Should read:
&
[quote]
They have my stanidng permission to verify that if any other poster asks.]
Should read:
:shrug: Off the top of my head, I’m not sure we’re going to be able to talk about politics without using words some will find to be ambiguous.
Well, wittingly or not, they set a time bomb at the foundation of a lot of entrenched structures of political inequality.
They are equal in their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They may lose those rights if they use them to deprive others of those rights. Someone smarter, bettter looking, more charming, or who has a bigger trust fund may enjoy their liberty more fully or pursue their happiness more successfully, but everyone has the right to pursue happiness, and to live their life in freedom.
Also, we are talking about political rights–equality before the law, equal representation in government (as opposed to aristocrats being subject to one law and commoners another, or 5% of the population having one house of the legislature with equal authority to the house selected by 95% of the population. We are not talking in the Declaration of Independence about “economic rights”, a different topic.
Granted, the Declaration isn’t a legally binding document the way the Constitution is. It is important philosophically. Besides, Monty said your ideas conflicted with those in the D of I, you said “How?”, and I showed you. (Not whether your ideas conflict with the reality of 18th Century government, but with the plainly expressed ideas of the Declaration. You may argue that the Founding Fathers were hypocrites when they wrote the Declaration; it is also perfectly legal in this country to argue that the political philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is mistaken, unwise, or that you have a better idea.)
Ah, but who decides who has that aptitude? Granted, there may be a correlation between economic status and intelligence, it’s still far from an ideal one. And the correlation between intelligence and civic-mindedness is not perfect either. There is no perfect correlation between civic-mindedness and personal economic drive or ambition either. And I haven’t defined what constitues “civic-mindedness” either–another of those ambiguous political terms. There are lots of ideas as to how to restrict the franchise to those with the “aptitude” for governing, but so long as people can’t even agree on what even constitutes “aptitude” for governing, I think it’s best to stick with the principle of “the consent of the governed”–since everyone’s stuck with the laws, everyone gets a say in them.
No, if someone is evil or does evil acts (and shows no remorse), I do not want that person in any position of power. I don’t care how good he/she is at that job.
I prefer the first option. I prefer educating the people about their right to vote, their options and how to excercise that right correctly than simply taking away their voting rights. It is not fair to be governed but not being able to say anything about it.
I have thought about it. I still prefer taking the chance and educating myself and electing the best possible candidate, after reading and informing myself of their plans and platforms. Besides, people’s perspectives and visions change. Even if I made the right choice at that time, later events may suggest I chose the wrong one.
I pay for my voting rights by following the law - no taxation without representation. Any system where people are subject to laws that they have no control over is fundamentally anti-democratic.
Well thats nice and all, but preference and reality don’t usually walk hand in hand and while your retort is genuine and heartfelt is really does not address the fact that someone dumb enough to sell a vote for pittance is also likely too dumb to use it wisely in any event. I regard this event as a self correcting anachronism. Like the obvious thief or killer. Certainly there are victims of the obvious thief or killer, but because of the ineptitude of this villains actions he/she is usually caught and greater attention is focused on a societal weakness. Predators are nessisary to cull the weaker animals from the herd.
**
I agree with a complete and comprehensive reform of standard education as well as making higher education free to those demonstrating aptitude (GPA based or interview based perhaps) and as much subsidy for those who may not have the 4.0 GPA to get the free ride but still want to improve themselves. But really, with the advent of the public library education in a broader sense of the word did become free, with the more recent implementation of the internet it has become drastically more convenient. You do not need to go to college to become educated, you go there for a degree to show others you are educated. Certainly it may help gather resources into one location making it easier to assimilate information, but if you really wanted to learn calculus, for example, you could go to a public library and do it the hard way. If you simply wanted to be more enlightened you can have a much easier go at it bu turning of Jerry Springer and reading a variety of newspapers (I say a variety because with rampant yellow journalism you need a variance filter to get the real story) or start talking to people.
The point is you have to actually want it. No once can educate people, all anyone can do is make education available to those who desire it. So while I do agree with your sentiment, I must state that it is based on flawed reasoning and a belief that you can do for others what they are unwilling to do for themselves.
