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Everything stated in the constitution is what we conservatives try to conserve today.
That's neither true nor what 'conservative' means. It would be, at best, inane to describe a group of people who believed you did not need a monarch to have a country in the 18th century. They don't need to be radicals, but they were hardly conservative. And even if conservatives in the 21st century are as you describe (which is pushing it given how many conservatives un-ironically seem to believe congress should serve the president becasue "the American people have spoken"), this would not mean the founding fathers were conservative.
You just traded a representative form of government so everybody could become Banana Republicans who have to overthrow their enemies to maintain their grip on power. Considerably messier, and no big improvement IMHO, although it might be entertaining to watch for a while.
I think it should be tried out by floating a reality show based on anarchists surviving in the wild with nothing but their half wits as weapons.
I was kind of done with the discussion, but I'm too curious about what you mean by the bold...why would everyone need to "overthrow" their "enemies" and maintain their grip on "power"?
And what's with the surviving in the wild thing? Reminds me of the Frederic Bastiat quote from all the way back in 1850...
Quote:
Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.
You're starting to sound like Jordan Peterson more and more...which is a good thing.
I've been watching his videos on YouTube a lot lately. The way he simply goes from A to B to C without any pride or prejudice...just logical and moral consistency...is a thing of beauty. It's no wonder everyone hates him on the far statist Right and far statist Left.
Ha...I'll take that as a big compliment. Whenever I see a new video of him I have to stop and watch it.
Communism and socialism are economic systems, not political ones. To communism’s founder Karl Marx, history is about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, while economics is about the middle class (bourgeoise) and nobility exploiting the working class, namely by paying the worker less for his or her labor than the actual value of goods and services the worker produced, in effect stealing part of the workers’ labors and paying them just enough to survive. Marx’s solution was to abolish all private ownership of property and have the workers own the means of production (farms, mines, forests, factories, transport lines, and any item that can produce wealth for the owner). In short, communism centers on who owns the means of production.
Laws regulating property privately is not of who owns the land. It’s a matter of regulating human behavior, more of a public policy matter than an economic one. Therefore, communism does not cover such matters. Nor does it cover taxes, what we pay in order to maintain a police force, legal system, and military in order to protect society from threats to it (invading armies and criminals). It also includes funding public goods that the private sector could never hope to accomplish well on its own, if at all (roads, bridges, dams, rural electrification, etc.).
Again, this is not a question of who owns what, at least outside the geographic range of the project (the government could always declare imminent domain over a property IF the owner is justly compensated). It is a question of our individual obligations to society (promote mutual security, mutual obligations to help fund projects which neither individuals, nor the private sector could ever develop on their own, but yet are considered vital for even minimal functioning of all members of a society).
In short, once the question shifts from outright ownership of wealth-creating properties and to our obligations to fund police, military, and mutually helping each other fund needed projects beyond the ability of the private sector to do so, it’s not about communism any more.
Spoken like a true apparatchik who ignores the greatest number of people slaughtered have been under communist regimes.
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