Little Difference Between Republicans and Democrats?

[Ibn Sina a.k.a Avicenna]

Dont You Guys Think that there is little(if no)difference between Republicans and Democrats?

:confused:

Many poeple say that America is very democratic country and in many ways it is(dont get me wrong), but there is no distinction between the only two political parties in the USA. And this is very evident in the low poll turnouts. Is this the begining for the end of democracy or is it just my political hallucinations. Let me Know what you think on this issue.

--Kcabuji--- :confused: :confused: :confused:

[Cant_Remember]

kcabuji,

 

American political compaigns are dominated by the Iraqi issue and this puts the Democrats in an awkward position cause they can't risk taking a stance on the most pressing issues associated with 'bread and butter.' If they take issues with the economy and the law (as they would have done in a peace time) they risk to be seen as insensetive to the current condition of the American psyche, which only appears to understand one word--SECURITY! Therefore, the both parties are forced to converge on the centre of the political spectrum in order to gain the most votes. This sadly blurs the famous (but increasingly insignificant) ideological differencess between the two parties.

[Ibn Sina a.k.a Avicenna]

Cant_Remember:

 

You have a very good point, but why dont the democrats come out strong about the IRAQ, like they did in many situations. That is what I dont get. I could understand attacking the Taliban in Afganistan becuase that could be said "National Security", but why would Iraq be more of a threat, specially when Saddame Hussien was in power twenty years ago. Would like to hear your response. But to tell you the truth, there was no distinction between Democrats and Republicans evan before the Elections of 2002. The only issue they argued heavilly was the "EALTH PLAN", and niether of them proposed a reasonable way.

Kcabuji

KCABUJI

[SomaliaOnline-President]

but why dont the democrats come out strong about the IRAQ, like they did in many situations. That is what I dont get. I could understand attacking the Taliban in Afganistan becuase that could be said "National Security", but why would Iraq be more of a threat, specially when Saddame Hussien was in power twenty years ago.

Making foreign policy, rests with the president. Most situations where they always disagree with the republicans are that of local issues. And as can't remember mentioned---going against the President spells total doom for you party in the future polls to come. They all do speak one Language when it comes foreign affairs.

[Cant_Remember]

Kcabuji,

 

It's only the hawks in the White House that are linking Iraq to Sept11 but the Democrats and the academics at large know that it isn't wise to bomb Iraq to the Stone Age or even link it to terrorism. The thing is, given the current American opinion, the democrats can't argue against it. If they do, they risk losing votes. No party in the world likes to be in this sort of dilemma.

 

One thing to note, though. The hawks in the White House are all graduates of the Realist school of thought--a doctrine that states that there is no justice or injustice in international politics. States have to do whatever they can in order to ensure their self_interest. This interest is measured on the basis of dominance, hence the higly frightenning doctrine of pre-emptive strike. A doctrine that this American adminstration adopted. Other states have to be striken before their assumed threat to America is fully formed. I believe this is the main (though we can't ignore the powerful economic motives as well) motive behind the looming attack on Iraq. Iraq isn't capable to inflict injury on american soil so one wonders where the threat is coming from.

[AUN]

This article by Edward Said is quite relevent to the this subject. He exposes the lack of political chioce in American by comaparing to Europe

 

Europe Versus America

by EDWARD SAID

 

Although I have visited England dozens of times, I have never spent more than one or two weeks at a single stretch. This year, for the first time, I am in residence for almost two months at Cambridge University, where I am the guest of a college and giving a series of lectures on humanism at the university.

 

The first thing to be said is that life here is far less stressed and hectic than it is in New York, at my university, Columbia. Perhaps this slightly relaxed pace is due in part to the fact that Great Britain is no longer a world power, but also to the salutary idea that the ancient universities here are places of reflection and study rather than economic centres for producing experts and technocrats who will serve the corporations and the state. So the post-imperial setting is a welcome environment for me, especially since the US is now in the middle of a war fever that is absolutely repellent as well as overwhelming. If you sit in Washington and have some connection to the country's power elites, the rest of the world is spread out before you like a map, inviting intervention anywhere and at any time. The tone in Europe is not only more moderate and thoughtful: it is also less abstract, more human, more complex and subtle.

 

Certainly Europe generally and Britain in particular have a much larger and more demographically significant Muslim population, whose views are part of the debate about war in the Middle East and against terrorism. So discussion of the upcoming war against Iraq tends to reflect their opinions and their reservations a great deal more than in America, where Muslims and Arabs are already considered to be on the "other side", whatever that may mean. And being on the other side means no less than supporting Saddam Hussein and being "un-American". Both of these ideas are abhorrent to Arab and Muslim-Americans, but the idea that to be an Arab or Muslim means blind support of Saddam and Al-Qa'eda persists nonetheless. (Incidentally, I know no other country where the adjective "un" is used with the nationality as a way of designating the common enemy. No one says unSpanish or unChinese: these are uniquely American confections that claim to prove that we all "love" our country. How can one actually "love" something so abstract and imponderable as a country anyway?).

