Parroting talking points only serves to make one look ignorant. Do you really feel that way or just repeating what you’ve read that someone smarter than you said in an article or on CNN for affect? Lets hear why YOU think Goldwater would never get through the GOP primaries today. And, no using Google.

  BHO

As for narcissism, social critics have been decrying the “culture of narcissism” since the 1970s and before. But where is the data? How do we quantify an increase in narcissism. You can’t. GB’s real line of argument is–”it seems, from mine and my friends’ perspectives, that most people do not believe like me, in Jesus, anti-abortion, wild-eyed conspiracy theories stolen from Alex Jones, and that Barack Obama is the antichrist, among many other things, and so the world must be going to hell in a hand basket.”

 And almost–I said “almost”–out of nowhere the guy drops credit into the mix. Yet he gives not context. Why do we, as individuals, rely on credit so much? Perhaps because of the wage squeezes since the 1970s. Or because our biggest employer is Wal-Mart, where people make nothing, get few hours, and even fewer benefits (I know, Wal-Mart has been making positive moves as of late. We’ll see how it pans out)? And all of this is tied to the rise of the financialization of everything. This is one reason why trickle-down economics doesn’t work. Rich people do not have to invest in jobs to continue to make their money make them more money. And so they don’t. Real wages have been dropping, with a slight bump in the 1990s, since the 1980s. These are real stats. Look them up. Households may be keeping up slightly, but that’s because many of them have two people working to make what one person made 40 years ago. Two parents in the workforce…hmmmm, possible problems with the stability of the family unit? But our economy runs on consumption. So, if people aren’t going to make money, and yet we still need them buying all the crap we import from China, enter VISA, Mastercard, because, “for everything else, there’s…”

Working people have been screwed in this country. And yes, the government–the dems and the GOP alike–have participated in that screwing. But at the end of the day, this idea of big govt as the problem is simply a tool to divide people. Like gay marriage and abortion. Whatever will keep two working men or women from realizing that they are getting the short end of the stick and banding together to do something about it. Instead, they blame others. It’s those lazy poor people bleeding the govt coffers dry! It’s amazing how poor people have so much power, huh? It’s a like a dad who loses the family nest egg gambling and then screams at his children for profligacy.  

How do you libertarians explain the rise of the middle-class after WWII? Yes, hard work. But what about FHA loans that put millions of people (mainly white) into their first homes. What about the G.I. and VA loans that allowed service men and women (again, mostly the white ones, mostly the men) to go t college and buy homes? What about the interstate highway system? What about the Cold War defense buildup that put millions of Americans to work making war material that we never even used? What about the union efforts that secured so much of what laborers take for granted today? The masses of industrial workers who climbed to the middle class in the last 50 years had union help, which up until the late 1930s wasn’t option until the govt granted unionization rights, collective bargaining rights, etc. And what about all these old-age benefits, unemployment insurance, etc? Do you really think people would put away the money? It’s easy to say that if they didn’t then they should suffer the consequences. But what happens is society suffers the consequences of too many people out of work, or too many sick people not paying for their care. 

Libertarianism is as utopian as communism.