The Political Discussion Thread

[Coco Pops]

and while you're at it check out all the info on John Howard, far-right-wing former australian PM and fascist POS
turns out he's also the one who had all private guns banned

That is true he did that in 1996 and the current government is even more right wing. Control of the media, and the PM has how own private cameraman, so only "the right" photos or videos will be published. Oh dear life here is like living in a tin pot dictatorship.. Almost..

All the big corporations or mates that donate to the govt. are getting favours left, right, and centre, while the middle class, and lower classes are getting screwed over.

[Womble]

Because what those 18th century guys wrote is the legal "rule book" of how the country is to be run, and defines the powers, responsibilities and authority of our government. Even more importantly, it defines limits upon that government.

So? Before them, other groups of long-dead people wrote other legal rule books about how a country is to be run. Do you follow all of them?

This is a more important question than you think. It's where the real fault line between the conservatives and the progressives lies. It is also one of the key problems of democracy.

Every society is guided, to a great extent, by the dead hand of the past. Rules laid down once upon a time, designed to create and maintain a framework meant to lead the society to success. The question is at what point and in which circumstances one stops obeying the dead and begins constructing a new framework.

The right - left, progressive - conservative, Republican - Democrat divide is a divide over that question. Conservatives are the people who obey the dead hand of the past; they seek to preserve and maintain the existing framework that has proven itself over time. Progressives are people who seek change from the existing framework. They find it limiting and attack its shortcomings; they prefer a fluid, ever-evolving set of rules that can keep up with the changing world.

Both views are legitimate and both are potential trouble. Conservatives' rigid adherence to laws laid down centuries ago handicaps the society in trying to keep up with the changes. It's why medieval China eventually fell behind Europe in both power and technological prowess despite having a tremendous headstart for most of human history. Progressives recklessly casting aside safeguards and limits that were in place for good reason can have the kind of disastrous results that various socialist revolutions of the 20th century have demonstrated.

My problem with the Americans constantly appealing to their Constitution is simple - the American Constitution is the dead hand of America's past. Its continued relevance is not self-evident for everyone. The reason American progressives are currently winning across the board - and despite not being American or technically a conservative, I have a lot more sympathy for the American conservatives at the moment than I do for the guys currently in the White House - is because the conservatives fail to coherently make the case that the Constitution is still relevant enough to be a basis for their appeals. It's not enough to say that something is "unconstitutional" and automatically declare it bad; the public will lose sensitivity for the label very quickly if you can't show that the thing is bad by itself. And certainly no one outside of your own society will have much sympathy for your position.

Prime example is the Second Amendment, the gun rights. Most people outside of the USA regard it as an ugly handicap that was built into your Constitution when the world was very different, and should be cast away as having long ceased to serve the social good. You cannot reasonably justify it to a non-American by appealing to the Constitution's sacred status - it's not sacred for them and there's no reason why it should be. The other argument - that it's meant to keep the government in check - goes against one of the fundamentals of a state as a form of social organization, the government's monopoly on violence. That monopoly is crucial to a stable state, because the existence of powerful armed militias capable of threatening the national armed forces is a recipe for social disintegration or takeover by violent groups hostile to the existing framework (as evident in the Middle Eastern and North African states where such militias are abundant). So you can't really win much sympathy for your cause with argumentation like that.

[Annoyed]

So? Before them, other groups of long-dead people wrote other legal rule books about how a country is to be run. Do you follow all of them?

This is a more important question than you think. It's where the real fault line between the conservatives and the progressives lies. It is also one of the key problems of democracy.

Every society is guided, to a great extent, by the dead hand of the past. Rules laid down once upon a time, designed to create and maintain a framework meant to lead the society to success. The question is at what point and in which circumstances one stops obeying the dead and begins constructing a new framework. EDITED FOR BREVITY

So, you're saying that the document is outdated, and should be scrapped.

The founding fathers realized that circumstances may change and that those changes might affect how the Constitution comes into play. For that reason, they did include a process for amending it. If enough people feel that it should be changed, it can be. But the bar for change was intentionally set high. But there is a process for updating it.

