First of all, I’m sorry to be so late in posting. The bug from yesterday has now added nausea, which makes writing (and anything else) way too much fun.
I would like to talk about the whole concept of “we need a new left” and our chances of getting anything that considers itself left that isn’t Marxist.
Look, we tend to forget this, we people who play with thoughts and concepts, but people in general are creatures of their time. Right now anyone who thinks they’re left or is “concerned about the poor” no matter how pure his motives is likely to have his thoughts informed by Marx. It’s almost impossible not to. If you’re like me, even, and vaccinated early against Marxism by seeing it in action, you develop sort of an anti-body reaction to it, where you have a reflex repulsion at even trace amounts of it exhibited by others, but even then you find yourself having it taint your thoughts when you least expect it, usually via the dread bug “it isn’t fair.”
And before anyone says anything, yes, I am aware that the world isn’t fair. It’s never been. It starts with when we live. Each of us gets a snip of time, maybe if we’re lucky 80 years, give or take 20, and in that time, we take the world as we find it. Yes, some of us might have been much happier or successful 100 years ago or a 100 years from now, but this is how the world is, and the world we live in imposes certain limitations on us.
It isn’t fair. Pretty much none of life is fair. All of us, looked at under the microscope, could have had better parents, better childhood, more opportunities.
In other countries the level of unfairness can be crazy high. You can meet with laws that keep entire classes down, or with people who are discriminated against based on their ancestry. (Don’t say here too, or you’re just proving you’ve never lived anywhere else.)
Things like, in my time in Portugal, I couldn’t really be out of doors after 8 pm alone, while my brother could go out and meet with friends and go pub crawling and all that drove me nuts. It wasn’t fair.
Then I got over it. I still can’t be out of doors alone after eight, now I think about it, except some summer days when it’s still light. It’s not safe. I could drive, but I’m night blind. Raging against it does nothing much.
If you guys say “but Sarah, doesn’t aren’t economic issues” I’ll say “really?” because mobility after a certain hour affects my ability to attend lectures, go to meetings, etc, all of which redound to economic issues.
In the same way, each of us is born with certain financial resources, either ours or inherited. And those aren’t fair either. I could have done with inheriting a million in my twenties. Heck, I’d settle for a hundred thousand. Ten thousand would have helped.
Tons of people get that, I didn’t, and “it isn’t fair.” Of course tons of people get less than I did, so… it really isn’t fair.
Which is where Marxism comes in, of course. Marxism is envy given a really cool package. (Well, not really, but when spouted by bearded hotties, (particularly the girls) people get confused.)
So, do we need “a new, non Marxist left?” “Someone who cares for the poor”?
First let’s discuss what “left” is – and whether they have any special claim to care for the poor. They do certainly have a claim to having used/using the angry poor as shock troops, but their regimes, since revolutionary France seem to make the poor worse off. While the regimes that emphasize greater individual freedom for all seem to make the poor richer. They might make other people even richer, which is why the poor we shall always have with us (it’s a relative thing) and some of them will be very angry indeed.
Problems of intractable poverty seem to add other things to the pot: lack of motivation, for instance, or a culture that doesn’t respect the property of others.
This is not to say that the laws of many countries aren’t unfair. In fact, you could pretty much bet that the more laws a country has the more unfair it is. Unintended consequences kick in. Take our divorce laws, for instance (please.) While they have barbs that are massively unfair to men, every woman I know who tries to give her ex a fair shake ends up in very bad straights re: custody/support. Which seems to be inherent in the system “If you’re decent, you’ll suffer, while if you’re a scammer you’ll make out like a bandit.”
In the same way, yeah, a lot of property – and other laws – in a lot of other countries are very bad indeed, though having grown up in one of those countries, I’d like to point out layering yet another law on top of laws only makes things even worse. Also that – from my growing up in Portugal – the laws are secondary. First you need to change the culture. As long as air cleanliness stations need to be bolted to concrete to keep them from being stolen (even though they have no logical use) all the laws in the world will fix nothing.
And don’t tell me it’s a measure of deprivation. NO ONE in Portugal is poor enough (at least until they finally collapse) that they need an air cleanliness measurement station. Even the shell makes inconvenient chicken coops. No one is poor enough either that they need holiday lights, but no one would put them outside, as they do here, unless they had high walls to defend them.
It’s the culture. Theft is illegal there, as it is everywhere, but the culture says if it’s not nailed down you take it. This has ripples through the laws no matter how fair the laws try to be.
So when people are very concerned for the property laws in other countries, it always makes me wonder a) what in heck they’d do about it – go to war to change these people’s laws? Are you ready to occupy and change the culture, too? b) Why do you think new property laws would benefit the poor if the culture isn’t changed?
It always ends up with arming the angry underclass and letting them gratify their envy, and then you don’t have paradise, you have Venezuela. And meanwhile the culture goes on, except more so, because if you can dispossess people once, it might happen again, and then why improve your rental houses and not let them devolve to slum conditions? Someone could lay claim to them tomorrow. Why bother to put improvement into the soil the tenant farmer could claim tomorrow?
For instance, my great grandfather who died very young, bought – before he died – several rental properties, as a way to provide for his widow and orphans (he died of consumption, so I don’t think it was unexpected.) But then various governments made it impossible to sell the houses without consent of the renters, made it possible to inherit a rental contract, and then froze the rents. This means my grandmother I her old age nominally owned several houses and was obligated by law to do the maintenance on them or she could be taken to court. But the rents had frozen before the massive inflation in the seventies (I don’t know what it was in reality, I know I could buy a book, at the beginning, for the equivalent of 50c, and by the end the same book cost 20 escudos.) So she was getting the equivalent of enough money for a pizza per month, per house. Multiply that by ten and it might have paid her electricity bill. (No heating, and most lightbulbs one per room.) But she owned property, so it was impossible to get public assistance.
These laws were doubtless formed to ease the lot of the tenants who often lived in a house their whole lives (my other grandparents) and made extensive improvements (ditto) but who never had any property rights on the house.
