Conservatives vs Liberals

[spacecowboy342]

This "not being the world's policeman" is just a slogan; the US is not and could not play such a role. That however does not mean I don't approve of the moral principal that those with the ability and opportunity to correct evils don't have a responsibility. The genocide in Rwanda and now threatening in S. Sudan are examples. If the US does nothing (as happened in Rwanda) thousand may die. Now it can be argued that others should help, but when the US does nothing no one else dares and it becomes a game of everyone saying "not my fault.

Not a slogan. Even now the right wants us solving the problem in Crimea. Every time anything happens anywhere in the world people expect us to take care of it. We don't have the capability to take care of the evils of the world nor should we interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. We should have learned this in Vietnam but didn't. We should have learned this when arming the Afghans fighting the Russians but didn't. No doubt we have the most powerful military but we should not try to grind all opposition under our heel just because of this.

[No Censorship]

This "not being the world's policeman" is just a slogan; the US is not and could not play such a role. That however does not mean I don't approve of the moral principal that those with the ability and opportunity to correct evils don't have a responsibility. The genocide in Rwanda and now threatening in S. Sudan are examples. If the US does nothing (as happened in Rwanda) thousand may die. Now it can be argued that others should help, but when the US does nothing no one else dares and it becomes a game of everyone saying "not my fault.

You make a compelling point regarding Rwanda. Where do you draw the "interventionist line", though? We were sold a bill of goods on Iraq and other countries. We are being sold a bill of goods on Ukraine. Blood and treasure, from all countries, are too precious to spend on foreign misadventures. Our leaders haven't learned that lesson during the past twelve years of war. I also doubt that the hawks are motivated to act by concerns about crimes against humanity in genocidal regimes. That's especially true when they aided said regimes in the past. We shouldn't take military action against any country unless we are truly attacked or threatened. Covert aid to forces fighting genocidal regimes is something else. Something tells me that such aid would be less likely to find its way to poor countries that can't enrich us in some way (alliances, hegemony, oil, etc.). As for Ukraine, it's doubtful that any side has clean hands, as well as pure motives.

[Frank Merton]

You make a compelling point regarding Rwanda. Where do you draw the "interventionist line", though? We were sold a bill of goods on Iraq and other countries. We are being sold a bill of goods on Ukraine. Blood and treasure, from all countries, are too precious to spend on foreign misadventures. Our leaders haven't learned that lesson during the past twelve years of war. I also doubt that the hawks are motivated to act by concerns about crimes against humanity in genocidal regimes. That's especially true when they aided said regimes in the past. We shouldn't take military action against any country unless we are truly attacked or threatened. Covert aid to forces fighting genocidal regimes is something else. Something tells me that such aid would be less likely to find its way to poor countries that can't enrich us in some way (alliances, hegemony, oil, etc.). As for Ukraine, it's doubtful that any side has clean hands, as well as pure motives.

There can be no drawing an interventionist line. When you do that you leave too much freedom for troublemakers to know how far they can feel safe in going.

I fully agree interventions should be international when possible, but frankly I think the American intervention in Iraq was quite successful: a horrible and brutal dictatorship was ended and the country now has about as good a government as can be expected in that part of the world, and the oil is flowing. The only real mistake is that Bush declared victory too early and didn't really understand what might happen if the West didn't deal with the ethnic divisions. This still isn't solved but has been mitigated.

Clean hands is a silly thing to expect from any government. You have to weigh relative merits. Personally I think a partition of Ukraine is likely, but the Russians have to be persuaded to allow this to happen in Ukraine. Why anyone would want to become part of the kleptocracy that Russia has become is something I don't understand.

[F3SS]

The last I heard Paul Ryan was trying to cut something like 500 million from food stamps. And raising defense.

I don't know anything about that but sometimes you have to see through the oppositions attack strategy. It could very easily be that democrats want to raise food stamp spending by a billion dollars and Ryan says no way I'll sign for half. In essence, Ryan is actually signing on for a 500m increase. The left does this all the time with social programs. They want enormous increases all the time and when the opposition says they'll sign up for some but not all the left will decry that the right wants to gut education, food stamps or your grandma when in fact they're not gutting anything. All the funding that was there before is still there.

