How would you fix the U.S Government?

@Fido,

Nobody every said anything about controlling all human behavior. Unless you are a prisoner in a prison, or in military service, most people enjoy the freedoms granted us by our Constitution. As I've said, it depends on one's environment, country, government, its laws, and other variables that controls behavior.

It depends on what you believe are 'freedoms.'

Singaporians are one of the wealthiest and happiest people in SE Asia. They can't throw trash on the ground, and they must flush public toilets - or they pay a fine.

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@Fido,

Whenever someone gets their nose bloodied by some life experience, they are quick to complain: "There ought’a be a law . . . ." Well, the truth is that there is. There is nothing that we do in this life that is not subject to law.

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Nobody every said anything about controlling all human behavior. Unless you are a prisoner in a prison, or in military service, most people enjoy the freedoms granted us by our Constitution. As I've said, it depends on one's environment, country, government, its laws, and other variables that controls behavior.

It depends on what you believe are 'freedoms.'

Singaporians are one of the wealthiest and happiest people in SE Asia. They can't throw trash on the ground, and they must flush public toilets - or they pay a fine.

If The American Version of Western Law has put more people behind bars per capita than any other country save the former Soviet Union, and white collar criminals, influence pedlers and buyers, and your more common type of criminal still plague us, then clearly the answer to law is more law, and more law still..

How did people ever survive without all the cops and prisons... Considering that some of our earliest Drama involved law breaking and social consequences of lawlessness; how did people survive, and survive yet without the police state and the whole country threatened by law and prison??? Communities used to enforce their own law, and defend their own... In case of serious trouble, moots, or dooms, or things were convened to settle the issues...These were still communities settling community issues... What we have with Western L:aw, is the breakdown of the community and community rights... What we were supposed to get out of the deal was a community, a nation state embracing every individual in a larger community...There are few communities, and few community defenses of rights... Communities are still held collectively responsible for the actions of their members, but they have no real control, so this is unfair... Since individuals have no defense, and are perfect victims, they must organize on the basis of common need or condition, as when people form corporations, or unions... Except for the corporation, this is a poor defense of rights... In fact, the union of us all, the American Union is compromized because our democracy is compromized... Where is E Pluribus Unum??? We have no unity because the purpose of those who would use us forbids unity, and seeks to pare us off one by one so we can first be ruined, and then eliminated... Object to the situation, show some fight, and you will end up in prison if you are lucky... We live in a police state, and most of us accept it and invite it out of fear of our neighbors...

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@Pukka Sahib,

Pukka Sahib wrote:

Whenever someone gets their nose bloodied by some life experience, they are quick to complain: "There ought’a be a law . . . ." Well, the truth is that there is. There is nothing that we do in this life that is not subject to law.

As long as minority rights are thought to be held at the pleasure of the majority there is no behavior that is not subject to law... When property has rights, for example, and rights are thought of as a property, as one enlightenment philosopher had it, then there are no inalienable rights.. They are all up for grabs, and all for sale to the highest bidder...What defense can minorities offer??? In this land created by revolution, revolution has been made illegal... Be careful what you say... Be careful of what you think... Be afraid...

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@Fido,

At my age, I'm not at the level of fear, but I distrust our government at all levels.

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@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

[I distrust our government at all levels/quote]

Write to your representatives on particular pieces of legislation to alert your government to well reasoned concern.

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@Fido,

No. All rights exist only by law; and without the law, we have no rights. Without law, there is anarchy; which is antithetical to the very existence of the rights you advocate. Rights can only exist within the structure of organized society subject to the rule of law. In this, it must be admitted that there can be no society without the law; it is the very fabric of social structure. It is, like the air we breathe, pervasive and essential, affecting every aspect of human relationships and endeavors. Beyond this lies only the uncertainty of uncivilized life where there is no society, where every man is a law unto himself; and life, as Hobbes put it, is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651). Such rights are nothing more than a scrambling possession that would be unlikely to last beyond the first to challenge the claim by force. No, the law is the only means by which real rights may be secured.

