I have heard many stories that the laws of USA, show signs of corruption.
The police officers exploiting the citizens through handed out many injustice tickets because it is their duty and order by the high. When trouble starts it is really propety and libilities, and money, they are protecting not the citizens.
The O.J. simpson case, which everyone knows he is guilty, yet, the court
pronouce he is unguilty , which I think , the judicial and the constitution lacks the law of common sense, because they dwell on evidence more then human thinking.
About the elections , runners did not uphold their promises and fill empty hopes for the citizens who are voting.
Lastly, the laws of the consitution is kept on changing, that it is mainly serving for the rich.
I have come to a conclusion that private propety, as Rousseau state, has corrupted the citizens and their consitution.
There are some things that troubled me like that virtue produces virtues, laws produces laws, justice laws will produce justice laws, however, good conquers evil is a problem that got to me. I have felt that evil conquers good. If good is the absoulte, evil would not have existed nor dwel within the good. Because of this, right and wrong is a balanced thing. Sometimes the wrong are right and the right are wrong. In order to survive in a decieful society you must also be decieveful.
The allowance, or toleration of corruption is really
is really a symptom of something larger.
An example and only an example,
is when the republicans have been caught with
their hand in the cookie jar, (abramoff payoff)
their defense as sad and sick as it was, was
“look the democrat are corrupt too”
It is systematic of a larger failing in the American soul.
But I am not sure about what the overall failing is.
For example, have we made money the ultimate criteria
of everything, or have we made money more important then
humans life. Or perhaps a third thing. I really don’t know.
I have been thinking about this for a while and have not come up
with an answer I am happy with.
No government is perfect, and there will always be injustices in the system of laws. But does this warrent throwing the baby out with the bathwater? I’d argue that it does not.
After all, America’s government has been around the longest with the fewest major changes in it than any other form of government in modern times.
“While democracy breeds tyrants, it also breeds incompetence. I believe the saying goes:”
As a former government employee I can testify that incompetence is the driving force behind a lot of what’s seen as corruption. People just make things up as they go along and there is no center.
I recently saw a news clip about some head of an organization managing the Iraq situation and he was saying that he didn’t think that it was important that anyone knew how to speak any Arabic language. Meanwhile, they were missing large amounts of not so secret messages.
Such a man isn’t evil but rather the result of a chain of incompetence.
Traffic tickets, etc are probably the least of my worries when it comes to police corruption. I would consider racial profiling, personal discretion, and accountability to be more serious problems within policing. You should be aware that policing has moved through a number of eras since the mid 1800s as a way of seperating police from political influence - which was, back then, the cause of much corruption. However, these days, police are so far moved from the influence of politicians that they are accountable to what are known as ‘police services boards’. Many citizens are involved in these commitees, so I would argue that the tickets you refer to are most likely considered necessary by the average citizen.
Jefferey Reidman argues in ‘The Rich get Richer, the Poor get Prison’ that the criminal justice system is biased against minorities right from the very get go - that is, the definition of what a crime is, all the way through the entire trial process.
I’m not so sure about this. The law focuses very much on human thinking. In fact, there are two fundamental elements to any crime: actus reus and mens rea. Actus reus refers to the act itself, it must have happened; mens rea, on the other hand, refers to the intent of the offender. This is divided into specific and general intent, in which the thinking of the offender is analyzed very carefully. It must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the offender intended to commit the crime…since these elements are fundamental to any crime, I disagree that the law does not focus enough on human thinking.
You have a point here, once more I recommend Reidman’s book. In some cases though I prefer that the laws change in order to stay updated. A lot of the punishments for certain crimes are based on previous decisions by judges, that is precedent, but if in case a situation occurs that is so drastically different from the average case that the normal punishment would be too severe, I prefer that the laws be changed, or updated, in order to prevent people from being treated unfairly and sentenced to prison for longer than is necessary.
I’m not familiar with Rousseau’s argument here, but I’d like to know more about how exactly private property has corrupted citizens??
When it comes to their drug policies I, along with those who are educated about the consequences of the US led war on drugs, would call for a major change. While a lot of other countries around the world have considered different approaches, rather than prison, when dealing with drug offences, the United States has continued to put people in jail even though there is absolutely no evidence suggesting that their approach is working. Instead we are seeing more jails being built, and more people being thrown away. The major argument by those calling for reform in the area of drug policy is that the prohibition itself causes even more drug crime mainly because it forces drugs onto a black market where it cannot be regulated or controlled. This being said, within the study of criminology and drug policy the United States’ prohibitionist approach is seen as an ultimate failure and is a prime example of what not to do, even though they continue to try to push their views on the rest of the world.
