Do you read stories over, and over and over?

Would you vote for someone who wants to be a politician? That's part of the conundrum.

blimp

If you want the political leaders to be selected by blind chance, you might as well advocate monarchy. It was a matter of blind chance whether the son or daughter of the king turned out to be a good ruler or a bad one (although usually they turned out to be rather bad).

Incidentally, if I had been an American, I would have voted for Obama, despite the fact that I despise him (he is like JFK, a leftist/fascist power-luster). The reason I would have voted for Obama was that the Republican candidate, McCain, was still worse. McCain claimed to be a representative of freedom, but he advocated self-sacrifice rabidly. Also, he would not really have rolled back the welfare state. So a President McCain would have tarnished the reputation of capitalism. President Obama on the other hand, is busy tarnishing the reputation of socialism, which is a good development. Now I am hoping that Obama will not destroy America, before he destroys the reputation of socialism and the welfare state among Americans.

I didn't even mention the monarchy galt54. Maybe we could chose the Royal family by lottery too?

blimp

Well, what really is the practical difference between having a monarchy and selecting the political leaders by means of a lottery? A monarchy is a sort of genetic lottery. The next prince or princess to be born might just as well happen to be a moron and a scoundrel as a genius and a moral paragon.

True, but the next monarch gets trained from birth to be a monarch.

Goodgulf

Goodgulf

That´s true, but the people as a rule have no say in *how* the future monarch gets trained. So it is still deuces wild. But I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not advocate democracy. Democracy means "unlimited majority rule". So a genuine democracy is a tyranny - a tyranny of the majority. The majority may do whatever it feels like, including violating the rights of minorities. The political system which I advocate is a constitutional republic - where the political leaders are chosen in elections, but where a constitution stipulates that the government must under no circumstances violate anyone´s right to his "life, liberty, property and pursuit of happiness" - no matter how much a majority *wants* to violate some minority´s (such as the wealthy or the capitalists) rights.

Yes, indeed, it is the wealthy who are most in need of protection. If we do not act now, Paris Hilton will have to pay untold millions to the government if her parents and grandparents don't have the foresight to die this year. The poor girl, having made tremendous contributions to the general welfare by choosing to be born into a tremendously wealthy family, may have to manage on a billion or two. The poor and middle class should be grateful for the opportunity to help the poor girl out by giving up a portion, or all for that matter, of their food stamps, health care, and social security.

Just a quick post to get us back on topic which was "Do you read stories over, and over and over?".

Thanks.

cfpub

Please excuse me if I am committing the sin of "flaming", but I just have to point out that cfpub is "arguing" dishonestly. He knows very well that *most* wealthy people are not heiresses. There are far more self-made, productive wealthy individuals, such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, than there are lucky inheritors of wealth, like Paris Hilton. And surely such socialists as Barack Obama are far worse parasites than Paris Hilton? Not to mention such socialists as Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

Incidentally, I would far prefer to have Paris Hilton as a friend than my former workmates at the factory where I worked for 30 1/2 years. Many of those Social Democrat workers were utter scum!

I know - I have committed the sin of digressing from the topic of spanking - but I cannot let an egalitarian screed such as that of cfpub go uncommented.

I am sorry if my previous post irritates some members, because of the fact that it does not concern spanking. But I felt that I just could not let my values be attacked (specifically, cfpub was attacking the value of justice, by implicitly advocating for egalitarianism) without responding and defending them.