The perfect system?

[FATAL]

Mystic's rambles about corrupt politicians influenced me to post this.

What do you people suggest to be the perfect kind of society? Who would govern people and make the laws, how are they chosen, or do you think that people don't need leaders?

Go into details or don't, just spill your beans. Even Reol should have criticism against the good ole' American democracy since his worst nightmare got elected as a president.

I've been thinking about this a bit and tell you what I think once this thread gets rolling (or in a day or two if it doesn't).

[Grazza]

There can be no perfect political system because humans are imperfect beings.

[FATAL]

That's quite correct.

However, I meant that what do you folks think that is the best kind of system for the people, advantages and faults considered. Otherwise I'd have to assume your answer to be that since no system works perfectly, there shouldn't be any system at all (which in turn would be impossible as well, as it is spontane that people form up a system of some sort).

Also this isn't restricted to the political system only, but also to the way people are organised and work. Whatever you can think that relates to society in general.

Ok take two go!

[Raptor Jesus]

The perfect system is one that works.

[FATAL]

All systems work to an extent.

Enough foolery. If no one can find anything that can be improved or completely changed with the current system (which is, in the end, pretty similar in most western countries where most of us come from), then you are all wrong.

[Mystic]

I think a good system would be one where we, the people, choose someone at a local level to represent us. By local I mean something like the street we live on or the housing estate we live on. Political parties/organisations should be illegal, it should be a 'no party state' or, alternatively a one party state which really amounts to the same thing.

This person should be someone that most of the locals know and agree is probably the best, most honest person, not a politician. In turn, all those representatives should choose from among themselves people to represent them (and us) at parliament and council level.

All voting should be transparent, no secret ballots, the results should be available under freedom of information as should all and any votes/decisions by councils and parliament.

If we see whoever represents us voting in a way that is self-seeking and not in the best interests of the voters then we should have the power to remove them immediately and if they are suspected of accepting bribes in exchange for building/roadworks contracts etc they should be suspended immediately while investigations are made.

People who try to promote themselves as candidates should be banned from any position of power.

Beauraucracy should be kept to an absolute minimum, in modern society far too many talentless 'little hitlers' are in positions where they can really fck up peoples lives whenever the mood takes them.

[+Acyclitor+]

mankind isn't meant to live in large societies. we are tribal by nature, and we should live in smaller civilizations who govern themselves as they wish.

[ghost]

"O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!" - John Savage.

I couldn't resist the opportunity to write this down, heh.
A world considered to be perfect is utopian, and we all know what happens in utopian socieities, don't we? *dark* At least in the Matrix, everyone'll try and wake up.

Albeit not perfect, I would consider a better society to be democratic, where people are not excluded from the government. Can't please everyone though. I wouldn't consider my opinion to be valid as I'm not old enough to vote yet... well at least for the next month, heh. :p

[Aliotroph?]

Secret ballots are there to prevent intimidation and violence. They should never apply to people in any kind of office. Their votes on issues are of course always public. IN fact, all their work should be public, and I don't mean that FOI stuff. I mean it should be on the web within a day or people get sacked.

I still figure the Americans came the closest to the perfect system of government. They screwed up a few key things. For starters, they're not willing to use any government money to build infrastructure most of the time. Bad plan. There are still towns in America with no phones because the companies won't build any and at the same time they sue the town if it tries.

They also need to can all the election campaign bullshit. More than a year to campaign for president??? What a load of garbage. Make it a month like it is here. At least they don't have this notion of kicking you out of the party if you vote wrong like all the British-based systems. They claim our MPs are allowed to represent us yet they're not because the parties boot them.

Oh yeah, make it high treason to even suggest laws against things like insulting the head of state. Freedom hating assholes must die!!! :D

Other than those things, I stand by my previous post saying the point of a government should be to increase the freedoms of individuals and put a check on the power of organizations -- ALL organizations. They of course also have to put a check on the pwoer of the government; violence is fine here as far as I'm concerned. Thomas Jefferson had that part right.

[Mystic]

You do need violence sometimes, I would use the SAS to wipe out all the nastier criminals for starters, be a nice change for them to be doing something useful like that.

initially violence would be needed to get rid of the old system because those basty nastards wont give it up without a full scale revolution against them.

