humans are slowly killing themselves...

I'm confident that at the speed technology is advancing that us westerners will have plenty of complex gadgetry to contend with. For now, yes, I'd agree, we're naturally good with computers, but it won't always be that way. Something will replace them eventually, and your trump card of this argument will be invalidated.

I'm going to take your word for it on this--but was it as bad back then as it is now?

No, liberals want change, conservatives want things to be more traditional. Both sides have their place, however at the moment the world is not perfect, therefore it could be better. It can only get better by thinking up new ideas and putting them to use. Thus, while liberalism should not run rampant, and should be gradual instead, it is and should be the prevalent force in modern-day politics. Democracy and freedom of speech has made this easier, although like I mentioned earlier, we have a long way to go. When everyone on Earth is happy, then it'll be time to be conservative.

I tend to think of myself at the moment as a socialist-capitalist hybrid. One poor person is too much, etc. However because I don't know that much about libertarians if you have any websites or information I could look at I would oblige you.

I disagree. When you have less government you leave more room for the corrupt rich to take over and oppress. It's the same arguments those bastard republicans have been yapping about for as long as I've been interested in politics--that the government should stay out of the way. When that happens in a democratic country the middle and lower classes suffer more. The rich cannot be in charge of the rest of us, they need to be policed. Thus, strong government is the only answer to the world's problems. As long as it is a fair strong government.

Quality of life on Earth now is largely better than it ever has been because of America. I love where I live, who I live near, and the benefits my nation has to offer. But I hate the stupidity, the lies, the huge stockpile of nuclear weapons, and the short-term-economic-solutions to every single goddamn foreign policy problem this nation has been faced with. So much of my happiness has been fueled by the spilt blood of others, of other innocents. My well being is not equal to another person's mere survival, and given a choice, I would give up my life if all of the wrongs committed throughout the nation's history could be righted. It isn't worth it.

The key is the media. AOL Time Warner will have to pass into the hands of someone not in the pocket of either the Democratic or Republican parties for true reform and progression to occur.

This is something I can't quite put my finger on. The American news media is the most powerful political entity on the planet, if it can be called a single entity. Excepting Democracy Now and NPR it is largely held in support of the nation. But I don't know what it has to gain from this. Only the politicians gain power and money through the media's support, the media gets nothing. If the media were to turn on the politicians, turn public opinion around (which, given the right tools, seems remarkably easy), true reform could happen. The rich would stop getting richer. That sort of thing. We'd have people telling the truth in Congress instead of people that lie--no more lesser of two evils. Voices that mean to do good would gain support because they'd actually be heard. The old system would undoubtedly break down in one or two congressional terms.

I see nothing that the media has to gain by support of the country. Absolutely nothing. They could be the power-wielders. The politicians could be their lapdogs, begging for mercy all the time, "please don't release this report, oh please oh please, I'll give you CSPAN-2!"

I have to give this some more thought, but I believe that Bush will win so wholeheartedly that I will do something incredibly stupid if he does in fact win. Streak through the neighborhood or something. It is impossible. The man cheated before, even in the primaries. He'll do it again, and like before, no one will stop him.

That's because it's true damnit!!

Do you happen to get Discover? Great magazine. Last month's article was on sending a ship to a nearby star, if we find a habitable planet or moon there. Could be done in twenty years if the right resources were committed.

 

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I think that this responsibility has been handed over to schools, colleges and the like. There is too much ground to cover for western parents of the modern age. While most are understaffed and underfunded they still do a better job than a pair of parents ever could. For most people homeschooling would be too much of a stretch, too much work to do.

Software doesn't sell unless it's easy to use. I like my GUI, it's way better than DOS. The guys making software know that unless their stuff works and unless it is easy to make work that it won't sell as well as the next product.

Depends on the school you go to. I'd rather skip the math and science, but who am I to blow against the wind...(Paul Simon)

Not THIS liberal. I don't know what you're talking about...

I think it only appears that way because the general consensus seems to be that democrats are liberal. True, they are more liberal than conservatives, but hardly at all. They're not real liberals.

Well that scenario isn't likely to happen anyway. All I can do is disagree, and say that when everyone is happy [the dictionary definition of] conservative thought will actually be logical. That's it.

