How the Right Has Won

“There’s much talk these days about Democrats needing to come up with “new ideas” to slow the Republican juggernaut. Perhaps first they should dust off some old ones, like solidarity.”

No, not “new ideas”, nor even “solidarity” first, which doesn’t mean much unless the Dems can show (not just say) that they have something to offer that’s likely to be an improvement on what the Reps are carrying out.

But a few old ideas will do. For example, 1) increasing tax breaks for small businesses, 2) energetically enforcing ethics rules in the legislature (there’s some of this now, but not enough, and it’s so tainted by partisan prejudice), 3) strict religious neutrality as a guiding principle of law, both statutory and Consitutional, 4) building or re-building relationships with important allies (now is an opportunity vis a vis the EU, after the Iranian president’s recent intemperate remarks about Israel), 5) using America’s media clout to denounce, marginalize, and humiliate dictators and oppressor-parties, 6) slashing and vetoing porky spending projects, 7) creating a progressive but rational tax system reflecting the idea that those who have more are expected to pay more, while not eviscerating nor really even harming the investor class (i.e. no more tax cuts aimed at the uber-rich), 8) using publicity, legal interference, and behavioral example to undermine the worldwide trade in arms of every type, 9) promoting safe, intelligent and effective means for family planning around the globe (i.e. not just a fixation upon abstinence), and 10) developing non-petroleum fuel sources for as many applications as physicists and chemical engineers can devise.

Three new ideas could be 1) investing the needed funds and personnel toward stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, and 2), as an adjunct to 1), formulating and sticking to a plan to get US troops out of those places in a logical, prompt manner. A fine 3rd idea would be to end computerized counting of ballots. No electronic data system is hack-proof, tamper-proof, or able to be empirically verified by the hands and minds of human counters. Use 100% recycled, low- or no-bleach paper ballots.

Just a few suggestions. After all, it’s not as if the Dems are the clearinghouse for great ideas or great leaders at the moment. The solidarity can come after, IF they’re able to put together anything other than a nebulous anti-Bush line.

Maybe they can adapt Reagan’s old campaign question: “Are you [voters] better off after Rep dominance of the federal branches of government, or not?” Then they’ll have to show they’ve got something real to replace what’s in hand now, and that has an outside chance of attracting voters who have more motivating them than a distaste for Bush et al.

2006 is right around the corner…

The old saying about the duck, “if it walks like a duck....” etc, applies to “democrats” too. Quite a few vote with the republicans in the house and senate, on tax cuts, patriot acts, bankruptcy bills, CAFTA, etc, etc. They are, in effect, republicans, and if we could get rid of them we might find that those remaining are actually a pretty cohesive, united bunch. I recently told a fundraising caller from the DCC (I may have the initials wrong) that I wasn’t going to make good on my pledge this year out of disgust that so many of them voted for the bills mentioned, and more. Their presence in the party is why so many people see so little difference between the parties, and little reason to participate in “elections” pitting wealthy white men and their corporate sponsors against each other.

HOW THE LEFT HAS LOST should be the title.

Everything Aaron talks about is exactly why Democrats haven’t made any gains in ten years.

The solution will not be to hope “that the masses will wake up and suddenly take an interest in politics,”

No, of course not. Because that is indicative of a Party in denial. In fact, the masses are awake and are flocking to the other party because the Party is 1) asleep, 2) stuck in Back to the Future, 3) fantasizing of past glories, 4) take your pick.

Medicare, Social Security, welfare, all good ideas, in their time. They were infinitely better than what they replaced, because there was nothing to replace.

But they weren’t the best and greatest. They are showing their age. Social Security has become any but secure, mortgaging children’s futures for their grandparents. Welfare created the permanent (and expensive) “nanny state”. Even the other party is afraid to touch the out-of-control Medicare costs.

And to roll out the unions as an example of pure Democratic principles while chortling about gross Republican indiscretions is funny. I guess Aaron isn’t old enough to remember the union corruption and underworlds links in the 60s and 70s.

Most Americans do remember. Especially the union membership. Maybe the recent rendering asunder of the AFL-CIO that we are hearing is an aftershock of intransigent union leadership that (still) isn’t listening to its rank-and-file.

hmmm.. Replace “union” with “party” and “AFL-CIO” with “DFL” in that last paragraph, and maybe we can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The Republicans have sure seen the light.

In these times, the progressive faction of the Republican Party, pioneered by Kemp and Gingrich and personified by the Bushs’ “Thousand Points of Light” and “Compassionate Conservatism” has stolen the Democratic thunder. Laugh all you want at George & Son’s simplistic phrases, but they are the ones laughing all the way to the White House.

The Democratic Party has got to stop being so conservative in their political actions.

Kuya, Cline -

You are being rational again.  You are wasting your time again.

Discussing politics and economics with a Liberal is like discussing nuclear physics with a turnip.

There is a fundamental mismatch in comprehension between Liberals and Conservatives.  Thus, a Liberal can argue forcefully, passionately, earnestly that actions by a fascist dictatorship in WWII were terrible, just terrible; but identical actions by leftist dictatorships over a period of eighty years, resulting in innocent deaths an order of magnitude greater than anything the fascists ever did, do not intrude into Liberal thinking.  Not only that, Liberals falsely identify Conservatives with fascists, and proudly identify themselves with leftists, with no sense of comprehension, irony, or shame. 

Another aspect: Liberals compare Bush to Hitler and Conservatives to brownshirts.  But most of the violence in the 2004 election seemed to be coming from leftist operatives and union thugs.  The American Center for Voting Rights (AC4VR) recently issued a scholarly report on the 2004 election entitled Democrat Operatives Far More Involved In Voter Intimidation And Suppression In 2004, Thousands Of Americans Disenfranchised By Vote Fraud On Election Day.  Examples of dastardly Democratic deeds abound, including the slashed tires in Milwaukee, the phone calls giving false times and places for voting in Ohio, and Republican campaign worker in Florida who had his arm broken by union thugs.  Other reports of Democratic mischief include gunshots fired, break-ins, thefts, and destruction of campaign signs and property.  If Republicans were involved in electoral misdeeds, it seems to have gone virtually unmentioned in the Liberal Press.  So who is acting like a brownshirt? 

The AC4VR report came out in August, but it is just now gaining attention.  It’s a good read if you want to know what is going on in the world of electoral politics. 

http://www.ac4vr.com/news/acvrnews080205.html

Of the multiple natural and unnatural disasters that have befallen in the last four years, all of them were handled in a cool and professional manner - except Katrina in Louisiana.  Louisiana is blessed with a corrupt and incompetent Democratic Party government.  The death toll from Katrina in Louisiana was far higher than necessary.  If the emergency plans for hurricane evacuation had been followed by Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin, the buses that were not mobilized would have removed tens of thousands of evacuees to safer parts, saving lots of lives.  The Democrats solution to this problem - blame President Bush.  In fact, President Bush does take responsibility, as befits a Commander-in-Chief, and Democratic incompetence in this manner will not happen again.  But Democrats are resourceful little illigitimi, as seen in their twisting of the truth as regards their own election fraud.  Be alert.

Kenneth D. Brown’s comment,

“I recently told a fund raising caller from the DCC (I may have the initials wrong) that I wasn’t going to make good on my pledge this year out of disgust that so many of them voted for the bills mentioned, and more.”
--------------------

How similar to my experience. 

First Delay and now Reynolds have offered the position “Honorary Chairman of the Business Advisory Council” to advise the President on small business issues. Twice they verbally denied it is a fund raising ploy — twice the written details proved it is just that.

