During my sojourn in Connecticut, the world has not stopped turning, and news has not stopped breaking. But I have been, for the most part, too busy/lazy to post about it. Here, however, is a brief overview of some stories that I should be posting about. :)
Gay marriage in Massachusetts: Today’s the day. But is there really any point in posting about this? You all know where I stand, and I know where all of you (i.e., my regular readers) stand. Blah blah, civil rights, blah blah, judicial activism. Been there, done that. Moving on…
Report says Rummy ordered torture; Pentagon denies it: Full ramifications not immediately clear, since who knows if it’s true? If true, smoking gun. If not true, liberal media bias. Again, we’ve had this debate before. Moving on…
Saddam’s WMD: Poorly constructed sarin-gas artillery round detonates in Iraq; was probably an old Saddam relic. Again, full ramifications not immediately clear. Maybe I’ll have more to say when the fog of war lifts.
Iraqi governing council president killed: Sad, but not as devastating as it might seem, since it’s a monthly rotating presidency anyway. Also, I don’t need to post about it, because CNN Breaking News did so for me.
Michael Moore’s big day: Audience gives anti-Bush documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11″ the longest standing ovation (20 minutes!) in the history of the Cannes film festival. But are we really surprised? They’re French. Drudge goes nuts. But are we really surprised? He’s Drudge.
NBA, NHL playoffs: Eh. Wake me when it’s the finals. Scratch that; wake me when somebody is one game away from winning the finals.
UPDATE: I will add this, regarding gay marriage, from here in Connecticut:
Connecticut law does not allow for same-sex marriages, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said today. …
Blumenthal said there is nothing in Connecticut law that allows or authorizes marriage licenses to be issued to same-sex couples.
Blumenthal said Connecticut statutes refer to a “bride” and “groom” and a “husband” and “wife” and said these terms are commonly understood to refer to a man and a woman.
He declined to say whether Connecticut can recognize same-sex marriages from out of state.
“An answer would require me to make law, not interpret it,” Blumenthal said.
And non-legislative officeholders would never dream of doing that. :)
Congratulations to all the newly married Massachusetts couples. Blogger John Scalzi has some advice for them. It applies just as well to straights as to gays, and I e-mailed the link to Becky. Some good stuff, there.
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Categories: Gay Issues, News: Terrorism & War
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May 17th, 2004 at 2:19:49 pm
Reason Three I’ll be voting for Bush.
(Reason One is the war, and Reason Two is he’s a Republican.)
May 17th, 2004 at 2:23:16 pm
So are you saying you didn’t watch Game 5 of Lakers-Spurs? My God, Brendan. Dare I say, that was probably the most incredible .4 seconds that ever occurred, and you missed it!
May 17th, 2004 at 2:24:36 pm
And Brendan, how did you miss this?!? :-)
May 17th, 2004 at 3:00:49 pm
hi i just accidently came accross your site. looks like you have lots to say. much luv.
May 17th, 2004 at 4:17:17 pm
Reasons why I won’t be voting for Bush
1) The War
2) The energy crisis
3) The economy
4) Haliburton
5) Gay banning ammendment
6) The economy
7) The lies
8) Not signing Kyoto accords
9) Bring em on
10) Mission accomplished
11) Gun control
12) The economy
13) Tax cuts for rich
etc etc etc
Reasons I’m voting for Kerry
1) He’s not Bush
Man I really wish I could get excited about Kerry, its so sad when the reason I’m voting for a guy is because I think the other guy is the worst President in history and that Kerry can’t do worse.
May 17th, 2004 at 4:32:21 pm
“Reason Two is he’s a republican”
Andrew, you might find this site interesting, it specificially addresses that exact statement you just made.
http://maddox.xmission.com/limits_to_freedom.html
May 17th, 2004 at 5:00:11 pm
Thanks Eric, I’m that much dumber for having wasted my time reading that. And David, well, I’m glad to see you get your talking points from Michael Moore. I’m sorry but I just can’t take seriously anyone who thinks this war was about enriching Halliburton, and that signing the Kyoto treaty would have made a pindrop of a difference considering that the Senate rejected the treaty something like 95-0.
Anyway, nice to see that neither of you actually bothered to click on the link and read what the president said.
May 17th, 2004 at 5:11:52 pm
You also missed this story, which is huge international economic news. Apparently, Gandhi is synonymous with peace, but not with prosperity.
May 17th, 2004 at 5:56:17 pm
Actually I have no idea what Michael Moore has said, I didn’t say that Halliburton was the cause of the war, and the Kyoto accord was about showing that we actually cared.
So thanks for jumping to conclusions about me. Much appreciated.
In addition I did read what he said. For someone with his track record to speak of egalitarianism and compassion makes me laugh.
Oh and I’m glad I get to respond, I forgot another reason I’m not voting for Bush. The Patriot Act.
May 17th, 2004 at 6:00:15 pm
Oh and as for the Gandhi comment, you do realize that they are not the same Gandhi right?
Then again atleast Gandhi has something positive attached to it. With Bush we get neither peace OR prosperity.
May 17th, 2004 at 11:54:32 pm
Ah, so we should sign treaties not because they are worth the paper they’re printed on, but because they make us feel good about ourselves? And we wonder where Kucinich gets his idiot constituency….
And the Gandhi reference was purely based on the name recognition.
In the meantime, quit arguing with me or I’ll have the feds come and nail you for potentially terrorist behavior! muah-hahahahahahahaha!!! lol
May 18th, 2004 at 12:26:17 am
Uh, David, Clinton signed the Kyoto Accord. Then the Senate said they’d never ratify it. So Clinton never submitted it to the Senate for ratification, but wouldn’t come right out and say it was dead. Bush just made this clear to everyone who was holding their breath for us to ratify the treaty. Which, because of that 95-0 vote, was never going to happen.
May 18th, 2004 at 5:10:58 am
Thank you Doc, I stand corrected. As for reffering to me as an idiot Andrew I expected better of a friend of Brendan’s. I think personal attacks are uncalled for.
May 18th, 2004 at 10:53:52 am
David, I never referred to you directly as an idiot. What I did was associate your silly arguments with the beliefs held by Kucinich’s legion of idiot supporters. After all, signing treaties not because it is to the mutual benefit of the parties involved but rather to meet some esoteric criteria shaped by the European street’s finicky opinions of the United States is about as idiotic as it gets. It sounds like the type of treaty Kucinich’s “Department of Peace” would be engaged in drafting. If you reject this naive idiocy, feel free to make yourself clear. Otherwise, it’s quite ambiguous whether or not you really believe such dumb inanity. And if that’s the case, the idiot derogation will pretty much have been self-applied.
May 18th, 2004 at 2:35:19 pm
Andrew, why is it that you constantly decide to insult, mock, belittle, denigrate, and jump to outlandish conclusions about what people are saying instead of actually engaging an argument on its merits? I think that there are many frequent visitors to this site that would enjoy engaging in a real debate about politics. However, you come off as being so closed minded and reactionary that it makes any attempts at this incredibly frustrating. It has gotten to the point where it is not worth the time to make any sort of argument because you will ether be insulted or parroted information that is from a highly partisan source with highly questionable fact checking abilities.
