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« Montana Polls Close | Main | Blogospherics »
Why you really should be a Democrat
Category: Politics
Posted on: June 3, 2008 10:19 PM, by Greg Laden
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TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/73344
Comments
If you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon.Bokonon
Posted by: Jonah | June 3, 2008 10:49 PM
This is a contradicting statement, a bit of a paradox really. It says take a way from the excess so that someone else can reach their full potential, but a person's full potential is excess. So no one can reach their full potential before something is taken away and redistributed.
Posted by: marketblogger | June 3, 2008 11:56 PM
It's only a contradiction, marketblogger, if you make it so by defining a person's full potential as excess. That's a bizarre misuse of the word "excess".
Posted by: Zeno | June 4, 2008 12:11 AM
Marketblogger, by saying reducing the excesses and extremes of inequality, I think he means reducing inequality to a level that keeps his own boat floating but doesn't really eliminate it. If they eliminated it, who would mow his yard and clean his house?
Posted by: Joel | June 4, 2008 8:01 AM
Joel, careful. He's dead and in a way that left feelings running pretty high.
Posted by: Stephanie Z | June 4, 2008 10:00 AM
My fault. I should have mentioned.
This is a picture of Paul Wellstone. He was the best damn senator ever from Minnesota, and we've had more than our share of great senators. He died during his re-election campaign in a tragic accident. He was widely loved in Minnesota and is as close to being a Saint as a nice newish boy from the DFL could ever be. (I have no idea if he is Jewish, BTW.)
Wellstone was, without doubt, Ted Kennedy's heir apparent.
Posted by: Greg Laden | June 4, 2008 11:47 AM
Excess is a subjective term. Some would say, keeping a boat afloat, owning a boat, is excessive. Therefore, one man's necessity is another man's excess. Therefore, so long as a persons full potential is greater than their most basic needs, food, shelter, blah blah, which virtually any person is capable of, then that person's potential is another person's excess. It speaks to the debate that has gone on for as long as people have been free to have the debate, how much is too much. In the U.S. we have controls to reign in political power, but not much in the way of controls to reign in the power that comes with great wealth, which is the way most people prefer it to be, as they don't their own potential for wealth accumulation limited, even if they may never accumulate any in their lifetime. It's an economic and political trade off between the ability to accumulate enough wealth and power to repress people with less, and having one's full potential limited by someone with the political power to define excess by their own measure. In either case complete economic freedom is unobtainable.
That is the paradox.
Posted by: marketblogger | June 4, 2008 11:48 AM
For a little more background, Wellstone was a college professor who won his first election based on ads that were more clever than professional, touring in a decommissioned school bus, and a bizarre anti-Semitic misstep by the incumbent. He did some odd things along the way, but his sincerity was never in doubt. Has it really been nearly six years?
And yes, Greg, a practicing Jew, which was the occasion for almost all the disagreements I had with him. His religion was more conservative than the rest of him.
Posted by: Stephanie Z | June 4, 2008 12:17 PM
Stephani, my reply to this is over on your blog. As is my one personal Paul Wellstone Story.
Posted by: Greg Laden | June 4, 2008 10:11 PM
Correction: It was not an anti-Semitic comment. It was an anti-Gentile comment. I really should know better than to rely on 18-year-old memories.
Posted by: Stephanie Z | June 4, 2008 10:33 PM
Oh, and how do you like the new spelling of your name? I think it's kinda cool.
Posted by: Greg Laden | June 4, 2008 10:38 PM
:)
The only time I considered changing my name (except when I traded in my maiden name for my husband's much cooler and harder to pronounce surname) was in kindergarten. It took forever to write. My mother wouldn't let me change it to Ann.
Posted by: Stephanie Z | June 4, 2008 10:51 PM
"It is the belief that extremes and excesses of inequality must be reduced so that each person is free to develop his or her full potential"
If only his pinch faced, nutmunching wife Sheila could have followed that same philosophy as she bandied her white female privilege about,grew the police state, and denied lower income males the opportunities that were afforded to 'single moms' and other flagrant opportunists who used children to gain social advantage.
Posted by: Napoleon Dworkin | June 12, 2008 1:56 PM