AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

"IF EVER A TIME SHOULD COME, WHEN VAIN AND ASPIRING MEN SHOULD POSSESS THE HIGHEST SEATS IN GOVERNMENT, OUR COUNTRY WILL STAND IN NEED OF ITS EXPERIENCED PATRIOTS TO PREVENT ITS RUIN." -- Samuel Adams

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"THE POWERS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ARE ENUMERATED; IT CAN ONLY OPERATE IN CERTAIN CASES; IT HAS LEGISLATIVE POWERS ON DEFINED AND LIMITED OBJECTS, BEYOND WHICH IT CANNOT EXTEND ITS JURISDICTION." -- James Madison

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"WHEN THE PEOPLE FIND THAT THEY CAN VOTE THEMSELVES MONEY, THAT WILL HERALD THE END OF THE REPUBLIC." -- Benjamin Franklin

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Nothing like being shouted at by the founding fathers.

Cycloptichorn

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"THEY THAT CAN GIVE UP ESSENTIAL LIBERTY TO PURCHASE A LITTLE TEMPORARY SAFETY DESERVE NEITHER LIBERTY OR SAFETY." -- Benjamin Franklin

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"REMEMBER DEMOCRACY NEVER LASTS LONG. IT SOON WASTES, EXHAUSTS, AND MURDERS ITSELF. THERE NEVER WAS A DEMOCRACY YET THAT DID NOT COMMIT SUICIDE." -- John Adams

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"TO BE PREPARED FOR WAR, IS ONE OF THE MOST EFFECTUAL MEANS OF PRESERVING PEACE." -- George Washington

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Some alleged adult folks need not only to be shouted at by their founding fathers. They need to also be spanked to help them grow up. Alas, the founding fathers cannot spank them, so they must absorb a modicum of wisdom some other way.

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How About The Tea Party? Yes, The Tea Party!

"TEA PARTY MISSION STATEMENT
Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values:
Constitutionally Limited Government;
Fiscal Responsibility;
Free Markets."

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@cicerone imposter,

Actually, I think okie does understand what you and I mean by universal health care. This is one of his attempts to make the world conform to his idiolect and his mindset.

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@ican711nm,

Quote:

"TO BE PREPARED FOR WAR, IS ONE OF THE MOST EFFECTUAL MEANS OF PRESERVING PEACE." -- George Washington

"War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting, and are not divided by any genuinely ideological difference. THis is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the attitude toward it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side, and not by the enemy, meritorious. But, in the physical sense, war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly trained specialists, and causes comparatively few casualties. The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at . . ."

--- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

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@plainoldme,

plainoldme wrote:

Quote:
"TO BE PREPARED FOR WAR, IS ONE OF THE MOST EFFECTUAL MEANS OF PRESERVING PEACE." -- George Washington

"War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Keep Obama and the democrats in power and watch how
the desperate, annihilating struggle of the past returns.

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NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR by George Orwell was published June 1949. Orwell time-labeled his warning 1984, but his warning is a perpetual and timeless warning of humanity's propensity to contain and even court personalities in its midst that are dangerous to humanity's existence. These are the personalities in humanity's midst that seek power over what the rest of humanity thinks and what the rest of humanity does. They seek this power for no other purpose than gaining power over the rest of humanity. Possessing that power over even some of humanity deludes them into thinking they are of greater worth than those over which they possess their power. The truth is for them to hold others down, they must also be down.

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@H2O MAN,

Gee, that description sounds like the bush WH to me. Diff'rent strokes etc.

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http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79n/
insertions below are by ican

George Orwell in NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, Part III, Chapter IV, wrote:

Leader says, Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. Leader said, 'I could float off this floor like a soap bubble' ... I, a MAL (i.e., Modern American Liberal) thinks, 'If Leader THINKS he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously THINK I see him do it, then the thing happens.' Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind: 'It doesn't really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination.' He pushed the thought under instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a 'real' world where 'real' things happened. But how could there be such a world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.

He had no difficulty in disposing of the fallacy, and he was in no danger of succumbing to it. He realized, nevertheless, that it ought never to have occurred to him. The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. CRIMESTOP, they called it in Newspeak.

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@ican711nm,

YEs. So, what has the fact that the book was published in 1949 to do with this discussion?

Quote:

These are the personalities in humanity's midst that seek power over what the rest of humanity thinks and what the rest of humanity does.

Dick Cheney. Leo Strauss. Glenn Beck. John Ashcroft. Donald Rumsfeld. Anti-choice demonstrators. Those who would deny basic rights to gays. Jan Brewer. Sharon Engle.

Quote:

The truth is for them to hold others down, they must also be down.

Well, that makes no sense.

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@ican711nm,

We didn't need blue ink to know that the insertions were by ican because we could tell by their poor syntax that they were.

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@plainoldme,

Quote:

Where I live . . . and I mention it all the time . . . has nothing . . . LET ME REPEAT, NOTHING . . . to do with the government statistic that the last year a retail clerk (not manager) could support a family was 1978.

Actually, where you live has a lot to do with it.
Where I live, the average house payment is between $300 and $350 a month.
The average home sells for $61,760.
http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Kentucky/Union_County-heat_map/

Thats for a 3 bedroom house, not an apartment.

So, at $8.50 an hour, thats a 1 week check (before taxes).
Now, most people learn as children to not spend more then 1 paycheck on their house payment or rent.

When you look at this data, and granted its older data, and compare it to the same data from urban areas, or cities, you will see that the cost of living is less here...
http://www.city-data.com/county/Union_County-KY.html

So if living expenses are lower, then it is possible for soemone to support their family here on $8.50/hr.
That is not to say its possible everywhere, but it is possible here.

Quote:

Anyone with an IQ of 100 ought to know that $8.50 an hour is not going to support a family. What you probably do not know is that below the level of manager, there is virtually no full-time employment in retail.

Everyone I know in this area that works in retail is working full time.
I agree that it is a minute percentage of retail workers nationwide, but I can only go by what happens in this area.
I am not foolish enough to think that this area is representative of the country as a whole, but you do seem to think that your area is representative of the nation as a whole.

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@plainoldme,

You're behind the times; there is such a thing as minimum wage laws in this country. The choice of where to live and work is some of the freedoms we enjoy. Many work at so-called low wage industries, but the fact that they are working and trying to manage a living earns them my respect and admiration.

Not everybody can be a rocket scientist; an honest days wages for an honest days work is what matters. This is capitalism where one can choose to end their education or to continue onto obtaining their professional license or PhD. They all have a place in our country. That's what makes capitalism work.

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@mysteryman,

Quote:

Now, most people learn as children to not spend more then 1 paycheck on their house payment or rent.

Nonsense.

Quote:

So, at $8.50 an hour, thats a 1 week check (before taxes).

1.) Most people realize as young adults that the only money they have is after taxes.

2.) There is no such thing as a 40-hour week for people below management in retail with the possible exception of Christmas rush. Even then, stores hire extra employees. Your $330 gross simply does not exist.

Quote:

Everyone I know in this area that works in retail is working full time.

How do you know that? I suggest that you know no one well and are making an assumption. Managers work long hours. 60 hours/week is expected of managers who are salaried. In fact, a young woman I worked with when we were both hourly employees turned down the assistant manager's job when it was offered to her because she would lose money (she based her computations on the hourly wage multiplied by the 60 hours she would work as an assistant manager).

I have lived in several states and no one in any of them ever worked a 40 hour week as a clerk.

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AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

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