Congressman Ron Paul's Answer To Combat Racism
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 01:55
VIEWED: 5043
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Signy's entire post.... blah blah blah.... yada yada...
Sorry Signy.
Your post enrages me so much that I can't even respond without being uncivil. I'm choosing to not get into it with you because we've had good conversations before and I don't want to start yelling.
I'll just leave it that I don't agree with one single word you said.
Maybe if I'm in a better mood later I'll try to put my thoughts on this in a way where I'm not being an asshole about it.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack
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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I'm all for it though. Welfare programs are simply an important ingredient for Communism and wealth re-distribution and have no place in this country.
My only exception to this rule would be that injured Veterans who served our country should not be left to fend for themselves after they come back home.
Just curious, what about other disabled people? Mentally handicapped? The families that are supporting the handicapped?
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Just curious, what about other disabled people? Mentally handicapped? The families that are supporting the handicapped?
Well.... Just because you're asking me this question I am positive you won't like my answer. So.... here it goes.
People need to have personal accountability. People should not have children unless they are financially able to afford it. This financial planning should also take into consideration the possiblity that your child might be handicapped. Life changes that would happen should one be unfortunate enough to have a handicapped child should be taken into consideration before two people decide they want to have a child in the first place. We all knew before we ever had sex that we could end up having kids if we weren't careful about it and we also all know that there is a very real possibility of having a handicapped child going into it no matter what precautions we take. There's plenty of birth control out there, and given the fact that schools are even pushing various forms of birth control and safe sex on kids today, "accidents" should, or will very soon be, a thing of the past.
Furthermore, if the child is born handicapped and the cause is found to be negligence on the parents part due to irresponsible behavior, such as drug or alcahol abuse (legal or perscription) or unhealty dieting, ect., the parent(s) should be severly punished. Maybe just knowing that they are to blame for their childs state coupled with having to raise the child without aid is punishment enough.
Certainly, there should be no person in the nation who gets aid for such a child and has a big screen TV or a nice car. When you become a parent, that's it. Life isn't about you anymore. It's about family, for better or worse. If it wasn't financially viable for you to have a child who was healthy, I'm certainly not going to feel sorry for you if you have a mentally handicapped child. Suck it up, get two jobs and save your cash.
Trust.... there would be a lot more money to be spent by these families for the welfare of their handicapped family members when they've got an extra 30% of their pay in their wallet instead of Uncle Sam's pocket. I'd rather see families be able to take care of their children, particularly the handicapped children, than see this money go to fund our terrorism on other countries via Federal taxes. This would simply be allowing people to decide where their money should be spent instead of the Government. If you didn't read anything else by Ron Paul, he also wants to eliminate the unconstitutional income tax and disband the IRS completely. I would recommend reading some more on that site before you make judgements about Ron Paul's opinions on things as well as my own. Perhaps when one reads only this article without reading others and seeing the big picture, it seems as though some of this may not be feasable, as stand alone ideas.
I look at children the same way the Oprah army of Smoke Nazis look at smoking. There is a part of their agruement that I actually do agree with. Why should you have to pay for my medical care with your taxes when I'm coughing up blood when I'm 65? It was MY choice to smoke, and these responsibilites are mine. I can afford the luxury because I have a great 401k plan at work and I contribute as much as I can to it. I also fund an IRA and I put a decent amount of money every month. I don't make very much money at all, having no college degree. I can do this because I'm a minimalist. I never bite off more than I can chew, I'm responsible with my money, and I sacrafice a lot to build my own nest egg. I've been driving the same beat up Cavalier for 9 years now. I can afford another car, a much better car, but I'm going to drive this thing into the ground first. I never said it was glamourous. I'm 27 and I won't even think about having kids or getting married until I know it's financially viable and I already own a house which is paid for, or at least a majority of it is paid for. If you're going to make the
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Ready for a shock? I agree with you almost completely. The only parts where I disagree is that I don't particularly care for Ron Paul (Fremd posted a long monologue of his a while back and I had a lot of issues with it but that's for another post), and I can't agree with you on the planning to take care of handicapped children for purely practical reasons.
The problem is that some handicaps can be so expensive that even a rich family can be brought to bankruptcy, so if everyone went by the idea of only having children if they are financially prepared for every circumstance then no one except the absolute richest people will have children. Now my opinions on whether or not the extinction of the human race would be a bad thing are a subject for another post but for now let's assume that we want to human race to continue and thus we want people to have children.
