Tag Archives: politics

Back to the Future

“The news is being flashed far and wide,
and before our earth has revolved on her axis every civilized community
within the reach of the electric wires will have received the tidings that civic freedom has been granted …”
— Kate Sheppard

Even he had to give in: he had lost.  But wait… he was a politician… Here was a opportunity…

A Horse's Ass: Richard Seddon
“King Dick” – Take Credit When Credit is NOT Due: A Politician’s Motto.

He had fought, blocked, and delayed the women’s right to vote in New Zealand. Only to reverse himself and claim he was trying to help, when the bill was passed finally.

Kate knew he was a hypocrite. She understood the political process. She knew that New Zealand was the first nation to “give the women” the right to vote in 1893. So, by letter, announcing to the world she encouraged her predecessor fellow civic activists in America including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Anthony to continue the fight. She had seen the future in 1869 because in the relatively new territory of Wyoming, farmers had given their women the right to vote partly as a reaction to outrageous behavior of brazen and politically connected cattlemen lynching an independent innocent single woman farmer.

Social progress thru politics is on the edge of chaos/order. Two steps forward in the future, one step back to the future. One Vote against, two Votes for.

Richard Seddon, though a member of the Liberal Party, opposed women’s suffrage, and expected it to be again blocked in the upper house. Despite Seddon’s opposition, Members of Parliament assembled sufficient strength in the House of Representatives to pass the bill. When it arrived in the Legislative Council, two previously hostile members, moved to anger at Seddon’s “underhand” behaviour in getting one member to change his vote, voted in favour of the bill. Hence the bill was passed by 20 to 18, and with the Royal Assent [Queen Victoria] it was signed into law on 19 September 1893.

Continue reading Back to the Future

Ralph at Cato

You would have never believed it, not ten years ago, or even now.

It must be a fake picture 😉
What is he doing?

What is the Unreasonable Man, Ralph, the man “on the left,” trying to convince those who might be viewed “on the right”?  Left or Right, never the twain shall they meet?

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Ralph Nader compromise?  Not chance.  He wants to be Unstoppable:  by joining with the Libertarians and Conservatives in common cause.

Strange Bedfellows?

Maybe the conventional “wisdom” or common bromides used in political and conventional media discourse is badly wrong or hopelessly simplistic?  — Naw!  Can’t be.  It will never happen?

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.

— Henry David Thoreau

“If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.

Or if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view.

Or if my emotion is less than yours, or more, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly.

Or yet if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, let me be.

I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you.

I may be your spouse, your parent, your offspring, your friend, or your colleague. If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself, so that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear to you as right — for me. To put up with me is the first step to understanding me. Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And in understanding me you might come to prize my differences from you, and, far from seeking to change me, preserve and even nurture those differences.

The point of this book is that people are different from each other, and that no amount of getting after them is going to change them. Nor is there any reason to change them, because the differences are probably good, not bad.”

Unreasonable

But not irrational

— not by long shot.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” –George Bernard Shaw

He is unreasonable in his consistent integrity of his ideals.

Some say, because of that, he is unsafe at any speed of change.

He has always been Idealistic. THAT’S THE NATURE OF TEMPERAMENT.

He won’t change, he can’t change. He doesn’t compromise.

And he is unreasonable about that. Continue reading Unreasonable

It’s about Time.

It has been a long time gone.

They finally have the time to try to make it work.

You know that thing called Democracy.

No, not the rhetoric  — well, the false promises…  words, words, words.  The Politician. The lies.. The grabbing of power, and holding on.  The Tyrants. Rulers.  Leaders, in name only.

Enough..

You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately … Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!  — Oliver Cromwell to the Rump Parliament.

They have gone in two countries.  Male tyrants and scoundrels.

It’s about time for their turn:  two strong and determined women.  The Challenge of Democracy.  The men have been mostly a disaster.

Continue reading It’s about Time.

Politics and Temperament: Why President Obama Should Love Idealists

As I wrote in yesterday’s entry, we surveyed more than 1800 people last over the past weekend who had completed the KTS-II to find out how the different temperaments sort out when it comes it current politics.  We focused on the current budget debt ceiling impasse between President Obama and Congressional Republicans.  One thing stood out strongly: President Obama, and anyone thinking of retiring some day, should wish for more Idealists.

Continue reading Politics and Temperament: Why President Obama Should Love Idealists