Now see we DO have overlapping concerns Peter. On spending cuts I was all for getting out of Iraq. We were lied to by the previous administration to begin with. And Afghanistan too for that matter, we should have learned our lesson from the Russians. There is no fixing either place IMO. And yep, we need to cut way back in our defense budget. Not so much that we make ourselves vulnerable, but they are government agencies too and waste a lot.

On what you call entitlement (a term that is politically charged) programs like medicaid, medicare and SS I have mixed feelings. SS and medicare is a program that you have to pay into get something back and so that isn't an entitlement entirely in my mind because you do pay into it, but and especially in the case of medicare, in many cases it can happen that it pays out more than you pay in. And even in that case I don't have a problem with supporting (via taxes) people's health that weren't prepared for skyrocketing healthcare costs.

In the case of things like SNAP (EBT, food stamps), I see a ton of abuse that needs to be fixed. At the very least I'd like to see term limits (say 5 years tops for SNAP and child vouchers) because we've created a culture of dependence and fraud that bothers me tremendously and if you can't feed or sustain yourself then there is no reason that you should keep making babies and having me support it.

I'm not against helping someone when they are down. I think unemployment compensation is ok too but we shouldn't keep stretching out those terms either because again, it creates dependency and a burden on those that have to pay for it.

When I spoke of losing freedoms I wasn't specifically referring to rights around the second amendment, though that is one area that progressives seem hell bent on chipping away at and always have. Inch by inch they'll try to do it until they reach their ultimate goal of total disarmament and to what end? None of their ideas are solutions anyway and have been proven not to work. There is gun violence in every country around the world and most all of them have very strict gun laws and yet it still happens because criminals just don't follow laws and never will.

The problem I have with losing freedoms (and both parties when in power do this but especially "progressives")is that we are forced to live to a level that supports the least common denominator of our society. Presumably in the interests of humanitarianism. But it has gone too far. And they (gov) also especially love to use scare tactics like terrorism OMG! Guns OMG! The banks are too big to fail OMG! We have to do something! And that is how they acquire power over you and me (that is all they want after all and we never get it back). I mean do we really need to feel up crippled old ladies and 4 year olds at the TSA checkpoint? Yeah, I guess we do because everybody is suspect now (didn't used to be that way) and by "protecting" us, they now have chipped off a piece of your dignity in the interest of our society in general and that is only one example.

The problem I really have though (in the case of government) is that government almost never does anything with efficiency and in almost every case in fact makes things worse. They don't produce anything and they don't enforce their own regulations when it is critical that they do, but instead make stop gap measures that we all end up paying for.

Take the case of the banks (you even mentioned this). The government made it easy for Wall St bankers (their biggest donors duh) to socialize their stupendous losses (your grandkids will pay for that along with you and me) and privatize their gains in the past 7 years. And nobody but Bernie Maddoff went to jail for it. How is that right? Its not. And I think on some level even the OWS movement even understood that even though they seemed to come off with an entitlement attitude too that projected a very misguided spirit to me as well.

The thing that really bothers me about our society in general and which makes me think that we probably deserve everything these aholes keep doing to us is that we've lost all sense of personal responsibility. Unions (heavy liberal donors) believe they are entitled to a job and can make any demand they want from an an employer. In my mind they have WAY overstepped their bounds. If your company can't compete because of YOUR demands you can (and should) be out of a job. Fast food workers feel entitled to a $15/hr wage now because they can't support a family on anything less. Well I would agree with that but hey guess what? Those jobs were meant for transitioning teenagers and young people...not a career. Do better for yourself by yourself buckwheat! And let all those unemployed kids take your jobs.

Parents today do not seem to instill a sense of American spirit in their kids these days in the sense that you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it, but rather they are helicopters that control every aspect of their kids lives (even if they are 26 and living in the basement playing video games). And if anything happens to them it is never their little snowflakes fault (or their own God forbid). And by extension, if somebody gets hurt it is always always somebody else's fault and somebody is gonna get sued to the teeth and probably get away with it. So when we are talking about cost cutting, how come nobody talks about Tort reform anymore anyway? I'll tell you why, trial lawyers are also notoriously liberal supporters too. They love it the way it is so why would they want to change it?

Have you noticed all the school shootings that have happened in the past ten years? Sure you have, people bring it up all the time as an excuse to disarm everyone (least common denominator again), but if you are my age you'll remember that these things almost never ever happened when we were in school even though many of our parents were well armed did they? Nope, it didn't. And it didn't get easier to get a firearm either because many states (and the Fed) have instituted rules and laws that make it more difficult but fail to see that there is something else at work here. Bad parenting. But nobody is willing to recognize it for what it is because remember...it is never their fault. And who ever even heard of ADD when we were kids anyway. Stop giving the kids meds and raise them right.

Now, I can't continue this particular post any longer because I have a previous commitment, but Peter I do want to say that I'd like to continue it because you engaged me in a thoughtful way (the old dbis way) and I'd like to expand on some of these things and will.

I'm not trying to change minds here, just saying what I feel. Besides, it isn't any fun to just preach at the choir anyway is it?