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The other day my grandmother and I were talking on the phone and lamenting the state of American politics. Both of us were irritated that the current election seems to be a choice between two candidates we don’t like. “I wish I could press a button for ‘none of the above’,” she said.
Actually, I pointed out, American voters in 2008 can press one of four buttons for “none of the above”:
The mainstream media has largely ignored these guys; I guess they can’t compete with such important topics as the strange folks Barack Obama associates with and what nation Sarah Palin can see from her backyard. But they are on the ballot in most states, and while they may not match Obama and John McCain in the hype-and-vacuous-rhetoric department, they have some interesting things to say.
“But isn’t it throwing away your vote to vote for someone you know won’t win?” Well, no:
- If third-party candidates gather lots of votes, perhaps mainstream America, starting with the media, will start to take them a little more seriously. This gets us more choices, which can hardly be a bad thing.
- The more voters go for third-party candidates, the more likely it is that the two major parties will get the message of dissatisfaction and field better candidates next time around. We have a great need for competent leadership and substantive, sensible policy, and we aren’t going to get there by voting for the lesser of two evils and supporting a way of doing things which seems to reward politicians for being dumber. (Frankly, I have trouble deciding which is the lesser of the two evils this time.)
- The “spoiler effect” of a third-party candidate has been seen before. But unless you live in a swing state, your vote is unlikely to “spoil” the election. And just talking about “spoiling” assumes you can identify one of the mainstream candidates who is worse than the other.
My grandmother thought this sounded like good reasoning. Do you?
October 6th, 2008
Here’s a poem I wrote last spring while waiting for the bus.
Where I grew up in Jersey was a really different place
With lots of winding country roads and lots of open space.
I think that rural Hunterdon did have a public bus,
But no one I knew took it; it was just too big a fuss.
But living in the city here, it seemed to be sufficient
To take the city bus around and try to be efficient.
Driving creates greenhouse gas and generates pollution,
So public transportation is an earth-friendly solution.
In Baltimore the city bus is called the MTA.
And there are many reasons why this is a better way.
At certain times of day the bus will save you lots of stress
From driving through the city when the traffic is a mess.
Where I grew up, diversity is something that we lack.
I could count upon my fingers everyone I know who’s black.
But on the bus I see things in a very different light –
I can count upon my fingers everybody there who’s white.
In my quest to be efficient, I forgot one crucial fact:
When you really need to get there, seems the buses all are packed.
The other morning two of them were full and drove right by.
They left me on the sidewalk and I stood there asking, “Why?”
If you’ve got a lot of time to kill, the buses here are great,
But I only recommend them if you don’t mind being late.
They’re scheduled to come every ten minutes in the morning,
But if you think that happens, heed the foll’wing word of warning:
I walk out to the bus stop, and I measure out my fare,
and I wait ’bout twenty minutes, but the bus still isn’t there.
I panic, run, and get my car, but when I start to drive,
I look out to the street and see the stupid bus arrive.
Maybe there are special tricks to try and work the system,
But as for what they are, so far it seems like I have missed ‘em.
Someday I’ll move to nearby work and give up the frustration
Of depending every day on flaky public transportation.
September 9th, 2007
I recently read an article in the New York Times about how our sexual desires are largely genetically determined. An interesting article, and worth a read – but be careful what you read into it.
A line of thought I have heard goes something like this: “Sexuality is genetic/natural; therefore, we ought to do what we are naturally predisposed to do.” This is a convenient argument, perhaps, if you’re trying to justify doing whatever you want. It isn’t good reasoning, though.
Maybe I can highlight the fallacy as follows: I am a naturally selfish person. Not sure if this is in my genes, but it is definitely an inseparable part of who I am. Imagine what would happen if I did what I was naturally predisposed to do. If someone was in line in front of me at the grocery store, I could shove that person out of the way so I could go first. If I wanted to do well in a class, I could sabotage the other students somehow so they would do worse and the curve would favor me. These examples, while morally revolting, are fairly tame compared to some of the possibilities of what would happen if we really followed our nature. (Man rapes woman. Why not? Seeking sexual pleasure is natural. Man holds up store, murders cashier to get money to buy drugs. Why not? The desire for pleasure is natural. Gotta do what it takes to fill that desire.)
