Feel free to suggest metrics to your liking, then, whatever you feel and can plausibly argue are indicative of personal responsibility.
See, you are advocating change. All reasonable and sensible people recognize that people who demand change must* prove* their case. It is not enough to merely decry injustice if that injustice has been imposed by the standard and traditional means of election and legislation.
All sensible and reasonable people recognize the paramount importance of stability. Injustice is wrong, of course, and ought to be corrected by the very same people and methods that imposed the injustice in the first place. Can we say that the importance of justice overrides the central importance of stability? Sure, we could say that, but it would mean that we are not sensible and reasonable people, and our opinions can be safely ignored.
For instance, the civil rights movement. In the 60’s, liberals and radicals demanded equality, conservatives took the cautious and prudent course, and here we are! With persons of color very nearly on a level of equality with the white and propertied. Sorta kinda, pretty close, and in only fifty years!
I would oppose it, as a needless waste of my taxpayer money* – this is a solution for a non-existing problem. There is no significant voter fraud in the USA. I don’t approve of spending our money until there is a proven problem to solve.
- Actually, it’s a waste of future generations’ tax payments, given our national debt.
Gosh, Bryan, I wonder who the gatekeeper for deciding the plausibility of my arguments will be? I’m so curious!
I’m guessing the people that you are trying to convince with said arguments?
Cite?
His score is in negative numbers, despite literally years of effort. Several posters have said he’s convinced them he’s wrong, but none in his favor.
Me.
Best of luck.
More fun for me, as the winner, I suspect.
In a representative democracy, society expresses its view of the reasonable standards by the action of its elected legislators.
I know you’d rather be King Gyrate I, but you can’t.
::yawn::
Too freakin’ bad, chuckles. Any system suffers from the flaw that its implementors cannot know the future. Doctors used to treat peptic ulcers by urging people to drink milk. Now, we know about acid blockers and h. pylori.
Sorry, Your Majesty. When is your coronation again?
I’m not trying to convince anyone here in this thread. I have a better chance of teaching calculus to a badger.
Not if you vote for one thing (say, cheaper health insurance that covers everyone as promised by the leader of your party) but get another (say, royally fucked). No one voted for the Republican health insurance fucking, so the claim one can deduce the Republican health insurance fucking represents America’s idea of reasonable simply because it’s being performed by elected officials has no basis in fact.
Ok if you aren’t trying to win anyone over with your arguments in this thread, then what exactly is your aim? You’ve posted a lot of arguments to this thread, so there must be some sort of goal you have in mind? It’s a lot of effort to undertake if there is nothing you are trying to accomplish as a result.
This thread has been laden with vituperative insults directed at me – this is the Pit, after all, so I cannot complain, but I see you’ve adopted the usual view that the right thing for the conservative to do is accept insults, not return them, smile ingratiatingly, offer arguments that are dismissed out of hand by the liberal interlocutors, and then finally accept defeat at the hands of his betters.
I’m trying to present a view that the silent readers, not the vocal participants, find compelling.
That’s hilarious, since repealing Obamacare has been a public and oft-repeated goal of Republican legislators since roughly March 24, 2010. Now, in your mind this equates to being screwed, but luckily the point I am making remains solid: you don’t get to decide what people “really,” want. See? So in a representative democracy, society expresses its view of the reasonable standards by the action of its elected legislators.
I know this is anathema to liberals, who much prefer to tell the ignorant public that what they THINK they want isn’t really what they want, and they should simply shut their bigoted, stupid mouths and vote Democratic so their betters can lead them. But that’s not the actual system.
Yet.
Keep trying, though; you guys are getting close.
I don’t know how you managed to suss out what view I may or may not have adopted by my post. I don’t recall saying anything about insults or what one should do when receiving them, or anything about accepting defeat either. I’m not seeing any connection between your first paragraph and any of my two replies to you. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t really know what to say to that.
I was surprised by your reply to me that you weren’t trying to convince anyone of anything. I was uncertain the point of arguing when not actually trying to persuade. Now I see that your audience is actually theoretical people that are reading but not participating in the thread. I guess that makes sense then.
I just explained why you’re wrong. Ignoring that explanation and repeating your false statement doesn’t make it true. But hey, at least now you can tell yourself everything the Republicans do must be reasonable by definition by virtue of the fact that they’re in power, and that if it wasn’t reasonable people wouldn’t have voted for it.
Also, Republicans didn’t run on repeal, they ran on repeal and replace. People voted for cheaper health care for all as a replacement. This is what the Republican party promised them. Now the Republicans are in power and they’re not doing what they were elected to do. If you choose to define “reasonable” actions as those they were elected to perform (kinda dubious about that, but let’s go with it), then their current actions are not reasonable.
You’re also ignoring what the large fraction of society that didn’t vote views as reasonable and assuming that all politicians do what and only what they ran on, therefore everything they do, society voted for, and is therefore “reasonable”. You’re also also attacking the specific while ignoring the general. don’t like my example concerning how the health care reform that was voted for isn’t what was delivered? Come up with your own example, it’s not like you aren’t spoiled for choice.
Your theory sounds like something you read in a book but gave absolutely no thought to regarding whether or not it actually applies in the real world.
Pretty clear, really. If the people elect the Republicans then it is their will that the Republican agenda shall rule. The people have assigned their political power to those they judge wise enough to make grave and solemn decisions. If those elected decide, upon sober reflection, that the best interests of the people is that the Republican Party continue without interruption…well, clearly that reflects the will of the people! If they make minor changes to the electoral system to enhance their power, they are entitled to do so! Indeed, duty bound to do so, if only to thwart Comrade Tooth’s diabolical scheme for world domination!
Sometimes I have trouble understanding the Counselor’s political philosophy, but a couple stiff belts of tequila and bongwater can bring it all into focus. Albeit briefly.
“But Obama lied too” doesn’t seem to counter the suggestion that the GOP promised voters affordable health care for all during the last cycle. He did, they did.
.
It counters the inference that this is unusual, and it counters the inference that it’s a problem unique to Republicans, and it counters the inference that Obama enjoyed legitimacy while Republicans do not because they promised one thing and supposedly delivered another.