Quote :

"Whole Foods Republicans The GOP needs to enlist voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics. By MICHAEL J. PETRILLI The Republican Party is resurgent—or so goes the conventional wisdom. With its gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey, an energized "tea party" base, and an administration overreaching on health care, climate change and spending, 2010 could shape up to be 1994 all over again. Maybe. The political landscape sure looks greener than it did a year ago, when talk of a permanent Democratic majority was omnipresent. But before John Boehner starts measuring the drapes in the Speaker's office, or the party exults about its possibilities in 2012, it's worth noting that some of the key trends driving President Barack Obama's strong victory in 2008 haven't disappeared. Republicans need to address them head-on if they want to lead a majority party again. [...] What's needed is a full-fledged effort to cultivate "Whole Foods Republicans"—independent-minded voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics. These highly-educated individuals appreciate diversity and would never tell racist or homophobic jokes; they like living in walkable urban environments; they believe in environmental stewardship, community service and a spirit of inclusion. And yes, many shop at Whole Foods, which has become a symbol of progressive affluence but is also a good example of the free enterprise system at work. (Not to mention that its founder is a well-known libertarian who took to these pages to excoriate ObamaCare as inimical to market principles.) What makes these voters potential Republicans is that, lifestyle choices aside, they view big government with great suspicion. There's no law that someone who enjoys organic food, rides his bike to work, or wants a diverse school for his kids must also believe that the federal government should take over the health-care system or waste money on thousands of social programs with no evidence of effectiveness. Nor do highly educated people have to agree that a strong national defense is harmful to the cause of peace and international cooperation. So how to woo these voters to the Republican column? The first step is to stop denigrating intelligence and education. President George W. Bush's bantering about being a "C" student may have enamored "the man in the street," but it surely discouraged more than a few "A" students from feeling like part of the team. The same is true for Mrs. Palin's inability to name a single newspaper she reads. If the GOP doesn't want to be branded the "Party of Stupid," it could stand to nominate more people who can speak eloquently on complicated policy matters. Even more important is the party's message on divisive social issues. When some Republicans use homophobic language, express thinly disguised contempt toward immigrants, or ridicule heartfelt concerns for the environment, they affront the values of the educated class. And they lose votes they otherwise ought to win. [...]"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703514404574588792834312898.html?mod=wsj_share_digg

I 'd my way through this one for a couple of reasons:

1) He's assuming (hoping?) lifestyle and politics are distinct from one another. I disagree. Lifestyle and politics are the result of a certain worldview and certain principles. It's like saying the front wheels of a car don't necessarily need to spin in the same direction as its rear wheels.


2) He's pretending that the Republican Party is more about economic conservatism than it is about social conservatism. As much as I want to believe this to bet he case, there is zero evidence backing it up. The Republican Party is the party of anti-intellectualism and social conservatism before anything else. To propose that Republicans simply ease up on the anti-intellectual, bigotry shtick is to suggest that they disband.

12/14/2009 5:56:26 PM

I think your sentiment is captured in this video theDuke posted in another thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84Un66GYOIk

12/14/2009 6:01:14 PM

Quote :

"1) He's assuming (hoping?) lifestyle and politics are distinct from one another. I disagree."

I think he's looking for people who want to live their own lives without imposing their personal values on others through the power of the state.

Quote :

"2) He's pretending that the Republican Party is more about economic conservatism than it is about social conservatism."

No, I think he wants it to be more about economic conservatism and non-interventionist social policy.

Quote :

"To propose that Republicans simply ease up on the anti-intellectual, bigotry shtick is to suggest that they disband."

Possibly.

12/14/2009 6:02:04 PM

Quote :

"I think he's looking for people who want to live their own lives without imposing their personal values on others through the power of the state."

Venn diagram:

A) People who regularly drive their Prius (with reusable grocery totes in tow) to buy organic food from a fair trade company.

B) People who adhere to a strict policy of deregulation and flat taxation.


There are probably two dozen people occupying the intersecting area.

