[0]Our scheduled host for this edition went MIA and I had a bout where I wasn't feeling well so this edition is very much delayed. What we're going to do is have CotL 54 today, CotL 55 next week, Jan. 9th, at The Greenbelt [1] and then CotL 56 will be the following week, Jan. 16th, at Blue Gal [2]'s place. Then Carnival of the Liberals will pick up it's normal schedule with CotL 57 on Jan. 30th at World Wide Webers [3].
Given the unusual lateness of this edition I'm going to simply list my choices for the best among the submissions. Once again I had to throw out a number of submissions that were either from Libertarians promoting either Libertarianism or Ron Paul. And once again I have to say that I am not interested in this blog carnival becoming a vehicle for promotion of Libertarian foolishness or right-wing populist, facist-wannabe political candidates. I also discarded a couple of posts from people voicing their support of individual Democratic candidates. I really would like for Carnival of the Liberals to stay focused on issues, philosophy, activism and almost anything than endorsemens of individual candidates. Personally the horserace mentality is one of the things I most despise about American politics and I just don't want that here. It's nothing personal. A couple of the endorsements were really well written.
So without any further delay, here's my choice for the ten best liberal blog posts for this edition:
- Bay of Fundie – Abington vs. Shemp [4]
- Greg Laden – The Bible-Thumping Grinch who Pissed on Christmas [5] (best. title. evah!) and Ohio School District: WTF???? [6]
- Reason and Capitalism – Stop Legislating Morality [7]
- And Doctor Biobrain's Response Is... – Perdido en Traducción [8]
- Atheist Revolution – Romney Reveals Bigotry Toward Non-Theistic Americans [9]
- Jon Swift – Jamie Leigh Jones Undermines the War Effort [10]
- The Agonist – Dancing On a Volcano [11]
- Phil for Humanity – An Analysis of Reasons for Allowing and Denying Gun Ownership [12]. A note on this one... Phil comes to the conclusion that gun ownership should be legal. I actually agree with this, but I think Phil is falling into the trap of a false dichotomy. Also, this argument is something of a red herring because we do in fact have legal gun ownership, albeit restricted and controlled, in the U.S. Also, by restricting the debate to simply 'guns' we lose sight of the bigger picture of personal armanentment in general. For instance, should tasers be legal under the Second Amendment? However I thought Phil did a great job of summarizing the common arguments on either side of the debate.
- Writopia Lab – A Comedy Writer on Strike [13]
And there you have Carnival of the Liberals #54. I'll post every link submitted in a few days over at the Carnival of the Liberals site but in the meantime, keep sending in those submissions. Everybody's submission gets saved no matter what (unless I explicitly toss them) so if you've sent in something for CotL 55 you can rest assured the host will get it.
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