Climate change and liberal democracy

Bjorn Lomborg writes powerfully in The New Economy about the policy choices we face with climate change.

Misusing the inaction argument

"One commonly repeated argument for doing something about climate change sounds compelling, but turns out to be almost fraudulent. It is based on comparing the cost of action with the cost of inaction, and almost every major politician in the world uses it.

The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, used the inaction argument when he presented the European Union’s proposal to tackle climate change earlier this year. The EU promised to cut its CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2020, at a cost that the Commission’s own estimates put at about 0.5 percent of GDP, or roughly €60bn per year. This is obviously a hefty price tag – at least a 50 percent increase in the total cost of the EU – and it will likely be much higher (the Commission has previously estimated the cost to be double its current estimate).

But Barroso’s punchline was that “the cost is low compared to the high price of inaction.” In fact, he forecasted that the price of doing nothing “could even approach 20 percent of GDP.” (Never mind that this cost estimate is probably wildly overestimated – most models show about three percent damages.)

So there you have it. Of course, politicians should be willing to spend 0.5 percent of GDP to avoid a 20 percent cost of GDP. This sounds eminently sensible – until you realise that Barroso is comparing two entirely different issues.

The 0.5 percent-of-GDP expense will reduce emissions ever so slightly (if everyone in the EU actually fulfills their requirements for the rest of the century, global emissions will fall by about four percent). This would reduce the temperature increase expected by the end of the century by just five-hundredths of a degree Celsius (nine-hundredths Fahrenheit). Thus, the EU’s immensely ambitious programme will not stop or even significantly impact global warming.

In other words, if Barroso fears costs of 20 percent of GDP in the year 2100, the 0.5 percent payment every year of this century will do virtually nothing to change that cost. We would still have to pay by the end of the century, only now we would also have made ourselves poorer in the 90 years preceding it.

The sleight of hand works because we assume that the action will cancel all the effects of inaction, whereas of course, nothing like that is true. This becomes much clearer if we substitute much smaller action than Barroso envisions.

For example, say that the EU decides to put up a diamond-studded wind turbine at the Berlaymont headquarters, which will save one ton of CO2 each year. The cost will be $1bn, but the EU says that this is incredibly cheap when compared to the cost of inaction on climate change, which will run into the trillions. It should be obvious that the $1bn windmill doesn’t negate the trillions of dollars of damage from climate change that we still have to pay by the end of the century.

The EU’s argument is similar to advising a man with a gangrenous leg that paying $50,000 for an aspirin is a good deal because the cost compares favourably to the cost of inaction, which is losing the leg. Of course, the aspirin doesn’t prevent that outcome. The inaction argument is really terribly negligent, because it causes us to recommend aspirin and lose sight of smarter actions that might actually save the leg.

Likewise, it is negligent to focus on inefficiently cutting CO2 now because of costs in the distant future that in reality will not be avoided. It stops us from focusing on long-term strategies like investment in energy R&D that would actually solve climate change and at a much lower cost."

The larger question for me on global warming is how we square ourselves with the policy failures of efforts like the Kyoto protocol and engage more effective efforts through more genuine public-private partnership.

I am not encouraged that we will see that kind of genuine partnership anytime soon, given the left-wing celebration of strong-arming public policy questions, these days.

The most promising climate change measures are coming from the market, at this point, I'm convinced. It is not for the failure of good intentions among environmentalists leveraging for regulation. It is because of the general failure of regulatory approaches like Kyoto to deliver when more genuine collaboration is needed to tackle problems like global warming.

It will take some years of failure with this more regulatory approach for liberal demoracies to adopt policies that support more genuine, collaborative private-public partnerships, which are the only efforts that have much change of success.

And thank goodness for a liberal democracy where our policies can be honestly debated and discussed so that our efforts can be focused on solving problems rather than defending our failures.

That broader marketplace of ideas, and not power or even the rule of law, is the brilliance of liberal democracies. And thank goodness we are able to take that fact of liberal democratic life for granted.

Liberal education

A fascinating look at educational opportunity in developing countries at the Economist.

The yawning gap in education within developing countries

"GLOBAL public spending on education rose from a median 4.5% of GDP in 1999 to 4.9% in 2006, according to a new report by UNESCO, the UN's education agency. The poorest countries invested 3.5%, compared with 5.6% by the slightly richer middle income countries, and 5.3% by developed countries. But spending money wisely also matters. Huge inequalities exist between the richest and poorest within many countries. In India, a 17-22 year old in the richest quintile has had an average of 11.1 years in education, compared with only 4.4 years for those in the poorest quintile. This gap is also big in Peru and the Philippines. The difference in Bangladesh is similar to that in Nicargaua, a much richer country, showing it is using resources more effectively."

Check out the article for a fascinating graphic breakdown of average number of years of education in each country.

Education is one of the central matters of concern to me that keeps my liberal commitments honest. It is plainly clear to me that liberal education, meaning the development of the conscience and intellect, is one that is best done consistent with liberal principles, meaning ones that respect independence of thought and action, freedom of choice and conscience, free and honest substantive engagement and learning, and an honest attempt to address inequities while acknowledging that inequalities of effort, commitment, and merit are inevitable in any society, and especially a liberal society that does and should reward merit.

Socialism is not liberal, in this context, insofar as it, inherently violates the consciences and judgments of independent actors in a liberal democracy. A commitment to one's neighbor is neither mutually exclusive with a democracy that respect freedom of conscience and choice and it is best facilitated by that kind of freedom that better acknowledges that coerced commitments are not real commitments at all and that free commitments are the only ones likely to deliver the highest quality opportunities for all people.

Public education in developed countries and developing countries, as conservative free market economist Milton Friedman and liberal poverty economist Amartya Sen both argue, are ones that must occur consistent with liberal principles, meaning a respect for freedom of conscience and choice by rich and poor alike.

Public education, hence, must become more liberal and democratic, meaning more free and self-determined, for real progress to occur on this front and almost all fronts of liberal democratic progress. School choice and commitments to educational opportunity for all children are necesary for this kind of progress. Government-funded education is a compromise on this principle that is worthy in many instances. But it is not the ideal that a more genuinely liberal democratic education - that is voluntarily provided and funded by independent schools, teachers, and administrators and chosen freely by independently-acting parents and students - has to offer.

The compromise of this principle by government funding to assure educational opportunity should not be confused with a more genuinely liberal education, that is freely chosen, engaged, committed to, and funded, to develop free and independent consciences and intellects.

Force is generally inconsistent and mutually exclusive with a genuinely liberal education, except in the case of real physical danger to those involved. It's use should be minimized and avoided as much as is reasonably possible and voluntary efforts should replace compulsory efforts as long as we take the principles of a liberal education and liberal democracy seriously.

This is not just a matter of abstraction. Such education is critical to undermining the oppressive hold of repressive and illiberal governments and institutions around the world. North Korea is no more liberal for its leftist dictatorship than Saddam Hussein was conservative for his right wing authoritariasm, and both, rightly, are most powerfully challenged by citizens with liberal commitments. And liberal education - meaning education that embraces a commitment to free and independent conscience and intellect - is necessary to debate, criticize, and undermine the illiberal commitments of governments organized around force as a governing philosophy rather than by a respect for individual conscience and choice. And those liberal commitments are fundamental to almost all of the most important quantity and quality of life indicators for people around the world.

