Hey, B!
I guess whatever your examples were about liberals expecting instant results, I didn't understand or see them- can you you expand on what you felt were your examples so I do?
I guess I am a real nerd- I read "The Republic" many years ago. I've often thought Plato's concept of a world where the perfect version of things existed (which is why, on earth, we can recognize both a Doberman and a cairn terrier as a dog, and know neither is a cat) is where Christians got the idea for Heaven.
Again, your argument is that government is going to attract nothing but crooks and liars and mine is that it doesn't have to be like that. I do think the current inability to win elections without huge amounts of money from Big Business leads to corruption of people running so I support efforts into election reform, though I don't think any of the proposed solutions are the best ones--- YET. But I don't think we should give up on looking for one. Mayor Bloomberg, here, is a lot of things, but not corrupt. How can he be? He's got more money than God; who could possibly bribe him? And so he funded his own election campaigns and didn't owe favors to anyone. I don't think the solution is just permitting the super-wealthy to run for office, but it indicates to me that climbing into bed with Big Business is a huge problem.
(If I could do one thing, actually, it would be to take away the taxpayer IDs for corporations- acknowledging corporations as individual entities was a grave mistake because it absolved the individual members of the corporations of most financial responsibility for wrongdoing.)
And again, when it comes to "but things REALLY suck in Europe/Canada/etc." I come back to, well, who says we have to do an exact copy of what they do for health care? Why can't we look at the things that work and figure out how to do what doesn't work differently? What happened to American innovation?
I do agree there are a number of factors that go along with Europeans better health (they're now getting taller than us, too!). And it could be an interesting study in whether a scarcity of a resource (waits for medical attention, for example) inspire lifestyle choices to make that resource less necessary. Cuba has a comparable life expectancy to ours, and there are theories that it's because cars are expensive, so most people walk or bicycle (exercise) and that while there is enough food, there certainly isn't an excess of it (at all) so people stay thin. I certainly don't advocate imposing that kind of lifestyle on anyone (I like being able to buy milk!), but it's interesting how we can also be victims of our own success in the mid-20th Century and now come out the other end overweight, out of shape and sick. And our current health system makes it hard to start up businesses due to health care costs for workers. We need to change something for our own economic health.
Do you support abolishing the National Parks system, so that rich folks can buy up park land and keep the average American off of it? I'm curious where you draw the line on smaller government. I'd go for a smaller defense system myself- which is one area where conservatives seem very content to keep throwing money at government.
My problem with the strict constructionist movement is the same one I have with people who insist the Bible is the unalterable, infallible word of God- we live in a different world now. Our country is bigger; we aren't an agricultural society; we have progressed to a point where we understand more than white, land-owning men deserve a say in government. (I have a good friend in Florida who is very much of "the Bible is perfect and all translations are perfect" school of thought and she, not surprisingly, believes homosexuality is a sin. I asked her about how she feels about wearing blended fabrics, since Paul also cited that as a sin, and she said, "Oh, well, things like that are archaic now." Uh-huh. Nice picking and choosing. Whose to say, in a now overpopulated world, homosexuality edicts aren't just as archaic?) And of course, strict constructionists will then say people like me want to junk the Constitution. Of course we don't; it's an extraordinary document; one of the greatest in history, in my opinion. But it's been amended over history and I believe our willingness to change to fit the world we live in (and then to change back if we screw up, in the case of Prohibition- whoops!) has kept it able to govern us.
Though in the wake of Cheney and Co., I'm not so sure anymore...
Anyway, my thoughts on a morning where I am being forcibly reminded that I can't drink hard alcohol after I've spent most of the day out in the heat (the actors at the zoo performed yesterday in the heat and as their supervisor, I think it's crummy to hide out in my air-conditioned office all day so I spent most of the day outside with them. And then had margaritas and am now reeeeaaallly sick. Speaking of Coke vs. red wine- Coke may not be good for you, but it sure does settle the stomach.). I'm enjoying this discussion immensely.