Shorter SayUncle
Posted by
tgirsch
Waaah! Most people don’t have as much of Teh Crazy as I do!
Seriously, I wonder if it ever occurs to these folks that not everyone has the same bizarre definition of “freedom” that they do. At the risk of sounding like the “America, love it or leave it” folks, I’m not aware that anyone has taken away their right to leave if they think it’s so bad and so beyond hope…
I have the crazy for not wanting the police killing innocents and the .gov listening to my phone calls?
Like the nuge said: The whole world sucks but America sucks less.
Comment 2/26/2008
Those aren’t the crazy part. The crazy part is not wanting a social safety net, not wanting consumer protection, etc.
Comment 2/26/2008
change not ‘not wanting’ to ‘preparing your own’ and you got it.
Comment 2/26/2008
Tell you what: Get reincarnated as a poor guy in a rural area, or in the inner city, with lousy parents, and then you go ahead and prepare your own safety net. Then get back to me.
But it underscores my point: You want “every man for himself,” which most of us acknowledge as being “teh crazy.”
Comment 2/26/2008
“Get reincarnated as a poor guy in a rural area”
That’s how my dad grew up. Worked for him. He taught me the same thing.
Comment 2/26/2008
I have to say, if your Dad managed to do it without any government assistance (grants, scholarships, public education, etc.), that’s admirable. Maybe he should write a book.
Comment 2/26/2008
Well, let’s see, no grants, no scholarship and dropped out of school he never attended anyway to enlist. So, yeah.
It’d be a short book consisting of the advice he’s given me all my life which consists of either ‘work hard’ or ‘man up and take it.’
Did I mention he was a drill sergeant?
Comment 2/26/2008
Wait, what kind of drill sergeant? Presumably in some sort of private militaristic organization not funded by anyone else’s tax dollars…
Comment 2/26/2008
Ah, yes, that good old fashioned world of self-actualization and economic rationality, the military.
That’s just hilarious. So, SU, where’s the GI Bill fit in your world view?
Comment 2/26/2008
last I checked it was an enumerated power of the .gov to ‘raise and support armies’.
Comment 2/27/2008
last I checked it was an enumerated power of the .gov to ‘raise and support armies’.
“…but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years”
The Original Intent(tm) was that there wouldn’t be a standing army, because the militia would be relied upon for most of the nation’s defense needs. But I forget that originalists only follow Original Intent(tm) when it’s convenient.
The .gov also has the enumerated power to “provide for the … general welfare of the United States,” but I’m sure That’s Different(tm).
Anyway, the constitutionality is irrelevant to the point. The point is that getting your life together and improving your lot by taking a job from the government (and one in which they feed, clothe, house, and train you, I might add) hardly qualifies as doing so “without any government assistance.”
If you tell me he’s a career military guy who retired, and is pulling a government pension, my head’s probably going to explode.
Comment 2/27/2008
SU
Yeah, in exchange for the small task of doing exactly what the government told him to do and to live where the government told him to live, the government fed him and his family, clothed him and his family, housed he and his family, trained him in a useful skill, and paid him a salary.
It’s amazing your father was able to make so much of himself without government assistance.
Or, let me put it this way: if you are so fired up about government assistance:
give back your degree that was partially subsidized by the government, move out of your house that is partially subsidized by the government, stop driving your car on government paid for roads, stop driving your car with government certified gas, stop driving your car that the government certified as safe, stop eating the food that the government certifies as safe, stop breathing air that the government ensures is healthy, stop using the internet that the government built, etc, etc, etc.
Comment 2/27/2008
If SU’s dad was career military, he also received life long health care and drug benefits from the gov’t and was potentially eligible for a subsidized mortgage and college tuition, as well as the right to purchase food and other essentials at the local PX at a healthy discount.
All of which, in my opinion, he was deserving of given his service in the military. The point is we never seem to consider benefits we receive as “handouts”. It’s only the other guy that gets them.
Comment 2/27/2008
Preemptively, just in case.
Comment 2/27/2008
#1 piece of advice - be white.
#2 - be male
#3 be born several decades ago, when medium-skilled labor was still financially rewarding enough to support a family and not cause the family unit to splinter. Also, this increases the advantages of whiteness, and male-ness.
Chris Rock has a term for that applies pretty well for libertarians, what is it again? Oh, that’s right - cracker ass cracker!
Seriously, I have no problems with libertarians, or I wouldn’t if they would be true to themselves and not call the cops when somebody catches their kid for a North Face on the subway…
Comment 2/29/2008