I have been mulling over the differences between Republican and Democrats. I find both of them valid and at the same time flawed.
If Republicans truly want more state oversight and regulation and less government interaction, then where are all the state laws that we need to protect the citizens from money hungry corporations? Why do we not see more Republicans swarming state capitals and influencing more state government issues? If they truly believe in less national government and more state government, they can't expect to walk up to Washington D.C., strip away all of the big government and say "We've fixed all our problems." If the first thing they do is strip away big government then they have effectively left the public at a huge disadvantage. I find it compelling that Texas, being such a Red state, has effectively dismantled our state level government instead of making it bigger. The true idea would be to build up strong state governments and then seek to dismantle the national laws that are redundant. Then as a nation we could ease off expecting the national government to take care of our needs and trust in the states to take care of us.
As for Democrats, I personally am leaving my Republican roots and leaning left more regularly because I feel businesses will not regulate themselves. It has been proven repeatedly that businesses will cheat, lie, steal and abuse their consumers and workers. The states have not protected us well enough and an incident with an insurance company proves the point. In 2008 Conesco had to pay around $32 million because their subsidiaries wrongfully denied claims, delayed claims and misled their elderly costumers. We feel like the states are not protecting us, so the government should step up to the plate. The flaw here is that this is exactly opposite of what the founders of the constitution wanted for us. The Bill of Rights wasn't even supposed to be applied to the states. It was truly only to be applied at a federal level and was almost left out entirely because many of the founders believed the states would be responsible for regulation. We were truly supposed to be independent states where each state could have completely different laws, united only for minimal purposes. I guess I lean more to the left because our 200+ year track record of states regulating things doesn't bode well for the future.
I don't know if there is a better way than what we have going for us now. Sometimes I wonder if we had more options, multiple parties, if that would help address these issues, but right now it seems that any third party (on a presidential level) only serves to detract votes from the only two parties that obtain anywhere close to enough votes to win. However protests and taking test cases before the Supreme Court does seem to have an impact on how laws are seen and used. I guess time will only tell what can make a definite change.
"We were truly supposed to be independent states where each state could have completely different laws, united only for minimal purposes"
ReplyDeleteThat's not the intent at all. In fact, that _was_ once the intent, but the founding fathers themselves dispensed with that notion pretty early.
Remember, the Revolutionary War was nominally over in early 1782 and George Washington wasn't inaugurated as our first President for 7 more years - 1789. The American psyche seems to feel that it was 7 years of trying to hammer out a Constitution, but that's not really right.
The Continental Congress didn't even meet to begin drafting the current Constitution until April 1787. Our first Constitution - which these days we call the Articles of Confederation - WAS exactly what you describe; truly independent, sovereign states who united only for minimal purposes. This lasted for _10 years,_ before the Founding Fathers realized that this would never work long-term and set about crafting a new Constitution with the explicit purpose of crafting a stronger, centralized Federal government.
Most of the limits on the Federal Government that are in the current Constitution were not dogmatic beliefs of the Founding Fathers, but instead were compromises they used to help secure the support of factions who vehemently opposed central government of any kind.
Lol Jeremy, so out of my whole post you fixate on one sentence. :P
ReplyDeleteI know all about the confederation and how it didn't work so they created a compromise in the constitution, however even with the constitution they really didn't want to create a super massive central government where the bill of rights would apply to the states. They really had wanted the states to be more responsible for their own laws where ever possible. Some wanted more central government, some wanted much much less, what they created was what we have, but it wasn't until much later that the bill of rights was EVER applied to state actions, showing that they really did want a good deal of independence between the state and govt. regulations. they were not as intermixed as they are these days.