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Lincoln might have started you off on that path, but could it be that his intentions were to guarantee all your citizens shared equally in whatever benefits came from within your country?
You all seem too willing to ignore all the positive things that came out of Nationhood to focus instead on the partisan bickering of just two particular parties.
The lifestyle and very luxury your country has enjoyed for generations came about through the melding of ideals and your wealth and power garnered through the co-operative efforts of all your states being channeled in some form have enabled you to maintain your position to this very day.
Your current problems are due to just one facet of your political structure and that is the failure to co-operate bears no personal punishment for your legislators.
Lobbyists of today and carpet-baggers of yore are still the same nefarious entities; get rid of the perks for congressman and senators and you'll change the whole dynamic for the better.
Should the US break up into 3 or 4 smaller countries?
HUH?? Only if we want to guarantee continual war. What on earth makes anyone think that division would lead to unity?
The division of North America into separate countries hardly ensures continual war. Recall that North America, above the Rio Grande, has been divided into two countries since 1783, and those two parts have only fought one war, two hundred years ago. If Canada and the United States have been able to live peacefully with each other for two centuries, there's no particular reason to think that several federations below the 49th parallel would not be able to do so. And contrarily, federal union has hardly been a guarantee against war in the United States, since the greatest war ever fought in North America was within the American union.
Lincoln might have started you off on that path, but could it be that his intentions were to guarantee all your citizens shared equally in whatever benefits came from within your country?
You all seem too willing to ignore all the positive things that came out of Nationhood to focus instead on the partisan bickering of just two particular parties.
The lifestyle and very luxury your country has enjoyed for generations came about through the melding of ideals and your wealth and power garnered through the co-operative efforts of all your states being channeled in some form have enabled you to maintain your position to this very day.
Your current problems are due to just one facet of your political structure and that is the failure to co-operate bears no personal punishment for your legislators.
Lobbyists of today and carpet-baggers of yore are still the same nefarious entities; get rid of the perks for congressman and senators and you'll change the whole dynamic for the better.
Our legislators are "cooperating" with their constituents by representing their wants, needs, and desires. Just how or even why would you "punish" them for doing what they are supposed to?
I didn't say we are six months away. But it wasn't the pathetic GDP that dissolved the USSR, it was nationalism and ideology.
Yes -- and no amount of totalitarian government could really force those separate states to become one -- when the USSR dissolved, the natural states reformed.
The USA should be 50 separate states and the states should be allowed to have a Constitutional government or the Socialist totalitarian one we have now.
Your current problems are due to just one facet of your political structure and that is the failure to co-operate bears no personal punishment for your legislators.
This is one very large argument in favor of a parliamentary system: a government's ineffectiveness has real repercussions for its backbenchers, who are likely to lose their seats at the next general election if their leadership fails. Or conversely, if the opposition is clearly acting in an irresponsible way, opposition MPs face the likelihood of losing their seats to candidates of the ruling party. Ask some of the Labour MPs swept away in the general election of 1983 if Michael Foot's leadership had anything to do with their losses, or ask Conservative MPs swept away in 1997 if the torpor of the post-Thatcher government of John Major had anything to do with it.
Each person has their own perceptions, but IMO these is enough overlap in most of our perceptions to bind us together. IMO, given time, we could come to a consensus on what those words mean if we needed to.
I'll humor you and give you an idea of what patriotism is to me:
My father and 7 uncles fought to defend our country and our ideas of liberty between WWII and Korea. 2 were captured as POW's, 1 in Italy and one in the Philippines.
1 brother and 2 BIL's were drafted during the Vietnam war.
One son and 4 nephews joined the service after 9/11, and 2 are still members of the US military.
There is no way on God's earth that I would ever disparage their service, what they fought for, the freedoms they defended or the flag they represented.
They didn't fight so that our country could be divided, or that our society and our values would be tossed out over a presidential election or any other BS partisan game that we at home want to play. They fought so we COULD have the freedom to disagree, but in the end, unite.
