While the Republicans are still the minority party, they seem to have been able to exercise considerable power-at least in a negative sense.
On one hand, the Republicans have been cast as the party of “no.” Their main activities have been to obstruct, criticize and widen political divisions. Of course, this makes selfish sense: while a Democrat success story would be good for the country, it would hurt the chances of the Republicans returning to power. While helping the Democrats fail would involve harming America, it would increase the chances that the Republicans can get back in control. While the Republicans are big on talk about unity and doing what is best for the country, this only seems to hold when they are in power. As such, one might suspect that they simply want folks to go along with them and do what they want.
On the other hand, the Republicans present themselves as fighting a heroic battle against the Democrats’ attempts to pass harmful laws. As such, they cast themselves as a noble opposition saying “no” not for their own selfish interests but for the good of America. Of course, the Republicans had their chance for eight years and that shows us the sort of good that Republicans intend to do.
I do suspect that some of the Republicans honestly believe that they are doing what is truly right and best for America. However, I suspect that most of them are mere politicians-they want was is best for themselves and the folks who have bought them. I think the same is true of the Democrats, of course.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i0.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png)
“While helping the Democrats fail would involve harming America, it would increase the chances that the Republicans can get back in control.”
This is hardly self evident. Stopping bad legislation is in America’s best interests.
See this article, for example:
Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams is scheduled for heart surgery in the United States, a move that throws into question his province’s and his nation’s health-care system.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/danny-williams-to-undergo-heart-surgery-in-us/article1452524/
Socialized medicine for thee but not for me.
“Of course, the Republicans had their chance for eight years and that shows us the sort of good that Republicans intend to do.” But Michael, I have it on good report from posters here that those were weak Republicans. Democrats in Republican clothing. Today’s are the authentic Republicans. Politically repositioned Republicans. Republicans who vote against bills they cosponsor 🙂 . Old Republicans in new bottles.Self proclaimed nonpartisans and patriots. The chosen ones. Blessed with the one true sense of what’s good for the country. They’ve truly got their shit together. Praise be. Unlike Democrats,who can’t agree on “the good of the country”, they can. 🙂 ROTFetc.
“while a Democrat success story would be good for the country”
Wow. Bias much?
“Republicans are big on talk about unity and doing what is best for the country, this only seems to hold when they are in power.”
Isn’t the simple answer that they do not believe what is happening is in the best interest of the country?
What is it that you think the Democrats want that is so great for the country? Won’t the country decide what is great for the country? If Obama is good, won’t he get elected again? Or do you think that he’s helping everyone but they just don’t know it?
And you hold Republican feet to the fire by stating that the Republicans are keeping back what is best for the country, by blocking the dems, when in the previous article you stated that the Dems can’t agree on what is best.
“While helping the Democrats fail would involve harming America”
I can’t believe that a PHD philosopher is saying this. If Pat Robertson were to say: “Since God exists and we know he is good, and Jesus is His Son, all we have to do is say we believe and be saved,” I suspect you’d have a problem with that.
One termer.
You have a Dem president and a large majority in the senate and house, and yet it’s the Republicans’ fault? What else do you want? If Republicans voted and thought the way Democrats do, wouldn’t they call themselves Democrats?
The Democrats had o plan for the country other than to ride the anti-Bush madness. That ship has run aground.
So what you have is the issues that the Democrats were forced to face:
1) Economy, which they fixed by tripling the deficit and failing to address the issues that caused the problem in the first place.
2) Global warming being exposed for what it is.
3) A withdrawal of troops from Iraq–thanks to George Bush who actually signed the Status of Forces Agreement to begin the withdrawal–not Obama.
4) A waste in Afghanistan.
The Democrats can place the blame squarely on themselves. They’re blaming Bush right into another Republican presidency.
I’ve got two replies for you waiting that supposedly are in the pipeline but won’t load in. WTF?
This page has been intentionally left blank.
