Tag: All Men Are Created Equal
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The Problem With Conservatives Is WHAT They Want To Conserve
I give conservatives full credit: they tell you who they are and what they want right up front. They want to conserve. The problems (always) start however with what they want to conserve. For one thing, it’s never the future. One can’t conserve what hasn’t happened yet. Even if one could, conservatives would refuse to…
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So Much For A Level Playing Field…
This morning, the SCOTUS did what everyone expected it to do: it put a stake through the heart of affirmative action. Race can no longer be a factor in deciding public or private college admissions. The supposed intention: a level playing field. Strange… a level playing field was the whole POINT of affirmative action. Affirmative…
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America Is A Great Idea Poorly Executed
While it would be neat and tidy if every first draft was the final draft, it never ever works out that way. Hell, I don’t know why we even call it “writing” when all good writing is really “re-writing”. If we had any sense, we’d call it “re-writing” to begin with so everyone understood how…
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Fascism Is Just Another European Pathogen
European culture and military superiority didn’t conquer the Americas, European pathogens did. By the time European colonists had landed enough armed men to do actual battle with anyone, European germs had reduced the native population by as much as 90%! Armed Europeans may have thought they and their culture were superior but their superiority was…
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Only Little Boys And Republicans Think Freedom Is Actually “Free”
“Freedom” may be the most abused, lease understood word in the entire English language. People seeking it don’t abuse it (they can’t – they don’t have it!). Rather, it’s the people who already have it who regularly abuse it – using their freedom to deny other Americans the same freedom. Libertarians define freedom as “you’re…
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How To Destroy Democracy, Step One: Hijack The Language
Words matter. In a democracy, they matter a lot. Ours is a do-it-yourself government. We don’t have a king or a dictator to solve our problems because we chose to solve them all ourselves – using the majority’s wisdom. In order to do that, we have to agree on a couple of things: to begin…
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How Conservatives Think
Were I a conservative, I probably would have titled this “Do Conservatives Think?” That’s because I already would have cynically dismissed them and their thinking. If I’m honest, it’s tempting. That conservative impulse lives within me. I do want the world to be how I want it to be. My problem is, the world has…
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Skepticism v Cynicism – They’re NOT The Same Thing!
Not a revelation: our news media sucks. It’s broken. And “both sides do it” (BSDI) brand journalism broke it. Not all journalists practice BSDI but enough do that their journalism prevents We The People from ever getting the truth in real time. Healthy journalism depends on skepticism. Doubt. But, hey – bring receipts? Doubt can…
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Why E Pluribus Unum Matters
Most Americans – if they think about the country’s founding – focus on “All men are created equal”. Alas, when our founders wrote those words, they didn’t mean them. Oh, they meant the “men” part. Only men could be other men’s equals. But by “men”, they meant only men like themselves: white, wealthy, land owning…