While there certainly should be more care taken to be assured of the ability to take care of children then there is now there will still be children who are afflicted with handicaps that are unusually expensive even speaking relative to other handicaps. So what do we tell the parents of these children? If we say that they just have to deal they'll probably turn the kids over to the state or an orphanage and it comes back to bite us anyway, the only other real option is to put the children down if their treatment is going to be too expensive. The only viable (and socially acceptable) option I see is subsidized care of the children in question.
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To everybody.... long post, I know. Sorry. I'm actually replying to Signy's questions here, but feel free to take a look if you're REALLY bored at work or whatever. If you're at home, skip this post and get your ass outside. The weather is great now.
I've chilled a bit Signy. I'll try to get through this now without ranting too much. I know you know how hard that is for me to do. I apologize for being so curt earlier.
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Originally posted by SignyM:
Wow. Did "the government" create sexism or slavery? Those divisions existed long before "the government" did.
Sure they existed before "The Government" did, but don't you think we've evolved as a social speices since then? Do you honestly think without government intervention that Americanized blacks would allow themselves to be slaves again or allow whites in this country to bring more Africans to enslave? Would they allow themselves to be told to drink from seperate fountains or be forced to sit on the back of the bus again? Or women.... do you think they'd allow themselves to be beat up by drunk asshole husbands or boyfriends to the point that they lost the ability to vote again? Do you think that the men would drive them all out of the workplace without the Government's aid? I can go on and on, but I'll just finish this line of questioning with, do you really think that this is what a majority of white males today would want without a large invasive Government telling them everyday that we should want the opposite? Do you think that we'd all actively participate in sending the civil rights movement back 100 years or stand by and let others do it?
Come on Signy.... I'm supposed to be the cynic here.
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While I think it's generally true that dividing society benefits those in power I don't see what this government gets out of religious, gender, or so-called racial divisions. It doesn't increase their coffers, and unless the government actively portrays a group as "the enemy within" (like the Nazis painted the Jews or like the right wing paints gays) it doesn't even increase their power.
We both agree that dividing society benefits those in power. Can we also agree that right now, we're more divided than ever before? I assume we cannot for reasons such as we don't have hangings anymore and women are allowed to vote. But what about what lies beneath? What causes kids to shoot up a school? What causes a man to go into his place of work and kill everybody and then take his own life? We're living in a fast paced world full of angst. Everyone is scared. Some hide it much better than others do, but it's there in nearly every one of us just waiting to be set off. Racial tensions today are like a giant boil on the tip of your nose that's almost ready to come to a head. They've grown exponentially with every race-baited story since Rodney King and OJ Simpson and seemingly get worse every year. Everytime we see Sharpton or Jackson on TV it's just more bad news. I'm sure they have to be doing something at some point of thier lives that's "happy" for people, but the news only shows them to us when they know it's going to just piss more people off. In fact, Jesse might not be a racist and might be one of the greatest guys in the world, but you'd never know it by watching the news. Watch 3 hours of news at any given time a day and you're going to walk away pissed off.
Thomas Jefferson had this to say about newspapers, and one could only assume that he would have included MSNBC, FOX News and any other outlet for them to show us the worst of humanity 24/7:
"I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it."
Wise words from a wise man. He also had this to say about the news:
"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper."
Good advice from an insider, I think....
and
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
All very, very true.
Well.....
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Originally posted by fredgiblet:
Ready for a shock? I agree with you almost completely. The only parts where I disagree is that I don't particularly care for Ron Paul (Fremd posted a long monologue of his a while back and I had a lot of issues with it but that's for another post), and I can't agree with you on the planning to take care of handicapped children for purely practical reasons.
The problem is that some handicaps can be so expensive that even a rich family can be brought to bankruptcy, so if everyone went by the idea of only having children if they are financially prepared for every circumstance then no one except the absolute richest people will have children. Now my opinions on whether or not the extinction of the human race would be a bad thing are a subject for another post but for now let's assume that we want to human race to continue and thus we want people to have children.
While there certainly should be more care taken to be assured of the ability to take care of children then there is now there will still be children who are afflicted with handicaps that are unusually expensive even speaking relative to other handicaps. So what do we tell the parents of these children? If we say that they just have to deal they'll probably turn the kids over to the state or an orphanage and it comes back to bite us anyway, the only other real option is to put the children down if their treatment is going to be too expensive. The only viable (and socially acceptable) option I see is subsidized care of the children in question.
LOL.... glad we agree Fredgiblet? I guess? I'm not sure what you agreed with if you don't care for Ron Paul or my answer to your question though.
EDIT: Well... I looked at my post and it was one of my long ones again, so if that's all you didn't agree with, I guess that's pretty good! If you're against Ron Paul though, I'm not doing what I set out to do.
I know about dibilitating illness. My brother's hospital bills for the brain hemmorage were nearly half a million dollars (15 years ago) and we'd be in the poor house if both of my parents didn't work and have good insurance.
