neutralguy

Well obviously I understand that its not literally free, meaning we all pay through taxes, but the idea that everyone wasn't covered or that everyone doesn't have the same access seems wrong to me. I am all for the govt. getting out of a lot of areas and giving the power to the people, but here, I think its just a matter of compassione.

If the USA could use the force they used for Iraq..this would be a much happier story. Again Mr.Bush messed up.

Well, no doubt. I'm just saying, let's not pretend its some kind of fear tactic that also prevents crimes.

I agree with Bush/Cheney here. I went through a war in Bosnia. Wars are not without loss, not without struggle, not without many things going off course. But none of that means there is never a positive end to such a story. Many of us view the world in us/me/individual terms, but really, many don't. Soldiers are basically those types of thinkers. They know they could die but they see their service as something greater than themselves. That is why they join. That is why they can risk their life. And that is why we have to be more sympathetic about what we say. What's going on in Afghanistan is indeed very sad but it is winnable.

You keep saying this over and over like you really believe it. Explain to me how a person on drugs gets effected by tougher sentences? How does a psycho serial killer>

I'm a Libertarian by heart, but if we can't agree that healthcare should be free and available for everyone, then I don't think we can agree on anything.

In my sig there. You can check it out. I've set up a cool and realistic system. I'm always curious to see what people would do if they actually had a shot at making policy (and would they be able to work with other people, communicate, lead) or would we end up exactly like what we blame other politicians for?

Well, George W Bush was right on one thing (i'll give him that one - he needs it) that the true judgement in Iraq will come much more into the future. When there is a new govt. there and it functions much like any other nation. Same thing in afghanistan..success/failure..you won't really know for a long long time. I would say a success is anything where there is a democractic country in place, the people have power, and they can secure their own country.

There are a lot of armchair politicians here, that's why you guys should join my game. Let's see your talk in action

lol

When cops see people smoking pot and don't do anything about it..that basically tells you what most people think about it.

People on drugs don't think clearly..they dont' care about tougher sentences.

I don't have a problem with harsh punishment for people that do wrong. But it is after the fact. I am more talking about drugs or treatments that can legitimatley treat people that have destructive instincts which they can't control. We aren't all like that.

I went through a war as a child (Former Yugoslavia) Neighbours got killed, some further removed relatives are gone, went through a lot, so what do I deserve? One thing war thought me is, I am not special. My family is not special. They are just special to ME. But when you take an example, as extreme, where people are killed, tortured, raped, little children getting sniped from buildings, that tells me everything I need to know about the "fairness" of any individual life. When you experience something like that, the only way you can live life is by saying, "this world isn't about me, or my family (even though i care about them for obvious reasons), this is about humanity as a whole. That is the simply the only way a victim becomes something more and regains some kind of meaning and purpose in their life. So why do I bring up the criminal first? Because, the war wasn't about me, and no crime really is. I am interested, if at all possible, in finding ways to stop crime and treat criminals. Because, in the end, what I learned, was that, when the chips are down, any human is capable of doing wrong. And we need to try to see if there is a way to stop those kinds of "animal" instincts.

Nobody said anything about not helping victims, right? I think we should be an understanding and compassionate society. I clearly said, there are people we can help (who have committed crimes) and there are people that we can't. The latter being that we aren't intelligent enough as a society to do so in some cases. But just like I noted that I think fear tactics might stop petty crime, I also think in the same way, there might be things we can do to prevent or treat non-violent crime.

Sadly people choose to believe what they want. It was pretty clear that the BLOC had no say on policy.

I would hope society is too developed to lower ourself to such standards. I know you are not being serious but this notion that fear stops people from commiting crimes is a bit naive. I don't know, maybe petty theft, sure, but when it comes to serious crime, no. We are talking about people who need legitimate help, or people we legitimatley can't help. The fact that we can't keep a govt. website up, when its obvious loads of people will be using it, suggests we have a systemic problem in a lot of different areas.

Embarassing.

Great post Visionseeker

As I mentioned in another thread, I think the fact that the electorate is misinformed about how our system works, Harper used that to his full advantage.

Wow - religious threads always manage to entice strong debate. I'm not religious, at all - agnostic, but here is what I would say. The way I see it, I do believe special interests and greed has taken over politics. But Liberals and Conservatives alike are to blame. And that is why I feel that the people we view as "religious" are sometimes nothing more than conservatives who are worried at the pace we are going. They aren't comfortable with it. If you look at the last century or so, in the west, we have been a society of development, greed, and special interests. I mean the things we have developed in the last century, we didn't do as much in ten centuries prior. The concentration on attaining wealth and getting ahead, we've never seen before. I see much of this economic mess (and in my opinion there is even some social unrest) as a result of stepping away from our faith and instead becoming a society that just asks "can i develop this", "is this possible", "can this make me more wealthier" and just doing it. We aren't thinking about the bigger picture, that religion does usually ask us. I think we are at a point, where we have made so many moves, so fast, that we don't even know how our economy actually works. We don't even know what most of the drugs produced do to us. We don't know the severity of the environmental problem. We don't know a lot because we haven't really thought about the bigger picture for a long long time. I think to myself too, how can the "Conservative" party, a party that is supposedly for the conservation of things, have such policies that go so strongly against the natural things in our world (the environment) Aren't they infavour of keeping things natural? Special interests? Not picking on them persay but it just seems nobody is actually doing anything about it. The citizens are the pawns in this game because I do believe the Conservative base itself actually stands for the many things I talked about.

I think what we've seen latley (last 6 months or so) is political opportunism at its finest. (from all sides) So, when I look at it, for me, its a system problem, as opposed to a party thing. We have a better system than the Americans, considering that we can have more political parties, to truly represent all kinds of ideas and principles. But, even with that, there can be improvements. The idea of proportional representation and getting use to the idea of coalitions might be the direction to take. We also have to look at educating the electorate.(from an early age) I think some people see proportional representation as a problem because nothing would ever get done (due to more coalition govts) but the bigger problem in my eyes is if we get random representation because the electorate isn't informed.