A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives ...by Michael Moore

No, you will not call conservatives unpatriotic. You will call them racist, hateful, oppressive, Nazis, child abusers, brain washers, primitive, etc. Really? I wouldn't believe this from conservatives or liberals without some sort of proof it's happening. Really? Not even on a mistake? Exactly how are you going to guarantee avoiding that? We already can see a doctor regardless of our ability to pay. It's posted as a right in the emergency room of our local hospital. I can do that in Germany, too, and I still have to pay and possibly go into debt to pay. What Germany offers is much, much cheaper health care and health insurance. Can you reduce the cost of health care so that I'm not paying the cost of my doctor's 9th exotic car and the genuine leather on the stadium seats in the theater he has in his house? I heard that promise from the conservatives, too. I hope that's true, but I see no evidence of it. I've heard more than once, right here on good ol' EVC, that teaching my children my religious beliefs is child abuse, and it is generally liberals who decree that spanking a child, even one time, is child abuse and scars them for life. Really? That will be awesome. I sure hope it's true, but you know, this isn't the first time the democrats have had a majority in congress.******************Listen, if Michael Moore really believes all that stuff and wants to promise that this is what he is for and wants to happen, then I'm sure glad to hear it. More power to him, and if I can help him in those goals, then that's great. But if he's promising that the new congress is going to do all this, I'm afraid I'm doubting Thomas. I'll believe it when I see it.

We could take a big chunk out of the headache for taxpayers by eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax, which would reduce the IRS code (according to an IRS employee who spoke at 2005's IRS Nationwide Forum in Chicago) by more than eliminating the normal income tax.There's several propositions to do so working their way through congress, some eliminating it only for individuals and some eliminating it for businesses, too.The speaker at that forum said the Alternative Minimum Tax was enacted because a number of people making over $200,000/yr paid no tax in the 1960's. It has been largely ineffective, though, as the number of such people has greatly increased since that time.That would be a start. There are ways the tax code could be simplified, and really, there's some rather effective efforts underway to do so.

I'd like to contest this. During Papa Bush's presidency the budget deficits went like this:1989: minus $152,841
1990: minus $221,229
1991: minus $269,361
1992: minus $290,404Obviously, there is a trend here.Then Clinton took office:1993: minus $255,110
1995: minus $164,007
1997: minus $21,990
1999: PLUS $124,414Again, there is an obvious trend. What we see is that Clinton was not in office long enough to overcome the debt accumulated by his predecessors. Statistically, it seems clear that had he remained in office, he would have achieved a reduction in the federal debt.Bush, of course, has wiped out any possibility of this, and if we gave the job back to Clinton, he would have another 8 year project on his hands just to get out of the hole.Your conclusion was that Clinton was not responsible enough. I suggest that a much more likely scenario is that he just didn't have enough time to do an incredibly difficult job.

Have you ever raised any children?

Well, it will alway be true that people who tastes run to fantasy will never be satisfied. In the case of the economy, too bad. A successful plan was being followed, and now it's gone.It mattered to me how successful the Clinton economic policies were, so I appreciate this opportunity to mention them again for those who didn't know (my post 88). Thanks.

Congratulations, I've always believed this was possible, too, if the parents are creative and patient enough. My personal opinion is that they must also be careful enough to ensure that their house is child proofed and that they are very careful that their toddlers have no opportunity to run into the street (leashed or something), because I've never seen a non-spanker have sufficient voice control of their toddlers to ensure their safety unrestrained. But who knows, maybe that's possible, too. I've never seen anyone who could do it. Maybe you don't. The alternative might be mandatory, long-term parent-training. There are people who can train dogs and horses, too, without ever hitting them, but they all have extensive training and they offer ongoing training and supervision to the average person who wants to repeat their results.That all said, your questions have absolutely nothing to do with my original post, which said that those who wish to make even one spanking into child abuse are almost exclusively liberal, and thus Michael Moore's promise that liberals are going to allow freedom of religion to parents is ludicrous. Remember, it is the Bible that says that he who spares the rod hates his child. You may disagree with that, but that is not the issue of this thread. The issue of this thread is Michael Moore's promises. I suggested most are simply not true, unless he makes them personal and not a promise from liberals.I don't know of any conservative groups, by the way, that want to make avoiding spanking children into child abuse, despite the fact that it is not rare that it endangers the life of small children.