Here’s a greatly eviscerated version of what I said in my original. For magus. Republican-conservatives or repcons live in RepconWorld. A world where cutting taxes and cutting spending solve everything. even cutting taxes during wartime. A lollipop world where Rep andor Dem congressmen will cut spending and actually risk their jobs and their voters’ support back home. We’re a huge economy. The proverbial huge ship that can’t be turned on a dime. After nearly running us into the iceberg PaulsonBush shouted TARP TARP and the slow turn began. Obama continued. Now RepCon politicians have convinced Repcon citizens that the problem should have been solved by now. At much lower cost. That they could have done it. The unemployment problem would be solved. We’d all be in snuggled up in our nice little RepCon beds. It’s crap. You know it and I know it. All we hear is what the RepCons would have done. Not what the consequences would have been.Let GM fail. The consequences have to be better than providing government money to keep them afloat. Why? Because that’s what we believe.Well. There were tons of beliefs out there about the free market too. We’ve seen where such blind limited attachments to economic ideology can bring us.
There’s a good chance a link I included in the original was the problem. So. Google washington senate republicans oppose budget cuts. The first item is about Washington state. That’s the relevant one. Click on the blue links there that take you to the specific bills. It’s about a point I made in my original rejected post. Politicians support spending cuts at the national level. Other politicians will oppose them at the state level. Guys and gals at the state level are even closer to the public. They’re the first to get the public heat. Esp. when taxes are raised. Or spending that’s near and dear to their hearts is cut. EX: Thomas Jefferson was a grand proponent of libraries, reading, books etc.Our state cut much money from our local library budgets. Well. Don’t know what it’s like in your neck of the woods. You’ve heard the saying you can’t have your cake and eat it too. But we like our cake. And we’re damn well going to eat it too.So locally RepCons and Dems alike bitch about spending and simultaneously bitch about the library cuts. It’s cut cut cut but not my stuff. But wait. If you keep my stuff and the other guy’s stuff nothing will be cut! But cut our taxes. Yeah. That’ll work. That’s the public that Hamilton describes. ‘The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.’
Global warming. The Economist puts it best. It flatly says there are disagreements about the issue. But. It compares the debate and its possible outcome to the Tragedy of the Commons. Perhaps you should read the article or at least figure out for yourself how the comparison fits the Commons situation. Again, It’s only in a very simple world where a few errors in world-wide research on a broad ranging theory would be cause to scrap the theory. Some pieces are wrong. Let’s scrap the valid research in the name of progress. 🙂 Let’s consider the possible consequences if the theory is correct. Imagine this.One party claims it is so concerned about our grandchildren’s future. Especially its economic future. But it rejects something that could save that future in the name of ‘progress’. Interesting. Rush Limbaugh of radio fame was calling global warming a hoax in 1990. Not long after global warming became a hot topic.Very little research had been done then. Now I know Limbaugh is a smart guy. But the fact is he took a purely ideological political angle. And always accompanied it with some ideological statement like Global warming is a communist plot to impede economic progress or the like. That mode of thought seems suspicious to me. But not to you?
“Again, It’s only in a very simple world where a few errors in world-wide research on a broad ranging theory would be cause to scrap the theory. Some pieces are wrong. Let’s scrap the valid research in the name of progress.”
Is that what the Progressives are already rewriting the global warming history as? A few errors? Only in a simple world would I believe that garbage. Those e-mails exposed much more than a few errors. There were admittals to the following…Fabricating data, manipulating data, withholding data so it could not be verified and suppression of any ideas or debate that did not agree with them. Does that sound like a few errors? What if the anti Man Made Global Warming ‘nuts’ are wrong? Is that reason enough to destroy the economy when it is already on its knees as that would surely be the killing blow?
Oh, I forgot admittals to destroying data that didn’t agree with the pro man made global warming model. Does any of that sound like real science to you?
‘Does that sound like a few errors?’ In the wide wide world of all global warming research the answer is a resounding yes. But before I move on to more substantive issues. Let’s see where your pattern of thinking might lead us. You might but I wouldn’t like to see all religion eliminated because more than a few Catholic priests raped those who put their trust in them. Or because more than a handful of evangelists have proven to be crooks. Or because too many churches spend more money on buildings and congregation growth than they do on people in need.Perhaps you’d like Wall Street to be heavily regulated or totally govt controlled because quite a few crooks there got away with millions.I wouldn’t. You surely can’t believe that removing all controls would remove the corrupt human beings. You and I don’t want guns confiscated just because some armed whack jobs have killed large numbers in schools and metro areas. Or because a few children accidentally blow their heads off with daddy’s pistol.I pointed out earlier that Rush Limbaugh was trashing the possibility of global warming in the early 90s. In the name of saving our economy. Before much research had been done. I’m not at all surprised that some desperate scientists deviate from the straight and narrow when faced with that kind of idiocy. He seems to bring out the best in all of us. On to the substance.
