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date	2011.04.22.08.22.53;	author baccala;	state Exp;
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date	2011.04.02.07.17.45;	author baccala;	state Exp;
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------


That's right?  So how do we get our freedom?

-----

You think you can treat everyone else like dirt that because there's
100 million of you and you all think the same way, that means everyone
else is supposed to be peaceful and non-violent and sit and take your
shit.

Nobody's every supposed to fight back against the majority, and when
somebody does, you act all shocked and say 'my God, why is this
country so violent?'

------

Is mercuriou willing to accept any democracy?

Willing to accept a limited role

Suspicious of the majority assuming more power

Examples: Estates general, U.S. electroal college has become a
technical excersise in vote counting, Commons is assuming more and
more and more power for itself

He's suspicious of whether the majority will ever accept a limited
role or will they return to their tired old refrain that they are 'the
people' and therefore entitled to rule over everyone else

[readers might not know what I'm refering to]

Ask mercuriou about Checks and balances

compare to a nuclear sub

Any group of people not willing to accept checks on their power by
some other completely separate group, outside of their control, are
tyrants.  It doesn't matter how many of them there are.


-------

Look at a map.  Hawaii should be the dominant central Pacific power.

------

Why don't you go to some other country?

Why don't you just give us a state?

Why should we do that?

You believe in freedom!  You'll just give us one or two states so that
we can live as we please!

That's the majority - you'll fight, fight, fight for everything, and
that's what everyone else has to do to contend with you.

------

I don't want you to have my land.

You want prisions to be built, but you don't want them build next to
you.  But you still manage to get them built.

I would be willing to build a new city.  The existing political system
means that I need my supporters spread out.  I need control of as
many districts as I can get.

-----

Is it worth the price you pay?  Is it worth it to turn your land over
to grow export crops?  Is it worth the lack of independence that you
can't grow your own food?

------

Maybe America will blithely ignore all comparisons to the Soviet
Union, blow off all domestic idealists as a bunch of weak-willed
liberals, and strong arm Hawaii into submission, but I doubt it.  It's
possible, but I doubt it.  On the other hand, maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe
the United States really is another Soviet Union.

-----

The capitalists basic philosophy is that you make people pay, and the
liberals basic philosophy is that you make them obey.  Neither is
comfortable with a leadership model where you ask people for their
support.

-----

Let a restaurant do like Friar Dunstan; let them put an envelope on
the table and ask people put the money in it.  They can't!  They just
can't!  It's anthema to their lifestyle; they can't conceive of a
lifestyle where you ask people.  They only thing they know - they're
just locked in this model - you refuse to do for people unless they
pay you.  You don't ask them.  You tell them.  You pay or the answer
is no.

It's the same thing with the liberals.  Their idea is you have to make
them obey.  There's also the paternalistic aspect.  Many of the
conversatives don't want government regulation of health care, but you
better believe that they want regulation of drugs, abortion,
immigration.

You can't ask people not to have abortions, you can't preach to them,
you have to _make_them_obey_.  It is the dominant model of leadership
in the United States.

-------

-----

Aren't you aware that the majority will decide this election?

I'm most certainly aware of that.  I'm not going to tell them what
they want to hear.  If I lose the election, I don't care.  I won't do
it.  I will not paper over my beliefs and tell them what they want to
hear.

-----

Democracy is in very serious trouble.  Its starting to look like it
will inevitably lead to a society run by the most selfish people you'd
ever want to meet in your life, where everyone is forced to work for
some depraved system.  And the reason is very simple - it's how the
majority of people live.  They're selfish.

The majority are not selfish!  The majority are hard workers!

This is the fraud of capitalism; the idea that you do for yourself and
the invisible hand takes care of everyone else... that actually, the
way to be a good citizen and help society is to be
_in_it_for_yourself_

-----

Even if we would succeed in taking over the whole country, there would
still be so many people so bitterly oppossed to the whole program,
then at least they can leave!  They're not going to like it, but they
can go to the mainland, and their opposition will be far more
embittered and entrenched.  It is best for everyone that those of us
oppossed to the leadership not try to fight for control of the whole
country, but rather take one state and leave.


-----

-----

-----

So, you think that we should be governed by religious authority!  I
think we abandoned that a few hundred years ago!

----

What majority?  Majority of what?  Majority of whom?  Majority of the
people of the country?  What about a majority of the whole planet?  Or
a majority of an invidual state?  What's special about the country?
Well, basically, we're part of a given majority, the election gives us
the answers we want.  If we talked about a majority of the whole
world, we don't think we'd like that majority; we don't think we'd
like the leadership it'd produce.  We wouldn't feel like we were part
of that majority.  Likewise, a minority could form a majority in one
state.  We want whatever majority puts us in charge.

