If the USA's growing income disparity sparks a revolution, how should we change our system?

I think that a simple reboot would suffice. The Constitution is pretty good stuff.

We need to deport anyone who is in the country illegally and close the borders. We cannot support the world.

@ETpro Great question, really well-written and supported. I’ve been having multiple conversations many variations of this topic with my wife and friends lately.

There is zero question in my mind that greed is at the heart of the entire problem, and partisan politics is preventing voters from uniting. Most voters want pretty much the same thing, but lots of money is spent to divide and delude them, in the self-interest of the rich getting richer.

But if there were a revolution, what on earth could it look like? Would we take up arms? The only way I think a revolution could occur would be if the generals took the reins and commanded the armed forces. Even then, the shift in power wouldn’t solve the problems for long.

I don’t know. It’s an ominous situation. What do you think a revolution would look like?

@desertr0se Thinking illegal immigrants are the biggest problem in preventing the rich from gaining unlimited power indicates you don’t really understand the question or the problem.

@cockswain, Sounds like you have it all figured out. But you don’t.

@desertr0se Here, read the CBO’s report on the effects of immigrants on the US economy. If you want to discuss it, I’d be happy to on a new thread.

@ETpro Sorry for going off topic.

@Nullo I strongly agree. Too bad we now have a Supreme Court that doesn’t seem to feel the same way.

@desertr0se I agree we should control our borders better. However, it would cost close to a trillion dollars to round up and deport every single illegal alien here. THe debt we would incur plus the number of productive people we would spit out would do us far more harm than good. We’d be better off to first do a reasonable job of sealing the borders then set up some path to citizenship for those who have broken no other law than crossing into the US illegally.Scapegoating illegal aliens for our current economic woes may be a feel-good solution, but it fails to target the Wall Street casino capitalism that produced the problem and, if left unchecked, will do so again and soon.

Alsom there is no such thing as a sealed border. If we set that as a standard that must be reached before we can turn our attention to our real problems, we will never address what’s killing us. Even East Germany with their 100 yard wide minefield, enormous wall, guard towers, dogs and machinegun nests could not completely seal their border. I don’t think most Americans want to emulate East Germany of North Korea in border security. We would be better of and would spend far less in simply targeting businesses that hire workers who cannot show proper documents.

@cockswain One might guess that the elites who profit so handsomely from the status quo keep pouring gasoline on the partisan fires just because it keeps voters from noticing the feeling of a hand picking their pocket.

I would encourage you to launch a thread addressing the question of what impact illegal immigration really does have in today’s economy. I would certainly chime in. It looks like @desertr0se has strong feelings about it as well.

The real in that deal is to 1st overhaul how campaigns are ran. Depending on which office at what level there should only be X amount of money that can be spent on it. For instance a senate race has a cap of 8 million dollars (hard and soft money). Those funds has to be divvyed up between everything the campaign wants to do, radio ads, robo calls, attack ads, buttons, flyers, etc. If they know they have only so much money then maybe they will use the money more wisely telling us what they will actually do than trying to say what the other didn’t do or how they are much more crooked and dishonest. The party can spend as much as it wanted so long as it doesn’t mention any candidate in its ads.

Second we might need to think how our goods are made. Maybe in order to keeps jobs here, and have quality goods we have to rethink how we make stuff. Maybe instead of having stuff made in a factory by a corporation we need to have things made cooply. Things can be assembled in one location but the individual components made in sever different smaller companies. Then part #459-A might better be build by a small factory in Denver that specializes in items like that and another part might come from specialist in Tucson. Then middle and small America not only has a hand in American made goods but getting in the game and off the bench.

