The more people that are actively involved in the government process the better IMO, including taking issues to the street non-violently. I admire the Occupy movement for that reason.
Out of curiosity, did you equally admire the tea party movement?
Personally, I respect
both movements for their attempts to change things (and I agreed with many points from both movements as well), but I think that both fell prey to the bull**** of the two-party dichotomy so early on that they doomed themselves and became
exactly what they should have been rebelling against. They should have worked together, since their goals were not in opposition to each other, but instead they became opposite ends of the spectrum because both movements allowed themselves to become co-opted by the parties. That's where I lost respect for both of them. They became the very **** they should have been opposing because they failed to see how the two-party system (of two very similar parties, no less) is the root cause of the problems they both went after.
I never said that. See the post by grip that addresses how our system addresses minority concerns, in addition to taking their issues to the streets as they did during Women's Rights and the Civil Rights movements.
When I say "minority opinion", I'm using the word "minority" in it's technical form (i.e. proportionally), not the form that is used to describe ethnicity or gender (I actually think that the word used in that sense can be almost derogatory so I very rarely use it in that bastardized form).
Your pizza ordering analogy fails to address the representatives we choose to order our pizza for us.
How did it fail to address that?
So do I. I was talking about the majority, not 100%. There is a reason we continually vote in center right politicians for president, and have never once voted in a liberal.
Why do you assume that the people who keep getting elected represent the majority view? It's not like presidents are directly elected, and with the two-party system firmly embedded there aren't any options that
aren't center right available for people to vote on even if they
did vote for president's directly.
Most parliamentary systems, for starters. They all have greater representation of views than the US does.
No, simply recognition of our democratic system.
But the problem is that you are basing your arguments on the premise that the US system is a
good one, and that makes your arguments an appeal to majority.
Your entire point is that our system works as a representative democracy and that in order to get minority opinion represented in our government it must first be converted from a minority opinion to a majority opinion.
My point is that our system
doesn't work as a representative democracy
because in order to get minority opinion represented in our government it must first be converted from a minority opinion to a majority opinion.
Now if the argument was that our government works, and therefore it's poor representation of minority opinion is irrelevant, I would have no problem with your position. I'd still disagree, but that'd be about it.
But since you are claiming to support the concept of representative democracy (which is what I support), your arguments become contradictory because our government does a very poor job of representing the views of it's people.
What is this new system that people agree on? This was a problem of the Libertarian party, they could never reach consensus on goals.
Out of curiosity, why do you think this is valid response to my question?
I said nothing at all about a new system that people agree on, so it's pretty much just pure gibberish to ask me to describe something that you invented. What's worse is that you appear to have done this in order to avoid answering the question I asked.
Who would you like to represent everyone and what is stopping you from building public support for that person?
Where did you get the absurd idea that I wanted one person representing everyone? I'm arguing for something
entirely opposite from that.
You keep citing women's rights and civil rights in the context of minority, so it's very confusing. These weren't really minority opinions that weren't represented, they were issues regarding so-called "minorities", but they actually had a large enough following to be majority opinion. In a sense, you could say that they were majority opinions that weren't represented in our laws (which gets into the concept of majority opinion in the ruling class versus majority opinion in the population at large. This is a very important point that shouldn't be glossed over, but it required one to first acknowledge that our government does a poor job representing it's people before it can even be discussed to any great depth).
I read fiction where the government makes every single person happy, its called utopia. I've not seen any perfect government in this planets history however.
Nice strawman. I'm not looking for a government that makes
everyone happy, not have I even come
remotely close to implying that. That nonsense is something you made up in lieu of a real rebuttal.
I'm looking for a government that actually has legitimate representation for it's people instead of a load of bull****
disguised as representation. Big difference.
You, however, are arguing for the status quo and using the cop out of "I've never seen perfection, so I support this load of horse **** because I buy into the nonsense that it is a good system."
And while we're on the subject of cop outs, I noticed you didn't even bother to give a clear framework for how you are defining "successful democracy". This is disappointing because it makes it kind of clear to me that your definitions will change to suit your desires rather than be based on a solid concept.
In other words, it gives the impression that if you
want a country to be defined as a "successful democracy", you will define it as such and they retroactively design your definition of "successful democracy" to fit that country rather than have a basic framework you use to make the judgments.
If this really is the case, one becomes logically obligated to dismiss your judgments of what is or is not a succesful democracy since it would be known that you are not using an honest metric for these judgments.
If it isn't the case, however, then producing such a framework allows me to view your designations from an objective standpoint.
If you want, I will gladly produce the framework that I employ in such designations. I could do so very easily because without such a framework I would be utterly incapable of making an intelligent and honest judgment of what is or is not a "successful democracy" in my estimation.
How do you change it without building majority support for change? It seems you need the majority which you hold in disdain.
Here's the thing, though. There is
already a majority that believes our system is ****ed up. Even the flag waving 'patriots" who think the constitution is the bees knees are aware that they are poorly represented. Just listen ot them bitch about how there's never really a True Conservative© running for office. (BTW, I'm assuming that "True Conservative©" has been copyrighted by Rush Limbaugh)
The problem isn't convincing them of that which they already know, it's convincing them that the line of bull**** that they've been fed about "no system is perfect and therefore anything we do to try to fix
this one would make things worse"
is bull****. That's the tricky part.
The key is convincing people that the
system itself can be improved upon. I mean, it's pretty absurd that many people in this country believe that a system that is almost 225 years old cannot be improved upon in any way.
To do that, we will have to deal with those who are dependent on the status quo staying in place. Unfortunately those are
also the people in control.
Because of
that it might not be possible to make a real change in the system without violence. This is the real problem, though, because while it doesn't work very well, it really isn't so bad that that it is worth dying in order to change it.
Enlightenment is a possibility for everyone, and will be required for the Utopian government you wish we had.
Two things:
1. Most people are incapable of enlightenment. They
are capable of being led by the enlightened, though.
2. The bull**** about me wanting a utopia is still a dishonest strawman. You are free to rely on dishonesty in lieu of an intelligent, logical rebuttal to my positions, but it's fairly pointless to do so because I have no qualms about calling out such dishonesty.