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A lot of folks claim to believe the right way to assess a controversy is to completely ignore the specifics of the controversy and instead do a comprehensive moral assessment of all the actors on both sides and line up with the good guys.
This seems obviously wrong to me.
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This then leads to the conclusion that it is really important to ascertain who is acting in “bad faith” which again strikes me as wrong — on lots of issues I learn informative things from lobbyists who are acting in total bad faith.
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During the Export-Import Bank reauthorization controversy, it was very interesting to hear from the Delta lobbyists (anti-ExIm) and the Boeing lobbyists (pro-ExIm) because they had a ton of facts at hand.
But they’re lobbyists, of course bad faith — on both sides.
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Still, I formed a view — the case against the Export-Import Bank was sort of abstracting persuasive but scrapping it would have been short-term economically harmful given the conditions of the time so I side with Boeing.
Under today’s different conditions, I’d be with Delta.
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The French welfare state is genuinely huge so if people want to mostly argue about other stuff who am I to tell them they're wrong.
But we are not so fortunate in the United States and still really need a politics that centers such matters.
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Climate activist dies after setting himself on fire outside of Supreme Court building on Earth Day.
nypost.com/2022/04/23/wyn…
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Or one inspired by @owasow — what if Martin Luther King wasn't assassinated, we didn't have the riots that followed the assassination, and Hubert Humphrey won the 1968 election?
That also seems better to me.
omarwasow.com/APSR_protests3…
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I just want everyone to know that I am consistent in my pro-pandering views — I don’t like to see courageous left-wing stands or courageous centrist ones.
Electoral politics is too important for principled leadership. https://t.co/gusUR9exvn
Ben Ritz 🇺🇦 SAVE STANDARD TIME @BudgetBen
