2016 US Presidential election thread

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Webster

if trump is not on the ticket then you will be damn lucky to even get 25% total voter turn out going to vote, and of that 25% it will be overwhelmingly (something like 90%) only those on government support voting to keep getting free checks from santa clause.

I would like to know where you got that from. I can send you some toilet paper if necessary.

[em2nought]

Originally Posted by STEED

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...ricans-support

How can only one @$$^ writer in the whole @$$^ world "get" it? LMFAO

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

That's true to a point. The biggest threat they had encountered was a government that refused to listen to them and when they complained only replied "Shut up and do as you're told!" When they protested against that the Colonial governors requested troops to keep the peace. When one such governor sent his troops to confiscate the contents of a citizen-owned armory (privately held cannons and such), that's when the citizens armed themselves and faced them off, and that's when the war started.


Maybe. The fact is that many of them didn't want a centralized government at all, but circumstances forced it upon them.

As for Washington, he was already famous for decrying false authority. When the Continental Congress voted him emergency powers he was very careful never to exceed them, always pointing out that the military must remain subservient to the civilian authority. At the end of the war his officers, unhappy with not being paid, decided to march on Congress, Washington finally convinced them not to do so, as it was contrary to everything they had fought for.

I've read at least one biographer (sorry I can't recall which one at the moment) who said that had Washington not been the President of the Constitutional Convention, and a constant reminder that he would probably be the first President of the United States, they likely wouldn't have given that office the powers that they did. The knew he would never abuse that power, and they don't seem to have considered what might happen when he was gone.

Perhaps that's what sets the American revolution apart from other revolutions which have often resulted in immense bloodshed in the immediate aftermath. Washington was smart enough to be able to keep the country together and create a system that would hold together for another 78 years before the major bloodshed.

When Washington reluctantly accepted a second term as president there were factions who protested, some violently, saying he wanted to make himself King. Therefore you may be right in saying a popular revolution might have opposed any attempt by a president to make himself more. We'll never know. Would such a thing happen now? It's hard to tell. I'd like to think so, but there's no way of knowing unless such a thing should actually happen.

Given that one of the reasons for the Civil war was a disagreement over the power of central government to exert its will over the slave owning states I'd definitely say that if in any period before 1861 any US president had attempted to give himself the sort of dictatorial powers that Americans of today fear, then he would have found himself under fire very quickly, and not just from states south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Maybe, but every time anyone asks when American politics became so dirty I always point back to the election of 1800, when old friends Adams and Jefferson let their supporters try to tear the system apart, with the front pages of privately owned newspapers acting as op-ed pages.

Egads That makes the D'israeli vs Gladstone feud look docile.

I don't disagree, but I do question. The third - Freedom from Want - raises thorny problems. Guaranteeing that nobody suffers from a lack of anything also means taking from others what they have so it can be given to the ones who have less. The question has to be faced of "how much is enough?" I don't know the answer to that question, but maybe some sort of enlightened socialism is in the cards. The negative I see to that is that it can only be accomplished by government, and to make it work you have to give the government more and more power.

This is a fair point, although I would put forward that the original goals of socialism is not to take away from the rich, but to create a nation where everyone is rich. Of course, in practice such a thing is nearly impossible to create without taking away from the rich, and thus we have the socialism that exists in reality which is a different animal to the socialism intended on paper. I think though that its exact opposite, capitalism, is also unworkable as a long term permanent solution in purity, and I think that we are entering an era in which we will be forced to seek some sort of balance between socialism and capitalism, a form of enlightened socialism perhaps.
However, yes, it's something that only government can do because in todays world only government can affect the high end of capitalism. Look at the 99% movement, thousands of people and yet they have achieved very little, perhaps a greater awareness of their movement but the situation itself has not changed. It seems that, in America at least, the people are terrified of being exploited by the government, but passive when the exploitation is done by big business. A curious sentiment.

Of course that leads to observations by Jefferson:
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."

I tend to follow that belief that Government and Freedom are natural opposites, and personally don't trust the government with any more power than is absolutely necessary.

Understandable considering the way the US was born, but I ponder how much such a thing translates into reality. How often, when a government becomes a dictatorship, how does it do so? Is it through gradual seizure of power or through rapid exploitation of a dire situation?
Does more government always mean less freedom? Would the Nazi government be considered as a big government? Or is a big government which is the opposite of freedom more of a communism thing?

Anyway, I really just wanted to point out that today's politics are nothing new. Washington may have hated it but those who followed him would likely recognize themselves in what goes on now - though they might not have wanted to admit it.

I doubt any who followed Washington would want to admit seeing themselves in todays politics.
Still, I think John Adams probably put it best, and I'll end with this quote:

Originally Posted by John Adams

There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Perhaps that's what sets the American revolution apart from other revolutions which have often resulted in immense bloodshed in the immediate aftermath. Washington was smart enough to be able to keep the country together and create a system that would hold together for another 78 years before the major bloodshed.

The funny part about that was, while Washington was at the center of the creation his main contribution was to referee the vicious arguments conducted by the actual creators. He was the calm at the eye of the storm. Once he was president and the new government in place he had much more of the same from his first cabinet. In some ways Washington was a weak president, giving a free hand to his Secretary of the Treasury (and old war buddy) Alexander Hamilton in the creation of a National Bank and the assumption of States' debts (primarily owed to Tories whose land had been seized when they fled to Britain during the war). This was opposed in Congress by James Madison, who, though responsible for the Constitution itself and getting it ratified as Hamilton's partner in The Federalist Papers, despised "Federalism" as propounded by Hamilton. Secretary of State Jefferson's main complaint was at first that Hamilton was bypassing his boss entirely and taking his case directly to Congress. Washington agreed that Hamilton shouldn't do that, but the problem there was that Washington also agreed with most of Hamilton's ideas. Washington and Jefferson were rich Virginia farmers, while Hamilton had made himself into a New York lawyer, and I believe the president was a little in awe of his former protégé. The cabinet meetings became so hostile that Jefferson finally ended up resigning.