12/14/2009 6:14:07 PM

I like whole foods ever since the CEO wrote that op Ed opposing Obama care

12/14/2009 6:48:05 PM

1. Yes, Prius and reusable grocery tote users are clearly not who he is talking about. But best I could tell last time I was there, the parking lot outside Whole Foods had its share of SUVs.

That said, you did not say which lifestyle and politics are distinct from each other. You can believe the best way to save the environment is to keep the government out of it. You can be gay and in favor of free trade.

2. He is pretending nothing. He is urging Republicans to make the switch, dump social conservatism in exchange for the economic conservatism the public is clamoring for nowadays. Just transitions are not that uncommon, as the Democrats dumped their socialism at the dawn of the 1990s (remember New Democrats?) and the Republicans dumped their conservatism in the 00s (is there any doubt the Republicans were economic conservatives during the 90s?)

12/14/2009 6:59:26 PM

^ Yes, I love what you are preaching in point #2.

Who gives a crap if Larry is fucking John as long as you don't work 3 hours a day to support Laquesha???

That is what we must get through our heads as a society. It doesn't matter what goes on behind closed doors, it matters how many people can afford to live on their front porch all day.

12/14/2009 8:03:37 PM

^ how many? seriously. i want to know. Laquesha is all too often the whipping boy of anti-progressive public policy sentiment -- i just want to know if its founded criticism.

LoneSnark should be able to quickly dig up some stats - he keeps it real in here.

that said, i think i think the writer makes some good points.


i always wondered what kind of candidate i'd make. fiscally i consider myself 'progressive' (although not a Social Democrat - for example i don't want govt. run healthcare), but i am 'pro-life' by most definitions.

12/14/2009 8:56:34 PM

This has been tried before. There was a book a few years back by Rod Dreher at the National Review supporting this as a new movement in the GOP. It was called "Crunchy Conservatives" or something like that. As far as I have seen, the GOP has made 0 overtures towards these voters, more than likely because there are no votes to be found in this group. The most walkable cities with the most organic grocers and whatnot overwhelmingly trend to the Dems already. Things might be trending GOP now in some places, but it sure as hell isn't in cities or places like Athens, Ga. or Olympia, Wa.

I'm surprised more of you didn't notice this fallacy of the whole thing: how many people living this "progressive lifestyle" stereotype would support the GOP's energy platform? I don't see how encouraging people to use more oil or coal (by upping output) plays into this, unless these people are Hypocrite Whole Foods Republicans.

Quote :

"Who gives a crap if Larry is fucking John as long as you don't work 3 hours a day to support Laquesha???"

We should raise taxes on the poor. Then they'll go work so they can get a tax cut. That would be a Fair Tax. I mean, they're just lazy black welfare queens, right?

[Edited on December 14, 2009 at 9:10 PM. Reason : .]

12/14/2009 9:08:50 PM

oh yeah - and i'm also "green" by most definitions.

one of these days i'm going to put together a financial model summing up the NPV of all the money spent militarily in the middle east (i don't know what time frame yet), and comitting a percentage of that towards wind and solar energy. the mathematics of it alone would be staggering.

12/14/2009 9:14:25 PM

well, either way, it puts people to work. look at the 1950s or 1980s military buildup.

of course, green energy only kills people when its used for its true end: to build a mega death ship for al gore to kill every last conservative alive.

(and energy projects have a multiplier effect in which people don't have to get blown up)

12/14/2009 9:17:02 PM

^^^^The problem is that money goes to wellfare but those people rarely pull themselves out of poverty. They get just enough to survive and reproduce.

The reps just want to give up on them, the dems require their dependence for votes.

It would be best for society to spend a little more money to get these people educated so that they can start putting more money into the system then they take out. It may take 3 or 4 generations to see a return, but it would be worth it. Its not in the interest of either of the current parties.

As long as you could prove the eventual return on investment, "fiscal conservatives" probably wouldn't have a problem with it. There are probably plenty of people (my self included) who wouldn't mind taxes if they're used to the best effect. The problem is I and those like me have absolutely no faith in the current government. We would rather see a much smaller government so that we can try to spend the money outselves than see it wasted on half-assed shit like the proposed healthcare debacle or a wellfare system designed to keep people just alive enough to get their votes.

