This country would never have been founded.
The whole point of conservatism is to resist change. If liberal thinking had not prevailed in 1776, then we would still be a British colony, and instead of English we’d be speaking…
Okay. Well, yes, we’d still be speaking English. But we’d all have British accents. And as a result, all our iconic television characters, like…I dunno…Doctor Gregory House, would have to be British. Could you imagine that actor, Hugh Laurie, speaking with a British accent? Of course not.
Avoid the prospect of Hugh Laurie speaking with a British accent. Be a liberal.
PAD
• 
Sounds like one of the DirectTV ads. “Don’t wake up in a roadside ditch.” But ’tis true, they would’ve convinced those people that wanted ‘freedom’ that it’s OK to give your money to the king in taxes, it will eventually trickle down to you.
One could opine that Columbus would never have found America in the first place without government funding.
I had a point, but I’ll shelve it. Yours works better anyways. 😀
Wildcat
Unfortunate flaw: Hugh Laurie’s real voice is even better than his House voice.
(by the way, I just finished Captain Marvel. Loved the last issue.)
Well, conservatism originally meant just small government (as in, conserve the government for those times when it’s absolutely necessary) as opposed to liberalism which believes in a whole lotta government (i.e. a liberal helping of mashed potatoes).
The problem is, the political/economic conservatives allied themselves with religious reactionaries, and have ended up losing sight of the original philosophy except as a tool (shrink government in any area that offends the religious, but grow the government in any area the religious want to exert more control).
Actually, Dave, “conservative” originally meant “favoring the status quo”. It’s only in the past couple of decades that American politicians have perverted it into a philosophy that favors “small government” that still regulates people’s personal lives, medical choices, and available entertainment.
Thus the famed European joke:
“What are those Republicans like?”
“Oh, they’re like our Conservative Party.”
“Ah, I see. And the Democrats?”
“They’re like our Conservative Party, too.”
If you don’t think the left wants to “regulates people’s personal lives, medical choices, and available entertainment,” you live a very cloistered life.
Stevie, I was addressing the inherent contradiction of a “small government” that nevertheless has such powers.
Find me a “liberal” who’s claimed to want small government, and we can talk…
The funny thing is, more than any other factor, capitalism has eroded traditional religion a lot.
Capitalism is so efficient because it’s amoral. If there is profit to be had selling products to transexuals, then you can be sure that a business will spring up to cater to that market.
No thanks.
On this side of the world, the “Liberal” Party is the conservative party. And you thought your country was weird….
Heh. Made me think of the House casting story retold on the series retrospective the other night. Hugh Laurie sent an audition tape using the American accent he used on the show. EP Bryan Singer saw the tape and didn’t believe he was British.
Or then there’s:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p49MXm8CQpg
And we now return you to your regularly scheduled comments.
–Daryl
Wait Hugh Laurie is bri… oh, I see what you did there.
On the other hand, we wouldn’t have to suffer a lot of bad American remakes of good British shows.
i second, third, and forth this statement.
On the third hand, not everything that comes off BBC is automatically gold. Watch more than three episodes of Are You Being Served?, for instance, or Keeping Up Appearances, two shows that have smatterings of brilliance amidst seas of Three’s Company-level mediocrity. (I’ve seen more than my fair share of these while waiting for the local PBS station to air The Red Green Show.)
Actually, (and you may know this) Three’s Company was based on the British television series Man About the House.
Aww, Are You Being Served? is one of my favorites.
But to this day, I have not even attempted to find the bootlegs for the two Red Dwarf USA pilots. 🙂
well, “All In The Family” is one of the exceptions.
Yeah, but you’d have Ameri/British remakes of Bollywood shows.
Like “All in the Family,” (without which we wouldn’t have had “Maude,” “The Jeffersons,” and “Good Times”) “Sanford and Son,” “Three’s Company,” “Cash Cab,” “America’s Got Talent,” “Max Headroom,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” “Being Human”…
PAD
Showoff:)..No, seriously, that is an impressive list and I was aware that most of them (“Three’s Company” and “Dancing With The Stars” were) remakes of British shows, but not all of the and stuff like that doesn’t come to me nearly as quickly as I would like.
