POLITICS Open source information: new proposal

[Guest guest]

>So what is the take away lesson? Well the obvious one is don't trust the

>Republicans, what they say and what they do are two different things.

>But if that is all you go away with then, IMO, you have sorely missed

>the point.

Well, ok, then that makes sense. Actually I DO know the bit

about Democrats ... it just makes me angry to keep hearing

people talk about Democrats wanting " big government " and

being " spend happy " when we just had 8 years of fairly

reasonable gov't that balanced the budget.

>The greater point, IMO, is don't trust politicians period. I'm picking

>on the Republicans in this post, but I could have just as well picked on

>the Democrats. The difference is by and large I know what I am getting

>with a Democrat. With the Republicans I'm getting nothing but smoke and

>mirrors.

Well, I WISH we had more than a 2-party system. I'm not in favor

of Big Gov't (though compared to and maybe you it might

seem that way). I like the IEEE model ... which is more or less

how the Internet was set up ... global rules, local implementation.

There is a whole school of architecture built on that idea ...

>In the end, if you believe in big gov't, and from what I have read, for

>all practical purposes you do, then you have nothing to fear from the

>Republicans. Oh you might argue with them over the various details of

>how to apply the hammer (such as the issue above), but they *do* believe

>in the hammer just as much as you do.

I'm not sure how you get that? There is a whole spectrum of shades

between " no government " and " the Kremlin " . I'm coming at it

from a system analysis point of view, and a " system " as big

as the " US " , just won't work without some central control and organization.

The smaller organizations keep coalescing into bigger ones .. in

terms of states and corporations and religions, and that process has been going

on

for the last 5,000 years or so. Any one of those 3 organizations can

make life miserable for you and me: the question is how to keep them

all working to make life better (rather than acting out some alpha male

power trip). The second question is how to make life decently livable in

an industrial economy, for which we are incredibly poorly adapted.

-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

>Heidi,

>

>Bush would be suffering major attack from conservatives had 9/11 not

>happened, since he isn't one, by any stretch of the imagination. But far more

>importantly, he IS suffering attack left and right, daily, from Libertarians.

Chris:

You must be in a different crowd! The conservatives around here love

the guy, and the expanded gov't too, and especially the bigger role

for the church in state affairs. And they still rail against the

" Big Gov't " liberals. The liberals I know mostly advocate a smaller

role for the government (though they do support some social programs

and environmental regulations and research) and a balanced budget.

Other than you folks, I have not met anyone who admitted to being Libertarian,

except Penn and Teller (whose philosophies in most things I like).

-- Heidi