Julie: Btw, it's odd to me, Eric, that in your post you talk about voting negatively -- why no mention of positive reasons you might want to choose someone for leadership?
The process of selecting a candidate, in my opinion, successfully rules out those who would make fit candidates. It may be a systemic flaw.
Some might argue that the ability to organize a national political staff and raise political funding is a metric of successful leadership. Not I.
I've considered a write-in for General Petraeus, since he's the only person in recent US history who has fronted a large staff of intellectuals (anthropologists, philosophers, linguists, systems theorists) and dissidents (officers who saw what was wrong but were ignored), fought and managed the Pentagon bureaucracy, and has perhaps made the slightest difference in anything. Plus he has a PhD in international relations.
He's also famous for being among the first to ask, "Tell me how this ends?"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902E5DF1230F937A35757C0A9629C8B63&sec _POSITIVE THINKING IN A VACUUM_OK. Let's be positive. What would constitute a truly liberal social agenda? We could make a list. Here's a start. Tell me where I err. Or make your own list.
(1) Women should have control of their own reproductive choices. (2) Separation of church and state should be firmly secured on all matters. (3) Maternity leave should be extended to at least six months for all female employees. (4) Higher education costs should be vastly reduced for all qualified applicants without reference to their group identities. Decree it then find a way to implement it. (5) The US should retreat to a strategic "sphere of influence" rather than spreading itself all over the world, and the revenue saved by this retreat should go into infrastructure repair, renewable resources, green- and appropriate-technologies, education, affordable health care for uninsured US citizens, and better national defense. (6) Government and business should work together to identify and carry out initiatives that encourage a prosperous, educated, healthy middle-class rather than a stark separation of technopeasants and super-elite. (7) Our politics should maximize individual choices. Gay marriage, marijuana legalization, assisted suicide, and similar high-controversy social issues should be decided at the state level and not at the federal level. This would allow for a greater plurality of choices for US citizens. (8) People should be assured of their innate value and basic human rights, NOT through a *group* identity (white, black, straight, gay, Christian, Jew, etc.) but through their *individual* identity (I'm Eric; you're Julie).
You asked for it. Endlessly windbagging, Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
