Response to Timothy Noah's "The New Complacency" in Slate Magazine

The author claims that Democrats give in to Republican ideals more and more, resulting a decades-long trend of right-trending "balance" between what is "liberal" and "conservative". Basically, he maintains that as Republicans gain ground on the ideological front, it's fair-and-square that Obama heralds an age where Democrats counterattack before the pendulum swings back to Red in the post-Obama age. I agree in principle that to complain of competition in a country based on economic, religious and philosophical/political competition would be hypocritical. In that same spirit, I hope* to ruin his game, if only a little bit. I know there are more flaws with this leftist tripe than I will enumerate, and that there are more faults with my right-wing tripe than I can defend against, or even consider. I don't disagree with everything here of course, but with enough to try to punch out some "thought" into text form.

Format:

the claim

R1: response to claim

the claim.

R2: response to claim.

Etc...

1. I think Karl Marx had some valuable insights into capitalist economies!

R1: I think the Chinese and Indians will beg to differ in light of voluntarily ditching Marxist thought in favor of free-market policies that resulted in an incredible rise in liberties and standards of living for said Chinese and Indians. I realize that telling dumbass Westerners how to enable cookies or packing toothpaste with lead isn't as noble as raiding the rich for the sake of the poor. Having said that, such sentiment grew in similarly demented medieval times, and applies only to institutional exploitation that occurred in said medieval times. Free-market competition and "modernity" allows something even more invigorating and humane than that - plundering the dumb for the sake of the clever. Otherwise known as "jewing someone". So you know I approve.

2. I think abortion should be safe and legal. Rare is fine, too, but the way to achieve that is contraception, baby!

R2: In a bid to avoid real responsibility or having to listen to women for any extended period of time for as long as humanly possible, of course I agree.

3. I think Mormons are kooks!

R3: that's putting it nicely.

4. The Second Amendment does too allow government to ban handguns!

R4: The Second Amendment can be changed or even deleted if enough of the right people decide. But I still want to know whether a monopoly on weapons by criminals, cops, and the state is "the way". And if so, why has that combination resulted in tyranny. If you point to Europe today, know that people have gone to jail over criticizing Islam, or have been shot or intimidated by criminal Muslims who knew they'd have no trouble with the native unarmed Europeans. Silver lining for you here is that Theo Van Gogh was STABBED for criticism of a psychotic delusion called Islam instead of shot. The debate over guns and the 2nd Amendment clearly hits the nail on the head: it is the act of combustion to propel shaped shrapnel that is the deciding factor in a society's propensity to violence. Not a monopoly on violence by fanatics, government, and criminals that leaves normal "good citizen"-types at the whim of any of the above with no method of self-defense. The 2nd-amendment-guns debate is usually too boring for me to jump into, but in case you didn't catch on, I don't agree with point 4.

Incidentally, if you didn't catch on until the end of the previous sentence regarding my stance on the issue, see end of R1 and send some money. Trust me, it's worth it.

But I can see your logic, Mr. and Miss Blue. Going by said logic, maybe women shouldn't carry pepper spray or even knives/guns when in dark alleys. After all, a prospective mugger/rapist could be hurt by one of those, and if the prospective mugger/rapist is of a different ethnicity... well the lady in question would have definitely committed a hate crime. And hurt his feelings. I don't know which of the TWO potential violations of civility (nevermind the original motivation of sexual violence, which is likely an aspect of his stone-age 3rd-world "culture") is worse. I doubt you do either because your philosophy sucks.

5. Let's standardize the federal age of consent at 16!

R5: To be honest, this is a non-issue for me. I don't agree or disagree, I just don't care. Maybe I should, but... And because I don't care, I definitely don't care to know enough to make even a whimsical judgment.

6. Promiscuity between consenting adults is good exercise!

R6: While yes, I wonder what you would say of that workout if your girlfriend was involved. This is a non-issue because I don't see how the government or an administration could affect such a question as promiscuity. Like laws against suicide (how do you enforce those??), a hypothetical law against promiscuity would be legislating morality. While morality may be a factor in deciding legislation, morality can't be the aim of legislation unless it is regarding the very basis of human rights. Why not? It cuts into personal life and religion too deeply to be a "State" issue in light of a church-and-state perspective.

