GunsmithKitten said:
Therumancer said:
Many Republicans support some of the arguements againast video games, but doesn't believe that federal regulation is right, but might push for state or town regulation if it came to that.
Ah, the wonderful hypocrisy of "if it's not the federals persecuting you, it's okay!"
I'm sure you'll have your arguements and links as to why "The Republicans are da Evil" and why anything I point out in response would be "debunked" or "wrong" to the point where I won't even bother in these forusm.
No more evil than the Democrats.
The point is that with the way the sides break down, The Republicans are more on "our" side as video gamers than the Democrats are, even a lot of the ones who speak agains video games themselves.
You did notice who Glen Beck, a right wing talking head, was Yes Man'ing all the way to Jack Thompson, right?
I dont' think Thompsons on the side of video gamers.....
At the end of the day both major parties/philsophies aren't exactly good for the people, as they both have huge down sides. I have a mixed bag of political philsophies, but tend to mostly go right wing as I feel it's the better side for everyone on most practical matters even if it doesn;t tell people what they want to hear too often.
Better side for most. Yea, not for me, as it would land me in prison. If you wonder what I'm talking about, go look up the court case Lawrence Vs. Texas.
Or maybe because you're not as often the target of their moral finger wagging....
The moral finger wagging goes both ways though, and I find the politically correct BS from the left wing just as annoying. That's just universal though.
As I said, the issue has gone bi-partisan with leaders on both sides playing "kick the dog" with video games, it's the current boogey man for a reason. That said it's the left wing that has been using it for serious attempts at censorship and free speech. Jack Thomson is something of a joke, and he did things the wrong way. Consider the Hillary Clinton set out to do it, and she won, the whole "Hot Coffee" thing and forcing Rockstar to back down was one of the biggest victories against free speech there is. Jack likes to file motions and talk a lot of crap, but he's mostly harmless, not so for the left wing efforts who are far more serious about it.
As far as the rest goes, let me explain the key differance in Democratic Vs. Republican philsophy when you get past the specific issues and all of the bullshit.
Democrats (as pointed out) believe in an all powerful federal goverment that can do whatever it wants to whomever it wants and get up your business any time it wants. States and towns becoming irrelevent, and sweeping nation-wide legislation and policy making being the norm.
Republicans believe in state and local power being the focus of the USA, with a weak federal goverment that exists largely to fight wars and deal with international politics, while the states and towns pretty much tend to their own affairs.
As time has gone on, and the federal goverment has gotten bigger and more powerful, even hardline Republicans have been forced to fight largely on a federal level. That said if we ever did see a long period of Republican domination you'd probably see the Federal goverment gradually deconstucted down to a shadow of what it is now, as unlikely as that happens to be.
I personally believe that people have the right to decide what happens in their own back yard, and are the best ones at choosing what they want to do. 99% of the social issues out there are things that should be resolved on an area by area basis, based on what the majority of people in the areas want. Your typical citizen can do a lot more to influance his town council, than Washington DC. What the majority of people want in each area, is what they do, and of course on a local level that can change as the attitudes of the people do. Done properly this means people are likely to wind up entering communities with those who happen to be like minded. It would take a real train wreck of a person to not fit in anywhere, and really that in of itself shows the person as the problem in the unlikely event that it was to happen.
To be honest with you, I could really give a flying leap if some town decides to ban video games locally or whatever. If that's what the people there want, more power to them and their ignorance, that's part of being in a free country. Just don't bother the people in the next town over, which is usually not a problem when it comes to this kind of thing.
To me 90% of the problem is that the Federal Goverment shouldn't be involved in issues like this, setting policies on things like media and what should be acceptable, or not acceptable, or whatever else. That's for the people themselves to decide. We're The United States, not The American Empire, each state is supposed to be pretty autonomous and largely made up of collections of fairly autonomous towns, bouroughs, etc... Pretty much any issue you can think of is better handled at a state or local level, as well as allowing differant groups to do differant things so they don't wind up needing to come to blows over it. 99% of the big issues, are big issues because of attempts to introduce sweeping legislature that will force everyone to follow ad accept it.
No system is perfect, but I tend to agree more with that way of thinking (there are pros and cons to both ideas), so I wind up going with the Republicans a lot more than the Democrats. To me, these kinds of issues don't belong on a federal stage to begin with.
I also think the playing field being too big for these kinds of issues are why we see crap like this with the NRA vs. the games industry. The NRA exists largely to operate on a federal level. The video game industry is fighting for the kinds of regulatory issues (ratings, etc..) that should never have been under federal purview to begin with. Both represent a threat to those looking for more govermental and less private power, a federal goverment that both wants to disarm the population, and also be able to make sweeping rulings about what kind of media people can and cannot choose to consume throughout the entire country. Both are fighting differant sides of the same thing, but right now the NRA in seeking to defend itself is trying to deflect criticism onto a popular boogie man that's basically fighting on a level it should never have been engaging at. I think the NRA is very much involved in "kick the outsider" as much as anything.
Of course as I mentioned before, I also think half the problem is the NRA is far too defensive here. It's trying to deflect criticism away from itself by presenting something else as being more dangerous. In reality the NRA should be going a bit more offensive, and less politically correct, pretty much coming out and saying "you know, we defend the right to have guns specifically because we need guns to kill people, specifically people like idiots in washington that attack free speech rights and try and disarm the populance. The whole point of being armed is so nobody will be defenseless before this crap". Not politically correct at all, but it gets right to the point of things, and is totally accurate.
