As an outsider, I feel I must warn you

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
You are very welcome. And don't forget if you should get discouraged. Whatever negative it is that you feel about yourself is a lie. You are really very smart. Make this one double sized.

UQ is right you are the smartest and here I thought I wrote really good stuff earlier... no way can it compete with the reality of your posts.... Hail Moonbeam...

 

[jackschmittusa]

My solution to the problem of people not voting is to include a "none of the above" choice on the ballot. If "none of the above" gets the most votes, new candidates must be chosen and all who ran the first time are disqualified. I believe that would inspire many people to vote so they could send a message.

 

[tcsenter]

To everybody: Try not to take any of this personaly. And even if you think that everything I said here is wrong, try to think my way for about 15 minutes. Some interesting questions may occur to you. And know that majority of people in US is not happy with present political system, and they don't vote. If less that 50% of the people would vote in my country, elections would be invalid. When was the last time you had 50%?

Then it would appear the American people have never been happy about their 'present' political system, given the 2000 election was roughly 10% off all-time recorded voter participation highs of the 1960s - an era of great social and political change. A 10% decrease puts things back in the neighborhood of where its historically been.

Year - Turnout

1924 - 48.9%
1928 - 51.8%
1932 - 52.6%
1936 - 56.8%
1940 - 58.8%
1944 - 56.1%
1948 - 51.1%
1952 - 61.6%
1956 - 59.4%
1960 - 62.8%
1964 - 61.9%
1968 - 60.9%
1972 - 55.2%
1976 - 53.5%
1980 - 52.6%
1984 - 53.1%
1988 - 50.1%
1992 - 55.2%
1996 - 49.0%
2000 - 51.0%

The notion that the American voter does not turn-out in droves because he/she is not happy with our current political system is actually incompatible with the historical record, where in fact voter turn-out has been high only when the American voter is not happy for one reason or another.

There are many reasons which might explain apathy of the American public towards politics, but flaws in our political system cannot credibly be one of them.

The American public is apathetic towards politics, primarily, because it requires some intellectual and critical thinking skills and at least a level of education which the average American doesn't possess. They just don't like politics. When the average American doesn't even have a basic clue about how our political system actually works - except for parroting populist and intellectually lazy answers like 'follow the money' - its hard to support the notion that Americans are 'unhappy' with our political system.

Sports and MTV require a whole lot less critical thought and intellectual effort and serve as a nice alternative distraction for the masses.

 

[isaacmacdonald]

Originally posted by: jackschmittusa
My solution to the problem of people not voting is to include a "none of the above" choice on the ballot. If "none of the above" gets the most votes, new candidates must be chosen and all who ran the first time are disqualified. I believe that would inspire many people to vote so they could send a message.

haha. you know, that's actually a great idea. third parties are frequently designated as a dissenting vote, but who knows how many people dispairingly punch in their vote with little or no hope of actually being represented.

along with that novel idea, I'd really like to kill the whole winner take all situation. Why should florida be the decisive state? Why shouldn't every vote count?

 

[freakflag]

To IamDavid: Yugoslavia used to be one of the larger weapons manufacturer and exporter, but I do not know weather it is still the case.

How am I supposed to take seriously anyone who says he knows exactly what's wrong with everybody else, but, has no clue what's happening in his own back yard.

 

[HappyGamer2]

I like this laserburn guy, he should post more often.

 

[Moonbeam]

Laserburn,
In a forum you may find folks who will agree with you that would not in face to face dialog. Some will agree no matter what. That is their right and I defend it. However, I will critize my government all I please because it IS mine. But, not to you. I will to each citizen who disagrees with me. It is my right to do that too. Each of use who are citizens are not just citizens but the very power that our government wields. We are not just citizens we are the soldiers who effect the policy that we wish enacted through the representative process. We are not just citizens of the US, we are the distant relative of folks from most every nation on this planet.
We are not perfect. We do not seek perfection.... WE ARE FREE! We seek freedom for us and all mankind. To achieve this we make mistakes but, we will not sit while freedom dies. Sure we befriend folks who are not the best people around but, it furthers our agenda of freedom.... we have poor... and good god we spend to help them... perhaps if we sent a bit less overseas we could help more. Our citizens suffer more and in so doing help other nations that little bit more. We have crime and punishment... goes with freedom. Goes with having wealth and goes with having illness and goes with greed. We have all these things.... But, what we have that is most important is we have each other. The fellow I agrue with today will stand with me tomorrow against any enemy any foe for the common good of Our Nation.
Enjoy what you have if not well we tried and we're not perfect. No need to thank or agree if you be free then be free.
----------------------------------------------------
As long as there are Americans like HJ, open to both our faults and our greatness we will do OK.

