It's Gooch!!!!

I found him! He's here! Get lost creeps! Gooch is back! And he is watching you!

**For those who are confused by this post, check this site out. Sometime we mules need a break from being so smart. And gooch is our mascot.

A few responses (a new topic later)

First off, thank you, Ben, for pointing out the irrationality in my "Must be said" post.

I want to apologize for putting too much emotion into a political matter.

In this post, I'll describe the history of the Palestine-Israel conflict.

I should actually praise George W. Bush for his reaction to Hamas' victory. The fact that he said "Democracy opens our eyes, and we should listen to the Palestinian people" is a very brave thing to say for an American president.

He's finally admitting that terrorists are not nameless, faceless, evil devils.
They are real people with real problems, and more often than not, real injustices that have been done them.

Now only if Bush had realized all this back on Sept. 12, 2001...When Palestinians cheered at the destruction of the WTC...He could have avoided a LOT of trouble.

What's the election results are saying is that Palestinians still have a great anger towards Israel, and express it any way they can. This is a true fact, and the reasoning behind it seems obvious to me. Israel did indeed cast the first stone, by invading Palestine against the official, democratic will of the Palestinians, and continuously destroying their homes, farms, and livelihoods and making them second class citizens. The hard facts are below, in three main sections.

To introduce my subject, this fact:

Today, in Israeli schools, teachers are liable to be arrested for reading Palestinian poetry to Jewish children.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1. Negotiating with Terrorists+++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Let's try a hypothetical situation, one that has a lot of similarities to Israel/Palestine. It takes place in the colonial US. Put Israel and Palestine out of your mind, for now.
*
*
*
...

A colony begins to oppress a native people, taking their land The native people become angry with the injustice done them, but aren't as civilized as the colonists and so don't know the best way to express it.

They strike back the only way they know how, in violence. They burn the fields of the colonists.

The colonists meet and decide what to do. Somebody says "Never negotiate with terrorists!" The colonists eventually agree on this.

They go out, and they massacre the natives. There are only a few left, whose only choice is to flee.

The problem is solved.

Was that really the best way to solve the problem?
Would they have reached a better solution if they hadn't considered the natives "terrorists?"
Would they have reached a better solution if they seriously considered why the natives were attacking?

==============================
2. Who started it.==================
==============================
Let's go back to Israel and Palestine.

If you read history of the conflict, you will see two facts.

1. There was a UN-sponsored referendum to the Palestinians on whether or not to give land to Israel. The Palestinians thought about it, and said no. This was a nonviolent, peaceful attempt to avoid a conflict.

2. But the colonists came anyway. Racial Jews had a vote, and a right to a fair trial, while Palestinans, whom the Jewish government murdered, harassed, and abused, had neither. Ariel Sharon himself participated in an event early in Israel's history where an entire village of innocent Palestinians was massacred.

The Palestians put up with all this from 1948 until about the late 1980s (Palestinians actually had little part in the Arab-Israeli wars), peacefully trying to regain their human rights.

By 1990, Palestians began to collectively realize that peaceful resistance wasn't working. So a small minority of them declared Intifada and began to resist with violence.

[I don't think that was their best choice, but the Palestinians had no Gandhi or MLK Jr. Why? Luck? Cultural Inferiority? Hard to say.]"

===================================
=3. Why did Hamas win this election yesterday?=
===================================

Palestians were punished collectively for violence, the same method Stalin used to keep rebellious sentiment down. Most Palestinians, even today, are averse to violence and do not believe in using violence to take back their country. But look at the facts. In the 1990s and 2000s, when Israel began to use collective punishment, this is how it worked:

-Every time a terrorist suspect, never a convicted terrorist, (remember that Palestians have no right to a fair trial) was identified, Israeli bulldozers would go into his town. They would order everyone out of the houses, and bulldoze the entire neighborhood.

This didn't stop the violence. It was only another injustice, and made the Palestinians more angry.

Sometimes the Israelis would take out a(n American-made) military helicopter, and demolish the entire building where they thought the suspect probably lived.

This didn't stop the violence. It was only another injustice, and made the Palestinians more angry.

Sometimes they would arrest, torture, kill, or destroy the home of the suspect's family. Good, honest, innocent people died every time.

This didn't stop the violence. It was only another injustice, and made the Palestinians more angry.

Israel would also use torture on Palestinians to extract information. Remember again, Palestinians have no human rights.

This didn't stop the violence, though. So Israel then built walls to keep out the "terrorists."

This didn't stop it either, though. Palestinans now couldn't get to their offices in order to work. Many more had homes and/or farms bulldozed to clear the way for the wall.

Israelis thought about this problem for a while. Then they decided
on a solution.

Every time someone fired a rocket over one of the walls, Israeli bulldozers would go around to the other side, and destroy the whatever they found (usually farms). Good, honest, innocent people had their life's investment destroyed by this.