Okay--the rich are too rich, the poor are too poor, and the middle class is the barrier keeping the poor from overthrowing the rich. If you've read any Gustav you know that a revolution generally requires someone from the upper class to start it, however there are exceptions. People should be able to be wealthy but not while other people are poor--even the rare cases when it is in fact due to "laziness" and "inability to contribute to greater Hellenistic society."

I've been reading too much of Jerrek's bullshit

I can't disagree enough. Who keeps their power limited? And how? You need rules, regulations, and police. You need the government to be elected. If strong government has fostered the huge corporations then it simply isn't doing its job, just like every country that has claimed that it is socialist or communist. They aren't. Corporations will thrive and take over if their power isn't checked. That's why the rich have almost always ruled this planet--because there was no one to hold them back and keep them in check.

*crosses fingers*

It doesn't matter who they are or who they stomped on. They were here before the Europeans, and when the Europeans arrived over the course of the next five hundred years the natives were butchered and enslaved to extinction. I don't think that the natives here did anything to each other on any scale comparable. And even if they did--that does not in any way make the Europeans better or less guilty of their crimes, just because other tribes did it all over the world, just because other warlords stole their enemies fiefs. This does not magically exempt Europeans. I steal a bananna from a store, they yell at me, I say "but everyone else steals banannas!" Does that make it right? Or less wrong?

More later. Have to depart.

 

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Later

I agree. But where is the cutoff point, exactly, for when people don't need to be held accountable for their actions? A child of a man or a grandchild of a man who kills someone should not go to jail unless they were involved, that makes sense to me. If the man dies before he is brought to justice, then that does not mean that the children should shoulder the burden of that justice. I'm saying that although our ancestors did do things that were wrong and awful and vicious and cruel, we had nothing to do with it at all, and most of us, I'm sure, given the chance, would attempt to right those wrongs. The living culprits, however, of every injustice against the innocent, of 9/11 (which is becoming an increasingly obvious government coverup of something deeper), of Enron, of Iraq, of Afghanistan, of East Timor, of so many different things, need to be convicted by a jury and put in jail before they die. Ken Lay hasn't been even whispered about on the news for months. Most Americans have never heard of East Timor, hell, I can't even quite remember exactly what happened there, something about the Indonesians buying American guns and using them to purge the natives.

But where does the justice begin and where does it end? When is someone old enough, dead enough, rich enough, to be exempt from American justice (which, in spite of its flaws, seems to be doing pretty well)? Those at the top are keeping the money from the schools and using it to build more stealth bombers or more nuclear weapons, keeping it from the most important class in any school: history. And even then, the history is biased, outdated, worthless. It's boring, written blandly, just busywork, like Mathematics or Chemistry. I know because I hardly had an interest in history at all until I got to High School, before then I had a mediocre teacher and a mediocre textbook. That's it. It shouldn't be that way for anyone.

In a few years I believe NASA is planning on putting up a few insanely powerful telescopes that will allow us to see planets and figure out (through the visible light spectrum, they'll only be pinpricks) if they have water, oxygen, etcetera. If they find some methane then that means that there are aliens that fart a lot. I remember reading or hearing somewhere that we live in a small sector of the galaxy that is rich in oxygen from a big supernova or something, so I feel that it is more than likely that a world habitable for human beings will be discovered before I turn thirty. Someone, somewhere, who is rich, will get his rich pals together, get the government to back them (they'll have a whole goddamn planet after all, not just a continent or a piece of a continent), and build an enormous ship that will get them there somehow someway. I'll be middle aged by then, and likely vying to go on the trip if I've managed to gain some status among my fellow Americans.

So far I've encountered several types of teenagers regarding this topic. One type doesn't know, doesn't care, doesn't want to know. Another type knows, but believes that it was still a fair election because Bush won the electoral college. That type has managed to push the fact out of his head, that Bush did not win the majority and nevertheless is still our president. I doubt Gore would be much better but, like I keep saying, lesser of two evils, lesser of two evils. Plus at least the guy actually won.

And then there's the type that is somewhat like me. One that is feverishly anti-government, anti-bush, anti-America, anti-humanity. So much so that the person has focused on the problems more so than the solutions. Most of my better friends are like this. They're also very anti-establishment, and don't believe in attempting to do a good job in school (as I do).

