You’re the second person to insinuate that Ruben might be for Obama due to race. Why interject race into it at all? Maybe he’s for men. Maybe he’s for younger men. Maybe he’s for lawyers. Maybe he’s voting for Obama because he’s taller than McCain.
Do I have to list every attribute and characteristic where Obama differs from Bush and McCain?
I find it curious that people go directly to race because there are so many other reasons to question someone on than race. It tells something about the questioner and how he views the motivations of other people. And maybe even himself.
I respect that…dont agree with your choice, but certainly respect it.
I dont respect that. This is evidence of you already falling to others demands without so much as your own thought.
I honestly can not find this quote anywhere. I did find that she thinks we should not encourage the socialist and communist regimes that are frequent in some parts of the world, such as Venezuela, and I dont quite see how thats a bad thing. Venezuela is not a positive country for the economic direction of the world, and if we can make ourselves 100% independent of countries that reverse the directions of forward economic thought, that would be a 100% positive move.
Dialogue with someone has no bearing on political ability. This man(Chavez/Obama) is a socialist propagandi of the greatest sense, and until you understand that you will continue to do his biding. The reason that Barry would love to have a chat with Huggy is that he wants to learn how socialists think so he himself can apply it to the United States.
Key word being some, and they were purely because he thinks capitalism is bad and he honestly thinks that free markets caused this problem. Having a positive point of view based on a fallacy does not make it correct, but I guess in being guilty of this time and again you are blinded to that fact…
Remind me who has been screwing up our country for the past two years? We didnt have problems until rockbama and the socialist brigade took over Congress two years ago.
I do agree with this somewhat. For all the talk of racism and the Bradley Effect, I think the opposite is just as true – many I have spoken to see virtue in voting for Obama simply because electing a black man marks some sort of pinnacle of social progress. That is, no matter how awful his policies may be, this one superficiality, skin color, trumps everything else. This is, of course, so mind numbingly retarded I have difficulty holding down my lunch. Elections, like beauty pageants, seem to be all about trivialities.
I think you are missing the bigger stories. Namely that people have become so disgusted (intentionally I believe) with the Republicans, that even if Obama stood for genocide, people would vote for him. And the other story is that people like redistributionism. They don’t believe in themselves. They want collectivism. This is the product of decades of federalized education. We really are nations of dumb sheep. And many of them are anxiously trotting up to the slaughterhouse.
When one thinks race is the issue, that’s indirectly being a gatekeeper by focusing on “look over there”.
Are you kidding??? This country has been screwed up for more than just the past two years. This country started on a serious down spiral about 7 years ago. The “socialist brigade” just so happened to have a majority when sh8t started hitting the fan. To say that we didn’t have problems until the change in congress seems to suggest that you were perfectly happy prior to that.
There are a couple of things going on here. One is the near manic obsession that whites have with one-upping each other by showing their zeal to embrace the Other. (This is the sort of attitude that Christian Lander skewers to great effect over at StuffWhitePeopleLike.com.) And for their part, blacks poll for Obama at rates of 90 to 97%. Race is definitely a factor.
Also, remember that America is a propositional nation, not an ethnic nation-state. The propositional nation is a recent experiment in human history in the face of global trends in the other direction. The hope is that by electing someone of mixed race, the American experiment can be sustained. Of course, the nod for this position goes to a Chicago machine politician who advanced his career by self-identifying with a Kenyan father that had almost nothing to do with him, and not, say, the staunchly capitalist Tiger Woods (who actually self-identifies more with his mother as an Asian Buddhist). And of course, men of strong West African descent like Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams are just completely beyond the pale. “Uncle Toms” would be the nicest thing said about them.
Speaking of SWPL, Obama actually represents the ultimate “whiter” person. He has the white upbringing, the urban elitism, the Ivy League education, and he carries the ultimate trump card for white people status games: he’s half black.