More of America has to learn to live within their means, racking up $50,000 dollars in debt because you want all the toys now before you actually earned them don’t serve to gaining wealth. The money you will be spending over all that interest could have been spent or used to put that money to work. Americans need to buy less and buy more local. If John Q wants to get his daughter a clutch purse he should buy it from Joe Schmuckateli the next state over at best. If it means he don’t get to buy his daughter a purse every season then he don’t, and she will just have to learn to be more responsible with the purse and make it last. Buy in your means then you can buy American, you might not get to buy as often but your money is going to work here not in Pakistan. Joe Schmuckateli has to give too. He can’t insist on getting paid a full days wage if the worked ended in 5 hours. He works five hours, he gets pay for five hours. Too many unions have gotten too greedy and lazy as well, they want to get paid more for less. Many unions have more perks for less man hours than union workers even as close back as the 60s.

That is where the starts need to be made.

If we are given a chance to reboot, we need to get out of the central bank standard where a group of just a few men control the credit of a nation. The founding fathers saw what trouble the type of banking system we have could cause but we were to dumb to listen to them.

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies… If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency… the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” -Thomas Jefferson, 1743–1826

1775, the American Revolutionary War began, as the American colonies sought to detach from England, and it’s oppressive monarchy. Although many reasons are cited for the revolution, one in particular sticks out as the prime cause: that King George III in England outlawed the interest free independent currency the colonies were producing and using for themselves, in turn forcing them to borrow money from the Central Bank of England at interest, immediately putting the colonies into debt. And as Benjamin Franklin later wrote:

“The refusal of King George III to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators was probably the prime cause of the revolution.”

@Nullo Indeed!!

With Internet connection being so ubiquitus, and with improvements in Web security,I would think that some form of participatory democracy is only a few years away. Instant voting on issues could become as easy as logging onto the Web. Other than that, a few Constitutional amendments should fix things, such as an amendment setting up a commission of random voters to decide on pay increases for congresspersons, an amendment saying that politicians have to be subject to ALL laws they pass, etc.

@cockswain It’s perfectly reasonable for a nation to want to control its borders. :\ @desertr0se makes a good point: we cannot support the world.
@ETpro I don’t think that we’ve ever had a Supreme Court that would be willing to flush all standing and derivative legislation. Fortunately (?), revolutions aren’t the sorts of things that much care who is a Supreme Court Justice.

Make sure you have enough guns in the family, and visit the shooting range often.

@CaptainHarley – I would bet that most average Joes haven’t read the fine print on their credit card statements, and I don’t see why the people who complain now about the “bills being too long” would bother to read them either before making whatever clicky-vote their favorite pundit told them was a good idea. “Direct democracy” should be as much a scare-word to us as it was to the Founders. Unless you want to save the money of setting up a citizens’ voting site and just hand the reins directly over to Rush and Glenn…

Um… initiative, referrendum, and recall? : )

@Hypocrisy_Central Public financing of campaigns would go a long way toward resolving the drift toward corporatocracy. Your other suggestions have merits as well, but implementing them in a way they do not reduce liberty in the defense of it might be a challenge.

@CaptainHarley Of course, with a congress largely in the hands of the corporatists, getting a ¾ vote on such Amendments seems a pipe dream. But past that, I have the same misgivings about direct democracy as does @laureth . I would expect a greedy majority to simply vote, “We get everything—you pay.”

I don’t think you give the American people enough credit.

Voters in California fell fro Prop 13’s promise of a free ride. It has slowly destroyed a once wonderful, prosperous state. They fell for Reagan’s tax cuts and Bush’s tax cuts that were going to drive more revenue and jobs. But the national debt we were paying down toll Reagan slashed taxes by 60% for the ricch started skyrocketing from that day forward. It tripled on his watch. It doubled on Bush’s watch. It is now 13.6 trillion dollars, and voters stioll believe tax cuts for the rich pay for themselves. Until American voters in mass get interested enough in what’s going on to reject silly, spin-mastered slogans, I do not accept that we can just trust the voters to do the right thing. Some day, they will wake up. Pray it is not too late.

How about we don’t change it, but let it die out? And then maybe a series of smaller, more manageable systems?

