Strode Reality: Andrew Sullivan: 'The Politics of Homosexuality: Intro On Prohibition'

Source:Strode Reality- columnist and author Andrew Sullivan giving a lecture on homosexuality, in 2010.

Source:The Daily Times

"Andrew Sullivan, "The Politics of Homosexuality," Princeton University, 2/18/10.

Part 1 of 7:

1. Intro & Prohibitionism part 1

2. Prohibitionism part 2

3. Prohibitionism part 3

4. Liberationism

5. Conservatism

6. Liberalism

7. Conclusion

See also: Audience question

The arguments put forth in this speech can be studied in more complete detail in Andrew's book Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality, which can be purchased here... 

From Strode Reality 

Unlike Andrew Sullivan, I'm not religious at all and therefor don't pretend to either be religious or an expert on The Bible. But I am a current affairs blogger whose very familiar with the U.S. Constitution and the American, federal, liberal, democratic, republican, form of government. And because of that, I know that America is a federal republic, not a theocracy. 

The Bible or any other religious book, can say that homosexuality is immoral and therefor it's not murder or assault, when gays are physically assaulted, terrorized, even raped, and murdered, simply because they're gay. But the United States of America is not a theocracy (Christian or otherwise) and therefor we are not governed by The Bible or any other religious book. We're governed by the United States Constitution.

And because of the U.S. Constitution, I also know because of both the 4th Amendment and the 14th Amendment, which protects Americans right to privacy and guarantees every American's right to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution, I know that prohibition of homosexuality, even in the privacy of consenting adults, is unconstitutional, at it should be.

The Dish: Opinion: Andrew Sullivan: Neither Living Nor Dead: The Relevance of the U.S. Constitution

The Dish: Opinion: Andrew Sullivan: Neither Living Nor Dead

Before I give you my take on the U.S. Constitution, I'm going to give you takes from others further Left of me and from people who are to my Right and further Right.

Today's so-called Progressives who are really Social Democrats to be real and blunt about it see the U.S. Constitution in European democratic terms and want to and see America as their type of social democracy. Where government is more centralized with more power and more resources for the good of the people. And where most if not all all things done though government are through majoritarian means with majority rule. They probably see our constitutional amendment process as undemocratic because of what it takes to repeal or amend an amendment. As well as forcing all Americans regardless of generation and the times as having to live under the same Constitution and Rule of Law.

Conservatives and Libertarians see the Constitutional in its original form. (Or that is what they say) And anything that is not specifically laid out for government to do based on the words of Constitution, they see as unconstitutional when government tries to perform those functions. Neoconservatives or the Traditional Values Coalition lets say when it comes to personal choice and freedom say that anything that is not granted specifically with the exact words laid out in it for the people, those rights don't exist for the people. And that government can deny those actions for them. The same-sex-marriage debate is a perfect example of it.

I guess I'm somewhere in the middle on this which is where a Liberal would be between a Social Democrat on the Left and a Libertarian on the Right. All of the amendments and constitutional rights that we have as individuals with the constitutional amendments and Bill of Rights apply to all of us at any time. But when it comes to things for either the people or what can government can do I'm not what is called a strict-constructionist which is sort of a bogus term to begin with. And even people who call themselves that find ways to expand government power to meet their own political goals.

Just because same-sex-marriage doesn't exist in the Constitution, or marijuana, or gambling and perhaps even property rights and the Right to Privacy doesn't mean we don't have the right to practice those things as long as we aren't hurting innocent people with those practices. The Fourth Amendment clearly limits what government especially law enforcement can to when it comes to regulating individuals own lives. And the Fifth Amendment clearly limits what government can do to one's property. And can't simply decide to take it over or take it away simply because it wants to. The Equal Protection Clause clearly protect all classes of Americans equally and doesn't grant government the right to discriminate because it doesn't like one class of people.

I'm a Liberal Constitutionalist because I believe in the Constitution and more broadly liberal democracy. The rights that we have just from the words themselves will always be there unless they are repealed or amended through a super majority process. As it should be because we are a Constitutional Federal Republic in the form of a liberal democracy. Not a social democracy and those things are different. And just because the Constitution doesn't specifically say an individual or government can do something, doesn't mean they can't. You have to look at the Constitution and see where those rights exist or not.

