Kurt Vonnegut on "Equality"

[Uncensored2008]

Harrison Bergeron is a fantastic science fiction short story that does a great job of mocking what equality for all could mean. That said, it doesn't reflect the cartoon version of what right wing nuts think the left believe.

Yet you reflect that cartoon version exactly.

Funny dat.....

 

[Erand7899]

Actually, [nutballs] seem to get the satire, but not Vonnegut's irony behind the satire.

Vonnegut was a real liberal nothing like the partisan grifters driving today's left into disrepute, and likely Vonnegut held some REAL Libertarian instincts unlike clan Paul and the anti-abortion scum degrading Libertarianism today, which means government takes care of education and roads, national defense, etc., and stays the fuck out of abortion and legislating finish lines.

What the nutballs embarrassing today's Republican party are too stupid to understand is how tax rates in the 90% range created the strongest nation in global history, and the fake-liberals undermining today's Democratic party are too morally degenerate to admit is that an essential right is the right to fail absolutely, then die poor and miserable in the gutter.

Once those differences are reconciled among the partisan scum of the earth, the rest of us can begin to live with less fear of the filthy god damned parasites working in government today.

If you actually believe that tax rates in th 90% range had any positive impact on creating the strongest nation in global history, then you don't know a damn thing about taxes or economics.

The first thing that you need to realize is that government, although necessary to some degree, is a drag on economic activity. It is akin to rent, a necessary cost of doing business. If the rent is too high, the business suffers. When government gets too big and too expensive, the business suffers.

This year, the US government is taking in more tax revenue than anytime in history, yet this economy is still near the bottom and sputtering. None of Obama's tax increases have kicked in yet, so how is that explainable by those who claim that tax cuts lead to lower tax collections? It means their economic theories are garbage.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Yes Im angry and so is most of the country.

Your party is acting like lying brain fevered rats.

You're angry and extremely stupid.

Thus, the perfect Obama voter...

 

[JoeNormal]

The freedom to get rich, the freedom to get poor, the freedom to be merely average.... and I support all those but will not support you getting to take from others in some scheme to try and equalize outcome to ANY degree

You don't want the rich to get rich.. beat them at the game... you don't weigh down their playing piece or glue it to the board

Then you are in the wrong country.


This country decided that one long ago


refuse to support the constitution then GET OUT

“Theodore Lowi, a political science eminence at Cornell University, years ago drew a bead on what was wrong with the American polity. In his The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States, he claimed that the Founder's constitution of 1787 had been surreptitiously replaced with a new one by the FDR administration, and no one had actually noticed it for seventy-plus years.

In current argot, we have been operating under US Constitution, 2.0 since the Roosevelt era. The contours of the constitution of this "Second Republic" as he deemed it, bears some scrutiny, as the Obama Administration and the 112th Congress go to work bringing even more change--possibly US Constitution 3.0. The preamble and first article of the actual constitution we have been living under, which Lowi acutely discerned, suffice to show where an Obama constitution will be taking off from. "http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/americas_third_republic.html


In case you're too busy to pick up Lowi's book, here's part:

PREAMBLE. There ought to be a national presence in every aspect of the lives of American citizens. National power is no longer a necessary evil; it is a positive virtue.

Article I. It is the primary purpose of this national government to provide domestic tranquility by reducing risk. This risk may be physical or it may be fiscal. In order to fulfill this sacred obligation, the national government shall be deemed to have sufficient power to eliminate threats from the environment through regulation, and to eliminate threats from economic uncertainty through insurance.

Article II. The separation of powers to the contrary notwithstanding, the center of this national government is the presidency. Said office is authorized to use any powers, real or imagined, to set our nation to rights making any rules or regulations the president deems appropriate; the president may delegate this authority to any other official or agency. The right to make all such rules and regulations is based on the assumption in this constitution that the office of the presidency embodies the will of the real majority of the American nation.

There was a reason that the American people overwhelmingly supported the New Deal. The suffering during the depression was intense and even before it, boom and bust cycles were frequent and turbulent. Life during the busts sucked big time for most people.

One thing most people did have back then however was a little patch of land they could subsist on. That's increasingly rare these days. What would most people do in a depression without assistance?

I find it humorous that modern day libertarians think they could somehow survive that scenario. What special skills or talents do you think you have that you could use to stand on your own two feet if society weren't there to provide most of what you need?

