Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

[pardonme]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

It would be nice (from my point of view as a fiscal conservative and social libertarian) if BOTH parties got this message, stopped pandering to their bases, and moved to the middle.

Getting rid of the primary system and switching to a preferential voting system would be nice.

 

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

Getting rid of the primary system and switching to a preferential voting system would be nice.

uhm no....

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

I think to some extent this idea that there's this mass of people out there that are just centrist and right in the middle is a bit mythological or at least overblown. It's far from that simple. You have all sorts of mixes, with some people socially conservative but fiscally liberal, some people socially liberal but fiscally conservative, and all sorts of other folks who are centrist in certain ways, but lean one direction, sometimes heavily, on certain issues. So, if you were trying to be a centrist party/candidate, you have problems where some who even consider themselves centrist don't like you on certain issues. And that's not even getting into defining what would be centrist, which I'm guessing would mean very different things if we all threw out our ideas of what it is. I'm guessing most of us thing we're relatively centrist, when it really doesn't look that ways to those who aren't of the same persuasion as we are.

Not that there isn't some real mileage to tacking to the center, as Clinton and others have shown. But it's not as simple as it sometimes is made to sound. I do think it would be fascinating to watch, and probably healthy for our system, if some sort of centrist party/movement came about. Not having many of that type of folks in Congress is a loss in a number of ways.

 

[blockski]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

uhm no....

Why not?

If your goal is to get politicians elected who better represent the views of the electorate, what's wrong with changing the system?

Americans get really defensive over our political system, particularly when someone suggests that it might not be the best example of democracy. Why is that?

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

Americans get really defensive over our political system, particularly when someone suggests that it might not be the best example of democracy. Why is that?

There are good sociological reasons for this. Other nations have ancient ethnic totems. Because we're overtly a nation of immigrants, our shibboleths are the Declaration and the Constitution, and generally our status as a free society with a democratic government. If the French challenge their constitution -- they've had, what, five Republics? -- they're still the French. If an American questions our democracy he's putting everything on the line.

Depending on your personality type, you take this as a call to constantly guard our principles and improve the match between our ideals and our practice or you are frightened by every investigation into whether we are really doing right by our principles and you retrench, go into denial, or even react violently.

And that's the genesis of the difference between liberals and conservatives.

 

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

...And that's the genesis of the difference between liberals and conservatives.

I like the wink but the real difference is conservatives like to support causes with their own money, liberals like to support them with other peoples money

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

I like the wink but the real difference is conservatives like to support causes with their own money, liberals like to support them with other peoples money

It's actually that conservatives are Godly and liberals are teh Devil!!!!11!1.

 

[MinnFan]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

there are good sociological reasons for this. Other nations have ancient ethnic totems. Because we're overtly a nation of immigrants, our shibboleths are the declaration and the constitution, and generally our status as a free society with a federal government. If the french challenge their constitution -- they've had, what, five republics? -- they're still the french. If an american questions our republic he's putting everything on the line.

Depending on your personality type, you take this as a call to constantly guard our principles and improve the match between our ideals and our practice or you are frightened by every investigation into whether we are really doing right by our principles and you retrench, go into denial, or even react violently.

And that's the genesis of the difference between liberals and conservatives.

fyp

 

[blockski]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

There are good sociological reasons for this. Other nations have ancient ethnic totems. Because we're overtly a nation of immigrants, our shibboleths are the Declaration and the Constitution, and generally our status as a free society with a democratic government. If the French challenge their constitution -- they've had, what, five Republics? -- they're still the French. If an American questions our democracy he's putting everything on the line.

Depending on your personality type, you take this as a call to constantly guard our principles and improve the match between our ideals and our practice or you are frightened by every investigation into whether we are really doing right by our principles and you retrench, go into denial, or even react violently.

And that's the genesis of the difference between liberals and conservatives.

That's the thing, however. Our practice doesn't embrace our ideals. There are systemic issues that often prevent that from happening, at least from my perspective. Instead of critically analyzing how our system reflects those ideals (and if it even does at all), we just assume that the outcomes we have are ideal because that's the way we've always done it.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

That's the thing, however. Our practice doesn't embrace our ideals. There are systemic issues that often prevent that from happening, at least from my perspective. Instead of critically analyzing how our system reflects those ideals (and if it even does at all), we just assume that the outcomes we have are ideal because that's the way we've always done it.

