| Subject: Sorry so short - will post more later... |
Author:
Duane
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Date Posted: 10/ 4/04 12:56am
In reply to:
Ben
's message, "I'm not bitter" on 10/ 3/04 2:39pm
Ben:
I just posted a pretty long post in the Intelligent Design Brawl thread, so I'm going to address only one thing you said here, and get back to it later...
>Thank you. And you, too, are a very rational person,
>which is why I’m sometimes a bit uneasy with how
>staunchly anti-Democrat you are.
I felt the same way (uneasy) when I started figuring out political theory from a rational basis. The conclusions at which I arrived completely disagreed with my convictions (I was a liberal democrat once - not too long ago, really.), and I was upset for a while until I decided to trust my intellect and go with what I had found to be rational and true.
The reason that I felt uneasy about the conclusions at which I arrived was because I "felt" so strongly about liberalism, and all the good qualities I thought it had. I just couldn't see how I could reconcile my compassionate nature with a capitalist, economist view of the world. But then I slowly realized that you *can* truly believe what's rational, and, indeed, it actually makes it easier to care for our fellow man if we're not always trying to make everyone else be charitable.
As for my choices between Republican and Democrat, I've said before that they both have parts I disagree with - Democrats have their socialist worldview, and Republicans have their religious fervor.
Frankly, religious fervor I can deal with. You can't fool rational, reasonably intelligent adults with it. But you *can* fool those same reasonbly intelligent, rational adults with some of the "softer" claims of socialism - public welfare, public education, social security, national health care... They all sound great! I mean, who doesn't want to help the less fortunate?
But a key realization that started my whole "conversion," or "deprogramming," if you will, was this:
It's more generous and compassionate to give freely to charity than it is to force everyone to give.
That coupled with the simple fact that when taxes go down, charitable contributions increase (meaning, when you stop forcing people to be charitable, they'll do it on their own anyways), allowed me to start reasoning through a lot of things.
>But don’t worry
>about me getting upset and hating you or something. I
>like a charged debate as much as the next guy, and I’m
>enjoying this one. However, my weekend is almost
>over, so I may not be posting much for another week or
>so.
Cool.
Hey - I just had a thought - we probably don't live in the same state, so our votes won't cancel each other out after all! (that's good news, right?)
Later,
Duane
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