Forum Post: The Grapes of Wrath
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 31, 2011, 3:10 a.m. EST by puff6962
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Occupy reminds me of the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression and that got me to thinking about the Grapes of Wrath. If you can get a hold of the movie, it's a great one....particularly, the last scene of Tom saying goodbye to his mother. Here's an excerpt:
Tom Joad: I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin' fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin'. And I been wonderin' if all our folks got together and yelled...
Ma Joad: Oh, Tommy, they'd drag you out and cut you down just like they done to Casy.
Tom Joad: They'd drag me anyways. Sooner or later they'd get me for one thing if not for another. Until then...
Ma Joad: Tommy, you're not aimin' to kill nobody.
Tom Joad: No, Ma, not that. That ain't it. It's just, well as long as I'm an outlaw anyways... maybe I can do somethin'... maybe I can just find out somethin', just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that's wrong and see if they ain't somethin' that can be done about it. I ain't thought it out all clear, Ma. I can't. I don't know enough.
Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I'd never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?
Tom Joad: Well, maybe it's like Casy says. A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then...
Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?
Tom Joad: Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.
Ma Joad: I don't understand it, Tom.
Tom Joad: Me, neither, Ma, but - just somethin' I been thinkin' about.
The important part of this dialogue Tom says, "They'd drag me anyways. Sooner or later they'd get me for one thing if not for another." There is a slow burn happening and they are going to get you one way if not another anyway. Coming together as a group to occupy our public spaces is self preservation.
huh?
Our economy is collapsing. Greed is the reason it is collapsing. We need to come together as a community to save ourselves.
John Steinbeck is my favorite author, and The Grapes of Wrath is the best novel ever written...my opinion. I think there can be many comparisons made between OWS and the book. For example, the banks foreclosed on their farm that forced them to migrate to California to look for work. Second, people seemed to despise the group, along their travels, considered them inferior, and used them as cheap labor and exploited them by paying them low wages and charging higher cost for goods like food. This kept them from being able to provide for their family even though everyone in the family worked the fields. Second, when the workers tried to unite, they were beaten and arrested for protesting. Third, their scanty towns were demolished, and people were forced to keep moving. I found the brother, hungery and starving, having to feed from his sister's breast after she miscarried to be the most chilling of the saddest of all tales. The Great Depression triggered some of the safety nets that we have in place today. Although this was fiction, it is my hope that OWS will help to prevent this from happening in America because we are getting close to another depression with so many foreclosures, lay offs and a Congress that does not seemed concern that people are out of work and my lack the money to provide for their families.
How can you be Tom Joad on the internet?
Love the dialogue, love the movie. Let's be there for the disadvantaged and the unfortunate because the 1% will not. Let's be Tom Joad.
It's an amazing book as well. Highly recommended.
Besides a compelling and emotional story of a poor family moving, it has little excerpts about how the government and the corporations did ridiculous things against the poor in order to protect commerce, such as price controls, spraying gasoline on oranges so people couldn't eat them, or forbidding impoverished people to plant crops on highway medians.
Brilliant book. My second favorite novel ever.
puff6962
i will have it posted here all of it"" in a few hours. it sounds like good training material for our movement
The Grapes of Wrath (1940) B & W
Director: John Ford
The Grapes of Wrath is a 1940 drama film directed by John Ford. It was based on John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Nunnally Johnson and the executive producer was Darryl F. Zanuck.
The film tells the story of the Joads, an Oklahoma family, who, after losing their farm during the Great Depression in the 1930s, become migrant workers and end up in California. The motion picture details their arduous journey across the United States as they travel to California in search of work and opportunities for the family members.
In 1989, this film was one of the first 25 films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Production on the film began on October 4, 1939, and was completed on November 16, 1939. Some of the filming locations include: McAlester, Sayre both in Oklahoma; Gallup, Laguna Pueblo, and Santa Rosa, all in New Mexico; Lamont, Needles, San Fernando Valley, all in California; Topock, Petrified Forest National Park, all in Arizona.
