Wbahn said:


Isn't that what's supposed to happen in a representative democracy? Supposedly, after informed debate, the majority imposes its will on the minority?

Correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a LONG time since I've read up on this stuff and my memory is a bit rusty, but from what I can recall about our government, it is a republic-that is, rights for all, including the minority. In a republic, the majority can never dictate what everyone can or cannot eat, or say or think because we have rights protected by a constitution.

I'm going to assume that you don't really think it works this way - or want it to work this way. Otherwise, you would have to say that if Congess were to pass a law saying that people more than 50 pounds over some weight in some government approved table were to have all of their property confiscated in order to reimburse "the people" for indirect expenses associated with their obesity and that they were to furthermore be imprisoned and forced to consume a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet until such time as their weight was reduced to within 10 pounds of their approved weight that this would be acceptable to you.

If such a law were to be passed, do you feel that you should have the right to challenge it? Or do you feel that it is simply the result of the right of the majority to impose its will on the minority?

There is a fine balancing act between allowing the majority to make decisions that apply to everyone and protecting the minority from being oppressed by the majority. The Founders were VERY aware of this. In fact, the present government we have (under the U.S. Constitution) is not the first one that we had. We were originally set up under the Articles of Confederation and the primary concern was protecting the rights and freedoms of the individual from being trampled by the majority. So they made the Federal Government very weak - intentionally so.

As it turned out, they made it too weak to be able to carry out the core functions set out for it and it couldn't last. So, while recognizing the need for a federal government that was strong enough to carry out its charged duties, there was great debate about how much authority it should be given. While many people felt that the original U.S. Constitution provided adequate safeguards, it quickly became apparent that most did not feel this was the case and that it simply would never be ratified unless specific protections for individuals were put into place - we call those protections The Bill of Rights. In fact, without including the protections provided by the Bill of Rights it is very likely that we would have had a second American Revolution right then and there. People were THAT passionate about limiting the power of the government to attack the individual - and it is what the Second Amendment is all about. When all is said and done, the the government can't freely impose its will because, at some point, the people have been ensured the ability to revolt - as long as the Second Amendment guarantees remain intact which is why they were written into the Bill of Rights. Each one of those Amendments was crafted with the primary purpose of making it so that the majority had firm limits on its ability to impose its will on the minority - particularly the Tenth Amendment which, unfortunately, has been largely completely forgotten by the very courts whose job it is, above anything else, to ensure that the Constitution is adhered to.

The laws of this country are there to ensure that everyones freedoms are protected, not impose the will of the majority. This is why eating, should never be regulated by the government. However, the govt has gotten its hands in so many pies now, that very few people can agree on where to draw the line.

bacon, could I talk you into editing your post to get the attribution correct? I'm not the one that made that statement. Thanks a lot!

sorry wban, i didnt mean to do that, it is just how the quote came up. I actually agree with what you said. I think the constitution and principles of this country has been eroded greatly over time (in large part to small minded lawyers, who see the loophole, and not the big picture). I think that is what is happening now, and i hope something happens to change this path before it is too late.. i like eating my oreos, and things, i know what is good and bad for me, it is my choice to make

Thanks a lot, bacon. I knew what you were trying to get across and know how the quote of a quote can easily get screwed up - been there and done that!

Xeles,

My understanding of the principles of a republic is that eligible voters elect legislators, who create laws based on what they think is best for their constituents. In the Roman Empire, only a small fraction (land-owning Roman males, I think) were eligible voters, so laws were designed with them in mind. The U.S., I believe, is a modified republic, where legislators are more vulnerable to pressure from the groups that paid for their election or have the money to run ad campaings that hurt their public standing.


wbahhn,

I appreciate the civics lesson, but I don't observe government to work today the way you say it does. I don't remember my constitutional rights prevailing, for example, in either the creation of the Dept. of Homeland Security or the Patriot Act. I don't see that the federal government respected the will of Californians when they passed the Medical Marijuana Act. I don't see the rights minority of gay couples respected by states who forbid gay marriage or even civil union. In short, the will of the majority gets imposed on the minority all the time.

Nor did your rights prevail when the Department of Education was created or the Environmental Protection Agency or dozens of other agencies and departments. You'll notice that I didn't say that it works the way that it is supposed to - in fact I pointed out how it has been increasingly deviating from how it is supposed to. Most of the places where individual rights have been ignored by the federal government are examples of the violation of the Tenth Amendment (and frequently others) which, unfortunately, the courts have been extremely negligent in enforcing.

But, that being what it is, the situation is still not as you describe it. Congress can't just pass any law it chooses and, just because it passes that law, impose the will of the majority over the objections of the minority with carte blanche. There ARE checks to that power and they DO get used - albeit not as much as they need to be used.

