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Chris Babcock
Phoenix, AZ
I'm a Constitutionalist with a voting record that ranges from Moderate to Liberal to Libertarian. I believe that we once give the government specific, limited legal authority to act on our behalf then the rest of political activism is keeping other individual from using the apparatus of government to infringe on our personal liberty. My views on all issues - including Gay Rights and Health Care - stem from this core philosophy.
Recent Activity
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Chris commented on the article |
I'm interested in seeing what kind of "Apollo Project" materializes in this administration. I thought that it was an offhand comment that Obama said we needed something on that scope on alternative energy to a Times reporter, but the more I see of Obama, the less I think he is prone to offhand comments. Also, it's the kind of startling declaration that would take root and become a serious initiative even if it hadn't been thought through before it was spoken.
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Chris signed the petition | -
Chris commented on the article |The good news about the economy is that our woes are caused by energy prices. Introduce clean, cheap, renewable energy and you heal not only the earth but also the economy. (Pickens) Scaling back because of the credit crisis is unfortunate.
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Chris commented on the article |To NW's points...
1. If Trexler understands the implications of this moment, it is not revealed in the excerpt above. We haven't had the kind of bubble recently that leads to giving out of abundance. What we've seen has been social and environmental values being implemented as part of personal definitions of success, perhaps as a response to the fact that overtly materialistic definitions of success are less attainable today than they were for our parents' generation.
2. One of the few deliverables from the for-profit business model that we are looking for is exactly this perspective on economic hardship. It's tiresome to see funding less available when the problems become more pronounced. The way to approach this is to see that the funds we do have available has more relative purchasing power. Instead of cashing out of the capital market - whether we mean financial capital or social capital - it's the time to make sure that our investments have impact. Yes, that means viewing challenges as opportunities.
3. If by "young" you mean under 150... Youth and education are conducive to this mindset for change, for example if you look at graphs for support of social issues like gay marriage. This isn't a window of opportunity that's closing, however, but one that's opening. Unlike their parents, children of Baby Boomers aren't getting old and cynical. Instead there appears to be a building momentum of social concern that gets larger with each graduating class.
The kind of cognitive dissonance experienced when hippies became yuppies is unhealthy and unsustainable. Probably the vice most despised by those under 40 today would be hypocrisy. -
Chris commented on the article |
Trexler asks a good question and you provide a good answer. Pragmatism is the new idealism. It doesn't matter whether it's called "Git'r'done" or Social Entrepreneurship, the younger you are today the more likely it is that you have expendable income and a social agenda. It's only a matter of time before the demand for substance and sustainability sinks into corporate culture. We know how things work now. Today it's our consumer dollars. Tomorrow it's our retirement dollars. Fiduciary responsibility to the share holder will take on a whole new meaning when P/E ratios begin to depend on the social and environmental values (not policies) of companies.
It's not an economic collapse. It's a buying opportunity. -
Chris commented on the article |At one site, several of us were given $1000 in fake money and asked to pay it forward to other members. This is a "solution oriented" site for bloggers on social issues similar in scope and purpose to Change.Org. Among the ~300 members at that point, there were none who had identitified specific financial needs for their projects (besides me) and less than a handful where the needs could be reasonably extrapolated or intuited from the content of their solutions.
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Chris commented on the article |Any one person can make radical changes to their diet and lifestyle to remove themselves from direct moral culpability for the meat processing industry. There are practical limitations to how that scales, however. We have to recognize the real physical and social limitations involved.
As a species, we have thousands of years of education, culture and practice invested in being the top of the food chain. While that won't go away over night, we can take steps in that direction. Stop teaching our children that "Meat and Dairy" is an daily educational requrement, for example.
Ameliorating the conditions under which food animals are kept is not just a salve for the conscience. If it raises the cost of meat then it makes alternatives more attractive.
These are stepping stones, small things, but this is the way that lasting social change is accomplished. -
Chris commented on the article |It's time to change the inscription on the Statue of Liberty to something like, "Give us your upstanding citizens, yearning to blend in." Policies like this are like drag nets. They work and that's the only thing that matters to their proponents. Forget the costs and ignore the collateral damage.
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Chris commented on the article |I have a daughter in speech therapy. Her mother and I are both somewhat atypical in our expression of gender. I had to ask the therapist to move on after the second week of he/she. My daughter had shown that she could make the sounds. Further training on gender appearance stereotypes was just going to frustrate her considering the lack of context at home.
The good news is that the activities in the flash cards and other learning aids no longer promulgate meaningless stereotypes in their actions, just in appearance. -
Chris commented on the article |This is an insightful definition of the issues. I think that the areas where the definitions have the greatest potential to be productive is in creating a synthesis for those situation where the controversy can be expressed in terms of a specific dichotomy.
For example, in "visionary individuals v. collective action" there is a very clear relationship under the surface conflict. What makes a visionary individual successful? What makes collective action possible? At that level of introspection, it's clear that those two things are as inseparable as the faces of a coin.
"Sometimes the lines get blurry" as you say.
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St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance0 Actions 0 Recruits
