The demonization of liberalism, for whatever reason, means that the values of compassion, egalitarianism, respect for education and experience that characterize liberalism are being lost. With that loss comes a desire to experiment with ideas that have been tried before, which have failed before, and which will inevitably cause America to stumble and lose the essential values that made it the successful nation that it is. And make no mistake -- when compassion is derided as "bleeding-heart liberalism" and egalitarianism is mistaken for an argument for economic, racial and ethnic quotas, and institutions of higher learning are dismissed as "bastions of liberalism," and respect for the differences of others is derided as "political correctness," America is in trouble. It is headed for the same conditions that exist in the nations where such selfishness and ignorance predominate and have for centuries -- the third world nations. Every day, as I look out on the America of my nativity, I can't but help be struck how it is increasingly coming to resemble the third world nations I have visited and in which I have lived.

Freedom or Orderliness, You Choose
Thomas Jefferson, one of the greatest theoreticians of liberal democracy of all time, understood the dilemma well. He clearly saw what finally became obvious to me when I moved away from America and all its rhetoric about freedom and liberty, and experienced first hand a culture that at one and the same time, had both freedom and tyrany.

Jefferson clearly understood that you can have a nice, neat, tidy, orderly society, or you can have a free society. But it is very difficult to have a society that is both orderly and free. In a letter to James Madison, he wrote, "A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserves neither."

Jefferson had clearly made his choice. It is the only choice a lover of freedom and liberty can make. But what choice is made by the theoreticians of the "new" conservatism?

"Law and order," cry the conservative theorists.

Indeed, we have a serious problem with law and order in the United States with the widespread use of narcotics, cocaine and its derivatives, methamphetamines and "designer" drugs, and Cannabis sativa and its extracts. The cost to American society is enormous. Just fighting the "drug war" costs us tens of billions of dollars each year. The crime that addicts commit costs conservatively more than a hundred billion. Each year, the toll gets worse, each year the enforcement measures become more and more stringent. The fastest growing industry in America is prison construction. Already, we incarcerate a larger percentage of our population than any other nation in the world, one person in thirty. Yet has that made us feel more secure?

Yet with each passing year, we surrender more of our freedom of movement, our right to be secure in our possessions, and more and more of our personal privacy. Has this led us to a more secure society? A lower crime rate? No.

The problem, as Jefferson so accurately predicted, doesn't get better, it gets worse......

.......European societies have little use for the right-wing ideologies that are so popular in the United States. They have had plenty of experience with unrestrained right-wing governments and have become innoculated against the fundamental errors in reasoning that drive right-wing ideologies. Similarly, after centuries of religious oppression by Roman Catholicism and other institutionalized religions, Europeans have generally become deeply skeptical of religious ideology and conservative politics.

The result is that in almost every measure, most Western Europeans enjoy a higher standard of living, more personal freedom, less repression and a higher quality of life than do Americans. Their economies enjoy a higher growth in productivity, and that fruits of those gains in productivity are more equitably distributed. This is why 200,000 Americans every year choose to move to Europe, while traffic in the opposite direction is only a tiny fraction of that level. American English is now commonly heard on the streets of most large European cities. When was the last time you heard Swedish or Polish being spoken by recent immigrants here? It is a fact that now Europe, no longer America, is the first destination of choice for Africans and Asians fleeing poverty and repression and seeking to better their lives.

Yet when a nation doesn't know it has a problem, it is hard to build consensus for a change.

That fact is probably the most grave problem America faces. Americans believe all the propaganda they've heard since World War II that America is by far the best place in the world in which to live. Most Americans still believe it. In their provincial ignorance, they haven't a clue at how far and how completely they've been left behind. As a place to live, the United Nations doesn't even rank the U.S. in the top ten anymore.

http://www.bidstrup.com/america.htm

The Gathering Darkness
America In The 21st. Century
An essay in hypertext by Scott Bidstrup

??? It's big news to whom that white folk might not vote for Obama as he is black, as black folk might only vote for Obama as he was the first (??) black presidential probability.

