MAV and Little Hawk,

Who would police them and expose corruption?

As opposed to what we have now? It is the nature of any bureaucracy to hide it's mistakes. It may well be part of our nature as humans. Like the little dance that some (non mudcat) performers do, claiming "innovation" instead of saying "oops"

Little Hawk said You can create a deliberately adversarial system, which is what we have... and you replied Man is adversarial in nature, it is a natural trait which leads to self-preservation. and LH went on to say ...or a system that is cooperative and not adversarial. I believe the latter would be far healthier in psychology

One reason for the adversarial system was an attempt to diffuse power, not concentrate it. Well, at least they tried. Have to give them a little something for the effort.

It may well be a chicken or egg question. There's some new work going on in that seems to show that, at least in part, nature is much more cooperative than it is competitive. So is the system adversarial because man is truly that way, or was the assumption made that man was that way and a system was set it on that assumption, thereby proving the assumption?

Not to claim that it's all cooperation, just that it's not all competetion.

A prime example of this is how they wound up defending the criminal and amoral behavior of the clintons and are now smeared with their taint.

To say nothing of how they leaped to the defense of Bush Sr for the Weinberger or Armand Hammer pardons....oops they didn't. Although they made the very generous offer to include investigation of those pardons along with the clinton fiasco. Which offer suddenly stopped the Congressional hearings on the pardons. Plenty of blame to share all around, as always.

And maybe in part because way back when, the belief was that you couldn't really trust al those colonists to do what's right, so lets create a system

They are not artificial, our side stands for the principles outlined in the Constitution, the democrats seek to destroy it.

Politicians seek to destroy it. True, some are better at it than others.

As long as we rely on a party or ideology to in any way guarantee "right" and "freedoms" and argue the necessity of any system (as opposed accepting purported sufficiency) for moral autonomy, we loose.

By its nature, any bureaucracy defuses responsibility. Blaming one side or the other adds to the effect of moving power away from the individual.

LH said To deliberately divide a public into adversarial blocks which perpetuate themselves generation after generation is to create a state of ongoing social warfare (I don't mean "shooting" war, but war nonetheless). That is what has happened in both our justice system and our political system. It's divisive and destructive. It hampers independent thought. It precludes fairness, and enshrines intolerance. It perpetuates pointless hatred and prejudice on many levels. It operates on a win/lose basis when it is entirely possible for people to operate on a win/win basis. Try it in a family and see what happens. It's not good. A nation is a very large extended family

Inherently so.

Mav, you said We now and always have stood for INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS!!!

Divide and conquer, you have put your finger on a very major point I've been trying to make and it is exactly what the democrats do very efficiently

I disagree. We (whether republican or democratic) manage to pay lip service to the idea with varying degrees of success. Dividing is what the "game" is all about.

We have some protections built in to make the inevitable intrusions seem less oppressive. For every assault on individual rights you can detail by the democrats, I can do the same for the republicans. And then we can try to justify our positions and claim "On, yeah but in this case it was Okay becasue....". And liberals can do the same. To what affect? The basic relationships of power remain, encased in the "armour" of various interpretations of what the constitution means, implies or "really" says. ZThey divide and them make victims of all the groups just so they will be dependent on the liberals. They then create social programs which benefit mostly the unionized employees inside them who pretend to serve the public. These programs are not designed to get results. Success would put the liberals out of business.

The only goal for them is PERCEPTION!

Decade after decade liberals perpetuate and expand these useless programs blaming their failures on GOP interference, even though they (GOP) have traditionally been the minority.

Stepping back, it's always "In this case". Whether its communism, politically correct behavior, corporate rights or welfare, the unifying principal seems to be that individual rights get argued away "In the name of".

Let's take a look at all the groups that make up the core of the democrat party activists; Government labor unions, teachers unions, non-government labor unions, various ethnic minority groups, NOW and other screaming topless lesbians, Act Up and other Militant homosexual groups, Militant vegetarians, PETA and other "animal rights" groups, Green Peace and other extreme anti-business groups, most people receiving "entitlements", University professors, and of course their students etc.

Which groups you don't like. Then there's the list that the democrats don't like and ....so what? The issue is how we can all live together and is the current distribution of power the only, the best or just minimally sufficient? Which ought to be what the real debate is about. Playing the "hero-villain" game is a distraction.

LH said You take the adversarial system for granted, cos you grew up with it

And if you look at other "systems" that are cooperative in this country (some of the tribal councils come to mind), they manage quite nicely in dealing with advesarial sports without them "infecting" their society. And LH added In a system like that, everybody loses in the end"

What's always fascinating is that everyone argues so hard to prove that there are winners. A line from somewhere (e e cummings maybe) comes to mind. "Though they sang in their chains like the sea"

My analogy is this, liberals would have you listening to the radio.

Conservatives would have you making your own music.

It's not their choice to make. They both assume it is. Which is Little Hawks point. Both define for you and me what is "best". Individual moral autonomy is taken away. It isn't a decision that should be left to any political persuasion. It ought to be left to the individual, or the least number of individuals absolutely necessary. It isn't. By either side. It ought to extend to all aspects of life, not just the political.

LH, problem with the "powers" in the US Constitution is that it always gets into a discussion of what words mean and away it all goes.

Here's a quick link for the constitution: BLICKY TWO that also gets into some of the issues.

Mav, On Taxes, take a look at this link: BLICKY ONE

Regards

John