News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
There are several reasons why the US has no concept of a formal opposition. One reason is that there is no concept of ever needing to "form a government" in the parliamentary sense. Each elected branch is a separate entity, with its own electoral rules. Particularly in the legislative branch, the majority can do whatever they want (except for the complicated filibuster rules in the Senate.) And the Executive is an entirely separate election. The government is structured directly by the election, and we gave all the levers of government to Republicans last time around. Sometimes the election will result in handing majorities to different parties, and only then will the oppositionhave any real power.
Another reason is that, believe it or not, we have no formal concept of parties in our founding documents. The founders disdained European-style parties, and did not want to replicate them here. They envisioned a country where individuals ran for office, and then all came to Congress representing their individual districts. They did not forsee how easy communication would get in the future, making the local District perspective less important.(also recall that at the founding, both the Senate and Presidential Electors were appointed by State legislatures, so really all elections were local).
And of course, by instituting first-past-the-post elections in these districts, they guaranteed that as communications got easier and national campaigns could emerge, elections would eventually coalesce unto one of two options anyway. The founders' disdain for parties led directly to an even worse two-party system.
The founders debated long after the constitution was ratified too.
Outlawing parties would be in direct violation of their first amendment. Humans are social by nature* - coalitions, parties, groups will form just because we exist.
*Yes I'm counting my AuADHD ass because even though I hate socializing with a passion I want to be able to.
The first US party was formed in 1789, that's only 13 years after the US declared independence and only 6 years after the end of the Revolutionary War. Pretty much all of the founders were alive when the Federalist Party was formed, communications didn't get much better than in 1776. By 1794-1795 both the Federalist Party and the newly formed opposition Democratic-Republican Party had state networks working on a local level in pretty much all the states.
I always love how Americans treat their current 2 party system as a new thing that arose due to modern communications but instead it was there since basically the beginning of their country.
But it is still a fact that the 2 party system is not engrained in our founding documents anywhere, and we have no idea of an "opposition" party. Either one party controls the Presidency and Congress at the same time, or it doesn't.
And although those 2 parties did emerge early in the country's history, they eventually dissolved, and are no longer around in any capacity. Another poster here noted that parties are simply human nature.
Rather, the current two-party system is an artifact of the first-past-the-post voting that states adopted. The Constitution doesn't even mandate it, but it is how most states have run their elections since the founding.