Thanks
"A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody"
That is a huge spiritual truth he just stumbled upon.
I personally find it insane that the government can't sit down with the citizens of america like regular people and come to a conclusion that is best for everyone. It's absurd.
That was the line that made me post this.
Nice! Given this one apparently simple principle, EVERYTHING would change. Given this one apparently simple ideology, and build our functions and structures and systems upon it, and nothing would ever have happened as it does today.
My, if we hadn't completely disrespected, tortured, and savaged the Native Americans, and instead learned from them, we might have even made 'progress' in our enlightenment/evolution.
Edit: Of course, only those tribes who were spiritually advanced.
Grapes of Wrath is a book by John Steinbeck. The movie is similar, but with that Hollywood polish. The book will change your life.
I read the book and have a copy of the movie as well. The movie, although a great classic, does not go into as much detail as the book. Nice point TheCloser! I am glad that puff6962 posted on it, as I do see the similarities between what the fictional story has in common with the current climate that spawned the OWS Movement.
Our debt crisis will make the Joad family look like the Kardashians. Be prepared to deal with no clean water or utilities. This morning the IMF chairman warns of "Global financial dissolve".
I know. What's up with that? I do not understand why there is opposition to having clean water and air and/or de-regulation geared towards weakening their protection. Will the masses be at peril and only the rich will be able to afford bottled water and cans of oxygen?
'metoo' clean air, healthy food, healthy people are all bad for the economy.
TheCloser, but who will make a profit from people being sick and hungry? I would think that if people had less to spend, it would hurt the economy more than having just a few healthy people with money...maybe, I am just trying to make logic out of this when individual greed can not be rationalized. Go OWS!!!
"Of Mice and Men" by Steinbeck, is also very pertinent, and maybe even a better novel than "The Grapes of Wrath" atthough "Grapes" is a really great book. Oh, and read "The Razor's Edge."
Dickens also comes to mind and "All Quiet on The Western Front" - even Catch 22. If you read Dickens though you need a lot of patience.
Read, "Duncton Wood," by William Horwood (if you can find a copy). It was a British work the rung a little to close to "Watership Down" and didn't attract enough attention.
It is about the decline and rebirth of a society.
I'll find it. Thanks
The book is better than the movie - an even better book is The Broken World.
by who?
Brent Hightower.
funny little sorry ; the russians used to show this film to its citizens to show them how bad the poor had it in america. It had the opposite effect....the russians couldn't believe that poor people had cars!!
just somethin' I been thinkin' about,. .
thanks for posting!
It's perfect, isn't it.
The Grapes of Wrath (1940) - I'll Be There
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yer4L1Uhayc
Man they just dont make movies like that anymore do they.
Fucking fantastic.
I just finished a book called, "Freedom From Fear," by David Kennedy and EVERYONE in OWS should start this book tonight.
History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme......and that melody is getting stronger every day.
I just finished, "Freedom From Fear," by David Kennedy. It's a history of the American People during the Great Depression and World War II. Anyone who wants to understand the origins of the middle class.....and what life was truly like for the average Joe before it.....should start reading. It won the Pulitzer Prize and should have won two. I don't like to sound like Oprah's book club, but this is another essential read for the OWS'ers.
(also, "The Big Con," "Duncton Wood," "The Conscience of a Liberal," and "The New American Economy." Throw into that, "The Return of Depression Era Economics," and you have a good and readable base).
This should be winter reading for all of the OWS movement.
Good post. Thanks.
I think the movie clip of that sequence should be the identifying theme attached to this movement. I captures the difficulty in identifying the exact source of society's ills while defining the necessity to do something...something...to address them.
Somebody put together a youtube montage of the movement and the clip and circulate it.
Here is another great quote by Bobby Kennedy. My parents were actually there (Univ. of Kansas, 1968):
Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
And people still think it was just a schizophrenic who killed him for no reason other than the voices in his head told him to.
We deserve what we get in this country. Good or bad. In 1968 the youth failed its nation. And in 2011, they will fail for the same reasons.
You can't fight city hall.
