Let me show you some examples of what "incompatible" means:
Solaris packages on Linux.
Windows Installshield on Max OS X. Dreamcast and Playstation.
THOSE are incompatible, because you KNOW that for any product from category 1, it will not possibly work on category 2.
Ubuntu versus Debian? Odds are it will work just fine. Thus, they're not incompatible. Calling them that would make as much sense as describing humans as nonambulatory species because you've seen a few patients in wheelchairs.
True statements: Most humans can walk. Some humans can't walk. Mostly-true statement: Humans can walk. False statement: Humans can't walk.
You are trying to force a "black and white" scenario on a scenario with some nuances.
HOW can you continue to insist that, when you're the one who wants to see only two options (100% compatible or incompatible), and I'm the one who says it comes in variable degrees??
Trinary logic is the model for the compatibility conditions: none, some, all; your
Here we observe a typical Slashdot evasive technique... see how the post is filled with lofty, uncontestable vagaries which upon closer examination have no bearing to the topic of contention, but merely give the speaker some aura of reasonableness. By saying some things that make sense, the impression is created that he always makes sense.
That's why I'm saying you have "binary logic disease", while arguing that Ubuntu falls into one of only two scenarios.
YOU are the one who split it into two scenarios. You heard that Ubuntu isn't guaranteed 100% compatible, so you declared it is incompatible. Incompatible has a specific meaning in the dictionary, equivalent to 0% compatibility. (Or at least well under 50%) By disavowing the whole range of 1%-99% compatibility, you have blinded yourself to the shades of grey.
dysfunction is setting you (and people who believe you) up for incompatibility.
If we choose to run the risk of an imcompatibility, that's our choice. You shouldn't lie and claim "so you can't mix them in a single install". Making such a statement is quantizing the fuzzy truth level onto a single boolean point, whose veracity we can precisely test.
Real life is full of shades of grey- so when YOU look at a grey situation and call it black, you've strayed from the path of truth.
The high-population areas do indeed have more power than the small areas -- but they have slightly less power per unit person, which is how it should be.
No they don't. The math to prove that they don't is much to complicated to post, but you can go read it. However, that much math is above most people's heads, so we can go on pretending that rural states have a small benefit. (Also, that benefit is solely from "Effect 1", below)
they have slightly less power per unit person, which is how it should be.
Do you have any support for that reasoning? The rest of your post certainly doesn't. Everything else you write (regarding suppression of candidates who are only locally popular) is true- but would still be true even if Senators didn't count towards electoral votes.
To be more specific, the Electoral College has two separate effects, both arguably creating unfairness, and either capable of being removed without upsetting the other. Effect 1 is what you call the "clamping device", which causes states to assign all of their electoral votes to one candidate. Effect 2 is the fact that each state gets electoral votes equal to (population/400000)+2, instead of just (pop/400000).
Abolishing the Electoral College would remove both those effects at once, but reforming it could target just one or the other.
That makes it harder for those places to dominate the election.
Why yes, disenfranchising people does indeed make it hard for them to influence elections.
Consider a candidate who enjoys a 98% majority in San Frangiego and Boswash, but only obtains 35% of the vote in the rest of the country
As you know, that's a ludicrously unrealistic example. And yet, it doesn't even work... because even with a purely-popular vote, 98% of SF and BW is just 41 million people. Add in 35% of the rest of the country, and they still lose a popular election by 132 to 169.
(pretty dismal).
Dismal? It's only 12% less that the 47% approval that it takes to win a state today!
That's a lie- you never made any argument. I've carefuly read ALL your posts on this topic, and none of them contains anything resembling an argument. All you've made are contradictions or the occasional appeal to authority.
In any case, since the Constitution isn't going to change anytime soon -- the Republicans would have to be crazy to allow it
Never assume that sanity is a prerequistite for editing the Constitution! Just remember the 18th Amendment, which shows that even the most far-out lunacies can be elevated to the highest law.
