tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4162927837864080042024-03-13T10:52:49.326-04:00The Modest Blog of a Liberal HumanistRandom musings of an American liberal and secular humanist man in the street.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger233125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-62684122915337737522021-02-14T14:36:00.003-05:002021-07-27T22:53:01.773-04:00Republican Support For Political Violence And Domestic Terrorism<div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Welcome friends!</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I feel I’ve talked quite a bit about the increasingly evident rise of right wing, anti-democracy, authoritarian, market based conservatism and Republicanism here in the USA, and I’m in danger of turning my once varied, entertaining, and far ranging blog into a sort of never ending statement of outrage and disgust at what conservatives have been doing to my beloved USA, but let’s face it, there’s something undeniably fascinating about watching the previously gradual but now ever more rapid rise of political fascism here in the USA. Horrifying, yes. Depressing, yes. Alarming, yes. But also fascinating. Some years ago I seem to recall there was a flurry of academic interest in what happened in Europe in the early and mid-twentieth century, with all sorts of fanciful theories put forward for the rise of the fascist state. However, it seems we here in the USA can now entertain that issue without delving into the funny ways of our foreign friends. We now can consider the issue in the context of the all too familiar good old boys, rednecks, racists, and religious nuts of our own country. So maybe I’ll just do one more on this theme and then try to give it a rest for a little while and talk about some other things.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">What happened recently to prompt this post was that nearly every Republican in the US Senate voted to acquit former president Trump of any wrongdoing with respect to the deadly attack on the US Capitol he and his minions helped plan and promote for months, and which he did everything he could on the day to instigate and nothing to end once started. Reportedly, he found it all quite amusing and was outraged when he suspected others in his entourage failed to appreciate the spectacle and suggested he call it off. This recent vote was a very strong signal that the conservative Republican Party supports the future use of political violence and domestic terrorism here in the USA planned, organized, orchestrated, and encouraged by future US presidents, a position which is entirely consistent with their now often declared disdain for democratic government. Well, I suppose one must address political issues one way or another, right? And if one opposes addressing those issues using political democracy and voting, then I suppose supporting clubbing people over the head with fire extinguishers, bashing their heads in doorways, gouging out their eyes and with one’s bare hands, and trying to hang them from hastily constructed gallows on the front lawn are other options.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">It is interesting to note that our homegrown American version of fascism is notably more dishonest and pusillanimous than the old European version, which appears from historical accounts to have taken itself very seriously indeed. The conservative Republicans in the US Senate who supported Mr. Trump’s recent activity publicly pretended to base their decision on the constitutionality of the proceedings rather than the evidence, which they famously ignored during the actual trial, preferring instead to doodle on bits of paper, look at their mobile phones, converse with one another, laugh at the absurdity of it all, or in some cases simply not show up to hear at all. It was a comically disingenuous position because, of course, the very first order of business was to decide the constitutionality of the trial, so continuing to pretend that was still an issue in the next phase showed the typical fascist scorn for democratic government and law. A few unusually dishonest characters, such as the slippery fascist Senator “Moscow Mitch” McConnell of Kentucky, even delivered post election speeches trying to muddy the water by saying that although they voted to acquit the man of all wrong doing they certainly didn’t mean to suggest the man did no wrong. This sort of Orwellian doublespeak was perfectly predictable because fascists here in the USA have long felt public pressure to dissemble, which they call by various names such as “political correctness” and “cancel culture,” and which they portray as requiring them to say things they don’t really mean and no one is meant to take literally. One day one hopes they will attain the level of courage of their erstwhile European fellows in the German Nazi Party, for example, and declare their allegiance to the fascist cause, but for now it’s apparently meant to be some sort of open secret. Something to be winked at, and winked at hard, by those in the fold, but officially still denied in public. According to contemporary American conservative / fascist political strategy, this is apparently known as “flooding the zone with shit.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Of course, the mere fact that American conservative and Republican fascists in the US Senate are now supporting future political violence and domestic terrorism instigated by American politicians up to and including future presidents of the USA does not necessarily spell the impending demise of American democracy. We still have a large group of people and one political party, the Democratic Party, who remain big believers in American democracy, and one hopes and assumes they will do everything they can, on their own, and over the determined and likely fanatical opposition of the fascists, to shore up our political democracy and prevent political violence in the future. However, it’s very much a touch and go situation right now. The very large contingent of American voters who now clearly support anti-democratic fascism and political violence as superior alternatives to peaceful democracy is not going anywhere soon. The titanic battle in the USA between the forces of democracy and fascism, decades in the making, will likely continue for decades to come. At least no reasonable person can still deny the situation at hand, so in that sense at least we may have finally made some progress. But it’s important right now that all patriotic and democracy loving Americans fight the intellectual and moral cancer of conservative and Republican fascism at the ballot box. Long live American democracy!</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-2678487214625505502021-01-19T12:03:00.012-05:002021-01-21T18:43:15.406-05:00Right Wing Fascism In The USA<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Welcome friends!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I read a rather comical discussion online the other day in which someone argued anti-democracy conservatives and Republicans here in the USA cannot properly be called “fascists” because in his or her estimation fascism is a “leftist” political movement and conservatives and Republicans are opposed to leftism. My first thought was, if the comment was meant at all sincerely, and one never knows these days, one can only assume it came from an unusually poorly educated young person because surely anyone else would be sufficiently familiar with the history of the twentieth century to perceive the important distinction between right wing, anti-democracy, authoritarian fascism and its mortal enemy left wing, anti-democracy, authoritarian communism. However, after a few additional moments of thought, it occurred to me the element that distinguishes the two, the economic dimension, the significance of the distribution of economic power and the use of that economic power in markets to resolve interpersonal conflicts, are exactly those elements of economics so studiously and self-consciously submerged by what my fellow traveller, Hansel Krankepantzen, would call bad economics, by which he has in mind certain ubiquitous misinterpretations of neoclassical welfare economics that systematically draw attention away from issues relating to the distribution and use of economic power in markets, the role of government force in establishing and maintaining markets, and the important role of democratic government in deciding the ethical issues relevant to evaluating markets.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In bad economics, and the bad folk economics it engenders, such as so-called “libertarianism,” “Austrian” economics, fake market based anarchism (I believe called “anarcho-capitalism” or some such), markets do not require government force to be created or maintained, there is no system defined by government and law to distribute economic power, and markets don’t really resolve interpersonal conflict on the basis of economic power. Instead, a market economy is “free” and everyone involved has the “liberty” to do whatever he or she likes, there is no social conflict, everyone gets exactly what they want or deserve, and the only thing democratic government does is interfere and render everyone less free. Young people, and those prone more to fantasy and magical thinking, appear to imagine spontaneous laws that spring forth and are followed with no enforcement or justice system required. More mature and realistic people who understand the role of government in creating and maintaining market system imagine an authoritarian system impervious to the problems and machinations of democratic government, that is to say, incapable of being captured by the ethically compromised hoi polloi and used as a weapon to interfere with ethically correct market results, pick people’s pockets, take from the virtuous rich and give to the deservedly poor, and so on.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Setting aside the young and those oriented to fantasy, who as always inhabit their own special world older and more reasonable people could never hope to enter, the likely reason the more mature and realistic element of the conservative and Republican movements don’t appreciate the relationship between the non-democratic, plutocratic, authoritarian government they have in mind and old time European fascism is American conservatives and Republicans want and suppose the non-democratic, authoritarian government they have in mind will be small, while the non-democratic, authoritarian governments associated with the European fascist movements were big, and they believe accepting big government is invariably a leftist idea. That is to say, rather than that looking at the distinction between mortal enemies fascism and communism in an intellectually serious way, focusing on questions of social power and who wields it, the intent or purpose of the governments, the difference in situations of the people who support the one or the other, they look to something rather less well defined and conceptually significant, the ostensible size of the government sector, and conclude risibly that fascism and communism were basically the same thing and all the fighting and warfare was really for nothing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">With that sort of thought process in mind, I thought it might be worthwhile to suggest European fascism wasn’t authoritarian big government for shits and giggles. That is to say, it’s rather difficult to imagine anyone supporting fascism because they thought it might be nice to have a large, powerful government sector. It seems rather more likely fascism led to a big and pervasive government sector for two very sensible reasons: 1) security and self-preservation, and 2) economic expediency. Let’s consider those two in turn.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I would suggest one important impulse for the relative size and power of the government sector in European fascism was simply the need to prevent what they considered morally corrupt supporters of political democracy and leftists in general from “interfering” with the “free market” and the power of the economic elite, which supported fascism specifically because of its undoubted ability to crack down on organized labor, preserve their economic power, prevent them paying taxes especially for programs they did not support, and ensure they could wield their enormous economic power without interference on the market. Turns out in a country like Germany of that time one needed a rather large and draconian government security sector to prevent unrest, stop people organizing, keep a lid on free speech, control media and academia, and promote propaganda positive to the government. Keeping everyone in line in a fascist society is a big deal.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The other important impulse for the eventual size of the government sector in European fascism was likely simple economics. Stimulating economic growth is always of paramount importance in very unequal economic systems in which government cannot address distributional issues directly or separately from economic growth. To keep the less well off portion of the population on board and thinking things are getting better for them specifically while not inconveniencing in any way those who already hold vast economic power far beyond their practical needs, economic growth must be robust enough that the rising tide lifts even the most broken down and derelict of boats. The fascists hit pretty quickly upon the power of what we would now call Keynesian fiscal policy to get their economies moving, launching military and infrastructure stimulus spending sprees. However, even that appears to have been inadequate to their needs, and they famously settled on continuous, aggressive warfare as the engine they thought would make their economic machine go where it needed to go, while also enriching the economic elite, and allowing the fascist political elite to expand their political power. It was what we in the USA we would call a win-win situation, at least until they rather unexpectedly met their comeuppance militarily, in which it rapidly transformed into a lose-lose situation, albeit with the economic elite surviving rather more in tact than the political elite. In that context, it might be noted there does seem to have been some development in the relationship between the fascist political elite and the economic and business elite that supported them over time with the fascist political elite eventually throwing their weight about more and more as they consolidated power even to the point of occasionally lambasting free market economics as a Jewish plot when it suggested conclusions that did not fit their military and economic agenda, and the economic and business elite, formerly the driving force and great patrons of the fascist movement, arguably became more of a silent and somewhat abused partner, but they were certainly never at odds entirely. The fascist political elite was always on warm terms with the business and free market oriented economic elite of the day.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Given these rather predictable reasons for the eventual size of the European fascist state, there seems little reason to suppose the trajectory of American fascism would be significantly different however much American conservatives and Republicans suppose their movement entirely different because of their focus, initially at least, on small non-democratic, authoritarian government. Comically, of course, it seems quite likely the government would continue to appear “small” to American fascists even if it followed the same trajectory as European fascism because government would be confined to only those activities they believe necessary, which is really the only sensible definition of the size of the government sector in the first place. In a market system government is inevitably and necessarily large at least along the dimension of creating, maintain, and enforcing the laws that make property, contracts, and markets possible. What one wants to add to that function while contending the government remains suitably small seems a rather subjective exercise. National defense? It’s not a small undertaking by any means. Other activities?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Of course, the similarity of modern American conservatism and Republicanism to European fascism is not simply the anti-democracy element nor the intent of preserving the current distribution of economic power and preventing society from interfering with the unrestricted exercise of that economic power in markets. European fascism famously made great political use of racism, nativism, and nationalism. It was famously corrupt, lawless, and nepotistic. It was anti-intellectual and relied heavily on simple violence and intimidation. It focused great energy on disinformation, propaganda, the staging of mass rallies, and so on. One cannot even list these non-essential characteristics of European fascism without being immediately struck by the many obvious similarities to the current American strain of fascism represented by conservatives and the Republican Party.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">So what’s the conclusion? Fascism was and is a right wing political movement predicated on doing whatever is necessary to maintain the “free market” and defend the power of the economic elite from potential interference by political democracy as well as anti-democratic leftist political movements like communism. Anti-democracy, plutocratic, market based American conservatism and Republicanism is a right wing, fascist movement. However, at the end of the day, deciding the definition of fascism and determining the right wing and arguably left wing elements is very much an intellectual side show. The danger posed by the recent anti-democracy activity we’ve been seeing by right wing conservatives and Republicans is the same whether one recognizes it as a form of fascism or not. </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-7625974412654984022021-01-09T21:52:00.010-05:002021-01-12T18:11:16.081-05:00The Republican Attack On Democracy In The USA 2021<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Welcome friends!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I thought I might take a day off and just do a little side post today to make my own personal historical record of the one hundred and forty-seven conservative and Republican politicians in the US Congress who voted in January 2012 to destroy American democracy by throwing out the Electoral College votes from certain US states in order to steal the recent presidential election at the Congressional level for the Republican candidate, Mr. Donald Trump. I’m sure the information is already recorded in a variety of places, but it seems too important an event to not make a record of my own of some kind. It will make me feel a little more comfortable knowing I’ve done what I can to ensure Americans never forget the events of January 6, 2021. A day that will live forever in infamy in the historical accounts of our great nation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Just to review, the Electoral College votes these Republican politicians attempted to throw out had previously all been properly certified by state election authorities, after any audits and recounts they found necessary, according to well established legal procedures. The Republicans had previously filed multiple lawsuits alleging voting irregularities, none of which went anywhere in the US legal system because of a lack of evidence. The Republican politicians attempting to subvert democracy offered two official pretexts for their unprecedented attempt to substitute their own opinions, whims, feelings, preferences for the will of the American electorate. One pretext was the evidence-free allegations of voting irregularities. The other pretext was ostensibly popular outrage those same Republican politicians had laboriously manufactured over the preceding two months on the basis of the evidence-free allegations of voting irregularities. What made the history making attempt to undermine American democracy all the more notable was that it was accompanied by a well televised storming of the US Capitol Building by an angry and violent mob of Republicans, who had been egged on shortly before by president Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who exhorted the rabble to “fight like hell” and engage in a “trial by combat” in favor of their preferred candidate, Mr. Trump. The intent was clearly to use the attack by the violent mob on the US capital as either a means of directing attention away from the attempt to destroy American democracy in Congress or to serve the role of the burning of the Reichstag in the ascension of the fascist Nazi Party in early twentieth century Germany, in which the attack on an important government facility was offered up as evidence of popular unrest that supposedly only the suspension of democracy and installation of a fascist dictator could quell. The violent attack on the Capitol by the Republican mob resulted in the death of a member of the Capitol Police force, as well as some Republican attackers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Although the entire Republican contingent in Congress had spent the previous four years in unanimous, lock-step support of everything president Trump said and did, excusing him even his impeachment for abuse of power, a number of them balked at this final and most conclusive stage of undermining American democracy. The actions of the entire Republican contingent in Congress in the years 2016 through 2020 led to and enabled the final assault on American democracy on January 6, 2021, but the cold feet of a number of them on the day of the outrage itself affords them a pass in this record. What I would like to record are that miserable subset who not only eagerly set the stage but enthusiastically plunged in the dagger in a vain attempt to conclusively kill democracy in our great nation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Long live democracy in the USA!</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The ringleaders of the Republican attempt to destroy democracy in the USA were as follows:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Senator Josh Hawley (Republican - Missouri)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Senator Ted Cruz (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">There were joined in the Senate by the following six Senators:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Sen. Tommy Tuberville (Republican - Alabama)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Sen. Rick Scott (Republican - Florida)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Sen. Roger Marshall (Republican - Kansas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Sen. John Kennedy (Republican - Louisiana)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (Republican - Mississippi)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Sen. Cynthia Lummis (Republican - Wyoming)</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">They were joined in the House of Representatives by the following one hundred and thirty-nine Representatives:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Robert B. Aderholt (Republican - Alabama)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Mo Brooks (Republican - Alabama)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jerry Carl (Republican - Alabama)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Barry Moore (Republican - Alabama)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Gary Palmer (Republican - Alabama)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Mike Rogers (Republican - Alabama)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Andy Biggs (Republican - Arizona)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Paul Gosar (Republican - Arizona)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Debbie Lesko (Republican - Arizona)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. David Schweikert (Republican - Arizona)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Rick Crawford (Republican - Arkansas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Ken Calvert (Republican - California)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Mike Garcia (Republican - California)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Darrell Issa (Republican - California)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Doug LaMalfa (Republican - California)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Republican - California)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Devin Nunes (Republican - California)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jay Obernolte (Republican - California)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Lauren Boebert, (Republican - Colorado)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Doug Lamborn (Republican - Colorado)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Kat Cammack (Republican - Florida)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (Republican - Florida)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Byron Donalds (Republican - Florida)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Neal Dunn (Republican - Florida)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Scott Franklin (Republican - Florida)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Matt Gaetz (Republican - Florida)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Carlos Gimenez (Republican - Florida)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Brian Mast (Republican - Florida)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Bill Posey (Republican - Florida)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. John Rutherford (Republican - Florida)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Greg Steube (Republican - Florida)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Daniel Webster (Republican - Florida)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Rick Allen (Republican - Georgia)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Earl L. "Buddy" Carter (Republican - Georgia)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Andrew Clyde (Republican - Georgia)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Republican - Georgia)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jody Hice (Republican - Georgia)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Barry Loudermilk (Republican - Georgia)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Russ Fulcher (Republican - Idaho)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Mike Bost (Republican - Illinois)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Mary Miller (Republican - Illinois)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jim Baird (Republican - Indiana)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jim Banks (Republican - Indiana)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Reo. Greg Pence (Republican - Indiana)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jackie Walorski (Republican - Indiana) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Ron Estes (Republican - Kansas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jacob LaTurner Republican - Kansas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Tracey Mann (Republican - Kansas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Harold Rogers (Republican - Kentucky)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Garret Graves (Republican - Louisiana)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Clay Higgins (Republican - Louisiana)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Mike Johnson (Republican - Louisiana)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Steve Scalise (Republican - Louisiana)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Andy Harris ((Republican - Maryland) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jack Bergman (Republican - Michigan)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Lisa McClain (Republican - Michigan)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Tim Walberg (Republican - Michigan)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Michelle Fischbach (Republican - Minnesota)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jim Hagedorn (Republican - Minnesota)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Michael Guest (Republican - Mississippi)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Trent Kelly (Republican - Mississippi)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Steven Palazzo (Republican - Mississippi) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Sam Graves (Republican - Missouri)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Vicky Hartzler (Republican - Missouri)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Billy Long (Republican - Missouri)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (Republican - Missouri)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jason Smith (Republican - Missouri)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Matt Rosendale (Republican - Montana)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Dan Bishop (Republican - North Carolina)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Ted Budd (Republican - North Carolina)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Madison Cawthorn (Republican - North Carolina)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Virginia Foxx (Republican - North Carolina)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Richard Hudson (Republican - North Carolina)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Gregory F. Murphy (Republican - North Carolina)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. David Rouzer (Republican - North Carolina)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jeff Van Drew (Republican - New Jersey)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Yvette Herrell (Republican - New Mexico)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Chris Jacobs (Republican - New York)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (Republican - New York) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Elise M. Stefanik (Republican - New York)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Lee Zeldin (Republican - New York) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Adrian Smith (Republican - Nebraska)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Steve Chabot (Republican - Ohio)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Warren Davidson (Republican - Ohio)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Bob Gibbs (Republican - Ohio)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Bill Johnson (Republican - Ohio)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jim Jordan (Republican - Ohio)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Stephanie Bice (Republican - Oklahoma)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Tom Cole (Republican - Oklahoma)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Kevin Hern (Republican - Oklahoma)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Frank Lucas (Republican - Oklahoma)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Markwayne Mullin (Republican - Oklahoma)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Cliff Bentz (Republican - Oregon) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. John Joyce (Republican - Pennsylvania)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Fred Keller (Republican - Pennsylvania)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Mike Kelly (Republican - Pennsylvania)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Daniel Meuser (Republican - Pennsylvania)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Scott Perry (Republican - Pennsylvania)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (Republican - Pennsylvania)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Lloyd Smucker (Republican - Pennsylvania)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Glenn Thompson (Republican - Pennsylvania)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jeff Duncan (Republican - South Carolina)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Ralph Norman (Republican - South Carolina)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Tom Rice (Republican - South Carolina)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. William Timmons (Republican - South Carolina)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Joe Wilson (Republican - South Carolina)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Tim Burchett (Republican - Tennessee)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Scott DesJarlais (Republican - Tennessee)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (Republican - Tennessee)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Mark E. Green (Republican - Tennessee)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Diana Harshbarger (Republican - Tennessee)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. David Kustoff (Republican - Tennessee)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. John Rose (Republican - Tennessee)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Jodey Arrington (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Brian Babin (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Michael C. Burgess (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. John R. Carter (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Michael Cloud (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Pat Fallon (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Louie Gohmert (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Lance Gooden (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Ronny Jackson (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Troy Nehls (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. August Pfluger (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Pete Sessions (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Beth Van Duyne (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Randy Weber (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Roger Williams (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Ron Wright (Republican - Texas)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Burgess Owens (Republican - Utah)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Chris Stewart (Republican - Utah)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Ben Cline (Republican - Virginia)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Bob Good (Republican - Virginia)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Morgan Griffith (Republican - Virginia)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Robert J. Wittman (Republican - Virginia)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Carol Miller (Republican - West Virginia)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Alexander X. Mooney (Republican - West Virginia)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (Republican - Wisconsin)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rep. Tom Tiffany (Republican - Wisconsin)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Reference</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The 147 Republicans Who Voted To Overturn Election Results. Yourish, Karen; Buchanan, Larry; and Lu, Denise. January 7, 2021. