democracy for all?

S

sleepydad

New member
1. Terrorism against the US is a direct result of misguided US past and current foreign policy. With no particular sovereign nation(s) other than the former leadership of Afghanistan to pursue in what's a very unconventional circumstance with rapidly growing support, I fail to understand how enlarging our conventional military force can do anything but send a message of continued support of that foreign policy. While current administration's role of combating terrorism seeks to raise it to a war status through implanting fear in the US public, I see no military role offering a solution. Iraq (and Afghanistan) has, again, proven the futility of addressing unconventional warfare with conventional methodology.

2. IMO our foreign policy, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, has accelerated the desire of Iran and others to develop nuclear capability. While we literally support Israel, a nuclear power, as a quasi US state and occupy Iraq, the entire world views the US as an overbearing aggressive power for which there is only one defense not requiring conventional forces they're unable to muster. Common sense would allow putting the ME shoe on the other foot to view the US and Israel much as Europe viewed Hitler's Germany. Hitler's expansion was to secure raw materials after Germany's war machine reached a size forcing all other nations to eliminate trade credits and agreements with Germany in an attempt to contain that expansion. US (and UK) desire to retain USD as the global currency to facilitate ongoing US debt to feed a false economy obviously contains military action as options, as voiced by US leadership and proven with Iraq. There is a parallel. Does the US determine who does and doesn't have nuclear weapons to defend themselves by using its military power to enforce that decision? Do Israel and Pakistan display more stability than Iran? That's what the rest of the world sees.

2. IMO regional conflicts are UN matters. That other Western(ized) nations offer little support for US actions is why spend the money when the US likes going to war for almost any reason. Using a ratio of US military size to that of any other country rationalizes a sound economic/military contribution policy on that one.
 
We the people are WHOLLY to blame for our current predicament. Ben Franklin described the newly formed US government as "A republic, if you can keep it". We have not kept it.
 
Georged:
1. Terrorism: I agree with you that, in most situations, conventional warfare cannot combat terrorism. However, I suspect that special forces units can potentially play a role in limited situations where governments (such as Pakistan) harbor terrorists unwillingly and would agree to allow US help to ferret them out. Spy rings are probably most effective but difficult to implement. As for causes of terrorism, I agree that much, if not most, of the reasons that terrorists target us is because of policies we have instituted in the Middle East which are too one-sided - such as our overly one-sided support of Israel and our support of dictators in the Middle East in the name of stability. Apparently, one of the driving forces of Al Qaeda was anger at US military presence in Saudi Arabia which, itself, was mainly due to our involvement in the first Gulf war. If we weren't as dependent on oil from the Middle East then we probably would not be so concerned about that region's stability that we sacrifice some of our own moral guidelines to sustain it. Having said all that, I should also note that Arab anger at unrelated issues (such as the recent cartoons of Mohammed) also has the potential for escalating into terrorism so not all terrorism is realistically avoidable.

2. Nuclear Proliferation: I agree that our recent ventures, under the Bush administration, in invading a country for ideological reasons (introducing democracy) along with Bush's rhetoric of "axis of evil" might certainly have played a large role in convincing Iraq and North Korea to push their nuclear programs. If their goals for these programs are purely for defense, then I would not be too worried. My main concern is that both of these countries are themselves run by strong ideologies that might be more willing to take agressive actions based on those ideologies (ex. hatred of Israel with the Iranians and unification with South Korea for the North Koreans) while using their possession of nuclear weapons as a type of shield to prevent foreign involvement.

As for the comparison with Hitler's Germany - I have to say that that is quite an exaggeration. I would certainly agree that US intentions are not as rosy as they are portrayed but people in the Middle East are very prone to jumping to the worst conclusions and believing in conspiracy theories (probably because they have so little experience with a truly free press).