I’m not sure if this is true or not, but it sure seems like you sit comfortably in the middle of a conservative echo chamber that reinforces your position and refuse to even think about the possibility that you might be wrong. Instead, you just insult and attack people that have a view that is different then your own. Additionally, it would seem that you just blindly toe the party line without objectively thinking about what is being said or done.
Now, for a bit of example. Why paying attention to the marketing campaign of the Bush administration is rather silly. (Note, I am not saying that the Kerry campaign is not silly. For a successful counter argument you would have to explain why the following actually makes sense.)
The Bush administration would have us believe two key things about John Kerry.
First: John Kerry is a “Massachusetts Liberal” — the most liberal senator in the whole United States Senate.
Second: John Kerry is constantly changing his mind and flip flopping back and forth on the issues.
Now, I know that the position of the Democratic party has evolved over the years just as the Republican party’ has; but my question to you is this: how is it possible for John Kerry to be the most liberal senator ever to walk the earth and constantly change sides on every issue? I mean ether he is a flip flopper or he is consistent right? It just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I mean I know that the ability of the American public to engage in feats of cognitive dissidence is legend around the world, but this seems rather ridiculous to me.
May 18th, 2004 at 3:32:33 pm
Dane, Andrew is a lost cause. Some people on this earth, unfortunately, are so narrow-minded and stubborn that it is not physically, mentally, or emotionally ABLE to take an objective view on any issue. (I mean, come on, a main reason he’s voting for Bush is “because he is a Republican.” And he has the NERVE to imply that other people are idiotic.) He does not have the capacity or level of intelligence necessary to utter the words, “Well, you have a good point. I do not agree with you, but I see where you’re coming from.” Instead, he digs up his thesaurus and throws around some fancy sophomoric banter to try to make his feeble arguments sound like they actually have some factual merit. And all he does is make himself, time and time again, sound like Ann Coulter with a bad hair day.
My point is, Dane, don’t waste your breath. People like him don’t change. And why should they?? Ignorance is pure bliss. I showed Andrew an article that I KNOW made him feel ridiculous, yet the best he could come up with was…”uh…that made me feel dumber.” He had nothing REAL to say, so he just acts like an ass. Alas, we have to be thankful for dear souls like Andrew, for if they didn’t exist, there would be no such thing as open-mindedness. I mean, sometimes he makes me feel like the damn Dhalai Lama.
May 18th, 2004 at 3:55:20 pm
I’m not going to “give up” on Andrew, I mean it is not like I’m asking him to be a Democrat or something. What I am asking is that enunciate and explain his position, whatever that might be. The thing is I’ve never really seen the Republican position explained in a way that makes much sense. Instead of explaining what they believe there is a tendency to just yell scream and throw insults. The problem is that this lowers the whole debate there no way to argue with mudslinging lies; so others in the debate begin the same.
oh, and another question. Why is it that you find a lot of Democrats that had Republican parents. But not a lot of Republicans that had Democrat parents?
May 18th, 2004 at 11:21:02 pm
“[W]hy is it that you constantly decide to insult, mock, belittle, denigrate, and jump to outlandish conclusions about what people are saying instead of actually engaging an argument on its merits?”
I’m sorry, was there an argument somewhere in the comments to this post? I didn’t see one. What I saw was a list of 13 reasons why David wasn’t voting for Bush, and other cheap attacks on the president.
“I’m not sure if this is true or not, but it sure seems like you sit comfortably in the middle of a conservative echo chamber that reinforces your position and refuse to even think about the possibility that you might be wrong. Instead, you just insult and attack people that have a view that is different then your own. Additionally, it would seem that you just blindly toe the party line without objectively thinking about what is being said or done.”
I think this explains your situation, but not mine. I grew up reading the newspaper, watching the news, and arguing in class, quite usually being the only one on my side. My first discovery of a like mind was a William F. Buckley column, and I became a fan of his writing style as much as his wisdom–hence, my own slightly arrogant writing style and advanced use of vocabulary (I always admired that WFB didn’t dumb down the vocabulary of his columns for the average reader). It really wasn’t until after 9/11, when I became fed up with mainstream media–whether it be AP and Reuters via Yahoo News, CNN and broadcast news channels, or the newspaper–that I began looking at alternate news sources regularly (National Review Online, blogs, etc.). Now I still get most of my news from Yahoo News, as well as from newsbreaks on the radio for the brief time I’m in my car (I listen to Bill Handel in the morning–liberal on social issues but pro-war–and sometimes enjoy Dr. Laura on my way to grab lunch–morally orthodox/conservative, but she’s not usually political whatsoever. By the time the afternoon rolls around, I’m focused on sports.), and links from Andrew Sullivan, James Lileks (who spends much more time writing about life than political issues), and Instapundit. I also read the Wall Street Journal’s “Best of the Web” column when I have time, but that’s about the only straight conservative source I get to anymore (I rarely read NRO, although I love their stuff, especially Jonah Goldberg). Lately I’ve been reading a lot of Belmont Club for war coverage, too. Now, I’d love to hear you explain how that amounts to a conservative echo chamber. The fact is, I almost always come to my own opinions based on principles I’ve held for a long time–with some minor modifications here and there. Sometimes I read a conservative writer and end up agreeing with him, but more often I come to my own conclusion and find my stance is pretty much in line with many other conservatives, too. That shouldn’t be a surprise, that’s how most people are–no matter what side of the aisle you’re on. For whatever reason, it’s popular among Democrats to accuse Republicans of getting all their arguments from a commonly-circulated “talking points” memo (from the RNC or Rove or whatever), but you’d have to pretty dumb to actually believe that.
You on the other hand, well, I can just about bet my life savings that you’ve never read a conservative publication regularly in your life. Indeed, I’d be shocked to learn you’ve ever read one whole issue of National Review or something comparable. No, your news sources are most likely mainstream media and newspapers and news magazines, meaning you are the one in the echo chamber of common opinion. I grew up, and was well known in high school and at USC for, being the lone conservative; I got to my positions by swimming against the crowd, by dealing with every argument thrown against me while I constantly stood up and voiced my views. Liberals? They have it easy, they just go with the flow. Schools and academia are chock full of liberal and lefty parrots who repeat the same dumb canards over and over, showing such ignorance for their ideological opponents, it’s the only explanation I have for why they are losing the war of ideas so badly. And of course, if you’re an intelligent person going through college, naturally you give a lot of credence to your teachers and professors and fellow intelligent students, so very quickly you swallow their views hook, line, and sinker. The fact is, when you’re the outnumbered conservative constantly surrounded by liberal voices, it’s pretty easy to know the other’s arguments and facts in detail, and you survive by learning to deconstruct and disprove them. However, many liberals are surrounded with other liberals quite constantly and rarely get the chance to hear a fully-aired conservative argument. Like the website posted above, where the guy actually met a Bush-loving Republican and couldn’t believe it, you guys are so alienated from the direct arguments and views of the other side, it’s really not any fun arguing with you because your knowledge of where I am coming from is so limited and basic, you usually can do little better than to call me a Nazi or a fascist. Instead, you get the argument already digested and distorted for you by your liberal sources or by your professors and students around you and just attach labels to us, when one of us perchance comes along into your life space for a brief, fleeting moment.