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@Pukka Sahib,

Pukka Sahib wrote:

No. All rights exist only by law; and without the law, we have no rights. Without law, there is anarchy; which is antithetical to the very existence of the rights you advocate. Rights can only exist within the structure of organized society subject to the rule of law. In this, it must be admitted that there can be no society without the law; it is the very fabric of social structure. It is, like the air we breathe, pervasive and essential, affecting every aspect of human relationships and endeavors. Beyond this lies only the uncertainty of uncivilized life where there is no society, where every man is a law unto himself; and life, as Hobbes put it, is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651). Such rights are nothing more than a scrambling possession that would be unlikely to last beyond the first to challenge the claim by force. No, the law is the only means by which real rights may be secured.

Again... Rights as a notion is far older than the organized enforcement of them... Again; right is the name for law in German and French, so at least in those two European countries, the idea of right had to preceed the enforcement of the idea... Do you act first and then get an idea of what you are doing???

I think what you need to do is go to ancient literature and see how matters of law were handled... Look at when Paris took Helen... Where was the law to forbid what he did or to warn hum in advance of the consequences??? There was none... What gave the action of the Greeks their force was their common honor to which they were all sworn... When there was a dispute among the Greek about returning the daughter of the priest to her father so the curse could be lifted there was no law to force it, nor was there law to prevent Agamemnon from seizing the slave girl from Achilles, and yet Achilles could not leave because he was bound by his oath, and trapped there he went a cried by the ships over his tortured honor...

It is honor that essential to society... Law is only loopholes for the intelligent to leap through on their way to riches... If the essential honor is missing from people, if they will not be bound to any common purpose but are only made to serve their own, Then no law will prevent them from doing injury, large or small on the population... It is honor that makes us serve the commonwealth and social purpose... Law gives people the illusion without the substance of a social commitment, and for that reason does not result in justice...

I am certain you are confusing civilization with society... There were many communities that were not civilized, but there has never been civilization without conquest, and with conquest came laws imposed upon the captive and defeated people by the victors... For the victors, right and justice will never enter into the subject of law... Only when a society begins to understand that justice must attend all their actions does right enter the discussion... Before that time there was only questions of right and justice which were settled by the individuals involved... People outside of their societies made their law as they went, but within society all people recognized that honor and justice were essential to survival...

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@laughoutlood,

lol, I have done so for many decades without any success. Have even written to Obama, but his office claims they get too many emails. I've essentially given up.

They are not there to listen to their constituents; they live in a make-believe world where they think presidents like GW Bush doesn't lie.

I wrote a letter to Senator Feinstein about not approving the Iraq war, but she said they have information that she must support the war, and voted for it. There were many other issues that I wrote to Senator Feinstein on, but she ignored them all. I just gave up.

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@Fido,

Fido, What you say has been proven by just understanding the history of all cultures that won control of their government through wars and conquest. How they controlled the masses were by degrees, and some were even benevolent leaders. It's a mixed bag.

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We vote too much. The political ground lurches one way or the other every two years. Good men and women with good ideas ( and both parties have good ideas )
are not able to get them in place because of time. It's time to give the House Representatives a 4 year term concurrent with the President's.

It may be possible to implement this at the state level and without a constitutional amendment.

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@fernald,

fernald wrote:

We vote too much. The political ground lurches one way or the other every two years. Good men and women with good ideas ( and both parties have good ideas )
are not able to get them in place because of time. It's time to give the House Representatives a 4 year term concurrent with the President's.

It may be possible to implement this at the state level and without a constitutional amendment.

We vote on nothing... There is no reason we could not vote every damned night on the issues that affect us... And who better than us to say what should happen... Government could research... Government could educate, but ultimately it should put all issues before the eyes of the people with all the information to make a choice along with the power to change their minds if the thing does not work... The greatest sign of the contempt we are held in by the government and the rich is the fact that we are never given a meaningful choice about anything... Since we are politically powerless we may safely be kept ignorant and uneducated... Unfortunately, the ignorant can be ingrained with a contempt of the educated until government is just as stupid as the people with only more power and less morality...

