Do you understand what is meant by unregulated market capitalism? Do you know that it is destroying us? Are you aware of what the “freemarket” libertarian lobbyists have been up to since the eighties? Do you know that the capitalism monster MUST grow or it dies and do you realize that in order to keep it going we must continue to use up all our resources and keep the military industrial complex operating at a maximum and thereby destroy our environment utterly while conspiring to make sure that they are legally free to “market” all their poisons and chemicals - not only to us but to our children and then they talk about PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY?

Do you know that Ron Paul would like to eliminate all social services privatize everything and use all our tax dollars for so called "defense"? Do you even know what GATT, NAFTA and CAFTA mean? Do you know that this kind of thing is increasing the use of slave labor around the world PERFORMED BY DESPERATELY POOR INDIVIDUALS to produce all these cheap goods that overweight, ignorant, spoiled, tv watching, mall roaming, zombie like americans are slurping up at an amazingly deadly rate while they blather on about welfare queens who don’t have personal responsibility?

Are you aware that he is in favor of eliminating a woman's right to choose? - except of course for those women who have the necessary $$$$$ to go wherever it takes to make that choice (I assume that they have these $$$$$ solely because they are the blessed ones who possess PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY)?? These are the same kinds of arguments that the people in power have been using to take our freedoms away and control and dominate us in the pursuit of happiness in the form of bigger and bigger profits fo themselves for the past 30 years while our jobs are disappearing and we are being forced to take less and less while we pay out more and more for the basics? It is based on the notion that your personal fortune is what gives you freedom and the more wealth you have accumulated the more you are demonstrating personal responsibility. I wouldn't be fooled by this guy for one moment. People will say that he wants to eliminate the federal reserve - well how, may I ask does he intend to accomplish this? I’ve listened to his speeches and I haven’t yet heard his strategy. Can anyone please direct me to it? I am very interested. It is one of the things I am in favor of.

His notions about taxes and private property are totally absurd - saying that when you own property you just naturally are protective of the environment? Nonsense....

These wonderful folks who like to buy up lots of property so they can exploit it for their own private profit are called Developers and believe me they want it all - they do not leave one inch behind - not a forest or a hillside or a wetland - nada!. They cut down our forests - destroy our wetlands, are trying to privatize our water supply and have been succeeding to a certain extent and will continue until they have it all. You say there are laws to prevent this? Well they have the laws changed and do you want to know how they do it? Several means - propaganda in the form of convincing you to eliminate the government that gets in their way and lobbying the government to get their way. They say "these laws are obstructing my freedom to make a profit" so they are able through arm twisting and bribery (lobbying) to get these laws that restrict their freedom changed all with your approval because you hate big government and hate paying taxes. What do you think is happening all over the planet? It’s about resources - a precious little of which is left - and then they call themselves conservatives. What a joke!

Individual rights over community rights is a childish and a selfish notion and whenever anyone says otherwise they always bring up the idea that "socialist" governments are destroying the environment. All these idiots who call themselves self made men are so full of themselves. If it were not for the schools, the roads the public transportation systems, the libraries the post offices, the fire departments, the head start programs and on and on - all paid for by our tax dollars - I doubt that these so called self made men would have made it very far. They count on you buying into this simplistic thinking that gets you to worship such a person as Ron Paul and to actually think that he can save you?

Governments such as the Soviet Union failed because they allowed themselves to become police states and not because they had a philosophy of sharing the burdens and benefits equally among all citizens. America is a so called “free market capitalist country” and it is the single largest police state in the entire world. WAKE UP! The police are aiming their military weapons at you to keep you from exercising your right to protest, to maintain your privacy, to have the right to fair trial. Not at the real criminals who are at the bottom of it all. The notion that there is freedom here is an illusion - purposely created to fool you. Yes there is freedom but it is for the ruling class and the rest is an allusion. They have the entire population on a mighty treadmill - working hard to produce a lot of unnecessary crap that no - one really needs. Then they talk about “family values”.

Everything should be run by private companies huh? Great - like Enron and Halliburton and Blackwater and Walmart and all those lovely arms dealers and forest destroyers. Do you realize that before we had a fire dept. that if you didn't have the $$$$ to pay a private fire fighting company your house would just be allowed to burn down? Do you realize how dangerous this was to the whole community? Do you realize that the entire community suffers when we allow even one person to be suffering unnecessarily? People who believe in this market rules all - unregulated private industry can do it better idea, are simply not thinking very deeply about the whole thing - It is not a matter of not paying taxes - taxes pay for good things. It is a matter of what those taxes are used for and right now our taxes are basically being ripped off by global capitalists who push for more and more deregulation all the time so they can make bigger and bigger profits at the expense of the working and middle classes. And now hear comes Ron Paul the next chosen one to complete the process of deregulation.

The rulers must be salivating and writhing in happiness to hear everyone applauding this guys free market privatization ideas. Our government is only bad and useless to us because we fell asleep at the wheel a long time ago and allowed big business to take it over. We allowed corporations to have person hood. So now the government is not of the people, by the people and for the people but is actually of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy - all of whom sit on multiple boards of the biggest corporations (MONSTER PERSONS) in the world. Understand this: they got there by taking over our government while convincing the population, through the media that they own, (propaganda mills) that they needed to beware of the commies and socialists who were trying to take over our government. Sorry to say that the dumbed down american population bought it hook, line and sinker while sitting in front of the TV eating chips and candy bars and purchasing coca cola Barbie dolls and G.I. Joes for their kids to emulate.

So now the government is not of the people, by the people and for the people but is actually of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy.

