[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Varq, you missed it! The only way to free the productive would be to trample all over the Constitution (as Lincoln did) and THEN free the economic serfs. No POTUS can pass laws freeing the serfs unless he’s a dictator.
We need an economic Emancipation Proclamation!![/quote]
So…
Basically you want the US to resemble Rome even more than it does?
That Empire lasted for Centuries, we’re Nothing like Rome…yet.
Stop Watching John Stossel.
[quote]Karado wrote:
That Empire lasted for Centuries, we’re Nothing like Rome…yet.
Stop Watching John Stossel.[/quote]
We’re just about half as old, I don’t know who Stossel is.
Stop responding to me without substance.
[quote]Karado wrote:
That Empire lasted for Centuries, we’re Nothing like Rome…yet.
Stop Watching John Stossel.[/quote]
The actual empire most people think about when they refer to the Roman Empire only lasted for three centuries or so. Then it got torn apart and lasted for another a century as a powerless tool before it died in the west.
The U.S. of A is steadily approaching its 300th birthday.
The only real question here is whether we should be counting the last two and a half centuries of the U.S. as the Roman Republic, and where we’re rapidly reaching a situation equivalent to the century or so of warfare and chaos that eventually led to the formation of the Roman Empire.
Personally? I’d say yes. I don’t think Modern day democracy, the one that a good number of the framers of the U.S. Constitution thought were only for idiots and power-hungry monsters mind you, was ever built with the thought that there would be 300 million people someday.
We need a restructuring of government eventually. I doubt people will ever accept a tyrant like the emperors, but something will have to change to reflect modern day realities, which was largely the same reason the Roman Republic became the Empire. How it will come and when I don’t know. But when it does, I think I might want to leave the country for a bit.
Cause it’ll get messy.
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
[quote]Severiano wrote:
Just a few months ago everyone here was demanding Mitt Romney. Now they want Lincoln, no Jackson. Did people just get smarter around here? [/quote]
Severiano:
Actually, many Conservatives were demanding “Not Obama”.
They were luke-warm, at best, for a Mormon New-England Moderate.
Mufasa[/quote]
Kinda hard to believe we have on these constitutionalists now. I bring up Mitt Romney because you all had a chance to back Ron Paul, who is a lot more like Jackson if you are all talking about being constitutionalists.
You ask me, all 3 of them would make great Presidents today so long as the focus is on the constitution and bringing attention to the bankers, the lobbyists, the entities who have been pulling their respective Democrat and Republican strings.
But, really it’s kinda hard for me to take seriously (not you in particular) the idea that someone would vote for Mitt Romney when they could have backed Ron Paul, and then all of a sudden act like Obama is less corrupt in terms of being a lobbyist rollover than Romney would have been.
Two peas of the same corporate pod. Just that one pea had the backing of Left Leaning businesses and interests, and the other pea had the right leaning business and interests.
At the end of the day, members of both parties see the writing on the wall and they come out in different expressions. Why are we so reticent to see the similarities in the driving philosophies of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party for example? Because Republicans painted Occupy a certain way and influenced the Tea Party, and the same thing happened with Occupy.
Basically, you paint Occupy as communist to scare away republicans, and you just let the mouthpieces slip up when it came to the Tea Party. Both ended up having people in them that the other party despised, and that was enough to create a dichotomy between Occupy and the Tea Party, even though much of the core philosophies were the same.
Both of these sort of fringe parties seemed more in line with what Ron Paul was promoting than anyone else. We had our modern day Abe Lincoln and Andrew Jackson last election, but we didn’t support him.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Severiano wrote:
Just a few months ago everyone here was demanding Mitt Romney.
[/quote]
Apparently you read as well as those blind fish that reside deep in the ocean’s basins.
[/quote]
There exists reasons why a blind fish cannot read, just as there exist reasons why the gum on the bottom of my shoe cannot comprehend.
[quote]magick wrote:
[quote]Karado wrote:
That Empire lasted for Centuries, we’re Nothing like Rome…yet.
Stop Watching John Stossel.[/quote]
The actual empire most people think about when they refer to the Roman Empire only lasted for three centuries or so. Then it got torn apart and lasted for another a century as a powerless tool before it died in the west.
The U.S. of A is steadily approaching its 300th birthday.
The only real question here is whether we should be counting the last two and a half centuries of the U.S. as the Roman Republic, and where we’re rapidly reaching a situation equivalent to the century or so of warfare and chaos that eventually led to the formation of the Roman Empire.
Personally? I’d say yes. I don’t think Modern day democracy, the one that a good number of the framers of the U.S. Constitution thought were only for idiots and power-hungry monsters mind you, was ever built with the thought that there would be 300 million people someday.
We need a restructuring of government eventually. I doubt people will ever accept a tyrant like the emperors, but something will have to change to reflect modern day realities, which was largely the same reason the Roman Republic became the Empire. How it will come and when I don’t know. But when it does, I think I might want to leave the country for a bit.
Cause it’ll get messy.[/quote]
I think it could be argued that the US of A has only been a world power since the end of WW2. Before then, it didn’t have the same, or even close to the same global reach. The Roman Empire, however, ruled for close to 400 years.
The US is just a baby in terms of world power rulership.
[quote]magick wrote:
We need a restructuring of government eventually. [/quote]
I don’t know, maybe just a restructuring of how we pick our leaders. And maybe not a restructuring, but rather a tweek.
I had a thought last night, which I’m sure I’m missing some reason it would be awful, but here goes:
What if we did away with the general election, and made the party primaries the general election.
