Hello guys. I wrote an email to a friend who's an environmentalist and noted that I had made some historical and overall in depth points about the right to bear arms throughout the letter, giving an in depth perspective on the subject that I doubt too many have (at least, at the depth level) so decided to post it here. The letter is long though and it's best to read allot around the RKBA references to get the depth understanding of what I was talking about so you'll probably want to just read the whole thing. I will try to highlight the RKBA areas when I wake up but I am on my way to bed at the moment.
First off, I am going to start with evaluating a recent conversation we had as a starting point, so trust that I am going to get deeper and go on to other things.
I did some searching on Ron Paul and the subject of racism, and found nothing to prove this case. I found plenty on the idea of things like speaking against the American Civil War and special services towards blacks as well as the problem with black crime rates, but these prove nothing except that the man is a realist and paying attention. For starters, the Civil War was not so simple, and certainly not about slavery. The propaganda and motivations behind the civil war were very similar to the Invasion of Iraq.
I myself have come across plenty of Blacks (and all but a few were in the south) who spoke much more highly of the confederate cause then the Union, often noting the fact that slavery was legal in some places clear in to the 20th century, and in some theoretical views, up until recent history (so much for the war effort) let alone the fact that the rest of the civilized world managed to abolish slavery WITHOUT having to go to war.
On the criminal subject, it really is true that black people make up a very large portion of people not just in prison, but those who are true legitimate criminals, to a degree that stands out among other races. This is not about the black race though, it's about how the black culture is being driven. In other words, there are people out there who are working (whether they intend for the result or not) to keep the overall black CULTURE among the low life crowd. There are many things that are being done that get these results, one of the most obvious is this well known "poor me" theme that has the black population thinking that the white people of today (who largely never persecuted blacks and are beyond even being able to understand the racist mentality) are somehow responsible for crimes against their ancestors and therefor them, and think that the white man now owes the black man something. This is not only a volatile way of thinking but also goes directly against the teachings of the greatest black civil rights leader of all time; Martian Luther King Jr. As we all know, his legendary speech did not include: "I have a dream that future white generations would pamper the future black generations for what our persecutors have done." No, his speech revolved around equality between whites and blacks to where no one worries about who's of what race when they interact. Though this theme has plenty of popularity among all races, I have seen far more support of it from this generation of white people then black. Trust me, I have been around, and it has proven very clear everywhere I have gone, even in the more hardcore ghetto and redneck areas, that disrespect for Martin Luther King Jr.s Vision is by far the No.1 thing separating the blacks and whites today. One example, when I lived in Florida, one of the owners of the company that I worked for was a self-made black man, and one of his employees was the son of a high-ranking KKK leader and was raised by clansmen, and despite the black guy being well aware of the white mans upbringing, the two of them got along very well and were friends on and off of the job.
We can wish all we want about who owes who what, but the bottom line is that until the Black culture begins building self-dignity and responsibility, there will always be diversity between whites and blacks, mind you what such behavior is doing to those in the south who are trying to overcome racist upbringing.
Again, this is simply reality and the way things are. The criminal culture among blacks only makes me angry at those who are pressing it. I am really saddened by it. It's not helping the black people or whites at all. When I was a child, I lived in south Alaska which had very few black people. Because of how scarce they were, it was always a treat to see them. The impression it had on me was a positive outlook on racial differences. In other words, I think racial differences are a good thing and make man more interesting. I also have allot of No.1s among black people. My favorite school teacher growing up, and the only one I still talk with is a black man, the closest girl I ever came to dating was a Black girl (in a backwood redneck town mind you) and one of my favorite movie actors is Morgan Freeman and one of my favorite Civil Rights Activists who's cause I have been championing throughout this letter is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Don't think for a minute that people don't prefer dignity when they taste it. When I first moved in to this neighborhood, the problems here were FAR worse then they are now, fist fights every other day, robberies all the time constant domestic violence and the list goes on. Upon my arrival, the first reaction I got from my neighbors was competitive, as if being an experienced craftsman and researcher made everyone feel less on top of the mound so to speak, but I used my knowledge, talent and experience to help them, educate them, admitted when I made a mistake or didn't have the answers and was always ready to prove my case without playing the ego game. I treated everyone with dignity and respect, and encouraged them to do the same. Thus far, the number of creeps visiting this neighborhood has gone down by at least 1/3 (and you can check that with your other next door neighbor and the guy across from me), as bad as the screaming and hollering still is, it has gone down dramatically (again, you can check our "sane" neighbors on that) and many of the creeps who DO come around have cleaned up their acts quite a bit, even turned their behavior over in one or 2 cases. Bottom line, things are slowly but surly getting better, and it's showing others respect and encouraging them to have and show some dignity that is making the difference. Having spent the second half of my childhood and 2/3 of my adult life in bad neighborhoods, I have found the dignity theme to work best with the black culture and has turned countless thugs in to decent people and true friends.