But in doing so, they destroyed not just the investments of earlier, frugal persons, but the sense of property, the sense of planning ahead, the sense of investment.
The idea that one of those cases is more “unfair” than other and more worthy of remedy is a Marxist one.
My great grandfather spent the whole of a very short life working his behind off to make sure his family was looked after and before you ask, my grandmother did work all her life too, and would have been fine except for two massive surges of inflation in her life time and the aforementioned lack of ability to have investments pay off. But they were contravened by people “looking out for the poor.”
So – do we need a left who cares for the poor? Even nominally?
In heaven’s name why? The best way of dealing with the poor is one on one, with people who know the poor and can help.
Yes, indeed, there should be some sort of ultimate safety net in place and there should be incentives to be provident, to save ahead, to invest. The emphasis should be on “minimal” and on help to get out of the condition. Right now both of those are backward and sideways.
People talk a lot about cultural/racial ideas of how to save/invest and deferring gratification and how this correlates with melanin or date of colonization by Rome or what have you. What they don’t get is that this is not necessarily racial or even cultural. It is a matter of some cultures having been taught not to save/plan for the future.
Building a new left sounds cool – but let me say two things:
1-That’s not our job. You – presuming you’re for personal liberty, which has become congruent with “right” in the States (not in the rest of the world, though. In the rest of the world right is “as things were done in the past”) – don’t get to build your opponents (and I’m presuming the opponents are in general for the collective not the personal freedom) much less do you get to tell them they don’t get to have Marxism in their beliefs. I wish it were that simple. It’s not.
While Marxism is a bankrupt philosophy it’s also attractive, because life ISN’T fair, and anyone who was raised in the twentieth century is tainted by it. Anyone who was raised in the twentieth century and is a person of left is particularly tainted by it. Marxism is the only philosophical framework they can reach for.
2- a new “left” will form and change in time. If we’re very lucky, eventually the two adversarial positions in the American system will be taken up by the Republicans and the Libertarians (whatever they call themselves, I don’t think in their present form) and I – if this happens in my life time – will harass both sides, and be truly independent (if leaning more libertarian.) Which will be left and which will be right? If you consider a pretense to using government to improve the lot of the poor left, the Republicans would be left – but that’s nonsense. It’s not written anywhere that one party must use the poor to bolster their power, or in what way.
Do we need a “left?” – I don’t know. Systems can be built on other things than the angry poor and have been, throughout history.
Will we get a new left? – we’ll get something.
But my guess is that the taint of Marxism will not pass from the culture unless it is soundly and visibly discredited (we should have done that when the USSR fell. Our fault.) And that, like the Israelites in the desert, no one alive today will live to see that philosophical promised land. We can’t be. We all, even the ones of us most against the d*mn thing, have had our mind corrupted by it. We’ve bent our knee to the golden calf. We will not see the promised land.
And I’ll admit it’s a long shot that we’ll get rid of the thing, even in the US, much less worldwide. But I have hopes my grandchildren or great grandchildren will get to see it.
Will it be perfect? If it were perfect there would be no need to govern.
Freedom – yes, and justice too – must be earned by each of us, one on one, day by day. World without end.
According To Hoyt 
“every woman I know who tries to give her ex a fair shake ends up in very bad straights re: custody/support. ”
This. And I am pondering a certain line of fiction about it. I have both sides of the story: “my brother was taken to the cleaners by his ex-wife” and “he is still hurting me by the way he fights even the minimal child-support the court ordered.”
Not at all a fair world.
Plus the woman expects child support, but doesn’t allow access to the father.
Yeah. And getting the courts to enforce a Parenting Time Order is damn near impossible and requires multiple days off work.
Yea– I saw how damaging for my nephew when he was the child in a custody/money battle.
Sounds like an interesting basis for a mystery, or horror, story — divorced couple both found dead in one of their houses; kid missing, presumed kidnapped.
Turns out: The kid got sick of being the rope in the tug-of-war; murdered the parent he was with at the time on the day the other parent was supposed to pick him up; murdered the other parent when it showed up; stripped the corpses of everything spendable; then de-assed to someplace else entirely….
ummm… so when are you going to write it. *angelic smile 😉
Write it???? He lived it. 😉
Then an autobiography 🙂
Bluntly, divorce is taking the income that supported one household and divvying it up among two.
There is no way on earth for them to keep the same economies of scale when they do that. It’s economics that are the source of the “unfair” here.
This is the attitude I’m talking about. Why is the man the only one who should be supporting the household.
Huh? Do you think it’s any easier when there are two incomes? They still budgeted for their income, and now must spend it on more.
Taken to the cleaners is right. I work two jobs. I makes less than twenty five thousand dollars a year. My ex works for the government. She makes over one hundred grand a year. She gets close to a third of my income. She whines about how she needs more. I think some women just don’t realize that yes the man is responsible for supporting the kids but so is the woman. It’s the twenty-first century. Women accepted the responsibility to work when they demanded the right to do so. That includes paying for things the kids need. And, at least in Michigan, the cost of day care is figured into the amount of support paid so no that’s not an excuse. Sorry, but in a fair world the man would only be responsible for half.
Drives me nuts, because then the gals who are trying to play fair get treated like they’re evil because everyone knows that women always get everything.
interesting post.
So, the job isn’t changing the crooks in (name of government center / entity), the job is changing the culture that puts them there, that gravitates toward promises and handouts without caring who pays, that prefers security to freedom and thinks fairness can be achieved by merely human intervention.
yep.
The Quest for Cosmic Justice by Thomas Sowell
1. Milton Friedman: “The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.”
2. Laws are the top* layer of the cultural norms and when they conflict with those norms the laws will not be obeyed.
Norms: Folkways, Mores, Taboos, and Laws
… Norms are the specific cultural expectations for how to behave in a given situation. They are the agreed-upon expectations and rules by which the members of a culture behave.
