*promote the master!
welcome back @blankfist
ya'all need to start taking notes.

this guy was super entertaining,i thought he was gonna have an embolism at the halfway mark.

hiiiiilarious!!!

look,no matter which direction you approach this situation the REAL dynamic is simply:power vs powerlessness.

we also should establish which form of libertarianism we are speaking.cultofdusty criticizes the bastardized american version and this dude come from a more classic libertarian (sans the unbridled capitalism).so there should be no surprise they are at odds in their opinion.this man is defending a libertarianism that cultofdusty may not even be aware of at all.

libertarianism has little or nothing in common with the republican party.

so when this dude posits that the corporation is the fault of government,while not entirely accurate,it is also not entirely wrong.corporations in the distant past were temporary alliances of companies,with the blessing of the people (government) to achieve a specific job or project and once that project was complete,the corporation was dissolved.

it was a cadre of clever lawyers,representing powerful interests who convinced the supreme court that corporations were people and hence began the long road leading us to where we are now.

so it was partly the government that fascillitated the birth of the corporation.

i do take issue with this mans assessment of public education.his commentary is the height of ignorance.while i would agree that what we have now can hardly be called 'education".his blanket and broad statements in regards to public education TOTALLY ignores the incredible benefits that come from an educated public.he ignores the history of public education,as if this system has been unchanging for 100 years.

that is just flat out...stupid..or more likely just lazy,regurgitating the maniacal rants of his heroes without ever once giving that 100 years some critical study.

so let me point to the the late 50's and 60's here in the USA where our public education was bar-none the best in the world.what were the consequences of this stellar public education?
well,...civil rights marches,anti-war movement,womens rights movement and a whole generation that not only questioned authority and the entrenched power structures but openly DEFIED those structures.

this absolutely petrified the powered elite.
during the height of the anti-war movement nixon was forced to baricade the white house with school buses and was quoted as saying to kissinger " henry,they are coming for me".

again,the fundamental premise is,and has always been -power vs powerlessness.

so over the nest few decades public education was manipulated and transformed into a subtle indoctrination to teach young minds to tacitly submit to authority.

which this man addresses and i agree,i just disagree with his overly generalized non-historically accurate puke-vomit.

my final point,and its always the point where libertarians lose their shit on me like an offended westboro baptist acolyte (its actually two points) is this:
1.if we can blame the government for much of the problems in regards to concentrated power and the abuse that goes with that power,then we MUST also address the abusive (and corrosive) power of the corporation.many libertarians i discuss with seem to be under the impression that if we take away the symbiotic relationship between corporations and government that somehow..miraculously..the corporation will all of a sudden become the benign and productive member of society.

this is utter fiction.
this is magical thinking.
many corporations have a larger GDP than many nation states.this is about POWER and there is ZERO evidence any corporation will be willing to relinquish that power just because there is no government to influence,manipulate or corrupt.

which brings me to point number 2:
my libertarian friends.
you live in a thing called a society.
a community where other people also live.
so please stop with this rabid individualism as somehow being the pinnacle of human endeavour.im all for personal responsibility but nobody lives in a vacuum and nobody rides this train alone.the world does not revolve around YOU.

but i do understand,and agree,that the heart of the libertarian argument is more power to the people.i also understand their arguments against governments,which directly and oftimes indirectly disempowers people.

i get that.its a good argument..
BUT...for fucks sake please admit that the corporation in its current state has GOT TO FUCKING GO!

because if you dont then ultimately you are trading one tyrant for another and in my humble opinion,ill stick with the one i can at least vote on or protest.

there aint nothing democratic about a multi-national corporation.they are,by design,dictatorships.

so i will agree to wittle the government down and restrict its powers to defense (NOT war),law and fraud police,if you agree to dismantle and restructure the seven headed leviathan that is todays corporation.

deal?

@lantern53

ah my friend.
you seem to have fallen into the propaganda trap.
allow enoch to chat with you for a bit.

are you comfy? need a drink? coffee? a beer?

ok,then let us begin

this is not a political ideology.
this is not right nor left.(seriously limiting terms anyways).

this is about the full picture.

so let us discuss WHAT propaganda actual is,rather than what we are TOLD it is.
propaganda is simply manipulated information presented in a way to appeal to our irrational and emotional response rather than our rational and reasonable.

when i use the term "manipulated" i am not inferring or implying an outright conspiracy (though often-times it may possibly be a conspiracy) but rather a set goal to illicit the desired response.

and there is always an element of truth in propaganda but the truth being presented is controlled and manipulated.which is apparent in your commentary.

corporations use this tactic and we call it mass marketing but the first usage was that of the state to control its own citizenry.america being the major and first to pioneer this tactic.see:edward bernaise and the council of propaganda (later changed to the council of public relations).

so let us break down your examples which i assume are an attempt by you to discredit the assertions in dr wasfi's speech in this video.