I’d suggest you go to your local library. If it hasn’t been closed because of state spending costs that is. Find the Dec5-11 09 issue of The Economist. I’ll give you a taste with an extended excerpt from p4 of the special section. Here. Pay close attention to the second /esp its last sentence/ and fourth paragraphs.
Carbon-dioxide emissions are now 30% higher than they were when the UNFCCC was signed 17 years ago. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 equivalent (carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases) reached 430 parts per million last year, compared with 280ppm before the industrial revolution. At the current rate of increase they could more than treble by the end of the century, which would mean a 50% risk of a global temperature increase of 5ºC. To put that in context, the current average global temperature is only 5ºC warmer than the last ice age. Such a rise would probably lead to fast-melting ice sheets, rising sea levels, drought, disease and collapsing agriculture in poor countries, and mass migration. But nobody really knows, and nobody wants to know.
Some scientists think that the planet is already on an irreversible journey to dangerous warming. A few climate-change sceptics think the problem will right itself. Either may be correct. Predictions about a mechanism as complex as the climate cannot be made with any certainty. But the broad scientific consensus is that serious climate change is a danger, and this newspaper believes that, as an insurance policy against a catastrophe that may never happen, the world needs to adjust its behaviour to try to avert that threat.
The problem is not a technological one. The human race has almost all the tools it needs to continue leading much the sort of life it has been enjoying without causing a net increase in greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Industrial and agricultural processes can be changed. Electricity can be produced by wind, sunlight, biomass or nuclear reactors, and cars can be powered by biofuels and electricity. Biofuel engines for aircraft still need some work before they are suitable for long-haul flights, but should be available soon.
Nor is it a question of economics. Economists argue over the sums , but broadly agree that greenhouse-gas emissions can be curbed without flattening the world economy.
The article is much more than this. I’m assuming you want more than soundbites and the blogosphere. You’ll find it here. 14 triple column pages. They mention the Tragedy of the Commons. I’d like to explain how that’s relevant to GW in my next post.
lol, you have too much time on your hands to go over worthless stats.
“Nor is it a question of economics. Economists argue over the sums , but broadly agree that greenhouse-gas emissions can be curbed without flattening the world economy. ”
The debate is over. lol again.
“And always accompanied it with some ideological statement like Global warming is a communist plot to impede economic progress or the like”
I’ve never heard him say anything like this.
Global warming is bs, I’ve said it all along and none of its hard core believers have ever held themselves to high scientific standards. Instead, they staked fame and career on their statements and hoped no one would look at the man in the booth.
About the only science I trust is hard and empirical. You see it, you see it again and are able to reproduce it. Like engineering: I make a rocket and shoot it into the sky. If it flies I know I was correct in my math. If it crashes I need to go back to the chalk board. With global warming and evolution they just throw some figures at us and hope we can’t do math–and most of us can’t. “You can’t see it–but trust us–it’s happening!” Models don’t work well. They can’t tell exactly what they weather will be next week but they can tell me what the results of a global warming that they’re not sure is really happening will be?
The Dems should not have depended on global warming for political gain. The well is going dry like so many of their wells.
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”~The Wizard of Oz.
Links still aren’t working for me. So. Google colorado springs budget cuts. Read either of the first two items there. Now. Colo. Spgs. is conservative I believe. Their website gives bios info of their council that seem to indicate a strong conservative leaning. Google colorado springs city council members and you’ll soon find a list of members and brief bios. Small business owners, larger business owners, etc. Should be interesting to follow what happens here.
Oh yeah–and the Democrats were very good at cooperating with Republicans when they voted for the Iraq War.
I’m looking under Iraq Resolution in wikipedia. The RedBlue pie charts there show that House and Senate Reps voted 97-8% for the resolution. The party of Aye those days. The Dems the party of Nay at the time voted 39% for it in the House 58% for it in the Senate. Likely the kind of government you’d prefer. Your party votes a nearly solid block. And 50% of a more thoughtful loyal opposition votes with you. Because we want to keep life so simple in RepCon land. Did I mention it’s flat there and everything’s in black and white? But perhaps I missed your point. Could you rephrase so that 1 I could address it better and 2 I know which one of many points raised in the main article and my responses you’re addressing? That way we can figure out which points you’re avoiding.
