I take it that Thomas Jefferson is vile, as vile as Stalin to you; at least that is what I am thinking now from your words. -- bucky1

First things first: I'm two years younger than you are. Not such a great gap, is it? I have no interest in besting you. I see things you don't see, that's all, and understand them differently than you apparently would. The difficulty for me is grasping why you have the aversion you have to government as a Platonic category, rather than to specific governments. It seems to me that a fundamental part of your agenda is missing from all your arguments here. Do you not see this? Will you not share what makes you argue as you do?

The quote above bespeaks a misunderstanding of what I wrote so fundamental as to almost make me conclude that it's intentional. Is this misunderstanding just a rhetorical flourish on your part, or do you actually believe it? If the latter, perhaps my initial conclusion about you was correct; there can be no commerce between us.

I enjoy reading your posts and want you to continue to participate, but in this particular argument, your viewpoint has an unfortunate disadvantage in that it's just plain wrong.

Wal-Mart is indeed as much an enemy of freedom as the FDA and for similar reasons. It doesn't need to violate the law in order to be so. It merely has to provide an environment where people are sheilded from accountability for their actions and can thus act without moral constraints. Corporations and Governments share that trait. In Wal-Marts case, they manage to parley their role as the only large employer in many rural areas in order to corner the labor market and shaft their employees by discoraging them from being full-time and thus gaining the benefits one normally associates with gainful employment. It not an accident that to this day, there is only one Wal-Mart in Chicago.

That is a good resource.

Actually I don't feel like I'm confused at all about varying uses of the terms liberal & conservative, and if I don't enter the "libertarian" socialists vs. market fundamentalists debate, it's only because I don't find it interesting.

There just isn't anything intellectually deep or interesting to me about the various crazy schemes to bass all human life in private cash transactions. It's a bunch of absurd nonsense that I only have to encounter because of the excited energies of the free market fundamentalists out there.

Nor do I think that forever will it be considered crazy and unreasonable to bring the standards of political democracy into the economic sphere. It seems quite absurd to me the lazy assumption that the end result of all human development, the peak of intelligent life on this planet, the viable stopping point of significant social change, are human societies dominated by giant, concentrated, inefficient, totalitarian organizations (corporations or generationally super-ultra-rich families) which control mankind's economic resources.

I also don't mind the fact that one has to use a bit of an ethnographic approach to political terms, i.e., if the terms are used differently in different contexts, then there is no objective source which can suggest how they ought be used.

I brought up my point just to establish that, yes, there is a context to these terms, and they are used differently in different times and places.

(Also, it's why Latin Americans use the term "Neo-Liberal" to describe a return to "free market" fundamentalist policies.)

bucky1: I asked a few times if anyone here ever just talked about a particular solution to a particular problem (an issue) rather than in broad generalizations. So far, no love.

Just so you don't lose any more sleep waiting for this to happen, here is something for you to consider:

There are no solutions, only problems. Anything that looks like a solution is merely a reformulation of the problem. Since there are no solutions, everything is part of the problem.

I respect the voices that post here on such matters and have a question/observation regarding the utter debauchery of the Bush Administration and what is to be don't about it.

The entire administration, from the Justice Department, the GAO and who knows what other agencies or sections of Govt is just “eat up with the cancer” of cynical Republican manipulation.

With each player in charge of a short series of abhorent, unethical behavior, behavior which no one can associate a prosecutable crime with, all the while allowing the sum of their efforts grow into a stinking pile of favoritism, stacked juries, unjustified voter-fraud prosecutions and deep systemic disfunction. How can the various oversight committees be expected to weave the Republicans’ individual behaviors into a comprehensive narrative of criminality the public can understand and prosecutors can pursue?

The whole bloomin' mess gives off such a strong stench of RICO violations I wonder if prosecution under such a statute is possible for Governmental acts.

'From' Fressen 'to' Essen.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertains angel 'messengers' unawares--Hebrews 13:2

For the son of Chronos has ordained this law for human beings, that fishes and beast and winged fowls should devour one another, since right is not in them; but to human beings he gave right, which is far the best.--Hesiod "Work and Days 276-280.

Whoever put super-fish-glue on my behind, I forgive you.

Maybe we can form into two old parties--Host and Cannibal.

What I have wanted most from the Democratic presidential candidates is for them to spend more time making a case for restoring the consititution, and rolling back some of GWB's abuses.

So far, the only candidate I've heard mention this issue as a priority is Christopher Dodd. Senator Dodd now has a post up a Huffington on this very topic:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-dodd/restoring-americas-stand_b_51114.html

Something I didn't know about his personal history:

My father served as Executive Trial Counsel under Chief Prosecutor and Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, which set a high standard for moral authority and rule of law in the 20th Century. Trials were far from the obvious choice following World War Two and the extermination of 10 million people - and vengeance was an understandable reaction.

The entire post is worth reading, but in case you don't, he concludes with this request for our help:

Here's what you can do today to help restore the Constitution:

Watch my video discussing the bill and upload your own explaining why you believe America is most secure when we draw strength from our highest ideals, not our worst fears -- add the tag "restoringtheconstitution" and we'll add your videos to http://restore-habeas.org. [emphasis mine]

Visit http://restore-habeas.org to sign up as a citizen co-sponsor to the Restoring the Constitution Act. Follow updates on the legislation's progress at http://chrisdodd.com/blog.

Imagine that! A Democratic presidential candidate is using the power of the netroots to ask all concerned citizens, not just his own constitutents, to speak out to their representatives in Congress, on behalf of the Constitution. Incredible.

And the senator actually is fluent in Spanish. Unlike you-know-who.