"Let The Class War Begin . . ."

[Vox]

rhetorical question - why are the leftards so stoooooopid and lazy?

if they weren't, they would know, that there was no working class in feudalism. none, zilch, nada.

working class emerged only with the dawn of capitalism.
plus the working class of early capitalistic society has nothing to do with working class in the XXI century.
to expect the leftards to realize that demographically "working class" was never the majority of the population, but a manipulative segment, and is even less now, would be way too much, for their thinking abilities

 

[NoTeaPartyPleez]

This is a thought-provoking column from Chris Hedges. Please take the time to read the entire article, because I think this thinking is coming to the forefront:

“The rich are different from us,” F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have remarked to Ernest Hemingway, to which Hemingway allegedly replied, “Yes, they have more money.”

The exchange, although it never actually took place, sums up a wisdom Fitzgerald had that eluded Hemingway. The rich are different. The cocoon of wealth and privilege permits the rich to turn those around them into compliant workers, hangers-on, servants, flatterers and sycophants. Wealth breeds, as Fitzgerald illustrated in “The Great Gatsby” and his short story “The Rich Boy,” a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities. Colleagues, associates, employees, kitchen staff, servants, gardeners, tutors, personal trainers, even friends and family, bend to the whims of the wealthy or disappear. Once oligarchs achieve unchecked economic and political power, as they have in the United States, the citizens too become disposable.

The public face of the oligarchic class bears little resemblance to the private face. I, like Fitzgerald, was thrown into the embrace of the upper crust when young. I was shipped off as a scholarship student at the age of 10 to an exclusive New England boarding school. I had classmates whose fathers—fathers they rarely saw—arrived at the school in their limousines accompanied by personal photographers (and at times their mistresses), so the press could be fed images of rich and famous men playing the role of good fathers. I spent time in the homes of the ultra-rich and powerful, watching my classmates, who were children, callously order around men and women who worked as their chauffeurs, cooks, nannies and servants. When the sons and daughters of the rich get into serious trouble there are always lawyers, publicists and political personages to protect them—George W. Bush’s life is a case study in the insidious affirmative action for the rich. The rich have a snobbish disdain for the poor—despite well-publicized acts of philanthropy—and the middle class. These lower classes are viewed as uncouth parasites, annoyances that have to be endured, at times placated and always controlled in the quest to amass more power and money. My hatred of authority, along with my loathing for the pretensions, heartlessness and sense of entitlement of the rich, comes from living among the privileged. It was a deeply unpleasant experience. But it exposed me to their insatiable selfishness and hedonism. I learned, as a boy, who were my enemies.

The inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults. We have been blinded to the depravity of our ruling elite by the relentless propaganda of public relations firms that work on behalf of corporations and the rich. Compliant politicians, clueless entertainers and our vapid, corporate-funded popular culture, which holds up the rich as leaders to emulate and assures us that through diligence and hard work we can join them, keep us from seeing the truth.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy,” Fitzgerald wrote of the wealthy couple at the center of Gatsby’s life. “They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Aristotle, Niccolò Machiavelli, Alexis de Tocqueville, Adam Smith and Karl Marx all began from the premise there is a natural antagonism between the rich and the masses. “Those who have too much of the goods of fortune, strength, wealth, friends, and the like, are neither willing nor able to submit to authority,” Aristotle wrote in “Politics.” “The evil begins at home; for when they are boys, by reason of the luxury in which they are brought up, they never learn, even at school, the habit of obedience.” Oligarchs, these philosophers knew, are schooled in the mechanisms of manipulation, subtle and overt repression and exploitation to protect their wealth and power at our expense. Foremost among their mechanisms of control is the control of ideas. Ruling elites ensure that the established intellectual class is subservient to an ideology—in this case free market capitalism and globalization—that justifies their greed. “The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships,” Marx wrote, “the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.”