[+Acyclitor+]

Jeffersonian principle is that the federal government has power limited to what is explicitly expressed in the Constitution, and no more (actually, the Constitution itself says this, but who gives a fuck about that these days, right?). the rest is left to the states to decide for themselves. I believe this is about as close to my tribal society idea as possibility allows in the current world.

as you can see, this is not how things work in modern USA. it did once, before the civil war. ever since the Union victory over the Confederacy, the federal government has been slowly growing while the state governments have shifted toward being subordinate to the federal. with each new department the federal government creates, taking over roles once left at the state level (education, transportation, labor, etc), the quality of results in those fields has dropped steadily.

this leads me to believe that larger government is incapable of attending to the best interests of the people it (supposedly) represents. to say nothing of oppressive regimes and personal motives, the larger the governing body ultimately means each individual matters less to them. only small, local government can see to the needs of its respective community effectively.

Jefferson had it quite right, in my opinion. each state should be very close to its own country, with the federal government doing little more than acting as our international representative.

I, personally, say fuck government. I'll see to my own rights and uphold my freedom myself. laws are just words on paper, and these days they just shave off your liberty layer by layer.

[FATAL]

A system without government wouldn't work very well, mostly due to human greed. The strongest would make the rules, and I certainly wouldn't like to live in such an enviroinment.

I'm pretty much with Mystic here. In my opinion, there can't be a complete reform (no communist utopia for me :( ) as most people don't want it, so we're stuck to altering the current system to serve people better and more fairly.

The party system is very faulty in that when voting for someone, you don't cast a vote for him and his opinions, but rather for the party he represents. This is exceedingly absurd when the most left wing MP of the most right wing party is more to the left than the most right wing MP of the most left wing party. The fact is that neither of these have any real voice in their parties.

Political campaigning should be illegal. There should be some common database which lists politicians opinions about common topics and whether they have any special agendas. Especially now with internet and all these fancy thingamajigs of future this wouldn't be a big feat at all. It shouldn't be allowed to change ones opinion after election and the politician would be more or less the voters' sockpuppet, as the people voted for him because of his opinions and not because of who he is (of course this is not correct but this is how it should be. People will continue to be idiots and vote public figures into power no matter what). Either this or what Mystic suggested, although it might get too small scale leadership to the point where a lack of any kind of unity would make things worse in general. It would easily spiral into quarrelling and that wouldn't benefit anyone in the end.


As for services, I do not believe that private businesses should have anything to do with services everyone needs, with few exceptions, such as grocery stores and such. Private healthcare just makes sure that poor people can't get proper treatment. As long as the rich can get good healthcare with money, they don't have any motivation to improve the public side of the services. In my short lifetime I've seen numerous services being privatised, and 99% of the time things go straight to hell from there. It just doesn't make any sense that somehow a private company could provide better services for a cheaper price without making any cuts. The extra money always comes from someplace, and most of the time it is from the poor people's wallets. Other areas that should be public include (but is not limited to) mass transit, pharmacies and security.

This all would be financed with a high and progressive tax rate. Before you throw a shitstorm about how the government is stealing your hard earned money, do remember that now when you for example get a serious illness, you'll have to pay for treatment no matter whether you can afford it or not (potentially not getting any treatment if you lack the dough!), when in my system it would be free if you cannot afford it. High taxes are nothing to be afraid of unless you are rich and greedy, because otherwise they will benefit you and society greatly.



I'll be gone for a few days so if I don't respond right away, don't think I've abandoned this topic!

[REoL]

Whatever the system would be, Bill Gates would probably make himself the ruler.

[Mystic]

Im with Fatal on this.
In the UK we have seen many state owned services privatised and ruined over the last 20 odd years and they are now trying to privatise our National Health Service and our Royal Mail postal service, the bits than can be run for a profit anyway.

in the past the state owned all the power utilities (and all the power stations, coal mines etc), the water, the railways, bus services, the National Health Service and even British Petroleum (BP, one of the biggest oil companies) British Steel and British Leyland, a car and truck manufacturer which had Jaguar, Daimler, Rover, Land Rover, Range rover, MG, Triumph, Austin and Morris among its brands, British Aerospace which co-designed and built Concorde. We had one Phone company, British Telecom that was state owned with a monopoly and the Royal Mail had a monopoly on postal services.
All these services were reliable and cheap to use, employed millions of people on decent wages with good working conditions.
All except the NHS and Royal Mail have been sold to private shareholders and the result has been absolute chaos, ever upward spiralling costs, constant cuts to the workforces and cuts in the services provided. The mass unemployment weakened the trade unions enough that the governments have been able to gradually make new laws eroding any rights employees used to take for granted so now there is almost no job security anywhere, everyone is at the mercy of greedy shareholders.

