Eric Rasmusen’s Weblog

Last night we had our neighbor the urologist over for a dinner party and he was telling us that the political skirmishing over stem cell research is just a fraud on ignorant enthusiasts and a cover for the abortion debate. There are plenty of stem cell lines available for research now, umbilical cord blood stem cells are as good as fetus ones, and we don’t know how to “turn on” stem cells now anyway, so any medical use is still far away, though well worthy of research. Rather, proponents of the use of fetal stem cells are trying to show that abortion has a good side to it– and to further their idea that a fetus is just like a blood sample, something to be bought, sold, or thrown away without qualms.

The topic of cell lines made me think about immortality and the odd lawsuit over Moore’s Spleen, which I posted about this spring. (My last musing on this subject, in 2003, included an excerpt fromCaptain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.) John Moore’s doctor and UCLA took his spleen cells, created an immortal cell line, and made millions. The lawsuit was over the millions, but what I think of now is that Moore is immortal, physically– at least, unless the researchers get tired of preserving his cell line. Yet, of course, it does Moore no good.

For that matter, we are all immortal in the sense that the atoms in our body do not disintegrate when we die. Isaac Newton’s carbon atoms are still around somewhere, perhaps in a tree in Scotland and a hog in Surrey.

Nor, for most of us, does our DNA vanish. Many, though probably not all of our genes are still around, in different combinations, in our descendants.

Nor does our effect on the world necessarily disappear. For most of us, our direct impact on other people slowly dissipates, as they die themselves and do not tell of us to their descendants, but authors, builders, and inventors can have increasing impacts. Mothers can too.

So immortality, even putting aside our immortal souls, is a tricky thing to analyze. The soul is even harder, and must be, I think, one of those mysteries like the Trinity or the Creation that cannot be understood using available evidence and intellect.

Lines 253-262 of Canto 3 of Pope’s Essay on Man has two important ideas:

Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally
The common interest, or endear the tie.
To these we owe true friendship, love sincere,
Each home-felt joy that life inherits here;
Yet from the same we learn, in its decline,
Those joys, those loves, those interests to resign;
Taught half by reason, half by mere decay,
To welcome death , and calmly pass away.
Whate’er the passion, knowledge, fame, or pelf,
Not one will change his neighbour with himself.

Idea 1 is that reason and slow decline teach us to accept death. That is true for the reasonable man, though I’d also be interested to see how IQ and age correlate with fear of death. I’m afraid there might, in practice, be a positive correlation, with intellectuals and [other?] old women having the greatest fear for their health.

Idea 2 is that “Not one will change his neighbour with himself.” How striking! Who would abandon his own identity for another’s? I may think I am unhappy, but would I destroy myself, to be replaced in someone else. Some people do, of course, commit suicide, but not to be reborn as someone else. We humans are selfish enough for just the idea of Self to be valued above all else.

