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Old 10-11-2007, 01:54 AM
count zero count zero is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: marin county california
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"Paul wants to ELIMINATE overzealous feds by eliminating many of their departments, while Kucinich wants to EMPOWER the federal government and give them even more power than they already have."

This commits the fallacy of the fourth term, invalidating your argument. Do you think the government that Ron Paul wants to eliminate is the same government that Dennis Kucinich wants to empower? It is not. Dennis Kucinich, rest assured, does not want to empower the FBI and the CIA and in particular the DEA and the War On (Some) Drugs. Therefore, I am unmoved by your bleatings. While I understand that you are opposed in the extreme to the sort of government envisioned by Dennis Kucinich and others that you humorously and mistakenly call socialists, you must not, for reasons of intellectual responsibility, conflate this with the evils of current or recent governments, ones that you clearly understand people are likely to reflexively view with suspicion -- the CIA and the FBI and the DEA, for example.

Obviously, per our previous encounters, I believe in government as the only viable rallying point behind which clear-thinking people can respond to the emerging oligarchy/corporocracy. All they have to do is stop voting for the corporate candidates and start voting for real people who will take as their mandate the greatest good for the greatest number. You evidently disagree with that, but fallaciously implying that Kucinich wants to expand the evildoing of the current criminal administration is not playing by the rules of discourse.

Really, as I read your posts, I find myself wondering what sort of world you envision. Anarchy? I doubt it; the arguments against anarchy are many and good. But if not anarchy, then, by definition, some sort of government. But then who decides how much government is too much? Ron Paul? OK, we won't take any money from the rich, and we won't give any money to the poor. But what about building a highway with tax money? Should the poor who didn't contribute a cent be allowed to drive on it? And are you really comfortable with the idea that, in the absence of government involvement, it will be the likes of Enron and GE who decide who gets a job (hint: Juan and Gupta and Wang Ling) and who eats cat food for dinner (hint: Billy Bob, Joe Bob and Chantelle)?

Properly conceived, government is just people getting together and deciding what to do in an organized way. At this time and place in history, of course, it is considerably less than that. It is a circus of thuggish self-interest. But if we turn over all power to the people with money -- a process which is well under way and which, in a perfect Libertarian world with the absence of external controls, would surely escalate to the max -- can any sane person imagine that this condition would improve? Please.

One last thing. Do you notice how the first thing you guys are always on about is money? You are not Libertarians because you want to free the noble human spirit from the grasp of a pernicious form of social organization; you're Libertarians because you want to hold onto every last dime. You guys are so hung up on money that you don't have time to think about what's happening to your neighbors; your motto seems to be, if they're gonna drown, stick a hose in their mouth. Your fellow capitalist Ray Kroc was fond of that one. Ray Kroc got rich by inflicting a measurable decline in health and happiness on the entire USA, but to you lot that's a totally swell result, since getting rich is the only reason for living and anyone dumb enough to eat at McD's deserves whatever they get.


"[Ron Paul believes] to protect liberty, we must protect life."

Let Ron Paul tell that to his death-crazed Texas constituents who have made that state's government the most bloodthirsty (relative to the behavior of the other states) in American history, because it's certainly not an argument against choice. Life begins at birth. No culture in recorded history has ever thought otherwise, and no amount of halfwitted ranting by a bunch of sexually-deviant money-grubbing TV preachers is going to change that. I read Ron Paul's description of the events that led him to be anti-choice, and it was embarrassing. I want a leader who is motivated by logic and clear thought, not someone who instantly succumbs to the pathetic fallacy (reasoning from emotion) the first time he sees an abortion.
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Last edited by count zero : 10-11-2007 at 02:31 AM.
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