At 06:32 AM 11/29/2004 -0800 Nick Arnett wrote: >JDG wrote: > >> Again, the only conclusion I can draw from using loaded language like "so >> it begins" is that religious conservatives either shouldn't be allowed to >> participate in the political process, or that if they are, they shouldn't >> ever be allowed to actually *win* and maybe enact some portions of their >> Agenda. Apparently the nation's social policy is supposed to be left to >> the *losers* of election, or better yet, to judges who were never even >> elected in the first place! > >I don't think this is about winning or losing elections. To me, it is >about how the leadership views the nation. The party that wins the >White House and Congress hasn't won the country in the way that the >person with a winning lottery ticket wins the money. Elections are our >way of making the best decision we can, not our way of deciding who was >right and who was wrong. It is much more of a conversation than a >contest; I think those who talk about it more as a contest than a >conversation do us all a great disservice. > >In a fair election, there are no losers. Sadly, it seems that hardly >anyone is willing to look at it that way these days.
In a fair election, there are no losers? Consider the case of a referendum.... we had three on the ballot here in Montgomery County, Maryland. One in particular was on term limits for the County Council. It was defeated. Very clearly, there was a winner and a loser. I think that the same is true of any race. While there is a conversation, and this conversation often results in compromise, in other cases this conversation results in some sort of majority enacting a policy that some minority objects to. That's life. In this case, we have a post who's subject line I can only presume on a list like this was harkening back to Babylon 5 and Kosh's statement on the beginning of the Shadow War. We also had the apparently radical concept that members of the winning coalition in an election might have some portions of their policy agenda eventually enacted described as "Payback" by both the same subject header, and the headline of a MSM media article. Maybe you will disagree with me on this, but I don't consider the term "Payback" to be filled with positive connotations. JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