Sometimes a movement fails but it unlocks a system for the change it needs.
The black panthers may have done more to push the issue of civil rights, although their movement never was truly viable. OK, bad example on that one. The irony is that to get city hall to represent the people, sometimes you have to remind them who inhabits the city.
The Black Panther Party failed because their ego's got in the way. When the FBI dissolved their power structure, they void was filled with ego maniacs and men who used their position for personal gain... oh, and the drugs too. You are right, thats not a great example.
One got the distinct impression, that unlike Jack, he might be a man of some integrity.
Imperfect men can serve their country too. The Kennedy family is a unique tale in our history. There will never be a clustering of men so great, yet so flawed, into one family.
I feel great sadness whenever I read their words and realize that people once got to hear this level of discourse. Now we listen to 9 9 9 or Michelle Bachman.
We cannot be again great until we understand greatness.
Well, unfortunately the working class people of MA do not share your perspective, for any number of reasons. But I did enjoy listening to Bobby.
But, this is a forum highlighting the sentiments of the Joad family in the desperation of the Great Depression.
That's why I think The Broken World by Brent Hightower is even better. It's set in the 1960s and deals witha lot of the very same specific issues we are facing now. Of course the fundamental problems were the same in the 30's, but in many ways practically nothing about the issues of corporate dominion, governmental corruption and unethical wars for profit have changed since the 60s. That book is the greatest justification for this movement I have read. But you're right, Grapes of Wrath ia something everybody should read in a grounding in the difference between the American reality and the American myth, Great post.
Sure, a tragedy of human failure... but to focus on Okie exploitation is just ridiculous in light of events and circumstance. You know, the farmer and fisherman fared far better than most.
Tell that to the Joads.
I've spent many hours interviewing the Depression era generation. Perhaps there IS an apt analogy here... those that destroyed their own means of production, and lost their homes, as "Okies," might perhaps be equated to those who now fail to pay the mortgage.
Sharecroppers didn't have too many options when crop/cotton prices collapsed. Starvation does some strange things to people.
Many did not survive the Depression; this is but one example, and that is the very reason it is so tragic. And truthfully, the "Dust Bowl," did not have to occur. It was incredibly poor farming...
You're blaming the dust bowl on a bunch of peasants?
Have you read the history? These were farmers, not peasants, and it was almost entirely due to poor farming methods. What made it particularity tragic is that they were unaware that the water table was only 120' below their feet.
The real tragedy is that the resolution Tom sought lie but 120 feet beneath their feet.
Yes, but that would have made this a O Henry story and not one by Steinbeck.
Haha... Yea, I suppose it would have. Terrifically tragic though as a Steinbeck, the sadness that endures.
Would you people get off the fuckin Grapes of Wrath. It's a shit story that is not historically factual. Most of you in NY and Canada cannot even relate to the characters.
Actually, Steinbeck did a great deal of research and "toned down" the details because what he had seen was too disturbing.
That's not what I am talking about. The characters were fictional and the story unrepresentative of the dust bowl and its cause.
Too many Americans use that book as a history text on the dust bowl.
base your movement on a true story.
The Dust Bowl is what triggered the family's migration like some very real people who lived through it have recalled. Banks were foreclosing on homesteads; people could not find work; Americans were being exploited with low wages and higher prices, and lastly, the anti-union theme continues to the present day...that's why the story is relevant and OWS is going strong.
It's an even better book. I have a few books that I read and re-read. This is one of them. It's so unbelievably insightful into society, it makes my dick hard.
You shouldn't carry the metaphor too far, though. The exploitation in the Grapes of Wrath was due to having no minimum wage or social safety net. We have won that in this country. If there's one thing that book teaches it is what minimum wage is about. It's not about providing a livable wage, it's about providing a MINIMUM so that workers cannot be exploited to death.
OWS is fighting economic injustice, not poverty and exploitation.
EDIT: Nevermind, OWS is fighting against individual rights. The posts below clearly demonstrate the mob mentality of these apish knuckle-draggers.
OWS is OK with poverty and exploitation??
