Imperfectly though, since they (imperfectly) represent governments that imperfectly represent the people(s). What if, instead of posting your response yourself, you hired a guy who hired a guy who hired a guy who hired a guy to do it? Or what if you hired a marketing company to take care of it for you? Something gets lost in the translation. In the case of social contract theory, I think everyone has to represent themselves.
Sure, it’s imperfect, but that’s how representative government works. Direct democracy would have many problems in this situation too. Until we have universal access to the internet and we can all vote individually I think it’s the best we can do, and I don’t see it as fatal flaw.
And I Told About Equality An It's True Either You're Wrong Or You're Right But, If You're Thinkin' About My Baby It Don't Matter If You're Black Or White
Good point. Its difficult to talk about rights in the absolute sense. They have to be viewed in the context of existing conditions in society which evolve over time. In pre-historic times, when food was scarce, food was less of a "right". Today, when and where there is plenty of food, I think food should be a fundamental right. In the end, rights make sense only to the extent that they are enforcable, and have to be viewed in the context of existing societal conditions. Today, in the US, I think food should be a fundamental right. I cannot find fault with desperate people anywhere who steal food in order to survive, for exampe during the New Orleans breakdown.
I think the biggest problem is that people will never agree on what is "universal", to each his own whether we like it or not. There are different cultures and different values, and conflict always arises when one side attempts to impose their view of life on others. In the 20th century, the world has moved towards somewhat agreeing on a list of "basic human rights", but even that list has been problematic for some and rarely enforced for that very reason, except in extreme circumstances (i.e. genocide). For the most part, I think the only thing universal is the right to acquire a bare minimum to sustain your own life, without encroaching upon the rights of others to do the same.
An excellent response. We can talk about rights in the abstract but they have no meaning unless they are actually enforced by government. The Soviet Constitution enshrined many rights and was a model of progressiveness but was largely meaningless since it was ignored by the government. This is why I think people should be very concerned about things like warrantless wiretapping because to accept it is to essentially accept that its proper for the government to ignore Constitutional rights at the Executives discretion. That essentially is the very argument that any police state will give that the rights of people need to take a back seat to the security of the state and the security of the state is whatever the authorities say it is. In the end we can have any number of rights but they are worthless as long as the government can decide to ignore them because they are incovenient. As the row over the cartoons of Muhammed show many rights that we consider sacrosanct, like freedom of the press, many around the world don't. If there should be a universal right in my opinion that would be the vote. That way societies could decide for themselves which rights they want enshrined rather than having that dictated to them through some utopian ideal.
here are ways To get there If you care enough For the living Make a little space Make a better place... Heal the world Make it a better place For you and for me And the entire human race There are people dying If you care enough For the living Make a better place For you and for me
In the Bible God endows man's rights and defines man's rights- The influential Founding Fathers of America understood this. Human Rights are those things that human government or individuals must not take away from another human. Human Rights are not guarantees of any kind, but protections against interference. By Divine Law we find those protections delineated. For example: Justice should not be taken away from individual humans. This would grant man life and recompence. (Thou shall not kill) Protecting life is the responsibility of justice. Human Rights= Human Responsibility Rights without individual responsibility= tyranny Truth should not be taken away from individual humans. Once humans deceive one another the foundation of trust for human relationships and human commerce is destroyed. (business is corrupted and marriages/families break down) Freedom of opinion, press, expression and belief are the result of protecting an individual's right to truth. Individual responsibility should not be taken from any human. If a person succeeds or fails, makes a good choice or a bad choice every person should be allowed to bear the consequences or benefits of their free choice. This is what enables men to live morally. Once men's choices are controlled they are slaves- either intellectually, emotionally or materially. etc. etc. etc. I believe rights of Humans are endowed by God through divine decree. Governements typically abuse unalienable (divine) rights. They take measures to afford special privledges as rights to a certain class at the expense of others. This is the essense of tyranny. Privledges should never be assigned by governement because it always tramples the freedoms of individuals. America has been the champion of Human Rights and freedom for years because our government was designed to protect the citizens from the government. We have lost all that... So we may not last much longer as a free people. Some believe the government already controls most areas of our lives- that is not Human Rights at all. The best government is the one inside the human heart- that is just, moral, truthful, loving, responsible, forgiving, humble, kind, faithful, patient, and self-controlled. That is the work of the Holy Spirit and that will be the government of Heaven. IMHO
Yes, the more people live right with their conscience, respect one another, take personal responsibility, honestly admit and correct mistakes, build trust through truthfulness, and value moral character the less government is needed. A strong Federal Government results in tyranny. Control, oppression of liberty and life. The government should be for the individual, by the individual and of the individual... a government should have no power except as ordained by God and granted by the individual citizens. Unfortunately we have become a social democracy- communists and facists share the same principles as social democracies- they eventually evolve to controlled dictatorships of the elite few who rule the masses with impunity. Only a moral people can remain free. Our Constitution is a beautiful document whose meaning has been hi-jacked and aborted too often.
