"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Stuart & Kathryn Fields" wrote in message
.. .

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Hawke" wrote in message
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That's categorically different from the libertarian program as it
stands
today. Libertarianism, as an intellectual conservative would define
it,
is
a
form of radicalism (and intellectual conservatives recognize that
their
opposites are radicals, not liberals). When Stuart says you need an
agreement on some fundamental principles to avoid chaos, he's surely
talking
about some things that are not part of the Libertarian platform,
because
those things aren't there. In fact, he's almost certainly talking
about
the
kinds of principle upon which conservatism is founded, as explained
in
detail by Edmund Burke.

I can tell that I don't have the historical or political depth of
information that you do, Ed, so I'll just bow out here.

I think I got carried away. I'll relax now. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress


Hey, way to go Ed. You sat on a Libertarian and made him give, you
bully. I
think that's a first. The fact that he agreed to bow to your logic was
a
real triumph. Usually when you give a Libertarian/Conservative a
thumping by
argument all they do is go away mad, start a fight, or call you some
names,
like Gunner would. You also nailed Libertarianism. It's not realistic.
It's
for complainers. They don't like the way things are now; with that we
can
all agree. But instead of coming up with real and feasible ways of
making
concrete changes all they can come up with is to throw out the baby
with the
bath water. But that explains why that party will never be anything
more
than a blip on the radar. As long as it can't come up with real
alternatives
to the status quo that might actually work it'll stay irrelevant.
However,
as Americans we all have at least some measure of Libertarian in us
though
it may be really, really small.

Hawke

Now, don't get carried away. The impulse behind libertarianism is a
perfectly good one. It's the thought that's lacking.

Ed: You criticize the Libertarians for the lack of thinking thru their
ideas. Where is there any evidence that the other parties have thought
thru their ideas?

Over 200 years of successful governance. And if you don't think it's been
successful, compare our legal, economic, and other situations with those
of almost any other country.

Well lets see. I've heard that said before. Lets use some measures:
The Human Development Index (HDI) is an index combining normalized measures
of life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment, and GDP per capita for
countries worldwide. It is claimed as a standard means of measuring human
development, a concept that, according to the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP) refers to the process of widening the options of persons,
giving them greater opportunities for education, health care, income,
employment, etc. The basic use of HDI is however to rank countries by level
of "human development" which usually also implies to determine whether a
country is a developed, developing, or underdeveloped country.

The US has been shown as a country that is expeirencing a decreasing HDI In
fact since 1980 the US has never been ranked as the top Nation. Canada,
Norway, Switzerland and even Japan has outranked us. We are sliding down a
slippery slope.



The present method of dealing with problems is called "Knee Jerk". I'll
repeat what has been ignored: Get on the internet and look into the
Democrat and Republican parties. Try to find a statement of philosophy.

Thank God, they really don't have one, beyond a few things that might
better be called attitudes.
A better name is "Situational Ethics". Take our Bill Clinton and his sexual
pecadillos. If I as a Civil Servan had engaged in sex with a subordinate I
would have immediately lost my security clearance because of an increase in
vulnerability to black mail and without the clearance my ability to perform
my job would be severely curtailed and thence probably my career be ended.
Bill as Commander in Chief of the Military allowed others in the Military to
lose their careers for having sex with a subordinant. Yep we have
attitudes.

The Libertarian party is the only one willing to state theirs clearly.

Deliver us from ideologues who have a philosophy. Philosophy is for
college classes and books. When it comes to governance, it's a
prescription for disaster. Every time. No exceptions.



I'm not an registered Libertarian, but I'm sure a supporter of smaller
less intrusive government.

So is 90% of the US population -- until you try to make *their* favorite
project smaller.
Yes I agree here and as the guy said the death of democracy is assured as
soon as the people find that they can vote themselve money. Again since we
are not governed by principles, then the rule is grab what you can for
yourself. Isn't this what you complain about in the big corporations??
Ed: You don't like monopolies. I agree they tend to run away with
themselves in an unbridled manner. The Federal, State, County and to a
lesser extent even City governments are simply monopolies.

No, they're democratically elected governments. That's the exact opposite
of a monopoly. You can get rid of them as easily as by voting them out.
That's our job.
Now this surprises me. It is as naive as a Junior High School student. It
is one hell of a lot more difficult than "easily by voting them out" You
have to compete with the two or is it one political parties who have the
machinery and the money that I don't. The candidates that we get to vote
for are pretty much selected by the parties. I watched Ron Paul get ignored
when he wanted to discuss things like the legitimacy of the governments
foreign policy.

