Youth Politics

On Tuesday, California voters voted on several propositions to go along with the national election. Of these propositions, I’d like to talk about proposition 8.

What is proposition 8? If you haven’t already heard, it’s supposed to restore true family values and outlaw gay marriage in California. This would bring back the supposed traditional meaning of the word marriage, which is the union between a man and a woman in every religion I can think of.

Basically, California took a big step backwards when it comes to equal rights.

The problem for me is the fact that governments can define what is marriage. This should be impossible. I thought marriage was conducted by religions, and thus should be out of bounds for the government. The government should only define civil unions, which is much different from marriage. Religions can still choose who to marry, but everyone should enjoy the same tax benefits etc. as others. It’s only logical.

And let’s not get into any crap about keeping marriage sacred. Heterosexual couples have already screwed that up by divorcing 50% of the time here in the United States. How frikkin’ sacred is that then? People are already marrying up then giving up a few years later just to get back with someone else who they give up years later. Family values my @$$. Think about all of the children broken up by divorced families. It’s a nightmare.

Gay civil union would not impede on anyone else’s marriage rights nor would it impact anyone else’s lives at all. As far as we all are concerned, some gay couples are practically married besides the legal benefits, and they deserve those benefits as much as anyone else.

“Oh no, but they are sinning by wanting to be gay.” No one chooses to be gay, period. I couldn’t choose to be gay. It’s impossible. Others who are straight couldn’t choose to be gay. It doesn’t work. No one chooses to defy nature ok? If you still believe people choose to be gay, you’re brainwashed. I like women. I will never stop liking women. No matter how hard I try I will never be able to change that. That’s simply how my body reacts. With gay people it’s the same deal. They happen to like the same sex, and it’s not by choice. Children don’t choose to be gay, that’s simply not something they are thinking about doing actively. Just like you didn’t actively choose to like whichever gender you happen to like.

I’m not even going to mention that there are many, many species that have homosexual relations. It just… happens. Just like cancer just happens, and I’m not going to incriminate people just because they have cancer.

And don’t give me crap about a slippery slope, either. There is no slippery slope. Two consenting adults want a civil union, there’s no slippage there. People aren’t going to win arguments to marry siblings, animals, or inanimate objects. There’s simply no legal basis for that, and those things are stupid anyway.

Again, if your religion doesn’t support gay marriage, fine. I have no qualms with that. But the legal system should not be defining marriage anyway; it should only allow for civil unions. I’m pretty sure that’s something everyone can live with.

Here’s a story about some rights groups challenging the ban:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27557521/

Got a differing opinion, or do you agree? Let me know in a comment below.

Conservatives will tell you that the media is quite biased against them in general, and I would tend to agree. There are simply more major news sources that are liberally biased than conservatively biased. I suppose it doesn’t help when a show like the Daily Show gets Barack Obama as a guest a few days before the election. And yes, I did watch to see how it would go. It was much more endorsement than funny I’d have to say, but overall it was entertaining to watch.

The reason I bring this up is because well, a LOT of younger folks actually get their news from parody shows such as the Daily Show. Should they be? Well…. technically it makes little sense to do so to be completely informed as the main focus is comedy. However, a lot of younger voters are influenced by these types of shows and it is a pretty good platform for advancing a political idea.

So why is the media so biased against conservative ideas? I’m not exactly sure. I also am not sure why conservatives are more easily mocked. Perhaps it’s because we have a Republican president right now? That’s definitely part of it I think. Are there other reasons? I’m sure, but I’m hardpressed to come up with a good answer. If anyone has any suggestions as to why Republicans have a big disadvantage in the media, feel free to let me know.

Perhaps someone needs to create a show that pokes fun at liberal views. They probably exist… somewhere, but I can’t name one off the top of my head. In any case I will continue to watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report because they air late in the evening and I’m bored during those hours.

Let’s face it, all of us are pretty bad at checking our facts when it comes to political issues. You’d think that with the advent of the Internet, political facts are more easily accessible and thus it is much much easier to make an informed opinion. In many ways this is true; people know a lot more about what’s going on now then they did even 100 years ago. However, we’re still really bad at checking our facts, period.

Some people go into the process of looking up political information with a built-in bias. Let’s say for example a Democrat is looking for information to back up his or her claim. Chances are this person will easily find everything that agrees with whatever he or she says because there is just so much information out there that it’s easy to find exactly what you’re looking for. Then, this person proceeds to reiterate just those facts that support the claim to others. Those others then use that source to back up their own claims. And now you’ve got a biased source of information everyone has decided to follow.

The problem is people can easily overlook or not even find any evidence to the contrary. For example, I could do a Google search for “The Republicans are to blame for the economic crisis” and find a plethora of evidence to back my claim, simply because there are others with the same exact bias who have written about this subject. I easily skip out on all of the articles I’d have found had I done “The Democrats are to blame for the economic crisis.”

The second problem is that the Internet contains not only a bunch of useful information, but it also contains a lot of nonsense and garbage. People find articles that are completely untrue or even slightly untrue and use those as parts of their arguments. Yes the Internet is a blessing in that information is very easy to find, but it’s also a great curse for those who will listen to just about anything. And yes, there are those who will believe anything and everything. And then when there’s a contradictory statement, some people (not all mind you) will be too stubborn to listen.

