About Thomas I. Expertise I can answer very general questions about liberalism today and how it differs to what it was like yesterday. Please note: I am not a liberal and I believe that liberalism is the most threatening ideology today in America. I am a libertarian. However, I spend lots of time trying to understand liberalism. I pledge to be polite, understanding, honest and hopefully insightful. I hope to be a socratic mid-wife of your ideas instead of simply disagreeing with you. Hopefully, I may learn a few things in the process.
Experience My mother worked For Ronald Reagan. My father is a self-made man with nearly a 1,000 employees. Myself and my family are heavily into politcs. Politics is the constant conversation in my family. I have traveled to dozens of countries around the world and was a business professor at a university.
Expert: Thomas I. Date: 9/14/2000 Subject: Small special-interest groups
Question Hello Thomas I.,
I think the nature of the liberals and the Democratic Party have changed quite a bit these past 15-20 years. I wonder if the Democrats are purposefully trying to attract special-interest groups so they`ll have a better chance at election time. By special-interest groups, I am referring to the homosexuals, any minority group, environmentalists, communists, etc.
Your thoughts are welcome, as I am simply bouncing thoughts around trying to get a handle on the apparent `popularity` of their foolishness. I realize some of their `popularity` is really a contrived situation as the media seems to be loaded with liberal Democrats that shamelessly slant the news to suit their agenda.
Thanks for your time,
Peggy
Answer Do you think?
Obviously...
Liberal comes from the word libra which means free, but there are anything but this. Atracting special-interest groups should not be inherently wrong in and of itself. This is my well-reasoned libertarian belief (I am not a liberal by the way), which is subject to rare mistakes and is open to change. Here are a few examples of where I stand Homosexuals are really the only minority that is being discriminated against by societies laws(through the use of the law, like making sodomy illegal or not granting joint election on tax returns) in this country that the Democratic Party or the "liberals" are backing. I think that such restrictions are stupid, because the Republicans go out of there way to give tax-cuts to married couples and then not allow homosexuals to make similar partnerships that would grant the same tax, insurance etc advantages. No, I am not a homosexual, but I am similar to them in sense, that I am a young rich white male and therefore target by certain interest groups. I simply don't feel like I am different than homosexuals because they are being affected by at least 51% of the voters like myself.
Minority groups may have there own gripes as well, perhaps because of discrimination. Blacks want restitution for slavery. Indians perhaps want more independence. Both in at least some degree have received restitution in recent years. And both perhaps have/do deserve some degree of restitution because it says we as a moral nation are making a statement that such things are wrong.
My whole point in this part of my answer is that >51% of the population should not decide the fate of the other <49%. That is what our founding fathers believed. They did not want the largess to attack those who made better lives for themselves (ie "those with $$"). Most founding fathers believed that everyone should be free, in spite of the dismal situation of freedom in this country at that time. They created a republic, which is different than a democracy. In a Democracy, there are no safeguards to people's freedoms, the plurality controls everything, however, in a republic, no laws can take away freedoms set forth by the republic (in this case the Bill of Rights).
However, the republic is not what it once was, Judges are reinterpreting the Constitution saying it is OK to have quotas. It is OK to have Affirmative Action. It is OK to have an abortion. (I am pro-life personally and pro-choice socially by the way). However, I still I am in somewhat in disagreement with the decision that they made. Nowhere in the 5th amendment does it say that you have the right to have an abortion, and in some degree abortions have taking place since before civilization. However, the 5th amendment never speaks about miranda rights or the Miranda statute which was created by jusdges and NOT legislators. Now, I don't have a problem with Miranda rights because the more freedoms, the better. But big point here is this, the major stuff in the 5th amendment are never taken into consideration. like, "The governement shall not tax the people without just compensation" or the rights against search and seizure which should easily be applied to salary withholding and paying quarterly estimated taxes, racial profiling. The government is turning out to be exactly what the founding father's were attempting to prevent from happening. The majority controlling the minorities. One person taking advantage of another.
Now, my mother worked for Ronald Reagan when he was govenor. She was around when Jack Kemp was accused of being a homosexual because a bunch of his pears were. She believes that everybody should have the same rights. However, special-interests are moving to the left because they get more bang for their buck...Stealing from Peter to pay Paul.
My point is this and I do have one and it is the same as the founding fathers. People should be free. Free to make a living, to do whatever they want so long as they hurt no one else, or damage the environment and public property to what is deemed to be to much damage.
Today, with the Democrats, you have a motley coalition of minorities that are in it for themselves taking advantage of court precendents that have been created since the late 30s with FDR. The funny thing is that a detroit auto union member does not like the homosexual or the environmentalist and the trial lawyer thinks the auto worker is a retard. The Jewish Democrats think they are better than all the rest. These people have very little in common other than the bribes the receive from the Democrats, but like I said before perhaps homosexuals belong with libertarians and republicans.