@incendiary_dan There are certainly redundancies and inefficiencies in government, and it would be great to fix them. But our debt problem is far to big to resolve by such incremental approached. You could shut down the entire discretionary portion of the Federal Government, this leaving all business unregulated, killing NASA, the Air Traffic Control system, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, the Transportation Department, Education, DEA, FBI, everything except entitlements and defense, and we would still be going into debt.

Awww, can’t our revolution take out those things, too? And the corporations? Pretty please?

Personally, I like the idea of anarchy. You can’t corrupt nothing. Just think of the endless pattern of government creation, golden period, corruption, revolution, government creation, and so on. We should be the first to break the pattern. No one can be in debt if money is a thing of the past. It’s all make-believe anyway.

And before anyone brings up the belief that anarchy is chaos, it’s not. Anarchy is actually a very peace-loving and passivistic political ideology. It’s about peace and fee-will and community.

@Saoirse Anarchism isn’t across the board pacifist. Being anti-imperialist doesn’t mean you aren’t willing to use violence as a tool. Indeed, it largely includes it.

@Saoirse The turmoil and loss of life under such a scheme would be staggering. There’s got to be a better way.

@incendiary_dan There is no crime inherent in profit, so I don’t think that you could say that corporations are inherently evil.

@ETpro What if we were to kill entitlements, too?

I heard of an ambitions plan once that involved quietly building up strategic reserves of things like oil, radioactives, and missiles, sending home all nonresident aliens (for their safety, since the fallout of this would be pretty rough), locking the borders, and cancelling the entire debt.
Not my first choice, but certainly not without its appeal.

@Nullo You cancell all our debt and you are going to have millions of Americans coming to take their part of it out of your hide. Most of the federal debt is owned by individual investors, trusts, insurance oompanies, investment finds and the like. Canceling entitlements would return us the the Merry Old England that Charles Dickens wrtoe so eloquently about. Poor hoises, people dying in the street. That’s what A Christmas Carrol was all about, balancing the debt of a nation on the backs of its poorest, weakest citizens so the barons and dukes and princes can live in ever more mansions of ever more extravagance.

That seems to be where the Republican Party of today wants to go, but it is exactly what will provoke a revolution. You see, right now the top 10% are profiting by more regressive taxes, but the lion’s share of that is going to the top 1%. As the bottom 90% falls ever lower, for the top 1% to keep raking in more, the wave must move up. It becomes the top 9% that make any headway, then 8% and so on till all the wealth is at the very top and everyone else is poor. That is how banana republics come into existence. But most are able to continue that way because the bottom 99% aren’t armed.

@ETpro What do you envision a viable revolution could look like?

@cockswain I truly hope that we come to our senses at the ballot box and vote for real change, then are willing to wait long enough for change to actually happen. You can’t unpack the Supreme Court and entire Federal Bench of judges appointed to serve the Corporatists in a weekend.

We have too much evidence of well intentioned revolutions against plutocrats going awry. The Marquic de Condorcet was a brilliant freethinker and man of enlightenment. His writings played a huge role in shaping the thinking of our own Founding Fathers and ot Thomas Paine. But when the Jacobin bloodbath began, he was one of many to be beheaded by the rage of the crowd. I sincerely hope we don’t come to the point where we have to take up arms to take our liberty back.

Just read the Wiki link. I’ve never heard of this guy, but he seemed very wise, particularly considering the times. I’ll need to read more about him.

So this really becomes the sticking point of your question though. I’d love to see the change you describe, but how to accomplish it? Thinkers like Condorcet would need to be in charge of the military, would need to collude and effect a meaningful takeover. It’s not like one could just storm the halls of Congress or the White House and suddenly have power either.

How can we vote for this change? We need hundreds of highly charismatic people of similar mind and vision to all emerge at once. And the vast majority of voters would need to believe and embrace their message, not just slightly better than half. Voters need to get past the propaganda machines run by the corporatocracy that continue to keep us divided. Liberals and conservatives need to find issues of such common import that they can really drive home one unified message.

But where can we get these hundreds of incorruptible, fresh politicians of like mind and vision? And how can we keep them safe too?

