Over the past few days, the public debate has turned toward the question of Syrian refugees. I’ve been wandering around the internet, reading the different arguments people have for refusing to accept refugees, and I have found all of them wanting. So today I’d like to run through the most common and pervasive anti-refugee arguments and the reasons they fail.
Continue reading “4 Arguments Against Accepting Syrian Refugees and Why They All Fail”
Last night, in a series of horrible attacks, at least 128 people in Paris were killed. The attacks were committed by the Islamic State with internal help from homegrown French terrorists. The best way we can respond is by completely ignoring the attack and paying no attention to it whatsoever. Here’s why.
In the third republican presidential debate, the moderators gave the candidates a hard time over their tax plans, and the candidates responded by accusing the moderators of being biased. Said Ted Cruz:
The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. This is not a cage match. And, you look at the questions — “Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?” “Ben Carson, can you do math?” “John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?” “Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?” “Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?” How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about? And Carl — Carl, I’m not finished yet. The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every fawning question from the media was, “Which of you is more handsome and wise?”
This was a clever move by Cruz–republican voters have been trained to believe that the media is out to get them, to suspect that whenever the republicans get asked tough questions that the journalists’ claims are exaggerated or even fabricated. He succeeded in distracting the viewing audience from the real story of the third debate–the deeply flawed tax plans laid out by the GOP candidates.
Continue reading “The Third Republican Debate and the Tale of the Terrible Tax Plans”
Since the Democratic Party debate, folks have been talking about Bernie Sanders‘ desire to make the United States more like Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. One of the most common responses to Sanders I’ve heard is the idea that the United States is too big to successfully imitate the Nordic countries. During the debate, Anderson Cooper himself said:
Denmark is a country that has a population — Denmark is a country that has a population of 5.6 million people.
I’ve seen the same thought echoed by many people, even people who are otherwise quite sympathetic to Sanders. This is very odd, because if we subject this thought to even the tiniest amount of scrutiny, it collapses.
Continue reading “Misconceptions: The United States is Not “Too Big” to be More Like Denmark”
I watched the first Democratic Party debate, hosted by CNN. CNN also hosted the second Republican Party debate, and in both debates it tried to get the candidates to fight each other on camera for the entertainment of the viewing public, repeatedly asking questions designed to get candidates to criticize or attack one another. In the republican debate, this tactic worked perhaps too well–the debate deteriorated into a series of personal attacks, with little relevant policy content. For that reason, I didn’t bother to write up an analysis of the second republican debate–there was little of substance to analyze. The democratic candidates did a better job of resisting their baser instincts, and we did manage to get some interesting exchanges on serious policy issues, particularly between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. In these exchanges, it was quite clear that Sanders was the winner–his arguments were significantly stronger and more convincing than Clinton’s.
Continue reading “The Democratic Party Debate: 5 Reasons Why Sanders Won and Clinton Lost”
