Red, white and goo: Has America gone soft?

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This seems a bit ridiculous.

1) Does obesity matter above any other health condition? I mean, sure, it goes with the aesthetic of "soft", but really it doesn't matter beyond ANYTHING ELSE that kills people.
2) America's poor education system sucks. That's great, what's the economic cost? Does the quality MATTER beyond what people need? I mean, I am not a fan of poor education, but I am not going to pretend that this is some idol.

I dunno, maybe by having plentiful land, lots of resources, and a culture/economic system favoring the creation of wealth.


Because every other government or even other organization is really DEEPLY MORAL?? I mean, come on, are you really going to tell me that we're uniquely evil??? Give me a break, as throughout history we see LOTS of organizations with questionable morality, including what seems to be EVERY government.


Right, because corporations don't exist in other places that lack our health problems. I think you really probably want to blame the Green Revolution, America's culture about food, and the cheap price of land/late development of America relative to modern transportation systems causing suburbanization. I mean, the only thing you can blame corporations for is for making food delicious, but hell, they'd sell you broccoli by the barrel if that's where the money was.


Right, because capitalism is becoming MORE IMPORTANT to America, as government regulations INCREASE. I mean, I hope you know that about a century ago, there were very little regulations, and very little taxation, yet apparently America wasn't "soft", unless we've ALWAYS been soft.

America has always had high regard for a free-enterprise system. It's nothing to do with anything becoming a religion.


Not really. We have loads of great American business leaders. We can argue about altruism, but the issue is that your political point seems to require that business leadership be devalued.


Both were enabled by the economic power that American attained through a capitalist system. Without capitalism, we wouldn't have the economic base structure to put that man on the moon, or to defeat the Nazis.

That being said, who really cares? It isn't as if something done a generation or two ago is really fundamental to my view on America or really anything. I mean, you have this great desire to prove something about capitalism and the right-wing, but it's an emotional response seeking rationalizations, not really a deep analytical system. The question is whether America is serving American interests. That's a difficult and much debated question, but it isn't as if capitalism is the great evil, and corporations are utter wastes, nor is it as if America is an outright failure, or even deeply sick in some manner easily treatable by the stock answers of any political ideology.

You know what I find great? Kickstarter. I recently supported a game on Kickstarter, and now it's got over 2 million dollars in financial support. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2 This is utterly capitalistic. However, it's also one of the small accomplishments in life that make it really cool to be alive today. We don't want to be killed by Nazis, but there are no plans for us fight Nazis every day, or put men on the moon (or other planets) most days of the week. And the reason I supported this Kickstarter wasn't because I really wanted to help Brian Fargo, I wanted to help me, and Brian Fargo is doing it because he thinks trying this is really cool, but he's not doing this as an altruistic hero either. I don't think taking pride in things like this means I'm "soft" either.

We also are soft in not regulating what Corperations can and can not do and letting Wallstreet and their lobbyists givng money to politicians to help pass the laws they want when they want them passed.

But like the old saying goes money talks.

The article is rather long, rambling, and nonsensical. Just to pick a passage



We still have nuclear weapons. The Marshall Plan was socialism at its worst. The Hoover Dam is still there. The moon landing happened. So what? Was it really all about "in-your-face-one-upmanship?'



McDonald's food is contributing to our obesity epidemic--other nations don't eat beef patties at all, and people in a lot of countries enjoy much better diets than we do.

This silly fool writes for the Washington Times--he must have got the job through church connections.

I hope he didn't I want my religion or any religion for that matter to stay out of politics and the government all together in fact I am very outspoken about it.

The main reason I posted this was to see how many people would have something to say since Barack Obama was the one who said America has gotten soft.

Kids, this is why a thorough analysis on issues always trumps simplistic rhetoric.

Hmm so am I the only one who sees america being soft?

You're in good company. Thanks to the self-esteem movement and political correctness a sense of entitlement prevails over a sense of duty.

Oh good haha I am glad it just isn't me the right-wingers in America can never seem to work with the left-wingers it is sad because I am both.

The nation that invented viagra?


Or, can you provide a concise statement as to what you mean by America being soft? And, is this softness good, bad, or neither?

Do you wish to restore hardness to America? And, how would you go about it?

I suppose, for a start, we could ban computers and video game systems, thus making going outside a more viable option.

The Washington Times is owned and operated by the Unification Church, which is owned and operated by Moon Sun-Myung.

The Unification Church has been out of the news lately, but used to be famous for mass-arranged marriages, and college-age folks who would go around annoying the public and bumming donations. Maybe they've become more main-stream?

