I’m not sure I understand what you’ve said, ucci. I said what I said because I’ve so often heard you tell people they’re wrong, albeit sometimes politely, and because you’ve so often insulted my intelligence. Trying to answer you is like trying to pull a wet sheet off my face only to have it return. After a while, it simply becomes tiresome. Nothing is accomplished; people repeat themselves; it’s a dead-end rather than a two-way discussion of very normal, rather mundane, differences.
I have a couple of very good friends, both conservatives. We’ve had years of discussion on-line. They’ve taught me a great deal about politics in general and the conservative political ideology in particular. We’ve had a great deal of fun over the years and I love them very much–they’re still conservative and I’m still liberal in some things and not so liberal in others.
You'd think these token friends of yours would have mentioned George Soros, academic bias, Obamacare, media bias, abortion, or the electoral process at some point over the years. And yet when I mention these things, you react as though learning what conservatives think about them is either impossible, or an idea that never occurred to you until I brought it up. You've talked to conservatives about politics for years, and yet when ETP brings up liberal bias in the media, you react like you've never heard of such a thing and need examples? You've talked to us for years, but find it utterly mysterious as to why some of us would have objections to paying for somebody else's contraception, and the only reason you can think of is sexism? How did you manage to learn a great deal about conservative political ideology, and yet not know what we think about anything?
This is a real problem, lizbeth. It's [i]hard[/i] to talk to progressives because you think you know so much more than you do. I would have loved to have had a talk with you in the Supreme Court thread about[i] Lemon v Kurtzman[/i] or the Sherbert test and how those things influenced the Hobby Lobby decision...but you're stuck in this fringe 'it must be because sexism' thing that makes it seem like you don't know that much about it while at the same time proclaiming that your side in this issue is grounded in the law, and conservatives are basing their views on gut feelings.
I mean, think about it- you declared that the Government fining young working people 150 dollars for not buying health insurance is no big deal at the same time as you're complaining that it's somehow outrageous that working women will have to pay the 20-50 dollars a month for their own birth control pills. That makes zero sense at all if you're being even slightly non-partisan.
I think you’re trying to build a rational, philosophically rigorous case for what you believe, which is good. But I think you’re trying to build it out of the political rhetoric coming from one camp and one camp only, sometimes without seeming to realize that that rhetoric is all you’ve heard.
And I think the same about you, ucci, which is one reason for saying this portion of a thread about reforming Democracy is a dead-end.
I know about the Lemon v Kurtzman case, and several other ‘religious’ cases, and the Sherbert test. As I said in another thread, I’m also reading the text of the Hobby Lobby decision. (You forgot to mention the RFRA, by the way.) There are times when you are very mistaken about me and your word choices reflect your mistaken ideas.
Foe example, my two on-line friends are not ‘token’ conservatives. Some time ago, we all subscribed to a chat group. One of us was in Iraq, at the time. The site owner asked us to continue to write and pit the conservative dialogue against a liberal dialogue. Two men against one woman. The owner liked the way we wrote, that was the basis for her ‘editorial’ decision. At the beginning, it was their views about the Iraqi invasion and subsequent war. Their views were for the war in order to ‘protect US strategic interests’ in the ME. My job was to counter that position. This eventually led to e-mails in which we learned about each other personally. They started to soften their language and I started studying the Constitution and its historical background. Ultimately, we were all banned from the site because we were too good at our ‘jobs’–which detracted from the owner–and because, quite frankly, I’m a better writer than the owner, which, again, turned attention away from her.
I’m the daughter of an Army officer, a Brat. The Military is conservative, probably because of the officer’s oath wherein they swear to defend the Constitution and follow the orders of the CiC. My father was also raised in the Lutheran church. My mother was Catholic. My father, as was required at the time by the Catholic Church, swore to raise any children as Catholic, and he did so. We all went to parochial schools whenever they were available. I started questioning things when I was a pre-teen–both religion and politics–and why I was here, etc., etc. I’m not being censorious in any way when I say this. This was life at the time and before my birth.
My on-line friends and I talked a lot about ObamaCare (and RomneyCare), about the pros and cons of the various political candidates, about politics in general, about the legalization of marijuana, various economic theories, pretty much everything I talk about here.
We also live in an upper-middle class, conservative Town. One of our next door neighbors, for example, manages the family trust, deciding which aid programs to endow all over the world, but especially in Africa. She and her husband are both marathon racers, running for charity. Her family is among the wealthy elite. My husband and I are both elected water commissioners for ****County Water District #1, established in 1888. Another, former, neighbor convinced the government that he had software that could predict terrorist threats. It turned out to be phoney, but not until after Homeland Security bought the idea. He was never prosecuted despite the damage he did, perhaps because of embarrassment on the part of the FBI and Homeland Security.
