Freedom is not safe

The government doesn't exist anymore, they went bankrupt, and were bought out. Wall Street is setting up a new complaint department, for their customers depositing more than 10 million dollars. Freedom isn't free, unless you have a checking account.

 

I have lived all of my life in a diverse racial, ethnic, religious and cultural environment.

 

Exactly. I want my kitchen knives to be sharp and don't care about societies "right" to force me to eat with a spork.

 

So now it's "sporks".... Okay.

 

Exactly. Consumer Reports is a private entity that does a much better job.

Anyone preventing a parent from lawfully purchasing a second hand winter coat for their child should be condemned.

 

It's the other way around: we are permitted to do everything (at the federal level) unless the U.S. Constitution permits the government to regulate it.

At the federal level, no. Murder and assaults are state crimes, not federal.

In the case cited, the "right" was the "right not to be injured by sharp things that have warning labels on them that I choose to throw on my own property."

 

Yes, unless this falls under interstate commerce, the federal government should allow your state to regulate - or not regulate - the products produced in your state. The fecal additives in your friendly neighborhood roach coach should not be of national concern.

 

Ah, but it does. Art I, sec 8, clause 3. Gibbons v. Ogden (1824). Last time I looked, jarts were an article of intestate commerce.

[QUOTE="Cello Song, post: 9132077, member: 320042"At the federal level, no. Murder and assaults are state crimes, not federal.

In the case cited, the "right" was the "right not to be injured by sharp things that have warning labels on them that I choose to throw on my own property."[/QUOTE]You're living in the 1950s. 379 U.S. 294 (1964). Or is it the eighteenth? The Constitution is a living document, adjusted to the needs of a changing society by the judiciary. You're claiming "rights" that went out with the hula hoop. Even if you live alone and have no kids of your own, other people do, and having dangerous things around in interstate commerce can put them at risk. And although a particular decision might seem ill-founded, the ability of government to protect our safety and environment works to the overall common good.

 

I think it requires a little more than just exposure at this stage in history. You have to sort of embrace the ideology and all that if you want to.

 

Under prevailing interpretations of he commerce clause beginning with Chief Justice Josh Marshall in the early nineteenth century the federal government has broad powers to regulate interstate commerce, and food sold in interstate commerce is fair game for protecting consumers from rat feces. Thank God. If we had to depend on the Retrumplican yokels who have gerrymandered their way into permanent control of many state governments to protect us from anything, God help us.

 

I'm not really clear about your meaning. Please explain further if you want.

 

You would have to worry about how much flour was in that bag of rat feces you just bought.

 

Plenty of rest, exercise, a healthy diet, meditation, humorous social interactions, music, art and lots of fresh air and sunshine nourish an internal locus of control and general wellbeing.

 

Bucky Fuller said that solving one problem doesn't get you an absence of problems, but gets you more interesting problems to solve. But if your headspace if right, there are no problems, only opportunities. And this the land of opportunity. All we need is Liberty. Everything is alright on the Freedom trip.

 

It doesn't sound like socialism to me, whether national or international flavors are involved. I know people who have lived under both varieties and they never talk about how great it is. EXCEPT, I did know a handful of members of the Communist Party of the Netherlands and they actually enjoyed socialism. They did no work, but were able to travel and enjoy life, at least as young people. They admitted only one weakness - they couldn't afford any children. But if you are willing to die out as a people, it is possible to do nothing productive and to live an acceptable existence on the dole for awhile, apparently. So it can work for short durations, but is unsustainable. It is possible that China has made some progress on this front, but my Chinese friends still live in terror so I am unconvinced that they have yet found the proper balance. In fact, I think that chaos theory illustrates that the dream of a centrally-managed orderly society is absolutely impossible.

I prefer capitalism entirely, except when "capitalism" descends into the type of feudalism that was experienced in the early twentieth century by the West Virginian coal miners, who were bombed from airplanes and shot dead in the streets. That's no capitalism at all really. I believe the problems of capitalism can be resolved only by having more capitalists, and not fewer. People only hate capitalism when they have no capital. It seems to me that the conflict expressed by Marx between owners and workers is best resolved, not by violent revolution, but by facilitating the purchase of shares by the workers. With the rise of trading apps on mobile phones, this has been completely resolved. I would rather save my pennies and by a small slice of my employer, than kill the CEO and try to farm potatoes on the corporate campus. In fact, I would rather own my own coffee shop than work on the corporate campus at all.

When you speak of "greed", now you are drifting into moral (or psychological, if you prefer) problems and these will not be resolved by political force, but by spiritual (or mental, if you prefer) healing. It happens that the experiences of my life have convinced me of the lack of a direct correlation between money and happiness. I know illegal immigrants who live in trailers and who labor for cash who are extremely happy and I have seen wealthy highly-educated professionals descend into madness due to the garbage living in their heads. Given that we only get perhaps 80ish orbits around the sun before we return to the soil, I'd rather be happy than rich any day.