Open Left

You lost me at your proposed compromises (0.00 / 0)

I too spent three semesters in physics before I gave it up--I didn't want to go make nuclear weapons, bombs and missiles, which was what everyone else, save a handful, were doing in the early '80s. I've also been an efficiency freak for my whole life and still am, if rather toned down with experience.

But the very idea of selling out several very important positions to get a watered down awful compromise on something else that's absolutely crucial... well, that's not even worth discussing.

To be blunt about this, simply assuming a huge amount of corruption and then buying into it with some silly idea of maybe accomplishing 10% of one set out to do is the height of laziness. Both intellectual and philosophical.

To address your two items, unregulated guns in national parks will result in: 1) poaching and 2), dead rangers who encroach on poachers and that's just for starters. Violent crime will skyrocket in national parks that already can't deal with the amount of law enforcement duties they already have. That, of course, is the NRA's real point in that item. Crime scares people and encourages them to buy more guns. Fear is their operating principle as a business model. You should be smart enough to see that, especially as one who studied engineering for any amount of time. Physics is easier than engineering, if I recall correctly. Until grad school, anyway.

As for Graham-Lieberman, if you really consider yourself a progressive in any real sense, you should know damn well that amendment is an obvious attempt at vastly increasing government secrecy, especially as it applies to covering up blatant criminal activities. It's inherently anti-democratic and authoritarian in nature and intent... and transparently so. American progressivism stands completely opposed to such ideas and rightly so.

So how can any real progressive reconcile these things? One can't.

There is a reason why some people are drawn to progressivism. They are rational, logical, reasonably aware people who have principles that aren't necessarily easy to live by. Honesty matters. Integrity matters. Reason matters. We like democracy and want it to actually work. What you propose is to pretend it works and act like that's somehow progress. That's the DLC/Third Way/New Dem position on everything, as it turns out.

We aren't so quick to sell out everything just to score one quick goal and call it a day.  

That's what centrists are for. Indeed, that's their raison d'etre. Selling out for profit and then celebrating the "victory."

You seem well intentioned, but I just don't think you get what being a progressive is.

"In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State" -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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by: Emocrat @ Sat Jun 13, 2009 at 01:26:44 AM CDT

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