Anyway, blacks and indians should go through the court-system and receive restitution and be heard in a court. However, AA and quotas and welfare and everything else over the years that have gone to minorities amounts to be in the trillions, perhaps ten trillion which I think is more than enough for restitution. AA in California for example, costs tens of billions of dollars. My father has a company with 700 workers and he gets checks from the governement for every minority he hires. However, the intangible costs are enormous. Payments to lawyers, Human Resource department heads, and lost productivity, and lost freedom when totaled are also in the tens of billions. So, these numbers can get big awefully fast. And valuing the expenses in real-terms (without inflation) or "opportunity costs" (accounting jargon for lost profits, or considering that this money could have been better invested in the stock market or other venture) is ABSOLUTELY HUGE! Let's put it this way. If the indians who sold Manhatton to the Dutch for $22 in beads invested that money in the Netherland Banks or in the Hudson Bay Company and continued to move in and out of conservative investments, then they have around $300 trillion which is easily enough to buy back the entire world.
Time heals everything. I just recently had the pleasure of living in Estonia which was a sattelite state of the former Soviet Union that was taken over in the Molotof-Rippentrof treaty between Stalin and Hitler and freed in around 1990. Here is a people that have not had a country since the 1300s. They had been enslaved since the 1300s because basically they were tied to the land. Napolean never gave them the Rights of Man which freed the rest of Western Europe because he never got there. They don't like to complain that they got shafted in the game of life. No complaints about the pograms, the genocide, their second class citizenry under the Danes, the Swedes, Prussians, Czars, Communists, Communists, Nazis, and Communists again for the third and last time. Not about the times the Soviets put their guns down on the table and demanded a meal when they retook the country or when first right of refusal was taking place. My whole point is this. I don't believe the African Americans, and many other minorities about their discrimination in this society. Most other peoples around the world who have had it don't have an opportunity to get money from deep pockets and simply have to move on. However, Most African-Americans (which I will single out justly because they are great example of my point) live their lives as if the world owes them much. When simply, that is not the case, and further interferes with their success and happiness in their lives.
Now, I am not sure if you agree with me so far. You don't have to. You don't have to in a libertarian society. In a libertarian or "Republican" (old definition), people have freedoms. Wrongs are righted through a court system in such societies.
And if you can't agree with that, I am certain you can agree with this. Government needs to be governed at the local level. Even Nader, in his platform stresses socialism at the local level. All the most developed nations of the world have democracy and decentralization (except Japan). Examples include USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland. The Scandinavian socialist countries are so successful (high per capita GDP), I believe because they have decisions made on the front-lines (as well as a homogenous culture and ethnic make-up). The countries are so small and that is why they are simply not centralised. France and Germany overall, do not have the high per capita GDP as the countries listed above because they are too centrally controlled.
Countries like Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong developed so rapidly from dire poverty to rich because they were free-marketeers and also that they are small. This is same reason why Russia is doing terribly, and Estonia is doing so well.
To put it another way, if a welfare recipient is receiving 25% of the amount of money that is going to welfare, and a public school student is receiving 20% for every dollar that goes to public schools, then it is not efficient. All Scandinavian countries have more in percentage terms going to students.
LASTLY ABOUT THE NEWS MEDIA
Ninety-five percentage of news reporters are registered Democrats. I don't think it is some big conspiracy. However, it just so happens that reporters, teachers, and actors don't get paid a lot because the free-market economy has determined that there are a lot of people who want to do that compared to the amount of people who demand there services. The free-market has put a price tag on them and they are simply unhappy about that for starters. Secondly, these are positions that require a great deal of empathy. Actors have to do it to play role. Teachers need motivate different kinds of students. Journalists need to understand their diverse audience. Furthermore, this is generational thing. The the Self-righteous baby-boomers are involved here and they think that everyone should be like them. In particular, though, Journalists are successful when they use fear, emotion, and sensationalism. Liberals are better at this than others. Teachers get paid by the government and therefore they are going to want bigger governement. Actors, may or may not
know this, but art is NOT often a reflection of people in their society. This is the common excuse for gangster rap and black victim film. In this case, Art is much more a reflection of what they want to believe that they are in society.
Let me put my point about acting in another way by talking about what I feel about people. If you want to understand one interesting facet about people and acting, it is this. People always think that they are right. How often does someone think that they are wrong? Maybe, if they are crazy they might do this. People are always right. Not only that, but they think that their was is the best way. Their religion, culture, nation, ethnicity or them as a person is somehow at least more valuable than it really is. I will never forget some night when a Nepalese person told me that his country was the best in the world because he has the tallest mountain in the world. So, this to some extent explains why blacks think OJ is innocent, or Christians believe that Christ is literally everything, etc. Call it egocentric when we are simply talking about one individual and when you get many together, call it ethnocentric or nationalistic among other things. Obviously, this egoistic nature of man, this survival mechanism must be reiterated and supported by acting and all of art. That is what Hollywood is trying to sell, they are trying to sell whatever it takes for you to believe that you are right, and that your sorry self is really more valuable than it really is. But Hollywood, must maximise there profits and therefore casts their net widely getting as many people as they possible can in their net. That is not neccessarily good.
Here is what are should be. It is about what "should be" and "could be". It should be about discovery. It should reflect good thinking, truth, justice and freedom. It should be open to new things and not simply movies about Cowboys, Sicilians, Jews, and Blacks or actually what they think that they are.
I am not going to go on a rant here especially since you did not ask such questions about actors, but the same applies to journalism. If you want to read more about my opinion read Nieztche or Ayn Rand and what they think art should be. Thanks for letting me type, it helps gives myself ideas. Hopefully you got some as well.
