[Reily]

As Newt was rising becasue of his debate performance, there was a brief discussion in my workplace about him. I commented that more and more I was being drawn to support him. (Initially I was highly skeptical and view him as yesterday's news!) A work colleague commented well he couldn't support Newt because he didn't understand anything Newt was saying. This was not a stupid poorly educated (college) guy, he was a former Navy enlisted, played the stock market with some success again not stupid. Newt's idea oriented approach to issues based in US history and Constitutional context clearly didn't interest him and may have even bored him. I guess he was someone whose political context is completely built on sound bites. I now think that a majority of the electorate on both sides are like that.

I guess the point for me is, ‘You can lead voters to the polls but don't dare ask them to think!’

[A'elian' nation]

Interesting anecdote and all too prevalent and sad.

Sad in that, to this generation, the past is prologue to nothing. The past means nothing. It is all in the now, and like you say, in the soundbites and the emotional tug of the moment.

Ridiculous to think that you could learn anything from the past and our forbears. Much less bother with a stale old Constitution written by slave holders.

Your friend has no understanding, much less interest, in how governments operate or how his rights are secured. I’ve lived in the Eurozone. I wish your friend could imagine a world in which a body of eurocrats can one day decree the shape of a banana and the next declare water as a non-hydrate.

You wake up one day and the rules have changed. It is a world in which you fear for your sanity when you realize that your fate resides in the hands of 754 Euro Parliamentarians, and your only recourse is some European Ombudsman. Every day your country is losing its sovereignty with every one of their whims.

Tell your friend that a UK judge just sent a student to prison for 56 days for a tweet of his deemed racist. Ask him to imagine a world like that. And then ask him how such a world came to be.