The End of the Bush Era

End of the Bush Era

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005; A27

The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that,
the better for them -- and the country.

Recent months, and especially the past two weeks, have brought home to a
steadily growing majority of Americans the truth that President Bush's
government doesn't work. His policies are failing, his approach to
leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced
a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like
this.

The Bush Era did not begin when he took office, or even with the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It began on Sept. 14, 2001, when Bush declared at
the World Trade Center site: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears
you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us
soon." Bush was, indeed, skilled in identifying enemies and rallying a
nation already disposed to action. He failed to realize after Sept. 11 that
it was not we who were lucky to have him as a leader, but he who was lucky
to be president of a great country that understood the importance of
standing together in the face of a grave foreign threat. Very nearly all of
us rallied behind him.

If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national unity, as
he seemed to shortly after Sept. 11, the country would never have become so
polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly
ideological policies and an extreme partisanship. He pushed for more tax
cuts for his wealthiest supporters and shamelessly used relatively modest
details in the bill creating a Department of Homeland Security as partisan
cudgels in the 2002 elections.

He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a war in
Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States
would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through. The
president assumed things would turn out fine, on the basis of wildly
optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential
flaws in your approach are not his administration's strong suits.

And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured
the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic moment
with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had by then
penetrated the country's consciousness. Yesterday's resignation of FEMA
Director Michael Brown put an exclamation point on the failure.

The source of Bush's political success was his claim that he could protect
Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush's calling cards. Over
the past two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans.

But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months ago. The
president's post-election fixation on privatizing part of Social Security
showed how out of touch he was. The more Bush discussed this boutique idea
cooked up in conservative think tanks and Wall Street imaginations, the less
the public liked it. The situation in Iraq deteriorated. The glorious
economy Bush kept touting turned out not to be glorious for many Americans.
The Census Bureau's annual economic report, released in the midst of the
Gulf disaster, found that an additional 4.1 million Americans had slipped
into poverty between 2001 and 2004.

The breaking of the Bush spell opens the way for leaders of both parties to
declare their independence from the recent past. It gives forces outside the
White House the opportunity to shape a more appropriate national agenda --
for competence and innovation in rebuilding the Katrina region and for new
approaches to the problems created over the past 4 1/2 years.

The federal budget, already a mess before Katrina, is now a laughable
document. Those who call for yet more tax cuts risk sounding like robots
droning automated talking points programmed inside them long ago. Katrina
has forced the issue of deep poverty back onto the national agenda after a
long absence. Finding a way forward in -- and eventually out of -- Iraq will
require creativity from those not implicated in the administration's
mistakes. And if ever the phrase "reinventing government" had relevance, it
is now that we have observed the performance of a government that allows
political hacks to push aside the professionals.

And what of Bush, who has more than three years left in his term?
Paradoxically, his best hope lies in recognizing that the Bush Era, as he
and we have known it, really is gone. He can decide to help us in the
transition to what comes next. Or he can cling stubbornly to his past and
thereby doom himself to frustrating irrelevance.

--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107

"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
--Thomas Jefferson

So, according to this guy, allowing grownups to manage their own
finances and make their own plans for the future, absent a coerced
Ponzi scheme called Social Security, is just a fanciful whim?

It doesn't matter whether a large number of people didn't like it.
They don't have the right to plunder the paychecks of others and
make decisions for them.

Of course, the Republicans are not standing up on principle for the
freedom of individuals to choose what to do with their money.
Rather, they are compromising with the hard-core collectivists,
trying to find half-measures so we'll have a little bit less
forcibly stolen from us to go into the Social Security fund, while
the rest is STILL forcibly stolen to put into a selection of
"private" investments, to give us the illusion of choice.

Republicans are cowards and fools, but Democrats like Dionne and
Gandalf are purposefully intent on denying everyone their personal
freedom.

=====
EE

As long as a majority did. You got it, Beagle Shit [apologies to Beagles].

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/12/AR2005091201
433.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that,

But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months ago. The

So it's OK to stuff Jews into ovens as long as the majority is OK
with it?

It doesn't matter what is right or wrong, just what "the majority"
agrees to?

=====
EE

Modern Conservative: Someone who can take time out
from trying to ban gay marriage because it is "what the
public wants" to dismiss popular support for gun control,
the UN, abortion rights and pollution laws because "polls
don't make it right".....