@cockswain With today’s education system, I don’t have an answer to that. The US is alone in the developed world in leaving educational standards in the hands of local boards and not highly educated professionals. One of Thomas Jefferson’s biggest disappointments was his inability to push national public education through the congress. The US had become full of many protestant sects and each wanted control over education in its little neck of the woods. George Washington fervently wanted to see the new nation establish a National Public University where the best and brightest students could complete their undergraduate and graduate work at taxpayer expense. He actually left Congress $10,000 in his will as a bequest to found such an institution. But infighting among various religious sects made such a secularized educational institution politically unpalatable, and nothing was ever done to act on the first president’s wishes.

In fact, still today the conservative areas of the country harbor a great distrust of intellectuals and rationalists. While they claim to love the Founding Fathers, if they met those men who were mostly deists and freethinkers, they would actually hate and demonize them. Given their anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism, they certainly aren’t going to produce a public education system that risks producing such enlightened students.

Keeping the free market economy, but a better organization of solidarity. In my country this is called social market economy and both conservative and liberal parties support it.

One reason the German economy could deal with the crisis in a better way and is now booking is the following concept

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurzarbeit

It allows more people to keep their jobs.

@mattbrowne Wow! That’s a wonderful concept. The USA would be in far better shape right now if we had that here. No wonder Germany is the #1 lender nation in the world today.

@ETpro Those anti-intellectual sentiments are (at least in part) a reaction to the tendency – sometimes perceived, sometimes not – that many academic types have of belittling the less-educated. Some of those sentiments are rooted in a feeling of inferiority. In parts of the South, some are remnants of a cultural antipathy towards the carpetbaggers.

Many of those populations are sensitive to feeling like they’re being looked down upon, and take offense at attitudes suggesting that the holders “think that they’re better than” them. As best I can tell, it’s a remnant of the Scottish and Irish backgrounds that they tend to have. My info is incomplete, at best. I used to think that they were reading more into the situation than was actually there, but since moving to the Midwest, I’ve come to learn that there really are people who will look down on them.

In short, they distrust intellectuals because a lot of intellectuals are or have a history of being nosy (and possibly manipulative) jerks.
It’s stuff like this, saying that they’re ignorant, that they need to let someone else come in and educate for them because they seem incapable of doing it themselves, that they loathe.

The problem with the American public school system is, I think, a lack of emphasis on actually teaching, choosing instead to coddle.

I may come back to this when I’ve had some sleep.

@mattbrowne

But the German economy is horrible right now. They haven’t been doing well for years. And the country is broke.

@incendiary_dan
@CaptainHarley

Although there may be some people that are violent that call themselves anarchists, a true anarchist will ONLY resort to violence for the purposes of self-defense. True anarchists don’t even believe in having a military. It is a very pacifistic path. An anarchist revolution would have no blood.

@Saoirse – This is complete nonsense. I recommend reading newspapers.

@Saoirse Having nominally been an anarchist for about a long time and having read an immense amount of anarchist lit, not to mention talking to countless anarchists and other anti-authoritarians, I can pretty safely say that’s bunk. Plenty of anarchists are willing to use violence to try to prevent further violence. Then again, one could consider that preemptive self-defense.

But of course, most anarchists no longer read Bakunin or Goldman, or even the “modern classics”. For a lot of kids (yes, it’s the kids) it’s mostly a lifestylist scene. But for most anarchists, who are likely otherwise only going to use violence in self defense anyway on purely practical grounds, the issue is much more complicated and real ethical conversations of the application of violence are had, not just dogmatic rejection of violence. It would especially be ironic to reject violent revolutions considering the wide support in the anti-authoritarian community of currently occurring revolutions of the sort.

It’d be more accurate to say that anarchist revolutions have the habit of trying to minimize violence, particularly violence not aimed at authoritarian targets.

And your pseudo-elitist reference to what true anarchists are is so expected it’s just cute. Reminds me of my younger days…when I’d argue with such obviously false statements with more fervor. Please, read some anarchist history and not just the zines from vegan hipsters.