I really don't know what to say here. Even though this happened to my own brother who I love, I am against insurance of any kind too. Insurance is the reason that medical procedures cost so much for everyone today. Think about it for a second... could the hospitals truly charge these outlandish fees if they didn't have insurance companies and Federal-Reserve-backed-by-thin-air dollars to pay them off? Since its origins it has just been another form of wealth re-distribution. It's built up our false sense of security and lead the charge to warnings and signs everywhere, frivilous lawsuits for millions of dollars and the fact that we have to put our damn signature on everything we do now. It helps fund the corrupt legal system we have today by making millions of cases for the lawyers to lawyer over and the judges to judge.
As for only the rich having kids, I don't think it will be that way. If people want to have kids, they're going to take the risk and have the kids. Even if they know going into it they're on their own. It's that false sense of security that's speaking there again. I think at first people will be much more hesitant to have children, but that would waine over time as the desire to procreate trumped it.
Watch "Angela's Ashes" (or read the book if you're not as lazy as I am) if you want to watch a movie about this very depressing topic. To us, at least, it's depressing. To the Irish it was standard operating procedure. If the mortality rate of the poor Irish was as high as it was, why would they continue to have so many children? Perhaps it's their Catholosism telling them they couldn't wear protection? Maybe.... no, that's likely even it. Even if that is the answer and people here choose not to have children of their own because they have no religious aversion to birth control, well they might just be happier being self-
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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
If you're against Ron Paul though, I'm not doing what I set out to do.
Not against him, I just don't think he's The Greatest Thing Ever To Happen. I don't remember much of the post that Fremd made but I remember that most of my disagreements were on practical grounds instead of principle, meaning that I like the idea I just don't think it's reasonable or practical.
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Insurance is the reason that medical procedures cost so much for everyone today. Think about it for a second... could the hospitals truly charge these outlandish fees if they didn't have insurance companies and Federal-Reserve-backed-by-thin-air dollars to pay them off?
I'm gonna have to disagree here, first off doctors are well-paid (and rightfully so), second off many times the equipment used in treatments is in itself very expensive. I'll agree that insurance has allowed more expensive treatments to be used for the reasons you mention, and possibly it has something to do with rising prices of simpler treatments, but the majority of the really expensive treatments are more likely honestly expensive. The exception would be treatments involving exotic medications where the price is high so Big Pharm can advertise.
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As for only the rich having kids, I don't think it will be that way. If people want to have kids, they're going to take the risk and have the kids. Even if they know going into it they're on their own. It's that false sense of security that's speaking there again. I think at first people will be much more hesitant to have children, but that would waine over time as the desire to procreate trumped it.
Maybe I'm overstating the problem, but I still think it would be more of a problem then you do.
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No.... I don't believe that doing this will make it so only the rich procreate. I believe it will make it so that, other than the rich elite, the only people having children are the people who really want them..... and in the end, wouldn't that be the very best outcome for everyone anyhow?
Sure, no argument there. Although I'm thinking you are underestimating the stupidity of people, I think there will likely always be people who have kids or large families when they really shouldn't (probably largely the Catholics and Mormons), and I can't help but feel sorry for the kids who get screwed over because of their parents decision.
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Given time, people would get on without Government aid or insurance. Until a hundred or so years ago, mankind has lived thousands of years without either.
But back then raising kids was cheaper and kids became an asset to the family when they were very young, now even raising kids without many possessions is more expensive and the kids are barely valuable to the family (not counting welfare and tax breaks).
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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
What causes kids to shoot up a school?
I think that the divide that causes this isn't the doing of the government myself, I think that this is almost purely cultural.
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Why can a fight of any sort between two people for whatever the reason be told to us in a way where now it's a black/white, straight/gay, man/woman issue when the original scuffle had nothing to do with any of the above in the first place?
It makes better news, when the news is a capitalist enterprise then they have to convince people to pay attention to THEIR channel so they provide sensationalism to try and up their numbers.
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First off, the government, through the media, has all but destroyed religion in this country. America is nearly completely secularized now.
Um...you are aware that the fundamentalist movement is on the rise right? You probably aren't aware that a church in my town was built about 6 years ago, and last year was expanded to 4 times it's original size. Religion isn't dying.
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There's no Athiests in the foxhole.
Oh yes there is, the number of atheists in the military (even in wartime) isn't that far off of the number in society in general. Consider as well the countries that openly push atheism, they have militaries and many of them have gone to war since they started pushing atheism.
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It would be a shame for a kid to be born 5 or 6 generations from now and not even have the option because religion isn't even taught anymore.