Seriously, the Republicans are not a monolith. Currently the party is steered by a fairly extreme wing that favors war, revenge, and enforced Old Testament morality. The moderate and fiscally conservative Republicans might welcome the change as a way to increase their dominance within the party.
At least the electoral college provides some stability.
You call it "stable" when just 500 more votes in Florida would've kept us out of Iraq? An election that hinges on handfuls of votes in one or two swing states is the opposite of stable!
california is a mix of people who have differing opinions and political beliefs. and california has not always voted democrat, either. for example,
Yes, it's a mix of people, of different parties. But one of those parties has the majority. In every state, there is always one party or the other with a majority of the legislature.
yes, that would shift the balance of power accross the country in the short term,
You belittle a significant change! How can you imagine that any Democrat this year would be willing to give Bush the Whitehouse, just for the vague hope of encouraging a mildly fairer electoral system in the distant future?
they have a republican governor now, or did you miss that?
Governors have no effect on passing amendments. Democratic states often accept a Republican governor, especially if they have 3rd parties splitting the leftist vote. Those governors are RINOs, though... at least as long as they want to stay in office.
but despite being sponsored by the minority, it's fairly popular, and may actually pass.
We'll see about that. However, a small state like Colorado has different motives than a big state.
of Illinois has more Presidential voting power than one from Utah.
Yeah, I flipped the names around. Obviously I meant Utah has more, because my whole point was that low-population states had an unfair advantage. I was changing around which to use as examples, and didn't want to stay with the over-used comparison of California to Wyoming.
It thus makes sense to ensure you have the necessary support in the states
Captain Obvious strikes again!
Yes, you do need support before an amendment can be passed- thanks for the enlightenment. But a state can support a position without already having passed an identical law in it's own jurisdiction.
Do you know how many states had laws completely banning alcohol, before they supported the Prohibition amendment?
Expecting state laws to pop up first is waiting for something that'll never arrive. Do you remember how Reagan and Gorbachev both wanted to reduce ICBM stockpiles? Neither of them was willing to go ahead and do it unless the other had already agreed to a similar change at the same time.
If you invent your own definitions for words, you can pretend to win any argument- but we'd all prefer if you did that by mumbling under your breath, and not posting it 5 times on a public BBS.
incompatible, adj: Impossible to be held simultaneously
So, do you argue it is impossible to install a debian package on ubuntu? Or do you admit they're not incompatible?
If a occasional conflict actually meant incompatible, then Debian would be incompatible with itself, because it occasionally does suffer an accidental breakage. Run "apt-get install php3 php4" to see it.
There are more than two options:
Yes, which is why I don't think you're a complete moron. You're not right, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're stupid- you could just be ignorant and prideful.
No, you are suffering from binary logic disease
In the past day, I've seen Twirlip of the Mists, Captain Carrot, and now Doc Ruby all attack people for offenses they are presenting committing. It's an ingenius defense, actually. To the numerous viewers who are unfamiliar with the details of topic, it appears ludicrous for a person to repeat an attack just made by his opponent. Therefore pre-emptively attacking someone for your own flaws is a superb technique for the dishonest rhetorician.
Just to stir the pot, why should you get to cast a direct vote for president if you haven't been paying much attention to his (or her eventually) work in the first place?
Do you speak math-ese? That argument is invalid by the process of induction. If a random voter is unqualified to make a choice, why is he qualified to choose the man who makes that choice?
It is a necessary and obvious result of freedom-of-speech that electors will lose discretionary power. From the very beginning, the Presidential candidates of the USA have been famous across the continent. It's impossible that the voters will not have an opinion as to which man they prefer. It's likewise impossible that they will choose an elector who disagrees with this opinion.
If electors had ANY other function, then there might be a reason to occasionally vote for one on another basis. But since their ONLY power is selecting the President, one can and should pick electors entirely on which President he plans to select. If you can't get a straight answer from a potential elector well before the election, then don't take the risk he'll disagree with you, and just go to a more forethright choice.
