Is It Time To Replace Political Parties?

[From article]
The 2016 presidential season may foretell the end of the two major political parties. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are not really members of the two parties whose nomination they have run so effectively to win. Indeed, both reflect as much as anything else frustration and anger against the parties whose nominations they seek. The two major political parties are seen by most Americans not as a path to the solution of those difficult issues we face, but rather as a major sickness in our system of government.
Do we need these parties? Not really. Party labels allow politicians to mask the reality of policies behind the fog of partisan rhetoric. This is compounded by the ugly fact that instead of having two national political parties, we really have the Party of Washington (A) and the Party of Washington (B), with all the goodies that come from controlling the White House and Congress providing the real motivation to win national elections.
[. . .]



State governments could make all elections nonpartisan: all candidates for congressional and state offices, perhaps even including presidential electors, would run on their own good names and arguments, and no candidate would have a "Republican" or "Democrat" by his name. Nebraska already has a nonpartisan state legislature, and a number of cities have nonpartisan city councils.
If enough states did that, then the number of nonpartisan members of Congress would be a majority in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, and the whole rotten system of party control of committees, with endless opportunities for mischief, would end. The Speaker of the House would actually represent the House and not the majority party in the House, and such drab offices as "Minority Floor Leader" and "Majority Whip" would vanish.
This reform would also make it simpler to require runoff elections for all state and federal offices so that every senator, congressman, and governor won with a majority of the vote and not simply a plurality. This change in elections further dilutes the political party system by compelling the two runoff candidates to present themselves not as candidates of a particular party to voters.
If we keep political parties, then there is nothing that requires that these parties should be national. Regional parties are common in Europe, and these parties serve a vital purpose in providing a natural counterweight for regions that would otherwise feel subject to an unsympathetic national party leadership.
Britain, Belgium, Germany, France, and Spain all have significant regional parties whose purpose is largely to protect those regions from overbearing behavior by a national government. In fact, our nearest neighbor, Canada, has a major party dedicated entirely to the regional cultural interests of Quebec.
America is really a land of many regions with divergent cultural values and economic interests. The Constitution was intended to protect those regions through the sovereignty of states, but the crushing of states under the heel of Washington has destroyed that balance. Regional political parties could do much to restore regional and state power.
[. . .]



The effect of regional parties that actually represented regional interests would force attention to be continually focused away from Washington and back toward the fifty states. These parties could exercise a veto on federal judicial appointments within the region as well, which would provide another practical check on rogue federal power.
We ought to view the chaos in this nominating cycle as an opportunity to replace the old, vested national political parties with political institutions and processes that serve us better. Washington Party (A) and Washington Party (B) are broken beyond repair.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/06/replacing_national_political_parties.html

June 3, 2016
Replacing National Political Parties
By Bruce Walker

Questioning Political Party Purity, No Republicans Allowed In Cambridge, MA

"Might as well be?" Hillary was a Republican, just as Ronald Reagan and Michael Bloomberg, were Democrats. Any remaining Republicans in Cambridge will be tracked down, exposed and dealt with in an appropriate manner.

[From article]
Sam H. Koppelman ’18, “I’m a Hillary supporter. In their eyes, I might as well be a College Republican.”

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/5/11/Guardian-characterizes-campus-politics/

Students Critique 'Guardian' Article On Harvard Politics
By DANIEL P. WOOD

Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
May 10, 2016

State Political Parties Make Their Own Rules

[From article]
This cycle has seen the rise of Donald Trump, a candidate who doesn't fit the central casting mold. He is unusual and bold, brash and unapologetic in his statements. Yet he is not without precedent. We are witnessing the rebirth of the populists, nothing more.
The political structure with which most of us are familiar is in truth a relatively new thing. People think of primaries as full-blown elections. They are not. The word that appropriately precedes "primaries" is "party." These are party primaries, designed by political parties to choose the candidate behind whom the party intends to coalesce support for the real election – the general election.
For most of our nation's history, primaries were not the method of choice for determining nominees.
[. . .]
Parties can choose their nominees in whatever methods that state chooses – with a party primary election, a caucus or convention, or, as done in Colorado, with a decision by party leadership. As long as the established rules are followed, these choices are the business of the party, not the general public, who gets their say in November.
This is one of the reasons our founding fathers eschewed party structures, hoping instead for ideological constructs based on merit and competence, not on membership. In other words, they wanted the best candidate to emerge from among many by virtue of having been lifted above the others by a groundswell of public support.
[. . .]



