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Originally Posted by GrantMercury
And I stand by my criticism of Libertarians. Most are selfish pricks who flatly refuse to accept we are a society. They'll tell you they were raised by wolves, taught themselves to read & write, and never benefitted from any social program or taxpayer-funded project. They hunt and prepare their own food, home school their kids, have a volunteer fire department in their town, and read Ayn Rand by candlelight in their self-made log cabin. Therefore they're being robbed by the government when they pay taxes. They're certain they're the only ones who get up early and "bust their hump" to live while the rest (or at least 47%) choose to collect welfare and live the high life. And we're supposed to take them seriously.
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Alright, just for fun, I'm gonna take these one by one. I've been voting libertarian for 20+ years. If you want to put a simplistic label on me (which you seem fond of doing), you'd label me a pragmatic/progressive libertarian.
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Most are selfish pricks who flatly refuse to accept we are a society.
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I'm no more of a selfish prick than the next guy AND i completely accept and embrace that we are a society.
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They'll tell you they were raised by wolves, taught themselves to read & write, and never benefitted from any social program or taxpayer-funded project.
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I was primarily raised by 3 human women. My mom, grandmother and aunt. As far as I know, no wolves were involved.
My grandmother taught me how to read and write.
I have benefitted from social programs and/or taxpayer-funded projects
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They hunt and prepare their own food, home school their kids, have a volunteer fire department in their town, and read Ayn Rand by candlelight in their self-made log cabin.
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I have done none of these things. Well, I've prepared my own food...
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Therefore they're being robbed by the government when they pay taxes.
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I do believe we are often robbed by the government, ON BEHALF OF large corporations and other big money interests, and the lazy 5ish% who want to do nothing more than subsist on welfare etc.
Anyone who looks into the numbers will see that Corporate Welfare is FAR, FAR greater than the welfare paid out to the lazy 5ish%.
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They're certain they're the only ones who get up early and "bust their hump" to live while the rest (or at least 47%) choose to collect welfare and live the high life.
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Anyone who makes a few minutes of effort to identify the alleged 47% will find out that 85-90% of them are the elderly and the working poor.
That said, i think 99% of people (regardless of their political leanings) don't make any effort to do their own homework. Instead, they just regurgitate talking points and have nothing to offer when asked to defend their positions.
At that point, they usually do one (or more) of four things:
1) Disappear from the discussion
2) Change the subject
3) Ignore comments that challenge their positions
4) Do silly things like make ignorant blanket statements about those they are ignorantly criticizing, post ignorant silly images about those they are ignorantly criticizing, etcetera etcetera.
Does this last bit make you look in the mirror a bit? It should.