[SNIP]
There are four basic types of norms that sociologists commonly refer to: folkways, mores, taboos, and laws.
Folkways
Folkways are often referred to as “customs.” They are standards of behavior that are socially approved but not morally significant. They are norms for everyday behavior that people follow for the sake of tradition or convenience. Breaking a folkway does not usually have serious consequences.
[SNIP]
Mores
Mores are strict norms that control moral and ethical behavior. Mores are norms based on definitions of right and wrong. Unlike folkways, mores are morally significant. People feel strongly about them and violating them typically results in disapproval.
[SNIP]
Taboos
A taboo is a norm that society holds so strongly that violating it results in extreme disgust. Often times the violator of the taboo is considered unfit to live in that society.
[SNIP]
Laws
A law is a norm that is written down and enforced by an official law enforcement agency.
Keep this in mind for your world-building: Customs, mores, laws, taboos. Laws against marital infidelity will never be obeyed (except pro forma adherence) if the mores accept casual infidelity. Laws regarding property will be followed to the extent they conform to accustomedy definitions of property.
OK, now I’m dying to know what “an air cleanliness measurement station” is.
Not the desired takeaway from the piece, I know.
LOL. They have them by the side of every major road. I’m going to assume it’s some stupid law — it’s about desk high and ten by ten, made of metal, with little holes on the side (I suspect it also measures heat, which… never mind.) I SUPPOSE you can make a hen coop out of them? I mean, honest to heaven, I have NO idea what you’d use it for, but apparently they get regularly stolen.
Oh, and they’re probably stolen not for the station itself, but for the scrap value of the metal in them.
I wager its an EU mandated pollution monitor, much like the ones in Kansas City, MO and El Paso, TX (that will be the first things to go if/when the revolution comes).
Oh no.
The first things to go are redlight and speed cameras.
In fact those may just trigger the revolution.
I have often wondered how long it will take before people start showing up in Thomas Jefferson or George Washington costumes (complete with latex masks so they can’t be identified on-camera), wielding baseball bats, and smashing red-light cameras all over town (in whatever town they happen to live in). To the wild cheering of any spectators, and the stonewalling of any further investigation. “No, officer, I didn’t see anyone smash the camera. You say the camera showed Thomas Jefferson just before it went dark? Are you sure the camera hadn’t been drinking?”
I especially wonder about this now that Halloween costumes are on “gotta get rid of our excess inventory” sales.
OT, Personal request:
Beloved Spouse tasks me to inquire whether your distaff side has published sequel to their first book, and if so I would need the name for Amazon purposes.
Sarah: as you are aware I am pressed for time to track comments this week, I beg of you to ensure an answer reaches me directly.
RES — talking to me? Or someone else on the blog? Sorry, I’m confused…
I think he was asking me about my sister’s book.
Yes, he clarified in email
For reference, Heather Munn is my sister, not any other relationship you may have been thinking of — and Lydia Munn is my mother.
The sequel to How Huge the Night is in the works but not yet published. Once a title has been officially announced, I’ll let you know.
I was more confused about the use of “their” to refer to the “distaff side”. I’d think “her” would be the obvious choice in that case.
Bad enough people use “their” when sex is *un*specified:-(.
In this particular case, RES’s use of the pronoun “their” is entirely correct, since the book is co-authored by my sister Heather and my mother Lydia.
Ah, that makes sense then. Thanks for the clarification:-)
Robin, let me know, too, in case RES can’t get into the blog that day.
Will do.
I suspect the residents of KC, MO will go after the red-light cameras, and the ranchers and farmers from Kansas will go after the pollution monitors, with the assistance of the city accountant of KC,MO. If the wind is from the west, the smoke from the spring burns in KS triggers KC’s EPA sniffers and the city gets fined, leading to annual calls for KS or the feds to ban the controlled burns. El Paso gets dinged because of dust storms and factories in Mexico.
Is this one:
http://www.npl.co.uk/news/novel-analysis-of-air-quality-data-reveals-pollution-sources
No. Oh, hell no. Possibly because in Portugal that would be a hen coop in no time. It’s low to the ground — as I said desk, height — and it’s sheet metal with some holes. AND bolted to concrete.
I think this is closer to what you describe:
http://wwws1.eea.europa.eu/soer/countries/mt/air-pollution-why-care-malta/AirQuality.JPG/image_preview
Every picture I find of these things, they get bigger, heavier and more armor:
Yep, but lower, no door, and bolted. heaven knows how they service it…
They probably bring a crane and lift the lid. A door means that somebody with bolt cutters and crowbar and break in and rip the copper out.
I really need to proof my stuff before hitting the submit button. I should read, “A door means that somebody with bolt cutters and a crowbar can break in and rip the copper out.” That’s what happens in NYC to all sorts of stuff when things get bad. Socialism in action.
That’s what is happening to the metering lights on freeway onramps here in the SF bay area – since they only are on during rush hours, a cleverly timed overnight theft of all the copper wiring in one will remain unreported until the next morning commute, and then ony when the CHP notices, as no commuter will complain about not being delayed in getting on the freeway.
I spit on the leftie’s so called sympathy for the poor. In every world wide natural disaster who comes rushing to aid the victims? Always the US, it’s military, it’s charitable organizations, and it’s citizens with donations of materials and labor and cash.
After the Indonesian tsunami who was there to provide food, clean water, power, and medical support? A US carrier group. UN inspectors showed up a week later and mostly bitched about the poor accommodations and lack of five star restaurants.
Indonesia, Haiti, and now the Philippines all get money and supplies and boots on the ground from US charitable organizations such as the Red Cross and Salvation Army. And yes I know Red Cross is international, but look to where most of the support comes from.
Typically, the left is all about “I feel your pain” and damn scant on here’s something concrete to help. Can’t recall the details, but I remember reading the record of charitable giving by various candidates in the last few national elections. What sticks in my mind is that Romney tithed both to his church and to other charities consistently over his business career. His opponents almost nothing until they decided to run for office at which point they increased donations to adequate levels to claim that they cared.
