Post by Godot showed up on Mar 4, 2010 23:46:11 GMT -5
...who have socialized medicine, and sincerely, and maybe even from their direct experiences, can honestly say, "don't worry, it's good," that in some ways our executive branch is much more powerful than yours. It is powerless in those spheres dominated by the other branches--although historically that power waxes and wanes, especially in time of war--but all-powerful when it has Constitutional control. Your parliamentary systems make your executive branch functions much more directly answerable to legislative changes. A Prime Minister may be removed by a no-confidence vote by those among whom he is first among equals; a President can be removed only by a deliberately complicated process, impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate, implemented by the legislative branch. And the Framers certainly understood that this was no dry process; both actions would occur only if real political will deriving from popular support backed them. Thus Clinton was impeached but not convicted. There was simply not national political will for conviction.
I've digressed. My point--I've got one--is that our executive branch can implement far more draconian changes in the lives of the citizenry of the US than yours can in most of Europe, within its sphere of activity, and once empowered by Congress. Your executive has a wide sphere of action but can have its party in power and thus executive control easily changed; our executive has a much narrower sphere of control--compared to parliamentary executive, directly under legislative will in the end--but is damn near absolute within that sphere. Our separation of powers can be something of a double-edged sword. It's often noted how it weakens the federal government as a whole, but it makes the single branches very powerful in their areas of action.
Obama, Reid, and Pelosi's intrusion into our lives would not be like your European healthcare, in my opinion a reality devoutly to be avoided from what I see, but would be even worse, because our executive has that sphere of absolute control, and I think it would be something that I think even you would find unpalatable. I think it would be far more intrusive, and far more geared toward rationing, even than what you have in Europe.
I've digressed. My point--I've got one--is that our executive branch can implement far more draconian changes in the lives of the citizenry of the US than yours can in most of Europe, within its sphere of activity, and once empowered by Congress. Your executive has a wide sphere of action but can have its party in power and thus executive control easily changed; our executive has a much narrower sphere of control--compared to parliamentary executive, directly under legislative will in the end--but is damn near absolute within that sphere. Our separation of powers can be something of a double-edged sword. It's often noted how it weakens the federal government as a whole, but it makes the single branches very powerful in their areas of action.
Obama, Reid, and Pelosi's intrusion into our lives would not be like your European healthcare, in my opinion a reality devoutly to be avoided from what I see, but would be even worse, because our executive has that sphere of absolute control, and I think it would be something that I think even you would find unpalatable. I think it would be far more intrusive, and far more geared toward rationing, even than what you have in Europe.