| | Luke,
I appreciate your illustrative defense of post-modern, left-liberal, existentio-nihilistic, tree-hugging, worm-worship. You mentioned the caveat that that view begs other questions and it does -- but it begs questions even more relevant than the example that you gave.
The reason runs like this:
You can't start with a surplus and end in a deficit without spending some money somehow.
You can spend money on our nation or on other nations and, at the end of the day, you can tabulate what it was that was spent on our nation and compare it to what it was that was spent on other nations.
If what it was that was spent on our nation dwarfs what it was that was spent on other nations, then you cannot legitimately make the following two statements together:
1) republicans spent so much money that they got us from big surplus to big deficits 2) republicans won't spend money on the country (because they think that spending money on our country is "wasted money", but they'll spend money on wars)
Let's say, for example, that 80% of all the money that the republicans spent in 8 years was money spent on our country and that 20% of all the money that republicans spent in 8 years was on the war in Iraq. Does spending a fifth of your money on another country allow you to infer the conclusion that you won't spend money on your country? Many Americans pay taxes. They pay at a rate that exceeds 20% of their income. Does that fact make proper the following conclusion?:
Americans won't spend money on themselves (because they send 20% of their income to Uncle Sam, they must feel that spending money on themselves is a waste). No, it does not. It is not a proper conclusion to draw because it contradicts reality and it contradicts logic. We do spend money on ourselves, so reality proves the main statement wrong. The fact that we spend money on other things besides ourselves begs the question of why. Why do we pay taxes? It turns out that it is a logical fallacy to infer that -- because we don't spend every penny on ourselves -- that we feel money spent on ourselves is a waste. A shorthand way to talk about such left-liberal "reaoning" is:
You can't get there from here.
:-)
Ed
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