Same with tax cuts. The left will want to raise taxes 10% on the rich and the right agrees to only 3% the left will decry that the right wants to cut taxes for the wealthy when in fact the wealthy will be paying what they have been and certainly no less no matter what.

Again, I don't know if this applies to Ryan or if that's even true but those kind of tactics certainly are. No matter which side of the isle there are very few who actually want less of anything.

[Frank Merton]

It is easy to blame failure to teach schools or failure to eliminate poverty or collapse of a bridge or whatever on "not enough money was spent, we need to spend more." Generally the real reason is that the money available was wasted.

[F3SS]

I always liked the saying that the left never believes what they're doing is wrong but that they haven't been allowed to do enough of it.

[Gromdor]

It is easy to blame failure to teach schools or failure to eliminate poverty or collapse of a bridge or whatever on "not enough money was spent, we need to spend more." Generally the real reason is that the money available was wasted.

This is so true. We have 11% of our bridges rated as "structurally deficient", yet when we had stimulus money we spent it all on bailing out banks and financial institutions. The thinking was that the money would be unjammed at the upper levels and trickle down. But most of the larger companies just sat on the money waiting for better times.

[F3SS]

No kidding. The stimulus was the biggest waste of a trillion dollars ever. It was nothing but pet projects, waste and squandering.

[Yamato]

I guess I didn't know that, I didn't really get interested in politics (ignorance verily is bliss) until later in life. I think it started when I read a book called "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by Edward Griffith, I believe. Then my friend Sue is really interested into politics and she tapes shows for me to watch, so I've learned a lot from her. Well, I may be an ignoramus, but at least I admit it. Seriously though, politics and economics are so confusing...and then when you talk to people, if they don't agree with what you say, they're like "well, that has been disproven" or "that has been discredited". This happened to me when I discussed with someone (who was planning to run for Congress) about Austrian economics (I may have it wrong but I mean the school of economics that propounds that you can increase revenue by lowering taxes because you increase currency flow by businesses starting). He said it had been discredited...

If we think that businesses and people are usually smart enough to handle their own money and if they have more of what they earn, this would translate into greater investment which results in greater growth, which results in greater revenue which results in greater tax revenue. It's a causal chain, it doesn't always work out, and there will still be bad times ahead. the fallacy of infinite growth is pretty well baked into our heads from childhood and this expectation along with a seemingly newfound intolerance of recessions makes it even worse. The bad times are oft used as reasons to increase taxes, as are good times when corporations (greedy capitalists) are making too much.

With everyone trying so hard to make money, eventually they will. Many voters will not let the market dole out its just punishments to the guilty. Gullible voters have no tolerance for bankruptcy either, not with the banks at least. The banks still get bailed out, and the innocents are called upon to pay more. Good economic theory or not, that's not right.

[No Censorship]

There can be no drawing an interventionist line. When you do that you leave too much freedom for troublemakers to know how far they can feel safe in going.

I fully agree interventions should be international when possible, but frankly I think the American intervention in Iraq was quite successful: a horrible and brutal dictatorship was ended and the country now has about as good a government as can be expected in that part of the world, and the oil is flowing. The only real mistake is that Bush declared victory too early and didn't really understand what might happen if the West didn't deal with the ethnic divisions. This still isn't solved but has been mitigated.

Clean hands is a silly thing to expect from any government. You have to weigh relative merits. Personally I think a partition of Ukraine is likely, but the Russians have to be persuaded to allow this to happen in Ukraine. Why anyone would want to become part of the kleptocracy that Russia has become is something I don't understand.

That's fine. We have no business attacking or invading sovereign states. I don't care what our *claimed* intentions may be. Use our precious military as a very last resort.

