As someone with no stake at all in the perpetual brouhaha between members of the Democratic Party and the members of the GOP, but someone with a very deep, passionate love for political ideology in its untarnished form, at the behest of others, and at the suggestion of something mentioned in another post, I’d like to start a dialog on political ideology here at BMG, which I’ve found, in my time here, to be a lively, engaging, and thoughtful political forum. As a self-professed conservative (though I consider myself a classic liberal, perhaps), I find it very engaging and informative to “have it out,” if you will, with those who, politically, do not see eye-to-eye with me.
Instead of going after each other with sharpened knives and forked tongues, let’s hash it out on a theoretical level, and have a real, honest-to-goodness dialog about our core beliefs. Because I think we all, at heart, truly want a better Massachusetts, a better America, and a better world at large.
To start it off, I ask the following question: What is the proper relationship between the government and the governed? I’d really enjoy hearing what you have to say.
As Ringo Starr so famously said, “peace and love, peace and love.”
What they cannot do alone.
Let’s explore that further:
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p>What sort of things?
With what sort of power to compel, and to have the power to compel in all things, or just certain things?
The US Highway system is one. The private incentive to build highways across the country is minimal at best. There is a net good in having a highway system, however. So it’s a net good that would likely never come to being without a government. National defense also, however that would also fall under your ‘protect freedom’ idea that you mentioned in the other thread also.
But I would say two things:
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p>1) I just read in the WSJ today that there are any number of private companies willing to dive right in with both feet to improve the nation’s highway system. Unfortunately I already tossed my copy into the recycle bin, but if you have a subscription, you can probably find the story. It was in the A section of the paper, I believe.
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p>2) For now, to keep this on the theoretical, we might want to consider the MOST basic relationship between the government and the governed—say, the relationship between a citizen and the town/city/village in which he lives. Pretend you’re starting a government up from scratch. Introducing the federal government into the fray at this point brings up the issue of federalism itself, and the relationship that exists between wholly separate governments. Instead, let’s talk about the relationship between the average Joe (or Joelle) and that first layer of government.
I’ve already commented on this a few months ago, but, on the face of it, there are a lot things that sound wrong about privately owned highways. A libertarian highway system does not sound appealing. There might not be many highways and there would be six competing highways between Boston and Providence but no way to get to Elm Grove, MA. One doesn’t want the market dictating safety standards either, and writing regulations for what roads are allowable would be a difficult to carry out. If Acme Highway doesn’t maintain route 36-AH, it cannot be closed down because people rely on it.
of private roads. In fact, I think one of government’s core duties is to provide an infrastructure.
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p>The big L libertarians get it wrong when they insist there’s a market solution for everything. There isn’t.
There’s a joke somewhere about how Libertarians would have refrained from fighting in WWII because Nazi economies are ultimately less efficient than free market economies. “In the end” the Nazis would lose to market forces. Libertarian arguments often seem rich in taking the limit as t goes to infinity.
The highway example got me thinking about risk and market forces. The pressures of the market do reduce risk to a certain extent. For example, a privately owned toll road would have to be a certain amount safe otherwise it would be unprofitable. However, I suspect that, as a society, we demand a higher level of safety than the level of safety sufficient to maintain profitability. The demand and supply curves cross at the wrong point.
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p>Think of additives and drugs. One could imagine that news reports, rumor, and anecdote might be sufficient to impose some requirements on the safety and efficacy of drugs, but market forces seem pretty weak here. A lot of rather useless megadoses of vitamin C have been sold that never would have made it to the market under the stricter regime to which drugs are subject.
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p>I wonder whether there is a name for this phenomenon.
I always took it that one role of government today is to prevent risk, rather than learn from others’ mistakes. To take your example, I bet a private highway would indeed lose money if 20 people died on it during a month because of insufficient driving. In the end we get safer highways, but what about the 20 dead people?
I also suspect that some of those 20 people will drive on the highway despite knowing better. (“There are no bad roads. Only bad drivers.”)
… private highway stories. They are interesting, but they don’t disprove the example. With private interests alone, the system overall doesn’t ever get built.
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p>If you want to limit it to local (first layer) government, then you’re going to, in general, miss the economies of scale that exemplify the kind of opportunities to overcome the problem of collective action.
Why don’t you set an example by laying out your answer to your own question?
I’m a newcomer here.
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p>But I’ll lay down my high-level opinion: the government exists to guarantee the rights of the people it governs. From that simple statement flows everything else.
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p>Basically, I’m a follower of John Locke, in his Second Treatise, minus that awful chapter on slavery.
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Locke did. That was the rock on which he built his philosophy (in my opinion). I ask only because if one is not devout, it seems hard to subscribe completely to his philosophy. Of course, even if one does not follow it completely, one can still take much of value, just as a general principle.
You do not need to believe in a Christian God in order to be a principled person.
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p>Rousseau is another who believed in the intrinsic dignity of humans.
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p>And really – how can you have a representative government without this belief? If you do not hold this belief, then humans are unprincipled chattel, who cannot be trusted to govern – enter, the divine right of kings and the justification of authoritarian rule.
But on the belief that there exists some sort of being or entity on a higher plane than man, and from this being or entity, human rights are derived; rights all people have at birth. I believe it’s very important to state, clearly, that rights do not come from man, but from God, for if rights were bestowed on men by men, they can be taken away from men by men.
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p>Also, on an unrelated note, sorry to have abandoned this thread for a bit. It was unavoidable; my wife gave birth to my second son.
to guarantee? I can think of several that others would say are not rights, e.g. shelter, food, affordable health care. Of course with rights come responsibilities. Where do these fit in?
that these things have merged with “rights” which were useful things when political in nature. “Food” as a right adds nothing whatsoever to any conversation, does nothing at all to provide food, and dilutes the concept of a “right.”
but then again, so is the concept of (for example) “freedom of speech.” Saying freedom of speech does nothing at all to provide free speech, unless the necessary steps are taken to secure that right.
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p>Also, the notion that a right can be “diluted” presupposes a particular definition of a “right” that is certainly contestable.
You may have a contractarian approach that is indebted to Locke and others, but I don’t think that anyone today can be a “follower of John Locke” in all of the details of his thinking.