Guess what? Everyone does not have the personality and the sensibilities of a business man. Some people are artists and philosophers and farmers and many other things - in fact we have created a society where only business is a respectable profession. A REAL job is in the “corporate” world - how about becoming a mortgage banker? Oh money is what brings respectability - it doesn't really matter where it came from or how it was gotten. The whole world is based on sales and it is hardly possible anymore to interact with each other without thinking about economics and the possibility that you may be able to make a sale here. A bunch of carnival barkers barking at each other all day long. What a drag!

Like it or not we are all part of a community and the real problems we have are the fact that americans so much resent helping each other out but are just fine with allowing corporate welfare and arms and chemical dealers to run our world. We are always looking for “leaders” to tell us how to think and what to do.

Americans are hopeless - they have lost the ability to think things through and they are so very selfish and childish. You live in a world with other people my friends and we have a responsibility to think about things other than our own personal wealth. Just for a moment let’s think about what is meant by having values - what is really valuable - I’ll let you figure it out but suffice it to say - it does not require having a mansion - driving a hummer or lumbering around in malls.

What we really need to do is take back our government and we need to strat by focusing on our own communities and our local governments. We need to begin to actually get to know each other what it means to live together as communities - not as individual little entities that care only about our own immediate gratification and to hell with the guy down the street. Most people really want this but have been trained by the Limbaughs and the Savages and O’Reillys aided by the Fallwells and Robertsons and the hideous Dominionists and mega churches (who have even taken over our military now)in league with the OWNERS OF EVERYTHING over the past 20 to 30 years to feel victimized by the ridiculous myth of the Welfare Queen. Well the biggest welfare queens of them all are private corporations and the very very wealthy who own everything.

We need to demand that we the people are the deciders about HOW our tax dollars are being spent (That's how we stay out of wars) and we need to get back to having a viable labor movement so that workers have some means to protect their rights. I’m sure Ron Paul is totally against anything like that socialist notion. Our right to strike has been all but destroyed in this country and that is a crying shame - the bar has been lowered and workers are having to pay more for basics like food, and housing while being forced to take lower and lower paying jobs. We blame the desperate people from south of the border who live in even worse oligarchies (but we are catching up fast my friends) for coming here and taking our jobs and yet we never enforce the laws that are on the books making it illegal to hire them - why? Because business interest love cheap labor. So racists idiots wind up dominating the whole conversation. We don’t want those brown people being able to bring their babies into our clinics for care. OH GET REAL..... I am so sick of racist america. It is really getting old.

We can decide - if we run our own government to leave the internet unregulated and free for all to use as a public resource while still regulating the behavior of big business can we not? We can make the internet a PUBLIC resource. We can decide to have a PUBLIC broadband system for all to use if we wish. We can decide to eliminate all advertising from the internet if we wish or we can have public access stations like the old public television that is community supported not corporate controlled as it has now become and just another propaganda tool for corporate america.

We need think about it and stop allowing the indoctrination that appeals to our selfishness and raciscm to control our ability to think critically about an issue as if we had a heart as well as a brain and a gut. We can also decide to limit the size of a business and we can bring back the notion of not allowing monopolies if we wish etc.
etc.

Yes I do care about the constitution but do keep in mind that it was written by a few wealthy MALE - WHITE - landowners and slave owners who believed that only a select few like themselves had the right to vote and were ok with the notions of slavery and genocide in order to increase their own wealth and power. THERE ARE LOTS OF PEOPLE STILL AROUND TODAY WHO FEEL EXACTLY THE SAME WAY. I am not against everything that Ron Paul is saying - I am definitely in favor of ending the war now and eliminating the Patriot act and all the other things that have been done to destroy our right to privacy and a fair trial etc. He is not the only candidate who is against the war - Have you ever heard of Dennis Kucinich?

Here is something to think about a little more deeply:

What does Quinney mean by "a modern welfare state?"

"As we understand it, 'a modern welfare state' is a society which provides all individuals a fair distribution of the basic resources necessary to maintain a good standard of living."

Jeanne and Susan responded on December 4, 1999:

Very good that you limit your responsibility for the interpretation with "As we understand it".

You've got part of this right. That is what is meant by the term when it is used in an apologetic theory, i.e., a theory that explains why, even though things may not be perfect, they're the best anyone could manage under the circumstances. Or, in other words, we should accept as reasonable and good the "status quo."

But Quinney is a critical theorist, and is more likely to criticize the status quo. So let's see if we can find the difference between a defense of the status quo and a critical response:

* The reference to providing distribution of resources for ALL individuals is in line with critical analysis, for critical theory stresses humaneness and the importance of the community of all persons.

* A problem arises with the words "fair distribution." Recall that some theoretical perspectives are opposed to the minimum wage, bringing into focus the definition of fair, and by whom, and for whom, and for what.

* You've kind of defined fair distribution in your own statement as the "basic resources necessary to maintain a good standard of living." Problem with that is that you make the assumption that a "good" standard of living is the standard to be maintained. Modern welfare states generally use a standard that is minimal. So I think Quinney would agree with your standard; but I don't think modern welfare states would. Here's why:

* What Quinney means when he uses the term "modern welfare state" is a state that ascribes to humanitarian values enough to provide minimal resources for survival to all, but views the provision of such minimal resources as a gift provided by the "successful" to the "unsuccessful" who have failed in the social system to which they all belong. Power, success, and the right to make such decisions is reserved to the "successful." Critical theorists, especially peacemaking theorists, see such a definition as structurally violent, harmful to the identity of the "unsuccessful" who receive this "bounty". So, for Quinney, the term "modern welfare state" is pejorative. He believes that resources should be fairly distributed as one of the basic goals of any community, not because some people are "unsuccessful" and therefore must be fed and clothed.

* The fundamental difference between Quinney's perspective and that of the "modern welfare state" is one of human dignity and the meaning of community and its responsibility to all.