Posted on 02/16/2009 9:46:22 AM PST by Tolik
Our 'defining principles' can only be taught in a 'basic training' type school. -- Every 18 year old should be required to attend a constitutional boot camp before they are franchised to vote. --
-- No service, - No vote.
You are welcome.
4+ years of concentrated treasure written by the best people.
"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." - Letter to James Warren, November 4, 1775
Thanks!
See my post #20 for some trends i see in our society.
There are more, of course. Large cities - that existed for a while, but grown tremendously in XX century - nessecitate dependence. When you are on your farm with a handful of other people, you depend on yourself. In the city you MUST depend on somebody else to run transport, pickup garbage, etc, etc. On the famous red-blue maps, especially more detailed - by county - you can see the blue cities and red countryside. My understanding is that the city grows is practically over. Suburbs are not rural areas, but new technologies do allow people to spread out. This trend will continue. When flying, I can’t stop getting amazed how green everything is under the wings. Few minutes, and we are out of the metro area, and then all green there. Leaving cities will work in favor of getting personally responsible for the things again. Eventually.
I wish I had thought of it when I began here.
You have inspired me.
ditto to that, excellent post.
Look, it's sort of like everyone coming to realize that the best way to move forward on the economy is to let the big banks fail. Likewise, the best way for us to re-establish a free market Republic is to let the current system die. Hussein is the perfect solution - let him and his lib friends bury the corpse. We can restore a New USA after the reset point.
“Our ‘defining principles’ can only be taught in a ‘basic training’ type school. — Every 18 year old should be required to attend a constitutional boot camp before they are franchised to vote. —
— No service, - No vote.”
-I agree with this and have been saying this for a long time. Citizenship should be just as hard or harder to get than a driver’s license. Also, if you don’t pay any taxes, you don’t get the right to vote. You have to have skin in the game. Voting to limit another person’s rights when you have nothing at risk is another form of tyranny.
You make an excellent point. If the United States fails as that Russian author predicts, I’d be only too happy to chose to live in the section of former states where personal responsibility, liberty and fiscal accountability are the order of the day. Given his map, I’d say I am headed to the Southern States and Texas.
I actually would feel a lot more at peace in a smaller country with real libertarian convictions. Maybe Ron Paul might end up being Jeff Davis’ successor.LOL
One, and only one, problem is that we no longer hold our politicians accountable for what they do. If this stimulus fails, they should all go.
People like the idea in theory that people who have more money than they should pay more taxes. It sounds nice.
But it ignores two things. First, the rich don't really pay any taxes; the tax is built into the price of the product and you pay it when you by the gallon of milk whether you realize it or not. And the tax is paid in lost opportunities, which are hard to quantify but real.
So raise the tax on some rich guy, and watch the prices go up on everything you do, and watch the investment dry up and marvel as you find yourself unemployed, standing on the pavement as marginal businesses are pushed over the edge into failure.
And the other problem is, as you say, if a majority of the people don't pay tax (or at least they don't see the tax that they really do pay) then they have no qualms about voting to increase the tax. They aren't going to pay it (they think) someone else will.
I've always favored some kind of flat tax, but flat starting right from the bottom up. If you're a citizen, you owe the same percentage as anyone else. Rich or poor, you're a citizen. Pick a percentage, I don't care what you pick but everyone pays the same. If you want to raise the tax, fine, but you raise it on yourself too.
And I tend to favor the idea that only people who are net taxpayers should have the vote on anything to do with tax issues. If you get a welfare check, a government subsidy, a government paycheck of any kind, you don't vote on tax issues. Its a conflict of interest.
Somehow being an actual Nazi, or at least being thought of as one, is instant death to someone’s political, academic or cultural career (and for good reason.) But being a communist/Marxist is both able to be fashionable and somehow shielded from receiving an accurate label.
Particularly since they are, in effect, one in the same.
Take care.
Good article but through it all, Plato, Socrates or even the author of this piece even intimates that in its simplest form, there is the hidden hand of pure evil driving us into the abyss. IOW, NONE of this is happenstance, but by design. Man’s nature is such that without a reverence for God and Godly principles, we are automatically doomed to go the way of all previous great civilizations. The hidden hand of evil knows no compassion or remorse; its only desire is to rule.
I'm still a young guy...it's only been about ten years since I was last in my twenties :-D
Yes and yes.
Flat tax or FairTax, I’d take any instead of our byzantine scisophrenic system.
Unfortunately, here I pessimistic. I don’t see congress voting on any reasonable solution.
No. They are voting for what they are voting for right before our very eyes. The next four years are going to be long and costly.
I think it might have something to do with the N-odd million of people who will die between now and the glorious return of your "New Republic". That and the fact that tyranny is the default state for man over the last few millenia. There have only been a few short periods of just governance. So I suppose most people get worked up over the thought of millions of their fellow Americans enslaved or killed and the loss of liberty for generations. But perhaps thats just an overreaction ;p
The Left has seized the language. Thus pederasty is now a synonym for merriment, and who’s against being merry, abortion and infanticide are choice, and who’s against choice, and Communism is progressive, and who among us is against progress?!
Oh, and so called “racism”, a concept invented in Moscow, instantly associates the “racist” with the likes of the good Dr Mendele, whereas in reality what’s called “racism” is no more than ethnic rivalry or ethnocentrism. The Left has seized the conceptualization of ideas in the culture and imposed it on us all with no opposition from the clueless Right, which has readily adopted these euphemisms and misdirections as their own (just watch the language used on this forum.)
Is Revolting Cat! a reference to a feline acting to overthrow its masters, or an evocation of of one with a gruesome visage? You know, just curious...
Remember that all great men in history were gay..... that is the current thinking.
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