 

[PoliticalChic]

Then you are in the wrong country.


This country decided that one long ago


refuse to support the constitution then GET OUT

“Theodore Lowi, a political science eminence at Cornell University, years ago drew a bead on what was wrong with the American polity. In his The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States, he claimed that the Founder's constitution of 1787 had been surreptitiously replaced with a new one by the FDR administration, and no one had actually noticed it for seventy-plus years.

In current argot, we have been operating under US Constitution, 2.0 since the Roosevelt era. The contours of the constitution of this "Second Republic" as he deemed it, bears some scrutiny, as the Obama Administration and the 112th Congress go to work bringing even more change--possibly US Constitution 3.0. The preamble and first article of the actual constitution we have been living under, which Lowi acutely discerned, suffice to show where an Obama constitution will be taking off from. "http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/americas_third_republic.html


In case you're too busy to pick up Lowi's book, here's part:

PREAMBLE. There ought to be a national presence in every aspect of the lives of American citizens. National power is no longer a necessary evil; it is a positive virtue.

Article I. It is the primary purpose of this national government to provide domestic tranquility by reducing risk. This risk may be physical or it may be fiscal. In order to fulfill this sacred obligation, the national government shall be deemed to have sufficient power to eliminate threats from the environment through regulation, and to eliminate threats from economic uncertainty through insurance.

Article II. The separation of powers to the contrary notwithstanding, the center of this national government is the presidency. Said office is authorized to use any powers, real or imagined, to set our nation to rights making any rules or regulations the president deems appropriate; the president may delegate this authority to any other official or agency. The right to make all such rules and regulations is based on the assumption in this constitution that the office of the presidency embodies the will of the real majority of the American nation.

There was a reason that the American people overwhelmingly supported the New Deal. The suffering during the depression was intense and even before it, boom and bust cycles were frequent and turbulent. Life during the busts sucked big time for most people.

One thing most people did have back then however was a little patch of land they could subsist on. That's increasingly rare these days. What would most people do in a depression without assistance?

I find it humorous that modern day libertarians think they could somehow survive that scenario. What special skills or talents do you think you have that you could use to stand on your own two feet if society weren't there to provide most of what you need?

Abbie....outside of the "I felt I had to do it" argument for violating the United States Constitution, article I, section 8, and obviating the principles on which this nation was built, what is the excuse for not using the amendment process if the following were essential, and if "the American people overwhelmingly supported" same?


The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of the people to free, unimpeded travel.

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

 

[Agit8r]

view of the Founders, which is equality before the law.

Alrighty! Another steaming pile of bullshit!

"The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all; 2. By witholding unnecessary opportunities from a few to increase the inequality of property by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches; 3. By the silent operation of laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort; 4. By abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest at the expense of another; 5. By making one party a check on the other so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented nor their views accommodated. If this is not the language of reason, it is that of republicanism."
-- James Madison; from 'Parties' (1792)


"legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."
-- Thomas Jefferson; from letter to James Madison, (Oct. 28, 1785)

"Admitting that any annual sum, say, for instance, one thousand pounds, is necessary or sufficient for the support of a family, consequently the second thousand is of the nature of a luxury, the third still more so, and by proceeding on, we shall at last arrive at a sum that may not improperly be called a prohibitable luxury. It would be impolitic to set bounds to property acquired by industry, and therefore it is right to place the prohibition beyond the probable acquisition to which industry can extend; but there ought to be a limit to property or the accumulation of it by bequest."
-- Thomas Paine; from 'Rights of Man, Part the Second' (1792)

 

[chikenwing]

heres a tip


your kids aint buying the dance

lol

 

[Dugdale_Jukes]

Actually, [nutballs] seem to get the satire, but not Vonnegut's irony behind the satire.

Vonnegut was a real liberal nothing like the partisan grifters driving today's left into disrepute, and likely Vonnegut held some REAL Libertarian instincts unlike clan Paul and the anti-abortion scum degrading Libertarianism today, which means government takes care of education and roads, national defense, etc., and stays the fuck out of abortion and legislating finish lines.

What the nutballs embarrassing today's Republican party are too stupid to understand is how tax rates in the 90% range created the strongest nation in global history, and the fake-liberals undermining today's Democratic party are too morally degenerate to admit is that an essential right is the right to fail absolutely, then die poor and miserable in the gutter.

