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.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

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.

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

“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?

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

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.

Choose wisely

Can I say, after reading news coverage all fuckin' day, this Presidential race is unspeakably fucked up.

We are such fuckin' hatemongers around election time. It is disgusting. And pathetic.

Must we be such shitheads to one another, all in the name of getting power and keeping someone else away from it?

Is it not possible for us to be decent to one another and earn one another's vote, we are so enamoured of our own use of power and so disgusted by those who we disagree with?

Is it not possible for us to even imagine that we might be wrong and those who disagree with us might be right that we would not feel so driven to slander, attack, villify, and otherwise demean those we disagree with and those who represent them among our political leaders?

Is it not possible for us to grow up and stop being such little children, all in the name of protecting our own and ourselves?

Are we not capable of just being the kind of person that we are so afraid that we cannot find the strength within ourselves to just be?

It is not within the realm of possibility to just live out our highest values, to pluck the beam from our own eyes before we pluck the splinter from those of our neighbor, and to trust and appeal to our better angels rather than persistently obsess over our inner demons, our propensity to do bad in a world we want to imagine that we could or should only do good?

Is it not within us to be human, for our political leaders to be human, for those we disagree with to be human, for those we agree with to be human, and to not be so human that our vindictive and destructive tendencies constantly overwhelm our better natures and our more decent concerns?

Is it not possible for us to better?

Of course it is. Obviously. When we're not obsessing with what shitheads we and everyone is. When we're not so afraid of our darker natures, when we are not afraid of ourselves and one another that we are not always acting out that fear on one another, pretending, all the while, that we are, in fact, better than what those darker impulses might betray us to be.

Because the truth is pretty clear.

When we love ourselves and one another, when we embrace our more self-centered natures and those of people around us, we are less likely to act like the kind of children that we have been behaving as, this election season.

The more we embrace ourselves and others, the less we are likely to act like the very sociopaths that we are so afraid of being.

If we want to be better people, we must love ourselves and one another more. It is the same fact of life we have faced since the dawn of humanity. We have just proved more ingenious at deceiving ourselves and one another of what is needed to be better.

It is not being forced to do so by some God, some parent, some government, some teacher, some boss, some lover, someone else outside of ourselves.

If we want to be better, we must choose to do so. And in so choosing, we will do today as we have done since time immemorial. We will choose badly. And then we will choose better. And we will only do so with experience that tells us the difference as much as knowledge of the two.

This election has become a circus of humanity and its most foolish and cowardly instincts. That can only change with some embrace for our folly. And some willingness to become wiser.

That is our challenge this election season. Our vote is completely incidental to that much more fundamental fact of existence.

Choose to be better. Or don't. Those are the options.

Choose wisely.

And if you don't, don't despair. Just make a better choice the next time. Until you do.

Data-driven health reform

Billy Bean, Newt Gingrich, and John Kerry - quite the unlikely trio - have an excellent article on how to reform health care with data-driven for-profit and non-profit market methods that deserves the eye of anyone concerned about health care.

How to Take American Health Care from Worst to First

From that article:

"In the past decade, baseball has experienced a data-driven information revolution. Numbers-crunchers now routinely use statistics to put better teams on the field for less money. Our overpriced, underperforming health care system needs a similar revolution.

Data-driven baseball has produced surprising results. Michael Lewis writes in “Moneyball” that the Oakland A’s have won games and division titles at one-sixth the cost of the most profligate teams. This season, the New York Yankees, Detroit Tigers and New York Mets — the three teams with the highest payrolls, a combined $486 million — are watching the playoffs on television, while the Tampa Bay Rays, a franchise that uses a data-driven approach and has the second-lowest payroll in baseball at $44 million, are in the World Series (a sad reality for one of us).

Remarkably, a doctor today can get more data on the starting third baseman on his fantasy baseball team than on the effectiveness of life-and-death medical procedures. Studies have shown that most health care is not based on clinical studies of what works best and what does not — be it a test, treatment, drug or technology. Instead, most care is based on informed opinion, personal observation or tradition.

It is no surprise then that the United States spends more than twice as much per capita on health care compared to almost every other country in the world — and with worse health quality than most industrialized nations. Health premiums for a family of four have nearly doubled since 2001. Starbucks pays more for health care than it does for coffee. Nearly 100,000 Americans are killed every year by preventable medical errors. We can do better if doctors have better access to concise, evidence-based medical information.