Now, on to those other matters. The enlightenment is a very important thing to study. It's the larges and probably the most important thing you can study about regarding political dynamics of the modern world. Basically all of the modern political systems are based to some degree on concepts brought about during the enlightenment. To give you a little background, the enlightenment was basically the movement in Europe that resulted in moving away from monarch and religious rule and gradual replacement of it with ruling bodies and less superstition based legal systems. It is traditionally taught that the enlightenment began in the 1700s though to be realistic, it actually started in the 1400s, certacy of the Hungarian king: Matthas Corvinus who began to open up to science and technology, which his nearby enemies (the Ottoman Empire) were well incorporating and his father: Janos Hunyadi, who taught a bunch of slaves and peasants how to use mandatory work tools (like pitchforks for instance) as highly potent combat weapons and sent them home to their masters throughout Europe following their victory at Nandorfehervar (where San Juan Capistrano, a church reformer, led and inspired many of them) resulting in a ruling class who was cautious about messing with their slaves, having defeated the most powerful army in the world with tools they were useless at home without.
However, the enlightenment was a threat to western powers so it remained somewhat underground with occasional successes (like abolishing of the Witch Hunts in the 1600s) and boomed beyond anyones ability to suppress during the 1700s though enlightenment idealists continued to be broadly persecuted in western culture to this very day.
Many of the ideas of the enlightenment had been tried BEFORE it started, such as religious freedom, which was being practiced by none other then the Muslims, who provided sanctuary for Jews and pagans during the inquisitions, and the implementation's of a civilian suppression function (same thing the American Right to bear Arms is) that served as one of the 2 main factors that gave the Byzantine Empire it's long life and long periods of holding lots of territory (the other being that they concurred through persuasion rather then by force when they could.
Mind you that there were some new ideas that sprouted between the mid medieval period through the late renaissance period that sounded great on paper but crashed and burned when put in to practice. The 2 most famous were Machiavelli's philosophy and that of Carl Marx. For Marx, we can at least credit to him that socialistic government had not been practiced before, at least, any form like his proposal. Machiavelli on the other hand proposed what many argue today is the perfect political concept despite the fact that shortly before he introduced it, a perfect example of his philosophy had already been tried and was not only short lived but was a horrible disaster, that being Vlad the Impaler's infamous reign of brutality.
Though some would argue that the socialistic idea is part of the enlightenment (which it DOES offer some interesting and possibly good ideas) it's main fault is lack of defense against abuse which has been proven in action over and over again throughout the 20th century and beyond. Sadly, history to this day shows that at some point governments will use and abuse every bit of power you give them, and one of the important factors that sets model enlightenment law systems (like the US constitution) apart from things like the socialistic ideal is that model enlightenment legal systems are carefully designed in defense against abuse of power, which is typically a No.1 priority. The hard concept here works like the science of sword smithing. If too hard, it will be brittle and break. If too soft, it will not hold an edge long and may be easily destroyed. You must strike a careful balance between these two factors for which there IS NO perfect answer. The same is true with government. If you have no government, you have anarchy and no one wants to live in such a state. With too much government power or dangerously displaced power, the government can become very dangerous and abusive to it's citizens and make the people worse off then if they DID live in anarchy as we have seen over and over again. A balance must be stricken to minimize the damage, which can be tricky. For instance, depending on the conditions of the areas, tossing out all gun control laws MAY result in an increase of violent crime in some areas though we have yet to see the presence or absence of gun laws dramatically affect violent crime rates in this country (though both sides of the argument attribute changes in violence to the results in changing of gun legislation when research just about always reveals that the change in crime was the result of something else. However, if you consider a bunch of armed and unintimidated citizens surrounding capitol hill and removing the war conspirators following the decision to invade Iraq (the soul purpose of the 2nd amendment), you can only imagine how many lives might have been saved on BOTH sides.
