The Conservative "Meritocracy" Paradise As It Recently Existed

Hello once again ATS!

Realizing that it has been quite awhile since I posted anything other than the occasional short story or off-topic thread, a recent conversation has reignited my passions and led me to enter the fray once again. For my absence, I apologize. Real life can become quite a complex thing, as we are all aware - and taking a breather from the deeper ends of the pool is sometimes the wisest and most safe choice for ones health.

As for what I am about to discuss, there shall be no apologies. Only difficult and stark realities that I sincerely hope might open an eye or two toward a different way of viewing the world.

So, with no further rambling or ado, let us commence...

The Conservative "Meritocracy" Paradise As It Recently Existed

Anyone reading these boards, the news, Facebook, or any other source these days has become very familiar with the message of the modern Republican party. We are all aware of their adoration for Ayn Rand and the concept of a meritocracy where what a man or woman earns, by God, is theirs and theirs alone. They dream blissfully of a world where small government steps clear of nearly every aspect of life and allows all of us to swim or sink as our lot and luck determine. They wish for a world where the market is utterly unencumbered by rules or regulations and is left to find it's own balance. The belief being that competition, and not regulations, are the most effective means of keeping the market in check. In this free market paradise all social safety nets and social programs ( referred to as communism and socialism ) are not just minimized - they are utterly gutted and laid to rest. A world without welfare. A world without Social Security. A world without taxes. A world without laws that favor minorities of any ilk. A world where good old fashioned Christian ( or their modern approximation and absolute distortion thereof ) family values can be not only expected - but enforced with an iron fist. A world where the gays are back in their closets, feminists have shut up and are in the kitchen making sandwiches for all, and June is Fetching Wards slippers while Wally and the Beav get into mischief that is wholesome and pure in nature. No more hippie, commie garbage to be suffered.

In short, and in their estimation, a utopia where everything works itself out in their favor and life is forever magically changed into a Heaven on Earth, unmatched.

What if I were to tell you that the America these people long for actually existed? Further, what if I were to tell you that it actually existed just a few ( in my case two ) generations ago? Would that shock or surprise you? Would you call BS?

If you will do me the service of indulging me for a few minutes and allow me to turn back a few pages, we can travel through time together and you can see what this Conservative paradise looks like, in reality, as documented by historians and the words and images of those who lived in it.

Let's start by doing a quick jaunt through time and discussing why we have a National Holiday known as "Labor Day"...

It was July, 8, 1894:

In the 1880s George Pullman built the town of Pullman near Chicago to manufacture his famous railway sleeping cars. All buildings, homes, and stores in the town were owned and rented to the workers. By 1894, the Pullman Company had declining sales and lay off hundreds of workers, and reduced the salaries of others. On May 7, the workers asked for lower rent and were flatly refused. The American Railway Union was formed and led by Eugene V. Debs. By June 26, railroad workers around the country began to strike. On July 3, President Grover Cleveland, declares striking a federal crime and orders federal troops to forcibly disperse the striking works. On July 7, troops, standing face to face with strikers, open fire killing thirty-four workers. By August 3, the strike was declared over by police, and Debs and others were imprisoned. Six days later, the U.S. Congress makes Labor Day a National Holiday.

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This event surely should raise a few eyebrows. It is unfathomable ( or is it? ) to us in this day and age that a Corporation could weild enough power and influence that the Federal Government would wage war upon citizens who were doing nothing more than exercising their Constitutional Rights. Right?

If this was an isolated event it would stand out as a glaring warning about allowing a non-regulated and totally "free" market - the type that is currently evolving and nearly complete. Sadly this is not an isolated incident from this period of history. In fact it is one of many such massacres.

The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Some two dozen people, including women and children, were killed. The chief owner of the mine, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was widely criticized for the incident.

The massacre, the culmination of a bloody widespread strike against Colorado coal mines, resulted in the violent deaths of between 19 and 26 people; reported death tolls vary but include two women and eleven children, asphyxiated and burned to death under a single tent. The deaths occurred after a daylong fight between militia and camp guards against striking workers. Ludlow was the deadliest single incident in the southern Colorado Coal Strike, lasting from September 1913 through December 1914. The strike was organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against coal mining companies in Colorado. The three largest companies involved were the Rockefeller family-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&I), the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company (RMF), and the Victor-American Fuel Company (VAF).