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p>TedF
I did Lincoln-Douglas debate in high school, and it seemed like so often a debater would invoke Locke as if that were the end of the discussion. I for one never saw Locke as a god the way some, especially libertarians, seem to. It seems to me that if we followed Locke, or at least their interpretation of him, to the logical extreme we end up finding ourselves in a Hobbesian world where life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
of what you and Bob said, with Sab’s qualification: that government protect the rights of all people.
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p>If Government protects the rights of people – which includes freedom of speech and religion, due process and equal protection (Sab’s qualification, essentially) – as well as provides for the things that are too large for any one person to do on their own, then we have a pretty good government.
Interestingly (given that I’m a center-left liberal), I would start by saying that I agree with your comment:
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p>However, I would argue that these rights also include ensuring a minimal level of security and prosperity to all citizens. This is necessary in part because it comports with social justice, but also because it is necessary to ensure that citizens can enjoy other natural rights. To the person who is starving in the streets, the broad rights to “life, liberty, and happiness” (as well as more specific rights, such as freedom of speech) are pretty much meaningless. On this point, I would say my views track FDR’s wonderful 1944 State of the Union address pretty closely.
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p>Secondly, I would argue government should act in situations of market failure. The free market is generally, but not always, efficient. Government action is necessitated in clear cases of market failure (e.g. monopoly) as well as providing economic goods to all (e.g. the Post Office, because private suppliers would have little incentive to deliver to very rural areas) and other social goods (e.g. universal health care, which the government elsewhere provides more efficiently than the private sector).
You needed to pay closer attention in Economics 101. You did take Econ 101 didn’t you? Remember … monopoly, monopsony, oligopsony …? No? Anyone? Bueller?
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p>Where geography, capital limitations, history, or technology do not permit efficient multiple suppliers — take, for example, the transmission of electrical power — monopolies are the natural and often preferred result. Telephone companies circa 1960 used to be regional monopolies and worked well until technology allowed multiple suppliers (cell phone systems, VOIP, etc.)
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p>Monopolies are a natural result of economic forces and are NOT FAILURES. Remember the term “natural monopoly?”
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p>If you believe monopolies = failures, we need to eliminate (1) the public school system, (2) Medicare, and (3) the Social Security system. Each of these are monopolies ONLY because government mandates them to be monopolies. Nothing natural about that.
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p>By the way, hoyapaul, you’re a “center-left liberal” only in Massachusetts (and possibly Cuba.)
There’s no other way to get an education, save for retirement, or seek medical help? News to me.
A. The raison d’être of government is to guarantee rights accrued to people that they cannot guarantee individually. Thus, the taking of rights is the most despicable act in which a government can perform — it’s the equivalent of a firefighter committing arson.
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p>B. After that, a government in my opinion can embrace additional duties and obligations that its citizenry so choose to bestow upon it — provided such decisions are made in a democratic function and their results do not contravene A.
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p>C. Any of those obligations and duties can be reclaimed from the government by a similar fashion to which they are bestowed.
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p>Of course, the nugget in this is delineating between rights and additional duties. For example, the practice of marriage is a creation of an institution…how much control does the institution have over its resulting creation? If “marriage” or “health care” or “Education” as we picture it are essentially institutional creations that are “additional duties” not rooted in the rights which each individual can claim absent a government, do they have a right to those institutions?
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p>I believe a government cannot bestow rights, thus it cannot reclaim the access of citizens to them. What say you on the proposition that as a government does bestow certain institutions, it can reclaim citizens’ access?
Amusing proposition from Old Scratch.
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p>That reminded me of the film Alien, which had these choice lines near the end of the script, when the Alien had claimed a number of human lives and the character Ash had acted to preserve the alien (at further risk to human life) in case this new species could provide profit for the corporation in the future:
There is a pattern in the results of pure conservative ideology the past few decades: when people need help, conservative ideology prevents government from using its power to help. When financial leaders were playing dangerous games with credit-default-swaps and bundled mortgages, the Randians (like Greenspan) didn’t want new regulations to sully the purity of the “free market.” Then when those dangerous games start drying up credit, leaving millions of auto industry workers in danger of losing health care and employment, government help would be unacceptable. When thousands upon thousands are going to be evicted from the homes, conservatives resists the cram-down changes to the law that can help these people maintain decent lives. When the Democrats & a number of Republican Senators try to expand healthcare for children, House Republicans uphold Bush’s veto for their pure principles. Human misery may grow and grow, but at least the conservatives are keeping the government “pure” and free from socialism or liberalism.
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p>And I haven’t even begun to list what Conservatism does when science produces data that go against the pure ideology of Conservatism.
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p>It is obvious why this Devil wants this discussion to avoid the consequences of conservatism in the real world.
If it is Old Scratch, then you’ve violated our rules of the road, which stipulate no personal attacks. Not only that, but you’ve undercut your own argument by descending to invective.
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p>So I guess we can assume that you’re just joking, and asserting that any claim to purity is the devil’s work.
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p>In that case, I’d say that my view is that there is no such thing as a “free market” because markets require rules. (This is one reason, among many others, why Ayn Rand’s philosophy is fatuous.) The question is just: whose rules.
“Old Scratch” is a nickname for the Devil. He was playing off the diarist’s handle which was probably intentionally chosen.
I stand corrected. I had no idea. Fortunately, my assumption about Joel’s fine character, and sense of humor, was correct. 🙂
Wikipedia.
very childish, Joel. Shall we discuss the consequences of, oh, I don’t know, socialism or communism in the real world? You think thirty million dead Ukrainians might have something to day about it . . . all for a “famine” manufactured by Stalin? Or do you fancy yourself a modern-day Walter Duranty?
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p>You probably don’t want to go toe-to-toe on this one, friend.
To me, personally, government is people working together to provide, protect, and organize to meet the citizenry’s needs. Need health care? A job for government. Need standards around education? A job for governent. Need personal rights safeguarded? A job for government. Need a road? Need clean water? Need a safety net for the chronically unemployable? Need support for the elderly? Need counselling for youth?
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p>You get the picture. I do not view government as a dirty word. To me, government is highest form of social responsibility. The more it does, the better it is.
HEALTH CARE
You cite health care. What do you mean that it is a job for government? Are you saying that doctors and other health care professionals become government employees?
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p>Providing health insurance, through the law, doesn’t mean that the government is providing health insurance. Contrast the letter from Mr. Brabant and the video testimonial of The Winakors.