1.to point out the crimes against humanity is a straw man argument.
it is irrelevant.
it is a last ditch effort by the american government to excuse and/or validate an illegal war of aggression:
a.no weapons of mass destruction
b.no connection to al qaeda
c.almost 1 trillion lost (literally,they cant account for that money)

so the american government points to the atrocities of saddam hussein and says "look! look at what a bad person he is"!

SQUIRREL!

which brings us to your next point.

2.the atrocities you are referring to were well know when saddam was a paid participant by multiple government agencies.
let me say that again for you:
saddams atrocities were WELL known and was on the american government payroll.
did saddam gas the kurds?------yes
who sold him the gas components?---we did.

so when my government,in a last ditch effort to absolve its complicity in the wreckage that is iraq by pointing to the awful and horrific acts saddam perpetrated on his own people as somehow making the invasion of iraq a righteous act is utter..and complete..hypocrisy.

they KNEW what he was doing and did nothing because it was politically expedient for them to do so.they wished to corral iran and the ends justified the means.see:Zbigniew Brzezinski-the grand chessboard

there are many MANY accounts where the american government turned a blind eye to the suffering of other nation-states citizens because it did not align with our interests.

i find the whole situation morally repugnant and it angers me even further when i see the propaganda twisting my fellow countrymen into believing this is somehow a morally just way to deal with despots,tyrants,zealots.

when it was MY country who put them in power in the first place!

the rationalizations are so deeply cynical and hypocritical that it creates an almost vacuum of cognitive dissonance.

and this is my main point in regards to your commentary.
it is a rationalization given to you by those who wish to continue to oppress,dominate and control those who are powerless.

it gives a semblance of morality where there is none.

because if we took your commentary to its logical conclusion:that sometimes war is necessary to rid the world of "evil" (an arbitrary term based on perspective),then why are we not in those countries that ALSO oppress,kill,maim,torture and immiserate their citizens?

answer:because it does not serve the interests of this government.

so the only usage of emotional heart string pulling is to give americans a sense of moral superiority,while not dealing with the actual reality.

you are being manipulated my friend.
and they have given you a convenient myth to hold onto.

by my commentary i am not dismissing the great works of my country nor am i saying that my country is inherently evil.
i served my country and did my duty.

but i also will not turn a blind eye to the reality on the ground just because i find that information..uncomfortable.

many times the truth is uncomfortable and it takes courage to look at it with clear eyes and a critical mind.

i always stick to the axiom:governments lie

as for your nazi reference,
i invoke godwins law.
the death camps were not even a known reality till the war was almost over and were not the reasons for the war in the first place.
so the context is irrelevant.

as always,
eyes open...
and stay sharp.

@lantern53 keepin it frosty since 1982.stay awesome my man

im no statist but this video is so childishly naive as to be laughable.

might as well call the free market jesus.

jesus is the way and the light.
follow jesus for salvation.
only jesus can absolve you of your sins.

this is about power.
if the libertarian is willing to acknowledge that the government is bloated and corrupt but unwilling to recognize the abuse of power wrought by corporations...because the corporation is part of the "free market"...they can end their sermon right there.

i am no longer interested.

if a libertarian preaches the importance of individual sovereignty and individual rights but dismisses that they are part of a community in a larger society.
they can proselytize at somebody elses door.

if a libertarian wishes to shower me with the glories of private property and ownership but ignore the importance and basic human dignity of the very workers who produce everything for those private owners.

then i say unto them that they wish to enslave their fellow man and the freedom they seek is for them alone and the rest of humanity be damned all in the name of profit and greed.

they can take their cult of ayn rand and masturbate somewhere else.

UNLESS....
they are willing to admit that:
1.as @VoodooV pointed out,we live in a society and a society is populated by PEOPLE.

