Firstly, thanks for answering. Despite claims indicating otherwise, I'm not framing an argument in bad faith.
Re: Military It sounds to me that you think a strong military is important to enable a smaller government, but that the current instantiation is a bit of a bastardization of that concept. Do I have that right? I can appreciate the idea. So many of our allies are allies simply because of our military presence in their countries. Decrease the military too much, and you lose your power, and not just as a deterrent to attack.
Yes, military is a fine line. I used to follow in lock-step, and never questioned when a president would go to war. But as I got older, I began to realize that I don't necessarily understand it. Desert Shield, I understand that. Desert Storm, I do not. Grenada, Panama, WW1, WW2, and Korea, I understand that. Even Vietnam, though our approach could have been handled better in hindsight since we effectively lost. Afghanistan? Maybe... but again... we did the exact same things the Russians did, expecting a different result. Did no one watch Lawrence of Arabia to know how these tribes think? The concept of countries over there means nothing to anyone but the absolute youngest generation. There's corruption in military... and that is that the military "brass" will largely always support those who seek to GROW the military's surface area and expanse. Donald Trump was largely against this, Biden is very much for it. Otherwise, everything you said is correct in how I feel.
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Originally posted by theBDub: Re: Subsidies Really the question is in regard to all subsidies, but I hit on those two since it's a big deal for the republicans around me. There is a part of me that understands "paternal libertarianism," or essentially coaxing desired behavior out of specific taxes and subsidies. Like cigarettes are bad, but we don't want to outlaw them, let's just tax them so heavily that people don't buy them. Or maintaining domestic production of oil is really important for international relations, so we should subsidize production as a matter of national security. But it just never fully sits right with me. Bailouts, subsidies, specific taxes, all the same messy cronyism from my perspective. Let free trade fly, let the free market dictate prices.
This is where there's confusion. Democrats consistently talk about "oil subsidies," when in fact there is no actual subsidy in the truest sense. Some aspects of the oil industry get tax breaks... and they try to use the language of saying that by getting tax breaks, they get "indirect payments," which itself is still wrong. If you are paying less taxes, you're not getting a check... you're just paying less taxes. But oil and gas are already something that's double taxed... it's one of the few things, like cigarettes, that you pay an additional tax on (gas tax).
Allowing the free market to succeed, you have Tesla motor company, Toyota Prius, electronic charging stations, and wind farms throughout Texas. Obama was right when he said "you didn't build that." The government DIDN'T build that. The Government built the Chevy Volt (which failed), Solyndra, Fisker, etc.
In the end, you cannot FORCE an economy to go in a direction it doesn't want to go. We already know that less than 5% of the carbon emissions come from the US (Senator John Kerry literally admitted to this in his speech last month on the Paris Climate Accord), yet we pay for more than 40% of the resources to fix it in other countries. Why? Did you know that the vast majority of the money we give to these programs ends up in the hands of dictators and warlords?
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Originally posted by theBDub: At the end of the day, it's not that I can't understand conservative thought. I'm pretty damn close to it, to be honest. I just don't understand this notion that somehow liberals don't have some foundation, and conservatives do. Both liberals and conservatives have some misaligned ideas. Liberals being against gun ownership has never made sense to me, for example. It's just emotion. But I do find them a bit more consistent, in that they at least don't shy away from saying they're all about a bigger government. From where I sit, conservatives want a smaller government, but have a bunch of "except A, B, and C" attached to it.
At the end of the day, the Democrats "today" don't really represent much. My truly honest opinion, the Democrats are a party of sheep that are being led by foreign influence campaigns, and elitist leadership in Washington that could absolutely care less about these ideas you think they're pushing. Instead, it's about distribution of power, and pursuing a global agenda that absolutely does NOT have US interests in mind... but are actually antithetical to it.
It used to be that Democrats and Republicans both agreed on the end-goal, but just disagreed on how to go about getting there. Things have really changed in the past 15-20 years. Most "Millennials" (not so much Gen-Zs) actually dislike the United States. Not that they dislike the direction it's going, but they actually believe the entire foundation of the country is flawed.
