Posted on 02/25/2010 8:15:14 PM PST by molybdenum
As the “historic meeting at Washington’s Blair House” drags on, Tibor Machan points out just how ill-equipped philosophically the Republicans are to deal with the president’s pitch today for an egalitarian healthcare dispensation. How about them Philosophical Differences? By Tibor R. Machan President Obama and others at the summit Thursday (2/25/10) kept talking about philosophical difference between his team and the Republicans but what did they have in mind? By “philosophical” most mean “basic,” or “fundamental,” or, possibly “systemic.” Bottom line is that believing in an extensive role of the federal government in determining the health care requirements of American citizens differs from believing in an extensive role by individuals and.... http://barelyablog.com/
(Excerpt) Read more at barelyablog.com ...
Blogger’s name is Ilana, not Elana. Pretty lady.
I don't know of any present-day Republican political figure that is as thoughtful and philosophical as Reagan was.
Too bad, really.
Very good article. Thanks for posting.
I don’t want a bunch of pretty words, I’d rather have facts and action.
Blair House...MSM garbage; what are we British or to be treated like Euro-trash.
Since this is written by a Liberturdian, an opinion piece, not facts.
The big news today, the Republicans blew away the Democrats,
they let the Nation see the Dems are the, not listening, going to be my way.
With this, the Republicans have more ammunition to fing back.
Even Lib networks said , Obama had a bad day
Machan laboriously makes a point that 10 second video clips make obvious. When some Republican says that Obamacare is unconstitutional, some Dem or media shill smiles and says: “So, if you really believe this then we would have repeal SS and Medicare because they are unconstitutional by the same argument. Are you advocating repealing them?”
At which point the Rep. starts tapdancing.
When the same point is raised on this board, many of our “conservatives” and “constitutionalists” start coming up with reasons why unconstitutional (illegal) programs need to continue, but not Obamacare.
More than any two other programs, SS and Medicare are destroying our country - first by violating the law and destroying the character of the people, and second, financially. Our hypocrisy and greed for illegally gotten income and benefits has enslaved us and will virtually ensure that our economy will be pushed over a cliff.
Chant the mantra of: Public debt [or National Bankruptcy] and then:
1) Propose the liquidation of ALL federal government agencies not directly commissioned by the constitution. (Sorry CIA, FBI, NASA, BATFE... wait, I’m not sorry about that... or the IRS.)
2) Repeal ALL tax laws and go with a basic and flat tax, say 5% sales or 5% income, but not both, with NO EXCEPTIONS/EXEMPTIONS. (Save religious organizations.)
3) Dissolve social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare, etc. {That is not just moving the programs to some Constitution-sanctioned agency.}
4) PAY THE DEBT!! DON’T JUST SWEEP IT UNDER THE RUG FOR “FUTURE ADMINISTRATIONS” TO DEAL WITH.
Tibor is just dead wrong on all points. First, the persistence of an overreaching, overregulating government does not in any way legitimize it’s continued existence in whole or part. You don’t justify an agency’s continued existence by its just being there. If anything, that becomes the kind of conservative argument liberals decry. It is like saying that federal regulation is a tradition, and should therefore be allowed to continue. What sense does that make to you liberals?
Instead, with philosophical principles intact, each agency should be measured by a new metric, a what-if metric, if you will. What would society be like if a particular set of regulations never existed? The fun you can have with shaping the assumptions would be a philosopher’s heaven! Cultural history, morals, ethics, even metaphysical arguments would have to be brought into resolve the many thorny issues raised by timid chicken-littles over doing away with various government programs. My God, how did the nation EVER get along without a Dept. of Energy, or Education, or the EPA? My goodness. Some 200 years without those useless bodies where we became the most powerful nation on Earth also providing welfare to countless other nations, and now, there is no basis for eliminating them? Pretty lame, Tibor. Pretty lame.
The real battleground you might be alluding to is the Philosophy of Equality. These philosphical hegemons you might be referring to might include racial quotas as a tool of “equality”. Now, there’s a philosophical tour de force us conservatives can’t handle: Rank Hypocrisy.
Tibor, you need to go back and rethink this one.
Exactly right, this is the result of go-along get-along cross-the-aisle politics and pleasing the leeches amongst the public they created.
“Some 200 years without those useless bodies where we became the most powerful nation on Earth”
But that claim would only support their previous claim that America was/is an imperialist nation. It’s only through those modern government agencies that equality is addresses and implemented on behalf of the citizenry.
