Am I the only one who sees a problem here?

Is the only goal in politics to win elections? Must politicians base their campaigns on opinion polls, instead of actually having principles of their own? Do they just say anything they have to say to get elected? Anyone with half a brain knows that the war in Iraq is wrong, but because so many people don’t have half a brain, our candidate must support the war? Is that it?

Or am I too naïve by being surprised?

I’m glad Lamont won. It’s time politicians – and everyone – stop being afraid of standing up to the Bush administration, because they don’t want to be seen as “liberal extremists”.

Let’s hope this is but the beginning of a wave of people finding out where their balls are.

Because America influences the rest of the world, like it or not. And Lieberman’s loss may finally mean that things are changing for the better over there.

Funnily enough, I’ve long disagreed with Lieberman, before the Iraq war, before even the Bush administration. Because I remember: Joe Lieberman is an advocate of censorship.

He’s the kind of sleazy politician who promotes censorship and other controls of media like video games, without really knowing anything about them, just to show soccer moms and conservatives how much “a guardian of moral values” he is. In other words, he despises the first amendment, individual choice, and freedom.

People, censorship is wrong. Always. And in this particular case it’s even worse, because it’s not censorship based on something that is actually there, but on a lie repeated so often that people accept it as true without even checking. The lie that “there are video games where you are rewarded for raping and beating up women”. I’m a gamer, and I tell you, there is no such thing in mainstream video games, no matter what Lieberman, or Hillary Clinton, or one of the most disgusting creeps in the world, say.

Video games are just like comic books in the 50s, or rock music in the 60s: they’re unknown to older, scared people, and dishonest politicians take advantage of that, promoting such entertainment as “deviant” and “dangerous”, and attempting to appear as guardians of morality. And people keep falling for it.

But Joe Lieberman is even worse. Let’s take one of his more recent comments, about the war in Iraq:

“In matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.”

(source)

Excuse me?!? Isn’t that the same as saying “if we’re at war, the president is our supreme leader and cannot be questioned”? What kind of absurdity is that? Isn’t he, in effect, saying that any president can start a war, and is then allowed to do whatever he wants, that he actually becomes above the law? Clever, then: start a generic “war on terror”, without a defined end.

And that man had the nerve to call himself a “democrat”. Last time I looked, “democracy” didn’t exactly go for supreme leaders…

Good thing he lost. I hope he loses again, when he runs as an independent.

People seem to have some difficulty in separating:

• tastes or preferences;
• opinions;
• personality traits; and
• genuine principles.

How to tell them apart?

• a taste is something you like or dislike. Example: I like heavy metal music.
• an opinion is something you believe to be true about something. For instance, I think that George W. Bush is a criminal and a monster. (that’s for another article, by the way.)
• a trait is characteristic you have, which you may control to a certain degree. For instance, I tend to be a rather shy person.
• a principle is something which makes you do (or not do) something because you believe it is right (or wrong). Example: I don’t pirate music, software or movies, because I believe that doing so is wrong.

Easy, right? But I’ve seen people — quite often — believing that they will “betray their principles” if they eat some food they don’t like (and possibly never tasted), or if they overcome a minor character flaw, or if they change their minds about something. People can be very, very defensive about their mistakes, their flaws, or their changing of mind.

And, so, everything is turned into a “principle”, which means that nothing about them can ever change, as that would be a “betrayal”…

I believe it is absurd to cheapen the meaning of “principle” by saying that everything is a principle. As someone said, if every(thing, one, etc.) is special, then specialness is ordinary… If everything about you (even, say, your favorite color) is a “principle”, then your principles don’t really amount to much…