Actually, this is one of the areas where I wonder about liberals, as the 2nd amendment was designed for their defense as well as everyone else's and is one of the few areas in the constitution that everyone (except for control freaks) benefits from and should be in total agreement on but that's beside the point.
I am not going to try and tell you what is the perfect balance between government, industry and citizens as this, like sword making, is a subject that there simply is no straight answer to. From an American perspective, if you believe in oath and contract, then you HAVE to stick to the constitution. Everyone who goes in to office, whether politician, soldier or police officer, swears an oath to uphold and protect the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The US constitution was written as an agreement between the people to be able to be changed under certain conditions which require intense investigation of the cause among many other precautions so that nonsensical laws are not just tossed out there because someone FEELS like they are a good idea. The proposition must be carefully examined, investigated and basically the whole of the country has to agree on it.
Honest people make loyalty to contract an important factor in their principals and if such people want to change the constitution to make the world a better place, they will do so according to the contract that all citizens live by and all government officers have sworn to follow and defend. The contrary is this "end justifies the means" theme of sidestepping the will of the people to sneak some new law on the books without allowing it to be studied and examined to find out if it even gets the results that it's supporters want. Believe me, as a machinist, inventor and engineer, the way things look and seam like they will work and the way they actually do work are very often, possibly more often then not, very different with very intricate little factors that you become exhausted trying to notice and keep up with, and law is no different. The ultimate purpose of law is results. If a law is not getting the intended results, then it's pointless and foolish to continue.
You may be surprised to hear this, but I myself think the constitution has it's problems even today. One of the biggest is that I believe that one critical thing missing is an uprise policy, that being, a list of conditions for which it is mandatory that the state police, militia groups and citizens alike should rise against the government (including other state governments when need be) and restore lawful order. In other words, I believe that some "must act" conditions should be attached to the 2nd amendment. At first glance, this actually looked like a somewhat bad idea to me but looking at history, this function dependably proved to be extremely potent in maintaining the balance of power between government, industry and citizens. It gave the Byzantine Empire it's long life and is doing well to keep Turkey in good shape today though the Turkish policy seams to be less potent then the Byzantine.
On the other hand, the socialistic idea has some functions that can actually benefit people. The health care idea is one of them. I guess the idea of government health care is not really unconstitutional, as long as the funds are obtained through constitutional means, which may actually be possible given where technology has gone. Give you an idea, get rid of income tax and the value and availability of money will increase to vast but possibly unpredictable portions since money ultimately pays only for human effort and the more that can be accomplished with less human effort, the more available the resources and the less they will cost. This may result in more importation with a higher dollar value, thus, we basically exchange the amount of money the government makes for a more powerful currency. Whether or not it will have the potency to make free government health care possible, I do not know, and I doubt you do either.
However, the government does not swear an oath to take care of everyones needs, so they have the right to decline this role. The only responsibility the government has is to uphold and protect everyones rights. Anything beyond that is either complimentary or overstepping their bounds, which is inevitably both with the way the current infrastructure is cut out.
