I think Yahmdallah has commented on my site before but for some reason I never linked to his blog, so it is now on the blogroll. He's not a right-winger -- but then, neither am I. I don't see much to argue about in his political screed here. (I don't know if the permalinks are working right -- this is Blogspot, after all -- so just scroll down to the image from one of those laughable political quiz things.)
Except for this: he says here, of education:
I think public education should be available, for free (through taxes, of course), up through the graduate/vocational degree level[...]
Er, ah, no -- actually, if it is paid for with taxes, then it is not really "free." Taxes, last time I checked, were paid with real money. At best, "free" public school is "prepaid." Now I have no objection to taxes being used to pay for a public school system. (The argument is with how the funds are being used and what the results are; private, pay-as-you-go schools are not automatically better just because they aren't paid for through a government agency.) But let's not say silly things like "free means taxes paid for it."
But otherwise he seems to be a sensible liberalish sort. Don't pass up his account of being on the receiving end of some of the Worst Conversion Attempts Ever.
Posted by Andrea Harris at April 15, 2003 03:13 AMI took the same shtoopid quiz, and it pegged me as a far-left liberal. I KNOW!!!!! rolls eyes
Posted by: Dave at April 15, 2003 at 07:47 AMI think his screed is pretty good except for the part where he starts to lapse into the Tale of the Wicked Usurper over the 2000 election. We liberals really need to let go of the paranoid talk or we're gonna lose the next one for sure, and the one after that.
For one thing, it ignores the major questions in the election itself. I have no idea whether Bush v. Gore was a justified decision, since I'm not a lawyer. It sure looked* baldly partisan. But it was over a *side issue, numerically less important than several others in the election (such as the butterfly ballot or that Florida felon list or the claims of attempts to intimidate blacks from voting, which weren't in question in the Supreme Court at all), and by some independent recounts if Gore had won the court case he would have lost the election anyway. The big problems were things that were not constitutionally revocable, just punishable if there was wrongdoing involved. So the real lessons to be drawn ought to be about what we have to do to keep this kind of mess from happening again, not over whether Bush is the real president.
Yamdallah avoids slipping into the whole conspiracist storyline that usually follows about the events of the past two years being a plot to convert the US into a fascist dictatorship, to his credit. Unfortunately, too many Democrats do go this way, and I fret that they're going to sabotage liberal politics for years because of it, in the same way that the Buchanan and Fallwell factions have sometimes sabotaged conservative politics.
Posted by: Matt McIrvin at April 15, 2003 at 09:42 AMThanks for the praise and linkage, Andrea!
You and I agree completely on the free/taxes thing. My parenthetical was an attempt at pointing that out, but perhaps I did not make my point well enough. Taxes and free are not even remotely the same thing, which is obvious on today of all days.
Matt, Regardless of one's politics, it's simply a fact that the supreme court did not allow the election to play out according to the established laws and precedents. (I'm guessing partially because the press was screaming "we want election results NOW" like a kid in the backseat whining about "are we there, yet?") They contradicted the laws of the state of Florida, which is their right I guess, but that still makes it look weird, regardless of who won (which a couple of the justices themselves observed). The manipulation of that vote was blatant, the partisanship of the people in charge was staggering, and it can't be ignored nor should it. What occurred was pretty obvious, was obviously wrong, and I don't think you have to be a loony lefty or a wingnut to point that out. A crooked election is a crooked election. Look at it this way, if Gore had taken office, can you imagine the screaming that would still be going on from the wingnuts? I'm sure they'd be wasting yet more millions to impeach Gore, too.
But it all comes down what you said; we need to insure that doesn't happen again.
Posted by: Yahmdallah at April 15, 2003 at 11:37 AM