No you are missing the point. For instance if you are on the "no fly" list you wont be going anywhere. You wouldnt even know why you are on the list nor how to get off. You are subject to them. You would also need permission in the form of a passport and will get searched like a criminal in the airport. You know, guilty until proven innocent. The government provides just enough where we dont throw them out or revolt. I said nothing about an advanced military so im not sure why you are disputing that. We could talk about how much money we piss away on the military and "defense" budget. Which is a joke to call it defense since they are constantly on the offense. Medicare is a joke and can only work with exponential population growth which is impossible unless we seed new planets. The debt is a huge issue contary to your belief. Every dollar of debt is like saying "the american people have not yet creating this 17+trillion in value but eventually they will". Not only that it devalues every dollar in your pocket, so its worth less. This is in part why a quarter used to buy a gallon of gas now you need 12. Its the inflation tax that you dont realize you are paying.
i don't think i am missing your point.. you pull out some edge-cases and say look how shitty our government is. well, i may not agree with everything that our government does, but i feel that things are not nearly as bad as you try to make them out to be. a few people on the "no fly" list do not concern me. i am free to fly anywhere. you are generalizing this like everyone is affected by the "no fly" list (aka north korea). as far as i am concerned i am completely free to fly and so is 99.999% of the US population. the couple of cases where people wound up on the "no fly" list relatively speaking means nothing. and neither you nor i know what they did to wind up on that list. so let's not speculate. furthermore pretty much every country in the world issues some sort of id (be it passport or whatever). and what was the last time you got "searched like a criminal in the airport"? blow things out of proportion much? ... i mean going through a metal detector/scanner is really being treated like a criminal... exactly the same yeah? So the government does provide? well at least we're on agreement on something. you know many other countries take your shit away. have you paid much attention to the tax rate in UK, Japan and other civilized countries... it's over 50% in some cases. again, we do a lot of things that i don't agree with.. but to say that our defense budget is a joke ... well that's just you again being overly dramatic. if we didn't have military power mexican drug cartels would be ruling our southern states long time ago. is that what you'd prefer? they don't make you pay taxes. what? you have no idea what you are talking about do you? "the american people have not yet creating this 17+trillion" ... right they i've just created 16.8 trillion in 2013 ... https://www.google.com/search?q=us+gdp i think you need educate yourself a little more on these topics before starting a debate. because all i've read is a bunch of over-hyped statements without any concrete facts. to say that we are not free is a real joke. i'm guessing you haven't been to too many places outside of US to understand how good you have things here.
"Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave." - Frederick Douglass “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.†- Steven Biko "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." - Buddha "A mind that is expanded by a new idea will never go back to its original dimension." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
Fair enough I wouldn't hate the income tax as much if it went to more things that are beneficial to humanity.. Sent from my SCH-S738C using Grasscity Forum mobile app
What's the point? The fact that we are "free" is the reason why the corrupt system oppressing freedom ironically exists. It's not like the natural order of the world is structured corruption; it's chaos. Freedom is technically chaos without borders. Many people freely elect to be slaves to a system that offers authority, order, and some kind of structure, because the alternative is tantamount to living out in the middle of nowhere and living off of the land, even if that doesn't have to be the case. The majority of people make that compromise. Obviously those with leftist leanings aspire to break the mold, but many have their own reservations about what true freedom would mean, and if it wouldn't just be some form of global Communism that transcended every fabric of our nature- thus rendering each and every life stagnant and void of individualized purpose, or distinction from one's own peers. Again, this doesn't necessarily have to be how it's perceived or plays out, but ego is also an inherent flaw to anyone human. So naturally, it would probably go that way. Freedom of choice is rarely made in the right direction. Humans are trial and error learners. And in my opinion, we've taken a few really bad guesses along the course of history that are just making the future almost impossible to claim. And people still don't get it. Sometimes I look at this country the same way I look at McDonalds. You'd like to see them go "we're gonna start serving organic grass-fed burgers", but you know it's not gonna happen. It'll be pink slime and bullshit forever, because that's what makes them money, and people have no problem buying it of their own volition.
No 99.999% is flat out wrong. Im on my phone so i wont post links to back up my claims but u can google and confirm it. No i dont fly much... but the presumption of guilt, hence the unwarrented search, us treating people like a criminal. You say our country could be worse, i say it could be better... And no if we didnt have a prohibition on drugs the cartels would have no.black market to support their violence. Take away the government and its policy and you solve that problem. And our defense budget, if was merely for defense would not need to be as large as it is. Heck China has the capability to detect our stealth fighters and i bet they didnt spend trillions on this defense, i have no info on how much they spent, but i know we spent over a trillion on just the f35. But defense is cheaper than offense but we are an aggressive country which is why our defense budget is so bloated. In regards to medicare, and other social programs originally had something like 50 people paying into the system for every person drawing aid. Now its something near 2-4. So the burden per person is higher, and would only be allieviated by exponential population growth. Again you say we are more free than other countries yatta yatta. Apparently you dont know what freedom is. If i had a desktop.id be able to post links to everything for you but it would take me hours for every reply. So i hope if you dont believe me just punch it up.