I’ve read these forums for many months now, but never posted before. So everyone knows where I’m coming from, I would classify myself as objectivist more than anything else. Now, as for this:
I would have to argue that while the last 7 years have hastened the downward spiral, this country has been heading this direction steadily since Hoover and Truman. You could even stretch that back to the creation of the Fed in 1912. Libertarian/Objectivist theory has predicted exactly these market fluctuations for many years, and unfortunately it seems that neither party has any reason to fix the true problem.
I would almost argue that Obama winning could turn into a good thing, for once he has the ‘super 60’ in congress and they can pass all their regulatory crap, and the situation only worsens, hopefully people will begin to see that it was, in fact, the regulation itself that created this entire mess. But that may be just a blind hope.
I wouldnt say I have been perfectly happy, because of all the socialist policies prior to that, but I certainly dont think George Bush should assume a majority of the blame.
Byzantine, I don’t doubt that race plays an role, even a significant one.
I do dislike that it’s used as an attack “do you like him for his race?” when there is much more going on here, and by virtue of the environment here at the Mises community, we’re certainly not a crowd that would be likely to make a superficial race first determination. Granted Ruben is relatively new, but coming from Michael and Giles, I certainly think there is an opportunity to address the fundamental sameness of both candidates, and the evil of that sameness (basically hyper nationalism, hyper statism).
I’ll readily admit I am not an expert on understanding white guilt.
Is there another President to blame? Someone else to blame for Iraq? Someone else to blame for carrying on Clinton’s policies of regime change, inflationary monetary policy and national home ownership?
I’m curious to know who deserves the most blame for the last 8 years.
During the Vietnam War, many staunch libertarians allied themselves with the left for the purpose of resisting the war abroad. They did this because they viewed such an immense, destructive war as by far the most severe issue of the day, and felt the need to stop it as soon as possible before turning much attention to other matters. I would guess that the most common reason for libertarian support of Obama is his view on our continued presence in Iraq, for similar reasons. Personally, I cannot overlook his massive failings in other areas, so… Bob Barr it is.
Maybe I am incorrect about my knowledge of how American government works, but does the president singlehandedly pass laws? Does the president enact legislation by himself, or is there a Congress involved?
Here’s how it works: white liberals move to places like Vermont or Seattle or Portland, and compensate for the fact that the place is whiter than a Klan rally by voting for Democrats.
Every now and again SWPL will post a New York Times article that reads exactly like it was written by Lander or his buds. Funny stuff.
Congress abdicated the responsibility for war to Bush, and Bush enthusiastically plunged the country into quagmires. Bush pushed for Congress to accept the Bailout Bill. Bush pushed for No Child Left Behind. Bush pushed for telecomm immunity.
You’re right Congress has a role, but the system is broken, and Bush is one of the recent tyrants to exploit that broken system as much as possible, whether it was telling his people not to even appear when summoned in front of Congress, to destroying evidence or openly declaring he would defy laws he had signed!
You do realize that Obama wants to attack Iran, Pakistan, Syria and move more troops to Afghanistan?
This guy might actually be a bigger warmonger than McCain, because McCain is driven by a notion of glory, Obama is driven by ideology. I’ll take a proud man over an ideologue (not that I favour either) anyday.
Congress has a bigger role. They are the people who actually vote on these things and they are our representatives. The President is also our choice, but Congress is our stopping valve.
Remember that awful George Clooney movie, Syriana? Obama typefies that attitude: terrorism is caused by Arab governments not spending their oil revenues on the poor and not giving women the right to vote. I think he’ll pick some crusades in Africa too.
Gawdamighty, just imagine his first trip to Kenya. I think I’ll go live in a cave for the next four years.
So you’re saying that Bush is not responsible because Congress is implicated, or that because Congress did not stop him, he can’t be guilty of doing wrong?
Either way, I think it’s bullocks. He took opportunity and used it for evil. Pardoning him would be like pardoning the speculative homeowners who used their houses as an ATM, because they could have never tried to cheat and game the system in a me-too fashion without the FED.