Posts by BenWilson
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I always find that policies not backed up by philosophies, can easily become contradictions.
Has that ever stopped them?
I try to get rid of contradiction where I find it, but whenever you step on moral intuitions you're pushing shit uphill to convince people of things. They just make exceptions in their principles and call it 'pragmatic'. It seems to me that our incredible minds don't help us much on this one, they are more likely to snare us into insisting we are right.
That's not to say that good reasoning doesn't change people's minds. I would say 9 times out of 10 that is because you show them their views are not pragmatic though, rather than the any assault on their core beliefs. It's more likely to be that you just showed how the pre-existing morals are being violated in a way they hadn't really thought through, in some particular case.
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One should be able to find a party (amongst the 20 or so that contest elections) to match ones ideas, and if not, anyone can start their own and many do.
20 is better than 2, but seriously there is no party that really stands for what I believe, and no point making my own party of one. I'm only interested in the issues, not the people purporting to have some shadowy agreement with me on any particular issue, and huge disagreement on many others.
Naturally, I'd still rather have people closer to my opinions running the shop, however bad a fit it is.
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I do feel that my vote in New Zealand matters much more.
It's the feeling that counts I guess. Our electorate vote is still FPP so I get the Texas experience by being in Mt Albert Electorate. The proportional thing is certainly more representative nationally, but where a Texan might be a flea on an elephant, we're fleas on a horse. Neither one feels that mighty.
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I'm not sure if your vote being worth next to nothing is any different in Texas to anywhere else. I vote more because I feel obliged to than because I think it matters. The other 99.999% of your life when you are not voting surely counts towards your political influence a great deal, particularly if you voice your opinions. The main thing we get on election night is a nasty taste of how ineffective our political system is at delivering what opinion polls have been showing us we want on so many issues.
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How did you manage to get dual citizenship for the US? I thought that was not allowed?
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As a person who normally (eventually) finds a moral philosophy/reason to back up how I feel about things, I've never been able to find that on life/death - at least consistently across the whole spectrum. The best I've ever come up with is "this feels right/wrong", which isn't exactly the vote winning line.
I don't think there's too many people who don't ultimately derive all of their moral intuitions that way, so "it just feels right/wrong" isn't a vote loser, necessarily. For everyone who feels the same intuitions it's a powerful argument.
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If science had proved Huckabee can't be POTUS it might make sense.
I still think Creationism has a place in schools - at least one class in which the 20 most famous creation myths are placed side by side. If it's treated in an anthropological way, it's just another branch of science - "What did primitive people think?". It would be worthwhile to chuck in quite a lot of other stuff that primitive people thought and did to put the wisdom of the ancient world in perspective.
But I know that's not what people who want Creationism taught are thinking of. The surprising resemblance of the North Island to a flat fish might just swing them in behind pre-European Maori Creationism. Or the extremely gory and violent Creation of the ancient Greeks might be more appealing to those so inclined.
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"Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play"It does seem that on Bush's Range, discouraging words are seldom heard.
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but in general he genuinely appears to be the 'compassionate conservative' George W pretended to be, and is an advocate of large-scale state based solutions to social and economic problems
So long as that solution isn't "let's have another great big war".
Something that just occurred to me about Iraq. The received wisdom that war is good for the economy seems to have been completely forgotten.
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This is Grecian. This is mad.
It's our game and we're allowed to be mad Grecians about it.
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