@Saoirse

Oh, you mean kinda like when I say that a “real christian” doesn’t violate the tenets of his faith?

Please, read some anarchist history and not just the zines from vegan hipsters.

Ouch.

@mattbrowne That seems like a vastly improved version of our unemployment/welfare program in the US. It keeps people working, albeit for lower pay, which keeps the economy moving, doesn’t cost the gov’t as much, and trains new skills. Really looks like a win-win-win. I wonder how much a similar system would compare here financially. Even if the gov’t subsidies equaled what we currently pay out in unemployment and welfare, there is no question that we’d get greater value for the money.

However, how do you think that would help revolutionize the growing plutocracy? How is improving that particular aspect of how we govern going to prevent the super-greedy from continuing to take a ridiculously disproportionate share of the wealth?

@Saoirse – When I think of places that have embraced anarchy, I think of places like this.

@Nullo – I understand that nobody likes to be looked down upon, but I don’t understand why these people feel looked down upon (in most cases). If I don’t hire the homeless guy that hangs out on campus to be my doctor, it’s because I want someone with medical training, it’s not because I look down on the bum. We need to pick the right people for any given job.

@mattbrowne

I apologize. I did, actually, get that information from a German newspaper I like to read online, but I have not been reading it for a while and, apparently, the economy got better while I wasn’t looking. It was true when I read it, though. But, again, I apologize for the current incorrectness of my statements.

@incendiary_dan

I got my info in anarchy from where the philosophy, or whatever you want to call it, came from. Not anybody’s zine. I do not speak in any sort of elitist way. If anarchists of today stray from the original philosophy, that is up to them, I suppose, but I do not uphold to those modern applications that you speak of. And hey, really, there are things in the original philosophy that I would change myself and aren’t going to do (and change is built-in to anarchy based on the scientific principals or experimentation to find out what works better), but non-violence should always be a part of anybody’s philosophy. World peace cannot happen when the majority of people can’t get along with even their nearest neighbors and violence and killing is used for anything from small disputes to the desire of conquests of land. If you want peace in the world, that peace must start with you. We don’t have world peace, because, apparently, nobody wants it. Not enough to actually create peace. Perhaps I sound to you like some loud mouthed kid that talks about things they don’t know about, but regardless of what individual people choose to do while wearing a placard of anarchy, I will not stray from what I truly believe to be right. Anarchy, after all, for me is more of a philosophy that agrees with me than I with it. “Create the world you want to live in.”

And, perhaps, to a point, the problem here might be just in words and labeling. After all, there are no shortage of people who call themselves things that have no real idea of the origins of it. Meaning can get lost over time. Look at holidays and traditions we have. Most of us don’t even know where they came from anymore or how significant some things may have been at one time in the past. Or even our own government is a good example. The Founding Fathers created a pretty nice document about how the country would be, and if it was adhered to, probably no one would even be considering revolution, but it never really happened and the country is not the America they had in mind, but here it is, still called America and still spoken of as if everything in their original framework actually took place. This country is a wholly different monster, but still….the name remains the same.

@CaptainHarley

‘Oh, you mean kinda like when I say that a “real christian” doesn’t violate the tenets of his faith?’

Yeah, that’s it.

@Nullo I have to agree with @laureth on the snootiness factor. Yes, it exists. I have run into it, and don’t like it. But I am not going to let that turn me away from learning, or seek schooling that caters to the lowest possible standard. Susan Jacoby has written an interesting book, The Age of American Unreason. She’s dealing with the anti-intellectualism and junk science of today in it, but she draws heavily from an earlier work, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life written by Richard Hofstader in 1963. The earlier work goes into why the South and parts of the Midwest ended up so intellectually starved.

