A Hint of Government Censorship to Come???
- Thread starter MylesBAstor
- Start date
This kind of stuff gets scary when it passes constitutional muster, and not a moment sooner. Conspiracy theories aside, the founders put together a pretty good system to keep the government out of our private affairs. Where they may have failed, or so it seems in this age, is in keeping private interests out of government. It is interesting, to me, that there is almost always outcry, even over just the remote possibility of future loss of personal liberty, while special interests have taken our representative democracy away from us with hardly a whisper of protest.
Strange, this American sense of freedom.
Tim
Strange, this American sense of freedom.
Tim
Ahh, the ultimate argument for small government...money inevitably flows to where the power resides.
And yes, the American sense of freedom is 'strange' which by definition is "a. Out of the ordinary; unusual or striking. b. Differing from the normal." It is this 'strangeness' that has defined us and sets us apart uniquely among nations.
Yep, and there are people who want us to all be the same. Don't get me started; my libertarian leanings are beginning to show.
EDIT: In a vaguely similar vein....
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All good things must surely end, and the free ride of the common man in Europe will end when the Euro crashes. It appears to be both inevitable and imminent.
-----Perhaps I should move?
Tom, did you ever try the Island; Vancouver Island in Canada?
There are a lot of good arguments for small government; I'm not even sure this is the best one as a smaller government would reduce government's power but not necessarily its concentration. The big problem with "small government" is that it has never been more than an empty campaign promise. When those who have been its advocates have had the power, they've not only failed to deliver on the promise, they've actively worked against it. Let's assume for a moment, without logic or reason, that the military is exempt, that it is necessary for us to maintain armed forces sufficient to police half the world, weapons programs the objectives of which, beyond buying them, are vague, wars that are beyond unnecessary, etc. The last president to sign a bill spending billions to save social security from collapse? Reagan. The biggest entitlements increase since Johnson? Medicare prescription drugs -- Bush. The smallest government as a % of GNP since before WWII? Clinton. I'm just scratching the surface here. Small government is, and has always been an empty promise. We're not arguing over how big the government is; we never have been. We're arguing over how the money, which will always be too much, gets spent.
Tim
Hi
I am not that paranoid about Technology. This however is one of the many things that have me wondering about our use of technology. GPS=enabled phones that broadcast your location to your "friends", thus it is possible to keep a database of our whereabouts. Google keeps a record of your searches and essentially of what you do on your computer down to the websites you go to. We have granted them this power without a thought. We gladly put ou entire private lives on Facebook for the world to see and to use if and when necessary against us .. We tweet our lives around ... We simply want to believe that technology wil right all wrongs ...
On the patent itself. Does Apple has a patent on what is done or how this is done? To me that would make all the difference. The "What" makes it even scarier
I am not that paranoid about Technology. This however is one of the many things that have me wondering about our use of technology. GPS=enabled phones that broadcast your location to your "friends", thus it is possible to keep a database of our whereabouts. Google keeps a record of your searches and essentially of what you do on your computer down to the websites you go to. We have granted them this power without a thought. We gladly put ou entire private lives on Facebook for the world to see and to use if and when necessary against us .. We tweet our lives around ... We simply want to believe that technology wil right all wrongs ...
On the patent itself. Does Apple has a patent on what is done or how this is done? To me that would make all the difference. The "What" makes it even scarier
This. I'm a whole lot less concerned over the govt. spying on me -- like most people, I ain't doin much of interest (speaking loudly on an audiophile forum
)-- than with the larger forces I see hijacking our democracy. For those interested though, worthwhile reading would be about John Poindexter's (of Iran/Contra fame) activities at the Pentagon and the Total Information Awareness program.
Everybody I know in Europe is hard working. This conception of everybody hanging around and living on the dole is a fiction spread by those whose causes it serves.
This. Not to mention those who would frighten us with tales of Euro-welfare and collapse rarely offer any real insight into why some European countries are going bankrupt. They just blame it on workers. Reminds me of Detroit in the 80s. And 90s. They also never offer any real insight into "Europe," which is a bit more than Italy and Greece. A look at the social policies, tax codes and fiscal performance of the more successful European nations might be instructive, but it evidently doesn't fit the purposes of those who would scare us deeper into more draconian social policy, less cautious business policy and ever-more aggressive foreign policy, the current American conservative movement. A name that no longer fits, by the way, as there is almost nothing "conservative" about their platform.
Tim
It doesn't require any great insight to understand why some European countries are going bankrupt. It is simply that their societies have stopped growing at the rate required to support their increasingly expansive and expensive social welfare states. With a current birthrate of ~1.3, for every 100 Greek grandparents eliding through 20-40 years of retirement, there are only 60 children and 40 grandchildren to support them. And since many of the those Greek grandchildren manage to stretch out adolescence into their early adulthood via an increasing languid educational process, the number of workers supporting the welfare state is even less than the above numbers suggest. It is one of the great ironies of the failing social democratic model that the so called 'family friendly' European societies paradoxically produce fewer and fewer families in apparent defiance of the law of supply and demand.
And, of course there is also the fact that Greece is remarkably ineffective at collecting taxes. This, and any nuanced discussion of the economics of these fragile states, always fails to get mentioned in these conversations. Simple math, staying on message, and throwing in a few of the "socials" -- "social democratic model" and "social welfare states," etc. is much easier than actually dealing with the complexities of the matter. What do you suppose are the odds that trending birthrates and spending on "social" programs don't look that much different in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan...?
In this simple vision of the world in which there are only generational demographics, evil socialism and perpetual growth, the only solutions are to eliminate all the things, including decent healthcare, that keep the weak alive, or to breed ever larger generations to support extended lifespans and feed unending growth. Always. Until the world explodes from it.
Thank God it's not that simple.
Tim
