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I’m pretty much convinced that the country is going to hell in a handbasket. I’m self-aware enough and have enough of a sense of humor to realize this may be a result of getting older. I turned sixty in January and when someone at my birthday party asked me whether being sixty felt different than being fifty-nine, I said yes. I’m now old enough to officially be a curmudgeon; I can talk about young whippersnappers without feeling like I have to do so ironically; and I’m old enough to pine for the good old days when everything was much, much better. But even after taking a mental discount for the nearly universal tendency to look back through rose-colored glasses, I’m still pretty much convinced the country is going to hell in a handbasket.
I’m also self-aware enough and have enough of a sense of humor to realize my conviction may be because the political party I like less is in power in Washington, DC - totally in power in the executive branch, half in power in the legislative branch. Yet throughout the Bush Administration’s tenure, I was pretty much Leftist and, although I was unhappy about some of what President Bush was doing (or what I thought he was doing), I never felt the whole country was going to hell in a handbasket. I always figured it would self-correct. So even if I give some weight to the sour grapes argument, I’m still pretty much convinced the country is going to hell in a handbasket.
Why you ask? Well, many of my blog posts in the category “The Great Divide” are about the reasons behind my conviction but a recent reading brought the issue into sharp focus for me. The piece was by Megan McArdle, entitled “Should We Force People to Save for Retirement?” After running through the practical, economic, and political pros and cons, McArdle writes:
You’ll notice that we haven’t even touched on the morality of the state telling someone how they have to spend this money. I think there are good arguments that this is wrong, and we shouldn’t do it. But those arguments are long and thorny and will never be considered valid by half the population.
And that’s the handbasket in which the country is going to hell.
Once upon a time we all pretty much took care of ourselves with our own money. Then the government began taxing money from all of us to give to all of us (in greater or lesser amounts) in the form of programs that many taxpayers liked but many objected to. We’ve lived with that and, indeed, one can argue that as soon as a government starts collecting taxes to perform any function, some of those taxed will be happy and some unhappy about the uses to which their money is being spent. The fact that more and more money was being spent on more and more programs that more and more taxpayers didn’t like was a simply an escalation of an existing condition and, although there was more and more unhappiness (e.g., the Tea Party), the basic idea of taking money in taxes and spreading it around was built into our reality.
Now, however, we’re not just taking money from people to support programs some of them don’t like; we’re telling people they must spend their own money on certain things - and we’re telling them what those certain things must look like. People must buy health insurance and it must be this kind of health insurance; that’s ObamaCare and it’s a done deal. In the proposal McArdle is writing about we would be telling people that they must save for retirement - and they must save this much and invest it in this way. We’re far beyond taxes and well into “plenary police powers”.
If we look at this in terms of ice cream (it’s summer weather here today): Once upon a time, if you wanted vanilla ice cream and I wanted chocolate ice cream, we would each buy what we wanted with our own money. Then we began to tax ourselves and buy you vanilla ice cream with some of the money and me chocolate ice cream with some of the money. Now, with ObamaCare and similar proposed schemes, all of us have to buy ice cream whether we want ice cream or not - and we all have to buy a double-scoop cone every day and it all has to be vanilla.
And that’s the problem. Not that half the country likes vanilla and half likes chocolate. Not even that the half that likes vanilla wants the other half to buy their vanilla ice cream for them. The problem is that the half that likes vanilla isn’t content with eating vanilla itself, isn’t even content with having the other half buy their vanilla for them. Instead, the half that likes vanilla wants to force everyone to buy and eat vanilla ice cream. The half that likes chocolate was willing to go along with buying vanilla for the first half but they believe that being forced to buy and eat vanilla themselves is wrong in a fundamental way. It is simply unacceptable.
There is no common ground here. One group is insisting everyone must buy what it thinks is best; the other group is insisting that no one has the right to tell them what to buy. So long as the first group just wanted money (taxes) to pay for its preferences, the second group could ante up - they might not like it but, in a way, it was tribute in exchange for being largely left alone. Now, however, the first group doesn’t just want money; it wants obedience. The second group will not obey - and the first group has absolutely no understanding of why that is.
We are at an impasse and the only way out of it that doesn’t involve hell and handbaskets requires that the demands for obedience cease. Unfortunately, I think that scenario doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in, well, you know.
According to NRO:
Islamist militant group Boko Haram said they abducted more than 200 girls last month in northeast Nigeria, and they “will sell them in the market, by Allah.” [snip]
Protesters in Nigeria are angered over government inaction. Nigeria’s first lady Patience Jonathan allegedly ordered police to arrest two protest leaders, and publicly doubted that any girls were kidnapped.
I’d like to think that no one - particularly no woman - would behave as Mrs. Jonathan is reported to have behaved but perhaps she’s a graduate of Brandeis. That would certainly explain her behavior if it is as reported.
When I wrote about Brandeis and Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently, I ran across some bits and pieces I think are worth noting although they didn’t fit neatly into my post.
A little data dropout
It’s instructive to note the difference between how the New York Times reports Ms. Hirsi Ali’s background and how the Brandies student newspaper does so. The New York Times:
Even some of Ms. Hirsi Ali’s critics say they understand her hostility to Islam, given her experiences, though they think she goes too far. A native of Somalia, she has written and spoken extensively of her experience as a Muslim girl in East Africa, including undergoing genital cutting, a practice she has vigorously opposed, and her family’s attempts to force her to marry a man against her wishes.
She moved to the Netherlands as a young woman, and she was later elected to the Dutch Parliament. She wrote the screenplay for “Submission,” a 2004 film critical of the treatment of Muslim women. Shortly after its release, the director, Theo van Gogh, was murdered on an Amsterdam street by a radical Islamist, who pinned to the victim’s body a threat to kill Ms. Hirsi Ali as well.
Brandeis student newspaper*:
Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born women’s rights activist who has campaigned against female genital mutilation [snip] She formerly lived in the Netherlands and was a member of Dutch Parliament until it was discovered that she had provided false information on an asylum application to gain entry into the country. In response to this, Hirsi Ali claimed that she lied on her asylum application because she was fleeing a forced marriage. She had also previously disclosed inaccurate information through several sources before the controversy, including through her book The Son Factory.
After resigning from her position due to the ensuing scandal, she moved to the United States to join the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute—an organization dedicated to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity and strengthening free enterprise according to its website—where she is now a visiting fellow.
So the New York Times omits the fact that Ms. Hirsi Ali lied on her Dutch asylum application. The Brandeis student newspaper finds the room to devote two and a half sentences to the asylum application issue** and a paragraph/sentence to her ties to AEI; but omits the facts that Ms. Hirsi Ali underwent genital cutting; that she wrote the screenplay for a movie opposing the subjugation of women; that the director of that movie was murdered by “a radical Islamist”; and that the murderer threatened to kill Ms. Hirsi Ali.
I think the Times made the better decision here although I would probably have included a brief reference to the asylum application dustup. On the other hand, the information omitted by the university newspaper is the entire context for her support for women’s rights and for her opposition to Islam. Omitting it seems a little, I don’t know, non-contextualized.
Turf wars and gatekeepers
In a faculty petition urging that Ms. Hirsi Ali be dis-invited to receive an honorary degree, we find the following sentence:
We further urge you to reinstitute the past practice of a faculty committee that vets potential honorary degree recipients.
In an interview with the Brandeis University newspaper:
Prof. Mary Baine Campbell (ENG) said [snip] that she was concerned about the awarding of the degree because of a lack of consultation with the faculty during the selection process. In an email to the Justice, she wrote that she was “astonished to find out that this choice, to honor Ms. Hirsi Ali for her contributions to ‘women’s rights,’ had been made without consulting the WGS Core Faculty.” s=She noted that the core faculty in the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies program had not been contacted either.