I’ve experienced at first hand the inequality of women in the work place with regard to wages and promotion. I’ve had supervisors admit that it was because I’m a female. I’ve been subjected to the machinations of work place politics by both male and female supervisors. I’ve been sexually harassed at work and could do nothing about it, because of those machinations.
I’ve taken birth control meds to correct hormone imbalance. I’ve never been able to have children. I know what the costs are–for being a woman. My co-pay for my hormone pills, alone, is $88 a month. I’m thinking very seriously about stopping them because of the cost, but I’m afraid for my over-all health if I were to do so. Osteoporosis runs in my family. I have to decide what’s most important.
One of my nieces asked my recently what my philosophy was. I told her that I felt her question was ridiculous. My philosophy changes, as I believe it should, as I learn more. Besides, it takes ‘recognized’ philosophers years–and several published books–to try to define their thoughts. I’ve learned one thing, however.
No matter what their views–financial, social, political, religious–people are people. We all face obstacles as we bumble along in life. We all make decisions that we hope are correct decisions, at least at the time and under the circumstances in which we made them. We all work at living. None of us had any choice but to be born where, when, and why we were born. None of us chose our parents, our genetic background, our ancestry. We just are.
Neither you nor Eric have shown me any ‘empirical proof’ for what you believe. You talk about media bias and I counter it with the plethora of conservatism in the print and electronic media. You both quote from or cite only conservative media. You talk about academic bias which I never experienced in my 5 yrs. in university. The only liberal bias I found was outside the classroom and I have an MA.
George Soros keeps a low profile and didn’t come up in our conversations–nor did the Koch brothers. When I ask for examples, I’m asking Eric to tell me where he got his information. I’m interested because I’d like to learn about what he’s learned. And I question. I question everything I read.
I know what you think about a lot of things because of what you’ve written. But what you’ve written sounds to me like the ‘party line’ of conservatism. Where is the ‘you’ in all the rhetoric? Is it possible for you to exhibit even a scintilla of your thoughts if they deviate, in any way, from the party line. Come on, for goodness sake! Haven’t you questioned anything about the current conservative ideology, which goes way beyond conservative ideology in the past.
Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you still hate Catholics and Jews, dark skinned people with coarse hair (African American, Native American, and Asian American)–maybe you want your world instead of anyone else’s world. If so, you can rejoice and be glad. It seems to me we’re getting closer and closer.
Please excuse me if my words come across as scathing criticism. I’m so deathly tired of all this. I don’t really care about what you seem to want me to say.
I’m conservative in some things and liberal in others. I accept ObamaCare because no one else has been at all successful in coming up with a way to at least try to get equal health care to everyone in our country, but I also realize that there are many, many objections to the Act, most probably because it doesn’t answer everything for every person. But it should have at least pointed out the disparities of the former system of health care; the high cost; the cost of the lack of preventive medicine; the insurance games played by the insurance industry which really control what sort of care will be allowed individuals.
Two of my nieces have different forms of congenital autoimmune conditions–lupus and scleroderma. One sister’s daughter, the one with scleroderma, managed to have a child, despite chronic endometriosis for which birth control meds had been prescribed. The other niece, the daughter of another of my sisters, chose tubal ligation rather than risk the chance of passing on lupus to her progeny in the future. What’s the conservative position on either of those situations?
What was the conservative thinking when the very famous jazz vocalist, Bessie Smith, was in a car accident in the South and her right arm had been almost totally severed at the shoulder. She was a black woman and, at the time, could only be admitted to a black hospital. When an ambulance was dispatched, the White EMTs had to take her to a Black hospital, even though it was farther away than the closest hospital. She died in the ambulance.
Are these the results of conservative thinking? No, not the stories of my nieces. But what could have happened to the niece with lupus–the one who chose tubal ligation–if the cost of the procedure were denied her? Would she then have been forced into taking contraceptives in order to prevent the possibility of carrying on the family tradition of lupus? But what if the cost of those contraceptives was more than she could afford? What then? Does she give up sexual intercourse with her husband?
Perhaps men are more comfortable thinking that women have no sexuality–that sexuality is a male characteristic. Guess again. We do. But time binds us as far as having children is concerned. When that time comes to an end, our bodies start to switch off, chemically–hormonally. Seems as if God has created women to be baby factories, doesn’t it? I’m sure that thought is somewhere in your “Holy Book.” If that’s true, however, why didn’t God also turn off the sexual excitement women feel during intercourse?