From the website:  http://www.businessadvisorycouncil.org/bac_contents/membership/

“We will spend in excess of $3.6 million recruiting broadbased support, and an additional $2.5 million in advertising. Most of these funds must come from our Honorary Chairmen. Your gifts are the seed money needed to create the grassroots support that can finally lead to a breakthrough on health care reform, debt reduction, social security, tax and education reform, and sound economic policy that keeps this economy growing! “

(If you are going to lie, be sure you are good at it.)

I’m sending this to the RNCC, Tom Reynolds, in response to yet another plea for my “Republican Membership Dues”.

To the RNCC: I am not and have never been a member of any political party. President Bush received my vote twice, not because I thought he was so good, but because I felt the other choice was worse. He got my vote primarily due to his pledge of Homeland Security. However, he has continued to allow illegals free access to our country and its benefits. His proposal to solve this by creating a sub-minimum wage category is disgusting. We flunked the Katrina test.

The current administration is NOT conservative in any sense of the term. It has continued to sell out our jobs, our currency and our future, preferring to favor CEOs and their off-shoring of American jobs while they stuff their own pockets.

Eisenhower warned of the dangers in a military/industrial complex — what we now have is a Congressional/Business complex with little loyalty to the U.S. citizen. Societies are formed for the mutual benefit of all the members.

Our two party system has been merged and become an oligarchy.

It is hard to believe the conservative movement is falling apart right before our eyes, we’ve all become so conditioned to expect them to do the most egregious crap and get away with it.  It has been an era of Reagan’s 11th commandment, with extraordinary message discipline by all Republican factions keeping scrupulously focused on the single message a small circle of leadership has put forth.  But the news of late seems to indicate that is changing.  From the rare exposure of dirty laundry during the failed Miers nomination, through the burgeoning criminal scandals seeming to grow geometrically, to the unceasing quagmire of the Iraqi occupation, the Pres and his Repug Congress are losing more and more legitimacy in the minds of the populace.  Every day it seems more conservative pundits and leaders are distancing themselves from the Pres and each other.  It is conventional wisdom that at <40% approval they have reached bottom, but I wouldn’t count on it.  As a sense of betrayal and hopelessness descends on the Republican faithful, we may yet see a circular firing squad that makes the classic liberal sort seem tame, and voter discouragement of historical proportions.  True, maybe the Repugs will regroup and avoid catastrophe, but I can’t help but feel more hopeful than I have since, since.....well, ever.

It may not require any more sophisticated strategy by the Democrats to gain legislative majorities than to run a Good Government campaign.  Many, like WTH and Jay, who have been seduced into thinking they are conservatives when they are in fact moderate libertarians, may in fact awaken from their delusional slumbers and re-begin the human process of learning and growing.  Hey, even toxic proto-fascists like <a href="http://tinyurl.com/6ml3m> scorpy baby </a> could find themselves on the road to Damascus.

Damn! [url="http://tinyurl.com/6ml3m" ] scorpy baby
[/url]

What happened to our mark-ups. damn, damn, damn.

Jay, Kuya, WTH,

You all discuss in some manner a central issue in American politics today. Yet it seems that those who have much to gain politically are not really listening. They don’t seem to get it. Naturally I am talking about Dems here.

They have a chance to outline a clear agenda based on the good that was accomplished by the new deal and the great society. Again it would be an agenda based in this legacy but forward looking and adapted to the realities of our current globalized times. There seems to be an unnatural fixation on the past which is counterproductive and contrary to true progressivesim.

LB, I think you are right about Jay and WTH being more moderate LIbertarians than conservatives but perhaps it’s a semantic question. For many true conervatism is very much moderate libertatarianism.

Scorp, is there any point you want to make besides ‘communists commited atrocites and leftists supported communists.’ Did the comparison of neo-cons to fascists cut to clost to the bone for you? It really sounds like a case of protesting too much. You have responded in almost ever case on every subject with the same tirade. For christ sake, please come up with a new straw man or at least stay on topic!

You are correct, Neruda, it is a semantic question. But not entirely a distinction without a difference.  The modern Conservative Movement is an alliance of various generally conservative and more reactionary factions.  Each faction fervently believes it is the ‘true conservatism’.  Their cohesion has been based on a heretofore unquestioning party loyalty supported by simplistic semantic sloganeering that effectively obscures the lack of real ideas that underlies the movement as a whole.  As Sirota says, the cracks are beginning to show. 

The past success of this specious sloganeering and the gross mental confusion it has caused, not to mention their craven dependence on corporate funding, has convinced the moderate centrist power brokers of the DLC and DCCC that progressive ideas are unsalable to the voting public. Even though repeated surveys indicate that US citizens actually would support many progressive ideas by large margins, given the choice.

A song for scorpy:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

T.S. Eliot

“Of the multiple natural and unnatural disasters that have befallen in the last four years, all of them were handled in a cool and professional manner - except Katrina in Louisiana.”

You’re doin’ a great job Brownie, errr Scorpy.  Something tells me your favorite river has to be da Nile.

Neruda -

Historical socialism has three salient features:

1) A noble sounding philosophy - Marx.

2) Tens of millions of dead bodies - Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Tibet.

3) An economic operating philosophy that results in inefficiency and stagnation - Old Europe.

Current socialism has exactly one feature: a residuum of true believers that cling to inefficient and corrupt economic and social models, and who oppose freedom, democracy, and prosperity for the rest of the world. 

As an example of corrupt socialist thought, there is your statement:

>> Did the comparison of neo-cons to fascists cut to (sic) clost (sic) to the bone for you?  <<

The actions of fascists and the actions of socialists were identical, until they were beaten in turn and forced to stop killing people.  So you might as well say, “Did the comparison of neo-cons to communists cut to clost to the bone for you?” Your statement is absurd, and a corruption of logical thought, whether the term “fascists” is used, or if the term “communists “ is substituted.  Your statement is devoid of logic and meaning, however it is phrased; consequently my gut reaction to your statement was, “ Who is this silly ass, Neruda, that says ridiculous things?”. 

Fascism and socialism are equally corrupt, and equally destructive.  And we know that democracy and free-market capitalism bring freedom and prosperity to all who practice it; look at India since it cut itself loose from its ties to the Soviets.  Look what China is doing, with its rather modest attempts at freedom. 

And look at socialist Old Europe, that has had 10+% unemployment for fifteen years and zero growth in that time.

You may be a true believer, but no socialist model has ever produced worthwhile results in the real world.  But don’t let me discourage you.  If you can come up with a social and economic model that actually works, knock yourself out, boy.

Scorp, Scorp, Scorp

Why do you continue to prove my point. You are a scratched record, playing the same bit over and over ad nauseum regardless of how relevant or apropo of the topic at hand.

Please continue to amuse us with you nonsequitors. It’s like comedy relief.

Neruda -

Now come on, Neruda.  I realize you can’t defend, much less justify, all the socialist murders and murderers in the world.  But I have given you ample opportunity to comment on the execrable state of socialist economic performance in Western Europe, not to mention the Soviet Union, which died of corruption and incompetence.  You seem not to want to talk about that either.

So If you can’t defend socialist crimes against humanity, and you can’t defend the socialist ‘s lousy economic performance, and you can’t tell us why 20 million people are out ot work in socialist Old Europe, can’t you just tell us what advantage it is that you see in socialism? 

I realize you like to complain about the USA, but can’t you find a rational basis for your complaints?

As scorp apparently does, I find the hypocrisy highly amusing. As lb slurs, the inherent fallacy of the conservative movement is that it composed of factions and they are beginning to fray.

Too often, the democrats wrap themselves up in the flag of unity and are blind to the fact that they don’t own it.

Say, doesn’t DFL stand for Democratic Farm Labor?
Surely a polyglot of divergent interests and factions that have already cracked. Farmers of the Midwest have long abandoned that party, union rank-and-file have been jumping ship like rats, even the Southern Democrats have turned sour.