7. Health care is a service, not a business

R7: Agree in principle, but to make your service available and of decent quality, you must treat it as a business. Why? Because healthcare demands products, expertise, and technology that isn't too common. Therefore, it's not too cheap. Therefore, a business model, while of course with pitfalls that are exceptionally brutal considering the humanity of the situation, is the best way to cut costs in the medium-long term. As business does in every other field of enterprise where costs incurred by material and personnel are an issue. This is why Lasik eye surgery, cell phones, and high-speed Internet are now expected and are no longer a sign of wealth and status. This is why later models of green hybrids/electric cars will be cheaper and better. This is how healthcare will be cheaper. Brutally so, with at first only the wealthiest being able to obtain service. Yes, poorer people will be left at the curb at first. It is a cruel inhumanity, a deranged "solution". But it is the lesser evil.

Otherwise your "service" will be of Soviet/3rd world quality, if even that. Otherwise your service is likely to remain an unattainable ideal. Sure, you can siphon off money from everything else like Canada and Europe; thereby delaying one failure of civilization at the expense of accelerating others -- poor military (Europe), utter economic dependence on a free-market neighbor (Canada) without which it couldn't afford air conditioning. And a quick glance at the map confirms Canada is hardly in need of air conditioning.

Don't compare healthcare services to police. Apples and oranges, dude. No, private police forces would not be good. But police require comparatively lower-cost equipment, less of it, lower-cost manpower to make it work (face it, there's a reason the Rich Cop stereotype doesn't exist), and is mainly a function of personal integrity and bravery. Healthcare is, to my understanding, primarily a function of technological and scientific prowess. Poor nations have doctors that care just as much for their patients, and wish as ardently as you do to provide this service. But they can't because they can't afford to. Before you provide a service, you have to afford it. And a "business" approach, for all it's faults which I don't deny or "excuse" works better at making that happen. Come up with something better. Your method is worse.

8. Pot is no more dangerous than vodka. Legalize it!

R8: Agreed 100%. Dear "get-tough-on-drugs" toads: The stupidity of banning Mary Jane and marking its users as perpetual failures and waste-of-flesh losers wouldn't be so chokingly thick if you didn't congratulate your insight into the folly of substance abuse with a sip of brandy at some blue-blood (ha, the irony) country-club function.

9. I don't support the troops. I support some troops, depending on whether or not they've committed war crimes!

R9: Those guilty of war crimes are punished accordingly and it is made known they've done so. Nobody supports troops who've committed massacres, if they've been proven to have done so beyond a reasonable doubt. However, until convicted, you must give the troops the benefit of the doubt, no matter what Code Pig and moveon.org hypocrites claim while "standing up for citizens' rights". One of those rights is to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise. I trust the same principle applied to Average Joes who watch porn and are generally mediocre, also applies to those voluntarily giving their souls and their lives for this country? If so, then we have no argument, for ALL those troops who have yet to be objectively convicted of war crimes fit your qualification of "some".

10. No more wars without United Nations or at least NATO support!

R10. I can understand NATO, but to say the United Nations should support our foreign policy is ludicrous. Why? Because their human rights councils are populated with the likes of Iran and a conglomeration of other inhumane terrorist-state losers. Last I heard, human rights didn't involve the germ-like Zionist entity being destroyed, along with all of western civilization (along with others. You're not going to fill any gaps, India, Africa, and Far East. If they'll get us they can get you). Also, last I heard, the most consistent and extreme violations of human rights were committed by Muslims in the name of their demented religion. And these are the people who have a substantial voice at the UN. Those are the ones whose approval you want?! I'd tell you my honest opinion here, but expletives counteract a certain air of intelligence I'm hoping to infuse into these responses.

11. Saving theboulder darter was worth a few thousand jobs!

R11: I couldn't care less for most animals, except to the extent they affect humans. People are more important than fish. So no.

12. If Eastern Europeans think NATO will go to war to defend them against Russia, they're out of their minds!

R12: If you imagine NATO to be other than a pact between member nations that an attack on one will illicit a response by all, then you're out of your mind. If said nations are in NATO, then they will be defended per the raison-de-etre of NATO. If not, you may have a point. One way your logic holds is if a conflict between NATO and Russia allows Islam any ground because of an inadvertent divide-and-conquer that would be easier to pull if a West-Russia conflict were to occur. And Russia is the lesser evil.

13. Ditto if Taiwan thinks the United States will go to war to defend it against China!

R13: I don't see why Taiwan matters that much to US security. Let Japan and the Koreas worry about it. It's rich, it's well armed. Agreed. Unless Taiwan joins NATO, of course.

