Rrriiiight. Because they want to control us... Never mind that the people who are elected into office who instate those programs were elected on the platforms of instating those programs and those programs don't get repealed because the American voters don't want them repealed...
The Religious Right and their corporate cronies would you believing that if you free the marketplace of regulation, everything will be alllllriiiiight. Funny thing is, though, they seem to forget the reasons for why those regulations were put in place to begin with. They seem to forget the days of Robber Baron. They seem to forget that the Great Depression was caused by businesses hoarding money because of their single-minded drive to maximize profits and their tunnel-visioned focus on speculation and short-term growth, resulting in lowering interest rates and refusal to invest for the long-term because all they care about is money now because the idea of any short-term loss of profits is abhorrent and terrifying because the majority of business enterprises are fucking retarded and cowardly. The Federal Government's off-hand approach to the market [you know, that hands-off approach you rightists trumpet as being such a terrific idea] exacerbated the problem, rather than fixing it; if it HAD stepped in, the Great Depression probably would not have happened! The Fed's refusal to prop up the banks [again, the government NOT stepping into the financial market] exacerbated the problem even more. Had those businesses taken the opportunity to take advantage of those lowered interest rates to invest in future growth at a reduced price, they could have and SHOULD HAVE focused on the common idea of supply and demand; you have lowered demand, so lower your prices, which will entice consumers to buy more since they will be able to have more for less, but they didn't. Why? Because the free market is not comprised of brilliant intellectuals, it's comprised of greedy idiots who are successful only by the virtue of their businesses rising at times of higher consumer spending and not by innovation; the businesses that DO innovate are not nearly as numerous, but they ARE the ones led by those who actually have some intelligence and foresight. But the focus of big businesses is not on innovating, it's focused on the short-term profits and what money that they have NOW. You see this even now, but the effects of such tunnel-vision are greatly reduced because, thanks to government interference in the marketplace, a lot of businesses were able to grow and profit and nowadays have much more financial leeway to cut their production and employment numbers to cover for their short-term losses; they do not succeed on innovation, they succeed on having so much money that they don't need to innovate, they can just fuck people over to deal with it and the big wigs at the top don't need to worry about feeling a damn thing.
Government laws and regulations are full of unintended consequences but by and large they are more successful than they are failures. No program is without its flaws and if they were able to refine and update their services, the problems they suffer from would not be as bad, or maybe even would not exist, but because of conservative ideology being so pervasive, any attempts to increase spending to those programs or expand on them are shot down and instead they are cut, resulting in them being even LESS effective. Then, once their effectiveness starts tanking, they bemoan it as the programs themselves being failures at their very cores, despite the fact that they are the fucking idiots who exacerbated the problems and flaws to begin with.
If you let people be free, they will act optimally SOCIALLY. But capitalistically? HA! HAHAHAH! AHHH hahahaha!! PLEASE! Wanna know why the EPA was formed? Because businesses were dumping toxic waste in the cheapest ways possible without a care in the world, and those cheap methods meant dumping their waste into areas wherein it affected ground-water, causing numerous health problems for huge numbers of people. They made no efforts to curtail their belching of toxic fumes and gases into the atmosphere because they had no profit-driven motives to do so. Why would they care about the rest of the world, and everyone else? They don't care, curbing those tendencies means cutting into their profits with no payoffs coming from those actions. So the government had to force limitations of toxic waste dumping and polluting by-products, because those businesses sure as fuck weren't going to do it on their own!
How do the conservatives treat the EPA? Like the redheaded step-child. They abuse it and try to cut it off because oh those poor multi-billion dollar companies! Instead of making $10,000,000,000 in profits, the EPA's intervention is causing them to only make $9,999,000,000 a year! OH THE FUCKING HORROR.
