[lit-ideas] Re: None Dare Call It Positive Reasons
- From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2008 21:12:18 -0500
>
>
> <<The process of selecting a candidate, in my opinion, successfully rules
> out those who would make fit candidates. It may be a systemic flaw.>>
A pretty strong and unfortunately accurate observation. However, there is a
gradation, a continuum -- life is rarely clearly black & white. I'm
watching the debate right now and observing the gradation.
>
> <<Some might argue that the ability to organize a national political staff
> and raise political funding is a metric of successful leadership. Not I.>>
Nor I. I find myself in the highly unusual position of playing the realist
to Don Quixote. Sometimes, to implement impossible dreams, it is necessary
to play pragmatics, which I'm absolutely certain you agree with, Eric.
>
> <<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.>>
I once liked Ross Perot. And Ralph Nadir. My step-kids voted "independent"
with their first vote opportunity. What they didn't "get" was that those
were idealistic and futile wastes of votes. (God, this rubs me the wrong
way, being the "realist".)
>
> <<(1) Women should have control of their own reproductive choices.>>
Absolutely concur.
>
> <<(2) Separation of church and state should be firmly secured on all
> matters.>>
Ditto
>
> <<(3) Maternity leave should be extended to at least six months for all
> female employees.>>
Ditto
>
> <<(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.>>
Ditto
>
> <<(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.>>
I'm not so sure about this one. It smacks of isolationism and a sort of
ivory tower notion of the way the planet works. I find it odd to type those
words having spent any number of years shouting against the U.S. as
policeman to the world. Neither of those extremes seems workable or
appropriate to me. Jonathon Sach's book, again, is one of my favourite
approaches to this issue. (yes I know I've referred to it ad nauseum)
>
> (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.
Amen in spades
>
> (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.
Yes, yes, yes.
>
> (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).
Absolutely.
>
>
> You asked for it.
>
> Endlessly windbagging,
Enjoying the "windbagging".
>
>
>
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--
Julie Krueger
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