Thread: Harrison Bergeron!

Great story, and the C.S. Lewis piece is worth looking for as well. You'll find it in the back of most editions of The Screwtape Letters.

Norm

Considering elections are right around the corner and many of us feel that if Obama is elected his policies will drag us deeper into the dark velvety abyss where government provides all and micromanages everything (God anyone?), I thought bringing this thread up again was apropos!

Enjoy, and please post your well considered intelligent thoughts, as I enjoy reading every last one of them!

Originally Posted by JMS

Considering elections are right around the corner and many of us feel that if Obama is elected his policies will drag us deeper into the dark velvety abyss where government provides all and micromanages everything

To be honest, I really don't think it will be that bad. I don't think Obama will be a micromanager.
Apart from the fact that he seems more intelligent than McCain, the major reason I am in favor of Obama is that he is not a warhawk like McCain.

From where I am sitting, I would be relieved if the US finally gets a president who doesn't think that grandstanding and sabrerattling is the best way to go about foreign relations. The best bet for that is Obama in my opinion.
And since that directly influences global economy, I find this issue doubly important.
Those are the reasons that I think I have a valid opinion in this matter. The outcome affects me.

As for how he will deal with the internal problems... I don't know, but my gut feeling is that he will have more respect for the law than McCain or Bush. I also think that he will try to make some limitations to the military spending which is quietly bankrupting the US, and perhaps be a it less bipolar in his arguments.
But that is just the feeling I have.

Originally Posted by JMS

Considering elections are right around the corner and many of us feel that if Obama is elected his policies will drag us deeper into the dark velvety abyss where government provides all and micromanages everything (God anyone?), I thought bringing this thread up again was apropos!

Enjoy, and please post your well considered intelligent thoughts, as I enjoy reading every last one of them!

Mark,

This comment seems incongruous when you consider that the current Republican administration has done much to destroy civil rights and limit freedoms. I actually think that you must be joking. Have you read Vonnegut's book, A Man Without A Country? I have read much more that Vonnegut wrote that I have the writings of JMS but based on what you have written here in these forums, I doubt you and Kurt would have agreed on much of anything.

Brad

This piece by Vonnegut had an Orwellian thread running through it....

I remember discussing "1984" and it's relationship to extremism in politics...and whether it was extreme left or extreme right. This led to the discussion of the premise that political views are not linear, but can be better represented by a circle, with extremist views (right and left) being on one point of the circle and democracy/republics being on the diametrically opposite point. The political climate of a group then moves around the circle, either towards the extreme left or the extreme right...with the rights of the individual decreasing in similar increments (and by similar methods) as the political climate approaches the extremist point.

The common claim by the right in the US that anything that the left in the US does is bordering on Socialism is a red herring left over from McCarthy's days. The closest the US ever came to Socialism was under FDR.

Most Americans can't even define Socialism...they equate it to Communism (those gosh dern Comm'nists!) and they just "know" it's bad. Mention prosperous Socialist or Democratic-Socialist countries to them and they stare at you like a deer in headlights...

Given the last 8 years and the debacle on Wall Street, I don't think either party has anything to crow about, but especially not Cheney and Co.

I am still waiting for the tar-and-feathering of the CEOs of the companies repsonsible for the meltdown....or even better:



“The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.”
- George Bernard Shaw

“If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution”
- Abraham Lincoln

Originally Posted by norman931

Great story, and the C.S. Lewis piece is worth looking for as well. You'll find it in the back of most editions of The Screwtape Letters.

Norm

I know that one. it's called "Screwtape proposes a toast" and it's excellent.