On Utopia and Political Parties ...

I wrote this in response to the question, "What would happen if everybody left political parties, so that they no longer existed?".




I believe it is perfectly possible to do that in theory, but I doubt that it will ever happen in practice.



I believe that the organization of a free, independent, individualistic society would be the cause of the decay of political parties, not vise versa. I think that, in order to achieve this society (which is far, far closer to utopia than anything Marx ever came up with), we are going to have to start on the ground level of educating people why, on the most fundamental level, individualism, rather than communalism, is the way to go. Attempting to get rid of political parties at this stage (unless they are outright made illegal), would only result in an uneven distribution of power which would lead to one party, the one with far less diversity (the democrats) being able to take almost complete control. We cannot start at that end of the equation. Both of those visions are intertwined, and what happens to one will affect the other, but you cannot start the reform on the political party side of the equation, or it will lead to a monopoly of power by the democrats (at this point), which is worse than the two party system we have now.



A society of free, independent, individual citizens, as I previously stated, is utopia. Perfect individualism is utopia. Perfect communalism is dystopia. In an individualistic society, every action has meaning, whether it is raising children, doing a job, or simply living life the way you want. By comparison, in a communal society, no action has tangible meaning, because all that is seen is the net total end result. Individualistic societies are balanced, with millions and millions of individual forces interacting to create a diverse, but balanced and equal society. Communal societies (even in the ideal), essentially maintain balance and equality through uniformity, which means a stifling of freedom. It is also far less stable, because any act of freedom and individualism can upset the balance drastically. Everyone would be equal because everyone would be appraised as an individual, rather than part of a group, taking a fraction of the group's power, etcetera. Politically, there would be very little for the government to do. With the balance and equality that society would naturally have, the government's only role would be to prevent some people from disrupting that balance by exploiting, manipulating, or coercing someone else. That is the greatest accomplishment of all, although I am sure that production would improve, with people actually perceiving meaning and merit to their actions. With people perceiving meaning to their actions, charity would also increase, though the need for it would decrease.



That is the kind of society which will exist without political parties, but, until then, people will always form parties, and coalitions will become parties.



Positively dystopic.



That said, it will be worse if we attempt to eliminate political parties one sidedly at this point.

Equality of Strength versus Equality of Weakness ...

That is the problem with gun control.  If everybody has a gun, everybody is equal in strength, and that equality is an equality of strength.  If nobody has a gun, even if everybody is equal in strength (which will never happen, anyway), that equality is an equality of weakness. 

Why would you want that?  It would make you more vulnerable to somebody else gaining strength. 

Civic versus Multi - National Countries ...

The US was founded as a civic society, but we are quickly moving toward being a multi - national one.  That is what I wanted to say.  I will say more soon, but I am exhausted right now.           

Nationalism ...

I had something to say about nationalism, but I forget what it is. 

The Natural State of Society ...

So, it seems like, in order to evaluate the roll of the government, the natural state of society should be looked at.     

To do that, I'd just like to cite an example used multiple times by people on both sides.  "If Caveman A invents something to make his life and survival easier, say, a wheel, he has the right to use it and ask for something in return from Caveman B to use it."  versus  "Caveman A does not have the right to ask payment from Caveman B who needs the tool, say, a wheel, to survive."     

Actually, Caveman B does not need the wheel to survive, he was surviving before.  The wheel makes his survival easier, but that does not make it necessary!  Fastforward a couple million years or so, and we're having the same debate about health care, etcetera.  The person in the country today who gets the worst health care is still better off than the person in the country fifty years ago who got the best health care!   

The definition of "necessity" seems to change depending on what is available to us.  This links with the definition of poverty being, in many people's eyes, somebody having less, relatively speaking, than other members of society.         

I am not a fan of this definition of poverty.  First, I don't think that's accurate.  Second, I don't agree with judging people (on anything) purely based on where they stand compared to others.  Third, the practical implication of this is that, unless we equalize final wealth, poverty will never be eliminated.  I disagree with that notion, partially because I do not, in any way, believe that final wealth is the ultimate indicator of prosperity (and I find it very ironic that it is often the very people who say that materialism is bad, we should not value materials, but, instead, what's on the inside, and happiness, who advocate a society which is based solely around the final equality of distribution of materials).                 

How would I define poverty?  I would define poverty as people who have no opportunity for advancement.  When people suffer a severe enough depletion of material goods that they simply have to struggle day to day, that is poverty.  When people do not have access to the information needed to advance or choose their own destiny, that is poverty.  When people are controlled by other people, that is poverty.  Poverty comes from the lack of an ability to choose.                                         

Fixing the final end wealth does not change poverty, it just gives it a way to keep going forward by giving people a way to get around dealing with the real problem.  Ensuring that everybody has a chance to choose what they want to do is the only way to eliminate true poverty.                

Hmm, I got a little off track there, oh well, next time.  (Ok, final thesis of the original post:  Assuming that the government has to equalize wealth is to assume that society naturally functions on a level in which, for some people to have, other people have to not have, and, what is good for one person is bad for another, etcetera.  This is not the case, people can benefit from each other's presence, and that is why we are social creatures.  With this as the assumption, the only thing necessary is to prevent people from exploiting other people.  This leaves the positive interactions and removes the negative ones, leading to a more prosperous society than simply leveling the end result.).                     

Desperate thoughts ...

A collection of thoughts from a mind desperately trying to avoid being used for productive work: 

1).  The state, society, collectivism, and the greater good are all abstract concepts, so what business does anybody have forcing individuals (people, not an abstract concept ...  ) to put their needs below the needs of these abstract concepts? 

2).  What can possibly be more important than the individual? 

3).  Libraries really make the world seem smaller.  Just today, I ran into books from (meaning used in) my old university, 4,000 miles away.  Some of them were even written by professors there, cool.     

4).  Nationalism is no worse than any other form of collective mindset.     

5).  Patriotism is loyalty to ideas, and Nationalism is loyalty to a group of people.  What do you think?           

6).  Someday, remind me to go through, line by line, and explain how '39 can be interpreted as a song about WWII. 

7).  The song "Cobwebs and Strange" is like musical amphetamine.  When I listen to it, I do whatever I am doing faster.  It is a very dangerous song to drive to.           

I have almost a week to finish this essay ... sort of ...

Shampoo and Migranes ...

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/beauty/10-drugstore-shampoos-you-shouldnt-buy-even-if-theyre-on-sale-527242/

So I came across this article the other day and thought it was worth sharing, not really the part about what works and what doesn't, but because of the clip about Pantene, and how it made someone have weird breakouts on their arms.     