Freedom makes possible both the safety and substantially better quality of life enjoyed in liberal democracies, and education is fundamental to developing the commitments, including and especially a commitment to reason as the foundation for understanding and resolving important problems in a culture, that guarantee that more people live, live longer, healthier, more decent, more honest, worthwhile lives. Almost all serious quality of life indices correlate broadly with stronger liberal commitments. And liberal education is the fundamental commitment that makes possible others within a culture.

This is one of the most critical questions for the 21st century and future of liberal democracies. The stakes are too high to take liberal education commitments less seriously than they deserve and to guarantee the freedom of conscience and choice that are fundamental to the development of robust liberal democracies that offer better lives for all of us.

This is the commitment of a liberal conscience. That all people should have better lives. No matter who or where they might be.

Ideals and what I can live with

I generally agree with this argument. Though I do not cry when courts affirm individual liberties when they are not explicitly given expression in the law.

Gay Marriage and the California Courts

Griswold v. Connecticut is not based on an explicit protection for privacy in the Constitution. But I do think the individual liberties involved warrant some kind of legal affirmation, even as I prefer that affirmation to come from democratic politics.

I definitely think a culture that affirms individual liberties is a stronger and more reliably mature liberal democratic culture. But I'm not in a hurry to revisit every court decision that affirms liberties based on our liberal democratic traditions.

What matters to me is that America and all liberal democracies take their liberal and democratic traditions more seriously and strengthen their commitments to free and self-governing socieities, independent of courts. Democratic outcomes - referendums, initiatives, legislative decisions, and the individual attitudes in the culture, generally - are better barometers of that commitment. Court rulings, generally, I think, offer protections for freedoms when majorities are not prepared to support them. That is a precarious way to affirm liberty, long term. But it is not a mortal sin. And challenges to majority rule based on principles of individual liberties and constitutional principle is a long and proud tradition in American juris prudence and the history of liberal democracies.

I don't know if majorities support the rights of Aghani women to vote and get an education. I certainly hope they do or will come to such a commitment. But I have no issue when Afghani courts interpreting that Afghani constitutional principles affirm such rights even if they do not explicitly make such affirmations or if majorities do not support them. They may be reversed. They also happen to be on the right side of the question.

Democracy is ideal. Court decisions that come down on the right side I can live with.

The truth will set us free

Thomas Sowell has some very nice perspective on the current economy and its would-be political saviors.

'Jolting the Economy'

From that column:

"Amid all the political and media hysteria, national output has declined by less than one-half of one percent. In fact, it may not have declined even that much-- or at all-- when the statistics are revised later, as they very often are.

We are not talking about the Great Depression, when output dropped by one-third and unemployment soared to 25 percent.

What we are talking about is a golden political opportunity for politicians to use the current financial crisis to fundamentally change an economy that has been successful for more than two centuries, so that politicians can henceforth micro-manage all sorts of businesses and play Robin Hood, taking from those who are not likely to vote for them and transferring part of their earnings to those who will vote for them.

For that, the politicians need lots of hype, and that is being generously supplied by the media.

Whatever the merits of trying to shore up some financial institutions, in order to prevent a major disruption of the credit flows that keep the whole economy going, what has in fact been done has been to create a huge pot of money-- hundreds of billions of dollars-- that politicians can use to give out goodies hither and yon, to whomever they please for whatever reason they please.

No doubt we could all use a few billion dollars every now and then. But the question of who actually gets it will be strictly in the hands of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It is one of the few parts of the legacy of the Bush administration that the Democrats are not likely to criticize.

Much as we may deplore partisanship in Washington, bipartisan disasters are often twice as bad as partisan disasters-- and this is a bipartisan disaster in the making.

Too many people who argue that there is a beneficial role for the government to play in the economy glide swiftly from that to the conclusion that the government will in fact confine itself to playing such a role.

In the light of history, this is a faith which passeth all understanding. Even in the case of the Great Depression of the 1930s, increasing numbers of economists and historians who have looked back at that era have concluded that, on net balance, government intervention prolonged the Great Depression.

Many of those who have, over the years, praised the fact that this was the first time that the federal government took responsibility for trying to get the country out of a depression do not ask what seems like the logical follow-up question: Did this depression therefore end faster than other depressions where the government stood by and did nothing?

The Great Depression of the 1930s was in fact the longest-lasting of all our depressions.

Government policy in the 1930s was another bipartisan disaster. Despite a myth that Herbert Hoover was a "do nothing" president, he was the first President of the United States to step in to try to put the economy back on track.

With the passing years, it has increasingly been recognized that what FDR did was largely a further extension of what Hoover had done. Where Hoover made things worse, FDR made them much worse.

Herbert Hoover did what Barack Obama is proposing to do. Hoover raised taxes on high-income people and put restrictions on international trade, in order to try to save American jobs. It didn't work then and it is not likely to work now.

Perhaps the most disastrous of all the counterproductive policies of the federal government was the National Industrial Recovery Act under FDR, which set out to do exactly what the politicians today want to do-- micro-manage businesses."

The empirics on this are pretty clear, actually, to objective observers who have not bought into the hype. This downturn is not a depression. And even the romanticism of the New Deal legacy reflects a poor and terribly incomplete understanding of the Depression. This was straightforward consensus among economists before the disillusionment with the Bush Administration. I very much doubt that the current politicial moment will sustain a substantial and long-standing change in that consensus.

Because the facts just do not support the revision.

In fact, if there were a period where the facts will flatly contradict an important ideological lens on events, this is as good as period as any.

What matters is what is true, not what I can make a case for. That is the nature of empirical observation and conclusions.

And the truth, mark my words on this one, will set us free.

George Will, pimpin' large

Congress has made bureaucrats into legislators

Sutherland's maxim: Adherents to ideology are at their best when they are illustrating what fuckin' morons adherents to other ideologies are when they are at their worst.

Newsflash: The Rich and Powerful in America Lend a Hand to the Rich and Powerful in America

Progress.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Being honest when we just don't know

A refreshingly insightful and genuine article from Bill Kristol, this morning. Definitely want to check this piece out.

Admit We Don't Know

"And it was Lincoln who wrote, in his second annual message to Congress, in December 1862: 'The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.'

I’ve worked in government. It’s hard to do much thinking there at all, let alone thinking anew. But Obama and his team will have to think anew, and those on the outside who wish to help will have to think anew too, if we’re to have a chance of rising to this daunting occasion."

It's the strongest bit of wisdom in conservative thought. That people, and those in government especially, are better off admitting when they do not know and what they cannot do, than to pretend to know or be able to do more than they can.

He's right. It is the single biggest weakness for Americans to face, right now. That we think we have more answers than we do.

We are better off acknowledging this fact, all of us, intellectuals and average folks, alike, than we are taking off on damned fool adventures to nowhere.

Being honest about what we don't know is not weakness. It's strength. The strength it takes to be honest about our vulnerabilities.

Acknowledging that we do not know is the first step toward discovering new insights and correcting the problem. As much as is humanly possible. And no more.

Bill Kristol definitely just earned my respect. And it came from his honest humility rather than his vast knowledge.

More of us could learn from that example.

What it means to be a liberal democracy

The current political moment is a serious misunderstanding of what it means to be a liberal democracy.

Liberal means liberty. Democracy refers to the right of people to govern their own affairs.

This period is neither more liberal nor more democratic, by those standards. Meaning, though many of us live in liberal democracies, the notion that we are making progress on the road to becoming more liberal and more democratic is not borne out by the illiberal efforts of those with power to undermine liberty and self-determination by liberal democratic peoples.

This moment is hardly progressive by any liberal democratic standard.

And political leaders in both parties are in for a rude awakening at how illiberal practices by government square with liberal democratic peoples' need and pursuit of greater liberty and democratic self-governance as the standard for their progress.

Those principles mean something, even when we pretend that they do not.

Thank goodness we live in a liberal democracy that can correct for the illiberal practices of our political leaders.

Only the beginning

There's just no end to the progress, is there?

Britain May Ban 'Happy Hour' As Alcohol Related Deaths Rise

One day we will have banned all that ails us. Only then will we recognize the only real progress available to humanity. When our betters have finally forced it upon us.

Progress

New York City Churches Ordered Not to Shelter Homeless

It's just undeniable, isn't it?

American Politics 101

American Democratic Idol.



There was a reason the Greeks abandoned direct democracy.

I think it had something to do with reality television.

Stephen Colbert makes Mark Twain his bitch (and he likes it)

Stephen Colbert is the new Stephen Colbert.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

A Colbert Christmas: Preview - Toby Keith

Ron Paul Interview
Bob Barr Interview

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

He is a notorious Godless sodomite, and a brilliant little sodomite he is.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - Pity Party

Ron Paul Interview
Bob Barr Interview

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

High brow and low, Stephen Colbert clowns them all. I have never seen someone so effectively humble those for whom humility is a foul obsensity.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - Love Lost

Ron Paul Interview
Bob Barr Interview

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Mark Twain is so dead. And his spirit lives as a garden gnome in Stephen Colbert's pants.

Taking freedom seriously

For those who take freedom for granted.

Myanmar court hands comedian 45-year prison term

This is why I don't.

I don't care what excuses people give for repression. I don't care what excuses those in liberal democracies give for giving ammunition to repressive forces in Myanmar and around the world. I don't care if those responsible will not take responsibility for how their repression helps thugs like this regime to rationalize their own thuggishness.

I intend on being an honest reality check for those hostile to freedom and friendly to repression of all kinds for as long as my life permits.

And that, and not the embrace of repression, is what courage looks like. No matter what bullshitting people may do to the contrary.

Power is often and generally the refuge of cowards who care too little about its appropriate use and the consequences of its abuse.

Thank goodness there are people like Maung Thura to be an honest reflection of courage when our cowardice is too much for us to bear.

Taking freedom seriously is a tough job. Thank goodness people like Maung are willing to do it.

If only his observers in the free and democratic world took liberal democrac values so seriously.

Repression and bulling our way through democracy

After a discussion with a colleague about his interactions with some religious fundamentalists in his family, I think I understand, now, why people with repressive philosophies are able to go so long pretending like their stubbornness is the same thing as being righteous and right, especially on questions where they are so assuredly wrong.

Because they are used to bulling their way through such conversations.

Not with me, they're not. And never will be.

You think you can bull your way through a discussion on freedom and repression with me, you got another think coming.

One thing is for sure, if you don't walk away doubting whatever your self-righteous assertion of truth is with me, it, generally, is not because of me. It's because you weren't listening very well in that conversation.

And those who don't listen well don't get treated like they have more truth than they have to offer because they just can't imagine that they might be wrong.

We need more people to challenge the self-righteous among us. Me included. Challenge me. Think hard and engage me seriously. Demonstrate how I'm wrong.

But, for God sakes, stop pretending that your opinions are more final than anything in this world could ever be.

Genuine liberals - meaning those who take liberty seriously - will only keep that flame afire insofar as they are willing to challenge those who would persistently compromise and whittle away those liberties for their own repressive ends.

This political era will be a referendum on that tactic for undermining our liberties.

And it is a referendum that liberty will win.

Freedom to choose

Noone has a monopoly on wisdom. Noone has a monopoly on folly. Noone has a monopoly on virtue. And, most assuredly, nooone has a monopoly on vice.

It is one enormous marketplace of humanity out there.

And each of us gets to choose what contributions, good and bad, we have to offer. And choose again, tomorrow, if we don't like what we brought to the table today.

Freely choosing what we have to offer the world, good and bad, wise and foolish, is the one birthright that each and every one of us has no matter where and to whom we happened to be born.

If you do not like what is available in that marketplace, now is your time to choose your contribution.

Broadminded

Kathleen Parker is brilliant and brave in her Washington Post column, this morning.

Giving Up on God

"As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I'm bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth -- as long as we're setting ourselves free -- is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

The choir has become absurdly off-key, and many Republicans know it.

But they need those votes!

So it has been for the Grand Old Party since the 1980s or so, as it has become increasingly beholden to an element that used to be relegated to wooden crates on street corners.

Short break as writer ties blindfold and smokes her last cigarette.

Which is to say, the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows. In the process, the party has alienated its non-base constituents, including other people of faith (those who prefer a more private approach to worship), as well as secularists and conservative-leaning Democrats who otherwise might be tempted to cross the aisle.

Here's the deal, 'pubbies: Howard Dean was right.

It isn't that culture doesn't matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs.

Religious conservatives become defensive at any suggestion that they've had something to do with the GOP's erosion. And, though the recent Democratic sweep can be attributed in large part to a referendum on Bush and the failing economy, three long-term trends identified by Emory University's Alan Abramowitz have been devastating to the Republican Party: increasing racial diversity, declining marriage rates and changes in religious beliefs.

Suffice it to say, the Republican Party is largely comprised of white, married Christians. Anyone watching the two conventions last summer can't have missed the stark differences: One party was brimming with energy, youth and diversity; the other felt like an annual Depends sales meeting."

Someone needed to say it, Kathleen. What both parties need to work on is more reasoned bases for their policies and, hence, more reasoned debates and discussions to form future policies.

Religion can play a role in that discussion. So can secular thought. And neither have a monopoly on wisdom.

But the reasoned idea that policy should follow from the most rigorous and intelligent insights into liberal democratic policy should be the basis for all politics and parties in liberal democracies. And the recognition that no one person, party, ideology, or group of any kind has any sort of monopoly on that wisdom must center in any party and democracy that is going to propose pragmatic and thoughtful solutions to our myriad of democratic challenges.

Many fallacies of reasoning plague our public sphere. Religion hardly has a monopoly on error any more than it has a monopoly on wisdom.

But those people who mistake their religion for more profound and practical wisdom about people and life than it really has to offer do need to face the honest intellectual challenge of thinking outside of that all too narrow and foolish box.

Republicans can follow Rich Lowry's advice and ride the train of social conservativism, if they want. And they should get used to losing elections, long term. The larger reason is that even religious Americans want pragmatic solutions to America's problems that their religion often fails to deliver, even when they do not recognize that fact.

And the more direct reason is that our politics needs to be more honestly squared in values that are most important to religious and non-religious Americans alike: a genuinely free and democratic culture. Americans should be free to take seriously the values of their religion. And they should be free to not take those values seriously when they do not infringe on the freedoms of their fellow citizens.

It is that kind of respect for freedom of conscience that Pilgrims, Pilgrim, Catholics, Quakers, and so many early Americans sought for themselves when they first settled America. And it is that freedom of conscience that we should respect today and that offers an important opportunity for Republicans to build a bigger tent than the one they inhabit today.

And bigger tents for all people, ones that genuinely have room for all people and all Americans, are the exactly what America and the liberal democratic and illiberal and undemocratic world needs today more than anything else.

What America and the liberal democratic world does best is look after others like we look after ourselves. When we are at our best, that is. And when we are not, people mistrust us for good reason. Because when we don't, we are generally looking after ourselves at the expense of others.

And any and all of us should only trust one another when we genuinely care about one another and each others' interests. Everything else is bullshit. Whether we believe it is ordained by the Almighty or a fact of our persistent narrowmindedness.

Kathleen and I would hope that we all aspire for something more broadminded.

Perspective

We need more of it in America.



If America is wondering why much of the world thinks of us as greedy, spoiled, and self-centered, this might be it.

Paul Krugman could do with a little of this perspective.

Might help him distinguish between absolute poverty and relative affluence. And an economic slowdown and a Great Depression. And power and honesty.

We would all do better to make those distinctions, these days.

No Excuses

Bret Stephens pens a very insightful and timely column for Democrats in power today.

'No Excuses' for Liberals

From that column:

"With the election of Barack Obama and huge Democratic majorities in Congress, liberals must now practice something other than the politics of nostalgia and what-if.

This is a politics that has been in the making since at least 1968, though its real origins probably go back to 1944 and the first great liberal what-if: What if an ailing FDR had died nine months earlier, and been succeeded by the great progressive icon and polymath (and original moonbeam), then Vice President Henry Wallace?

In that case, perhaps, desegregation would have happened sooner, universal health care would be with us today, and the 'century of fear' that Wallace predicted as the outcome of the Truman Doctrine would have been avoided by means of a more conciliatory policy toward the Soviet Union.

From that moment on, the liberal what-ifs multiply in dizzying profusion. What if John F. Kennedy had dodged the bullet in Dallas and lived to get the U.S. out of Vietnam before it fully got into it? What if Robert F. Kennedy had dodged the bullet in L.A. five years later? What if Jimmy Carter hadn't been so earnest, truthful and unlucky? What if Ronald Reagan hadn't proved such an adept political mythmaker? What if Donna Rice hadn't been pictured on Gary Hart's lap? What if Willie Horton hadn't been given a furlough? What if Bill Clinton hadn't squandered his political gifts with cheap trysts? What if Bush v. Gore had gone 5-4 the other way? What if 9/11 hadn't intervened to give the Bush administration its mandate for another bout of the politics of fear? What if John Kerry hadn't been sandbagged by Osama bin Laden's last-minute video intervention?

This liberal narrative of its own near-misses, bad luck and tragic interventions of fate is supplemented by a parallel liberal tale of unbridled conservative malevolence. Republicans may be the stupid party, but they've been fortunate in their evil political geniuses -- Lee Atwater, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove -- all of whom have succeeded in bamboozling the public into voting against its own economic interests.

As for conservative electoral successes, these are explained almost entirely as a function of political dirty tricks (cf. 'October Surprise') jingoism (Star Wars, Grenada et al.) and racism ('Southern strategy'). 'The legacy of slavery, America's original sin, is the reason we're the only advanced economy that doesn't guarantee health care to our citizens,' writes Nobel laureate Paul Krugman in 'The Conscience of a Liberal.' Who knew that a straight line connects the ideas of Jefferson Davis and Milton Friedman?

(Only lately has this history been turned on its head, so that liberal pundits now bemoan the passing of those great conservative ideas men who presumably are crying tears in heaven over the GOP's capture by the likes of Sarah Palin.)

The upshot of all this has been an amazing lack of introspection among the frequently wronged, but never wrong, liberal American hard core. Politically, this hasn't yielded such great results: The number of Americans who self-identify as liberals continues to fall, to 21% in 2008 from 22% in 2004, according to CNN. (The number of self-identified conservatives held steady at 34%.) Then again, without that hard core Mr. Obama's primary triumphs would never have been possible.

Now the long wait is over, and the liberal ship has come in. In Mr. Obama, liberals have a president who seems to have stepped out of the last episodes of the West Wing. He has the Congress in his left pocket, the news media in his right pocket (or is it the other way around?), and he floats on a tide of unprecedented international enthusiasm. The Republican Party has no obvious standard-bearer, as it did in Ronald Reagan after Gerald Ford's defeat in 1976. It could well spend the next four years, or eight, tearing itself to pieces.

Instead, the only things that stand in Mr. Obama's path are what Marxists like to call 'objective factors': the financial crisis, the mess in Detroit, the disposing of Guantanamo detainees, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Russian hostility, Chinese assertiveness, maybe the disintegration of Pakistan.

Mr. Obama will get, and deserves, a period of political grace. Let's say a year. After that, it will become increasingly difficult to attribute whatever mistakes he makes to the legacy of his predecessor. American liberalism, such as it is, is finally being put to the test that fate has denied it these last many decades. Succeed or fail, this time there can be no excuses."

Democrats need to take this concern to heart. Should they not, the fate of the previous time that American power was concentrated in one party is likely to be repeated.

It is the learning and not the ideology that makes for better governance and ideas. Should liberals fail to take that notion seriously, both are likely to fail them this term of power.

At his best

This is why I love Charlie Rose. Because he always brings out the best in people.

And this is George Will at this best.



We need George Will, right now, more than ever. These are the days when I thank goodness for him.

Because he says with intelligence and decency what people need to hear, even when they don't want to hear it.

Perverse

Has it not occurred to Democrats, yet, that their current governing philosophy is the opposite of John F. Kennedy's famous first inaugural call to service, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

Today's Democratic message is, "Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what government can do for you."

Perverse.

Being a serious dumbass

Most of life is making the same mistakes over and over again, until the day you figure out that you are a serious dumbass. And then realizing, after you have discovered the error of your ways, that you are still a serious dumbass.

Most of history is people being serious dumbasses with no correction. Until we learn the above.

Why I want to take a bullet for Stephen Colbert

His Truthiness can speak for himself.

Protect Marriage, Protect Children

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

One day, we will prohibit all that ills us. Only then will we be free.

What is wrong with the world, today? What is wrong with the world, today?

Issues from Flight of the Concords.

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Liberal conscience

George Will delivers where he is brilliant.

Welcome to Socialism

This is why intellectual integrity and liberal values matter.

So we can be honest with ourselves when we are acting inconsistent with them.

Conscience is borne of such integrity and values.

Power, in all its soft and hard forms, is checked and challenged by those values and that integrity.

And, over time, it is shaped by them.

And that, and not by legislative, executive, or judicial fiat, is how liberal democracy, and the liberal conscience that underpins it, operates.

Democrats' New Philosophy

Sally: No. I like it. No. That's a good philosophy. No. No. No.

Schroeder: That's your new philosophy, huh?

Sally: Yes. I mean no.



Schroeder: But, Sally, anything that takes only a minute can't be very lasting. For instance, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony took over...

Sally: No.

Schroeder: I can't stand it.

Sally. I can't stand it. I like it.

Que sera, sera

I've been thinking a lot, this weekend.

I've been really unhappy with both the teaching and political work, lately. I'm just worn down by endless and mindless arguments with people about why they are capable of more than they think they are capable of and why there is so much opportunity for them to take advantage of in the world, both of which beliefs underpin much of my teaching and thinking.



I guess I've gotten to a point, after 3 years of having those discussions around the lives of kids with both kids and adults that I'm just tired of trying to convince people, all the time, that they are capable of more and there is more opportunity available to them than their fears might otherwise lead them to believe.

Many people, I'm learning, would rather stubbornly hold onto their fears than more honestly face the risks involved with pursuing lives that really matter to them or that accomplish things that are important to them and to others.

And I guess I'm just at a point where I think que sera, sera. If people want less for themselves, so be it. And if they want more, there is a whole world available to them.



I'll write my book. I'll teach out my scholarship. I'll study investment more seriously. I'll probably write and perhaps teach, in one capacity or another, for the rest of my life.

But after my scholarship is up in a year and a half, I'm not sure that I will be teaching, anymore. And I'm not sure I want to teach in a university, necessarily. I might want to get a Ph.D., just for the study purposes. But I'm not sure, anymore, that this is necessarily a route I will take in my life. I may just invest and write for a living and see where that takes me.



Anyway. As I said to Brandi a million times - and which we argued about a million times; Brandi and I had this very silly running argument on the meaning of this phrase - que sera, sera. Whatever will be will be.

I gotta get out of this business

I don't bullshit enough to be a teacher or a policy scholar. I need a job where honesty pays. I'm thinking investment.

All I know is that everything politics touches it makes dishonest.

I just can't live my life like that.

Propaganda and honest judgment

If the point for the repeated radical propaganda was to convince me that markets don't work and government does, it is doing a piss poor job of doing so.

Why Spending Stimulus Plans Fail

That might have something to do with the fact that Democrats and the left are dead wrong on this issue.

And worse than being wrong, they lack the courage to face that they are wrong. Maybe it's the pussy tendency to shrink from anything that might be difficult no matter how decent and honest. That does seem to be a common denominator for being a leftist, these days.

You know why Democrats are in deep fuckin' shit during this period?

Because crowing from the sidelines is easy. When you have power and you can't deliver - which they can't - everyone sees what a fuckin' fraud your ideas are.

And boo-fuckin'-hoo for the fuckin' mindless bullies of the Democratic Party.

When all is said and done on this question, Democrats have long lost my respect. And they will lose power and the central justification of their outdated and wrongheaded economic policies.

You doubt that?

How long you willing to live with failure?

I hope it's a long time.

The greatest menace, a.k.a. The Worst People in the World

Maybe Keith should consider sports again.

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“But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness -- each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked -- each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.”

Herbert Butterfield

A little bit of honesty

Either intellectual honesty is en vogue again. Or people are really getting more intellectually honest. I can't really tell, most days.

The Same Old Change

From that piece:

"There are lessons here for everyone. Polarized Republicans and Democrats justify the means by which they practice politics by their self-described exalted ends. The only constant is they'll each do anything when out of power to regain it -- and anything while in power to retain it. All candidates say almost anything to get elected and call it idealism. Then when in office, they renege on what they promised and call it realism."

Lord Acton had something to say about that propensity. I'm trying to remember the phrase. Power. Absolute power. Something about people being liars and shitheads to get it and maintain it. Something along those lines.

Sounds about right.

Be nice if honesty were taken as a serious virtue in politics and life.

Until then, I think maybe young people can be cut some slack while their less-than-honest parents, teachers, professors, journalists, bankers, police officers, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, political leaders, and all the rest cut out the dishonesty.

Dishonesty is a fact of life among folks always scared about what other people think about them. Power compounds that problem a hundred-fold. And mistrust is the quite natural byproduct of all that lying.

Be nice if we told the truth more often, wouldn't it? Be nice if intellectual honesty was how life worked more often.

Until then, we shouldn't be surprised when shit falls apart, when our kids don't trust us, and when noone trusts the government, even when their power is needed, all because we decided to pretend that our dishonesty and power-mongering and nastiness had no consequences.

Be nice if we could cut that shit out.

Should the Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?

"It's just like they say, you have throw money in a hole and set it on fire to make money."


In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?

I don't need no stinkin' girlfriend. I think I need to marry the Nancy Fichandler and her pro-hole agenda.

Et tu, E.J. Dionne?

Must be something in the water.

E.J. Dionne and Thomas Sowell, both in one day, write pieces of real substance, absent narrow partisan interpretations of the world and the people in it.

No Monopoly on Hope

And E.J.'s conclusion - that McCain's emphasis on fear rather than hope as a more noble, and thusly effective, animating spirit for Americans and for people, generally - is a spot-on reflection on the 2008 Presidential campaign.

Fear is the seed of its own undoing, often, when it is used to manipulate others. All manipulation is its own undoing, at it turns out, when people wise up to being manipulated.

Soft power. Hard power. Whatever means of manipulation is engaged.

Conscience, in the end, is what animates human beings and the liberal democracies that best facilitate the development of that conscience.

Doubt that? Keep watching.

And you might want to consult some of the many, many people who made possible our ability to think it, express it, and live in a world that takes it seriously.

Intellectuals

Thomas Sowell has been far too partisan and self-righteous in his interpretation of recent events, by my lights.

But then he goes and writes something brilliant.

"Intellectuals"

I can't think of a single disagreement I have with this column.

And it goes to why I trust noone to have all the right answers, no matter how smart they are (myself included). Because they so often don't. And, often, their failures have serious consequences, including intellectuals.

And not a single one of them likes to admit when they are wrong.

Plato was wrong. Philosopher kings are a bad idea. Average joe kings can often be worse, but not always, depending on how open they are to being wrong relative to their intellectual brethren.

A strong intellectual understanding of the world is definitely important. But being open to the fact that your framework and any and all its facets could be wrong is more important. Humility and decency trump intelligence, in my book. And they certainly trump intellectuals who are pricks or bullies, both of whom deserve the brush off no matter how smart they may or may not be.

