Someone who hates the very idea of a particular place would not be my first choice for a tour guide to that place.wfja wrote:The United States of America in the immortal words of Aaron Sorkin. Have a gander.
I know it was made to sound really bad, but the reality was that virtually everyone got on with their lives just fine.Dinosawer wrote:A funny thing (not entirely cultural maybe, but still):
A year ago or so there was a thing in the US where the government didn't agree about a budget in time, which led to people not getting paid, public services not being available, general chaos and all that shenanigans for over a week (I think).
Also, I can assure you that virtually everyone -- most especially "public sector" (i.e., unionized) workers -- got every red cent of their wages. There were loud noises about national parks closing temporarily, but that was political theater to try to make the elite media's enemies look bad in the public's eyes. It mostly failed. (Most people grasped the concept that not being able to spend a day at Yellowstone does not qualify as an actual national disaster.)
Mostly what there was was a lapdog press dutifully spending every minute of every day breathlessly repeating the administration's political talking points. I'm not surprised if anyone following the general U.S. news during that time must have thought blood was raining from the heavens.
There is a serious argument to be made that letting the federal government briefly suspend its operations is not the best way to address either executive branch stubbornness or a legislative branch inability to control spending. I think that's a responsible objection.
But the idea that going for a few days without non-critical government activities caused any meaningful hardship to regular citizens, or that it was a disaster that no honest and caring legislator would ever permit, is bogus. There are a few better ways to govern, but there are many, many more worse things than to take a brief holiday from passing yet more laws.
Speaking of which:
The way I hear it, Brussels is too busy trying to tell every other EU country what to do to have the time to manage its own affairs.Dinosawer wrote:About four years ago, Belgium has been without an elected for 541 days and hardly anyone noticed.
But if we're talking about legislatures that aren't constantly trying to pass more laws on top of the hundreds of thousands already on the books at all levels, the Texas state legislature (speaking of Texas) meets every other year for 140 days. Period.
And yet it somehow manages not only to remain functional, and solvent in most years, it weathered the Great Recession better than other states with more activist legislatures. (And not just because of cheap energy, either.) It also continues to see more people and businesses moving to Texas (and not just from south of the border) than leaving, unlike those other eternally-controlling states. I'll be the first to say Texas is not perfect. But it does some things better than other places, including expecting people to behave like responsible adult members of society, and many of its positive features are IMO a direct result of that general attitude regarding self-government, the most important kind.
The U.S. itself also has its share of problems, many of them self-inflicted. "Too few laws" is not one of those problems, though -- not after 200+ years of barnacle-like encrustation of the ship of state. I don't think failing to agree to a budget resolution is the right way to address the real and dangerous problem of creeping statism. But I also don't think the brief shutdown hurt as much as fans of centralized power would like you to believe it did.
Precisely. "Harsh language," maybe.TheJuggler wrote: if you outlaw guns, all you do is create a power imbalance between law-abiding citizens and criminals. The criminals will still have guns, and then what is one to protect oneself with? Throwing knives? Crossbows?
"Ban guns" is an emotional plea; it's not an informed argument in light of history (see "Lord Acton"), nor is it a serious argument in light of the reality that, like it or not, there are many guns in the U.S. right now. A serious effort to remove this part of the U.S. Bill of Rights would forthrightly and sensibly address the reality that stripping the right to bear arms from law-abiding citizens would leave many weapons in the hands of criminals, who you can imagine would be delighted to find an immediate use for those weapons.
My test for whether a Second Amendment opponent is honest is whether their solution is to advocate for a constitutional amendment to repeal the Second Amendment -- the prescribed legal recourse.
Trying to nibble away at it through small individual restrictions, upheld by politically activist judges -- I have a word for that, which I won't use here. A person with the courage of their convictions would take this question to the people's representatives and then directly to the people themselves, in the process provided for by the Constitution itself. The honorable course would be to tell all of the truth on all sides, trust citizens to decide for themselves, and abide by that choice.
Fixed that for you.Dinosawer wrote:I guess that explains why America has such a lowermurderrate of home invasions and burglary!
(Actually, I don't value human lives below property. But the "ooh, those dumb Americans and their guns!" thing always seems to somehow fail to mention the startlingly high frequency with which you guys get robbed.)
Thank you for not disappointing me, Tom -- I had a feeling you might not be able to resist the opportunity to... well, let's be charitable and call it "say things not everyone would agree with" about the conservative perspective on reality.Tom wrote:That said, the position of mainstream media (such as CNN) that the truth lies some equal distance between the two sides has contributed to the current political malaise. To equate liberal talking points with the outright lies of the Far Right has emboldened members of the latter group to push an ever more oppressive agenda. The Right Wing expertly uses the politics of division to create single issue voters the truth and the welfare of the majority be damned.
Er... you did sort of already go there yourself earlier in this thread (which once upon a time was about cultural differences), inviting a response from the other side. Citing Aaron Sorkin on America is not exactly a politically neutral comment.wfja wrote:Now now, do we have to go make a political differences thread?
Because we can. That'd totally be worth watching with popcorn.
Actually, since this kind of conversation seems to bring out the angry in some people, I'll add that I'm not feeling grumpy in the slightest at anyone. Some folks expressed some views on matters of governance; I offer relatively mild rebuttals to a few of those perspectives that I feel were lacking somewhat in the accuracy department. I'm happy to be friendly here as long as everyone else is; if this turns personally nasty, I'm done... even if that means that those who can't tolerate opposing viewpoints "win." I'd like to think this forum is better than that.
Or cultural differences. I'm OK with that, too.
), but considering that the structure of government in most modern nations have rarely changed since their inception, I find it hard to believe that politic's an accurate expression of a culture's value system. Coupled with random facts - like that the average American legislator was born in 1964, recent widespread movements like Occupy Wall-street show some demand for change, or that some legislature's are still producing religious legislation despite a slow liberalization of the populace - there seems to be a teeny-tiny dissonance between American culture and politics. That's just my uneducated opinion, of course, understanding that the facts presented are conjecture.
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