Role models

role models are overrated and CNN really thinks you are pathetic, case and point:

CNN reports that judge Sonia Sotomayor is a type 1 diabetic and now diabetic kids all over the world can look to her and think, now I can accomplish anything.

Resisting gravity

Defining success as a recursive process is a dangerous proposition. People are poor because they have always been poor and this cycle of poverty keeps them poor. Countries are given aid to "lift" them out of poverty. A "lift" necessary due to the historical weight of their situation. A logical man might ask, what is recursion, then he may wonder how anyone overcame their short, nasty, brutish existences. He would rightly wonder how the rich became rich, or in recursive terminology, what is the base case?

So it goes that when success requires a push, someone already "lifted" must provide the push. Who pushed them? Liberalism revokes blame on those that don't succeed (fail is too harsh a term and denotes an evil known as responsibility). Liberalism also revokes success due to that evil known as responsibility. Responsibility being the "lifting" where one "pushes" themselves.

How to convince people

At the base level people are motivated by self interest. Self interest means anything people value, whether explicitly benefiting themselves or helping others. The point is that everyone has a happiness function and any action which increases their happiness is what motivates people.

People develop morals independent of politics. We learn that stealing, lying, and other sins are wrong before we learn the law. In order for arguments to be effective they have have to agree with one's fundamental morality. We need to equate our arguments with what people already believe what is right and our opponent's arguments with what is wrong. This creates a contradiction in people. To rebuke our argument requires abadoning their morality.

The foundation

The foundation of government needs to be how people really act versus how they ought to act. What I am going to say will be blasphemy but we must advocate policies not on the basis of some theorectical ideal but on the basis of what will work the best.

Morality is in an absolute sense relative and even if it is not, man's morality definitely is. At their base people are envious and jealous and don't believe in fundamental right and wrong. I believe that every one of us is inherently self centered and I will not advocate choice and freedom because they sound good, or right. I will advocate policies which will promote as much freedom as is possible. We must accept the fact that not everyone values freedom and liberty as much as we do. This is not a fault that needs to be corrected. It is nature.

The battle is over between what is right and wrong, moral and immoral. Morality is for philosophers and liberatarians. We live in the real world, so let's get off our immature soap boxes and do something!

Read George Will

From George Will's column in the Washington Post:

In "Democracy in America," Alexis de Tocqueville anticipated people being governed by "an immense, tutelary power" determined to take "sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate." It would be a power "absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident and gentle," aiming for our happiness but wanting "to be the only agent and the sole arbiter of that happiness." It would, Tocqueville said, provide people security, anticipate their needs, direct their industries and divide their inheritances. It would envelop society in "a network of petty regulations -- complicated, minute and uniform." But softly: "It does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them" until people resemble "a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."

Perhaps subconsciously the New Liberal Democrats stole Tocqueville's message, maybe not, but our point is the same:
http://newliberaldemocrat.blogspot.com/2009/01/who-are-new-liberal-democrats-we.html