This sounds to me like the faculty (at least some of the faculty) have their noses out of joint and are happy to use the Hirsi Ali bandwagon as a way to leverage more power. Tiresome and discouraging but remarkably human.
I find the idea of a gatekeeper more disturbing. The use of quotations marks around “women’s rights” and the apparent belief that only the Women and Gender Studies “Core Faculty” can determine whether someone is really contributing to “women’s rights” is anathema to someone like me, whose ideas of feminism go back to the 1970s. Part of feminism then was the refusal to allow gatekeepers to tell women what was and was not valid about their own experience and about their perceptions of that experience.
It’s interesting to contrast this attitude with that of David Silverman, a Brandeis graduate and president of the American Atheists. In an open letter to the president of Brandeis University, Mr. Silverman recalls his pride in Brandeis’ activism during his student days and goes on to decry:
Brandeis [caving] to religious intolerance masquerading as political correctness and [uninviting] a valuable voice in the discussion of religion in public life, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
In detailing what Brandeis has done by disinviting Ms. Hirsi Ali, Mr. Silverman says:
Ms. Hirsi Ali’s experiences, however, are different.
Her background allows her to speak with clarity about one of the most challenging questions of our time: whether a robust commitment to equality, diversity, dialogue, and social justice is possible when we look the other way when confronted with the realities of Islamic extremism.
What you have done to Ms. Hirsi Ali is rob her of such an opportunity. You have robbed her of the opportunity to speak to Brandeis students about her lived experiences as a child in Somalia and Kenya. You have ended the “dialogue about these important issues” before it has even begun.
Apparently, Mr. Silverman is stuck in the same time warp I am, remembering fondly the idea that a woman’s “lived experience” is worth listening to, regardless of what the self-appointed gatekeepers say. Perhaps we are both pre-post-modern.
A little comic relief
In the same faculty petition I mentioned above, I read this:
Please know that, like Ms. Hirsi Ali, we fully recognize the harm of forced marriages; of female genital cutting, which can cause, among other public health problems, increased maternal and infant mortality; and of honor killings. These phenomena are not, however, exclusive to Islam.
The selection of Ms. Hirsi Ali further suggests to the public that violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam or the Two-Thirds World, thereby obscuring such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus.
Who knew that Brandeis was a hot-bed of forced marriages, female genital cutting, and honor killings? That the campus was plagued with the kidnapping of schoolgirls and the murder of film directors? And I had no idea that women were not allowed to drive, vote, or own property on the Brandeis campus. Perhaps someone should look into that.
Oh, and “Two-Thirds World”? A real phrase, not invented by the faculty specifically for this petition. It’s apparently not even an invention of the Left. I wonder if the faculty at Brandeis is aware they’re using a term reportedly used “mostly by evangelical Christians”.
*****
Notes:
* I snipped the description of Ms. Hirsi Ali’s “critical view of Islam. The Times covered that separately and I consider it part of the controversy rather than part of Ms. Hirsi Ali’s background. I believe including the controversy itself as part of Ms. Hirsi Ali’s resume is an example of either poisoning the well or assuming the conclusion. Or something like that.
** Just to clarify the following sentence (a Herculean task):
She had also previously disclosed inaccurate information through several sources before the controversy, including through her book The Son Factory.
I read this to mean that Ms. Hirsi Ali had made false statements not only on her asylum application but also “through several sources”. However, if Wikipedia is to be believed, Ms. Hirsi Ali in those “several sources” gave the true versions of the information she had lied about on her asylum application. I tend to believe Wikipedia since it lists the “several sources” (which can therefore be checked) and since it mentions these sources to explain why the accurate information was “considered by many to be public knowledge”.
The most charitable explanation for the misleading wording in the sentence is that Brandeis is not teaching its students to write. The less charitable explanations are left as an exercise for the reader.
Here is an excerpt from the Brandeis University student newspaper’s April 8 article about the outcry over the decision to grant Ayaan Hirsi Ali an honorary degree:
Prof. Mary Baine Campbell (ENG) [snip] wrote that she was “astonished to find out that this choice, to honor Ms. Hirsi Ali for her contributions to ‘women’s rights,’ had been made without consulting the [Women and Gender Studies] Core Faculty.”
Here is the final paragraph in that article:
[Prof. Mitra Shavarini (Women and Gender Studies)] further stated that Hirsi Ali’s approach to discourse “collapses thought in obscure, non-contextualized allegations that have no intellectual merit”—something Shavarini believes is radically opposed to the University’s values of “intellectual exchange and the challenging of one’s ideas.”
Here is a line from the New York Times’ April 9 coverage of Brandeis’ decision to cancel its plans to give Ms. Hirsi Ali an honorary degree:
Even some of Ms. Hirsi Ali’s critics say they understand her hostility to Islam, given her experiences, though they think she goes too far.
Here is the motto for the AHA Foundation, founded by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in 2007:
Women everywhere, of all cultures, merit access to education and basic human rights.
Here are the opening paragraphs from a BBC report that went up this afternoon:
Around 100 girls are thought to have been abducted in an attack on a school in north-east Nigeria, officials say.
Gunmen reportedly arrived at the school in Chibok, Borno state, late last night, and ordered the hostel's teenage residents on to lorries.
The attackers are believed to be from the Islamist group, Boko Haram, whose militants frequently target schools.
The AP helpfully informs us that:
Islamic extremists have been abducting girls to use as cooks and sex slaves.
Sahara Reporters adds:
The mass abduction lasted between 9PM -3 AM as sect members made several trips picking and choosing their victims out of the 250 students enrolled in the school.
(Via The Feed at National Review Online)
I’ve been feeling very fatalistic lately about the course ObamaCare will take and, more generally, about whether the juggernaut of Incredibly Huge Utterly Unresponsive Federal Government Bureaucracy is stoppable - or even slow-down-able. Kevin D. Williamson does nothing to change that:
Barack Obama’s administration is unmoored from the institutions that have long kept the imperial tendencies of the American presidency in check. That is partly the fault of Congress, which has punted too many of its legislative responsibilities to the president’s army of faceless regulators, but it is in no small part the result of an intentional strategy on the part of the administration. He has spent the past five years methodically testing the limits of what he can get away with, like one of those crafty velociraptors testing the electric fence in Jurassic Park.
As Williamson points out, "the American public accepts" this. That's not a hopeful sign, either.
… but I will defend to the death your right to say it. - My mother's explanation to me of the meaning of freedom of speech under the United States Constitution and, yes, I do realize she was quoting - or at least paraphrasing - someone else.
Julian Bond, President Emeritus of the NAACP, was asked recently about the IRS targeting theTea Party, especially in light of his objections to the IRS auditing the NAACP during the Bush Administration. Mr. Bond replied in part:
I think it’s entirely legitimate to look at the tea party. I mean, here are a group of people who are admittedly racist, who are overtly political, who’ve tried as best they can to harm President Obama in every way they can.
That's an interesting argument. Bond appear to be saying that it is legitimate for the IRS to take a special look at the Tea Party because it is:
- it is admittedly racist;
- it is overtly political;
- it has tried its best to harm President Obama.