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p>Mr. Brabant chose to pay his mortgage before following the law. The Winakors followed the law, but it wasn’t because they couldn’t otherwise afford health insurance. Mrs. Winakor says that now they can do things they would otherwise have to think twice about. What are those things? Dinners out? Vacations? Purchases?
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p>I grew up lower middle class. We had a home, but a very frugal lifestyle. I asked my mother how health care costs were handled.
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p>She said we paid out of pocket for everyone of her nine pregnancies. We paid for doctor visits, braces, even minor operations. She told the hospital how much we could afford each month, and she paid down the bills over months or years. I think part of the problem we have now started with government (Nixon’s HMO Act) and is going to be made worse by further obsfucation of the provider-consumer relationship.
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p>That said, I do think everyone should have a safety net of access to health care. I just don’t think health insurance is the proper means.
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p>……. As for it being government’s role to set standards for education, are you OK with NCLB? What if the majority wanted to set standards to teach something you didn’t believe (creationism, for example)? Would it be OK then, or is it just OK now because you are of like-minds with the majority in power?
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p>How does the rule of law factor into the services you describe as the role of government? If you had your wish and government took care of all our needs, what would prevent a widening gap between the small ruling class and the governed masses? Or would it not matter then?
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p>I prefer personal freedom to collective responsibility. Good and bad can come from either, but I have more control of the former.
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p>In a word, yes. In my perfect world, those who want to be physicians and have the cognitive skills to be effective get to go to medical school for free. IOW, privilege means nothing when it comes to getting into medical school anymore. If you are talented, irrespective of your ability to pay, you get to go. If you are richer than God but do not have what it takes to be a talented physician, you don’t go.
Are you for real? I worked in health care for 16 years. If you had a kind physician, the sort that I worked for, you can get away with $5 a month to pay for the in-patient care of your psychotic son. Now? Not so much.
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p>Why should anyone be forced to choose between a mortgage, food, clothing, and health care? That’s medieval thinking. Health care free of cost to citizens, imho, is a right not a privilege and should be a priority of any 21st century industrialized nation.
The question posed concerns my view of government. If I live in a superstitious theocracy, then my role of government is going to differ from the role I’ve been describing. If I lived in a superstitious theocracy in which creationism substitutes for science, then, candidly, I’m favoring violent overthrow of the government or I’m planning my escape to a Scandinavian nation where people are rational.
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p>With all things being equal, I prefer collective responsibility and personal freedom. Keep your hands off my uterus and out of my bedroom. Keep your superstitious religious beliefs out of my life; you’re entitled to them in your own personal daily living. Educational policy is constructed around fact and science, not superstition. Those who are unable to work are supported and those who are sick have access to the treatment they need.
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p>If the question becomes what will you do if your nation is voted into the hands of Christianist anti-gay, misogynist, anti-knowledge, anti-science Luddites, then I say overthrow the government or move, but that’s not what the diarist asks. Perhaps I misunderstood?
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p>Even the government has to choose all the time between these things.
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p>First decide how much you owe to the government and then they will be able to tell you what you can buy with your money.
devote $12 billion per month to an illegal war.
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p>How about we use taxpayer money to benefit taxpayers and refrain from using taxpayer money to line the pockets of cynical corporate Republicans and their sycophants?
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p>$12 billion a month.
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p>I’ll be polite and won’t tell you what you can do with your “choices.”
Even if you could get all $12B devoted to mortgages, health care, food and clothing it wouldn’t buy a fraction of what you claim to subsidize. So how do you divide up the $12B among even your four priorities? And you’re leaving out education, wind power, mental health etc.
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p>This shows how this whole discussion is silly. The role of government is not a yes/no proposition down a list of priorities. It’s a judgement of less/more.
I’ll interpret your use of “you” as a grammatical convention and not a direct comment to me.
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p> If the question becomes what will you do if your nation is voted into the hands of Christianist anti-gay, misogynist, anti-knowledge, anti-science Luddites, then I say overthrow the government or move, but that’s not what the diarist asks. Perhaps I misunderstood?
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p>So, if I’ve understood you correctly:
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p>If you like the government that has been elected, then you want to expand its power — The more it does, the better it is. But if you don’t like the government, you’re in favor of violent overthrow? That seems like an extreme and irrational reaction to a government that embraces creationism.
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p>I’m not looking to replace evolution with creationism in science class. But to ponder the beginnings of creation is a worthy intellectual pursuit.
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p>Keep your hands off my uterus…
Well, what’s in there isn’t just yours is it? There’s a father I presume. Even if you don’t recognize the embryo as a life with rights of its own, shouldn’t the father have rights? I think so.
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p>You don’t want government to control you uterus, but yet I would guess you want government to pay to take care of a child. Why isn’t policy if you cannot take care of your child, you aren’t allowed to control your reproductive rights?
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p>Educational policy is constructed around fact and science, not superstition.
If only that were the truth. Unfortunately, educational policy has long ignored what has been proved to work in favor of what sounds like it should work but doesn’t.
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just wondering, because you talk as if all pregnancies are created by two people who both want to have sex together.
I know of no law which requires paternal consent before an abortion is performed. Does anyone know of any?
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p>You may argue that to legislate a father’s rights on abortion decisions means you give control of a woman’s body to a man.
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p>By the same logic, a man having to pay his ex-wife alimony is enslaving him to a woman.
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p>The difference is that at least in the latter case, there is law — and a legal system — which should provide for equal access to a just decision. I have read of ex-husbands who toil very hard to pay for wives who do not work and will not marry their gentleman friends in order to preserve their alimony income stream. They might disagree about justice and argue it is slavery.
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p>But back to the abortion question, a father is not protected under the law. This cheapens the role of fathers in our society. Having laws that allowed the father to have input into the decision would mean that the law — not the man — has control over the decision. Such a law could stipulate that in the case of rape, the rapist forfeits this input. That seems reasonable to me.
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p>You wouldn’t question a rapist’s right to a fair trial. Would you? If the statute existed for the father to have input on whether an abortion is performed, shouldn’t the rapist influence be judged according to such law?
of pregnancy, then they can have half the say on the status of the pregnancy. How’s that?
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p>Until then, women bear all the risk and are thus entitled to make decisions about that risk in their own self interest. I may feel strongly that a man should donate a kidney to my family member, but I have no legal standing. The man’s body is viewed as his domain, as it were, and any decisions about whether or not he can be compelled to put himself at risk for the benefit of another or to comport with the sensibilities of another are his and his alone. Women, likewise, cannot be compelled to put themselves at risk just because someone else believes it is the right thing to do. That would be relegating women to chattel status, held hostage by her uterus. Perhaps that wouldn’t bother you.
