http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7023898915403727418
Wait for the sexual metaphors at the end, they're priceless.
Wait for the sexual metaphors at the end, they're priceless.
Bill Maher v. Think Tanks
- Thread starter VladTemplar
- Start date
Bill Maher is an idiot. He's one of the most left wing liberals to ever come out of hollywood yet he pretends to be a libertarian.
Going along with his sexual metaphors at the end the idea that pulling out will solve anything is insane. You can't have your orgasm then pull out and expect her not to get royally pissed off for leaving her unsatisfied.
Going along with his sexual metaphors at the end the idea that pulling out will solve anything is insane. You can't have your orgasm then pull out and expect her not to get royally pissed off for leaving her unsatisfied.
Yeah, that'd be fine if he wasn't so retarded on every other issue. He wants his drugs, he wants his hookers and he wants his gambling. He wants the government to stay out of everything that he likes but demands that guns be taken away and that the wealthy be punished for being wealthy. He's a liberal that pretends to be a libertarian and that disgusts me.
All of these ad hominem attacks have ignored the point, the think tanks were wrong. Granted, not all think tanks are like this (RAND comes to mind as a good one) but there are some very ideologically bent ones (Heritage, AEI, and PNAC for example) which do exactly what he described.
wtf is a "think tank" anyway? Is it just a group of people trying to justify their existence by pretending to know shit?
Wow
Think tanks have largely taken the place of the Congress in terms of policy forming. Since most Congresspersons are more involved in the day-to-day partisan infighting, think tanks have filled the void. Many think tanks exist to provide apolitical analysis, RAND being the most prominent here in terms of strategic/security studies. There are others that focus on different areas of policy.
The problem lies in the fact that there's no qualifier in being a think tank. The more established ones, again such as RAND, are hard as hell to get fellow status at. A PhD is just the starting point, years of research and publications let you move up the ladder.
I'm actually getting a chapter of the Roosevelt Institution (Student-ran think tank that spans all areas of policy) here at Baylor. We'll have committees to hammer out different areas of policy focus, fellows to direct research, and even a journal paid for by the university to publish in.
Right, because guys who've spent their entire lives dedicated to the study of a very specific area have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.
Guy who have spent their entire lives studying something without gaining real world experience have no idea what they're talking about. Folks in a think tank that have never been to Iraq or any other third world country, that don't know what life is like outside of the United States have no business dictating foreign policy.
Not saying this is what any of these think tanks are but try to remember that real world experience can be equally as valuable as research if not more so.
Right. So you have a bunch of academics armed with esoterica involved in federal policy making. Great. That's definitely a recipe for.....something. Who exactly is out there offering alternative viewpoints?
You just proved to me that you have never really looked into think tanks.
Most people won't even be considered for positions without extensive travel experience and are expected to know multiple languages. They work as fellows and try to get grants from public and private sources in order to fund research trips to various countries to do their own work.
The vast majority of academics have spent FAR more time outside of the US than even the most travel savvy American citizen. Have they spent it on a battlefield? No, they're not soldiers. Have they seen parts of wars that soldiers never will, most certainly. You forget that an academic could walk straight into the headquarters of Hizbollah and they would sit down and talk with him. Situations such as that are a critical part of gaining proper policy stances and formulating them so that they will effectively work.
The people that haven't any real clue about the world outside the U.S. are the people like Paul Wolfowitz.
You do understand that in voice EVERYONE is a libertarian. Its no different than Bill O'Reilly calling himself one. Libertarian is a catch all for someone who doesn't want to say they are either left or right.
You think there is only one think tank for any given area of policy research? There are centrist, right, left, up, down, and 4 dimensional think tanks. Name an ideology, and there will be a think tank out there that represents it. That's the best part of academia, even though we will argue vehemently with one another over the nuances of policy and the best approaches, we respect each other's viewpoints and gladly look over research from one another. I personally can't stand William Kristol, doesn't mean I don't read his policy stances/arguments so I can understand how he thinks and how that ideology is approaching a certain policy issue.
Most policy decisions are never purely of any one kind of ideology, they come after an exhaustive level of inter collaboration to come to a solution that best fits it. Libertarians would want the US economic policy to focus on the abolition of all tarrifs, but the left leaning groups would want to protect domestic agricultural and industrial interests, hence there is compromise.
Academia is all about compromise and finding the best fit. It's not about getting up to a podium and beating it with your shoe like Nikita Khrushchev until someone's is buried in the ground. Most people don't understand that.