>>>Beautiful words indeed, but even nicer when they are followed. This country went for a long time ignoring these words, at least if you were a slave. Even Jefferson himself owned slaves. And as far as the consent of the governed goes, well, don't try and express your opinion by voting if you were black and living in the South before the 60s.
>>
>>All moot points.
>
>Why?

Those conditions no longer legally exist. As I said before, laws are not the problem. The lack of enforcement of existing laws is part of the problem. The rest, IMHO, lies in changing hearts of bigots and racists [which is not likely].

>I have not extracted anything from your statement. I have expressed my view on Congressional legislation, and its attempts to create a level playing field for the pursuit of hapiness. Your statement was that Congress and other attempt to legislate hapiness. Exactly what laws are you referring to?

Government has no right to dictate who I can hire and fire in my private business. I have no problem with laws that say I can not discriminate on irrelevant qualities. However, business must have the right to discriminate based on qualification. My wife and I purposely keep our business small because of the burden of government laws and regulations would bankrupt in less than a year. We know this for a fact as we tried this by hiring administrative help. We ditched that experiment in less than 6 months. Almost a year later, we are just now back to where we were 18 months ago. IMO, the have not only leveled the playing field, that field has been tilted against the owners of small and mid-sized businesses.

>>Libertarian principals -- government should get the hell of my back and out of my wallet! And he lost the next election because of it. Where were you the first 2 years of the Clinton administration?
>
>Your statement was that there was a current trend toward higher taxes. My understanding was that the last tax hike we had was under Bush. If taxes are trending higher, where?

Are you saying Clinton did not raies taxes during his first term? He not only raised them, he did so retroactively to the previous tax year! I can't believe you do not remember that. He and that Congress were the first to ever do something that abominable.

>>No. Praise the self-motivated and the right to reap the rewards of your own labor. Our current tax system penalizes success and does not equally share the risk when a venture fails. If you succeed, pay the gov't 20 to 40%. If you fail, the gov't does not suffer proportionately with you. That is wrong.
>
>How does our system penalize success? By taxing it?

Absolutely. We tax the hard working and successful, and reward those who are needlessly unproductive [e.g., welfare scams].