One of the very difficult problems with anything political in the states is that all the terminology has been overloaded to the point where it's not really clear what people are saying.
What's a war? Does it involve a draft and killing large numbers of people somewhere? Nope. We have a war on poverty, a war on drugs, a war on obesity, and so on. How about "rights" what's a right? Is it some piece of property that the government is forbidden to take from you? Nope. We have an airline passenger's bill of rights, a right to contraceptives, now a privacy bill of rights, and so on.
I think people mean well when they re-use words like this. It certainly sounds more serious to say that such-and-such is a right. The problem is that when talking about the structure of the system overall, as opposed to just the change you are suggesting, you need to know what things are and where things fit together. I think this structural knowledge of the theory behind the way things are supposed to fit together -- the design pattern of the country if you like -- has been lost over time. now politicians just ask "what do people want", then spin it up to sound as dramatic as possible, then throw hundreds or thousands of pages of legislation at it until it looks as if it's been "fixed". If this were coding, it'd be obvious that they were just thrashing around, trying to hack their way through tons of cruft to try to get something to compile.
The lack of clean structure and terms makes talking about and resolving everything a lot more difficult than it should be.
> I think people mean well when they re-use words like this.
You're being too generous.
> The lack of clean structure and terms makes talking about and resolving everything a lot more difficult than it should be.
That's the intent. There are many who benefit by maintaining the status quo. The last thing they want is to make things clear. When things are clear, the populace at large has a nasty habit of voting sensibly and in the process, disenfranchises the few who are benefiting at the expense of everyone else.
You have parasites on both sides of the isle. Ranging from unions to defense contractors. Clear and frank conversations are dangerous to people who draw a check from the government.
Exactly. In my opinion if it's not a constitutional amendment it's not worth anything. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies barely follow the constitution at times, forget following simple bills.
I feel like we don't even try to follow the Constitution as the Law of the Land in the United States anymore.
Look at Drug Prohibition for instance (at a federal level). When they tried to do it with Alcohol in the 20's at least they had respect for the rule of law to properly make it a constitutional amendment.
Now we have federal raids in California for marijuana, where the people being raided haven't broken any local state laws.
Depressing.
'But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.' -Lysander Spooner
What's a war? Does it involve a draft and killing large numbers of people somewhere? Nope. We have a war on poverty, a war on drugs, a war on obesity, and so on. How about "rights" what's a right? Is it some piece of property that the government is forbidden to take from you? Nope. We have an airline passenger's bill of rights, a right to contraceptives, now a privacy bill of rights, and so on.
I think people mean well when they re-use words like this. It certainly sounds more serious to say that such-and-such is a right. The problem is that when talking about the structure of the system overall, as opposed to just the change you are suggesting, you need to know what things are and where things fit together. I think this structural knowledge of the theory behind the way things are supposed to fit together -- the design pattern of the country if you like -- has been lost over time. now politicians just ask "what do people want", then spin it up to sound as dramatic as possible, then throw hundreds or thousands of pages of legislation at it until it looks as if it's been "fixed". If this were coding, it'd be obvious that they were just thrashing around, trying to hack their way through tons of cruft to try to get something to compile.
The lack of clean structure and terms makes talking about and resolving everything a lot more difficult than it should be.