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at 2:38, yes, you're wrong. very wrong. and if you were as informed as anyone conducting this interview should be? you would be as concerned as barr, and i, and a shitload of other americans are, about the implications.
he spends half the interview, clumsily making sure that his audience sees barr as nothing but a spoiler. a wasted vote that otherwise would've gone to mccain. even though barr gives rock-solid, specific, impersonal (and remarkably polite) reasons, why he finds both obama's and mccain's platforms, to be equally unappealing.
as originally drafted, and still technically, we the people, aren't even supposed to be voting for President. just for the electors, who are to vote their conscience on our behalf. just like the senate, house, etc. that's why we're not a democracy, but a democratic republic.
but, even given all of that?
never believe that any vote is wasted.
that fallacy is one of the major reasons, why these 2 parties take your vote for granted.
because Democrats aren't being allowed to express a fiscally conservative option.
and Republicans aren't allowed a socially liberal one.
oops. another longass political comment.
it's mostly just the political stuff that brings it out in me. and only as of 7 years ago.
plus, wallace can really be a transparently partisan twerp sometimes.
*promote!
i'll have to wait a few more hours for the sift fairy to leave another under my pillow.
However, I'd like to see more strong voices out there, to give people more perspective, and maybe think about where they really are on the political spectrum, and vote more in line with their own philosophy, rather than voting out of antipathy for the "other" party.
and there'll be plenty of Democrats, like yourself, who really are Democrats. who have very solid reasons why they are fiscal, as well as social, liberals. an honest belief that one of the roles of government is to help the less fortunate get a leg up. i think that's a fair assessment of how a true Democrat would see, that which others might deride as a 'welfare state'.
and it's not that fiscal conservatives are heartless, necessarily. most would simply want charity to be left in private hands, and can present equally sound reasons and priorities for it.
for starters, it's more efficient. if you give directly to a charity, the state doesn't have to take a cut, to maintain their staff and expenses. so when i give to a charity, one of the first things i check is the percentage of all donations that is necessary for the upkeep of the charity itself.
http://charityreports.bbb.org/public/All.aspx?bureauID=9999
American Red Cross - Programs: 95% Fund Raising: 2% Administrative: 3%
*promote!
and it's not that fiscal conservatives are heartless, necessarily. most would simply want charity to be left in private hands, and can present equally sound reasons and priorities for it.
I agree, I don't think conservative citizens are heartless (for the most part), I just think the leadership of the Republican party is completely heartless -- and that people for some reason wind up backing a party that fights efforts to control carbon emissions, fights efforts to improve education, fights efforts to improve health care, and wants us to "compete" with third world nations for the lowest common wage.
for starters, it's more efficient. if you give directly to a charity, the state doesn't have to take a cut, to maintain their staff and expenses. so when i give to a charity, one of the first things i check is the percentage of all donations that is necessary for the upkeep of the charity itself.
http://charityreports.bbb.org/public/All.aspx?bureauID=9999#H
American Red Cross - Programs: 95% Fund Raising: 2% Administrative: 3%
promote!
Private organizations aren't always better: Medicare has similarly low overhead (3%), while Aetna has overhead costs approaching 25%.
For things like feeding, educating, and providing care for the less fortunate, why do we have to make it voluntary? Don't we have a collective responsibility to help?
I understand the intellectual arguments from conservatives, but they're usually based on an automatic assumption that private organizations are always better for every purpose, and that just isn't the case.
There's also an ethical calculus at work behind it that seems foreign to me. To me, paying more taxes to improve education, provide better health care, and fund research into alternative energy sounds like a great idea that will end up benefiting everyone. To conservatives, it's stealing their hard-earned cash to give to "people who didn't earn it".
The higher minded make into a conversation about whether we can trust the government to use our money for things like education, and not booze, hookers, and wars in Iraq, but that's a whole different problem -- one we can fix with ballot boxes, or failing that, torches and pitchforks.
...but I'm ranting again. Thanks for the promote.