Yours was the post with balance between those two poles, mine were weighted to addresses what I perceive as an imbalance in the thread, the inability to look at our faults.
-----------
-------------
freakflag: If nothing else, you are a master of irony.
--------------------
The irony to me is that every word was true.

 

[Michael]

#1 - Homeless sleep under bridges in France and germany.

Michael

 

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: Michael
#1 - Homeless sleep under bridges in France and germany.

Michael

The folks under bridges in France and Germany are not homeless they are either young lovers searching for flowers or the socialist modern trying to learn more about life in the USA.

 

[jackschmittusa]

It could be young American tourists sleeping under the bridges. You know, the ones who are doing the "see Europe on $2 a day" tours.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: HJD1

Originally posted by: Michael
#1 - Homeless sleep under bridges in France and germany.

Michael

The folks under bridges in France and Germany are not homeless they are either young lovers searching for flowers or the socialist modern trying to learn more about life in the USA.

lmfao! Oh now that is definitely sig-worthy.

 

[LunarRay]

Moonbeam quote,

As long as there are Americans like HJ, open to both our faults and our greatness we will do OK.

Yours was the post with balance between those two poles, mine were weighted to addresses what I perceive as an imbalance in the thread, the inability to look at our faults

*********
Actually, MB you post what no one wants to be confronted with. Many may scoff and geer because it is the only defense to a truth ignored. The energy of truth cannot be created nor be destroyed only accepted or ignored. John the Baptist lost his head for truth as did many before and since... only the brave proclaim the truth with out fear.. So spread the water... Baptise all with the water of truth.... and maybe it will douse the fire of fear..

 

[PowerEngineer]

Welcome to the fray -- I mean forum, laserburn! I must say you've picked an appropriate name given the nature of this thread. I can't say I agree with you on every point you make, however I appreciate hearing what you have to say. I'm afraid that most people in the United States do not appreciate how we appear to people in other countries. We can argue as much as we want about whether or not their perceptions of us are justified, but knowing what their perceptions are and taking these into account in our foreign policy decisions is important.

And here's my nominee for the most unbelieveable assertion made in this thread:

why does everyone equate what we, the US, did in the past to our current foreign policy? It changes every four years and our current policy is infinitely different from that of 3 years ago. If Bush had his way we would no longer support ANY dictators or tyrants. He doesn't even support our very recent allies Saudi Arabia. I know he may say he does but we are pulling completely out of SA and then we will sit back and watch it fall. Knowing we will be able to get our oil from Iraq, Russia and other places. .

You have to be joking!

 

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: jackschmittusa
It could be young American tourists sleeping under the bridges. You know, the ones who are doing the "see Europe on $2 a day" tours.

Peut etra...

 

[etech]

laserburn

1. You do not have what is usually called ?social justice?. Government does not care about individuals. You do not have health insurances provided by the government, nor any serious social programs for helping less fortunate. You try finding poor people sleeping under the bridge in France or Germany!

French National Statistical Agency

Insee, the French National Statistical Agency, conducted a study on persons without housing in January 2002. This study confirmed that more than 200 000 persons are homeless in France and assumes that between 5.000 and 10.000 persons who live in squats or have no contact with reception centres should be added to this total

Death in Paris 1998

The winter months always kill many homeless people and this time, the pluralist left government is revealed as a centrist management-style government totally ignoring electoral pledges etc. Winter has come early. A family in Paris slowly starved to death, hastened by the cold, because they didn't know their rights. The only one surviving member described the tragic nightmare of people who do not realise that they have basic rights to food, heat and clothing in 1998 Socialist France. The moral of this tragedy is that people must fight and continue to fight for their rights and improve their standard of living in order to survive. In barely a month, 8 people have died from the cold. The press has started counting. Some metro stations remain open to compensate for lack of adequate centres and 15 special ambulances circle Paris to try to persuade the homeless to seek shelter, to save the government from accusations of failing to house, feed and give sufficient financial help to those in need.

