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if those who are democratically elected are not those placed in parliment, then i ask you what system of government are they running under?
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"Who could deny that lawmakers in America are almost continually bending over backwards to please women and feminist groups?"
The voters, specifically the majority of voters, are the real US government. Women are the majority and, while they have their separate slants on issues, they often vote their interests very nearly as a block. Politicians know that they must always be looking over their shoulders to see what women want.
In a very real sense, in the US and the other western democracies, women ARE the government. That's one of the reasons this society is such an anti-male, sexist mess.
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I dispute that society is in an "anti-male sexist mess" but even if it were true, if it came about by legitimate means through our political/legal system we have to accept it as legitimate. At least to the point that we can change the laws by the same legitimate democratic means.
If lawmakers are looking over their shoulders to see what the constituents who put them in office want, they are doing their job! It's a representative democracy. Do you propose another system?
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I dispute that society is in an "anti-male sexist mess" but even if it were true, if it came about by legitimate means through our political/legal system we have to accept it as legitimate. At least to the point that we can change the laws by the same legitimate democratic means.
I disagree with your dispute. Society is an anti-male sexist mess these days. And it didn't come about by legitimate political/legal means in this country. It came about as a result of fear and pressure from gender feminists. Yes, politicans look over their shoulder to see what the voters want, but gender feminists misrepresent themselves to the voters and to the politicians, so women vote for the gender feminists candidates under the (wrong) impression that they are somehow being victimized by men, and that's just where the mess starts...
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Actually, Lorianne, we live in a "democratic republic" not in a democracy, as much as our leaders like to ballyhoo democratic principles. What this means is that the government makes decisions that are not necessarily representative of the majority of the people. And a significant example of that is last year's presidential election. So, since we elect leaders to represent us without checking with the electorate on every issue, then we leave the opportunity for national opinion and "moral" principles to be misrepresented by special interest groups.
I agree with Nightmist: that's where the mess starts...
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So what is a better system?
I'm not happy with a lot of laws and I agree, they often don't represent the majority interests. There are many small interests which get a disproportionate (IMO) condideration in lawmaking to their relative size.
Not everything our government does is "right" by a long shot but its been that way for over 200 years. It's not a new thing. Overall we get it "righter" than other forms of government. With a lot of kicking and screaming along the way from people who didn't change. Now is no different.
I also agree that some feminist causes don't ring true to large numbers of women. I certainly find myself at odds with many of ideas put forth by so called "mainstream" feminist. I trust that people will eventually choose the right even if they stumble along the way. Overall, things have improved for women and men in this country. Most see that being a part of the political system is a good thing and a right garanteed to all free citizens.
What it comes down to is trusting in our system or not; trusting other free citizens to eventually and ultimately get it right. If you don't trust other citizens to act (overall) for the betterment of society as a whole, you've got big problems living in a democracy. You've got no choice but to propose chucking democracy and going with an undemocratic form of government (hopefully with people who agree with you in charge). Now THAT'S a huge risk if you ask me.
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by Anonymous User on Thursday December 06, @10:53PM EST (#9)
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Remo here
The United States is not a democracy per-se. It is, nominally, a Democratic Republic run by a constitution that sets limits on what a majority can do to infringe the rights of minorities. I say nominally because it used to be a constitutional Democratic Republic with a small and limited government. It is now a Democratic Republic with a large government, that has in many ways totally deviated from the philosophical underpinnings of its foundations. My rights to free speech should not and do not depend on whether some 'democratic majority' decides on whether I should have them or not. I think a whole lot of people in general misunderstand the Constitution and what the very concept of a "right" entails.
It is partly due to this ignorance that I don't hold much hope for the future. I think the divisions between the sexes and into multiple cultural/ethnic blocks will eventually tear the country apart. Or it will be held together by a tyranny of some sort. "Big sister" or "Big Mother" having as a good a chance of coming true as any other form of tyranny -- indeed, in many senses it is already here. (E.G. The system of "family law" ) So in my opinion, there is very little hope, though I am willing to try to work within the existing system. It seems the only moral thing to do, though it seems so very hopeless. :(
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Not everything our government does is "right" by a long shot but its been that way for over 200 years. It's not a new thing. Overall we get it "righter" than other forms of government. With a lot of kicking and screaming along the way from people who didn't change. Now is no different.
Not exactly. The U.S. government as it was originally laid out in the Constitution was incredibly small compared to today. States held most of the legal powers, but even state powers were no match for the will of the people. We were still a democratic republic, though.