2.that people deserve more than just the right to trade freely (which i agree with) but that human dignity and compassion,and yes..the right for life,liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

3.that the corporation is actually MORE vicious than a government.a corporation is amoral by design! so if we are going to address the abusive powers of government,the abuses of corporations should be recognized as well.

4.the argument that corporations would not exist without governments is a canard.that may have been true in 1910 but no longer.there are corporations that have a higher GDP than most nation states.

5.the argument that governments start wars are only half-truths.can you guess what the other half is? thats right! banks and corporations using their power and influence to oppress third world nations...through the use (or abuse to be more accurate) of this nations military.see:smedley butler.

6.while a non-state would be amazing i am not naive enough to believe it could ever happen in our lifetime.yes many arbitrary borders have been penned by empires but there will always be lines drawn by cultural,religious and ethnicity..lets be honest.

7.while i do not share voodoos optimism in this democratic representative republics current health status (i feel it is broken and dysfunctional),it is a FAR better thing than the authoritarian,totalitarian system that is the american corporation.unless they went all democratic on me and i didnt get the memo.

8.government does have a role in our society,though it should be limited.
defense (not illegal and pre-emptive wars of aggression).
fraud control and law enforcement.
roads,fire,police,education and health,because thats what a society does for each other.
we take care of each other.
you dont like that? move to the mountains..have fun!

9.the corporate charter should be re-written."for the public good" should be re-instated for one thing.
a.i was talking to a libertarian and he used the term "non-aggression" and i really REALLY liked this.so a corporation will be held responsible for any and all:destruction to the ecology (local and abroad),destruction of peoples health,home and property.externalization of any sort will be seen as "aggression" and the CEO and all officers will be held liable to be paid by:dissillusion of company of jail time,they can choose.
b.a corporation is NOT a person and ZERO funds will be drawn from company money to purchase a legislator.they may spend as much money as they wish from their own personal accounts,but ALL contributions shall be made public over a certain amount.
c.any corporation that has been found to pay their workers so little as to put the burden on the tax payer shall be found performing an "aggressive" act against the american people and shall either pay the amount in full or forfeit their company.

dammit.im rambling ...again.
but oh baby am i digging this non-aggression dealio!

can i rewrite the corporate charter?
please please please please.....

*promote the discussion

And given the choice between moral and legal I'd like to think I'll never hesitate in choosing moral every time.

Your argument about nation's blood stained hands making any moral argument hypocritical I think goes to far. Your plenty right it's hypocritical for any nation state to declare "that was wrong and must be punished" when in virtually any given case every nation has likely got as bad and worse written throughout it's history. I object when you go further and then throw out the declaration "that was wrong and must punished" as not merely hypocritical to have been said, but acting as if the statement is then made false.

In the end the facts seem to clearly indicate that Assad used chemical weapons(with Russian made rockets) against his own people to hold onto his dictatorship. Personally, I believe that those of us who still listen to conscience are beholden to side against Assad. We needn't embrace any and all enemies of Assad, but at the least we should show solidarity with the moderates who started things off through peaceful protests. If America comes in and notes the exact same things, the hypocrisy of that DOES NOT make any of those facts less true.

Can you honestly tell me you deeply and truly believe it is in the best interests of the Syrian people for America and the rest of the world for that matter, to continue on the path of doing nothing but talk? You seem to have been around enough to appreciate that the UN will NEVER under any circumstances authorize force against Assad. Demanding we wait for UN approval is identical to demanding we do nothing to aid the Syrian people fighting Assad's forces which I just can't agree with.

I agree 100% with you on that. I personally take the position that ALL nations that are signatories to the international convention on genocide were obligated to intervene in Rwanda and the universal failure of all of them to do so is as frightening to me as the war crimes nation states commit to advance themselves.

Guaranteed though that if Clinton, or any other national leader, had sent boots into Rwanda during the genocide the crowd of folks like Greenwald and Chomsky would be here today explaining how intervention caused the Rwandan genocide...

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Good points Shiny - I also think we might be looking at the first signs of the nation state crumbling as the primary organiser of people in civilisation. Anyone remember how the US government was treated in SnowCrash? They were just another corporation jockeying for influence among many.

So... Vatican city is kind of like the corporate nation-states in Snow Crash, presumably complete with franchulates.

