Almost everyone agrees there should be more compromises in politics. So I’m curious, how would that play out?
While I love the policy debates and the nuances, most people go for the big issues. So, according to the party platforms/my gut, here’s what I’d put as the 3 for each party:
Democrats: Abortion rights, gun control, climate change.
Republicans: Immigration, culture war (say, critical race theory in schools or gender affirming care for minors) , trump gets to be president. (Sorry but it really seems like a cult of personality at this point.)
Anyway, here’s the exercise: say the other side was willing to give up on all three of their issues but you had to give up on one of your side’s. OR, you can have two of your side’s but have to give up on the third.
Just curious to see how this plays out. (You are of course free to name other priorities you think better represent the parties but obviously if you write “making Joe Pesci day a national holiday” as a priority and give it up, that doesn’t really count.)
Edit: The consensus seems to be a big no to compromise. Which, fair, I imagine those on the Right feel just as strongly about what they would call baby murdering and replacing American workers etc.
Just kind of sad to see it in action.
But thanks/congrats to those who did try and work through a compromise!
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I am willing to compromise and allow trial by combat to be reintroduced as a valid judicial process. The only caveat is that the wealthy cannot appoint champions to fight for them.
Seriously though, I’m not in love with either party. Honestly, there are things I despise about both. Most Americans are pretty middle of the road. It’s the extremists and the parties holding the country hostage, not the American people.
I am willing to compromise and allow trial by combat to be reintroduced as a valid judicial process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_combat
Trial by combat (also wager of battle, trial by battle or judicial duel) was a method of Germanic law to settle accusations in the absence of witnesses or a confession in which two parties in dispute fought in single combat; the winner of the fight was proclaimed to be right. In essence, it was a judicially sanctioned duel. It remained in use throughout the European Middle Ages, gradually disappearing in the course of the 16th century.
So that was before the US became a country.
Wikipedia sadly doesn’t mention it, but a few years ago, some Brit decided to challenge what IIRC was a traffic infraction and demand trial by combat. The judge issued a ruling that trial by combat was no longer permissible, so it’s officially off the books in the UK under case law.
kagis
Vehicle registration violation.
Is Trial By Combat Still Legal?
Citing a law from 1066, a man requested a fight to the death to settle a $33 motoring fine.
In 2002, in Suffolk in England, a 60-year-old man didn’t tell the country’s motoring authority that his motorcycle was off the road. That authority, the DVLA, can fine individuals for things like not paying road tax and similar admin things.
The man, Leon Humphreys, was fined £25 ($33) for his small infringement, but the man didn’t pay and was taken to court.
Trial by combat
Almost a thousand years earlier, in 1066, William the Conqueror introduced the right to trial by combat – a fight to the death to resolve disputes using swords or other weapons such as pikes.
The thinking behind this was that God would back who was right, and they would win. Elderly people and women were allowed to nominate a champion to fight on their behalf.
You couldn’t just demand trial by combat with anyone. Rather, it needed a genuine legal matter to be resolved, and was one official way of resolving that matter. It let God decide the outcome, apparently, and the guilty party would pay the ultimate price.
Humphreys decided that instead of paying the fine, he would call upon the ancient law, saying;
“I believe the right to trial by combat is still on the statute books… I am willing to fight a champion put up by the DVLA if they want to accept my challenge – but they must remember it is a fight to the death… I am reasonably fit and not afraid of taking anyone on in a fight.”
A spokesman for the British courts simply said of the matter;
“I am not aware that anyone has the right to demand trial by combat these days.”
And the DVLA responded;
“We have never dealt with a request for trial by combat before. We are looking into the legal issues.”
The courts unsurprisingly rejected the request for trial by combat, which hasn’t really been used much since around 1300 when trial by jury replaced it. Mr. Humphreys never got his deathly fight, and all DVLA clerks remained safely at their desks.
Instead, he was fined £200 ($265) for not paying the fine, and a further £100 ($133) in court costs.