In retaliation for Ludlow, the miners armed themselves and attacked dozens of mines over the next ten days, destroying property and engaging in several skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard along a 40-mile front from Trinidad to Walsenburg. The entire strike would cost between 69 and 199 lives. Thomas G. Andrews described it as the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States".

The Ludlow Massacre was a watershed moment in American labor relations. Historian Howard Zinn described the Ludlow Massacre as "the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history". Congress responded to public outcry by directing the House Committee on Mines and Mining to investigate the incident. Its report, published in 1915, was influential in promoting child labor laws and an eight-hour work day.

The Ludlow site, 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Trinidad, Colorado, is now a ghost town. The massacre site is owned by the UMWA, which erected a granite monument in memory of the miners and their families who died that day. The Ludlow Tent Colony Site was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 16, 2009, and dedicated on June 28, 2009.[6] Modern archeological investigation largely supports the strikers' reports of the event.

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I could include several more - but I want to include just one more to drive the point home to Conservatives that this type of thing did not just effect the lowly "useless eaters" but also claimed the lives of literal heroes who fought for the very rights and values of America.

In 1781, most of the Continental Army was demobilized without pay. Two years later, hundreds of Pennsylvania war veterans marched on Philadelphia, then the nation's capital, surrounded the State House where the U.S. Congress was in session, and demanded their pay. Congress fled to Princeton, New Jersey, and several weeks later, the U.S. Army expelled the war veterans from Philadelphia. In response to that experience, the federal district is now directly governed by the U.S. Congress, now known as Washington, D.C., was excluded from the restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act which forbade the use of the U.S. military for domestic police activity.

The practice of war-time military bonuses began in 1776, as payment for the difference between what a soldier earned and what he could have earned had he not enlisted. Breaking with tradition, the veterans of the Spanish–American War did not receive a bonus and, after World War I, their not receiving a military service bonus became a political matter when WWI veterans received only a $60 bonus. The American Legion, created in 1919, led a political movement for an additional bonus.

On May 15, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge vetoed a bill granting bonuses to veterans of World War I, saying: "patriotism... bought and paid for is not patriotism." Congress overrode his veto a few days later, enacting the World War Adjusted Compensation Act. Each veteran was to receive a dollar for each day of domestic service, up to a maximum of $500, and $1.25 for each day of overseas service, up to a maximum of $625 (2010: $7,899). Amounts of $50 or less were immediately paid. All other amounts were issued as Certificates of Service maturing in 20 years.

3,662,374 military service certificates were issued, with a face value of $3.638,000,000 (2010: $43.7 billion). Congress established a trust fund to receive 20 annual payments of $112 million that, with interest, would finance the 1945 disbursement of the $3.638 billion due the veterans. Meanwhile, veterans could borrow up to 22.5% of the certificate's face value from the fund; but in 1931, because of the Great Depression, congress increased the maximum value of such loans to 50% of the certificate's face value. Although there was congressional support for the immediate redemption of the military service certificates, President Hoover and republican congressmen opposed such action; they reasoned that the government would have to increase taxes to cover the costs of the payout, and thus any potential recovery would be slowed.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars continued to press the federal government to allow the early redemption of military service certificates.

The first march of the unemployed was "Coxey's Army" in 1894, when armies of men from various regions streamed to Washington as a "living petition" to demand that the federal government create jobs by investing in public infrastructure projects (Donald L. McMurry, "Coxey's Army", 1930). In January 1932, a march of 25,000 unemployed Pennsylvanians, dubbed "Cox's Army", had marched on Washington, D.C, the largest demonstration to date in the nation's capital, setting a precedent for future marches by the unemployed...

On June 15, 1932, the House of Representatives passed the Wright Patman Bonus Bill which would have moved forward the date for World War I veterans to receive their cash bonus.

Most of the Bonus Army camped in a Hooverville on the Anacostia Flats, a swampy, muddy area across the Anacostia River from the federal core of Washington, just south of the 11th Street Bridges (now Section C of Anacostia Park). The camps, built from materials scavenged from a nearby rubbish dump, were tightly controlled by the veterans who laid out streets, built sanitation facilities, and held daily parades. To live in the camps, veterans were required to register and prove they had been honorably discharged.

The Bonus Army massed at the United States Capitol on June 17 as the U.S. Senate defeated the Bonus Bill by a vote of 62-18...

The marchers remained at their campsite waiting for President Hoover to act. On July 28, 1932, Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the police to remove the Bonus Army veterans from their camp. When the veterans moved back into it, they rushed two policemen trapped on the second floor of a building. The cornered police drew their revolvers and shot two veterans, William Hushka and Eric Carlson, who died later.

