Right on, Nick!  That is the very weak link to a utopian/socialist idea — who can you trust to implement it?  We may as well just have a benevolent king — how come that was so hard, too? 

Better to defend the freedom for people to live their lives on their own terms while respecting others to do the same.  The 'poor' don't realize they are poor because they are ruled.  If they weren't, they could take care of themselves, or at least have the option.  State intervention in all its forms has created more ills than it cures, as the end result is almost always the consolidation of power and property into fewer and fewer hands.

It is unlikely that we can ever return to a currency backed solely by gold and silver.  But we could start trading with a currency backed by a breadbasket of non-perishable commodities, including several precious metals, oil, water, etc..  Managing such a currency would require integrity of the highest order — that which was expected of the US Treasury.  Our currency would have to be a hard currency only — we must make a distinction between cash and credit.  If people want to invest in speculative commercial paper, they may do so at their own risk, but it should not become legal tender.  Bad money pushes out the good.

For goodness sake, Robert, if you understand the evils of central banking, then you must realize that isn't 'capitalism'.  Heck, show me one time the founders ever spoke about capitalism — show me ever the first time the word capitalism started being used.  I'll tell you, Marx coined the term to define the opposition to communism.  Anyone that spouts anti-capitalist rhetoric is affirming Marxism — and it is self-evident among the 'antifa' types and 'progressive' liberals.  You guys are full of yourselves.  Everywhere this rhetoric has flourished has been followed with millions dead.  Just stop it!

Again the tired old excuse, "the reality is that these countries hadn't had real Socialism" — yes, they did!  Communist USSR, Nazi Germany, communist/socialist Latin American countries all implemented socialism in its various authoritarian forms and devolved into dictatorship — that's the end result of a one-party system.  Sheesh, wake up and smell the coffee.  As far as I can tell, American socialists are an ungrateful and envious bunch that would rather cut the baby in half than return it to its true mother.  This nihilistic rhetoric yields nothing but destruction, "if I can't have it, then no one should."  Disgusting...

Eloquently put, as usual Patrick Henry!

Sorry, Robert but your entire argument is based on a false premise.  It is not compassionate to subjugate an entire nation for 'compassion' i.e. the greater good.  Compassion is best expressed individually not through a soulless state.  Better to have a million independent and self-determining people decide individually what best helps his brother than a central authority that has stolen the power of all the people to then selectively distribute it back to privileged classes.  Every government that has fallen to this ideology has merely put in place an autocracy, and the common people have been leveled into poverty while an aristocratic few rise to the top.

Seriously, Robert, have you no shame?  To take from Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul.  Yes, real civilization requires a compassionate and honorable people, and the American republican form is suited for none other.  But compassion cannot be legislated by threat of the state.

You have said that true socialism has never really been implemented. Hah!  It sure as hell has!  The truth is the promises of socialism have never been realized because they cannot ever be — it is a con.  So-called American 'capitalism' today is not capitalism at all — the money system is completely a copy of communism, and we can trace all our ills to this system foisted upon us in 1913.  Since then, ever the noose has tightened as FDR embraced fascism, and put all into perpetual debt to the banking cartel, our new masters. 

Socialism cannot even begin to be implemented without a central bank that can create money out of nothing and spend it on the social programs that never really do anything but enrich the corporations that manage them.  Our medicines are poisonous, our educators corrupt the truth, our 'representatives' give themselves the power to 'rule' us, and our bankers seize our property and rent it back to us — and don't get me started on the lawyers that hold this statist system together! 

We have become enslaved by this socialist promise, and it will not end any better than it did for the USSR.  Hence the eternal requirement for every sovereign being is to learn the truth, be guided by the Law: as you sow, so shall you reap.  The Golden Rule is still golden, we need no other.

Hey, Mike, give it another shot.  I'd like to hear your response to Robert.

