The article that started this interchange points out a very sad fact
about the American political environment. We have been pretty evenly
divided on the left/right, socialist/constuitutionalist continuum for
some time. What is new (only 10-15 years IMO) is the increasing
tendancy of each side to portray its own agenda as the one true
religion and the other side as the forces of darkness. It would be
easy to characterize this article as simplistic leftist propaganda
(and I have done so) or to counter with simplistic rightist
propaganda, but not much is accomplished by doing so. Those on the
left are going to say "this article is telling it like it is" and "Fox
new is a propaganda stream". The truth, as always, is somewhere in
the middle, and there is no shortage of leftist proganda streams,
including all too frequently the standard new outlets.
I'm very much an in the middle person. I can't stomach the leftist
drive towards increasingly higher taxes, cradle-to-grave government
programs to control every aspect of our lives, and elimination of any
mention of our religious heritage in public places. Nor can I stand
the ultra-right born-again furor over abortion laws as the most
important action for politics. Unfortunately, in our system, there is
no middle of the road party. I find that the party on the right has
about 80% of the values I support with 20% excess (and excessive)
baggage. The party on the left has about 40% of the values I support
and 60% excess (and excessive) baggage. So the choice is clear for me.
As I said earlier, this article contains nothing new. You can read
that kind of vitriol in Molly Ivans' column every week.
Happy and prosperous 2006.
--
Collins Richey
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code ... If you write
the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not
smart enough to debug it.
-Brian Kernighan
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