.... It's still within living memory that the USA was a segregated country... let alone having a slave trade.. And there are still those on both sides of the race divide who think the other is out to get them.

Maybe in a few more generations the race paranoia will fade.

I actually in preparing the book spent an immense amount of time listening to tapes of the Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh shows, and the most fascinating thing I found in the whole process was an exchange between Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin, in which at some length they discussed weatherization programs. This is when the government helps people put better windows on their house so they can stay warmer in winter. And they were both ranting about how this was socialism, this was creeping dangerous socialism that was a threat to the Republic.

So you see this isn’t about big ideas, it is often about very minor objections which they then inflate, using the word socialism as some sort of ultimate demonization, some sort of ultimate threat – and yes it’s demagogic; it’s also unhistorical, or anti-historic, and very crude. I think that’s the most interesting part about it. It’s so crude that there is some good evidence that it has caused an awful lot of people to open up to socialism and consider socialism in a way they haven’t in the past.

PA: There are some prominent figures in American history you associate with the socialist tradition, if not socialist parties, people like Tom Paine and Abraham Lincoln, which counters everything we learned about them in school. How does that work, in your mind?

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, history is a fascinating thing. It’s always something that we can dig deeper into and learn a little more about. Now in our history classes in school, we are obviously given a sort of first level introduction. It tells you some dates and some prominent figures. By the nature of it, we don’t go as deep into that always as we should or as we might. One of the things I did with this book was to spend a lot of time looking at the original documents going back to the real history, the deeper history, which is one, I might add, that was known through much of our American experience, but has sort of been swept away in recent decades.

To give you an example, Eugene Victor Debs frequently referenced Paine and Lincoln as folks who had inspired him toward socialism. So it’s not that this is something that we have just discovered, but it is something that has been sort of lost in recent decades. With Paine the fascinating thing is that so much of the teaching about Paine focuses on a couple of pamphlets he wrote very early in his career, “Common Sense,” which of course was an inspiration to the American Revolution and “The Crisis,” which was an inspiration to the soldiers once the Revolution began. Those are both terrific pieces of writing, very inspirational and very inspired works. But what people don’t note is that Paine kept writing. He wrote for another 30 years, and as the years went on his writing focused more and more on economic inequality and economic injustice, such that his final essays outlined a social welfare state, and there’s no question of that, that’s not a debatable point. In fact, amazingly enough, if you go to the Social Security Administration’s web site today, they have quotes on there from Tom Paine back in the 1790s describing a social security system, a system of pensions and social welfare supports for the elderly, the infirm, children and others who might otherwise suffer in extreme poverty.

So again this is not hidden history – it’s there, it’s findable, but it’s not a history that has been emphasized. More significantly you bring up Lincoln, and the history on Lincoln is absolutely fascinating, because when you go back to the founding of the Republican Party, there is simply no question that that party was founded by a broad array of folks from many different ideological perspectives and backgrounds, but some of the founders of the Republican Party, in fact key founders, people who called the initial meetings, were socialists and communists. A friend of Karl Marx was one of the key players in the founding of the Republican Party. That is not a debatable point – the history is there – but it is something that has not been emphasized, it’s almost been pushed aside.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/socialism-in-american-history-an-interview-with-john-nichols/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47LuYQL6AoI

How will you charge you batteries??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWf9nYbm3ac&

The old saying of where there is muck there is brass still holds true.

"When the world's two great propaganda systems agree on some doctrine, it requires some intellectual effort to escape its shackles. One such doctrine is that the society created by Lenin and Trotsky and molded further by Stalin and his successors has some relation to socialism in some meaningful or historically accurate sense of this concept. In fact, if there is a relation, it is the relation of contradiction.

It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy. Since its origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One major ideological weapon employed to this end has been the claim that the State managers are leading their own society and the world towards the socialist ideal; an impossibility, as any socialist -- surely any serious Marxist -- should have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as history has revealed since the earliest days of the Bolshevik regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura of socialist ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, to conceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of socialism.