Have you considered that there might be a valid reason for the decline of religion? For instance as we explain the world and get a clearer view of our history it becomes apparent that the religious texts are simply wrong. If the religions flex with the history that we discover and accept that literal interpretations are not going to work then they can keep their followers on simple spiritual grounds, but many religions don't and continue to insist that their beliefs about the nature of the world are absolute truth. In that situation when what they are saying is exposed as falsehood the follower loses faith.
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How hard would it be for Government to really pull the plug since a majority of Churches are Federally funded? Not federally funded, you say? Okay.... let's see how many churches close at the end of the year if the Government were to charge the Churches property, gift and income tax.
I think it would be harder then you think, they could easily start charging property taxes but there would be a voter revolt. Maybe sometime in the future the religious zeal of the country will decline to the point where that's possible but we aren't there yet.
As a side note I think it's interesting that you seem to be fine with everyone supporting religion by giving them the benefit of not paying property taxes but you don't think that we should support handicapped children. IMO religious building should pay property taxes, if you want a church bad enough then you should have to pay for it.
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Because we've allowed Congress to illegally and unconstitutionally sign over their granted ability to coin money to the Federal Reserve
The more I find out about this the more absurd it seems
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We've been told that even if the public aid were to stop now, many jobs would be lost as a result and the economy would collapse.
Well if you think of many people are employed in the Welfare department and others like it, there would be a lot of lost jobs. In fact that's one of the things I'm not so hot on in regards to Ron Paul, he wants to cut back hugely on the size of the government but where are all the government employees going to go then?
P.S. You might be interested in reading For Us, The Living by Robert Heinlein and I know I'd be interested in hearing your thought (and Fremd's) about it.
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Originally posted by fredgiblet:Quote:
Because we've allowed Congress to illegally and unconstitutionally sign over their granted ability to coin money to the Federal Reserve
The more I find out about this the more absurd it seems
Just a quick note, I figured you might take this the wrong way so I thought I'd clear it up. What I mean is that the fact that a corporation is running our finances is absurd, not that the idea that a corporation might be running our finances is absurd.
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6ix- Sorry for bactracking the thread, but my SO just had brain surgery (minor, if there is such a thing as "minor" brain surgery) and I've been awfully busy. We agree on so many things that I think deep feelings are inevitable. So let me try to do this piece by piece, if possible.
Society at every step of civilization has found ways to divide itself, so much so that the egalitarian ones (which I can count on the fingers of one hand) stand out as exceptions and leave us wondering how they managed. Men in every society are slightly larger and more aggressive than women, so unless women band together and/ or are given more authority they will wind up being at a slight disadvantage on a day-to-day basis. Certain men are larger and more aggressive than others. And certain people are sociopaths. The reason why I go back to biology is that power concentrates. Small differences in power tend to magnify over time. Whether you call it "government", corporations, religion, or the mafia it is a near-inevitable factor that some people will wind up with inordinate power over others and will use all means at their disposal- money, propaganda (including religion), "the law", and force of arms - to retain it.
I do agree that we're more divided than ever. You blame the government "through the media". But "the media" itself has its own agenda, which is to sell advertising. It is a whore of the corporations and itself a corporation. It has a vested interst in people not thinking. Why? Because thinking people will not buy on the basis of packaging or hype.
As far as loss of religion: America is the most religious developed nation in the world. More people in the USA say they believe in God, attend church, and disavow science than in any other industrialized nation. We are a nation of believers, which makes us a nation of followers. We are also the most unequal, the most violent, and the most punitive. Religion does not seem to tbe the answer.
It's not "the government" that benefits from the destruction of religion and social feelings and from the promotion of mindless consumerism. Most people have become docile, but most people do not depend on "the government" for survival and I can't imagine where you get that idea from.
Yes, government and corporations have an unholy alliance. It don't think it's all tied up in "the Fed" but much more broadly intertwined. If I were to make an argument against our government it would be this:
We live by laws and rules. These laws are generally enforced by arms and punishment. Once a group or person (it could be a monarchy, a high priest, or a corporation) controls those laws it has just acquired all of the force needed to benefit itself. Back in "the old day" when the greatest force was the spear, it would be relatively difficult to enslave a very large number of resistant people. But now that the greatest force includes WMD, it's possible to enslave entire nations by fear. Insofar as government wields that force it is complicit in subjugating a population. However, the impetus today (as I see it) doesn't come from "the government" because "the government" itself is working at the behest of the corporations. The real power lies with the multinationals.
As long as any politician points to "the government" as the source of the problem without looking at the power behind the throne, then IMHO that politician has not addressed the totality of the problem.
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Always look upstream.
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