AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

If it is true charity nobody HAS to do anything which was my whole point. The fact that some people of faith believe there is an obligation to not withhold benevolence is an entirely thing altogether. When I worked for the Episcopalians, the Diocese presented a budget to the people so that they would know exactly how the money would be spent, and the people contributed toward that budget as their consciences inspired them to do so. Nobody went out and demanded a check from anybody.

I was the person designated to distribute most of the monies allocated for the poor, and I helped work with other social services to set up a community clearing house so that social agencies could send the needy to a central location rather than have the scam artists working the whole system. That pretty well ensured that it was the truly needy and not the scam artists who got help. But again, all monies contributed to that process were voluntary. Nobody came around to collect an arbitrarily assigned sum from anybody.

It would be reasonable if there was a huge need such as a Katrina or massive fires in California or famine in Africa etc., that the government advertise the need and solicit donations to help and then distribute the contributions that came in. I am guessing that the response would be huge, not a single person's property would be confiscated without his permission, and future generations would have to pay off no debt as a result.

It certainly looks to me that there is little other explanation despite how many eye rolls you put in. Otherwise we wouldn't have decades of history of doing the same old things over and over and pacifying the people with the same old rhetoric when there are little or no results other than more poverty and/or more misery to show for the effort.

Quote:

Foxfyre wrote:

And what justice is there for those who have their property confiscated?

Hey, look, God prohibited gathering every grape of thy vineyard, too. What's the justice in that?

But God isn't collecting the grapes is he? He teaches the people what the right thing is to do and then leaves it to them to get it done. So where is the injustice in that?

So again, I ask you. How is it just to forcibly take from those who legally and ethically acquired it and give it to those who did not?

Quote:

It certainly looks to me that there is little other explanation despite how many eye rolls you put in. Otherwise we wouldn't have decades of history of doing the same old things over and over and pacifying the people with the same old rhetoric when there are little or no results other than more poverty and/or more misery to show for the effort.

Since you think that charity would work better without the government Fox, explain why poverty was 31.1% of the population prior to the government getting involved and is currently about half of what it was before?

You keep claiming "MORE poverty" in spite of the clear facts to the contrary.

When the facts don't fit your world view you just ignore them.

I posted a link to HOW poverty is calculated and you never did show us how it changed based on how it is calculated. Please do so or stop making your unsubstantiated claims about how poverty is worse today.

Foxfyre wrote:

He [God] teaches the people what the right thing is to do and then leaves it to them to get it done. So where is the injustice in that?

He doesn't "teach them to do the right thing", he lays down the law. And the law is that you'll have to give up a portion of what would otherwise be yours. I agree that God doesn't walk around and collect that portion, but he certainly controls whether or not you're complying with His laws.

If you can come up with a modern system that establishes what you have to give up to the poor and to strangers and that controls that you're complying with the system without having the government involved, feel free to share.

The continual straw men, diversions, and non sequiturs do get tedious and boring after awhile.

True. Conservatives have already taken away our Constitutional rights based on "fear" and "security." What's to say they won't take away other rights such as bearing children by the poor who send their children to public schools and our hospitals? OMG, how can we stop this madness?

old europe wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

He [God] teaches the people what the right thing is to do and then leaves it to them to get it done. So where is the injustice in that?

He doesn't "teach them to do the right thing", he lays down the law. And the law is that you'll have to give up a portion of what would otherwise be yours. I agree that God doesn't walk around and collect that portion, but he certainly controls whether or not you're complying with His laws.

If you can come up with a modern system that establishes what you have to give up to the poor and to strangers and that controls that you're complying with the system without having the government involved, feel free to share.

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary." -- The Federalist No. 51.

What parts of the Bill of Rights have been repealed?
What law or regulation has passed thru congress (both the house AND senate) that took away any of your rights?

What executive order or signing statement took away any of your rights?

And be specific, dont use generalities.

Yay, my old thread lives again!

Cycloptichorn

I only asked that you address the subject. You didn't.

You substituted a lot of straw men and non sequiturs and absurdities and refused to answer the one question I put to you.

Had you even made an attempt at civil discourse we might have had a discussion. You didn't.

And you could have introduced any topic that interested you and that would have been fine too. You didn't do that either.

And that is what makes me disinterested in continuing efforts to have a discussion with you. If you or other liberals or conservatives for that matter find my questions too difficult to answer or the topics I find interesting too complicated or difficult to discuss, I would prefer that you not engage them with me at all.

I would worry that I am one of a kind and nobody else in the world understands some of these topics if I didn't continually run into people, either on A2K or elsewhere, that do. Some agree wtih me. Some don't. But they aren't confused about what the topic is.

Bush challenges hundreds of laws
President cites powers of his office

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | April 30, 2006

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.

But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.

Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.

Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts.

Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University law professor who has studied the executive power claims Bush made during his first term, said Bush and his legal team have spent the past five years quietly working to concentrate ever more governmental power into the White House.

''There is no question that this administration has been involved in a very carefully thought-out, systematic process of expanding presidential power at the expense of the other branches of government," Cooper said. ''This is really big, very expansive, and very significant."

For the first five years of Bush's presidency, his legal claims attracted little attention in Congress or the media. Then, twice in recent months, Bush drew scrutiny after challenging new laws: a torture ban and a requirement that he give detailed reports to Congress about how he is using the Patriot Act.

Bush administration spokesmen declined to make White House or Justice Department attorneys available to discuss any of Bush's challenges to the laws he has signed.

Instead, they referred a Globe reporter to their response to questions about Bush's position that he could ignore provisions of the Patriot Act. They said at the time that Bush was following a practice that has ''been used for several administrations" and that ''the president will faithfully execute the law in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution."

But the words ''in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution" are the catch, legal scholars say, because Bush is according himself the ultimate interpretation of the Constitution. And he is quietly exercising that authority to a degree that is unprecedented in US history.

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files ''signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

''He agrees to a compromise with members of Congress, and all of them are there for a public bill-signing ceremony, but then he takes back those compromises -- and more often than not, without the Congress or the press or the public knowing what has happened," said Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio political science professor who studies executive power.

Military link
Many of the laws Bush said he can bypass -- including the torture ban -- involve the military.