Once those differences are reconciled among the partisan scum of the earth, the rest of us can begin to live with less fear of the filthy god damned parasites working in government today.

If you actually believe that tax rates in th 90% range had any positive impact on creating the strongest nation in global history, then you don't know a damn thing about taxes or economics.

The first thing that you need to realize is that government, although necessary to some degree, is a drag on economic activity. It is akin to rent, a necessary cost of doing business. If the rent is too high, the business suffers. When government gets too big and too expensive, the business suffers.

This year, the US government is taking in more tax revenue than anytime in history, yet this economy is still near the bottom and sputtering. None of Obama's tax increases have kicked in yet, so how is that explainable by those who claim that tax cuts lead to lower tax collections? It means their economic theories are garbage.

Actually, I do believe that because it is true and proved by actual, real, history that happened and was recorded - and stopped reading your screed at that point because it was clear your understanding of markets and economics stopped developing at the marbles-trading level.

When you can explain the RELATIVE effects tax rate policy on on national economies and the relative effects of 32:1 and 400:1 ratios in pay rates from CEO to janitor on corporate health, please get back with me. At that point you will know enough to BEGIN to discuss the cause-and-effect issues that you bury yourself under pitilessly above. One feels sad that you humiliate yourself like that in public.

Until then please keep paying your doctor with chickens and trading marbles on the playgrounds of your life. Clearly you understand the nano-micro aspects of neighborhood economics.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Then you are in the wrong country.


This country decided that one long ago


refuse to support the constitution then GET OUT

“Theodore Lowi, a political science eminence at Cornell University, years ago drew a bead on what was wrong with the American polity. In his The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States, he claimed that the Founder's constitution of 1787 had been surreptitiously replaced with a new one by the FDR administration, and no one had actually noticed it for seventy-plus years.

In current argot, we have been operating under US Constitution, 2.0 since the Roosevelt era. The contours of the constitution of this "Second Republic" as he deemed it, bears some scrutiny, as the Obama Administration and the 112th Congress go to work bringing even more change--possibly US Constitution 3.0. The preamble and first article of the actual constitution we have been living under, which Lowi acutely discerned, suffice to show where an Obama constitution will be taking off from. "http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/americas_third_republic.html


In case you're too busy to pick up Lowi's book, here's part:

PREAMBLE. There ought to be a national presence in every aspect of the lives of American citizens. National power is no longer a necessary evil; it is a positive virtue.

Article I. It is the primary purpose of this national government to provide domestic tranquility by reducing risk. This risk may be physical or it may be fiscal. In order to fulfill this sacred obligation, the national government shall be deemed to have sufficient power to eliminate threats from the environment through regulation, and to eliminate threats from economic uncertainty through insurance.

Article II. The separation of powers to the contrary notwithstanding, the center of this national government is the presidency. Said office is authorized to use any powers, real or imagined, to set our nation to rights making any rules or regulations the president deems appropriate; the president may delegate this authority to any other official or agency. The right to make all such rules and regulations is based on the assumption in this constitution that the office of the presidency embodies the will of the real majority of the American nation.

There was a reason that the American people overwhelmingly supported the New Deal. The suffering during the depression was intense and even before it, boom and bust cycles were frequent and turbulent. Life during the busts sucked big time for most people.

One thing most people did have back then however was a little patch of land they could subsist on. That's increasingly rare these days. What would most people do in a depression without assistance?

I find it humorous that modern day libertarians think they could somehow survive that scenario. What special skills or talents do you think you have that you could use to stand on your own two feet if society weren't there to provide most of what you need?

Got some more for ya,' Ab.....


" The suffering during the depression was intense and even before it, boom and bust cycles were frequent and turbulent. Life during the busts sucked big time for most people."