This doesn't surprise me at all.     

A couple of years ago, I started to have headaches, and by headaches, I mean really, really serious headaches, nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, really fun stuff ...  And I had never had headaches before, this was definitely out of the norm.  Anyway, I got the idea that it was my shampoo (Pantene), because it was worst a couple of hours after I washed my hair, differences in whether I washed my hair at night or in the morning, and when I used conditioner, it was even worse.     

I changed to Dove, and my headaches stopped for a couple of days!  Then they got even worse.  I looked it up online and found this list of chemicals in bathroom products which cause problems for people, and I switched to a shampoo and conditioner which did not contain them (all natural), and my headaches went away and have (for the most part) not been back since.                     

In addition, my skin started to get very rough, dry, cracked, and red on my hands, and unhealthy seeming on my face, so I switched all my soap to non anti bacterial gentler soap, and, again, no problems to the present day.     

Oh, the for the most part on the headaches is this:  MSG can set it off, but only in relatively high doses.  Three servings of non organic fruit (only certain ones, like peaches and strawberries) can set me off, and whenever they put that stuff on the road (or wherever ... ), magnesium chloride, especially in summer, when they put it on dirt roads to keep the dust down, it really, really makes me sick.  As far as I know, I'm fine if it is not too recently applied, though.                                                 

Is this relevant to the majority of the population?  Probably not.  I just thought that, if someone else was having serious headache problems, well, maybe you'd want to look at these as potential causes.  A lot of people probably are not sensitive to chemicals, in which case, no problem!  But if you have been having, well, they sound like they were migrane type headaches from the description I have gotten of migranes, you might want to look at this.                       

George Soros ...

So this is ... um ... chilling? 

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/george-soros-on-helping-the-nazis-during-the-holocaust

I guess that's not new, but it sure is interesting to me. 

The Curious Case of the Glasgow Fire Alarms ...

Glasgow must be a very flammable city, because it takes more fire precautions than anywhere else I have ever been.  You know it's excessive when you worry more about whether someone will set the alarm off when you're in the shower, than whether or not the fire is real.  Another hint is that you go out during the drill, and people are surprised you didn't take the time to get on a coat.  Both of these are true, as is the fact that I have literally had four fire drills within the space of twenty - four hours once, although, to be fair, only three of them were in the same building, and one was planned ...    
People don't bother to get out quickly, anymore, either.  Jacket?  Check.  Shoes?  Well, I could change ...  You stand at the door, and point, if that's a real fire, he's dead, she's dead, he's dead, she's dead ...  It really is odd.     
During one of the fire alarms, my roommate was cooking dinner.  Wouldn't it have been ironic if an actual fire had been started?     
How do all these false alarms get set, you ask?  Well, we get lectures on how to prevent them (yes, lectures entitled "How Not to Set Off the Fire Alarms.").  On the list of things not to do: iron outside of the kitchen, take a shower with the door open, blow dry your hair with the windows closed (sticking your head out the window would be even better ...  ), cook with the door open, use any sort of aerosol spray outside of the kitchen (the kitchen has a real fire alarm, the others will go off at the slightest provocation), open the door before the steam from your shower has dissipated, you get the picture.  We're turning into a bunch of people more afraid of blowdrying our hair than being caught in a fire.    
On the bright side, they do make an effective alarm clock!              

The Post - Industrial Age ...

Communism was Marx's idea of a post - industrial age.  At the time he was writing, society was transforming in every way;  it was the Industrial Revolution, a time of capitalism, innovation, and industry, but also one in which the working classes were exploited by the elites, in which art and intellectual pursuits were pushed to the side, and in which the very structure of western society was changing in every way and on every level.  At this point in time, Hegel's dialectic was a very popular structure in philosophy, and one which influenced nearly every thinker of Marx's generation (Jakob Burckhardt opposed it.).                                              

Wait!  Don't stop reading!  I actually have something original to say!  I just have to describe the dialectic really quickly first ...         

So, in a nutshell, Hegel's dialectic says that everything can be broken down into a basic series of events or situations, the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.  The thesis is the first stage, and has its strengths and weaknesses, the antithesis is the second stage, and has an opposing set of strengths and weaknesses, and synthesis manages to bring the two together.  Sometimes, the synthesis can act as a new thesis, and the process starts over.                     

It kind of makes sense that Hegel's idea of radically opposing situations ultimately merging to create one with all the benefits of both situations would be popular during the Industrial Revolution, when society was changing so drastically.  Different people looked to different situations for the thesis and antithesis, but, ultimately, everyone was looking for the synthesis.  The synthesis would be a post industrial age, which would combine both the benefits of the first two stages to create a much more ideal society.                                     

I don't believe in the Hegelian dialectic, personally.  That said, Marx did, so, just for the sake of argument, I will adopt it here;  it's kind of romantic, anyway.               

Going by the Hegelian dialectic, and I am not going to sit here and explain Marx's multiple step process to achieve Communism, but going by the Hegelian dialectic, it is fair to say that the final stage in society will be caused, at least in part, by the removal of the problems which face society in its other two stages.  Marx focused a lot on class differences, exploitation, alienation, and envisioned a society in which that wasn't the case.  His idea of a utopic society was one in which there was no government, and no private property.  Everyone would work for the good of the society, in total equality.                               

I want no part of such a society.  Marx confronts the problem of class inequality by proposing that the classes be forcibly equalized without ever really addressing any other societal problem.  Marx's idea of equality is purely an idea of material equality.  In Marx's system, individuals have no significance, except as parts of the whole.  This is the biggest problem.                                                                                    

In my opinion, the biggest problem with a purely capitalistic society is that some people become dependent on others.  This is not the case now, but, in the Industrial Revolution, when people had nothing and earned just enough to live on, they really became dependent on the jobs they had, and had to go no matter how badly they were treated.  Those problems have been largely fixed now, even to the point of being overcompensated for.  The dependence, however, was not purely monetary, but intellectual.  The vast majority of people who worked in the factories of the Industrial Revolution were people whose parents did not receive an education, whose families historically worked on farms, but who had sold their land and moved to the city a couple of generations earlier.  They were being exploited, but they didn't know what to do to stop it, and they looked to leaders to stop it for them.  Jakob Burckhardt would tell you that that is why the twentieth century was filled with dictators and tyrants.  That, that is the problem which needed to be addressed in the Industrial phase of society.                                                         

