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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 29, 2014 - 06:42pm PT
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Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton were walking down the street when they came to a homeless person.
Then Romney gave the homeless person his business card and told him to come to his office for a job.
He then took $20 out of his pocket and gave it to the homeless person.
Hillary was very impressed, so when they came to another homeless person, she decided to help. She walked over to the homeless person and gave him directions to the welfare office. She then reached into Romney’s pocket and got out $20. She kept $15 for her administrative fees and gave the homeless person $5.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Oct 29, 2014 - 09:40pm PT
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And then Hillary tried to give Romney a courtesy reach-around and discovered that he didn't have a dick...
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crankster
Trad climber
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Oct 30, 2014 - 01:36am PT
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Mitt thinks a homeless person is someone with a house a block away from the beach instead of one on it.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 30, 2014 - 02:54am PT
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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” With these words Dickens began his famous novel A Tale of Two Cities. But this cannot, alas, be said about our own terrible century. Men have for millennia destroyed each other, but the deeds of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon (who introduced mass killings in war), even the Armenian massacres, pale into insignificance before the Russian Revolution and its aftermath: the oppression, torture, murder which can be laid at the doors of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and the systematic falsification of information which prevented knowledge of these horrors for years—these are unparalleled. They were not natural disasters, but preventable human crimes, and whatever those who believe in historical determinism may think, they could have been averted.
I speak with particular feeling, for I am a very old man, and I have lived through almost the entire century. My life has been peaceful and secure, and I feel almost ashamed of this in view of what has happened to so many other human beings. I am not a historian, and so I cannot speak with authority on the causes of these horrors. Yet perhaps I can try.
They were, in my view, not caused by the ordinary negative human sentiments, as Spinoza called them—fear, greed, tribal hatreds, jealousy, love of power—though of course these have played their wicked part. They have been caused, in our time, by ideas; or rather, by one particular idea. It is paradoxical that Karl Marx, who played down the importance of ideas in comparison with impersonal social and economic forces, should, by his writings, have caused the transformation of the twentieth century, both in the direction of what he wanted and, by reaction, against it. The German poet Heine, in one of his famous writings, told us not to underestimate the quiet philosopher sitting in his study; if Kant had not undone theology, he declared, Robespierre might not have cut off the head of the King of France.
He predicted that the armed disciples of the German philosophers—Fichte, Schelling, and the other fathers of German nationalism—would one day destroy the great monuments of Western Europe in a wave of fanatical destruction before which the French Revolution would seem child’s play. This may have been unfair to the German metaphysicians, yet Heine’s central idea seems to me valid: in a debased form, the Nazi ideology did have roots in German anti-Enlightenment thought. There are men who will kill and maim with a tranquil conscience under the influence of the words and writings of some of those who are certain that they know perfection can be reached.
Let me explain. If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used—if necessary, terror, slaughter. Lenin believed this after reading Das Kapital, and consistently taught that if a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society could be created by the means he advocated, then the end justified any methods that needed to be used, literally any.
The root conviction which underlies this is that the central questions of human life, individual or social, have one true answer which can be discovered. It can and must be implemented, and those who have found it are the leaders whose word is law. The idea that to all genuine questions there can be only one true answer is a very old philosophical notion. The great Athenian philosophers, Jews and Christians, the thinkers of the Renaissance and the Paris of Louis XIV, the French radical reformers of the eighteenth century, the revolutionaries of the nineteenth—however much they differed about what the answer was or how to discover it (and bloody wars were fought over this)—were all convinced that they knew the answer, and that only human vice and stupidity could obstruct its realization.
This is the idea of which I spoke, and what I wish to tell you is that it is false. Not only because the solutions given by different schools of social thought differ, and none can be demonstrated by rational methods—but for an even deeper reason. The central values by which most men have lived, in a great many lands at a great many times—these values, almost if not entirely universal, are not always harmonious with each other. Some are, some are not. Men have always craved for liberty, security, equality, happiness, justice, knowledge, and so on. But complete liberty is not compatible with complete equality—if men were wholly free, the wolves would be free to eat the sheep. Perfect equality means that human liberties must be restrained so that the ablest and the most gifted are not permitted to advance beyond those who would inevitably lose if there were competition. Security, and indeed freedoms, cannot be preserved if freedom to subvert them is permitted. Indeed, not everyone seeks security or peace, otherwise some would not have sought glory in battle or in dangerous sports.
Justice has always been a human ideal, but it is not fully compatible with mercy. Creative imagination and spontaneity, splendid in themselves, cannot be fully reconciled with the need for planning, organization, careful and responsible calculation. Knowledge, the pursuit of truth—the noblest of aims—cannot be fully reconciled with the happiness or the freedom that men desire, for even if I know that I have some incurable disease this will not make me happier or freer. I must always choose: between peace and excitement, or knowledge and blissful ignorance. And so on.
So what is to be done to restrain the champions, sometimes very fanatical, of one or other of these values, each of whom tends to trample upon the rest, as the great tyrants of the twentieth century have trampled on the life, liberty, and human rights of millions because their eyes were fixed upon some ultimate golden future?
I am afraid I have no dramatic answer to offer: only that if these ultimate human values by which we live are to be pursued, then compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen. So much liberty for so much equality, so much individual self-expression for so much security, so much justice for so much compassion. My point is that some values clash: the ends pursued by human beings are all generated by our common nature, but their pursuit has to be to some degree controlled—liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I repeat, may not be fully compatible with each other, nor are liberty, equality, and fraternity.