Really now, who among you has read The Conservative Mind? The Road to Serfdom? The Modern Conservative? The Conscience of a Conservative, God and Man at Yale, or any other of the books on this list? I bet maybe somebody here has actually read the whole Bible (oh but how few, considering it’s the foundational book of Western Civilization!), Democracy in America (best book ever written by a Frenchman, hands down), or Atlas Shrugged (anybody besides Sean?), but for books that really tackle what it means to be a conservative, I’m pretty confident that you’re all about as ignorant about the subject as you appear. I’ve had years of in-depth training of my opponents. I’ve read their policy papers, histories of their movements (the New Left, etc.), their speeches, their party platforms, their books (Andrea Dworkin, COINTELPRO stuff, anti-Reagan polemics by Michael Rogin, Noam Chomsky, politically-correct reader after politically-correct reader on subjects like racism, social inequality, feminism, and socialism, etc.). I’ve read their magazines repeatedly (I find The Nation quite amusing, though I don’t think that’s intentioned on their part, and I find The New Republic very thoughtful and occasionally compelling), and their columns in the op-ed sections (Friedman, Krugman, Dionne, Cohen, the list goes on). And so on. I’ll bet a thousand bucks that not one of you out there who is a Democrat, liberal, or libertarian has read as much detailed work of conservatives as I have of liberals and leftists. Not even close. The only person I’ve talked to through this site who has any idea of where I am coming from is Joe Loy, and we frequently have very amusing, very engaging, very thoughtful, and very challenging back-and-forths. Of course, most of them are done by email, and you only see a fraction of them on this website because the most of you are simply too ignorant to appreciate it. So let’s not talk about echo chambers, unless you really enjoy the taste of your own foot fungus, mkay?
As for the Republican party line, I don’t even know what the party line is anymore. If you actually paid any attention, you’d see that Republicans are all over the map on what the administration is doing, on what Congress is doing, where we should go from here in Iraq, etc. That it appears to you that we’re all reading from the same playbook only tells me that when we conservatives or Republicans speak, we might as well be speaking in Ancient Greek, your knowledge of each is about the same.
As far as John Kerry being a flip-flopper and being consistently liberal, well, these are empirical observations. National Journal, a premier (and expensive!) Inside-the-Beltway news source, rated Kerry’s record in the Senate as the most liberal over the last [whatever set of years they were measuring, I forget]. We also know his voting record going well back into the ’80s, and positions he took before he was ever elected, that he has been consistently liberal. The flip-flop thing is also evidentiary: “I actually voted for the [Iraq war funding] bill, before I voted against it,” and other such wonderfully amusing examples. The flip-flop charge comes from the observation that he readily has different answers for different audiences. But don’t take the RNC’s word for it, just read Slate. But, I guess if you want the RNC’s version, you can get that here. It really is weird how he can be both a consistent liberal and such a flip-flopper, but looking at the evidence, it’s amazing, he pulls it off.
“I mean, come on, a main reason he’s voting for Bush is “because he is a Republican.” And he has the NERVE to imply that other people are idiotic.”
My Republican fidelity is a well-thought-out position. It’s not a position I arrived at lightly. I’ve read constant discussions over at NRO and elsewhere on whether we should be conservatives first and then Republicans, or the other way around. Of course, over at NRO, they are conservatives first, but they are about advocating principles. I am about winning and implementing them. They’re two sides of the same coin, parties and ideologies. Really, one can’t be successful without the comparable success of the other. It took Republicans far too long to realize that, and after barely two years of complete control over Congress and the Executive Branch, we seem to be quickly forgetting it and falling apart at the seams. I’m a Republican first because I realize that my voice and conservative views are more powerful and have a better chance of influencing the system when the guy on my team is in office. Even if he is more liberal than me, perhaps even more liberal than some Democrats, I am better off helping him win, because the only vote that really counts in the House or Senate is the vote for Speaker/Majority Leader. As far as a president goes, there’s a bit more room for leeway, but given the power to influence and direct legislation, it’s vastly more helpful to have a member of your team directing that traffic than have an opponent’s guy in office setting a competing agenda. Really, I am a party-over-ideology guy, which always wins you enemies when you are debating friends and foes because such real-world pragmatism rarely counts for much in arguments about ideology. But I’m a bottom-line kind of guy, and I’d rather my guy be in office pushing a half-right agenda through than him be on the sidelines with full-right ideas and no power to implement them. You can disagree with that kind of thinking, but it’s certainly a very reasonable and wise position to take. Your venom is best put to use in ad hominems such as “party hack” or “unprincipled”; calling me “idiotic” for being a party man is clearly off-the-mark and shows you have no nuance in your understanding of ideology and its interrelations with the political process.
“Why is it that you find a lot of Democrats that had Republican parents. But not a lot of Republicans that had Democrat parents?”
Do you have any empirical evidence whatsoever to back that up, or is that your warped view from your echo chamber? In my experience, I’ve met plenty of both. Or look at Becky: She’s gone from polar-opposite Democrat to her dad’s Republicanism, but now she shares a lot of common ground with him (last time I checked; Becky or Brendan, correct me if things have changed yet again). And then there’s the amusing argument favored by “Best of the Web”, which advances the idea that liberal Democrats are more likely to have abortions, and thus proportionally less likely to have kids. It would then follow that most kids would be of Republican parentage, so for things to even out again, a large number of those kids would have to change to liberal Democrats. I’m not sure I’d take that argument seriously, but it’s very logical and seems to fit the evidence. Another explanation has been that people tend to be more liberal–until they start paying for taxes. Evidence seems to support this theory as well. Overall though, it’s always been an axiom that the young are more liberal and the old are more conservative. Joe and I are nutballs in the sense that we represent the exceptions to that rule (Indeed, Joe was once a Republican hack like myself, hence his detailed knowledge and memory of the movement). Really, you’re better off 1. supplying empirical data that supports your observation that there are more Democrats of Republican parents than vice versa, and 2. asking a sociologist or political theorist. Explanations for why people are the way they are are interesting and useful, but they’re not my passion. My passion is taking that knowledge and using it to help my side win.
May 18th, 2004 at 11:28:40 pm
At least I have a sense of humor:
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CONVENTION SCHEDULE
New York, NY
6:00 PM Opening Prayer led by the Reverend Jerry Fallwell
6:30 PM Pledge of Allegiance
6:35 PM Burning of Bill of Rights (excluding 2nd amendment)
6:45 PM Salute to the Coalition of the Willing
6:46 PM Seminar #1 Getting your kid a militarydeferment
7:30 PM First Presidential Beer Bong
7:35 PM Serve Freedom Fries
7:40 PM EPA Address #1: Mercury, it’s what’s for dinner.