These people needed power, but true power does not come from forced monetary equalization, or societies in which everyone is merely a part of the whole, and, thus, equally powerless.  True power comes from understanding and taking initiative.  If every individual can control his or her own life, if every individual is an end in and of his or herself, then, and only then, can a truly equal society be achieved.  Power cannot be given, but it can be taken away.  Likewise, equality cannot be given, but it can be taken away.                                       

What is my idea of the post - industrial society?  It is a society in which every individual takes the time to truly understand what he or she wants from life, and goes out to achieve it, without hurting anyone else in the process.  Every individual would make his or her own choices, independently of others, and no one would tell anyone what they could or could not do.  Society would not put pressure on the individual to behave in a certain way, because society would be molded by the individuals who lived in it, and not the other way around.                                         

It is a simple vision, in some ways even simpler than Marx's idea of everyone simply contributing to the greater good and taking his equal portion of it.  It is better, though, because it gives life meaning, and freedom, true freedom, both of which are lacking in Marx's utopia.  It is exciting, millions and millions of individual people each doing different things for different reasons, and interacting on that level, rather than Marx's homogenization in the name of equality.  Can it be achieved?  I don't know.  We all talk about how communism is good on paper, but it can never really be achieved, well, I don't think communism is good on paper, but I think it is more likely to be achieved than this.  Education does not create understanding;  it only gives people the information to understand as much or as little as they want to.  Did you ever hear the phrase, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."?  Well, you can lead a person to ideas, but you can't make him/her think.                                                              

Surprise, surprise ...

Today, I woke up to the news that Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. My only surprise was that I hadn't thought of that happening before it happened. Seriously, he seems to fit in well with the ranks of Al Gore and Jimmy Carter, and we can only hope that he doesn't achieve Yasser Arafat status, but, well, whatever, the Nobel Prize is a joke.

Actually, it would be a joke, except for the fact that one million dollars are involved. The recipient of the prize gets a million dollars, and that makes a difference.

When Al Gore won the prize, Irena Sendler lost. Irena Sendler rescued over one thousand Jewish kids in the holocaust, was tortured by the nazis, and helped place the children after WWII ended. She lived through the days of Communist Poland, and, when she was nominated, was living in a nursing home, with not much more than a meager state pension to live on, and being taken care of by one of the children she rescued. Irena Sendler died later that year, with nothing, which is pretty much what she had had most of her life. She could have had something, but, instead, Al Gore bought a private jet.

We don't know exactly who Obama beat in the race for this prize, but there wasn't only one Irena Sendler in the world ... The people who win make the prize a joke, the people who lose make the prize annoying.

Drugs ...

So, until recently, I did not even consider the idea that drugs should be legalized in society. They are harmful, no good will come of it, legalizing them will increase the number of people who try them, so just keep it the way it is. I didn't really care about marijuana, except that its legalization would probably lead, eventually, to the question of hard drugs being legalized, so it is best not to go down that path. Then I discussed it with some people. Most of them simply accused me of being against drugs for moral reasons, or this or that, but some of them were really willing to sit down and discuss the issues rationally and reasonably, and it was a very interesting argument.

Some of their points I didn't agree with, but the idea that people should be allowed to make their own mistakes is a pretty overwhelming one. Does the government have the right to tell people to do things "for their own good"? If somebody wants to take a drug which might kill them, should they be allowed to? People should have the freedom to choose, as long as it is choosing with full knowledge of the risks.

I came to the conclusion even before this that virtually no drugs should be available by prescription only. Twice the reccomended dose of Tylonol can kill you, so why make something less harmful available by prescription only? Besides, doctors can be pretty careless about prescribing drugs, so maybe the idea that drugs are available even without doctor approval will cause people to take a more active roll in their treatment process.

So what is it that makes drugs something which should be illegal? Dangerous drugs will be available off the shelf if prescriptions are gotten rid of. People should be able to make their own choices.

The one question which is still left to be answered for me is that of addiction. I only said that most prescription drugs should be available without a prescription because I was excluding the addictive ones. People should be free to make their own choices, but addictive drugs actually minimize freedom in the (not too) long run. I am not talking about cigarettes or alcohol, or coffee, or sugar. Anything can be addictive in some way, but I am talking about the highly physically addictive drugs. Opiates such as heroine (and morphine) are the ones which come to mind for me, but maybe there are more. The thing is that, on those, once you start, it is very difficult to stop. Furthermore, they interfere with day to day functioning in all aspects of life. Do people have the right to take away their own freedom? Do others have the right to (by giving them drugs) take away other people's freedom?

The government shouldn't regulate things based on preventing us from doing stuff which could kill us (driving cars could kill us), or from doing stuff which could cause health problems later on (hamburgers should not be banned, either), but, when someone is addicted to a drug, that is a severe limitation on the person's freedom in a number of ways. Freedom is essentially maximized by not allowing physically addictive drugs to be sold, or sold without a prescription.

I guess that brings us to another question, which is, is it the government's role to stay out of people's business, or to maximize freedom?

If it were the government's role to just stay out of other people's business, we would essentially have an anarchy. The counter argument to this is that there is no victim, and the person chooses to give up their freedom. I would tend to argue that the person buying the drugs is the victim, and that, since they are only buying the drug by choice the first couple of times, it is not a choice, for the most part. A lot of people might disagree with this, because it is consentual, but it is irreversible and life damaging. Ultimately, freedom is severely inhibited. Even accepting this, the question is whether you can prosecute a victim for becoming a victim, and the answer is surely not. You can, however, prosecute the person selling the drugs.

So, I guess what I would tend toward is a prosecution of people selling highly addictive drugs.

Parsi ...

I was talking to some people the other day when the subject of Freddie Mercury's ethnicity came up. Was he a Farsi? Parsi. That's like Iranian, right? Well, sort of, it is someone of Persian descent whose more recent ancestors have lived in India.

Same thing, right? No.

They thought I was just being difficult, or, perhaps, a little bit of a know it all, because I am a huge Queen fan (and yes, I am a huge Queen fan.). I am something else, too, though, and that is a Parsi (don't ask me how it came to be that Queen was my favorite band, it has nothing to do with Freddie's being a Parsi! That was just one of those bizarre coincidences.).

I don't really care that they called him a Farsi, and I didn't press the issue. I didn't even tell them that I am a Parsi. I don't get offended when other people talk about my religion or whatever. This is purely for the intellectual interest of anyone finds it, well, interesting ...

