After reading a lot of these comments I have 2 thoughts that I want to share:
1) Maybe I just didn't look deep enough.. but there has been little or no discussion about something that I consider to be a really important issue - Ron Paul is now the only presidential candidate that is *against* the Real ID act. That's a big deal for me. I definitely don't want a chipped and trackable national ID card that I am *required* to carry by law. That is so blatantly unconstitutional it's scary. I don't want to elect anyone that will be willing to give up our constitutional rights of privacy and citizenship anymore than they already have been. Actually fixing these issues we have now would be a plus (like the current lack of Habeas Corpus - "Wait, you're saying you can come into my house without a warrant and put me in prison for life without a trial? And it's legal for me to be tortured there??". Sure, maybe this will never happen to good, law-biting, non-terrorist citizens like you and me, but the fact that they can if they want to is way too much power. Same for the ID cards... what are the implications of a system like that?
2) The entire concept of "electablity" implies that the *media* has already decided who the winner of the elections will be and that our votes don't really matter unless we vote for the candidates they've selected. I understand that in the end it may seem that we have to chose the lesser of two evils and throw our vote to the most likely candidates so that our vote can have some semblance of meaning. However, not voting for who you believe in and instead voting for who you are told will be the winner is essentially allowing the media to elect our president (and of course they're voting for whoever brings them more money). Regardless of what the surveys and polls try to suggest, they are not the election, and the decisions aren't made until the actual votes are tallied. But even then, we've allowed a system to be put in place that actually devalues our voting power (Bush didn't win the popular vote, but he still became president), so maybe this is a moot point... In the end, meaningless or not, might as well stay true to our values.
Slashdot Mirror
After reading a lot of these comments I have 2 thoughts that I want to share:
1) Maybe I just didn't look deep enough.. but there has been little or no discussion about something that I consider to be a really important issue - Ron Paul is now the only presidential candidate that is *against* the Real ID act. That's a big deal for me. I definitely don't want a chipped and trackable national ID card that I am *required* to carry by law. That is so blatantly unconstitutional it's scary. I don't want to elect anyone that will be willing to give up our constitutional rights of privacy and citizenship anymore than they already have been. Actually fixing these issues we have now would be a plus (like the current lack of Habeas Corpus - "Wait, you're saying you can come into my house without a warrant and put me in prison for life without a trial? And it's legal for me to be tortured there??". Sure, maybe this will never happen to good, law-biting, non-terrorist citizens like you and me, but the fact that they can if they want to is way too much power. Same for the ID cards... what are the implications of a system like that?
2) The entire concept of "electablity" implies that the *media* has already decided who the winner of the elections will be and that our votes don't really matter unless we vote for the candidates they've selected. I understand that in the end it may seem that we have to chose the lesser of two evils and throw our vote to the most likely candidates so that our vote can have some semblance of meaning. However, not voting for who you believe in and instead voting for who you are told will be the winner is essentially allowing the media to elect our president (and of course they're voting for whoever brings them more money). Regardless of what the surveys and polls try to suggest, they are not the election, and the decisions aren't made until the actual votes are tallied. But even then, we've allowed a system to be put in place that actually devalues our voting power (Bush didn't win the popular vote, but he still became president), so maybe this is a moot point... In the end, meaningless or not, might as well stay true to our values.