I think it's really as simple as, people don't like the current system, but they are afraid that a new system/party would be worse, and there's always the fear of the unknown. Or another way to say it is that the current system/parties haven't gotten bad enough for enough Americans to embrace alternatives.

 

[WeWantMore]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

That's the thing, however. Our practice doesn't embrace our ideals. There are systemic issues that often prevent that from happening, at least from my perspective. Instead of critically analyzing how our system reflects those ideals (and if it even does at all), we just assume that the outcomes we have are ideal because that's the way we've always done it.

So what's your fix? Not picking a fight, honestly curious...

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

fyp

Your first change is wrong, your second is arguable. We have a "democratic" form of government, even though we are not strictly a "democracy" in the classical sense. However, there is certainly a modern sense of democracy which includes a representative republic and which is broadly accepted by everyone not scoring points for Cato.

It may not be exactly the right time for a conservative to be splitting those hairs, anyway, since the Tea Party is all about Ochlocracy.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

I think it's really as simple as, people don't like the current system, but they are afraid that a new system/party would be worse, and there's always the fear of the unknown. Or another way to say it is that the current system/parties haven't gotten bad enough for enough Americans to embrace alternatives.

It depends on what we mean by "the current system." I would think there is massive support for all of the following attributes of the current system:

+ secret ballot
+ one man, one vote
+ universal suffrage of adult citizens (with the current restrictions)
+ equality under the law

I don't think there is any fundamental and intentional aspect of the American democratic system that has fallen into disfavor. The only dangerous erosion of support for our basic system comes from impatience with protections of political minority rights, but I'd argue that the broad mass of people has never understood the need for those and will always be upset with them, which is why the Founders were right in including a strong measure of aristocratic elitism to ward off the tyranny of the majority. There is an abuse of this impatience when demagogues try to use it to undermine checks and balances between branches of government. There will always be attempted power grabs like unitary executive theory or the legislature trying to get out from under judicial review, and the broad mass of citizens won't understand why these are detrimental to long term freedom.

But mostly people are angry at what they deem corruptions of the system -- somebody putting their fat finger on the scale of justice. Who you perceive as doing that just depends on who you're personally peeved at -- for conservatives it's Big Government and for liberals it's Big Money. But I disagree with blockski that the problems are "systemic." They may be intractable, but that's because fights between different groups with different interests are intractable.

 

[MinnFan]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

Your first change is wrong, your second is arguable. We have a "democratic" form of government, even though we are not strictly a "democracy" in the classical sense. However, there is certainly a modern sense of democracy which includes a representative republic and which is broadly accepted by everyone not scoring points for Cato.

It may not be exactly the right time for a conservative to be splitting those hairs, anyway, since the Tea Party is all about Ochlocracy.

The problem is that most people don't realize that we are a Republic. The more things look like a winner-takes-all democracy the more we are split apart. This is why Federalism was the key to the Constitution. If power is dispursed to the states people will have more of a say in how their gov't looks. The more power we give way to a National gov't the less likely it is to truly represent the people.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

Obama's decision to participate in the U.N. Human Rights Council seems to have backfired, as nations like Russia, Mexico, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Iran took the U.S. to task for its alleged human rights problems during a recent two hour session.
Bush was extremely wise to steer clear of this joke of an organization.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/11/04/united-nations-human-rights-council/

 

[blockski]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

So what's your fix? Not picking a fight, honestly curious...

Just riffing on LynahFan's earlier desire for a more centrist party structure - I think there are lots of ways to accomplish that. The parties currently take the stances they do because that's what the system we have determines is most beneficial.

How about proportional representation in the House? What about instant runoff voting, or some other form of voting choice? All of those would give voters more leeway in selecting a candidate or party platform that fits their views, rather than having to choose only between two, big-tent parties.

For some interesting discussion on the subject, I'd suggest reading "How Democratic is the American Constitution?" by Robert Dahl:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Democratic_Is_the_American_Constitution?