While progress was made, and it was an amazing time in our history, it was hardly all light and roses.

Does more government always mean less freedom? Would the Nazi government be considered as a big government? Or is a big government which is the opposite of freedom more of a communism thing?

Those are questions I don't have answers for, and despite lofty claims by those who think they do, I don't see it. In a very small society socialism and even communism, can be made to work for the good of all. I would even be so bold as to say I believe that the political equivalent of those is a true democracy. Unfortunately when societies grow larger than the bare minimum required fore survival, people end up having to work at different tasks, and specialist jobs are born. At that point you begin to need professional police and firemen, who need to be paid out of a public trust or else they can't do their jobs properly. Then you need to hire people to build roads, and you can't have each person paying for his share of the road or some will refuse and there will be no roads in front of their houses. Finally you need someone to run it all, so you have to hire (elect) an actual government structure.

At what point does this stop having to do with the people and become its own entity? I don't know.

And what does this have to do with this year's Presidential Election? Not much, except for background. On the other hand I don't see that any election these days has much to do with what really happens in the running of the country. It's all a big TV show. No matter who the President is, it's the Congress that makes the rules. The President can sign them into law or veto them. Either way he will claim the credit for the low gas prices and the low unemployment, and find someone else to blame when it doesn't go his way. I don't really see it making much different these days.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Does more government always mean less freedom?

Here is something to ponder

It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive. Thomas Man

It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.

Thomas Mann

It could be said that the purpose of a government is to provide balance by enabling equality via the constraint of freedom to counter society's enabling of freedom which is intrinsically unequal.

I don't think too many of us would like to live in a society with ultimate freedom. Most of us would be dead. And I also don't think we would want to live in a society where there is absolute equality.

The moderate compromise of just enough freedom and just enough equality is probably best.

The problem, of course, is who gets to decide what freedom and equality mean in this context, who gets to decide how much of both and in figuring how to get and maintain the "proper" balance.

So yes, to answer your question, more government does mean less freedom, but that in itself is not necessarily good or bad, unless you consider equality.

People who are more privileged may tend to value freedom over equality. People who are not so privileged may tend to value equality over freedom.

We need to devise, implement, and maintain a system that is fair to both extremes and everyone in the middle.... but then what exactly does "fair" mean???

[Oberon]

Platapus, that is a fantastic assessment, and very well put. Very well put indeed. When boiled right down to it, you're right, the best form of government is one that balances well between freedom and equality.
Perhaps, to bring my little divergence back to the topic at hand, the arguement in this election is what direction America needs to shift the scales, Trump wants more freedom and Sanders more equality whereas Clinton probably wants to keep the scales where they are.
One does have to ponder that if both sides are unhappy with the current situation in the United States, does that mean that some form of equilibrium has been reached, and as such, does that mean that Trump or Sanders would only serve to upset the balance in either direction?
It's an interesting way to look at it.

And Steve, thank you for the insight into the early days of the US, I must admit my knowledge of the events around the Revolution and its immediate aftermath is pretty hazy, but I've only just got my head around the Civil War to some extent so I'll work my way back.
All revolutions have their problems, but I think it's always impressed me how the American revolution managed not to descend into terror like the French or Russian revolutions did, and it also managed to exist without direct enforcement at gunpoint of its terms. Perhaps the closest equivilent in our history would be the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688...
Revolutions are interesting studies, and I think America may be the only nation to have managed to stave off civil war and vast bloodshed in its immediate aftermath of its revolution.

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Platapus

We need to devise, implement, and maintain a system that is fair to both extremes and everyone in the middle.... but then what exactly does "fair" mean???

I think most people want everybody else to be alright but it's only "fair" if the system has a positive impact on me. Human nature I guess.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by u crank

I think most people want everybody else to be alright but it's only "fair" if the system has a positive impact on me. Human nature I guess.

I want everyone to be treated fairly.... as long as I am treated just a little bit more fairly.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Oberon

All revolutions have their problems, but I think it's always impressed me how the American revolution managed not to descend into terror like the French or Russian revolutions did, and it also managed to exist without direct enforcement at gunpoint of its terms. Perhaps the closest equivilent in our history would be the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688...
Revolutions are interesting studies, and I think America may be the only nation to have managed to stave off civil war and vast bloodshed in its immediate aftermath of its revolution.

It really was an amazing achievement. That's one of the reasons many of us revere the Constitution. What the founders were able to accomplish, was a rare feat, with lasting benefits for not only us yanks, but people around the world. Yes, we needed to make some corrections for equality of all people and both sexes, but the seeds of 1776 made that possible, and inevitable.

[Betonov]

[Oberon]

[mapuc]

Saw a clip from a Trump meeting in this clip a protester and a supporter started to engage in a furious fight among the spectators

It is not the first time in this election it has happened-Made me worried, are this the first step towards a torn USA ?

Markus

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by mapuc

It is not the first time in this election it has happened-Made me worried, are this the first step towards a torn USA ?

It's still got a way to go to catch up with 1968....or 1860 for that matter.

[Catfish]

Has this been posted before?m Found that hilarious

"Socialism", "The intelligence report"
"Let's not get bogged down by details..."

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Torplexed

It's still got a way to go to catch up with 1968....or 1860 for that matter.

Yeah, when the National Guard open fire at a university protest then we'll be getting to '68 levels of manure.