17th February 2003, 1:13 PM
Um... you aren't a Republican, you just agree with them on pretty much every single issue? Yeah right...
As for parties, yeah, they aren't the greatest thing and they do mean that you end up either voting for the lesser of two evils or voting for someone who doesn't have any possible chance of winning... but representative democracy (or a republic, as its more accurately called) is really the only way to run a big country... you can't have all the citizens voting on everything once the population gets above a few tens of thousands... like with town meetings. They are common (well, in New England at least...), but only in small to midsized towns... the bigger towns all have elected town councils or mayors because above a certain size town meetings just don't work anymore.
As for parties, yeah, they aren't the greatest thing and they do mean that you end up either voting for the lesser of two evils or voting for someone who doesn't have any possible chance of winning... but representative democracy (or a republic, as its more accurately called) is really the only way to run a big country... you can't have all the citizens voting on everything once the population gets above a few tens of thousands... like with town meetings. They are common (well, in New England at least...), but only in small to midsized towns... the bigger towns all have elected town councils or mayors because above a certain size town meetings just don't work anymore.