I’ve ranted long enough. But, as I said earlier, I’m so deathly tired of it all. I just don’t understand how any political ideology has anything to do with life. It has, to me, only to do with the structure of the system under which we live. The military, for example, isn’t democratic; at best, it’s socialistic. Organized religion isn’t democratic; at best it’s an oligarchy, as is capitalism with its emphasis on corporate personhood. And in all of the welter of opinion and ideology, there is bumbling humanity.
Hopefully, bumbling humanity will continue despite all attempts to quash it by human institutions that have gained their ‘personhood’.
Sleep softly, everyone, and have only gentle dreams.
The difference, Liz, is that you think that because you know very little about conservatism and simply react that way whenever you see a conservative speak. In reality, I'm more educated (formally educated, not "I have this one friend" educated) on progressive ideology and politics than most progressives are.
Mistaken about you? OKay. So you know ll about the Lemon and Sherbert tests and how they obviously apply to this case, but instead of talking about them, you chalk the whole thing up to sexism and men not understanding women's health issues. So you made a conscious choice to be a misandronist instead of talking about the law...what sorts of mistaken conclusions do you think a person like me might come to on the basis of that?
Seriously- since YOU ALREADY KNOW that a standard with long precedent is that the State can't force people to act against their religious principles unless [i]a compelling state interest[/i] is shown and unless furthermore it is shown that that need [i]is being pursued in the way least burdensome to religion[/i], and since you know the Sherbert test was upheld in the 90's, and since you know the Supreme Court's decision clearly relies upon this standard, then you have absolutely no excuse for accusing the supreme court of misogyny or profound ignorance about women's health. YOU ALREADY KNOW they made their decision based on a straightforward interpretation of the Sherbert test, which a very liberal source [motherjones.com/politics/201 ... -obamacare](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/hobby-lobby-supreme-court-obamacare) endorses as the way the case should be decided (before they knew what the result would be, of course.)
I don't care! Somehow you did all that and managed to come out of it completely ignorant about conservatives views on this subject that YOU chose to start a conversation on. You can't expect me to explain to YOU how you managed to participate in this illustrious bi-partisan think tank and yet never hear about media or academic bias, or that there's this George Soros guy that does everything you hate about the Koch Brothers only for progressives. It happened, I don't know how! You could have a PhD in political science and be the editor of a National Review for all I care...you still somehow managed to not know these things that are super important to the matters at hand.
Bullshit. We talk about media bias and you play dumb like it's the first time you've heard of it, and demand us to provide the examples you could have provided for yourself with 30 seconds on Google.
And you bombard me with your autobiography like it makes your argument stronger.
OK, you have MA. You know what else you have? An internet connection. You don't need me or Eric to provide you examples of media or academic bias; all we're going to do is the same thing that you could be doing now; typing 'academic bias' into a search engine and skimming over the first page of hits for the most relevant entries, including wikipedia. If anything requires an explanation, it's how I'm supposed to take you seriously when you throw all your credentials at me while at the same time telling me that liberal academic and media bias is [i]news to you[/i].
But don't you think your attitude has something to do with it? Right now, right this moment, it would take you 15 seconds- literally 15 seconds- to bring up the wikipedia entry on academic bias , which will link you to more studies and information than you could read all weekend. Right there at your fingertips. But instead, your attitude is "I'm allowed to pretend it doesn't exist until somebody else does that work for me". Well, here you go:
There. Now you know there’s such a thing as academic bias, and you can stop implying that me and Eric made it up.
Since you have an MA, I don’t have to tell you (but I will) to skip the actual article since it’s trash, and go right to the bibliography of studies, editorials, books and etc. on both sides of an issue that you somehow didn’t know existed.
Is there where I type a long sob story about all the liberals I've known, about what my views used to be when I was a mohawk-sporting, pot-smoking, God-hating, youth, and my tragic story of redemption and education where I discovered conservatism while maintaining a healthy respect for my liberal roots that proves my non-partisan chops, whereupon you will suddenly respect me and see my arguments in a completely new light, even though they are the exact same arguments? Is this where I confide in you about all my liberal friends, and how well we get along, in full contradiction of the attitude we take here/ Are you actually inviting me to do what you did, as if it would change anything? How about no? How about I refuse to play the "The person who garners the most pity and grandstanding wins the argument" game, and we actually discuss the fucking issue at hand?