Then there's me. Capitalist-Socialist Catholic-Jewish hybrid. I'm one-of-a-kind. GB-GIL is the closest person with a similar viewpoint to mine (although he seems to be a bit more...aggressive than I am. I'm sure he'll mellow with age), and I am several years his senior. Haven't talked to that fellow in awhile, wonder where he's got to...

So these are the colors of the teenage political spectrum where I live, and of the people that I know. Try educating them traditionally and you'll get nowhere--either they'll go too far, ignore you, or not go far enough. It takes a special mix to get the right idea into their heads. This is assuming that I am one of the better examples of my generation, currently.

A few months ago I would have agreed with you on Affirmative Action. However I learned that my mom actually did her Final Project in college on the very subject (she majored in Political Philosophy, I believe, but hasn't made much of it). Her basic conclusion was that the rich white fat guys who run the colleges will undoubtedly keep the minorities out, regardless of their intelligence, because they favor whites. On top of that, most minorities grow up in inner cities, where schools recieve skeleton funding. On top of that there's the discrimination they will have to endure their entire lives. If minorities aren't given a boost up they will stay exactly where they are, that is, in need of a boost. Until they are truly equal this is the fair thing to do.

Not the Americans in power. They only do what the masses absolutely demand that they do, by striking (Labor Movement) and by mass protest (Human Rights Movement, Vietnam War). The stronger the middle class, the harder it is to make an effective outcry against the rich.

By taking only a sliver of the money diverted to military spending we could make every school in the country a thriving center of learning and enthrallment (if that is a word). By taking only a sliver of the money diverted to military spending we could give the elderly free insurance to pay for prescriptions, give kids everywhere free health care. As for welfare, while I believe that no one deserves to be poor, it should be only a last resort, should be sufficient but not overdone. It needs to be enough to allow people to get by between jobs--that's it. So much money is there to help people and an amount exponentially larger is being used to build weapons to kill them instead, to build prisons to put them in as a solution to spiraling crimerates.

Gahh...makes me sick.

Never. Take the power back and the rich win.

 

"Well you ended that argument with the most blatant oxymoron I've seen in a long time. There's no such thing as a "fair strong government." It's a universal truth that power corrupts. The only way to keep people or institutions from becoming corrupt and unfair is to keep their power limited. Our biggest problem in the West is the rise of the Corporation. Adam Smith would be turning over in his grave watching these scavengers stomping around on his "level playing field" of a free market, pretending to be of roughly equivalent power and influence to all the other players. And the concept of the holding company would make him barf: a corporation that exists for the sole purpose of owning other corporations, that actually produces no goods or services but just skims profits off the top of the economy. And where do you think the Corporation came from? Big Government invented it. With the demise of the aristocracy it became difficult for the government to conceal its own misdeeds, so they created a New Aristocracy. Corporations have all the power and influence of feudal lords, and no accountability. You can't execute one or throw it in jail, and it just laughs off even the largest fines and passes them on to its customers.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Big Government got us where we are today by creating the very institutions that are strangling our economy and taking away our freedom by purely civil means, such as forcing us to drive ever longer distances to work so no one is home when their children are awake."

Weeelll, your right about corporations. But have you ever thought about powerful smaller gvt? ir gvt that is directly under the control fo the peopel by whatever means necessary, and i dont mean just by gunpower. I mean referenda, recall of officials, and most importantly, devolution of power etc. But of course devolution of power is hard to do with the current economics, consumerism and corporations. So your half right about the problems.
Moreover, I think in some ways you are being unduly restrictive about gvts and corporations and rich people. here in the UK, until the advent of the mass franchise, gvt very much was by the rich, for the rich, ie the rich and powerful who owned the businesses and the land, the owners absically, were the gvt. I cannot see that much has changed. The gvt and corporations are intricately connected, and its nearly immaterial as to whom started it all. for example, the demise of the aristocracy happened at the same tiem as teh man of business, the self made man started to grow up, which is part of the problem, because in doing what they did, ie get in cahoots with gvt, they merely took over from the aristocracy. Ill come back later and add more to this. Suffice to say I think your nearly right, but also barking up teh wrong tree a little too much.