.
Kudos.
Since many of those shows (ALL IN …aside) didn’t impress me anyway, I can’t judge, but will say that the ones I had hopes for (ABFAB and FAWLTY) were horrible in the American versions. One thing … wasn’t MAX HEADROOM produced by the same people in the US and British versions? That would help account for the consistent quality levels.
Yes, it was, although to say there were US and British versions is a bit misleading. There was a British TV pilot, and then they made a series from it for ABC, but it was still technically a British show.
That was such an interesting show, too. Too bad it didn’t last longer. I remember always being frustrated that I could never convince my family that the guy who played Blank Reg was not the annoying guy from the Energizer commercials (even though that guy was Australian and about 30 years younger).
I don’t think you meant to get “Cool, Considerate Men” stuck in my head, but you did.
Of COURSE he meant to.
And then there’s the problem of breaking political thought down in to a pure liberal/conservative spectrum. Where do you place someone who believes the Government should be as small as possible? That the Government should not be in the business of propping people up if they make mistakes? That it’s none of the Government’s business who you sleep with, who you marry, or even how many you marry at the same time? That drugs should be legalized – but if you’re caught driving or otherwise doing something that could lead to someone getting hurt while you’re impaired, you should be held responsible as you chose to take the drugs in the first place? That public corporations are an abomination, and should be abolished, as the artificial limitation of liability leads to psychopathic and sociopathic behavior by the entity, but privately-held joint stock companies are fine? That “hate crimes” are no worse than “anger crimes” or “greed crimes” – that killing someone because they cheated on you in marriage, or you want their money, or the color of their skin, or the choice of their bed partners (if not in an agreement with them) matters – all these are equally horrid reasons to murder.
“Liberals” and “Conservatives” are each just as screwed up as the other. We desperately need people voting for the third parties – at this point in time, I don’t even want to advocate a particular third party, but any of them, to break up this logjam we have of the artificially encouraged two-party system.
Liberal and Conservative are not parties, but are in fact political ideologies founded on on certain principals. Democrats and Republicans are parties.
Jose V
Apologies for the change in subject but I just wanted to say that PAD’s second short story e-book ($0.99) based on the Fable Heroes video game is available since yesterday.
If it meant more people would be “Doctor Who” fans, then I might be able to be persuaded…
Actually…if had been up to Conservatives, Doctor Who would have never been made in the first place. A doctor who travels through time and CHANGES THING – Time can be REWRITTEN – O no, can’t have such a dangerous idea float around, now, can we ?
If you like Laurie’s American accent, you should seen one of his comedy sketches with Stephen Fry, in which he adopts some type of vague European or Middle Eastern accent (Israeli?) in one sketch in which they skewer “psyhic” spoon-bender Uri Geller: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSk2GWWWCJs
I realize that this thread was started somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the first few comments lead me to believe that it will soon devolve into yet another conservatives-only-want-to-establish-an-anti-minority-theocracy-and-give-the-rich-more-money-while-not-letting-us-stick-our-winkies-in-whatever-we-want thread. With this in mind, I’ll just skip right to the serious rebuttal.
There’s a reason why I tend to use the word progressive instead of “liberal” when describing the political left – you guys aren’t liberal. In his forward to the 1956 paperback edition of “The Road to Serfdom”* Friedrich von Hayek commented on his surprise on the way the word became used in America. He wrote, “It has been part of the camouflage of leftish (sic?) movements in this country, helped by the muddleheadeness of many who who believe in liberty, that ‘liberal’ has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control. I am still puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in liberty should not only have allowed the appropriate this almost indispensable term but should even have assisted by beginning to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium. This seems to be particularly regrettable because of the consequent tendency of many true liberals to describe themselves as conservatives.”
Edmund Burke, the man called “the Father of Modern Conservatism,” lead the movement in Parliament supporting our War for Independence. Not coincidentally, he’s also recognized as a representative of “Classical Liberalism.” This makes sense considering the Revolution started as a tax revolt, which isn’t a concept associated with the left today. So, even when I break down and use the word “liberal” I usually qualify it with adjectives like, “northeastern,” or, “modern.”