Which things are you conservative about, out of curiosity? I see liberals say this a lot like they need to prove they're really deep thinkers by 'going against the grain'', but the things the liberal is conservative about never seem to actually come up.
Oh Jesus Christ, here we go with more of the autobiography that you think makes your arguments better for some reason. I really do not care who you are or what you've done. Do conservatives never have sick family members? Does having a political issue affect you personally automatically make you right about that issue? Or are you just trying to lay a foundation where if I express a political view, you can justify your venom and rage (again) through how personally you take it?
More man-hating horseshit when a discussion of the law that you know so much about would have been better advised.
Reforming democracy would need to start by reforming the people, they’re the ones that will make the system work. They need to learn to educate themselves and learn that responsibility is not so scary.
Also democracy is hard work, do people want to put in so much energy compared to having fun? Our current society suggests that people do not value it so highly.
You wanna know what I think? I think we should keep the definitions of liberalism and conservatism simple. From what I understand, a liberal is one who thinks it is the government’s responsibility to make life better for the people, each individual equally (all things considered). A conservative is one who thinks the government’s roll in the public sphere should be minimized in order to allow a free market to do the job of improving life for the people.
I want to get rid of all this other crap–this “liberals think that conservatives are evil,” or “only liberals think that war should be a last resort”. I don’t know what thinking people are evil or war being a last resort has to do with the above definitions. It’s clear to me that this rivalry between conservatives and liberals has been an ongoing thing in the US for several decades and is part of your tradition; The polarization is undeniable which makes the biases inescapable, which is what the “lining up of the poles” comes from (see the last few posts of my other thread: Fellow Americans, I ask you this…). Just so you know, I’m not taking it seriously.
The conservatives in this thread are obviously very bitter at the liberals, and this makes what they say about them suspect in my mind. I’m taking it with a grain of salt.
It has been very enlightening however. Understanding this tradition of bitter rivalry between conservatives and liberals is playing a very pivotal roll in how I understand the issue of political corruption. Now, whenever I hear about this or that way in which Obama or some senator is ruining the country, it now strikes me more as some conservative or liberal tripe (and based on which party the politician in question is from, I can guess which group the charge is coming from), and really doesn’t mean there’s anything out of the ordinary going on, not even that the politician in question is doing anything wrong.
(btw, the idea that the liberals have taken over the media, the universities, and Hollywood sounds like a conspiracy theory).
We tend towards generalizations when we become bitter. And we want to say “they’re all like this” or “they all do that,” but I’m not bitter yet, and I don’t want to hear it.
So far, Ucci and Eric have suggested going back to basics (back to the original Constitution) as a way of solving the problem of political corruption. At first I took this as representative of Americans overall, but now I understand it as representative of conservative views.
So be it. I want to pursue this line of thought anyway. What must we do in order to make strides towards this goal? As this is unlikely to be representative of what Americans want overall, will we have to knock down a colossal wall of liberalism?
I hear you, Mark.
I think that the first reform that needs to be made to the people is to get them acting as one unit. This discussion we’ve been having about conservatives and liberals tells me that Americans have issues with each other to get over first before they can act as a united front against political corruption.
Yes. This is a really important thing to realize. If people are talking about personalities and specific current events, it's probably tripe. The drama and exaggeration people apply to Obama or Boehner or anybody else who is doing things they are getting updates on moment-to-moment is shocking. Now, maybe somebody is ruining the country or whatever, but it won't be because they're a terrible person or because some political party needs to win every election in order to save America- the answer will be empirical; what is happening to the economy, what has happened when some plan has been tried in the past, what are the people who are actually in a position to know saying about this or that.
And the idea that journalists, university professors, and hollywood writers are split about 50/50 between liberals and conservatives is something you could disconfirm with literally 2 minutes of effort on a decent search engine. We're not talking about who killed JFK here- there's absolutely no reason to rely on 'what it sounds like' as if we can only guess at the truth.
Now that’s what my two minutes got me. You aren’t going to find equal and opposite statistics coming from the left- and indeed, my sources above are from a mix of partisan backgrounds.
So to talk about empirical reality and not how bitter some notions sound to you- do you see how, given the percentage of journalists and professors are liberals, that campaign finance reform is going pretty much always benefit liberals?
There’s not much difference there. Most Americans are conservative about most issues.
Well, those are two different questions. In order to get America back to it's Constitutional roots, sure there's a 'colossal wall of liberalism' that has to be knocked down, but that wall has very little to do with what Americans want overall. There's a reason why Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and stuff like that ends up being extremely popular- when conservative views are expressed (by conservatives, and not strawmen presented by liberals), Americans flock to them and support them.
