A Radical Thought Experiment

[MuslimAgorist]

Recently Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scallia made the comment:

"If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede."

Apparently in some mad fantasy he imagines the responsibility of interpreting the constitution doesn't fall on the judicial branch, but instead on the executive branch, in the form of military force. If there isn't a natural right to secession America owes England some serious reparations.

But I have my own mad fantasy. Face it, the ideological differences between liberals and conservatives are irreconcilable, and its unconscionable to subject one to the bad ideas of the other against their will. Public debate is getting us nowhere because both sides are buried in their own propaganda. We need to actually see the tangible results of unfettered liberalism and unfettered conservatism. So, next presidential election, let both candidates win. Let the republican run the red states and the democrat run the blue states. Split the congress. There’s more than enough “representatives” to go around. Let the liberals try to create their socialist welfare utopia without the republican dime and see what happens. Let the republicans build their corporatist warfare empire without the democrat dime and see where it gets them.

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[Muezzin]

I think this thread would be more at home in World Affairs.

 

[Lynx]

Recently Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scallia made the comment:

"If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede."

Apparently in some mad fantasy he imagines the responsibility of interpreting the constitution doesn't fall on the judicial branch, but instead on the executive branch, in the form of military force. If there isn't a natural right to secession America owes England some serious reparations.

But I have my own mad fantasy. Face it, the ideological differences between liberals and conservatives are irreconcilable, and its unconscionable to subject one to the bad ideas of the other against their will. Public debate is getting us nowhere because both sides are buried in their own propaganda. We need to actually see the tangible results of unfettered liberalism and unfettered conservatism. So, next presidential election, let both candidates win. Let the republican run the red states and the democrat run the blue states. Split the congress. There’s more than enough “representatives” to go around. Let the liberals try to create their socialist welfare utopia without the republican dime and see what happens. Let the republicans build their corporatist warfare empire without the democrat dime and see where it gets them.

Read More

That's an interesting proposal.

It echoes the traditional problem in economics and political economy: we can't ever test a whole bunch of our theories because the 'laboratory' conditions are impractical. Back to armchair economics & and political philosophy it is...

 

[Pygoscelis]

The more liberal version of the USA already exists. It is called Canada and it is doing quite well.

The problem with the fellow's proposal here, splitting the US conservatives and liberals into two different nations or whatever is that the ideologies just are NOT as geographically based as many like to suggest. And what you see in the media is a very distorted image of what people actually believe. The loony left and radical right are NOT anywhere near as numerous as one would think from watching the news. This was a point very well made by Jon Stewart today at his Rally to Restore Sanity (which was quite good)

 

[titus]

The left and the right in the US are not as far apart ideologically as most Americans believe. It just seems that lately the ability to compromise has been thrown out the window.