Posted on 12/09/2007 6:39:31 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Bump for bookmark
The "money in politics" thing is always a thorny issue though. I kinda like the idea mentioned further down of only allowing donations from within a district, though it would most likely be really hard to police. I suspect we'd benefit more by transparency. Disallowing bundling would go a long way into letting us know where money is coming from that funds a given candidate.
Term limits: probably an idea whose time has come.
I'm right there with him on abolishing the 17th amendment! In addition to giving more power to states, (as it was originally intended), it would probably help to reinvigorate state party organizations because they would become more meaningful. Read through the Texas party positions, and you'll see that it is a heck of a lot more libertarian than national ones are.
I don't see any point in changing the term of the presidency.
I'd also get rid of the income tax, and the war on (some) drugs.
We’ve been falling for some time.
Rome declined over centuries, with some ups and down, but the overall trend was down.
We are doing the same.
The rise of the left, and the slide to the left of those who today call themselves “conservatives,” are all part of our decline.
Bumperoo!
Yes, however, we really do need a government that is competent to execute the enumerated powers such as running the courts and seeing to our defense. We will not be well served by a continual churn of newbies getting OJT (on job training) by making the same, sometimes expensive, mistakes the last crop of newbies made.
There is an old physician’s axiom: Obstruction Begets Infection. When bureaucrats can insulate themselves from the view and control of the taxpayers, their activities start to take on a self-serving life of their own. This is the infection that we often see, such as the one raging through our intelligence community and State Department. The puss from that infection just leaked out in the form of the well-tuned bomb of the recent NIE, the one that now makes it almost impossible for the US to lean on the Iranians to stop their rush to building a nuclear weapon.
To clear an infection, it is essential to remove the obstruction- to allow the public to be aware about the activities of as much of the bureaucracy as possible. The sheer magnitude of our government makes this impossible, which is yet one more reason that for our own liberty, we must have smaller government.
In reference to your suggestion, maybe the best way to do this is to just create a brand new function of government, staff it with people whose loyalty has been vetted, and decommission the previous department. Even after doing that, it will only be a matter of time before that new department must share the same fate.
I don’t know about consensus about the Roman Empire and parallels to the United States, but my take is this: The Roman Empire succeeded mightily when it was important to become a Roman citizen. The Romans first goal was to acheive empire. That kept people busy doing it as a national focus. Then the second goal was to have conquered nations or individuals wishing to join the empire EARN CITIZENSHIP. When the people of the empire inherited citizenship or it was sold to raise money for the empire, it all went downhill. Our current empire needs a national focus that requires something just as big as what the Roman’s were trying to do on earth at their time. Something like the colonization of Mars or eternal life. Humans get bored when we more or less have it all. It’s that simple. We may not be able to get out of this pattern without the national goal before we are attacked with a WMD. Our economy is fragile and greed for toys cannot be our sole national focus.
The citizenship issue is what I look at too. When Rome was great, it was a great honor to be a Roman citizen and an honor to be admitted into the legions. When citizenship became unimportant (and by the end it was a mockery of it’s former self) and military service was something to be avoided (and mocked), you had an empire in decline.
Basically, when a good number of a peoples believe that their country isn’t better than others and isn’t something to be proud of, you can start counting the years before it is gone as you knew it.
Abolishing the 17th amendment will do that by natural attrition
“Since there doesn’t seem to be much consensus on what exactly caused the downfall of the Roman Empire”
Global Warming?
You got it Laptop - and that is how the Left feels about our nation now, that it is bad as it is and must be changed. Truth is, much of what is bad is from the Left. Their hand-outs and wealth redistribution causes laziness and time to think about how ‘discontent’ people are. That is what happened in France and that is what is going on here. Of course, the good people bearing the burden stop becoming productive after ahwile, because it means nothing to themselves or their society.
It’s a snowball effect and one that must be broken. Hopefully, a good POTUS could get us all dreaming of what can be, like a Regean did or a JFK. I don’t see these kinds of people around but then again, Regean did surprise all of us continuously.
But unfortunately as stated, the shame is that it is likely this will be our enemies to make the majority of America realize what we truly have. If 911 didn’t do it, I shudder to think of what will in that regard. This next elected President may be the last in terms of our current political structure. Someday, it might just be the United America under God once we have reclaimed and rebuilt this land after catastrophe. The Romans did it, it is now simply Italy.
I agree, but it's an endless cycle. We expected, I trhink, the Dems to get more liberal, but I don't think we expected them to reach out to the fringe elements as part of their base, nor did we expect them to drag the 'Pubbies further to the left with them.
Which leads us to a conundrum - if we know that we can't trust the elected reps to stick with their commitments to the US, the Constitution, their states and their constituents, how can we expect "people whose loyalty has been vetted" to keep their commitments year after year?
You more or less answer your own question, but this is a fundamental part of the problem we see with the State Dept. IMO, it has been slightly less of a problem in the Congress with staffers that go from politician to politician as the voters make changes but, never before in our history (that I'm aware of) have we have a political situation such as we have today - voters who want solutions, but not the ones being proffered by the Congress. And, as current polls indicate, the voters are none too thrilled with either political party. Frankly, based on the current political situation, I think that next year's election is a tossup, despite the predictions by the pundits. Currently, the voters are less than thrilled with representatives from either party.
Really? How will abolishing the 17th Amendment get rid of the Dept. of Education, the Dept. of Agriculture, the DHS as well as the FCC, the IRS, the CBO, etc., etc., etc.? By abolishing the 17th Amendment, all we do is restore the Representative Republic from the "democracy" we currently have. That's a big step in the right direction (and I certainly support!), but I'm missing the "natural attrition" component of your comment. Please explain how you envision the natural attrition effect to address the size of government subsequent to abolishing the 17th Amendment.
The Founders had no illusions about the press-- both Hamilton and Jefferson paid editors to publish scandals about each other and each other's parties.
But while they knew any given newspaper would be partisan, they assumed that there would always be a multiplicity of partisan viewpoints, unless the government suppressed partisan outlets contrary to the party in power. Hence the 1st Amendment.
They never foresaw the kind of alien and despotic European-leftist cultural and political uniformity fomented by mass society, mass education (or mis-education). So how moght one reintroduce a multiplicity of voices in mass media is not just a practical problem but a methodological one-- maybe 'mass media' (analogously with 'mass production') are just better (more profitable) at stamping out one type of opinion and distributing it broadly.
So how can we incentivize (financially) the distribution of multiple viewpoints? Or is it already happening through the internet and we just have to wait for the boomers to die off?
Not ignoring you...Just processing.
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