The rules for taxation can be lawfully applied to corporations via the Uniform Commercial Code.  The only lawful taxes authorized by the US Constitution are excise taxes, e.g. tariffs, and up until 1913 that was the primary source of revenue for the government.  The US was thoroughly rich before then, with gold and silver used as currency — every dollar in circulation was backed with a hard asset.  Today every dollar is backed by debt-bearing commercial paper which was never to be used as currency but a tool for promoting commercial transactions — the risk was borne by the companies that traded in these IOUs and if the debt was not repaid, there were consequences that were litigated in commercial courts.

Once commercial paper became the trading medium for all, we all became commercial entities trading in commercial paper, thus subject to the reams and reams of rules in the Uniform Commercial Code.  The distinction between corporation and person became blurred such that today corporations are treated as people and people are treated as corporations.

We need to return to a monetary system where cash and credit are distinctly different.  The IRS treats us all as commercial entities and tags our 'income' with various excise tax codes in order to qualify the tax as constitutional.  But labor was never to be taxed!  That is slavery.  It behooves every citizen to learn the truth about the corruption of the monetary system — but don't expect any of this to be taught in public education (and you know why).  The Wafflers of this world cannot face the fact that they have been in collusion with this system because their 'income' would have never been possible without it.  So it is 'fair' to them.

No, Dick, what Marx said is not irrelevant.  Marx's ideology has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people and the enslavement of the rest.

No, Mr. "A".  The actions advocated by Marx in the Communist Manifesto are a 'how to' list for enslaving a populace to be ruled by an elite.  Is that good or bad?  For the slaves, bad, for the enslavers, good.  Whose side are you on anyway?

Yes, it was not only propaganda but also policy.  Nothing has been inverted — this is the policy of a statist form of government, whether from the left or the right. 

The final line says it all: "The Common Good Before the Individual Good"  Who determines that?  How can it be enforced?  Is this what the American Founders fought for?  Is this what the Constitution empowers government to do?

Face it, democrats, progressives and socialists, this is your creed, no matter how you try to rationalize it, and the only way to enforce such an ideal is to corrupt classical liberal republican governance into its polar opposite.  This utopian dream is but a nightmare.  Ignorant hypocrites all!

True, without a 'right' view of 'good' and 'bad' this quote supports any action whether right or not.  Take the progressive activism constantly at work because silence is considered submission.  That being said, there is too much complacency IMO among those that could rightfully counter the assaults of 'progressive' liberals (i.e. Marxists).

No, I don't think so.  When given no other choice but to be ruled by communists or fascists, we must concede that we have lost our 'right' to dictate our own lives.  Pure democracy is but mob rule, where the individual has little choice to go with the mob or else be trampled.

Interesting.  I suppose it means that if we do not care to recognize a line between 'right and wrong', we will inevitably cross it.

Unfortunately, Mary, the people didn't listen or defend their freedom.  Madison's warnings have all but come true, and the common people have been dumbed down to thinking the exact opposite of the principles enshrined by Madison, the primary author of the US Constitution.  Is it too late to return to sanity and lawful power?

I'm all for rising!  Let us live up to our God-given nature, as Mike would say, 'noble sovereigns,' masters of our own fate, writers of our own stories, realizing who we really are, not subject to the whims of those that wish to yoke us for their own gain either financial or egotistical.

LOL Fred, may I counter your defense that you "have never received any of the most remote interest by any female" because of your self-righteous, argumentative and condescending attitude, sense of superiority, deep need for admiration, passive-aggressive and judgmental nature, not to mention obnoxiousness.  This makes you positively repellent.  Marilyn Monroe?!  In your fevered dreams!  You are so delusional.  Wake up, man, this is textbook narcissism...

Heck, our elected officials. as imperfect as they are, sure do seem to have more respect than you do, Fred.  You would have us all live in your own private Idaho whether we want to or not.

Fred, no other species requires a central 'scrutinizer' to plan for its existence — neither does humankind.  We can trace all social ills to such arrogance.  Please, the world is not in need of your saving it — you can't do it, there is no way to pay for it even if you enslaved every soul on Earth, but you can kill off billions in the process which is the not-so secret aim of the geo-fascists that count you among their useful idiots who will happily make life unlivable for those that would rather be free to guide their own lives as they see fit than be enslaved by the likes of you 'for their own good.'  Pitiful.