You don't know what poverty and exploitation are. No one in America does.
That is a non-answer. What is your agenda?
If you two posts down the tree you'll see I happened to have laid out my agenda in fair detail.
I am a Libertarian-Socialist, and my point has been made very clear: don't carry the metaphor of poverty and exploitation too far, because there is and has been in the past a level of poverty and exploitation which we can scarcely conceive.
Now it's your turn. What's your agenda?
I think inequality is today what poverty and exploitation were in the past. Relative to other developed nations, and even to our recent past, the working classes are exploited, and heading back into poverty.
Excellent TED lecture: http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html
Minimum wage is nearly a nonexistent wage compared to cost of living, by the way. Is minimum wage higher, in real dollar terms, than the exploitative wages of the Gilded Age?
Noam Chomsky is a preferable libertarian socialist, IMO.
I'm the one who posted that TED talk here, and you thanked me.
The minimum wage, again, is not about being a livable wage. It's about being a protection against exploitation. The fact that you need me to repeat that not only means that you're not very good at reading comprehension or addressing arguments, but also that I'm exactly right about your lack of understanding as to what exploitation really is.
Have you even read the Grapes of Wrath? If not, why are you in this thread calling me a bad Libertarian socialist? Grapes of Wrath portrays true poverty and exploitation, and you're out of your element, Donny, if you come in here and jump into a conversation with no appreciation about the subject being discussed.
Interesting manner you have. Might explain why your particular brand of bullshit is spreading like wildfire.
I have indeed, and, you did not answer my question. How much higher in real dollars is the minimum wage than exploitation-level wages that existed prior to organized labor and labor laws?
Your silence is deafening. Have you or have you not read the book, sir? Nice try, attempting to deflect, but your true nature has been exposed. The numbers you demand from me have nothing to do with any argument of mine - it is your own strawman argument because you are apparently completely unable to engage with another Human being in a rational discussion.
Have you read Grapes of Wrath? That is what this thread is about. If you are unable to discuss it, take your pre-packaged arguments to a new thread. You will notice that I am being attacked by three people not for anything I've actually said, but because I'm a libertarian and you're all throwing your pre-packaged anti-libertarian arguments at me as though they were relevant to anything I've said. Sad.
"Have you read Grapes of Wrath?"
"I have indeed"
Waiting.
You're free to provide the answer to your rhetorical question any time. It is not essential to any of my points, so why don't you educate us and stop beating around the bush?
You clearly linked minimum wage to exploitation and poverty, and claimed that because of it, at least in part, exploitation and poverty are a non-issue. I disagreed and made my case. I think it stands. You're just angry at everyone for not recognizing your obvious superiority (moral and otherwise). So be it.
Well,
The poverty line in 1890 (sticking with the Gilded Age) was $500/year, and the average salary was $380/year. There was no "minimum wage" to compare but I think we can call earnings that fell below the poverty line "exploitative."
In today's dollars, using the CPI, $500/year would be $12,400/year (and this is in line with our currently-calculated poverty line). The minimum wage of $7.25 comes out to about $14,500/year. It's marginally better. So if we deem slightly above poverty to be non-exploitative, you win. It really wasn't a rhetorical question.
No, I don't win, because that never had anything to do with any of my arguments, you bird-brain. If you re-read this thread the horribly controversial thing I said was that OWS is about fighting economic injustice, rather than poverty or exploitation. Well, you sure have proved me wrong. OWS is clearly about fighting individual rights and making strawman attacks on those who support them.
The exploitation has continued since the 70s in the form of "illegal." It is definitely not an effective stop gap but rather it serves to exacerbate the problem.
How so? Please elaborate.
Venture back to the the 17th and 18th centuries and what we find is that American labor was valued at seven times that of European labor. Ok, so perhaps the this journey is impracticable... so leave the cities to observe... what we find are numerous enormous and elaborate Victorian homes, virtually everywhere, all of which were very ornately created entirely by hand with many thousands of man-hours... the wealth that created these homes, and employed these craftsmen, was imported, and this was a prosperous nation, for all.