 

[gigapet]

Since when is the president the real person calling the shots in this country? Please don't tell me that of all the educated people on this board that nobody realizes that the next presidential election has already been decided and even if it has'nt it's a moot point because regardless if the president is a dem. or a rep. they are all still puppets controlled by the elite.

When offered the presidency they know they have a two choices, follow the rules of their superiors during there time as president or face assassination.

 

[Nitemare]

You forgot 5...

5) The US typically does not elect a ruler who performs genocide on certain groups within his country


1) Yes big governments suck the big one, more power should be delegated to the state level with less intrusion from big brother..This is why the democratic party sucks and I usually vote republican or other.

2) This is because the legal system in the US has become a joke and it is virtually impossible to do anything with this beaurocratical nightmare. They should not allow inmates to tie up the legal system with frivolous lawsuits. All ambulance chaser type lawyers should be disbarred, flayed and deported to Canada. The death penalty should be expanded to include rapists, pedophiles(not statutory I'm talking totally unconsensual), treason, high level drug trafficing, and just being a sick piece of $hit. Stupid people who waste the courts time bringing up stupid lawsuits(McDonalds made me fat, Catch a tiger by the toe is racist and offends me, et al) should be placed in a gulag in North Alaska to pay for the court costs and waste of space that they took at the minimum wage rate.
They should bring back public executions and forget this lethal injection crap..'m talking guillotines, quartering and good old fashioned Mr Sparky. If the DNA evidence matches up plus there is plenty of witnesses that saw the accused do it...hell kill them the same day...
Death Row is a waiting place to await an execution not a lifelong career

3) Yes 2 party systems suck the big one as well. This is why i will never vote for a hard core right or left winger. This is why God created moderates and why I will be voting for Powell if he runs in 2008. I disapprove of his view on affirmative action but approve of most of his other views. He was recruited to run on the democratic party as a VP candidate and is a reformed democrat...how more moderate can you get

4) We have always chosen the lesser of 2 evils...and not elected them...see point 5

 

[bigben]

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Originally posted by: charrison

Originally posted by: konichiwa

Originally posted by: CPA

3) Kind of a potpourri of issues here. Yes, two major parties, but that is what the public lives with.

Wrong. You try starting a third party. Just look at Ralph Nader -- he had a surprisingly large base of support, yet he failed to garner more than, what, 5% of the vote? A two-party system is pretty detrimental and IMO it's due to the immense corruption and convolution of the campaign finance situation.

A 2 party system is not perfect, but I would have to say it is more stable than an n-party where drastic swings in goverment can and will occur.

Not to mention that the candidate for whom a clear majority did not vote can be elected. Three party system:

Candidate A: 31%
Candidate B: 33%
Candidate C: 36%

Candidate C wins, despite the fact that 64% of the country voted for someone else other than Candidate C = no political mandate. If you think a simple majority, 50% + one vote, is a tough situation for a political mandate, think of how it would be when the winning candidate only got 36% of the vote. It permits candidates to cater to a small but well-organized minority and be elected. This was in no small part what the founders were trying to prevent by devising the electoral college.

As far as our Yugoslavian friend's take on our country, I wouldn't have expected anything less from him. Same old, tired, worn-out, discredited, antiquated, 19th century, bankrupt socialist European thinking.

Yawn...

In this scenario, at least a large majority of the population voted. That is an improvement in itself. As it stands in the US now < 30% choose the leaders.

It seems to me certain ideas are @ssbackwards here:

1) Fewer parties promote stability. Somewhat true, depending on whom you are talking about. It makes politicians jobs easier, either you rule or you don't, however it eliminates the need for good diplomatic and listening(voter concerns) skills. I wonder if US voter's low turnout is related to the lack of real choices?