They have no competition.

Of course they do -- every politician who wants their job is a competitor.

They are not held accountable by any other than themselves for their
actions.

That's why we have a tripartite government with a distribution of powers
and an institutionalized system of checks and balances.

God I wish I could have the belief and faith that you apparently have
inspite of all the fraud waste and abuse being done by the governments. I
wish I could just ignore the insane laws and rule makings that I see
everyday.

I wish I had a job where I could vote myself pay raises and create my
own retirement system that someone else pays for.

So do I. d8-)

No it has been said that no alternatives have been proffered. Wrong.
Ron Paul offered up some alternatives, granted not all would be
acceptable or work, but he evened offered a method to fix that:

Ron Paul is a half-baked crackpot who should stay in Arizona, where
nothing destructive that he could do matters very much. If he goes out in
the sun much, maybe he'll be fully baked some day.
Well your light bulb just dimmed. Ron Paul is a Representative from Texas
not Arizona.
Constitutional Amendment. His ideas of restricting the government to
those powers granted by the Constitution would be a big step in the right
direction to at least curtail some of the Federal Governements
monopolistic behaviours presently viewed as the way of doing business.

Bull.

What do the Centrists offer...

Government that works.

...to get us out of our current Morass?

What morass? Are you starving? Are you threatened by some other country?
Did you have to sell your children into slavery? What in the hell are you
talking about, "morass"?
I'm talking about the Morass of restrictive laws and rules such as the FEMA
telling me that I might have to raise my entire 40X72 steel building because
of some bureacratic derived flood plain that there exists no evidence,
historically or otherwise to support. I'm talking about the 3 star general
in charge of the Strategic Defense Command responsible for the Star Wars
stuff getting his hand caught in the cooky jar setting himself up with BDC
for a post retirement job. I'm talking about the 2 star general that
changed a $750M contract scope of work to a cost + award fee effort to
Raytheon in spite of an Army science board paper which stated unequivocally
that the Army did not have anyone technicall qualified to perform an award
fee determination for that effort. I'm talking about two people that I know
who just obtained government funding to produce some three radars using
contract supplied radar pedestals of quality much inferior to those setting
right under their noses in the supply yard. I'm talking about FEMA spending
over $1M producing houses for the Typhoon stricken Marshall Islands. The
houses were fabricated with prest wood with absolutely no studs. With just
a little removing of the blinders example after example of incompetent
government rulings are just obvious. If this and the downward direction of
measures like the HDI above as well as other measures that are readily
available don't constitute a Morass I don't know what is required.
It seems their technique is to wait and see what happens.

Stu

What are you, a radical who has a program for overturning tradition? g
Of course it's to wait and see what happens.

What is it you want, Stu? Is it 6,000-pound, 6-liter SUVs and pickup
trucks forever? A McMansion for everyone, with a 40-mile commute? Didn't
you realize 10 years ago, or even 20 years ago, that we were sliding
downhill on a waterslide into a swamp?
Is this the great society that you were talking about? Which is so much
better than other countries?
I have no idea what you are talking about here. I do not own or think that
an SUV is the car to own but based on statistics it seems that the majority
of the people who are supporting the political parties running the US do.
Another example of thinking things thru.
We get caught by our own wretched excess from time to time. That's the
product of a hot economy and an....uh, expansive attitude. That's the US.
It means we'll swing up and down, and drive ourselves silly, probably
forever. I happen to like the system, and the people in it, silly or not.
I was told that the pendulum swings in the DoD service when I saw them
removing work benches and putting desks in their place. This was in 1975.
The pendulum is still swinging to the crazy extreme. The people that
replaced me in the Navy R&D are all spending their days on airplanes going
to meetings. Meetings that no one can detect the benefit or purpose. Their
"smart buyer" status is being eroded at a fantastic rate. They have no
hands on experience to support their college education. It doesn't take
much listening to them to find the efficacy of the term Morass.
But spare us the talk about "morass." There is no morass. There is only
the roller coaster. Hang on tight.
I wouldn't get on a roller coaster that had no tracks or some effort at
purposeful design. I wouldn't get in an airplane when there was no
statement of the purpose of the flight. I wouldn't get on an airplane where
the pilot just said I'm here to see what is going to happen and our emergeny
plan is based on the widely accepted Knee Jerk method.
Yep we don't have an agreed to destination so where ever the Democrans or
Republicrats are going to take us I guess we are just the kidnapped
passengers and Take us they will.

Stu

--
Ed Huntress