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Voting against your interests: Why does it happen so often?


EHK for Darwin

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Seriously, if the general population is barred from owing weapons what options are there for citizens if Government becomes oppressive on the level of past and present dictatorships?

Join the army. :thumbsup:

Seriously we´re back to "Would US soldiers attack against their own countrymen?" If your answer is yes and you use the militia argument you´re better to support less military spending. :pirate:

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You're totally right I completely forgot about the Red Dawn scenario, of course anyone who wants an assault rifle should be able to own one especially high school students :P

Wolverines!

Whats the worst that could happen?

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Blauer Dragon,

I'm just saying that he isn't very convincing to a lot of people when he says that he is Christian.

Which people are they? On what grounds do they think they know another man's heart?

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Yeah, there is that sentiment. But why is universal healthcare sucking the tit, but social security isn't?

I still hear this to this day and it is sooo outdated. At least in my area. My interactions with the DMV the last couple of years have all been smooth, quick, and efficient. Really, I was quite shocked. Even though there was a decent crowd, last time I got my license renewed I was in and out in 5 minutes without hassle. The DMV is no longer a hellhole.

IMHO:

Universal Health Care is "sucking the tit" for the same reason that welfare is, because it reaches to and benefits those who have never paid into it and will never pay a dime into it, thus raising the expense for those who do. Much like Social Security is these days. People don't mind Social Security because they still operate under the belief that the majority of people collecting it have paid into it.

As for the DMV, the last time I had to go there it was because I bought a car and they'd sent my new license plate to me with already expired registration stickers. I had pre-paid for 2 years of registration, and had ordered a vanity plate as well. What they sent to me was an ordinary plate with registration that had been expired for about 4 months by the time I got it. I went in to their office first thing in the morning, and was quite happy to see that there were only a handful of people there with me and there was what looked like an excess of available people working. I was there for 5 hours that day, then I had to come back the next day. The next day, I spent another 2 hours waiting before I had to leave and go to work. Two days later I took the day off, was there for another 6 hours, paid them a $75.00 fee that I'd already paid them previously (I had the receipt in my hand) because I was tired of arguing with them, and finally got the issue resolved (or so I thought). A month later I got a letter telling me that it was time to renew my registration. I guess that you should be glad that you don't live in Arizona.

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Or pro-life, or opposed to gay rights.

Why LTA, are you implying that I'd dump a dream candidate over one of those issues? If so, you are wrong. I've voted pro-life in the past, most notably when Bob Casey Jr. was running against Rick Santorum. So there.

Oh, and Scot, I used the term "breeding" in the general sense, not as the anti-heterosexual slur. Although Kalbear is correct that as leader of The Gay Agenda I intend to cull the American herd, I do not intend to base my selections on sexual orientation alone.

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Elrostar,

Was artillery usually owned by the general population when the 2nd amendment was enacted? It wasn't. But it was possible to resist the government of the day with simply firearms. Cannons made it harder to fight back, but it was possible.

My point was that the success of the American revolution was not because of some people banding together with muskets. It was in large part because of cannon (and chiefly because of outside aid in the form of soldiers and training).

Put another way, the Cuban revolution was the exception, not the rule. When Che Guevara tried to reproduce its results in another setting (Bolivia), he was spectacularly unsuccessful.

I will happily move this discussion to another thread, however, as I have other points I would like to make relating to non-gun control aspects of this topic.

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Blauer Dragon,

Which people are they? On what grounds do they think they know another man's heart?

They would be the people who still think he's a Muslim, or think that he was faking that too. I talk to a lot of them on a regular basis. If I have a solid handle on the argument, they see it as a progression of he was a Muslim, then it looked like that would cost him politically so he became a Christian and joined the most racist and hate filled church he could find, then when that church looked like it would cost him, he disavowed it (but kept the "Christian" tag-line handy for convenience). Honestly, I think that some of these people are convinced that he eats babies and tortures puppies for fun. As I said before, I don't care what his beliefs are, or if he even has them. Though, I will admit that he seems to exude a certain demeanor that has worked well to convince me that every word out of his mouth is most likely a lie. I cannot explain it, but the way that he carries himself, the way that he speaks, even the way that he looks at people (especially when smiling) just screams "filthy, rotten, corrupt, evil scumbag." Clinton didn't even give me the creeps the way that BO does.

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What is it with all the paranoia amongst some of our US boarders?

That's a genuine question, by the way. Where does it come from? I mean, I'm from a country where we have serious gun control, and I've never heard anyone worry about the fact that we wouldn't be able to defend ourselves against the government if they chose to round us all up into camps, or anything along those lines.

(Of course, that might be because if they tried it, they'd almost certainly mess it up, like they do everything else)

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Peter cut off people's ears.

What more do you need in a head of state?

There's no such thing. War is an extension of politics by other means. There's no point in fighting a war if it does not achieve some kind of political goal.

Someone on the Paradox boards had a "map of political segregation" thing, and the interesting part is this: In most countries, rural areas tends to be conservative and urban ones to be more leftish.... Except in Sweden, where the reverse is true. (a few regional abberations, Småland is pretty much a stronghold for the christian-democrats, for instance) someone pointed out that it might have to do with the kind of work that was going on: Eg. Farmers tended to be more conservative than loggers/miners.

