Brit NHS "Free Healthcare for All" lie.

[Seth]

It's absolutely inevitable.

And it ought to be obvious. It's the history of your country, for fuck's sake !

It's only inevitable because there are lazy, greedy people who want others to support them and manage to create governments with the power to force others to do so. The trick is not to allow government to have or gain that sort of power to begin with, which is what our Constitution was all about. Admittedly it's been grossly distorted of late, but it worked quite well for more than 150 years, which is a pretty long run for such a system, and it's worked fairly well up until quite recently. To restore it to effectiveness is a relatively minor matter if the populace decides to do so, which it may when it gets fed up with paying to support all the layabouts and doleists.

What, you mean, if they all work together, to get what they want?

Of course. The difference is that they don't force other people to do what they do not want to do in a Libertarian society. Consent is the key.

[mistermack]

Of course. The difference is that they don't force other people to do what they do not want to do in a Libertarian society. Consent is the key.

And you're saying that was how it was, for 150 years?
Are you sure you didn't dream that?

[Seth]

Of course. The difference is that they don't force other people to do what they do not want to do in a Libertarian society. Consent is the key.

And you're saying that was how it was, for 150 years?
Are you sure you didn't dream that?

Pretty much. It was far more Libertarian than post-Progressivism, which began about 1912.

[mistermack]

Of course. The difference is that they don't force other people to do what they do not want to do in a Libertarian society. Consent is the key.

And you're saying that was how it was, for 150 years?
Are you sure you didn't dream that?

Pretty much. It was far more Libertarian than post-Progressivism, which began about 1912.

So there was no slavery then? And no civil war?

I need to start again. It must be me who dreamed it all.

[Seth]

Of course. The difference is that they don't force other people to do what they do not want to do in a Libertarian society. Consent is the key.

And you're saying that was how it was, for 150 years?
Are you sure you didn't dream that?

Pretty much. It was far more Libertarian than post-Progressivism, which began about 1912.

So there was no slavery then? And no civil war?

I need to start again. It must be me who dreamed it all.

Political philosophy and political reality are often remarkably different. The principles upon which the US was founded were quite (though not completely) Libertarian in nature. The practical realities of operational politics, specifically with respect to slavery, were somewhat more cloudy. For practical reasons the Founders agreed not to ban slavery outright at the formation of the Union because attempting to do so would have resulted in no Union at all, and they knew it. But they did build in the concepts upon which the abolition of slavery was eventually founded, and did so quite deliberately and with the full intent of ending slavery over time rather than in one fell swoop. That didn't work out so we ended up having a civil war to settle the issue. That doesn't mean that the intent of the Founders was not that "all men are created equal." It most certainly was. That it took a substantial amount of time to bring that to fruition doesn't change the facts.

For example, the "Three-Fifth's Compromise," which counted slaves as three-fifths of a person was not intended to diminish or disparage their humanity by the Founders who lived in non-slave states, it was a compromise forged with slave-holding states to limit the political power of the slave-holding states in the federal legislature. The southern states would not accept that slaves not count as "population" for districting purposes, and the northern states would not accept that a slave was a full "person" for census purposes with respect to apportionment of representatives precisely because they were slaves, could not vote, and counting them as full persons would skew the legislature in favor of the slave-holding states.

The three-fifths setup was how the Founders got agreement to ratify the Constitution from the slave-holding states while avoiding having them hold majority power in the Congress by virtue of counting each slave as one person for apportionment of representatives.

So, the Three-Fifths Compromise was in fact an anti-slavery effort that reflected the general consensus that "all men are created equal" and it reflected a determination to eventually end slavery entirely.

[mistermack]

Wriggle wriggle wriggle. And squirm.

You won't make the US into a libertarian example, ever. So the ''intention'' was ''eventually'' to be more libertarian? I don't believe even that.

And there was never any intention for women to be ''free'', in your imaginary gold age. They were never ''forced to do what they didn't want to do'' ?
Or the redskins? They loved their reservations, did they?

Nobody was forced to go to church in your dream time? Nobody was forced to marry an old man who already had five wives?

I think you must have some super rose-tints in your specs.

In any case, people are always forced by economics to do stuff that they don't want to.
Which is more effective than violent force. And gets the same result.