This didn't stop the violence. It was only another injustice, and made the Palestinians more angry.

Israeli military officials used (and in large part, continue) to use collective punishment. This means:

"We know that a [group] person did the crime. So, let's punish everyone who's [group]. It's so much faster than figuring out who actually committed the crime and giving them a fair trial, and hopefully it intimidates the enemy."

Stalin would apply this technique to which ever group contained the rebel element.
It worked well for him, because his punishment was always death. He killed over 20 million people this way.

Israel applies this technique to whichever race contains the rebel element.
However, they don't use death as the punishment. They just use humiliation and destruction of property on a huge scale. This makes the technique ineffective. The Palestinians just get more and more desperate as a result.

Israeli strategists cannot seem to realize this. It baffles me! To solve the conflict, they must either

• Murder every Palestinian man, woman, and child
  

or

• reconcile the Palestians' grievances, compromise by compromise.
  

But they don't do either!

As I said initially, hopefully this Hamas election will show them the truth. It seems GWB has finally taken a lesson from it, however small, and for that I am glad.

(A better president would have known it from the first time he read a history of the region, though... ;)

More later, and sorry for the length....: )

RE: Marriage

Wow! A four-page post to respond to! I hope I can be a little bit more concise, but I probably won’t be able to fit as much good analysis in even if I write eight pages. We’ll see what happens.

The first serious thing I want to say is that I thought I had established that Jones wasn’t really my friend, but it’s not really a big deal.

About Jones
1) You are correct that incest is bad for all involved. As a devils advocate, I would say that Jones was specifically talking about relationships that don’t produce children hence that business about the presumption of reproduction, but incestuous relationships that don’t produce children are still bad, so I’ll join you in calling it a mistake by Jones.
2) I want to play devil’s advocate again. I once read an article by a major feminist who was also a wife of a prominent Mormon, one of tens, at the least. She said that polygamous relationships were wonderful. She got to have children, but share the work of caring for them. This allowed her to become a concert violinist and a prominent Feminist writer. Of course, I read this was a long time ago, but you can probably still find it on the web. And, I don’t really agree with her about the majority of circumstances.
3) Am I allowed to have nothing to say? I guess…since I don’t. But it would look like I was ignoring the point if I skipped it.

Concerning my being factually misguided - Guilty as charged. Actually, I am guilty of a larger sin. I was aware of the evidence that went against my point, but I withheld it. I also did say that I was being idealistic, and I felt that instances of arranged marriages didn’t entirely apply to the argument, since I was discussing the idea of allowing individuals to choose their own terms with which to get married. I didn’t note this, but I thought I might be able to get away with not mentioning it…mea culpa! I won’t make the intentional mistake again.


Now to your response…
“But I don't agree with you about making marriage just up to the people. I think that though Love is always first, Responsibility is always second.”
Bravo for mentioning Responsibility.

“If you just have marriage completely voluntary, people will get lazy about it. They'll go in, the first time, thinking, "Ok, this is marriage, this is the most super important thing," but when they realize how easy it is (under Ben's idea) to break it off, they'll be strongly tempted to do so.”
I’d like to see some evidence that people are taking marriage seriously under the current system, before I concede that mine would be any different. I think that people already view divorce as “no big deal” – even those couples with young kids.

“And if making marriage easy and stripping it of all obligations and responsibilities is what you're talking about, Ben, then I won't support it.”
I’m not, and I wouldn’t support it either. In my mind my idea would allow people to take marriage more seriously, but this would only apply to the people who are interested in it. I guess some people might get married and have no intentions of up-holding the bargain since they would no longer have to jump through what little hoops currently exist…but the marriages they would get would not be valued by society. If the system were de-legalized, then I think most Priests/Pastors/Religious leaders would set higher standards for marriage than currently exist, and these would be the marriages that would have a good track record that would then gain the respect of society.


Quick note about point C. Did you know that Clinton used his religion as a reason for his positions far more than Bush 43 has? Clinton also referred to God/Jesus more often than Bush has (there was an article about this in the WaPo or some other major newspaper a few days ago. It might have also been on CNN. I'll try to find it, but you're welcome to look as well.) …It’s hard to compare the two, since not many people doubt Bush’s sincerity when he refers to God, but lots of people did when Clinton did the same thing. I also haven’t seen Bush promoting official theology or anything…nor has he made any serious attempts at converting any Muslims. He did make it easier for religious based charities to do their work…but tell me why, actually, is this a bad thing? He didn’t stop secular organizations from doing charity, and he effectively increased the amount of charity work that is done. As a conservative, I’m against government programs that hand out cash and benefits to citizens, on ideological grounds, and I would even if those programs worked perfectly. But that doesn’t mean I want people to starve. I just want charities to do the work…not the government. I can give reasoning for this later. My post is already too long.

RE: Must be said

Well, I'm not really excited that Hamas won the Palestinian elections. A few things I want to note:

1: The elections were free, and fair. There was a choice, and there appear to have been no instances of fraud/intimidation at the polls.