What’s left? The Eastern Liberal elite? I guess there aren’t enough of that fractious group to win elections, huh?
.

Geez, Jay; aren’t you the fine one to talk about hypocrisy?

As I wrote above the Liberals can get credit for inventing the circular firing squad.  Get ready for some real Republican fun!

I would slur additionally that it is arguably the inherent destiny of any mass movement to fray, fragment and decay.  It happened to the progressive movement, it happened to the labor movement, it happened to the ‘New Left” and now it is happening to the conservative movement.  If you want a more thorough treatment of this idea I suggest you get a copy of
“The True Believer”
by Eric Hoffer, ex-SF Longshoreman activist and darling of the libertarian right.

It’s not controversial to say that the left has been divided and wandering in the wilderness for a long, long time.  Still, the Democratic Party, the only pragmatic vessel we can put our hopes in, has remained electorially competitive, even considering how the Republicans have used their small majoritarian edge to tilt the playing field.  We are just now beginning to come together, again.  Watch out!

Expect Resistance: the future is not yet written.

“Come gather ‘round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’. “
Bob Dylan

Still pretty timely after all these years, don’cha think?

Expect Resistance: the future is not yet written.

I’m behind you 100% on that!

Of course, as much as Dylan’s song could be applied to the burgeoning progressive conservative movement, I think Mark Twain’s quote is more appro in this context:

The report of my Death has been grossly Exaggerated

Discussing politics and economics with a Liberal is like discussing nuclear physics with a turnip.

I would like to point out that Nuclear [That word our Pres can’t quite say] Physics was largely the product of liberal minds like Einstein.  These same minds tend to be the product of those horrible institutions- Universities, peddling their horrible knowledge with all its confusing intricacies.

Further more, this obsession with communist Russia as some demonstration that socialist idea are a historical failure is a pathetic mis reading of history. The USSR was a totalitarian dictatorship, and anyone who actually reads Marx, rather than relying on some talk-radio interpretation of him, will know that dictatorship has nothing to do with socialism.  Also, you might look at the socialist successes in the world.  Scandanavia anyone?  They consistently lay the smack down on America’s image of itself as the best place to live.  Imaging a place where taking care of one another was important enough to actually do it rather than paying lip service.  Yup, collosal failure…

Oh- and find out what facism is- like this:
* exalts the nation and party above the individual, with the state apparatus being supreme.
* stresses loyalty to a single leader, and submission to a single nationalistic culture.
* engages in economic totalitarianism through the creation of a Corporatist State, where the divergent economic and social interests of different races and classes are combined with the interests of the State.

Sound familiar?  Corporate America owning the politicians, be they Rep. or Dem. is the problem, not all this BS they have you squabling over.  Follow the money.  And by the by, just to further relieve you of the idea that “left” and “right” or “conservative” and “liberal” mean anything, the Nazi’s were a national SOCIALIST party.  Well dang, its almost like you have to look at the nature of a thing rather than the window dressing.

Honesty, Integrity, Accountability.  That should be the new democratic platform, and it would single handedly cull Washington of these pigs.

Progressive Conservative.

The oxymorons flow like piss down a drunkard’s leg.

Ordog says,
“ Scandanavia anyone?  They consistently lay the smack down on America’s image of itself as the best place to live.  Imaging a place where taking care of one another was important enough to actually do it rather than paying lip service.”
-------------------------

As one whose ancestry is 50% Swedish I keep in touch with what is going on over there. It has been a long-running experiment, but is not immune from the economic fundamentals, personal preference, or today’s Islamic problem.

Many of their most industrious and creative people have come here over the past century to seek individual opportunity. What is eventually left is only the LEFT. Among them are a core group who firmly believe in the socialist way as best. However, they are also left with those who, while they say, “Not me.” along with the goose, duck etc., still want the bread the Little “RED” Hen bakes.

They have a huge Muslim problem due to their willingness to give everyone a free ride. In Malmö, where my wife’s cousin is a police detective, the Muslims have taken over an area of the city where they continue their long time battle between separate factions.

The fire department refuses to enter the section without police protection because of attacks by opposing groups when offering aid to the victims of this religious hate.

There are NO Swedish children left in the state school due to fear of the Muslims.

Why is there such a large number of them?  The socialist goodies available to all.

For a comprehensive article see:
The Weekly Standard, Volume 010, Issue 22, 02/28/2005

To Ordog,

The following is a response to the WS article from a Swede currently teaching economics at a U.S. college.
----------------------------------------------

“I found Christopher Caldwell’s “A Swedish Dilemma” interesting. I hope it will open American eyes to a problem that is visible all across Europe.

Although Sweden is on the extreme end of things, I do not think Caldwell’s article gives a full account of the dire situation there. Social tensions have reached alarming levels, symbolized in part by skyrocketing crime rates. Recent studies in Stockholm show that of all rapes reported to police, only one in five are investigated and only 5 percent of the cases reported lead to the prosecution of a suspect. It is estimated that violent crime is rising by 25 percent annually, and over the first half of 2004 the murder rate rose by 40 percent.

Political extremism is also on the rise. About five years ago, an estimate by anti-racist groups indicated that Sweden had more active members of Nazi movements than its neighbors, adjusted for population. Hate-crime rates are several times higher than in America. Nazis have killed and have tried to kill journalists. Recently a long-time Nazi leader was arrested and charged with trying to build an armed political movement. In a different case, a group of nationalists were rounded up for inciting and planning an “armed revolution in the welfare state,” as they called it.”

I hope the U.S./Mexican immigration problems can be resolved before a similar extreme backlash takes place here.

LB,

I see you like Eliot. Here is one I believe expresses my skepticism in the flood of information we have to cope with today.

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? 
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

T.S. Eliot, ‘Choruses from “The Rock”.

Not to split any libertarian hare’s, but a progressive conservative is someonly who believes in progress, in political evolution, without going to the extremes of throwing the baby out with the piss water.

Perhaps conservative progressive would be a more apt moniker.

Thanks for the interesting info Whattheheck, I will check out Cladwell’s book.
I have been living in Europe for the past two years and am awake to the intractable social problems here that are tearing numerous rifts in ‘society’, particularly islamic extremism in light of Madrid and London.  It makes for a delicate situation, to resist the reactionary tendencies.  I just don’t have much stomach for… throwing the baby out with the pisswater as Cline says?  Systems are only as good as the people who implement them I think, but naturally there is no political Shangri-la.

Jay,

I am wondering what progressive conservative positions look like. Where are they conservative and where are they progressive?

It’s in interesing moniker.

There is already a word for progressive conservative in our political lexicon.  It is liberal. But that won’t get Newt Gingrich the Repug nomination.

Ordog -

I suppose that Einstein was “liberal”.  The founders of the United States were certainly “liberal”, and products of the Age of Enlightenment.

But that is not what I said.  I said “Liberal”, as in Hayek’s statement, “American radicals and socialists began calling themselves ‘liberals’.” Thus historical liberals are the polar opposite of today’s radicals and socialists.  The hijacking of terms like “liberal” in the service of an ignorant and repressive socialist philosophy is not unusual, and such hijacking is common; the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is NOT a democracy.

Scandinavia has always been held up as a model of the ideal among socialist states, but the truth was never quite as good as the story.  The truth and the story are now becoming downright terrifying.  I need not repeat what WTH has said, but I would add that some of the Scandinavialn states have been the recipients of vast amounts of oil money from the North Sea since the early 1970s.  This oil money has paid for a lot of socialist benefits.  This oil money is now in decline as the oil reserves are used up.  So in the future, Scandinavia can look forward to povery, along with its other social and economic problems.  Perhaps they could build real economies, and not economies based on nature’s (limited) bounty.