1. The attempt to mitigate 'boom or bust' cycles goes back to 1913...not 1932.
"Congress created the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to tame the business cycle ..."
http://www.independent.org/store/book.asp?id=100


2. "America's greatest depression fighter was Warren Gamaliel Harding. An Ohio senator when he was elected president in 1920, he followed the much praised Woodrow Wilson— who had brought America into World War I, built up huge federal bureaucracies, imprisoned dissenters, and incurred $25 billion of debt."
Not-So-Great Depression - Jim Powell - National Review Online

a. "Instead of bailing out failing businesses, expanding government, and redistributing taxpayer money with a "stimulus" plan, Harding responded by cutting spending and removing burdensome regulations and taxes. During his campaign, he argued, "We need vastly more freedom than we do regulation." In stark contrast with the Bush-Obama response of ever-more government spending and debt, Harding had federal spending cut in half between 1920 and 1922 and ultimately ran a surplus.
As a result, the recession that started in 1920 ended before 1923. Lower taxes and reduced regulation helped America's economy quickly adjust after the war as entrepreneurs and capital were freed to create jobs and push the economy to recover. Harding's free market policies lead to the Roaring Twenties, known for technological advances, women's rights, the explosion of the middle class, and some of the most rapid economic growth in American history. Still, he is ranked as one of the worst presidents by many in academia's ivory tower
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/obama_should_channel_harding_n.htm


And this:
FDR extended a recession and made it into "The Great Recession"

Don't believe me?

3.In 1935, the Brookings Institution (left-leaning) delivered a 900-page report on the New Deal and the National Recovery Administration, concluding that “ on the whole it retarded recovery.” The Real Deal - Society and Culture - AEI



Now...aren't you glad to have come here for an education?

 

[JoeNormal]

“Theodore Lowi, a political science eminence at Cornell University, years ago drew a bead on what was wrong with the American polity. In his The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States, he claimed that the Founder's constitution of 1787 had been surreptitiously replaced with a new one by the FDR administration, and no one had actually noticed it for seventy-plus years.

In current argot, we have been operating under US Constitution, 2.0 since the Roosevelt era. The contours of the constitution of this "Second Republic" as he deemed it, bears some scrutiny, as the Obama Administration and the 112th Congress go to work bringing even more change--possibly US Constitution 3.0. The preamble and first article of the actual constitution we have been living under, which Lowi acutely discerned, suffice to show where an Obama constitution will be taking off from. "http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/americas_third_republic.html


In case you're too busy to pick up Lowi's book, here's part:

PREAMBLE. There ought to be a national presence in every aspect of the lives of American citizens. National power is no longer a necessary evil; it is a positive virtue.

Article I. It is the primary purpose of this national government to provide domestic tranquility by reducing risk. This risk may be physical or it may be fiscal. In order to fulfill this sacred obligation, the national government shall be deemed to have sufficient power to eliminate threats from the environment through regulation, and to eliminate threats from economic uncertainty through insurance.

Article II. The separation of powers to the contrary notwithstanding, the center of this national government is the presidency. Said office is authorized to use any powers, real or imagined, to set our nation to rights making any rules or regulations the president deems appropriate; the president may delegate this authority to any other official or agency. The right to make all such rules and regulations is based on the assumption in this constitution that the office of the presidency embodies the will of the real majority of the American nation.

There was a reason that the American people overwhelmingly supported the New Deal. The suffering during the depression was intense and even before it, boom and bust cycles were frequent and turbulent. Life during the busts sucked big time for most people.

One thing most people did have back then however was a little patch of land they could subsist on. That's increasingly rare these days. What would most people do in a depression without assistance?

I find it humorous that modern day libertarians think they could somehow survive that scenario. What special skills or talents do you think you have that you could use to stand on your own two feet if society weren't there to provide most of what you need?

Abbie....outside of the "I felt I had to do it" argument for violating the United States Constitution, article I, section 8, and obviating the principles on which this nation was built, what is the excuse for not using the amendment process if the following were essential, and if "the American people overwhelmingly supported" same?


The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of the people to free, unimpeded travel.

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

I think article 1, section 8 pretty much spells it out. What would your proposed amendment say instead? Maybe use this as an exercise in constitutional law.

 

[chikenwing]

Most conservatives support the right of states to segregate based on race don't they?

What??? someone told you that in a dream??

Where do they get this shit?? i'ts ether just plan making crap up to suit the moment,or they wll believe anything told them.

 

[PoliticalChic]

view of the Founders, which is equality before the law.

Alrighty! Another steaming pile of bullshit!

