Government has become mostly a mafia style protection racket. If you don't pay your "insurance" your business will mysteriously burn down in the middle of the night. Why do businesses hire lobbyists? Do businesses like to throw away money for nothing? They hire lobbyists for two reasons: politicians can harm them and politicians can be bought. The politician will not literally burn down your business, but laws and regulations can more thoroughly destroy it than fire.

Waffler won't believe you, Mike. He's never heard about it on the Tee Vee.

Money or accumulated wealth is not called a life savings for nothing. You trade a portion of your life and freedom for that wealth. When someone takes it from you, they steal a portion of your life. For that portion of time and freedom that they steal from you, you are essentially their slave. That's why thieves and congressmen have so much in common.

Government interference inevitably create imbalance and ineptitude. Government interferes in farming and people starve. Government interferes in banking and people go bankrupt. Government interferes in education and people are ignorant. It's not too many people that cause starvation, bankruptcy, and ignorance. It's government social engineering for the purpose of control through tax codes, regulations, subsidies, and handouts that create these ills. People left to themselves will feed their families, provide for their future, and educate them if they know they must or pay the consequences.

The accumulation of wealth is the accumulation of future self-determination. That is why the progressive "elite" want to take our wealth from us: they want to determine the future of the benighted class. It's easy to control people who have to grovel in squalor, begging for a few crumbs.

There had already been a first and a second Bank of the United States which had 20 year charter renewable at the government's option. Andrew Jackson fought and temporarily won the battle to not renew the second bank. The United States Banks were very similar to the Fed. The Fed is simply the third iteration of the bankster's scam.

Declaring something is a right does not make it one. My natural rights exist and have always existed before and after someone declared them. They are predefined. I have the right to do anything I please as long as I don't interfere with others' right to do as they please. Declaring health care for instance, as a right does not make it one because health care is a good and a service that someone has to pay for. When I claim my supposed right, who pays if I don't? Perhaps I should declare my right to Waffler's, RBE's, or Reston's house and move in. Maybe I should declare my right to travel and take their cars. I'm sure they'd be compassionate and let me have them. Please have the tank full when I come to pick it up.

RBE, I have studied early Mesopotamia history fairly extensively. It wasn't climate change that destroyed a succession of empires. It was dictatorial rule that turned the common people into slaves that did it. An empire built upon enslavement will whither away because the innovation and spirit of the individual is crushed. A city, nation, or state that is filled with free people will be able to overcome any mere force of nature including your vaunted, yet suspect, anthropogenic "climate change". The climate change scam is all about enslavement and empire. That is a critical issue.

The only real, statistically significant danger in societies are the arrogant, egotistical, intellectual elite class who yearn to be the dictators of other peoples lives. When they get the dictatorial control they so lust after, they find that the peasants are rebellious and they must be punished (for their own good of course) and when a little punishment doesn't work, a little more will be applied. Finally, they discover the only way to really control them is to kill them. Death is always the dictator's final solution.

I think Josef Mengele must have thought there should be no barriers to freedom of inquiry; and yet he did "inquire" didn't he?

Yes, networks like ABC, NBC, SeeBS, MSNBC, CNN; magazines like Time, Newsweak, and on and on ad nauseum are all right wing propaganda machines of the right wing fascists. Of course that's why Ed Shultz said he would vote ten times if he could to keep a Republican from winning "Ted's seat". That's why Chris Matthews wets himself every time somebody disagrees with an Obama policy. Let's face it folks: what we have is one fascist party with a left and a right wing. Both sides are corporatist/welfare statists in the style of Mussolini and FDR. Both are corrupt, and both are controlled by the "intelligentsia". Intelligentsia...isn't that another word for arrogant SOB? As for me, I'd rather have a congress full of bakers, farmers, loggers, and fishermen that lawyers, academics, bankers, and career bureaucrats. At least they've lived in the real world.

There's no greater tyrant than the majority, the same majority than brings you affirmative action, and Equal Opportunity Commissions; a society where everyone has to walk on eggshells or not look at someone for more than 1.5 seconds or risk being accused of racism or harassment. Be careful of the words you say. Say "stingy" instead of "niggardly" or you'll be accused of racism. Don't stare at the ugly girl because she looks like a train wreck in progress, or you'll be accused of sexual harassment. Absurd indeed.