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@Fido,

You got that right! Even in California, the GOP doesn't want the voters to determine government worker's pension benefits, and is hampering Gov Browns plan to put it on the next ballot.

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@cicerone imposter,

The United States is not a true democracy. U.S. Const., Art. IV, Sec. 4. It is a constitutional republic, which is a representative form of government, albeit there is now provision for initiatives to be enacted into law directly by public referendum (e.g., the previous initiative in California for an anti-gay marriage amendment to the State constitution). Likewise, under the Constitution, we don’t vote directly for a presidential candidate, but for “electors” for the President of the United States. U.S. Const., Art. II, Sec. 1; Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000). If you want the government power put directly into the hands of the people, then the Constitution would have to be changed to provide for mob rule.

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@Pukka Sahib,

PS, I already understand all of that! It's the current frustration with how the two parties are split so badly, they are not accomplishing much for the citizens of this country at the federal, state, and local levels.

The big issues of today is the GOP's threat to destroy government unions, social security, and Medicare.

Local governments can't rein in government pension costs, while most other services are being taken away or minimized, because they are beholding to the very unions that supports them.

It's a freak'n mess from my observation point.

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@Pukka Sahib,

Pukka Sahib wrote:

The United States is not a true democracy. U.S. Const., Art. IV, Sec. 4. It is a constitutional republic, which is a representative form of government, albeit there is now provision for initiatives to be enacted into law directly by public referendum (e.g., the previous initiative in California for an anti-gay marriage amendment to the State constitution). Likewise, under the Constitution, we don’t vote directly for a presidential candidate, but for “electors” for the President of the United States. U.S. Const., Art. II, Sec. 1; Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000). If you want the government power put directly into the hands of the people, then the Constitution would have to be changed to provide for mob rule.

Revolution is necessary because the government cannot be changed... There is no reason a constitutional republic can not be democratic, if not a democracy... The ability of our government to set its own rules allowed them to limit the democracy to the maximum, and to corrupt what remained with money... No power could stand before the House of Representatives if they were elected at the same ratio to citizens as when the country was new...And they would have to answer to the people... By limiting members the house as made each member more powerful, and so worth a higher price, but it has robbed the institution and the people of power, and in the process made the parties most powerful of all... And for their power, because they divide their districts the representative are vulnerable to every change in the tide of feeling, and so live in fear...

And the government should fear the people, but it should also give the people what was promised to them in the preamble of the Constitution, and they cannot do that without giving to the people the maximun of democracy, which they could do short of revolution just by returning to the ratio of representatives to represented that we began this country with... It would not be a true democracy, but it would be more democratic for a start... Short of that, we will twist into decay or worse, dictatorship, and then decay... Without democracy we have no hope of reaching the good that government should provide for us...

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who says it needs fixing?
i do, but why?

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@hamilton,

hamilton wrote:

who says it needs fixing?
i do, but why?

I say it needs fixing because it has not met the goals those who wrote the constitution set for the government... The goals were good, but the performance has been complete failure... Only the vastness of the country, the multitude of resources, and our protection from attacks because of the Oceans have made the government seem a success... The true nature of the facts are being revealed... Now that the wealth of the nation is smoked or in private hands; now we see the worth of the government... It is like the Roman Empire... It survives so long as it can divide et empera... If we could have only a moment of common feeling we could crush the goverment between the left and the right... Our division is its survival...

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@Fido,

Fido wrote:

hamilton wrote:

who says it needs fixing?
i do, but why?

The goals were good, but the performance has been complete failure...

they (I) say that completeness is a virtue...

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Quote:

There is nothing that we do in this life that is not subject to law

My dreams and thoughts are my very own and are not subject to any law of either God or of man.

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How would you fix the U.S Government?

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