Would YOU vote for RON PAUL

Indie

LOL – as pointed out to you on several occasions there is a big problem with your thinking here - because the greatest effect on a person’s life is where and to whom they are born. This can give someone advantages or disadvantages that can affect their whole lives and what choices may be open to them and long before they have the independence to take certain actions themselves. The individual baby can take no responsibility for that choice.

You’ve never been able so far to address that criticism, can you now?

But a person cannot make the ‘good’ choice to be born into advantage and neither can they be responsible for making the ‘bad’ choice to be born into disadvantage.

 

Indie

The problem is that in a neoliberal and wealth dominated system wealth driven by a short termist philosophy wealth can be derived from making choices that while maybe seeming good for the individual taking them are in fact very, very bad for the majority of the people.

We have been through this before and you still haven’t addressed that criticism of your views.

 

I am a Liberal and I can never vote for a conservative/Republican. That being said, he is quite unlike other Republicans and feel he does make a good Libertarian. That being said, I lost all respect for him when he said it's ok for restaurants/businesses to have so much freedom that they can deny service to people of other races. I know he wants government to stay out of small affairs like small businesses but that just opens up racial discrimination and segregation

 

How do you explain those who were born into greater poverty than exists in the U.S. or other developed world countries, received little or no education to speak of and emigrate to the U.S. or another developed world country and succeed?
Quit making excuses, and take a look at the real world we live in.
While we are unable to choose to whom we are born, the choices we are left with are what we must deal with. So the easiest excuse is to look for a source to place blame rather than accept responsibility.

 

Indie

LOL – more evasion –

How did they get a working visa to the US if they had no money and little or no education?

What is your definition of success? I mean if you take someone who is jobless and starving and give them a job where they get paid just enough that they only have to suffer malnutrition you could say they were better off, but is that really a definition of success in a civilised society?

Only with political action that brought about the restriction of wealth’s power and legislation that limited or forbad it’s more exploitative excesses did the majority’s interests rather than those of the few start to become addressed.

In the real world the US has one of the lowest levels of social mobility.

Again that doesn’t address the contradiction in your stance. To whom you are born has a great effect on the later number of choices available and the possibility of those choices succeeding or not.

I want a system that gives everyone the possibility of tapping their potential and having a healthy and fulfilled life, by increasing the number of choices and opportunities of those that otherwise wouldn’t have them.

You seem to want the opposite an even greater restriction of choice to the majority while increasing those of the few.

Responsibility for what, as you point out people are unable to choose to whom we are born so how can they be praised or blamed for that?

So is it justified for a person born into advantage to retain exclusive rights to advantages they didn’t earn rather than share them with others who through no blame of their own are disadvantaged?

You say yes, it is justified, but so far you have given no rational or reasonable argument as to why you think that, the only reply so far is the irrational and unreasonable answer that ‘life isn’t fair’ and ‘shit happens’.

 

At the end of the Viet Nam war many persons were granted admission to the U.S. due to the fact they supported us in Viet Nam, Cambodia, or Laos, and many others came later having a family member, Church, or some other organization to sponsor them.

Success need not have a single definition, but I would hardly consider dependence upon others to be considered a form of success.

Do you actually believe any of what you post? You paint a picture as though there were hundreds if not thousands of bodies to be picked up off the streets each day.

When you speak of social mobility, I'm never certain of how you are defining it, and usually I assume you are in truth thinking of economic mobility.

The system you want actually exists, but it requires ones effort.

Praise or blame are words which are applicable to the results of ones decisions. While no one can choose to whom they are born, neither should they try to fix blame for their status in life to those who had nothing to do with their birth.

It is not a question of justice or fairness for someone to retain exclusive rights to what they acquire as a result of birth, it is simply a fact relating to an event no different than someone winning a huge sum in a lottery. The nice thing about those who have large amounts of wealth is that they spend it, and that creates jobs. My argument is no less rational than yours which is "it isn't fair".

Societies are not formed to make each member equal to one another, and when government attempts to do so, it usually results in the gradual destruction of the society.

Obviously you ignored your own Margaret Thatchers utterance of a very simple truism.

 

Indie

LOL So the best way for an uneducated and penniless person get a visa to work in the US is to support an American occupation of their country who are there in a misguided foreign adventure overseas?

So the poor and uneducated of the word should pray for their country to be invaded by the US and then have them bugger it up so they as ‘supporters’ can get a visa?

 

Indie

Again we get the same contradiction in your thinking – you say people are responsible for the choices they make and the success or failure of those choices – but what choices and the possibility of those choices being successful or not is in a large measure down to something they have no choice over – to whom they are born.

