Category Archives: Politics
Weekend Linkorama
I don’t think you’ll find a more perfect series of links to show why I left the “Right”, even though my political philosophy was and remains staunchly conservative/libertarian. All five deal with false memes — lies — that the Right is using to promote an agenda of anti-intellectualism, torture and bad climate skepticism that is anathema to everything I believe in.
Sarah Palin isn’t just ignorant; she’s proud of being ignorant. Her cluelessness is seen as proof of how much of an “outsider” she is and how good she would be as the conservative leader or, God forbid, President.
But that’s just nonsense. Guys like Reagan and Goldwater were outsiders, they were not ignorant. Reagan was intensely intellectually curious. Goldwater was so forthright about issues, he got massacred in the election. Even Gingrich, when he first came about, was all about ideas. Palin is none of that. She is pure resentment against a perceived “other”.
Then you have the pants-shitting terror — or pretense thereof for political purposes — that leads people to declare terror suspects to be unpersons. No conservative should believe any human being to be an unperson, to have no rights. Rights may be restricted or conditional, but they always exist. Abducting people, imprisoning them without trial and torturing them is against everything conservatives supposedly believe in — specifically the universality of our divinely given rights and the need to restrain government. How can you possibly say you triumph the individual over the state when you embrace the greatest subjugation to which a state can subject the individual — imprisonment and torture with trial?
And finally, I can understand — I support — skepticism about hysterical environmental claims. I especially support opposition to collectivist solutions to them. But that has now morphed from Good Climate Skepticism to Bad Climate Skepticism — a mix of conspiracy mongering, anti-science, witch-hunting and quote-mining. A conservative approach would say, “Maybe AGW isn’t real. But if it is … we need to do something about it.” A conservative would do what I do every time a Right Wing blog links up to some article that “disproves” global warming — look into it and see what it actually says.
Until these things are purged from the Right Wing, I will remain outside. This is simply not what I signed on for.
Thursday Linkorama
Weekend Linkorama
Demand Question Time
An online petition calls for more question sessions like we saw with Obama and the Republicans last week. That session was one of the best things I’ve seen in politics in a decade. I would love to see more debate between our President and the opposing party (and his own).
Online petitions mean shit, of course. But a signed petition will get bloggers talking, will get the media talking, will generate some support for this.
The best result of regular question times? It will mean that future Presidents are screened by the ability to respond coherently to questions and their mastery of the issues. Thing of all the horrible things this could have prevented, like Bush 43.
Midweek Linkorama
Weekend Linkorama
Haitian Slavery
A devastating story about Haitian kids in slavery. I can not express the white hot rage I feel against people who predate on orphaned and lost kids during a tragedy like the Haitian earthquake. What the hell is wrong with them?
Midweek Linkorama
Weekend Linkorama
The Torture Right
Earlier this week, a story ran in Harper’s about an incident in Gitmo. It took me a few days to get time to read it. My commentary after the break. If you don’t care about the torture issue, you can skip this.
The Minority Majority
This is … a strange point:
Counting the new Republican Senator Scott Brown from Massachusetts, the 41 Republicans in the Senate come from states representing just over 36.5 percent of the total US population. The 59 others (Democratic plus 2 Independent) represent just under 63.5 percent. (Taking 2009 state populations from here. If you count up the totals and split a state’s population when it has a spit delegation, you end up with about 112.3 million Republican, 194.7 million Democratic + Indep. Before Brown’s election, it was about 198 million Democratic + Ind, 109 million Republican.)
Let’s round the figures to 63/37 and apply them to the health care debate. Senators representing 63 percent of the public vote for the bill; those representing 37 percent vote against it. The bill fails.
Except that your assuming the states vote as one big glop. There are 37 million people in California. They are not all Democrats, but they count as such in this logic. The reality is that the country is slightly more Democratic right now than it is Republican (although more conservative than it is liberal). So by party, you’d go something like 51-43, splitting the independents. By philosophy, you’d go something like 60-30 against, against splitting the moderates.
But that still assume all conservatives or Republicans oppose the bill and all liberals or Democrats favor it. In fact, the polling would indicate that you’d have something like 55-45 against. Or more.
But we don’t vote based on opinion polls, thank God. Or party identification or anything else. We are not a Democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic and that Republic works a certain way.
Don’t like it? Change it. But don’t whine about how unrepresentative it is. It’s not designed to be representative. It’s designed to be bound by law and the Constitution.
Rush Limbaugh
Definitely has a screw loose. It’s just sad.
Dr. Strangegov or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Government
Reason has a great article explaining that libertarians and conservatives need to abandon their reflexive hatred of government if they want to make any progress.
I happen to work in a government-supported industry, so you can imagine that I’m receptive to this point of view. I have a much longer post about how I, as a libertarian-conservative, can still work in this industry. The gist, however, is that basic science is one of the few things that government does really really well. It’s one of the few endeavors, like roads and law enforcement, that benefits everyone but doesn’t have specific enough benefits to make it worth the private sector’s while.
Moreover, the reason science works well in the government paradigm is because government science is run very very differently from government everything else. Budgets tend to be strict and have to be justified in advance. Progress is closely monitored. Funding is dependent on past performance. And merit is decided by fellow scientists (mostly), not politicians.
The GOP tried to reform other government functions along these lines in 1995 but were fiercely resisted by federal employee unions and their subservient Democratic party. Attempts to reform, say, the school lunch program were denounced as drastic cuts in the program and leaving kids to starve.
A pity, really.