How are the founding fathers libertarian? Didn't they have varied views? Even in the early years they were split up over how to run the country. But yeah, if an individual is a hypocrite and a bad person I'm not going to care about their ideas. Especially not a slave owner from the 1700s.[QUOTE="Laihendi"] I am supporting the libertarian principles they advocated, not the actual founders themselves. I do not understand why you have so much difficulty separating an idea from the person expressing the idea, especially when it comes to the US founders. Also you clearly have not read the Declaration of Independence.Aljosa23
I have not read the Declaration of Independence but so what? Only reason they rebelled in the first place was because of taxation from the British.
You realize ad hominem is a logical fallacy don't you? Anyways, again I'm not saying the founding fathers were libertarian. I'm saying many of their principles were libertarian. And you are not qualified to say why the states rebelled against the British if you haven't even read their declaration of independence.
No offense whip, but my opinion is that your list is an indication that you either don't really know what's causing our deficits or aren't serious about fixing them. Everything you listed falls in the category of "discretionary spending" (AKA the 18% "everything else"). To actually come anywhere close to having a meaningful impact on the deficit, you'd pretty much need to eliminate the "everything else" category completely. There's a very easy way to know whether or not someone who is talking about solving the deficit issue in this country is serious or not. That way is if they talk about three things. 1. Defense spending 2. Entitlement spending (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) 3. Tax revenue Any "plan" to fix the deficit that doesn't revolve around some combination of cutting the first two and raising the third one is an unserious plan. Either the person putting forward that plan doesn't understand the issue or they DO understand and are cynically assuming that the audience he is talking to does not. We can argue how much of the deficit reduction should come from which of those three things. Most liberals think it should come mostly from a combination of defense spending cuts and tax increases on the top income brackets. Most conservatives think that it should come primarily (exclusively) from entitlement program cuts. But that's where the actual impactful items are. At the risk of being "that guy" who is egotistical enough to actually quote themselves, I'm going to have the bad manners to point out that if we're talking about DEFICIT REDUCTION then nothing anybody has really said since this very first reply to the thread has yet changed the basic, underlying truth. Fixing the current structural deficit involves cutting defense, cutting entitlements and increasing tax revenues in come combination. I mean, we can talk about Founding Fathers and Original Intent, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, hypocrisy of white men living two centuries ago, and capitalism, socialism or freaking Nazism...but none of that is really relevant to the discussion on fixing the deficit IMO. I mean, I'm sure there are SOME places in the "Discretionary Spending" portion of the pie chart above that could be shaved a little. But to get to the dollar amounts needed to address the deficit there's no way around talking about the three items I've mentioned. Once that basic idea is widely understood and agreed to in the country, you can start making tough choices on things like which it is better to cut from (Entitlements or Defense) in what amounts and how much it's worthwhile to avoid deep cuts by raising more revenues instead.
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