Yep. Those "conservatives" who are so unprincipled are just as
bad as the people they oppose and criticize.

To hell with them all.

=====
EE

Disinformation tactic noted, Beagle Lie. We aren't discussing Jews, and as
much as might want to stuff Jews in ovens, it has nothing to do with the
Social Security Program.

Correction: The Above should read "....as much as you might want to stuff

Notably it was "Mr. Eye" who introduced the faulty analogies to Jews in
ovens. Not I. Mr. Eye has also never shown any tendency to actually
connect with the subject. He seems content to make faulty analogies.

Yes, I note that you cut off half my sentence so you could engage in
your usual disinformation.

I was, as a demonstration of the consequences of judging the moral
probity of a proposition by its popularity.

Stuffing Jews into ovens is ALWAYS wrong and no vote can ever change
that.

You're still a scumbag who lies to smear others with the most foul
libel, I see.

It has everything to do with your argument that "[a]s long as a majority"
agrees with something, that gives someone the right to do it.

Following your argument to its logical conclusion means that "[a]s
long as a majority" agrees that stuffing Jews into ovens is OK, that
the government has the right to do so.

=====
EE

Did you see what he did? He carefully edited what I wrote to
change this:

So it's OK to stuff Jews into ovens as long as the majority is
OK with it?

into this:

Then, he stated that I wanted to do this.

I don't think his ability to handle analogies is the real problem
here.

> Gandalf> Correction: The Above should read "....as much as you
> Gandalf> might want to stuff Jews in ovens, it has nothing to
> Gandalf> do with the Social Security Program."

Anyone who has read Gandalf for awhile has no doubt seen him engage
in libelous smears. The above may be bad, but I've seen him do far
worse.

=====
EE

bt from your writin i would think that you had this inner voice to
figure that out a

I'm adept enough at analogies to know that
a woman getting pregnant despite contraceptives
is not analagous to a car accident.

It was not a perfectly good analogy, it was a false analogy. If EE
wants to discuss the merits of SS he can do so. But he doesn't. What he
wants is to deal in purple prose and hypercharged analogies that do not
equate. EE is dealing in nothing but the fallacious argumentum ad Hitlerum,
which is as usual nothing but a disinformational diversion.

What a whining baby you are.

Sadly, Martin's Petri dish origins would imply that he was NOT an accident.
He's very special....all the doctors say so.

>

And you're analogy had nothing to do with SS save at the most superficial
level. You wanted to sling associational mud at the concept and that's what
you did. On the subject of a democratic republic you have as usual nothing
to say because you live in a solipsistic world that does not in fact exist
for anyone but you.

I've made no such contention.

My contention was simple and direct. Referring to whether SS shall exist or
not exist as a policy of this country.....

EE> It doesn't matter whether a large number of people didn't like it.

GG>As long as a majority did.

Where did I mention "morality"???

>
> Again, you completely failed to understand the analogy.

Well one of us did, and that would be you. Trying to make an analogy
between a representative democracy devising a particular program involving
the financial state of the retired, and throwing jews into ovens is not
about "if a majority believe [sic] in a thing that makes the thing moral."
On the contrary, it's about hyperbole and weaseling out of the actual
argument. Governments in which majorities or pluralities elect officials do
all sorts of things. If any of those things outrage the "morality" of
citizens, there are means by which they can be addressed, outright
revolution being one of them. Comparing social security to the holocaust is
nothing more than an intentionally fallacious argument that's well known in
logic. If Mr. Eye has problems with SS, he ought to be able to address them
directly. If he has moral problems with it, there are also arguments [not
ridiculous analogies] that could be made. If he is as upset about SS as he
supposedly is about the Holocaust, he ought not to be living in this
country, or he ought to already be in prison for bravely attempting to
confront the problem head on.

1. SS and the Holocaust are not analogous on either moral or practical
grounds. Assessing taxes is not murder and the principle of popular
elections does not equate to overwhelming popular anti-Semitism. Saying
that they are both "moral" is the same as saying that EVERYTHING that is
political is moral. And saying that everything is moral is the same as
saying that nothing is moral. All EE has done is to trivialize the
Holocaust. EE might just as well be screaming about the fact that the
majority of Americans prefer chocolate to vanilla ice cream and comparing
THAT to the Holocaust. How can we live with the vast moral implications of
a majority of Americans insisting that chocolate is somehow "better" than
vanilla???