Dahl's criteria for good democracy:

* Political stability (that is, remaining democratic)
* Effective protection of democratic rights
* Democratic fairness
* Fosters consensus building
* Promotes effective problem solving

On those last two points, the US comes up short. With majoritarian rule and single member districts, the Representative that gets 51% of the vote ends up with 100% of the power. Proportional representation would produce a much more fractured party system, which then forces the parties to build coalitions in order to accomplish anything.

Now, you can look at all those options and decide if we should change or not. Perhaps some minor changes (like reverting to the old filibuster rules in the Senate that required, you know, actual talking and filibustering) would accomplish a great deal.

Nevertheless, I find the "America, love it or leave it" attitude from many to be, well, un-American. Do we not seek to better ourselves and improve our process?

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

The problem is that most people don't realize that we are a Republic. The more things look like a winner-takes-all democracy the more we are split apart. This is why Federalism was the key to the Constitution. If power is dispursed to the states people will have more of a say in how their gov't looks. The more power we give way to a National gov't the less likely it is to truly represent the people.

There's nothing in principle that is wrong with this argument. Partly, the concentration of power under the federal government and at the expense of the states has just been driven by macroeconomic history -- states aren't the self-sufficient actors they were in the 18th century and interpendence has meant ceding more power to the forum where states meet -- the federal government.

But I think the part that angers most people at the grassroots -- the part that really provokes tirades against national centralization -- has followed from federal action after an inability to protect people's fundamental rights at the state level. That has mostly been racial, the problem has mostly been the South, and the problem is mostly solved. Maybe States Rights won't be such unpleasant company someday, and to the extent it's economically possible we can revive federalism. I'd love it, personally -- let gays marry in Vermont and shoot Catholics in Alabama. I don't plan to ever, ever set foot in Alabama.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

There's nothing in principle that is wrong with this argument. Partly, the concentration of power under the federal government and at the expense of the states has just been driven by macroeconomic history -- states aren't the self-sufficient actors they were in the 18th century and interpendence has meant ceding more power to the forum where states meet -- the federal government.

But I think the part that angers most people at the grassroots -- the part that really provokes tirades against national centralization -- has followed from federal action after an inability to protect people's fundamental rights at the state level. That has mostly been racial, the problem has mostly been the South, and the problem is mostly solved. Maybe States Rights won't be such unpleasant company someday, and to the extent it's economically possible we can revive federalism. I'd love it, personally -- let gays marry in Vermont and shoot Catholics in Alabama. I don't plan to ever, ever set foot in Alabama.

It would have solved a lot of problems if we would have just let the South win.

 

[pirate]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

There are good sociological reasons for this. Other nations have ancient ethnic totems. Because we're overtly a nation of immigrants, our shibboleths are the Declaration and the Constitution, and generally our status as a free society with a democratic government. If the French challenge their constitution -- they've had, what, five Republics? -- they're still the French. If an American questions our democracy he's putting everything on the line.

Depending on your personality type, you take this as a call to constantly guard our principles and improve the match between our ideals and our practice or you are frightened by every investigation into whether we are really doing right by our principles and you retrench, go into denial, or even react violently.

And that's the genesis of the difference between liberals and conservatives.

I see the wink, but can you elaborate on the difference relative to the paragraph above it...are you saying both groups fall into that definition or are you saying only one of them tries to close the gap and only one of them is frightened etc?

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XVII: Do You Take Your Tea Party with One Sugar or Two?

I see the wink, but can you elaborate on the difference relative to the paragraph above it...are you saying both groups fall into that definition or are you saying only one of them tries to close the gap and only one of them is frightened etc?

The wink was about the common trope that liberals are working to close the gap and conservatives aren't. To my way of thinking, there really are authoritarian and anti-authoritarian personality types but they are observable across the political spectrum. That's why, for instance, you had the migration en masse of Trotskyite authoritarians from the hard left to the hard right to found Neoconservatism in the late 1960's. There are a lot of people just looking for a leader to give them an order (and a few even creepier people just looking to give orders) on both sides of the political aisle, and there are people fighting for real freedom on both sides. Left vs right is in a lot of ways a false dichotomy -- the real struggle is the protection of variation vs the policing of orthodoxy.