>> (T)his obsession with communist Russia as some demonstration that socialist idea are a historical failure is a pathetic mis reading of history.  <<

You don’t like what the Soviets did with your precious socialism?  How do you like what Old Europe is doing with it?  Socialist Old Europe has 10+% unemployment and zero growth for the last fifteen years.  Old Europe is stagnating, and is in serious danger of falling into permanent decline, not to mention its demographic problems.

>> Since the 1970s, America has created some 57 million new jobs, compared to just 4 million in Europe (with most of those in government). <<

(http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.18720/article_detail l.asp)

Your comparison of fascism with the current USA is flawed and silly Liberal propaganda.  Did fascism bring democracy to anyone?  No, but the USA and the other democracies have done this many times.  Did the fascists build a workable economic system?  No, but the USA and free-market capitalism have created the most productive and dynamic economy the world has ever seen.  Did the fascists have a workable and benefical values system?  Emphatically, no, unlike the USA and its ongoing striving for values.  The list goes on and on.

>> Honesty, Integrity, Accountability.  <<

No one is going to hold you accountable for your foolish statements, but you desperately need a dose of honesty and integrity.  Get busy.

Ordog,

I would be interested in your on-sight European observations — not only on the Islamic issue, but political, economic, or whatever. While not widely traveled I have been to England, (Where we maintain email contact with several people.) The Netherlands, Austria and Germany.  But all were at least ten years ago.

As you say, “Systems are only as good as the people who implement them I think, but naturally there is no political Shangri-la.”

IMO our political choices — both parties and candidates — offer so little for the average American. I see this as a problem at local, state and national levels. While there are some who genuinely try, the accumulated incumbent power makes reform all but impossible. Congress is a tough Good Old Boy nut to crack.

About four years ago I read, “Selling Ben Cheever”, by (surprise) Ben Cheever and then “Nickel and Dimed”, by Barbara Ehrenreich. They both make a good case that we are heading toward national division based more on class and income than race and gender. No doubt if they are right this does not bode well for any minority, but will only add to their difficulties.

(1 of 2)

Neruda,

I suppose the discomfort with progressive conservatism (or, as I am beginning to think of it, conservative progressivism) is that it is in flux. I am certainly uncomfortable with the apparent dichotomy between progressive and conservative.  I am not the source for a definition, all I can do is offer why I accept that over any other label.

If I offered an unqualified moniker, it would be simply progressive. Unfortunately, since FDR, that has come to mean, by default, a socialist (and pacifist) progressivism. Being progressive is simply a belief in social progress and justice.

As an aside, I see nothing inherently contradictory between a religious fundamentalist position and a progressive one. A belief in a “fall from grace” intrinsically implies progress toward something, though I don’t acknowledge the “fall from grace” starting point, nor the Rapture as the end of history. There is no end of history.

Thus, I object to arguments that would, by definition, isolate religion from any sort of progressive viewpoint. Who were the first people to help Katrina victims? The Red Cross and American churches. I also see no conflict fighting under the banner of progressivism and taking a hawkish view toward international affairs. To give tyrannical regimes like Iraq, Iran, Syria and North Korea legitimacy and the benefit of the doubt would most certainly be a hypocrisy of social justice.

The problem with Progressivism (as opposed to progressivism) is that too much other crap has been rolled up into it.

Qualifying progressive thought with conservatism (which for me is more about the classical liberalism of the Founding Fathers than anything resembling John C. Calhoun’s argument for states rights) is not oxymoronic, any more than military intelligence. Those who would reach into that septic system are generally looking for sludge to kill the messenger instead of the message.

For me, in these times, a progressive conservative is someone who values social programs and understands the need for social justice, but doesn’t like the dogmatic socialist and pacifist sledgehammers used to impose it.

Newt Gingrich, along with Jack Kemp, Rick Santorum, etc, are progressive in that sense. They do not call for the abolition of government; they do not see government as evil incarnate. But they do recognize the dangers of that kind of concentration of power. Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive in that sense. He fought the federal bureaucracy to turn it away from patronage; he opposed monopolies that hindered free markets. He was all for setting aside land for our future.

But he was not a socialist, nor liberal. Nor a pacifist. How does he fit in the modern sense of Progressivism?

(2 of 2)

Gingrich is stumping his own ideas, sort of a Contract with America, Part 2. His basic tenet is not the gutting of social programs, but making the bureaucracy and the programs more effective. Anyone who has listened to him with even one open ear knows he believes in the value of government.

But what he is advocating is a major restructurization of the late 19th Century quill and pen Bureaucratic Public Administration with what he calls a 21st Century Entrepreneurial Public Management. The difference between the two is that we tell the bureaucracy what our expectations are, rather than they tell us what they are going to do.

For example, as simplistic as this sounds, set up two or three or four FEMAs, divided regionally. If the FEMA of the South fails and the FEMA of the Midwest steps in and gets the job done, the Midwest FEMA gets more money in next year’s budget at the expense of the Southern FEMA (disclaimer: that is an off-my-cuff idea and I am solely responsible for its content).

One of the most scathing critiques Gingrich offers is when the government loses records and people in an era when FedEx and UPS can not only tell you when your package is going to arrive at its final destination, but which truck it will be loaded on, and when it will be leaving the loading dock. Government Bureaucracies have had no incentive to use existing technologies. Remember Bush’s fun with the filing cabinet of IOUs for Social Security? That file cabinet-style of administration is 1930s thinking…

How come private organizations, like the Red Cross and American churches, were the very first responders? Because they are not carrying the baggage of inefficient and ineffective bureaucracies. My attacks on arguments such as Tim Wise centers on that very principle.

Yes, the feds, led and staffed by Republican appointees screwed up. But so did the state and local bureaucracies of a very much Democratic base fail. Katrina wasn’t a Left vs Right argument, unless you start talking about the difference in preferred bureaucratic mentalities. And the Right cannot be held responsible for the failures of FEMA’s career middle management.

I saw one high level career FEMA manager on Frontline or Now or something complain that when he left for the day and had passed on concerns and recommendations to Brown and the DHS head, he was appalled that, come morning, nothing had been done. He also criticized, and rightly so, the DHS head’s demand for statistics on how much ice was available, etc. for a press briefing. The career guy claimed that this wasted vital time as responders had to take inventories instead of “responding”.

I would ask him two questions. Two questions which the interviewers never did.

1) why didn’t you make sure the concerns and recommendations reached their destinations? If I send a doom ‘n gloom email, the first thing my boss is going to ask the next morning is “Why didn’t you make sure that critical information was received”. “Not my job??”..

2) If the career bureaucrat had been doing his job, he should not have need to do a re-inventory. He should have had it, a point and a click away.

Excuses, excuses, excuses....

So, for me, I guess the appellation of conservative is a reflection of liberal (socialistic and pacifistic) progressives losing their way, and in recent history it is the Conservative Party carrying the standard.

Sorry for the length…

Gingrich also offers this social program to encourage math and science.

Pay teenagers to study math and science at the same wages that they would make at McDonald’s.

Where to get that money? Gingrich claims that if you cut the head off the current education bureaucracy down to the district level, without touching the teachers or individual schools, you will have more than enough to cover the “education wage”.

Whether this would work or not is not exactly the point. Again, Gingrich claims that he would rather pass 60 different reform programs now, and then have to revisit, in the next year, 15 that didn’t work, than do yet another ten year study that only tells us what we can’t do.

I would also point out that the liberal and socialist progressives get very Conservative when anyone questions the validity of social programs that are showing their age…

Where is the progressive spirit then? As I have argued and argued, the ideas behind the New Deal and the Great Society were great, but only in the context of the paucity of social programs that preceded them. But instead of fixing what is now broken, these “Conservative” liberals defend their entrenched territory with the vengeance of a mother grizzly bear.

