[photodawg]

Conservatives and liberals agree on little these days. But most agree on this: Capitalism works, but it is insufficiently moral. Conservatives--allow me to paint them with a broad brush--believe capitalism works best when it is spun with golden moral threads, when it weaves in those old values learned in church, charities, service clubs and the like.

Liberals are more skeptical. They know capitalism will produce losers as well as winners. They feel the winners must be forced into helping the losers. Forced help hurts everyone, say conservatives. Redistribution discourages winners from producing and losers from trying. It leaves everyone bitter.

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The above statements are are prime examples of the absolutely absurd thinking that passes for theoretical economic analysis going on in this country today. We are all products of the social welfare state that has deteriorated and nearly destroyed the capitalist system. We are on the verge of implementing world socialism democratically here in America, and this kind of analysis is exactly why. Morality has nothing to do with the attack on capitalism. Morality is being used as a means to secure power for the socialist world order. Blaming capitalism for things like poverty, and pollution, and global warming is totally wrong. Those conditions spring from the political process, not the economic system. In China there are massive examples of poverty, pollution and inequality, yet it is the prime example of communist economic system in the world. Where is the "morality" in their economic system. Interestingly the chines are moving towards capitalistic economics to provide for the needs of their people.

[Hardastarboard]

We are all products of the social welfare state that has deteriorated and nearly destroyed the capitalist system. We are on the verge of implementing world socialism democratically here in America, and this kind of analysis is exactly why.

Damn I hate to agree with you so strongly. I really, really wish you were totally wrong - but you're not.

One debate that I've never seen or heard about is whether we can vote ourselves into slavery. The Germans did it in 1933. We are on the verge of doing so if we elect another Democrat President and a Democrat Congress.

The very concept of whether or not we can vote ourselves into slavery is paradoxical. Certainly I am able to vote against my own freedom. I may even be foolish enough to do so. The real philosophical disconnect comes in whether I can vote to deprive another man of his freedom. I believe that the Founding Fathers would have answered with a resounding "NO!", but they weren't foolish enough to believe that we would never do that. That's why our government is a republic, NOT a democracy.

As our republic and our populace are currently headed, we are bound for that slavery despite their, and our best efforts. How we prevent that becomes the critical debate.

Do we win in the marketplace of ideas, or by other means (you both know what I'm talking about, I'm just not going to say it in an open forum). Either way is fraught with peril, as the Founding Fathers again recognized. They did what they had to do. I'm not sure yet what we have to do, but to say that I'm dissatisfied with the current state of our nation is laughably understated.