That's fine to say, but it ignores the problem of minority rule. If we all take a big vote, and most people want Progress(A), you don't have the ethical right to jump up and down or put a gun to the rest of our heads insisting that we instead do Progress(B).

Maybe Progress(B) is a lovely thing for you. The rest of us, however, don't like it very much, and didn't vote for it.

If Progress(A) means taking stuff from a minority group, then sorry you don’t have the right for that either, even if your plan is to equally distribute it for the “good of everyone”. For some people who went through the hell of communism it is the opposite of progress.

>If Progress(A) means taking stuff from a minority group, then sorry you don’t have the right for that either,

Hold on, let me check something...

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

I rather think we do have that right. Human rights for minorities are indeed a thing, but they aren't a thing that gives you (or anyone else) a fully general right to rule over the majority, nor a fully general right to treat the government as illegitimate when it uses its constitutionally enumerated powers to go against your ideas.

> it uses its constitutionally enumerated powers to go against your ideas.

So let me clarify your position a bit: you do support immigration law enforcement, correct?

Also where did you get the idea that the majority of people in the US gets to decide the policy?

>So let me clarify your position a bit: you do support immigration law enforcement, correct?

Yes, of course. If enforcing the law as written involves doing Bad Things, the law should be changed, but if we aren't democratically deciding to change it, then it's on us what it involves.

Mind, there's been plenty of support for the DREAM Act for quite a while now, so...

>Also where did you get the idea that the majority of people in the US gets to decide the policy?

The basic ethical grounds for representative democracy, without which the US government has no legitimacy, no matter how many pieces of paper anyone waves around.

Majority rule is not “the basic ethical grounds for representative democracy”. US was set up as a constitutional republic specifically to limit the simple majority mob rule.

>Majority rule is not “the basic ethical grounds for representative democracy”.

Yes, it very much is.

>US was set up as a constitutional republic specifically to limit the simple majority mob rule.

The US was set up to preserve the power of the rural landowner class. It wasn't intended to be a representative democracy initially, and has only moved imperfectly towards representative democracy over time, with great struggle.

Rule by a minority elite claiming the mantle of national authenticity as its exclusive possession is, ethically speaking, far less legitimate than that of plain, old-fashioned majorities.

Clearly OP means agreeing with his agenda here.

Anything contrary to his agenda is not progress, but going backwards. "around half" is a veiled hit on people who voted for President Trump.

No, I just mean progress. We have data, we could be using it to improve. But instead, we watch other countries leapfrog us in quantifiable ways while we point fingers at each other and accuse 'the other side' of being the real problem. And we are so enamored with ourselves being special that we won't even consider ideas from other countries which have successfully dealt with similar problems. It is very frustrating. And I don't care which side politically you are on, you are only part of the problem from my perspective if you care more about winning than actually making better policy.