Jay,

“Whether this would work or not is not exactly the point. Again, Gingrich claims that he would rather pass 60 different reform programs now, and then have to revisit, in the next year, 15 that didn’t work, than do yet another ten year study that only tells us what we can’t do.”

Right on! When Edison was asked if he was discouraged after trying so many materials for his light bulb elements, he answered, “No. We now know X number which do NOT work.”

The only problem I can see with this approach is the tendency for bureaucracies to refuse to admit failure. (Mainly due to the criticism they would get in the media I suspect.)
-------------------------------------------------

Let’s bring back the Bull Moose Party — all we need is the “moose” — there is plenty of bull already.

:)

The American Center for Voting Rights (AC4VR) recently issued a scholarly report on the 2004 election entitled Democrat Operatives Far More Involved In Voter Intimidation And Suppression In 2004, Thousands Of Americans Disenfranchised By Vote Fraud On Election Day.

What you failed to include in your quaint condemnation of dastardly Democratic deeds is the fact that the American Center for Voting rights is a Republican party front group, one whose listed address is a PO box in Dallas, Texas.

Nice try, Dumbo, but no cigar…

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001282.htm

you know, scorp, MM is right. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, then it is a duck.

Unless it is a Democrat. They are above all that.

Just ask ‘em

>> What you failed to include in your quaint condemnation of dastardly Democratic deeds is the fact that the American Center for Voting rights is a Republican party front group, one whose listed address is a PO box in Dallas, Texas.  <<

Wrong on all counts.  You give bradblog as a reference.  But bradblog really is a Liberal hack site, and has done no more research than you have. 

AC4VR advertises itself thusly: “ACVR is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that neither supports nor endorses any political party or candidate.” The listed officers for AC4VR include both Democrats and Republicans.  The Democrats include Brian Lunde, former Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and Eric F. Kayira, speechwriter for Mel Carnahan, Democratic Governor of Missouri. 

Now aren’t you embarassed?

But if you still have questions, you might compare the documented crimes of the Democrats in the election campaign versus the documented crimes of the Republicans.  If you can find one-tenth as many Republican crimes as Democratic crimes, I will apologize to you.

BRIAN LUNDE: CHAIRMAN, ACVR

Lunde Was One Of Bush’s Key Operatives. “One of the key Bush-Cheney ‘04 operatives… was a former Democratic National Committee official who had originally volunteered back in 2000 to give the Texas governor a bridge to centrist Democrats. His name was Brian Lunde, and by 2004 he was exhibiting more practical talents. These had nothing to do with bringing in voters from his former party, and everything to do with mining for Republican votes in Democratic areas.” [National Journal, 3/12/05]

Lunde Worked With Washington Megalobbyist Jack Abramoff on Indian Tribes. “Mr. Lunde… said [he] did not know it at the time; the tribe was working with Mr. Abramoff, one of the best-paid Republican lobbyists in Washington. The consultant said [he] had been given the contract by Mr. Abramoff’s partner, Michael Scanlon, a former House Republican aide who is also under scrutiny by the grand jury.” [New York Times, 5/13/05]

Lunde Ran Democrats For Bush In 2004. Brian Lunde was the National Executive Director of “Democrats for Bush.” [Market Wire, 10/29/04]

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Editorial: ACVR Is A Fraud. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review called the group a “fraud.” The organization’s new voter fraud study “indicated that Democrats were the instigators in every case from Alabama to Wisconsin—except two. It also said that the two complaints regarding Republicans had no merit.” It also mentioned that “the three public faces of the nonpartisan group are very partisan Republican operatives—including one who claims to be a sounding board for senior White House adviser Karl Rove.” [Editorial, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 8/8/05]

Try again, Dumbo…

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001707.htm

was a former Democratic National Committee official who had originally volunteered back in 2000 to give the Texas governor a bridge to centrist Democrats.

Yep, rats leaving a sinking ship…

So, why is the Dem ship sinking?

Yes Jay, the rats (the last of the Dixiecrats) are leaving the ship.  A long needed housecleaning. Suddenly the ship is light and buoyant, and this old leaky hull is magically repaired.  There’s room from you if you can leave behind your sexist, racist, homophobic and other stupid, self-serving prejudices.  Otherwise, don’t bother to apply.

MM -

My contention is that AC4VR is non-partisan, as stated on their site.  Your contention seems to be that a high-ranking Democrat who works with Republicans becomes partisan against Democrats.  But there are alternative explanations, of course. 

Since virtually all of the documented crimes were committed by Liberal brownshirt thugs against Republicans, perhaps Lunde is trying to restore democratic values to the Democratic Party.  The Democrats are desperately in need of some values and decency, as witnessed by their decades-long spiral downward.

Values and decency like THIS? Or THIS? I could go on all day.

Ah! I love the smell of desperation in the morning.  It’s the smell of victory!

OOPS!

What we’ve got here is the parody of a caricature of a farce: Dumbo, the Caped Conservative Crusader, and his Faithful Sidekick, Jay “Daffy” Duck ("Sufffferin’ Suckatash!"), sworn to defeat the evil elite atheistic liberal parasites who infest the corridors of power in Washington, DC, Hollywood and the entire eastern and western seaboards of a proud, patriotic nation tragically corrupted and mired in its own mortal moral decline.

It’s a pathetic inversion of the Communist Manifesto, with economics replaced by a reverent religious worship of the virtues of an idyllic utopian Past which exists only in the minds of the Christian fundamentalist fanatics who harbor them.

Quack, quack.

It is Sylvester the Cat who says “Sufferin’ Succotash”.

Ehhh...what’s up, Doc?

The point is, we all harbor an unconscious desire to return to the womb, the one and only place where existence was never corrupted by consciousness, or exposure to the realities which govern our social lives, where the separation between desire and its consequent gratification did not exist because our desires were gratified long before any of us could even conceieve of them.  Much of Christian ideology centers around the “paradise” from which we were expelled, and to which presumably we return after our temporal demise.  It’s the narrative which structures our subsequent social and political organization.

ahh yes .... I remember Paradise. Everyone should get back to the Garden .

temporal demise .... Th-Th-That’s All Folks!

Major Major,

“The point is, we all harbor an unconscious desire to return to the womb, the one and only place where existence was never corrupted by consciousness, or exposure to the realities which govern our social lives, where the separation between desire and its consequent gratification did not exist because our desires were gratified long before any of us could even conceieve of them.”
----------------------------------------------------

Of course that was before Mom’s bod took precedence over Junior’s.

If we’re OK with abortion why not make it more efficient? Say maybe — an option until the kid is 21.  “Clean up your room! You’re not a person yet, you know.” Also, it would give us time to weed out the Hitlers from the Einsteins.

“Everybody loves Raymond.”

As long as we’re making “womb” for thought…

If a kid is not a kid until (?) why are we giving prenatal care to a foreign mom with an unborn soon-to-be-American citizen?

WTH;

Why does the nationality of the prospective child matter?  Isn’t it enough that the mother is in need of pre-natal care?  Is nationality a valid determiner of the limits of compassion?  It isn’t everyone’s view that we gush sentimental over the welfare of a zygote, but don’t give a fuck about the woman of whose body that zygote is a part.  That is the peculiar stance only of the anti-abortion crowd.

Sorry, but I don’t get the “Everybody Loves Raymond” reference.  Is that where you got the “you’re not a person yet” line?  A better line is that of Bill Cosby; “I brought you into this world, and I can still take you out.” You might like to review Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” for tips on how to punch up your leaden satirical style.

It isn’t surprising you don’t understand the difference between elective abortion and coersion.  But then it would be a surprise if you showed anything but a shallow understanding of...well...anything.

The reference to Raymond reminds me of the perennial Jewish mother joke.