As for the environment, the governments responsibilities include protecting peoples right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The right to life is an important one on the environment issues as if environment conditions pose a threat to the lives of Americans, then it becomes the governments responsibility to protect them. In the case of things like Global Warming, unlike many neo cons, I myself have done some research on the issue and what I have found is that there is clearly something going on that most likely poses a real threat to Americans along with the rest of the world in the future thus I think it would be foolish and neglectful to simply blow it off. On the contrary, I whole heartedly think the issue needs to be further investigated. HOWEVER, unlike many environmentalists, I am also aware that much graver and imminent threats against our species are afoot, and many (such as the asteroid threat) are not getting a fraction as much attention as things like Global Warming. This is also one of the reasons why I strongly believe in a space program. Looking at the craters on the moon and saying we don't need a space program is like being dropped off in a bad Iraqi neighborhood, looking at fresh bullet holes in cars and doors all over the place and saying you don't need a bullet proof vest.
None the less, how government deals with environmental issues needs to be handled very carefully as this is one of the best and easiest ways for snakes to sneak in and cause extreme damage.
The simple layout of an infrastructure, as I pointed out earlier, can be quite deceitful. Example: one of the easiest infrastructures to achieve total peace, happiness and prosperity is feudalism. All you need is one good dictator who loves his people, wants the best for them and understands how to get it and it's happily every after for that entire generation. It's actually happened a few times, hence the saying: "Long live the King"
Communism is another example, even though communist regimes are not entirely dictatorships (Soviet is the Russian word for: Council), there were some less known examples of USSR leaders who actually did some real good for their people. Also bear in mind that the Soviet Union was a very different place during the late 1940s and early 1950s then say, 1984 and 1985, curtacy of who was in charge. This is one of the major downfalls of Socialist systems, and yes, Communism IS a socialistic system (USSR stands for: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)
Under Socialism, the implementations of checks and balances on government are highly neglected (compared to stuff like Libertarianism) making the conditions of the nation almost entirely a matter of who's calling the shots.
In any case, both die eventually at the hands of human nature. Socialism offers between little and no incentive to be productive thus the system collapses under it's own weight and people in libertarian societies start to abuse freedom as soon as they get it by infringing on the liberties of others while crying about their own liberties being stomped in which case the people battle their way back in to a now well deserved state of bondage where our species has spent a great deal of it's existence and apparently doesn't have the capacity to live without.
Apparently mankind is a bunch of wolves running in packs, following the leader. Perhaps that's why the Byzantine Empire lasted so long and was so successful during it's life. Even when it came time to revolt and cut down the power holders, it was done with human wolf packs.
First off, I am going to start with evaluating a recent conversation we had as a starting point, so trust that I am going to get deeper and go on to other things.
I did some searching on Ron Paul and the subject of racism, and found nothing to prove this case. I found plenty on the idea of things like speaking against the American Civil War and special services towards blacks as well as the problem with black crime rates, but these prove nothing except that the man is a realist and paying attention. For starters, the Civil War was not so simple, and certainly not about slavery. The propaganda and motivations behind the civil war were very similar to the Invasion of Iraq.
I myself have come across plenty of Blacks (and all but a few were in the south) who spoke much more highly of the confederate cause then the Union, often noting the fact that slavery was legal in some places clear in to the 20th century, and in some theoretical views, up until recent history (so much for the war effort) let alone the fact that the rest of the civilized world managed to abolish slavery WITHOUT having to go to war.
On the criminal subject, it really is true that black people make up a very large portion of people not just in prison, but those who are true legitimate criminals, to a degree that stands out among other races. This is not about the black race though, it's about how the black culture is being driven. In other words, there are people out there who are working (whether they intend for the result or not) to keep the overall black CULTURE among the low life crowd. There are many things that are being done that get these results, one of the most obvious is this well known "poor me" theme that has the black population thinking that the white people of today (who largely never persecuted blacks and are beyond even being able to understand the racist mentality) are somehow responsible for crimes against their ancestors and therefor them, and think that the white man now owes the black man something. This is not only a volatile way of thinking but also goes directly against the teachings of the greatest black civil rights leader of all time; Martian Luther King Jr. As we all know, his legendary speech did not include: "I have a dream that future white generations would pamper the future black generations for what our persecutors have done." No, his speech revolved around equality between whites and blacks to where no one worries about who's of what race when they interact. Though this theme has plenty of popularity among all races, I have seen far more support of it from this generation of white people then black. Trust me, I have been around, and it has proven very clear everywhere I have gone, even in the more hardcore ghetto and redneck areas, that disrespect for Martin Luther King Jr.s Vision is by far the No.1 thing separating the blacks and whites today. One example, when I lived in Florida, one of the owners of the company that I worked for was a self-made black man, and one of his employees was the son of a high-ranking KKK leader and was raised by clansmen, and despite the black guy being well aware of the white mans upbringing, the two of them got along very well and were friends on and off of the job.
