What’s even more gross is that the party not in power is always like “ewww. they stole our liberties! we’ll get them back!” then when elected, they protect the previous party’s worst offenders from prosecution and extend the constitutionally illegal laws passed by the previous administration, only occasionally differing in stances on taxes and on frivolous things like sexuality, religion, ethnicity and made up (not even real) morals.
Made up morals? Care to educate us on what “made up morals” are?
As for what Congress is supposed to represent, there’s quite a bit of dispute on that issue. Should congressmen be completely subject to the whims of their constituents, voting entirely in line with what a majority of that district wants? That would essentially turn politicians into robots subject entirely to the polls. Really, there would be no reason to have an actual person serve in the position.
Should, instead, congressmen be elected Philosopher-Kings? Should they represent instead entirely what they think is best and let the chips fall where they may? Maybe they should represent the color of their district and vote in line with the national (or state) party.
As a middle ground, should congressmen instead try to represent their constituents’ interests but recognize that, in some cases, what the constituency wants may not be best? Ideally, congressmen should be dedicated to their jobs, and if they serve long enough on the right committee, be well educated about certain matters. Many times, they may have greater understanding of the issue than their constituency at-large and know to vote a different way.
There is no one unilaterally agreed upon method of representation. Blindly following what the constituency wants leads to Tyranny of the Majority. See The PATRIOT Act or the Iraq War which was widely popular when first started. If they are philosopher-kings, beholden to no one except come election time, there is likely to be more turmoil in the system. It may honestly be the best method of representation. If the middle ground, we get the rampant doubletalk.
Bleh, I’m just echoing things people got around to writing way before me, but the best way to understand the lack of integrity behind the tea parties and the people who attend them is to ask where they were for the eight years before January.
I seem to recall minor protests before Obama. However, I don’t remember if they were organized as tea parties, and they definitely weren’t as big as the ones yesterday were.
Technically all morals are made up, but I meant more to say contradictory morals, which every politician seems to practice.
Mind giving us some examples? What made up morals do Democrats take stances on that differ from Republican made up morals?
“All morals are made up?” I see, so you don’t believe in objective morality. So, if I skewed a live baby and ate it raw, you’d have no objections?
Republicans in power or near the point of obtaining it tend to say they value all life (especially unborn children from all corners of the globe), but take a special pride in indescriminantly bombing, starving, torturing or otherwise killing people (pregnant or not). Democrats are vocal against killing and torturing then near power, but quietly introduce laws that allow them to secretly (and Republicans to openly) abuse people (such as Rendition, which is also abused by both parties, some more openly then others).
Democrats tend to pretend that they honour and respect freedom of speech, unless it isn’t directed kindly at them (same as Republicans, but Democrats try harder to look like the free speech party). People who display signs of being in a Militia, supporting the Libertarians or mention conspiratorial movies like Zeitgeist are now people of interest for terrorist activities (can be pulled over and questioned without any other reasoning). (1) (Zeitgeist is mentioned in the PDF document listed as the source, I seem to recall a couple threads on this board about it.) Another report of targeting by the ACLU (2) mentions the “latest example of inappropriate police intelligence operations targeting political, religious and social activists for investigation”.
Some parties claim to protect religious freedoms, others claim to care about minority rights. Really day by day it looks like more and more hogwash.
I live in Canada by the way. I can safely say that other than Taxes our political parties here are barely different also.
And yes, I try to show references, and often those references have references worth reading 
Please not that I’m not a rabble-rouser. I really don’t care who’s in control anymore. I’m not an idealistic highschooler.
also to reinforce this point, you become the reincarnation of hitler and also hate black people as well as single pregnant jewish mothers if you think morality is subjective
just fyi
Hey, that was a perfectly viable reductio ad absurdum. Don’t wave your yellow flag at me, ref!
FOX News was not the only station to cover it. CNN and MSNBC ran stories about it too - not in the same depth, but they still covered it. What’s missing in this conversation is how the Astroturf aspect of it hardly makes it illegitimate. You can’t tell me that liberal organizations don’t fund “homegrown and spontaneous” protests too. The skepticism regarding FreedomWorks on their intentions, however, are certainly warranted…
We can talk about the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise, but we should really talk about the practical implications on places of worship if we taxed them. In Dallas and other places, there are a great deal of historically black churches that benefit the community a great deal. They don’t throw the money around on “satellite television” and things like that. If the government taxed them, it would be an action that would threaten their ability to use tithe money and other resources to help the community.
GAP, I think what you’re doing is generalizing all the religious institutions as having a lot of money and spending it unwisely. That’s not true - and it’s unfair. It also ignores the fact that churches can have their tax-exempt stauts revoked if they do spend their money unwisely. Some of the megachurches have been scrutinized for their outrageous spending habits - some pastors have been living lavishly off of church funds.
