Liberalism, after all, needs to imagine an unhappy populace. Passing sweeping entitlement programs and convincing voters that big government is the answer only works if people are frustrated with their stations in life. (NY Daily News - S.E. Cupp)
Progressives need people on the welfare rolls, people without health insurance, hungry people, marginalized people speaking foreign languages, bitter and angry resentful people, homeless people and people in substandard housing.
A self-sufficient people have no need for progressive government busybodies. Imagine if everyone followed in Sara Palin's footsteps. Progressives would be out of business.
25 comments:
She is growing on me, but I still have concerns about her track record.
Silver,,,This is why I believe this whole economy is by design as it creates the very people you speak of.
On a side note and at the risk of sounding sexist, Fox News cannot get better than when Megyn Kelly has both S.E. Cupp and Andrea Tantaros on her show, three very smart and sexy conservatives!
If that sounds sexist so be it, but at the same time it remains true.
Even more broadly altruism itself requires victims. If noone needs your sacrifices, how can you be moral? Create victims. I think this is why so many altruists (leftist and religious) gloat over stories of hard luck, it gives them an opportunity to be moral.They can be almost gleeful about someone elses disaster.
RE: Shane Atwell,,,,
Altruism by definition cannot be applied to leftists for they are about self-promotion and creating victims not selfless concern for them.
This is all rather disappointly standard conservative talking points.
"Progressives" do not care for Palin because she is not progressive. Is that really so hard to understand?
And progressives do not "need" people to be poor, disenfranchised, unemployed, or ill. The poor, disenfranchised, unemployed, and ill need progressivism. Is that also so hard to understand?
JMJ
You got it backwards, Jersey. Progressivism creates impoverished victims.
History directly and completely contradicts that belief, Silver.
JMJ
Ya gotta bring proof, Jersey...
40 years of Johnson's great society has brought us what?
Speaking of history, free markets bring prosperity, central planning brings economic misery. That record is clear.
RE: Jersey,,
I second Silvers motion of bringing proof.
Keynesian economics has indeed a history but a failed one of which there is abundant proof.
So put your money where your mouth is and provide the revelant proof you boast of.
"...free markets bring prosperity..."
Where's the properity? We had a collapse in financial markets and an economic catastrophe that we're still reeling from as a result of "free markets."
What country are you talking about.
PS. We liberals do not dislike Ms. Palin. In fact, we hope against hope that she's the GOP nominee in 2012. Really. We do.
Re Palin: Right Shaw, "Pleeeeeeeze don't throw me in that brier patch!"
The financial crash was a result of government meddling in a no-longer-free market.
Incentives to buy homes we can't afford. Government guarantees to Wall Street gamblers that Uncle Sugar will clean up after them and refill their pockets. The government provided perverse incentives and people responded. Crash.
RE; Shaw,,
Nice picture. Where might I inquire do you live and in what style I might also inquire if we are to be speaking on prosperity.
Mind you that I ask about you and you alone and wish for full disclosure.
I'll tell you, Christopher, if you share the same with me.
OK Shaw if you wish to play answer a quesetion with a question (reminds me of Hussein), even though a quick visit to my site might answer this; Michigan, Detroit-Metro area, blue-collar UAW, raised middle-class and thus far remain so,,,,,YOUR TURN
You won't make a good TV anchor this way but a good socialist politician maybe?
>We had a collapse in financial markets and an economic catastrophe that we're still reeling from as a result of "free markets."
I'll throw your question back at you. What country are you talking about? The United States has not had a free market for at least a century.
Your assertion is the great straw man of modern American totalitarian collectivists. You blame the failure of government intrusion in the economy on the lack of government intrusion in the economy. The "deregulation" of the financial markets was no deregulation at all. Just as FDR's Raw Deal extended the Depression for possibly as many as seven extra years (see the study by Cole and Ohanian (UCLA), for example), government intrusion into the economy--regulation and heavy taxation--was the catalyst for the current recession, and is the greatest obstacle in the way of recovery.
The collapse of the financial markets, etc., had nothing to do with a free market; it was caused specifically because of the absence of a free market.
Look, Christopher, I don't want to get into a who's humbler than whom contest with you.
I asked if you were willing to share your personal information after asking me to. This is the internet, and I have been stalked in the past. I'm reluctant to give away too much information.
I live in Boston, Massachusetts, my parents were Italian immigrants. My father arrived here with almost nothing, put himself through school, and ended up owning his own business and home. Raised middle class and remain so.
The picture in my avatar was taken when I lived in Florida. I've also lived in California, and have spent time in Italy.
Don't care if I'd make a poor teevee anchor--don't know of any good ones anyway. And you don't need to suggest labels about me (socialist) around because you know almost nothing about me except for the information I just gave you.
You're making assumptions about me based on your prejudices. Tsk. Tsk.
I suggest you and others who toss the label "socialist" around to read up on what a real socialist is. Because most people who label others as such don't know what they're talking about.
American Progressivism and Free Market Capitalism are not mutually exclusive constructs. While they inevitably and understandably bump up against each other at times, they also are requisites for each other to function.
A great way to at this is in the enforcement of contract law. Without the legally enforcable "contract," Free Market Capitalism is impossible. If you don't have at least some legal recourse against fraud, you have no way to calculate risk, and if you don't can't ascertain at least a reasonable, general scope of risk, you can't make investment decisions.
