McCain Answers Science Policy Questionnaire

thebestsophist writes "A couple weeks ago, I reported that Barack Obama had answered a questionnaire by Scientists and Engineers for America. McCain has now answered that questionnaire as well. You can also compare their answers. Perhaps with help from the Slashdot community, we can get all the Congressional candidates as well?"

Comments

Re:Innovation

[k1e0x]

What? You clearly do not understand.

The reason Libertarians are moving away from the LP (Libertarian Party) is because like you, nobody knows what that word means anymore. I mean who can blame people for being confused when you have people like Glenn Beck and Bob Barr calling themselves Libertarian. Much less people like you describing it.

Ron Paul's a huge states-rights advocate who runs with the Libertarians, because they share the common goal of reducing the size of the Federal government, even though his views on state government are borderline tyrannical.

Ron Paul not being an anarchist supports the Constitution. You have heard him call himself a Constitutionalist before right? I think you misunderstand the 10th amendment but clearly Paul has the correct understanding of it. States really do have the freedom to enact a varying degree of laws you or I might call tyrannical, that does not mean they will, and even if they did local government is much easier to change than federal government, AND EVEN if you couldn't there are 49 other states to go to that compete with each other for your tax money. Your comments makes it sound like Ron Paul is only a libertarian because he is a closet authoritarian wanting to use the powers of the states, and that is absolutely wrong. If you read Paul's writing you will see that he absolutely understands the danger that government proposes to people, he is on the ball with some of the best libertarian minds that there ever was.. in fact.. many of his campaign positions are out of whack with what could only logically be his philosophy.. It is my believe he takes those positions because he is pandering to the right wing base.

Their belief is generally that the government (at all levels) should only do things that individuals absolutely, positively cannot do for themselves. In many cases this actually does include civil rights and gun control to a certain extent.

So, what you are basically saying is that Some "so called" Libertarians believe that people can not have "civil rights" or gun control without government.
If you believe that then you CAN NOT logically have a sound understanding of the nature and concept of rights.

The term "civil rights" is pleonastic description of rights. You have "rights" and they are all the same. You do not need to separate your rights into individually divided groups, such as "civil rights", "existing rights", "breathing rights", etc. Also "civil rights" implies that these are rights awarded to citizens, or that only citizens have rights. It is a ridiculous concept and I will explain why.

To have a right is to have the supreme authority over something. If you have a right to something you do not need to ask anyone for permission to do something with what you have a right to. The reason you have rights is because you own your body, you own your life and you own your liberty. No other person can claim ownership over you, just as you can not claim ownership over other peoples lives. Rights are supreme authority over some piece of property and they can not be given or taken away, they can be infringed upon but are never lost.

The opposite of a right is a privilege. This is where someone with supreme authority over something allows or grants you an ability to use it. To make this simple lets say you buy a pizza from someone else. You have justly acquired your property and now you can do whatever it is you like with it, even stuff it in your mouth, and you do not need to ask anyone for permission to do so. You have a right to this pizza. However if someone else owns this pizza you must ask if you may have some, they own it, and grant you a permission, or a privilege to have some.

So the distinction between rights and privileges is important. Privileges mean you have to ask someone of higher authority, rights means asking a higher authority is not necessary because there is no higher authority. Privileges are granted bu the higher authority