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/07/us/elections/electoral-college-biden-objectors.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-73900884130236893552021-01-07T19:33:00.018-05:002021-01-08T11:18:35.161-05:00The Storming Of the US Capitol 2021<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Welcome friends!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I wasn’t really intending to post on this site again so soon, but my oh my, did you happen to watch TV yesterday and witness the violent mob storming the US Capitol? It was something I certainly never thought I</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">d see in my lifetime. It was horrifying, of course, but also weirdly entertaining. Certainly an unusual sight to see the unwashed hordes of fascist fanatics and homegrown American terrorists running riot in those august surroundings, hanging from the balconies, making off with the speaker’s podium, awkwardly slouching behind desks, muddy clodhoppers plonked proudly atop papers they likely could never comprehend if they had a thousand years to study them. What an amazing spectacle. We had comical figures like the semi-clad fellow with the face paint and Viking horns who apparently thought he was going to a football match. We had pretend policemen and pretend soldiers. We had ominous, vaguely Middle Eastern style hooded figures with zip ties in hand apparently looking for victims to kidnap and murder, an echo of the similar anti-democracy criminality that took place recently in Lansing, the state capital of Michigan, in which a similar mob was intent on kidnapping and murdering the governor of the state. And so many flags. You’d think our fascist nation within a nation would settle on one or the other. We had the incongruously blue flag of Trump Country, of course, but also the flag of the old Confederacy, what looked like a flag of Texas but with an assault rifle superimposed, a flag with a cross that looked vaguely like the Iron Cross of Germany, the flag of Mr. Trump done up as a character from the Rambo movies, the state flag of Michigan, and many, many others. I even saw, rather comically, a few US flags, the stars and stripes, being carried by what one can only presume were the most colossally clueless of the bunch. We had secret hand signals being flashed for the cameras. No, not that one. I mean weird groupings of fingers flashed in a particular sequence in the manner of childhood clubhouses and drug gangs everywhere. We had Neo-Nazis with T-shirts extolling Auschwitz and carrying large, hand scrawled placards about circumcision and so on. I’m telling you, it was a regular three ring circus. For all my foreign readers, who I sometimes suspect may not have an accurate idea of what the USA is really like, please do take a look at some videos of the remarkable event so you can get up to speed on the real America, as opposed to the fake, honey glazed, Hollywood version.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In addition to our public airing of the seamy underside of violent, right wing, anti-democracy, American redneck culture, the event was interesting because it had been immediately preceded by a rabble rousing speech by the outgoing president of the USA, billionaire puppet master Donald Trump, who apparently wanted a demonstration of popular support for his latest con: stealing the recent presidential election after the fact with the help of Congressional Republicans on the risibly flimsy pretext of alleged voting irregularities, which have already been thoroughly vetted by our legal system and basically thrown out of every court in which they have appeared for lack of evidence. Don’t exactly see that every day either. Mr. Trump, a former spoiled rich boy, bankruptcy artist, TV reality show star, and in the past several years Twitter personality, has always prided himself on his ability to whip up large crowds of imbeciles, and he was certainly in his element on the day, hamming it up for the crowd, exhorting the rabble to “fight like hell,” declaring in his best feeble minded American parody of Mr. Churchill, “We will never give up! We will never concede!,” and encouraging his base to be strong. No, not strong in the sense of having the emotional maturity to graciously accept defeat in a democratic election. Are you kidding me? Nazi strong. Willing to bash as many innocent heads as necessary, at least until confronted by an equal or stronger opposing force. His redoubtable stagecraft was augmented by an appearance of his personal ghoul, a ghastly apparition many call Rudy Giuliani, who backed up the president by calling for a “trial by combat.” Actually, that was pretty comical. Can one imagine that nitwit as a medieval knight going to a joust only to show up at the wrong venue, makeup running down his face, babbling nonsense? Or I guess the actual combat was meant to be undertaken by the mob of angry peasants, not by Mr. Giuliani himself, which seems even more comically misinformed. Of course, after the event, during which four of Mr. Trump’s minions died for one reason or another, one from the rather obvious cause of being shot by a guard, Mr. Trump did appear to pledge to what he called a peaceful transition using someone else’s Twitter account, as his own Twitter account had been shut down indefinitely for spreading dangerous and fact free conspiracy theories. Apparently, his felt his people had made his point. However, he was not so uncouth as to just let them die and say nothing at all. He thanked them for their service, saying, “You’re very special,” which is a phrase often used to comic effect here in the USA. He also noted his struggle to topple American democracy had really just begun, noting “it’s only the beginning of our fight.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Interestingly, on the day, a total of one hundred and forty-seven Republicans in Congress ended up supporting Mr. Trump’s scheme to do away with American democracy, agreeing with Nazi youth leader impersonator Sen. Hawley (Republican - Missouri) and professional right wing agitator and southern good old boy first class, Sen. Cruz (Republican - Texas), that the US Congress should throw out the actual votes delivered from the states in favor of their own opinions or feelings about who should prevail in the election based apparently on their gut feelings, “people are talking,” or on a political calculus of some sort or other, but anyway certainly not for the ostensible reason proffered as the official rationale. As I mentioned earlier, it’s been well established at this point there is no factual basis or real substance to any of Mr. Trump’s various whoppers and tall tales about voting irregularities, which he may or may not sincerely believe, and which he seems to have gotten off the internet from sources unknown. Although it’s difficult to determine if Mr. Trump’s apparent ignorance and enthusiasm is the result of stupidity or a foxy feigned stupidity, one must presume the latter based on his history of business scams and cons of various sorts, there can be no such uncertainty about the one hundred and forty-seven Republicans in the US Congress. One can rest assured they harbor no illusions about the facts of the matter. Whether these politicians felt the mob trashing the Capitol helped or hindered their cause is anyone’s bet. The events certainly didn’t seem to bother them to any great degree, that much seems clear. One supposes they were satisfied with how it all played out on the various crackpot and fake news media that cater exclusively to right wingers, conservatives, and Republicans here in the USA.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">So there you have it. The slide from a problematic, big money saturated, not entirely representational but moderately functioning political democracy to a fascistic, anything goes power grab supported by violent street mobs, took only four short years of conservative and Republican leadership to engineer. Seems they can do something after all, when they set their minds to it. On the bright side, the results do not appear to be what they had in mind, as they’ve managed to lose control of the White House and both houses of Congress in the process. One senses if they’re going to seize power in the future it won’t be through our democratic political institutions. No, seems there’s still some fight in the old USA after all. One imagines foreign despots like Tsar Vladimir of Russia being convinced if they helped Mr. Trump and our right wing conservatives and Republicans win the 2016 elections, if they gave American democracy a little nudge toward the abyss, the entire thing would collapse in short order, but seems we’re not quite as bad off as all that. There’s still some fight left in American liberals, progressives, and democratic leftists of all stripes. We’re not ready to accept conservative and Republican plutocratic, market-based fascism just yet. Long live democracy in the USA!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Addendum</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">After I wrote my post, the always unpredictable Mr. Trump finally delivered a video address in which he promised a “smooth, orderly, seamless transition of power” and referenced his presidency in the past tense. One must give credit when credit is due, no matter how late in the day nor how routine the activity may be for others. In the immortal words of President Trump, “America is and must always be a nation of law and order. The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy ... To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction: You do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law: You will pay.” So there you have it, again. Oh yes, and the body count increased by one, as a member of the Capitol Police died from injuries sustained during the attack. </span></p><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-6348505436209641292020-12-29T14:08:00.013-05:002021-01-02T16:46:56.986-05:00Politics As Religion In The USA<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Welcome friends!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I’m sure I’ve discussed it before, probably many times, but the arrival of the winter holiday season here in the USA makes me want to write a little something more about the increasingly clear relationship between religious modes of thought and the sort of overtly authoritarian and anti-democracy sentiment we’ve been seeing more and more from conservatives and members of our right wing Republican Party.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Of course, by winter holiday season I’m talking especially about Christmas which, in case you’re not already familiar with the history of the holiday, is basically now a nominally Christian holiday that postulates Jesus Christ was born in late December suspiciously near the date of the winter solstice, a date and an event that was apparently already or also celebrated as a holiday by various non-Christian cultures including the Ancient Romans, who had a big holiday in mid-December to honor their god of agriculture, Saturn, and the ancient Germanic tribes of Europe, who celebrated a holiday around the same time called Yule, which involved their own god Odin. Seems the tendency of American religious conservatives to not take things too literally and to be always up for a good story if it serves a rhetorical purpose didn’t begin with Donald Trump but has been around a good long while. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. No, the relationship of American style political conservatism to religion that crossed my mind recently has more to do with the religious view of ethics than with a penchant for convenient fictions, although maybe it amounts to much the same thing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Yes, I thought it might be a good time to just reiterate my belief that the most reliable basis of support for the ethos of political democracy is the realization that ethics are ultimately subjective and that the only sensible, stable, peaceful way for a society to temporarily and contingently resolve issues of social ethics, or at least the social ethics expressed in the law and in particular the law governing economic relationships, is to periodically agree upon them socially in some ongoing, perpetually reassessed way, that is to say, through democratic government. The opposing view, that ethics are objective, in the religious version laws set down by supernatural law givers, generally leads to fundamental dissatisfaction with democratic government and a yearning for a system in which high priests, or philosopher kings in the less common secular version, are given the power to enforce the one true code of ethics no matter the potential disagreement of the unfortunate populace. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">There are exceptions, as I’ve pointed out previously. Historically, some religious groups who presumably supported religion-based objective ethics argued right behavior resulting from government enforced edicts doesn’t really count for much in a religious sense and were perfectly willing to leave it to democratic government to come up with laws expressing popular ethics that might or might not correspond to what they believed represented the one true ethics. How else to demonstrate one’s ethical superiority and hence one’s religious credentials? And, of course, some religious folk who have historically endorsed objective ethics seem to have supported political democracy out of the rather sensible and practical fear the wrong sort might end up in charge of government and pronouncing on what they felt were the one true ethics and that diverse secular democracy ensuring individual freedom of conscience was their best bet to preserve a realm in which to discuss and pursue what they saw as the authentic as opposed to government endorsed one true ethics. Certainly religious warfare between different Christian sects was rampant in Europe in the centuries preceding the founding of the United States, so one can understand their concerns. However, in general, I would suggest the realization from the world of modern secular philosophy that ethics are based ultimately in a fundamentally subjective moral sense that must then be reconciled in some way with those of other people is one of the fundamental building blocks on which the ethos of political democracy rests.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Now don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t argue for a moment a belief in religion-based objective ethics is the only point of connection between religious modes of thought and contemporary political conservatism and Republicanism here in the USA. Surely the peculiar suspension of human reason and normal modes of thought on the part of many conservatives and Republicans today is simply an application of pathological religious modes of thought to politics in which, in this instance, one’s faith in the chosen one must supersede anything and everything, including the evidence of the senses, and only slavish obedience to the chosen one promises salvation, with the opposition apparently irredeemably evil and in league with the devil and so on. The fanaticism, ignorance, bigotry, hatred, and ever present threat of violence alone would be enough for most objective observers to perceive the contemporary conservative and Republican movements in the USA to be little more than an expression of a modern religion inspired Age of Ignorance, which if unchecked one supposes must inevitably result in a benighted era here in America comparable in scope and intensity to medieval Europe’s long and unfortunate Dark Ages.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The rather obvious connection between religious modes of thought and political conservatism and Republicanism should remind us all the monster of contemporary conservatism is a multi-headed beast that we must address in some way in all its many guises and contexts. But fighting the multi-headed monster of modern conservatism is essential for the future not only of democracy here in the USA but elsewhere and indeed for the future of humanity itself.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I wish you all a happy holiday season and a new year very much better in every way than the old. </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-86225826305231396852020-11-10T18:19:00.024-05:002020-11-12T15:40:03.555-05:00O Glorious Day<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Welcome friends!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">November 7, 2020. Oh my goodness. Truly a red letter day for the ages. The day we here in the USA finally found out the results of our recent presidential election. It was a vastly more important presidential election than the previous one, and not just because of the apparent absence of the well documented foreign interference that muddied the results last time, but more importantly because all American voters knew exactly what they were voting on this time. There had been a great deal of speculation that conservatives and Republicans didn’t really know what they were getting with Mr. Trump the last time, that he was an unknown, a one off, a loose canon. When he was revealed over time to be a dishonest, corrupt, nepotistic, greedy, egoistic, secretive, cruel, incompetent, wannabe authoritarian dictator, a great many Americans wondered if we would see a massive popular repudiation of the man including from his conservative and Republican base. The answer came loud and clear. We did not. Conservatives and Republicans showed up in even greater numbers than in the last election to ecstatically and enthusiastically support the man and do everything they could to keep him in the White House. They were not put off at all by what they had seen. Far from it. They loved it. They supported it one hundred percent. Fortunately for all of us, an even greater number of American voters were motivated to finally get off their backsides and prevent conservatives and Republicans from succeeding this time around. In the past four years, Mr. Trump has managed to inflict a rather remarkable amount of damage to our democratic institutions and traditions, the rule of law, the professionalism of our civil service, the economy, the standing of the USA internationally, the environment, the national debt, race relations, public health, and a great many other things. There was understandable concern about what further damage he might manage given an additional four years in office and indeed reasonable doubt about whether American democracy would even survive in any recognizable form. As it is, we seem to have given ourselves a little respite, a few moments to collect our thoughts. But surely a few moments only. The briefest of time outs. American voters did see fit to return to Congress the Republican politicians who unquestioningly and completely supported Mr. Trump the past four years in everything he said and did including notably corrupt Senate kingpin Senator “Moscow Mitch” McConnell (Republican - Kentucky). The long term future of American democracy is still very much in doubt. So let’s take a few moment to consider the two primary forces I believe are threatening to end American democracy at this time: racism and bad economics. Yes, I considered other important forces and currents in contemporary conservatism, including religious bigotry, nativism, and nationalism, but I really believe the two I just mentioned predominate.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Racism, the American Cancer, is the festering wound bequeathed to our nation by our so-called founding fathers. It is a bit of intellectual claptrap originally designed to provide a convenient if rather far fetched rationale for the slave labor required by immoral and greedy early European colonists to make a buck and build fancy manor houses on other people’s land. Later, it served famously as the primary cause of our most divisive and brutal domestic conflict, the American Civil War, a nauseatingly destructive bloodbath which one hundred and sixty years later still marches on in the minds of many Americans. Since that time it has been the inspiration for countless murders and other outrages against innocent men, women, and children. It was largely traditional American racism that was behind the immediate and automatic outrage and backlash against former President Obama, our first partially “black” president, an abomination for many. It is racism that underlies the obvious rural versus urban dimension of our current political struggle as racially homogenous rural areas fear and despise our thriving, diverse, cosmopolitan cities, the home of what they see as a dangerously racially and culturally heterogeneous and hostile cultural “elite” of the educated and competent that is perpetually out of step with their simple, time honored traditions. It is racism that underlies the geographic dimension of our current political situation with the deep southern states of the old confederacy voting always and automatically en masse in support of anti-democracy conservatism and the Republican Party, with the notable exception this year of the standout southern state of Georgia, home of the major thriving southern metropolis of Atlanta. It is racism that underlies as well the similarly single minded devotion to the conservative and Republican cause of the remote, sparsely populated Great Plains states, famous historically for their racial pogroms, lawlessness, corruption, and bloody mob violence. It is racism that makes conservatives and Republicans view the artifacts of American democracy generated in the distant past, before our more recent demographic changes and in many cases before even the extension of the vote to non-“white” citizens, as fundamentally different in character and far superior to the artifacts of modern American democracy, with its suspiciously swarthy and unreliable electorate. It is racism that leads conservatives and Republicans to their obsessive attempts to manipulate our voting system, gerrymandering voting districts, thinking always of new and inventive strategies to complicate and curtail voting. It is racism that has enabled arch conservative and Republican Mr. Trump to turn reasonable protests against apparently disparate police treatment for racial minorities into a charge that inchoate, lawless anarchism has taken hold in our American cites. It is racism that makes conservatives and Republicans see any and every attempt by our democratic government to help struggling people in terms of an us against them struggle against racial minorities and their allies that they imagine are trying to pick their pockets and destroy the ethical nature of our economic system. The racism of large segments of the population of the USA, both of the implicit sort and more recently of the rather more explicit, old school sort, remains one of the most vital and important drivers of American culture and politics. Racism alone may have the power to one day end American democracy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Bad economics, a form of insincere and manipulative political rhetoric based on common and carefully cultivated misunderstandings of normative neoclassical welfare economics, is an independent but also very powerful generator of anti-democracy sentiment here in the USA. I discuss it often, although not as often as formerly now Hansel Krankepantzen is on the job. Bad economics suggests chimerical perfectly competitive markets or near enough approximations of the same (risibly assumed to equate to “free” markets in the vernacular) lead to socially optimal results if only democratic government can be prevented from “interfering” with them. That</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">s not really what neoclassical welfare economics says, of course, and is inconsistent with a well known feature of neoclassical welfare economics called distributional indifference, which derives from the definition of “utility” on which neoclassical welfare economics is based. Any given market result really has no normative or ethical significance until and unless democratic government assigns it normative significance based on synthesizing the subjective ethical or normative views of the populace on distributional and other controversial ethical issues not addressed within neoclassical welfare economics. What neoclassical welfare economics really says is that democratic government is absolutely essential to achieving socially desirable market results, not the opposite, that socially desirable market results can only be achieved if democratic government is eliminated or at least prevented from getting involved. Here in the USA, it’s largely the immense cultural popularity and significance of bad economics that makes so many people unrealistic, unreasonable, utopian, anti-democratic, and looking forever for scapegoats they imagine are “rigging the system” against them, as well as fighting a never ending war of the imagination against wily “communists” and “socialists” who fail to see the light and are cast as stock villains trying forever to muck up the works of the amazing clockwork mechanism for good that would prevail in their absence. If you’re interested in knowing more about bad economics and how it works its rhetorical magic, the best thing you can do is take a look at Hansel Krankepantzen’s blog, or if you’re a big spender his short book / pamphlet, and he’ll set you up and get you appreciating what’s really going on in that department a great deal faster than any competing resource in my opinion. And I should know. Because I’ve read them. And I thank you very much.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">All joking aside, we’re not out of the woods here in the USA by any means. The forces of anti-democracy conservatism and Republicanism, based in sickly but powerful currents of American culture, racism and bad economics, and supported by vast economic wealth and foreign despots, is a foe not easily vanquished. It has its hooks in many millions of Americans and has proven it can make them do the most amazing, unlikely, and reprehensible things. If you live here in the USA, you should help me fight the dangerous influence of contemporary American conservatism and Republicanism. If you live abroad, be on your guard against conservative and right wing poison arriving from these shores. Know what it is, how it works, how to fight it. Stockpile the antidote. Prepare yourself, or like liberals and other democratic leftists here in the USA, you may find yourself one day suddenly, unexpectedly, on the ropes, fighting for your democracy like you’ve never had to fight before. Long live democracy!</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-84770670981505279192020-10-15T21:06:00.006-04:002020-10-19T13:38:08.022-04:00American Conservatism And Anti-Democracy Sentiment Update<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Welcome friends!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I thought I should probably update my years long commentary on the close connection between anti-democracy sentiment, mainstream conservative ideology, and bad economic theorizing here in the USA in light of some new information on the topic I saw recently. For many decades now, at least since former actor / president Ronald Reagan famously proclaimed our democratic government was the problem, not the solution, back in the early 1980s, conservatives and Republicans here in the USA have been all about shrinking our democratic government or, in the immortal words of conservative arch-bloviator Grover Norquist, reducing it to such a size he could “drown it in a bathtub.” However, while seeming to clearly express an anti-democracy frame of mind to me and many other liberals and democratic leftists, many traditional conservatives preferred to interpret such statements in light of the conceit they were still very much in favor of democratic government, just not one that might actually do anything, not so-called “activist” democratic government. An inert, inactive, neutered, powerless democratic government was just fine, so in that sense there were still big believers in democracy. I’m not entirely sure why anyone would value an institution like that, but that’s neither here nor there. The argument was they were perfectly happy with democratic government of that peculiar attenuated sort for whatever reason. However, more recently I’ve been seeing conservatives delivering rather more forthright proclamations of their true feelings about political democracy. I commented previously on Mr. Trump’s recent pick for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, Stephen Moore, who announced in no uncertain terms a while back he was “not even a big believer in democracy.” However, I was online the other day, don’t tell anyone but on Twitter, which is actually not as oppressively idiotic as one might assume as long as one is willing to mute and block the unending tsunami of knuckleheads talking rot and regaling one another with what they apparently believe are witty GIFs and so on, and I happened to stumble upon US Senator Mike Lee (R - Utah) discussing the issue as bluntly as one might ever hope. Yes, apparently at least a few conservatives have managed at long last to overcome the mysterious and oppressive social force known as political correctness that reportedly formerly required them to lie about what they really think about political democracy, “race,” religion, sexual orientation, and any number of other issues. According to Sen Lee’s missive of October 8, 2020, “democracy isn’t the objective” of the American political system or maybe he meant the American people. In his opinion, liberty, peace, prosperity, and a flourishing of the human condition are the objectives, and “rank” democracy can “thwart that.” Sounds pretty horrible, right? Damned democracy! In a different post from the day before, Sen Lee noted, “our form of government is not a democracy,” and opined that fact should be important for anyone “who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few.” Seems we’re finally getting somewhere on this front. Let’s take a few moments this week to break down the arguments here.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In case you think I’m making this all up, and these days I would forgive you for suspecting that because there’s certainly a lot of it about, let me just give the full text of the two posts I’m talking about. I’m not interested in playing silly rhetorical games. I just want to discuss for a few moments what I feel are some important issues creating divisions in our society that must at this point be obvious to even the most casual of observers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Mike Lee@SenMikeLee</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity (sic) are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">2:24 AM · Oct 8, 2020·Twitter for iPhone</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Mike Lee@SenMikeLee</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The word “democracy” appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy. It’s a constitutional republic. To me it matters. It should matter to anyone who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">9:06 PM · Oct 7, 2020·Twitter for iPhone</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">At this point I’d like to change the format a bit. I didn’t study Sen Lee’s oeuvre of tweets to discover how exactly he feels rank democracy can thwart the pursuit of the various objectives he mentions, but I think I’ve heard enough conservative claptrap in my day to speculate on the sort of thing conservatives generally have in mind when they say these sorts of things, so let me just go ahead and proceed on that basis using Sen Lee’s statements as the starting point, with the understanding I’m now talking about my impression of how some general conservative themes may be involved and not necessarily about Sen Lee’s undoubtedly unique and fascinating personal take on these issues.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">One of the social objectives Sen Lee suggests may be thwarted by “rank democracy” is liberty. It seems quite possible the term liberty here is being invoked in the so-called libertarian sense, so not referring to some abstract principle of personal freedom or liberty, which of course would be irrelevant to all real economic issues involving resolving interpersonal conflicts of needs and wants because both sides would have a claim to such freedom or liberty, but instead referring to resolving interpersonal conflicts of needs, wants, desires on the basis of economic power in markets. That is to say, the liberty involved in statements like that is usually the liberty of rich folk to get what they want based on their economic power in markets as the gods or sometimes nature intended. Democracy can thwart “liberty” defined in that way because of course political democracy, which created the legal specifications of property ownership, contract law, and all the other legal and political underpinnings of real world markets, can just as easily change them. But if democracy changes certain aspects of that system, then the interests of those who interests would prevail now might not prevail in the revised version, or in the words of conservatives, their own liberty to get what they want will have been thwarted, never mind the corresponding but opposite change in liberty of whatever other parties may be involved. It’s confusing argument that I think would be filed under the philosophical category of assuming the conclusions. That’s really why we have democracy. To make sure everyone or at least most people agree the conditions we’ve set up as far as the distribution of economic power and the use of markets to resolve particular interpersonal conflicts is ethically correct and to give people a way to revise those conditions or use other mechanisms if they’re not.