most of my reasons will be obvious to many that know me and have discussed politics with me in the past, but i thought i would lay them out here because I had a political debate with someone surprised me with a change to support Obama, and the result of the debate was me not being able to sleep until i got this out of my system. This blog, if you didn't realize and are among my two readers, is my "getting it out of my system" blog.
So we will start with the biggie and from there go as my brain sees fit - the supreme court.
As Scalia said, I prefer my constitution dead. We are a lazy people in general, and we appreciate a quick fix. The supreme court has become that quick fix - if we perceive a law to be unjust, dangerous or outdated the quickest way to protect the innocent, or free the downtrodden is to interpret the Constitution as an evolving standard and a document that should be interpreted in light of everything that has changed since it was written. This leads to a oligarchy of 5 people deciding what the standard of decency our nation has evolved to. If you believe there is a right that needs to be protected under the constitution that better matches the evolved state of our country then you should amend the constitution. yes it is more difficult, yes it takes longer, but it is actually democratic.
Of course, the supreme court leads us to abortion. The fact that Ginsberg has promised to uphold Roe to protect abortion rights even though she felt that it was a poorly decided case on constitutional grounds tells me that we need a more concrete way of interpreting the constitution. One where a judge is bound by the words, and by history, and who do not need to promise anyone how they would tend to vote on any particular issue. But the issue with abortion does not end with the president's stance on justices. There is a lot of grey area in abortion that would come across a presidents desk - issues related to parental notification, partial birth, fetal homicide. These are not issues that i want Obama to deal with, he did after all, call asking a 2nd physician into a room to examine a infant that showed vital signs an burden on the decision of the aborting mother. If nothing else I think that he is going to be an extremely polarizing figure in an already bad debate. Other nations have come to reasonable impasses on this issue - England outlaws abortions after viability, for instance. Here any danger to the most precious right to choose has led us to have a highly lucrative medical procedure be almost completely unregulated.
Abortion being in many circles a matter of religious sensitivity, I will move on to the freedom of religion. My problem with the left in general is that the freedom of religion antics always revolve around the establishment clause, while treading directly on the free exercise clause. A practicing catholic who owns his own pharmacy cannot obey their own conscience in regarding distributing birth control. I have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with birth control, and if it was a Hindu vegan that didn't believe in providing any medicine that had ever been tested on an animal, then i wouldn't have a problem with that either. looks like there is room in town to start your own pharmacy, its his right to turn away business. There are a lot of scary examples in various places - pastors in Canada, Sweden, Britain and Australia who have been fined or even jailed for simply stating the Church's position on subjects such as homosexuality. Granted the first amendment should keep hate speech laws at bay, but its definitely a road that i see a Dem administration taking us down.
federalism - this is similar to the problem with the supreme court. You see a problem, you think you have a solution, the federal government is the biggest tool in the box, use it and you fix everything at the same time. America performs really badly compared to many many countries in educational assessments. 4 of our states are at the very top, but the rest of the states drag the others down. The solution to this problem is not to have the federal government mandate new math. we have states that have different problems, that need different solutions. A major problem facing Texas schools is the resources and the best approach to the large non-English speaking immigrant population. A federal program to address this, makes no sense to Alaska and Utah. We have 50 states with 50 plans and 50 results. that sort of freedom of experimentation is good for innovative solutions to local problems that can be implemented elsewhere. Same is true for health care - lets see how Romney's health care plan in MA works. If it does well, other states may adopt it, if not, then fixing, scrapping or tweaking it in MA is easier that dealing with failure across the nation.
Taxation to pay for all the entitlement programs - Mom worked in a state government regulations board, i've been told the stories that would make an efficiency engineer wake up crying at night. helping the poor isn't going to go so well with government programs that carry that kind of overhead.
ok, i'm running out of steam. there are a large number of other things, plus much better arguments for the ones above, but i think i may be able to sleep now.
Monday, September 1, 2008
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2 comments:
You forgot corruption. I won't say that Obama has done anything corrupt in his career so far (though his house deal does stink to high heavens), but he certain has been willing to at best sit by as efforts to displace the Stroger machine were going strong in Cook County.
I think that corruption reform, along with fiscal restraint, sound energy and environmental policy, and general worldview will go under the heading "why i will vote for mccain"
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