"The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all; 2. By witholding unnecessary opportunities from a few to increase the inequality of property by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches; 3. By the silent operation of laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort; 4. By abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest at the expense of another; 5. By making one party a check on the other so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented nor their views accommodated. If this is not the language of reason, it is that of republicanism."
-- James Madison; from 'Parties' (1792)


"legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."
-- Thomas Jefferson; from letter to James Madison, (Oct. 28, 1785)

"Admitting that any annual sum, say, for instance, one thousand pounds, is necessary or sufficient for the support of a family, consequently the second thousand is of the nature of a luxury, the third still more so, and by proceeding on, we shall at last arrive at a sum that may not improperly be called a prohibitable luxury. It would be impolitic to set bounds to property acquired by industry, and therefore it is right to place the prohibition beyond the probable acquisition to which industry can extend; but there ought to be a limit to property or the accumulation of it by bequest."
-- Thomas Paine; from 'Rights of Man, Part the Second' (1792)

Try to use more civil language.

Not only are you stupid....but uncouth.
Ok...here's your remedial, boor.


From Glenn Greenwald's “With Liberty and Justice for Some; How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful”



1. The central principle of America’s founding was that the rule of law would be the prime equalizing force; the founders considered vast inequality in every other realm to be inevitable and even desirable…. A small number would of individuals would be naturally endowed with unique and extraordinary talents while most people, by definition, would be ordinary. So the American concept of liberty would be premised on the inevitability of outcome inequality- success of some, failure of others.

a. Law was the one exception; no inequality was tolerable. It was the sine qua non ensuring fairness.

2. The concept has made its way into our clichés: equal before the law, justice is blind, no man is above the law, a nation of laws, not men.

3. What the founders feared most was that a centralized federal government would erode liberty, forcibly override local rule, obliterate self-governance, and transgress every limit. The Constitution was the attempt to prevent that.

4. The founders recognized that, unless the law was applied equally, the Constitution would become merely a suggestion, compliance being optional.

5. The central dispute in Marbury v. Madison was whether the courts had the authority to subject officials in the executive branch to their rulings.

6. None of the founders believed in equality as a general proposition. The opposite is true: they considered inequality on every level, other than law, to be the natural, inevitable, and just state of affairs. Even Jefferson, one of the most egalitarian of the founders, held that there was “a natural aristocracy” among men, based on “virtue and talents.” This was not only natural, but desirable: “The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and the government of society.”(10)

a. Adams the same. “It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors an inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction.”

b. Thomas Paine loathed inherited titles and assigned status as a legally enforced inequality: “Nature is often giving to the world some extraordinary men who arrive at fame by merit and universal consent, such as Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, etc. They were truly great or noble. But when government sets up a manufactory of nobles, it is as absurd as if she undertook to manufacture wise men. Her nobles are all counterfeits.” http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/paine_dissertations_on_first_prin.html

 

[PoliticalChic]

The Constitution provides for the determination of constitutionality. You have no idea what you're talking about.

No.. it really does not...

You have tried this argument before, and failed...

The government does not just get to grant itself power willy nilly.. that is why we have the amendment process that is purposely HARD.. so that the fed cannot easily gain more power

Judicial review is constitutional. Period.

....as long as a judicial decision is connected to the language of the Constitution.

 

[boedicca]

This thread needs a sound track. They'll turn us all into beggars cuz they're easier to please...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V7HeBJp620]Government Cheese[/ame]

 

[PoliticalChic]

There was a reason that the American people overwhelmingly supported the New Deal. The suffering during the depression was intense and even before it, boom and bust cycles were frequent and turbulent. Life during the busts sucked big time for most people.

One thing most people did have back then however was a little patch of land they could subsist on. That's increasingly rare these days. What would most people do in a depression without assistance?

I find it humorous that modern day libertarians think they could somehow survive that scenario. What special skills or talents do you think you have that you could use to stand on your own two feet if society weren't there to provide most of what you need?

Abbie....outside of the "I felt I had to do it" argument for violating the United States Constitution, article I, section 8, and obviating the principles on which this nation was built, what is the excuse for not using the amendment process if the following were essential, and if "the American people overwhelmingly supported" same?


The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of the people to free, unimpeded travel.

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

I think article 1, section 8 pretty much spells it out. What would your proposed amendment say instead? Maybe use this as an exercise in constitutional law.

Are you saying that the above are part of the enumerated powers?