In the South, it was a conscious choice, Plantation owners were the elite and powerful. They had no need of book learning outside what was required to run their plantations. Most of them devoted their free time to hunting and sport. The poor white sharecroppers held the second rung of the social hierarchy. They had no time for book learning. They spent every waking minute simply struggling to survive. And of course, slaves (the bottom rung) were forbidden to learn to read. The social order may have begun to decay after the civil war, but the class distinctions lived for a very long time. And educated carpet baggers from the North swarming in and carving out a new rung on the social order did not sit well at all with any of the Southern whites.

On the frontier, learning wasn’t looked down upon, it was simply a luxury that few there could afford. Books were scarce. Small towns could not afford to bring a teacher West. Only the larger population centers had anything like a school. And only families with a solid income could afford to let their children attend. Others needed the kids to help put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads.

I’m not at all sure how we unwind all that. Nobody likes being looked down upon, but the best way to avoid that is get yourself up off the floor. What’s clear is that if America is to be competitive in the 21st century economy, we have to have a well educated population. The love affair with junk science and anti-rationalism has to come to an end. If it doesn’t, then any hope of maintaining “American Exceptionalism” as anything more firm than a fantasy is lost.

@Saoirse

: D

@ETpro Well said

@ETpro, @laureth As I said, it’s a cultural thing. I suspect that it relates to their historical place at or near the bottom of the social ladder.

@laureth
It’s nothing so specific as suitability for a given task – there is no problem with seeing a doctor if you’re sick, or a carpenter if you want cabinets, or a plumber if your pipes break – but rather a more general quality-of-person issue. It was initially brought about, I think, because there really are people who really do think that they’re “better”, in some vague way, because they make more money, or they have a better education, or whatever.

Best I can figure, they feel looked down upon because they (or their parents, or grandparents) have been before, and so they anticipate it. Perhaps because of the pervasive stereotype that they’re unintelligent, or uneducated or just plain backwards. Some, I’m sure, are unhappy about unavailable opportunities.

There is often a retaliatory, “you think that you know better, but you’ll see,” attitude at work.

@ETpro
From my experience, they want their kids to have a good education, to succeed, and they’re appropriately proud of them when they manage it. But telling them that they’re anti-rational, that they go in for junk science, or whatever else, puts you in the category of the snob.
I am reminded of the fable of the fox and the grapes: Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked, ‘Oh, you aren’t even ripe yet! I don’t need any sour grapes.’ People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves.

My aunt and uncle fall into this category. Like all the rest of my relatives, they were invited to my commencement ceremony. They were happy for me, but they scoffed at the pomp and circumstance, and the robes and hats and medallions that the faculty were wearing. The only explanation that I can come up with for this behavior was that they never went to college, and neither did either of their kids.

But since I’m not them, I now find myself forced into the ‘snob’ end of the snob/serf paradigm whenever we get together. Makes things difficult. Fortunately, most of the offense is confined to my aunt.

@Nullo Thanks for sharing that personal anecdote. The view of education as the path to snobbery is a tough obstacle to clear. I wish I could think of some way for you to convince your aunt that simply having a sheepskin does not make you holier than her.

What I can take home from your experience is a resolve to do my best not to play the intellectual bully myself. In Internet debates, it’s all too easy to forget there is a living, breathing human being on the other side, not just a policy or idea that seems flawed and needs to be torn down.

@Nullo – This is what I mean.

I know a guy, “Chris.” Chris does go in for junk science and conspiracy theories, but if you say to him, “That stuff you’re talking about is junk science,” he gets that same attitude you’re talking about, that I think I’m so much better than him. Is there any way to tell people that believe things which are demonstrably untrue that they are believing untrue things without getting that biteback?

When I need a doctor, I hire myself a doctor, and when I need a plumber,I hire myself a plumber, and we seem to agree (Chris and I) that these are valuable, worthwhile people to have around, jobs which require skill and training and are worthy of respect. However, we differ: when I look for a politician to hire to represent me in Washington, I want someone who is smart and skilled and can do the job: someone educated, perhaps even someone who has done the job before. But Chris thinks that when it comes to this particular skilled position, just anyone can do it, and he’d prefer to hire a less smart, less educated person if that person seems (for want of a better cliché) like someone he’d enjoy having a beer with. He thinks that “smart” politicians are merely “snooty” and “think they’re better when really they’re not.”

