10 ms·

You're more liberal than conservative. I'm more conservative than liberal. Bless your heart, I agree with all of your points. At the end of the Cold War, oth

You're more liberal than conservative. I'm more conservative than liberal. Bless your heart, I agree with all of your points. At the end of the Cold War, other conservatives were making the same noises that you're making now. For their pains, their careers were destroyed by the people who run the current mainstream conservative movement. Let's take a look at those points of yours. Points 1 & 2. Cut defense spending and all of the cool people will call you an isolationist. Sure, argue rationally all you want; the name will stick. Also, remember that the United States is bound by treaty to defend more than two dozen nations. That includes keeping bases in some of those nations. Those treaties will have to be renegotiated. Those nations will have to increase their own defense spending. Many of those nations have budget problems of their own. Have fun. Point 3. Touch social spending and the cool people will call you a heartless bastard who cackles at the sight of starving widows in between gulps of baby orphan blood. Sure, argue rationally all you want; the charge will stick. Of course, this doesn't solve the money problem. Iceberg? What iceberg? Point 4. Social Security is the third rail of American politics: If you touch it, you will die. Sure, argue rationally all you want. It will help as much as it ever has. Long story short, the bureaucracy rules us. The administration of administrators who administer the other administers who supervise the people in charge of those who actually get real work done cannot make any concessions to reality. It would be like Gorbachev loosening the grip of Communism; one exit through the Iron Curtain and it's all over. The Cool People will double down. They will continue to double down until it is physically impossible for them to continue doing so.

