Passion and tolerance are very interesting concepts. We all use the words all the time, but consider this thread for a moment in the light of those words. The comments below are generalizations and as someone once said, no generalization is true--not even this one.

PASSION: Something each of us has, or at least had at one time. Generally speaking passion flows stronger from the young than the old. Therefore, younger people tend to present their arguments for, or against, something with more emotion and with louder voices. It isn't that the old don't have passion, it's just that they have learned to temper it as the result of sometimes bitter experiences. Whereas the young are much more certain of their position simply because they haven't had such experiences.

Wars, revolutions, new political movements, etc. are generally started and led by younger people because they have the vigor, zest, and passion to do so--They haven't learned yet to be prudent and cautious.

TOLERANCE: Something I think we all aspire to, but have in less measure than we would desire. The stronger one feels about any particular thing, i.e., the more passionate they are, the less likely they are to be tolerant of those who don't share that same feeling. We strive to teach our children tolerance right up to the time we finally pass away. I sometimes wonder if we do so out of fear for our own lives, because lack of tolerance can quickly lead to trouble and even bloodshed & death.

Do you detect a common thread here?--That thread is emotion. Not cold, precise, objective logic, but hot, imprecise, subjective feeling.

I don't know what the average age of the ATS community is, but I would be willing to bet it isn't all that old. Therefore, there is a lot of emotion being expressed in just about all the threads on ATS. Passions flow strongly amongst our community--thats one of the primary reasons the community is so appealing. As much as the comments from many posters sometimes get under my skin, I don't think I would change the liveliness & passion exhibited just to have less annoying comments. In other words, for all its warts & scabs & imperfections ATS is a great place to discuss thngs.

An afterthought--for what it's worth: Someone once told me when I was learning to fly that there are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.

[edit on 4-6-2006 by Astronomer70]

Originally posted by grimreaper797

Originally posted by jsobecky
Government by consensus would never work. The public isn't educated enough to decide isues other than local/state ones' they would succumb to the slickest salesman.

well, I wonder why that is. maybe if we stopped cutting education and such then we would be able to better educate the public huh? anyway what party stands for less budget for education. Theres a pattern.

The public education system is broken in the US, and throwing more money at it is not the problem. Holding back funds until schools attain certain goals is reasonable. Reward success; punish incompetence.

Cell phone voting? Think of the potential for abuse.

I have a system I think would work great, but for now I will just keep it to myself.

Well, share it with us! On the same topic, I thought I heard that some states were contemplating drive-up voting. I can't remember which ones.

Quick question, off topic, I apologize: Do you support the idea of a voter ID card, such as was proposed in Georgia the last election? There was much local resistance to it.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming...

is broken in more ways then you think. teachers need to be trained more in college. We need better teachers and i can tell you that for a fact. Your not going to see results until you get teachers that can teach. I had one teacher would just assign us something then she would grade papers the entire time, sometimes just doing whatever she needed to do. I didnt learn anything, and I almost failed the class. She didnt actually TEACH anything, she was like a babysitter. You want results for the education system, then start getting decent teachers.

voting system goes kind of like this. Weekly voting. Any issues that arise get voted on. The more outcry about an issue the more likely you are to see it go on the voting system. Now how does the actual system work? Every bank will have a voting station. Much like you would have an ATM or something to that extent. In order to vote you have to get a paycheck. why? because if you have a paycheck your paying taxes, thus your voice is important. If your not getting a paycheck, then your not really paying any taxes(other then maybe sales tax). If your not paying taxes, you really dont deserve to have a say. When you cash in your paycheck, you get to vote, but only once. After that youve maxed out for the week. That prevents you from cashing multiple checks and getting multiple votes. Its a live voting system, and the results can be monitered live. This station will have a hit count button. So everytime a person visits the station it gets a hit count. This hit count simply gets reported at the end of the week as to how many people voted at the station. The grid will show how many votes it picked up from the station. If they dont match then something went wrong.

really it probably isnt worked out to the finest detail but with the correct budget to install it, the system could work.

Originally posted by Astronomer70
It isn't that the old don't have passion, it's just that they have learned to temper it as the result of sometimes bitter experiences. Whereas the young are much more certain of their position simply because they haven't had such experiences.

