A voice of reason from the left of center

I was listening to AirAmerica today and the topic was the violence as of late in the schools. I was listening to Ed Schultz and the partt that suprised me is he made a statement that no manner of gun law is going to stop this stuff. The problem is not guns but bad parenting and lack of responsibility in adults. He made the point that the guns were not the root of the problem. The root was kids that are left to do their own thing with parents who want to be friends to their children or not involved at all instead of being parents and older individuals with mental disorders that are not able to receive the care they need. I thought this was refreshing coming from a left of center person like myself for a change.

 

and exactly what were you doing listening to airamerica ???? just kidding, gotta keep your finger on the pulse......that's how i justify my occasional perusal of cosmopolitan !!
but seriously, i could picture the airamerica guys cringing when he said that. for all their talk about free speech...uh, i mean expression, the left is doing it's best to squash oppositional views. as i write, i'm watching bill o'rielly address a near riot at columbia university where a rep from the minutemen was trying to speak. the entire auditorium threw a tantrum worthy of a two-year old.
on a happier note, my glock 33 round mag arrived today, now i'm gonna run around the house yelling BANG,BANG,BANG

 

Yeah, Ed Schultz commenting on AirAmerica about how every left wing, lunatic, liberal policy of the last three generations has been an abject failure.

Welfare, the destruction of the family, socialism, the denial of individual responsibility...etc.

Good to have the God fearing, conservative, defenders of the Second Amendment from AirAmerica on our side.

Snort!

 

Shermacman,

Hmmmm...I am betting you have never lived anywhere but in the USA. MAke those statement after living somewhere that does not have the civil and social help structures that people here enjoy.

 

The reason some people object to those structures is becuase 'help' is a code-word for 'steal'. You take money from some people, and give it to yourselves, and give nothing in return except a hint that crime might go up if the money stops coming.

If a large enough mob is stealing, does that make it right?

Sorry for the OT. I'm actually a generous person and see no problem with a social program to get people back on their feet, so long as they have a time-limit.

 

What does living someplace other than America have to do with anything?

 

I actually like listening to Big Eddie. He hunts, fishes, and think gun control means using both hands. It seems to me that he's nowhere near the rabid socialist you guys are painting him out to be. Compared to Rush, he's a pillar of American values.

 

Because people that love to bitch about these so called "give away" programs usually have no understanding of what they have actually accomplished and how much they do for the greater good of the country. After you have lived elsewhere were such programs do not exist you start to realize tha,t despite the small percentage of people that abuse the system, these programs have helped the coutry greatly. Imagine a country were disease ran rampant because of no social health care system, where interior infastructure was private built and owned and not accessable to the general public, where no public school system existed so the majority of people were uneducated, where no unemployemt compensation existed so more people were unemployed and starving. These places do exist and if you have not experienced them I suggest you get down and thank your lucky stars that you have not had to experience them before you open your yap and complain about something of which you know nothing besides the sound bites you have heard on conservative talk radio from some drug addict..

 

I am pretty right wing, and Ed Schultz is about the only lefty commentator I can stand to listen to. He does tend to say stupid things about right-wingers, but when he is talking policy he often has some pretty sharp insights.

 

Tom Bri,

I am by no means a righty. I am a left leaning republican. Actually I am quite a conservative republican but nothing like the neo-cons and talking heads out there today so that makes me seem left of center.

Ed Schultz is pretty easy for me to listen to and I do agree with most of what he says... even when he is bashing Hannity, O'Reily and Rush because they are both mindless boobs spouting propoganda.

I also like Al Fraken's books and his comedy but I can't quite take his smug attitude on AirAmerica and Randy Rhodes makes me want to rip my radio out and chuck it onto the hi-way.

 

Don't worry, she makes EVERYONE feel that way. I know lots of rather liberal people who despise her, too, who thinks she just makes up facts on the spot and outshouts callers, not letting them speak. No idea how she stays on.

Ed Schultz is fine, though. He's a lot more of a clean upstanding citizen than "All drug addicts are bad except for me" Rush, that's for sure.

 

Yeah, I have to agree. He's the only person I've heard on Air America so far that hasn't made me want to default to the local Muzak station (shudder).

But then again it's a similar theme with the gasbag right-wing programs as well.

 

She sounds like a liberal version of Bill O'Reilly. Airbags are all the same no matter which side they are on.

