stoic vs utilitarian

Kennedy’s program was popular enough to get him elected and then he thought he would just propose his program, and since it was popular it would sail through. The problem is that congress is not an easy car to drive. It’s not enough to know where you want to go, you have to know how to drive the car. Kennedy’s programs were toast before he was shot, Lyndon naturally took advantage of whatever sympathy he could get for the fallen president, but while that feeling was deep among the public, I doubt it cut much ice with hardened pols.

One thing about LBJ taking over, is that he was left completely in the dark as to what was going on while he was VP, so he kind of had to figure out what was going on on his own, some of the Kennedy advisors wanted to leave because they did not like Uncle Cornpone, but LBJ begged them to stay on because they knew what was going on.

The thing is he had been in the house, and he had been master of the senate and he knew how to drive that damned car. He had previously aligned himself with the southern senators so he had their ears to bend. He threatened them, he told them he was on their side but the pressure was so great that this was the best he could do and they better take it before things get worse, and he promised dams and whatnots to the western republicans who didn’t care all that much about race since their states were lily white, and he passed the civil rights bill. He knew this would be the end of the democrats in the south, maybe he thought sewing up the black vote for the dems was a worthy trade, or maybe he was just doing what he thought was the right thing.

He never seemed to be that big on equality of the races, always had a bit of a patronizing air towards nonwhites, but he knew they were poor, as he had been growing up, and he knew they could never do anything about it until they could vote and not be turned down for jobs or be refused places to live.

I guess that’s what I mean, it’s not enough to think the right thoughts (theory), you have to know how to put them into action (practice). I was thinking of this along the lines of the two threads of ethics that I distinguish, the stoics who thought the thing to do was act right yourself and stay away from the sinful world, and the utilitarians who thought your job on the planet was to make it a better place. More on this later.

That’s one of the drawbacks of being a loyal dem or rep (I imagine you don’t consider yourself a rep, but I wonder when was the last time you voted for a dem), is that you get taken for granted. Your vote is in their pocket and they don’t have to worry about you, maybe like the dems have the blacks and the reps have the religious, so the parties have to go after the swings, some of whom are level-headed deep thinkers, but most of them are ignorami who pay no attention to the news.

Gee why doesn’t Obama consult congress (and by congress of course you mean the house) when he wants to make a change in Obamacare? Oh maybe it’s because they have voted about twenty times to repeal it and pledge to the high heavens that the only good Obamacare is a dead Obamacare. When Beagles goes shopping for a new rifle, why doesn’t he invite along a couple gun control nuts to advise him?