There are those who believe that each of us should be empowered to make his own decisions – for good or ill – finding our path to success or failure depending on our own efforts. Government exists to ensure we have that freedom by protecting the rights with which we entered this world from infringement by those who would "stack the deck" through corruption rather than merit.
The other side views individuals as messy pieces within a larger collective. Individual liberty must be suborned to collective goals, as determined by a central group of planners, who presumably know better than you how your life ought to be lived. To these, government exists to establish the definitions of success and then ensure that people receive it equally.
Of course, these myopic "Solomons" never assign such restrictions to themselves, as that would be far too limiting for them to achieve their utopian goals, which thankfully makes them easier to spot, as their neon hypocrisy shines like a "vacancy" sign on a lonely nighttime highway.
[. . .]
Whenever we resort to absolutes to make sense of a circumstance that are anything but absolute, we are setting ourselves up to be either proven wrong in an embarrassingly public way or proven right at the cost of losing close friends and associates.
There is very little in this life that is all of one thing and none of another – and nothing illustrates this more than politics, where little is ever as it seems anyway.
The parties make their rules and choose their methods for determining a nominee. One candidate making more effective use of those rules isn't "cheating" or "stealing"; he is merely making more effective use of the rules, just as their opponent might've.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/04/what_we_sow_in_spring_we_shall_reap_in_fall.html

April 20, 2016
What We Sow in Spring, We Shall Reap in Fall
By Joe Herring

Republican Establishment Self Destructing

[From article]
Donald Trump’s popularity is a response to decades of arrogance and betrayal by the Republican establishment.
After giving us lackluster centrist candidates in election after election, the elite is amazed that the rank and file are so fed up that many are falling for a pseudo-populist huckster who’s smart enough to take positions that are an anathema to the establishment, but not to the base. In separate polls last fall, 64 % of likely Republican voters supported a moratorium on Muslim immigration, while 73% agreed with a wall on the border.
[. . .]
As speaker, Ryan worked with Nancy Pelosi to pass the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill, fully funding ObamaCare, executive amnesties and Planned Parenthood. Conservatives gave the GOP the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. In return, the Republican leadership gave us empty rhetoric and vague promises.
[. . .]
The Republican establishment believes it has a divine right to pick the party’s nominees. Ford, Dole, McCain, and Romney -- the elite has an unerring instinct for disaster. For them, vision and values are irrelevant. It’s all about credentials (who’s next in line for the nomination) and who won’t upset the media by being “divisive.”
Their choice this year seemed to be based on breeding.
[. . .]
Now, there’s talk of drafting Ryan. I wonder what Harold Stassen is doing these days.
The GOP establishment has always treated the base with contempt. Our role was to show up at rallies waving signs (and do other grunt work), while our betters were left to run the party. You’ll take what we give you and like it, they told us. Whenever an outsider comes close to the nomination -- Gingrich, Santorum, Cruz -- they get hysterical.
Romney and company are scared of Trump? Well, so am I. If he’s elected, he’ll treat us like his first two wives the first chance he gets. Conservatives who are now supporting him will wake up one day knowing how it feels to be date-raped.
Republican insiders thought they could play us for suckers forever. Whenever we dug in our heels, all they had to do was point to the latest Democrat horror story -- Clinton, Kerry, Obama and now Hillary -- to scare us into line. What are conservatives going to do, stay home, they sneered? In 2012, 10 million did, costing Romney the election.
The difference between the Republican elite and its Democrat counterpart is mostly rhetorical. Republican insiders are comfortable with big government -- as long as they get to distribute the largesse. They view social issues as stuff to stick in a platform to keep activists happy, and promptly forget once in office.
Now their chickens have come home to roost with a vengeance in the form of a sleazy New York real estate developer who brags about buying politicians. The one candidate who could stop him, Ted Cruz, they won’t give the time of day because he’s an authentic conservative.
If nothing else good comes out of this election, at least it will mark the demise of the Republican establishment. They keep threatening to start a third party if Trump wins the nomination. Why not? They could call themselves -- the Whigs.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/03/republican_establishment_the_next_whig_party.html