To say that we should do what is natural for us ignores the obvious fact that our nature is really, really corrupt. It removes the idea that we are responsible for our actions and replaces it with sort of a fatalistic view that we are completely determined by our genes. It is not only incorrect; it’s extremely dangerous. Imagine if we thought this way about everything!
What I’m getting at is that the connection between genetics and sexuality implies absolutely nothing about the connection between morality and sexuality.
April 27th, 2007
On April 16, I received the following email from Focus on the Family Action:
Dear Joshua,
I have warned you for weeks that the U.S. House would attempt to gag our ability to keep you informed about the mischief in Congress and thus, hinder your ability to let your voice be heard by elected officials.
Well, the day is upon us! In fact, if the U.S. House is successful, future communications from us to you such as this e-mail will be difficult.
You may remember that the tremendous outpouring of opposition by people such as yourself forced the Senate to stop it when they tried the same thing earlier this year.
This week the U.S. House may begin fast-tracking its version of the same bill and all indications are that the provisions to gag grassroots communications will be included.
We can’t sit idly by and allow Congress to silence our voices!
Rumors are that this terrible bill will be hustled along to a full House vote 24 hours after the bill is introduced. These are back-room practices at their worst and we must move fast. To date, this bill has been seen only by radically liberal groups funded by George Soros. I faxed a letter to House Judiciary Committee members today detailing more about this bill. Click here to see my letter.
Why do they want the bill passed? Because they want to keep groups like us from telling you what’s happening in the back rooms, where the deals are cut.
Here is what you need to do.
- First, please forward this e-mail to your friends and family if they haven’t yet signed the Freedom of Speech petition.
- Next, please visit our Action Center and send your representative an e-mail urging him or her to oppose the forthcoming “Grassroots Gag Order Bill” and reject any restrictions on grassroots communications with Congress or Executive Branch officials.
- Finally, please call your representative’s district and Washington offices with the same message; the phone numbers are available in the Action Center.
It is time to stand strong for our right to be informed and be heard.
Sincerely,
Tom Minnery
Senior Vice President
The message looked like one worth paying attention to. Something was a bit fishy, though. For one thing, the whole premise of keeping a political action group from communicating with citizens (”silencing our voices!”) seemed so ridiculous and un-American that I had a hard time believing our government was actually considering it. Then there was the line about the “radically liberal groups” (because all things liberal are evil) and George Soros (second to Satan himself). Generalizations and guilt by association – it looked manipulative to me.
So I dug a little deeper to find out more information about H.R. 984: Executive Branch Reform Act of 2007. If you actually read the bill, you won’t find anything that prohibits political action organizations from communicating with citizens. In fact, the purpose of the bill is to require transparency in government, to stop the very “back-room practices” that Minnery cites. (And yes, we are talking about the same bill – Minnery referred to H.R. 984 in his letter.)
Other helpful pages about this bill were WashingtonWatch.com (the comments at the bottom are telling) and this article from the National Right to Life Committee, another conservative group whose interpretation of H.R. 984 seems to line up a lot better with the facts compared to Minnery’s.
With all that in mind, I don’t think this is a very good law. It looks like something that will hinder communication between citizens and the federal government (although only the executive branch) while tying up government agencies in a lot of red tape. There has got to be a better way to stop shady back-room practices.
I am, however, dismayed with Focus on the Family Action for sending me this email. Being manipulative is one thing; that seems to be how political organizations often get things done. I don’t like it – I think it insults my intelligence – but I can accept it as a reality of the system. Being flat-out wrong is another. I can’t say that they were trying to be deliberately deceptive, but it’s sad that the basic premise of this message could be completely debunked in about two minutes with a simple Google search. I wonder if they think most people won’t even bother to find out what they’re forwarding emails and contacting their representatives about?
The lesson here is don’t believe anything you read so easily, even if it comes from a Christian organization. Scary.