14. Let's teach evolution in Sunday school!

R14: 100% agreed, but liberals need to admit an innate human need for "something" that cold-hard-facts just can't fill. Unless you propose Ayn Rand's philosophy or something of similar caliber, you only carve out a gap that needs to be filled. And inevitably will be, with one thing or another. Keep in mind that ethnic cleansing and similar atrocities are perfectly "reasonable" in light of national ideology, sentiment, or as a "solution" to whatever crisis is gripping a society at the time. I can't think of a good reason not to profile, detain, even evict Muslims in the West. Even if they were born here. Too bad. What you lose in moral high ground you more than make up for with the reduced (eliminated?) threat of mass murder, covert jihad, and terrorism (overt jihad). That seems to be worth the inhumanity of the proposed harsh measures. Let's say that it is a calculation, and the net result is in favor of their being discriminated against without hesitation. On whatever basis you tell me it's wrong to do so, if it's only a "strictly logical" one, then I would simply need to counteract your reasons with better ones. Hypothetically I could do so to the effect that all reason dictates that said prejudicial measures are Just, and for a much greater good. At that point, what would your objection be? It couldn't be a "reasonable" one since in this scenario, reason is on my side. But it is still wrong to do so, yes? "Somehow" it is. Why? Until you can answer that question, you offer little better than what Sunday school has going on.

15. The military-industrial complex is a greater menace than most foreign nations!

R15: How so? Aside from providing jobs, spurring innovations and scientific discoveries, the military-industrial complex keeps ALL foreign nations who wish to do us harm with a good reason not to. It'd be nice if there was a warmer, cuddlier way to ensure our collective safety. Holding hands is not going to cut it at the moment. Until it does, deal with the harsh reality that people outside America shape the world outside America. And that world is largely a shithole except to the extent it takes up American/Western ideals and institutions and makes them their own.

By the way... What about the Biotech conglomerate? The IT oligarchy? The Agribusiness monopoly? The Pharmaceutical scam? Big Oil? All of those are bogeymen in Utopia's closet, and each are undeniably cut-throat paragons of profit-above-all-else. And each make our life liveable in their own way; unless you want to distill your own crude, defend the nation with half-assed weaponry against the few that fall outside of "most foreign nations" that are no menace, and grow your own crops... deal with it. I don't recall the military-industrial complex threatening lives of American citizens, torturing its own people for ideological deviation, or justifying killing of whatever minorities are "it" in the name of Utopia or the will of God. Quite a few foreign nations do. You may even know one. It rhymes with "Marfur". And they won't hesitate to use their military-industrial complex to bring such "noble-savage" bliss to our heartland. What keeps them out is not your kindness, but the massive rain of death that the US military-industrial complex manufactures. Obviously this is a "solution" hardly fitting a "civilized" world. Agreed. And I don't deny the corruption or systemic push to screw the taxpayer; and I admire your sentiment in its effectiveness to keep it semi-honest and at least nominally "humane". However, the pendulum can swing too far in either direction. Your 15^th statement is definitely overkill to the Left of equilibrium.

16. If Israel isn't out of the occupied territories in six months, we'll cut off all aid.

R16: I would think a bleeding-heart would be against using the purse-strings to manipulate another nation. A democratic one at that, and one with a different culture that adds DIVERSITY to the mix. Aren't you supposed to love that shit? Oh wait, the nation in question is Jewish. Way to go by liberal principles of "humanity", anti-semetic Nazi rat.

You know what, ok. We'll do it your way, on one condition: If the Islamic world doesn't stop trying to destroy Israel (including ALL of Jerusalem and ALL Jewish holy sites) by all "fast" and even "soft" means such as overwhelming muslim demographics, we'll cut off all aid and replace it with the business end of the military-industrial complex.

I know Israel is a separate country, and that my counterstatement is hardly "balanced". However, in the scheme of things relating Israel-America issues, cutting off aid to Israel is like cutting off "aid" to Maine because French Canadians want it for whatever claims of "homeland" they cook up. Even thinking in your own self-interest, Geert Wilders' recent comment rings true: "The Islamic war against Israel is not a war against Israel. It is a war against all of Western culture. Israel receives the blows meant for Europe and the US. If Israel wasn't there, another excuse for their zeal and hatred would come up".

Islam's entire history being one of external, as well as internal, wars and massacres against everyone they come into contact with in the name of the faith testifies to this. As do attacks on Spain, India, the Phillipines and Russia. All are substantially less pro-Israel (do the Phillipines even give a damn? I can't imagine why) than the US. All have been bombed in the name of Islam. With scant Muslim objection, EXCEPT WHEN SUCH BOMBINGS KILL OTHER MUSLIMS. Not when they kill non-Muslims. Imagine the Danish Mohammed cartoonists being killed by Muslims for their "misdeeds". Can you visualize Muslims objecting to it AT ALL? I can't. Did they object to Theo Van Gogh's murder? Do they contribute to the bodyguard funding for Islam-critics like Sam Harris and Ayaan Hirsi Ali? No. Way to identify those threats.