Most of those privatised companies are now gone, the UK has no car manufacturers of its own anymore, British Steel became Corus and has shrunk beyond recognition and is almost bankrupt, our coal mines are gone.
Even though they are privately owned now the railways still get massive funding from government which seems a bit crooked to me.

Something that has always bugged me is that if all those things were state owned, that is 'taxpayer' owned, why didnt the taxpayers get their money back when they were sold to greedy shareholders??

[CrazedImp]

The human race has been screwed ever since the ideas of trading and money were introduced. Its in our nature to be selfish, and always striving for the higher power. In that sense we are no better than all the animals we strive to be better than. We all think we are so smart with all these social innovations, but at the core we will always be the same, and one day will lead to our eventual downfall. There is no perfect system. Because any system, no matter how organised or unorganised, clever or stupid, will always fail in the end. You just need to look at history of older civilisations for proof of that. In the end, all of them fail. And I have a very bad feeling with the economy in its current state we are on the verge of doing it again. What comes next?

As Grazza said, humans are imperfect beings, and one of those imperfections is that we can't admit it. We are supposed to be the most advanced and intelligent race on the planet, but we can't do the most simple thing of all; admitting imperfections in what we are, and finding ways to overcome them. Instead, we just keep feeding those imperfections with systems which are built on ideas that we as humans could ultimately never achieve, and always end up being purely about who has the most power and money.

Putting something like taxpayers money into a scenario. If you walk up to any random person in the street, give them $1000 and ask them to build you a road or a bridge, with no contracts or contact information or any of that, would they do it? Of course not, they'd think you are batshit crazy and run off with your $1000. So in a sense how is this any different to giving governments money to do things? How many countless times in history have we seen higher authorities like that use the money for their own selfish needs?

Our concepts and ideas are broken, and we need to seriously rethink about the ways we should go about our daily lives.

[Aliotroph?]

Well, Britain always was a backward country. I mean they have a state religion and a TV license. Backward indeed! No wonder anybody owning anything there wants to sell it and go live on a boat! ;)

The best thing to privatize was our liquor stores. The prices went down and the selection went through the roof.

For some reason all our businesses that make anything sell out to Americans. My solution to this is to nuke America. :D

[REoL]

Privitization doesn't always work.
Auto Insuracne was privatized a couple years a go here in Massachusetts, promising rates would go down, but mine actually shot UP, even with a perfect driving record. Same thing with the electric bill, privitized, rates soared.

It works in some places, I guess. Not here in Taxachusetts.

[+Acyclitor+]

A system without government wouldn't work very well, mostly due to human greed. The strongest would make the rules, and I certainly wouldn't like to live in such an enviroinment.then pick up your weapon, round up your possie, and take that bastard down.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be chaos in modern society, I'm just saying it would be a better and more natural way of life if we lived in smaller tribal groups.

Privitization doesn't always work.why do you hate America, sir? ;)

[REoL]

I said it doesn't ALWAYS work. Sometimes it does, and other times, not so. In Massachusetts, it's more of a burden than a bonus. It's probably the oposite everywhere else, literally.

[FATAL]

TV license
BBC produces more high quality programmes than all American commercial businesses together. Public TV here in Finland too is a lot better than the ones that run on ad revenue. Culture and capitalism mix horribly.

[Mystic]

The BBC isnt as good as it once was, it really was all about quality in the past but has resorted to chasing ratings just like commercial TV now so the quality has been thrown out the window.
The BBC is just another way for upper/middle class folk to get obscenely high wages for doing fuckall really.

[FATAL]

That might be true. I don't know what kind of stuff they produce these days, but many times after a good programme I see the BBC logo hanging someplace.

[REoL]

The PBS stations here play those BBC shows. I just don't get any of them. Must require the intelect of the 3-year-old to understand them, I guess.
I lose.

