There are all sorts of people on the internet, then there is IB and her crew of supporters. This is a strange group of people. I try not to engage with them. For this post, we can lay it on the door of determinism.
She wrote this as an explanation to a query by Violetwisp. She offers the following great solutions. When I find myself almost agreeing with her suggestions, I console myself with the saying even a broken clock is right twice a day. Without further delay, here are her solutions
- Don’t tell poor people they are poor. They are better off not knowing. Keep off with pitiful descriptions of depravity, inequality and what else the left has in mind. They are better off not knowing they are poor;
- Pray till the hens come home. It wold be terribly unkind to stop people from praying. It is not like god didn’t see them born in poverty, inequality and depravity. That’s the way god can show them s/h/it doesn’t give a damn about their condition but it is good for the image of the church;
- Reduce the size of government, don’t force insurance on them and by all means don’t give them food stamps. Now I must say here we don’t have food stamps. Someone may have to explain them to me. I know for all persons formally employed, your employer must make a contribution to the national health insurance fund. And you are doubly lucky if you have a good employer, then you will have a medical cover paid for by the employer. I don’t know why anyone would object to this but maybe it is peculiarly American. Does reducing the size of government include reducing military budget too? I have heard a lot on the size of government, what extent of government involvement is being proposed?
- Don’t tell us about your degrees. Now I am not about to dispute that everyone needs to have a degree to succeed in life though I have seen those who succeeded by selling peanuts have toiled to take their children to get a degree or equivalent. So the argument in itself isn’t an argument against college degrees. There is a joke this side of the Sahara that those A students end up working for the C students, but are we going to stop people from getting As? Let us have technical schools, but we must keep our colleges. They should encourage research, innovation and growth in new ways of doing things.
- Families. Well yes. In the words of Count Leo Tolstoy, all happy families are alike, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways. There are many dysfunctional families that are not good for the children born in them, nor for the society in which they are found. I have nothing against those who want to get married. I have nothing against those who want to get married and don’t want to have children. I have nothing against those who don’t want to get married. To claim marriages are good for the society is to be blind to the many homicides reported daily or the abuses suffered by most people in these unions. I prefer a healthy society for all.
Random thoughts 
The conservatives here always cry about a smaller government and no socialized health care for Americans. At the same time they scream for a bigger military budget to further our socially funded military machine. Drones cost $, dammit! Taxes for bombs=AWESOME!!! Taxes for health care= ARE YOU F**KIN’ KIDDIN’? Is it any wonder most conservatives here are bible-thumpin’ christians? Socialism is great when it funds a huge-ass military, but not when it helps feed the poor and gives them health care. Fuck conservatives, the Anti-American idjits!
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I can tell you my friend I have not understand the objection to the health insurance scheme. I don’t want to read the whole law but some one can summarise it for me. Maybe I would see why they object.
Something I don’t understand too is why they want a small government but a big army? Isn’t army part of government?
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There’s no law that’s preventing socialized health care, just asshole conservatives who claim socialized health care is evil because…I don’t know. We have a socialized, HUGE, army that’s paid for by MASSIVELY taxing our citizens. It’s socialism in action in it’s purest form. The same idjits who scream about a smaller government are the same ones who want a Christian theocracy in America, want to end gay marriage, and want all aid to the disabled and poor to end. Conservatives really want a huge government that imposes their christian will onto the rest of the country. It isn’t a smaller government they want, it’s a big, fat christian one that, at the same time, frees them of the burden of paying taxes. They’re greedy, arrogant, lazy, self-serving, wealthy pricks who, I must say, I REALLY hate.
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Actually, our military is largely paid for by borrowing money from the Japanese and Chinese. Americans, even reactionary war mongering Americans, don’t like to pay taxes for the military, either
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True. But, our taxes are used to pay back the money we borrow from the Japanese and the Chinese. Well, they would be, if we actually paid it back. Ironically, if the Chinese started a war with us, or visa versa, we’d we fighting them with weapons their money helped pay for, money which, of course, we didn’t pay back. Conservatism to a “T”.
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That would be an interesting war, don’t you think
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I do, but I’d rather it not happen.
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That’s actually interesting Brian.
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Maybe it is always best to ask them to state precisely what they mean by small government.
