Well follow it out. Taxes are the fee to continue living in this society. Crafter_man could move away and never owe America a cent, assuming he paid up before leaving, but if he stays here, then he owes the fees to continue living here. And he won’t move, cause good luck finding a first world country without UHC taxes.
Sure, but people are naturally going to identify any movement with its most visible proponents.
Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are faceless, generic and boring. Boehner is notable only for his curious resemblance to a younger, better-coiffed, less jowly John Ashcroft, for example. Eric Cantor says some really dumb things, and is therefore sort of interesting, but is totally devoid of personality otherwise.
Rush Limbaugh is angry and dynamic and interesting, and important Republicans/conservatives like Cantor talk about how the Republican Party needs him. Sarah Palin is bubbly and strange and interesting. Glenn Beck is totally fucking insane, and of course that makes him interesting too.
Which group do you think people- Dopers included- are more likely to look at when forming their opinions? Even if you ignore the fact that the crazy pundits are more visible, the fact is that Cantor, Boehner, et al are repeating the same asinine conspiracy theories and cries of socialism that the right-wing pundits are anyway.
On the other hand, the most visible representatives of the Democratic Party/“liberals” are Obama, Jon Stewart, and Biden. Nary a crazy person in sight, though Stewart was getting there towards the end of the Bush years, and obviously Biden says some odd things every day.
Our crazies (lookin’ at you, Howard Dean, but also the students with beards waving placards) are kept firmly out of the public eye. You’ve got yours front and center, entreating the public to put on their tinfoil hats and start buying up folding chairs in preparation for the coming days when they’ll be standing in line for bread at the supermarket.
ETA: To add to this, there’s a good reason why we lost two elections to Bush, who everyone knew going in couldn’t find his ass with both hands- he was cheerful and fun, and our candidates were really fucking boring, just like yours are now. Lesson learned.
I understand how taxes work.
Here’s how I see this argument: Der Trihs suggested that people owe each other something on a moral level in society. Crafter_Man asked why he owed anything, and so far, the response has mostly been “because every government collects taxes.” That’s not an answer to the moral dimension of the question, it’s just a statement of the status quo and it barely answers the question at all. It’s not just about taxes. “You are benefiting from a social framework you didn’t construct and could not construct on your own” is a moral argument for owing something to your fellow man and also supports paying taxes. Does it totally settle the case for people owing something to their fellow man? Not completely, but I think it’s a good answer.
You’re misunderstanding the point. Think of society like an apartment. You gotta pay rent to live in it. Rent funds the upkeep of the apartment. The whole complex would degrade to being condemned if some people opted out of their rent. You can move to a different society but you’ll have to pay rent there to maintain it too. Besides it isn’t like taxes come on down by royal decree. Taxes come from a government that’s elected by the people. Taxes fund things that the electorate, or their representatives by proxy, deem necessary. If he wants to live here then he has to chip in for those public works as well.
What it is, is caring more about abstract principles than personal circumstances. One such principle might be that people aren’t entitled to help or training to find employment: you take the first decent thing that comes your way, and only then do you seek to improve your lot.
The other possibility is that empathizing with others actually is “namby-pamby bullshit.” That’s a widely held opinion, and one I loudly protest whenever it comes up. I suspect your dad and his friends would hand me my ass for doing so, but that’s a red-blooded conservative male for you.
The rules of a society, in some sense at least, matter more than the people they’re meant to apply to, because society consists not of people but of rules.
This follows from the idea that morality must not come from people, but from something outside people - a classically conservative idea that is all too easily perverted.
Well you’re right that the article is a bit biased, for instance taking a single event and then talking about it in plural. But what about the source article? Did you read that too?
So BOTH sides were involved and, to keep this in perspective, they pounded on glass so hard that they didn’t break it. And then you accuse us of mindlessly accepting what someone in the media says.
If you are truly concerned with organized groups (the word “mobs” is too inflammatory), as I am, then maybe you should google David Horowitz and see how many times he’s been shouted down and kept from speaking. We are not talking about a single event but an ongoing pattern.
How about when Karl Rove tried to speak at Claremont McKenna College?:
Many more articles available if you google “karl rove pitzer”
And BTW I resent your mislabeling of the Tea Parties with the tasteless slur, which only a few sick leftists and one conservative are even aware of. I already mentioned that I attended two of them so you make the insult personal. And then you call us dicks.
Finally, the media people you mention are not the whole story. You’ve probably never listened to any of them for five minutes straight, and if you do, you’d find they are different than MSM portrays them.
Finally I dare you to test the “oxymoron” by reading some of Victor Davis Hanson for a few weeks. Or Eugene Volokh. What do you have to lose? At worst you get to know your enemy.
