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Post by gillianren on Aug 27, 2010 18:39:43 GMT -4
I agree that Saudi Arabia should endeavor to be more free, but that has nothing to do with whether or not the US should live up to their claim to being the most free country in the world. And not merely most free! We're the best, greatest, whatever other superlative Sean Hannity can think of at any given moment. The fact is, the Constitution doesn't just guarantee freedom for religions we like or speech with which we agree. That's directly contrary to its intent. It doesn't mean "freedom of Christian religion"; the religious freedom statutes of the early colonies kept getting farther from that concept. I can worship my Goddess. My mom can worship her God. My old high school friend Jasmeen can worship Allah. (Not that I know how devout she is.) That's how freedom of religion works. After all, how can we be the best country on Earth if we don't work toward actually being better than everyone else? "They don't do it so we don't have to" is not an argument which supports the idea that we're better than they are.
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Post by echnaton on Aug 27, 2010 18:53:40 GMT -4
If we have any pretensions to have rule of law, the project should go ahead without delay. They have both constitutional and statue legal support behind their right to build an Islamic building. Anyone opposing asking the government to block the construction is undermining the rule of law.
The opposition movement is large, let them organize to raise funds to buy the land at a price the owners would be willing to part with it for. Then each can walk away with something of value.
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Post by Joe Durnavich on Aug 29, 2010 21:28:51 GMT -4
And the simple fact is, your idea of what's important is not the same as mine. You value the free market more than I do. Am I smarter than you or vice versa? I don't want to say. All I'm saying is that we have different standards. If more people agree with me and elect people who make those decisions, isn't that the free market at work? No. If iPhones become the most popular cell phone, that doesn't force you to buy an iPhone or to buy a cell phone at all. A free market doesn't force you with the threat of jail time to do anything. You still have the power to choose your own course of action. If that were so, the Constitution would not be a document that primarily aims to limit the powers of the federal government. I don't see the Founders taking over the health insurance industry and deciding for you whether you should buy health insurance and what plans can be sold. I don't see them deciding for all banks that none can offer student loans. I don't see them deciding how much a corporation can pay its CEO. I don't see them deciding that you should help bail out General Motors, banks, and those who are falling behind on their mortgages. I don't see them deciding that you cannot purchase or sell incandescent light bulbs, fishing tackle or wheel weights made of lead, or multi-ply toilet paper. I don't see them deciding for you how much transfat and salt your food should contain. You get the point. Speaking generally and mostly about political philosophy and not so much about political parties, those on the left tend to think the above are the types of decisions that are the responsibility of the government, especially if a majority votes for it to have that power. Hence, I believe that the left tends to obsess more about intelligence, education and the like of their fellow citizens. Yes, there are Republicans that are just as elitist for the same reasons, but those tend to be Republicans that are running for the center, and the center these days is somewhere in the vicinity of Joe Stalin. Many have been complaining about and poking fun at this elitism for some time. I don't know if the left recognizes it or pays attention to it. Here George Will goes after Robert Reich: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHWgGoXsDpwToward the end here, the economist Thomas Sowell makes a similar point. Sowell, I think, has written a whole book on the subject of liberal elitism: www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9kELBgKSvQThose are two great economics popularizers of our time, by the way. Charles Krauthammer had an article in the Washington Post the other day. The Last Refuge of a LiberalThe Founders worked hard to prevent a tyranny of the majority, that is, the state of affairs where 51% of the people vote themselves benefits that the other 49% have to provide. They really did see the purpose of government as securing the blessings of liberty or securing the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Today, most people don't see it that way. They think the President is the CEO of the country, for example. They look to him to "stimulate" or "jump start" the economy, to create jobs, and so on. That is very bizarre in my opinion. The President is the CEO of the federal government. He is not the CEO of the citizens. My recommendation is that we get back to limiting the power of government so that we come to see our elected officials more like glorified dog catchers than as a ruling class that micromanages our lives.
