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LETTERS
GOP presidential field focusing on non-issues
Tools
To the editor:
It's difficult to believe that in an election year with such critical issues as the Arab Spring, homelessness among people who have never been homeless, foreclosures, Iranian nuclear ambitions -- good or bad -- and crippling national debt, Republican candidates for president seem preoccupied with such relative non-issues as gay marriage and abortion.
Does whomever one chooses to marry really impact my life and personal values? And to those who claim to be "pro-life" but usually favor the death penalty, do we really want more unwanted children languishing in orphanages, foster homes or in the street among the homeless?
The ongoing mantra from the right and its supporters suggest most clearly that the primary goal of Republicans is to remove the president from office, to expunge "ObamaCare" and to retool the machinery of government to the standards of the lunatic Tea Party.
John Esperian
Las Vegas
Spending plan
To the editor:
Why is it not surprising that President Obama's proposed budget is another stellar example of federal ineffectiveness, generously laced with class envy in hopes of attracting votes during this election year?
The requested $3.8 trillion carries with it an additional $1.3 trillion in deficit spending and $1.5 trillion in increased taxes. Adding to the national debt does not seem to bother members of this administration (I guess they do not read about the crisis in Greece).
The same old theme of bleeding the wealthy seems paramount in this budget. In reference to the "Buffett Rule" (taxpayers with earnings of more than $1 million pay 30 percent), it would make little difference in the $1.5 trillion allegedly needed to erase the deficit. Earners reporting more than $1 million number less than 250,000, so the increase in revenue would be insignificant, even if they currently pay zero.
With a record-size government, which is getting bigger and worse, what happened to Mr. Obama's request on Jan. 13 to be allowed to streamline government by merging agencies with similar functions? That's a far cry from relatively newly created agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has a fiscal 2012 budget of more than $200 million.
Another agency that seems to be free-spending our tax dollars is the Department of Energy and its loan guarantee program.
Mr. Obama recently said, "We can't just cut our way into growth." Just remember these words were spoken back in 2009 by the man who promised us he would cut the deficit in half by the end of his four-year term. He should have said and committed to, "We can't spend our way into prosperity."
Robert Latchford
Henderson
Phone records
To the editor:
So now that the offensively intrusive and blatantly illegal ban on cellphone use while driving has been forced onto the residents of Nevada, I have a few questions and suggestions. How do the police enforce this law? Do they issue citations based merely on sight, or do they actually have the unconstitutional mandate to perform a warrantless search of our cellphone records? How do they know if you have been talking or texting on your phone unless they check actual records from your provider?
Obtaining these records requires a warrant. Do they just issue citations on a hunch?
My suggestion to protesting and annulling this Nanny State intrusion on your civil liberties is to refuse to allow any police officer to search your cellphone without a legal warrant. I also suggest turning your cellphone off and holding it up to your ear any time you drive. Holding a shoe or a box or a hamburger -- or just your hand up to your ear -- will suffice, as well.
The point is, how -- without a warrant issued by a judge -- do the police prove you were talking on your cellphone while driving? Can you spell Fourth Amendment?
I will be driving and talking on my "Get Smart" shoe phone whenever I drive in Nevada.
J.D. Collier
Henderson
Another dream
To the editor:
Just like Steve Sebelius (Sunday column), I too have looked back from the 2031 Legislature. But unlike his vision, mine is more positive.
What happened is that in 2012 a small group of conservatives had an epiphany. It suddenly dawned on them that what they were trying to "conserve" was in fact the most radically liberal system of government ever devised by the mind of man. A system rooted in the free choices of a free people in all areas -- political, social and economic.
This led them to abandon their oppressive policies of sticking their noses into people's individual lives in Nevada. They became known as Classical Liberal Conservatives (CLCs), and they were successful in the election, gaining control of the state Senate and picking up a couple of seats in the Assembly.
By 2014, the CLCs took the lead and successfully articulated how fraudulent and cruel the regressive statists' business income tax was, and the people crushed it at the polls that November.
By the 2019 Legislature the CLCs from both parties had control and the economic tyranny of the regressive statists had been relegated to irrelevance. All through the 2020s, operating under the expanding freedom of classical liberalism, the people of Nevada created a level of economic prosperity and political and social justice unmatched in our state's history.
The 2031 Legislature will be a celebration of the power of human liberty, but it all hinges on the positive answer to one crucial question: Are there any CLCs out there?
KNIGHT ALLEN
LAS VEGAS
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Neither you nor Jefferson answered the question I posed Winston, and although I have no doubt you understood the implication, I suppose I will have to accept that you don't want to answer the question; oh well.
