Nikita Khrushchev: The difference between the Soviet Union and China is that I rose from the peasant class, while you came from the privileged mandarin class.
Zhou Enlai: True. But there is this similarity. Each of us is a traitor to his class.
Hopefully we’ve all read Parliament of Whores. If not, I recommend it. Paraphrasing from memory, there are 3 ways to spend money:
–Spend your own money on yourself. You look for the highest quality at the lowest price. This is how Greenwich Drs. shop for Porches.
–Spend your money on other people. Maybe your buddy gets the Costco putter rather than the Scotty Cameron or the jewelry you bought isn’t quite as nice as you’d like them to suppose.
–Spend other people’s money on other people. Who gives a shit on either metric?
And spending other people’s money on yourself?
Absolutely a valid addition, and I think we all know the answer. Ca-CHING!
Leftist-inclined people trying to wrap their minds around conservative perspectives? I’d start with the individual-versus-state attitude. “I want freedom from my own government. I don’t want to be bossed around by people who pretend they’re doing what they do on my behalf, people who claim to be my representatives”.
Don’t get me wrong: I have huge departures from the overwhelming majority of conservatives. I count myself among the most radical at the other end of the spectrum. But if the name of the game is bridging gaps and trying to understand the mindset of people who’ve arrived at very very different conclusions from us, for me here is the common ground.
I don’t want to be under the thumb of any authority, and least of all those who pretend to be doing me some kind of favor for my own good without consulting me.
I have the sense that folks who have gravitated to the right believe in informal networks like neighbors helping each other, and non-governmental structures like church congregations coming to people’s aid. That’s people in the plural helping individual people. People on the left are more inclined to believe in the formal structure of government to be us in the plural, but it’s still the notion of us in the lural helping individual people.
If those of you who are on the right think we of the leftist persuasion are oblivious to the ways in which the government can be something other than us in the plural, you’ve forgotten scenes of us protesting our own gov. But I don’t think the folks on the right are entirely oblivious to the ways in which the local community, or the church, can go astray from what would be in everyone’s best intests either.
I was one of the misfits, someone pointed at and targeted for small-town ridicule. It’s one of many things that lead some people to head to the cities and the hope of official structured forms of “us in the plural”. The little village neighborhoods and churches don’t have a good mechanism to raise grievances about how they do things. Government, at least in theory, always does. Admittedly, there’s corruption and cynicism and ways in which the successful campaign to get attention to your group’s needs has less to do with the legitimacy of those needs than the slickness of presentation and the resulting trendiness of the issue.
What about how they feel antipathy toward us queers for existing at all?
Well, first someone would need to create a human that doesn’t make so many mistakes. Good luck. In the end it will always come down to ‘power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.’
George Washington has the best quote, I think?
" Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/05/26/fire-servant/
First attributed to Washington in 1902, so probably apocryphal.
Oh well, it’s a good quote anyway. Especially the first sentence.
I’m curious: what democracies are you thinking of here? I can’t really think of any significant countries which adoped some kind of democratic system later than the US?
Many or most, wouldn’t it be, at least for modern, liberal democratic republics? The US Constitution was finally ratified in 1788 which is among the earliest adopters.
Sure, if you look to classic republics a la Greece or Rome or such, there are older examples but not for the modern incarnations.
I guess. A lot of what we consider the current European counties didn’t really exist as such until the major upheavals and consolidations which happened around 1848. Germany & Italy being prime examples. Spain was a dictatorship until 1975. France of course had a revolution and has oscillated between monarchy and republicanism several times. Britain has - sort of - drifted from monarchism to democracy over the years but has no formal consitution.
Not sure that any country has a good solution. I find it rather odd that one can get a college degree in something called “political science”, which has to be one of the most astonishing oxymorons ever coined…
A longer historical perspective seems to be lacking.
E.g. Germany’s current constitution and government dates from 1945. So although the German unitary state goes back a decent ways farther, the current governmental design is quite new.
The main problem I see with governments and utopias is, once the original founders pass on, the new guard might not like or agree with the existing laws. Nor may their children.
Adding to that, there is always going to be bad agents who will corrupt and subvert the system. Finding loopholes or just outright rebelling against it.
Pretty much all of Europe, South America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Africa… the list is quite long.
- Prior to that, West Germany was under control of France, the UK, and the US.
On top of the list provided by @Northern_Piper you can add Japan with a U.S. imposed constitution but pointedly not a U.S. style constitution.
Surely you’d consider at least one of them to be significant?
Thank you. D’oh!
The real question is why. Why would you want a government that works well? Fine if your party or ideology is currnetly in power, but what if it is not?
In the US we have the House of Representatives, that is usually where bills and laws originate. Then whatever comes out goes to the Senate. If something gets through both houses it may end up on the desk of the Executive branch, the president. And then a check on the power the Judicial branch, usually the Supreme Court has the final say.
The simpilest things seem to take forever to get through this process. But what if the opposition could move their ideas through the same system faster? You wouldn’t like that.
The cumbersome, slow, process is more ideal. These are some of the most dangerous people in the country deciding these things. Congress keeps them busy and out of our local communites. You do not want them to be more efficient.
So again the question is Why? Why do you really want them to get quicker results? I don’t. I do not want a government that works well I do not want a government that can make swift changes, no matter how well intentioned.
Gridlock is my desired result.