2) Multi-Party systems promote instability. Can be true, such as in Italy where you probably couldn't name all the elected parties from memory, but not always true. Canada has a multi-party system that works well(IMO), though it could be argued to be a 2 party system based on the record(hell, it's close to a 1 party system at times). A strength of multi-party systems is that it forces the ruling party to consider issues from competing parties even if the ruling party rules with a clear majority. Multi-party systems allow governments to see trends and growing concerns of the voting public. It's a concrete poll supported by public action(votes).

Electoral systems that require 50% +1(not of "cast" votes, but of voters) in order to elect are best for Democracy, IMO. Sure, they often require a run-off election, but at the end of the day you can point to the results and know that the majority have chosen the person(s) elect. You can't get more "legitimate" of a government.

There are a couple of political science ideas to apply here

1. The two party system has been challenged in America and is maintained by the median voter theorum. Basically, the two parties are vying over a nation that, as a whole, is mostly centrist. The candidate or the party closer to the middle between right and left will win the vote. Any party that has a significant third part vying for its votes (i.e. green party) will be severly hampered in its quest for votes. On occassion that third party will take over the the second party and the second party will dissolve (notice how we no longer have whigs and such...)

2. Few people vote because no vote is essentially a vote for the country not to change: a vote for the status quo. Voter turnout is much greater when the fundamental ability to live life is changed. That rarely happens in the United States.

 

[laserburn]

To KenGr: I doubt that American people think that system is so good that they don't need to vote. I bealive they think it is so bad that they can do nothing about it. Those things you mentioned about presidents show that it is not them that run the country. Country is ran by far more powerful figures.
To sandorski: Multy-party system would be a great improvement. The reason why Italian government is so unstable is they don't have a voting census. Voting census demandes that a party must get at least 3 or 5% votes to enter a parlament, and in that way excludes a large number of small parties. People MUST NOT be forced to vote, because boycott of election is also a form of expressing your views.
To tcsenter: You've made a quite interesting point. But question remains why don't Americans like politics. Even small children in my country have political ideas and we also have sports and MTV. Something is very wrong with this picture.
To freakflag: I am glad you read my posts so carefully. I didn't say I know everything that is wrong with USA, I was just pointing out a couple of things that should be discussed.
To Michael and etech: Point taken. I was too quick to declare France and Germany as countries without homeless. But I bealive that there are much less homeless there than in US. I will try to dig up some oficial statistic to make sure. I didn't say I was right about everything, I was simply stating a few issues that should be discussed.

 

[KenGr]

Originally posted by: laserburn
To KenGr: I doubt that American people think that system is so good that they don't need to vote. I bealive they think it is so bad that they can do nothing about it. Those things you mentioned about presidents show that it is not them that run the country. Country is ran by far more powerful figures.
To sandorski: Multy-party system would be a great improvement. The reason why Italian government is so unstable is they don't have a voting census. Voting census demandes that a party must get at least 3 or 5% votes to enter a parlament, and in that way excludes a large number of small parties. People MUST NOT be forced to vote, because boycott of election is also a form of expressing your views.
To tcsenter: You've made a quite interesting point. But question remains why don't Americans like politics. Even small children in my country have political ideas and we also have sports and MTV. Something is very wrong with this picture.
To freakflag: I am glad you read my posts so carefully. I didn't say I know everything that is wrong with USA, I was just pointing out a couple of things that should be discussed.
To Michael and etech: Point taken. I was too quick to declare France and Germany as countries without homeless. But I bealive that there are much less homeless there than in US. I will try to dig up some oficial statistic to make sure. I didn't say I was right about everything, I was simply stating a few issues that should be discussed.

Having been a US voter for over 30 years now, I can assure you that most Americans who do not vote make that choice because they do not think either candidate poses a real danger or a significantly better choice to them. For all the space taken up in the press, Americans do not live and die by politics like many other countries. That's just part of the American psyche. We love to complain about the government and worry about the results of legislation, but most people don't feel like the government has a significant day to day impact on them. We could have a whole different argument on how much the government intrudes on life, but the fact is that most Americans don't have a feeling of government presence. I think you have to live in several countries to understand how much freer American life is of government control.

