I'm a liberal and I'm here to learn

How do you guys pull that off near-simultaneously?

Yeah, we all post nekkid, didn't you all make him aware of it early on so that he would get the big picture sooner?

You don't have any questions about power and its abuses?

The concern about power over me and my children and grandchildren is precisely what makes me a conservative.

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.
Barry M. Goldwater

Clearly many, if not most, folks immigrated to this country to avoid the oppression of overbearing government.

The "oppression/abuse by persons", individual or corporate, is not to be compared with the oppression/abuse of the uncombatable powers of government.

Welcome to Free Republic.

Unlike the major liberal site, most of us welcome the free exchange of ideas. We may think you are wrong, but we are willing to listen and to discuss politics of all varieties.

I think you will find us ready, willing and able to punch some serious holes into your perception of good government.

The first thing I noticed was that you made an assumption that business (or perhaps big business) is a bad thing. I couldn't disagree more. The free market, while a little slow to react to illegal, unfair and immoral practices, is much faster than government.

He has made a few responses so we are in a holding pattern.

Yes, a few. A very few. This guy is slower than refrigerated molasses.

Reminds me of the 1st caller on Rush today, Karen from Oregon. She.....talked.....veerrry....slow....so....the....mind.....numbed....robots.....in....Rush's......audience....could....understand. It was like a kindergarten teacher talking to her students on the first day of class.

we kitties are always insync

And yes, I am concerned about some things you may associate with liberalism--social safety nets and taking care of those who fall through the institutional cracks.

Roger,

I don't know if you were around when the liberals closed the institutions many of those you worry about falling through the cracks should be calling home, but I was. That action freed many from accepting services which would help them and replaced those services with a culture of entitlement to all sorts of "social" service payments directly to those who are incapable (or unwilling) to use those services wisely to better their lot in life.

Many of those individuals have antisocial personalities. Many have become cancers upon our society. Many have such toxic personalities that they suck the lifeblood out of those individuals (mainly family and friends) who try to help them.

My wife and I are trying to help an old friend of mine and his wife survived just such at toxic individual. The wife had a daughter from a previous marriage. That daughter routinely reminded my friend that he was not her father and had no legal right to make her do anything. She played her mother and birth father against each other. (Her birth father is a reprehensible individual who was abusive to his first wife -- her mother -- his second wife and his third wife. I think you can see the pattern.)

The daughter whom I will call Mary got pregnant when she was an 18-year-old senior in high school. She had moved out of her parents' home because at 18 should could emancipate herself and collect a rent and a food subsidy from the state. (She apparently learned of these "inalienable" rights from her teachers!) She elected to get knocked up by a 14-year-old freshman. The boy's parents gave her the option of signing over her parental rights to them (because they knew she would be an unfit mother) or they would have her prosecuted for statutory rape which would result in a felony conviction and having to register as a child sex offender under New York state law. I could not convince those two saintly people they should do both because Mary's by then obvious promiscuity was going to result in more heartbreak and place more children in jeopardy.

When my wife sat Mary down to discuss how to act as a responsible adult, Mary indicated she intended to have more children, that having a father wasn't important to her (something she apparently learned in public schools from the teachers!). When my wife asked how she planned to care for any future children without a husband and/or a stable job and a method of providing quality child care for her child(ren) while she was at work, she cavalierly answered she would give her children to her mother who would care for them. My wife read her the riot act, but she learned nothing from that discussion.

She proceeded to get pregnant by an individual who had a felony conviction for dealing drugs. She was true to her word in that she imposed upon her mother to care for her daughter whom I will call Samantha from 6 AM until 4 PM while she was at work as an aide in a nursing home. She then expected her mother to make supper for her, feed her child, and would only leave after Samantha was asleep. (She did pay her mother the child care subsidy provided by New York state -- but only because New York state sent the subsidy directly to her mother!)

Her live-in felon boyfriend proceeded to get busted for a second felony drug charge and did some time. He again impregnated her. She also expected her mother to care for her infant son while she works.

Mary does not clothe her children appropriately. She expects others to provide her with clothes. Yet she uses her income to purchase clothing for herself -- including a diamond ring which she has been telling others is from her felonious boyfriend. The boyfriend moved out and has since impregnated at least one other girl and wants nothing to do with Mary. When the state tried to garnish his wages as the father of the two children, he claimed (rightly) that he wasn't certain he was the father of either child because Mary is a slut and was sleeping with perhaps a dozen other guys around the time each was conceived.

Mary has also expected her parents -- and we have not been able to convince her parents to say "NO!" -- to supplement her lifestyle. She expects them to help her pay the rent, buy groceries, etc., even though the real problem is not lack of income; rather, it is lack of financial discipline.