On a totally different note, why do I suspect that Portugal has an unusually high incidence of random fires in rental properties? Hopefully when the renters are not at home, but seems obvious that your grandmother could have benefitted greatly had she been of a larcenous mind.
Liberals earn about 6% more than conservative
Conservatives give about one third more to charity.
Bring this up to a liberal, and watch the excuse making for why the conservative charity doesn’t count. It’s “religious” for instance, because my sending money to Catholic Relief Services for the Philippines isn’t really charity, while their giving money to the private school their child attends for a soccer field, why that’s REAL charity.
Oh, yes. Catholic Relief Services also has boots on the ground.
The American Red Cross is a very different entity than the International Red Cross,and the latter is, based on their actions in Israel/Palestine, worthy of little more than contempt.
When Sandy hit, Obama got a new jacket, dropped in for a photo op and a hug from Christie, and then left.
Romney, on the other hand, organized a goods drive that only made the news because the Red Cross complained that he wasn’t having people donate money to them instead.
And with regards to the Red Cross… I hate to say it because of the good will that their name generates and all that they in theory stand for, but my understanding is that the American Red Cross has become increasingly corrupt lately. I would imagine that the International Red Cross is doing the same.
I hate the “right/left” paradigm because I don’t think it does an adaquate job explaining the conflicts we see today. Instead, I prefer an “Equality-Rule of Law-Personal Freedom” triangle. Progressives cluster around the “equality” corner, conservatives around the “rule of law” corner, and libertarians around the “personal freedom” corner. Most people fall along one edge or another, which means ignoring the opposite corner; for example, someone on the right who falls along the “rule of law-personal freedom” edge will favor policies that balance those two factors while having little to no interest in equality. Someone who falls along the “equality-personal freedom” edge will place little value in the rule of law.
Progressives cluster around the “equality” corner
No, they do not. They talk a good game but are really interested in a two or three tier class system.
Arnold Kling develops this very well in his book, _The Three Languages of Politics_. His thesis is that Progressives / Conservatives / Libertarians speak completely different languages, and they cannot perceive the arguments of the other groups. $2 Kindle Ebook.
He’s reminds me of Heinlein, who says something along the lines of “English is not a rational language, it is a rationalizing language”. (Although I may have gotten that quote mixed up…
Except that Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia ([Search Engine] is my friend) did a study showing that Conservatives (I didn’t see if he also divided out Libertarians) understand Liberal language far better than the reverse.
We have to. We live immersed in it.
I’m not a big fan of the left-right dichotomy. Why is our political discourse based on a 250-year old seating chart?
The reality is that political space is n-dimensional, where n is the number of issues under debate. Everyone’s political position is represented by a 2xn matrix, where one vector represents that person’s position on the issue, and the other is how much they care about it. Politican campaigns are all about influencing the care factor for the issues to candidate matches the majority of the electorate, not shifting anyone’s position.
If we’re going to use a one-dimensional space, I think it should be a Liberal-Progressive axis. Where Liberals seek the maximum freedom for people, while Progressives think that they can use laws to improve people. The fact that this wou put anarchists and libertarians together on one side, and marxists and social conservatives together on the other means that it is of limited utility in the real world. Which makes it pretty much the ideal political theory.
That’s good, I like an anarchy – totalitarian spectrum, personally, where anarchy/totalitarian maps to an X axis, and the traditional left/right consideration maps to a Y axis. Which can explain why people who are purportedly on the “right” never seem to actually reduce government power, spending, programs, etc. It’s because they’re high government involvement / totalitarian. Maybe they say they’re for things like baseball, capitalism, and apple pie, but their temperament leads them to believe that every problem is one that has to be solved with a massive government bureaucracy. Meanwhile, those on the purported “left” claim that they’re for personal freedom, but that turns out only to be true for what act of non-reproductive recreational prurience you prefer, and not for people who are, say, trying to run a business. Also high totalitarian. Fascism / Socialism / Communism / Dictatorship – left, right, center, they’re all high-totalitarian.
Gah, and forgot to say that you get too close to the other side – the few laws, low government power side, then you lose the functions of the rule of law. So you want to find a goldilocks position. Not too T, not too A. (Oh, geez, that’s setting things up for the Horde. I’ll start.) So you want to make sure your T&A levels are appropriate.
**RUNS**
I tend to favor a little more (better) A over an abundance of T, myself.
0:)
I prefer a nice, firm balance between the two. 😉
Yes, the T is too often inflated by an injection of confiscated cash
Well played.
Oh. My.
Indeed. *loud sigh* Boys. *shakes head*
Politics is often perverse.
Perverse or perverted? (Runs)
Perversely perverted.
I’m not an anarchist because I think people are good and decent.
I’m an anarchist because I think most people deserve it.
Catalonia here we come…
Oh, it isn’t. Entirely at least. It’s also based on Stalin’s habit of labeling all his foes as right-wingers.
It’s fascinating that before we had “left” and “right” (thank you, French Revolution, for another development detrimental to human happiness), complaints about “fairness” often came from those opposed to new government and tax policies, or about price increases due to shortages (both environmentally caused and semi-artificial). The idea of a “just price” for certain commodities goes back to at least the 1500s, probably farther, and woe betide the merchant who dared to raise prices in times of dearth. The old argument about “When Adam delved and Eve span/then there was no gentleman,” predates the first recorded account in English in the 1300s. So the tendency has always been there, especially in times when your village/caste/estate determined your identity. So yeah, dollars to doughnuts, we’ll have some new version of the Fairness Party spring up in some guise. Sigh. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his cattle,” nor his savings account, nor his health insurance, nor his ability to charge more for fruit out of season.
First you need to change the culture.
Freedom – yes, and justice too – must be earned by each of us, one on one, day by day. World without end.
These two phrases, bolted together. I think, I believe, that central to American recovery and a return to American prosperity (which drives world prosperity, imperialism be damned) is a fundamental shift in American culture. And the shift resides in the choices each of us make, day in and day out, online, in RL, everywhere. A recognition and celebration of individualism and cooperative accomplishment.