As for the world's second major propaganda system, association of socialism with the Soviet Union and its clients serves as a powerful ideological weapon to enforce conformity and obedience to the State capitalist institutions, to ensure that the necessity to rent oneself to the owners and managers of these institutions will be regarded as virtually a natural law, the only alternative to the 'socialist' dungeon.

The Soviet leadership thus portrays itself as socialist to protect its right to wield the club, and Western ideologists adopt the same pretense in order to forestall the threat of a more free and just society. This joint attack on socialism has been highly effective in undermining it in the modern period. "

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKIu-JjfIXE&feature=related

Artful Dodger: The UK figures are a failure rate of about 1/3 regarding new businesses. I cannot be accurate on this due to the variations like we have now where small businesses are not getting the support they use to since the banks screwed up

"You've got to make money at a business and lots of it. You have bills to pay and if you can't meet those bills each month, you're not going to make it."

I know.. that's why before you start a business you need to carefully look at your costings. I learnt that years ago when I managed a shop for someone.. which, I nearly did buy, but backed out of once I looked into some of the shady deals that would have come back onto me via debts I was not willing to pick up... only time I've ever been interested in owning my own shop.

Unlike some banks I look into what I'm thinking of buying.

"You can't compete with a big business like America's Target or Walmart store if you're not already established and well grounded in the community."

As you pointed out... Location, product, cash flow, research, marketing. Many of those I see succeeding are not trying to compete with the big boys, they are not stupid.. Like one part of the one I nearly did own he was beating the big boys on certain crucial goods, but would not keep (despite me constantly telling him) stock levels up... That one item kept people flowing into the shop through that at the time being an essential product to computer users. The humble 3.5" floppy. Branded names cost, unbranded didn't.


.................... "The reason you saw paranoia is because you have your own paranoia about being paranoid."

you need to watch some Kenny Everett as yet again you've missed my point. Gotta love that cold war mentality

Artful Dodger: Yes I saw.... but I also saw the paranoia still present in him having to say...

"but by saying completely off the wall, totally ignorant stuff like this, he reminds me of factory managers in the old Soviet Union"

hello...... soviet union .. communism.... USSR... socialism... all in that little sentance.

Have you ever thought Dan that due to the difference in how the cold war affected the UK and the USA...... us in the UK might have developed a different perspective when it comes to the likes of what that guy said.

Artful Dodger: Many chains have gone out of business here due to overheads. Most of what the chains sell can be bought from small shops or (what I call) warehouse internet shops for 50% or more off.... and one of them due to a stupid law (soon to be gone??)

..... as for "mom and pop's" ... we've seen so many new ones open up in the last few years as people have migrated back to using them in the UK. The area I live in is 80% independents and many offer goods that cannot be bought in chains.

"It's tough to compete with a huge store."

Not if you've got brains.

What these days is a Commie?

Got to love American paranoia!!

Artful Dodger: .. pretty good when I goto smaller unchained stores. I got 80% off recently by avoiding a chain of stores and going to a local shop and getting a deal.

Some goods are inherently cheaper by the small independents not having to spend millions on advertising.

My analysis is based on real events in the UK.

"Regulating is one thing. Over regulating another."

If we could trust the men in suits fine.... but as the banks have shown that left as they were with less regulation, businesses the bigger they are will break such regulation due to lack of accountability.

Artful Dodger: So's capitalism. A free market ends up with monopolies who endeavour to rip off everyone. Or as we have seen recently in the UK, unable to live upto their contractual obligations or don't care if as a result their cost cutting leads to abuse.

While money creation for stock prices and shareholders is the highest priority, accountability be damned... that's why our governments need to regulate.

Vikings: what?

Vikings: ... Plight... is being happy a plight??

I think you've missed much of my meaning.

Bernice: Maybe Australia could do another £10 deal and let them emigrate.

Vikings: Nope. Some people do find though money is not the only richness (Jesus for example) ... like the guys who are just happy doing a job that brings them great satisfaction as it what they want to do.

