Now Norm,

As a parent and grandparent, I know partly what George Will was talking about. He said, "I used to forbid my children to use it ["fair"] for fear they become liberals....". The standard response to a kid who has complained, "That's not fair..." is "Life's not fair." It is important, when you want to raise liberal children, to say this because otherwise they won't be prepared to deal with conservatives.

Why would anyone want to raise a 'liberal' or 'conservative' child? I can think of no better way to limit a child's potential.

That blows my mind, it really does. I can understand wanting to teach a child that life isn't necessarily fair, but to act like fairness is somehow a bad thing? Bwaaaaa...

Why would anyone want to raise a 'liberal' or 'conservative' child? I can think of no better way to limit a child's potential.

It just happens, Syngas. You teach a child to have compassion and to think - and, voilá, they turn out liberal. ☺ (You dropped they 'asshat' name at the wrong time, my friend.)

Ah... I see now.

So if I'm not a 'liberal', I cannot, by definition be compassionate or thoughtful.

I think you may be confusing the word 'liberal' with 'good' and 'conservative' with 'bad'.

This will break your heart

I think you may be confusing the word 'liberal' with 'good' and 'conservative' with 'bad'.

I think you may be confusing 'joke' with 'serious opinion' - not usually a problem you have, despite your conservatism. ;)

I thought that conservatives didn't like the 7 letter word for fear their kids would turn out to be whiny liberals.

"special"

Sorry Tim,

Please pardon my lack of humor today. I've got a date with the 'defendant' table today. Seems I was a bit to liberal with the gas pedal back in January.

It's not fair - there was no speed limit sign! Waaaah!!

Whenever I complained to my grandpa about life being unfair, I was treated to a short rant about his life. A childhood in the great depression, shipped off to WWII after that...I'm sure most of you know the routine.

He had an odd approach. If I kept complaining, or complained that his story was boring, he would calmly walk over to my nearest toy, and go lock it in the trunk of his car. He would then explain that it was to be donated to the salvation army. His logic: it wasn't bringing me any happiness or appreciation, so perhaps it would do more good for a child with real problems.

Food for thought.

This is to say, like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, I'm pretty sure "fair" is one of those pleasant legends passed along in order to make petulant children feel better.

Bonus question: name a law, of government policy that you view to be fair- fair to all people, mind you, not just the "good guys".

I don't generally like Will's politics, though he was very critical of Bush before the '04 elections, and more blatantly so than most of the media or the Congress. But it's hard to argue against any point he might be making when it was truncated into a sound bite, spindled and mutilated into a paper tiger. I assume that he was equivocating on the word or the popular misunderstanding of its application. The concept of fairness seems hard-wired into us, like justice, and when we realize that neither can be found very often in the real world, we invent gods (including God or The Rule of Law) to fill the gaps. I'd have been interested in hearing what Will was about to get at, and how Brazille responded.

I'd have been interested in hearing what Will was about to get at, and how Brazille responded.

I too have wondered how Brazile responded.

I wonder how a child brought up in the ghetto with one parent who is a prostitute and an absent father would describe what is "fair".

I wonder what the price of tea is in China.

Brazille didn't respond, but if you've had enough coffee to make it through, here's the whole show Will's 'fair' comment is about 11:15 into the show.

Syngas,

I'm getting ready to check out for the day and so I have no time to download and watch the full video and thus understand the context of what was said.

One thing I'll say though. Whenever I've been down and out in my past and in my youth, I had family and friends to help me. I think about those who don't have a support group, though, and realize that for those who don't have family and friends to support them, then we, as a society, should be there for them.

Sure, there are those who take advantage. But in our efforts to punish those who take advantage, let us not punish those who are doing their best, but who suffer because of their bad luck vis à vis what station in life that they were born into.

I couldn't agree with you more JoAnn. Where I think we differ is what we mean by the word 'society'. From my perspective, I think most Democrats believe society means government. I believe society means me. I don't know what the Republican Party believes anymore.

I don't think this is what Will was getting at, but he did make a pretty blanket statement.