We are the coal miners. Israel is the canary. You're threatening to strangle it and claim to be better off for doing so. Moronic.

By the way, THANK YOU ISRAEL. Attack with confidence. Give up nothing. Not to any Muslim, certainly not to dimwit Europeans, not even to stupid Americans like the one I'm responding to.

17. Higher gas prices are good because they make everybody bike and take public transit like they should!

R17: No objection. Could have thrown in that they spur development of alternative power sources which cripple funding for the Islamic Jihad, but we all know such Jihad-talk is irrational islamophobia and/or a right-wing conspiracy/myth. Sept 11 nonwithstanding. Ahh, but 1 in 4 Americans just "know" it was planned by the government or some other shady agency instead of the people who openly praise it, take credit for it, and attribute it to their religion's commandments for "holy war". Those videos are all phony. The CIA did it. Then they spilled the beans about their Master Plan to every Average Joe and Jane in the world. After all, 25% of the people can't be wrong, they saw Loose Change! Except when something like 46% believe that Jesus will actually physically come down to administer Heaven on Earth within the next 50 years. Know what's really scary? 100% of both categories have their votes counted.

18. America isn't the greatest nation in the world. We think it is only because it's our country. Duh!

R18: This is a personal opinion dependent on so many measures of "greatness" that it seems futile to say "agree" or "disagree" to this claim. Perhaps I am mistaken in this pessimism and give-up attitude about this question. I just don't care about this question. It seems a personal opinion can slide very close to belief, and regardless of objective merit, can illicit a prissy reaction when pushed against. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps you're not. Perhaps we need to "think outside the box" to arrive at the best answer or assessment of "greatness". In the long timeline of history, "America" isn't even there most of the time. So how can one judge?

19. America won't be the world's most powerful nation forever. And you know what? Handing that responsibility off will be a relief!

R19: I agree. By the time the torch is passed on, the functional difference between America and The Next will be the difference between Illinois and Wisconsin. Globalization will make the "power" concept as futile as military scenarios for a British-French-German war. Those have been at it for centuries. But now they simply, and literally, can't afford to. A military victory by one will be accompanied by such an economic self-inflicted wound upon all that the "winners" will find themselves in a condition hardly distinguishable from the "loser" population. Ok, maybe less dead, but otherwise... Same idea. Applied globally.

20. America's official languages should be English and Spanish!

R20: Don't care.

21. Judges should legislate from the bench if they want to. Conservatives do it, so why not liberals?

R21: Because then both parties would be in violation of their separation-of-powers principle. Why not liberals? Because it's not a good policy to tag onto a mantra of Change if the conservatives do so.

22. I do not accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior! I don't even believe in God!

R22: This is.. an issue?...

23. What's so great about the Judeo-Christian tradition?

R23: the idea of a benevolent God or Savior gives emotional satisfaction. The idea of a God "setting up" rules of nature that are then run to the effect of being consistent regardless of God's whims (to the extent an infinite being can have things like "whims" and "desires" and "feelings") brings a philosophical basis to rational inquiry of the natural world. More specifically, to the notion that physical laws discovered "here" apply no less "over there". God may not overrule such laws on a consistent basis "there" if it's the god of Judeo-Christian belief. Islam's Allah and certain other gods may do so at whim, striking a huge blow to a philosophy of "natural laws governing the universe" and the notion that it's worth finding out what they are so they may be extrapolated to use "there" as well as "here. Does that help?

24. Big-city values are better than small-town values!

R24: Like 22 and 18, this doesn't seem to be a topic that plays by rules of understanding-by-debate.

This doesn't cover the entire list of statements. There are about ten more. I find that they go on to the point where it's just saying it for shits and giggles. Example: "Gay marriage is great, gay divorce is even better!". Or something to that effect. Ok, Chief. Point being that I got it off my chest that with roughly 60% of claims made, most of those are kind of dumb. Even if agreeable, they seem agreeable for dubious reasons half the time.

Tangent:

*Does "hope" have to be Capitalized now? It seems that just as faith became Faith during Bush's campaigns, the equally logical and well-grounded notion of hope; especially in relation to global leadership and direction of trillions of dollars and just as many weapons, is now a proper noun.

Yes this is petty, but considering the irrational zeal of some Obamaniacs, I have cause to Hope for their disappointment.