1) As Dean over at Just Cuz reports, it seems as if there's been a shameful lack of attention to the horror that took place in Bali. He links to the estimable Tim Blair, and I'd follow those links were I you.
2) Paul Fallon recently sent me an article which (once again) demonstrates something that far too few people in North America know:
Namely, that Northern Ireland's IRA is a terrorist organization with extensive ties to the PLO and other international terror groups. Remember that the next time you come across some jackass collecting money for "Northern Irish Aide" in Irish taverns here in the U.S.
3) Also from the Fallon File: Paul recently sent me a note asking why the NRA seems strangely silent in the face of recent calls for "ballistic fingerprinting" (a.k.a. gun registration-plus), and pointed to some political cartoons from the usual suspects (Toles, Oliphant, etc.). I pointed out that they haven't been all that silent, but their position isn't easily rendered in cartoon form. If you check their web site, they rely mostly on a Newsday article by a former BATF agent to make their case.
4) So now North Korea admits what many of us have suspected all along: that they have an aggressive program of nuclear weapons development. Some reports say that the White House is "stunned," but some of us suspect that the only thing they're stunned about is the fact that the world's most psychotic regime is admitting it outright.
5) I've been meaning for weeks to link to this excellent article from lesbianoid firebrand Camille Paglia, a staunch left-wing intellectual and Nader-voter who devastatingly lays out the case for how morally bankrupt and intellectually stale and insular the Left has become. Then I came across this excellent "goodbye to all that" piece by Ron Rosenbaum, and it seemed about time to stop waiting.
Best line from Paglia? "When they call for the redistribution of wealth, leftists are endorsing an authoritarian system that, wherever it has been tried, has resulted in economic stagnation and a sapping of cultural energy. Such concentration of power in the State creates its own tyrannical master class. "
Even in a democracy? Yes, my friends, even in a democracy.
Best line from Rosenbaum? "Goodbye to a culture of blindness that tolerates, as part of 'peace marches,' women wearing suicide-bomber belts as bikinis.... Goodbye to the brilliant thinkers of the Left who believe it's the very height of wit to make fun of George W. Bush's intelligence--thereby establishing, of course, how very, very smart they are."
Rosenbaum makes only one mistake: suggesting that people on the right haven't confronted their racist elements. Oh yes they have, Mr. Rosenbaum, and they've done so quite effectively over the last couple of generations. But that's something that, like many of your fellow apostates, you'll probably discover for yourself. You might also discover that the Left has generally done a piss-poor job of cleaning its own house when it comes to such things.
Anyway, both articles are worth reading. I have long maintained that there is a place in this world for a sane and thoughtful left--we just seem to be missing one. Is it because, as some are now saying, that the Left today only seeks enemies, and really doesn't believe in anything except "America sucks" and "stop the radical right?"
Dean, I have to ask why you insist upon referring to Ms. Paglia as "lesbianoid"? Are we so fascinated with categorizing people we have to include all the details of their personal life? And why do we feel the need to specifcally mention gay/lesbian or "minority" status, such as "Latina commentator, etc" or "Black columnist, etc"? Doesn't that defeat the purpose?
Should we perhaps refer to a writer as "Fred Verkoff, straight conservative firebrand with libertarian leanings and an occasional dip into the pond of centralized command economy"? Or perhaps (since sexual preference has been defined as a "choice" these days) we should include all preferences?
How about: "Joanne Cheng, bisexual left-leaning atheist vegan, drives a Volvo, enjoys Jean-Pierre Rampal, Claude Bolling, likes walks in the rain, people with a sense of humor, favorite color blue, always votes for Leiberman, writer"? And let's not forget about height, weight, and astrological sign. Heh.
Or how about just "Camille Paglia, firebrand"? I'll let you have the "firebrand" as it refers specifically to her writing.
I think we should all just stick with things like names, and pick up the rest as we go along.
Signed,
"Casey, straight, on the rocks with a splash of soda and a preference for history"....
You're right of course, Casey.
I do it mostly because it amuses me, Casey. Especially since she refuses to fit into the neat categories people would like to put her into. Just like me. That's what I like about her.
