"David R.Birch" wrote in message
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Ed Huntress wrote:
"David R.Birch" wrote in message
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Ed Huntress wrote:
"David R.Birch" wrote in message
There's that, I guess. OTOH, if they B&Cs want to get into serious
illegal bucks, what better path than politics? It's not just Illinois,
Louisiana and Joisey, after all, there are opportunities everywhere.
What's better? Drugs. Prostitution. Numbers.
AT least these are more respectable than politics.

As I said, you have a bleak outlook.

Sometimes. I think the US peaked around 1968, downhill since then. We
approach the end of a Noble Experiment in republican democracy, one that
didn't survive the ability of the people to vote themselves wealth from
the public coffers.

I'm not following you. In 1968, we had most destructive welfare system in
our history. That was what eventually turned me toward the Republican Party,
which I joined specifically because I'd become a welfare hawk. My experience
is that the amount of graft and corruption was far worse then than it is
now. My feeling is that things have gotten a lot better, although I'd have
to study it to see how the numbers stack up.


Hell, they could even get into finance.
I doubt there are as many openings available as a year ago. Lots of
unemployed brokers, I'll bet.

Ten years ago, one of those guys could have been Obama.
Pffffht.
? Tell me why not.

You made the claim. Tell me why.

Because it isn't really about wealth, it's about power, and to those who
crave it, left/right is irrelevant.

Again, I'm not following you here, maybe because I've lost track of what you
were comparing. Obama graduated from Columbia and Harvard Law, Magna cum
laude. He's without a doubt the most academically skilled and disciplined
president we've had in our lifetimes. There isn't a person on this NG who
could even begin to compare with his skills and ability. There are very few
in government anywhere in the country.

Now, are you saying that those black guys in the video could have been him?
That's unlikely. Abilities like Obama's aren't passed out like M&Ms.


I wonder if the Reps could have offered a better piece of the action.
He is an Illinois politician, after all, smart enough to be more
careful, so far. As far as we know.
That's a pretty bleak outlook, David.
A common reaction to my quest for realism. I don't expect much of Dems
or Reps. Up here in Wisconsin, we find Illinoisances amusing. Our
political corruption is at a much lower level and they tend to get
caught before they get far.

David

For all the annoyance and frustration we feel over political corruption,
most of it, added all together, hardly makes a blip on the money meter. A
few days in Iraq probably wastes more money than all of the political
corruption does in a month.

Spends it, yes, wastes it, maybe. Power over there is big stick power,
when we bring our stick home, the power will go to whoever does a better
job of uniting the conservative elements of Islam toward Jihad.

Speculation on your part. Even the Iraq experts can only guess at how that
will work out. Frankly, no opinion on the subject that we're going to give
or hear in this NG is worth a pitcher of warm spit.

Our blundering about in centuries old conflicts only postponed that, if
Bush & the Pentagon had listened to the State Dept, Iraq might still be a
prosperous nation allied with the West. As it is, the members of the EU
are already finding their Islamic minorities unwilling to assimilate and
asserting the right to impose Sharia in their communities. BTW, did you
know there's a LARGE mosque going up in central Köln with a minaret that
will be taller than the Dom?

Yeah, I saw a news item about that. That's the doing of the Europeans. It
was their choice, and it's just one of many examples of them periodically
and enthusiastically digging their own graves. They've given up on
destroying each other so they're letting immigrants take a shot at it.


Nevertheless, corruption undermines the whole system, leading to the kind
of cynicism you've expressed in the last couple of posts. The trick is to
keep your eye fixed on what you say in your last paragraph, which is to
keep up your quest for realism. It's the way to go.

If I were cynical, instead of realistic, I'd be a LOT more negative. I'm
not sure how we can return to a time when communities were small enough
that politicians couldn't get away with much since everybody knew what
they were doing.

You could try a nuclear war or a plague. d8-)

I know that our country was started by people who expected citizens to be
better than people really are,

That's not my reading of history at all. That's what they taught us in
Civics class.

something shared by the current version of the Left. Progressives?

It wasn't even shared by the Founding Fathers.

Right, cue sound of Fighting Bob Lafollette spinning in his grave.

David

It sounds like you want a small-community, local-government,
traditional-conservative country, David. If that's correct, all I can say
is, the US isn't it. Nor could it be; nor would any of us want it to be, if
we really thought it through. Because what you're describing is a weak
country of economic victims who couldn't protect themselves against a gaggle
of invading Canadians g, let alone elbow our way into the world at large.
It was appropriate for an agrarian society in which a big economic
enterprise was a shoe factory powered by a water wheel.

Greed and corruption are always there. Size has nothing to do with it. There
is nothing more profoundly and universally corrupt than small government in
places where corruption is the cultural norm -- and they didn't get that way
by being big. They got that way by being human and by having the
opportunity.

In my view, an important role of government is to put roadblocks in front of
those opportunities, as carefully and intelligently as we can. When we let
down our guard and oversight, we get corruption, greed, and all the things
that go with it. Because there are plenty of greedy people around, waiting
for us to drop our guard. Protecting ourselves against it requires, among
other things, getting involved with government so that the greedy and
corrupt ones don't wind up running the show by default. And that's exactly
how they get there, when honest people leave the job to someone else.

--
Ed Huntress