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p>A man who is unhappy or feels cheated about lacking input into a female’s decision to end a pregnancy is certainly entitled to his feelings but is not entitled to standing in that decision.
Most pregnancies do not put the life of the mother at risk.
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p>There are laws that compel men to support children that they might have opted to abort. If we as women want to have complete control over our choices, then we should bear full responsibility as well. The law sets a double standard.
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p>A woman is free to have sex.
A woman is free to get pregnant.
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p>But once pregnant, a woman’s body is no longer just a woman’s body. There is another life inside her, and the responsibility for that life belongs to both the father and the mother.
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p>The “chattle” argument seems like something a teenager would say in a rage against their parents — “You aren’t the boss of me.” The law compels men to use their labor to support women and children. Other than risk, is there some difference in binding someone to bear a child vs. binding someone to turn over the rewards of their labor to someone else. Both could be viewed as forms of slavery.
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p>Yet, we restrict freedom — at least a man’s freedom — because we recognize his responsibility for the child.
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p>Getting back to the role of government and the governed, shouldn’t we be seeking more equitable treatment?
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p>This statement is completely irrelevant. The risk exists, whether you value it or not. And who’s talking about life? An entire range of health issues short of death often complicate pregnancy. Indeed, it is safer to have an abortion than to carry a pregnancy to term.
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p>Your comparison is silly, but I can see where you certainly might feel this way if you’re not the one being asked to forfeit your rights.
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p>Yes it is. It is always her body. And even when the fetus is viable, maternal rights and health trump that of the fetus.
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p>The law also compels women to support men and children if financial circumstances warrant.
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p>There is no comparison between forcing one to put one’s life and health at risk and forcing someone to pay support. The fact that you equate money with health and life is not a surprise to me.
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p>We restrict a mother’s freedom when it comes to taking responsibility for a child, too. That said, the non-viable contents of a uterus is not a child and has no rights.
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p>We should be protecting women’s reproductive rights, ensuring that parents assume financial responsibility for the children, and assisting those parents who cannot.
Men are required to register for Selective Service, and should there be a draft they would surely be putting their bodies at risk — more so than carrying a child a term.
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p>So, these sorts of conscriptions, based soley on gender are not completely absent from our law. But I’m guessing that you would choose to abolish selective service requirements as well. At least that would be logically consistent.
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p>If I were pregnant and compelled by law — not by a man, but through a court decision — to carry the baby to term against my free will, I can understand the feeling of being treated like property. I consider the reaction adolescent because the sentiment doesn’t survive my further introspection.
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p>I used to hold the same view as you. My beliefs have changed, and they’ve changed in part as a reaction to the devaluation of fathers in our society.
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p>I don’t equate money with health. I am stating that both are restrictions on freedom. Given that, in the case of pregnancy, the risk to health is minimal to begin with and could be further reduced or eliminated through the rule of law, this comes making one person responsible for another.
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You say: …the non-viable contents of a uterus is not a child and has no rights.
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p>A woman becomes pregnant. A natural course of events. Let’s say she is one of the unfortunate 1 in 10,000 who risks her own life by being pregnant.
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p>From the CDC:
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p>So, who is non-viable? The “contents of a uterus” that — barring an unnatural event — will survive through a live birth? Or the woman who cannot survive through the natural course of childbearing — is she “non-viable”?
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p>These are heartbreaking questions to ponder. I would be terrified if the government required me to maintain a pregnancy that I knew would kill me. Nonetheless, your choice of words has given this pro-choicer pause.
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p>I don’t think the cause of choice gains anything from referring to a embryo as anything less than the beginnings of a human life. I the those terms is a convenient way to shut out all the other ethical questions that should be part of the discussion. Can’t have a father of “contents of a uterus” now, can we?
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p>I think, too, we miss an opportunity to state that the relationship of government and the governed should avoid decisions of human viability. Afterall, we’re teetering on the verge of potentially sweeping changes to our health care system.
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p>An ever-growing database of DNA and catalog of genetically-dependent diseases can help government make the case for determining “viability.” Is that where we want to go? Where can I sign up to be one of the governors rather than one of the governed?
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p>Source:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previe…
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p>You don’t understand the clinical notion of viability.
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p>Viability is a clinical term with real antenatal clinical meaning.
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p>The uterine contents, up until roughly the 24th week of gestation, are clinically non-viable, i.e., unable to sustain its own life outside the uterus. Rights are not granted on potentiality, they are bestowed on the basis of viability and/or birth. Up until the cerebral cortex is attached and functional, there is no viability. As an example, a 26-week gestation, which may well survive with appropriate neonatal intervention, is not viable without extraordinary intervention. The point of viability has limits that are clear and, ultimately, clinically unequivocal–no attached and functioning cerebral cortex at roughly the 24th/25th week; no viability. Indeed, certain 40-week gestations may result in nonviable deliveries, e.g., the trisomies, anencephaly, etc.
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p>Well, what’s heartbreaking is the social pressures by certain religious groups to impose their sensibilities on females who are entitled to a safe and legal abortion and who are entitled to privacy in matters concerning their own reproduction.
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p>Romanticizing the fetus and/or the uterus is rife in conservative and religious circles. I would argue your attempts to imbue some sort of mystic meaning to the “beginnings of a human life” is a way to muddy the waters and inject emotion into an issue that should remain clinical and legal in nature. And you sure can have a father of uterine contents if you so wish. You may also have a father of a fetus and a father of a child. Word games. These distinctions don’t change biological facts or rights guaranteed by law.
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p>That’s ridiculous. Clinical gestational viability is, as I said earlier, a brick wall from a physiological perspective. Although it has been pushed back from 38 to 30 to 28 even to 25 weeks, there is an end point. To the extent that viability remains determined by survivability outside the uterus without extraordinary neonatal intervention, we really are talking about a fairly consistent point in fetal development. At about 24 to 25 weeks, however, the brick wall is a deal breaker; no functioning cerebral cortex, no viability–even at 40 weeks and delivered.
An IUD user may have dozens of viable fetuses over the course of years, which the device prevents from adhering to the uterine wall. Are these fertilized eggs ‘non-viable’? Because the preventative device is all that prevents gestation.