 

[boedicca]

At the risk of stating the obvious to the rational among us:

Any "rights" which are based on the government GIVING us things are not rights. They are shackles.

 

[JoeNormal]

“Theodore Lowi, a political science eminence at Cornell University, years ago drew a bead on what was wrong with the American polity. In his The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States, he claimed that the Founder's constitution of 1787 had been surreptitiously replaced with a new one by the FDR administration, and no one had actually noticed it for seventy-plus years.

In current argot, we have been operating under US Constitution, 2.0 since the Roosevelt era. The contours of the constitution of this "Second Republic" as he deemed it, bears some scrutiny, as the Obama Administration and the 112th Congress go to work bringing even more change--possibly US Constitution 3.0. The preamble and first article of the actual constitution we have been living under, which Lowi acutely discerned, suffice to show where an Obama constitution will be taking off from. "http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/americas_third_republic.html


In case you're too busy to pick up Lowi's book, here's part:

PREAMBLE. There ought to be a national presence in every aspect of the lives of American citizens. National power is no longer a necessary evil; it is a positive virtue.

Article I. It is the primary purpose of this national government to provide domestic tranquility by reducing risk. This risk may be physical or it may be fiscal. In order to fulfill this sacred obligation, the national government shall be deemed to have sufficient power to eliminate threats from the environment through regulation, and to eliminate threats from economic uncertainty through insurance.

Article II. The separation of powers to the contrary notwithstanding, the center of this national government is the presidency. Said office is authorized to use any powers, real or imagined, to set our nation to rights making any rules or regulations the president deems appropriate; the president may delegate this authority to any other official or agency. The right to make all such rules and regulations is based on the assumption in this constitution that the office of the presidency embodies the will of the real majority of the American nation.

There was a reason that the American people overwhelmingly supported the New Deal. The suffering during the depression was intense and even before it, boom and bust cycles were frequent and turbulent. Life during the busts sucked big time for most people.

One thing most people did have back then however was a little patch of land they could subsist on. That's increasingly rare these days. What would most people do in a depression without assistance?

I find it humorous that modern day libertarians think they could somehow survive that scenario. What special skills or talents do you think you have that you could use to stand on your own two feet if society weren't there to provide most of what you need?

Got some more for ya,' Ab.....


" The suffering during the depression was intense and even before it, boom and bust cycles were frequent and turbulent. Life during the busts sucked big time for most people."

1. The attempt to mitigate 'boom or bust' cycles goes back to 1913...not 1932.
"Congress created the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to tame the business cycle ..."
Boom and Bust Banking: The Causes and Cures of the Great Recession


2. "America's greatest depression fighter was Warren Gamaliel Harding. An Ohio senator when he was elected president in 1920, he followed the much praised Woodrow Wilson— who had brought America into World War I, built up huge federal bureaucracies, imprisoned dissenters, and incurred $25 billion of debt."
Not-So-Great Depression - Jim Powell - National Review Online

a. "Instead of bailing out failing businesses, expanding government, and redistributing taxpayer money with a "stimulus" plan, Harding responded by cutting spending and removing burdensome regulations and taxes. During his campaign, he argued, "We need vastly more freedom than we do regulation." In stark contrast with the Bush-Obama response of ever-more government spending and debt, Harding had federal spending cut in half between 1920 and 1922 and ultimately ran a surplus.
As a result, the recession that started in 1920 ended before 1923. Lower taxes and reduced regulation helped America's economy quickly adjust after the war as entrepreneurs and capital were freed to create jobs and push the economy to recover. Harding's free market policies lead to the Roaring Twenties, known for technological advances, women's rights, the explosion of the middle class, and some of the most rapid economic growth in American history. Still, he is ranked as one of the worst presidents by many in academia's ivory tower
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/obama_should_channel_harding_n.htm


And this:
FDR extended a recession and made it into "The Great Recession"

Don't believe me?

3.In 1935, the Brookings Institution (left-leaning) delivered a 900-page report on the New Deal and the National Recovery Administration, concluding that “ on the whole it retarded recovery.” The Real Deal - Society and Culture - AEI



Now...aren't you glad to have come here for an education?

So the Fed and Warren Gamaliel Harding weren't able to stop the boom and bust cycles by indirect means apparently. That's where the New Deal came in.

 

[Agit8r]

view of the Founders, which is equality before the law.