April 19th, 2007
Someone asked me last night whether it was worth my time to recycle plastic bottles. I answered yes, but I didn’t give a very good explanation about why. The following is hopefully a better explanation.
Modern America is living in a way that, to use a buzzword of the day, is not sustainable. By this I mean that our activities consume so much in energy and resources that they cannot continue this way very long. Furthermore, these activities create pollution in various forms, which is harmful not only to plants and animals but to humanity itself. This is not good. This has got to change. What we need is a “green” revolution of sorts - a radical change in our ways of doing things that will better respect each other and the rest of God’s creation.
A revolution takes at least two kinds of people. Consider, for example, the American Revolution. The Revolution had its “heroes” - prominent figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry who led the movement. These are the people we read about in the history books. Yet the Revolution would have been impossible without the support of many ordinary people who read Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and decided that it was, well, common sense that the American colonies should not be governed by a faraway imperialist nation that valued them for economic reasons but didn’t even treat the colonists as equal citizens.
The green revolution will have its heroes too - people like Rachel Carson and maybe Al Gore who knew something was wrong and wouldn’t back down until their messages were clearly heard. (I say maybe Al Gore because I don’t think enough time has passed yet to evaluate Gore’s contributions to the environmental movement in the context of history.) But the green revolution, like any revolution, will only happen as you and I get on board. And as ordinary people like us do things like making efficient transportation choices, conserving energy, and recycling, things will change, slowly but surely.
How much difference does it really make whether I recycle one plastic bottle instead of throwing it away? I don’t really know. I know that it means a little less petroleum will be used to make new plastic things, and I know a landfill somewhere will be one bottle short. But I also know that when everyone does this, way bigger things will happen.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” It’s worth my time to recycle because the revolution begins with me. How about you?
April 12th, 2007
My sister has been spending the spring semester studying abroad in Beijing. She’s been keeping a blog called Silly Times in China that details her wild adventures there for the entertainment of her friends and family.
I really should have posted a link to this before; her blog has been consistently fun to read. However, my parents and I agreed that her entry from April 7 is the funniest yet. Part of this is just that my sister is a good writer – you can tell she’s been influenced by Dave Barry and Bill Bryson, among others – and part of it is that China is just a really weird place (at least to our Western eyes) and gives her a lot to write about. This is definitely worth a read.
April 9th, 2007
Had enough with junk mail credit card offers? Today I submitted my name and address to OptOutPreScreen.com, a site run by the major credit reporting companies where you can choose not to receive pre-approved credit or insurance offers in the mail. This ought to save some time that would be wasted reading junk mail. It reminded me of when I submitted my telephone number to the National Do Not Call Registry. Both sites will free you from their respective annoyances for up to five years with an electronic submission. If you print and mail in a form, you can opt out of the credit card offers permanently.
January 19th, 2007
While reading comments today on an online bulletin board, I noticed that the people posting there were confusing two words that sound similar but mean very different things.
voracity: the quality or state of being voracious.
voracious: having a huge appetite, or excessively eager.
To use it in a sentence: “That boy is a voracious eater.” You could then say (awkwardly) that “he eats with voracity.”
This is not to be confused with
veracity: devotion to the truth, power of conveying or perceiving truth, conformity with truth or fact, or something that is true.
To use it in a sentence: “I do not trust the president; I question his veracity.”
All definitions are from Merriam-Webster.
January 14th, 2007
Welcome to joshporter.org!
If you’ve been here before, you might notice that the format is a bit different. I’ve decided to turn my site into a blog for several reasons. My old site, a static page, was a pain to keep updated. By making it easy to add and edit content, this blog should not only facilitate more frequent updates but more interesting ones as well. Also, since you can leave comments on my blog, my web site is no longer a monologue but more of a conversation. Although the purpose of this site is still a little unclear, even to me, the possibilities here are endless!
I dedicate this blog to the pursuit of all that is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy, and, where appropriate, the exposition of what is false, ignoble, wrong, corrupt, lousy, etc.
January 12th, 2007
