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Just remember that the income tax is a "progressive" tax and you can't go wrong.

Liberal is one who would use the income tax to redistribute wealth.

I think that the problem for me arises from the fact that the socialists have adopted the term "progressive" as a synonym for socialism because, in their own words, they thought that the Black population was afraid of the term socialist.

I've posted on this quite a number of times, but I feel I have to once more.

The War on Terror IS a Clash of Civilizations: one civilization being secular and free, dynamic and advancing and the other stifled, poor, and mired in a 7th century ideology, ordained by God, no less.

When Khomeini called the United States the "Great Satan" he did not mean to tar us as evil (Satan does not have the same connotation in Islamic thought), he instead pictured us as the "Great Deceiver". In other words, the benefits of Western life were not a means to improve a people, but rather a trap intended to destroy a people. Only the virtuous, i.e those that avoid watching Brittney Spears' belly button on TV, those not obsessed with wealth, etc, would be saved and only the virtuous have a right to rule the world. Materialism and seduction via appliances, television, popular music,etc, was to be avoided. This was at a time when many of the countries of the Middle East were emerging from the Ottoman past and leaping headlong into the 20th century.

This was a powerful message in Iran under the Shah whose obvious wealth was unimaginable, while his people often lacked. Khomeini set himself up as Lenin with a religious aura, and the message spread across the Muslim lands where nothing resembling an opposition to autocracy had ever existed. It was powerful stuff at the time, since every system of government and Pan-Arabism invented up to that time had utterly failed.

He also set back anything resembling progress for God-only-knows how long.

Now, imagine that you are a Saudi or Jordanian man, you are young, you are educated (typically in the West, no doubt)and you cannot find a job or afford to marry because your country is a) in the hands of a despotic regime and b) everything in your culture MUST be viewed through the lens of religious orthodoxy and judged as either useful or a tool of evil. How long do you think it is before you either go crazy or start joining some lunatic fringe group?

The point is that Islam is backwards and corrupt and the people know it, however, due to the fact that they live in a society which is EXACTLY the way in which God ordained it to be, they cannot believe that God would have screwed them in this way. Therefore, it must be SOMEONE ELSE'S fault --- and the easiest scapegoats are (in no particular order): Jews, Westerners, Infidels, who have all screwed with God's master plan in the Islamic lands in one way or another. In psychology we call this phenomena "Transferrance".

Those ways include imperialism, materialism, socialism, merchantilism, realpolitik. Only when the Middle East is purged of Western influence, and then the planet purged of Westerners in total, will the Caliphate (i.e. Muslim paradise on earth) be recognized. It says so in the Koran (look it up).

This is a clash of civilizations no matter how you slice it since they make no distintions between Westerners (we're all the same to them), the guilty or the innocent. The difference is that it is a clash they can never win and they have not realized that...yet.