🚀 go-pugleaf

Zachery Joseph Bir wrote: 
>     [Zac posts more anti-liberal stuff]
> 
>     a> This is your view, which I believe to be wholly inaccurate and
>     a> not based in fact.  It seems to a popular pass time to
>     a> characterize those who have different ideas in extreme terms.
> 
> What is extreme about the billions of dollars wasted (IMHO) on welfare,
> the military, the relgulation of private business practices, enforcement
> of drug laws, enforcement of victimless crimes? 

Then I misunderstood what you were trying to say earlier. It seemed to me that you
were characterizing American liberals as people who want to control yours, and
everybody elses, life. That is an extreme view without basis in fact. There
are definitely some who go under the label of liberalism who espouse such views, but
it is not the mainstream. It is rather like those on the left wing of the political
spectrum who characterize those on the right as people who want to cut down all
the forests, who want to be free to pollute water and air, who want to keep the 
masses poor whilst they control the wealth of the country etc etc....

> I can decide for myself what is best for
> myself, and if I don't know all the facts, I can damn sure try to find
> out.

I am sure you can, and as a responsible citizen I would hope you would. I am sure
that you have a strong social conscience and would curb your own self-interest if
you thought that it would harm others. Unfortunately, not everyone is similarly
endowed with such a social conscience.

> 
> I am most assuredly not talking about communism. I am talking about
> socialism, wherein the state takes it upon itself to redistribute funds
> gained from the work of the citizens.

Socialism? Ye Gads man. Are you seriously characterizing the US as a socialist state? 

 
>     a> Great thinking! America wasn't involved in space exploration
>     a> before 1914, maybe that is the reason. How do you determine
>     a> prosperity? What objective criteria are you using to determine
>     a> this? In 1914, many children died of things like smallpox and
>     a> polio was common. These have now been effectively erradicated in
>     a> the US through, Oh My God....government intervention .....paid
>     a> for by....Oh My God....Taxes. All I am trying to show is that
>     a> such a comparison as the one you made is pointless without saying
>     a> what objective criteria were used and without providing a proven
>     a> causative relationship between the two phenomena.
> 
> Granted. Now, ask yourself this: Is it an impossibility or even an
> improbability that things like this can be done without resorting to
> stealing the rewards of labor? Do you honestly have that low an opinion
> of your common man that you would have to forcibly take their money from
> them in order to fund projects that are beneficial to others? Perhaps I
> have a misguidedly optimistic view of mankind.

Yup. Historically, movements for the improvement of society as a whole have
frequently met with stiff opposition and have had to bought in through either overt
coercion or major political strife; most of the opposition arising through the self
interest of those who felt they were going to lose something. 
 
> Diseases eradicated? Hell, they've gone ahead and mutated, and are now
> mroe resilient to our drugs. Instead of developing natural resistences,
> we've led ourselves into a dead end street relying on a medical
> establishment that doesn't do jack squat.

Boy oh boy, just what is your problem? Above you say, referring to my examples of
disease eradication, that "Is it an impossibility or even an
improbability that things like this can be done without resorting to
stealing the rewards of labor?" and refer to projects that are beneficial to society.
Now you rant against these very same projects! Just what kind of "natural
resistances" are you thinking of developing? Do you have medical insurance? Do you
ever visit a member of the medical establishment? Since you seem to think them 
worthless ("a medical establishment that doesn't do jack squat") I assume you do not
use their services and that, of course, you have done a lot better. Whilst I
would whole heartedly endorse the view that medical science does not provide a
universal panacea for all illnesses, and whilst I agree that mistakes are made (given
a system as complex as the human body, it is miraculous that more mistakes are not
made) I would most definitely want to live in a world WITH current medical science.
Given that as little as 60 years ago there was a high infant mortality, lower life
spans, high incidence of crippling diseases such as scarlet fever, tuberculosis,
smallpox, polio etc, I would much prefer to live with the current medical knowledge
we have. Nowadays, medical research is so expensive that individual contributions
could rarely even come close to providing sufficient funds. What is more, those who
would be doing the research would be spending vast portions of their time going round
cap-in-hand. I'm sorry, but there is no way that I can imagine current medical
research for example being funded by the good will and individual donations. 

> 
> Oh, and by the way, this is the first ongoing debate I've really enjoyed
> in a long while. 

Why thank you! 

-- 
____________________________________________________________________________
                             | 
Adrian Burd,                 | Quidquid Latinae dictum sit,
Dpt. of Oceanography,        | altum videtur.
Texas A&M University,        | 
College Station ,            | 
Texas 77843                  |
                             |
_____________________________|______________________________________________

Disclaimer: I am not the official spokesperson for anyone, for which 
            organisations that use spokespersons are profoundly
            grateful.

____________________________________________________________________________