The difficulty is that the lines needed to be drawn early on and held. Instead, pragmatists came along and in essence said “Don’t be so rigid. We can hold onto power if we are flexible and ‘modern’”. What happened long ago on the economic issues is now being pushed by the usual suspects regarding immigration, the sodomites, and environmental issues.
“NO EXCEPTIONS/EXEMPTIONS. (Save religious organizations.)”
So you can’t adhere to your own principles for even 5 seconds, eh ? Everyone else has to give up his exemptions/deductions, but you get to keep the ones you like ? Nice.
And you want to abolish the FBI and CIA ? Are you an Islamic extremist trying to open the way for your terrorist buddies ? And no NASA so no way to launch or manage spy satellites, so we get to be blind to what our military enemies are planning ? I’m glad you’re not in charge of our national defense.
If Government starts taxing religious orgs then they can VERY EASILY favor one religion over another. That’s a violation of the 1st Amendment... pesky thing, ain’t it?
>And you want to abolish the FBI and CIA?
The CIA could be absorbed into the Army and Marine corp. {i.e. Military Intelligence.} And as for the FBI, I have to ask does the Constitution authorize such a federal police-force?
>Are you an Islamic extremist trying to open the way for your terrorist buddies?
Nope. I’m just tired of politicians decrying cutting spending for something because: “I’ll hurt education/the economy/the military(lol - they actually don’t use this one)/the poor” and so forth.
>And no NASA so no way to launch or manage spy satellites, so we get to be blind to what our military enemies are planning?
NASA started life as the Army’s missile research & development project; there is no reason that it couldn’t be there again... furthermore, being under a branch of the military would help keep the goals on defense-related objectives.
>I’m glad you’re not in charge of our national defense.
*Shrug* - Then I suppose you wouldn’t like a Federal Firearm law... stating that ALL members of the militia must own a gun and qualify with it. (Here’s another hint: the US Constitution doesn’t define the militia... but a lot of state Constitutions do, and they’re usually defined along the lines of “every able-bodied male from 18 to 50.”)
Nonsense. You tax all income received by individuals, and none by any organization — no businesses, churches, charities, or any other organization, only individuals. That way the income is only ever taxed once and nobody gets any deductions just because they chose to spend it on a church rather than buy beer.
Your way, people who like to spend money on churches or other charities are getting a reduction on their income tax. That’s favoritism. That’s your slippery slope.
So you still want to spend the money on intelligence but you just object to the names of the organizations that do it ? ROTFLMAO
>So you still want to spend the money on intelligence but you just object to the names of the organizations that do it? ROTFLMAO
The more [federal] organizations “want a piece of the [funding] pie” the more political things become (and the arguing, waste-of-time, and waste-of-resources [like studies on this vs that intel org] all combine to waste our monies). Having intel ‘belong’ to the armed-forces would keep that down to a minimum.
Now I’m not saying that politics doesn’t exist between the branches of the military, or even amongst the same branch of the military, but because we’re dealing with flawed humans it will exist, therefore the only thing we can do is try to minimize it & its influence/impact.
>Nonsense. You tax all income received by individuals, and none by any organization — no businesses, churches, charities, or any other organization, only individuals.
That’s a good idea, if you’re going with the income tax; I also suggested a flat sales-tax; that has the same advantages of your implementation of income taxation with the addition of encouraging savers... the down-side of it would be that I’m not sure it would be entirely Constitutional for across-the-board implementation because the Federal government has no authority (under the commerce clause) to tax items wholly produced and sold in a single state.
>Your way, people who like to spend money on churches or other charities are getting a reduction on their income tax.
How would they be getting a reduction on their income tax? My proposal was just that churches shouldn’t be taxed, but your idea of not subjecting organizations to an income tax solves that problem.
>That’s favoritism. That’s your slippery slope.
Actually what I was going for, and I should have explained this better, was that if we lay an income tax on churches, even a small one like the 5%, in time the tax rules will get more and more complicated (as we’ve both seen in our own lifetimes) and it is entirely possible to imagine that in future years/decades that the government, taxing churches, declares that churches which don’t [say] embrace/condone “same-sex partnerships” will pay higher taxes... in effect wriggling ‘around’ that pesky 1st Amendment, or at least trying to.
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