Letters to the Editor
-
The Ron Paul Spam Club - Cultists
The Ron Paul Spam Club
July 2nd, 2007
I just approved this comment on a recent post, and got to thinking about some of the responses I’ve seen from supporters.
Some make honest and thoughtful arguments, some opt for “Go Ron Paul!!! WOooO!” responses. But there is a third segment, the comments that lack the hallmarks of spam, yet have nothing to do with the post itself. These comments simply link to Ron Paul speeches or events. This RP spam has been noticed by a few other folks as well. The Pragmatic Economist asks are Ron Pauls supporters destroying the internet? The intensity of the comments in and of itself says nothing aside from the fervor of those who do support Ron Paul. However the comment spam says volumes.
The spammers are easy to spot. Their comment has nothing to do with the article they comment on. They simply write a pro-Paul message and maybe throw in some links. Done, one more blog saved for Paul.
Have they really saved one more blog? If you are going to argue for your candidate, do so convincingly. Throwing up a bland pro-Paul message that has nothing to do with a post does nothing to advance the cause of the candidate.
Ron Paul may appear to be doing well on the internet, but how much of that is the individual foot traffic of a few true believers?
(One more question. Will Ron Paul supporters heed this advice and follow their peers who already make interesting arguments, or will they attack this post from as many angles as possible?)
http://fitnessfortheoccasion.wordpress.com/2007/07/02/the-ron-paul-spam-club/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJE_sc0HDWo&mode=related&search=
-
You cretinous little turd
At least the simple-minded Bucky tries to piece an argument together. They are pathetic but he gets an A for effort
Q: How dumb is LWM?
Multiple choice:
A. He thinks George Orwell wouldn't have learned anything since 1950.
He would have learned that he was right all along and Hayek was wrong all along. But he always knew that.
[What Hayek] does not see, or will not admit, [is] that a return to "free" competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the State. The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them. Professor Hayek denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly, but in practice that is where it has led, and since the vast majority of people would far rather have State regimentation than slumps and unemployment, the drift towards collectivism is bound to continue if popular opinion has any say in the matter.
George Orwell, in a 1944 review of "The Road to Serfdom" by F.A. Hayek and "The Mirror of the Past" by K. Zilliacus
But Friedman seemed to share Friedrich Hayek's extreme and inaccurate view that socialism of the sort that Britain embraced under the old Labour Party was incompatible with democracy, and I don't think that there is a good theoretical or empirical basis for that view. The Road to Serfdom flunks the test of accuracy of prediction!
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2006/11/milton_friedman.html
October 16, 2006
The Social Welfare State, beyond Ideology
Are higher taxes and strong social "safety nets" antagonistic to a prosperous market economy? The evidence is now in
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
One of the great challenges of sustainable development is to combine society's desires for economic prosperity and social security. For decades economists and politicians have debated how to reconcile the undoubted power of markets with the reassuring protections of social insurance. America's supply-siders claim that the best way to achieve well-being for America's poor is by spurring rapid economic growth and that the higher taxes needed to fund high levels of social insurance would cripple prosperity. Austrian-born free-market economist Friedrich August von Hayek suggested that high taxation would be a "road to serfdom," a threat to freedom itself.*
Most of the debate in the U.S. is clouded by vested interests and by ideology. Yet there is by now a rich empirical rec-ord to judge these issues scientifically. The evidence may be found by comparing a group of relatively free-market economies that have low to moderate rates of taxation and social outlays with a group of social-welfare states that have high rates of taxation and social outlays.
Not coincidentally, the low-tax, high-income countries are mostly English-speaking ones that share a direct historical lineage with 19th-century Britain and its theories of economic laissez-faire. These countries include Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. The high-tax, high-income states are the Nordic social democracies, notably Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, which have been governed by left-of-center social democratic parties for much or all of the post¿World War II era. They combine a healthy respect for market forces with a strong commitment to antipoverty programs. Budgetary outlays for social purposes average around 27 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the Nordic countries and just 17 percent of GDP in the English-speaking countries....
Friedrich Von Hayek was wrong
(...)
Von Hayek was wrong. In strong and vibrant democracies, a generous social-welfare state is not a road to serfdom but rather to fairness, economic equality and international competitiveness.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000AF3D5-6DC9-152E-A9F183414B7F0000
B. He thinks Noam Chomsky is "august."
According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar during the 1980–1992 time period, and was the eighth most cited scholar in any time period.
I thinlk you are a pissy little idiot with no talents and many faults.
-
Sorry to break the news to Americans
Sorry to break the news to Americans, but outside of some small self-hating Balkan states the opinion of the US has not changed that much over the past few decades.
The only thing that has happened is that what the rest of the world has always known intuitively about the US has now been solidly reinforced.
-
William Timberman
And I would give a months pay to see you ever be for a specific proposal rather than just the gutless snipping you do. Oh, I know you think you sound intellectual, but it is just evasion. Hell William, I have never read you or any of the cabal be for anything. Do you have a position on something? Are you for apple pie?
Oh, and I'd give a month's pay to see what those Greeks would have done with the likes of you. But do not kick the pig, that may be a relative of yours. :-)
Note: Much better to be free in hell than serve in heaven.