Today's politics

Here are some of my current political thoughts

• Consider this argument: Although the left wing arguments for items such as immigration reform, universal health care, legal abortion, or energy independence seem tenable - useful in theory - the 'demographic makeup' of our beloved country would make the liberal plans completely useless if not harmful in practice. In other words, the liberal plan will typically fail because the country is too full of irrational ignoramuses (drug addicted 6th-time mothers, high-school dropout People's Court defendants) and amoral scumbags (millionaire CEOs, personal injury lawyers) who are waiting to ambush and/or take advantage of the system.
  
  This argument is one I've been hearing a lot more often coming from my conservative acquaintances who (I think) are attempting to redefine themselves from some of the right wing failures of the current conservative administration.
  
  I would say to this argument that, while it is always a possibility that a plan like affirmative action or tax-payer funded health-care will have holes that might be exploited, there are two reasons why they should still be attempted:
  
  1) While the Democratic position is an attempted solution, the Republican position on these issues is NOT a solution at all: It simply ignores the problem. Quite often the 'conservative everyman' position on most issues is "pull yourself up by your bootstraps." If you work hard and diligently, you'll be able to afford good health insurance (like mine) and then your kids will have better opportunities. If you are from south or central america and you want to try out your luck in this great country of ours you should first work hard in your country and save up the 3 thousand dollars for the admittance fee, then wait the requisite 2-10 years for the application to go through and then you can join us in the land of opportunity (like my parents did?). In the meantime we'll build a fence to keep the illegal immigrants out (despite the fact that most illegals enter legally and simply overstay their visas)
  
  Well, after spending thousands of dollars of education which involved learning a bit of social psychology, gaining a deep understanding of statistics and how they are calculated/manipulated, reading lots of literature on the subject of at-risk individuals and laissez faire governmental policy, I've come to the conclusion that, while this philosophy sounds tenable - useful in theory - in the long run it causes more problems than it solves.
  
  It basically leaves a great majority of the population into a continued decline while continuously rewarding those few lucky enough to have been born in a decent environment. So anecdotal evidence you'll hear from middle class americans might make you think that the conservative way of looking at these types of problems works, stepping back and looking at the big picture shows you that, while a very small number of tenacious youth does manage to live a more successful life than their parents, the vast majority fails to do so because despite what the rich white republicans keep telling them, they don't have the role models or life experience available to see that it may be possible for them to better their situation.
  
  On a personal side note: If I hadn't received financial aid through my undergraduate career it would be very likely that I would not be in the extraordinarily great position that I am now. I would like to, therefore, admonish George W Bush and Gov. Schwarzenegger for directly and indirectly cutting funding to the aid and loan programs of their respective governances.
  
  2) I hate to quote Obama on this issue but he said it all when he said in a speech last week "It's like they[the McCain campaign? the republican party?] take pride in their ignorance". He said it with respect to McCain making fun of Obama's reminder/suggestion that we could all save on gas if we remembered to keep the air pressure up in our tires.
  
  But my point is this. So much of the conservative issues rely on what seem to be ignorance about the reality of a situation (like the border fence building fiasco). Take for example opening up off-shore or ANWR drilling. A conservative estimate of when we would see an effect on gas prices resulting from drilling in new locations here at home is 10 years. If everything goes according to plan and we get incredibly lucky with respect to finding the oil, getting it pumped and turning it into gasoline, in the best of all possible worlds we might see some kind of decrease in fuel costs in 2 to 3 years (assuming people start surveying today). In addition, drilling for more oil does very little to stop our oil dependency. In a time when we should be investing more money in researching for better energy alternatives I don't think that we should allow energy companies the freedom to postpone that research by funneling cash to off-shore drilling rigs or building roads into Alaskan wildlife. But the details don't matter. What matters is that drilling off the coast of California SOUNDS like it would lower gas prices with the additional benefit that we aren't giving our money to those middle easterners whom we don't seem to like so much. And that seems to be enough incentive for a bunch of Americans to get behind the plan.
  
  A simpler case of a conservative policy wrought with ignorance is the stem cell research issue. I did a little impromptu quiz with some conservative friends and asked each of them how they felt about stem cell research. 6 of 6 were against it. 4 of 6 couldn't tell me why they were against it. 2 of 6 told me that stem cell research is bad because it's research being done on dead fetuses. When I asked all 6 whether scientific research on dead bodies was acceptable if the body agreed, when it was still alive, to donate itself to research after death, 5 of 6 said this was acceptable. After informing the 4 participants regarding what stem cells were, I also asked whether stem cell research would be acceptable if stem cells could be retrievable from a source other than a human zygote (such as an animal zygote or a human placenta or through genetic engineering). 6 of 6 weren't sure. My understanding of these results is that the average conservative voter doesn't know very much about the issue of stem cell research, doesn't care enough to find out more about it, but is completely willing to vote against it.
  
