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Re: *is in total agreement.*

Posted By: Phil (static-64-65-138-250.mspcovdsl.eschelon.com)
Date: 6/10/2003 at 2:32 p.m.

In Response To: Re: *is in total agreement.* (Superfoborg)

It's funny that you all should compare Bush to Lincoln. There actually are quite a few similarities, both good and bad. The big one is the one you mention above: gambling the future on what some people feel is essential to survival.

And there's a significant difference as well, as I mentioned in another post. That Lincoln, or the Union for that matter, didn't start the Civil War.

Federal tax can have pros and cons...

Indeed. In fact there are still people today who try to get out of paying income tax by claiming that it's unconstitutional. It isn't, but they get an "A" for effort, and probably a lot of penalties and late fees to boot. Seriously though, much of what our federal taxes pay for, we take for granted, and would miss if it were not properly funded. Everything from education and infrastructure to radio, art, and cheaply priced, domestically grown food.

federal standing army has a few logistical pros but I feel is for the most part the source of my disdain for the present military structure we have.

Though the standing military is not without its many flaws, its lack of existence nearly cost us the Revolutionary War. Though our noble volunteers and militia-men stood resolute against the numerically superior, highly trained, battle-hardened British army, and though we won a few significant victories, the real cause of most of our success, the true unsung hero of the revolution, was the standing army of the hated French.

Though we didn't have an army at the time of the Revolution, and didn't have much of one to speak of until the Civil War, it has become rather indispensable in modern times. We would really have no capability of defending ourselves without one these days. Not only would we not enjoy the privileges of culture and technology that accompany being the world's premier superpower, but we might all be speaking German. Every industrialized nation in the world has adopted a standing army, except those strictly prohibited from doing so. However, that being said, I do think that there is a significant amount of bloat in the military, and I would like to see the military expand into different projects both domestically and internationally. Perhaps the building of roads, bridges, aqueducts, and power plants in the impoverished countries we visit. I mean, it worked for the Romans.

My ideal government system is in some sense very centralized, but also very layered, and the central, higher layers have only power on high-level, central matters, and all that power is directly derived from the layers below them, which have similar duties and responsibilities on a different scale and level, and draw their power from those below them, and so on, until it ultimately comes down to power, responsibility, and jurisdiction over immediate personal matters being dealt with by the immediate people involved, unless an issues becomes huge enough to invoke higher governmental levels.

You deal with a local community law enforcement, though you can always call in a higher police/military force to police THEM if you feel you are being treated unjustly. You pay only a local tax, and your local government is then taxed by the higher levels, and so on... Lots of small, local, immediately relevant issues that average people are actually going to see a point in dealing with, cumulatively guiding a larger social structure.

It's an interesting theory, and the tax structure could conceivably fill in the gap left by the removal of a federal tax. Indeed, the model you mention is more or less the federalist ideal, an ideal that in many ways has evolved into the modern libertarian movement. However, I don't see how it could be implemented in a westernized nation such as America without serious upheaval. But it may be worth working the numbers.

-Phil.

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