Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

[St. Clown]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

Naming a town is much different than mass immigration. All it takes is one successful exploration and one small group can re-name an entire region. I say re-name because I do not think any of those individuals the European explorers displaced coined all the French names. I lived in Fond du Lac for close to 20 years and I am not sure I met a single family who identified as French. Mostly German, Irish, Scandinavian, etc, like the rest of Wisconsin. More importantly for the discussion in this thread, either Catholic or Lutheran

During the '06 Frozen Four, I was at the Milwaukee history museum. They mentioned the French as the fourth or fifth most prolific group European, with the Germans and Polish being the first two, then it was either the Swedes or Norwegians. The French just bought the claimed the "unsettled" places first.

[Kepler]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

Naming a town is much different than mass immigration. All it takes is one successful exploration and one small group can re-name an entire region.

Amerigo Vespucci called. He wanted to know how Fiorenza Nuova is working out.

[FreshFish]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

Great disquisition today in WSJ from Charles Murray on the essential differences between liberals and progressives.

I shared drinks and dinner with two men who have held high positions in Democratic administrations. Both men are lifelong liberals. There's nothing "moderate" about their liberalism. But ... I was struck by how little their politics have to do with other elements of the left.

Their liberalism has nothing in common with the political mind-set that wants right-of-center speakers kept off college campuses, rationalizes the forced resignation of a CEO who opposes gay marriage, or thinks George F. Will should be fired for writing a column disagreeable to that mind-set. It has nothing to do with executive orders unilaterally disregarding large chunks of legislation signed into law or with using the IRS as a political weapon. My companions are on a different political plane from those on the left with that outlook—the progressive mind-set.

....

philosophically, the progressive movement at the turn of the 20th century had roots in German philosophy ( Hegel and Nietzsche were big favorites) and German public administration ( Woodrow Wilson's open reverence for Bismarck was typical among progressives). To simplify, progressive intellectuals were passionate advocates of rule by disinterested experts led by a strong unifying leader. They were in favor of using the state to mold social institutions in the interests of the collective. They thought that individualism and the Constitution were both outmoded.

That's not a description that Woodrow Wilson or the other leading progressive intellectuals would have argued with. They openly said it themselves.

It is that core philosophy extolling the urge to mold society that still animates progressives today—a mind-set that produces the shutdown of debate and growing intolerance that we are witnessing in today's America. Such thinking on the left also is behind the rationales for indulging President Obama in his anti-Constitutional use of executive power.

....

I want to make a simple point about millions of people—like my liberal-minded dinner companions—who regularly vote Democratic and who are caught between a rock and a hard place.

Along with its intellectual legacy, the Progressive Era had a political legacy that corresponds to the liberalism of these millions of Democrats. They think that an activist federal government is a force for good, approve of the growing welfare state and hate the idea of publicly agreeing with a Republican about anything. But they also don't like the idea of shouting down anyone who disagrees with them.
....
They still believe that the individual should not be sacrificed to the collective and that people who achieve honest success should be celebrated for what they have built....they still believe in the separation of powers, checks and balances, and the president's duty to execute the laws faithfully.

These Democrats should get exclusive possession of the word "liberal."

we should start using "liberal" to designate the good guys on the left, reserving "progressive" for those who are enthusiastic about an unrestrained regulatory state, who think it's just fine to subordinate the interests of individuals to large social projects, who cheer the president's abuse of executive power and who have no problem rationalizing the stifling of dissent.

Making a clear distinction between liberals and progressives will help break down a Manichaean view of politics that afflicts the nation. Too many of us see those on the other side as not just misguided but evil. The solution is not a generalized "Can't we all just get along" non-judgmentalism. Some political differences are too great for that.

But liberalism as I want to use the term encompasses a set of views that can be held by people who care as much about America's exceptional heritage as I do. Conservatives' philosophical separation from that kind of liberalism is not much wider than the philosophical separation among the various elements of the right. If people from different political planes on the right can talk to each other, as they do all the time, so should they be able to talk to people on the liberal left, if we start making a distinction between liberalism and progressivism. To make that distinction is not semantic, but a way of realistically segmenting the alterations to the political landscape that the past half-century has brought us.

Perhaps that can make it more clear how I can both consider myself a "liberal" who also despises "progressive" politics.

[Kepler]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

Great disquisition today in WSJ

Where by "great disquisition" you mean sophomore dorm bullshit session. Murray should know better. The Bell Curve is unfairly reviled and actually a work of real scholarship. But he's completely out of his depth, here, like a plumber trying to rewire his house.

