Howard Zinn's A People's History Available Free
Aug 18, 2013 22:59:42 #
I don't trust either party, too. I agree that most of the acts you have described represent travesties of the Constitution. They are making me feel disenchanted with Obama, too, although in the past I have been one of his supporters. He has taught "constitutional law," yet seems to me to be violating it over and over. These days I don't see a political party that makes total sense. They are all terribly flawed.
Blurryeyed wrote:
So, then change the constitution through the amend... (show quote)
Aug 18, 2013 23:04:27 #
This should be of interest to you.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/08/17/212729349/rnc-doesnt-focus-on-an-elephant-in-its-ballroom
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/08/17/212729349/rnc-doesnt-focus-on-an-elephant-in-its-ballroom
Aug 18, 2013 23:07:28 #
And I think this will be, too.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/08/17/212960237/amid-struggle-for-soul-of-gop-libertarians-take-limelight
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/08/17/212960237/amid-struggle-for-soul-of-gop-libertarians-take-limelight
Aug 21, 2013 12:35:56 #
If Washington were not as corrupt as all its players are these days, I think the system would muddle along just fine. But the system now is so corrupt it no longer works. I tend to believe in rather more government intervention than less. If Libertarianism prevailed, OI think the whole government would fall apart -- and I don't want that, though you may (or may not).
CharlieR wrote:
If you don't think a civilized society can function according to libertarian principles, then what kind of principles do you think we function with. I'm not arguing with you. I'm just interested in what you think. Neither conservative Republican nor liberal Democratic governments have kept us from sliding into the mess we're in today. I keep looking for something for another alternative other than Libertarianism, and I just can't find one that makes more sense.
Aug 21, 2013 12:38:33 #
Here's an article that discusses a bit about Hayek and considerably more about Friedman. It might interest you.
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Milton Friedman, Unperson
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 11, 2013 462 Comments
Recently Senator Rand Paul, potential presidential candidate and self-proclaimed expert on monetary issues, sat down for an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. It didnt go too well. For example, Mr. Paul talked about America running a trillion-dollar deficit every year; actually, the deficit is projected to be only $642 billion in 2013, and its falling fast.
But the most interesting moment may have been when Mr. Paul was asked whom he would choose, ideally, to head the Federal Reserve and he suggested Milton Friedman hes not an Austrian, but he would be better than what we have. The interviewer then gently informed him that Friedman who would have been 101 years old if he were still alive is, in fact, dead. O.K., said Mr. Paul, Lets just go with dead, because then you probably really wouldnt have much of a functioning Federal Reserve.
Which suggests an interesting question: What ever happened to Friedmans role as a free-market icon? The answer to that question says a lot about what has happened to modern conservatism.
For Friedman, who used to be the ultimate avatar of conservative economics, has essentially disappeared from right-wing discourse. Oh, he gets name-checked now and then but only for his political polemics, never for his monetary theories. Instead, Rand Paul turns to the Austrian view of thinkers like Friedrich Hayek a view Friedman once described as an atrophied and rigid caricature while Paul Ryan, the G.O.P.s de facto intellectual leader, gets his monetary economics from Ayn Rand, or more precisely from fictional characters in Atlas Shrugged.
How did that happen? Friedman, it turns out, was too nuanced and realist a figure for the modern right, which doesnt do nuance and rejects reality, which has a well-known liberal bias.
One way to think about Friedman is that he was the man who tried to save free-market ideology from itself, by offering an answer to the obvious question: If free markets are so great, how come we have depressions?
Until he came along, the answer of most conservative economists was basically that depressions served a necessary function and should simply be endured. Hayek, for example, argued that we may perhaps prevent a crisis by checking expansion in time, but we can do nothing to get out of it before its natural end, once it has come. Such dismal answers drove many economists into the arms of John Maynard Keynes.
Friedman, however, gave a different answer. He was willing to give a little ground, and admit that government action was indeed necessary to prevent depressions. But the required government action, he insisted, was of a very narrow kind: all you needed was an appropriately active Federal Reserve. In particular, he argued that the Fed could have prevented the Great Depression with no need for new government programs if only it had acted to save failing banks and pumped enough reserves into the banking system to prevent a sharp decline in the money supply.
This was, as I said, a move toward realism (although it looks wrong in the light of recent experience). But realism has no place in todays Republican Party: both Mr. Paul and Mr. Ryan have furiously attacked Ben Bernanke for responding to the 2008 financial crisis by doing exactly what Friedman said the Fed should have done in the 1930s advice he repeated to the Bank of Japan in 2000. There is nothing more insidious that a country can do to its citizens, Mr. Ryan lectured Mr. Bernanke, than debase its currency.
Oh, and while were on the subject of debasing currencies: one of Friedmans most enduring pieces of straight economic analysis was his 1953 argument in favor of flexible exchange rates, in which he argued that countries finding themselves with excessively high wages and prices relative to their trading partners like the nations of southern Europe today would be better served by devaluing their currencies than by enduring years of high unemployment until the deflation has run its sorry course. Again, theres no room for that kind of pragmatism in a party in which many members hanker for a return to the gold standard.
Now, I dont want to put Friedman on a pedestal. In fact, Id argue that the experience of the past 15 years, first in Japan and now across the Western world, shows that Keynes was right and Friedman was wrong about the ability of unaided monetary policy to fight depressions. The truth is that we need a more activist government than Friedman was willing to countenance.
