So, another part of voting that people don’t think about is Voting on the Issues. Most all of us have pet peeves about the government and personal agendas that we feel are ignored by our countries politicians. We all have ideologies that can’t be fully supported by our government in the real world. My political ideology is for the government to step out of the big brother role, both socially and economically. I think personal responsibility is more important than government mandating things for us, and picking up the pieces for the lazy people in this country. Also, on a more practical level I want term limits for supreme court justices, maybe around 12 years with a third of them being rotated every 4 years, still appointed by the president, but the appoints take place about six months after inauguration.
It is stupid for me to rail on about my ideology, and my personal desires, and it is silly for me to try to tell you all why you should vote like me because my ideas about the supreme court are best. It accomplishes nothing. There is no party right now that agrees with me on all the issues. Unfortunately there is no party that is even close right now, and some of my personal desires to see the government change aren’t even mentioned anywhere in any of the parties platforms. So, how do I vote then? Important issues that I feel must be addressed aren’t getting addressed. Kids starve all over the place because of dictators in power, why do we only go after a few of them?
Sorry, there isn’t much we can do about these issues, but I will talk briefly about how to make these issues heard. One way to get your issues in the eyes of politicians is to buy a major news media outlet, a newspaper, a TV station, and broadcast all the atrocities across the world as they happen. Especially the ones our country is ignoring. Or broadcast and write about the shortcomings of our current government system. Since most of us don’t have that kind of money, I will suggest another alternative. Start your own political party that focuses on the issues you see as most important. Work hard at educating people why these issues are important. Become that third party worth voting for I was talking about in my last political post.
Now, since most of us are lazy or uninterested in being under the media magnifying glass, we aren’t likely to do either of these things. So, what do you do now. You’ve already decided that you don’t have the resources to force your issues onto an existing political parties platform or start your own party, so you are left with no choice but to pick from the people available. So, now you must begin the process of decided which platform has the most stuff you care about on, and which platform agrees with you the most on those issues.
There is a very nice test at theLibertarian Parties webpage. That link will take you right to the test. This test does a good job of sorting out the stances on the issues that are included on everyones platform.
After you take that test and find out which party you agree with on the major issues that are mentioned on every platform, you must find out what the rest of the platform says. These third parties have some wacky stuff on their platforms sometimes and that stuff can make it so you don’t want to vote them, even if you agree with them on the major issues. The second part is much much harder because it means wading through the long winded platforms yourself, while that test does a nice job of cutting the main points out of the platforms, so you can get right to the chase.
Also, I’ve gotten tired lately of listening to people talk about these kinds of non-issues, especially since I know no one wants to really do anything political about it, but it is even worse that if motivated to do something political those same people are so fixated on their issues not being acknowledged that they haven’t thought out the consequences and repercussions of those actions. Like if we were to just stop giving money to Israel, Turkey, and the UN, backed out all our forces, and sent them all the the most impoverished, aids ridden, and genocidal African countries, (which is just about the only way to pay for the aid Africa really requires) where would we be. We would be out of the UN taking away any of its military power (we are the UN forces, don’t kid yourself into thinking the French, Russians or Germans ever actually contribute to the UN with any real numbers compared to us) making it almost useless. Our economy would start to feel the serious tug from having forces always squelching dictatorial, and homicidal governments. Working to force them to no longer be corrupt, and then hear all the papers talk about what assholes Americans are, thinking they can run the whole world, installing leadership with our own interests. All the while our economy starts to collapse cuz our military is spread far to thin over an entire continent. And still, we haven’t even begun to address the human rights issues in Asia, that mess would probably be even bigger because there are some countries with some teeth that could make it hell to police them. But instead we help the countries who suit our best interests, financially, politically, ethically, and the UN ignores those places in Africa, like Rwanda. And America catches the blame for doing something internationally, other than talking, because we can’t help everyone at once. There are almost exclusively Americans in Iraq right now, why isn’t the UN doing something about that genocide in other countries, why aren’t the Germans, French, Russians, or any other country doing something. You may not like my assessment of how to think out the situation in Iraq or Africa, and that is OK, so I’ll use another example. Thinking out the issues completely on my supreme court thing, would mean more than just what I listed. Start with the Supreme court. I’ve put some thought into them, and like I said, 12 year limits, one term per person, rotate a third of them out every four years, about six months after inauguration. But now we’ve restructured the Supreme court, made it slightly harder for it to get stale, and for them to not feel overly comfortable on their seats. But they still aren’t being held accountable for when they make laws instead of interpret them, which they do. But even worse yet, I haven’t touched the appellate courts, or the federal district courts. Those guys are easily the most ridiculous right now. They make laws, and the constitution say whatever they want. And what is with them using constitutional review, if the courts have that power, it should be left for the Supreme Court in my opinion. There is no accountability in the courts when it takes to long, and is to much hassle to impeach appointed judges. This leaves judges open to do just about anything they want in terms of making laws say things that they don’t. I don’t have a good way to keep track of that many judges, it would be far to expensive and would take too much effort, and create bureaucratic positions of almost more power than the judges. So since I don’t have a good complete solution to work out for the courts, and it isn’t of interested to any party at all, I usually just discuss what would be some better ways to fix the problem…unless I’m presenting the problem for those who are unaware of what has been happening in the courts of late, and then I shut up about it. Because complaining about the president, or about our situation in this place or that doesn’t do anything if we haven’t thought out what we feel is the best solution and the consequences to that solution. And it does even less, if it isn’t on a parties platform and you aren’t working to get it on there.
So, what I’m getting at here, is that you have to read the party platforms, as well as doing a little research about the individual candidates positions, because they will tend to lean toward the parties stance in times of indecision. And if you think something should be on a platform, write officials, educate your neighbors about it, and come up with a solution that has attempted to see as many of the consequences as possible before hand. Don’t just vote for someone because of your non-platform related issues, you won’t change anything. And don’t just complain, especially about one person (the president) instead look up the facts. See what the Clinton administration did to create the situation that Bush took over from him, look at the elder Bushes administration, and Regan’s. Do you really think we are economically unsound right now because Bush screwed it up? Look for facts, back that up, look at economic trends (and you will see how the Regan administrations policies are still effecting us today), see the big picture, before you vote just to get one guy out of office only to put another in that isn’t any better.
Hope that makes sense…if my African and supreme court examples don’t make sense about what I’m getting at here, ask me, and I’ll write some other ones. Now, I must go the Vineyard Regional Conference, so I will see you all later.