March 7, 2016
Republican Establishment the Next Whig Party
By Don Feder

Muslim American Political Preferences

[From article]
In general, Muslims have indicated their present personal preferences, though these may change: 52 percent for Hillary Clinton, 22 percent for Bernie Saunders, 7 percent for Donald Trump (because of his business background and his properties in Middle East countries), and 2 percent for Ted Cruz.
This preference for Democrats may relate to the fact that, after Islamist massacres in Paris and elsewhere, Democratic politicians including President Obama, with rare exceptions, do not refer to the events as the actions of "Islamist terrorists," but blandly as "violent extremism." It neglects the reality that, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali has remarked, the U.S. has "to engage with the ideology of Islamist extremism."
Another finding of the survey is the great difference between Muslims and the rest of the U.S. population on what they consider the most important issues. Among Muslims, they rank as follows: Islamophobia 30 percent, the economy 24 percent, health care 14 percent, and foreign policy 6 percent. This priority, so different from the agenda in the presidential primary debates, in which foreign policy has been prominent, is understandable in view of the Muslim disquiet about some political rhetorical excesses that candidates have made about Muslims. Nevertheless, the priority given to "Islamophobia" implies that criticism of Muslim beliefs – say, regarding sharia law and its customs, is to be equated with animosity or discrimination against Muslims.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/what_a_new_poll_says_about_muslims_and_american_politics.html

February 11, 2016
What a New Poll Says about Muslims and American Politics
By Michael Curtis

Ethnic Groups, Political Parties Falling Apart

William F. Buckley, Jr. quoting Richard Weaver's definition: "A paradigm of essences toward which the phenomenology of the world is in continuing approximation." is my favorite.
[From article]
City Journal had to my way of thinking a really sound explanation for Trump’s popularity:
What rankles most among workaday white Americans is that, even as their incomes and life expectancies decline, and even as the protections promised in the Fourteenth Amendment are eviscerated in favor of new minority carve-outs, they’re accused of benefitting from “white privilege.” The rise of Ferguson’s Michael Brown and Baltimore’s Freddy Gray -- the first a thug, the second a small-time drug dealer -- as black icons of white oppression, exemplify the perversions of Obama’s America.
[. . .]
[Arthur] Schlesinger’s fears have largely come to pass; we’ve become what he called a “quarrelsome spatter of enclaves.” Schlesinger was too much a part of the elite to imagine that the class he always thought of as representing the best of the future would come to be despised by a broad swath of Americans for its incompetence and ineffectuality. But what Schlesinger saw on the horizon seems to have arrived, with no sign of abating: we are in the midst of a soft civil war."
[. . .]
Washington conservatives -- Cable News Conservatives -- overlook the fundamental principle of conservativism, and that is giving everyone the same opportunity. America is best when she is a capitalistic society that builds railroads and industry. The idea that only career politicians are qualified to hold public office is not conservative.
But this year's election is not about conservativism or liberalism. The survival of the nation is.
[. . .]
a magazine that has supported without question in the general election GHWB, Bob Dole, W twice, McCain and Romney has no business acting as though Trump is so far out of bounds they need a symposium to not just disagree with him, but stop him.
[. . .]
Like the unhealable wound of the Fisher King,
[. . .]



Well Trump is one hell of a competitor and will use fair means or foul to win. The Democrats haven’t seen anything like this in 30 years. And they aren’t going to be up to it.
All they can do is rally the really red and the safely dead, their greedy, illiterate minority base, their vile unions and those desperate for the governmental tit and hope the demographic distribution and their media echo chamber can pull off a victory.
[. . .]
In a sense we are like the blind men trying to describe an elephant. Do we trust the polls, can we really decide who is the most “electable” candidate except by crowd size? What will the candidates do if elected? Surely we know by now that whatever candidates say to win, their promises will be tempered by the facts on the ground at the time. I think voters know this and are more interested in how they view the personal attributes of the candidates. Helmuth Von Moltke the Elder famously noted, “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” Experience teaches that political promises rarely survive the shifting moods of the electorate and Congress, economic exigencies, and the actions of our enemies.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/a_soft_civil_war.html

January 24, 2016
A Soft Civil War
By Clarice Feldman

Can One Change Political Parties? Is the Pope Argentinian?

Like Michael Bloomberg and Ronald Reagan before him, Donald Trump became a Republican after being a Democrat. What is the problem? What did he do for Sarah Palin?

