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News Archives - Posts #16-23, 2-20 to 3-7
#23
2004-3-7, 02:16 PST
Congratulate me. I have finally written the Iraq article that you, my 3-5 regular readers, have surely been yearning for.
Unfortunately, I missed the deadline I gave myself of 9 pm today/yesterday, which would allow me to publish it on OSP on the same day as my social security article.
Oh well - there's always tomorrow...
Now, I have two things on my to-do list; Combating Totalitarian Ideologies remains, and now there's that liberalism/conservatism article, which I don't think is IDOL material (although it kind of discusses the same issues).
The liberalism/conservatism article is something I thought of shortly before I wrote The Dean Campaign; I in fact intended to publish the Dean article, it, and the Iraq article on two adjacent days, which of course I didn't.
I just never put it on my public to-do list, but it was still in my mind - just like the social security article, which I had been thinking about for quite some time.
On another note, please visit Blame India Watch, a blog that attacks the American tendency to bash India and Indians for offshoring.
#22
2004-3-4, 10:45 PST
According to Riverbend, the Karbala/Baghdad bombings only caused greater unity between Shiites and Sunnis.
Which I guess is a good thing. Apparently the people realize that they are being played from outside, this time by Al Qaida, so they don't start the civil war Al Qaida hoped to foment.
Good...
#21
2004-3-3, 23:13 PST
Two things about the Karbala/Baghdad bombings. One, unsurprisingly, it seems that Al Qaida is responsible to these bombings and committed them to foment a Sunni/Shiite civil war.
Two, the death toll from the bombing is between 140 and 271, according to the linked article (another article - I don't remember which - says at least 143).
Why would Al-Qaida try and foment a civil war between Muslims? Destabilizing Iraq will of course be a way to help the prospects of a Taliban-style fundamentalist regime (the main purpose of the Bali bombings, for instance, was almost certainly destabilization).
However, shouldn't Al-Qaida try and unite Muslims against the "heretics" rather than pit them against one another? It doesn't completely make sense.
#20
2004-3-2, 03:19 PST
Gays Ruled Human Beings; Conservative Groups Rally Against Judicial Activism
April 10th, 2018
In the landmark case Taylor vs. Robinson, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that gays were human beings.
Citing recent scientific studies and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, the Court has ruled 2-1 that "People of homosexual, bisexual, or transgendered orientation... are certainly human beings with the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexual people."
This decision strikes down laws in 21 states, including four states in the Ninth Circuit (Arizona, Idaho, Alaska, and Montana), which give legal personality only to heterosexual people and thus deny members of the GLBT community any legal or constitutional protection and do not allow them to vote.
The current Republican administration has condemned the ruling. "This is yet another case of judicial activism run amok," said the White House spokesman. He explained, "In the Soviet Union gays were not only considered human, but were even given complete equal rights - this proves that the radical liberal judges of the Ninth Circuit Court are only interested in turning this country into a communist dictatorship."
Other conservative and Christian groups agreed.
Ralph Reed's official response to this ruling is, "This is by far the most outrageous and Satanist-inspired federal ruling since 2003's Lawrence vs. Texas. How much more can patriotic Christians take, when they as a majority are not allowed to determine who is human and who is not? We all know that homosexuality is an inhuman deviation; why don't the courts see that?"
Some Democrats have commented on the ruling as well.
The Democratic Senate Majority Leader commented: "It is of course a good thing that gays are considered human beings, but we should not be so rampant or radical about it. We should maybe put this to a referendum in the relevant State Legislatures. But the Courts must not act foolishly, and above all we as a party should not make decisions that will lose us the moderate vote."
Many Democrats have stressed that while they think that gays are human beings in theory, they do not support any measure that will produce a conservative backlash.
They cite the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbids homosexual marriages, ratified in 2006, as an example of what happens when the courts act too liberally and without regard to what the people think.
Earlier today, the Senate and the House voted 95-5 and 427-6 to condemn the ruling; in a poll taken shortly after the vote, it was found that the approval rate of the 11 Congresspeople who voted against condemning dropped by an average of 13% whereas this of those who voted for or were absent remained the same.
#19
2004-3-2, 02:46 PST
At least 125 Shia Muslims killed in coordinated bombings in Iraq.
