Isn't the greatest threat to American freedom, our government?

You need to research what happened in 2005 and stop making a complete fool of yourself.

The Financial Regulation bill on the books isn't an executive compensation bill. You're blaming it for not solving a problem that it isn't intended to solve.



Oh, it absolutely DOES do that. Have you even read the legislation? It seems not. In fact, Obama announced that he would VETO any bill that didn't contain regulation of the derivatives market.



Credit-default swaps are not inherently the problem; the unregulated and secret market for them is the problem. Which is clearly indicated in the bill, which you haven't read.

Why do you bother coming here to talk about **** you have no understanding of and have done no background research into?

Cycloptichorn

Actually, there is an effort to shine a light on derivative trading.

The effort to shine the light on the problem occurred years ago and the democrats cut off electricity to that light.

That is about a million miles away from actually fixing the problem. It appears to be a proposal to make the practice slightly less profitable, and it is not likely that even this will ever become law.

Isn't that how you stop it from happening? Why would anybody do it if it wasn't profitable?



Not if the Repubs mount a filibuster.

No. Contracts are a matter of law, if you want to get rid of certain kinds of contracts then you outlaw them.

Our government is running the banks. Thomas Jefferson stated so eloquently in 1802: And it has come to pass:

'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.'

That is already covered by existing legislation. Corporate officers are responsible for signing off on the books.

The legislation would give government agencies regulatory powers to prevent derivatives.

Ah well... You are free to make up whatever you want to about the legislation I guess.

The analogy of Somalia is senseless.

That a functioning government is the primary means for preserving individual freedom within a sizable population in no way defeats the argument that government is generally the greatest threat to individual freedom, and certainly so when it comes to Americans' freedom.

It actually enforces the argument.

Any entity with the power to protect freedom has the power to restrict it.

It is simply foolish to suggest that the logical extension of the argument is to favor anarchy.

I can appreciate, to some extent, the argument that national debt threatens individual freedom, but how is national debt incurred?

Whenever peoples have lost their freedom, who has stolen it?

At times it has been external enemies and conquerors but in relatively recent history it has been almost always the internal power structure of a nation --- the government.

Americans have, arguably, been seriously threatened by external forces only twice in its history, and this doesn't include the threat of the Cold War.

We have on multiple occasions had our freedom threatened by our government and I've already offered several examples.

If you believe the answer to the original question is "No," what do you think the greatest threat to be?

No, it isn't. You have it completely backwards and your remark flies in the face of traditional political theory. People form governments to protect their liberties.



The recent bedwetting being done by some white people once Brack Obama was elected president is funny as hell. From such folk I heard not a sound as the country was lied into a war, a trillion dollars shot off into the ether, civil rights curtailed, Habeas Corpus threatened, because.... "well there was a war going on."

And now? What? Having an ex-president, on whose watch the greatest disaster of homegrown domestic terrorism calls out lunatics that threaten violence is somehow a bad thing?

How one draws some sort of moral equivalence towards the Right wing in this country with the Left in America vis a vis violence is simply a stone cold and willful dismissal of the facts.

How objective and rational could anyone be to post such nonsense about not being concerned about Right winger violence in light of the shootings at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. in June 2009, allegedly committed by white supremacist James Von Brunn, preceded two months earlier by Richard Poplawski, another right-wing extremist, allegedly gunned down three police officers in Pittsburgh, in part because he feared the non-existent "Obama gun ban," or few weeks later by Scott Roeder, another right-wing extremist, assassinating Dr. George Tiller in Kansas.

There are other, recent examples that bear similar characteristics. But the most chilling is the murders from Tennessee in 2008 by Jim David Adkisson.



http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/Jul/28/church-shooting-police-find-manifesto-suspects-car/

Owen said Adkisson's stated hatred of the liberal movement was not necessarily connected to any hostility toward Christianity or religion per say, but rather the political advocacy of the church.