To that point, more than 1/3rd of Millennials in the United States believe Communism is a better solution to Capitalism. How can anyone come to this conclusion if not for either sheer ignorance, or brainwashing at the lowest and highest levels of their development: https://www.marketwatch.com...sm-is-not-2019-10-28
These aren't Republicans, they are Democrats.
Democrats no longer stand for anything. And they haven't for over a decade. Now, they "loosely" believe in some fundamental aspect of "equity" and "fairness," but have literally no concept of how the world works. More than 1/3rd of Millennials also believe Trump was the biggest threat to world peace. Yet... not only did he not start a war, but he prevented several wars, reduced troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even saw the negotiation of nearly a dozen historic peace agreements! The rhetoric from the left is so absurd and ridiculous. They claim Republicans are racist and bigotted, when it is literally the left that formed the KKK, created eugenics and practiced it by building abortion clinics in almost exclusively black neighborhoods, and even created internment camps. The greatest number of anti-gay legislation in history was passed during Obama's election. Democrats also claimed that Bush (and later Trump) would destroy the world if they got control of the Nuclear Triad... yet the only time in history that a nuclear weapon had ever actually been used in wartime, was by a Democrat. There is literally nothing that the Democrat party stands for today that makes any sense.
Even something as ridiculously unimportant to me as the Keystone XL pipeline. It literally means nothing... it's not finished, and therefore there's no real gain or loss, except the huge number of jobs lost. But the Democrats did this because they want to FORCE us off oil. Instead of now being able to use the pipeline, we'll continue to ship oil to the refineries through truck, tanker, and trains... which will result in more ecological damage, and a larger carbon footprint as we now have to pay for the energy to transport it, rather than just pump it. Absolutely no logic whatsoever in that decision.
Another example were safety and emissions inspections in Florida. Back when I moved to Florida in 1996, the state was run by a Democrat. It had been for decades. Crime was high, and the beaches looked more like Cuba's beaches (run down buildings) than they do today. When Jeb Bush got into office in 1998 (he was actually good then). The very first thing he did was eliminate vehicle emissions and safety inspections. Democrats nearly lost their **** in the state, saying all the usual nonsense... Republicans hate families, want people to die in the streets, and want to pollute our water. I believed it, and as a young 18 year old, followed along in the outrage.
What we discovered was that the safety and emissions inspections were costing the state an inordinate amount of money... operating at a huge loss to the state. Furthermore, the only people it was hurting were the very people the Democrats were saying it was supposed to help... the under-served and underprivileged. You see... middle class and wealthy families had newer cars that didn't need repairs. Poor people were being forced to take time away from work to go to an emissions and safety inspection station where their cars would fail, and not only did they have to pay $35 for the inspection, but they were also hit with an $80 fine for a failed catalytic converter (or whatever else was bad). In the end, these poor people now couldn't work... lost their ability to drive, or they drove illegally, which then caused them to get pulled over for having a flag on their drivers licenses, and now they were getting misdemeanors and going to jail. It was a huge failure.
Jeb Bush found work for all those state employees, and they sold off all the inspection stations (which had Mustang Dynos in them) all of which turned into automotive speed shops. I remember when Jeb Bush campaigned on this. I was out protesting with the liberals (I was a Democrat then), and it was at that point that I began to realize how stupid I was. Emissions standards were improving year over year as cars were becoming more efficient as a result of the EPA (which is an organization created by Republicans to protect the environment).
There are hundreds of examples of sheer hypocrisy and corruption. I literally cannot express this enough... it's so bad. You pick almost any category in which the Democrats criticize the Republicans for, and you'll find the Democrats are 10 or 15 times worse. They never stand for what they mean, and the vast majority of the people who say that they're Democrats cannot even defend their own positions.
I'm sorry... I hope you don't read my post as being mean or being a jerk... but I've done this round and round multiple times. Most of my friends are liberal, all very intelligent... but none of them can defend their own beliefs and often feel the way they do simply due to peer influence...
[This message has been edited by 82-T/A [At Work] (edited 02-16-2021).]
This is where there's confusion. Democrats consistently talk about "oil subsidies," when in fact there is no actual subsidy in the truest sense. Some aspects of the oil industry get tax breaks... and they try to use the language of saying that by getting tax breaks, they get "indirect payments," which itself is still wrong. If you are paying less taxes, you're not getting a check... you're just paying less taxes. But oil and gas are already something that's double taxed... it's one of the few things, like cigarettes, that you pay an additional tax on (gas tax).
