What political party do you vote with?

I have a general hatred of ideologies. Its all about finding which party best approximates your beliefs. It forces people into a mold and doesn't do a very good job of representation. They'll say anything to get in office, and once they're in, there's nothing you can do to hold them accountable. "Oh well lets go vote for the other party". At some point you're just chasing your own tail. I'd rather individuals be their own political parties. I think all legislation should be decided on through direct democracy. If that slows down the political process and the number of bills that get through, that's all the better. The fact that were not doing it now with computers is testament to how much human culture lags behind technological progress. I vote Democrat, because I feel they're dragging us down at a slower rate than the Republicans, but the trends still the same. People should be informed, should get to know each other, stop believing in political cliches, and we should have a political system that respects our individuality.

I think communism is fucked for the same reason consumerism is fucked. They both cling to dominator culture values and view happiness and the meaning of existence in terms of materialism, not consciousness. If were just protoplasm or puppets on a string, directed by random chance, the laws of nature, or an immutable, supreme male, ego God modeled after a feudal Lord, then what's the point? If you view existence in terms of consciousness and see free will as a fundamental part of reality, then morality and democracy make complete sense.

 

I hate nationalism, because it fools people into thinking they're the center of it all. Its like a mass, collective ego trip. A country shouldn't try to dominate someone else, like the US and western Europe does to the rest of the world through IMF and WTO policies. People should just make things better where they can. If that means its within the confines of some imaginary lines, that's all fine and good, but that shouldn't be the main objective. We should make our own locales the paradise they should be to the best of our ability and encourage others to do the same. If everyone held that philosophy, the world would be a much better place. Love should be the guiding force and the ego trip of one individual wanting to save the entire world should be avoided at all costs. The big guy always has to force their ideology down the little guy's throat though.

I don't like Libertarianism either, because I find that they ultimately want to repeat the robber baron economies of the Gilded Age. Ive even heard some go as far as saying that we should repeal child labor laws and compulsive, primary education. The logic with them is "well communism didn't work so lets go back to this". Well, that's the reason communism started in the first place. Lets just run around in circles again.

I'm not saying I think capitalism is wrong. People should be rewarded in a comparable way for their work and contribution to society, but when they use desperation as a bargaining chip and get people in third world countries to work for bare minimum (2 dollars a day for 12 hours of work that they can barely scrap by on) and sell their commodities here for a maximum price (150$ Nikes) while raping the earth of all its resources, then I think there's a problem.

People just need to chill and get to know other people and stop being assholes. They think death is eternal, and everyone is shoving the next person out of the way to accumulate as much stuff as possible, because they expect to fall asleep forever in a very short time. No this is just a cosmic ride. We've always existed, and this is just one of many manifestations.

That's why communism didn't work. They had the right idea, but they still believed in the notion of death being eternal. The control freaks couldn't satisfy their lust for material wealth before being stuffed and put on public display, so they decided to take the reigns of power over all aspects of everyone's lives in an attempt to satisfy their own throbbing egos. ...but yah, to put it bluntly, people should just live and consider other people, which 20th century communists claimed to do but didn't. That being said, the popular views of afterlife don't help either. Adherents pretend to like the idea that they're gonna be God's servants and play things in a celibate, puritan heaven, but in the back of their minds, they want to live out their material desires to the fullest extent before spending eternity as a eunuch, cloud sitting harp player for God. If that's what eternal life is like, that's not much of one. The way I see it is were in an afterlife right no, we always have been in one, rendering the concept useless. Nobody is really manning the controls, and all we have to do is make this heaven right now through the power of the one true God, love.

I think any debate of individualism vs. socialism is stupid. They should contemplate each other. The individual should respect social rights that respect the individuality of other people, and visa-versa, because society is ultimately made up of individuals. There's a yin and yang to it, a metaphorical wave-particle duality. You don't want sociopathic individualism, and you don't want beehive socialism. They both strip from us what makes life worth living, our quirks and uniqueness. This universe would be boring if we were all just one homogeneous thing. One extreme reduces most of humanity to worker bees for the benefit of a few wealthy individuals, and the other reduces individuals to worker bees for the benefit of a handful of apparatchiks heading a state posing itself as the central nervous system of a worker's paradise. The end result is very similar.

People should stop hoping for a better future, whether it be a the Nazi Ubermensch, the Communist worker paradise, the Libertarian utopia of capitalist anarchism. Manifest Destiny, the American dream, etc, erc, and make the present moment the best you can. Realize life in the present moment is fucking amazing, and give other people some courtesy. Don't cause a car wreck from talking to your stock broker on your cell phone.

