"Freedom" thread or something

The T wrote: ^Not good. Because people should do whatever the hell they want. But at the same time, I'm not deciding who to vote for based on their positions of legalization of pot.

Atavachron wrote: George W. Bush had desperately poor judgment, and it had disastrous results.  True I'm not happy with Obama's pot stance which is incongruous with his other social positions, but to defend W's foreign policy is simply a lost cause.   He may have been a good man and maybe even a thoughtful one, but he was not insightful, and that's bad news if you're President.   Particularly when you have hawkish advisers giving you equally poorly-perceived information.   It was a very bad recipe.

But Bush isn't running for office, is he? 

Atavachron wrote: George W. Bush had desperately poor judgment, and it had disastrous results.  True I'm not happy with Obama's pot stance which is incongruous with his other social positions, but to defend W's foreign policy is simply a lost cause.   He may have been a good man and maybe even a thoughtful one, but he was not insightful, and that's bad news if you're President.   Particularly when you have hawkish advisers giving you equally poorly-perceived information.   It was a very bad recipe.

 

thellama73 wrote: Remember Code Pink? Haven't heard a peep out of them lately.

stonebeard wrote: Or I suppose you can just oppose taxation all together, as many here do. Let me know how that works out.

That's kind of a snarky thing to say. Are you implying that it's stupid to oppose policies just because they are unlikely to go away? In that case, all the anti-war people are equally stupid. Or is the implication that if we got what we asked for, iwe wouldn't be happy with it? If so, I dispute that as well.

manofmystery wrote: The T wrote: ^Not good. Because people should do whatever the hell they want. But at the same time, I'm not deciding who to vote for based on their positions of legalization of pot.     You don't have to: Obama and Romney share that position, as well.  Obama has been absolutely brutal when it comes to prosecuting the drug war.  Guess when you publicly joke about how cool it was that you used to toke up, though, all the destroying of innocent users lives you're doing is acceptable.   To say Obama has been better on foreign policy than W was is also complete bullsh*t.  He's kept W's foreign policy plus tripled the troups in Afghanistan, got involved in Libya, Yemen, and Uganda, hell several more countries if you count his "we'll send a drone anywhere we damn well please" policy which also targets American's for assassination (some of them teenage picnicers) on his presidential "kill list" (seems like the press would've been all over W for something like that), strengthened the Patriot Act while adding on NDAA, making the entire county officially a warzone, for good measure.   After it was clear that Ron Paul would not be nominated I was torn between writing him in in November or throwing my support behind Gary Johnson.  A vote for Johnson would do more good than a write-in, though, as write-ins aren't counted.  I like Gov. Johnson and his campaign, anyway, and would sure as hell love to see him cost Romney several important states.

I understand the principled act of writing in Paul or of voting for Johnson. I don't want Obama to be reelected though.  

The T wrote: I understand the principled act of writing in Paul or of voting for Johnson. I don't want Obama to be reelected though.

That's how I feel as well. Romney leaves a lot to be desired, but I honestly believe that four years under him would be vastly better than another four years under Obama.

stonebeard wrote: I think discussions with diehard libertarians can be a little bit over-the-top at times though. 100% freedom all the time, no government at all, taxation is one of the worst things ever, etc. I understand a lot of the reasons behind why freedom and liberty are good things, but I don't recognize that they're always the best things to strive for in all circumstances. I rather like Western society, from the American system to the more-socialist European systems. If anything I'd rather deal with more taxation and get a better quality of life out of it that deal with the perils of no taxation. I guess that might makes me a pariah. But that doesn't mean I'm satisfied with how our money is spent. That's the discussion I'd rather have. Let's talk about (in a broader sense talking as a culture) about how to spend the money we collect, not the distraction of whether we should be collecting at all.

You seem to do that to yourself since you're imposing foreign assumptions on our positions. The idea that taxation could lead to an aggregate increase of the quality of life is dubious.

More importantly, I think it's absurd that you call the amount of taxation a mere distraction. Why would any rational discourse assume a certain amount of money to be collected only to discuss the uses of such funds? How would you even set the amount? The very idea of a use of funds cannot exist independently from the amount of collection. Certain uses will require more taxation. Other uses will call for less taxation (unless we mean to engage in taxation qua taxation). The central problem with taxation from a libertarian viewpoint, by my judgement, is not that it's immoral to collect taxes nor that tax money often finds itself wasted on meaningless work projects and blowing people to smithereens for reasons which have become so obvious through their vacuity that discussions of "how" and "why" need never trouble the senescent conscious of political pundits. The more fundamental issue to me is that the appropriate uses of the money cannot even be properly ascertained and the result of the erroneous allocations are so pernicious that the devastating collapses are so obscured from the cause that a solution to the issue never comes and instead becomes a game of economic depressive hot potato passed from one generation to the next until eventually biological reasons implore us to accept, to preserve our own sanity, the worsening conditions as merely a incorrigible physical law meant simply to be observed rather than explained or changed.




Edited by Equality 7-2521 - September 05 2012 at 11:11

manofmystery wrote: Atavachron wrote: George W. Bush had desperately poor judgment, and it had disastrous results.  True I'm not happy with Obama's pot stance which is incongruous with his other social positions, but to defend W's foreign policy is simply a lost cause.   He may have been a good man and maybe even a thoughtful one, but he was not insightful, and that's bad news if you're President.   Particularly when you have hawkish advisers giving you equally poorly-perceived information.   It was a very bad recipe.   I'm not defending W' foreign policy.  I'm pointing out that you're defending it, through Obama.  Obama's foreign policy has been the stuff of Dick Cheney's wet dreams.  What he hasn't kept the same he's made worse.

That must be why Cheney has called Obama "a disaster".   I'm defending nothing, just making observations.






Edited by Atavachron - September 05 2012 at 17:43