Regardless of what you'll hear you live in a republic. And the people are removed from actually electing their leaders by the electoral college. I don't remember the exact quote but the founded fathers stated that the average person would never be competent enough to elect their leader.

 

well it's not perfect. But it's not exactly 3k years old like many governments either. But for the most part, the majority is satisfied. When you are allowed so many rights, they conflict with others rights. It can never and will never be perfect.

 

So you believe in rights of the individual. And by your own stated expansion, rights of the majority. Do you believe states have rights?

 

are you quizing me? :fawk:

 

No, I'm just wondering if you think states have rights.

 

certain regions of certain industry should be allowed specific rights. But some rights of a particular regional industry can have rights that superseed (sp? :fawk: ) other industries. But this is only when its been fully investigated and proven due to the situations. This also relates to a larger capita of citizens.

 

So what is justifying the US's violation of the rights of another state?

 

My brain hurts...how about your opinion for once h: :fawk:



...and I think we're breaking it down too far past the original point of the thread.

 

My basic precepts:

#1: People are afforded certain irrefutable rights by sheer existence. (Natural Law)

#2: Common good. (The needs of a group are more important than the needs of an individual.)

I'd like to think that those two are pretty universal.



Governments are nothing more than organizations of people. As such, they have certain rights. (#1) Also, being (generally) large collections of people, they have the ability to supercede their consituents' rights as needed for the betterment of the common good. (#2) One responsibility of government is to have some kind of process whereby the decision to infringe on these rights can be made.

By extrapolation, the needs of global good (the world's collective good) supercede the rights of a nation or state. Obviously, the needs of the human race as a whole override any individual group's. Also by extrapolation, a process is needed whereby this can occur as needed. As such, a global government (Back to first paragraph, government = collection of people. Global government = collection of nations) of sorts needs to be in place to handle this. Hence the United Nations.

The United States going into Iraq and saying "Your leader is a danger, we're going to take him out" is no different from one of your neighbors saying "That Duff Man guy can't be trusted, I say we kill him." No matter what you've done, he's circumventing the proper authorities to impose his own version of justice. If other neighbors voice their support or say "We're donating 6 bullets and a ham sandwich to support the murder" that doesn't justify the action. He has decided that his individual rights overrule your individual rights, which is both illegal and runs against natural law. Proper process needs to be observed to impart a fair decision.

Here's my breakdown on the whole situation: I hate rapists, and I think they should all die. However, that does not entitle me to violate their basic right to life by killing them. I think certain totalitarian governments are unjust and immoral. However, that does not give me or the United States the right to violate their sovereignty.

 

Honestly if the U.S. takes on another war, in the next five years I'm gonna dip out and get citizenship in some nice Caribbean island nation like Jamaica or something. Hopefully Bush won't get reelected and things will be fine.

With an education from a U.S. college I'm sure I'll be able to have a more than comfortable existence and buy a money beachfront house. Either that or I can always buy a sailboat and take tourists on snorkel trips while I play Jimmy Buffet and serve em margaritas out of a cooler. There's no point supporting the government here with my tax dollars if they're going to start invading every other country that's a "perceived threat" real or otherwise.

Despite the fact that the women there are AMAZING, I wouldn't want to go to Spain because so far their government has been best chums with Bush.