dear mr seamus, i don't believe the word sheep ranks up their with buckshit like cathrine keeps saying , but this is good as reason as anything to turn the heat down, if you were really ingoring me like you say you are why do you keep posting replys to all my post , and threating my status on this board. i'm only expressing my point of view .

What we want at TVNL is intelligent debate, not just rant. It has nothing to do with handling what you call "heat." Mister, you aren't even WARM! So far, we've not had intelligent debate here from any right wingnut, including you, and especially YOU. My 9 year old granddaughter does a better job of writing and spelling than you do. You can't spell, you can't type, your use of the English language is atrocious. Yet, you expect us to listen to you, read all of your verbal vomit, and actually respect you.

You won't debate the points that are precisely pointed out to you, and when you're asked for references to your rants, you never deliver anything except more of the same garbage. You only provide entertainment for us for a short while, and then you quickly become boring. Read that again...YOU NEVER DELIVER what is necessary to be a credible contributer to any community such as this.

Get a good dictionary, learn to use the edit button, and check your spelling and grammar before you venture into enemy territory. In other words, read Seamus's responses carefully. There is good advice in there for you.

Catherine

i quote from jesse"I am going to say this once. You are welcomed to share your opinions regardless of what they are. " why won't you people let me do this without threating me and slinging mud at me. but i guess because all the people hurling insults at me are on your side your not going to tell them anything. don't be so one sided, and why do you insist on pointing out my spelling problem , i don't care jesse has all kind of mispelt words on this site do you tell him anything.

there you go again cathrine hurling more insults, didn't you listen to anything seamus said. if you have something you want to discuss get to the point and stop hurling insults. also i really don't care about my spelling, like this is a real formal forum. are you the spell checker on this forum .

I never threatened your status on this board. I pointed out a fact. You're on track to get banned. You've done that all by yourself. You don't need any help there. Keep on doing what you're doing and you'll get banned. It's not a threat. I can't ban you. Only you can stop that. I can't stop it.

I never said that I'd ignore you. I said that there was nothing that we can say that you'll accept.



How do you get "Let's ignore him" or "I'll ignore Mr. Buckshot" out of that?

Don't tell me... It's liberal spin, right? No, better yet, Michael Moore is telling me though my handy dandy trusty liberal transmitter that's implanted in my brain. Is that it?

you said a mouthfull champ..

and i quote you". In your case I ignore them"

And where would that be?

Do you mean this?



You clearly took what I had said out of context my friend. I said that I ignore your insults.

What you did was misleading. You are using quotes out of context to infer something outside of the original meaning.

Although the terms have become confused in current usage, just for the record...

Liberals believe in *liberal government*. They stand by the reasoning that there is an inherent social contract between the government and the people, and the government has certain social responsibilities to the people. Thus they are for more laws, protectionism, tarriffs, social programs (and the taxes that pay for them). Thus COMMUNISM is very liberal, with a stron centralized government that controls all aspects of the society

Conservatives would say that government is in place to protect individual rights. They are for *conservative amounts* of government. Few laws, hands off policies, minimal social programs (and taxes), strong protection of freedoms. Free Market Capitalism is an example of conservative government.

Jefferson, an anarchist, would be a CONSERVATIVE. He wanted the Government of the US to be all but non-existent, only providing a basic framework for individual expression, and he posited that in a well educated and moral society, a largely de-centralized or, in the ideal, no government at all is possible.

Hamilton would be considered, historically, a LIBERAL, he wanted to institute Merchantilism, strong protective tariffs, social programs for infrastructure (given to his cronies) paid by taxes. He advocated a strong centralized government that controled all aspects of life.

When did they stop teaching civics?

As I have stated before the terms "liberal" and "conservative" have been so twisted and misused over the years as to be non-sensical. Both Jefferson and Hamilton could be said to be both liberal on some issues and conservative on other issues in the modern sense of these terms.

Instead, I suggest the use of the terms progressive and regressive.

progressive adj advancing, improving, proceeding by degrees, aiming at reforms; denoting a broadly liberal Progressive party. *n a person who believes in moderate political change, esp social improvement by government action

regress v to move backward; to revert to a former condition.-regressive adj.

regression n the act of regressing; a relapse, reversion; return to an earlier time or stage; (psychoanal) a retreat of personality.


I think those terms more clearly define the two main streams of thought in our country today.

I couldn't agree more!

Conservative and liberal no longer represent the thoughts they are intended to. By classical definition, Bush is a Liberal, and there are few, if any, true Conservatives anymore.

Sadly, *regressive* seems a harsh term to me. I am a classical conservative (an anarchist, if you will) so where would I fit into your scheme? Free Market is NOT a repressive thought, and in fact is very innovative.

I offer a thing I saw on the web a whiole ago that divides the politcal spectrum not into *right* and *left* on a one dimensional line, but a 2 dimensional graph that has *right* and *left* on one scale and *authoritarian* and *libertarian* on the other.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

Personally, I feel that the "free market" as it applies to the corporate globalism of today is regressive in practice, if not intent. It has produced a worldwide race to the bottom of wages and living conditions for today's workers. We are now seeing the disparity of incomes between the haves and have nots approaching that of the days of the robber barons at the turn of the century. The labor movement and the social safety net, which together produced the first true large middle class, is being destroyed.

