The Nun-of-the-Above Test of The System:
[1] Do you trust Congress?
[2] So, if you are among the 80-plus percent who do not, then:
would you like
to have a none-of-the-above lever or box,
among the options you choose from when you vote?
[If under 20% of the public now trusts a US Congress composed
almost entirely of Dumbos & Dembos, then why do pollsters' questions
so often constrain pollees' answers to GOP-vs-Dem options, as
elections approach? (Hint: who's paying for the polls?)
Years ago, a person (in San Francisco, I think)
frustrated by the above constraint, dressed up in a Catholic Sister's outfit
(“habit”) and announced his intent to run for public office.
But when he applied to the courts to have his name changed to
“Nun of the Above”, he was refused.
I.e., the present narrow arrangement isn't that way
entirely by accident.]
Abortion vs Poverty:
[1] Do you approve of public-funding of abortions?
[2] If a woman can't afford an abortion, can she afford a kid? —
and whose taxes will (barely) support all those poverty-bound kids?
(DIO 8 [1998]
‡5 §E7 [p.47].)
Constitutional Democracy:
[1] Are US citizens living in a free democracy,
which many have died to preserve?
[2] If so, then why do these citizens have no say
when their taxes go for a war it rejects, for AFDC which most dislike,
for social services to support businessmen's illegal-immigrant scab-labor,
for legal representation to spring those who mug us
(lawyers on the dole), etc?
[1] In the US' profit-motive society, do you have the sense of being,
increasingly inundated with
injustices,
such as out-of-your-control “democratically-elected” rulers,
[other] unpunished criminals, as well as the inexorably-growing
vast gap between rich & poor?
[2] Do you think that other citizens' similar perceptions may contribute
to a greater statistical likelihood to acquiesce-in or even join-in
criminality, in a capitalist society?
Pig-in-a-Joke Gov't
— the Flaw in Representative Democracy:
[1] Do you think it's OK for pols to
lie?
If YES, then:
[2] Why vote for candidates whose positions
(and cornucopic fiscal well-springs)
aren't immediately apparent or reliably determinable?
Videocops:
[1] Will street videocameras make society more honest?
[2] So, given where most of society's really serious robbery occurs:
would monitoring conversations of politicians & businessmen
make society more honest?
[The states in the US [e.g., NY, IL, CA] which ban 1-party taping
tend to be the most corrupt, by a curious coincidence.
Who but a criminal would object to having his sayings
a matter of referable record?
If
the gov't can bug you, shouldn't you be able to bug the gov't?
Does the media's selective “privacy”-boogeyman
remove your ability to choose among these options
by scaring tax-pickpocketed honest citizens into foresaking
a tool which would be the bane of crooked pols and merchants?
Or, on the other hand, are the privacy-advocates right in presuming
that the gov't's relative power will ensure that all listening
will be one-way, regardless, so: the less in-toto, the better?
Also: is there a parallel here to atomic weapons,
which we know cannot be in everyone's hands
(DIO 4.3 [1994]
‡13 n.13 [p.115]), or is the more apt parallel to
a citizenry attempting to defend itself with small arms?]
Some Diseases More Equal Than Others?
Does All-Sides Include the Bottom? Of the Barrel?
[1] Should AIDS carriers be quarantined like other plagues' carriers?
[2] How about if (as part of a multi-pronged attack on the disease's
spread), it's found that some degree of quarantining saves some lives?
(DIO 2.1 [1992]
‡1 n.19 [pp.7-8].)
[One can see several sides to this question.
(Wm.F.Buckley ingeniously suggested that AIDS carriers be bottom-tattoed.)
Is there a homosexual-cult lobbyist who has paused to notice that,
of those who suffer or even die because of quarantining's banishment,
the majority are of his own feather?]
Divine Flounder or Holy Flounder?
[1] Is it OK for media people (BJClinton's press-chief McCurry;
or NBC's longtime talking-head, Father Tom Brokawski)
to be calling pope “the Holy Father”
and calling VatCity “the Holy See”? If YES, then:
[2] Doesn't this kind of stuff constitute free (and highly judgemental)
advertising?
Should we ask whether any other father or see is also holy?
[Network news has taken to calling an occasional Iraq site “holy”
— especially if The Enemy has just bombed it.]
If we are to call the Bishop of Rome “holy”, then should
we likewise characterize the Archbishop of Canterbury as “holy”?
Holy Jim Bakker? Holy Baba Ram Das? Holy Jerry Falwell?
Holy Sadr? Holy L.Ron Hubbard? Holy Batman? Holy
Flounder?
Etc.
Ever Say Never.
Or: How Often Can the Press and Other Churches Agree
on a 1-Word Answer?
[1] A PURELY theoretical question:
If there were — somewhere in another galaxy, let's say —
a PURELY theoretical woman who bore child after child
after child, simply because she was too dumb (or drugged by narcotics
like heroine or religion) to use birth control, then: how would her
PURELY theoretical community deal with her burgeoning brood?
[2] Is abortion or sterilization justified here?