Well that is fine. You are welcome to believe whatever you want about the world. However just as you wouldn't want me pushing my views of the world on you; you should not push your views on me. Using the government to legislate your morality is basically you saying you know better then others how they should live their lives. That is fatal conceit.

It is a fundamental difference in our beliefs. There is no doubt about that.

You think it's the have's responsibility to take care of the have nots. I think that's true to a small extent, but too many of the have nots are happy to remain have nots. Eventually instead of continuing to give, give, give, we need to make the have nots earn, earn, earn.

When 47% don't pay federal taxes...
When food stamp use is at an all-time high...
When unemployment benefits are extended almost indefinitely (if you can't find a job in more than two years you're truly worthless)...

This is when you tell people that enough is enough. We don't have enough money to take care of our country as it is right now, but Obama and dems want to spend more and more to push through their progressive ideals. Universal healthcare would be nice, but nobody has come us with a decent way to pay for it and WE CAN'T AFFORD TO IMPLEMENT IT RIGHT NOW. Let the country get back on it's feet before you go spending our nesteggs.

Obama is a bag of hotair. If you took away his microphone, podium, and teleprompter, he truy would be just a figurehead. He doesn't have any decent ideas. He doesn't have a bonafide plan for the country. He's using his first term as a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants freestyle session. He had no experience going into this and it shows.

Believe me, I would LOVE to have Bill Clinton in office instead of Obama. Clinton was a governor and knew what the fuck he was doing most of the time. Obama is a community organizer. I said that when he campaigned and I'll say it again now. All he knows how to do is stir the pot and get people's blood boiling. He has no clue how to run a country, state, city, business........ANYTHING.

I wish he would simply not run for a 2nd term. I'd prefer to see a fresh face from the democrat side. I already know what I'll get from another 4 years of Barry....and I don't like it one bit.

All I have to say is this.


Europe has tried to give everything for free to people who couldn't afford it.

After being away from the mainland of Europe for 5 years and finally going back...It's just scary. So many failed buildings in every country (cept Holland) that I went too. Makes me wanna cry because I am truly in love with many things in Europe and I would love to one day live there.

The fact of the matter is this. Europe has failed and it's socialist programs doomed the countries in Europe to a slow suffocating death.


Also the price of living in Europe is just fucking ridicules. The taxing that goes on there is just fucked. 100% fucked.

We do not want to follow this road, and anyone who thinks that we should become a socialist state is either an idiolog (insert delusional...sorry boog) or wants to see the country fail because they hate themselves and believe it's free the free markets fault for allowing them to fail at life.(jpc4p)

Code, my liberal moral/political philosophy can't be relativized in the way you are attempting. Enlightment ideas such as equality are indissociable from democracy; liberalism as a political philosophy and democracy as a political system are fundamentally tied; neither could exist without the other. Religious fundamentalism is on the other hand foreign and hostile to democracy and should be strictly separate from the state.

I think that the role of civic institutions in our democratic society is to ensure just outcomes in the distribution of diverse kinds of social goods, including health care. I'd also like to reiterate that equality does not mean everyone receives a numerically equivalent share of each particular social good; but that everyone receives a share, however small, in proportion to their contribution. My position really isn't extreme; its not even socialist. Its merely liberal in the most mundane sense, derived directly from the philosophical tradition stemming from Locke, Rousseau, right down to Rawls.

Yodel the US has terribly run down infrastructure, so I'm not sure whether your observation of abandoned buildings in European cities really supports your conclusion that socialism destroys everything.

The economy over there is way worse than it was when I was there 5 years ago. It's a blatant fact that I could not ignore in my travels.


And yes our infrastructure is fucked right now. So good of Obama to spend the trillions we needed for that elsewhere...

Thrax: If you admit that universal health care is a nice idea, a worthwhile goal to strive for, then we are in agreement. How and when to implement universal health care, once agreed upon as a goal, is an entirely separate debate. I'm trying to refute the arguments offered by my libertarian friends against the very principle of having universal health care at all.

Yodel what countries were you in? The Dutch economy seemed to be prospering when I visited last summer. Same with West Germany, France and the UK.... Southern Europe is another story.

Also it's not just the buildings. It's the cost of living.

Believe me I would love to tout how much better off socialism is than capitalism. I genuinely care about people and want everyone to be healthy and happy.

As a biologist I've looked a nature (a success case if you cut out human destruction and even with human bs it's still gonna win in the end) and in nature weak things die and strong things survive. I don't think Humans should try and avoid this fact. We should be busy promoting the health and well-being of those who are giving to society so that as a whole human society gets stronger. Right now what we are doing is weakening our gene pool with medications and programs designed to keep people alive who, in a harsher climate, would not survive. As fucked as that sounds our own survival does not depend on the meek it depends on the strong. I can no longer deny the fact in front of me. I must deal with reality.

I was in Spain, Portugal, Holland, And Blegium.

I said that Holland looked fine.

Spain was noticably worse for wear. I was in similar areas where I had been before and I remembered what it looked like. Things have changed.

Portugal was just a tragedy to see. Lovely country and people though....

Northern Europe is not as far along in the slide as southern Europe is....Give it another 5 years. Germany and France are going to go broke trying to help the rest of Europe. Or they are going to jump ship and the EU is going to be dissolved.