Then you don't know how to read.

And you don't know how to conduct yourself among your equals.
Ron

Well, it's not often that I am accused of being a family-, baby-, humanity-hating state lover.

I guess the best approach when confronted with such false accusations is to roll over and play dead, according to you.

This is the kind of talk that typifies this so-called education forum, making it not an education forum, but an attack venue for anyone who disagrees with the predominant political views expressed here, the "taxation is theft" mantra from lewrockwell.com, the no government is best lines, the classical liberalism is the only legitimate government lines or the liberal fascism a la Jonah Goldberg NeoCon arguments you like to try to pass off as history. Or, your contention that the War on Terror is legitimate because the Muslims have another caliphate in mind, something that is certainly antithetical to John Taylor Gatto's views on war and peace.

You have attacked me with one false accusation after the next and rarely relent, making things up that I have never stated or implied. Yet you claim that it is I who don't know how to conduct myself, never failing to accuse me of ad hominem argument when you are the expert in that area.

Your biases are showing every time you speak, yet you claim to be a neutral observer, the authoritarian overseer of a venue that is a platform for nothing more than right-wing political rhetoric under the guise of education.

Louise,

The funny thing is: You love it.

You're addicted to this forum. It's why you keep coming back after your "vacations."

Personally, I find it very interesting that this has been going on here for almost a decade, with virtually the same people. Heck, that's longer than most marriages last these days.

Think of it as a family -- a dysfunctional family, to be sure, but a family nevertheless. I have a feeling that if we were ever to meet we'd greet each other with big hugs and laugh over some of the silly, nit-picking bickering that has gone on here over the years.

Louise, et al, just so you know ... I love you all and enjoy popping in here now and then to join the "family" discussion and occasionally to add my 2 cents.

I can't think of anyplace else on the 'net where a phenomenon like this has occurred with this kind of longevity. Can you?

Dave

Now, Dave, don't try to pick another fight.

I love Gatto's work, but I'm not in love with the altercations. But as someone here who thinks taxpaying is necessary and is perceived as a dread "libruhl," I am inevitably the target of political hostilities. My hope is ever communication despite the hostility, but that never seems to happen.

Thank you for your good wishes!

Louise

>>>> I am inevitably the target of political hostilities.<<<<

Poor Babu, ever the victim of those who just want to be left alone.

And since you claim you just want to be left alone, you claim that I am a state-loving hater of babies, families and humanity. A commie creep. Anyone who believes in taxation HAS TO BE commie, according to you.

You may not realize it, but your own opinions identify you as a very hostile, angry and rude person, with zero power of persuasion, crap and crud being the words you rely on to try to communicate whatever notions you think are important.

If you want to be left alone, just ignore my posts!

>>>And since you claim you just want to be left alone, you claim that I am a state-loving hater of babies, families and humanity.<<<<<

You call unborn humans "tissue" and justify their slaughter. You consider traditional parents child abusers and call for the stripping of their parental authority. You justify state dumbing down for "the poor", as if they are not the ones hurt most by the gulag. You deny the rights of people to associate freely, have their own beliefs and traditions and religions. You deny the rights of people to defend their private property and rights, calling it "privatized force" while seeing not a thing wrong with government thugs brainwashing children, stealing the fruits of the individuals labor and property as they see fit. That is why I have come to the conclusions I have.

>>>> A commie creep. Anyone who believes in taxation HAS TO BE commie, according to you.<<<<

Did you understand Tuckers point? There IS NO THIRD WAY. There is state aggtression and there is liberty. Choose. You can't choose state aggression and call it liberty. You can't give the state a monopoly on violence against people and absolute power and then claim you are not a statist. Your repeated attacks against individuality and alternate ways of living to state enslavement reveal your devotion to the state. And ultimately that is totalitarianism, ushered along via your beloved dialectical "dialogue".

>>>>You may not realize it, but your own opinions identify you as a very hostile, angry and rude person, with zero power of persuasion, crap and crud being the words you rely on to try to communicate whatever notions you think are important. <<<<<

I am not hostile in the least, except to evil ideas. And anyone who does not reject evil in the most plain and strongest terms is in league with it. Your repeated attempts to paint me as an angry nut are transparent and an attempt to smear ME rather than admit the reality of your worldview. I don't like MANY, MANY of the terms and stylistic "flourishes" you use, but they are the terms you use. The point is, do I understand you? As long as I do, the terms you use are your business. You have done the same thing to Bobby, ridiculing her unique writing style. You like to revert to critiquing literary style and vocabulary when you can't defend what you are promoting. It is a dodge.