Defining the word “conservative” as “against change” is problematic because modern day progressive thought isn’t anything new. Big centralized government is a concept as old as history itself. Empires, kingdoms and centralized governments from Babylon to Rome to medieval fiefdoms to the Soviet Union are more the norm than the exception in history. And Utopian ideals involving big government date back at least to Plato’s Republic. To oppose big government is to buck the totalitarian impulse so prevalent to history.
The argument that conservatism is lost to religious zealots who expand government just like others doesn’t quite hold. It is true that some religious “conservatives” don’t mind a big government. For example, Catholics as a demographic historically favor big government. The reason Bush became known as a “big government conservative” is because he did nothing to cut the size of government or even the rate at which it grows. IIRC, it took him 6 years to even veto a spending bill.
I also believe this is why his numbers went so low. Progressives hated him for Iraq, perceived 9-11 gaffes, the Patriot Act and for just being a Republican. However, they make the mistake of thinking this why his numbers fell so low with conservatives too. We always railed against him for his lack of discipline on spending, and for giving “tax cuts” to people who didn’t pay taxes. And people in the middle disapproved of him for all these things.
In fact, if anything is going to hang Romney in this election, it’s his big government record. Romney got the votes of moderates and the establishment, but it was the conservatives he had problems tying up in a large part due to the perception of his record as a tax-and-spend Republican.
However, religious zealotry has little to do with the actual size of government. I see no religious conservative advocating the creation of a Prudery Czar or a Department of Moral Uprightness. When progressives propose a new moral, they always advance a new agency or department to make sure it’s enforced. In fact, the people who call themselves liberals today don’t mind if the government gets involved in matters of the libido. The calls for gay marriage are nothing more than calls for the government to be involved in gay relationships. When an elderly hetero couple gets divorced, the government will often check to make sure they aren’t still living together, and only divorced for better benefits. Gays now open themselves to that scrutiny, as well as scrutiny to ensure they aren’t simply enacting a “Chuck and Larry” scenario. Calls to keep laws off of a woman’s body are calls for the government to add more regulations to the womb, and lead to calls for the government to provide and thus track whatever birth control is used. So when progressives tell me I’m a creepy prude, I simply reply, “Yes, but I’m not a creepy voyeur.”**
*As note to Jerry Chandler (or anyone else interested), a while ago, I asked you if you knew what the source documents for modern conservatism were. I never finished that though with for which I apologize. “The Road to Serfdom” is the common thread to every small-government conservative and libertarian today. For the record Hayek did not consider himself a conservative, even writing an essay entitled “Why I am not a Conservative.” That said, his thinking is probably the most influential to the shape of modern conservative theory. If you ever wish to to do research of your opposing view’s philosophy, that’s the place to start. Buckley, Burke, Bastiat, Friedman, von Mises, Rand, de Tocqueville, and Kirk all have varying currency (I can’t stand Ayn Rand, for example), but it is Hayek’s work that unites.
**Said tongue-in-cheek. Within recent threads, I’ve established that, though I am a religious conservative, I’m a federalist, and thus don’t feel the federal government should have role in these matters. Our forefathers left the Old World not so everyone can live as they wished, but so they can live as they pleased. Some may call that hypocritical, but I think there’s some wisdom to recognizing that in government, one size does not fit all. I’d like to live and raise my family in a community with standards to my liking rather than to the specifications of people a thousand miles away from me. Likewise, I don’t deign to believe that New Yorkers should abide by Springfield, Missouri’s beliefs on issues like unions or marriage.
Allow me to respond with a detailed and carefully…
…zzzzzzz….
PAD
Malcolm,
I believe the disconnect comes from the peculiar Libertarian notion that only governments are capable of tyranny. No, today’s Conservatives usually don’t create new government Departments. They prefer to act through churches or other pressure groups to impose their views onto unbelievers.
I felt this disconnect most acutely when one prominent Libertarian advanced the ludicrous idea that women were never as free in the US as in a certain period of the 19th century. Only because there were less government legislature concerning women, Libertarians think that makes women automatically more free. That is either naive or disingenious. There were numberless unwritten laws and social protocols that restricted women’s freedoms radically.
