Again, I don't believe that we need to be so radical. The structure of the government is not unmanageable IMO.
We do need to be intelligent when allowing Senators to hold seats for 40years and abstain from voting, voting only "present", or voting only on issues that are self serving.
How do we act intelligently? We limit terms. We force bills to pass on their own merits. No corporate buy outs, no pork roll, no extra riders on the bills. You vote on the single issue and the bill passes or fails on its own merits.
You clear the lobbyists from within the ranks of the White House. Exercise your right to organize and to free speech but you are not to do so during operating hours. You wouldn't expect to walk into a business and start preaching your own agenda, yet we allow lobbyists to do so.
Televise and publicize votes. Make the way senators and congressmen have voted be known. They're supposed to be representing the individuals they were elected by, so those individuals should have an easy means of obtaining the way their officials have voted.
Cut all representatives salaries. No salary for the president, none for the VP, none for senators, none for congressmen.
Force candidates to run individually.
Cap campaign spending.
These are all good ideas, but the things you seek to eliminate are the bread and butter or Washington, and probably the main reason most of these people got into politics in the first place. You are assuming competent people will sign up for public office with the sole purpose of actual public service. Money talks, working for the good of the American people is a bullshit line that politicians use to make more money.
This is why I provided the anecdotal example.
You're a parent, you won't ever understand my viewpoint due to your circumstances. Thats fine.
Understand I think you viewpoint is as silly, as you think mine.
So because I've been on both sides of the fence, I don't understand your limited perspective? I understand exactly where you're coming from. As a young, single man, you would feel no empathy toward a fetus, no emotional connection. It's just a "collection of cells" and that's enough for you to disconnect any emotional attachment from it. You are defining humanity in terms of intelligence, which doesn't work because that is an arbitrary point on a spectrum. Humanity is our unique ability to feel emotion and to extend those emotions to other humans, animals, and even inanimate objects. Your lack of empathy for a fellow "collection of cells" is most inhumane. The physical chemical compositions have nothing to do with the definition of humanity. It is only on that hyper-cognitive level that humans are separated from animals and other "collections of cells".
Everyone just likes to play semantics to avoid dealing with the responsibility of parenting. When it all boils down, a fetus is a living organism from before the sperm joins the egg. And destroying life is never something to be easily justified, especially when that life carries human DNA, regardless of it's "humanity" or cognitive state.
The E. Coli bacteria is also a life, yet we destroy it actively and with great prejudice. Why? because it is a pest, a nuisance, and can be fatal. This is the exact reason why women have abortions. The fetus is a parasite that can be fatal at worst and an 18 year nuisance at best. We justify the destruction of all forms of life to varying degrees, even human life. Even massive numbers of fully cognitive humans. I'm not going to say what is right for someone else to do, or to condemn someone else's decisions, that's not my place on this earth, but I know what I believe. I understand exactly why you think the way you do. You could list a hundred reasons why abortion is okay, but all you need is enough to justify it to yourself, so that's what you do.
When a woman told me that the decision we made together had resulted in a new human life being formed, I knew what I had to do, and it certainly wasn't to extinguish the miraculous life we had created together. I didn't see it then for what it was, but now having spent time with the most important person in my life, learning from her what my purpose on this earth is, I see that nothing will ever matter as much to me as her. No amount of money or possessions will ever be worth as much as she is. She made my life worth living.
I guess maybe I do lack understanding, because the reason why someone would throw that all away because it's not financially feasible, or not inline with their life goals is beyond my comprehension. You're throwing away gold to chase after dirt, and you'll never be as fulfilled slaving for monetary gain as I am watching that collection of cells become an amazing human being.