Power, as Lord Acton observed, should be entrusted very little at all to anyone. That's what it meant to be a liberal to those who invented the term that both conservatives and progressive lay claim to today.

Liberal means liberty. And wiser people like Lord Acton, John Stuart Mill, Mary Wolstencraft, Baron de Montesquieu, John Locke, and their contemporaries like Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Amartya Sen, Martin Luther King, Mohandas Ghandi, and the rest knew that.

They knew it because it was and they knew and know that it was the oxygen for real life, learning, and growth for the fate of humanity.

It is not a claim that is the mantle of any ideology, any country, any religion, any race, any ethnicity, any gender, or any one man or woman.

Freedom, and the right to determine one's own life and destiny, is the claim of every one of us. And it is not dependent on our economic, political, ideological, national, religious, racial, ethnic, gender or any other status.

Self-determining freedom is the claim of each human being independent of the claims to power of others, no matter what intellectual or other station they occupy.

No amount of intellectual rationalization of the power to encumber liberty makes it right or so. It only makes it one in the long line of rationalizations for circumventing and undermining the more genuine liberal democratic values and relationships that allow for more independent conscience and interdependent collaboration around individual conscience to take root and flower.

Intellect can be used to promote those liberal democratic values. And it can be used to stunt or block that growth.

But it is that claim to conscience that is more fundamental than any intellectual rationalization to the contrary.

And freedom and democracy will always offer those who take them seriously to challenge those who would take them too lightly.

The big picture

William Raspberry comes out of retirement for this gem of a column on what a President Obama says about the state of racial politics in 21st century America.

A Path Beyond Grievance

As I read this brilliant little reflection, I was alerted to two other colums that Raspberry wrote when he was retiring that are equally powerful. The first is about his efforts to promote education and child welfare in his retirement.

What I'll Do Next

And the second is a real beauty about anticipating the ugliness reaped from polarization sown in American politics.

Our Civil Disagreement

That's what it looks like to have the big picture on life and politics.

And you'll notice a consistent theme on that big picture: it comes from a man with a big heart.

Make no mistake. That's what strength looks like.

Thank you, Mr. Raspberry, for the heart and mind you have to offer.

International exchange

A recent exchange I had on an international debate board I visit off and on:

Listening to the coverage of the American election, you'd think that the last eight years didn't happen, internationally speaking, and that all is sweetness and light.

Bullshit.

Regards,
M. Graham


Yeah, that's my concern, Murray. That's why I voted Obama, for all of my misgivings about his economic policies, which I think are bad for everyone. Because I'm concerned about Americans - conservatives, especially, but not exclusively - who are taking the lesson from the last 8 years, "As long as I got the power to do it, what the fuck are you going to do about it?"

A lot of liberals have that mindset, these days, as well. Which is the problem. I have to choose between 2 sets of assholes with the same fucked up logic. I hope Mr. Obama is a step in the right direction, in foreign policy matters, at least.

But I take heart from the fact that it took almost the rest of the century for Britain to give up her empire, long after the notion of empire was discredited in World War II. The idea that democratic power can swagger it's way through problems will also take time to unravel, largely because everyone only seems concerned when someone else is doing it.

I think we're moving forward. Just painfully slow.

After another 4 years, hopefully we will have learned that Democrats are just as likely to run roughshot over people they don't like when they have power. And the politics will reflect that lesson learned. And the parties will adapt to Americans' looking for more freedom to live their lives without such assholes mucking things up all the time.

I have some confidence, Murray, that this is how things will play out, given some time.

In retrospect, it looked like the notion of empire would never end. It took up most of human history. But it most assuredly left the scene, largely as it was discredited in the democratic discussion and the marketplace of ideas. The idea that power can resolve all our problems - the heart of the problem with empire, ironically - will similarly fall out of fashion once people figure out that it is a false god.

But first people have to be willing to give up the false god.

It will take time. And then, like post-World War II and World War I, when the quest for empire had ravaged the lives of millions of people, we will have to move on. Because we'll have no other choice.

It is easy to understand, now, why humanity did so many horrible things, in the past, with power. Because they were afraid. And our fears, I'm beginning to understand, can rationalize almost anything. No matter how irrational and destructive.

Eventually we learn the lesson. That's the one thing we can bank on, Murray.

Help! Help! I'm bein' repressed!

Holy Grail. Favorite scene.

My daily prayer

Jesus in heaven. Is there any way that you can do spiritual corrective surgery on the permanent condition of my head being 6 inches up my big fat ass?

Thank you, Baby Jesus. Say hi to the old man.

Live your life, love your kids

I do sometimes wish that there were a way to force away the tragedy and bad stuff that happens in the world. There just isn't most of the time.

What we are left with is wisdom we have or do not about the world, that we share and do not about this world.

Our kids aren't going to do what we want them to do often. Which is good, if we could give our pride a rest for a moment. It means they will determine their own lives. Which is as it should be. It is their life, in the end, not ours.

What we can do, when all is said and done and we've done everything to offer what wisdom we have to offer and done what we can to be a better example to them, is to live our lives and love them.

Every damn fool notion to the contrary has always fallen apart over the course of human history. And for good reason. Because everyone wants the freedom to determine their own lives. Whether we like it or not.

It's the best thing my parents gave me.

And it is likely the most important thing I will have to offer my kids, when all is said and done.

When I think about all of the things I have to offer my kids, this is the one that my parents offered me that I cherish the most.

Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad and Marilyn.

Thanks to all parents, family, teachers, and friends who let me get life figured out for myself.

Freedom, democracy and fuckin' shit up

Even when I think Chuck's mistaken, he does make me chuckle.

The Campaign Autopsy: McCain was the most worthy nominee ever to lose.

"In the excitement and decisiveness of Barack Obama's victory, we forget that in the first weeks of September, John McCain was actually ahead. Then Lehman collapsed, and the financial system went off a cliff.

This was not just a meltdown but a panic. For an agonizing few days, there was a collapse of faith in the entire financial system -- a run on banks, panicky money-market withdrawals, flights to safety, the impulse to hide one's savings under a mattress.

This did not just have the obvious effect of turning people against the incumbent party, however great or tenuous its responsibility for the crisis. It had the more profound effect of making people seek shelter in government.

After all, if even Goldman Sachs was getting government protection, why not you? And offering the comfort and safety of government is the Democratic Party's vocation."

True dat, Charles. True dat.

Does anyone remember Bobby Kennedy? Or Barry Goldwater? McCain is an enormously good man. Who lost fair and square.

Every political party will protect you from any and every possible calamity. For a price. That price is typically your liberty.

I'll take the freedom and the responsibility. For the sake of my dignity as much as for my conscience.

Democracies don't get this question right, every time. They fail at it miserably and often, is the truth. It's much of the history of humanity as much as the history of liberal democracy. That's why the Greeks warned humanity about its hubris. Because everyone and every generation thinks that they will finally be the one to figure it all out.

Good luck with that, morons.

Homo sapiens are often a terribly foolish species. We think we know it all. And we turn to repression and aggression to solve problems and resolve fears that repression and aggression have never, can never, and will never resolve.

And I am homo retardus numero uno.

I spent all week being pissed off and aggressive with kids when they were handling things badly in ways that I'm perfectly clear were counterproductive. I am an alpha male dumbass. And the whole thing was exactly what I say about everyone else right down the fuckin' line: I was too afraid that I was being too nice and soft. So I was being kind of a dick. And I dealt with the consequences. Until I wised up, that is.

Human beings are often a foolish, foolish species. So foolish that it's the way we, eventually, we get to be so intelligent, the feature that distinguishes us most clearly from the rest of life on the planet. Smarter than any other species, I suppose. We learn from the wisdom of others. We learn from experience. And we learn from fucking things up. It is the hallmark of our species. The learning, that is. And all the fucking up that goes with it.

Aggression is sometimes necessary and useful in very limited circumstances. But the problem with this species, the predators and aggressors we are, is that we have such a hard time facing up to the fact that our aggression betrays us, often. All too often. It is our intelligence and not our aggression that generally rescues us from ourselves. And when we do need to use aggression, the least possible necessary measure of it is our wisest path to its use and to creating space for correcting our so frequent mistakes in its use.

Mark Twain was not joking about what dumbasses we are. He was dead serious. Even as he was cracking my shit up.

Freedom and democracy aren't our most important values because we get things right all the time. They're our most important values because we get things wrong so often. And, as often, because we never like to admit when we fuck things up. And freedom and democracy are the best pathes for making choices, reflecting on them, and picking up when we screw up.

All I know is that I need to cut out the bullshit. I'm easily as big a dumbshit as any caveman that ever roamed the earth praying I could scare off any threat I face.

What's different is that I have an education, meaning what I've learned from all of the accumulated learning of those who have gone before me. Meaning all their fuckin' up. And what that offers me is not some damned fool guarantee of any goddamn thing.

What my learning and education offers me is an opportunity to understand, better, my own fucking up. And do better tomorrow than I did today.

And I get to do it in one of the most stable, mature, and robust liberal democracies in the world. Warts and all.

I'll take it.

How far we've come

Peggy Wallace Kennedy, the daughter of the late George Wallace, one of the most poorly regarded governors of the era of segregation in the United States, writes a really touching and thoughtful column, today, on her father and the need for all of us to have the space we need to learn the lessons we need to learn.

My father, George Wallace, and Barack Obama

"Healing must come, hope will be our lodestar, humility will reshape the American conscience, and honesty in both word and deed will refresh and invigorate America, and having Barack Obama to lead will give us back our power to heal.

My father lived long enough to come to an understanding of the injustices borne by his deeds and the legacy of suffering that they left behind. History will teach future generations that he was a man who used his political power to promote a philosophy of exclusion.

As his daughter, who witnessed his suffering in the twilight of his years and who witnessed his deeds and heard his words, I am one who believes that the man who, on March 7, 1965, listened to the reports of brutality as they streamed into the Governor's Mansion from Selma, Alabama, was not the same man who, in March of 1995, was welcomed with open arms as he was rolled through a sea of African-American men, women and children who gathered with him to welcome another generation of marchers, retracing in honor and remembrance the historic steps from Selma to Montgomery.

Four years ago, the young Illinois senator who spoke at the Democratic National Convention mesmerized me. I hoped even then that he would one day be my president.

Today, Barack Obama is hope for a better tomorrow for all Americans. He stands on the shoulders of all those people who have incessantly prayed for a day when "justice will run down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream" (Amos 5:24).

Perhaps one day, my two sons and I will have the opportunity to meet Barack Obama in person to express our gratitude to him for bringing our family full circle.

And today, the day after the election, I am going to ride to the cemetery so that if asked, I can vouch for the fact that the world is still spinning but my father lies at peace."

Rest in peace, Governor Wallace. We've all come a long way.

Perspective

Kathleen Parker offers some, this morning.

Not the Worst of Times

As someone who voted Obama, I have no illusions that America is dramatically different today than yesterday. I hope we are more cautious of the use of force and more aware of the limits of power today than we were 4 years ago. But I know that is only partly true. It will take another 4 years for us to learn the limits of power that Democrats wield as well as Republicans.

What makes democracy great is not that any of us, of any ideological, religious, ethnic, gender or any other background have all the answers, nor that always, or even more often than not, we wield power wisely.

What makes democracy the strongest form of government in the history of the world is that we have more freedom and openness to learn our lessons, better, over time.

We have, now and forever, many lesssons to learn. The most important lesson we face, right now, is the limits of power to resolve important problems in our lives.

I can only hope that this election will be a step in the right direction, in that vein.

Only time will tell.

The bottom-line on wealth inequity

Some intellectual honesty from Robert Samuelson.

Poor Aren't Poor Because Rich Are Rich

"Judged only by economic inequality, the financial crisis is a godsend. It will probably narrow the gap — though still vast — between the rich and everybody else. But what good will that do? Economic inequality also declined in the Great Depression. The country wasn't better off.

By and large, the poor aren't poor because the rich are rich. They're usually poor for their own reasons: family breakdown, low skills, destructive personal habits and plain bad luck.

The presumption implicit in the criticism of growing economic inequality is that society's income is a given and, if the rich have less, others will have more. Up to a point, that's true. The government already redistributes much income, often for the good.

During the boom years, companies might have been less lavish with top executives and slightly more generous to other workers or shareholders. Some new fortunes stem from self-dealing and financial razzle-dazzle, not the creation of real economic value. It's just desserts that some of this wealth has evaporated.

But the redistributionist argument is at best a half-truth. The larger truth is that much of the income of the rich and well-to-do comes from what they do. If they stop doing it, then the income and wealth vanish. No one gets it. It can't be redistributed because it doesn't exist. Everyone's poorer."

I have to say that if there is one thing I am most tired of working with those who do not feel successful in their lives, it is the constant pretending like their choices are not having consequences, often ones they do not like, in their own lives.

And the big one is the choice to blow off the education, self-discipline, and work involved with building wealth, long term.

I don't care, anymore, how much people bullshit on this one, anymore. I'm contributing something real with my life. And I don't care how many people pretend that they are doing more than they are to contribute.

I want my life to create something real.

Who we are

Mitch Albom reminds us what really matters this election.

How one small act could define a nation

It's not who we elect President.

It's who we decide to be.

Good fucking question

What was deregulated this decade?

Bullshit is not honesty. Sooner or later, people figure that out.

Bank on it.

Liberal

To paraphrase Bono from the Rattle and Hum tour, "This term, Karl Marx stole from Lord Acton. We're stealing it back."

The oldest conumdrum

Liberal means liberty, not socialism, you Marxist motherfuckas.

We're taking it back.

Why I love the teachers at Capital City

There are many, many reasons why I love the people I work with here at Cap City.

They are kind and decent. They are loving and goodhearted souls to work with. They are always looking for a reason to bet on kids that many others do not. A fact I know, now, from experience.

These teachers take these kids, who often, but not always, have either terribly clueless parents or terribly irresponsible parents, and they love the shit out them. They love these kids like they were their own. And they put up with a lot of shit, in the meantime. Far too much shit, is the truth.

