Links With Your Coffee - Friday
- Caucus II the Republicans A Mark Fiore animation.
- To be deported for voting
TJM Author Luci has a problem. Her son received a letter last week, saying he would be deported for lacking moral character. Evidence? After registering for selective service, political campaigners mistakenly explained that he was allowed to vote in a local election because he had registered for selective service.
This young man lacks moral character because a political campaigner told him he could vote, election officials allowed him to vote, and he informed INS officials that he had voted.
Yes, he made a mistake, but it was a mistake that other people had a duty prevent. The campaigner should have known that resident aliens were not authorized to vote, and should not have pressed him into doing so. Election officials should have informed him at the polls that he was not allowed to vote because he was not yet a citizen. - YouTube - Scarborough: Bhutto Assass. Helps Giuliani and Clinton
- Twilight of the Books: A Critic at Large: The New Yorker
In 1937, twenty-nine per cent of American adults told the pollster George Gallup that they were reading a book. In 1955, only seventeen per cent said they were. Pollsters began asking the question with more latitude. In 1978, a survey found that fifty-five per cent of respondents had read a book in the previous six months. The question was even looser in 1998 and 2002, when the General Social Survey found that roughly seventy per cent of Americans had read a novel, a short story, a poem, or a play in the preceding twelve months. And, this August, seventy-three per cent of respondents to another poll said that they had read a book of some kind, not excluding those read for work or school, in the past year. If you didn’t read the fine print, you might think that reading was on the rise.
- Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Debunking Creationist Nonsense. Again.
- The Left Coaster: Ron Paul really is nuts! (video)
- Matthew Yglesias (December 26, 2007) - Innumeracy (Media)
- Effect Measure : How about Medicare for all?
If you have heart disease or diabetes and you are uninsured you are worse off than those who are insured by several measures. Those are the kinds of health conditions that usually worsen with age, too, so you would expect this to be a bigger problem for the uninsured near elderly. But they don't worsen for this group because when they hit 65 in the US they are no longer uninsured: they have the near universal health insurance coverage called Medicare, and as a result their health improves.
Comments
Paul is right about Lincoln, and it's correct that Lincoln went to war to "preserve the union." This is what Paul is saying. It's just that "preserve the union" sounds noble, whereas "get rid of the original intent of the republic" sounds damning. And it should be damning.
Why shouldn't the south have been able to secede from the union if they so dramatically disagreed with its policies? Everyone forgets that in the 19th century, the people in the north did not like black people any more than the southerners did. There were a lot of terrible, racist, white people in this country. But the people in the north did not depend economically on a free labor source as some southerners did.
If the issue hadn't been slavery, or economics wrapped in slavery, or anything that is so distasteful today, would the civil war be viewed in the same light?
There is no doubt that the civil war strengthened the power of the federal government, and took power away from the states. In Paul's view, and in the view of those Americans who believe we should still follow our Constitution today, the federal government should not rule over state governments, no matter how much a Georgian might disagree with how New Jersey chooses to govern itself.
What is so noble about strengthening the federal government's power? Yes, in the civil war, this power grab allowed the government to do some good. But do not forget that a government with the power to do good has equal ability to commit evil in the hands of the wrong person.
This is what us libertarians fear, and what causes so much concern amongst many liberal-minded individuals in the context of the Bush presidency. If the terrorist threat were truly as great as Bush and his administration seem to project, and if the deaths of millions of Americans were prevented as a result of listening to phone calls without warrants and torturing suspects, perhaps he would earn the accolades of future generations. And maybe he would help lay the groundwork for a sinister political force twenty years from now, one that would use his noble accomplishments and good intentions to turn this country into a tyrannical state.
And sure, it may never happen. It is possible that the American people would never succumb to fear, never let their guard down, and never bow to a dictator. But there is always that uncertainty, the moment of chaos where all bets are off. This is the wager that libertarians find so unpalatable. Lincoln and all his good intentions do not change the fact that he brought us just that much closer to tyranny.
