Youth Politics

I’d like to thank everyone who commented last week! As I brought up in Hooray For 100 Posts, I said I would be giving shoutouts to those who commented. I explained that the purpose is twofold, not only to encourage more commenting but also to let others see comments they wouldn’t otherwise see. I will not be placing my replies to any of these comments, so you’d have to look at the source post to see what I said, if anything.

So without further ado, the comments….

From Five Guaranteed Ways to Win A Political Argument:

Armen Shirvanian from Timeless Information writes:

It is tough to say whether these items are not more successful than the logically reasonable alternatives. Another possible title for the list would be “5 Political Argument Methods That Shouldn’t Work, But Probably Will”.

Kevin Jackson from The Black Sphere writes:

Alberto, I thoroughly enjoyed this post, and welcome you to The Black Sphere. I agree that the tactics of your list is how Liberals argue, however we Conservatives put them over our knees and spank them, if they use these tactics! Nevertheless, I like seeing how they argue in print. Fun read! – Kevin

From How Sacred Is Marriage Anyway:

Kevin Jackson from The Black Sphere writes:

Alberto, the homosexuals have “civil unions” that grant them essentially ALL rights of marriage. The bigger question is “Why do homosexuals want the word ‘marriage’?” When you get to that answer, you will have your twist. I will blog on this soon…Kevin

From Win $50 At FixThePig.com:

johnny from 4pppp.ru writes:

e7RlPI Thanks for good post

From Why Does the US Support Israel:

rampantheart from The Voices Within writes:

Happy New Year, Alberto!

A small gift from my side! You have been conferred upon the Arte-y-pico award! Check out my latest post!

fastfret writes:

I find that our support of Israel is a blinded attempt at keeping up ideals. Yes the Brittish promised the Jews the land but knowing that it would result in chaos gave it to the UN to handle. Which in turn the US now champions. Giving the Jews the land was a mistake, there was an irrational thought process throughout the world mostly due to the zionist movement and massive sympathy due to the concentration camps and hitler/ww II. We have created a situation in which if we stop supporting Israel we will damage our already tarnished reputation but continued support will lead to the abuse of Palestinian land by the Israelis and soon Palestine will cease to exist.

From Crude Oil At $33.87 Per Barrel:

China man from elcocn.com writes:

hey…

agree…

That’s all for this week’s comment shoutouts. Again, if you’d like to appear on this list, all you have to do is leave a comment that’s not spam! I’d like to thank everyone for giving their input and I look forward to further input from those who agree with me, disagree with me, hate me, tolerate me, etc. : )

There’s a pretty serious non-issue (in my opinion) that has gotten quite a bit of media coverage over the last couple of days, even with the conflict in Gaza getting out of hand. The Blagojevich scandal, which was about the man himself, the governor of Illinois, being convicted of selling Obama’s senate seat to the highest bidder. Now Blagojevich has appointed Roland Burris to take the Senate seat, and the Democrats are trying to block this action.

Here’s the problem I’m having with this: while it is true that Blagojevich is being convicted of a serious crime, is he still not the governor? Where in the law does it say that he no longer gets to perform any of his duties? Do we ignore the law because of a “special circumstance”? I thought that is what courts were for, to challenge the law. If that’s the case, someone needs to bring this to the attention of the courts.

As far as I’m concerned, the only person this punishes is Burris himself. Burris is completely clean and I think would be a perfectly good senator. It seems to me that Obama’s team’s only motivation to block Burris’ entry into the Senate is purely political, and that leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I understand the arguments against this act, and I also do understand that Blagojevich pretending that nothing’s going on is a serious lack of judgment, but isn’t he still governor and isn’t he innocent until proven guilty?

Americans have a pro-Israel mentality. This is somewhat of a no brainer if you pay any sort of attention to US policy, but the question is why is the United States such a strong ally of Israel. That is, why is it that the US has decided to back Israel and not Palestine? How did this whole mess begin in the first place? The answer to these questions lies in history.

I don’t want to go into a full history lesson, but this is what I’ve gotten from what I’ve read.

Conflicting British Promises:

The British were looking forward to an Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire, which happened to be allies of Germany and thus enemies of Great Britain in World War I. The Hussein-McMahon correspondence came about as a series of letters between Husayn bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca and Sir Henry McMahon, High Commissioner in Egypt. Here is what a letter from McMahon to Hussein said, and do remember that this letter is on behalf of the British government:

“The districts of Mersin and Alexandretta, and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, cannot be said to be purely Arab, and must on that account be excepted from the proposed delimitation. Subject to that modification, and without prejudice to the treaties concluded between us and certain Arab Chiefs, we accept that delimitation. As for the regions lying within the proposed frontiers, in which Great Britain is free to act without detriment to interests of her ally France, I am authorized to give you the following pledges on behalf of the Government of Great Britain, and to reply as follows to your note: That subject to the modifications stated above, Great Britain is prepared to recognize and uphold the independence of the Arabs in all the regions lying within the frontiers proposed by the Sharif of Mecca.” (Source: October 24 1915 letter from Sir Henry McMahon, High Commissioner in Egypt, to Sherif Husayn of Mecca, archived at UNISPAL.)

