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Bay12 Presidential Focus Polling 2016

Ted Cruz
- 7 (6.5%)
Rick Santorum
- 16 (14.8%)
Michelle Bachmann
- 13 (12%)
Chris Christie
- 23 (21.3%)
Rand Paul
- 49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107


Pages: 1 ... 413 414 [415] 416 417 ... 667

Author Topic: Bay12 Election Night Watch Party  (Read 832335 times)

mainiac

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6210 on: March 21, 2014, 05:01:35 pm »

Not every Confederate was a dyed-in-the-grey-wool zealot, mainiac.

Which I never said they were.

The fact is that people died for a cause they didn't believe in.  Look at Vietnam.  How many soldiers there didn't care about communism or the South Vietnam government?  Would you argue that it wasn't a war waged to fight communism and prop up the south vietnam government?
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Mr. Strange

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6211 on: March 21, 2014, 05:27:12 pm »

I'm curious. How many bay12ers think the US is a democracy?
Not me.

* strange sits down to watch fireworks and eat popcorn
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Then you get cities like Paris where you should basically just kill yourself already.

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Zangi

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6212 on: March 21, 2014, 05:33:44 pm »

I'm curious. How many bay12ers think the US is a democracy?
Not me.

* strange sits down to watch fireworks and eat popcorn
Monecracy!
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Helgoland

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6213 on: March 21, 2014, 05:34:08 pm »

I'm curious. How many bay12ers think the US is a democracy?
A dysfunctional one, but yeah.
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Arguably he's already a progressive, just one in the style of an enlightened Kaiser.
I'm going to do the smart thing here and disengage. This isn't a hill I paticularly care to die on.

kaijyuu

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6214 on: March 21, 2014, 05:34:44 pm »

Monecracy!
"Plutocracy" is the word you're wanting.

New word for the day~
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Quote from: Chesterton
For, in order that men should resist injustice, something more is necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant. They must think injustice absurd; above all, they must think it startling. They must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment. When the pessimist looks at any infamy, it is to him, after all, only a repetition of the infamy of existence. But the optimist sees injustice as something discordant and unexpected, and it stings him into action.

Vgray

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6215 on: March 21, 2014, 05:35:43 pm »

Nope. The US is a republic. There is a difference you know.
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Helgoland

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6216 on: March 21, 2014, 05:36:19 pm »

Isn't a republic usually a democracy?
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The Bay12 postcard club
Arguably he's already a progressive, just one in the style of an enlightened Kaiser.
I'm going to do the smart thing here and disengage. This isn't a hill I paticularly care to die on.

Frumple

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6217 on: March 21, 2014, 05:37:21 pm »

Also known as a representative democracy, yes.
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Vgray

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6218 on: March 21, 2014, 05:44:08 pm »

*Shrugs* My dad is adamant that the word democracy means mob rule. He greatly prefers the term "Representative Republic".
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Aqizzar

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6219 on: March 21, 2014, 05:50:24 pm »

I don't see why people say "Industrialism would have ended slavery!"

Have people forgotten the horrible conditions (and wage slavery) of the late 1800s, early 1900s? Can you -seriously- imagine slave owners going "Well, I have all these black slaves, and I have this factory I want to build/man... Better free them and hire some other guys."

It doesn't take much more skill to man a factory as a floor-worker than it does to be a cotton-picker.

Slaves have to be fed, housed, etc, and at the same time are far less motivated (and trained) than other workers. The costs of running a slave factory would be very high compared to just hiring regular workers.

They don't really have to be fed, housed, etc.  Some of the first things that could be called industrial-age factories were Caribbean sugar mills, staffed entirely by slave labor.  They were a major cause in the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, since slaves at sugar farms and mills rarely lived more than five years (mills in particular were nearly guaranteed accidental death).  You don't need to worry about the welfare of your workers when you expect their job to kill them sooner than deprivation.

Plantation slaves in the US were comparatively better treated, partly because by the 19th century the planters knew they had to keep their slaves alive or they'd run out.  And even then, the industrial cotton gin was used by more slaves than free men until the Civil War, and was called a major cause of slavery's survival by abolitionists of the day.

I just felt like throwing that out there.  Point being, slavery ended in all the places it ended because relatively forthright people in power wanted it to, not because it became economically prohibitive.  Brazil didn't abolish slavery until 1890, and even then only by edict of Brazil's monarchy.  As poorly treated as factory workers would become, people who literally have no other choice than to work for you are always cheaper to keep.
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kaijyuu

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6220 on: March 21, 2014, 05:52:33 pm »

*Shrugs* My dad is adamant that the word democracy means mob rule. He greatly prefers the term "Representative Republic".
A democracy requires everyone to agree to a set of rules that everyone follows, so its method of influence is social pressure. A mob's method of influence is instead violence. That's the difference there.


You might want to have him switch to the saying "democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner." (though that's only really true if the system is 100% majority rules, instead of weighted representation)
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Quote from: Chesterton
For, in order that men should resist injustice, something more is necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant. They must think injustice absurd; above all, they must think it startling. They must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment. When the pessimist looks at any infamy, it is to him, after all, only a repetition of the infamy of existence. But the optimist sees injustice as something discordant and unexpected, and it stings him into action.

Vgray

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6221 on: March 21, 2014, 06:06:53 pm »

What he really means when says that is, majority rule is a bad thing. Think of this way, to him, the difference between a democracy and a republic is that in a democracy the people vote for everything. In a republic, we elect representatives, the House. Broadly speaking.
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Helgoland

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6222 on: March 21, 2014, 06:14:50 pm »

-snip-
Tell your dad that the word he's looking for is 'ochlocraty'. There was a Roman philosopher, can't remember the name, that claimed that for each concept of a political system there was a well-functioning and a corrupt one: Monarchy and dictatorship, aristocracy and oligarchy, and democracy and ochlocracy.

Under your dad's definition, the US is a republic as well as a democracy, btw.
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The Bay12 postcard club
Arguably he's already a progressive, just one in the style of an enlightened Kaiser.
I'm going to do the smart thing here and disengage. This isn't a hill I paticularly care to die on.

Vgray

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6223 on: March 21, 2014, 06:28:42 pm »

For the record, I may be misrepresenting him somehow. I don't consider myself that eloquent. Out of interest, what do people directly vote on in the US? As opposed to electing officials?
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scriver

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Re: FJ's Murrican Politics Megathread 2: So dysfunction. Much Congress. Wow.
« Reply #6224 on: March 21, 2014, 06:44:53 pm »

Wage slavery is still slavery. Industrialization didn't end slavery, it made everyone poor a slave. When the only choice people have is "work yourself to death or watch your family starve and freeze to death a bit faster than you're allready doing" they can "abolish slavery" all they want. It makes the ruling class feel progressive but doesn't matter to the people.

 
This has all been on my mind a fair bit lately, as I've been taking my kids to the history museum and starting to explain the Civil War (and the American Revolution) to my 7-year old.

I hope you tell them the real story :P
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Love, scriver~
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