There are plenty checks on that power. For example, a Constitutional Amendment requires ratification from three-fourths of the states.
Did you have any “vulnerable groups” in particular when you made that statement? I can think of a couple, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Executive Order for Internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Nothing as horrific as slavery though.
Who watches the watchmen?
Which means it’s zero sum, winner take all. I hope you’re more committed to the cause than the people who spend all their free time making signs with dead fetuses on them and marching around in front of clinics with them, because otherwise your failure to compromise means a total rollback of all abortion rights entirely everywhere in the US in the long run.
If elections have real-world effects, then this is just as callous as anything I’ve said about restricting federal power. We white folks can afford to keep losing elections to Trump. But how about @gracchus’s poor African-American woman from Mississippi?
Once again, agree with the rulings, disagree with ordering people around at gunpoint. Even when they’re really, really, mean people.
You could always actually ask me about my views. I’m happy to share.
I think large institutions are dangerous. History has proved me right time and again.
Maybe you guys should google the phrase “masters’ tools”. I want to save everyone, but selling all my property and giving it away to charity just ensures that now I need someone else to save me. Maybe with a small-scale POC of democracy working to make everyone more free and prosperous, we can lead by example. Trying to force our preferred way of life on others does not seem to be a good approach.
Sometimes the guns are the only thing keeping the really, really mean people from ignoring the ruling.
Much easier than engaging in good faith and trying to understand a perspective different from your own. I understand your closed-mindedness, but I cannot condone it.
Yup. Sucks. So when did you want to start our invasion of North Korea?
How do half of the population “start” compromising when they’re the only ones who were doing it for decades now?
It is time to STOP compromising.
People who hate social justice are of course the first to want to reform the Dems in their image.
Heavens to Betsy, look at that federal government oppression! Don’t you sjw’s understand that that Commie Ike was refusing to compromise with bigots (who were really just talking about ethics in government)?
We understand and reject your values.
Who says I hate social justice?
Oh, because I disagree with some other people who support social justice? That’s reasonable…
The States Rights was a clue.
Never uttered the phrase. There’s a long tradition of left anarchists and libertarian-socialists and I count myself among those. You can look up Noam Chomsky if you care to.
Wait, what was the compromise you were making for decades?
We’re not talking about the big money Republicans who’ve won every presidential election since Carter (Democrats have done a fine job compromising with them), we’re talking about the Republican rank-and-file who elected Trump.
The important part is that you’re willing to completely calmly and reasonably consider perspectives that are different from your own.
So, Jim Crow would have evaporated if the federal government, for whatever cynical reason, had not intervened? The only reason they did so was because of a couple of centuries of black American pushing for their full citizenship. the local governments were the ones enforcing racist institutions. Do you think that would have gone away without help? And yes, the federal government also had racist and sexist institutions and policies. But the federal government is not the monolith you like to pretend here. There are always internal struggles. And I doubt that people who worked in the federal government in various capacities (such as black politicians, like Adam Clayton Powell) were pushing for civil rights legislation for cynical reasons.
That’s a matter of historical debate, actually. Some historians think that it was. Others believe he acted out of a sincere belief in those things. But we can’t know what was in his mind, only what we have on the record.
That’s true, often enough, and it’s why we push for always defending human rights. That’s why we elect people who promise to uphold human rights and vote them out when they don’t. [quote=“wysinwyg, post:204, topic:89524”]
You guys are all trying to frame this as “being against a strong federal government is being against human rights”.
[/quote]
No. We’re pointing to specific examples of WHEN the federal government upheld human rights. None of us are blinkered enough to think that the government, especially in its capacity as a global power, always does. But throwing out the good with the bad won’t get us anywhere.
Our government was set up against a “tyranny of the majority”, right? Setting up a system where individual rights are protected against violation is not a bad check on democratic, populist impulses. I’m a fan of democracy, but I’m not a fan of being told that my access to democratic practices should be limited, because my gender means I’m unable to understand what these rights mean. Allowing states to curtail voting rights of African Americans is ALSO anti-democratic. Passing laws about other’s reproductive health might be done through democratic means, but that doesn’t mean it should happen.
No. I’m saying that they are VOTING FOR a racist and sexist person. I think that’s pretty obvious from how he conducted himself during this election. If me saying that Trump played to racism and sexism is acting smug, I honestly don’t know what to tell you. I’m also perfectly aware that many voted on other issues. However, they still voted for the racist and misogynist candidate.
Do you think that any black person in America would go back to a time before the 1960s civil rights act? Do you think that the constant chipping away, rhetorically and culturally, at the gains made by African Americans in recent years and the constant dog whistling and the constant “southern strategy” BS isn’t a major part of the problem here?[quote=“wysinwyg, post:204, topic:89524”]
I think the federal government has, over the course of its history since WWII, done more harm than good in this respect.