Labor is no longer highly valued for one simple reason - we have a surplus of labor. And the minimum wage has only served to exacerbate this problem because the non-citizen migrant worker does not share our standard of living, therefore the value of his labor, with this same perspective.
We've lost what, over half of our agricultural industry in CA? Entirely due to the inexpensive import of products from places like Columbia, and for those that remain there is ever increasing pressure to remain competitive - a higher minimum wage only serves to grow the population of non-citizen workers and lower the bar for citizen unemployment.
So you're for abolishing the minimum wage? Are you in favor of NAFTA and globalization? And yet against immigration from Latin America? Have you read The Grapes of Wrath?
I have no feelings on the matter one way or the other. Except to say that pushing it ever skyward will definitely have a deleterious effect on labor. I definitely do not support NAFTA. We've lost up to a million (I believe) manufacturing jobs. I'm also concerned about our recent trade agreements. I am not only against illegal immigration, Latino or otherwise, I would also like to see legal immigration scaled back as well (as Clinton recommended). And yea, I did read the Grapes of Wrath, and have seen the movie many times, etc. I have never viewed this movie in the light of exploitation; the grower was overwhelmed with laborers which he was forced to discourage in some manner; he is a businessman, and one that very likely has a very narrow profit margin. Besides I've lived on the illegal side of labor; I understand the competitive forces at play.
My agenda is to see my country return to sanity. Forces are at work to reduce and disarm the middle class of America, to concentrate wealth and power among the few. They have promoted philosophies and economic theories with flowery names like "free trade," "free market" and "trickle-down economics" but they are simply justifications for bad behavior. I don't have a problem with individual rights within reason. You don't have a right to reduce me to tyranny - period.
Every time someone starts talking about free markets and free trade, I know someone else is about to get raped.
Free trade isn't free for anybody. Markets without rules is like banking without rules. It never ends well.
I agree.
All economics is trickle down, nothing else is possible.
"I don't have a problem with individual rights -- within reason." Holy shit, did you really just say that?
It's hard for me to comprehend a mind that could say something so depraved. Everybody always thinks they approve of individual rights, until someone starts smoking something they don't like, saying something they don't like, or having sex in a way they don't like. Your 'within reason' clause means that no one has the right to do anything that might offend someone else, and so therefore no one has the right to do anything. You're disgusting and no better than those you're protesting. You are truly a wicked individual.
Spoken like a true lover of tyranny. Have fun shouting "FIRE" in crowded theaters and you know where you can put your mock outrage.
There is nothing social about this libertarianism. You even have the Randian arrogance and abusiveness down pat.
The arrogance is called 'moral superiority' which was handed to me when the two words within reason were attached to philosophical rights of freedom and liberty. For someone by the name of Lockean you sure have a poor appreciation of concepts like liberty and evil. You seem to be a garden variety knuckle-dragger with no philosophical education whatsoever. You come into this thread, call me a bad libertarian socialist, and then proceed to ignore every argument and just make useless shitposts.
What argument? You've yet to explain how exploitation and poverty are not what we're dealing with here. These are relative terms, and the world has changed since the 30s. I asked a simple quesiton about minimum wages which you've dodged aggressively.
Not half as aggressively as you've dodged the question about whether you've read the book we're discussing. You could lie and say 'yes.' Come on, you can do it. Very simple.
Damn you're a douche. I did answer you, and in fact I have read it several times. My argument is that the disparity of wealth is as high, if not higher, than it was, and this (inequality) is a metric for relative terms like poverty and exploitation. My additional point is we're headed south. GoW should be read as a cautionary tale. Will we have to have mass displacement/migration before we accept that our system of transferring wealth to the top is indeed exploitative, and that the "highest poverty in 52 years" is, actually, poverty?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/14census.html?pagewanted=all
Reason is depraved? You are a an intolerable blow hard, and make deranged arguments, that no one here seems to enjoy,. perhaps you could take your personal freedom go in a corner somewhere and masturbate to a picture of Lon Raul.