This goes hand in hand with being socially progressive. I dont give 2 shits about how someone lives their life and a smaller government means less intervention in private life.

When it comes to stuff like environmentalism that train has been completely hijacked by nut jobs. Its worth remembering that the creation of the national parks system was 100% the work of wealthy private individuals. These were people who wanted to preserve the US for future generations. Anti-business groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club pushed these guys out of the environmental movement and as a result polarized "fiscal conservatives" from the ideas of actual conservation and protection of species.

I mean you have endangered species laws that encourage people to kill those species if they show up on your land. How hard would it be to provide tax incentives to keep those species around instead? Or nuclear power. Retard environmentalists have fearmongered the hell out of it to the point that we haven/'t built any new shit in 30 years. Despite it being the only green power solution capable of handling US demand. Or the fact that greenpeace has successfully prevented the use of drought-resistant crops in Aftrica. Or how about these hopenhagen bullshit where these faggots are out there circle jerking about some retarded shit instead of actually creating laws to encourage wind and solar development. We could get a law that gave tax incentives for businesses and individuals to build wind/solar/geothermal, but instead we got some awful fucking cap and trade law that penalizes the poor and gives tax credits to coal and oil companies with friends in congress.

So when you say fiscal conservatives are anti-environment, thats a bit of bullshit. We aren't anti-environment, we're anti-greenpeace, anti-retarded legislation, and anti-bad science (re: obama's nuclear policy).

There are plenty of ways that fiscal conservatives can get on the bandwagon, we've even proposed them. If you can get past your anti-capitalism views there are some retardedly easy solutions to these environmental problems that everyone can get behind.

[Edited on December 14, 2009 at 9:19 PM. Reason : a]

12/14/2009 9:17:30 PM

maybe the angry conservative FARK reader should be a new group. i certainly work with at least 5 of them in my IT dept and they're definately insufferable enough to be worthy of the GOP's attention.

12/14/2009 9:21:45 PM

Quote :

"an energized "tea party" base"

+

Quote :

"voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle"

If mixing these two is the hope for the republican party, then President Obama is going to be at least a three term president.

12/14/2009 10:35:18 PM

WTF. Why is anyone talking about welfare? Is either party up in arms over welfare? Hell, I can't remember the last protest sign that said anything about welfare for the poor. Such welfare programs largely did not survive the 1990s: Bill Clinton did a miraculous job dismantling the welfare state (well, making it small enough to ignore). Yes, we do still have welfare queens, but they don't live in Queens, they live on 5th Avenue. I'm not even going to bother looking it up, but all the implicit bailouts this past year probably exceeded all the welfare spending that Congress has spent since 1789. It is an insult to suggest that the meaning of "economic conservative" means getting rid of welfare queens! Have you not read a newspaper in the past year?

"economic conservatism" means, at least to me and I strongly suspect the President of Whole Foods:
1. No such thing as "Too Big to Fail" (No Bailouts!)
2. No spending money you don't have (That means stimulus)
3. No making promises you cannot keep (curtailing runaway public employee retirement schemes)

Sure, this list means that a large chunk of Republicans are not economic conservatives; as Boone has said, social conservatism is and was strong in the party. But Economic conservatism is non-existent in the Democratic party (Many Republicans balked at the bailouts, not so Democrats).

12/15/2009 12:18:35 AM

^^ Exactly. Welfare is such a drop in the bucket that we can pretty much label it as completely inconsequential. It's just a whipping boy because it's an easy target and the abuses of it are pretty infuriating...but in terms of the numbers of actual dollars wasted, it's like #1000 on the list of things to get pissed about.

12/15/2009 1:08:34 AM

Quote :

"He's assuming (hoping?) lifestyle and politics are distinct from one another. "

I don't think that's what he's saying at all. In fact, I think that's the exact opposite of what he's saying.


at any rate, this thread can be largely summarized by "VOTE DUKE 2024".

12/15/2009 1:16:00 AM

Quote :

"When some Republicans use homophobic language, express thinly disguised contempt toward immigrants, or ridicule heartfelt concerns for the environment, they affront the values of the educated class. And they lose votes they otherwise ought to win."