Ultimately, I believe that the US can play a joint role, under the umbrella of an organization such as the UN security council, in helping stem the spread of nuclear weapons to unstable or hostile countries. Of course, it is always difficult to make the decision whether or not a particular situation warrants such an enormous risk, but avoiding making any decision could potentially be far worse.
 
I disagree. Democracy gives power to the people, but sometimes the people do very silly things and future generations/ other countries pay the price.

That and some cultures aren't really suited to have a democratic style of government.

-Wez
 
I agree when the whole population is involved and INFORMED then a good democracy is underway, however, lawyers, and legislators of yesterday and today make it EXTREMELY hard to understand what laws are on the table, which "appointed" person is making the final decision and just because we elect a certain person to a specific office, we, the general population relinquish our power once we elect that one person, who many times change their platform.

The thing is we have too many darn freaking LABELS like republican, democrat, conservative, the working family, the green party, liberal, etc. I personally refuse to pick a party and in a DEMOCRACY I'm forbidden to vote in a primary. There's democracy for you. Besides that when I do go to vote in the election most of the time I'm disgusted in who I have to choose from.

Well, I know things will never change in my life time but I hope it does change for the better.

One more thing about broken democracy is that as citizens we must adhere to the laws "we" create, so why is it we don't elect our US Supreme Court Justices who have life positions, who create laws on our behalf, and I didn't have a say in that very CRITICAL VOTE, and we do elect many local judges that hold terms for a few years at a time but for some reason the public doesn't have the intelligence to pick a US Sup. Ct. Justice...strange.
 
It would be wonderful if we had a populace informed and wise enought to be able to support a pure democracy. Unfortunately, we don't have that. From things I have picked up over the years, I believe that the founders realized that such a wise and informed populace would be unlikely. Therefore, they formed a representative democracy. My understanding of the basic idea behind a representative democracy is that the people outline the general course of a country's government by electing representatives but they are not trusted with the details or with any decision that requires the one deciding to be well informed. Decisions on specific laws, on the election of a judge to the Supreme Court, etc. are decisions which require the one deciding to be well informed.

The great majority of people don't have the time nor the interest to become informed enough about these issues to make any wise decisions. I really can't blame people too much for that. It would probably take 20 hours a week of effort at least for people to stay well informed enough to support a pure democracy and most people just don't have the time for that. However, I remain disappointed in our populace for not even taking enough time or using enough objective reasoning to make well informed decisions about the direction of our country - the one area which does seem to me to be our responsibility in a representative democracy. How can we criticize people who live off of credit while ignoring our government's complete fiscal irresponsibility? How can we not hold a president responsible for misleading the public in the reasons given for going to war? Why do we not pay more attention to the built in corporate control over elected candidates by not pushing for more election reform? People seem to be just too easily distracted by the rhethoric between the two oposing camps (Democrats and Republicans) to step back and look at the big picture.
 
How is that an exageration? Hitlers Germany was essentially invading other countries in order to provide materials and capital influx for their military machinery in order to keep their false economy rolling along. The US is essentially doing the same thing. The only real difference is that our false economy is based on debt and a wildly inflated equity market. In order to sustain our false economy, we have to ensure dollar dominance. The only way we can do that is to ensure that the petro dollar remains the driving economic force behind the world economy.

Saddam rejected the dollar for purchase of Iraqi oil and insisted on Euro only payments. While he was under crushing sanctions, this was not a problem. If Iraq had come out from under sanctions, and started full oil production, accepting payment in Euros only, the damage to the dollar as the premier world currency would have been incalculable.

This ws problematic becuase the UN weapons inspectors were almost done. They were within 2 weeks of issuing their final report, which we now know would have declared Iraq WMD free. The few lingering questions would not have been nearly enough to keep the sanctions in place.

I think that it should be obvious by now what our response was. We could not risk Iraq resuming full oil production using a petro Euro. So, the Bush administration "fixed" the intelligence to make it appear that there was still a viable WMD threat, despite the fact that our own inspectors told us otherwise, then invented links between Saddam and AlQueda that were frankly ludicrous. Any thinking person should have been able to see right through these ploys. Fortunatly for the Bush administration, very few Americans fall under the category of "thinking people".

