Politics
Entries related to things political.
Imagine New York
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 08/27/2004 - 14:50(Originally posted at Greater Democracy)
In 1983, I spent eight months traveling around the United States and Europe. It was a wonderful experience and I learned a lot about myself, my country, and the world through these experiences. I wish more people could spend time traveling like this.
I had been living in New York with a couple struggling actors and seen my share of off-off-Broadway plays. One of my roommates traveled with a company to perform in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, so I made sure to pass through Edinburgh during the festival.
In spite of having access to lots of wonderful theatre in New York, Edinburgh blew me away. There was so much to see all packed into an incredibly tight schedule. I got my schedule and tried to figure out which plays to see and when to see them. I read the reviews in the Scotsman, and posted on the walls around Edinburgh. I saw five or six plays a day, and stumbled through my nightly pubcrawls, my mind spinning with many new thoughts.
I went back to Edinburgh several years in a row after that, and only stopped going when children made travel more difficult. How I have longed for such an overwhelming smorgasbord of artistic stimulation.
Now, living outside of New York City, and having covered the Democratic National Convention as a credentialed blogger, I have been trying to figure out what I want to do. As I noted in a previous entry, I’m particularly interested in the Progressive Tourist Bureau happening at The Tank, which will also be my home base for blogging when I’m in the city.
Devolve This!
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 08/25/2004 - 18:27(Originally published at LocalPols, and copied here for consolidation)
John McCarthy from California pointed me to an article by Joel Rogers entitled 'Devolve This' about the need for a coordinated progressive state-level effort in the most recent Nation magazine (8/30/04).
I believe that it presents a good explanation of part of what I have been hoping to contrbute to with this website. I would encourage everyone to read the article.
Have you left no sense of decency?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 08/25/2004 - 12:58(Originally posted at Greater Democracy)
As I have spoken about before, I like the sense a narrative in politics. I like tying in stories that people remember and that resonates with them.
Popular stories include the emperor’s new clothes, the boy who cried wolf, and perhaps Pinocchio. However, there is another story that I like to talk about, which I don’t think is getting enough attention.
On June 9th, 1954, Joseph Welch confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy, asking him, “Have you left no sense of decency?”. As an aside, for a transcript, and a wonderful recording of the interchange, please check out: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/welch-mccarthy.html
The recent advertisements by Swift Boats for Bush raise some interesting questions. To what extent were the activities illegally coordinated? What role should 527s have in the political process? However, the most important question to ask of Swift Boats for Bush is, “Have you left no sense of decency?”
Creating political maps
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 08/13/2004 - 10:50Recently, I’ve been interested in using computers to generate maps for political purposes. Folks from CCAG helped train me in using ArcView. ArcView is a very impressive mapping program. It is very powerful, and hence very complicated. I’ve used it to produce turf maps like this.. I still feel as if I’ve barely scratched the surface. I am hoping to see some integration between mapping software and projects such as CivicSpace or Advokit
About patriotism...
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 08/13/2004 - 09:21A recurring theme I've been running into is taking back patriotism. Samuel Johnson's quote, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" has often been brought up. Many people claim that his barb was really aimed at those false patriots who equate patriotism with their specific political philosophy.
On one mailing list, I sent this as my reply discussions about flag waving at the Democractic National Convention:
