The Partisan Divide on Issues

[David Horn]

(02-11-2020, 04:02 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(02-11-2020, 03:48 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-11-2020, 12:46 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: 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.

I think you missed my point entirely.  The 2nd is only a symptom of a truly huge problem: we have a governing document written in the waning days of the Agricultural Age that barely functioned in the Industrial Age and is a potential existential threat in the Information Age.  The modus operandi of careful and deliberate debate with constraints everywhere is an impossible model when the default is set to "do nothing".  Worse, the default is enforced by supermajority rules, such as overcoming filibusters, that add to the imbalances I discussed previously.  Yet here we are, with the "do nothing" party actively hostile to actions that require even a small sacrifice by the PTB.  For example, how, exactly, is AGW addressed?  It requires diligence and has a long time horizon.

Dealing with the archaic 2nd is small potatoes, frankly.

Don't you think that before long the time will come when vast sacrifices will be required in order to right the ship? That giving up chocolate for Lent won't be nearly enough?

I doubt we escape without huge sacrifice, though the sacrifice will almost certainly be shared very unevenly.  It would be nice if, just once, the gougers are the ones who get gouged.   Wishful thinking, I know.