Allowing the free market to succeed, you have Tesla motor company, Toyota Prius, electronic charging stations, and wind farms throughout Texas. Obama was right when he said "you didn't build that." The government DIDN'T build that. The Government built the Chevy Volt (which failed), Solyndra, Fisker, etc.
In the end, you cannot FORCE an economy to go in a direction it doesn't want to go. We already know that less than 5% of the carbon emissions come from the US (Senator John Kerry literally admitted to this in his speech last month on the Paris Climate Accord), yet we pay for more than 40% of the resources to fix it in other countries. Why? Did you know that the vast majority of the money we give to these programs ends up in the hands of dictators and warlords?
If you owe me $20, and I give you $10 before you give me $20, that's a subsidy. If you owe me $20, and I instead say "just pay me $10," that's a tax break. It's the same thing. It's not confusion on my part, it's just the government choosing to subsidize certain industries over others. I'm not for green subsidies either, btw. I'm not speaking out against oil--if you remember, I used to work in O&G.
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Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]:
At the end of the day, the Democrats "today" don't really represent much. My truly honest opinion, the Democrats are a party of sheep that are being led by foreign influence campaigns, and elitist leadership in Washington that could absolutely care less about these ideas you think they're pushing. Instead, it's about distribution of power, and pursuing a global agenda that absolutely does NOT have US interests in mind... but are actually antithetical to it.
It used to be that Democrats and Republicans both agreed on the end-goal, but just disagreed on how to go about getting there. Things have really changed in the past 15-20 years. Most "Millennials" (not so much Gen-Zs) actually dislike the United States. Not that they dislike the direction it's going, but they actually believe the entire foundation of the country is flawed.
To that point, more than 1/3rd of Millennials in the United States believe Communism is a better solution to Capitalism. How can anyone come to this conclusion if not for either sheer ignorance, or brainwashing at the lowest and highest levels of their development: https://www.marketwatch.com...sm-is-not-2019-10-28
These aren't Republicans, they are Democrats.
Those people are morons. They've been led to believe that capitalism created greed. I agree that the hard left progressives are ignorant, brainwashed, and terrible for the country.
quote
Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]:
Democrats no longer stand for anything. And they haven't for over a decade. Now, they "loosely" believe in some fundamental aspect of "equity" and "fairness," but have literally no concept of how the world works. More than 1/3rd of Millennials also believe Trump was the biggest threat to world peace. Yet... not only did he not start a war, but he prevented several wars, reduced troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even saw the negotiation of nearly a dozen historic peace agreements! The rhetoric from the left is so absurd and ridiculous. They claim Republicans are racist and bigotted, when it is literally the left that formed the KKK, created eugenics and practiced it by building abortion clinics in almost exclusively black neighborhoods, and even created internment camps. The greatest number of anti-gay legislation in history was passed during Obama's election. Democrats also claimed that Bush (and later Trump) would destroy the world if they got control of the Nuclear Triad... yet the only time in history that a nuclear weapon had ever actually been used in wartime, was by a Democrat. There is literally nothing that the Democrat party stands for today that makes any sense.
Even something as ridiculously unimportant to me as the Keystone XL pipeline. It literally means nothing... it's not finished, and therefore there's no real gain or loss, except the huge number of jobs lost. But the Democrats did this because they want to FORCE us off oil. Instead of now being able to use the pipeline, we'll continue to ship oil to the refineries through truck, tanker, and trains... which will result in more ecological damage, and a larger carbon footprint as we now have to pay for the energy to transport it, rather than just pump it. Absolutely no logic whatsoever in that decision.
Another example were safety and emissions inspections in Florida. Back when I moved to Florida in 1996, the state was run by a Democrat. It had been for decades. Crime was high, and the beaches looked more like Cuba's beaches (run down buildings) than they do today. When Jeb Bush got into office in 1998 (he was actually good then). The very first thing he did was eliminate vehicle emissions and safety inspections. Democrats nearly lost their **** in the state, saying all the usual nonsense... Republicans hate families, want people to die in the streets, and want to pollute our water. I believed it, and as a young 18 year old, followed along in the outrage.