As time went on, the federal government gradually strengthened because people "wanted" programs to deal with this and that (actually the legislators wanted those programs). Look at the FBI as an example. I heard G. Gordon Liddy talking about this today. The FBI originally couldn't even carry guns. Now they're a huge federal police force, something for which the Constitution did not provide.
Unfortunately, both our federal and state governments wield far too much power over individuals these days.
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I'm okay with the system as it exists. What I have a problem with is actually in two parts: 1) The media has done whatever it can to stifle even-handed debate on gender-equality issues; 2) Men need to recognize their own plight and ACT UP more than they have been over the last thirty years or so, including spending money on litigation.
Politicians are whores for votes. Everyone knows that, even the people who don't vote, and most of THEM are men. The courts judge only on the question being asked. If you ask the courts "are the women being mistreated?" the answer can be yes, but the un-asked question is "are men being mistreated?" If it were asked, the answers to the two questions might well lead to balance and equality.
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I agree with most of your post about how the government has changed. However, feminists didn't make these changes. The changes that are in effect now ARE the system (until we change it). So feminist are working within the system in place just like any other group is. Disregarding whether their policies are good or bad for this discussion, they original premis I posted to was the assertion that feminists are hijacking our government. They are not, they are doing precisely what other groups are doing and working within the system we have in place at the moment.
My rebuttal of of the premis was a separate argument than "Are feminist doing good or ill". It was related to how they work within the system. If the system needs changing, fix it, but don't blame feminists (or environmentalists, or honey bee farmers, _____ add your own special interest group) for creating or taking advantage of the system in place.
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Though we may have the best system of government, it is not perfect. If the majority votes its interests largely as a block, in part to oppress the minority, then the system has become corrupt. Environmentalists have not hijacked the system, though they might like to. Honey bee farmers have not hijacked the system; blacks have not hijacked the system; the Christian right has not hijacked the system.
Through their grip on the media and near stranglehold on the academy, feminists HAVE hijacked the system. I know that Lorianne won't be convinced by this, we've gone over this sort of thing before, so I write for the other readers. We have a system in which 18-year-old men must register for war with the Federal government. (The cavalier claim that we will never again call up the draft is a smoke screen. The fact is we don't know. It could well happen.) We have a Violence Against Women Act and not a Violence Against Men Act. We have women outnumbering men in the student bodies of this nation's colleges and universities by nearly 50%. We have breast cancer receiving about 5 times the amount of research funding as prostate cancer, though they claim a nearly equal number of victims. The list goes on and on.
Because of the lies invented and spread by feminists most women believe the fallacy that they receive less pay than men for equal experience, ability and work. Most women, and men for that matter, believe the lie that domestic violence is mostly men against women though between adults it is roughly equal between men and women and violence against children is committed overwhelmingly by women, mostly against boys.
Feminist hate-mongers and liars have definitely hijacked the system and, most of them being women, they are devoted to hatred against the biological other (males).
Feminists have corrupted the system.
We may be able to defeat the evil known as feminism by working largely within the system. This remains to be seen. In any case, we must smash the evil known as feminism.
Down with the gynocracy! Up with equality!
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http://members.garbersoft.net/~spartacus/vipers.ht m
Philip Wylie
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In an argument made by a feminist in England, when lobbying for female quotas in parliament, she said, "it's not as easy for a woman to get elected as it is for a man."
She misses the point -- actually it's just as *hard* for a woman as for a man. If women want to get elected, first they have to chose to *run*, and then they have to work the brutal hours to win the votes. Just like a man does.
It's simply that less women than men *choose* to get involved in politics. There's no 'sexism' or 'discrimination' about it.
It's personal choice, the same way that the person who gets elected represents the choice of the electors. To institute quotas is to deny that choice, and to oppose the democratic process.
Of course, we've seen plenty of examples of feminism's contempt for personal choice and democracy. It's a matter of public record, and there's no need to reiterate it here.
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Yes, I agree Ragtime. I increasingly believe that feminists are much more interested in building female privilege than in promoting gender equality.
A couple of quick points: when feminists cry for more women in elected office, they mean feminist women. They certainly don't want more conservative women in positions of power. And secondly, it's not entirely feminist interest groups at fault. Male politicians scramble to come to women's rescue. Men have a built in urge to be protective of women. It isn't just a desire to win female votes. It's male chivalry at work, which women's groups take full advantage of.
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Lorianne writes: 'I dispute that society is in an "anti-male sexist mess"...'
I don't understand, Lorianne. I know by your postings that you frequent this discussion forum; unless you assume that all the articles are fabrications and that the other posters are lying, how can you possibly believe that North American society is *not* "an anti-male, sexist mess?"
...but even if it were true, if it came about by legitimate means through our political/legal system we have to accept it as legitimate."