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Another of the objectives Sen Lee suggests may be thwarted by “rank democracy” is peace. It’s hard to imagine anyone seriously contending democracy is any less conducive to peace in the sense of avoiding violent international conflict than any other political system. Historically, non-democratic authoritarian systems such as feudal monarchies historically or more recently fascist authoritarian market states like Nazi Germany or authoritarian communist states like the USSR have seemed every bit as happy to mix it up militarily as any democratic state has ever been. When conservatives talk like that one suspects they may have in mind some notion of domestic peace or social and political tranquility, some sense that in the absence of democracy those with economic power would be able to enforce their will more completely on others and there would be less debate and potential criticisms of the system from the hoi polloi. One has the impression many conservatives suppose an absence of political democracy would lead to what the old medieval political theorists called a well ordered society, in which everyone from the all powerful monarch and his privileged and wealthy cronies all the way down to the lowliest and most powerless peon or serf working in the fields knew his or her place and was content with the world. Not, I think, something any non-conservative might really look forward to. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Another of the objectives Sen Lee suggests may be thwarted by “rank democracy” is prosperity. I think this one pretty much gives the game away as far as the influence of bad economics because one of the hallmarks of bad economics is the suppression of the important ethical issues associated with resolving interpersonal conflicts of needs and wants on the basis of economic power in markets, notably distributional ethics, the issue of who should have what level or amount of economic power and why. According to the mangled version of neoclassical welfare economics one finds in bad economics, once one arrives at some arbitrarily near enough approximation of a perfectly competitive market one must refrain from “interfering” with it because it maximizes everyone’s “utility” and one loses total output or sometimes rather more comically “economic efficiency” if one tries to change it. If you read Mr. Krankepantzen’s blog at all you’ll recognize the components of the argument that render it bad economics. Maximizing “utility” as defined in economic theory is a characteristic shared by many potential market outcomes. Deciding between them is a matter of controversial ethics lying outside economic theory. Indeed, deciding between any “utility” maximizing outcome and certain non-“utility” maximizing outcomes is impossible on the basis of “utility” and is a matter of controversial ethics lying outside economic theory. The idea of a tradeoff with total output is first of all conjectural, in the sense a more even distribution of economic power may lead to more robust demand and hence better economic results, but more importantly is normatively or ethically entirely unrelated to arguments and conclusions based on “utility” as defined in economic theory. Depending on where the resources are actually going there may be no way to compare on the basis of “utility” an economic outcome with a higher total output to an outcome with a lower total output. It’s an entirely different argument in terms of the ethics involved than that associated with neoclassical welfare economics. And, of course, if one is talking not about the normative content of neoclassical welfare economics but just unrelated ethics in general, trying to define “prosperity” as total output with no concern over where it’s going, how actual people are faring, whether a few or perhaps many people are suffering material want, etc., seems rank philosophical sophistry. If you’re interested in those sorts of issues you really should take a look at Mr. Krankepantzen’s blog or books someday. He spends a lot of time discussing those issues, so I don’t have to.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Moving on to his penultimate concern about the ostensibly deleterious effects of “rank democracy” at least in the two comments I read, goodness knows how many other concerns he may have voiced in other comments, Sen Lee goes on to establish the US Constitution envisioned the political system of the USA as a constitutional republic rather than a direct democracy or in his words a democracy. That’s absolutely correct as any schoolchild here in the USA knows quite well. Our original system was cobbled together as a compromise between the wealthy big wigs of various former English colonies clearly concerned about losing out to their counterparts in the other colonies, including on the basis of the relative size of their respective voting populations. It’s simply a historical fact, along with the fact the US Constitution granted the states the power to set voting requirements, which most states promptly limited to property owning (so tax paying at that time) “white” males, which apparently because of how property was defined at the time came out to only about six percent of the population according to the Wikipedia article on the subject. That part checks out. However, Sen Lee then seems concerned to set up a sort of false dichotomy between a constitutional republic and political democracy. With at least some citizens voting in even the earliest incarnations of our constitutional republic, our system was clearly always a democracy as well as a constitutional republic. And, of course, over time the trajectory or pattern of development of the political system here in the USA has been to increase the level of democracy, first with the abolition of the property requirements for “white” males, then prohibitions on denying the vote to males on the basis of “race,” color, or previous conditions of servitude” (i.e. slavery), then eventually the granting of the vote to women. So the USA may have always been a constitutional republic, but it’s always been a constitutional republic that is also a democracy and that has trended toward ever increasing levels of democracy throughout its long history.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Finally, Sen Lee opines that his belief that the US Constitution never envisioned the USA as a democracy should be important for anyone who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few. It’s an interesting argument because, of course, when most people think of political democracy relative to other potential political systems they associate it with just the opposite, with trying to spread political power around to avoid the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few one tends to see in various non-democratic and authoritarian political systems. Indeed, one wonders what other political system Sen Lee has in mind that performs better in that regard. What conservatives usually have in mind, of course, is a plutocracy or some sort of corporate fascism in which technocrats, usually economists, are meant to determine and set the legal requirements for markets, after which all issues and conflicts are meant to be determined on the basis of economic power in markets. One suspects the underlying issue is not really the number of people involved. There may be relatively few elected officials, but there are many voters who put them there and can remove them as well. In contrast, there may be many people with some modicum of economic power, but there are usually a handful of people with rather greater amounts of economic power, and no one can really remove them. No, it seems much more likely to be about the basis of power. Not the number of people involved, but who has the power and why. In a market system, those with economic power effectively have more votes in the market system than others. It’s obviously galling for rich conservatives to end up in our democratic political system with one measly vote like everyone else when they feel through their economic stature and their economic power in markets they should have much more power than they already do from the more informal expressions of economic power in our political system. It seems they feel manipulation of the democratic system through such mechanisms as donations and patronage, holding the economy hostage, and funding conservative media and academic institutions is not always enough to ensure their will prevails in a democratic system. The potential for some broad expression of political will on the part of the people is always there, waiting in the wings, preparing to stride onto the stage at any moment. Frightening, isn’t it? Not for me, of course. I think it’s great. I mean frightening for people convinced they deserve whatever relative power they currently have, if not more, and concerned to ensure they suffer no diminution of that power in the future.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Well, I suppose that’s quite enough for one day, isn’t it? I feel I’ve been writing for some time now, so presumably anyone who’s made it this far will be feeling similarly fatigued. The point is simply that American conservatives and their political wing, the Republican Party, are becoming much more forthright in their disparagement of political democracy here in the USA, as any observer of the overall arc of their ideology and rhetoric over the past several decades will have long anticipated. It’s not really a mystery any longer. The cat is well and truly out of the bag. If you support political democracy here in the USA, then you’ll want to vote against the biggest and most serious threat it’s ever faced: the American conservative and Republican movement. You know my views. I’m an open book. Long live American democracy!</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-19726230673635971862020-09-18T13:45:00.020-04:002021-08-04T16:21:56.138-04:00Anti-Democracy Sentiment And American Popular Culture Of The 1980s <p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Welcome friends!</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I was watching a movie from the 1980s the other day and it reminded me of something I’ve long been interested in and indeed have likely discussed a number of times before: the historical development of that influential element of the right wing conservative movement here in the USA concerned with fighting what they call “activist” democratic government, so groups like the so-called “libertarians,” devotees of so-called “Austrian” economics, and fans of market-based fake “anarchism” (so-called “anarcho-capitalism” or something along those lines). The most interesting part of that development to me is the relationship of that element of the American conservative movement to the worst excesses of the self-indulgent late stages of the similarly egoistic albeit rather more genuinely anarchic and nominally “leftist” utopian hippiedom of the 1970s; an echo of that fascinating and complicated era of popular American culture between the folk singing, sincere as all get out, idealistic, socially conscious progressivism of the 1960s, and the smug, oleaginous, cynical, money grubbing, proudly egoistic, Greed is Good, “yuppie” movement of the 1980s. Maybe I’ll discuss that a bit more today.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">One of the popular tropes you’ll find in artifacts of American culture from the 1980s is that, in the immortal words of then president Ronald Reagan, (democratic) government is not the solution to our problems, it’s the problem. In fairness to Mr. Reagan, he may have been speaking specifically about a particular problem at the time, but the quote was widely taken as a statement of a broader principle of conservative ideology. The popularity of Mr. Reagan and the conservative movement at that time is reflected in films of that era in which every US government employee is dutifully depicted as, at best, a mean spirited, pencil pushing prig, and at worst, a wily super villain of near supernatural abilities. Many of these depictions still resonate with conservatives today such as, for example, the high handed, perpetually angry, emotionally unstable EPA inspector in Ghostbusters whose puny mind and unreasonable enforcement of draconian regulations nearly allows NYC to be overrun by ghosts, or evil slime, or threateningly foreign sounding Eastern Europeans of the supernatural sort, or whatever it was. Lucky for us the boys managed to sock democratic government in the eye and save the day. Conservatives are still fulminating against the EPA and I would suggest the character of the evil EPA inspector in that particular film could just as well have been written yesterday. Other films seem rather less fortunate in that department. In the particular film I was watching, a gratingly irritating bit of juvenile claptrap named Coneheads, the requisite US government villain took the form of a cold-hearted functionary intent on rooting out illegal aliens, the joke being the illegal aliens in this case were not desperate, struggling families from south of the border but the extraterrestrial Coneheads themselves. I know. What a jerk, right? Leave those aliens alone! Except, of course, unlike the evil EPA inspector of Ghostbusters the evil immigration official of Coneheads is actually right up conservatives’ alley just now. Indeed, if they were to have any criticisms of the character today it would likely be he was too incompetent or perhaps too humane or lenient to effectively eject the lovable Coneheads thus preserving American culture. Funny. Seems the two films straddled the line between two opposing notions of what we all were talking about when contemplating the evils of activist democratic government. And that really is the root of the issue, isn’t it? It was never simply the general proposition that activist democratic government is inherently bad, but that political democracy allows activist democratic government to sometimes end up doing things one does not personally support.</span></span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">To make sense of this, it may help to appreciate the 1980s stock character of the evil US government functionary originated with popular opposition to the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The basic idea at the time was the “establishment,” including the military, the police, the courts, and indeed often democratic government itself, was not to be trusted. It was an anarchic, nihilistic mindset that was popularly associated with a sort of swoony, unmoored liberalism or leftism of the utopian variety and roundly despised by conservatives of the day. However, at some point some conservative group somewhere apparently realized conservatives themselves could make use of those themes to construct a bit of popular rhetoric to advance their own agenda. They did so by peeling off the activist democratic government they had long opposed under the influence of bad economics, in which markets are seen as panaceas and democratic government as unnecessary at best and harmful at worst, and identifying that specifically as “the establishment,” thus allowing the other erstwhile components of “the establishment” to go unchallenged and immune from criticism and revision. They did so by emphasizing the ills of democratic government not in the context of lawless utopian anarchy but in the context of their preferred baseline of markets, property rights, contracts, laws, police, prisons, militaries, etc. The legal and perforce ethical baseline associated with those institutions receded into the intellectual background to such an extent these conservative spinmeisters convinced many people those institutions were not, themselves, simply artifacts of the now despised political democracy, but natural laws or divine edicts or some such thing having no particular relationship to democratic government and law. The result is that a generation of what would have formerly been called, and are now again increasingly called, economic and political conservatives, became confusingly miscast as fake “anarchists,” fake rebels, people presented as carrying the banner of the let it all hang out, do what you want, self-obsessed hippies of the 1960s striking a blow against the strictures of democratic government and law and society itself, but really in their case doing so on behalf of existing power relationships and arrangements, on behalf of rich folk and the institutions that reflect the interests of rich folk, that is to say, on behalf of what real hippies of the day would have recognized as “the establishment.” Basically, they became what amounts to right wing anti-democratic fascists.</span></span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">This coup of political rhetoric has led to all manner of peculiar and seemingly lasting consequences for our public conservation here in the USA. One notable example is the ascendency of wealthy, corrupt, lawless, power mad, anti-democracy businessman Mr. Trump to the White House based partially on the populist conservative notion the man is an “outsider” intent on taking on “the establishment.” Old timers, of course, will recognize immediately that the man exemplifies everything about the establishment those in the late 1960s and early 1970s who were concerned about such things wanted to fight against. It has also led to such comical notions that hoary free market ideology from the nineteenth century is a bold new idea no one has ever yet considered or tried because of opposition from </span></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">the establishment,</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">”</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> and that people like Ms. Rand and other “libertarian” writers of her ilk invented the revolutionary new ideas of selfishness, egoism, and greed, and it’s only the reactionary small mindedness of </span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">the establishment</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">”</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> that prevents the power of their astonishing new discoveries being put to proper use. In other words, the American conservative movement’s bit of cynical nonsense and repackaging of bad ideas has done a lot to make the popular public conservation about political, economic, and social issues here in the USA what is today: ignorant, idiotic, confusing, dangerous, and unintentionally comical. All reasonable people will want to fight the intellectual rot of the conservative movement if only to discuss these important issues in a reasonable and responsible way.</span></p><div><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-58433784766550007972020-05-07T14:13:00.006-04:002020-10-28T17:00:01.424-04:00Neoliberalism and Marxism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">You may recall I did a post not long ago on the curious habit in some circles of using the word “neoliberalism” to refer to the orthodox free market ideology we’ve long associated with economic “conservatism” here in the USA. I pointed out that in traditional American terminology the “neoliberals” were simply erstwhile liberals who adopted long-standing conservative free market ideology in the 1980s but retained other aspects of the broader liberal political agenda and hence were not simply called conservatives. I suggested calling conservative economic ideology “neoliberalism” seems rather comical to me, as that very same free market ideology existed in this country long before the 1980s, and even after the 1980s has been championed primarily by economic conservatives rather than neoliberals. It struck me as very much an instance of what I believe they call the tail wagging the dog. I wondered why that shift in terminology might have occurred and looked for antecedents in the various ways the term “neoliberalism” was used in Europe prior to the 1980s and so on. However, more recently I had an online exchange with a very enthusiastic fellow who gave me an entirely new perspective on what might be going on with that term, so I thought I might just do a quick update on that issue today.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">My interlocutor seemed very much concerned to establish that free market economic ideology essentially began in the 1980s and was the work of liberals in the guise of neoliberals. He didn’t believe free market ideology existed prior to 1980 or if it did was related at all, nor did he associate free market ideology with “classical liberalism,” which he accepted as an older eighteenth century term for something, although I’m not entirely sure what. I’m also not too clear on what happened to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in his historical scheme, but it doesn’t really matter. Interestingly, he didn’t seem to associate any economic ideology at all with conservatism, apparently believing the term “conservatism” referred only to political and social ideas unrelated to economics. Thus, he seemed to believe all the economic debate in this country at least since the 1980s has been an internal affair between different groups of liberals. When I suggested what I believe is the more conventional use of the terms conservative, liberal, and neoliberal in the economic arena, he suggested my terminology was quaintly old-fashioned and not current at all with what he called “hardcore Marxism,” which he suggested was the more common way of discussing these issues today.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I found it all quite interesting. I had actually suspected a connection to Marxist theory given the generally foreign origin of much of the discussion of “neoliberalism” online. I’m not being nationalistic, just saying my impression is that Marxism has always been rather more popular in many foreign countries than here in the USA. He ended the discussion with the usual dismissive sort of insults one generally encounters when discussing popular economics with random people online, although I thought perhaps rather milder in tone than what I usually encounter from those with more right wing interests. More, “you don’t seem to understand very much about economics, politics, history,” etc., rather than the more typical conservative or right wing “why don’t you go screw yourself?” sort of thing. We parted company.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">One thing that crossed my mind after learning of the connection to Marxism, or at least after having gotten some confirmation of the connection, is the way that theory seems to be such fertile ground for confusion relating to terminology. A big part of the problem I think is that Marxism downplays the importance of ideas, theories, and ideologies, in favor of material relations and conditions. Thus, it tends to use words ending with “ism” not in the conventional way to refer to a collection of ideas, theories, or an ideology, but to various material conditions. “Capitalism” in traditional Marxist terminology is not a theory or collection of ideas relating to capital but a certain form of economic and social organization. A “capitalist” is someone who lives under such conditions regardless of his or her thoughts on economic or political ideas. The person can be as leftist as you like, but he or she is still a “capitalist.” This makes me suspect one fairly benign mechanism that might underlie the current confusion over the term “neoliberal” is that some Marxist writers somewhere may have decided at some time to call the economic and social conditions or arrangements since 1980 “neoliberalism,” so that anyone who has happened to live under those conditions is perforce a “neoliberal.” </span></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The problem, of course, is that “neoliberalism” also has a completely different definition based on ideas. In that other definition “neoliberalism” relates to the ideas or theories of a particular group of people, “neoliberals.” Under that definition, “neoliberalism” conventionally denotes conservative free market ideology combined with random other social and political ideas otherwise associated with traditional progressive liberalism. If this is what has been going on, I have to way it was all lost on my interlocutor, who despite his ostensibly hardcore Marxist leanings seemed clearly to be jumping back and forth between Marxist materialist terminology and more conventional idea based terminology in the most confusing way imaginable.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">However, the connection to Marxism also made me wonder if there might be a rather more sinister reason for this apparently coincidental congruity of terms. That notion certainly gave me reason to pause because in recent years I’ve come to associate heavy handed rhetorical and linguistic game playing mostly with conservatives and right wing sorts, who seem forever redefining and conflating terms, overgeneralizing, using misdirection, and so on. But I do believe some leftists have done that sort of thing in the past, so I suppose there’s no real reason to think they can’t be doing it again right now. Certainly the confusion relating to the term “neoliberalism” I’ve been discussing might play to their political advantage. If people feel progressive liberalism / democratic socialism / social democracy is essentially the same thing as neoliberalism and hence free market economic conservatism, then that would presumably make Marxism appear a rather more attractive alternative for those critical of our current economic arrangements. Indeed, it may make it appear the only game in town. </span></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It may seem farfetched, but I’ve noticed that pattern quite a lot online recently. Some leftists seem just as much or more concerned to fight against progressive liberalism as conservatism, against the relatively progressive or socially oriented and leftist Democratic Party as against the conservative and right wing Republican Party, against Mr. Biden as Mr. Trump. In a weird way contemporary Marxists seem often to be fighting on the same side as conservatives against what is apparently their common foe: reasonable liberals, progressives, social democrats, and democratic socialists. Indeed, it makes me wonder if contemporary Marxism might actually be bankrolled by wealthy conservatives specifically for that purpose. Not saying they are, but if I were a clever right wing operator and I thought Marxism itself could be easily contained for some reason, let’s say the historic antipathy of the American electorate in general to Marxist ideas, I might just throw some money their way so they could do a number on the more serious competition.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Now that I</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">ve come to suppose this shift in terminology is not the result of natural linguistic drift but simple terminological conflation combined possibly with purposefully misleading and manipulative rhetoric, I</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">m encouraged to be a little more active confronting misuse of the term “neoliberalism.” Indeed, I take back what I said earlier about not caring if I’m considered a liberal, per se. I think now I do care. I’m what you call a traditional American liberal. I support using activist democratic government to address the ethical shortcoming and failures of market systems, and in that I agree with those calling themselves progressives, social democrats, and democratic socialists. I’m fighting against simplistic conservative / </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“neoliberal”</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> free market ideology.</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-60349373374615604202020-04-23T15:15:00.006-04:002020-04-24T13:25:24.660-04:00Values, Facts, and Conservative Ideology<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I’ve been noticing a trend recently among conservatives and right wing sorts in which they seem increasingly concerned to deny the traditional philosophical distinction between value and fact, ethics and science, normative and positive, subjective and objective. Have you noticed any shift in that long standing staple of Western philosophy at least of the more analytical and less “continental” variety? One expects it from religious conservatives, of course, who have long fancied ethics and morality meaningless unless objective and factual or at least treated as though they were. However, recently I’ve been hearing similar ideas from random purveyors of bad economics, who seem concerned to establish the ethics they promote in their various economic theories and frameworks are not just their own subjective ethical values but propositions that have been scientifically and mathematically proven to be correct, like the laws of physics seems a common refrain, and hence only subject to dispute by slow witted clods who cannot comprehend the generally rather simplistic science and math involved. It occurred to me this fundamental bit of philosophical confusion is very likely what’s ultimately behind most conservatives’ increasingly obvious antipathy toward political democracy. How did I work that out? I’ll be happy to tell you right now.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Let me first set out my own view on what ethics is really all about, which I think is pretty standard stuff in the context of secular ethical philosophy. First, ethics and morals and values are inherently subjective, whether we like it or not, whether we talk about them that way or not. They’re in a different epistemic category from factual statements relating to what we perceive as the external world. If an alien were to visit Earth he or she or it would need to come to terms with what we perceive as the objective facts of our existence here on Earth. Let’s go with “it” this time, shall we? I’m imagining a creature of uncertain gender but with many menacing tentacles and one eye. Wait, was that on TV? Doesn’t matter. Now, this creature might not like the idea of gravity, but there gravity would be nonetheless. So sad. The same cannot be said of our human ethics. If we’re not there to explain them to it, it might never know they even exist. We could argue ethics with it, hopefully some form of ethics that doesn’t involve the awesome superiority and godlike rights and appearance of the human race or whatever, and maybe it would be persuaded by what we say and maybe not. But the ethical propositions would not be in the same category as propositions about gravity. There is nothing in this world that would compel the alien in question to either accept or reject our ethics. It’s subjective. It’s a statement about values we hold. Maybe aliens hold similar values; maybe they don’t. It’s not a statement about an objective fact one can demonstrate by getting out the old valuescopeometer and taking a few quick readings.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So, if it’s all subjective anyway, what’s the point of ethical philosophy? You think whatever you want, and I’ll think whatever I want. Well, for one thing, you may not know really know what you think. You may think you do. You may have a vague idea what you think. But then an awkward situation rolls around and you discover it’s not so clear and you have to sit down and think it through. So that’s one point of ethical philosophy: challenging and understanding your own ethical beliefs just for your own self-awareness. What ethical propositions correspond to your fundamental moral sentiments and stand on their own with no further need of analysis? What ethical propositions are logical developments based on those moral sentiments? Where may you have made logical or philosophical errors in what you supposed your moral sentiments implied based on divergence of conclusions and your moral sentiments? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Then, of course, you have the problem of having to deal with other people. People who may have their own subjective moral sentiments and their own set of ethical beliefs. How do you intend to deal with them? Yes, you could always try ignoring them, or if you found yourself at cross purposes, sneaking up behind them and hitting them over their little heads with a rock. That’s what you might call the traditional approach. However, you could also sit down, armed with your self-knowledge about your own ethics and your own moral sentiments, and try to work something out with them, understand their ethical arguments, work your way back hopefully to some kernel of commonality, some shared moral sentiment. I mean, the rock isn’t going anyplace. It will always be there if you need it. But it’s nice to give philosophy and reasoned discussion a try. In that sense, secular ethical philosophy seems rather more robust than religion based ethics, which may be perfectly sensible and persuasive for those holding the same religious views, but which lose their effectiveness rather rapidly when one moves to people in different sects of a shared religion, different religions, or differing views about the value of the whole religious enterprise. And, of course, with religion, ethics is just part of a much bigger package, so lots of other issues about to complicate and potentially end the discussion of ethics prematurely.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Now, if you hold this view of subjective ethics, a funny thing happens. No one person can ever really lay claim to being the ultimate arbiter of ethics. Everyone has their point of view. Some people may have thought through some issues a little more carefully than others; but when it comes to the inputs and conclusions they find consistent with their moral sentiments, no one is in any better situation than anyone else really. When it comes to society making collective ethical decisions, it’s just a bunch of people talking to one another. And how do you make order from a bunch of people talking to one another and having different views and so on? Political democracy, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, that sort of thing. You talk it out, and then you have some mechanism where you vote and decide what you’re going to do, maybe with some mechanism for protecting the minority with maybe some harder to revise rules that are still nonetheless subject to democratic processes and potential revision. There is a close link between secular philosophy, the idea that ethics are ultimately subjective, and the philosophical basis of political democracy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Of course, one can get to democracy by other routes, including a religious one, which is kind of interesting itself. What normally happens when one comes to believe ethics are objective is one will be drawn to some sort of authoritarian political regime that will make other people behave ethically. If we’re talking about religious ethics then we’re talking about an authoritarian theocracy of the sort one finds in various places around the world today. Doesn’t always happen that way. Some religious traditions historically associated with political democracy stress the subjective choice involved in accepting their ostensibly objective ethics. In those traditions, whatever it is doesn’t really count as ethical if one is only doing it because one thinks if one doesn’t the religious police or local holy man or woman will hit you on the head with a rock. People with this perspective are basically fine with society at large deciding to reject what they see as the one true ethics, indeed they often expect as much and consider such a result essential to their own self-identity and particular worthiness, but they never doubt for a moment the objective veracity of their own ethics. There are yet other possible routes by which those who support the idea of objective ethics may support political democracy. For example, they may simply fear authoritarian rule because of the very sensible concern the wrong sort might end up dictating ethics. But that seems a rather unstable situation. If ever they felt there was a way they could ensure the correct result they would prefer to do away with political democracy. It’s very much a second best solution. However, in general, one has a much trickier and less direct route to supporting political democracy if one thinks ethics and morality are objective rather than subjective because in the latter case political democracy is really the only sensible game in town.