8:00 PM Vote on which country to invade next
8:10 PM Call EMTs to revive Rush Limbaugh
8:15 PM John Ashcroft Lecture: The Homos are After Your Children
8:30 PM Round table discussion on reproductive rights (MEN only)
8:50 PM Seminar #2 Corporations: The government of the future
9:00 PM Condi Rice sings “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”
9:05 PM Second Presidential Beer Bong
9:10 PM EPA Address #2 Trees: The real cause of forest fires
9:30 PM Break for secret meetings
10:00 PM Second prayer led by Cal Thomas
10:15 PM Lecture by Carl Rove: Doublespeak made easy
10:30 PM Rumsfeld demonstration of how to squint and talk macho
10:35 PM Bush demonstration of trademark “deer in headlights” stare.
10:40 PM John Ashcroft demonstrates new mandatory kevlar chastity
belt
10:45 PM Clarence Thomas reads list of black republicans
10:46 PM Third Presidential Beer Bong
10:50 PM Seminar #3 Education: a drain on our nation’s economy.
11:10 PM Hilary Clinton Pinata
11:20 PM Second Lecture by John Ashcroft: Evolutionists: The
dangerous new cult
11:30 PM Call EMTs to revive Rush Limbaugh again.
11:35 PM Blame Clinton
11:40 PM Laura serves milk and cookies
11:50 PM Closing Prayer led by Jesus Himself
12: 00PM Nomination of George W. Bush as Holy Supreme Planetary
Overlord
May 18th, 2004 at 11:50:26 pm
First of all, if I “attack” the President, I do so because this is America and to stop criticizing our politicians is to become the USSR or China. I will criticize the President and will keep criticizing him because i think he is the worst President in history. You may disagree with me, but if you expect anyone to EVER take you seriously you better darn well not insult them just because they disagree with you.
Personally I think both Democrats AND Republicans resort to name calling and insults instead of actually discussing the issues. While I see the Republican leadership doing it more lately, i see individuals on both sides doing it pretty often. Do you know how I know this. Because I am NEITHER. I don’t subscribe to some blind party line because I think they are both wrong on things. And when i try to bring up an issue that one side or the other disagrees with, its difficult to get anywhere because one side or the other inevitably accuses me of being on the left or on the right.
There is the problem right there. Party line Republicans and Democrats seem to have this binary view of things. Either you are one or the other. The don’t get that you can be neither, that you can actually think for yourself.
Frankly it scares me when someone says “I’m voting for him because he belongs to party X”. You know why? Because that shows me that the label is more important than the person. If you vote for him because you feel he is the better candidate fantastic.
Now I can’t claim to have read any of those books, my knowledge comes from reading a paper, or watching the news, preferably CNN. Also I was raised to respect the system by my father who teaches American History and Government. My parents never once suggested which way I vote, I didn’t even know what party they tended to vote for until I got older. My point is I’m NOT a Republican OR a Democrat.
You brought up reasons why you were voting for Bush that I didn’t agree with, so i brought up reasons why I wasn’t. I didn’t insult you, or tell you you were wrong. I told you why I felt like I did. I didn’t go into details even. You took what I said and ASSUMED that I meant things that I hadn’t even hinted at. Then you called me an idiot.
Oh and I love your point about people being democrat until they pay taxes. As a resident of Washington we have seen our government gutted by some recent anti-tax initiatives. They claimed our govt was just wasting money. Were they? Maybe a bit, as happens in all beuracracies, but you know what happened? Important programs like transportation, education, etc are suffering major cuts. Teachers are losing their jobs, class sizes are ballooning.
I am sick to DEATH of this idea that people earn their money in a vacuum and they don’t owe society anything in the way of taxes. You prove to me that you earned all your money without any benefit from society and you can keep every red cent. Otherwise you should really suck it up and be willing to pay for the freedoms and benefits you enjoy as part of living in this country. This ain’t no free ride buddy. The US is allready the LEAST taxed industrialized nation in the world, I wish those rich fat cats on the republican side would quit trying to convince us that their tax cuts for the rich benefit anyone but the rich. Give me a break. It just goes to show that people are greedy. Whatever happened to helping your fellow man and your country? They tout their Chrisitianity without living up to the tenets of charity. They tout their Patriotism without being willing to sacrifice for the good of the country. Yes the good of the country. Its in our best interests to fund things like medicare, education, etc. It creates a better situation for EVERYONE. Tom Brokaw is right, the Greatest Generation was 50 years ago. Today we are left with the Greediest Generation, led by King George W. There you wanted an insult to the president. I gave it to you. And I’d do it again.
May 19th, 2004 at 1:28:40 am
Does anyone have statistics on the percentage of voters who vote a straight party ticket?
May 19th, 2004 at 11:30:31 am
I don’t, Doc.
I believe such data (which doubtless does exist somewhere) would necessarily be derived, in whole or at least in substantial part, from survey research, i.e. polls, rather than from official returns. Here’s why.
I think that even those voting systems (if any) that still provide a “straight ticket device” — whereby one may so vote by a single action or mark — don’t actually tally the number who use it. They just “fold” those votes into the candidates’ individual totals.
I may be wrong on this, re some systems; somebody correct me if so. I know that mechanical lever machines like CT’s, which have a “straight-party-lever” capability, don’t tally the number who use it — and even if they did it wouldn’t be a valid measure because (a) after pulling that lever you can still go back and “split” before Casting the vote, AND (b) you can also vote a straight ticket without ever touching the party lever. It is, or was, just a Convenience.
CT abolished — indeed, BANNED — the use of the straight ticket device by state constitutional amendment, narrowly approved by the voters in November 1986 (at the same time that they elected the entire Democratic ticket by a landslide btw :). It was a long-sought progressive Election Reform to benefit the People, y’know. Only, turned out the People were Skeptical of this latest move to protect them from themselves. :) Some 49% voted to Keep the evil party lever. They Liked it. :) Was by far the closest referendum vote ever on a proposed CT constitutional amendment.
Interestingly, whereas Republican state leadership strongly supported getting rid of the Lever because they perceived it as usually helping Democrats (city political machines & so forth), Republican Fairfield County voted a bigfat NO. Go figure.
Of course you can vote one-party anyhow, it just takes a little longer. In any case, unless some systems do track it (which I doubt), estimating straight-ticket voting from official returns can only be done inferentially — and, I’d say, rather unreliably — in reference to to the vote-total differentials among ticketmates & some kind of a calculation as to the “baseline” party vote.
May 19th, 2004 at 12:11:49 pm
They don’t have the party button in California, at least where I’ve voted; I heard about it when I was first exposed to voter education, in Utah.
But even without the ticket lever, a lot of people, and by a lot I mean the majority of voters, vote based on party affiliation. I don’t remember the exact percentages, though, so I’m not going to say “sixty to eighty percent of voters” and be labeled inaccurate because it’s eighty-five percent, or fifty-five. Do these people scare Dave? Or do they only scare Dave when they admit to it? Are these people better, or worse, than the ones who are registered, but don’t bother to vote?
