Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label America. Show all posts

Monday, June 18, 2007

Democracy: Friend or Foe?

You can't go through a world history class without hearing that the ancient Greeks came up with the idea for democracy. An interesting fact that a lot of these classes leave out is that the Greeks said that democracy was a BAD system of government. See, the Greeks came up with three "good" systems of government. They ranked them, from good to bad, as follows:
  1. Monarchy - The ultimate form of government. The country would be unified under one leader, who would strive to work for the good of the people. The idea was that this one person was groomed their entire lives to be the best leader possible. They would be well-educated and they would be trained to be a good ruler.
  2. Aristocracy - The next-best thing. The elite class, which in this case was the educated, virtuous class, would rule the country by way of council. In the council, majority ruled.
  3. Polity - The educated people in the community vote on candidates based on their individual character and virtue. This was considered the least desirable of the three.

The Greeks also realized that all three of these systems of government had the potential to become corrupt.

  • Monarchy <-----> Tyranny
  • Aristocracy <----> Oligarchy
  • Polity <----------> Democracy

When they became corrupt, they would also switch places in the ranking of good to bad, so the monarchy, the best of governments, would, when corrupted, become the worst of governments.

  1. Monarchy
  2. Aristocracy
  3. Polity
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  4. Democracy
  5. Oligarchy
  6. Tyranny

Some people might argue that democracy and polity are synonymous, or that an aristocracy and oligarchy are one and the same. This isn't so.

  • Democracy - There is one big difference between polity and democracy: partisanship. All of a sudden, you're not looking at candidates based on their individual merits. You look at them in terms of political party affiliation.
  • Oligarchy - Oligarchy and aristocracy are both centered in the idea of an elite class being in power. The difference is in who this elite class is. In a Greek aristocracy, the elite class were the well-educated and the virtuous (ideally). In an oligarchy, the people who hold power do so by way of wealth, powerful friends, or birthright.
  • Tyranny - The worst possible government. In a tyrannical government, the country has a single ruler who governs not for the good of the people, but for the good of himself.

Unfortunately, in modern day you see mostly governments 4, 5, and 6. In a way, you can see all three of them prevalent in modern-day America. It is undeniable that the United States is a democracy. Everyone votes, and there is definitely a lot of partisanship in our government. You fit into two categories: red or blue. Sure, you can vote on a third party candidate, but let's be realistic. If you do that, you've wasted a vote on a candidate who will never win. So you may very well have people who are much better candidates for office than the Democratic and Republican candidates, but who will never win the Presidency and help our country because it is impossible to battle these political powerhouses. In addition, many candidates get in not because they are especially liked by the people, but just because that party has such a massive amount of members. One of my friends, for example, was very displeased with how Bush served his first term as President. In 2004, HE VOTED FOR HIM AGAIN. Why? Because he's a Republican. Easy as that.

You might say that you'll give me that our government is definitely a democracy, but you don't see how it's simultaneously a democracy, an oligarchy, and a tyranny. Okay. An oligarchy is a society in which a small elite group governs the masses; specifically, the small group of the wealthy. Let's be honest. Elections in the United States are not won by votes. They're won by corporations. If you have money, politicians are your friend. Or they want to be, anyway. If you don't have money, they don't give a rat's ass about you. The corporations' lobbyists can push nearly any bill through Congress, with enough money. The corporations also fund Presidential campaigns. Wonder why Bush is in Iraq? A good chunk of his funding comes from oil companies. Wonder why he's lax about environmental issues? Corporations, specifically oil refineries, are big contributors to the Republican party. Partisanship leads to an oligarchy because when the party gets money from a certain contributor, they cater to that contributor. You're not going to bite the hand that feeds you. Thus, the people running Congress are not the politicians, but the corporations who put them there; the elite class of America, our CEOs.

The tyrannical state argument is actually probably the easiest to prove. When you have people who are elected by the masses based on partisanship, the parties look to the wealthy, the corporations, for funding. When they are elected into office, thanks to the corporations and the wealthy, they take care of the people who made this investment, in order to make sure that their sponsors, if you will, don't cut the funding off. Congratulations, you now have the leader of your government governing in such a way that he's making sure HE'S taken care of, rather than his people. It's kind of a chain reaction, really, and America is the poster child for this chain of events.

In my opinion, the ancient thinkers and philosophers of Classical Greece that we so admire would have been very disappointed in government today.

Friday, June 8, 2007

Nuking Iran: The Republican Agenda?

At the Republican debate last night, almost all the candidates said that they would not rule out a nuclear attack on Iran Only Rep. Ron Paul of Texas said he opposed a nuclear strike on moral grounds and because he believed Iran "has done no harm to us directly and is no threat to our national security."



read more digg story

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This is the problem with Republicans. They never learn, and they are unable to change their views in the slightest. These people have learned absolutely nothing from Iraq. The entire point of studying things like history is to say, "Okay, we tried that, and it failed horribly and just made matters worse. Let's not do that again." They say that the true definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I always knew the Republican party was insane.

