I’d vote for a candidate who campaigned to repeal the Second Amendment.

  • Cosmonaut_Collin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    29
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    8 months ago

    Woah! What are you? Some kind of Communist? The founding fathers were perfect in every way. Ain’t no one more qualified on God’s green flat Earth!

  • LordCrom@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    8 months ago

    Also, America was formed because a bunch of rich, old, white guys didn’t want to pay their taxes.

    • Mr_Blott@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      8 months ago

      More like a bunch of folk who were turfed out of Europe for being a bit too religiously weird

      That takes some doing in the 16th century 😂

    • John_McMurray@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Yeah but maybe look at a modern written constitution. At least the guys wrote the American one had some ideals. The Canadian Charter of Rights was written by a career politician in the late 70s to specifically guarantee governmental rights, not citizens.

  • UmeU@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    8 months ago

    I have always felt that freedom of press was one of the most fundamental aspects of a working democracy. Without a free press, you cannot have proper checks and balances. Unfortunately, while press is still ‘free’, actual unbiased news gets only a small fraction of the viewership. Mainstream ‘news’ is nearly completely opinion driven, and profit is the incentive rather than the dissemination of information. The free press no longer serves its necessary function, there is no accountability, and democracy is at risk.

    • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      8 months ago

      We no longer have free press, not to any meaningful degree:

      European version:

      Given that the freedom of press is a requirement for a healthy democracy, and corporations owning all of these subsidiaries prevents that, I think it is well past time that we ban corporations from owning subsidiary companies.

      • Liz@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        8 months ago

        At the very least, every product should be explicitly labeled as produced by the top parent company, right next to the actual name of the product.

    • LordCrom@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      8 months ago

      What about public radio, NPR? Of all the crap news out there, the reports I get off NPR are usually well balanced

      • UmeU@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        8 months ago

        So yea, I hear you. I pretty much exclusively listen to NPR for news, and they are pretty balanced if not potentially a little left leaning from time to time, which I actually find refreshing.

        But when a measurable percentage of the country thinks fox is fair and balanced, or that FB is a news source, the ability for our free press to safeguard democracy is severely threatened.

        What good is free press when there are no longer facts and everything is opinion based?

        Paraphrasing Asimov, ‘There is a cult of ignorance which operates under the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is as good as your knowledge.’

        When trump took a play straight out of the dictators handbook and started shouting fake news, I began to fear that this was the beginning of the end. The real beginning however was probably a few decades back when news went from dry and factual to sensationalist infotainment.

        • LordCrom@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          It’s when CNN went to a 24hour news cycle and they had to fill that time with a bunch of talking heads spouting opinions.

  • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    8 months ago

    At least we got rid of that pesky national religion that controls what’s legal and what’s not.

    Right?

  • davel@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    8 months ago

    A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the genocide of indigenous peoples and the suppression of slave revolts, the right of the settler crakkkers to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

  • Sekrayray@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    8 months ago

    I don’t think the problem is that the government “wasn’t the best ever,” I think it’s that it hasn’t changed. And the US hasn’t done a lot to enforce some of the groundwork beliefs of the framers.

    I still think the idea and balance of power of the US government is one of the best—but it was created to change with the times and address practical flaws (amendments) and hasn’t.

    • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      8 months ago

      The problem is that they’re still largely perceived as being the best ever. The American founding fathers are pretty much deified, and it’s still expected that important policy decisions will be made based on what these centuries-dead aristocrats thought rather than based on what’s needed in the here and now. Other countries don’t do this. I’ve never in my life heard a politician try to attack or defend a position based on what John A. Macdonald would have thought of it, but in the USA that sort of thing happens all the time.

    • Liz@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      8 months ago

      Yeah, but that’s a structural flaw inherit in the initial design. We were doomed to quickly end up in a two party system, despite the fact that they all thought they were better than parties. The federal government pretty much immediately became a two party affair, that that inherently stagnates change and limits the actual will of the people from being enacted in government.

      We need to switch to Approval Voting and proportional representation if we want the government to actually represent the people.

      • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        Many liberal countries have these alternative voting systems, and it means nothing. Australia and Japan for example use alternate voting systems, and yet are still far-right countries who are killing indigenous movements and have extremely unpopular governments.

        The root problem is that in liberal countries, capitalists stand above the political system, and control it for their own purposes. No people’s democracy can emerge from within it, regardless of any system of “checks and balances” or voting systems.

  • Masterblaster420@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    8 months ago

    the meat of it is concerned with property and ownership, which has little to do with the general welfare of sentient beings, so i think it was alright for the time, and totally outdated now.

  • JoYo@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    8 months ago

    and the government has never changed in any since.