Candidate Likeability Poll

[LearJett+]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/28/lik...reut/index.html

 

Giuliani probably is liked so much because of 9/11... I don't really classify him as a Republican or a Democrat because of his moderateness. It would be nice to have a Republican back in the house though ;-)

 

Obama and McCain would be a great race, but Obama is rather young... I think McCain would win in that race.

 

The most interesting part to me was that Condy is #4! I'd vote for her :-).

[AstroProdigy]

Speaking as someone who lived in New York City while Giuliani was mayor, his actions on 9/11 were good, but otherwise he wasn't great and he basically rides on his reputation because of 9/11 and the fact that people outside New York have no idea of anything else about him. He also can't possibly get past the ultra conservative GOP machine to be the Republican candidate in 2008.

 

McCain is a respectable candidate, but I don't think someone as moderate as him can get by the GOP to even run as the Republican Candidate either.

 

The GOP would never let someone black let alone a black woman run for president as the Republican candidate. This is almost fully !@#$%^&*ured.

 

A moderate Republican president along with a Democratic Congress would be fine, but I doubt it can happen. More likely either the ultra conservatives regain control or the Democrats take the White House and probably run as a much more moderate Democratic group than the extremism under Bush.

[Aileron]

Why not?

 

I mean in the 1860s the Republicans were the leaders in civil rights and in the 1960s the Democrats were the leaders. I was born in the 1980s so both cases are history to me. One was more recent the the other was more important, so as far as I'm concerned both parties have equal weight in the civil rights department, though I would understand why someone who lived throught the 60s would feel otherwise.

 

Really the modern GOP has no racism outside of Strom Thurmond. Before 2000 their number one choice for president was Colin Powell, who simply would rather have retired than become president.

 

The GOP would gladly nominate Rice. The problem is that she doesn't want to run for president either.

 

 

I say draft her. As much as I like Bush we would've been better off under Powell. Lets not make the same mistake twice.

[LearJett+]

Wow, Astro's post is oozing with bias. It's okay though.

 

 

I don't think the 'ultra-conservatives' are the ones in charge of the GOP.

 

I believe the Republican party needs a moderate candidate to bring back some of its popularity... I'm sure they would rather have a moderate Republican rather than any sort of Democrat in the White House.

[AstroProdigy]

Uh no the parties might switch one day, but only with some nation changing event like the Civil War or the Civil Rights Movement.

 

Honestly, the chances of either party nominating a non white person for President is low. The Republicans just have a larger group of racists. There are lots of racists in this country and although many people ignore it its still there.

 

Rice would not get past the GOP imho. I agree we would have been better with Powel. Him i respect.

 

Conservatives definetely control the GOP. A moderate Republican would be a great candidate and I might vote for them if they are better than the Democrat, but I don't see it happening. A moderate Democrat fits more with my beliefs though ;-).

 

A moderate Democrat versus a moderate Republican would be an interesting election, however moderates tend to get less respect than the extremists who define the parties and the Republicans have a much larger Conservative base than the Democrats have a Liberal base. That's why the Democrats are forced to be a more moderate party and why many of the new candidates they put up for election in 2006 were moderates. The Republicans, however, have simply lost more moderates since the election and will likely be even more conservative now. Don't forget that the Republicans only lost Congress because of Iraq. People tend to ignore the more important issues for the more publicized ones.

[Aileron]

Actually the massive changing event already occured...the fall of communism. That suddenly changed a lot of new progressive ideas into old attempted anti-progressive ideas.

 

Strangely enough the Republicans have become the new progressive party, and the Democrats are stuck trying old ideas that were tried by the communists and proven as failed ideas.

 

The Democrats need moderates to pick up the slack, and still any face-off between two moderate candidates ends favorably for the Republican, because the moderates get split and the extremists pick the moderate who is closest to their ideals.

[AstroProdigy]

Democratic ideas and Communism are very far apart. Soviet Communism itself is a betrayal of true communism. No one calls for Communism in the US as no one calls for Fascism. However Conservative ideologies are the opposite of progressive. Keeping gays from getting married is not progressive.