William Hushka (1895–1932) was an immigrant to the United States from Lithuania. When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, he sold his butcher shop in St. Louis, Missouri and joined the United States Army. After the war he lived in Chicago. Hushka is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Eric Carlson (1894 – July 28, 1932) was a U.S. veteran from Oakland, California. He fought in the trenches of France in World War I. He was interred in Arlington National Cemetery.

When told of the shootings, President Hoover ordered the army to evict the Bonus Army from Washington...

At 4:45 p.m., commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the 12th Infantry Regiment, Fort Howard, Maryland, and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, supported by six battle tanks commanded by Maj. George S. Patton, formed in Pennsylvania Avenue while thousands of civil service employees left work to line the street and watch. The Bonus Marchers, believing the troops were marching in their honor, cheered the troops until Patton ordered[citation needed] the cavalry to charge them—an action which prompted the spectators to yell, "Shame! Shame!"

Shacks that members of the Bonus Army erected on the Anacostia Flats burning after the confrontation with the military.

After the cavalry charged, the infantry, with fixed bayonets and tear gas (adamsite, an arsenical vomiting agent) entered the camps, evicting veterans, families, and camp followers. The veterans fled across the Anacostia River to their largest camp, and President Hoover ordered the assault stopped. However, Gen. MacArthur ignored the president and ordered a new attack. MacArthur explained his actions by saying that he thought that the Bonus March was an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government. Fifty-five veterans were injured and 135 arrested. A veteran's wife miscarried. When 12-week-old Bernard Myers died in the hospital after being caught in the tear gas attack, a government investigation reported he died of enteritis, while a hospital spokesman said the tear gas "didn't do it any good."

During the military operation, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, later the 34th president of the United States, served as one of MacArthur's junior aides. Believing it wrong for the Army's highest-ranking officer to lead an action against fellow American war veterans, he strongly advised MacArthur against taking any public role: "I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch not to go down there," he said later. "I told him it was no place for the Chief of Staff." Despite his misgivings, Eisenhower later wrote the Army's official incident report which endorsed MacArthur's conduct.

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These are tales from a world with small government, an unregulated and totally free market and no social services. The Conservative utopia we are rapidly approaching bringing back to life.

And this was life for the working class circa 1910.

The 20th century was a time of enormous changes in American life. The beginning of the 21st century seems a suitable time to look back over the past 100 years and see how the United States has developed, for better and worse, during that period of its history.

Changes in the workplace reached across social strata. For those in the working class, the effects of industrial growth were often adverse. Labor unions enjoyed little public support, lacked legal status, suffered from internal differences, were weakened by periodic economic depressions, and lacked the power to counter employers' use of such anti-union tactics as hiring strikebreakers, known as scabs.

Crowding of industrial workers and their families in tenement districts worked against the kind of neighborliness that characterized life in small towns. The saloon was the social club for many immigrants. It provided cheap or free lunches, warmth, banking and notary services, gambling, party rooms, and political headquarters. Premature death disrupted many families. At the turn of the century, life expectancy at birth for white males was 46.6 years; for black males, 32.5 years; for white females, 48.7 years; and for black females, 33.5 years. (In 1995 the figures for the comparable groups were 73.4, 65.2, 79.6, and 73.9.) The maternal mortality rate in 1915 was 61 per 1,000 live births (compared to 8 in 1990); the infant mortality rate stood at 100 per 1,000 live births (compared to 7.6 in 1990), and was twice as high for blacks. Divorce also caused disruptions. The number of divorces was 15 times higher in 1920 than in 1870; by the mid-1920s, one in seven marriages ended in divorce. Moral problems evident in the corruption of urban political machines, high juvenile delinquency and crime rates (the homicide rate had quadrupled in New York in the last two decades of the 19th century), and widespread prostitution were coupled with health problems: diseases and epidemics resulting in part from water and sewage disposal deficiencies.

Source

Of course these things were no bother to the names from that era that we can all rattle off - some of which are still relevant today.. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Hearst, Morgan, Ford, and Vanderbilt. Many of those names are, now, collectively referred to as the "robber barons" - and for good reason. They made fortunes while treating the remainder of society, including those who were making their fortunes for them, like disposable trash - or even lower.

Does any of this feel familiar?