I also don’t buy the notion that most religious zealots are opposed to use the government to impose their views. The US has had were sodomy laws, censorship laws, and somehow I doubt that modern religious zealots would oppose the return of this legislation.
Yeah, imagine Hugh Laurie playing, oh, I don’t know—Bertie Wooster, say. Laughable.
An impressive response. I expected nothing less from a master writer 😉
p.s. would having British accents be so bad? Actually, some British Accents are kind of hard to understand. But I meant ‘proper’ English like Patrick Stewart speaks.
I think the world would be a better place if everyone was more like Patrick Stewart.
Which is why he was the perfect choice to play a French guy on “Star Trek.” Granted, his proper British accent made it hard to think of him as French, but then he surrendered in the first episode, so…
PAD
Malcolm and Rene,
It is clear that this thread started at least partially tongue-in-cheek. It’s healthy to smile every now and then and exhale..otherwise what’s the point? Just my two cents. Your mileage may vary. As you were:)
You’re right. I’m sorry. Sometimes I just like to debate too much. Particularly with Malcolm.
No need to apologize. I love debating also..I like to chuckle too.
If “liberal thinking had prevailed in 1776,” there’d be no mention of God in any of the founding documents, and the Declaration of Can’t We All Just Get Along? would promise “life, liberty, and mandated equality by Ye Government.”
Hah! I’ve run rings ’round you logically.
“logically”
Yeah….
To quote Indio Montoya: “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”
Im Canadian.
I want our health care system, how we pick senators and our immigration system changed.
Apparently this makes me a conservative.
How do you want the immigration system changed? I want all three things you listed too, but I want a more open to all comers system with immigration (with an opt out for Canada that any crime committed that would result in jail time prior to citizenship is dealt with via immediate expulsion upon a guilty verdict gained by any family member – just as if they had a criminal record prior to applying for entry to Canada). Personally I believe Canada is massively under populated, but to read yesterday’s Globe & Mail comments most Canadians want to restrict access to the country so they can have more of it to themselves…
Hi Brett,
Immigration: It is too hard to get in. My parents came with a Grade 5 and 6 education.
(opposite for refugee system where it is too easy).
We expect a Masters or Bachelors, one or both of the languages and a whole lot of cold hard cash to get in.
Immigrants who are doing reasonably well in their respective home countries are sold on false hope. Yes we live in the greatest country in the world ,but, if you are coming, you come for your kids not you.
This is not communicated. Then we have the Doctors, Engineers as taxi drivers meme that is spread and we are all acccused of racism.
Where I get in trouble is, if times are tough and we see a recession ahead, slow down the process.
Instead of the 500K per year, openly state we are going 100-200K in the next 5 years. With that last statement persons see my skin colour and judge.
According to Harperism? Yep!
My favorite American actors on TV right now are Jason Isaacs on Awake and Sean bean on Missing. I also liked Jason OMara from Life on Mars and Tera Nova, and Damian Lewis on Life and Homeland, as well as Kevin McKidd on Greys Anatomy.
All fine American Actors.
It seems every SF show has a non-American playing a lead role: Anna Torv and Yvonne However you spell it are Aussies, and Michelle Ryan (Brit) playing the Bionic Woman. It was weird seeing Ryan in Doctor Who with her ‘real’ accent.
The weirdest thing for me was seeing Jamie Bamber in Law and Order: UK with his real accent. I didn’t even know he was British.
Peter has been reading too many comic books.
And you read none of mine. WHY are you here again? Just to be a douche? Because if so, then by all means, carry on.
PAD
ha.
Internet Corollary Rule of Expansion: Internet douchbaggery will expand to fill available netspace. Where none exist through normal means, Murphy Law #1 will then come into play.
We have to read your comic books to stick around here? My fandom of you started from Knight Life, the Photon stories, the Psi-Man stories, and the Star Trek books. Meh – you write well, so I’ll keep checking in, even if I don’t agree with your politics.
I’m sorry: I thought your original remark was meant to be silly, so I merely responded in kind.
I didn’t realize that you were trying to be serious.
