Except, of course, the market didn't decide to invade Iraq; the government did. The market didn't decide to make irresponsible public budgeting decisions; the government did. See a pattern? - kdwmson

No, actually the market did decide to invade Iraq. Cheney and his "friends" had that country sliced and diced before Bush even knew where all the bathrooms in the White House were located.

And the market did decide on the Pharma Bill. And the market did run through gazillions of dollars after Katrina. And the market did help push hundreds of billions of dollars through one end of the Iraq money machine and suck it right back out at the other end. It goes on and on and on. The market loves the Cheney's, Rumsfeld's, Wolfowitz's, Rice's and Tenet's of the world. It rewards them handsomely.

I'm a firm believer in free markets. I just don't see very many. I do see a lot or corporatism and fascism though. Corporate capitalism doesn't need free choice or democracy to prosper. Corporate capitalism is doing great in China, is it not? Corporate capitalism (i.e., the "market") may in fact turn out to be just the thing communist totalitarianism needed to succeed. Free markets are like communism in a way. They're great on paper, but once you put people in power, those people all seem to want the same thing. Everything. And for the same period of time. Forever.

This turn of phrase is the problem. Would you say that you're a "believer" in a Euclidean analysis of distance? Of course not - Euclidean geometry is just a tool which is sometimes the right tool, and sometimes not. -- jojo++

Before I argue with a person, I always try to be certain that we are not already in complete agreement.

The phrase "turn of phrase" as applied to "free markets" could easily lead to an infinite regression on the words "free" and "market." So, I'm going to stay away from that. The point I was trying to make is that the term "the market" as originally defined in classical economics has evolved to a point in which any analysis of economic cause and effect cannot be taken seriously without including governmental, social-psychological and even ecological considerations as part of the analysis. That is why people like John Keynes, John Nash and Ronald Coase play such important roles in contemporary economics.

For a pragmatist, everything is a tool, a means to an end. Pragmatism as an American tradition is one of our best traditions, and one of our worst. Your comment re: Euclidean geometry is well taken. Not to seem a smartass, but I remind you that Riemann did not invalidate Euclidean geometry, but used his concepts of the manifold and metric tensor to prove the existence of an infinite group of non-Euclidean geometries. It was Riemann's work which in turn provided scientists like Einstein with the tools they needed to increase our shared understanding of the physical universe. And, as importantly, Riemann's theories hold for all geometries. What I am saying is that I think we are in agreement for the most part.

@mona - A individual human being cannot normally survive outside a group unless and until they have first been raised inside a group. The rare documented exceptions are almost always developmentally disabled and nearly incapable of functioning in society. As an idea, the rights of the individual can be said to exist in a Platonic sense, independent of any external constraint or authority. In practice, however, the rights of the individual must be guaranteed by a social contract. That contract may take the form of normative behavior (in small groups such as a tribe or clan), or the Rule of Law as expressed in one or more social institutions (e.g. religion, government, education, economics and family). I think a lot of this discussion is confusing the one context with the other.

The arguments seem to be pitting existentialist and essentialist philosophies against each other. By existentialist I mean the idea that existence precedes essence. By essentialist I mean just the opposite, that essence (ideas for example), precede existence. The inalienable rights of human beings can be argued from both camps.

In matters of ethics I tend to believe that certain actions (like murder and rape) are always wrong. No law, no government, no religion, nothing, can make them right. That would make me an essentialist. But I also think that other things (like sex of nearly any sort) are right or wrong as a result of the consent of lack of consent on the parts of the participants. I guess that would make me a (happy) existentialist.

I blame the French.

Despite my admiration of the French, I am not a libertarian or a socialist.

I used to think I was about 33 1/3 percent libertarian but I was wrong. I'm an enlightenment, postmodernist, liberal with socialist economic infrastructural leanings (highways, healthcare, education and, in about 30 years, energy via nuclear fusion and solar).

BTW, I really like Justin Raimondo. He's intelligent, eloquent, informed and a self-professed libertarian, right?

I just threw in that part about Brit Hume and Keith Olbermann, since we've been discussing everything but.

We've all been getting along so well, but, no, George Bush really is the worst president ever. Actually, Andrew Jackson killed all those Indians and nobody seems to care, and Truman did drop nukes on Japan and even McNamara admitted that was a war crime, but after that, it's definitely George Bush.

He's put us behind the rest of the developed world in every way imaginable. He has done everything in his power to establish a totalitarian state. I just can't say enough bad things about him.