on voting "present"

This is what I've been talking about.  Associated Press: Senate moderates looking to sweeten the healthcare bill.

Opposing GOP Senators must not allow themselves to be used as the votes that put these amendments over the top.  The greatest resistance to these changes are the liberals who want to pass the overall bill -- let them try and fix it on their own.

The article observes that Ben Nelson will have a difficult time getting a satisfactory abortion amendment.  Presumably that includes GOP votes in favor of the amendment, in a principled stand against abortion.  But we need to end such presumptions.

Nothing good is served by helping give this bill the finishing touches it needs to overcome a filibuster.  There are enough moderate Democrats to help the Republicans make fiscal changes to the bill that would satisfy Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, or even Susan Collins.  But without the Republicans the Democrats would have to dig deep into liberal territory to find the votes to come up with those same fixes.

Now is not the time to worry about the contents of the bill.  No matter what, you can be sure that abortion, the public option, a mandate and Medicare cuts are all going back into the bill in conference.  The goal is to keep the bill from getting there.

It's too liberal to pass.  Leave it that way.

Comments

[Ragnar Danneskjöld]

Unfortunately the looters are unable to hear reason. They are working in their own self interest; not the nation's.

It is truly sad that there is not a "Galt's Gulch" that we could all go to and wait for the fall, and be there ready to re-build.

[J Green]

Galt's Gulch was full of people who had actually made major attempts at stopping such a fall - and narratively the world became one stuck on a dire course with no chance of correction.

For all the comparisons that can be drawn people seem to ignore those comparisons that cannot be drawn. They do not understand why we do not have a Gult's Gulch when the reason is simple and obvious. Living in a correctable world, we lack the capable people to correct it and we lack the capability and individualism to create such a Galt - how can this be true? Because we fail - because it does not exist, A = A. Ergo we are the definition of our own existance, again A = A, and if we cannot exist as our individual desires dictate such a Gulch would be doomed to repetitious failure.

In the end, Objectivism cannot save the world, but can at its best improve it beyond comparable wallowing ignorance and only so far as the capabilities of those who preach it. And in our realistic correctable world, if we had the capabilities of establishing a Gulch, we would have the capabilities to not need one.

[Ragnar Danneskjöld]

Some very salient points you make, my friend. As for “Galt’s Gulch,” it could be considered a metaphor for one's need to recharge. Unfortunately, my pessimistic side questions the possibilities of the world as it stands now being “Correctable”. As I listen to the news driving across the George Washington Bridge, I find myself imagining the “talking head" on the radio as the venerable “Mr. Thompson” Or “Wesley Mouch,” the leaders of the looters, preaching to the weak-minded. The panhandlers standing beside I- 95 with their hands extended for something-for-nothing, a hand out. The population appears to be on a blind march towards reliance on people who are poor examples of humans or, even less, leaders.

I am reminded of the words in John Galt’s speech.

“To those of you who retain some remnant of dignity and the will to live your lives for yourselves, you have the chance to make the same choice. Examine your values and understand that you must choose one side or the other. Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil.”

[J Green]

Even the best of us find reliance in obliviousness to the truths we know to be false. It's been said by many people that the troubles of the world, the economy, the fuel crisis, global warming and rising sea levels - they are always used as scare tactics to make the world look like an awful place, that these are the reasons why we need the sub-par leadership we continuously fall prey to. We hear that these false truths are not substantiated by the facts; or so I've heard many times, yet more often than not the people with the spirit to these push alternatives points of view and supposed solutions are the people who, despite their positive facade see the world as closest to or beyond saving.

Interestingly, Galt contradicts his own points of view, "Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil,” when there is no self-denial amongst the denizens of the Gulch as to whether their actions against those left in the world to suffer and die are good or evil - they are at war. To place the burden of good and evil onto others and place oneself above its reach is paramount to a self-indulged oblivious behavior Rand mirrors in her hero.

Compromising one's ability to distinguish good versus evil by denying or otherwise throwing in one's responsibility to do so - whilst touting the same lofty concepts is part of the root of the current leadership that so dreadfully makes sweeping mass mistakes/decisions that guide the fate of our lives. I think there are better ways to justify seclusion than the totalitarian aspects of John Galt's views.

There is no real solution to our problems, the only realistic soothing notion I can think of is that life is simply a succession of painful learned mistakes that we'll be forced to make fewer of as they become harder to ignore. En mass we are on average getting more intelligent more quickly, we will win in the end.

[John Galt]

John, when the strikers retreat, leaving the looters and moochers to die, how exactly would you describe what it is that the looters and moochers are dying of?

I ask because you seem to suggest that they are somehow victims of Galt's strategy, but I know you're better-read than that. Perhaps you can clarify.

If I strike, am I committing any offense against those who are dependent upon me against my wishes?

[J Green]

I'm making a judgement that the world represented in a fiction book isn't the world within which we live despite similarities. And in the case being referenced the strikers did not just retreat they sought the early downfall of a world they held malice towards.

By definition a strike is an act intended to impact or impose on others, therefore yes, you are committing an offense against those that depend on you - that why it's called a "strike". What defines the morality of the act is the intention, striking to take what is yours versus striking simply to take more - often this is opinionated and the right or wrong of it indeterminable without one parties admission of their intentions - Galt and numerous Gulch denizens make clear their wishes to see a bastardized world end for the chance to start a new. And so they did strike, against the people who had no choice but to depended on them because they had pushed to the forefront of their industries, knowing their strike would mean death and famine justified by the Randian belief in individualism. To me this is just history repeated, the suffering of a people who we segregate from our own justified by our own beliefs.

I do not wish to try to establish whether the end result was right or wrong as I know ends cannot justify means, we live with the burden of conscience. But when I consistently see people referencing Rand's literature as if it were gospel, rather than actually learning, growing and avoiding the kind of catastrophes it highlighted, I see an intention to strike, causing harm to many, in a world that is not Atlas, that is filled with many people like those who read this blog who are reliant on their world and who have worked and earned above and beyond the rewards of that reliance.

There is a fine line between individually objective and outwardly destructive.