>>>>If you want to be left alone, just ignore my posts!<<<<

Been there, done that! You just started posting ABOUT me in posts to others.

I never called the unborn "tissue." If PZ Myers did, level your complaint at him. You, of course, are devoted to life in the fetal stage. But after a child is born he or she can starve or die, makes no difference to you.

I have said repeatedly that the ONLY reason I think schools are needed for the poor is that they lack the wherewithal to homeschool. You have NO ANSWER to this, other than to say I should personally start a daycare center to help them, which is a non-answer.

You know what? I don't care about your conclusions. I am not denying anyone the right to associate freely. I am denying your right to exclude other people on the basis of their beliefs or other qualifiers that you believe make them unfit to associate with. I believe that public places like parks and libraries and roads are good. You do not. You have no basis for saying any of the words you have just written, trying to paint me as a totalitarian.

Further, when, where have I ever said that I thought it was right or good or just for "government thugs to brainwash children"? I haven't. Nor do I consider most teachers thugs, as you apparently do.

Nor have I ever said this:



If you don't like the tax code, rewrite it. Get a lawyer to help you instead of trying to blame me for your tax rate.

There is no third way except your third way, which is privatized force, in any amounts needed to enforce your beliefs in a privatized world.



No dodge involved. One might think on an education forum people might try to communicate in a way that made it easy for others to understand instead of relying on slang to get their points across. You apparently think slang is acceptable, especially when you are attempting to defame and ridicule and tarnish another person as "evil." As if you even knew what the word meant.



Then why not try it again? In the past when this happened, you were all over the forum involved in every discussion imaginable. It was not unusual or breaking any rules for me to refer to the notions you had just recently posted.

Louise,

I'm thinking there's a bit of a disconnect in your comments about compassion. You accuse anyone of the conservative bent of being uncompassionate because we don't advocate government theft in order to fund welfare programs.

What you are missing is that without government stealing from us we'd have more money to donate to charitable organizations. Many studies have been done proving that conservatives and Christians, even those who are on the poor side, give more to charity as a percentage of their income, BY FAR, than liberals do.

I'm wondering if you would be honest enough to tell us how much you give to charitable organizations and what percentage that is of your disposable income. And, please, giving to PETA, or Planned Parenthood or Green Peace doesn't count. What I mean is giving to organizations that do the same for people as government does with our taxes.

If you are willing to tell us about your charitable giving, I'm betting that others here would be willing to also ... and let the chips fall where they lie. We'll see who really has compassion for the needy.

I'm warning you, however, that if I were to tell you about our charitable giving, and the percentage it represents of our income, you would forever be ashamed about accusing our family of being uncompassionate because we don't support government theft.

Louise, how about it? Let's see you put your accusation to the test.

Dave

I never accused you or your family of lacking compassion. Nor was I aware, however, that you considered taxation theft.

As it stands now, the government welfare-warfare state is premised on both welfare and war, while the military-industrial complex gets rich off so-called defense spending and programs are needed to help people who are unemployed based on the intentional unemployment that is built into the system.

The scare and fear tactics that businesses rely upon to keep workers worried about their next paycheck, to keep them cowed and obedient and compliant. This situation would not have to exist if our governing structures were transformed to accommodate independent livelihoods and the concept that small is beautiful or less is more, as Gatto says, not that bigger is always better or that the unbridled consumerism is something good, based on endless growth.

Your question is reasonable, but I do not choose to reveal the proportion of my discretionary income that I give to charitable organizations on a public forum. Some years my donations are much larger than others, since my income varies from year to year. But in any case, this is a private matter that I see no reason to make public.

Also, I don't doubt that you are generous in your charitable giving and made no accusation about your family.



And what about taxes that go to fund wars? You do not object to paying those? The drone attacks on innocent civilians in other countries, the slaughter of over 1 million Iraqis and the displacement of several million Iraqis who have had to flee their homes and become refugees?

I don't understand your reasoning here, except that, like Ron, you must fear aggression from people you believe want to force others to live under a caliphate. This makes little sense to me and I do not see it aligned with compassion. Saddam was captured and put to death. What will become of what is left of this war-torn nation now and all the civilians who live there?

Louise,

Throughout the years, time and again, we've endured insinuations from you that because we oppose taxation we want to throw widows out into the streets to beg for a living, we want to deprive children of their milk and cookies, and many of the other false accusations that liberals like to hurl at conservatives.

So, I merely wanted to know if you put your money where your mouth is, or if, like most liberals, you merely talk a good talk, but insist on others involuntarily ponying up the dough for your causes.