If you want to get corruption out of politics, the first thing you have to do is decide what corruption really is. And it's not 'when the other party accomplishes something' or 'when interest groups I don't agree with manage to get their message out'. The simple fact is, at the end of the day the United States is just not a very corrupt nation compared to the rest of the world, once you tune out all the usage of the word that is a purely partisan tactic.
First of all, I’m so incredibly disappointed with the information pool that I don’t even trust Google hits all that much. It didn’t used to be this way. It became this way with me after becoming thoroughly frustrated with my attempts to research the facts surrounding global warming. And again, I became frustrated with my attempts at researching sexism in the work place and the wage gap and the glass ceiling, etc. For every source that seems trustworthy and to confirm one side of the issue, another one comes along at a later date, seeming equally trustworthy, but disconfirming the first. After a while, I started to regard the information pool (the internet being the bulk of it) as like mad cow disease–if some of them are infected, might as well consider the entire heard infected. I began looking at the debates that rage over this or that issue as like a game: which side can find more sources supporting their position than the other? Whether the sources are accurate or reliable doesn’t really seem to be the point anymore.
I have no idea whether I can trust the links you provided to me or not, and if I can, I have no idea how to interpret them (they say, mainly, that the ratio of liberals to conservatives in universities and journalism is increasing, but couldn’t this reflect a general trend among Americans overall?). I don’t even know how you searched for that. Did you type in “sites confirming liberals outnumber conservatives in universities and journalism”? I know you most likely didn’t do that, but my point is that finding google hits that confirm one’s position doesn’t really mean much to me, which is why I’m not motivated to spend two minutes finding them.
But for the sake of this discussion, I’ll do it:
I typed in the keywords “liberal conservative education journalism hollywood”–seemed pretty comprehensive and non-leading.
Top 10 hits:
worldissues360.com/index.php … ons-27110/ ← Sites the recurrent figure of 80% liberals in the educational institution (both K-12 and post-secondary). They even compared one institution to Stalin’s Soviet Union in virtue of their having an “exit board,” a committee who interrogates near-graduates for their political leanings and considers withholding their certificate if they are found not to toe the liberal line.
becker-posner-blog.com/2008/ … osner.html ← Explains a theory about why Hollywood is disproportionately liberal: It isn’t that Hollywood attracts liberals, it’s that it attracts extremists and we simply live in times when liberal principles and values are fashionable and therefore more extremists end up being liberal.
youtube.com/watch?v=viWNot4_yAY ← youtube video explaining how a conservative group in Hollywood, the Friends of Abe, have been targeted by the IRS for having suspicious political agendas after applying for tax exempt status on their donations.
conservapedia.com/Conservative_media ← the conservatives wikipedia; an article on “conservative media,” sectors of the American media in which conservatives have a foothold. Includes a list of conservative Hollywood actors, news programs, talk radio shows, newspapers and magazines, media watchdogs, media personalities, and journalists. The article states that although the liberals have control over the national media, conservative media is on the rise while liberal media is declining.
letterstoconservativeparents.wor … -reliable/ ← A blog exposing Fox News as biased towards conservatism, the left-leaning slant of the media as a myth, and Fox News as misinforming their viewers and even lying to them.
bernardgoldberg.com/bulletin … -just-ask/ ← Bernard Goldberg’s blog/article on why a recent pole showing that 28% of journalists claim to be liberal democrats is bullshit.
books.google.ca/books?id=y4FgqcA … od&f=false ← James Hirsen’s book Hollywood Nation: Left Coast Lies, Old Media Spin, and The New Media Revolution (didn’t read it). The title speaks for itself.
culteducation.com/group/1257 … onist.html ← David Stein is really David Cole. Before he was unmasked as the Holocaust denier David Cole, he was David Stein, conservative party host to many of Hollywood’s other conservatives. He never was a liberal, but that he was a holocaust denier was shocking to many nonetheless. The only relevance to the liberal saturated media theory is that Cole claims that conservatives in Hollywood are a “persecuted minority”.
So, out of the 8 of 10 hits which are actually relevant to the topic at hand, 7 concur with the liberal dominated media theory and 1 denies it. So what does that mean? All it means in my mind is that it’s a widely held theory, a theory of liberal conspirators for sure. But to be fair, if it were false, one would think there would be just as many liberal hits countering the accusations against them, but my search found only one liberal denier. Also, is it really fair to call it a “conspiracy” theory when, as a few articles suggest, the educational institutions are quite open about their discriminatory practices against conservatives ← conspiracy implies secrecy… but then again, other articles suggest there is a high degree of denial about liberal stances within journalism… so go figure.
