Greetings, The other day I responded to Platt by saying that we are not as free as we think we are.
Surely this is not the forum to discuss current goings-on in the US, but I have written to my senators (both of whom happen to be Republicans) and received very unsatisfactory responses. I guess in my frustration I desire to have my voice heard somewhere. At some point during the 9 years of my absence was there ever a time when the fad of writing "This I Believe" essays swept through MoQ Discuss? If so, I missed it. I miss the news. I mean actual NEWS that provides information. The current Fox vs MSNBC mudslinging is tearing the country apart. This is ugly stuff and detrimental to making any kind of forward progress. I suppose it has entertainment value since everyone enjoys watching things that reinforce their belief system. If you turn on a TV in the United States today you are bombarded with arguments designed to arouse fear. News has become commentary interspersed with commercials laced with innuendo and specious 'facts'. If it is true that the majority of Americans cannot explain the meaning of a health-care public option, who's fault is that? Isn't it the job of news organizations to convey information? I used to believe that a free and independent press was a foundation of democracy, but now we are seeing the denouement. The press is not free when it exists only to return value to its corporate shareholders. Should the worth of a news organization be directly proportional to its stock price? To those who would argue that government is the problem, I would suggest that corporations are the problem, and that even though I agree our government is no where near perfect, I would point out that it is the only thing we have standing between us and corporate greed. I cannot believe I am saying this, but I long for the days of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s conservative "Firing Line". How I turned out to be a liberal is a mystery, given that "Firing Line" was required weekly viewing in my childhood household, but maybe not so much of one, because I recall Mr. Buckley behaving much more like what we would call a moderate today than a rabid conservative. He did not stick strictly to a party line, and entertained guests of all persuasions - and he gave them a chance to speak their mind without chopping them off mid-sentence to go to commercial. What an amazing show. We did not then appreciate what we had. All this is an impossibility today. There is a fundamental law that should be self-evident to anyone wishing to persuade. You do not do so by insulting the intelligence of other party. Our current "debate" about health care in the United States is the farthest thing from true debate there is. Due to the grandstanding and insult-hurling that is now passing for debate, the nation is completely polarized, and no one is coming forward to bring sanity to the situation. Do you know how true agreement is achieved? It is my belief that the fundamental requirement is an ability to understand the other side. When your opposition says something seemingly illogical to you, instead of crowing about it and attempting to humiliate them, your job should be to try to understand where they are coming from. This serves two purposes. On one hand, you may actually gain an understanding of their position that you did not have before, and this might cause you to alter your own, and on the other hand, by forcing them to explain themselves, they will be forced to delve deeply into their beliefs, and may change their view once they have gone through the exercise of examining it. In either case, and I don't care which, something better will always come of it. Did it ever occur to liberals that when a conservative says they are afraid of losing what health-care coverage they've got, the correct response is not to deride them for being selfish, but to respectfully examine that concern? Maybe they are right, and even if they aren't, they believe they are, so your task should be to find a way to allay those fears rather than simply cast aspersions. This is a mess. Not a true essay at all. I actually have two points I am trying to make rather than just one as should be addressed in a proper essay, and they are both interwoven in a very unsatisfactory way in my mind. I should edit, edit, edit, and know that, but I am not going to. Given this group of distinguished thinkers, I'm going to just throw it out there knowing my points will be understood no matter how poorly I string them together. Thanks for listening, Mary The most important thing you will ever make is a realization. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