It’s your perogative as it stands, but your first sentence says you prefer educating youself. Good. But it education isn’t important to a person’s vote then why mention you educating yourself in this conversation? After all you seem to otherwise champion the cause of the ignorant otherwise. note: I’m not saying you are ignorant yourself in any general regard. You seem well informed, if misguided by my opinions. But it has always been the symptom of the intelligencia to champion the rights of those who do not often bother to champion themselves. Marx and Engels were certainly well educated and intelligent men, and even well intended in 1948 when they wrote the Communist Manifesto. But I feel that there is no point in wasting my energies helping those who do not help themselves, I could use my efforts to much greater effect improving my own lot in life or at least learning how to play the guitar I bought two years ago and which is now collecting dust. And if someone sees the need to bring up how some people need help, well my respnse is two-fold: So does the slow, aged, or diseased caribu when the wolf take it down but that isn’t how nature works, also with the exception of a very few most people are capable of helping themselves if they are simply made aware that it is possible or if they simply want it bad enough. Our country was made possible by the effective efforts of a bunch of militia men who were completely outclassed but who found a way to get what they wanted regardless because they wanted it that badly. Frankly it seems against the spirit of those efforts to just hand things to those who don’t even make minimal efforts on their own behalf. Charity is demeaning to the one recieving it and arrogant for the one providing it.
Finally: We are as a specis rapidly destroying our habitat, certainly there is a lot of room but we are not reaching homeostasis and we are requiring more and more to sustain us as we go along. Is this endemic of our specis or our society? We are the only animal that works actively to thwart progressive evolution by creating an environment where those who would be otherwise unable to survive on their own are cared for through the efforts of those more able. Nietzsche is not my role model as I have been accused by some too ignorant to look past the benefit of shock value, mu ideals are strictly those of a natural humanist. I have stated before because I believe it, “survival is it’s own morality”. Kindness is a symptom of a surplus and should be dropped in times if deficit (not civility, kindness). If you think we are living in a surplus world then perhaps you need yo up your prescription lenses a bit, we have not two but four hostile nuclear powers (and that is just confirmed, not even considering all the nations who may have purchased nukes during the Soviet collapse), at least three of them have alleigence to national religeons which have heavy suicide=paradise inclinations, we have a nation (the US for all of you foreigners I’m admittedly less aware of your national corcumstances and understandable less concerned) which at one time led the world in production and exported goods, but which now suffers because of overinvesting in paper money and potentials and we allow our own few remaining national moneymakers to do the bulk of their manufacture overseas at little to no cost for them, our main exports are intellectual properties which no one actually NEEDS (god forbid some other country figure out that we really are not all that cool and that buying American music isn’t what it takes to be hip). WE don’t make anything here anymore, for thirty plus years we have been paying our own farmers not to grow things and rewarding businesses for having products we buy made by Laotians or Mexicans but still referring to these products as American. You think we got here by intelligent use of a democratic republic?
If I seem emotional or overly invested in this belief well I’m either insane or the only person sane enough to see the implications of unchecked largesse.
You are allowd to vote because you follow the law. But your statement does not demonstrate that you have paid for anything, in fact a criminal who does hard labor may theorhetically be paying more to society that you are. No Taxation without representation implies a paiymet in the form of a tax and it was the argument used by the colonial sepratists when they were fed with absentee governments, colonial govenors, and the fact that England outlawed trade of locally manufactured good between colonies (and in some cases outlawd simple manufacture of thinks like shovels or brass handles), and isnsisted on importation of these items even if they were gotten from another American colony. This means you could live in New York and but a barrel of tobacco off an English merchantman, thus paying an importation tax even though this same tobacco may have originated in Virginia or the Ohio river valley and been sent from there to England (and in some cases the person sending the item paid an export tax. Thats two, cout em’ two taxes on an item that never needed to be imported OR exported.).
