You can't count on charity …people have always been able to 'donate', but they rarely do.

People shouldn't have to depend on charity, and other people's pity in order to survive.

No one in the history of the world has ever been self-sufficient.

Not even in our original cave tribes.

Men did the hunting, women did the gathering, everyone minded the kids and pitched in for supper.

Anyone disabled made flints or baskets or clay pots….sick people were tended.

They all helped each other…tribal socialism.

That's why the worst thing a tribe could do to a transgressor wasn't death, it was exile. People don't survive on their own.

Except you can't do that outside a small tribal setting.

Live in a village of 400 people, or a town of 4000 people, or a city of 4 million people…you couldn't keep up to it….so we developed another way of looking out for each other.

I said no one in the history of the world has ever been self-sufficient, not in our earliest tribal days and not now.

And no, no one has ever built wealth and prosperity for themselves without outside help.

There has been no change on my part, you are simply clinging to your ideology.

I believe the mantra of 'free market economy' is your ideology, not mine.

I don't recall planning on taking over govt either, and I'm sure I'd remember a plot like that. LOL

I would never compare our intelligences Dennis, but you really should get some public healthcare for that cough.

Really. Most of those countries established wealth without big government. Once big government was introduced, guess what? Deficits and debts ballooned to the point where we don't know when it'll all be paid off, and with mixed results. Like most things involving socialist programs.

The basic premise of leftists policies is that they know better than the rest of us, so they need to take our money and make it so.

You weren't criticizing BIG vs. SMALL … you referenced those who "flourish and survive without socialist programs." And this thread is about social programs vs. self-reliance (again, not big vs. small).

Post-war Scandinavian countries established welfare states that freed their workers from poverty, illness, ignorance and toil so they could help build productive industries and a better quality of life for themselves and their children. They paid high taxes, but got a lot in return. Subsequently, they have been demonstrated to be more successful at moving the poor into middle classes and middle classes into wealth than have so-called free-market systems. They also pushed for free trade long before it became fashionable in these here parts. Today, they produce products under dozens of globally recognizable brands. We sell grease and potash.

I'll take a small government committed to the welfare state over a big one committed to wild-west euphemisms any day.

BS. Pearson notes a limit right in this clipped portion and yet you are castigating him.

'such a strong accusation'… please, it is obvious to anyone that actually read Pearson's piece that you disparaged it with out bothering. Pearson plainly states:

We are now reversing that progress, and in the place of government is the free market. We know, and have experienced, what happens when one or the other of these becomes too powerful, and Canada has excelled only when we struck the proper balance between them.

So Pearson's wiriting clearly flies in the face of your facile assertion he thinks there are no limits to what government can do. Grow up.

In other words, you were never serious about the idea that government should be limited. And I'm the one with the shifting sands in my argument, am I?

5) We – those people on my (Thatcher's) team and our patrons that we serve. Used in a sentence: We are authorized to cast you into penury.
6) People – (notice the difference between 3 and 6, no "The") those, that due to their industry, talent, drive, etc. have elbowed their way to the front of the line; synonym for We; also meaning our people, but it is always spoke as people, never our people
7) The State – that which seeks redress and balance against the powers accumulated by We. Opposite of natural order. Used in a sentence: The State is the arrangement of affairs opposed to our interests, government is rule according to the natural order of things – ie our interests.

But you can't count on donations. Some people do, some don't. Some can't. Some won't.

Kindly stop making nonsense statements about 'progressive and liberal atheists' since you know nothing about them.

Lots of 'religious' countries have poor people. Just as we did when most of the country was devout.

The population is much too large now to depend on the charity of churches. Indeed the churches are hard put to pay off their lawsuits.

I do not lay the blame for America's current economic woes solely at Obama's feet. However, he has taken a bad situation resulting from a global collapse and squandered it badly. Instead of trying to fix the economy in a responsible fashion, he has spent trillions of dollars making things worse. Yes, worse — by his own calculations. The economy is doing worse than their own projections if nothing was done.

Speaking of mentality, I'm curious: does any opinion left of your own put Canada on the road to economic ruin, ala Greece?

Not quite sure what that means. But I believe that the policies of modern day liberals are destructive. They are unaffordable with mediocre results. Just look at California and Ontario, apart from Greece and the States, to verify the phenomenon.

Liberals spend on big programs needing big union jobs that do not deliver results. Period.

That's what Glen Pearson seems to be offering during tight financial times. In other words, just more typical liberalism.

I can also tell you that the big expenditures of $9b for prisons and $9-16b for fighter jets represents big spending in these tight financial times

Perhaps you know this already, but just in case you didn't I'll point out that these are projected expenditures that are spread out over the years, rather than a lump-sum payment.

Also, I half suspect that Ignatieff supports the fighter jet expenditure, though it may not be politically expedient to say so right now (hence his silence on this issue).

I can't argue with any of that! However, I fear we may have to wait until an election is imminent before we're able to compare plans. From a strategic perspective, I think the Liberals won't reveal their spending plans before they absolutely have to (i.e. when the writ is dropped).

Why focus on the States and Toronto? Seems to me that in OTTAWA, cutbacks aren't exactly beating spending to a pulp.

Maybe I've been misinformed, but I was sure I read somewhere about us going back into deficit, and about our Tory saviors increasing government spending to its highest levels in history.

Which brings me back to my earlier point. If we're going to have a "grand philosophical battle", let's at least first see if we can figure out who should stand on which side of the field.

Shorter version

The Liberals will take your bank card, empty your bank accounts and then buy you nice stuff with whatever money they have left over.

The Conservatives will take your credit card and run up an enormous debt for you and help you feel safe while they are doing it.

The NDP will break into your place of work, trash it and sell it for surplus and then help you out when you are unemployed.

The PQ would just like to take a nice cash settlement from you and split.

So?

The Liberals would be like a spouse who has been inspired by characters from romantic comedies ( Sex And The City, 200 Days of Summer, etc ).

The Conservatives are would be like your adult children or relatives who fret for your safety by installing every sort of security measure possible in the house, mortgaging it three times over.

The NDP would be like your fashionable anarcho-syndicalist child in university who just came back from a commune, volunteering in some developing country and wants to bring down the 'man.'

The PQ is a scornful spouse on the verge of wanting a divorce and substantial, continuous alimony.

With a family like that, it is no wonder Parliament becomes dysfunctional.

Say, are we breaking some kind of code by dishing all these analogies on Wherry's site? Is this one of those unreported crimes?

Or are these exempt, by virtue of being full-blown metaphors? Maybe even parables.