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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices

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To: hmaly who wrote (128457)	11/14/2000 4:26:41 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) of 1580489

Tim Re..I would distinguish between dishonest campaining and negative campaigning. Tim Re.. I have been a salesman for my own business for 30 yrs. One of the first lessons I learned when I was young was to never speak negatively about your competitors. Why? Because then your competitors will speak badly of you also Honest negative campaigning does provide information to votors. That canidate X has a history of supporting unpopular policy Y is somthing I might want to know and is something that canidate X is very unlikely to tell me. I think negative campaigning should be kept to a minimum because it is in my opinion more important to tell votors why they should vote for you then why they should vote against your opponent but properly used it has its place. Politics is and to an extent should be a rough game. People are trying to get your consent to have power over you. I don't want to only know the positive things about someone who seeks such power. Who would you want to represent you. The person who can destroy someone with lies and untruths, or someone who can win your vote by telling you what he stands for.?" As I said I would draw a distinction between negative campaigning and dishonest campaigning. Is freedom of speech so important, that you would want the right to yell fire in a crowded theater. Is freedom of speech so important that you want the right to swear and curse in front of children. Free speech has its limits. Respect the limits. Telling people about your opponents unpopular positions, or his flip flopping on positions, or a a criminal incident in their past, is not the equivilent of yelling fire in a crowded theater. Such information can actually be helpful and even when it is not it does not result in the immediate death of anyone. Any government limits on free speech should be extremely limited. I don't think it should be illegal to swear and curse in front of children (however the parents of the children could not allow you on their property or a store or restaurant or school would be conpletly justified in telling you to leave). Political speech in my opinion should be almost completly unrestricted. Look at the campaigns and politicians we are getting nowadays. 90% of our politicians are on the take, and the good honest people are getting out. It is too high of a price for free speech. Most campaign money either goes to both parites to get access or goes to canidates who all ready support a certain position. There may be a certain sleaziness about it all but it doesn't amount to 90% of our politicians being on the take. There is a price for this sleaziness but it is not as high as you say it is and it is not worth giving up our freedom to avoid paying. Actually even if we could force cut back in the amount of money canidates can take or in who can give money to them the money would either go covertly and directly to politicians (who would then be truely on the take) or more often it would go to "issue adovocacy adds", designed to push the ideas of one of the canidates. If you restrict issue advocay then you have truely abonded free speech and have taken a step toward totalitarian government. also don't like spending public money on election campaigns. Neither do I, but look at the alternative. Tax funding of election campaigns amounts to extorting money from people to support political ideas and candidates that they don't agree with. Volentary public financeing (like a check off box if you want to contribute additional money on your tax return) is somewhat less offensive. Until we clean up our government, the word democracy means nothing, because our representatives are paying homage to the almighty dollar;not to the people they swore to represent. I think government is not quite as dirty as you seem to think it is. To the extent that it is dirty I'm not sure that banning negative campaigning or increaseing public funding would really make it much cleaner. I think most proposed campaign finance reform ideas are neither necessiary nor sufficient to adress the problem. Tim

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