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[khyrand]

As I mentioned yesterday, I am going to focus this blog more on relating moral theory to action. The first action that I would recommend is to oppose acts that lead to the possibility of a Palin presidency. A person with good desires and true and complete beliefs would be adamantly opposed to any action that would put Palin a heartbeat away from

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[khyrand]

Re: Fannie Mae. Palin's original quotation was "John McCain has been calling for years to reform things and cut bureaucracy, even at the lending agencies that our government supports. The fact is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they’ve gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." To me it's clear she thought (9/6/08, before the bailout) that FM and FM were government entities bleeding taxpayer money. "Our nation is in a free-fall economically, and the person vying for the number two spot in the land doesn't know how these major financial players operate?" (Apt comment, but not my words.)

Oddly, McCain and Palin's op-ed in the WSJ (9/9/08) blames Congress for not having stepped in years ago: "what we are now seeing is an exercise in crisis management rather than sound planning, and at great cost to taxpayers." McCain has served in Congress for twenty-six years. Whose failure is the lack of sound planning?

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Re: the rest. The author is not writing as a politician or a pundit, but as an ethicist/philosopher. Fyfe calls his philosophy "desire utilitarianism" (outlined here: http://www.alonzofyfe.com/article_du.shtml). The purpose of this particular article is not to reiterate the anti-Palin talking points of the day or to make a long list of reasons why she's a terrible person; it's a logical argument (in the desire utilitarianism framework) against voting for a ticket that includes her. Agreed that the _examples_ he chooses are not of earth-shattering importance, but they nonetheless strongly support the notion that Palin is unqualified to hold high national office because, in holding to those beliefs, _she fails to acknowledge her own limitations_. This is a trait that both Fyfe and I believe is inimical to prudent exercise of power.