Is the GOP trying to lead us in to Anarchy?

[Robert Goren]

Is the GOP trying to lead us in to Anarchy? After watch the GOP presidential candidates(especially Ron Paul) and all their talk about scaling back government, I wondering how far are they willing to go? It doesn't seem that their positions are that far from the Anarchists. They both seem to think that any government is bad.

[newtothegame]

Is the GOP trying to lead us in to Anarchy? After watch the GOP presidential candidates(especially Ron Paul) and all their talk about scaling back government, I wondering how far are they willing to go? It doesn't seem that their positions are that far from the Anarchists. They both seem to think that any government is bad.
And somehow you think 16 TRILLION in debt is good? With no end in sight....and government continuing to spend money that is NOT there....yeah I can see how you would wish to continue down that path...:bang:

[PaceAdvantage]

No.

[Tom]

Bobby, you are thinking of the democrats, who are sponsoring the Occupy movements - that is anarchy.

Obama himself said he condoned the Arab Spring. That is anarchy.

[sammy the sage]

Bobby, you are thinking of the democrats, who are sponsoring the Occupy movements - that is anarchy.

Obama himself said he condoned the Arab Spring. That is anarchy.

Well..1776...was a GOOD year for anarchy...

[Robert Goren]

And somehow you think 16 TRILLION in debt is good? With no end in sight....and government continuing to spend money that is NOT there....yeah I can see how you would wish to continue down that path...:bang: I wish that we would be more careful in our spending. Some programs have no oversight at all. 60 Minutes recently did a story on how over $100 billion in cash disappeared in Iraq as soon as it hit the ground. A little more regulation of securities industries and the banks would have prevent the need for TARP and the all of the stimulus spending. much money the CIA has given the Afghan crooks. There is no reason why places with booming economies like Germany, Japan and South Korea Talk about being penny wise and pound foolish. Heaven only knows how shouldn't contribute to their own defense. Then there is all the money we spend immigration. We pick them up and turn them lose. If they are from some places like Cuba, we give them the gravy train and easy citizenship. Why should somebody from Cuba be treated any differently than someone from Mexico? Is Cuba really that much worse a place to live than the drug gang controlled Mexico? Then there is that giant earmark called Home Security. Every town no matter how small has to get a piece of that action. I could go on and on for pages about the sacred cows in government. I have yet to see very many politicians talk about those really big money wasters. What I hear from politicians is outrage that someone spent $3 in food stamps on potato chips. We didn't get $15 trillion because of food stamp or medicaid abuse. We should go after fraud and abuse in those programs, I am not kidding myself that it is going result in any really large savings. These guys are small time crooks. The big time crooks go to where the pickings are large and easy, the Defense department, the CIA and Homeland Security. Why do we need private security firms to handle our Embassy Security when the Military could do it for one tenth cost with active duty personal? After all the private security firms are using former soldiers. That's just one example.

[Robert Goren]

I think I just hijacked my own thread. Oops, sorry.

[ArlJim78]

you've got nothing to worry about, the annointed GOP nominee is Romney so there won't be any big changes in spending. everything is on auto-pilot and anyone who even talks about reform is immediately attacked and ridiculed.

Obama is gutting defense right now, I don't recall hearing any concerns about that.

[elysiantraveller]

Is the GOP trying to lead us in to Anarchy? After watch the GOP presidential candidates(especially Ron Paul) and all their talk about scaling back government, I wondering how far are they willing to go? It doesn't seem that their positions are that far from the Anarchists. They both seem to think that any government is bad.

Obama is leading us down the path to high inflation and interest rates. Those wipe out the middle class and allow the rich to get richer. Ultimately his policies will lead to greater wealth disparity not less.

[JustRalph]

I wish

[badcompany]

Is the GOP trying to lead us in to Anarchy? After watch the GOP presidential candidates(especially Ron Paul) and all their talk about scaling back government, I wondering how far are they willing to go? It doesn't seem that their positions are that far from the Anarchists. They both seem to think that any government is bad.

To be fair, the Libertarianism tends to attract Anarchists as the latter takes limited government to mean no government.

However, Ron Paul, a Ludwig Von Mises student understands that government is necessary and not, by nature, evil.

True Libertarians see government as a sort of nightwatchman, not a nurse, nanny, psychologist or parent.

[boxcar]

Is the GOP trying to lead us in to Anarchy? After watch the GOP presidential candidates(especially Ron Paul) and all their talk about scaling back government, I wondering how far are they willing to go? It doesn't seem that their positions are that far from the Anarchists. They both seem to think that any government is bad.

