Comments by "Colonel K" (@Paladin1873) on "Biographics"
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@kazoranzo3984 I can't speak with any authority for western Europe, but from what I've read and witnessed over the past 50 years, I would tend to agree with you. They have grown soft and decadent, thanks in large part to being protected by the USA against any potential Soviet aggression for half a century. But it's more than that. Each of the European democracies has adopted some form of socialism to one degree or another, and this always appears to work at first, before it begins to falter and fail. As the late Margaret Thatcher used to say, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Sustainability is only one of its problems. Government guarantees of jobs, wages, work hours, healthcare, and retirement sound great in theory but they tend to dis-incentivize people. Why work harder or better than the next guy if you aren't suitably rewarded for your extra effort? When the quality of work degrades, the resultant product or service degrades as well, so the economy slows to the point that it begins to contract.
Socialism contains another trait that most Americans detest - centralized, overbearing bureaucracy and its accompanying regulations. Socialism cannot coexist with people who prefer freedom of choice. Not everyone wants to be told what is best for them and forced to comply with the dictates of the faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats who produce nothing but consume much. I don't know what your life is like today in the former Yugoslavia, but I do know that life here in America was and remains much better than you ever had it under Tito. To be blunt, he was a hard-nosed dictatorial butcher who understood the only way to keep such a disparate group of people united under one government was to be ruthless. He also knew he could not trust the Soviet Union. They were even bigger butchers. He held his country together through a combination of collective fear of a Soviet invasion and intimidation by his secret police. He also experimented with a degree of of localized power and limited forms of free enterprise. It served more as relief valve to prevent the lid blowing off the country while he was alive and in charge. Once he died, the facade disintegrated and much of the country resorted to internecine warfare. Things seem to have settled down now, so perhaps your seven "new" countries can cooperate with each other better than they ever did when somebody was always trying to take control of all of them.
Getting back to the topic of western Europe, I think perhaps their greatest blunder since the World Wars was allowing the European Union to replace much of their native sovereignty. As with Yugoslavia, you can't expect such a mix of cultures and national identities to operate as one well-oiled machine. To do so requires sacrificing individual identity and freedom to an ever increasingly powerful and centralized bureaucratic apparatus. I do not think it will end well for Europe if they continue along their current course.
In the USA we foresaw the problem of overbearing centralized government at the founding of our republic and adopted the concept of federalism (dividing power among national, state, and local government). Even so, for at least 100 years now there have been many efforts at the national level to consolidate powers they do not legally possess. Many of us have long fought a rearguard action to forestall going the way of Europe or the USSR, but it's a battle of mind over heart that must be won with each succeeding generation of youth. When people are young their passion tends to override their reason, which is why socialism has so much appeal for them. But we continue to fight these false ideologies and offer a better way if people will only take the time to listen and think. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
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@kazoranzo3984 There is nothing worn out about truth. Man is born in a free state and desires to retain it. This is why the USA was founded and continues to thrive. Just look at the millions of people who try to immigrate here each year, both legally and illegally.
You asked me to look at the poor people living in out cities, but you did not ask me to look at anyone else. Break each city down by neighborhood and you find some areas suffer while others thrive. Overall, most of the cities are doing quite well. A few are not. The few major cities experiencing major economic problems have one thing in common. They have been run by socialist minded Democrats for decades. I should say ruled rather than run because they are practically one-party states. The voters in those metropolitan areas always have a choice. They can allow the situation to degenerate further, they can relocate to another city or state, or they can change their political views and their leaders to ones who offer better alternatives. A good example of failed cities is Detroit, Michigan. It was run by left leaning Democrats for 60 years and it went from being the best city in Ameirca to being a toilet. Over 60% of the population left. The citizens willingly chose this path and they paid the price for it. They believed the lies of politicians who kept telling them everything was the fault of big business and the banks, so they voted men into office who wanted to provide abundant social services to the people by overtaxing and over-regulating the industries that had made their city great. When it got to be too much, these businesses either collapsed o relocated to friendlier climates. So yes, it very much is the fault of the citizens; they brought these troubles on themselves.
You say banks rip people off. If this were true, why would anyone use a bank? If you are referring to the loan market, again we only have to look first at government to find the cause of loan failures. In the 1960s our Congress created two programs called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the purpose of which was to make it easier for people to qualify for loans. This was accomplished by the government promising the loaning institutions that it would guarantee their loans if the borrowers defaulted. Over the years the government kept lowering the requirements to qualify for loans. This alarmed many lending institutions because they believed much of the money was going to people who could not possibly pay them back. The government told them to lend the money anyway. A few institutions did take full advantage of the new guidelines and made loans that in earlier times would never have been authorized. It all came to head around 2007 when the market bubble collapsed. The American taxpayer wound up having to bail out the banks that some said were "too big to fail". I'd prefer to see them fail. When they do, somebody else, who is smarter and leaner, will come along to replace them. It's the same with the automobile industry. The government bailed out GM. This was a mistake. They too should have been allowed to fail. Rewarding people for doing a poor job is always a bad idea. But you would be mistaken if you believe these are examples of free enterprise. They are not. They are examples of crony capitalism, a system where the government picks the winners and losers instead of the natural market place deciding.
