Reply #43: "give them an inch and they'll take it a mile school." [View All]

[madmusic]

Excellent post, and we agree on a great deal. Frankly, I didn't realize what power bureaucracies have until recently, and didn't know that the checks and balances were negated within them. If that is what the Republicans always had against them, then they were right. A bureaucracy is the judicial branch, the executive branch, and the legislative branch all rolled into one. Many people who have run into the bureaucracy of the local motor vehicle department head-on (apply directly to the forehead!) will know what this means. Sure, they are granted this power through state or federal legislation, but they run with it and get power hungry. They can be the police, judge and executioner all in one. There are ways to appeal their decisions and move the issue out of their total control and into the regular legal system, but is difficult and rule laden. Lately, it seems, both parties are perfectly happy ruling by legislation, if it serves their purpose. There doesn't seem to be much difference between the two anymore.

My major gripe with the right on that issue is their "leave it up to the states" stance, when many of the Framers knew tyranny was more of a risk from local and state government. That's why I support a stronger 14th Amendment applied to the states. That, I think, would be truer to our Framers intentions, and would only make for bigger government if the states try to repress their citizens Bill of Rights.

There are many environmentalists who will gladly offer links to why electric cars, or alternative energy cars, are so important. They will also argue that it is big business through self interest who claims there is no danger to the environment. I don't claim to know much about that debate, but it does seem logical that given a finite planet, there has to be a point of no return.

You makes a good point about fascism, and Bush is using it now. It's a loaded word and one I don't use lightly. My major reason for using it (see my sig below for a link) is that we are in many ways reliving the Progressive Era, or at least I think so. For some reason a lot of American's do not know that Hitler borrowed his eugenics plan from us, and if not for him going to the extreme he did, the many elite American's who had control over politics and law nearly sold the country on our way form of Nazism. The irony is, the most liberal state, California, led the pack: Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection. That could not have happened without support from the left and the right.

This possibility was beyond belief to me a couple of years ago until learning about it here at DU. Everyone has their fight, and this is mine. Sometimes I'm as bad as a "Bible thumper."

As to the name calling, at the risk of sounding like a hypocrite (because I do it too) it was Newt Gingrich who started that. Before his "Language, A Key Mechanism of Control" congresspersons from both sides used to wine and dine together. It's only gotten worse since then.

But I agree we over react too often, or at least I do. Even with extreme views, and even when suffering from fiery passion, the tone of our posts, if we hope to reach anyone, really matters. That's advice I should listen to.

edit typo, and probably still missed one.