Ultra-right conspiracy lunacy is nothing new.

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Of course it's not how it has to be, but this is the way the corporate oligarchy wants them to be. As long as we accept their tyranny and pretend we're living in a free "democracy" one can only expect the fate of most people (including ourselves) to become worse instead of better.



First of all, the standard of living is just one aspect of measuring welfare. While we might have more luxury than our ancestors used to have, we have little freedom to think beyond the frameworks offered by the oligarchy. Not only is this a limitation of some of our most basic freedoms, the manipulation of the masses through the media and "education system" has a major corrosive effect on culture and social cohesion and is largely responsible for the emptiness many people feel but simply can't explain... which drives them towards selfish hedonism, depression or insanity. This is of course precisely what the oligarchy wants, considering a weak, decadent and divided population cannot offer any resistance to a tyrannical regime.

Having said that, the standard of living in my country (Belgium) is currently declining and there doesn't seem to be much hope for the future. The gap between rich and poor hasn't been this big for decades and just keeps growing slowly but steadily.



Actually, government debt is caused by the economic system itself. As a country, you don't really need any banks to loan money from. Any government can issue its own currency and supply it debtfree to its population without risking any more inflation (or actually decreasing inflation). The only reason governments loan money from banks is because it drains money from the population into the hands of the bankers at the very top of the corporate oligarchy who're the ones who really run the puppet shows we commonly call "democracies".

Of course you're right about unemployment, but this again is caused by the greed and lack of concern about human rights by the corporate oligarchy. The seek the cheapest way to produce their goods and as soon as they find a way that's cheaper than the way they're producing their goods now, you can bet they'll fire a few thousand employees, sell the least profitable production plants and build a few more where it's cheaper. Unless we stop this practice things will only get worse, however again this requires we overthrow the corporate oligarchy and to do so we must overthrow the political system itself.



I couldn't agree more and as I said we can expect things to only get worse...

He was fighting against the Fascists; he didn't much care who his allies were at the time. At one point he ended up in a Trotskyist unit. But for virtually his entire life, he spoke and wrote in favor of democratic socialism. So... yeah. I am way, way to the right of the real Orwell, and his ideal government would have been significantly bigger than the modern US government, and also bigger than I would support.

To your tin hattery, I will not bother to provide a response.

I wasn't aware of that. I must admit I read only a few chapters of "Homage to Catalonia" since I read it at a friend's place and never had a copy of it myself. He seemed quite sympathetic to the anarchist cause, though, as far as I remember.



So why did you pick his image as your avatar?



My "tin hattery" consists of nothing but verifiable facts and the fact that you refuse to address what you consider to be flaws in my rhetoric I guess this means you don't have any rational rebuttal at all.

I enjoyed his books, and I was in a cynical mood when I registered on this site, hence the handle Orwell. The rest (avatar, sig, custom title) are largely because I like consistency, so once I'm calling myself Orwell I may as well have a matching sig and avatar.

Can I ask what you mean by this? Wasn't Henry Ford an isolationist who wanted America to stay out of WW2?
Do you mean to say that Ford believed powerful people would always look to war as a way of making money and that he thus concluded world peace was unattainable?



Me too. What in particular would you like explained about it?
I have heard that General Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket" is a good place to start. I have not gotten round to reading it yet myself, but it's fairly short.
http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/racket.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

What is it with liberals and spamming the race card? That capitalists are monsters, blah blah blah. While unions may have had their place in the early 19th century, they have become part of the problem today.


Anyways do the liberals here have any explanation for the fact more and more of these "crazy conspiracy theories" are being proven to actually be true. It isn't crazy when it is actually true, guess the right isn't as crazy as you try to paint them to be huh.

Umm. I was addressing Codarac not you.

The truth is that to organizations like the JBS (which is a major influence on Glenn Beck) "restoring the constitution" is a code word for restoring the social order to that of the 19th century. Minimum wages? Unconstitutional! Communist!! ! Child labor laws? Radical!! ! Socialist! Unconstitutional!! Social Security? Unemployment benefits? It's a Marxist conspiracy!! !

You see the pattern? Today it's healthcare legislation. In the 1960s it was civil rights legislation. In the 1940s it was Social Security. The times may change but the arguments never change.

You do know that high minimum wages hurt small businesses right? It has been nothing but a hindrance for my parents. Business owners don't have unlimited funds for operating costs and investment so high minimum wages means less positions available, less people being hired, compensating for the high minimum wage by raising prices on products, and a higher entry point.

Teddy Roosevelt supported an end to child labour, was for women's suffrage, and was in favour of trust busting in case you're trying to imply right wingers are reactionaries.

Teddy Roosevelt was also famous for being a Progressive. In fact, his political career helped to define that term, and he briefly was the head of a political party by that name.

Come on people. When you're talking about politicians from a century ago, you have to look at more than their party affiliation to figure out where they actually stood.

