AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Parados, while it is lawful for the government to tax for the purposes specified in the Constitution, it is unlawful for government to give tax money away to those who do not earn it. That give away is not specified in the Constitution.

The article shows us the value of hindsight towards the actions of home buyers and that of rating agencies, although it doesn't mention our government's actions in legislatively mandating those very agencies.

That's for privateers, who are essentially pirates on your side. That's not what Halliburton or Blackwater did.

http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/
Main Entry: 1pri·va·teer
Pronunciation Guide
Pronunciation: |prv|ti()r, -ti
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): -s
Etymology: 1private + -eer
1 : an armed private ship bearing the commission of the sovereign power to cruise against the commerce or warships of an enemy
2 : the commander or one of the crew of a privateer
3 archaic : one fighting voluntarily as a soldier but not formally enlisted in an organized armed force : a free-lance soldier

Yes, letters of Marque and Reprisal are most certainly what Halliburton and Blackwater were granted by the Federal Government and did do as granted.

Article I. Section 8:
The Congress shall have power
...
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

where does the Constitution say it is unlawful to give money away? Please point out the precise words that you think mean that.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

ican, you're ignorant of history. It is definition 1, a common tactic of war in the 18th and 19th centuries, that letters of marque and reprisal applied to, not 3.

The procedure for issuing Letters of Marque and the issuing authority varied by time and circumstance. In Colonial America for instance, colonial governors issued them in the name of the King. During the American Revolution first the state legislatures, then both the states and the Continental Congress, then after ratification of the Constitution, Congress authorized and the President signed Letters of Marque. A ship owner would send in an application stating the name, description, tonnage and force (armaments) of the vessel, the name and residence of the owner, the intended number of crew, and tendered a bond promising strict observance of the country's laws and treaties, and of international laws and customs. The commission was granted to the vessel, not to its captain, often for a limited time or specified area, and stated the enemy upon whom attacks were permitted. For instance during the Second Barbary War President James Madison authorized the Salem, Mass. brig Grand Turk to cruise against "Algerine vessels, public or private, goods and effects, of or belonging to the Dey of Algiers".[15] (Interestingly, this particular commission was never put to use as it was issued the same day the treaty was signed ending the U.S. involvement in the war—July 3, 1815.[16])

A Letter of Marque and Reprisal in effect converted a private merchant vessel into a naval auxiliary. A commissioned privateer enjoyed the protection of the laws of war. If captured, the crew was entitled to honorable treatment as prisoners of war, while without the license they were deemed mere pirates "at war with all the world," criminals who were properly hanged.[17]

For this reason enterprising maritime raiders commonly took advantage of "flag of convenience" Letters of Marque, shopping for cooperative governments to license and legitimize their depredations. French/Irishman Luke Ryan and his lieutenants in just over two years commanded six vessels under the flags of three different nations and on opposite sides in the same war.[18] Likewise the notorious Lafitte brothers in New Orleans cruised under letters of marque secured by bribery from corrupt officials of tenuous Central American governments, or the briefly sovereign nation of Texas, to cloak plunder with a thin veil of legality

August 8, 2010
Commentary: The Unconscious of a Conservative
By Dennis Jett | McClatchy Newspapers
Dennis Jett is a former career diplomat who served abroad is six countries including Israel.

Future historians will have plenty to argue about as they analyze today’s politics through the lens of time. One debate might be about whether 2010 was the year conservatism died. In the days of Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller, conservatives were those who wanted limited government and low taxes, but still found room to accommodate a range of beliefs under their tent. And they even had a degree of tolerance for those who were outside it.

Now intolerance is in and anyone violating any of the core conservative beliefs is branded a heretic. The political landscape is littered with the bodies of politicians who were deemed insufficiently ardent. Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, Florida Governor Charlie Crist and Utah Senator Robert Bennett all demonstrate that, for conservatives, moderate has become as dirty a word as liberal.

But it is not just intolerance that is the hallmark of today's conservatives. They have become little more than the sum of their fears and their hatreds. What they fear most is the modern world and its pace of change. For them, the natural order of things is a country run by white, Protestant males. Today they are confronted with a black man in the White House, a woman as House majority leader, no Protestants on the Supreme Court, gays asserting their rights, and a Muslim immigrant winning the Miss USA crown. It is all too much to bear.

Instead of dealing with the world as it is, conservatives prefer to feel victimized and be victimized by politicians and pundits who promise a return to an Ozzie and Harriet era that never existed. Reconstructing a nonexistent past includes rewriting history and asserting that only they can channel the real intentions of the founding fathers. That allows them to deny anything is different from when the constitution was written by that collection of wealthy, white, male, Christians. Back in those good old days, blacks were property, women were in the kitchen, and Native Americans and Latinos were people from whom God said land should be stolen until the Pacific was reached.

To support their history, conservatives have their own facts. They whine constantly about being over-taxed ignoring the fact that the total tax burden is now lower than it has been since before Eisenhower took office. They also have their own science to support the facts they invent. Their answer to evolution is a biblically-based fairy tale. In their version of economics, tax cuts always pay for themselves by creating so much growth that the new tax revenue generated exceeds that lost by the cuts. No matter that no study has ever shown that to be true and that George H.W. Bush once referred to that theory as voodoo economics.

Conservatives today turn away from reality and prefer to swoon over the media stars that validate their worldview. The irony is that, while people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly claim to be standing up for the little guy, all they really do is put the con in conservative. While standing tall for the small, they all take home eight-figure annual incomes and laugh all the way to the bank.

Their formula for success is consistent. They stoke the homophobia, xenophobia and Islamophobia of their listeners by using language that would embarrass George Orwell and name-calling that would turn Joe McCarthy's stomach. Their response to the racists in their midst is to accuse others of racism. Politicians they don't like are compared to Hitler and Stalin and any government initiative is socialist if not communist. They make allusions to using violence to protect the imaginary world their listeners live in. And in the meantime, they sell them books, videos and gold.

When the conservative cheerleader is a woman she has to be sassy and glib with far more bile than brains. She also has to be pretty. The audiences that gather to hear Palin are enraptured by her rap and unbothered by the fact that her train of thought derailed before it left the station. And they would pay no attention to her if she were as attractive as someone like say Meg Whitman, the Ebay billionaire who spent 90 million dollars of her own money buying the nomination for governor in California.

There will always be people suffering from a psychic crisis due to their inability to deal with the world. And there will always be those who will be ready to make a handsome living exploiting that condition. So 2010 probably won't be considered the year that conservatism died. But it may be the year that it became recognized as the ideology of the impaired

ideology of the impaired.