However, British courts don’t bind the US, not since independence, and last time I looked, it still hadn’t been resolved in the US. WP doesn’t have any clear case law prohibiting it, though the Brits came close:
Proposals to abolish trial by battle were made in the 17th century, and twice in the 18th, but were unsuccessful.[23] In 1774, as part of the legislative response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament considered a bill that would have abolished appeals of murder and trials by battle in the American colonies. It was successfully opposed by Member of Parliament John Dunning, who called the appeal of murder “that great pillar of the Constitution”.[24] Writer and MP Edmund Burke, on the other hand, supported the abolition, calling the appeal and wager “superstitious and barbarous to the last degree”.[25]
At the time of independence in 1776, trial by combat had not been abolished and it has never formally been abolished since. The question of whether trial by combat remains a valid alternative to civil action has been argued to remain open, at least in theory. In McNatt v. Richards (1983), the Delaware Court of Chancery rejected the defendant’s request for “trial by combat to the death” on the grounds that dueling was illegal.[50] In Forgotten Trial Techniques: The Wager of Battle, Donald J. Evans set out the possibility of a trial by battle in the setting of a lawyer’s office.[51] A tongue-in-cheek motion during 2015 for trial by combat in response to a civil suit was rejected in 2016.[52]
In 2020, a man named David Zachary Ostrom requested a trial by combat in response to a custody and property dispute with his ex-wife over their children.[53] Following Ostrom requesting trial by combat, he was court-ordered to be administered a sanity test and was temporarily restricted from parenting rights. Upon successfully clearing his sanity test, Ostrom’s parenting time was restored. Ostrom has since admitted that he initially made the request for trial by combat in order to attract media attention to his case.[54]
Now, IIRC there are some limited forms of dueling – not to the death, but fights – that are legally sanctioned in at least one state, IIRC Oregon or Washington state.
goes looking
Washington. And, Texas being Texas, Texas also has a sanctioned form.
https://texascriminaljustice.com/what-is-the-mutual-combat-law-in-texas/
In some ways, Texas has had a reputation in the past as the Wild West. If you have ever wondered if two parties in the state can fight without worrying about the legal consequences, the answer is yes. Texas is only one of two states (Washington state being the other) where mutual combat can be an affirmative offense in specific assault cases.
Most people know that it is against the law to punch or otherwise assault someone. But did you know that the Texas mutual combat law allows, in certain situations, for two parties to fight and injure one another without legal consequences, to a certain degree?
The law behind certain mutual combat being allowed is Texas Penal Code 22.06. The law states that a party charged with assault can argue that the alleged victim consented to the fight. This defense may apply in the following circumstances:
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The fight did not result in serious bodily injury
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The alleged victim was aware of the risks but consented
Consent does not have to be overtly verbal; all that is required under the law is that you had a reasonable belief that consent was given. However, you must prove as the defendant that consent was reached before the incident. Your Texas criminal defense attorney will review the case evidence to determine if consent can be proven.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/mutual-combat-states
Washington state is one of only two states in America where mutual combat is totally legal. Most states do not have a specific law relating to mutual combat, leaving consensual fights in a sort of gray area. Washington state, however, does have a law legalizing mutual combat.
The Washington state law regarding mutual combat does lay out one provision that makes fighting legally a little challenging: To be legal, a fight has to be overseen by a police officer. Most of the time, police officers have something better to do with their time than watch a couple of guys brawl.
The police officer is supposed to act as a referee by breaking up the fight when an obvious victor has emerged. The police officer also must keep bystanders from being injured and property from being damaged. This would make the fight illegal.
So I think that either a judge would need to have a different interpretation of the legality of dueling or impact on the right to trial by combat than that Delaware judge – which might happen – or the trial by combat would need to occur in Texas and be constrained to not incur serious bodily injury – like, no killing or maiming – or be in Washington.
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Ahaha, I really enjoy this comment.
I think you’re right, most folks are middle of the road but damned if I can think of a way to get the middle to actually dominate politics…
I’m afraid you’re not likely to get many actual answers on Lemmy. The politics here can be wildly, wildly skewed, and it doesn’t generally create a conducive environment to calm, rational discussions. (In fairness, I’m not sure if any other site really does support truly balanced political discussion either.) I admire your attempt, however.
