Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Zelandakh]

fwiw if baby born on mars=Martian?/

Don't be silly! Everyone knows the ice warriors are the real martians (and they definitely do not give citizenship by place of birth).

[mike777]

Don't be silly! Everyone knows the ice warriors are the real martians (and they definitely do not give citizenship by place of birth).

 

 

again you do not qUOTE ME IN FULL.

 

 

but given all of that

 

 

I agree

 

aND THEY ARE WRONG AND I HAVE SAID THIS OFTEN VERY OFTEN

 

 

:)

[Trinidad]

again you do not qUOTE ME IN FULL.

Come on, Mike. When people quote you in full the CAPITALS DON'T FIT ON THE SCR

 

;)

 

Rik

[Zelandakh]

I agree

 

aND THEY ARE WRONG AND I HAVE SAID THIS OFTEN VERY OFTEN

The ice warriors are wrong not to give citizenship by birth? Strangely I do not remember reading this in any of your previous posts. :o

[barmar]

again you do not qUOTE ME IN FULL.

 

 

but given all of that

 

 

I agree

 

aND THEY ARE WRONG AND I HAVE SAID THIS OFTEN VERY OFTEN

 

 

:)

If we

 

quote you in full

 

 

should we also copy your

 

 

annoying habit of

 

putting lots of blank lines

 

in the post?

[phil_20686]

I think the general consensus about republicans is very, even dangerously wrong.

 

1) People do not vote in their narrow self interest

This is well known. There have been a ton of surveys done on it in the UK. The why is more interesting - most people see their country as more than a vehicle for their individual prosperity. It is some slightly anthropomorphic entity, and they want the country to do well. People have very different views on what that means and how to do it. I think the line of argument that "Republicans vote for policies which make them poorer they must be stupid lol" is both wrong and insulting. They vote for a republic party despite the fact that it makes them poorer because they think that the republicans will make America great again.

 

2) Polarisation arises when a polity has a substantial difference of opinion about the goals of policy, rather than the means.

If you want to understand why the American nation is so divided, start asking people what the ideal American looks like. Dollars to donuts if you start asking that dems will give some variation of a college educated, secular, career orientated professional. Republicans will give you something along the lines of the second Bush - a ranch owning, gun toting, self sufficient Christian. Republicans see the ideal American as the kind of 'get up and go' that characterised the Old West, where people made fortunes of the sweat of their own brow. This is really at the heart of Republican's indifference to education generally - their idol's didn't need it.

 

3) Conservative electorates view the Supreme Court as engaging in significant judicial overreach. And they are right.

What every student of political science learns is that divisive political issues require a political settlement with buy in from all segments of society. That's why, in Poland and Ireland abortions are Illegal, and yet they are still signatories of the Human Rights convention. Europeans understand that any attempt to force them into line with the rest of Europe is more likely to force them out the EU than it is to force them to comply. Multiple times in the last fifty years the Supreme Court has short circuited the democratic process, and that is a terribly dangerous system, because westerners broadly buy into the idea of democratic solutions. If abortion rights in the US had been decided at the ballot box, then there would not be the same level of vitriol that there is now in the US. Just compare to the UK? We have an equally large and vocal pro-life movement, but our politics are largely free of any stigma about it because everyone understands that if you want to change policy you have to get a majority of the people onside. If you can get the majority to change their minds then you should be able to change the law. There is no such understanding about supreme court decisions.

 

4) People tend to regard history as having a certain amount of inevitablity, whereas in reality it was often balanced on a knife edge.

This is basically a commentary on how democrats seem to view supreme court decisions. That because these decisions have repeatedly gone in a liberal direction, that was inevitable and really the only logical outcome. But that just isn't true. For example, european courts under very similar legal frameworks to US courts have sometimes/often taken a different view. For example, in the Gay Marriage case, the ECJ decided that the European Bill Of rights Article 12 - the one about marriage - did not apply to same-sex marriage because that isn't what the framers meant by marriage. So the ECJ took a different view and accepted as valid an argument which the supreme court of America specifically rejected as invalid. The supreme court could easily have decided, with echos of Roe vs Wade, that it wasn't for the Supreme Court to decide what marriage meant, and turfed it back to the states/federal government. Alternatively, the SC could have decided that actually they did have the authority to decide when life begins (which seems no less woolly a question than what marriage means!) and decided in 1960 that every conceived person was entitled to legal protections, then it would be the democratic party who would be rabid single issue voters. As soon as you short circuit the democratic process you end up with a system that lacks buy in from all segments of society. If your courts repeatedly decide things that are better decided at the ballot box then a polarised society is the inevitable result - just as much as if an autocratic leader keeps deciding things contrary to the will of the people, his government will be seen as illegitimate (which is how any number of european monarchs ended up with their heads on the chopping block!).