Whenever someone asks me where my name is from, I say it is either Parsi or Indian. If they ask me "what I am," I usually say Indian, for simplicity's sake. I never, ever say Iranian, or Persian. Ethnically, it is true, I am much closer to being Iranian than anything else (well, on my Dad's side, on my mom's side, it's Europeans who have been in America since the 1600s), and, so, on forms, I put down "caucasian" as my ethnicity, because Parsis are caucasian, ethnically. Enough on that. Culturally, however, I consider myself much, much more Indian. It is not just because we eat Indian food, speak Indian languages, wear Indian clothes, etcetera, all with variations, naturally. It is also, for me, the fact that, well, Iran kicked us out and India took us in!

Here's the story as it was told to me, and probably countless other Parsis.

When the Muslims invaded Persia, they gave the existing inhabitants three choices. They could convert, they could leave, or they could die. The Parsis were the people who chose to leave. Not all of the people who chose to leave made it. Some landed in hostile countries and were killed off, or died on the journey, etcetera. Supposedly, some went to China, and were killed off. Anyway, a group of them landed in Gujarat, on the western coast of India, and they were greeted with hostility and suspicion. The king came and was going to make them leave, saying that they could not be
trusted not to take over, etcetera, and one of the priests made his plea. He asked that a bowl full of milk be brought, and it was. He brought some sugar, and put it in the milk, and said, "See, the sugar didn't make the milk overflow, but if you taste it, it is now sweeter. That is what we will do for you. We will not cause a disruption. There are not many of us. We will not convert other people, or try to take over in any
way. We just ask the right to live here and practice as we wish, and, in return, we will contribute to the country and make it better for everyone." The king said ok, and we've been living in India ever since.

The thing is, we did move there, and we did integrate, and we have been successful in India. We are an ethnic group in India with roots in Persia, rather than a group of Persians who has been living in India all this time.

Society Must Be Decentralized ...

Society must be decentralized. The question is how the government should factor into this. The government is in a unique position of being a relatively unchecked center. It exists to check other centers, but it, itself is relatively unchecked. In the American Republic, the government is supposed to be checked by the population, the ultimate decentralization, but government is a very dangerous power center, because virtually all centralization and oppression which has occurred in the past has been performed by the government.

Centralization versus Decentralization ...

Ok, if many subsequent posts are going to make sense, I am going to have to spend time defining a couple of words, centralization and decentralization. The exact definition of these words might be adjusted slightly as I go along, and it is going to be a little bit difficult to say exactly what I mean by the words at the beginning, so I am thinking that I'll just give the words two bits of information each, a description of the most extreme scenario, knowing that it is highly improbable that the most extreme scenario of either would happen at any time, and the historical context of each. This way, you'll know what I am talking about when I ramble on about centralization.

Centralization: In its extreme form, centralization means one world government determining what is best for international society as a whole. People only form a part of the greater whole, and can be used by society for the greater good. Everything is ordered, and everybody plays their part, contributes their work, and interacts with other people who do the same thing. Marx's definitions of Socialism and Communism were good examples of ideals of centralization.

Decentralization: In its extreme form, decentralization means that no groups exist, and individuals act solely of their own volition. Centralization was a product, largely, of the Industrial Revolution, and what had existed before then in the middle class was a largely decentralized system. People did not, for the most part, rely on specific other people. There is no dependence. Dependence is a product of centralization. People do not exert power over each other. That is also a product of centralization. Decentralization is much easier to define by what it is not than what it is, which is simply all members of society living their lives as they see fit, and making their own choices without force by other people. It is the total independence of each member of society.

I will say right now that decentralization is the route in which I believe society needs to go, and that, if ultimate decentralization were possible, it would be my idea of a utopia. Given the idea, which I feel is pretty well substantiated, that it is not possible, however, the goal must be to structure society in such a way that decentralization is maximized, so that individual autonomy can also be maximized.

I will also argue in favor of decentralization, rather than centralization, as the ideal.

Quadrophenia Versions and Introductions ...

So today, I picked up the soundtrack version of Quadrophenia. As I understand it, John Entwistle produced the music for the soundtrack version, while Pete Townshend produced the two album versions. Perhaps Roger didn't care too much for the soundtrack version? I'm not sure. Anyway, it is quite different, actually. John's version seems much harder, but there is always something going on in the background, whether it is something orchestral, or guitar, or even piano, which kind of sounds like his bass lines. I can't tell which version I prefer! They are so different. Another cool thing about the soundtrack is that it ends with fifties and early sixties songs. The cool thing is that these songs, which I have heard a million times, before, sound totally different on this album, and not because they have changed them! It is just that looking at them from Quadrophenia, you can almost picture the early and mid sixties mod culture, and these songs which we grow up with, thinking of them as innocent little cutesy songs, well, they were not always that! They were part of a legitimate culture in society for a long time. It really adds to the romantization of the time, even using songs which I would not have picked out as my favorites from the era, for the most part.

Yeah, this post is a little stiff. I am going to be posting a lot more, though, I think, and the posts should get more fluid and conversational as they go along. A lot of the previous posts here were simply imported from my facebook account, and I was not sure what to do for a blog, even though a lot of people were telling me that I should start one. Add to that the problem of having a whole lot to say and not a whole lot of people who are interested, and the solution becomes clear. Whenever I have something to say that will interest no one I know (and that is a lot), whether it is about politics, music, movies, or life in general, I am going to bring it here. I might also try twitter. Hopefully, I can use this to vent, ponder, and philosophize, and someone else can use this to read and respond to.

We'll see!

Roman Polanski ...

Roman Polanski was arrested for raping a 13 year old girl thirty years ago. At first, I was willing to give Polanski the benefit of a doubt. I will say it. The guy has had a traumatic life. He loses his mother in the holocaust, then he loses his wife and unborn child in the helter skelter killings. Now, I never would have given him special treatment legally because of this, but did I think he was necessarily a horrible person? No. Stuff like that leaves scars, and maybe that was just some manifestation of an emotional scar, a one time only occurrence which, well, I wasn't quite sure what happened, anyway, and maybe it wasn't that bad ... Well, it was. It was as bad as you can imagine and then some. Read the victim's testimony, and then go read some of Roman Polanski's later exploits, as detailed in his autobiography. Yes, Whoopie, it was "rape - rape." I don't know what you think "rape - rape" is, but I assure you, taking an underaged girl (No, it is not just a societal stigma. This matters because children depend on and trust adults, because they do not have the knowledge, skills, or life experience to take care of themselves), drugging her (with drugs and alcohol which could have killed her, by the way), and having intercourse with her even when she still objects is "rape - rape."