2. SS and the Holocaust are not analogous because the dilemma EE pretends to
present is a false dichotomy. In point of fact, there is no majority in the
U.S. in favor of pushing Jews into ovens. Hence we need not choose to hold
with throwing Jews into ovens if we hold with the validity and legality of
SS. IF there was a majority in the US in favor of throwing Jews into ovens,
we'd be looking at the wholesale breakdown of our society, civil war, and
not just a few rabid Randian Greedheads unwilling to bow to the legitimacy
of the tax laws of their own country.

Yes, an example of one of your inept analogies.

> Note to lurkers confused by the dishonest description
> of the analogy in question.

It's your analogy basically as you stated it, or
as you accepted it after I restated it so that
it would be clear what you were actually saying.

> Mr. McPhillips had claimed that a woman that
> gets pregnant while using contraceptives had
> consented to being pregnant.

That's not an analogy, but it is an aspect
of why a woman getting pregnant while
using contraception is nothing like a
car accident.

> Which of course is no more true that someone
> that gets into an accident due to the fault of
> a drunk driver has consented to the accident.

You're a lot like Zepp, in that you can't
ever surrender your drivel. Pregnancy lies
directly beyond the act of sexual intercourse,
and is one of the functional purposes of
sexual intercourse. Having a car accident does
not lie directly beyond the act of driving
a car, and is not one of the functional
purposes of driving.

Your analogy is like comparing someone who
goes to the movies only for the popcorn, keeps
his eyes and ears covered so that he won't
have to see the movie, but sees the movie
when his eye coverings fail, to someone
who is walking down the street when someone
rushes up to him and shows him a movie
against his will.

This is very reminiscent of when you
insisted that you didn't use logic when
driving your car, or that an outfielder
wasn't employing logic when chasing down
a fly ball, or that a skyskraper had
no discernible logical presence in its
construction.

I tried to explain it to you, but you're
a very inert sort of fellow, more interested
in dispensing your sullen prep school
cheek than actually thinking about anything.

You're an idiot, Martin. With respect to the act of rape, pregnancy is not
"one of the functional purposes" and yet rape involves sexual intercourse.
If we are to conflate rape with sexual intercourse [as your open-ended
definition implies], we could state that "pregnancy is one of the functional
purposes of rape." But plainly, it is not and so your argument fails on its
face. Tied tubes and contraceptives are also specifically used so that
pregnancy will not be an effect of sexual intercourse. And so, in human
beings, pregnancy can be an accidental effect and not a purpose.

Human beings may be just rats and dogs to you, responding mindlessly and
purposelessly to the rules of evolution or the dictates of some wrathful
subdiety that a psychotic such as youself might worship, but happily, human
beings are not rats and dogs to human beings, and sexual intercourse in the
human species is not as simple as you make it out to be.

Sure it is. If you get in a car, are you consenting to being in an
accident?
>
>

"'I’m not meeting with that goddamned bitch,' Bush screamed at aides
who suggested he meet with Cindy Sheehan, the war-protesting mother
whose son died in Iraq. 'She can go to hell as far as I’m concerned!'"
--Putsch, a decompensating drunk

"Grover Norquist couldn't drown the government, so he drowned New Orleans instead."

Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!
Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.
For the finest in liberal/leftist commentary,
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a.a. #2211 -- Bryan Zepp Jamieson

Guffaw. I mean, I wish it were true, but Karl Roves has been put in charge
of the reconstruction of the Katrina Disaster, and I can guarantee you that
Karl Roves doesn't let his clients make political miscalculations of the
kind that this author seems to think have been made. Katrina exposed some
LOUSY planning, but with Karl Rove in charge, the current bad PR will be
overwhelmed by the positive (and negative) PR machine that have made Karl
Rove one of the most powerful men in US politics.

How not? She took reasonable precautions, but despite the odds, something
unintended happened.

I think you're confusing educated, rational competence with a
blind faith.

>What is morality? Can you define it?

The determination of whether a given action is wrong or not.

>Specify rules to identify moral from immoral?

