GeorgiaDon

Unlikely. The South was, at the time, economically based on the production of one product, cotton, which was sold to industries in Northern States for processing into finished products. The demand for cotton was strong, and no alternatives were available, so there still would have been a market for cotton even at the higher prices that would have been necessary without slave labor. What was at risk was the Southern social system, which was one of class and privilege based on the plantation system. It's a curious fact that by the time of the civil war, slaves had become hugely expensive (this following the banning of importation of slaves, so the "supply" was limited to reproduction from the existing population), and only the most wealthy could afford even a few slaves. The vast majority of those who fought and died to defend the Confederacy could never have realistically hoped to own slaves themselves. Rather, they died to defend a social order that kept economic and political power in the hands of a relatively few wealthy plantation owners. Such is the power of "tradition" (=social indoctrination). As I'm sure you recognize, your analogy is highly offensive in that it equates human slaves with dogs. The tactic is a familiar one, though: 1. Humans can be legally owned as slaves (as long as they aren't white, or are from another country according to Leviticus). 2. Slaves are property. 3. Therefore, abolition affects property rights. 4. Abolition isn't about "human rights", it's about "property rights" Same goes for "States Rights" type arguments. Of course, arguments about slavery necessarily involve both human rights and property rights/states rights. By emphasizing the States Rights/property rights aspect and glossing over the human rights side of the equation, Confederacy apologists seek to bolster their argument that the South was the aggrieved party. But, the pro-South position can be defended only by relegating slaves to the position of property. Anyway, your analogy also fails because the abolitionist Northern States were by every measure better at "making money" than the South. Largely this was because the North became industrialized, due largely to the ready availability of water power to drive mills (for example, at Harper's Ferry), and later on steam power based on Pennsylvanian coal. True, they weren't good at growing cotton, but cotton was an economic trap for the South, in that they invested their whole economy in the one crop and never made the effort to build a diverse economy (until long after the Civil War). By the time of the Civil War, the economic gap between the North and the South had become huge, and Southern political leaders had become aware that the Southern "way of life" was doomed to extinction as long as they remained joined with the much more successful North. The only hope to prolong the Southern social order was to separate themselves as much as possible from the North. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Not sure where you're getting this from, Mike. You must have a different understanding of "consumption tax" than I do, if you believe the acquisition of BNSF would be taxed as "consumption". Anyway, this just reinforces my point that such a tax would have a chilling effect on the economy. I'd think anyone would be dissuaded from such an acquisition if it meant having to pay so much tax up front, and if you did buy such a company the profit or value would have to go up 25% before you could sell it and not take a loss. It seems better to pay tax on the profit (capitol gains) after you sell, as at least you should have the money in hand to cover the tax. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Well, if Joe Sixpack is like 47% of American taxpayers and pays no federal tax at all, Mr Buffet could easily be paying infinitely times the tax Joe Sixpack does, as would his receptionist as long as she paid any federal tax at all. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

(not specifically replying to rushmc, more to everyone in favor of consumption taxes replacing the current income tax system): Everyone currently pays state and local sales tax, a form of consumption tax, on pretty much everything except food. While I do agree that everyone should pay in something to support services we all benefit from (public safety, roads, education, etc), wouldn't a "consumption tax" just be a federal sales tax? If state sales taxes don't get people "in the game" and "voting to take power away from the money power hungry bastards...", will another sales tax really have that effect? Also, what rate would this "consumption tax" have to be to replace the federal income tax? Even assuming a 1/3 reduction in the federal budget (as if that'll ever happen!), I'm guessing we're talking about a minimum 25% or more, on top of existing state and local sales taxes (for a total of, say 33% or 1/3 of the retail cost). People respond to immediate stimuli; even if they "know" that their overall tax burden is lower, adding 33% will create enough "sticker shock" to discourage purchasing, especially of bigger ticket items. For really big ticket items such as houses, the sales tax will end up as part of the loan, unless people have 33% of the cost of the purchase saved up in addition to a down payment, as they have to pay the tax up front. If you have to borrow to cover the tax, you will easily end up with a mortgage that is more than the house is worth, and lenders won't give you the loan. If you are somehow able to get the loan, interest on the money borrowed to cover the tax will go to the bank, not the government, funneling yet more of our income to banks. If the lender won't make loans to cover taxes, people will have to have on the order of $75,000-100,000 cash on hand to be able to purchase even a modest home in most markets. If real estate is excluded from the "consumption tax", taxes will have to be correspondingly higher on everything else. And, of course, any "consumption tax" is going to have to be highly regressive. There is just no way that Warren Buffet, as an example, consumes 100,000 times as much as Joe Sixpack, despite making 100,000-fold (or more) the income. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I'm so sorry to hear of this. I hope you're doing OK. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Yes, 'weaker'. Kinda like everest getting 'shorter' when a foot of spindrift is blown off the top. A spelling come back atta boy You completely missed the point. Atta boy indeed. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So a new arms race is your version of a "stimulus plan"? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The Republicans too. No amount of rhetorical outrage can cover for the fact that this is business as usual for both parties. Unfortunately we get the government that we deserve. Oh...In that case, lets Ignore it...Nothing to see here folks, it has happened before, no need for alarm, this is a non news item... He didn't say to ignore it. But it's a fact that politicians from both parties have campaigned and been reelected based largely on how much "bacon" they can bring to their home constituencies. The politician who can't bring jobs by steering government $$ to the local economy has always been seen as a loser. Can you imagine anyone running on a platform of "If you elect me, I'll make sure not one dime of federal money makes it into this district"? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The buildings are already built. The cost of utilities and custodial staff is a small deal, relative to the cost of the health care system. No it's not. Do you have any response to my argument that you can't take the existing staff and admin for one state and have them do the work of all 52 states, and do it reasonably well? You would pretty much have to move the existing work force to one state, but the size of your staff would probably not change much. Savings: small deal. The buildings are already built? Huh? Office space is expensive, there's no getting around this. And it's much more expensive in some parts than others. You're correct that the number of staff to do X units of work is going to be pretty constant. However, each office needs a building manager, a regional manager, managers of each of the functional groups, and a sufficiently sized HR department. And each office has to have to have enough people for peak load for their given region, rounding up. There's a considerable reduction in head count when you go to fewer, larger offices. I said small deal, not no deal at all. Of course there will be some savings, but I doubt there would be a really dramatic reduction in payroll. Unless the "managers of each of the functional groups" are significantly underemployed, you won't be able to have each manager suddenly be responsible for 4 or 5-fold more people and still have efficient oversight. So there will be some economy of scale and some savings, but probably not a huge fraction of the payroll. Health care expenditures currently account for more than 16% of the US GDP, and they have been growing at an average rate of 6.7%/year, well above inflation or the growth of the rest of the economy, for decades. Similar or identical procedures cost double (or more) here compared to other developed countries, and while the standard of care is generally excellent for those who can afford it, outcomes are not two-fold better than in Western Europe or Canada. Closing a few buildings and laying off a few vice-presidents will not even be a blip on the chart of rising costs. Of course a penny saved is a penny earned, if it'll save some expenditures (and not result in even longer processing times or bungled claims due to overextended staff), go for it. But that's not going to be close to addressing the problem the mandate for everyone to buy insurance was trying to address. So, back to that question. How do we solve the problem of people using medical services they can't pay for (either through insurance or their own funds), while still respecting EMTALA and the constitution? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The buildings are already built. The cost of utilities and custodial staff is a small deal, relative to the cost of the health care system. No it's not. Do you have any response to my argument that you can't take the existing staff and admin for one state and have them do the work of all 52 states, and do it reasonably well? You would pretty much have to move the existing work force to one state, but the size of your staff would probably not change much. Savings: small deal. Only works for larger group policies that have the "muscle" to demand and receive specific services. Individual buyers will only be offered those services the insurer finds it convenient to offer. Purchasers of individual policies will not have the "muscle" to demand that any specific procedures be covered. Also it's easy for big insurers to run roughshod over individuals, doing things like dropping them as soon as they get