I'm going to leave aside the issue of whether the Tea Party is overtly political in any sense that matters to the IRS, and the issue of whether the Tea Party has tried to harm President Obama (as well as the issue of what he means by "harm"). Those would be rich subjects to explore but they are not my focus. Furthermore, I am going to note in passing that the Tea Party is not "admittedly" racist but that is not my focus either. My focus is on Mr. Bond's apparent belief that an organization's racism has something to do with whether it is appropriate for the IRS to subject it to exceptional scrutiny. It does not.
The IRS does not exist to police the beliefs of individuals or the policies of groups.
If I believe that straight white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men are the only hope for the country and want to set up a group to educate everyone about my beliefs, I should be able to do so without the IRS subjecting me to a more intensive examination than it would give me if I believed that straight white Anglo-Protestant men were the bane of the country and wanted to educate my fellow citizens about those beliefs. It is no business of the IRS whether an organization is racist, sexist, or feminist; whether it is pro-men, anti-Catholic, pro-amnesty, anti-ethanol, pro-salt, anti-war, pro-LGBT, or anti-Asian. It is no business of the IRS whether an organization supports abortion or opposes it; supports Obamacare or opposes it; supports Israel or opposes it; supports the NAACP or opposes it. It is most emphatically no business of the IRS whether an organization supports the IRS or opposes it.
The only concern of the IRS is whether an organization's activities conform to the guidelines laid down for the type of organization it claims to be.
-----
I wrote this post in May and then realized I didn't know how to finish it. Those who agree with me, agree with me - there's no need for a big finish to convince them. Those who disagree with me see the world too differently for what I write to make any difference. It's not a difference of degree; it's a difference of kind. To people of the latter persuasion, if someone's stance, position, or utterance is wrong, then it's perfectly reasonable to use every means at their disposal, especially government power, to make sure that someone is, at minimum, disadvantaged and, preferably, silenced. Or, rather, not just perfectly reasonable - it's the obligation of decent human beings to make sure that sure error is stamped out.
It's depressing and frightening to realize I'm sharing a country with people who think the way Julian Bond does. It's puzzling and ironic to realize that many of those who think like Mr. Bond are self-proclaimed representatives of the very groups whose views have been so often silenced by society and government in the past.
The truth is that it is natural, as well as necessary, for every man to be a vagabond occasionally. - Samuel H Hammond
I’ve been feeling rather bitter because my liberal friends - who support Obamacare - get their health insurance through their employers while I buy mine individually. I believed that this meant I would have to give the IRS information about my income and health insurance while they would not. It looks like I was wrong. According to Avik Roy at The Corner (and do read the longer post at Forbes):
To enforce the individual mandate, the IRS needs to know whether or not you have purchased insurance this year. It will also need to know the specific insurance policy you have, in order to ensure that it meets Obamacare’s “minimum essential coverage” requirement.
To enforce the employer mandate, the IRS needs the same information from employers in terms of the specific policies employers purchase for their workers, and also the hours worked by every part-time employee. In addition, your employer will need to know what your household income is, in order to ensure that the coverage it offers you is “affordable” to you by the law’s definition.
This makes me feel less bitter about my friends (it’s probably a sign of a serious moral failing that I rejoice to know they, too, will fall under the watchful eye of the IRS). However, it also made me realize something I had known but not fully understood before: The individual mandate means no one has the right to be left alone any longer.
Let’s say I work until I’m 50 and save my money. I then decide to retire and become a vagabond. I convert my savings to cash and keep it in a no-interest checking account. I live off the cash, never earning a salary or interest or capital gains. I have no reason to interact with the Federal government since I owe no taxes. I do not maintain a residence which means I have no reason to interact with State or local government. I can, if I want, legally step outside the grid.
Under Obamacare, that will change. I now must interact with the IRS. I have to tell them how much money I make and what health insurance I purchase. If I do not purchase health insurance, they will fine me. I can no longer legally step outside the grid.
That seems to me to be a terrible loss. I know that very few people want to take that step but I believe we have lost something precious by making it impossible for people to do so without breaking the law. How did we end up in a situation where my life is now subject to my government’s beck and call?
After reporting that a recent Pew Poll shows:
...just 28% rate the federal government in Washington favorably. That is down five points from a year ago and the lowest percentage ever in a Pew Research Center survey.
Peter Wehner at Contentions wonders why voters nonetheless “continue to vote for politicians and support policies that entrusts more and more power to the federal government[.]” He concludes by saying:
One might think that Republicans should be able to leverage the public’s skepticism toward the federal government in a way that advances their interests. Of course, that should have been the case in 2012, too–and what the GOP got instead was a drubbing.
America can sometimes be a most curious country.
Perhaps the reasons Americans continue to vote for Democrats is because no one has any faith that the Republicans are the slightest bit interested in entrusting less and less power to the Federal government. Given a choice between two political parties equally interested in building up the central government, why wouldn’t most people vote for the party that at least pays lip service to using that power to help others rather than to the one that sounds happy to cut all kinds of entitlement programs except the ones from which they themselves benefit?
Ace of Spades recently linked to a Michael Crichton speech. One line stood out for me, independent of the topic of the talk:
… the frantic fantasies that people have about one political party or another ... miss the cold truth---that there is very little difference between the parties, except a difference in pandering rhetoric.
I would have disputed that until recently, arguing that the Republican Party was far from perfect but was much better for the country than the Democrats. Now, however, the Republican Party's decision to push amnesty for illegal aliens has convinced me of the truth of Crichton's statement.
Neo-neocon wrote about the recent Mitt and Ann Romney interview with Chris Wallace:
it makes me sad to think what might have been and is not [snip]
the whole interview, it reminds me once again of Romney’s qualities of essential goodness and modesty, as well as his lack of attack-dog capability.
I didn’t watch the interview and haven’t read the transcript but I remember my first reaction to Romney’s loss was sadness at an opportunity missed. Mitt Romney is a very intelligent man; an exceptionally competent executive; and a remarkably decent human being. To find all three characteristics in a President is almost unheard of: usually we hope for two out of three and consider ourselves lucky to get one.
I don’t imagine we’re likely to have an opportunity to vote for someone so intelligent, competent, and decent again in my lifetime.
... is to maintain it. - Ursula LeGuin
So the sequester is supposed to kick in this Friday, March 1 - or, more accurately, the budget sequestration provision of the Budget Control Act of 2011. I had forgotten most of what I ever knew about how this came to be but Wikipedia explains that:
In 2011, sequestration was used in the Budget Control Act of 2011(BCA, P.L. 112-25) as a tool in federal budget control. This 2011 act authorized an increase in the debt ceiling in exchange for $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction over the following ten years. This total included $1.2 trillion in spending cuts identified specifically in the legislation, with an additional $1.2 trillion in cuts that were to be determined by a bipartisan group of Senators and Representatives known as the "Super Committee" or officially as the United States Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. The Super Committee failed to reach an agreement. In that event, a trigger mechanism in the bill was activated to implement across-the-board reductions in the rate of increase in spending known as "sequestration".
The sequestration was supposed to kick in on January 1, 2013, but “the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 delayed in until March 1 of that year.”
Ah, yes. Debt ceilings, sequestration, Super Committees, fiscal cliffs, all that. And once we get past March 1, it looks like we’ll need another Continuing Resolution by March 27. Then there’s another fight over the debt ceiling coming up in May. Another fiscal cliff. Another chance for the parties to squabble, another chance for the economy to tank, another chance to have our credit rating downgraded, another chance for everyone outside of government to pay still less attention to still another crisis that never quite happens.
I'm pretty much sick of all this. So here’s what I’d like the Congressional Republicans to do, assuming they can act together.
Call a press conference.