What we discovered was that the safety and emissions inspections were costing the state an inordinate amount of money... operating at a huge loss to the state. Furthermore, the only people it was hurting were the very people the Democrats were saying it was supposed to help... the under-served and underprivileged. You see... middle class and wealthy families had newer cars that didn't need repairs. Poor people were being forced to take time away from work to go to an emissions and safety inspection station where their cars would fail, and not only did they have to pay $35 for the inspection, but they were also hit with an $80 fine for a failed catalytic converter (or whatever else was bad). In the end, these poor people now couldn't work... lost their ability to drive, or they drove illegally, which then caused them to get pulled over for having a flag on their drivers licenses, and now they were getting misdemeanors and going to jail. It was a huge failure.
Jeb Bush found work for all those state employees, and they sold off all the inspection stations (which had Mustang Dynos in them) all of which turned into automotive speed shops. I remember when Jeb Bush campaigned on this. I was out protesting with the liberals (I was a Democrat then), and it was at that point that I began to realize how stupid I was. Emissions standards were improving year over year as cars were becoming more efficient as a result of the EPA (which is an organization created by Republicans to protect the environment).
There are hundreds of examples of sheer hypocrisy and corruption. I literally cannot express this enough... it's so bad. You pick almost any category in which the Democrats criticize the Republicans for, and you'll find the Democrats are 10 or 15 times worse. They never stand for what they mean, and the vast majority of the people who say that they're Democrats cannot even defend their own positions.
From a practical perspective, I agree with you. From a policy perspective, it seems like Democrats believe in "equity" and "fairness" and their policies tend to mostly go towards those goals. I may disagree with them, or at least harshly disagree that it's the government's responsibility to achieve those goals, but it's fairly consistent. Republicans claim they want limited government (or at least did before Trump), but their own policies aren't for that. It's just wild to me that anyone here can stand on a high ground and say:
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Originally posted by randye: They can hold and earnestly believe two or more completely contradictory and irreconcilable ideas in their heads simultaneously and apparently be completely unaware or unconcerned by it.
... but completely ignore Republican contradictions.
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Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]:
I'm sorry... I hope you don't read my post as being mean or being a jerk... but I've done this round and round multiple times. Most of my friends are liberal, all very intelligent... but none of them can defend their own beliefs and often feel the way they do simply due to peer influence...
Ha, no Todd, I understand your text well enough to know when you're being a jerk, this isn't it. Plus, I've said it before and I'll say it loud and clear again: I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a progressive, only a liberal in a "classic liberal" sense, and not a leftist.
My beliefs all stem from an extremely firm foundation of individual liberty. I can take any of my positions and break it down to that core foundation.
[This message has been edited by theBDub (edited 02-16-2021).]
What we're enjoying today is a direct result of our actions in WWII. We lost WWII.
WWI, big mistake #1. WWII, big mistake #2, a continuation of big mistake #1. Korea, I don't know. Vietnam, mistake. Granada, doesn't really count. Panama, doesn't really count. Desert Shield, we misled Saddam by not rejecting his stated desire to invade Kuwait due to their thefts of Iraqi oil. Dessert Storm. Big mistake.
Our foreign policy isn't the good guy policy. Now we're broke and trying to threaten the world with our arsenal to keep us relevant
What we're enjoying today is a direct result of our actions in WWII. We lost WWII.
WWI, big mistake #1. WWII, big mistake #2, a continuation of big mistake #1. Korea, I don't know. Vietnam, mistake. Granada, doesn't really count. Panama, doesn't really count. Desert Shield, we misled Saddam by not rejecting his stated desire to invade Kuwait due to their thefts of Iraqi oil. Dessert Storm. Big mistake.
Our foreign policy isn't the good guy policy. Now we're broke and trying to threaten the world with our arsenal to keep us relevant
Different folks will have different perspectives of history. All I'm gonna say is, If you can read this thank a teacher. If you're reading this in English thank a soldier. Your choice as to what to believe.
Totally, up until current times, anyway. The soldier does the job commanded of him. He isn't responsible for the policy. And then there's conscripted soldiers who didn't even volunteer to serve or knew their number was a guarantee for drawing. Meaning they're even less regarded by policy. A volunteer can be said to support policies.
