A new CNN poll shows that a large majority of Americans agree with libertarians that government is far too big and is sticking its snout into matters that should instead be handled by businesses, non-profits, and individuals. According to CNN: "54 percent said they thought government was trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Only 37 percent thought government should do more to solve the country's problems." Further, people correctly perceive that the federal government is rapidly growing. According to CNN: "When asked if the size of the federal government has increased in the past four years, 72 percent said it had, and 86 percent said they thought federal spending had gone up during the same period." They are right, of course. Since 2000, when supposedly fiscally-conservative Republicans took control of the U.S. presidency, House and Senate, federal spending has skyrocketed, even disallowing for the costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Indeed, the GOP's 2000-2006 domestic spending spree has been unmatched since the regime of 1960s liberal Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson and his "Great Society" explosion of social(ist) welfare spending.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
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2 comments:
Polls are a poor excuse for a study of American history.
150 years ago I'm sure many Americans would agree solidly with you. Southern states wanted to sell their cotten abroad, but this would have doomed the northeastern garment industry. These stalwart yankee capitalists convinced the administration that lifting the bane of capitalist slavery on the south would be fiscally catostrophic. Why let a bunch of European aristocrats dictate the economic future of America? Damn it - we have no kings in this country - and we never will !!! Thus, some southern battleship sails past fort Sumpter and shots are fired. By whom? Who really knows? Frankly, this is prety much how Vietnam started....
Allright - so Lincoln achieved office without the funding of Yankee garment interests and the Civil war never happened. I do tell I hear that slavery would have eventually run its course and blacks would eventually be technically able to walk off their jobs whenever they pleaseed - but where would they go? Another sweat shop? More likely their clever, enterprising former owners would have simply kept them on the farm with liquor, tobacco and a consumer friendly paycheck cashing serive @ loan shark interest rates. Can you say "indentured servitude"?
My respect for those of you who could read enough of this to get this far. As a token of my esteem may I state I think Government has no business dictating what people say to each other. "Sexual harrasment" makes as much sence to me as the impeachment of Clinton. Get a life for God's sake.
In the final synopsis, I believe Libertarans are just Anarchists who have learned - the hard way - that the pen is mightier than the swoard; or the bomb, perhaps. I would like to belive that humanity is basically good, but there are always exceptions, and this is why we all need government.
Charlie Reese calls government "The Retarded Giant" Here's what he said:
"Many Americans have too much faith in government and in laws. Government is like a retarded giant -- very powerful but stupid. Almost nothing government tries to do succeeds. Just looking back at the past few decades, it has -- despite enormous expenditures -- failed to find a cure for cancer, failed to stop illegal drugs, failed to stop illegal immigrants, failed to protect the American people from terrorists, failed to improve public education, failed to keep up with repairing the infrastructure, failed to eliminate the deficit, failed to eliminate the trade deficits, failed to curb inflation, etc., etc., and so forth. I could go on and on, because virtually every program started by government has failed in its objectives or sputtered along in the most ineffective and expensive manner." -- Conservative syndicated columnist Charlie Reese, October 16, 2006
I wholeheartedly agree.
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