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It’s a roughly similar situation in the realm of economics and economic theory. What usually happens when one thinks one has found the one true, objectively correct ethics as far as economic arrangements go is one wants to set things up in the ostensibly ethical way and then prevent other people interfering through such dastardly mechanisms as, for example, the monopoly on legal power of an activist and democratic government. One becomes a sort of technocratic and secular priest of the one true ethics, akin in many ways to power mad religious extremists. Think I’m being funny? Have you had the temerity to challenge the ethical views or values relating to economic issues of an academic economist recently? How about one of these hot headed and forever foaming at the mouth economists of the boulevard? Think religious extremists are not always entirely rational and sometimes a little overly emotional? You should get out more. There’s a lot of it about. And, of course, if one feels one’s role on this earth is to make and defend an economic system that reflects the one true ethics, the question of how one goes about it may become a secondary consideration. Maybe one talks honestly about one’s values, but the risk is always there someone might disagree or get confused and end up doing the wrong thing. One will be tempted to believe the ends may justify the means and just go with whatever works on a strictly rhetorical basis, even if, wink wink, you and I know it’s not really honest or technically true or entirely correct. Basically, one comes to believe things like maybe the common misinterpretations of neoclassical welfare economics in which it appears to take up distributional issues isn’t really so bad after all, as long as it leads people to the ostensibly ethically correct result.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">We’re currently witnessing a serious degradation and degeneration of support for political democracy here in the USA with multiple branches of the conservative movement involved: bad religion, bad economics, and bad ethics.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The trends will likely continue unless we begin to get serious and teach our young at least the rudiments of real philosophy, so they can at least understand the difference between value and fact, normative and positive, ethics and science, subjective and objective.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">If we don’t, then we shouldn’t be surprised at all if one day they can’t really see the point of political democracy, free speech, free thought, and all the other democratic values we’ve traditionally held in this country and throughout the modern developed world.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> If that day arrives, we will have been the architects of our own demise.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-42376218812984182852020-04-09T18:53:00.001-04:002020-05-06T17:07:39.654-04:00Liberalism and “Neoliberalism,” and Conservatism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Welcome friends!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Have you noticed a curious trend online in which economic arguments long associated with traditional American economic conservatism are described instead as “neoliberal,” for example in phrases like the “neoliberal doctrine of free markets” and so on? While it’s true what distinguishes so-called “neoliberals” from normal, traditional, American-style “liberals” is the former’s adoption of conservative economic reasoning, and in that sense I suppose it’s technically correct to call conservative economic ideas “neoliberal,” there’s something suspiciously odd about it to me, especially when not used as part of a hyphenated formulation like “conservative / neoliberal economic reasoning.” To me it always sounds like the tail wagging the dog, or what I imagine that must sound like anyway. Neoliberalism here in the USA as far as I can remember has always referred to liberals who adopted conservative economic language during the so-called Reagan Revolution of the early 1980s when conservatism and in particular economic conservatism was rampant in this country. So, as I</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">m sure you can appreciate, it sounds rather jarring to the ears of anyone like me who was alive at that time to now misplace the derivative connection to what was in the past always considered mainstream conservatism and call free market ideology a neoliberal idea, as though it was something they had worked out amongst themselves and, who knows, perhaps later told conservatives about? It raises one’s suspicions that some sort of rhetorical funny business involving words is going on, along the lines of conservatives’ attempt to redefine and broaden the meaning of “socialism” as we’ve always understood it in this country to now include the mundane fixing of market problems and addressing distributional issues that have long been considered part of the neoclassical economic orthodoxy. However, when I raised my concerns to a fellow online the other day he pointed out the term “neoliberal” has a long of tradition in Europe going back to the 1930s of referring to the economic policies we traditionally associate with conservatism in the USA. What the heck? Really? Why have I never heard about this before now? Why is everything always so damned complicated and confusing? Because some people like it that way? Oh. Yeah, probably. Anyway, it sent me to Wikipedia to learn more about this newly strange beast called neoliberalism.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Part of what the authors had to say about neoliberalism in the Wikipedia article seemed to make sense to me. “Neoliberalism constituted a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus that had lasted from 1945 to 1980.” That sounds about right. That timeframe would make the start of neoliberalism contemporaneous with the conservative revolution here in the USA. That’s what I always understood to be the case. Some traditional liberals, the sort who supported Keynesian and New Deal policies to confront the conservative free-market policies that arguably led to the Great Depression and initially prevented any effective response to that economic calamity, gave up their by then traditional liberal economic ideas to adopt conservative economic ideas relating to worshipping the free market as a panacea and in so doing became so-called “neoliberals.” They were neoliberals rather than plain old conservatives at that point I suppose because they retained their interest in other non-economic parts of the traditional liberal agenda in this country, presumably things like the separation of church and state, racial equality, etc.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">However, after this promising start the article promptly began to go perceptibly pear shaped. The authors noted English-speakers have actually been using the term neoliberalism since the start of the twentieth century but with different meanings and, to make matter worse, with definitions that have changed over time. Of course. As the name of an “economic philosophy,” it was apparently used by European “liberals” in the 1930s (and, yes, I have no idea who we’re talking about now, maybe anyone who wasn’t a fascist?) as they attempted to revive the central economic ideas of so-called “classical liberalism,” which is an even older term for what we here in the USA have long called conservatism in the realm of economics, that is, people who view so-called “free markets” as panaceas. So, in Europe in the 1930s, neoliberal apparently didn’t mean “new” American-style liberals who had adopted conservative economic principles in the 1980s, it basically meant proponents of a “new” or resurgent form of classical liberalism or conservatism as we call it here in the US.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But we</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">re not done yet. The article also noted that at some point in the 1930s there was a time in which European “neoliberalism” apparently didn’t simply imply a return to “classical liberalism” (conservatism in American terminology) but was meant to contrast with the latter by accepting a role for the state to “intervene” in markets when necessary, which of course here in the USA is a hallmark of what we call “liberalism” rather than “neoliberalism.” The 1930s in Europe sounds a very interesting time, doesn’t it? I hope I never see anything like it during my lifetime. Oh, it’s happening again? Right now? Damn. Oh well, let’s just carry on, shall we?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Anyway, to continue our narrative relating to what Wikipedia had to say about the topic, the term neoliberalism apparently entered or maybe re-entered common use internationally in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet’s economic reforms in Chile and quickly took on negative connotations. At that time it was apparently used as a pejorative term people critical of free market ideology applied to those less critical of that ideology. In that context, it became associated with people like Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and James M. Buchanan, all considered notable “conservative” writers here in the USA. But, then again, I guess the article didn’t say these conservatives ever referred to themselves as neoliberals, only that their critics referred to them as such. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So that cleared it up, right? Clear as mud? Who the heck cares, anyway? Why am I even talking about it right now? It’s only a word, right? Well, I think maybe it matters a little bit here in the USA for a couple of reasons. First, given our recent history, it raises the suspicion conservatives are starting to play funny words games in an effort to smear traditional liberalism, which in the USA has always been about using democratic government in a pragmatic and progressive and I suppose generally leftist or socialist way, by associating it with neoliberalism and hoping people won’t notice the difference. Second, and along the same lines, it seems to make the entire economic debate of the past few centuries a debate between two schools of “liberals,” with conservatism apparently not involved at all, waiting in the wings to emerge as the new kid on the block recently arrived to save the day with bold new economic thinking rather than representing the hoary old traditional “free market” economic thinking dating back to at least the nineteenth century in opposition to which American-style liberalism was formed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">However, it may well be that in our new Age of Ignorance that ship has sailed. The good ship Funny Terms. My impression now is that many people who would formerly have proudly proclaimed themselves liberals now seem not entirely sure what the word really means and hence prefer alternative labels such as progressives, democratic leftists, democratic socialists, social democrats, etc. You know, it’s fine with me if you want to call yourself that, it’s the same thing, we can still be friends, but I can’t help thinking what sort of confusion it’s going to generate down the line if ever those young people crack a history book and read about the long conflict between liberal and conservative economic ideas here in the USA. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">At the same time, “conservatism” as far as economic principles, seems to have become unmoored from what we’ve always considered conservative economic thought in this country. Where previously economic conservatives would have agitated for the free movement of labor, they now argue for limiting immigration. Where previously they would have agitated for the free movement of goods, they now argue for tariffs and trade wars. Where previously they would have agitated for the free movement of capital and the principles of competitive advantage, they now tout nationalistic economic warfare. Where previously they would have advocated reduced government spending, they now support running up the national debt like there’s no tomorrow. Where previously they would have demanded government impartiality, they now support government doling out economic favors and treats to the president’s favorites and loyal minions. Actually, now I think about it, I suppose that may be a rather more benign reason the economic debate in this country seems increasingly to be defined as an internal conflict between two sets of liberals. Because conservatives no longer seem to have any coherent economic philosophy at all, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for young people to remember back to the time they did.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Oh well. I guess words are always changing. Let’s face it. I’m old. Well, older anyway. My moniker refers to myself as a “liberal” humanist and that’s the way I’ll always think of myself. That’s the world in which I was born. But if you’re young and want to say it some other way that’s fine with me. I can be a progressive humanist or a democratic leftist humanist or a democratic socialist humanist or a social democrat humanist if you like, just don’t call me a neoliberal or conservative humanist. Good enough?</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-81455496003404895192020-02-14T18:03:00.001-05:002020-02-14T18:03:54.952-05:00Fighting the Establishment<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I know, it has been awhile. Sorry about that. Lots of stuff going on just now. But I would like to register an opinion on this site now and then. Maybe a little fewer and farther between than formerly, but still trucking as they used to say. Or is that truckin’? I have the old days on my mind just now, for reasons that should become clear when I get to my topic for today. But enough tomfoolery, let’s get the ball rolling. My topic for today is a funny little article I read in the paper the other day about how many people here in the USA are interested in fighting “the establishment,” although what and who they’re actually fighting is quite different and often contradictory, so they end up fighting one another rather more than the establishment. How true. And funny. Not, of course, in a slap your knee and spurt coffee from out your mouth way, but in an ironic way.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">To be a tad more specific, t</span><span style="font-kerning: none;">he article argued that for conservatives and right wing elements here in the USA “the establishment” has come to mean our democratic government, the politicians and bureaucrats who work in it and for it, regulatory agencies, and on, while for liberals and left wing elements “the establishment” means the wealthy elite of the nation they feel have long held oversized influence over our democratic government and have long tended to use it to their own advantage rather than for the commonweal. The article also provided some historical perspective, all interesting and worthwhile, but not necessarily relevant to my thoughts on the subject.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The funny thought that occurred to me is that “back in the day,” as they say or used to say back in the day anyway, when I first started hearing about it in the 1960s (who knows how long it had been going on before that, probably decades, maybe forever), </span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">“t</span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">he establishment</span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">”</span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"> meant both. It meant the wealthy elite, bankers, CEOs, denizens of Wall Street, economically powerful muckety mucks of all stripes, and the nominally democratic government and justice system they were seen as controlling behind the scenes mostly for their own benefit. “Conservatives” were people who thought everything was working quite well and wanted to defend the establishment. “Liberals” and progressives and leftists had some concerns and wanted to fight the establishment. Everything made sense and had a sort of logic, at least as far as talking about the establishment went.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">However, in the early 1980s or there about enterprising conservative and Republican ideologues started working on ways to peel off some liberals to their side. That’s the distinctive thing about the establishment: they have the time, money, and power to try all manner of tactics and strategies to maintain and enhance their situation. They’re always trying to come up something. </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">They’re always </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">a worthy adversary.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">In this instance, they ended up using a slippery con game of misinterpreting neoclassical welfare economics to successfully convince many Americans all their problems would be solved by the magic of “the free market” (not any particular market structure mind you, just any old free one), if only what they started to call “activist” democratic government could be taken out of the picture.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">I suppose they felt democratic government was fine as long as it didn’t actually do anything.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">It all worked out quite well for them because of course the “free market” does indeed tend to work out quite well for the wealthy elite who made their money on whatever the market happened to be freely doing at the time, although how much it did and does in general for anyone else is a matter of dispute.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">According to this new theory, “the establishment” was redefined as the elected officials and government employees who were ostensibly determined to use democratic government for their own nefarious purposes, and who were opposed by freedom loving people trying valiantly to throw off the yoke of democratic government, with the people being led, of course, by some very wealthy and powerful people indeed.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Their goal became minimizing the role of democratic government, or I suppose in the best case scenario eliminating it entirely.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Thus, when enormously wealthy and corrupt as hell Donald Trump tries now to do everything he can to undermine democratic government, rank and file conservatives and Republicans in this country are right there with him, fighting the good fight against the establishment as they see it.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Meanwhile, many liberals never fell for the bad economics of the conservative ideologues.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Some did to varying degrees, of course, the so-called “neo-liberals.”</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">But others just kept on being concerned about fighting the establishment in the form of the wealthy elite who they still saw as dominating democratic government and using it for their own purposes.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Their notion of fighting the establishment was to make democratic government stronger, not weaker, more representative of what average people wanted, and just in general reducing the influence of big money in politics and government.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">From their perspective, the advent of Donald Trump simply made a long-standing bad situation much, much worse, handing the establishment much greater power than it ever had before.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Bernie Sanders is very much in this tradition of what we might call unbowed traditional American political liberalism also known as progressivism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">So that’s where we are today. Lots of people fighting “the establishment,” but the establishment doing just fine and indeed better than it ever has before. Oh well. Life goes on. We can always fight the establishment another day and most likely will, and the day after that, and the day after that, and …. well, you get the picture. But if you really want to fight the establishment, you might consider taking a few moments to understand the root of conservatives</span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"> 1980s anti-democracy claptrap in bad economics. (See Hansel Krankepantzen if you don't know how that works.) But you know, if you’re too busy fighting, just carry on. Don’t let me get in your way.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Both Republicans and Democrats hate the establishment, but they hate very different things. Jon Ward. Washington Post. February 11, 2020. </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/11/both-republicans-democrats-hate-establishment-they-hate-very-different-things/#comments-wrapper</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-69849767611419951052019-08-08T18:50:00.003-04:002021-08-25T18:59:21.514-04:00American Conservatism and European Conservatism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">I was reading an article in the newspaper the other day about the collapse of the American conservative movement as a serious or ostensibly serious intellectual enterprise and the paucity of writers who have thus far attempted to address that phenomenon. The article mentioned famous conservative gas bag George Will as one of the few who have. He’s apparently put out a book on the topic entitled “The Conservative Sensibility.” Based on the few points the article I was reading provided on Mr. Will’s book I think I’ll give it a pass. Sounds rather like more of the same self-serving claptrap I’ve come to expect from conservative authors. What makes me think so is that according to the article I was reading Mr. Will argues in his book that American conservatism has “almost nothing to do” with European conservatism, which he said is “descended from, and often is still tainted by, throne-and-altar, blood-and-soil nostalgia, irrationality, and tribalism.” Mr. Will apparently paraphrases the Iron Lady (former UK Prime Minister Thatcher) in observing that “European nations were made by history, the United States was made by philosophy.” According to Mr. Will, American conservatism is a project that seeks to defend the original philosophy of the Founding Fathers, “classical liberalism,” which ostensibly promotes limited government and the veneration of individual liberty. Yeah, sure. In the words of the great stereotype of the plain talking American pragmatist: what a load of crap.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">It seems to be quite a thing with conservatives these days to make stuff up and discuss the world not as it really is but as they would like it to be or maybe as they would like others to think it is. Surely at least we can agree that the current incoherent state of conservative ideology as expressed by the Republican Party and their current champion Mr. Trump, certified as bona fide conservatives by basically every conservative group in the nation, the conservative infotainment and media industry, and pretty much every man or woman in the street who describes himself or herself as a conservative, runs exactly counter to Mr. Will’s contention that American conservatism is based on philosophy rather than more pragmatic and variable bases. Indeed, I would suggest the vast majority of conservatives tend toward disinterest or sometimes downright antipathy to philosophy of any sort, which is part of the famous anti-intellectualism the conservative Republican Party touts at every opportunity. Mr. Trump in particular has made quite a point of saying how much he loves uneducated people, and while anyone can do philosophy or at least appreciate philosophy a bit of education certainly makes it a bit more likely.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">What I think Mr. Will fails to comprehend is that the “classical liberalism” philosophy he apparently takes so seriously himself and imagines other American conservatives to have taken seriously was never really a very serious philosophy to begin with. It was always a pragmatic rhetorical exercise designed to buttress and expand the economic and political power of the wealthy elite. And that, of course, is also the eternal objective of European conservatism. American conservatism and European conservatism are simply two faces or aspects of the same movement with strategies and tactics that have sometimes varied due to local national conditions. For a long while American conservatives like Mr. Will for example were able to use their misleading, baby-level hash up of economic reasoning and their rather dubious and incoherent political philosophy to keep people in line using hot air alone. However, that approach hasn’t been working as well of late, perhaps because most average social media and internet obsessed Americans have just stopped paying much attention to even baby level philosophy or perhaps because Americans on average have become incrementally better educated and have come to appreciate the particular philosophy American conservatives have been peddling these past several decades is just not very good philosophy. As a result American conservatism has gradually drifted into areas that are as traditionally American as apple pie but portrayed by Mr. Will as more typical of foreign European conservatism, that is to say, nationalism, nativism, racism, authoritarianism, and so on. As a result the leaders of the American and European conservative movements get along famously today. They’re very much on the same page. Their former apparent antipathy was likely simply an impression caused by the American elite correctly forecasting that the European elite’s attempt to concentrate their economic and political power and do away with political democracy was doomed to fail and it was not in their best interests to get on board at that time. A difference in strategy or timing more than objectives or values.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Anyway, it’s hard to interpret Mr. Will’s insistence there’s some fundamental difference between American and European conservatism as anything more than the wishful thinking of an aging agent or hired gun for the American elite who wants now to portray himself as something rather more serious and substantial. One can sympathize of course. No one cares to be shown up by events as a tool, a useful idiot, someone who was so myopic or easily manipulated that he fell hook, line, and sinker for a body of work that was always meant to be a rhetorical device to manipulate the unwary and uneducated. Perhaps the man is a true believer and perhaps not, but one thing is clear, he will apparently claim to be so until his dying day. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Why American conservatism failed. Fareed Zakaria. July 4, 2019. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-american-conservatism-failed/2019/07/04/bf221ddc-9dd7-11e9-9ed4-c9089972ad5a_story.html?utm_term=.baa1fc2167de.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-20955025582498447182019-07-18T20:18:00.000-04:002019-07-22T23:12:21.958-04:00Fair Pay, Fair Play, and the Women’s World Cup<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I must apologize for my negligence these past few weeks. Good old summertime, when the living is easy. And maybe the FIFA Women’s World Cup had a little something to do with it as well. Surprised? So am I. As with I suppose most US citizens of a certain age I don’t normally give soccer a second thought, although perhaps a little more unusually I must admit I don’t normally give any sport at all a second thought. But I suppose like most citizens of anywhere I have a certain low brow nationalistic pride whenever the national team does well at whatever it might be. Fortunately, in this case it wasn’t competitive hot dog eating or tiddlywinks but the reasonably entertaining sport of soccer or football as most of the world calls it. Of course, this year was a bit choppier than average and I almost decided to stop watching after the embarrassingly ugly and oddly disproportionate celebrating of the USA team after every goal they scored in their multi-goal thrashing of the team from Thailand. Gooooooooooal! Hey, look at me everyone! I scored a goal! Let me act the fool for the next five minutes! Let me see how wide I can unhinge my jaw! Let me explore what manner of awkward and clownish gestures I can make! Did they realize that particular game wasn’t for the championship? That it was really just a rather tedious first round rout? A thoroughly unentertaining mismatch? Because the way they were acting I wonder if some of them might have been a little confused. Or maybe they just didn’t have a lot of that quaint old time virtue we used to call sportsmanship. But maybe that’s not entirely fair? Who does these days? No, I suppose these days it’s pretty much blast your own horn at maximum volume every minute of every day from our conservative clown president to the national team on the soccer field. But I didn’t come here to talk about soccer. All things considered it was a mildly entertaining diversion but hardly something I would write a blog post about. I mean, who the hell really cares anyway? No, what I found rather more interesting was the extended public conversation after the tournament on the issue of equal pay for the women’s team relative to the men’s team.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">What I found interesting about the aforementioned debate is not the facts or merits of the issue but really that some Americans were prepared to discuss it at all. This whole issue of fairness or more generally any sort of ethical reasoning as it relates to the labor market or more broadly our distributional system in general is of course central to liberal and leftist ideology, but it</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">s long been very much a no-go area for conservatives who tend to associate any discussion of distributional issues with what they call “full blown socialism,” despite the fact we have already have a distributional system in place and could hardly have a functioning economic system without one. They’ve apparently convinced themselves the best way to defend the existing distributional system that favors them so extravagantly is not to defend it explicitly but to </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">portray it as no fit subject for polite conversation all relevant issues having already been entirely disposed of by various bewigged slave holding farmers in the eighteenth century, or having fallen down from the heavens in the form of Natural Law, or if they’re really confused or dishonest, after having been established as socially optimal by neoclassical economic theory.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">They prefer people now think of it as a proverbial </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">black box.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> An i</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">nfallibly ethical black box long past requiring any detailed understanding or defense. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And the notion of the distributional system as unassailable black box seems fine with most Americans at least of the uneducated conservative sort, which seem to predominate just now. The result of course is that if someone isn’t doing as well as he or she supposes he or she should be doing it will never appear to be the result of any </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">deficiencies</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> in our economic system but of someone rigging it or sabotaging it in some way, usually minorities of various sorts, immigrants, foreigners, educated people, and of course anyone who talks plainly and openly about distributional issues like liberals and leftists. Conservative Americans in general hate things like labor unions in which people are seen fighting for what they see as their fair share of the economic pie because they prefer to think these things happen according to some impersonal and ethically infallible system that no ethical person has any business “interfering” with. For some reason, adulation of the rich and powerful I suppose, they don’t seem to mind as much when it involves people at the higher end of the wealth spectrum, for example CEOs negotiating pay packages that allow them to make out like bandits even while the companies they’re ostensibly running file for bankruptcy</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">. I suppose it’s all in the manner of what one might call a vicious circle of bad reasoning: it’s different when rich people do whatever they can to get as big a slice of the pie as they can since they deserve to be rich and have that ability because </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">that’s what fell out </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">of our impersonal and ethically infallible distributional system. Poor folk aren’t so lucky. So one can well imagine how odd it feels to be an American and hear other Americans suddenly opining on “fair” pay for the women’s soccer team. Since when did fairness enter the issue? Have we all become liberals and leftists? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Fairness is always good of course. That’s not where I’m going with this at all. But if we’re going to start talking about fairness I’m not sure I’d consider the case of millionaire athletes the most pressing or important context in which to bring it up. Our current distributional system is rife with unfairness. Take our system of inheritance for example. That’s obviously a big one if you think fairness implies the distribution of economic power should depend in some way on one’s individual merit. You may recall conservatives and Republicans were in the news recently drastically reducing inheritance taxes or possibly even eliminating them entirely. I’d look it up, but it doesn’t really matter right now. The point is that if we’ve decided we want to be concerned about distributional fairness let’s talk about the fairness of allocating sometimes immense economic power to sometimes lazy, shiftless, amoral, layabouts while allocating relatively negligible economic power to hard working, responsible, ethically upstanding young people who have not had the advantages of birth. Want another one? How about the way we’ve set up our otherwise generally democratic political system such that rich people wield disproportionate influence and can use government to represent their own interests to the exclusion of the interests of other people? But then I suppose a conservative would have no problem with that one because </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">they</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">re</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> rich, right? Well, let’s take the bull by the horns and talk about the labor market. How about the fact that a good deal of the returns one sees on the labor market has precious little to do with any merit on one’s own part? A kid from the right side of the tracks going to a good school, having everything he or she needs in terms of an environment conducive to study, having no financial responsibilities or worries, and aided in every way possible by his or her presumably at least somewhat well off parents will naturally tend to do better on average in our system then a kid from the wrong side of the tracks no matter the relative amount of individual merit the latter might posses. Oh here we go. I’m not saying it can’t be done. One hears the odd anecdote. But certainly not facing the same odds are they? And by the way did you know labor market models that attempt to predict wages based on the sorts of things one might suppose would be relevant only ever seem to explain only a small part of the observed differences in wages? That means we don’t even really know what drives a good deal of the difference in results, although one suppose such factors as connections and just being the in the right place at the right time, </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">otherwise known as luck,</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> likely play a role. And if we’re going to push it to the extreme what about the fact that even a system based on individual merit as conventionally conceived would allocate greater economic power to those fortunate enough to be born with various innate characteristics such as intelligence or talent or what have you? I don’t know about you, but anytime you have people being born to any sort of privileged position it doesn’t necessary strike me as particularly fair although it may be defensible along some other dimension. My point is simply if we</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">re </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">going</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> to start taking up fairness as it relates to our distributional system I would suggest we have quite a bit of work to do. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So what do you think?</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Will the conversation relating to fair pay for the US women’s soccer team translate this time to a more general and serious discussion of fairness as it relates to our distributional system in general?</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Or is what we</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">re seeing now more a matter of the time honored American tradition of worshipping rich folk and celebrities and once the financial situation of these already very well paid athletes is resolved satisfactorily the issue of fairness for the common folk will inevitably recede once again into the background? Or will the natural inclination of Americans to avoid at all cost honest discussions of distributional issues torpedo even the cause of bigger paychecks for the ladies of the US soccer team?</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Only time will tell.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> But by all means as liberals and leftists let’s keep discussing the fairness and other ethical attributes of the distribution of economic power no matter the outcome of this particular tempest in a teapot. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The quest for fairness and more generally living an ethical life is part of being human. Let’s hold on to our humanity and cherish it. Let’s fight for fair pay and fair play. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-51554648838790949492019-06-13T21:49:00.001-04:002019-06-16T22:50:46.320-04:00Conservatism, Stupidity, and Killing the Problem Out<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I suppose you saw the recent news story about one Mark Chambers, the mayor of some small town named Carbon Hill in the quintessentially conservative and Republican deep, deep south US state of Alabama, who was in the news recently suggesting the only way to deal with arguments presented by gay people, transgender people, “Socialists,” and abortion rights advocates was to “kill them out.” The people; not the arguments. Yes, seems it all started when Mr. Chambers shared a Facebook post, all capital letters a la our current president and every other right-wing nut job on the internet, that lamented, “We live in a society where homosexuals lecture us on morals, transvestites lecture us on human biology, baby killers lecture us on human rights, and socialists lecture us on economics.” The shared comment went on to opine the only way to deal with that dire state of affairs is violent revolution, which prompted Mayor Chamber to contribute this bit of wisdom: “… the only way to change it would be to kill the problem out. I know it’s bad to say but with out (sic) killing them out there’s no way to fix it.” When confronted with his thesis Mr. Chambers first said in true spineless conservative form: “I think that’s somebody else’s post.” A short while later he admitted writing it but said it had been taken out of context and anyway wasn’t really meant for public consumption. Later still he explained he never actually said he supported killing gay people or anyone else; he was simply saying in the hypothetical case of violent revolution “the only way to get your way is to kill the other side out.” (Yes, apparently rural Alabamans say the word “out” a lot or at least some do. Never really noticed that before. Odd.) Later he added more modestly “it was just something dumb and stupid that I said … I don’t believe anyone should be killed for anything that they believe in.” Well, that at least sounds OK in my book. I guess he came clean in the end. Walked it back. Disavowed it. Acknowledged it was both dumb and stupid. Admitted he should never have said it. So I guess all</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">s well that end</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">s well. Seems churlish to carry on about it. But really I’m not so much interested in what this particular fellow had to say than in a more general point about the conservative and Republican mindset here in the USA and in particular the peculiar anti-intellectualism that appears to have become an integral part of that mindset.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The interesting bit of the whole event to me involves the segue from the complaint involving people lecturing people to the call for violent revolution and thence to killing people out. Sorry, I’m starting to talk a little funny myself. One can interact with the locals a bit too much sometimes. I meant to say killing people. Being a liberal and leftist and basically just an educated, mature person I would have thought a more sensible response to people lecturing people would be to simply resolve to investigate and refute whatever nonsense these ostensibly shady characters are trying to foist on everyone. Or if one can’t refute what they’re saying maybe acknowledge they make some good points never mind their personal qualifications and characteristics or lack thereof and investigate the consequences of one</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">s discovery. Isn’t that some sort of principle of logic? Don’t judge an argument according to your views about the person making the argument but on the merits of the argument itself? But apparently that just isn’t in the mindset of your average conservative or Republican American. Apparently, for those people the only appropriate response to hearing arguments they can’t refute from people they don’t like is killing the people involved. Wouldn’t make the arguments go away of course. Unfortunately for conservatives one can’t actually kill ideas. Even if one manages to kill the messengers the ideas just sit there, as valid or invalid as ever, waiting for someone else to give them expression. But anyway it would mean they wouldn’t have to hear them just then and from those particular people, which I suppose must count for something.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">It’s not unexpected at all to hear this sort of thing from conservative Republicans. It’s been quite obvious for some time now the wily and wealthy conservative elite of the nation who use the Republican Party to look after their interests have been relying increasingly on stupid people for their political power. I’ve previously </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">mentioned a few </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">notable instances of Republicans endorsing stupidity including that time the Republican Party of Texas wrote into its political platform it opposed “critical thinking skills and similar programs,” which it claimed “have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority,” and the time the then governor of Louisiana, a bona fide conservative and Republican of course, famously pleaded with the Republican National Committee to “stop being the stupid party.” The culmination of this great surge in support for stupidity has been of course our current president, and I use the word lightly, Dishonest Don, a man renowned around the world for lying, never seeming to have any idea what he’s talking about, and extolling the virtues of the uneducated; a man who represents the apotheosis of stupidity if you will. And this conservative cult of stupidity has certainly paid off for them in very practical terms, by which I mean financially. Yes, the Trump Train has finally delivered to the wealthy elite of the nation their long desired tax cuts and greatly furthered other conservative priorities such as weakening and likely eliminating Obamacare and just in general sinking the national finances thus drastically reducing the government’s ability to address distributional and other concerns in the future. One can well understand why American conservatives are now convinced Stupidity is King.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">But one can’t help but wonder if the conservative elite truly understand the potential cost of their enthusiastic endorsement and support of stupidity. Typical when one considers the question, “What would a stupid person do?” the answer is not very pleasant and sometimes downright alarming. For example, let’s say a conservative Republican in some southern swamp or other hears an argument he doesn’t like? What does he do? Well, just consider: what would a stupid person do? Take out his or her gun and shoot the person making the argument of course. Duh. But what happens when everyone starts doing it and people are shooting people all over the place? Will they make distinctions and continue to faithfully support the wealthy conservative elite as they do now? Well, let’s think about it. What would a stupid person do? I don’t know. I suspect he or she might just take out a gun and shoot pretty much anyone in an orgy of random and senseless violence. Because that’s the nature of stupidity isn’t it? It doesn’t really make sense. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t cohere. It’s incompatible with logic, reason, civilized discussion, and political democracy. It belongs more to the realm of violence, dysfunction, anarchy, and eventually social failure. Consider the last major regime that relied nearly exclusively on stupidity: Nazi Germany. I suppose it did OK for a little while but then the inevitable happened and it ended its stunted life in the horrible train wreck of WWII. It wasn’t an accident or a coincidence. It had to happen that way. How do I know? Well, think about it. What would a loyal Nazi driving a train do? Well, what would a stupid person do? That’s right. He would drive the train directly into the mountainside or at least dutifully follow orders to drive the train directly into the mountainside. It’s the nature of the beast. It’s how he came to be driving the train in the first place. It seems the wealthy conservative elite of the USA are now intent on playing pretty much the same game. They’re convinced they’ll come out ahead if they encourage and nurture stupidity here in the USA. But will they in the long run? Are they really smarter than their mid-century brethren or </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">merely</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> equally deluded? Should we sit around and see what happens? Well, what would a stupid person do? Not give a damn? Look the other way? Sit down and have a beer? In that case let’s do the opposite, shall we? Let’s decide to not be stupid. Let’s fight conservatism and Republicanism intellectually and at the ballot box every chance we get.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">‘Kill the problem’: Alabama mayor sorry for Facebook post accused of ‘inciting violence’ against gays. Allyson Chiu. June 5, 2019. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/06/05/kill-problem-out-alabama-mayor-sorry-facebook-post-accused-inciting-violence-against-gays/?utm_term=.7ddcb4417f65.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Texas GOP rejects ‘critical thinking’ skills. Really. Valerie Strauss. July 9, 2012. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html?utm_term=.49a53a564fe4.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Bobby Jindal: GOP Should ‘Stop Being The Stupid Party.’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Paige Lavender.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">November 13, 2012.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Huffpost.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bobby-jindal-gop_n_2121511</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-46976839135865226202019-05-23T21:38:00.001-04:002020-09-29T23:29:16.498-04:00Is the Fake Essential to Conservatism?<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Welcome friends!</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I was reading an article the other day on the peculiar fake science American conservatives in the supremely southern state of Alabama employed recently when explaining their new anti-abortion bill. It occurred to me conservatives and Republicans here in the USA are famous for espousing fake science in a variety of contexts including human sexuality and the climate to take two random examples. And it</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">s not just science. Our current conservative Republican president is famous for fakery in the form of stretching the truth, making things up, and basically just lying his backside off every chance he gets. We have a vast conservative “infotainment” industry devoted to peddling fake news to a clientele with an apparently insatiable </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">appetite</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> for fakery. So what is it with conservatives and fakery anyway? Why do they love it so much or at least not seem bothered by it at all? I’m starting to realize the conservative commitment to the unreal may be greater than I had previously appreciated. Indeed, they may see accepting convenient falsehoods as the fundamental and necessary basis of human society. How did I arrive at that conclusion? Well, that’s a funny story.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I had submitted one of my usual humble comments to the aforementioned article in which I suggested a love of fake science was central to conservatism and likely began with their fascination with the Queen of Fake Science, that fetid stew of hidden and mis-stated value premises, mathematical proofs of the obvious and unremarkable, and clueless amateur philosopher gobbledygook that is neoclassical economic theory and in particular the so-called welfare economics component of that theory. I suggested conservatives are committed to fake science the way they</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">re committed to fake news and alternative facts, and that it was likely because for conservatives words are always just a means to an end, a cheap attempt to manipulate other people through rhetoric and salesmanship. They never employ nor expect to employ words in an honest discussion of any value or issue.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In a short while a reply or really a riposte appeared from some fellow (I assume) rather drolly named Will Yum arguing what humanists like me fake is a “rationale for values” beyond the faith-based one. (A very typical rhetorical device for conservatives over the past several years has been to not bother denying or addressing criticisms but to simply lob the same criticism back in an attempt to establish what usually turns out to be a false equivalence. In this case Mr. Yum didn’t bother disputing the claim conservatives rely on fakery but predictably sought to establish humanists also rely on fakery thus apparently eliminating the problem in the us against them world of the conservative info warrior.) According to Mr. Yum’s comment “a totally materialistic and naturalistic universe doesn</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">t provide any moral guidance at all,” with the unfortunate consequence a regime like Nazi Germany for example could not be “shown to be evil.” This feat in Mr. Yum’s estimation can only be accomplished if one believes in “transcendent values,” which he suggested cannot possibly exist in a naturalistic universe. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> responded of course that I found his way of thinking somewhat peculiar and delivered the usual humanist response.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I suggested the ultimate rationale for human values must be human emotion and reason. While I understood his desire to demonstrate Nazi Germany to have been evil in some absolute and indisputable way I suggested making things up to arrive at that result really only gives one the illusion of getting where one wants to go. It doesn</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">t really get one there. I argued we should face the world as it is, not as how we would like it to be. We may believe Nazi Germany was evil but the old Nazis clearly did not. That was the whole problem.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">We did not share certain values and emotions we each found important. That</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">s why we had to fight it out, because we had no other way to connect with one another and work it out peacefully. I suggested unfortunately that is what sometimes happens.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">That</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">s the way the world works. I did concede it would be nice if we could do a little science experiment or bit of math or logic or look deep into our collective conscience or whatever and get an answer we must all necessarily accept, but I pointed out that</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">s not how values and ethics actually work. I disputed the idea we shouldn</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">t support our own values unless we can show those values to have some superhuman validity or origin, that is, unless they</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">re something they</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">re really not, as just not really making a whole lot of sense.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I urged Mr.Yum not to fake his or her way through life but to be real and face life.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">And there the exchange ended, except for a little coda in which Mr. Yum characterized my reply as breathtaking in its honesty but “utterly revealing of the vapidness of the revealed worldview,” to which I responded I was sorry he found reality so vapid, I hoped he would continue trying to make life more interesting for himself by making things up if he felt so inclined, but I thought it unreasonable of him to expect other people, particularly those seeking honesty and the truth, to join him there.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">After that the line as they say went dead.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">But you know the larger issue for me was how did we get from fake science to fake religion and fake ethics anyway? It’s a funny sort of segue, although when I thought about it a bit I did seem to remember hearing a somewhat similar argument from some religious conservatives to the effect that if religion were not true we’d still have to pretend it is in order to have some basis for ethical reasoning. It occurred to me although Mr. Yum didn’t explicitly say so and indeed was ostensibly interested in establishing just the opposite, that non-religious people pretend to have a basis for ethics when they really don’t, perhaps the comment was in the order of a Freudian slip. Perhaps he was alluding in some way to the argument about the supposed necessity of religion. Perhaps what got him thinking about religion was the suspicion the conservative attachment to convenient fakery started not with the Queen of Fake Science, economics, as I </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">had </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">suggested but with religion and hence in their view the foundation of ethics. In a sense I wondered if he meant the conservative attachment or at least acceptance of convenient fakery was integral to their theory of the formation and continuation of human society. I mean, it would explain a lot wouldn’t it? Coming from that perspective, with society based on the Greatest Convenient Lie Every Told, who would bat an eye at the sort of falsehood and fakery we see in politics and economics? Could conservatism really be such a sad and inhuman creed? Could it really be </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">eternally</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> committed to the false and unreal? From what I</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">ve seen of it I think so. All the more reason for those who believe in the power of human reason and the truth to fight the anti-intellectual, anti-democratic, and indeed anti-social doctrine of conservatism. Vincit </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">omnia veritas. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Conservatives’ junk science is having real consequences.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Dana Milbank.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">May 17, 2019.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The Washington Post.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-states-are-laboratories--run-right-now-by-mad-scientists/2019/05/17/94da1a72-78aa-11e9-bd25-c989555e7766_story.html?utm_term=.b5f86bd3146f</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-22074247475052841112019-05-02T20:23:00.001-04:002020-10-05T10:27:13.804-04:00American Conservatives and Republicans Not Big Believers In Democracy<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Looks like I’ve focused on the religious head of the multi-headed monster of contemporary conservatism the last couple of times out so maybe this time I’ll take another swipe at the economic head. You may recall one of the themes I’ve returned to time and time again is the inherent conflict between the increasingly concentrated economic power structure generated by our current formulation of a market system and our at least theoretically broader based democratic political power structure and how economic conservatives are basically big on the former but not the latter, that is to say, they tend to be all for rich folk being able to exercise their economic power but generally suspicious or downright aghast at the prospect of poor folk being able to exercise their democratic political power. (See my post Democracy and Leftism, March 21, 2019, for a recent discussion of that issue.) Shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone given that Americans, predominantly conservatives, have recently elected corrupt billionaire Donald Trump to the White House with the mandate he shrink the power of democratic government and expand the power of wealthy folk such as CEOs, stock brokers, bankers, and of course the hereditarily wealthy class. I’ve expressed this a number of times in rather blunt terms by suggesting American conservatives have become ever more forthright in their disdain for or sometimes intense hatred of political democracy. The conservatives’ great champion, President Trump, is famous for attacking our democratic political institutions, attempting to obstruct justice, attacking the free press, making “jokes” about becoming president for life, and openly admiring or as he says “falling in love” with anti-democratic despots all across the globe. However, my vote for the most conclusive example of contemporary American conservatism’s antipathy toward political democracy would have to be President Trump’s recent nominee for the Federal Reserve Board, a conservative gasbag named Stephen Moore who formerly worked for the Wall Street Journal (of course) and CNN (rather surprisingly) and currently works at a so-called conservative “think tank” called the Heritage Foundation (of course</span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">)</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">According to the CNN story on his nomination Mr. Moore has said repeatedly he believes “capitalism” rather more important than political democracy. (I’m putting the quotes around the word “capitalism” because as I’ve explained a number of times in the past I view the word sufficiently ill-defined that it has no place in serious economic thinking or writing and belongs only to the field of political rhetoric. All modern democracies including the USA in particular have had primarily market based economies with government regulation and intervention for some time and all reasonable debate for years has been about the level and type of government involvement, an issue which the notion of “capitalism” leaves entirely unaddressed and hence open to subjective interpretation. Indeed, according to conservative pundits we’ve ended “capitalism” in favor of </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“s</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">ocialism</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">”</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> any number of times in this country in the past through such unmitigated horrors as the income tax, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, minimum wage laws, etc., and yet miraculously it seems always available to be destroyed anew by whatever social policy may be on </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">the</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> table.) He clarified his views on the relative importance and validity of the economic power structure and political power structure in an interview for Michael Moore’s 2009 file “Capitalism: A Love Story” by saying, “I’m not even a big believer in democracy.” Of course, it must be noted he later presented his views rather differently by basically punting on the issue and saying, “I believe in free market capitalism and representative government.” Assuming he wasn’t playing games with the phrase “representative government” and accepts it equates to political democracy one suspects he may have submitted to </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">that</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> much feared social force conservatives call “political correctness,” which ostensibly requires them to lie about their true values to avoid censure by other people. Or maybe he just doesn</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">t really have any </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">strong views on the subject and flip flops this way and that like the proverbial silk hanky of legend. Conservatives do have a reputation in this country for simple mindedness. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">If you review the rest of Mr. Moore’s sophomoric economic stylings you’ll understand the basis of his love for “capitalism” and his possibly on again off again hatred of political democracy. Basically, he’s an advocate of the hoary notion that an ill-defined unregulated “free market” or, yes, “capitalism,” is a panacea for all of society</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">s ills and in particular does away with any distributional concerns one might have. As such he appears to have spent a good deal of time and effort on the standard litany of complaints economic conservatives have with </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“a</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">ctivist</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">”</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> government “interfering” with the “free market” by addressing market failures and distributional concerns. So for example, he has questioned the existence of the Department of Labor, Energy, and Commerce; the IRS; the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau; the Department of Housing and Urban Development; and the Department of Education. He has suggested eliminating Social Security, Medicaid, minimum wage laws, and personal as well as corporate taxes. Of course, along with this standard conservative claptrap he’s also had a few ideas </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">that must</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> be classified as a bit odd even for conservatives. In 2015 for example he advocated abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard although since that time he’s apparently thought it through again and now reports he doesn’t support that. So let</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">s give the man the benefit of the doubt and set that one aside. The point is that in general Mr. Moore can be taken as a fairly standard representative of the common economic conservative themes of free markets as miraculous and ethically infallible panaceas and the importance of shrinking the role of democratic government. As such his views relating to not being a big believer in democracy, despite being half-heartedly and rather unconvincingly walked back later, is a very good example of the way in which mainstream conservatives tend to favor the concentrated economic power derived from the market however construed over the theoretically at least much broader based and more egalitarian political power derived from voting power in a political democracy.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Some articles have suggested Mr. Moore might not end up on the Fed after all although interestingly not because of his clear animus toward political democracy, which supports my contention that that view is now accepted as perfectly representative of the conservative viewpoint, but because of some combination of the typical social conservative mix of racism and sexism in some of his previous commentary. Well, that plus plain old economic incompetence. As an </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">example</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> of what some people probably fear in </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">that area </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Paul Waldman, opinion writer for the Washington Post, suggested Mr. Moore has the curious tendency whenever a Republican is in office to view the economy at risk of deflation and needing the Fed to give it a little boost and whenever a Democrat is in office to view the economy at risk of hyperinflation and needing the Fed to slow things down a bit. That pressure to use the Fed for short term political gain is of course why we have an independent Fed in the first place, although given Mr. Moore’s apparent inability to grasp the rationale for a great many other government programs and institutions, and given his waffling on the legitimacy and necessity of the Fed itself, one would hardly expect him to appreciate the point. On the other hand Mr. Moore’s views are perfectly consistent with Mr. Trump’s own views on the Fed, which led one former chair of the Fed, Janet Yellen, to suggest Mr. Trump doesn’t really understand national economics and the role of the Fed. Ironic of course because in the minds of economic conservatives and the relatively educated part of the conservative Republican base the laughably simplistic claptrap expressed by Mr. Moore is evidence of their ostensibly superior grasp of economics. The relatively less educated part of the conservative base of course doesn’t even understand the simplistic claptrap instead attributing to Mr. Trump a superior knowledge of economics because he’s rich and at least poses as a successful businessman.