geuis 15y ago
Thanks. I have no refutations to any of your comments. I know exactly what you mean. One interesting thing about your first statement, "At the end of the Cold War, other conservatives were making the same noises that you're making now". A few years ago I had the opportunity to hear Francis Fukuyama speak. He was the author of The End of History and a later follow up book. I never knew it before then, but he was one of the founding members of the Neo-conservative movement. It was originally started by him and a group of like-minded sorts around a cafeteria table in some ivy-league college (Princeton maybe?). He went on to talk about how the ideals of what they founded were adopted and warped beyond recognition by the Evangelical Christian community in the U.S. and by other conservatives. What was remarkable about the talk was that at the end, he essentially repudiated everything he had originally written in The End of History. I remember stories my grandparents told of growing up during the Great Depression. I also remember stories from my mom's family of 7 kids growing up poor in Rochester, NY in the post-war era. Perhaps I've inherited an attitude of bite-down and deal with reality from their history.
- geuis 15y ago
  Ah, followup. Here's the link to the talk I referenced if anyone cares to take a listen. http://longnow.org/seminars/02007/jun/28/the-end-of-history-revisited/ http://longnow.org/seminars/02007/jun/28/the-end-of-history-...
  - quantumhobbit 15y ago
    I'd love to listen to this, but it seems like the mp3 is corrupted. It won'd play in iTunes or Quicktime. Shame.
    - Saad_M 15y ago
      It seems to work fine for me in QuickTime X under Snow Leopard.
    - look_lookatme 15y ago
      VLC worked for me.
    - quantumhobbit 15y ago
      VLC works fine, but I still can't get it to play under quicktime in Lion. I wonder if Apple changed anything since Snow Leopard?
  - look_lookatme 15y ago
    Oh gosh this was great. Thanks for the tip.
- winestock 15y ago
  When Fukuyama was talking about the Evangelical Christians, I think that he meant their doctrine of "The Rapture" and how it motivates their support for Israel. It's scary just how much of their politics rotate around that. Seriously, Christopher Hitchens (yes, that Christopher Hitchens, the atheist) can get published in National Review because of his support for Israel and for wars to bring democracy to the Middle East. Meanwhile, the paleoconservatives (the guys who opposed these wars) have been airbrushed out of the conservative movement; vaporized, in the Orwellian sense. It's downright eerie. And it's gotten to the point where "extreme" right-wingers like Pat Buchanan are saying that the bankers and corporate executives are ruining America. Paul Craig Roberts, assistant secretary at the Treasury under Reagan for crying out loud, the guy who helped implement supply-side economics, sounds more like Noam Chomsky than George W. Bush, these days. It's a topsy-turvy world.
ataranto 15y ago
There's a huge gap between isolationism and, you know, not occupying TWO countries on the other side of the planet. I stopped reading your comment after that sentence with the assumption that all of your other points would be equally dumb.
- winestock 15y ago
  Sure there's a difference between isolationism and occupying multiple nations across the globe. You know that. I know that. Try telling that to the neocons and watch your reputation get ruined. The neocons are not nice people. They will call you names for all kinds of silly and/or evil reasons. And they will demand that you think of them as the Righteous Good Guys every step of the way.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
ubernostrum 15y ago
The thing with Social Security is that it's such a huge, tempting cookie jar for Congress to reach into -- remember that this is a program that easily runs a surplus when we just leave it the hell alone. So instead of cutting it, how about we build a big damn electrified fence around it? ;)
- sbierwagen 15y ago
  There already is one? Other departments can't touch the SSA's budget-- because it's the SSA's budget.
  - ubernostrum 15y ago
    Except for the gaping hole in the fence, which dictates that the trust funds have to invest in Treasury bonds. Which means the money goes in and straight back out again, and that threats of default carry an implicit threat of "Social Security won't be able to pay out".
    - dvogel 15y ago
      Thus far the risk of investing the SS surpluses into any investments other than US treasuries far out-weighed the risk of the US choosing to make SS forgive the debt incurred by said treasuries. I've often argued that SSA should be allowed to invest some portion of the surplus (perhaps 10-20%) in AAA-rated municipal bonds. Perhaps the downgrade today will prompt more people to consider this.
      - muzz 15y ago
        Isn't reducing the conflict of interest a small price to pay for slightly higher risk? Currently, Congress can "save" money by cutting benefits to Social Security receipients and use that money to pay off the bonds owed to Social Security.
        dvogel 15y ago
philwelch 15y ago
Also, remember that the United States is bound by treaty to defend more than two dozen nations. That includes keeping bases in some of those nations. Those treaties will have to be renegotiated. Those nations will have to increase their own defense spending. Not having read the North Atlantic Treaty, I don't know that the US has any special obligation above and beyond the rest of the NATO members. Yes, the US is obligated by treaty to defend Latvia, but by the same token Latvia is obligated by treaty to defend the US. American deployments to Europe are likely above and beyond American treaty obligations.