I couldn't agree less with your views on Iraq. I would have been more on your side at one time, though. The whole scheme was built on cherry-picking intelligence and information. It was a catastrophic choice. For starters, Iran and Iraq balanced each other in the region. That balance no longer exists. The Iraqis continue to live horrible, if not much worse, lives too. The bottom line is that forced democracy is an oxymoron.

We should stay out of Ukraine too. The elected government was overthrown by a coup. The real kleptocracy and oligarchy was behind that. They instigated the situation, which put ethnic Russians at risk. That's why McCain and others were there (to pledge support for the coup). Many of us realize what's really taking place, and we realize how useless state propaganda organs are. Yes, that includes all countries. It's just more of the same tired tactic of isolating Putin by pulling countries into the cabal's orbit.

[No Censorship]

It is easy to blame failure to teach schools or failure to eliminate poverty or collapse of a bridge or whatever on "not enough money was spent, we need to spend more." Generally the real reason is that the money available was wasted.

By the way, Frank, I don't mean to sound curt and rude in my replies. I disagree with some of your opinions, but it's not my intention to be disagreeable. You seem like a good guy, with much integrity, to me. My comments always are aimed at the events/issues being discussed. I'm not happy with our meddling in the affairs of other countries, especially Russia. I'm sure that you and I are on the same page when it comes to the Cold War. Communism was a threat to the world's freedom, and eastern Europe was liberated when that era came to an end. It's just that it's hard to separate the good guys from the bad guys now. Our actions during the past twelve years, both within and without, are troubling. They don't represent the USA that a lot of us remember. Our leadership sound like hypocrites when they try to demonize individuals who have wreaked much less destruction on the world stage. It's clear that they have ulterior motives when they condemn the very situations that they helped to create, actions that would not be tolerated if other countries were responsible for them. We were given a great gift to improve our relationship with Russia after we won the Cold War. That was a gift to both our country and our planet, but certain cabals and forces squandered it either by ineptitude or design. We did not seize the opportunity that was presented to us, as war-mongers with personal agendas decided to isolate our past enemy by excluding it as well as surrounding it, to the point where we actually supported their enemies bordering them as if to draw a reaction from them so that our department heads could justify their misguided interventionist policies. One needs to ask if perhaps Nuland, McCain, Kerry, etc. are as responsible as Putin is for the present situation, because he didn't start the fire.

[spacecowboy342]

There can be no drawing an interventionist line. When you do that you leave too much freedom for troublemakers to know how far they can feel safe in going.

I fully agree interventions should be international when possible, but frankly I think the American intervention in Iraq was quite successful: a horrible and brutal dictatorship was ended and the country now has about as good a government as can be expected in that part of the world, and the oil is flowing. The only real mistake is that Bush declared victory too early and didn't really understand what might happen if the West didn't deal with the ethnic divisions. This still isn't solved but has been mitigated.

Clean hands is a silly thing to expect from any government. You have to weigh relative merits. Personally I think a partition of Ukraine is likely, but the Russians have to be persuaded to allow this to happen in Ukraine. Why anyone would want to become part of the kleptocracy that Russia has become is something I don't understand.

I still don't see why American's are expected to die solving other people's problems

[spacecowboy342]

I always liked the saying that the left never believes what they're doing is wrong but that they haven't been allowed to do enough of it.

How is this different from the thinking of the right?

[spacecowboy342]

No kidding. The stimulus was the biggest waste of a trillion dollars ever. It was nothing but pet projects, waste and squandering.

The biggest waste of a trillion dollars ever was the Iraq war

[F3SS]

The biggest waste of a trillion dollars ever was the Iraq war

Ok, the stimulus was still a waste of a trillion dollars. That money should've been chopped into as many parts as there is taxpayers and doled back out into our pockets. That was our money and we are the real stimulators. Tell me, what did the stimulus do for you? Could you not have used a few grand at the time? Like five grand? Cause that's about how much you'd have gotten. Don't you think five grand in your pocket and your neighbors and your brothers and mothers hands would have been way better?