Their are plenty of left of center supporters of RKBA, it just they are out voiced by the more vocal anti ones.

 

Yes, I am

a left-of-center and certainly believe in RKBA and belong to the NRA. So, that is why I get frustrated with all the labels being put on people. I get tired of hearing about liberals and conservatives. I think there are a lot of us out there who cannot be so easily put into these black and white categories.

 

playboy

You are so correct! I have never lived in a foreign Socialist Hellhole!

But I did spend the night at a Holiday Inn in Newark, NJ once. I believe that qualifies.

 

Why is our high standard of living a result of all these social programs? Might the lower classes even have a better standard of living without them (more jobs/more economic growth), or less of them and better accountability? (I actually prefer the latter over no help at all)

Yup, I'm all for higher standards for where our tax $$ go, how it's administered and more accountability and common sense. People who can work while on welfare should get to keep a lot of what they make, not have it deducted dollar for dollar from their welfare check. How stupid...there should be an incentive to work and that would still save the tax payers money, money that could be used to help more people who really need it.

Yeah, I've been to a few places...the answer is an un-corrupt, thriving economy, not socialism. Where would the $$ for the programs come from?

Private charities are great at efficiently helping people...there should be more tax incentives for giving to them and less tax $$ going to horribly inefficient social programs.

 

True - some programs are good as a safety net -- "tragedy of the commons" and all that

I have lived in those places and also in places where those policies run amok. In their extreme, they tend to lead to an entitlement mentality that is destructive to a society

I believe his point was that when these policies lose the original purpose of providing a safety net and become a proactive entitlement, the sturcture of a society is destroyed. My view is society is based on personal responsibility, family responsibility, achievement, morality. These things go away when people don't have the incentive to work hard for the things they get.

 

My personal view is that taxpayer funded government "help" should be for this:



Not this:

 

Manedwolf sums it up nicely.

 

Last year, I had a simple yardstick for judging bond measures and laws at the ballot: "It's my money, darnit." Would it cost me more money? Then no.

This year, I'm trying a different yardstick: Will it give the government more power? Then no.

Lo and behold, it turns out that these two yardsticks are printed on the same piece of wood. Giving the government money is the same as giving the government more power. And that is the problem with social programs: They give the government money, which gives the government power.

Do you like charity? Most Americans do. Great, good on you! So give money to charity. Nothing wrong with it.

What's wrong with it is when you vote for the men with guns to come take my money and give it to your favorit charity. That is theft, or perhaps extortion... whatever it's called, it's wrong. What's worse, it seldom achieves it aims, and it always increases the power of government.

Giving voluntarily to charity does not increase the power of government and is more likely to achieve what good it is you want to achieve. And, best of all, it's not theft.

 

Newark is a perfect example of how these social programs have NOT worked.

 

Actually newark is more an example of how jobs being sent overseas and big business closing domestic offices to transfer money off-shore, etc are killing the American cities and workforce.

 

I promise to bring this thread back on track after a brief turn into a Jersey reststop...

PP - jobs have nothing to do with it; Newark is a perfect example of a small political machine, cozy with the party in power in the state gov't, running things it's own way for the last 20 years, and without regard for the consequences.

And that's been the problem since the 1960's; personal responsiblity has taken a back seat to personal fullfilment, and the "ME" generation.

I must admit never listening to AirAmerica - I really got sick of NPR and its "look down your nose" attitude towards American values many years ago.

 

I don't think the "give away" programs help, I think they hold the country back. The programs encourage people to sit back and do nothing while barely scraping by on government subsidies instead of going out and making it on their own. And because of their complacency with doing nothing for something, when they do want more than to just scrape by, they often resort to crime, the other "easy" way to live without working for anything.

To get back on topic, I've never once listened to Air America. I have a hard enough time driving to work in Dallas traffic without being worked up into a frenzy, I don't need to hear Randy Rhodes on the radio ro make it any worse

 

Ed Schultz always did describe himself as being a gun toting liberal, which is the only thing I like about him.
On the other hand, the concept of a liberal who knows how to shoot concerns me at a fundemental level.
They all live by the words of the late Chairman Mao, who said "Political power flows from the barrel of a gun and that gun must never be allowed to fall from the grasp of the Communist (Demonratic) Party!!"