Globally Rational

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Two hundred and thirty-two years ago today, Thomas Jefferson announced the Americans’ future right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  But people often forget the next part of the Declaration of Independence, where he states “that to preserve these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed.

The term “consent of the governed,” unfortunately, was never defined.  Does it mean that everybody has to agree to the government?  Or that more than half of the people have to agree?  Or just that the people have the right to get rid of a government if we want?  Jefferson, of course, was insinuating a majority-rule democracy… but is that the only way to make it work?

As many of you already know, we don’t live in a truly democratic society.  In a true democracy, there would be no President or Congress… every decision would be made by majority rule.  There’s no way for us to make that work in such a big country, so we go for the closest thing we can: a representative democracy where we spend half of our time worrying about elections and the other half complaining about how our favorite candidate didn’t get elected.  So, I thought about it… is there any other way?

Well, I couldn’t think of anything good.  But I did think of an option that might work:

What if we just had official monthly approval ratings for our leaders?  Instead of doing the usual elections, we could require everybody to take an hour every six months to decide whether or not they approve of the current President or congressman or mayor or governor.  When the approval ratings drop below a given number (say, 40%), then it’s time for an election.  If the people are happy with their leader, then we don’t need to waste time replacing him.  That way, he won’t have to waste all of this time campaigning as long as he’s doing a good job.

Of course, it would have to be more complicated than that.  And it probably wouldn’t work… but why?

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The Pew Research Center, which always seems to come up with great surveys and statistics, recently asked people if they think that Barack Obama is Muslim.  10% of people said “yes”, which is obviously wrong.  Do people think that Islam is an ethnicity and not a religion?  Or do they think that anybody who lived in Indonesia is a Muslim?  Well, it’s probably not the latter… because most Americans don’t even know that Indonesia is a Muslim country.  So they must be basing their conclusions on faulty assumptions or random rumors… and if you look at the actual data, it’s even more convincing:

• —The opinions are divided across party lines.  16% of conservative Republicans were skeptical of Obama’s beliefs, while only 5% of liberal Democrats felt the same way.
• —16% of evangelical Protestants thought that Obama was Muslim, while only 7% of mainline Protestants agreed.  However, neither group was much more likely than the other (50% vs. 59%, respectively) to believe that he’s Christian.
• —More educated people are less likely to have the misconception.  Among college graduates, 73% think he’s Christian and 5% think he’s Muslim; among people who didn’t go to college, half as many people think he’s Christian (37%) and three times as many believe he’s Muslim (15%).
• —People are very divided based on their region.  19% of rural residents believe that Obama is Muslim, probably because they’re not as well-exposed to different cultures.  In cities and suburbs, the number is less than half as much.  The same sort of trend is evident if you compare the Northeast (7%), the West (6%), the Midwest (13%), and the South (13%).

I’m almost ashamed to live in a non-urban Midwestern area.  It’s obvious that among people who have more experience with world cultures and religions (college graduates, urban residents, people on the East Coast), Obama’s religion is much less of a controversy.  Personally, I don’t even understand how people can make a controversy out of an unquestionable fact… I guess we’ll have to wait until November to see how big of an effect this has on the election.

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McCain’s top VP prospect, Bobby Jindal, apparently believes that Intelligent Design is “the very best science.” When talking about the subject, he mentioned that “The way we’re going to have smart, intelligent kids is exposing them to the very best science and let them not only decide, but also let them contribute to that body of knowledge.”

So apparently, he seems to believe that we not only need to teach Intelligent Design in schools (as he mentioned earlier in the speech), but that kids should be able to “contribute to that body of knowledge.” I’m curious… since when are we allowed to “contribute” to Intelligent Design theories? I was always under the impression that the Bible (and other religious texts) are non-negotiable… how can kids contribute to the body of Christian knowledge?

He also mentioned that he doesn’t want “any facts of theories withheld from [his kids] because of political correctness.” Personally, I was always under the impression that we keep religion out of public schools for reasons much more important than “political correctness.” I thought that we lived in the “Land of the Free” where you could get through school without being subject to a certain mandatory religion.