Stay classy.
Freedom has it limits,. liberty is useless without reason. When your freedom causes others to suffer it is no longer a personal issue. wake up and stop being so dogmatic,. it is tiresome and shows your lack of humanity.
You expose your ignorance every time you say that my liberty can infringe on anyone else's. If you understood anything about philosophy or negative rights you'd know that's impossible. You statists are so cute with your ever so classy strawman arguments though.
Smile, you're the face of OWS.
you have a superiority complex of epic proportions,. you seem to think you are smarter than everyone you comment at,. and yet you are not making any arguments,. just repeating the same deranged lines over and over,. . "An it harm none, do as you will." this is ancient,. but apparently you study little,. your rights do not over ride the rights of the rest of us,. simple.
Individual rights within reason, the concept isn't alien. When someone's rights conflict with those of another, or with those of the society as a whole, then the contention must be weighed and judged. For example, if I make fun of someone and destroy their self-esteem, making them depressed, it would be hard to believe that people would consider my right to speech be first on the chopping block. On the other hand, if I yell these insults at someone 1 inch from their face and refuse to leave them alone, it wouldn't be so difficult for people to see this as verbal assault and conclude that my right to speech is outweighed by the victim's right to personal safety. I imagine a fairly depraved mind to be one that assumes the society around him, directly affected by his actions, should have no recourse. If democratic arbitration of conflicting interests is so abhorrent to you, then your slippery slope argument reversed would show nothing else than your desire to be emperor of the planet.
Alright, I'm done with you guys. I'm not going to be the pinata for your childish intellectual dishonesty or your loathing for liberty.
Take note, people. This is the true character of OWS. Their people despise the concept of individual rights and cannot argue honestly with their opponents. This is why their livestream, IRC, and forum is dominated by censorship and banning. It is approved of and demanded by their anti-intellectual members. No one stepped up to defend individual rights, and the rallying cry against individual rights was taken up immediately. If you love liberty and individual rights, if you oppose censorship and repression and mob mentality shout-downs, you should look elsewhere. These people do not respect your views and will behave in this same manner towards you with endless strawman attacks.
I responded to you once on a single thing you said and you throw this little tantrum? (Also, my account stops working after doing so, but I don't exactly blame that on you). You say we loathe liberty then accuse US of childish intellectual dishonesty? You say we "despise individual rights" and then in the same breath you say WE cannot argue honestly! You say we censor, repress, and have a mob mentality and then you accuse US of endless strawman attacks! We did defend individual rights! But when we expanded it to the individual rights of other people besides yourself you throw a hissy fit like this. I'm sorry but your response to me was the most pathetic post I've seen on this site. You have to get over yourself.
I am so glad I was able to read your words because my heart was becoming closed off to all mention of libertarians. But that was always my problem for having been sucked in by stereotypes and political jargon.
Idk. Stereotypes are formed naturally, and often for good reason. Read the rest of the thread above before you reform your opinion of libertarians. There's a Chomsky ideal of libertarian socialism that's very agreeable, but that definition is mostly irrelevant here in the states. No matter how they qualify it, American libertarians are basically extremists. IMO.
Well, I would not go as far as to say I'd vote for Dr. P. But that is just because he has not left his party no matter how bad it has become. Their idea seems to be geared toward breaking down the old and building a new. If that's the case, there are better ways of honing freedom of opportunity than to create ordered chaos, or as they call it creative destruction.
I believe they worked too hard and are just old and bidder that they fell for the dream, while the poor seen if for what it was, and worked on their family instead.
Are you being sarcastic? I can't tell anymore after getting bombarded with all of that endless garbage they threw at me.
No, I guess i should have said it's good to find out that not all libertarians are market fundamentalists.
Ah, I get you. Left-libertarians are the original and still best flavor. :)
Give the Republicans and the Libertarians time. Their ultimate goal is to produce a severe fiscal crisis...think Greece....and to use that crisis to roll back medicare and social security. In the meantime, they are actively trying to "privatize" and discredit both programs. The fiasco over the raising of the debt ceiling was just a warm up act. That is how it will play out again and again until they have achieved their end.