Look at the governments' hands-off approach to oil companies! Look at all those tax breaks they get! WE'RE PAYING FOR CORPORATIONS TO GET MORE MONEY. Whenever the government is big-business-friendly, we all get fucked over. When the government is populace-friendly, we all benefit. Look at the food stamps program! For every dollar spent from the food stamps program, two dollars gets added into the economy via increased demand and higher consumer spending, increasing profits and allowing for more money cycling.
The government doesn't need to step in EVERYWHERE. It just needs to step in when shit's not working to the benefit of the American people, and that's what it does, because that's what its job is. The government had to step in to force businesses to pay a minimum wage because before it did, businesses were paying people as little as they possibly could, and forcing people who otherwise couldn't find jobs elsewhere to remain in destitution. Why? Not because they want people in bread lines, but because they only give their fucks for their own selfish reasons, NOT because they're looking out for the average person. Nowadays, companies pay higher than the minimum wage because it's good PR, and yet nevertheless there's fucktons of businesses that continue to pay the minimum wage to huge numbers of their employees.
Before the government stepped in, businesses were allowed to discriminate against anyone they desired, both in employment concerns AND in service concerns. When they were forced to stop discriminating, they had to hire more people, which meant that more people were working and making money, and as a whole, the economy at large and society at large benefited. But you can't expect one business to look at the whole; they only look at themselves and what THEY can personally gain. Because that is what businesses do.
Now we have businesses discriminating all over again, and in so doing, they are inadvertently harming the economy as a whole by cycling less money through it because of the guys at the top having their own personal feelings interfering with their professional lives.
If the government must step in to force the economy to behave so that the American people as a whole benefit, then so be it. If it means trodding on the toes of a select few, so fucking be it. The needs of the money outweigh the needs of the few, and the individual's importance only extends so far. We as individuals have privileges of freedoms that most of the world wishes it could have. A few people who are far more successful than most others are get a tiny paper-cut in what they perceive as liberties to ensure that the liberties and happiness of the vast majority can continue, and suddenly the conservatives are up in arms about the reduction of personal liberties, never mind that the many benefit.
The balance of the scales is complex and highly nuanced. Conservatives pay almost no attention to things that are complex because conservatives are fucking idiots. You need only look at how many conservative politicians say that global warming is an "alarmist myth" despite nearly the entire scientific community saying the exact opposite to see this. You need only look at how many conservative politicians say that the world is only a few thousand years old, despite the entire scientific community with its nigh-endless barrage of facts and proofs saying it's billions of years old to see this. You need only look at how many conservative politicians talk about personal liberties, but then when it comes to abortion, they trod on the rights of women to get an abortion despite the woman being the self-aware, cognitive, self-determining, and self-functioning entity while the fetus is not even remotely close to any of those things to see that they're both idiots and hypocrites. You need only look at all the conservatives who, after cutting government aid programs, then say those programs are total failures once the performance of those programs suffers further to see that they're idiots and hypocrites.
Your average conservative voter scores less on test scores, IQ scores, political awareness, and awareness of national and international affairs than your average liberal voter.
Why?
Because conservatives are idiots.
If conservatives had their way and progressives were forced to have no say, women would still be inferior to men, blacks would continue to be second-class citizens, the environment would be getting abused to such a reckless extent that it might have caused global warming to have already reached an absolutely catastrophic state as of this present moment, unskilled laborers would practically be corporate slaves, and Christianity would be firmly established as a state religion at the expense of every non-Christian individual in direct defiance of the idea of personal liberties and equality.