sick, or denying coverage after the fact by claiming "preexisting conditions" based on unrelated symptoms years before. Such horror stories are legion. I never said honest profit is evil. Profit made by selling a product that you don't intend to deliver, or selling a product that is disguised to look like something other than what is is, is indeed evil, especially when it can cost someone their life's earning or even their life. Competitors can indeed pop up when the government restricts anti-competitive practices or prevents monopolies from forming. Period Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I'm very skeptical. There may be some cost savings here, but they would certainly be minimal. The "bricks and mortar" are a one-time expense, perhaps $1 million or less for a really nice building. Salaries might total a couple of million, but the fact is those people are processing claims and such; I really doubt they are being paid to sit on their hands. If all the claims were to be sent to one central office, the jobs would move there, but the limitation would still be how many claims one person could be expected to process/week (or whatever time scale you want). Certainly what would NOT happen is that the insurance company would be able to say "we have 100 people processing claims in each of 20 States, so now we can close 19 offices and have 100 people in the remaining office handle claims from all 20 States". Also, when you have a dispute with your insurance company, it's hard enough to deal with them when they are relatively nearby, but it'll get a lot harder when you're dealing with long distance and different time zones. The problem with this is the logical fallacy that private for-profit companies are in any way obligated to create products to match the whims of customers. They offer a few choices of some product, and usually all you as a consumer can do is choose from amongst the products that are offered. If it's a product you must have in at least some form (and I would argue any responsible person should have some form of insurance to protect against catastrophic illness or injury), then you HAVE to pick one, even if it sucks, and the company has made a sale. The only force driving companies to improve their products is competition, the idea that someone else will offer a better product and everyone will buy that one instead. But, insurance is a matter of spreading risk, everyone pays in a little and a few take out a lot when they need it. For health insurance, large companies dominate the market because the amounts paid out tend to be pretty large, so you have to have a lot of subscribers to have the cash flow to pay claims, make a profit, and keep premiums relatively affordable. Profitability (which is what all corporations are really about) is maximized by minimizing payouts (claims), which can be done by limiting the types of procedures that are covered. They can't really cut out common stuff that everybody uses, as that discourages people from buying the product, so instead they pad on inexpensive but often ineffective procedures like "touch therapy" and exclude relatively rare but highly expensive (and lifesaving) treatments like bone marrow transplants. Even coverage for pregnancy is very difficult to obtain, is very expensive, and offers poor coverage if you are privately insured (as opposed to large group policies through employers). So why don't competitors pop up and offer a better product at a cheaper price? Again its an economy of scale. New startups are by definition small, and with a small cash income (relatively few people paying premiums) you can't afford to risk covering expensive procedures such as bone marrow transplants; one claim could bankrupt the company. The only alternative it to charge extremely high premiums, which will ensure you will not be able to compete with the already established big companies. The same situation applied to the car industry in relation to safety features and fuel economy. The car manufacturers resisted government mandates, saying "let the customers decide what products they want". Yet, on their own the manufacturers did almost nothing to improve safety or fuel economy, preferring to concentrate on cosmetics and horsepower as cheaper but effective selling points. Customers still have to buy a car (in the US it's pretty hard to function without one, unless you happen to live in a handful of cities with passable public transit, and live near your work, and not have kids). Even if you really wanted a fuel efficient car, if no-one is selling them you end up buying something else, and then the manufacturers could turn it around and say "see, no-one is buying for fuel economy". It was government mandates that forced them to offer customers real choices in terms of safety or fuel economy. Similarly, government mandated minimum standards for health insurance are needed to ensure appropriate products are offered to consumers. I wonder about the reference to "many states require coverage of many cosmetic procedures". I'm not aware of any states that require coverage of nose jobs, or breast enhancements etc, but I'm sure that's what opponents of state mandates want people to think of when they hear "cosmetic procedures". How about the burn victim who needs skin grafts to restore mobility to a limb, or someone who's had their face half chewed off by a dog, and so on. Procedures to repair injuries such as these are "cosmetic procedures", and are necessary to restore functionality; should they not be covered