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All the public land gets bought up or will soon be for sale because the government shouldn't have land.
Gas prices on the rise.
Rents are allowed to skyrocket because of market demand.
In order to keep up with rising costs set by "market forces" (aka greedy rich people) and be responsible I am FORCED to work more hours and get less time to do what I want, hobbies, exercise etc. (you know being able to do what you like is freedom)
Of course by the OP's judgement the only freedoms that count are making money or killing babies and doing drugs.
All the public land gets bought up or will soon be for sale because the government shouldn't have land.
Gas prices on the rise.
Rents are allowed to skyrocket because of market demand.
In order to keep up with rising costs set by "market forces" (aka greedy rich people) and be responsible I am FORCED to work more hours and get less time to do what I want, hobbies, exercise etc. (you know being able to do what you like is freedom)
Of course by the OP's judgement the only freedoms that count are making money or killing babies and doing drugs.
I support your right to PUI (post under the influence).
On the rise of the radical religious right and the breakdown of democracy in the United States
Quote:
Values shared implicitly by all Americans are 1) that persons ought to be free to do as they please so long as they do no harm to others, and 2) that every person is entitled to hold an opinion, and that no person's opinion is necessarily or intrinsically more valid than any other's.
Quote:
A marked difference between the fundamentalist Christians and others is that most people are motivated by the desire to find happiness. Those who adhere to Christian fundamentalism do not regard the pursuit of happiness to be a valid motivation, but instead consider "doing the will of God by submitting utterly to the Lordship of His Son Jesus Christ" to be the only acceptable reason for living.
Those two motivations lead to very different choices and personal values. Imagine what the US would be like if the religious right had a vast majority in congress!!
Both are horrid, but what's worse is that when they compromise, it's always the freedom-destroying characteristics of each that survive the compromise.
Both are horrid, but what's worse is that when they compromise, it's always the freedom-destroying characteristics of each that survive the compromise.
This.
Both the religious right and nanny state left are pretty much the same and have some common ground.
Virtually no 'real world examples' in these comments so far. The left in my region sent cops into a popular strip club to induce strippers to give 'lap dances' that violated the law. Then they raided the club and eventually shut it down. Surely the religious right must have done similar things in the Bible Belt. What were they????
"Often, her cases boil down to strip club owners battling the Christian right, she says. "They want to get rid of these things, so that these things don't tempt them.'"
"Often, her cases boil down to strip club owners battling the Christian right, she says. "They want to get rid of these things, so that these things don't tempt them.'"
Thanks for an actual real world example. I lived in St. Louis, MO in the early 1990s. The county prosecutor, George Peach conducted an ongoing war on porn & illicit sex. Then he ws arrested for soliciting a prostitute at a hotel near the airport. It was quite obvious from the police report that this was not the first time for him.
One's responsibility is to one's self and to his/her family, not to the neighbor next door, the bum down the street, the crook in prison, or the bureaucrat in Washington. Societies aren't built around the government, or at least, shouldn't be, as enumerated in the Constitution. Governments, especially the Federal government is inefficient and ineffective and should be limited as much as possible. Government should be built around "society", not the opposite. From the beginnings of this country when the Pilgrims experimented with socialism that first winter, they nearly died. It was not until they were held responsible for their own welfare did they thrive.
Our responsibility is to ourselves AND everything we encounter because we are all creating it. A crap society full of drug addicts is the creation of those using drugs as well as those who don't use them. Both contributed to the creation of that society. Yes, what you have done is your responsibility, but we each cannot ignore what we contribute--consciously, unconsciously, by accident, intentionally, whatever--to it.
The Constitution is where we began. It pushed us off the shoreline into an ocean of our own discovery. What it said government was to be and what we democratically want it to be are independent.
Only a person who dislikes government would see it as something to dismiss. I think society and government are intertwined, they bounce ideas off of each other. I don't think they can be separated without the collapse of both.
The Federal government's inefficiency is not a trait of any government. It is a product of the size (land area) of our country and our octopus-like economy (with worldwide tentacles). If you already think government is bad, you'll miss every opportunity to use it to your (and our) advantage.
As far as your comment about the Pilgrims dabbling in socialism, ah, now we know what the source of your problem is: fear of socialism, as if that had any basis in reality. Neither the Constitution no any other founding document stated we had to have a capitalist economy. We the people can determine whatever we want our economy to be and if we want to dabble in socialism in the 21st century or even, as you claim, in the 17th century, we have every right to.
Seems to me my leftist thinking provides more freedom and more options than your rightwing thinking.
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