So here’s my quick blurb about my politics, reciprocating
Society is formed of norms. Beliefs about the world. Practices for performing important tasks like maintaining safety, acquiring food, shelter, bringing up the next generation, and so forth and so on. But sometimes norms aren’t enough. This is particularly true as societies get larger. The need for more sophisticated and often more powerful systems of organizing people and maintaining order take over.
What matters to me in society are the big ones: safety, food, shelter, water, health, and the ability to keep things going smoothly for the next generation(s), and maybe just possibly hand them something better than what we have.
Correspondingly, education is probably my top priority. I’d like smaller class sizes, more participatory, and project based learning. I’d like kids to learn initiative, cooperation, and cultivate all the various abilities they possess, at the levels they possess them. I’d like kids to learn how to learn on their own. I want to see greater adult involvement in the educational process, and less age segregation. I’m not nearly as concerned with shoving more money at schools as I am with making sure the schools do things in a different and better way. See also Howard Gardner on this one. If our citizens are going to think for themselves they have to start young. A few years of mandatory military or civil service also seems like a good idea to me (it shouldn’t be too easy to duck out of the military service though, no more national guard draft dodges).
People do a better job when they are not worried about their health care or that of their loved ones. Further, people are society’s most valuable resources. Society should cultivate their well-being accordingly, including strong increases in preventative healthcare. Subsidize Total and tax frosted flakes. Gym memberships should be a citizen right. Healthcare, including mental healthcare, should be provided free or nearly so (ala public transit) to everyone. I recognize and appreciate the choice concerns of
I think privacy should be vigorously protected, not by continuing to deny that the government collects information on us, but by making every effort to secure the information they already have on us, and putting strong controls on how that information is distributed, as well as full information on how it is used and accessed. I see one’s right to pursue whatever religion, philosophy, or personal perversion one likes as intimately tied to this. Anything two consenting adults wish to do is fine. Marriage is a religious institution. Legal relationships for co-parenting, co-residence, and co-ownership of property ought to replace civil marriage. People should be able to bundle them. Making any of these relationships more than two citizens should be kosher. Allowing any of them to be performed by same sex couples ought to be fine. Allowing sisters to coparent, or a bunch of buddies to establish a co-residence deal should be a no brainer. There should be a waiting period on such civil arrangements. Just to reduce commitment in haste.
I think all citizens should be equal in the eyes of the law in terms of race, gender, sexual preference, religion, and cultural affiliation. I’m not sure what to do about age. Almost no one is competent to live independently at 12, some still aren’t at 40. Sex should only matter in terms of reproductive law. Discrimination of the basis of relevant characteristics is fine. (Hooters shouldn’t have to hire men, chippendales shouldn’t have to hire women, but sex isn’t relevant in picking surgeons, secretaries, or shelvers)
I think we as the governed ought to know (and ought to fucking care) about what our government is doing for us, to us, and with us, down to the last dot of ink. I think willful attempts to deceive the public, or deny a citizen their rights, including access to information, ought to be considered treason, and those guilty of it ought to have their citizenship revoked. Negligent deception or obstruction should merely remove one permanently from office, and bar election to any public office down to and including county dogcatcher. Leaders ought to be held to much higher standards than the rest of society, but not for their private perversions. I don’t care that Clinton got a blowjob. I do care that he lied about it. I care more so that he may have used his office to coerce an intern. I care much more that Bush manipulated military intelligence to fabricate a justification for war to serve his political purposes.
Voting rights for everyone, including ex-cons. Including voting from prison. Attempts to dick around with this fall under my previous statement about denying citizens their rights. Flexible voting policies (not a single voting day, easy vote by mail, etc)
I am, as you can probably tell, an idealist, and I’m fine with that.
I don’t give a shit about hunting as an argument for allowing gun ownership. I care about safety from criminals (better served by banning guns, than by universal gun ownership, we can chat about that if you disagree, but far better served by preventing the motivation for crime), and safety from the government, which may be better served by allowing gun ownership.