I wonder how many people in the nation don't believe our current involvement in Near/Middle East nations is for our security, but is for a globalist mission for other nations? Because is any of this CURRENT STUFF making us safer as in your statement?
Regarding reading it in English, I don't like what England has represented in much of it's history. Nor did many of the revolutionaries. Most Americans spoke non-English European languages. Half of America came from families in Germany in the mid 1800s.
[This message has been edited by sourmash (edited 02-16-2021).]
Originally posted by theBDub: If you owe me $20, and I give you $10 before you give me $20, that's a subsidy. If you owe me $20, and I instead say "just pay me $10," that's a tax break. It's the same thing. It's not confusion on my part, it's just the government choosing to subsidize certain industries over others. I'm not for green subsidies either, btw. I'm not speaking out against oil--if you remember, I used to work in O&G.
I certainly understand that. But I'm not seeing it that way. I'm seeing it as an arbitrary number.
I've DECIDED that you owe me $10, and so you'll only give me $10. I've also decided that Rinselberg owes me $20, so he'll give me $20.
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Originally posted by theBDub:
Those people are morons. They've been led to believe that capitalism created greed. I agree that the hard left progressives are ignorant, brainwashed, and terrible for the country.
This is the problem though. What percentage of the Democrat party do you think is made up of this? We already know 1/3rd of Millennials believe Communism is better than Capitalism. Let's apply some additional math to this.
Pew Poll identified in late 2018 (which was a year before that article about Communism came out), the following breakdown:
59% of Millennials identify as Democrats 32% of Millennials identify as Republican 9% are unsure or refused to answer.
We can make a pretty good assumption that within 99.99% accuracy that all of those Millennials who like Communism, are not Republicans.
Easiest way to show this visually is in 1/10ths...
Number of Millennials (100%) I I I I I I I I I I
Number of Millennials who are Democrat (showing as 60% for ease of math) I I I I I I
Number of Millennials who like Communism (showing as 30% for ease of math) I I I
Effectively slightly greater than half of Democrat Millennials believe Communism is better than Capitalism.
To put that more broadly... this isn't fringe. We need to realize that literally more than half of adults under the age of 40 in the Democrat party believe in Communism.
This is why we have a major problem...
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Originally posted by theBDub: From a practical perspective, I agree with you. From a policy perspective, it seems like Democrats believe in "equity" and "fairness" and their policies tend to mostly go towards those goals. I may disagree with them, or at least harshly disagree that it's the government's responsibility to achieve those goals, but it's fairly consistent. Republicans claim they want limited government (or at least did before Trump), but their own policies aren't for that.
Republicans DO want limited Government, at least those who know what it actually means. What our politicians do, and what we want, are seldom the same. Trump, who has become the most popular president among Republicans in modern history (more than Ronald Reagan), has been the closest to this that we've seen. Obviously, creating a whole new military branch is not limited government, but limiting the Government's involvement in our lives was a huge priority... and that came in the form of significantly reduced regulations.
I'll say that Trump had significantly much more planned, but the Democrats coordinated consistent attacks on the president unlike I've ever seen. I laugh now when I think about how the Republicans made it difficult for President Obama during his time in office... what Trump had to fight was unbelievable. It's amazing he got anything done at all, let alone breaking numerous records... legislatively, economically, and in many other areas.
I'm a big proponent of state's rights, and believe that competition at the lowest level is really the best way to go. If a state wants to do crazy stuff, then they should be allowed to... and when the residents have had enough, they can move to a better state. Democrat politicians realize that their policies never work when there are other policies that are more amenable... so the only way they can make it "fair" for Democrat states that do crazy stuff, is to force the same policies on every state... and then do whatever they can to affirm this power as long as they can (mass immigration, making people dependent on welfare, growing the Federal workforce, etc.).
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Originally posted by theBDub:
Ha, no Todd, I understand your text well enough to know when you're being a jerk, this isn't it. Plus, I've said it before and I'll say it loud and clear again: I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a progressive, only a liberal in a "classic liberal" sense, and not a leftist.
My beliefs all stem from an extremely firm foundation of individual liberty. I can take any of my positions and break it down to that core foundation.
I appreciate that, and I know you'll understand when I say... I'm sure you'll be voting Republican the next time around.