And we don’t live in a democratic society, we life in a republic based loosely on a Roman republic (we even call one branch of our congress a Senate). We don’t directly elect presidents, we cast ballots for an electoral college where candidates “swear” to vote for one person and you vote for him/her so they can cast that vote. There have even been cases where elected members of the electoral college have legally changed their mind after getting their nomination. A similar thing goes for when you elect your state senators or local representatives. Even the utimate rule of law is completely out of your hands as any and all judicial rulings are under the final authority of the Supreme Court, a group of persons who are appointed for life. So you see, you ARE indeed subject to laws which you have vortually no control over. If you lived in a society where you had control over the laws then there would probably be an implements “sunset rule”, but there isn’t. Jefferson tried to get one passed, but didn’t see the need evidently after he got into office himself.
Seriously the no taxation witout representation quote is nice and all, but it has no more more merit here than any other bit of hyperbolie. You might as well have said “sic semper tyrannus”, it would be more impressive as a somewhat less memorable historic quote and had about as much literal meaning.
This is your theory of societal interaction? Good grief, at the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law, I must say you prove you are no better than Hitler.
BTW, the Communist Manifesto was published in 1848, well before WWII.
Monty, you can chase down typos all day, obviously I meant 1848, But typos are to you symptoms of a lack of education. Just as when I typed confederacy as opposed to confederation.
“Confederacy” isn’t a typo of “Confederation.” It’s a simple error. I agree that “1948” is a typo of “1848.” That’s really not a problem.
The rest of your postings indicate your lack of education. Although you may have a degree, that does not mean you actually learned.
I realize that the quote refers to taxation. The idea behind “no taxation without representation” is that if the people are subject to the law, their interests ought to be considered when the law is made.
If I weren’t allowed to vote, our government certainly would be an absentee government, with respect to myself. It can’t claim to take my interests into consideration if I’m not allowed to voice those interests by voting.
Appointed by whom? The president, who is (indirectly) elected by the people.
Our government may not be a direct democracy, but after many levels of indirection, you still have the people choosing the laws. If a senator proposes a law that his constituents disagree with, he may find himself voted out of office and replaced by someone who better represents their interests. If a president appoints a Supreme Court justice who doesn’t represent the interests of the people, he may find himself voted out of office as well, and the people will think a little harder about who the next president might appoint.
If a large section of the population is unable to vote, that breaks down. We have a situation like that today - no one under 18 is able to vote. But apart from a few ridiculous cases of trying minors as adults, Americans under 18 aren’t subject to the law to the same extent as adults. Juvenile hall isn’t federal prison, and your juvenile record goes out the window when you turn 18.
No? I can vote for a president who will appoint Supreme Court justices that agree with my philosophies. I can vote for Congressmen who agree with my stances on the issues that matter to me. If none of the candidates support my views, I can collect signatures and propose initiatives and referenda (at least in this state) to create or repeal laws.
And the mere fact that I can vote forces politicians to consider my interests. They won’t pass a law making it legal to steal from brown-haired people because they know the brown-haired people can vote. More realistically, they won’t pass a law requiring re-tests for elderly drivers because they know elderly voters rush out to the polls in droves.
Several areas have passed curfews for teenagers. Do you think that would have happened if people under 18 could vote, and the legislators knew they’d be flooded with angry phone calls and letters from constituents who are no longer able to go outside at night? (Hint: Do you think a curfew for people under 40 would have a chance of passing?)
This proposed society might start out with “non-citizens” equal in all ways but voting and holding public office. But as has been said before, once their voting rights are gone, they won’t have their other rights for long.
Mr2001: Your points are all valid and well said. I would like to add another note to it, if I may. Although the under 21 crowd cannot vote, they can and do have recourse to government officials and those in political office such as Senators and Representatives.
Said Senators and Representatives will also take into account those individuals’ concerns because they know those individuals will be voters soon enough.
(this was to be posted at 9:30 this morning but the board was far too slow)
No, I’ll keep my response short and besides this isn’t USENET so technically the term does not apply. Unless you consider the secondary meaning where they longer the thred is the greater the chance that someone WILL be compared to Hitler/Nazis. But two pages isn’t all that long.
Anyhow: Hitler believed races and ethnicities (as well as homosexuals, who lots of people have believed were inferior and persecuted) were inferior based on no measurable scale and in contradiction to much evidence. Part of the reason for the vilification of the Jews was the fact that Germany was in such a great economic depression, but that Jews seemed to be doing ok as they had taken a traditional role of the moneylender and the banker which many Orthodox Germans were forbidden from doing. This means that they were in fact successful, a complete indication that they were not inferior, but still a reason they were targeted. Nazis did not use logic, just it’s trappings. Certainly there was a lot of science used by them, but science w/o logic is garbage.