I care a great deal about how I’m going to leave the world when I’m dead. My veganism and aversion to cars is as much if not more political [as] than personal. Most of the problem is that people are spread way the fuck out because we are afraid of our fellow citizens. Because we don’t know our fellow citizens. Because we are spread way the fuck out. Note the vicious cycle. Think about it, long and hard. Particularly if you’re thinking about buying suburban real estate. Also note the effects of transience, disposability, and consumer culture. Disposal costs ought to be included in the purchase price of an item. Urban forms ought to be contracted. Our cities ought to be rebuilt to better suit biking and walking. Efforts should be made to encourage people into mixed culture communities and engage in their communities (and get the hell away from the TV).
I think the UN should be scrapped and replaced with an organization structurally capable of making a decision. I think that the US should reprioritize away from military endeavors and western europe should build up its militarily capabilities. I don’t think we should be the world police. If we choose to be the world police, we shouldn’t bitch about protecting the world. Playing the martyr for choices one has made is one of the prime forms of drama queen.
I think our current criminal justice system is beyond retarded, as well as inhumane. Pot and all other drugs should be legalized, and smoking (anything, including pot) should be banned in public. Education and rehabilitation (for the willing!) should be the norm. Prostitution should likewise be legal and regulated. Deliberatly allowing rape to go on in your prison should put you behind those same bars, with the rapist. Negligently allowing it should get you your own cell. Sticking convicts in an environment where their dominant contact is with other convicts, and expecting it to cure them of criminal tendencies is the “beyond retarded” part. The goal should be to turn them into useful members of society on exit. Minimal standards of living guaranteed. And not just to criminals, to remove that motivation for criminal behavior.
Abortion. I actually forgot about this one, because as a gay man it has never directly involved me. I am fine with abortion. I’m honestly not as deeply bothered by infanticide as many people are either. I view the killing of an adult as a much bigger deal, though I would never do either. It is killing, certainly.
Yeah, there’s more, but that should do for now.
Mine don’t really fit on a bumper sticker either. And, yes, I do change my positions when confronted with countervailing evidence, some are more mutable (whimsical) than others.
I enjoy your position on criminal voting lives. It seems to me that few recognize the inherent dangers in saying that the government can disenfranchise citizens at will.
Hello, Florida. Exactly. Though I wasn’t thinking of it that way so much as the lack of a compelling reason to disenfranchise cons. If a significant fraction of society has committed a felony, that society has other issues.
That is quite true. Though it is always easier to demonize the symptoms then find a cure.
I’m honestly not as deeply bothered by infanticide as many people are either.
*blinks*
Not to overlook everything else that you just wrote, but…huh? I mean, I don’t find infanticide to be more troubling than the murder of an adult, but I certainly don’t find it to be less so.
Keep in mind that I think abortion should be legal and access to it unrestricted.
I fully support Roe v Wade as it stands because of the climate in the US, but I don’t think it’s a rational position to take. It likely turns more people off than it helps to support the right to choice.
How unrestricted? Up to the expected day of birth? Anne Quindlen had an excellent argument in Newsweek about abortion a month or so ago. She asks, with good reason, how is it that we talk out of both sides of our mouth on the topic. There is a point when the fetus moves to a point that it can exist outside the womb, and that point has become earlier and earlier with reproductive technology advances (less than 50 years ago a “preemie” would have been a miscarriage). I don’t think it’s as cut and dry as all or nothing. A more rational system would be to say free abortion up to and including the 15th or 18th week and thereafter only if medically necessary, decided by a panel of doctors and clinical social workers.
There are always exceptions, but part of the visceral discomfort among the majority who support Roe v. Wade is that the exceptions appear to always get support.
Having said that I’d fully support Medicaid paying for abortions and much greater access to contraception. We do however, have the freedom to choose before we get into that situation, it’s not as if condoms are illegal.
I think that’s much better. I’d rather have doctors regulating themselves, with the threat of government intervention than, than to have political experts who know nothing about the medical issues making the decisions.
I misspoke when I said that I think access to abortion should be “unrestricted.” That was too strong a word. I agree that there should be a point beyond which a pregnancy should not be aborted. Your suggestion about having a limit and then making allowances thereafter for medical reasons sounds like a good one to me.
It seems to me that many people place special emphasis on the value of newborn life. It horrifies them that an innocent who has done nothing wrong could die, I suppose. Tying it in with various theologies on what happens to the unbaptised, it’s even a “reasonable” view.