Prime example is the Second Amendment, the gun rights. Most people outside of the USA regard it as an ugly handicap that was built into your Constitution when the world was very different, and should be cast away as having long ceased to serve the social good. You cannot reasonably justify it to a non-American by appealing to the Constitution's sacred status - it's not sacred for them and there's no reason why it should be. The other argument - that it's meant to keep the government in check - goes against one of the fundamentals of a state as a form of social organization, the government's monopoly on violence. That monopoly is crucial to a stable state, because the existence of powerful armed militias capable of threatening the national armed forces is a recipe for social disintegration or takeover by violent groups hostile to the existing framework (as evident in the Middle Eastern and North African states where such militias are abundant). So you can't really win much sympathy for your cause with argumentation like that.

The founding fathers believed that government is only legitimate when that governance is with the consent of the people, as the ultimate authority for that govt. comes from the people, not the govt.

If the citizens are disarmed, what can be done when / if that government begins to act as a dictatorship, or in other ways contrary to the interests of the people? They firmly believed that the government should NOT have the monopoly on violence. Many dictatorships have arisen and very often, one of the first steps is to disarm the population.

[Womble]

So, you're saying that the document is outdated, and should be scrapped.

I am saying that there may come a time when any society's founding document, or significant parts thereof, may become outdated and may need to be scrapped rather than tweaked, and the US Constitution is not an exception to the rule.

The founding fathers realized that circumstances may change and that those changes might affect how the Constitution comes into play. For that reason, they did include a process for amending it. If enough people feel that it should be changed, it can be. But the bar for change was intentionally set high. But there is a process for updating it.

Are you saying that the founding fathers of the USA had infinite foresight and that the system they created is flawless and infinitely adaptable?

The founding fathers believed that government is only legitimate when that governance is with the consent of the people, as the ultimate authority for that govt. comes from the people, not the govt.

If the citizens are disarmed, what can be done when / if that government begins to act as a dictatorship, or in other ways contrary to the interests of the people? They firmly believed that the government should NOT have the monopoly on violence. Many dictatorships have arisen and very often, one of the first steps is to disarm the population.

That shows a severe misunderstanding of how the world works.

First, there is no contradiction between the idea that the legitimacy of a government derives from the consent of the governed, and the need for government monopoly on violence. Monopoly of violence is a defining concept of the modern state as a form of social organization: if statehood means anything at all, it means an organization exercising exclusive right to legitimately exercise, threaten or authorize use of physical force within a given territory. The state's managerial functions can only be performed in conditions of said monopoly; it cannot collect taxes, enforce laws or do anything else if it cannot freely use force to coerce the disobedient to cooperate.

Statehood is coercion, by definition.

The other thing you don't seem to realize is the mechanism by which dictatorships come about. Dictatorships do not just happen. They are not created against the will of the people by an elected democratic official who decides to cast away the rules. ANY government, including dictatorial governments, can only endure when and if they secure legitimacy in the eyes of the population. When they fail to do so, they get overthrown. The worst, most violent and oppressive dictatorships and authocracies were, in virtually every instance, supported by their population.

Hitler came to power with majority support, and remained a popularly worshipped figure among Germans until defeat. Stalin was so loved by the people that to this day, Russian opinion polls show that 35% of all voters would've voted for Stalin as President had he been alive, and more than 50% agree that Stalin, during his rule, did more good things than bad things. Any dictatorship that lasted more than a decade, did so with the support of its governed people.

There are two forms dictatorships can take in the modern world. The first is majority dictatorship. Hitler, Stalin, Mao persecuted minorities but relied on the support of a clear-cut ethnic and ideological majority of their populations. The other form is minority dictatorship, of which Syria and Saddam Hussein's Iraq are best known examples. Minority dictatorships emerge in weak states whose coercive apparatus proves incapable of protecting the population from the onslaught of armed militias of a determined, violent minority. Neither scenario justifies weakening the government's monopoly of violence out of fear that the government might get out of control.

[Annoyed]

I am saying that there may come a time when any society's founding document, or significant parts thereof, may become outdated and may need to be scrapped rather than tweaked, and the US Constitution is not an exception to the rule.

Are you saying that the founding fathers of the USA had infinite foresight and that the system they created is flawless and infinitely adaptable?