[+Acyclitor+]

BBC sucks, just like the rest of the UK

[Aliotroph?]

The BBC made Doctor Who -- and there was much rejoicing. :D

[FATAL]

I just don't get any of them. Must require the intelect of the 3-year-old to understand them, I guess.
I lose.
So NASCAR and Smackdown are the high-brow entertainment and BBC is for those who don't understand the fine quality of American TV-shows?

[CrazedImp]

The majority of American TV is complete garbage. While BBC don't exactly have a 100% track record, they've made a hell of a lot more good programming than something like Fox.

But see, I'm not surprised American's don't understand British or Australian comedy, its why their remakes of British and Australian comedy always fail. The thing is with American sitcoms is that all the jokes are often predictable, based on slapstick, fart jokes, stereotypes, and all that other rubbish and often jokes are beaten to death throughout any episode. British/Australian humour is more subtle, and jokes you need a moderate amount of intelligence to fully appreciate and understand. Aussie comedy like Kath and Kim and British like Red Dwarf, American's don't find funny. While not a huge fan of Kath and Kim myself, its still more amusing than something like Seinfeld or Friends. But I guess thats just the differences in how each country lives. American's like to sit on the couch and zone out and stare at the screen and laugh randomly at something they think is funny, whereas your Brit's tend to actually focus on whats on the box.

Not all American stuff is bad though, personal favourites Dead Like Me and the earlier Simpsons episodes (the last 10 seasons have been mostly rubbish). None of their drama is good though, overpopulated by crime shows and predictable soap/love stories.

[Mystic]

The BBC let Red Dwarf die, unforgiveable. It was a long slow death starting with the split between the two writers. The BBC should have sweetened the deal to keep both writers on the Job and also should have kept the Rimmer character in the show instead of trying to shoehorn that actor into inferior sitcoms.

I agree with crazedimp up to a point but there are/were some really good quality american comedy shows. Unlike some I actually enjoyed 'friends', 'the simpsons' 'frazier' and 'cheers' to name a few but my all-time favourite american tv show has to be 'SouthPark'.

REol must live in Benjamin Button land.

[Aliotroph?]

Friends is crap. :p I agree on The Simpsons and Southpark. I also like Family Guy (the show that makes a point of doing the jokes way too long) and Futurama (Simpsons for geeks).

I will never forgive Fox for killing Firefly though. Bastards!

[Giftmacher]

Friends can be funny, and is occasionally, but isn't all the time. The Simpsons is good most of the time but can be too "american" for it's own good sometimes. My favorite american comedy is still the Office, and that's based off of a British comedy so you can tell I like British comedy more. I still wish I knew more fans of The Mighty Boosh though, that show's fucking genius.

[ghost]

I've always thought the BBC to be more conservative perhaps, it's a shame they've changed, although Channel 4 is worse off isn't it? Anyways, the British make excellent comedy shows no doubt. My two favourites would have to be Fawlty Towers and Bottom. I've got loads of BBC comedy DVD's, thanks to my dad, and they're a blast to watch.

I loved the Simpsons from the start to the beginning all my life. I am still amazed they keep satirising society for 20 years long and still seems to work (Although the earlier shows are no doubt the best and memorable and won't be surpassed). I don't mind Family Guy/American Dad/Futurama at all either. If only America was like those cartoon show...

House MD, Life and Californication (unfortunately not subtitled anymore since it's on tv really late) are my other favourite American shows.

I agree with the above posts, I see American comedy as pretty much "low standards", you only need to be 2 years old or younger to get the so called jokes and gags. The characters are forgettable (unlike the simpsons, etc), there are nothing unique in most shows, no clever plots/themes, and I hate the fact they just cannot be original, they have to take other shows names and 'americanise' it. For instance, Kath and Kim, they are a really funny pair. The two actresses are about the same age, yet they play mother and daughter, they are really eccentric. The american version is just... bland, the actors are afraid of becoming a different character, it's like, oh noes, i don't want to become stupid, I'll look stupid!

@Gifty: The Mighty Boosh, heh, I've seen that show a couple of times, very cool and absurd. The only episode I recall strongly would be the 'crimping' where the two guys tried to outcrimp their imitators, hehe.

EDIT: Holy smokes, 500 posts. Another 500 to go..