As an individual, I don't know how the budgeting process of a state government works, nor the overall process of designing environmental regulations.
Those are all fairly complex questions- too complex to fairly condense down to one ballot. Oftentimes, an expert is required to insulate the voting public from all those details. But the job of casting a vote for President from amoung at most a handful of contenders is not like that.
Sigh, if you were a robot, this level of self-contradiction would explode your head. I'll just quote 3 of your sentences, and let them sit there and fight each other:
No, just because you vote and your candidate didn't get elected this time does not mean you got disenfranchised.
My point is that the rural areas would have effectively no representation due to their less dense population.
It's not about a minority status so I didn't even address your straw man.
I can hardly imagine how someone can go on writing a post that is so at-odds with itself. You say that rural areas need special defense because they have fewer people... what do you think "minority" means, if not fewer people?
There were very cogent arguments presented for it against a popular vote. I'm not hearing anyone taking on any of those arguments here.
Maybe if you presented one or two of those arguments, someone might address it. You know, type it in, or link to it, or something. Instead of just appealing to phantoms.
No. As I've already explained twice, they felt the contradiction was an acceptable compromise to get the Constitution approved. The bicamaral legislature was a compromise. If you don't believe this, then refute it, don't just ignore it.
Wrong. Back in the day, a person counted for the population of a state, regardless of whether that person could vote.
Wrong. Back in the day, slaves weren't persons. (I mean that by legal terminiology). "Murder" was killing a person, but killing a slave would just be vandalism. Oxen and horses didn't add to the population, so why should slaves?
Anything less, and the Southern states wouln't have joined the union.
Yes... which is why that clause was put in to benefit them. If there had been no special mention of slaves at all, then certainly they wouldn't have counted towards the population, because they weren't people. They were property.
Do you really think that just because the states are small, the people are idiots?
Do you really think that because the states are small, the people are selfish? Believe it or not, sometimes the holder of unfair power can be convinced to give it up willingly, by appealing to higher principles.
Ok. First, your conclusion is false: High population states DO get more power in the House of Representatives, and in the Electoral college
It's hard to respond to someone who's so completely ignorant of what I just wrote. Go back and read my first paragraph, and then say that again.
Also ridiculous, and Captain Carrot never made that argument.
Another place where you need to practice reading comprehension. Of course Captian Carrot didn't say that; DLR did. (You know, the guy I was responding to...)
See the false analogy? The relationship between one's IDENTITY traits and how they vote is not (and constitutionally should not be) inextricably linked. The relationship between one's ECONOMIC activity and how one vote's is
Yes, I know that's your position. What I want is for someone to DEFEND that position; not invoke it as Holy Writ.
Then again, the argument that people with different economic interests deserve inherently unequal political power is virtually self-refuting (except to audiences in favor of class-warfare). For example, the minority of college-educated American workers have very different economic needs from blue-collar employees. Let's give them greater voting power!
The principles of free market capitalism say that rural needs would be protected under a popular vote, because whatever power city residents take at the polls, they'll sell back in exchange for critical foodstuffs.
and is itself a FEDERATION of states, it is supposed to represent every state's interests as equally legitimate, not just the high density ones.
That's stating how things are, not why they should be this way.
If you get to vote, you are not DISENFRANCHISED.
If your vote has 0% chance to change anything, and everyone knew ahead of time the chance was 0%, are you really enfranchised? Note that I'm not claiming this, but DLR did. He claimed that a popular vote would disenfranchise rural dwellers. But as you well know, they'd still get to vote, so they're not disenfranchised.
We do not exist in a nation where each person's vote is considered equal,
What's your point? Do you think it's illegal to talk about hypotheticals? Because abortion is legal today, can I not talk about whether it's right or wrnog?
We're discussing how things SHOULD be, not how they ARE. "That's the way we've always done it" is NOT a rigorous defense for a course of action.
