Pajamas Media

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What a piece of ridiculous right wing drivel put forward by Burt Prelutsky. Of course you can’t expect to much more from someone who gets their information from Michael Medved, a man who himself is one of the great conservative panders of our time, a man whose intellectual ability is two steps above that of the average house cat.

I won’t bother going into the shameful rewriting of history I see happening here, because I’m sure it won’t help Mr. Prelutsky or any of the righties who actually buy into this utter claptrap. The United States of America is some $3 trillion in debt today, not because of free lunches for children in our schools public education, welfare, or any of our social programs, where in that kind of debt because of war and destruction, that’s led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, by a president who is totally bereft of any moral compass. But instead of looking at this, Mr. Prelutsky adopt a favorite tactic of the right, attacked the least powerful and bring greater hardship on those least able to defend themselves.

It should also be mentioned, given that Prelutsky is of Russian Jewish ancestry, that if he wants to put forward a more genuine criticism of FDR, perhaps he should look at World War II and the despicable inaction of Roosevelt in the face of genocide. It’s a matter of historical record that FDR knew about the mass extermination of the Jews that had been undertaken in Europe, and he knew as early as 1941, perhaps earlier. But by 1942 he and the US State Department had conclusive evidence that the extermination of the Jews was taking place on a massive industrial scale, yet he chose to take no action throughout his presidency. He could have directed the allies to bomb rail lines that were funneling Russian, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Czechoslovakian, etc. Jews from all over Europe to the death camps, yet he chose to do nothing. He could’ve bombed the camps directly and though this would have undoubtedly kills Jews and many other oppressed groups directly, it would likely have saved millions. Yet Franklin, Eleanor Roosevelt decided that it was better to do nothing in the face of genocide, much like William Jefferson Clinton chose to do nothing to stop the genocide in Rwanda, much like George W. Bush chose to do nothing in the face of the genocide in Sudan.

You want to start criticizing people Mr. Prelutsky, perhaps you should start with those who allow human beings to be barbarously slaughtered and left to die without food and water, as opposed to tearing down a man for putting bread in the mouths of children who were starving in America, and preventing tens of thousands of Americans from dying from neglect and depravity in the streets of this country. Your apparently have the type of mind which would put monetary issues ahead of human lives, you would balance a budget and create an orderly society at the expense of living breathing human beings, it is precisely that mindset which led to the rise of the Nazis and the deaths of millions. I wonder if you and Michael Medved are really comfortable in that company.

“Why stop with universal health care? I’d promise universal car, fire and life insurance. I’d promise four weeks paid vacation for every workingman and workingwoman in America, and eight weeks for every non-working man and woman.”

Why indeed. In good ol’ socialist Germany (and, yes, “Good Bye Lenin!” was right; the Socialists DID win), you have a “social welfare right” to a television and refrigerator.

Of course, the top tax bracket begins at around 70,000.

Can someone please explain, why more Republicans today simply don’t hammer away at the obvious - whether “the messenger” is a woman or minority (or whatever…), today’s Democrats have nothing more to offer than their historic message of

SOCIALISM, SOCIALISM, SOCIALISM.

I would also strongly advise everyone to read Robert A. Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. This well researched book will help one to further understand the mindset of the “elites” of that period. Moses literally said that those who graduated from Harvard, Yale, and Columbia should be running the country. And he meant that in a benevolent dictatorial manner! The common people should essentially shut up and obey. Moses considered folks like himself to be superior compared to the so-called selfish capitalists. They knew what was best. Moses was a very arrogant and somewhat nasty man during his lifetime. He rationalized his behavior because of his alleged altruism. After all, he was sacrificing on behalf of the people.

Friedrich Hayek and others warned warned that “elites” cannot create a rapidly expanding economy. The main reason may perhaps be our inherent reliance on tacitly understood knowledge. We do not consciously comprehend what completely motivates a particular human being to select one product over another. You may be willing to pay $50 for a Brtiney Spears CD and I won’t pay even one penny. An outsider would be utterly incapable of setting a set price for this CD that would please everyone. The pricing can only be determined in a rough and tumble free market.

Thanks for the good laughs Burt!

