Grover Norquist is literally retarded.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I'm talking about "government", you silly person.

[Kuciwalker]

Do you not think that the additional bureacracy and social programs would increase the amount of government to greater than the sum of competing factions who have limited control over the areas and people they are in charge of?!

No, since the relevant criterion is, roughly, the degree of individual liberty (which incorporates the tax burden) and it is observably the case that areas with a more powerful central authority than Somalia and less powerful local factions frequently have much more individual liberty.

[Kuciwalker]

I'm talking about "government", you silly person.

I'm not the one using a narrow dictionary definition of government. I'm using a broader notion that incorporates the essential features being discussed.

[Kuciwalker]

If you really think that Norquist's sin is that he uses the word "government" when he should use a slightly different word for the notion I've described, then OH NO HE USED THE WRONG WORD! How dumb he is!

[kentonio]

I'm not the one using a narrow dictionary definition of government. I'm using a broader notion that incorporates the essential features being discussed.

In other words like Norquist you are not using the word in its strict 'What a word actually means' sense, but rather in the looser 'making **** up to mean whatever you want' sense.

Grover Norquist is not the only person who is literally retarded. Several of you now share this dubious honour.

[BeBMan]

In the good old days, people were moving to Cuba when they didn't like stuff. Or away from it.

Or between the two Hermanias, in those glorious days when we had two of them.

[-Jrabbit]

I opened this thread hoping for details of the medical diagnosis on Grover Norquist's intelligence.

I'm an optimist that way...

[kentonio]

Norquist isn't suggesting we reduce the size of the central government to the point that armed gangs take over the streets, you ******

It's like you think we can either expand the government, or we become somalia, and you don't even recognize this blatantly obvious false dichotomy.

What exactly do you think people do when they don't have enough money to support themselves and their families? When they can't feed their children or pay for their medical treatment, or keep a roof over their heads? The reason your political views are so out of touch, is that every time you seem to miss that people will only tolerate a situation up to a certain point, and then all bets are off. People will tolerate a moneyed upper class until those rich folks get too greedy and the poor get too hungry, then crime rockets and people start looking at radical options.

The current GOP field is ****ing insane in large part because they have forgotten this. For a stupid ideological stance they are willing to shout for the poor to suffer and the rich to be ever further coddled. While America may be too civilized for actual revolution these days, you can bank on a huge surge in crime at the very least if the GOP get their way. People simply will not let their children go hungry while a tiny group feast themselves at their expense.

[BeBMan]

And that is all completely irrelevant to Norquist's criticisms of state overreach, which are entirely based on the use of force to curtail individual liberty and have nothing to do with national sovereignty.

He says that Somalia (not anything else) has competing governments or a "series" of govs. If that's meant as some kind of metaphor it would work somehow, yet in the debate of small gov vs. big gov it is totally absurd to compare a failed state with warring factions to "big gov" in the sense of overregulation or restriction of liberties due to "too much state/gov".

[Aeson]

Loin has already won this thread twice.

-------------------

Things Norquist says governments should do:

"I think government, up to a certain point, advances human liberty. Police, a judicial system and an army to prevent people from stealing stuff out of your car, out of your house, knocking you on your head or the Canadians coming over and invading the country..."

Canada could whoop their asses... as such his argument is for a stronger government or governments in Somalia whatever their jurisdiction(s) may be.

[Dinner]

[Hauldren Collider]

What exactly do you think people do when they don't have enough money to support themselves and their families? When they can't feed their children or pay for their medical treatment, or keep a roof over their heads? The reason your political views are so out of touch, is that every time you seem to miss that people will only tolerate a situation up to a certain point, and then all bets are off. People will tolerate a moneyed upper class until those rich folks get too greedy and the poor get too hungry, then crime rockets and people start looking at radical options.

The bourgeoisie better start watching out for the starving proletariat. Poverty in the US is so bad, it could be the October Revolution--American style!

The current GOP field is ****ing insane in large part because they have forgotten this. For a stupid ideological stance they are willing to shout for the poor to suffer and the rich to be ever further coddled. While America may be too civilized for actual revolution these days, you can bank on a huge surge in crime at the very least if the GOP get their way. People simply will not let their children go hungry while a tiny group feast themselves at their expense.

Where are these starving children? I don't think there is any starvation anywhere in the United States. Aren't we discussing in another thread how poor people are overweight in the US because of lack of government assistance? How can they be both starving and fat? Fascinating.

[Hauldren Collider]

You know, it's as if Kentonio doesn't realize that the Republicans in congress were elected by a majority of voters in their districts. These voters can't all be "the 1%", can they? That would seem to defy arithmetic.

[Dinner]

"Somalia has competing governments, they're called clans, and they shoot each other," he said. "They have a series of governments that claim complete control over your property and your life. They have a whole bunch of governments, people acting like governments, people with a legal monopoly on force and they compete with each other. Not compete to provide better services, compete to be in charge of pushing you around."

Yeah, and that is the natural result of having no government. Survival of the fittest, no law & order, but... HEY... At least there is no evil, big, bad government telling you want to do, right? Mother ****er needs to die in a fire for his stupidity.

[Mojotronica]

Probably be something more along the lines of a series of bridges collapsing, rather than starvation.