Talk about the lousy shape the economy is in. Talk about the unemployment rate and the number of people who have stopped looking for work. Talk a lot about the morality of leaving future generations with crushing debt so we can have what we want now.
Say that the best choice for the country is the Path to Prosperity. State that the House is prepared to pass a budget based on this proposal immediately if the Senate Democrats will agree to pass it unchanged and President Obama will agree not to veto it.
Say that if the Senate Democrats and President Obama will not so agree, then the second best choice for the country is Bowles-Simpson. Acknowledge its flaws but point out that it is better than what we have now. State that the House is prepared to pass a budget based on this plan immediately if the Senate Democrats will agree to pass it unchanged and President Obama will agree not to veto it.
Say that what is bad for the country are the policies the President and the Congressional Democrats want. Explain what they are and why they are bad. If the Congressional Republicans cannot explain what these policies are and why they are bad, they should find another line of work.
Then say that nonetheless there is something that is worse for the country than the policies of the President and the Congressional Democrats: our current situation. The unending crises, the constant fiscal cliffs, the partisan bickering, the name-calling, the accusing, the lack on a budget, the constant kicking the can down the road through Continuing Resolutions and suspensions of the debt ceiling - none of that is good for anyone. Therefore, if the President and the Senate Democrats will not agree to either the Path to Prosperity or Bowles-Simpson, the Republicans are prepared to do the following:
1) Raise the debt ceiling to $21.5 Trillion.* Explain that this will be the last debt ceiling raise ever approved by a Republican-controlled house of Congress and that no future suspension of the debt ceiling will be considered.
2) Pass whatever budget President Obama and the Senate Democrats propose. Explain that Republicans will vote for a continuing resolution to get the country to the end of June and give President Obama and the Congressional Democrats a chance to put together a budget bill. That will be the last Continuing Resolution ever approved by a Republican-controlled house of Congress.
End the press conference.
The Republicans should do all this while avoiding partisan sniping, sarcasm, loaded language, and pettiness like the plague. It would be nice for at least one side to discuss the issues rather than the people involved, the supposed motives of the other side, the history of the failures, and whose fault it all is. And if high-mindedness isn’t enough reason to take this tack, the fact that bad-mouthing President Obama doesn’t work should be.
Doesn’t advocating this make me a nihilist, rooting for disaster to prove my point - or at least to gain political advantage in the long run? No.
I believe we’ll end up with a debt ceiling of $21.5 Trillion before Obama leaves office anyhow so that’s not a giveaway. As for passing the Obama/Democrat budget, there are three possibilities. One is that this approach works and the country recovers economically: unemployment drops like a rock; housing sales pick up; young people buried in student loans find good jobs; small businesses spring up like grass in a meadow and flourish like poplars by a flowing stream; the infrastructure is healed; consumer confidence skyrockets; a new sense of purpose and energy spreads across the country - and 90% of those polled now call themselves Democrats. Bad for conservatives but good for the country so I couldn’t really complain.
The second possibility is that the economy will remain in the doldrums. I believe this is the best we can hope for if we keep doing what we’re doing now so this outcome would be a wash.
The third possibility, of course, is that things get much worse. This is worrisome but I think there’s a good chance that’s going to happen soon anyhow if we keep “solving” our economic problems the way we have been - and I’m absolutely certain that’s going to happen eventually if we continue the way we are and that “eventually” isn’t much later than “soon”. I also think there’s a limit to how much damage President Obama and the Congressional Democrats can do in four years - and to how much damage they will risk doing given that all but one of them will be up for re-election shortly. It’s easy for them to talk Big Left when they know their policies won’t be implemented; knowing they are going to have to live with the consequences should induce a certain amount of realism and caution into their approach.
I truly believe that continuing down the road we’re on is the worst possible path. Taxes are going up already; meaningful, intelligent spending cuts don’t seem on the table; wandering from one crisis to another is practically the definition of a climate of uncertainty; and no one on either side is accountable for anything.
So I’d like to see the Republicans ask President Obama and the Congressional Democrats to do the conservative thing and then, if they refuse, gracefully step aside. Doing so will require President Obama and the Democrats to actually sit down and put something detailed on the table and I hope that once budgeting stops being primarily an exercise in slash-and-burn partisan politics, the Democrats will come up with something less destructive. And even if they don’t, why keep putting the economy through these fiscal cliff upheavals if we’re going to end up raising the debt ceiling and doing nothing to fix our actual economic problems anyhow?
*****
Notes:
$21.5 Trillion is an incredibly big number. However:
When Obama entered office, the debt ceiling was $11.315 Trillion. It is now $16.394 Trillion - an increase of $5.079 Trillion in Obama’s first term. If we increase the debt ceiling by the same amount in Obama’s second term, we will end up with a debt ceiling of $21.473 Trillion. Round it up a little and we get $21.5 Trillion.
To look at it another way:
When George W. Bush entered office, the debt ceiling was $5.95 Trillion. When he left office it was $11.315 Trillion. That’s an absolute increase of “only” $5.365 Trillion but a percentage increase of 90%.
If we increase the debt ceiling during Obama’s two terms by 90%, we will end up with a debt ceiling of $21.4985 Trillion. Round it up a little and we again get $21.5 Trillion.
So $21.5 Trillion it is.
Imagine that a man who has brutally murdered several people, including children, is testifying at his own trial. Cameras are allowed in the courtroom and a television network is taping his testimony. The tape is played on the evening news.
When he see the news the murderer is incensed. The network, he claims, played only the part of the tape that showed him confessing to the killings. It edited out the part of the tape where he explained his very good reasons for doing so. The network, he claims, has materially misrepresented him.
I would not see media malpractice here. What the man did is so utterly unacceptable that his reasons for doing so are irrelevant. There is literally no reason for the network to broadcast them.
Now imagine that a major newspaper prints an article on child sexual abuse. The article praises the social workers who identify the abused children; the police and prosecutors who work to put the abusers in prison; and the counselors who help the victims have a chance at a normal life. They barely mention the abusers, except to express disgust that anyone would commit such an act.
After the article comes out, a pedophile advocacy organization protests that their side of the issue was not considered. No one interviewed them; the article’s author doesn’t even mention that such organizations exist. Perhaps, they acknowledge, the author of the article doesn’t agree with their position but he has an obligation to at least know what their arguments are, explain them honestly, and rebut them if he can.
I would not see media bias here. The advocacy organizations are not legitimate players in any public discourse. There is no need to take their views into account or even to acknowledge that anyone holds those views. They exist outside the realm of decent, serious society.
Perhaps what look like media malpractice and media bias to people on the Right; what look like deliberate decisions to deceptively edit and knowingly omit; what look like actions in service of an ideology and a goal; perhaps all that is simply a result of a mindset that defines certain people as existing outside the realm of decent, serious society and that believes no reason is sufficient to explain their utterly unacceptable ideas and policies.
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Related reading:
If It Will Save a Single Life, We Must Get Piers Morgan's Stupid Fat Face off the Television - The idea for this post has been running around my head for a while. Reading this over at Ace of Spades made me decide to write it:
This is the underlying assumption that they simply will not confess, for if they did confess it, it would be game over for them. All of their conclusions -- all of their bias, all of their double-standards -- flow from this premise, which they will not admit, but will only dance around.
The premise is simply that liberal speech is much more valuable than conservative speech and this is of course because liberal politics are much more valuable than conservative ones.
Perhaps it’s not that they “will not confess” so much as that they do not realize there is anything to confess.
