We’ve gone over the durability of the US two-party system here many times, but the short version for me is that it’s an inevitable product of a government structure in which parties do not play a constitutional role at all, not related to anything “cultural”.
Third parties are a dead end in terms of actually displacing one of the majors in gaining actual power, sure. But they aren’t a dead end if their real value and purpose is kept in mind - to advocate for a particular issue that neither major has adopted as its own, up to the point where its support becomes large enough that one of the majors *does * co-opt that issue. Then the third party no longer has a purpose and disappears.
If libertarianism ever were going to work its way out of the statistical noise and become a widespread philosophy of governance, it would have by now, wouldn’t it? If it ever were going to expand its support beyond that portion of the electorate who’ll vote for anybody who promises to cut their taxes the most, combined with a few Rand-worshippers, it would have by now, wouldn’t it?
Maybe it’s time to stop blaming the “culture” and the major parties for somehow oppressing the free flow of ideas, or whatever the hell the excuses are, and consider the possibility that libertarians’ ideologuism is a problem, not a solution.
How does that follow? If continued support of the war is an extremist position now, then advocating ending it is a *mainstream * view. How does expressing a mainstream position make one unelectable rather than the reverse?
Not unelectable, just unable to be nominated by the Republican party.
I have a feeling that support for whatever completely crazed policy Bush is following at primary/convention time is going to wind up being some sort of litmus test. Sad, but true.
Not the culture, the electoral system. See here (and threads linked therein).
In any case, Paul is not pursuing the third-party route. The question is, are there enough libertarian-leaning Republican voters to make his run a serious one?
Another question: I remember the seven-way Dem debates in early '04 – all declared Dem presidential candidates debating on TV. Will the Pubs do that in '08? Paul vs. Brownback vs. Giuliani, etc.?
Perhaps we’re using different definitions of “constitutional role.” At any rate, a parliamentary system is not necessarily any more hospitable to third parties than a separation-of-powers system, as any LibDem in the UK can tell you. The crucial difference is that between a single-member-district winner-take-all system and a proportional-representation system; either of which is compatible with parliamentary or with separation-of-powers government.
I would like to know why a gold standard is unworkable, especially since gold and silver have successfully been used as currency for thousands of years. Is a person automatically paranoid and/or ignorant if they support the gold standard? Or is that just an excuse to stiffle serious consideration of the subject?
I have sent Ron Paul a few dollars over the years, and have run for congress myself for the Libertarian Party. It always galled me to have liberals (and conservatives) dismiss me as just an “anti-government extremist”. Again, another attempt by people to avoid serious debate of the issues. There is a proper role for government; just because a person opposes the Marxist income tax or the expanding socialist welfare state doesn’t make them an extremist.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton
:rolleyes: The income tax is not Marxist, nor is the welfare state socialist.[/QUOTE]
Have you ever read the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx? He advocates a graduated income tax, which is a direct application of the communist credo “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. When the government controls the wealth should we then call that capitalist?
Critics of the gold standard seem to me to be ignorant of a few basic economic principles. Like the nature of money, and how governments manipulate it for their own purposes. The Federal Reserve was created so government would always have enough money for their welfare state projects and so they would have enough money to wage wars. Modern socilialist liberals want the welfare state, but not the war machine (at least until they completely hold the reins of power).
Ron Paul has been opposed to all these, the guy is a doctor who is educated and articulate, yet critics dismiss him as ignorant and paranoid. Label someone as ignorant and paranoid and nobody will listen to them.
Possibly not. But using the phrases above (my bolding) does position one as an extremist.
The simple fact is that the American electorate wants taxation (and a graduated system) and welfare in some form. If the voters didn’t want them they’d be gone by now. Therefore treating them as something to be killed only shows the extremism of the position.
By and large the American voting public gets the sort of government policies they’re comfortable with over the long term. The system has enough feedback built into it (contested elections) and that feedback happens often enough (every two years) that those wishing election have little incentive to wander far from the borders.
Whether what the American electorate wants is achievable, rational or wise is, most certainly another debate, however.
Aside from his support of the gold standard, his economic views seem… a little bit wacky. From Wikipedia: “His opposition to the Federal Reserve is based on his belief that instead of containing inflation, the Federal Reserve, in theory and in practice, is responsible for causing inflation.”
I’m no economist, but does a stance like that have -any- basis in reality?
Go down this page and you’ll find a link to an Excel that you can download. If you do this and graph the conversion factor, you do find that 1913 looks like an important pivot point in the inflation data. Best to do this on a log scale, btw, to get the compounding distortion out of it.
Basically, it shows that prices went up a bit during the War of 1812, then went down steadily until 1850, when they began to nose up, peaking with a spike because of the Civil War. Then they fell again until around 1900, when they began to nose up again, spiked in World War I, and then fell again until World War II, but not as much or as steadily as after either the War of 1812 or the Civil War. Since World War II, of course, prices have steadily gone higher.
So, is it because of the Fed? Well, inflation really only began after it was founded. The conversion factor for 1913, .049, is only about 20% higher than what they estimate for 1850 (everything prior to 1913 is an estimate) at .04. In 1941 it was already at .073, before the inflation of World War II set in, which is already nearly a 50% increase in prices from 1913.
The rest, as they say, is history.
So yes, there is some basis for believing this.
Found that they actually link to their own log-scaled graph, although the labelling for the wars is a bit misleading as to timeframes. Anyway, if you look at the middle bar between 1905 and 1925, which would be 1915 and right about the year the Fed was founded, you can see how prices went up and never really came back down again, unlike after the prior wars.
I think he would make a fabulous President. It’d be an excellent way to trump a Clinton/Obama ticket - the first black, female, transvestite* commander-in-chief.
Once again, proponents of the welfare state have to resort to personal attacks to justify their position. Calling someone an “extremist” is an attempt to marginalize them and paint their argument as something that is preposterous to the average person.
The income tax is rooted in Marxist ideology, to tax the able and give it to those who for whatever reason aren’t able to produce.
The voters have been bamboozled into thinking they are getting something at the expense of someone else. It is human nature to want to prosper, even if it means taking something from someone else with no rational justification. The politicians have learned how to pander to everyone who thinks the government can perform miracles.
There are many polls that have shown large numbers of people want to get rid of the IRS and the income tax. If we were to have an income tax, I could live with a flat 5% (with a deduction on the first $20,000 of income to give the poor a break). But watch the howling and opposition from the left if anyone suggests something like that.
In what (non-Communist) countries do political parties play a constitutional role?