Even sadder than Hollywood backing up Polanski is the repeated treatment of victims of rape in this country, led by Hollywood and the press. More often than not, it is treated as the woman's fault. Polanski's victim says that every time this case comes up, her name is dragged through the mud by the press, who says that her mother was just trying to get her a movie role, or something like that. Heaven forbid it's the man's fault, especially when he is famous. This is not new. William Kennedy Smith raped someone on the beach at Ted Kennedy's house, but it was her fault, because, well, what kind of girl was she, anyway, walking alone with a man on the beach at night? What did she expect? No it doesn't matter that she was on the property, and in the company of the family of, a US Senator (even though he was a Kennedy) ... Any girl who would engage in such conduct should expect to be raped. When Clinton raped Paula Jones, she was dragged through the mud as trailer trash. Actually, she was a big - nosed, horse - faced piece of trailer trash, so she should just be glad that a man paid her any attention at all ... I've got news for you.

I don't care if a woman is walking naked down the darkest allyway in the US, she should not expect to be raped. It should not be excused if she is raped. It is never her fault.

Laura Ingraham's Ten for '10 ...

Most of it seems ok, but there was one thing which really stuck out at me as being just awful. 9) Restore America's System of Justice. Introduce penalties for frivolous lawsuits, where those who launch unsuccessful lawsuits are liable for the defendants' legal bills. That is a terrible, terrible idea. Firstly, just because you lose a lawsuit does not mean the lawsuit was frivolous. Lawsuits are long, hard battles, and they often involve corruption or unfairness of some sort. Raising the stakes only raises the chances of this happening. The legal system is manned by people who are no better than the people filing the lawsuits. Furthermore, it becomes a restriction on people who want or need to file real, valid lawsuits, because the stakes become too high to risk a defeat.This renders the petition unsignable, absolutely. We cannot have this impede people's rights to justice under the legal system of the United States. If people are so worried about frivolous lawsuits, maybe we should ensure that judges are hired who can choose what is frivolous and what isn't. We already have "Rule 11," which states that a judge can determine if a lawsuit is frivolous or not, and act accordingly. This includes making the side engaging in the "frivolous" lawsuit pay the legal fees for the other side. This puts the entire American justice system at risk.

Roman Polanski ...

Roman Polanski was arrested for raping a 13 year old girl thirty years ago.

At first, I was willing to give Polanski the benefit of a doubt. I will say it. The guy has had a traumatic life. He loses his mother in the holocaust, then he loses his wife and unborn child in the helter skelter killings. Now, I never would have given him special treatment legally because of this, but did I think he was necessarily a horrible person? No. Stuff like that leaves scars, and maybe that was just some manifestation of a scar, a one time only occurrence which, well, I wasn't quite sure what happened, anyway, and maybe it wasn't that bad ... Well, it was. It was as bad as you can imagine and then some. Read the victim's testimony, and then go read some of Roman Polanski's later exploits, as detailed in his autobiography. Yes, Whoopie, it was "rape - rape." I don't know what you think "rape - rape" is, but I assure you, taking an underaged girl (No, it is not just a societal stigma. This matters because children depend on and trust adults, because they do not have the knowledge, skills, or life experience to take care of themselves), drugging her (with drugs and alcohol which could have killed her, by the way), and having intercourse with her even when she still objects is "rape - rape."

Even sadder than Hollywood backing up Polanski is the repeated treatment of victims of rape in this country, led by Hollywood and the press. More often than not, it is treated as the woman's fault. Polanski's victim says that every time this case comes up, her name is dragged through the mud by the press, who says that her mother was just trying to get her a movie role, or something like that. Heaven forbid it's the man's fault, especially when he is famous. This is not new. William Kennedy Smith raped someone on the beach at Ted Kennedy's house, but it was her fault, because, well, what kind of girl was she, anyway, walking alone with a man on the beach at night? What did she expect? No it doesn't matter that she was on the property, and in the company of the family of, a US Senator (even though he was a Kennedy) ... Any girl who would engage in such conduct should expect to be raped. When Clinton raped Paula Jones, she was dragged through the mud as trailer trash. Actually, she was a big - nosed, horse - faced piece of trailer trash, so she should just be glad that a man paid her any attention at all ...
I've got news for you. I don't care if a woman is walking naked down the darkest allyway in the US, she should not expect to be raped. It should not be excused if she is raped. It is never her fault.

Actors ...

From Alec Baldwin to Sean Penn to Matt Damon, we seem to be given constant reminders that actors, as a group, have a significantly lower intelligence level than pretty much any other profession, but is it surprising? Their job entails reading words on a page and reciting them in front of a camera. The directors and writers take care of the creative side of things, along with the set and costume designers, so that all that is left is for someone to come in and do what they are told to complete the work.

When it comes down to it, actors are just tools.

Heritage, Not Hate ...

Alright, here it is. I have avoided this topic because it is so controversial. I had too much important stuff to say to let a silly little moot issue be used to discredit me. Few Republicans know about this, and even fewer Democrats do. But I have come to the conclusion, more and more, as time goes on, that battles are not won by making concessions. The bigger picture can not be clear if any details are sacrificed. The full truth must be at least spoken, even if it is not agreed upon. When people start using untruths to try to discredit people who are trying to do good work, there is a problem. That is why I am now going to defend that most hated of all symbols in American history, the Confederate flag.

We have been led to believe that this symbol stands for oppression, racism, and slavery. People from an entire region of the country have been led to be ashamed of their ancestry, many going so far as trying to distance themselves from it. It does not.

Firstly: The Civil War was not about racism, it was about states rights, and before you tell me that the right that the states wanted was the right to own slaves, I will tell you that the banning of slavery was already being introduced into the Virginia state legislature. I will also tell you that Robert E. Lee (a true American hero and patriot, by the way, and a great man) did not own slaves. He freed his slaves, but at least one of them stayed with him, voluntarily, because his life was better working for Robert E. Lee than it would be anywhere else. In addition, I will tell you that only about a third of the people in the south at the time of the civil war had slaves, and it was only a minute fragment of the population who had more than two or three. In addition, William Tecumseh Sherman (who was absolutely and unequivically not an American hero or patriot) stated that he did not care about the plight of the slaves. When he marched to the sea (more on that later), he took slaves against their will to be used as manual labor in the army (more on that later.). Slavery was, as Thomas Jefferson put it, like holding a wolf by the ears, you don't really want to keep him, but it is pretty hard to let him go. There were a lot of practical issues which had to be addressed in getting rid of slavery. Firstly, where are all the slaves going to go? This is a whole group of people who owns nothing, and will be out of work, food, and shelter the minute this passes. What are you going to do with them? Let them starve? This is something that needed to be addressed. Secondly, what will happen to slave owners who have relied on slavery as a source of labor (it wasn't right, but that's what they did, and how much worse was it than what they did in the north? More on that later.). The north's answer to those questions was, respectively, "I don't care," and "Suck it up." It probably did not make the north more hesitant to proceed in this manner to think that that course of action would crust the economy of the most prosperous region of the nation, right as the industrial revolution was starting to take hold, hey can we have some of them Blacks when you aren't using them? Oh, by the way, you are telling me that every other country in the civilized world managed to get rid of slavery peacefully, and the US couldn't?