Are you ignoring my responses, because that’s not at all close to what I said. Apart from that, the reciprocal exchange of currency was your own suggestion, and that’s a fairly low level bit of moral reasoning itself (Stage 2 of Level 1 within the modern formulation of Kohlberg’s moral reasoning, in my opinion).
Even if we stick to relatively low levels of moral reasoning, and that’s were I think people who suggest that they are rugged individualists who owe nothting to anyone else - or those who suggest that their money is all their own and shouldn’t be taxed - are at, then one still owes their ability to conduct their day to day activities with relative ease (i.e. not have to do all the things, and more, that I suggested in my first post on this subtopic) to the societal infrastructure that has been built by others and that continues to exist because of others.
Are you contractually obligated to those people? Only in the strictest sense that you had in terms of paying for the things that you’ve agreed to. Do you have other obligations to society that aren’t part of specific contracts? I think so, but such things are not as obvious.
There’s also the issue that if something horrible were to happen to CM or a member of his family, he is still eligible for all of the programs he decries.
IOW, he’s able to sit here on the internet and call us names and say he’s above all of us, but if push came to shove he could still use the programs. He has exactly the same eligibility as I do. There’s no way for the programs to differentiate between us.
Now, if he goes and becomes Amish, that changes. And if he leaves the country, that changes. But as it is, he is operating risk-free. So, he’s going to pay, just like I pay, to have the option available later
Thanks for your interest and I’ll try to respond as well as I can.
First some links:
Of course, other conservatives have other preferences, and each of the above is unique. I’ve tried to choose a good mix.
Now to answer your questions. I’d say that responsible conservatives refer to money about 5% of the time, and when they do it’s about the big picture. Things like how the deficit or a tax law affects the economy. I’ve NEVER heard someone say something like “If Obama gets elected I’ll have to trade in the BMW for a Camry.” And it’s mostly about concern for the little guys, who get hit hardest when we make big mistakes.
Other things include: women’s rights, racism, free speech, voting patterns, history, education, literature, legal issues, foreign policies gay marriage, abortion, democracy vs. tyranny. For some of my favorite non-financial posts, you could scroll down the Hugh Hewitt/Townhall link above for interviews with David Allen White (Shakespeare) and Andrew Roberts (History). Victor Davis Hanson, BTW, is a classics professor at Stanford so he has his own knowledge base he refers to.
Thank you for your open mind and let me know what you think.
That is a blog post. There are many more blog posts available if you google “karl rove pitzer”. There do not appear to be any related articles.
You might do well to study the difference between the two. Welcome to the New World.
Volokh? OK, sure, why not? Hanson? Perhaps. But Hugh Hewitt? You’ve got to be kidding me.
cite, please? What exactly is your problem with HH? Law professor, speaks spontaneously for 15 hours a week. Knowledgeable about a wide range of things.
Once again, it’s about rules first, people second; morality as outside of human experience (sky-buddy, if you like, but not necessarily); and firm, limited, absolute Truths. Anything more (or less, as a believer would see it) is the path to social chaos, dogs and cats living together, etc.
The “tasteless slur” was self-administered by at least one group involved in your “grass-roots movement,” and repeated by oblivious (yet clearly sympathetic) Fox News reporters.
Sorry, but that makes it irresistible.
You mean this Hugh Hewitt?
http://townhall.com/blog/g/099bd269-0072-4399-b75d-58558238cc57
I can certainly see why you would be attracted to such a calmly reasoned approach, the way he respects his opposition and refrains from bald demagoguery.
Mislabeling?
http://www.capveterans.com/year_of_2009/id47.html
http://teabagparty.org/
http://www.wesavedemocracy.org/Teaparty.shtml
http://www.metrokc.gov/mkcc/news/2004/0604/KL_Road_Closure_Protest.htm
If you want to blame somebody for coming up with the “tasteless slur”, blame your fellow attendees.
ETA: And is “responsible conservative” Hugh Hewitt the same one who proposed refusing access to the Nixon library to Bob Woodward and other “irresponsible” journalists? Sure sounds like a defender of the Constitution to me.
I don’t want to listen to a radio show, so I’ve been reading some of Hugh Hewitt’s writings. I don’t think I would consider him reasonable. I was aware of the other three and have had their RSS feeds on my bloglines list for a while now.
Yeah, “tea-baggers” was what they called themselves. My mother forwarded me a tea-bagging email a while back. Not a good image, ma!
I wouldn’t want to get into a position where I agree with everything someone else says, but I’d be curious what comes across as unreasonable. I might agree with you. The thing about him that impresses me the most is his breadth of knowledge, for instance the way he handles the interviews on history and literature.
But if you’re aware of the other three you obviously don’t need suggestions on who the responsible conservatives are.