And so I say, we don’t need a new left. Frequently I see a strong belief that if only the Toobawhacker Party was in office, of if the Pogo Wing of the Faltemhabers was eliminated…Those libensnibbers are naive wack-jobs, if they’d just sit down and shut-up…
Too much reliance on party identity as solution, not enough recognition that political parties are mechanisms for accruing power. Philosophy plays a muted second fiddle to that primary mechanism.
We need to break this culture of party affiliation and reinstate/create a culture of individual philosophical commitment. And individual cooperative alignment with other individuals to achieve specific ends. The whole charade of Left/Right/Party identity masks a subtle and complex reality and reduces a heterogeneous society of 314 million people to a handful of not really good enough slogans. It cripples the strength of American culture.
Or else I put too much garlic on my lasagna and the fumes are corrupting my canted brain. Entirely plausible.
Bingo! Had this really crystallized while listening to one of the Ricochet podcasts the other day. Rob Long (aka RINO-squish) pointed out that Republicans != Conservatives. That the “conservative movement” could push for purity all it wanted to, the Republicans still had to win elections, which meant getting 50% + 1 vote.
Which means that attacking our current woes by saying “we need to change Washington” is taking the problem exactly backwards. We have to change Main Street – change the narrative. Almost literally, we do that by telling stories to each other and ourselves. We change the culture first (and it’s Just That Easy!), and then we might expect to fix (political system/capital/organization of your choice).
Pass the garlic.
Here ya go. And here’s the Kleenexes, this stuff is wonderfully pungent.
Politicians aren’t chosen by Main Street, they’re chosen by the electorate. The two aren’t the same. One of the factors in Obama’s wins was the fact that his candidacy caused the number of black voters to increase significantly. That’s why the Democrats won’t run another white man for at least the next generation. Their only hope is to goose various minority voting blocs by pandering to their group identification, on deck for 2016: Women.
Likewise, I’m convinced the key to GOP success is to appeal to conservatives. Since Reagan the GOP has tried to chase after the middle, as a result they’ve alienated conservatives (one of Reagan’s major achievements was to win over conservatives who traditionally voted Democrat). The record has been pretty bad, with the three wins in that time being one case of Reagan’s coattails, one fluke, and one where the GOP was the support-the-troops party.
Too much garlic? Ain’t no such thing.
I’d be happy if, instead of Toga and Pizza Parties, we had the Loyal Opposition and the Incumbents- and switch out names when the other gets in office. *chuckle*
For too many, the opposition to getting involved is “I hate politics” and “my vote doesn’t matter” and “I’m apolitical- got too much on my plate to worry about hose A-holes in D.C.” This frustration, apathy, and disaffection is bloody well endemic. The sea change towards more personal responsibility and engaged curiosity is going to be massive. And I think it has already begun, we just need to help it along, all of us.
That cussed individualism is the heart of our strength. It demands freedom. Speaking to that attitude is one of the big things that helps, and draws people from all sides together. Americanism has broad appeal (a whole world’s worth of appeal, I’d say). Directing that is nigh impossible. *chuckle* Simple things, like the freedom to keep what you earn (tea, anyone? Perhaps a party?) are good things in and of themselves. To get that, folks have to give up things- like the ability to tell others what to do. What to buy. What to give, and who to.
Prosperity is more powerful than poverty. Freedom trumps chains. Responsibility breeds confidence. Perseverance grows experience (and competence, much of the time).
For those that think they know better than me, pie-eyed with their own power and incontrovertibly unconvinceable that any alternative to their Progressive paradise exists, I say “Eat $#!^ and chew slow. Me and mine will do well enough without your expensive and wasteful, wrongheaded schemes.”
Er, that ‘how do we talk about this’ point I occasionally tend to harp about: perhaps a lot more talk about something like that poor widow trapped by the property her husband had worked for in order to make sure she’d be secure after he died would not be a bad idea. Most people I know who vote socialists seem to think kind of in terms of good old Snidely Whiplash when they hear the word ‘landlord’, or in terms of the Goliath companies when they hear the word ’employer’. And so they tend to vote for solutions which would seem to limit the choices of these big baddies – which, of course, can often walk right through or around the limitations because they have the money and resources to do that. Now if it was possible to make the ones who do suffer from those policies, the small employers and the small property owners and so on, more visible to those nice folks who just want to help the poor people…? (And to point out the Goliaths can often flatten the little competitors precisely because they are helped by all those rules and regulations they can afford to deal with and the little guys can’t – now the Goliaths tend to get the sole blame, while the role of all that red tape which have been brought into existence with the excuse that the rules would help the little guys gets ignored, or never gets noticed at all by the voters).
Might help.
Changing the culture is the right solution, but that will take time. And meanwhile people still vote.
I’d love to see the Religious Right go all out to recruit the soon-to-be new citizens, many of whom are devout Catholics and hard workers, into a social conservatives party. But would the Marxism be diminished or would it spread and infect the RRs? A Tea Party might be able to attract moderate Dems if it could stick to the economics. Starve the Democrats of votes.
Alternately, just dissolve the Republicans. We all be come Democrats, and the fight shifts to the primaries.
I don’t know what prompted your post on needing a new left. I myself run a blog entitled “I want a new left.” I am pretty sure it is not tainted with much, if anything, from Marxism. In fact, I regard Marxism, communism and socialism as what I call Rich People’s Leftism. See here:
http://iwantanewleft.typepad.com/i-want-a-new-left/2010/07/rich-peoples-leftism-vs-poor-peoples-leftism.html
That is, it’s leftism that was basically constructed by rich people not so much to help the poor as to deal with the rich person’s guilt over having so much money AND not wanting to give it up.
