Watchhttp://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/ron-paul-ralph-nader-agree-on-progressive-libertarian-alliance/
Imagine a political system where differences were laid out in real terms and not turned into hyperbole and outright lies.
Imagine a political system where irrelevant issues were ignored, rather than turned into the most significant components of the debate.
Imagine a political system where our representatives voted for the best interests of the people who live in their districts rather than the best interests of the people who finance their campaign.
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true freedom based on personal accountability and moral social behavior just aint for everyone.
I like RP.
I like Palin better.
I do not like Rosie O'donnell.
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Thanks ToT.
I see the fractures to go down the lines of pretty much what I suggested - faith, behavior, accountablity, morality, American fundamentalism(sp). One one side will be those who follow the basic Christian and Hebrew faith and the CoUSA, and on the other side would be those that would rather see dead Hebrews and Christians and do not like the CoUSA. I think Africa and Arabia are already doing the killing part. Christians are getting chopped to bits.
But, I may be wrong. Maybe things will get better when all workers are taxed 100% to make sure all non-workers get the food, clothes, drugs, and other things they have been promised by the mighty gov. Tuff call.
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Wow, the crazy's out in full force now.
I give up.
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@Bap33 - My point with Africa was that Muslim vs. Christian strife is not the only cause of death and misery for African Christians. Many manage to do well hurting themselves just fine. Your comment implied that if left alone, Christians inherently fare better at governing themselves than other religions. There is no evidence of this.
Bap33 says
You confuse demographics with cause and effect of attitude and family dynamic. The working poor, regardless of race, religion, or ethinic background, have been universally screwed in post apocalyptic areas of the US. Attitude and family dynamic are uniquely shaped by the socio-economic conditions of a person's reality. Are you a young black man desperately seeking safety from Katrina, and a white cop is standing on the other side of the bridge with a rifle not letting you pass? Or perhaps your attitude and family were great - until they died because the government didn't respond appropriately to the hurricane and the elderly relatives couldn't escape.
And yes, we still have many laws that single out, hurt, and hinder minorities. Ohio has a wonderful law that makes it a felony to register a black kid in a white school district outside of one's government designated area. Don't pay any attention to the thousands of illegal non-citizens getting tax free educations in the border states. (They are a lighter shade of brown so its ok). We punish our citizens for valuing a good education?
I'm also still struggling to see how any of the Gulf Coast fisherman who've had their lives utterly destroyed by the oil spill are completely free in choice of action and thought. Or is every man an island of independence in a black sea of toxic death?
The world is much simpler if everything is reduced to black and white platitudes. Unfortunately, this isn't reality.
So to circle back to the original post - a political system dreamed up above is nothing more than a fantasy. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for it anyway.
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lol
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Imagine getting 1% of the vote.
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Back around 1986 I was working in an arcade and out came a driving game that also had a gun you shot.
My first reaction was "cool -- a combination of genres to appeal to more people!"
But then upon further reflection (and playing the game) I saw that when you combine disparate elements, you don't get the union of a synthesis -- ie a wider market -- what you really get is the intersection of whatever people like both genres, which is a much smaller market.
The Republicans can duct-tape their coalition together because big-money voters are not negatively affected in the slightest with all the God talk, in fact making people more stupid with the moral mumbo jumbo increases the value of having a lot of money. They also manage to cement this unholy marriage with a strong pandering to the defense sector, which is now a $800B/yr money pump, a rural jobs program, and a very conservative institution that has been thoroughly white-anted by Christianists.
The Democratic coalition has to play at the margins of this -- the legal profession, Big Science, limousine liberals, college kids voting for change, pro-choice people and feminists in general, homosexuals, and illegal immigrants, oh, and also the po'.
Obama was a pretty good creation to punch the Democratic coallition's buttons. He hasn't done any worse a job than I could have done, 2009-2010. People don't really know what "change" they want. It is a time of confusion now.