The most general rule is that initiating force against another
human is immoral.

>What is the source of moralality?

Rationality.

>Was god moral when he [snip]

I've never seen any evidence of a supreme being, so I cannot
attribute any statement or action to this entity. So, your
question is based upon a premise I do not accept.

>Maybe you just jumped at a preferred conclusion concerning the
>analogy.

Maybe you poured ball bearings on your keyboard to generate the
above message, instead of thinking.

Look, instead of trying to bicker over angels on the head of a pin,
you can just answer a simple question, from which we can generalize
about the nature of popularity as a guide to what actions are wrong:
Was killing Anne Frank wrong, no matter how many people supported
the government which killed her?

Either you're going to have to admit that popularity doesn't determine
whether a given action is wrong or not, or you're going to have to make
a case where killing an innocent little girl is not wrong.

==
EE

No, it isn't, if you're talking about an accident caused by
another driver. In that case, there is another person,
capable of rational thought, who is making choices about
how to drive.

When two consenting adults have intercourse, they are the
only people making choices. There are no external actors
involved.

What type of accident?

=====
EE

How was it dishonest?

That all depends upon whether you're going to equivocate on the
word "consent", or to apply it in a consistent, rational manner. I
see you equivocating in your arguments.

The basis for such a discussion is whether a woman who has
consensual sex is RESPONSIBLE for the creation of a human life
inside her. As I attempted to illustrate in a past article [
http://tinyurl.com/bcpgm ], on the subject of consensual
intercourse between a fertile man and a fertile woman, any
discussion of contraceptives, methods, timing, and such boils down
to probabilities and intent. Arguing about whether the woman
consents to being pregnant, then equivocating on the word "consent"
is a dead-end. Instead, argue the real issue of RESPONSIBILITY.

If you're going to argue on the basis of intent, then you would
have to argue that the woman who wants to get pregnant, but who
uses oral contraceptives, condoms, a diaphragm, spermicidal jelly,
and only has intercourse when she isn't ovulating is more
responsible for getting pregnant than the woman who doesn't want to
get pregnant, but knowingly uses no such protection and has
frequent intercourse during ovulation. Obviously, that doesn't
make sense.

If you're going to argue on the basis of probability, then you need
to either argue that no woman is ever responsible for getting
pregnant, draw a line between "responsible" and "not responsible"
based upon some formula involving the probabilities, or concede the
argument.

You are very wrong about that. The drunk driver is an external
actor, a human being capable of making rational choices about
driving. There is no such analogous agent involved in a
pregnancy.

A more apt analogy would be hitting golf balls near a building with
large glass windows. Assume that the building was put up before
you came along, the field in which you're hitting balls has never
before been used as a driving range, and no one else is around to
influence any of this. You can make choices on how you position
yourself, how hard to hit the ball, how careful to aim your stroke,
etc.. Perhaps you want to hit the windows, perhaps you're trying
not to, or perhaps you're more concerned with enjoying your sport
than worrying about hitting a window. In all cases, if you hit the
ball and it breaks a window, you are responsible for that. You're
only obfuscating the matter by rephrasing the the question as, "Did
you consent to breaking the window?" You could spend weeks bickering
over that one, if you equivocate on the word "consent", but that
would simply be a diversion from the ultimate question of
responsibility.

Note that while the analogy could be useful when determining
responsibility, the actual breakage, repair, payment, etc. are not
analogous to a pregnancy, for many reasons, not the least of which
is the existence of the owner of the building as an additional
party. We could consider the scenario that the building owner had
a pregnant daughter and bequeathed ownership of the building to her
unborn child, stipulating that if the child was not born alive that
the building would be razed. But at that point, the analogy starts
to get too complicated to be useful as a clear demonstration of
principles.

=====
EE

No, it isn't. They have control over which brand they choose, how
they put it on, the vigorousness with which they screw, etc.. Even
more importantly, they have a choice in whether to have intercourse
or not.

Like I stated in another article, it all amounts to probabilities.
Either you're going to judge the matter on intent, irrespective of
the choices the two make; or you're going to devise some sort of
formula based upon probabilities to determine when the couple (or
perhaps just one of them) is responsible for a pregnancy.