My first draft was more accurate, but was rejected as ‘too snarky’.
May 19th, 2004 at 6:35:41 pm
Well it would seem I am a bit behind the eight ball on this–despite the fact that I started it a bit. But to catch up a bit.
David, I second that.
No, I don’t have any hard evidence on that, it is just something that I have noticed in my life experiences; why I said “it seems like”
Andrew, you really have no idea what I believe do you?
So let me explain it thusly. I live in Virginia. Virginia is a very conservative state, as I’m sure you are aware. (I work at a DC based marketing firm that shares office space with a DC based lobbying firm. The parters in the lobbying firm are reasonably balanced as far as sides of the aisle.) Now, one of my best friends is a Republican (now that you have recovered from fainting) from Rhode Island, although he now works for an insurance company in Pennsylvania. As you know, New England is reasonably liberal and Pennsylvania can reasonably be called moderate (there is a reason they call it a swing state). So here is the deal, my friend and I agree on quite a lot of things. Example: would it shock you to know that I don’t think affirmative action is a good idea? Why? Because it is completely ineffective at solving the problems that it purports to be the solution for. Government is fond of taking stop gap measures and never bothering to fix the underlying problems. A good example is Bussing in Boston. It was a stop gap measure, but they never bothered to fix the schools which is the underlying issue. Would it surprise you to know that I don’t really care about abortion? The only reason I nominally support it is that when in doubt I like to err on the side of increased personal freedom. It is the same thing with Gay marriage. It does not effect me in anyway, so I’ll err on the side of increased personal liberty. If you don’t like gay marriage you don’t have to perform it and you church does not have to recognize them. But, Andrew, does it really effect your life if gays can get married or not?
Okay, so now a bit about your response.
“What I saw was a list of 13 reasons why David wasn’t voting for Bush, and other cheap attacks on the president.”
Now, I don’t see these as cheep attacks, rather they are legitimate conners about the presidents ability to lead. And instead of engaging speaking to David’s concerns in a constructive fashion you decided to engage in a personal attack calling him and idiot.
I think this explains your situation, but not mine.
Andrew, I said it “seems” not that it is so. The positions that you so often voice appear to just blindly follow Bush wherever he may go. There is no way for me to know that this is the case or not. However, to the best of my knowledge you have never accepted any criticism of Bush, let alone been willing to criticize him yourself. Additionally, you portend to know what I think and this leads you to many assumptions and conclusions that are just not true. Now you are correct, I choose not to read Republican propaganda is not germane to this discussion. I also do not bother much with Democratic propaganda ether. Instead, I prefer to make my own decisions based on the best information available to me.
You on the other hand, well, I can just about bet my life savings that you’ve never read a conservative publication regularly in your life. Indeed, I’d be shocked to learn you’ve ever read one whole issue of National Review or something comparable.
True, but I’ve never read the New Republic, or the Nation or any other Liberal news source ether so I don’t know that that fact is relevant. (The plethora of NYT Op Ed pieces that my dad sends not withstanding, and most of which I delete with out reading.)
No, your news sources are most likely mainstream media and newspapers and news magazines, meaning you are the one in the echo chamber of common opinion.
That assumes that the News media is liberal. An assumption I’m not willing to make. Are there many liberals in the news media? Yes. Are there many conservatives in the news media? Yes. However, a concerted effort is made to get ratings and sell papers, whatever the cost. There is no equivalent on the liberal side to the conservative echo chamber. (Air America not withstanding, given that you can only get it in a very few cities, and DC is not one of them.)
I bet maybe somebody here has actually read the whole Bible (oh but how few, considering it’s the foundational book of Western Civilization!),
Andrew, that makes absolutely no sense. But that would require you to know that Western Civilization predates the bible for quite some time. The Bible certainly did help civilization move backwards for close to a millennia, but that is a different issue entirely. It was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that Roads and Water systems in London surpassed those that had been built by the Romans. And that is just scratching the surface.
The only person I’ve talked to through this site who has any idea of where I am coming from is Joe Loy, and we frequently have very amusing, very engaging, very thoughtful, and very challenging back-and-forths.
Well, it would be nice if you would enlighten us without the attendant name calling and constant attacks on your opponents intelligence that pepper your posts to the website. You won’t get very far calling my position stupid just like I won’t get far calling yours stupid.
See, Andrew, there it is again. Why do you feel the need to attack and denigrate people just for disagreeing with you. You act as if your opinion is the only right one and that anyone that disagrees is just an idiot. This kind of behavior, and it is behavior that conservatives have been engaging in for some time, only serves to entrench that feeling that the Right is full of shortsighted, rude, close-minded people.
So let’s not talk about echo chambers, unless you really enjoy the taste of your own foot fungus, mkay?
Yet again, why do you insist on being rude?
That it appears to you that we’re all reading from the same playbook only tells me that when we conservatives or Republicans speak, we might as well be speaking in Ancient Greek, your knowledge of each is about the same.
Hmm, shows how much you know… Apparently Brendan never told you I was a Classics major–lucky for you I was more of a Romanist than a Hellenist.
As for your flip flop example. He voted to give the president the authority to use force if all else failed. The Senate trusted Bush to be prudent and judicious with his use of force. However, he did not expect Bush to abuse that trust the way he did. You know the threat had to be a real one to obtain compliance.
I think the issues is not that he flip flops but rather, his position is a bit more nuanced that a five second sound bite.
[R]eal-world pragmatism rarely counts for much in arguments about ideology.
Andrew, I’ve never know you to hold any position that could be called pragmatic.
And, lastly, your entire post was worded in a relatively attacking and vicious tone. And yet you not once explained why you believe any of the things that you believe. The real problem is that you assume you are right about everything. You are so arrogant about everything that you never allow for even the possibility that you may be wrong. And therefore, it is a complete waist of time bothering to debate anything with you because time and time again your only response is to call people stupid for possibly believing everything else.
May 19th, 2004 at 10:43:38 pm
Once again, David and Dane, I never called David an idiot. My remark was certainly, hmmm, mean-spirited and perhaps snide or vicious, but I never applied an ad hominem derogatory term to David’s person. My insults are much more, to take a phrase from the Kerry people, “nuanced” than that.
“Party line Republicans and Democrats seem to have this binary view of things. Either you are one or the other. The don’t get that you can be neither, that you can actually think for yourself.”