IMHO the actions of an individual are tempered much more by wealth rather than by age. Passion is generally dimmed by the reality that your wealth can be taken away from you by government, your employer or by others via civil litigation if you do not conform to the status quo. Conformity to the status quo also becomes more desireable with wealth as the individual has more of a vested interest in keeping things the same.

Younger individuals have the luxury of being passionate, bold and wide eyed because they have less that can be taken away from them by the "powers-that-be". The seminal event which frequently dims the passion in an individual is home ownership. Up until this point most individuals do not have much wealth that can be taken away.

Just my off topic thoughts...

That's an interesting thought df1. I've never thought of it in strictly economic terms, but perhaps the bitter experiences of life turn out to be financially related ones. I don't really think so, but I will give your comments some serious thought.

Yes this board and the mainstream media has a left slant. It's really quite easy to understand why.

1. The Leftwing political view is intellectually easy. Why do you think MTV and a bunch of 13 year olds always spew left-wing rhetoric. It's based on sound bites, junk science, censorship, self-victimization, political correctness, and elitism. These are all easy for lowbrows and the uninformed to get their "minds" around. Bush Bashing is fashionable. It's the cool, coastal elitist thing to do. Any retard can join the fray and not have any of their opinions questioned.

2. Conservatives do their talking at the polls. Why do you think republicans have all 3 branches? No, it was not some ridiculous voter machine fraud or what not. It's that while libs are getting stoned and vandalizing SUVs, republicans are voting their people in.

[edit on 4-6-2006 by Apoc]

wow APOC, lost all respect for you. Because you know thats what us left wing nuts do. screw the fact that maybe, it would be just as easy for uninformed to follow bush. The media just plays it that way and thats why its easy to follow, because thats what they see. And when the media was playing him in a positive light after 9/11, guess what, the uninformed were behind him. your response is hardly worth addressing any further then that.

Originally posted by Apoc
1. The Leftwing political view is intellectually easy.

It seems intellectually easy to me to accept everything your government says at face value and not question a word of it.

Bush Bashing is fashionable.

And yet below you claim "conservatism" is fashionable. It seems both parties pander to soft minds. I guess this is an easy way for you to bash people who disagree with Bush without having to get into specifics, eh?

2. Conservatives do their talking at the polls. Why do you think republicans have all 3 branches?

First off, the judicial branch is not voted upon, it is not supposed to be influenced by mere politics. Secondly, the last two presidential votes were almost a 50/50 split with Bush actually losing the popular vote in his first win. Third, in Congress, republicans control the majority by less than 55%.

Neither could all republicans be considered conservatives, as the popular term "neoconservative" springs to mind. The nature of such a word, shows that the definition of "conservatism" is being lost by those who are hijacking the Republican party for their own ends. Don't worry, democrats do it too. Wait, maybe you should worry...

[edit on 4-6-2006 by Jamuhn]

Originally posted by Jamuhn

First off, the judicial branch is not voted upon, it is not supposed to be influenced by mere politics.

Some judges need to win elections. Of course, not at the SCOTUS level, but..
Who gets to appoint them? The ruling party. So in effect, they are elected.

Originally posted by jsobecky
Some judges need to win elections. Of course, not at the SCOTUS level, but..
Who gets to appoint them? The ruling party. So in effect, they are elected.

I doubt the original poster was talking about the local level. At the federal level, even appeals and district judges have to be ratified by Congress in addition to supreme court justices.

Judges are not elected, they are nominated and confirmed. And, it's not a ruling party, but rather parties that usher in various judges. Their appointment is based upon years and years of various presidents and congresses. It is not as if every president who gets into office chooses who will be in the judicial branch. The makeup of the supreme court and other federal courts is based upon years of various presidents and various congresses. There is bipartisanship in the confirmation of many judges as well, so that a judge may represent the interests of multiple parties.

With all these factors, trying to state that the judicial branch is controlled by one party or another is a weak argument unless a lot of citations can be used to back it up. And to this, I leave you as a weighty task.

[edit on 4-6-2006 by Jamuhn]

That is the “rub” anyway. You lost and you lost big. Now you’re desperate to get any power back that you can. So your tactics are to discredit and defame Republicans as much as you can until the American Public begins to swallow all of the garbage you are forcing down their throats.
Well, if you get your Democratic president, and the country goes back into the darkness then I guess I can say, “I told you so.”