2: The Palestinians chose a party that is dedicated to the destruction (by terrorist means) of Israel.

3: They did this after several years of rather accomodating actions by Sharon in a time of cease fire. Most of these actions were taken unilateraly, with no concessions from the Palestinians. Therefore they can neither claim that Hamas/violence forced the hand of the Israelies, nor that they had to give up too much to get what they wanted. Including the right to a government and elections not controlled by Israel, control of boarder points with a country other than Israel, and territory with no Jews. It's true that during the same period of time Israel retaliated for attacks (outside of the cease-fire), but it was nothing like what (in my understanding, and I could be wrong) has happened in the past. They also had to deal with Isreal building a major wall, which wasn't in exactly the place that the Palestinians wanted it to be. However, I think that the life of a Palestinian is arguable better than it has been even in recent years.

So what conclusions can we draw from this? Nothing, yet. We need to watch and see what happens. In some ways it's good that Hamas won with an outright majority. Now they can't complain that their tactics didn't work because of meddling ministers from other members of a governing coalition. They will be completely responsible for what happens. However, I'm worried about the Jewish reaction to this. Especially since Sharon is all but deas (and at least done with politics) and his middle of the road party, Kadima, is struggling to find leadership. I think their tentative support will dry up. Then, the now-even-more reactionary hard-line party, Likud will get elected at the earliest opportunity, and we'll see all the progress that had been made dry up.

But Chad, I'm slightly confused as to why you want our president to negotiate with Terrorists. Israel did not attack the Palestinians first, and if they are wrongly in the region, well, the Jew's didn't really have anything to do with that. It was the guilty conscience of Europe after which created Israel. I can only think that we'll be hearing things like what the president of Iran says about Israel (some choice examples include "Israel should be wiped off the map. There was no holocaust), and not constructive reasonings about why they are terrorists in the first place. Any reasonings they might choose to cite would most likely be examples of Israeli repression...repressions that were brought about by the Palestinian Terrorism. Neither side of this conflict holds the moral card. But it certainly doesn't help the state of Palestine to be electing to power an organization that promotes violence, if all they want is to be simple farmers.

I know I'm not going to convince you about this, but we're going to have to agree to disagree.

I will say this, I'm not as conversant about the founding of Israel as I should be. If you have more information than I do, I would love to hear it. I would especially like to hear the reasonings for the first acts of terrorism from the side of the Palestinians.

And, Chad, I'm still reading that first post you put up today. I'll be writing back soon.

Must be said

"Whether Hamas is democratically elected or not, Mr. Bush said, the U.S. won't deal with the group." -Wall street journal, today.

Bush, you are a complete and utter hypocrite, for the third major time.
You spent all your time talking about the ideal of democracy in the Middle East. And when there's finally a democratic election in Palestine, Bush says "I dont like who won, so I refuse to recognize them."

Bush: You. Can't. Win. The. War. On. Terror. By. Refusing. To. Listen. To. The. Terrorists'. Motivation.

Also, the WSJ are asses, for this sentence: "Hamas has claimed responsibility for many attacks on Israel over the years and continues to deny its right to exist."

Israel has no right to exist. No country has a "right to exist." Putting rights aside, Israel was created as a violation of democracy. A violation of international human rights, and U.N. principles of the self-determination of peoples. And we still have violence, tears, and problems today because of it.

And Bush won't listen to those who would tell him why.
He is an unbelievably incompetent president.



====================================================
I am not denying that Hamas kills people it shouldn't kill, and that that is bad.
But considering the terrors, cruelties, injustices, and tortures that Israel has inflicted upon Palestinians I consider them at the very least morally neutral.

Israel assasinated a 70 year old man in a wheel chair with a rocket They regularly destroy the lives and livelihoods of innocent people. They build walls to lock out other races, often cutting off those people from their own farms. Israel has a religious symbol on their flag. The most basic concept of the country is racist and religiously discriminatory. They give citizens gifts or violence depending upon what race they are.

Israel has zero moral authority.

Want to say something about the Jewish Holocaust? I'll tell you something. Being a victim does NOT make you a good person. Being a victim does NOT give you moral authority. It makes people angry and eager to victimize someone else.

First off, I want to say that I think it's really cool that we can agree to work for our posts to be at
least non-partisan, and reasonable. I really appreciate that from everyone.

First, factual problems.
Ben, you are factually misguided in 1 key way and your friend Colin P.A. Jones is wrong on 3 points.

First, Colin's mistakes.

1. "If the presumption of reproduction is no longer needed, then there is no real reason to prevent incestuous marriages."

There is a very big reason to prevent incestuous marriages. Whether you "presume" reproduction or not, incest is more than half likely to produce a child with severe genetic diseases. Moreover, incest is known to cause psychological problems. These two reasons have been proven by reason, science and lots of history, so I don't feel I need to cite sources here.