- cperciva 15y ago
  the US is obligated by treaty to defend Latvia, but by the same token Latvia is obligated by treaty to defend the US And, in fact, the only time that Article 5 of the NATO treaty -- the mutual self-defence article -- has been invoked was after 9/11, when the US used it to drag the rest of NATO into Afghanistan.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Not just into Afghanistan. A good chunk of the post-9/11 air patrols in North America were flown by allied aircraft.
    - njharman 15y ago
      Citation, something, anything to back up such a stupendous claim.
      - philwelch 15y ago
        Please see the CNN link posted by smallblacksun.
        georgieporgie 15y ago
        He said, "A good chunk of the post-9/11 air patrols in North America were flown by allied aircraft." The article says: " Five NATO planes have arrived at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma" and: "Most of the United States' 30 AWACS, based at Tinker, have been flying around-the-clock surveillance of U.S. airspace..." In my opinion, the phrase, "a good chunk of" is dubious. In a few minutes of Googling, I could find no indication of how many missions (if any) those NATO planes flew.
trevelyan 15y ago
Why do you - as a conservative - consider it rational to cut social security? The program is popular and self-sustaining. and if you read the trustees' reports you'll see it has been in surplus and perfectly solvent since 1985. In a few years it will stop generating surplus revenue for a few decades as the baby boomers move through the system, but it isn't threatened with insolvency. There is an ethical problem with using surplus social security revenues to fund tax cuts to non-contributors and then claim there isn't money left to pay back the workers who contributed in good faith. But this isn't a problem with bureaucracy so much as a problem with the Republican Party.
- winestock 15y ago
  First, both parties have raided Social Security, not just Republicans. In fact, both parties have been complicit in the government's financial misfeasance for a long time. Second, you mention the money "to pay back the workers who contributed." There was never any money to pay back. Social Security was always a pay-as-you-go system. Current revenue pays for current appropriations. There was never any "trust fund," another fact that smoothed the way for Congresscritters to raid Social Security and replace the surplus with Treasury IOUs. This system was feasible when there were ten workers being taxed for each retiree receiving benefits. With the graying of the Baby Boomers, that ratio will approach parity. Another commenter on this thread mentioned that the best thing to have done to Social Security would be to build an electric fence around it. A good idea. Too late. Congress has fleeced it.
  - trevelyan 15y ago
    1. Social security reform was a core part of the Democratic platform in 2000. "I will keep Social Security in a lockbox, and that pays down the national debt and the interest savings I would put right back into Social Security." (Al Gore, Oct 4, 2000). Put simply, the Democratic policy aim was to divert the surplus into paying off the debt while preventing lower interest rates from spiking government borrowing/spending by also putting interest savings into the trustee account. You can compare this with the Republican plan at your leisure. 2. Your characterization of the "feasibility" of the social security program is wildly inaccurate. Seriously, instead of turning yourself inside out trying to claim that Republicans didn't setup a system that had workers pay MORE into the system than they were taking out for 30 years, why not just roll back the Bush tax cuts and call it a day?
fabjan 15y ago
Point 3. I don't know who these cool people are that you're talking about, "liberals" I assume. I find it hard to believe they will call you heartless if you socialize your health care to make it cheaper and available for all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_health_expenditure_per_capita,_US_Dollars_PPP.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_health_expenditure_p...
- Unseelie 15y ago
  The argument is much that you can't just socialize the health care, you have to tear it to shreds and then paper-mache it back into a more serviceable shape. This is a process that takes time, and would leave people scrambling all over the place. Trying to do it while reducing damage results in monstrosities like Obamacare, and the current situation.
orblivion 15y ago
> The Cool People will double down. They will continue to double down until it is physically impossible for them to continue doing so. That's why in some ways, watching the government on the brink of default is exciting. For once there's nothing the Cool People can do.
sliverstorm 15y ago
It really is depressing realizing that the only changes we can viably make to those three great leeches is to allocate even more money to them.
- hans00 15y ago
  your choice of words suggests that you're a follower of thoroughly-discredited pseudophilosopher ayn rand, and as a consequence i strongly encourage you to read: http://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/ http://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/ and not skim and look to argue. read charitably and see if you can still buy into her ideas, after reading some articulate people dissecting them (and seeing rand's defenders try and fail to defend via the comments sections).