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Post by gillianren on Aug 29, 2010 21:47:44 GMT -4
"They" didn't believe anything. Read what they wrote. There was a great deal of debate about everything. Alexander Hamilton, for example, essentially wanted a king and certainly wanted to abolish state boundaries. One of the reasons the Constitution says essentially nothing about the Supreme Court is that so much of the Constitutional Convention was spent arguing about exactly what power the Executive should have. Several argued in favour of lifetime appointment, which is clearly much more power than the President currently has. Some wanted three men. Some wanted six-year terms. Pinning any one belief on what the Founding Fathers said or believed shows you don't know much about the Founding Fathers, frankly.
Tyranny of the majority was never popular among them, but at the same time, they did end up with a government requiring majority rule on most decisions. Others, of course, required a supermajority. In the long run, they had to settle on someone's being in charge. The balance of powers, of course, exists for a reason, and certainly not all of them would be fond of the current position of the executive. However, quite a lot of the current issues are ones the Founding Fathers never considered. Corporations? Not a major concern. Gay rights? Never even considered it. Foreign wars? Something they'd planned to avoid, having just resolved the one on their own soil. And so forth. You can't spend all your time worrying about what they thought, because what they thought doesn't, in a lot of ways, enter into it.
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Post by Joe Durnavich on Aug 29, 2010 22:13:38 GMT -4
Geez, all this talk of liberal vs. conservative/Democrat vs. Republican. I wouldn't be able to tell ya who in my family is Liberal, Conservative, New Democrat - or anybody I know, even. That's how much partisan conversation goes on in these parts... I wonder what strange sort of creature I am... Canadian = Liberal Socialist? New Democrat Liberal? Canuckhead Commie? For what it is worth (probably not too much), you can try this 10-question quiz to find out where you might fall on the Nolan Chart. The questions are geared for the U.S., and, I see, for topics that are currently hot here. www.nolanchart.com/survey.phpMany people think that political views can, roughly speaking, fall on a line with Democracts or liberals on the left and Republicans or conservatives on the right. The Nolan Chart adds a second dimension so that you get a diamond shape with statist (maximum government) and libertarian (minimally-required government to ensure liberty) at the bottom and the top and liberal and coservative at the left and right. For the record, I am at the very tippy-top at the libertarian end. Note too that libertarian does not equal anarchist.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Aug 30, 2010 7:35:08 GMT -4
Geez, all this talk of liberal vs. conservative/Democrat vs. Republican. I wouldn't be able to tell ya who in my family is Liberal, Conservative, New Democrat - or anybody I know, even. That's how much partisan conversation goes on in these parts... I wonder what strange sort of creature I am... Canadian = Liberal Socialist? New Democrat Liberal? Canuckhead Commie? For what it is worth (probably not too much), you can try this 10-question quiz to find out where you might fall on the Nolan Chart. The questions are geared for the U.S., and, I see, for topics that are currently hot here. www.nolanchart.com/survey.phpMany people think that political views can, roughly speaking, fall on a line with Democracts or liberals on the left and Republicans or conservatives on the right. The Nolan Chart adds a second dimension so that you get a diamond shape with statist (maximum government) and libertarian (minimally-required government to ensure liberty) at the bottom and the top and liberal and coservative at the left and right. For the record, I am at the very tippy-top at the libertarian end. Note too that libertarian does not equal anarchist. Well it placed me right at the bottom of libertarian in the very centre, though I'd dispute that simply because for about 8 of the 10 questions I actually disagreed with all possible answers.
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Jason
Pluto
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Post by Jason on Aug 30, 2010 11:57:42 GMT -4
I don't much care for most of the questions either. I placed well into the libertarian corner of the chart, a bit on the conservative side of center but still even with the centrist square with regards to liberal-conservative. 10 badly-written questions really aren't enough to tell me anything I didn't already know.
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Post by Joe Durnavich on Aug 30, 2010 12:25:01 GMT -4
The questions do suffer from being overly-loaded questions, and that probably skews the results toward the libertarian corner.
o Government should not run health care because if they do, it means that when I get sick, they will send me off to the gas chamber to relieve society of my burden.
But I do think the chart gives you a pretty good sense of the landscape of political opinion and why in this country that you hear some people sometimes complain that they don't see a real difference between Republicans and Democrats. For a libertarian, they are both equally statist. Republicans and Democrats just disagree on where people should be left free: economically or personally/socially.