I come from a lower-middle-class background and bought into all the leftist stuff when I was younger. What forced me to face reality was going into academia and watching how the people from the better schools, who are generally wealthier, stomped all over those of us from the non-elite schools, who are generally poorer. (And yes, they stomped on us in an unfair way. It’s always moderately high standards for their articles, and extremely high standards for our articles.) If the elites had been conservatives, that would have affirmed my leftism, but since they were mostly liberals and leftists, I had to rethink everything.
I went into academia a supporter of socialism who hated rich conservatives because they weren’t paying their fair share of taxes, and came out a supporter of capitalism who hates rich leftists because they don’t want to give up their money and because they hog all the best jobs.
My goal is to remake leftism so that it is aimed at what the poor need and often want: good jobs that allow them to work their way out of poverty. I am against redistributions, which don’t work and which rich leftists don’t really want anyway. Because if they wanted them, then the tenured leftists would be redistributing their money to the exploited adjuncts voluntarily; which they aren’t.
I hope to have a book out on all this next year.
If you enter commercial world you’d make more than in the academic world.
First: All government is Tyranny — even anarchy (the tyranny of the individual).
Second, re the Poor: Every society, ever, had been afflicted with People Who Can’t Handle Money. No matter what steps have been taken to alleviate their poverty, pretty soon, they’re right back in the sewers.
So, on that basis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYqF_BtIwAU .
Third: “I Want A New Left” sounds like the beginnings of a parody of Huey Lewis and the News’ “I Want A New Drug”….
” o/~ I want a new Left/ One that does what it should/ One that’ll lift blacks up/ And get them outta the ‘hood/ I want a new Left/ One that won’t tax/ And spend the US into the ground/ One that’ll get off of our backs…. o/~ “
I want a new left because I want us to fight about something other than basic economics. I want a new left because marxists have too rich a corrupting/revolutionary tradition for me to trust them with power and we do need to have an alternative to the Republicans that can clean out their own corrupt tendencies.
Care for the poor should be a consensus item, not an ideological dividing line. What we have right now is a feel good travesty of a system. To spend $450B on Medicaid and to not improve outcomes over those with no insurance at all is a very bad situation.
“Right now anyone who thinks they’re left or is “concerned about the poor” no matter how pure his motives is likely to have his thoughts informed by Marx.”
Marx was not the first person to be concerned about the poor.
Mark 10:21-24:
Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”
The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Was Jesus a Marxist? I think not.
I am insulted by the suggestion that anyone who cares about the poor has their “thoughts informed by Marx”. Marx was not the first person to say we should care about the poor. We go around claiming the USA is a Christian nation. Well Jesus preached that we should be concerned for the less fortunate in life. Maybe Marx was a secret Christian.
There is no question that there are dumb ways of trying to help the poor, and rent controlled apartments are one of the dumbest ideas.
Don’t insult everyone who cares about the less fortunate in life by calling them Marxist. I grew in America. There were no Marxist around. My father was a minister. He taught me that I should be concerned about the poor, because that is what Christianity teaches.
You come wandering back in when Marx is mentioned. Do you have a keyword alert, or something?
Anywho. You’re still demonstrating a marked reading comprehension failure. Try to follow the post, yeah? Otherwise you’re just baffling.
Some people have the name of their girlfriends, some people have the name of their pets… MikeCA has Karl Marx tattooed over his heart — and in his search engine. What can I say?
Everybody needs a hobby?
Hey, Mike.
I would love to engage in a discussion on what Christ meant when he was talking to the young rich man in the story you reference. But as it turns out, you were part of that very discussion on this blog back just a couple weeks ago and it’s probably a better use of everyone’s time just to refer you back to your own comments on this blog and the responses to it. Especially seeing as how you referenced that same encounter in that comment.
Not everyone who “cares about the poor” is a Marxist, and no one here is claiming that they are. However, as a conservative, I’m less concerned with the good intentions of leftists and more concerned with the actual impact they have on economies. Which, as it turns out, seems to be almost universally bad.
It does strike me as funny (not ha ha funny but hmmm, that’s weird funny) how Marxists and those who belong to other related strains of collectivism all claim to be the only ones who do care about the poor, while simultaneously ignoring the difference in actual giving between “liberals” and “conservatives”. But maybe that’s just me.
I don’t mean they have their thoughts informed by Marx BECAUSE they care about the poor. You’re, as usual, willfully misreading me.
I mean that all the charities, most mainstream churches and most governmental bodies who are supposed to care for the poor are full of people who were educated in Marx in college. And so the outcomes, as TM Lutas said, are disgraceful
As for your dragging Jesus into this and implying I called him a Marxist, you are over the line and this is trolling behavior. One more hit and your ass is banned.
I did not imply or mean to imply that you were calling Jesus a Marxist. In fact if I did anything I suggested Marx might have been influenced by Christianity in his sympathy for the poor.
I was trying to say that the idea people should be concerned for those less fortunate originates from much older philosophical and moral thinking than Marx.
I attended college in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I don’t recall being taught or influenced by Marxist thinking, but then I took mostly science (physics, chemistry and astronomy) and math classes. I did have to take freshman sociology, but even there I don’t recall any Marxist or political ideas being taught. This was the height of the anti-Vietnam war movement. There certainly were anti-war protests on campus, but I did not take part in them.
I think we have very different life experiences. I grew up in America. I was taught from the youngest age that Marxism/Communism was evil, but I was also brought up in the Christian tradition of concern for the poor and less fortunate.
I think a person can be concerned for the poor and less fortunate for purely Christian/moral reasons that have nothing to do with Marxism.
And a post full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Did I say people couldn’t be sorry for the poor and suffering without Marxism?
I just said the implementation of most INSTITUTIONALIZED charity and government is tainted by Marxism.
I think I’ll ban you. I have the flu, my head hurts, and you’re being stupid beyond permission.
If you want to discuss potatoes go right ahead, but the post is about geese.
Why do you persist on trying to force your religious values on the rest of society, Mike? Christ’s teachings on our duty toward the poor are an argument in contempt of the American Constitution’s First Amendment. Please stop hating on the First Amendment. Please cease your efforts to impose your theocracy on the rest of America. If you cannot base arguments for statist redistribution on other than your interpretation of Christian doctrine you have no place in a political or economic discussion.
