GOP wants candidate off ticket:

[Embar Angylwrath]

All three of you (Pathos, Harlowe and Fail) are missing something... one can't compare honor and moralality across a timeline, because what is considered morally acceptable in one timeframe may not be in another timeframe. It was once morally acceptable to beat your wife, now it isn't. It was once morally inacceptable to marry across racial lines, not so anymore.

I don't know how morallly acceptable it was at the time to bend a negro slave over the desk and have a gentleman relieve himself inside her. Certinaly today it would morally reprehensible and dishonorable to use any unwilling human in a sexual encounter. But then?

As to Harlowe... your use of the word "elites" is misleading. I think the term at the time was "landed men". And from my understanding, the right to vote was reserved to landed men because landed men paid the vast majority, if not all, of the taxes at the time. And that was an evolution stretching back to Roman times, moving through Britain with the Romans, and eventually landing in the colonies, which eventually became the United States. (And it even stretches to Greece, before the Romans). Its the evolution of western civilization.

So its really pointless to compare the evolution of morals (the more accurate term is probably mores, which is the word for a given society's values and norms) with a different society. And as a society moves through time, they develop differnt sets of values and norms. The mores change over time. Usiing the US as an example, we are worlds apart from a 1950s society than we are from today's society. Our national attitude (mores) towards minorities and females are worlds apart from just 60 years ago. Women have made great advances, and they now outnumber men on college campuses. They are wholly integrated into professions once reserved for men, like law and medicine. Same with minorities. Great strides have been made in both achievement and acceptance.. the mores have changed.

So please, abandon those shitty arguments about past v present as if they operated in the same controlled world environment.. they don't.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Still, the argument for people of more moral character in Washington is one I can get behind.

[Partha]

All three of you (Pathos, Harlowe and Fail) are missing something... one can't compare honor and moralality across a timeline, because what is considered morally acceptable in one timeframe may not be in another timeframe. It was once morally acceptable to beat your wife, now it isn't. It was once morally inacceptable to marry across racial lines, not so anymore.

Here's my problem with that argument specifically...the Tea Party claims that by returning to those mores that things will be better.

Do you think it would be better if you could just bend the help over a desk, no questions asked?

Do you think it's better that the franchise be limited to property owners?

Do you think it's realistic to expect that we can go back in time and undo all our previous progress?

That's why the Tea Party is a bogus shell.

[Harlowe]

Embar if you took a moment not to knee-jerk your response, you'd have seen that I DID NOT bring up the comparison. Fallakin did. I just responded to his claim men were more so much more moral and honorable back then.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

I think the difference between Washington then and Washington now is that back then those men were accountable for the decisions they made. With the system how it is now they pretty much do whatever they want, and some of them have said as much.

[Ddrak]

I don't know this for sure, and it would be a long and interesting exercise in history to actually examine Fallakin's statement there. I would put forward the opposite proposition that public figures today are actually more accountable than they were in the late 18th century. Much of my reasoning comes from thinking that the majority of histories were written by the social peers of those we are trying to judge now and so will be written very sympathetically to their social standing. While truth, honor and wisdom are lauded in these icons of American history, I wonder how much is hero worship and how much is actual truth.

Now, striving for the modern image of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and Lincoln is all well and good but is it striving for a bygone reality or striving for an impossible dream? I do feel for the rank and file of the Tea Party movement because I believe they honestly want that dream and that's laudable. I just wish the energy could be channeled into solutions instead of problems.

Dd

[Lurker]

Everyone is over-thinking a movement that is, at it's core, based in ignorance. The rank and file Tea Party members anger is not justified because they have been duped by Republican propaganda into believing things about Obama and his policies that are untrue. And the figureheads of this movement (Beck, Palin) are nothing but self-promoting shills. People like them are incapable of bringing anything "moral" to Washington, and the movement isn't going to develop coherent policies with morons like them as figureheads. Suggesting the tax code not have more words than the original constitution is about as deep as this movement is going to get.

[Ddrak]

I see the body as distinctly different from the head in this case. There was already anger there and the figureheads took it and molded it into something that serves their own self-promotion. I think the anger is justified, but not the direction it's being directed. The Tea Party rank-and-file should be angry at the people who, ironically enough, are the ones they're rallying behind.

Dd

[Fallakin Kuvari]

I don't know this for sure, and it would be a long and interesting exercise in history to actually examine Fallakin's statement there. I would put forward the opposite proposition that public figures today are actually more accountable than they were in the late 18th century.

