It does mean it was always there. The Know-Nothings were co-opted into the very first generation of the Party, and that strain was never eradicated from the overall body politic. That the other side does it too means that the alternative was not also nativist is itself a simplistic viewpoint. In reality it's perfectly feasible to have two parties advocating viewpoints that amount to discrimination and the people that end up choosing the one know this, but decide that better the lesser evil than the greater.
Noting that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence equaling stagnation always and forever is itself another extreme simplification. Just because it's not greener does not mean that the people on the other side of the fence did not and do not have good ideas. However since you brought up the Australian ballot, that it was adopted didn't forbid the massive bloodshed aimed at keeping black people subordinate in the most ruthless of ways until the 1960s or protect their rights to vote legally guaranteed by Constitutional Amendments, did it? The rise of universal suffrage here didn't happen until the black men and women were guaranteed their rights to vote, which were already there, were actually going to be enforced. Simply having the concepts meant nothing.
Yet in practice you still have two major parties and a number of little ones, just like in the United States, and parliamentary legislatures are no more respectful or prone to working together than the US Congress is, often rather less so, in fact. I would agree that in large parts of the South the only thing that changed was the label on the one party, and it's why I think Democrats will take a long time to be re-elected here in Louisiana, as they have to learn what contesting an election means.
Proportional Representation is not used because in practice it is to a great extent unworkable. How, for instance, does one handle delicate issues like parts of a US state with huge minority populations or Hawaii where whites remain in the majority as they have for decades, and as such should be a minority at all levels? How does one district things by proportion of the population in practice when this means in a particular country that only a few states gain an overwhelming preponderance of power the other states won't grant due to the usual political factors, regardless of any rationality in that prospect (and of course those states are not themselves a unified bloc but this counter-argument never matters to the people raising the first counter-argument as theirs is not a logical view but one based on fears of might-have-beens and could-be-but-is-not-right-nows.
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Date: 4/11/12 20:37 (UTC)Noting that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence equaling stagnation always and forever is itself another extreme simplification. Just because it's not greener does not mean that the people on the other side of the fence did not and do not have good ideas. However since you brought up the Australian ballot, that it was adopted didn't forbid the massive bloodshed aimed at keeping black people subordinate in the most ruthless of ways until the 1960s or protect their rights to vote legally guaranteed by Constitutional Amendments, did it? The rise of universal suffrage here didn't happen until the black men and women were guaranteed their rights to vote, which were already there, were actually going to be enforced. Simply having the concepts meant nothing.
Yet in practice you still have two major parties and a number of little ones, just like in the United States, and parliamentary legislatures are no more respectful or prone to working together than the US Congress is, often rather less so, in fact. I would agree that in large parts of the South the only thing that changed was the label on the one party, and it's why I think Democrats will take a long time to be re-elected here in Louisiana, as they have to learn what contesting an election means.
Proportional Representation is not used because in practice it is to a great extent unworkable. How, for instance, does one handle delicate issues like parts of a US state with huge minority populations or Hawaii where whites remain in the majority as they have for decades, and as such should be a minority at all levels? How does one district things by proportion of the population in practice when this means in a particular country that only a few states gain an overwhelming preponderance of power the other states won't grant due to the usual political factors, regardless of any rationality in that prospect (and of course those states are not themselves a unified bloc but this counter-argument never matters to the people raising the first counter-argument as theirs is not a logical view but one based on fears of might-have-beens and could-be-but-is-not-right-nows.