Check out this video from YouTube. Nice picture of the palettes of money that came from YOUR tax dollars to Halliburton directly to....where exactly? This video says it was 12 billion but I have read that it was more like 9 billion dollars that basically vanished.
Let's hear it, conservatives. Since you like to bitch about tax dollars being wasted on all those lazy poor people, how do you feel about it being wasted on lazy rich people?
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Your Tax Dollars
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I’m off hiatus and back in the political saddle, keeping tabs on the fringe…looks like quite a ruckus there in the last few posts. I’ve been reading a bit from time to time, but really, who has time to get into it? But I have taken a number of things from the latest posts and created a therapeutic writing exercise for myself. And, it was a lot of fun, in a silly kind of way.
(Side note: Mark, you’ll be happy to know that I can now bash President Bush with the best of them. But don’t get all giddy just yet; I’m not switching sides of the isle, just time for a true conservative to take the helm. And, sorry but this post has almost nothing to do with the thread, but I don’t think you’re keen on guest columnists with differing views unless they’re different views on how conservatives are really the devil, so I thought I’d just slip in it here.)
So without further ado, here’s –Just Dave: Unofficial Guest Columnist
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Civil War Redux
I have a very juvenile habit of hypothesizing on strange things. Okay, I have lots of juvenile habits. But the relevant one today is actually brought on by Johnwaxey and a couple others who’ve mentioned references to the French Revolution, I guess in reference to it happening here. And ironically, it’s something I’ve been musing about for years now. An American Civil War; could it happen again?
Due to the polarization of this country, this has been on my mind since before the last presidential election. As President Bush was defeating Kerry, liberals all over the fruited plain were caterwauling about how they’re going to just up and leave the country if Bush wins. Canada was opening its doors. Sadly, they did not hold true to their worlds. Then talk came of seceding from the Union, ala the origins of the first civil war and some even went as far as to mention the “R” word. Unable to pull themselves out of the local coffee shop, active revolution did not happen either.
But could it happen? And if it did, what would be the outcome? I’m no historian (actually I was only a couple classes shy of a history minor and read history diligently), but, generally speaking, cultural revolutions tend to be more violent compared to say, political ones. People have an ax to grind and it’s not just about winning power in the gov’t, they want to exact a bit of revenge and the previous ruling class, ala the French & Russian Revolutions. Johnwaxey mentioned it himself…musing about President and Mrs. Bush being treated to the same fate as Mussolini and his girlfriend (Mussolini deserved what he got, but I don’t know enough about her). Then another reader mentions it. Hmm, could be a trend…
But I don’t think a 2nd American Civil War would follow the models of either the French or Russian Revolutions. I think, at least from the left’s perspective, it would certainly be a cultural revolution as they feel it’ much more of a class based society than the right. Although there certainly are class distinctions here, the right doesn’t dwell on it as much.
Tale of the Tape: So how would the teams be divided up?
Here I can’t equate it to the French or Russian revolutions with peasant uprisings, led by non-peasants like Lenin & Trotsky. There are so many millionaire/billionaire liberals that it just doesn’t fit those profiles. Reviewing a US red state vs. blue state map, those “peasant” groups revolting in the French or Russian revolutions are actually the ones who’d be on our current government’s side, since in modern day America, the rural populace is the more conservative. The blue dots on the map are just that, dots (cities) in a sea of red.
Numbers-wise, if the last several elections are any indication, it’s about evenly split. (For the sake of argument, we’ll say that people wouldn’t change sides simply out of concern to keep the Union together, but if some did want to keep the status quo, the right would gain not the left.)
Due to that 50/50 demographic, I can’t see the teams separating out state-by-state, but that’s a fun thought experiment, isn’t it?
I know, I know, North Carolina doesn't seem like much at first glance, but they stack up pretty well against, say, Delaware and Maryland. And, yeah, Ohio is sort of a swing state, but I'd pick them over Connecticut any day of the week. I don't know how fired up the Floridians would be, but if it came to it, there’s enough real people in the pan-handle to take care of California once half California’s populace flees back across the border. Minnesota vs. Wisconsin would finally be the border battle we’ve always wanted and, I’m sorry to say, Packer-backers are a whole lot heartier than fair-weather Vikings fans. And, of course, there are the stalwart Texans and the entire South for that matter. Whenever it's go-time the drawl-speaking crowd rolls up its sleeves and seems to lead the way.
So if it’s go-time for an all-out holy war between the Right and Left, how will it pan out once the rumble starts?
Well, not so well for you folks I’m thinking… I don't know how the left could manage it, exactly. You have the manpower, but lack the means and the will.