The blanket dissemination of the ideology of free market capitalism through the media and the purging, especially in academia, of critical voices have permitted our oligarchs to orchestrate the largest income inequality gap in the industrialized world. The top 1 percent in the United States own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 80 percent own only 7 percent, as Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote in “The Price of Inequality.” For every dollar that the wealthiest 0.1 percent amassed in 1980 they had an additional $3 in yearly income in 2008, David Cay Johnston explained in the article “9 Things the Rich Don’t Want You to Know About Taxes.” The bottom 90 percent, Johnson said, in the same period added only one cent. Half of the country is now classified as poor or low-income. The real value of the minimum wage has fallen by $2.77 since 1968. Oligarchs do not believe in self-sacrifice for the common good. They never have. They never will. They are the cancer of democracy.

“We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are,” Wendell Berry writes. “Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all—by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians—be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us. How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.”

The rise of an oligarchic state offers a nation two routes, according to Aristotle. The impoverished masses either revolt to rectify the imbalance of wealth and power or the oligarchs establish a brutal tyranny to keep the masses forcibly enslaved. We have chosen the second of Aristotle’s options. The slow advances we made in the early 20th century through unions, government regulation, the New Deal, the courts, an alternative press and mass movements have been reversed. The oligarchs are turning us—as they did in the 19th century steel and textile factories—into disposable human beings. They are building the most pervasive security and surveillance apparatus in human history to keep us submissive.

This imbalance would not have disturbed most of our Founding Fathers. The Founding Fathers, largely wealthy slaveholders, feared direct democracy. They rigged our political process to thwart popular rule and protect the property rights of the native aristocracy. The masses were to be kept at bay. The Electoral College, the original power of the states to appoint senators, the disenfranchisement of women, Native Americans, African-Americans and men without property locked most people out of the democratic process at the beginning of the republic. We had to fight for our voice. Hundreds of workers were killed and thousands were wounded in our labor wars. The violence dwarfed the labor battles in any other industrialized nation. The democratic openings we achieved were fought for and paid for with the blood of abolitionists, African-Americans, suffragists, workers and those in the anti-war and civil rights movements. Our radical movements, repressed and ruthlessly dismantled in the name of anti-communism, were the real engines of equality and social justice. The squalor and suffering inflicted on workers by the oligarchic class in the 19th century is mirrored in the present, now that we have been stripped of protection. Dissent is once again a criminal act. The Mellons, Rockefellers and Carnegies at the turn of the last century sought to create a nation of masters and serfs. The modern corporate incarnation of this 19th century oligarchic elite has created a worldwide neofeudalism, where workers across the planet toil in misery while corporate oligarchs amass hundreds of millions in personal wealth.

Class struggle defines most of human history. Marx got this right. The sooner we realize that we are locked in deadly warfare with our ruling, corporate elite, the sooner we will realize that these elites must be overthrown. The corporate oligarchs have now seized all institutional systems of power in the United States. Electoral politics, internal security, the judiciary, our universities, the arts and finance, along with nearly all forms of communication, are in corporate hands. Our democracy, with faux debates between two corporate parties, is meaningless political theater. There is no way within the system to defy the demands of Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry or war profiteers. The only route left to us, as Aristotle knew, is revolt.

It is not a new story. The rich, throughout history, have found ways to subjugate and re-subjugate the masses. And the masses, throughout history, have cyclically awoken to throw off their chains. The ceaseless fight in human societies between the despotic power of the rich and the struggle for justice and equality lies at the heart of Fitzgerald’s novel, which uses the story of Gatsby to carry out a fierce indictment of capitalism. Fitzgerald was reading Oswald Spengler’s “The Decline of the West” as he was writing “The Great Gatsby.” Spengler predicted that, as Western democracies calcified and died, a class of “monied thugs” would replace the traditional political elites. Spengler was right about that.

“There are only two or three human stories,” Willa Cather wrote, “and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”

The seesaw of history has thrust the oligarchs once again into the sky. We sit humiliated and broken on the ground. It is an old battle. It has been fought over and over in human history. We never seem to learn. It is time to grab our pitchforks.

Chris Hedges: Let?s Get This Class War Started - Chris Hedges - Truthdig

I read Hedges' book, "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle" a few years ago. He's spot on.

And though many here will automatically assume he's some kind of far left loon, he's one of Obama's biggest critics.