Problems that progressives rail against are not invented to justify controlling anyone. Where the fuck would you even get that idea to begin with? Progressives work for the progression of society as a whole, the BETTERMENT of everyone, not the control of everyone, and we're well-aware of where to cut government interference [Guantanamo, the NSA spying programs, the NDAA are all things that progressives are at the very front when it comes to confronting those programs of government interference into personal lives, along with the legalization of substances that people wish to partake in in their personal lives] and where to increase it [the marketplace wherein it will otherwise continue to work as a disparate, self-centered mess that will fuck over the vast majority of the people]. Conservatives just want everything to stay as it is. They want stagnation. That's the very definition of conservatism; the lack of action. Stagnation. Culturally, socially, even economically. They want the status quo, ignoring the lessons of history in regards to stagnation and the status quo [Look at the middle east]. Why? Because conservatives are not only idiots and hypocrites, they're all cowards. The idea of their lives changing at all because of the outside world is terrifying because they're all a bunch of pussies. But get this! The world doesn't give two fucks what you want. We progressives want a government that both allows us all to change and evolve as a society, and prevents us from being jerked into a chaotic maelstrom wherein our choices mean nothing. Conservatives want a government where we don't change...and in so doing, inevitably will lead to a chaotic maelstrom wherein our choices mean nothing.
Besides, if you wanna talk about progressives wanting the government to control you, how about we talk about that conservative-installed invasion of privacy program.
What was it called again? Something Act...uh...Minuteman Act-? No, no, it wasn't called that...but it was something evocative of that general idea...
OH, RIGHT! THE PATRIOT ACT!
Take your bullshit and cram it. You don't wanna live in the real world, that's fine, we don't expect you to. I mean, you believe that a burning bush talked to a guy, that millions of jewish slaves went on an exodus from Egypt even though that should have meant Egypt would have collapsed as a civilization overnight instead of continuing on as a powerful civilization for centuries more, that a dude was nailed to the cross and died and then came back to life on the third day following (or was it after that third day? That stupid fucking book can't seem to agree on when that happened) and floated into the sky (even though ever since the advent of flight we've discovered that heaven is NOT in the clouds...), that a dude built a boat and loaded it with two of every animal and somehow genetic variability is still an incredibly strong and present facet of the natural world to avoid a massive world-consuming flood that no archeological evidence exists to support, and a fuckton of other fantastical shit that taken out of the context of religion sounds like a very dry, long-winded, and boring work of fiction. But please, don't you dare insult progressives by suggesting we want a government controls everyone including ourselves and that we don't give a rat's ass about others when that's the exact opposite of what we want.
I need a fucking cigarette...
The Religious Right and their corporate cronies would you believing that if you free the marketplace of regulation, everything will be alllllriiiiight. Funny thing is, though, they seem to forget the reasons for why those regulations were put in place to begin with. They seem to forget the days of Robber Baron. They seem to forget that the Great Depression was caused by businesses hoarding money because of their single-minded drive to maximize profits and their tunnel-visioned focus on speculation and short-term growth, resulting in lowering interest rates and refusal to invest for the long-term because all they care about is money now because the idea of any short-term loss of profits is abhorrent and terrifying because the majority of business enterprises are fucking retarded and cowardly. The Federal Government's off-hand approach to the market [you know, that hands-off approach you rightists trumpet as being such a terrific idea] exacerbated the problem, rather than fixing it; if it HAD stepped in, the Great Depression probably would not have happened! The Fed's refusal to prop up the banks [again, the government NOT stepping into the financial market] exacerbated the problem even more. Had those businesses taken the opportunity to take advantage of those lowered interest rates to invest in future growth at a reduced price, they could have and SHOULD HAVE focused on the common idea of supply and demand; you have lowered demand, so lower your prices, which will entice consumers to buy more since they will be able to have more for less, but they didn't. Why? Because the free market is not comprised of brilliant intellectuals, it's comprised of greedy idiots who are successful only by the virtue of their businesses rising at times of higher consumer spending and not by innovation; the businesses that DO innovate are not nearly as numerous, but they ARE the ones led by those who actually have some intelligence and foresight. But the focus of big businesses is not on innovating, it's focused on the short-term profits and what money that they have NOW. You see this even now, but the effects of such tunnel-vision are greatly reduced because, thanks to government interference in the marketplace, a lot of businesses were able to grow and profit and nowadays have much more financial leeway to cut their production and employment numbers to cover for their short-term losses; they do not succeed on innovation, they succeed on having so much money that they don't need to innovate, they can just fuck people over to deal with it and the big wigs at the top don't need to worry about feeling a damn thing.
