Posted: July 9, 2011 | Author: Dr. Ernie | Filed under: News |
Political Typology Project
There is much more to this than the following charts, but these are fundamental.
Picture quality is less than optimal inasmuch as each visual is a literal example
of cut and paste –with actual paper and actual cutting and pasting of labels.
For optimal viewing it is advisable to open up your e-mail window,
that is, make it “taller” than usual by using the blue bar at the top of the
window to expand its size.
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Posted: June 28, 2011 | Author: Dr. Ernie | Filed under: News |
The Real Truth Project / Hal Morris
Notes From the Radical Center
Posted by ontologicalcomedian
One problem with the idea of “Radical Center” or “Radical Middle” is that there are too many radical centers. A lot of people have taken up one or the other as a slogan (or “brand”, I might say — but I’d rather not).
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Posted: June 24, 2011 | Author: Dr. Ernie | Filed under: News |
Amen!
World magazine
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Godly politics, neither left nor libertarian
Is the Christian view of politics libertarian or socialist? As Tony Woodlief mentioned in his column on Friday, the evangelical left has become quite concerned about the number of Christians who praise the writings of the atheist libertarian Ayn Rand: “Rand advocates a law of selfishness over love and commands her followers to think only of themselves, not others.” Politically liberal evangelical groups, like Jim Wallis’ Sojourners, argue for a more state-dependent politics based on Christ’s command to love one another and care especially for the poor.
Last week, another WORLDmag.com columnist, Alex Tokarev, who I have worked alongside for several years at The King’s College, seemed to agree with the religious left that we have a choice between collectivism and libertarian freedom. (I have never heard Alex mention Ayn Rand; Harry Potter is more his taste in literature.) But are the alternatives that simple? Is either of them genuinely Christian at all?
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Posted: June 23, 2011 | Author: Dr. Ernie | Filed under: News |
Edward L. Glaeser: A Time for Radical Centrists – NYTimes.com
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/time-for-the-radical-centrists-to-step-up/
Edward L. Glaeser: A Time for Radical Centrists
Edward L. Glaeser is an economics professor at Harvard and the author of “Triumph of the City.”
It has been a bad decade for the gross federal debt, which has ballooned to 93.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2010 from 56.4 percent in 2001. Wars and recession have taken their toll, and last week Standard & Poor’s warned that the United States was in danger of losing its AAA rating.
Is it any wonder that 70 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track?
Our best hope is that the collision between the Tea Party and the Obama administration will explode into some serious centrism. Just as the strange cocktail of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich produced welfare reform in 1996 and a significant decline in the gross debt, to 57 percent of G.D.P. from 67 percent, the political conflict between President Obamaand the Republican-controlled House seems to have created some fiscal seriousness from both parties.
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Posted: October 5, 2010 | Author: Dr. Ernie | Filed under: News |
I’m not optimistic about the chances of anything dramatic happening by 2012, but I agree with his analysis of the challenges faced by the existing parties.
Obama probably did the best he could do, and that’s the point. The best our current two parties can produce today — in the wake of the worst existential crisis in our economy and environment in a century — is suboptimal, even when one party had a huge majority. Suboptimal is O.K. for ordinary times, but these are not ordinary times. We need to stop waiting for Superman and start building a superconsensus to do the superhard stuff we must do now. Pretty good is not even close to good enough today.
We need a third party on the stage of the next presidential debate to look Americans in the eye and say: “These two parties are lying to you. They can’t tell you the truth because they are each trapped in decades of special interests. I am not going to tell you what you want to hear. I am going to tell you what you need to hear if we want to be the world’s leaders, not the new Romans.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/opinion/03friedman.html?_r=1&ref=thomaslfriedman&pagewanted=print
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Posted: October 1, 2010 | Author: Dr. Ernie | Filed under: News |
Matt Miller nails the issue right on the head. A brilliant analysis.
… our entire system conspires to ban the expression of a practical synthesis of the best of “liberal,” “conservative” and more eclectic views.
… the deeper vacuum comes not from liberal or conservative ideology per se, but from the interest groups and campaign funders that help each side seek power.
The crisis in the way we think about our collective challenges, in other words, is inseparable from the economic stake many groups have in policies that are obstacles to addressing them.
The challenge is to build a new creed and a new coalition that can move us past the inability of left and right to tackle our real problems.
Posted: September 23, 2010 | Author: Dr. Ernie | Filed under: News |
Kudos to Steve Monsma for taking on the sacred cows of right-wing Christendom to plead for a new radical center:
This leads me to plead for a radical Christian center. Centrism may appear to be wishy-washy and undecided or so apathetic that one refuses to take sides. But a radical Christian center is far from being either. It is radical in that it goes to the root of today’s political issues, asking basic questions of purpose, value, and worth. It puts the common good ahead of partisan advantage and narrow special interests. If you don’t think that is radical, you haven’t been paying much attention to this fall’s partisan election campaigns
Posted: March 13, 2009 | Author: Dr. Ernie | Filed under: News |
[Originally posted on March 13, 2006]
Linda Stone is perhaps most famous for coining the phrases “continuous partial attention” and “committed full-attention focus is the next aphrodisiac.” However, I’m especially grateful for her (hat tip to Nat on O’Reilly) pointing me to Dee Hock’s definitions of how information evolves:
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Posted: December 21, 2006 | Author: Dr. Ernie | Filed under: News |
[The following article from Centroids was solicited by PetitionSpot, apparently because they were impressed by my petition to Elect Jon Stewart].
Inspired by what I considered
excessive solutions, I thought I should actually write down what I think a good, actionable Platform would look like. Or, more precisely what we’d need to do in order to do the job effectively in the context of the
Unity08 movement.
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Posted: April 21, 2006 | Author: Dr. Ernie | Filed under: News |
[The following is extracted from an email response I sent to a friend who asked about Christine Rosen’s article in The New Atlantis, “The Age ofEgocasting.”]
Interesting stuff. To be sure, this feels more like an extended and eloquent “rant”
than a real essay. Then again, Pod person that I am, I skimmed it rather than
reading it through. 🙂
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Radical Centrism 