Elon Musk is a patriot

[liberty]

I believe Elon Musk is a patriot of course he has his faults like all of us. The national debt is constantly growing, and it will eventually reach a point where it becomes unmanageable. At that point, we’ll be faced with alternatives that could devastate our country. We’ll either have to default on the debt, which could bring down the entire system, or try to inflate it away, which would leave us all significantly poorer, potentially approaching third-world conditions. We’d be vulnerable and unable to maintain the same level of defense.

Elon Musk saw this coming. His work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was an effort to try to save the country by reducing the deficit. There are things we can do without, and we need to tighten our belts. We could greatly reduce foreign aid and be far more selective in our giving. Of course, we would never abandon humanitarian food assistance, but our support should be smart and strategic.

There are other places to trim as well. We don’t need a Department of Education; the few essential functions it performs could be absorbed by other agencies, eliminating redundant overhead. And we do not need taxpayer support for art. If art can’t support itself, it has no automatic right to public funding. The same holds true for public broadcasting.

We need to do away with the thinking that “it’s only $100 billion.” As a nation, we need to start watching our nickels and dimes, or nickels and dimes will be all we have left.

[Scooter]

Can anyone point to a time in recorded human history when there was not public funding for art? Or when broadcasting, in any of its forms through the ages, was entirely a private sector endeavour?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Of course, we would never abandon humanitarian food assistance, but our support should be smart and strategic

I think you're a day late and several bushels short of a harvest there, lib.

[Burning Petard]

Indulge me, Mr. Liberty. Can you tell what you think a patriot is? Was Benedict Arnold a patriot? Was Genl Robert E Lee, CSA a patriot? Is the current prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, a patriot?

snailgate.

[liberty]

one:

It is difficult to tell what is in someone's heart, so we often judge by their actions. Benedict Arnold appeared to be a patriot, until he wasn’t. Robert E. Lee was patriotic to both the United States and the South. Benjamin Netanyahu seems to be patriotic toward Israel.

A patriot is someone who cares about their country and demonstrates it through action. Benedict Arnold was patriotic to the United States, until he lost faith and changed allegiance. It's hard to know what caused that shift, because history is written by the winners and is often biased.

Robert E. Lee was also a patriot. He paid allegiance to the United States and later to the South. He cared deeply about the people of the South and his family. He reportedly believed that secession was a bad idea and did not like slavery, but like many of his contemporaries, he saw no easy way out of it. Today, the common narrative is that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War. While that’s partly true, I believe it was also about greed and fear. Slaveowners didn’t want to lose their wealth, and many average Southerners were afraid of Black people. That fear had existed for a long time. They knew what happened in Haiti in 1804 and feared a similar uprising and extermination in this country. The idea of Black people being free to move about terrified them.

I believe Benjamin Netanyahu truly cares about his country and fears for the future of his people. He believes that if Arabs were ever to gain the upper hand, they would attempt to exterminate the Jewish people of Israel, and he might be right.

And finally, I believe that any United States citizen who is not concerned about the danger posed by the national debt is not a patriot.

[BoSoxGal]

At the moment, THIS patriot is far more concerned about the 22 year old appointed to lead domestic counterterrorism at a time of unprecedented domestic terror attacks including the assassination of a Minnesota politician a week ago (and attempted assassination of another) which seems to have already fallen entirely out of the news.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trum ... prevention

The current fascist regime in the White House and the feckless Congressional response to it is a far bigger threat to America and all Americans than the national debt is, at least in this moment. And this fascist regime has no intention to shrink the debt, they fully intend to blow it up in order to fund massive tax cuts to the wealthiest 1% at the expense of all the rest of us.

[Burning Petard]

Thank you I think you have answered my question as sincerely and as honestly as you can.

For Liberty a patriot is one who cares about their country. What is in their heart. They Care. Nothing about actions that produce great harms to others. Only do they care about their country. Make our country great again, like back when everybody knew their place and one's character could be judged with a brown paper bag and a mirror.

I look at the actions of Elon Musk, and find only care about his own gain. He has changed his national allegiance almost as frequently as he changes his
underwear. He seeks only his own aggrandizement--much the same as our current Commander -in-chief. Musk has achieved greatness, much like the founder to Trump University. Musk claims the be the richest man in the world, much the same way realtor Trump claimed non-existent square footage in his Trump Tower. Dear Elon is mentally a little boy who proudly sets off the biggest firecrackers the world has ever seen.

I commend attention to Mark Twain's 'War Prayer'.

snailgate.

[Big RR]

It has been years since I read that piece, but it has a lot of wisdom in it; wisdom we all could benefit from. But from the tun of the century (19th to 20th), we have learned nothing.

[BoSoxGal]

This cartoon showed up in my Facebook feed yesterday; it's from 1915.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Lib told us:

Robert E. Lee was also a patriot.

Apart, of course, from the whole Civil War thing. That's rather like pointing out that Hitler was a decent guy. Yes there was the Jewish issue, but let's not forget that he was kind to children and dogs.