Government laws and regulations are full of unintended consequences but by and large they are more successful than they are failures. No program is without its flaws and if they were able to refine and update their services, the problems they suffer from would not be as bad, or maybe even would not exist, but because of conservative ideology being so pervasive, any attempts to increase spending to those programs or expand on them are shot down and instead they are cut, resulting in them being even LESS effective. Then, once their effectiveness starts tanking, they bemoan it as the programs themselves being failures at their very cores, despite the fact that they are the fucking idiots who exacerbated the problems and flaws to begin with.
If you let people be free, they will act optimally SOCIALLY. But capitalistically? HA! HAHAHAH! AHHH hahahaha!! PLEASE! Wanna know why the EPA was formed? Because businesses were dumping toxic waste in the cheapest ways possible without a care in the world, and those cheap methods meant dumping their waste into areas wherein it affected ground-water, causing numerous health problems for huge numbers of people. They made no efforts to curtail their belching of toxic fumes and gases into the atmosphere because they had no profit-driven motives to do so. Why would they care about the rest of the world, and everyone else? They don't care, curbing those tendencies means cutting into their profits with no payoffs coming from those actions. So the government had to force limitations of toxic waste dumping and polluting by-products, because those businesses sure as fuck weren't going to do it on their own!
How do the conservatives treat the EPA? Like the redheaded step-child. They abuse it and try to cut it off because oh those poor multi-billion dollar companies! Instead of making $10,000,000,000 in profits, the EPA's intervention is causing them to only make $9,999,000,000 a year! OH THE FUCKING HORROR.
Look at the governments' hands-off approach to oil companies! Look at all those tax breaks they get! WE'RE PAYING FOR CORPORATIONS TO GET MORE MONEY. Whenever the government is big-business-friendly, we all get fucked over. When the government is populace-friendly, we all benefit. Look at the food stamps program! For every dollar spent from the food stamps program, two dollars gets added into the economy via increased demand and higher consumer spending, increasing profits and allowing for more money cycling.
The government doesn't need to step in EVERYWHERE. It just needs to step in when shit's not working to the benefit of the American people, and that's what it does, because that's what its job is. The government had to step in to force businesses to pay a minimum wage because before it did, businesses were paying people as little as they possibly could, and forcing people who otherwise couldn't find jobs elsewhere to remain in destitution. Why? Not because they want people in bread lines, but because they only give their fucks for their own selfish reasons, NOT because they're looking out for the average person. Nowadays, companies pay higher than the minimum wage because it's good PR, and yet nevertheless there's fucktons of businesses that continue to pay the minimum wage to huge numbers of their employees.
Before the government stepped in, businesses were allowed to discriminate against anyone they desired, both in employment concerns AND in service concerns. When they were forced to stop discriminating, they had to hire more people, which meant that more people were working and making money, and as a whole, the economy at large and society at large benefited. But you can't expect one business to look at the whole; they only look at themselves and what THEY can personally gain. Because that is what businesses do.
Now we have businesses discriminating all over again, and in so doing, they are inadvertently harming the economy as a whole by cycling less money through it because of the guys at the top having their own personal feelings interfering with their professional lives.
If the government must step in to force the economy to behave so that the American people as a whole benefit, then so be it. If it means trodding on the toes of a select few, so fucking be it. The needs of the money outweigh the needs of the few, and the individual's importance only extends so far. We as individuals have privileges of freedoms that most of the world wishes it could have. A few people who are far more successful than most others are get a tiny paper-cut in what they perceive as liberties to ensure that the liberties and happiness of the vast majority can continue, and suddenly the conservatives are up in arms about the reduction of personal liberties, never mind that the many benefit.