Mike, I’m going to type this slowly because it’s obvious you don’t read (or think) fast.
Sarah’s point was that in today’s political climate as soon as you start talking about caring for the poor in an actual mechanical sense of doing something rather than the mindless pablum you see in most college campuses and bedroom communities your framework is either informed by, or a reaction to, Marxism.
Jesus has nothing to do with Marxism, because THE BIBLE WAS WRITTEN AT LEAST 1500 #$*&@#ING YEARS BEFORE THAT EVIL INCOMPETENT *&^% MARX!
For the love of Pete, crack open a history book or two before you come in here. I don’t expect you to avoid looking like a complete ignoramus, but could you at least show us the respect of at least trying?
Since I see that others have responded already, I’ll be brief: It’s blatantly obvious that “concerned about the poor” is in quotes for a reason.
Ok, ok, I can’t leave it that brief: Since it is trivially true to say that lots of people are concerned about the poor, putting it in quotes shows that it is not a normal reference to such concern, and implies that it is therefore intended to mean those who claim such concern without being honest, and using it as a club to guilt those who they claim aren’t doing enough to help said poor.
One notices the fundamental disparity that allows one to say that Jesus was not a Marxist: He did not force anyone to give up their property.
Either at gun point or with the threat of jail. You know, Mary, it’s uncanny — I spotted that too.
These Christians-by-government preen themselves on their high moral judgement. PFUI.
It can be argued that ALL Government enforcement is ultimately at the end of a gun, because if you defy them, they will always (and granted, they ultimately have to, or else back off) fall back to that when all else fails.
Is damnation any less a threat against the devout than a gun or prison?
I’m not trying to be snarky here, but it looks like there’s a distinction being made between “the government will punish you if you’re not charitable” and “you won’t get into Heaven (which leaves…what?) if you’re not charitable”. In both cases you’re being presented with a choice between giving away your wealth and suffering unpleasant (to say the least) consequences.
From my perspective as an unbeliever, I’d say the government threat is “force”, while the religious threat is not, but for a devout believer, wouldn’t both cases amount to coercion?
No. the religious side is edged with all sorts of stuff. You’re not supposed to give if you feel you’re doing it under coercion — or at least it doesn’t count.
Don’t ask me. I can feel these things but not articulate them. In any case, I like people, even the hopeless and helpless, so I usually help because I like people. The caveat is that I help once, maybe twice. If it has not effect, I stop helping and direct my limited resources elsewhere (same with writing advice which is, admittedly, more onerous because it takes time and energy.)
While the perverse voice is telling me to keep quibbling, the rest of the voices are saying that this isn’t an issue about which to go looking for fights, especially with people with whom I generally agree:-).
Best wishes on getting over the flu.
IIRC there’s several places in scripture that say “The Lord *loves* the *willing* giver”.
And several more about not being able to buy salvation through good works.
You’d have a point if the church was sending people around to collect your stuff at the potential point of a gun. Or if angels were showing up with clipboards.
Glowing visitor on the porch – “Hey, Steve. I see that your neighbor Bob is struggling. You seem to be doing pretty well. How’d you like to avoid eternal damnation?”
Does a double take on Zachary — you mean you DON’T get angels with clipboards? Not even in your dreams, going “You were supposed to have done this this and this by now?” With pointed expression and pointy pen?
No? Singular that.
Mayhap they took a look and said “…yeah… why don’t we focus on someone that has a chance…”
Okay. Just read your second paragraph — look, squirrel! the Angels with clipboards threw me off — you owe me a keyboard.
I have nothing of substance to add. I just wanted to take a moment to note:
That was cool! I can check my morning chuckle off the list.
Bureaucratic angles with a politely thuggish attitude. Fantastic.
Angels even. My fingers wanted to type angles, yet again. Silly fingers.
Angels with Bureaucratic Angles.
You know, I now totally want to start a story with Zachary’s angel. Sigh.
My plan worked! Bwah, ha, ha, ha, ha…
And now I’ve said too much.
My brain was playing with it, too. Maybe there ought to be an anthology with all the writerly Huns contributing a version.
I nominate Zachary as compiler/editor.
Gah! My dastardly plan is backfiring! Nooooooo! I did this to give more work to someone else, not to get it myself! Curses!
Sticky traps don’t discrinate, you get your hand near it and there you are.
Actually, if there’s some interest and we hop on it, we could put together a small anthology and have it up in e-book by Christmas. Maybe even donate the proceeds to disaster relief in the Philippines or another worthy cause (I served my mission in the Tacloban area, right where the latest storm hit, so it’s on my mind.)
Call it the “Bureau of Eternal Affairs?” Maybe 4-6 stories, 2 – 7k words apiece? Shoot me an e-mail if interested to zach at madpoetfiles dot com?
Donation would be good. The problem with anthos is pay out to multiple people…
Donated exclusive rights to the antho for 90 days, non-exclusive rights thereafter? All proceeds go to _insert charitable cause or organization to be named before work is accepted_? Author can do what they want with the stories after the 90 days are up?
Interested. I’m away from my computer, but I’ll email later in the day. I do like the charitable angle.
I may be caught in the spam trap: eamonjc2014 at yahoo.
That’s the point. Heaven doesn’t do this. Many people on welfare work. Which goes counter to the biblical precept of working for one’s sustenance.
It’s the difference between “do this, or do that” vs “do this, or that is going to happen.”
It’s a bit hidden by the language involved, but the point of Christian charity is to get your soul aligned so that you get a good result.
Sort of like “don’t drink and drive, or you’ll be arrested” vs “don’t drink and drive or you’ll total your car and probably die.”
Yep. The USSR fell when soldiers refused to shoot their own people
As Obama seems to have noticed, which may be why he’s started to fire US officers who state that they won’t shoot their own people.
