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December 8 Prayathon for Hillary

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Sunday, October 14, 2007 3:52:15 PM
Liberal ministers across the country have declared December 8 as "Pray for Hillary" day. They are seeking to get a minimum of 30 million Americans to pray for Hillary to be the next President of the United States. Prayers are asked to pray for one minute at 8:00 a.m. on that day. The ministers are certain that God can not ignore such an outpouring of faith.
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Rich are beneficaries of socialism

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Wednesday, October 10, 2007 2:31:48 PM
If it weren't for the socialist public education in the U.S. the rich would have had to educate the work force that makes their money for them, the work force that has steadily become more educated, the work force that need to learn new technologies, to embrace new management systems, that needed the education necessary to work in the factories and corporations of 20th and 21st century America.

When conservatives argue that it is wrong to tax the successful and the producers in America they show a total lack of understanding about, at least, modern society. No one person makes money all by themselves. No one person has financed the education and the infrastructures that make this modern State possible. The entrepreneurs are the beneficiaries of the colleges that conservatives love to condemn and disparage; they are beneficiaries of the socialistic transportation system in the United States; they are beneficiaries of the government funded health and research programs. The rich are simply the collection points of the millions of individual flows within a modern society. The rich shouldn't take it personally.
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Unanticipated Consequences of "The Fair Tax"

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Tuesday, October 09, 2007 4:21:15 PM
Inspired by Prager today to go to Wikipedia for The Fair Tax. A couple of things came to mind while reading the various for and against pronouncements. The first is that there will be unanticipated consequences. There always is - like the general who said a war plan can be thrown away when the first bullets are fired.

The second is that The Very Bright People, i.e., entrepreneurs, scallywags, brokers, etc. will figure out some way to make gravy for themselves from the new taxation scheme - business in already taxed items, i.e., second hand tax-wise is probably a ripe field for making money from The Fair Tax implementation. And, of course, there will be the usual criminal element making their money.

And a question about lobbyists. Surely the high powered K Street lobbyists won't slink away into the night. Surely they will find some way to get congress to favor the big corporations.

Aside from that I still don't know. It might be a good thing, but I don't think anyone can predict the results. We will simply have to try it and then try to fix it when we can get a handle of the problems that will inevitably crop up.
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Conservatives Ignorant About Socialism

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Tuesday, October 09, 2007 11:13:40 AM
Socialism is an abstraction, just as the free market is an abstraction. Neither exist as entities in nature but only in the mind of man; man the maker of abstractions that help him simplify the over abundance of information about the nature of reality. This simplification, this abstracting creates categories in the minds of men. But outside of our minds reality is not divided as the categories imply that reality is divided. One such category is "government."

In reality government is not a separate thing or entity,  with definite borders. It is not cut off from the flow of life, the flow of reality, but interacts with the life of America, dynamically, flexibly.

Conservatives make their first ignorant mistake by assuming that the category "government" is a separate entity and that it is a bad separate entity. Conservatives think that government is separate from the free market, that it is separate from individual people in the United States, that it is one organic entity with one mind and will that thinks and acts against the interests of all the people in the United States.

Without this basic understanding of how human beings think conservatives will never be able to think intelligently about anything, including socialism.

In general, conservatives are confused about how the world is and how it got to be the way it is. Intellectual conservatives ascribe our present Western Christian Society to an error that occurred somewhere between the 9th century and the 20th century. The error is that man began thinking that he could create God's transcendental realm here on earth. This is called Gnosticism or the Gnostic Heresy.



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Abuse of power at Oral Roberts

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Monday, October 08, 2007 5:57:28 PM
I've been pointing out that human nature is universal and that abuse of power is not found only in government, but also in families, churches, corporations and universities. Apparently Roberts' son and wife couldn't resist abusing their power. Smaller universities, eh?
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Shame conservatives such flaming haters

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Monday, October 08, 2007 5:45:20 PM
Bouncing back and forth between Beck and Hannity on my car radio. Beck saying that liberals are liars, live for lying and the media. Hannity his usual vituperative self, saying Sandy Berger did the worst thing ever, excusing as usual his friend Ollie North who was part of an out of control cabal determined to end run democracy in the United States.

If conservatives have college degrees they majored in condemnation, disparagement and demonization. I can't wait to hear the piteous wailing and gnashing of teeth when Hillary wins.
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An offer to Conservative Wordsmith

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Monday, October 08, 2007 1:17:07 PM
I've collected quotations from iconic conservative intellectuals and use them on Townhall.com to critique the contradictions in conservative philosophy. Conservative Wordsmith (CW) has challenged this exercise in discussion of basic principles. I will offer to respond to quotations, and defend or critique them as the case may be, that CW can offer from self-identified, or iconic, liberals or "men of the left." Here's my favorite iconic conservative quotation, from Harry Jaffa: "Liberalism and radicalism deny legitimacy to laws, governments, or ways of life which accept the ancient evils of mankind, such as poverty, inequality, and war, as necessary - and therefore permanent - attributes of the human condition."
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Why exclude military from "smaller government?"