by insurance? Are they really "unnecessary luxuries"? In theory some cost savings in terms of malpractice insurance could be realized here. Experience suggests the savings will be small or non-existent. Here in the state of Georgia, rather draconian caps on malpractice awards were passed at the behest of the insurance industry. Curiously, malpractice premiums have not decreased at all, in fact they continue to rise as they did before the caps. The insurance companies have been able to maintain their healthy profit margin, though. The only noticeable effect of the caps has been to make it very difficult for lower income people, such as retirees, to be able to bring legitimate claims to court, as legal fees must be paid out of the award and small awards don't pay enough to cover the lawyers and leave anything for the malpractice victim. Since most of the award is for actual damages (medical costs plus things like loss of future income if the victim is disabled), only people who had a high income before the malpractice occurred have potential awards large enough to pay reasonable legal fees. Tort reform coupled with a legal requirement that the savings be reflected in lower premiums could be helpful, but the mandate for the insurance companies to lower premiums has never been included in any tort reform legislation. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I'd open your link, except that I'm afraid it might be the virus that seems to have invaded your brain and scrambled your language processing. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Exactly...My wife is an admin at Childrens Hospital, (Yes a brain married a lowlife biker) , she started there over 20 years ago as an ER nurse, they have never once turned anyone away...I'm not sure why so many worry about health insurance, it doesn;t seem to be needed other than for every day health care...If yer hurt, yer covered... Payment ...is a noen issue, ask any illegal ..... How about this idea. Let's pass a law that bans hospitals from passing unrecovered bills on to paying customers. I'm sure your family, and everyone else who works at/for the hospital, won't mind paying for all that care by working for free, any more than all the paying patients mind (or can afford) to pay for it. [/sarcasm] Or just maybe people and politicians could get serious for once about trying to figure out a solution that will work. One thing for sure, the current limitations to the debate (no mandate to buy insurance, no taxes, and no change to EMTALA allowed) leaves us with nothing but a shit sandwich. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Agreed. I didn't disagree with the post itself, only pointed out that the 'leave them to die in the parking lot' scenario would be illegal under EMTALA. How is this different from the current situation under EMTALA? Mike, you're a smart guy, I'm sure you clearly understood my post. Still, I'll spell it out hopefully a little more clearly. Under current law (EMTALA), people have the option to not pay for insurance, then go to the hospital when severely sick or injured, get patched up (save their life type care, not cosmetic surgery), then not pay for that either (perhaps by declaring bankruptcy). Since hospitals, doctors, nurses etc must get paid, the costs of this care are passed on to those of us who do have insurance or other means to pay. This is unfair in itself, and it drives up the cost of care for those who do pay including insurance companies. The result is higher premiums, which results in even more people "opting out". This is the status quo, and in the long run it is probably unsustainable given the fact that health care costs are escalating faster than growth in the ability to pay. How can this problem be fixed? 1. Require everyone to "opt in". Make it illegal to not be insured. This is the approach that was ruled unconstitutional today; eventually the supreme court will have the final say. Let's assume this one won't fly. What else is there? 2. Repeal EMTALA. If you can't pay, and didn't have the foresight to get insurance, too bad so sad. Personally I think this would be uncivilized in the extreme, as there are many circumstances aside from shortsighted greed that can lead to people being uninsured. As well, as I explained earlier, requiring proof of ability to pay before treatment is offered will result in many thousands of people who in fact are insured being denied treatment. I think this one is a non-starter too. What else? About all I've got right now is to fund trauma centers and emergency departments through a sales tax on something everybody buys, such as food or clothing. If you taxed alcohol and cigarettes I bet many of the "poor" would end up putting as much into the system as better off people who choose healthy lifestyles. You can't do it based on income tax, as too many people don't pay income tax so they would still be freeloading. Then, if you have an accident or need emergency care, you can go to one of the tax-funded treatment centers. At least a nominal copay will have to be charged, to discourage trivial use of the resource. If you want longer term care, physical therapy, anything more than life-saving treatment you'd better have insurance or be able to pay for it. Anybody got a different idea? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I can definitely see the reasoning behind this decision. I can also see the reasoning behind the requirement that everyone have some form of health insurance. It will be interesting to see how the SC (Supreme Court, not Speaker's Corner) eventually rules on this. What I wonder about is, people can currently choose to "not participate" until they have an accident or serious illness, when they suddenly become "participants". At that point they are uninsurable, so they have to bear the full cost of care out of pocket. Many cannot pay, so after being treated they declare bankruptcy and pass the bill on to those of us who do have insurance. This seems to me to be unfair. What to do? One solution might be to demand payment/proof of insurance up front, and refuse to treat the "indigent", but that has perils too. When an ambulance responds to someone having a heart attack, or to a car accident with unconscious or critically injured patients, the priority is to get the patient to the hospital, and they don't waste time searching the house or the accident scene for a wallet or bank statement. I once asked a former student, who had become an EMT, how common is it for them to transport patients who don't have ID, and he said it's quite common, maybe 10% of his calls overall. A rule that says "don't begin treatment until proof of insurance or funds is secured" would condemn tens of thousands of people who actually have insurance to be left to die outside the emergency department door, just because their wallet with their insurance card was lost at the accident scene. I wonder if you, or anyone, can see a solution that preserves peoples freedom to "opt out" without sticking those of us who "opt in" with the bill, or creating a situation where many people who have paid in are denied care when they most need it. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Sometimes you don't have the luxury of taking care of one problem at a time. If you're half-way across a train trestle and you see the train coming, the fact that you have cancer won't change the fact that you have to get off the trestle before the train gets there. Of course population is an issue, you yourself expressed skepticism about reducing population size. The most effective tool we may have to do that is economic development, due to a phenomena called "demographic transition", which is the easily observed correlation between economic wealth and reduced population growth rates. As societies and individuals become better off economically, they tend to reduce the number of children they have. In the developing world children are cheap labor for the family farm, and your retirement plan, and you better have a bunch of kids because some will die of disease and most won't make much money, so you better have a lot of surviving kids to take care of you when you get too old and frail to work. In the developed world we have pension plans, social security, etc, and on the other hand kids cost a lot to raise and educate, so they become a net financial liability (they do have other things going for them fortunately). As a result, people voluntarily reduce the number of kids they have, to the point where several countries now have net negative population growth (discounting immigration). If you really want a lower population, you should support economic development in the so-called 3rd world countries. Of course the process takes time, a few generations at least, for cultural attitude about family size to change. However, if that economic development means that people in developing countries increase oil consumption and CO2 output to match our American prodigious levels, we will still have a huge problem. CO2 output will just be a part of it, all those people will be competing with us for oil and other resources, driving up prices. Better for us if we can reduce our own dependence on fossil fuels, so we won't have to compete to buy an ever scarcer and more expensive resource. Even better if developing countries could by-pass dirty fossil fuel based technologies, and go straight to energy efficient technologies. It could be in our long-term interests to help them do that, even if it costs us up front. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Absolutely! What could be worse than the prospect of countries actually cooperating to solve common problems? Much better they resort to the old tried-and-true ways: war, or ignoring problems until they become insurmountable. From each according to their ability to each according to their needs, eh comrade? So do you object to international negotiation instead of conflict as a general principle, or only in this specific instance? When the US negotiated an agreement with Canada to curb acid rain, was that "communism" or was that two countries recognizing that pollutants don't respect national boundaries? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Absolutely! What could be worse than the prospect of countries actually cooperating to solve common problems? Much better they resort to the old tried-and-true ways: war, or ignoring problems until they become insurmountable. _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Congratulations! It does get better after this hurdle is passed. For a while. I think I get as nervous when my students are up for their oral and written prelims as I was for my own. And here's something worth knowing: faculty hate the process as much as the students do. Don't you have to do a few years worth of experiments before writing the dissertation? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