No, but Obama probably is. He's the one who has the agenda to fundamentally transform the face of America. Why do you libs have such a tough time remembering your messiah's words?

Boxcar

[boxcar]

However, Ron Paul, a Ludwig Von Mises student understands that government is necessary and not, by nature, evil.

And therein is the molten core to all nations' problems, but particularly this one because the framers to our Constitution certainly did have the biblically-justified sense that government is evil by nature but at the same time necessary. Therefore, they tried to limit the power of government, which is what people like Obama hates the Constitution and why he calls the People's rights negative rights -- "negative" because the Constitution puts the leash on government, not the People. The People have the rights we do because the Constitution limits or restrains government's power. Just as the Law of Moses often said to God's covenant people, "thou shalt not...", likewise the Constitution does likewise with respect to the government

But the vast majority of Americans will reject my opening premise above because a government (any government) is a reflection of the People. And not very many of us think we have an evil nature and that we're ultimately responsible for what our government does. Therefore, the cancer of Evil will spread throughout the nation, being passed on from the People to the Government election after election, until there is nothing left upon which the cancer can feed.

True Libertarians see government as a sort of nightwatchman, not a nurse, nanny, psychologist or parent.

But I think the founders saw government as a necessary evil.

Boxcar

[lsbets]

Is the GOP trying to lead us in to Anarchy? After watch the GOP presidential candidates(especially Ron Paul) and all their talk about scaling back government, I wondering how far are they willing to go? It doesn't seem that their positions are that far from the Anarchists. They both seem to think that any government is bad.

So you think that the Constitution is anarchy?

[johnhannibalsmith]

So you think that the Constitution is anarchy?

The mind boggling aspect of this thread is that Robert sees scaling back defense as one of the only legitimate cutbacks in central government, but thinks that limiting central government in those capacities which are beyond the scope of the intent behind our system may lead to anarchy.

[Robert Goren]

The mind boggling aspect of this thread is that Robert sees scaling back defense as one of the only legitimate cutbacks in central government, but thinks that limiting central government in those capacities which are beyond the scope of the intent behind our system may lead to anarchy.Not the only one, but if you want to go after fraud and abuse, that's where you have go because that's where a lot of it is. People like you would rather kick somebody off food stamps than stop giving 100's of millions dollars to crooked politicians in Afghanistan.
I do not agree with you on cutting back the Federal government. The federal got big because the states can't do the job. When we left things to the states we had separate water fountains according to race. That's the kind of things that happen when you leave things to the states. The people who wanted that kind of stuff hid behind states's rights. They still do. Does anybody really believe that Mississippi would have ended discrimination if the Federal government did not tell them they had to. We have a program like Medicare because the states and private insurance companies couldn't or wouldn't provide health insurance to people too old and too sick to work.

[Tom]

If you need a nanny to take care of you, to wipe your nose and other things, then you go build a great big government.

People that can't take care of themselves or are afraid to, like big government and unions.

Other big governments from history: Germany, 1930s-1940s.
USSR 1940s - 1980s
China 1960 - present
N Korea - 1950s - present
Iraq - 1979 - 2003
Iran - 1970s - present
Syria, Libya.........

Yes, Bobby, The bigger the better.

[johnhannibalsmith]

Not the only one, but if you want to go after fraud and abuse, that's where you have go because that's where a lot of it is. People like you would rather kick somebody off food stamps than stop giving 100's of millions dollars to crooked politicians in Afghanistan.
I do not agree with you on cutting back the Federal government. The federal got big because the states can't do the job. When we left things to the states we had separate water fountains according to race. That's the kind of things that happen when you leave things to the states. The people who wanted that kind of stuff hid behind states's rights. They still do. Does anybody really believe that Mississippi would have ended discrimination if the Federal government did not tell them they had to. We have a program like Medicare because the states and private insurance companies couldn't or wouldn't provide health insurance to people too old and too sick to work.

Well needless to say, I disagree with the underlying premise in pretty much every sentence contained in here before I can even get to the actual written words. When I read right off the bat about how "people like (me) would rather..." and then it, with a serious tone, goes into some wild misrepresentation of reality, it gets hard to even know where to begin in trying to make sense of the whole presentation.

[Robert Goren]

Well needless to say, I disagree with the underlying premise in pretty much every sentence contained in here before I can even get to the actual written words. When I read right off the bat about how "people like (me) would rather..." and then it, with a serious tone, goes into some wild misrepresentation of reality, it gets hard to even know where to begin in trying to make sense of the whole presentation.So you are denying that discrimination existed before the federal government stepped in? Are you that the old and the sick had access to health insurance before Medicare? Are denying that 100's of millions of American dollars are go to crooked Afghan politicians? If so, you have got a really strange sense of reality. Either that or you were born yesterday or at least a lot later than I was.

