Go read any of the numerous Tea Party affiliated or branded Facebook groups. 99% of the crap there is about how Obama is a Muslim who allows illegals in so that ISIS can use that to infiltrate US and establish Sharia here. Economic issues are barely a blip on the radar.
Xenophobia and tribalism are not exactly cognitively sourced phenomena.
I would argue that one cannot simultaneously be a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. Social liberals uniformly support the massive welfare state that threatens our very existence as a nation. The debt is now larger than GDP. Let that sink in. Not only that, but the way that the government figures its debt would get any CFO thrown in jail. The government chooses to use a cash-based instead of an accrual-based system to hide the truth. If they used the accrual-based system, the debt would be over $96 trillion (or over 5X GDP), as opposed to the $18 trillion widely reported. $96 trillion represents over $800K per citizen (including children).
Fiscal conservatism means living within our means, instead of this massive intergenerational theft.
A little quiz.
The debt is larger than the GDP because expenditures are greater than revenue. Expenditures are mostly due to the following categories
Military expenditures
Social Security
Medicare
Of these, the only one that doesn't bring in any income to offset the expenditures is.... ?
Explain how this relates to your concept of a welfare state which threatens our existence as a nation because of the debt.
I would argue that one cannot simultaneously be a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. Social liberals uniformly support the massive welfare state that threatens our very existence as a nation.
You're confusing socially liberal with socialist, not the same thing at all. I am socially liberal in that I don't think the government should tell me what to do in my private life with regards to items like abortion, marriage, drugs, gambling, prostitution, drinking, guns, sex, religion or lack thereof, etc.
Indeed. one could argue that bias against minorities, gays, women, the poor, whatever could be done in a revenue neutral fashion. In fact, it might cost extra if you have to have two separate but equal school systems, etc. and the state police to enforce it.
Exactly. The Tea Party and similar ultra conservative factions are forcing Republicans to keep fighting culture wars that the majority of American society has already moved past. That may win Republicans votes in Congressional and state level races, but in the long term it is unsustainable. Just look at a map of Obama's 2012 victory. The Democrats are making inroads in conservative states.
The problem for.Republicans is that their own political machine is strangling them, forcing candidates on voters that voters are far less likely to vote for, or even if they do, are so noxious to voters elsewhere that it has the same effect.
If the Republicans can't figure out a way to marganilize people like Ted Cruz and prevent them from grabbing the microphonez they're doomed.
The political equivalent of the old Japanese soldier still holed up on an island in the Pacific, waiting to attack any Americans who arrive.
Humm yes? This is because people vote for the greens, the commies, and the crazy nationalists. Do you think people shouldn't be allowed to vote for them?
Now seriously, Italy has a lot of problems, but at least bipartidarism is not one of them. They are one of the most disfunctional European democracies, but even they managed to avoid being so absurdly disfunctional as to shut down their own government.
In fact, given that no other country that I'm aware of has the Always An Election Always Campaigning US political style, let alone the SemiOfficial 18-24 Month Election Season, and they all manage to get their electioneering done in a couple of months at most, I'd have to say nobody is as dysfunctional as the US, no matter what else is going on.
Have you seen the small parties in Europe that become king makers in coalitions? Have you seen the bullshit the greens push through when they become the swing block? How about the commies? How about the crazy nationalists?
The USA's politics are fucked, but not as fucked as Italy's (picking just one particularly egregious example).
That's just the European equivalent of the three unaffiliated undecided voters in Florida who have every candidate and every news media (yeah, i know, wrong use of plural) camped out outside their door for the entire election season because they hold the deciding votes for the entire country.
Unelected senators were the reason the senate was a bastion of corruption and pay for play politics. Returning the senate to such a state would NOT be an improvement. It would be just about the only action you could take right now that would make it worse.
Did senators serve only at the pleasure of the state they were from, though? I.e. could they be recalled by the state government who appointed them?
You are quoting the NIV translation which made the debatable translation choice of "give birth prematurely" instead of "so that her fruit depart from her". Since the NIV was published after Roe V Wade, it is hard to argue that it is a politically neutral translation choice.
I bumped my shopping cart into a woman's in the store and her fruit departed from her.
Not only that, my parakeet named Onan spilled his seed.
Only three out of the ten commandments are codified into US law: thou shalt not kill (murder), thou shalt not steal(theft), thou shalt not bear false witness (perjury). Adultery laws might still be on the books in some states, but I doubt they'd hold up in court. Otherwise you are perfectly free to dishonor your parents, worship graven images, work on Sunday, take the Lord's name in vain, and covet your neighbor's wife. As for abortion: an embryo or a fetus is not a person and it is not viable to live on its own. Even the Bible makes this clear since the punishment for striking a pregnant woman and causes her to miscarriage is not the same punishment as murder.
It's made quite clear in the Bible, that the Ten Commandments, along with most of the stuff in there, is intended to be Rules for Being Jewish, not intended for general dissemination. In fact, the current version of Christianity (according to Peter) is pretty clear that Jesus didn't view most of the Old Testament as required for all mankind
NonJews are judged by their own set of rules; Noah, for instance, who was considered a Good Guy though living generations before Judaism. These laws are mostly rules that seem self-evident and axiomatic; don't murder, don't steal, etc., the stuff you refer to above. As you point out, not working on the Lord's Day and/or not worshipping statues isn't exactly the kind of universal moral law that you'd require a person from another culture to abide by so as not to disturb the peace and upset the social order and injure citizens; they're just the requirements to belong to the club; if you're not Jewish and violate the fourth commandment by keeping your store open on Saturday or Sunday or whichever, the Bible isn't suggesting you be penalized, contrary to the religious right's desire to hang a copy of the Ten Commandments on every courthouse wall; that was never intended to apply to you as a nonJew.
Not surprised. I've met other former Republicans who say the GOP has moved so far to the right it's left them behind.* Meanwhile, I'm *really* tired that the last two Dems I voted for President who won are both Eisenhower Republicans.
At least for now, I have someone to vote for who's not "the least worst".
mark
--- Bernie Sanders for President!
Yeah, to expand on my previous verbosity, the move of the Dixiecrats to the Republicans and the Reagan Revolution and the reduced financial regulation resulted in that wave of corporate raiding, that basically raided the US treasure houses that had been the giant old corporations, largely northeast, that had financially supported the Rockefeller Republican types; Northeast based, financially conservative, socially liberal; and left the money in the hands of Reagan Republicans; southwest based, socially conservative, financially radically rightwing individuals. Aside from leaving the corporations hollowed out shells that could no longer afford luxuries like long term planning or loyalty to employees, it meant the funding and rise of the new Republicans (not to be confused with the New Republic), i.e. the radical right, with its offshoots the religious rightwing, and the Tea Party; and their hatred of government and regulation and so on.
But, that left the former Republican refugees from the new Republicans with enough money and power to move in on the Democrats and shoulder out the oldstyle Democrats, who never had the same corporate and wealthy resources and had been reliant on a lot of "little guys" from the south, now seceded, and couldn't defend themselves.
So you have the New Democrats, socially liberal as were the old Democrats and the old Republicans, but with the little guy liberalism replaced with old style Republican probusiness, proindustry, profinancial, promilitary attitudes.
And the old democrats floating around in search of a place to feel at home; unionists, peaceniks, socially conscious.
You can say you don't feel like it all you want, it's not going to change Duverger's Law. Math doesn't give a damn if you "feel" like you're not wasting your vote.
That's more of a simplified hypothetical trend, than a law. Witness the NDP's comeback in Canada after being fringe of the fringe, vs the PC party's demise after having been dominant for decades. If there are multiple axes/spectra on which voters rate the parties, multiple parties can exist in a metastable state; one party wins on economic issues, one party wins on defense issues, one party wins or social justice issues, for instance, With just a one axis system, there will always be only one party closest to the centroid of public sentiment on one side, and a second party closest on the other side, and parties any further out will die away. (Basically, the same system commercial establishments tend to cluster near the centers of towns, or suburbs, rather than out in the middle of nowhere).
But if there is more than one axis, there isn't a mathematical requirement that one party be significantly further from the centroid that the others, so it's metastable.
That's actually the way the US worked, for years; if you hypothesize another "party", the dixiecrats at one time, generally the south/southwest; and two axes, one the general "liberal/conservative" axis of economics vs social spending, etc.; and the other axis kind of a minority rights axis. When the dixiecrats were tied to the Democrats, that kept the party as a whole kind of orbiting the centroid of the voters, with the Republicans floating around in response. But when they got severed from the Democrats and tied to the Republicans, that removed the counterbalance in the Democrats, and the Republicans didn't have the same counterweight in their party, so basically gravity broke up and both parties are flying out of orbit.
I'd become a REPUBLICAN if the Republican party were anything like it was in the JFK years. There were Hawks and there were Doves, but they weren't exclusively in one party or the other, and outside of their opposing views on war and expansionism, they could be civil to each other. It was only the Cold War and Nuclear Armageddon, not like the very foundations of the Universe were at stake.
Now everything's a pledge and a "litmus test" and the loonies run the asylum.
Used to be, you'd find liberal republicans in the northeast, and conservative democrats in the south. Then came the civil rights era, the 60s, and Reagan, and when the dust had cleared there were no counterbalances in either party and they're just incestuous little mutual admiration societies who enjoy spitting on the other guys,
I don't think it's limited to those of your age. I"m about twice your age and I feel that both the Democratic and Republican parties have pretty much become an organization that feeds itself and no longer represents those who elected them.
Both seem to be war mongers (it's not as if Obama has gotten us out of Afghanistan). They both seem to perpetuate the military/industrial complex.
Remember, it was Kennedy that escalated the US presence in Vietnam. Ironically, it was Nixon who got us out of that war, only because the general population was fed up with all of our young being killed in a "no win" war.
The Dems seem to be nanny folks, union supporters and those bent on giving out welfare way too easy.
Repubs are religious right wingnuts. They are stuck way back in time with their "values".
I'm hoping that we all get frustrated enough to precipitate a viable third party candidate but the deck seems to be bent in the directing of only giving us two choices.
A perfect example of the failure of the system was the California Senate candidates being a choice between Barbara Boxer (yuk) and Carly Fiorina (yuk).
Some choice that is.
The entire political process is slanted towards war, because the entire notion of government is slanted towards war, because the entire concept of a nation is slanted towards war. The concept of a nation which is fundamentally geared towards support of its citizens rather than defending the wealth and privilege of the wealthy and privileged is still in its infancy, and a lot of people can't quite grasp it.
Libertarian is just short hand for 'Bring on the post-apocalyptic waste-land. I'm tired of paying taxes and I have enough weaponry to impose my will on others.'
Or, to paraphrase, "I wanna I wanna I wanna, you're not the boss of me, when I get bigger I'm not gonna have to listen to what anybody tells me any more again"
Capital?
Capital-C Capital or small-c capital?
"It's the best thing since professional golfers on 'ludes." -- Rick Obidiah
