[quote]nd that was the beauty of the original Constitution and why I so resent left-wingers who reject originalism and embrace a so-called “living Constitution”. The original system gave the federal government very limited powers. So hippies could have all the greatest ideas in the world and were free to employ them in their own lives without, as they do now, shoving them down the throats of others who have their own ideas.[/quote]
The original system gave the federal government very limited powers, but it placed virtually no restrictions on what state governments could do. The concept was of a fairly loose confederacy of independently-governed states with a lot of local self-administration (something in between modern UN and modern EU), rather than a libertarian country where everyone is free to do what they want within minimally restrictive limits.
Do you know that half of all Mississippi counties have a ban on retail sales of alcohol? Is that consistent with the modern right-wing vision of limited government? No, it is not. But that’s because the original system was not built with limited government ideas in mind. It was meant to allow puritans in Massachusetts to run their state in one way and catholics in Florida in a different way. If either wanted to ban alcohol, extramarital sex, or bath salts, because of their religious attitudes or for whatever other reason, or even, in principle, mandate weekly attendance of church services, that was perfectly fine with the founding fathers. (No states really mandated attendance of church services, but several, like North Carolina, banned non-Protestants from serving in official positions.)
Many modern restrictions on things that states were allowed to do in the original system were only introduced (in all likelihood, accidentally) by the Fourteenth Amendment, fifty years after the death of the last founding father.
[quote]CAR, the platitudes sound great but the people you vote for vote to suppress the freedom of individuals, silence their opponents, and resort to ad hominem attacks instead of facts while logic and reason are rarely part of the equation. [/quote]
Many left wing people are left wing precisely because right wing politicians are far more likely to suppress the freedom of individuals or to use ad hominem attacks instead of logic and reason.
During Q3 2010, Obama stimulus boosted real GDP by 1.4% to 4.1%, reduced the unemployment rate by 0.8% to 2.0%, and created 2.0 to 5.2 million jobs.
Right wing politicians:
“As the American people, facing near double-digit unemployment, mark Labor Day by asking, where are the jobs, the White House has chosen to double-down on more of the same failed ‘stimulus’ spending … If we’ve learned anything from the past 18 months, it’s that we can’t spend our way to prosperity” (John Boehner, House republican leader)
It will take you no more than two minutes than to find similar quotes by McConnell, Palin, or any other prominent Republican politician. It will prove much harder to find anyone on the right willing to acknowledge that stimulus had any positive effect.
Similarly, there are lots of right-wing politicians denying the existence of global warming (in case you missed it, 2010 ended up tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record.) And don’t even get me started on intelligent design.
In the end, while I myself wouldn’t mind having a party that represents interests of high-income earners and businesses and tries to limit unnecessary income redistribution, I’m certainly not going to vote for a party that seems to be engaged in a war on logic.
