When is enough, ENOUGH?
The United States has had basically a 2 party system since the beginning. The 2 parties, in theory, were supposed to provide checks and balances on each other. When one party gets too much power the people could elect the other party to bring us back to stability. There is a great deal of historical evidence that this system has produces much more negative results than intended.
Nature of the Democrat
Recent Democrats are supposed to be the party of the people. They are concerned about freedom, human rights and fairness. They were champions of the civil rights movement, suffrage and war protest. They wanted to keep ‘big brother’ out of people’s lives so we could pursue our happiness.
Unfortunately, they are also known for economic redistribution, environmental paranoia and big government. In an effort to help the poor, they use the government to force the rich to pay for a multitude of inefficient programs. They don’t really understand the cause and effect relationship between productive work and profit. In their world people only have more than others because of fraud, deceit, inheritance and privilege. And that is probably how most of them became rich. Their guilt about their life situation is their justification to steal as much money as they can from as many people as they can and give it away to anyone they think deserves it.
Not only are they worried about poor people, they think they need to protect animals, plants and the whole environment from evil business men. This is another way to create ever expanding programs based on ersatz science, just so they can feel good about themselves. It doesn’t matter that the only effect is over regulating businesses, which forces them to increase their prices or go out of business. One solution is to eliminate unnecessary regulations and deal with real polluters on a case by case basis with boycotts or civil lawsuits.
Nature of the Republican
Recent Republicans are supposed to be the party of small government and low taxes. They are champions of business and wish to lower taxes and regulations so businesses may flourish. This will raise the economy, produce many jobs and raise the standard of living for everybody.
Unfortunately, they are also known for defense spending, morality legislation and irresponsible foreign policy. Their main justification for existing is to ‘protect/defend’ the country. They spend inordinate amounts of the tax payer’s dollars building and expanding bureaucracies, weapons systems and military units to fight the enemy du jour. They never stop to think that all the hostile posturing and attempts to manipulate other countries is the real reason we have ‘enemies’ in the first place.
Their other claim to fame is attempting to change human nature. The ugliest and most destructive, before the ‘war on terrorism’, was the ‘war on drugs’. Just as prohibition created a criminal enterprise so entrenched in our country that it still exists today, the ‘war on drugs’ is creating and expanding other even more devastating world wide terror and non-terror organizations. The way to deal with them is not to eliminate rights, and allow intelligence and police agencies access to personal information of every citizen. The answer is to remove the profit from the drug business by decriminalizing drugs.
Nature of Politics
I work with many businesses and every time I hear someone say, ‘It’s politics’, it means that they are about to make a bad decision. What is politics? A few definitions from Webster’s are; ‘the art or science of government’, ‘competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power and leadership’ and ‘political activities characterized by artful and often dishonest practices’. Those seem like fairly accurate descriptions.
I have noticed that everyone who defaults to politics is usually in one of two camps, lazy or corrupt, sometimes both. I will illustrate with a couple of examples I have run into in my consulting business. I put together a proposal for a client that included server hardware. In my initial consultation the client requested a particular brand to be tested as part of the proposal. My team purchased and tested the off brand equipment which came in last on all our stress tests and was actually the second most expensive unit. Even after my best effort to discourage this product, the client, as I had expected, forced us to use that hardware.
They have had problems for years, which is why we decided to do the project and NOT put them on a maintenance agreement. But why did the CTO of that company make such a bad decision? I did a little research and found that CTO’s brother in law was the salesman for that product. I have seen this so many times but it still amazes me how people can put their career, quality and their company’s best interests in jeopardy for such small gains.
Before I started my business I had worked for many managers, who constantly made wrong decisions. Most of these managers never did their home work. They would allow problems to fester and become almost unmanageable. Then they would panic and usually patch the most immediate symptom while ignoring the real issues. Sometimes their answer was just to hide the fact that there was a problem from ‘their’ managers and hope it magically disappeared. This is similar to George Bush trying to hide the fact that he LIED to the world in the ‘state of the union’ address that led to ‘operation Iraqi slaughter’. I think Bush himself added the erroneous info, so I don’t expect anyone to be held accountable.