 

The Democrats are not communists...If the Democrats are Communists the Republicans are Fascists. I know calling the Democrats as Communists helps your argument, but it's not even true. Democrats are opposed to government controls on society, which means Republicans in a way are Communists more than Democrats. I'm not saying Republicans are Communists. I'm just saying these absolutist inferences are inaccurate and oversimplified. There's actually not just a Left/Right spectrum. There's also an Authoritarian/Libertarian spectrum and combining the 2 creates a system that's more like a grid. In this grid the Republicans today have policies in the Right/Authoritarian area whereas Democrats are in the left/libertarian. Communism is Left/Authoritarian which means neither party is Communist. Again, things aren't so simple.

 

The Republicans aren't trying new ideas unless you mean banning gay marriage and abortion. Since 2001 the Republicans have been keeping the same policy that anyone that they don't like are terrorists and that they can "beat the terrorists" as long as they "stay the course" which has obviously failed since Iraq has fallen into a Civil War with the policy that was obviously letting it get into a civil war, but the Republicans were too static to change anything.

 

The Democrats have yet to have a chance to do anything because the Republicans would block anything they attempted so I'd hardly think they are legislating old failed communist ideas. Wait until they at least take Congress before you make imaginary communist imagery to Democratic policies when it was only the neo conservative Republican policies that were getting through.

 

The Democrats do need moderates because they don't have a large Liberal base like the Republicans have with Conservatives. That's why the Republicans will not even let a moderate candidate run for president. They could even conceivably win with a Conservative candidate.

 

I don't know if the Republicans would win a moderate versus moderate election since the Conservatives who seem to have an extreme or nothing policy might end up having a low voter turnout, whereas the Democrats will probably not have that problem and if they do it will have a much smaller affect.

 

It might be possible for the presidential election that the most likely win for the Republican Party would be a conservative and not a moderate. For the Democrats it's clear it'd be in the best interests of the party to have a moderate Democrat running for President.

 

As for the change in the U.S., communism changed much in the world, but in the U.S. people went on with their lives the same. Sorry, but a totalitarian regime falling doesn't prove universal healthcare is evil. The Soviet Union was extreme and that's why it fell. Extremism in a different way isn't right either. A party that's very obviously controlled by religion can never be progressive. Even if Christianity is true and Republicans are saints it still doesn't make the party progressive.

[NBVegita]

I think he's moreso referring to the fact that the over liberal democrats give off this aura that its not right that there are classes in this country. And that no one should be rich, and no one should be poor.

 

Or at least that is the only thing I could come close to correlating with it.

[Aileron]

Letting Gays marry is only progressive if its a good idea that will be done in the future. That arguement !@#$%^&*umes a viewpoint is correct in order to prove its correctness.

 

Rebublicans came to power in the 90s by being the opposite of authoritarian. Apparently authoritarianism just comes from being in power too long rather than political viewpoint.

 

As for abortion...I for one don't like the way that came to pass The way our government is supposed to work, getting a cons!@#$%^&*utional right or ban installed should take an overwhelming 2/3rds majority from Congress. That's almost 400 congressmen and the support of the millions of people who voted for those congressmen. Instead, we had something added onto a bill of rights by half a dozen judges who nobody voted for using a very long stretch of the Search and Seizure amendment.

 

As for "Stay the Course", the dynamic strategizing is the job of the military officers. That message was intended for the civilians both in government and at the polls.

 

Well, if you look over LONG history, science didn't really start advancing until the Christians took over, so we must have done something right. I mean, sure, one can come up with several examples where Christians hindered progress but at the same time Christianity didn't completely stop progress in its tracks for tens of thousands of years like most of the preceeding religions, so it is possible to be both Christian and progressive.

 

Communism didn't fail because of its extremism. It fell because it was an unstable idea. I don't know who wrote this, but statistically every person on Earth is connected to every other by no more than 6 contacts. Communism is really the same thing as tribalism, which actually worked in pre-historic times when everyone was connected by 2 contacts. Monarchy also worked at its time when everyone was connected by 3 or 4 contacts. Generally when the population increases certain problems start showing up, which Marx's manifesto didn't address.

 

The Democrats are far from communistic, but many of their ideas still have been tried by the communists. Keep in mind, that authoriatarianism isn't a real political viewpoint, only a side-effect from having power.