The period we've been discussing was rife with the problem of childhood hunger. Would it surprise you to know that:

About one in seven Americans—more than 46 million people—rely on such programs to get by, according to the study, which involved confidential surveys of more than 60,000 recipients of food aid from groups affiliated with Feeding America, a network of 200 food banks that distribute donated food to programs in all 50 states.

The ranks of the hungry include 12 million children and 7 million seniors, plus millions more among the working poor, military families, the unemployed, and young college graduates. Those in each group said their reliance on food aid stemmed from a daily struggle to put healthy and nutritious food on the table when all that many can afford is inexpensive processed food that fuels a cycle of chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.

Source

Those are the numbers from ONE private organization that provides food bank services.

Conclusions

I walk way from this thread not sure if I have made my point or not. My usual method is to try and use as little external content as is necessary to validate my thoughts. In this case the sheer magnitude of information available about what life was like in the years leading up to social reform is, simply put, overwhelming and heartbreaking. It felt best to allow the historical record to do the talking this time around.

The social safety nets we have in place today, which are all under attack and rapidly eroding beneath the propaganda driven war against them... They ALL came into being as a direct result of an unregulated and "free" market that had gone way too far and had become far too greed driven and irresponsible to the general welfare of the people of this country.

Now we have a case of generational amnesia and of the pendulum swinging back the other direction. We have a generation trained to believe that an Oligarchy is acceptable because it seems to allow for a meritocracy to exist in it's deformed and destructive shadow. We have allowed those who control information to instill within us concepts like "Take care of #1", "Greed is good" and "It's a dog eat dog world".

What these people fail to see is that it is not a dog eat dog world. Dogs, in actuality are pack animals who hunt together and share the spoils of the kill. Instead we are being trained like pit bulls being prepared for the dog fighting circle - and it both frightens and offends me how many are salivating as they wait for their chance to get into the ring.

Make no mistake - we are on the precipice of returning to the conditions discussed above. In some cases we are already there. Just ask a Chinese Apple employee and they'll tell you.... life is not a dream nor utopian when the free market comes to town and the company store welcomes you with open arms as it prepares to pick your pockets clean, enslave you, work you to death and own your ass from here to the grave.

All in the name of "freedom".

How the dream got this twisted I get - propaganda. How so many amongst us has bought into the lie - that still confuses me to this day.

Thanks for reading.

a reply to: Hefficide

Heff I feel it is an honor to post a reply to your well laid out Thread! This tore me open when You said, "overwhelming and heartbreaking"... It is the epitomy of Your Thread...

Very well done Sir!!!

A wonderful exposition. Thank you for the history lesson especially about the military bonuses, I'd never heard of it before and interestly enough I come from a military family.

Your piece also brings up the hypocracy in 'libertarianism' of crime and war. If 'market forces' can solve all problems then shouldn't the market also solve the problems of Crime and War and not exacerbate them? If the 'theory' is correct shouldn't it solve all problems.

You also point out the self-centered nature of this 'worldview' andit's total lack of respect of the 'minority opinion' and when a society takes this stance (authoritarianism) where people are rightfully afraid to speak out then all you get is stagnation and decline.

Thank you again for the heavy lifting.

a reply to: Hefficide

Welcome back, man. Good to see you. I hope that all is well, or at least getting better.
I've seen the type of posts you're talking about. I even see them from some of my friends and it blows my mind that they'd think like that. I mean, a couple of them are getting social security. I don't think that they really understand. They listen to all the blowhards on the radio and drink it up without even realizing what they're hearing.
Somebody I know posted something on facebook about unions a few months back. Of course, he got one of those guys trash talking him. Basically, the kill them all type. Well, I went and posted some of the stuff you have in this thread. You can imagine how that went.

Synchronicity is sometimes so on-point that it almost makes one wonder if the Universe/fate/God might actually be paying attention.

Not moments after I pushed the final "post" on this OP a friend posted the following video elsewhere. I, of course, asked him if he minded my stealing it and he said go ahead.

While it doesn't address the history aspect of this OP - it most certainly addresses the underlying message AND is extremely invaluable in illustrating how the extravagantly wealthy do, in fact, control far more than we understand, while the rest of us are left with simple illusions of being part of the system.

Reading about your posts about the labor massacres made me think of the labor activist named Joe Hill and the song that he wrote. The song is called The Preacher and the Slave. It's where the phrase "pie in the sky" comes from. Here's the song:



I think it fits here perfectly.

a reply to: Hefficide

That blows the whole right vs left thing out of the water. They're all crooks. I'm going to share this with some friends tomorrow, if you don't mind.

