the sounds of silence

Norway on Fox News.com (Photo credit: Norway UN (New York))

I thought when I first decided to begin this political opinion blog that I would get lot’s of comments from haters. Watching the news, it seems that today many believe in tolerance for everyone except anyone that disagrees with them. So, I was really expecting to get hit. However, I haven’t gotten a single critical or hateful comment. Not one. Actually, now that I think about it. I’m not sure if I remember any comments to this blog, so far. Only a very few likes and a few follows. Otherwise, it’s been all quiet on the western front.

I’m glad. I think it would be stressful to have to deal with a lot of angry notes. Or a lot of hostile attacks that aren’t meant to really discuss. I’m not sure if this medium is good for real discussion or not. These days, with the Left and the Right not negotiating, and the country split in half, it doesn’t seem that anybody really wants to discuss or negotiate anyway.

It seems that every time I turn on my TV, there are groups of people on MSNBC calling the Republicans names, there are two political hacks from both parties on Fox fighting and pointing fingers at each other, there are news casters slanting the news and denying any bias. Sometimes, I just have to turn it all off and listen to the sounds of silence. This blog is a perfect haven for that. I can vent and then there is quiet. I don’t have to listen to endless fallacious arguments, lies, talking points and ad hominem attacks. I just sit and enjoy the silence of apathy. Ah, a sweet sound it is.

ad hominem ad nauseam

Logical Fallacies 1 (Photo credit: Mark Klotz)

I am so very tired of hearing President Obama, Harry Reid and others referring to the “Tea Party” as extreme or anarchists or hostage-taking terrorists. Pursuing these kinds of fallacious ad hominem attacks is unfair. Whether or not you agree with the Tea Party, they are not extremists. They believe in the United States Constitution, in smaller federal government, and fiscal responsibility. They want their representatives to take action to reduce the size of government and the national debt. In my opinion, none of that is extreme and I certainly have not heard anyone calling for anarchy or taking the government hostage.

Libertarians, of course, are used to this kind of ad hominem attacks from progressives. Libertarians are often accused of being an anarchist in many a straw man argument, simply because they believe in less government. Note, they do not believe in no goverment, thus there is no basis for this reasoning. Of course, on the other hand progressives do believe in big government and they want the government to have more control over every thing in our lives. They do not seem to care much for liberty and freedom or individualism. They believe in the collective and statism. So, if the Tea Party is made up of extreme anarchists, then the progressives like Harry Reid are extreme totalitarians.

I don’t imagine Harry would take kindly to being called a fascist or communist. So, please, let’s drop the fallacious and unhelpful ad hominem attacks. Instead, let’s get down to real discussions. Like, how exactly do the progressives intend to continue paying for social security, medicaid, medicare, obamacare, welfare, and all the other socialist entitlements when we are almost 17 trillion dollars in debt? They love to say “show us your plan”, so show us your plan! There simply aren’t enough rich people in existence to tax in order to pay for all of this. So, how do they ever plan to balance the budget and pay off this debt?

Because, if they can’t answer that, then perhaps they are just buying votes by promising to deliver all of these things that are unsustainable.  I wonder if they don’t worry about such things because they know they will be long gone and living high, when everything hits the fan and the economy falls apart? Don’t they worry about their children and grand children? I know they do because Senator Obama once said that Bush’s record deficits and increase of our national debt and was unpatriotic. Yet, somehow after being President for one term and adding even more debt than Bush, he no longer seems to worry about this. Is he planning for his daughters to live in another country after his last term, or something, after we go bankrupt?

What could possibly make progressives think they can get away with this? Well, for one thing, they have been getting away it for more than 50 years or so. Even now, many people can’t seem to comprehend how cities all over the country, like Detroit, are going bankrupt. They can’t seem to acknowledge that the money required to fund all of the promised city, state and federal workers pensions and health care benefits just doesn’t exist. At some point, as this situation continues to worsen, the argument that it is all Bush’s fault isn’t even going to fly with the most uninformed of us citizens.

Hey, I will be the first to agree that it would be nice for every one to have guaranteed health care, a guaranteed job, and a guaranteed retirement. Imagine guaranteed happiness. Yes, all that would be just great, if the government could do that. But, the sad fact is that no government can do that. There isn’t enough money in the world to do that. There never was and there never will be. It is enough, as our founding fathers wisely said, to guarantee the pursuit of happiness. Believe me, that is hard enough to do. Not many countries or governments in the entire history of mankind have truly achieved even that. And many in the Tea Party today fear that one of the very few successful countries, is in danger of losing everything because of those that want to do it all or promise to do it all. How sad is that?