Why are so many Americans so heartless and uncaring?
Where did all that me-first and FU-too-bad if you're poor come from?
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in private -- one of the few Koch quotes on this that got "out" -- that the only valid role for government is protection of person and property, and perhaps from fraud. Not schools, not...anything but basic policing and military.
Most genuine libertarians, like socialists, tend to be romantics who imagine their idealized systems will improve human nature by forcing much better behavior (by extremely different means). 
But definitely not this economist, Buchanan, at a third point of extremism with his overwhelmingly negative view of human nature.
The people who needed protection were property owners, and their rights could only be secured though constitutional limits to prevent the majority of voters from encroaching on them, ... Buchanan wanted a private governing elite of corporate power that was wholly released from public accountability.
Suppressing voting, changing legislative processes so that a normal majority could no longer prevail, sowing public distrust of government institutions— all these were tactics toward the goal. But the Holy Grail was the Constitution: alter it and you could increase and secure the power of the wealthy in a way that no politician could ever challenge. ...
Buchanan and his associate Henry Manne, a founding theorist of libertarian economic approaches to law, focused on such affronts to capitalists as environmentalism and public health and welfare, expressing eagerness to dismantle Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare as well as kill public education because it tended to foster community values. Feminism had to go, too: the scholars considered it a socialist project.
Real pieces of work. Koch's favorite economist was an off-the-cliff conservative with a lucrative onlay of select libertarian justifications. Remembering also that the mean authoritarian father Koch himself rebelled against was so far right he admired the Third Reich's economics.
And these ideas took over the Republican Party.
Not because I disagree with everything they stand for...but I do
Not because they won't leave people alone...they won't.
Not because we can't seem to get thru to them on anything...but you can't.
I hate them because they think they are the only true Americans.
I hate them because they stole my free thinking patriotic military family from me.
And I HATE them because they want me and my kind DEAD!!!!
I DIDN'T USED TO BE LIKE THIS. So when you say there's good and bad....don't forget
why I'm bad now.................
this me now....
This was me before............
If it's capitalism?
Maybe take another little gander at Venezuela. In cities, people without jobs requiring them to leave their homes tend to stay inside all day for safety. The streets, prowled among others by socialist gangs supporting Maduro, are very dangerous.
Btw, now that niceness has returned to our own capitalist federal government, we'll be rejoining other many other capitalist nations trying to help the people of Venezuela.
Venezuela’s deepening crisis has gutted emergency ambulance services, so a group of volunteer paramedics has stepped into the void to offer life-saving help on the tough streets of Caracas.
Calling themselves Angels of the Road, the volunteer corps relies on donated medical supplies and funding from international organizations. Despite receiving no paychecks, its roughly 40 paramedics are ready at a moment’s notice to jump onto motorcycles and fire up their single ambulance and race into the streets.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=
I resonate with much of what you said here.
I'm torn between wanting to keep fighting for a better world for the sake of my toddler grandson, versus just wanting to shut out the cruel world and focus solely on him and keep the meanness at bay, even from my own mind. I've never been a detached, apathetic, uninformed person, but I do now envy those who are even though I also feel they're responsible for where we are.
Take good care.