Do we NEED Democrats and Republicans?
The most disturbing thing about our system of government is that all the Good things espoused by the 2 parties during elections, like freedom, lower taxes, smaller government, less regulation, etc., are the exact things that we never get. And all the Bad things that the 2 party system is supposed to protect us from, like higher taxes, bigger government, more spending, more regulations, civil liberties violations, foreign entanglements, etc., are exactly the things that continue to worsen.
I think there is no doubt that both parties and their sympathizers are essentially destructive. When Clinton was president all the Republicans from Ann Coulter to Bill O’Reilly blasted him relentlessly. Hillary called it the ‘vast right wing conspiracy’. Now with Bush 2 the Dems, after a long cowardly silence, have finally found something to get excited about, which in my opinion is too late and too limited. The sick thing is that both parties and their followers are right about the dishonesty, corruption and disgraceful behavior of the other party.
Like most writers on LewRockwell.com, I felt the wars, in Iraq and even Afghanistan, were planned long before 9-11. The NeoCons capitalized on the fear and emotional devastation of the situation. The thing that is most striking to me is that from the beginning I felt that even if EVERYTHING the administration said about Iraq was 100% true, it still did NOT justify War. And now that it turns out that almost NOTHING was true, I can’t understand how anybody can continue to defend the wars.
What to do?
Day by day anarcho-capitalism continues to look increasingly attractive. The problem with that is getting everyone to agree to tell the government, ‘ENOUGH’, and opt out of the system. On a large scale this could actually work but individually it only gives the jack-booted thugs justification to F&#$ up your life.
It seems to me that career politicians are the main cause of the difficulties. One thing that can be done is never vote for Dems or Reps for anything. But this also requires a majority of people to wake up and follow through. Another possible step in the right direction may be to apply term limits to ALL political positions. It could be implemented at the federal level first and then extended. Imagine the benefit to the US if all elected representatives could only serve for ONE term in their life then have to get a real job!
Nature of the Democrat
Recent Democrats are supposed to be the party of the people. They are concerned about freedom, human rights and fairness. They were champions of the civil rights movement, suffrage and war protest. They wanted to keep ‘big brother’ out of people’s lives so we could pursue our happiness.
Unfortunately, they are also known for economic redistribution, environmental paranoia and big government. In an effort to help the poor, they use the government to force the rich to pay for a multitude of inefficient programs. They don’t really understand the cause and effect relationship between productive work and profit. In their world people only have more than others because of fraud, deceit, inheritance and privilege. And that is probably how most of them became rich. Their guilt about their life situation is their justification to steal as much money as they can from as many people as they can and give it away to anyone they think deserves it.
Not only are they worried about poor people, they think they need to protect animals, plants and the whole environment from evil business men. This is another way to create ever expanding programs based on ersatz science, just so they can feel good about themselves. It doesn’t matter that the only effect is over regulating businesses, which forces them to increase their prices or go out of business. One solution is to eliminate unnecessary regulations and deal with real polluters on a case by case basis with boycotts or civil lawsuits.
Nature of the Republican
Recent Republicans are supposed to be the party of small government and low taxes. They are champions of business and wish to lower taxes and regulations so businesses may flourish. This will raise the economy, produce many jobs and raise the standard of living for everybody.
Unfortunately, they are also known for defense spending, morality legislation and irresponsible foreign policy. Their main justification for existing is to ‘protect/defend’ the country. They spend inordinate amounts of the tax payer’s dollars building and expanding bureaucracies, weapons systems and military units to fight the enemy du jour. They never stop to think that all the hostile posturing and attempts to manipulate other countries is the real reason we have ‘enemies’ in the first place.