That depends completely on your objective. If your role in the political system is simply an atomized individual who occasionally votes, then yes, party affiliation is likely to mean very little to you, and you’re more likely to develop attitudes and positions independent of where either of the two parties stand. If power–the ability to see your ideas implemented–is among your main goals, then quite frequently you’ll see yourself amending, emphasizing, or de-emphasizing your positions to better move your party forward. That’s not to say you stop thinking for yourself, just that your opinions are influenced slightly by your priorities. If being ideologically correct is your goal, then it will be nearly impossible for you to not end up identifying with one or two macro-constructs of political thinking. The more you try to construct for yourself a general prism to interpret the political world, the less options there are; blending of two or more ideologies is usually a result of misapplication of principles and presuppositions within one or more of those philosophies. For me, I label myself a libertarian-leaning conservative (to the chagrin of Sean). What that means is, first and foremost, I am a conservative. Conservatism is fundamentally an anti-ideology, which is why the label describes such different groups of people depending on the society. Since American society was largely founded on the principles and ideas of classical liberalism, modern conservatism is in many ways very classically liberal. But the overlap is not complete, because a conservative would reject that any one ideology can 100% explain the world and provide solutions, therefore slow and careful “muddling through” and respect for tradition is vital for a stable and prosperous society. The second part of that description is “libertarian-leaning”. What this entails is that, to the extent that I like an ideology, it’s libertarianism, but living in the real rather than perfect world that we do, I draw from libertarianism princples and inspiration rather than positions and policy. But primarily, I’m a Republican first before all that because I value power over the means to the end more than I value the end itself. This emphasis on control over means is not a Republican thing, it’s a party thing–die-hard Democrat partisans operate on the same principle. And that frankly captures a lot of us Americans; if you are afraid of “party” people, you must be afraid of more than one out of every two people you meet, because that’s about the number of people (roughly) who vote straight-line tickets based solely on party identification.
David, what did I assume about you? That you got your talking points from Michael Moore? That was a snide remark, a facetious remark, and not meant to be taken at face value. Now, if you truly believe I get my daily talking points from the RNC, then okay, I understand why you’d be so naive as to think that I really thought you got your talking points from Michael Moore, but I sincerely hope that’s not true. And Halliburton? Well, you listed that as a reason for not voting for Bush. What does Halliburton have to do with anything, if my assumption that you believed the Iraq war was partially or fully about enriching Halliburton? And we already popped your lame Kyoto criticism. And for the last, last time, I didn’t call you an idiot. If I must really dissect my nuance for you, then I will. After making a comment ridiculing your idea that we should have supported the Kyoto treaty to show “we actually cared”, I said, “And we wonder where Kucinich gets his idiot constituency….”–in other words, for someone like me who can barely fathom that there are people dumb enough to support Kucinich, to hear such a comment from an otherwise reasonable fellow like you shows me that the pool of potential idiots is likely bigger than I thought. This is not directly calling you an idiot, it’s merely suggesting that you’re likely to be one if this is what you truly think. Maybe in that book such inference is equal to calling you an idiot, but technically it’s not and it’s much more “nuanced”.
This actually comes back to what it really is about me that bothers you: my intellectual arrogance. I readily admit that my MO in these kinds of debates is off-putting and sometimes condescending. I probably have no real excuse for that, other than being too lazy to be nice sometimes and give people the benefit of the doubt, or go the extra mile to explain myself. Part of it too is a weeding-out process: people who are capable of matching me in an argument typically can defuse my language and compete just fine; people who cannot instead get frustrated by their inability to express themselves coherently enough to compete, and doubly frustrated because I rub their faces in it with my intellectually arrogant writing style. Of course, it helps if you know me or have some history with me outside of the written word, which would give you a better ability to contextualize my writing style to my personality.
“I am sick to DEATH of this idea that people earn their money in a vacuum and they don’t owe society anything in the way of taxes.”
There’s a straw man if I ever saw one. Who argues for no taxes? Certainly we conservatives argue for lower taxes, or fairer taxes, but we conservatives believe government plays an important (albeit limited) role in society and needs funding to do so. There are numerous theories and disagreements on how taxes should be structured and applied, but that’s not the issue really. The key point is most conservatives believe that government spends way too much money (and libertarians are even more wary of government spending).
“The US is allready the LEAST taxed industrialized nation in the world,”
And the U.S. is also the richest country in the world, with a per capita income more than 50% higher than the next richest country. Think there might be a correlation? Also, some economists believe that if it wasn’t for the Great Society programs’ impact on the federal budget, and we had thus had much lower taxes than even now, our GDP would have grown between 10 and 50% faster, and our current per capita income would be around $50,000 to $80,000 instead of $35,000-$40,000.
“I wish those rich fat cats on the republican side would quit trying to convince us that their tax cuts for the rich benefit anyone but the rich.”
Becky, want to answer this one? Do lower tax rates for your dad’s income bracket (before he retired I suppose) help only your dad, or does the extra income that he then puts into investments help stimulate the economy and provide more jobs?
By the way, while the per capita income of Republican voters is slightly higher than that of Democrat voters (I don’t remember where I saw this statistic, so take it with a grain of salt), voters who made more than $250,000 a year split almost evenly between Gore and Bush. Honestly, what I never understood is, if rich liberals don’t feel their taxes are high enough, why don’t they just voluntarily pay more? They’re allowed to, ya know. Why must everyone else pay higher taxes before they are willing to put their money where their mouths are?
But here’s another argument. The highest tax bracket is ~35%, while the lowest is 10%. Why should the richer person pay a higher percentage of his income than the poor person? Leaving the complexity of how the bracket system actually works aside for a moment, why should someone who earns, e.g., $25,000 only pay $2500, but someone who earns $250,000 must pay $87,500? Shouldn’t the percentage be equal, and the rich person should thus pay $25,000? He makes ten times more than the other guy, but he pays 35 times more in taxes! Morally, how is that fair if each dollar is fairly earned through hard work and/or ingenuity? Your answer is probably, “the rich can afford to lose a bigger chunk of his income to the state.” Well, first of all, that’s an empirical statement–where’s your data to prove that, and how do you determine at what incomes the percentages should start changing? You can but guess. Furthermore, don’t you think higher tax rates are a disincentive to earn more money, or to put it another way, are a disincentive to seek more compensation that counts as taxable income? Take your logic to the extreme: why not tax 90% of one’s income over $10 million dollars? Surely the person doesn’t need that much! Well, Britain (among others) once had that tax structure until very recently, and it absolutely crippled their economy, thus also hurting tax receipts. Can you imagine why? So there are plenty of us fair-minded people out there who don’t think the rich are unfairly rewarded when they have their tax rate lowered a few percentage points, when they are already taxed at much higher rates than the rest of us anyway. In fact, I think income taxes should be abolished and we should rely on sales taxes instead. Sure, a rich person will most likely end up paying less of his overall income in taxes than a poorer person, but if the rich person chooses to spend less money as a percentage of his income than a poor person, what he saves is going into investments, which helps drive the economy and new jobs, which creates better wages and job income for all and raises government income from those taxes.
“Its in our best interests to fund things like medicare, education, etc.”