[kenberg]

Phil's points1 and 2 match pretty well with my way of thinking.

[mike777]

The ice warriors are wrong not to give citizenship by birth? Strangely I do not remember reading this in any of your previous posts. :o

 

I have said this often...very often....sorry you miss this, In fact this is really an important pt.

[mike777]

If we

 

quote you in full

 

 

should we also copy your

 

 

annoying habit of

 

putting lots of blank lines

 

in the post?

 

sure why not.....if annoying to you I should do less so as to not annoy if posters find my spacing annoying I should do less, ty

[mike777]

Don't be silly! Everyone knows the ice warriors are the real martians (and they definitely do not give citizenship by place of birth).

 

I strongly disagree, to not space ....babies born on mars will be martians....this is really important...you miss an important event in history

 

 

babies born on mars are martians

[Zelandakh]

I have said this often...very often....sorry you miss this, In fact this is really an important pt.

Could you link to one of your posts about the ice warriors? I am intrigued that the subject has come up before at all.

 

 

babies born on mars are martians

I am reasonably confident that Ice Warriors are regarded as Martians wherever they are born - Earth, Mars, Skaro, it is largeley irrelevant. Similarly, I am also confident that they do not regard any humans as Martian regardless of what the birth certificate says - but you would need to ask Steven Moffat to be sure!

[y66]

Phil's points1 and 2 match pretty well with my way of thinking.

Please pass the bong.

[kenberg]

Please pass the bong.

 

Huh?

 

I was tired when I wrote that, so I wrote little, but I wasn't smoking (I don't). My only concern was that people would say of course, who disagrees.

 

 

His first point was that people vote their values rather than their narrow economic interests. Does anyone disagree? No one on this thread has explained that his preference is based on real or perceived personal economic interest. Of course a well-functioning economy is in (almost) everyone's economic interest, but that's different.

 

The first vote that I cast was for JFK in 1960. I was 21, I had graduated in June, I got married in the same June, I worked in Maryland at NASA over the summer. I started grad school in the fall. The car died out here in Md., we could not afford another one, we could just barely afford train tickets back to Minnesota, we found a very modest upstairs of a house to live in. JFK told us to ask not what our country could do for us, but to ask what we could do for our country. I did not ask either question. I thought JFK would be a decent president, so I voted fopr him. . I thought my finances were my own responsibility, and my best shot there would be to learn how to calculate Galois groups for weird polynomials over weird fields and learn about Bessel functions. I did not ask what I could do for my country, I figured that taking care of the country was Kennedy's job, and I did not expect Kennedy to help me with Galois groups or with my rent. Btw, this was a decent approach. I did well in the course taught by the departmental chair, and then asked if he could increase the salary I was getting as a teaching assistant. He could. Neither of us checked in with Kennedy.

 

This is the general idea that I got out of Phil's post (his point 1), and it fits with my views.

 

I don't actually know much about how my parents voted. They would be closer to the struggling middle class whose votes the dems seem to have trouble holding on to. They voted for Ike in 52 (we had arguments about this, that's how I know). I think "I will go to Korea" was they key, people were fed up with that "police action", as it was called. Pocketbook issues were of lesser importance if they came up at all.

 

People vote their values. Not always maybe, but often enough to be a strong contributing explanation for analyzing votes. I think this is what Phil was saying, and, if it is, I agree.

[barmar]

I think the general consensus about republicans is very, even dangerously wrong.

 

1) People do not vote in their narrow self interest

This is well known. There have been a ton of surveys done on it in the UK. The why is more interesting - most people see their country as more than a vehicle for their individual prosperity. It is some slightly anthropomorphic entity, and they want the country to do well. People have very different views on what that means and how to do it. I think the line of argument that "Republicans vote for policies which make them poorer they must be stupid lol" is both wrong and insulting. They vote for a republic party despite the fact that it makes them poorer because they think that the republicans will make America great again.

In addition, they often vote for the party whose platform is consistent with their general ideals. So social conservatives and the religious right vote Republican, while progressives, altruists, and religious moderates tend to be Democrats.

[y66]

I agree people vote their values. But how does that square with "They vote for a republic party despite the fact that it makes them poorer because they think that the republicans will make America great again". That's not a value. That's a delusion.

[kenberg]

I agree people vote their values. But how does that square with "They vote for a republic party despite the fact that it makes them poorer because they think that the republicans will make America great again". That's not a value. That's a delusion.

 

I look at it this way.

 

 

People, including myself, are not really delusional.