If a fertile couple has frequent intercourse between menstrual
cycles, using no contraceptive methods, but the woman (or man)
doesn't want to get pregnant (or to impregnate), does the intent
alone relieve her (or him) of all responsibility?

Unless you want to concede that the couple is responsible or argue
that they are never responsible, you have to either answer the
question about intent in the affirmative, or offer some sort of
formula based upon probabilities to draw a line between
"responsible" and "not responsible".

How you value responsibility as a moral determinant, and how
that translates into action (private or political) is yet
another discussion.

>One not the fault of the driver.

A one-car accident, caused by weather conditions? A two-car
accident caused by a drunk driver? Lightning? Tornado?
Volcanic eruption? Meteor?

>Surely you are not arguing that a woman that used BC and gets
>pregnant has consented to that pregnancy?

I'm arguing that she is responsible for getting pregnant. Her
partner is also responsible for impregnating her.

I will not play the game of equivocating on the word "consent",
when we can simply resolve the issue by discussing responsibility.

=====
EE

You're hiding the fact that you were dishonestly mangling context
in your original reply to me. (See below.) In addition, you're
trying to draw a distinction between two different actions carried
out by a democratically elected or popular government, to deny the
connection between something you endorse and that which you
despise.

Let's look at the FULL context:

It doesn't matter whether a large number of people didn't like
it. They don't have the right to plunder the paychecks of

-- Eagle Eye 9/14/2005 http://tinyurl.com/dbq22

-- Gandalf Grey 9/14/2005 http://tinyurl.com/9r2hv

MY statement was about the morality of "plunder[ing] the paychecks
of others and mak[ing] decisions for them." You responded to my
post, deceptively removing context, to make your quip about my
statement of the morality of Social Security.

Now, you're being a chickenshit and claiming that you didn't say
anything about morality, by pretending that you didn't dishonestly
hack up my post to change its meaning, with no punctuation to
indicate edits.

You're still a lying sack of shit.

It most certainly is. That is THE basis for the comparison.

In both cases, you have government doing things to people which
violate their rights. In both cases, the apologists for these
harmful acts cite the popularity of the government as
justification.

If you agree that it is wrong to stuff Jews into ovens, even if
99.999% of the population endorses it, then you cannot claim that
forcing employers and employees to pay payroll taxes can be
justified on the basis of popularity. You don't get to have it
both ways.

[snip]

=====
EE

And you're hiding the fact that you're committing the oldest crime in bogus
logic, attempting to pretend that two concepts that might share one
characteristic are the same concept.

You're a lying fraud, Beagle Shit.

Bullshit. I use a ladder to clean my gutters. Second story thieves often
do the same. That doesn't mean that I have to accept that cleaning gutters
is an immoral or illegal act.

So where's my quote on "morality," you lying piece of dog crap? Where did I
mention morality, Beagle Shit? cite exactly where I mention morality.

YOU are the one trying to conflate majority actions with specific acts.
According to your moronic philosophy, ALL decisions arrived at by a majority
are immoral by definition because SOME majorities engage in backing up
immoral acts.

If you had even a shred of personal dignity, you'd either stop paying SS
taxes and live with your greedhead attitude. But since you feel the need to
project your greedhead mentality on others, you show up and pontificate,
trying to conflate SS taxes and Jews in Ovens.

You're pathetic.

Cite where I mentioned morality in my original post or go back to the
basement where you belong.

Says the lying sack of shit who can't provide a cite where I originally
mentioned "morality."

Then ALL majority decisions and all majority opinions are by definition
immoral. And they are not.

Otherwise, you're going to have to prove why SS taxes are in and of
themselves immoral due to the specific involvement of a majority decision
that led to them.

Have at it.

Even were this the case, with SS, which it is NOT, governments doing things
to people that violate their rights does not by any means require majority
decisions or majority opinions. You just trashed the first part of your
argument.

Next?

Most apologist cite popularity of the government as a justification whether
the government is popular or not....see George Bush's first term "mandate."

You just trashed the second part of your own argument.

Next?

I don't need to have it either way. The fact that a majority of the
population is for or against any act doesn't define its morality one way or
the other...ever...period. But representatives are elected by a plurality
or a majority in a representative democracy and if the majority disagrees
with a particular financial policy, they have the right to vote out those
behind legislation and/or put public pressure on those in office. That's
the way it works.