It’s Sudan Day here at Indiana University. Sudan now has not one but two distinct collapses of civil society: in the South, and in Darfur. The South has been in turmoil ever since the 1950’s, except for one period from 1972 to 1983 when the Khartoum government made peace and allowed autonomy. There is no reason for the Moslem North and the Christian/Pagan South to be one country, really, though a federal system could work. But in 1983, the discovery of oil in the South and Northern Islamism combined to make the North end autonomy and restart the war. It’s unclear how many hundreds of thousands or millions have died in the South (some say 3 million). But what is clear is that the South has been in anarchy. The North has not seriously tried to conquer the South, but it has used such things as raids, funding of bandits and militias, and aerial bombing of civilians to prevent anybody else from governing the South. The aim seems to have been to keep the South utterly undeveloped, so it could not present any kind of threat to Northern plans. The situation would be like the traditional one, where the North, in a more advanced state of development, could go South for resources (slaves then, oil now) without needing to actually govern it….
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One thing I hate about liberals is how they use the courts to subvert the Constitution and then claim they are just defending the Constitution and “separation of powers”. There is a large class (majority? 90%?) of law professors who do not even acknowledge the fact that the Supreme Court can act unconstitutionally– for them, what the Supreme Court says is what the Constitution says, by definition. Our U.S Rep. here in Bloomington, Baron Hill, is doing the same. He claims he is against various judicial atrocities, but then he votes against any attempt to prevent them, and claims his opponents are lying when they say he favors what the courts are doing. It’s sickening. I heard one of his ads this morning on the radio. It claimed he represented traditional values– which he clearly does not. If only liberals would admit to their views! Here’s what the Herald Times has to say ($) about Baron Hill.
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MT 3.1 is working pretty well now for me. It will be some time before I restore my old weblog appearance– I have to see how the templates work now. I’ve managed to merge in my old Politics entries into the archives, though, and to purge the old spam comments. I may have deleted some legit reader comments by accident– my apologies, and it is to my regret perhaps even more than to yours. The newest version of MT-Blacklist, which I’ve installed, seems to deal well with spam comments, so I’ve opened up comments again. Note that comments on older entries are moderated now, meaning I have to approve them before they appear. Also, the first time you comment I need to click to approve it. These are the main MT-blacklist line of defense against spam.

After a chat with Professor Harbaugh, I thought I’d collect my thoughts on communication games, thinking about revisions to my Games and Information. These notes won’t mean much to non-economists, I’m afraid.

UPDATED AT
http://www.rasmusen.org/x/archives/833

There’s a new electronic BEPRESS journal out for public policy, nontechnical, articles. John Donohue’s (September 18, 2004) “Clinton and Bush’s Report Cards on Crime Reduction: The Data Show Bush Policies Are Undermining Clinton Gains” is interesting. He notes that the number of police per capita increased in the Clinton years and has declined slightly in the Bush years. Clinton had a program that was giving a billion dollars or so a year to cities to hire police, though funding was cut in half from 1999 to 2000, even before Bush took office. Of course, the most important feature of the Clinton years was a booming economy and fast-growing state and local spending generally. Donahue’s data stops in 2002, and the first couple of Bush years were not prosperous ones for city governments.

Donahue says that a 10% increase in police reduces crime by about 5%, which is remarkable. If that is true, though, then we must ask why cities (and states) do not fund more police themselves, rather than waiting for federal funds for what is a local concern. The city (and state, via lower prison spending) gets the benefit, so why wouldn’t they be willing to pay the cost? My main criticism of the Clinton program is that it seems like a way for the President to reward cities that support him with cash for their local spending, paid for by taxes generally, including from localities that do not support him.

“Does Prison Pay?” by Anne Morrison Piehl and John J. DiLulio (The Brookings Review, Winter 1995) concludes generally that prison does pay: if the prisoners were not there, the cost of their crimes would be greater than the cost of their imprisonment. They except drug crimes from this, but only because they measure the benefit of imprisoning a drug dealer to be zero! In detail, here is what they say about crime generally:
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I’m moving to Movable Type 3 now, and am having problems. My first priority is to make my new posts readable. My second is to get a search engine working so old posts can be found.

Clayton Cramer has a good post on a simple form of vote fraud: just pretend to be someone else and vote before they do. Absentee and early voting make this kind of fraud particularly easy. He recounts one such incident that just happened. One part of his story that struck me in particular was that the authorities were completely uninterested in pursuing whoever perpetrated the fraud. When there’s no enforcement, we can expect a lot of fraud. This is a major advantage of the electoral college. If we simply elected whoever had a majority of the popular vote, that would give a big incentive to pile up fraudulent vote in the states in which you had complete control of the government. We still have a problem with this within states: a corrupt part of a state can exercise undue influence via fraud.

Cramer also writes about an easy step towards reducing the problem:

Question: Is there any good reason why a voter should not have to present valid identification at the polling place?

The answer, by the way, is No.

I consider one of the most important actions of the next Congress to be passing a law requiring anyone voting in a federal election to show an official picture ID.

