At Fri, 02 Apr 1999 00:29:25 -0500, you wrote:
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>joe dees wrote:
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>> > The answer is not to rebel against a democratic system - it is to encourage
>> the more
>> > rational people to get off their bitching and moaning asses and use the system
>> to vote in >saner policies and politicians.
>>
>> First you decry that there are no acceptable Republicans anymore, then you say
>> we must work through the system. If the system excludes those that represent
>> your sentiments, then you have the Constitutional right to rebel against that
>> government, by any means necessary. I want a system that knows inherently to
>> stay away from my wallet. I shouldn't have to bribe some slimeballs to make sure
>> it happens. I might as well pay taxes then.
>>
>> You have the constitutional right to either run yourself, and see how many voters share your sentiments enough to vote for you, or to find and support candidates who do share your sentiments.
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>Why should I when it is impossible for a non-celebrity to make it as a third party candidate.
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It makes it impossible without a fire in the belly and a message which resounds with the wishes and desires of the voting populace enough to inspire volunteer support (see Jesse Ventura, who was hardly a celebrity).
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The two parties have written the rules for the electoral system, which slant the field in their direction. The 'campaign finance reform' issue is nothing but a continual tug of war between which party gains more from the existing system. It is not intended to allow private citizens to be able to run for office. I am on the board of directors of my local fish and game association, and that is about as political as I would like to get.
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I have been asked to run for county commission and have declined, so I'm a bit of a hypocrite on this issue, but I was able to found a citizen's pressure group which, with the help of a demographic study which I designed, made a strong case for paving 18 miles of rural clay roads in my home county. When we were nevertheless spurned, I wrote a letter to the local paper detailing how our voter-approved Gas Tax (which was supposed to pave roads) wes being diverted to road maintainence, a General Funds expense, which allowed those General Funds which would have gone towards maintainence to be spent on other things - a roundabout funnel for diverting Gas Tax funds to inappropriate projects. Four of the five County Commissioners were defeated for re-election, and their replacements paved the roads, at a cost of 2.4 million (and all funds diversions stopped). From the inside, politics is a slimy business, but we have only ourselves to blame if good people can't be persuaded to run!
and we are left with choices between different grades of pond scum by default. BTW, This is how state governments skim lottery funds from education, by using them instead of, rather than in addition to, previously allocated levels of funds, and the trick the federal government played with Social Security.
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>> That is the rebellious and revolutionary means supplied by the same constitution which houses the 2nd Amendment (the overthrowing an unjust government part is in the Declaration of Independence).
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>Actually the preamble of the Consitution implies the same thing.
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>> The remarkable thing about our form of government is that it is perpetually evolving in response to the expressed will of the people. It cannot do so perfectly (utopias are ideal), but it must do so adequately (to forstall dystopia-inspired uprisings).
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>satisfaction with the status quo only leads to more of the same.
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It's not an either-or; governmental forms cannot realistically be presented with the choices of perfection or unacceptability.
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>> The means by which it accomplishes this is the interplay between the popular vote and the constitution. The moment you have a multiplicity of people living in close proximity whose freedoms may conflict, and it is wished that all shall enjoy all freedoms which do not interfere with the exercise of the same freedoms by others (and where freedoms collide, the conflict should be resolved by equal and proportional compromise), it is necessary to have a document which codifies these freedoms and their order of precedence, and which prevents a majoritarian tyranny from usurping minority rights; this requires a constitution. The general language of this document must be interpreted to apply to particular cases; this requires a judiciary.
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>The judiciary is to defend the standards that are set in the constitution, not to twist, bend, and hallucinate new meanings from the words, or to decide which words it is ok to ignore.
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Agreed; this is why, when one votes for an official having judiciary appointive power, one must consider this possibility in one's vote.
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>> Individual bullies and bully groups must be deterred from trampling on the freedoms of their fellows; this requires an executive.
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>Except when the executive is the one doing the trampeling. Who watches the watchers?
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The Voters. They have the option to vote out abusive administrations, and it is the administration which gives all the three-lettered agencies their marching orders and acceptable parameters.
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>> The document must be updated to evolve with changing sociocultural and technological realities; this requires a legislative. Finally, the people who occupy these positions must be fairly chosen; this requires free and democratic elections. It has been said that our form of government is the worst there is, with the exception of any other which has been tried. Given the situation as I have described it (and I trust that it is a fair description), exactly with what would you replace it, and why and how would your replacement function better than what we've got, if we'll only work with it (notice that the law of club and fang alternative of NO government is intellectually feasible only to pimply-faced adolescent idealist utopians who have not yet abandoned their starry-eyed Randian pubescence in the face of a reality of which they have as of yet inadequate experience).
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>My big peeve with the problems in the system now is that the founding fathers had definite ideas about what the words in the Constitution meant (we can see it is so in much of their other writings), but they did not include a glossary in the document, because they were shortsighted and had no idea that the meanings of the words could change so drastically, because society was so stable then that the meanings of words had not changed since before Shakespeare.
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>They also did not understand the concepts of disinformation, newspeak, and doubletalk and how they could be used to undermine the Constitution.
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>Constitutional word a)old meaning b) new meaning
>or phrase
>"well regulated" a) trained and skilled b) restricted or prohibited
> by excessive laws
>"shall not be infringed" a) not even slightly restricted b) whatever the court decides
> it means
>"general welfare" a) stable economic development b) socialist command
> nationalized economy
>"no standing army" a) no full time professional army b) they aren't living in
> YOUR house without
> paying you
>"not support establishment of state religion"
> a) no official government religion
> b) nobody can even have a relgious thought on
> government property
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I notice that you didn't suggest a better Y; I therefore conclude that you have no alternatives superior to the six bedrocks of our present governmental form: the tripartate separation of powers (leg., exec., jud.,), a constitution, free popular elections, and unenumerated poweers devolving and decentralizing by default to states and localities.
>--
>TANSTAAFL!!!
> Michael Lorrey, President
> Lorrey Systems
>------------------------------------------------------------
>mailto:mike@lorrey.com
>------------------------------------------------------------
>"A society which trades freedom for some measure of security
>shall wind up with neither." -----Benjamin Franklin
>
>"The tree of Liberty should be watered from time to time
>with the blood of tyrants and patriots."
> -----Thomas Jefferson
>"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security
>of a Free State, the Right of the People to keep and bear
>arms shall not be infringed." -----US Constitution,
> 2nd Amendment
>"You can have my gun when you pry it out of my cold, dead
>hands.." -----Anonymous
>
>"Once we got their guns away from them, taking their
>money was REAL easy." -----Unknown North Korean
> Commissar
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Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher