Who I respect

This is who I respect in politics, and in the world.

People willing, honestly, to take on their own, for their and our own good. People like John Ridley.

Obama's Struggle with Typical Liberal Hypocrisy

"From the beginning it's been fairly clear a big chunk of supposedly liberal America hasn't been ready for Barack Obama. Their unease obvious in the shock and awe of Joe Biden, and in Newsweek's inane, aloud wonderings of whether or not Obama was 'black enough.' 'Black enough' for the liberals being people of color in the Sharpton/Jackson mold; Old Schoolers devoutly wed to the regressive ideology of loud haranguing and low expectations. Obama -- early on in a Pound Cake-esque fashion urging people of color to do better and questioning race-based affirmative action -- was clearly not 'black enough' for the Liberal Plantation.

Any doubt that Obama was from the jump fighting not only for the presidency, but also against Lefty hypocrisy was shattered into a million pieces by Geraldine Ferraro's 'lucky' black man remark. Those pieces then again refined by Clinton's talk of 'hard-working Americans, white Americans.'

Clearly much of the liberal Left has long seen...oh, your average non-hard-working black, as nothing more than a piece of a loyal voting bloc. Keep us anesthetized, they feel, with promises of hand outs and government mollycoddling and we will mindlessly check the 'D' box on Election Day.

Conservatives are, of course, not a hair less bigoted in their hearts (nor are Independents or anyone else for that matter). But unlike Democrats, Republicans have found a way to play nicely with the ideologically aligned, regardless of the color of their skin.

That, perhaps, is part of the problem; Obama is more his own man than merely a Democratic tool. That he refused to put up a show, and then capitulate, makes him all the more frustrating to those on the Left used to their people of color playing by pre-prescribed rules.

In that regard it's too bad Obama's not an anti-war Republican. His 'Yes We Can' message of hope, his Morning in America redux, would have worked much better had it not be drowned out by the typical gloom and doom drum beat of the liberal machine."

This is how the bullies in both parties are going to be confronted. By thinking people in each party who say to the faithless and meanspirited in each party, "You are a fraud. You do not offer leadership. You offer cynicism. Which leads nowhere. And we will not be following."

We need more people thinking, writing, and leading like this.

Thanks, John, for joining the fold.

Think more, whine less

Wow. Peggy Noonan tells Republicans to buck up and put on their thinking caps.

Pity Party

"The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

The headline Wednesday on Drudge, from Politico, said, "Republicans Stunned by Loss in Mississippi." It was about the eight-point drubbing the Democrat gave the Republican in the special House election. My first thought was: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that. Second thought: Most party leaders in Washington are stupid – detached, played out, stuck in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in '78 or '82 or '94. Whatever they learned then, they think pertains now. In politics especially, the first lesson sticks. For Richard Nixon, everything came back to Alger Hiss.

They are also – Hill leaders, lobbyists, party speakers – successful, well-connected, busy and rich. They never guessed, back in '86, how government would pay off! They didn't know they'd stay! They came to make a difference and wound up with their butts in the butter. But affluence detaches, and in time skews thinking. It gives you the illusion you're safe, and that everyone else is. A party can lose its gut this way.

Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven years in the White House. But they've publicly supported it so long they think they . . . support it. They get confused. Late at night they toss and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what those thoughts imply.

And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have the country, the troops will rally in the fall.

'This was a real wakeup call for us,' someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. 'We can't let the Democrats take our issues.' And those issues would be? 'We can't let them pretend to be conservatives,' he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

The Bush White House, faced with the series of losses from 2005 through '08, has long claimed the problem is Republicans on the Hill and running for office. They have scandals, bad personalities, don't stand for anything. That's why Republicans are losing: because they're losers...

...What happens to the Republicans in 2008 will likely be dictated by what didn't happen in 2005, and '06, and '07. The moment when the party could have broken, on principle, with the administration – over the thinking behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and the size of government – has passed. What two years ago would have been honorable and wise will now look craven. They're stuck.

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn't be left with a ruined 'brand,' as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership."

What is really terrific about this column is that, unlike Andrew Sullivan's criticism of a conservative who looks like he is voting Democratic, Peggy Noonan is not abandoning the Republican party in this piece.

She is saying, as an insider, "Buck the fuck up, you fuckin' whiners. Put on your thinking caps, take conservative principles seriously, and rebuild your party."

This is much more encouraging to me, at some level, right now, to Andrew's cheering for Obama - as much as I think Andrew Sullivan is one if not the finest conservative journalists and thinkers in the business - because it anticipates what needs to be anticipated: the need for a strong and credible Republican opposition.

Liberals and Democrats, no matter Andrew's frustration with them, right now, are a long fucking shot from having all the answers. There are many, many, many places where Democrats have bad policy perscriptions.

