There are significant beefs with the EU, outside of strictly financial ones and nationalist ones. This is not just a matter of nationalist attitudes, although I will admit that it does play a part.
For instance, the European court of Human Rights has authority in England that supersedes English courts. Which is at least part of the reason England has such problems with youthful offenders - the English justice system legally cannot do much of anything to stop them for fear of the EU Court of Human Rights coming down on the side of the kids, no matter what those offenders have done, and the problem is that the kids know it.
This is only ‘working out well for them’ if you feel that the right course of mankind is towards some sort of group consciousness (I know, sounds spacy, but I can’t think of another way to put it) rather than independent thought. and local responses to local problems. I have to go with the Libertarians for this one - the best people to sort out local problems are local people. The best system to protect a nation is a nationalist one.
I should figure out how to say that better, shouldn’t I?
I guess what I am trying to say is that your example only serves true in the ‘man serves society’ ideal; I happen to think that society should serve man, so don’t really think we’re ever going to agree on this point.
You are missing the point. Every society is a group consciousness in some sense. But its individuals remain individuals. At present, every nation-state is a separate group consciousness from every other – except in Europe, where they are gradually evolving a broader sense of Europpean community and identity. I think that’s a good trend, and if it culminates in a world government, so much the better! But individuals would remain individuals.
This is I agree with. Which, for example, is why, while I would strongly defend marriage against federal regulation, I would also oppose state marriage law amendments that discriminate against certain groups.
I understand your point about wealthier regions separating themselves from poorer ones in order to decrease their taxes, but, by the same token, is it really fair for a city to engulf a suburb, thus increasing the inhabitants’ taxes and–if building projects are then undertaken–changing the neighborhood to something the overwhelming majority of its populace does not want?
Well we can agree that smaller political entities give more power to individuals simply because there are fewer people voting on the laws for a region of the same size. Although I could believe that local offices are more corrupt than federal ones, I would attribute this to a lack of participation among the citizens of said county, rather than to some inherent flaw.
Heh. That’s one of the few things I like about them.
Technically true, but when one makes such an inflammatory statement, prefacing it with “IMO” does little to mitigate the effect.
Yeah, Ayn Rand was certainly not the most compassionate person, but there is a huge difference between not caring about the problems of others and creating them. So, notwithstanding your parenthetical remark, I’d say you’re wrong.
So, if most of the libertarians you’ve known don’t subscribe to a Randian aesthetic, it’s not really fair to tar them with the minority brush, is it?
Sure, it’s plausible–maybe even likely–that if more states joined some sort of supranational conglomerate, there would be fewer wars. But in this respect the international situation differs from the federalism debate only in the concept of state sovereignty (the constituent states of the US not having the same autonomy as nation-states in the world). Essentially, you’d have more stability, but less room for disagreements in what laws should be implemented within a state (GomiBoy’s reference to England and the EU being an example of this). However, if the EU, in your view, is important to preserve peace between individual states (and not to meddle in civil affairs), that would make it a bit more palatable for me.
Actually what he said was that he rarely reads the papers. Interview with Brit Hume about a year ago…surely you’ve read the transcript?
He gets his “news” filtered through his staffers. IMHO, thats why he is so out of touch with the average American. That and the fact that he was raised with a silver spoon in his nose…er…mouth.
What I wrote was, “IMO, a lot of modern American libertarians have a lot more in common with that rat-bastard than they have with John Stuart Mill.” Not all, not most, but a lot.
Expanding on post 67 – suburbanites benefit by having the city within driving distance. That’s why they chose to live in Edge City instead of Montana. It’s only fair they should pay taxes to support the city’s needs.
Yes, but they only use a portion of the city’s resources (through, say, visiting public museums) so it would be unfair to tax them fully. On the other hand, if you believe the city should annex the surrounding suburbs and that the entire area ought to be integrated into a single political unit, what’s the point of having any distinct localities? After all, the residents of a nearby city could also benefit from the first city’s resources without paying taxes for them. Should they have to pay too?
Okay, but I still contend that you’re wrong because ignoring someone’s misfortunes is not the same as causing them.
IMO, it would be better if every SMSA (Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area) in the United States were consolidated into a single political entity – which might then be divided into boroughs with some limited measure of self-government, as in NYC, but the metropolitan government would be there to make all the growth-management decisions and to provide law enforcement, emergency services, and public transportation – more cheaply and efficiently than small town governments can, because of economies of scale. One tax base, and one policymaking council which everybody has the same vote in electing.
But now we’re getting way, way off-topic.
No, it is not the same thing. That does not make it a wise, just or moral choice.
I agree that it’s not a moral choice.
Anyway, to get back on track, I see no reason whatsoever to vote for Bush and only a few reasons to vote for Kerry.
And I’ll echo RTFirefly’s comment about Putin; those two have a lot in common.