The church's Web site states that it has worked for "desegregation, racial harmony, fair wages, women's rights and gay rights" since the 1950s.

Obviously, we're dealing with sick individuals here. There are key differences between violent right-wing radicals and mainstream Americans who happen to be conservative. Indeed, I'm not suggesting that conservative activists are necessarily dangerous, violent people, but it seems lately that the dangerous, violent people who kill others for their political beliefs are conservative.

I think this is your main thesis... and I think it is ambiguous and misleading. But let's put it this way.

I have great faith in democracy.

Our government was founded by and based on the Constitution-- the majority of which is dedicated to setting up and ascribing power to the three branches of the Federal government.

Our nation needs to make decisions; we must write and adapt laws based on the needs of the times, we need maintain a healthy economy through changing circumstances and we need to respond to internal, external or natural emergencies. Further, the government belongs to the people, and as peoples values, needs and desires change, the government should change as well to adapt to them.

The Constitution was written with these needs in mind. We have an legislative branch, chosen by election, that writes and changes laws. We have an executive branch that enforces laws and can respond to emergency. The Congress and presidents have used their Constitutional power to set up economic institutions. And, the judicial branch has always watched over the other two branch with an eye toward to Constitution.

Is this system perfect-- clearly not. The examples you give probably good examples of government overreach. But there are also good uses of government power-- to put people to work in Depressions, to enforce changing values on civil rights and to respond to disasters natural or man-made.

Then there are the cases when you disagree with what the Constitutional branches of government; the Congress, the President or the Supreme court do. Sorry about that; this is part of being living in a society-- and hopefully the fact that we have a Constitutional democracy with all of its benefits makes up for that. I certainly have to accept some things that I don't like-- and yes, I am still very happy to be living in the US.

Freedom is an interesting thing. All Americans value, but at times we disagree on the specifics. In these cases, the government is all we have-- the founders understood this and gave powers to the branches of the government accordingly.

This is why the idea that "expansion of our government" is a "threat to freedom" is problematic (other then the fact that the Constitution itself, which no one considers a threat to freedom, was perhaps the biggest expansion of government in our history).

Americans will disagree on what "threat to Freedom" means-- some people think that providing health insurance is threat to freedom. Others of us think that the government using torture is more of a threat. The number of people thinking both of these are a threat are probably pretty small-- yet government needs to make just these decisions.

If you don't like our system of representative democracy-- where people vote to elect the President and Congress who have the Constitutional power to enact and enforce laws, while the Judicial branch watches over them, what would you suggest in its place?

Those most eager for use to surrender our civil liberties are the ones that will never be asked to. I take offensive that the richest and most entitled feel that they are the ones that feel they understand bondage and freedom the best.

Freedom is harmed only by indifference and a lack of empathy. The government is made of people so they can be a part of that, but the people that do harm to our freedom are not confined to the boundaries of public office. It's not government.

T
K
O

Your a fucken republican. Your a conservative. Here is what you think of America!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chXjCtkymRQ&feature=related

"The merchant has no country"

-Thomas Jeferson

stand by your side.

I 've been a conservative Republican for many decades, amigo.





David

The history of derivative trading goes back to 1865 where they were called "futures trading" at the Chicago Board of Trade.
Derivative trading is not in itself dangerous but The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 allowed loopholes like the Enron loophole and later on the SEC lost the ability to guard against OTC derivative trading abuses. I think the Finance Reform Bill will be helpful.
I agree with you hawkeye, the futures trading abuses add about a dollar a gallon to the cost of heating fuel.

I can see your angle. After all it has the power to put me behind bars, tell me who I can marry and all. It has authority over me (even claims to have it when I am overseas, with taxation of income I earn elsewhere etc).

But I'd say debt (and the work/debt cycle) is a more typical threat to the average American's freedom.

Interesting quote, but it remains a paradox that few people these days are sustained by the satisfaction with simply being a good person amongst his common brethren.