How do you explain liberty to people (the left) who think that freedom is not freedom of speech, freedom of religion and right to keep and bear arms, but rather that real freedom is being free of economic burdens?
And that the best way to that freedom is economic redistribution and eliminating capitalism?
How does one go about explaining to people who have paid into Social Security for 40 years that they should lose that?

Quoted: Quoted: How does one go about explaining to people who have paid into Social Security for 40 years that they should lose that? They should certainly NOT lose that. Doing away or reforming SS is a fine and correct thing. Denying 40 years of paying into is robbery and should be dealt with severely.

That's happening right now.  The government spent my Dad's SS pay-ins years ago.
I'm paying for him RIGHT NOW.
I have no realistic hope that SS will be there for me.
I am likely being robbed, and will never see that money.
So are you.
Why?
Because there is no such thing as individual SS accounts.  It is a general fund, and the government draws out money for various other projects.
Somebody is going to lose something before it is over with, and the victims are just going to have to deal with it.

Quoted: The gun issue only confused the point of that essay, which was an outstanding one.

Didn't confuse me at all.

Ravyn, how do you convince those people who think that a PROPER function of government is taking care of people's retirement (conversely, if there are privatized retirement accounts, then private corporations are hogging power, which makes it fascism) that retirment acounts should be privatized because the government has so royally screwed things up?

There are also a growing number of people who figure that the next barrier of freedom to tackle in an advanced civilized society is that of economic freedom.  This isn't just a passing thought, but rather a cornerstone of their vision for the future.  Right now they will tell you that you are a slave to the almighty dollar, and thus cannot be truly free.

The possibility of a gun ban scared me for a SHORT time.  Then I realized exactly the point of the above article.  If you can make people embrace the concept of a benevolent and powerful government, you can get them to do anything to keep it.  The fact that gun control is such a hot potato issue can be used against us.  They throw us a bone and let us keep a controversial gun and we'll sit back and keep quiet about whatever else they do.

It always bothered me a little when I ran into somebody who was a single issue voter.  If there are enough people who pay attention to only one issue, then the Statists can leave the issue alone or even advance it, and whatever else the government is doing is going unnoticed.

Several years back, I kept having gunhaters tell me that they'd accept a dictatorship in place of our current Republic if the dictatorship would promise them safety.

How do you argue with that?

Quoted: SS is a boondoggle at this point. Our society ages, with more benefits promised daily to the masses by both parties.  You do the math. If I could opt out of SS now and keep all my future $ to be paid in to the sustem (I'm still in my late 30's) I'd do it in a heartbeat. I think the use of the second amendment in this article was quite clever-and sadly right on target. We are being bent over the barrel in many other ways.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship… -Tytler's words come from his book, The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic, published in 1776.

You got it right, Ravyn.  Enough people really do buy into the 'civilized society' poppycock and won't let go of the dream, that the whole system will have to collapse before anything changes.

Quoted: I am split on this. On one hand I think "gee, we win on the sunset of the AWB, and congress passes a law forbidding the use of your SSN for identification purposes, but you people are still complaining." On the other hand, I remember the following quote from the trailer for Celcious 41.5 (or something): "If a dictator provides free health care and free college education then I like that dictator"

Are you thinking of Fahrenheit 451?

Quoted: I've given the SS/medicare question a lot of thought, and the most likely outcome is monetization of the trust funds. In other words they'll sell the bonds that are currently in the trust funds, that are backed only by the taxing power of the state, to the Fed, which will simply create the cash necessary. Of course this will lead to significant inflation and the money the boomers get back won't buy as much as the money they paid in, but at least they'll get paid. Money really just confuses the issue, the real issue is whether or not we can produce enough goods to go around. Tax rates are another of these issues that people are confused about, the tax rates mean nothing. What matters is what percentage of GDP government consumes. It doesn't matter if it pays for that consumption with tax money, interest revenue from the federal reserve, issueing debt, or just printing the money. All that does is transfer the burden from one citizen to another, the people pay the full burden of government spending regardless. In order to have a rational discussion about taxation first you have to decide how much government should consume, and then you should decide what the fairest way to fund it is. We never have that discussion in American politics, we have tax and spend vs. borrow and spend and those are our choices.