People, including myself, are not experts in much of anything.

 

We take these two axioms and see how we can explain the fact that many people of the struggling middle class vote R.

 

My father installed weatherstripping in houses. If someone ran on a platform of eliminating weatherstripping jobs he would not have received my father's vote. Of course not. I don't imagine that Phil was claiming that he would. But also, if someone ran on a platform of doubling the amount of money he would be making, I think my father would not have voted for him either. He would have regarded the candidate as a proven liar. My father was not delusional, in either direction.

 

Anyway, if we agree that votes are often based on values rather than on a narrow appeal to personal economics, that's something. I guess it was Carville who came up with "It's the economy, stupid". Of course the economy is part of it, but only part. If the Ds want the vote of the struggling middle class, I think that they need to re-think their approach.

 

Short version: I did not take Phil to mean that voters chose the candidate who would lower most lower their income. Often voters don't expect all that much economic help from either side (Bill said something like this earlier). So the vote their values, and watch out for their own finances. This matches with my experience.

[y66]

According to this political typology quiz by the Pew Research Center, I'm a median Democrat (a 30 if you number the horizontal axis from 0 to 100). I suspect you're 10 to 20 points to my right (at or just left of center). As in previous polls, many of the questions are somewhat annoying (not just for moderates either).

 

The discussion of increasing polarization is interesting and consistent with observations in this thread, including gaps between liberal and conservative positions on diversity.

 

Why so much polarization?

Obama's take on this, which seems right to me. :)

 

Edit: Obama does not mention the culture war tactics Lee Atwater and Karl Rove perfected and how those tactics have become increasingly aligned with echo chamber media specialization and deep pocketed corporate interests and contributed to increasing polarization and the increasing intellectual dishonesty and bankruptcy of the Republican party.

[kenberg]

According to this political typology quiz by the Pew Research Center, I'm a median Democrat (a 30 if you number the horizontal axis from 0 to 100). I suspect you're 10 to 20 points to my right (at or just left of center). As in previous polls, many of the questions are somewhat annoying (not just for moderates either).

 

The discussion of increasing polarization is interesting and consistent with observations in this thread, including gaps between liberal and conservative positions on diversity.

 

Why so much polarization?

Obama's take on this, which seems right to me. :)

 

Edit: Obama does not mention the culture war tactics Lee Atwater and Karl Rove perfected and how those tactics have become increasingly aligned with echo chamber media specialization and deep pocketed corporate interests and contributed to increasing polarization and the increasing intellectual dishonesty and bankruptcy of the Republican party.

 

I took the quiz! It says I am "Next generation left", whatever that means. Just so I am not the only generation left. I couldn't find a numerical score.

 

As so often happens, I am by no means certain I would answer the same way if I retook the quiz this evening. Do I favor diplomacy or military strength in international relations? Can I favor both? Speak softly and carry a big stick, I recall someone saying. OK I don't want TR back in the White House, but I think diplomacy is not apt to succeed all that well without some strength to back it up. Many questions offered choices where I felt neither fit my views. I guess not answering and moving on was an option. Maybe I will try it, it will probably rate me as undecisive left. Or undecisive right. At any rate, as undecisive. Or maybe not, I can't decide.

 

Why has the nation become so polarized? A good question. Even this probably needs some work to define. Me, I don't feel all that polarized.

 

 

Analogy from bridge. Watching vugraph you see that there is a pro-flannery camp and an anti-flannery camp. I play flannery with a couple of partners because they like it. My approach is that I will play most conventions as long as I don't have to agree that the convention my partner advocates is a good convention. I agree to play it, I don't agree to praise it. Naturally there are limits to this, but it's a way to move forward. And while I am pushing this analogy: The problem with many conventions is that the partnership implements them carelessly. I expect the same can be said of many government programs.

[Zelandakh]

According to this political typology quiz by the Pew Research Center, I'm a median Democrat (a 30 if you number the horizontal axis from 0 to 100).

An astonishingly American viewpoint for what seems to advertise itself as a general political quiz. It puts me as a Solid Liberal, a reasonable description, but this appears to make me a rabid left-winger in American terms. In European politics I am very much in the centre ground.

 

It should also be pointed out that the old idea of left versus right has long since gone from typical political quizzes. Most these days use an x axis of conservative-radical with a y axis of tough-tender. A Liberal is typically at the extreme tender end of the spectrum and slightly to the right (conservative). Diametrically opposed to that are Communists - only in America can Liberals and Communists be considered close together.