[From article]
the three major issues that gave rise to and have animated the Tea Party since 2008 when then-Governor Palin burst on the national scene: The bailouts, the stimulus, and Obamacare.
[. . .]
When the time came to choose between the Tea Party activists and his friends in the New York/Washington corridor, Trump chose the latter.
Donald Trump was no Rick Santelli. Trump was for the $700 billion bailout program, which is as establishment as it gets. He was for the subsequent auto bailout, too.
President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill? Yep. You betcha. Trump was for that.
[. . .]
Instead of pledging to put an end to the federal subsidies and the mandates controlling that industry, Trump has blasted his rival Ted Cruz for having the audacity to do just that.
Trump isn’t going to stop the influence of special interests; he is the special interest.
[. . .]
As president, Trump boasted, he would force Apple and Ford Motor Company to build their products in the United States.
This isn’t the behavior one expects from a consistent conservative; it’s what’s expected from a dictator.
Palin is free to endorse anyone she likes. Trump is a successful businessman who has done many things for many people, but it’s awfully hard to see what he’s done for Sarah Palin.

https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/01/what-has-sarah-palin-done-for-donald-trump

CARPENTER: WHAT HAS DONALD TRUMP DONE FOR SARAH PALIN?
By: Amanda Carpenter

January 20th, 2016

Clueless Elite of Both Political Parties Perplexed at Trump Success

[From article]
To hear the patronizing wise men of the Republican Party tell it, anyone who would vote for Donald Trump for president must be deranged. “Trumpkins,” they call them, mental midgets and xenophobic troglodytes who’ve crawled out from their survivalist caves in order to destroy the Beltway Establishment.
How their resentful attitude galls the crack cadres of campaign consultants who brought conservatives halfhearted standard-bearers like John McCain and Mitt Romney to do sham battle against Barack Obama in 2008 and ’12, then return to the safety of the US Senate and a beachfront mansion in La Jolla.
The peasants are revolting!
[. . .]
And all on behalf of a bloviating billionaire whose conservatism and party loyalty are suspect.
[. . .]
Can the GOP really be so out of touch with the legions of out-of-work Americans — many of whom don’t show up in the “official” unemployment rate because they’ve given up looking for work in the Obama economy? With the returning military vets frustrated with lawyer-driven, politically correct rules of engagement that have tied their hands in a fight against a mortal enemy? With those who, in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino massacres by Muslims, reasonably fear an influx of culturally alien “refugees” and “migrants” from the Middle East?
[. . .]
has the junior wing of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party, ably embodied by Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, forsaken even token opposition to the “progressive” ethos?
[. . .]
Even lame-duck Obama has waded in, cheekily blaming “economic stresses” and flatlining wages for Trump’s groundswell. “Particularly, blue-collar men have had a lot of trouble in this new economy, where they are no longer getting the same bargain that they got when they were going to a factory and able to support their families on a single paycheck . . . Somebody like Mr. Trump is taking advantage of that.”
Remember when Obama apologized for saying that voters who disagreed with him “cling to guns or religion”? Yeah, guess he wasn’t really sorry.
[. . .]
The Trumpkins are sick of winning and having nothing to show for it, and their vengeance will be terrible. Maybe the Establishment should stop belittling them and listen instead.
http://nypost.com/2015/12/26/elites-and-media-really-hate-donald-trumps-voters/

Elites and media really hate Donald Trump’s voters
By Michael Walsh
New York Post
December 26, 2015 | 2:55pm

Divided United States

[From article]

One thing is clear, however: politically, we are a paranoid-schizophrenic nation. Maybe it’s the fault of social media and cable news, or maybe we’re just wired to expect the worst from one another, but whenever something big happens, we sprint immediately to the partisan barricades. Unrelated events and phenomena seem part of a larger plot—launched and directed, of course, by the other guys. It feels—to borrow the title of Charles Murray’s 2012 book—as if we are coming apart at the political seams. Maybe not since Watergate has America been this mentally and emotionally exhausted.
[. . .]
That we ignored their warnings entirely and went straight to a two-party system is a testament, perhaps, to human nature.
Much that was human in nature transpired between 1780 and 2000, butBush v. Gore seems like the precursor to our downward spiral. September 11 and, later, the financial collapse, gave us frightening glimpses of how fragile our institutions really are.

http://www.city-journal.org/2015/eon1203mh.html

MATTHEW HENNESSEY
American Exhaustion
We are having a political nervous breakdown.
December 3, 2015

Political Parties Doing A Good Job Choosing the Candidates?