I don't think he cares, he's already shown that he believes rich people (as long as they don't support the far left) are evil monsters.



To add to this, Republicans were also the ones that were the deciding factor for civil rights. George H.W. Bush is the one that signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law, and George W. Bush restored and strengthened it after activist judges tried to dismember it.

It was the Liberal Judges and the Swing vote on the US Supreme Court that decided it was okay for city and state governments to use eminent domain to steal land and property from individuals and give it to businesses. It was the 4 Conservative Judges that were the dissent.

I thought liberals here claim that Conservatives are for big business screwing people over, well looks like the liberals are living in the twilight zone because the liberals are the ones helping big business screw people over, not the Conservatives.

There has been a shift in political alignments since the Civil Rights movement. The Republican and Democratic parties are not what they used to be.


Credit where credit is due: a legitimate Bush family accomplishment.

Actually nothing has changed, the democrats just discovered they can use the culture of victimhood to get minority votes. That is possibly why inner city schools are so bad and nothing ever gets done about it.

Republicans are viewing the situation as skin color being used to judge someone is quite frankly stupid. People should succeed or fail based on merit, that's why Republicans want ethnicity to not be given in college applications, so a University has no way of knowing what ethnicity a potential student is.



I will give you credit that you have at least enough objectivity to recognize Bush did something positive.

I'm aware of that, but it's not like he became progressive and all the sudden felt empathy for the first time in his life. All the stuff he proposed had to be already on his mind, not just sudden whims from a change of heart. I'm just saying that's one proof of the right being exclusively selfish and power hungry being BS. And yeah, props for paying credit where it's due, more people need to do that.

@ Inuyasha: Yeah, I don't think he cares either. He can keep believing that the rich are the root of all evil, but I see enough power trips on a daily basis to be convinced that selfishness is universal.

Last edited by AceOfSpades on 21 Jan 2011, 6:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Irrelevant. Here in the US there would be no minimum wage if the far right had it's way.


Teddy Roosevelt wasn't a right winger. He was for "Evil Big Gubberment" and therefore a radical commie/fascist by Glenn Beck standards.

Wrong. I believe all human beings (both rich and poor) are inherently selfish and tribalistic. It's just that the concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy people (I'm not talking about small business owners here, I'm talking billionaire owners of giant conglomerates) allows these people to put their selfish agenda into practice. The poor simply don't have the power to act on their selfishness to such great effect on society as a whole as do the ultra-wealthy.

We as a species are not genetically programmed to want to provide for the good of people outside our immediate social sphere. Human beings will also exploit those outside their immediate sphere given the chance. Society will also come up with rationalizations for gross injustice and unfairness in order to absolve themselves of guilt. Before the age of enlightenment, the aristocratic class promoted the philosophy of divine birthright. Today the wealthy elite (the Koch brothers in specific) promote the mythos of the John Birch Society and Ayn Rand style Social Darwinism.

Um... you missed my point entirely. Teddy Roosevelt was not a right-winger. It is anachronistic to attach our modern notions of Republican=Conservative or Democrat=liberal to early 20th century politics. Progressivism is very clearly a left of center ideology. Certainly Beck has demonized Progressives in general (and Teddy Roosevelt in particular) for their leftism.

The Democrats were initially the more conservative/right-wing party. Their precursors (the Democratic-Republicans) opposed the expansions of government authority that the Federalists wanted, and favored states' rights over the more powerful central government desired by the Federalists. The Democratic Party of the early to mid 19th century was not in favor of the rapid industrialization and universal public education that the Whigs promoted (hence conservative- desiring instead to remain an agrarian economy and keep education relatively more privatized). They were conservative in desiring to maintain the systems set up in America's founding, including the institution of slavery, in contrast to the progressives and abolitionists of the early Republican party, who pursued a progressve social agenda (abolition, expansion of suffrage) while expanding the government's role (national banks, higher taxes, increased funding for education). The Republicans of the Progressive Era continued to be more left-leaning than the Democrats, including the push for (and successful passage of) Prohibition. It was only with the formation of the New Deal Coalition under FDR that the Democrats began to adopt left-of-center economic stances, although socially conservative elements (notably the Dixiecrats) were still very influential up through the 1960s. As late as the 1960s and 1970s, there was a strong liberal wing in the Republican Party, spearheaded by Nelson Rockefeller. Only with the "Reagan Revolution" do I think we can really conclusively classify the GOP as part of what we recognize as a modern right-wing movement, and the Democratic Party still has a significant conservative wing in the Blue Dog Democrats.

So. GOP!=Conservative when we are talking about politicians who were active a century ago. Mainstream scholarship recognizes at least one major political realignment since that time (the formation of the New Deal Coalition) while several further shifts, if not complete realignments, from the 1960s through 1980s are a matter of serious debate. It is inappropriate and anachronistic to label Teddy Roosevelt as a right-wing conservative, especially if your only basis for doing so is his party affiliation.