[Winstonm]

I took the test twice and was rated as solid liberal both times - must be a defective program. B-)

[kenberg]

I took the test twice and was rated as solid liberal both times - must be a defective program. B-)

 

I am still working on whether that is better or worse than being a next generation left. The "next generation" part sounds sort of snazzy. We are all of a next generation----Gertrude Lowenstein

[y66]

From East by West Indies:

 

At a time when a sizable chunk of the American population is debating whether immigrants are lazy sponges or job-stealing sponges, it may be refreshing to learn that Trinidad has a national holiday celebrating the arrival of Indians to its land. It was 1845, and they were workers coming to quench the country’s withering labor shortage. Of course, that ‘‘labor shortage’’ was actually how plantation owners described a result of African slaves’ winning their freedom — a thought almost as depressing as the fact that the Indians were actually indentured servants brought in to take their place. But today, Trinis are chest-thumpingly proud of their blended heritage.

I know a few Trinis who feel this way and who also know their way around the kitchen. Expatriate Trini V.S. Naipaul, whose great grandfathers migrated from Nepal to India and whose grandparents emigrated to Trinidad in the 1880s is not one of them. Naipaul wrote this incredibly perceptive account of the 1984 Republican Convention in Dallas.

 

During the convention one of the publications distributed was the Presidential Biblical Scoreboard. This purported to give (from various sources) the presidential and vice-presidential candidates’ attitudes to a variety of issues—abortion, homosexuality, women’s rights, pedophilia, pornography, the nuclear freeze, prayers in schools. Just as all these issues were seen as “Biblical” issues, so they all appeared to be aspects of one big issue of right and wrong, requiring only a particular kind of faith.

 

Mr. Reagan didn’t come out too badly in the Scoreboard. Once, before he became president, he was asked by a reporter, “Governor, whom are you patterning your life after?” Mr. Reagan said, “Oh, that’s very easy. The man from—“ After all the shots of John Wayne in “Ronald Reagan’s America,” and the emphasis on Mr. Reagan’s own film past, one might have expected Mr. Reagan to say, “The man from Laramie.” But what he said was, “The man from Galilee.” And, oddly, during the convention week, the two did not seem dissimilar. The pervading sentimentality—about old America, the old faith, the West (or the western), old films, old stars—had brought the two ideas together, and almost without blasphemy. Mr. Reagan, running together his three roles—actor, politician, old-fashioned Christian—had made himself into a formidable political personality. He answered many needs; many people of the many-featured right could read their fantasies in him. He was an actor: an actor could say very little, and still stand for a lot.

 

On Wednesday, at the convention center, after the pigpen speech (delivered in a hectoring, Baptist way), there was a film about Mrs. Reagan. She was shown unveiling a plaque to her surgeon father and appearing to sob. There was something about her acting career. Frank Sinatra sang the song about Nancy. Mr. Reagan said with emotion, “I don’t know what I’d do without her.” And in the end they walked off down a slope into a wood.

 

The lights went on and there was applause. We had a surprise. The film was not a substitute for Mrs. Reagan’s presence. Mrs. Reagan had been brought in during the screening of the film and was now on the podium, in white. We had a further surprise: on the big screen at the back there wasn’t a big picture of Mrs. Reagan, but a live view of Mr. Reagan in his room at Trammell Crow’s Anatole Hotel. Mrs. Reagan waved at the big screen. For a second or so Mr. Reagan seemed bemused, but then he started waving back. It was a great moment of family theater. And it was enough. It was what the delegates needed. All that was required of Mr. Reagan now was his presence. And that was what we got on the last day.

 

The political part of his speech repeated what had been said by others. The poetical part at the end, about the “springtime of hope,” was less a speech, less a matter of poetry and language, than a scenario for a short documentary about multiracial, many-landscaped America. So that at the climax of the great occasion, as at the center of so many of the speeches, there was nothing. It was as if, in summation, the sentimentality, about religion and Americanism, had betrayed only an intellectual vacancy; as if the computer language of the convention had revealed the imaginative poverty of these political lives. It was “as if”—in spite of the invocations and benedictions (the last benediction to be spoken by Dr. Criswell)—“as if inspiration had ceased, as if no vast hope, no religion, no song of joy, no wisdom, no analogy, existed any more.”

 

The words are by Emerson; they were written about England. English Traits, published in 1856, was about Emerson’s two visits to England, in 1833 and 1847, when he felt that English power, awesome and supreme as it still was, was on the turn, and that English intellectual life was being choked by the great consciousness of power and money and rightness. “They exert every variety of talent on a lower ground.” Emerson wrote, “and may be said to live and act in a submind.” Something like this I felt in the glitter of Dallas. Power was the theme of the convention, and this power seemed too easy—national power, personal power, the power of the New Right. Like Emerson in England, I seemed in the convention hall of Dallas “to walk on a marble floor, where nothing will grow.”