So if there are all these factions out to kill each other, why don't they just divide up the country and seperate the populaces?
It's a tough question, and one the USA should've thought hard about before launching their nation-building effort (in reality, many government thinkers did work on it, but Bush ignored them)
The 3 simplest reasons why Iraq cannot be broken up: 1. Oil is not spread through Iraq, it's concentrated in a few places. Those people living far from the oil will not accept breaking up the country, because they don't get sales revenue anymore. 2. General weakness. The states split off from Iraq would have smaller militaries, and be unable to resist invasion from their neighbors (like Iran). 3. The Kurdish group occupies the north of Iraq, along the Turkish border. But many Kurds live inside Turkey as well. They'd like to see south Turkey and north Iraq combine into Kurdistan. Of course, Turkey doesn't want this to happen, and will fight any division of Iraq.
No, it hasn't. In 1901, the USA Navy invaded and conquered the Philippine islands. Insurgents continued to fight against the occupiers for many years, but couldn't win. That area would still be a USA colony today, except for the intervention of the Japanese Empire in 1942.
they don't care about their fellow soldiers' welfare (because they are there against their will)
That's a dirty lie that'll get your teeth knocked out in a lot of places. Draftees do worse because they had less dedicated training, not because they don't care for the lives of their teammates. (If anything, they care about each other too much, and are more likely to put their safety over the mission).
The reason professional soldiers do better is because, as volunteers, they are expected to stay longer, so more training time can be invested in them. (And, the trainers have more freedom to wash-out the incompetent)
We have plenty of volunteers these days,
If we have plenty, then why is the National Guard in Iraq? That is not their mission. The Army is supposed to fight in foreign countries, with reinforcement from the Reserves if needed. The National Guard should only be activated for missions regarding imminent danger to the USA itself.
Aside from Iraq, which was the stupidest thing Bush could've done
Oh, I could imagine 2 or 3 potentially stupider things. Attacking the Axis of Evil in order of their WMD power, for example... that would've been much worse.
Still, Bush's argument that the insurgents attacking soldiers in Iraq would instead have become terrorists striking the USA just doesn't hold up. The required skill-sets are too different. To infiltrate the USA undetected, you need a level of language and cultural skills that the foreign fighters coming into Iraq just can't muster.
Circumstances have shown that to be untrue. Confidential interviews with privates throughout the Army have shown that they didn't expect to be policing Iraq.
Even more importantly, the men who signed onto the Army National Guard absolutely didn't think they'd be ordered into Iraq to reinforce MPs. Their recruiters said "1 month a year, and you'll be called up in case of a national emergency". Well, their nation had no emergency, so they were called up to go protect a hostile enemy power. Did they know those risks?
We know how horrible it is, and we're grateful for those who serve so we don't have to.
Maybe we could demonstrate HOW grateful by keeping them out of unimportant, high-risk, unresolvable quagmires?
That's an insufficient answer, becauase the Bush administration claims a "dire national emergeny" is already ongoing.
After all, the National Guard can only be deployed overseas in case of a dire emergency... because you know, in normal circumstances, they're supposed to be guarding THIS nation.
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that's what it's like in the real world, outside your quaint little binary opposites
Ha! "Quaint binary opposites"! That's like saying that because Debian packages might concievably have a version conflict with an Ubuntu package, that they are "binary incompatible", and "you can't mix them in a single install".
Slashdot Mirror
Let me show you some examples of what "incompatible" means:
Windows Installshield on Max OS X.
Dreamcast and Playstation.
THOSE are incompatible, because you KNOW that for any product from category 1, it will not possibly work on category 2.
Ubuntu versus Debian? Odds are it will work just fine. Thus, they're not incompatible. Calling them that would make as much sense as describing humans as nonambulatory species because you've seen a few patients in wheelchairs.
True statements: Most humans can walk. Some humans can't walk.
Mostly-true statement: Humans can walk.
False statement: Humans can't walk.