Just because things don’t change very often, doesn’t mean they are working.
It was stated in the founding fathers of politics, started from Aristotle, Hobbes, and then Locke. They all talked about the state of nature before the existence of gov’t - agree that the government was created to protect properties of whatever the citizens own or claimed or cultivated. A certain period of time Rousseau steps in, saying protecting private property has alienated the citizens to become greedy and greedier, and as the saying of America goes, the land of freedom, is really a land of limited freedom because more laws are being created for the protection of private properties especially for the rich and wealthy people. quote]" Why are we limiting ourselves"[
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This is the cause of limiting our virtues and the rise of criminals. Rousseau stated we should have a direct democracy, and laws should be created by the favor of the majority not by one person, the representative govt.
I would add that this doesn’t negate corruption. ‘Many Citizens’ can often turn out to be ‘Many Citizens who can be bought off’. Often the mafia are just an extension of different politican roots anyways.
I hope that anyone who has criticised the American government in this thread has also personal lived for a period in the United states.
I think a lot of people are too trusting of the major news networks. Remember, these networks only stay in business if they can manage to come up with “news” to report. I can only imagine that they try at times to create “conspiracies” out of things that truly are not conspiracies ---- just so that they have something to report as “breaking news”.
Completely the opposite. The media do not present the views on drug policy that I was arguing. In fact, they buy into the governments drug policy rhetoric. This is because drug coverage sells, and if media agencies want material for stories they better not oppose those who can give them that information…thus, you see the media siding with gov’t on these issues.
Speaking of the media and drug policies, I felt that most media and news today are frauds and scams, but it persuades the audience. Like the drug and food adminstrator, they hide facts and persuades the audience to buy more of their products, like the food pyramid, why would we need to eat this to survive, the low fat diet scam, - diet pepsi does not make you lose weight it just has no low calories which push the immune system saying we need more calories in our system, next time they eat they gain gain wieght, because their bodies need to stored the energy because the person is losing calories in their diet. Living in America for 20 years, I felt I have been living in a lie. It is all about the money. Either you become obident and a slave to the gov’t, which you live in a life of being exploited and become poor eventually, or you decieve others or the gov’t for the protection of your assets or making big profits by sueing and lying.
Both, and more to it. But it is impossible because we are living in a limit gov’t system, we are living in fear and in tyranny, the people does not see it thats all, because the gov’t disquise themselves with acting virtues but in secret they are not.
I do not mean to sound as if I believe America has a perfect government that is made to appear dysfunctional by an eternally-evil media, but the only way we know about our government is through the media.
I therefore believe that the media is constantly tainting the truth both ways – in some ways to make the government appear better than it is, and in other ways to make it appear worse than it actually is.
How would we know any different anyways? Unless you work for the government yourself, you are hearing the government’s activities through the mouth of the news-media. We must be very carefull not to side with one specific news network.
Take CNN & Fox for example. Both claim to to deliver the news truthfully, but both networks portray the government in totally different ways. In reality, we know that one network is more accurate than the other. By this, I mean that it is very unlikely that both networks deliver equally accurate news. But which one is the most accurate? and how could we ever know?
I think we are far too trusting of the news networks simply because they tend to take a “liberal” or a “conservative” approach similar to what we agree with.
I just wish that these news networks would stop giving their opinions on the government and just begin delivering news as purely news. Let us be the ones to make up our own minds!
You are generalizing way too much here. The news media is by no means our only source of information on government. In fact, the people who argue for the view I was discussing earlier are scholars, people who conduct their own research. This could take the form of interviews with people who have had first hand experience either as drug offenders or drug victims, the police can also be interviewed…same goes with politicians.
The thing with the media is that they are constantly producing stories, and of course there are going to be biases in the media, because these biases grant them information and future material when stories are needed.
Thank you for the example to demonstrate my point. You say that in reality you know one network is more accurate than the other…do you though? Or does this assumption simply relate to how you perceive reality? Do you think that a network who is constantly criticizing Liberals and supporting Conservatives, is going to get completely truthful information from the Liberals? Of course not!!! Why would the liberals, with full knowledge of the networks position, set themselves up for intense criticism? Same goes for networks that criticize conservatives while supporting Liberals. In reality then, neither network is any more accurate than the other, only more accurate in terms of what Liberal or Conservative supporters want to hear.
Scholars on the other hand dedicate their research to being as least bias as possible, and therefore a lot of the information that is discovered may not necessarily agree with the stories the media pitch at us.
So in response to your comment, no the media is not the only way we receive information, and it is not the media who are always responsible for criticisms…we may just conclude that the media report information for stories in the broader sense, and scholars report information more for truth.