For those 16 'reasons', I have to believe that we will continue, despite whatever partisan games people want to play, to be a united nation that cares about and protects each other.
Our legislators are "cooperating" with their constituents by representing their wants, needs, and desires. Just how or even why would you "punish" them for doing what they are supposed to?
Horse pucky!
Senators and congressman haven't represented their constituents en-mass for the better part of many decades.
Once upon a time they actually valued integrity but today they simply TELL their constituents what's in their best interests and forge ahead with whatever path will garner the most backhanders in the form of directorships or paid post-congress positions as fellow travellers.
You folks have reduced them to mere puppets by overlooking their culpibility in many failures. Have Frank or Dodd received any slaps on their fat backsides for possibly setting things in motion that brought your country to it's very knees? NOPE.
Pelosi, Reid, among many of those morons; being held accountable for not crossing the floor with an olive branch? NOPE!
I find it hard to believe that given the last few years of obvious disdain a lot of them have shown for the representative process that anyone would actually still believe they are performing at the behest of their electorate. That's just laughable!
Lincoln might have started you off on that path, but could it be that his intentions were to guarantee all your citizens shared equally in whatever benefits came from within your country?
You all seem too willing to ignore all the positive things that came out of Nationhood to focus instead on the partisan bickering of just two particular parties.
The lifestyle and very luxury your country has enjoyed for generations came about through the melding of ideals and your wealth and power garnered through the co-operative efforts of all your states being channeled in some form have enabled you to maintain your position to this very day.
Your current problems are due to just one facet of your political structure and that is the failure to co-operate bears no personal punishment for your legislators.
Lobbyists of today and carpet-baggers of yore are still the same nefarious entities; get rid of the perks for congressman and senators and you'll change the whole dynamic for the better.
Lincoln didn't start us on the path, he put the car in overdrive. We were on the path since our founding.
And no, Lincoln didn't do it for the benefit of freeing the slaves. War was the option of least monetary cost. Lincoln himself knew that, he even floated the idea of paying for all the slaves freedoms and having a phased in freedom instead of an all at once.
The Republican power structure of the time, and wealthy Americans of the North didn't want to fit the bill. To much money building weapons, who cares if hundreds of thousands of people die, life is cheap.
No better then what the south was doing with slaves, in my opinion.
This is one very large argument in favor of a parliamentary system: a government's ineffectiveness has real repercussions for its backbenchers, who are likely to lose their seats at the next general election if their leadership fails. Or conversely, if the opposition is clearly acting in an irresponsible way, opposition MPs face the likelihood of losing their seats to candidates of the ruling party. Ask some of the Labour MPs swept away in the general election of 1983 if Michael Foot's leadership had anything to do with their losses, or ask Conservative MPs swept away in 1997 if the torpor of the post-Thatcher government of John Major had anything to do with it.
The parliamentary system isn't/hasn't worked very well for the europeans. During the same time we produced fdr european gave us hitler, mousilini, stalin, and franco. No thanks.
Last edited by Dutchman01; 11-04-2012 at 07:55 AM..
Senators and congressman haven't represented their constituents en-mass for the better part of many decades.
Once upon a time they actually valued integrity but today they simply TELL their constituents what's in their best interests and forge ahead with whatever path will garner the most backhanders in the form of directorships or paid post-congress positions as fellow travellers.
You folks have reduced them to mere puppets by overlooking their culpibility in many failures. Have Frank or Dodd received any slaps on their fat backsides for possibly setting things in motion that brought your country to it's very knees? NOPE.
Pelosi, Reid, among many of those morons; being held accountable for not crossing the floor with an olive branch? NOPE!
I find it hard to believe that given the last few years of obvious disdain a lot of them have shown for the representative process that anyone would actually still believe they are performing at the behest of their electorate. That's just laughable!
En-mass? Really? If our congressmen and senators are not cooperating it's because our peoples are divided. It shouldn't be that hard to comprehend.
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