The big party money would have to spread out their funds to two or three candidates, and the differing ideas would have to compete with a broader spectrum of visions.
So say each party ran 3, and a Democrat won the election, the second place Democrat would be the Vice, and the first place Republican becomes speaker of the house, irrelevant the party makeup of the house at the time.
So would this be good, bad or ugly?
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]magick wrote:
We need a restructuring of government eventually. [/quote]
I don’t know, maybe just a restructuring of how we pick our leaders. And maybe not a restructuring, but rather a tweek.
I had a thought last night, which I’m sure I’m missing some reason it would be awful, but here goes:
What if we did away with the general election, and made the party primaries the general election.
The big party money would have to spread out their funds to two or three candidates, and the differing ideas would have to compete with a broader spectrum of visions.
So say each party ran 3, and a Democrat won the election, the second place Democrat would be the Vice, and the first place Republican becomes speaker of the house, irrelevant the party makeup of the house at the time.
So would this be good, bad or ugly?[/quote]
I think you’re pretty much guaranteeing the President serves 2 terms.
We need the FORBIN project, where a computer rules.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]magick wrote:
We need a restructuring of government eventually. [/quote]
I don’t know, maybe just a restructuring of how we pick our leaders. And maybe not a restructuring, but rather a tweek.[/quote]
Sure. Just a restructuring of the qualifications required to be a leader and how they’re chosen may be sufficient.
I think the folks who commented about the dangers of the tyrannical majority back at the early stages of the U.S. Revolution had a point, one that we’ve forgotten about and are seeing the effects of today.
The majority is merely the majority. It does not necessarily mean that the voice of the majority carries actual intelligence or moral weight.
That’s why I find the whole “Cause I got elected I have a mandate to do X!” bullshit claimed by our two most recent presidents and the Tea Party utterly ridiculous.
But the structure of the three seats of power in the government is quite solid, provided that each seat actually does what it’s supposed.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
If for no other reason then history repeats itself, this has to be true. I don’t think we as a people have the wherewithal to buck a distinct, axiomatic, historical principle.[/quote]
Well, the principle is that all governments either go through changes eventually or just died, and one can say I’m an idiot for just repeating something that is fundamentally true.
But I think Americans have this belief that our government structure in of itself is infallible, and that its always the people who’s running it that’s failing us.
No one seems to publicly consider the possibility that the structure itself isn’t designed for modern-day realities.
I think it would be a nice dialogue to have in the public realm; if nothing else than to generate more thought and bring in fresh ideas. Things tend to rot if nothing new comes in and you just have the old ones just spinning around constantly; coincidentally another age-old principle that is fundamentally true.
[quote]magick wrote:
That’s why I find the whole “Cause I got elected I have a mandate to do X!” bullshit claimed by our two most recent presidents and the Tea Party utterly ridiculous.
[/quote]
I get the two presidents part, but where are you seeing the Tes Party saying this?
Not saying you are wrong, would just like to read it/hear it.
[quote]magick wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
If for no other reason then history repeats itself, this has to be true. I don’t think we as a people have the wherewithal to buck a distinct, axiomatic, historical principle.[/quote]
Well, the principle is that all governments either go through changes eventually or just died, and one can say I’m an idiot for just repeating something that is fundamentally true.
But I think Americans have this belief that our government structure in of itself is infallible, and that its always the people who’s running it that’s failing us.
No one seems to publicly consider the possibility that the structure itself isn’t designed for modern-day realities.
I think it would be a nice dialogue to have in the public realm; if nothing else than to generate more thought and bring in fresh ideas. Things tend to rot if nothing new comes in and you just have the old ones just spinning around constantly; coincidentally another age-old principle that is fundamentally true.[/quote]
We have to accept that a government run by humans is flawed. We should hand over government to computers with certain built in axioms – Each person’s life belongs to them. All relationships between humans must be voluntary. The computers exist only to prevent non-voluntary relationships and punish transgressors.
Of course, computers are built by humans so there will be flaws. Somehow though, that’s still better than Nancy Pelosi and Barack O-bongo.
Or to a guy who makes satanic hand signals to others.
Satanic hand signals? Maybe the Pope was just fuckin’ tired… 'Lookin at one too many conspiracy sites there Decapitator Tots?
Stop listening to Alex Jones.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
We have to accept that a government run by humans is flawed. We should hand over government to computers with certain built in axioms – Each person’s life belongs to them. All relationships between humans must be voluntary. The computers exist only to prevent non-voluntary relationships and punish transgressors.
Of course, computers are built by humans so there will be flaws. Somehow though, that’s still better than Nancy Pelosi and Barack O-bongo.
Or to a guy who makes satanic hand signals to others.
[/quote]
Everything invented by people are, to an extent, flawed.
countingbeans-
That’s what I remember hearing back in 2009-2010, when the Tea Party folks were winning congressional and senate races. Unfortunately do not have sources, and my memory may certainly be spotty.
I do have this though, but dunno if it counts-
http://www.thenationalpatriot.com/2012/11/08/dont-waste-the-tea-party-mandate/
Honestly wouldn’t place much stock in anyone who thinks we’re being run by “Islamists”. I don’t even know how that would work, seeing as how the House is firmly in Republican control, and the Senate can’t really do shit without the House letting them.
Even if we do suppose that Obama is actually a Muslim who wants to destroy the country- can someone tell me how he’ll manage to do that when he doesn’t control Congress?