… conception, most of us die without ever being born,… contraceptives and abortion regardless.
@lightiris
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p>In case you weren’t following this old thread. I put some resources here for you that hopefully can help the student you mentioned:
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p>http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/s…
just wondering, because you talk as if all pregnancies are created by two people who both want to have sex together.
Yes, I was using “you” in a rhetorical sense, not a direct address.
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p>I like government when it functions in the manner I described. Religious fanatics who wish to substitute their own theocratic government for the one the Constitution describes are worthy of ousting. If that cannot be done, under whatever bizarre situation that arises, I guess I’d move. But that’s a minor point and not worthy of getting stuck on.
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p>Creationism has no place in a science classroom under any circumstances. Religious beliefs belong in a comparative religion course only.
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p>The question is what is my take on the relationship between government and the governed. Implied in that statement is that the government I’m talking about is a government I value. Why would I bother to consider a government I abhor and then discuss my relationship to it?
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p>Uh, sorry, but yes it is. I bear the burden of risk, I control what happens to my body. As a legal matter, women should have their right to make reproductive decisions in the privacy of their doctors’ offices-alone.
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p>I don’t think so, no. I’m pro-choice, so I shouldn’t have to describe to you what that means. Certainly it would be nice if the woman made her reproductive decisions in conjunction with her sexual partner, but that is certainly not always the case. No embryonic rights, no external paternalistic rights. A woman and her doctor. Period.
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p>Government has a vested interest in the well being of living, breathing, children who possess all the rights inherent in their full humanity. That has nothing to do with the non-viable cellular contents of a uterus. If a woman chooses to give birth to a child she cannot afford, it is in society’s best interest to support that child.
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p>I’m not interested in the notion of a punitive pregnancy. And women do not forfeit their rights to health care privacy in exchange for financial support of an infant should such support be necessary.
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p>Educational policy evolves just like every other sort of policy. So does instructional methodology, etc. No big deal.
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p>2. It should be a right. No one should have to die because they don’t have the money to get antibiotics, or go to a check up, get a mamogram or have a necessary and life-saving surgery.
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p>3. It’s cheaper! Not only does our private system fail to meet its obligations, but countries with national health care systems not only insure everyone, but most do a far better job and so at a much smaller cost (we could save more than 5% GDP every year by going single payer, while improving the standard of health care and making its access universal).
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p>Why? Because you want it to cost more, or more people to die? Either way, that’s the result of having government provide ‘the safety net’ of emergency care, but not give everyone health insurance. A great deal of the cost savings in moving to single payer government health insurance comes from providing universal access to preventative medicine. It’s far easier and cheaper treating something from an early stage than it is at a later one. Not only is it cheaper, but you’re much more likely to save a life or permanent negative side effects (I once got a staff infection in my blood stream; if I waited a single day before going to the doctors, I probably would have lost my right leg from the knee down, according to the doctors; if I waited several days, I could have died. Thankfully, I was one of the lucky ones with insurance – because I went to the doctors at the first sign that there was something wrong and was sent to the hospital immediately).
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p>Find a deserted island and build your own systems to provide you and your family clean water, protection from pirates, health care, clothes, shelter.
“To live outside the law you must be honest. I know you’ll always say that you agree” from Absolutely Sweet Marie
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p>Ursula LeGuin wrote a great book on the subject. Anarchy requires absolute personal responsibility.
Our alphabet has a mere 26 letters yet within those tight confines our freedom of expression is boundless.
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p>I find your attitude especially odd seeing that you have made a career of funneling public resources to private corporations.
that educate our children by paying teachers and administrators (ahem), keep our water clean by building and maintaining treatment centers, protect our food supplies and our public health by building laboratories and sending out technicians, and revitalizing local neighborhoods to encourage small businesses to grow.
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p>I work sometimes as a paid consultant, sometimes as a community volunteer. I believe that everyone in my family, my neighborhood, my community, my state, my country, and yes all of us on this planet earth share a collective reponsibility to work together through our governments to do things we cannot do alone.
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p>Personal freedom is very important as well, and I think the struggle is to find the proper balance between personal freedom and collective responsiblity.
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p>Could not find a use for q x or z.
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The proper relationship between the governed and the government must begin with the legitimate expectations of the governed. Not to have them, or to be apathetic about them results in a chaotic, self-serving government, one that cuts deals with the special interests that install or perpetuate them in office.
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p>The second occurrence in this utopia I’m constructing is that the government must both acknowledge, and be responsive to these legitimate expectations. Upstream, you discussed the idea of roads as an expectation, and, on balance, I think a legitimate one. Privately-owned roads, wherein all public roads are excluded, for instance, would probably mean that half of us couldn’t get home; no one is incented to build a road for, say, three rural farm families to use. Toll roads demonstrate a limiting weakness, bifurcating the citizenry into users and non-users based on their ability or willingness to pay, and it becomes glaringly unfair when they are constructed with tax dollars. Pay-for-play diamond lanes carries the concept from the ridiculous to the sublime; they’re intended to reduce congestion and encourage multiple occupancies, not to allow the wealthy to get home quicker than Jimmy the Janitor. Examples?
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p>There is a four-lane bridge between Seattle and Bellevue, across Lake Washington. When that bridge was built, it was paid for entirely with bonds. When it opened, it cost a quarter to use. When enough quarters had been collected to retire the bonds, the tollbooths – and the tolls – evaporated. The road passed into the public domain, and is now maintained as part of the public road system. Win-win.
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p>Now, the Narrows Bridge in Tacoma has been replaced with a toll bridge, and the toll is in perpetuity. Win-lose. And Washington State’s Hiway 167 has pay-for-play diamond lanes that can cost several dollars for wealthy, individual, SOLO drivers to use. Win-lose.
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p>Third, the relationship between the government and the governed should be optimized. To prevent utter chaos from billions of individual demands, we use a representative form of government, checked and balanced by an elected Administration and an appointed Supreme Court. This is a good start, but it will only work when the representatives represent the people, and not the special interests. That’s not happening today. Thoughts?
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p>Outlaw lobbies. Outlaw campaign contributions, and do completely away with campaigning. Elect on the basis of representations made to the people, in a one-time public forum before the primary, and a one-time public forum for the general election, allotting equal time for all vying candidates. Allow terms to run for no more than one year for representatives, two for senators, and two for presidents. Limit aggregate terms to three for representatives, two for senators and one for presidents, after which they are no longer welcome to that office again. Toss the electoral college, and directly elect the president by popular vote.