It's mostly my own little joke. ;-) But I like Paglia, have no doubt about that. I like her a lot. Even though I disagree with her on some major issues, I find her thoroughly enjoyable to read about 100% of the time. ;-)
What a phrase "morally bankrupt and intellectually stale," as it is an erudite way of calling your opponent a freakin' moron. Dean, what is your definition of "the Left"? In the comments sections of some blogs, that would seem to include all Democrats, Northeast Republicans, Canada and Europe. Let's agree for every Cynthia McKinney, there's a Bob Barr, for every Rev. Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton, a Rev. Falwell/Robertson, and for every idiotic far left columnist, there's Ann Coulter.
In regards to the quote from Ms. Paglia, I would point out that our current economic doldrums occured not because of transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, but from middle and upper income individuals (anyone who owns stock, stock mutual funds, or participate in a pension plan which owns stock) to the extremely wealthy (talk about a master class, these "Masters of the Universe").
Let me hazard a prediction (which I'm sure others have made)- in the next couple of years, there will be increased and intense animosity from liberals, centrists, and "Crunchy" conservatives against "corporatist" (sic), those who put profit and increased share prices above everything else.
Well no, GP, let us not agree.
A) Pat Robertson, whatever his problems, is not a tenth as horrid as either Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. Jerry Falwell might be, in that his excoriations toward gay people are so thickhanded and stupid that he drives as much of a wedge between them and straights as Jesse Jackson does between whites and blacks. On the other hand, Jackson and Sharpton are both corrupt, and Falwell is not that.
B) Ann Coulter is no more obnoxious than Maureen Dowd, who actually wins Pulitzers. She's also no worse than Molly Ivins, Paul Krugman, James Carville, Michael Moore, or a whole host of left-wing pundits I could think of. Indeed, I'd say she raises so much left-wing ire because she talks just like Michael Moore or Maureen Dowd, and people on the Left simply aren't used to being treated so shabbily.
C) We have not had any transfer of wealth from middle income voters to the super-rich. The extremely wealthy took as big a hit from the stock market crash as anyone else. So, this is a null hypothesis.
D) I'm not aware of any political group which puts profit and increased share prices about everything else politically. So, again, another null statement.
As for what I mean by "the Left," I mean left-leaning newspapers, academia, think tankdom, and the punditry.
In terms of domestic politics, it means the Democratic Party, which generally reflects this lack of intellectual vibrancy. The party has pretty much been idea-free since Bill Clinton first ran for President in 1992.
This isn't a way of calling leftists dumb. It's to point out what I think is a screaming intellectual crisis. I don't think denial is the way to handle the problem, either.
Let us not avoid the truth here. The USA is the strongers nation in the history of the planet. This is so because our econimic system encourages "those who put profit and increased share prices above everything else" to do exactly that.
Those who advocate a kinder, gentler capitalism should check out the economic fortunes of European corporations in the last decade or so, or the amount of criticism levelled upon giants like Bertelsman who insist upon profit: they are forced to relocate here! I think that most who desire a redistribution of wealth are merely those who never figured out how to make it honestly.
And Dean, one more thing. Lesbianoid? She self-identifies as lesbian frequently. Anyone who objects to your referring to her that way should take it up with Camille, not you.
Two things, Michael:
1) I would agree that people who run corporations should put profits first. Although the smart ones have learned that treating employees well and not ripping of their customers is better for profits in the long run.
Quibbles aside, we were talking about political movements. Corporate chieftains are not a political movement.
Some conservatives would do well to watch the impression they give with their rhetoric, but anyone who looks deeply at even the most diehard free-market conservatives knows that they believe in more than "corporate profits uber alles."
2) You're right that Paglia regularly and quite fiercely identifies herself as part of the gay community. Paglia also makes waves all the time in the more P.C. segments of the gay community because she refuses to stop saying that she enjoys having sex with men. She also regularly critizes misandrist lesbians and feminists. Thus my little joke. Like I said, I do like her.
Dean, thanks for your reply. Regarding Pat Robertson, I think he also made a statement regarding "feminists, abortionists, & homosexuals" being responsible for 9/11. He has made enough wild statements in the past to put him in the same league as Falwell.
In regards to Ann Coulter, I would say that pre- "Slander," she was just another conservative pundit.. Her recent intemperant remarks certainly has made her stand out (although she has kept quite a low profile since the NYT remark).
As for your C&D comments, well, where did the money go? What happen to 35%+ of the cash I put into my stock funds? Yeah, I know...some of the trillions of dollars that has been lost was paper wealth, some was squandered on Friday office parties of champagne and foie gras, some is lying in the ground in unused bandwidth, and some went to fund enormous stock options for top level management. I can think of two parties which greatly aided the latter: the Republicans and the Democrats.
