President Bush are the best speaker ever.

oh, LOL sorry. Thats a term Ive heard used by them. Please accept my apologies.

The terminology we have at our disposal really sucks doesn't it?

Left, Right, Liberal, Conservative, Democrat, Republican, they all describe a one dimensional, linear universe where people are either at one extreme or the other, or somewhere in between. Edwin Abbott would have called it Lineland I guess. The world of politics is not a line, or a plane, or even three dimensional, we probably can't even enumerate the dimensions: Economics (and then subdivide that), morality (subdivided), Social Services (ditto), Foreign policy (ditto) and on and on.

Some people think that the solution to this is to have more political parties. You could have an abortion party, and anti-abortion party, strong-military party, no-military party, in-between-military party. It would certainly make it handy for some of us to classify ourselves, and each other, hehe. I think it was the Clinton campaign that came up with "It's the economy stupid" and I tend to agree with that, in that, if the economy sucks, all those other issues are in sucky shape as well.

As an "old-line conservative" (hey I like that term!) I think that the best thing the government can do for the economy is to leave it the F* alone. That's hard to do though once 40% of the economy gets to be government activities (fed, state, local). It gets harder and harder to justify the notion that American is not a socialist country already. What part of socialism are we missing at this point? I'm not even a knee-jerk anti socialist, or anti communist for that matter. I skimmed Das Capital, and the Communist Manifesto when I was in high school (although I can't remember details of either these days) and my reaction was "wow, there are some interesting concepts in there!" The notion that society eventually "breeds" selfishness out of its individual members, the notion that in the end, individuals become so much "in love" (I think they actually used that term with the state that there is no longer a need for government at all, what a concept! And since I read those books so long ago, I've had plenty of time to look for examples of this process in action, in the Soviet Union, Red China, parts of Europe, even the commune movement here in the US. I've yet to see any evidence that these principles actually work.

Man(kind) is basically selfish, and to some extent that is a good thing. I may hate having to take orders from some fat cat in corporate America, but I hate just as much having to sell my house because I can no long afford to pay the taxes on it. Does it really matter whether the government pays for all of my medical expenses or whether they require my employer to? If being a doctor is going to mean you have no time for your own personal life, you interact with a lawyer on a regular basis to save your practice and when you get old you have accumulated no more wealth than a good electrician, or even a computer programmer, then why be a doctor? How many such altruistic (and also smart) individuals can we count on our society producing? The Communist system forsaw this problem and solved it by assigning people a job: "YOU HAVE to be a doctor, because you appear to have some talent in that direction and we need more. You will make as much as a carpenter, but don't worry you won't bang your fingers up as much, be thankful."

I just don't think that system will ever work. Just about the last people pretending to practice it any more are the Chinese, and Cuba. But Cuba is a terribly impoverished place, and China is becoming a lot more like Hong Kong than the other way around.

But I don't like big business either. Business is great, big business stifles innovation. While I hate big government, I have no problem with our big government telling Microsoft that THEY are too big. Unfortunately in the world we live in that doesn't quite happen. We have both big government that claims to be keeping an eye out for monopolistic abuse, and we have big businesses abusing their monopolies left and right. Is the problem that government isn't big enough to face down Microsoft? Obviously not. And yet they don't.

I think the problem is that there is no grass roots interest in economics. Few people worry about Microsoft stifling innovation in a whole economic sphere. "I use Windows, it's what came on my computer, it's fine with me." That's no different than: "The government is too big? Well, I don't know, I'm still getting my Social Security check."

The only way to fight bigness is for more people to think, and act, and debate, as individuals, not as part of some collective doing battle against yet another collective. I am only slightly optimistic that individuals the world over will move in that direction. Anything else is a step backwards into something that might look different, but is really just a variation of where we have been before.

So what am I?

PS: The last dozen or so posts have been excellent! Very entertaining for someone who's SL computer has gotten separated from their SL monitor by a 3-hour drive (and who's car is broke to boot.)

Some would argue that "true" Marxist Communism has never existed. So examples like USSR, China, Cuba, are irrelevant.

But sorry, I can't really play devil's advocate on that atm, it's been a loooong time since I read up about that stuff. So I can't discuss that area too well.

Heh, this thread really diverted to a different topic, didn't it? Oh well I tried to unhijack it once so don't blame me!

I was musing with a friend the other day about how our governmental systems could be improved in this country. My idea was to replace the executive branch with a multi-party panel, all with equal powers, but only able to act as a group and not as individuals. My reasoning was that I don't want to even hear a proposal come out of the executive branch unless it's already a compromise. We'd waste a lot less time that way.

Another idea (and this one I really really like) is to forbid unrelated things from getting tacked onto bills in Congress. Want to make the other party look bad? Just tack some ridiculous porkbarrel crap onto an otherwise beneficial bill and then claim that your opposition was opposed to the beneficial part of the bill, not the BS you stuck on the end of it. That's how McCain got railroaded. They made hay about the fact that he voted against a bill that would have provided funding for breast cancer research... but it wasn't the breast cancer funding he voted against... it was the completely unrelated bullshit that got stuck onto the same bill. Things like that should not be allowed to happen.

Another idea... stop letting Congress have the power to give themselves pay increases. Let voters decide. If they spend their whole session doing nothing but partisan bickering and accomplish nothing, we should be able to vote them a pay cut.

What pisses me off the most about our government is that it's so partisan. These people seem to think that their job is to do everything they can, no matter how dirty, to push forward their narrow agenda, and everyone else be damned. That's so wrong. Their job is to arrive at compromises. The very nature of democracy is supposed to be bipartisan. A good compromise is the best and highest pinnacle to which they should aspire. If a bill gets through Congress that's not a bipartisan compromise due to abuse of majority then these people obviously aren't understanding what their job is supposed to be. I think the Bush administration and the Republican party these days are a wonderful example of everything that's wrong with our government, and of the narrow minded selfishness that permeates its every nook and cranny.