 

[Mustang]

This is a thought-provoking column from Chris Hedges. Please take the time to read the entire article, because I think this thinking is coming to the forefront:

“The rich are different from us,” F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have remarked to Ernest Hemingway, to which Hemingway allegedly replied, “Yes, they have more money.”

The exchange, although it never actually took place, sums up a wisdom Fitzgerald had that eluded Hemingway. The rich are different. The cocoon of wealth and privilege permits the rich to turn those around them into compliant workers, hangers-on, servants, flatterers and sycophants. Wealth breeds, as Fitzgerald illustrated in “The Great Gatsby” and his short story “The Rich Boy,” a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities. Colleagues, associates, employees, kitchen staff, servants, gardeners, tutors, personal trainers, even friends and family, bend to the whims of the wealthy or disappear. Once oligarchs achieve unchecked economic and political power, as they have in the United States, the citizens too become disposable.

The public face of the oligarchic class bears little resemblance to the private face. I, like Fitzgerald, was thrown into the embrace of the upper crust when young. I was shipped off as a scholarship student at the age of 10 to an exclusive New England boarding school. I had classmates whose fathers—fathers they rarely saw—arrived at the school in their limousines accompanied by personal photographers (and at times their mistresses), so the press could be fed images of rich and famous men playing the role of good fathers. I spent time in the homes of the ultra-rich and powerful, watching my classmates, who were children, callously order around men and women who worked as their chauffeurs, cooks, nannies and servants. When the sons and daughters of the rich get into serious trouble there are always lawyers, publicists and political personages to protect them—George W. Bush’s life is a case study in the insidious affirmative action for the rich. The rich have a snobbish disdain for the poor—despite well-publicized acts of philanthropy—and the middle class. These lower classes are viewed as uncouth parasites, annoyances that have to be endured, at times placated and always controlled in the quest to amass more power and money. My hatred of authority, along with my loathing for the pretensions, heartlessness and sense of entitlement of the rich, comes from living among the privileged. It was a deeply unpleasant experience. But it exposed me to their insatiable selfishness and hedonism. I learned, as a boy, who were my enemies.

The inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults. We have been blinded to the depravity of our ruling elite by the relentless propaganda of public relations firms that work on behalf of corporations and the rich. Compliant politicians, clueless entertainers and our vapid, corporate-funded popular culture, which holds up the rich as leaders to emulate and assures us that through diligence and hard work we can join them, keep us from seeing the truth.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy,” Fitzgerald wrote of the wealthy couple at the center of Gatsby’s life. “They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Aristotle, Niccolò Machiavelli, Alexis de Tocqueville, Adam Smith and Karl Marx all began from the premise there is a natural antagonism between the rich and the masses. “Those who have too much of the goods of fortune, strength, wealth, friends, and the like, are neither willing nor able to submit to authority,” Aristotle wrote in “Politics.” “The evil begins at home; for when they are boys, by reason of the luxury in which they are brought up, they never learn, even at school, the habit of obedience.” Oligarchs, these philosophers knew, are schooled in the mechanisms of manipulation, subtle and overt repression and exploitation to protect their wealth and power at our expense. Foremost among their mechanisms of control is the control of ideas. Ruling elites ensure that the established intellectual class is subservient to an ideology—in this case free market capitalism and globalization—that justifies their greed. “The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships,” Marx wrote, “the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.”

The blanket dissemination of the ideology of free market capitalism through the media and the purging, especially in academia, of critical voices have permitted our oligarchs to orchestrate the largest income inequality gap in the industrialized world. The top 1 percent in the United States own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 80 percent own only 7 percent, as Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote in “The Price of Inequality.” For every dollar that the wealthiest 0.1 percent amassed in 1980 they had an additional $3 in yearly income in 2008, David Cay Johnston explained in the article “9 Things the Rich Don’t Want You to Know About Taxes.” The bottom 90 percent, Johnson said, in the same period added only one cent. Half of the country is now classified as poor or low-income. The real value of the minimum wage has fallen by $2.77 since 1968. Oligarchs do not believe in self-sacrifice for the common good. They never have. They never will. They are the cancer of democracy.