Now, to get this back on track, what I believe happened was this: Liz started out by suggesting a law against partisan financial support towards political parties or campaigns. I believe this was proposed as a possible solution to the problem of paying politicians off, distracting them with money rather than the jobs they were voted into office to perform. And as far as that goes, I think it’s a reasonable proposal.
Then Ucci and Eric came along and pointed out how that would give significant leverage to liberals across the nation if only because they still have the media on their side. Here, Liz denied there is any such bias in the media. AFAIK, she could be being sincere at least insofar as here experience goes, but I could be wrong. If I’m wrong, then it’s here that she adopted an ulterior motive, but before this point, I think she was honestly trying to solve a problem which, as I understand it, all Americans agree is a problem: politicians being bought off by Big Business.
But here’s a question: to suggest that the liberal control over the media is a leg up that the liberals have in influencing politics in America sort of suggests that the main source of campaign financing are conservatives. Why aren’t there any liberals donating? Also, why can’t Liz’s proposal just be met with a counter-proposal: give conservatives more opportunities to enter into the media and the educational institutions. I mean, the proposal that we cut partisan financial support to political campaigns isn’t really going to fly anyway–why should we let the same dismal prospect stop us in proposing something equally impractical as stop barring conservatives from the media and education sectors?
(and btw, this sounds like Liz’s analysis of pro-gun lobbyists being an example of corruption in the political process; the liberals dominate the media and the education sectors ← there’s corruption, our system is broken! No it’s not; just get off your lazy conservative asses and fight your way into the media and education sectors like your constitution allows you to. You’re starting to sound like feminists wining and complaining that men aren’t letting them into the work sector).
Like I said in my last post, I’d like to get into how we can turn back the American clock so that the Constitution is reverted to its fundamental basics, but now I want to put that on hold to see how the above unfolds.
A couple of points, contributors to Google pay Google to run their articles. By that I mean, any source can publish something and then pay Google to cite it. It’s a form of advertising and it’s all open to the Freedom of Information Act, anyway. Why not use Google to advertise?
Second, the whole fol-de-rol about going back to the original intent of the Constitution is just that–fol-de-rol. The basic Constitution, without the amendments, concerns the structure of the government–whether Federal or State (counties, municipalities, etc.) The amendments are changes made mostly to add to that structure as time changes people’s lives. The amendment process, as set out by the Constitution, is pretty stringent.
The SCOTUS makes further changes based on interpretation of the laws approved by Congress at both the Federal and state levels and how individual cases are presented to it. The SCOTUS decisions don’t change the Constitution, but they do establish case law. Case law is the foundation of US jurisprudence because it provides precedents.
While nothing is impossible, getting back ‘to the original intent of the Constitution’ comes close.
What happens if an overwhelming majority of Americans want to revert the Constitution back? Will there be resistance by the government? By a small minority (of course there will be, but will they stifle the political process in order to get their way?)
Oh, and change is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean a nation can’t return to one of its prior states.
Assuming that a majority wanted to get back to the “original intent” of the Constitution, I would imagine the first thing needed would be a study of the language of the document in an attempt to understand the meaning of the words as they were used 200+ years ago. Then, the SCOTUS findings, if there are any pertaining to the laws in question that stemmed from the Constitution, would have to be combed through to determine how the SCOTUS interpreted the words, and when. An accurate history of the time would need to be developed, remembering that history is very fluid and that it, too, has been re-interpreted over time.
Once that’s accomplished, Congress would propose an amendment for consideration by the various state legislative branches. It takes 3/4 of the states to approve an amendment; however, the states can also change the amendment to suit the needs of the states’ citizens, should there be objections to the wording of the proposed amendment. If that happens, and if 3/4 of the states haven’t agreed to the proposed original amendment, the proposed amendment goes back to the Federal Congress to be rewritten and the process starts all over again.
This is my understanding of the Constitutional Amendment process as outlined in the Constitution. But wait, there’s more. While it takes 3/4 of the states to approve a proposed amendment, it only takes 9 states to ratify the new Constitution. (All amendments, when agreed to, become a part of the Constitution. A new amendment means a new Constitution.) There were only 13 states when the Constitution was first ratified, all clustered along the Eastern Seaboard. The citizens were predominantly English. Things have changed a lot since then.
