Something a good friend that is hard conservative has said for years has bothered me, and I have tried to write about it to hear what people say about it, but it finally really clicked on things he was saying among the totally backwards rhetoric his head is filled with. It came about with how he reconciles the crap he's believing when faced with a friend trying to tell him facts that can be proved.

When I would say let me prove to you the facts I am basing my position on, and here's the part that says it all...

...he says this is a free country, that means you are free to believe that, I don't believe that, that is my right to believe whatever I want to. I told him we are talking about the difference between facts and beliefs that have nothing to do with facts. You can believe whatever you want, that will never make it the truth, 50 million other clueless people can believe it as well and it will never be the truth and reality, the only reality being that there are 50 million clueless and ignorant people. The truth is whatever the facts are whether you agree with or believe them or not.

He wanted to know what makes what I believe right and what he believes wrong. I told him to start with he can't tell me a single detail about what he believes, he knows nothing about it, I asked him why he would continue to believe something he knows nothing about when he's talking to someone who could provide a hundred details on it that he's never heard of?

That revelation that this is how people who's heads are filled with garbage believe it is their god given constitutional right to believe whatever they want to, and they don't have to prove it or understand anything about it.

Humm, I see you picked the first, most liberals know nothing about the second and care little about the third.
But the first option, that one always pushes a liberal's buttons.

As "you know it or should" there is a growing gulf(a Biblical term for gap FYI) between the rich and the rest of us today. This is not a new thing because there has always been the two groups, however the part about it growing is new.
I say not a new thing when viewed on the macro level because there were certainly rich folks in the 1800's, but what's different today?
Today the rich are getting richer by investing while in the 1800's they became rich by producing.
But what's the difference you might ask? Glad you asked.

The gold standard is the difference. When our currency was based on gold a man could put $1,000 in the bank, wait 5 yrs, draw an equatable interest, take the $1,000 and buy the same amount of goods as he could have when the money was placed in savings.
As"you know it or should" those were days when saving made sense. But not today! Today it's much smarter to buy today and pay off latter with inflated dollars.
But what about the rich over this long period of time (macro)? They used to get rich by producing which increased employment. Remember the old saying "a rising tide lifts all ships", but not now. They are getting rich by playing the game better.
Which game? Awh again thanks for asking. The game of getting the biggest portion of govt printed money. They roll it into the stock mkt, rather than paying higher wages, they build elaborate pension funds encouraging others to invest in these funds.
The rich move their big handout into hard assets, the poor feed the kids. Remember the old adage about he who owns the gold.... The rich are suppressing hard asset mkts so they can stock up using the dollars they win by playing the game.. But sorry you didn't wish to speak on that topic.

So where are we now? We're all trying to make ends meet with more and more dollars which are worth less and less. (In another post I show how a pre-64 quarter used to buy a gallon of gas and it still will having a value of around $5.00)

As you know it or should Rome was brought down because it debased the coins paid to their soldiers, no difference today.
I do believe the old saying "the only thing man learns from history is that man doesn't learn from history."

I'm quiet sure you will come up with a few of your other causes that I should know about, but when you peel the onion layers of history and economics, currency debasement is always at the core.