 

So how do we fix the problem with the American government? I am not sure how many Americans are in here, but as an American I feel as if I am responsible. I also do not always agree with the statement "Power corrupts". There have been many "great" leaders throughout history.

We are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I think the problem is this: We vote people into office because we want a tax refund or some other selfish concern. If we are going to do this, why do we expect this official to have higher ideals than just paying off the people? We vote fools into office because we are afraid of change. I feel a pull to politics, not because I want power, but because it is easier to change the system from the inside than from the outside. I know that I would never get elected because I would demand change. I would be for things like union busting and cutting socialistic programs (welfare/ universal healthcare). Yet, even though I know I would never get elected, I still feel a need to try because I feel it is my responsability.

Now, I apologize for that tirade, I am just sick of people not taking responsability for their problems. Is mankind killing itself? We began our decline when we acheived a level where the strong was expected to carry the weak - so much for evolution. I do not necessarily think this is a bad thing, but we are no longer evolving for the better. We cannot breed out malignant genetics if those who carry the genes breed. Of course, now we are entering an age of genetic screening and engineering, so we'll see if we are allowed to take advantage of it.

- KitNyx

 

I have seldom left its borders.

I do agree with the statement "Power Corrupts." If the power isn't with the government then it's with the rich. It's always been like that in every single nation on Earth.

While I feel doing such things is just criminal and would benefit only the wealthy (after all, they don't belong to unions and don't need welfare or universal healthcare) from the sounds of it you would probably get far in America, today.

When was this, exactly?

You know, you're right, Adolph. We should get the labor camps ready for the inferiors as soon as possible. Where do you draw the line on strong vs. weak, eh? Start with the poor in the streets, they don't help anyone, hell, they're hardly human at all. Next go for the Arabs, so they stop demolishing our buildings. After that we should probably take care of the minorities, after all, they do poorly in school and only fill janitorial positions throughout their lives. Soon everyone will be strong, white, and handsome. Now that sounds like my type of realistic reality.

 

Thank you for putting all of those words "into my mouth". I do not think what I wrote pointed to the conclusions you drew, but just in case let me clarify - Malignant genes - diabetes, color blindedness, etc. Genetic Screening of fetuses and genetic manipulation/ gene therapy to fix these. I am a Darwinist, not a supremist.

- KitNyx

 

something to think about

"In wildness is the preservation of the world."-Thoreau

 

I agree with invisibleone...we need to pay more attention to nature...its what got us here, afterall...

 

Hey corey

Do you always refer to yourself in such a collectivist way?
Do you not make up your own decisions and take resposibility for your own actions.
It seems a lot of people do this.
If you yourself are making the decision to do whats right for yourself or for nature then you cannot say that humanity as a whole is disintegrating.
Your main concern should be are you disintegrating or not.

 

"The populace simply isn't paying attention because it's in a constant state of shock. If this does not change soon, before the Evil People, whoever they are, secure their control over everything, then yes, America is on its way to becoming the next Argentina. Except Argentina with nukes, of course."

exactly. we "evil people" are just the onse who do not get shocked by the headlights of the terrible futer coming. were all deer in the raod geting blinded by mini-vans of doom! yet we evil onse are the moose in the road who gets hit by the car, turns around, tramples the car into oblivian, and out of sheer rage kills everything eles in sight too. including other deer and moose!
oh yah, and moose have guns!

so stop fuckin siting there going "omg! omg! omg! bush was elected unfairly!? why didnt i figure it out! aaahg! WTF!?!?! lifes unfair and people are taking advantage of me?! oh no!"

get over it. enjoy it. get on the train to hell and crush the lesser beings, even tho u too were one onse, and use the goo u get from crushing them to drown puppies then sell the puppies corpses to third world children as lunch meat!