I see the nose-ringed protestors almost daily, and even while approaching 40, I’d take an old army sharp-shooter like myself over of the local hippies. The big corn-fed boys from Nebraska are going to whoop some serious ass over the coffee house philosophy debaters. And I’ll take our boys from Texas over metro-sexuals from the Upper West Side any day of the week. Heck, some users actually post pictures of themselves here…and let’s face it, Phil from Minnetonka’s pic doesn’t impress me as a guy likely to do well in a scrap.
And let me tell you something: this title fight goes from ten rounds to one if the military isn’t dissolved prior. Conservatively speaking, the military is 75% right of center and that 25% are the deserters only in it for the college tuition. But, let’s say, just to be fair, the military is dissolved and those chaps went home prior to the onset of fighting so no organized military was involved…just them fighting independently.
We know that once the death toll hits 1,000, or some other pre-defined magic number, liberals will say it’s too hard and look to withdraw.
We know Ted Kennedy will micro-manage those 5 non-conservative generals.
We know you’ll be hamstrung waiting on your “notes of protest” against us to pass thru the UN; which will require Hans Blix to study us for a couple decades first before deciding on the language to be used in the petition going to the Security Council…where Russia will veto it, because, Russia being Russia will veto anything coming out of the US.
We know that you’ll not use every means at your disposal to fight, because you’ll be worried that Sweden or the Maldives might not consider it nice.
We’ll have the New York Times on our side because they’ll constantly be undermining your intelligence apparatus in each publication out of fear of one day losing some perceived ‘right’.
We have over 100 million guns in this country. And of that number, liberals own about 6.
We've got millions of very smart people who know how to MacGyver all sorts of cool stuff and who know how to live off the land. The left doesn’t produce much, so they’ll have supply issues from the onset because, let’s face it, they’re much better at living off the wealth and hard work of others…you only need to look over the last posts on that issue.
And, now that you mention it; who's supplying the liberal blue dots to begin with? Right now, if you subtract the red parts, the liberal world cannot even feed itself. It's not like they have sufficient agriculture and industry to keep fighting for long.
They’ll also have less people to tax too, so they’ll have money issues right off.
Even in the "best case" scenario for Team Liberal, say the entire liberal population rises up and even wins some battles. Conservatives would disperse into the hills and become a never-ending sprinkler system of whoop-ass. We know how you hate “insurgencies”, so even if we had that set back, it wouldn’t take long until you capitulated or lost sight of the prize once the next season of American Idol came on.
But, remember, this would be the most favorable scenario for the liberal crowd. In reality, I’m thinking the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy crowd would say, "I'll pass on this war, catch me at the next one" once confronted by the Cornhusker offensive line. In fact, some liberals would probably take our side, fear being a motivating factor.
I'm no historian, but it seems to me that even without nuclear weapons or our organized military, we would defeat the liberal army. We'd need to be convinced that our survival was on the line and be thus committed to total war like we were during WWII. But that's sort of implied when you see what nations look like when liberals reach the zenith of their power…The Red Terror, The Killing Fields, The Cultural Revolution, Cuba’s gulags, and National Socialists (Nazis, in case you forgot, were a bastardized form of socialist system).
As a practical matter, I can’t believe the liberal agenda can be achieved through an all-out battle between us vs. them. Civil war would be the worst thing for the liberal cause. It’s one thing if this relatively small horde of zealots were in pursuit of something achievable. You know, if their goal were simply to get our troops out of the Middle East and keep them in useless places like Germany and Iceland. But to take it to a revolutionary level would wake a sleeping giant that until then was content to try and fight them off quietly at the ballet box.
This doesn't mean these daft people aren't dangerously bad for America. They are. But, if you take them at their word and deed, they wish to achieve an ultimate goal and bring about a total change from capitalist democracy and a banning of the Christian faith. They’ve been doing it in micro-bits for years; take down that religious symbol here, remove free speech there, take away that person’s land here, cut defense there, increase entitlements here, decrease the birthrate there, make up a “right” here and there when you need one… They are tactically and strategically dangerous, killing America with tiny little moves. Taking it to the revolutionary level would be suicide; roughly the equivalent of the terrorist leaders actually following their stated wish for open war; they’re better at hit-and-run tactics and wouldn’t last a second in straight up fighting.
So, what's my point? Simple: These people who consider revolution a viable option are frickin' nuts. If they were drinking when they’re writing, I'd say they were talking with their beer muscles. This is why I find these references about armed revolution so bizarre and this is a juvenile, although therapeutic line of inquiry. On a scale of seriousness, hypothesizing on a war of conservative vs. liberal ranks slightly higher than asking who's stronger, Superman or the Hulk. I would think liberals are flat out hilarious, except that I believe the gov’t is established to preserve our rights, not restrict them and that every so often a liberal government reaches that zenith and if they do, we’ll be very, very sorry. And we must not let that ever happen here.
Hey Dave,
Welcome back. I missed you. I hope you stick around for awhile as I will be unveiling my take on all the potential candidates for 2008. You will be surprised at who I like and dislike.