Still, Dem cooperation was needed and obtained. Par Excellence!
k: The tragedy of the commons and global warming.
From wikipedia. ‘a situation in which multiple individuals [or corporations or governmental entities, etc], acting independently, and solely and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen.’ Put that in practical terms. Human beings share a world of limited resources. Like our atmosphere. Deplete/pollute the atmosphere and you change the balance of beneficial/harmful insects for example. As Cassidy writes, “the atmosphere is part of the global commons.” The immediate economic interest might seem all important to you. But as the Economist article points out it’s not at all clear that pursuing a positive environmental policy would be economically harmful. Read it. This is where Smith’s invisible hand doesn’t work. This is where the flat RepWorld comes up against the 3-D real world. Because the global climate and the survival of the globe shouldn’t be an economic issue.It is irrational self interest to contribute to the destruction of the ‘global commons. Ken Binmore, quoted in How Markets Fail, claims it’s rational. Because we’re human beings who haven’t faced up to the true nature of what we are. ‘Critics ask how can it be possible for a society to engineer its own ruin.[They ask] can’t we see that everybody would be better off if everybody were to grab less of the common resource?The error in such reason is elementary. A player in the human game of life isn’t some abstract entity called ‘everybody’.We are all separate individuals, each with our own aims and purposes. Even when our capacity for love moves us to make sacrifices for others, we each do so in our own way and for our own reasons. If we pretend otherwise, we have no hope of ever getting to grips with the Tragedy of the Commons.’ Briefly. The invisible hand is a selfish hand. And as long as we continue to deny that, or ignore that, or fail to recognize that we’re going to be in deep shit.
Is ‘wiki’ your God now? Beware of Wiki as revisionist history, science…etc would be easy there. I figured you were smart enough to realise this though. If all the ice caps melted that would be a 24 foot sea level rise at most. I can deal with that. 😉
That is all fine and good. Conserve as you wish, and use renewable energy as you choose. When I am forced to do something that you think is right through legislation and not education then I dig in my heals. I am not willing to give up Liberty for theoretical security.
Oh–you’ll get Mike going again on the evils of the Patriot Act. He really believes it’s the biggest intrusion into our liberties in history.I just want someone to list one person they know who has been the “victim” of the Patriot Act.
Of course the Dems voted for that too. But it’s only evil when we connect it to GW Bush–who we’ve been hornswaggled into believing was the worst president ever. So we elected someone who had no history–who is creating himself while in the White House. The inexperience is showing and the Dem party is paying big time. Americans don’t want what the Dems are shoving down their throats.
Again–pay no attention to the man behind the curtain–because he’s a Democrat.
I thought the man behind the curtain was Dick Cheney. Pay no attention to him.
The tragedy of the commons also explains why socialism can never work. It also explains why big companies have to be allowed to fail, otherwise their profits remain private while their losses are socialized.
The proper response to pollution is to include a “clean up” cost in every gallon of gas.
TJ Sorry I’m still not able to get a link accepted, so I’ll just offer the text from econlib.org.
‘The rational explanation for such ruin was given more than 170 years ago. In 1832 William Forster Lloyd, a political economist at Oxford University, looking at the recurring devastation of common (i.e., not privately owned) pastures in England, asked: “Why are the cattle on a common so puny and stunted? Why is the common itself so bare-worn, and cropped so differently from the adjoining inclosures?”
Lloyd’s answer assumed that each human exploiter of the common was guided by self-interest. At the point when the carrying capacity of the commons was fully reached, a herdsman might ask himself, “Should I add another animal to my herd?” Because the herdsman owned his animals, the gain of so doing would come solely to him. But the loss incurred by overloading the pasture would be “commonized” among all the herdsmen. Because the privatized gain would exceed his share of the commonized loss, a self-seeking herdsman would add another animal to his herd. And another. And reasoning in the same way, so would all the other herdsmen. Ultimately, the common property would be ruined.
