We Built This?

How about "self-absorbed?"

I find it interesting. I remember a few years ago having arguments with the likes of okie about paying 50% or more in taxes and how that was too much. At the time I pointed out no one really paid 50%.

Now it seems paying 13% is considered too much.

Most Americans are ill-informed about taxation; looking back at history, our country did best when everybody paid taxes that were much higher than today's rates or amounts.

People need to understand that taxes are required to pay for our infratructure, schools, and social services for the majority.

You can't have something for nothing.

I want to make a bumper sticker -

Don't Like Socialism?

Who built this highway ?

Believe it or not even highly capitalistic countries have highways and modern infrastructure - consider for example Hong Kong and Singapore.

The isue here is the degree to which government puts the taxes it collects to productive use. Our current government has a pretty dismal record in that regard. The few socialist governments left and even the moderately social democratic governments of Europe are all having a lot of problems with excessive debt; high borrowing costs; high unemployment; and low labor productivity. See any connections there??

I live in Texas. Just about every day in Texas is a day in a world where people think like me. I like my world, a lot better than one in which everyone thinks like you.

Now I expect to be castigated for wanting to exist in a cocoon of Group Think, but I have plenty of opportunities to hear and read what people who think quite differently than me, actually think: I have the Sunday Times delivered, and subscribe to GQ, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly and Vanity Fair. I go to the movies regularly, and every now and then watch MSNBC. My beloved brother is a flaming socialist, and most of my wife's family are "we need to be cool" liberals. I don't need to live near liberals to hear what they have to say.

I own my own business and work from home and so can live anywhere. I lived in Charlotte NC for 20 years. We loved living there and have talked frequently about moving back --- It's certainly a hell of a lot prettier than Dallas---but it's also a hell of a lot more liberal, and NC is at best a light blue state thanks to all of the damned Yankees that have moved there over the last 30 years.

If we do move back East it will be to SC.

I don't need to be exposed to left wing thinking. I once subscribed to it, I understand it, and I'm not going back.

People who think like me are good neighbors. They'll help me when I truly need help, deeply appreciate my help when given, and never insist that I help them whether or not I think they need help.

This idiotic notion that conservatives are selfish bastards who think only of themselves is just that. It has been evidenced, over and over, that conservatives are more charitable than liberals. They give more of their money to the disadvantaged than liberals, who prefer to give more of conservatives money away than their own.

Self-absorption, thy name is CI.

One thing anyone who frequents this forum can totally rely upon is CI ranting about how stupid, ignorant, uneducated, and ill informed his fellow Americans are because they don't agree with his left-wing cant.

Apparently you subscribe to the same silly notion of conservatives held by Hingehead and Obama.

Folks who favor a conservative concept of limited government, don't favor the absence of government.

Nor do they find anything socialistic about municipal infra-structure programs unless they are make work projects intended to support Unions.

We all want and appreciate roads.

We all pay for them, although some of us pay a much larger share of their cost than others.

That's the problem with facile bumper sticker thinking.

That's interesting. Countries you consider highly capitalistic have government controlled health care systems.

Hi Finn

My thoughts weren't about conservatives, they were purely about you, I guess the point I'm orbiting around is that you seem to lack 'enlightened' self-interest. You appear to resent people who aren't doing as well as you are and particularly resent your government tax dollar doing anything to make their lives any better - you think they should bootstrap themselves. And you're not Robinson Crusoe, the name Gina Rinehardt probably means little to you but she should move to Dallas with you.

Anyway, the point I'm still orbiting around is that you won't concede that govt funded safety nets for the less well off make for a better for society for all. I am more than happy for you or anyone to argue the size of that net. I don't believe you're the sociopath you come across as - it's just the interwebs and your stubborness that won't let you concede that you do, kind of, give a rat's ass about other people - if only so they don't eat you when the revolution comes

Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey. Ouida.

PS A book for you about Texas' left wing heritage.

Not only that, but most conservatives have already forgotten that most of the current debt was created by GW Bush.

I won't?

I have on more than one ocassion, and no, I won't go searching for those posts to prove anything to you.

If you're more than happy to debate the size of the net than do so and stop your ridiculous arguments that I want poor people to disappear and die.

By the way, I truly wish I could feel grateful that you don't think I'm a sociopath, but you see I am actually a psychopath and find human emotion to be an alien concept.