Tuesday morning 7am in Ohio right now. The house has power and I hope not much is damaged. When I was taking my dog out around 9pm last night, I noticed that one gutter drain pipe had totally come down. If that's all the damage to the house, I am not complaining. The wind was crazy throughout the night, and it is coming from the north, which normally never happens. Right now looks like we are having teeny flakes of snow instead of rain. But the ground temp is around 34F, so it is not accumulating. I'll check outside the house once it gets lighter. Wind gusts are still somewhere around 50mph

Ohio was not hit hard, at least not where I live - so far. Local paper has a list of what is happening, state by state: http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2012/10/30/national-state-by-state-damage.html

I hope everybody and their loved ones are safe.

I don't feel like posting silly videos today. I am just grateful that everything is fine right where I live.

I actually watched the show last night when it aired and I was disappointed.
And I'm not alone, as this article, this article, and this article have all lambasted the first four episodes.

". . . at it's worst, the show chokes on its own sanctimony."

But worse than that is that Sorkin could've done so much better.


>> ^RhesusMonk:

The show isn't all didactic ranting (as well founded in this case as I think it is). The West Wing is the greatest television ever produced. Give the man more than four and a half minutes and I'm sure we'll be pleased.>> ^Trancecoach:
Disappointed that Aaron Sorkin has gone the way of the "Old Man Syndrome," where things "used to be better" until the younger generation came along and effed it all up... The reality is that the younger generations are stuck with the mess that their forebears have left for them, so if you really need to blame someone for the mess we're in, start with yourself, old man.
Still, the show has potential and, unless we dissolve the nation state, we're in to recreate the 20th century, and we all remember how great that was the 1st time!

The show isn't all didactic ranting (as well founded in this case as I think it is). The West Wing is the greatest television ever produced. Give the man more than four and a half minutes and I'm sure we'll be pleased.>> ^Trancecoach:

Disappointed that Aaron Sorkin has gone the way of the "Old Man Syndrome," where things "used to be better" until the younger generation came along and effed it all up... The reality is that the younger generations are stuck with the mess that their forebears have left for them, so if you really need to blame someone for the mess we're in, start with yourself, old man.
Still, the show has potential and, unless we dissolve the nation state, we're in to recreate the 20th century, and we all remember how great that was the 1st time!

Disappointed that Aaron Sorkin has gone the way of the "Old Man Syndrome," where things "used to be better" until the younger generation came along and effed it all up... The reality is that the younger generations are stuck with the mess that their forebears have left for them, so if you really need to blame someone for the mess we're in, start with yourself, old man.

Still, the show has potential and, unless we dissolve the nation state, we're in to recreate the 20th century, and we all remember how great that was the 1st time!

Whereas nation states where religion is part of the law of the land. Well look at those nations. These are isolated states that have remained in a development vacuum but got rich off selling oil. There is no freedom of speech or democracy in those states. The very fact that the first world deals with say OPEC allows the theocracy to be sustained in those nations.

Religion was a form of government for most of Europe. Then we had the enlightenment, democracy, revolution, kings, wars, history and so on. Religious denominations in Europe are now rapidly fading. This process never occured in the Middle East. Suddenly they have BILLIONS to spend on spreading their 'faith' as a form of government intervention. Saudi Arabia building schools in Pakistan that eventually created the Taliban was not an act of religious domination but a ham fisted attempt at geopolitics via religious doctrine. Because for some fucking reason the Saudis believed the Taliban would actually listen to them or something LOL. (Is this of course ignoring specific political issues of the time, USSR, evil empire, Regean, cold war, US allies with Saudi Arabia, fighting proxy wars, stinger missiles, Charlie Wilson and so on).

Saudi Arabia is cool because its such a fucking relic of government policy they have little room for any type of social policy because that is dictat by Religion. Thus their policies stem from it. They are like evil but religiously ahaha so they just fund fundamentalists everywhere thinking it will give them political clout and power when in reality it backfires. Kinda like this US thing where it's like FREEDOM FOR ALL... THROUGH FUCKING DAISY CUTTERS. To Save Iraq We have to destroy it. To save Afghanistan. We have to keep sending troops for a dubious objective. Oh wait let's pull out now. etc.

Fundamentally we have to appreciate the fact that religion is but a theory of the that explained things prior to science. With the rise of science, it tried to fight it. Finally slowly it's either merging or being eliminated or reconstituted in new ideological belief sets.

What I mean to say is that it's only through the evolution of man, knowledge and ideas that humanity has reached a point where it starts to doubt a very flawed perception of reality. First gods were manifest everywhere. Then they were nature. Then they are ghosts. Now we are supposed to believe or have faith.