Lincoln ended slavery, but in the process he made Americans less free. I want all Americans, black, white, or whatever, to enjoy the same liberties that rich white people had a right to before the civil war. I want an America that is more free than it has ever been before, and not one that serves our current perceived roll. And I want this to happen before someone far more terrible than Bush takes the reigns of this nation.
god can we separate all the liberals, and neocons, out of a certain part of the country and let ron paul be president of that so I can move there and be happy? every time he is saying something everybody else says is so fucking crazy, i think gee that makes sense. the only thing i can think of is evolution but we've been down this road before....seriously this guy is twice the fucking american you are. he fucking cums red white and blue. i love you ron paul!
seriously the liberals socialists, can have your welfare, redistribution of wealth state, the bush neocons can usher in the apocalypse, and everybody else can be happy, living in what america was meant to be.
brian's on to something here. Not only does he have the right idea about the American dream, he's got the invisible hand pleasuring Ron Paul.
Re: Twilight of the the Books
It is Interesting how the author, Caleb Crain, strains to avoid be alarmed about the decline of reading. He doesn't really pull it off (the appearance of not being overly concerned), but he tries. Still, it is clear that the ability of illiterate and barely literate people to think, analyze, and even formulate the questions that precede problem solving is very limited.
One passage, not of particular importance, is both amusing and calls into question the validity of some of the conclusions presented:
Anyone believe that visiting porn sites improves academic performance? No matter, it is still pretty amusing that teenagers surfed the porn sites even when they knew their they were being monitored.
Re: But the people in the north did not depend economically on a free labor source as some southerners did. But how can a free market libertarian believe this? Surely the northerners knew that goods produced with free labor were cheaper, didn't they?
Lincoln ended slavery, but in the process he made Americans less free...he brought us just that much closer to tyranny. Surely you want to qualify this statement, don't you, Alex? Except for the ones who had virtually no freedom at all, right? If you were an American with black skin, it would seem to me unthinkable that you would have overlooked the exceptions to this overly broad generalization, don't you think?
Sounds great, but I don't think that Ron Paul, who seems not to understand many rights beyond property rights, would bring you what you want. Personally, it seems to me that some of the greatest threats to our freedom have their origins in corporate power. Why do you think that Bush misuses his power to suppress scientific reports that threaten corporate profits? Do you think that corporate-owned media will become more honest and forthcoming in a Ron Paul administration? Do you think that government agencies that monitor the safety and efficacy of products will be funded adequately in a Ron Paul administration? Do you think that the information you need to make truly informed decisions - and without information, your freedom is illusory - will be supplied by the FDA? EPA? NSF-funded research? Do you think that a women seeking an abortion (for whatever reason) will retain the freedom to get one if Ron Paul is appointing the judges? You are correct to fear "the moment of chaos where all bets are off". But, as Naomi Klein's recent book, The Shock Doctrine, documents it is people that share much of Ron Paul's economic and political ideology who have been exploiting the moments of chaos to restrict people's freedom.
Brian --
I agree with your idea that the U.S. population needs to be separated. There's no reason to have a country as large as the U.S. It should be divided into approximately France-sized countries. The conservative Christians can have their country, Constitutionalists can have their country, scientists can have their country, so forth, so on... This way we can have a theocratic, a "constitutionocratic," a technocratic, and so forth version of the United States. (Of course, then they wouldn't really be united anymore. Oh, well.)
Diversity is great, but it also causes a lot of problems. If it seems like the U.S. is inhabited by completely different people with completely opposing ideas, it's because it is. If the polls are accurate, they sort of reflect this.
Why does the U.S. need either Paul or Kucinuch/Gravel? Why not have Kucinich run part of a country filled with his supporters and the same for Kucinich? There's no way that one person can effectively run a country the size of the U.S. I bet Bush would have even faired better he were only in control of a certain portion of the U.S. rather than the entire U.S.
