Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
From the early 1960’s with “My Favorite Martian” into the next decade, and with a brief resurrection in “Mork and Mindy,” we used to have this interest in the shipwrecked space alien. The mini-genre limped along by exploring facets of our lives “earthlings” took for granted, but that a developed intellect from another environment would find stange for a number of reasons.
Liberals, nowadays, have me convinced that perhaps bringing the mini-genre back would be a worthy exercise. We do far too many strange things, that are normal to us only because we’ve become acclimated to them over time. They wouldn’t…couldn’t…make any sense whatsoever to someone visiting from beyond who was not so acclimated.
And here, I’m referring to the arguing conservatives and liberals do over what’s a good social idea, versus what is not. Liberals say whatever a conservative thinks is good, sucks ass, and whatever the conservative doesn’t want to do, is great; and vice-versa. This is all part-and-parcel of a two-party system. Thanks to The Otto Show, we get a great example of this kind of whining over here, where a lefty guy struggles to make sense out of his own beliefs.
If not for the liberals in the world, we would still be living in caves. Neo-Cons have no imagination. Because of this they fear change of any kind. The only thing that ever remains the same is that things change. A Neo-Cons, will never willingly explore new avenues. They discover nothing except by chance, and never take chances unless forced by unavoidable circumstances. Liberals ask questions, and find new and better ways. They embrace change and innovation. They believe in the saying “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again.” But Know to try a different way each time to avoid the same mistakes that kept them from succeeding, this way, they learn from their mistakes. Neo-Cons are afraid of the future because the don’t learn from the past.
Huh. I wonder what kind of past that guy’s been looking at. My recollection is, “learn[ing] from their mistakes” means to make sure liberals never run things.
Perhaps I, and that liberal guy, are showing how a personal bias works. I remember some things, he remembers different things.
The dispassionate-but-intelligent-and-interested space alien would be down with all this, I think.
But here’s where he’d have the problem.
Certain ideas, such as freezing the minimum wage and the cutting capital gains taxes, would illuminate the effects of not only those policies, but their opposites as well. They would also illuminate the effect of personal decisions, good and bad, on personal destinies. In other words, if the free market has a greater role in determining our standard of living, it becomes much easier to see what works and what doesn’t. If our standard of living is determined by something other than the free market, the contrast is injured and this distinction becomes much more difficult for everyone.
And without exception, I notice, liberal policies tend toward this difficulty. In fact, that seems to be the definition of a liberal idea. Pumping more money into a failing public school district and requiring parents to continue sending their children there, doesn’t have very much to do with punishing productivity by rolling back tax cuts. Taxing people after they’ve died, doesn’t have very much to do with making it illegal to hire people for less than some arbitrary “minimum wage.”
There is no common thread running through those ideas — except one. It is the erasure of the contrast between good ideas and bad ones. The confusion. Liberal policies confuse. They make it harder to figure out what works and what doesn’t work.
And so I think the dispassionate-but-reasonable space alien would want to know this:
How come you earthlings spend so much energy arguing about what ideas are good for everybody and what ideas are bad for everbody — and yet, only half of you support policies that would prove what’s good, and the other half of you seem to be resolutely opposed to ever finding out for sure?
You earthlings seem to agree on what would highlight the differences and erase the uncertainty forever. You also appear to be weary of arguing. Why not just spend, let’s say, a decade or so, putting aside the arguments and just doing these things that highlight the differences? Then you’d know.
Come to think of it, I’m not even a space alien. And this has had me befuddled for quite awhile.
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