Where I think we differ is what we mean by the word 'society'. From my perspective, I think most Democrats believe society means government. I believe society means me.

Syngas,

If "society" means 'you' or 'me', then that means that those who need our help have to depend on you or me having compassion. Government help means that the compassion is guaranteed, it is help from all of us, (whether "we"like it or not) and that those who need help don't have to cross their fingers and hope that people such as you and me will be there for them.

I prefer that help for those who need it is guaranteed by the "government", i.e. by all of us.

I don't know what the Republican Party believes anymore.

Hell, I don't know what the Democratic Party believes anymore.

What do we believe?

I don't think this is what Will was getting at, but he did make a pretty blanket statement.

Okay, I listened to what George Will said and he makes the same argument that you're making:

A) People should be responsible for their actions.

And then there's your argument (and the argument set forth by the majority of Conservatives)

B) People should be free to choose whether or not they want to help someone.

I say that some people attempt to be responsible but that their bad luck results in them having few options.

I say that we should help people who have been dealt a bad hand and that we should all join together in this endeavor. Yes, with taxes some people can just pay taxes and thus feel good about it. Others choose to help and could care less about taxes. But shouldn't we all join together to help those who are disenfranchised?

Yes!

But shouldn't we all join together to help those who are disenfranchised?

Syngas said"

yes

I know that you're a good egg Syngas. Perhaps, together, those of us from different camps will be able to join together and figure out how to best help the disenfranchised.

I may have spoken too soon. What do you mean by disenfranchised?

I may have spoken too soon. What do you mean by disenfranchised?

What I said above:

those who need help don't have to cross their fingers and hope that people such as you and me will be there for them.

The disenfranchised are those people who don't have the family and friends that most of us look to and rely upon to help uplift us in those times where we're in the gutter.

Okay, I'm for that.

You tell your friends to do it by proxy, and I'll join my friends and get my hands dirty.

Why not do it by "proxy" and get our hands dirty. Just do it.

That 'proxy' comment was meant to rustle your feathers JoAnn. I used to be pretty good at that. What happened?

I used to be pretty good at that. What happened?

Smart ass asshat!

"I prefer that help for those who need it is guaranteed by the "government"

yeah, you might say the government does a heckuva job helping people

A "government" run by people whose stated wish is to "reduce government to a size where it can be drowned in a bathtub" cannot be anything but a failure. Do we blame government for such failures, or the people who have been tasked to run and manage it, especially those who hold it in such disdain like the Bush administration?

I prefer to take heed to John Ralston Saul's excellent take on what government means in a democracy:

The most powerful force possessed by the individual citizen is her own government. Or governments, because a multiplicity of levels means a multiplicity of strengths.

The individual has no other large organized mechanism that he can call his own. There are other mechanisms, but they reduce the citizen to the status of a subject. Government is the only organized mechanism that makes possible that level of shared disinterest known as the public good. Without this greater interest the individual is reduced to a lesser, narrower being limited to immediate needs. He will then be subject to other, larger forces, which will necessarily come forward to fill the void left by the withering of the public good. Those forces will fill it with some other directing interest that will serve their purposes, not the larger purposes of the citizen. It would be naïve to blame them for occupying abandoned territory.

How then could individuals possibly replace government? In a democracy they are government.

Individuals do not beat large companies or defeat large armies. Why would one expect them to replace governments? The point is there will be a government as there always has been. People ask: What kind of government? How much government? I think the primary question is: Whose government? If individuals do not occupy their legitimate position, then it will be occupied by a god or king or a coalition of interest groups. If citizens do not exercise the powers conferred by their legitimacy, others will do so.

The citizenry might well wonder why they should put artificial limits on their only force. The power we refuse ourselves goes somewhere else. Yet no other legitimacy is capable of disinterest. If the citizenry agree to exclude themselves from any given area, they are automatically excluding the possibility that in that domain the public good could have any role to play.