In your list of "the Left," which newspapers do you include? USA Today? For academia, do you mean, like Harvard? Does that include the med school, or the business school? Or the chemistry department? Which think tanks?
Finally (my fingers are getting tired), what do you consider to be the great, vibrant political or economic ideas of the last couple of decades?
1) Robertson was interviewing Falwell, and it was Falwell who said those idiot things. Robertson agreed, and then the next day retracted and apologized.
2) Any money in the stock market is theoretical. Reports in the WSJ and other reputable sources show clearly that most "the rich" got soaked with the rest of us. There is no greedy overclass who cacklingly emptied your 401(K). My goodness, weren't you warned that this could happen? If you invest in stocks you should be thinking in terms of decades, not this quarter. Bear markets happen. If you invest in stocks, you do it because you believe the Bulls outrun the Bears in the long run.
3) Repeated surveys show that perhaps 10% of college professors vote Republican. You can do with that what you will. As a college student I can tell you that almost anything at the undergrad level which isn't strictly about math or hard science is ridiculously slanted.
I don't have a list of all the newspapers in the country or how their editorial boards lean--some lean conservative, some lean left. [shrug]
4) Ideas from the Right: You can thank conservative and libertarian think tanks, and a Republican named Jack Kemp, for the very existance of that 401(K) you're invested in. You can thank them for the return of the 70 mph speed limit, term limits, parental notification on abortion, liberalized concealed carry laws, legal protection for infants born after a botched abortion, tort reform efforts, charter schools, experiments with school vouchers and other choice systems, flat tax proposals, social security privatization proposals, proposals to reform medicare to buy private plans for people rather than the government-run system, work requirements for welfare, attempts to eliminate the race discrimination hidden in many Affirmative Action programs, oppostion to campus speech codes--I can go on.
Whether you like any of those ideas or not is a completely separate question as to where they came from, or their dominance of the national debate.
What's the Left got? Well, there is Kyoto. And they did come up with the hate crimes laws. Price controls on drugs and energy. Can't think of much else, can you?
What we mostly seem to have today is "conservatives" who are challenging the status quo and trying to reform the system at all levels, and "liberals" who are fighting tooth and nail against most proposed changes.
Dean, thanks for your second reply. I'll try to be brief, as this is the weekend. Of course I'm in the stock market for the long haul. However, I found it disconcerting to read Holman Jenkins of the WSJ saying that noone should believe analysts and that index funds are the best way to go. If that's true, why even bother reading the WSJ? It was also disconcerting to see major corporations committing accounting fraud. Unfortunately (according to a WSJ poll), the public views the Republican party as being more favorable to corporate interests (which isn't necessarily bad, as long as the corporations are acting in the shareholders' best interest).
In your list of "Ideas from the Right," I would say that the big ideas you've listed (Social Security privitization, flat income tax) have been scrutinized and rejected. Other ideas (public school experiments, Medicare experiments, term limits) have had very mixed results. Most of the rest, except for welfare and tort reform, are small ticket, but emotional, items.
So what does "the Left" have? I guess they came up with the Clean Air/Water act, anti-discrimination laws, funding for school lunch programs, funding for more basic science and and medical research, more money for public education, Family leave acts,etc. The only recent big idea I can recall, Universal Health Care, was stillborn.
Listen, I supported welfare reform because during the debate, every weekday morning I would hear another story (on NPR) of some single mon with 3 kids who never worked a day in her life. Just what you want to hear when brushing your teeth and tying your tie. As David Brooks recently said, the last six years have basically been a tie. Virtually all politics are at a tactical level, to gain or reclaim a slim majority, and any big idea will need bipartisan support, and get watered down in the process.
Thanks for you intelligent replies. This pro balanced budget Democrat is now goin' SUV shopping.
Heh, heh. Most of those ideas from the Left you mention are 30 years old at least, GP. ;-)
You're darned right that most ideas have to get a certain amount of broad political support. The Right's been very effective at finding ideas that get just that kind of support, and that woo enough moderate Democrats to support them that they pass. It's why they've been so successful--they've been playing the democracy game like it's supposed to be played!
I gotta say a couple of things though: The 401K has led to the unprecedented situation where a majority of American voters are now invested in the stock market. It's the most breathtaking political change of the last generation at least--hardly a small item at all. And you can thank Jack Kemp and a handful of "right wing" think tanks for it. ;-)
Also, Social security privatization is alive and well as a political issue, and remains surprisingly popular in the face of the current bear market. In fact, I'd be willing to bet you that we will see social security privatization, and that the only question is "when" and not "if"--and a good thing, too, since the current system robs from our children and rips off our elderly. But the longer we wait, the more burden we put on our kids. That's the only shame about it.