Generally, yes, though human rights should be uniform and universal. This is why the European Union’s structure is designed including the subsidiarity principle.
To be clear, “Community”, capitalized, refers to the European Community of nation-states.
Time zones got me again - I really wanted to discuss this further, but turns out when it’s mid-day there it’s 11pm here and the GF was frowning at me!
And that’s where we disagree - a world government (and organizations like the WTO) is great for rich folks, like western European countries and the US. It’s not so good for poor folks, like the Bangladeshis that work in the ‘grey market’ of the UK, or the sweatshop workers in China. The don’t get minimum wage, or health benefits, or anything, yet they are working to keep a global economy floating.
That’s my point - society has a strange way of over time benfiting only itself and the richest members of it who can bend society to their will; the poor always get screwed.
But as this is quite the hijack from the OP, I’ll let it go for now and just realize that I probably won’t ever agree with you on this point…
On the OP, though, I also see no reasons to vote for Bush and many to vote for Kerry. But I always vote negative - I don’t vote for the one I dislike. To be honest, Kerry is only a bit less repugnant to me than Bush, but then most politicians are pretty sleazy and self-serving in most regards.
IMO -
Kerry is slightly better than Bush on the economy, but his plans have almost as many unfunded mandates as Bush although he is a bit less likely to give tax breaks to billionaires.
Kerry is slightly better than Bush on the environment, but still supports self-regulation of some industries (like that’s ever going to happen) and doesn’t seem to have a solid plan on how to improve the air so that maybe my kids can breathe in any city in the US.
Kerry is slighty better than Bush in international relations, but goes a bit too far in suggesting a global test for defense reasons (there is still room for unilateralism as long as the US populace overwhelmingly supports it, without having to seek support from the UN, although if the highly divided US population overwhelmingly supports something the UN is likely to as well)
Kerry and Bush are pretty equal in supporting things like the WTO and NAFTA (both of which I think are a travesty of human rights abuses and environmental damage)
Kerry is slightly better than Bush in that Kerry can change his mind (something Bush seems unable to do) and can admit he was wrong about something (which again Bush seems unable to do), but his capability to flip-flop alarms me (as most Democrat’s capability to self-justify flip-flopping alarms me)
Of course when you throw in Iraq and WMD and all the other abject failures of the Bush Administration, I think it’s high time we toss him out and try someone else.
What happened? Where you hit by lightning? Sudden brain trauma? Poisonous spider bite?
(kidding, kidding.)
Why not?
Sure, states aren’t always right. Sometimes by mere chance alone a state is bound to get things wrong and the feds get things right. However, the idea that the states should have power over the federal government certainly is a political principal in it’s own right! It even has it’s own ammendment on the bill of rights.
This is meaningless. I could point to a horrible policy made by the federal government and say that respecting “federal authority” is a bad thing.
I disagree with this. Sure, there are plenty of incompetant local officials. However, they are under much more direct control. A town government is much less likely to overstep it’s bounds because it’s under much more direct control. If I don’t like something that the town is doing, I can show up at a town meeting and have my voice be heard. The same is true of the state level, to a lesser extent. A good example is the big dig here in Boston. A 2 Billion dollar project going over budget by 13 billion dollars simply would not have happened if it wasn’t the federal government’s money that was being spent. The citizens of Massachusetts would never have tolerated it.
This isn’t true of any libertarian’s that I know, and not true of any that I know of on the SDMB. Libertarians just have different solutions. They believe that the “tough love” type policy of cutting the government support to the poor will actually reduce poverty and ultimately help. You are free to disagree that this is effective, but it’s just not fair to say that they hate poor people.
I, like most American’s, am strongly opposed to internationalism. If something is the right thing to do, then do it. Whether or not France and Germany approves is not something that should be part of the decision. Kerry hasn’t shut up about how much we need allies, and he has a history of siding with the UN. He is an internationalist, if not by a universal standard, certainly by an American one.
That’s because there is no global government or international trade organization in which those people have any direct political representation. Europeans get to elect representatives to the European Parliament – directly; they don’t have to just elect their own governments and let the governments elect the EP members. If we had something like that on a global scale, world goverment would be good for the poor because its politicians would have to pay attention to their interests or get booted out of office, and we might have global minimum-wage laws, etc. As it is now, WTO, policy is set mainly by bankers accountable to their national governments and their stockholders. Note the crucial difference between the EU and NAFTA: NAFTA is not governed by any democratically elected body.
By “global test,” he meant any military action by the U.S. should meet a general global (or at least G-7) standard of justification and rationality, not that the U.S. should actually submit the decision for foreign countries’ approval.
I don’t think so, or at least the way you describe is exactly how the UK sends it’s reps to the EU. They are selected by the government in power, not through any sort of popular vote.
Of course you can vote out those who do the selection, but the public does not directly vote for EU representatives.