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Lest there be any confusion on this issue in the future let me explain that for many decades now conservative thinkers have been espousing a simplistic and really just flat out incorrect interpretation of economic theory that implies something called “the free market” necessarily runs to or approximates a perfectly competitive market structure, that fails to acknowledge other market structures or market failures, and that fails to acknowledge the distributional issues that must be addressed and are addressed but lie entirely outside the scope of economic theory. That rhetorical nonsense has led them to excoriate democratic government as a dire threat that unscrupulous people in the form of the voting public can use to “interfere” with the black box panacea of “the free market.” As a result we now have a president, very popular with conservatives indeed, who clearly questions the fundamental basis of political democracy, openly admires foreign anti-democratic despots, and nominates to top government posts people like Mr. Moore who state flatly they’re not big believers in political democracy. After many years fretting about the threat of anti-democratic authoritarian communism and other foreign enemies it seems the true threat to American democracy is the intellectually vacuous and amoral rot of conservative ideology.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Mr. Moore announced today he has withdrawn his name from consideration to sit on the Fed. Apparently and rather surprisingly some Senate Republicans took issue with some of Mr. Moore</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">s more sexist and racist statements, although I see no indication his views on political democracy or the role of the Fed played any role. I guess one might say we dodged a bullet that time, but of course one presumes conservative Republicans have a great stockpile of bullets beyond just this one man. We’re not out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Trump’s Fed pick Stephen Moore is a self-described ‘radical’ who said he’s not a ‘big believe in democracy.’ Andrew Kaczynski and Paul LeBlanc. April 13, 2019. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/politics/stephen-moore-kfile/index.html</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The Stephen Moor farce reveals the depths of GOP cynicism. Paul Waldman. May 1, 2019. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/01/stephen-moore-farce-reveals-depths-gop-cynicism/?utm_term=.f1387e55c33a.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Trump doesn’t understand economics, says former Fed chair Janet Yellen. February 26, 2019. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47369123</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Stephen Moore, Trump’s Federal Reserve choice, bows out amid scrutiny of past remarks about women, other topics.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Felicia Sonmez and Damian Paletta.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">May 2, 2019.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The Washington Post.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/stephen-moore-trumps-choice-for-federal-reserve-seat-bows-out-amid-scrutiny-of-past-remarks-about-women-other-topics/2019/05/02/0eb33cba-6c45-11e9-a66d-a82d3f3d96d5_story.html?utm_term=.013d98865a47</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-90217354585021077872019-04-18T22:35:00.001-04:002019-05-01T18:55:17.223-04:00Gay People And The Strange Love of Christians<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Last time out I discussed the Sultan of Brunei’s recent attempt to pander to the increasingly conservative and extremist Islamic religious sentiments in that part of the world by instituting a law requiring gay people be stoned to death if caught expressing their sexuality, a barbarous and torturous form of execution representatives of the Sultan suggested anyway was integral to Sharia or Islamic religious law. Whenever I report on the news of the day from the more Muslim parts of the world I’m always afraid people may get the wrong end of the stick and suspect I have a particular antipathy toward the Islamic religion, which I don’t believe is really the case at all. Indeed, I consider Islam to be a fairly typical representation of the religious mindset, which I suppose must explain why I write from a humanist rather than religious perspective. I’m sure I must have mentioned before the similarly barbarous and gory history of Christianity, which has arguably been relatively benign the past few decades but of course was formerly the wellspring of an appalling amount of murder, torture, warfare, hatred, and discord throughout the world. Not sure I remembered to do that last time out but fortunately I got a little dose of Christian “love” upside the head the other day to remind me. It got me thinking about the similarities and differences in how those two great Middle Eastern religions cope or fail to cope with the existence of sexual minorities, so maybe I can just do a quick follow up on that. (I’d say three great Middle Eastern religions and address Judaism as well but honestly who really knows what they think about anything unless one is actually in the club? I suppose that’s one of the things I like about them. If you’re going for a walk in the ether at least do us all a favor and keep whatever you think you discovered there to yourself.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">To get back to the matter at hand, the article that caught my eye this week involved an Australian rugby player named Israel Folau, who apparently got into a bit of hot water recently by sharing his Christian religious views on gay people and others as follows: “Drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolators - Hell awaits you." In case anyone took it the wrong way Mr. Folau clarified later, "I share it with love.” In the same spirit of avoiding misunderstandings allow me to clarify I have no real interest in rugby, Australian or otherwise, or in Mr. Folau personally, and also that I understand Mr. Folau’s religious sentiments are not necessarily typical for Australia. I’m interested in Mr. Folau’s sentiments only because they represent a handy example of a certain common interpretation of Christian theology as it applies to gay people that can certainly also be found here in the USA. Well, actually I suppose I was a bit interested in the other characters that ended up in the same boat as gay people including notably drunks, atheists, and idolators. Apparently according to Mr. Folau’s understanding there are many paths to hell including nature, illness, philosophy, and competing religions. And by the way what exactly is an idolator anyway? Christians are always waving around that horrifying image of an ancient crucifixion. Does that count? How about statues of saints? Mary? I don’t really care, just saying. Who exactly is praying to an idol anyway? Well, actually I suppose it wasn’t just the people who ended up in the boat but the ones who didn’t make the cut I found a bit noteworthy. We’ve got the thieves but how about their close cousins the robbers? Murderers? You know, just trying to detect some pattern in what’s going on here</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Anyway, the main thing that caught my eye in Mr. Folau’s little flipping off of gay people is the way Christians of this sort express their hatred of gay people in contrast to how devout Muslims like the Sultan of Brunei for example express their hatred of gay people. Mr. Folau uses a little rhetorical trick or gimmick one commonly encounters in popular Christianity in which he is ostensibly not telling you what he thinks about gay people himself; he’s just passing on the good word about what his supernatural lord thinks about them. He’s a messenger or middleman of sorts. He’s not saying he wants gay people to go to hell. He’s not consigning gay people to hell himself. Indeed, in warning gay people of their fiery fate Mr. Folau himself is </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">ostensibly </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">expressing his love of gay people not his hate. It’s a nice story although of course I suppose everyone must know by now not all Christian sects endorse this particular point of view and if Mr. Folau disagreed with it or was troubled by it in any way he could very easily investigate and eventually espouse a different form of Christianity, so of course it’s quite clear the hatred under discussion is not emanating solely from some other worldly plane but is centered squarely at least partially in Mr. Folau’s own personality and perspective on the world. In other words, one can’t help but recognize Christians like Mr. Folau as somewhat hypocritical when they discusses expressing their agreed upon hatred of gay people with love for gay people. It’s a strange sort of love isn’t it?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This third party, faux innocent bystander motif one finds in certain strands of Christianity stands in interesting contrast to certain strands of contemporary Islam in which not only are devout Muslims such as the Sultan of Brunei encouraged to share their understanding of the good lord’s feelings toward gay people they’re expected to actually carry out the lord’s bile and hatred by serving as the instrument by which the lord consigns gay people to hell, in the case of the Sultan by stoning them to death. It’s clearly a much more active hands on and potentially ethically troubling approach than just standing on the sidelines warning them the lord will consign them to hell when they die and contemplating the day with evident satisfaction.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">On the other hand, maybe I’m splitting hairs. Christians for a long time were very much in step with contemporary Muslims in terms of their perceived moral duty to kill, main, and torture people on behalf of the lord. Interestingly they talked pretty much the same way they do now. Yes, they burned people at the stake but only because they loved them and wanted to save their souls by helping them atone for their sins here on earth in the agreed upon way: by slowly burning them into a pile of smoking ash. They didn’t hate anyone themselves. No, no. They were all about love, love, love even when carrying out their perceived duty to their supernatural master to kill, kill, kill gay people, atheists, and a great many others besides. And indeed I’m not even sure the distinction between active agent and third party messenger is significant from a theological point of view because the omnipotent supernatural entity ostensibly consigning gay people to eternal torture in hell is typically meant within Christian theology to also be a paragon of love, at least the strange love of the Christians. One supposes the Sultan might </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">similarly</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> imagine himself to be expressing love and peace even while dutifully bashing in the head of some random gay youngster with a rock. By the </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">same</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> token, one supposes there may be sects within Islam taking an approach more similar to Mr. Folau’s version of Christianity and contenting themselves with visions of the lord allowing and indeed consigning gay people to be tortured for eternity in hell rather than feeling any particular duty to act as the good lord’s court executioner and torturer in this life.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">What’s my point?</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Well, I suppose it must be that Christianity and Islam don</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">t </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">appear</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> to be all that different </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">to</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> me at least as far as gay people are concerned.</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">They’re both typical of at least the Middle Eastern form of the religious mindset.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Tomorrow a form of Christianity more similar to traditional historical Christianity might arise that might involve torturing and murdering unbelievers and gay people and so on while a form of Islam more similar to modern mainstream Christianity could break out any time and indeed likely already has with people neglecting or disavowing their moral duty to murder and torture to instead bang on about peace and love all the while looking forward with satisfaction to the prospect of the various objects of their various hatreds and sexual hangups getting their just desserts in the afterlife.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">We give Christians the benefit of the doubt in this country.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">We assume if they harbor feelings of hatred toward other people, such as gay people for example, they can talk about it and carry it about in their hearts and minds and so on but allow the good lord to express it in more concrete form in the next life and in that way co-exist with non-Christians who don’t share their ancient hatreds. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">We should give Muslims the same benefit of the doubt and expect they can also come up with similar expediencies and adjustments in their theology that would allow them to co-exist peacefully with non-Muslims.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">They have no reason to bother with that sort of thing in foreign Muslim-dominated countries of course, so one would hardly expect to hear anything like that from the majority Muslim areas of the world, but in the very different context of countries like the USA they do.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> We can never accept anti-social behavior but when it comes to people’s religious beliefs we should give people some room to come up with something that works and not simply always assume the worst.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Israel Folau: Australia end player's contract over anti-gay message. April 15, 2019. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union/47932231.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-19442286231455980972019-04-04T23:24:00.002-04:002019-04-05T16:43:10.422-04:00Brutal Brunei, Islam, And The Killing Of Gay People<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Welcome friends!</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Have you read the news stories about the small South-East Asian country of Brunei deciding </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">they</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> should execute gay people if someone discovers them having sex with one another? Yes, indeed, and apparently by the medieval and rather tortuous method of execution known as “stoning” no less. Apparently it’s all </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">meant</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> to be based in Sharia, Islamic religious law. The intent of the authorities in adopting these draconian punishments at least according to government spokesperson Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah is to “see Islamic teachings in this country grow stronger.” According to a fellow named Mathew Woolfe, founder of a human rights group called The Brunei Project, one likely practical reason Brunei has decided to start murdering gay people right now is the country’s interest in “attracting more investment from the Muslim world, along with more Islamic tourists.” He opines this latest move “could be seen as one way of appealing to that market.” I’m not sure whether Mr. Woolfe had in mind Islamic tourists showing up specifically for the stonings, perhaps as part of some sort of public festival of torture and murder, think the worst of medieval Europe but with hummus on pita rather than beef on a stick, or whether he meant simply Islamic tourists would likely be more comfortable vacationing in a country that kills gay people. And by the way, it’s not just gay people up for the chop. The new law also involves killing people for “insult or defamation of the Prophet Muhammad.” Clearly the traditional American values of freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and free speech have no place in an Islamic paradise like Brunei. I say paradise because according to the article I saw Brunei’s ruling royals possess a huge private fortunate and “its largely ethnic Malay residents enjoy generous state handouts and pay no taxes.” I’m imagining fat, lazy, spoiled, berobed people lolling about on divans and carpets smoking hashish and watching their servants being whipped, but of course I’ve never been there so I might be thinking of an old movie. What difference is it to me anyway? I don’t live in Brunei. I will certainly never travel to Brunei or really any other locale in the majority Islamic regions of the world. Ever. The vast gulf in our values and ethics precludes that possibility. I’d like to just laugh it all off the way one laughs off all the other peculiar things people in foreign climes get up to that have nothing to do with one personally. Unfortunately, one small step removed from what happens in ostensible devout Islamic Brunei is the awkward fact we have quite a few Muslims living here in the USA as well. Should we be worried? Well, yes and no. Let’s discuss.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">This is clearly one facet of a very major and serious problem. Here in the USA a great many people have a great deal of unease over Muslim immigration partly or more likely largely because of the obvious and indisputable fact that the values and ethics of the greater part of the Islamic world don’t align very closely or indeed at all with the traditional values and ethics of modern western democracies such as the USA. A common and entirely understandable sentiment is that most Muslims would probably feel much more comfortable and indeed much happier living someplace other than the USA. Indeed, moving to the USA seems rather a recipe for disaster or at least the production of some </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">very, very</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> confused and alienated young people. Yet perversely a certain number of Muslims insist upon immigrating to the USA, where of course we accept them into our society no matter the obvious potential and indeed likelihood of their holding and espousing views offensive to us because, well, that’s our way. Until they act upon their offensive views and peculiar ethics of course, say by murdering a gay person or blowing up a nightclub full of loose women or what have you, in which case we kill them or at least throw them in prison for what one hopes is a very, very long time. We have plenty of other people in this same general category, by the way. It’s not just Muslims. We have any number of domestic anti-democratic hate groups in this country and they’re all allowed to think and talk whatever rot they like until they act on their beliefs and kill or maim someone, in which case it</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">s the same deal: we either kill them or toss them in jail for what one hopes is a very, very long time.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The American way of accepting this sort of problematic and challenging diversity must seem quite odd to our foreign friends as well as to some of our domestic blockheads who never got the memo so perhaps a few words of explanation may be in order. It involves maintaining a healthy realm of personal freedom. The presumption lying behind our approach is that what people say and profess to think does not always align very closely with what people actually do, particularly when the state and the law is involved. One may want to kill gay people, believe one’s ethics require one to kill gay people, and wish the state would, in fact, kill gay people, but when it comes to flouting the law of the land and murdering some random gay passersby on the street one may see things differently.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This can happen any number of ways and for any number of reasons. One may subscribe to some sort of generalized “one should obey the law” or “do as the Roman’s do” ethical belief so even though one feels the law is wrong in some instances one feels a moral obligation to go along with it whatever it is. I’ve personally never heard of that being part of Sharia of course, but one supposes individual Muslims might mash up Sharia, general Islamic ethics, and various bits of ethical reasoning from who knows where, so that’s certainly a possibility.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In other cases, one supposes simple cowardice and fear of legal consequences may play a role. One may believe it’s perfectly ethical to murder gay people but the prospect of the state ending one’s own life if one acts ethically may make one take a rather more reflective and philosophical as opposed to active perspective on one’s ethics.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Another issue of course is it’s not entirely clear if all self-described Muslims say or profess to think the same things. Even though the belief Sharia calls for the murder of gay people appears to be quite common in Islamic circles, at least I’ve heard it espoused in various places by various Muslims with various religions credentials and does not appear at all specific to the theological stylings of the government of Brunei, the religion of Islam, like Christianity and indeed most of the big religions, seems prone to a certain degree of interpretation. Among Christians here in the USA anyway “following” the Christian religion quite often means in practice shopping about for a priest, or a church, or a sect, that espouses a version or interpretation of Christian ethics that corresponds to one’s personal ethics, which might </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">always</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> of course be based on one’s own study of scripture but one suspects might equally involve ethics arriving from other places such as angels sitting on one’s shoulders whispering religious insights into one’s little ears or from other more conventional religious or philosophical sources or indeed even from simple introspection and the consultation of one’s own moral sentiments, emotions, and feelings about what seems right. To a large extent contemporary Christianity is basically whatever one wants it to be. Now I must admit I’m not aware of different sects in the Islamic religion or the prevalence of Mosque shopping, but I suspect that may have more to do with my ignorance of that </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">particular </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">religion than an actual dearth of options for practicing Muslims. One other hand, I have read a number of people arguing there is little centralized control over official Islamic theology and as a result at least some room for different beliefs about what Islam and Sharia really entail. Where one Islamic scholar may find Sharia requires the stoning to death of gay people another might well interpret the relevant material as suggesting one should simply disapprove of gay people in some more general and less bloody and horrific way. I suppose a few daring independent minded Muslims might even interpret the whole thing as a big misunderstanding and attempt to accommodate modern scientific knowledge of human sexuality. Reformed Muslims, if there is any such thing.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">So where does that leave us? What is the point? What should be we actually do about the Islamic threat to our traditional culture and values? Well, I think we recognize and face the challenges posed by the presence of our Muslim friends head on but nevertheless maintain our traditional values and accept them as we accept everyone with unusual and offensive views. In other words, let’s not go all crazy. Yes, having Muslim neighbors would understandably make one rather nervous. Sharia appears to cover an awful lot of ground and according to some Muslims anyway </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">involve quite a bit of violence. One never knows whether one’s Muslim neighbor is about to launch himself or herself over the garden gate kitchen knife or meat cleaver in hand to dispatch whatever gay person, infidel, insulter of the Islamic religion, alcohol drinker, shaved person, or what have you may be standing on the other side. In that sense having a Muslim neighbor is rather like having a neighbor with a swastika or the letters KKK carved into his or her forehead. But our tradition is to not overreact to these sorts of superficial provocations. Live and let live, that’s our way. Let people work things out on their own and in their own time and in the meantime pay rather more attention to what they do than what they say. Stories in the news explaining what foreign potentates in faraway lands believe Islam entails may or may not resonate with your Muslim neighbors here in the USA. Extend the same consideration to your other neighbor of course, the one was with the swastika or KKK carved into his or her forehead. Perhaps the offending inscription was the result of some past mental illness or youthful ignorance or a bit of drunken tomfoolery. Or maybe it doesn’t represent what that person is really all about but is just for show, something for the benefit of other people, something to make granddaddy happy. Give people the benefit of the doubt until they show their true colors through their actions; that’s really the American way. But of course if you have unusual neighbors and you have a notion to avoid them and lock your doors at night and buy a higher garden gate, … well, those might be good ideas as well. Awkward to be sure, but then no one ever said freedom was easy or free of risk.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">References</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Brunei implements stoning to death under anti-LGBT laws.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Yvette Tan.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">BBC News.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">April 3, 2019.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47769964</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-39295422826544769522019-03-21T20:45:00.001-04:002019-05-02T21:21:51.529-04:00Democracy And Leftism<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Welcome friends!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I’ve probably mentioned before but I suspect the essentially ambiguous feelings most or perhaps all American conservatives and most likely world conservatives hold toward political democracy is closely related to their apparent inability to maintain a clear and consistent definition of what they mean by “liberalism,” “leftism,” and “socialism.” They’re two sides of the same coin. The essential issue is that the political power arrangements generated by democracy are fundamentally inconsistent or at least potentially inconsistent with the economic power arrangements generated by our current distributional system including the labor market and inheritance laws for example. Let’s discuss.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Political democracy as commonly conceived today with every adult having a single vote is an inherently egalitarian affair. It distributes political power equally at the level of voting at least regardless of the voter’s wealth, credentials, or merits however specified. One may be socially responsible or a selfish jerk, a genius or a clod, wise or foolish, rich or poor; it just doesn’t matter as far as voting goes. Everyone gets one vote and one vote only. Well, there may be some exceptions for people convicted of certain serious crimes or residing in prison and so on but let’s not get bogged down in details and absolutes, shall we? For the most part our interpretation of political democracy is quite egalitarian in spirit at least when it comes to voting.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The distributional mechanisms we have in place for allocating economic power, that is to say inheritance laws, labor markets, investment markets, lotteries, and so on, are of course not similarly egalitarian in spirit or practice. They distribute power based on various considerations some arguably under an individual’s control at least to some degree and some arguably not, and these mechanisms famously lead to very unequal results. When it comes to economic power some people have quite a bit indeed; others don’t have much or in some cases any at all. That’s especially the case here in the USA but it’s also true albeit to a lesser extent for other democracies having more-or-less market-based economies. Discussions relating to the distribution of economic power here in the USA tends always to be fraught and characterized by </span>profound<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> and rancorous disagreements about not only value or ethical issue of what ought to be involved but factual issues relating to what is currently involved. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">There is a fundamental conflict or at least potential conflict between these two varieties of social power. Economically powerful fat cats rule our economic system in the sense their every passing whims take precedence via their superior purchasing power in the marketplace over even life and death matters of less economically powerful people. When it comes to productive resources going toward building a third vacation home for Mr. Moneybags or lunch for the guy under the bridge there’s no question where those resources will go. However, when it comes to the realm of political power we don’t take the necessary steps to ensure the same results. If left to our democratic political system with one person one vote some of the passing whims of the economic elite may go unfilled and the life and death matters of the less economically powerful, the hoi polloi if you will, may end up being addressed possibly with tax dollars from the wealthy elite. Anger and resentment on the part of these exalted personages are all but inevitable.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Clearly I’m simplifying the situation quite a bit. Although voting may be a one person one vote affair it’s surely no secret we’ve set up our democratic political system to include various mechanisms by which the wealthy can convert economic power to political power. We have an in-built bias in the sense taking time out of one’s career to run for political office is largely the prerogative of people one might generally describe as at least moderately wealthy. In 2014 for example more than half the members of Congress had a net worth of one million dollars or more, which may not seem all that much these days until one considers the median net worth of adults here in the USA is only about forty-five thousand dollars. Thus, if one considers self-interest to play any role at all in what our politicians are up to or even if one thinks one’s perceptions of life are perforce molded in some way by one’s own life experiences then the interests of the wealthy elite must be more than proportionately represented by our elected representatives. Of course, raising funds is a major part of any political campaign in this country and that relies very directly and heavily on catering to the wishes of the economically powerful. Wealthy CEOs and banking and investment types also wield some degree of non-democratic political power because there is a feedback between general economic performance and the political fortunes of those in office so if those business leaders feel a candidate is not doing them right they may just put off a few investments or slow things down a bit. Indeed, every politician here in the USA is expected to be “pro-business</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">” or </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">business friendly,</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">”</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> which in practical terms means catering to the desires of wealthy CEOs and the other economically powerful people who make decisions for those businesses. Political lobbying of course is also something one associates mostly with economically powerful industries and professions. One expects lobbying efforts on behalf of let’s say relatively wealthy medical doctors to be significantly more politically potent than lobbying on behalf of fry cooks or what have you. Moving back a step from the front lines money obviously plays a great role in convincing and cajoling potential voters into falling in line. A great army of people have ridden the conservative money train over the years ranging from academic economists and political scientists and historians to the clown army that daily disseminates false and misleading conservative rhetoric on internet, radio, and TV. Indeed, the entire conservative discourse involving “minimizing” government, government not “interfering” with the “free market,” “drowning government in a bathtub,” fighting so-called “activist</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">”</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">government, and stressing the ostensibly inherent futility and counter-productive nature of government attempts to address distributive issues in the form of helping out struggling people or indeed government attempts to address any social problem or issue at all are most reasonably seen as simply elaborate rhetorical exercises, marketing campaigns if you will, designed to support the primacy of the economic power of the wealthy elite expressed through their market power against the egalitarian democratic political power expressed through the voting power of the hoi polloi. To put in a nutshell, in our particular formulation of political democracy money talks. Money talks a lot. Indeed, it can sometimes be hard for anyone else to get a word in edgewise.