That excerpt also reminds me of the venomous and completely accurate take down of the Newt Gingrich School of rhetoric: "it's an uneducated person's idea of what an educated person sounds like." There's another great quote (paraphrasing) from a famous conservative who said "the likelihood that your speaker is a cafe poser is proportional to the frequency of him making declarative statements about Rousseau, Marx or Hegel." Again, Murray should know better -- he's not the usual fool who writes in the WSJ. But good lord, a second semester poli sci major could tell he's talking out of his anus.

If you are actually interested in this line of inquiry and not just trying to dazzle with slapdash silliness, there is a tradition of legitimate and subtle analysis out there, but fair warning, it takes a TON of work and it will leave you far less partisan than you are now. As a start read this book. Everybody knows the Hedgehog piece by heart, but read the rest -- in particular, study what Berlin had to say about Herzen. This is no game for sophists, but there's something really bracing about reading The Real Thing after years of marinating in the garbage our culture regards as Serious Political Thought. The downside is you will never take any popular political opinion-blarger, left or right, seriously again -- they may as well be Nelson Muntz once you've tried the heavy stuff.

This I promise you: if you're serious and open-minded you'll get a lot out of it. Also, the arguments in it are actually related to your post, so you might even get some serious grounding for what is obviously your prefab partisan stance. They are also the Mona Lisa compared to somebody drooling on a tablecloth in Murdoch's commissariat, so if nothing else your readers will be happier.

They're also the most devastating criticism of authoritarianism that I've ever read. Oh, and Berlin's even funny, in his own very dry way. Well, funny Chesterton, but without the bile and anger.

[Kepler]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

Meanwhile...

Happy 4th, everyone! Please be safe in all your driving, 'sploding, and other activities.

The reason for the season:

- - - - - -

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Matthew Thornton

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris

North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

[William Blake]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

*******, *******, burning bright
in the forests of the right,

I was going to say, I can't tell if I should be insulted or not because it's all *'ed out, but I can see the word you used when I quote it (at least before I post this), so I know not to be

[Kepler]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

Some of this is overstated, particularly the insistence that this is a completely unprecedented internecine party fight. But one paragraph captured the essence of why, even if we've seen it before, it's potentially so dangerous:

The recent friction between the GOP establishment and Tea Party forces is similar to clashes that rocked the Republican Party in the 1960s – yet with a crucial difference. Instead of bowing to the more right-wing elements of the party, as today's Republicans have, the administration of Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower took a moderate tack best explained by Eisenhower's Under Secretary of Labor, Arthur Larson. He described what he called "true conservatism" as a belief system focused on the preservation and promotion of American ideals and values, even if government had to take active steps to secure such preservation. Larson contrasted such genuine conservatism to a "false conservatism." For him, this belief system was willing to reject new and innovative ways to preserve the American way and insist on older ways, even if stubborn adherence to them would ultimately undermine values Americans cherish.

And that's the key. The far right is not conservative, it's exactly the opposite. The kernel of conservatism is the protection of basic American values. The monster currently lumbering on the right will happily destroy all of those values as long as it gets power. In the long run, they're dead -- quite literally, they are demographically dead within 20 years. But in the short run they can still do a lot of damage.

[Bob Gray]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

Some of this is overstated, particularly the insistence that this is a completely unprecedented internecine party fight. But one paragraph captured the essence of why, even if we've seen it before, it's potentially so dangerous:

And that's the key. The far right is not conservative, it's exactly the opposite. The kernel of conservatism is the protection of basic American values. The monster currently lumbering on the right will happily destroy all of those values as long as it gets power. In the long run, they're dead -- quite literally, they are demographically dead within 20 years. But in the short run they can still do a lot of damage.

Sometimes I'm stunned by how differently you see things. Wow!

[Kepler]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

Sometimes I'm stunned by how differently you see things. Wow!

That's why God made different flavor ice cream.

How do you see things? I'm interested to know.

[Bob Gray]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

That's why God made different flavor ice cream.

How do you see things? I'm interested to know.

I'm just referring to the representation that those who define themselves as conservative don't have an interest in preserving basic traditional values. If you reframed it and said pro-big business Republicans, then I'd understand where you're coming from and agree. But social conservative Republicans view themselves as fighting a tough rearguard action to try to preserve what fragments remain of traditional basic values in this country in a setting where social mores are being rewritten by the minute.

[Kepler]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

I'm just referring to the representation that those who define themselves as conservative don't have an interest in preserving basic traditional values. If you reframed it and said pro-big business Republicans, then I'd understand where you're coming from and agree. But social conservative Republicans view themselves as fighting a tough rearguard action to try to preserve what fragments remain of traditional basic values in this country in a setting where social mores are being rewritten by the minute.

There has been a long and often bitter battle inside conservatism about whether being conservative means suspending social attitudes in amber or trying to get beneath social attitudes to what their source is and why they make sense (and why they can stop making sense one day and need changes). By "long" I mean 300 years and counting, so we're not going it solve it today.

