And here we have the problem with our political duopoly...

[kickaha]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/23/scotus.property.ap/index.html

Repubs: God knows best.
Dems: Government knows best.

You, the individual? You don't know. You're irrelevant.

But golly, we'd love to have your vote.

Comments

Issue of originalism...

[actsofcreation.livejournal.com]

What you are really seeing here is WHY people like me prefer justices who cleave to what the constitution actually SAYS as it was originally intended. A pox on both the liberal and the conservative justices, I want nice reliable law, where a founding father can protect my right to private property from unlimited government caprice and still have it MEAN something 200 years later.

Amen brother

[cspowers.livejournal.com]

you said it. The idea of personal responsibility is almost totally lost these days. So is the idea of doing the right thing just because it's the right thing.

Treason!

[flinx.livejournal.com]

What, you want us rabble, us sheep, to think for ourselves?!?! That's just wrong! We don't know the first thing about self-governance! We need the guiding hand of the politicians to keep us happy and quiescent! We like being fed a diet of pablum pukum to maintain our docility and our passivity! What you're talking about is high treason, there.

< / sarcasm >

Re: Treason!

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

And here's why I don't trust either party, nor believe in their values....

I agree that religion is the opiate of the masses. Replacing God with The State does nothing to alleviate the problem, however. As I see it, the fundamentalists are taking over the right, and forcing God down everyone's throat. Unfortunately, the statists long ago took over the left. It's not any better. Removing the individual from the equation is the road to totalitarianism, plain and simple, be it the Church or the State. There's no difference.

Re: Treason!

[flinx.livejournal.com]

Oh, I certainly agree with you. The fundies apparently have a lock on the voice of the right, and it's the federalists on the left who are taking governmental oversight too far. (Statists/state-rights folk are usually right-wing)

I don't think that resetting the gov't is quite the panacea that some claim, however (i.e. the extreme libertarians), as a free-for-all isn't going to help anyone in the long run. Bringing the rights and the obligations of the individual back to the fore, however, would be a wonderful thing.

Oh, and one more thing. Corporations aren't individuals. They aren't the great, nefarious beast that the greens claim, but they do have too much power in our society, with say and sway greater than what any individual can achieve, with far fewer responsibilities.

Re: Treason!

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

(Goddamned fucked up political system in this country...) I meant statist in the traditional term, ie, The State, not 50-things-we're-going-to-call-states-but-are-really-now-just-regional-provinces-thanks-to-the-federal-power-grab-even-though-they-were-originally-true-states. Not state-rights, but The State.

Agreed on all counts though.

Too bad trying to actually sway people to vote third party results in the old 'wasting your vote' rhubarb.

Re: Treason!

[flinx.livejournal.com]

Re: Statist/The State--I'd a thought that was what you meant, but I didn't figure on taking a chance. Should've just said 'man-ists', and I would've understood 'The G-Man'. ;-)

Frankly, I'm still rather confused how this country hasn't had the political system fracture into dozens of parties, by this point. Sometimes I wonder if it's the homogenizing influence of TV, that's kept us locked into a bipolar system.

Re: Treason!

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Nope, it's the pluralist vote. Think about it - start with any number of parties > 2, and consider them as entities vying for resources (voters). The entity with the most resources wins. A resource is 'owned' completely by one entity only (one vote is all you get to cast). Entities can combine to pool resources.

Mathematical end result: 2 parties, split 50/50, desperately scrabbling for a thin margin in between, the swing voter.

Until pluralist voting is tossed out, this is what we're going to be stuck with.

Re: Treason!

[flinx.livejournal.com]

So, you're waiting for other pluralist-based democracies (i.e. most of Europe) to degenerate into two-party systems, at some point in the nebulous future? It just seems that for now, they've been very successful in maintaining multi-party systems, esp. as some parties come and other parties go. The feeling there seems to be that absolutely everyone has a right to get their particular voice heard--something we're sorely lacking here.

Re: Treason!

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

That's because they have parliamentary bodies that divvy up the seats based on vote diversity. We don't.

Also, I don't think that's the way to do it - it *still* reduces the voter's intelligence and opinion to "only one!", which offends my sense of decorum. Instead, it replaces the voter's inner spectrum with a spectrum chosen by... tada, the gummint.

I'd rather have our system of legislative bodies, but with a ranked voting system. Best of all worlds in my opinion.