How you would know? Do you have a copy of the watch list or known criminals? Are those lists published? Being distrustful of government is not "groupthink". It's called paying attention to history.

The only reason you are pro-socialism is because you have not yet experienced a socialist government that has been taken over by angry nut jobs. When that happens, maybe not in your lifetime, your socialist citizens will be in no position to oppose it. America is unfortunately more socialist than capitalist at the moment which is why you see "to big to fail" crap. In a truly capitalist system, to big to fail would be impossible. Only in a socialist system can the government decide who is "to big to fail" and consequently "to small to succeed". You long for "true socialism" as defined in your texbook. Sorry, has never happened and will never happen. People with greed (and all other negative emotions) get in the way. Human nature trumps all political systems. The best you can do is to try and let peer pressure bring out the best in others and hope empathy grows.

srsly? Communism has been tried. It failed every time.

UPS and FedEx are both private corporations. The USPS is an independent agency of the Fed. If your point is that government has no problem regulating private corporations or independent agencies then yes, you are correct. If your point is that the people of the united states are still (if they ever were) capable of regulating the government itself, then your examples do nothing to support that claim.

I'm sure that if you were a resident of the middle east, where this American "adventurism" is taking place, you might call it something different. I'm sure you sleep well at night knowing that you have cheap gasoline for your auto. Who cares what harm this "adventurism" causes to the region or whether it is morally wrong. Dag gummit, I wanna drive my SUV! You should be less critical of people who actually want to *do something* about overreaching federal control rather than just being "critical" or "distrustful" and doing nothing. Anyone who tries to defend the US government (especially after the NSA revelations) is a fool or has the "frog-n-water" complex.

Seriously, building and running libraries takes a fraction of 1% of the tax revenue. Where do you think the other 99.x% goes? If you think taxes are "good" because we get "things" from it, then you have missed the point entirely of self determination.

The Federal Reserve spends 85 billion a **MONTH** on quantitative easing. Yet 50 billion will buy out the entire coal industry of the United States? Something is wrong there.

I agree with you that actual cost of consumer goods has gone up. But pointing to a specific examples of a few products does not help your argument. It would be easy to find other items that have gone down. The only way to validate the claim is to average thousands of products and ensure the stats are not "massaged" by biased researchers.

That's interesting. Seeing evidence of this "remarkable restraint" would be gratifying. In science we use peer review to validate claims. In finance we use audits to validate claims. Perhaps you can paste a link to the latest audit of the Federal Reserve bank that was open to peer review. I would be very excited to see what actions these central bankers have taken to directly prevent hyperinflation.

That's the best laugh I have had all week.

So they all suck. We know that. The only ones that even try to do the right thing are the Libertarians. But oh ya, they are all crazy so lets just keep voting for the same old group.

Are you serious? All of those can be answered easily. Just think for once will ya!

The supreme court determined slavery to be legal and the return of fugitive slaves to be constitutional. The law is not always moral. When you reference court decisions to validate your point you are effectively resigning your morality to your masters. Do not fall into that trap. Think for yourself and stand up for what you know is right/wrong. "time of military conflict" -- that would be the last 20 years in America with no end in sight. But of course, there is no military conflict because only the congress can wage war. So once again, The wars we are in are considered "legal" because they are not "war". I think George Orwell had something to say about this.

At least they are talking about it. All you can do is wring your hands and point out how it is not even worth trying. I'm glad you were not in charge during the war of independence when it made no sense to even try and fight the mighty British. I guess DNA for backbone fades after a few generations.

That's right. Fuck the messenger even if the message is correct.