Political Extremists taking over?

[Tmy]

It seems like the far right n left are the one controling politics. Its really starting to annoy me. You have gay marrige on one end , anti-gay amendments on the other. Jesus freaks and conspiracy nuts seem to get all the attention.

Whats worse is that the moderates now feel the guilt trip from both sides. For gay marriage? "Sinner how can you spit in Gods face like that. Go watch Mel Gibsons movie." Against gay marriage "You bigot! Your worse than Hitler, Im sure you want slavery back too!".

I sure do miss the days when we focused on Clintons affairs.

 

[corplinx]

I posted a message about a week ago relating to an article about what happens when government ceases to be a nightwatchman and becomes an interventionist. All of a sudden, you have government picking the winners and losers and then elections become a critical matter of "picking the right man". In theory, it shouldn't really matter which schmoe gets elected since the presidency is very constitutionally limited.

The basic requirement for a president is that they need to support international trade and they need to be ready to whip the @ss of anyone who messes with us. That's the presidents job in a nutshell. I have no doubt Wesley Clark would have been ready and able to do this job by the way.

However (and the american people themselves bear the blame for this in part), the president is _expected_ act like king nowadays pushing a domestic agenda and leading congress by the nose. He is even expected to propose a budget. This is just a waste of staff hours for the executive branch. When the budget gets too big, it has to be cut or taxes have to be raised and he has to pick the winners and losers. All of a sudden the presidency is a much more important job and the stakes become high.

Look at the gay marriage debate, is government acting like a night watchman or like a benevolent but misguided paternalist? The federal government is picking the winners and losers and in this case the horrible thing is it happens because its an unpopular minority.

Until government functions as intended the shrillness will continue since electing the "wrong" person can mean your income taxes get raised by an obscene amount, the public works project you work on loses its funding, you are refused the same rights as heterosexuals, or you are treated unfairly in some other by the government.