This should be modified to the government should be for the rich and powerful, by the rich and powerful and of the rich and powerful. This is true under any form of government during any time in the history. The people who make up the rich and powerful segment of the population could change, but the concept never changes. The poor rebels who overthrows the previous government will surely be just as corrupt when they takes power.
I’m still not sure where you’re going with this. Clearly there is a lot in the legal code of our countries that does not appear in the Bible. Certainly God, through the Bible and directly, tells us how we should treat other people and I fully agree that we need to use this as our guide. In a democracy we the people are the government so we need to take responsibility for our government and the laws it passes. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” For the same reasons that the constitution was and is important I think we are approaching the day when the emerging global community will need a similar in principle agreement, although much more basic at this point. Replace United States with World in the above passage and you’ll get the general idea, though. I think it’s important to add that this example provides a further warning. Most of the Founding Fathers were slave owners. The world has thankfully evolved to the point where slavery is considered a violation of human rights in all but a very few isolated places in the world, so like the constitution any declaration of human rights would need a provision for amendment as social standards continue to evolve. My understanding is that what we are talking about here is an agreement between peoples. Again, think of this in the same way you would think of what we might call the human rights provisions in the constitution. Humans are fallible and governments made of humans will make mistakes from time to time and abuse rights. This is true. This is one of the reasons for codifying principles in a constitution or a declaration of universal human rights. It removes them from the reach of an individual, possibly corrupt, administration. But lets not forget that in a democracy the government is us, not some big bad bogeyman. It is us, we the people, and we are responsible for it. We do need checks and balances, but ultimately, and in the long run, we the people are responsible for how our country is run. (I don’t want to get sidetracked, but given that the US was one of the last western countries to abolish slavery proper, and further that Jim Crow laws lasted up until the 60's, while the US may have been a champion of human rights in the 18th century I think it lost its title somewhere before the middle of the 19th century. Even today you still have capital punishment in some places and no universal health care, so the US is bringing up the rear on both those counts by close to half a century as well.) I find this kind of talk very strange. Again, in a democracy we the people are the government. If you don’t like something get out and talk to people and campaign to change it. That’s what democracy is about. That’s what the Founding Fathers did and that’s what they gave American citizens the right to do. While this is true, God did not direct us to live in anarchy on earth. He did not say that all laws should be abolished or that we should not have any form of government. I have to be frank rhester. You sound like you oppose democracy. You sound a lot like an anarchist. Is this true?
Anarchist-- No Way! God ordained human govenment. I am speaking of the principles behind government. In a republic we the people are the government. In a democracy the political parties end up controlling the government and they are usually controlled by money and other forms of power. If you think you can elect who you want for president for instance you are sadly mistaken. You can only elect who the political parties decide you can elect. The federal government can do about anything they want and the best you will be able to do about it is vote for who they tell you to vote for. We have had two political parties control the Congress and White House for over 100 years and they have just about fixed all our problems. The founding fathers feared democracy and tried to institute a constitutional republic where the Constitution gave protection against centralized power and the Bill of Rights protected individual freedoms. Rule of Law is far superior to rule of masses. Governments easily control the masses. I think the farther you push government accountability down to the local level even to the individual the better your government. What I feel threatens our nation is continued centralization of power in a large strong federal government. Nothing wrong with a global constitution or bill of rights as long as it does not take any authority over our sovereign Constitution and Bill of Rights. The Form of Government we need is one that severely limits federal power to those strictest and plain enurmerated Constitutional responsibilities and then leaves all other power to the individual states. That is how our government was framed in the beginning. I suggest you go back and carefully read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I do it from time to time. I am all for Human Rights and a government that enforces Human Rights. God gave government two functions in scripture- To punish evil doers and to reward those who do what is right. Any government that acknowledges God's laws can fulfill that purpose. We would be a better nation for it. Thanks for asking for clarification.