I do value an adult life more, or worry more about the premature ending of one. Think of a person like a trust fund, the early years are investment, the later years the pay off. Losing someone at 30 is a bigger loss than losing someone at 1 month. If you want to look at it from a less economically rationalized point of view, there’s‘s perspective in here. The experience and abilities of the adult have a real present value. It will take time and effort, years of effort, to develop that for the infant.
Adoption is way more moral. Infanticide is still wrong, but if given a choice of destroying a piece of art or the materials that could be used to make another, I’ll destroy the materials.
Historically and internationally, infanticide is and has been ‘common’, not just for deformed, or nonviable children, but also for the unwanted.
A few years of mandatory military or civil service also seems like a good idea to me (it shouldn’t be too easy to duck out of the military service though, no more national guard draft dodges).
why’s that?
To increase social solidarity
To raise awareness of the realities of the military and war
To remind people that war could hurt them, their kids, or other loved ones
Those are the big reasons.
Society should cultivate their well-being accordingly, including strong increases in preventative healthcare. Subsidize Total and tax frosted flakes.
this sounds like it puts too much power into the hands of science, or pseudo-science… for example, “eggs are good. no wait, eggs are bad. no wait, yolks are bad but whites are good”… food science is fickle, and not necessarily any righter now than it was 50 years ago.
it also takes away people’s freedom to pick the foods _they_ think are healthy for them, and pushes them towards eating what the government thinks is healthy.
what if the govt thinks atkins is healthy? someone presents a good argument against vegetarianism (the non-complete diet argument?). someone else presents an argument against meat. any of these could have consequences for the other party.
imagine if the food pyramid had been enforced when it came out!
this issue reminds me of the voters-should-pass-a-test issue…
I did pick “Total” and “Frosted Flakes” pretty deliberately. I suppose “Captain Crunch” would have been a better example than “Frosted Flakes”, but whatever. There are a number of foods that all dieticians agree are bad for human health, and some that are over-represented in the typical modern american diet. For the more ambiguously healthy/unhealthy, (coconuts, or frosted flakes, say), the proper response is to not intervene. Just to be clear, I’m not talking a complex network of subsidies for any and all foods.
Hrmm…
Our culture is so schizophrenic about education. It’s always the centerpiece of the all-men-created-equal meritocracy that we invoke to cleanse ourselves of guilt for the existence of the underclass, and yet we don’t prioritize it in any meaningful way. This is a cultural value, not some top-down oversight–a huge chunk of the populace resents and does not understand why education deserves public funding. My mom could tell you stories about how hard it was to get public money to remove asbestos from the high school much less keep textbooks and academic programming up to date.
Mandatory military service would bother me deeply in the current climate where the U.S. Army is an underpaid and abused unit of slaves at the beck and call of the private reconstruction contractors.
Totally agree on health care–applying the “if you want a plasma TV so bad why don’t you go learn a skill and get a job?” attitude to health borders on the bizarre. I know most preventative medicine experts want to pull their hair out when they examine how and where the money flows in health care. All of society benefits from healthy citizens.
Public interest in government accountability is probably tied into education. Examining political shenanigans is just alien to most people because they’ve learned “red good, blue bad” long before they get to poli sci in school. Maybe someone could portray critical thinking as “hip”, but judging from the figures I read, all of MTV’s vote-rocking didn’t really rock that many youngsters.
Total Cost is another alien concept to the American psyche. We love to shift (and conceal) the impact of our choices to the next generation. My sister-in-law told me once that a Starbucks iced mocha should really cost about $15 when you consider the energy that synthesized the plastic cup, the air pollution (in several states) of trucking the cup from HQ to your neighborhood, and the local waste disposal of dealing with the cup that will sit in the ground for eternity after being used once.
UN: I find it humorous that Syria and Sudan helped vote the U.S. off the Human Rights committee.
Abortion: I’ve been trying to find a way to phrase my thoughts on this in a way that’s less likely to offend people, but the gist is that: sophisticated and evolved humans should appreciate each other for their unique thoughts, emotions, experiences, memories, relationships, and accomplishments, not for the mass of easily reproduced flesh (of whatever age or size). By fetishizing the physiological component of our being, we de-emphasize the unique aspects I listed, rendering our life experiences meaningless. I wonder if, ironically, the pro-lifers of the future would have no qualms about melting sentient androids down into pop cans if needed because they have no beating heart.