Liberal and Loving It

Vote Republican

I live in a very liberal town and I know a lot of people who think all Republicans are evil incarnate. And this viewpoint seems to also exist in a significant part of the liberal blogosphere.

I don't see it that way. Example 1 is my mom. She is a Republican legislator in the Hawaii legislature. So what is she fighting for there? Is she trying to increase tax breaks for the rich? Trying to speed up global warming? Trying to invade Tahiti?

Well actually her largest effort is to increase the use of alternative energy and particularly wave energy. That's right, the mean awful Republican is the number on proponent of alternative energy in the Hawaii legislature.

And she's not the only one. There are others across the country who, while they come at problems from a different viewpoint, are trying to solve the same problems and in a way that many liberals, if they stop to look at the results, will find themselves in agreement with.

I put Arnold in that list. Yes he pandered to the right at times - as liberals pander to the left at times (granted, we're the good guys so we should be pandered to). And I didn't agree with a lot of what he did. But he did try to break the stranglehold the public service unions have on the state government. And he did try to move redistricting to a non-partisan body. And you don't see any Democrats stepping up to do this.

And in many cases the competition and compromise between liberal and conservative can lead to laws and policies that are better than those that would have been promulgated by either side on their own.

You also have the corruption that almost always occurs when there is a single party controlling a state. In this case, if the minority party is the Republican party, a vote for a Republican is a vote for a less corrupt government. (I think this is why the Republicans tend to be so good in Hawaii - they aren't even offered any bribes.)

Gaining control of the US House and Senate this Fall is so very critical that I think everyone outside of William Jefferson's district should vote straight Democratic for the US House and Senate. But at the state and local level, especially if the Democratic party owns the state/local level, take a look at the Republican candidates.

Because a knee-jerk vote for a party is not an intelligent thoughtful vote - it's a tribal instinctive vote that separates this country into us and them. And that is not an advancement in civilization, it's a regression.

trackbacks: Mudville Gazette, DailyKOS

Stephen Colbert is WRONG!

My glasses broke and I went to my eye doctor to get them fixed (a screw fell out). They told me the problem is that I remove my glasses with one hand pulling them a bit to the side. The correct way is to remove them with both hands pulling them straight off.

I responded that pulling them to the side is how Stephen Colbert removes his glasses when speaking to the camera. And this is what they told me.

Stephen Colbert is wrong.

He may be right when skewering the right wing and the press. But on the critical issue of how to properly remove your glasses, he is setting a bad example. If this goes on soon all liberal activists will be blind from following his example and breaking their glasses.

I'm sorry Stephen but if you are wrong on critical issues like eyeglass removal, how can we trust you on the less important issues like Iraq, oil, global warming, and all those other little problems?

trackbacks: DailyKos, Mudville Gazette

Was the Korean War a "just war"?

A friend of mine stated that the only wars America should fight are those on our own soil (we are attacked) and "wars with humanitarian reasons at heart."

This brings up the interesting question of the Korean War. Because even using the criteria above (which is the ultra-liberal/libertarian position), it's still not that clear-cut.

We occupied the South and supported a dictatorship. Russia did the same in the North. However, we did have to occupy Korea at the end of WWII because it had been a Japanese colony for 100 years so there was no native bureaucracy to turn things over to. It was either us or the existing Japanese colonial administration.

And yes it was a dictatorship in the South, but that was more from neglect than any purposeful action on our part. American knew nothing of Korea and Rhee knew how to say what Washington wanted to hear so he was installed as the initial head of government. And America then basically ignored Korea to concentrate on other problems.

North Korea (without getting permission from the Russians) then attacked South Korea. We defended against that attack. So the war was fought to defend a country we were occupying against an outside invader. Unlike Vietnam is was not us fighting an insurgency of the people we were occupying.

But in so doing, we defended a dictatorship. But the dictatorship we defended was better than the dictatorship attacking. But this turned the cold war into a warm war. But if we hadn't defended here, Russia might have believed they could take over Finland, Austria, Greece, and/or Turkey. But Russia did not instigate the North Koreans and maybe they would not have invaded elsewhere. But...

In hindsight many decades later the end result is we did a very good thing. South Korea is now a productive 1^st world democracy while North Korea is one of the worst governments on the planet to live under.

So does it meet the criteria in the first paragraph? Hard to say. What this does mean is even "simple" philosophies like the one above are still open to interpretation in the real world.

The Paris Hilton tax relief act

I find it amazing at anytime that this country is considering eliminating the inheritance tax. This tax supports the core ideal of this country and as such is the most American of taxes.

I think part of the problem is how the Republicans had phrased it, calling it the death tax and talking about the loss of family farms (which apparently has never happened). So I think in the interests of making it clear exactly what this tax is about, it should be called:the "Paris Hilton Tax Relief Act."

That will give most people a very clear idea of exactly what this is about - allowing people who earned great wealth to pass all (instead of most) of it on to children who spend their days doing ... nothing.