Reply #33: No we have moved away from the New Deal. There's a healthy role for government.

[David Zephyr]

I am not in favor of no government. That is classic libertarianism and anarchism.

Idealism -- whether from the right or left, whether it comes from Ayn Rand or of Peter Kropotkin on the other side -- is not practical on our small little globe with the population growing as it is. There are serious survival issues such as feeding, housing and clothing that population that simply merit government of some form.

Perhaps there was a time long before the population exploded and the planet began to overheat when I would have been a classic anarchist myself, maybe not like sweet Sasha AKA Alexander Berkman who pissed away a great part of his life sadly in a prison for a foolish act, but perhaps more like Emma his one time paramour, but that, in my cynical old eyes is no longer possible.

The key here is progressive taxation, healthy estate taxes and, yes, a partial, but necessary redistribution of the wealth. That requires government.

Believe it or not, there is a middle ground between corporate domination of government or fascism and governmental domination of all enterprise or Stalinism. It is rooted in democratic liberalism as initiated under Roosevelt.

The task of good government is to defend the weak and yet, to still challenge the strong.