Letters to the Editor
Rob Seaman
Published Letters: 44 Editor's Choice: 4
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slogans
[Read the article: Conflating the questions on Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Democrats: Enablers of the GOP since 9/11
Repubicans: Not necessarily stupid, though most stupid people are Republicans (but see above)
Americans: Stuck with GOP and Demi-GOP, pending instant run-off elections
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Slogans
[Read the article: War Room contest: Pick the Democrats' bumper sticker]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Democrats: Enablers of the GOP since 9/11
Repubicans: Not necessarily stupid, though most stupid people are Republicans (but see above)
Americans: Stuck with GOP and Demi-GOP, pending instant run-off elections
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A statement against penal interest?
[Read the article: Stop your sobbing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So these guys are the Pollyannas of the environmental movement? Too much doom and gloom only makes the Hummers sell better? Like the "skulls in the ice cube" ads appealing to an innate death wish among drunks.
Presumably Salon wanted to provoke discussion, while providing themselves some cover against accusations of left wing bias. Whatever. Thanks are due, however, for saving hundreds of us from buying this crappy book. What sinks the argument isn't its contrarian nature - rather, it is ridiculous assertions like:
"Environmentalists have credited their strict and literal adherence to science" and "When environmentalism fails, it is invariably due to [...] most especially, the overall lack of deference in the United States to capital-S Science"
The argument is one fallacy after another. I stopped counting after ad hominem, non sequitor, begging the question, irrelevant conclusion and direct and converse fallacies of accident.
Somehow asteroid impacts in the past (a specific example of the general concept of cosmic "oops!") justify human generated mass extinctions in the near future. The notion that technology - the bastard child of blessed Science - can temporarily permit human flesh to pack the continents like Vienna sausages, supposedly justifies that this is not only an acceptable end-state for Manifest Destiny, but a desirable one.
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Zoöpomorphism
[Read the article: Proud atheists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Pinker's own careful distinction between a so-called "defining characteristic" and the more correct usage "distinctive characteristic" is key to elucidating a rational world view. We are human not because a dictionary (or deity) deems us so, and not because some recipe of thumbs + sense of humor + upright stance + language + sparse hair adds up to a human. Rather a human is descended from other humans and thus is known from certain stigmata.
A key point is that variations of those stigmata are shared with non-humans. One of the most damning indictments of soft-headed thinking is to accuse someone of committing the heinous act of anthropomorphism. As with the nonsense debate between evolution and intelligent design, the correct response is to reject the premise of the discussion. The question isn't whether some godhead tinkerer - Hephaestus on steroids - drew the interlocking blueprints for Man and Woman on a cosmic etch-a-sketch. The answer, rather, is that all design is evolutionary.
This is as true for human-mediated design as for natural design. Peruse the health-and-beauty aisles of your local big-box store. What are the ever-changing myriads of cosmetics but natural selection - sexual selection - in action? In particular, consider the toothbrush section. These are items of simple purpose with largely shared features. While seeking to differentiate the nearly identical functional values of one design over another, the manufacturers clearly find themselves locked in a classic battle of ornamentation as real as peacocks or birds-of-paradise.
It's said we're created in the image of God. The misdemeanor of anthropomorphism is not in reassigning special characteristics to mere animals. Rather, the crime is in failing to recognize the holy marks we share with the animals. The basic architecture of the human form is shared with all other tetrapods. Our physiology is common to mammals. Our upright posture and thumbs are common to our many living and extinct ape relations. A recent YouTube video showed a sneezing baby panda - the panda wasn't endearing because it resembled a human baby - rather both are endearing because they resemble some ancient common ancestor. Surely parental love is an even more ancient shared trait than sneezing.
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It's the party, stupid
[Read the article: Stop lying to yourself. You love Dennis Kucinich]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I believe in everything the Democratic Party claims to stand for. That the Party has never actually stood up for those things is the reason I've spent my entire adult life registered independent.
It was the most core of our Founding Fathers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay, in the Federalist Papers who denounced party politics. Just as it was Eisenhower who denounced the Military Industrial Complex. One presumes Hillary, just like Bill, is not a Democrat, but a self-proclaimed Eisenhower Republican. That doesn't look so bad compared to the neighborhood the Republican Party itself has moved to, but it sure isn't the same thing as a card-carrying liberal democrat.
Kucinich has the right policies - he doesn't give the impression of being the right man to implement them, but then none of the candidates with the wrong policies are going to implement the right policies either.
The question isn't why the public shouldn't vote for the candidate who has the right policies - the question is why the Democratic Party doesn't produce more Paul Wellstones.
The answer is simply that Publius was right the first time. Party politics distorts the perceptions of the body politic. We won't escape from this trap until the mechanics of our democracy are tinkered with to permit instant runoff elections of some sort.
A citizen should be rewarded for choosing a candidate of conscience by seeing their second choice - a candidate of pragmatic choice elected. The question of the 2000 election wasn't whether Ralph was a spoiler - the question was WHY was Ralph a spoiler. And that comes down to the technical logistics of voting, not to Ralph's or Dennis's policies or the leading candidates craven begging for corporate sponsorship. Fix the logistics and campaign finance reform becomes a moot point.