Introduction

This blog will try to lay out the different philosophical viewpoints of controversial American political issues. The goal is to provide relatively unbiased information to enable us to understand and respect opposing views, rather than perceiving a stupid, evil, insane, stooge, and/or oppressor enemy. Posts will feature the most prominent sides of each issue, with each argument represented by "Mark" or "ME" or "Ellis", and end with my take, under the guise of "Mark Ellis". The reasons provided are general contentions with varying degrees of value and validity.

I'm going to do my best considering I have limited intelligence, knowledge, and data on each issue, and limited time and effort to devote to the research and writing of these posts (I have a full time job), and I understand that you also have limited time and effort to read these posts. Do not expect stats. And sure, I have my own biases: I am a male married Jewish (traditional non-Orthodox) New Yorker (born and raised), and an aspiring novelist in my mid-thirties. I am the son of Eastern European immigrants (from Soviet nations) and grandson of Holocaust survivors who forged a middle-class family. I graduated from a math/science high school, I majored in History and English at a Philadelphia college, I earned a degree from a Brooklyn law school where I trained in various prosecutors' offices, and I have been practicing criminal defense (often white collar) and commercial litigation for small law firms for the last ten years. Obviously, all of these factors affect me.

I like debating politics, history, religion, philosophy, and science, but not nearly as much as I like talking television, movies, sports, podcasts, and occasionally books. And generally, I like making people laugh more than I like making people think or feel, but you did not luck out today.

I welcome thoughtful comments and would enjoy if this blog could precipitate thoughtful debate or discussion. I'm open to change, but almost everyone that knows me will tell you that I am rather stubborn, so don't expect me to change. I can be manipulative, but generally in the most passive possible way. But, I don't expect to change your mind either because, the words on a blog post (especially my words on a blog post) have limited value, and even if my words ring true, these analyses will be shallow (because of the limited time, etc. described above) as I don't want to get bogged down on (often competing) statistics on each issue, and in part because delving into the details of some of these positions can rapidly get confusing, boring, or pointedly biased, which is not how I intend to spend my spare time. Mostly, I guess I am trying to rationalize my views to myself - and to a lesser extent, to justify my views to you.

So, here is what I think I feel on these issues.