[From article]
So far, it looks as if we will be forced to choose a president from a slate of mediocrities and monstrosities. With the fate of our country already precarious, and with no Eisenhower or Reagan in sight,
[. . .]
But in these desperate times, we have a right to expect a president to devote the rest of his life solely to the welfare of the nation, to the exclusion of any personal motive. In this regard, Ronald Reagan was an admirable example and William Jefferson Clinton a despicable one.
[. . .]



G.K. Chesterton once proposed that the only person fit to be king is somebody who doesn’t want the job. I think we have come to the converse impasse: the only people who want to run for president and who have a chance of getting elected are those who are unfit for the job.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/lets_play_fantasy_president.html

December 4, 2015
Let's Play Fantasy President
By Paul J. Shlichta

Liberals Support Criminals

[From article]
While the people in the prison he was talking about were really drug dealers and violent felons, Obama, was repeating the liberal lie that the prisons are full of folks who just smoked a joint and got caught.
Liberals are five times more likely to use marijuana and cocaine than conservatives. A natural consequence of drug use is fear of the police. While the U.S. has an overly soft policy towards drug users, users are nonetheless afraid of the consequence of getting caught breaking the law. This fosters in liberals an anti-cop mentality, since the police are the agents of society that enforce society’s laws against drug use.
[. . .]
During Prohibition Americans who liked to drink lost respect for the police. Anyone who likes to do things that are illegal is going to develop a distaste for the men and women in blue who enforce the law. It’s a natural consequence of the fact that human nature is such that we usually try and rationalize our behavior by scapegoating someone else.
The problem is exacerbated because for many liberals, such as Obama, drug use began when they were highly impressionable teens; biases developed at a young age are often much harder to escape than those developed later in life.
[. . .]
The river of drug money also leads to the corruption of the police that in turn causes the very sort of police misconduct that liberals excoriate.
[. . .]
It’s not an accident that liberals disagree with Giuliani’s “Broken Window” policing philosophy, since liberals don’t seem to care about the victims of “petty” crimes.
[. . .]
It’s time to realize that liberals are rooting for the wrong side in the war on crime.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/why_liberals_identify_with_criminals.html

October 31, 2015
Why Liberals Identify with Criminals
By Tom Trinko

Toxicity of Cambridge Politics

It appears that Councilor Benzan desires civility in Cambridge political speech, unlike the toxic national political discourse. Au contraire. Cambridge is a one party dominated city. There is seldom any opposition. All politicians support education, affordable housing, diversity and equal opportunity. They say. But when details are discussed there are some differences. Hallelujah. Benzan is the only official I saw who objected to the disgraceful black only candidate forum held in a public theater. That indicates how fearful Cambridge officials and residents are of advocating for equality in fact not just in words. 

Nationally there are still two strong parties, a requirement for a functioning democratic republic. If the Democrats have their way there will be only one party as under the soviet system and in many countries. Having two strong parties is not enough. They must compete, unlike the merging mush of the two parties in Congress, who go along to get along. Dissent is essential. Even the ACLU recognized that when George W. Bush was President. 

The Cambridge City Council is conformist. The Massachusetts legislature is a one party conformist body. Harvard University discourages non conformity too. It is not toxic to disagree. What is toxic are the personal attacks and unlawful political abuses of government power. Because disagreement is discouraged few citizens know how to disagree civilly. Add the lack of critical thinking ability among the population and you have a recipe for disaster. Mix in the low information and the no information voters. But the most dangerous are the omniscient voters. Some resources should promote tolerance, diversity of ideas in fact not just in words.

As for Cambridge as the best city in the world, The Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Global Liveability Ranking and Report, August 2014 says Melbourne, Australia is the best. Number 27 is Honolulu, as the best US City. Cambridge does not appear in the top fifty.

https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/non-economic-data/best-cities-to-live

[From article]
I’m more convinced than ever that we live in the greatest city in the world. Meanwhile, several candidates would lead you to believe that Cambridge is one of the worst. The toxicity of national elections is bleeding into our local elections, and it is unfortunate because that is not the kind of city we are.

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20151020/NEWS/151029524

LETTER: Toxicity of national elections is bleeding into Cambridge elections
Posted Oct. 20, 2015 at 12:30 PM
Updated Oct 20, 2015 at 12:32 PM
Cambridge Chronicle
To the editor:
Dennis A. Benzan, vice mayor and city councilor seeking re-election

Political Parties Deceive Voters With Historical Images

In addition to Noam Chomsky's perspective this article does not recognize that both parties have extremely wealthy supporters. Both parties exploit poor people and mislead them. 

