At 12:56 PM 3/1/01 +0100, Jeroen wrote:
>I heard about that speech on the evening news, and I'm quite puzzled.
>Apparently, Bush wants to improve health care, education and <something I
>forgot>, and build that damned anti-missile shield (the Reagan Paranoia
>Strikes Again!). Yet at the same time he wants to significantly lower
>taxes. Health care and education already suffer from lack of funding; how
>is he going to improve them (which will cost loads of money) if at the same
>time he lowers taxes, and wants to waste billions of the tax-payers'
>dollars on SDI?
Well, when your budget projections show a 5.6 trillion dollar surplus - a
lot of things become possible.
Also, I would note that SDI and missle-defence are different programs
entirely. SDI uses lasers and satellites. Missile defence involves using
conventional means.
>>Most Americans have the stereotype of
>>Europe as being very socialist and the US very free market.
>
>Europe is not socialist; we only look like that because we're not as
>right-winged as the US. Then there is the difference in the definition of
>socialist: by American standards, anything on the left of the Democrats is
>labeled socialist, while in Europe only the far left is called socialist.
Apparently Europeans don't have a word for "communist." Unless, of
course, that is reserved for the realy, truly, far, far, (honest now!)
mega, jumbo far left.
>Europe has been drifting to the right in the last three decades: we first
>went from socialist to social-democratic, but most parties that call
>themselves social-democratic (that is, modest left-winged) have by now
>become parties of the political middle ground, with the already
>right-winged parties shifting even further to the right. We're moving
>towards a situation that resembles the US, with the major parties being
>either right-winged or even more right-winged.
O.k. This has bothered me for a while, Jeroen. What exactly is it that
you have labeled the "universal political middle?"
JDG
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"The point of living in a Republic after all, is that we do not live by
majority rule. We live by laws and a variety of isntitutions designed
to check each other." -Andrew Sullivan 01/29/01