Your kids could very easily find themselves identifying with Tom's words in the future.
Libertarianism is about liberty and the maximization of individual rights. Opposition to endless war and imperialism; opposition to assassination of US citizens (or anyone) without a trial; opposition to prohibition wars; opposition to the trampling of our rights to bear arms, to freely assemble, to freely express ourselves, to worship as we please, to be free from self incrimination or from unreasonable search and seizure, and on and on.
Libertarianism has nothing to do with Republicans or mass privatization, or tax as theft. That's Ayn Rand Objectivism which concerns itself with taking power from the state and giving it to the plutocrats. Libertarianism seeks to give power from the state to the people.
As for my kids, well Tom Joad's family lost control of their land and the bank took it and made it into a mechanized farm run by one guy with a tractor, forcing all the share croppers out on their asses which then led to their exploitation. You can only end up in that position if you give up control of your land. As long as you have land, you have the ability to escape the evil machinations of government and plutocratic power. Me and my children, if I ever have any, will be hiding on our land from the evil sociopaths you idiots (the people) put in power, I expect.
No, it's an unworkable set of slogans that are being used by a group of very wealthy nutjobs in order to lasso people and politicians into serving their ends.
Whatever you say, brobot.
So, You don't believe that the Koch-roaches were involved in the bank rolling of the Tea Party?
What leads you to think that's what I believe?
Because they are the mouth piece for that divisive philosophy of smaller Government. If i were the big boy on the block, the one who could crush all his competitors, I'd probably ask for the police and fire fighters to be fired, too. If i had all the money, I would not care what the cost of health care would be. The idea of self interests his a hall mark of American politics. and when some one with all the pieces wants to change the rules, my self interested self finds that suspect.
Okay?
Well, I don't think it's a secret that Koch funds the tea party through Citizens United, et al. So I still have no idea what you're responding to. What specific thing did I say that prompts this?
And in any case, reducing the power of government is a wonderful idea, as long as you give it to the people instead of to the plutocrats. I see nothing divisive about reducing statist power and giving back to the communities and families that the statists and plutocrats have systematically shattered. If there's something divisive about that, I want to be divided. I would never want solidarity with a statist or a plutocrat. That's as much of a heavy block from me as attacking gun rights or reproductive rights, if not more so.
Fine, you get legislation passed that will dissolve corporate person hood that transcends state and national lines then I wont stand in your way when you neuter the Federal Gov. I try to be particle and work within the paradigm we live in, not the one we wish. When a private institution has more power than the referee, I would never eject the referee. Unless drastic changes happen I have to pick my poison wisely, or pick the lessor of two evils. I see that the voting Libertarians, not the theoretical ones you hail from, elect republicans. Republicans make my life worst.
Wrong, sir. Wrong. The president is commander in chief. The buck stops with him and he is in charge of our foreign policy and all of that. I'm not bitching about his backdown on healthcare, or corporate welfare Bush tax cuts, or anything in the realm of the congress. EVERYTHING I mentioned is at the president's SOLE discretion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpFOh-FZcpc
I hope some day you wake up and stop supporting and apologizing for cold blooded murderers.
Oh, I see the problem now. You think that there are 'sides of the aisle,' and that Democrats are the good guys. Well if Obama hasn't already convinced you that is not the case, there is nothing I can possibly contribute to the matter. If you think good guys murder US citizens who are saying things the government doesn't like is okay, and their children too just for the fun of it to keep people scared, to say to the world look we can murder you and your children with cold precision and our people will do nothing about it because they believe in 'sides of the aisle,' then I can't possibly convince you with my words. If you could be convinced, you'd have already been convinced by the war on whistle blowers, the protection of torturers and wire tappers, and the massive expansion of George W Bush policies under the Democrats.