So, while the task may not be an impossible one, I believe it would be extremely difficult to go back to any point in time and ‘re-interpret’ our Constitution according to how the practice of government used to be–back in the “good old days.”
You might enjoy reading about the Interstate Commerce Act. It’s an excellent example of how laws have changed over a bit more than a century. It was passed in 1887 and was the first legislation brought by the Federal government to regulate an industry in the US, in this case the railroads. It’s not at all a bad read if you’re at all interested in such things. And I’m sure many Hollywood films have been made about it.
Sure it seems to make sense in the same way that a social conservative is more conservative than a liberal. It just seems part of the definition. But you may be putting more there than I am picking up on.
No, I personally attempt to follow the Platinum rule, it always made more sense than the Golden rule.
No, charity cannot be forced at gunpoint, it stops it from being charity and makes it a matter of law. It is not the governments job to provide for charity, for other reasons than just removing the entire point. (Which is giving of oneself willingly to help others.)
Yes, though Conservatives are not prone to the normal perceived version of protesting. Not every conservative was for those wars, and regardless of what is done with them we always support the troops.
Again, you present a pile of assumptions, to any response I give I must provide proof, it’s a trick Liberals play so they don’t have to prove anything and conservatives fall for all to often, it puts us on defensive grounds… This time though, I ask you for proof that war is good for business… Don’t just hint at an assumption you believe, state what you think and provide proof.
I’ll believe that.
Assuming you mean the keynesian/progressive problem with new information. There was a babysitting ring in DC, when you joined the ring you were given a number of tokens. The tokens could be traded for hours of babysitting. Because it was done via people who had to go through an oversight committee, it was desirable to get in, all these people had clean pasts. But quickly people started hoarding the tokens, so that they would not be stuck in the group should something happen. So a couple of members who were economists suggested adding a couple more tokens in, and it worked, suddenly those tokens were passed around and things flowed.
This is the keynesian economics model, it is why the print more money, it is why they believe in demand side economics. The problem is, it does not account for new information, for new ways to prosper. It is a static, inclosed system, unable to account for new ways to babysit… But that is the theory/practical applications with great controlling factors…
Liberal ideas are the same as they were during FDR (seriously go back and read books from that time frame, they say the same things that the “new” books do now). And they failed, most economists accept that they prolonged the great depression, they did not end it. We crawled out of it despite the restrictions and largely because we had the only infrastructure, combined with double the previous labor resources (because women had entered the labor market), which lowered wages and costs to produce. We would be wealthier as a country should FDR have never been elected…
Or do you mean examples of things the free market has produced? Refrigerators, Personal Computers, Gas grills, Cheap TV’s, ETC. These are object produced in the free market, government has no reason to produce them. Many of these things could not have been foreseen at one point in time. When people attempt to stop the ups and downs of the free market they also put restrictions on the solutions to problems.
Recycling is a free market answer to a problem. Yes, recycling started by a bunch of fucking hippies that wanted to save the earth, and it failed, miserably… Thankfully the free market stepped in and people realized they could make money off of recycling, taking peoples trash and turning it into resources. For the keynesian model to work, no new information must be found. The reason for the “end to history,” for science to have solved all our problems, is because new information changes things. Stop all new information and you can actually appropriate stuff to make everything equal.
And I have no problem with that.
Eh, confirmation bias is everywhere.
Ok, that was supposed to be slanted media… I’m not sure what the hell I was thinking, my excuse is I was high. (Not a usual occurrence for me, I was in a lot of pain and it was a temporary solution to a temporary problem.) Wow, just wow.
But, ok, at this point, all newspapers, including the NYT publish things that are one sided while pretending they are not… Or I could point to the news.
Just about everything by Gladstone. (More I’d have to find and that would be more work than I should put in), I’ll also point to this video. Ideally they would be presenting in a unbiased way, showing both opinions… But the only thing they talk about is what the dissenting opinion was. It is so slight, and very well presented, but watch twice and look for a positive view of the verdict, they don’t even really go into it, but the dissenting opinion was quoted at length. If you didn’t know the other side, you wouldn’t understand why they voted the way they did, creating a feeling of victimization. Why they did what they did is for another thread, that opinion was presented in a one sided slanted view is what I’m pointing out.
gib, I enjoy you. I think you are attempting to play moderator and not take sides. I can truly appreciate it.
Americans are never going to get over these issues. If taken as cultural differences, remember, the US is made up of every other culture on the planet. The only thing that sets them apart is that the people of the US are the descendants of those willing to risk everything to find a better life. Canada, as you know, has many of the same problems. Do you really think all of Canada gets along?