Your claims fall into that 3rd category.
until they fail, and then there's no way out.
apt-get remove --f bad_package
You are trying to force a "black and white" scenario on a scenario with some nuances.
HOW can you continue to insist that, when you're the one who wants to see only two options (100% compatible or incompatible), and I'm the one who says it comes in variable degrees??
Trinary logic is the model for the compatibility conditions: none, some, all; your
Here we observe a typical Slashdot evasive technique... see how the post is filled with lofty, uncontestable vagaries which upon closer examination have no bearing to the topic of contention, but merely give the speaker some aura of reasonableness. By saying some things that make sense, the impression is created that he always makes sense.
That's why I'm saying you have "binary logic disease", while arguing that Ubuntu falls into one of only two scenarios.
YOU are the one who split it into two scenarios. You heard that Ubuntu isn't guaranteed 100% compatible, so you declared it is incompatible. Incompatible has a specific meaning in the dictionary, equivalent to 0% compatibility. (Or at least well under 50%) By disavowing the whole range of 1%-99% compatibility, you have blinded yourself to the shades of grey.
dysfunction is setting you (and people who believe you) up for incompatibility.
If we choose to run the risk of an imcompatibility, that's our choice. You shouldn't lie and claim "so you can't mix them in a single install". Making such a statement is quantizing the fuzzy truth level onto a single boolean point, whose veracity we can precisely test.
Real life is full of shades of grey- so when YOU look at a grey situation and call it black, you've strayed from the path of truth.
The high-population areas do indeed have more power than the small areas -- but they have slightly less power per unit person, which is how it should be.
No they don't. The math to prove that they don't is much to complicated to post, but you can go read it. However, that much math is above most people's heads, so we can go on pretending that rural states have a small benefit. (Also, that benefit is solely from "Effect 1", below)
they have slightly less power per unit person, which is how it should be.
Do you have any support for that reasoning? The rest of your post certainly doesn't. Everything else you write (regarding suppression of candidates who are only locally popular) is true- but would still be true even if Senators didn't count towards electoral votes.
To be more specific, the Electoral College has two separate effects, both arguably creating unfairness, and either capable of being removed without upsetting the other. Effect 1 is what you call the "clamping device", which causes states to assign all of their electoral votes to one candidate. Effect 2 is the fact that each state gets electoral votes equal to (population/400000)+2, instead of just (pop/400000).
Abolishing the Electoral College would remove both those effects at once, but reforming it could target just one or the other.
That makes it harder for those places to dominate the election.
Why yes, disenfranchising people does indeed make it hard for them to influence elections.
Consider a candidate who enjoys a 98% majority in San Frangiego and Boswash, but only obtains 35% of the vote in the rest of the country
As you know, that's a ludicrously unrealistic example. And yet, it doesn't even work... because even with a purely-popular vote, 98% of SF and BW is just 41 million people. Add in 35% of the rest of the country, and they still lose a popular election by 132 to 169.
(pretty dismal).
Dismal? It's only 12% less that the 47% approval that it takes to win a state today!
I did that, you silly person.
That's a lie- you never made any argument. I've carefuly read ALL your posts on this topic, and none of them contains anything resembling an argument. All you've made are contradictions or the occasional appeal to authority.
Please, just point out which one of these posts you think contains an argument.
For reference, here's an example of someone else making an argument for your position. He doesn't support it very well, but at least he tried.
In any case, since the Constitution isn't going to change anytime soon -- the Republicans would have to be crazy to allow it
Never assume that sanity is a prerequistite for editing the Constitution! Just remember the 18th Amendment, which shows that even the most far-out lunacies can be elevated to the highest law.
Seriously, the Republicans are not a monolith. Currently the party is steered by a fairly extreme wing that favors war, revenge, and enforced Old Testament morality. The moderate and fiscally conservative Republicans might welcome the change as a way to increase their dominance within the party.
At least the electoral college provides some stability.