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The apparent ease with which the wealthy elite of the nation are able to dominate and manipulate our democracy for their own benefit is probably the main reason so many conservatives feel ambivalent about political democracy rather than actively opposed to it. Basically, it all seems to have been working out rather well for them these past several decades. The economic power of the wealthy elite has grown by leaps and bounds while the economic power of pretty much everyone else and in particular the so-called middle-class has stagnated. So political democracy is not seen as an imminent threat by most conservatives but more of a perpetual annoyance and potentially serious future threat; something to be concerned about to be sure, but not the sort of thing that would cause one to fly into a panic and throw the baby out with the bathwater. Not yet anyway. Besides, they’ve given it a go in the past and the results have been less impressive than they might have hoped. The wealthy elite of mid-twentieth century Germany assuredly thought they had it made in the shade when they helped install authoritarian despot Adolph Hitler to keep democracy at bay, but they underestimated his megalomania, murderous racism, war mongering, </span>general <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">moral depravity, and rank ineptitude on matters social, </span>political, and military<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">. On the other hand, conservatives in some other nations have had rather better results. Nominally “communist” China is a politically authoritarian state with a robust market economy very much along the lines of what elite supporters of the old German fascist movement probably had in mind. In short, it would be a mistake to suppose conservatives have any sincere commitment to political democracy at the level of principle or value. However, they appear to recognize that eliminating it is a dangerous game to play and one that can very easily although not necessarily end rather badly for them. Taking everything into consideration conservatives here in the USA appear to prefer the relative stability of a democratic system as long as they can control it and use it to further their own interests and only their own interests; democracy as plutocracy if you will.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Historically, of course, conservatives were much more forward about grafting a plutocratic ethos onto political democracy. In the early days of American democracy for example we restricted voting in most jurisdiction to male land owners of European descent (i.e., “whites”), in other words, the wealthy elite of the day. Nor have conservatives necessarily been bashful about putting forth similar proposals today. I don’t have any references but I do seem to recall a few years back reading about some academic economists (of course) and conservative political scientists recommending various schemes by which political voting power might be made more consistent with economic power such as combining voting with willingness and ability to pay or equivalently just giving rich people more votes than poor people. Indeed, American conservatives’ present hero, President Donald Trump, has been openly flirting with rather blatant anti-democratic ideas by attacking our democratic institutions and separations of powers, attacking the free press, attacking higher education, lauding the Chinese model of authoritarian government combined with market based economy, and most recently making thinly veiled threats of political violence involving the army, the police, and I believe some sort of biker gang. Don’t ask me; that’s just what I read.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Acknowledging the fundamental conflict between political democracy and our current distributional mechanisms so important to conservative economic ideology can feel awkward if like many others of my vintage one was weaned on the belief conservative economic ideology and political democracy are natural complements and as a unit opposed to the ostensibly equally natural complements of leftist state socialism or communism with anti-democratic authoritarian government. Feels a bit odd to split the pair and discuss the anti-democratic ethos lying at the heart of conservative economic ideology, or to consider authoritarian political systems committed to market economies such as contemporary China, or indeed to take up the pros and cons of that strange beast democratic socialism. It can take a bit of mental effort to see the earlier story was essentially incorrect and indeed misleading, which brings up an interesting question: was it all a bit of Cold War rhetoric purposefully designed to get everyone on the same page fighting International Communism, or was there some reasonable basis for honest and sincere writers and intellectuals getting the wrong end of the stick?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Historically the association of political democracy with what we now know as conservative economic ideology may have made a bit more sense than now. For example, consider the earlier iteration of the conservative leftist split in which the role of the wealthy elite was played by the hereditary aristocracy (i.e., kings and queens, nobles, and all their various courtly hangers on). In its heyday the aristocrats held both economic and political power and in that sense their society was in a sort of balance although whether salutary or not depended no doubt upon one’s situation. As market economies developed the so-called commoners began to develop some economic power of their own very much upsetting the power balance of old medieval society. The eventual move toward political democracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, initially consisting largely of the restricted plutocratic version of democracy I just mentioned, was very much addressed to bringing the political power of these financially successful commoners more into line with their newfound economic powerful against the traditional and hereditary political and economic power of the old land-owning elite of the ancient feudal order. So, yes, at that moment political democracy was aligned with the development of the market economies that feature so significantly in conservative economic ideology albeit typically in misleading or incorrect ways. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">However, that was clearly by no means an essential relationship. Already by the nineteenth century and especially now in the twenty-first century the conservative versus leftist split is largely a struggle between the wealthy elite of existing market economies playing the role formerly played by the old aristocratic elite and wielding both political and economic power facing off against the hoi polloi playing the role formerly played by the commoners with the twist that rather than the conflict being triggered by the hoi polloi obtaining some measure of economic power without commensurate political power our current conflict has been triggered by just the opposite: the hoi polloi have some measure of political power </span>without commensurate<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> economic power. As a result, these latter day commoners threaten always to take steps to bring their economic power more into line with their political power at the expense of the political and economic power of the wealthy elite by using their voting power to force democratic government to “interfere” with existing market systems and distributional arrangements to increase their own share in the proceeds. Hence political democracy, at one time instrumental in establishing the political power of the wealthy elite, has in some ways proved to be a double-edged sword.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Given this state of affairs it is perhaps not surprising some people find it difficult to bring their thinking up to speed on the differences between left and right. Some people seem to have their heads stuck firmly in the seventeenth and eighteenth-century struggles of commoners against the feudal aristocracy. Other people seem mired in the various anti-democratic authoritarian movements of both right and left in mid-twentieth century Europe and Asia. The debate in this country between the left and right often has a surreal quality as people talk passionately past one another using inconsistent terms and frames of reference. It’s all a bit comical really. Let me bring some order to the chaos. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">At this point in our history the economic debate between left and right is no longer about abolishing market structures. The issue is whether and if so how to regulate those markets and associated legal institutions and to revise the distributional results of those market systems to bring them more into line with what our ethics recommend. The view that democratic government has the right and duty to regulate markets to improve their performance and also to potentially revise market results to address popular values relating to distributional issues corresponds here in the USA anyway to what people call variously liberalism / leftism / democratic socialism. This view is entirely consistent with neoclassical economic theory in the sense that theoretical rationales exist for regulating many real-world markets and of course distributional issues are outside the scope of economic theory and hence logically must be addressed another way such as for example via democratic government. (See my post Economic Theory And Then Some, April 12, 2018, or my tab on Economics with Hansel if you’re stuck on this very common point of confusion relating to what economic theory says and doesn’t say about distributional issues.) The opposing view that democratic government must be prevented from “interfering” with real world markets and other existing distributional mechanism such as inheritance laws and in particular has no business redistributing resources to address voters’ beliefs and values relating to distributional issues corresponds here in the USA to what people call conservatism or sometimes as in my case economic conservatism to differentiate it from the rather different religious form of conservatism, which is based more on adherents of certain religions carving out legal exceptions for themselves or forcing others to adhere to their beliefs. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Liberalism and leftism supports the primacy of political democracy and the egalitarian distribution of political power expressed in our voting system and is prepared to revise our economic system and the results of our economic system on that basis and indeed to strengthen the egalitarian quality of our political system by reducing the role of economic power in politics. Conservatism and right-wing ideology in general supports the primacy of our existing mechanisms for distributing economic power and the unequal distribution of economic power that governs activity in the marketplace and is increasingly prepared to revise our democratic political system to defend those social power arrangements including eliminating or undermining the egalitarian components of our political system by strengthening the role of money in politics. These two perspectives are locked in a fundamental and inescapable conflict. Only time will tell which will eventually emerge victorious. You know where I stand on the subject. Not much question about that. Long live American democracy!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Congress Is Now Mostly A Millionaire’s Club. Andrew Katz. January 9, 2014. Time. http://time.com/373/congress-is-now-mostly-a-millionaires-club/.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">America’s Middle Class: Poorer Than You Think. Tami Luhby. CNN. https://money.cnn.com/2014/06/11/news/economy/middle-class-wealth/index.html.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-72385975603673655222019-02-28T22:44:00.000-05:002019-03-02T10:52:57.828-05:00Libertarianism: The Crazytown Where Far Right And Far Left Meet <div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I know I’ve commented upon the hopelessly confused and unhelpful doctrine of “libertarianism” a number of times now but I recently saw another article in the paper touching on that unfortunate ideology so I thought that might be a good excuse to spend a few more minutes on the issue. Not the sort of thing I want to do very often mind you. Once in a blue moon seems more than sufficient. But good to cover all the bases every once in a while.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The article in question involved a young American man going by the name John Galton, which is apparently also the name of a character in some old Ayn Rand novel. You remember Ayn Rand don’t you? The anti-social novelist, folk philosopher, and enabler and cheerleader of the egocentric and self obsessed? Darling of conservative Republican politicians such as Rand Paul from the great state of Kentucky? Yes, Mr. Paul once said he was so enthralled by Ms. Rand’s writings as a young man they were the main reason he got into politics in the first place. More recently he was in the papers walking that back as they say. Of course, Republican politicians are famously dishonest so who knows what his story may be next week. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. He’s not the only one by any means. But to return to our story, it seems Mr. Galton (the real one; not the fictitious one) had recently fled drug charges here in the USA along with his girlfriend to set up house in Acapulco, Mexico and was shortly thereafter shot and killed by what one can only presume were members of some rival Mexican drug operation. According to the article, Mr. Galton envisioned himself as a sort of prophet of entrepreneurship freed from the constraints of the nation-state. He opined in an interview taxation was theft and bristled at the notion of obeying the law. As far as the nature of his entrepreneurial business activities, he apparently ran what the papers described as a “marijuana laboratory.” However, he also taught classes on “cryptocurrencies,” which I read somewhere is the preferred means of exchange among such people. He noted in an interview “he had always had libertarian leanings” but got excited about anarchism per se while in prison, which suggests he at least had some sort of distinction in his mind between the two philosophies although what it may have been is anyone’s guess as I’ll discuss a little later. His girlfriend on the other hand was described in the article as having been raised by anti-government “hippie” parents ironically dependent on food stamps. She became interested in politics while in college but realized politics “weren’t changing anything,” so she dropped out and took up with Mr. Galton. Young people are funny that way, aren’t they? I wonder what her timeline for politics to change things was anyway? Sometime between the summer and fall semesters? After the beach weekend but before the big campus beer bash? Some of us have been trying to change things for decades and still haven’t given up. Anyway, that was the whole story really. Not all that unique if you think about it. Basically some people wanted to live outside the law and got their wish but ended up being what law-abiding citizens would call murdered by criminals. Happens all the time. But I suppose these people talked it up a bit more than usual, so maybe that’s why it’s a little more interesting than when a local teen from the wrong side of the tracks joins a drug gang and ends up getting shot behind the old liquor store or something like that.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So let me just deliver my customary commentary on this so-called “libertarianism.” It seems to me there are two forms of libertarianism or maybe three if one wants to count the indistinct region between the two separately. First, we have the libertarianism that is really just plain old economic conservatism just not explained very well. Economic conservatism of course is the notion that government should only do certain things, address certain functions, and if it does those things and those things only then everyone and everything will be just fine. These functions turn out to be the things that benefit people who make out well under our current version of a market system, so things like property rights, law enforcement, national defense, and maybe a few other things. The idea comes from either the conviction our existing distributional system is ideal and any potential departure immoral or the notion that all manner of unfortunate unintended consequences will occur if anyone tampers with our existing system so even though it may have a few flaws we need to maintain it as though our lives depended upon it. It’s fine as far as it goes. I consider it hopelessly simplistic and indeed ignorant in the sense that it is sometimes presented as following from or implied by economic theory, which if one looks into it is not the case at all. (Check out my tab on Economics with Hansel if you’re interested in how that happens.) But that’s not my issue here today. If you’re an out and proud conservative you’re ahead of the game as far as my thesis in this post goes. No, what I’m interested in here is what happens when people who don’t really understand the basis of economic conservatism take the extra step of proclaiming themselves “libertarians.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">One thing that tends to happen when people start talking in terms of libertarianism rather than conservatism is they begin to have difficulty perceiving the nature of distributional issues, that is, in the issue of how to resolve conflicts of desires between different people. The way a sensible person looks at such things is to say if two people have conflicting wants or needs or desires then we need some way to resolve that conflict so we make laws that govern distributions: property rights, market institutions, etc. If someone comes along and points out what he or she feels are ethical issues then of course we’re certainly willing to entertain their ideas and potentially revise the rules. What happens when so-called libertarians look at these issues is that they are so thoroughly committed or convinced of the rectitude of existing distributional arrangements they see the issue as whether whoever currently has the legal right to do something should have the “liberty” to carry on or whether some scoundrel will interfere with their liberty to do so. For example if we imagine a little two person world where let’s say we distribute all resources by who is shorter and the taller of the two consequently kicks the bucket from want most of us would sit down and say maybe we need to rethink that particular distributional system. We wouldn’t think of it in terms of liberty per se. When a libertarian looks at this issue he or she will think something like look we’ve already decided the shorter person gets all the resources so the only thing left to talk about is whether the shorter person will have the liberty to use those resources as he or she feels fit or whether the taller person or his or her agents will be able to unfairly interfere with the short person’s liberty. Basically it does something akin to assuming the conclusion of the discussion we’re meant to be having. In other words, this form of libertarianism is intellectually empty. It doesn’t actually add anything to the conversation. It just passes issues along. The justification for the underlying distribution assumed as a given within the libertarian system isn’t being derived within libertarianism. The justification has nothing to do with liberty in the abstract. They don’t present arguments showing we would have more total liberty if one person got the resources than if the other person got those resources. To discuss the underlying distributional issues sensibly you’d have to ignore the “libertarian” red herring entirely and move on to the conventionally conservative element, that is, what’s so great about the distributional mechanism we have right now anyway? Why is the claim of one person for whatever it is ethically stronger than the other fellow’s? How do markets really distribute goods and services and does it really correspond to what we consider ethical?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Where libertarianism as confused conservatism begins to devolve into anarchism is when libertarians sidestep not only the moral issues involved in addressing and resolving distributional issues but also the role of government power in enforcing those arrangements. In some ways this might again be thought of as a confused or not very well explained form of conservatism. Conservatives after all are famous for saying things like they want to “minimize government” despite the fact they want government to fulfill certain important functions they find important such as enforcing property rights. It’s an inherently confusing way of talking. What they should say is they feel government should be restricted to those functions they support. Because when one says minimize of course there’s no real reason we can’t minimize government entirely and create anarchy. Indeed, the essential difference in this context between conventional conservatives and libertarians is that conservatives recognize when they talk about “minimizing” government they’re simply talking rhetorically and what they really mean is minimize to the extent consistent with government fulfilling the functions they want it to fulfill. And those aren’t small or minor functions by any measure. Having government power enforcing property rights implies government involvement of a sort in every transaction and of course the entire mechanism of enforcing those relationships: police, judicial systems, prisons, etc. With libertarianism these important government functions recede so far into the background and become so invisible and taken for granted and unrecognized and so immune to discussion that many libertarians lose sight of them altogether and start talking about really minimizing government to the greatest extent possible, that is, eliminating it. In other words they become indistinguishable from anarchists. Why don’t conservatives express the notion of “minimizing government” differently to avoid the sort of confusion that leads to the sort of libertarianism that equates to anarchism? Probably because everyone thinks government should be “minimized” to those functions they think are important. Liberals and leftists think that every bit as much as conservatives. It’s not really a distinctive position. All the substance, the contentious bit, is a step back from that and involves what those functions are and why one thinks or doesn’t think government has a role. The whole libertarian canard appears most likely the result of a rhetorical ploy meant to exaggerate the differences between conservatives and liberals, avoid discussing the real issues, and avoid drawing attention to the role of government power in the conservative view of the ideal society. Libertarianism is basically the unholy offspring of the unfortunate underhanded way some conservatives choose to disguise and defend their values.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">And what’s the inevitable and entirely predictable result of some conservatives’ inability to talk straight and possibly even to think straight about distributional issues and the resulting bit of confusion known as libertarianism? We get people like the recently deceased John Galton: conservatives who become attracted to “libertarian” claptrap and from there are drawn inexorably into the anti-social pie-in-the-sky nonsense of anarchism formerly associated mainly with the most unrealistic and utopian of what in the past anyway was conventionally considered leftist hippiedom. Sad to think how much harm mainstream conservatives are willing to inflict on other people rather than do what liberals and leftists have always done: argue honestly and transparently for their values.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">An American ‘crypto-anarchist’ fled the country. He was just killed in Mexico’s ‘Murder Capital.’ Isaac Stanley-Becker. The Washington Post. February 4, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/02/04/an-american-crypto-anarchist-fled-country-he-was-just-killed-mexicos-murder-capital/?utm_term=.0fa91cdafd3a.</span></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-23873734469809388732019-02-14T19:08:00.003-05:002020-09-26T15:56:27.096-04:00On Love And Money<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Ah yes, good old Valentine’s Day. One of my favorite holidays. What’s not to like? A holiday celebrating romantic love or I suppose more broadly any sort of love, surely one of the noblest of human emotions. Or is that a matter of debate? How sad to read in the papers today an opinion piece lamenting what the author of the article suggested was an </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">increasing absence of romantic love here in the USA particularly among young people, formerly and traditionally most susceptible to such things. Searching for answers the article touched on our addiction to the mind numbing plague of social media and our possibly consequent ignorant and ill-tempered public discourse before settling on what the author felt was the most likely culprit: an increasingly fear-based culture in which the goal of all parents is to shield their very special progeny from any potential setback or harm be it physical, psychological, or emotional. Seems somewhat plausible to me. People do seem to fret and worry about things a lot more than I remember from my own childhood but maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. Has been known to happen now and then. And of course under the still dominant conservative perspective the prevailing attitude for several decades now has been everyone is very, very special indeed and the main goal in life is to prevent other people interfering with the majestic display of one’s own remarkable ego. Not exactly the sort of attitude that would make one sympathetic to romantic love, which inevitably involves allowing someone else to play such a prominent role in the story of one’s own life. However, I would like to throw my hat in the ring and suggest another likely culprit also emanating from the same conservative cultural currents: greed.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Why makes me think that? A night at the theater. A little while ago now I was watching a play entitled The Heiress by Ruth and Augustus Goetz based on the short novel Washington Square by Henry James. It’s been around a while. A revival of a play from 1947 based on a novel from 1880. A sort of classic I suppose, but I don’t meant that in the stodgy negative way. Sometimes classics become so for very sound reasons, don’t you find? Well, I thought so in this case anyway. It made me think, which I suppose must be one of the few acceptable reasons to spend a night at the theater. The story involved a plain and socially awkward but very rich young lady who could not or would not reconcile herself to the fact that her wealth was one of her most attractive assets and indeed perhaps her only asset as far as prospective suitors are concerned. She turns on her father when he basically tells her so rather too bluntly perhaps while trying to protect her or her fortune at least from a probable gold digger of a suitor and then turns on the suitor who left abruptly when he thought she might not get a large chunk of her inheritance but returns to pick up where he left off when it turns out she does. After repudiating both father and suitor the young woman apparently resolves to fulfill her own prophecy that she will never find or indeed apparently again even seek true love. The chilling ending has her rejecting the suitor in no uncertain terms and comfortably ensconced in her mansion ascending the stairs to her bedroom alone, pausing at the top flight to bid her aunt (and the audience) good night, then blowing out the candle leaving herself (and the theater) in utter darkness. I found it tragic but also thought provoking. Was the young lady right to renounce romantic love unless entirely free from material considerations? Or was she as her aunt suggested unnecessarily consigning herself to a life without romance by simply expecting too much of other people? Was consideration of her fortune really any more egregious than consideration of another’s ephemeral good looks or unreliable popularity or what have you? Was she right to hate her father because he told her what he believed to be the truth? That she had little to attract suitors beyond her fortune? Or was she too easily convinced by her father and this one suitor no love would ever be proffered were it not for her fortune? Or is that wishful thinking on my part? Grasping for straws? </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Seemed to me some pretty serious stuff going on at the denouement but to my surprise a good portion of the audience burst into laughter. It took a while but eventually it dawned on me what they saw was probably a simple revenge story with a timely girl power twist. Some men were mean to a young woman and she got mean in return. She told men to take a hike. Get outta here! And she kept all the money. A happy ending for all. Seems the question of true love never entered the equation or if it did then in the age old battle of money or love money won handily this time around. No contest really. Was it always so? Certainly seems a traditional theme, right? That material wealth is real. It’s tangible. It’s what any sensible person wants. Love is a fantasy. It’s not real. It’s ephemeral. It’s strictly for fools or simpletons. According to the old song a diamond, not another person, is a girl’s best friend. I guess I’m just an old softy at heart because I don’t think so. Indeed, I’d put it the other way round. For me, love is ultimately what’s most important and valuable in life. Receiving love is always nice to be sure but what’s more crucial by far in terms of bringing meaning to life is the bestowing of love. And when you give your love to another person you inevitably give up something, you put something in jeopardy, you can no longer live as though you were the only person in the world. Your finances may take a hit. In direct contradiction to the conservative credo greed no longer appears so good. But it’s not only that. Your waistline may take a hit. Your busy schedule may take a hit. Your habits of a lifetime may take a hit. That’s what must happen when you attach significance to another person. It’s no longer all </span>about <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">the Great I but the Great We. Love strikes me as the true basis of human society and inevitably the first casualty when one adopts the inhuman anti-social egotism and greed of conservative ideology.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So going back to the play and funny reactions it occurs to me now perhaps all I was witnessing was a difference in perspectives between the conservatives and the liberals in the audience. Between those doggedly devoted to their own financial situation and those who while perhaps having their share of self regard also appreciated the power and beauty of true love. Don’t really know for sure. Just some random thoughts on this most romantic of holidays. I suppose we could investigate. I could hardly ask anyone to repudiate love; that would be immoral. But we could try the other tack. So let me throw down a challenge. If you consider yourself a conservative declare your love for another and really mean it. Act accordingly. See if it changes your perspective at all. I’m banking it will. Let’s see the play again next year. Will you laugh and cheer at the amusing spectacle of a young woman renouncing love to protect her fortune? Or will you see a horrible human tragedy instead? Will you perhaps detect the ultimate basis of liberalism and leftism in a concern for others, or will you remain forever obsessed with your own situation and view others as only a threat to one’s fortune? Devoted to the unfettered freedom of the Great I? Greed as the ultimate good? Only time will tell. But I like my chances. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The U.S. is in a crisis of love.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Arthur Brooks.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The Washington Post.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">February 13, 2019.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-is-in-a-crisis-of-love/2019/02/13/06b92e3e-2ef1-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c_story.html?utm_term=.5dcfdba5a3cb.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-43803210574335716922019-01-24T20:28:00.002-05:002021-07-27T01:23:51.953-04:00Theory v Reality Quantum Physics Edition<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I was watching an episode of the popular science program Nova the other day and I was rather surprised to end up with the uneasy suspicion the academic brainiacs and eminent eggheads I was watching on the tube were making epistemological errors similar to those I’ve previously ascribed to religious conservatives in the sense of confusing the world with their stories about the world. Can’t be real can it? Must simply be the result of my lack of familiarity with contemporary physics or at least my inability to comprehend the information the program was trying to impart? Or maybe it wasn</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">t me at all. Maybe the usually reliable program fell down for once and just didn’t explain things very clearly? Well, it’s a fun sort of issue to talk about so maybe this time out we can have a little holiday from my usual preoccupation with the most unfortunate anti-social philosophy around today, the multi-headed monster of contemporary conservatism, as championed here in the USA by the Republican Party and their current champion President Trump. Let’s play amateur scientist for the day shall we? Might at least be useful as a little exercise in the ways popular explanations of scientifically complex ideas can sometimes run off the rails.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">According to the program the theory of quantum physics involves the notion sub-atomic particles do not really “exist” in any conventional sense except as a “cloud of probabilities” prior to being observed or measured, a concept the program portrayed visually with the particles starting out as fart-like clouds of vapor that snap into focus to become fancy decorative light bulbs when we get around to measuring them. Turns out for reasons the program did not fully explain the mathematics associated with quantum physics suggests one can create two particles or groups of particles or whatever the heck it was, not important here so let’s just say particles, from a single source that will be related in such a way that if you measure one of the particles hence causing it to spring into existence and assume certain properties the related particle will also spring into existence and assume the same properties. This theoretical phenomenon is called “quantum entanglement” and was portrayed as implying one could manipulate one particle and have the effect apply automatically and instantaneously to the related particle no matter the distance involved, thus contradicting conventional notions of space and time. This intriguing state of affairs was illustrated a number of times with the image of a stage magician flipping over a card at one end of a table and having a similar card simultaneously flip over at the other end of the table as if by magic. Our amazing capacity to now cause things to happen instantaneously over vast distances led to all manner of rather inadequately explained speculations about the unreality of the observed world and so on. The whole thing was done in a breathless “isn’t physics weird and hard to understand?” manner I found more irritating than educational.