The Opinionated Bastard

To the Left: Capitalism is not universally bad.
To the Right: Capitalism is not universally good.

We don't have a capitalist society in this country, we have a "democratic capitalist" society. Marx might have been right in that unfettered capitalism can lead inevitably to fascism, but not in a democratic society. In a democratic society, capitalism has lead to more wealth for everyone, and has proved its self superior to any other system.

So capitalism must exist in a system of checks and balances. The market always wins though, so those checks and balances must be carefully defined. You have to make tradeoffs. While the minimum wage raised the standard of living for some people, it also increased unemployment.

To the Left: Unions are not always right
To the Right: Businesses are not always right

Personal note: My mother was the shop steward in her union, but she hated their politics. My grandfather was imprisoned in Leavenworth for running a labor union, but though Communism was evil.

While workers are the means of production, that production is in competition with other workers. The market always wins. The union leadership is not always reasonable, neither is management. Don't shortchange your workers, don't strike yourself out of a job.

To the Left: Left wing totalitarian regimes are evil
To the Right: Right wing totalitarian regimes are evil

While the US did a certain amount of support for right wing regimes during the Cold War, its substantially backing off from that now. What both sides have yet to realize is that ALL totalitarian regimes are evil, and the US should now work to eliminate them. Both the right and the left should applaud whenever one of these regimes falls, not selectively applaud based on the stated politics of the regime.

To the Left: We are not all going to become slaves to a conspiracy of multi-national corporations. Even in cases where actions by someone can be traced back to the profit motive, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Capitalism works. It makes good movies, but the world is a lot more complex then Noam Chomsky thinks.

To the Right: Individual power is a precious and fragile thing. Freedom of choice is important. Its too easy for corporations to break the law with minimal consequences.

To the Left: The death penalty is appropriate in certain cases
To the Right: The death penalty as applied in this country is rarely appropriate.

To the Left: Being a Christian is not a bad thing, its a good thing.
To the Right: The first lesson of Christianity: Watch out for the church elders.

Being a Christian used to imply the virtues of tolerance, charity and compassion. While I think that's still true, that's not the Christians who show up on television, they are always judgmental, greedy and uncompassionate. Ironically, this is the same thing Christ told us to watch out for. Its the church elders who nailed him to the cross. For an extreme example of this, see Iran.

To the Left: Family Values Work
To the Right: That doesn't make them the law.

Children who can grow up in whole, stable homes in general will do better then others. That doesn't mean that should become the law. We all have to make our own way in the world, and its not clear that growing up in a whole but unstable home would be better.

To the Left: Abortion is bad
To the Right: Choice is good

Its shameful the number of abortions that are performed in this country. That doesn't mean it should be illegal, instead we should promote alternatives like emergency contraception. Ultimately, people have to have the freedom to live their lives, but we should work together to try to reduce the abortion rate by 75% (the effectiveness of emergency contraception).

Something that no one quite seems to get in this whole WMD thing.

Also Titled:

Even Saddam thought Iraq had WMD

After having dozens of Bush-hating friends tell me "Bush lied", and after reading pages and pages of everything Bush said (gotta love the internet), I have to say that Bush never lied. Nor did he say that we knew for sure that Iraq had WMD. Instead, Bush and his spokesmen were very explicit about we knew for sure and what we didn't know. The best you can approximate really is that Bush said:

"We think Iraq has WMD, and that's a bad thing".

Note that Bush's statements were summarized differently by the media, but you can't blame Bush for how the media edits his words. Of course, we know now that we were wrong, but the most interesting thing about all this is that what David Kay found Iraq was that while Iraq had plenty of programs _trying_ to make WMD. However, in general, the scientists were lying to Saddam. Specifically Jafar Jafar, the head of weapons research was lying to Saddam. This makes some of the statements by Saddam about "unleashing a rain of fire upon US troops if they invaded" make a little more sense. Saddam thought he had weapons he didn't have.

The irony of all this is incredible to me. Currently, I keep fantasizing about having Tommy Chong play Hussien, with Cheech Marin as Jafar in a Saturday Night Live skit.

Saddam (played by Chong): Dude, I need to score some killer weapons to keep these Americans off my back, man.

Jafar: (played by Cheech): No can do, dude.

Saddam: Well, then I'm going to have to kill you then, dude.

Jafar: No, wait dude, I know how to build some killer weapons, but its going to be expensive. I just thought you wouldn't want to spend the money.

Saddam: Cool, Man, here's $1B.

Jafar: (bugs eyes) Bitchin' Man, I can get...uh...make some killer powder with this man...

(...Time Passes...)

Jafar: (snorting from bag of white powder, his "digs" are much nicer now...) This is some killer stuff man.

(Saddam Enters)

Saddam: Hey, dude, how's it hanging? Got any cool weapons for me.

Jafar: (looks nervous, looks around wildly, sees white powder, looks back at Saddam) Uh.... Yeah man! I got this killer powder, its, uh, Anthrax. Yeah, it will really fuck you up man...it'll totally waste 'em.

Saddam: Great! Give me that (takes bag of white powder) I'm going to load it into my Scuds right now!

(leaves)

Jafar: (dials phone) Hello, Travelocity? I need a ticket to Kuwait...