What's the most important thing government does?

[Siete]

A primary responsibility of the courts is to protect the rights of the minority

If only you really believed this....

Tell it to blacks, gays, women.......

I don't need to. They understand, personally and painfully, what it's like to fall outside the concerns of majority rule.

MAJORITY ?

YOU JUST SAID ALL THE PEOPLE ..

pick one ..

 

[dblack]

A primary responsibility of the courts is to protect the rights of the minority

If only you really believed this....

Tell it to blacks, gays, women.......

I don't need to. They understand, personally and painfully, what it's like to fall outside the concerns of majority rule.

MAJORITY ?

YOU JUST SAID ALL THE PEOPLE ..

pick one ..

I pick all the people. Majority rule should be constrained to only those matters that truly require consensus.

 

[dblack]

History has shown that public health is the most important responsibility of government
Before government got involved in sanitation, water supplies, sewage systems, garbage removal millions of people died in plagues, from disease, from infestations of vermin and Mosquitos

Really? More important than national defense and individual rights?

 

[rightwinger]

History has shown that public health is the most important responsibility of government
Before government got involved in sanitation, water supplies, sewage systems, garbage removal millions of people died in plagues, from disease, from infestations of vermin and Mosquitos

Really? More important than national defense and individual rights?

Absolutely
Modern society owes its existence to its sewers

Life expectancy in this country had doubled since the Civil War. The primary reason is sanitation

Our country hasn't been invaded in 200 years, we can live without defense. We can't live without sewers and clean water

 

[task0778]

Was just wondering if we should talk about something called the tyranny of the majority. I get the impression there are some among us to whom a simple majority is the be-all and end-all of good and proper gov't, as though the thoughts and ideas of those people who aren't in the majority should not count or even be heard.

 

[rightwinger]

Was just wondering if we should talk about something called the tyranny of the majority. I get the impression there are some among us to whom a simple majority is the be-all and end-all of good and proper gov't, as though the thoughts and ideas of those people who aren't in the majority should not count or even be heard.

It is why we operate as a Republic and have courts to protect the minority

 

[dblack]

Our country hasn't been invaded in 200 years, we can live without defense.

LOL

 

[EverCurious]

Our country hasn't been invaded in 200 years, we can live without defense. We can't live without sewers and clean water

FAKE NEWS!

Attu and Kiska Island's were not only invaded, they were taken in 1942. It took us almost a year to even get a large enough force mustered up to route them, despite the consideration that it was a key strategic point in the Pacific.

 

[usmbguest5318]

What's the most important thing government does?

Stand as the most effective bulwark against anarchy.

 

[dblack]

Was just wondering if we should talk about something called the tyranny of the majority. I get the impression there are some among us to whom a simple majority is the be-all and end-all of good and proper gov't, as though the thoughts and ideas of those people who aren't in the majority should not count or even be heard.

It's a real danger. That's why it's important to have constitutional limits on what the government can do in serving the will of "The People".

 

[Freewill]

What would you say is the core purpose of government? Why do we need it? What part of it could we not do without?

I'm not trying to say (here at least) that government should be limited to this core purpose. I'm just trying to get a better understanding of how others see the role of government in society.

Protect our borders.

 

[dblack]

Our country hasn't been invaded in 200 years, we can live without defense. We can't live without sewers and clean water

FAKE NEWS!

Attu and Kiska Island's were not only invaded, they were taken in 1942. It took us almost a year to even get a large enough force mustered up to route them, despite the consideration that it was a key strategic point in the Pacific.

Uh, I think you may be making rw's case, rather than countering it. Still, It's hard to imagine how sewers and clean water are more important than defense. Apparently rightwinger would choose being nuked over having to boil water before drinking it.

 

[rightwinger]

Our country hasn't been invaded in 200 years, we can live without defense. We can't live without sewers and clean water

FAKE NEWS!

Attu and Kiska Island's were not only invaded, they were taken in 1942. It took us almost a year to even get a large enough force mustered up to route them, despite the consideration that it was a key strategic point in the Pacific.

Alaska was not a state

Those islands had hundreds of people on them.....you could even see Russia from your house

 

[dblack]

What's the most important thing government does?

Stand as the most effective bulwark against anarchy.

That's pretty broad. Are there specific elements of anarchy that you object to?

 

[rightwinger]

Our country hasn't been invaded in 200 years, we can live without defense. We can't live without sewers and clean water

FAKE NEWS!

