Being wrong for the right reasons...

@engineer,

I have no idea why you wrote your first sentence in this response. It is (or ought to have been) obvious from what i wrote that i know what he is responsible for, and what is demanded of him by his responsibilities. That is why i used the word competent. It seems to me that you are obsessed with arguing this case, and aren't paying much attention to the meanings of what i write. You just want to tell me i'm wrong in every way.

You may not intend to dictate to me, but when you take a didactic tone, i'm going to object to it, every time. I have no reason to assume that there is anything you can teach me about human nature, especially as it relates to politics.

Your remarks about "the way things have always been" are not applicable here. The issue of same sex marriage, and the separate issue of full faith and credit between jurisdictions on the subject of same sex marriages are issues 0f very recent date.

Your remarks about DD and his posts are a pathetic attempt at sarcasm. I was simply pointing out that i was willing to, but really saw no necessity, to argue with you about a point DD brought up, and which you hadn't mentioned.

The local school board can't bus your children without appropriate authority, and especially not against you wishes. Busing has been a phenomenon of court-ordered desegregation programs, and it was on that higher authority that school boards were required to take actions which might have been against the wishes of those who elected them.

Otherwise, school boards can only do that which is in their power when they are elected, and the electorate knows, or ought to know, the limits of that power. It is, or it ought to be, a consideration of those who vote for them. If this is not the case, that is the fault of the ignorance or indifference of the voter. None of that abrogates the point that i have been making that at the lower levels of government, at all but the highest levels of government, this is a democracy in which the electorate don't care for innovation from those whom they elected except in those cases where someone is elected with the understanding that they will innovate. That is, of course, my opinion, but it is not a uninformed opinion.

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By the way, i find the nested quote game very annoying. Just as annoying as i find it when someone attempts to argue with me points made by another member.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

There's the crux of the biscuit. It seems to me that Engineer's outrage is based upon his moral certitude that same sex marriage should be a civil right, whether or not it actually is. As i have pointed out, even if it is morally indefensible, Mr. Barry is not competent to rectify the situation--he can't change Federal law.

Hmmm.... yes, I do think that marriage is a civil right and that includes same sex marriage. But my "outrage" is that I feel that politicians have a duty in a republic to vote for the good of the political body and that the opinion of the population is not always in line with what is good for it. It is very easy to use sound bites and misinformation to sway the public, not because the public is dumb, but because the public does not always have the time or resources to cut through all the BS and extract the essence of the argument. We hire out that responsibility to our elected leaders. When our elected leaders say that the correct answer is "A", but we are voting "B" because the public wants it, that is complete failure in my book. It really has little to do with gay marriage, assisted suicide, school redistricting or building cement plants (local hot button issue), it has to do with the responsibilities of elected officials in our government system. You asked if Barry was "being wrong for the right reasons." My opinion is that he was acting for the wrong reasons.

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I didn't ask anything of the kind--Boomer did.

You are indulging in mild online hysteria to attempt to imply that the issue of same sex marriage is one of such great moral importance, that this is the equivalent of the civil rights movement, and that it is an issue so complex and requiring a knowledge so arcane that the ordinary members of the electorate cannot reasonably be expected to form an informed opinion, and that they must therefore be lead where they don't wish to go by courageous politicians.

Quite apart from that, i do not accept the notions that people at the level of city councillor are elected to provide courageous leadership, something which i feel i've made clear by now.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

It seems to me that you are obsessed with arguing this case, and aren't paying much attention to the meanings of what i write. You just want to tell me i'm wrong in every way.

Set, I'm not trying to kick your dog. I'm trying to have a civil debate. I disagree with you, that's all.

Setanta wrote:

You may not intend to dictate to me, but when you take a didactic tone, i'm going to object to it, every time. I have no reason to assume that there is anything you can teach me about human nature, especially as it relates to politics.

