Hey, I'm new here. This is my official first post on the forums. I want to let everyone know my opinions first of all. I personally support reduced taxes (not no taxes at all though), I am pro-choice and accepting of same-sex marriage, I oppose ACA and I oppose things like food and helmet laws. Thank you.
Your views are alright. I agree with them in the aspects you have posted. Your method of introducing them, however, make you look like a naive tool. Nevertheless, you begin with a question, which always deserves an answer. To wit:
Overall, not bad. It's probably better than the system that existed in France in the 18th Century, and better than that which existed in Russia in the 19th Century--or at any other time in Russia, really--but it has some unpleasantness. For one thing, our offices are for sale. This is neither bad nor good in the abstract, but simply the result of evolution in a system wherein people have never suffered the indignities of foreign occupation, starvation, rule by Divine Right, or prolonged strife. Still, rationing offices to the highest bidder makes the office holders less beholden to the people governed than to those who ensure their victories with largesse. Such a system will likely devolve further into feudalistic corruption to the point that the rights that the lowest classes enjoy will in time be diminished by the system of retail politics as it exists in the United States. Our system is also cumbersome. This is also neither bad nor good, but simply the result of a large population with wallets fat enough to make it so.
Much of the problem derives from the conceit of democracy. Democratic processes really only work well with a well-educated, well-informed, motivated, and interested populace. During the early days of the republic, the franchise was limited precisely to those who were well educated, well informed, motivated, and interested. Over time, the franchise was extended, little by little, to those less fortunately placed. Given our current sensibilities, this seems not only warranted but noble. Fair enough, but the privileges of education, information, motivation, and interest was not also extended to the marginal groups upon whom the burden of democracy was placed. This expansion of suffrage made it easy for the controlling class to exploit the populace--especially in the absence of universal information--into setting into place a system of continual oscillatory brinksmanship/power cycles in which small groups of well-placed individuals control the masses under the apparent aegis of presumed democracy while simultaneously extolling the virtues of their brand of democracy so effectively that those controlled purchase it with their very existences. More astounding still, they do it by affecting a façade of competition between two political factions whose goals are essentially the same, but who cleverly spin it in such a way as to seem diametrically opposed to the great unwashed masses, so that when one sweeps the other from the halls of power, the public is seduced into being placated by its apparent autonomy. This is also neither bad nor good, but it can be amusing if you don't allow yourself to take any of it too seriously. (Assuming, of course, that you have the funds to insulate yourself from the temporary economic disequilibria that always accompany such reversals of fortune.)
