I said I don't need to be protected from myself. None of the issues you point out are of this "nanny state" variety. I do not object to legitimate needs for taxation.

I'm not an idiot. I don't need to be "protected from myself". Please refund my taxes immediately.

Most gun violence is perpetrated by governments, not "society", not individual criminals. Your society may well be civilized. Germany certainly was. That doesn't obviate the need for self-defense against those with power.

Individual criminals will disregard the laws, and come at you with greater force than you have. Is that right?

Governments will make laws to disarm you, and then use the power you've entrusted them with against you. Is that right?

In either case, it is wise to have the means of self-defense. The quotes I posted only go to show that a wide variety of other people, from all places and walks of life, seem to agree.

Does your grandmother have a blue beard to go with the blue hair?

Surprising how? Developers did this to Mac users for years.

As long as we're quoting....

I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand. - Susan B Anthony

If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun. - Dalai Lama

A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity. - Sigmund Freud, General Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. - Mohandas K. Gandhi

An armed society is a polite society. - Robert Heinlein

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country. - Adolf Hitler, dinner talk on April 11, 1942

He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. - Jesus, Luke 22:36

I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them. - George Mason, during Virginias Convention to Ratify the Constitution (1788)

Gun bans dont disarm criminals, gun bans attract them. - Walter Mondale

The right to life means nothing without the right to possess the means to protect and defend ones own life. - James Mullen

That rifle on the wall of the labourers cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It our job to see that it stays there. - George Orwell

We don't let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns? - Joseph Stalin

All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party. - Mao Tze-Tung, Problems of War and Strategy, Nov 6 1938

It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks. It is legal and lawful to own a shotgun or a rifle. We believe in obeying the law. - Malcolm X, March 12, 1964

I dread the day when my last 50-pin SCSI drives fail and I'm forced to retire my working 68k Macs. (No more A/UX tinkering for me!) There are people who chain SCSI-IDE and IDE-CF adapters to have modern storage solutions, but that quickly gets pricey.

I thought the purpose of regulations was to give control and a sense of power to the regulator.

Remember, tastes change, but tattoos are permanent.

But what if you tattoo your tongue?

You just want a permanent crib sheet for your physics exams!

You're missing the point. It's the voting system itself that forces the 3rd parties to the fringes, not any inherent weakness of that candidate/party/platform.

Say you have two polar opposite candidates, A and Z, with large (nearly equal) followings (due to cult of personality, name recognition, incumbency, strong party apparatus, whatever). And one middle-of-the-road guy, M, who's not well known or any of that other stuff. In the current system, it's obviously down to A and Z in the runoff stage, and one of them wins in the general.

But in a system where voters can describe their preferences more completely, the A folks would obviously rank their choices A, M, Z. The Z supporters would rank their choices Z, M, A. The (few) M voters would choose either M, Z, A or M, A, Z - let's say that's an almost even split.

Now let's analyze who is the most preferred.

Comparing A to Z is almost a wash...depending on how exactly the M voters break, how good the turnout is, etc...it's not clear which would win. Might as well choose between them randomly. Let's say A, 50.1 to 49.9.

Comparing A to M, we see that all the Z voters would rather have M than A, so there's clearly a numeric advantage for M (55 to 45 for the sake of discussion).

Comparing M to Z is similar - all the A voters would rather take M than Z, so M wins again. (55 to 45 again.)

So really, Mr. Moderate is the most preferred. But your system would write him off at the first step. And his policies would arguably be better for the people overall, since they would not completely alienate large blocks of the populace. Remember, plurality voting is just that - plurality. You may "win" with 45%, but that means that 55% do not want you. Not necessarily a ringing endorsement, is it? You can artificially winnow the field down to two candidates so you never have that problem, but is that really honest? Having to do that points to a different problem that you're not really solving.

Under our current system, the M voters would say "Why bother, because we can't win. Suppose I better not ``throw my vote away`` supporting my true preference, but instead vote the lesser-of-two-evils, even though there's not much difference between them." Any system that suborns honest voting for tactical considerations is a bad system!

The inherent problem with preferential/runoff voting, is that it throws away part of the voters' preferences at every step. How can your vote be accurately summed up if part of it is throw out? You have to evaluate all the voter's preferences simultaneously, not sequentially. That's why you need a Condorcet method. Same voting casting, different vote counting, that doesn't discard any portion of your preference.

Condorcet method, FTW!

I do think moving away from a winner-take-all system is a good idea, I'm really getting tired of the two party system, and winner-take-all makes anything else impossible.

Condorcet voting, FTW!