Out of Pod Experience

absaloutly correct Britain is not nor never has been a democracy .. its a constitutional monarchy and the findings were published by a publicly owned division of the government with left leaning liberal views always has been ..always will be . It even has its own government minister to oversee it .......... so yes your totally correct in the assumption that what the bbc report is biased and has been proved so on countless occasions .

the bbc runs to its own agenda and has been cought out on more than one occasion over the last couple of years .

yay

no, my theory is we need a leader for the decisions we can't make, as a group. unfortunately that also means that you'll take the brunt of the wrath of said group if you **** up. case in point: mutiny in the sail ships of times of ole'. Bounty anyone?

"It's a Republic, if you can keep it"... We've not kept it. It's no democracy either... It's not a "Representative" republic either. The US is an Elected Dictatorship.

When you stomp down of Free Speech (Free Speech Zones for example), when you tell someone that they can't practice their beliefs in public (praying before dinner at a restaurant) even if it doesn't do ANYTHING to the surrounding people (it's happened to me, my family and I were booted out as soon as we held hands and began to pray quietly), then there is no Freedom. It's a dictatorship when such discrimination becomes law.

Ever waking moment of every day we in the US are ALL breaking the law. Ask any Cop. There are SO many laws on the books that it's impossible to NOT break the law. The cops don't even know all the laws. When I was a kid, things were a whole lot more "Live and let live", but not today. Can't even defend your own home without being a criminal. Our politicians will do ANYTHING to impose control over us American Citizens. Including crashing the Economy (thanks Bush, and Obama next).

I agree with much of what you say Mutant, but I am muting myself as I do not want to make this a class debate...

All I will say is that I no longer blame the President. Whatever power the elected position of The President entailed, in the past, has been usurped and curtailed into oblivion....even though the position was created to have minimal power to begin with.

For example, I do not agree with most of what the 'Bush's' (might as well include the current figure head, Obama, as well) agenda stands for but I would love to have many beers with G.W. Bush JR.

I'm not sure the size an scope of a ship can compare to that of a country. The "Ship of State" analogy, like all analogies, can only be stretched so far.

yes, it can only be streched so far, but then again, you don't have any other example to come by with, now do you?

A state will always provide for itself, no matter what the size is. It is also pretty much akin to a single living body: If there is sickness, it will fight to get rid of that sickness. Even if the disease is a corrupt head of state, a corrupt system, a corrupt section of said state, it is still a cancer, and the state will fight itself to get rid of it, or die in the process. Either way, like any living being, a state requires a brain, be it a single person or a group of them, a brain is still needed, for it will die without one.

Why am I going with another analogy?

Now, it's true that freedom is important. Socially speaking, freedom is the main evolutionary engine for any society. While not the single cause, it was one of the pillars of the Renaissance. More lenient and "enlightened" chiefs of state gave a bit more freedom to the masses and so great scientific knowledge was produced so as to thrust forward mankind further and to new heights.

One thing that we must be aware however is that nothing and nothing more is more important to mankind's survival than the concept of "common good", and nothing must surpass this, not even the concept of freedom. Don't forget that you, like me and many others, were provided the freedom we have nowadays by great sacrifices brought by revolutions, sparked by single individuals that had the masses behind them. Leaders.

Of course there are bloodless revolutions as well. My country is celebrating today the 40th anniversary of the return to a democracy, something that was brought by when a handful of guys decided that enough was enough and decided to lead, for the common good.

For that is what a leader really is, the representative of the people's will for common good.

true, I went a bit far over there.

My point is, someone has to do the dirty jobs every now and then, specially when this world isn't as clear-cut as one wishes to be.

How in the world has this thread not gotten locked for being about politics?

If this is possible, then anything is possible. Before you know it we'll be neck deep in Hentai and Bronies.

All states die, because nothing is eternal. there will be sturdier examples of states that will last longer, but in they end they will die, either by themselves or by getting annihilated by a stronger state.
And don't twist my words. State is not a sickness. Sickness kills the state.


Common good is defined by the people. That's why people form groups. It's much less time consuming and it brings much bigger chances of success to survive. Every group has their definition of common good, if this wasn't true, then we didn't formed the entity called "Country" in the first place, nor we would have wars.

And social security is a good idea corrupted by our own stupidity.



Actually, if you want to blame someone for the creation of the concept of "leader", blame the monkeys. Yes I'm being dead serious here. And I' know you're intelligent enough to understand where I'm going

Also, tyrants end up on the "disease" that I've explained above.