The other easy step is to reduce the amount of absentee voting, or to eliminate it altogether.

The main use of learning Euclidean geometry is to learn the idea of how to prove things– how to go logically from assumptions to a proposition. That is especially useful because the assumptions are laid out as axioms, but doing any kind of proof can be a useful exercise. Below is an exercise that I think I heard about from Professor Aliprantis some years back:…
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Should children multi-task? In a psychology study, one group of 5-year-olds watched Sesame Street with toys in the room, and another with no toys. The researc hers filmed them to record how much attention they paid (how much they looked at the TV), and then tested them on what they remembered about the program. The surprising discovery was that although they children with toys paid much less attention, they remembered just as much– though not as much about what was going on during the specific times they were not paying attention.

The researchers’ conclusion was that the children were paying attention to the most informative parts of the program, carefully enough that paying attention to the other parts didn’t yield them much extra comprehension. Thus, comprehension causes attention rather than the reverse.

An implication is that the way to get children to understand something on TV is not to grab their attention with fast pacing and gimmicks, but to slow down the pace to make it understandable, which in turn will get their attention.

I suppose this has implications for adults too, and for my teaching. I should slow down and be understandable!

The study is reported in Daniel Anderson and Elizabeth Lorch “Looking at Television: Action or Reaction?”, chapter 1 of Jennings Bryant and Daniel Anderson, eds. Children’s Understanding of Television (New York: Academic Press, 1983)

Ruth Wisse, one of my neighbors during my year visiting Harvard, wrote in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal,

The Federal Election Commission could not have foreseen that when it required employment information on political donations of over $200, it would expose scandalous uniformity in a university community that advertises its diversity. The Sacramento Bee reported that the University of California system gave more to the Kerry campaign than any other single employee group, and that Harvard was second, with only 15,000 employees to UC’s 160,000. Campus bloggers computed the percentages of Kerry contributions over Bush: Cornell 93%, Dartmouth 97%, Yale 93%, Brown 89%.

What is the relevance of this? –That our universities are strongholds of the Left, and of the Democratic Party. That is fine– other organizations are equally strongholds of the Right and the Republican Party. But students should realize that their professors, as a group, are leftwing, and letters saying that 123 law professors or 234 economics professors oppose Bush should fail to impress anyone.

The Left has come to dominate universities, the judiciary, the media, the “mainline” religious denominations, schoolteachers. This is what one might expect, and is in line with what Schumpeter predicted in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. His gloomy prediction there was that capitalism would collapse because businessmen were not articulate and political enough to defend themselves against intellectuals. It is interesting that that prediction has not come true. We do have heavy government regulation, but the private sector has defended itself fairly well, has even rolled back some regulation, and has largely defeated the idea of government ownership. Instead, it is on social issues that the Left has triumphed– abortion, homosexuality, gambling, pornography, secularism, the role of women, affirmative action. I suppose that is because of the Left’s strength in the key sectors I named above, combined with the lack of strong individual interests being affected by attitudinal changes. Note that the Left has not been so successful with gun control, which though it arguably has diffuse general benefits would also impose disliked restrictions on individuals. The benefits of pornography control are similarly diffuse, and the restrictions individualized, and so we legalized it once the universities, judiciary, media, ministers, and schoolteachers changed their attitude.