The balance of the scales is complex and highly nuanced. Conservatives pay almost no attention to things that are complex because conservatives are fucking idiots. You need only look at how many conservative politicians say that global warming is an "alarmist myth" despite nearly the entire scientific community saying the exact opposite to see this. You need only look at how many conservative politicians say that the world is only a few thousand years old, despite the entire scientific community with its nigh-endless barrage of facts and proofs saying it's billions of years old to see this. You need only look at how many conservative politicians talk about personal liberties, but then when it comes to abortion, they trod on the rights of women to get an abortion despite the woman being the self-aware, cognitive, self-determining, and self-functioning entity while the fetus is not even remotely close to any of those things to see that they're both idiots and hypocrites. You need only look at all the conservatives who, after cutting government aid programs, then say those programs are total failures once the performance of those programs suffers further to see that they're idiots and hypocrites.
Your average conservative voter scores less on test scores, IQ scores, political awareness, and awareness of national and international affairs than your average liberal voter.
Why?
Because conservatives are idiots.
If conservatives had their way and progressives were forced to have no say, women would still be inferior to men, blacks would continue to be second-class citizens, the environment would be getting abused to such a reckless extent that it might have caused global warming to have already reached an absolutely catastrophic state as of this present moment, unskilled laborers would practically be corporate slaves, and Christianity would be firmly established as a state religion at the expense of every non-Christian individual in direct defiance of the idea of personal liberties and equality.
Problems that progressives rail against are not invented to justify controlling anyone. Where the fuck would you even get that idea to begin with? Progressives work for the progression of society as a whole, the BETTERMENT of everyone, not the control of everyone, and we're well-aware of where to cut government interference [Guantanamo, the NSA spying programs, the NDAA are all things that progressives are at the very front when it comes to confronting those programs of government interference into personal lives, along with the legalization of substances that people wish to partake in in their personal lives] and where to increase it [the marketplace wherein it will otherwise continue to work as a disparate, self-centered mess that will fuck over the vast majority of the people]. Conservatives just want everything to stay as it is. They want stagnation. That's the very definition of conservatism; the lack of action. Stagnation. Culturally, socially, even economically. They want the status quo, ignoring the lessons of history in regards to stagnation and the status quo [Look at the middle east]. Why? Because conservatives are not only idiots and hypocrites, they're all cowards. The idea of their lives changing at all because of the outside world is terrifying because they're all a bunch of pussies. But get this! The world doesn't give two fucks what you want. We progressives want a government that both allows us all to change and evolve as a society, and prevents us from being jerked into a chaotic maelstrom wherein our choices mean nothing. Conservatives want a government where we don't change...and in so doing, inevitably will lead to a chaotic maelstrom wherein our choices mean nothing.
Besides, if you wanna talk about progressives wanting the government to control you, how about we talk about that conservative-installed invasion of privacy program.
What was it called again? Something Act...uh...Minuteman Act-? No, no, it wasn't called that...but it was something evocative of that general idea...
OH, RIGHT! THE PATRIOT ACT!
Take your bullshit and cram it. You don't wanna live in the real world, that's fine, we don't expect you to. I mean, you believe that a burning bush talked to a guy, that millions of jewish slaves went on an exodus from Egypt even though that should have meant Egypt would have collapsed as a civilization overnight instead of continuing on as a powerful civilization for centuries more, that a dude was nailed to the cross and died and then came back to life on the third day following (or was it after that third day? That stupid fucking book can't seem to agree on when that happened) and floated into the sky (even though ever since the advent of flight we've discovered that heaven is NOT in the clouds...), that a dude built a boat and loaded it with two of every animal and somehow genetic variability is still an incredibly strong and present facet of the natural world to avoid a massive world-consuming flood that no archeological evidence exists to support, and a fuckton of other fantastical shit that taken out of the context of religion sounds like a very dry, long-winded, and boring work of fiction. But please, don't you dare insult progressives by suggesting we want a government controls everyone including ourselves and that we don't give a rat's ass about others when that's the exact opposite of what we want.
I need a fucking cigarette...