2. "Islamic or Mormon fundamentalist marital corporations could allow polygamy."

This wouldn't be ok or normal. There is a big problem with this: Polygamous marriages are known to cause large psychological problems. Among them, it demeans the percieved value of individual women. Seconod, much infighting occurs between wives for favor of the children. There was a NYT magazine article a while back that documented this among outlaw polygamists in Utah. If you want more evidence about why polygamy is unhealthy for society, you can read
"Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe of Nigeria. Or, read the history of the early Muslim royalty.

3. [I agree with you here, Ben:] I also get the feeling that Colin seems to presume that marriage is only a practical contract, like you'd find in a business. It's not. It's a contract both of concrete rules and of deep emotional commitment. I think we can all understand this from our experiences growing up in the United States, and our relationships with our parents and their relationships with each other. *1

Second, Ben's factual mistake:

1. "All marriages are this way [of love], not just the one's between two people, and again, I'm using marriage to describe the myriad co-habitation rituals that exist in the world)"

That's not true. In some cultures, there is no concept of "love," at all. For example, the country people of Mali only recognize lust, or desire for sex, in their lives. Neither romantic nor maternal love is recognized there. (My cousin spent a semester in a poor village in Mali researching them). In many other cultures, love is understood, but marriage is completely unrelated to love. For example, traditional Indian culture. Marriages are all arranged, economic contracts. There are so many tragic Indian novels, plays, and movies about arranged marriages that are depressing and spiritless. For one, read "Nectar in a sieve."

(I'm remembering all my hi school required reading for some reason....;)

=====Ok, now the response.=====

Ben: I have to say, I agree with you. Love is the most important thing, especially in a marriage.
I think the prevalence of Christianity, the religion of love, in the most successful societies, proves
this. But I don't agree with you about making marriage just up to the people. I think that though Love is always first, Responsibility is always second.

If you just have marraige completely voluntary, people will get lazy about it. They'll go in, the first time, thinking, "Ok, this is marriage, this is the most super important thing," but when they realize how easy it is (under Ben's idea) to break it off, they'll be strongly tempted to do so.

I find that the study of history and especially the study of eocnomics generally proves that if there is an easier way to do something, people will choose the easier way, in vast quantities *2. And if making marriage easy and stripping it of all obligations and responsibilities is what you're talking about, Ben, then I won't support it.

The greatness of Western marriage is that it is one of the ultimate combinations of love and responsiblity, one that everyone has the potential for. Marriage laws are important because they commit families to each other, reward that commitment with benefits, and then punish the couple if they try to separate. It's a path that is very difficult to conform to, but that ultimately brings some of the most wonderful rewards, be they healthy children, or simply a more loving and constructive life.*3

That is why I believe it is in our utmost interest to open marriage to any two consenting adults, and otherwise retain it in its current form.

=====Preemptions of possible criticism=====
A. With regard to the raising of children by same-sex parents:
-Two loving, committed parents, of the same gender, are far better than one parent, and vastly better than none, even if possibly inferior to two opposite-sex parents. *4

B. About the marriage of two friends who are consciously NOT in a romantic relationship with each other:
-I agree that this is really not the purpose of marriage, but as I can't see it having any negative effect, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't happen.

C: Marriage should be interpreted religiously in whatever way the citizen desires (despite the Bush Admin's efforts to force its religion on everyone). Yet, as it stands today, I think marriage should be ultimately a legal and not a religious matter. This is because a marriage of responsibility and love is in the best interest of the country as a whole: committing families to work together to support each other's success and love each other.

*1 These three mistakes are not surprising to me, considering that Colin Jones lives in Japan. Japan, in all my experience of it (and I have a lot ;) is a place where the value of the individual,
especially of individual women, and the value of love, is not understood. It's easy to get used to
once one is there, because it's a culture that surrounds. Nevertheless I would say it is a bad culture in that sense because Japanese kill themselves and become depressed much more than do Americans. Japanese women who are excluded from economic life become resentful and take out their anger on their children, especially male children, which causes those boys to grow up with generally misogynistic fantasies and continue the cycle.

*2 Otherwise, the poem about taking the road less traveled by would never be so profound.

*3 I'm not a marriage/children Nazi like Leon Kass. Everybody is different and marriage is not for everybody. But I feel sure that for many people it brings some of the best rewards of life.

*4 It has not yet been proven whether or not same-sex parents or opposite-sex parents are a better environment for children. So far there is only speculation. I have heard persuasive speculation from both sides of the argument, and seen persuasive statistics in favor of gay parents. But I don't want to judge until I have all the facts.