Sure, we can teach our kids religion… I’m not opposed to religion as a concept. But this is the sort of education that should be restricted to personal homes. If you want to teach your kids to be Hindu or Mormon or Baptist or Muslim, it’s not my problem… but if you want to feed a certain religion to my kids, it’s suddenly a big deal. Kids go to school to learn facts based on empirical evidence, not to learn a certain prophet’s interpretation of the truth.

Are you ready to see Bobby Jindal as the next Dick Cheney?

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Ralph Nader just publicly accused Barack Obama of trying to “talk white” and not making a big deal out of issues such as “payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, [and] lead”. He went on to say that Obama “wants to show that he is not … another politically threatening African-American”. My favorite is the following statement:

“He wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he’s coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it’s corporate or whether it’s simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up.”

I can have a field day with this, but I promise not to be too harsh:

—-Since when is it possible to talk in colors? Do I “talk brown” because my skin is brown? Obama was raised by his white mother (and her white parents) after his parents’ divorce… so if he was raised in a white household, why would he not “talk white”?

—-I agree that Obama wants to show that he’s not politically threatening. Since when does a politician want to appear to be a threat? I can’t remember the last time I saw somebody make a serious run for President without making it obvious that he/she was not a threat.

—-Nader seems to think that Obama is “appealing to white guilt” by saying that he is “not going to threaten the white power structure”. I’d go as far as to call this comment “racist”… does Nader seriously believe that Obama is a threat to the white power structure? I didn’t even realize that white people had their own power structure. Is it whites-only? Can I join? How does somebody apply to become a member? And why would Obama want to threaten it?

—-When was the last time that payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, and lead were major election issues? Nader seems to think that just because Obama is black, he should be focusing on “black” issues. He clearly said the following:
“There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos.”
So, apparently, Obama should be thinking about ghetto issues just because he’s black. Ignore the fact that he was born in Honolulu, grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, and went to school at Harvard. Obama should stay true to his “roots” by focusing on the “ghetto”.

Nader seems to think that Obama should be acting blacker. Apparently, he’s only acting white so that he can get votes (because, as Nader’s track record will show, he doesn’t think that votes are important in a Presidential race). It seems that despite the fact that Obama was raised by a white person in Hawaii and Indonesia, Nader believes that he should act “black” just because of the color of his skin.

I usually try to be more balanced in my articles… but I just can’t tolerate blatant racism from a major Presidential candidate.

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Back in February 2007, USA Today/Gallup asked Americans the following question:

“Between now and the 2008 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates — their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be 72 years old, would you vote for that person?“

42% of people said “no” and 15% were undecided.  That means that if their party nominated a 72 year-old, 3 out of 7 people would vote for somebody else.  In the same poll, 48-50% of people supported Obama or Hillary in a November election against McCain.  That would lead a person to believe that, since 42% of people should technically vote against McCain solely because of his age, only 6-8% of people actually supported Obama or Hillary.  In fact, I think it’s much easier to vote for McCain when you attach a name to his age… people were averse to voting for a 72 year-old, but plenty of people were willing to vote for McCain.

Are we serious?  In a perfect world, I think we’d remove all of the faces from political elections.  If we only knew a candidate’s political stances and credentials (and we never saw their faces until after they get elected), I think more people would dismiss McCain just because they don’t want to vote for a guy who’d be 80 years old by the time he finishes his second term.  What do you think?

I like looking at data and studies… they cast a lot of light on reality.  I’ve noticed plenty of people say things like “I don’t care about the numbers, this is what my experience says”… but I don’t think that any single person’s experience is as valuable as the experience of the thousands of people involved in the study.  If we weren’t willing to vote for a 72 year-old, then why were we willing to vote for McCain?

I like McCain… I won’t vote for him (not because of his age, but because of his stance on the issues), but I do like him.  I think that he’s better than Hillary and that he’s not as good as Obama… but that’s irrelevant.  The question here is about numbers; if we weren’t willing to vote for a 72 year-old, then why were we willing to vote for McCain?

