From: coolidge@speaker.wpd.sgi.com (Don Coolidge)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.dan-quayle,alt.politics.bush
Subject: Re: "Liberal" - A Misnomer
Date: 9 Sep 92 19:30:12 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.

In article <JASON.92Sep9113133@ab20.larc.nasa.gov>, 
jason@ab20.larc.nasa.gov (Jason Austin) writes even more nonsense
in an attempt at a high-sounding response to the drubbing I gave him:
|> In article <pjs7us@twilight.wpd.sgi.com> 
|> coolidge@speaker.wpd.sgi.com (Don Coolidge) writes:
|> -> In article <JASON.92Sep8151229@ab20.larc.nasa.gov>, 
|> -> jason@ab20.larc.nasa.gov (Jason Austin) writes:
|> 
|> 	Look at the facts.  Bush and Reagan has vetoed bill after bill
|> in an attempt to stop the growth of the government. 

Bush and Reagan grew government more than any other administrations
in history, both in terms of the size of the budget and in number of
employees, especially in the Executive Branch. I once again suggest 
you at least make a minimal effort to determine the facts before 
offering what you seem to think passes for wisdom...try the Congressional
Record. Try your local library. Try something. But stop taking all of
Marlin Fitzwater's pronouncements as gospel - 'cause they sure ain't.

|> The Conservative
|> ideal is keeping government out of the individual's life and out of
|> business. 

Then by your own definition, neither Reagan nor Bush is a conservative.
Both favor(ed) regressive and repressive programs in the areas of 
individual privacy (right to choose; mandatory drug testing; sexual
orientation; government access to private IRS information, etc. etc.) 
and civil rights (far too numerous to mention, but threatening to veto 
the latest Civil Right Bill is a good, and obvious, example, as was 
Bush's opposition to the Americans With Disabilies Act, which he takes
great pride in trumpeting that he signed, conveniently forgetting the
years of opposition the Act's authors faced from his administration).
As for business, they have been perfectly willing to jump all over
businesses that they think might differ in political perspective with
their own views - such as 1) their defunding of NPR and other 
federally-dependent sources of news and perspective, and 2) their idiotic
repeated attempts to have INS place limits on the number, style, and 
quality of foreign entertainers who are permitted to perform in this 
country. *Nobody* with any non-rightwing political agenda would have
been let in. They've tried this gambit twice now, and each time it's
been barely beaten back.

Or there's the other perspective on business - remove all regulations
that would limit a business' ability to poison its neighbors, despoil 
public lands of their resources, buy politicians wholesale, engage in
monopolistic and other exploitative practices, defraud and cheat 
consumers, force employees to work in hazardous conditions or with
harmful substances...all of this may get government off business' back, 
but it puts both of them sqarely on the backs of the American public. 
And just who is supposed to be serving whom, eh?
 
|> For example, a bill in the works now will force business to
|> provide long term maturnity leave; this is an expansion of government
|> to take more control of private business.  Bush has vetoed this bill
|> in the past and will probably veto it again. 

Gee, and I thought he was the Family Values President. My mistake. 

The leave is *without pay*. It involves no control of business; it
simply requires a benefit that companies in almost every other 
developed nation in the world provide their employees as a matter
of course. Talk to Frenchmen, Canadians, Germans, or even British.
They consider our country's attacks on two-earner families totally
uncivilized, and destructive to the stability of family life.

|> An example Bush used in
|> one of his speeches was a law that would force companies to sterilize
|> hard hats before they can be worn by another person even though there
|> is not a single case of infection passed by hard hat.  Bush vetoed
|> that one also to keep the government's nose out of business.

This is so bizarre and laughable that it just might be true. If
so, George, I gotta salute ya! Sure are scraping the bottom of the 
barrel, though, Jason, if this is the best you can come up with. :^)

|> -> A liberal believes in expanding an individual's rights and powers. If
|> -> you believe that requires a growth in government, those same Founding
|> -> Fathers (tm) come back to haunt you. 
|> 
|> 	The Founding Fathers lived in a different world, a different
|> time, and a different situation.  Anyone who thinks they are in as bad
|> shape as a monarchy oppressed country has been spoiled by the easly
|> life in the US.