Look at what’s happened in baseball. For decades, executives, managers and scouts built their teams and managed games based on their personal experiences and a handful of dubious statistics. This romantic approach has been replaced with a statistics-based creed called sabermetrics.

These are not the stats we studied as children on the backs of baseball cards. Sabermetrics relies on obscure statistics like WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched), VORP (value over replacement player) or runs created — a number derived from the formula [(hits + walks) x total bases]/(at bats + walks). Franchises have used this data to answer some of the key questions in baseball: When is an attempted steal worth the risk? Whom should we draft, and in what order? Should we re-sign an aging star player and run the risk of paying for past performance rather than future results?

Similarly, a health care system that is driven by robust comparative clinical evidence will save lives and money. One success story is Cochrane Collaboration, a nonprofit group that evaluates medical research. Cochrane performs systematic, evidence-based reviews of medical literature. In 1992, a Cochrane review found that many women at risk of premature delivery were not getting corticosteroids, which improve the lung function of premature babies.

Based on this evidence, the use of corticosteroids tripled. The result? A nearly 10 percentage point drop in the deaths of low-birth-weight babies and millions of dollars in savings by avoiding the costs of treating complications.

Another example is Intermountain Healthcare, a nonprofit health-care system in Utah, where 80 percent of the care is based on evidence. Treatment data is collected by electronic medical records. The data is analyzed by researchers, and the best practices are then incorporated into the clinical process, resulting in far better quality care at a cost that is one-third less than the national average. (Disclosure: Intermountain Healthcare is a member of Mr. Gingrich’s organization.)

Evidence-based health care would not strip doctors of their decision-making authority nor replace their expertise. Instead, data and evidence should complement a lifetime of experience, so that doctors can deliver the best quality care at the lowest possible cost."

It's an excellent conceptualization of the challenges we face and health care and more sensible, market-driven approaches to tackling those challenges.

And it's nice to see some honest, substantive bipartisan thinking leading this conversation rather than mindless blather and empty promises that liberal and conservative partisans more regularly offer in contemporary politics.

News item: U.S. government offering lessons in how to handle money

U.S. trying to teach Iraqis how to spend billion-dollar surplus

Now, really. With everything you know about the U.S. government, would you trust it to teach you how to spend your own money?

If so, I've got a bridge to sell you. Paul Krugman built it. You're gonna love it.

For those who love power more than they love people

For those who love their power over people more than people, themselves, this is dedicated to you.



It's not just the sinners of lust, greed, and vanity who God cuts down, as it turns out. It's all of us. And pride is the sin that is and always has been most destructive of humanity. That's why it's the deadliest sin.

It's time to end this obsession with power. Soon or later, it will end. Sooner or later, it'll cut us all down.

Loving freedom

I care about people doing good. In a lot of ways, it is the central purpose of my life. Figuring out how I can do more good, how others can do more good, and what to do about when I and everyone else doesn't do good.

I've also come to terms with the fact that it is useless to compel people to do things they are not going to do, anyway, or will half-ass it, at best, except in very limited and generally negative situations when we don't want them to do something and when the dangers are real and the stakes are too high not to use force or aggression. But those times are few. And people perpetually use that exception for license to use force and aggression whenever they want, and often for self-centered purpose and often when they don't really give a shit about those they are compelling or even others they aren't compelling, for that matter.

I've learned what a waste of time it is to force peoples' hand to do good that they are either going to do or not going to do, and which, when compelled, not only limits the freedom of those who actually care to do a better job, but which always results in half-ass efforts from those who don't.

As people live life, as they care about one another, more, and get smarter, over time, often by learning the lessons of their own foolish mistakes, they generally do want to do good. Though noone can do all the good in the world that needs doing. So that's why it's best to let people do the things they do best and stay out of their way when the truth is that we, generally, do not know how to do the good they have to offer as well as they do. It was one of the most important lessons that Adam Smith had to offer. And it is more relevant today than it was over 200 years ago, when he wrote it.

Many people just have to fuck up the big lessons in order to learn them. The world in the process of doing just that, right now. You could say that the world is always in that process, actually. But the current political moment and its romanticism of force, aggression, rules, laws, regulation, etc., is a moment when we are going to have to fuck up a big question to get to a better answer.

