Can a range of views co-exist under one party banner?

Both Britain and America what is known as a 'First-Past-the-Post (FPTP)' electoral system and this means that whoever gets the most votes in one particular area (district, state or constituency) gets 100% of the representation from that area. One of the effects of this is that it means that small parties always suffer and might get 5% of the vote nationally but 0% of the representatives. Because of this, countries with FPTP tend to have two-party systems and a range of views in each party.

Right-wing parties are supported by religious Conservatives, fiscal conservatives and nationalists, whereas left parties are coalitions of Liberals, Socialists and Social-Democrats. In other electoral systems (like the Italian Proportional Representation model) these factions would fight elections as separate organisations. Under FPTP, it's pointless electoral suicide so you might as well try to reform one of these parties from within.

The fact that we live in changing political times puts a strain on main parties and their constituent parts. The Republicans have Tea Party and Trump, the Democrats have Bernie and OAC. British politics has had the Corbyn movement and also both parties are heavily divided by Brexit.

My own view is that factions are OK and that internal debate is necessary. For a political party to be effective, it does need balance and responsibility on both sides though. If you join a party, you should support your candidate, even if they are not your best choice candidate.

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

SatanBurger · 36-40, F

Also if you want to dig deeper, as much as I love the idea of religion and want religious people to stop being nuts, religious conservatives have been shown they can't co-exist with secularists through the policies they support. LGBT people have had to fight REALLY HARD just to have a right to get married. They've been discriminated against renting apartments, applying for colleges, adopting children, I've heard catholic hospitals turning gay people away before and getting in trouble for it. Still to this day there's religious conservatives mainly in politics pandering to their base by saying horrible things about them. Many have said if they could take away rights, they would in a heartbeat.

Even religious LGBT people, kind of get it from both sides.

It would be awesome if we could just all coexist but I question what coexisting means when the other side is always trying to take away rights through sheer political muscle.

I mean true co-existing is recognizing that everyone should have rights. The right to marry between consenting adults, the right to freedom, the right to an opinion, the right to education, the right to health but we don't have that.

We often have people that fight against health care, fight against education, fight against LGBT right's to marry...

I think there's a limit on co-existing, in a just society we should all have rights that CANNOT be taken away and we shouldn't have to fight them every 4 years or so when some corrupt asshole of a political pig gets in office.

bijouxbroussard · F

@SatanBurger Totally agree. I was trying to explain to someone pushing Prop 8 back in the day (which defined marriage as “between a man and a woman”) that while she in theory had a right to her “opinion”, that opinion when turned into [b]law[/b] interfered with real people’s lives, while her life was not altered one bit by marriage equality. Ironically, I was speaking to a “Christian” black woman married to a white man, and I asked her if [b]she’d[/b] have been as calm facing someone proposing upholding once existing laws against [b]her[/b] choice of a spouse ? She couldn’t answer, insisting “that’s different”.

SatanBurger · 36-40, F

@bijouxbroussard When they insist "that's different" you know they're trying to find some rational for it but deep down they know you're right. I think religious people know it's wrong what they're advocating for but they'll find some rational for their behavior either way because of the guilt of not doing things by the book (the bible, Quran and many others.) They want to please their god and feel like they'll go to hell if they stray etc. a lot of emotional guilt from being raised that way.

It's not that I don't want us to co-exist, it's just that 71 countries being subverted through political sabotage of free and fair elections has made me skeptical that we can co-exist because democracy is kind of a weird word. It seems like democracy is used by well intentioned people but it's also used as a dog whistle word to mean something else.

The problem with a "democracy" is that in reality everyone should have rights but to define those rights is [b]limited[/b] depending on who you ask.

For instance legalizing gay marriage is seen as discriminating against Evangelists because the majority of churches don't want to wed same sex couples. They'll argue that even if they were on the Titanic sinking, some people still believe the earth is flat and that by teaching the earth is round, it's some kind of subversion to brainwash children by the "deep" state.

So you have all these people trying to define all these things based on their view points and not just what is morally right.

Therefore I question if our system can even work with co-existing because every 4 years we have to worry about certain rights changing and what the new president will do and what they won't. We have nothing set in stone except things like murder (obviously for good reason.) But everything else seems up for grabs even though we should all have rights, we sometimes don't depending what political party just happens to gain power that year.