Not by a long shot. They were men, not Gods. And I think history shows that while it is not perfect, it is best system to come down the pike yet for maximizing individual freedom. Results speak for themselves too. In less than 200 years, hardly the blink of an eye in historical time scales, the U.S. rose a fledgling upstart to the absolute top of the heap in the world in every measurable aspect. Standard of living for her citizens, technological ability, military capability, economic output, the list goes on. You can't deny that the U.S.'s manufacturing might and her military power were largely responsible for the defeat of the axis powers in World War II. If the U.S. didn't exist in the 1900's,. we would likely all be speaking German today, slaves of the Third Reich & the Nazis.
You can't argue with results, and those are pretty damned impressive results.

Sadly, we began to lose our way in the 60's and 70's, when the baby boomers came to power and began ignoring what had created the nation that so spoiled them. This decline continues today, at an ever accelerating pace. More and more, we began to trade away individual freedom for someone's idea of what was good for everyone. Equally important, we began to ignore the restrictions placed upon government by the Constitution.

That shows a severe misunderstanding of how the world works.

First, there is no contradiction between the idea that the legitimacy of a government derives from the consent of the governed, and the need for government monopoly on violence.

If the government is the only one authorized to use force, what recourse do the people have should that government lose the consent of the governed? Throw rocks? An armed citizenry is the only real thing keeping a government in check. It's no secret that in any authoritarian state, the people are prohibited from owning firearms. There is a reason for that.

Monopoly of violence is a defining concept of the modern state as a form of social organization: if statehood means anything at all, it means an organization exercising exclusive right to legitimately exercise, threaten or authorize use of physical force within a given territory. The state's managerial functions can only be performed in conditions of said monopoly; it cannot collect taxes, enforce laws or do anything else if it cannot freely use force to coerce the disobedient to cooperate.

Statehood is coercion, by definition.

The other thing you don't seem to realize is the mechanism by which dictatorships come about. Dictatorships do not just happen. They are not created against the will of the people by an elected democratic official who decides to cast away the rules. ANY government, including dictatorial governments, can only endure when and if they secure legitimacy in the eyes of the population. When they fail to do so, they get overthrown. The worst, most violent and oppressive dictatorships and authocracies were, in virtually every instance, supported by their population.

Hitler came to power with majority support, and remained a popularly worshipped figure among Germans until defeat. Stalin was so loved by the people that to this day, Russian opinion polls show that 35% of all voters would've voted for Stalin as President had he been alive, and more than 50% agree that Stalin, during his rule, did more good things than bad things. Any dictatorship that lasted more than a decade, did so with the support of its governed people.

There are two forms dictatorships can take in the modern world. The first is majority dictatorship. Hitler, Stalin, Mao persecuted minorities but relied on the support of a clear-cut ethnic and ideological majority of their populations. The other form is minority dictatorship, of which Syria and Saddam Hussein's Iraq are best known examples. Minority dictatorships emerge in weak states whose coercive apparatus proves incapable of protecting the population from the onslaught of armed militias of a determined, violent minority. Neither scenario justifies weakening the government's monopoly of violence out of fear that the government might get out of control.

I'm aware of how Hitler came to power. He employed many tactics, one of which was "programming" the young under the guise of education. Hitler Youth, and all that, as well as intensive propaganda aimed at the adult population. And he provided a scapegoat, which all of the people could rally behind in their government-fostered hatred simply by blaming them for the country's economic problems.

Take a look at the revisionist history and self-loathing being taught to our own young today. Not entirely dissimilar. I know of middle level history classes that teach their students all about the evil U.S. used of Nuclear weapons to bring WWII to a close, but that same class doesn't even touch upon how the U.S. was drawn into the war to begin with, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Your idea of an ideal society may be different from mine; I value the freedom of the individual first above all else. You seem to define things differently. That's not wrong, if that's what you think would work, great. But individual freedom seems to suffer under your ideal.

[SoulReaver]

It's no secret that in any authoritarian state, the people are prohibited from owning firearms. There is a reason for that.

because unlike what anarchists claim, the raison d'être for these regimes is the well-being & safety of their people. a master must care for his dog, that includes teaching it not to bite
look at the north koreans for instance - how can you not see the happiness on their faces?