Fast forward a couple of years. Iran comes forward voluntarily and informs the IAEA that they have a nuclear program for civilian use. Now, we know that Iran has been running a heavy water reactor, and enough plutonium sitting around that Russia is unwilling to take it back to dispose of it. We have known this for a long time. We know that back in the 90's, the Iranians bought several nuclear capable cruise missiles from the Ukraine, and most intellignece agencies believe they bought the warheaRAB that went with them because while the Ukraine claims they did not, the warheaRAB in question are missing.

So, we know Iran is possibly already aremed with nukes. We know they have the plutonium and technical expertise to produce weapons with it. We know there is pretty much nothign we can do about that. BUT, they also want to enrich uranium. They have 2000 centrifuges, which leaves them 4000 short of being able to produce weapons grade material. We have no proof they are attempting to acquire those 4000 centrifuges.

Look at the strength of the evidence we have against Iran thus far. Are documents abotu nuclear weapons that can literally be downloaded form the internet proof of nukes? I think not. Are plans for commercially available dual stage centrifuges proof? If so, I must eb bulding nukes in my basement, because I have plans for a couple of different desinged for dual stage cetnrifuges left over from my previous employment.

i don't knwo if Iran is trying to produce nukes or not. IMO, it is likely that they already have them. What I DO know is that the evidence is incredibly weak, and the US had to strong arm other nations in order to get the referral we wanted.

I also know that our increased interest in the Iran nuclear situation occured immeditaly following Irans announcement that they would be opening an oil bourse, and that it would not be limited to dollar based transactions. This is another one fo thsoe dollar crushing events, so we warm up the rhetoric and the war machine and get ready to go.

Personally I think it will be interesting to see what form the UNSC sanctions take. The US was happy to get the sanctions. They did not push for a referrral that would allow the use of military force, which does not make much sense given the fact that sanctions are HIGHLY unlikely to have any real effect on Irans nuclear program. Lets face it, they acrried it out for 20 years and nobody had a clue, and during much of that time they were under sanctions.

Anybody want to place odRAB on whether or not our proposed sanctions include provisions that keep the Iranians from runnign their oil bourse????
 
I agree with your post, and the above quote I've heard like-minded views, however, I do not believe that to be true for the most part. In any event, we should be wiser than our ancestors/founders, but we're not, I believe we are spinning our own deadly web and this nation will be like England and the people here will want to be leaving in droves. Taxes are spiraling out of hand. Is this history repeating itself all over again? We do know why our founders came here, we do know why they created the declaration of independence and here we are over-taxed yet again! Deja Vu! Almost to the point where many of us can't live in parts of the U.S. because of the over-taxing. I don't think paying real estate taxes of 8,500.00 for a 3 bedroom cape is appropriate, and there is no cap. I don't think being taxed out of your community is what our founders had in mind, and in such A SHORT TIME PERIOD. If our founders believed in your quote above, and they may have, I don't know, then isnt it time to re-think things. The "representatives" like the "common folks" apparently are equally dumb-founded.

We can make government and laws more accessible escpecially with today''s technology, we can do it but we never will. Over-Taxing the citizen's to death is not the answer, the "representatives" have placed us in a bad situation.
 
'Voting' for a representative you believe is the lesser of two evils doesn't sound like democracy to me.

Sitting around a camp fire with your peers voting and discussing directly on matters sounRAB more like it.
 
Seems easy enough to solve - have a driving theory type test for those who want to vote. Could even cater it to the issues at hand and have people vote on more referendums rather than have problems when one party controls too much of the government. Have the people represented by as many of them who actually care rather than whichever millionaires can do the best working class impressions.

Yeah, its elitist...but elite does mean good.
 
