02-26-2004, 04:06 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-26-2004, 05:01 PM by Occhidiangela.)
It unfortunately omits a significant detail. This bit, I mean.
But until the reality (or is it myth?) of "Government of the People and By the People" is changed, government is indeed "We." That means the collective will, when discernable, has to be considered, "for better or for worse." ;)
Who the hell is "We?" Absent a Royal "We" that is, as we have discussed before, "We" is somewhat of a chimera, but at present it seems to consist of those who shout loudest and longest, and a judge or shapr lawyer here and there. As a gay friend of mine in SF observes: 'I pay taxes, I vote, I pay my parking tickets. I am part of "We the People" too.' Indeed he is.
In theory, the government in a republican or democratic society expresses the will of the people, and if the people have a semi-cohesive set of common cultural assumptions, it is more likely to do so than if they do not. Our government is built on that theory as an underlying assumption. Note that the Mormons in Utah were not allowed to keep bigamy/polygamy as a legal construct when entering the Union, though of course some still practiced it anyway and took the risk that someone would "turn them in." Sorta like, now that I think of it, certain practices in the post-bellum South after the Equal Protection under the Law and Universal Suffrage laws were on the books. Sort of like the Whiskey Rebellion. :)
"I don't like your law/laws and you can't make me follow it/them!" The entity being addressed is "everybody else" in a republican or democratic society, even when the degree of Federalism varies.
Under a system where the State is deified, such as Socialism or Marxism, the State is still allegedly "the agent, or servant (bearing whips and chains), of the people." Once again, everybody else. (Hmmm, I just had a thought: under Socialist/Marxist dogma, The State is a lot like Corporations are in America today: disembodied entities with different rules than that of the regular people, citizens.)
That "you can't make me" is an old refrain. ("From my cold dead fingers" or anyone?) What it boils down to is that if you live somewhere other than your own island, you have to deal with all of those "other people" one way or another. Government, that necessary evil of Thomas Paine's, is a way to deal with that.
Which takes us to social engineering, something I am far too familiar with thanks to the 20+ years as a guinea pig of social engineers in the Military.
Policies and laws that best allow "the people" to provide for their own general welfare and posterity are enacted that emphasize or de-emphasize a whole kolaidascope of social standards. The Legal Age of Consent is one such standard. Legal voting age. Felons can't own guns. Marriage. Imminent Domain for that highway in your back yard.
It is, or at least was, a common cultural assumption that stable families raising children was a "common good" socially, and so over time the tax laws changed to reflect that social priority. In the past 40 years, for many reasons, we have seen the courts full of lawyers make their living, lamprey like, on the misery of others in the form of folks whose marriages were either ill advised or simply not working: Catalysts to destroy marriage in the name of making a buck by emphasizing people's shortcomings, rather than seeking to bring people together and work together. Going to Court is not about healing, it is about inflicting and receiving pain, societal pain. (In the case of Enron and other Wall Street frauds, I am all for inflicting that pain with a barbed wire Cat O' Nine Tails!)
If all, or even half, of the money spent on divorce court were invested in counselling and teaching each other how to be better spice (is that the plural of spouse?) to each other, think of the social damage NOT done. But that's wishful thinking.
What has happened to marriage? A lot, but the 1996 act I quoted to Nico showed that across partizan lines, there was a generally agreed assumption that strong marriages are good for society as a whole. As to your "Shrub" comment, I wonder at why all of a sudden the gay marriage folks did not all show up en masse at the SF city hall in 1999? Unwilling to go head to head with, who was it, Pete Wilson? (I forget who the gov was in 99, or had Davis won by then?) Curious that it happened [I]This Election Year. Is this about Gay Marriage, or [/I]Is This Politics Using Marriage As An Excuse? I smell the same sort of stuff as came up a few years back with that "No Flag Burning Ammendment" nonsense: I hope I am wrong, but I think the timing of this is a political act. Maybe that is what it takes.
