Saturday, 19 January 2008
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I’m told McCain is my man
John McCain just won the South Carolina Republican Primary. With this victory, it looks it’s going to be a two-horse race on the red team between McCain and Romney.
Which is interesting because according to glassbooth.org, John McCain is the candidate who is most similar to my views. We’re 69% compatible. BUT, the second most compatible candidate for me is Hillary at 64%. Obama is third at 63%. The site does a pretty good job of weighting their compatibility based on the issues that are important to you. Check it out.
It’s too bad that I can’t find a candidate that’s more compatible than 69%. I think what did me in were my economic views and my consistent views on life. I’m a free marketeer, but I believe that we need to undo our subsidies on cotton, corn, wheat, etc which disrupt the growth of other countries (plus the subsidies make us fat). I’m against the death penalty and want to see more gun control (and bullet control for that matter!) but I also am not a fan of abortions. I think that’s the
onlyinternally consistent position. (Update: I realized that there is another internally consistent position on the spectrum of life: pro-abortion, pro-guns, pro-death penalty. If you hold that position, I will respect you for your consistency, but I think it would be hard to be friends.)This entry also published at Not on My Quach!
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Comments (10)
hillary is my top woman :)
glassbooth sent me toward kucinich. i think it's wrong.
65% huckabee. cool.
64% romney. not cool.
64% mccain. wtf?
hmm... 78% edwards, 75% obama and clinton. figures that i'd match most closely with a loser.
but hey, at least maryland won yesterday!
To play the devil's advocate on consistency...
On the death penalty: In the Old Testament law, both the commandment not to kill and an extensive list of offenses that merited the death penalty coexist. Apparently, God saw no internal inconsistency there. Romans 13:3-4 seems to grant civil authority divine authority to use violence to maintain order.
On abortion: Exodus 21:22-25 could be read as placing lesser moral weight on an unborn child's death. The NIV text note gives the possible translation, "she has a miscarriage" instead of "gives birth prematurely."
On gun control: Sometimes we allow considerations of freedom and/or convenience to trump considerations for life. If preservation of life were our paramount concern, we would not allow anybody to drive as fast as 55 MPH. For that matter, we would very severely restrict driving, flying, and electricity use altogether, since air pollution causes lots of death every year.
Any of the above arguments could be evoked to maintain a mixture of positions while arguing that internal consistency has not been violated.
Personally, I'm not against the death penalty in principle, although I think the way we implement it is flawed. Clearly, we can never attain perfection in any man-made institution, so demanding perfection for an institution to exist is unreasonable. Whether we're so far away from perfection that we should simply halt executions currently is something I don't have a clear view on.
On abortion, I am on balance against from the time of conception, but acknowledge that the case is not overwhelming in the very early stages of pregnancy.
On gun control, I'm pretty strongly for, but don't think that those who are against are necessarily inconsistent with a respect for life.
It's interesting how there's people we think we support (or want to support) and people whose views actually align with ours.
Either that or all these online polls/quizzes that match us with candidates are off (there's a slew of them).
To Rev. Thomas: Thanks for the thoughts. I pretty much agree with you on all your points. I agree that there are scriptural grounds for the death penalty but our implementation is so filled with injustice that we are taking life we ought not take. And I believe we should err on the side of keeping people alive. I have no problem with life sentences with no parole -- it's cheaper too.
I also agree that Ex. 21 is ambiguous and there are no other verses that provide support. But the overarching impetus of the biblical ethic is to be welcoming to the least of these. There are excruciatingly difficult decisions that need to be made some times (e.g., risk to mother's life), but on net, I think we need to be more welcoming to unborn babies.
On guns, I agree that those you can see guns as tools to protect life, but I'm just talking about gun CONTROL, not a gun BAN. If you have a legitimate reason for having a gun, what's wrong with jumping through a bunch of hoops to get it? What's wrong with putting unique identifiers on all bullets so that we know who shot them? If you had to shoot someone out of self-defense, you've got nothing to hide. And if you use your bullets for anything else, you have to explain yourself.
Responding to jquach:
It's true that our current implementation of the death penalty is far from perfect. But is it worse than the system in the Israeli theocracy, where surely the standards of evidence were worse than they are now? That's not clear. The perfect can't always trump the good.
BTW, "keeping people imprisoned for life without parole is cheaper" isn't a strong one for the anti-death-penalty camp. The reason it's cheaper is that it takes us so long to execute anybody, and we allow so many appeals -- the result of people with a tender conscience about executions. I'm pretty sure that it's a lot cheaper to execute somebody in [insert authoritarian regime here]. Conditional on the death penalty existing, I'm all for allowing lots of appeals, but I also think that those appeals should be compressed into a much shorter time frame. Under the current system, the likelihood of a death row inmate dying by execution instead of old age is rather low, so the deterrent effect of the death penalty (surely the most societally useful aspect of its use) is minimal.
On gun control, I think you're misunderstanding the anti-gun-control advocate's stance. It's about freedom and the closely related right to privacy. Your arguments about gun control could just as well apply to, say, government wiretaps. If you're not doing anything wrong, why should you object to the police listening in on your phone calls without a warrant? If you're not intending to bomb a plane, why should you object to being strip-searched at the airport before boarding a plane? It's simply another hoop to jump through that will increase flight security. And yet we do believe that warrantless wiretaps and strip searches without reasonable cause are manifestations of tyranny. Similarly, the NRA feels that making people jump through hoops to get guns is an infringement on liberty.
Now I am not a big believer in inalienable rights. Liberty is a precious good to be sought after, but sometimes it must be sacrificed for other aims, such as security. That's why I favor strong gun control. But I can understand why somebody reasonable might take the opposite side.
To Rev. Thomas: Thanks for the interesting points. Definitely fodder for future posts!
For now, I'll just say that, as you can probably tell, I don't mind trading privacy for safety/security. I believe in the United States. I believe that our country is not close to being tyrannical. And I believe due process works pretty well.
Plus I don't really have anything to hide. If there is something that becomes known that I didn't want to be known, ultimately, I think I would be glad it came to light. But that's just me. I know Americans consider privacy and individual liberty very precious. I don't totally buy it.
74% obama, 71% hillary, 70% gravel.
just curious, but is anyone going to defend farm subsidies?