It is therefore naïve or disingenuous for those leading the fight against government to suggest that society will be reinvigorated by smaller government. Responsibility will simply have been transferred to an equally if not more sluggish bureaucracy in the private sector. What’s more, by demonizing the public civil servant they are obscuring the matter of the citizen’s legitimacy and of the public good which only that legitimacy can produce. People become so obsessed by hating government that they forget it is meant to be their government and is the only powerful public force they have purchase on.

My point is that the individual and the government are linked together by an artery. If we act to sever that artery by replacing or opposing a central role for government, we cease to be individuals and revert to the status of subject. If democracy fails, then it is ultimately the citizen who has failed, not the politician.

Thanks Mat,

Honestly though, do you think the US is a democracy?

Um, last time I read the Constitution,it clearly indicated the USA is a democracy.

Why you would think otherwise--if in fact you do--is both sad and strange, and might in some way indicate your paranoid and misanthropic pathologies, Cory.

And if you don't think it's a democracy, then I must ask why do you so vehemently defend America as being so "great"? If we citizens are not electing our leaders and have some say in our governance, then we're a shitty country and lousy citizens for not exercising our rights granted to us under the Costitution. And if some unseen power is denying us those rights, then perhaps you could point it out to me.

"then I must ask why do you so vehemently defend America as being so "great"?"

Quote me.

As to why I don't think the US is really a democracy, George Washington said it best:

"All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They [political parties] serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.

"However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

Another Washington quote on the subject:

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty."

I don't think George Washington would be at all surprised at what the US has become.

But we are a democracy. We meet all the requirements of a democracy.

We freely elect our leaders. We have a Constitution with a Bill of Rights for all citizens, granting citizens the right to free speech, free assembly, due process, religious freedom, and many more.

At this point our democracy still works. It's crybaby defeatists, awash in apathy and laziness, who do this republic harm, not "special interests," "party politics," and such. It's people who fail to perform their basic civic duties, like voting, participating in the political process, serving their community, state, or nation, who do this republic harm.

What harms a democracy is apathy and laziness. Competing interests--party politics, partisan fighting, whatever--are a healthy way that a democracy affects change. Having rival factions in pursuit of self-interest and power is a good thing. It isn't healthy for everyone to agree, get along, and want the same things.

A democracy is about the balance, equilibrium, and compromise of competing interests. As long as the democratic process is there--and it is, we still all have the right to vote for our leaders and possess full privilege of all our rights granted under the Constitution--we live in a democracy.

Quote me.

Sometime you are so disingenuous it makes me think you might be mentally ill, or maybe you think we're all stupid. On this web page's comments threads on occasions too numerous to quantify, you've pointed your supercilious finger at people and castigated them for being "America-haters," "unpatriotic," and "anti-American" simply because they had the temerity to criticize the country or its leaders, or their policies.

Seriously, you give yourself far too much credit for your so-called intellectual skills. Your paranoia and misanthropy, coupled with your obvious defeatism and apathy, ring true just in your crybaby claim we don't live in a democracy.

You try to come across as clever and worldly, but it seems to me you're neither of these things. Moreover, if you REALLY feel democracy is dead in America, the fact all you do is bitch about it on a web page that isn't even yours speaks volumes about the effete nature of your character. If I thought democracy were in danger I'd fight for it. I'd take to the streets and kick some ass. But I don't feel democracy is dead or even that ill. It just needs more participation by its citizenry.

But, hey, that's just my opinion. Who the hell am I, after all? I’m a big fat nobody. But I don’t claim to love this country while at the same time whine it isn’t a democracy.

Does it have problems? Of course. Are there people and institutions seeking to usurp the power of the citenzry? Yes. Anyone who is anti-government in my opinion is anti-citizenry, and hence anti-democratic, and ultimately anti-American.

I must confess I've been rather harsh with you, Cory, both now and in the past.

But I am consistant and fair for the most part, even if I can also be a complete asshole.

But if my personal shots at you diminish my arguments, then I apologize. You've always engaged me with much less vitriol than I give in return, but I am a man of passion and idealism.

Are you a man of integrity Mat?