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">A refreshing dose of boring convention appeared in the form of some old quotes from Albert Einstein, who appears to have remained </span>unimpressed<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> with quantum physics throughout his lifetime opining instead we apparently don’t yet understand some things about subatomic particles. He rejected the notion they don’t really exist in any conventional sense until we measure them with the quip, “Do you really believe that the moon isn’t there when nobody looks?” He derisively referred to the idea we could ever instantaneously affect particles over great distances using the postulated quantum entanglements as “spooky action at a distance.” Sounded rather sensible to me. Although the quotes were introduced in the context of the ascendency of quantum physics and how special it was that even Mr. Einstein couldn’t get it I was left with the uneasy feeling that when someone like Albert Einstein wants to tell you something about physics one might do well to hear him out.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Interestingly the program then made a very big deal about a historical experiment that supposedly settled the dispute once and for all. Seems some physicists created pairs of particles from a source, put them through filters, and showed they were statistically more similar to one another than one would have expected without quantum physics. This supposedly sealed the case in favor of quantum physics and we were off to the races with stage magicians flipping cards all over the place and academics explaining how we apparently live inside a soccer ball of illusion while reality plays out on the surface.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I was prepared to be astounded. I waited to be astounded. I wanted to be astounded. Alas, I must admit feeling distinctly underwhelmed. I just wasn</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">t getting it. It seemed to me all the experiment showed was we can create pairs of particles that are more similar than we would have expected without quantum theory so apparently the theory is picking up something. It certainly didn’t show anything satisfyingly weird like the particles turned out to be always identical. Just a bit more similar than we would have otherwise expected. And it certainly didn’t illustrate what I thought we were talking about: spooky action at a distance. </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I suppose if one accepts the notion both particles didn</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">t exist except as metaphorical farts until we caused one to exist properly by partially measuring it in the sense of putting it through a filter then the spooky action at a distance would be the entangled particle simultaneously springing into existence or taking concrete form or whatever and going through the same filter more often then we would have otherwise expected.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But wasn’t the notion these particle don’t really exist until we measure them part of the issue Mr. Einstein had with the whole enterprise?</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Wouldn’t we see the same thing if we were simply creating somewhat similar particles for reasons we don’t fully understand then discovering the similarity when we measured them?</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Wouldn’t that be the simplest explanation?</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">If someone wanted a really conclusive experiment wouldn’t it have made more sense to have manipulated the particles in some way beyond simply measuring them so we could unambiguously see the effect occurring simultaneously in the quantum entangled particle some distance away as advertised?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Leaving all reasonable questions unanswered the program then abruptly changed gears to explain the theoretical debate was all over now anyway because quantum physics was already being used in all sorts of practical commercial applications. Seemed a bit odd. Why the sudden hurry to jump to the conclusion? Did the studio catch fire? I suppose it would have been fine if they had shown people were already using spooky action at a distance so it was all proven in action but again I didn’t see anything like that. Honestly. I looked. I was interested. I said, “Show me the spooky action!” What I got was a Chinese scientist talking about encrypted data and a Google engineer talking about quantum computing. Great, but how do those technologies actually work? I was left wondering if perhaps they were simply taking advantage of our ability to create particles that are similar in ways and for reasons we don’t fully understand rather than actually acting on one particle and having the effect apply instantaneously to a quantum entangled particle some distance away. Bummer. I guess it doesn’t matter that much. A partial theory is certainly better than none and if it allows us to do something practical then that’s what will happen although hopefully it won’t blow up in our faces later for reasons we don’t understand. I’m fine with that. But I did feel a bit like someone was trying to pull a fast one on me. The old bait and switch.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I ended up with the familiar feeling some people will go to great lengths to avoid saying they don’t know something and will happily jump between the world and their ideas about the world to bridge the gap.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Ignorant uneducated religious conservatives do it all the time.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">They have a convenient and appealing story for everything they see no matter how unlikely or fanciful that story may be.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But I think maybe it’s not just them.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Going to the far side of the galaxy some spectacularly intelligent and educated people appear loathe to admit there is anything their theories </span>can</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">t<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span>explain<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> and I suspect may also conflate theory and reality or anyway jump confusingly between the two.</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But as I said maybe this was all simply an artifact of my own lack of education or intellectual limitations or perhaps an unfortunate encounter with a flawed presentation of an admittedly complicated idea.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> Well, o</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">ne day I’ll straighten it all out.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But for now wouldn’t it be grand to be able to do things at one location and have the effect apply instantaneously billions of miles away?</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">We may need that kind of technology if we’re ever going to get to distant galaxies and so on.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> Or can we already do that? It</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">s a done deal right? Oh never mind. I don</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">t really know what we’re talking about at this </span>point<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">. I think I</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">ll just wait for the update. </span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-5848751619277095752019-01-10T19:23:00.000-05:002020-04-28T17:18:59.361-04:00Handouts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Can we talk about handouts? I was reading some online comments the other day to just remind myself how conservatives talk about economic issues and one recurring theme or perhaps more accurately meme involved the idea of opposing “handouts” as for example in the phrase “the reason I consider myself a conservative is that I don’t like handouts.” Seems reasonable. Who likes handouts? Maybe I should be a conservative. However, it then occurred to me that like much of conservative ideology the proposition as stated is empty rhetoric with all the substance existing only in the unstated details. It’s rather like people who defend their ethical beliefs on the grounds they believe in supporting “goodness” misleadingly implying those who disagree with them must support “badness” and leaving it up to critical readers to take the logical and necessary next step of asking what exactly they mean by goodness. Because of course real ethical debates are never or seldom about supporting or not supporting goodness in the abstract are they? They’re about differences in how one defines what is good, what behaviors one considers good. That’s what creates the problems. Seems similar to what we have with this concept of a handout. One isn’t really saying anything at all when one proclaims one’s opposition to handouts unless one takes the next step and explains what one has in mind and why one opposes them. Absent that it’s really just an empty gesture, a bold stand against all the straw men supporting handouts.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So let’s get a bit into the details of what we might be talking about when we talk about handouts shall we? For me the word “handout” has a pejorative ring to it that suggests something that is not ethically justified. As such, I would suggest it’s impossible to separate the concept of a “handout” from one’s thoughts on distributional issues. That is to say, I think the most reasonable interpretation of a handout is a distributional result that one feels does not have proper ethical justification. As such I would suggest a generally market-based system of the sort we have here in the USA is rife with handouts. Assuming one believes the distribution of economic power should have something to do with the behavior of the individuals in question the biggest handout of all would have to be our traditional system of inheritance. By setting up a legal system in which one’s economic power depends on parentage rather than personal merit we’re basically setting up a system based on handouts to arguably undeserving people. Another common sort of handout would be the sort of nepotism one sees in family owned companies in which owners install their offspring in management positions no matter their relative merit. Again, it certainly appears to be a system of handouts allocating economic power in a way that has no convincing justification in terms of individual merit. Another sort of handout would be tax codes that favor the wealthy both indirectly by giving them a tax bill smaller in terms of practical hardship or disutility than the tax bill for the less well off and also directly by allowing them various deductions and write-offs that can reduce their tax bill to zero as was apparently and famously the case for our resident billionaire president Mr. Trump. More expansively I have to wonder if distributional results based on anything beyond individual effort are entirely justified on an ethical basis and hence a form of handout. Let’s take inborn talents or abilities like intelligence. Although they presumably allow one to contribute more per unit of effort one needn’t do anything particularly noteworthy or laudable to receive such gifts of nature so why exactly should they be rewarded by our distributional system? Perhaps even the returns on inborn talents and abilities are in the nature of a handout when considered in terms of individual merit as opposed to contribution to society? So, yes, like many online conservatives I suppose I also consider myself to oppose handouts, which is simply to say I think our distributional system should have some ethical justification although the exact principles may be open to discussion. But in my case my opposition to handouts leads me to reject rather than endorse conservatism. Odd isn’t it?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Now of course one suspects although one can never be certain many conservatives would disagree with my examples of handouts. Presumably they believe those distributional mechanisms and results are entirely justified in ethical terms. What they tend to have in mind is an entirely different category of distributional policies typically departing from either our existing distributional arrangements or some favored subset of those mechanisms typically what they consider market arrangements. So for example if we as a society vote to provide a poor person with publicly funded medical care then many conservatives likely believe that person has received a handout of exactly the sort they oppose. Although I can see some reasonable ethical debate might be involved I would suggest health care may be something we might consider a public good and available to all so in this example I would oppose classifying such results as handouts and see them instead as perfectly justified distributional policy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I’ve tried to think a bit about other definitions of the word “handout” that don’t involve the thorny ethical component. The only real alternative I was able to come up with is that despite the pejorative ring one may interpret the word “handout” to refer to anything that alters </span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">what would otherwise happen under whatever distributional arrangements we have in place. For example let’s say we set up a system whereby all profits from more efficient production go to CEOs and stockholders, but some workers organize and demand and receive a share. I suppose in that case one might say workers managed to get a “handout” not in the sense they did something devoid of possible ethical justification but simply that they ended up with more than they would normally have gotten under existing distributional arrangements. In that case, opposing “handouts” would translate to opposing any alteration of the existing distributional patterns no matter how ethically justified or unjustified those arrangements may be. That’s fine. In that case what I just described as handouts from my perspective would not be handouts and the non-handouts I hypothesized might be considered handouts from a conservative prospective would be handouts. So it solves that problem. But of course in that case the sentiment that one “opposes handouts” seems oddly amoral. One is saying one supports the results of current distributional arrangement regardless of whether they’re ethically justified or not. Seems a bit odd. Indeed, it’s hard for me to interpret such a statement without inferring some implication that supporting whatever distributional arrangement one happens to have has its own ethical significance in the sense that regardless of whether it’s good or bad or ethical or not it’s what we have and the most important overriding ethical principle is to not alter whatever we have. But honestly I can’t imagine anyone taking such an ethical principle seriously.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So let’s summarize. Everyone with ethical beliefs relating to distributions, so let</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">s just say everyone, will naturally dislike handouts defined as distributional changes having no ethical justification, so expressing one’s disdain for handouts is essentially expressing nothing at all. The real difference between liberals and conservatives does not involve how they feel about handouts in the abstract but what they feel constitute handouts, and getting to that issue involves discussing distributional issues. In other words, what we have with the conservative complaint against handouts is basically yet another instance of conservatives wanting to argue in favor of their distributional beliefs without doing the hard work of actually presenting relevant arguments. As such it’s rather similar to the standard misinterpretation of economic theory I’m always banging on about by which economic theory is made to appear to address or even resolve distributional issues it never really could. Indeed, it’s hard to avoid the feeling one of the founding ideas behind conservative ideology is to always avoid discussing distributional issues plainly and honestly. That to me is reason enough to fight against conservative ideology. We can discuss any distributional issues we like but let’s hold the line against any dishonest and manipulative ideology that tries to argue about distributional issues in indirect and misleading ways rather than honestly and honorably after the fashion of liberals and leftists.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-416292783786408004.post-49270655060604287702018-12-30T21:02:00.002-05:002018-12-31T12:16:48.940-05:00Happy New Year 2019<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Welcome friends!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Well, looks we made it through another year and not the best we’ve seen that’s for sure. I suppose for the sake of tradition I should deliver an optimistic greeting of the new year but honestly with Lord Voldemort still entrenched in the White House, his fanatically loyal death eaters controlling the Senate, and dementors from the frozen wastes of Durmstrang helping the Dark Lord’s oleaginous minions in the Ministry of Misinformation exert their dark influence over the army of witless, greedy, bigoted, drug addled muggles of the worst sort imaginable who make up a rather alarming portion of the American population, I can’t really even muster the strength to give a hearty show of optimism right now. (Yes, it was yet another Harry Potter Weekend at my house over the holidays. I suppose the latest installment must be in theaters but really without the cute kids cavorting about what’s the point?) So let’s keep it real and resolve to just do our best to get through 2019 some old way and do what we can to bring about a happier 2020. This year I thought I’d use my end of the year post to tackle some interesting issues raised by Larry the Cable Guy in a holiday movie offering from some years ago now: Jingle All the Way 2. Yes, I watch way too much TV.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">If you’re never seen the movie in question, which I can readily understand, I can tell you it’s a bit of generally harmless albeit forgettable family fluff featuring a sanitized and unrealistically benign version of a conservative American redneck in the form of the aforementioned Larry. Although it’s quite clear the sort of person Larry is meant to represent he certainly isn’t very similar to any real redneck I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet and let me tell you I’ve met a few in my lifetime. Did I mention I lived for some time in the great American interior? Well, I did, and Larry is much less unreasonable, rude, bigoted, violent, drunken, and just in general offensive than any real American redneck you’re likely to encounter on let’s say a road trip through the great American Midwest or South. But on the other hand the character is clearly not cut from whole cloth either. There is a kernel of authenticity there that allows potential insight into this most confounding and disturbing of American subcultures.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The plot such as it was involved the divorced Larry competing for his young daughter’s affection against her wily, scheming, and incidentally very rich new step father. Shortly before the big day they both mistakenly come to believe the little girl requires a certain toy for Christmas and the rich jerk promptly tries to buy and hoard all locally available instances of the object in question so he and he alone can present the coveted prize. Hilarity or at least mild amusement ensues as he and Larry do battle. Turns out the preternaturally angelic daughter had no such crass materialistic wishes. Silly adults. No, it was all a big misunderstanding. The kid didn’t want a toy: she just wanted everyone to be happy. The end. Kind of cute in a weird sort of way. But the plot wasn’t really the interesting bit for me. No, the interesting bit was a scene near the end in which Larry and the evil step dad engage in some verbal sparring that touched on the sort of distributional issues I find interesting but so few other people appear to do, although I guess in this case the writers thought enough people might be interested they wrote it into the script, which is weird. I wonder? Am I just not bringing it up the right way? Too serious? Oh well. In the words of the old song I’ve got to be me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">To get back to the movie, Larry’s contribution to the discussion in question involved two noteworthy lines of argument. First, he suggested the reason he was struggling economically compared to his wealthy opponent was that he simply chose to not work very hard and indeed only part time to have more time for fishing and his daughter. He rejected the insinuation or really I suppose preempted the insinuation this lifestyle choice rendered him in any way inferior to the rich guy, for example in terms of discharging his responsibilities to society, by noting he “pays his taxes” like anyone else and has never taken a “handout” from anyone. He chooses to be poor and is happy he has the freedom to do so. Second, he clarified he doesn’t “begrudge” the rich guy his relative wealth and power; indeed, he’s happy for the guy. They’re just two different people living different sorts of lives. No class conflict here! It’s the sort of philosophy or perspective one supposes might appeal not only to rich Americans who likely wish all the poor people of the USA could be as sensible as Larry but also and this is the interesting bit for me the many poor people in the USA and elsewhere who seem never to mind when rich people arguably take advantage of them every way possible. So let’s break it down a bit and let’s see where the disconnect is coming from.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The first thing that jumps out at me is the very specific basis of Larry’s relative poverty. He simply chooses to not work very hard. Tomorrow he could presumably choose to work hard and be rich, or so he appears to believe. It’s an interesting coincidence this most unlikely and implausible scenario is the one that provides what most people would surely consider the most ethically plausible case for economic inequality. Larry’s situation has nothing to do with the myriad of factors outside his immediate control that may nonetheless apply in other people’s economic situations that make the issue of wealth inequality so ethically vexing for some people, so for example nothing involving his innate talents or abilities, his intelligence, his physical, mental, or emotional health, his early childhood experiences and environment, the quality of his early education or lack thereof, his family’s emotional and intellectual support and wealth and connections, government policies such as tax policies, macroeconomic trends particularly at various significant moments of his life, unpredictable changes in technology, etc. The troubling thing of course is that one rather suspects although Larry may believe his relative poverty is entirely a matter of his own choosing he might one day decide to give wealth a try and find out otherwise. One can’t help but suspect Larry’s psyche may be on rather thin ice. One hopes for his sake he sticks with fishing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The second noteworthy element to Larry’s worldview is he appears to accept the distributional system in place so completely and uncritically it never even occurs to him to challenge it. When he explains his acceptance of the rich guy’s relative economic power he doesn’t say he accepts the ethical argument in favor of that result but that he doesn’t “begrudge” the man his situation. Although the word “begrudge” can imply simply looking upon something with displeasure the usual connotation is that the displeasure is not rooted in one’s ethical beliefs but envy. One doesn’t typically say something like one begrudges the wealth of a thief who just made off with one’s money; one might object to it or oppose it or whatever but generally something a little more forthright than begrudge. So although open to interpretation Larry’s language certainly make it sound as though he thinks the only reason he might conceivably object to the rich guy’s relative economic is the unfortunate emotion of envy. This is surely a common view of rich people absolutely convinced of the ethical basis of their wealth no matter how they may have come upon it but it is always somewhat noteworthy coming from a poor person. One can’t help but wonder if Larry is simply aping the rich fellow’s worldview and trying to head off a likely retort or criticism or if he really cannot imagine harboring any more substantive objection to the man’s relative economic power. The latter possibility seems particularly unlikely in this case because the movie makes clear the rich fellow in question was basically born into his position by inheriting the family business, gives no indication the man engaged in any particularly laudable behavior to keep it going, and makes it quite clear the man used his economic power in what many people would probably consider a rather unethical way, to manipulate the market to harm the father’s relationship with his daughter. One might reasonably suspect all is not as it should be but not Larry.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">It’s the same story with Larry’s other claim to dignity. He proudly proclaims he dutifully “pays his taxes” but evinces no particular concern at all about what those taxes are, who devised the tax system, or how much he pays relative to other for example wealthier people. It’s just a part of the distributional background. Taxes appear. He pays them. That’s his claim to dignity. Just the sort of person rich people devising a tax code would surely most appreciate. </span>One<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> hopes he can </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">continue to pay his taxes in the future.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It’s a similar story when it comes to claiming his share of the output of the government sector. Larry takes great pride in never having accepted a “handout.” But one does have some concerns. Might he consider public services funded by his and other’s taxes handouts? What if he pays less in real terms than another person, let’s say a rich person? Would he then be accepting a handout from that person? Is he therefore a supporter of those non-graduated flat income tax schemes in which rich and poor pay the same tax so that proportionately the opportunity cost of the tax is many multiples higher for the poor than the rich? Or does he solve the issue some other way say by rejecting or avoiding all public services paid for by taxes? Does he for example drive only on toll roads? Does he turn up his nose at public parks and other amenities? Does he distrust the police and instead pay for protection from local street thugs? Even then may he have benefited from minimum wage laws or consumer protection or worker health and safety regulations that arguably raise the price of goods for other people? Is he indirectly receiving what amounts to handouts from his fellow consumers? Has his dignity been wounded without his ever realizing it? Or is whatever we’re doing now just fine and not a handout but if we do anything more then the increment would represent a handout? One can’t help but suspect Larry is again on shaky ground. One hopes he never inquires too deeply about how real societies work or the pros and cons of real market systems and so on. But again isn’t Larry’s worldview the sort any rich person concerned to combat incipient socialism might appreciate? How annoying for them when poor people start going about asking for ethically unjustified handouts in the form of government services.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">We’ve been having some fun with Larry thus far but let’s not just do the easy bit shall we? Let’s flip it around and look at the one plausible aspect of Larry’s worldview: the notion that one very legitimate reason for economic inequality including even extreme economic inequality is that some people may be willing to do certain things society values while other people may not. That does sound like a legitimate and plausible distributional view. If someone simply isn’t interested in working on anything society values doesn’t it make sense he or she would receive nothing from society in compensation or if he or she did then only in the form of handouts based on charity rather than any plausible ethical claim? We’ve already discussed the fallacy involved in assuming there’s something ethically special about the pattern of demand for labor falling out of any random distribution of economic power at least from the perspective of economic theory, but let’s say we address that problem and set up a distributional system we think allocates economic power in a way we think is fair, which may or may not correspond to what we have right now. What if even under those conditions someone simply doesn’t wish to participate? Surely he or she should have that choice even if it leads to relative poverty. In that sense an ethical distributional system that reflects the value we place on freedom would arguably need to leave room for possibly even extreme economic inequality, which suggests that when liberals discuss what they see as the problem of economic inequality they really should be a lot more specific and in particular talk about economic inequality resulting from certain unacceptable sources. That’s actually a pretty useful insight I think. One may not suppose Larry’s situation is very common and that few poor people simply choose poverty but one should be aware that for some other people this is the one and only scenario </span>that<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> springs </span>naturally to their minds. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">We could just end it there but maybe we should quickly consider what the argument against economic inequality even from this particular source might look like just for shits and giggles. We’re talking about the market power of other people under what we consider an equitable and ethically correct distribution setting up a certain pattern of demand for labor and someone rejecting those incentives so to make it most plausible let’s imagine someone whose innate talents and abilities and education and so on suggests he or she can best contribute to society’s collective demand by digging ditches but who decides instead to go write poetry on a windswept hilltop. Well, I suppose that’s the genteel version of the issue. At this juncture we could equally imagine someone who insists upon smoking crack and playing video games or writing snarky blog posts all day long. Doesn’t matter. The funny thing of course is that some people with such inclinations would in fact be perfectly capable of engaging in their chosen lifestyle without any particular hardship, for example, people who inherited a big old pot of money, while </span>others <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">might experience a bit more difficulty pulling it off. One’s feelings on this state of affairs must depend in part I suppose on one’s opinion about the fairness of the distributional policies that make such results possible, in this case inheritance, and in that sense perhaps the notion one may have concerns contradicts my assumption of an ethical distributional system. I suppose if one wanted a system based more on individual merit and less on fate or accident of birth and one wanted everyone to start life with the same range of choices then perhaps one might consider eliminating inheritance or maybe instituting one of those minimum income arrangements as I understand some countries have tried relatively recently. However, I suspect there may be an argument even beyond distributing freedom fairly. Let’s say for example one attributes some value to whatever the person is doing that is not currently recognized by the market as particularly valuable, video game playing seems unlikely but maybe writing snarky blog posts or poetry or more generally writing or philosophizing or making art. In that case one may have some reservations about a system in which only spoiled rich kids engage in such activities. One may wonder if society may gain some sort of benefit if other people were given similar opportunities to follow their talents and inclinations even when they prove inconsistent with current market incentives. Again, I suppose we’d be talking about eliminating inheritance or instituting minimum incomes or at least programs for aspiring writers and artists and so on but maybe not based on conventional notions of talent or merit so we don’t lose the sense of going against the grain.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Not trying to resolve anything here of course.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I never am really.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Just talking.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Remarking.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Commenting.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Why?</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It’s interesting.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">We don’t want to end up sounding like a comical simple-minded cartoon character like Larry do we?</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Well, if you agree you’re in luck because I have every intention of returning in the new year with plenty of random thoughts and observations to get the old neurons fired up and working again.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> Happy new year my brothers and sisters!</span></div>
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