Another issue (which some others have already commented on) is what constitutes a “compromise”. For instance, if I have four issues which left and right-wing movements are at odds over, is it “compromise” if for each of the two I decide to go with a strongly left- or right-wing position? Or is it only compromise if for all positions we take a moderate position which cleaves to neither bloc’s position?
Anyhow, let me at least try to answer. Though I lean more left, I still find myself out of line with both major parties on some issues. For example: In the interests of addressing climate change and achieving stronger energy reliability and independence, I favor a drive to increase, not remove, hydroelectric dams and nuclear power facilities in the country.
Call me naive or stubborn but these aren’t points I would compromise at all with.
Abortion rights: People have the right to bodily autonomy. Anything less means that you don’t own yourself.
Gun Control: People have a right to live safely and without fear or going to school to be shot up or at the mall. The fact that gun violence and school shootings are a regular occurrence is not a good thing.
Climate Change: Every single scientist is literally saying the next few decades will see some of the worst weather patterns in human history and that’s even if we go to 0 emissions starting tomorrow. This will affect humanity on a global scale and cause unprecedented population displacement and suffering.
Any compromise on any of these posts means you are causing some kind of demographic to suffer and die simply to appease the egos of individuals who lack empathy.
The sad hilariousness of this really comes into play when you look at the compromises of the opposite three points that OP suggested. If I try to do the same style of justification explanations you gave as to why those would be uncompromisable:
Immigration: people have a right to… Jobs? (Firmly debunked that immigrants are “taking American jobs”). People have a right to not have to see non-Americans in “their” country?
Culture war: people have a right to… Ignore racism? People have a right to be as ignorant as they please? People have a right to be saved from others confirming their sexual identity and feeling peer pressure to do the same?
Trump gets to be president: people have a right to… Fascist leadership if they willingly elect it? People deserve the “best president ever”?
It’s absurd that these are political issues if you take a half a step back and examine the 6 points in isolation. 3 of them are concerned with individuals making their own choices or the safety of humanity as a whole. 3 of them are about nationalism or controlling information and education, basically the definition of “putting myself and my beliefs above the rights of others”. How the hell did we even get into a situation where this is what we are choosing between? Or rather, a situation where roughly half our country actually thinks this is a choice and not just blatantly obvious based on basic morality.
Oh yeah, I 100% agree with you. I don’t know what OP was thinking when making this post and listing those points.
How the hell did we even get into a situation where this is what we are choosing between? Or rather, a situation where roughly half our country actually thinks this is a choice and not just blatantly obvious based on basic morality.
Easy, we compromised :). We said ok we’ll meet you halfway on things that are absolutely crucial to humans rights for the sake of progress. Over the decades the right got more and more extreme as we continued compromising. It’s not just in the US. I see it here in Canada as well. I really hate it.
What would you say are the big three priorities for either side?
Here’s the thing: you’re not wrong on what each side seems to have as priorities. It’s just absurd that anyone should think there’s any kind of equivalence between them.
Half of America seems to think so. And whether we like it or not, we live in a pluralistic society.
The point of my original comment was on how bad compromise is in these scenarios. We got to this point where we are arguing for basic human decency with complete sociopaths. When I read your post all I could think of is “this is literally asking us to choose which demographic we should screw over for the sake of appeasement and compromise”.
I know I’m coming off really bitter, and none of it is targeted towards you. I’m just really tired of this all.
That’s fair.
Lol that’s what I noticed too.
One side wants less people to die, the other side wants fascism and racism. Please help me compromise.
This is why they’re known as wedge issues because there’s no compromise.
Aren’t wedge issues for stuff that are divisive for a group of people who usually agree on most things? Something like the effective tax rates for billionaires among democrats.
Yup!
Guns: A well regulated militia includes gun registration and training requirements. The fear based self defense justification is a bunch of baloney. The compromise is being able to keep guns if you are part of that well regulated militia, which should probably require not being a violent felon along with guns being taken away for other people’s safety, like when domestic violence allegations are involved.
Abortion rights: A woman and a doctor decide when and how she has an abortion. Since a doctor already has an oath to life, they won’t abort a viable and healthy fetus anyway so they can compromise on how that situation works out.