You claim our courts are unjust. How so? If somebody believes he has been falsely convicted, there is an appeals process that can go from the state appellate court to the state supreme court to the federal appellate court and the US Supreme Court. Few people receive the maximum penalty for any crime of which they are convicted. Many plea bargain to a lesser charge. I personally don't approve of plea bargaining. I'd rather the government go forward with its charges or drop them if they think their case is weak. If your claim is that we put too many people in prison, I would agree. Most of them are there because of some sort of drug related charge. Drug abuse is a serious issue that we are still grappling with. Our courts have not been unjust in dealing with these offenders, but they have become overcrowded, so the wheels of justice have slowed. I would agree that is unfair to all parties involved.
You state our education system is bad. Well, it has been better. Public education (not private) has gotten steadily worse over the past 60 years because it is no longer a local issue. When our nation was formed we did not have a federal Department of Education. The US Constitution never recognized this as a federal power, but reserved it to the states and local communities. It was under this original concept that we were able to educate nearly our entire population for close to 200 years. In the 1960s there was a clash between the states and the feds over religion being taught in schools and public school integration. The federal courts became involved and judges began removing all references to faith and ordering desegregation plans without regard to neighborhood schools. This latter move proved to be a terrible idea because students were now spending hours riding on buses to schools across town simply in order to achieve some judge's notion of what constituted a proper balance of races in each school. Many parents became quite angered and pulled their children from the public school system and put them in private schools. The quality of public schools began to drop. In response, Congress created the Department of Education, and like any good bureaucracy, they began issuing general edicts to schools across the nation, without regard to what the states desired. Failure to comply would result in the loss of federal aide money. Schools learned that if they failed students or kicked them out then their federal aide money would be cut, so they lowered their standards and now produce graduates who cannot read or comprehend at the level their grandparents could.
In case you haven't noticed, all of the problems you identified have either been caused by or exacerbated by government interference. Left alone to solve their own problems, people have an amazing ability to do just that. The Founders understood this, which is why on each U.S. coin appears the phrase "E pluribus unum" - from the many, the one. It speaks to the fact that while we do not share the same ethnicity, race, religion, or origin, we do share a common bond, a belief in individual liberty. In a country as large and diverse as ours, the only other thing that binds us is our common language and shared understanding of our history. Trying to find one answer to fit us all will never work, but that's how a bureaucrat sees it. He cannot envision it any other way, for to do so would put him out of a job.
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@kazoranzo3984 I doubt anyone ever accused Tito of being dumb, but I believe he had your people snookered. You may consider him fatherly, but a good father does not murder or incarcerate the children who disagree with him. I do think he was a product of his age, an age that endured tremendous suffering regardless of who was in charge at any given time. All he ever knew was that brutal repression worked. Perhaps being under the heel of the Soviet Union, there was no kinder, gentler course to follow. Look what happened when Hungary and Czechoslovakia tried. Perhaps Tito really believed there was a third way, one that blended aspects of communism with democratic ideals. But it isn't true. If it had been, his ideas would have survived him. They did not.
As for my own country, it was not the banks that created Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, nor were they the driving force behind their creation. It was the U.S. Congress, the same Congress that created Medicare and Medicaid, both programs that the medical community strenuously opposed. But once programs are forced on the general public by our elected officials, everyone looks for a way to benefit from them. The only other option is to go out of business. In time some companies learned how to profit from these programs. Some did so honestly; other proved to be less than scrupulous. Our leaders were warned of these dangers, but they saw the programs as sacred cows that guaranteed them votes come reelection time. I don't think that Fanny and Freddie were originally conceived as pyramid schemes, only because I don't think our leaders are bright enough to conceive them that way. What many of them are is too dumb to grasp the basics of economics. They simply don't care. They are always focused on the next election, not the next generation. As a result, I will grant you that we have quite a few politicians who are easily swayed by the lure of money and power. This is one reason why I support both term limits and the ability for the state to recall its senators. Neither of these conditions exists and I'll try to explain why.
In 1913 the States and Congress ratified the Sixteenth Amendment to our Constitution. It was written specifically to invalidate a Supreme Court ruling in 1895 that had made a nationwide income tax impossible because it violated the Constitution. The new taxing authority granted by this amendment was sold to the American public as being one that would only apply to the super wealthy. Greed and envy being what they are, the public lapped up the idea despite warnings that they too could be subject to such a tax someday. Too few people heeded this warning, and our federal government was handed a blank check. This government has been growing ever since, despite the fact that for over 50 years now it has been writing checks the public treasury can never cover. I fear it's an economic time bomb that will someday go off and adversely affect the entire world's economy. You would think that because the situation is so dire, our Congress would pass a balanced budget law. They did; then they proceeded to ignore it. As long as they can keep writing those checks, then most of them are guaranteed jobs for life.