[+Acyclitor+]

The thing is with American sitcoms is that all the jokes are often predictable, based on slapstick, fart jokes, stereotypes, and all that other rubbish and often jokes are beaten to death throughout any episode. British/Australian humour is more subtle, and jokes you need a moderate amount of intelligence to fully appreciate and understand.yes, British humo(u)r is much more sophisticated (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=810TQyT2KXI)

So NASCAR and Smackdown are the high-brow entertainment and BBC is for those who don't understand the fine quality of American TV-shows?ba-zing! high five, dude.

[Mystic]

if you liked 'the office' you will love 'extras'. Its Ricky Gervais (co-creator of the office) best work to date. Only 2 series so far but its smucking fart. Ricky stars as an ambitious 'extra' desperate to get a real acting part and each episode has a special guest star who invariably send themselves up including Robert deniro, Orlando Bloom, Harry Potter (forgot his real name) and Ben Stiller.
By the second series Rickys character has managed to write and star in a BBC sitcom aimed squarely at the lowest common denominator so he is still swimming against the tide with his hopes of becoming a 'real' actor.
The Christmas special was quite special and worth chasing down.

[Heidi]

Birchers got it 99% right, so what they stand up for would be the closest thing to a perfect system. No progressive tax policies, no political correctness bullshit, no welfare state, free market, death penalty for a wider range of crimes and lotsa guns and Jesus down your throats. Spit or swallow baby.

[+Acyclitor+]

no political correctness bullshitPC paranoia aside, government should favor no particular group and should be impartial.
free marketfree market is great and all, but there needs to be some small regulatory body (with total transparency, of course. all government should be totally transparent for public review) to break up monopolies and shit. a limited few laws help in keeping a free market from turning into a communist propaganda dystopia. for example: highest paid employee can only earn 10 times the wages of lowest paid employee.
death penalty for a wider range of crimesdeath penalty should be in the arsenal of the penile system, but only for the most heinous crimes. other crimes that would put somebody in prison for a long time (at the expense of the taxpayer), should instead just be exiled. fuck 'em, who cares let russia deal with them instead.
lotsa gunsI am in agreement here
Jesus down your throatsand this is where those guns would come in handy for killing off shithead religious oppressors such as yourself.

fyi, I think you might be echoing a lot of what is wrong with the modern republican party. the core message of small government, minimal spending, etc, is drowned out by religious fundamentalist blabbery that only serves to alienate moderates.

[Heidi]

free market is great and all, but there needs to be some small regulatory body (with total transparency, of course. all government should be totally transparent for public review) to break up monopolies and shit. a limited few laws help in keeping a free market from turning into a communist propaganda dystopia. for example: highest paid employee can only earn 10 times the wages of lowest paid employee

Having a government tell you how much you can/cannot earn and own (anti-monopoly bullshit) is socialist filth of the vilest kind and by no means elements of a genuine free market.

death penalty should be in the arsenal of the penile system, but only for the most heinous crimes. other crimes that would put somebody in prison for a long time (at the expense of the taxpayer), should instead just be exiled. fuck 'em, who cares let russia deal with them instead

How about we use them for experiments? that might be even more profitable than executing them right away.

I am in agreement here
and this is where those guns would come in handy for killing off shithead religious oppressors such as yourself

Since liberals are too stupid and too pussy to buy guns, your miserable, tyranic socialist asses stand no chance :D

fyi, I think you might be echoing a lot of what is wrong with the modern republican party. the core message of small government, minimal spending, etc, is drowned out by religious fundamentalist blabbery that only serves to alienate moderates.

Republicans have been reluctant to kill this miscarried joke of a welfare state that's fundamentally contrary to the small government approach professed by true conservatives, that's what wrong here.

[+Acyclitor+]

Having a government tell you how much you can/cannot earn and own (anti-monopoly bullshit) is socialist filth of the vilest kind and by no means elements of a genuine free market. a few simple regulations doesn't make a socialist economic structure. a free market without oversight would concentrate all power and wealth into a few key executives who would endlessly exploit their workers. don't believe me? look at the industrial revolution.
I understand the concern of big bad government domineering business, however. that's why I stress few regulations.