A united front already exists, the problem comes from defining political corruption. Is it just an abuse of the laws? Or does the spirit of the law come in?
I doubt Ucci and Eric are without their own opinions on what the original intent of the Constitution was. I don’t think people are crying out “Let’s revert back to the original Constitution… whatever the hell it was.” I would think most people have an idea of what it is they want to get back to.
What would the amendment be in this case?
What does it mean to “ratify” a Constitution? How many times has this happened in your history? Are you saying it would take 9 out of 50 states to ratify a new Constitution today?
Honestly, I’m the wrong person to ask. I think I would be a very poor representative of the typical Canadian. Quite frankly, I don’t get into discussions about politics all that much–this is quite beyond my usually philosophical stomping grounds–so I have too little experience dealing with Canadians who get passionate about political debates and such in order to comment about how well Canadians get along compared to Americans.
But it’s not like it’s never happened–at the place I used to work, we’d go out for lunch sometimes, or for drinks after work, and sometimes political topics would come up; mostly though, it would be about global warming or the Middle East or religion; I remember I’d get pissed off because almost everyone at the table would deny the reality of global warming or make up excuses about why humans aren’t responsible; I was the only one who had contrary opinions though, and so I kept my mouth shut. But I don’t remember a single discussion over conservatism vs. liberalism–and I think if Canadians ever do get into discussions on this topic, it would be about American conservatism and liberalism (you’d be surprised how often Canadians–and I suspect the rest of the world–can get riled up over discussing America and its issues).
Having said that I don’t frequently engage in political discussions, let alone Canadian politics, I don’t know if I’m in a position to say this (on the other hand, having grown up and lived in Canada for 37 years, I might very well be in position): being laid back, not making a big deal out of issues, not being polarized, is part of our culture. It would be nonsense to say that we don’t have our issues, or that we never become divided sometimes, but at the end of the day, we’d rather have a cold beer and smoke some weed rather than go sit in our separate boxes and point to the other box crying “enemy!”
The percentages as to newspapers is hard to determine, but newpapers’ editorials generally reflect the owner’s or publisher’s political thoughts as chosen by the editorial boards, don’t they? Rupert Murdoch’s news empire is certainly conservative. Our daily, here, runs both liberal and conservative editorials. But I don’t know if an ‘unbiased’ research institute like Pew has done any studies about it. Do you?
Gladstone is funny, at least what I’ve read of him is. So is The Onion, rather than insulting–unless you take comedy as insult. If you do, I can understand why you find Gladstone to be insulting.
270 electoral votes out of the currently existing 538 is a fraction over 50% (.018), which makes it a very close vote. What you said was, “We are a two party system, because you must have 51% of the support to get elected.” I apologize if I misinterpreted, but it’s really not that important. No matter that it isn’t 51%.
I’d rather hear what you have to say about the Gold Standard. But I think that would be a different thread, don’t you.
And I asked if you’d read about Agent Orange, because you said you would. We were talking about the Defense Budget at the time, I believe.
That was one of my questions, as well. ‘Approve’ and ‘ratify’ seem to be a redundancy, but perhaps there was a difference in meaning back when the Constitution was written. Why did the Founders use 3/4 of the states in one sentence and 9 states in another. It may have something to do with incorporating the amendment into the individual state constitutions. Ratification generally applies to treaties. To me, it tends to imply that action will be taken as a result of the agreement. Whatever.
There were 13 original states, 9 is approximately 3/4 of them. Despite the popular belief that James Madison ‘wrote’ the Constitution, it was actually the work of several committees–everyone at the Constitution Convention, not just the deputies from each state, seemed to have a say, from farmers to business men. And it was hard to get everyone together at the same time. Traveling could be tough. Some of the deputies weren’t present when the document was signed. (see http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_q_and_a.html
After it was signed, thirteen copies were made by clerks and sent to the state legislatures for ratification. That’s when the first ten amendments were made. Some states refused to sign without those amendments. Everyone wanted it done by the 4th of July so they could get home before crops were to be harvested. But it wasn’t. Who knows why those two different numbers were used?
But they remain. So, yes. It takes 3/4 of the states to approve and 9 states to ratify the new Constitution and every amendment makes it a new Constitution. It usually doesn’t take very long for ratification, especially now that we have better communications systems; there is one amendment, however, the XXVII, having to do with Congressional pay, that was proposed in 1789 but not ratified until 1992. Since then, Congress gives itself pay raises, forgoing the Amendment Process.
Liz
