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Monday: March 31, 2008

We Need Two Parties, but Which Two?

Filed under: — site admin @ 12:19 AM GMT-0500

On a more serious note:

A. J. Strata ponders the trainwreck that will ensue if the Democrats dump Obama and Clinton and nominate Al Gore:

The conservative in me says go for it, end the suffering of the democrat party quickly – bury it. I hesitate as an American because we need two viable parties. But if the dems go this route they are no longer viable anyway, so I would expect to see a far right wing party pop up to create some ‘balance’ as the GOP moves to the center.

I’m surprised that the Democratic Party has lasted as long as it has. I expect it to shrivel up into insignificance some time in the next 10 or 15 years, perhaps quite suddenly, though I don’t quite see it happening this year. I also expect the Republican Party to split in two, but I think these two will not be a moderate and a far-right party but a conservative party and a libertarian party.

My reason is simple. The economic question has been settled. With all its faults, capitalism works, and no alternative comes close to working. Socialism is dead, though (like a zombie) still walking around in some countries. However, that leaves a wide range of moral and social questions on which consensus seems unlikely. Issues such as abortion, the death penalty, pornography, gay marriage, vegetarianism, drug legalization, smoking bans, pâté de foie gras, consumption of dog and horse meat, cloning, the clubbing of baby seals, paying for transplanted kidneys, and so on, will continue to divide Americans, since they cannot be solved empirically. These issues should suffice to divide Americans into two economically-liberal parties for years to come.

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