The big issue is on deciding the proportions of the mix: How much public sector? How much private sector? How much taxation? We’ll just have to deal with it on a case-by-case basis as we go.

To paraphrase an old saying from my old profession:

“America is like a software application. We have to debug it as we go along.”

“‘I prefer a scientific solution, when one has developed the human genome.’

What makes humans different from animals is their spiritual dimension. Call it soul. Call it self-consciouness. Science cannot address the spiritual nature of man.”

Chekote, you know real leftists make no distinction between animal and human don’t you? For heaven sakes, we are but merely and organism which is wreaking havoc on the ecosystem!

And what of separation of church and state then? Should the government really be involved in matters of spirituality? A good leftist would think not!

And of science, leftists are required to take science as the answer to all things, why not apply it here? I’ll tell you why, because it makes Pro-Choice a loser issue.

We almost declared a baby a person when it acquires the human genome in my state, and sure enough there will be a state that will, and it should be interesting to hear arguments about “soul” when it does.

Your logic is shallow every time. You have your beliefs which are that you are superior to all philosophical logistical thought that has come before. You have some very simplistic methods for determining what is the proper course of action. H.L Menkin, H.L Smenkin -irrelevant some cute phrase just closed your easily manipulated mind. Also Friedman in this context is irrelevant. When the fact is that we have a quasi socialist State and at some point we know that socialist states turn into totalitarianism and serial loss of freedom you think you can weigh each case on it’s merits, out of context with the general direction the country is headed.

You must determine if you want the ship to head east or west based on where it is now. You have to take your bearings and you refuse to do this. You just make blanket statements about no way being 100% right, a couple of clever quotes from wordsmiths as though that is some kind of organizing philosophy.

Also did misread the man’s name or do you not know who he is? Powell may be your intellectual equal but Sowell is a much smarter person than you (and me) . You just say I have to admit he is wrong because you say so, and you don’t even know who Thomas Sowell is! Hilarious!

“One idea that came from the Left (starting with Rachel Carson), that turned out to be correct, is that all externalities of a transaction need to be accounted for. You own a polluting factory that makes widgets, I buy the widgets–but who pays for a child’s asthma attack caused by the pollution from your factory?”

Using your debating methods I could simply say “you have to admit Carlson is wrong” and be done with it, but I’ll act as I would HOPE any rational person would in citing why I believe you and Carlson are misguided.

Er China? I mean, the widgets now get made in China because of the laws here. We still buy the widgets but they aren’t made here so outasight/ out of mind to you drones. They pollute (much worse BTW) in China and (even more) children die anyway and the pollution eventually comes here too. We will never be able to control the world or the world’s economy. You are a totalitarian by default. You don’t even know it…You will vote us right into slavery thinking you are a nuanced moderate picking and choosing from the smorgasboard loading is up with government.

As Mark Steyn and the liberal blogosphere both noted, the Left doesn’t mind Obama saying that marriage should be between a man and a woman, because they know he’s one of them and he probably doesn’t mean it in his heart but is just saying it to get votes.

They did mind Ms. Prejean saying it, because she’s a devout Christian and they know she really does mean it.

Bill Clinton, the Left was never sure about, due to his Southern heritage and his moderate track record on social issues when he was governor of Arkansas. His approving of the death penalty for a convict there had signaled to the Left that he wasn’t on board with them. When he signed the Defense of Marriage Act, he was strongly attacked by the Left, and particularly by gay activists.

And when Clinton signed welfare reform into law, several of his staff members resigned in protest.

Give the Left *some* credit. They know the difference between a politician who is really on board with them but has to compromise to win elections, versus someone who is really not on board with them.

If Powell were right, all nations on earth would have a choice between voting for the Ayn Rand Objectivist Party or the Karl Marx Communist Party. That this choice has NEVER arisen in world history tells you how wrong Powell is.

It came from an earlier Supreme Court ruling, Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). And I *do* AGREE with you, that this was an absolutely ghastly ruling. Ultra-liberal Justice William O. Douglas wanted to give Americans a right to privacy. Period. He had already decided from his ultra-liberalism that he wanted that. And so he and his colleagues authored one of the worst rulings ever, with tortuous reasoning and nonsensical metaphors that could be a self-parody if its consequences weren’t so serious. This is the poster child for judicial activism.

Go read it sometime.

The Roe v. Wade ruling in 1970, was that Griswold v. Connecticut had given a woman a right to privacy, and that this should imply her right to terminate a pregnancy. That’s pretty bad reasoning too. But it’s nowhere near as bad as Griswold v. Connecticut.

H. L. Mencken once said: “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem–neat, plausible, and wrong.”

I strongly believe that. Whenever anyone says “It’s very simple. All we gotta do is….” they are very likely to be WRONG.

No human philosophy is perfect and has all the answers. A philosophy is, at best, a general guideline as to where to start planting one’s spades to look for answers.

But a truly open mind is willing to listen to proposals from any source, from any philosophy–and evaluate that proposal objectively.

One idea that came from the Left (starting with Rachel Carson), that turned out to be correct, is that all externalities of a transaction need to be accounted for. You own a polluting factory that makes widgets, I buy the widgets–but who pays for a child’s asthma attack caused by the pollution from your factory?

Laissez-faire capitalism was an ideal abstraction, like kinetic gas theory that assumes that gas molecules are points of zero size at reasonable temperature and pressures.

Likewise, laissez-faire capitalism can only work perfectly when the world in which the players operate is infinite: The atmosphere and oceans are infinite, pollution is zero, players are located so far apart that pollution or toxic waste from a factory hurts no one nearby. But it gets into trouble in the real world, where those assumptions do not hold.

This makes for a difficult calculus, even more difficult than the theory of kinetic gases at extreme temperatures and pressures.

Even Milton Friedman, who was no left-winger, realized that you have to balance the externalities caused by private enterprise, against the externalities caused by government’s attempt to correct the externalities in the private sector. AFAIK, so far there is no perfect theory as to how to do this–because we’re dealing here with political economy, and the choices society has made about how it wants to live: How much risk from cancer? How much risk from lower standards of living? Not easy.

We moderates recognize these issues and struggle to provide solutions. Unlike ideologues on BOTH the Left and the Right, who think that the solution is simple: Always either more socialism or more capitalism, respectively.