The ballooning liabilities in entitlement programs will surely destroy our productive economy. That is because Paul and Pablo alike have a ‘right’ to a free lunch at the involuntary expense of Peter.

At least democrats are honest and overt about how they want to tax and spend. Republicans are dishonest and covert with their profligate deficit spending. Deficits are simply taxes on future production.

Lighten up Aaron. It’s called satire.

Bravo Burt!
We’ve been saying that for years, but you said it better.

The GOP can’t hammer away at socialism, socialism, socialism because they are peddling more, more, more of the same, same, same…

The last thing the GOP want’s to point out is that the only reason to vote for them is pure patronage.

The more we subsidize poverty, the more poverty we’ll have. It’s a pretty simple equation. I posted a blog entry about this, titled Poverty is Increasing - And It’s Our Fault. After all, why would we expect anybody to turn down a free lunch, especially when told they’re entitled to it?

HEY Aaron, Phineas, Dan et.al.:

When you speak of such Democratic Party “melodies” as
http://www.dipdive.com/dip-politics/wato/

Please accept the truth that what you really want means this “tune”
“>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdM8PDu6VMg

Why not free legal care? Nationalize the lawyers! Even I could go for that. The fact that that idea would not even surface in the lawyer-majority congress goes to prove how unfair stealing a professional’s livelihood really is.

Why not push it to the max and give out free *everything* and everyone gets to work for the State? Really that is what the ‘progressives’ have wanted for decades, and converting individual liberty into State oversight and mandate is the final reductio ad absurdum: you want it free, then the State owns everything and is the source of everthing. That, as the USSR found, did not make everyone equally rich but equally poor, with hospitals and clinics without electricity, running water, sewage facilities and, often, doctors.

Government was not created amongst men to do good, but contain the nastiest impulses of individual and society so that the overall society could not be harmed by such things. Of course in the months before the Declaration this was clearly stated by another of those Revolutionaries:

“Some writers have so confounded society with government,
as to leave little or no distinction between them;
whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.
Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness;
the former promotes our POSITIVELY by uniting our affections,
the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one
encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions.
The first a patron, the last a punisher.”

One of the most cited, least read works around today called Common Sense by Tom Paine. We are now at the end course where our political class knows no difference between government and society and the political parties thrive on creating distinctions to better capture the heart of government. And lose society as part of the bargain.

Both sides do it with the best of intentions! The D party does it for the ‘poor’ and ‘minorities’ and seeks to further divide the people based on those things and have government ‘do good’ by them… forgetting that it is society that does the making of what is good through the work of its dedicated citizens and their investment into charity. The R party is just as bad seeking to restrict civil liberties in the name of ‘the children’ or ‘clean up the political process’. That is how we get one party coming in to take away money and liberty to waste via government, the least capable of institutions and least efficient of them, to make things ‘free’ for everyone… while the other seeks to liberty and freedoms of speech and leverage punishment for minor vices that are the sole purview of the individual, thus creating a societal poverty of intellectual discourse and fear for having done anything wrong in having transgressed any law or rule about such things.

Imagine government mandated health care that works as well as the department of energy, is as friendly as the IRS and is as punishing as the justice department. Plus it now has its hand in determining what you can and cannot choose and may even decide to start having bureaucrats decide what care is best for you. Of course you will not hear that from either party as the ‘good’ of health care outweighs the evil of having government know your health details intimately and having punishing power over you if you do not do as it says.

Being up front about that would spark a revolution… or bring about a totalitarians state. That is why neither party tells you what these ‘good things’ will really cost you, until it is far too late to protest.

Aaron,

Please come back when you’re in a coherent state. Your frantic, scattershot, disorganized rant feeds on its own illogic and creates the impression that the orderlies were out smoking and you jumped on their computer on the sly.

Great post, ajacksonian. Both parties overstep the bounds of legitimate government in different directions.

My political positions are all based on a fundamental belief in the axiomatic principle of free will and personal responsibility. While the Ds want to do away with the concept of personal responsibility, the Rs too often seek to wield the law to control other people’s lifestyle choices.

The role of government should be no more an no less than to protect me from you, and you from me, and both of us from a common enemy.