Conservatives are much like paleontologists. They dig through prehistoric garbage heaps and anything they discover they define as a new find.
A long long time ago there were two caves overlooking a valley populated by similar people. Winter was in the wind and the leaders of each cave went out to hunt. Leader Wolf came by a buffalo, killed it, and with his fellows dragged it back to the cave for his people. From the other cave, Leader Weasel and his men also killed a buffalo, but he and his fellows sat down and devoured it on the spot.
Back at their respective dwellings, Leader Wolf and his people, with bellies half full, celebrated with a song and dance while Leader Weasel and his fellows returned with bellies distended and a speech.
Leader Weasel told the hungry crowd of mostly women and children that they needed to be more responsible and accountable for their own lives, that as Weasel people, they were rugged individualists and should act as such. If they wanted to eat, they would have to reach down and yank on their sandal straps. A few women and children still strong enough to bend down that far understood and asked The Weasel for a few spears and hand skinners. The Weasel and his fellows owned the equipment. Good Weasels knowing that property rights transcended human rights did not have giving things away as was part of their makeup. So instead the Weasels gave yet another speech about how the Great Weasel Spirit wanted them to help themselves, for if these women and children became dependent upon free food, that lack of self reliance would soon turn them all into horrific child murdering cannibals.
Thus it was that the women and children of Weasel went out into the valley to suck on old bones and eat grass while The Weasel and his fellows sat full and belching, telling each other how smart they were.
One day, Leader Wolf took his fellows over to the Weasel clan to learn what could be learned. They saw the women and children gnawing gristle and eating bark while Leader Weasel and his fellows sat fat and farting. The Wolves saw the benefits and immediately joined up. On that day so long ago, conservative ideology become the overriding aspect of human interaction.
'Tis better to give a lecture to a starving man than to give of oneself.
Leader Leech did quite well for himself. The poor rubes who supported him did not realize that he was going to tax them as well. Plus, Weasel and Wolf decided it was not worth going out anymore since Leech just took what they earned-so they just kept what they had to themselves.
Leech, though, being leechy, kept the masses in line by persuading them it was all Wolf's and Weasel's fault because they had too much and would not pay for everything. Plus, Leech was very effective in convincing the cavemen--superstitious lot that they were--that some natural catastrophe was always just over the horizon and that they would all die if they did not follow him.
Ironically, Leech convinced them one year that they were all going to freeze to death; the next year he would convince them that they were all going to burn to death from the heat.
Unfortunately for Leech, it came to pass that one day a natural disaster did come. The disaster exposed the fact that after decades of Leech's taking everyone's money away to build a great society, nothing had actually happened. Leech had spent more money than all of the tribe together could have ever needed, including Wolf and Wesel, and they were all still poor.
THE UNITED STATES IS THE LEAST TAXED NATION IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
a) in spite of the Libs
b) hence, the most prosperous and free
Seems to be a disconnect there somewhere. :)
And most free? War on drugs makes it the least free.
Somalia has a low tax rate MOVE THERE! :) Houses start at about $200.
Cayman Islands too! Houses start at about $1.6 million, MOVE THERE! :)
I will say this, though. I figure many of the countries you envision that are so much better than America are in Western Europe. Norway, for example: high taxes, everyone insured, low poverty rate, etc., a socialist utopia, so to speak.
One problem with your theory is that they are only a sovereign nation able to tax their citizens at these ridiculous rates because the US provides their sovereignty for them. Otherwise, they would be German or Russian.
It is very simple to provide universal health care to your citizens when you do not have to maintain a standing army that can actually defeat an agressor.
Not to mention that Norway only has 4.6 million people.
One wonders why the tax rates would have to be the exorbitant amount that they are in these socialist utopias, until we remember that taxation destroys economies. All this is so blatantly obvious that one would have to be a propagandist on par with Michael Moore to deny it...
ADAF...:)
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