I don’t really have anything to compromise on with Republicans because they oppose basic rights that impact no one else, and compromising rights is only necessary when the impact the rights of others.
Compromise doesn’t have to mean giving up on anything. It’s more often about finding a middle way solution on an issue that both sides can accept.
This is how I would suggest compromising on each issue without either part giving up on any:
Abortion: Religious people can give up all the rights they want.
Gun control: Ban guns in cities. Allow them in the wilderness.
Climate change: Allow industries to pollute as long as they pay for cleaning it up.
Immigration: The whole thing could be solved by not allowing employers to hire people without their paperwork in order.
Culture wars: The fear is that certain cultures get to control others? Don’t allow anyone to force their culture on others.
Trump gets president: Okay, if all power is removed from the position, then he can be the representative of the country. Not a good one but whatever.
Climate change: do they have to pay to clean it up before or after it hurts people?
Immigration: We already do not allow employers to hire people without their paperwork in order. The issue is way more complex than that.
Trump: I 100% support replacing Congress and POTUS with a Parliament and Prime Minister, and would compromise by making POTUS a ceremonial office with the only function being wearing a bald eagle costume at international sporting events, and letting Trump do it until he quits after being tackled by the Canadian in a maple syrup bottle costume.
Climate Change: they should clean up as they go. It ought to be part of the production cost.
Immigration: Why aren’t the laws enforced? The issue is that employers absolutely do hire unregistered immigrants, otherwise they wouldn’t come. Even Trump himself has Mar-a-Lago staffed with illegal immigrants. Either make them legal, or stop the employers from dumping the employment market with “they took our jobs”-employees. It’s the most hypocritical thing. It’s not complex at all. It’s just racist slavery.
Human rights are not a compromise. I will not even entertain the idea of compromising those. Abortion rights stay.
Gun control is an iffy one. It really should be fixed, but it will take decades of continuing reforms and filtering firearms out of the market to really get it to where it should be. On a short term basis, “compromising” (but not giving up) on this would be OK.
Climate change will obviously just kill us all, soooo…
In a keep two, give one scenario to shut Republicans up for an election cycle, it would be safe to compromise on gun control in exchange for cementing proper human rights and getting meaningful climate action.
I don’t think the kind of compromise that is necessary is able to be stated in the way you’re asking for, because of how values feed into beliefs.
Take abortion rights for example: someone who would describe themselves as “pro-life” may argue something that is effectively saying that murdering babies is never okay. I would be in complete agreement there. As someone who is “pro-choice”, the core of my argument is usually some form of “a clump of cells that could become a person does not trump the rights to bodily autonomy that an existing person has”. No progress will be made in this discussion unless we can address the fact that the vast majority of abortions are nowhere near “murdering babies”. That’s where compromise is most likely to happen, in the discussion that arises when trying to reconcile different word views, and coming to speak in mutually intelligible terms.
For example, one area where I and many other abortion advocates have compromised on this front is recognising that the line between “a clump of cells” and “a baby” is pretty blurry. Personally, I don’t know where I stand on where the law should stand on that line; in my country, abortions after 24 weeks can only be done in exceptional cases (mother’s health at risk, foetal anomalies etc.). I think a time limit like this seems reasonable, but I’m not sure whether at 24 weeks, a foetus is more like a clump of cells, or a baby. I have personally had a very early term abortion, and I’m grateful to have had that opportunity, because I have no idea how I’d feel if I was in that 20-24 weeks range. Acknowledging this uncertainty I feel is part of how compromise works. I would hope that someone on the “other side” of the argument would apply a similar approach to try to understand and entertain my argument wrt bodily autonomy. In a way, this is an easy example, because all the leeway in positions has been explored, and the core issue is something that can’t be compromised on (such as how I can’t have a productive discussion with people who are actively against women’s bodily autonomy, or people who believe that life starts at conception).