The Dish: Andrew Sullivan: If America Had Scandinavia's Tax Rate

Source:The Dish

Jonathan Chait had a column in the, formerly liberal (ha ha) New Republic magazine arguing that, as we celebrate tax day, the U.S. should be thinking about increasing taxes on everyone across the board except for the working poor.  He based his argument on the example of Scandinavia.  They have much higher tax rates than we do and have traditionally had a very strong economy.  They have good public services with a very generous welfare state and, as a result, have had strong economic outcomes.

Ross Douhat, a columnist for the, lets say, progressive New York Times opinion page wrote a response to Chait's column.  In it, he laid out why higher taxes work in Scandinavia and why they wouldn't work here.  For example, Sweden is physically about the size of Turkey but has only about nine-million people.  Sweden is also not only energy independent but also a net-exporter of oil and gas. They produce a hell of a lot of energy with a lot of land and a small population to take care of. To put it in simple terms, they can afford to be generous with their welfare state.

The U.S., on the other hand, is physically the size of a freaking continent going from one ocean to another, with a three-thousand mile border on the North with Canada and a two-thousand mile border with Mexico on the South and a population of over three-hundred and ten million people.  It is a net-importer of oil.  We are still paying other countries for our energy supplies and paying them to defend them.

We have a seventeen-trillion dollar national debt and have been basically stuck in, or trying to recover from, one recession or another since 2001. We simply do not have the resources to pay for what we currently owe to our population.  We also have a high poverty rate compared to the rest of the developed world.  Our working class is struggling just to pay their current tax obligations.  Most Americans simply can't afford Mr. Chait's, and others, socialist, big government tax rates now.

When our economy was booming in the 1980s and 1990s, our taxes were low and our government budget to GDP ratio was low. In plain English, the percentage of the national economy that the Federal Government spent was low in the 1980s and 90s.  In both decades, we had low unemployment, high economic growth and record low poverty levels.  This is what we are trying to get back to and we need to protect middle class tax payers by not increasing their rates.  At the same time, we need to invest more in infrastructure, education and job training so that more Americans can live in freedom and not depend on income assistance.

Andrew Sullivan: 'Why is Liberal a Dirty Word?'

Source:The Dish- with Andrew Sullivan. Eat as much as you want, you might learn something. Comeback for 2nd's & 3rd's.

"[T]here’s reason to believe that today, many Americans eschew the term not because they associate it with any particular unpopular attitudes or issue positions, but merely because they’ve only heard it discussed negatively. In a thought-provoking 2013 paper, Christopher Claassen, Patrick Tucker, and Steven S. Smith of Washington University in St. Louis note that although most Americans prefer the term “conservative,” those same Americans are “remarkably consistent” in telling researchers that they prefer liberal policies. How come? One reason may be that “conservative” has positive “extra-political” associations. To many Americans, it connotes “caution, restraint and respect for traditional values,” positive attributes irrespective of one’s views on specific policies.

But even more important, Claassen, Tucker, and Smith suggest, may be the negative way in which “liberal” is publicly discussed. “When certain labels are emphasized or favored by political and media elites,” they write, “the public is more likely to identify with them than others. Public framing often promotes the term ‘conservative,’ while the term ‘liberal’ is used with much less frequency and has long had a more negative connotation.” Part of the reason Americans consider liberal an epithet, in other words, is because they mostly hear it used as an epithet." 

From The Dish 

Since I started blogging in 2011, just from talking to people and looking at polling on particular issues, I've always believed and really before I started blogging, actually, that there has always been a lot more Liberals in America, than self-described Liberals. 

Think about it: 

Americans like the right to privacy

Believe in free speech overwhelmingly 

Believe in a free press

Believe in checks and balances 

Believe in personal freedom and responsibility

Believe in property rights

Believe in the rule of law

Believe in equal justice, equal rights, quality of opportunity for everybody, a safety net for people who truly need it. 