Yep. I do pay income tax from my rather meager salary, which affects my ability to earn that salary because without even that loss it would be hard to keep a car at that salary, I barely have enough for that after my other even more unavoidable expenses, like rent, but unfortunately both of the jobs I have found require that car, due to the times I work and where I live I can’t easily (or at all) get to work without that car.
One part of those taxes is also a tax which supports the Finnish Broadcasting Company, so I’m paying for two TV channels I never watch, and for radio programs I never listen.
We are always told that everybody must pay taxes, and part of the reason for that is so that our poor are taken care of. How will it benefit our poor if I end up living on government support, which may happen if I lose that car? But if I refused to pay those taxes (okay, that’s hypothetical, I can’t because they are taken out of my salary before I get it, but anyway) they’d come after me and take that money, one way or another.
Besides, by the standards of this country I am one of the poor, just one who is working. But I still need to contribute, even if there are people living wholly on support who live better than I do (at least have more money to use on luxuries…)?
Yep, well arranged. Trust the government to design a system which works in an equal and fair way.
Yep. We had this argument about “Forcing Morality”, but I think we can agree that “Government Charity” is forcing people to be moral.
One small quibble. This forces people to comply – to act morally. But it does not and cannot force them to be moral. It forces compliance, not morality.
For too many people “acting moral” is “being moral” so they’d believe that they are able to “force people to be moral”.
This ought to be required reading instead of “The People’s History” and other such drivel:
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/AIH19th/Sumner.Forgotten.html
The problem is that far too many of us who have been paying taxes that drain away large portions of our ability have better lives see these “leach” stories and have to ask ourselves why we get out and strive. I find it hard understand why it is moral to take somebody’s hard work away at the point of a gun and arrange to give it to somebody else just because he has less.
It’s not. But Mikey is going to say that’s because we’re not “concerned” for “the less fortunate.”
The fact that we give more than we should to every friend in trouble (which has led us into trouble a couple of times ourselves) and other non-deductible charities, as well as the deductible charities means nothing to Mikey. If we’re not voting for people who will rob in the name of the poor we’re uncaring evil people….
The ‘soak the rich, help the poor’ argument always falls down on two counts: first the rich are the ones screaming to help the poor (for example, editors of left-wing publications who are paid extremely well and those caring lefty-politicians who have large houses paid for by the public purse but with diverse income streams that we the people never know about) but they never quite do anything but scream for more laws and regulation, and second many of the poor have more disposable income — and hence a lot more consumer products — in their homes than the ones who have to work for a living. Yes, they do have homes: in the UK the system of council housing as it is known provides a very good standard of property often at a price far below market levels. Being classed as poor means they haven’t got jobs yet spend all day watching giant plasma TVs between either playing video games or spending money on such pleasures as cigarettes, light drugs and alcohol. By the way I knew people who worked in social welfare and they never ceased to be amazed how skilled these so-called poor people were in getting more and more ‘free stuff.’
There was also a case in the UK where a man and his wife lost their own council-provided home to fire, which tragically took the lives of several of their large tribe of children asleep in it. Despite the wailing of the left that these were poor and socially oppressed people who deserved better it emerged that this couple had wilfully caused this fire to try and force some authority to give them a larger council owned property. I doubt they wanted their kids to die and may well have thought it was merely a gesture. Either that or someone would rescue them free of charge.
By the way, the principle of handing over lots of state money to people who have lots of children tends to make sure they go on having children in order to get more money. Immigrants when they arrive in the UK can’t believe their luck because we pay for them to have sex, essentially. (Incidentally, there are huge problems with in-breeding but again the left who are shouting about fairness for people who have never contributed to the ‘system’ simply won’t look at that.) The left does not accept any of this happens because all people are pure in motive to them, except the nasty right wingers who ask questions and talk about budgeting, etc.
In one sense you couldn’t blame the couple who caused the deadly inferno: as councils here have a duty to house people we get examples of people arriving on our shores from some hell-hole inevitably caused by their own religion and being handed extremely large and very expensive houses that the soldiers who, for a pittance, were sent to try and help some concept of democracy in those hell-holes would never be given. But the left and associated screamers claim this is ‘only fair’ and so the unfairness continues.
The left always deals in unfairness and narrow self-interests, but they have emotional and not practical words on their side reported eagerly by a compliant and comfortable media. These proud words are often demands that others but not they themselves do more and that others pay. I am sure there is a whole study to be made how the left has been allowed to use language unchallenged to state a mythical, emotional case where common-sense or practical issues (such as how much does this cost?) can never be seen in the same light.
no there is no need for a new left. a failed outlook is a failed outlook.
read this to see what left/progressive is.
http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/the-theory/rk-selection-theory/
http://anonymousconservativ.ipage.com/blog/
OT: 5800 words and all but the conclusion done on the draft of N2:TS. Whee! Now if only the d-mn chills and light-headedness would quit.
Mine seems to be exiting with astounding speed, unless this is “late afternoon feel better”
asking for a “new left” implies you are are socialist at heart. (maybe for the correct reasons in your mind). It really means you do not understand conservativism and are buying into the language of the socialists.
It is hard to argue with the premise that socialist present, but they are lying and the end result is always the same. Collectivism holds people back it lowers people it never raises them up.
I think you would make a better argument why only people with a stake in the game be allowed to vote. Or maybe do an article as to why women should not be allowed to work. Women will naturally vote in a collectivist manner. Now there is an article I would like to see you explore.
http://anonymousconservativ.ipage.com/blog/
If you’re directing the comment at me — the post was exactly about why you shouldn’t ask for a new left, whatever that is.
Sorry, but your comment is so incoherent, I have trouble understanding what you mean.
As for women not being allowed to work — my dear sir, I come from a long line of working conservative women.
And no, women are not collectivists at heart. Women like every other group the socialists could splinter off have been convinced they’re socialists at heart. This is not the same, and alienating such groups only reduces your reach.
I don’t think he read past the second paragraph, and assumed the article was something completely different.
yes, I’m going to assume that too.