i love pre-crazy michael jackson, but....

some thoughts on proposals of change...

just a note or two...

last night i was watching c-span (i know), and newt gingrinch was giving a speech at the american enterprise institute. it was an interesting speech...it was full of thoughtful (if flawed) critique and bold ideas. i was in a listening mood because i had just finished listening to eboo patel talking about pluralism and religion...something that i almost always end up rejecting—not because i don’t agree with that idea; it’s because i don’t think that it’s entirely a workable notion when applied to religion and faith. the very notion of religion and faith seem to contradict the foundational principles of pluralism. however, i find it interesting and strangely satisfying to think and talk about. but, i digest (i love the family guy. i also love thunderlip.)

how about the idea as the american consumer as a consumable product? we’ll talk later...

i caught the last half hour or so of newt’s (heh heh) speech. he was talking about some of the challenges faced in determining the course of our future. specifically, he was talking about economics and culture and how the two inform one another. he talked about the situation in detroit...it’s decline and the policies that led to that decline. i don’t really know much about it—he intimated that it was all the fault of liberals and their desire to manage everything and redistribute wealth and their tendency toward bureaucracy. *shrug* could be...i woke up this morning thinking that there are a few things about which liberals need to be honest. the most important of those being not everything system that we humans encounter can be or even should be managed. economic output, the environment (specifically, wilderness), etc., etc. sometimes, i think that it’s just enough to get out of the way. i digested again.

since i didn’t catch the entire speech i didn’t really understand the point of bringing up detroit. maybe he was saying that since it was the site of so many failed liberal policies that it was time to try something that “makes sense.” anyway, he laid out seven proposals (of which i only remember a couple) to radically change or at least stake out a new direction. ( i think in a lot of ways, he’s making the implicit argument that the “great society” experiment has failed, and it’s time to try something else. though, how he can say that while at the same time our country has experienced the greatest economic expansions in the history of mankind is curious.

how bad-ass was david cook the other night on american idol? another reason to love chris cornell, as if i need more.

anyway, the one thing that he said that kind of stuck in my craw was the idea that adolescence was a contrived notion. it was a contrived notion of 19th and 20th century liberals...all of the things to counteract the growing power of monopolistic corporations...labor unions, child labor laws, etc. etc. but, i absolutely disagree with his analysis of social history. i mean, the reason that he addresses adolescence in particular is because of the amount of crime and the amount of leisure associated with the lives of teenagers. i don't disagree with that...i do agree that a great deal of undirected leisure time can lead to some bad stuff. the point of his analysis with which i take umbrage is the notion that somehow the social and economic reforms of the 19th century somehow created a class of people with nothing to do. on the contrary, the growth of the age group called adolescence has more to do with our astounding economic success than any law. it's the same effect that we see in financially successful families. if the parents go to college and do well for themselves, not only will their kids be more likely to do well, but also the parents will have something to leave for the kids and grandkids--and life becomes "easier" for successive generations. makes sense? doesn't it make sense that the same principle could be applied to a society? doesn't it make sense that as the country as a whole (not just a privileged few) became wealthier and moved through demographic transition, children wouldn't have to work to support smaller and more educated families?

The accompaniment

HOW FREAKIN' CUTE IS THIS?!?!

Religious fundamentalism and the Constitution

My friend, Leah the Lawyer, posed an interesting question with regard to the religion, the threat we currently face, and how the Founding Fathers (FF) might have faced the question. Here's a bit of what she wrote...

"I was wondering the other day, as I drove around, what would Thomas Jefferson think about the War on Terror. What would our Founding Fathers think, if they were presented with the knowledge that religious fundamentalists who had no qualms about sending themselves, their wives, or even their children, into battle armed to a T in order implement a suicide bombing."

I revisited my plan for this post Friday night. I was flipping through my Thomas Jefferson reader while I was kicking it at work and I re-read his first inaugural speech. I came across a quote that sort of summed it up for me. He said

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

I think that's the crap shoot right there. That's the whole ballgame...we are asked every day to put aside the process (the Constitutional processes) and trust President Bush. Stop asking questions about Gonzalez, trust me. Stop asking questions about how I manage the war prisons, trust me. I think that TJ would be more alarmed about the manner in which we have decided to prosecute this war than the threat itself. I say this because I believe that the FF's and their contemporaries were living through a time of extreme religious intolerance and violence. The Age of Reason saw the end (essentially) of the modernization of Christianity. Even at the time of the constitutional convention there were instances of religious extremism in America--it was one of the factors that brought about the end of the Articles of Confederation. Ultimately, I believe that TJ would see the war on terror as a more potent threat to our survival than the threat of radical islam.

On a tangential note, is there a policy difference in thinking of radical islam as a strategic threat as opposed to a threat to our way of life? i mean...can we think of radical islam as a threat to the lives of people rather than a wholesale assault on the idea of america? i know that the radicals want to destroy us--not just our lives and property (well, maybe they'll keep our property) but also our ideas. but, have they? i mean have they even come close to hurting our ideas? just a thought or two...i'll expand in a later post, i think.

exasperation...

ford
jack daniels
enterprise
branson tractors
rocky boots
fox sports
wrangler
the US Army
bud light
dickies
big tex (?)

these are just a few of the companies/organizations with whom mike vick should have had endorsement deals. apparently, they aren't shy about benefiting from animal cruelty for the entertainment of the masses--they have ad space on the nationally broadcast bull riding competitions.

this is what they say. *shrug*

3 of the Sunderland 4

3 of the Sunderland 4--12 years later. We missed you, Brandon.

power

it occurred to me the other day that while all of the presidential hopefuls (with the possible exception of mccain) continue to have a field day bashing the president for his handling of the war, none of them (with the exception of paul & kuccinich) have recanted themselves of the power that the president now wields. none of them have said that they would open the doors of gitmo to the international community. to my knowledge, none of them have promised to submit themselves to the scrutiny of the congress in the event a declaration of war is needed. i don't specifically recall any of them saying they would never utilize the kind of unilateral measures used by the current administration (with the obvious caveat that we are not in immediate danger, of course).

did you know that ron paul has raised more money than john mccain? the mccain campaign is almost broke. the paul campaign raised over 5 million dollars in the 3Q. i don't think that the media is liberal so much as it simply suffers from group think. it just looks liberal now because part of the current group think is everything bush does is bad. i remember not being able to watch the news without hearing about that blue dress in the 90's. *shrug* just thought i would throw that out there. by the way, i learned that tidbit about ron paul on the Air America website. who says liberals can't report good stories?