Sigh...strawmen are *so* boring. I thought we were talking liberal
and conservative, not the British Crown. I, at least, didn't bring
it up. But go ahead, argue with yourself if you like - at least then
there's a 50-50 chance you might win :^)
 
|> 	A liberal believes in expanding the government's rights and
|> powers.  Look at the examples above.  Look at Clinton's plan for a
|> government take over of the health care industry.

Jason, you have to stop insisting on definitions you obviously know
nothing about. I, and other L-people, disagree tremendously with
the motives you'd like to tar us with. We (mostly) believe in the 
dictionary definition of liberal - one who seeks to expand an 
individual's rights and powers. Sometimes that means adding a new law,
or a new agency. Sometimes it means repealing or eliminating one. 
Sometimes it means neither. The world isn't black-and-white.

And what's your beef with Clinton's health-care plans? Or are you
happy with our current system, where healthcare costs go up an average
of nearly 20% every year, over 40% of each healthcare dollar spent
goes into administering our crazy patchwork health insurance system
rather than providing care, and hundreds of thousands of people have 
no insurance whatsoever, while millions are underinsured? Do some
research first, *then* form an opinion.
  
|> -> And "traditional values"? Whose traditional values? Those of our
|> -> liberal Founding Fathers? :^) Those of the Haitian boat people, or
|> -> Native Americans, or Hmong refugees, or the African-American descendants
|> -> of slaves? Or just those of people like yourself? 
|> 
|> 	Any country must be based on a value system.  Laws are nothing
|> but written down values, and laws are the only thing that protects
|> freedom.  Without the law, someone could walk into your house, take
|> everything you own, and unless you're bigger, there's nothing you
|> could do.  Without the law, someone could force you to work without
|> pay.  Whose values?  A conglomerate of all the people in this country.

Would somebody else take a crack at this pile, please? I can't stop
laughing long enough to type coherently...:^)

No, I'll try. Jason, law or no, anybody who walks into my house with
an AK47, or even a Saturday Night Special, is already going to take
all I own, regardless of his size. In fact, it happens here more than
in most places.

And, law or no, there are *lots* of places in the agricultural parts
of this country where people are, in fact, forced to work without wages.
Sometimes the employers get caught, and I'm glad when they are. But the 
law is no guarantee against it happening.

There are two things that prevent that kind of behavior. First, adequate
income for all, so that there are an absolute minimum of desperate people.
Second, respect for one another, so that the other race/creed/sex/income
bracket isn't demonized into something subhuman to be preyed upon. Without
those, all the laws in the world can't stop crime.

I salute your inclusion of all our country's value systems into your
synthesis of "a system of vaues". However, your Republican heroes
systematically discriminate against all non-white/affluent/Judaeo-Christian/
male value systems. Sounds to me like you're backing the wrong horse.
 
|> -> |> 
|> -> |> 	Historically, a left wing society is economically inefficient
|> -> |> and is much too permissive of criminal and anti-social behavior.  A
|> -> |> right wing society is highly efficient but is too inflexible in
|> -> |> defining morality.
|> 
|> 	I didn't try to answer anything below this, because I can't
|> discuss something where no facts are presented.

Nice try, Jason. Didn't you mean to say instead that you can't argue 
with facts? Or was that statement just your graduate thesis from the 
Marlin Fitzwater School of Public Speaking? :^)

Here are some of the non-"facts" Jason refers to, which contradict his
stated opinions:

1) Sweden, a socialist state with liberal laws, has a far lower crime
rate than the US, and has had a healthier economy for decades.

2) The former USSR, a rightwing totalitarian state, had an inefficient
economy. (I could have added Hitler's Germany, Peron's Argentina, and 
Mussolini's Italy, among others, but one example's enough to disprove 
such sloppy thinking.)

3) Crime rates are high because inner-city people, especially minorities,
can make more money in crime than in most other avenues potentially open 
to them.

4) Schools fail in the inner cities because they have been abandoned
by the taxpaying public and the Federal government (or even government
in general).

5) The enormous burden of personal, corporate, and governmental debt
built up over the past twelve years is an immense millstone weighing
down the neck of the American economy. 

6) The country is *already* headed in the wrong direction. Over 60%
of the American public thinks so - even some of those planning to
vote for Bush (they prefer to swallow the Presiden's guff and blame
Congress). 

Sigh...I need to work. But thanks for an amusing interlude.

Don Coolidge
coolidge@speaker.wpd.sgi.com