 

The second major difference I have noticed between America and Europe is that religion and ideology play a far greater role in the former than in the latter. A recent poll taken in the United States reveals that 86 per cent of the American population believes that God loves them. There's been a lot of ranting and complaining about fanatical Islam and violent jihadists, who are thought to be a universal scourge. Of course they are, as are any fanatics who claim to do God's will and to fight his battles in his name. But what is most odd is the vast number of Christian fanatics in the US, who form the core of George Bush's support and at 60 million strong represent the single most powerful voting block in US history. Whereas church attendance is down dramatically in England it has never been higher in the United States whose strange fundamentalist Christian sects are, in my opinion, a menace to the world and furnish Bush's government with its rationale for punishing evil while righteously condemning whole populations to submission and poverty.

 

It is the coincidence between the Christian Right and the so-called neo-conservatives in America that fuel the drive towards unilateralism, bullying, and a sense of divine mission. The neo-conservative movement began in the 70s as an anti-communist formation whose ideology was undying enmity to communism and American supremacy. "American values", now so casually trotted out as a phrase to hector the world, was invented then by people like Irving Kristoll, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, and others who had once been Marxists and had converted completely (and religiously) to the other side. For all of them the unquestioning defense of Israel as a bulwark of Western democracy and civilisation against Islam and communism was a central article of faith. Many though not all the major neo-cons (as they are called) are Jewish, but under the Bush presidency they have welcomed the extra support of the Christian Right which, while it is rabidly pro-Israel, is also deeply anti-Semitic (ie these Christians -- many of them Southern Baptists -- believe that all the Jews of the world must gather in Israel so that the Messiah can come again; those Jews who convert to Christianity will be saved, the rest will be doomed to eternal perdition).

 

It is the next generation of neo-conservatives such as Richard Perle, **** Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld who are behind the push to war against Iraq, a cause from which I very much doubt that Bush can ever be deterred. Colin Powell is too cautious a figure, too interested in saving his career, too little a man of principle to represent much of a threat to this group which is supported by the editorial pages of The Washington Post and dozens of columnists, media pundits on CNN, CBS, and NBC, as well as the national weeklies that repeat the same cliches about the need to spread American democracy and fight the good fight, no matter how many wars have to be fought all over the world.

 

There is no trace of this sort of thing in Europe that I can detect. Nor is there that lethal combination of money and power on a vast scale that can control elections and national policy at will. Remember that George Bush spent over $200 million to get himself elected two years ago, and even Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York spent 60 million dollars for his election: this scarcely seems like the democracy to which other nations might aspire, much less emulate. But this is accepted uncritically by what seems to be an enormous majority of Americans who equate all this with freedom and democracy, despite its obvious drawbacks. More than any other country today, the United States is controlled at a distance from most citizens; the great corporations and lobbying groups do their will with "the people's" sovereignty leaving little opportunity for real dissent or political change. Democrats and Republicans, for example, voted to give Bush a blank check for war with such enthusiasm and unquestioning loyalty as to make one doubt that there was any thought in the decision. The ideological position common to nearly everyone in the system is that America is best, its ideals perfect, its history spotless, its actions and society at the highest levels of human achievement and greatness. To argue with that -- if that is at all possible -- is to be "un-American" and guilty of the cardinal sin of anti- Americanism, which derives not from honest criticism but for hatred of the good and the pure.

 

No wonder then that America has never had an organised Left or real opposition party as has been the case in every European country. The substance of American discourse is that it is divided into black and white, evil and good, ours and theirs. It is the task of a lifetime to make a change in that Manichean duality that seems to be set forever in an unchanging ideological dimension. And so it is for most Europeans who see America as having been their saviour and is now their protector, yet whose embrace is both encumbering and annoying at the same time.

 

Tony Blair's wholeheartedly pro-American position therefore seems even more puzzling to an outsider like myself. I am comforted that even to his own people he seems like a humourless aberration, a European who has decided in effect to obliterate his own identity in favour of this other one, represented by the lamentable Mr Bush. I still have time to learn when it will be that Europe will come to its senses and assume the countervailing role to America that its size and history entitle it to play. Until then, the war approaches inexorably.

 

Edward Said writes a weekly column for the Cairo-based al-Ahram.

[Thinkerman]

Thx for the producing teh article KISIMA i dont live in the USA but what is clearly true (even in here in the UK) and probably more so there, when it comes to issues such us these their is no particular difference or choices to chose from between the ruling party and the opposition parties, am not even go into the the particularties ton this occasions as some of the nomads replies above more than done so.

 

so no i think when it comes down to issues of 'national interest' as so simplistical termed by west and the media in general, then the is no signifcant difference between Parties whether they be Democrats or Republicans in the USA or even here in UK between Labour and Conservatives (even though there is some reblions from the back bench mp's).