If you don't want to debate and can't be taught or persuaded, why are you here? I've learned things here and changed my opinions on some issues after following interesting threads. We clearly aren't persuading each other, but maybe there is someone else out there who is considering the matter and we are presenting them with two sides of the argument. What's the big deal? I'm not flaming you, I just disagree.

Setanta wrote:

Your remarks about "the way things have always been" are not applicable here. The issue of same sex marriage, and the separate issue of full faith and credit between jurisdictions on the subject of same sex marriages are issues 0f very recent date.

Whether is was suffrage or African American civil rights or bi-racial marriages, at one time all of those issues were of very recent date.

Setanta wrote:

Your remarks about DD and his posts are a pathetic attempt at sarcasm.

No, it was a sincere statement of respect. That you would take it as sarcasm is insulting to both me and DD.

Setanta wrote:

The local school board can't bus your children without appropriate authority, and especially not against you wishes. Busing has been a phenomenon of court-ordered desegregation programs, and it was on that higher authority that school boards were required to take actions which might have been against the wishes of those who elected them.

The school board determines which public school my child is allowed to attend. I can drive them if I want, but I can't pick my school and this is fully within their authority. My point is that local government is empowered to take many actions and make laws without the direct approval of the electorate by ballot. I used the school board as an example, but you could come up with many more.

Setanta wrote:

None of that abrogates the point that i have been making that at the lower levels of government, at all but the highest levels of government, this is a democracy in which the electorate don't care for innovation from those whom they elected except in those cases where someone is elected with the understanding that they will innovate. That is, of course, my opinion, but it is not a uninformed opinion.

Granted. My opinion is different for reasons already stated.

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Debate does not mean that i allow you to dictate to me, and i won't

As for the rest of that twaddle, i'm not going to play the nested quote game, and i'm not going to argue those things about which i've already made statements. I will only go so far with the nested quotes idiocy, and i've reached my limit. I've already answered ever point you've made in your last post, and i don't intend to play stupid games such as that with the question of how recent the issue involved with the civil rights movement were, as compared to the issue of same sex marriage--i consider it apples to oranges, as i've already pointed out.

I will not respond to any more of your posts in which you take every line of my post or nearly every line, and attempt to deconstruct them. My thoughts are unities, to use a French idea which i don't know to be the same in English, and i consider the tactic of nested quotes to be a means to separate ideas from their context in order to nitpick them.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Well i suggest to you that they should vote as the majority of their constituents want them to vote.

What a safe, nonchalant statement. A safe, nonchalant statement that really says nothing.

As I asked before, which constituents? Just the ones that voted for him? Whatever the majority wants on any particular issue? And how do they determine what "their constituents" want?

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@DrewDad,

I responded to that issue in detail, despite your having cherry-picked that one sentence. If you care to go back to that post, read it, and then respond to it, object to it, wail and gnash your teeth, or pee all over it . . . help yourself.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

I responded to that issue in detail,

No, you didn't. You bitched about how voters are unreasonable, and said that politicians try to find out what the electorate wants. You did not go into any specifics at all, in fact.

If an elected official is just going to chase the approval of the mob, then I want to know how he determines it.

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@DrewDad,

OK, smartass, if you're that ill-informed--but allow me to point out that i did no bitching, i've been reading history all my life, and know that people of all descriptions can be and often are unreasonable in their expectations. A good example here would be a reasonably intelligent and well-informed member who wants someone to tell him how politicians feel the public pulse, so to speak, as though he didn't already know.

Politicians go out and press the flesh at a wide variety of public events. They keep in touch with "community leaders" such as preachers, school teachers and administrators, and policemen and police officials. They conduct surveys and commission polls. They convene focus groups. If they're Congressmen or -women, they have free franking privileges to send out surveys. Otherwise, they get staff members or the ubiquitous enthusiastic volunteers to go door-to-door with surveys. The savvy ones live, actually reside in their constituency, and spend some time there casually pressing the flesh and listening to the electorate. Even if they secretly despise the electorate, they keep in touch. Because if they don't, they won't be successful as politicians.