We can wish all we want about who owes who what, but the bottom line is that until the Black culture begins building self-dignity and responsibility, there will always be diversity between whites and blacks, mind you what such behavior is doing to those in the south who are trying to overcome racist upbringing.
Again, this is simply reality and the way things are. The criminal culture among blacks only makes me angry at those who are pressing it. I am really saddened by it. It's not helping the black people or whites at all. When I was a child, I lived in south Alaska which had very few black people. Because of how scarce they were, it was always a treat to see them. The impression it had on me was a positive outlook on racial differences. In other words, I think racial differences are a good thing and make man more interesting. I also have allot of No.1s among black people. My favorite school teacher growing up, and the only one I still talk with is a black man, the closest girl I ever came to dating was a Black girl (in a backwood redneck town mind you) and one of my favorite movie actors is Morgan Freeman and one of my favorite Civil Rights Activists who's cause I have been championing throughout this letter is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Don't think for a minute that people don't prefer dignity when they taste it. When I first moved in to this neighborhood, the problems here were FAR worse then they are now, fist fights every other day, robberies all the time constant domestic violence and the list goes on. Upon my arrival, the first reaction I got from my neighbors was competitive, as if being an experienced craftsman and researcher made everyone feel less on top of the mound so to speak, but I used my knowledge, talent and experience to help them, educate them, admitted when I made a mistake or didn't have the answers and was always ready to prove my case without playing the ego game. I treated everyone with dignity and respect, and encouraged them to do the same. Thus far, the number of creeps visiting this neighborhood has gone down by at least 1/3 (and you can check that with your other next door neighbor and the guy across from me), as bad as the screaming and hollering still is, it has gone down dramatically (again, you can check our "sane" neighbors on that) and many of the creeps who DO come around have cleaned up their acts quite a bit, even turned their behavior over in one or 2 cases. Bottom line, things are slowly but surly getting better, and it's showing others respect and encouraging them to have and show some dignity that is making the difference. Having spent the second half of my childhood and 2/3 of my adult life in bad neighborhoods, I have found the dignity theme to work best with the black culture and has turned countless thugs in to decent people and true friends.
Now, on to those other matters. The enlightenment is a very important thing to study. It's the larges and probably the most important thing you can study about regarding political dynamics of the modern world. Basically all of the modern political systems are based to some degree on concepts brought about during the enlightenment. To give you a little background, the enlightenment was basically the movement in Europe that resulted in moving away from monarch and religious rule and gradual replacement of it with ruling bodies and less superstition based legal systems. It is traditionally taught that the enlightenment began in the 1700s though to be realistic, it actually started in the 1400s, certacy of the Hungarian king: Matthas Corvinus who began to open up to science and technology, which his nearby enemies (the Ottoman Empire) were well incorporating and his father: Janos Hunyadi, who taught a bunch of slaves and peasants how to use mandatory work tools (like pitchforks for instance) as highly potent combat weapons and sent them home to their masters throughout Europe following their victory at Nandorfehervar (where San Juan Capistrano, a church reformer, led and inspired many of them) resulting in a ruling class who was cautious about messing with their slaves, having defeated the most powerful army in the world with tools they were useless at home without.
However, the enlightenment was a threat to western powers so it remained somewhat underground with occasional successes (like abolishing of the Witch Hunts in the 1600s) and boomed beyond anyones ability to suppress during the 1700s though enlightenment idealists continued to be broadly persecuted in western culture to this very day.