Even when herdsmen understand the long-run consequences of their actions, they generally are powerless to prevent such damage without some coercive means of controlling the actions of each individual. Idealists may appeal to individuals caught in such a system, asking them to let the long-term effects govern their actions. But each individual must first survive in the short run. If all decision makers were unselfish and idealistic calculators, a distribution governed by the rule “to each according to his needs” might work. But such is not our world. As James Madison said in 1788, “If men were angels, no Government would be necessary” (Federalist, no. 51). That is, if all men were angels. But in a world in which all resources are limited, a single nonangel in the commons spoils the environment for all.’
Substitute ‘atmosphere’ for ‘commons’ ‘property’, etc. I don’t give a whit or a shit about the future of socialism or pure capitalism. This isn’t a subject for ideologues.
Sorry, the Dems will always be the Party of Jimmy Carter in my mind. They get nothing done and they have no idea how to run an economy.
No apologies need. We love you just the way you are. 🙂
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/03/manipulating_the_climate_numbers_100154.html
‘TO MY SURVEY, there is not a SINGLE aspect of the “anthropogenic global warming” hypothesis that has been left standing by recent revelations, and more shoes drop every day.’ God this man must have a capacious mind and a bottomless data source. ‘Not only ALL the numbers, but ALL the assumptions behind “AGW” — not “most,” but ALL — have depended on the manipulation of facts by persons who had an interest in manipulating them.’ I’m ALWAYS suspicious when I see the word ALL. And David Warren is qualified how to make such statements? This is from his self-bio from david warrenonline. ‘There may therefore be minor mistakes, not only of spelling and grammar, but of FACT– for each piece was written under deadline pressure according to the best information I had at the time.’ Quite an admission. Makes him seem to me damn overconfident with ALL his ALL’s .
Think he may be biased much? One can develop a huge ego writing for the tenth largest newspaper in Canada and ALL. You can go to davidwarrenonline and view some articles. Note ‘Haiti’. Where he lightly chastizes Pat Robertson. Then cozies up to the mode of thought that generated Robertson’s idiocy. Or the article on ecology. Read it then read some other sources about the Pope’s statement. The man is an opinion writer. Thanks but no thanks.I’ll view his general claims as ALL ALL ALL just opinion.Until a fact comes along.
AKA,
I agree that the tragedy of the commons applies to rising CO2 levels. The solution is to tax CO2. Other regressive taxes such as social security could be reduced to keep overall taxes from being increased.
How is a CO2 tax not an overall tax? It should affect everyone. Put ideological purity aside for a moment. In Boulder they add a carbon tax for residential commercial and industrial electricity use. It’s graduated. Now we could add to that a tax on transportation fuels. Graduated for indivduals and coporations. There you’ve got yourself a CO2 tax. I’m curious. Why Social Security? Why not take a libertarian view and limit our military activities outside our borders? That would save a ton. Why not refuse to pass unfunded bills like Medicare Part D?
m- I know this:1/In any system or group there will always be crooks and liars. Look at politics. The military for sure. Wall Street. The unions. 2/ Here’s one thing I know for a fact. A skeptic’s view may be- We’ve gone through climate phases before. Cold periods. Hot periods. I’m told by anti-global warming experts that we’re likely heading into a new ice age.I don’t disagree. And their point? I couldn’t tell you. Earth has gone through many ice ages and all the subsequent warmings.I doubt the next will be a pleasant experience. But NONE of those previous periods were preceded by the Industrial Revolution. We live in post Industrial Revolution World. A place where capitalist socialist and communist ideologues can bask in the clouded sunlight of accord. We all love the benefits the IR has brought us. But there’s no apples to apples equivalency to the IR in our long ecological history. That I know of. If I’m wrong name one. We’ve thrown an inestimable quantity of industrial waste into our atmosphere. And there’s stuff in industrial waste that isn’t equatable to what trees put into the air. Or volcanoes. In type or in quantity. We changed our world with the IR. And the scientific revolution. And the technological revolution. TJ says we’ll soon be able to grow mean in a Petri dish. I agree with The Economist.We can deal with atmospheric pollution. We can afford to. We’d be foolish not to.
Assuming global warming is happening, and assuming that it’s because of the industrial revolution, you still can’t show it really matters that much.
But I’m not assuming anything.
There have been times in history when there was more CO2 in the atmosphere than now–and there were no factories. There was the temp rise during the middle ages–alas–no SUVs.