It is true that liberals and progressives tend not to go to liberty sites since they're not terribly interested in individual liberty. It's all about the collective (that would be collective slavery to the elitists). But it's hard to ague with the truth no matter how you might spin it. Marxists have religion and they worship a god; themselves. The Obamunists have a similar religion except they worship the Narcissist in Chief first, then themselves. I think, however, it is dawning on them that they've been worshiping a tin god and the tarnish is becoming very noticeable.

Galileo was a keen observer of experimental facts and was talented at using those facts to postulate truth. Galileo had, however, a poor understanding of human nature because he thought the truth might actually matter to politicians, i.e. the Pope et al. By the way, Al Gore is a charlatan con-man who has profited from fraudulent research. Of course he was not ignorant of the fraud. He was complicit in it and probably should be doing time with Madoff as his neighbor.

You would only oar a boat when there is a strong wind when it is blowing you in a direction you don't want to go. Maybe it's time for me to go buy some more ammunition for my "oars" since there's a lot of hot air and bad wind blowing out of DC.

Most truth can be hard to swallow if you're used to eating sugar coated crap.

We really ought to try letting freedom ring someday. You know, like being able to say any hate filled thing some fool might want to say with the only consequence being public derision, not government sanction. You know, like a private business being able to operate in any foolish fashion it might want to such as refusing to hire a particular group which may actually give it a competitive edge, without government coercion. Public ridicule stops racists and Nazi's more effectively than oppressive government action.

It is a very seductive idea that THEY can give everyone something for "free" with no consequences. Maybe THEY can just print up a few more dollars and make us all millionaires, then we wouldn't need insurance...right? The price of taking freebies from THEM is that THEY will own you because freebies are never free.

The thing about something that is petrified is that it is dead. It cannot adapt. It cannot feel. For instance the idea of a petrified justice that is set in stone does not leave the possibility for mercy. It is like Islamic law which requires a hand for theft, regardless of the circumstance. Sometimes justice requires mercy to be truly just.

Truth needs no persecution to prove it, only rational thought and repeatable experiment. I'm sure a lot of people wish they were being "persecuted" like Al Gore, what with his 20,000 square foot homes, jet setting lifestyle, and billions of dollars worth of stocks based upon countless dupes' belief in a hoax. Al Gore is much like Jim Jones and if you drink his Kool Aid, will eventually give you the same result.

I have no problem with one sect telling the other they are damned to hell. In fact if they truly believe their own religion it is their obligation to warn the unbeliever. However, no sect should attempt to carry out the punishment of the unbeliever themselves and send them to hell. That is not the role of the believer. Leave what happens after this life to God. We'll all find out who's right soon enough.

Interesting discussion, gentlemen. Archer, I think you maybe put too much blame on the symptom and ignore the cause of wars and crimes between people. You seem to believe it is religion, be it Christianity, Islam, or whatever, which inspires an empire to conquer its neighbors. If all religion and all memory of it were to disappear overnight, I would predict there would be a war the next morning. Some people just have a natural inclination to take others' property and they will do anything to get it. There is truth in the statement "the love of money is the root of all evil." If you go to the basic philosophy of most religions, they don't condone theft or murder, so it is not a get out of jail free card. Any philosophy can be perverted to mean whatever one wants it to mean by the unscrupulous, and the gullible will believe them and the cynical will profess to believe them. Atheists have stolen, lied, murdered, and conquered empires too.

Spoken like a true Marxist. It's not intolerance that destroys noble lives (that is the life that is earned by "the sweat of his brow"). The root cause of the destruction is envy. That would be the kind of envy socialists have for other peoples property. Millions have been lost to socialists' greed disguised as a love for mankind.

I think most of us here can generally agree that Waffler is insane, but that doesn't make it necessarily so. Ad hominem does not make a good argument. It's just a reflection of someone who has nothing to say. Reston, when politicians turn into barbarians, it might be useful if the citizen can meet incivility with more than a kind supplication given from their knees. If you want peace prepare for war.

Lazarus Long didn't live a millennium because he was careless.