Alrighty! Another steaming pile of bullshit!

"The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all; 2. By witholding unnecessary opportunities from a few to increase the inequality of property by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches; 3. By the silent operation of laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort; 4. By abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest at the expense of another; 5. By making one party a check on the other so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented nor their views accommodated. If this is not the language of reason, it is that of republicanism."
-- James Madison; from 'Parties' (1792)


"legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."
-- Thomas Jefferson; from letter to James Madison, (Oct. 28, 1785)

"Admitting that any annual sum, say, for instance, one thousand pounds, is necessary or sufficient for the support of a family, consequently the second thousand is of the nature of a luxury, the third still more so, and by proceeding on, we shall at last arrive at a sum that may not improperly be called a prohibitable luxury. It would be impolitic to set bounds to property acquired by industry, and therefore it is right to place the prohibition beyond the probable acquisition to which industry can extend; but there ought to be a limit to property or the accumulation of it by bequest."
-- Thomas Paine; from 'Rights of Man, Part the Second' (1792)

Try to use more civil language.

Not only are you stupid....but uncouth.
Ok...here's your remedial, boor.


From Glenn Greenwald's “With Liberty and Justice for Some; How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful”



1. The central principle of America’s founding was that the rule of law would be the prime equalizing force; the founders considered vast inequality in every other realm to be inevitable and even desirable…. A small number would of individuals would be naturally endowed with unique and extraordinary talents while most people, by definition, would be ordinary. So the American concept of liberty would be premised on the inevitability of outcome inequality- success of some, failure of others.

a. Law was the one exception; no inequality was tolerable. It was the sine qua non ensuring fairness.

2. The concept has made its way into our clichés: equal before the law, justice is blind, no man is above the law, a nation of laws, not men.

3. What the founders feared most was that a centralized federal government would erode liberty, forcibly override local rule, obliterate self-governance, and transgress every limit. The Constitution was the attempt to prevent that.

4. The founders recognized that, unless the law was applied equally, the Constitution would become merely a suggestion, compliance being optional.

5. The central dispute in Marbury v. Madison was whether the courts had the authority to subject officials in the executive branch to their rulings.

6. None of the founders believed in equality as a general proposition. The opposite is true: they considered inequality on every level, other than law, to be the natural, inevitable, and just state of affairs. Even Jefferson, one of the most egalitarian of the founders, held that there was “a natural aristocracy” among men, based on “virtue and talents.” This was not only natural, but desirable: “The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and the government of society.”(10)

a. Adams the same. “It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors an inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction.”

b. Thomas Paine loathed inherited titles and assigned status as a legally enforced inequality: “Nature is often giving to the world some extraordinary men who arrive at fame by merit and universal consent, such as Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, etc. They were truly great or noble. But when government sets up a manufactory of nobles, it is as absurd as if she undertook to manufacture wise men. Her nobles are all counterfeits.” http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/paine_dissertations_on_first_prin.html

And, as noted above, LIMITING the disparity of wealth, was an essential part of assuring equality before the law. But people being free to have limitless wealth and to buy politicians was what our revolutionary struggle was fought against.

"there are various ways in which the rich may oppress the poor; in which property may oppress liberty; and that the world is filled with examples. It is necessary that the poor should have a defence against the danger."
-- James Madison; Note to Speech on the Right of Suffrage (1821)

 

[Uncensored2008]

So the Fed and Warren Gamaliel Harding weren't able to stop the boom and bust cycles by indirect means apparently. That's where the New Deal came in.

And effectively stopped all speculation bubbles, inflationary cycles, and recessions.

We have not had a single recession since the "New Deal" was imposed....

 

[JoeNormal]

Abbie....outside of the "I felt I had to do it" argument for violating the United States Constitution, article I, section 8, and obviating the principles on which this nation was built, what is the excuse for not using the amendment process if the following were essential, and if "the American people overwhelmingly supported" same?


The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of the people to free, unimpeded travel.

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

I think article 1, section 8 pretty much spells it out. What would your proposed amendment say instead? Maybe use this as an exercise in constitutional law.

Are you saying that the above are part of the enumerated powers?

One of the few college level law courses I've ever taken clarified the notion that there are two types of laws that we live by - de jure and de facto. Enumerated powers are de jure law. The social contract is de facto.