The General US Politics Thread

By "faith in the constitution" I mean that people follow/enforce it at all. I only said that because you made it sound like we should simply disregard laws.

See, the job of the court is not to follow the will of the people; that belongs to the representatives. The job of the court is to uphold the law. "Should be" of a law is separate from "is". This is why I think the court should have more instances of suggesting the legislature that while the law rightfully says one thing, it should be changed to another.

"The Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from enacting stupid laws," says Thurgood Marshall, a liberal justice and the lawyer for Brown v. Board of Education. Just because laws are stupid doesn't mean the court should be reckless in ignoring them.

I'm not sure why you mentioned US being a republic. A republic is a system where people are left to govern themselves, with no hereditary monarch. It incorporates democracy. I honestly don't see what that has to do with this. I'm not talking about direct democracy, either; all I've said is that democracy should represent the will of the people, and distinguished when it is appropriate.

Of course democracy isn't enough. But it's a good system. It's up to the people to have right mindset and use the system properly.

However, that doesn't mean that democracy can be ignored either, for the sake of a few powerful people (in this case, justices) exercising their own judgment. Didn't imply that their beliefs or decisions are automatically wrong. Just saying that it's not a proper government that we have.

edited 26th Jun '12 12:03:49 PM by abstractematics

Friends, if you really want me to, I can try to to go back through this thread and the rest of OTC, and come back with some analogies that, however cogent their main thrust, I could interpret as tantamount to accusations of Rightist dictatorship, deviltry, and Sauron-worship, if I really cared to. I don't care to interpret them so, not being a drama queen. However, I'll go out on a limb and take a wild guess that I could.

edited 26th Jun '12 12:06:57 PM by Jhimmibhob

You mean you dont worship Sauron?

Gasp! Morgoth worshipper!

And you'd be engaging in the kind of stupidity that gets liberals called terrorists with those last two. Actually more stupid, since most of us here realize that Sauron is a fictional character.

And the Right, mostly corporatists, are doing their damnedest to make it as hard as possible to enact social justice. Not quite a dictatorship, but when you're at the bottom it probably doesn't make that much difference.

Jhim, show me any case of a liberal doing something like this unironically. Then we can talk. And let's not bandy about admitted radical groups, either. That billboard was sponsored by the Heartland Institute.

edited 26th Jun '12 12:19:08 PM by Fighteer

{EDIT} stupid rant deleted.

Wait, pornography and hate speech can be censored? That's a lot better than I thought.

edited 26th Jun '12 12:18:36 PM by ATC

Well, I simply don't like to say "worship." Being good capitalists, we have an annually renewable contract with Sauron. That way, our Orcs are never unionized.

Well, the important takeaway is that nobody's reduced anyone else to cartoons.

edited 26th Jun '12 12:15:34 PM by Jhimmibhob

Are you strawmanning? We already don't have unrestricted freedom of speech. Hate speech and pornography, for example, have Supreme Court approval to be censored. So I have a very strong feeling that your post is inflammatory for the sake of being inflammatory, which is not permitted.

edited 26th Jun '12 12:15:37 PM by Fighteer

Sorry. I'm not strawmanning, I'm just ignorant.

Sorry, Fighteer, but refusing to bandy said groups wouldn't be honest—i.e., it wouldn't be comparing apples to apples, because not every party's "paint-eating radical fringe" is equally distant from its mainstream. Whoever put up the billboard that Krugman is worked up over is highly unlikely to fit in at the RNC. I cannot confidently say any such thing w/r/t the leftist radical groups you're alluding to and the DNC.

It's rather reversed, what with all the Tea partiers that have gotten into power, the fact that Santorum was seriously considered a candidate for presidency, the fact that crazy woman in Arizona is able to say the things she says and not be talked down by her own party, and the fact that Republicans everywhere keep trying to interfere in people's medical care.

That shit is not happening on the Left. The fringes are far from our center. It's the Right that has the crazies in the center of their party.

Jhim, that was a mainstream Republican group that put the sign up. You cannot separate the Republican fringe from its core any more. Democrats don't go around with inclusionary policies towards Greenpeace, anarchists, Communists, and what have you. We think they're as crazy as conservatives do and we aren't afraid to say so.

The point is that there is one side in this whole mess that is actively engaged in lying about and demonizing its opponents, and it's got an elephant on its banner. There is just not an equivalent rhetoric coming from the Democrats.

This post was thumped by the Merciless Hammer of Doom

We'd be happy to ignore Limbaugh if Republicans would ignore him. They don't. He's their poster child! Congress voted him Republican of the Century or something.

edited 26th Jun '12 12:40:03 PM by Fighteer

On top of all that, here's the biggest difference between the left and the right in terms of acceptance.

