[Vision2020] These are insults, Sir. Insults I tell You!

[Ted Moffett]

Nick et. al.

What a great reply!

Odd how the label "socialist" is hurled at those who just want sensible
regulation of capitalism.  I keep repeating over and over to those who use
the "socialist" label to denigrate those who want to regulate capitalism to
prevent the worse abuses of the free market, that a strong socialist would
demand nationalizing the oil industry, the auto industry, military
industrial capacity, and so forth.  And many Republicans still support
"socialist" programs such as medicare, medicaid, and public schools, even if
they recommend some cut backs, while backing a massive Pentagon budget that
reeks of waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars such as to make a fat
cat statist socialist drool with envy!  Halliburton's no bid contracts in
the Iraq war makes this case with no effort at all...Of course this is why
many of the fiscally conservative "true" Republicans have turned on the Bush
administration, seeing how they waste taxpayer dollars like the
stereotypical "tax and spend liberal," though they are doing this by
borrowing money from the Chinese and Japanese, which is perhaps worse in the
long run than funding the Iraq war with domestic taxes, placing the burden
of this debt upon future taxpayers.

A good case could be made that the Pentagon is in part a massive taxpayer
funded "socialist" military enterprise to protect international resources
and markets fueling the multinational corporate/state capitalist system,
"corporate/state" meant to deliberately express the now common manipulation
with massive donations, lobbying, etc. of the federal government by the most
powerful multinationals, who sometimes write their own legislation that is
passed through the US Congress.  Witness the bankruptcy bill, drug benefit
bill, and Cheney's energy corporation handouts in the last few years, all
legislation directly written in part by corporate operatives who can
literally buy the influence in Washington to make law in their favor.

Socialism (i. e. government control of personal private behavior relating to
sexual orientation) in the bedroom is what many of these faux conservative
religious fundamentalists desire, with their obsession with controlling
sexual orientation wasting the governments time and taxpayer dollars, such
as we saw with the ridiculous politically motivation dog and pony show in
the recent US Congressional effort to pass a constitutional amendment to ban
gay marriage.

Ted Moffett

On 11/17/06, nickgier at adelphia.net <nickgier at adelphia.net> wrote:
>
> Greetings:
>
> I suppose we can excuse a person who says he is a Christian libertarian (a
> contradiction in terms) for confusing liberalism and socialism.  A
> dictionary defintion of socialism is the state ownership of the means of
> production.  I don't believe this nor would I bet most American liberals
> believe this.
>
> I believe that the free market, with reasonable regulation, is the best
> way to distribute goods and services.  Furthermore, free market capitalism
> has always been a policy of classical liberalism, to which I happily
> adhere.  See my essay at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/liberalism.htm.
>
> About three years ago I wrote an essay on Christianity and libertarianism
> and posted it on this list.  (You can read it at
> www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/libchristian.htm.)  My conclusion is that you
> would have to be a really liberal Christian to get these two beliefs
> together.  Christ Church appears to have lot of these hybrid creatures, but
> none of them have bothered to untangle the logical conundrum that I have
> presented to them.
>
> Incidentally, this thread "These are insults, Sir" was not intended for
> V2020.  A military guy responded to my piece on Veterans Day and I did not
> notice that he decided to copy the Vision in his last reply to me.  My
> apologies for not detecting this.
>
> Nick Gier
>
> Nick Gier
>
> Nick Gier
>
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