My advice is this: Try your best to find all sides of an argument when looking up political facts. Know that it’s impossible for you to be 100 percent right about everything, because if that were the case then you’d quite possibly be the best politician ever. To think that you even could know everything suggests that the government is transparent enough for the common people to know exactly what’s going on, and I highly doubt that’s the case.

Anyway, just be extremely careful when presenting any sort of facts, and remember that you can’t always draw up conclusions based on what you find, because there’s probably a lot more you didn’t find.

Change, or some form of it, is one of the highlights of this campaign. Obama speaks of change. McCain speaks of reform. Both are vague because well, for one, what will Obama change? How much will he change it by? McCain will reform what exactly? And by how much?

Here’s what I’ve come to conclude about what each is trying to say by “change” and “reform”.

Barack Obama’s “Change”: The political system is absolutely broken and it needs to be completely redone. There needs to be a new way of thinking and a new direction for America. There will also be a change of policies that did not work in the past.

John McCain’s “Reform”: The political system has gone awry. We need to look at each part of government, remove the corruption, and fix up what’s left. The system can work if we remove what’s making it broken.

Both are essentially good things. Now I’ve heard that people don’t want change, or that change will be bad. To which I respond by staring blankly. I think what people really mean is that they want the America they’ve known in the past. It’s gone. Time moves only forward; you either fix what you’ve got or keep the mess. Right now, we’re moving deeper and deeper into a mess. We need reform and we need change. We can’t assume that just because America is great that America will continue to be great without some effort.

What do you all think? Am I missing something here? Which one do you prefer, reform or change? Feel free to leave comments below (If you’re on the front page, you’ll have to go to the blog to comment).

Before I begin this post, I’d like to thank Jolly Roger for having the most comments last week. Congratulations!

You should definitely check out his blog, as it contains some great information that’s way more likely to tick you off than this blog, and if it doesn’t then you’ve got another great read. If for some reason you do find his content pisses you off, then go ahead and leave some comments so that he may then prove you wrong.

I mostly kid, however here’s the blog from anyone who is interested: Reconstitution 2.0. If the name of the blog doesn’t pique your interest, I don’t know what will.

Anyway…

Some people are stupid. These people think stupidly, about things. This is a no-brainer.

I recently read that Obama’s campaign had left out the national anthem in order to have another speaker. I found the responses to this outrageous.

Here’s the post for anyone interested.

I seriously cannot believe that just because the national anthem wasn’t sung, that it makes Obama unpatriotic. Should everyone be squeezing in the national anthem to everything they do nowadays? If I sing the Star Spangled Banner more often, does that make me more patriotic? How about everyone just sing the song 10 times a day, every day to make up for it not being sung at Obama’s rally. I’ll sing it 11 times myself to make sure I’m more patriotic than everyone else.

There are people who will not vote for Obama SOLELY because his campaign left out the anthem. These comments are usually proceeded by random nonsense. I know these people are not using any sort of logical thinking at all. These people tend to be much older than me too…. coincidence?

Nope, issues don’t matter. If the national anthem isn’t sung, then the candidate is bad. Somehow not singing the national anthem ONCE is a shame… yet I bet these people go day after day without singing it, even though they have every opportunity to do so. In fact, why listen to any other songs at all?

Not surprisingly enough, these same types of people are the ones going around calling Obama a terrorist and a socialist. Let me make a list here:

1. Obama is NOT a terrorist.
2. Obama is NOT a socialist.
3. Obama is NOT a Muslim.
4. If Obama were Muslim, it DOESN’T MEAN HE WOULDN’T MAKE A GOOD PRESIDENT.
5. If Obama were Muslim, it DOESN’T MEAN HE WOULDN’T MAKE A GOOD PRESIDENT.

Yes, I stated number 4 twice.

Calling Obama a terrorist is one of the most blindly ignorant things I’ve ever heard. What act of terrorism is Obama even accused of? He’s a guy from Hawaii who went to law school and is running for president. What the hell are people talking about when they’re calling him out as a terrorist? I’d hate to think who else these people think are terrorists.

I don’t even think these people know what socialism is, either. Even my friend who IS a socialist doesn’t think anyone on the Democratic party is socialist. Barack Obama is far, far from being a socialist. In fact, both the Republican and Democratic parties are pretty near the center as far as the political spectrum is concerned.

Obama is a Christian, but who cares? In America everyone is free to practice their own religion, and if Obama had been a Muslim, it doesn’t change his policies or his stance. People who would not elect someone into office based solely upon their religion are BIGOTS, blinded by hate and ignorance. I’d bet a lot of money that these people don’t know that Muslims worship the same God as Christians.

So there’s my rant. The whole anthem thing is a non-issue. It’s just another stupid, unimportant angle from which to make a nonsensical attack on Obama. The “terrorist” and “socialist” remarks are dumbing at best. America is a great country, but not necessarily because of everyone living in it.

I’d add rants concerning ridiculous statements towards McCain, but I haven’t found an article that’s particularly maddening, although I am on the lookout for one. If anyone has one for me, please email me at Crowtche@juniorpolitics.com or drop a comment.

If you too are sickened by all this, by all means let me know. I appreciate all comments however, so even if you’re angered by my statements, at least tell me. Sheesh, I’ll take it like a man I promise.