 

As for classism, there's a very simple solution...stop promoting the arts and start promoting the sciences. Too many of our students want to be either musicians or actors and not enough of them want to be engineers or medical personnel. The former is always rich or poor, whereas the latter are usually solidly middle class. Both parties have strength in the sciences: the Democrats have the researchers (Professors, higher level students) and the Republicans have the implimentors (most professional jobs).

[AstroProdigy]

Progressive does not mean moving closer towards the Bible. The Bible can be all true and good, but progressive is progressive towards more rights and equality for all (I don't mean no classes if you want to argue that next).

 

It's true that much of the original goals of Republicans when they came to power can be viewed as progressive, the Republicans today are far from those of the early 90's. We've been closer to authoritarian after Bush than before; A lot closer.

 

Equal rights for minorities was opposed 100 years ago by most of the white population. Case in point.

 

For abortion, if it's so much of a hassle for Conservatives maybe we should leave it up to the states, but making abortion illegal nationwide would have a huge backlash.

 

Military officers knew that we "the course" was a wrong one, but politics kept things the same and got generals who spoke out fired.

 

Are you kidding me science didn't start advancing until Christianity? I'm Greek buddy and I know all about how the Greeks advanced Science. So did the Romans, the Chinese, and a wide variety of other people.

 

Christians spent a millenium keeping things just about the same scientifically and burning people who tried anything with science at the stake. You're analogy makes no sense. Science progressed under Christianity whenever things became more secularized. Christianity was a hinder to science and nothing else.

 

In other respects, however, you can be progressive and Christian. You can use Christianity as a call for greater human rights. However the politicized Christianity that has a hold over the Republican Party does not go in that direction anymore.

 

As for economically, Christianity would actually support greater equality and Jesus would be disgusted with the greed of capitalism. I'm not saying revert to communism, I'm just saying if people are going to use the Bible as a political weapon it should not just be the things that are conveniant for them.

 

Communism lasted for 70 years in the Soviet Union and it failed because trying to compete with the United States led to their downfall. If there was no compe!@#$%^&*ion with the United States it would still be around today.

 

People were plenty connected under communism. The reason people are more connected today is because of all those advances of technology. Communism is nothing like tribalism. Communism failed because it was distorted to a totalitarian regime that controls everything and the corruption eventually wore down their economy and made them unable to compete with us, whereas actual communism means no government is needed. Anyways, actual communism is impossible in my opinion.

 

Many of Republican ideas have been tried by Fascists. Who cares? Just because the whole system failed doesn't mean every single thing in it has to be wrong.

 

Democrats today support a less authoritarian policy than Republicans except with regard to big business and the rich.

 

While I agree the arts are overrated and sciences need much more promotion. I think society needs to develop to the point where scientific advancement is admired. The government can't just do this, but they can help it develop faster.

 

However, the arts can't be ignored. I don't know about you, but a society with all science and no arts would scare me. Then again I'm setting up a straw man argument for this since I don't think you're making that point.

 

With your generalization of where the parties have strength in the sciences, it's not sound as Republicans have plenty of higher level students and professors and Democrats have plenty of people with "professional jobs". The difference is more of a regional one than a career path one.

[Aileron]

Well, science with the Greeks, Egyptians, and Chinese never really "stuck". They made advances, but generally upon their fall that scientific knowledge fell with them. It is also a historical fact in Islam that there once was an age of huge gains in science during the Abbasid reign, but hardliners stopped and reversed the progress made in that period.

 

I know this contradicts the opinion of most historians, so let me explain. Christianity doesn't outlaw science, but there are numerous references to condemnation of magic and sorcery. Now to a non-Christian, the problem with magic versus science is that science is real and magic is not.

 

Intelligencia offer a pre-industrialised society no short term benefit. Thus, such a community can only support finitely many intellects. If those intellects are scientists, they make progress and to civilization advances. If those intellects are magicians, they make no progress if not false progess and the civilization stagnates. Belief in magic is like breathing helium. Breath a little, and its harmless and makes life more fun. Breath too much, and you get sick. Breath air that is all helium, and you die. Helium isn't poisonous, but it does take up space where oxygen needs to be. Similarly a society needs limited belief in magic if it is to advance. What Christianity did, by design or accident, was remove the magicians so that European society could support enough scientists so that scientific knowledge could survive the collapse of the country that developed it.