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p>What do the rest of you think?
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p>Best,
Chuck
I disagree with all of your last paragraph except for switching to popular vote for President. Outlawing lobbies and campaigning would be both patent violations of the 1st Amendment (Lobbies are a form of petition and campaigning involves both speech and press.) and outlawing contributions can easily be worked around via independent expenditures (Outlawing those would also violate the 1st amendment.).
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p>Shorter terms would be a disaster as they would only mean people spend much of their term running for re-election even more than they do now. Such severe term limits also means that nobody can ever acquire the requisite knowledge and expertise needed more modern governing and runs the risk of making the bureaucrats de facto in charge when it should be elected officials.
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p>I take very literally the notion that our government is of, by, and for the people. As such I utterly reject the attitude of some that the people/government relationship is one of us vs. them. In our system the people ARE the government and if you bash the government you are bashing the American people. Let me be clear: I am not suggesting we should never criticize specific actions or policies of our government; I’m talking about lines such as Reagan’s more general statement, “Government’s not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” To me the definition of government is the method by which society chooses to organize itself and advance the common good. Specific policies are of course debatable, but to me anything that advances the purposes laid out in the preamble to our Constitution is a legitimate function of the government should the people, through their elected representatives so decide.
but eliminating campaigning would preclude much of the claptrap, bombast and political time-wasting of running for office. Then, shorter terms would make more sense. Probably, if you take out all the microphone time, and actual campaigning politicians holding office expend, the shorter terms would still allow them more time to devote to governing than they do now.
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p>Best,
Chuck
The optimal level of government involvement can change. For instance the people of Massachusetts voted in favor of a referendum question to roll back the income tax to 5%. But that was before Sept. 11. Once September 11 happened, suddenly we became aware that we needed all these government services for the airports, watching the bridges and lng terminal etc. So politicians who ran in favor of the rollback after 2001 did not account for the change in the electorate’s perception of the optimal level.
saved from themselves.
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p>Thus the United States is a representative republic, not a direct democracy. Referendums offer a check on the latter, but there’s no reason for fooling ourselves about our form of government. There are more intellectually challenging forms of cynicism.
You could save the people from themselves even more by having a 12% state income tax. Or 30%. At some level when amateur discussion ends, we have to acknowledge that politics is a matter of degree not yes/no.
If there’s a credo that I wish the government would adhere to is “thou shalt not waste.” It shouldn’t waste anything that comes from the taxpayer – not money, time, energy or resources. People could have have faith in government if it did this one thing. I think the reason “small government” starts to resonate with voters is in response to government incompetence or corruption.
physical or social, in which waste is not endemic. Eliminating waste, or rather increasing efficiency, should be a major goal of every organization, but I think sometimes we fetishize the idea.
is not a fetishized idea. The bloated pensions, cost over-runs and lack of project management at the “T” is not a fetishized idea. It’s not good stewardship of the resources. Just because waste is epidemic doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. There’s a reason why people have lost faith in government, and there’s a reason why they don’t want their taxes to go up – because they don’t trust the government to do the right thing with their money.
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p>So, you’ve asked me to name a system in which waste is not endemic. I can point to the town in which I currently reside, (mostly blue-collar and middle class, BTW) where there’s no budget overruns, the schools are reasonably funded, and public safety has been appropriately funded. The town actually started preparing for the current economic climate more than a year ago. The town manager treats the funds as if they were his own – very carefully. And if he didn’t, he’d be fired. I’ve seen the budget, and compared it to other communities; it’s pretty lean, all things considered.
No More Wasteful Spending!!! The governments relationship to the governed should be to use taxpayer money with respect. You are right! I would say it is the #1 reason why people have lost faith in government.
Because if “No More Spending” translates into letting small cracks grow into big ones, small leaks grow into gushers, and rust grow into structural failure–how have we actually stopped waste?
Huge difference.
while some waste went on, cost over-runs aren’t necessarily “waste.” There were unforeseen difficulties with the Big Dig. There was all sorts of muck under the city that we didn’t know about and wasn’t mapped. It went through landfills – which required new technology to be invented in order to bypass. And it was also one of the biggest freaking projects ever.
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p>Honestly, for the work that was done, 15 billion wasn’t a whole ton. It was more than the public expected – sure, but I say look at the end result. The Big Dig has remade Boston – by far for the better. Boston is a completely new – and better – city. The problem wasn’t the Big Dig, the problem is that there aren’t more Big Digs and Mini Digs across the country. That’s a big part of the reason of why our country is falling far behind others in terms of infrastructure. If there were more major construction programs happening all around the country, we’d quickly be able to rise to the top again.
Have you even read a thing about the federal audit? One of the biggest criticisms was an “alarming” lack of oversight. It was the ultimate insiders game – where the people who were supposed to provide oversight kept silent while cost over-runs soared by more than a billion dollars. Kerosiotis and company intentionally deceived the federal government and the investors. They kept silent as the bonds went out to bid – which had it been a publicly trade corporation, who pulled that, the SEC would have indicted the managers and brought them to trial. The Feds also concluded that the state management of the Big Dig function more like “partners” rather than providing statutory oversight. Think about it; it everything was on the up and up, why all the secrecy?
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p>Auditor DiNucci has noted that billions have been wasted on the project over the years. http://www.publicpurpose.com/u…
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p>Let’s not forget that one of the tunnels was a crime scene, where a woman lost her life due to negligence and the culture of secrecy at the Authority.
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p>BTW, it’s more than 22 billion now. Some waste? I’d call it a criminal level of waste.
The big dig had a lot of cost overruns. But reading through what you quoted, it looks like there was at most $700 million in waste. Which is only 3% of a $22 billion dollar project. 3% waste hardly qualifies it as a wasteful project. If you want to point out government waste, look at the Iraq war. If we could reclaim the lost money (and I mean the money that nobody knows where it went, not the money we spent on things of questionable value) we could afford to pay for the big dig. Or you could point to the TARP money. Well over 3% of that was spent on performance bonuses at firms that needed government bailouts to survive.
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p>It is possible that had the cost been properly estimated, people never would have approved of the big dig. Then again, maybe people would have anyway. I am not sufficently familiar with major highway projects to say how much it was truly worth. But cost overruns are not an example of waste.