UPDATE: I found these statistics from the Heritage Foundation. They regard constant, 2 parent households and are not related to sexual orientation of parents. Observe:

• Adolescents in intact families, as a group, are the least likely to feel depressed compared to those with divorced, step-, cohabiting, or single parents; (National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health)
• The national average grade-point scores of children in intact families is 2.98, compared to 2.79 for children of cohabiting parents and 2.71 for children living in stepfamilies; (National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health)
• The rate of youth incarceration is significantly greater for children raised in single-mother and stepfamily homes than for those raised in intact families, even after controlling for parental income and education; (National Longitudinal Survey of Youth)
• Children in non-intact families are three times as likely to have children outside of marriage; (National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.) and
• Rates of engaging in problem behaviors such as lying, stealing, drunkenness, and violence are sharply higher for children of divorce compared to children in intact families. (National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health)

---Chad!
Still awake? ; )

Just Another Marriage Post

So, someone has been stealing my ideas without my knowledge. And, as you might assume, he totally destroys it. I hate it when people turn my genius idealistic musings into a hellish shadow of what they once were. Well, once I became aware of the rebel idea - which took a while since it was published in the San Francisco Chronicle (not very high up on my list of newspapers to read) - I immediately began to work out how to return my plan to its original state of glory.
Go ahead, and read the fool's proposal, and then come back so I can tell you what he got right and wrong.

Ready? Good.

Well, he wants to take government out of the picture. That's good. But he wants to replace government with corporatism and lawyers. That's bad. Good marriages are supposed to be an agreement between people that love each other. (all marriages are this way, not just the ones between two people, and again, I'm using marriage to describe the myriad co-habitation rituals that exist in the world) My proposal was to take all that is soulless and wrong (that would be the government) with the state of marriage in our country (and most others as well), and return it to its roots (that would be the people). The proposal outlined in the article gets rid of the soulless meddling of the government (at least until the end, when he sort of says that he wants something akin to corporate law to govern marriage. Crazy fool), and replace it with something that is equally soulless, namely, lawyers and corporatism. I feel that marriage should be pure, that's why I don't want meddling. This proposal just changes the direction the meddling comes from. I want love, not contracts and permits. I know this is idealistic, and I usually dislike idealism. But I'm gonna stick to my guns on this one. Thanks.

All that being said, I think it might be better than the current state. However, I also sometimes think that things like haggis might be tasty (at least until I really think about it), so that last thought might not count for much (as I'm still mulling it over). However, I don't think it's as bad as this guy makes it out to be...but I could be wrong. Go and read for yourself. We link, you decide!

Almost there

I totally agree with you, Ben--it's the ideas that are important. We have good ideas and should make them clear and accessible to all. I'm really impressed by your new tax proposition, it sounds like it might have a really good effect on everybody (aside from the initial sudden drop in spending).
The whole point of my spiel is,

I want to make sure that our *ideas* themselves are /logical/. I want to avoid empty, partisan noise. I feel we should use our discussion to learn from each other.

Otherwise, without any guidelines, we'd be simply stabbing in the dark at each other. Throwing out arguments based on unstated assumptions, ignoring criticisms, making lots of noise, but little communication.

If we could just pledge to make our ideas clear and reasonable, both the creative and the critical ones, I feel that would be ideal.

A blog is what people make of it.

Let's agree on a general principle of clarity and reasonableness and get back quickly to the debating. I don't care about the format as long as anybody makes a good point.

-Chad

Rules

Wouldn't making rules for a blog be against the spirit of blogging? I mean, we're not exactly respected members of the mass-media that need to protect the reputations of their respective organizations.
Blogs are organic...let's stay that way...if we have rules about when and how to post, it's no longer a blog. Or, at least, it's not really an original blog. Let's just let this flow organically...and, please, remember, it's the ideas here that make us different, original, not the formatting.

Clean Air Act for this blog

1. Ben, I am glad that we can agree on what a logical fallacy is.

2. I'm confused, however, because it seemed, in your [Re:Clearing the Air] last paragraph, that you thought I'm at fault for using a common logical fallacy as an example of a common logical fallacy. I'm sure this isn't what you meant, and I'm sorry for not understanding it clearly. Could you please explain it?

3. You're right, I must have missed the point. I'm confused as to what you're saying about marriage. Your post on marriage was titled "Slippery Slope for marriage" implying that expanding the definition of marriage is a slippery slope. Then, in your Re: Clearing the air post, you say

"I want to note that I don't think legalizing homosexual marriages would lead to legalizing polygamous marriages."

This apparently contradicts what you suggested originally. I don't understand. Did you change your mind? I don't want to respond until I understand your argument, so that I don't attack you unfairly.

4. I think this blog should contain civil discourse: arguments that respond to each other directly and criticize/support specific arguments individually.

That was why I offered an explanation of the common usage of 'reductio ad absurdum,' so as to make it clear as a rule of debate to all posters/readers. It's a rule that might allow arguments to be clearer and rational debate more effective. It's really cool that we can agree on that.

How about we make a Rules meeting/comittee to agree on discourse rules? I think might help us discuss politics more clearly, persuasively, and transparently.

