Liberal Ideas v Conservative

Money Quote:

Conservative ideas

"...trying to convince people that our conservative ideas are better than their liberal ideas?"

Conservatives have ideas, it's just that most Americans don't like those ideas. Here is a partial list of conservative "ideas" that the American people overwhelming reject: Privatize social security, the Iraq war, ivade Iran now, more deregulation for the banking industry, the unitary executive, turning government into a political advocacy group, more Tax breaks for big oil, more tax cuts for the rich and roll back clean air and clean water regulations.

Conservatives have to get Americans to believe things that aren't true in order to get their ideas accepted.

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Publuis's Commentary:

"I tell my conservative friends (yes I have a few) that it is not as if conservatives have no ideas, it is just that most of them are wrong- especially the conservative party of the last 10-15 years. Yes, that is the party of the Religious Right, the anti-science Right, the Neo-Con Right, the borrow and spend right, the huge deficit right, the anti-reality right...etc...etc........

" I could offer a lot fair amount of criticism for the fanatics on the left as well. That is one reason why I support Hillary over Barack. She has a way of finding the center in American politics (but she found it too late) and that is appealing to my moderate sense.....

" Back to my point, most of the "big" ideas of the last 200 years have been liberal. progressive ideas. The Bill of Rights (liberal),  Ending Slavery (liberal), ending child labor (liberal), 8 hour day and 40 hour week, (liberal), workers' rights (liberal), rights of unions (liberal), social security/medicare/medicaid (liberal), Interstate Highway System (liberal), civil rights movement (liberal), women's right's liberal, empowerment of a myriad of disenfrancised groups of people (liberal).....and the list goes on.....

"When it comes to progress, thinking about the future, being inclusive, and moving towards "a more perfect union" history clearly shows us that it is liberals and progressives that have led the way. Conversely, it has always been conservatives who have looked to the past, have defended the status quo, and have resisted change every chance they get. They got theirs a long time ago and they seek to hand on to it, and that often means preventing others from gaining equality and opportunity that every citizen has a shot at in a democracy.!"

"I will add one caveat, we must all become conservatives in two areas. The first is the economy and the second in climate change. Our national deficit is nearing 9 trillion dollars and the unfundd liabilities are running up to 30 trillion dollars. (that is scary!). The environment and climate change is clearly the issue of our time and to their credit mnay people who previously opposed corrective measures are starting to understand the science and the urgency we face. In those two areas liberals and conservatives must come together to find common ground"

How about the price of oil

Money quote from ADN.com:

"A sensible policy would entail Republicans getting on board with a greater commitment to alternative energy research, Democrats getting on board with increasing domestic oil and gas exploration and all Americans embracing sensible conservation practices.

Until then, prayer seems to be the only viable alternative."

Mark's commentary:

As an Alaska resident I support (along with 2/3 of Alaskans) drilling in ANWAR and other areas. However, that comes with a caveat: the galaring need to research and develop alternative energy and to slowly wean ourselves from carbon-based fossil fuels. It needs to be a concerted effort that involves the recognition of our addiction to oil and the simple fact that most of our oil is imported from nations that do not like us very much.

Happy Mother's Day- I hope you do not have to drive too far.

Semper Paratus,

Publius

It's the time of the year for....

It is  the time of the year for student apathy and I do not like it.

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Sometimes I think Iam in control of the circumstances in my life and am able to create my world through my choices and power of definition.

However, there are times (as Lincoln said) when the circumstances  control me and I am merely along for the right...often reacting just to keep up! It can be kind of depressing.

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I do not like the feeling of not being wanted.......of not being in demand. I envy folks (especially in an economic sense) that can pick and choose where they work and generally can dictate some of the terms of their employment. I do not like being at the mercy of a system that is cruel, callous, and ignorant.....seemingly!

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I have always wanted to be somebody, I guess I should have been more specific!

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If it possible to overestimate the ignorance of the American public, populace, voters, citzenry.....can they possibly read less......think less....be less passive....less involved.........our roots are in the Enlightenment/ TheAge of Reason......today Americans are nor reading, not thinking, not giving reasons.

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Why me!...well I take that back: why not me?!

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Is it possible to have parentheses with parentheses?

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There is this neat blog in which people submit one sentence stories. Kind of neat and fitting. I think soon we may replace the 5 paragraph essay with the 5 sentence essay.

Take a look at: http://www.onesentence.org/

One Sentence is about telling your story, briefly. Insignificant stories, everyday stories, or turning-point-in-your-life stories, boiled down to their bare essentials.

