Logical Informalism

Thursday, 29 May, 2008. 08:20:16 PM

John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona and presumptive Republican Party nominee for President of the United States in the upcoming 2008 election.

McCain graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1958 and became a naval aviator, flying attack aircraft from carriers. During the Vietnam War, he nearly lost his life in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. Later that year while on a bombing mission over North Vietnam, he was shot down, badly injured, and captured as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese. He spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war, experiencing episodes of torture.

McCain retired from the Navy in 1981 and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona in 1982. After serving two terms, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, winning re-election in 1992, 1998, and 2004. While generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain established a reputation as a political maverick for disagreeing with his party on several key issues. Surviving the Keating Five scandal of the 1980s, he made campaign finance reform one of his signature concerns, eventually co-sponsoring the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in 2002.

McCain lost the Republican nomination in the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush. He ran again for Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and gained enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee on March 4, 2008. /n

Monday, 26 May, 2008. 01:14:57 PM

The War Prayer /n

Sunday, 18 May, 2008. 03:14:21 PM

McCain is turning out to be a politician who can't keep his story straight. He's finding out that speaking untruthfully is a lot of work because you have to remember what you said.
Video /n

Friday, 16 May, 2008. 11:07:35 AM

RUBIN: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"

McCAIN: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."

-Two years ago on Sky News

Now McCain is singing a very different song.

When a politician values winning more than honesty and integrity, they end up saying things like this and then contradicting themselves later. It's clear that McCain wants to win at all cost, even at the cost of his own integrity.

A person can change their mind after considering their position carefully, for good reasons. I doubt many Americans would consider it morally good to change your position just to win conservative votes, and that's what McCain's doing here. /n

Thursday, 15 May, 2008. 10:41:36 AM

I wrote this on KOS in response to someone else who reported that his parents like Hillary because she's still trying to win, though she's the underdog.

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Winning is a moral value. Like all moral values, winning exists with other moral values, and some take priority over others.

Conservatives value winning very highly. They see the world as dangerous, and the losers are the dead ones. In that kind of world, you either kill the lion, or the lion eats you. There are no other options. You're on your own, and winning means living. Lose, even once, and you're dead.

The primacy of winning as a moral value explains why Republicans will do anything to win. They value winning more highly than honesty, so for them it's ok to win dishonestly, because winning is what counts.

And that explains why your conservative parents like Hillary. She appears to value winning extremely highly.

Winning is definitely a good thing, but for liberals it's not held as highly. We value other things such as fairness more highly. We don't think it's moral for a person to win if it means screwing someone else. We don't think it's OK to win if the environment is spoiled. We don't think it's OK to win if you do it by lying and dishonesty.

Hillary clashes with our moral values because we value community more highly than winning. We want a country that is truly concerned when even the least of us is left behind without opportunities. We want a country where people improve the community and thereby improve themselves.

Obama's the candidate that embodies those moral values. /n

Saturday, 10 May, 2008. 09:20:51 PM

I've put a lot of thought into what makes a person a conservative or a liberal, and I found that it helps to realize that the positions a person takes depends on what moral values they hold. It doesn't work the other way around. Nobody decides the are for example for or against capital punishment, and then they decide afterwards that killing is wrong.

So, my conclusion from that is that it's not the positions that define a person, it's the moral values.

Furthermore, it's not like liberals and conservatives have different moral values. How they differ is in priority, and there are also very subtle versions of the same moral values.

Let's take the value of strength, for example. It has two different versions, one of which is moderately important to liberals, and one of which is extremely important to conservatives.

The conservative version is the strength that comes from masculine power, the power of muscle and force. A physically strong man can defend his family from harm. He can use his muscle to perform work to provide for his family. He can use his masculine power to demonstrate a powerful image to the world; that his family is a strong family that doesn't raise wimps.

The liberal version is not a gender specific strength. It something displayed by both men and women when they show perseverance and stamina in their efforts, where they refuse to give up because continuing the struggle is the right thing to do. It's the kind of strength that would drive a factory worker to take on another job to put his kids through college. It's the kind of strength a single mother would display as she raises good kids and takes care of her ailing parents, while putting her needs off until later.

Both of these strengths are good things, but the priorities are different. The conservative version of strength is what drives our military spending, and our warlike natures. The liberal version of strength, maybe better called fortitude or constitution, is what (I would hope) drives our nation to try to make peace in the middle East, fail miserably, try again, fail again, try again and again, and never give up trying to find peace in the Middle East.

A liberal can certainly say that physical strength is a good and wonderful thing. There's no liberal in the world that would not do their damndest to beat a home intruder to death with their bare hands to defend their children. But as a priority a liberal would put stocking guns in their house and learning martial arts strictly to be able to project a tough image pretty low on the list.

There's a whole list of moral values which are good for different reasons for each side. Education for example is good for conservatives because it helps them make money, provide for the family, and generally win at the game of life. (Winning is another moral value which is very high for conservatives. Some of them can't enjoy the game unless they win the game.)

But a liberal view of the moral value of education is that it's primarily a good in itself. It's morally liberal to get an English degree with a History minor because it makes you a better person, and if you really can't expect to make a lot of money with those degrees that's fine. Winning is not the point. The point for a liberal is more to improve yourself and your ability to contribute to the community around you. /n

Thursday, 08 May, 2008. 11:00:56 AM

I upgraded my game machine to support the new X-Plane version 9. It's a Core 2 duo, 3 Ghz with an NVidia 9600GT now. Runs X-Plane just fine. /n

Wednesday, 07 May, 2008. 05:01:40 PM

The caller ID information from the University of Texas is misspelled. It says "Univeristy." I don't know if that's just Alex's number or if it's everybody. /n