The United States is not and never has been a pure democracy. It is a constitutional republic, with checks and balances against the mob. |
Yes, of course, all the “smart” people think government from a place of invincible ignorance is the way to achieve Utopia. |
Fortunately the mob didn’t succeed on 1/6. |
Sure they did. We now have hundreds of voting bills across the country making it harder to vote because people are convinced that the election was stolen. |
Nothing I listed would “punish” non-criminals. |
All of your suggestions burden the free exercise of an enumerated civil right, particularly from a financial standpoint. None of them has any track record of success. To the contrary, they’ve been tried and failed. Instead of recognizing that you seek to solve DC’s problems by making citizens of other States responsible for them. Is DC going to pay other Ststes to carry out these unfunded mandates? All of your suggestions would shift the burden of criminal misconduct from the criminals to law abiding citizens. Each and every one of them is a fantasy cure to a human behavior problem. You certainly would not tolerate such burdens, be they “punishment” or not, on the exercise of other enumerated civil rights or even judicially created rights that you favor. |
Imagine that! Federalism in action! |
The problem is that the checks and balances have been exploited not to stop a populist majority, but to rule by populist minority. Oligarchs — the billionaires that fund the GOP — have packed our courts with crazies and hatemongers. The same oligarchs own the GOP politicians. And the rightwing media. And the major right think tanks. The problem we have today is that billionaires have figured out how to use media to lie to voters and take over democracies from within. In the US, they don’t even need a majority to do it, due to our minoritarian Senate and electoral college. Rule by oligarchs is what we have now— extremists installed by Koch like Tom Cotton. The opposite of what the Founders intended. On guns too. |
Actually they did. |
DP. I worry about the direction liberals are headed these days. Many of them seem so hateful - to the extent that they almost seem proud of their hate. And also many seem so certain that people who don’t agree with them are evil. |
Progressives and Dems aren’t the ones committing daily mass shootings. I’m indeed proud of hating gun nutters. |
| Arm the homeless. |
+1 all those inner city gangbanger nutters who obtain and use illegal firearms should be locked up! Remove them from society. |
Do you think most of the shootings in DC are committed by Republicans and conservatives? |
Already armed at the Watergate encampment. |