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It does support my position, and I also said our system would be more representative with less apathetic citizens.
There is an option, work to change the system, all you need is enough people to support your position.
Rebellion is no better option because you still have to gain the support of enough people to support your position.
I think maybe why other countries seem better represented to you, is that many other countries people are more enlightened than Americans. When we are as enlightened as other people, so will be our representative government. Americans are pretty far to the right politically compared to most of the industrialized world. Its not surprising to me that our representative government reflects this.
I've already noted that voter apathy hinders democracy.
One of the most important things I learned in Government class was that Democracy is not a lazy man's government, it requires active participation to work, and sometimes that involves protest.
If more people had voted for Gore in enough states, that would not have been the case.
How did the other countries you prefer get to multi-party representation?
How when the system's lack of representation is what causes the apathy?
This is false. Gerrymandering prevents any such attempts form working.
"Enough people" is a far cry from "a majority of people".
The only issue that affects rebellion is whether or not the status quo is bad enough that it is worth risking one's life in order to change it vs. Whether or not people think the status quo is good enough to think it is worth risking their life to preserve it.
If the former outweighs the latter, violent rebellion can be successful without having anywhere close to majority support.
To explain using the choosing a direction analogy. If there are 20 people making the choice, and 11 decide on one direction, but only 1 of them is actually willing to kill and die to support that choice while 6 of the 9 who voted differently are willing to kill and die to support their choice, rebellion is easily achieved despite only having 30% in favor of it.
It may be more difficult to convince 2 people to change votes than it is to rebel.
They are better represented because their systems are one's that allow them to be better represented. Simple as that. Whether I agree or disagree with their politics has no bearing on a simple analysis of representation.
The reason they seem more enlightened to you is simply because you tend to agree with their politics. Don't allow subjective agreement with tehir politics to cause you to ignore a systemic issue in our own government.
Even if the majority of people in the US were more enlightened by your standards, our government would remain one that has low representation unless there were major systemic changes employed regarding our election system.
Enlightenment has no bearing on the fact that the system is designed so that it is less representative.
Depends on the country.
In many cases, the same way we got to our minimally-representative system: violent rebellion.
In others, they created/adopted a new form of government based on proportional systems.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
The independents elected to public office suggest otherwise.
If you expect to win a civil war, a majority would come in handy I would think.
I disagree, I think it is only possible for a representative government to be as enlightened as those it represents.
Looks like you need a civil war or a whole lot of people that agree we need to change to a proportional system. It might even take a.............majority!
This seems to be a "catch 22" situation.
But the question is why do you think degree enlightenment (by your subjectively defined standards of enlightenment) matters in a discussion about how represetnative a government is?
I haven't been convinced our government doesn't represent our people's values and goals as well as another country represents their people's values and goals.
More enlightened, more progressive, more socially evolved, call it what you will.
The term is not important.
It all comes down to the fact that we are a somewhat backward people compared to some countries that have socially evolved (grown) more than we have.
So it stands to reason to me that our government is somewhat backward compared to those countries where the people are more socially evolved, exactly because it is representative of who we are.
33% of the country are neither democrats or republicans. Less than more than 99% of our federal representatives are either democrats or republicans.
What else do you need to convince you that it is not very representative?
all of those things are subjectively determine dy you. They have no bearing on the representation discussion.
Democrats and Republicans come in many varieties, just like the people they represent. Some are far left, some are liberal, some are green, some are in the middle, some are conservative, and some are far right.
How about some examples of how our government is acting in a way that is not representative of the people it represents?
They most definitely do, as government can be no better than the people it represents.
The one variety they don't come in, can't come in, is Independent. Regardless of what they claim their views are in order to get votes, they still tend vote along partisan lines while in office.
You were given one example (the ultimate example). You keep trying to ignore it.
Our government doesn't have representation for at least a third of it's people.
That doesn't follow what I have seen. For example, a majority of Democrats in congress voted against the war in Iraq, independent of the party leaders who supported AOF in Iraq. If they had been independents, instead of Democrats, how would the end result have been any different?
Refresh my memory, please.
Not surprising, given the percentage of people that do not vote. You have to sit at the table if you want to be a part of the discussion.
That just shows that in this rare case, the party leaders were not in step with the partisan lines.
Why do you think that the end result of one vote in congress matters when the issue is that our government is minimally representative of it's people?
The proportions of democrats/republicans in elected office compared to the demographics of the nation.
Are you actually completely ignorant of gerrymandering and it's effects on US elections, or are you just being obtuse for the sake of being obtuse?
Its not a single instance, here's another example: a large portion of House Democrats voted against Obama's compromise with the GOP in extending the Bush tax cuts in 2010.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2010/roll647.xml
So that is all that would change after the civil war?
No policy changes that better reflect all of the American people???
I have never said I am opposed to redistricting reform.
They voted against the compromise. They didn't vote against the party line. They voted against straying from the party line. That doesn't really help your case.
When did I say there would be a civil war? Hint: I said the exact opposite about this issue. Stop being dishonest.
I never said there'd be no policy changes, either. There would be policy changes, but you can't use policy-results from this ass-backwards system to predict how and where those changes would occur.
I will say that there would be a significant decrease in voter apathy, a large increase in voter turnout, and far less disenfranchisement in the electorate.
What happens to policies themselves after such a change is not nearly as predictable as those things are.
And how will you make it so that whatever reforms are put in place don't allow bipartisan attempts to crowd out third parties from winning elections if they do manage to have a successful grassroots effort to gain local support?
Such bipartisan gerrymandering is relatively common today.
They voted in opposition to what their party leaders wanted.
Previously, you listed two ways that multi-party representation had come about. One was through violence and the other was to adopt the system through our political process.
Yes, I get your point that you think we would be better represented by a multi-party system, but I am trying to understand in what ways you feel that our government is not representing the will of the people.
What do you expect to change, policy wise, with multi-party representation?
it would have to be changed through the political process, the same way a multi-party system would have to be adopted. There is a bill in Congress to address redistricting that would limit changes to every 10 years and it would have to be based on the census.
The problem here is that you are equivocating on the word "represent"
You seem to want to make my position about policy alone when it is about representation.
Well, looks like that ends our discussion.
Why? Are you not able to glean the specific definition of "representation" I am using in this context?
Your definition shifts from one use of the word to the other (which is why it is equivocation). Mine is remaining consistent (which is why it is not equivocation).
Best of luck to you in your quest!
What quest is that?
To find the holy grail!Whatever you wish it to be!
To find the holy grail!
In that case, don't forget to take along a nice shrubbery!
Good point. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress in this period in history.
Indeed. "You must return here with a shrubbery or else you will never pass through this wood alive!" - Monty Python
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