And if they reverse those things, they lose votes that they currently have. My guess is it wouldn't be a terribly equal trade.

The author seems to be saying that conservatives would be better off if they were liberal.

He also apparently thinks that Obama rode in on some great intellectual wave and not the normal tide of stupid people voting for terrible reasons. If its goal is to win, the Republican party does not need to appeal to tiny sliver of the population that includes the "highly educated" possessors of "progressive affluence." For every one of these dipshits, there are five regular ones.

The effective short- to mid-range policy is to keep blocking Obama on everything and then blaming him for not getting anywhere, eroding the support of people who expect great things and got none. Then co-opt a lot of much of what the administration is saying, run on that, and use our normal powers of brutal republican efficiency to ram it through congress. Take credit and bask in the glow of popularity until you find some new way to fuck it up.

I'd like to think that, long term, improved education will make that strategy (as well as many of the lamer talking points of social conservatism) less viable.

12/15/2009 2:47:04 AM

The GOP can't block anything dumbass. Don't buy into the liberal spin

12/15/2009 7:19:23 AM

The writer just described Cary, North Carolina.

12/15/2009 7:43:37 AM

Quote :

"If mixing these two is the hope for the republican party, then President Obama is going to be at least a three term president."

Yeah, and that's the problem that I'm seeing. You have the Democratic party that is, for the most part, united. Sure, they may disagree on specifics in bills or whatever, but by in large the party is socially liberal and fiscally liberal. There is no place in the Democratic party for someone that believes in limited government or balanced budgets.

So, as a result, you've got a lot of these libertarian-leaning types registered as Republicans, and often voting as Republicans. The Republican party leadership is doing and has been doing everything they can to make sure the "socially liberal" faction doesn't get power. And, at times, it seems like they're doing everything they can to make sure the fiscally conservative members don't get power, either. The "mainstream Republican" stands for everything that I despise: bloated government/military, out of control spending, and restricting personal freedom. At the same time, there are many Republicans that I support because they don't stand for those things, but it's all under the same party. There's definitely a split and it makes it hard for the party to form a coherent message.

There's a solution, but it won't be easy. To steal an idea from another TWWer, the GOP should be looking at the "lowest common denominator," which (you would think) is fiscal conservatism. That means throwing out planks of the party platform that attempt to increase government control over people's lives. Who gives a damn what people do with their own lives? The conservative message should be individual freedom and personal responsibility, not that we need to legislate morality.

I also believe that there are many Democrats who are potential allies in this fight. I know many of them would refuse to associate with the Republican "brand" at all, but I also know for a fact that there are many left-leaning libertarian Democrats that would agree on many important issues with these "Whole Food Republicans." If the Republican party didn't have such a stigma, these voters could easily be attracted. That's why the Republican party should rebrand itself, or a new party needs to rise from the ashes.

12/15/2009 9:10:19 AM

Quote :

"You have the Democratic party that is, for the most part, united. Sure, they may disagree on specifics in bills or whatever, but by in large the party is socially liberal and fiscally liberal. There is no place in the Democratic party for someone that believes in limited government or balanced budgets."

Everything that's happened in the last year goes against your statement. With Obama and majorities in both houses, no meaningful legislation has been accomplished aside from the controversial stimulus package. This is almost entirely due to internal strife.

12/15/2009 9:44:46 AM

There are a few Democrats that oppose specifics of certain bills, sure. It isn't just internal strife that has made it so bills are unpassable, though. Almost the entire Republican party has voted against proposals from Democrats. In any case, while there may be minor disagreements within the Democratic party, the ones in power seem to generally agree on what the role of government should be. In their view, the government should be playing an integral part in "fixing" the economy, regulating just about anything, and controlling behavior through legislation (hate crime legislation, for instance).

12/15/2009 10:02:05 AM

Quote :

"It would be best for society to spend a little more money to get these people educated so that they can start putting more money into the system then they take out. It may take 3 or 4 generations to see a return, but it would be worth it. Its not in the interest of either of the current parties."

I disagree. The money is already there through grants, loans, and a subsidized education system. Maybe we could make some extra efforts to lead the horse to water, but we definitely can't make him drink.

