It looks like I'm not alone in my assessment of the current race.Aestu wrote:
"It worked very well..." Back to my original point. It "worked" under conditions that no longer exist - a very simple way of life and abundant natural resources.
I know it's a difficult concept for those, like yourself, who have never been outside of an urban/suburban area to grasp, but we're still a country where many people (even some of those fancy city-folk) live simple lives. We still have vast natural resources, sustainable forests for timber and pulp and farmland without even considering mineral and water resources. The only difference is that now people in New York think they know what's best for people in California who think they know what's best for people in South Carolina who think they know what's best for...to infinity and beyond. The majority of our arguments at the federal level are how we're going to impose a solution that works well in one region on a vastly different region. Californians think everyone has their pollution problems, but they don't. Southerners think everyone needs Jesus, but they don't. The 'one size fits all' top-down solution, which doesn't work and only serves to create a great deal of animosity, didn't exist until power started pooling at the federal level.
Or to be more blunt, the "problems" we're constantly trying to solve are generally the result of trying to solve "problems" we created by solving problems that only existed in the minds of people like yourself who have no concept of the world beyond their horizons and think (or thought, as the past tense may be) that the entire world is a reflection of their own little microcosm.
Aestu wrote:
We started "concentrating power" during industrialization, which was when we began to cease being a nation of small farmers getting by off abundant natural resources.
It doesn't matter when we started it, or why. It works poorly when it works at all.
Aestu wrote:
Government came about to counterbalance growing concentration of power by a few wealthy individuals. Libertarians refuse to understand this or study the history...and that is why it is a philosophy of ignorance...and why anyone who supports Ron Paul is simply ignorant.
Government came about long before there were a "few wealthy individuals." Historically, government was composed of those few wealthy individuals, which is why individuals like yourself use words like "oligarch(y)" as an epithet. I shouldn't even have to point out that government came about in this country during the American Revolution, not the industrial revolution, and many of the people famously associated with that movement were wealthy as fuck. Hell, Benjamin Franklin was the first American millionaire...and our government came about to counterbalance the growing power of the wealthy? You're off your nut.
Aestu wrote:
The whole bit about religious/traditional values is nonsense and corroborates my point. Libertarianism is really just a rationalization for schadenfreude towards the well-being of people who aren't you. The advantage of homogenous cultures isn't religious/traditional values, it's community and compassion. That is most undone here by the "I got mine" attitude that underscores all American libertarianism.
So now that you've re-written American history, you're going to tell us what other people think, a past-time in which you often indulge yourself when you feel the need to be irredeemably wrong. Religious/traditional values have nothing to do with libertarianism, except inside the confines of your fevered imaginings. Libertarianism is not limited to a religion or denomination, there are even within the confines of the movement a few
Atheists (of all things!), and they're not just welcomed, they're
embraced. When I was involved with the Libertarian Party of Virginia, we had a
Quaker running for Lt. Governor on a platform of cannabis legalization. When I met Gary Reams, he was introduced to me by a heavily-tattooed Wiccan lady who named her daughter Moonbeam (you just can't make this shit up). Yeah, the libertarian movement sure is "homogenous" and "traditional," isn't it? Just more proof that your world-view isn't informed by anything outside your field of vision, and that what you can't see, you imagine.
Aestu wrote:
Standing in opposition to that is the notion that people do, in fact, have some sort of obligation towards their countrymen.
I have an obligation to my son, which comes before my obligation to my family, which comes before my obligation to my friends, which is only followed by my obligation to myself. I think that's obligation enough, especially as large as my circle of friends happens to be. Some of us don't have to fabricate obligations to people, because we actually interact with some, and have established them naturally. Despite the fact that I feel no obligation toward perfect strangers, I still donate money and goods to charity when I have the resources. The only person who should be deciding when I have those resources, or where they should go, is me. After the last few weeks of SOPA hand-wringing, only a moron would suggest that the people in Washington DC have any idea what's best for the country or the people in it...yet you'll make that suggestion. You won't be able to help yourself.
Your Pal,
Jubber