Democracies need to evolve to address new problems as our society evolves, and you’ve touched on a big one, perhaps the biggest one, money. Most democracies have implemented election spending acts in the not too distant past to limit the impact of money and ensure that a very broad segment of the population is able to run for office, and to ensure that they are not beholden to monied interests. In Canada, for example, an individual can give a maximum of $5000 to each political party, and corporations can give a maximum of $1,000. There are also spending limits by consituency, based on population and other factors, and on each party for advertising at the national level. The three main national parties in Canada were limited to spending under $20 million each. For candidates there are only one or two constituencies where the sending limit tops $100,000. So essentially if you can raise $100,000 you can run for office on a level playing field with the other candidates in any constituency in Canada. This is one area where the US needs some major reforms. Election spending reform may well lead to the rise of other parties. Also, many democracies are talking about going to hybrid first-past-the-post and proportional representation systems so that more minority voices can be heard. Germany is one of several who have already gone to such a system. But don’t forget that there were provisions for the amendment of the constitution, one of which abolished slavery no less, so it was never meant to be a static document above the reach of the elected representatives. This was just a check and balance system. Again, don’t forget that the government makes, and changes, the laws, and even the constitution, so this is really a false dichotomy. I think what you’re concerned about is rash decisions by the masses and that there be some checks and balances to allow sober second thought to have its say, and I agree, but ultimately we still have rule by the people. Again, there is a false dichotomy here. Different levels of government are better suited to deal with different issues. You wouldn’t want national defence handled at the community level, for example. Nor would you want the states to individually try to coordinate national infrastructure issues, like freeways and air traffic control. Otoh, you wouldn’t want the federal government planning your local parks or passing noise bylaws in your city. In general terms, local governments are more in touch with local issues and preferences, and a federal government has the economics of scale on its side with respect to certain issues and it can act as a coordinating body to represent national interests. I have to take strong issue with this. We have the responsibility to punish law breakers and to the best of our ability be just in the way we do it, and to be just in the way we make laws in the first place, but he did not give us the right to judge people as evil. If we were to do that we would be declaring ourselves God. It is not for us to judge. It is for Him to judge. This is one of the most strictly warned against things in the Bible. I trust you didn’t mean it this way but this is how it came across to me. I’m not sure what that “reward those who do right” part is about either. Our duty is to treat all people fairly and if anything to treat the less fortunate with more compassion and generosity. "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Christ didn’t come to give worldly rewards the righteous. He came for the sinners, and his compassion was for the less fortunate.
This is essentially 100% incorrect. You are trying to compare a purely democratic form of government in social democracy with two diametrically opposed totalitarian forms of government, if you’re talking about Communism as in Soviet style Communism, that is. If you’re talking about ideal communism, as in Marx’s theory, it and fascism are at either ends of the political spectrum with social democracy at about dead centre. Tony Blair’s Labour Party is a social democratic party, for example, so you are suggesting that Tony Blair shares the same principles as fascists and Communists, which is ridiculous and I’m sure highly offensive to many.
People of the world today Are we looking for a better way of life We are a part of the rhythm nation People of the world unite Strength in numbers we can get it right One time We are a part of the rhythm nation
You are taking strong issue with Romans chapter 13:3-5 "3For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: 4For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. 5Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake." I should have just put the verse in there, that is all it says and all I meant. God ordained rulers to bear the sword for those who do evil and to praise those who do good. If you can read those verses any other way I am not sure about it. I was speaking of human government as these verses speak. I don't sit in judgment of people, we might be talking about two different things, now you have me wondering... Meditate on the whole chapter of Romans 13 to me it gives a picture of God's role for rulers.