“We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are,” Wendell Berry writes. “Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all—by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians—be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us. How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.”

The rise of an oligarchic state offers a nation two routes, according to Aristotle. The impoverished masses either revolt to rectify the imbalance of wealth and power or the oligarchs establish a brutal tyranny to keep the masses forcibly enslaved. We have chosen the second of Aristotle’s options. The slow advances we made in the early 20th century through unions, government regulation, the New Deal, the courts, an alternative press and mass movements have been reversed. The oligarchs are turning us—as they did in the 19th century steel and textile factories—into disposable human beings. They are building the most pervasive security and surveillance apparatus in human history to keep us submissive.

This imbalance would not have disturbed most of our Founding Fathers. The Founding Fathers, largely wealthy slaveholders, feared direct democracy. They rigged our political process to thwart popular rule and protect the property rights of the native aristocracy. The masses were to be kept at bay. The Electoral College, the original power of the states to appoint senators, the disenfranchisement of women, Native Americans, African-Americans and men without property locked most people out of the democratic process at the beginning of the republic. We had to fight for our voice. Hundreds of workers were killed and thousands were wounded in our labor wars. The violence dwarfed the labor battles in any other industrialized nation. The democratic openings we achieved were fought for and paid for with the blood of abolitionists, African-Americans, suffragists, workers and those in the anti-war and civil rights movements. Our radical movements, repressed and ruthlessly dismantled in the name of anti-communism, were the real engines of equality and social justice. The squalor and suffering inflicted on workers by the oligarchic class in the 19th century is mirrored in the present, now that we have been stripped of protection. Dissent is once again a criminal act. The Mellons, Rockefellers and Carnegies at the turn of the last century sought to create a nation of masters and serfs. The modern corporate incarnation of this 19th century oligarchic elite has created a worldwide neofeudalism, where workers across the planet toil in misery while corporate oligarchs amass hundreds of millions in personal wealth.

Class struggle defines most of human history. Marx got this right. The sooner we realize that we are locked in deadly warfare with our ruling, corporate elite, the sooner we will realize that these elites must be overthrown. The corporate oligarchs have now seized all institutional systems of power in the United States. Electoral politics, internal security, the judiciary, our universities, the arts and finance, along with nearly all forms of communication, are in corporate hands. Our democracy, with faux debates between two corporate parties, is meaningless political theater. There is no way within the system to defy the demands of Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry or war profiteers. The only route left to us, as Aristotle knew, is revolt.

It is not a new story. The rich, throughout history, have found ways to subjugate and re-subjugate the masses. And the masses, throughout history, have cyclically awoken to throw off their chains. The ceaseless fight in human societies between the despotic power of the rich and the struggle for justice and equality lies at the heart of Fitzgerald’s novel, which uses the story of Gatsby to carry out a fierce indictment of capitalism. Fitzgerald was reading Oswald Spengler’s “The Decline of the West” as he was writing “The Great Gatsby.” Spengler predicted that, as Western democracies calcified and died, a class of “monied thugs” would replace the traditional political elites. Spengler was right about that.

“There are only two or three human stories,” Willa Cather wrote, “and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”

The seesaw of history has thrust the oligarchs once again into the sky. We sit humiliated and broken on the ground. It is an old battle. It has been fought over and over in human history. We never seem to learn. It is time to grab our pitchforks.

Chris Hedges: Let?s Get This Class War Started - Chris Hedges - Truthdig

I have two observations to offer before I comment further on Hedges. Both are ironic.

The first is this: If someone (anyone, really) dares to comment on the rising income inequality (which is arguably destroying America's longstanding social contract which has kept the peace while promoting prosperity for all), that person is immediately attacked as engaging in 'class warfare' which is absurd since the middle class has been on the receiving end of a decreasing share of the economic pie for about 3 decades now, and observing and acknowledging that phenomenon is not class warfare. It's an awakening. That awakening could, if handled properly, prevent further civil discord if only the powers that be were willing to heed that warning which history has born witness to on several occasions.

The second is this: Who will the powers that be and their sycophants blame? Liberals. Isn't that hilarious?