That's all.

Dave

Apparently you oppose taxation for some purposes but not others.

You asked me a personal question about my personal contributions to charities, yet I am not supposed to ask you any questions? Is that how it works?



Believe me, over the years I have contributed both time and money to causes, not expecting other people to pony up the dough for them. If you expect me to say which ones and have such causes trashed here, along with nearly everything else I say, I am not about to do that.

Some of the causes I have supported with my own time and money are in opposition to the government coercion that I am continually accused of supporting here. So, Dave, please don't try to pull a "holier than thou" in the compassion department, based upon what you think "most liberals" do.

Louise,
I am not the only one that notices how you insist that you are conservative or centrist but continuously resort to very left positions.
Ron

Louise,

I'm happy to hear that you put your money where your mouth is ... even though I probably would not care for the causes that you support.

But, I believe I've made my point. You should stop haranguing others for opposing taxation with the accusation that we are uncompassionate because we are conservatives.

Dave

Dave,

Are you against all taxation as theft or do you only consider tax dollars allotted for social programs as theft?

And btw, I think you would care for some of the causes I support. Contrary to the consensus views of some people here, I am not afraid to support liberty in cases where the government denies it. I believe that exercising the rights of citizenship demands it.

This does not mean, however, that I am a libertarian. The libertarian position is so filled with contradictions that I find it nearly incoherent.

I am sorry you think that I have harangued people as lacking compassion BECAUSE they are CONSERVATIVES. I realize that generosity and concern for our fellows is not based on political ideology.

Louise,
"Are you against all taxation as theft or do you only consider tax dollars allotted for social programs as theft?"
When you take money from one person at the point of a gun to give it to another because you feel that is a good thing to do without any authorization in our Constitution I do not consider it theft - it is armed robbery.
If done at all it should be left to the States.
Ron

I was thinking the exact same thing a few weeks ago, Dave.

>>>>>I have not said how everyone else should live. You, however, have said people should live in covenant communities, based, according to you, on the ability to exclude those unlike themselves.<<<<

Do you understand what you have written?

In your first sentence you claim that you have not said how everyone else should live and also misrepresent my statements (I have never said that everyone SHOULD live anyway in particular, only that people have the right to live as they please as long as they do not aggress against others and that this could include covenant communities, clans, etc.).
In the next sentence you imply that there is something wrong with people wanting to freely choose their own associations, to have the liberty to select or avoid other relationships. Your second sentence negates your first sentence. Your second sentence says that there is something WRONG with people excluding "those unlike themselves" from contracted communities....effectively sayiong that you ARE saying how everyone else should live, that they MUST associate with people they'd prefer not to associate with or there is something wrong with them.

What's it to you who lives among who??

It's with your claim that government force is illegitimate, but that private force - to enforce covenant community living - is OK.

I defend pluralism. You defend exclusion.

In the past you have spoken against public zoning laws. Yet here it turns out you want to zone the world into privatized enclaves with KEEP OUT signs. A privatized world based on force and coercion.

Yet you see no contradictions here, only blissful living of like-minded people.

No. You stated that you are not saying how people have to live but you ARE.

>>>It's with your claim that government force is illegitimate, but that private force - to enforce covenant community living - is OK.<<<<<

I am not saying it is OK to force any kind of covenant on anyone. I am saying that is an option some might choose, just as they do now.

>>>>>I defend pluralism. You defend exclusion.<<<<

I am defending the right of free association. If that means excluding someone, then that is a right an individual has. You have no right to insist that someone associate with you, live with you, trade with you. The government forces associations illegitnmately when it chooses to among SOME people. Actually, I am the one defending pluralism and YOU are the one insisting that "we" ALL have to live a certain way, believing the same things, behaving the same way. And that is NOT "pluralism" OR diversity.

>>>>>In the past you have spoken against public zoning laws. Yet here it turns out you want to zone the world into privatized enclaves with KEEP OUT signs.<<<<

Yes. Private property is just that. Private and no one elses business unless their property use interferes with someone elses property right use of THEIR own. Zoning laws generally affect OTHER peoples property. Some people get governments to pass laws prohibiting what OTHER people do with their property. This can be done in a market anarchy, of course, as long as everyone agrees to and contracts for it.

>>> A privatized world based on force and coercion.<<<

VOLUNTARILY agreed upon behaviors should not require very much force at all. If I agree to abide by rules in order to live in a certain community then I won't need to be forced to obey them.

>>>>Yet you see no contradictions here, only blissful living of like-minded people. <<<<

Where's the contradiction?