"Anyone believe that visiting porn sites improves academic performance? No matter, it is still pretty amusing that teenagers surfed the porn sites even when they knew their they were being monitored."
I think that visiting porn sites in moderation can improve overall intelligence, sure, especially in a "bodyphobic" country like the United States. The truth is, and I'll shamelessly admit it, is that I learned a ton about anatomy during my teenage years from porn than any anatomy book could ever teach. Did this improve my academic performance? Well, I doubt it raised my IQ, but it certainly increased my knowledge in sex-related areas.
Also, and I'll shamelessly admit this, too, is that seeing a ton of differently-shaped and differently-colored people gave me a deeper appreciation and acceptance for the way others look. I'm sure everyone has their ideal naked woman or man somewhere in their mind ("X should look like Y or it's ugly..."), but a healthy dose of porn will make one realize that people come in all shapes and sizes and there's nothing necessarily wrong or ugly with any of them.
Perhaps not everyone gets what I did out of porn, and I agree that porn viewed excessively and obsessively could lead to problems, but if taken in moderation (like everything should be taken...), I don't see anything wrong with it. In fact, I think many people could benefit from it.
In 1937 0% of respondants were playing video games. Bunch of cavemen! They had no appreciation for arts!
The more power an entity has, the more that power has to be reined in and limited. The outcome of the Civil War essentially set the precedent that Federal government trumps State government (in that case by militarily subjugation). Note that Tim Russert was the one who focused on slavery, in particular; Ron Paul was just responding to the "we'd still have slavery" nonsense, by showing how other nations dealt with that particular issue.
Is this one of those defining points about the liberal viewpoint - the idea that we have to legislate behavior (in this case, anti-racism laws)? I've always been leery of those kinds of laws, simply because it's like the government taking the role of parent and forcing two kids to play nice (and implying authority the government doesn't rightfully have). Instead of relying on Constitutionally-protected rights (which rightfully apply to everyone), you wind up trying to clamp down specific right for every conceivable group, and wind up with an incoherent mess that labels people as belonging to one group or another. Some people are so afraid that if we don't have laws protecting X, Y, and Z groups, everything will fall apart and racism, etc, will run rampant. But I think that, if we treat each other as individuals, instead of belonging to one group or another, we'd make a fair bit more progress. Idealistic? Perhaps, but I seriously doubt such "babysitting" laws are needed in this day and age. Racism is regarded as pathetic and asinine, and rightly so!
The essence of libertarianism (in my opinion) is the idea is that the Federal government shouldn't do anything the State governments can handle; the State governments shouldn't do anything local governments can handle; and local governments shouldn't do anything the individual can handle. It maximizes both the liberty and the responsibility of the individual.
How old are you? In 1964, your assumptions about whether "we'd all just get along" would have been laughable; even today you'll find plenty of people to argue that you are naive about the persistence of discriminatory practices. In any case, Ron Paul was asked whether the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was necessary in 1964. He spews pure revisionist history - the reason Federal government acted was because the state and local governments didn't act.
Attitudes about race have clearly improved, but the "babysitting" laws have been instrumental in doing that. Ron Paul argues the opposite - but he is simply wrong. It has gone this way all along; in 1948 Truman ended segregation in the Armed forces by executive order and racists screamed and moaned that it would ruin the military. It wasn't long until the military was one of the least racist institutions in society. When "forced to play nice", racism was beaten back. You may think that racist attitudes are dead and buried, but you're wrong.
In 2002, Republican Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott, says at the birthday party of Strom Thurmond (who ran on a platform that explicitly supported racial segregation):
Racist attitudes aren't dead by a long shot. You can bet that Lott's GOP colleagues were well aware of his attitudes when they elected him as Majority Leader - his (political) mistake was to voice his racism publicly.
Yup, racist attitudes aren't dead by a long shot.
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