Conservatives need to create powerful, “sticky” messages that lead the electorate to a tipping point - From Bookworm:
... for decades the Left had created an intellectual atmosphere in which it was easy for people to believe, all evidence to the contrary, that Romney was an evil, soulless man, and that a Republican America would be, as Ted Kennedy so memorably said about Robert Bork,
a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy….
That none of this came to pass during any Republican ascendency is irrelevant.
Obama’s Thunderdome - From the Wall Street Journal:
What is striking about the Obama technique is that it's not so much criticism as something closer to political obliteration, driving his opposition out of the political arena altogether.
After the inaugural speech, Obama communications director Dan Pfeiffer said that Democrats don't have "an opposition party worthy of the opportunity."
The problem with starting an alternative media on the right - From Neoneocon:
The much more basic problem with an alternative conservative media is that the media on the right has been so demonized—and any alternative media would be equally demonized—that Democrats and even many of those in the middle have been taught that it’s unreliable and will not watch it, and/or they automatically discount what it says.
So God Made a Fawner - Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. At the end of this piece, she writes:
... Mr. Kroft is a reporter whose job it is to be impartial and nonpartisan, and who works for a towering journalistic institution, "60 Minutes."
People like him are supposed to approach political figures with no fear or favor.
Their job is to grill. What are they afraid of?
I suspect the answer to that question can be found here:
In response to: The left is quite open about its intentions - From Breitbart (via Ace who is doing some interesting writing on media bias):
People don't want to be thought of as "extremist". No one wants to think their opinions are stupid, hateful or unpopular.
In the process of doing some reading about the Chick-Fil-A business permit fiasco*, I ran across a CBS News article that has a few quotes I haven’t seen discussed. The first two are statements by Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno, who is threatening to block Chick-Fil-A from opening a restaurant in his district. According to the CBS story:
On Wednesday, Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno said he wants Chick-fil-A to adopt a written anti-discrimination policy before it is granted a permit for a new restaurant in Chicago. "There are consequences for freedom of speech (and) in this case the consequences are... you're not going to have your first free-standing restaurant in Chicago," he said.
Yes, there are consequences for freedom of speech. Our customers, our friends, our community, our associations, perhaps even our employer may impose such consequences when we speak freely. The point of the First Amendment, however, is that the government may not impose consequences for freedom of speech.
The second quote is also from Alderman Moreno:
Moreno said he's been working with Chick-fil-A on the matter for several months and that the restaurant has already verbally agreed "they will no longer donate any dollars to any organization -- left, right or center -- that has a political agenda."
The idea that a government official would force a company (or individual or other organization) to restrict its donations - political or otherwise - in exchange for the “privilege” of doing business is appalling. Even more appalling is that Mr. Moreno considers this something to be proud of.
The third quote is from Philadelphia City Councilman Jim Kenney. Mr. Kenney wrote the head of Chick-Fil-A denouncing his comments; that’s fine with me. Mr. Kenney will introduce a resolution to the City Council “condemning Chick-Fil-A”; that’s fine with me, too. Mr. Kenney told CBS that some constituents support and some oppose what he is doing:
"People who are mostly con continue on with the religious aspect," he said. "American civil liberties are not ordained by religion, they're ordained by a free and democratic government. There were times when religion was used to explain slavery and lots of other ills."
I can imagine few ideas more dangerous than the idea that our civil liberties** are whatever the government decides they are. American civil liberties were originally conceived as a way to protect us from the government; to assert that there are some rights that are ours by virtue of being human and that bestowing and removing them are beyond the reach of government. Government can violate them but it does not grant them and cannot take them away.
Furthermore, the councilman has clearly not thought through his view of religion. He implies that we had slavery and other ills because of religion; that without religion we wouldn't have societal ills. This is nonsensical on the face of it. Societies use whatever is handy to justify what they want to do. Sometimes they use religion; sometimes they use ideology; sometimes they use science. Religion is an extremely useful tool but it is not a cause.
The other aspect of the councilman's statement that is discouraging is his utter lack of historical knowledge. He seems totally unaware that religion was the driver of and the justification for both the Abolitionist movement in the mid-nineteenth century and the Black civil rights movement in the mid-twentieth century. Once again, society uses whatever is at hand to justify what it wants to do.
There is one positive thing I can say about both Mr. Moreno’s bullying and Mr. Kenney’s views of civil rights and religion: these men are being honest. As Ross Douthat said in his recent New York Times opinion piece:
If you want to fine Catholic hospitals for following Catholic teaching, or prevent Jewish parents from circumcising their sons, or ban Chick-fil-A in Boston, then don’t tell religious people that you respect our freedoms. Say what you really think: that the exercise of our religion threatens all that’s good and decent, and that you’re going to use the levers of power to bend us to your will.
The alderman and the councilman have done exactly as Douthat asked. Now we can, as Douthat says, "get on with the fight" - honestly.
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Notes:
* If you don’t know what this fiasco is, you can read Glenn Greenwald for an excellent explanation.
** Here’s how Wikipedia begins its definition of ”Civil liberties in the United States”:
Civil liberties of the United States are certain inalienable rights retained by (as opposed to privileges granted to) citizens of the United States under the Constitution of the United States, as interpreted and clarified by the Supreme Court of the United States and lower federal courts.
[Comments are closed since I’m not really blogging. You can always email me; my email address is in my profile.]
From a 1997 interviewwith David Gelernter, author of Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber (a book well worth reading)
I expect from a journalist exactly what I'd expect from a friend or colleague or neighbor, not that he agree with me on everything but that he and I speak the same moral language. If you believe that abortion is morally neutral or that capital punishment is unacceptable, I may disagree, but I don't doubt that a morally serious person could reach such positions. If you believe that murder is all right, that killing or injuring innocent strangers with mail bombs might be okay under the right circumstances, I have nothing to say to you. We have no moral common ground. You have a free-speech right to your opinions, and I don't question that right. I have a right to regard you as a monster, to regard your opinions as dangerous and unacceptable and to refuse to have anything to do with you. You might argue that rejecting abortion and accepting capital punishment were once part of our shared moral common ground in this country, and you'd be right. Society's moral consensus isn't fixed; it evolves. Has it evolved to a point where disapproval of murder, or terrorist bombing, is outside the moral consensus? God forbid -- though I don't doubt that if we continue the way we have, that could happen some day. At that point the group of people who are profoundly at odds with this society will be so great, the rest of the country will have to take notice (and for all I know, a new Mayflower will set sail).
This is where I’ve come to regarding the HHS mandate that all employers provide insurance that covers contraception: there is no common moral ground here. Not “no common moral ground” on contraception itself but “no common moral ground” on what this controversy is about.
I’ve always thought that Americans on the opposite side of an issue from me were understandable. I might think they were short-sighted or unaware of certain information or wanted a different type of society than I did or were ignoring human nature or were ignorant of history of even were simply wrong or mistaken. But I’ve always been able to say that I could see how they held the position they did; I couldn’t hold it myself but given what they knew, what they believed, how they thought, what they wanted, I could see how they believed it. Or, at least, to concede they may have valid reasons for their position, even if I couldn’t see those reasons.
When it comes to the HHS mandate, either the original or the ”compromise” that isn’t, that is no longer the case. The issue is so clearly one of violating the First Amendment that I am unable to find any common ground with anyone who doesn’t see that. We have nothing to say to each other on this topic. And their belief either that this does not violate the First Amendment or that violating the First Amendment is acceptable is so inexplicable that we don’t really have anything to say to each other about anything else related to the Constitution or governance in general.