An area in which I’m working on trying to compromise on is trying to reshape how I think about farmers and other similar social groups. Farmers are a good example because I am a very left wing, queer, university-educated city-living scientist who has Opinions on the climate, and I’m very socially progressive. To some people, I am the big bad Other, an inherent problem with the world. I don’t like this, because certainly I don’t see myself as “the problem”. I’d actually rather like to be part of the solution, but I won’t do that well if I take the easy route of dismissing people like this as just racist, idiotic bigots whose opinions I shouldn’t care about. Many of them are bigoted, but if I don’t want to mass exterminate people whose views are unacceptable to me, nor be exterminated myself, I need to try to imagine a world where I could break bread with these people. That’s a pretty difficult challenge.
PhilosophyTube’s video on Judith Butler helped a lot on this actually. I have been realising more and more that the common ground that exists between me and many of my “political enemies” is that we are humans who are scared and struggling, like me. When I feel hopeless, solidarity pulls me through, and thinking in this way makes it easier to feel compassion for people whose anger and bigotry isolates them from this kind of community support: a person can simultaneously be a product of their environment, and responsible for their actions; they can both be a victim of fascist ideology (through becoming isolated, disempowered and stewing in hate), and also an active perpetrator of said hate.
This reframing isn’t itself compromise, but hopefully if I continue to work to see what I share with the people I most disagree with, I’ll be able to have the kinds of conversations that build compromise. Successful compromise takes a small amount of shared ground and extends that, bit by bit, person by person. That’s why I think your question didn’t get the answers you were hoping for: by the time things become solidified into political parties and manifesto stances, there isn’t much fluidity and ambiguity left to act as space for new, shared understanding.
If you made it to the end of this comment, thanks for bearing with my meandering. If you’d like to read an essay about compromise that’s a much better story than my rambles, you might enjoy this article about a beautifully mundane yet improbable compromise helped build the internet. . The whole article is great, but I especially love this part:
"In the beginning, the disagreements seemed insurmountable, and Miller felt disheartened: ‘The first night we thought: This is gonna fail miserably. At first nobody saw eye to eye or trusted each other enough yet to let each other in and try to figure out the art of the possible.’ But as concessions and then agreements were made, people began to feel energised by the creation of a new system, even if imperfect; one piece at a time, their system could bring the content of the web within reach for everyone. As Caplan remembers: ‘By the second day, there was a lot of drinking and all-night working groups. We were running on adrenaline and energy. By the last day, we realised we were making history.’ "
I take heart in the understanding that compromise is messy, and hard to evaluate when you’re in the thick of it.
I think this was really well written and gets at the heart of what actual compromise entails much better than my quick question could possibly do.
Apparently in France naming a Prime Minister of the party that won the last elections is a compromise in itself for the President, so I would start with that 😒
I mean, depends on “won.” The far right (RN) had more votes but had fewer seats after Ensemble and the NFP withdrew candidates competing against each other. But then those two parties couldn’t work out a Prime Minister who would survive their first No Confidence votez which I think would trigger another election, one in which the RN would be at a substantial advantage…
So on this one, I think Macron actually did compromise by putting in a Right wing PM who is not Far Right and who will mostly be governing with Ensemble/NFP…
I’d give up gun control for America to no longer be allied with Israel.
Do you consider yourself a partisan? The pervasive notion that there are “two sides” and you must be on one of them, it results in ordinary citizens viewing one another with suspicion and fear. It’s a useful lie that serves the interests of those who would foster division in order to maintain the cultural status quo.
Not calling you out in particular. Just that I think about this every time something is posted that perpetuates this false “our team, their team” narrative because it’s a powerful, insipid tool of oppression against the common person. True, people differ on contentious issues, sometimes irreconcilably. But if we are made to view one another as dyed-in-the-wool adversaries over that, we will fail to discover our common interests much less promote them through solidarity.
Not denying that the two major political parties in the United States do hold seemingly unassailable dominance in major elections like the one we’re entering, largely due to determining winner by first-past-the-post. And yes, sadly it’s very often the case that a meaningful vote will support one of those parties. But it doesn’t have to be this way forever. In fact, I will be able to vote for city office candidates by ranked choice starting this year!
Sorry for the rant. Not an expert. Just a dude who wants to love his neighbor.
Just a dude who wants to love his neighbor.