Q: When does a Jewish mother recognize her fetus as human?

A: When it graduates from medical school.

luminous beauty,
“Why does the nationality of the prospective child matter?”

That is the point — What nationality is the child/not-child-yet?

Some people claim that the baby-to-be is already a U.S. citizen because it will be born here. They then claim an illegal foreign mother should get prenatal care. Some of these are the same people claiming this is not a person yet, therefore it is OK to abort. How can it be both ways? It just depends on what is IS. (To coin a phrase.)

Ah, yes, Wiley Zygote
----------------------------------------------

The line,”Everybody loves Raymond” is spoken by his brother, Robert, who always gets the short end of the stick and would identify with your zygote in this situation.  Raymond gets the preference even before having been born.
(I guess you are not a fan of the show.)

I think it depends on the woman, and what she decides.  Not you or me or some other people.  It’s called freedom.  That IS how it IS.  (P.S. Pre-natal care is for the health of the mother, on which the health of the fetus is totally dependent.) Sorry to mess with your clever bit of irony, but it just isn’t that clever.

I love the whole ensemble except Raymond (the character, not the comedian).  I think he’s a putz.

OK, but let HER pay for the prenatal care — personal responsibility goes hand in hand with freedom. Also, let’s do away with automatic citizenship for offspring of illegals.

I’d rather just eliminate all border restrictions, but go ahead and start promoting a constitutional amendment if that’s what you really want to do.  Good luck with that.

Sorry, I can’t agree to any definition of personal responsibility that includes abandoning people in need.  Personal responsibility arises out of social responsibility.  Without it, it is just selfishness.  A prescription for narcissistic solipsism, alienation and mutual distrust, leading down the spiral of discord and conflict.  One’s sense of personal responsibility may extend only to one’s own family or one’s own friends or one’s own tribe or religion or one’s own nation; but you should understand that doesn’t define the limits of personal responsibility.  Just the present limits of one’s personal ethical development.  I may be completely out to lunch in your purview, but I believe that the more inclusive and more expansive our personal ethical development, the greater and more profound our personal freedom.

Nice thoughts, but then we’ll end up like Sweden. All the freeloaders move in to drain the resources of the people doing all the work.

Have you given away all that you own — like the Bible verse? Or, is your view that “WE” should do it?

If you think about it, the womb is nothing less than the protypical paradise, at least from the perspective of the people who subconsciously identify with the foetus, where nothing more is required than to simply exist.  No suffering or pain (unless some evil gynecologist is attempting to abort it), no expectations, realistic or otherwise, and, best of all, no work.

Geez: what a bunch of closet freeloaders.

Of course, once the foetus is expelled from the womb, everything changes.  The infant must breathe, and actively attempt to feed itself.  Waste products no longer vanish into thin air, but must be consciously evacuated.  No longer enclosed in the comfort of its mother’s uterus, the child must learn to clothe and shelter itself.  All of which requires work.

And so our primordial prototypical couple is expelled from the Garden and forced to toil from the sweat of their furrowed brows.

No wonder we long for the subconscious haven of heaven.

WTH:

All that I can truly own is my conscience.  Everything else is just stuff that in a moment can be taken away.  If everywhere was like Sweden the ‘freeloaders’ (what a judgmentally loaded word!  One would think you had interviewed every single one of them and determined none were willing to make any effort on their own behalf) wouldn’t have to flock anywhere, would they?  I also believe the best aid you can give anyone is the means to help themselves.  That still doesn’t come cheap.  But its value is light-years beyond its price.  Don’t you think you have a share in that kind of investment, or do you believe you can just leave it to someone else and later reap the rewards?  What does your conscience tell you?

Of course, the fantasy of paradise is derived from the roots of an unconscious, fundamentally ontological experience which recedes in our memory with the passage of our conscious experience.  Religious or philosophical speculation serve to revive the recollection of a psychologically charged, pre-conscious experience in mythological service to the necessity of social survival, where competition for the available resources required the social cohesion and voluntary cooperation of its individual constituents.  When competition for those resources become progressively acute, through overpopulation or environmental decline, or both, the social necessity of sacrifice is coupled to the compensating fantasy of an eternal, utopian after-life, in order to motivate those who are expected to make the necessary sacrifice, for those who are destined to benefit from it.

It looks like Dumbo and his Faithful, Fearless Sidekick (Suffferin’ Suckatash!) have deserted us for the more fertile fields of some other potentially propagandizing thread.

No, still here.

Just haven’t seen the need to reiterate what I have already said…

MM:

I think the problem is we’ve moved the conversation into the deep end of the pool.  The goofballs are up against the fact that they don’t know how to swim.  It is a problem when one substitutes the oceanic comfort of partisan opinion for the rigors of rational thought. 

Jay, what is with your sudden reluctance to be redundant?  It has never bothered you before.

Keep flattering yourselves…

That’s clever, Jay.  Do you even understand what Major Major is saying?  Do you?  Perhaps you have a well reasoned response to the unanswered questions I have posed to WTH.  No?  More sophomoric insults, maybe?  Bring’em on. (to coin a phrase)

No more sophomoric insults, please.

Seriously, when you are ready to return to where the topic was when I last left it, let me know.

Well, hallelujah, brothers and sisters!

The junior, profligate partner of our Dynamic Conservative Duo has returned to the fold.

Da-di-dah.  Da-di-dah.
Da-di-da-da-di-da-di-dah.
Da-da-da-dah.
Da-di-da-da-di-da-di-da-dah…

On with the show.

Sorry, Jay.  I’m just not interested in giving you a forum to re-invent the wheel.  Or do you mean to discuss the sideline about the ACVR?  If you have anything new to add to this conversation, just do it.  I must admit I find your sudden reticence to put your foot in your mouth encouraging.  There may be hope for you yet.

LB,

By no means do I think all of these people are “freeloaders”. Many may be willing workers and it would be difficult to turn some of them away when their need are obviously great.

However, my point is that there are too many to cope with. Our country cannot accept all who want to come here anymore than you can take in every street person you meet. They should be making their own governments accept the responsibility for their livelihood, etc. but it’s easier to come here. It is my view that those who enter illegally are less apt to obey other laws. Each one who slips in is in effect taking the place of another who is trying to follow proper procedure.

My reference to Sweden had to do with a post I sent a week or two ago concerning conditions in Mälmo, Sweden, where my wife’s cousin is a police officer.  Their problem is with Muslim immigrants (legal) who came for the well known Swedish social programs which are “free” for all. They have taken over a portion of the city and violence has risen astronomically.

I just saw the same thing on TV news a few minutes ago in a Paris suburb — second generation Muslims (also legal) who want what other French citizens have, but are unable to get it.

With the both our legislative and executive branches off shoring our jobs and catering to the influx of foreign labor we will continue to see a downward movement in job quality and benefits for our own people.

No doubt the people with the most education and experience will have first chance at any level of employment. This will crowd out the less educated and qualified worker regardless of how willing he is to work.

It has already happened at a local scrap yard where I worked when in college. Forty-five years ago the guys in the yard were roughly half whites and half blacks. Now they are exclusively Hispanic. I would guess at least some are here illegally. 

LBJ was going to “take from the haves and give to the havenots.” The havenots will be giving something in return — count on it.

When times are bad enough (we are still at over 7% unemployed in our city), there will be a violent reaction by the willing worker blacks and the target will be Hispanics.  Not fair, but very likely.
---------------------------------

This is pure speculation on my part, but I doubt that you have been met each morning as you went to work by panhandlers with increasingly creative hard luck stories. Probably never been burlarized. Have not had armed robberies or carjackings next door to your place of work.

It makes for far more scepticism and reluctance to shell out to people you don’t know.