Christ? (Did I use the lord's name in vain? Am I going to hell for that?)

Well, Italy is very interesting. It seems that they are more lawsuit happy than Americans. In fact, there is one 70-year-old man who is suing a Priest, basically for lying and profiting from it, because he asserted that there was a man named Jesus from Nazareth. The news story (CNN) is here.
Well, I am a Christian, but I feel on pretty solid ground stating that there was a historical figure who went around by the name of Jesus, and who lived in Nazareth. My reasoning for this belief doesn't come only from reading the Bible. There are, in fact, plenty of secular historical accounts that mention this person, and the affect he had on the populace. The view you get of him varies depending on who wrote the account, but he ranges from the Messiah to a rabble-rouser intent on overthrowing Herod and the Romans. That lines up pretty well with what the Gospel's say, at least in general. I don't really want to get into an argument about inconsistencies in the Gospels over the internet, (but if you want to, I can go there) but that doesn't seem like a good reason to doubt the existence of a man named Jesus, especially since we have sober historical accounts to look at, which corroborate the basic facts, if not some of the miracles. (The miracles being one of the chief points of contention in the debate about inconsistencies in the Gospels)
I also want to say that I'll be going to the town where the trial is being held, early next week. I'll do my best to do some investigative reporting, and I'll post whatever I learn here, first. So, Stay Tuned for the Biggest Scoop of your lives!

RE: Clearing the air

Well Chad, I just got an A in Logic and Argumentation, and we talked a lot about logical fallacies. You've hit on a very important one, but I think, you are also guilty of a more serious violation. Missing the Point...also called, attacking a Straw Man. If you look closely at my post, the polygamy part wasn't really what I was talking about. Also, while it may be true that only one congressman brought this up in Congress, there are at least several other people talking about it. One hotspot for such debate is Utah, where at least a couple of towns (controlled by a very extremist wing of the Mormon Church, one that is so extremist, it is in fact not being spoken to by the larger version) are actively trying to legalize polygamous marriages...while not allowing homosexual marriages. And, there are several groups in Canada also trying to expand their marriage laws to allow for polyamorous relationships.
I want to note that I don't think legalizing homosexual marriages would lead to legalizing polygamous marriages. And I don't need to assign value judgments to reach this conclusion...they are two separate things, and one can come without the other...and one coming has no bearing on the other.
However, that wasn't my point, and I would invite you to go back and read my post again and comment on what I was really talking about (That not allowing government to regulate marriage would be a good thing, for everyone involved) ... but thank you for giving us a lesson on Logical Fallacies...
There is also a rule in the blogoshpere (this isn't exactly related) that states: "The first person to bring up Hitler in an argument that doesn't relate to the Third Reich immediately loses the argument. There are to be no exceptions." There is a special name for this rule, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Let's dub it, "The Hitler Clause" I think we should follow it on this blog, but I don't anticipate any problems...

Clearing the air.

Let's talk about reductio ad absurdum (common usage):

The only lawmaker or activist I can remember ever bringing up multiple-person-marriage in the last 6 years is Jim Gerlach.

That's strange. He's a congressman. Why would he be the only one to bring up something that nearly everyone agrees is primitive and unhealthy like polygamy?

He's saying that arguing for gay marriage somehow argues for polygamy, because they both have one arbitrary thing in common: expanding the definition of marriage.

In reality, they don't follow.
Just because they have one thing in common, and one is surely bad, doesn't mean the other is.

In common language, you call an argument "reductio ad absurdum" that takes one similarity between a reasonable position and a ridiculous position, and equates them because of that one similarity.

Using an ad absurdum argument you can say all kinds of crazy things.

A: "I believe in eating off of plates."
B: "Oh, eating off of plates, eh? I bet the next thing you'll ask for is eating off of the SPACE SHUTTLE!!"
A: "...[speechless]"

B used an argument ad absurdum. Because both plates and the space shuttle are made of ceramics, and because
-eating off of plates isn't so bad
but
-eating off of the space shuttle is ridiculous,
he made A look bad.

I had a friend while I stayed in Japan who tried a similar tactic on me, and I lost the argument. I'll tell you the story.

Chad: "I like Richard Wagner's music, because it talks about the greatness of love and responsibility--"
Ben: "You know....ADOLF HITLER liked Richard Wagner, too. I don't like Wagner. His music is too Nazi."
Chad: "...[speechless]"
Dennis: "[talking to Ben]Yeah, I agree with you, man."

...when of course Wagner died before Hitler was born, most Nazis hated Wagner, and Wagner's philosophy is completely different from Hitler's.

This form is also known as the "Reductio ad hitlerum." When one person says something is good, another compares it to Hitler by saying, "Hitler did/supported/liked [...thing...], so therefore it's bad."

Using either is a logical fallacy.
So please, let's not use it here.

Any further curiosities, please go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

Thanks,
Chad

The Fair-Tax

I admit I haven't read the book, but I already think that this tax is better than the one we currently have in place.