******************************

I am consistantly amazed at the way you people on the right view us liberals, and you call us simplistic. Has it ever occured to any of you that not only did we "get over" both 2000 and 2004 long ago but that opposition to the bush administration has nothing to do with the fact that he won. We on the left have morals and family values too and they involve among other things helping those that are less fortunate, taking care of the environment and being responsible members of the planet. Do we succeed at these things? Rarely but a large part of our outrage at the bush administration is (as we view it) the socially (environmental and global) iresponsible policies that he enunicates. it is a deeply felt moral stance whether any of you on the right chose to accknowledge it (and this is especially true if the iraq invasion) or not.

If you take into considering ALL the members and staff on the board. I know this was a while ago, but in 2004 we ran a lil poll to see how ATS would vote in the US presidential elections. Democrats and Republicans split the vote while the vast majority of the rest voted Libertarian, which is a Right Wing philosophy. Why is it, when people complain of a slant or bias, always try to ignore the other political philosphies and just concentrate on the tired old Demo vs Repub. mud slinging competitions?

As for the "Leftwing is intellectually easy" comment made above, all I can say is ROFL! The Rightwing has historically been anti-intellectual and pro-alpha male dominated.

[edit on 4-6-2006 by sardion2000]

Sorry but you have to permit me a giggle here..

I find it unbelieveable that no - one has even comtemplated my words..

can i give you a few words..

Never a truer word has been spoken in jest..

To be honest.. i couldn.t give a poopoo.

I don,t live in America... I don.t vote for your hamster parading as a president..

I have enough problems dealing with Tony Blair pretending to run this rapidly diminishing country,,

But ONCE AGAIN..
there are NO opposing parties

They propose ridiculous policies as a pretence to get you to vote for the least moronic party

Therupon they pass the laws that you paid least attention to when you voted for them

to too two 2 who knows

[edit on 4-6-2006 by AGENT_T]

The liberal bias is like the self-evident fact of christian persecution in America. Have you seen all the persecuted christians round here? Makes me weep. Really. Not.

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
You've taken deep long swigs of that dangerously poisonous "Kool Aid" as has the vast majority.

Thats strange SO, I noticed you were no where around when member grover, among others in the recent past, posted up their OP/EDs slamming the "Right" or those that backed Bush. As such, have you accused grover, among other recent past OP/ED ATSNN topic creators, that they too were taking "deep long swigs of that dangerously poisonous 'Kool Aid'", or is that member, among others, included in that "vast majority"?

You talk of an existing divide, one that I happen to have long agreed with, but I find it ironic that you happen to make such a commentary within this particular topic thread and not in some of the other ATSNN "left" leaning topics, such as grover's, for example.

If I had enough time, I would pull each of those recent past ATSNN topics just to prove my point, as well as semperfortis's. Furthermore, as much as you and others would like to think that ATS/ATSNN is about 'conspiracy-natured' related material, truth beknown, ATS/ATSNN has dramatically and drastically shifted to political discussions, hence the "divide," hence the 'left' and 'right' becoming very distinct within ATS/ATSNN.

Want to get rid of it, move ALL like political discussion (War on Terrorism, ATSNN, etc., etc.) to where they belong: PTS. Make the main site ATS what it originally was intended to be: a conspiracy discussion board and not what it has so shifted to predominately be, a political discussion board.






seekerof

[edit on 4-6-2006 by Seekerof]

Careful what you say rizla, a real christian probably would be persecuted.

Originally posted by jsobecky
Government by consensus would never work. The public isn't educated enough to decide isues other than local/state ones' they would succumb to the slickest salesman.

Cell phone voting? Think of the potential for abuse.

Well, like I said, it was a brief go. I'll get to writing up a more in-depth discussion on the premises for this idea, and may post it as an OP/ED. the way I envision it, there is no more room for tampering than there is now. Heck, the current infrastructure for this is already in place, and being used daily. There's no reason to give it a second thought if you ask me. And the people CAN be educated on these issues if they felt there was a genuine need for them to be. People just need to feel important. I'll write it up though when I get some time. It'll be a long one.

Until then...

TheBorg

I do know this, that President Bush has not gone after my firearms. I know that he and the the Republican Congress let the "Assault Weapons Ban" to sunset.

I know that President Bush has not set the BATF and others agencies on a religious compound burning to death 80 children, women and men.

Roper