Letters to the Editor
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The last thing "conservatives" want is "fairness"
To one critic, Olbermann's actual performance at the debate and in similar situations was less important than the message sent by his presence.
In that one sentence, AP’s David Bauder gives away the game and exposes the double standard that "conservatives" want to apply: for them, it is not acceptable for anyone who has expressed “liberal” views (or openly challenged “conservative” positions) to question Presidential candidates during debates. However, that rule does not apply to those who have expressed “conservative” views.
Hume, who openly admits and expresses his conservative views, insists that he should be judged “upon his performance.” Yet, that is exactly what “conservatives” are trying to deny Keith Olbermann. They object to his very existence; his performance is irrelevant.
What conservatives want in the debates, and the criteria they want applied to the questioners, is the very same standard that Bradley Schlozman applied in the Bush Justice Department: “Is he one of us?”
That is their goal. And there is absolutely nothing “fair” about that at all.
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cartoons...
"There may be two libertarians somewhere who agree with each other about everything, but I am not one of them."
--David Friedman
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
Most of the anarcho-capitalists are cartoonish, Mona. It's
been called "vulgar libertarianism" by both liberals and conservatives.
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@WT
Some things just shouldn't attract the interest of the state. The Schiavo case, abortion, etc. On the other hand, as I weighed in on here long ago, the Christian scientists with a sick child, the man from Syria living in Detroit who's decided that his 17 year-old daughter has dishonored the family by kissing one of her classmates in public...well....
The semi-states. The partial states. The uncollapsed state waves. They're all there, always, coming in and out of focus, a mirage on the road, like the indivisibility of the individual.
As soon as you grab one, the cancer kicks back.
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@WT
I agree. I just think there is a terrific need to be careful and make distinctions, and ferret out nuances in anything as complicated as the health care system. It isn't a free market entity, it doesn't mix well with political philosophy, and it would be really pretty easy to break.
It really is a sign of how broken the thing is that we have such distrust of the doctors, though.
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@Paul R.
The institutions created then have been modified, augmented, and re-evaluated repeatedly over the years since then. The libertarians stand out in particular for their failure to do this. Instead, they simply wish the whole experience away.
You could not be more mistaken -- but then, most that you write about libertarians is utter horseshit. The cause of the Great Depression has been extensively addressed by libertarian economists; it is not an area in which I hold much expertise, but I can verify that they are deeply critical of the way the stock market was organized and how stocks were purchased, among other things.
What so many of you remind me of are the wingnuts online who just "know" that Kos is a raging far-leftist, a Marxist who probably longs for Stalin's resurrection. Greenwald, too -- utter Maoist, that Greenwald. How do they know this? Because everyone they read says so. You have that same inane dynamic going on where libertarians are concerned, as do many here.
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"Everyone has a right not to be murdered" says Mona
Unless they are being murdered by failing health as a result of having no dental care and being born into deep poverty.
Unless they are being murdered by groundwater contamination from BTEs and get in the way of corporate profit.
Unless they are murdered by drowning because of bad land-use decisions by developers.
Unless they are low wager worker who life expentency is cut drastically short because having to work multiple minimum wage jobs, regardless of health or capacity to do so.
Frequently when human considerations get in the way of corporate profits, often the cost-benefit analysis comes down on the side devaluing certain of our community for the property rights of others.
We don't have the right not to be murdered whenever it is being done in the name of "the Market."
Ondelette . . . (or was it JoJo++?) I have to agree with you on many of your points. I never heard you or anyone here say the government should "fix" healthcare. In fact, whenever I think of collaborative solutions they are frequently public/private solutions that the community should and must agree upon together. But, always, when I say I'm a progressive to anyone who is a so-called libertarian or conservative, I get a response back about how I think the government is THE tool to solve all of our problems. I don't believe the government is the tool to solve all problems any more than I believe that the market is THE tool to solve all our problems. We, the people, using a variety of tools and methods can solve our problems as they arise.
When viewing the modern media market, I think of nothing so much as high school. Bush, Tom Selleck, etc. are the super fast, super popular kids that the AV club kids and kids on the school newspaper always wanted to hang out with.
Now, they can either write about what is really happening to the detriment of us individually and collectively, or they can live out their high school fantasies of being popular. Cheering on war is about being the jocks and cheerleaders they weren't in high school. That's how Maureen Dowd can write all about Cheney's and Bush's transgressions in exactly the same smarmy tone and manner that she talks about John Edwards haircuts, it's all about being cool and popular.
But. hey we live in a society where getting over at the expense of the community is revered instead of reviled.
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Boom! chaka laka laka...I'll see your Afrika Bambaataa
And raise you a Baba Olatunji and a Kwaku Daddy.
http://www.olatunjimusic.com/
Kwaku Daddy is a neighbor. I used to see him down at the local watering hole all the time when he wasn't on tour or in the studio.
http://www.skwaku.com/
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@jojo+++: I think we are in agreement
This turn of phrase is the problem. Would you say that you're a "believer" in a Euclidean analysis of distance? Of course not - Euclidean geometry is just a tool which is sometimes the right tool, and sometimes not. -- jojo++
Before I argue with a person, I always try to be certain that we are not already in complete agreement.
The phrase "turn of phrase" as applied to "free markets" could easily lead to an infinite regression on the words "free" and "market." So, I'm going to stay away from that. The point I was trying to make is that the term "the market" as originally defined in classical economics has evolved to a point in which any analysis of economic cause and effect cannot be taken seriously without including governmental, social-psychological and even ecological considerations as part of the analysis. That is why people like John Keynes, John Nash and Ronald Coase play such important roles in contemporary economics.
For a pragmatist, everything is a tool, a means to an end. Pragmatism as an American tradition is one of our best traditions, and one of our worst. Your comment re: Euclidean geometry is well taken. Not to seem a smartass, but I remind you that Riemann did not invalidate Euclidean geometry, but used his concepts of the manifold and metric tensor to prove the existence of an infinite group of non-Euclidean geometries. It was Riemann's work which in turn provided scientists like Einstein with the tools they needed to increase our shared understanding of the physical universe. And, as importantly, Riemann's theories hold for all geometries. What I am saying is that I think we are in agreement for the most part.