And the big issue seems to be that the two sides have drastically different definitions of the word “love”. There was a study a while ago, which found that conservatives are more likely to have liberal friends, while liberals are less likely to have conservative friends. It sounds odd on the surface… But the reality is that if a liberal hangs out with conservatives long enough to become friends, those conservatives will eventually get comfortable. Comfortable enough to start using hard slurs, or they will call the liberal “one of the good ones” as if it’s a compliment.
It’s no wonder that liberals are less likely to report having conservative friends. Liberals have tried, and have been burned by all of the conservatives that they got close to. Meanwhile, the most offensive thing a liberal does around conservatives is just… Exist? Relatively speaking, it’s easy for a conservative to keep liberals around, because the liberal isn’t constantly trying to undermine the conservative’s right to personhood. Whether or not you can own guns isn’t an immediate existential threat to a conservative.
In this study, were the terms “conservative” and “liberal” self-applied by the subjects? People do adopt those labels for themselves, but I would urge careful consideration before doing so. Where they can be useful in describing one’s position on a specific issue, when applied directly to the person they are needlessly reductive. Exactly the sort of thing that facilitates the mental assignment of oneself or others into an imaginary camp on one side of a false dichotomy.
The essence of what you are saying makes sense to me, and I do understand those terms are routinely applied to people both by themselves and by others. But your post, though well-meaning also serves to perpetuate the “conservatives vs. liberals” view of political discourse. I realize I may be Sisyphus under the boulder here, but it’s my challenge to the United States political duopoly.
The pervasive notion that there are “two sides” and you must be on one of them
Nah, though there is an irony to arguing that the notion of two sides means we view each other with suspicion right after deciding what I believe because of the question I asked.
Just like you, I get that there are two major political parties, one of which will hold power, both of which view the other as the enemy. I asked this to see what the general consensus would be as my friends and I played a similar game and were stymied pretty quickly.
Just wanted to direct folks to [email protected], which is a brand new community for exactly these kinds of discussions. Cheers!
Great question. Democracy is all about compromise. I am bothered by how few people seem to grasp this fact. Personally, when I hear the phrase “squabbling politicians”, I roll my eyes - to squabble is their job! They’re doing it on our behalf because people have different interests and different values and so we don’t all agree, and that is a good thing. A polity where everybody agrees - well, there are names for that kind of political system and none of them are democracy.
Over here in Europe, I just wish the progressive parties (for whom I vote) would do the obvious deal and sacrifice their dilatory approach to immigration and in particular border security. This issue is undermining all their other policy goals. The obvious allergy of voters to porous borders is not just a result of disinformation, and taking a tougher line on it does not necessarily mean infringing human rights.
I am bothered by how few people seem to grasp this fact.
Yeah, some of the responses in this thread have been predictable but still disheartening.
would do the obvious deal and sacrifice their dilatory approach to immigration and in particular border security.
100%. It just seems like the progressives are losing the war for the sake of being in the moral feel good category, witness the rise of the Far Right in Poland, Germany, France and probably others that I’m too ignorant to know about (sorry!) That being said, reading over this thread and you can kind of see why the Progressive parties are in a bit of a bind, we do seem allergic to the notion that we might not get everything we want.
Indeed. The moral purity issue has always been the Achilles heel of progressive politics. It makes compromise hard and it drives heretics - i.e. the people whose votes you need - crazy.
How many queer people deaths are ok for you? How many women dying during childbirth are you willing to give up on for your compromise? The only thing politicians compromise on is whose pockets get lined more. Compromise on rights for others is a very privileged position to be in.
I’d give up any and every gun point in favor of police reform, proper election and transition of power legislation, and climate change.
Probably towards the centre with a tilt towards liberalism but like both in terms of being socially and economically liberal. Ideal government would let everyone do whatever they wanted to until it interfered with anyone else doing whatever they wanted to do.
I could see myself being a Libertarian if they didn’t say stupid stuff like “the market will regulate corporations”. Grow the fuck up. The market is absolutely and completely dominated by the corporations. There is no free market.
PS, the “grow up” comment was aimed at the party, not at you.
Wait, you are saying we can have comprehensive environmental restoration and an honest fight vs. climate change if one of the other two is given up?
Gun control for sure for me. Enforce the laws we have, though.