Two months after the 16th Amendment was ratified, the 17th Amendment was ratified. It fundamentally changed the balance of power between the federal government and the state governments, disrupting our system of federalism by weakening the power of the various States. It did so by removing from the state legislatures the power to choose their U.S. Senators, and gave that power directly to voters in each state. This meant that the Senators no longer represented the interests of their state government. They were now immune from the state government and could chart their own independent course from Washington, DC. Their interests soon coexisted with those of the federal government. It is an unholy alliance to be sure.
Until we fix the fundamental problems with these two amendments, I don't see how we can ever reign in their abuses of power and spending.
Regarding your comments about education, I agree. A big part of the solution is getting the federal government out of education and returning that power to the states and the local citizenry where it rightfully belongs. As for drugs, some people resort to it to escape misery, others to escape boredom. It's the same with alcohol Opportunities for a better life existed before these people resorted to using drugs and alcohol. The cure for this is not a job; it is a spiritual awakening. This won't happen as long as the government provides them a crutch in the form of free housing and free food. I've watched some of these bums spend their federal credit cards (yes, that's what they give them now) on tobacco, alcohol, and junk food. There is no accountability for them. If they didn't have these crutches, they'd either sink or swim. As it is, they just float in their own sea of despair.
You say the government does not care. Why should a bureaucrat care about anything other than his own family and satisfying his boss? They get paid regardless of what happens. They are almost never held accountable for anything, and the things they are accountable for need not be something positive. Have you ever met a bureaucrat who saw his mission as shrinking his department, his funding, and his authority? If my job is to get people off of welfare, I'd consider it a success if I worked myself out of a job. Somehow that never happens. Indeed, it always seems to go the other way - more power, more people, more authority. It's like a cancer that keeps on growing and spreading (remember that blank check).
As for the war in Iraq, I participated in its planning and execution. You are wrong in your assumption that we knew they had no weapons of mass destruction. In fact we did find evidence of such programs, but much of it had been dismantled, buried, or sent to Iran. We invaded Iraq because we considered it a regional destabilizer and supporter of terrorism. So is Iran, but we thought we could use Iraq as counterweight to them. I believe we executed the war well, but went about reconstructing the county the wrong way. Saddam was a thug on the order of Stalin (a man he idolized). He ruled by fear and intimidation (sound familiar?). Once he was deposed, the ancient animosities that each group harbored against the other arose again with a vengeance. We made the mistake of thinking Iraq was a real country. It was no more real than Yugoslavia was. I believe we would have been wiser to have turned it into a loose confederation of member states that operated semi-autonomously rather than try to build a central government from the top down. But voices like mine were a minority that was never heeded. Maybe someday they'll sort out the mess, but it will take a very long time. In the meantime we have to contend with Iran. I doubt we will invade them, and I'd prefer we limit any attacks to those targets deemed most vital. They do need to be taught a lesson about engaging in acts of terrorism, but there's a right way and wrong way to go about this. Our ultimate goal should be to bring about a transition to a better government by alienating the Iranian people from their current government (easily achievable) and having them topple it from within. Outside attacks tend to have the opposite effect, bringing enemies together to face a common foe.
I'm not sure I understand your last statement, but if you mean God and freedom are unrelated, I strongly disagree. Freedom is much more than being unchained from poverty or government oppression. One must be freed spiritually or he has gained nothing. To quote Milton, "The mind is its own place; it can make a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell".
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@kazoranzo3984 The people of the Balkans were killing one another long before there was a USA. The First World War started there and we got dragged into in the last year of that bloody conflict. The seeds of World War Two were planted by the unfair peace treaty that followed, and the end of that horrible conflagration resulted in 44 years of Cold War. You are free to denigrate my country as much as you wish, but I will point out one fact you entirely overlooked. In 1945 the United States was by far the most powerful country in the world. Our nation did not suffer devastation at home, our economy was the strongest in the world and still growing, the Axis were smashed, Europe lay in ruin, England was broke, Japan was crushed, China was once again in civil war, and the USSR had no nuclear weapons with which to challenge us. We could have owned the world at that moment. Instead we did what Americans have traditionally done. We went home and turned our weapons back into plow shears, we financed the rebirth of Europe and Japan, we opposed communist aggression, and we even helped Yugoslavia remain autonomous from the Soviets. This is fact, not fancy. Hate us if you wish; you won't be the first or the last. But while you're doing that, try envisioning what the world would be like if Germany, Russia, China, or Japan were the dominant force on the planet, instead of us. We never asked for the job of world policeman, but we are the only nation capable of doing it. If you don't approve, offer a better way, not sophomoric lies that are easily dispelled. As the saying goes, walk a few miles in my moccasins. You'll acquire a better understanding of what we are trying to do, which is maintain some semblance of peace, freedom, and shared prosperity so we don't have a World War Three. It certainly isn't conquering the world (done that already) or entertaining ourselves with foreign wars (no nation kills for fun, and contrary to popular myth, there are much better ways to make a profit than fighting a war). I admit we are imperfect, as are all men and thus all nations. Every decision we make impacts somebody adversely. You can't please everyone. It is a thankless job, but the last time we walked away from it, WWII resulted. If in the end we fail and a disaster greater than the last world world results, it won't be for lack of trying to avoid it.
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