There is, to a certain extent, a valid point here. It rests, though, on two assumptions that I disagree with.
- First: that a system, no matter how evil or destructive, must be deemed 'legitimate' if it was legitimately arrived at, and
- Second, that it *was* legitimately arrived at.
Our system of government is not, if fact, government of, by, or for the people. Hasn't been for some time now. It's a government by lobby, special interests, academia, Hollywood, and control of public opinion through one-sided, unbalanced media coverage ('propoganda,' to give it its proper name).
So, the current state of affairs was not legitimately arrived at, and censorship through politcal correctness prohibits frank discussion, or even acknowledgement, of the true issues.
I was watching the documentaries on "Pearl Harbour" and "Canada at War" on PBS tonight. I'm reminded that there was another political regime that was arrived at by similar 'legitimate' means. To quote from one of the WWII radio broadcasts I heard on tonight's show:
"The People needed an enemy to unite them: Hitler gave them the Jews.
They wanted to have Pride: Hitler told them they were the Master Race."
And, to quote Fred Reed, a writer I often agree with:
"... we live in a time when legal and constitutional principles are under attack. What once was to a large extent a government of law has become more and more openly a government of tribes. The edifice of civil rights has degenerated into a naked spoils system. Hate-crime laws have come close to outlawing undesired thought. The iron rule of political correctness has distinct resemblance to Soviet-style social control. Much of this is imposed less by the official government than by the meta-government of academia, media, and Hollywood. Yet it's there."
Fred is a little 'Right' sometimes -- even for me :-) -- but he writes with a sense of humour and often has good and insightful things to say. Another article here.
Ragtime
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"women do not conspire against tyrants; and they are of course friendly to tyrannies ..
since under them they have a good time"
Aristotle, "Politics"
"We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems. Altho they are in full Force, you know they are little more than Theory. We dare not exert our Power in its
full Latitude. We are obliged to go fair, and softly, and in Practice you know We are the subjects. We have only the Name of Masters, and rather than give up this,
which would compleatly subject Us to the Despotism of the Peticoat, I hope General Washington, and all our brave Heroes would fight. . . ."
John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 14, 1776
"She is the arbiter of your merit. This condition was most
important in the chivalric courts of Francois I and Henri II,
and at the elegant court of Louis XV. Under a constitutional
and rational government women are entirely deprived of this
means of influence."
Stendhal (speaking De L'Amour)
"As I read political history, the facts go to show that the fundamental principles of our Government are more opposed to the exercise of suffrage by women than are
those of monarchies. To me it seems that both despotism and anarchy are more friendly to woman's political aspirations than is any form of constitutional
government, and that manhood suffrage, and not womanhood, suffrage, is the final result of the evolution of democracy....
"The Suffragists repeatedly call attention to the fact that in the early ages in Egypt, in Greece, and in Rome, women were of much greater political consequence than
later during the republics; but the moral they have drawn has been that of the superiority of the ancient times. Mrs. Dietrick say[s]: "The idea[l] woman of Greece
was Athena, patroness of all household arts and industries, but equally patroness of all political interests....
"If women were of political importance in earlier times, and if a republic is more favorable to the exercise by them of the elective franchise, we should expect to find
women reaching their highest power under the Areopagus. Exactly the contrary appears to be true. Native and honorable Greek women retired to domestic life as
the liberty of their people grew. Grote, in his "History of Greece," referring to the legendary period, says: "We find the wife occupying a station of great dignity and
influence, though it was the practice of the husband to purchase her by valuable presents to her parents. She even seems to live less secluded, and to enjoy a wider
sphere of action, than was allotted to her in historic Greece....
Lecky, in his "European Morals," says: "It is one of the most remarkable and, to some writers, one of the most perplexing facts in the moral history of Greece, that in
the former and ruder period women had undoubtedly the highest place .."
WOMAN AND THE REPUBLIC
By HELEN KENDRICK JOHNSON
THE GUIDON CLUB NEW YORK 1913
(Copyright, 1897. By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
Copyright, 1909. By HELEN KENDRICK JOHNSON)
"The whole plan of A Thousand and One Nights is very profound.
This battle between masculinity and femininity, the fact that femininity
conquers by means of her storytelling, her persuasiveness. In the fu-
ture the Sultan, who has discovered the basic unfaithfulness of all
women, intends to have every woman put to death after one single
night. Then Scheherazade offers to save the sex .. and she saves the
sex by telling stories, which means: never listen to a woman. Once she
gets permission to tell stories you never get rid of her."
Kierkegaard
"The man who trusts womankind trust deceivers."
Hesiod, Works and Days
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