Those of a stronger mental make up could possibly accept that we live and die and that is the end. Others cling to religion because it is safe. Others believe in living eternally through genes, about the only thing we consistently carry on through time.

Time will see the end of man man religions, into new constructs of stupidity, because science still, while providing much of the answers lacks many fundamental resolutions for most issues at the core of religious belief. Time will tell us all. But so far so good.

>> ^hpqp:

How did Christianity get to Europe? Conquest. To the Americas? Conquest and colonisation. To Africa? Colonisation, slave trade. To Australasia? Colonisation. Does that mean that these means have been taking place all the way 'till now? Of course not. After a few generations of growing up with the imposed religion, you forget it was imposed in the first place. Unless you were "cleansed", then there are no next generations.
Same story with Islam. Only eventual difference: violent conquest/conversion is directly condoned, one could even say "ordained", by the holy text (e.g. 2:191-3/2:216); oh, and the prophet was also a tribal leader and war general, unlike the possibly fictional Jeebs of the Christians.
I'm not saying people don't convert, just that the majority of religion's spread is through breeding and childhood indoctrination, and that the origins of the desert monotheisms' spread (especially Christianity and Islam) was conquest and colonisation so your original comment does not seem to be making any relevant point.
edit: add to that the continual use of majority pressure and intimidation, especially when religion is part of a country's legal and political system.
>> ^Farhad2000:
Naa. Islam reached 1 billion in the 21st century.
The assumption you are making is that it's been spreading at the knife edge from what the Moor times?
>> ^hpqp:
Uh, you do know that more often than not it was spread, like Christianity, at the edge of the sword, right? Conquest, colonisation, slave trade, same old same old.
>> ^Farhad2000:
Furthermore people forget that Islam represents 22% of world population. Much of it not in the Middle East. If the religion was so shit it wouldn't have taken every other religion out there.

@hpqp

First off, thank you for taking the time to track down all of those links. And thank you for at least looking at the link I posted (though I hesitate to you say you actually "read" it as I explain below).

The title of the book is "Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence." The author states explicitly on page 4 the main premise of the book: "Islam is not violence, nor are Muslims intrinsically prone to violence." He then fills the rest of the book with economic, anthropological, and historical evidence to support his case.

And yet you are claiming the book doesn't go against anything you or Harris are saying... okay.

Next, you have mined all those quotes completely out of context and twisted their meaning to fit your agenda while completely ignoring the bulk of the work. To give just one example:

"Muslims, we often forget, do not always act as Muslims or members of a religious community; rather, they respond to economic, social and political needs that may direct conduct more than ideological signposts do."

This statement was directly addressing violence in the Islamic world--that Islam does not completely prevent people from being human and acting in violent ways when under extreme economic, social, and political pressures. Yet the Western media--and Harris in particular--would have us believe that these pressures are irrelevant... that there is something inherent within Islam that causes this violence. The rest of Lawrence's book shows this is not the case, and provides ample evidence to support the opinion. Yet, I've not seen Harris nor you provide ANY evidence for Harris's position.

Throughout our conversation, I have been asking you in good faith to make your case to me and for my part I was willing to change my mind if you were to provide some evidence that your position is correct.

You have not.

In your last post, you did finally start to list some statistics (with no sources given, I notice), but they don't really provide evidence of anything other than it is really shitty to live in a 3rd world country. I see no smoking gun there to show me Islam itself is the cause of these problems or that these problems are somehow unique to Islam. There are many other possible and indeed probable explanations (which clearly neither Harris nor you--having made up your minds already--seem willing to explore) for why, for instance, Pakistan is so fucked up other than "Islam made it that way." But even assuming for the sake of argument there weren't any other explanations, science demands evidence--as do I--because of a little problem known as "correlation versus causation." The fact that Pakistan is fucked up and is an Islamic nation does not suddenly make Islam the culprit.

You clearly feel very passionate about this. And I understand why. You genuinely believe Islam (but somehow not Muslims) is a threat to everybody (believer and non-believer alike). Did I finally state your argument correctly that time? What I still don't understand in spite of all you've written is how you came to that conclusion. From what you've written in these posts, all I can see is a lot of "correlation vs causation" fallacies mixed in with scary anecdotes followed by a bit of emphasizing the negative aspects of Islam (for example, verses calling for violence in the Koran) while ignoring the positive (verses extolling the benefits of reason, compassion, and love--including towards non-believers). Like I said before, I don't see the smoking gun and I don't understand why you do apparently see it.