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kevin says
...and then imagine how pissed off ya'll will be when some powerful state with many more votes than yours - or even a bunch of states with more votes - builds a skyscraper commemorating some guy who was important to their district. Pork projects will always abound.
I'd really like to imagine a non-corrupt system. I'd love to imagine a world without nasty pundits spewing hatred and partisanship. I'd love Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin to be found making red hot monkey love in a dumpster and losing what little credibility they have left...
kentm says
It didn't come along yet. It's a pipe dream a guy on the interwebs posted anonymously.
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Troy says
I'm actually with you on that one...
Troy says
The game you really wanted was Carmageddon (1). Pure insanity, all fun.
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elliemae says
I guess I meant 'the possibility of it', or 'anything other than whats in place now'. Why let details get in the way of a good one liner...
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kentm says
Take my Representative...please.
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Troy says
I'm not a big Ron Paul fan but I must say that at least Jeremy provided word-pairs that sound good, you provided nothing. So "rolling clownshow" is somehow not heaping a pile of meaningless bullshit? Care to quantify and explain exactly which of Ron Pauls positions qualify as "rolling clownshow".
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kentm says
Well if you represent the people than you get little campaign donations and basically set yourself for being vilified on the paid media.
If you represent rich corporate special interest than you'll get tons of campaign donations, get tons of good publicity from crony talk stations and life will be good in general.
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bob2356 says
actually "personal freedom, limited government, and sound money"
says it pretty well.
"Personal freedom" reduces to the cartoonishly dogmatic economic freedom of Honest Abe, ie the glibertarian utopia of the rich owning everything and the poor working in company towns. For a real-world portent of that, just look at China.
"Limited government" reduces to "The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul148.html
"sound money" reduces to Paul's tinfoil and black helicopters and all the "End the Fed" bullcrap.
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My Aunt loves them guys
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Bap33 says
"freedom" "based on" "moral social behavior".
When you think two opposites like that belong in the same sentence, something should tell you that you are operating from inconsistent logical bases somewhere.
"Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism popularized the term "thought-terminating cliché". A thought-terminating cliché is a commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to quell cognitive dissonance. Though the phrase in and of itself may be valid in certain contexts, its application as a means of dismissing dissent or justifying fallacious logic is what makes it thought-terminating.
"Lifton said, “The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.” [2][3]
In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the fictional constructed language Newspeak is designed to reduce language entirely to a set of thought-terminating clichés."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_cliche
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something like, "Clinton lied nobody died" ... or "Hope and Change" ... or "Yes we can (in Spanish)? .... are those examples of what you are saying?
Anyways, what I meant is that a free society does not work without personal accountibilty and healthy social guidlines (morals, for lack of better term). I do not find those two points confusing, but I do understand that most left-view people would find them uncomfortable.
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Troy says
Again I'm not a huge fan of Ron Paul, but you have obviously not actually read what he has written. I find him to be fair and realistic with well thought out positions even the ones I don't agree with. He avoids sound bites based on some single wildly distorted factoid and most political bullshit. I could live with a congress full of left wing, right wing, and middle of the road Ron Pauls. You should try to be a more objective observer, you are sounding like a left wing rush limbaugh.
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Bap33 says
well, its just that by "healthy social guidelines" you usually seem to mean more prisons and more cops busting heads of hippies & faggots, and at this point in the great effort of US democracy 'personal accountability' seems to have very little bearing for the right unless its aimed solely at unwed mothers, poor minorities and minor drug offenders... certainly it has no bearing on anyone who holds any kind of power with their wide stances, fake wars, admissions of torture, corporate illegalities and outright graft.
What makes me uncomfortable is how much you honestly seem to believe what you're saying when its so obvious that there's a whole other dynamic going on.
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And I will also say that at least what Nader and Paul have going for them is that they're people who've stood by their convictions honestly and openly and have been very successful in bringing generally positive change based on those ideals. Their visions of the world, I think, is intended to make the place better for more people. I'd love to see what kind of change they could effect together.