FYI: I don’t read comic books because I never was satisfied with cardboard characters (the kind where we know she is the “good” princess because she wears a self-cleaning white robe). But, maybe some of your work goes beyond that (I seem to recall some Star Trek episodes that were entertaining, and from what I gather, you may have written one of them — who knows?).
In any event, you apparently have read little of the work of the Founding Fathers, or you would not have made the opening remark with more than tongue in cheek.
May I suggest Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment(Boston: George Braziller, c. 1963)? Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton (you could do a lot worse for openers). By today’s standards, Hamilton was the most “liberal” of the lot; however, that still puts him far to the right of Mitt Romney (though maybe not to the right of Newt Gingrich).
He writes them, so reading them is kinda required you’d think, if you thought at all Bobbi
Actually, I hang out here (don’t chime in that much…) but I don’t think I have EVER read one of PAD’s comics. I have read several of his novels, and seen quite a few of his television shows, and am therefore a fan. I also disagree quite often with his politics, but try not to be obnoxious about it.
On the main topic, true conservatives would never want to revolt. They were known as Tories, IIRC, and were a major problem both during and after the war.
Once things were resolved, however, they usually made good Americans!
Robert Crim,
Wow! Using comic book reading as an insult to a man who writes them and other forms of science-fiction for a living on a blog almost totally comprised of people who read comic books/sci-fi/fantasy, specifically by him..you really are trying hard to be an áššhølë!
.
Tara Li, no…I believe PAD was just answering RC with the brevity he deserves. If you’re a fan of his at all, through whatever means or medium, I’m certain he appreciates it.
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Charlie E,
see above. But if you want top read some of PAD’s comics, might I suggest “The Death of Jean DeWolff” in either trade form or “Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #107-110” if you can find them. I looooved the DeWolff character, but this story is so intense and emotional and heartbreaking I would forgive PAD for killing her off, even if was his idea…which it wasn’t:)
.
There is so much to choose from, but I would also recommend any part of his Hulk run – but especially any issues/trades in which Todd McFarlane or Dale Keown did the art.
.
Bladestar, when you called RC “Bobbi” I thought of Robert Goren, who was called “Bobby” by his nemesis, on “Law and Order:Criminal Intent”. as played by Vincent D’onofrio, Goren was one of the most intelligent, interesting characters in the history of television. In other words, the opposite of RC who is a real person but possesses neither of those qualities.
Jerome,
Never watched the L&O:CI much, preferred SVU.
It was meant more as a cheap insult as Robert is usually “male” and the Bobbi with an “i” is usually female. 😉
Bladestar,
“Jerome,
Never watched the L&O:CI much, preferred SVU.
It was meant more as a cheap insult as Robert is usually “male” and the Bobbi with an “i” is usually female. ;)”
.
I get that..I was just trying to give a shot of my own..and I always enjoy trying to make people aware of Robert Goren, who as played by D’Onofrio was a combo of both Sherlock Holmes and Batman.
.
But yeah, I love SVU also. To me, not only are the scripts still impressive, but Mariska Hargitay’s Benson has to be one of the most awesome characters ever. She has such a range of emotion and is still stunning..It’s still a shock to see her when she’s undercover at a party, but I love her interaction with the victims as well. She shows great empathy in addition to her strength.
If you go back a few centuries, conservatives would have resisted Chaucer and his writing. The English language would still be viewed as a barbaric language, we’d be speaking French, and the Canterbury Tales wouldn’t exist to provide us with social commentary and rather amusing juvenile humor. (How many people today can write fart jokes that will be read in 2650 and be considered a literary great?)
I think Dr Johnson might disagree with you, especially on the French thing.
In any time, fart= funny.
Funny. In this alternate universe where the foundng fathers were liberals we’d have a second amendment giving the right to call any relationship you want “marriage”, the Boston Tea party would have been called an environmental disaster, and the war for independence would never have happened because they would have insisted on paying more taxes for the “priviledge” of being british citizens.
Actually, I think they would have occupied Boston Common.
And been and been hauled off to jail.
(I was tempted to say “And been shot,” but that probably wouldn’t have happened.)
Another history flunkie who never heard of the Boston Massacre.
