
Originally Posted by
thegodfather
Logan, while I agree that we most likely do not have all the pieces to the puzzle, and cannot know the totality of the situation; the fact remains that presently 70% of the population is opposed to the war. Your comment is bordering on sounding somewhat elitist, and I feel that it at the least, implies that the general public is not educated enough to make decisions for itself. If someone believes this to be the case, and they are in favor of an "informed" group of elites in Washington making those decisions for them, then that is considered a Dictatorship, and not a Democracy.
The average person who makes generalized comments on the nature of the world is ignorant of the facts because they simply do not have the facts. It is amazing how often people are allowed to make claims that they are only regurgitating from some blog, etc...
I'll also ignore the fact that our present model of Democracy is appauling; where 51% of the population is able to opress the opposing 49%. That was never how Democracy was intended, it was designed so that 99% of the population could not oppress 1% of the population. Anyway, according to our current model, we elect officials to vote in our interests or on our behalf of how WE ourselves would vote. So, when 70% of the population is opposed to the war, and 400+ Congress members vote to increase War spending, that is at least indicative to me that these elected officials are running on a "I Know Whats Best for YOU" mentality. This I certainly do not agree with. The people empower the government, and not the other way around.
I disagree. Over the last 10 years, many 10% minorites have been able to oppress the majority through the court systems. The court system is the gov't, so your claim obviously goes both ways.
Stating that the American population does not have enough information to make this decision does not appear accurate to me. Can you state what critical pieces of information we are hypothetically not privvy to? That is a very easy out for the current government powers to say "We have information that is Top Secret, that if we could show you, then we're sure you would agree with this war, but since we cant, you're just going to have to trust us." So in reality, I believe that to be a cop out.
Doesn't this sound very familiar? Wasn't it Bush who told us to trust him with his warrantless wire tapping, that this was to catch terrorists? When in fact there have been several FBI agents coming forward who have stated that many of these warrantless taps were used to catch drug dealers and other criminals. Come on please, use some logic here. They are going to screen millions of electronic transmissions a day, in order to catch a few HUNDRED POSSIBLE terrorists? They are going to sort through countless drug transactions, extortions, murder plots, and many other crimes, and then just overlook them and only go after the terrorists? No, of course not. Then someone would argue that they are criminals so it does not matter that we conducted warrantless wire tapping. Well, yes it does, because we have violated their Constitutional Rights, and that is a crime perhaps greater than any they have committed. They are in place for a reason, the founders realized the slipperly slope that such warrantless behaviors could lead to. It would start with criminals, and when they had caught them, it would soon move on to dissenters, in which case we are all in trouble because I dont think any single one of us here agrees with every single policy that the government comes out with.
I would vote for Ron Paul:
Because he listens to the people. He understands that the people are what give him his power, and that such power comes with a deep respect and even fear. He understands what Democracy is more so than any other candidate on the stage, with their socialistic, imperialistic, and tyrannical tirates.
Because he makes promises and he keeps them. His 10 term 30 year record in Congress is impeccable, he has ALWAYS voted in accordance to the Constitution of the United States, and I expect him to do so as President. How many of his competitors on stage can show their records and not present any contraindictions? 0
Because he respects the Constitution. The other candidates can talk about the Constitution. The bottomline is that their passed voting records and policies show otherwise.
Because he is the only candidate who is professing PERSONAL LIBERTY! I have not heard any other candidates bring up the warrantless wire tapping and the torture of prisoners of war. What other candidate has expressed his outrage to the blatant disregard for Habeas Corpus and our Constitutional rights in general? None, and my opinion is that they do not care about our rights, only their power and self serving interests.
Because he is not afraid to talk about ALL of the tough issues, Americas dirty little secrets. The Wellfare state, the illegal Federal Reserve, the illegal federal income tax, and the tradition in America of non-interventionism.