RRC Archives

Crankmas wrote:the dude is openly advocating techniques for peeing on another etc...,

somebody got an F in fisting class. i'll recap:

"you put your right hand in and you shake it all about. you do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. that's what it's all about!"

rappers? pft.

-t

JeffCastro wrote:Your link to "fistgate" just proves my point. Why is there a controversy over teaching kids about safe sex? If we had our priorities straight we would be giving out bags of condoms to every public school student.

Yeah but all those condoms they hand out won't accommodate my massive fist. This is why we need big government to take the initiative and teach kids about proper fisting materials and procedures!

And shame on you charlie for posting media matters propaganda.

Please define big government

Be careful what you wish for.

WOULD A PLANETARY ONE-CHILD POLICY DOOM THE WELFARE STATE? “A welfare state is in one sense a big Ponzi scheme. Without increasing numbers of people entering the scheme, there is no money to pay the people receiving the money.â€

50% approval for one confused child in the WH while a 50% disapproval ... roughly equivalent to the numbers who do and those who don't pay taxes in this country.. interesting

correlation without causation is a concept that they teach in, like, 7th grade nowadays.

JeffCastro wrote:Please define big government

Well good question, I'll try and answer as best I can. First we have to be specific about which government, so lets stick with the US federal governement. "Big goverment" would certainly mean other things when applied to states, other countries, etc.

I would define "big government" as political authorities extending influence and power beyond that enumerated in the constsitution. So how about some examples:

- Eductation, why are the feds even involved?
- Cap and tax, where in the constitution do the feds get the power to regulate the air we exhale, and all the energy we use?
- Health care - not a federal issue! The feds however should allow insurance companies to comptete across state line. The interstate commerce clause in the constitution has been abused, but this is what it was intended for.
- Amtrak?
- PBS, NPR?

And yes, Bush was a "big government" guy too:

- Medicare prescription drug bill
- Bailouts, Obama likes them too!
- Bush increased funding for the national endowment for arts while we were running a budget deficit. Why the hell does such an endowment even exist!

My whole point is, the constitution was written by some smart folks escaping tyranny. Their primary intent was to limit the power of the federal government. We have completely lost sight of this.

michaelarmand wrote:And shame on you charlie for posting media matters propaganda.

Heh. You link to Hoft and Biggovernment and I can't link to Media Matters?

Shame on you for firstly not appreciating the humor of me linking to what MAY be an equally slanted website tongue in cheek, but shame mostly for being so clueless as to how slanted your stuff is.

michaelarmand wrote: My whole point is, the constitution was written by some smart folks escaping tyranny. Their primary intent was to limit the power of the federal government. We have completely lost sight of this.

yeah. let's make sure we keep our eye on the prize:

bending the present around cutting edge geopolitics from the mid-1700s.

it's tempting to leave you with a one-liner, but i think it might be productive to recap your "whole point".

1) "constitution written by smart folks." i guess. i mean, yes, we know definitively they could read and write. and we might assume - given they all had a role in government - they were all quite brilliant (because this is a trans-historical axiom). either way, their intellectual prowess says nothing about the purchase of their thought on the present. why? because their "smarts" were set in a particular historical moment, and the problems facing white wealthy men in 1770 are FAR different than those facing modern leaders. to suggest they "onsighted" the complex quandaries of the 21st century is laughable at best.

2) "escaping tyranny": i find it hilarious that people don't trust the vile self-serving ethos of modern government officials, but believe the first set of politicians in this country were altruistic saints. nope. powerful white men who didn't want to pay taxes to a far away government. did they do away with taxes? no. did they do away with government? no. did they abolish slavery? no.

they changed the way power operated in and through nation states, and they changed the locus of sovereignty. but they still maintained a strand of "tyranny" under the guise of a republic; a new type of tyranny with an emphasis on diffusion rather than centrality. different but not "free" in any meaningful way.

3) "primary intent": we're going to make claims about original intent? here? really?

4) "we have completely lost sight of this": of course, by "this" you are referring to an ostensible intentionality, which can only be verified if we have access to a time machine. we don't have one, and yet you still insist on lamenting our failure to stick to a plan made invisible by the passage of time? in sum, you are suggesting we should try to steer the course of a nation with an unclear mandate written 200 years prior to the problems we are trying to solve.

great job. i'll be in the war room reading Euripedes to prepare for the ground war with China.

-t

burn