I guess I might be what he is referring to as a "Whole Foods Republican" although I don't really consider myself to be a Republican. It really is an odd melting pot of tattooed hipsters and suited business people with some earthy liberals and wealthy housewives thrown in the mix. All in all I think it's nice to see such a diverse group and I can't really think of many other places where you'd find these differing types being brought together. I've met some nice people and had quite a few interesting conversations just eating on the patio in front of the store.

12/15/2009 10:16:56 AM

Most of the money would need to be spent getting these people to want to get educated in the first place. Thats by far the hardest part. And it may just be as simple as providing an income to keep them from turning to crime. Theres probably more to it and much would need to be done ahead of time in terms of research to figure out the best possible means of getting them out of poverty and into the workforce.

12/15/2009 10:20:43 AM

Quote :

"Yes, we do still have welfare queens, but they don't live in Queens, they live on 5th Avenue. "

i hereby declare LoneSnark king of TSB

let the wild rumpus begin

12/15/2009 10:23:41 AM

Whenever I go to Whole Foods, all I see are well-dressed white folks buying fancy granola and crab-cakes.

Quote :

"There are a few Democrats that oppose specifics of certain bills, sure. It isn't just internal strife that has made it so bills are unpassable, though. Almost the entire Republican party has voted against proposals from Democrats. In any case, while there may be minor disagreements within the Democratic party, the ones in power seem to generally agree on what the role of government should be. In their view, the government should be playing an integral part in "fixing" the economy, regulating just about anything..."

There are broad, over-reaching themes that unite both parties, but that doesn't help them agree on legislation. I'd say the Republicans are united, if anyone; as displayed by their unnanimous opposition to bills put forth thus far.

Quote :

"..and controlling behavior through legislation (hate crime legislation, for instance)."

Hate crime legislation sucks but you can't honestly believe "behavior control" is a uniquely Democratic qualifier.

12/15/2009 11:30:37 AM

Quote :

"The effective short- to mid-range policy is to keep blocking Obama on everything and then blaming him for not getting anywhere, eroding the support of people who expect great things and got none. Then co-opt a lot of much of what the administration is saying, run on that, and use our normal powers of brutal republican efficiency to ram it through congress. Take credit and bask in the glow of popularity until you find some new way to fuck it up."

politics 101

12/15/2009 12:12:34 PM

Quote :

"i hereby declare LoneSnark king of TSB let the wild rumpus begin"

lol, stop

12/15/2009 12:17:41 PM

Quote :

"He also apparently thinks that Obama rode in on some great intellectual wave and not the normal tide of stupid people voting for terrible reasons. If its goal is to win, the Republican party does not need to appeal to tiny sliver of the population that includes the "highly educated" possessors of "progressive affluence." For every one of these dipshits, there are five regular ones. The effective short- to mid-range policy is to keep blocking Obama on everything and then blaming him for not getting anywhere, eroding the support of people who expect great things and got none. Then co-opt a lot of much of what the administration is saying, run on that, and use our normal powers of brutal republican efficiency to ram it through congress. Take credit and bask in the glow of popularity until you find some new way to fuck it up."

QFT . . . QF

Quote :

"The "mainstream Republican" stands for everything that I despise: bloated government/military, out of control spending, and restricting personal freedom."

I still maintain that the GOP is at least as fascist as the Democratic party is socialist.

12/15/2009 12:24:43 PM

Quote :

"The GOP can't block anything dumbass. Don't buy into the liberal spin"

I'm not so sure, cuntlips. We focused on the big push (health care) and managed to delay it much later than Obama promised while simultaneously changing it drastically. Whatever the final product is, my guess it that Republicans will take credit for:

1) Everything left in the bill.
2) Being willing to compromise.
3) Fighting to keep out less popular bits.

They will then blame Obama for:

1) Not getting it done on time.
2) Not getting everything he promised.
3) Spending money.

And they will get away with it, because the GOP does not hesitate to spend money on evil geniuses.

