Hmm, wasn't the Clinton administration preparing a case against MS that was dropped as soon as the Bush administration came to power? Hasn't MS repeatedly been fined by the EU commission? Whatever MS got away with was largely under an administration that only cared about low taxes and massive spending on the military (your typical conservative agenda).

I'm no liberal, sir, but not a good libertarian either, because I'm not humanist enough (not at all, even). I'm sympathetic to what both of you respectively said. I would put it: too much state control and too little are both undesirable, but in light of human nature, too little state control is less undesirable.

Oh, please. "Typical" this and "typical" that, whatever phrasing you use, is usually just a way of belittling someone's viewpoint.

Recheck your facts. The most important case was the one the previous Bush administration had already won when Clinton came in and fought with great difficulty but ultimate success to undo and replace with a toothless negotiated settlement overwhelmingly benefiting Microsoft and hurting its competitors and customers.

Then Clinton followed up with fake lawsuits against MS to preempt the rights of competitors who otherwise could have sued individually, but then intentionally failing to win.

I certainly think both Bush administrations also failed to enforce the laws against Microsoft, often intentionally. But Clinton was clearly more blatant about it.

That is just theft by the EU.

It is much more MS paying a fee to the government for the ongoing right to cheat its customers and competitors than it is any serious attempt at law enforcements.

It is really confusing to use the world "liberal" in conversations with Americans. The word has a different meaning to a European audience. To us, liberalism is a right wing movement as it is all about liberty (and about minimal states, low taxes and unbridled capitalism) whereas to Americans, it is almost coincides with socialism (which only adds more confusion; the average American seems to equate socialism with communism...).

Good point, sir. Because of that, I support American liberals' wanting to call themselves "progressives" instead. (I used to laugh at that, thinking "progressive" was a weasel word.) I think Americans became confused about the word "liberal" because Marxists stole it from classical liberalism, thinking it sounded less threatening to Americans than Marxist or socialist or Communist.

Facts checked, I stand corrected. However - see my remark about terminological confusion.

Yep, and they now have stolen Internet Explorer. Future releases of windows will not include IE. You have to start somewhere, I guess. Right now, MS has announced they won't include any browser but the EU is planning to force them to offer their customers a real choice.

Well, let me say this before I forget to: partly because American intellectuals certainly are arrogant and partly because European governments have been experimenting with socialism much longer and more seriously, European governments are wiser about socialism. We're hearing over here that they are now experimenting with market-based solutions, whereas our government and our intellectuals are eager to go the opposite direction.

I think they should just tell the truth and call themselves "Communists"

It's not just a weasel word, it's a lie. Human progress has been based primarily on technological progress. That has enabled most of the social progress. The viewpoint that generally opposes technological progress shouldn't get to call itself "progressive".

The meanings of the political terms are always shifting. I'm not old enough to have been a "liberal" in my youth the same way Ronald Reagan was a liberal in his youth. (Except for "church and state" issues, I've always been a conservative). If you look at most of what is written (by liberal historians and commentators) about how Ronald Reagan's view changed over his lifetime, you'll see lots of descriptions of a tremendous shift from left wing to right wing. But stripped of all the nonsense and distortion, all of that is things like the shift from being opposed to racial discrimination in his youth to being opposed to racial reverse discrimination in his old age. To the left (as well as the really far right) opposing racial discrimination and opposing racial reverse discrimination are contradictory positions. Obviously I think they are the same position. Reagan kept his point of view while the national political landscape moved.
As a result, any of the many historians describing that shift in Reagan's views are instead accidentally documenting the shift in the meaning of the underlying terms.

I knew current American use of the word "liberal" is very far removed from traditional European use of the same word. I didn't know it was also far removed from current European use.

But that's not the same thing. Political opinions are more diverse than that.[/QUOTE]

I believe the political word "progressive" uses "progress" strictly to mean "change."

Bah ... political parties ... they're only in your head. In reality they all have the same agenda.

Wiser is not the word I would use to describe this.

Here in the UK, the "Labour" government under Blair and Brown, has been forcing "market-based solutions" all public service. They have determinedly ignored public opinion, and all the available evidence that privatisation results in a worse service at higher cost. The result is that that the Labour Party has lost many of its core supporters, and the National Health Service is now a cash cow for private enterprise.

Is really because the Labour government that the NHS is in trouble ?
Look every where in this world to the cost of the health services it is sky high .
So is because of the Labour government ?
Or is because of the way the health services works ?
Or our demands for health services ?

Not solely - they've just continued the policies started by Thatcher, but taken them much further.

Yes, health services are expensive, but...

• Building new units under PFI (Private Finance Initiative) (enforced by the government) is demonstrably more expensive than directly funding the buildings.
• At the end of the PFI lease, the buildings belong to the contractor, not the NHS
• PFI schemes are often argued for on the basis of "sharing risk" between the private contractor and the government - this is only reality if the project can be allowed to fail
• "Internal Market" arrangements increase administration costs.
• Trusts are pushed into contracts with private healthcare providers. for certain services. These providers must be paid, whether the level of service contracted for is required or not
• By law, PFI contractors and other private contractors must be paid before any other costs are met

And this is without even going into the issues of poor quality service delivered by PFI contractors.

It is partly about our demands for health service, and also about the way it works now. BUT the way the NHS used to work was much more financially efficient, and it is New Labour (and the Tories before them) who are to blame for this.

Well I know from my English colleagues that a lot of companies in the UK give there employees private insurance for health services and it started
already about 15 years ago .

I stand by the word, because wisdom is a product of experience. So in theory, European governments know what they're doing regarding socialism, having practiced it for decades, and the American federal government doesn't.
Something else Europeans have been better at is choosing their progressive policies through the democratic process. I understand that in European countries, abortion was accepted through legislation rather than forced by a court system pretending to be a legislative body. That isn't the case in America.