The article is here in the NYT Magazine (apparently free access to all!), but before you read it (and you SHOULD read it), read the analysis by DHinMI on Next Hurray, which points out the binary thinking, ignorance of US history, and the underlying Compulsive Centrist Disorder of Matt Bai, so characteristic of the inside-the-Beltway crowd that has never been exposed to the real world.
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This time around, we're talking to Mike of Mike the Mad Biologist.
What's your name?
Mike the Mad Biologist.
What do you do when you're not blogging?
Science. For fun, well, I live in Boston. Museums, great restaurants, beautiful neighborhoods (and people, excepting yours truly). After four…
Monday evening at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, Chris Mooney and I gave our first DC-area Speaking Science 2.0 presentation. We have details as pictures over at our new Speaking Science Web site. Inspired by Al Gore, Chris and I have also bought emission…
The NY Times' Matt Bai writes a predictable article about the Gifford shooting:
Within minutes of the first reports Saturday that Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and a score of people with her had been shot in Tucson, pages began disappearing from the Web. One was Sarah…
Happy day before Patriots' Day. Tomorrow, I'll be watching the Boston Marathon (I don't really have a choice; it goes right past my building). Anyway, here's some science and other links for you:
There's a humongous fungus among us. And it could create real problems for food production.
One…
Another characterization one could make about "predistributionist" Democrats is that they believe that all people are created equal-- that there are no inherent differences in intelligence, resourcefulness, or gumption between people-- and whatever inequalities there may are the result of environmental vicissitudes and, furthermore, can be can be completely eliminated through enlightened technocratic governing (e.g., progressive taxation).
As a geneticist / behavioral neuroscientist, and aside from the economic problems with redistributionist philosophy, I have strong moral and scientific objections with this point of view. That's why I consider John Edwards pledge to eliminate poverty simultaneously laughable and very threatening. Why? Because the elimination of socio-economic poverty when not all people are as clever as he would entail a massive dimunition of liberty in this country. (Note that Matt Bai cites those who approve of marginal tax rates > 90%.) I, personally, would rather be free than to work for a government that was trying to accomplish something that I am certain is IMPOSSIBLE, i.e., the elimination of differences between people.
Liberty or socio-economic equality. That is the choice Americans must make. I choose Liberty, and that's why I would *never* vote for John Edwards.
What a reactionary view of people! Typical "poor people are poor because they are dumb or lazy" conservative trope which is dead wrong. What are you going to do next, cite "The Bell Curve"?
And nobody, including Edwards, is proposing governmental equalization of wealth, just equality of opportunity, which is missing in this country due to decades of its conservative policies which allow the self-gloating rich to get even richer and to push the poor even deeper into poverty. It's about the American Dream, the vertical mobility, not some stereotype of communism. And people who, like Steve Seiler, hide their racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, femiphobia and nationalism behind the IQ argument are part of the problem.
The USA had a middle class, which is fast disappearing. A certain minimal safety net for all, particularly health care as in other modern states, is worth paying for. People barely surviving have little chance to show gumption.
Not just liberty, but liberty and justice for all. That means, to me, a fair chance.