[From article]
The United States has begun the seventh year of leadership under the most liberal of Democrat Presidents the Oval Office has ever known. Further, this president had control of one or both Houses of Congress for all of his first six years in office. Thus it’s entirely accurate to state that the policy results in America today are thoroughly the result of Democratic Party rule. Has all this implementation of Democrat ideology and policy initiative benefited the poor, made fewer poor, and been detrimental to the wealthy similarly making fewer of them as well? An objective analysis of the data leads to but one inarguable conclusion – not so much.
Under the first six years of the Obama administration the rich have gotten very rich, the poor have gotten very poor.
[. . .]
A more appropriate way of looking at it would be to say “Obama so loves the poor that he’s made millions more of them.”
[. . .]
The past six years have been very, very kind to the rich and ultra-rich in America. The Obama presidency has fostered an explosion in the number of millionaires within our borders and has bloated the bank accounts of the ‘already-millionaires’ in ways the George W. Bush presidency could hardly have imagined. (Or any other presidency for that matter.)
[. . .]
Though he loves delivering swelling messages about the poor and middle classes and the need for government to do more to help those struggling millions, the facts are that while the lower classes continue to miser away on penny-pinching budgets, the economy on Obama’s watch has heaped huge windfalls on the already-rich.
[. . .]
Six years of an uber-liberal presidency has not helped the poor and lower classes nor has it harmed the rich and upper classes. It has done the exact opposite.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/04/the_party_of_the_poor.html

April 6, 2015
The Party of the Poor?
By Derrick Wilburn

Populists In Spain Challenge Two-Party Rule

Reuters/Reuters - A man holds a a book written by Pablo Iglesias, Secretary General of Podemos, during a local assembly of Podemos at Madrid's Salamanca district December 18, 2014. REUTERS/Susana Vera


[From article]
The sudden rise of a new anti-establishment party has transformed Spanish politics a year before a general election, forcing the center-right government to veer away from austerity and the left-leaning opposition to scramble for new leaders.
In just a year since its founding, the party "Podemos" - We Can - has overturned the two party system in place since Spain embraced democracy in the 1970s. It is now polling around even with the ruling People's Party (PP) and main opposition Socialists, and has even led in some polls.
[. . .]
Podemos has set up hundreds of local assemblies known as "circulos" across the country, staging unruly weekly meetings at which Spaniards can vent the anger built up during worst economic crisis since World War Two.
"The one thing we all share is the outrage over what's going on in Spain," said Jose Luis Soriano, a 32-year old unemployed computer scientist who has been coming to the circulo in the upscale Madrid neighborhood of Salamanca since the summer.
[. . .]
Created in January by a group of political science professors from the Complutense University in Madrid and led by charismatic 36-year old Pablo Iglesias, the party is tapping into the sentiment behind the "Indignados" movement of youths that occupied Spanish squares in 2011.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/rise-spanish-populists-overturns-two-party-system-070629468.html

Rise of Spanish populists overturns two-party system
By By Julien Toyer
Reuters
December 29, 2014

Communist Party Takes Power in Thuringia State, Germany

Bodo Ramelow, head of the leftist Die Linke party faction in the Thuringia state parliament
Photo: Jens Schlueter/Getty Images

Curious that Germans recognize Communists when they take political power in their country. But for some reason there are no Communists in the United States. They cannot take power or even infiltrate the government. They are unable to conduct surveillance or to harass Americans because they do not exist. Only in Germany, North Korea, China, Venezuela, Cuba and a few other isolated outposts. But none in the United States. No Communists come over the southern border with the illegal aliens. None of them are Communists only capitalists. Really?