Holmes,Let me say first that I agree with your post 113 in its points. I'm not meaning to interrupt your discussion with Schraf, nor disagree with you. But since this is Coffee House... We have a couple horse trainers in our village that have trained through Pat Perelli's methods. While one just told me last week that there are times you have to hit the horse to maintain authority, the whole goal of the "Natural Horsemanship" method is create a partnership that allows you to ride the horse without it being "physical force against the will of the horse." The idea is to get the horse to cooperate agreeably with the idea of a rider on its back.It's a pretty impressive system, and I've been amazed at what it's been able to achieve.Again, I don't mean to take anything away from your post, as I found all its points valid, but since this is Coffee House, I wanted to throw in a chatty comment about a horse training method I'm extremely impressed with.

Ok, great. I have to admit, I assumed you weren't willing to consider it. My last post to you was meant partly not to lose the point of my post on Michael Moore's promises, but I'll discuss using pain in training of children if you want.Whether you consider the world to be made by God or by the forces of nature, it seems undeniable to me that all animals are "created" to learn by pain. In fact, it seems to me that the whole reason you have the ability to feel pain is to know what you need to do. If you sprain your ankle, it swells and hurts, thus instructing you to rest it and limit its mobility. It's built right into your body.Except for those very few perfect people are around (I don't believe that nobody's perfect, but I'm not for sure), most of us have had behaviors that were "bad" that we didn't stop until we got caught, whether as children or as adults. For example, I have a friend who quit speeding home from work after he got two tickets in a month.What stopped him? Morality? No, the pain of paying the ticket. Now, admittedly this was emotional pain, but as we grow up emotional pain tends to work better and better on us. Less physical pain is needed to train an adult, because we learned from physical pain as children.For example, what will definitely stop a child from touching a wood-burning stove (still in use in some Tennessee homes) or a hot oven? Some children, having learned to obey mommy already, will not do it because mommy said so. However, most parents will need to keep their 2-year-old out of the kitchen if the stove is real hot, because no matter how much you tell the child not to touch the stove, there is a danger he/she will get too close and accidentally touch it or simply disobey and touch it.Let the child touch it once, however, and the whole scenario changes. That two-year-old won't go near the stove. You won't need to tell him/her not to touch it ever again. Pain effectively teaches two-year-olds.When my second-oldest son was 9-months-old, I put him on the floor with a glass of ice water in front of him. When he reached for it, I stopped his hand and told him no. I did this several times. After several times of stopping his hand, I whacked the back of his hand with a pencil just hard enough to hurt. I had to do this twice before he didn't reach for it anymore.I did the training again the next day, and I had a child that knew the meaning of no. It was a wonderful thing to watch him a few months later reaching for the TV knobs. I told him no, and he got back on the rug. Then he stood back up and reached again. I told him no, and he sat back down. Then he stood and put his hand on the TV cabinet. I said nothing, so he reached for the knobs again and got another no. Over the next couple minutes he put his hand all over the cabinet, determining what was allowed and not allowed.The result. When he was two, we went to a flea market. We played up the trip to him and his older brother, so they were very excited to be going out. As we walked across the parking lot, he got so excited he took off running towards the flea market and was running between two parked cars just as another car drove past them. I shouted no, and he stopped on the spot, sending rocks flying in the gravel he stopped so hard. Had I not have voice control of my two-year-old, he would have been dead or seriously injured.It seemed well worth three episodes of very tiny pain that trained him to respond to no. My friends didn't need to childproof their houses. I didn't go through the terrible two's with him, and today he's a responsible, hard-working teenager who loves me very much and enjoys the respect he gets from everyone around him.Is it possible that a parent could find an alternative to that little training session I did with my son? I think so. I listened to a guy on the radio once talk about all the creative ways he had used to change the behavior of his then 12-year-old son. I was impressed. I also realized that I'm not as creative as that man and most people aren't either. They'd have never come up with those clever training methods, and the fact is, a simple swat on the butt would have accomplished the same thing.Where children really suffer from parents is rage and lack of attention and time. That happens with both spanking and non-spanking parents. That is what needs to change, not some minor pain that is one of the main ways our brain is made to learn, anyway.

