Ookay. Chen quotes a National Review article (at NPR’s website) which states that illegal immigrants cost CA taxpayers $13 billion per year. Typical of NRO, they give misleading context, comparing a budgetary line item to the budget deficit. So I go over here and find that total CA spending is $132.5 billion per year. Sorry Chen, but 10% of the budget doesn’t constitute “unsustainable”.
As for Afghanistan and Iraq, the Dems are busy declaring victory and getting out. As for Libya, the US’s involvement after the first few days has been pretty moderate: the bombing runs are done by the Brits and the French. Besides, the point was to avoid a repeat of Srebrenica: democratization is a longer-run project.
Well there is a least one Republican who understands this. What I don’t understand is why you are still a Republican (or belong to any clown party of another name).
Really? I think Friedman makes a reasonable point - a lot of leftist rule those possible implications out a-priori. Peter Singer is a notable exception.
@ Brain Glutton, those kinds of differences are very much a potential implication of evolution. See Robert A Weinberg’s MIT lecture.
This argument commits an extreme naturalistic fallacy. Just because men and women (or races) are evolutionarily different does not mean that it’s morally right to discriminate based on that. We ignore these implications not because they don’t exist, but because they don’t matter in a moral sense.
Friedman doesn’t suggest that anyone should discriminate based on that. His point is that leftists tend to deny the possible implications of evolution and assume differences are man made or due to discrimination.
Hm. According to his blog: “David Friedman is an academic economist who teaches at a law school and has never taken a course for credit in either field. For more details, see my web page.”
This is not the sort of crank you want to cite with regards to science and evolution. He does, however, exemplify the inhabitants of wingnut island. (Hint: if you’re going to attack Libruls, you probably should come up with -you know- actual examples).
astro: Well the political nutters certainly have a constituency, ya?
The Republicans are in the final stages of a self-delusion bubble, in which the old lies are failing faster than they can replace them with new lies, which, by necessity, must be even more outlandish to hold onto the political base. The cleansing of the parties moderate voices by endless purity tests distills the crazy even further, but at the cost of making the party smaller and smaller as moderates are thrown out. Like any economic bubble, they are on an unsustainable path which will eventually implode when cognitive dissonance overwhelms their own sophistry. It is is just unfortunate what they put the country through until the bubble bursts.
Charles Darwin stated that members of species differ in innate abilities, and that population pressures favor individuals with certain abilities. The Bell Curve is thoroughly consistent with the theory of evolution. If Darwin was alive he would certainly agree with it. I have never read a rebuttal of TBC that did not read like a Fundamentalist track against evolution.
Unfortunately, the lies of the Republican Party resonate with the fears of the white majority. Since 1980 the Republican Party has told the white majority that they can have the government they want without paying for it.
By Jacob WeisbergPosted Friday, May 20, 2011, at 12:22 PM ET
At a press conference last week, someone asked Chris Christie for his views on evolution vs. creationism. “That’s none of your business,” the New Jersey governor barked in response…
Christie is not part of the natural constituency for Darwin-denial. He’s an intelligent man, a lawyer, a fiscal rather than a social conservative. But Christie is also someone who might want to run for president someday, or be selected as someone’s running mate. For those purposes, he must constantly ask himself the question: Am I about to say something to which a white, evangelical, socially conservative, gun-owning, Obama-despising, pro-Tea Party, GOP primary voter in rural South Carolina might object?..
The long-range forecasts in the Paul Ryan plan, which show spending falling to 3 percent of GDP to allow for additional tax cuts, express an impossible libertarian fantasy…
To get to the front of the line in 2012, Republican candidates must pretend to believe a lot of nonsense than isn’t so. Or **do they actually believe it? **
He’s got a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago & an A.B. from Harvard. I think he’s capable of grasping the basics of evolution.
In any case are you actually denying his point? That people who claim to believe in evolution, nonetheless often tend to deny its possible implications? Steven Pinker discusses some examples in the Blank Slate. Peter Singer has also pointed out how the left need to adapt to a darwinian understanding of human nature.
I know it doesn’t matter to many here but did he decline to answer because he is a creationist (“evolution is just a theory, teach the controversy”), or because he knows his base is and you don’t say what you believe if it goes against your activist base (see Newt’s radical right social engineering comment)?
Science has moved on since Darwin. He was a great scientist not a Holy Man whose word runs writ. Wrong is wrong. It’s the science not the person who counts. But this basic misunderstanding is pretty indicative of the extreme, Anti-Enlightenment, Right.
You will have to get used to my intermittent attendance around here.
Ok, for one, please quit pigeonholing me as a ‘leftist’ or a ‘liberal’. In today’s US national politics those labels have become pretty much moot from a practical standpoint. It is as The Hamster King said- the GOP stands for a kind of plutocracy/aristocracy and attempt to paper over that fact in the hopes of securing the ignorant vote so they can win elections and thereby advance the agenda of their corporate/billionaire masters. I think they are attempting to undermine education in order to manufacture more ignoramuses. (I am waiting for the Dems to become the conservative party and a true ‘leftist’ party to emerge to represent those left behind.)
These days, on a pragmatic national-politics level, you either support that, or you are with the other guys. A politician who talks out of both sides of their mouth on the evolution issue is clearly with the plutocrats. Or as has been pointed out, is failing the moron test.
Beyond that, we have a constitutional framework for dealing with differences between groups or individuals that may or may not exist. People are equal before the law in this country, not ‘favored by God.’ My idea of a competent public figure is one who will go on record as receiving the most up-to-date information on a subject, rather than pulling the curtain on the whackjob constituency he is pandering to.
You want to talk about it? I’m not running for office, but I’m not hiding much. I’m probably more well-versed in the ‘why creationism isn’t true’ side that the finer points of evolution, honestly. Still, ‘none of your business’ is a stupid, stupid answer. That’s reserved for ‘do you share a foot fetish with your wife’ and other such questions.
Chen019 and New Deal Democrat, stay on topic or leave the thread. This is a discussion of the Republican Party, not your theories on race and evolution. You have been told repeatedly that you need to stop dragging them into every thread you post in. This is a formal warning to both of you.
Yes. A news article* in which the reporter uses the term “barked” to indicate a response about one throw-away line by the Governor of NJ is a sure sign that the entire Republican party is losing its grip on reality. Or did I somehow miss some depth of analysis in the OP…?
*which is probably best described as an editorial, but I’m just using the OP’s own terminology.
Christie is not the only one. Far from it, he’s simply one in a long line of Republican politicians who take their facts from ancient books written thousands of years ago.
