(CCL: Twelvism)
If you missed Part 1 or Part 2, there are the links.
I rarely see liberals and conservatives actually listening to and talking with each other about current issues.
Ethically, that’s wrong. Whenever you and I stop listening to other people, and start seeing them as the enemy, we become less human.
Tactically, it’s stupid. Our country has to change or die. To change in a democracy, 51% of the voters have to be convinced to try a new direction. Right now, we’re in a stalemate, but liberal and conservative pundits alike are just preaching to their own fan bases as our bus goes hurtling toward the cliff’s edge.
Let’s quit preaching to the choir and start reaching across the aisle. “Emmie” and I aren’t doing it perfectly, but we are trying. . . .
It sounds to me as if you think the rich are somehow fundamentally different from you and me. You want to take more of their money, Emmie, but I suspect you wouldn’t like more taken from you and me. To most of the world, though, of course, you and I are rich.
(CCL Mohammad Jangda)
Bill Gates is an ordinary joe who figured out how to build a better mousetrap. Why should we penalize him for that? If you look at the people on the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America, a few of them are “old money,” yes, but 70% are self-made people who designed better mousetraps.
And we’re all benefiting from those mousetraps. We’re also all benefiting from the money the über-rich keep pumping back into the economy–both as they buy Big, Expensive Things, and as many of them set up charitable foundations and so on. Penalizing their creativity isn’t fair. And it won’t benefit us in the long run. The more we penalize creativity and the willingness to take risks, the fewer creative risk-takers are going to be willing to step up and improve our lives.