How do you know that it’s better to have a federally-funded and federally run Medicare program than to have it run and paid for on a state-by-state level, or even than a privatized system based on mandatory, tax-deductible personal investment/savings accounts, with the government picking up the tab for catastrophic coverage only? How in the world can you say a pay-as-you-go system for Social Security is better than if everybody had mandatory, portable 401(k)s? Chile does something like this, and retirees get way better returns on their money than if it was still a pay-as-you-go system like ours, which is untenable when there are more retirees than worker bees. How is our education system run better when the tax money goes the extra step of going to the federal and state governments first, and then redistributed to the school districts with a bunch of inhibitive strings attached? Why wouldn’t that be better run at the local, county level, with mandatory statewide testing being the only reason the state needs to get involved? Better yet, how about the funds follow the child directly, so if the parents want their kids to go to a private, parochial, or charter school, the money can help pay for that more rewarding education? And don’t even bring equality into this–isn’t it better that 50% of kids get an outstanding education and the rest get a mediocre education, than 75% of kids get a mediocre education, and the 25% of us who survive public schools to go onto college are not challenged nearly as much as we could be if we underwent more demanding schooling? Overall, you are so focused on intentions that you don’t bother to see if we can get better results by moving in a different direction, hence anything Republicans do to change the system and cut costs is de facto destructive in your eyes.
Moving on to Dane’s post:
“That assumes that the News media is liberal.”
No it doesn’t. Whether or not you agree that mainstream news sources are generally liberal in orientation/effect, you can still agree that they tend to parrot each other and report the news in similar ways. They almost all choose to cover the exact same things, while ignoring other things. When you’re limited to what mainstream news sources decide is “newsworthy”, it’s very difficult to say you live in anything but an echo chamber.
“But that would require you to know that Western Civilization predates the bible for quite some time.”
No, you’re wrong. Western Civilization is generally thought to encompass Western countries (and Australia, New Zealand, sometimes South Africa, and more rarely Latin America, Japan, or Israel) from the last 300 years or so. Before that, there was European Civilization, and before that, Roman, and before that, Greek. Each one built upon its predecessors, but they are not interchangeable.
The Bible did not cause Europe to go into the Dark Ages, the collapse of Rome did. Now, there are many reasons why Rome collapsed and fell to the Gothic invaders, but Christian religion is but a minor part of that. More common to blame was the decadence of the Romans, who lost the taste for military vigilance. Also, consider that the Byzantine Empire survived another few hundred years and stayed prosperous, not falling until the Islamic threat overwhelmed them (Does this mean you think Islam/the Quran is more advanced and progressive than Christianity/the Bible? lol). The Catholic Church did do a good job of protecting a lot of the knowledge of the ancients, but since they valued piety and tradition over free-thinking, innovation was stifled until the Renaissance (which was a rediscovery of the wisdom of the ancients) and the Reformation (which was a radical departure from the Catholic mentality). In fact, it was because of the Reformation and its idea of sola scriptura, that the Bible alone contained truth, and that each man must decide for himself what the Bible says, that Western Civilization received its spark of individualism and free thinking, which later on led to the scientific and industrial revolutions.
Regarding Kerry’s nuance, you apparently didn’t bother to read the Slate article I linked to. That author–not a Republican or conservative–demolished Kerry’s nuance defense. If you want to insist that Kerry’s not a flip-flopper, at the least read that article and the Bush site’s “propaganda”, and then fisk both for us so that we may know why their examples and arguments are wrong.
“Andrew, I’ve never know you to hold any position that could be called pragmatic.”
I’m not a philosophical pragmatist–I don’t deduce my positions from their pragmatism. I hold conservative positions and principles, and I apply them pragmatically based on the subject/situation.
For instance, I am generally in favor of balanced budgets, but I am also for reduced government spending and lower taxes. It’s very difficult to accomplish all three simultaneously. But, what you can do quite easily is cut taxes, which will initially cause a combination of spending cuts and deficit spending, and in the long run force politicians to limit the size of government and boost the growth of the economy, eventually causing higher tax receipts that would outpace the growth of tax revenue that would have come if nothing had been done at all (subject to the limits and intricacies of the Laffer Curve). This move is even more pragmatic when your economy goes into a funk due to the tech stock bubble popping and terrorist attacks wiping out major economic assets and killing the tourism industry. The next pragmatic move is to restructure entitlement spending so that, in the long run, it won’t grow as much in cost, and then if we can find some way to hold a fire to pork-loving politicians (I concede the Republican Party is chock-full of them just like the Democrats, unfortunately, and the Bush Administration could do better as well–although a Kerry Administration would be far worse on this point), we can accomplish our next objectives of reducing spending and restoring a balanced budget. Now, you may disagree with my three objectives in some way, shape, or form, and you may chafe at the way I get there, but you can’t say my way of getting there is not pragmatic or feasible when the evidence shows that constructing a legislative majority to accomplish these feats is much more realistic than, perhaps, any solution you might desire.
May 20th, 2004 at 9:56:04 am
Andrew, I think that is quite possibly one of the best written and most interesting comments that you have ever made on this site and I thank you for taking the time to make it. Now, obviously I don’t agree with all of it; however, that is a whole different can of wax.
To my way of thinking politics is not about “winning” it is about compromising. To be perfectly honest I don’t think pure anything is good for the long term health of a nation. Pure Conservatism has a tendency to slip into a totalitarian us versus them mentality. That kind of binary thinking leads (historically) to fascism, and ether enslavement or genocide depending on the century that you are looking at. Likewise a pure “Liberalism” (boy that is that the wrong term in this case, but oh well, its the only one I’ve got) also goes towards a totalitarian state, and also leads to genocide and enslavement in this case it will be a communist state instead of a fascist state, but there really is very little difference between the two (note we are speaking of in practice and not what Marx actually wrote about–another one of those “it looks good on paper” things.) In a certain sense it is almost helpful to think as the political spectrum as more of a circle than a straight line. If you get pure anything, even pure libertarianism, it will end up, more or less, in disaster.
[B]lending of two or more ideologies is usually a result of misapplication of principles and presuppositions within one or more of those philosophies.
That is a very interesting idea. But I’m not sure, precisely, how it holds together. Consider that the Republican party holds abortion to be abhorrent–a gross destruction of humane life. At the same time the Democratic party holds abortion to be a perfectly acceptable decision based on personal liberty. And then the Republicans are okay with the use of the death penalty. But the Democrats find that to be an abhorrent destruction of life. This has always been something that struck me as rather odd–that both parties hold views on the subject that are at odds with each other. Another example would be the Bush v. Gore decision. Where the justices seemed to change their ideologies to obtain an outcome that was pleasing. The reality is, of course, that it was not a federal matter and should never have gone before the supreme court in the first place.
Since American society was largely founded on the principles and ideas of classical liberalism, modern conservatism is in many ways very classically liberal.
I think this belies a bit of misunderstanding of “classical liberalism.” Classical liberalism more or less encompasses both parities despite their disagreements; or perhaps because the disagreements are allowed to exist in the first place. The idea of classical liberalism is born out of the Athenian Democracy–a democracy that lasted less then 200 years, and some would argue it lasted less than a century (this is of course completely unimportant to our present discussion). Around the year 400 BC the Athenian city state was in turmoil, an oligarchy had been installed by the Spartans after the Peloponnesian war were finally disposed, but democracy would not flourish again for more than two thousand years because shortly after that Alexander the Great would take control of Greece in its entirety. In this small span of time is when Socrates would be tried and put to death. Socrates is oft times considered the father of western philosophy; further, he, Pericles and other leading men of the Athens’ golden age helped to forge the concept of classical liberalism. As a sort of market place of ideas, examination and thought. Socrates was put to death by the more “conservative” elements that felt he was corrupting the youth. Corrupting them by making them think about things and not believing in the gods. However, conservative in this instance means something different than Conservative. (There is of course much much more about this entire subject, but involves far to many tangents and I doubt any of you are really that interested.)