So we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise, and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals. I know only too well that this is not a flag under which idealistic and enthusiastic young men and women may wish to march—it seems too tame, too reasonable, too bourgeois, it does not engage the generous emotions. But you must believe me, one cannot have everything one wants—not only in practice, but even in theory. The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction, blood—eggs are broken, but the omelette is not in sight, there is only an infinite number of eggs, human lives, ready for the breaking. And in the end the passionate idealists forget the omelette, and just go on breaking eggs.
I am glad to note that toward the end of my long life some realization of this is beginning to dawn. Rationality, tolerance, rare enough in human history, are not despised. Liberal democracy, despite everything, despite the greatest modern scourge of fanatical, fundamentalist nationalism, is spreading. Great tyrannies are in ruins, or will be—even in China the day is not too distant. I am glad that you to whom I speak will see the twenty-first century, which I feel sure can be only a better time for mankind than my terrible century has been. I congratulate you on your good fortune; I regret that I shall not see this brighter future, which I am convinced is coming. With all the gloom that I have been spreading, I am glad to end on an optimistic note. There really are good reasons to think that it is justified.
© The Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust 2014
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Oct 30, 2014 - 05:45am PT
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The Republicans control Congress with 45 Senate seats?
Yes, they do. With the filibuster rules now in effect a party needs 60 seats to control the senate.
The same with California, the Republican minority could, and did, block any fiscally sound spending bills. It wasn't until the Democrats achieved a super-majority that California got back on a sound fiscal footing.
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Oct 30, 2014 - 05:56am PT
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Gary wrote
Yes, they do. With the filibuster rules now in effect a party needs 60 seats to control the senate.
How did the Affordable Care Act pass without 60 votes?
Bookworm,
Interesting essay by Asaiah Berlin. I like philosophical discussions over the political finger pointing. The essay reminds me of the zero sum relationship between liberty and security.
I am also reminded of this quote by an unknown author:
"The problem with capitalism, is capitalists.
The problem with socialism, is socialism."
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dirtbag
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 30, 2014 - 06:01am PT
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Oh sketch,
Please refresh my memory:
Who controlled the house house then?
Who controlled the Supreme Court?
Who controlled the senate then?
Who was our president?
Compared to now:
How many times did the dems threaten to filibuster legislation or appointments they disliked?
How many bills were passed?
Hoe many times did the dems threaten to shutdown the government when they did not get their way? Or seriously threaten to default?
I think you aspire to be a dickhead, but you aren't bright enough to pull it off. Keep trying...
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 30, 2014 - 06:12am PT
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ok, this one's just for fun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A
exit question: what's the difference between a polite greeting/compliment and "harrassment"? the vid seems to blur the lines...perhaps libs would prefer we not communicate at all...but then, how would we be able to "give consent"?
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Norton
Social climber
quitcherbellyachin
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Oct 30, 2014 - 06:13am PT
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How did the Affordable Care Act pass without 60 votes? \
the Dems had 58 of their own plus the two Independent Senators joined them
oh come on, you knew that, or could have googled it, right?
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Oct 30, 2014 - 06:59am PT
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Norton beat me to it. Thanks, Norton.
Did they change the rules, giving additional power to filibusters?
Yes, it used to be that you had to "filibuster", that is extend debate by speaking endlessly. In the '70s they changed the rule, so it was no longer required to speak on the floor, thus creating the "virtual" filibuster of today.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Oct 30, 2014 - 07:17am PT
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More bad news for all you that hate America.
From Bloomberg News: http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/us-economy-up-35percent-in-3rd-quarter-capping-best-6-months-in-over-a-decade/ar-BBc2vQU
The economy in the U.S. expanded more than forecast in the third quarter, capping its strongest six months in more than a decade, as gains in government spending and a shrinking trade deficit made up for a slowdown in household purchases.
Gross domestic product grew at a 3.5 percent annualized rate in the three months ended September after a 4.6 percent gain in the second quarter, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. It marked the strongest back-to-back readings since the last six months of 2003.
Growing oil production is limiting imports and contributing to a pickup in manufacturing, allowing the economy to overcome slowing growth in overseas markets from Europe to China. At the same time, job gains and cheaper gasoline are giving American consumers the confidence and the means to spend, brightening the outlook for the holiday-shopping season and helping explain why the Federal Reserve ended its bond-buying program yesterday.
Improving consumer sentiment may help lift the biggest part of the economy this quarter. Confidence this month jumped to a seven-year high, according to figures from the Conference Board.
It appears the only people that refuse to accept that things are going great in America are the "Nabobs of Negativity" on Fox News and their disciples that post on ST.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Oct 30, 2014 - 07:45am PT
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Perhaps that last part... about being dickhead, but not bright enough was more about your insecurities, than anything else.
perhaps not.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 30, 2014 - 08:28am PT
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A senior Obama administration official has described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “chickensh#t,”
expressing the US president’s frustration with the Israeli leader.
I told you Obama can't stand that world stage genocide terrorist creating aszhole Netanyahu.
Most of the Republicans bow down and kiss the ring of that world wide terrorist prick Netanyahu .....
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 30, 2014 - 08:49am PT
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Both Dems and Repubs have histories involving criminal behavior...
 yah, but... the south!
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