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Showing results for tags '2012 election'.
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I've been meaning to weigh on in the upcoming election. Here are my thoughts. 1. The Republicans as led by Romney and Ryan are not appreciably different in any meaningful way from the democrats. They will not touch a single pillar of the welfare state and in fact they will gleefully support them in every single speech and policy. Their opposition to Obama policies are purely rhetorical and disingenuous. An example is Obamacare, which was invented by a "conservative" think tank and implemented by a Republican governor, and was once "spun" in a conservative direction of making deadbeats pay for their own health care / helping hospitals / helping private insurance companies. 2. The entire Republican platform is based on fundamental lies which are not at all subtle. In particular, their platform consists of: a) keeping the welfare state intact; maintaining or even beefing up the military; c) lowering taxes; d) lowering the deficit. Any idiot with 3rd grade math skills can see that this doesn't add up. As such, it is necessary for the Republicans to launch a war on reason in order to cover up this top-line fact about their platform. This isn't the sort of subtle lies we're used to seeing from Democrats, and to be sure the latter-day democrats are sounding, well, quite conservative these days as they are now the ones fighting for reasonableness and reality (viz. "if you want X then you have to pay for X"). All of the anti-Obama messages from the Republican side are based on actions that Republicans themselves have performed before and will perform again if they are elected. 3. Insofar as "the house is on fire" in terms of the justification of dropping one's long-range goals in an attempt to solve an immediate problem, there's nothing we're going to do about the currently raging fire. The fuel from this fire must be cleared and that is a long-range process that happens in schools and universities. Trying to change politics on the retail level today is futile. 4. The Democrats are honestly for the welfare state--which of course reflects the sentiment of the overwhelming majority of citizens today. As such, their platform while politically incompatible with Objectivism is more closely Epistemologically compatible. 5. Paul Ryan's "flip-flopping" on Ayn Rand ("and they I suddenly noticed that she was an atheist! I had never noticed that before!") and Romney on OC and abortion and his hiding of his tax returns (not the contents, mind you, but the fact that he hides them), etc. etc. The Republican message here is one of unreason and legitimized lying. Folks, our time is analogous to the 17th century, not the 18th century. There's no chance in Hell we're going to sign another Bill of Rights anytime in our lifetimes. The proper course of action is to work toward a culture of reason and proper ethics. Without this foundation any sort of political change is impossible. Compromising that foundation--however nascent and thin it might be at the present time--is simply pushing us farther from our goals. Wishing them within our grasp will not make it so. They aren't. Let us then fight the battles we can win.
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- 2012 election
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