You call it "stable" when just 500 more votes in Florida would've kept us out of Iraq? An election that hinges on handfuls of votes in one or two swing states is the opposite of stable!
california is a mix of people who have differing opinions and political beliefs. and california has not always voted democrat, either. for example,
Yes, it's a mix of people, of different parties. But one of those parties has the majority. In every state, there is always one party or the other with a majority of the legislature.
yes, that would shift the balance of power accross the country in the short term,
You belittle a significant change! How can you imagine that any Democrat this year would be willing to give Bush the Whitehouse, just for the vague hope of encouraging a mildly fairer electoral system in the distant future?
they have a republican governor now, or did you miss that?
Governors have no effect on passing amendments. Democratic states often accept a Republican governor, especially if they have 3rd parties splitting the leftist vote. Those governors are RINOs, though... at least as long as they want to stay in office.
but despite being sponsored by the minority, it's fairly popular, and may actually pass.
We'll see about that. However, a small state like Colorado has different motives than a big state.
of Illinois has more Presidential voting power than one from Utah.
Yeah, I flipped the names around. Obviously I meant Utah has more, because my whole point was that low-population states had an unfair advantage. I was changing around which to use as examples, and didn't want to stay with the over-used comparison of California to Wyoming.
It thus makes sense to ensure you have the necessary support in the states
Captain Obvious strikes again!
Yes, you do need support before an amendment can be passed- thanks for the enlightenment. But a state can support a position without already having passed an identical law in it's own jurisdiction.
Do you know how many states had laws completely banning alcohol, before they supported the Prohibition amendment?
Expecting state laws to pop up first is waiting for something that'll never arrive. Do you remember how Reagan and Gorbachev both wanted to reduce ICBM stockpiles? Neither of them was willing to go ahead and do it unless the other had already agreed to a similar change at the same time.
Ever heard of Hitler? He was elected by popular vote and at the pinnacle of his government had 95% approval of the citizenry.
Irrelevant. If a guy has 95% support, he will win any kind of election, popular or indirect or whatever.
(Oh, and Hitler wasn't elected to his position by popular vote, but close enough)
Even a little incompatible means incompatible.
If you invent your own definitions for words, you can pretend to win any argument- but we'd all prefer if you did that by mumbling under your breath, and not posting it 5 times on a public BBS.
incompatible, adj: Impossible to be held simultaneously
So, do you argue it is impossible to install a debian package on ubuntu? Or do you admit they're not incompatible?
If a occasional conflict actually meant incompatible, then Debian would be incompatible with itself, because it occasionally does suffer an accidental breakage. Run "apt-get install php3 php4" to see it.
There are more than two options:
Yes, which is why I don't think you're a complete moron. You're not right, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're stupid- you could just be ignorant and prideful.
No, you are suffering from binary logic disease
In the past day, I've seen Twirlip of the Mists, Captain Carrot, and now Doc Ruby all attack people for offenses they are presenting committing. It's an ingenius defense, actually. To the numerous viewers who are unfamiliar with the details of topic, it appears ludicrous for a person to repeat an attack just made by his opponent. Therefore pre-emptively attacking someone for your own flaws is a superb technique for the dishonest rhetorician.
Just to stir the pot, why should you get to cast a direct vote for president if you haven't been paying much attention to his (or her eventually) work in the first place?
Do you speak math-ese? That argument is invalid by the process of induction.
If a random voter is unqualified to make a choice, why is he qualified to choose the man who makes that choice?
It is a necessary and obvious result of freedom-of-speech that electors will lose discretionary power. From the very beginning, the Presidential candidates of the USA have been famous across the continent. It's impossible that the voters will not have an opinion as to which man they prefer. It's likewise impossible that they will choose an elector who disagrees with this opinion.
If electors had ANY other function, then there might be a reason to occasionally vote for one on another basis. But since their ONLY power is selecting the President, one can and should pick electors entirely on which President he plans to select. If you can't get a straight answer from a potential elector well before the election, then don't take the risk he'll disagree with you, and just go to a more forethright choice.