That wasn't an ad hom. The Clinton budget went from a 200 billion deficit when he took office to a 200 billion surplus when he left, and that didn't satisfy you. You said you were disappointed because you wanted something more than that.I think that what you wanted was impossible, a fantasy. I was simply saying that your disappointment doesn't mean much to those of us who want a solution. Clinton's economic policies were clearly solving the problem. Another 4 years of continuing the policy and the national debt would have stopped increasing.I think if the American public knew the incredible progress that Clinton made on putting a stop to the increase in the national debt, they may still have ousted Clinton for his morals, but they would have demanded a continuation of his successful economic policies.You're asking for too much. I apologize for the offensive wording in saying that, but my statement was not ad hominem. I was saying that a policy that turned our budget around and began decreasing the debt over a 12-year period, then continued to do so, is an acceptable answer to the problem. I'm also saying that a demand to turn it around faster doesn't appear reasonable.

I'm going to use this comment by you in a post to Holmes to say my one last thing on our discussion, because I didn't see anything in your replies that made me feel I need to post again. I'm perfectly willing to let what I said stand against your replies.(added by edit: It's hard to tell how things sound in a purely written environment. The statement about not needing to answer your replies is not meant to be rude. I was just trying to say that if we continue, we'll likely just restate our cases repeatedly.)Here's the one thing I'd add.Apparently we live in two different worlds or something. The statement above matches nothing in my experience. I have six children, and I've dealt with all six by slapping their hands if they touched after being told no. The result was that after the first several times, I never had to slap their hands again. 100%. I could take my children to anyone's home. I didn't have to worry about childproofing their home or mine. Knick knacks could be left out without fear of breakage. It was 100% successful.All the non-spankers I met--not many, I admit, but 100% of the several I've known--could hardly hold a conversation unless they put their child in some safe, caged environment. They were constantly pulling something out of their child's hand, saying no, etc.If you live in a world where that doesn't happen, that's wonderful. I've lived on three continents and in five states as an adult, and I've interacted with parents from five or six different countries. I'm not making up what I've seen.If I lived in a world where physically punishing reaching behavior did not work, but scolding, saying no, or other such verbal statements did work, I'd go for the verbal, too, but since I've never seen that be the case even once in hundreds of examples in 27 years as an adult, I have to go with what works in the world I live in.Edited by truthlover, : added paragraph to ensure I wasn't rude

Thanks Holmes, for your research.I've seen the parents that yell at their kids in WalMart, whack them in anger, etc. It's obvious those poor kids need help. Obviously, zero percent of such parents will be against corporal punishment.On the other hand, there are caring parents who are training their children who slap the back of their hand or their buttocks not out of anger but out of a desire to teach their children good behavior. It's very effective, and I have a lot of test cases.Before I had children--in fact, before I was married--I purposely conducted a survey of the parents of every set of well-behaved, happy, and respectful children I met for about five years. I simply asked them what they did to produce such wonderful children.There was 100% consistency in their answers. A combination of consistent discipline (the lines were clear for the children) and love. My observation over those five years was that love from a parent to a child is best spelled T-I-M-E. I've heard and read about "quality time," but I've seen no evidence that quality time means anything at all. Time is what matters. Loving parents are interested in their children's lives and their children can get their attention. That combined with clear lines and consistent discipline when the lines are crossed were the common traits in all the parents I queried and watched.It works. As Coach Boone put it in _Remember the Titans_, "It's like novocaine, just keep at it and it works every time."There are difficult children who won't be wonderful and easy no matter what you do, but I'm talking generally here. Nothing is 100% in this world.2nd Issue:What can be done with those poor kids who are yelled at, slapped, harrassed? I'd love to snatch those children and take them home with me and deliver them from that terrible environment. I can't, of course, and what's frightening is that if the state grabs them and puts them in foster care, there is a very good chance their plight will be even worse.

My "very good chance" was purposely vague. I have met maybe seven or eight foster parents, and I can only think of one that wasn't a really terrible parent, at least to the foster children. I have met a large number of people who have been in foster homes. Neglect was very common, actual physical abuse was too common, though not pervasive. The worst part is how many perfectly normal kids had been diagnosed with some psychological problem and who were on medication, in special ed, living in a halfway house, etc. completely unnecessarily. Aaarrghh!Since five such children are close friends of mine and two live in my house, none of whom are on any medication any more and are perfectly normal teenagers, it is very bothersome to me. The two who were in special ed would have been on SSI the rest of their lives being treated as incompetent adults when there is in fact nothing at all wrong with them. One's 19 now and working full-time. It's horrifying thinking what would have happened had they not gotten in a good home.