Our Platform for Outlining Colorado’s Future

Reasons to Agree : We just want to create a good place for our people to live. America should focus on internal prosperity rather than expanding its global influence. Empires historically collapse due to overreach. Rome, Britain, and the Soviet Union all fell when they stretched too far. Military expansion is financially unsustainable. Global military bases and interventions cost trillions of dollars, money that could be used for healthcare, education, and infrastructure. Republican values oppose imperialism. The U.S. was founded on self-governance and democracy, not ruling over other nations. Empire-building creates unnecessary enemies. Intervening in other countries often leads to backlash and long-term instability. Reasons to Disagree : A strong global presence ensures national security. The U.S. deters threats by maintaining military bases and alliances worldwide. Economic dominance benefits Americans. U.S. influence in global trade and financial systems helps maintain...

The numbering system below describes a system that scores groups of people within a range of 1 to 10 by how much they value equality. These people undervalue equality. People who value equality at a 1, do not value equality very much. These people are willing to accept inhuman, or even unnatural cruelty to others, or specific groups of people. They do not value all life equally. People from their group (family, race, nationality) are acceptable, however they give little or no concern to those from other groups, or actively seek to harm those from other groups.                   These people over value equality. Someone who overvalues an otherwise positive value like equality would be willing to sacrifice other good values in order to satisfy equality. These people not only are willing to steel from Peter to give to Paul, but are willing to trample all over such concepts as "freedom of choice", the "law of the harvest", justice, or reason...

Let's face it - we are inundated with information. The problem is, much of it isn't organized in a way that helps us make better decisions or gain deeper understanding. In the current landscape, we have a situation that I like to call "manufacturing confusion". Imagine a system where each reason to agree or disagree is tagged, organized, and classified. You could trace the genesis of an argument, finding the first person who made that claim, or discover more eloquent ways it has been expressed. Each post would carry a wealth of associated information: better or more succinct ways of expressing the same idea, the inception of the argument, and references to books, songs, and statistics that support or challenge this perspective. To cut through the noise and make real progress, we need not just more, but better organized information. We should be brainstorming common interests and opposing viewpoints, and generating alternative solutions. I've been toiling away at t...

As anyone who follows history and politics knows, there has always been a very healthy debate on the issues in our country. Yet, now that conservatives are expressing their disapproval of President Obama's proposed health care plan, liberals are suddenly very critical of dissent and debate. Earlier this week, Speaker Pelosi accused honest citizens expressing their views on health care of being "un-American." And why? Because they disagree with her on the need for a new government insurance program. Our Founding Fathers would be very surprised by Speaker Pelosi's attempt to clamp down on dissent. This nation was founded by patriots who staged the ultimate protest in declaring their independence from a distant and out-of-touch government. The rights to peacefully assemble and petition our elected officials are guaranteed by the Constitution. What Nancy Pelosi doesn't understand is that our differences and disagreements don't make us weaker; they make us stron...

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/07/cambridge-police-profiling-still-a-grim-reality-for-harvard-faculty-assholes.html Guest Opinion by Professor John Evans Evans-John Harvard School of Harvard Faculty Asshole Studies Harvard University When I first learned of the arrest of my colleague Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates after he stood up to the fascist jackboots of a declasse, ill-educated Cambridge police officer, I was of course angered -- but scarcely shocked.  L'Affaire Gates  simply aired, in public, the dirty 100-thread-count table linen of an American culture where Harvard faculty assholes still face a daily struggle against profiling, abuse, and insolence. It will come as no surprise that Skip's arrest was the talk of the Douchebag Room at the Harvard Faculty Club last Friday. I and a group of colleagues had assembled for our weekly lunch; I opted for their competently-prepared Ahi Tuna Tartare and an amusing glass of '05 Hospices de Beaune P...

Reasons  to disagree People who say, "It takes a village" really want power. They don't think you should be allowed to run your life the way you want to, and so they want to get groups together, and then they want to lead that group's decisions. They people to make decisions as cities, towns, and governments, not individuals and families, because if we let individuals and families make decisions, they don't get to be involved, but they can get their hands into government.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books." Thomas Carlyle Ideas   We should allow users suggest  books  as  reasons to agree or disagree  with an idea. Now start thinking ahead what an  algorithm  could do, if someone says that a book agrees with their beliefs. Data is readily available from  Amazon  or  E-bay  or the  New York Times  best selling list of how well a book has sold.   So there would be three fields. One place where you submit the item that agrees or disagrees with the original idea. The second field would let you classify the object. Is it a  book , a website , or simply a  logical argument . The third field would be a place where the user explains why he thinks the book supports the conclusion that he/she has come to. Of course, people would be allowed to vote weather or not the book actually does support the side that the original user said that it w...