A "thorough analysis" always tells you more about the assumptions of the analyst than it does about the subject. Everything is rhetoric, although some rhetoric wears an unconvincing disguise.

Here is some assumptions that I think I can detect in Awesomelyglorious' thorough analysis:
(1.) The government policies which are good for corporations are the same policies which are good for small businesses.
(2.) Corporations are the result of a free enterprise system, and thrive in a free enterprise system.
(3.) People are free agents who will choose to buy an alternative product if a certain product is bad for them.

I think that all of these are false.

Honestly, it's more complicated than that. Yes, analysts use assumptions. However, some assumptions are considered more valid than others. Frankly, the problem is that if you apply this claim to itself is that it appears to destroy itself, as the only way your claim becomes better than others is by being truer in appearance and having assumptions that are considered more valid, which is the very thing your rhetoric appears to undermine.


I never said anything related to that. I don't think that corporations are holier than small businesses or vice versa.


It's pretty complex. Corporations are a result of a legal framework that allows for limited liability. The corporate business structure is very good at organizing large amounts of capital, which can allow it to arrive at high economies of scale. Broadly speaking, corporations are thriving now, broadly speaking, this is a "free enterprise system". It may not be as free as some people like, but it's free enough that trying to argue about the TRUE free enterprise system comes off as petty essentialism, you may as well fault me for describing Western political systems as democracies instead of republics.


This gets complicated. The long and short is that there is some truth on both sides of the matter, where people do change their actions, and where people fail to.

The issue though is that I didn't put a lot of fault on consumer choice during most of what I said. I blamed obesity on a variety of social causes that made America different than other Western nations. I claimed that the major thing corporations had done was that corporations made food tasty, which is something very few people would blame a corporation(or any organization) for doing. However, tastiness of food as a cause for obesity has nothing to do with people being free agents or not. And if food is very tasty, and people choose to consume products that are bad for them, then the problem isn't food producers, but rather more likely that human psychology is a product of stupid evolution. After all, it isn't as if corporations are freer agents than people(quite the opposite), nor is it as if small businesses don't create delicious unhealthy food. (Heck, many families make delicious and unhealthy food as well. It isn't as if people are busy munching on lettuce during Thanksgiving.)


That's nice. You can't just presuppose your favorite empirical claims though.

I'll agree with you on 1) because of various analyses on regulations that hold that corporations can carry the costs of regulations better than small businesses.

2) creates issues because then you have to explain why the modern corporate form has attained such dominance if it really is not efficient. Corporations are a product of the legal structure of EVERY western nation, NOT just the US. "Result of the free enterprise system" is way way too squishy to even get into, as we are talking about legal structures, so technically a limited liability legal structure can't be attributed to free enterprise, as it is a legal structure issue.

3) is really sort of complicated. I don't think my analysis requires much in terms of it. The problem is that if you have people be entirely irrational then NO political or social system really can really work out well. You may have a case for limited rationality, but then the issue comes down to how we can/should conceptualize this. The problem is that normal ETHICAL thinking emphasizes human rational thinking, choice, etc, such that the domain of ethics has to be reconceptualized, making this a huge chore not to be taken too lightly. I may, push comes to shove, actually agree with your claims if you are arguing limited rationality.

And yet policies with socialistic methods in mind such as corporate regulation, trade union right(s) laws, and government-funded schools, housing, etc. are absolutely necessary to keep Capitalism as a system from reverting back to what it was in the 19th century.

Before the government stepped in during the Progressive era, not only did corporations routinely bust labor unions and hire and exploit women and children, but they also sided with the government on these very amoral practices, utilizing such laws as the Sherman Anti-trust act and so forth to keep the workers down.

19th century American Capitalism was a mess. We complain about our boss now, but imagine being a child being forced by their boss to craw into a narrow underground passage that could collapse at any moment?

IMHO Capitalism as a system without government regulation and reforms is barbaric.

Jeff Sachs would disagree. He believes that IBM outsourcing their jobs to places like India is an economically empowering thing. They're using american technology i.e. cisco, dell computers ect. They make 200-500$ american per month. And the textile industry gives women work - infact so much that they're understaffed. These women make clothes in places like Bangladesh for europeans.

What I mean by soft is letting the lobbyists and special interests groups influence law making ect

When we start ignoring reality because it isn't as exciting as entertainment, I'd say we've gone soft. Or maybe complacent.

Our military has made countless mistakes that have cost civilian lives because they relied on drones instead of using their human senses to positively identify their targets. I'd call that pretty complacent.

The fact that fear propaganda works so well that GWB got re-elected after illegally invading Iraq points to our complacency.