As an individual, I don't know how the budgeting process of a state government works, nor the overall process of designing environmental regulations.
Those are all fairly complex questions- too complex to fairly condense down to one ballot. Oftentimes, an expert is required to insulate the voting public from all those details. But the job of casting a vote for President from amoung at most a handful of contenders is not like that.
Sigh, if you were a robot, this level of self-contradiction would explode your head. I'll just quote 3 of your sentences, and let them sit there and fight each other:
No, just because you vote and your candidate didn't get elected this time does not mean you got disenfranchised.
My point is that the rural areas would have effectively no representation due to their less dense population.
It's not about a minority status so I didn't even address your straw man.
I can hardly imagine how someone can go on writing a post that is so at-odds with itself. You say that rural areas need special defense because they have fewer people... what do you think "minority" means, if not fewer people?
There were very cogent arguments presented for it against a popular vote. I'm not hearing anyone taking on any of those arguments here.
Maybe if you presented one or two of those arguments, someone might address it. You know, type it in, or link to it, or something. Instead of just appealing to phantoms.
They must not have felt they contradicted.
No. As I've already explained twice, they felt the contradiction was an acceptable compromise to get the Constitution approved. The bicamaral legislature was a compromise. If you don't believe this, then refute it, don't just ignore it.
Wrong. Back in the day, a person counted for the population of a state, regardless of whether that person could vote.
Wrong. Back in the day, slaves weren't persons. (I mean that by legal terminiology). "Murder" was killing a person, but killing a slave would just be vandalism. Oxen and horses didn't add to the population, so why should slaves?
Anything less, and the Southern states wouln't have joined the union.
Yes... which is why that clause was put in to benefit them. If there had been no special mention of slaves at all, then certainly they wouldn't have counted towards the population, because they weren't people. They were property.
Do you really think that just because the states are small, the people are idiots?
Do you really think that because the states are small, the people are selfish? Believe it or not, sometimes the holder of unfair power can be convinced to give it up willingly, by appealing to higher principles.
Ok. First, your conclusion is false: High population states DO get more power in the House of Representatives, and in the Electoral college
It's hard to respond to someone who's so completely ignorant of what I just wrote. Go back and read my first paragraph, and then say that again.
Also ridiculous, and Captain Carrot never made that argument.
Another place where you need to practice reading comprehension. Of course Captian Carrot didn't say that; DLR did. (You know, the guy I was responding to...)
See the false analogy? The relationship between one's IDENTITY traits and how they vote is not (and constitutionally should not be) inextricably linked. The relationship between one's ECONOMIC activity and how one vote's is
Yes, I know that's your position. What I want is for someone to DEFEND that position; not invoke it as Holy Writ.
Then again, the argument that people with different economic interests deserve inherently unequal political power is virtually self-refuting (except to audiences in favor of class-warfare). For example, the minority of college-educated American workers have very different economic needs from blue-collar employees. Let's give them greater voting power!
The principles of free market capitalism say that rural needs would be protected under a popular vote, because whatever power city residents take at the polls, they'll sell back in exchange for critical foodstuffs.
and is itself a FEDERATION of states, it is supposed to represent every state's interests as equally legitimate, not just the high density ones.
That's stating how things are, not why they should be this way.
If you get to vote, you are not DISENFRANCHISED.
If your vote has 0% chance to change anything, and everyone knew ahead of time the chance was 0%, are you really enfranchised? Note that I'm not claiming this, but DLR did. He claimed that a popular vote would disenfranchise rural dwellers. But as you well know, they'd still get to vote, so they're not disenfranchised.
We do not exist in a nation where each person's vote is considered equal,
What's your point? Do you think it's illegal to talk about hypotheticals? Because abortion is legal today, can I not talk about whether it's right or wrnog?
