The silver lining in all this is that lame-duck President Bush will simply not be able to satisfy all his constituencies to the extent they're all expecting.
If he guts Social Security, he'll lose the elderly social conservatives. If he aggressively pursues a Dominionist agenda, he will -- eventually -- alienate the warhawk crowd, many of whom really are libertarians (as opposed to pseudo-libertarians à la Glenn Reynolds). If he's not aggressive enough in pursing a Dominionist agenda, he'll lose the religious right. If he doesn't retaliate to the next terrorist incident by nuking Mecca (or Paris), the LGF contingent will abandon him. And if he maintains his current fiscal policy, the resulting economic troubles will cause the financial community to drop him like a hot potato.
The only problem, of course, is that by the time people realize that what their votes got them was a bankrupt theocracy and permanent war, we'll ALL be screwed -- not just the 51% who voted for Li'l George.
As another American broadsheet says regarding the "cancer" of homosexuality: "already countless young boys have been "infected." What is therefore needed is "immediate and systematic cauterization." The "operation as projected" will not be complete until "the whole sordid situation is cleared up, and the premises thoroughly cleansed and disinfected. This is what we demand, and this is what we expect."
That's right. Kill all the homos. Let's start with Mary Cheney.
Then we'll kill all the drug abusors! Let's start with Noelle Bush. Jeb's daughter!
And alcohol? The bible says we shouldn't drink until drunken, so let's go after the twins while we're at it! We might even decide to make the president pay for his past drug and alcohol abuse? Why should his crimes be left unpunished? What kind of liberal, leftwing pathological crap is that?!
Yes! Perform God's will on America! Destroy the cancerous growth from our midst!
Limbaugh has been spouting the "war" theme for well over a decade. This is truly an American Jihad.
So, is it considered elitist to try and eliminate your political enemies? I think so.
Thompson's plan also excludes Washington, DC, which is perhaps the Blueest of the Blue, with over 80% of the vote going to Mr. Gore and 90% to Mr. Kerry. Perhaps he proposes to expell the evil verim Liberals from the great Capitol city, which would leave a mere nineteen thousand residents.
The more distanced from actual power a group becomes, the easier it gets to portray them as holding a secret, illegitimate power, and thus be worthy of censure and exclusion. Thus, Republican control makes liberals all the more dangerous because they must be wielding power in secret ways.
As for the idiot invoking Swift -- who obviously has never read the original piece -- a truer Swiftian satire would argue for the denizens of the blue states to be forced to sell their unborn children at birth (abortion being illegal) to be raised (and one assumes, home-schooled) by good Christian red-staters, ensuring that 'liberals' would die off. The whiff of slavery? That's the intention.
One notes that, were the populace of DC to rise up and challenge its unrepresentative national rulers, the result might be similar to that in Paris.
"Thompson goes on to lay out a plan of expulsion. The 12 states that must go: California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware."
IIRC California has something like the fifth largest economy in the world (if considered as an independent country), so it probably wouldn't mind all that much about being expelled...
Whoaa- just back the train up a little.
To start with, liberals don't need enemies. A lot of us have dealt with enough enemies already and certainly don't need any more.
However, we are appalled by ignorance and incompetence. When someone believes the world was created 4000 years ago, and that justifies wife-beating, we stammer in amazement- and we should.
However, the 'evil liberal who makes fun of fundies' is just as bogus as the crinoline 'history' the fundies have lifted from old episodes of Gunsmoke and Little House on the Prairie. When we look at the real history we learn this wasn't a 'Christian' nation, but a nation with a vigorous Socialist Party, a massive Free Love Movement, and more than our fair share of tenant farmers and states wholly owned by the Rockefellers and Guggenheims.
In the pre-election Mason County Journal a reader said he was voting for Bush because Bush reminded him of his cowboy heroes, who always got the bad guys. There is no rational way to respond to a 50-year old man wearing a cowboy suit and pretending to get the bad guys.
And there is no need to figure out a way to reach that poor soul. Demographics tell us that within a decade or two 90% of us will live in a coastal metropolitan area of substantial size.
When you hear that sucking sound of an oil pump running on empty, you're going to hear an even louder sucking sound of cities with transit sucking up residents.
So go ahead, be tolerant, keep a straight face when they start waving the Bible and talking about God's plan. If you can.
But remember, there's work to do, and I'm not talking about rescue missions to the Mormons.
That, after all, would be patronizing.
Yeah! Down with anyone who believes in God! Mahatma Ghandi? Screw him! Martin Luther King, Jr.? Good riddance!
No wonder people in red counties feel persecuted if we educated liberals immediately brand anybody with any religious inclincation at all an ignorant huckleberry.
I look around me, in vain, for those liberals who treat rural Americans and religious people with disrespect. I don't see them. I don't see any such people, not even a tiny number to give some credibility to the notion you propound.