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Post by Joe Durnavich on Aug 30, 2010 12:28:25 GMT -4
"They" didn't believe anything. Read what they wrote.I pretty much quoted from our founding and governing documents. I am sure the Convention was a mass of bickering, fighting, biting, hair pulling, chair throwing, farting in general directions, dueling, and that deal where one gentleman slaps another in the face with a pair of gloves. But in the end, they and the States put their John Hancock's on a pair of documents that recognized the dangers of an unfettered government. Surely, the States were not keen on the idea of ceding power to a newly-created federal body. Majority, yes, but within the boundaries imposed by that system of checks and balances. Even President Obama griped about the Constitution being a charter of negative liberties placed there by the founding fathers and wished that the Supreme Court would have moved beyond that to allow programs of "redistributive change." You cannot look at the Declaration and the Constitution and see documents that call for more active participation by the government in our individual lives. Anyway, this whole mini-debate illustrates my point that liberals are more attracted to the worldview which holds that we ordinary citizens are not competent to make decisions about our own lives.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Aug 30, 2010 12:29:35 GMT -4
It put me in the top right corner of the liberal box near the borders of libertarian and centrist.
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Post by gillianren on Aug 30, 2010 13:32:28 GMT -4
I pretty much quoted from our founding and governing documents. I am sure the Convention was a mass of bickering, fighting, biting, hair pulling, chair throwing, farting in general directions, dueling, and that deal where one gentleman slaps another in the face with a pair of gloves. But in the end, they and the States put their John Hancock's on a pair of documents that recognized the dangers of an unfettered government. Surely, the States were not keen on the idea of ceding power to a newly-created federal body. No, but the Constitution was in part a direct response to one state's attempt to create a tyranny of a minority. Remember, quoting the founding documents can tell you what they agreed on. Where they compromised. What they finally accepted. It doesn't tell you that they all believed a certain way; they certainly didn't all approve of the finished products. Remember The Federalist Papers, after all; those exist because there was a real possibility the Constitution wouldn't get ratified for one reason or another. That's an odd phrasing. So what? Whether I can or not, it doesn't mean that Isn't What the Founding Fathers wanted. Do, after all, remember that the man on the $10 bill wanted the government to have more direct control over financial matters. It took Andrew Jackson (on the $20!) to destroy Alexander Hamilton's vision. If it cannot be taken directly out of the text, which you have merely asserted, that doesn't mean that the changes the country has undergone since 1789 might not require changes in how we see those documents. How? I specifically said that I wanted all people to have a voice, though in the end, we must in general default to the majority. Indeed, I would argue I want ordinary citizens more able to contribute to government, since I want the government to make them all healthy and educated. With police to protect them, fire departments to keep their houses from burning down, and roads to drive them to the polling places. Or, in Thurston County, a postal system to deliver their ballots to and from the County. I have no doubt the average person is quite capable of making decisions about their lives. I just doubt the average person--and here I include the average politician--spends enough time putting things into long-range consideration. The other day, we increased our county sales tax to keep our transit company one of the best for a city our size in the entire country. This surprised me, given I live in a state where, on the same ballot, we decreased the state budget and increased the salaries of a fair number of state employees.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Sept 7, 2010 13:26:15 GMT -4
To put News Corp's donation into perspective, estimates are that $1.2 billion has been raised by House and Senate candidates for this year's elections. Rep. Meg Whitman, running for governor of California, has put $104 million of her own money into her campaign.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Sept 13, 2010 15:52:59 GMT -4
The Florida pastor who was going to burn the Koran (but later changed his mind) appeared on MSNBC on Friday, sort of. Here's the transcript. Mika Brzezinski is a co-hostess of the show, and Jon Meacham is an ex-editor of Newsweek:
That's right - the pastor appeared on screen but didn't get to say a word.
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Jason
Pluto
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Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Nov 29, 2010 16:43:27 GMT -4
"The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won't be posted here."--New York Times, on the Climategate emails, Nov. 20, 2009 "The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. . . . The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match."--New York Times, on the WikiLeaks documents, Nov. 29, 2010
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