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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Whatever happened to the American Independent Party? A few decades back, they used to be a viable (well, not obviously insane) political choice, but you never hear about them anymore. I'm guessing they broke up into a bunch of splinter factions...
edited 24th Aug '16 8:12:50 PM by pwiegle
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
That's an inherent problem with a party whose primary claim to fame is "We aren't the Democrats or Republicans; vote for us."
Between them, D's and R's capture the majority of the political spectrum in America, while the fringe parties distinguish themselves by staking out fringe positions. Ergo, if you believe in the basic platform of either party (or a mix-and-match of both), those are your only reasonable choices even if you don't like the candidates.
Parties that try to stake a claim on a single major position find that they can't attract enough people to be viable, since even if you believe in that position, if you also care about other things, you'll be more at home in a major party that also cares about those other things. The Constitution Party may say, "Hey, we support the Constitution! Rabble rabble!" but so do Democrats and Republicans — have you ever heard a Democrat say, "Fuck this stupid Constitution thing," in service of a policy goal?
This unfortunately causes some heartache for voters who, for example, believe in gun control but not abortion, or like Keynesian economics but think we shouldn't help immigrants, or whatever. You can't have a party to match every possible set of ideological positions.
edited 24th Aug '16 8:42:26 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"To be fair, that's a lot of people's opinion about control, if not to just flat out the second amendment just try to maliciously loophole abuse your way around it. Arguably, that's pretty justifiable, but it's still a pretty common sentiment.
I think you might've meant Harry Truman there since Wilson died back in the 1920s.
edited 24th Aug '16 8:45:56 PM by rmctagg09
Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.![]()
While some people do indeed believe that the Second Amendment is obsolete and dangerous, the idea of banning all private gun ownership without first going through the process of amending the Constitution is not something you'll find argued outside of the extreme fringes.
The "God's law before man's law" position is one found mainly on the extreme right. I don't see how a Democrat could possibly say it with any kind of intellectual integrity.
That said, last I heard the Constitution Party is all about some God up in America's laws.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Parliamentary governments have a much higher tendency to have more then 2 parties and have support for them built into the system, AFAIK. I think UKIP is basically to their conservative party what the Tea Party would be if they had actually split off and formed their own party instead of co-opting the existing one. There also used to be the Liberal Democrats who imploded some years back.
edited 24th Aug '16 8:58:33 PM by Elle
"God's law before man's law" — doesn't ISIS say the exact same thing?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank."How does the UK manage having three parties?"
Strong regional political traditions, plus a general differentiation between classical liberalism and social liberalism — the Lib Dems and Labour/SNP are on opposite sides of this divide, while the U.S. Democrats straddle it, and the prevailing Big Tent political paradigm means that regional differences are ironed out behind closed doors. In the past, there used to be third parties or insurgent candidates, but they were usually a sign of drastic political realignment, and once the party that the splinters came from got its shit together, the status quo was restored.
edited 24th Aug '16 8:59:11 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."The whole "give unto Caesar" thing, as explained to me by my pastor: It means respecting the legitimacy and authority of the government, but giving unto God means that you put his will above human's laws.
ISIS claims to believe in putting God's will above the will of the state, but: A) they do not, and B) Hitler Ate Sugar. For example, many people have done evil things claiming they want to help the poor, but this does not mean we shouldn't help the poor.
I've heard it said that Jesus was complaining about how the trial was being conducted, not the punishment itself. There wasn't enough witnesses and the husband needed to be punished alongside the woman.
edited 24th Aug '16 9:13:17 PM by Protagonist506
Leviticus 19:34I always understood that statement to mean that you should keep your magisteria separate. Pray and make your devotions and whatnot in your home or your church, but when in the secular realm, you obey secular laws even if they don't conform with your views.
edited 24th Aug '16 9:13:22 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Damn, in these last few pages, there's an awful lot of people prompt to equate "man accused of rape" with "rapist".
"Prompt to assume the rape charges are trumped-up" does not mean "defending rapists". No one here has ever mentioned "defending someone who had been proven guilty of rape", except those who felt accused of it.
I perfectly get Capcase's point, since I've been on the opposite end of the leaks back in the day (by virtue of being in a country officially opposed to the Iraq war). I've been the guy who instantly assumed the rape charges were trumped-up because the US were calling for Assange's head. And I won't let anyone call me a "rape apologist" for thinking (back then) that the rape didn't happen in the first place.
Edit: And it's not just rape either: In fact, you could have substituted for it any accusation worthy of a Red Notice, such has a bombing. Had he been accused of bombing some place and killing the survivors' dog, I wouldn't have believed it either at the time.
On another subject, I've been thinking about this whole "lesser of two evils" thing. I think that if one is to stay honest, one can't call Clinton "the lesser of two evils" without also calling her the lesser of four evils.
edited 25th Aug '16 1:55:01 AM by Medinoc
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."I'm willing to call Assange a rapist for as long as he's willing to hide from a trial, while innocent people who occasionally run its very rare and the assertion that Sweden is somehow a US puppet that will execute Assange is deranged at best.
If the crime had been commited in the US and there was a call for Assange to be extradited to the US I could see the agreement, but so far nobody has ever provided me with any actual argument as to why Sweden (a neutral non-NATO country) is somehow such a huge US puppet that it would fake rape charges, get the UK to extradite an innocent man and then either execute him or violate both Swedish and EU law and send Assange to the US. Nor why Sweden would be the one doing this entire thing instead of the much more US-friendly UK.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranMy sympathy leaned towards Assange back when the accusations happened, because at that time he looked like a honest whistleblower ready to sacrifice his own well-being to deliver important informations to the world.
Considering what I see of Wikileaks recently, he looks more and more like a petulant child who throws a tantrum whenever something doesn't go his way, and I can absolutely imagine such an man committing a rape of the "I am entitled to have you" kind.
Which doesn't mean that he did. Just that my (absolutely worthless) opinion on the situation has shifted over time.
X3 Care to explain your logic for that, Sweden is not a member of NATO, did not participate in the Iraq war, does not have the "special relationship", does not have a wildly unequal extradition agreements with the US, haven't been caught being part of a US lead case of mass spying on allies and own citizens, ect...
edited 25th Aug '16 3:23:43 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Because third parties exist primarily out of a rejection of "big tent" political philosophy, you're going to get a lot of weird people at their conventions.
edited 24th Aug '16 7:47:44 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."