“WELL, NO WONDER!” DEPT.
22 May 2013
22 May 2013
Writing for The Washington Post on Monday (Austerity and Keynes Can Coexist), Post editorial writer Charles Lane asserted the following:
“Nobelists may be better qualified to describe the issues than the average voter, but they are no better qualified to decide them.”
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Here in America, we live by the belief that any amateur’s opinion (especially one’s own) is equal in all qualities to that of any expert’s knowledge-based views.
But did Mr. Lane truly mean to assert this belief? Or was it an byproduct of flattering his readers?
One does not usually expect to read such a limited point of view from the staff of one of America’s leading daily newspapers.
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Most Americans agree that our educational system is challenged to keep up with others throughout the world. Our educational challenges are supported by this belief that my opinion beats your expert knowledge. Any nation that does not value learning and education—and facts—is not likely to do to well at teaching its children how to excel in those regards.
When even the bulk of our school teachers read no challenging books in their off time, is it any wonder American education is suffering?
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If a paid-professional writer such as Charles Lane asserts that his readers opinions are valid equally to his or anyone else’s, why would any of us want to be reading newspapers in the first place? Especially The Washington Post.
Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!
@GozoTweets
WHY ARE THOSE ON THE LEFT SO GOSH-DARN REASONABLE?
10 January 2013
10 January 2013
In response to a piece by David Weigel posted on SLATE,* someone asked why it is that the views of so-called “Conservatives” are shown respect and consideration which it seems is disproportionate to the lack of respect and consideration such views merit. What follows is Gozo’s response.
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The Answer Involves the psychological concept of “projection”:
The Right continually accuse the Left of deliberate malfeasance. What does this projection say about those on the Right?
On the other side, the Left continually speak to the Right as if they—such as those “neocons”—are reasonable and honorable people, determined to do what is best for self and country.
What does this projection say about the Left?
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The Downside to the Left’s honorable and respectful expectations of the Right is that the whole of the country remains held up—obstructed and impeded—by the Left’s honorable need to include the malevolence of the Right in resolving our shared challenges.
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In America, the Right consists of that deadbeat brother-in-law, at the far end of the Thanksgiving table, who insists that, here in the United States of America, he’s got the God-given right to bring his assault rifle to the God-damn table and set it down on the table in front of his place, and what are you going to do about it?
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The Way I See It, that type of scenario represents the basic answer to the question of “Why?” Those on the Left are constrained by a unilateral sense of mutual respect.
That the Right is not similarly constrained by this putative “Christian” practice remains part of the puzzle.
And as for the brother-in-law’s question—“What are you gonna do about it?”—I haven’t any idea.
Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!
@GozoTweets
“Chains” of Mental Illness, or the “Enslavement” of Gun Control?
17 December 2012
17 December 2012
In “You keep saying semi-automatic…,” Ken Wheaton speaks to the mental-health aspect of contemporary American massacres, rather than the aspect of weapons control.
Writes Mr. Wheaton:
“Me? I find myself not interested in arguing about guns. My mind’s kind of full=up with the sort of person, the sort of brain capable of committing such an act.”
Mr. Wheaton raises what seems to be a point more-important than what sort of guns mass murderers use, and how they get them.
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A compelling issue in Mr. Wheaton’s “gun control” or “mental health” question is the following:
The side of our political divide that is most-averse to controlling weapons is also the side most-averse to implementing a substantive safety net for issues of mental health.
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It also happens to be the side that takes least seriously the ramifications of the “touchy-feely” aspects of contemporary life:
That side’s loudest-expressed attitude toward such issues as “what sort of person” finds reverberation in the attitude that, as long as we have enough guns, we can handle the “sort of brain” that keeps coming into America’s schools and businesses and homes, and opening fire.
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These sorts of persons and brains open up fire, not for criminal gains, but for freedom from whatever chains enslave them.
Meanwhile, those on the “gun control” side see less of a distinction in the different forms of “chains,” whether of mental illness, of bad parenting, or of gun-control laws.
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The point about weapons-ignorance/gun-control versus mental health is sound.
But another good starting point seems to be the way that the different issues seem to align in sets along the opposing sides of our national, political divide.
Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!
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This essay was originally posted as a comment at: