Consistency in Presidential Elections

This survey stops with the Presidential election of 2008.  Too lazy to update it.

Four states – Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota – have voted Republican in every Presidential election since 1940 (FDR’s third term), except for 1964 (Johnson vs. Goldwater).

Four more states – Oklahoma, Utah, Wyoming and Idaho – have voted Republican in every Presidential election since 1952 (Eisenhower’s first term), except for 1964.

Accidents

It affronts our sense of fair play when we consider someone having an accident having to pay for the accident and its consequences and repair.   But it attacks our notion of fair play and common sense when we consider the victim of the accident paying for the accident, its consequences and its repair.  In other words, we don’t think BP should have to pay for its “accident” and the consequences of the accident on the Gulf Coast until we consider the residents of the area having to pay for it.  At which time it becomes 100% obvious that the perpetrator of the accident, not its victims, must pay for their “accident.”

The Contraceptives Controversy

Reader: if you are a practicing Catholic who believes the Pope has a right to define women’s sexual behavior, please do not read this essay; it will only piss you off.

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Have you caught the spat about contraceptives between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church?  Church doctrine forbids contraception and the Church objects to the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) providing information about and access to and coverage for contraceptives to its faithful.  Newt Gingrich – a third wife convert to Catholicism – called it the biggest assault on freedom of religion since … well I am not sure, maybe since Martin Luther hammered his 95 Theses to the door of his church.  Rick Santorum, a one wife Catholic, has said equally nasty things about it too.  The Obama administration, as its first response, offered to allow the church, as an employer providing health insurance to its employees, not to have to pay for that part of the insurance package; but the insurance company would still have to provide contraceptive services to the church’s employees and insurance policy holders.  I suspect that will not satisfy everyone as the church may want to deny its members information and access to contraceptives (despite the fact that many of them already use contraceptives, doctrine be damned).  So, for Gingrich, Santorum and others, freedom of religion in the USA seems to mean the right of the Catholic Church (the employer) to deny freedom of choice to individuals who work for them (employees).  Ironic.

Guns

Here’s a rule.  If there is a politician or a TV or radio political commentator – or worse yet more than one – with whom you are in agreement 100% of the time, what that proves is you are not an independent thinker.

Obvious, right?  Good.  Because I am sure that the following will rub many Americans the wrong way, Americans I most want to reach.  

But just because we may disagree on one issue does not make everything I have to say unworthy of your time and consideration, right?

OK.

Abortion

Before Roe v. Wade, American women had abortions.  Some were self-administered and very dangerous, even fatal; some were black-market, expensive and very dangerous, even fatal; and some were safe, expensive and out of the country, where the law couldn’t do anything to you, even when you returned.  And for many of those who went to term, there were abandonments (dropping newborn babies in dumpsters or leaving them on door-steps in strange neighborhoods) and there were orphans, millions of orphans.  But for those who seriously considered abortion, what there was very few of was a happy couple welcoming a newborn into a loving family life.

Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that is so “controversial,” the decision that forbids a state to outlaw abortion for the first trimester, was not a close 5-4 decision pitting conservative justices against liberal justices.  The decision was 7-2.  The makeup of the Court was 6 justices installed by Republican presidents and 3 justices installed by Democratic presidents.  Five of the six Republican justices voted with the majority and two of the three Democratic justices voted with the majority.  Bet you didn’t know that.  It was not a close decision, nor was it a party-line decision.

Social Darwinism

“So, Social Darwinism, whazzat?”

If “Darwinism” can be thought of as “survival of the fittest” (not Darwin’s idea at all; he preferred survival of the best adapted or the most adaptable), or prominence of the strongest, the most competitive, the wealthiest or the best connected, and then you apply it to humans, rather than the “inferior animal species,” that would be Social Darwinism.  The Law of the Jungle, applied to humans.  A corollary to survival of the strongest or fittest is the non-survival of the weakest or least fit.  Only the “best” would survive and reproduce, and this would naturally result in a superior human species, superior to what it would be without this kind of a Natural Selection.  Social Darwinism has no need for any “social safety net” to rescue the least fit, as it does not approve of allowing the least fit to survive.  Social Darwinism is cruel but efficient; think the ancient Spartans and the not so ancient Nazis.  A good case could be made that a more compassionate society would be a stronger, more fit society in many ways, but I am not approving or condemning Social Darwinism, just defining it.

Non-Violence

Many of my liberal friends – and I have more liberal friends than conservative ones (because of where I live!) – seem to believe that non-violence is the right approach to any issue that has the potential for violence, the ONLY right approach to any such issue: violence is never justified.  No doubt Martin Luther King, Jr’s non-violent approach to African-American Civil Rights worked wonders in the sixties, but I am not convinced that the perceived threat of mayhem posed by the Black Panthers didn’t help the cause some, maybe a lot.  Indeed, I am not so sure that the back-sliding of black power since the sixties cannot be traced at least partially to two generations of near total black non-violence.

Mohandas Gandhi (an inspiration for Martin) knew that non-violence was the only way to win when the other side outgunned you; you have to pick your battles.

But putting the Civil Rights struggle aside, my personal answer to the Left’s near-absolute allegiance to non-violence can be found in a simple movie of long ago: High Noon.  Those who know the movie know what I mean, and I would bet that all of them agree with me that non-violence has its place, as does violence.  For those who have not watched High Noon (or listened to its Oscar-winning song), I recommend it highly.  You might come away from it not so sure that non-violence is always the right answer to every question.  Sometimes, being a man means getting dirty.

Freedom of Speech, Revisited

“Well, I don’t think that you have made the case against money as protected speech.  For example, Meg Whitman (former CEO of eBay) and Carly Fiorina (former CEO of Hewlett-Packard), not only spent gobs and gobs of money running for governor and senator, respectively, of the great state of California, but they lost, and they lost embarrassingly, Whitman to a Democratic fossil who had been governor when T. Rex's ruled California.  Money did not corrupt the electoral process there, did it?”