 

During the dark ages, there were a lot of hybrids. Astronomers for instance doubled as Astrologers and made their living by providing "predictions". Chemists doubled as Alchemists and made their living by conning investors to support their next turn lead into gold scheme. Sometimes a hybrid who made scientific progress was punished for what he did in his other field. Sometimes a pure scientist was misidentified as a sort of "magician" and was falsely punished. However, in the overall scheme the scientists were spared and the magicians were punished, and the computer screen you are reading this on is proof.

[AstroProdigy]

If the Christian world had fallen then so would any knowledge they had. Besides the knowledge of ancient civilizations doesn't just all disappear. Some of it remains and some of it is rediscovered. The Greeks and the Romans affected Europe up to the present day for example.

 

No religion that I know of outlaws science specifically. I have no idea what you're referring to with magic.

 

Technology offers any civilization a huge advantage even pre industrialization. How do you think the Romans built such a vast and long lasting empire?

 

Magic is not real. Intellectuals can fall for magic, but progression and magic have no relation. Magic serves no contribution to society if science is present.

Science and Technology progressed quite well without Christianity and Christianity was only a hinder to it as shown by a milennia of stagnation in Europe. Magic existed when Christianity was around. More scientists appeared because despite Christianity's negative influence on science, science inevitably progressed and with increased removal of Christianity from government and society science skyrocketed. I think it's pretty clear. The Muslim world became more extreme and then became stagnant. Country is a more modern ideal. Before it was empires and city states. The reason knowledge survived the collapse of a country BETTER is because the population was greater and improvements in technology combined with the knowledge already known and regained from older civilizations allowed it to extend beyond borders.

 

During the dark ages I don't know of any astronomers. They were astrologers. There weren't chemists either to my knowledge, just Alchemists. The Church saw science as a threat and vehemently oppressed it, but couldn't manage to do so forever. That's why science has progressed, not because Christianity has provided some unintentional benefit to science. You're trying too hard to make this analogy stick. It really doesn't work at all.

[Aileron]

I'm not trying to "make an analogy stick". This is just a touchy subject for me. There was one case with Galileo and people now think that my religion opposed the entire scientific community. Guess what? Galileo wasn't that important. Sure he made some good experiments with gravity, but nothing that powerfull. Keep in mind that his day-job was reading the stars to tell people's future. Also, the "discovery" that the Earth revolves around the Sun is actually just a change in frame of reference. While it would be laughably difficult to do the math otherwise, the point is that it isn't a law of physics.

 

I mean, if the Church really wanted to hold back science, they would have locked up Newton. His work was the foundation for all of classical physics and modern calculus.

 

 

The conflict between magic and science is simply incomprehensible to a modern person. In the dark ages, people honestly believed magic existed. For scientific discoveries to be made, there needs to be scientists and there needs to be sponsors. In the dark ages, scientists had to compete with those claiming to be magicians for sponsorship. For example, a mayor of a farming community might decide between a scientist who wishes to impliment crop rotation or a magician who wishes to research a magical spell that can make it rain. In our modern eyes, one of those ideas is sound and one is ludicrus. However, to some stupid backwards supersticious dark age mayor, the second would actually seem to yield more results. Back then, there needed to be something in place to controll those charliatons.

 

The closest thing we have to magic as those in the dark age believed in is science fiction, in which there are about a dozen or so ficticious devices that even break currently known laws of physics that the general populace thinks we will develop some time in the future, which can be scary when you think about how much our Air Force might be spending in hopes of developing some sort of "cloaking device" when given our current set of enemies we should be developing small cheap slow infantry support aircraft rather than another superfighter that has greater capacity to take out the MIG-25s that our are already obsolete and yet way beyond our enemies' financial and infrastructural dreams. Obviously, the idea of being invisible is greatly appealling, much more appealing than something flying at 10 mph so as to target enemy infantry and provide a platoon of ground troops with an eye in the sky. The former we don't need, but the latter we need so much that we've kept juryrigging aircraft with other purposes to do the job in every war since Vietnam. In this case, belief in the magic of science fiction is hampering scientific progress.

 

In the dark ages, people were less educated and more supersticious. If they had continued to believe in every hackneyed idea somebody could dream up, true intellectuals such as Newton would never have been able to get the financial support they needed to run their experiments.