 

Each of us creates our own ideology consciously or subconsciously, and it is more likely that your hatred is based upon the fact that a variation exists which differs greatly from your own.

That's true when government and politicians begin to intrude deeply into the personal and private lives of the members of a society with the intent of creating a common ideology through a democratic process or by any other means of force.

There's strength in numbers, but aren't you making a case for limited government?

Now you appear to be supportive of a common ideology created by a more pure form of democracy. When a majority is allowed to form an ideology applicable to all members of a society any respect for individuality diminishes rapidly.

Be very careful when you use the term democracy without knowing the full details of its implementation.

 

grass roots party

 

Relative to which side of the fence the grass appears greenest?

 

im sorry, but i dont quite understnd your question

 

Never mind, you just made the context of your previous post clear.

 

Haha, you assume a lot. If I hated the fact that people have differing opinions as you assume I do, I wouldn't be arguing for a directly democratic system that respects a diversity of opinion. I'd be trying to become the chairman of a political party to draft the party line. No, my hatred of political ideologies is simply that they force people into a box. Like, I believe in gun rights, but, at the same time, I believe women should have access to abortions up to a certain point. I also don't believe market anarchism. I think there needs to be laws that protect INDIVIDUAL rights in factories and work environments. I can't find a political party that'll represent all these views which I feel are important, and I'm sure a lot of people are in the same boat. What I want is a system that represents people's beliefs precisely, not forces them to compromise a set of their own beliefs with the slim hope that the guy they voted for might actually represent them in some way. There's no guarantee they'll even vote yes or no on a piece of legislation that could effect your life in a significant way. I believe people should have ideas, think for their selves, get to know each other and their perspectives really well(that would be a wise use of the internet) and vote on legislation accordingly. People should stop seeing each other in terms of polarizing labels(Tea Party, Conservative, Liberal) and just in terms of human beings.

There's no choice between political parties when that happens. It sounds like you're describing Marxist-Leninism, which wasn't democratic at all but claimed to be democratic. What I was getting at is you have to choose the party that best approximates your beliefs and you'll never have a political party that directly represents all your beliefs. This is much more the case under our two party system in our liberal democracy than the scenario you described.

I'm not sure exactly. I'm making a case for extended democracy. I think government should remain as an infrastructure. We need police to throw people in prison for murders and violent crimes, and we need public schools. Though, I think it can be scaled down a bit. I don't think we need to spend as much on military and the prison industrial complex that funnel massive amounts of public subsidy into the hands of private contractors and crony capitalists. We do need constitutional rights, though, that say "no one can take away your freedom of speech, nobody can prosecute without due process, etc etc, not government, mob, or other individuals". If that's what you mean by limited government I am making case for it. If by limited government you mean cutting all social services, then I disagree. In another way, it could be an inherent limit on government actually. As I stated, It would slow down the political process, which wouldn't be a bad thing. People would only make laws if it was absolutely necessary, because the process would be a bit more difficult to organize.

No, actually respect for individuality increases when everyone gets equal representation on societal decisions. When a politician isn't held accountable and passes legislation that breaks campaign promises and doesn't consider what the people actually want, that's a diminishment of individuality in my view. Individuality only works when you respect everyone else (i.e. society), because society is ultimately made up of individuals. When you lose sight of this duality between society and the individual and go to one extreme or the other, you really lose perspective of what both these terms truly mean.

Nah, I know the full details of democracy. Its an ideal meaning we are all masters over our own domain and a general rejection of vertical hierarchy. Masses of people can be dangerous, but individuals can be dangerous as well. I don't believe in preferencing social right over individual right, just finding a balanced medium.

 

haha oh yeah sorry, i just kind of jumped in with my answer. I didnt realize at the time that the thread was so long and involved

 

I am a registered democrat. But only because I wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries a few years ago.

 

^^^ right about now there's probably quite a few democrats wishing she'd won . . .

 

So you appear to be less left leaning than what I assumed?

 

Democrat: D for Drive
Republican: R for Reverse.

Nuff said.

 

I usually can't tell the difference between the two.

 

Of course the other side of the coin is:

Democrat: D for dependent
Republican: R for responsible

But that might only be applicable to the people, while the parties might most appropriately be defined as:

Democrat: D for driven to destroy the country
Republican: R for ready to join in the destruction

I vote for the candidate who is the least liberal, which is sometimes difficult to determine.

 

i'm not american, but based on my political beliefs here at home and what you have on offer i'd likely vote republican.

but then, you have to actually live first hand in america to know for sure - i'm just assuming your quality of life is the same as mine, which i'm mostly certain of, coming from the united kingdom.

 

I vote for anyone who has the best chance of defeating a Republican.