Thanks for chiming in. At least at this point when you have nothing to say, you’re doing so succinctly rather than at mind-numbing length.
You know, I agree with almost nothing that Jerome, for instance, says. But at least he’s here legitimately: he’s a fan of my work. We get it: you’re a right wing clown obsessed with your own intellect. Which brings us back to, again, why are you here except to be a douche?
PAD
I guess he just enjoys flaunting Crim-inal misbehavior.
And we’d still own New York (or should I say…Nieuw Amsterdam.)
Hey, we (okay, the English) traded you Run island for New Amsterdam/York fair and square.
After all, even old New York was once New Amsterdam. Why they changed it? I can’t say. People just liked it better that way.
(They Might Be Giants didn’t write it, but dámņ do they do the definitive version of that song.)
What did you expect? He’s full of Istan-bull (and Constanti-Nope-ul). And that’s no one’s business but that jerk’s.
And in this alternate universe, where the Brits stayed on ruling the Americas, would the disastrous War of Secession have taken place?
No. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833, without the need for a revolution (like in France in 1848) or a war.
I guess the counterpoint question would be: would slavery have been abolished by the British Empire if they hadn’t lost the US? After all, the US colonies were where slaves were mostly being shipped to and used in the first place.
But even after the British Empire abolished slavery, they held on to colonies for more than a hundred years where the natives of those places were treated little or no better than slaves.
I love it when liberals tell us what conservativism is — in this case that the whole point is resistance to change. Apparently Peter isn’t aware that conservatives are big on those unsentimental creatures known as free markets. Or that a lot of us reject the liberal notion that there is an ideal global temperature and that we should freak out when the weather changes and there’s a hot spell here or a bad hurricane season there. Want to see a liberal freak about change? Just mention that you want to reform Social Security. I can’t wait for Peter’s next political post, where he assures that rich people only donate to the Republicans.
-Dave O’Connell
“conservatives are big on those unsentimental creatures known as free markets”
The problem with “those unsentimental creatures” is that they are just that: unsentimental. The “liberal” view on them is that when corporate interests begin to trump human interests, we, as a nation, should remember government’s mandate and purpose: ours is “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” not “of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation.”
The “liberal” view is that it is unhealthy for a society comprised of human beings to take such a liberal and laissez-faire attitude toward business as to allow them to grow, unchecked, like a cancer, when the market’s very nature (by your own admission) is — like a cancer — unsympathetic to human needs and seeks only its own growth. The “liberal” view is that therefore the market must be monitored, and, if necessary, controlled — like a cancer.
And this may be exactly the point you were trying to make: that the “conservative” attitude toward business is actually liberal, and the “liberal” attitude toward business is actually conservative. (You can correct me if I’m wrong in this.)
“the liberal notion that there is an ideal global temperature”
There very much is a temperature that is ideal for human beings, and if climate deviates too far from that, there may not be any of us left.
While you might disagree that global climate is changing (or that we, as humans, can have any effect on it), and you might therefore conclude that those who are concerned about it are just channelling Chicken Little, you can’t contest that there are indeed temperatures that are inhospitable to humankind.
“and that we should freak out when the weather changes and there’s a hot spell here or a bad hurricane season there”
Note the difference in the terms “weather” vs. “climate.”
Dunno about that, but after that stupid repub’ ad about how much Wall Street donated to Obama, I want to see an ad about how much Wall Street donated to the repubs, bet it turns out to be a LOT more….
It’s not – and even if it turns out to be true that doesn’t make Obama any more of a disingenuous hypocrite for taking money from the same people he smashes and bashes on a daily basis.
It probably varies year to year and depends on which party is in charge–in 2009 Democrats got 62% of the wall street money. I suspect the numbers evened out after the 2010 election.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-21/democratic-party-helped-by-wall-street-outraising-republicans.html
Wow. Just, just… WOW.
Being that we seen the effects of both an unrestricted free market (Wall Street, the housing bubble) and our impact on the global climate (hole in the ozone, shrinking polar ice potentially raising the ocean level), your comment seems particularly misguided.
