By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
One aspect of American politics I find particularly disappointing is the lack of substance inherent in political platforms of both the Republican and Democrat parties. Since most voters in the United States have only experienced the politics resident in our country, I thought in light of this year’s election it would be worthwhile to experience another point of view that is removed from our current political ideologies.
It seems unfortunate that most of what we see today are mere soundbites of half a dozen topics considered to be of utmost importance to each of the parties — seemingly only designed to inflame emotions and provide the voter with very little information which can be ambiguous at best.
I present to you a political platform from another nation, and political perspective: the 2016 Fine Gael manifesto.
the Fine Gael party, formed in 1933, is a major political party within the Republic of Ireland. It is noted for its fiscally liberal economic policies as well as a somewhat conservative social approach: though not to the degree of conservativism as defined in the United States.
Since politics in the United States on the federal level especially, has become so polarized and unworkable I have doubts that many politicians can see the broader picture of the needs of the United States. It would be refreshing for many to see another perspective at least looking at it from a structural point of view. For the purposes of our discussion it is not necessary to evaluate the political tenets of the Fine Gael party, but instead to see documents such as this as an example upon which to formulate a greater governing approach by political parties generally.
I invite the readers to view this political manifesto: again not from a perspective of trying to evaluate so much the goals of Fine Gael, but instead to look upon it as an example of how the U.S. parties can do better to convey actual solutions to those problems facing us today. And, for each of the voters to evaluate for themselves. While certainly this is not intended to be all encompassing of Fine Gael’s itemized plan for its future governance, it certainly is much more comprehensive than what we are given here.
By Darren Smith
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
Issac,
Thank you for the detailed reply. I will try to respond better after supper and my little one’s bedtime.
Issac,
I have had posts eaten inexplicably eaten by WordPress. Darren is usually able to retrieve them, but, sometimes, they have vanished entirely. I do not use profanity, not even asterisked profanity, and I keep my links to two. Some keyword I have apparently used in my post triggered the spam filter algorithm. I try to remember to copy my posts prior to hitting submit.
Issac – there was a time when about every tenth post disappeared into the WordPress Void for no particular reason and the moderators, usually Darren were finding them. It has gotten a lot better. A lot lot better. 🙂
everyone – sorry, I am triple tasking.
Paul
Three more posts, at least two. If a Republican gets in then we are doomed. If Clinton gets in, the least damage will be done and perhaps the Supreme Court will respond in an intelligent manner to issues such as disallowing concentrated mega bucks for the purchasing of our supposed freely elected representatives. It is a start.
issac – Obama has every looking to Putin for leadership. He has taken us from the 6th strongest economy to the 11th. And I expect a recession by election time. Watch the Democrats scramble with numbers to make the economy look better than it is.
Darren
Thank you very much for sorting this out. I will make sure to use more asterisks in the future or adverbs and adjectives the consistency of pablum.
Darren
I don’t advertise anything via this blog, unlike the Science Geek. My only interest is to dialogue and discourse with others. Perhaps I am not understanding Turley’s definition of Spam. Obviously this problem is between my ‘spamming’ and Turley’s blog. Your weekend edition and I seem to interact well enough. What next?
It was an automated system that flagged the comments as spam. We don’t have access to this algorithm as it is maintained by WordPress. This occasionally happens now, though it was significantly worse in the past. Certain comments however will be flagged as spam if they contain prohibited words such as profanity.