But if it isn't politics, it's still worth asking in re the 1996 law: where does that leave gay couples? At present in Limbo, and since no Civil Union statutes seem to have been settled on, they remain in Limbo, and many are not all that happy about it. (My friend up in SF included.)
To a certain extent, the initiation of action in SF is a good thing: no more dancing around the point. It FORCES a decision, or the process of arriving at a decision, and my own opinion that Civil Unions may indeed need a solid place in secular society is still being informed. Some of this is also tied to my own feelings on adoption reform, but that is for another day.
I am going to be a grammarian here, and ask the whatever the outcome, don't call it "Marriage," because it isn't, and my back up to that is that marriage is a customary bond between man and woman that crosses all cultural borders. Look around the world, maybe there is something to that common custom.
Since "The People" more or less spoke and said, in 1996 "marriage is a good thing and we need to support it" that strikes me as at least a step forward to striking down (lawyers, are you all listening?) strands in our social thread that weaken, undermine, and destroy marriages. Those in the thread who comment on "how marriage is failing" were probably never married, or never saw one that worked. Marriage can work, but it takes work! :D
Of course, rushing into marriage can't be legislated against, and that is a crying shame: we have a waiting period, a cooling down period, for hand guns in many states, why not a cooling off period, a "de-tumescence" for marriage? Eh, Brittany? Eh Dennis and Carmen?)
If this crap were easy, anyone could figure it out and make it all work to everyone's satisfaction. :o It aint, so it takes more work to work it out.
I seem to have wandered a bit there, sorry. Caffeine 3 Rogue 1.
EDIT for a redundancy.
Quote:Rather than making a move one way or the other on gay marriage, perhaps getting their collective nose out of marriage completely would be a better move by government.As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us" which I will paraphrase to "we has met the guvvimint and he is us!" They government is not "they," it is more or less "we," warts and all. At present, many Liberals find the "government" intrusive and just a while back, it was the Conservatives who bellowed the most, the Libertarians never stop objecting to "too much," while the Anarchists of course will never be happy. Putting the fun into dysfunctional seems to be the hobby du jour of American political life.
But until the reality (or is it myth?) of "Government of the People and By the People" is changed, government is indeed "We." That means the collective will, when discernable, has to be considered, "for better or for worse." ;)
Who the hell is "We?" Absent a Royal "We" that is, as we have discussed before, "We" is somewhat of a chimera, but at present it seems to consist of those who shout loudest and longest, and a judge or shapr lawyer here and there. As a gay friend of mine in SF observes: 'I pay taxes, I vote, I pay my parking tickets. I am part of "We the People" too.' Indeed he is.
In theory, the government in a republican or democratic society expresses the will of the people, and if the people have a semi-cohesive set of common cultural assumptions, it is more likely to do so than if they do not. Our government is built on that theory as an underlying assumption. Note that the Mormons in Utah were not allowed to keep bigamy/polygamy as a legal construct when entering the Union, though of course some still practiced it anyway and took the risk that someone would "turn them in." Sorta like, now that I think of it, certain practices in the post-bellum South after the Equal Protection under the Law and Universal Suffrage laws were on the books. Sort of like the Whiskey Rebellion. :)
"I don't like your law/laws and you can't make me follow it/them!" The entity being addressed is "everybody else" in a republican or democratic society, even when the degree of Federalism varies.
Under a system where the State is deified, such as Socialism or Marxism, the State is still allegedly "the agent, or servant (bearing whips and chains), of the people." Once again, everybody else. (Hmmm, I just had a thought: under Socialist/Marxist dogma, The State is a lot like Corporations are in America today: disembodied entities with different rules than that of the regular people, citizens.)
That "you can't make me" is an old refrain. ("From my cold dead fingers" or anyone?) What it boils down to is that if you live somewhere other than your own island, you have to deal with all of those "other people" one way or another. Government, that necessary evil of Thomas Paine's, is a way to deal with that.
