My comments at #56 are for REVDEB.

I would provide you an email address back-channel if I knew how to keep it back-channel. I do not know now to accomplish this.

cleanth July 29th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
128
In response to RevDeb @ 40 (show text)

Deb, being formerly in the same club as you (Lic Th), I want to raise with you a dilemma facing voters, and not just those presently who have no good alternative between McC and O’B:

In a representative democracy, when we vote for a representative, we are erecting a vicarious moral agent who takes, in our names and with our consent, moral decisions for which we alone are responsible. We cannot delegate nor can we abrogate this responsibility, and it will not do to assert that we ourselves have not done this or that, but rather that our representatives have done it.

I have received a lot of flak, but, tellingly, no analysis on FDL for this position, but if one goes into these matters seriously and thoroughly, I am altogether certain that there is no escaping having to work through this dilemma. And this holds for non-theists as well; it holds for anyone who accepts personal responsibility for their actions. And as I have inisisted, these things cannot be delegated.

Rejoinders such as such a position is impractical, or would make our polity, as presently constituted, unworkable do not address my points, and in any case, they are posterior, logically, to my points.

I have appreciated your posts and what I take to be your attitudes and capacities. I welcome, nay I am keen to hear, your take on this matter, than which nothing could be more serious.

Oh boy, talk about yer low-information voters……caller on WashJourno just said something to the effect of, “I can look at ted stevens and see he’s an honest man.” And people with this lack of brain cells get to vote come November. :-(

And this is why democracy is, in practice, often mobocracy.

With the sort of know-nothing electorate we have to large degree here, democracy is not a desirable form of governance.

Our electorate is altogether too much of a piece with the philistine who attends an art gallery, scoffs at it all, and declares “I know what I likes!”

There is nothing wrong with gayness; but closeted public officials who take anti-gay decisions are reprehensible, IMO.

Supreme Court Justice Roberts is an in-the-closet gay man…..perfect.

So my gaydar informs me, too.

MoDo produced a thing called “Cyclops and Cunning,” in which she hisses that given his inability to get lift off, even flying close to the sun, Barack Obama will need all the cunning intelligence he can muster.

Effing concern troll!

Mr. Friedman’s column is titled “Drilling in Afghanistan.” He has a question: Has anyone stopped to think about what political slogans really mean?

Has Friedman ever done this?

Pretty rum lot, these two!

Have a nice return to work, Marion.