Wednesday, June 02, 2010
"Commonsense Constitutional Conservative"Is how Palin (or whoever writes on her Facebook page) describes some guy running for office. Palin's frequent use of "commonsense" (or "common sense") really grates. Sure, common sense has it's merits, but not everything can be properly analyzed or solved using common sense. It's common sense that things can move faster than the speed of light. Common sense that all numbers can be made from integers and fractions. Common sense that when you start to skid on ice, you should slam on the brakes. Etc. And common sense is limited in what it can do. People aren't only using common sense when designing a computer chip. Or when doing brain surgery. Or economic research (which is especially true when people treat a nation's fiscal policy as equivalent to a household budget) As to the "constitutional" adjective, that's simply window dressing. And anyway, which constitution are we talking about? The one in 1800 that sanctioned slavery? Or the one in 1900 that denied women the vote? Or ...?
posted by Quiddity at 6/02/2010 10:28:00 AM
6 comments
Common sense that all numbers can be made from integers and fractions
Funny you should mention that
Sarah Palin brings out the Liberal LOLZ!
Case in point:
You've written an article railing against the very concept of common sense just because Sarah Palin supports it. WTF? What if Sarah Palin went on TV and told Liberals not to jump off a cliff. Some of them would do it just to spite her.
WRT the Constitution, I suspect she was talking about the current Constitution. You know, the one with all the amendments that fix the problems you mentioned. Keeping solutions that work is a very conservative concept. It isn't as exciting as Change, but you aren't left SOL when you discover that you aren't as smart as the Founders were 235 years ago.
"Some of them would do it just to spite her."
No one would throw away their life for the likes of Sarah Palin. No one. Most of the liberals I know are too busy trying to make this country a better place to pay any attention to Sarah Palin.
"Keeping solutions that work is a very conservative concept."
No. Implementing the same failed policies over and over again (such as tax cuts to "increase revenues" - talk about LOLZ!) is the only concept conservatives bother with.
"you aren't as smart as the Founders were 235 years ago."
If they were so smart, we wouldn't have to keep correcting the mistakes they wrote into the document.
"Common sense is that faculty which tells you that the earth is flat"
I have no idea where I got that from, but I've remembered it for years. I take the point of it to be that in many everyday situations, you can rely on this for a workable solution, but sometimes you have to go beyond it to get to the point where you can solve your problem. And that you always have to remember that it's just an approximation of reality.
"It isn't as exciting as Change, but you aren't left SOL when you discover that you aren't as smart as the Founders were 235 years ago."
Yeah, kinda like their take on slavery, which led to a pretty bloody civil war.
Yeah, kinda like their take on slavery, which led to a pretty bloody civil war.
Abolition of slavery would have been a deal killer in 1776. We wouldn't have a Constitution. Would you rather the Union and Confederacy have set up borders and taken sides then? They would either have gone to war, or alternately, had they avoided war, we would have slavery today in the South.
That's a pretty deep insight, that is, if your knowledge of the founding of the United States is a blank slate.
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