Which takes us to social engineering, something I am far too familiar with thanks to the 20+ years as a guinea pig of social engineers in the Military.
Policies and laws that best allow "the people" to provide for their own general welfare and posterity are enacted that emphasize or de-emphasize a whole kolaidascope of social standards. The Legal Age of Consent is one such standard. Legal voting age. Felons can't own guns. Marriage. Imminent Domain for that highway in your back yard.
It is, or at least was, a common cultural assumption that stable families raising children was a "common good" socially, and so over time the tax laws changed to reflect that social priority. In the past 40 years, for many reasons, we have seen the courts full of lawyers make their living, lamprey like, on the misery of others in the form of folks whose marriages were either ill advised or simply not working: Catalysts to destroy marriage in the name of making a buck by emphasizing people's shortcomings, rather than seeking to bring people together and work together. Going to Court is not about healing, it is about inflicting and receiving pain, societal pain. (In the case of Enron and other Wall Street frauds, I am all for inflicting that pain with a barbed wire Cat O' Nine Tails!)
If all, or even half, of the money spent on divorce court were invested in counselling and teaching each other how to be better spice (is that the plural of spouse?) to each other, think of the social damage NOT done. But that's wishful thinking.
What has happened to marriage? A lot, but the 1996 act I quoted to Nico showed that across partizan lines, there was a generally agreed assumption that strong marriages are good for society as a whole. As to your "Shrub" comment, I wonder at why all of a sudden the gay marriage folks did not all show up en masse at the SF city hall in 1999? Unwilling to go head to head with, who was it, Pete Wilson? (I forget who the gov was in 99, or had Davis won by then?) Curious that it happened [I]This Election Year. Is this about Gay Marriage, or [/I]Is This Politics Using Marriage As An Excuse? I smell the same sort of stuff as came up a few years back with that "No Flag Burning Ammendment" nonsense: I hope I am wrong, but I think the timing of this is a political act. Maybe that is what it takes.
But if it isn't politics, it's still worth asking in re the 1996 law: where does that leave gay couples? At present in Limbo, and since no Civil Union statutes seem to have been settled on, they remain in Limbo, and many are not all that happy about it. (My friend up in SF included.)
To a certain extent, the initiation of action in SF is a good thing: no more dancing around the point. It FORCES a decision, or the process of arriving at a decision, and my own opinion that Civil Unions may indeed need a solid place in secular society is still being informed. Some of this is also tied to my own feelings on adoption reform, but that is for another day.
I am going to be a grammarian here, and ask the whatever the outcome, don't call it "Marriage," because it isn't, and my back up to that is that marriage is a customary bond between man and woman that crosses all cultural borders. Look around the world, maybe there is something to that common custom.
Since "The People" more or less spoke and said, in 1996 "marriage is a good thing and we need to support it" that strikes me as at least a step forward to striking down (lawyers, are you all listening?) strands in our social thread that weaken, undermine, and destroy marriages. Those in the thread who comment on "how marriage is failing" were probably never married, or never saw one that worked. Marriage can work, but it takes work! :D
Of course, rushing into marriage can't be legislated against, and that is a crying shame: we have a waiting period, a cooling down period, for hand guns in many states, why not a cooling off period, a "de-tumescence" for marriage? Eh, Brittany? Eh Dennis and Carmen?)
If this crap were easy, anyone could figure it out and make it all work to everyone's satisfaction. :o It aint, so it takes more work to work it out.
I seem to have wandered a bit there, sorry. Caffeine 3 Rogue 1.
EDIT for a redundancy.
Cry 'Havoc' and let slip the Men 'O War!
In War, the outcome is never final. --Carl von Clausewitz--
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
John 11:35 - consider why.
In Memory of Pete
In War, the outcome is never final. --Carl von Clausewitz--
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
John 11:35 - consider why.
In Memory of Pete