[Womble]

Not by a long shot. They were men, not Gods. And I think history shows that while it is not perfect, it is best system to come down the pike yet for maximizing individual freedom. Results speak for themselves too. In less than 200 years, hardly the blink of an eye in historical time scales, the U.S. rose a fledgling upstart to the absolute top of the heap in the world in every measurable aspect. Standard of living for her citizens, technological ability, military capability, economic output, the list goes on. You can't deny that the U.S.'s manufacturing might and her military power were largely responsible for the defeat of the axis powers in World War II. If the U.S. didn't exist in the 1900's,. we would likely all be speaking German today, slaves of the Third Reich & the Nazis.
You can't argue with results, and those are pretty damned impressive results.

Sadly, we began to lose our way in the 60's and 70's, when the baby boomers came to power and began ignoring what had created the nation that so spoiled them. This decline continues today, at an ever accelerating pace. More and more, we began to trade away individual freedom for someone's idea of what was good for everyone. Equally important, we began to ignore the restrictions placed upon government by the Constitution.

I would observe that much of the USA might is owed to sheer geographic and historical luck. It's a large, resource rich country separated from the nearest comparably powerful enemy by thousands of miles of open water, which is why it has never experienced a devastating war on its own territory. USA just never really had to deal with most of the factors that slowed down other countries' progress.

Bu the decline you're speaking about could well be interpreted as evidence of the old framework failing. People don't just toss away willi-nilly things that work. Perhaps the old framework's restrictions etc. came to be ignored because it was inadequate for responding to new challenges.

If the government is the only one authorized to use force, what recourse do the people have should that government lose the consent of the governed? Throw rocks? An armed citizenry is the only real thing keeping a government in check.

Historically speaking, "throwing rocks" was how it was always done.

Any government's military is of the people. When the government truly loses the consent of the governed, it usually loses the loyalty of its military as well. The Russian revolution of 1917 was perpetrated largely by Army and Navy deserters who turned their weapons against the government who issued them. Most governments in history that were overthrown violently, were overthrown by members of their own military.

It's no secret that in any authoritarian state, the people are prohibited from owning firearms. There is a reason for that.

That is actually not true on two levels.

First, many authoritarian states are permissive or selectively permissive towards firearms ownership. Many Arab dictatorships have relatively high rates of private gun ownership. Yemen ranks third in the world in per capita private gun possession with about 55 guns per 1000 population, half the USA ownership rate. Saudi Arabia is 6th, Saddam Hussein's Iraq 7th. On the other hand, the democratic South Korea has only a marginally higher private gun ownership rate than the totalitarian North Korea.

You see, if one wants to institute a tyranny, the best way to do it isn't to disarm the entire population, but to generously arm the tyranny's supporters among the population. Muslim tyrannies in North Africa and the Middle East often tolerate the situation when most household have at least one gun, legal or otherwise, because it creates fertile soil for tribal warfare that allows the government to divide and conquer. They often rely on armed militias of regime-friendly population groups instead of their own army and police to suppress rebellions; the genocide in Darfur was perpetrated almost entirely by militias which the Sudanese government supported, armed, financed, trained, directed but did not formally command. This allows the tyranny to stay "clean-handed" while having its dirty work done by the armed citizenry. Similarly, in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, any Baath party member could legally own an AK47.

One of the main reasons why stricter gun control was originally instituted in Western democracies, by the way, was a well-grounded fear of Soviet-funded Communist revolution attempts.

I'm aware of how Hitler came to power. He employed many tactics, one of which was "programming" the young under the guise of education. Hitler Youth, and all that, as well as intensive propaganda aimed at the adult population. And he provided a scapegoat, which all of the people could rally behind in their government-fostered hatred simply by blaming them for the country's economic problems.

He could only do all that after taking power, not before. You cannot "programm young people under the guise of education" before you actually control the nation's education.

Hitler came to power by winning the sympathy of a large share of German population, and organizing anti-government extremists into an effective political force.

I'm honestly stumped whenever I observe the Americans discussing the Second Amendment, and why the conversation invariably shifts to "keeping the government in check". For me, as an outsider, it is blindingly obvious why the Second Amendment was put in place.

