Politians can really be Dumb

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Originally Posted by peggy

Do not edit MY words. Do not!

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I won't...but if I were to do a little selective editing I could easily come up with...

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I would

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give

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anything

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to teach creationism

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with President Romney

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in an

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Ayn Rand utopia

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Smile. It's election day.

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Originally Posted by Zoebird

To be honest, there are large aspects of libertarian ideologies that I like. There are others that I do not like.

THere are a lot of different kinds of libertarians -- and it's really important to understand these differences.

For example, there are libertarians who do believe that there should be a federal government and that the federal government should manage a lot of things because some communities are simply not capable of managing it on their own due to circumstance (natural disasters are a great example).

There are other libertarians who believe in a more socialized aspect to things. For example, the power company would be owned by the people, the power going to the people, and any power sold to other states/countries/whatever would then go into a fund spread among the people. It's pretty much pure socialism. Noam Chomsky talks a lot about this sort of libertarianism (btw, I find old Noam really interesting, but often quite confusing).

Anarcho-libertarians tend to be considered the "most extreme" -- who basically believe that there should be no government and focus on individual sovereignty as the starting point for everything (which is great concept, honestly), and that we will all just be good people and figure it out without the need for any sort of government at all. I'm not quite sure how that would work. A lot of folks in this camp like to talk about "family" -- but my family doesn't work that great, so I"m not so enamored. LOL

From there, though, I would say that I do find some libertarian ideas really interesting and valuable. The more "mainstream" libertarians (such as the Cato Institute) is really a form of economic liberalism (which we then call conservative -- so confusing). And they leave the social aspects simply to the given states -- not a federal issue or whatever. But, I don't know if civil rights quite work that way -- or they don't seem to anyway.

It seems to me that Rand falls much closer to the anarcho-libertarian camp than his father does, but I can't say so much what Ron Paul is up to. He's been consistent in his politics, and he seems to be economically liberal (which is to say conservative in our common language), and he's also socially liberal, but would prefer all of that stay out of politics as far as I can tell (which means to not legislate on anything such as abortion, legal marriage, etc) and that everyone would just have natural legal rights.

And, our country is a social experiment. It has been from the very beginning. IN a way, all countries are social experiments. We get together and we try things and some things work and some things don't. That's just life.

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Well that's true. There are various degrees of libertarians. I guess I'm really answering to the Ayn Rand breed of libertarian, like the Pauls.
But yeah, there are some aspects of the more progressive libertarian philosophy that is appealing. But then our country/government is not one thing or another but a blend of philosophies. Pure anything just doesn't work.
Despite what the ultra right/tea party folks are trying to sell, our government doesn't control our every move and in fact gives us lots of leeway, but with a safety net. In this country we have the freedom to succeed spectacularly...and the freedom to fail spectacularly. If you want a business, you can start a business. And if you don't want to work within the regulations (enviromental, labor, etc..) well, then step aside because there are plenty in line behind you who will.
And oh by the way, our government will be sure you have nice, wide, maintained roads to conduct your commerce on, and Internet, and electricity, and an educated workforce to choose from who aren't constantly sick from tainted meat, or breathing filthy air.
And on and on, we have cobbled together this way of life that is the envy of the world. We do fiddle and tweak, but we don't let some band of nut jobs completely overturn it and 'let's try this'. (which is what I meant by our country isn't an experiment.)

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Originally Posted by Zoebird

Iris lily,

I honestly don't know what you are talking about. I never said (or insinuated) such a thing. I spoke to my personal experience of talking to friends about this.

I don't want them to not be republican or even change their position on entitlements. Instead, I'd like to honestly talk about the ideas around this -- the ideas around why entitlements exist, whether or not they benefit the society as a whole on-going, and where we want the lowest bar of poverty in our society to be (I already wrote about this on another thread). Just honest discussion on the matter.

And, I want them to be clear on which entitlements they do value -- because they do obviously value those from which they personally benefit. And yet, most of them assert that they are an exception, not the rule, and as such they should get the benefits (they are deserving) while others should not. I find this confusing, and perhaps intellectually dishonest.

Likewise, I simply like to talk about ideas. To me, these ideas are interesting. In several other threads, many of the more conservative members of the boards have agreed with me on certain measures: it's not about whether or not we should have entitlements, but really where the bar of poverty is going to be in our society (where is poor enough?) and what that means for our society as a whole; lets stop talking about entitlements and start talking about how the policy and ideology of military interventionism is what is really blowing our budget (a neocon idea, part of the republican party now, and an idea that started to take root in the 1980s); and how if we let go of military interventionism and seek to spend on defense only that which is needed to maintain our standing military for security purposes and support our vets, then we will be able to more quickly balance the budget and do what we want for all of our citizens.