The basic idea is that a sales tax would replace all income taxes. I think people would be less concerned about paying taxes based on their spending rather than paying taxes based on their income. It would also save the government some of the costs associated with tax collection. The rate would be about 23-30%, and it would supposedly bring in as much money as we do now.

First thing to note, before people start saying it would be regressive. They proponents say that we could include a rebate (in the form of a check from the government each month) for each family/person that would cover the cost of essentials. In practice this mean a check for 23-30% of the poverty level for each family/person. This seems fairly a fairly flat rate (by that i mean, not progressive nor regressive) and that's good. I think that people who make enough money could choose not to receive this rebate. Of course, the rebate would create a new bureaucracy (who is a citizen, and who gets one of these checks? What do people who are now on their own as opposed to living at home do?) and letting people opt out would add to that, but I think the costs would still be less than they are now.

Also, please note, we can vary the rates of taxation. A sales tax on food doesn't have to be as high as a sales tax on luxury boats. That could make the system more progressive, and it would also act as an impetus for savings. Paying a higher rate of tax on something will encourage rational actors not to buy it...so they save their money, therefore relying less on social security for their old age. Even a flat sales tax would encourage saving...what will you think when you go to buy the flat-screen TV and it suddenly costs 30% more? ("I don't really need that big of a TV. I don't really need those extra DVD’s.")

Another benefit for this, is that it looks like everyone gets a pay raise. It doesn't work out that way...people will pay almost the same in taxes as they did before, except for people at the low end of the spectrum who will pay practically nothing because of the rebate. I also think that the income tax is basically a tax on the privilege of working. If you work, you have to pay the tax to the government because they allow you to have a job. (I know this is an extreme statement, but it's pretty true, even if it's not intended that way) However, if you pay a tax on the things you buy, you are now paying for the privilege of purchasing those things. Instead of being taxed for your passive actions, you are consciously making a choice "Do I want to buy this, and pay the tax on it? Or do I want to save my money?" It gives the decision to the citizen, rather than just taxing them for working.

An easy way to figure out who gets a check would be to have two forms: one that each person fills out when they are employed, like the w-4, and another that would be available in many places, like the internet, the town hall, maybe even free for the taking from convenience/grocery stores, that you would fill out if you were un-employed, and then send on to the now-much-smaller IRS. Since you would be paying the tax due with every purchase, and there would be no possibility of not paying the tax, you would not need to fill out loads of paperwork on April 14, therefore giving me a better month of the year to have my birthday.

A sales tax would also take away the need for the capital gains tax, and the inheritance tax. All that money would be taxed anyway, when it was spent. So there will be much less unimportant stuff for our politicians to argue about, and they could do the jobs they're supposed to be doing.

I do think that if we allow variable tax rates on different good, our system could become needlessly complicated. That's something to watch out for, and certainly speaks in favor of a straight flat tax rate.

Some states already use this method, especially ones with lots of tourism. It is a big revenue generator for states like California and Florida, and Maine even has a pretty good system in place. Maine still has an income tax, but it also has a relatively low sales tax rate. I'd rather just have the sales tax, and it seems to be working ok for the other two that I mentioned.

I like the idea, and I wish there were enough people who were actively considering it so that we could get some more studies on it's probable effects and then maybe switch to it...but for now I like it better than system we have now.

Cross Posted at Ben's Rants and Raves

Slippery Slope for Marraige

Check out this post from NRO. It brings up the subject of Polyandry (and it links to a post from the blogfaddah, but it's not as thoughtful, so therefore, not as relevant, but you should follow the link anyway.)

