Quote Originally Posted by Thorne View Post
So if I can't convince a group of frightened people that it's not right to condemn someone just because they are Muslims, that makes it okay to shoot them on sight?
Not frightened people - the populace as a whole, and yes, that is actually pretty much the legal situation, with slight regional variations: if something would be perceived as a significant threat by normal people then the use of (deadly) force is legal. Before you hold up politicians as solving that problem, I should probably remind you Congress has done almost precisely that on multiple occasions in the past - and only admitted to the Census Bureau's rôle in the process in 2007.

No doubt a lot of voters would have voted against the Civil Rights Act in 1963, given the chance, just as a lot of politicians did each time - but considering that the facts that they did elect the President who pushed it, that the House Rules Committee blocked the bill until after JFK's assassination gave LBJ political leverage to pressure them, then had to use backdoor procedural trickery to squeeze it through the Senate with "only" two months of filibusters, after Congress had already rejected the core Title III proposal 3 and 6 years previously, can you really tell me you're sure the same electorate which voted JFK into office would have taken much longer than those six years to approve his proposal?

Only because there is less opportunity for it. How many would gladly change their vote for the price of a new television, or a mortgage payment?
No - because corrupt politicians are screwing over the general population for personal benefit. For the population to screw itself over for its own benefit is a contradictory. They could of course reverse the process, with the broader electorate screwing a smaller subset, but you'll have a hard job convincing those who pay most of the taxes and anyone in an unpopular industry (tobacco, alcohol, fast food, insurance, energy) that isn't what we have right now. When you promise financial benefits to most of the electorate ... well, that's how both the current and previous occupants of the White House got there, and I don't recall anyone calling that corruption yet.

The average newspaper in the US, as I remember, is written on a sixth grade level (about the comprehension of the average 10 or 11 year old) so that the average reader can understand them. Would you want to entrust the laws of your country to the whims of a group of 11 year olds?
Do you really think politicians are significantly better than that? How many of them have even bothered to read, let alone fully understand, the laws they vote on? Remember ObamaCare, with Pelosi's line "we have to pass the health care bill so that you can find out what is in it"? Obama's speech earlier this year, exhorting Congress to pass a bill that hadn't even been written yet?