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Friday, October 05, 2007 6:01:23 PM
Remember, it's not the incompetent bureaucracy for which conservatives oppose big government. It's because of the nature of man. Conservatives argue that when men come into power virtually no one is strong enough not to use his power for personal gain, no one is strong enough not to abuse power. This is the core reason conservatives want smaller government, so that "bad men can do the least harm."

So, why do conservatives exclude the military? Why think that the defense department and the military won't abuse power? We have about $10 billion missing and defrauded in the Iraq war. We have the head of Blackwater making over $1 million in salary a year, not to mention perks. There's plenty of evidence that power is being abused in the defense department and military. So why not shrink them? Or do we think that the abuse of power is a reasonable trade off if the abusers are at the same time "protecting us from terrorists?"
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If an Iraqi mother and her unborn child

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Friday, October 05, 2007 11:23:50 AM
are destroyed by a bomb is anyone murdered? Or are they both collateral damage, which means that destroying a child in the womb is not always murder; or is the woman collateral damage and the child murdered? Where does the consistency of principle lead us?
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Sanctity of ADULT human life?

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Friday, October 05, 2007 11:11:11 AM
Why won't conservatives admit than when they write or speak about the sanctity of human life they are restricting themselves to life in a womb? If conservatives cared about the sanctity of adult human life they would, on principle, never support the war in Iraq. Conservatives have been too easily persuaded that the lives of adult human Iraqis who die in real time are expendable and exchangeable for the potential taking of American lives. Conservatives don't care about the sanctity of adult human lives; they care about the sanctity of adult American lives. Hardy the stuff of principle. Also, too easily persuaded that torture in a good cause doesn't violate the sanctity of an adult human life. Hardly the stuff of principle.
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Conservative Morality Falls To Second Place

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Friday, October 05, 2007 10:50:09 AM
Conservatives, who love themselves for their morality over abortion and gay marriage, have been easy marks for the neocons who argue that pre-emptive war is not immoral. When it comes to a conflict between "defending the country" and violating the sovereignty of a country and unleashing a destructive and murderous war on it's population conservatives readily place the morality of such actions in second place, arguing the secular attitude that "it is for the greater good." Once again conservatives prove they are not against all immorality, but only against immorality which offends their feelings. Hardly the stuff of principle.
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Which Socialist Wrote the following?

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Friday, October 05, 2007 10:22:15 AM
The ordinary expense of the greater part of modern governments in time of peace being equal or nearly equal to their ordinary revenue, when war comes they are both unwilling and unable to increase their revenue in proportion to the increase of their expense. They are unwilling for fear of offending the people, who, by so great and so sudden an increase of taxes, would soon be disgusted with the war; and they are unable from not well knowing what taxes would be sufficient to produce the revenue wanted.

The facility of borrowing delivers them from the embarrassment which this fear and inability would otherwise occasion. By means of borrowing they are enabled, with a very moderate increase of taxes, to raise, from year to year, money sufficient for carrying on the war, and by the practice of perpetually funding they are enabled, with the smallest possible increase of taxes, to raise annually the largest possible sum of money.

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war.
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Guiliani best draw for Hillary

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Thursday, October 04, 2007 11:14:16 AM
According to today's news Rudy has adopted a "my way or the highway" stance for his policies. He says if elected he will enact his policies, so if you agree with him vote for him. If you don't agree vote against him. He's saying he won't compromise or take the "other side's" views into consideration. This is exactly what George Bush did to the more than 50% of the people who did not vote for him in the first election.

I can only go by my own feelings, but after 8 years of Bush I wouldn't want another "my way or the highway" president. I can very well imagine that this might be the attitude of the majority of Americans. So, if it's Guiliani, a kinder, gentler Hillary wins.

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Prager's phoney chortle

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Wednesday, October 03, 2007 9:05:13 PM
Is there anyone besides me who thinks that Prager's chortle is entirely phoney? Then he makes these little pleasureable cooing sounds as though he's so surprised at the pearls of wisdom he finds in his own locutions.
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Could the Democrats be wrong about the Iraq war?

Posted by The Proud Liberal on Wednesday, October 03, 2007 9:02:35 PM
Bartle Bull is very opimistic about the war. He says that the political fighting is over and all that is left is internecine arguments and riff raff killing each other. He says this was inevitable: that the 80% of Iraqis who are Shiias would win. The Sunnis, he says, are suing for peace and trying to get the best deal then can.

Thanks to catching the tail end of Prager after the apparently interviewed Bull, I found his article, on his web site I think. Prager was chortling merrily about "we're winning in Iraq."

There are some interesting comments in a "draft" discussion of Bull's article. Bull does depict the Iraqis as driven by a desire for oil money and for political autonomy for their respective regions. Like most optimistic authors he doesn't mention the fact that the Shiias want an Islamic state under Sharia law. Bull says the Shiias will have their state eventually, which means that they will eventually have their Islamic state. Is that something to be optimistic about?
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