Secondly: Do you really think there was some magic dividing line of morality which ran between two areas of the country? Everyone below the line was racist hillbillies who just wanted to own slaves, and everyone above it was a bunch of benevolent, accepting, and tolerant people? It was all economics. In the south, slavery was economically viable. You had a plot of land, and you used some of it to grow sustenance crops, and some of it to grow cash crops. If you had enough land, you could grow enough sustenance crops to feed yourself and a couple or more slaves. At this point, slaves become almost cost neutral and provide a source of labor. I would like to take the opportunity to dispell the common myth that most Southern landowners who had slaves had the slaves do all of the work, and just sat around and ordered them to do things all day. That is simply not true. The vast majority of Southern landowners, even among those who owned slaves, only owned a couple and had to work with them in the fields in order to survive. That said, this was not the case in the north. In the north, there were two types of economy, farming, and industry. In industry, slavery was not economically viable because the slaves had to be supported. They had to be fed, clothed, and housed, all of which cost money. At that point, it is cheaper and easier to bring a poor immigrant off a boat and have him work for wages low enough that he and his whole family, including children, have to work, usually in dangerous, dangerous jobs (usually for you), in order to survive (often paying rent to you to live in buildings that you own, in towns you built, whose commerce you control). Again, that leads to effectively cost neutral labor, and with no money, these immigrants have no real future. How is that different from slavery? Actually, today, we acknowledge it as slavery, economic slavery, but apparently the term is not retroactive. Thirdly, there are the agriculturalists of the north. The growing season is not long enough to have a plot of land used for sustenance farming. Many northern agriculturalists specialized in growing things such as apples, maple syrup, timber, or dairy, and while it is possible to grow a balanced diet in the north, it takes much more in terms of resources, so it is much harder to turn a profit, especially while feeding more people. Getting rid of slavery got rid of the labor source for one segment of the population, while keeping equally unfair and even more dangerous labor practices intact for another segment of the population.

Thirdly: The north did some pretty terrible things during that war. Sherman's March to the Sea was a deliberate "total war" strategy, aimed at destroying, not only the economic prosperity of the South, but also its very ability to survive. Sherman marched through hundreds of acres, burning everything, slaughtering the animals, and taking the slaves (after the emancipation proclamation, might I add) against their will to do manual labor. They raped and murdered an unknown number of black women. They murdered black men who tried to protect their wives or even the white women left behind on the plantations. They took children away from the only home they had ever known at gunpoint. So yeah, slavery was bad, but you know what, I guess if the war was about slavery for the South, it was about genocide for the North. By the way, a lot of Native Americans will tell you that the true attempt at genocide came under Sherman. Yes, there had been strained relationships before that. Yes, there had been injustices before that. Sherman started the genocide. The attempt to eradicate the Native Americans by any means necessary, whether it was killing their food and starving them, or arranging for mass murders of men, women, and children, it was Sherman.

Fourthly: No culture is perfect, and I will not defend slavery nor the South's participation in it. It is also true, however, that no culture is purely evil (with the possible exception of the state imposed culture of Nazi Germany, under which you would find many good citizens willing to risk their lives to protect others or fight the state.). All that anyone thinks of when they think of the South are racism and slavery. They think of the KKK. That is not what the South stood for any more than genocide and industrialist exploitation are what the North stood for. Very few cultures are remembered solely for their flaws, and the South should not be. It should be remembered equally, or even more, for its positive qualities. It should be remembered for its culture, its elegance, its sophistication. It should be remembered for the great people who lived there, Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, William Faulkner, Mark Twain. It should be remembered for the bravery of the people who first settled it, in Jamestown, in 1607. It should be remembered for the positive values it stood for, individuality, independence, freedom, and bravery. It should be remembered for its contributions to the United States throughout its history. All of these things are a part of the heritage of the South, more than racism.

This is what it means to say, of the Confederate Flag, Heritage, not Hate.

My Health Care Reform Plan ...

My reform plan:

Open the borders between states to allow inter state competition. I have a hunch that certain requirements in drug testing could be gotten rid of without negative effects.

Let people go to experimental treatments earlier in the experimentation process. Yes, that might mean that you test drugs on people which kill them, but at four months to live, isn't that their decision?

Also, I feel like there is too much animal testing. It drives up the cost, hurts animals, and, again, this is just a belief, but I don't think that it helps all that much, and certainly not in the excessive amounts it is used in. Keep it to a practical level, a minimum.

Very careful tort reform, according to the following plan: Do not force doctors to have malpractice insurance, but do force them to reveal whether or not they have malpractice insurance. If they have malpractice insurance, allow for an unlimited amount of money to be taken in a successful lawsuit. If they do not, make the maximum legal amount that can be won one which helps the patient and is enough to be threatening to a doctor, in order to prevent cases of malpractice, but not one which would be life destroying if the doctor were forced to pay it (the example I use is $100,000, but that is very subject to change.).

The only drugs which should only be available by prescription only should be those which are highly addictive.
This will do two things:
First, it will prevent people from having to go to the doctor for drugs which they know they need, anyway.
Second, it will give people more freedom, and therefore more responsibility, into the drugs which they take. This means they will be less likely to rely totally on doctor opinions when it comes to which drugs to take, which means that a doctor mistake will potentially be less devastating, because people will get more information on their own, and from more sources, meaning a higher chance of second guessing the doctor with regards to the medications taken. Make more tests available for home testing. This is cheaper and more efficient than having a doctor do it. We have home blood sugar and pregnancy tests, so why not a home strep test? That is a cheaper and easier remedy to the problem of people going to the emergency room with a sore throat than Obama's national health care plan.

Simple, cheap, and helpful. That is what a reform plan needs.