If a government action is judged "immoral" by a number of individuals or
even one individual, our constitution makes provisions for that as well. If
that doesn't work, you have the right to expatriate yourself, and you can
also choose not to comply, or you can also choose outright insurrection. If
you really think that SS is immoral, your duty is to not only refuse to pay
it but insist on being imprisoned for doing so. That way, you could pat
yourself on the back for upholding both the spirit and the letter of the
laws

So far as I can tell, all you're doing is bitching about it.

Either way, you haven't made the case that SS is immoral, and bringing up
Jews in Ovens just proves that all you're really capable of is argumentum ad
Hitlerum and a really lame use of the false dichotomy fallacy.

When you have a real argument, by all means cough it up.

The concept is the determination of morality by democratically
elected or popularly supported government. What other concept do
you think I'm trying to tie to that?

[snip]

Not all burglaries involve the use of a ladder. All burglaries
involve entering a building without permission with the intent to
steal.

Thus, the defining characteristic of burglary is not the use of a
ladder.

Thus, your analogy falls apart.

In contrast, I was discussing the determination of moral
justification based upon popularity, illustrating that if we
accepted the principle that popularity determines the morality of a
given act, that would logically mean that it was OK to stuff Jews
into ovens, so long as it was popularly supported (or alternatively,
if the leaders committing such acts were popularly supported).

This was a counter-example to debunk the principle that popularity
determines morality.

The quote about morality is in MY statement, in the article to
which YOU responded. Like I wrote in my last reply, and you
dishonestly deleted, you pretended that you didn't delete the
sentences before and after the sentence you cite above beginning:
"It doesn't matter whether ...."

[snip]

Conflate? No. I'm characterizing the manner in which specific
acts are justified and identifying commonalities between different
instances. The commonality is not between sending checks to old
people and stuffing humans into ovens. Rather, what they have in
common is the attempt to justify them by the principle that
popularity implies morality.

No, that would be your moronic strawman.

I'm denying ANY type of universal correlation between popularity
and morality. That means that if a proposition is popular, it's
popularity does not make it moral and it does not make it immoral.

In fact, I have argued against such a hasty generalization in other
articles. For example, if you buy a condo and join a homeowner's
association, you have explicitly agreed to abide by the decisions
of this association. If they decide, by majority vote, to divert
money from something which benefits you to something which benefits
others, they have not violated your rights, for the simple fact
that you gave your consent upon joining up.

Furthermore, a law prohibiting murder and providing exceptions for
self-defense is not immoral, because it proscribes violations of
rights and does not harm people who have done no wrong. However,
the morality of such a law is not, in any way, determined by its
popularity (or the popularity of legislators who wrote it).

How is it greedy to want to keep what belongs to me?

On the contrary, it is supporters of Social Security, like you, who
are greedy because you demand control of what DOES NOT BELONG TO
YOU. You insist that others be forced to participate.

You've got it backwards. YOU are the one being greedy. You want
to control (by proxy) what belongs to your neighbor. You want to
harm (by proxy) your neighbor if he resists taxation.

I don't want a single cent taken from you and I don't want a single
hair on your head touched if you refuse to give in to aggressive
coercion.

You're greedy. I'm not.

No. I'm illustrating the dilemma of adopting the principle that
popularity determines morality by offering a conter-example which
should be sufficiently repulsive to most readers that they won't
have already prejudged such a program as justified.

>You're pathetic.

You're greedy. Why don't you just respect your neighbors' rights
to choose how they manage their finances?

Why can't you just mind your own business?

>> anything about morality[restore], by pretending that you didn't

I mentioned it. You responded to that. If you hadn't carefully
edited my text without indicating changes, you could have argued
that you're just a dumbass who lacks reading comprehension. But
your deception gave away your intent.

[snip]

Strawman. I'm denying ANY type of universal correlation between
popularity and morality. That means that if a proposition is
popular, it's popularity does not make it moral and it does not
make it immoral.

>And they are not.

I never argued otherwise.

Nope. I'm arguing that the popularity of Social Security or the
relevant election results do not make it moral or immoral.

What makes Social Security immoral is the fact that it violates
freedom. That is true whether 99% approve or 99% disapprove.

Popularity is IRRELEVANT.