"and by making excuses like I cant do school, I'm not talking about the mentally challenged"

.. Only mentally challenged can't do school!!?? I find that somewhat lacking in depth.

"Either brick layers or dry wallers (which ever you are talking about) can easily make $100,000 a year, I know examples of both that do"

Yes I know people who do as well.. but you said.... "person choosed to get a simple blue collar job"... These jobs might not be "noble" but they are essential to our modern world.

Artful Dodger: Ahh a graphic novel.... but I have to be careful in saying that. Comics and the like can be quite a cult thing.

"Plus my big mean dogs would take a bite out of their crime. "

unlikely.

Artful Dodger: You've been watching to much TV....

"I'd empty my gun on them with no questions asked."

N' if their friend is just around the corner... you lose... they duck, you miss... you lose.

The Col: .... but then a shooting war in a 99p store just don't seem right.

Artful Dodger: ... It could also mean the assailant takes up a threat of violence to killing... it could mean the assailant runs off...

...... No guns ... less risk of death... imho a better chance for any quick minded defender to have the upper hand and drive off any burglars.

The Col: Communities were acting to defend their property.. some shops grouped together and hired security.

.... The problem was that the police initially were told not to engage looters!! News of that spread.

Artful Dodger: If your point is you don't need guns.. yes. Unless you live in a state of constant fear of any assailant having a gun... then I see the need for choice.

... Guns do make killing easier, and more likely. I see some 'family feud' ended up with several dead through gunfire in the US..... that is something we don't need commonplace in the UK.

Artful Dodger: Most household items have a potential to be a weapon. or... a worrier... as in make the attacker nervous and doubt themselves.

Vikings: That depends on what they want to achieve. Being the CEO of a big multinational can be beyond reach of what most call "The American Dream".

"If a person choosed to get a simple blue collar job, they have no one else but themselves to blame for their plight in life"

Simple blue collar... our houses are dependant on blue collar skills. I know guys who can't do school, but they can do a mean wall.

Artful Dodger: ....old English tradition. Staff. It gives good reach at 5-6 foot in length. Handy.

Artful Dodger: In the UK he'd probably get off, if it can be proven he had due cause with the killing. Such is the law here. The gun will be confiscated though... or at the very least rendered unusable.

I can by law protect my property and family here. By the nature of little gun crime. I don't need a gun.

I'm also aware of some stats over how killing people affects people. About 90%+ are affected by it and can lead to trauma. A small percentage are those who are not affected mentally. Then there is the small percentage who enjoy killing... they generally end up in the army, dead or in jail.

rod03801: Stopping illegal ownership is impossible. With people being able to take replica's and turn them into live arms, smuggling, etc.

"in a place that has made that silly choice, isn't it?" ... don't get.

Here is a snapshot timeline of some of the worst shooting incidents carried out by one or two gunmen around the world in the last 20 years:

April 1982 - SOUTH KOREA - Police officer Woo Bum Kong went on a drunken rampage in Sang-Namdo with rifles and hand grenades, killing 57 people and wounding 38 before blowing himself up.

August 19, 1987 - BRITAIN - Michael Ryan, a 27-year-old gun fanatic rampaged through the English town of Hungerford, killing 16 people and wounding 11 before shooting himself.

July 1989 - FRANCE - A French farmer shot and killed 14 people including members of his family in the village of Luxiol, near the Swiss border. He was wounded and captured by police.

December 1989 - CANADA - A 25-year-old war movie fan with a grudge against women shot dead 14 young women at the University of Montreal, then killed himself.

November 1990 - NEW ZEALAND - A gun-mad loner killed 11 men, women and children in a 24-hour rampage in the tiny New Zealand seaside village of Aramoana. He was killed by police.

September 1995 - FRANCE - A 16-year-old youth ran amok with a rifle in the town of Cuers, killing 16 people and then himself after an argument with his parents.

March 13, 1996 - BRITAIN - Gunman Thomas Hamilton burst into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot dead 16 children and their teacher before killing himself.

