The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-10-2020, 03:37 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-10-2020, 03:15 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-10-2020, 09:11 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-08-2020, 08:23 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: But if you do not use the current structure for a well regulated militia, you will have to wait until you can pass an amendment or hold a constitutional convention.  Neither is likely.  If you consider modern guns and urban environments a problem, you are stuck with using the existing constitution and laws.

In a nutshell, that's a symptom of what's driving modern politics in the US.  We're well past the use-by date for this Constitution.  It needs a major overhaul to remain viable in the 21st century, but the minority that benefits from keeping things as they are still holds total veto power.  That was and is a major fault in the original document, though one the Founders couldn't know.  It will be resolved at some point, but how is anyone's guess.  Let's hope that sanity reigns, and violence is avoided, or keep to a minimum at the very least.

Texas is already underfunding their census effort to delay redistricting that's not to the GOP's advantage.  We'll see much more of this before the resolution takes hold.  I'm afraid that this 4T won't be long enough to get there, so this gets passed to the future.

Another perspective is that the progressives agreed to a certain constitution, which happened to become rule of law, and the progressives are attempting to overturn that agreement without the supermajority originally agreed to to change it.  The progressives are so sure their culture is superior that they are attempting to force it on the rest of the country.

Now, problems which aren’t solved will get worse.  Eventually, you might get the supermajority.  In the meantime, you might take a hard look at the original arrangement and find a way of living within it.

No, the real problem is representation in a representative democracy.  When 18% of the voters elect 50% of the Senators, who in turn confirm 100% of the judges, the game is rigged.  Add to that, since 2000 the electoral plurality has selected a Democrat in every Presidential contest except 2004, yet the GOP has held the White House for 12 of those 20 years.  Just to get to judicial parity, the Democrats need an 8+% majority.  To dominate, that rises to 20%.  The GOP only needs a draw.

Was that baked into the Constitution?  Yes.  It may be that the Founders were balancing the 3/5 rule for slaves by giving the then non-slaveholding states some leverage.  Virginia was far and away the most populous state at the time.  Now, there is no slavery, and the rule by farmers has also passed, so these are archaic rules set in concrete by well meaning men.  Fixing that peacefully will be incredibly hard, but fixing it is mandatory, if for no other reason than the total disregard for AGW by the dominant minority.  Sadly, survival demands it.

Well, that is one more perspective.  I should add, there are lots of perspectives.  Not as simple a problem as one can reduce it to only one important perspective.

Yes, a lot of the slavery compromises are still in place, including the senate, the electoral college, and the amendment process.  As a result, the conservatives have more than their share of power.  This is more reasons the progressives should look hard at the old methods for regulating weapons owners, and use the tools which they do have.  They have just been trying to push a perspective that the militia no longer exists, therefore the right does not.  Now that an individual right has been recognized and some point at the militia being well defined in the US Code and existing, this argument is pretty much gone.  They might as well abandon it and try to regulate the militia as the Founders intended.  

The bit about the progressives trying to change the culture by force is problematic if you are trying to avoid use of force.

I would add that representative democracy is itself a problem.  The representatives want to become elites, and over represent the elites.  This could be fixed with direct vote democracy over the net, by getting rid of the representatives, but at this point security is a problem that has not been solved adequately for that.