[ExI] To Arms!

[Lee Corbin]

Dagon writes

> Amazingly enough, irregardless of what labels I may or not be 
> susceptible to, I agree. Capitalism is the
> only default system, in a world where any minority of peoples will 
> always work to assert its power and
> discount any other people, ideology or consideration...
> 
> However, I add  - if capitalim is the free and rational exchange and 
> implementation of ideas, resources, intelligence,
> discourse, goods and natural means, according to supply and demand, I 
> also would regard the interests
> of people as subject to free market considerations. If we are free to 
> convene in religious worship or
> political debate or scientific study or journalistic reporting under a 
> free and capitalism paradigm,  we are
> also free to unionize. Or negotiate new social contracts. Or cancel 
> outdated contracts. Or establish legality
> and legality, Or allow minorities to set up non-contradictory  enclaves 
> to serve their own needs. Or set
> up binding minima to what we consider humane treatment. Or establish 
> basic human rights. This is a
> free market of ideas, and one Idea I cherish is the ideal of making sure 
> people have a chance to grow
> beyond the wretched state of their biology, and the natural inclination 
> of his fellow human to exploit him
> as cattle.

Yes, collectively we are free to embrace any delusional
system we like. And, I guess that it's good that we are.
But this places a huge burden on human judgment and
intelligence, and often many cultures haven't really
been up to the task of choosing wisely.

There have been some cultures that did make very wise
choices along these lines, and did institute relatively
effective institutions and public policies. I think of
Rome before 100 BC and the United States, from 1789
to 1855.

> Again, I do not in any way oppose what you say. Even though conditions 
> here are universally far better, livable and
> civilized than in gang-ridden and destitute squallor of LA inner cities, 
> I itch to take up whatever legal arms I can and
> lash out at what I regard as evil. And in fact, I do. I won't give you 
> specifics but I can get donwright vicious when I
> see something wrong,

Er, I hope have done nothing to offend you  :-)   I take it
back, if I have.  :-)

> whether it is parents that neglect their children, 
> or a spouse that abuses his (or her) weaker
> mate. And I have acted, and it can be asserted that in those cases 
> people died of what I did. Yes, I take
> responsibility, I took action, situations perceptibly changed and those 
> I regard(ed) as guilty, they literally entered
> situations that culminated in death.
> 
> What I won't do, ever, never, under no circumstances, is kill another 
> human being, or call for any group of people to
> kill another human being.

Ah, that's a relief. Now I can go back to blasting you.

> Changing conditions that cause a human to die, 
> is one thing, and it is what it is. To
> actually cause death, causally, I do not. It is an arbitrary distinction 
> but it has meaning for me.

For what it's worth, it's not at all an arbitrary
distinction to me. To me, it's a totally objective
situation: some people have died, and quite a number
have---as of this writing---not died. (Yes, there
are borderline cases.)

>         This week the EU president said : America is on the road to Hell
>         <http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2214443/posts>.
> 
> 
>     The EU president is entirely correct. The policies favored
>     by the Democrats and Obama (which are exactly the same
>     policies that would have been followed by McCain and the
>     republicans) ignore the principles of government non-intervention
>     and the unconstrained operation of the free market. If companies
>     fail, then they fail, the idea of being "too big to fail" being
>     simply a failure to admit that short term severe pain leading
>     back to health is better than protracted (but less severe)
>     pain leading to total government regulation of everything.
> 
> I call upon you, if you have the courage as a human being, to end this 
> situation. You fill in what I mean, according to your intellect and wisdom.

Attempting to overthrow the government of the U.S.
is a crime, a law enacted when the U.S. was worried to
death about (actually real and ongoing) Soviet infiltration.
But maybe I'm not pondering what you're pondering at all.

> I call upon you to end the situation where 
> two almost equal spouses in a rotten
> marriage are strangling each other. Both their necks are blue and 
> swollen, both their faces scared into a patchwork
> of crisscrossing welts. Both are slowly dying.

Michelle and Barack are too darkly shaded for me to
see the blue and swollen patchwork to which you refer.

> If you are not a moral coward, a hypocrite, or a demagogue - I you have 

I have to be at least one of those, I am sorry to admit

> the nerve, I call upon you to do whatever
> it takes to end your two-party system. Do your part to end the duality 
> that has become america. This change will
> probably end up doing me more worse than good. This change will almost 
> certainly end the imperial,
> cancerous hubris in US society.

This hubris, and all these idiotic policy decisions---which
the U.S. has been getting away with since WWI---are solely
made possible by all you people outside the U.S. continuing
to buy our bonds! Fools. See? The U.S. Treasury is making
all your investments valueless, heh, heh, heh. (Unfortunately,
it is also severely punishing prudent savers like me.)

> ...people's movements. What you then do
> (and this would be a novel concept in US thinking) is vote, those 
> parties form a coalition, and those coalitions
> rule under an elected president.
> 
> Anyone who thinks this won't work, I would suspect of being an 
> undemocratic swine,

Oh, go ahead. Tell us what you really think.

> and I don't like those, for
> reasons above - and in the current US, both liberals and conservatives 
> have delusions of grandeur, empowered
> by the delusion their chosen patriarch can have dictatorial powers for 
> 4-8 years, and "get the job done".
> 
> If you prefer that, go on strangling. My estimate stands - civil war in 
> the US and millions dead before 2025.

Nah. By then the U.S. will have completed the conversion
to third-world status, with prosperous middle class types
in the small, small minority---a minority too small to
wage civil war.

Since 1865, the U.S. and Canada have been remarkably
peaceful. Has any area this large in the history of
the world been without war and serious starvation?

No, this laid-back attitude will doubtless continue.
Because almost everyone here puts money above everything,
we have been spared Europe's horrors and tragedies.

Lee

> 
> It is an immature, condescending, "winner takes all" system. It is a 
> system that works to fulminate a top dog, who then
> snarls the deckhands into submission and pays of allies. It is imperial 
> Rome all over again, a system to create
> bubble after bubble, burst after burst. It is what Naome Wolf calls 
> "disaster capitalism".
> 
> And I despise it, with every fiber of my being.