I don't want to put words in Andrew Sullivan's mouth, (but only because he might have too many of his own words and he suffocate if you put any more words in his mouth) but I think that's what he's talking about in his own article. Americans like associating with the word Conservative, because it tends to come with positive social and political associations. 

But when people think of Liberal, they think of the left-wing illiberal, (meaning not Liberal) the person with the long beard, who looks like he's never been to a barber shop in his life, whose living like it's still 1968 or 69, trying to take down the man. 

When Americans tend to think of Liberals, they think of the hipster revolutionary, who think that most so-called White people are immoral and bigoted and that Americans for the most part are too dumb to manage their own affairs for themselves and even think for themselves and we need a national government big enough to take care of everybody for them.

I think Andrew Sullivan's point here about Americans and Liberals, (and again I'm not trying to put words into his own mouth, for reasons I already explained) is that a lot more people in America are Liberals, but perhaps aren't aware of it, because they don't know what liberalism actually is, what liberal values really are. 

Or, Americans know what liberal means and what it means to be a Liberal and what liberalism really is, but they don't think it's politically and culturally safe enough to let the rest of the world know that they're a real Liberal and what it means to actually be a Liberal. 

You can also see this post at The Daily Times, on Blogger.

The Dish: Andrew Sullivan- 'Healthcare Socialism 1, Healthcare Capitalism 0'

Source:The Dish- Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, with a lot at American health care.

"The Commonwealth Fund quietly eviscerates America’s medical system with some basic facts. Two of the more remarkable ones:

In 2013, more than one-third (37%) of U.S. adults went without recommended care, did not see a doctor when they were sick, or failed to fill prescriptions because of costs, compared with as few as 4 percent to 6 percent in the United Kingdom and Sweden.

Roughly 40 percent of both insured and uninsured U.S. respondents spent $1,000 or more out-of-pocket during the year on medical care, not counting premiums. High deductibles and cost-sharing, along with no limits on out-of-pocket costs, may explain why even insured people in the U.S. struggled to afford needed health care, the researchers said." 

From The Dish

This idea that capitalism is better when it comes to producing things that people want, but socialism is better for things that people need to live well, in other words capitalism is better for producing luxury cars, cell phones, computers (to use as examples) but a state-owned socialist system for producing things that people need to live well, take health care and health insurance (to use as examples) well, you don’t see at least in America a lot of people calling for nationalizing the food industry. 

Agriculture, grocery stores, restaurants, we all need food, right. You don’t see a lot of people in America calling for nationalizing the energy industry, only the Far-Left wants to nationalize energy. And we all need and use energy to get around and keep our homes warm and cool. 

You don’t see a lot of people calling for nationalizing banking in this country, again, only the Far-Left. We all use and need to use banks, because it is still the safest place to keep our money and we’ve all borrowed money before because we needed to that as well.

Where government comes in is to do the things that we need it to do that it is best qualified to do. And in some cases the only ones qualified to do. Like foreign policy, law enforcement, prisons, homeland security, central intelligence, regulating the markets and collecting the taxes to pay for the government that we need. 

Germany the largest country in Europe (unless you include Russia) and the largest economy in Europe and fourth largest economy in the world. This is a perfect example of a country that has shown you don’t need government-run health care and health insurance to have an affordable and quality health care system.

Germany has private health insurance from cradle to grave. Their hospitals and clinics are private as well, but what they do well unlike America at least yet is properly regulate their private health care system. So their people aren’t abused by their health care providers. And every German is required to cover their own health care costs and not able to pass those costs on to others. Things that America has just started doing and their health costs are half that of the United States.

I’m tired of hearing these bogus (Happy Holidays) arguments that the rest of the developed world has government-run health care which is why America should do the same thing. Or government is automatically better at delivering health care and health insurance than the private sector. 

Germany, France and Japan are perfect examples of countries that do not try to do everything for their people through government. Including health care and they all have better health care systems than the United States. At least when it comes to paying for their health care. 

You can also see this post at The Daily Times, on Blogger. 

You can also see this post at The Daily Times, on WordPress.