The point, however, is that modern conservatism has moved so far to the right that it no longer has room for even small concessions to reality. Friedman tried to save free-market conservatism from itself but the ideologues who now dominate the G.O.P. are beyond saving.
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Milton Friedman, Unperson
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 11, 2013 462 Comments
Recently Senator Rand Paul, potential presidential candidate and self-proclaimed expert on monetary issues, sat down for an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. It didnt go too well. For example, Mr. Paul talked about America running a trillion-dollar deficit every year; actually, the deficit is projected to be only $642 billion in 2013, and its falling fast.
But the most interesting moment may have been when Mr. Paul was asked whom he would choose, ideally, to head the Federal Reserve and he suggested Milton Friedman hes not an Austrian, but he would be better than what we have. The interviewer then gently informed him that Friedman who would have been 101 years old if he were still alive is, in fact, dead. O.K., said Mr. Paul, Lets just go with dead, because then you probably really wouldnt have much of a functioning Federal Reserve.
Which suggests an interesting question: What ever happened to Friedmans role as a free-market icon? The answer to that question says a lot about what has happened to modern conservatism.
For Friedman, who used to be the ultimate avatar of conservative economics, has essentially disappeared from right-wing discourse. Oh, he gets name-checked now and then but only for his political polemics, never for his monetary theories. Instead, Rand Paul turns to the Austrian view of thinkers like Friedrich Hayek a view Friedman once described as an atrophied and rigid caricature while Paul Ryan, the G.O.P.s de facto intellectual leader, gets his monetary economics from Ayn Rand, or more precisely from fictional characters in Atlas Shrugged.
How did that happen? Friedman, it turns out, was too nuanced and realist a figure for the modern right, which doesnt do nuance and rejects reality, which has a well-known liberal bias.
One way to think about Friedman is that he was the man who tried to save free-market ideology from itself, by offering an answer to the obvious question: If free markets are so great, how come we have depressions?
Until he came along, the answer of most conservative economists was basically that depressions served a necessary function and should simply be endured. Hayek, for example, argued that we may perhaps prevent a crisis by checking expansion in time, but we can do nothing to get out of it before its natural end, once it has come. Such dismal answers drove many economists into the arms of John Maynard Keynes.
Friedman, however, gave a different answer. He was willing to give a little ground, and admit that government action was indeed necessary to prevent depressions. But the required government action, he insisted, was of a very narrow kind: all you needed was an appropriately active Federal Reserve. In particular, he argued that the Fed could have prevented the Great Depression with no need for new government programs if only it had acted to save failing banks and pumped enough reserves into the banking system to prevent a sharp decline in the money supply.
This was, as I said, a move toward realism (although it looks wrong in the light of recent experience). But realism has no place in todays Republican Party: both Mr. Paul and Mr. Ryan have furiously attacked Ben Bernanke for responding to the 2008 financial crisis by doing exactly what Friedman said the Fed should have done in the 1930s advice he repeated to the Bank of Japan in 2000. There is nothing more insidious that a country can do to its citizens, Mr. Ryan lectured Mr. Bernanke, than debase its currency.
Oh, and while were on the subject of debasing currencies: one of Friedmans most enduring pieces of straight economic analysis was his 1953 argument in favor of flexible exchange rates, in which he argued that countries finding themselves with excessively high wages and prices relative to their trading partners like the nations of southern Europe today would be better served by devaluing their currencies than by enduring years of high unemployment until the deflation has run its sorry course. Again, theres no room for that kind of pragmatism in a party in which many members hanker for a return to the gold standard.
Now, I dont want to put Friedman on a pedestal. In fact, Id argue that the experience of the past 15 years, first in Japan and now across the Western world, shows that Keynes was right and Friedman was wrong about the ability of unaided monetary policy to fight depressions. The truth is that we need a more activist government than Friedman was willing to countenance.
The point, however, is that modern conservatism has moved so far to the right that it no longer has room for even small concessions to reality. Friedman tried to save free-market conservatism from itself but the ideologues who now dominate the G.O.P. are beyond saving.
Aug 21, 2013 13:28:40 #
Richard94611 wrote:
If Washington were not as corrupt as all its players are these days, I think the system would muddle along just fine. But the system now is so corrupt it no longer works. I tend to believe in rather more government intervention than less. If Libertarianism prevailed, OI think the whole government would fall apart -- and I don't want that, though you may (or may not).
Richard, In my opinion Libertarians are much like any other political group. There are those that are extreme and hold 100% to steadfast principles and then there are those who agree with and align with those principles but are realistic enough to know that they will not work in today's society. I like most Libertarian ideas, reframe from foreign entanglements, stop trying to be the world's "Globalcop". Stop spending vast amounts of US treasure abroad. Balance the federal government, actually pay for the government that we get and stop expecting for the generations who come behind us to somehow pay for our excesses. The sanctity of private property, the effectiveness of a free market economy not interfered with by the government. Reigning in the FED, auditing the FED.... Here is a quasi governmental institution who just prints US dollars at will, loans trillions in a matter of weeks to overseas banks, and refuses to allow our government to audit their books? WTH is that all about?
You should learn more about libertarians and understand, that they are not anarchists and will never go all the way with some of their stated principles, but as you stand many of their principles and analysis up against either the republican party or the democratic party they often make more sense, the other thing about the libertarians is that for them governance is not about power, it is about principles, if you study their principles you would find that if they were in charge they would be working to lessen their power and influence in our daily lives.
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