Furthermore, it doesn’t matter how this situation comes out. Even if the Administration backs off completely on the contraception mandate for all employers, it’s too late. Even if the Supreme Court rules that the mandate is unconstitutional, it’s too late. That a President of the United States believes it is acceptable to simply ignore the First Amendment is a sea change in our form of government. Perhaps if the Administration had established this mandate and every single person and institution other than President Obama and Secretary Sebelius had screamed bloody murder, I could believe that we had, in a moment of national inattention, elected as President one of the only two people in the United States who consider the Bill of Rights irrelevant. But that wasn’t the case; Obama and Sebelius’ attitude toward the Constitution is clearly so widespread that there is no going back.
Do I consider the people who support the mandate “monsters” as Gelernter does those who are willing to countenance killing or injuring innocent strangers with mail bombs? No. My dictionary says that a monster is “one who inspires horror or disgust”. Those proposing the mandate and those supporting it inspire in me simply total bewilderment. I do, however, “regard [their] opinions as dangerous and unacceptable and ... refuse to have anything to do with [them]” insofar as issues of law, governance, and the Constitution are concerned.
I have heard for years - decades - that the Constitution was being shredded. I have heard this from both major political parties and from those aligned with neither. I’ve never really bought that. Yes, the Constitution was being bent, twisted, expanded, contracted, and even turned inside out. But I always believed that there was, nonetheless, a basic respect for the Constitution and that there was a point beyond which we, as a nation, would not go. We might fold and even spindle the Constitution but we would not mutilate it. Now we have. The HHS mandate and the defense of that mandate is something completely different, something new in the long line of disputes over the Constitution.
Is “the group of people who are profoundly at odds with this society ... so great, the rest of the country will have to take notice (and for all I know, a new Mayflower will set sail)”? In other words, are there a lot of people who believe what I believe? I don’t think so. Some people seem to be opposed to the HHS mandate for political reasons; it’s a chance to make hay. Most seem to be opposed to the HHS mandate for reasons of principle but also seem to believe that this is just more of the same and that if the mandate can be reversed or thrown out by the Supreme Court, the genie will go back in the bottle. They see this as one more struggle over the Constitution, one more argument that can be won or lost. I see it as a watershed; the meaning and relevance of the Constitution are profoundly and irreversibly changed.
It’s just as well, I suppose, that there aren’t a lot of people who believe what I believe. Gelernter overooked the fact that there is nowhere for a new Mayflower to go.
It’s an oft-repeated belief on the Left that white* working-class voters who support Republicans are voting against their own economic interests. After all, Democrats will take money away from the fat cats and spread it around to everyone who isn’t a fat cat. Therefore, white working-class Republicans must be ill-informed or led astray by conservative rhetoric (or conservative lies) or stupid or all of the above. For those on the Left to say so is simply being truthful.
I don’t think so. What Democrats represent is the redistribution of wealth from those who have more to those who have less. Democratic rhetoric claims this redistribution flows from those few who have a lot to the masses who don’t have a lot. But that’s not what the white working class sees. The white working class sees that people who are poor get stuff for free - housing, food, medical care - while those who work have to pay for this stuff themselves. The white working class sees that people who are very rich somehow manage to stay very rich and even get richer: the working class guy who lost his job, lost his medical insurance, and lost his house is looking at the Wall Street guy who got buckets of money because letting his firm fail would destroy the economy. White working class guy has got to be wondering exactly whose economy has been saved from destruction; it certainly isn’t the economy he lives in.
I suspect the white working class is asking themselves exactly whose money has been taken to give to the poor and - since more redistribution is on the horizon as more of ObamaCare kicks in and if some variant of cap-and-trade gets through and as the effects of financial regulation begin to be felt - they must also be asking themselves whose money is going to be taken in the future. It can’t be people who are poorer than the white working class - they don’t have money to redistribute. So far it doesn’t look like it’s going to be people who are rich - even if their taxes go up there’s no reason to think their special relationship with the government will disappear. That would seem to leave the working class.** Their money will be taken if not through higher income taxes then through a VAT; cap-and-trade; inflation; having to pay bank fees; tighter and/or more expensive credit; forced purchase of particular forms of health insurance; more job loss; or simply by piling a incomprehensibly huge national debt on the backs of their children and their children’s children.
If you look at what the Democrats say they’re going to do then, yes, when the white working class votes Republican you can argue it’s voting against its own economic interests.*** But when you look at what the Democrats have actually done, I’d say the white working class figures - quite rationally - that it’s better to hold onto what little they have rather than risk being the people on the wrong end of the continuing redistribution. This doesn’t mean they think the Republicans are going to help them or, for that matter, hurt the wealthy. It simply means the working class hopes the Republicans will allow them to keep what they earn. They entertain no such hopes about the Democrats.
*****
* I write here of the white (presumably non-Hispanic) working class because that’s the contingent that swings between Democrat and Republican. I think the same economic factors apply to the non-white and Hispanic working class but they are more solidly Democratic.
** I’m leaving aside the middle class. I don’t think the working class is stupid enough to think anyone is going to take money from the middle class and give it to the working class. Nor do I think the working class is stupid enough to think taking money from just the middle class is going to be enough to accomplish the myraid forms of redistribution either underway or in the works.
*** Yes, we could have another whole discussion about whether even if the working class was on the receiving end of redistribution they would support it and want it (there are interests that are not economic) and yet another one about whether the Democrats’ program would be in the working class’ best economic interests in the long term. What I doing here, though, is ruminating on why the Left’s “voting against their own economic interest” claim is weak even in the very short term.
*****
Reading:
News Flash: Inflation Is on the Way - Kevin D. Williamson at Exchequer on the new issue of TIPS.
Trouble with the humans - The Economist article that jarred this post loose
Of Reds, Racists and Rubes - Anglachel. My favorite snippet (but read the whole thing): People are motivated by rational self-interest, especially in times of need.
Capital Expenditure - Anglachel again. This is one of her posts where our world views are so different I struggle to understand her and quoting Bob Somersby makes her even more opaque while quoting Paul Krugman makes her even less accessible to me. However, if I understand her correctly what she’s saying is that Barack Obama did not and does not have a unifying ideological view of how the world works or how the world should work and this has handicapped him. This combines with - or possibly causes - Obama to be timid in going after what he wants and even in arguing for his desired outcomes.
I agree - this is my view of Obama. He lacks a coherent view of what he wants to have happen, how to get there, and - most important - how all the pieces have to fit together to get him there; in addition, he appears unable or unwilling to take the heat for what he believes in perhaps because he doesn’t believe strongly in anything except himself. The result is the kind of half-hearted, piecemeal legislation we see in ObamaCare. It is neither a huge overhaul that has a chance of working nor a modest, step by step fix with few unintended consequences. Instead it’s Frankenstein’s monster; almost any other outcome - including doing nothing and moving to a Canadian system - would be better than what Obama’s combination of ideological laziness, political ineptitude, intellectual shallowness, and general incompetence have given us.
What Happened to Change We Can Believe In? - Frank Rich:
But the most relentless drag on a chief executive who promised change we can believe in is even more ominous. It’s the country’s fatalistic sense that the stacked economic order that gave us the Great Recession remains not just in place but more entrenched and powerful than ever.
An astonishing piece since Rich spends much of it chastising the Obama Administration for its failure to “unstack” the economic order but winds up by concluding that much of the blame rests with the GOP, its deep pockets backers, and the mean old Supreme Court. (As an aside, blaming the last makes me incredibly weary. I’m sick of hearing that when the Supreme Court does something a commentator agrees with , it’s rightfully the ultimate arbiter of our fates and perfectly justified in riding roughshod over elected officials and the wishes of the voters but when it does something that same commentator disagrees with, it’s a captured and corrupt political cesspool. Pick one.)