~ajab cthulhU! may you be wicked, unmercifull, and let me kill and sin and teach me new ways to enjoy myself~

 

moementum7: no, yes, yes it does, if the destruction humans have caused to nature isn't obvious then i don't know what to say, and Im pretty sure that Im not disintegrating...Im just thinking

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Okay, in theory it sounds good. But I lived in New York until I was six, I went to a crappy, overcrowded school, and to the best of my recollection, I was never bused to a better school somewhere in suburbia. I never really cared about the racial differences, but let me tell you, there were plenty of them. I remember just as many Arabs, Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, as I do whites--while where I live now, in Suburban Paradise, there are three or four black kids out of a total of about six hundred. Other than that I'm not quite sure as to the numbers. So it is a racial thing for as long as the minorities are confined to the inner cities. And while I could be wrong, the best solution I can think of for the problem would be a huge increase in Federal funding that would have otherwise been spent to build MOABs or something. Because they sure as hell aren't going to get the money from the local population, who, if they had any, would move to a better school district.

Chomsky Chomsky Chomsky....

As for power, not everyone who has had it has been evil. The best examples I can think of are Lincoln and FDR, two men who arguably kept the country from falling apart, even though neither of them were saints by any stretch of the imagination, I think for the most part what they did led to benefiting those that were not at the top of the social heirarchy. Whatever FDR constructed, however, I have decided that Reagan tore down. The people either loved him for it or forgot about it completely.

But your case is one that is hard to refute--that (to overgeneralize) concentrated power leads to suffering, correct? I think that it just depends on who wields the power, and that, more often than not, the people who traditionally have wielded the power (those various evil bastards) will continue to do so, with rare bouts of hope here and there. Because that is the pattern of history, of civilization, and it has, to the best of my knowledge, never been interrupted before, or changed, for that matter.

So then I would say that there does need to be a police force separate from the wealthy to keep the wealthy in line. Sadly this is currently not the case, nor has it ever been the case, for the United States of America.

The people do have the power, the problem is that most of them are either corrupted, brainwashed, or just stupid. Floyd says it best--"it could be made into a monster if we all pull together as a team." The wealthy will bend to whatever we demand as long as we demand in force, together.

 

Korey

Note taken.

 

SOLUTION: Stop moralizing. Spread new values that encourage strength, obedience, and personal success through hierarchy. Encourage naturalism, nationalism, and loyalty to family. Preserve and restore nature. Create a strong totalitarian government to cleanse the filth. Get rid of most modern technology and put it in the hands of the elite. Give guns to the citizens so that it is not unfair (or so they think). Kill all ingrates. Increase punishment. Make ugly, fat, and stupid people feel unwelcome so that they are forced to change. Deny work to mothers of children under 15. Get rid of free market, outlaw advertising. Outlaw modern music. Produce efficient products that will last 100s of years. Find new power source. Let young kids play and learn outside instead of sitting in classrooms. Kill all metrosexuals. Colonize Mars.

 

ahhh, it was this thread i posted on a few days ago. id forgotten.

"Yes of course. That's what libertarianism is all about. Shrink the government and you automatically shrink the limits of the power it can acheive. With modern communications and technology a small government can do a lot more damage than it could have done a thousand years ago, but we'd still be a whole lot better off than having one government controlling an area and population the size of the USA, Russia, China, India, or Brazil."

Id disagree, becasue of the general libertarian tendency towards worship of private propoerty, including natural resources etc. Its all very well getting rid of gvt, and saying that big corporations suck, but you have to have "the people" capable of exercising restrinat on both the gvt and the companies, something that an emphasis on libertarianism doensst do. So a gvt that is directly democratic yet interferes in private business etc, almost certainly counts as too big a gvt.
Then the other difficulty is gaining consensus on bigger issues, but ill have to leave that one, its hard to demonstrate one way or another.
Then theres the point that the society we have today is a product of hte tehcnological advances and the larger scale advances i business and gvt, in efficiency etc etc, so we shall have to sacrifice some of them in order to have a fairer society more like what we want.


"Universal suffrage is not a sufficient condition for effective democracy. The party system, especially the two-party variety that our countries have, limits the voter's choices to candidates that have already been approved by the people who wield power behind the scenes. I'm sure to you foreigners the differences between our Democrats and Republicans appear trivial, and we laugh at the idea of a "representative" government that still has an influential institution named "The House of Lords."

An aristocracy is an aristocracy, regardless of how one qualifies for membership. These days it's generally by wielding economic power, whether by birthright, mobster violence, or running a profitable business.