But without a credible Republican opposition, right now, it becomes very difficult to block bad policy and to offer up better ideas.

And Peggy is preparing her party for the next leg in this journey.

Which should be important to all of us. Unless we are deluded with the notion that liberals really do have all answers they pretend to have.

They don't. And that's why Baron de Montesquieu argued, rightly, that we should have divided power to check the arrogance of those who have it.

Peggy Noonan is right. Republicans need to stop feeling sorry for themselves and start thinking their way out of their woes rather than trying to posture their way out.

Pretending to be tough is for pussies.

Real men and women think their way through the challenges they face. And they use force only when it is absolutely necessary, not to rationalize their cowardice.

And Peggy Noonan is basically telling all the poseurs in the Republican party, "Stop being such fuckin' pussies and start thinking about and taking seriously the principles that make this party great. Think more, pose less, you fuckin' losers."

It is a long overdue message for serious and honest thinkers who are tired of their pitifully less thoughtful brethren trying to bully their way through conversations that it hurts their heads to think their way through more seriously.

And fuck them for that.

Thanks, Peggy. It's good to know that honesty counts for something in this business.

The strange direction for the tax policy debate

Ever since the gas tax holiday idea floated by John McCain - an idea that will not resolve America's financial problems, but one that really can't hurt, either, and very well may help - the tax debate in Washington has taken a strange turn.

Steve Chapman's article, in Reason magazine of all places, demonstrates that strange turn.

Republicans and Tax Realities

"Sensible people might not mind the lost revenue if the change strengthened the economy. But chances are it does just the opposite, by encouraging taxpayers to jump through hoops to reduce their tax liability.

A low capital gains rate hinders the free market by inducing people (especially very wealthy ones) to find ways to take earnings as capital gains instead of ordinary income. In other words, it encourages them to do things that would not make economic sense otherwise. A modestly higher rate would discourage such wasteful avoidance.

Like all taxes, capital gains taxes are a burden. But given that the federal government spends nearly $3 trillion a year, taxes are a regrettable necessity. When we cut capital gains taxes, we have to raise other taxes to make up the loss. Or we have to borrow more money—which means raising taxes in the future.

Republicans may abhor the obligation of paying for the welfare state they helped preserve. But for the moment, the only real choice is between doing that job better and doing it worse."

What?

A capital gains tax rate gives people an incentive to pay the government less by offering a way for people to pay less tax and channel resources into capital gains - the basis for investments that grow the economy - rather than into discretionary income - where it is more likely to be spent rather than invested - and this undermines the market?

What exactly is Steve Chapman smoking that the folks over at Reason, rightly, advocate should be legalized?

The budget needs to get balanced. That is a priority. But it can be done in many ways. We could raise taxes. But doing so, generally, undermines economic growth both because it coerces money from other purposes and because one of those purposes, in particular, is the investment of those same limited resources into ventures that can expand those resources to become less limited and thus produce more long-term tax revenue.

It is perfectly conceivable that an enormously bloated Federal deficit and Federal budget could be cut in any number of ways and taxes can remain low or lowered, given a genuine commitment to a balanced budget and limited government instead the charade that is masquerading as such in this debate.

The truth is that those who are looking to raise taxes either do not want to make the budget cuts necessary or they have grown so cynical about all of the political maneuvering on such questions that they behave like such cuts cannot be made, rather than the truth, which is that legislators and constituents, often, do not want to make those cuts.

It's irrational that people would look to pork rather than building the economy, both for themselves and for others.

But Americans - Americans from all walks of life; not just those on welfare - have this irrational sense of entitlement to someone else creating financial opportunities for them rather than creating them in the market, themselves, which is the only place that sustainable and honest wealth can be built.

And it is that wealth that is the basis for both Federal revenues and paying off that enormously overbloated budget. It is also that market, and the democratic conversation around it, that offers the greatest hope in our efforts to offer the best quality services in our non-profit commitments, like health care.

Americans need to come to terms with a simple fact about the economy: the only and best way to create wealth, for profit-based endeavors, but also to more generously and effectively support decentralized, diverse, and better quality non-profit commitments, is through taxes low enough to support the most limited government we can safely and wisely to support.

We can fail to come to terms with that fact. But that failure has consequences too. And none of them are great consequences.

And none of our failure to come to terms with this fact of life makes America or democracy or anyone great.

Facing such facts of life and building a stronger and more liberal democracy makes America, the liberal democratic world, and everyone great.

It is our liberty that makes us strong. It is our liberty that makes us great. And any empirical and clear-headed comparison of liberal and illiberal cultures and the quality of lives of those who live there bears that out.

The question is can be that honest and clear-headed in our outlook.

I think we can.

And I think doing so is what makes liberal democracy great.