The idea was born from a blog entry several years ago that got a million (actually, only 14) responses. "Maybe this will take off more as its own site," thought I. Let's see. Tell your story.

Where was God? Either he/she is not omnipotemt or he/she does not care!

1. Deadliest storms mostly in Bengal
   Storms in the Bay of Bengal account for seven of the 10 deadliest hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones in recorded history, as documented by Weather Underground. The casualty figures are notoriously difficult to pin down, but here is the list:

   1. Bhola cyclone, Bangladesh (East Pakistan), 1970. Death toll estimated at 150,000 to 550,000.
   2. Hooghly River cyclone, India and Bangladesh, 1737. Death toll: 350,000.
   3. Haiphong typhoon, Vietnam, 1881. Death toll: 300,000.
   4. Coringa cyclone, India, 1839. Death toll: 300,000.
   5. Backerganj cyclone, Bangladesh, 1584. Death toll: 200,000.
   6. Great Backerganj Cyclone, Bangladesh, 1876. Death toll: 200,000.
   7. Chittagong cyclone, Bangladesh, 1897. Death toll: 175,000.
   8. Super Typhoon Nina, China, 1975. Death toll: 171,000.
   9. Cyclone 02B, Bangladesh, 1991. Death toll: 140,000.
   10. Great Bombay Cyclone, India (from the Arabian Sea), 1882. Death toll: 100,000.

Is belief in God rational, necessary, a crutch, scientific?

Yes, if by... "science" we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge (including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and white lab coats. Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to explain the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from? What is the basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why should anyone be moral? Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper we probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which we live, the less reason there is to believe in God. Start with the origin of the world. Today no honest and informed person can maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago and assumed its current form in six days (to say nothing of absurdities like day and night existing before the sun was created). Nor is there a more abstract role for God to play as the ultimate first cause. This trick simply replaces the puzzle of "Where did the universe come from?" with the equivalent puzzle "Where did God come from?" What about the fantastic diversity of life and its ubiquitous signs of design? At one time it was understandable to appeal to a divine designer to explain it all. No longer. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace showed how the complexity of life could arise from the physical process of natural selection among replicators, and then Watson and Crick showed how replication itself could be understood in physical terms. Notwithstanding creationist propaganda, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, including our DNA, the fossil record, the distribution of life on earth, and our own anatomy and physiology (such as the goose bumps that try to fluff up long-vanished fur). For many people the human soul feels like a divine spark within us. But neuroscience has shown that our intelligence and emotions consist of intricate patterns of activity in the trillions of connections in our brain. True, scholars disagree on how to explain the existence of inner experience—some say it's a pseudo-problem, others believe it's just an open scientific problem, while still others think that it shows a limitation of human cognition (like our inability to visualize four-dimensional space-time). But even here, relabeling the problem with the word "soul" adds nothing to our understanding. People used to think that biology could not explain why we have a conscience. But the human moral sense can be studied like any other mental faculty, such as thirst, color vision, or fear of heights. Evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience are showing how our moral intuitions work, why they evolved, and how they are implemented within the brain. This leaves morality itself—the benchmarks that allow us to criticize and improve our moral intuitions. It is true that science in the narrow sense cannot show what is right or wrong. But neither can appeals to God. It's not just that the traditional Judeo-Christian God endorsed genocide, slavery, rape, and the death penalty for trivial insults. It's that morality cannot be grounded in divine decree, not even in principle. Why did God deem some acts moral and others immoral? If he had no reason but divine whim, why should we take his commandments seriously? If he did have reasons, then why not appeal to those reasons directly? Those reasons are not to be found in empirical science, but they are to be found in the nature of rationality as it is exercised by any intelligent social species. The essence of morality is the interchangeability of perspectives: the fact that as soon as I appeal to you to treat me in a certain way (to help me when I am in need, or not to hurt me for no reason), I have to be willing to apply the same standards to how I treat you, if I want you to take me seriously. That is the only policy that is logically consistent and leaves both of us better off. And God plays no role in it. For all these reasons, it's no coincidence that Western democracies have experienced three sweeping trends during the past few centuries: barbaric practices (such as slavery, sadistic criminal punishment, and the mistreatment of children) have decreased significantly; scientific and scholarly understanding has increased exponentially; and belief in God has waned. Science, in the broadest sense, is making belief in God obsolete, and we are the better for it.