...
In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, pt. 2, ch. 5 (1840)
The American colonies, all know, were greatly opposed to taxation without representation. They were also, a less celebrated quality, equally opposed to taxation with representation.
--John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, Chapter 6, p.180
Still one thing more, fellow citizens -- a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government...
--Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
[edit] Related: U.S. Government Inquiries About Debt-Reducing Game
now THIS is a fascinating idea (emphasis mine):
Gamers may soon be able to help reduce the United States' massive budget deficit.
In an effort to reduce the USA's $12.8 trillion federal budget deficit, President Barack Obama's fiscal commission co-chairman Erskine Bowles has asked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer about creating a debt-reducing videogame, USA Today reports.
According to the report, the game would "enable anyone with a computer to take a stab at balancing the budget." Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey said the game could even "go viral."
"What you could get is support among the populace for the exceptionally unpopular things you need to do to solve this problem," added Kerry, who help release his own budget-reducing game called Budget Shadows for PC in 1994 as chairman of the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform.
An option to stand up to out of control government and force it back into its narrow Constitutional limits, will have to be part of the gameplay to be realistic. Maybe this type of game will become its own genre after the "Restoration War".
All the foreign influences are ruining the country, according to his mantra. You should stop eating foreign foods, drinking foreign drinks. The World Health Organization is a big conspiracy out to pollute bodies and minds. And he would like to make political corruption punishable by death, to restore Democracy to its proper role.
Who is this conservative firebrand? Swami Ramdev. He wants to clean up his native India.
I think this is indicative of a liberal/world-culture agenda coming to heads with a conservative/national-culture agenda.
Should be a good fight. :)
want to eat foreign foods? knock yourself out. DONT want to? thats ok too. do WHATEVER the fuck you want, as long as you dont endanger or harm anyone else in the process. i want the government to GET THE FUCK OUT of the day to day lives of its citizens.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
we're about to hit the end of a very long train of abuses and usurpations... my only fear is we will replace it with another different set of bullshit impingements upon individual liberty.
"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."--R.A.H.
Que?
You must be logged in to post comments.