Obama the snob - Michael Gerson.
The Psychology of the Taboo Trade-Off - Scientific American on sacred values versus secular ones - especially monetary ones.
Tea Party to the Rescue - Peggy Noonan. Of particular note is Maureen Turner’s explanation of how she ended up supporting the Tea Party: I have voted Democrat all my life, until I started listening to what Obama was promising and started wondering how the hell will this utopian dream be paid for?"
David Brooks is writing about Phillip Blond. I’d never heard of Blond but his ideas sound interesting since I have recently been discussing with an efriend the loss of the social web that holds society together. Since I’m not really blogging, I’m not going to do an extended analysis of Blond’s points but I do have a few thoughts on his piece in Prospect Magazine:
In the United States, one route to devolve power from a central government and monopolistic corporations is to re-empower the States. It’s not a full answer but it’s a start.
Blond quotes JB Priestly as saying:
the area of our lives under our own control is shrinking rapidly… politicians and senior civil servants are beginning to decide how the rest of us shall live.
I believe this conviction explains much of the vehemence of the reaction against the Democrat’s health care plan. There is something about the government telling us what we must buy that is qualitatively different from the government telling us we must pay taxes or telling us via regulation what we must not do. It is an order of magnitude shrinking of the “area of our lives under our own control”. Oddly enough, I believe a single-payer system funded by tax dollars would probably have produced less outrage: taxes are familiar to us all.
I believe Brooks has misunderstood the Tea Party movement and Blond (and possibly libertarianism) when he writes:
This confluence of crises has produced a surge in vehement libertarianism. People are disgusted with Washington. The Tea Party movement rallies against big government, big business and the ruling class in general. Even beyond their ranks, there is a corrosive cynicism about public action.
But there is another way to respond to these problems that is more communitarian and less libertarian. This alternative has been explored most fully by the British writer Phillip Blond.
It’s not at all clear to me that the Tea Party movement objects to all public action; rather they seem to object to public action on the part of the Federal government. It seems to me that Blond would applaud the Tea Party movements disgust with Washington. I read Blond as being distrustful of large, heavily centralized government and preferring devolution of power to a level closer to those whose lives are affected by that power:
if Conservatives are to take power from the market state and give it to the people, they must develop a full-blooded “new localism” which works to empower communities and builds new, vibrant local economies that can uphold the party’s civic vision.
I’m not sure the Tea Party movement would argue with that idea.
Be sure to read what Brooks refers to as “a separate essay”, Blond’s piece on his ResPublica website.
Finally, Brooks closes with:
This country, too, needs a fresh political wind. America, too, is suffering a devastating crisis of authority. The only way to restore trust is from the local community on up.
I believe there are very few politicians in Washington who have any interest in relinquishing Federal power to States, municipalities, or any other government or non-government entity. However, of all the politicians who want to increase Washington’s power none wants to do so more than Barack Obama. I am unable to see how Brooks can square the conclusion he comes to in this essay with his continued admiration for the President.
Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t be blogging but I couldn’t resist saying something about this; the post saying it is quick and easy to write; and I’m feeling quite snippy today so this is a good outlet.
Today on Meet The Press, Tom Friedman said:
Well, this is what worries me, that, you know, I've been saying for awhile, Tom [Brokaw], there's only one thing worse than a one-party autocracy, the Chinese form of government, and that's one-party democracy. You know, in China, if the leadership can get around to an enlightened decision, it can order it from the top down, OK? Here, when you have one-party democracy, one-party ruling, basically, and the other party just basically saying no, every solution is suboptimal, you know. And when your chief competitor in the world can order optimal and you can only produce suboptimal, because what happens, you know, whether it's health care or the energy bill, votes one through 50 cost you a lot, votes 50 to 59 cost you a fortune, and vote 60, his name's Ben Nelson. And by the time you've made all those compromises, you end up with the description David had of the healthcare bill, which is this Rube Goldberg contraption. I really hope--I hope, personally, I hope it passes, I hope it works, but I can't tell you I think it's optimal.
Friedman is sort of half right although his passion for all things China has blinded him to the real issue here. It’s not that democracy is unworkable because we have one party ruling and one party saying no. The problem is more likely one of the following:
1) The more government does, the less well democracy works. This means we either need to make government do less or change our form of government.
2) Democracy does not work well when there are two sharply opposed views of what government should be doing and how it should be doing it. This means we either need to divide up the country or change our form of government.
These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive and I believe that at this point they’re actually mutually reinforcing. We do have two sharply opposed views of what government should be doing and how it should be doing it. Since one of those views is that government should be doing a lot less it automatically means that the more one side tries to get government to do the less co-operative the other side becomes.
So perhaps the solution is to divide up the country. One side gets a nation where government does a lot; the trade-off is that they have a less democratic form of government so “optimal” solutions can be imposed by wise technocrats. The other side gets a nation where government doesn’t do much; the trade-off is that they get a stronger democracy under which people and parties can disagree sharply without worrying about derailing an “enlightened decision”.
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Notes:
How weird was the last segment of Meet The Press this morning? Tom Brokaw and Tom Friedman chit-chatting about their weekend talks and their train trips while poor David Brooks must have felt like the class nerd who ended up at the table with all the cool kids.
Yes, I know Friedman is complaining about the Republicans saying no at the same time he’s bemoaning the horse-trading the Democrat leadership had to do with other Democrats to get that 60th vote. So he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Big surprise.
No, the two opposing sides are not the Democrats and the Republicans. Both parties want the government to do more, get bigger, spend more money, etc., although perhaps in slightly different ways. The two opposing sides are the entrenched political parties and the people who are sick of both of them. It looks like we have a struggle between the Democrats and the Republicans because the Republicans are hoping to regain control of Congress by pretending to side with those who simply want government to stop trying to do everything.
Yes, I know we have a representative democracy not a straight democracy.
No, I don’t think talking about splitting up the country is treason. I don’t think talking about a State seceding is treason either. Provided the country as whole agreed this sort of thing was the correct course of action and it happened peacefully and through some legal process, I don’t see any Constitutional problem with it.
Reclusive Leftist has up a post about Harry Reid’s proposal to create a public option as part of health reform but let States opt-out. She is understandably irate that no one seems to know exactly how the opt-out would work but what caught my attention was her concluding paragraph:
And this whole states-opting-out thing is bullshit. Do people in red states not have rights?
Well, yes. And one of the rights they have - or are supposed to have - is to elect a governor and a State legislature to make decisions about what happens inside their State.
Let’s assume that everyone who voted for Barack Obama wants a public option in health reform. That means 53% of the people in the country want a public option. Okay, the majority of people want a public option which means the rest of us get it too. That’s fine, that’s how democracy works.
But what if the majority of the people in a particular State don’t want a public option? Why shouldn’t the the State opt out? If you follow the link in RL’s post you find yourself in a FiredogLake post that claims States which decide to opt out are “disenfranchising” the people who live in those States. But the opt-out will happen at the behest of the State governor and/or the State legislature both of which have been elected by the majority of voters in the State. If we go along with RL’s logic we must argue that if 53% of the people in the country want a policy everyone in every State must live under that policy - even if 95% of the people in a particular State don’t want to. But why? Some decisions cannot be variable across States - whether we belong to the United Nations, for example, or the use of the Armed Forces. But if a decision can vary across States I don’t see why we should insist on uniformity.