Attu and Kiska Island's were not only invaded, they were taken in 1942. It took us almost a year to even get a large enough force mustered up to route them, despite the consideration that it was a key strategic point in the Pacific.

Uh, I think you may be making rw's case, rather than countering it. Still, It's hard to imagine how sewers and clean water are more important than defense. Apparently rightwinger would choose being nuked over having to boil water before drinking it.

Look at the affects of disease vs the affects of wars
Even in war, disease kills more if there is no sanitation

Prior to our governments involvement in sanitation, our cities were open sewers. Not just drinking water, but infestations of rats and mosquitos that spread disease. Environmental protections instituted in the 60s protected our air and water supplies and stopped the dumping of toxic chemicals into our environment

Not many people living in the US have been killed because of a lack of military protection

 

[rightwinger]

Drinking water supply and sanitation in the United States - Wikipedia

In the 19th century numerous American cities were afflicted with major outbreaks of disease, including cholera in 1832, 1849 and 1866 and typhoid in 1848.[17] The fast-growing cities did not have sewers and relied on contaminated wells within the city confines for drinking water supply. In the mid-19th century many cities built centralized water supply systems. However, initially these systems provided raw river water without any treatment. Only after John Snow established the link between contaminated water and disease in 1854 and after authorities became gradually convinced of that link, water treatment plants were added and public health improved. Sewers were built since the 1850s, initially based on the erroneous belief that bad air (miasma theory) caused cholera and typhoid. It took until the 1890s for the now universally accepted germ theory of disease to prevail.

 

[dblack]

Our country hasn't been invaded in 200 years, we can live without defense. We can't live without sewers and clean water

FAKE NEWS!

Attu and Kiska Island's were not only invaded, they were taken in 1942. It took us almost a year to even get a large enough force mustered up to route them, despite the consideration that it was a key strategic point in the Pacific.

Uh, I think you may be making rw's case, rather than countering it. Still, It's hard to imagine how sewers and clean water are more important than defense. Apparently rightwinger would choose being nuked over having to boil water before drinking it.

Look at the affects of disease vs the affects of wars
Even in war, disease kills more if there is no sanitation

Prior to our governments involvement in sanitation, our cities were open sewers. Not just drinking water, but infestations of rats and mosquitos that spread disease. Environmental protections instituted in the 60s protected our air and water supplies and stopped the dumping of toxic chemicals into our environment

Not many people living in the US have been killed because of a lack of military protection

Heh.. because we've generally had about ten times more military protection than we needed. But that doesn't change its primacy in modern government. There are lots of interesting theories about how a free society might protect itself without government, but that's still a pipe dream. Without some kind of military protecting our nation, clean water and sewers would be laughably irrelevant.

 

[EverCurious]

Hey you wanna play semantics; country is already being invaded by Mexico.

But yeah, Alaska was still a territory at the time, I didn't know that mattered. I guess it's okay if another country invades Guam then yea? (The Japanese did manage to get bombs ashore on the pacific coast of the US - little balloon bombs, they were quite inventive even back then. Very smart those Japanese, gotta give respect where it's due.)

That said, trust me you dump our defenses then America is toast. I don't have to worry about "clean water sources" cause they are all over my state so I'm not commenting on that shit - ya'll lower 48ers done fucked yer shit up...

 

[rightwinger]

You Used to Get One Life. Now You Get Two. #NotDeadYet

The most important difference between the world today and 150 years ago isn’t airplane flight or nuclear weapons or the Internet. It’s lifespan. We used to live 35 or 40 years on average in the United States, but now we live almost 80.

To understand why people live so long today, it helps to start with how people died in the past. People died young, and they died painfully of consumption (tuberculosis), quinsy (tonsillitis), fever, childbirth, and worms. There’s nothing like looking back at the history of death and dying in the United States to dispel any romantic notions you may have that people used to live in harmony with the land or be more in touch with their bodies. Life was miserable—full of contagious disease, spoiled food, malnutrition, exposure, and injuries.

Public health is the most important thing government does

 

[rightwinger]

Clean water may be the biggest lifesaver in history. Some historians attribute one-half of the overall reduction in mortality, two-thirds of the reduction in child mortality, and three-fourths of the reduction in infant mortality to clean water. In 1854, John Snow traced a cholera outbreak in London to a water pump next to a leaky sewer, and some of the big public works projects of the late 1900s involved separating clean water from dirty. Cities ran water through sand and gravel to physically trap filth, and when that didn’t work (germs are awfully small) they started chlorinating water.