(there's even some interesting studies done based on the different kinds of industrial workers in Sweden, loggers and rafters usually organized themselves much earlier and to a much greater degree than iron-workers)

You obviously miss my point about politics and the military. I am talking about politicians making the operational calls on when and where we can use force. Politicians should only ever give the joint chiefs broad objectives, ie take that city. After the objective is given the generals do everything else.

Btw interesting to find out your a fellow Paradoxian.

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I think it boils down to the fact that instead of lining up directly on fiscal and social issues, like the parties are aligned, most people in the country end up falling socially conservative and fiscally liberal, and end up voting republican.

On a local basis, the parties end up aligning properly to their belief structure, IE california republicans who are far more socially liberal, or arkansas dems who are fairly socially conservative.

On a national basis, they vote with the party and end up often getting fucked, especially since there is so much rhetoric and marketing at the national level.

The single dividing factor on why so many rural people switched from dem to rep was the social issues in the 60s, and specifically equality. Democrats aligned with the african americans, and you see a max exodus of the social conservatives.

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You obviously miss my point about politics and the military. I am talking about politicians making the operational calls on when and where we can use force. Politicians should only ever give the joint chiefs broad objectives, ie take that city. After the objective is given the generals do everything else.

That's a recipe for atrocities.

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Why LTA, are you implying that I'd dump a dream candidate over one of those issues? If so, you are wrong. I've voted pro-life in the past, most notably when Bob Casey Jr. was running against Rick Santorum. So there.

Oh, and Scot, I used the term "breeding" in the general sense, not as the anti-heterosexual slur. Although Kalbear is correct that as leader of The Gay Agenda I intend to cull the American herd, I do not intend to base my selections on sexual orientation alone.

I'm not sure choosing the more moderate pro-life candidate proves your point. In any event, my point was that many people have trigger issues which tend to blot out a candidate's other merits. The fact that, for you, abortion may not be one of those issues proves nothing. I certainly have such issues, and I expect you and most other people do. We all have some things that are very important to us, which may cause us to vote against candidates or parties with whom we otherwise largely agree.

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To go slightly off-topic for a second:

I agree. However, I think it's worth drawing a distinction between "national interest" politics and electoral/party politics. Being hamstrung by the needs of the national interest isn't really being hamstrung at all, because soldiers fight in furtherance of the national interest. However, I can see where the complaint might come from that the military was being hamstrung by the electoral needs of the party in power.

I don't think they were particularly hamstrung by that though. The main limitations that were put on the conduct of the war in Vietnam were A) How do we avoid this from going Nuclear? Which was a consideration in every Cold War conflict. and B) How do we keep this from impacting the larger war?

In some sense the military is naturally myopic: They look at the conflict ahead of them (which is their job, mind, it's not a *bad* thing to be focused) but might lose track of the larger issues.

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Blauer Dragon,

Second, I must not have made the point I was trying to make. It's all about appearances. Whenever the Democratic party takes a stance that is so easy for the Republicans to paint as being Anti-Religion and they don't make a convincing argument that they are not anti-religion it gives the appearance that they are. Take the whole "Under God", "In God We Trust", Christmas pageant, and general zeal for extermination of religious references in all things public and it makes it very easy to paint the "They hate God!" ("They eat babies") picture. Does that make sense?

Up to a point.

Look at it this way: the state is suddenly overrun by expert chefs. They order that currency bears the new phrase, "In Cake We Trust," and the Pledge of Allegiance must now include the expression, "with steak and horseradish for all," and twice a year every city hall enacts a pageant celebrating the life cycle of domestic poultry, ending in deep-fat frying.

If someone decides that all that business is foolishness and should be stopped -- does that mean they are anti-food? Or even anti-chef? Why can't the chefs just, you know, keep it in the home, or among people who have the option to disengage, by leaving the restaurant, or simply walking away? Why do they need their ideals to infiltrate the homes of, say, diabetic vegetarians?

And that's the other thing -- religious/anti-religious is not the same, even in this country, as Christian/anti-Christian. I could be a devout Jew and be offended at a Christmas pageant enacted by the state and act to have it stopped. As far as I can tell, according to you, I'm not Jewish, I'm not anything. I'm actually anti-religious.

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Blauer Dragon,

Good point. I said Anti-Religious, when I suppose that what I meant was Anti/Protestant-Christian-Religion. Thank you for the correction.

You only addressed half my point. The first part still stands. Why is an attack on an attribute on currency an attack on Christianity altogether?

I'm sorry, where in the Christian faith is it a tenet that one must put God's name on one's currency? Where is it written his name must appear in the national pledge? Where is it written that government must participate in Christian ritual? What does God need with a spaceship?

Will the Christian faith fundamentally change because you can't put up a Christmas tree in city hall? Are people's faiths so frail? And then, what business is it of the state's to save Christianity?

And if that's what the state is doing, isn't that an establishment of a state religion? The state isn't going around saving Judaism or Islam or Buddhism or Taoism or Zoroastrianism, or saving Jupiter, Zeus, Thor, and Re. It isn't going around saving atheism or agnosticism. People are left to their own devices who identify themselves by those.

But Christianity is somehow special -- and we have to act to preserve it? And not only to preserve it, but to exalt it on the public dole?

Why?

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