States making their own decisions drives people like Reclusive Leftist crazy but to me that’s the most brilliant idea embedded in our form of government. In a country this big and this diverse not everyone wants the same things and that’s where the States come in. They provide a means by which we can be a really big country and yet not try to force eveyone into the same mold. If the 53% of the people who want a public option are spread evenly across the country then every State will opt in. If the 53% of the people who want a public option are concentrated in “blue” States and the 47% who don’t are concentrated in “red” States then our form of Federalism lets us give most of the 53% what they want without forcing it on all of the 47% who don’t want it.
I know those who called themselves “progressives” will never buy the argument that States should have any say in such an important matter - or possibly in any matter - but there’s also a purely practical political side to this. Reclusive Leftist - and the articles at FireDogLake she links to - are concerned about the people in those red States. Red States have the highest percent of uninsured so they argue it’s wrong to allow their governors and/or state legislatures to cut them off from access to a public option. But if the public option works as well as its supporters believe it will, the States that opted out will want to opt in before too long. If I supported a public option, I’d rather pass a strong bill even if it didn’t include all the States than a weak bill that forced everyone to participate. Then I’d make sure States that opted out today could opt in further down the road, sit back, and wait for those silly red States to realize how much better off they’d be if they did it my way.
Of course the same logic applies to those who think a public option is the first step on the road to perdition. If the public option works as badly as its opponents believe it will, they can sit back and wait for the States that opted in to realize how much better things are going in the States that opted out. So if I opposed the public option, I’d make it my business to insure the opt out clause lets States opt out of the costs as well as the benefits and that States which opted in today can opt out further down the road. Then I’d sit back and wait for those silly blue States to realize how much better off they’d be if they’d listened to me in the first place.
I wrote yesterday about President Obama’s recent weekly address in which he threatened the anti-trust exemption for health insurance companies. There are two other aspects of Obama’s talk that also concern me: his dislike of profits and his concern that people will make the “wrong” decision.
The White House summary of his address highlights both those aspects.
In his weekly address, President Barack Obama praised the progress that has been made on health insurance reform, and spoke out against those who defend the status quo in order to score political points and protect their profits. With reform the closest it has ever been to becoming law, the insurance companies are rolling out deceptive ads, paying for misleading studies, and flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists. Now, Washington needs to serve the American people, not the special interests.
Private companies are supposed to make a profit; that’s why they exist. If the President believes that health insurance should be the province of non-profits he should simply say so: that’s a perfectly reasonable position. Instead he attempts to keep one foot in each camp. He is unwilling to back the elimination of for-profit health insurance companies but he clearly believes that it is wrong for an insurance company to make a profit:
The fact is, the insurance industry is making this last-ditch effort to stop reform even as costs continue to rise and our health care dollars continue to be poured into their profits, bonuses, and administrative costs that do nothing to make us healthy – that often actually go toward figuring out how to avoid covering people. And they’re earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exception from our anti-trust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.
It seems crystal clear from this that Obama believes a profit-making health insurance company is unacceptable. He should simply say so and push for either a single-payer system or the forced conversion of all health insurance companies to non-profits. As it is he is supporting the worst of both worlds: the continued existence of for-profit companies which are considered pariahs if they make a profit.
The other aspect of Obama’s remarks that troubles me is his concern that people will make the “wrong” decision. He is essentially arguing:
- the health reform bill that is going to be written by Congress is the right thing to do;
- the insurance companies are lying about what that legislation will do;
- the insurance companies are spending money to lobby legislators to vote against the legislation; and
- “folks on cable television who know better” are repeating insurance company lies.
As a result, Obama is afraid that Congressmen will be misled by the lies and tempted by the money and vote against the health reform bill that is going to be written.
This is distressing. Obama’s formulation leaves no room for a legislator (or for that matter an insurance company executive or a private citizen) who truly believes the health reform bill that is going to be written is not the “right” decision. Anyone who opposes the bill must be doing so either because he is so stupid he believes the lies of the insurance industry or because he is so venal he would vote against what he knows to be right in order to profit financially. There is no place in Obama’s formulation for a Congressman who prefers smaller government to larger; who thinks mandates are unConstitutional; who believes a different plan would be far superior; or who believes the health reform bill that is going to be written will end up costing money we can’t afford to spend. No, anyone who opposes the health reform bill that is going to be written must be stupid or venal or both because after all anyone who is intelligent and honest will clearly see that the health care bill that is going to be written is the only “right” thing to do.*
This is an attempt to poison the well. Those who oppose the bill cannot be doing so for valid reasons because the bill is clearly the “right” thing. Therefore anyone who opposes it must be doing so because they’ve been lied to or bribed. And of course the statement that “the bill is clearly the ‘right’ thing” cannot be challenged because anyone who challenges it is either stupid enough to believe lies or has been bought off.
This approach is very dangerous although hardly unique to Obama. It delegitimizes all political opposition. Ideological differences are recast as cover for stupidity and venality. Differing interpretations of data, different predictions about an uncertain future must always be lies. The idea that honest people can honestly disagree is found ridiculous. It is the very antithesis of John McCain’s request:
... if an American feels the decision was unwise, then they should state their opposition, and argue for another course. It is your right and your obligation. I respect you for it. I would not respect you if you chose to ignore such an important responsibility. But I ask that you consider the possibility that I, too, am trying to meet my responsibilities, to follow my conscience, to do my duty as best as I can, as God has given me light to see that duty.
Americans deserve more than tolerance from one another, we deserve each other's respect ...
If we truly reach the point where we believe those who disagree with us about how the country should be governed cannot possibly have any valid reasons for doing so; if we decide that all those who do not believe as we do are either stupid or venal; then we are one short step away from excluding our opponents from the political arena. If we know what is right and they cannot possibly have any legitimate reason to think otherwise, why should we even let them speak much less let them vote? After all, once we know what is right we really don’t need to hear what anyone else thinks.
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* I suspect that Obama does not intend his denunciation to extend to those who argue against the health reform bill that will be written because they prefer a single-payer system or a public option. I don’t think Obama would consider people who support those positions either stupid or venal. I imagine he would consider them very smart and very honest - but unfortunately unrealistic.
I’m going to start with something really, really simple: Roman Polanski. Thank goodness Kate Harding at Salon has saved me the from the horrendous ickiness of actually writing anything substantive about this by saying the only thing that needs to be said:
Roman Polanski raped a child.
For those who want the longer version of Harding:
There is evidence -- albeit purely anecdotal, in this case -- that only the most debased crapweasel thinks "I didn't know she was 13!" is a reasonable excuse for raping a child, much less continuing to rape her after she's said no repeatedly.
Period. The only possible further discussion needed is about why anyone one who claims not to be a debased crapweasel would ever even have worked with Polanski* much less be defending him at this point. Having that discussion would, however, involve almost as much horrendous ickiness as writing about the original incident. In fact, it might involve even more horrendous ickiness. So I’m going to pass on that discussion and stick with:
Roman Polanski raped a child.
Think of this as a kind of mantra you can repeat endlessly in the unlikely event you actually know anyone who wants to defend Polanski.
*****
* I paid no attention to the Polanski rape story when in broke in 1977 (I was starting graduate school and nothing outside of the university existed) and in fact it became confused in my mind with Polanski’s affair with then-fifteen-year-old Nastassia Kinski. I thus mentally filed Polanski as distasteful but not depraved enough to boycott. Once he was arrested in Switzerland and I realized the nature of his actual crime, I was horrified to discover that two actors whose work I like very much - Harrison Ford and Johnny Depp - both made movies with him after the rape. I was even more horrified to realize that I’d seen both movies. It makes me feel ill to realize that some of my money may be going to pay for Polanski’s defense.
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