I like what you wrote. It made me think about the friends who I consider "liberal" and the ones I consider "conservative." It seems muddled right now and the idea of a civil war between the left and the right seems unlikely. I see conservatives saying and doing things that I like and I see liberals doing things I don't like. There seems to be more of a run to the middle but hey, that's just my opinion.
JustDave,
It is good to have you back... and like Markadelphia, I like what you wrote. Just to clarify my position, revolution does not typically start between political poles, it is fed by those poles though. It starts with oppression of a minority whether it is religious or economic and it escalates from there. Sometimes it becomes violent (in many other countries it has taken that route) other times it has not such as been the case in these United States. The outcome of such revolutions is inevitably change, sometimes short-lived, sometimes not. My whole point was that many wealthy people do not believe that any kind of revolution could be the direct result of their stock options plan or the fact that they make considerably more money than most people or that they have health insurance.
The growing wealth gap is not going unnoticed, the sprouting up of gated communities, the raising of taxes in selected portions of communities, the attention to things like road maintenance in wealthy neighborhoods or the fact that police and EMT visits are rare to certain areas is obvious. All it takes is a match ...say a white police officer beating a black man to death...ensuing protests that lead to riots and before long, there are uninvited visitors at Meadowood Scenic Hills Community. It is sadly tragic that most people think that "race" is the problem.
I also find it amusing that some people who read this blog think that if the richest 10% get to keep their hard earned money, that they will too. My guess is that the people who read this blog are not in the class of people I am talking about. Being in the situation I am in (a silly ironic one actually), I converse regularly with these wealthy people who make more than anyone else. They have resources WAY above what anyone I know has to KEEP the money they have. They have financial advisors, tax lawyers, Ivy League educations, a financial base that can buy their way into loopholes in the tax laws. If you have those options too, then lucky you. I don't and the majority of people out there do not either. SO if you think that defending their position is going to afford you more take-home pay, you are sorely mistaken. In my opinion, it is better to afford the middle and lower class people in this country more charity than to defend those that you will never be like, or even accepted by.
True, revolution is not necessarily brought on by polar opposites, but it was for the French & Russians. But, that’s where we differ…I (and I dare say conservatives at large) don’t believe the poor by and large are being oppressed in America today.
But why I don’t think conservatives will embrace your full philosophy is that it’s too darn like theft. “I’m poor and you’re not and you’re not giving me your money so I’ll become violent and take it.” In an unstructured, disorganized society like Zimbabwe (thanks to Mugabe), this kind of mentality can manifest into violent revolution. But in America, I think the upper and middle classes, for the most part, will not bow to this kind of pressure from the poor. And organized revolution could not happen because of it.
I have to admit it, I agree with you on one point. Many people simply do not think their own wealth will (or should) produce violent results. I think they (and I) believe this because, in a civilized society, we believe that regardless of one’s private circumstances (which should be just that, private), one will conduct oneself in a civilized manner.
I think it is the moral decay of society that leads to this kind of thinking. I do pretty well for myself now, but grew up poor as a church mouse and had some very hard times right after college. But it did not even enter my mind that I was owed anything from someone who was smarter or didn’t make the bad decisions I made. And I certainly wouldn’t have turned to violence to get my way. I never took charity because I’m hard-headed and have personal issues with it, but there’s program after program out there for the poor so there’s no reason they need to steal. And hospitals rarely turn away someone in dire need. The crime rate didn’t go up dramatically during the depression and if you look at what is defined as poor now days, I think the people living during the depression would say that our poor today are pretty well off. We’re just a little spoiled with how well off as a nation we truly are.
My old business partner was from South Africa, so I learned a lot about gated communities. But if you live in a violent community and can’t leave, that’s what you do. He was fortunate and got away to London because he didn’t want to raise his son in that environment. But what happens when everyone essentially jumps ship? Then those “no-go” areas develop in cites where even the police and emergency vehicles won’t go because it’s anarchy there and not safe. …who can blame them? This is a phenomenon in France, Scandinavia and other areas now and large scale social programs didn’t help them.
Note: I would never say that everyone gets to keep “all” their money. Taxes are a necessity. But if I walk into a grocery store to buy a gallon of milk, I shouldn’t have to pay more for it simply because of my financial situation.
I’m all for doing away with those loop holes. It’s shameful that we have volume upon volume of taxes laws. Loopholes come because of the unnecessary complexity of our tax system. We have the most complicated tax system in the world. Did you know there are only 2 countries in the world that tax you regardless of where you make your income? I.e. if I’m a Brit and live in Brazil, the UK will say that as long as I’m paying taxes someone, they’re ok with it. Those 2 countries are Bolivia and America. I’m not so sure about a pure flat tax, but a pure consumption tax sounds appealing at first glance. But the current system isn’t right. …but I could go on about that for days…
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