On top of what government consumes, the people will have to take a VERY hard look on what government should and should not do.
Some Federal Agencies:
Indian Arts and Crafts Board
Panama Canal Commission
President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency
Inside the Commerce Department: Minority Business Development Agency , Women in International Trade
Inside the Education Department: Office of Indian Education
Inside the Health-Human Services Department: Indian Health Service (IHS)
American Indian and Alaska Native Affairs Desk
Inside the State Department (note the overlap): Bureau of Nonproliferation, Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund
Office of Under Secretary for Global Affairs
Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs
Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration
Office of the Senior Coordinator for International Women's Issues

Stuff like that.

Quoted: Quoted: How do you explain liberty to people (the left) who think that freedom is not freedom of speech, freedom of religion and right to keep and bear arms, but rather that real freedom is being free of economic burdens? And that the best way to that freedom is economic redistribution and eliminating capitalism? How does one go about explaining to people who have paid into Social Security for 40 years that they should lose that? wtf? you forgot the sarcasm smiley df. ok, i'm totally confused.     being free of economic burdens is socialism or communism?   isn't that what economic redistribution is?    isn't that the opposite of capitalism?

You're not as confused as you think you are.
Yes, it is the opposite of capitalism, in a sense.  Karl Marx also opinied that capitalism naturally evolves into socialism and then communism.
Here's where DU has been an extremely valuable tool to me.  I never understood longterm motivations for communism, because I view it as economic slavery, where you are shackled to an oppressive government and you have no rights outside of what the beaurocrats grant you.
However, the proponents don't look at the evils of communism, but rather at what they see as the evils of capitalism.  One easy facet to undersatand is the fact that the capitalist economy is cyclic.  There are good times and there are bad times.  It is always be that way in capitalism.
Communism aims to correct that with government intervention; the redistribution of income prevents money from pooling on one place.
Next time some politician scowls at you from the TV, wags his finger, and says "The richer get richer and the poor get poorer," remember that that inequality is taken by the state-ist as an evil of capitalism that punishes the unfortunate, while we see the system as rewarding of personal initiative and hard work.
Both sides look at the same thing and view it differently.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: How do you explain liberty to people (the left) who think that freedom is not freedom of speech, freedom of religion and right to keep and bear arms, but rather that real freedom is being free of economic burdens? And that the best way to that freedom is economic redistribution and eliminating capitalism? How does one go about explaining to people who have paid into Social Security for 40 years that they should lose that? wtf? you forgot the sarcasm smiley df. ok, i'm totally confused.     being free of economic burdens is socialism or communism?   isn't that what economic redistribution is?    isn't that the opposite of capitalism? You're not as confused as you think you are. Yes, it is the opposite of capitalism, in a sense.  Karl Marx also opinied that capitalism naturally evolves into socialism and then communism. Here's where DU has been an extremely valuable tool to me.  I never understood longterm motivations for communism, because I view it as economic slavery, where you are shackled to an oppressive government and you have no rights outside of what the beaurocrats grant you. However, the proponents don't look at the evils of communism, but rather at what they see as the evils of capitalism.  One easy facet to undersatand is the fact that the capitalist economy is cyclic.  There are good times and there are bad times.  It is always be that way in capitalism. Communism aims to correct that with government intervention; the redistribution of income prevents money from pooling on one place. Next time some politician scowls at you from the TV, wags his finger, and says "The richer get richer and the poor get poorer," remember that that inequality is taken by the state-ist as an evil of capitalism that punishes the unfortunate, while we see the system as rewarding of personal initiative and hard work. Both sides look at the same thing and view it differently. we don't have pure capitalism in this country. Pure capitalism works about as well as pure communism.   You wind up with an elite group in power with everyone else sucking hind tit. Our system has lots of limitations to prevent the excesses that a purely capitalistic economy would bring.

I have no information which  would permit me to disagree with you