Recall the wording:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The reasoning behind the amendment is explicitly stated - the security of the State. Not keeping the government in check. Not the security of individial citizens. The security of the State.

Look at it in historical context. The Second Amendment was adopted in the year 1791. USA population at the time (according to 1790 census) was just under 4 million people, spread thin over a gigantic territory. The main transportation technology was still the horse (steamboat has only just been invented. Britain still has footholds on the continent, relying on its Native American allies to defend its control of the Great Lakes and other territories, possibly eyeing reconquest of the rest. The only way to protect the entire American territory, or to suppress insurrections like the Whiskey rebellion in Pennsylvania - was to rely on the population itself to form militias and fight back against any invader until the army can arrive. The same with law enforcement. Hence the right to bear arms.

Your idea of an ideal society may be different from mine; I value the freedom of the individual first above all else. You seem to define things differently. That's not wrong, if that's what you think would work, great. But individual freedom seems to suffer under your ideal.

I am generally of the mind that the quest for an ideal society is a foolish one. The world will never stop changing; a society that wants to survive, must constantly adapt and evolve.

Freedom of the individual is a beautiful thing, but any form of social organization will necessarily limit it. Individuals will inevitably be less and less free as population grows and society becomes more complex. The larger the society, the smaller the world around it, the greater the need for regulation.

I am a conservative hawk from Israel, currently very pessimistic about where the world is going. I believe democracy as we know it may be at the end of its use-by date. As the world's preeminent democracies are in a chronic crisis and the rising powers are almost all hybrid regimes - autocracies with high degree of economic liberalization - it is no longer self-evident that democracy and individual freedom bring prosperity. Just as in the middle ages the feudal state with weak central powers was replaced by absolute monarchies (to be replaced by democracies as the wheel kept on turning), we may be entering another phase of centralization of power, and police state may be an inevitable development phase for most societies over the next few decades.

[Annoyed]

Well, we obviously have rather different outlooks on things. In my view, the best path the US should follow to regain her former glory is to return to what brought her that glory to begin with, and you seem to feel it's time to start over in a new direction. That's fine, we still have freedom of speech (sort of anyway, for now. That right is being slowly stripped away as well). We will just have to agree to disagree.

A comment on one point you made, however.

I would observe that much of the USA might is owed to sheer geographic and historical luck. It's a large, resource rich country separated from the nearest comparably powerful enemy by thousands of miles of open water, which is why it has never experienced a devastating war on its own territory. USA just never really had to deal with most of the factors that slowed down other countries' progress.

While it is true that with the exception of the Civil War, we've never fought a war on our own soil, a bigger part of that success is that we had a population that was willing to work to take advantage of the incredibly rich natural resources of this country.

Nowadays, we have large segments of the population who are unwilling to work even to support themselves. Instead they demand that those of us who do work support their useless existences as well as our own, and the government encourages this behavior in order to make the government more necessary to these people.

In addition, it has become popular to turn our collective nose up when it comes to taking advantage of the resources we have been given. It's almost as if we have a collective will to destroy ourselves.

[SoulReaver]

see what I meant when I said your 2nd amendment is ambiguous?
it's almost like your Founders deliberately made a mess of it isn't it

anyway IMO there's 1 area where freedoms should definitely be restricted in the US and that's corporate freedoms ie. tighter government regulation of the economy

[Womble]

Well, we obviously have rather different outlooks on things. In my view, the best path the US should follow to regain her former glory is to return to what brought her that glory to begin with, and you seem to feel it's time to start over in a new direction.

I think it's time for your country to return to what brought it glory to begin with, but not in the "forward to the past" kind of way. That approach never worked for any society really. Look around at the modern world, analyze, draw conclusions, act.

American society is very awesome in some ways and completely messed up in others. You have a lot to teach others, but you also have a lot to learn. American healthcare system is a disaster; here in Israel we achieve far superior results with much less money (granted, we curse our system a fair bit, but I've never had to think whether or not I can afford a visit to the doctor, and my current healthcare plan runs about $20 per month). Americans come to Israel for medical treatments much more often than Israelis come to America for medical treatments. You're beginning to fall behind the developed world on infrastructure such as roads, bridges and public transport, because that's an area that cannot be successfully done through private contractors. New York City expects to complete its Second Avenue subway line by 2029, 22 years after the start of construction, while China builds whole subway systems for cities that size in a year.

