CrowEpistemologist:
We must be living in different universes because nothing you have said corresponds to reality as I know it.
The VP candidate for the Republican party is a bald-faced liar who once made his staff read AR and now says his interest in her is an “urban legend”.
You’ll have to provide more context or a quote or an attribution to this quote since this is something I hadn’t heard. My understanding of Ryan’s position on Rand is ARI’s: he is a fan of Rand’s, particularly Atlas Shrugged but he doesn’t accept her whole philosophy.
On Fox News we regularly hear speakers conflating Obama’s support of Regan’s programs as, “communism” all they while they tell the dumb dumbs who watch that crap that lowering taxes on the rich will make poor truck drivers like themselves oh-so-much-more rich sometime in the future.
Which part of this do you believe is untrue: That the rich disproportionately and unjustly are punished (via taxes) for their success or that all of us would be better off if they weren’t?
Meanwhile, the constant drone of the Democrats seems to be, “okay, so you want a welfare state, let’s actually make it mathematically work”. Crazy stuff.
I don’t hear any Democrats saying this. Certainly you can’t mean Obama who has increased the debt more than all former Presidents combined. I have heard some Democrats say they want to raise taxes to supposedly pay down the debt but all higher taxes equates to is more government spending.
Af for reality, Paul Krugman (!) said it best: the US government is an insurance company with an army.
I have no idea what this means, a properly attributed quote with full context would be nice. But … Paul Krugman!!! Seriously? You are pointing to him as part of this intelligentsia? He is an evil liar with no connection to reality at all.
Given the premises and the political realities for the next, say, 25 years, we’re going to spend what we’re spending on our Army and social safety net, and we’re going to have to pay for it somehow. Our choices therefore are either deficit spending or higher taxes. Period. One party acknowledges this, and one party lies about this.
One party acknowledges that spending money we don’t have cannot go on forever, eventually it will bankrupt us, as it already has and as it has Europe. They also acknowledge that we are Taxed Enough Already. The other party ignores these truths – apparently you agree with them.
I’m voting for the guys with the cloak borrowed from Aristotle. At least they still see some reason to wear that cloak.
Wow, this is nowhere near the truth. They haven’t borrowed the cloak from Aristotle, they have borrowed the cloak from Kant. Kant was pretending to borrow the cloak from Aristotle in order to destroy the cloak, this is what the Democrats/liberals are doing. They don’t wear the cloak of reason, they decide things by feelings or subjectively or according to social justice or according to race or group affiliation. They have already destroyed the schools and they are actively working to destroy the minds of the young by what they teach in schools.
Do you really think they revere or even respect reason when their leader says: “I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there.” !!! In other words “Intelligence is not what gets you anywhere.”
They call Democrats “elitist” (which is what Democrats used to call Republicans back in the day of Barry Goldwater and WF Buckley). The word “elitist” is code for “intelligent and rational”.
Forget politics folks–it’s pissing in the ocean at this point and time. The real battle is culture, logic and rationality. Vote pro-elitist, not pro-moronic truck driver.
Again, a quote would be nice because I don’t often hear Republicans using this word. Perhaps they have used it to refer to Marxist humanities college professors or even Marxist “law professors” but I don’t think they use it to denigrate reason or intelligence.
In fact, I believe it is more commonly used by Democrats or the Marxist Occupy Wall Street crowd to refer to rich people.
Interesting your usage there though: “moronic truck driver”. Are all truck drivers necessarily moronic? Who is the elitist now?
Romney and Ryan are not selling themselves as people to decide things from their hearts. They’re selling themselves as the ones who will face reality with reason. They are also selling themselves as people to will not evade the huge deficit caused by entitlements. They are also selling themselves as champions of lower regulation and less statism. The real danger is that people will read any failures from their actions as a failure of capitalism. However, if you’re going to decide based on how they’re being sold, then they win.
Funny how you ignored this part of softwareNerd’s post and instead decided make fun of Romney’s religious beliefs … as opposed to what? Christian belief? Remember … Obama is a freakin’ Christian right?
Who’s a smart and logical Democrat?
I’m sorry, in order to keep this out of the category of “floating abstraction” or at least out of the category of “Democratic talking points” we are really going to need a name. I can’t think of any. Bill Clinton is supposedly smart but he is also a liar and a cheat. So perhaps you could name a smart, logical, honest Democrat. (I’m sorry to say that this will be an impossible task since, contrary to your defense of some liberal’s “internal consistency”, logic requires correct premises.)
I feel like many people here simply refuse to believe the indisputable fact that every one of those geriatric t-party followers are on Social Security like all old people are, and when push comes to shove they aren’t going to vote themselves a pay cut. They are there because somebody at Fox News told them that 94% of the Federal budget is actually spent on homosexual atheist art specials on PBS and if they just get rid of the Democrats we can cut those and balance the budget.
Here is a nice little hyperbolic screed a la who, John Stewart? However it only displays your myopia. You have been asking about reason and intelligence, logic and fundamental premises and when they present themselves you do what Democrats who have none of the above do: you insult instead of making an argument.
All of the energy and ideas on the Republican side come from the Tea Party these days but you dismiss them as what? Geriatric hypocrites? Ayn Rand and many other Objectivists collected and collect Social Security. Do you think they wouldn’t “vote themselves a pay cut”? Why is it that you find Tea Partiers less sincere that Marxist socialists or even Democrat/liberals? I’m sure most of the Tea Partiers understand that cutting SS must be done and that ultimately it will be beneficial for them.
I’m reminded of the election 10 years ago in Alabama I believe in which there was a proposal to raise taxes on the rich in order to supposedly save services for the poor. A large percentage of the electorate was considered poor enough that this tax would either help them directly or not affect them at all, it was expected to easily pass, it didn’t, 70% of poor people voted against raising taxes on the rich. People aren’t as cynical or unjust as you suspect.
So the Tea Party espouses less spending and lower taxes. They envision smaller government and revere the founding fathers and principles. This may not be a full philosophy and they may not even understand it fully, but at least they are on the right side of truth, justice, the American way and “culture, logic and rationality”, which are the things you supposedly want to support.
But somehow you have convinced yourself that supporting the party that explicitly says: government spending is what creates jobs; redistribution of wealth is fair; if you own a business you didn’t build that; working hard and being smart are not how you get ahead in life; government is the answer not the problem; etc. – is what culture, logic and rationality demand. These things are what has and is destroying the culture, they are illogical and have no connection to reality at all.
What you support is destroying the things you say you want to save. You have deluded yourself, your thinking is muddled, contradictory and wrong.
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