 

So would I if the Republican were the most liberal of the candidates, but I assume in your case you are looking at Republicans as being not liberal enough.

 

At least one of the quotes in Individual's sig is a lie. It wasn't Al Gore that said that nonsense about pollution -- it was Dan Quayle, a stupid Republican.

I suggest you do some fact-checking, although I know that isn't fashionable among conservatives.

Dan Quayle's wisdom

 

From the Eugene Weekly
If I hear one more rich person complain about how we can't afford health care,I'm going to shoot someone. "We're tapped out",cries millionaire heiress Jennifer Solomon. Schools have to "live within their budgets,just like we have to". Sure,if only those whiney kids and their loser parents would follow Solomon's example and go out and inherit their own timber companies! The truth is,we're not "broke"-neither Oregon nor the country as a whole. There's plenty of money in the country.

The problem is that it's being hoarded by the people at the top-who buy off politicians to make sure they keep getting richer while the rest of us us live in growing fear for ourselves and our kids. Almost every state is now facing huge budget crises , with devastating cuts being forced on communities around the country.

In Arizona, the governor has proposed cutting off health insurance for nearly 300,000 people-including some in the middle of chemotherapy or dialisis treatments. The city of Camden,New Jersey has laid off half it's police force, and in Cleveland five firehouses are being shut down. Texas is contemplating shutting down 850 of the states 1000 nursing homes, forcing the frail elderly out on the streets.

There's no question that some will die as a result of these cuts. Here in Oregon,thousands of people that are struggling to make it through the recession are being cut off from healthcare,food stamps and nursery school for their kids. Training and treatment for developmentally disabled people will be eliminated. And employees at the U of O are being asked to take a 20% pay cut-a setback that will force some into bankruptcy and others to lose their homes.

But none of this is necessary. The entire budget shortfall-for every state in the country-could be made up by two simple things. First,end the tax cuts created by President Bush for people who make more than 250,000 a year. We're now giving up 50 billion a year to help these people who need it the least. Second,make the rich play by the same rules as everyone else. Ninety percent of the money by buying and selling stocks on Wall Street goes to the richest 10% of the country-most of it to people who make more than a million dollars a year. But incredibly, these people pay a lower income tax rate than do regular working Americans.

The price of letting Wall Streeters off easy is almost 90 billion a year. Those two things together add up to more than the total budget deficit in all the states in the country.

That's it. The rich pay their fair share and the deficit is gone. Teachers are back in the classroom,the elderly infirm are back in nursing homes,cancer patients are back in chemo,cops and firefighters are back on the street,and hard working U of O employees can continue to earn a modest but decent living.

But the Republicans have pledged their undying opposition to to both these proposals--raising taxes on the rich is "unacceptable".insists House Speaker John Boehner-and the Democrats are too spineless to force the issue. As a political scientist, I'm sometimes asked how it's possible in a democracy that laws get passed the run against the interests of the majority. But you don't need to be a professor to know the answeroliticians are in hock to the rich.

If you thought you had a voice in the process because you gave someone 20 dollars over the internet--sorry,but you've been played. In last years congressional elections,more than two thirds of of all political contributions came from the the top 1% of the population. There's no place for the little people in the process. Even the labor movement-the only serious voice on behalf of normal working Americans-was outspent 20 to 1 by corporations.

It's no wonder that a majority of Americans are so disillusioned with both Republicans and Democrats and they believe that this country needs a third party. I think that part of what people on both the left and the right long for is a sense of HONOR in politics,rather than the weasly evasiveness that have become the hallmark of elected officials.

I've long since accepted that we live in an Orwellian era,where people who want to destroy schools and undercut job standards get to call themselves "Citizens for Jobs and Schools".But once in a while I still fantasize about what it would be like if politicians actually told the truth.

If John Boehner had the guts to man up and be honest ,what he would have to say:" I believe it's so important to give more money to the richest people in the country that I'm willing to have kids kicked out of daycare,old people made homeless,and cancer patients denied treatment in order to pay for it" Because that's the truth and anything else is political spin designed to keep us all clueless sheep.

As the old saying goes-don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining. The money's there. The only question is wether we use it on teachers for our kids and nursing homes for our parents, or to help out poor Jennifer Solomon in her moment of need.

(Me---Solomon is evidently the heir to a large timber company here as he stated. But the main point to me is just what this country has become and is becoming. My opinion is that somewhere ,sometime ,people have to begin to see the immorality of the "I got mine and I'm going to get yours--every last bit of it if I can and you can't do a damn thing about it " mind set of conservatives. And if the Democrats don't grow some balls,a concerted effort needs to be made to create a VIABLE 3rd party that doesn't scare the zombies out of their wits.