The Two Party System

The most commonly made argument against the two party system is that the parties are not representative of the people's interests.  I think this is largely nonsense.  What is true is that the national platforms have a higher variance from regional interests.  I doubt that changes much nationally in the end.  Presently the parties are as weak as they've been in a generation.  This has been owed somewhat to the progressive reforms that weakened the parties.  Oddly enough, the worker was better off with two strong parties, because labor made the parties serve their interests of they delivered votes elsewhere.  That is not the case today.  Today, neither party works in the interests of workers.

Suffering

In my life, I have almost always been willing to allow suffering for myself.  That has been inclusive of suffering for people better off than me.  The day that started ending was when I noticed that my suffering did not just fall upon me, but it fell upon my children.  It is one thing to suffer for your ideal.  It is another thing to have those who depend upon you suffer for your ideal.  This comes to mind reading this thread.  The absolute fear of bringing another child into this world to join in suffering is quite visible in some of the comments.  Of course, the vast, vast majority of people using birth control (be it NFP otherwise) are doing so for economic reasons.  Of that group, a large number are well off or at least moderately well off.  However, there are more people for whom bringing a child into this world would mean asking him to suffer.  These are people like myself who look almost idyllically at the people able to support large families.  I had never built my value system around the acquisition of material goods.  Were it not for kids, I would likely be content with a certain amount of poverty.  I am not content to allow them to suffer for my ideals, and if the church wishes to be insistent on the matter than she needs to make provision.  Asking the weakest of her followers to suffer for her ideals is simply cruel.

Paul Ryan

Since the guy is from my home state, I feel almost compelled to comment.  Meh.  He was elected in an open race.  He lives in a district neighboring three TV markets with voters fairly distributed throughout the district.  This means opposition candidates tend to be known in one market but not all three.  The district covers around a quarter of each television market, and that makes TV advertising very difficult and more expensive.  He will tickle the ears of the Milwaukee talkers, but he won't do so near to the degree that Scott Walker does.  Demographics and redistricting made it a fairly easy district for him.  This is why for example I have difficulty seeing how people impute charisma to him.  I haven't seen a whole lot of evidence of him ever persuading anyone.  Republicans haven't valued an ability to woe independents since at least Bush the Elder, so they are likely being idiosyncratic in their definition of charismatic.  I think his selection was more about rallying the troops, and I would imagine the troops will be satisfied with the pick.

People will try to play his district as liberal, but Mark Neumann preceded him.  Neumann is considered the most conservative candidate in the WI Senate race.  He has lost statewide office bids several times.  Draw your own conclusions.

Moral Theology

Having been involved in Catholic moral debate for half a decade, I've come to a few conclusions.
1.  Some acts by their very nature are wrong.
2.  Applying the butterfly effect to choices is a piss poor way to do theology.
3.  Anything beyond 1st order cooperation is likely crap.

One of the things I like about Catholic morality is that it tries to truly evaluate the exercise of agency.  It does not tend to look at 2nd order effects unless the actor has agency over those second order effects.  These tend to be safeties against demagogues, but demagogues have a tendency to go through stop signs.

Runaway Determinism

A common thing heard nowadays is that something was "a failure in leadership."  Such lamentations are often accompanied by "needing to take responsibility" or "needing to take ownership."  While I too don't like it when bad things happen, I take a rather dismal view to those wanting to attribute responsibility everywhere, everywhere except with the actual perpetrator.  Add to that a zero toleration policy for everyone else's actions but your own and you end up with less actual accountability.  Accountability is a necessary thing, but people should only be accountable for things they have control.  Even then, a liberal birth should be granted so that defensible actions are not treated as incompetence.

A lot of this has seemed to have come from a die-hard determinism.  Determinists tend not to think that there are unknowns.  They just believe there are things you didn't have the will to figure out.  They take it as gospel that if one tiny detail were changed in the past, an outcome today would have been totally prevented.  Perhaps I wasn't as exposed to the same science fiction as these folks growing up, but that is the exact opposite of my own experience.  My experience has been that exceptional events are indeed exceptional.  My experience has been that quickness to presume has not led to insight but rather to rash judgement.  Perhaps I have simply acquired a more refined empathetic spirit, but I have great difficulty holding people to my level of judgement, let alone to a level impossible for even me to achieve.  At the same time, I don't have near the trouble condemning people engaged in actual wrongful behavior as others seem to do.

Paterno

Rarely do I recycle comments I leave elsewhere.  This comment however pretty much sums things up:

PSU [Penn State University] got what they paid for. Heaven forbid one of these reports ever just say people did what they thought was best with the information they had. Instead we have to pretend that PSU could have prevented child abuse, a rather absurd idea in practice as opposed to the mere ideal of wanting to prevent it. These reports [a reference to the Freeh Report] are necessary though, because they signal we have overcome our past sins, a baptism if you will. Perhaps PSU can even put up signs signaling that they are a pedophilia free zone so as to really emphasize how far they have come. It is all nonsense, but that is social panic for you.

Now the university has chosen to remove the statute erected in Paterno's honor. It unfortunately perpetuates this belief Joe Paterno was instrumental in Sandusky's sexual abuse of boys.  Paterno of course admitted a desire to have done more had he known more, as would all of us.  That isn't enough for the people posing for holy pictures.

With Paterno, everything is evidence of his complicity.  If Paterno talks to school officials and follows up with them, it is evidence that he is trying to cover up the matter.  If Paterno leaves other officials to do their work after reporting his conversation, it is evidence of his callous disregard for the victims.  One of the cases end up in the local prosecutor's lap and he declines prosecution, yet Paterno gets to be the one who clearly didn't exercise his power - whatever that power was off the field - prudently.  His choices for whatever reason are the lynch pin in this whole saga.

One of the more disturbing things about the present generation in power is their callousness to truth and principle.  It is a generation that cares solely about outcome and only the immediate outcome at that.  Their actions will invariably result in more sexual abuse cases being covered up.  The first reason is that the person they know is always the exception to their outcome based philosophy, e.g. the welfare queen is always someone a person doesn't know.  Therefore they will be hesitant to see the perpetrator face the full wrath for what they will invariably consider a misunderstanding or mistake.  The second reason is that people of action have a tendency to get into trouble whereas people who keep their mouth shut don't.  McQueary's life would be a thousand times better today if he hadn't confessed to seeing what he saw in that locker room.  This case has reinforced that.

On Guns Briefly

Before this massive shooting, I had basically resolved myself to the position that we should examine disarming the police.  Specifically, I thought a large caliber rifle for the squad car, even a high capacity one, should be sufficient.  By removing hand guns, my belief was that police officers would be less reluctant to place themselves in situations where one would be necessary.  This is turn would make the police less confrontational.  Time would solve more issues..

With the shooting in Colorado, the debate about guns has begun again.  I tend to be ambivalent on the topic.  I think supporters of gun control tend to be correct that guns are antisocial, and I think they are correct in their constitutional interpretation that guns are a corporate rather than individual right, despite claims by the Supreme Court otherwise.  I also think opponents of gun control tend to be correct that gun control laws have their most pronounced affect on the law abiding.  However, I'm coming around to the belief that prior efforts toward gun control were sabotaged.  I'm coming around to the belief that success can be had if it is willed.