Personally, I don't think we'll get so far down the road that the government provides multiple partner-marriage certificates. I don't exactly have a problem with government-sponsored polygamy, in that I don't think it would be any worse than just polygamy (or, rather as KJL rightly corrects, polyandry).
I feel that the government shouldn't discriminate. Therefore, if we're going to have marriage certificates, we should make sure that all parts of the citizenry are eligible to get them. However, I don't think we should just make gay marriage (or any of the other things we're talking about) legal.
The knot in the issue is that, if we make it government supported, then priests (or any official who can marry people) who don't want to marry homosexual couples, will have to at least fill out the paperwork for them to be married. I don't think we'll be able to force the priests to do the whole ceremony, but I do think that people would cry "Discrimination" if they refused to do the paperwork. I don't think we should force anyone to compromise his or her beliefs in that way.
Here is my solution. Lets give marriage back to the people who invented it. I'm sort of referring specifically to the church here, however, I know that other cultures came up with male-female cohabitation rituals (along with others) as well, and my point works for everyone. Let's get the government out of the picture on this. If there was any issue where the government was superfluous, it's this one. The certificate doesn't really do anything. It lets you file jointly for taxes, and sometimes pay more money. It lets you get health benefits from work, but most companies already have committed relationships clauses or something similar that could still apply. It lets you visit your spouse in the hospital, but we could do that just as easily by having everyone write a permission note that they could give to their loved ones that would allow them to visit. Other than that, there isn't much.
These benefits are already given to people who have civil-unions. However, they appear not to have appeased the homosexual/whatever-I'm-supposed-to-call-it-now community. The reason for this is simple. A civil union does not grant the social respect that marriage does in our society. I have a news flash for you: the government sanction will not change this!
What I propose is this. Lets get the government completely out of the loop, as far as marriage goes. Let's let churches decide who they want to give marriage ceremonies to. And lets let civic groups decide as well. People could then use whoever they wanted to marry them...even their best friend Bob. The churches that are comfortable giving marriages to homosexuals will be allowed to, and the churches that are not, won't have to. The people who don't want to get married in the church can go ask their best friend Bob to provide the ceremony, if they feel they need one. And no one would be able to complain that they are treated differently with taxes, or hospital visitation, since everyone would be on the same page. The community respect for marriage would not change, and some groups would be less respected than others, but this is already the case (what do you think about the marriages that happen in Las Vegas?) so it won't change anything substantial.
Also, the system, as it currently stands, discriminates against single people. If the government doesn't grant special privileges to married people, then it can't continue to discriminate against singles.
If this post doesn't make sense, well, tough. But tell me, and I'll re-phrase. Maybe I'll even edit it a bit...but that's not exactly blogging.

Update: The links I put up top no longer seem to be working, or even appearing. I've come to the conclusion that they died, or I forgot to create them in the first place...errr, sorry. I've gone to the trouble of rounding up some of them, but the others seem to be lost in the sands of time...

Check out Instapundit here and here

RR=P

I have my first class in fifteen minutes. So here's a quick post. The Progressive movement in America is essentially the same as the Religious Right movement in America. They are both moralistic movements that want to control the government and make everyone else in the country live by their rules. Neither group is better than the other, because the rules they want everyone to follow excludes just as many people as the other group does. So they are both as good as the other.
I can provide examples for how similar they are, when I get back to the internet. But if you're smart, you already know what they are, because you already agree with me.

Response to Ben's "Kyoto II"

Posting from my 2-room apt in DC! Whoo! : ) Lobbying is fun so far.

Ben, I really agree with you on most of your post. But I criticize you here:

-Don't just express a problem, express a solution too!
-I think your last three sentences are overgeneralizations. I'll address them each in one sentence. ONE: The American Revolution, implying all that came after it, was forced on the country by a minority (less than 30% of the pop.) who thought that all the others would appreciate it. TWO: Treaties are like laws: They require both enforcement And public support to work, but they are powerful when they do. THREE: See ONE, and remember that governments are composed of individuals, and especially unique individuals, IN government, are often the ones who make the biggest differences.

You're right, convincing people is more important. And ad campaigns aren't enough alone. If you tell people: "Either buy a green product or suffer a less beautiful world," that doesn't seem to have much of an effect. Activists have been trying to get Americans to be active about stopping genocide, with not much practical effect. It's one of the worst crimes you can commit. Why no action? Some of the biggest reasons include:
1- People don't care about what they can't see (don't often see rwanda/sudan on news, pop culture/local stuff takes priority)
2- People don't care about what doesn't affect them directly (Its somebody elses tragedy)

Back to environmentalism, Not everybody really cares about the beauty of nature(especially nature in some foreign country) enough to donate money. Off the top of my head one might guess that less than 5% do (more at colby b/c colby is known for its enviro studies progrums)

This is why you have to convince individuals that this will affect them directly.
Before Katrina, SUVs and other wasteful cars were used heavily, and criticized/satirized heavily as well. The criticism didn't affect the rising sales, tho. It was the Katrina oil scare that got people really into alt. energy. One can see hybrid cars around these days, where previously they were just amusements in "Tech" sections of news/magazines. People realize that oil prices can rise suddenly, that affects ppl directly and is right in their face. So there was at least a small rise in hybrid sales.

Thus, I argue that environmental product ads should be aimed at what really affects people every day in their own lives, like gas prices.


------------------------
4 Tangential Points:
I have seen people argue back and forth on whether oil is really running out or not. At least, it seems we will have to drill in more and mroe unsavoury places if we do drill.

I would argue that the 'war on terror' has made Americans less friendly to Saudia Arabia, probably one of Bush-tachi 's original goals (transfer oil source from SA to Iraq), but has also increased resentment slightly towards oil (not one of bush's goals).

Hopefully all these coal mine disasters will tell people that coal is not cool. Personally I support nuclear power: It's [EDIT: vastly safer than coal power], it produces less nuclear waste than coal power, and it is very efficient and has little negative effect on the environment.

Of course, solar power / wind power / hydrogen power are more ideal, as they pose no long term (long term meaning less than 6 billion years) problems, but they have not yet been researched/developed to an efficient/profitable level yet.