Many of the ideas of the enlightenment had been tried BEFORE it started, such as religious freedom, which was being practiced by none other then the Muslims, who provided sanctuary for Jews and pagans during the inquisitions, and the implementation's of a civilian suppression function (same thing the American Right to bear Arms is) that served as one of the 2 main factors that gave the Byzantine Empire it's long life and long periods of holding lots of territory (the other being that they concurred through persuasion rather then by force when they could.
Mind you that there were some new ideas that sprouted between the mid medieval period through the late renaissance period that sounded great on paper but crashed and burned when put in to practice. The 2 most famous were Machiavelli's philosophy and that of Carl Marx. For Marx, we can at least credit to him that socialistic government had not been practiced before, at least, any form like his proposal. Machiavelli on the other hand proposed what many argue today is the perfect political concept despite the fact that shortly before he introduced it, a perfect example of his philosophy had already been tried and was not only short lived but was a horrible disaster, that being Vlad the Impaler's infamous reign of brutality.
Though some would argue that the socialistic idea is part of the enlightenment (which it DOES offer some interesting and possibly good ideas) it's main fault is lack of defense against abuse which has been proven in action over and over again throughout the 20th century and beyond. Sadly, history to this day shows that at some point governments will use and abuse every bit of power you give them, and one of the important factors that sets model enlightenment law systems (like the US constitution) apart from things like the socialistic ideal is that model enlightenment legal systems are carefully designed in defense against abuse of power, which is typically a No.1 priority. The hard concept here works like the science of sword smithing. If too hard, it will be brittle and break. If too soft, it will not hold an edge long and may be easily destroyed. You must strike a careful balance between these two factors for which there IS NO perfect answer. The same is true with government. If you have no government, you have anarchy and no one wants to live in such a state. With too much government power or dangerously displaced power, the government can become very dangerous and abusive to it's citizens and make the people worse off then if they DID live in anarchy as we have seen over and over again. A balance must be stricken to minimize the damage, which can be tricky. For instance, depending on the conditions of the areas, tossing out all gun control laws MAY result in an increase of violent crime in some areas though we have yet to see the presence or absence of gun laws dramatically affect violent crime rates in this country (though both sides of the argument attribute changes in violence to the results in changing of gun legislation when research just about always reveals that the change in crime was the result of something else. However, if you consider a bunch of armed and unintimidated citizens surrounding capitol hill and removing the war conspirators following the decision to invade Iraq (the soul purpose of the 2nd amendment), you can only imagine how many lives might have been saved on BOTH sides.
Actually, this is one of the areas where I wonder about liberals, as the 2nd amendment was designed for their defense as well as everyone else's and is one of the few areas in the constitution that everyone (except for control freaks) benefits from and should be in total agreement on but that's beside the point.
I am not going to try and tell you what is the perfect balance between government, industry and citizens as this, like sword making, is a subject that there simply is no straight answer to. From an American perspective, if you believe in oath and contract, then you HAVE to stick to the constitution. Everyone who goes in to office, whether politician, soldier or police officer, swears an oath to uphold and protect the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The US constitution was written as an agreement between the people to be able to be changed under certain conditions which require intense investigation of the cause among many other precautions so that nonsensical laws are not just tossed out there because someone FEELS like they are a good idea. The proposition must be carefully examined, investigated and basically the whole of the country has to agree on it.
Honest people make loyalty to contract an important factor in their principals and if such people want to change the constitution to make the world a better place, they will do so according to the contract that all citizens live by and all government officers have sworn to follow and defend. The contrary is this "end justifies the means" theme of sidestepping the will of the people to sneak some new law on the books without allowing it to be studied and examined to find out if it even gets the results that it's supporters want. Believe me, as a machinist, inventor and engineer, the way things look and seam like they will work and the way they actually do work are very often, possibly more often then not, very different with very intricate little factors that you become exhausted trying to notice and keep up with, and law is no different. The ultimate purpose of law is results. If a law is not getting the intended results, then it's pointless and foolish to continue.