I am not certain what alternative you are suggesting. How do you deal with people like myself that only want to have voluntary interactions with human beings? I don't want to be part of a larger society, but perhaps a community. When I help someone by sharing the fruits of my labor I want it to be on my terms and not legislated by some government. I want to share what I have with my neighbors not some entity.

Any government that exists enslaves its people. Can a person be born without having to swear fealty to a government or nation? I just want to be free to provide for myself, my family and community. I don't have any interest in foreign goods, wars or other petty concerns of governments or international agreements.

I just want to be free from Government and the inevitible tyranny that they inflict.

Where is there a place to live as a free man?

a reply to: Hefficide

Fantastic thread Heff! Welcome back by the way!

The truth of these matters is self evident, and in every nation which has seen examples of this sort of explosion of greed in its history has similar tales to tell of what happens when you allow your nations government to have firmer links with the monied few, than it does with the working poor.

The lessons that we here in Britain learn, about the plight of workers during the industrial revolution and indeed later on, with the miners strikes and so on, fail in some people, to sink in deeply enough to affect an understanding of the concepts which really lead to the virtual, and in many cases actual enslavement of innocent people, by those who were prepared to spend lives to make money.

This failure, how so ever it comes about, leads people to gloss over the harrowing nature of certain elements of the past, to find themselves wishing to live the Dickensian nightmare, as long as it passes for them, as if a dream. Frankly, I believe that it is impossible to have an understanding of history, and vote in such a way as to see it repeated, unless ones intent is to prey on the weak and the poor, in order to feel strong and become rich. The instinct to do so, is held only by the lowest of living beings, and a mark of either a poor intellect, or an even poorer moral centre.

Metallicus:

There is not, nor has there ever been a moment in the history of mankind as we know of it, where an individual was not beholden to another individual, or group thereof. No human being has ever truly been the sole master of his or her fate, because all of us are tied to all the rest, and have been since before we even knew what reason was, before we ever became sentient as a species.

The place you are looking for, has never existed, and it never will, because human beings are social animals, primed to be a part of a whole, and ever since we had thought and ego, we have had systems of governance, of varying degrees of complexity. Whether it is the hierarchy within a hunting pack, or a town council, or a national government, there will always be a system in place which prevents a person from being apart from those around whom he or she lives.

If your country is too big, then that is unfortunate but there is absolutely no way to be a human being on this planet, and not live under rules set by either majority opinion, or the tyranny of dictatorships. The amount which they might irk an individual who lives under them differs with the size of the nation, and with the political leanings of its voters and or leaders, but the existence of systems of government is uniform. There is no un governed land, and even in what ungoverned land there once was, even in the most lawless lands, in the deepest past of mankind, there were, and are rules which you have no choice but to live under.

a reply to: Hefficide

Your Abraham Lincoln quote invalidates your entire point. Interesting read though.

a reply to: Hefficide

Great post, but...

I believe your post is playing into the duality of our political system. Maybe you are a dyed in the wool "democrat, liberal, socialist, etc (insert label here)" so what I'm about to you will not make any sense as you are still trapped in the system. But maybe not. I'm sorry I haven't read much of your writings to know your POV.

I'm not arguing with the facts presented, but the specific pointing to the "conservatives". If you will note, most of those robber barons lean far more toward the socialist side of the spectrum. At least in their politics. They may have benefited from "no rules" but I disagree. You see the rules were set by them. They were already in place. They had the government, and have had the government since the beginning of time. The idea that the "conservatives" are the big bad robber barons and the saviors the "liberals/ big government folks" are the ones who have brought us into our current state of fairness is a false narrative IMO. Again this may not be what you're saying, but well your title is conservative meritocracy.

On the other end we could talk about the genocide perpetrated by the big government people of the last century in China, Russia etc. This is the logical conclusion of the pendulum swinging the opposite direction. Which is where our country seems to be headed.

Either way its not an us vs. them, left vs. right. Its the Aristocracy vs. the Plebs. Only the plebs think that its a left vs. right. The robber barons are no different than the corporations that control our big government now. Oh the regulations they put on the bankers have done so much, LOL.

My point is that "they" have never been conservative or democrat, That whole thing is a distraction while they continue to screw the little man. These so called regulations and government controls are more population controls than controls on the big guys. I'm not saying the quality of living hasn't gone up tremendously under these so called reforms and regulations. It has, for us, I mean The US and its allies, while we continue to subjugate and desecrate the rest of the world through our big government and its allies. Except now instead of having to call in the national guard, they are the national guard, or the direct command of.

