Had To Respond Once More To Libertarian Dupes

This to answer any and all fitting comments to the recent posts regarding Ron Paul:

To the menagerie of fools, too many to name individually:

You are either very disingenuous, or very naive. There are hardcore, doctrinaire socialists on one extreme, and on the other, you. You have a fundamental misconception that somehow wealth can be divorced from state power, and that established wealth will not inevitably use its natural influence to compel state power to perpetuate that wealth. You are making the same mistake, ironically, that people on the very extreme left make: thinking that humans are ultimately reasonable, benevolent, will act as they should, etc. Have you read anything about what the U.S. economy was like during the Gilded Age, the heyday of your economic ideology?

There is one simple reason why there is no longer widespread child labor in the U.S. One reason why public education, yes, even such as it is, is now universally available. One reason why when someone gets hurt on the job, they don't just get put out on the street with an arm cast on, and tough shit, buddy. One reason why when someone has a catastrophic illness, they aren't just left to be evicted and starve, and their kids along with them. One reason why when someone gets too old and sick to work, they can at least afford a tin of Little Friskies. One reason why anybody can require the barest subsistence wage when they show up for a job.

It's called "government." And it's virtually inevitable. Ask somebody in Somalia what it was like to live without it. If you like low taxes, try sunny Guatemala. See what the roads and schools are like there.

I'll take my chances with a modern Western mixed economy, thank you. At least it can be monitored, checks and balances, etc. No, it isn't going to be clean or perfect. Nothing associated with the naked ape is ever going to be, and especially not a "free" market.

At least I've gotten a chance to respond thusly to the smug, ignorant likes of you, rather than being made into some beast of burden like some of my forebears were. You are either liars or fools. I hope that in most cases it is the latter.

4:47 PM