This election, one that could really make history any way you slice it, is suddenly very much about the past; specifically the legacies of two iconic ex-presidents: Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy (well, three if you count Bill Clinton, but even he fashioned himself as the heir to Kennedy’s Camelot). As the media, and the Kennedy family, recast Barak Obama as JFK’s reincarnation, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee are vying to be the rightful successor to Reagan’s revolution. In a time frought with forboding for the future, why is the past such a preoccupation? Are we on the verge of some historic fight-to-the-finish between the gods of liberalism and conservatism? Is running on yesterday’s visions for America the right course in a new millennium? Well, yesterday, Big Think spoke with Ted Sorenson, former special counsel to President Kennedy, and the speechwriter behind JFK’s famous “Ask not…” inaugural oration. Sorenson finds that the elections of 1960 and 2008 are remarkably similar, and today, he once again finds himself supporting the candidate who can inspire. In fact, Sorenson’s already written the nomination speech.
Yesterday, the presidential horse race narrowed down the stretch to Super Duper Tuesday. As candidates bow out, their endorsements are a jackpot for lucky rivals, but what about the hallmark campaign issues the departed leave behind? Well, Islamic extremists may not have to play against President Giuliani’s “offense,” but Giuliani passed his national security playbook to John McCain with an endorsement. Likewise, the “special interests” in Washington no longer have a John Edwards administration to fear, but with no Edwards endorsement forthcoming, the issue of lobbying reform may be a loose ball, and it may not go to a Democrat. If you ask John McCain who has the power in Washington, as Big Think did before the primaries began, he seems to channel John Edwards.
George Clooney has been named a U.N. Messenger of Peace and has already started trying to promote important issues like payment of U.N. dues and the crisis in Darfur, but he’s having some trouble. Reuters reports he has already been shut out of a meeting between nations sending peacekeeping troops to Sudan by Russians who deemed it “inappropriate.” If Danny Ocean can’t break into a meeting and bring a message of alarm, who can? More important, were he to succeed in breaking in, would his message even reach the right people? Folks often wonder if the U.N. is still relevant so we’ve been asking the experts. Here, Shashi Tharoor, former U.N. Under Secretary General for Communications and runner up for Ban-Ki Moon’s current seat answers the question, “Is the U.N. still relevant?”
To hear Gov. Bill Richardson answer the same question, “>click here!
The Pope has taken a hard line on scientific progress, singling out issues like embryonic stem cell research, artificial insemination and the prospect of human cloning. Such practices have “shattered” human dignity, Pope Benedict said.
In a feature called “Oil and Water: Are Science and Religion Compatible?” we’ve assemble some thoughts from our experts including Larry Summers, the former President of Harvard and Secretary of the Treasury, Peter Gomes, Minister of Harvard’s Memorial Church, Professor of Genetics George Church, Editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham, and the author Sam Harris. Check it out.
What do you think? Are science and religion compatible?
Yesterday, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, a Princeton professor who recently became the poetry editor at The New Yorker, came in for his turn in the Big Think hot seat. He shared his thoughts on life and poetry, and read us a lovely poem called “The Loaf.” Take a look.
Barack Obama raised a jaw-slackening $32 million dollars in January this month. Where’s it coming from? 170,000 donors, his campaign said, and, if the states of New York, California and Illinois are any prediction, each of those contributions should be in the mid-hundreds of dollars. Senator Obama has been making a point of keeping his hands clean, avoiding contributions from outside groups called 527s, which can make unlimited donations and aren’t subject of much scrutiny, though several such groups continue to campaign for him anyway. The Clinton camp, on the other hand, has been raising some eyebrows on the fundraising front, first with the mad flight of big Clinton donor Norman Hsu, and now with the revelations that Bill Clinton has been getting cozy with a Canadian (uranium) mining magnate and Uzbek strongman and human-rights disregarder Nazarbayev to raise money for his Clinton Global Initiative.
Last week, a Big Think user named Michael lamented the shifting of accountability in the Washington establishment from their constituents to their parties, saying that “When this nation was established and the Constitution was written, there were no political parties. The congressmen were supposed to serve the people that elected them. Now you get elected by serving the party not the people.” The people, he says, take a back seat to the party. And then, of course, there are all those people to thank: the donors and the so-called special interests that helped you get elected by footing the bill. So the constituents take a back seat to them as well as to the party, right?
Ah, the old dilemma: will the big donors have a big say in our governance if they have a hand in the candidate’s pocket? Will Clinton donor Danny DeVito have a say if Hillary gets elected? What about Halle Berry and Zach Braff, who donated the maximum amount to Obama’s campaign? And should we keep an especially close eye on Hugh Heffner, who donated to both campaigns? What shady aims does he have, hedging his bets like that?
And now, for a unique perspective on the issue of campaign finance, here’s Billy Tauzin, a former Congressman who now heads PhRMA, a lobby that represents pharmaceutical companies. Tauzin, who knows what it takes to get elected and now knows what it takes to get his former colleagues to listen, claims that, if the system gets corrupted, we only have ourselves to blame. What do you think? Is that, well, fair?
As the world continues to tap into the grid, the grid gets a firmer grip on us. Today’s Internet outage in the Middle East and South-East Asia is revealing just how Internet-dependent the world’s economy has become. (Apparently, an anchor disrupted a cable in the Mediterranean — an almost poetic protest of the ancient maritime economy.) It doesn’t take a Goldman analyst to predict that India’s outsourcing industry is going to take a huge hit, as are telecoms that rely on the bandwidth for cheap phone lines. But it can be easy to forget how this type of outage will trickle down to smaller businesses and families. From farmers in distant villages monitoring grain prices to families that simply need to connect with one another, the fact that this type of disruption could occur is startling.
This all makes examining our relationship with technology and the Internet in particular a pressing issue. In this clip, Walt Mossberg, editor of All Things D talks about how technology is changing our lives and how dependent we are becoming on that grid.
In light of our growing dependence and today’s outage, we have to ask, are we becoming to dependent on the Internet? And, if so, is that a bad thing?
Yesterday, we implemented a new feature — daily email alerts. If there’s has been any activity on the ideas you’ve contributed to the site — a comment or a new idea in response — you will receive an email once a day with links back to your idea. This way, you can easily track the progress of your discussions and stay in the loop about how your ideas are developing on the site. If you haven’t gotten any alerts yet, it may be because your spam filter is keeping us out. Check your spam box and add us to the approved sender list if you want to be getting these alerts, something we highly recommend as it keeps you involved in the debate.
John Legend, the Grammy-winning singing sensation, graced Big Think with an interview yesterday, and music wasn’t the only topic of conversation. The Ivy League-educated Legend held court on a range of subjects and even picked a horse in the 2008 presidential race. Hint: It’s someone he can trust, and it’s not Giuliani or Edwards.
It may come as no surprise that John Edwards has dropped out of the Presidential race. In a competition increasingly focused on “firsts”–first woman vs. first black man, Edwards had to settle for third as a white male. Talk about firsts! The question now is who will he endorse, and why?
0
