an answer to the two party bullshit? who's with me?
31 July, 2004 :: 5:52 p.m.
We need a viable third party as I said before; we need to scrap most of the policies we have on the books and get our country back to what we like to think of it as...right now all that rhetoric about America being the land of the free, the land of opportunity and diversity...all of that is a geat myth. We need to redesign our society so that it really is all of the positives that we like to think of.
I was happy when reading Jim Hightower to see that he mentions John Rawls because we've discussed him in two of my philosophy classes and I really think that the only way to establish a truly egalitarian society is to do it the way he proposes. For anyone not familiar with Rawls, I'll give you the basic idea:
It's your job to establish a new society. You get to set all of the rules for that society. Sounds great so far, right? You can set yourself up with everything you've ever wanted...you can have the slaves building pyramids in your honor if you so choose, right? There's a catch--you have to decide all of the rules for this society behind what Rawls called the "veil of ignorance." You have to create this society and decide how it will run without having any knowledge of who you will be in that society. You don't know what race you'll be, what age you are, what gender you are, whether you are mentally retarded or physically handicapped, your financial situation...you know absolutely nothing about yourself...so now how do you make the rules? Sure there are those who are addicted to gambling and set up a society similar to what we have now and hope they end up as one of Bush's buddies...but most rational people are going to be very careful to see that things are as fair as they possibly can be so that no matter where you end up in that society, you are treated fairly and decently.
So I believe we need a third party and I believe the third party should be Rawlsians...it would take a good long while for them to get high enough to start making a differences in the government, but it could be done...probably not in my life, but that doesn't mean it's not worth fighting for. People rally behind the president claiming they are patriots but in reality they just want what they want and they don't care about the country or anyone else...the true patriots are the ones who will rise up and take the country back from the elite who have it now.