"Don't vote for the lesser of two evils." I'm so happy someone said this!
http://www.spore.com/static/avatar/500/696/644/Cthulhu4Prez-Preview.png

Invictus I agree entirely about the Libertarian Party, which has generally been a clown show. As far as lesser or greater evils, it depends on how much difference you see. If Romney is wrong on 80% of stuff and Obama is wrong on 85%, is that 5% difference enough for you? It wouldn't be for me.

Depends on what the stuff is. Wrong on school vouchers I can live with, wrong on tax and entitlement reform I can't.

Libertarians are too individualistic to ever be a viable movement.

Small-L libertarians can do to the Republican Party what conservatives did to it in the 1970s. You'll never see any states colored yellow on election night, but you may see a Vice President Rand Paul in three or four cycles.

Conservatives are strategic minded. Libertarians are utopian, shortsided, and have no concept of longterm interests.

"Libertarians are utopian, shortsided, and have no concept of longterm interests."

Oh my, we actually agree on something, Putin...

Amazing what can happen when you don't chastise everyone for not agreeing with you 100% of the time and can cut the rhetoric and just phrase your point calmly!

Its only rhetoric if youre not the target. Anyway i dont find your politics much different. Instant gratfication.

I've worked in Washington, DC for an organization I know you would hate every summer in college besides the one where I was abroad for half of it. EVERY young Republican calls themselves a libertarian. The term doesn't necessarily mean nutjobs like Tolstoy, it usually means fiscally conservative, socially liberal or indifferent. As culture warriors die these are the people who would be leading the party. It's the future.

Abd self absorbed individualism. Putting a group before your own demands is anathema to you. Its all about you.

It's all about freedom.

http://exiledonline.com/its-hip-its-cool-its-libertarianism/

"Its only rhetoric if youre not the target. Anyway i dont find your politics much different. Instant gratfication."

So we're clear--

Are we criticizing me as a libertarian (if so...how do you figure that when I've sat through hours of ass-numbing debates bashing Ron Paul and libertarian ideals in general) or the fact you think that my demanding some results within the first term before I vote someone in for the second is unreasonable?

If Romney is wrong 80% of the time, and Obama is wrong 85% of the time, then you guys really need to take a serious look at your entire political system...

How about dissolve the union, and have all the elected reps do tje jobs of starting again, a whole new generation of 'framers of the constitution', a second republic!

I mean not everything is perfect, so why not build it again?

^Because it'll never happen in this country, not without a second Civil War or something...

People treat the Constitution like The Ten Commandments.

Which really is closed-minded and unfair--

The Constitution is a MUCH better model of Justice than The Ten Commandments!

;)

But in all seriousness, I doubt it will ever happen, at least not in the foreseeable future...what could possibly prompt us to exercise that clause and have another Constitutional Convention? (What's more, if we had one, I'm half sure we'd wind up with a USA and CSA by the end of it...)

"or the fact you think that my demanding some results within the first term before I vote someone in for the second is unreasonable?"

'Some results', so Obama's done nothing, huh?

Yeah, you're exactly like them. Politics is all about your needs, not any group's needs, and your sense of self-satisfaction. Strategic and collective goals are called "dogmatism".

I actually think that democratic accountability is hard to manage and gets harder the bigger a country gets. The more people you have to get through to talk to your representative the less able to represent they are.

There's a nice comparison between witch-doctors/shaman and priests.

It essentialy says magic (performed by the village shaman) is about figuring out how to get the spirits (in an animist belief system) to do things for you, so the people of the village will come with their needs and the shaman will try to work things out for them (make it rain, cure a sickly child, rain fire down upon them)

In contrast a priest (usually the ruling class in an urban dwelling) is someone who tells people how they must behave in order to appease some God. They are no longer working for the village's interests they are pushing the interest of their God onto the city... Differences of scale lead to qualatative changes in power dynamics.

I think disolving the Union (except the currency and free trade union) would leave an economic powerhouse without the burden of federal government, central taxation... And the individual states could make additional agreements beyond that with other states who actually want in...

The Ten Commandments are really about justice after all. They are "laws" but don't spell out the penalty at all. So presumably, all those laws have the same penalty and yet we are taught that the commandments are in order of importance. How can that be if the penalty for murder is the same as the penalty for stealing your neighbor's goat or seducing his wife? Yet if there is an order of precedence to the Commandments, then what are the respective penalties for breaking each?

;-)

*aren't really about...

Yes, indeed, an economic powerhouse that lets its cities drown because we have no federal government. Maybe you should examine how corrupt, inept, and vile our state governments are before you wish this travesty upon us, Orathaic. Extreme Federalism/confederalism has only worked in one country -Switzerland - and even there I have my doubts.

This is kinda random but the names of the election types that were previously talked about are Borda (Draug's point system voting) and Instant Run-off (Orthaic's ranked preference voting system).

'the same as the penalty for stealing your neighbor's goat or seducing
his wife? ' - just makes me think : what is the neighbours goat is also his wife...

@putin, perhaps i'm suggwsting you try a new model.

Letting new orleans sink happened whether the federal government existed or not. Disolving the federal government would have left that state asking for aid, and it's neighbours mobilising - instead of waiting for fema to react.

POTENTIALLY better. And sure i don't know if the supranational entity that is the EU lrovides a better model of multi-state co-operation (the euro failing being something which you could learn from and avoid, by, umm lets see having a central bank... Oh wait that's the one thing i suggested you keep.)

But coming up with a better system which doesn't suffer from the scale issues seems like it is worth trying... The senate, congress and executive bramch aren't going to fix these problems ever. So really it is just a question of how long it takes for the system to collapse in on itself...

(and switzerland is a terrible example becUse you're talking about a population maybe a thousand time smaller - 3 orders of magnitude away from being a useful example - try discussing China, India or the EU.

STV - single transferable vote, never heard it refered to as an instant runoff.

Our electoral system (First-past-the-post, one-voter-one-vote) all but guarantees two political parties which pander to the extreme edges of their party. Without changing that system, other parties either vanish, or gradually push one of the two parties in their direction.

There are no successful confederal examples that size, thats the whole point. In the history of the us, theonly force for freedom or decisive decisionmakingmas been the feds. Federalusm is theproblem, not the solution. The problem isnt scale, its having too many veto players. If the eu was more centralized, like china, itd work better.

Hey Putin. No joking here, are you on a phone by chance? Cause your typing is usually fairly decent but I keep seeing some hard to interpret messages due to missing spaces and typos from you tonight. Just wondering, dude.

Fema didnt act because it deferred to the state.

First-past-the-post does not encourage pandering to the extremes. On the contrary. First past the post encourages building broad, inclusive coalitions, because you want 51% of the voters on your side. It actually encourages moderation, because both sides are competing for the 10 or 15% of voters in the middle of the spectrum.

Proportional representation actually encourages fringe parties, because they become the kingmakers. The big mainstream parties have to pander to smaller, fringe parties in order to build majority coalitions.

Actually, FEMA's top officials countermanded Ward's order to strewamline the process and kept the outdated and horriblyu inefficient one in place. Had they listened to Ward, it would have been days, not months, before the rebuilding started and it would have saved the taxpayers a significant amount of money.