Plus, how do they think we'd let them do this? There was a lot of controversy over taking military action in Iraq, and that was using conventional weapons. Think about how the American people would feel about a nuclear strike against a country that hasn't even attacked us!

Speaking of, why do we suddenly have an urge to attack a country, with nuclear weapons, no less, that hasn't attacked us or done us any harm? Isn't this going too far? Wasn't attacking Iraq for no reason going too far? Where is this going to stop? When we've wiped out every living soul in the Middle East? Will we start on Asia next? Maybe after that, we'll have time to make it to Europe. This is idiocy! The crazy thing is that these politicians are saying that they would support an unprovoked nuclear attack, thinking people would buy it. Thinking that people would be eager to start up on another war right after the Iraq disaster.

I swear to god, if a Republican gets elected, I'm moving to Canada.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

The REAL Cost of the War

One of the greatest political issues of the day is the war in Iraq. There are many arguments surrounding the war, such as whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, whether Hussein had anything to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center, and various other issues that the Bush administration pulled out of their collective ass. Perhaps one issue we should be looking at more closely is the cost of this war. Many people dismiss these costs as something unimportant, but the fact remains that the cost of this war is a really big problem.

As of 11:57 AM on May 8, 2007, the cost of the war reached a staggering $423,929,450,000, according to costofwar.com. Estimates for the possible total cost of the war by its end range from a rather conservative $500 billion to well over two trillion dollars. many people dismiss the issue of money without giving it much thought, but what we need to do is ask ourselves, "What else could be be doing with this money?" Once you start throwing some numbers together, it becomes obvious that we could do much better things with 424 billion dollars than kill people.

We could provide government housing for 3,817,099 families, according to CostOfWar.com, or medically insure 253,850,000 children. While Bush has been pushing for increased funding for his war in Iraq, he has also been working to cut government-sponsored medical plans. Education is an area we all know is woefully underfunded. This amount of money could employ 7,346,799 teachers for one year or provide 20,551,257 students with a four-year-scholarship to a public university. How many starving children could we feed and clothe with this money? How many African AIDS victims could receive treatment? How many of our senior citizens could live comfortably?

The sad thing is that the tremendous amount of money that is spent on the war doesn't even begin to cover the real cost of the war in Iraq. What is the real cost? To date, 3,378 United States soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq, 80 of them women, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. 24, 314 soldiers have been wounded, as well. That is a huge loss to our country. What about the cost of the war to the rest of the world? The war has claimed the lives of 148 soldiers from the United Kingdom, 33 Italians, 20 Poles, 18 soldiers from Ukraine, 13 Bulgarians, 11 Spaniards, as well as soldiers from Australia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, and Thailand. A total of 223 soldiers from other countries have died in Iraq fighting Bush's war. Then we get to civilian deaths. Many jounalists and other workers who have gone to Iraq have died, and the number of Iraqi civilian deaths is perhaps one of the most sobering statistics of all. 38,198 Iraqis have died that we know of. This number includes men, women, and a startling number of children. Over 41,799 people have died as a result of this unnecessary, senseless war. The big question we have to ask ourselves is: Is it worth it? Is anything worth this?

Friday, April 20, 2007

10 Reasons Bush Must Be Impeached

from 10 Things You Never Knew

"So George W. Bush doesn't have much time left on his term, and most of the below points aren't really impeachable offenses. But at the very least, here's 10 reasons why Bush will go down as the worst president in U.S. history..."

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1. It is actually considered a crime for the President to lie to Congress, although it's rarely enforced. I do think, however, that it is more than justified in this case to act on that and use it as a reason for impeachment. And yes, tens of thousands. Many tens of thousands.

2. To be fair, most of the blame for the Katrina disaster can be spread around. The city's evacuation was started much too late to be successful, and the city was just unprepared in general. They should have been bussing people out of the city days before they started. Also, if the levies in the city had been kept up and well-maintained, a lot of the damage could have been prevented. Bush's team was a tiny bit responsible, but that was a failing of the system as a whole, from the President on down to the New Orleans mayor and his team.

3. This is deplorable in the person who is responsible for governing us, but unfortunately, it's not grounds for impeachment. However, we need to learn from this and be sure to elect people who are competent and informed from this point onward, because although it's not an impeachable offense, it IS a definite problem.

4. Bush's team has been a huge disappointment, but again, this isn't actually a crime on his part, so he can't be impeached for it. But yes, Bush and his team continued to lie about Iraq through their teeth from day one. First of all, the idea that the Iraqis would just welcome the Americans with open arms and offer no resistance whatsoever is ludicrous. Believe it or not, not everyone in the world wants to be an American. Not all of them want to be governed in the same way we are. Not all them of them want to live our way of life. And can you blame them, with the picture of America that is presented by Bush? It was also a huge failing on their part not to heed any of the advice or warnings of true experts.

5. Further proof that Bush is an idiot, but no grounds for impeachment. This list seems to be mainly complaints about Bush rather than reasons for impeachment, although they are valid complaints.