I could go on for pages here, but I think you get the picture. Mary is a person who is an unfit mother. Yet unless she actually physically harms her children, the state is powerless to intervene -- largely because of the "safety net" liberals have created to protect the "civil rights" of the dysfunctional.

The mother is not in good health. Caring for her other daughter who is still in high school and her husband who works the swing shift has caused her health to deteriorate. Caring for a toddler and an infant from 6 AM until midnight seven days a week has cause her health to deteriorate. The other day the mother was so depressed my wife had to intervene because she was talking about taking her own life.

Mary was not at all concerned that her mother is on the brink of physical and mental exhaustion, that her dysfunctional lifestyle is coming very close to destroying her mother's marriage, and that her younger half-sister despises her because Mary expects her younger sister to babysit for her children any time her mother cannot.

Mary is almost 24 years old, but is less mature than my 13-year-old daughter. My 13-year-old daughter hadn't met Mary until recently because we only recently adopted her. After she met Mary, Emily rightly noted Mary has severe psychological problems that prevent her from being a real mother. (Remember this is from a young girl who lost her mother 6 years ago and has been cared for by two foster mothers since then.) Emily remarked that Mary has all the symptoms of using hard drugs and being an very anti-social person. Emily said she fears for Mary's children and wanted to know why we could not do "something". She was surprised that unless we could clearly demonstate Mary was using drugs in the presence of her children or that she was so mentally deranged as to be a clear threat to her children or that she actually physically harmed her children there was nothing we could do because the enlightened "liberals" in the New York state legislature have created a body of law -- and the liberal judges in New York state have so restrictively interpreted that law -- as to make in impossible for anyone to intervene before a disaster occurs. Emily was a bit depressed because she knows that those most likely to be injured are Mary's two children, her mother, her mother's husband, and her half-sister. She also predicted that the felon who has even less conscience than Mary (which I call a "liberal conscience", that is, there is no objective standard of right and wrong, only what is good for me) is likely to seek to end his court-mandated child support payments by some evil means.

Emily wants to be an attorney (I have her using that word instead of lawyer now for what should be obvious reasons.) She seems to understand that the liberal legislators in New York state aren't collectively worth a gallon of piss and that the liberal judges in New York state are worth much less -- say two gallons of piss.

The reason I am telling you about Emily is to note that my lovely young daughter is apparently much more intelligent than the smartest of the liberal buffoons in the New York state legislature and on the bench in New York state courts.

Years ago I used to be a Democrat of a moderate to conservative stripe. I still hold dear the principals I held when I was 21. Over the last three decades I have not changed my ideals -- but my former party moved farther and farther to the left -- leaving me and people like Zell Miller outside their "mainsteam" even though we are much more in the mainstream of America. I spent about ten years as an unenrolled voter, but I cannot see any liberal of national stature nor can I see any liberal here in Massachusetts that I would vote for -- save barehanded dogcatcher in the current rabies epidemic ravaging the east coast states.

I am proud of my daughter for recognizing evil when she sees it. I wish there were a few liberals or Democrats (other than Zell Miller) who would go so far as to admit evil exists. But I suspect that liberalism as practiced today IS evil.

Emily's Dad

How did you get a conservative ranking.

I came out a libertarian and then just played with it. I didn't use algebra on it because my time was limited. But the 10 combinations I tried kept coming up Libertarian.

#461, please, when the pucker wears off...oh, and did you vote for the Party which intends to nationalize ALL industry, beginning with our Health Care system?

Those would be the RATS, very much similar to World Communists, if not one and the same for all intents and purposes...

I am a liberal, but I'll be the first to admit, I don't have all the answers

You could have stopped at "I am a liberal." The rest is a given.

I've been speaking in public and writing in public since 1954. (That's not a typo.) After all that time, I'd have to be a real bonehead not to have learned something. LOL.

Billybob

I agree.

That's how it's looking.

I'm wearing a fig leaf...

Ditto on the Democrat party abandoning me.

I figured as much. It was a true compliment. But I think you figured that out. I really did enjoy reading your post.

No doubt!

try wearing armour...it chaffs!

My personal favorite was being referred to over there as a "Freeptard".

Yeah, we all post nekkid, didn't you all make him aware of it early on so that he would get the big picture sooner?

If that's a 'he' it ain't MY little red light blinking on their monitor.

NO - THANKS! :)

What's with vanity RAT boy? Where's the damn beef?

1st day, you start a vanity, hang around and tell us NOTHING?!

I'm not buying...