Since liberals are too stupid and too pussy to buy guns, your miserable, tyranic socialist asses stand no chance :Dwho said anything about liberals? anybody who isn't christian (maybe that your definition of liberal?) would qualify for the statement I made.
fyi, there are multiple guns in this household and we all know how to use them. I know a few people who you might call liberals who are enthusiastic gun owners as well.
you really ought not generalize me with your perceived liberal enemies - I'm more of an anti-authoritarian, paleoconservative/libertarian who happens to support just a few leftist policies.

Republicans have been reluctant to kill this miscarried joke of a welfare state that's fundamentally contrary to the small government approach professed by true conservatives, that's what wrong here.if this was supposed to be a counter-point, you have failed to address my argument. christian fundamentalists, in their misguided and ignorant zeal, have hijacked the pro-small government camp and alienated everybody else instead of trying to broaden the base of support for small government philosophy. its no secret that the republican party's leadership is retarded liars, but that hardly has anything to do with what I'm saying here.

[Aliotroph?]

People who advocate small government with no limits on corporations and monopolies are worse than communists. They want to concentrate their own power into a dictatorship with no regulations. The fact they're always trying to leverage belief in an evil god who does the same things means they should be put into concentration camps with the so-called liberals who want government to do the same thing. Then you have the guys like Bush who want no limits on companies or government. Absolute evil.

The closest to a correct society would put very strict limits on companies, governments and churches. Balance of power ftw. Anything else is evil. Individuals deserve freedom -- groups do not and never will.

[FATAL]

Never mind what I said in the other thread, I'm quite sure that Heidi's a troll. No one could really be like that and be considered a human being.

[Heidi]

a few simple regulations doesn't make a socialist economic structure. a free market without oversight would concentrate all power and wealth into a few key executives who would endlessly exploit their workers. don't believe me? look at the industrial revolution.
I understand the concern of big bad government domineering business, however. that's why I stress few regulations

You're supposed to be intelligent and hardworking enough to get promoted to better paid jobs during your career, and even start your own business and become your own boss like I eventually did. Nothing but your limited ability can make you to live like a pawn for the rest of your existence. Monopolies are the reflection of mediocre companies offering inferior products/services nobody wants to pay for, being absorbed by superior companies offering quality products/services, that's all there's to them; garbage throws itself out.

The government is here to enforce contracts, contracts nobody can force you to sign in the first place, but that's as much governmental regulation as there should be in this particular field.

Capitalism = from each according to his ability
Socialism = to each according to his need.

who said anything about liberals? anybody who isn't christian (maybe that your definition of liberal?) would qualify for the statement I made.
fyi, there are multiple guns in this household and we all know how to use them. I know a few people who you might call liberals who are enthusiastic gun owners as well

Liberal gun enthusiasts are not the rule. It's a bit like tree-hugging Republicans.

you really ought not generalize me with your perceived liberal enemies - I'm more of an anti-authoritarian, paleoconservative/libertarian who happens to support just a few leftist policies

The so called "worker exploitation" scam is part of the socialist self-victimization agenda. I just knew it, libertarians are nothing but closet socialists.

if this was supposed to be a counter-point, you have failed to address my argument. christian fundamentalists, in their misguided and ignorant zeal, have hijacked the pro-small government camp and alienated everybody else instead of trying to broaden the base of support for small government philosophy. its no secret that the republican party's leadership is retarded liars, but that hardly has anything to do with what I'm saying here.

I wouldn't call that an argument. Separation of church and state is bullshit. Small government doesn't mean "everyone go heathen". Christianity is one of the pillars of democracy thus must be promoted, reinforced and spread all over the country with iron fist, that's what helps keeping reds like you from brainwashing people into throwing their lives aways for filthy, anti-American socialist lies.

[REoL]

Having a government tell you how much you can/cannot earn and own (anti-monopoly bullshit) is socialist filth of the vilest kind and by no means elements of a genuine free market.

Since liberals are too stupid and too pussy to buy guns, your miserable, tyranic socialist asses stand no chance :D

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/11/obama-derangeme.html


Republicans have been reluctant to kill this miscarried joke of a welfare state that's fundamentally contrary to the small government approach professed by true conservatives, that's what wrong here.
Aggreed.

[Aliotroph?]

