(10-12-2019 12:23 PM)tanqtonic Wrote: Couldnt figure out a good place to put this.
This has to be one of the best essays I have read in long time. The Three Blind Spots of Politics
That is a good essay. It puts into words things that I have been thinking.
(10-12-2019 12:23 PM)tanqtonic Wrote: Couldnt figure out a good place to put this.
This has to be one of the best essays I have read in long time. The Three Blind Spots of Politics
I'm going to use this as place to put another idea of mine.
I think one of the worst things to happen to the republicans is that GHWB and Jack Kemp could not get along. Kemp would have been a much stronger VP than Dan Quayle. And an administration where Bush handled foreign policy and Kemp handled domestic policy would IMO have been a very effective one. I think Kemp would have been enough stronger than Quayle as both VP and candidate that Bush-Kemp would have stood a very good chance of being re-elected in 1992.
In 1996, I did not like Bob Dole or Al Gore. If it had been possible to split my ticket and vote Clinton-Kemp, I would probably have done so.
I really liked Jack Kemp (obviously). Plus a point of personal reference, I had a mint condition Jack Kemp rookie card that I believe would have been worth some money if he had been elected.
(This post was last modified: 10-12-2019 02:41 PM by Owl 69/70/75.)
I think a lot of the difference had to do with the thought that government COULD play a role in supporting some things, but I don't remotely support the way we currently do such things... so I go from disagree to agree (which probably moves us exactly that far) based on how things could be vs how things are... plus the idea of local vs feds.
Really? That doesn't sound right. I'd believe +3.5.
I know. Though the specifics of the questions caused me to give some intellectually confusing responses
Indeed! I expressed the same concern several months ago:
(07-16-2019 04:36 PM)georgewebb Wrote: But man, many of these test questions were terrible!
1. There were a lot of questions where I might have agreed with the general idea, but the questions was phrased as an absolute ("always" or "never") which is almost impossible to agree with. Conversely, there were a lot of questions phrased permissively ("sometimes" or "may") where I might disagree with the general idea, but could not say that there are no exceptions. Here are two really bad ones:
- Absolute: "No broadcasting institution, however independent its content, should receive public funding." First, what does "independent content" really mean? Independent of what? Second, one could be the staunchest small-government absolutist and still believe that might be ok to, for example, provide public funds for broadcasting weather alerts or air raid warnings. Changing "No institution ... should" to "Institutions generally ... should not" would make a better question.
- Permissive: "Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade." Even a staunch opponent of protectionism is unlikely to say is could not ever be needed. Changing "sometimes" to "often" would make a better question.
I mostly disagreed with the absolute questions and agreed with the permissive ones, which I'm not sure is what the test writers had in mind.
2. Questions that were too vague to answer: e.g. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." I can't agree or disagree with that: sometimes it might be true, sometimes not, and the devil is very much in the details. But that was not an answer choice, so I had to pick either "agree" or "disagree". I essentially flipped a coin.
3. Unnecessary negatives: e.g "Schools should not make classroom attendance compulsory." There is no need to phrase this in the negative. It would have been better to state "Schools should make classroom attendance compulsory" and ask people to agree or disagree with that. As a matter of question-writing, this one bugged me.
4. Questions that didn't make much sense at all. For example, "There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures." What does this mean? To agree, does one have to believe there is no such thing as civilization? To disagree, does one have to believe there are no different cultures?
Here are two questions that I thought were good:
"Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment."
"Possessing marijuana for personal use should not be a criminal offence."
These are well-written and (I think) somewhat useful in discriminating among political leanings. These questions, by their quality, stand out as outliers.