I can feel the appeal of the dark side - :)

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Date Posted: 00:17:35 11/02/02 Sat
Author: Grumpy�
Author Host/IP: 155-41.poccpe.cableone.net / 24.116.155.41
Subject: I can feel the appeal of the dark side - :) - but
In reply to: Wilbs 's message, "But you gotta understand" on 21:43:24 11/01/02 Fri

the simple truth as I see it (with emphasis on the "I"), is that the Republican platform assigns a greater value on property, economic efficiency and ever-increasing production and consumption ahead of people. To me, the purpose of human activities is to serve human ends. If society is reduced to just a mechanism for producing goods and services, spinning off private property as a by-product, and only incidentally supporting the people who form that society, then it's not serving the right purpose.

I am quite willing to settle for less efficiency and lower production if that's what's necessary to restore humans to a central role in society.

I asked long ago for an explanation of how the Republican view of efficiency and productivity applied to the average person not born into the magic circle of Ivy League political correctness - education and effort and initiative are supposed to be the cureall for poverty and privation, but I don't see how that works at all in a capitalist society. If every person in the world had a four year college degree, what value would a college degree have? Very little. How many high-tech job openings can the market offer to a world of 6 billion people? In an era when 2 or 3 percent of our population can grow enough food to feed half the world, why are farmers always complaining about being in financial trouble, but international conglomerates like ADM prosper and grow larger and larger, exerting greater and greater political power?

What sort of world is it that can present us with the spectacle of our nation fully prepared to spend $200 billion dollars to prosecute a war with Iraq, but we cannot find funding for schools, health care, building and maintaining the infrastructure that supports our economy, and homeless people are just a fact of life?

I don't think the Democrats have a clue about how to keep all the balls in the air, how to balance the budget, provide health care as a right, spend the billions of dollars needed for schools and teachers, abolish the drug problem, solve violent and nonviolent crime problems, and all the myriad ills that beset us; but they're willing to try. The Republicans are almost to a man (and woman) satisfied with the status quo, which just isn't good enough.

I too dislike government interference in our lives, but it's far too late, I think, to do anything about that. The best we can hope for is probably to have that interference be effective and helpful, rather than inefficient and harmful.

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Replies:

This is very difficult for me but I certainly will give it a shot -- Wilbs, 20:17:27 11/08/02 Fri