6. It is debatable as to whether this is a valid offense for impeachment. When this went so far as to intrude upon habeus corpus, I think that it might be reasonable to consider this grounds for impeachment. What I can't believe is that even with all the criticism of the Patriot Act and all the the furthering of the NSA's abilities to spy on American citizens after that, the Bush administration CONTINUES to push for more and more power.

7. Again, while deplorable, this unfortunately isn't grounds for impeachment. It's very true, though, and very unfortunate. Of course, when you elect a president who makes money off oil, and who is a Republican to boot, what else can you expect?

8. Not grounds for impeachment, but this offense IS a huge problem for America. And Bush refuses to pull out of Iraq, making the economy worse by the day.

9. Dear God. It's so horrible he does that, but again, not an impeachable offense.

10. While this again isn't an impeachable offense, it is very unfortunate. I mean, we complain that the world doesn't like us (we make that complaint a lot about France, but I don't think many other countries are any more fond of us than France is), but then we have this President who not only paints a very bad picture of Americans, but he also continuously thumbs his nose at the rest of the world. Furthermore, many countries around the Middle East are terrified right now that they'll be next. What do you expect?

Okay, so on the list we actually have two possible reasons for impeachment. We could add that he has completely ignored various treaties that the U.S. has signed. We could also add that he WENT AGAINST THE UNITED NATIONS when they told him NOT to go to war. The reason he kept giving for going to war? That Iraq was disobeying the United Nations! Now, THAT has to make your blood boil. How about the continuous lying to Congress and the American people about several issues? Or permitting torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo?

Perhaps a better name for this list would have been 10 Reasons Bush Should Never Have Been Elected, as many of these offenses date back to before his second term, and a few back even before his first term as President. If people looked at the history of Presidential candidates a bit more closely, mistakes like this one wouldn't make their way into the White House. If Bush was a horrible governor, why would he suddenly perform better in a higher office? You promote people who do well, not the ones who totally suck at their job.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Get The Kiddie-Cuffs, or Police State Pedagogy

From The Pro Libertate Blog

“Do you think this is the first 6-year-old we've arrested?”

This comment by Avon Park, Florida Police Chief Frank Mercurio to New York Times columnist Bob Herbert easily qualifies as the pull-quote of the day, perhaps of the month. Chief Mercurio was justifying the arrest -- complete with handcuffing, fingerprinting, and a mug-shot – of Desre'e Watson, who was eventually charged with a felony (as well as a few misdemeanors) after disturbing her kindergarten class.

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Hm. So they arrested a six-year-old and charged her with a felony for "yelling, screaming - just being uncontrollable. Defiant." No six-year-old is safe. Do you know why? BECAUSE THEY ALL DO THAT! My god! You're going to charge a kindergartener with a felony for yelling in class? Yes, she should not be throwing temper tantrums in class. So send her to the principal's office. Send a note home or give Mommy a phone call. You alert the parents when a six-year-old is acting up, not the police.

Then we move onto the case of Chelsea Fraser. Okay. You know what you do when you catch a thirteen-year-old girl writing on her desk? You give her detention and make her clean all the desks during that detention. That's all you have to do. There's no need to call the police, there's no need to press charges over two letters written on a freaking desk. She wasn't writing obscenities. She wasn't drawing crude pictures of genitals. She wasn't stashing a gun in the desk. She wrote "OK". Oh my god, call the cops. We have two letters written on a desk. And just for the record, handcuffing a child to a pole for three hours does not constitute an acceptable substitute for detention.

And finally we get to Gerard Mungo, Jr., which is, in my opinion, the worst of the three. The little boy is on his dirt bike, on the sidewalk, but the motor is turned off. That means he's not breaking the law, which states that you can't OPERATE a dirt bike on the sidewalk. That is not justification for a police officer to arrest him at all, much less grab him by the throat and lift him off the ground, choking him. A seven-year-old little boy! My god! And then you leave him handcuffed to a bench. For two hours. Great. These cops are just doing wonders for this first-grader's emotional health, aren't they? Jackasses. And then it gets worse. What the police did then in the Mungo drama is just horrible and sickening, but the point I wanted to address here was the one with the children, and the rest of that story involves that boy's mother (as if she wasn't in bad enough shape as it was, with the treatment her little boy received). I do encourage you guys to read it, though.

Since when is this all right? Why is it all of a sudden acceptable for the police to grab a seven-year-old little boy by the throat and lift him up off the ground, choking him? I don't care what he did. And wouldn't it count as child abuse to fasten a child to a pole and then leave her there for three hours? And what kind of a country do we live in when teachers are calling the police offices as a way to discipline their students? It's one thing when you have children who are threatening your and the other students' safety, but if that's not an issue, then don't have a child from your class arrested. Good god. And... is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that all three of these children are minorities? I wonder a white child has ever been arrested for the same things? I doubt it. I really hate that this stuff has happened, and I hate even more the fact that it wasn't front-page, national news. This should have been alarming. People should have been enraged. People should have called for the officers to resign. People should care about this sort of thing.