 

Any career clergyman knows that science and religion do not compete. Science is the study of nature, religion is the study of the supernatural. They don't intersect. Magic is however a notion that one can make the supernatural natural, and thus competes with both science and religion. For every "scientist" who was locked up, one can find some magical and proposterous claims that he had made in order to achieve profit.

[AstroProdigy]

Galileo got off easy compared to a lot of the other scientists. When was his day job reading the stars to tell peoples' futures? He was a professor. Where'd you ever here of that? Galileo laid the foundation for Newton. Newton lived in a much more secular England than Galileo's religion controlled Italy. It was the lack of religious influence that allowed Newton to make his discoveries. It's not that the Church hates science persay. It's that they had a strict interpretation of the world and any dissent was strictly punished in the name of God no matter how wrong the Church was. Magic was more important during the Christian Dark Ages than before in a polytheistic Roman Empire. What does that say about Christianity? In the Dark Ages, people were uneducated and based all their "facts" on the Bible and what the Church told them. That's what was the big crutch to scientific progression. It was the Renaissance and the weakening of religious following that allowed for scientific progression. Science and religion do not compete? Have you every herd of Evolution vs Creation? When religion is not taken literally, but instead as a guide for life then it can coexist with science, but Christianity was the opposite of that back then. Your analogy at the end seems logical, but when you take a closer look you realize that the Church back then was about controlling EVERYTHING. Scientists weren't locked up for magical claims. They were locked up because the search for knowledge conflicts with religious dogma that has been set and stone based on whatever the writer thinks and cannot be changed or else you're called a heretic and tortured to death.

[SeVeR]

Well, if you look over LONG history, science didn't really start advancing until the Christians took over, so we must have done something right.

Aileron, how can you believe this? Science started advancing from about 500 B.C. in Ancient Greece. Around 200 B.C a man named Eratosthenes calculated the cir!@#$%^&*ference of the Earth to within a very small error, yet Christianity actually took us backwards from that moment and for the next millenium "enforced" a flat Earth theory based on nothing but ignorance. All the great works of ancient Greece were stored in a great library at Alexandria. Then at some point it was destroyed most likely by the Muslims or by Christians in an attempt to knock down Pagan Temples (....again why?).

 

From that point on science was at a near stand-still until the time of Keplar and Newton. One can argue that by that time things were already starting to be liberalised and by the Victorian era (1830-1900 in England) the Church held very little influence.

 

Over a millenia with absolutely nothing to show for it. More than anything the true ambition of science is to ensure the survival of the human race. Christianity put us back 1000 years and it could be the death of us all if a major catastrophe beckons and we don't have the scientific mastery to overcome it.

[AstroProdigy]

A millenium is a very long time in human history. The millenium before when Christianity didn't exist saw massive technological and scientific development. The half millenium after when things were being liberalized and the power of religion was waning saw a very dramatic change. The Middle Ages if anything prove that religion is the worst enemy of science.

[SeVeR]

True, i would go further and say its the worst enemy of humanity.

[AstroProdigy]

I like how me and Sever disagree on certain issues while agree on others and the same with Aileron. Shows how bad a bipolar system is.

[Aileron]

Well, given its location I'd bet the library of Alexandria was knocked down by the Muslims. Granted Cristianity had a 800 year head-start, but Christianity never really caught on in Egypt until modern times. I mean, Christians had cases of going after individuals, but not really whole structures of learning, where as the people of the Abbasid Caliphate in 1000 AD were fond of destroying whole universities.

 

And, no, people knew the world was round the whole time. It was never covered up. It was never forgotten. It just never had any relevance until Columbus tried to exploit that fact.

 

It was the clergy who started the first work in Biology and medicine. Also, the best cases of what you can come up with are in the field of Astronomy, which to be honest is one of the most useless of the natural sciences especially before the time of aircraft or rockets which are needed to actually build craft capable of reaping the benefits of the field.

 

Oh and there were plenty of physicists between the Romans and Newton. They based their science on the Greeks and Romans, who while being good at math, sucked at physics. Generally the physicists before Newton existed and operated freely, but were wrong.

 

Also, the secular atmosphere was more corrosive to science than anything. The only use for science during that chaotic warfare ridden time period was in architectural needs to build better fortresses and engineering skills to build better ways to take down the better fortresses. Both those fields made advancement and nobody went after them.