More Shit

Further commentary on the shit thread of Demian's:

Finally getting back to this. What else am I gonna do when I'm down with a cold....

I was throwing the charity thing out there to counteract Demian's assertion that conservatives are cold-hearted SOBs. I've heard of a study (but haven't seen it myself) that indicates that conservatives, particularly midwestern ones, donate in much higher percentages than liberals, particularly the ones in California.

Charity for business may be, and I quote, "fucking bullshit", but it's not like that for me and, I'd wager, for most individuals. I feel like it's a social imperative: I am able to make a decent living developing HDDs because the social structures exist to support my specialization. As such, I can afford to donate from my salary to help as I see fit. On the other hand, much of my donations go to cancer research organizations.

The problem with sending aid to third world countries is that usually the dictator or whatever corrupt government is running things takes the spoils. How would you expect to "end poverty", though? There will always be poor people (despite what socialists will have one believe), and poor people beget more poor people. It's an unending cause, and to expect otherwise is purely unrealistic. Charity could be a means of preserving the status quo -- or it could be a good element to balance the tendency of things to go to shit. Your call. I prefer to believe that some good can be done. That said, some is never enough.

Part Two:

Your argument about Venezuelan gun possession is bogus, by the way. Check your facts -- most of those 6M guns are illegal. Right now only law enforcement can legally buy guns there. They just don't have the gestapo environment that the U.S. has. Americans are in general too cowardly to revolt, otherwise we would've had a new government after the Waco massacre.

If you're talking "socialism" like Chavez and dictators like him -- might as well be Hitler or Stalin -- then you're really nuts. Democratic socialism is at least plausible in that they believe that non-totalitarian government can help the underprivilieged. Communist socialism has been completely discredited. Communism itself is an ideal that unfortunately cannot be implemented practically: anyone with a modicum of logical thinking can appreciate that in order to administer things fairly a class must exist that decides those matters, and such an administration is prone to corruption. Plus, a populace that puts themselves in a position of servitude deserve whatever they get.

Small-time tyrant socialists like Castro (who vehemently denied being a communist before rising to power...now he's unabashed about it) and Chavez needed their backers to be armed in order to execute their "revolutions". When they're in power, though, they aim to crack down on access to weapons of resistance so as to enforce their monopoly of force. That's precisely why the people shouldn't trust a government that disbars the use of arms: it's the first step down the road to totalitarianism.

Part Three:

You're right about Jefferson's support of public education. I think his heart was in the right place, but the problem with government involvement in education is that they then gain the ability to brainwash future generations. In this regard, homeschooling is a vitally important option to maintain. I don't see myself doing it (my kids will go to a private school if I can afford it, otherwise I'll shoot for a charter school) but it's every right of a parent to avoid government-mandated crap. Regarding private versus public, I went to a Montessori for a year in elementary and learned more in that one year than in any other two years in the public school system. (This coming from a kid who's been an honors student since 3rd grade.) Regardless of the availability of public education, private will always be superior because of less red tape and the presence of a business mandate (if the kids don't do well, parents quit paying for it).

In any case, the mandatory public systems instantiated by the government, regardless of good intent, are villainous. People shouldn't be forced to comply with someone else's idea of how they should spend their income.

As for the infallibility of icons such as Jefferson, of course he was human and had his failings, such as keeping slaves. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, eh. Abraham Lincoln, however, revered, was not as great as some make him out to be: he was the first to make extensive use of Executive Orders, which are used for vile purposes today. I'm a bit torn on the Civil War: while slavery was definitely a bad thing, the right of the states to secede should have been inviolate. (Yes, I'm solidly in the camp of the Anti-Federalists.) Slavery was an institution at the time, and while now it seems very antiquated, the whole colonial "white man's burden" was at a time the prevailing thinking. Kind of like smoking used to be atarimae, a sharp contrast to how it is villified today. Then there's that piece of shit Franklin Roosevelt who devalued the dollar, outlawed private gold ownership, created a raft of socialist programs including Social Security, and managed to get us embroiled in WWII, which set the stage for the U.S.'s interventionist foreign policy in the 70 years since. (Yes the Japanese attacked the U.S., but not until after we embargoed them, basically cutting off the lifeline to an island nation, to limit their aggression. The embargo itself was tantamount to an act of war. I'm not an apologist for what happened, but it's important to look at the entire context of the conflict. Plus, we had intelligence that the Japanese were planning an attack. Just clarifying my views on WWII -- basically one that pisses off both Americans and Japanese!).

Information on Venezuelan gun laws is hard to find, but the sources I've been able to find indicate that private ownership isn't legal (for example). From the link, dated 2006.11.25:

However, the Chavez government has tightened gun laws. Once it was easier to take out a gun licence than a driving licence, but now only police officers can buy guns legally. In spite of this, there are a number of gun shops nationwide and the evident levels of gun ownership would suggest that the law is not being implemented effectively.