Why anyone would want a theocracy is beyond me
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Jeff is absolutely correct. This is the essence of modern conservative ideology in America. It is the bizarre amalgamation of Christian dominionism (i.e. theocracy), militarist nationalism (i.e. authoritarianism), white supremacy (i.e. hierarchical society), and anti-centralized government radicalism (i.e. libertarianism, and “States’ Rights” advocacy). Let’s look at their 5 points:
1 – Keep the poor uninformed: Control over information and the media is the hallmark of totalitarian regimes bent on maintaining a social hierarchy that first oppresses and then exploits the lower classes (in this case Blacks, Latinos, other ethnic and religious minorities).
2 – Emphasis on prayer: Promotion and preeminence of anti-secular religious fundamentalism (in this case Christianity).
3 – Reduce the size of government: As Jeff explained, this is a misnomer. What they really want is to reduce or eliminate the practice of democracy which they correctly see as their biggest obstacle. In the absence of democratic centralized government, political power defaults to state and local bureaucracies where their influence is strongest. This was the clarion call of secessionists before the American Civil War to preserve the southern plantation system and slavery.
4 – Delegitimization of educational degrees: Anti-intellectualism is another prominent characteristic of theocracy and authoritarianism.
5 – Narrow definition of families: This is primarily anti-gay sentiment, but it also falls in line with broader Christian fundamentalist doctrine.
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The Christian Dominionism is a self-deluding lie. American has a State Church: Mammonism. It’s priesthood is worshipped and given oodles of money (CEOs, celebrities, etc).
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Let’s find a few of their leaders and crucify them. I’d like that.
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There would a great wailing
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The god of money rules over America’s wealthy elites, but religious gods have more sway over America’s less-privileged less-educated masses.
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And this class of religious Americans sound like a scary lot
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You have distilled this better than I could Bob.
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Thanks, I can strike the right cord on rare occasions. But, I’d rather distill some spirits… like a good bottle of scotch! 🙂
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That’s a language we both understand. Some old Scotch so we cannot be accused of dealing with the underage 😀
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What can I say? 1 and 2 are classic! You really need to paste this post in the comments section.
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Commenting on IB’s blog would be acting against policy.
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What policy? I clearly missed something, hope I’m not breaking any rules! 😉
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Not a chance. You have not broken any policy. It is my policy on what blogs I comment on and which I don’t
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You’re missing bucket loads of fun, ask John Zande! 😀
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Did you see what happened to Ark? He almost stopped blogging after spending time with IB’s ilk
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BTW, I just beat the hell out of dude trying to force free health insurance on me. The bastard.
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Was he sent by the big government or small one? Others should learn from him not to force free health insurance on anyone
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They should all just join Christian medical prayer circles. These lovely groups make sure nobody is given any help for “immoral” and “ungodly” acts. Insurance encourages SIN, I tell you, SIN.
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Now I understand the opposition to insurance. It’s all about sin
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it seems that this highly unpleasant person, IB, is all for a government like in “1984”, albeit run by her religion. Her answer to everything seems to be keep people ignorant.
I do wish we could put people like this on an island by themselves so they can put into place their ideas.
Incidentally, “food stamps” (now using credit card type things rather than paper chits) are government payments to people who can show a financial need to buy food. Conservatives in the US are obsessed with the idea that there is massive fraud in this system, quite similar to their obsession about massive voter fraud, and with the usual lack of evidence of their paranoia. There is fraud, no doubt about it, but as my husband has said, how many honest people do you want to go hungry to prevent a few from gaming the system?
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In short, they don’t want a welfare state? They want those who can’t fend for themselves to be left for dead or what solution are they offering? I seem unable to understand them. Maybe I am slow.
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It’s a survival-of-the-fittest mentality (a.k.a. social Darwinism).
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We had an interesting discussion once about this on your blog. I think it was about Rand Paul?
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Yes, we covered a lot of ground in that very interesting discussion.
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they offer no solution. Often this type of person is deluded by the myth of the individual who can succeed with no help from others and/or the myth that some enity has decreed that the poor “deserve” to be poor.
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I think they must also be in the group that insist people who are poor are not working hard while these people in reality slave days on end to make one end bread and another meat, if you get what I mean😀
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