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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (210)	1/10/2001 10:14:06 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82486

It could be argued that evaluating candidates purely upon GPA, SAT scores, and the like is akin to claiming that a high jumper who clears a 6 foot bar while jumping from ground level has jumped higher than one who clears 5 1/2 feet while jumping from the bottom of a 3-foot trench. Is government required to be neutral? If it becomes clear that neutrality is perpetrating a situation that creates vast wastage of human resources and a significant drain on public resources, is it not reasonable for government to at least consider adjusting the neutrality scale? Shouldn't qualifications, preparation, and ability figure in here someplace? The point is that a student from an economically disadvantaged background who achieves qualification equal or near-equal to those of a student with economic advantages may be reasonably assumed to have had to show a significantly greater degree of preparation and ability to achieve that qualification. I would prefer to use economic advantage as the "handicapping" factor, rather than race, because the assumption that all racial minorities are poor and all Caucasians are rich is not valid. You'd probably be better off debating the topic with kholt, who had intelligent things to say about it. I've had little exposure to affirmative action in practice, and have not thought much about it; I wouldn't be talking about it at all if you hadn't raised the issue in response to my invitation. the military budget has dropped a great deal since the end of the cold war. What capability should we have? It is reasonable to scale the level of military spending to the level of threat. Russia is still in possession of tens of thousands of nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them. They are not exactly our friend. I think you can count on them exploiting a blackmail capability if they get it. Since our current nuclear capability is sufficient to ensure that anyone attempting a nuclear attack would face certain and total destruction, I don't thiunk we need to worry too much about anyone achieving a blackmail capacity. Actually, we could probably scrap the oldest third of our warheads and delivery platforms and still maintain a more than adequate deterrent. Total numbers of warheads are not particularly revealing: accuracy of delivery and survivability of delivery systems are far more important than the total number of warheads. 20,000 warheads do not pose twice the threat of 10,000 warheads. Detonating 2000 warheads would probably exterminate the human race altogether; the capacity for redundant extermination is not particularly useful.