I've read Hedges. I've read "American Fascists" and "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle." I've also started "The Death of the Liberal Class" which is a history of how our institutions have failed us. I'm currently knee-deep in reading his book, "I Don't Believe in Atheists" which is an absolutely horrid title for a very good book which was also sold as "When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists" which at least gives a better idea of what the book is about which essentially dismisses the idea that human beings progress morally over time to become a better version of itself despite the fact that both religion and modern behavioral theories (including science) promote that idea. It's an excellent read which challenges the reader (at least is has with me) to seriously question his or her previously deeply held beliefs.

Hedges was a war correspondent for several years in numerous conflicts, so he's not only seen the privilege of the wealthy as a youth, he's seen man's inhumanity to man close up, and how power is used by the powerful to perpetuate their privilege. He was also a Harvard Divinity student, so he's got a wealth of personal experience to draw from in his writing.

He's an author who's well worth the time to acquaint oneself with. Although he might take exception with me ending that last sentence with a preposition.

 

[ClosedCaption]

rhetorical question - why are the leftards so stoooooopid and lazy?

The right uses more welfare than the left. Boom goes your mind

 

[Erand7899]

So I should hate my brother because he has more money than me? I should go to war with him?

Ill pass.

So you were cool with feudalism, then?

You keep working hard on this idiotology of income equality, and you will eventually find yourself in economic slavery. Capitalism is the only economic system that allows for free people to follow their own dreams. The further an economy drifts away from capitalism, the less free are the common people within that system.

The right to make economic decisions, without the permission of government, is the basis of individual freedom. Today the government is telling individuals that they must purchase health insurance, and also what health insurance is acceptable for purchase. Tomorrow they will be telling you what food you must buy, what automobiles you must buy, and what is acceptable as housing.

But, you keep right on envying the rich, and doing your best to destroy them. Feudalism is just a short jump from there.

 

[Vox]

rhetorical question - why are the leftards so stoooooopid and lazy?

The right uses more welfare than the left. Boom goes your mind

no, it doesn't.

and using welfare has nothing to do with being retarded, like the left is

 

[Vox]

So I should hate my brother because he has more money than me? I should go to war with him?

Ill pass.

So you were cool with feudalism, then?

You keep working hard on this idiotology of income equality, and you will eventually find yourself in economic slavery. Capitalism is the only economic system that allows for free people to follow their own dreams. The further an economy drifts away from capitalism, the less free are the common people within that system.

The right to make economic decisions, without the permission of government, is the basis of individual freedom. Today the government is telling individuals that they must purchase health insurance, and also what health insurance is acceptable for purchase. Tomorrow they will be telling you what food you must buy, what automobiles you must buy, and what is acceptable as housing.

But, you keep right on envying the rich, and doing your best to destroy them. Feudalism is just a short jump from there.

^ this

 

[Freemason9]

Advocating class warfare supports what I am saying IE killing and hating our brethren because they have money is not a good thing... yeah not seeing it.

You mentioned the Tea Party. So of course I mentioned Obama. The two are related. The Tea Party supports policies that make people free. Obama, as we have seen the past 5 years, doesn't.

And yes, Romney was a much superior choice to Obama. He isn't the son of aristocracy. There is no aristocracy in this country. We don't have any. You cant be the son of something that doesnt exist. Not to mention when he was born his parents weren't wealthy. If anyone acts like aristocracy in this country it's the current administration.

You have so many little things wrong. You claim the Tea Party is against science and education. Pure nonsense. Even a liberal ivy league professor did a study that conluded we are far more educated in matters of science than the general population. You claim Romney was born the son of aristocracy which is total nonsense.

Why do you believe such crap?

And you're wrong about the 08 election. Obama wasnt elected because of Palin. He was elected because of Bush and McCain.

Sorry. I thought you were reasonably coherent until this last post.

(1) As Buffett remarked, the "class war" is already being waged . . . and the middle class is losing. It's time to buck up and fight back.

(2) The Tea Party does not want to make anyone "free." They are right wing extremists that base their ideology on Christian fundamentalist teaching. They no nothing at all about economics. They can grow often carrots, however.