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I saw a YouTube video today regarding the war in Iraq (created by a Ron Paul supporter):

The Jed Report correctly describes this video as potentially “brutal” and “devastating” to John McCain.  What I think is interesting is that, despite the fact that this information has all been in the public domain for months, it doesn’t become “brutal” until after somebody puts it on YouTube.  Did people not realize beforehand that McCain apparently believes that Baghdad is a safe place where anybody can walk around without any fear?  Did they think that he intends to withdraw troops from Iraq?

I think it’s about time that people start noticing these trends on their own instead of relying on a random YouTube user to tell us.  If you support the war and you think that it’s safe to walk around a ravaged city like Baghdad, then I understand why you wouldn’t care about his statements… but the vast majority of people (including intelligent and educated people) don’t even know about this.  I’ve met plenty of people who judge McCain based on the promises he made during the 2000 campaign, when the war and the economy were nonfactors.  It’s time for people to actually think before they vote.

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It’s common for a Presidential nominee to replace the chair of his party with one of his own people.  Although Barack Obama’s recent decision to keep Howard Dean as the DNC chair was minor news at best, I think it’s much more important than the media has made it seem.  I think the foreshadowing is undeniable; this will tell us a lot about what a potential Obama presidency would be like.  Here are some things that jump out at me:

• Obama did not install one of his cronies, which would be a huge change over past Presidencies.  In fact, some people at the University of Chicago (whose law and economics programs are among the best in the world) are worried that Obama will steal all of their best professors and put them into his cabinet.
• Howard Dean (a licensed physician) and Barack Obama (a Harvard-educated lawyer who was offered a tenure-track faculty position at one of America’s best law schools) are both highly intelligent and highly educated.  This gives me hope that we’re approaching an America where politicians work together and make intelligent decisions for the benefit of the country instead of trying to benefit their own respective political campaigns.
• A lesser-known fact: Obama and Dean have both strayed substantially from their parents’ life views, which suggests to me that they embrace change and positive development.  Howard Dean grew up in a conservative family and Obama has written (among other similar things) that “my mother’s confidence in needlepoint virtues depended on a faith I didn’t possess… In a land [Indonesia] where fatalism remained a necessary tool for enduring hardship… she was a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism.”

I’m hoping that this is a positive sign for Obama’s campaign and, eventually, his Presidency.  It’s no secret to my regular readers that I’m a bit biased (I’ve supported Obama ever since Ron Paul fell into oblivion and McCain started to turn into another Bush), but am I wrong?

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Hillary Clinton’s latest (of many) ridiculous comments really gives us an insight into her mind. People have said that they want to look past her slip-ups, but when we’re selecting a President, I think it’s very important to analyze these small comments to get a better picture of what the candidate will be like in office. I highly doubt that anybody would have voted for Bush if we knew that he’d take us into an endless and pointless war, but we couldn’t know that for sure… instead, we should have inferred it from his lack of knowledge of foreign policy matters. Similarly, we need to do the same analysis for Hillary.

When asked why she hasn’t dropped out yet, she recently cited two examples of past campaigns where such a drop-out would have been a mistake:

1. The 1968 election, where the frontrunner (Robert F. Kennedy) was assassinated after the California primary.
2. The 1992 election, where her husband supposedly “did not wrap up the nomination until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June.”

I don’t even know where to begin.

• What does it tell us about a candidate who is suggesting that she’s staying in a race just in case her opponent gets assassinated? It’s an especially big issue in a race that involves Barack Obama, who has received death threats in the past. If you suggest that a murder could get you the nomination, you’re adding another reason for some crazy person somewhere to commit that murder… not to mention the fact that it’s just plain wrong.
• In her apology, she only said that she had no intention of offending anybody. I don’t think that “offending” people is the issue here… the point is that we see how cold-hearted she can be.
• Kennedy may have been killed in June, but that was because campaigns happened later back then (Kennedy didn’t announce his candidacy until March 16, while Hillary seems to have done it years ago). He was assassinated about four weeks after his first primary.
• She also made the excuse that she was already thinking about the Kennedy family (because Ted Kennedy was recently diagnosed with a brain tumor). I think she forgot that she also made a similar comment two months ago.
• On a separate note, Bill Clinton didn’t have to go through June to secure the nomination. As this 1992 news story shows, he was up by a 7-to-1 margin in March, at which time everybody believed that he had the nomination locked up. Although he wasn’t the “official” nominee at the time (just like McCain won’t be the “official” nominee as long as Ron Paul is still technically in the race), he had started to focus on the general election by then.

