Very interesting comment, Mike. We are seeing a consolidation of corporations into ever larger corporations until finally everything in each industry is merged into a single entity, and that entity is under direct government control. That is the very essence of fascism and that is what we're seeing take place before our very eyes.

The ends never justify the means. Only moral action can result in moral good. Evil actions will ultimately breed evil results because evil actions corrupts men's souls and becomes habitual and to them evil becomes always necessary.

Government "action" is, simply put, force. It is coercion by threat of violence. As an individual I don't have the power or the legitimacy given by society to exercise the same power over someone else that government does. When government acts against me when I exercise my rights (for instance free speech in opposition to government policy), I have no recourse of action to take against it other than the good will of my fellow citizens that are willing to risk government violence upon themselves.

An unemployed politician is a beautiful thing. I just had a look at the Constitution. I couldn't find a thing about a "cool government." Maybe the new constitution will have something about guvmint gittin down wit da homeboys.

A statesman knows when to keep his mouth shut and his nose out of other people's business which is why dead politicians are so good at it.

Like Orwell said in 1984, "Love is hate, Freedom is Slavery, etc." Mr. Waffler seems to be fluent in Newspeak. I suppose Fascism is freedom in his dictionary. As for Aristophanes, I think he might not have envisioned how large some of those rocks would have to be to hide our politicians and their sins.

A rarity indeed. Logan, the only problem with hanging politicians is that they seem to have nine lives (i.e. political lives) like cats. We'd wear ourselves out hanging just one of them.

I'll have to disagree with Mencken somewhat here. I would say that government and politicians in particular are only like "you and me" if you and I deserve to be sitting in lockup in the penitentiary for crimes committed. Their only particular talent is for not getting caught.

That's right, jim. I actually like celery and it clearly has some nutritional value. I do have a friend that refers to celery as "that vile weed." That much more accurately describes the venerable House majority and Senate leaders. I'm with Mike on the quote, however. Many more 'Pubbies actually want to jump in and help on their own than habitual nanny staters.

Dangerous to whom? Any true word can be dangerous to a liar, suppressed or not. Suppression is the liar's attempt at self-preservation from a word that's dangerous to him.

Compared to the European press, the American media is a paragon of objectivity and dissent (though far from perfect) and in Europe government exercises its grip as strongly as any corporation in the US. I guess it all depends on who's ox is getting gored, right Vidal?

It does have a more fundamental thing to do: make money. Of course amusing, entertaining, and misleading is how it's done. Journalists, and I use that term loosely, can fool themselves into believing they are society's watchdog, but we all know better.

I hope you all know I'm not always entirely serious. I only put on the tin foil hat as an aesthetic fashion accessory.

Robert, the only reason I didn't give it five stars is that I, unlike Bernie Sanders, don't believe regulation or deregulation makes much of a difference at all. If you regulate, you are simply trading one set of puppet masters for another.

I have to ask who owns the CIA? We need the citizen representatives that our founders envisioned, not the professional class of aristocracy politicians spawned in ivy league universities we have had since the late 19th century. Fascism has been a growing beast since the early 20th century. Whether it is the international socialism of the far left or the national socialism of the slightly less left makes little difference. Most have no idea what a truly free capitalist society even looks like. I don't know, however, that the CIA owns "everyone" in the major media. The NVD may own a few. Then again, the who owns the NVD?

Who's that McDonald fellow you speak of, Archer? I can't count the years since I've stepped into one of those, or for that matter, watched a network news broadcast. I just can't take either type of junk food and the indigestion they cause. I would ask Chomsky, however, "Obedience to whom?" It is obviously not obedience to our current government, but the unified voice with which they speak seems to suggest there's an obedience to someone.

Even a communist can be right once in a while. If you want to see how different corporations, governments, and the media industry itself control edit the information that is allowed to be published, take a look at various foreign media sources. If only a small portion of each population believe what is published, it is no surprise that there is always a war somewhere in the world. After all, there's a pile of money to be made in war. Regulation of the industry is immaterial, however. The regulators are just as corrupt as anyone else. You simply trade one set of manipulating editors for another and they will just foment war against someone else, somewhere else.

Silence can be deafening. Perhaps one of our best presidents was Coolidge because he kept quiet and kept out of the way. He let people get on with their business without government interference. That says volumes in itself. However, I am sure that Chesterton, being British, was more concerned with politics in his own back yard. What happened in 1923 in Britain? In 1923 the Labour party was swept into office and formed the first ever Labour government in early 1924 (which fell nine months later when it was found that the Russian communists had instructed the British Communist Party to support Labour). Labour was very sympathetic to the Russian Bolsheviks and wanted to enact many of the same kinds of 'solutions' the Bolsheviks had. Chesterton recognized Communism as saying nothing.

Waffler, I can only conclude from what you said that you believe a man has the right to beat his wife into submission, or even kill her, in order to prevent her from divorcing him. That doesn't sound like America: Iran or Pakistan, perhaps, but not America. As for public opinion, I can only observe that Lenin and Trotsky had public opinion on their side too, and the Soviet system was nothing but a failure.

Pani et circuses.

The outcomes of socialist policies are socialists' fault. GW is nearly as big a socialist as Clinton. What else could his "compassionate conservatism" be if not socialist? Myself, I am looking for rational conservatism/liberalism. People who ignore natural human behavior (the profit motive) will always take us down the road that leads to misery. By the way, Enron failed because Bush failed to sign on to the global warming/carbon credit trading scheme. They were counting on it to make money, and they bet wrong.

Robert, Fannie and Freddie were already national socialist institutions and always had been since their creation by FDR. The market distortion that was created by that federal guarantee is why we are where we are today; that and the criminal practices of Clintonite partisans who ran Fannie and Freddie (Gorelick, Raines, et. al.). In addition, threats of industry regulation over "red lining" and just plain old greed by lenders and borrowers, didn't help the situation.

Ignorance and apathy are all that is required to have an out of control government. Unfortunately, there is plenty of both to go around, in large part because both are fostered by government and the other beltway 'elite'.

The distortion of facts creates a distortion of outcomes. Rational people will make rational decisions when presented with all of the facts. Of course, we will always have the irrational among us, who will make up distortions, lies and innuendoes to further their own irrationality if not insanity (e.g. dailykos.com).

The only reason to fear someone else's free speech is if you're a liar. If truth is on your side you can effectively refute any lie (if you aren't censored).