The veil of separation is gone now between the robber barons and the government. They are one and the same, the government is a wholly owned subsidiary of these powerful men. And frankly so are the unions. Yes they may say they're for the people but their actions speak differently . Oh the charade is put on for the people to be entertained by, all the while those lucky few at the top of the unions/liberal causes hope to be accepted into the upper echelons of society, to be granted a lordship and a place at court in return for screwing their friends.

Again I could be wrong and you aren't trying to perpetuate the false narrative that is told to us simple plebs. If I am forgive me for making assumptions.

originally posted by: Metallicus
I am not certain what alternative you are suggesting. How do you deal with people like myself that only want to have voluntary interactions with human beings? I don't want to be part of a larger society, but perhaps a community. When I help someone by sharing the fruits of my labor I want it to be on my terms and not legislated by some government. I want to share what I have with my neighbors not some entity.

Any government that exists enslaves its people. Can a person be born without having to swear fealty to a government or nation? I just want to be free to provide for myself, my family and community. I don't have any interest in foreign goods, wars or other petty concerns of governments or international agreements.

I just want to be free from Government and the inevitible tyranny that they inflict.

Where is there a place to live as a free man?

Point me in that direct as well.

We can do all things given does without govs.

In modern times we could have direct democracy.

Technology allows us this possibility in real time.

The giv would truly be the people.

Somebody posts on the american registry site a proposal to build a new bridge in your county, every one in your county has say 2 weeks to talk about and vote up or down on it.

If it passes, the residence of the county put up a county "gofundme" basically and you begun to collect money for it.

Or say some on proposes to build a new aircraft carrier, it would be a national issue, so all Americans would get a say this time.

And it would be a national "gofundme" to pay for it.

We don't need politicians, we should drop the dead weight and corruption for good.

Interesting. Now show us the liberal utopias... you know places like North Korea where everyone is equally poor (except for the connected elites). Or maybe pictures from communist Russia? Or maybe China?

Capitalism isn't perfect, but of all the ism's it has done more to raise standards of living than any other 'ism. There will always be greed and unscrupulous individuals.

One thing I walked away with: our government has NEVER given a # about the needs of veterans.

originally posted by: Edumakated
Interesting. Now show us the liberal utopias... you know places like North Korea where everyone is equally poor (except for the connected elites). Or maybe pictures from communist Russia? Or maybe China?

Capitalism isn't perfect, but of all the ism's it has done more to raise standards of living than any other 'ism. There will always be greed and unscrupulous individuals.

You want a real liberal utopia? You're looking in the wrong places. No one's vision of utopia is run by a dictator. Try glancing in the direction of Scandinavian countries, you'll hit closer to the mark.

yet another beautifully thought out thread, heff. you always manage to strike straight to the root of the matter and leave us with a clearer picture of whats really going on. thank you.

ive heard america referred to as an oligarchy, as a republic, as a communist nation...but i dont really see a meritocracy in there. money gets you places a lot faster than skill does. and that money is not necessarily "earned". or is money considered a greater merit than skill?

originally posted by: ISawItFirst
a reply to: Hefficide

Your Abraham Lincoln quote invalidates your entire point. Interesting read though.

If you could explain how this quote invalidates my point I would be very appreciative. I have read it now, several times, and it feels like it directly addresses the historical aspects of what the OP discussed, the same circumstances we now find ourselves facing - and the date of the quote is even in line with events.

a reply to: zardust

The word used most to describe me is "liberal", though I do not use the word to describe myself often - and only when I find myself in a situation where I simply have to over simplify my thoughts for the sake of conversation and brevity.

As far as I am concerned, I am simply a rational human being with both compassion and a mind to see the bigger picture. I do not watch television. I do not subscribe to any party or political newsletters. I did get caught up in the Democratic party for a couple of years - but the truth be told that was my own pendulum swinging after realizing the selfish nature I had possessed as a lifelong Republican.

And I agree - Blue and Red are meaningless. They are the same thing. Having said that - this OP was addressed to Republicans and Conservatives because it is their side of the coin's propaganda machine which is most openly pushing for the entire Randian meritocracy based society.

But as for typical labels? None apply to me very well. I despise the false victimization claimed by so many on the far left equally. Both representations of the extreme ( and those who buy into it all ) are equally as damaging to mankind and to our nation.