Quote:
Originally Posted by ZenGum
Am I the only one who is amused by UG's political contortionism here? When it comes to invading other countries, he's all "pro-democracy" and "down with the anti-democrats".
Flip to US politics and he's "Down with the Democrats!" and "Up Republicanism".
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I see you are not a deep student of US political philosophies, Zen. Well, you're on the outside looking in and you're not majoring in US studies, so it's understandable. You've managed to confuse labels with working philosophies -- and frankly in US politics the labels of the Big Two aren't powerfully indicative of what they believe in, or indeed of any difference in what they believe in either.
For about the last thirty or forty years, the Big Two parties (and a two-party system is a natural result of winner-take-all Electoral College rules for the one duumvirate office it directly affects, the Presidency with the Vice Presidency) have implemented an enthusiasm for Great Big Government as the solution to most Federal-size problems, assuming for the sake of argument that these are indeed problems. When both Democratic and Republican Parties contained a continuum from conservative to progressivist solons, they were about like the difference between one GM company's car and another GM company's car -- that is, not much.
This has in the last fifteen years or so become less the case, though this conversion is by no means complete or desired. The Democratic Party has become increasingly socialist in its ideas, and the Republicans, always inclined to be business sorts, rather more capitalistic than before. Some sorting by ideology has been going on.
Capitalism is associated with making deals, mutually beneficial exchanges. This is what naturally goes on between humans. It is altogether independent of government in its fundamentals.
Socialism is not, and hence requires the force of the State to cause socialist things and policies to happen. It is collectivist rather than giving the individual his due regard.
Socialism and Communism make a big deal out of "the collective," which they suppose to be a virtuous entity.
There is no such thing as "the collective." If human beings were involuntary telepaths, maybe there might be.
The Democratic side has increasingly set about buying votes by pandering, to this group, to that group, to anything they think is a bloc. It is not fundamentally different from Roman Senators pandering to the mob with promises of
panem et circenses, and having to find inflationary measures to cover the bills for all that. The Republicans are generally less inclined to embarrass themselves so -- of late. So, yes, I am more impressed with the
virtu and the virtues of the Republicans, for now.
It has gotten to the point where Democratic politicians hint very broadly, if induced to comment, that scandals that destroy Republican politicians only scuff Democrats up, because Democrats aren't expected to behave with propriety or integrity, or with character either. Isn't that just fucking peachy.
This is not to say Republican solons have not merrily gone along with the aggrandizement of the State and the enlargement of the public sector. They have done this very thing to feast out of the Federal pork barrel, as the American metaphor has had it since very early in the nineteenth century -- getting Federal goodies for the benefit of the home constituency. Yep, buying votes with the mob.
In the old days, the US Senate was supposed to be designed to be a set of representatives (small R here) not elected by the population as a whole, but by the Legislatures of the several States of the Union instead -- that the states' Senators were to more directly represent (and Federally empower) their respective State governments, every state on an equal footing regardless of population or economic strength. Just in case of the madness of crowds, was part of the original thinking. What with this and that, this seemed too oligopolistic and was eventually amended to having Senators chosen by direct election, serving rather lengthy terms of office of six years, compared to the House of Representatives' two-year terms. Previous to the relevant Amendment, the electorate's effect on choosing the two Senators of its state was indirect -- in voting for the State Legislators, choosing those who chose the Senators. But still the feature of one house of Congress (the entire Legislative Branch) being of equal representation by state while the other be of representation by population was retained even with the direct election of Senators.
A few pols and pundits wonder if perhaps this should not be reinstated. The idea has attracted more "Hm, that's interesting" than traction.
The Libertarian Party, a tiny US third party that is generally kept frozen out of national-level elections and hence does not make a great international ripple, is implacably opposed to the aggrandizement of the State and to the heavy taxation that fuels an aggrandized State. I find their arguments persuasive on the domestic front. I also find the Democratic Party to be the party most bitterly opposed to Libertarian ideas. The Republicans, while not a perfect fit, are considerably less so. Such opposition as Republicans have to Libertarian philosophies is weaker. The Libertarians are far too pacifist, apparently on the grounds that a Fed with a small army is a less expensive Fed -- I do not think they are being real about the way to safeguard US economic interests anywhere not run by a libertarian-minded democracy but by oligarchy instead. Only some oligarchies are comparatively benevolent; the common run are despotic, and all of America's serious foreign policy troubles come from undemocratic, despotically run societies.
The democratic societies run, well, variations upon the American model: free markets and representative government closely accountable for its behavior to the citizenry. Since WW2, they have found out for themselves that it works. It gets called the "American model" of an economy and a social order in the main because somebody somewhere had to do it first, and due regard should be given to how parts of Europe contained within their social thinking the seeds the flowered largely upon the North American continent. A China could not have come up with what we do. A France really couldn't, nor Holland or Belgium, and Spain quite simply didn't. It was an English thing, really.