User talk:72.229.133.128

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Please refrain from undoing other people's edits repeatedly, as you are doing in Republican Party (United States). If you continue, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia under the three-revert rule, which states that nobody may revert a single page more than three times in 24 hours. (Note: this also means editing the page to reinsert an old edit. If the effect of your actions is to revert back, it qualifies as a revert.) Thank you. Argyriou 21:31, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

First of all, this was my first full revert of the section, so I hardly think I'm in any danger of violating anybody's policy.

Moreover, I reverted only as a salve for the violence being done to political discourse and the English language. If you start ruining articles, you can fully expect your work to be reverted.

I did what I did because the article had been edited to boast such phenomenal writing as:

"On social issues, Republicans believe there should be a "safety net" to assist the less fortunate which, compared to their opponents, favors a greater degree of private funding, less expense, and stricter requirements for eligibility."

I dare you to diagram this sentence. The antecedents are so hilariously out of place that the sentence ends up "compar(ing)" "the less fortunate" to Democrats ("their opponents"). Similarly, the sentence states that a "safety net" favors "less expense." A safety net, being an abstract concept, cannot favor anything. Republicans can favor things, certainly, and that's what the sentence is trying to say--but if you diagram the sentence, you'll notice that it involves the "safety net" ITSELF favoring all sorts of things!

As if that weren't enough, safety nets are NOT a "social issue." Restributing wealth (via social spending) is, by definition, an economic issue. "Social issues" are things like flag burning and abortion. This is just a childish and rudimentary misunderstanding of public policy.

• Your understanding of public policy doesn't seem much better, if you believe that only non-financial issues are "social issues" - the main Republican critique of welfare before 1994 was a social-issue critique, not concern over the expense of it. Your understanding of economics isn't terribly strong, either, if you don't understand how a tax can be inefficient.

To continue:

"Since 2001, the party has demanded much stronger accountability in the public schools starting with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001."

Can accountability be strong? I posit that it cannot. That's like saying that a certain form of energy has a "stronger renewability" than other forms--it's simply an abusrd thing to write. Clearly, one can propose a "stronger system of accountability" or one can make "a stronger push for accountability," but accountability itself cannot be "stronger."

• Or you could just change the word "stronger" to "greater" - accountability isn't binary; there can be differing levels of it, especially in practice.

Aside from those sections, the only major changes my revert involved were restoring the number of signatories to the Kyoto Protocol (Wikipedia policy suggests that factual, cited evidence should never be deleted) and deleting the unsourced claim that a majority of Democrats oppose the Protocol; it also involved reverting a POV edit which changed the word "aggressive" to "strong."

• Aggressively is a much more POV word than strongly in that context, unless you have a citation, which you didn't offer.

If you have another take--that is, if you think that important, well-written content was destroyed during the revert--I will be happy to listen to your side of the story. Alternatively, if you can explain why terrible writing, unsourced claims, and fact suppression is important to protect, I'll be happy to stop reverting. Let me know.

• I do, in fact, believe that your reverts - because you weren't actually adding anything useful until after I posted to your talk page - were overall a detriment to the article.

1. You reverted to a rather inaccurate and ahistorical description of the role of neoconservatism in the Republican Party's foreign policy.
2. You reverted a link to American conservatism back to conservatism.
3. Your reverts undid a useful reorganization of the ideology section which had attempted to group similar issues together.

• Your more recent edit is better, but you've still removed important information:

1. Taxes do vary in their efficiency, and Republicans believe that the income tax is less efficient than many other taxes.
2. You've removed the bit about "stricter requirements for eligibility" for various welfare programs.

• Argyriou 08:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Cross-posted on Argyriou's talk page.

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