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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (208476)	11/15/2006 8:54:26 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 281500

Nice post.

To: Sam who wrote (208476)	11/17/2006 8:44:32 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Sam; Re: "Actually, I think a 5 party system would be better, with 2 large and 3 smaller parties. And with the parties having some distinctive characteristics to set them off from one another, ideologically or economically or both. That would force coalitions, genuine deliberations between opposing points of view, and more sensible compromises. Would also rid any party of the delusion that they might build a "permanent" majority. That should be impossible, and it is essential that no one believe that it might be possible." No. In a two party system, the two parties are forced back towards the middle in order to compete for the middle of the road voters. Therefore it is the middle of the road votes that have power. In a multiparty system, the middle of the road voters collect into middle of the road parties, and the extremists collect into extreme parties. Sometimes it is the middle of the road voters who have power and sometimes it is the extremists. So long as a country is not a superpower, there is nothing particularly bad about giving power to the extremists. But it is too dangerous to give extremists power over a superpower. I know, I know what the chief objection to what I am saying is. Something like, "But Bush and the Republicans are extremists". This is not true. Bush's invasion of Iraq was thought to be a great idea by 90% of the population. That was not an extremist war, it was a middle of the road war. What I'm saying here is that the American public is a lot more extreme than some of the left wing would like to acknowledge. Were the US a multiparty democracy, you'd be looking at the right wing of the Republican party taking over. What you saw in Iraq was both wings of the Republican party (well, except for me and Pat Buchanan) along with the conservative wing of the Democratic party and probably a good percentage of the liberal wing of the Democratic party. Bill Clinton bombed Iraq for 8 years and the Democrats didn't complain. Bombing is an act of war. In doing this, Clinton killed thousands of Iraqis (mostly innocent soldiers). Heck, overflying without permission is an act of war. Invading the place is a natural extension of that policy. You can't logically say that bombing a foreign country during peacetime is legal but that invading a foreign country during peacetime is somehow illegal. Acts of war should be reserved for wartime, which means conditions where the whole country decides that war must be declared by the Congress, not through creepy passing of the buck to the executive branch, but through a declaration of total war as a matter of the right of the people. -- Carl