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Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
seriously....
it's not viable, it's stupid at best.
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I discovered something today: you can't block people who happen to be moderators. Fortunately you can ignore them.
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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
A failure of the democratic process? Really? I call bullshit.
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You mean "No, it's not viable." I respect your opinion.
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Originally Posted by Loquitur
until candidates get a crystal ball that tells them what the future will bring, there is no way this proposal will work.
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The idea would be to prevent them from making promises they can't keep. It would be preventative. Instead of a candidate promising to lower taxes, which one cannot responsibly promise (which is exactly your point), they will say something more like, "I will do everything I can to lower taxes." That's a more reasonable claim.
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Originally Posted by roachboy
i think machiavelli covered this pretty well in "the prince"
it's part of that curious gap which separates the spectacle of power from the human beings who dance around inside it.
so no, it's not practical. no-one in their right mind would take the oath. or if they did, it would become yet another of those rituals of forthrightness that would be jettisoned and forgotten as soon as raison d'etat ran too counter to it.
you might get some embarrasing photo-ops out of it for a while.
but that wouldn't last long.
and the cynicism that'd be engendered by the failure of the process would do more damage than not having it.
anyway, this is all just transposing words in a cliff-notes version of the prince. read that. it's better.
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I've only read part of that book. Machiavelli seems a guide-book to being an immoral and unethical leader. That kinda flies in the face of my intent.