So sure, keep things clean, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Like The Economist says. You don’t have to accept the idea. It’s just a sensible insurance policy to do something about it.And we’re economically and technologically well equipped to do it. You’re ‘assuming nothing’? Aren’t you assuming that the only pollutant factories have put into the air in huge quantities during the IR is CO2? Chlorofluorocarbons? Nitrogen oxide? Hydrocarbon gases? We know factories emit these substances into the atmosphere. You know that they existed in greater quantities in the atmosphere sometime in the past? You know they don’t have a synergistic effect in the atmosphere?
The baby ref brings to mind noted neocon Grover Nordquist’s statement about government. He of the silver tongue and brain of crap. ‘My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.’ One of the pioneer inhabitants of RepConWorldWorld. Where there is apparently no government.Isn’t that anarchy?
k. 2/4var. Don’t you mean I have too much time on my hands to go over worthless FACTS? I wish. Whereas. You have seem to have ample time to go over valuable half-truths? Re wiki.I prefer it to just pulling info out of my butt. “Use” “conserve”. You can live with a 24 foot sea level rise? 🙂 Consider a few possibilities.If you have the time. 🙂 Severe contraction of living space relative to existing and inevitable population growth . Economic repercussions of property and land loss. Decreased space to grow food because of need to accomodate the DISPLACED ONES. Dealing with the DISPLACED ONES. Thus,likely loss of quality of life.Some loss of life. You can live with that. At what cost to the world outside RepConLand?
m.at 2/4/10 2:28 You haven’t heard Rush Limbaugh say this. I have. The atmosphere isn’t like a rocket.It’s much more complex. Your analogy doesn’t hold. But here’s a puzzler for you. The only science you trust is hard and empirical.And you’re certain that because models don’t work to predict next week’s weather global warming can’t be verified. We’ll assume that’s a fact. Even though there’s room for argument there. Is that your only evidence that global warming is bs. The sum total of ‘hard empirical’ facts behind your conclusion? Please tell me your thinking isn’t based on something as shallow as your lack of faith in your local weatherman. Or k’s idea that because some info has been cooked it’s all worthless. I dealt with that ‘issue’.My 2/3/10 5:47 and 2:4:10 5:55. You remind me of those people who don’t believe in God because there’s no empirical evidence. Willing to lose Pascal’s wager for it. The Economist is saying bite the bullet and buy the insurance. It’s seems the only likely way to win the bet.
Incisive analysis from Charles Krauthammer:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/05/dont_they_understand_massachusetts.html
This being a democracy, don’t the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don’t they understand Massachusetts?
Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.
Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking “in the plain words of plain folks,” because the people are “suspicious of complexity.” Counseled Blow: “The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, ‘Mr. President, we’re down here.'”
A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are “a nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive.”
Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, he chided himself “for not explaining it (health care) more clearly to the American people.” The subject, he noted, was “complex.” The subject, it might also be noted, was one to which the master of complexity had devoted 29 speeches. Perhaps he did not speak slowly enough.
Then there are the emotional deficiencies of the masses. Nearly every Democratic apologist lamented the people’s anger and anxiety, a free-floating agitation that prevented them from appreciating the beneficence of the social agenda the Democrats are so determined to foist upon them.
That brings us to Part 2 of the liberal conceit: Liberals act in the public interest, while conservatives think only of power, elections, self-aggrandizement and self-interest.
It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good. A 2002 New York Times obituary for philosopher Robert Nozick explained that the strongly libertarian implications of Nozick’s masterwork, “Anarchy, State, and Utopia,” “proved comforting to the right, which was grateful for what it embraced as philosophical justification.” The right, you see, is grateful when a bright intellectual can graft some philosophical rationalization onto its thoroughly base and self-regarding politics.
This belief in the moral hollowness of conservatism animates the current liberal mantra that Republican opposition to Obama’s social democratic agenda — which couldn’t get through even a Democratic Congress and powered major Democratic losses in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts — is nothing but blind and cynical obstructionism.
Krauthammer’s my favorite.
“That brings us to Part 2 of the liberal conceit: Liberals act in the public interest, while conservatives think only of power, elections, self-aggrandizement and self-interest.”