----

We're calling your bluff.  We're seceding from the union.  I can't win,
but I can cost you everything.  (another Prague Spring)

----

You underestimate... you don't understand the resolve of the
American people!

OK, are you willing to sacrifice everything to keep us as your
vassals?  Give up absolutely everything, any kind of political
credibility you've got left, just show the world an American
Tienanmen Square.  Do you have that kind of resolve?  If so,
I'm going to push it to that point and I'm going to make
sure it costs you everything!

----

You're all gung ho to conquer Afganistan and conquer Iraq, but once a
couple thousand American troops come home in body bags, then you don't
seem to have too much resolve anymore.  The majority always talks a
good game - they're always cracking down, getting tough, having zero
tolerance - they're real pushy, real violent, until somebody stands up
to them, and that's what it takes to make the majority stop and really
think if it's worth it.  Why does this drug war keep going, year after
year?  It's because it doesn't really cost the American public
anything.  If it cost the American public soldiers in body bags, then
it would be wound up.  That's what it takes to make the American
public wonder if this is a good policy.  The majority of American are
very willing to resort to pushy and aggressive tactics, and it has to
really cost them before they're willing to back down.


---

An elected exectuve, and we need to spell out the reasons why.

(in the U.S. case)
The presence of an elected executive might be its fatal flaw.
or it might that democracy is just too unstable to support anything.
But, it's definitely got too much power in the democracy and
not enough effective checks on the majority

-----

Sailboats for petroleum.  Try to cut our use to zero.

Argue about Iraq.




-----

That son-of-a-bitch talks like he's running for President!

He is running for President, Dad... President of Hawaii!

-----


Wye: We're not going to allow some kind of criminal ploy!...  a bunch
of hooligans... we have laws and they will be followed!

-----


How are you going to stop me?

How are you going to stop me?  You gonna to crack down?  You
gonna get tough?

-------


We'll walk into your hail of gunfire.  I see a hundred men marching,
and we'll take it, we'll take it like the Marines on Iwa Jima.  We'll
take your fire, and we'll keep coming.  We'll overrun your position,
and what will you do then?  I see a masacre.  I see a hundred men
marching forwards and only twenty marching on.  I see freedom's (blood
soaked/stained) banner waving in the wind.

-----

Lincoln was the greatest man in American history but the worst president.
Period.  The country can not afford another Lincoln administration.

What if Gorbachev had adopted the precedent of Lincoln?
What if Gorbachev had said that communism isn't the issue, that
the union had to be preserved at all costs and launched Russia
into a civil war in 1991.

What did Lincoln say?  That if he could preserve the union by
freeing all of the slaves, he would, and that if he could preserve
the union by freeing none of the slaves, he would.  What if Gorbachev
had said that if he could preserve the union by abolishing the communist
party he would, that if he could preserve the union by preserving
the communist party he would, but he would preserve the union
at any cost, if necessary through an absolute bloodbath.

Slavery had to be stopped!

What if Eisenhower or Kennedy had say "communism had to be stopped"?
And New York, and Los Angeles, and Washington were also smoldering
radioactive ruins, and there would be people to this day saying that
it was all worth it because communism had to be stopped.

Lincoln made the wrong decision.  He was a bit like George W. Bush.
He made a single bad decision, early on in his presidency, and
it affected everything that came after.

---

Zee: There's a supreme court case on secession - Texas vs. fff.

Is our position that Lituania, in fact, needed permission from the
Soviet Union to leave?  Or that the United States is special?  Or that
each nation may set up its internal decrees as it sees fit, and we see
fit to outlaw secession?

Can't we just admit that Lincoln was wrong.  He should have let the
south go.

-----

You're stealing the election!

Define 'steal'!  Define 'rig'!  Define 'legitimate'!

You're trying to change the outcome of the election!

Politicians blow millions on these bitterly negative campaign ads,
that often twist and distort their opponents's positions, why?  To
change the outcome of the election!  I've just come up with the latest
'legal' tactic to win!

The problem isn't how; The problem is who's winning!  The whole
premise of your democracy is that you're the majority, so you rule
over us!  Any other result, you'll scream foul!
[ We're just expected to accept it!




-----

The "freedom" these people aspire to is the freedom to steal, the
freedom to get 'high', the freedom not to work...

So what?  What if that is what we aspire to?  Is the majority's
freedom the only one that matters?  [CA]

------

"Well, I don't think it's going to change; the country seems
absolutely committed to capitalism, and it _is_ absolutely committed
to democracy."  He threw up his arms in an air of desperation, like a
man watching a ship full of drowning people helplessly from the shore.
"Hell, I hope I'm wrong.  I hope they can work out their problems."