I already stated that I expected someone to call me a Nazi or similar previously. Usuaully someone with a smattering of education or who maybe has the History Channel will do this, but it demonstrates that your education in this area lacks depth. I’m in favor of allowing individuals to fail based on their own personal abilities. Hitler was in favor of predetermining who would fail based on race, with no regard for acvtual ability.
By your reasoning teachers who enforce acedemic standards are also Nazis, as are college admissions boards. Or you’re a :wally and just trying to be obnoxious personally. Frankly you have made or implied several personal attacks here, which I have continued to overlook. Is this habit or a lapse in medication?
Because if you bothered to really dig into my past posts you would have learned that I’m a ;j (well not Orthodox) and how insensitive of you to call me a Nazi. Good thing for me I have a thick skin (developed early when I learned it was better to form my own opinions rather than parrot populist propoganda).
I’ll probably no longer reply to you or address your comments unless your form improves dramatically. You can feel free to take this as “moral” victory if you wish. I’m fairly cerain the kind of person who invokes Godfrey is the kind of person who claims victory over his many internet battles despite the outcome.
Make sure when you brag about how smart you were in this little debate you tell people that I didn’t know who wrote the Communist Manifesto or when, but you may want to make it a bit more confused than 1948, as most people would get that that was a typo.
Substitutiong one similar word for another is indeed a typo and is often the result of allowing your brain to get ahead of your hands. The hands will often revert to typing a simpler word, or phrase. But you seem to know nothing aout this phenomenon, must be a gap in your education.
**
Unless you are well over 200 years of age and happened to either drafted it or at least been there for the process I don’t think you can speak with authority in regards to the intent of the document. Even those who did participate later disagreed in regards to intent and scholars make money derbating this and publishing insight based on assumption, but it does not make that assumption fact.
Therefore you must be left with two things, what was actually written and the belief that as educated an literate men they could have written it your way had then meant it that way. They didn’t, you are wrong in presuming otherwise.
**
A vote that is disregarded is nothing more than a placebo used to placate the simpleton. Your vote “may” count but only if you happen to agree with the person you vote for. When choosing a politician you are forced to chose between the lesser of several evils, not for a perfect choice (unless you are extremely lucky or have few opinions). This is a limited democracy in a representative system. It also loses effect when you consider that once elected a person has to virtually break the law to lose his job, and even then he might not. I could detail it, but I’m not getting paid to lay out facts that your political science teacher should have.
**
Went over this one. You don’t pick the president, you pick the electoral college. Besides, the appointment is for life and being unpopular will not get a judge removed from the position. Federal judges are one election, lifetime job security gigs unless you abandon the post for other political office.
**
Not logical as a huge segment refuses to vote anyhow. You could deny them the right to do it and unless told otherwise most people would never know.
**
More and more juveniles are being tried as adults or recieving juvenile sentences which carry over to adult sentences. They usually deserve them, but it’s still a glaring flaw in your white-wash argument.
I would have loved to argue other stuff here, but much of what you said was repetitious on the major points. I get that you think you have power over an elected officiol, and I agree you have a little, but I maintain that the amount of control you think you have is much greater than what you actually do have. Sure elected officials want to make as many people happy as possible, but it’s more important not to piss people off than to actually make them happy. It’s easy not to piss people off these days as most people expect little from elected officials and usually don’t even know what they are really up to. Small example is the fact that politicians keep trying to pass a sales tax here but the citizens vote it down (citezen power of which I spoke earlier, it is a local initiative not a federal one.) one career politician voted 9 times for the sales tax and no one knew about it outside of his peers in the state senate. Why didn’t his opposition blab this sooner to get him to lose his job? Because most politicians are in league with their primary agendas and don’t tell outsiders what is going on. It’s reality, try a glass.
I didn’t call you a Nazi. I pointed out the apparent fact that you are no better than Hitler was with you cold-blooded theory of societal interaction.