But cost over-runs and waste happen in the absence of good management. And don’t forget that this project was only supposed to be 2.5 billion, not 22 billion. That kind of makes it about 35%. No one – not the Feds, not the state auditor, not leading Democrats – defend what happened at the Big Dig. It was a wasteful project, and corrupt to the core.
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p>I have a real hard time being cavalier about money that didn’t need to be spent. $19 million in useless design work? 83 million in design mistakes? Imagine if we have that money now?
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p>BTW, pointing to the disgrace of others doesn’t mitigate the negligence of the managers of the Big Dig.
“Cost-overruns” aren’t always, or even usually, avoided by “good management” when you’re dealing with carving holes in the Earth. Good Government doesn’t rewire and plumb the entire city’s underbelly, or harden its landfills.
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p>Seriously, you’re digging your whole deeper, scraping after pennies on the floor as your house is ransacked by things like the Iraq war.
… dealing with anything underground are usually a result of geotechnical risk. Not to mention the risk of ‘the utility infrastructure we found when we dug didn’t match what the plans said would be there (of course the plans are 80 years old)’. There were a lot of mitigation costs… keeping south station running while digging under it. Replacing windows in buildings in the north end to deal with construction noise standards. Way too munch to encapsulate in an online discussion.
you should do a series of posts on this.
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p>Maybe you’ll get a blogitzer?
some kind of artillery?
blog + pulitzer.
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p>maybe I should copyright it =p
445 million.
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p>The project was 22 billion.
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p>So, at best, 1 in 44 dollars was wasted. Do you waste less than 1 in 44 dollars in life? I severely doubt it. That’s a car accident deductable and a lousy Dell computer that breaks in a year, if you made 44k.
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p>No doubt the Big Dig was a Big Boondoggle. No doubt it could have and should have been done better. But for a project of such a massive scale, of course there’s going to be a couple hundred million in waste. That’s a few days of bad weather, a hack or three and some lost stamps compared to 15 BILLION.
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p>let’s look at it in numbers.
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p>445,000,000
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p>15,000,000,000
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p>That’s a lot more zeroes!
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p>The project was big and complicated and had a lot of unforeseen difficulties that came its way. It was burdened by the political process of handing out projects to the lowest bidder, which doesn’t always mean the best bid, especially when those bids are dealing with imaginary figures. It was also pushed by politicians who had an incentive to downplay the costs early in the game. You may call that dishonest, but had we known it would cost more than $20 billion to begin with, we may not have done the project — yet, the way it has fully transformed the city of Boston and entire region, it was worth every penny, including the up-to-$445 million potentially-wasted ones. The project was that important and meaningful.
You didn’t say anything about the Big Dig in your first post. Your generalizations about waste are certainly hasty if that’s your test case on governmental efficiency.
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p>Are you telling me that no one in your city/town thinks your municipal government wastes money? I live in a town where some people think that funding our schools beyond the minimum required by state law is spending too much. Does that mean there’s waste?
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p>Politics, as some define it, is the allocation of scarce resources. Waste is relative to the output of a system. One fetishizes about waste when one ignores the rest of the equation: inputs and outputs; or in economic terms, costs and benefits. The real issue is efficiency.
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p>Burn wood and there’s waste. It’s called ash. But if burning wood saves me money, as compared to oil,for example, then I’ve saved money. The benefit of burning wood outweighs the cost of oil.
Probably not. I was a city councillor for ten years; sat on a ten community taskforce on local aid…currently working on masters in management. I understand the nature of government, from nuts and bolts of “making the trains run on time,” to the third idiot cousin of some elected official taking the job of someone else more qualified…to the theft of paper products, gasoline, sport equipment, you name it – petty thievery to grand larceny; I’ve seen it. This is not some ivory-tower, talk radio blather, this is from someone in the trenches, not some academic ivory tower.
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p>My first post on this top was to consider the relationship between the governed and the government. What I pointed out is that people are willing to be governed and taxed as long as their contributions aren’t wasted. I provided the example of the Big Dig in response to the suggestion that waste was some sort of “fetishized” idea, which would mean it was “an object of irrational reverence.” That’s BS, friend. Waste and corruption is real, and being pissed about it isn’t irrational. In fact, pretending it’s all good is irrational. The waste and corruption of the Big Dig put a very bad taste in the mouths of the citizens in this state, and you can’t ignore that. All you have to do is read the executive summary by the Auditor to understand what a party Parsons and Bechtel had with our checkbook.
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p>So here we are in the midst of a terrible economy, and we’re watching the government cut programs to the poorest of the poor, and the weakest of the weak, while there are still sacred cows standing. In the last few months we’ve been treated to headlines involving the T pension system, the revolving door of ethically challenged Speakers of the House, politicians on the take, extra pensions for politicians who lose elections, notably a woman-groping politician, pay for play….it is not an over-response to be pissed off over this crap.
I did not understood Yellow Dog as saying that waste should be ignored or even that it was a merely small or medium sized problem.
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p>What I do hear a lot of are indications that any waste is a refutation of attempting anything. Sort of like, if there’s going to be waste, we shouldn’t do it.
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p>For example, if you travel next door the cold red blog, you can find the newly minted chair of Massachusetts Republicans telling her faithful.
It’s as if all state government does is waste and corruption. I think you have there a severe case of the exactly fetishization of waste that our sunny canine has been concerned about.
I tend to think the lack of citizen participation in government lets more waste happen. More eyes would make for more transparency.
But just because the conservatives overly focus on waste doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. Putting a democratic sugar glaze on the problem doesn’t make it taste any better.
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p>As for the lack of participation in goverment…why do you think that is? We have a legislature with the some of the least amount of turnover in the nation, and very few opportunities for other involvement in the finances of the state. What opportunity was there for citizen involvement in the BD process? Unless one’s a completely wired in insider – there’s not much to join.
Really.
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p>And yes, citizen participation right now seems to require fanaticism or zealotry. Not so good, that.
I don’t think we’re that far apart on the Big Dig.
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p>You made a general statement about waste being demoralizing. I said, every system had waste, which was only part of the equation of efficiency. You said brought up the Big Dig, which was irrelevant to my point. I never said waste was good. I said it was endemic, and a matter of costs and benefits. The goal is to minimize it, not eliminate it. It can’t be eliminated.