But what’s important to note is that those megachruches are in the minority. Most places of worship are community-oriented and are forced to take care of how they use their funds. If you tax them, the burden you would be putting on them and the communities they support would far outweigh the gain.
…And on Separation between church and state, I’m with Rehnquist - we should be looking at Madision, not Jefferson, as to what the meaning of the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise clause are. I’m with Thomas concerning the interpretation of the Establishment Clause - the intent was to not have a national church like in England. We’ve already admitted that there has to be “play in the joints” when it comes to the contradiction between these two clauses - that interpretation does away with the alleged contradiction altogether.
Fun Fact: I was nicely asked to pay $75 to attend Easter Mass. Sufficed to say, my tradition of not attending church for Easter Sunday lasts another year.
Jesus needs that money to buy a bus ticket back home!
No, rather I believe that Morals are more inherent to the society you live in. What is immoral in one society is not in another. Obviously there are certain things that are obvious, but you know. SOMEBODY had to on a technical level, come up with the morals we choose to live by.
Morals rather began as traditions and eventually grew to be more tightly ingrained into religions as time went on. However, politicians as I said tend to not actually follow any tenets of their religions, and they love to break or bend or fundamentally change the law to allow for more abuses.
::doh::
They got you in, they should get you out?
So morals are relative to the society you live in, now? In other words, something like female circumcisionis horrible and bad in the US, but is fine in the countries it’s practiced in? You see, I don’t buy that. If something is wrong, it’s wrong everywhere, regardless of what a specific country’s morals say.
Of course, I will say that a lot of things that seem like morals really aren’t. Some might say that to kill a cat or a dog and eat it is evil, while other societies regularly practice this. While you might say “Killing a dog and eating it in the US is wrong, and it’s right in X country,” I’d say “Killing a dog and eating it is neither moral nor immoral.” Now, if you killed somebody’s pet, that would clearly be immoral. If you killed your own pet, or ate your pet after it died, I think that’s a little weird, but certainly not immoral.
So, things you feel strongly and empathize with, are “obviously” objective and universal morals, while things that are actually in grey areas are conveniently swept under the category of “neither moral nor immoral”. Okay.
But somebody who loves animals a whole lot might think that <i>keeping</i> pets in the first place is a despicable immoral act that has no place in any society. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, and say that they’re not part of PETA, and that when you meet them, they appear to be reasonable people who think that dependency on humans by animals is a bad thing, and can justify their ideas. Well, they’re not crazy for opposing this symbiosis, and neither are you, for tolerating it.
It’s almost as if these kinds of things are subj-
There is no subjectivity in morality. There are easy ways to determine whether something is immoral or moral. If an action does not harm a human being in any way (harm includes “making them uncomfortable,” making something like sexual harassment wrong even if no physical harm was done), then there is no way that it can be construed as immoral. If an action does harm someone, then you have to think, “Do the benefits outweigh the harm?” For example, giving someone a vaccination is not wrong, even though the needle sting may hurt. This can and does extend to animals as well.
So what you’d need to ask to examine this moral question is thus: Does owning a pet harm an animal? No, it doesn’t. The majority of pet owners love their animals, and keep them well. They can go ahead and not own pets, but there is absolutely nothing immoral about someone else owning it. In fact, if they took action against somebody who owned a pet, such as “liberating” a cat or something, I’d consider THEIR actions immoral.
then you have to think, “Do the benefits outweigh the harm?”
Um.
<small>I think this might be subjective! :O</small>
See, the “humans” is the problem there for me. I think the idea that I could just go torture an entire family group of squirrels to death is inarguably less immoral than using profanity around my grandmother is, at its very best, poorly thought out.
Bee tee dubs, the fact that I disagree with your supposedly simple objective morality system means it might not be that objective. In fact, it might be your purely subjective decision.
Utilitarianism runs into so many problems the further it’s taken; if everyone is dead, they will never be harmed again, is killing everyone painlessly moral? Or, to be less absurd, what about as-painlessly-as-possible executing all the less intelligent and physically fit humans to deal with the numerous issues of overpopulation and remove genetic strains we don’t want being passed on. The interplay of benefits and harms is not a simple matter. What some might consider wholly worthwhile, you would consider abhorrent, by the same exact set of principles herein espoused.
Also, aren’t only “human beings” worth considering the harm of? That was mentioned notably above.
The general notion against pets is that it’s kind of like saying it’s okay the majority of slave-owners love their slaves, feed them, don’t abuse them; the notion that they are property is what’s objected to. I, personally, think it’s silly, but it’s not based on a pretext of abuse so much as one of principle.
You would. Other people might not. Oops, morality isn’t objective. Or, rather, if it is, nobody knows who is actually correct about which morality is objective, meaning it really might as well not be.