Over the course of two sentences, Hillary managed to not only showcase her cut-throat cold-hearted campaign style, but also to (once again) lie about a known fact. This isn’t the first time that she’s lied to the public… how can you vote for somebody who is so dishonest? Do people seriously believe that she’ll follow through with her campaign promises if she has been caught in a lie multiple times?

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In a campaign full of pointless buzzwords and endless political maneuvering, I was not surprised to read that Hillary Clinton is now telling her supporters to “turn off the TV.” Her suggestion was, as one would expect, met with applause… probably because the audience chose to listen to the power and intonation of her voice rather than the actual words that she was saying.

Since when does a candidate actually encourage the voters to stop paying attention to the issues? She obviously wants them to “turn off the TV” in an attempt to neutralize Obama, who seems to climb in the polls every time he gets more exposure in any given state. I’m the first to agree that the media has plenty of inherent biases, but it’s still far less biased than the alternative (word of mouth). Even better, take a look at what she said afterwards:

And it would be exciting to have the first mother in the White House. We would have someone who has lived the experiences that many of us share and we would be focusing on how we’re going to help families balance the work that they have to do outside the home and the really important work they do inside the home.

It’s Mother’s Day; you love your mother, right? That means you should find it “exciting to have the first mother in the White House.” Apparently, she’s the only person who has “lived the experiences that many of us share.” She wants people tho think she’ll be the only one who “would be focusing on how we’re going to help families balance the work that they have to do outside the home and the really important work they do inside the home.”

One thing I’ve noticed about many of these politicians is that they continue to use the same emotion-inspiring phrases. By insinuating that her opponents haven’t “lived the experiences that many of us share” and then telling her supporters to “turn off the TV,” she is appealing to the emotional (and, consequently, irrational) side of the voters. Sure, that’s the best way to get support… but we all know that it’s not the best way to get a good leader.

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Isn’t it about time that we stop getting angry at people for stating the obvious?

After “Bittergate,” I think I might have lost hope in our ability to ever recover from our tendency to make a big deal every time somebody says something rational that might just be politically incorrect.  Recently, the popular political blog Crooks and Liars, whose views I usually agree with, decided to publish a post about a FOX News anchor’s statement that “working class” is a euphemism for “lower class,” which is a group of people with “lower income” and “lower education.”  Crooks and Liars dubbed this “demeaning” and called it a case of “elitism”.

Honestly, I think they’re just arguing over semantics here.  By no means am I typically a supporter of FOX news, but I don’t really see how he’s wrong.  The phrase “working class” insinuates that you’re talking about a class of people who works… but doesn’t almost everybody work?  He’s being pretty clear in saying that “working class” actually describes not “working people,” but rather “less educated people who tend to have lower incomes.”  People on welfare are included in “working class,” but they don’t even work.  Is his statement really false?

There’s nothing wrong with being less educated or less affluent; some of my best friends didn’t go to college.  But I don’t see how it’s “demeaning” to simply point out the fact that this group of voters, by definition, has less money in the bank.  Honestly, it seems to me that the comments on Crooks and Liars are more “insensitive and bone-headed” (to use their own words), since they seem to believe that it’s “demeaning” to have less money.  I thought this was an equal society; are we going back to the days when it was lower-income individuals were considered to be inferior?

When I don’t have money, I don’t keep it a secret; neither do my “working class” friends.  I’ll make it public knowledge right now that I just finished climbing out of debt; did I just demean myself?  I think it’s about time that we start being honest and stop complaining about semantics.

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