Any other stupid questions?

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I'm thinking I prefer foxfyres philosophy -- majority always rules except when I disagree with the majority.

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@Setanta,

And that's how you want it to be? Policy decided by intuition and personal access?

If that's how Barry decided to vote on this issue, I wonder if Boomerang still agrees with his decision.

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@DrewDad,

I never agreed with his decision, I respect his reasons for making the decision he did. And yes, I still do.

I really do believe that the role of an elected official is to represent the people who elected them. I've read the arguments here but I haven't seen anything to persuade me otherwise.

I know I (we, the people) won't agree with every decision they make but when we have spoken clearly I expect them to represent our decision.

I think Barry is kind of a nut but I think he probably does know his constituents and I think the vote he cast represents them. I'd love to hear more about the aftermath of the vote -- how his constituants greeted the news of how he voted.

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A politician cannot vote the will of his people in every case. Extreme examples, such as enforcement of Jim Crow comes to mind. He would not get re-elected, but he would have done the correct thing in opposing the ones that elected him.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Debate does not mean that i allow you to dictate to me, and i won't

As for the rest of that twaddle, i'm not going to play the nested quote game, and i'm not going to argue those things about which i've already made statements. I will only go so far with the nested quotes idiocy, and i've reached my limit.

I use quotes, not to piss you off, but to clarify which points in a multipoint thread I'm addressing. I would not dictate you to how you post and I'm sure you would never dictate to me how to form my arguments. While I can appreciate that your thoughts are "unities", I disagree with parts of them and sought to address those comments specifically.

So we're back where we were several posts back: You believe that elected officials should vote the views of the majority regardless of their individual views and I believe they should vote their individual views. After all the smoke clears, does that sum it up?

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@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

I think Barry is kind of a nut but I think he probably does know his constituents and I think the vote he cast represents them. I'd love to hear more about the aftermath of the vote -- how his constituants greeted the news of how he voted.

I think Barry was pursuing a very savvy political path. He knows the bill is going to pass and pass big. He knows that the African American population in DC is vehemently against it and will come out screaming. He can get the bill he wants, but claim he cares more about the feelings of the people by being the single nay vote. I wonder if the vote was 6-6 and it came to him if he'd vote the same way?

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@edgarblythe,

I know that, edgar. I really don't expect that any official is going to represent me 100% of the time.

Did you read Barry's comments?

Quote:

The black community is just adamant against this.'' Indeed, after the vote, a group of black ministers reportedly ''stormed'' the hallway outside the council chambers, vowing political reprisals.

The Washington Post quotes Barry as saying he voted as he did because ''I am representing my constituents.'' He reminded reporters that ``98 percent of my constituents are black, and we don't have but a handful of openly gay residents.''

I have a friend who uses medical marajuana. It is vital medication to her health. Oregon's medical marajuana laws aren't recognized in other states, she'd get busted if she got stopped by the police in Idaho.

States don't have to recognize other state's laws, no matter how much sense the law makes.

At least they aren't throwing married gay couples in jail in D.C.

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@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

Did you read Barry's comments?

Quote:
' He reminded reporters that ``98 percent of my constituents are black, and we don't have but a handful of openly gay residents.''

that's what particularly infuriates me.

His re-election is more important than voting what he has previously suggested is what he believes.

Everytime a politician disgusts me, another one finds a way to reinforce that feeling.

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@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

At least they aren't throwing married gay couples in jail in D.C.

But, if his constituents wanted to throw married gay couples in jail, wouldn't Barry have have to vote in favor of what they wanted? Isn't that your argument?

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@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

I never agreed with his decision, I respect his reasons for making the decision he did. And yes, I still do.

That's what I meant; sorry that I mis-typed.

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Being wrong for the right reasons...

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