April 1999 - USA - Two heavily-armed teenagers went on a rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Denver, shooting 13 students and staff before taking their own lives.

July 1999 - USA - A gunman killed nine people at two brokerages in Atlanta, after apparently killing his wife and two children. He committed suicide five hours later.

June 2001 - NEPAL - Eight members of the Nepalese Royal family were killed in a palace massacre by Crown Prince Dipendra who later turned a gun on himself and died few days later. His youngest brother also died later raising the death toll to 10.

April 26, 2002 - GERMANY - In Erfurt, eastern Germany, 19-year-old Robert Steinhauser opened fire after saying he was not going to take a maths test. He killed 12 teachers, a secretary, two pupils and a policeman at the Gutenberg Gymnasium, before killing himself.

October 2002 - USA - John Muhammad and Lee Malvo killed 10 people in sniper-style shooting deaths that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area.

April 16, 2007 - USA - Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia, became the site of the deadliest rampage in U.S. history when a gunman killed 32 people and himself.

November 7, 2007 - FINLAND - Pekka-Eric Auvinen killed six fellow students, the school nurse and the principal and himself with a handgun at the Jokela High School near Helsinki.

September 23, 2008 - FINLAND - Student Matti Saari opened fire in a vocational school in Kauhajoki in northwest Finland, killing nine other students and one male staff member before killing himself.

March 11, 2009 - GERMANY - A 17-year-old gunman dressed in black combat gear killed nine students and three teachers at a school near Stuttgart. He also killed one other person at a nearby clinic. He was later killed in a shoot-out with police. Two additional passers-by were killed and two policemen seriously injured, bringing the death toll to 16 including the gunman.

June 2, 2010 - BRITAIN - Gunman Derrick Bird opened fire on people in towns across the rural county of Cumbria. Twelve people were killed and 11 injured. Bird also killed himself.

August 30, 2010 - SLOVAKIA - A gunman shot dead six members of a Roma family and another woman in the Slovak capital Bratislava before killing himself. Fourteen more people were wounded.

July 22, 2011 - NORWAY - Police seize a gunman, identified as a 32-year-old Norwegian, who killed at least 84 people at a youth summer camp of Norway's ruling political party, on the small, holiday island of Utoeya. Anders Behring Breivik is later charged with the killings, as well as with an earlier bombing in the centre of Oslo which killed at least seven people.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/timeline-mass-shooting-incidents-last-20-years-085556620.html

Vikings: We can't blame *cough* "Cain and Abel" for what is happening today. It's neither a moral or political fault.. but both.

Some of the areas are being hard hit by cuts, yet we see politicians, police, bankers, corporations all sc**wing us over. Years of bad policies that have favoured those with money.. and thanks to Maggie, house prices gone through the roof despite the recession due to gazumping being practised and allowed to be practised under her government.

Plus other policies that prevented the Local councils investing money they did gain from the sell off of council property back into more housing... leading to a political good year in terms of 'it looks good' but bad long term levels of social housing.

Artful Dodger: But in the UK as guns are a rarity when it comes to crime... we don't need guns to defend ourselves. We have the right to defend our property, even to make 'booby traps' or otherwise make burglars lives ... unpleasant.

"one guy in the UK ran over three people in his car killing all three of them! That's just ONE car and ONE hit. No gun can do that. "

Oh yes one gun can... some can take out a small group with one shot. But with guns, most have a number of rounds. Some automatic assault weapons can be fitted with 150 round mags.

.. Or a automatic shotgun with a 30 round mag that fires them off in a few seconds.

Artful Dodger: Worse then what? US gun crime rates?

.. You like the idea that you might have to shoot someone because guns are so common... Is that Christian?

Artful Dodger: It's the UK now and we are not fighting the Scottish, Irish, French, Spanish and other European countries. Kings are not conscripting men to arms.

Artful Dodger: Yes... some do and we'd like to keep it that way.

And please... 16 year old stats are pointless.

... If the robber in the USA see you with a gun and then runs.. You then shoot him in the back. What then?

