Friday, December 11, 2009

Hey Jim DeMint, what's so bad about empire?

Posted by Chris Haire on Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 8:49 AM

You can count me as one of the many who would like to see the GOP, and government in general, adopt more business-minded principles.

If it was up to me, all decisions made by our elected officials would be based on cost and cost alone. No rhetoric. No morality. No party line. Just money. Profit.

A war in Afghanistan. Not worth it. That is unless, you take into account the coming oil crisis. And quite frankly, we need our hands on as many pipelines as possible. I've watched Dune enough times to know that he who controls the spice controls the universe.

Incarcerating pot heads and minor drug offenders. Really, do we need to keep building prisons to house these guys? Seriously, I don't like the idea of paying for daycare for my own kid, much less somebody else's.

"I Believe" license plates, Christmas carols at schools, Intelligent Design in the classrooms. The courts have been pretty clear on these — and any legislator who pushes them in order to win the support of his constituents simply doesn't care about wasting taxpayer money. He is a douche. And a hypocrite.

Public education. Yeah, it's expensive. But the better it is, and the better educated the populace is, the better society as a whole is. Crime is tied to poverty, and poverty is tied to education. An educated populace is a productive populace. And when you're being productive, you don't have time to steal cars and break into your neighbor's house. At least not until your lunch break.

Now, ideally, the Tea Party should take a similar point of view. They claim to be all about the money. Time will tell. But already it's become clear that the religious fundamentalists who've helped marginalized the GOP, in some ways reducing it to a party of warmongers, anti-abortionists, and angry white guys, have already establish a foothold in the movement (Really, guys? The war on Christmas? That's so 2004.)

And that's a shame.

We can't continue to spend at the levels we do today and hope to remain prosperous. That is, unless we continue to expand the reaches of our empire.

See, an empire sustains itself by bringing in new territories, leveling new taxes, and, most importantly, increasing trade amongst its various holdings and making sure those pathways remain secure.

Now, Jim DeMint doesn't understand what we are. He still thinks the U.S. is a tiny isolated nation, and he's afraid that we're turning into a socialist one at that. And he's afraid that this socialism will rob us of our freedom. He's wrong. For one, capitalism isn't going anywhere. And two, what's so bad about empire?

An imperial government doesn't care what you do, as long as they get a few ducats in taxes. Taxes are just the price of business, whatever your business may be. It's like that fee you have to pay when you use an ATM that isn't at your bank. You may not like paying it, but dammit if the service isn't a lifesaver. Businesses have to be fairly compensated for providing transaction routes and governments have to be paid for making sure those routes are secure.

Just because the United States is an empire, and will continue to be, doesn't take away from the freedom that you and I possess. In order to survive, empires have to be tolerant of its citizens; they have to let the people buy and sell, feast and fondle what they want and when they want it. That's just business. That's freedom.

And what's the function of business but to run free. To get bigger. To grow. To bring in more revenue. To increase profits.

And that's more or less the direction the U.S. been heading since, well, we were founded, and it's not going to change. (Do I really need to list all the instances of our imperial expansion? The Louisiana Purchase, Florida, Texas, the West Coast, Alaska, Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, Iraq, Afghanistan ... hell, you can probably through Japan too. Any country where the U.S. is the standing army, that's ours and has nuclear weapons, for all intents and purposes, it's ours.)

So let's all raise a glass to the Pax Americana. The economy might stink right now, but business is good. And it's going to get even better.

Topics: National Politics
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Comments (7)

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Well said. I raise my glass in honor of our freedom to do so...

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Posted by Wabbits on December 11, 2009 at 9:16 AM

It's people like you, "educated" at my expense in the youth prisons we call schools, that continue to degrade our culture. You have obviously bought the long-established gunverment's line that anything it does is justified. If you are looking for a real education on what is right and wrong with the world check out lewrockwell.com.

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Posted by wilderness on December 11, 2009 at 9:34 AM

Sure, empires are great...until they collapse. Anyone remember Rome?

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Posted by kennedycolev on December 11, 2009 at 10:16 AM

Rome, eh. It only took it 1000 years to collapse. And then additional 500 years before its offshoot, the Byzantine Empire, collapsed.

1000 years, most of it of prosperous, ain't bad in my book.

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Posted by chrishaire on December 11, 2009 at 10:59 AM

Yes, education is clearly bs, I totally and completely non-sarcastically agree with "Wilderness" and think that if we would all just get out of school we could totally kick the collective asses of the whole world. Now, it wouldn't be our government military with which we'd be kicking asses, or even driving on our government roads. No we'd be wagon-training in our SUVs through drainage and power easements... but I swear to god when we'd get there we'd totally be kicking major ass.

Education is nothing but indoctrination into books, and we all know those are totally traps.

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Posted by factoryconnection on December 11, 2009 at 1:56 PM

You write as if you are from the dark ages and haven't yet learned that the government schools are only good at teaching "social justice and proselytizing for homosexual behavior. You know what I mean, "Take my money and give it to whom ever you think is more socially deserving".

Hide the fact that homosexuals are 50 time more likely to contract HIV. Keep secret that 85% of syphilis are among homosexual practitioners. Don't mention that with homosexually come increased risks of anal cancer, increased Chlamydia trachomatis, Increased Guardia Lamblia, increased herpes Simplex virus, Increased human Immunodeficiency virus, Increase Human Papilloma Virus, Increased Gonorrhea, increased Microsporidia, increased Viral Hepatitis types B&C, and let us not forget increased Syphilis. The list goes on and on. See Dr John R. Diggs Jr's writing for more information on the effects of homosexual behavior. The good Doctor also points that while smoking may shorten ones life by 4 years, Homosexuality shortens ones life by approx 25 years on average.

I am sure it in the best interests of our young school children to indoctrinate them in the virtues of engaging in Homosexual behavior. I guess we could consider such instructions as a kind of population control.

If the future homosexuals were smart they would sue the Government schools for all the future pain and suffering they will experience, the result of teaching the virtues of the homosexual alternative life style for the past 5 or 10 years.

In case you haven't noticed the quality of our high graduates is getting worse each and every year. teaching a little Intelligent Design theory could only help and certainly would never harm our poor government school students.

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Posted by tfagan on December 12, 2009 at 6:55 PM

Does anybody else find it amusing that in the comments section for an article advocating, in an extremely simple-minded sort of way, for the United State's continued imperialistic policies, the debate has focused on, um, education. Awesome.

Oh. And buy gold.

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Posted by chrishaire on December 13, 2009 at 9:41 AM
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