  Why? Because just like it's easier to check the republican party box on the ballot rather than to spend your days reading the newspaper and trying to figure out who should be the state comptroller or the senator, it's easier to listen to your president (or your dad or your mom or your favorite cable news pundit) and think "I'm a republican, so I must agree with all the other republicans on these issues that I know nothing about".
  
  Admittedly, many liberals are just as guilty of this logic as conservatives, but in my experience the proportion is much smaller.
  
  
• Interestingly enough, I think the problem of gun control in this country is equivalent to this new conservative argument described above. In my life I've known several responsible gun owners: friends, family, neighbors. When you have an intelligent, responsible, and friendly gun owner (who happens to be a very good marksman/woman) living next door it becomes very easy to feel a little safer in the event that a mad gunman comes to our neighborhood and starts shooting (or in the event that our government oversteps its bounds). Neither of these events is likely to occur but, in conjunction with my libertarian leanings, they provide me with some reason to support free and legal firearms.
  
  The problem, as I see it, is that I also know many irresponsible and ignorant people who own guns and would be happy to own more, especially those guns which could only be useful for destroying hundreds of human beings in short bursts of rapid fire. Why do they want these guns? Well, when I asked (and I ask repeatedly) the worst answer I got was "because it would be cool" the best answer I got was "because I can".
  
  I think the only way we can keep guns free and legal while reducing the amount of gun violence and 'accidents' in a society is to require all gun owners to be over-educated. One of the several pre-requisite for owning a gun (among being a high school graduate or equivalent and/or passing a simple intelligence test in order to qualify as normal or above) should be to know and UNDERSTAND COMPLETELY all of the firearm statistics relating to misuse, death, and theft. This would be easier if we included statistics lessons at the 3rd grade math level. In this era it would be much more useful for the average american citizen to know and fully understand statistics as opposed to calculus. But that's a rant for another time.
  
  Bottom line? I'm pro-gun but I'm anti-gun-owning-fool and I'm pretty sure that gun-owning-fools make up a large bulk of gun-owners in the world simply because fools tend to make up a big chunk of humanity.
  
  
• I don't see much footage of Obama fumbling on a reporter's question. It happens once in a while, and possibly more when the cameras aren't rolling, but for the most part I can only recall 2 times from memory when I saw Obama befuddled by some question and really not knowing what to say. Unlike many politicians, even when Obama doesn't have a good answer to some question he can dodge it while sticking to the subject such that the dodge is less obvious.
  
  On the other hand, McCain seems to be a lot more like the traditional politician. It seems that he is much more often stumped (at least on video). I suspect that much of his speechlessness is due to his age and his discomfort with much of the party line. He is called a 'maverick' because, unlike Bush, he has sometimes strayed from the prototypical conservative viewpoints (which I think can be a sign of good political character). However, now that it's time to win the votes of that party's members, he's forced to educate (or re-educate) himself about what his constituency believes. And with the times changing so fast it's hard to remember what 20-something conservatives feel about the environment or contraception, especially for a man as old as McCain.
  
  So when reporters ask him a question that he has never been asked before, a question about a topic that isn't as important to him, I'm sure that his first intuition is to try to remember what his advisers told him, then try to recall his understanding of his constituency. If he can't remember then he'll say "I don't know about that" or "I don't have enough information about that to give you an answer". In a way, this is better than having him ramble on with a non-answer, and I appreciate that from him. But it does make him seem like a bit out of touch with his party and a little ignorant on key issues.
  
  However, at a recent event sponsored by the saddleback church (a mega-church in california) Pastor Rick Warren was asking some pretty tough questions about religion and faith to both candidates. Obama went first and did a pretty good job. When McCain came up he was actually better at answering these curveball questions than he's usually been in so many of his other events.
  
  Interestingly enough, Rick Warren asked the same questions to both candidates, but stated that, while Obama was on live answering the questions, McCain would not be able to listen to the questions and answers since he was waiting in a "cone of silence". Well, it turns out that he was actually in a limo/motorcade on his way to the church. That limo could actually receive the cable channel on which the event was being televised, live. So it is actually possible that McCain was watching the questions and Obama's answers in his car. Or maybe McCain simply did his homework.