From the Weekly Standard, we have more evidence of Kerry’s shamelessness. It is in the interest of many politicians to incite racial strife. The Democrats have merely moved from cynically inciting whites to cynically inciting blacks over the past 50 years.
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It’s hardly a secret that in America racial and sexual discrimination is practiced on a massive scale, more overtly (in the North if not the South) than ever in history. But a federal court ruled in July 2004 that Northern Arizona University discriminated against white male professors….
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Today I was at my parents’ farm and we had church at home, using Luke
16:19-29 and I Corinthians 1:20-27. Luke 16 [+/-]Luke 16 [16:1]He also said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. [2]And he called him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.' [3]And the manager said to himself, 'What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. [4]I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.' [5]So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' [6]He said, 'A hundred measures of oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.' [7]Then he said to another, 'And how much do you owe?' He said, 'A hundred measures of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, and write eighty.' [8]The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. [9]And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. [10]"One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. [11]If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? [12]And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? [13]No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." [14]The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. [15]And he said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. [16]"The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it. [17]But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void. [18]"Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery. [19]"There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. [20]And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, [21]who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. [22]The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried, [23]and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. [24]And he called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.' [25]But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. [26]And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.' [27]And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house-- [28]for I have five brothers--so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' [29]But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.' [30]And he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' [31]He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'" (ESV)
is the story of Lazarus and
the Rich Man, and I Corinthians 1 is about “The Foolishness of This
World”. I’ve copied both at the end of this post. The order of service was like
this:

Invocation >
Singing “Jesus Loves Me”
Reading I Corinthians 1:20-27 (Uncle Scott) .
Singing “Trust and Obey” (first verse only)
Prayer (Grandpa)
Reading Luke 16 [+/-]Luke 16 [16:1]He also said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. [2]And he called him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.' [3]And the manager said to himself, 'What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. [4]I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.' [5]So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' [6]He said, 'A hundred measures of oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.' [7]Then he said to another, 'And how much do you owe?' He said, 'A hundred measures of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, and write eighty.' [8]The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. [9]And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. [10]"One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. [11]If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? [12]And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? [13]No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." [14]The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. [15]And he said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. [16]"The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it. [17]But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void. [18]"Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery. [19]"There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. [20]And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, [21]who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. [22]The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried, [23]and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. [24]And he called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.' [25]But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. [26]And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.' [27]And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house-- [28]for I have five brothers--so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' [29]But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.' [30]And he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' [31]He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'" (ESV)
, Lazarus and the Rich Man (Grandma)
Acting out Luke 16 [+/-]Luke 16 [16:1]He also said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. [2]And he called him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.' [3]And the manager said to himself, 'What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. [4]I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.' [5]So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' [6]He said, 'A hundred measures of oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.' [7]Then he said to another, 'And how much do you owe?' He said, 'A hundred measures of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, and write eighty.' [8]The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. [9]And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. [10]"One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. [11]If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? [12]And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? [13]No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." [14]The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. [15]And he said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. [16]"The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it. [17]But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void. [18]"Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery. [19]"There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. [20]And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, [21]who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. [22]The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried, [23]and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. [24]And he called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.' [25]But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. [26]And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.' [27]And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house-- [28]for I have five brothers--so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' [29]But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.' [30]And he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' [31]He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'" (ESV)
(Elizabeth as the Rich Man, Grandma as Lazarus, Amelia as Abraham, Benjamin as the Dog, Jacob as the Angel and the Gravedigger, Uncle
Eric narrating.
Sermon: “Simple Faith” (Uncle Eric)
Singing “Trust and Obey” (first verse only)
Singing “Jesus Loves Me”

It worked out well. Lazarus and the Rich Man is easy to dramatize, and the two passages work well together for a sermon on the Gospel and Pride. Two things I’d remember for next time are: (a) Prepare a passage for a benediction, and (b)Sing hymns like “Trust and Obey” out one line at a time, with the congregation then repeating them. That’s better for kids who can’t read, and eliminates the need for hymnbooks.
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I was just looking through some clippings. Someone was recently saying that there were witnesses on both sides, and that he thought the Swiftvets had been discredited. Of course, they have not. Kerry has never even addressed their points, just hoping for what indeed has happened: that people would assume, after time passed, that there was nothing to it. I’ve blogged on this at length before, pointing out that most of the problems with Kerry’s medals don’t even need any Swiftvet testimony to be apparent– you just need to look at the records released by Kerry, and at his campaign bio by Brinkley, and read carefully. But it remains significant that 90% (literally) of the men who served with Kerry signed a statement saying he was unfit to be President. From World magazine in May 2004:

” In an open letter to Sen. Kerry, the Swift Boat Veterans complained that the Democrat had “grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct” of American servicemen upon returning home, making him unfit to serve as commander in chief at a time when the armed forces are once again embroiled in a controversial war overseas. The Swifties also called on Sen. Kerry to authorize the independent Navy release of his military records, putting to rest questions about his service and the recognition he received.