I heard an exchange between P.J. O’Rourke and a radio caller — Caller, “I used to be a liberal, but have become quite conservative lately.”

P.J., “Oh, you got mugged.”

If your not interested, be honest about it from the outset....

wth,

The same happens up here in the Northern Plains. During the summer, our “dole rolls” swell with transients for the Great Minnesotat Welfare State.

Of course, by now, they’ve all headed south.

So, how does that definition of “freeloader” go?

WTH:

For the record, I’ve been homeless myself.  Never had to resort to panhandling, but got to know many panhandlers from an eye-to-eye level of understanding.  As opposed to your petit bourgeois self-righteous aura of superiority and dismay.  Panhandling isn’t easy.  Besides imagination it requires a level of existential humility of which I’m afraid you are incapable.  I always give a little change if I have it. 

We had our garage broken into this spring.  Though the police were trying they really weren’t much help.  Having friendly relations within the lumpen proletariat is what led to our recovering two chain-saws and two boxes of tools.  The local homeless camp is across the street.

My downstairs neighbor at one time was an ex-bank robber and a not-so-successfully recovering junkie.  He was actually a great guy and a loyal friend, even though in prison he was AWB.  It’s amazing what people will do just to survive. 

I work seasonally in an industry that has become 90% Hispanic. Many of them began as illegals, but once you get a job getting a green card is fairly simple.  Your fantasy of coming inter-racial strife is just that.  Too much Murray-Herrnstein and not enough real world experience. 

My understanding is much of the violence in Malmo and other European cities is caused by the incursions of bands of skin-heads and/or blatantly discriminative policies by conservative governments. 

In my experience, when someone says we can’t do anything about intractable problems, they really mean they won’t even try.  Prove me wrong.

The framework to the “immigrant problem” is false, and was noted by Zizek in a previous thread.  The idea is not to reinforce those barriers which keep people from immigrating to our country, but to refrain from enforcing foreign policies which make it necessary for them to emigrate from their native countries.  Democratic and Republican conservatives proposed to “globalize” the economy and “outsource” production as a possible solution, but the “solution” was possible only after the economies of the countries concerned were made “safe” for capitalism.  Ask any Chilean for his or her opinion with respect to the significance of 9/11 and you may be surprised by the response.

I got mugged once, after driving a cab during the graveyard shift for several years.  I stopped answering the radio and drove the airport run for several years after the incident, but eventually returned to my “liberal” roots by finding a better job.  Cab drivers, incidentally, aren’t quite the victims we’re made out to be.  We can be extremely creative in finding the longest possible route between any two points in any given location.  And most of us understand that if you take an order off the radio you’d better be within sixty seconds of the location or another “enterpising” driver will poach the trip.  After leasing the cab and paying for the gas, the average income for a twelve hour shift is about five dollars an hour.  Many veteran drivers generate a better income by driving “lockups”, or regular riders to and from their place of employment, but most of us just ride the radio or sweat out the airport queu, which can last from one to three hours and usually results in a mad scramble to maximize the number of passengers from a random set of incoming flights.  Sometimes the return trip to the airport, in the middle of a blizzard in the middle of the night, can be more hazardous than the landing of the flight itself.

The purpose of this pastoral description of American manual labor is to point out that the people who produce the profits for the people who consume them are easilly misled by the “cultural values” propagated by the politicians who incite the indigents with divisive narratives of hatred, greed and patriotic outrage.

If all else fails, just wave the bloody shirt and recite the pledge of allegience.

I understand what Major Major is saying and want him to say more. Please.

Thank God some sane people have entered the thread, to see both JC and Scorpy at one on the first page was almost more than Rabbit could imagine.  Then WTH......but not doing his profile any damage for a change.  Now Rabbit can see the enlightened ones are lining up. 

Could you imagine being left alone with JC and Scorpy in a room?

Luminous Beauty Rabbit has been “On the road “ a while back and that was how he met his wife of Twenty years.  She was a Danish backbacker and the Dirty Old Rabbit Swagman, joined up with her.  I was headed across the top end, via various places, to a Hippy Community sort of place on the East coast. Northern New South Wales.  We met on the Nude beach in Broome.

Today we have three Small A+ world citizens in the making, but not much else, thanks to a nasty and destructive Legal system, which accuses and lies and keeps doing it till you run out of money and they win, or they run out of options and you win.  We did both as it happened.  Much in these few words but an enlightened Lume can decode it all.

There is something about the freedom (Of one kind) of the open road, Rabbit misses in his soul, now and then, the life of vagrancy had it’s moments, and companionship with some fine outcasts is one of them.  Also some fine moments alone in the world, with God.  Sometimes that was out in the desert and other times that moment came in the pouring rain standing waiting for a ride on the edge of a highway on the edge of Sydney.

Rabbit spent twelve months in close companionship with many interesting people, while waiting once for the wheels of justice to turn their course, and as a consequence of being an agitating witness to massive level of corruption on the periphery of the Amphetamines INDUSTRY.  Rabbit is a rather accomplished, electron trainer.  In some areas, of high energy chemistry Rabbit accidentally got too close to a dangerous flame and his personal amusement was suddenly connected to some very ambitious and stupid people, and they in turn attracted the interest of, everybody from the FBI (Way down there with you Americans), as well as Oz Customs and State and Federal Police.  The whole lot converged on Rabbit for some very mundane and innocent reasons, but with his little tiny Rabbity interest he was inadvertantly and falsely linked to the biggies, who “Gave up” big cash to the PIGS who then pulled all the punches on them.  Rabbit meanwhile was a weeny little Bunny and had nill to do with the big dudes, but was treated in the lying press as mister big. All “Proven” to be false, more than NOT Guilty, the case was eventually thrown out, for which Rabbit sat in the bloody BIG HOUSE, while his survived and the Fireworks company, Rabbit’s LIFE’s Carreer, his Shangri La, was lost and then the Farm, our home we had built together over fifteen years of hard work and saving on two continents, all gone, because of lies and corruption.  Sorry to say all that, but Rabbit had to get that off his chest.  The Top Cop calling for law changes on the other thread got a bit to the poor raggedy old Rabbit.

Maybe Shangri La is not the right word.  Lets just say Rabbit liked his Fireworks Company a lot.

So did lots of other people from twenty different towns and thirty shows a year all over Western Australia.  All gone, Rabbit never hurt anyone, has always been a helpful and good community Rabbit, but his community let the bad men come and steal his family’s life, and throw them into the streets of uncertainty, pain and anguish. 

Our home in the middle of the forrest on a nice little river, was meant to be our end of the road.  Now someone else makes it their dream.  Rabbit and his brood are searching for a new one, which seems at least achievable in the few years we have left, to re-build.  You know what really pisses me off?  Today I have managed to get a liitle factory going, producing Rotatrioanl moulded Kayaks, and I cannot even get insurance.  As soon as one is charged with a criminal offence now, all your insurances are cancelled and you cannot ever get it them back for anything unless all chages are beaten.  Rabbit cannot even insure his own car!

Bloody Prohibitionists and Fascist Bastards, Rabbit has seen the ugly fist of corruption and incompetance which passes for law enforcment in our countries and the whole NWO scenario is intensely personal because Rabbit knows it means these ugly wicked people, who you don’t even know yet, will be calling all the shots.

You keep talking about the facts that such laws as those we are passing are not dangerous because our police and system is better, and Rabbit tells you they are not. 
They are just better at it

(page 1)

A while back the Wall Street Journal ran an essay about a place “where hatred trumps bread,” where a manipulative ruling class has for decades exploited an impoverished people while simultaneously fostering in them a culture of victimization that steers this people’s fury back persistently toward a shadowy, cosmopolitan Other.  In this tragic land unassuageable cultural grievances are elevated inexplicably over solid material ones, and basic economic self-interest is eclipsed by juicy myths of national authenticity and righteousness wronged.