The answer to the elevator question is obvious, and it simply makes the point that where there are more people, there are fewer liberties; that is the world we live in today like it or not. And the fact that more people, who act contrary to others rights/liberties, means that there must be more people to intervene if anyone's rights/liberties are to be protected. Man's nature hasn't changed...much, and so long as man is immoral (as they are and will always be) there must be those who protect the rights of the people.
Yes, I believe Jefferson did answer your question, since one of his premises is that natural rights originate with God, and they are unalienable, meaning they cannot be abrogated or taken away, without due process, by those demonstrating damage or injury, as under common law.
Therefore, those Elevator Ten have the exact same natural rights, which are inexorably tied to correct self-government. If one man behaves badly, diminishing the rights of another, he would be held responsible by the others, this essentially being due process.
Of course, if only one person was on the planet, there is nobody there to hold him responsible, but then, how could he diminish anyone else's rights anyway?
BTW, not that I don't have independent thought, but I consider one of my primary purposes for posting to various websites is to clarify what our Founders believed and why, since much of that has been lost to our current generation.
Winston.Smith:
Thomas Jefferson was many things, and said many things, and none of them answer the questions that I asked; sadly.
The question was simply whether YOU would acknowledge that the liberties and freedoms of men are by necessity more limited when there are more men around, than when there are fewer.
I'll give you a for instance; say that there is a single man on earth all right? Now, its probably fair to say that the liberty he enjoys is unlimited right? Now, say instead of a single man on earth, your measuring the liberty of 10 men crammed into an elevator; do those ten men have the identical rights of liberty as would the single man living alone on earth?
That's the question and I hope I can get YOU, without reference to anyone else, to answer it.
BTDT: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." - Declaration of Independence
Jefferson set up various premises here, that while not totally original, in which, for the first time in history, a nation was created upon those premises. This was, indeed, the revolutionary aspect of our founding.
What Jefferson left out is our responsibility, collectively and individually, to self-govern correctly. To have a minimum of "normal" government, people must behave themselves, take care of themselves, and generally abide by the "Golden Rule". John Adams recognized this when he remarked: "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Your comments seem to imply that we must have a continuously larger government taking away our liberties in order to protect ourselves from other citizens taking away our liberty. Kind of like saving the village by destroying the village, doncha think?
Winston.Smith:
I really have to ask you something, and I hope you answer; do you agree that people, in a world with 8 billion other souls, have less "freedom and liberty", the same amount, or less?
As a follow-up question I would ask you, if you agree that there would be less freedom and liberty in world of 8 billion people as opposed to one with 10 people, would you expect there to be more people enforcing violations of peoples' "freedom and liberty" or fewer?
What you seem, in my opinion, to miss, is that it is only natural, in a world with more people, for their to be more people who violate other peoples rights, and therefore to "protect" those rights, there must be more people in those positions to protect those peoples rights.
MSchaffer, surely you've noticed the growing militarized police/surveillance state growing around us? As long as our government's actions continue to reflect Orwellian projections, I will continue to expose and oppose them.
Even if Pinker's assertions that violence globally is decreasing, for whatever reasons, that does not mean that our increasing loss of liberty is to be ignored. Government tyranny does not always mean deaths.
Art.Ruehls assumes that I am a Christian or even religious. While I do believe in God, I am not a Christian nor am I very religious. Religion is a "top-down" authoritarian institution in which some human being controls others and I reject being controlled. I don't want others ordering me around, be it a minister, priest or rabbi, and certainly not some bureaucratuc drone and that's why I am a Conservative. I don't want or need a nanny-religion nor a nanny-state dictating what's right or wrong. I have a set of morals & ethics instilled in me by my parents, added to that by weighing the words, deeds and experiences of others, as well as a conscience that nags the hell out of me if I do something that would harm others such as cheating or stealing. I try to treat others as I would like to be treated but won't roll over, be crapped on or go-along-to-get-along. Art.Ruehls believes in executing the innocent unborn? Just where did he get his moral grounding from?
Aldous Huxley anyone? Winnie really should join reality and forget "1984" for it's simplistic outlook. Try reading some non fiction...I would suggest "The Better Angels of Our Nature".
Gee, moist, to take down Obama, all we really have to do is have Congress impeach and convict him for waging unconstitutional undeclared wars, but neither party will do that, since the leaderships are controlled by the fascist/globalist banksters, and, after all, Bush I and II did the same thing.
Partisan bickering is so infantile when all it becomes is pointing and shouting. The false left/right paradigm was designed to prevent the electorate from realizing that the fix is in, and both parties work 24/7 to separate us from our liberty and prosperity using the Orwellian warfare/welfare state.
War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength
I hope we don't have to endure the trotting-out of Willie Horton or flag burning nonsense again.