force equal to the combined might of the entire rest of the world and to underwriting corporate risk and subsidizing corporate profits to the tune of trillions in unnecessary government spending every year . . .

we still see the leftists thinking the solution is . . .

. . . a government that serves the interests of the people as a whole, rather than the special interests of the richest citizens.

Nor can they imagine a world that would just keep turning and people managing to make things work if the government . . .

. . . continued its current course of being of, by, and for the rich at the expense of the rest of us.

So very true.

 

[dblack]

New York? Chicago? You sure the differences between then and now means that what worked then won't work now? Based on what?

Well, let's start with the fact that you're mischaracterizing what existed...

This whole idea of debating future policy based on the 'lessons' of the past has never interested me all that much. And a couple of nights ago, I think I stumbled on why that's the case.

I've been reading a book on free will (Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett, if anyone cares). One passage in particular was something of an epiphany for me. The author was making the overall point that one reason free will is such a difficult issue to sort out, is that our assumptions about it, perhaps even the ways we define it, are incoherent.

He pointed out that we tend to think of the past as a fixed entity, that because it's 'already' happened, we can pin down exactly the series of causes and effects that created the current situation. We look at the future differently though. We conceive of it as an open book that is ultimately 'undetermined'.

But the irony is that, under close scrutiny, things are actually the reverse. Even if we knew all the facts about he current state of the universe, we can't say with certainty how it got that way. That's because any number of possible pasts could have created the exact same current state. Ultimately, all we can do is make some educated guesses on how things were and how they played out. The future, on the other hand, is a actually easier to know - in theory at least. If we know the state of things now, and have a solid (if not complete) understanding of the laws of reality, we have a decent shot of predicting the future.

Anyway, my epiphany, and the point I'm making, is that using the 'facts' of the past to support our preferred philosophical narrative just isn't as reliable as we like to think. All we can do is look hard at the way things are, and use our understanding of the way reality works to lay out a course. Obviously, our 'understanding' will be colored by our assumptions about past events, so I'm not suggesting blindly ignoring history. But it's hard to use it to really prove much that applies today.

 

[occupied]

They say history is written by the victors, what is there to even base a policy on if history is in a constant state of revision by those who seek and hold power?

 

[Foxfyre]

We have had a recent discussion on another thread that emphasized the tendency of Leftists to rewrite history to suit themselves, while modern American conservatives seem to prefer the original versions. After decades of up close and personal observation of policies of leftists who do not like to be instructed by history as opposed to results of policies of conservatives who appreciate history, I prefer conservatism by a wide margin.

I don't expct the leftists to agree, however, because it does bring the whole legacy of entitlements into a whole new perspective to do so.

 

[rightwinger]

We have had a recent discussion on another thread that emphasized the tendency of Leftists to rewrite history to suit themselves, while modern American conservatives seem to prefer the original versions. After decades of up close and personal observation of policies of leftists who do not like to be instructed by history as opposed to results of policies of conservatives who appreciate history, I prefer conservatism by a wide margin.

I don't expct the leftists to agree, however, because it does bring the whole legacy of entitlements into a whole new perspective to do so.

Yea......like Paul Revere shooting those guns and ringing those bells to warn the Brittish they better not try to take our guns

Or the noble work of Joseph McCarthy

Or the honored presidency of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolege