| QUOTE (Colonel32 @ Mar 2 2004, 01:30 AM) |
| QUOTE | | I'm beginning to think Bush-hating is a form of dementia. It certainly lacks logic and common sense. |
But the rabid bush lovers are just as bad as the haters  Nice posts Ben! I completely agree with your stance on gay marriage, now if you could just get on board with some liberal social spending mwuahaha |
If you can eliminate all the crap pork barrel spending, you can put half of that toward responsible social programs.
My big problem with social spending is that most of it amounts to throwing money at a perceived problem and ignoring the real root causes. Too often groups politicize and issue and ignore the real causes of society's ills because it's taboo to criticize a particular group for their culture, for example (unless it's white trailer trash or men in general). Cries of racism always go up in a shrill defense of a self-destructive pattern of behavior instead of giving some ideas valid consideration. We've become oversensitive to certain things, to the point of aping the three monkeys (see, hear and speak no evil) of lore.
Ignoring the truth doesn't make things better, no matter how ugly it is.
What replaces the truth is a culture of victimization. Everybody is a victim, even when they commit crimes or wallow in their own self-pity, while their own world crumbles around them. Lawsuits have become the "American Dream" - the big Lotto Win - Welfare becomes an entitlement, a right.... affirmative action becomes payback. All of these affect the collective self-esteem of the people they proport to help. Instead fo the helping hand to aid people and uplift them to a better, productive, tax-paying life, they only serve to beat down people with one hand while handing them a form of slavery with the other.
Social spending should come with tactical and strategic plans for helping people help themselves. Education, training, debt management/elimination... all should be considered. Throwing money at institutions (like schools) should require a demonstration of the effectiveness of that spending, instead of more requests for money. Sadly, every attempt to do these things are met with resistence by those who take advantage of the system in the worst way.
So "Responsible" is my key watchword when it comes to social spending, as well as how people need to act in today's society. If we all held personal responsibility as our most esteemed ethic, the world would be much better than it is today.