Let's take slavery as something that is distant enough in time that the battles over it can be more easily discussed. There was a self-described "conservative" defense of slavery: we should not uproot our traditions with the dangerous experiment of giving blacks rights; slavery has always been part of the price of civilization; what was good enough for the Founders is good enough for us. There was a self-described "conservative" attack on slavery: slavery is offensive to the American tradition that all men are created equal and it is time to change it; slavery is an intrusion of commerce on the moral realm and we should reassert the primacy of God and restore divine balance.

Because anybody can use a tradition as broad and deep as conservatism (or liberalism) to both attack or defend pretty much any proposition, the second type of conservative seeks for something below "the way it's always been." Political scholars like Russell Kirk have discerned underneath these kinds of apparent contradictions patterns that keep repeating in history. One type of "conservatism" reacts against a change in social practices as ipso facto unnatural, and sees the conservative tradition as trying to keep values from "sliding." The other type of "conservatism" looks at social practices not as ends in themselves but as means to deeper ends. When the means becomes offensive to the end, you modify the means. (Of course, this is also a rigged game, since the type of thinkers who make these distinctions also have their feet planted in the second camp. Reactionaries don't accept the distinction in the first place.)

Let me use gay marriage as the contemporary example. One type of conservative looks at gays and sees their grandfathers' revulsion at an "abomination." For them, gay marriage is in itself a wrong that can not be countenanced. The other type of conservative looks at marriage and says, "this is a good institution for all sorts of reasons -- let's not oppose its spread." Their attitudes towards gay people can change without threatening their underlying devotion to the healthy effect of stable relationships. Although they may themselves simply never be able to wrap their heads around gays as morally equal (after all, few abolitionists saw blacks as actually equal), they at least reach "better to marry than to burn."

"Social conservatism" can be defined either way, and I strongly suspect the reason a person is one or the other type just comes down to autobiographical details. Both are "valid" in the sense of being coherent worldviews that sustain themselves. But that very clash between them has given the more intellectually curious conservative thinkers grist for discussion for the last several centuries.

[FreshFish]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

The history of the present "King" is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts:
establishing an Arbitrary government,
For abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

He has abdicated Government here,
He has destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time already begun with circumstances of perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us,

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Some things never change...

[Kepler]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

Some things never change...

Inevitability, for the win.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

Inevitability, for the win.

I wonder if that cartoon has it wrong. I think the original Tea Party wasn't made up of complete loonballs like Michelle Bachmann. The Tea Party didn't really give a dam about the social conservative talking points until the blowhards like Glen Beck saw the goodies between pair of legs they weren't trying to control and decided to make it their business.

[Kepler]

Re: Your Political Stance - 2014 Edition

I wonder if that cartoon has it wrong. I think the original Tea Party wasn't made up of complete loonballs like Michelle Bachmann. The Tea Party didn't really give a dam about the social conservative talking points until the blowhards like Glen Beck saw the goodies between pair of legs they weren't trying to control and decided to make it their business.

I think the cartoon was trying to bring that across. The nutbar with the tea bags (a woman at my work actually did that one day -- incredible) is thrilled, the mainstream GOP (love the suit) is shocked the Tea Party vehicle has driven into the tree (unlabeled, but presumably, Electoral Reality), so there's a distinction being made between the TP and the nutbar.

If you want to give the cartoonist more credit than he probably deserves, the story could be that the GOP rents the Tea Party vehicle as a temporary vehicle (any means to an end), the nutbar (who is presumably just as hyped up the whole time) takes it seriously and somehow causes the accident (as a backseat driver) -- a simple retelling of the Scorpion and the Frog.

In OTL, the tea party started as local and as far as anybody can tell sincere protests specifically against TARP and the bailout, before Obama was even elected -- classic agrarian populists who hate Banksters and City Slickers -- Kansas before Something Was The Matter.

Beck saw an opportunity for quick money and used them as useful idiots, astro-turfing national "Tea Party" gatherings. Because these were being orchestrated by the Echo Chamber they immediately took on every Knuck talking point: Obama's the anti-Christ, gun fondling, if I can't drag a gay behind my pickup my religious freedom is being infringed, the usual Wahmbulance. The GOP greedily slobbered up all the votes...

... but then a funny thing happened on the way to Restoring 'Murica. The extremist rhetoric was meth for actual extremists, who nominated crazy people and blew 5 or 6 sure Senate seats. The GOP was horrified that these rubes, who the Kochs wouldn't even let use the service entrance without fumigating, were actually following through on the rhetoric that had been drawn up in Club For Growth seminars strictly for its vote-provoking magic.

I'd say the cartoon does a pretty good job telling a complicated story.