[Robert Goren]

If you need a nanny to take care of you, to wipe your nose and other things, then you go build a great big government.

People that can't take care of themselves or are afraid to, like big government and unions.

Other big governments from history: Germany, 1930s-1940s.
USSR 1940s - 1980s
China 1960 - present
N Korea - 1950s - present
Iraq - 1979 - 2003
Iran - 1970s - present
Syria, Libya.........

Yes, Bobby, The bigger the better.or places like Somila with little no government. Or Mexico where the government is so weak that drug gangs rule. Yeah, those places are great places to live.

[elysiantraveller]

So you are denying that discrimination existed before the federal government stepped in? Are you that the old and the sick had access to health insurance before Medicare? Are denying that 100's of millions of American dollars are go to crooked Afghan politicians? If so, you have got a really strange sense of reality. Either that or you were born yesterday or at least a lot later than I was.

If we are doing this just on the basis of fraudulent spending thats fine. Medicare fraud in 2007 was estimated at $23.8 Billion with a B. Its funny that you point to poor spending in one place and throw it up on the chopping block (defense) but completely ignore it on the homefront.

Everything needs to be adjusted.

Medicare/Medicaid
SSI
DOD
DOE
EPA

Everything...

[johnhannibalsmith]

So you are denying that discrimination existed before the federal government stepped in? Are you that the old and the sick had access to health insurance before Medicare? Are denying that 100's of millions of American dollars are go to crooked Afghan politicians? If so, you have got a really strange sense of reality. Either that or you were born yesterday or at least a lot later than I was.

Really? This is how you operate - you make a claim that I would rather give billions of dollars to crooked Afghan politicians at the expense of food stamp recipients and then upon objecting to the silliness of such an unsubstantiable claim, you rephrase it to whether or not I deny that there is fiscal corruption in the military.

This is what I mean. You just don't make sense and then leave it to up the other person to make sense of it and then you re-frame the whole thing again using a reply to ask with feign shock if I really believe what I said... even though it was never said as a response to the newly posed question... :confused:

You then summarizing a diatrbe that alleges that federal government has eradicated discrimination with an implication that people that favor state's rights do so because they want to govern as bigots. I mean, that type of logic makes it really hard to even begin to know how to dispute the point you may or may not be making, because the point is as clear as mud.

Someone says that government is far too wasteful and its scope too broad and suddenly there's a transition to the civil rights movement and Medicare and the implication being that scaling back central government is the equivalent of calling for famine, starvation, slavery, and genocide of the elderly.

Sorry... I can't follow the bizarre zigs and zags you take while morphing what is said into the launchpad for a collection of random rants.

[Robert Goren]

You think that government is the problem and I think it can be the solution. We disagree. I would to point out that I lived through a lot of the things that you imply won't return if we cut back on government. I am not so sure of that.

[johnhannibalsmith]

You think that government is the problem and I think it can be the solution. We disagree. I would to point out that I lived through a lot of the things that you imply won't return if we cut back on government. I am not so sure of that.

The initial post that I made was merely pointing out that you tend to favor a very broad federal body and support subsidizing it at that level, but speak sharply about reducing the funding to the military. This was in the context of a thread in which you speculated that reductions to government's reach would lead to anarchy. It seemed incongruous.

The reality is that the idealist in me supports a distinct reduction in military, both in presence and in expense. The idealist in me supports a government that uses its power to tax and the vast wealth of its citizens to actually improve the trajectory of a standard of living for everyone, particularly the weakest amongst us. The realist in me realizes that the idealist is naive about defense and is completely cynical about the government's will, ability, or perhaps sincerity to effectively make the idealist proud by actually improving outcomes.

That doesn't mean that I favor anarchy or do not believe that central government is crucial. I think it is dysfunctional, can't recognize the limits to its ability to actually affect positive change, and struggles to acknowledge when its own ineffectiveness in certain areas that it cannot be effective in begins to hog resources that could be used elsewhere - in places where it truly can be effective in promoting change and overall health of the society.

Too much of it has become a function of campaigning and reward and real people with real needs are suffering because of that, all the while dependent upon it to keep them merely afloat. My disdain stems from the belief that it could just as likely be effective in getting them back to shore and out of the murky waters altogether.

[elysiantraveller]

Even if America decided to become pacifist over night and disband the military we would still be running a deficit right now. :)