Porsche-O-Phile |
08-29-2004 04:04 AM |
The founding fathers intent for the country was also the notion of equality where anyone would have an equal shot at "making it". This has come to be most certainly not the case. The "free market" advocacy that right-wingers seem to love to defend is capable of - and responsible for - grave injustices. In most cases, the free market works great, but the role of government is to step in and decide where the "line" is and keep things reined-in when the free market starts becoming abusive and destroying the notion of equality. This is what someone correctly mentioned above (think it was Zeke) about "checks and balances".
Left to its own devices, the free market would create the robber-baron era all over again. There'd be slums all over the place, rampant poverty, disease, social injustice, etc. Is this really the system we want? On the other extreme I agree that communism is proven to not work - the idealology falls apart due to people's inherent desire for greed, advancement, and personal power. In THEORY, I think communism is the best system, but it will never work in practice. As "civilized" as we humans like to think we are, we're animals / monkeys at our core and incapable of resisting the temptation of greed necessary to put the "system" first and make a common-good system (like communism is intended to be in its purest sense) work.
The free market has its merits and socialized government-run programs have theirs. Both have times and places where they should exist to prevent abuses / unfairness in their more extreme forms.
As an interesting side note - traditionally it has been the "right wing" types that have called for small government, government "out of people's lives", an end (or mitigation) of taxation, elimination or cutback of social programs, etc. How then do all you self-proclaimed "right wing" types defend the current idealology of the republican party? Here it is in a nutshell with regards to the above "planks" - LARGER government (a la 9/11, "Patriot" (that name alone is a TOTAL joke) Act, larger budgets for military, DOMESTIC (not just foreign) surveillance, etc.), MORE government intervention in peoples' lives (particularly the personal areas like sexuality, womens' rights, and people having the right to love and / or marry whom they choose), HIGHER taxation (overall, despite BushCo's "front" about purported tax cuts - the reality is the middle class pays more. Look at the budget / defecit; it's bigger than ever, hence "bigger government", duh)
So which is it? Are you right-wingers for larger and more intrusive government or for smaller government / free-market? You can't have it both ways.
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