geuis 15y ago

Thanks. I have no refutations to any of your comments. I know exactly what you mean. One interesting thing about your first statement, "At the end of the Cold War, other conservatives were making the same noises that you're making now". A few years ago I had the opportunity to hear Francis Fukuyama speak. He was the author of The End of History and a later follow up book. I never knew it before then, but he was one of the founding members of the Neo-conservative movement. It was originally started by him and a group of like-minded sorts around a cafeteria table in some ivy-league college (Princeton maybe?). He went on to talk about how the ideals of what they founded were adopted and warped beyond recognition by the Evangelical Christian community in the U.S. and by other conservatives. What was remarkable about the talk was that at the end, he essentially repudiated everything he had originally written in The End of History. I remember stories my grandparents told of growing up during the Great Depression. I also remember stories from my mom's family of 7 kids growing up poor in Rochester, NY in the post-war era. Perhaps I've inherited an attitude of bite-down and deal with reality from their history.

geuis 15y ago
Ah, followup. Here's the link to the talk I referenced if anyone cares to take a listen. http://longnow.org/seminars/02007/jun/28/the-end-of-history-revisited/ http://longnow.org/seminars/02007/jun/28/the-end-of-history-...
- quantumhobbit 15y ago
  I'd love to listen to this, but it seems like the mp3 is corrupted. It won'd play in iTunes or Quicktime. Shame.
  - Saad_M 15y ago
    It seems to work fine for me in QuickTime X under Snow Leopard.
  - look_lookatme 15y ago
    VLC worked for me.
  - quantumhobbit 15y ago
    VLC works fine, but I still can't get it to play under quicktime in Lion. I wonder if Apple changed anything since Snow Leopard?
- look_lookatme 15y ago
  Oh gosh this was great. Thanks for the tip.
winestock 15y ago
When Fukuyama was talking about the Evangelical Christians, I think that he meant their doctrine of "The Rapture" and how it motivates their support for Israel. It's scary just how much of their politics rotate around that. Seriously, Christopher Hitchens (yes, that Christopher Hitchens, the atheist) can get published in National Review because of his support for Israel and for wars to bring democracy to the Middle East. Meanwhile, the paleoconservatives (the guys who opposed these wars) have been airbrushed out of the conservative movement; vaporized, in the Orwellian sense. It's downright eerie. And it's gotten to the point where "extreme" right-wingers like Pat Buchanan are saying that the bankers and corporate executives are ruining America. Paul Craig Roberts, assistant secretary at the Treasury under Reagan for crying out loud, the guy who helped implement supply-side economics, sounds more like Noam Chomsky than George W. Bush, these days. It's a topsy-turvy world.

ataranto 15y ago

There's a huge gap between isolationism and, you know, not occupying TWO countries on the other side of the planet. I stopped reading your comment after that sentence with the assumption that all of your other points would be equally dumb.

winestock 15y ago
Sure there's a difference between isolationism and occupying multiple nations across the globe. You know that. I know that. Try telling that to the neocons and watch your reputation get ruined. The neocons are not nice people. They will call you names for all kinds of silly and/or evil reasons. And they will demand that you think of them as the Righteous Good Guys every step of the way.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

ubernostrum 15y ago

The thing with Social Security is that it's such a huge, tempting cookie jar for Congress to reach into -- remember that this is a program that easily runs a surplus when we just leave it the hell alone. So instead of cutting it, how about we build a big damn electrified fence around it? ;)

sbierwagen 15y ago
There already is one? Other departments can't touch the SSA's budget-- because it's the SSA's budget.
- ubernostrum 15y ago
  Except for the gaping hole in the fence, which dictates that the trust funds have to invest in Treasury bonds. Which means the money goes in and straight back out again, and that threats of default carry an implicit threat of "Social Security won't be able to pay out".
  - dvogel 15y ago
    Thus far the risk of investing the SS surpluses into any investments other than US treasuries far out-weighed the risk of the US choosing to make SS forgive the debt incurred by said treasuries. I've often argued that SSA should be allowed to invest some portion of the surplus (perhaps 10-20%) in AAA-rated municipal bonds. Perhaps the downgrade today will prompt more people to consider this.
    - muzz 15y ago
      Isn't reducing the conflict of interest a small price to pay for slightly higher risk? Currently, Congress can "save" money by cutting benefits to Social Security receipients and use that money to pay off the bonds owed to Social Security.
      - dvogel 15y ago

philwelch 15y ago

Also, remember that the United States is bound by treaty to defend more than two dozen nations. That includes keeping bases in some of those nations. Those treaties will have to be renegotiated. Those nations will have to increase their own defense spending. Not having read the North Atlantic Treaty, I don't know that the US has any special obligation above and beyond the rest of the NATO members. Yes, the US is obligated by treaty to defend Latvia, but by the same token Latvia is obligated by treaty to defend the US. American deployments to Europe are likely above and beyond American treaty obligations.