-----

"No," he answered softly, then took a deep breath and exhaled.
"They've got as serious a problem with capitalism as they once had
with slavery.  The entire society is based on it; it's absolutely
entrenched, and it corrupts everything that it touches.  They're not
going to just change."

"They've got another problem, too," Andrea added.  "They've rejected
Christianity in favor of democracy.  They've displaced morality by
freedom, and gone chasing after populism in lieu of God."

-------

Big government was in.  A national newsmagazine aired a segment
featuring an interview with a woman who said, "I just assumed if there
was a problem, there'd be a law in place to deal with it."

"Now why would you assume that?"  Mercuriou asked the TV screen
as he watched the program.  "Why would you assume that for _every_
problem we've got, the solution is another law?"

"I know people who don't wear their seatbelts," Andrea said.  Car
safety was the topic of the broadcast.  "They prefer to say a prayer
when they get in the car instead of putting on their seatbelts."

"Exactly!" Mercuriou exclaimed.  "Now who the hell is the great
_majority_ to tell someone that they can't do that; that they
can't decide for themselves to wear that seatbelt or not?"

"I'll tell you why," he went on.  "It's not only because the majority
has no real respect for anyone else, not only because once they've
made a decision for themselves they can see no reason not to impose it
on others, but the simple fact is _they've_got_no_other_solutions_.
The only way they know how to deal with _any_ problem they've got is
more laws, more rules, more regulations.  It's inconsivable to them to
find real solutions to their problems!  They choose absolute garbage
for their leaders, and then when they've got problems, and you better
beleive that a society run by capitalists, or communists, or fascists
is going to have problems, their 'solutions' are always the same - get
tough.  They can't figure out that they need to choose good leaders in
the first place, and that the answer to every problem isn't some new
law."

"I'll tell you why," he went on.  "It's not only because the majority
has no real respect for anyone else, not only because once they've
made a decision for themselves they can see no reason not to impose it
on others, but the simple fact is _democracy_defines_right_and_wrong_!
These people have no conception of how to behave except what is
defined by the government!  What's right is what's legal, what's wrong
is what's illegal, and there's nothing else!  There's no point at
which the majority can conceive that something that is wrong wouldn't
be prohibited by a law!  It's just completely beyond these people that
the force of government should be used to absolute minimum and that
people have to ask themselves what is right and wrong!  Democracy
makes all these decisions for you!"

-----

"We'll have you back in our clutches in a few days, captain, and
your Hawaiian republic will join the Republic of Mars in oblivion.


-----

Wye: "What whould you prefer?  Single party rule?"

Mercuriou: "How about a majority of the people who show up to vote?"

Wye: "No, no, we don't have those kind... there are voter requirements
that must be met."

Mercuriou: "What requirements?  Residency?  So half the people in the world
can't show up, vote, and call the result a legitimate government?"

Wye: "Exactly!  There are age requirements, residency requirements,
criminal exclusions..."

Mercuriou: "Why?  Why shouldn't whoever turns up to vote be counted?
Everyone who wants to secede show up in Hawaii by November and vote!
Turn 'em away at the polls!  Let's see how many citizens won't be
counted!"


-----

"So you're just going to rip down our entire structure of government!
We don't like that!  We like our government the way it is!"

"Well, we want change!  So you can keep 49 of your states just the
way they are and we'll just make our changes in one of them!"

"You go someplace else!  You're not taking one of our states!"

----

"...these people that have sacrificed for our freedom!"

"Yeah, yeah!  We just heard your long speech on how you intend to
sacrifice one state for our freedom.  The only freedom you're
interested in sacrificing for is your own!"
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@a155 24
Democracy is one of two things, and it means different things
to different people.  It's either a particular system
of government or its a philosophical principle that the majority
are entitled to rule over everyone else.

There's no difference.  It's the same thing.

No, it's not the same thing, it's very different.  We can certainly
have a structure/system of government without any conception that it
is somehow entitled to rule more so than any other system of
government.  All systems of government are subject ot the same tests,
and no one of them is special.

What tests?  The will of the people!

No, it is not the will of the people.  First of all, how do you define
'people'?  Invariably, the 'people' means the majority; its a
propaganda term, and, furthermore, its my belief that governments are
justified by the test of First Chronicles, by moral judgements on
their actions, and whether anyone supports them.  You have to look at
their actions to see whether their moral, just, and Godly.  These are
the things that determine whether a government is justified or
legitimate.

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