12/15/2009 12:56:57 PM

Quote :

"The GOP can't block anything"

But they can. Their total opposition to any compromise is forcing the Democrats to be 100% unified, which is a ridiculously high bar. The fact that they could hypothetically unblock the bill by easing up means that they are currently blocking the bill. It's like saying the bottom-half of a levee isn't blocking any water.

If the Democrats had 75-something in the Senate, then you'd be about right.

[Edited on December 15, 2009 at 1:23 PM. Reason : ]

12/15/2009 1:05:15 PM

It would be totally sweet if you could harness the GOP machine for good instead of evil.

12/15/2009 1:32:27 PM

liberal circle jerk that is TSB

12/15/2009 1:50:19 PM

If we took a TSB straw poll I guarantee you that Obama would MAYBE get a plurality of the votes in here, and I doubt most people here would eschew him for, say, Nader.

I mean, I wouldn't vote for him right now, but it's early yet.

But then again, the persecution complex is an important part of the psyche of the American right, so keep on truckin'.

Quote :

"It would be totally sweet if you could harness the GOP machine for good instead of evil."

Too bad the entirety of the machinery is busted right now. I don't see any salvagable parts either, unless you count parts of the Paultard foreign policy.

I don't see any significant constituency in the GOP supporting anything that's really politically winnable aside from opposing Obama right now. If they ran on ideas and not opposition, I don't see how they would win. They could MAYBE win in 2012 on a "Anyone But..." platform like the Dems did in '06 and '08.

[Edited on December 15, 2009 at 3:32 PM. Reason : .]

12/15/2009 3:28:15 PM

the machine has completely obliterated obamas healthcare plan. What im saying is what if you used it to promote a healthcare plan that would actually work? Half the dems would support it and you could get it done.

Same with energy, same with education. The dems just dont have the ability to solidify a political offense or defense. Plus they dont have Rush to beat the talking points into people's heads.

12/15/2009 3:44:48 PM

I don't know what that plan would be. Bob Dole and Howard Baker, both former GOP Senate Majority Leaders, proposed a plan with Tom Daschle that did much of what the Senate Finance Committee bill would do (subsidies, non-exclusion, regulation) and the GOP all voted against the Finance Committee plan (save Snowe).

I don't know what they'd support aside from something that probably has a lot of tax cuts and deregulation. They sure haven't let on that they back anything more than that and the Dems would be right to reject that.

12/15/2009 3:52:09 PM

All the plans presented so far have been complete trash. They dont fix anything. But that has nothing to do with my point.


My point was the originizational structure behind the gop is vastly superior to that of the dems. Regardless of if the current members of the gop would in reality create their own healthcare bill, they'd have a better chance of passing it than the dems passing their original plan.

tl;dr the dems are fucking morons despite their majority. Any chance of real reform will only be passable via the support of the GOP machine and my original post was to reflect my wish that the GOP would use their powers for good instead of evil.

ex: If the GOP created their own reform bill (regardless of content) they'd be able to pass it with ease.

12/15/2009 4:02:27 PM

I would guess that I am something close to a Whole Foods Republican.

I live a "progressive" lifestyle.
I believe in global warming and evolution. I like diversity and care about the environment. I am educated and "affluent" (I do okay anyways). I don't shop at Whole Foods, but I do go to the Fresh Market near my house.

Yet, I typically prefer limited government intervention in the economy. That isn't to say that I am a libertarian. I do support many forms of government efforts to create a "safety net" for people that are less well off. But I am certainly a supporter of the free market and am generally suspicious of sweeping efforts to regulate entire industries.

A "Whole Food Republican" candidate would be right my alley. A republican with a powerful voice that wasn't a batshit crazy birther or teabagger would be nice change of pace.

12/15/2009 4:11:22 PM

^same page

^^^^^liberal doesn't mean Obama. But there are WAY more liberals in TSB than coservatives. Lets have a poll?

[Edited on December 15, 2009 at 4:23 PM. Reason : .]