You said you thought it was refreshing to see a libertarian that focused on individual liberties over economic liberties, but it's the defense of those individual liberties that has me so reviled in this thread tree with -4, -5, or even -6 points while things wishing death on me get +4. Total mob rule. Total absense of rationality or intellectualism. Total hatred of liberty, and these are the types of people who are somehow drawn to the OWS movement.
As a left libertarian, I find this whole thread to be highly disturbing. These people are the face of OWS.
Keep believing it has to do with your intellectual arguments rather than your disgusting arrogance and abrasive personality.
Wow, he is a president in a democracy not a king. He has to play the game by the rules that were there before him. he can suggest solutions, he can't force them. Just because Bush said he is the decider does not make it true. Congress decides, the president implements. all those atrocities you name says more about the nation and less about the president. People get the government they deserve, not the one they wish.
The government is the referree? The government is the one with all the guns and all the soldiers and all the police and all the force. Without the government's complicit and obedient use of force against us, the plutocrats are nothing. We give the plutocrats most of their power by our pathetic lack of will as a people. By our sycophantic lust for their iProducts and oil and movies.
Corporate Personhood needs to go, but who made it law? The supreme court. And they can now use that as precedent to keep the congress or the president from doing anything to end corporate personhood. There was demand to overturn Roe v Wade, and that is never going to happen. Do you think an end to corporate personhood is ever going to happen? The people don't care. Government exists not as a referee, but as the bagman. They aim their guns at whomever the plutocrats point at.
I don't see corporations denying civil rights and murdering our own citizens who have committed no crime, including children. I do see the government doing that. I see the government doing a whole lot of murdering and torturing and brutalizing and repressing, and I see it doing it in my name.
But, what side of the isle past that bill, and which side dissented? By taking my ability to make minimum wage I am voiceless in a market economy. those are right wing talking points. Through their ability to crush competition they have destroyed the 20th century conception of market forces. That utopia does not exist. The electric car is an example. if the politician is financed by Corporations then takes my liberty, I blame those that put the politician in power. If the Government is a pain in my side, I have to ask who in the private sector made it so.
Show me one libertarian society in history that wasn't the equivalent of a modern third world nation.
Medieval Iceland pushed forward to discover the Americas without any strong central government. The community rule of Scandinavia dominated the absolutist kings of dark ages Europe.
But that is irrelevant because you're still ignoring my argument all together. Probably because you're too intellectually bankrupt to have a discussion person to person. You'd rather argue against right-wing memes and ascribe them to me, I guess.
You should take it down a notch and remember that you're arguing with people.
I'm still waiting for that country.
Medieval Iceland was the first two words of my post. I'm still waiting on that sanity.
I would say that if the model for where you want to take this country is medieval Iceland, then you might as well put that gun to your head now. There is simply no hope for someone as dumb as you.
Wow you are blood thirsty aren't you? Well, keep on wishing death on people who you disagree with, buddy. I'm going to go find someone less insane to argue with. I'm getting a little worn out with all the hatred.
EDIT: Look how many thumbs up he got for that hateful post. :) That shows the true nature of the OWS movement at present. That's the caliber of person who has taken over.
It wasn't hatred, it was pity. You just haven't thought about your ideas well enough.
I don't believe you can use a 19 th century modal for a highly technological society; I just believe that puff is being practical. also, I believe that with the downing of climate change we need uniformal rules. Also, we, as in the individual states, can't compete with one another then compete with the world. corporations want the states to race to the bottom, then scoop up the profits. If business is too powerful for the fed what chance do you think the states will have?
I don't believe we won this one; quite the opposite - they later imported South Americans by the bus load, built them housing, little cities... all for the sole purpose of circumventing the prevailing wage.
And the American picker is still unemployed and in poverty due to inexpensive agricultural imports and the overwhelming flood of migrant labor.
Easily solved by giving them citizenship. Keeping borders closed but immigrants flowing in illegally is exactly what benefits exploitative farmers. Open the borders to anyone who wants to come. Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Make the corporate farms and fruit orchards pay immigrants minimum wage one way or the other. Pretty hard to do that if they're illegal and can't report bad conditions for fear of being deported.
You need to start your own pro-dictatorship movement.