How about if the "job" is more than just a "paycheck". Have you ever experienced a career that you are personally invested in for more than the money? Sure doesn't sound like it. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Back to your initial post about student loans, and according to the article you linked: "The average debt load is $24,000, according to the Project on Student Debt." So, it seems the majority of students are able to keep their loan to an amount similar to a car loan. While a college degree is no guarantee of a high-paying job, most professional careers do require extensive education beyond high school. Without a degree, good luck landing a job as a doctor, engineer (of any sort except "sanitation"), scientist of any description, teacher, or in marketing, management, and on and on. Even bank tellers require a business degree these days. What a college education offers is a shot at an interesting career, one that can (hopefully) motivate a person to head off to work every morning and feel good about it, all for the cost of a new car. Of course high school grads or even dropouts might be able to attain the same thing, as long as they have no desire to be an architect, doctor, or find a cure for cancer. Getting rid of student loans would limit such careers to students who come from situations where they already have in place the resources to pay all the costs up front, which for all intents and purposes means wealthy families. Aside from the issue of stifling the ambitions of all but the progeny of the wealthy, do you really think the USA could be economically competitive with the rest of the world under such conditions? You would have this country reduced to hewers of wood and drawers of water. Of course, I recall your disdain for anyone who has actually completed college from another thread; maybe that's the real reason you'd like to see student loans eliminated. Would you also like to see mortgages eliminated, so only the people with cash in hand could buy property? Mortgages are by far the largest single debt source for the vast majority of people. Hey, if we restrict home ownership to the rich, and voting rights to property owners, maybe we could get closer to your vision of the perfect state. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

+1 This is the real heart of the problem. If American/NATO/Pakistani forces could operate in the tribal areas capture would not be such an issue. Posing the problem as a choice between being allowed to use torture and indefinite detention or having to kill people is a false dichotomy. The real problem is the Pakistani government and military, which for political reasons has never had real authority in the tribal areas. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Thank you for the link. Thomas Aquinas is essential reading for anyone who wants to actually think about these issues. I agree with you about "common sense". I know people for whom "common sense" has led them to religion, and people who have had the opposite experience. RonD1120's intentional rejection of "common sense" on the grounds that it won't lead to "salvation in Jesus Christ" seemed to me to be an outrageous (although unintentional) condemnation of religion. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

A fine Christian artist of our time. I went through this guy's web site (thanks Quade) and aside from a lot of motel-room type art (artists blow-out sale! nothing over $10!!), there are some that depict his vision of America as a Christian theocracy, and President Obama standing on the Bill of Rights. Apparently he has bought into the notion that trying to save the economy from a complete meltdown, and trying to ensure that people have access to medical care, represent un-Christian values. Curiously, I found no such paintings criticizing any policies of the Bush administration, which leads me to conclude that he has no problem with endless wars of opportunity, warrantless surveillance of the American population, indefinite detention without charges or trial, or any of the other unconstitutional outrages perpetrated by the previous administration. I wonder if that's because Bush makes such a big deal of being "born again"? Don't know anything about that. American entrepreneurship for sure. But, is he trying to make a buck or a political point, and if the latter what point is he trying to convey? I'm more impressed by another guy I heard about who is making beautifully framed copies of the Declaration and giving them for free to local schools. OK, in a Mom-and-apple-pie kind of way, but the devil is in the details. Is your vision of "strong, nurturing, and safe" a militarily aggressive fundamentalist Christian theocracy where diversity of thought, scientific literacy, and even "common sense" is suppressed? My vision of "nurturing and safe" is more along the lines of a society where creativity and curiosity are supported and encouraged; society as a whole benefits because many ideas are put forth and the most useful ones can be selected and developed. A strong society is one that has confidence in its resilience and its people, not one that has the military might to impose its will on others. Militarism weakens society, because it tempts countries into trying to solve problems by force, which cannot be sustained indefinitely. Fundamentalism weakens society by robbing it of the diversity of ideas needed to apply to solving problems, and by robbing people of freedom of thought and expression. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

now listen up buster, and listen up good stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)