The better answer is more freedom. We probably won't get that figured out until we've fucked it up, enough. It's kind of a frustrating and often sad fact of life, really. But it is a fact that cannot be avoided, no matter how smart or good or whatever we think we are or are not.

And the hubris that life can be lived without fucking up and with power circumventing the very human propensity to fuck things up is the source of humanity's most serious and persistent tragedies over the course of human history.

This is a moment where we can begin to end that much more fundamental mistake of human history. We have spent several hundred years working to do just that with the founding of liberal democratic values and societies.

It is time we recognized the brilliance, bounty, beauty, and greatness they have to offer. It is time we learned confidence in the lessons and learning and fruits that freedom has to offer.

It is time we learned to love freedom for real.

Time

There is so much to know about the world. And so limited time to know it all.

The question for all of us is how are we going to spend that time? And are we going to do it honestly and for good purpose?

And, most important to me, do we really give a shit about the people that our time and efforts serve?

Those are the 3 most important questions for life that I can think of, at this moment.

Might be worth us taking some time to answer.

China's "strong state"

China is upset for good reason with the West, right now. The West says that the highest priority in the world, right now, is the enforcement of the rule of law. China does exactly that. And the West honors those who violate its rule of law.

For good reason.

China says EU human rights award winner a criminal

It is the Hu Jia's of the world, right now, who are the only leadership in the world worthy of any real trust, it seems.

Leadership without courage is bankrupt. And there is an awful lot of cowardice masquerading as leadership, right now.

Thank goodness people like Hu Jia keep us honest.

Francis Fukuyama likes China's strong state antics.

I'll take Hu Jia and people of real courage any day of the week.

Alan Greenspan and the cowardice of the current political moment

I think I just lost a little respect for Alan Greenspan. Where is Milton Friedman when we need him?

Greenspan: 'Crisis Broader Than Anything I Could Have Imagined'

Here is where the downfall occurs for this prevailing and wrongheaded logic going around these days that regulation will prevent future financial meltdowns like the current situation:

It won't.

Do you really think that there will be no more financial meltdowns after this one? Really? And when it occurs, are we really going to have another lame Democratic verdict that it was the free market and not people making bad choices responsible for it?

When a downturn happens again - which it will because freedom and a free market does not guarantee that we will always make good or even better choices, necessarily, absent understanding of our mistakes - will we get honest, at that point, that regulation cannot stop us from screwing up? You really think regulation will prevent all future problems like this one? Really?

I'm sure I'll have to listen to a lot of lame "It if wouldn't have been for our efforts, things would have been really bad," rationalizations of the failures of regulation and regulators. It's my favorite excuse for why bad ideas don't deliver.

Good people screwing up. It happens in governments. Happens in the market. And no hubris about finding just the right laws or rules or regulation or force to prevent that fact of life will ever make it go away.

We do seem to be enamoured with regulation, in the political moment, to resolve some of these fundamental questions, once and for all. But it won't. And the proof will be in the pudding when it doesn't. And , like all things, this political moment too shall pass.

More Drunk History

This is, without a doubt, the most entertaining way to learn history.

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If Derek Waters keeps this up, I am never going to be able to study history sober, again.

Coconut rum and 19th century liberal political philosophy sounds fucking brilliant, right now.

Right after I get some sleep.

I Am the Nation

In a time of deep political cynicism and mistrust of politics and political leaders, I thought a little Johnny Cash might cheer us all up.

Andrew Bacevich and the limits of power

H.D.S. Greeway writes an excellent column in the Boston Globe, today, covering the ideas of a writer that looks to be very much up my alley, soldier-scholar and Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich, and his new book, The Limits of Power, the End of American Exceptionalism

The grand illusion of American power

Bacevich and I look to be very much eye to eye on quite a bit and I'm looking forward to reading his new book.

Here's a teaser from Greeway's column:

"Niebuhr warned against 'dreams of managing history,' a combination of arrogance and narcissism that posed a moral threat. That's why Niebuhr is often held in contempt by neo-conservatives for whom power is everything. Bacevich's concern is that the dream has become a physical threat that could lead to America's inevitable decline.