Chris believes that being smarter doesn’t make a person more valuable than any other person, especially if the less smart people are also valuable, like “willing to die for his country,” or “has a strong work ethic.” I agree: and I think the “willing to die for country” would be a good fit for the Army, and “has a strong work ethic” might be a good fit for a job which requires more hard work than skill, and that “smart and educated” would be an excellent choice for a job like doctor, teacher, or leader (depending on the area of expertise, of course) – that is, the right person for the job, but not necessarily more valuable as a person.

In short, how would you suggest to Chris that preferring an educated person to be a leader doesn’t necessarily mean that they are more valuable than a strong-as-ox bricklayer? That’s what I’m getting at.

In short, how would you suggest to Chris that preferring an educated person to be a leader doesn’t necessarily mean that they are more valuable than a strong-as-ox bricklayer?

If you figure out the answer to that question, you can be a leader.

Here’s the situation in Europe:

Iceland was broke and had to declare bankruptcy.
Greece is almost broke.
Ireland might be almost broke.
Spain and Portugal are in serious trouble.

@laureth So far, I haven’t found anything foolproof. Perhaps the Socratic Method? I’ll have to try it out sometime. My MO is to avoid sensitive issues when possible, and not press the issue when I can’t avoid it. Finding common ground is important. In a protracted conversation, I’ll ask them questions about their fields of expertise to balance the flow of information.
Basically, follow good conversational etiquette.

In short, how would you suggest to Chris that preferring an educated person to be a leader doesn’t necessarily mean that they are more valuable than a strong-as-ox bricklayer? That’s what I’m getting at.
Actually, I wouldn’t think that Chris would have a problem, unless he was or knew the bricklayer or had something against the educated guy. Still, I would probably underscore the fact that different people have different strengths, and that the educated person probably wouldn’t be any good at tuckpointing, and that the single most important quality in a leader is that he be able to get people to follow him.

@ETpro Thank you for your concern. She doesn’t think that I’m better than her, but she thinks that I might think that I’m better than her – or else my cousin. Sorry if I didn’t get that through in my previous posts; my writing skill drops when I’m sleepy.

UPDATE:

Ireland is almost broke.

Hasn’t Ireland been practicing the same austerity meaures (and failing at recovery because they were too good at austerity) that the Conservative/Tea Partiers think would be awesome for the USA?

I’m not sure. Ireland has agreed to accept European help. See

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-22/ecb-s-weber-confident-irish-aid-will-stabilize-banking-system.html

@laureth You are right. They went on an austerity program 2 years ago to try and restore confidence to their financial markets. I saw an article on it several days back, but now can’t find it. But there is much more to it than just that. Here is the story of what went so terribly wrong.

One problem seems to be Ireland’s taxes which are extremely low. Companies don’t have to pay a lot on their profits and many European countries object to this kind of tax dumping because it’s unfair competition.

@mattbrowne Part of their program to pay down the debt they are taking on rescuing thier banks is to raise taxes. Looks like early elections are a certainty.

@ETpro – Yes, looks that way.

Again, low taxes in the face of much debt is a Tea Party sermon.

@laureth Actually, the Tea Party hates the debt. They wax eloquent about it when demonizing the Washington insiders who ran it up. They just hate doing anything constructive about it way more than that hate the debt.

@ETpro – you make my point. If they hate the debt, for really real, you’d think they’d do anything in their power to reduce it, including tossing a little more cash in the kitty when Uncle Sam passes the hat around. Instead, in the face of amazing debt, they still want to reduce taxes, and cut spending only in seemingly trivial ways. Ways that cost (comparatively) little, like science and education, are always on the chopping block, which will damage our ability to compete, but the big gaping maw of the military (which isn’t even properly funded for wartime) is left alone.

