Politics Made Simple

This is exactly why we shouldn’t have places like North Dakota. 

[Note: I assume that my audience with this post is primarily composed of young people in their late teens and 20s]

Homophobia is the last societally and institutionally permissible form of bigotry remaining.  Because this is still a large issue for our generation it seems that it will need to be our generation to deal with it.

In our parent’s youth the predominant social issues of the day were racism and sexism, and through the efforts of their generation several decades ago we have seen discrimination against women and people of color go from being the generally accepted social norm to being an exceptional and particularly deplorable phenomenon. Granted, both of these still certainly exist, but they now exist as things that need to be fixed rather than as things which are the norm. However, their parent’s generation did not necessarily agree with this wholeheartedly and it was and uphill struggle to gain equal rights for these groups, but it was generally accepted by our parents’ generation in their youth that these things were unacceptable and this widespread belief among the youth has become the widespread belief amongst the general voting population of middle agers, which happens to be the majority of voting Americans.  Unfortunately our parents generation did not have the same energy in campaigning for equal rights for gays, nor did they have the widespread support to accomplish gay rights legislation. 

Now those issues are up to us. As our parents’ generation of baby boomers transitions from middle age into retirement our generation is starting to become the new mass voting population, and the belief that gays should have the same rights as straight people is as prevalent amongst our generation as the belief that racism and sexism are wrong was amongst our predecessors. While our parents are not overwhelmingly pro-gay rights there are many who are very supportive of the cause.  As our generation grows older I believe that we will see the advent of discrimination against gays and support for gay marriage become the social norm rather than the exception. 

Right now one of our two main political party opposes gay rights and many of the Republican Party’s supporters view homosexuality as an offense to God and religion. This is not so much a reflection of Republican ideals (it actually goes against every core idea of the Republican pro-individual rights platform) rather it is a reflection of the fact that no society will readily accept changing the way they act and view things, and the Republicans have felt the need to pander to this particular portion of the population to increase their voter base. However, as we transition to being a society that is accepting of homosexuality it will become political suicide for a major party to be viewed as so bigoted and ignorant that the party dynamic will need to change in order to get votes and without a major outlet for their views on gays the more prejudiced members of our society will be forced to accept these views as the way things work in the modern era, much as the way racism and sexism have been fading from our ideas of what is acceptable.

This is my prediction at least and I hope that I have presented the case well.

So President Obama has mandated that Catholic universities and hospitals provide birth control coverage in their employees healthcare. Now this has caused a rift between Obama and Catholics which are a mainstay for the Democratic Party, a rift that is made worse in an election year.

Now I grew up in Rhode Island, a state that is 87% Catholic (which is the only state other than Utah to have such a high residential population of one religion) and have spent a great deal of time in other New England states (which also have high numbers of Catholics) and so I feel fairly confident in saying that the Obama campaign should not be worried about this. Sure the prominent bishops are upset, but these are people who have been railing on the Democratic pro-life stance for as long as its been an issue and it has been proven time and time again in elections and polling data that while the Catholic Church may have a strong opposition to abortion the majority of Catholics are pro-life and of those who ARE pro-choice it has been proven that they care too about the rest of the Democratic platform to go Republican even in the face of a renewed effort to push birth control coverage into healthcare plans. All this does not even get into the matter that the majority of Catholics think that the Church’s stances on contraception and birth control are archaic and impractical in the present day.

My main point here is that Obama should ignore the protests of prominent Catholics who are decrying this policy because they have proven to be out of touch with the Catholic base which is far more concerned with other issues.

So I’ve always been very libertarian in my governmental views, but I see these views starting to change upon consideration of a few things:

