Louisville Restaurants Forum

Carla G wrote:I was going to do the quiz thingy but stopped after it tried to get me to agree to a $14.95 a month charge for a security program . When I refused that I had to jump through a dozen more hoops refusing all kinds of 'free' stuff and was finally refused to continue because I would agree to at least one spam program.
So which coloered block does that put me into?

Steve H wrote:

Matthew D wrote:For me, one of the strongest arguments against the "left/liberal agenda" is that the masterminds of the agenda craft it in such a way to make the less powerful dependent on these very masterminds. On on hand, power is inherent to the system. On the other hand, it does seem overly paternalistic for some of our leaders to find purpose by making other people dependent to/on them.

This is interesting. You've tagged yourself as being off-the-scale left, but you recognize that government solutions might not actually help those it claims to be helping, at least in the sense of being free and independent.

I think government solutions can help and should help.

I have issues with the word dependency, which I first used!. That word comes from deficiency thinking - that only those w/o other options would be dependent. As would be the case with national, universal healthcare, we would not all be dependent, we would just be (it's universal after all)*. The issue with dependency is not that the government is involved but that participants in the government manipulate the less powerful for their own purposes. Our use of the word dependency in relation to governmental aid is tied to our own governmental mode. So the powerful exploit the less powerful by telling them they are looking out for the less powerful. My issue is not with government aid; my issue is with the way the leaders manipulate the aid as a way to manipulate people. And here we've arrived at the main argument against socialism - the inability to change human nature.

* Universal healthcare is great in theory, but problematic in our current governmental model because of the utter distrust that exists toward the central government. Given who we elect and how they act, I can't really find fault with such distrust. Having said that, I still support universal healthcare on the basis of basic human rights.

Matthew D wrote:Obviously a true left agenda would emanate from the people themselves, not from a select few. Alas, one of the drawbacks of a representative democracy is that significant power is invested in those who have the ability to represent, often at the cost of democracy.

This is also interesting. You are describing a left agenda as arising from the people themselves. This seems close to an anarchist outlook; which I'd place further out on the libertarian extreme, definitely not something on the left. What is the role of the central government in your view?

Steve A wrote:

Carla G wrote:I was going to do the quiz thingy but stopped after it tried to get me to agree to a $14.95 a month charge for a security program . When I refused that I had to jump through a dozen more hoops refusing all kinds of 'free' stuff and was finally refused to continue because I would agree to at least one spam program.
So which coloered block does that put me into?

I went to the site http://www.politicalcompass.org/ using two different browsers and got no ads whatsoever. Did you maybe go to politicalcompass.com by mistake, Carla?

Steve A wrote:I went to the site http://www.politicalcompass.org/ using two different browsers and got no ads whatsoever. Did you maybe go to politicalcompass.com by mistake, Carla