Malpractice Lawsuits ...

Malpractice lawsuits are a problem with the current medical system.

I don't know that I think they are as big a problem as other people do, but they are certainly there, and they raise the cost of medical care significantly.

The problem is that, whatever you do, you are going to open the door for people to abuse some privilage.

If you allow malpractice lawsuits, you create an environment in which people will inevitably sue frivolously. This has led to doctors being required to have malpractice lawsuit insurance, which drives up the cost of care.

If, on the other hand, you do not allow malpractice lawsuits, or restrict them in some way, you create an environment in which malpractice will happen more than it already does.

Not all malpractice lawsuits are frivolous, and not all cases of malpractice become lawsuits.

Forced to make the choice, I would choose a world in which malpractice lawsuits are allowed than one in which they are not. That said, here is the way I feel we could get around having to make a universal choice one way or the other. Let doctors choose whether or not they want malpractice insurance. Do not make malpractice insurance manditory. This will allow the doctor to choose between one set of advantages and disadvantages and another. Both courses of action have good and bad points. One lowers the cost of practicing, allowing doctors to lower their fees, but is riskier. One raises the cost, but is safer. There will be doctors who choose each, and there will be patients who choose to go to each type of doctor. There are two final details to this plan that I would address. The first is that the doctors without the malpractice insurance should not be subject to multi million dollar lawsuits. There should be a limit to how much someone can ask of a non insured doctor. It should be high enough to scare the doctor and help the patient if things go wrong, but not these immensely high numbers. Off the top of my head, I would say about $50 to $100 thousand. The second is that lawsuits must be directed at the appropriate person. A hospital might be reluctant to allow an uninsured doctor in private practice to practice or perform tests in its building, so the hospital must not be liable for a private doctor's actions. Similarly, I don't know that an individual nurse or doctor working in a hospital should be able to be individually sued, because they are employees. This is the most I would do about malpractice lawsuits. I think it would help address the problems of frivolous lawsuits without creating an atmosphere which allows for the much more dangerous problem of malpractice.

Health Care versus Medical Care ...

Health care versus medical care, what is the difference?

Health care is care dedicated to preserving health, keeping people healthy. This includes everything from vaccines to advice on how to live healthily to actual needed medical care.

Medical care is care specifically dedicated to treating illnesses and injuries.

What does this mean? Universal health care is health care. It means that, out of the finite amount of money which can be dedicated to keeping people healthy, a large percentage of it is dedicated to telling people how to be healthy, giving people all the vaccines they might need, and monitoring to make sure that they follow these rules (in fact, in England, there are refrigerator checks, where government officials go into peoples' houses and look through their kitchens, to see how much sugar, fat, protein, fiber, etcetera is there, and make reccomendations for improvements in diet. They have similar baby checks for new mothers.) as well as treating very minor ailments, in addition to the care which people actually need. Because the goal of health care is to keep the largest number of people healthy, treatments for serious illnesses, in which the treatment is going to be long and expensive, and the prognosis is less promising, especially if the person is old, the priority of spending money on that person goes down. Perhaps people can be trusted to take care of themselves? Perhaps the money does not need to go into refrigerator checks, or preaching safer sex practises, or telling people not to smoke, or that junk food is bad for them, the fact is that people should be able to live how they want to if they are not hurting anybody else. So what if I want to eat the occasional hot dog? So what if someone wants to smoke? It does not hurt anybody else, they know the risks, let them make their decision. There cannot be a system in which one person's decisions on how to live his or her own life is seen as affecting the whole of society to the point that it must be controlled. Medical care is the only thing that I think people are truly entitled to, and I truly believe that everyone is entitled to medical care. The thing is that universal health care does not ensure that everyone will have access to medical care. It actually lowers the chances that someone will have access to medical care. Cancer survival rates in Europe are SIGNIFICANTLY lower than in the US, 14% lower for breast cancer, 50% lower for colon cancer. What can we do? We have to address the core of the cost problem, for starters. This will not be simple. Malpractice lawsuits send the price of healthcare up dramatically. Insurance programs need to be improved (not sure of everything wrong at this point, collecting problems). Government regulations send the cost of research up dramatically. This leads to more expensive drugs. Obviously some regulations are necessary, but some are excessive (one thing that I feel should be the case is that, in the case of experimental treatments of illnesses with an extremely low prognosis, researchers should be able to go to the human stage of research much earlier, as long as the people consent with full knowledge, cheaper, gives people access to experimental treatments much sooner). Strep tests should be offered as home kits, which is technologically feasable, and would be much, much cheaper, like home pregnancy tests, and blood sugar tests. In fact, tests drive the cost of medical care up dramatically. Not all of them are necessary, all necessary ones should be available, in their cheapest form, but unnecessary ones are performed, often to avoid malpractice lawsuits. Addressing these problems, alone, will send the cost of medical care down dramatically. Another problem is the lack of knowledge. There are institutions currently in place which help people who need medical care obtain it, but people do not know about these! This information must be collected and spread. Combined, these actions should fix the health care problems in this country.

Harry Potter ...

Ok, I was not going to write this as a note, but whatever, it is irritating me. How have I seen three movies in the past couple of months, two of which I had no interest in, and all of which were bad, and, worst of all, all of which were popular?!

X Men? The best word I have to describe this movie is prissy. Everything about it is prissy. All of the actors just prissed around thinking they were hotter than they were. The fights were prissy. The love scenes were prissy. The movie was based on total visual stimulation. There was no interesting story. I did not care when the girlfriend died. I did not care when she was alive. I did not care when she died again. The movie would have been predictable if I weren't too bored to even attempt it.

Star Trek. Did they even watch the original series? I guess they didn't have to, considering that it seemed that the whole premise of the movie is saying that the original series never really happened, anyway. How bizarre is that? And then the numerous problems within the movie, itself. Oh, and the movie felt like a Star Wars movie. Oh, and point singularity projectors (black hole guns) are an Andromeda creation.