It was “as if”—in spite of the invocations and benedictions (the last benediction to be spoken by Dr. Criswell)—“as if inspiration had ceased, as if no vast hope, no religion, no song of joy, no wisdom, no analogy, existed any more.”

Indeed.

[kenberg]

At a time when a sizable chunk of the American population is debating whether immigrants are lazy sponges or job-stealing sponges, it may be refreshing to learn that Trinidad has a national holiday celebrating the arrival of Indians to its land. It was 1845, and they were workers coming to quench the country's withering labor shortage. Of course, that ''labor shortage'' was actually how plantation owners described a result of African slaves' winning their freedom — a thought almost as depressing as the fact that the Indians were actually indentured servants brought in to take their place. But today, Trinis are chest-thumpingly proud of their blended heritage.

 

This passage has many facets and really could help focus some issues.

 

The Trinis, as they are called in the article, have a holiday celebrating immigration, we do not. We have Ellis Island. I have been there, i have a copy of the manifest from the ship my father arrived on, I spent some time in Wisconsin trying, unsuccessfully, to find traces of his time there. I found my visit to Ellis Island far more interesting than my visit to any of the museums.,

 

The Trinis celebrate legal immigration, controlled and designed for a purpose. . Most in this country are equally appreciative of legal immigration, controlled and planned for a purpose. The vast majority of us do not have to look far back to find this in our family.

 

The immigration being celebrated was not easy on the immigrants. The same often applied here. I read Steinbeck's East of Eden almost sixty years ago, I still recall some description of the plight o the Chinese who were brought here to work on the building of railroads. Easier for my father? Probably so, practically anything would have been. But I asked him once about his early life, he said it was hell, and he refused to discuss it further. So easier does not equate to easy.

 

Are there people in the US who are opposed to any immigration in any form? I suppose so, but in fact I can't think of anyone I know who fits into that category.

 

Yes we are a nation of immigrants. This not not easily transform into the notion that anyone who wishes to come is welcome to come. That has never been our policy, as far as I know. Also I don't know, but I would be surprised, if it is Trinidad's policy, or any country's policy. It seems pretty clear that it is not a policy in European countries. Even Germany, as generous as it is, exerts some control over who can cross its borders, does it not? I really think every country does.

[barmar]

Yes we are a nation of immigrants. This not not easily transform into the notion that anyone who wishes to come is welcome to come.

This week was the 50th anniversary of Immigration Act of 1965. Until the recent coverage of the anniversary, I had no idea that prior to that law our immigration policy was strongly biased in favor of particular countries (almost all slots for immigrants were only available for those coming form western Europe).

 

The bill that was actually passed was a strongly watered down version of what was hoped for by the bill's sponsors. The old immigration policies were essentially racist, favoring countries with white populations. The original version of the bill removed the country-of-origin bias, and gave people priority based on having useful skills. But the racists (led by Michael Feighan of Ohio, who chaired the House Immigration subcommittee) wouldn't vote for this, so they changed it to give additional priority to people with family already living in the US. The racists thought this would amount to keeping the status quo, because most previous immigrants were from Europe, so this would just allow their families to come. But it backfired -- once a few non-Europeans (i.e. Africans, Asians, and Middle-Easterners) got in (through student visas, work sponsorship, or marriage to Americans), they could then bring their families, and then their extended families, and it snowballed. The complexion of America changed drastically as a result: from 70% European in 1960, to only 10% in 2010.

 

It's sad to see modern politicians apparently trying to turn back the clock.

[kenberg]

I was probably aware of this 1965 act when it was passed, but if so i had forgotten.

 

The WC has an amusing feature. I find myself discussing issues that until they come up here, I don't much think about them Religion is one such issue, i sometimes join in discussion, but personally I settled it adequately for my purposes long ago. immigration is another. I mentioned a few posts up about Indian and Pakistani grad students in the early 1960s. But until we got into this, I had long ago forgotten such things.

 

 

The issue of who should be allowed to come, given that a large nu ber wish to, is complex. Certainly restricting it largely to European countries would be a serious error. Skills? many who would like to come here have no great skills. It seems to me we should allow this, but as part of a mix where we also accept and encourage those with skills.

 

Between "anyone can come" and "no one can come" there is room for discussion of "who can come" and there can be debate and planning. As there always has been. We who are here should think through what the policy should be, and we should insist that ultimately it is up to us.I favor immigration, but I favor thought out and planned immigration..

 

The fact is that immigration has worked very well for this country. Amazingly well, actually. So of course we should keep doing it. But it sometimes gets romanticized. It has always had its tough aspects.