Some 200 Swift Boat veterans have signed the letter, according to organizers. Only 19 have refused. Most damaging of all, they said that 12 of the 18 servicemen pictured in Mr. Kerry’s celebrated “band of brothers” photo had signed onto their cause.”

Steve Sailer has a very good article on the IQ of presidential candidates, “This Just In–Kerry’s IQ Likely Lower than Bush’s!” (via Drudge). The bottom line: from available hard evidence, IQ’s are: Bush 123, Kerry 120, Gore 134. That makes Gore smarter than I would have thought, but, more importantly, it confirms what we should know already from knowing Bush’s SAT scores and Kerry’s lesser academic record, that Bush and Kerry are both much smarter than the average American, but not as smart, as, say, someone with a PhD in economics. (So are you going to vote for me? I’d lose to the average physicist or mathematician, I’m afraid, if that’s your criterion.) The Sailer article is long and very educational, but here are some excerpts:
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Via Arts and Letters Daily, “Better Playing Through Chemistry” tells us that “beta blocker” cardiac drugs are being used for stage fright, legitimately, to block adrenalin:…
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We were discussing the election at lunch yesterday, and someone said that this election was engendering more bitterness than most. That’s right, and it’s not surprising why. The reason is not, I think, that Kerry is a left-wing extremist (at the far left of the U.S. Senate in standard rankings) and Bush is a conservative, though this is indeed the biggest ideological divide since at least Mondale vs. Reagan, or perhaps even Goldwater vs. Johnson. Rather, I think it comes down to disagreement about whether a few key features of each candidate are good or are bad.

1. Bush is truly religious. This pleases some people, and horrifies others. There is a great fear of religion in America, despite its being a religious country. Ironically, what many people fear is a politician with principles, because they are afraid he will do crazy things on their behalf. A Clinton will stick safely to what is popular. It is interesting to note that Kerry being irreligious (or, perhaps, Cheney– who knows his religion?) does not similarly horrify anyone. We are used to politicians who pay lip service to God. Even conservatives are tolerant of atheism. Liberals, however, despite their occasional claims that character doesn’t matter (remember Clinton?) do think it matters– and that religiosity is a very bad character trait.

2. Bush overthrew the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s pretty clear that Kerry supporters think it would have been better if Saddam was still in power, even if they won’t admit it, and pretty much the same principles apply to Afghanistan– we overthrew a government that was a threat to us. After all, what alternative policy would they have suggested? What is usually suggested is to wait for the U.N., the French, and the Germans to come on board, which is the same as saying to do nothing.

Bush supporters think the overthrow of the two governments is a triumph for Bush; Kerry supporters think it is a big negative.

3. Kerry told lies about U.S. atrocities in Vietnam and gave encouragement to our enemies. Bush supporters think this is appalling. Kerry supporters either don’t care, or think that it is to Kerry’s credit that he fought U.S. policy in Vietnam with such tactics.

These differences don’t apply to all Bush and Kerry supporters, but they apply to many of those who feel strongly about the election. Other supporters care only about domestic policy, or are indifferent to the character of a politician.

For comments, continue reading…
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Via Bainbridge I found this October 15 AP article:

When asked whom they would trust as commander in chief, people in military service and their families chose President Bush (news - web sites) over Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), a decorated Vietnam veteran, by almost a 3-to-1 margin…. The Annenberg poll, which does not report head-to-head preferences, did not ask the military respondents whom they support for president. The report cited a 1948 law that prohibits polling members of the military about their voting intent.

I’d wondered about this. The Democrats keep acting as if Bush is mistreating the troops. So why do the troops back Bush by a huge margin?

Again: remember the 1864 election.