[P]eople who are capable of matching me in an argument typically can defuse my language and compete just fine; people who cannot instead get frustrated by their inability to express themselves coherently enough to compete, and doubly frustrated because I rub their faces in it with my intellectually arrogant writing style.
The problem is that many of us feel that it is not worth the time or effort to even bother with it because you come off as not being able to engage in an actual discourse about much of anything without trying to make it personal. Put another
Of course, it helps if you know me or have some history with me outside of the written word, which would give you a better ability to contextualize my writing style to my personality.
I’m sure you are right. Chris and I get along just fine (we also probably agree on more things than ether of us would care to admit; but, yet again, different can of wax).
Taxes, really quick because what I really think should be done with taxes is fairly simple. Eliminate both corporate income taxes and personal income taxes completely. Then apply a value added tax to products. There would be no VAT on any food items. Only “luxury” clothing items would be taxed (luxury clothing being defined as any item of clothing being retailed at over $1,000 (inflation adjusted). Luxury taxes may also be applied to goods or services costing over $50,000 (inflation adjusted and excluding houses). Home property taxes would be set based on the amortized cost of street maintenance as well as fire and police service that serves that area. I’m sure there are a bunch of things I missing here, but that is more or less it.
I do agree that there is a problem with pay as you go entitlement programs. However, the problem is with fixing it. How do we keep the promise to those that have already paid into the system while at the same time migrating to a more effective and efficient system? The problem is you can’t make the transition without screwing a whole bunch of people over. Social Security is indeed the third rail of politics–touch it and your dead.
As for education. I think making sure all people have access to a high quality education is extremely important. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
No it doesn’t. Whether or not you agree that mainstream news sources are generally liberal in orientation/effect, you can still agree that they tend to parrot each other and report the news in similar ways. They almost all choose to cover the exact same things, while ignoring other things. When you’re limited to what mainstream news sources decide is “newsworthy”, it’s very difficult to say you live in anything but an echo chamber.
A not entirely unreasonable point. However, the right and left wing propaganda machines tend not to present any new “facts” but instead have a tendency to beat them into outlandish editorials. Now, sure there is some good stuff in there, but it is just not worth it to me to sift thorough all that chaff to find a few grains of wheat. Now, I suppose I could start reading the copies of Congressional Quarterlythat litter the office. But that is a different thing.
No, you’re wrong. Western Civilization is generally thought to encompass Western countries (and Australia, New Zealand, sometimes South Africa, and more rarely Latin America, Japan, or Israel) from the last 300 years or so. Before that, there was European Civilization, and before that, Roman, and before that, Greek. Each one built upon its predecessors, but they are not interchangeable.
Your argument was that the Bible was is the foundation document of Western Civilization. This is not the case, although the Judeo Christian tradition is an important element. Western Civilization is also built upon the democracy and philosophies of Greece and Rome–there is a reason that CLAS 155 “Greeks and the West” does not count for the “non wester” GE requirement.
Yes, but the collapse of the Roman Empire is not nearly as interesting how the Roman Empire managed to stay together as long as it did. And nether of those to issues is as interesting as the collapse of the Roman Republic. (Just so you know, Caesar played a huge role in destroying the Republic and is not nearly as nice a guy as Shakespeare makes him out to be)
More common to blame was the decadence of the Romans, who lost the taste for military vigilance.
It was more an issue of military privatization. Troops become economically dependent on their general who they will follow. The regular citizen is distanced from the fighting and does not think about the cost of war and sends the army off willy nilly. The professional military begins to resent civilians and think themselves better. The emperors stop being able to maintain control ultimately leading to the Citizenry welcoming any thing that will restore order–in this case the invading goths–but there was not much left of “Rome” by the time they got there.
Also, consider that the Byzantine Empire survived another few hundred years and stayed prosperous,
It was actually closer to 1,000 years–recall the holy Roman Emperors. (One could argue that Rome did not completely fall until the Russian Revolution. I don’t make this argument, but there are some that do–that the “Caesar” moved from the eastern empire into Russia become Czar; it makes since to some degree, but it is more of an evolution that a continuation–at best.)
(Does this mean you think Islam/the Quran is more advanced and progressive than Christianity/the Bible? lol).
Actually, it is possible to make that argument. The Mores invaded Spain and maintained many of the Greek and Roman texts and continued scientific and other endeavors in learning. In fact much of the extant Greek and Roman corpus was maintained in Spain by the mores.
However, I think it best not to get too much into religion–that is pandora’s box that I think it best to leave closed.
As for Flip Flopping. I don’t think that that is an inherently bad trait. Being able to change your mind in the presence of new information is a valuable trait in a leader.
[I]f we can find some way to hold a fire to pork-loving politicians (I concede the Republican Party is chock-full of them just like the Democrats, unfortunately, and the Bush Administration could do better as well–although a Kerry Administration would be far worse on this point),
Actually, “pork barrel” spending has increased each year under the Bush Administration and would likely fall in the Kerry Administration if only because different parities would (most likely) be in charge of the executive and legislative branches making a full blown Christmas tree effect a little more difficult to just slid through like a greased pig.
At the end of the day I don’t think it is about winning I think it is about doing what is right for the nation. And what is right for the nation is formed through compromise of the two parties. Our government is designed to move slowly and take baby steps in different directions.
May 20th, 2004 at 11:28:29 am
It’s ‘Moors’, or, if you like Seinfeld, ‘moops’. But I’m just being pedantic. The Moops were more advanced because… their revealed faith was revealed further along in the Advancement of Human Knowledge. My evidence for this is the prohibition against alcohol; you can’t do that unless you’ve got reasonably clean water.
The confusion over abortion vs. the death penalty, on the other hand, shows an inability to see things from more than one perspective. Pro-lifers feel that abortion is murder because they believe that life begins before birth; clearly, this is innocent life, as it hasn’t had time to do anything wrong. Murderers, particularly those facing the death penalty, have shown that they are not innocent; the murderer deserves his fate. Another undercurrent is the deterrent value of punishment - there have to be consequences for criminal acts, or crime rises - and for some things, the ultimate punishment is warranted.
Pro-choice folks do not see abortion as murder; the fetus is not alive on its own, therefore terminating a pregnancy is not taking a life. If they oppose the death penalty, it is often because they see execution as state-sponsored murder, and again, murder is wrong. Another argument against it is the threat that some innocents will be killed along with the guilty; the death penalty is irreversible, so errors can’t be corrected.
That’s oversimplified, but both of those positions are reasonable and internally consistent. They’re also both closed-minded and wrong, from the other sides perspective.