Americans think they have economic power because we all own stock, either directly or through our retirement associations. And we do to a small extent. We actually share in the corporations' profits. That keeps us happy enough that we don't ask a lot of questions. The corporations can easily afford the tiny bite out of the pie, and for their trouble they get an acquiescent public who never stops to realize that all of us put together don't own quite enough stock to have any influence at board meetings. Somebody that arrives in a private jet always owns 51 percent."

Well, yeah. How many times have you been called a commie?
There is an interesting idea towards more universal ownership that doesnt appear to infringe the free market capitalist ideal, based on Louis Kelos's idea of universal capital ownership.
And yes, we have the same problems over here, but gripe at the USA because by and large fewer USA'ians seem to think there is a problem with their gvt.

"You got me there. The inner cities are deserts of poverty that seem to be inescapable. Of course I could get on my soapbox about how the War on Drugs targets black people, puts their husbands and fathers in prison, while white men who commit the same offenses get to go to college. But I've been getting too much flack for inserting political commentary into the social and philosophical threads."

No no, its alright, the topics are all related. I could relate just about any topic to any other quite easily. And what your saying is fairly true. It does take a long time for a class of people to climb out of poverty that occurs beyond their control. However it woudl happen faster in a better society.

Pollux, remember its that power tends to attract corrupt personalities. I read that in a frank herbert book i think.

"Or perhaps disllusioned? I've been looking for a way to right this wrong since before your parents were born (I think) and I haven't found one."

Ever read "Island" by Aldous Huxley? It suggests one way. Otherwise, there isnt really any aprticular way, perhaps if we all converted to Buddhism....

 

damn, never mind, wrong topic.

 

Sorry for the late reply

I'm actually not sure exactly why there is such a lack of nonwhites where I live. The amount of racism here doesn't seem to be more than other places, even New York City. I could be wrong though, being white and not seeing it firsthand. Maine has a very small population, only a few million permanent residents or so. And I think most of them are second or third generation Mainers, or more simply put--rednecks.

Well--we can't give up on the war, we can't just surrender. Drugs hurt people, that's why they're illegal. It's not like I'm all for frying the black guys and ignoring the white ones, but there is a poison being circulated around the country, and that circulation needs to be cut off.

I know. Absolutely. Apparently he could never fully see them as equals.

I thought it was originally about the South not having any political power vs. the North in Congress. I guess that could translate to economics--but remember, in the South, a huge portion of their economics was based on slavery and forced, unpaid labor. They must have known for awhile that the tide was turning against slavery, it had been or was being outlawed left and right outside the States.

I don't think so. The South probably wouldn't have lasted for long, since a lot of their economy (even their currency) was based on agriculture, a few bad seasons would have forced them to crawl back to the Union. If not then, skipping ahead a few decades, we would have easily had the strength to defeat the Germans in WW1, putting Europe on its course toward even greater catastrophe, but it's likely that the more conservative south would have had objections to entering the war against Hitler. We may not have annexed Hawaii, and the Japanese may never have attacked us. Hitler declared war on us at that time, and he may never have done so. Things could have been significantly different for us in the Modern Age had the South been victorious. I might not even be alive.

As for Texas, I thought that war was all about annexing another half of the country, manifest destiny, etcetera. The Spanish were completely outgunned and outclassed anyway, their Empire had been in a state of decline for some time since the Armada was destroyed a few hundred years earlier.

Hasn't every president done that?

The answer lies in the television. Become a media mogul, you'll have more power than any president or legislator has had. Maybe more powerful than anyone ever has been. Because you can sway the masses with a snap of your fingers, use people in your departments who know how to lie or to blur the facts. This is what the current moguls and past moguls have done. If you were to rise to the top, you'd just have to start telling the truth, that's all. I find it hard to believe that there is only fifteen minutes of newsworthy material happening around the world in a day.

Possibly. It is possible, however I would like to try to sally them out when I'm older. Or maybe just become one of them. I can feel the ring calling for me...

Power is very attractive to me, and unless I have a change of heart, I am going to "do it." However I have trouble killing insects, and I am still just an adolescent. Am I corrupt? Or will I be?

If the world is still around in forty years, and I'm at or near its top, we'll check back on that question. Until then....