Socially, our rights to privacy and free speech are under attack from the regressive right wing. Regressives are emasculating the court system in order to pursue their unConstitutional objectives.

IMHO, it is NOT free market that led to any of this. Multinational Corporatism is NOT free market capitalism, it is merchantilism. So I would tend to be of the opinion that merchantilism caused all the ills you place on a free market. The fact is in a corporate merchantilist society is is no free market. For instance, no one can compete with WalMart. Americans think corps are people and have rights, this is not true. In fact, for a VERY long time corps were only slightly better than slumlords and had less than no rights, even lifespans (20 years I believe). In a FREE market anyone can bring a product to market, patents would only be good for the life of their inventer and then become public domain, thus allowing PROGRESS as technology becomes public *open source* resources to be used by anyone. Socialism and Communism have had their try, and they have both failed. They both inhibit innovation and growth. Merchantilism is failing before our eyes for different reasons. Eventually the top heavy merchantilist society has no consumer base and thus no marketplace, and innovation, no matter how active, is meaningless because no one can afford it.

That free market needs to deal with the issue of corporate merchantilism as an abuse of the market is completely seperate from the advantages of capitalism and free market economics.

Wow, what advantages has capitalism given? It is no better than the bastardised form that communism took on. It is the rapacious progenitor of this communist form of mercantile development, which has left the world reeling and stopped the progress of evolution. The corporate lifespan you spoke of was always realligning and retooling itself through progress and adaptation. This has always meant labour suffers. New technology, better machines, can always replace the bottom line- wages. You develop mega-plants where there are fewer workers doing less skilled jobs by buying the machinery that saves you money as an employer, from the moment these machines start to "work". No questions, no union, no strikes, 24/7. No problem.

This is the problem with Wal Mart as well. You concentrate products in one store, a variety of choices that consumers want, pay employees wages close to the poverty line, increase the desperation of employees in all sectors of the economy by making living wages highly competitive, increasing the available work force, lower wages in all sectors, buy goods from third world countries and blame it on a global marketplace that has made the worker and his demands seem like the greedy one. No questions, no union, no strikes, almost 24/7. No problem.

By doing this, you have made people more desperate so they are forced to take low paying jobs to buy the goods from around the world, and undermine the domestic industries as well as lose real wage jobs, force even the Wal Mart employees to shop at Wal Mart to support the very situation that has placed them in this dilemma. Low wages and unskilled nowhere jobs. All this so Wal Mart managers, higher ups and bottom line stock holders (People of wealth) can garner those higher wages while they crack the whip of production on a poorly trained, ungrateful, minimal staff that knows little about their area of work and could care less about their job and service they provide. A far cry from the way it was when the owner was in the store and served the public. This is the rub though- if they don't perform up to the standards and demands of their supervisory staff, then they can get fired, as there is always someone desperate enough to take their place. It's alimental and self feeding. That is capitalism in a nutshell. We benefit from the philosophy of capitalism and its eventual and inevitable progression by being used as machinery, while the corporations become entrenched in the philosophies of communist economics, where the worker is the means of production for the corporation/country and benefits those who rule. Who says communism in its true form failed. In the higher echelons, it is used all the time. No wonder we are taught to hate socialism and communism as it is the game our leaders play. Why would they want to share the wealth. Make us grovel and scramble and blame us for our condition, while the hegemonic oligarchy benefits from capitalising on the poor and desperate, who would sell their souls for a piece of bread when starving. It truly is a DO.g's life.

This is truly a regressive de-evolutionary society. Back back to the dark ages with them!

On Nov. 21, 1864 President Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Colonel William F. Elkins.

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war."

He was dead on April 15, 1865. Seems his prophecy was far seeing and precise. Capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction, because it cares not for people, land, sea or air in its growth and consumption. Money is its fuel and in the end it is just worthless paper that you can't even eat.

In that sense, about capitalism, I agree with you. We are undermined by our own greed and only our leaders seem to profit from it. Our means to remain first world is disappearing quickly. But I don't see the advantages to capitalism, as it spawned the potential for the present condition. They're so intertwined(free market economics, corporate merchantilism and capitalism) as to be virtually indiscernable. This is an example of the means(capitalism) justifying our ends.(corporatism) Human compassion is a lost element that needs to be equated in. But such is the world of money. It has no heart or feelings.

Excellent essay DO.g. You hit the nail on the head.

However, there is an answer to the problems caused by unfettered capitalism. Regulation. We need to reinstitute and reinforce the anti-trust, workers rights, and labor laws which saved our country and led to the most spectacular growth in the history of mankind. We also need to abandon the ridiculous trade agreements which benefit only the global corporatists, while destroying jobs in industrial countries, and taking advantage of near slave labor in developing countries.

Capitalism, like any game, must have fair rules, which are strictly enforced, for the betterment of all the players. The free market law of the jungle is no way for civilized people to live.