And then Harry Potter. In the movie's defense, the book was worse, because it wasted more of my time. The fifth and sixth books were just filler material to get to the seventh book, which fizzled more than any book, movie, or tv show has ever fizzled. Nothing happens, nothing happens, but in the end, nothing happens! And you will care, because along the way, a lot of people die meaningless, but dramatic deaths which the reader is supposed to care about. It was funny, as soon as Hedwig died in the seventh book, my brother and I started discussing who would die in the rest of the book. He bet it would be Fred. I bet it would be Dobby. You should never be able to do that with a book. Snape and Malfoy could get into a competition for which character fizzled the most. Was it Snape, the guy who had been a spy for one side or the other for years, dying before he could actually do anything interesting? Or was it Malfoy, who may or may not have had a change of heart, oh wait, he didn't have a change of heart, he's just a coward. I guess if they got into a competition, they could both just stop fighting as soon as anyone took any interest. And Lily and James potter. How am I supposed to care about such horrid people? I guess that at least explains why Harry is such a terrible person. So Lily got married to the guy who ostracized, bullied, and pretty much destroyed her best friend, because the years of constant torment had actually taken a toll on him? Wow, they are so wonderful. And Tom Riddle is the only character in the movie who acts of his own volition. Yes, what he wants to do is horrible, but no one actually opposes his ideas, they just oppose him because harry opposes him (which is because he killed his parents), and they like Harry better than they like him. There does not seem to be any true, deep moral conviction on the part of any of the characters. And dumbledore, blah. So he was a dark wizard who killed his sister and then decided that maybe he should be a better person? Great. In short, three great movies, with lots and lots of great previews for other great movies, indicating that the forseeable future is going to be filled with interesting, powerful, thought provoking movies. If I remember correctly, the last good movie that came out was in 2005. The last good non independent movie which came out was in, what, 2003?

Sarah Palin ...

To everyone who tried to win a debate about Sarah Palin by bringing up her wardrobe, her baby, her children, her beauty pageants, or the fact that she is from Alaska, I have only one thing to say.

You won.

If by win, you mean higher taxes and fewer freedoms.

The thing is that elections may be won using trivial sideline information like that, but countries are not run using it. Winning an election is a means to an end, not an end in an of itself. A campaign is not a game, and an office is not a prize. When the right person wins an election, the whole country wins, and when the wrong person wins, the whole country loses. There can be rational debate over who the right person is, but bringing in random facts and allegations does not contribute to positive political discourse. It does not determine who can help the economy the most, or who will be the best in foreign policy. It does not determine what should be done about healthcare. The fact is that we are all part of the same country, and we all recognize and face the same problems and challenges. There can be rational debate over which solutions are best, but arguing based on petty, personal attacks, and treating elections as things to "win" for your party, rather than times to seriously sit down and evaluate what need to be the solutions to problems, and who will best implement those solutions, is the height of apathy. Dismissing arguments based on who made them, arguing to win rather than arguing to further the cause of the country as a whole, those are all apathetic things to do.

Apathy is not not voting.

It is voting without taking the time to understand the issues. How do you know when you understand the issues? You know when you can argue both sides without assuming that the person with another viewpoint is fundamentally different from you. If you say "yeah, I guess you could say that, if you were stupid, racist, rich, etcetera," you don't understand the other side. If you vote without this understanding, you are being apathetic. If you argue without trying to achieve this understanding, you are being apathetic. If you try to defend your side without even trying to accept criticism of it, or put politicians on a different level than normal people, saying that we should simply trust them for one reason or another, you are being apathetic. Freedom cannot survive in an apathetic environment.

Running a democratic republic in this way is akin to digging yourself into as deep a hole as you possibly can, and then admiring yourself for your accomplishment.

You better hope someone will be there to help you out at the end.

Swine Flu ...

I graduated! Hehe, and I actually went to commencement, which I didn't think I would. I am glad I went to the Russian commencement, very personal, very nice, very small. I didn't go to psychology.

Then I went to History. It was funny. First, they said that the biggest problem facing us today is global warming (I guess that means we should have all been Environmental Science majors instead. oops.). Then they quoted Obama. Then they said we all did "so much" to help to elect Obama (you know me). Then they, very seriously, said that we would not be shaking hands because of the H1N1 virus outbreak.  The guy beside me went "what is that ... the swine flu?" and I laughed. Yep. And he laughed. Apparently, one student off campus may have tested positive for the disease.

Meanwhile, the WHO announced that it might declare it a global pandemic. Back to CU, they also cancelled the midnight breakfast for finals because of the outbreak, and there are fliers all over campus telling us to wash our hands. And then it hit me. People want this to be a problem, an outbreak. They want there to be an emergency, it is exciting! And the closer to the emergency you are, the more attention you can get (and the less of a real threat it is, the more "bravely" you can deal with it.). We live in Colorado, too, how sad. We missed 9/11, London, Madrid, Bombay, come on, people, throw us a bone! "But you had Columbine ..." "Well yeah, but that was like, ten years ago! And besides, I was in Boulder when it happened, and that was in Littleton ... that only works when you go out of state." Every time something bad happens (or something we can pretend is bad happens ... ), people seem to frantically trace their lines back to it, to see how close they can find that they actually were. Come on, people, six degrees of separation? I know I can do better than that. It is actually quite ridiculous. It seems like, instead of feeling sympathy for the people who were actually affected, people try to see how they can get a little bit of the spotlight.

And that is when there is something going on.

Obama and Biden order a hamburger ...

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12301116?source=rss

Because it was Cinco de Mayo, Joe Biden ordered his hamburger with jalapenos, joking that, in Delaware, you couldn't even order a burger without a slight Mexican accent.

Obama quickly corrected him. "Burgers are Austrian, Joe."

Warren Buffett on Newspapers ...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124139748870881957.html

Warren Buffett is lamenting the state of newspapers. His deputy, Charles Munger, even called it a "national tragedy." But is it?

Let's look at a brief history ...

Newspapers started in the US in 1608, with John Smith's Newes From Virginia, and did not reach their height until the New York Sun, the first penny, or people's, paper, was published in 1833 (before this, newspapers were too expensive for many people to buy). Throughout this time, objectivity was not considered necessary to journalism. Different newspapers had different viewpoints, said what those viewpoints were, and used the news and facts to argue them, advocacy journalism. Objectivity was not considered to be an important trait in journalism until the twentieth century, when more centralized media forms like television and radio emerged. Forced to compete with this, large, centralized newspapers began to emerge, as small, opinion based papers died out. Before this, in the US, 2,600 dailies and 14,000 weeklies were published. As prices and competition increased, this number began to decline, and so did the influence of the newspaper.

So, at the height of newspaper popularity, newspapers presented opinions, using facts as a basis, and they were cheap to publish and accessible to the majority of the population.

Does this sound like blogs to anyone?

A Lesson in Socialism ...

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little.. The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F.The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that…

Democracy in America ...

Written in 1820, by Alexis de Tocqueville. Particularly read the first and last.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.

In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.

The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

And the grand finale!

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.