The essay was supposed to be a description of the Arab states in their conflict with Israel, but when I read it I thought immediately of dear old Kansas and the role that locales like
Shawnee play in conservatism’s populist myth.  Conservatism’s base constituent, the business community, is the party that has gained the most from the trends that have done such harm out here.  But conservatism’s house intellectuals counter this by offering an irresistible way of framing our victimhood.  They invite us to take our place among a humble, middle-American volk, virtuous and yet suffering under the rule of a snobbish elite who press their alien philosophy down on the heartland.

Yes, the Cons will acknowledge, things have gotten materially worse on the farms and in the small towns, but that’s just business, they tell us.  That is just the forces of nature doing their thing.  Politics is something different: Politics is about blasphemous art and crazy lawsuits filed by out-of-control trial lawyers and smart-talking pop stars running down America.  Politics is when the people in small towns look around at what Wal-Mart and ConAgra have wrought and decide to enlist in the crusade against Charles Darwin.

But the backlash offers more than this ready-made class identity.  It also gives people a general way of understanding the buzzing mass-cultural world we inhabit.  Consider, for example, the stereotype of liberals that comes up so often in the backlash oeuvre: arrogant, rich, tasteful, fashionable, and all-powerful.  In my real-world experience liberals are nothing of the kind.  They are an assortment of complainers—for the most part impoverished complainers—who wield about as much influence over American politics as the cashier at Home Depot does over the company’s business strategy.  This is not a secret, either; read any issue of The Nation or In These Times or the magazine sent to members of the United Steelworkers, and you figure out pretty quickly that liberals don’t speak for the powerful or the wealthy.

But when you flip through People magazine, you come away with a very different impression of what liberals are like.  Here you read about movie stars who go to charity balls for causes like animal rights and the “underprivileged.” Singers who were big in the seventies express their concern with neatly folded ribbons for this set of victims or that.  Minor TV personalities instruct the world to stop saying mean things about the overweight or the handicapped.  And beautiful people of every description don expensive transgressive fashions, buy expensive transgressive art, eat at expensive transgressive restaurants, and get edgy with an expensive punk sensibility or an expensive earth-friendly look.

(page 2)

Here liberalism is a matter of shallow appearances, of fatuous self-righteousness; it is arrogant and condescending, a politics in which the beautiful and the well-born tell the unwashed and the beaten-down and the funny-looking how they ought to behave, how they should stop being racist or homophobic, how they should be better people. In an America where the chief sources of one’s ideas about life’s possibilities are TV and the movies, it’s not hard to be convinced that we inhabit a liberal-dominated world: feminist cartoons for ten-year olds are followed by commercials for nonconformist deodorants; entire families of movies are organized around some transcendent dick joke; even shows for toddlers have theme songs about keeping it real.

Like any other industry, though, the culture business exists primarily to advance its own fortunes, not those of the Democratic Party.  Winning an audience of teenagers, for example, is the goal that has made the dick joke into a sort of gold standard, not winning elections for liberals.  Encouraging demographic self-recognition and self-expression through products is, similarly, the bread and butter not of leftist ideology but of consumerism.  These things are part of the culture industry’s very DNA.  They are as subject to change by an offended American electorate as is the occupant of the Danish throne.

Never understanding this is a source of strength for the backlash.  Its leaders rage against the liberalism of Hollywood.  Its voters toss a few liberals out of office and are surprised to see that Hollywood doesn’t care.  They toss out more liberals and still nothing changes.  They return an entire phalanx of pro-business blowhards to Washington, and still the culture industry goes on its merry way.  But at least those backlash politicians that they elect are willing to do one thing differently: they stand there on the floor of the U.S. Senate and shout no to it all.  And this is the critical point: in a media world where what people shout overshadows what they actually do, the backlash sometimes appears to be the only dissenter out there, the only movement that has a place for the uncool and the funny-looking and the pious, for all the stock buffoons that our mainstream culture glories in lampooning.  In this sense the backlash is becoming a perpetual alter-ego to the culture industry, a feature of American life as permanent and as strange as Hollywood itself.

Even as it rejects the broader commercial culture, though, the backlash also mimics it.  Conservatism provides its followers with a parallel universe, furnished with all the same
attractive pseudospiritual goods as the mainstream: authenticity, rebellion, the nobility of victimhood, even individuality.  But the most important similarity between backlash and mainstream commercial culture is that both refuse to think about capitalism critically.  Indeed, conservative populism’s total erasure of the economic could only happen in a culture like ours where material politics have already been muted and where the economic has largely been replaced by those aforementioned pseudospiritual fulfillments.  This is the basic lie of the backlash, the manipulative strategy that makes the whole senseless parade possible.  In all of its rejecting and nay-saying, it resolutely refuses to consider that the assaults on its values, the insults, and the Hollywood sneers are all products of capitalism as surely as are McDonald’s hamburgers and Boing 737s.

Thomas Frank, What’s The Matter With Kansas?, 2004, pp. 239-242

MM -

If you have nothing to say, do not say it in long irrelevant quotes.  This site is for our comments, not for someone else’s comments.

Thomas Frank’s question “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” has been long answered.

Nothing.

It is the Democratic Party that has lost faith with Kansas, not the other way around.

Major Major:

Scorpy and li’l Jay-Jay don’ wanna hear no extended metaphors.  Too hard...make brain hurt...SHUT UP!

Like scorpy ever had an original idea in his freaking life.

Kansas is just a place, like any other place.

That link didn’t work out like I planned, but the effect is kinda cool, in an unintentional way.

Maybe this: <http://tinyurl.com/18r>

Go here. Scroll down to Chris Hume “Red State Road Trip” Day 8.  Click on your preferred video link.

Dumbo speaks!  The high priest of free market economics states an opinion, and that opinion can best be summarized in the words of his faithful feline philosopher’s apprentice:

“Nothing.”

Well, OK.  It was just one word, but it’s a crucial quote nevertheless.

You’d think these post-modern neoconservative genii might contribute an insight even remotely “germane” to the principal premise of Frank’s extended essay into the wilderness of American conservative political populism, (which not coincidentally, is the subject of this thread): that postmodern conservatism is the social inversion of premodern progressivism, an American revolutionary counterpart to the French Revolution, which villifies the powerless liberal “revolutionaries” as it glorifies the corporate aristocracy which created the problem in the first place.  But no, these two intellectual titans continue to carp their sad refrain: that “cultural values” dominate the debate, and economic realities, other than their “pie-in-the-sky” faith in the “free” market, no longer obtain.

Perhaps, if we repent and renounce our evil, atheistic liberal habits, our mercenary masters might pity us, and find some shred of generosity in their collective conservative hearts to return the industry they outsourced to the backwaters of the world, where wages, for the moment, remain uncorrupted by the unrealistic expectations of union solidarity, and delusions of “human rights” and “economic entitlements”.  Only the affluent aristocracy deserve their “entitlements”.  The rest of us are entitled to work, for whatever wage the miraculous market will allow.  Equilibrium points between the intersection of supply and demand: we supply what they demand.

Loony Booty -

“SHUT UP!” she explained.

bush’s approval ratings 35% and republican’s house ratings 34% today. Democrates just have to sit back and watch the republicans sink. The public has spoken in their poll ratings.
Now the republican’s will spin this into the polls don’t matter and everything is fine, but 10 years ago the same thing happen to the democrate’s when they lost the house to the republican’s.

That’s just too sad, scorpy bambicito.  Buck up.  Remember, you’re not a loser...you’re a winner....you’re not a loser...your a winner...you’re not a loser...you’re a winner...you’re not..............*................You are just another poor dumb fuck like rest of us.  Get over it.