[spacecowboy342]

Ok, the stimulus was still a waste of a trillion dollars. That money should've been chopped into as many parts as there is taxpayers and doled back out into our pockets. That was our money and we are the real stimulators. Tell me, what did the stimulus do for you? Could you not have used a few grand at the time? Like five grand? Cause that's about how much you'd have gotten. Don't you think five grand in your pocket and your neighbors and your brothers and mothers hands would have been way better?

I don't really dispute that at all. I think 5 grand in every one's pocket would have been an excellent stimulus. Anything to get money into the hands of the middle class and the poor instead of just being concentrated in the hands of the 1%

[F3SS]

instead of just being concentrated in the hands of the 1%

Think about that the next time you hear this administration champion, or let's say pander to, the regular folks and rail against the rich. They're full of crap.

[spacecowboy342]

Think about that the next time you hear this administration champion, or let's say pander to, the regular folks and rail against the rich. They're full of crap.

I think they are all full of crap, more interested scoring political talking points than doing anything substantive about our problems. The right are hypocrites and the left incompetents

[Myles]

Think about that the next time you hear this administration champion, or let's say pander to, the regular folks and rail against the rich. They're full of crap.

I agree, but it is every administration. This one is just one of the many. lobbying needs to be made illegal and investigated!

[Frank Merton]

I still don't see why American's are expected to die solving other people's problems

They aren't, but they can if they want to and are sometimes in a position where all that is good cries out for them to do so.

By the way, what makes the idea of "national sovereignty" so holy? It is just an idea passed down from Divine Right of Kings theory and is as absurd now as it was then.

[spacecowboy342]

They aren't, but they can if they want to and are sometimes in a position where all that is good cries out for them to do so.

By the way, what makes the idea of "national sovereignty" so holy? It is just an idea passed down from Divine Right of Kings theory and is as absurd now as it was then.

Somehow I think the Vietnamese people had a different feeling about this in the 60's

[No Censorship]

They aren't, but they can if they want to and are sometimes in a position where all that is good cries out for them to do so.

We definitely *don't* want to after twelve years of likely endless military action. All that is *truly* good cries out for our voices to be heard by our "leaders".

[Indiogene]

The definition of conservative generally value tradition and don't want political change, while Liberal is defined by wanting reform and change. Most American voters happen to be socially Liberal (for gay marriage, cultural diversity and gender equality) yet they maintain a fiscal conservative attitude. Unscientific newspaper polls also find we're a center-right country...and more are registered Democrats. What does it say about us socio-politically is we're not defined by a political party in most individual cases, we think to ourselves when we identify with a political issue and cast a vote for a particular candidate. We throw labels and stereotype each other, we forgot what it means to self-identify as a conservative, liberal, moderate, progressive, libertarian, traditional or radical while we don't always follow the party line. I have to say the two political blocs conservative and liberal are imaginary social constructs, because you may find one person in the same movement disagrees with the other on a particular issue.

[No Censorship]

The definition of conservative generally value tradition and don't want political change, while Liberal is defined by wanting reform and change. Most American voters happen to be socially Liberal (for gay marriage, cultural diversity and gender equality) yet they maintain a fiscal conservative attitude. Unscientific newspaper polls also find we're a center-right country...and more are registered Democrats. What does it say about us socio-politically is we're not defined by a political party in most individual cases, we think to ourselves when we identify with a political issue and cast a vote for a particular candidate. We throw labels and stereotype each other, we forgot what it means to self-identify as a conservative, liberal, moderate, progressive, libertarian, traditional or radical while we don't always follow the party line. I have to say the two political blocs conservative and liberal are imaginary social constructs, because you may find one person in the same movement disagrees with the other on a particular issue.

I agree with almost everything in your post. I don't agree with your first sentence. Both the Left and the Right want change. They just want that change at different times.

[Yamato]

Fine. But it's never going to happen. Nothing's going to change.

It's never going to change if we keep satiating ourselves with bandaiding over a failed system and keeping it intact.