So here we have a promise stating that Arabs can have their own independent state in the region now known as Palestine. Only two years later, we have the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which stated that the British government

“view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” and that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” (Source: Yapp, M.E. (1987). The Making of the Modern Near East 1792-1923. Harlow, England: Longman. p. 290.)

Therein lies the problem. Two promises that are seemingly conflicting.

After World War I:

The Israeli’s eventually get their own country, and of course the Arabs in the region aren’t too happy about it. On top of that, the Israeli’s are unwilling to have only the half of Jerusalem that has most of the Jewish population. This is understandable because the parts of the supposed holy land that the Arabs controlled resulted in the desecration (the building of Mosques on top of sacred Jewish landmarks) of monuments and landmarks held sacred by the Jewish people. They feared the same would happen to the part of Jerusalem they wouldn’t directly control. The Arabs were furious about the Jewish not dividing up more of the region, and several wars ensued. Later on, Hamas was formed to terrorize the country of Israel, which they do not recognize as a country anyway.

Today:

The United States supports Israel because it does not support terrorism. Plain and simple. Although the Arabs basically got cheated out of their deal, it is the way they have been handling the situation that has led to US support for Israel.

The reasons the United States doesn’t deal with Hamas head on are

1. We don’t have the resources right now due to our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
2. Hamas was legitimately elected in early 2006.

The United States has taken a stance that terrorism will not be tolerated, and has been on the side of Israel against Hamas since it’s founding in 1987. This is, in the end, why we support Israel, regardless of the historical implications.

I’m not trying to teach history here, but if you’d like more, go visit http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm . I’d like to thank rampantheart from The Voices Within for helping me find some sources.

Of course I write this because of the recent events in Gaza. What do you all think of Israel’s actions?

First of all, I hope everyone is having a good time with the holidays. I know with current economic conditions everything seems a little gloomier, but I hope that everyone has made the best of it.

This blog has come a long way since it’s starting back in late July. I’ve learned a lot about maintaining a blog and actually finding others in the community to discuss politics with. Through persistence and through your support this blog has made it to it’s 100th post!

If you haven’t already checked out my list of Awesome Economic and Political Blogs, then I suggest looking at them in the sidebar. I promise they are well worth your time. They are at the very least well worth mine.

I’ve also begun using Twitter in order to keep in better touch with the community as well as to let everyone know about my political thoughts throughout the day. It’s also been great hearing what others have to say, whether or not I agree with their viewpoints or not. Listen to me on Twitter or talk to me through Twitter if you’re interested.

Those who have commented may have noticed that I’ve turned off nofollow on comment links. This means you can get link juice to your own blog just by commenting here on Youth Politics. I do appreciate everyone’s comments as they help me write and they do sometimes help to prove me wrong >: ). At the very least they get the conversation going, so if you haven’t given your input please do so. I encourage it!

Starting next week I’m going to start a comment shout out list. Basically I will put up a list of all the comments for that week in a blog post. This means the more times you comment, the more times you get listed. Seems good right? Oh, and don’t forget that you will show up on the top commentators sidebar list if you post more than most. My main reason for doing this is of course for more commenting action but also because I feel a lot of newer comments that go on older posts just don’t get noticed, and I want to bring those kinds of comments to everyone’s attention.

So again, thanks everyone for helping this blog get to its 100 posts! Couldn’t have done it without you readers. And remember I will reward comments once a week with a shout out, so feel free to take advantage of that.

For those who are generally bad at getting your point across or persuading anyone to support your political cause, it’s probably because you haven’t been following these five key crucial ways to win a political debate 100% of the time.

1. Remember that your viewpoint is absolutely correct and that no one can ever persuade you otherwise. There is also no such thing as a “similar” viewpoint; it’s either yours or wrong. Remember to convey that fact to your opponents.

2. Facts don’t lie, and neither do false facts. Back up everything you say with a fact, whether or not that fact actually exists.

3. Tell your opponent that his/her view makes absolutely no sense, and that his/her opinion doesn’t matter. Arrogance is key with this one.

4. Name calling. This one is a classic and if you’re not already doing it, you’re a shameful debater.

5. Insult the opponent’s immediate family and friends. Once your opponent has lost his or her temper, they are sure to throw away the debate by spewing nonsense.

So there you have it, five sure fire ways to win any political argument. If you didn’t find this post to be sarcastic, then you should be worried : >

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