If you really want the USA to succeed, the Constitution is not the thing to obsess over. You need to do four really important things:

1 - Roll back Obama's trainwreck of a foreign policy. Trying to bring your enemies back from the cold at the expense of your time-proven alliances is madness. USA needs to rebuild its camp of allies and stick by them, instead of bending over backwards to please every disgruntled tinpot dictator and European moralizer.

2 - Go back into space ASAP with a grand, ambitious, expensive project like a Moon colony. It'll be money well spent. Government R&D spending drives private R&D spending, and aerospace R&D was what created the American technological surge of the second half of the 20th century. Israel created the basis for the start-up nation the same way, through government-financed aerospace R&D (especially the Lavi project). In a sense, it's not even the projects' eventual success that matters most but the building of an experienced and creative workforce which later spills over into private enterprise.

3 - Sort out your immigration laws and attitudes towards both immigrants and visitors. You want to siphon the world's best brains and make them feel welcome. Right now even visiting the USA as a tourist is a stressful endeavor because your immigration officials are world champions of unfounded paranoia, worse than Chinese and South African ones. Don't get me started on the process of obtaining a tourist visa. A friend of mine was refused visa on the grounds that she was - wait for it - young, attractive and single. She could, God forbid, marry an American she has just met on her 10 day trip and apply for citizenship.

4 - Invest HEAVILY into integration of your war veterans into civilian life. You're wasting a huge pool of capable, experienced men whose potential employers can't make heads or tails of a military resume. A man who commanded a Marine company very likely has the gifts it takes to run a business company, he just needs the right education - but at the job interview, his army experience will not be seen as having had a "real job". Ideally, perhaps reintroducing the draft could do some good.

[mad_gater]

I think it's time for your country to return to what brought it glory to begin with, but not in the "forward to the past" kind of way. That approach never worked for any society really. Look around at the modern world, analyze, draw conclusions, act.

American society is very awesome in some ways and completely messed up in others. You have a lot to teach others, but you also have a lot to learn. American healthcare system is a disaster; here in Israel we achieve far superior results with much less money (granted, we curse our system a fair bit, but I've never had to think whether or not I can afford a visit to the doctor, and my current healthcare plan runs about $20 per month). Americans come to Israel for medical treatments much more often than Israelis come to America for medical treatments. You're beginning to fall behind the developed world on infrastructure such as roads, bridges and public transport, because that's an area that cannot be successfully done through private contractors. New York City expects to complete its Second Avenue subway line by 2029, 22 years after the start of construction, while China builds whole subway systems for cities that size in a year.

If you really want the USA to succeed, the Constitution is not the thing to obsess over. You need to do four really important things:

1 - Roll back Obama's trainwreck of a foreign policy. Trying to bring your enemies back from the cold at the expense of your time-proven alliances is madness. USA needs to rebuild its camp of allies and stick by them, instead of bending over backwards to please every disgruntled tinpot dictator and European moralizer.

2 - Go back into space ASAP with a grand, ambitious, expensive project like a Moon colony. It'll be money well spent. Government R&D spending drives private R&D spending, and aerospace R&D was what created the American technological surge of the second half of the 20th century. Israel created the basis for the start-up nation the same way, through government-financed aerospace R&D (especially the Lavi project). In a sense, it's not even the projects' eventual success that matters most but the building of an experienced and creative workforce which later spills over into private enterprise.

3 - Sort out your immigration laws and attitudes towards both immigrants and visitors. You want to siphon the world's best brains and make them feel welcome. Right now even visiting the USA as a tourist is a stressful endeavor because your immigration officials are world champions of unfounded paranoia, worse than Chinese and South African ones. Don't get me started on the process of obtaining a tourist visa. A friend of mine was refused visa on the grounds that she was - wait for it - young, attractive and single. She could, God forbid, marry an American she has just met on her 10 day trip and apply for citizenship.

