I accept shared common expenses and benefits in our country. I'm not happy with all of them, of course, but hey, that's part of living in a pluralistic society and a representative democracy. I imagine it is just part of being alive.
Take, for instance, the US Military. That runs in the 700 billion to 1 trillion a year range, depending on how you look at it. Oregon doesn't have any military bases. Well, we have one small Coast Guard facility. And we do have a National Guard, which I imagine gets some national funding. We don't have any big defense contractors but some of our companies (like Flir and Intel and Northwest UAV) do business with the military. I'm not particularly a fan of a lot of the ways in the which modern military works, is funded or is deployed. None the less, I acknowledge my responsibility for helping pay for the federal defense budget. I may push to reprioritize thing in the budget and to reduce its overall size, but I acknowledge that as a citizen of this country, it is a shared burden. However, I would say that principled stands do matter. There is a really interesting start up company in town that I've pondered working with. They do some fascinating stuff and I like the people I've met there. On the other hand, they are backed by In-Q-Tel, the CIA venture capital fund and the intelligence industry is one of the biggest consumers of their products. Should I go to work there? Would taking money from there be compromising to my ethics? It's a tough call because of the uncertainty in the whole situation. It wouldn't be a tricky situation if I railed against the CIA and everything it stood for and then accepted a contracting gig directly with the CIA. That is clearly hypocritical. Yes, I could say, "well, if I don't do it, someone else will and it is better that I do it because I won't be as tempted by the evil of the CIA as someone else because I know I hate the CIA". That's exactly what what is going on with the funding requests from grant pools set up by the stimulus act. "We're fucked either way so I guess I better get mine" is not a principled stand. Maybe it is too much to expect principled stands from my representatives. One of my previous Senators, Gordon Smith, was a Republican with whom I had disagreements but whom I also respected for some of this stances, even when they were different than mine. In one prominent case, Oregon was the first state to pass a Death With Dignity law. That was a measure I heartily support for both ethical and personal reasons. Gordon Smith is a devout Mormon and his religious stance was that assisted suicide was a flat out sin. When Congress took up a measure to potentially ban the practice and override Oregon's voter-passed law, Smith was in a tough spot. As our Senator, he felt like he should represent the views of his constituents who had passed the measure. As a Republican, he felt like he should support State's Rights. As a Mormon, he felt morally appalled that his state could participate in assisted suicide. When it came down to it, he had to choose and he chose to follow his moral dictates and go against the expressed will of the people who elected him. I give him credit for that. I think that's leadership. I disagree with what is morally correct and I wish he could have supported our state in that instance but I can't really fault him for what he did. To the contrary, his decision increased my respect for him, even though I disagreed with it. I carry the same sort of judgement through to the debates over (optional) government programs. You think that Social Security and Medicare are socialist programs that should be eliminated? Fine, you can work toward that. However, I expect that you should not be drawing money from Social Security and Medicare either. Same thing goes for stimulus grants. Yes, that means that you are foregoing potential money that you could get out of the system and some of that money is money that you put into the system. I understand that. But that is the price of ethics. I fund the CIA and therefore In-Q-Tel. It would reasonable for me to work for a In-Q-Tel backed company that gets a lot of its revenue from intelligence agencies that I also help fund through my taxes. But can I do that ethically? I don't know. Therefore I have forgone the opportunity so far. That's how ethics works. Cheers, Judah On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 12:12 PM, denstar <[email protected]> wrote: > > Not really. > > :Den > > -- > There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe > that I was not He. > Friedrich Nietzsche > > On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 10:40 AM, Sam wrote: >> >> Not really, it was a selfish and ignorant comment. >> It's in line with saying I didn't vote for Obama so I shouldn't pay >> for any of his programs. >> It's that black and white mentality that's useless in discussions. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:329401 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
