Harry Truman overestimated the danger of Communism and bears much responsibility for the Cold War. Dwight Eisenhower caused the War in Vietnam and the Iranian Revolution. John Kennedy nearly ended the world during the Cuban Missile Crises.

Ronald Reagan deserves a special place in Hell. More than any other person he convinced most whites that we can have the government we want without paying for it.

The War in the Gulf had to be won. George H.W. Bush was the only man who could have won it.

Joshua, I do not expect you to agree, and I respect your disagreements.

I admire Thomas Jefferson.

I appreciate George Washington not because of what he did, but because of what he could have done and did not. He was not a great military leader. He lost more battles than he won. Without French help he would have lost the American Revolution. He left nothing in writing that is worth reading. Nevertheless, he could have created a military dictatorship, or even an absolute monarchy with himself in charge, and he did not.

I admire Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt – of course- Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton.

Lyndon Johnson was a tragic failure whose intentions were honorable. He said of himself, “I’m going to out Lincoln and out Roosevelt. He lost his wars on poverty and in Vietnam. The Democrat Party has never recovered.

I think Adlai Stevenson, Bobby Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey may have been good presidents. Even Richard Nixon might have done some good if he had not had to contend with the War in Vietnam. I think that war was immoral. Nevertheless, the domino theory resonated with the American people. In Vietnam the only choices were to keep fighting or admit defeat. If Nixon had admitted defeat in 1969 he may have faced impeachment earlier than he did.

If Stevenson had been elected in 1952 the War in Vietnam and the Iran Revolution never would have happened.

Because the marketplace favors employers I want the government to favor employees. A government that tries to act as a neutral arbiter between employers and employees behaves like a referee in a boxing match between a heavy weight professional and a light weight amateur who enforces the Queensbury Rules equally to both.

You will probably agree with me that Democratic presidents are prone to side with labor unions against management. According to the following article from The Wall Street Journal, from the administrations of Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush there has always been more job creation per year under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/

This is one more reason for doubting your assertion that labor unions damage the interests of employees.

All you have proven with your arguments is that a government that strengthens management while weakening labor unions benefits those in management. I agree and do not care.

I put the bit ab out the Book of Abraham in my previous post to illustrate that I do my own thinking.

Regarding all those links, I had already seen the first one, and I took a look at the others, but I don’t think they prove anything. Correlation is not causation, and as the first article points out, there are all sorts of potential reasons why those 10 countries experience the success they do, and besides, judging “happiness” is sticky business to start with.

For me, the objective is not to get the US onto a “10 happiest countries list” but to allow people to make their own choices. The freedom to choose comes with consequences and the potential that people might choose to do things that don’t bring them happiness. It’s unfortunate that people make choices that don’t bring them happiness, but I don’t believe it’s the role of the government to “help” people make better choices. If we need to have a federal government at all, it should be there to provide for the common defense. Otherwise, it should leave us alone. Every other service can easily be provided by the private sector at a much lower cost, and at much higher quality. Just look at the expense and low quality of almost all government run monopolies such as public schools, the post office, the banking system, etc..

You may feel that the ends justify the means, that is, that forcing people to give up a portion of their income, provides greater happiness for society. Even if that could be proven to be true, I’d still be against it, because I think taxation is morally wrong. I see no difference between taxation and theft, except that thieves have the decency to not try and convince you that they’re actually doing you a favor. Likewise with unions, for the sake of argument let’s say they lead to a “happier” society. For me, that still doesn’t justify the labor laws we have in our country. Do I believe workers should be free to organize? Absolutely. But I also believe companies should have the right to fire any worker they discover has joined a union. If a company thinks there’s a way to work out a win-win situation such that the workers get their union and the company finds a way to work with the union in such a way that it’s actually a benefit for the company too, then great. But for the government to step in and tell a company they can’t fire a worker for joining a union, or to tell an employee that if 50% of his co-workers vote for a union then he has to join it too, even if he doesn’t want to, is, in my opinion, a gross miscarriage of the role of government and interferes with the rights of the employer and employee to negotiate on their own terms, without interference, and I think that is morally wrong for our government to have and exercise such power.

I also believe that in the long-run freedom produces the best results, but that is a difficult thing to prove. Despite the contrast between the results of the Soviet and American experiments there are people who still think socialism is the way to go, and that the only reason it didn’t work in the USSR is because the wrong people were in charge. I think that’s ridiculous, and that socialism has failed and will ultimately fail everywhere it’s tried, but intelligent people can be found on both sides of this issue, and likely always will be found on either side.

Why did you put that bit about the Book of Abraham in there?

Tell me the name of the book. I may have already read it. If I have not, tell me in your own words what it says. If you cannot do that I will suspect that you do not understand the book yourself, and agree with it because the policies it recommends would increase your standard of living, regardless of what they would do to the standard of living of the employees whom you said in the beginning of this thread benefit from government actions to weaken labor unions.

I enjoy discussing controversial topics. I am often given reading material. When this happens I assume that I have won the argument. It is easy for someone to say, “Read this John. It proves that you’re wrong.” It is very difficult, however to actually prove that I am wrong.

Rather than ask you to read a book, I would like for you to read two articles from Forbes, which as you must know calls itself, “the capitalist tool.”

The first article concerns “The Ten Happiest Countries.” As you can see they are Scandinavian countries: “joining Norway in the top 10 prosperous countries are its Scandinavian sisters Denmark, Finland and Sweden.”
http://www.forbes.com/2011/01/19/norway-denmark-finland-business-washington-world-happiest-countries_2.html

If you read the second article, also from Forbes, you will see that these “Scandinavian sisters,” have much higher taxes than the United States. The second article, by the way, is by Bruce Bartlett. In addition to being a regular contributor to “the capitalist tool,” he was a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and he was a Treasury official under President George H.W. Bush. After documenting that “the ten happiest countries” pay high taxes, Bartlett explains why high taxes contribute to national happiness.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/09/tea-party-taxes-opinions-columnists-bartlett.html

The following link demonstrates that the Scandinavian countries have powerful unions:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lab_tra_uni_mem-labor-trade-union-membership

And the last link demonstrates that countries with higher taxes than the United States and stronger unions have been less effected by the Great Recession, and they are recovering faster:
http://www.bls.gov/ilc/intl_unemployment_rates_monthly.htm

I hope you are willing to look at these websites. Reading them will take vastly less time than reading a book I might suggest. I use links to websites to substantiate factual assertions I make in arguments I compose myself. I do not say in effect, “Click on this. It proves I’m right.” You can follow my argument without clicking on the websites, but the websites prove that I am right about the benefits of big government, high taxes, and strong labor unions.

I discovered myself that the manuscript from which Joseph Smith claimed to translate the Book of Abraham was really The Book of the Dead. It was not until many years later that I discovered that competent scholars of the ancient Egyptian civilization had reached the same conclusion.