Soooo....

[CuteOldGuy]

It's simple. Longer thinks there is a difference between Democrats and Republicans. The differences are only cosmetic. Longer also thinks the government is the answer to all problems. It isn't. It causes most of the problems. People have, and will step up to assist the people of Joplin, and other areas.

Longer also thinks the government should help "because they can." In other words, the government can come to your house, take your money by force, and give it to someone else. This is "liberal generosity". "Don't ask me for my money, but take some from the other guy and give it to these people who I think deserve it."

And what is wrong for expecting people who live in a tornado zone to buy tornado insurance? I lost a building to a flood, caused by cold weather and burst pipes. I didn't have insurance to cover it. Should the government bail me out? No, it was my own damn fault I didn't provide for an easily foreseeable contingency. You want fairness, how is it fair for the government to bail out those who didn't have insurance? How do those who were responsible and had insurance feel? They would feel like patsies, and they didn't need to buy the insurance. Maybe the government should reimburse them the premiums they paid. That will teach them to be responsible.

And need we mention that the government HAS NO MONEY!? The debt is over $14 TRILLION. China is divesting itself of its holdings of T-Bills. The credit rating of the United States is being considered for a downgrade. Every dollar the government borrows will have to be paid back by my grandchildren and great-grandchildren with interest. It has to stop.

The American people will have to step up and assume some responsibility for themselves, and get off the government teat if we are ever to get back to being a "government of the people, by the people and for the people." We haven't been that since at least 1913, and probably longer.

Anyway, that is my humble opinion. You are welcome to your own.

[Longermonger]

You don't have a very good grasp on what I think. See: siggy #2.

[CuteOldGuy]

I obviously don't. Look at your siggy #1.

[CuteOldGuy]

Just to clear up one thing. I am absolutely NOT opposed to assisting victims of ANY disaster. I am opposed to sending men with guns to your house and demanding your money in support of their cause.

[kcbigpapa]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

I am opposed to sending men with guns to your house and demanding your money in support of their cause.

When has this happened to you? It's never happened to me or anyone I know. Just seems like more useless rhetoric that I have come to expect from you.

[CuteOldGuy]

Now KC, what happens when someone doesn't pay their taxes? Men with guns show up. I have been there when it happens. (Not to me, but to a client who wouldn't listen to me.) The only thing that makes people pay their taxes is the threat of force. I know people who intentionally pay too much because they are so afraid the IRS will come to visit them. Not useless rhetoric, it's the truth. The Founders of this country opposed the use of the public treasury for charitable purposes. I agree with them.

[kcbigpapa]

It absolutely is rhetoric and it is completely useless. The notion that there are tax collectors and the way they collect taxes is by the use of guns and force is rhetoric. The times they do enforce tax collection with armed IRS agents is when someone refuses to pay. You are intentionally trying to make it seem as if IRS SWAT (which doesn't exist) kicks in the doors and comes crashing through the windows to get the taxes due. Read Confessions of a Tax Collector to get a better understanding. Also, I would be very surprised if you know what the founding fathers were really thinking.

[CuteOldGuy]

Read that book, and seen them in action. My point is taxes are not voluntary, and I resent being forced to pay for public charity. Build roads, defend my shores, police my streets, ok. But what gives Congress the right to decide for me who is more deserving of my money than me?

And I seriously doubt you have more experience with tax authorities than me. I have seen them with their guns drawn. The only reason they haven't done that with you is that you give up your property to the government voluntarily. I do too, I don't like looking down the barrel of a gun. But it does resemble a protection racket more than good government.

If you want to know what the Founders had to say, you might try reading them. Or not, I'm sure it is just useless rhetoric.

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
-Benjamin Franklin


“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816


“A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
-Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801


“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”
-Thomas Jefferson


“When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
-Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 15:332


“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to E. Carrington, May 27, 1788


“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”
-John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787


James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson:
“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”


In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
-James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)


“…[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
-James Madison


“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” James Madison, “Letter to Edmund Pendleton,”
-James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed (Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984).


“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”
-James Madison, Federalist No. 58, February 20, 1788


“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
-James Madison, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788

[Longermonger]

What did the Founding Fathers have to say about nuclear nonproliferation? How about unlimited anonymous donations to political action committees? What did they say about corporate funded lobbyists? Did they leave any wise words about political parties masquerading as news outlets to distribute propaganda?

My point is that you can cherry pick quotes from certain founding fathers and not other ones all you like, without ever touching on the real problems of our times. They did a great job for the late 1700s, but that was a different world. If you really want to live like that I suggest you don the garb and live in colonial Williamsburg. I'd rather live in the 21st century with laws befitting my time.

P.S. I have a suspicion that many of those statements were made in arguments with other founding fathers. Are the other points of view of those eloquent statesmen omitted?

[CuteOldGuy]

Spin it however you want. Longer. Make it say whatever you want. It is what it is.