There is a mythical American narrative, according to Bacevich, that the United States is a nation "providentially set apart in the New World and wanting nothing more than to tend to its own affairs," only grudgingly responding to calls for global leadership "in order to preserve the possibility of freedom." In reality, the United States has sought expansion, first by pushing west until it reached the sea, then through a brief period of direct colonialism, and more recently through a ruthless if indirect imperial policy of control. It worked spectacularly. The United States became a great power replete with material abundance.

Right around the time of the Vietnam War, Bacevich argues, this began to unravel. Trade imbalances, federal deficits, "mushrooming entitlements, plummeting savings rates, and energy dependence" led us to become a debtor nation, counting on others to foot the bill. "The positive correlation between expansion, power, abundance, and freedom began to become undone . . . Further efforts at expansionism have led to the squandering of American power," according to Bacevich.

The actions of the Bush administration after 9/11 may have been designed to make the United States safe from another attack. But the chosen method was nothing less than to "assert American power throughout the Greater Middle East . . . to transform this region, to employ American power, both hard and soft, to impose order while ensuring stability, order, access, and adherence to American norms - in essence to establish unambiguous US hegemony so that the Islamic world will no longer serve as a breeding ground for terrorists who wish to kill us."

The grand illusion of American power as a transformative agent is evident in what Bush's lieutenants had to say. "We have a choice," said Donald Rumsfeld in September, 2001. Either we change the way we live, "which is unacceptable," or we "change the way they live, and we chose the latter. " Or as Douglas Feith would later put it: America's purpose was to "transform the Middle East and the broader world of Islam generally."

This grand imperial overreach never had a chance. Transforming Islam can only be done by Muslims themselves, in their own due time. The new "liberated" Iraq has not changed the Middle East. The passions of the Middle East have transformed Iraq, perhaps more stable now than a year ago but in no way destined to achieve what Bush, Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, et al wanted and expected.

The net result is that much of the world now looks on the Bush administration's resurrection of Woodrow Wilson's ideals and the expansion of democracy as a cover for coercion and bare-knuckle dominance. As Bacevich says, Bush always confused strategy with ideology.

Militarily, we threw containment and deterrence out the window, banking on the "shock and awe" of preventive war. It hasn't worked. We are bogged down in two wars with an end to neither in sight.

Bacevich doesn't see the November election as necessarily producing a beneficial change. John McCain touts the stalemated Iraq war as a success, while Barack Obama calls for more effort in Afghanistan. In Bacevich's view, it is the entire doctrine of preventive war that has proved a failure. There has to be a better way than occupying Muslim countries."

Looks like great stuff. Highly recommend checking this book out. I know I will.

The limits of power

Apparently Indians have found a way to deal with foolish regulations they don't like. Ignore them.

Shrugging off Smoking Ban

Not a bad idea, frankly. If I didn't value my honesty and integrity with my colleagues and folks I have to work with, I'd chip in. As it is, I'll be working on honestly persuading them of the foolishness of this route of everyone pretending like regulation solves more than it does when people are not genuinely on board and when their consciences are not in line with whatever rules are enforced.

In the meantime, India does reflect the very serious limits of enforcement. People do have to cooperate. If they don't, you are fucked. I don't care how much power you have.

If you doubt that, I hear there's an Asian subcontinent who could use some help getting people to give up the tobacci.

What liberal elitism?

I love how Paul Krugman always thinks he knows my interests or Joe the Plumber's interests better than me or Joe, for ourselves.

The real plumbers of Ohio

Joe and I both earn less than $50,000 a year. So a millionaire economist like Paul Krugman must know what is best for us even if we don't, right? Don't liberal Nobel-prize winning economists always know my interests better than me?

It's good to know that liberal elitism is really just a myth, in'it?

Glad that Paul has alerted me that it is "Republican plutocrats", and not Paul Krugman, who are condescending the average Joe.

For their own good, of course.

Say hi to your mother for me, ok?

I don't care how much Mark Wahlberg wets his little cotton panties, this is fuckin' funny.



Mark Wahlberg needs to stop being such a little girl and quit his fuckin' whining.

And on the off chance that he says anything to Andy in my vicinity, I will talk to you nice, Mark, about the benefits of having a sense of humor. And I then and Andy Samberg will beat your cryin' bitch ass if you try anything funny, Funky Bunch.

Say hi to your mother for me, alright?

Wise up

One of my favorite songs from one of my favorite artists.



Sing it, Aimee.