Religion is a pillar of dictatorship and democracy shouldn't even be the goal of a society. Freedom should be the goal. It is possible to impose freedom on people with a dictatorship and remove it with democracy. A society ruled by Christianity can never provide freedom and is therefore evil.

[+Acyclitor+]

I wouldn't call that an argument. Separation of church and state is bullshit. Small government doesn't mean "everyone go heathen". Christianity is one of the pillars of democracy thus must be promoted, reinforced and spread all over the country with iron fist, that's what helps keeping reds like you from brainwashing people into throwing their lives aways for filthy, anti-American socialist lies.you sir are an enemy of freedom. I can respect a difference of opinions - but you obviously cannot.

[ace]

Man, I started typing a gigantic argument to tear down Heidi's points--as unbiased and objectively as possible, even--but then I realized it would be a gigantic waste of time, as per usual. So instead I'll type a different wasteful long rant.

You know what the real problem is, Heidi? It's people like you. Not republicans, not fundamentalists, not conservatives, no--it's much more fundamental than that. It's people like you who are so close minded that they cannot for a moment consider any alternative to their own narrow point of view even when the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that they are wrong. People who are so deeply entrenched in their political party's agenda that anyone who dares to nay-say them--even those supposedly subscribed to that same party--must be accused of betrayal, spinelessness, appeasement, and alignment to radical ideologies which they do not, in fact, subscribe to at all.

People like you who create false dilemmas between none but their own ideal, extreme system and another extreme system that, in their eyes, would be the polar opposite; who fail to realize that that neither their proposed extreme or its alternative is, in all likelihood, anything but catastrophic. People like you who blindly loathe with wicked fury any and all particular ideologies which do not fit their own without fully understanding them or tolerating them in the slightest.

People like you who think that anyone who has a fair and honest concern over the welfare of the American nation and earnestly believes that it does not meet the standard it has set does not in fact care about their country, but is against it entirely and would rather see it burn--unless, of course, those proposed improvements match your dispositions, in which case they are almost as patriotic as you in your eyes. But not quite, I'm sure.

People like this do not exist only in the form of conservatives. They exist in the form of liberals and libertarians and and authoritarians all around just as easily--the only distinction is the method by which they make their case and the ideologies touted therein. They are people not of a nation, but of a Party. People who would rather remain in an endless gridlock of political bickering in preference to tolerance of differing--even "incorrect"--perspectives, to compromise, to the scrutinizing of the status quo.

It is these people that I despise the most. People whose breadth of ideology is infinitesimal and entirely unified, who are irrevocably and rigidly absolutely certain in their beliefs without second thought. A scourge upon the Earth, they have spread like a malignant tumor and destroyed any shred of human decency, modesty, cooperation and respect that their gnarled, grubby fingers can ensnare.

You are one of these people. These people almost never learn. And you, too, will likely never learn.

Here's to watching the world burn... lest we fail to anticipate who will start the fire.

[rustyslacker]

Way to flex your vocabulary, you pretentious fuck. :)

[CrazedImp]

I actually agree with pretty much everything ace has said. Probably one of the main reasons we have so many problems in the world is because of close minded people, who like to think their opinions and beliefs are everything and everything else is wrong or bad. But unfortunately, there are far too many of these people in the world, and a large number of them make it into influential places of power.

Would make sense as to why the world is in so much shit in so many places at the moment.

[Aliotroph?]

And this is why I advocate a system of government that lets people do pretty much whatever they want short of restricting what other people can do. :)

This is all reminding me of that God Warrior episode of Trading Spouses. :D

[Mystic]

whats this free market everyone goes on about??
where is it??
why do its advocates oppose decent conditions and good wages for those at the bottom of the ladder???
how can such people kid themselves that they are christian????
have such people ever read their new testament or do they mistakenly believe that Jesus is like that old hebrew fire/war god in the old testament.

Just curious. Im actually atheist but I try to live a 'christian' life, Im a big fan of the character called Jesus in the new testament, he would get my vote.

@ACE, very well said, impressive even, thanks for sharing your rant with us.

[ace]

Way to flex your vocabulary, you pretentious fuck. :)

Leave me alone, I felt like being verbose. :p

EDIT:
Heh, thanks Mystic. I usually lack the motivation to rant on about something, but my overall shitty mood is a good help to me going off like that at the moment. :D