I was addressing the economic parallel. Germany emerged from a devastating economic recession through military investment/expansion. The US is currently using conventional military expansion to drive GDP and retain consumer confidence, both being facilitated by abnormal debt. When Germany's ability to incur trade debt was curtailed, geographic expansion followed.
 
Since Russia is already accepting Euros for oil (and undoubtedly the SauRAB), I don't see how such a sanction could be maintained. Unless, of course, Europe is stupid enough to let current US administration talk or bully them into being at the mercy of Russia as a primary oil and natural gas supplier. I also don't see China accepting that type of sanction other than in a limited manner to unload USD trade surplus.
 
State and municipal tax increases are being driven by a federal budget with conventional military expenditures that defy rational explanation and reduce state revenue sharing for societal improvement, a vicious cycle. Let me assure you that wealth, personal and investment capital, has been fleeing the US for quite some time. IMO it will take a major economic recession before the general US public catches on to the fact that their political representation has been and is self-serving. That general public has become enslaved to political refocus based on fear generated by their representation. Dumb as rocks and politicians are well aware of that that fact.
 
Pure democracy = mob rule, so no, I don't think democracy is the ultimate answer for all.

For democracy to work it must be combined with a system of checks and balances, as in the gov'ts of modern democratic countries, and let's face it, it's far from ideal in many cases.

I don't think we've got it perfected yet, I'm not sure we can or will, but compared to most forms of gov't, I do think a modified form of democracy is the best available option.

Waxy
 
My main question to you would be - what would you cut away to reduce the taxes? As it is, the federal government is already spending much more than it is bringing in. Over 40% of government spending goes to Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security (~7.7%+11.6%+21.4% = 40.7%), a bit over 19% goes to military spending, 7% goes to debt servicing, 13.3% goes to "All other mandatory" spending, leaving only ~19.3% to "Non-defense discretionary spending". I got these numbers from:

http://www.house.gov/budget/fedgovbuck030905.pdf

I don't have similar distributions for various state and local budgets but my impression about property taxes is that they mostly go to financing schools, police and fire departments, etc.

If you believe that your taxes are too high, then where specifically do you think the money is being wasted? Otherwise, do you think that the federal, state and local budgets should come from taxes that are more uniformly distributed so that the poor and middle class pay more than they currently do?

Also, I should note a couple of things. Many European countries have taxes far higher than our taxes - mostly to support more social programs. However, our military spending is much higher. As for comparisons with the colonial period, I believe their main complaint was "taxation without representation". They felt that these taxes were being imposed upon them by the British government that was not respecting their rights. Those taxes were less than today but they also did not have a standing army, no social security, medicare, etc.

I am not saying that there is no government waste and that we cannot find ways to cut taxes. I am only saying that any such cuts in taxes would have to happen through a very painful, meticulous and objective analysis of priorities in expenditure.

Yes, one could argue that, if you limit the people who can vote to those who make the effort to inform themselves, then one would have a more educated voting public and that, from that point of view, an elitist approach could be good. However, I would be skeptical that an elitist voting body would look out for the interests of those who are too uneducated (from poverty or disinterest) or too busy to inform themselves enough to pass the tests you propose. Do the ignorant have any less right to a government that represents them? It is a tricky issue.
 
Note I did not say "the sanctions that are passed". I said "our proposed sanctions".

It is not merely a question of oil being bought and sold in Euros. In order for the dollar to REALLY suffer, oil must be PRICED in Euros. Thsu far, the VERY limited trading that goes on in Euros in the international oil market has only had a limited imapct on the dollar. The Iranian oil bourse essentially creates an independant, Euro based marker for oil trade, as well as providing a marektplace where people are not only ABLE to purchase their oil in Euros but are REQUIRED to do so.

As I have said before, I think that the petreuro is still little more than a stopgap between a petrodollar and a petroyuan. In the real world, the decline of the US is the decline of the western world. Europe is not much better off than the US, and the UK is probably is worse shape.
 
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