They are a little bit naive, this bunch, too often. That's for sure. They have had a tendency, that is beginning to give way, to look to often for an excuse rather than a reason for them to succeed beyond their current behavior. They do, too often, want to protect a kid when what they should do is let them learn from the knocks and flow of life. They do tend, too often, to want to control kids than to let them figure out lessons for themselves so that they might actually learn something rather than make it seem so in their presence.

My colleagues are far from perfect, that's for sure.

But, the truth is, they are also some of best people I've ever worked with in my life. They are decent. And good-hearted. They love kids and they love people like no other group of people I've ever seen. They live it. They don't just visit on Sundays or mouth it around election time. When they say they give a shit about you, they really mean it, generally. Even folks who I wish would give a little more of a shit, sometimes.

The truth is, that for all of the serious disadvantages and bullshit features of this job, the quality of the people I get to work with has always been the best part about this job. I love these people. They are decent, through and through. If this job doesn't work out, I'm taking my act to the investment world and I'm not looking back, because I just don't know if it's possible to meet a group of people who seem to care about other people, for real, in quite the same way these folks do. That's hyperbole, in some ways, of course. In a million different ways I wish my colleagues, like all people, cared more. But they do a damned better job of it than just about any group of folks I've ever encountered. And my circles are wide.

And the truth is that, when push comes to shove, when all their critics point out their many honest flaws, there is one fact about these folks that I will always be reminded of that their critics could never match.

They come every day and do the job.

This is a hard fuckin' job. Working with kids who could often give two shits about anyone, nevertheless anyone associated with school or authority. These teachers get treated like shit, everyday, and they come back, everyday, with their hearts more open today than they did yesterday.

That's fuckin' impressive, in my book. That is what real strength looks like, as far as I'm concerned.

Most of the world is a bunch of whining, snivelling pussies. They can't have a trust broken. They can't get hurt. They can't have someone do them wrong without crying their poor little eyes out about how they just can't find it in themselves to forgive.

And these folks, my friends and colleagues, come every day to a job where not forgiving is just not an option. Because if you couldn't, you could not possibly do the job. You'd go crazy and then you'd lose your minds on some kid and then you'd lose your job and then you'd go crying like the little bitch you are about how noone protected you from all the frustration and pain. And then you'd go along your merry way.

And these people would still come back to the job the next day.

Because that's what strength looks like, you fuckin' pussy.

I can hardly believe all the shit these people take - from kids, from parents, from politicians, from journalists, from random folks with a million different random opinions - and yet they still come back to the fuckin' job, every day.

Pretty fuckin' impressive, really.

Colbert King, eat your fuckin' heart out, you fuckin' pussy. This is what real strength looks like, you fuckin' whiner. Real strength is not crowing about how imperfect the world is from the fuckin' sidelines behind your cush little Washington Post desk cryin' about how the world is just not fair and full of crime and bad things happening, to and by kids, whining about how the people who show up to do the fuckin' job that you don't have the fuckin' balls to go do just aren't living up to your standards.

Pardon my french, Colbert, but fuck you. And fuck every pussy just like you who can't find it in their hearts to imagine what remarkably overwhelming and difficult job this is and what remarkable fuckin' people have to be willing to show up every day to do it.

Fuck you and your fuckin' opinions, you overpaid fat-ass, making a living having opinions rather than doing any real fuckin' work.

You want to be taken seriously, Colbert, you come do the fuckin' job.

In the meantime, the only people I trust, after doing this job, to know, day-in and day-out, what this job is like is the people who do it.

And for every fuckin' pussy who thinks that they're opinions on juvenile justice, youth education and such matters mean more than they do without having done the job, talking with those who have, or some kind of genuine understanding of the difficulties that lie within it, I say a hearty fuck you to you too.

Yes, I understand that you don't really understand much for not having done the job. And I could give two shits, at this point, having listened to these people get scapegoated for the failures of too many kids and parents and a society too dishonest and fucked up to own up to its role in their failures, as well.

That's why I love these people. Because most people are much more full of shit than these teachers. And they're assholes to top it off. And my friends and colleagues have big hearts for big people. Because, for them, being an asshole when someone needs some help, just isn't enough. And fuck you and anyone else who thinks that it is and that your opinion on such matters should really be taken more seriously than it should, and anyone who thinks that your ego is some kind of compensation for their strength, and decency, and honest concern.

I do this job because I love the fact that I get to wake up everyday and come work with these people. I've never had a job where I could say that. And most people in politics and political circles and those who make far too many decisions about the work of my colleagues are not people I would want to work with. Because they're pricks, is the bottom line. And I don't care how many times you try to talk your way around that one. A prick is a prick, no matter what your excuse. And I just couldn't do any job where I had to spend time with a bunch of fuckin' pricks constantly making one long excuse for what fuckin' pricks they were. There is no excuse, prick. And I have colleagues who know that better.

And that's why I love these teachers. And fuck every prick who confuses their being an asshole with these teachers' compassion and wisdom. Because if they won't beat your ass, I will.

I love these people.

Lying, pretending, and power

It's such a clusterfuck. Life.

We get so used to lying. We get so used to pretending. We get so used to trying to be something that we know we are not, down deep, for real.

We get so used to the dishonesty, that we start to believe our own bullshit. We start to believe that we are something we are not, just so we can maintain the pretense. And the hope that it will keep us from being found out.

Power plays an enormous role in this dance of dishonesty that we engage in.

It is the reason that Lord Acton said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Because those who covet it get so wrapped up in their lies and their pretenses, that they become almost inexorably confused about who they really are. We get so wrapped up in the bullshit and the lying and the pretending that we lose track of who we really are.

It is worse among adults than among young people. Because young people see the lies and hypocrisy of adults and know better than to pretend they are being more honest than they are.

It is the most persistent and most difficult to unravel of the legacies of power.

All the lying. And the pretending. And the bullshit. And the ways that it corrupts us and our outlooks on life.

And, in the end, it is what keeps it all in place.

Until it doesn't.

Because people decide that they would rather face the hard truths than keep up the lying.

Hubris

I just saw another video of partisans in action.



Maybe I'll sit home, this election. I don't like any of these people. They're all shitheads. Why in the world would I want any such people running anything in my life, nevertheless my government?

It makes me sick to my stomach that this is the best that partisans in America think we have to offer.

This is the height of liberal democracy, huh? Wonder why illiberal, undemocratic parts of the world don't trust us?

How couldn't they when we are so clearly worthy of their trust.

Hubris, say the Greeks. Hubris.

Why do we settle for so little?

How is it possible that this would be the best that we can expect?

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Because we expect so little. Because we have gotten so used to turning our brains off, to closing our hearts and minds when people who disagree with us open their mouths, that we can't even imagine that there might be something more honest and open-minded that might offer a more genuine picture of the world that our sanctimony could just never offer.

Because we have learned, out of habit, to confuse our sanctimony with something more honest. And this is the result.

Congratulations, America.

This, apparently, is all we have to offer.