You probably shouldn't waste time looking for homeless statistics. They are quite varied because there is no good way to get consistent statistics. I think we'll all concede that the US has more homeless than other advanced nations. Again, it's part of the American system. We don't provide cradle to grave support and we don't make people take help that don't want it. One of the telling facts is that homeless shelters in the US fill up in dangerous weather and go empty the rest of the year. For some people (not all of course) it's a lifestyle.

 

[tcsenter]

To tcsenter: You've made a quite interesting point. But question remains why don't Americans like politics. Even small children in my country have political ideas and we also have sports and MTV. Something is very wrong with this picture.

You've been so terribly "off" on so many of your previous statements, I'm inclined to take this latest assertion for what it appears to be worth.

 

[Lucky]

To tcsenter: You've made a quite interesting point. But question remains why don't Americans like politics. Even small children in my country have political ideas and we also have sports and MTV. Something is very wrong with this picture.

Obviously. Democracies and free governments are either novelties, hopeless dreams, or wolves dressed up in sheep's clothing for many parts of the world. Would you not stare wide-eyed and captivated at the sight of such magnificent liberties if you had never experienced it before?

We unfortunately take much of this country for granted. The basic knowledge that the government will not realistically be completely defeated militarily in our lives, or even overthrown, gives us the ability to worry about other things instead. We have a relatively stable economy, are very wealthy by global standards, and for many people things on a national level, or international level, pale in comparison to the importance of things both good and bad in our own little private worlds. It takes quite a bit for many to come out from under the turtle shell and make the effort to vote.

 

[laserburn]

To KenGr: Maybe American government has no significant impact on the live of common American, but it has way too much influence on lives of non-Americans. State department advices American citisens against going in over 100 countries! Ask yourself: Have we done something wrong to make people in all those countries hate us? I have never lived in any other country but mine, so can't say if Americans are freer of government control than lets say Germans, but I feel that there is way too much propaganda in praising the American way. I find it hard to bealive that people would choose living on the street. They are not there to exercize your generocity, they don't want shelters, they want homes, jobs and little respect.
To tcsener: I am not saying i couldn't be wrong about anything. I am offering an outsider view. Feel free to influence my opinion and let me influence yours.
To lucky: Democracy is not American trademark. Most all developed countries are democratic. Remember the 60's, peace protests? Remember how people stood up for what they felt is right? Today US government starts wars all over the world and no one stands to object. What happened to all that energy? Do people only care for cheaper gas they are going to have after Sadam's downfall? Is it alright if Iraqy children die because of it? Have you become one nation, under $ sign, with liberty and justice for none?

 

[laserburn]

To KenGr: Maybe American government has no significant impact on the live of common American, but it has way too much influence on lives of non-Americans. State department advices American citisens against going in over 100 countries! Ask yourself: Have we done something wrong to make people in all those countries hate us? I have never lived in any other country but mine, so can't say if Americans are freer of government control than lets say Germans, but I feel that there is way too much propaganda in praising the American way. I find it hard to bealive that people would choose living on the street. They are not there to exercize your generocity, they don't want shelters, they want homes, jobs and little respect.
To tcsener: I am not saying i couldn't be wrong about anything. I am offering an outsider view. Feel free to influence my opinion and let me influence yours.
To lucky: Democracy is not American trademark. Most all developed countries are democratic. Remember the 60's, peace protests? Remember how people stood up for what they felt is right? Today US government starts wars all over the world and no one stands to object. What happened to all that energy? Do people only care for cheaper gas they are going to have after Sadam's downfall? Is it alright if Iraqy children die because of it? Have you become one nation, under $ sign, with liberty and justice for none?

 

[Michael]

laserburn - Do I have to go link to all the news stories about the protests and opposition to the war in Iraq? There were plenty of people that wer eopposed. They, however, were not even close to being the majority.

Michael