A child cannot choose to enter a lottery for the chance to be born into advantage and would an unborn child even want to enter a lottery to be born disadvantaged?

Your view seems to be that it isn’t a question of justice or fairness it is just how it is, but that’s the point it doesn’t have to be. It just a matter of what your aims are, my viewpoint is based on the ideas of making societies that are fairer and better to live in, places that give a reasonable opportunity to all the habitants of having a healthy and fulfilled life.

This seems reasonable and rational because it would seem totally irrational and unreasonable to actually want to live in a worse society.
And that is why I can’t understand your thinking or that of other right wing libertarians and neoliberals, because they and you do seem to want to live in a worse society.

 

Indie

That is just the simplistic definition of that very flawed and widely discredited theory of ‘trickle down’.

 

Yes, I think it's time to blast any attempt to convince us that trickle-down works. This is simply untrue ideology, but the oligarchy keeps pushing it down our throats.

 

We were discussing the relationship between achieving success and the advantages of birth, NOT how to obtain legal residence in the U.S.

Is this how you evade intelligent conversation?

What I was trying to point out is that many people come to the U.S. with little or no education or language skills and are still able to achieve success. It is a direct relation to the effort they exert, not government intervention.

 

If I wanted to live in a worse society, I would be agreeing with everything you say. Why would you like to regress society to one of subsistence and bare necessities?

 

Actually it is much more complex than you appear capable of recognizing. You get out of life essentially what you put into it. You are the one who seems to have a rather simplistic view that what exists should be shared equally between all, for no other reason than you think that is fair or just.

 

Some should be thankful for a trickle, and that may be much more than they are actually are worth.

When societies reach a point that every member is equally capable, both mentally and physically, of performing any and every function valued by society, then we might begin to see equality in every facet of society. In the meantime, the products, services and labors will be valued and priced according to their relative value as accepted by both the producers and consumers within each society.

 

What I really get a kick out of is Individuals repeated chanting of the failed republican policies that crashed our economy to begin with. Then you want us to forget about all that and go and elect someone that might be on the republican ticket, but probably not because Paul has no chance of making it through the primaries. So this whole discussion boils down to Obama or Romney as Paul is not a viable candidate. And even if he did manage to sneak onto the GOP ticket his environmental policies would be a disaster, which is why I would never vote for him.

 

Individual, check out the quote+ function. You dont need to post multiple times to reply to multiple people.

 

Personally, I'm not adverse to a second Obama term, although it would in my opinion be detrimental to the future of the U.S., it would benefit me financially. After the Clintons were elected and based on the adage "In a democracy you get the government you deserve, and deserve the government you get", I thought to myself, "I don't deserve this" so I took action to protect myself, and now nearly twenty years later it looks like I made the correct call, so YOU, and others like minded will bear the consequences, not me.

 

I usually respond to each individual post individually. Take a look at Balbus for example, I make one post and receive 3 or more separate responses from him, which I respond to individually, or sometimes just pick one and ignore the rest.

You're welcome to post as you wish, however.

And, I would vote for Ron Paul if he makes it to the general election, and might vote for Obama if Mitt Romney becomes the Republican candidate. I figure if we're not going to change direction, we might as well go as fast as we can and bring down the government so we can start anew.

 

Voting for any of these assholes is detrimental to the US, only Obama is less likely to give it all away to the corporations. Not saying he wont give most, but at least not all. The same cannot be said for the GOP candidates, everyone of them would give the corporations total access to anywhere USA do do whatever they want in the name of profit. That is why they are doomed to fail and Obama will win. As for consequences, looks like we are all paying them for the failed Bush years.

 

How right Neitzsche was, "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
No matter who is elected, they have nothing to give away, which is the primary problem that no one wishes to recognize. Obama, is not only spending all, but much more than any previous President, not to mention laying the groundwork to perpetuate massive deficits which can not be sustained. Corporations are not the problem, the American voters are the problem, looking to government to provide what can not be provided through massive accumulation of debt which can not be repaid, and can only end in bankruptcy. If Obama winning is your goal, what will you have won? The creation of a ruling class and a ruled class, and a Soviet Union styled form of government that can barely provide the necessities for the masses, who are more or less equal to one another and wealth and power to be found only in the hands of those who rule?

Try going back to 1913 if you wish to begin with the source of current problems, and while Bush contributed, so did nearly every President, Congress, Supreme court, State and Local government, not to mention the voters who gladly went along feeling they were receiving something for nothing.