Sunday, December 20, 2009

Terry Pratchett on Religion - 'I'd Rather Be a Rising Ape Than a Fallen Angel'

1 astute observations :

  1. Anonymous said...

    I assume your reference to “your side” is the Republican Party or conservatives in general and I’ll have to agree I’m unaware of any viable plan put forth by the Republican Party to solve or improve the problems confronting the county at this moment. But I’m not sure that’s something the party out of power normally does in a non-election year.

    If the “your side” is a reference to the Bush administration and the results of eight years of Bush, I have a couple of thoughts. I think Bush overreached to 9-11 with a misguided war in Iraq and spending that rivals any prior administration.

    Back to Obama:

    I’d argue history is a better judge of the success of any president and it’s very difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of policies enacted during a president’s term.

    Two noted examples are Johnson and busing.

    While Johnson is forever connected with the Vietnam War, he was not about projected military power and world domination. Vietnam was just something he inherited from Kennedy, much like Obama inherited Iraq and Afghanistan from Bush. It’s just something he needed to deal with but I don’t think it should define him. Johnson was really about a Great Society. Johnson believed a wealthy society had a moral obligation to provide for the poor and disadvantaged. That doesn’t sound like an evil warmonger to me. The welfare programs instituted during the Johnson administration are a better measure of the man and his presidency. While his intentions were nothing less than honorable and rooted in benevolent motivation the results were disastrous. The social welfare system enacted by Johnson spawned generations of welfare dependency, destroyed the family structure of the poor and ultimately create a sub-society of under educated unemployable individuals. I’m not sure one could have done more damage to poor if that was the original objective.

    Busing was a similar initiative with like objectives and similar results. It created white flight, wasted vast resources and ultimately destroyed the thing it was intended to save, the city school systems.

    So, what’s the point?

    Good intentions are not enough. I believe Obama is about to repeat the same mistakes with the healthcare.

    Last thought for you:

    “If you are not a socialist by the time you are 25, you have no heart. If you are still a socialist by the time you are 35, you have no head…”

    Absolutely every experience in my life brings me to agree with Winston!

    Last thought for Obama:

    Don’t destroy the thing you intend to fix and 2010 it all about jobs.

    P.S. You know its common practice to attack the messenger when one disagrees with the message. While an effective tool to silence debate it’s not very productive. If you insult me I won’t come back. It’s your choice…