12/15/2009 4:22:44 PM

There's an assumption that more legislation is going to help. Like if we can just get enough regulation and enough government funding, this whole mess will be solved and everyone will be able to get healthcare. The "reform" we need should come in the form of repealing old legislation. That's what the GOP needs to support. As long as reform really just means price controls, salary controls, laws regarding who can compete and where, and moving costs around, the problem isn't going to be solved. The problem is the cost of healthcare. There isn't going to be a bill that legitimately lowers the cost of going to the hospital or doctor. What we can do is rip up the laws that make it difficult for doctors and insurance companies to compete, and the government can stop encouraging (subsidizing) group plans that mask the true cost of healthcare.

12/15/2009 4:27:02 PM

Are Whole Foods Republicans same as Church Going Liberals?

12/15/2009 8:40:38 PM

At face value, Jesus-imitating liberals seem to be much less of a contradiction.

I'm surprised that Christians aren't economic liberals (well heck, judging from Bush Jr., they're de facto economic liberals). Jesus wasn't exactly a champion of the sort of "SCREW YOU I EARNED MY SHIT" values.

12/15/2009 9:10:23 PM

Are you nuts? Theft is spoken of quite extensively by Jesus. Giving is good for the soul, giving what you stole from others is not. It's in the bible, look it up.

If one believes in a god, it would be easy to see why he would set such a policy. "From each according to his ability to each according to his needs" without advanced technology was little more than a suicide pact. Even as recently as the 19th century many communities were set up under such belief systems, they all disbanded in hunger.

12/15/2009 10:43:34 PM

yep, if we weren't all ate up with entitlement programs and various means of wealth redistribution, i would be charitable. as it is, i give away pretty close to nothing...i figure it's already being taken from me forcibly, and it's going to get bad as my income and wealth grow.

12/15/2009 10:55:01 PM

^ that’s easy enough to say, but I don’t know of a single example of any community where out of pure charity, the needs of the poor were taken care of.

It didn’t happen in the US before gov. stepped in after the great depression, and it’s not happening in any of the many countries around the world where the gov. is too poor or too weak to have any welfare programs.

Not to mention that in times of economic recession, everyone is tight with their money, and people have few qualms about turning blind eyes to problems.

12/16/2009 12:03:21 AM

To be clear, I'm not advocating a total "fuck 'em all" policy. I just think that the money taken from me over my lifetime is enough above and beyond my share that I don't feel compelled at all to give anything else.

12/16/2009 12:11:19 AM

I understand that, and it is a reasonable position.

I’m saying that if that mechanism weren’t in place, there’s no historical evidence that shows we can reasonably expect enough people to be charitable enough to cover the expenses regarding the poor that’d we’d need to in order to maintain a high quality of living as a first world country.

12/16/2009 12:15:38 AM

Quote :

"It didn’t happen in the US before gov. stepped in after the great depression"

Liar. Even after you claim the government stepped in, its efforts were paltry. The salvation army fed tens of millions, the red cross fed and evacuated millions from the dust bowl, and charity keeps feeding the hungry to this very day. And this does not mention the other millions that went to live with distant relatives or childhood friends. Or is it only charity when they are complete strangers? The federal government tried to put lots of people on direct assistance, but many opted to live in the shanty towns (where they were given free temporary building materials and free meals, all funded through charity). Many landlords allowed their tenants to stay without rent, neighbors opened their homes to their less fortunate neighbors.

No American starved during the Great Depression. And this fact had nothing to do with federal largess, which just like today tends to spend its money on itself rather than the people actually in need. Check the dates, a large chunk of our government buildings were built during the Great Depression, a horrendous mis-direction of resources. Especially when you realize the pork was funded with 80 percent income tax rates, a national sales tax, an electronics tax, a radio tax, a wealth tax, 100+% tariffs, and the national recovery administration putting people in prison for trying to sell chickens. This was all before the federal government decided to slaughter livestock and destroy crops in an effort, I can only guess, to bankrupt the charities which were struggling to feed 1/3rd of the population.

But you go right ahead and put your faith in Congress. They seem to help out as soon as they have run out of other things to do.

12/16/2009 12:55:45 AM

Quote :

"No American starved during the Great Depression. "

Do you mean this figuratively?

Because it is definitely not true.



And this book was about a white family. I can’t imagine what blacks at the time had to go through.

[Edited on December 16, 2009 at 12:59 AM. Reason : ]

12/16/2009 12:58:09 AM