(3) Romney was/is an aristocrat. I really can't add much to it.

(4) The Tea Party is a continuation of the John Birch society and Nixon's "silent majority." They are the old Dixiecrats. They are know-nothings. They deny human influence in global climate change, oppose environmental protections, and want to defund virtually all forms of public eduation.

(8) Palin was/is an ass clown, and Romney was always unelectable.

 

[ClosedCaption]

rhetorical question - why are the leftards so stoooooopid and lazy?

The right uses more welfare than the left. Boom goes your mind

no, it doesn't.

and using welfare has nothing to do with being retarded, like the left is

Sorry I meant, Boom goes where your mind would be if you had one.

 

[Moonglow]

Class warfare is always in society, in the US the rich are winning the class war, again.

 

[Mustang]

So I should hate my brother because he has more money than me? I should go to war with him?

Ill pass.

So you were cool with feudalism, then?

You keep working hard on this idiotology of income equality, and you will eventually find yourself in economic slavery. Capitalism is the only economic system that allows for free people to follow their own dreams. The further an economy drifts away from capitalism, the less free are the common people within that system.

The right to make economic decisions, without the permission of government, is the basis of individual freedom. Today the government is telling individuals that they must purchase health insurance, and also what health insurance is acceptable for purchase. Tomorrow they will be telling you what food you must buy, what automobiles you must buy, and what is acceptable as housing.

But, you keep right on envying the rich, and doing your best to destroy them. Feudalism is just a short jump from there.

You equate the economic theory of capitalism with the political theory of democracy as if the two are mutually and inexorably tied together. I can assure you that they are not. No, they are not natural allies since unrestrained capitalism can enslave a population just as surely as a dictatorship can because unrestrained power will not permit dissent when it sees that dissent as a threat to its continued preeminence.

 

[Vox]

The right uses more welfare than the left. Boom goes your mind

no, it doesn't.

and using welfare has nothing to do with being retarded, like the left is

Sorry I meant, Boom goes where your mind would be if you had one.

you are one constant boom instead of the mind

 

[Vox]

class warfare is always in society, in the us the rich are winning the class war, again.

good

 

[Erand7899]

Advocating class warfare supports what I am saying IE killing and hating our brethren because they have money is not a good thing... yeah not seeing it.

You mentioned the Tea Party. So of course I mentioned Obama. The two are related. The Tea Party supports policies that make people free. Obama, as we have seen the past 5 years, doesn't.

And yes, Romney was a much superior choice to Obama. He isn't the son of aristocracy. There is no aristocracy in this country. We don't have any. You cant be the son of something that doesnt exist. Not to mention when he was born his parents weren't wealthy. If anyone acts like aristocracy in this country it's the current administration.

You have so many little things wrong. You claim the Tea Party is against science and education. Pure nonsense. Even a liberal ivy league professor did a study that conluded we are far more educated in matters of science than the general population. You claim Romney was born the son of aristocracy which is total nonsense.

Why do you believe such crap?

And you're wrong about the 08 election. Obama wasnt elected because of Palin. He was elected because of Bush and McCain.

Sorry. I thought you were reasonably coherent until this last post.

(1) As Buffett remarked, the "class war" is already being waged . . . and the middle class is losing. It's time to buck up and fight back.

(2) The Tea Party does not want to make anyone "free." They are right wing extremists that base their ideology on Christian fundamentalist teaching. They no nothing at all about economics. They can grow often carrots, however.

(3) Romney was/is an aristocrat. I really can't add much to it.

(4) The Tea Party is a continuation of the John Birch society and Nixon's "silent majority." They are the old Dixiecrats. They are know-nothings. They deny human influence in global climate change, oppose environmental protections, and want to defund virtually all forms of public eduation.

(8) Palin was/is an ass clown, and Romney was always unelectable.

Your rant is fairly broad, and has little to do with the subject at hand. The Tea Party is a collection of many smaller parties, whose chief concerns are excessive taxation and limits to the federal government. Just like you, they are allowed to believe, and advocate for, any damn thing they desire to believe and advocate for. They are not evil because they disagree with your idiotology, and they are not know nothings because they do not buy into your so called truths.