Are there problems with certain interpretations of Islam? Yeah, absolutely. Radical fundamentalist Islam most certainly causes its followers to not just condone violence, but believe that violence is the only way to achieve the political aims for which radical Islam was created to achieve. But Harris isn't arguing against radical fundamentalist Islam, is he? He's arguing against the totality. He's arguing there is something inherently wrong with Islam. Okay, great. Make the argument. But for the love of science, please provide some proof. Reading selected passages from the Koran is not proof of how real Muslims in the real world interpret those passages and apply them to their daily lives (if they even do so at all). The actions of a unbelievably few individuals who choose to embrace radical fundamentalist Islam are not proof. The misadventures of nation-states which happen to be Islam are not proof. Proof will only be found through science--his argument is clearly empirically testable so I am still dumbfounded as to why he repeats the same talking points without actually taking the time to find the proof that would make his case convincing.

The FDA can't inspect sperm.
In reply to this comment by blankfist:
>> ^Peroxide:

>> ^ridesallyridenc:
He lost me at "raise my taxes."

Taxes are an investment in your country's future.
Do you drive on roads? Did you attend a school? Do you expect the food at the grocery store to be free of E.coli? Do you expect someone to answer and emergency services to respond when you dial 911?
When Americans were paying taxes to a foreign state, or the head of the empire, for their imports and exports, that was when taxes were theft. Think of the Actual Boston Tea Party, they were protesting paying tax to a different nation state.
"Colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives." -wiki.
I repeat, their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives.
I personally think your view on taxes says a lot about your ability to empathize with the community within which you reside. Think about employment insurance and programs for the poor. Of course, maybe you live in a gated community out in the suburbs and the poor are forcibly segregated from you.
Of course, I must add that I do think governments must be held accountable for the manner in which they spend/invest the people's wealth. But frankly I'm sick of egocentric, ill informed people decrying the taxes that are necessary for their way of life, and necessary for to sustain the community of humans beings within which they live.
their is some good discussion over here.
http://videosift.com/talk/Taxes-and-theft


I've gotten sick TWICE in the past year from food poisoning. Um, I think during that period of time we still had the FDA, right? And the Supreme Court has upheld in every single case that has been brought to them when police refused or failed to protect the people that the government has zero obligation to protect it's citizens.

Not an investment in the country's future, thank you very much. It's just theft.

Just a quicky, but is being ill due to food poisoning really the fault of the FDA? Isn't the FDA there to stop potentially toxic and life threatening food/drink substances entering the market? I'm fairly certain that an FDA representative doesn't have to supervise every cook in every kitchen both public and private. If you need someone to supervise your cooking to ensure you don't give yourself food poisoning you really shouldn't be anywhere near a kitchen.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^Peroxide:
>> ^ridesallyridenc:
He lost me at "raise my taxes."

Taxes are an investment in your country's future.
Do you drive on roads? Did you attend a school? Do you expect the food at the grocery store to be free of E.coli? Do you expect someone to answer and emergency services to respond when you dial 911?
When Americans were paying taxes to a foreign state, or the head of the empire, for their imports and exports, that was when taxes were theft. Think of the Actual Boston Tea Party, they were protesting paying tax to a different nation state.
"Colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives." -wiki.
I repeat, their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives.
I personally think your view on taxes says a lot about your ability to empathize with the community within which you reside. Think about employment insurance and programs for the poor. Of course, maybe you live in a gated community out in the suburbs and the poor are forcibly segregated from you.
Of course, I must add that I do think governments must be held accountable for the manner in which they spend/invest the people's wealth. But frankly I'm sick of egocentric, ill informed people decrying the taxes that are necessary for their way of life, and necessary for to sustain the community of humans beings within which they live.
their is some good discussion over here.
http://videosift.com/talk/Taxes-and-theft

News flash. Income tax doesn't pay for roads. Also, I've gotten sick TWICE in the past year from food poisoning. Um, I think during that period of time we still had the FDA, right? And the Supreme Court has upheld in every single case that has been brought to them when police refused or failed to protect the people that the government has zero obligation to protect it's citizens.
Not an investment in the country's future, thank you very much. It's just theft.