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NY Tea Party Candidate Paladino: 'I'll Use Eminent Domain to Stop the Mosque'

201
lostlakehiker8/08/2010 4:59:13 pm PDT

re: #156 Fozzie Bear

The NYC mosque isn’t a political issue. It’s not that the parties are polarized, it’s that things that should never even have been discussed in the context of politics are made into “issues” by ideologues.

Examples: AGW, the Mosque in Manhattan, people’s private sexual practices, private contractual agreements (i.e. marriage), the teaching of evolution in schools, and many more topics.

None of these things need be discussed by politicians, because they shouldn’t be considered “issues”; They are made to be issues by people who have no actual policy ideas of their own.

Private contractual agreements? First, marriage involves not just the parties getting married, but their children in due course, and the state, right from the start. There are consequences in tax law, social security law, and more. The state, for instance, forbids persons already married from marrying again while already married.

Second, you surely cannot mean to say that any contract any number of parties agree to enter into ought to be legit?

What if I decide to sell a kidney? What if I decide to sell myself into slavery, or to indenture myself for a time. What if I want to buy a slave, a servant, or a kidney?

Suppose I want to buy medical plutonium, which by ancient wisdom cures toothache?

Or, turning to AGW, the scientific reality of the thing is well established. But it’s not a scientific question what we should do about it. There’s a political side. Should we build many nuclear power plants, or rely instead more on wind power? Should we invest billions or even trillions in solar? What about conservation? Should we have a carbon tax, or ration electricity, or ration home heating oil? Should homes be required to have higher R-value insulation? How much more, and should there be regional differences?

Should New Orleans be rebuilt, or just written off as indefensible because the seas are destined to rise high enough to flood it even without hurricanes?

Even if we ever do get serious about mitigating and adjusting to global warming, these types of questions cannot be answered in peer reviewed scientific journals. A free society isn’t really free if the citizenry doesn’t get a vote in such matters.