The left still forgives/tolerates/accepts the Blue Dogs, although there are still some on the far left of the Democratic party that don't tolerate the Blue Dogs at all. But these people are few.

After 2010, the Republican Party has at LEAST 60 congressmen that are given legitimacy despite their extreme "my way or the highway" views, and when Jeb Bush criticized Grover Norquist's tax pledge, Grover Norquist didn't see it as a mere difference of opinion, the way Harry Reid and Lieberman made up even after Lieberman endorsed Mc Cain. Norquist was FURIOUS!

The right wing of today is in an idealogical civil war between the Tea Party and the more mainstream conservatives and moderates.

The Senate Republicans have filibustered more times from 2006 to today than any other party or person in the entire history of our country. They went from treating Democrats as the idealogical opposition to an enemy that needs to be destroyed.

I had no idea there was a difference between the two in this field.

This post was thumped by the Stick of Post Thumping

So, now it's the victim's fault for telling off the bully? Good example you're setting there! ATC, if you are genuinely that ignorant, do us all a favor and lurk rather than post.

Ace, you're welcome to dislike any of the phenomena you cite above, but if you think there's anything fringy or crazy about run-of-the-mill Tea Partiers, Santorum voters, Jan Brewer (?), or opposition to Obamacare, you've revealed more about yourself than you might have planned to.

So, Fighteer, I'm taking it that fellows like Charles Barron are figments of my imagination? Anita Dunn, too? Bev Perdue? Holder? Whatever you say. That's one firm grip the Dems have got on their members' rhetoric and veracity.

ATC, please stop saying things like that. It has no basis in reality and I really don't think you know what you're talking about.

Also, Democrats are very much telling current Republicans they suck. But Democrats can't regulate who the Republican party supports because that group is responsible for regulating itself.

@Terwylth; Republicans have gone nuclear lately in a way that the Democrats just haven't. It's one thing to view someone as the opposition, but Republicans have taken it incredibly farther than is usual. Seriously, all this claiming "both sides do it" is ignoring the trend of the last few years where Republicans have done literally everything they can to suppress and block progress, and the Democrats are bending just to get a little bit of their policy through.

And what, exactly, have I revealed about myself other than I don't want a religious nutjob who hates the idea of Separation of Church and State and endorses racists policies to be President of this country, and that I think the Tea Party's policies are outright harmful to this country because they don't realize how it will ultimately destroy things like infrastructure and education, and that I think Jan Brewer is a bigoted idiot enacting harmful policies in her state? Oh and that I like the idea of socialized healthcare because not only will it lead to better preventative care, it will save all of us money in the long run. And that the government has no right to interfere in what's going on in my uterus.

edited 26th Jun '12 1:03:34 PM by AceofSpades

My mistake, Ace. I'd gotten the false impression that you considered beliefs contrary to yours in those areas ipso facto nuts, and that your own beliefs were starting to get couched in a cartoonish manner—almost like something a right-wing caricaturist might whip up. Obviously, I couldn't have been more wrong. Please accept my apologies.

edited 26th Jun '12 1:12:12 PM by Jhimmibhob

Ummm... It's been a while since I've posted here, but might I request we all stop being massive dicks and attempt to understand each other?

Kex is right.

We all need to start being civil again. Let's stop with the personal attacks and fight with words rather than insulting people.

If you say something liberal or conservative (for me, mostly liberal), fine with me, but I get the feeling this is getting dangerously close to a Flame War.

@terlwyth

There is a big difference. With idealogical opposition, you at least try to acknowledge that Both Sides Have a Point, but now we're gridlocked because the Dems are unwilling to completely surrender to the Republican agenda (not a bad thing), and Republicans aren't cooperating at all, even if they get most of what they want (the whole Violence Against Women Act fiasco is proof of this).

edited 26th Jun '12 1:26:57 PM by Skatepunk

"Few" appears to include most of this page of discussion.

That does indeed seem to be the problem. Republicans are in the middle of a back-backlash against their own backlash movement getting too extreme, and the Tea Partiers are back-back-backlashing to try and shut them up before they get voted out by disillusioned moderates.

Eh. Granted the Republicans just did it a couple years quicker, but Dems are polarizing pretty hard in response to that. Hell, just look at the blue dogs fiasco.

Hell, if we could do that this thread wouldn't exist

edited 26th Jun '12 1:26:02 PM by Pykrete

That's no excuse. We might as well try.