You may be surprised to hear this, but I myself think the constitution has it's problems even today. One of the biggest is that I believe that one critical thing missing is an uprise policy, that being, a list of conditions for which it is mandatory that the state police, militia groups and citizens alike should rise against the government (including other state governments when need be) and restore lawful order. In other words, I believe that some "must act" conditions should be attached to the 2nd amendment. At first glance, this actually looked like a somewhat bad idea to me but looking at history, this function dependably proved to be extremely potent in maintaining the balance of power between government, industry and citizens. It gave the Byzantine Empire it's long life and is doing well to keep Turkey in good shape today though the Turkish policy seams to be less potent then the Byzantine.
On the other hand, the socialistic idea has some functions that can actually benefit people. The health care idea is one of them. I guess the idea of government health care is not really unconstitutional, as long as the funds are obtained through constitutional means, which may actually be possible given where technology has gone. Give you an idea, get rid of income tax and the value and availability of money will increase to vast but possibly unpredictable portions since money ultimately pays only for human effort and the more that can be accomplished with less human effort, the more available the resources and the less they will cost. This may result in more importation with a higher dollar value, thus, we basically exchange the amount of money the government makes for a more powerful currency. Whether or not it will have the potency to make free government health care possible, I do not know, and I doubt you do either.
However, the government does not swear an oath to take care of everyones needs, so they have the right to decline this role. The only responsibility the government has is to uphold and protect everyones rights. Anything beyond that is either complimentary or overstepping their bounds, which is inevitably both with the way the current infrastructure is cut out.
As for the environment, the governments responsibilities include protecting peoples right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The right to life is an important one on the environment issues as if environment conditions pose a threat to the lives of Americans, then it becomes the governments responsibility to protect them. In the case of things like Global Warming, unlike many neo cons, I myself have done some research on the issue and what I have found is that there is clearly something going on that most likely poses a real threat to Americans along with the rest of the world in the future thus I think it would be foolish and neglectful to simply blow it off. On the contrary, I whole heartedly think the issue needs to be further investigated. HOWEVER, unlike many environmentalists, I am also aware that much graver and imminent threats against our species are afoot, and many (such as the asteroid threat) are not getting a fraction as much attention as things like Global Warming. This is also one of the reasons why I strongly believe in a space program. Looking at the craters on the moon and saying we don't need a space program is like being dropped off in a bad Iraqi neighborhood, looking at fresh bullet holes in cars and doors all over the place and saying you don't need a bullet proof vest.
None the less, how government deals with environmental issues needs to be handled very carefully as this is one of the best and easiest ways for snakes to sneak in and cause extreme damage.
The simple layout of an infrastructure, as I pointed out earlier, can be quite deceitful. Example: one of the easiest infrastructures to achieve total peace, happiness and prosperity is feudalism. All you need is one good dictator who loves his people, wants the best for them and understands how to get it and it's happily every after for that entire generation. It's actually happened a few times, hence the saying: "Long live the King"
Communism is another example, even though communist regimes are not entirely dictatorships (Soviet is the Russian word for: Council), there were some less known examples of USSR leaders who actually did some real good for their people. Also bear in mind that the Soviet Union was a very different place during the late 1940s and early 1950s then say, 1984 and 1985, curtacy of who was in charge. This is one of the major downfalls of Socialist systems, and yes, Communism IS a socialistic system (USSR stands for: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)
Under Socialism, the implementations of checks and balances on government are highly neglected (compared to stuff like Libertarianism) making the conditions of the nation almost entirely a matter of who's calling the shots.
In any case, both die eventually at the hands of human nature. Socialism offers between little and no incentive to be productive thus the system collapses under it's own weight and people in libertarian societies start to abuse freedom as soon as they get it by infringing on the liberties of others while crying about their own liberties being stomped in which case the people battle their way back in to a now well deserved state of bondage where our species has spent a great deal of it's existence and apparently doesn't have the capacity to live without.
Apparently mankind is a bunch of wolves running in packs, following the leader. Perhaps that's why the Byzantine Empire lasted so long and was so successful during it's life. Even when it came time to revolt and cut down the power holders, it was done with human wolf packs.