The things that the Right wants us to do to “recover” seem to be the same sort of austerity measures that are driving places like Ireland into the crapper. But they don’t learn the lesson from watching news of Europe, they still think that stuff will work here.

@laureth True. I am sure there are exceptions, as with any large collection of people, but the bulk seem to want spending cuts that only impact other people—none that might affect themselves. Recovery equalls laying off as many government employees as possible, so they can
t go shopping for their kids anymore, businesses in theor town get hurt, they lose their homes and flood the already oversaturated lines looking for jobs. Somehow, I don’t see that plan working.

The first answer is the best, get rid of all laws and start over. But revolutions in themselves mean out of control and all whom try to lead are killed leaving the best killer, a totalitarian dictator whom just like in russia murders untold thousands over the years. Anyone whom theatens his or her hold on power.

Sorry for not responding sooner, but, well, I just forgot.

@Saoirse So Emma Goldman never advocated violence? You seem to be confusing anti-militarism with pacifism a lot. You also clearly didn’t get it “from where the philosophy, or whatever you want to call it, came from”, if there even is such a thing. Bakunin also never advocated pacifism. Chomsky does, but he’s certainly not a primary source, and doesn’t count anyway (Statist pig-dog).

More to the point, your claims to not be elitist are overshadowed by the fact that you are nothing but that in your treatment of anarchist philosophy. Anarchism, or rather its various strains and forms, have only a few common threads, and pacifism isn’t one of them. None are an official or truer form. At its core, all that can be said about anarchism is that it is the belief that we, as humans, can order our lives and communities by ourselves, without authoritarian governments, corporations, and other such organizations. All the rest is different forms of embellishment.

To everyone else: Since this conversation started, Wikileaks and other leaks have shown the general contempt that the world’s presumed rulers have for democracy, justice, and freedom. We see it laid clear the collusion between corporations and governments, such as the Shell company having almost complete control of the Nigerian government, or the EPA basically being a tool of chemical corporations, driving constant wars, Obama selling weapons to India so they can slaughter the indigenous Dongria Kondh or the rebels trying to stop the corporations, and lots of other fun stuff. More and more evidence stacks up that the government/corporate complex is functionally antithetical to healthy, independent communities, and that the government’s primary job is to “move into an area, establish a monopoly on violence, and facilitate resource extraction” (to butcher a Derrick Jensen line). It continues to do this at home and abroad; our culture is a ‘culture of occupation’.

But since Americans get their news from the TV, who knows what this will mean in terms of any sort of revolution, peaceful or otherwise. It’s happening lots of other places, though, and I bet it’s catching.

The question is silly because the American system has revolution built in. It’s called voting. Get on your soap-box and get the people behind you. Get elected president and have all your like minded party members elected to the house and senate. Cast out the laws you don’t like and make new ones. Change our country how you like it.
The other thing why it is silly is because no one cares. Were is your local democrat, republican or peoples party meeting held? If people really cared they would be down there taking the stage and telling people that people are starving and try to come up with solutions. Then get elected and do something. You could try to write your congressmen or woman and try to get it done, but they have taken money from lobbies and represent big oil or the rich and famous. Don’t use big money to get elected. Have a network of people saying the same speech’s all over the country at all the political meetings. If your cause and solutions ring true, they will elect the representatives for change.
Do we really think people will revolt in this country when they won’t even go down to the local political meetings and have their voices heard? Ronald Regan enacted the tax law were people could keep allot of they’re earning and become rich with out taking it all in taxes. The argument was they take the risks and why should they create new jobs if not allowed to reap the rewards of success. All well and good but we can now also see how it has grown into embezzlement and fraud in banking and investing..What is right. Perhaps 10 years taxed and ten not? If all that money is put into welfare, the people will not be motivated to work and want to just live on that. The communist system of taking from the rich and spreading out to the masses is re-born into our government. These are the issues and why people must starve if they don’t work. The best system is in place to create jobs, but the big conglomerates keep buying out smaller ones to cut administrative costs and put them all under one roof.

@Tex88 Great Answer!