4 - Invest HEAVILY into integration of your war veterans into civilian life. You're wasting a huge pool of capable, experienced men whose potential employers can't make heads or tails of a military resume. A man who commanded a Marine company very likely has the gifts it takes to run a business company, he just needs the right education - but at the job interview, his army experience will not be seen as having had a "real job". Ideally, perhaps reintroducing the draft could do some good.

many of the problems you mention can be traced back to bloated government bureaucracy...in other words we have far too many government departments that serve very little, if any, useful purpose and thus are nothing but huge drains on taxpayer resources

[Annoyed]

If you really want the USA to succeed, the Constitution is not the thing to obsess over. You need to do four really important things:

1 - Roll back Obama's trainwreck of a foreign policy. Trying to bring your enemies back from the cold at the expense of your time-proven alliances is madness. USA needs to rebuild its camp of allies and stick by them, instead of bending over backwards to please every disgruntled tinpot dictator and European moralizer.

2 - Go back into space ASAP with a grand, ambitious, expensive project like a Moon colony. It'll be money well spent. Government R&D spending drives private R&D spending, and aerospace R&D was what created the American technological surge of the second half of the 20th century. Israel created the basis for the start-up nation the same way, through government-financed aerospace R&D (especially the Lavi project). In a sense, it's not even the projects' eventual success that matters most but the building of an experienced and creative workforce which later spills over into private enterprise.

3 - Sort out your immigration laws and attitudes towards both immigrants and visitors. You want to siphon the world's best brains and make them feel welcome. Right now even visiting the USA as a tourist is a stressful endeavor because your immigration officials are world champions of unfounded paranoia, worse than Chinese and South African ones. Don't get me started on the process of obtaining a tourist visa. A friend of mine was refused visa on the grounds that she was - wait for it - young, attractive and single. She could, God forbid, marry an American she has just met on her 10 day trip and apply for citizenship.

4 - Invest HEAVILY into integration of your war veterans into civilian life. You're wasting a huge pool of capable, experienced men whose potential employers can't make heads or tails of a military resume. A man who commanded a Marine company very likely has the gifts it takes to run a business company, he just needs the right education - but at the job interview, his army experience will not be seen as having had a "real job". Ideally, perhaps reintroducing the draft could do some good.

Strongly agree on points 1 & 2.

I'd go even farther; rolling back every single thing that Obama has done since he took office would be a great start.

Regarding point 3: It depends upon what way you want to sort it. My idea of "immigration reform" is as follows:
Rebuild our border defenses to stop the flood of illegals entering this country. Did you know that in some jurisdictions, border patrols/agents are not even allowed to carry firearms? That's how soft in the head our immigration policy is these days.
Then, round up every single person in this country illegally and immediately deport them, no excuses, no BS, no nonsense of any sort. If they have family members here, they can leave with them, or remain here if they themselves are legally in the country. None of this "anchor baby" stuff or any other dodges people use to get around our immigration laws. These people can then reapply for admittance/citizenship via existing legal process. But of course, their initial illegal entry into the country would be one of the factors considered. I don't see why we should do any favors for people whose respect for our laws is shown by their willingness to break them.

Legal immigration levels need to be adjusted as well, based upon our economic needs. If we get to the point that the legitimate unemployment rates are hovering about 1 - 2 % instead of damned near 20% we have now, and companies have to competitively bid against each other to get workers and still can't get enough people, then we can raise legal immigration levels. Of course, this would also require scrapping of the various trade policies that companies use to outsource as much labor as they possibly can. We need to look after our own best interests first, last and always, because the simple fact is that if we don't, no one will. And we have been doing the exact opposite for decades now.

I also agree with # 4, for the simple reason that if a man (or woman) has been willing to serve in the military, with the risks that that entails, the country ought to do its best to help him/her return to this society. This includes medical care for injuries sustained.

[SoulReaver]

ye make it sound like Obama's the one calling the shots

[SoulReaver]

btw is healthcare in Israel more similar to that in the US or the EU??

[mad_gater]

from where I'm sitting....most free republics like the Roman Republic/Empire and the US Republic (modeled somewhat similarly to the Roman one) tend to corrupt themselves and fail due to one glaring loophole....the ability to vote oneself largesse from the federal treasury...once people discover that that can be done....it gets done rather frequently and thus said once free republic becomes an authoritarian regime

if we were to close that one glaring loophole I bet that would take care of much of the corruption