Yes, there is a class war being waged, and it has been going on for some time now. It is not a war between the haves and the have nots. It is a war fought by socialists in their attempts to destroy capitalism. Class is only an excuse to wage the war.

BTW, public education is a local and state function that did just fine before the federal government got involved in it, and will do just fine when the federal government gets out of it. Especially when we can finally convince you loons that the proper goal of public education is to educate children and not to provide jobs for Democrat voters.

 

[ClosedCaption]

no, it doesn't.

and using welfare has nothing to do with being retarded, like the left is

Sorry I meant, Boom goes where your mind would be if you had one.

you are one constant boom instead of the mind

Really

 

[Mustang]

Class warfare is always in society, in the US the rich are winning the class war, again.

Their problem will come down to human nature. They won't know when to say enough is enough because it's NEVER enough. At some point, it's not even about the money anymore. It's just about winning.

 

[daveman]

There is no way to discuss this rationally with someone that has never had to fight or sacrifice to gain anything.

Oh, you mean like someone who works 90-hour weeks to get his small business up and running, as opposed to someone who wants what other people earned?

Someone who served for 20 years in uniform, willing to give his life in defense of the nation, as opposed to someone who thinks he deserves free money from the government in return for nothing?

Someone who provides jobs for other people, as opposed to someone who demands a job without offering his employer any effort?

You're right. There is no way to discuss this rationally with someone that has never had to fight or sacrifice to gain anything.

 

[daveman]

"Feudalism" = "It's not fair that I have to work for a living. Give me free shit!!"

 

[Vox]

So you were cool with feudalism, then?

You keep working hard on this idiotology of income equality, and you will eventually find yourself in economic slavery. Capitalism is the only economic system that allows for free people to follow their own dreams. The further an economy drifts away from capitalism, the less free are the common people within that system.

The right to make economic decisions, without the permission of government, is the basis of individual freedom. Today the government is telling individuals that they must purchase health insurance, and also what health insurance is acceptable for purchase. Tomorrow they will be telling you what food you must buy, what automobiles you must buy, and what is acceptable as housing.

But, you keep right on envying the rich, and doing your best to destroy them. Feudalism is just a short jump from there.

You equate the economic theory of capitalism with the political theory of democracy as if the two are mutually and inexorably tied together. I can assure you that they are not. No, they are not natural allies since unrestrained capitalism can enslave a population just as surely as a dictatorship can because unrestrained power will not permit dissent when it sees that dissent as a threat to its continued preeminence.

except democracy does not exist with any other economic platform

capitalism is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for democracy to exist

 

[Mustang]

You keep working hard on this idiotology of income equality, and you will eventually find yourself in economic slavery. Capitalism is the only economic system that allows for free people to follow their own dreams. The further an economy drifts away from capitalism, the less free are the common people within that system.

The right to make economic decisions, without the permission of government, is the basis of individual freedom. Today the government is telling individuals that they must purchase health insurance, and also what health insurance is acceptable for purchase. Tomorrow they will be telling you what food you must buy, what automobiles you must buy, and what is acceptable as housing.

But, you keep right on envying the rich, and doing your best to destroy them. Feudalism is just a short jump from there.

You equate the economic theory of capitalism with the political theory of democracy as if the two are mutually and inexorably tied together. I can assure you that they are not. No, they are not natural allies since unrestrained capitalism can enslave a population just as surely as a dictatorship can because unrestrained power will not permit dissent when it sees that dissent as a threat to its continued preeminence.

except democracy does not exist with any other economic platform

capitalism is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for democracy to exist

A few observations.

There is no economic system codified within the US Constitution.

Unregulated capitalism does not exist within the US. People may long for it in some philosophical way, but they would not be happy campers if they found themselves in a situation similar to the Midwest and the West back in the 1800s when everyone was at the mercy of the powerful railroads with a gov't that was either unwilling or unable to intervene on the behalf of citizens, small towns, counties, and individual states.

China has a capitalist economic system, but they're a one party communist political system.