I agree.  I would start with dumping the bias that 'climate change' is an existential danger that humankind must do something to resolve.  It's just another scheme to monetize scarcity in the environment to profit from it.  Regulate energy production into scarcity, and the speculators get rich from energy prices.  Regulate water into scarcity, and droughts and floods will make speculators rich.  Regulate farming and food production into scarcity and become wealthy from starvation. 

Nature is abundant, and can provide for all.  But when the rulers regulate who can produce — even to collect rain water or grow your own food — an aristocracy forms out of the poverty intentionally planned.  This is the oldest game on the planet.  Independence and self-sufficiency are the enemy, and every effort is made to keep the people dumb and dependent upon a ruling class that taxes them not to provide for the common people but to keep them from ever breaking free from the perpetual debt foisted upon them.

So, all we need is a wise and benevolent king. Got it.

I continue to grow in knowledge and experience through these dialogues, Fred.  So far, your ramblings aren't substantive enough to learn anything from you other than provide an example of a disordered and confused mind. 

My opinions of you are based on your own words — there is no shortage of them, and you make one thing very clear: you believe you are the smartest, most mature, most sane person on the planet, and you have no equal, and that nearly always people think you are in need of psychiatric help. 

Friendships? I doubt you have any.  Mike and I are probably the only people you engage with.  But please do consider me a friend.

As far as your writing goes, it is needlessly verbose using complex words incorrectly, grammatically incorrect, and almost exclusively relying on well-known logical fallacies as support for your truly unoriginal ideas which have a history of failure so profound, it would take a completely ignorant and poorly educated person to hold fast to them as gospel.

Please know that I am not making fun of you.  I really am trying to help you and others like you that may stumble upon these dialogues.  We have been lied to and suffer for it, but thankfully the Truth makes us free!  I am here because I like the quotes on this site about Liberty and have been posting here for over 20 years (with Mike and others). 

True liberty requires an awakening, and this forum has been a lot of fun to connect with like-minded and opposition alike.  I've always been curious as to why people so against liberty like to come here and promote servitude — perhaps because it is 'fun' to mock those of us that proscribe to personal responsibility rather than socialist dependency.  No matter, it has only strengthened my resolve and faith that mankind will one day break the chains that bind them and find true Liberty. ;-)

Yes, hence Hitler's term for his empire was the "Fatherland."  You would have fit in well, except that I suppose you would have been jealous of Hitler and believed you could do it better.

"Did ...you yourself offer contributions of these very precious roles?"  Yes, I believe so, I've been happily married for over 30 years blessed with a wonderful wife and children.  How about you?  Personally, I can't imagine anyone being able to live with as narcissistic a personality as yours, but there's no accounting for other people's tastes...

OK, perfect example: you say "eliminate the drug and sex trades."  Despite reams of government laws, centuries of cracking down on such practices, why have these evils not been eradicated? Has banning opium ever stopped the opium trade?  Has making prostitution ever stopped prostitution, even with the threat of stoning?  Why are more children trafficked for sex now than ever in history?  You cannot cure these ills through legislation, and for the same reason, socialism in all its terrible forms cannot succeed by compulsion without total and complete servitude — and even that won't stop people 'breaking' the law no matter how noble.

It is unfortunate that you have not found any guiding principles to peace in the Bible.  The 'Truth' is more than a superstitious belief in a divine being, it is a 'spiritual' understanding of the laws of nature and our individual responsibility to act in accord with them.  The proof is in the pudding, and to those of us who are willing to put away our sacred cows in search for true understanding, the Truth has become self-evident, because it is not a philosophy or a socially engineered process but what is.  And you cannot come to this understanding without the freedom to pursue it and to say NO to the lies and those that oppress the truth.  

Your utopian ideals are based on a false premise, and nothing can ever come from them to fill a 'whole' that in fact does not exist.