So why aren't they used more? It's actually pretty simple when all is said and done. On too many occasions we have allowed - indeed begged - the government to impose laws and regulations on everyone because the cause appealed to enough people. Before 1900ish, the courts were limiting the federal government's reach even when such laws passed but, as a people, we decided that we no longer cared about having the Constitutional protections rigorously applied and passed a number of Amendments in the early 1900's which forever strengthened the government's hand and weakended the individual's. Perhaps the most damaging was the 17th Amendment when the people saw the Senate's stance in protecting State's Rights as getting in the way of letting the Federal government from delivering nirvana to the masses. So we altered the fundamental nature of the Senate and, in doing so, removed the primary check against the federal government - the fact that the Senate, being appointed by the States to represent the States, was the body that approved federal judges and therefore had a vested interest in making sure that the federal courts were willing to block the executive branch when it overstepped its constitutional limits.

So the bottom line then is that the Tenth Amendment doesn't get enforced because, as a people, we don't want it enforced - we don't want to give up the ability to use the heavy hand of government to impose our will on others and for some reason continue to think that we can somehow prevent others from using that same heavy hand to impose their will on us.

The predominant attitude used to be, "Government, stay out of my life. I will take care of myself, my family, and my community and accept the consequences for failing to do so." Over time, it shifted to, "Communities should take care of people that can't take care of themselves and since they sometimes don't we will pass laws that require them to." We invited the camel into the tent by thinking that big government would, or even could, solve societies problems without giving proper thought to the fact that doing so involves one group of people imposing their will on another group of people and that the group doing the imposing would sooner or later reap what they sowed.

A classic example is the Income Tax - which the Constitution specifically forbids. All direct taxation on the people was to be done by enumeration meaning that everyone paid the same amount. A few short term Income Tax laws were passed to meet the funding needs for wars, but they couldn't be sustained for long after the war. The highest rate of any of these was 10% abd only applied to very wealthy individuals. But once your sufficiently far removed from why the prohibitions in the Constitution are there to begin with, it's not hard to convince 51% of the people in 75% of the states that an Income Tax is a good thing when you are promised that the highest rate will only be 7% and that over 90% of Americans are completely exempt altogether - just think of all the wonderful things that government can now do for everyone and the 90% that aren't going to have to pay a dime have no problem taking less such a modest fraction (typcially about 3%) of the income from the people that can most afford it. It was a simple case of promising enough people that they could have something for nothing if only they change the Constitution - which we proceeded to do with the 16th Amendment. We let the camel into the tent and it didn't take long before the vast majority of Americans were paying Income Tax and the marginal rates exceeded 90%!

I don't know that there is any going back. The attitude shift is now highly engrained - on both sides of the political spectrum. The right wants to say that a gay couple don't have a right to be married and the left wants to say that a homeowner doesn't have the right to refuse to rent out a room to someone that's gay. I'm afraid we are long past the days when enough people insisted on having the full authority to control their own destinies while accepting the full responsibility that goes along with it - today too many people want neither.

Sure they can. They can repeal the law of gravity if they are so inclined. It just won't have much effect.

Of course, in the US they have to get the courts and the executive branch to go along with them...

wbahn,

Thanks again for your lucid remarks. My point still stands. I'm commenting on the way government works, not how it ought to. We live in what I consider a corporatist-fascist state, since lawmakers legislate and regulators regulate mostly in favor of the corporations, who have the lion's share of power in this country.

So that means that it is the corporations and the regulators in their hip pockets that have resulted in the huge reduction in air pollution in this country? I guess it was the auto makers that insisted that they be required to improve fuel effeciency and reduce emissions? It must have been, because we all know that the big, greedy corporations always get their way since Congess and the regulators are bought and paid for. Just think how much better off we would have been had we adopted the communist-socialist model that has proven to be so wonderful at creating a worker's paradise with pure, clean air, crystal pure drinking water, and happy, content citizens who are secure in all of their freedoms and liberty.

wbahn - whoa, slow down, I'm not sure where or what your aggitation is.

First, Capitalism won in the 20th century hands down - it hammered communism, pounded socialism, and even "liberal" market economies like Japan eventually lagged behind.

Second, Enron, Tyco, Halliburton, Martha Stewart. Just because you win doesn't mean you can subvert the law.

Third - corporations are often idiotic in their policies - they resist long-term reform because stock markets demand short-term gains.

That's enough for now, I think.

It does if we live in a corporatist-fascist state where the corporations have all the power and the regulators are in their hip pocket!

Quote:

corporations are often idiotic in their policies - they resist long-term reform because stock markets demand short-term gains.

Agreed, but since we live in corporatist-fascist state where the corporations have all the power and the regulators are in their hip pocket, the environmental progess - among many other things - must have been at the insistance of these same corporations. How else could it have come about since they have all the power and the regulators are in their hip pocket?

Am I being more than a bit facetious? Yes. I'm using a process called Reductio ad absurdum (“Reduction to absurdity”) to show the logical fallacy inherent in the claim that we live in corporatist-fascist nation.