A Radically Practical Politics for a Culture of Life, Part One

So, Hemingway and I have talking politics again -- as tis the season. Over the years he has hammered out some interesting, reasonable, and impossible positions. I'm discovering that it is the impossibility of these positions that leads him to vote according to economic issues -- that and he (being a white, male, baby boomer) feels he has little at stake in any culture war. (I know. I work on it.) So, he and I have come down to this, all of which is impossible. If a candidate took any of these positions, they would be at best pilloried and at worst assassinated.

In no particular order, some points on domestic policy:

1. Health care and health insurance must go non-profit. Possibly so should drug companies. A policy to be phased in over time, to be sure. And shut up, there's other stuff of invest in. Like new energy sources and art.
2. Privately owned weapons are to be limited to long guns, single action. No pistols, no semi- for full-automatics. -- Need to kill someone? It can be done with a rifle, or up close and personal with a knife or hands. Takes more fortitude that way.
3. Abortion is a matter of private morality and therefore can not be successfully legislated against. It is a shame and a tragedy, but that does not mean it should be illegal. (No, these are not fully nuanced positions, and yes, Hemmy and I simply ASSUME that women are humans.) Consequently, robust sexual and relationship education based on medical and psychological research should be taught in the schools, and prophylactics of every kind should be cheap and widely available.
4. Recreational drugs should be legalized, all of them, even the really scary ones. They should be regulated by the FDA, sold in dedicated shops, inspected for impurities, and taxed. See: prohibition. Consequently, education about drugs and treatment for addiction will need funding. Take away the profit that comes from the clandestine nautre of the enterprise: No black market, no communities blighted by their own members, no gangs, etc.
5. Climate change and energy policy are, the Republicans are right, matters which have a massive effect on our economy and infrastructure. But so what? Cutting emissions by 40% in the next 13 years is a lovely scientific and technological challenge. We're very good at those. The process itself will employ lots of people and generate oodles of profits. Clean and renewable energies should be pursued intrepidly for the same reason. Coal companies and Oil companies and Electric utilities will BENEFIT economically from exploring, investing in, and creating these technologies themselves. If they don't, other companies focused solely on these technologies will. Wanna play in a free market? Then do it. Again, this is a matter in Ingenuity, and we are America, synonymous. Auto emissions and gas milage: same argument. More RnD, the creation of Stuff We Can Sell to Other Countries (imagine), new sources of employment and investment, a cleaner, healthier, prettier environment for humans and beast of the air, field, and sea? Where, tell me, where the fuck is the downside? Transition, but transition as fast as you can. Mama Tara is not waiting on us. Besides, don't we Want our cars to sell abroad again?
6. Education: content mastery is nice (NCLB), but Learning to Learn is far more useful in a world that demands ever faster content mastery, facility with application and interrelation of content and methodologies, and adaptibility to new content. Many who test badly think and learn brilliantly. -- Our public schools should be funded to the absolute hilt, should offer an education on a par with the finest prepratory schools, and no one should grumble about their property taxes. We cherish our children? We should act on that value. Education is not free, and teachers are not saints or missionaries. -- Mythology is not science. Notice the difference in methodology and first assumptions. They are educationally incompatible, but not intellectually or spiritually incompatible. -- Education is not meant, in a democracy, to produce robots. (Pace my Franfurt school marxist friends. Democracy is not capitalism. They are at present coincident value systems.) -- Moreover, we will recognize that teaching happens on one side of the desk, and learning on the other. The learning context (which reaches outside of the school to the home) must be recognized as a factor in the educational process. The teacher needs reach toward the student, but folks, the student has to reach toward the teacher. Education happens in the middle.
7. Religion as the foundation of public life is madness. There is NOT EVEN ONE historical example of a nation founded on and governed by ANY RELIGION that did so without the vivavcious and violent and virulent and vitiating oppression and destruction of whole segments of its own or other populations. Hence, the Enlightement. From which, America. -- NB: The concern of the secular humanist is for the well being of humans. Hence, humanist. The Church and its Empire, historically, not so much. The Taliban, nope. Al Qaeda, not even close. Not even lovely Hindu India back in the day. Not even the Buddhists got all the way there. In Athens, in the mind of the Founding Fathers, in the genius of the Magna Carta, it was reason and concern for human well being that got us the America we know. Religion does much good, but it alone does arrive at our Constiution or this process of enlightment we call America. Why, because humans are LOUSY at living the demands and implications of their faiths. What force can balance the will to power? Humanist reason guided by careful ethical investigation. Living the demands and implications of our faiths might get to the same place, if we sincerely engaged our faiths as peoples, but hasn't yet. And I for one and am not willing to die at the hands of That historical expriement.

See how one could get dead saying these impossible things? Next, culture, and then foreign policy.

Anyhoo, that's just the start. And just the issues Hemmy and I tend to agree over. Happy Political Holidays.