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p>Anything you’ve said about the Big Dig could easily fit under issues of system efficiency and costs-benefits. There are political and democratic costs to inefficiency, which, I think, is what you’re saying.
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p>My point about fetishizing waste was that it’s used as an excuse to unfairly criticize government. It has been at least since the 1980s. When Proposition 2 1/2 was voted in, I heard people say that it would eliminate waste in government.
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p>I was looking over WHYN’s petition against the gas tax today. Sure enough, someone mentioned eliminating government waste before raising taxes.
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p>Why did I call you on the term “waste”? Because it is a fetish, a conservative fetish used to bash governnment and all sorts of worthwhile projects. You may not be a waste pervert, but using the term gives it more currency than it deserves.
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p>BTW, I’m not in an ivory tower. I’m just public school teacher with a little more education than you will have when you complete your master’s degree.
I am by no means, unfairly criticizing my goverment. And criticizing them doesn’t make me a conservative. These bastards deserve every bit of my ire. They’re closing down facilities for people with MR, watering down services for the children at risk, homeless, the elderly, etc. while some enormously big sacred cows are still standing. It’s disgusting, is what it is. Imagine if we had those millions now that were wasted on BS on the Big Dig? We could use that $700 million plus right about now.
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p>I’m glad you’re not an ivory tower denizen. There’s something to be said for having more money than sense, and more education than experience.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…
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p>So with this in mind, we must remember that our elected officials are elected solely for the purpose of representing their constituency…. and no other reason.
That is the relationship. The government represents the peoples will.
How do you explain the legislature completely ignoring the 2000 voter mandate, which clearly supported the reduction in state income taxes?
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p>The constitution is all about freedom. It says nothing about progressive taxation, which is essential a denial of freedom to those that are successful. After all, if 40% of what someone makes is owed to the Government, then that person is only 60% free.
Republican government (as opposed to direct democracy – not the GOP). In such a system, representation is assumed to take the form of good judgment, not faithfulness, and that if this ‘goes wrong’ the ballot is the redress.
Government ain’t American Idol. Thank goodness.
Athenian democracy only worked because all the hard work was done by slaves. Not a democracy if you ask me.
To extend your logic, if you paying 40% income tax (and no one does, BTW) means you are only 60% free, then “freedom” must be equivalent to your taxable income. So the higher your taxable income, the more “free” you are. Yeah right.
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p>Why don’t you spare us from more of your strange metaphorical thinking?
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p>And the Constitution is not “all about freedom” in any case. Perhaps you should read it sometime.
Regarding your understanding of the taxation argument, you got the whole thing mixed up. I clearly stated the higher the tax rate, the LESS free one is. I’ll try to dumb down the concept for you with a rhetorical question: if the Government took 100% of what I make, would I be free?
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p>For whatever it’s worth, a constitutional amendment established the federal income tax, which applied only to the richest 2 percent of the people and took no more than 7 percent of their incomes. There are also plenty of arguments suggesting an income tax violates the U.S. Constitution in a number of ways.
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p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T…
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p>P.S.If the core theme of the Constitution were not freedom, I’d love to hear your take on what the core theme is?
duh.
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p>dude, freedoms weren’t even written into it to begin with. The Bill of Rights were all amendments to the original document, albiet amendments promised in order to get the original document passed.
You may have read the 16th Ammendment,
it’s pretty clear.
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p>Plus I count 6 core themes in the constitution.
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p>1. form a more perfect Union;
2. establish Justice;
3. insure domestic Tranquility;
4. provide for the common defense;
5. promote the general Welfare;
6. secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.
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p>Freedom doesn’t get mentioned by name, and liberty shows up last (not to say it’s the least important, in fact for many I’m sure its last to show just how important it is).
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p>However, justice, tranquility, common defense and promoting the general welfare are not explicitly about freedom, and in many ways limit freedom. One of the first complaints about the constitution was that it didn’t secure freedoms enough, therefore it had to have ten amendments tacked on right away.
I agree with the idea that the part of the Declaration you quote is the basis, though I would use the preamble of the Constitution to further clarify the ends of government.
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p>I’m not sure I want to go as far as you in the notion of the government representing the people’s will. My idea of representation follows that of Edmund Burke that says that representatives owe their constituents a respectful hearing, but also judgement as to their interests, which does not necessarily coincide with their will. If I misunderstand please let me know, but it sounds like you think an elected official should poll their constituency and vote with the majority, notwithstanding his own conscience or additional information he may have access to. The easiest example is the income tax initatives that have been on the ballot. Cutting the rate was the expressed will of the people a few years ago, but I do not believe it was in their interests. I for one don’t have a problem with the legislature undoing the results of a ballot question, though the members should be prepared to thoroughly explain their actions to their constituents.
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p>Finally, for everyone’s reading pleasure, the preamble to the MA Constitution in John Adams typically verbose style:
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p>”The end of the institution, maintenance, and administration of government, is to secure the existence of the body politic, to protect it, and to furnish the individuals who compose it with the power of enjoying in safety and tranquillity their natural rights, and the blessings of life: and whenever these great objects are not obtained, the people have a right to alter the government, and to take measures necessary for their safety, prosperity and happiness.
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p>”The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals: it is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good. It is the duty of the people, therefore, in framing a constitution of government, to provide for an equitable mode of making laws, as well as for an impartial interpretation, and a faithful execution of them; that every man may, at all times, find his security in them.
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p>”We, therefore, the people of Massachusetts, acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the goodness of the great Legislator of the universe, in affording us, in the course of His providence, an opportunity, deliberately and peaceably, without fraud, violence or surprise, of entering into an original, explicit, and solemn compact with each other; and of forming a new constitution of civil government, for ourselves and posterity; and devoutly imploring His direction in so interesting a design, do agree upon, ordain and establish the following Declaration of Rights, and Frame of Government, as the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
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p>Shades of Locke abound, as they seem to in many state constitutions, especially the early ones.
I like the idea of government being formed to protect the liberties and freedoms of the people as they have defined them in our laws. The government needs to provide for the enforcement of those laws and for the protecting the governed from those who break these laws.
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p>I believe the original question was…
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p>
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p>The governed select who will be the government and the government needs to remember that “public servant” are exactly that, they serve he public. I see many government workers forgetting what their job is all about and many politicians caring more about themselves than the governed who put them there.