Sure it is. The people who earn money from an employer have the
exclusive moral authority over their salaries. Self-employed
people have the exclusive moral authority over their profits. Only
they can, through a mutual, consensual exchange, transfer such
authority for a given monetary amount or other item of property.

Social Security was passed by legislators. Not all legislators
voted for it. Not all voters voted for the politicians in office.
Not all residents of the US participated in the elections. People
born after it was passed weren't even given a chance to give any
input into the decision.

Thus, there are people who do not consent to participating in the
system. They never granted their moral authority to anyone for
that big chunk of their earnings designated for payroll taxes. No
election changes that because no voter has the moral authority to
dispense with the dissenters' money, and thus cannot transfer such
authority to a proxy. Thus, the so-called representatives cannot
obtain such authority from a vote. That moral authority, for the
dissenters' earnings, remains exclusively with the dissenters.

Thus, forcing a dissenter to cough up 15.3% of her earnings
violates her rights. Q.E.D.

[snip]

OK. So you agree that democracy does not establish consent? You
agree that, without consent, governments will aggressively coerce
citizens, thus violating their rights?

Wait, now you're backtracking. You're back to discussing the
"majority" as having the "right" to make decisions, via elections.
When you use the word "right", you are making a statement of moral
judgement.

Appeal to tradition fallacy.

False premise. The US Constitution is not "our constitution" until
we all explicitly consent to it.

The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has
no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between
man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a
contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to
be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. And
it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between
persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be
competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts.
Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion
even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject,
or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent
in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their
consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead
forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And the constitution, so
far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural
power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is
not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they
could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind
them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an
agreement between any body but "the people" then existing; nor
does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power,
or disposition, on their part, to bind anybody but themselves.
Let us see. Its language is:

"We, the people of the United States (that is, the people then
existing in the United States), in order to form a more perfect
union, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of
liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish
this Constitution for the United States of America."

It is plain, in the first place, that this language, as an
agreement, purports to be only what it at most really was, viz.,
a contract between the people then existing; and, of necessity,
binding, as a contract, only upon those then existing. In the
second place, the language neither expresses nor implies that
they had any right or power, to bind their "posterity" to live
under it. It does not say that their "posterity" will, shall, or
must live under it. It only says, in effect, that their hopes and
motives in adopting it were that it might prove useful to their
posterity, as well as to themselves, by promoting their union,
safety, tranquility, liberty, etc.
-- Lysander Spooner, "No Treason" No. VI,
(The Constitution of No Authority) part I, 1867
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/notreason.htm#no6

Furthermore, the US Constitution does NOT make adequate provisions
for protecting the rights of dissenters. If I (correctly) consider
the income tax to be immoral, what can I do about it, unless I have
sufficient POPULAR support?

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to
live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not
everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do
everything, it is not necessary that he should do something
wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the Governor or
the Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and if
they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in
this case the State has provided no way; its very Constitution is
the evil.
--Henry David Thoreau (On Civil Disobedience)

For that matter, people living in Mexico have the right to move
here and live their lives on their own terms, without being
obligated to pay taxes or follow other immoral laws. If they
respect the rights of others, they need do nothing else.

The fact that I don't choose to leave my home in now way
establishes consent. I am not the one hurting others, so I am not
the one who should change his actions to remedy the situation.
Those who are behaving immorally should stop without requiring me
to jump through pointless hoops, like organizing votes or leaving
my home.

I have every right to make that choice. The problem is that the
thugs will harm me and make that choice too costly for me to bear.
And, you will cheerlead for them, sneering that I deserved to have
my rights violated for daring to object to what the majority
decided.

That's suicide. The thugs are ruthless enough to murder those who
dare to exercise their right to take up arms in self-defense
against anyone in uniform who is attempting to hurt them.

Note that you have only suggested ways in which people who are
behaving morally can act differently. You have not, at all,
suggested how those who are behaving immorally ought to act
differently.

Bullshit. I have no duty to make a futile gesture. Giving in to
thugs who are far more powerful in no way establishes consent. If
a street hoodlum points a gun at your face and demands that you
give him your wallet, giving it to him to save your life does not
change the fact that he stole from you.

Why would I want to uphold anything about an immoral law?

I'm stating the truth and you don't like it.