Tag Archives: Left vs Right
Israel or Bust!
On May 31, 2010, a Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla intersected Israeli naval ships. The account of this event differs depending upon which news source you read; either the spiteful Israeli navy savagely brutalized humanitarian relief workers looking to transport goods to Gaza or the demonstrators aboard the Mavi Marma (the Turkish ship) reacted in violence to said navy [1] upon denying a request to dock at the Israeli port of Ashdod, where the Israeli navy hoped to inspect the cargo carried on board. [Note: if there is any doubt as to the legitimacy of Israel’s actions towards the Turkish flotilla, be sure to take a look at The Naval Warfare Publication regarding The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations”i.] Instead of orating some concession of affirmation regarding the Israeli navy’s choice of engagement with said Turkish flotilla, the current U.S. administration chose to tote the line carried by the likes of the United Nations – namely neglecting to conduct an in-depth investigation into the matter before severely admonishing Israel’s alleged poor behavior in blindly attacking those aboard the Mavi Marma – and relinquishing the opportunity to demonstrate a proper response to this event. Continue reading
Homeownership: Good for You, Better for Me
In the market-driven economy of today, quid-pro-quo is often (if not entirely) the modus operandi. Unfortunately, not all transactions are fair in that the “benefit” one party receives is in fact harmful to them either immediately or over time. In drafting and eventually passing the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, the United States Congress set the American people on the fast-track to homeownership by strong-arming banks into offering home mortgages to minorities and low-income groups. Questions of legitimacy, a false sense of security and a dubious backhanded attempt at further controlling the American people come into question in addition to whether or not homeownership is a ‘right.’ Continue reading
Rethinking Political Ideologies
Suppose that Legal Philosophy was ordered as a Left-Right Jurisprudence spectrum rather than by group—Natural Law, Legal Positivism, Legal Realism, and Critical Legal Studies (CLS). Suppose that Theology was ordered as a Left-Right Religion spectrum rather than by denomination—Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Bahá’í, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, etc. Suppose that the Natural Sciences were ordered as a Left-Right Science spectrum rather than by field—Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Astronomy, and Geoscience. This is the current state of Politics. One should feel a knee-jerk reaction seeing a complex and intellectually rich system of thought reduced to an overly simplistic uni-axis or multi-axis model that is ultimately inaccurate, but more importantly breeds tribal politics.1 Continue reading