At least as far as I’m able to determine, where liberals tend to be resistant to change, they’re in areas where said changes are to the detriment to the greatest number of people, such as Social Security, as you so graciously pointed out.
Tell you what. We’ll try and be more rational and even-headed about discussing financial and environmental issues if the Republicans can stop freaking out and making political issues over whether or not two dudes can get married. ‘Kay?
So the point of “conservativism” is not to resist change, but to resist global warming theories? That’s seriously what you just said.
Stephen, one correction–there is no way one can call either Wall Street or housing an example of “unrestricted free market”. The restrictions and red tape involved with both are mindboggling.
You can argue the restrictions are insufficient, inefficient, not enough, too much, poorly designed, out of date, corrupt or any number of adjectives. But unrestricted? Not in this reality.
Bill,
Okay, I can see that. Perhaps a better way would be to say “given that the Wall Street crash and housing market bubble situations occurred despite inadequate regulations, does one seriously think they would have not occurred without restrictions?”
Howzat?
Sorry, ‘nother correction:
“…not occurred were they totally without restrictions?”
Sounds good to me. No restrictions is just an invitation to fraud–only a lawless society is one without any restrictions (and even then, one could argue that the very nature of lawlessness is one that is even more restrictive in terms of getting anything accomplished.
I think the question we have to ask whenever we pass a law that restricts business and trade is “Is the necessary or just a way to siphon off some money toward a bureaucracy?”, a reasonable question when, after all, it is bureaucrats who are making the laws. If the response is a huffy “Oh, so you just want NO OVERSIGHT AT ALL, is THAT it?” you pretty much have your answer.
Given that an awful lot of analysts are awfully nervous that the issues that caused the 2008 crisis are still with us and could potentially lead to an equal or greater calamity I have to wonder How great our regulations are. I can accept new screwups but please let’s not do the same dámņ ones over and over again.
One of the most depressing things about political radicalization is that people tend to think in false dilemmas.
It seems like that you have to be for Ayn Rand or else you’re considered a Stalinist, or vice-versa, with no middle ground possible.
The interesting thing about comments concerning Liberals vs Conservatives and Big Government is how often the Right has (ironically) got it wrong.
They’ll regale you about how it’s those nasty Liberals who are the ‘tax and spend, Big Government’ types. Oddly, the largest government in Canada, relative to the Gross Domestic Product, in the past 50+ years was the Mulroney Conservatives which topped off at 24.7 percent, and only shrank by a little over one percent during their eight years in Office. Contrast that with the Chretien Liberals which followed them and, a few years later, had it down to 16 percent and were starting to pay off the Debt. Now, the Conservatives are back in, and they already have the largest Cabinet in Canadian history, after giving us the largest Deficit in our history. (They’ll whine about how the opposition forced them into that Deficit when they were a minority, but that just means they put their lust for power ahead of their principles. And they’re proud of this?!)
Remind me again about the Liberals being the problem … I forget.
This may have started out as tounge and cheek, but, boy did the claws go out really fast! Ok, even the biggest liberal is a bit conservative about something and the biggest conservative is liberal about something. We are human beings, we don’t all fit into these ideological molds. Hugo Chavez and Barack Obama are both Leftist. Obama is no Chavez. Nor would we want him to be. There are diffrent degrees in conservatism and diffrent degrees in liberalism. Fidel Castro is another leftist and we know that Obama is no where near the same zip code as Castro. (I am not insulting Obama here saying he’s like Castro or Chavez, In fact I’m saying he’s not like them)
I am liberal when it comes to gay marriage (they’re consenting adults) the environment (I despise hunting and hate deforastation. I’m all about helping the environment), but when it comes to taxes and welfare issues, I’m very conservative. I hate wealth distribution. I’m also for smaller government.
So socially liberal and fiscally conservative is my motto. My view on welfare is based on one simple thing. If you can’t afford to have children then don’t have them. If the man is lazy when you met him, chances are he will be lazy after. Neither of those are the problem of the people to fork up money. I don’t want to/have to pay for the children that a person keeps having and not be able to afford.
So there you have it, I’m both. A conservative liberal. The extreme case on either side is dangerous. Just my opinion.
Jose V