Dd

The 17th amendment changed a lot in how Senators do their work. Before they were voted in by popular vote they were nominated and voted in by State Legislatures and had to meet with them to account for how they voted on bills. Now its more of a money race in whoever can pump in the most money to the election process is usually the one who's going to come out the victor. Sure, they were still held accountable for their actions by the general public in Town Halls and such, but even that is going the way of the Dodo.

[Partha]

You're funny if you think that Congresspeople ever really worried about what low-information voters think. You think Jim DeMint cares what you think about him shutting down the Senate?

[Embar Angylwrath]

You're funny if you think that Congresspeople ever really worried about what low-information voters think. You think Jim DeMint cares what you think about him shutting down the Senate?

Or what Rangel and Waters think about anyone's opinion?

[Partha]

Nope. But I'm not the one arguing that a return to 1860 is a good idea.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

You're funny if you think that Congresspeople ever really worried about what low-information voters think. You think Jim DeMint cares what you think about him shutting down the Senate?

Before the 17th amendment they weren't accountable to the "low-information voters". They were held accountable by the State Legislatures and voted in and out by those same people.

Nope. But I'm not the one arguing that a return to 1860 is a good idea.

Considering that the 17th amendment was adopted in April 1913...

[Partha]

So when you say we need to go back to the days of the Founding Fathers, you're talking about making sure that the Congresspeople aren't responsible to the citizens, but to the State government, except for the part where you complain that town halls aren't working anymore.

You're a model of the inconsistency of the Tea Partier mind. Do you come with a weathervane?

[Fallakin Kuvari]

No, in that regard I'm talking about return to politicians that care more about their country than their pocketbook.

[Embar Angylwrath]

I'm sort of with Fail here. Politicians now see politics as a career, not an opportunity for service. They are addicted to power, and will do anything to keep it (Rangel and Waters anyone?) What's so wrong with wanting that dynamic to change?

[Lurker]

You keep saying "Rangel and Waters", "Rangel and Waters", "Rangel and Waters".

Why?

Both of them could have escaped scrutiny, kept their positions, and gotten off with less than a slap on the wrist. They chose to have a trial instead. What do you have against trials and a public airing of the evidence? You'd rather it was all just swept under the rug? If they are guilty I'd like to know. And if they are innocent I'd like to know that too.

And a message of "service to country" and "morality" would resonate a lot more if it wasn't coming from a group of empty-headed divisive hucksters out to line their own pockets.

[Partha]

No, in that regard I'm talking about return to politicians that care more about their country than their pocketbook.

Oh, this is fucking funny.

The Founders were all rich men. Throughout the history of the Republic, the vast majority of the people who run the country were folks whose pockets were fat and got fatter afterwards. Your Tea Party fantasy does not hold up under even casual inspection of history. Hell, your tea party is being funded by a pair of oil billionaires for what? Patriotism? Don't make me fucking laugh.

[Ddrak]

I'm sort of with Fail here. Politicians now see politics as a career, not an opportunity for service. They are addicted to power, and will do anything to keep it (Rangel and Waters anyone?) What's so wrong with wanting that dynamic to change?

I'm not sure politicians ever saw politics as an "opportunity for service". Sure, some biographies painted things that way and looking at the past through rose-colored glasses you may believe things were once so much better but I just don't see things that way. The main difference between then and now is "politician" used to be a synonym for "aristocrat".

While it's nice and all to have some sort of belief that politicians should see themselves as servants of the people, it's about the same ball park as those communists that believe if everyone was nice to each other then it would all just work. There's nothing more wrong about wanting the dynamic to change as there is a communist wanting the dynamic to change.

Dd

[Fallakin Kuvari]

No, in that regard I'm talking about return to politicians that care more about their country than their pocketbook.

Oh, this is fucking funny.

The Founders were all rich men. Throughout the history of the Republic, the vast majority of the people who run the country were folks whose pockets were fat and got fatter afterwards. Your Tea Party fantasy does not hold up under even casual inspection of history. Hell, your tea party is being funded by a pair of oil billionaires for what? Patriotism? Don't make me fucking laugh.

Sorry that I'd rather see this country run by men who feel called to serve it rather than pieces of shit that want to turn it into the next marxist "utopia" of the world (read: shithole). If term limits have to be established to keep the corrupt pieces of shit in check, then so be it.

Just because you want this country to be the next Marxism failure in a really long fucking line of Marxism failures doesn't mean the rest of us want it to.