But Obama is a "Progressive"...
Another response lost to the bad browser and retyping, argh.
No, he's not on this issue, which is why progressives are so upset with him on it. You can't measure that by 'approval ratings' with Bush fresh in their memories as the alternative, but it's there.
Did you catch when I replied to you not too long ago that you will soon learn that all power corrupts?
No, but you are wrong to imply this is new ground, I've looked at the issue for decades. Lord Byron's quote is actually that power *tends to* corrupt.
It's because I understand it very well that I hold views about *systemic issues* that allow that tendency to corrupt to cause problems - positions against the excessive concentration of power in a few hands.
Why I favor things to oppose that corruption and have the nation's resources serve everyone, which *includes* the efficiency of uneqal rewards, but not the excessive and corrupt concentrations that reduce overall prosperity in order to ensure that the many are laboring for the benefit of the few - if they're lucky and not simply in poverty.
You seem to be a well-educated person, but also seem to be so utterly clueless on common sense!
Not to remind you of moonbeam, but that has more to do with you than me. Gandhi and King sounded that way to a lot of people too - people who our own President just distanced himself from in Norway.
In fact I'd say perhaps you need more than common sense in dealing with the complex issues of poverty and wealth, with the complex institutions our society has, in dealing with the complex financial system.
How does 'common sense' say to fix the problems of war, of Wall Streeet excesses? It doesn't, does it?
Government will always try to seize power, and government will always become corrupted by that power. There is no wing of the Democratic party "immune" to corruption. That would be on the level of me saying "Only the non-corrupt wing of the Republican Party can fix this," to which you would attack me for supporting pure evil.
You have fallen for a wrong ideology. "Government" before 1776 was, for example, the royalty of Europe owning the 'corporation' they founded, the largest by far in the world, and setting government policy, especially taxation, to give the company they profted from advantage over the competition - very bad corruption. That's different than the designed American "government", founded on the principle that government's just powers are derived from the consent of the governed, and giving the poor masses who had few rights and giving them something new called a 'vote' over their government.
At its best, this new 'governemnt' has the people able to stand up to the corrupt few and have better policies for the nation. In practice, the system provides some limited measure of protection where if the powerful try to go too far, the people can vote for change. Regardless, the 'government' when elected like this is, at least in principle, not the same as the government you rail against like the government of England before it - which itself was in a gradual process of democratization over a period of centuries as the culture of mankind in the west evolved from the primitive 'king-serf' paradigm.
In practice, democracy has given us a hybrid - a mix of the powerful still having more than their fair share of power, but with more limits than they have without democracy.
When you attack 'government' the way you do, you throw the baby - the role of *elected* government to stand up to corrupt power on behalf of the people - out with the bathwater of the government being corrupted by those same powers to serve them instead of the people. You need to be careful abou tthat, because the crippling of the elected government isn't freedom from the corrupt powers, it's increased tyranny under them as the power of the vote has been crippled to challenge them.
Attacking 'government' as the problem because it's been hijacked by the rich is a bit like attacking the police force even existing if the mob corrupts them. The solution is cleaning them not abolishing them.
Indeed you might find it ironic that the same powerful few who represent the corruption you hate in goverment are *encouraging* you to hate government.
The only thing better for them than undue influence to thwart democracy, is to really cripple or remove the system that threatens them on behalf of the people.
It's as if the American people revolted to get rid of the 'corrupt government' of 1800 without considering the restoration of the corruption government of England that would follow.
I think we have a crisis of corruption now, and that includes, but is not led by, government. We need stronger 'real democracy'. I've posted various things I think will help.
One thing is for people to stop accepting the groupings of 'left and right', and start noticng the common interests of the middle class, and the poor compared to the contentrated powerful.
I'm not talking about guillotines - I'm talking about learning to ask skeptical questions about Bush's tax cuts and not love them for the pittance you get and ignore the borrowed windfall for the top few.
It involves recognizing that our democracy is not working too well now, with a lot of ignorance leading to the people being manipulated to bad policies, and what will help.
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