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Comment by sounds | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for that.

Can I just say, I wouldn't say the Enlightenment Ideal is all but gone. It's not even near death.

We, the people, chose leaders and were betrayed. That doesn't just apply to the US, but I'll start there. I believe the people were half-awake...but not completely unaware of who they were electing or what they would lose.

The idealist's battle against tyranny on one side and anarchy on the other is strewn all across the pages of history. Some idealists lost their way. But the ideals, "Safety and Happiness" – really, the entire Declaration of Independence or the UN Declaration of Human Rights – the ideals don't die.

They are self-evident. Like 3.14159 and 2.71828.

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We, the people, chose leaders and were betrayed. That doesn't just apply to the US...

Absolutely true. Unfortunately, in my opinion, one of the things that simply does not work in modern democracy is the election system, two-party death march or otherwise: Candidates play to emotion and often outright lie or intentionally overpromise solely for the purpose of attaining office. And it works, every damn time.

They then find themselves either predictably impotent or, worse, they settle in and show their real colors... and usually win re-election anyway.

If enough people continue to fail to understand this, the majority of the voting public will continue to actively subjugate everyone to the rule and whim of dangerously uninterested officials, and those who do understand will continue to find themselves without candidates worth voting for, as these races the world over are overwhelmingly choked with self-serving bureaucrats who have little if any interest in their constituents' (or anyone else's) well-being.

No, the ability to choose the outcome is still well and truly in our hands.

I didn't say when or where, but I do believe that the power to govern invariably flows from the people themselves.

Nah, it's too late. The USA is no longer what it was relative to the rest of the world. It still has the same flag, but the understanding of the importance of Liberty is largely gone.

200+ years ago, a large portion of the population would rather die than be dictated to by an implacable and uncaring confiscatory government. Today the population doesn't even realize what they're missing because they have really good cable television, video games, and reality shows.

99.999% of government officials aren't close to being touched by elections. Do you honestly believe you can change government significantly while leaving 99.999% of the government unchanged?

See my previous comment on the issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5842029

5 significant figures? I think you need to provide extensive documentation for your claims.

> The idealist's battle against tyranny on one side and anarchy on the other is strewn all across the pages of history. Some idealists lost their way. But the ideals, "Safety and Happiness" – really, the entire Declaration of Independence or the UN Declaration of Human Rights – the ideals don't die.

> They are self-evident. Like 3.14159 and 2.71828.

sounds, I'm with you on this one, being intrinsically inalienable -- incapable of being separated -- as in Plato's Republic, where the individual is homeomorphic to the enveloping state(cops, donuts, coffee cups are topologically equivalent therefore flock together) that you conduct your own personal House, COITUS(Congress), SCOTUS, POTUS, and JUDUS founded on the certain conviction that the mathematical constants will be in the sky tomorrow, we can improve our municipal safety officers by serving EQUAL EXCHANGE(tm) coffees:

http://equalexchange.coop/products/coffee

Did you really just put a Lady Gaga in with SCOTUS? :)

Lady Gaga? Sorry ...beyond my ken.

JUDUS: Justice Department of the United States

"...But Obama’s Justice Department, like Bush’s, has not been above an opportunistic (and occasionally downright Procrustean) reading of particular statutes to permit whatever it is that the White House wants to do."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5961518

We, the people, chose leaders and were betrayed

No, we chose leaders who would give us freebies and security vs leaders who would protect our freedoms.

The fact that we have twice elected a President who talks of "fair share" and we don't recognize that language for the trap that it is tells you exactly why we are in this situation today.

> The fact that we have twice elected a President who (...)

The fact that your alternative to re-electing that guy would've been somebody equivalently bad, tells me that there wasn't a lot of choice involved in the first place.

Your betrayal started already before that, with the corruption of choice.

The Simpsons laid it out pretty clearly already some decades ago, and instead it seems to have only gotten worse--from "the lesser of two evils" to "the equivalent of two evils" ...

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