Several of the forum stalwart conservatives agreed with these ideas. They are not radical ideas. They are really starting points for discussion (because after you agree to an idea, you have to figure out the 'how' of achieving it -- and that's what's interesting to me).

The problem here is, as soon as I bring up an idea like this -- particularly to one of my republican friends (again, educated people who live all over the US), I am shut down immediately for being stupid, brainwashed by liberal professors, uneducated on the topic (even when I provide evidence and policy papers from republican and libertarian as well as democrat and other liberal sources), an "obvious lover of big government," accused of "using too many words isn't winning your argument" (that's a personal favorite. I posted three linked articles to conservative think tanks, go figure), and even accused of being pol pot (or similar), as well as -- as you have done -- accused of thinking that everyone else is dumb.

Reality is, I think everyone is smart, and I'd like to talk about ideas -- and be open and honest about what we are really talking about, thinking about, researching, feeling, etc.

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+1

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Originally Posted by Gregg

I won't...but if I were to do a little selective editing I could easily come up with...

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Smile. It's election day.

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:laff::laff::laff:
Go vote!

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Originally Posted by peggy

So, you think teaching that the world is only 5 thousand years old, or that evolution is a liberal lie, or re-writing history to suit the republican christian right agenda will put us 'on tract' with the world?

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I don't think that at all, but I do think its critical to let people make up their own minds. Some people in this world believe that when you die you keep coming back until you finally achieve the state of being a cow. Some picture a dude on a throne dealing out final judgments like playing cards. Some think you better take care of what we have here because its all there is. People come up with all kinds of explanations for all kinds of events that we didn't actually witness.

Evolution makes sense to a lot of people because we can put puzzle pieces together to form a picture. Creationism is accepted by a lot of people because they have faith in the existence of a God that could pull it off. We do not follow any particular religious path at home, but we talked with our kids about both ideas and tried to give them the tools to decide for themselves. That's the track I would like to be on. And you know what? If you remove only the most extreme, literal interpretations the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Maybe there's a lesson there that could apply in other places.

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Originally Posted by Zoebird

I give The Cato Institute -- in case any of you have missed it.

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What goes this mean, you give the Cato Institute?

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Originally Posted by Zoebird

Iris lily,

I honestly don't know what you are talking about. I never said (or insinuated) such a thing.

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Yes you did insinuate that those who vote against bigger/better entitlements are numbskulls. You said:

"I just am not sure if they know what they are talking about when they are rambling on about cutting them."

It's right out of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? book in which the author explains how conservative citizens in Kansas vote against their best interests in economic policies and entitlements because they been swayed by polemics of the right on non-economic issues. Your statement is derisive of conservative voters.

So if you wish to debate entitlements, then do so. And you did do that in your next post.

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Originally Posted by Gregg

I won't...but if I were to do a little selective editing I could easily come up with...
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Smile. It's election day.

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haha, that's funny!

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Originally Posted by Gregg

Evolution makes sense to a lot of people because we can put puzzle pieces together to form a picture. Creationism is accepted by a lot of people because they have faith in the existence of a God that could pull it off. We do not follow any particular religious path at home, but we talked with our kids about both ideas and tried to give them the tools to decide for themselves. That's the track I would like to be on. And you know what? If you remove only the most extreme, literal interpretations the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Maybe there's a lesson there that could apply in other places.

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There is a very significant difference between science and faith, which distinguishes them from each other. Science is testable in the tangible, material world. Faith is belief. Both are important to the human experience; they are not at all equal as theories, however, as they dwell in very different domains.


"Science does include logic—statements that are not logically true cannot be scien- tifically true—but what distinguishes the scientific way of knowing is the requirement of going to nature to verify claims. Statements about the natural world are testedagainst the natural world, which is the final arbiter. Of course, this approach is not perfect: one’s information about the natural world comes from experiencing the natural world through the senses (touch, smell, taste, vision, hearing) and instrumental extensions of these senses (e.g., microscopes, telescopes, telemetry, chemical analy- sis), any of which can be faulty or incomplete. As a result, science, more than any of the other ways of knowing described here, is more tentative in its claims. Ironically, the tentativeness of science ultimately leads to more confidence in scientific under- standing: the willingness to change one’s explanation with more or better data, or a different way of looking at the same data, is one of the great strengths of the scientific method. The anthropologist Ashley Montagu summarized science rather nicely when he wrote, “The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof” (Montagu 1984: 9).
Thus science requires deciding among alternative explanations of the natural world by going to the natural world itself to test them. There are many ways of testing an explanation, but virtually all of them involve the idea of holding constant some factors that might influence the explanation so that some alternative explanations can be eliminated."

http://ncse.com/files/pub/creationis...hapter%201.pdf

You mean science would tend not to believe in a virgin birth unless they had more proof then it was written in a book and this book was published hundreds of years after the birth.