Two Iraqi cities were attacked: Baghdad, in which 3 bombings occurred inside and outside the same shrine at the same time, and in which at least 75 people have died; and Karbala, in which five explosions near the same shrine have killed at least 50.
Meanwhile, everyone is trying to blame others - Sistani's spokesman is accusing the USA of "ignoring repeated requests to bolster security for the pilgrims," for instance.
From the "liberation, my ass" files.
#18
2004-2-29 10:01 PST
Sorry for not posting more often... :-(
Anyway, I'm trying to think why leftists are so much puritan on issues than rightists.
Left-wing groups look for heretics - Monty Python's Life of Brian is an excellent parody of this attitude, with the members of the various anti-Roman resistance groups refusing to even view the Romans as their common enemy.
Right-wing groups sometimes do look for heretics - just read a thread of three in Free Republic - but usually look for converts.
In terms of partisan politics, just look at libertarians - the Republicans court them despite their being pro-choice, pro-gay rights, and pro-isolation; the Democrats look at their opposition to welfare, gun control, and taxes and sneer.
Ironically, the Bush administration is looking less and less like a right-wing administration in this respect, considering that it looks for heretics much more than for converts.
I have several theories. One is ideological: conservatism is simply more pragamtic than liberalism, which reflects in its greater ideological flexbility, and further, conservatism lacks liberalism's disdain for groupthink and thus conservatives are more able to ignore what they think for the sake of unity.
But on the other hand, leftists are just as capable of groupthink (the Dean campaign is a bad example because it looks for converts more than for heretics; a better example would be the groupthink prevalent on the Democratic Underground, coupled with fierce ideological puritanism on any level), and besides, liberalism also promotes diversity of opinion much more than conservatism, which is far less tolerant.
A second theory is that leftist ideological puritanism is based not on liberalism but on socialism, which takes groupthink to the level of paranoia, a milder form of which is the denial that Stalin and Mao were socialist mass murderers (socialists either justify Stalin and Mao's actions or claim that they weren't "real socialists").
Most if not all leftists have absorbed at least some ideas from socialism; beginning around 1900, even liberalism borrowed a toned-down version of socialism's message of social justice.
Perhaps - this is a borderline crackpot theory, mind you - the ideological puritanism was also borrowed.
A third possible reason is political. For most of modern history, progressivism has been on the attack and conservatism on the defense.
Maybe this produced different mindsets, with political rightists, rooted in conservatism, caring more about general agenda, whereas political leftists, rooted in liberalism and socialism, cared about specific plans and thus were much less accepting of deviation.
The ideological roots of political alignments bring me to a fourth theory, namely that I am looking at the wrong polities.
In the United States, leftists are divided among liberals, socialists, left-libertarians, and everything in between; socialism and liberalism have been somewhat ideologically compatible, allowing various hybrids, whereas neither has been ideologically compatible with conservatism since the Great Depression.
Leftist fringe groups always possess radical ideas taken from socialism, anarchism, or both, which creates an excellent recipe for extreme ideological diversity combined with ideological puritanism, which explains all the in-fighting you see on the left but hardly on the right.
In any way, conservatism's emphases on ideals such as stability and unity have helped political conservatives accept people who could be absorbed into their respective conservative parties.
#17
2004-2-22, 09:53 PST
So far, I've posted 6 articles on OSP. And so far, there's been a strong negative correlation between constructiveness and number of replies.
My two most constructive articles so far have been Hunger and How to End It and Specialized Legislatures, both of which have gotten 0 replies so far.
Granted, the SL article has only been up for several hours, but the hunger article has been there since late December.
Another article of mine hasn't been constructive in the sense of having a solution, but has rather inoffensively outlined methods of constitutional interpretation - Strict Constructionism. It's gotten no replies, too, in over one month.
Contrast that with my three destructive articles: from the least to the most destructive, they are The Problem with Anti-Americanism, The 2003 Sellout, and The Dean Campaign. These three have gotten 3, 22, and 5 replies respectively (per day, it works out to 0.038, 0.815, and 2.5, respectively).
In other words, to generate response I need to attack viciously, preferably attacking the target audience's idols (e.g. Dean).
So much for meaningful political discourse.
#16
2004-2-20, 02:22 PST
The King of Cambodia supports gay marriage - look here and here.
It's only we who are stuck with the puritan mentality that considers gay marriage to be defiling; everyone else is going forward, beyond the dark ages.
Freest nation in the world, my ass.
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