Quote:
Originally Posted by SeanPlunk
I think you missed my point.
Our options are
1) No government intervention
2) Some level of government intervention
3) Total government intervention
You guys all seem to think it should be choice 1, which is absurd and could never work in reality.
Choice 3 is also totally absurd and can also never work in reality.
This leaves us with choice 2. What I'm saying is that the appropriate level of government intervention in a democracy is decided by voters. You and Bob both clearly think the government is too involved. I think in some instances you're right. I also think in some instances more government intervention is necessary. I voice my opinion one way or the other by voting for candidates that more closely align with my position. That's the way a democracy works.
If you want to argue our system is broken, or that we're really a Republic, that's a completely different argument.
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Choice 2 restricted by a fundamental view of rights, not a might makes right/majority rules view, would be a good and reasonable goal. (A hard core republic with a natural rights basis for law.) The essential problem is that we started that way and crossed into at first a Utilitarian philosophical POV that makes 3 entirely plausible. I routinely hear from liberal progressives how we can just sort of do whatever we want in the name of the greater good and that the republican philosophy (note the lower case) is antiquated and obsolete. Many of us are not happy about living under the rule, and that's what it is, of the democratic philosophy. These philosophies are not compatible in the same space and time and increasingly heated conflict is inevitable.
As for 1, the part almost everyone confuses is that the absence of a state equals the absence of law and order. This is FAR more theoretically and historically complex than you are aware.
Democracy: The God that Failed