cperciva 15y ago
the US is obligated by treaty to defend Latvia, but by the same token Latvia is obligated by treaty to defend the US And, in fact, the only time that Article 5 of the NATO treaty -- the mutual self-defence article -- has been invoked was after 9/11, when the US used it to drag the rest of NATO into Afghanistan.
- philwelch 15y ago
  Not just into Afghanistan. A good chunk of the post-9/11 air patrols in North America were flown by allied aircraft.
  - njharman 15y ago
    Citation, something, anything to back up such a stupendous claim.
    - philwelch 15y ago
      Please see the CNN link posted by smallblacksun.
      - georgieporgie 15y ago
        He said, "A good chunk of the post-9/11 air patrols in North America were flown by allied aircraft." The article says: " Five NATO planes have arrived at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma" and: "Most of the United States' 30 AWACS, based at Tinker, have been flying around-the-clock surveillance of U.S. airspace..." In my opinion, the phrase, "a good chunk of" is dubious. In a few minutes of Googling, I could find no indication of how many missions (if any) those NATO planes flew.

trevelyan 15y ago

Why do you - as a conservative - consider it rational to cut social security? The program is popular and self-sustaining. and if you read the trustees' reports you'll see it has been in surplus and perfectly solvent since 1985. In a few years it will stop generating surplus revenue for a few decades as the baby boomers move through the system, but it isn't threatened with insolvency. There is an ethical problem with using surplus social security revenues to fund tax cuts to non-contributors and then claim there isn't money left to pay back the workers who contributed in good faith. But this isn't a problem with bureaucracy so much as a problem with the Republican Party.

winestock 15y ago
First, both parties have raided Social Security, not just Republicans. In fact, both parties have been complicit in the government's financial misfeasance for a long time. Second, you mention the money "to pay back the workers who contributed." There was never any money to pay back. Social Security was always a pay-as-you-go system. Current revenue pays for current appropriations. There was never any "trust fund," another fact that smoothed the way for Congresscritters to raid Social Security and replace the surplus with Treasury IOUs. This system was feasible when there were ten workers being taxed for each retiree receiving benefits. With the graying of the Baby Boomers, that ratio will approach parity. Another commenter on this thread mentioned that the best thing to have done to Social Security would be to build an electric fence around it. A good idea. Too late. Congress has fleeced it.
- trevelyan 15y ago
  1. Social security reform was a core part of the Democratic platform in 2000. "I will keep Social Security in a lockbox, and that pays down the national debt and the interest savings I would put right back into Social Security." (Al Gore, Oct 4, 2000). Put simply, the Democratic policy aim was to divert the surplus into paying off the debt while preventing lower interest rates from spiking government borrowing/spending by also putting interest savings into the trustee account. You can compare this with the Republican plan at your leisure. 2. Your characterization of the "feasibility" of the social security program is wildly inaccurate. Seriously, instead of turning yourself inside out trying to claim that Republicans didn't setup a system that had workers pay MORE into the system than they were taking out for 30 years, why not just roll back the Bush tax cuts and call it a day?

fabjan 15y ago

Point 3. I don't know who these cool people are that you're talking about, "liberals" I assume. I find it hard to believe they will call you heartless if you socialize your health care to make it cheaper and available for all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_health_expenditure_per_capita,_US_Dollars_PPP.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_health_expenditure_p...

Unseelie 15y ago
The argument is much that you can't just socialize the health care, you have to tear it to shreds and then paper-mache it back into a more serviceable shape. This is a process that takes time, and would leave people scrambling all over the place. Trying to do it while reducing damage results in monstrosities like Obamacare, and the current situation.

orblivion 15y ago

> The Cool People will double down. They will continue to double down until it is physically impossible for them to continue doing so. That's why in some ways, watching the government on the brink of default is exciting. For once there's nothing the Cool People can do.

sliverstorm 15y ago

It really is depressing realizing that the only changes we can viably make to those three great leeches is to allocate even more money to them.

hans00 15y ago
your choice of words suggests that you're a follower of thoroughly-discredited pseudophilosopher ayn rand, and as a consequence i strongly encourage you to read: http://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/ http://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/ and not skim and look to argue. read charitably and see if you can still buy into her ideas, after reading some articulate people dissecting them (and seeing rand's defenders try and fail to defend via the comments sections).