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As a historian of the Cold War, you’ll get no argument from me. But that doesn’t negate civil rights gains. [quote=“wysinwyg, post:204, topic:89524”]
I would be a lot more comfortable if we had put some energy in stripping some power from the executive branch while Obama was in office.
[/quote]
Again, I agree. I don’t think it’s okay when “our guy” does it, because it’s not. The Kill list the Bush and Obama administration has is terrifying.
Native American genocide?
OK, that’s definitely a major one too.
I can’t think of any cases in which the Feds took away rights that the States had granted Native Americans though. Pretty much every level of government let down the Native Americans.
“They say that we are ‘anti-Semitic, though our company was founded by
Jews, is largely staffed by Jews, and has an entire section (Breitbart
Jerusalem) dedicated to reporting on and defending the Jewish state of
Israel.” Larry Solov
They are way to the right for most people’s comfort, but I am not sure that the charge of antisemitism applies.
No.
Please understand I don’t believe in perfect, utopian solutions. Any policy has both benefits and drawbacks that must be weighed against each other. Yes, these are big drawbacks, but they have to be weighed against big benefits.
And it’s not as though federal power was the only possible solution. Suppose instead of imposing desegregation on the south, supporters of desegregation took other measures – perhaps collecting money to help black families relocate from Jim Crow states, perhaps investing in factories and schools in black communities in the south – these are not perfect solutions either, but again, I don’t believe in perfect solutions.
I’m not really pretending so much as talking in short hand. I’m trying to respond to a lot of points all in a very short period of time, and as a result, I cannot spell everything out in as much detail as I would usually like to when making such inflammatory comments.
Yes, the federal government is not monolithic. But it still provides a great deal of leverage – enough to allow the Bush administration to unilaterally start a foreign war on a false pretext. That’s a dangerous amount of power to entrust to any small group of people.
This is one frame, but it’s not necessarily the correct one. Another frame is that we’re at a “local maximum” that is quite low on an absolute scale – movement in any direction results in some short-term losses but also the possibility of huge gains in the long term. Which frame is correct (and these are only two out of a near infinity) cannot be determined a priori.
I think it may very well be that long-term sustainable health of human society depends on rejecting nation state governments, multinational corporations, and other large institutions, even if there are some short-term bad effects. As I mentioned before, I do not believe in perfect solutions. There are always benefits and drawbacks that must be weighed against each other.
Right, but we’ve strayed very far from the initial checks against tyranny of the majority in the direction of broad democracy and populism, and the justification at every turn has always been human rights. In other words, a side effect of protecting human rights has been to create an institution that further endangers them.
The government was set up against tyranny of the majority by preserving most political power within the states (sound familiar) and by preventing proles from voting for anyone in the federal government besides state representatives. State legislatures elected the president.
If you want poor people to have political power, then they might vote for things you don’t like. You can’t have your cake and eat it.
The power to implement civil rights contrary to popular sovereignty is also the power to negate civil rights contrary to popular sovereignty. There are no perfect solutions. You cannot have your cake and eat it.
Yes. And we’re about to see it happen again. Obama seems like he was going to work with the protesters to get the pipeline moved, but since trump actually has an economic stake in the pipeline going forward, they are going to stomp all over their rights again.
It seems like the general argument here is that the US is an imperial power that regularly violates human rights around the world, right, @wysinwyg? But Trump got votes from people who either don’t care about or actively want the civil rights of their fellow citizens violated? Who cares about native American lands, as long as we get some oil jobs? who cares about women’s reproductive rights as long as trump “drains the swamp”? But the GOP isn’t any more likely to uphold civil/human rights abroad either? But are we just supposed to accept our own diminishment because the Dems will ALSO violate human/civil rights?
There was literally NO GOOD CHOICES that square with all my values here. But I’m being told that this is what I get for somehow being responsible for Democrats violation of human rights abroad? Or… the sexism and racism isn’t so bad and that’s what we get for supporting war abroad? I mean, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do personally here, other than apparently accept that a man who is racist and sexist is in office now and it’s my fault for supporting laws and legislation which has freed people here in this country from actually oppression by their state and local governments.
So, @wysinwyg, I’m really sorry if you think me opposing the incoming president and pointing out the racism and sexism in his campaign and now cabinet is somehow ignoring other real issues, which I think will get WORSE under a Trump presidency. But I really, really don’t know what you want me to say, other than I WAS WRONG somehow on something, I was wrong. I probably was. I’m a human being (although the alt-right doesn’t believe that) and I fuck up constantly. I can say all day that I oppose human rights violations of any kind all day and night, but clearly that’s not enough somehow. So… I dunno. Have a good day.