Also, school choice has indeed had very "mixed" results--between moderate improvements and overwhelming improvements. ;-) And it's expanding all the time, despite the best efforts of the reactionary Left to stop it.
The Democrats are on the wrong side of too many issues like this. It's why I left them. I respect people who stay with them, hoping they'll change, like Ben Wattenberg and Ron Radosh and Camille Paglia, but I think there's no denying what an incoherent mess they are these days.
They either need to come up with some new ideas or steal some from the Republicans--as Clinton did so very effectively. ;-)
Dean
Dean, thank you for your reply. I would suggest that the "Left's" 30 years old ideas are now so popular that they survive 70-80% intact and are quite resistant to being gutted (really...who's against clean air and water, except the polluters). Also, I'm not sure 401K's are the revolution you make them out to be. Plenty of defined benefit pension funds invested in the stocks prior to 401K's, as well as did insurance companies. So perhaps 401K's merely allows the individual the opportunity to screw things up him/herself and to see on a daily or even an hourly basis how their investments are doing.
Regarding Social Security privatization, not only is this issue dead for the next several years, but republicans are fleeing this suddenly radioactive concept. Can you find one republican in a close race advocating SS privatization? Let's be real- the problem with both Social Security and Medicare is that people are living longer and longer. I'll make one last point regarding Social Security. Any person who is depending primarily on Social Security for retirement and cannot or will not set aside 10-20% of their net income should get a defined benefit type of plan, and should not be exposed to the ups and downs of the stock market. Paternalistic? Yeah, but at least they won't be homeless on the street.
Finally, who isn't for better public schools? If vouchers and charter schools are as good as you say, then it should be easy for you to provide the evidence that is so overwhelming that all moderate democrats would switch over. On the other hand, when buying houses in the past, I have found that being in a good school district adds a premium to the sale price. No realtor has told me as a selling point the public schools suck, but they have a nice charter school. IMHO, the secret to good schools are a) a good tax base, to buy modern textbooks and computers and hire good teachers, and b) having parents who understand the value of education and actually make their kids study.
P.S. What a rascal Clinton is! I wish he had kept it in his jeans, but if his marraige is a genuine as Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (i.e. not at all), why not?
Ya know, GP, you're making my point for me. [grin]
The Left won many of its biggest arguments 30 years ago. (It also lost some of its biggest arguments, and some still can't get over that.) But anyway, Democrats are mostly living in the past today, relying on old ideas. Their primary arguments almost always boil down to one thing:
Preserve and extend the status quo.
All of your arguments really come down to that. They're very old-fashioned conservative arguments: "No one needs that." "That'll never work." "Oh that's not important." "That's a terrible idea, we shouldn't even try it." Even the one "reform" you propose is, in your own words, paternalistic. ;-)
That's really my point: the political Left doesn't doesn't stand for much right now, except "stop the radical right." And the far left adds "America sucks" to that equation.
Of course, you can argue that we need people who fight against change and defend the status quo. They help prevent society from going too crazy with too many major changes at once. So I guess it's good that the Democrats fit the role of the status-quo reactionaries right now.
I think we'd be better off with a vibrant left, embracing some of the better ideas from the so-called "Right" and trying to be just as creative, really engaging in debate rather than just putting the kybosh on new and creative ideas. But maybe we always have to have the liberal reformers vs. the conservative stick-in-the-muds. Maybe American politics are just wired that way ;-)
By the way, did you pick up that SUV? My wife really wants a Durango!
The White House is not surprised by any of Mr. Kim Jong Il's shenanigans. If I knew that North Korea was developing nuclear weapons over the past twenty years then so did the White House. The White House is instead building on its war against terrorism by diplomatically isolating N. Korea. Mr. Il will be forced to forego his weapons program soon enough. The civilized world will be consumed by terrorism if does not fight it. Any nation in the civilized world sponsoring terrorism as Mr. Saddam Hussein does will suffer his fate, too.
It is very revealing that The Nation loses Mr. Hitchens the same month the left loses Roger Rosenbaum. Perhaps citizens, and eventually voters, will see the loony left for what it is, a jingoistic clan void of any new ideas who survive only by demonizing their opponents.