[From article]
Germany's far-Left party has returned to power in a state government for the first time since the Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, stoking heated debate about its communist roots.
The Left Party, widely seen as the successor to the Socialist Unity Party (SED) that once ruled East Germany, will head the government of Thuringia after the state parliament narrowly voted to approve a new coalition.
[. . .]
The coalition, which is completed by the Green Party, will have a majority of just one seat in the state parliament.
Although Mr Ramelow grew up in West Germany, many of the Left Party's leadership were senior figures in the East German communist party and some have been accused of links with the Stasi secret police.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11276037/German-far-Left-party-takes-state-parliament.html

German far-Left party takes state parliament
East German communists return to power 25 years after fall of Berlin Wall
By Justin Huggler, Berlin
4:04PM GMT 05 Dec 2014

Laws Useless When People Ignore Them

[From article]
“A society’s first line of defense is not the law but customs, traditions, and moral values,” wrote Professor Walter Williams a few years ago. “They include important thou-shalt-nots such as shalt not murder, shalt not steal, shalt not lie and cheat, but they also include all those courtesies one might call ladylike and gentlemanly conduct. Policemen and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct.”
[. . .]
As a “continuing body,” the Senate’s procedures are supposed to remain in force unless a two-thirds supermajority votes to change them. In this case, a 52/48 all-Democratic majority voted to change the rules, and so the rules have been changed. After all, who’s gonna stop Harry Reid? The Senate page boys? Legislative majorities are here today and gone tomorrow, but legislative mechanisms are supposed to be here today and here tomorrow and here next year. If a transient party majority can change the rules on a single, sudden, party-line vote, than there are no rules. The rules are simply what today’s rulers say they are. After all, banana republics and dictatorships pass their own rules, too – to deny opposition politicians access to airtime, or extend their terms by another two or three years, or whatever takes their fancy.
[. . .]
The law is applied according to whim, which means there is no law.
[. . .]
A government that lies to its own citizens should command no respect. To accord them any is to make oneself complicit in their lies, which is unbecoming to a free people.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1113/steyn112413.php3#.UpJut900i6Y

Jewish World Review
Nov. 25, 2013/ 23 Kislev, 5774
When a society's first line of defense fails
By Mark Steyn

Romney Did Not Invite Palin To Convention.

Why is it that grown men who ordinarily have agreeable personalities freeze and become fearful when they run for President? It happened with Bob Dole who has a great sense of humor but showed none of it during his campaign. John McCain is an intelligent rational man who acted as if he feared being called a racist if he criticized Obama in 2008. Now Romney appears to be doing the same. How can one woman make so many men fearful of her? Her personality, integrity and common sense make spineless politicians tremble. What is with the parties which cannot find or who fear nominating strong people with integrity to run for office? The two parties in the US are run by criminals who want only weak candidates with relaxed rectitude to ensure they can continue to steal taxpayer funds wholesale no matter who wins. Sad what happened to this great nation, killing itself from within.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2174478/Sarah-Palin-Mitt-Romney-How-solve-problem-like-Palin.html

How do you solve a problem like Sarah? Romney misses out in stand-off with loose cannon diva who could deliver him the backing of the Tea Party
By DANIEL BATES
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 14:54 EST, 16 July 2012 | UPDATED: 14:59 EST, 16 July 2012

James Madison, Constitution and Politics

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/books/chaos_theory_baguKBxtc2rpsNkp5YOkVL

Chaos theory
Politics is messy, government is mad — just as James Madison planned
By RICHARD BROOKHISER
New York Post
Last Updated: 4:42 AM, December 11, 2011

Liberals and Mob Rule

The ability to see inside of another person's mind is priceless. Why not offer your services? Ann Coulter explains all of this in her newest book. Liberals do not respond to reason or laws. The Constitution is an inconvenience to mob rule. The audacity of Carter's doctrine that anyone may declare a law unconstitutional and ignore it encourages anarchy. Who needs courts? Yale lawyer condones individual legal analysis by a Harvard lawyer. What a team. The logical end of this argument is laughable. As for Rove's criticism being partisan, that is the reason for having more than one political party, Duh. Saddam Hussein had a one-party government.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-06-10/karl-roves-misguided-constitutional-attack-on-obama/?cid=hp:mainpromo8

Karl Rove's Misguided Constitutional Attack on Obama
by Stephen L. Carter
Daily Beast
June 10, 2011

Intolerant Two-Party System

Turner's expulsion is one more example of intolerance of the Boston and Mass one-party system. Turner belongs to the Green Party. Democrats refuse to allow any other party to gain power. They tolerate a few Republicans in order to silence the voters who still promote a two party system. But Green Party? No way. The Democrats put Lyndon LaRouche in jail too. What we have is the appearance of freedom, while the ruling class chooses who we can vote for.

http://bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1300219

Menino statement on Turner expulsion
Boston Herald
Wednesday, December 1, 2010