Liberals are the most arrogant people I meet. They sneer. They chide. They cynically attack all classic institutions of America.
Then they lose elections.
Obama’s just too smart for us. Only the Hollywood types are smart enough.
TJ CK like any human comes in many flavors. He can be intelligent. He can be superficial.Socially he’s nuanced. Politically he’s ideologically transparent.He accepts evolution. Hes a global warming ‘agnostic’ with a predictable partisan take. In the article you offer up he’s nothing but the ideological pot calling the ideological kettle black. His first point for example. Plenty of criticism of the intellectual elite from an intellectual. About Democrat disdain for the people’s intellectual abilities. But something’s missing.Perhaps I see it because I’m looking at it objectively. There’s no clear statement here from CK that HE doesn’t feel the same way. He doesn’t say ‘The people are not stupid’. He doesn’t defend their abilities to make critical judgments. He just condemns liberals for being stupid enough to say it. Puzzling. I assume the liberals he’s condemning include liberal ‘people’. So CK thinks libs are stupid for thinking people are stupid! But libs are people. Last I looked. But may be that’s a conservative trait. Thinking anyone who doesn’t fit a perfect template isn’t one of ‘the people’. Anyway. Maybe this is CK’s way of reinforcing the borders between Palin’s real America and everyone else? My take. Dems and reps and libertarians are politicians. I’m guessing they all think people are easily manipulated. That their passions overrule their intellects.Would you agree? Consider the effects of ad campaigns inside and outside politics. The easy manipulation by lenders of borrowers to sign for mortgages they can’t pay. Someone once wrote that he feared ‘the passions,therefore not the REASONS of the public would sit in judgment.’ James Madison. Someone else wrote ‘The people are turbulent and changing;they seldom judge or determine right’ Alexander Hamilton. We could play battling quotations forever. Defending one side or the other. We could rip Madison and Hamilton out of our national history. Because they sound like CKs characterization of Democrats. This has been the nature of the national dialogue in this country for 220-odd years. It’s just amplified these days. We’re no longer a population of 4M confined to the east coast of the continent.
AKA:
Average people may not be highly educated, but they are not stupid. And they get angry when people who work for them (i.e., politicians) express contempt for them and their values.
We have heard a lot of contempt for the Tea Party types coming from the left. But for the most part these are just ordinary folks who are getting angry.
This short video really explains a lot:
Yes indeed it does. Something doesn’t mesh. And it’s pretty obvious. These people were around when Bush and a Rep congress passed Med D ‘unfunded’. Their contempt didn’t surface during a Republican administration. They didn’t object when Bush tried terrorists in civilian courts. No objection when a Republican administration did that. Though it’s against their currently avowed deeply-held values. What crap. They’ve got religion now. Seems Madison and Hamilton were spot on. As I wrote at 2/6/ 11:36. The people are not stupid. But they’re gullible as hell.Put a Democratic shill equivalent to Breitbart in front of enough libs with the right ‘convictions’ and he’ll get a similar response. I can see that. Can you? Krauthammer knows that. Which reminds me. Let’s look more carefully at what he says about the Dems and people’s stupidity. Attack by implication. Obama shouldn’t have referred to health care reform as ‘complex’. Wha? So hcr is easy? Hasn’t it been hanging fire for nearly a century? So Obama’s ‘supercilious[ly] modest for apologizing for his failure to explain it? What does that even mean? Suprecilious is a heck of a judgmental word coming off Krauthammer’s keyboard. What would a conservative who had succeeded in passing Medicare Part D say? He’d look you square in the eye. ‘We gave you a simple bill. We don’t have a clue how to fund it. Screw you.’ But he’d omit the last two sentences. That’s the way to handle the people. Then CK quotes a blogger! ‘Nuf said about that, no? If CK explained health care reform to the first ten customers who exit Tony’s Pizzeria so that they could explain it back to us you can bet the hcr he’s explaining would be simple. And virtually worthless.
‘They cynically attack all classic institutions of America.’ List’em all. We can deal with them one by one. And give me a reply about why you would prefer to lose the global warming equivalent of Pascal’s Wager. 5/10 1:43 Google Pascal’s Wager and Climate Change and choose the radar.oreilly link. I’ll post it in a reply to this and see if it loads.
Here goes:
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/pascals-wager-and-climate-change.html