1. Most people do not seem to know who their senators, congressmen, state senators and representatives are and many people who do not even know who their governor is! With that being taken into mind I simply do not see how we can any longer rely on the states to sort out their own problems, this country may have been founded with the idea that the Congress would be the most powerful branch of the federal government, but due to the ever evolving nature of our nation the President has become the most powerful person in government and the person that most people actually pay attention to when making voting decisions. I really do not see how we can rely on the states to sort out such huge issues on their own when the people who elect state governmental officials are not paying attention to who they are voting into office.
2. The rich have a monetary responsibility to society, but the federal government cannot be trusted to manage their money responsibly. I still think that this iss true and I strongly agree with Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth that the best way for the very wealthy to fulfill their obligation to those in society not as fortunate as they are is by massive private donations to charities and causes that the person who worked so hard to make all of that money agrees with. However we also live in an age of incredible greed where many of the most wealthy will horde their fortune rather than distributing it charitably. I have gone to wealthy private schools all of my life and I’ve met many people who will likely give a great deal of their accumulated wealth to good causes, but I have also met a great deal of people who seem like they will squander it for selfish purposes while giving very little back to society. I would certainly like to live in a world where people would give willingly when they have great wealth, but that just does not seem to be the case all that often. So my view on higher taxes on the wealthy has been changing.
3. I am so utterly disgusted by social conservatism that I really cannot even put my rage into words. I will however try to do so right now. The entire basis of social conservatism is based upon religious zealotry and ignorance and a desire to enforce one’s personal view on others, it goes against everything that it means to be an American in that it encourages persecution, religion being forced into government, it goes against all of our personal freedoms and I refuse to support it in any way shape or form.
4. We need to stop bombing people. Why does America have to be the enforcer of freedom and goodness around the world? Who decided it was our job, and what gives us the authority to decide what governments are right and wrong? I think we need to get out of the Middle East entirely, if Israel cannot stand on its own then that is certainly too bad, but we need to look out for our best interests and our best interests involve staying out of the Middle East, seeing as how all we ever manage to do there with our interventions is make things worse. We need to focus on getting OUR country back on track and stop worrying about the rest of the world for a little bit. 
5. We also need to cut back on our military spending. Yeah, we have been trained to think that that sounds crazy given the dangerous and volatile state of the world, but if we stop antagonizing Middle Eastern nations, maybe we could be a bit safer. Not to mention that we do not need to be doing as much military research! Now I think that the military should have a big budget and that if another nation wants to pick a fight with us we should utterly destroy them, but maybe if we stop picking so many fights ourselves we could spend our money on things that are not death machines.
6. We need to be smarter. Since I was just talking about raising taxes on the rich who have no interest in giving back to society and about cutting back military spending lets get to where I think all of that money should be going: education. I think that in this day and age we should be spending at least as much money teaching our kids and paying the best teachers as we spend on making weapons. Is that really such an unreasonable idea?

So what does all of this mean for me? Well it means that I think I’m going to be switching isles and becoming a member of the Democratic Party. In theory I agree with the basis of Republican ideas- that the states should be more powerful than the federal government and that when they apply their powers correctly they can be far more efficient than the federal government-but this is an idea that no longer works in an age where people pay no attention to their local governments and expect governmental action to come from the President and the Federal Government.

However, I still disagree with a fair amount of Democratic ideology, mainly i think that the Federal Government is inefficient and bloated, but i would much rather see people trying to fix those ineficiencies and try to make things better in this country than the alternative. which is trying to turn the clock of our governmental, social, and societal ideas to a point where they were working well for that time period.

There is always room for change and if the Republican Party can learn to evolve to catch up with the present day I would certainly reconsider things, but right now their approach is far too based on stopping the progression of events and trying to relive Reagans successes from nearly 30 years ago.

That is all.

I was kinda busy the past week. But I called Florida right and yesterday Santorum won Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado. I attribute these wins primarily to the large amounts of stupid people in these states. That is all for now.

Romney will win. He has been ahead in the polls for a while now, and Gingrich’s big bump from South Carolina has faded, not to mention that following President Obama’s State of the Union people are looking for a solid conservative response to Obama’s ideas. The way I see it people are sick of the constantly dragged out Republican Presidential primaries, not to mention that Gingrich’s ethical issues will ensure that he is unelectable. My prediction is that the American people want to see Obama against the Republican nominee, rather than Republicans arguing nonstop about who is the most like Ronald Reagan.

The first thing to know about presidential debates is that the only way to figure out who won is to wait for who the majority of the media claims won. In the case of last night’s debate it has been clearly decided that Mitt Romney came out on top.

Romney shook up this debate by going on the offensive against Gingrich and rather than try to hit back Gingrich was crushed beneath Romney’s onslaught, and at one point was even totally flustered by Wolf Blitzer pressing him to answer for his own accusations.

So in the past few days Newt has been attacked not only by the Romney, Paul, and Santorum campaigns, but also the conservative media as a whole! Gingrich has been attacked by former and current GOP senators, congressmen, presidential candidates, and governors plus long time bastions of conservative thought with numerous anti-Gingrich articles appearing in the National Review, not to mention all of the attention being brought to anti-Gingrich articles across all media by the Drudge Report all saying that Gingrich is untrustworthy, unscrupulous, and a fake conservative who will say anything to get elected.

All of this negative attention being directed at Gingrich is sure to bolster his anti-establishment message, but it will also surely deal a grave blow against him with undecided voters and more moderate members of the GOP.