7/08/2008
Step Away from the Bong, Please
I'm trying to figure out if the author of this mammoth pile of steaming ignorance is a balding 60s hippie with a graying ponytail or one of the walking arguments for raising the voting age to at least 25 who attends The Evergreen State Commune. But I'm reasonably sure he voted for Dennis Kucinich.
This Letter to the Editor from The Olympian is so blissed out ignorant, it's impossible to even fisk entire paragraphs. It almost has to be done one sentence at a time.
Replace war budget with humanitarian efforts
In case you haven't been paying attention to the standards of living of the average Afghan or Iraqi, you can say that our current military campaigns ARE humanitarian efforts. Or is bringing political freedom, property rights, etc, as well as improved material well being, not humanitarian?
Paragraph 1
Fellow Americans, the world is in dire need of new leadership.
This is probably about the only thing we agree on. Although I highly doubt we agree on what kind of new leadership we need.
It is time to change our economy from the ground up.
Bud, I've read your letter, and the kind of change you're talking about has already been tried, and it failed. Look up the Soviet Union, or China before Deng instituted the capitalist economic reforms.
Paragraph 2
For millenia, nations have depended on war.
That’s a pretty sweeping statement there, Wade. Depended on war for what, exactly? Certainly, nations have depended on the ability to wage war to defend themselves against hostile nations. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “Si vis pacem, para bellum.” Of course, there are nations that determined that war, or at least the existence of external ‘threats,’ was the best way to achieve their national goals. Nations like National Socialist Germany, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and Communist China.
Starting today, there will be no more war.
So you have concurrence from Iran, North Korea, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban on this point?
It is in our nation's, and the world's, best interest to no longer base the economy on national and corporate self-interest.
Actually, I think Adam Smith proved pretty conclusively that an economy based on enlightened self interest is in the best interest of everyone. And folks like Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises proved the point further.
Paragraph 3
In the next four years, we must move to an economy that focuses on sharing our resources with the rest of the world.
OK…’sharing’ has not formed the basis for a functional economy anywhere, at any point in history. Now, we can and should happily exchange our resources – things we can produce at less cost than anyone else - with others in return for their resources. That whole free exchange thing where everyone ends up better off than they were before.
The Pentagon budget should be reallocated for food and medical supplies for the hungry and sick here in America and the rest of the world.
We already spend far more than the entire DoD budget on so-called ‘anti-poverty’ programs – things like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Food Stamps, Unemployment Insurance, etc. Actually, the amount spent on these programs is more than the ‘income deficit’ in America. Of course, a massive chunk of the money spent on these programs merely provides comfortable middle class lifestyles for armies of bureaucrats who actually produce nothing of real economic value.
Actually, given that folks of Wade’s ilk seem to think that only ignorant, uneducated maroons, folks who would otherwise have very poor economic prospects, sign up for service in the Armed Forces, it could be argued quite easily that the money spent providing those people with salaries, benefits, and training is probably the best bang for the buck anti-poverty program going.
And no amount of money is going to reduce any of the poverty and misery caused by corrupt, tyrannical governments. It just goes to fatten the Swiss bank accounts of the dictators and their cronies.
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I'd allocate funds from the Pentagon budget for college educations for all Americans; similar to systems already in place in some European countries.
But I thought you just spent it on food and medical supplies, Wade. You can’t spend the same money twice. Actually, from this sentence, I’m guessing darling Wade is still in college, and Mommy and Daddy probably just cut him off from the free ride teat, and he’s a bit annoying that if he wants to continue his extended adolescence, he’s going to have to fund it himself, which is no fun. So he wants folks with actual productive jobs to pay for him to slack around for a few more years, smoking dope and spewing half-baked drivel like this.
Paragraph 5
The good news is, at the United Nations, all the major powers in the world would agree to follow America's lead.
Wade, you really haven’t been paying attention to what’s been going on at the UN recently, have you? As the saying goes, “Nations don’t have friends, only interests.” No other nation is going to follow us just because we’re sharing our toys like good kindergartners. If they follow our lead, it’s because they perceive that there’s something in it for them.
This is what I call good leadership — where the word "power" no longer means to conquer and destroy, but instead to share.
We already have the ability to share, you blessed out ninny. Which we do more prolifically than any other nation on earth. While at the same time maintaining the most powerful military on Earth. And the last time we used it to conquer anything was 1898. And I’m reasonably certain that there aren’t too many people in Puerto Rico who want to go back to being part of the Spanish empire, and they don’t seem to keen on declaring independence, either.
This is a watershed moment in history. God bless America and God bless the whole world.
Wade Hatcher, Olympia
Like a stopped clock, you’re right twice in one day. Just not for the reasons you think.
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No, We're Not Gun Nuts
[Background: the Mrs. picked up two abandoned kittens while on patrol duty Sunday night. They have now been adopted.]
Mrs: "They still don't have names. I thought about Heckler and Koch, or Mosin and Nagant..."
HL: "If you wanted to name them Heckler and Koch, they'd have to be aloof and arrogant."
Pause
Mrs: "They're CATS."
The cats are named Sig and Mauser.
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