tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8429570072441023296.post5258548329871701689..comments2023-09-07T06:36:59.520-04:00Comments on The Virtual Philosophy Club: Political Signs of the TimesIra Glicksteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10800080810596424897noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8429570072441023296.post-68656169178603721932010-10-17T22:03:55.600-04:002010-10-17T22:03:55.600-04:00Right on Mark!
All interest groups have to make p...Right on Mark!<br /><br />All interest groups have to make political contributions to both major parties because the government is now involved in virtually everything of importance in this country.<br /><br />We know that "power corrupts" and "absolute power corrupts absolutely" (Lord Acton). The government, at all levels, should be pared down to <b>absolutely <i>minimum</i> necessary</b> functions. Smaller federal government will unleash the state, county, city, and towns to do what is best for the people to whom they are closest. Less government involvement at all levels will unleash private capital and individual labor to do what they think is best in their spheres of knowledge and influence. <br /><br />Efficiency and hard work will be rewarded directly, with little need for political contributions (which amount to legal bribes). That will make us more efficient and help us compete in the globalized economy.<br /><br />Ira GlicksteinIra Glicksteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10800080810596424897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8429570072441023296.post-74956335875681883802010-10-16T22:38:04.166-04:002010-10-16T22:38:04.166-04:00There is so much money in national politics becaus...There is so much money in national politics because the stakes have become so high. With a properly circumscribed federal government - one that exercised far less control over the lives of its citizens; one that respected and adhered to the principle of subsidiarity - the stakes then would be much lower and the money correspondingly much less a factor. We do not have that type of federal government so the hope that we can tamp down on attempts to influence through tons of money it are futile. Madison understood this and it pervades all of his writing. What we have now with the "democratic" leviathan that we have called into being is basically Hobbes war of all against all played out in the electoral area. The stakes have become that high for each side.Mark Brintonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15719719742791035168noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8429570072441023296.post-24616406900808074712010-10-14T18:47:56.178-04:002010-10-14T18:47:56.178-04:00Howard, I would appreciate some help here. I'...Howard, I would appreciate some help here. I'm scheduled to give a talk about the tea party movement in few weeks. I've seen comments like yours on every liberal blog I've looked at, and from many other liberal reporters like Kate Zernike. What I'm unable to fathom is why as a tea party member or an ordinary citizen I should care. Is moveon.org less viabl cause George Soros is a billionaire? Should the American revolution be invalidated because Hayam Solomon provided funding? I just don't get the logical point.<br /> Why should I care that Nobel prize winning economist F.A. Hayek is dead and gone when I consider his notions? I seem to remember that you referenced his "Road to Serfdom" in a previous post. Could you explain why those on the left make this an issue rather than his ideas? Thans.joelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08770806025343971171noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8429570072441023296.post-42185628213384836102010-10-10T07:46:29.982-04:002010-10-10T07:46:29.982-04:00Money is the Mother's Milk of politics!.
Desp...Money is the <i>Mother's Milk</i> of politics!.<br /><br />Despite a high score on the qualification exam and an exemplary record as a letter carrier, and being elected head of the postal union in his local post office, my father had to make a contribution to the party in power to get a promotion to field foreman.<br /><br />So it should come as no surprise that the Tea Party movement has some fat cat supporters. The Koch brothers made their money suplying energy-related technology and services. They are life-long free market advocates and libertarians using their legally-earned money to press their views. <br /><br />Richard Mellon Scaife is a newspaper publisher and heir to the Mellon fortune and supports conservative causes.<br /> <br />Murdoch made his money in the publishing and broadcast industries by noticing and filling a void in an industry dominated by leftish coverage.<br /><br />They made their money legally and are entitled to spend it (after paying taxes) however they want.<br /><br />Do you think the Tea Party is disproportionately supported by monied interests compared to the Republican and Democratic parties? What proportion of funding do you think the established parties get from big labor and big industry.<br /><br />I believe the Tea Party movement gets a higher proportion of money and - much more important - feet on the ground at rallies, than the establishment. That will play out in the upcoming elections.<br /><br />Ira GlicksteinIra Glicksteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10800080810596424897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8429570072441023296.post-32989614196222419012010-10-09T21:40:50.055-04:002010-10-09T21:40:50.055-04:00Ira, you are really being naïve and credulous to t...Ira, you are really being naïve and credulous to think of the Tea Party as just a grass roots movement. There are more careful studies of the Tea Party. Follow the money!<br /><br />Dick Armey, former Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives, spent much of the last year promoting the new movement through <i>FreedomWorks</i>, an organization he helped to create with Scaife and Koch money. Richard Mellon Scaife’s wealth was inherited from the Mellon industrial, oil, uranium and banking fortune. Koch Industries is the largest privately owned company in the United States. Rupert Murdoch is also in the act with the Tea Party being opportunistically promoted by Fox News. <br /><br />Alan Brinkley, professor of history at Columbia, says, “We should not be surprised that so many Americans are angry. Almost four decades of growing inequality have left most of them no better off than they were in 1970, and many worse off. The recklessness and greed of much of the financial world — the principal causes of the crisis — have done far more damage than taxes or the deficit. The corruption and dysfunction of Congress and much of the rest of the government have disillusioned many. The Tea Partiers are right to be angry. But the objects of their outcries — taxes, deficits, immigration and supposed violations of the Constitution — are of far less consequence than the great failures that plague the nation.” <br /><br />Jill Lepore, a historian of the American Revolution and a staff writer at The New Yorker, has written a brief but valuable book, <i>The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American History</i>. Contrary to Justice Scalia’s conservative view of the Constitution as an immutable “dead document,” Jefferson insisted that “laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.” Madison asked in Federalist 14, “Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience?”<br /><br /> In her book, <i>Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America</i>, Kate Zernike did not find bigotry, or racism openly expressed, but she found, “there are many self-identified Tea Partiers who detest immigration and fear the prospect of an America in which white people will be a minority. Older white men, who seem to constitute the majority of the movement, often rally around the cry ‘Take Back Our Country.’ There is little doubt as to whom they wish to take the country back from.”<br /><br />HowardHoward Patteehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12181204289094297715noreply@blogger.com