Here you see why it is imperative that a huge, complicated, capitalist state such as ours needs many well-paid, experienced, honest regulators just in order to basically function. Republicans, with "moderate" Democrats, have done everything in their power over the years to neuter our regulatory system, and sure enough, cancerous corruption is historically rife in the private sector now.
Progressivism is and always has been the bulwark against this sort of corrupt, dumb, short-sighted, selfish, bad governence. It is why women vote, and black men don't get lynched, and why children go to school and not horrific factory jobs, and why Americans didn't rise up in anger with this latest recession - because unlike in the past, they had help.
Progressivism did that too.
What the hell has conservatism ever done?
JMJ
You're screwed up, Jersey. You did not describe progressivism. If government limited itself to refereeing contracts and enforcing the rule of law I'd be singing its praises.
But no, government creates a false market for ethanol to the tune of $7 billion per year, that's progressivism.
Government forces lenders to drop prudent, time tested lending practices, and we got the housing bubble.
Government constructs a trillon dollar safety net under Wall Street so they can steal us all blind. That's progressivism.
Government now owns us thanks to progressives. Idiots on the left are describing continuing these tax cuts as "giving money to the rich." It's their money!
Thanks to progressives, government has its greedy hands permanently in out pockets, and you good little sheeple on the left defend it all.
Republicans are not blameless. I'm with Hayek when he said ...
"...To the socialists of all parties"
Silver, progressivism does not champion ethanol. I'm a "progressive" and I have never championed ethanol, nor have many progressives and liberals far more important than I'll ever be. Ethanol (and remember, it's really a pretty small issue) was pushed by agro concerns on both political parties until it became a subsidized industry. It's not about ideology, but about the personal greed of agro concerns and their minions in congress.
As for this. it is so insane that I just don't know what to say:
"Government forces lenders to drop prudent, time tested lending practices, and we got the housing bubble."
It was exactly, completely, totally, utterly, infinitely the opposite. I can't begin to imagine how you rationalize this statement.
And this one...???
"Government constructs a trillon dollar safety net under Wall Street so they can steal us all blind. That's progressivism."
Do you really and honestly believe that any progressive is happy with the Moral Hazards with which congress is propping up Wall Street? At the same time, do you really believe the intent of subsidized lending is for propping up contract fraud? Really???
"Government now owns us..."
No. They don't. They don't "own" any more of us than they ever did.
"Idiots on the left are describing continuing these tax cuts as "giving money to the rich. It's their money!"
Yes, we all know whose money is whose. We just think the rates need to go up a little right now. That's all. Again, this isn't some all-or-nothing, ridiculous demand.
"Thanks to progressives, government has its greedy hands permanently in out pockets, and you good little sheeple on the left defend it all."
Taxes are lower now than ever before. Give it a rest already.
JMJ
>Taxes are lower now than ever before.
That comment alone removed what minute amount of credibility that may have still been hiding somewhere.
Income taxes, sales taxes, socialist security taxes, other fees for governmentally imposed programs...all of those things are taxes, and there has never been a higher level of overall taxation than we have now.
>American Progressivism and Free Market Capitalism are not mutually exclusive constructs.
To a certain degree, that's true. Naturally, American "progressivism" would disappear if there were nobody to steal from. On the other hand, a free market would function with peak efficiency and effectiveness without such thievery. Of course, as I pointed out in an earlier comment, there hasn't been a free market in the United States for a hundred years.
By definition, a free market cannot coexist with so-called progressivism (which is merely a form of legal plunder). "Progressivism" is now, always has been, and always will be, the enemy of liberty.
You've got some big blind spots, Jersey.
Progressivism is about using government to "better" peoples lives. That requires more intervention by the state, which results in less personal initiative and less freedom. Ethanol is a gold-plated example of progressivism, as is banning the incandescent bulb.
YOU may not agree with that stuff, but the overlords you vote for and cheer on are all about more government in out lives, and that is progressivism.
Shaw, You are the one making assumptions, I only asked my question to get an idea of what you understand about prosperity.
In your rather lenghthty response/diatribe I see that your father understood prosperity but somehow his lessons were lost on you.
Now I had guessed as much from your first comment but just wanted you to prove it to yourself.
CHRISTOPHER: "In your rather lenghthty response/diatribe I see that your father understood prosperity but somehow his lessons were lost on you."
Christopher, my father was a life-long Democrat, believed in socialism, and was a union man; and apparently in your opinion, "understood prosperity."
Thank you for validating that people can believe in socialism and prosperity.
CHRISTOPHER: "Now I had guessed as much from your first comment but just wanted you to prove it to yourself."
Next time, try not to "guess" things about people from one comment. It may lead to embarrassment.
Shaw can I ask you something? You said your Dad started his own business,was his business Unionized?
Many people of our parents were Unionized when it was put in place and for good reason,but like any other government program the Unions have become just another bankrupting, bloated bureaucracy.
If the whole country were Unionized like the dems want to do with the health care system we would have seen the breakdown of our country alot more prematurely than we are now.
Calling someone "Union" doesn't have the same crediblity it used to knowing they are being supported of the backs of private industry and struggling tax payers.
Just goes to prove how more Government intrusion causes our financial woes instead of maing them better.
"Imagine if everyone followed Sarha Palin's footsteps." I am..where did all the Caribou go?
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