I'd rather have a society where gun crime is rare than common.

"Well, when the police aren't allowed to use guns." ........... lie.

If more police do have guns.. then more criminals will want guns. DUH!!

welshrugbyfan: That's all very good... but by our law that would be murder and would cause so much more rioting.

Curfew... arrest. Fine... no go zones.. fine. water cannons.. fine. But we don't need an all out war on our hands and the police to be the target of so much more hate then that might be around at the minute.

Mousetrap:

The Col: The guy was a father of four, not a kid.

N' it's not just all.. just the spark that set it on fire.

The IPCC has reported that Mark Duggan did not open fire before being shot.

"Mr Duggan, 29, whose death sparked the first riots in Tottenham, died from a single bullet wound, an inquest heard.The police watchdog said ballistic tests showed "no evidence that the handgun found at the scene was fired".

BBC News understands firearms officers discharged their weapons in the belief there was a threat to human life. Their guidelines allow them to open fire in such circumstances.

Mr Duggan, a father of four, was shot in Ferry Lane, Tottenham, north London, on Thursday, as specialist firearms officers attempted to make an arrest. A key witness, the driver of the minicab in which Mr Duggan was travelling, has yet to give his version of events. He is understood to be in a severe state of shock.

Investigations by the IPCC show two shots were fired by a Scotland Yard CO19 firearms officer.

**************** Tottenham is in London for those outside the UK.

"On his Twitter feed Monday, the Oscar-winning film director also blamed the 2008 economic collapse on Standard & Poor's -- apparently because it and other credit-ratings agencies did not downgrade mortgage-based bonds, which encouraged the housing bubble and let it spread throughout the economy."

I don't like the loud fat slob either, but it's hard to argue with the above statement. I can't say whether that was the start of our troubles, but it sure gave us a good hard shove down the slippery slope.

Bernice: .... Yes, but that is just one area of London. I wondered if you meant colour of the hoods which all youths use regardless of their ethnic heritage... seeing as the riots are not just taking place in London.

Snoopy: Really... or just presumption on your part.

Snoopy: No... should I?

Bernice: Colour??

Snoopy: Some here say the UK is always having problems

Maybe it's just their area.

Artful Dodger: You quoted a paper saying.. "52% .. positive income liability"

You quote another paper saying..

"Just 54 percent of all tax units will pay federal individual income tax in 2011, leaving about 46 percent paying no federal income tax or receiving a net refund."

and ... "Of the 38 million tax units made nontaxable by the addition of tax expenditures, 44 percent are moved off the tax rolls by elderly tax benefits and another 30 percent by credits for children and the working poor (see chart 2 and table 2). The other six groups of tax expenditures have much less impact, each making 6 percent or fewer units nontaxable."

Please explain.

A positive income liability.. would you explain that to me Dan.

"A positive income tax liability is the amount of income tax that a
taxpayer owes to the federal government after subtracting all of their
deductions (e.g., standard deduction/itemized deductions and
deduction for personal exemptions) from their income and taking into
account non-refundable tax credits (other than the child tax credit).
For example, if a married couple filing jointly with two children
receives $26,000 of income and takes the standard deduction of
$10,900 as well as the deduction for personal exemptions of $13,600,
their taxable income would be $1,500. Based on this taxable income,
their positive income tax liability would be $150."

Is this right?

Artful Dodger: Explain it then. No sound bites.. as I looked up income tax and the amounts and benefits and saw those you say don't pay taxes were paying income tax, yet getting tax credits, etc back.

.... you'd know a tax expert how?

And we are having more problems with youth riots at the moment. Riot and looting season is in full swing.

Not true.. It could be said that 51% get more in benefits or tax credits than they pay in taxes, but not that 51% don't pay taxes, as the latter if FALSE and a blatant cherry pick to warm the hearts of the conservative American.

Artful Dodger: ... You don't even understand variable tax levels depending on income!! ... .... I know a CEO who would like you. You'd be made financial director and a scapegoat at the same time.