We're discussing how things SHOULD be, not how they ARE. "That's the way we've always done it" is NOT a rigorous defense for a course of action.
BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT IS THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE STATES, NOT THE PEOPLE.
Okaaay... That would make a good question for the candidates, actually:
"Mr. President, are you the Chief Executive of the People of the USA?"
What do you think GW Bush would say to that? Really...
I suggest you get your facts straight before shooting your mouth off.
I wish you'd be marginally relevant. The constant appeal to tradition is getting very stale.
So if there are all these factions out to kill each other, why don't they just divide up the country and seperate the populaces?
It's a tough question, and one the USA should've thought hard about before launching their nation-building effort (in reality, many government thinkers did work on it, but Bush ignored them)
The 3 simplest reasons why Iraq cannot be broken up:
1. Oil is not spread through Iraq, it's concentrated in a few places. Those people living far from the oil will not accept breaking up the country, because they don't get sales revenue anymore.
2. General weakness. The states split off from Iraq would have smaller militaries, and be unable to resist invasion from their neighbors (like Iran).
3. The Kurdish group occupies the north of Iraq, along the Turkish border. But many Kurds live inside Turkey as well. They'd like to see south Turkey and north Iraq combine into Kurdistan. Of course, Turkey doesn't want this to happen, and will fight any division of Iraq.
While this has been true in the 20th century,
No, it hasn't. In 1901, the USA Navy invaded and conquered the Philippine islands. Insurgents continued to fight against the occupiers for many years, but couldn't win. That area would still be a USA colony today, except for the intervention of the Japanese Empire in 1942.
they don't care about their fellow soldiers' welfare (because they are there against their will)
That's a dirty lie that'll get your teeth knocked out in a lot of places. Draftees do worse because they had less dedicated training, not because they don't care for the lives of their teammates. (If anything, they care about each other too much, and are more likely to put their safety over the mission).
The reason professional soldiers do better is because, as volunteers, they are expected to stay longer, so more training time can be invested in them. (And, the trainers have more freedom to wash-out the incompetent)
We have plenty of volunteers these days,
If we have plenty, then why is the National Guard in Iraq? That is not their mission. The Army is supposed to fight in foreign countries, with reinforcement from the Reserves if needed. The National Guard should only be activated for missions regarding imminent danger to the USA itself.
Aside from Iraq, which was the stupidest thing Bush could've done
Oh, I could imagine 2 or 3 potentially stupider things. Attacking the Axis of Evil in order of their WMD power, for example... that would've been much worse.
Still, Bush's argument that the insurgents attacking soldiers in Iraq would instead have become terrorists striking the USA just doesn't hold up. The required skill-sets are too different. To infiltrate the USA undetected, you need a level of language and cultural skills that the foreign fighters coming into Iraq just can't muster.
A soilder joined the service knowing the risks.
Circumstances have shown that to be untrue. Confidential interviews with privates throughout the Army have shown that they didn't expect to be policing Iraq.
Even more importantly, the men who signed onto the Army National Guard absolutely didn't think they'd be ordered into Iraq to reinforce MPs. Their recruiters said "1 month a year, and you'll be called up in case of a national emergency". Well, their nation had no emergency, so they were called up to go protect a hostile enemy power. Did they know those risks?
We know how horrible it is, and we're grateful for those who serve so we don't have to.
Maybe we could demonstrate HOW grateful by keeping them out of unimportant, high-risk, unresolvable quagmires?
Under circumstances of dire national emergency.
That's an insufficient answer, becauase the Bush administration claims a "dire national emergeny" is already ongoing.
After all, the National Guard can only be deployed overseas in case of a dire emergency... because you know, in normal circumstances, they're supposed to be guarding THIS nation.
that's what it's like in the real world, outside your quaint little binary opposites
Ha! "Quaint binary opposites"! That's like saying that because Debian packages might concievably have a version conflict with an Ubuntu package, that they are "binary incompatible", and "you can't mix them in a single install".