In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Ronald Bloom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Herman Rubin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> In article <001801c04d82$38529f80$70690e3f@wards>,
>> Joe Ward <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>Does anyone know WHY so many states DON'T DO IT THIS WAY?
>>>Perhaps the Political Science/History folks can comment.
>> The principal reason is that the two major parties want
>> to keep their position AS PARTIES. If you read the
>> Constitution, there is no mention of parties, and it
>> was expected that the Electors would be people of trust,
>> who would use their judgment. The near catastrophe of
>> 1800 caused separate voting for President and Vice-President.
>> Even worse is plurality voting. But doing something
>> about it would weaken the Demopublicans.
>> As it stands now, probably 2/3 of the people are not
>> "represented" by someone who agrees with them.
> Agrees with them in respect to *what*? Reasonable
>people may come to agreement along some dimensions
>of discourse; and to no agreement along others.
Reasonable people may come to some agreement, but only
if they are willing to respect the rights of the ones
with whom they disagree. We do not have this here;
anyone invoking "morality" or "right" to tell someone
else what to do has already indicated disrespect.
Some major items where this is violated are such
things as health care and reproductive rights, all
state-run activities which can be done, possibly in
a different manner, privately, and all state run
welfare. The danger of this latter was quite
apparent to the founders, who believed that the fall
of the Athenian and Roman republics was due to the
use of public money for boons for citizens. Knowing
some of this ancient history, I tend to agree.
>If there is to be something called "representative
>government", then reasonable people will just have
>to get accustomed to putting up, to some extent,
>with politicians who do not "agree" with them on
>every single, solitary laundry-list item that
>may be in contention at this or that point of
>space or time.
The "laundry list" should be only about two or three
items long. The major concerns of the federal
government before this century were foreign affairs,
transportation, and raising taxes to meet these
demands. We had, as was intended, a part-time
Congress, and part-time legislatures, and the
legislators were expected to pursue their occupations
when not in session.
Reasonable people tolerating
>a certain amount of disagreement amongst each
>other has a venerable name, it is called "Compromise".
Reasonable, yes. But there is no reasonable
compromise between those who believe in reproductive
freedom and those who believe in the essentially
religious alternative. There is no reasonable
compromise between those who believe in a free
market and competition in any of education, health,
retirement, research, and charity, and those who
believe that these should be controlled by the
government. The compromise would be to allow those
who believe in a collective manner of doing these
to form a voluntary collective, with no coercive
power of those who decide not to join.
It was expected, at the time the Constitution was
written, that a few hundred, or at most a few
thousand, not liking the local situation, could
found their own community as they liked it. We
are now moving to federal totalitarianism; there
is no conflict between democracy and totalitarianism,
as Roger Williams and those who did not go along
with the Massachusetts Bay Colony Church realized
when they left. These other freedoms are not that
dissimilar from the freedoms in the First Amendment.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
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