Drat. “…you cold-blooded” should read “…your cold-blooded…”
I won’t bother to nitpick the use of “apparent” and “fact” in your sentence but will jump right to the point.
“no better than Hitler” is a non-sequitur in your first posting of that nature so one is left to assume with what is best known about the man (aside from one testicle and a penchant for fecalphilia), and that is Naziism and the holocause which was racially motivitated primarily are the things he is best known for (and before you jump up and say “Hitler didn’t found the Nazi movement. You are uneducated.”. I know this, but he is most closely associated with it).
I have not once in any of my postings here given any indication that I’m basing my expressions on race or ethnicity or religeon. That leaves my “cold-blooded” belief in competitive genetics of which Hitler had no concept of other than a belief that blond hair and pale skin made someone genetically superior.
If you want to call me cold blooded you could do a lot better to compare me to Darwin in my observations on evolution and is nessesity but you seem to be a cheap-shot artist who fancies himself an intellectual. You got that half right.
In fact I’m not even cold blooded, any more so than a surgeon who sees the need in performing an amputation or even more simply operating a triage. With limited resources it is simply better to expend those resources wisely. I happen to be, in my personal life, a very compassionate person who does not typically accuse Jews of being Hitler as that would be rather cold and insensitive. I also don’t tease orphans about dead parents, of the infirm about their impairments. These are things a cold hearted person would do.
And finally even if I were an evil bastard at heart it would not mean I was wrong. Ask any livestock expert (perhaps you are an elitist who thinks humans are not animals subject to common aspects of genetics?) what happens when you do not cull for undesireable traits in a herd, or even worse you make conditions optimal for the slower animals to breed.
Care to try that last posting again, but this time in English?
I do help myself: by taking my medication, by keeping my doctors’ appointments, and by managing the money I get from disability–money that I get because I contributed to society before I was a “diseased caribou”. (Ironically, when I was working I never complained about the amount of taxes deducted from my paycheck.) I don’t find the supplemental charity I occasionally need demeaning; I find it an example of the goodness of the human spirit. And your education should tell you that it wasn’t the efforts of a “bunch of militia men” that made this country possible; it was an army trained by military experts from Europe and by colonial military veterans, aided by the money and other assistance from France and Spain and by the fact that Britain had a few other things on its plate to deal with at the time.
Also you seem to be equating formal education with intelligence, and intelligence with wisdom and beneficial political decisions. Good gods, we all know that Henry Ford, for one example, was intelligence, but that his politics were morally bankrupt!
As for the enforced military or civil service: yup, people sure do their best at a task they’re forced into. :rolleyes: My sister volunteered for military service during the Vietnam War and even so she described the commonly-held attitude of the military as “if it moves, salute it; if it doesn’t move, paint it green.” I’m all for a volunteer military because for the most part the people enlisted are there because they want to be there; they’re eager to learn and have a strong desire to succeed.
I began to read this thread because I thought it dealt with improving American public education, so I’ll chuck in my thoughts on that. I consider myself intelligent but poorly educated, particularly in maths (in fifth and sixth grade, the method of teaching mathematics was ‘self-teaching’: you graded yourself, and if you couldn’t grasp the concepts in your workbook, there were no resources to help you). I am embarrassed by the fact that there are many people on mailing lists I belong to for whom English is not there first or primary language, but they can communicate in English not only formally but idiomatically, whereas few of the native English-speakers can reciprocate.
So then:
-I propose that children be taught one classical language and one modern language other than English beginning at least in first grade.
-I propose that primary education (first through eighth grades) consist of two cores: the first core would be Logic/Critical Thinking, Grammar, Rhetoric and Reading. This, so that they would learn to think, learn to formulate their thoughts, and learn to express their thoughts both verbally and non-verbally. The second core would consist of Natural Science, Physical Science, Applied Science, and Applied/Practical Mathematics. This, so that they will learn how the world they live in works and how they can work within it.
-Secondary (high-school) education would consist of a core of more complex applications of the primary-school education, and electives that would allow students to explore their future career path.
Finally, two observations: 1) I do see many of the opinions expressed here as fascistic, and 2) (referring back to the OP) marijuana apparently does not always lead to carpentry; sometimes it leads to toe-jam philosophy. 