Their other claim to fame is attempting to change human nature. The ugliest and most destructive, before the ‘war on terrorism’, was the ‘war on drugs’. Just as prohibition created a criminal enterprise so entrenched in our country that it still exists today, the ‘war on drugs’ is creating and expanding other even more devastating world wide terror and non-terror organizations. The way to deal with them is not to eliminate rights, and allow intelligence and police agencies access to personal information of every citizen. The answer is to remove the profit from the drug business by decriminalizing drugs.
Nature of Politics
I work with many businesses and every time I hear someone say, ‘It’s politics’, it means that they are about to make a bad decision. What is politics? A few definitions from Webster’s are; ‘the art or science of government’, ‘competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power and leadership’ and ‘political activities characterized by artful and often dishonest practices’. Those seem like fairly accurate descriptions.
I have noticed that everyone who defaults to politics is usually in one of two camps, lazy or corrupt, sometimes both. I will illustrate with a couple of examples I have run into in my consulting business. I put together a proposal for a client that included server hardware. In my initial consultation the client requested a particular brand to be tested as part of the proposal. My team purchased and tested the off brand equipment which came in last on all our stress tests and was actually the second most expensive unit. Even after my best effort to discourage this product, the client, as I had expected, forced us to use that hardware.
They have had problems for years, which is why we decided to do the project and NOT put them on a maintenance agreement. But why did the CTO of that company make such a bad decision? I did a little research and found that CTO’s brother in law was the salesman for that product. I have seen this so many times but it still amazes me how people can put their career, quality and their company’s best interests in jeopardy for such small gains.
Before I started my business I had worked for many managers, who constantly made wrong decisions. Most of these managers never did their home work. They would allow problems to fester and become almost unmanageable. Then they would panic and usually patch the most immediate symptom while ignoring the real issues. Sometimes their answer was just to hide the fact that there was a problem from ‘their’ managers and hope it magically disappeared. This is similar to George Bush trying to hide the fact that he LIED to the world in the ‘state of the union’ address that led to ‘operation Iraqi slaughter’. I think Bush himself added the erroneous info, so I don’t expect anyone to be held accountable.
Do we NEED Democrats and Republicans?
The most disturbing thing about our system of government is that all the Good things espoused by the 2 parties during elections, like freedom, lower taxes, smaller government, less regulation, etc., are the exact things that we never get. And all the Bad things that the 2 party system is supposed to protect us from, like higher taxes, bigger government, more spending, more regulations, civil liberties violations, foreign entanglements, etc., are exactly the things that continue to worsen.
I think there is no doubt that both parties and their sympathizers are essentially destructive. When Clinton was president all the Republicans from Ann Coulter to Bill O’Reilly blasted him relentlessly. Hillary called it the ‘vast right wing conspiracy’. Now with Bush 2 the Dems, after a long cowardly silence, have finally found something to get excited about, which in my opinion is too late and too limited. The sick thing is that both parties and their followers are right about the dishonesty, corruption and disgraceful behavior of the other party.
Like most writers on LewRockwell.com, I felt the wars, in Iraq and even Afghanistan, were planned long before 9-11. The NeoCons capitalized on the fear and emotional devastation of the situation. The thing that is most striking to me is that from the beginning I felt that even if EVERYTHING the administration said about Iraq was 100% true, it still did NOT justify War. And now that it turns out that almost NOTHING was true, I can’t understand how anybody can continue to defend the wars.
What to do?
Day by day anarcho-capitalism continues to look increasingly attractive. The problem with that is getting everyone to agree to tell the government, ‘ENOUGH’, and opt out of the system. On a large scale this could actually work but individually it only gives the jack-booted thugs justification to F&#$ up your life.
It seems to me that career politicians are the main cause of the difficulties. One thing that can be done is never vote for Dems or Reps for anything. But this also requires a majority of people to wake up and follow through. Another possible step in the right direction may be to apply term limits to ALL political positions. It could be implemented at the federal level first and then extended. Imagine the benefit to the US if all elected representatives could only serve for ONE term in their life then have to get a real job!
posted by Stephen Madaras | 5:05 PM
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