I'm sorry, but for the first time ever, David, I believe you are wrong in your conclusion, as surely as you are largely correct in your analysis of the current situation. I have one foot in the urban world and one in the rural: I live in a large city in a "red" state, and my family has farm and small-town roots. I am a religious non-Christian. And I just don't see the phenomenon you describe in your conclusion.
Meanwhile, there is plenty of disrespect of the left by the right, and the eliminationist rhetoric is frightening, to me at least. As part of the "liberal menace" that is to be "expunged" (yes, I've seen those very words used, in the subtitle of a small pamphlet decrying "outcome-based education"), I cannot help remembering how few years passed between the time some Germans began speaking of a "final solution" (apologies for the scare quotes; all the quotes above are actual) and the time their leaders attempted to implement it.
Show me evidence of some large number of liberals advocating the elimination, deportation, partitioning away or "expunging" of conservatives, and I'll reconsider your conclusion. Otherwise, I'll go with the drastic asymmetry of respect and disrespect that I see, not the result you describe.
Perhaps we could begin by observing that Red States' supposed values aren't Red States' actual qualities? Divorce and illegitimacy, etc., all higher in the Bible Belt.
No, you don't have to be religious to be stupid. But, considering the nature and function of that uniquely American and rural brand of Protestantism so deftly USED by politicians to get people to vote against their own interests, it obviously doesn't hurt. It's the politics of our third-world puppets brought home, used on the (apparently) most vulnerable.
I think I lost my first comment.
Great read, David. I'ms so sick of this "values" argument, so sick of having these anti-Christs calling themselves saved and consigning people who threaten their selfish, greedy xenophobia to hell.
Get right over to The Daily Howler and read his piece on it. Then read Gary Hart's opinion piece in the NYTimes.
Enough of this batshit.
This ubiquitous handwringing about "liberal" disrespect of religion is starting to drive me nuts. That you, Dave, seem to be subscribing to it astonishes me. Aren't you the same guy that's been documenting the eliminationist rhetoric and violence on the right?
"Liberal" disrespect is a reaction. I don't say nasty things about the Amish, but then I never hear the Amish saying nasty things about me. I like Quakers, I like Sojourners. But, basically, I'm an agnostic who believes that facts are a better measure of reality than myths. When large numbers of religious "conservatives" identify people like me as not only the enemy, but the root of all evil, I tend to get a bit testy.
Anyone, anyone at all, who wants my respect is gonna have to respect me. Respect is a two-way street, and the religious right's streets are all one-way. It's a shame that it's come to this, but it is NOT the "liberals" doing.
The religious right could gain my respect by demonstrating their respect for those they disagree with. What would it take for me to win their respect? Capitulation. Ain't gonna happen.
I noticed in the paper Sunday that Wisconsin just passed a law requiring that Creationsim be taught in the schools along with evolution... Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Wisconsin go for Kerry? Local school boards defeated fundmentalists on that very issue in Oklahoma and Kansas within the last two years.
There are extremists everywhere. If the argument persists at the extremes, all that will be produced is more argument. I remain convinced that there are more people in the center, and thereby more room for agreement, than we realize right now, fresh from the election. And there are some issues that are so polarized, abortion for example, that it's hard sometimes to even imagine a middle ground. Barack Obama made that, and some other excellent points, yesterday on the Sunday shows: it would be helpful to put some effort into identifying ways to compromise on some of these issues.
One question about the religion/politics issue, which I raise not to irritate but because I would like to find out what everybody thinks. What is the difference between conservative religious involvement in politics, and similar activity on the other side? Dems have had two religious leaders run for Pres: Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Sharpton, without a similar outcry to that currently being raised. Is there a distinction, and if so, what is it?
I have to agree with Steve. As a resident of a big blue city in a big blue state, I haven't seen any examples of modern liberalism showing disrespect for rural values or deep religious beliefs -- and although I agree that liberals are intolerant of ignorance (and intolerance), I don't think we should apologize for it.
What I do see is the conservative movement distorting liberal opposition to their radical social agenda to convince rural voters that liberals hate their "values". For example, liberals oppose posting the ten commandments in schools, thus the movement describes us as "anti-Christian". As far as I'm aware, there aren't many -- if any -- liberals who actually oppose this issue because they hate Christianity.
I'm not trying to criticize David's entry, just curious about where this disrespect is coming from.
In my own experience, I've never heard a conservative Evangelical Christian say "here's what I think, now what do you think?", other than my own father. What I hear instead is that I'm supposed to listen, and they're supposed to talk.
We should simply forget about reaching out to them as long this attitude continues. They're the ones in charge of the government. They should listen. Are they leaders, or are they not?
Our future lies with those who share our values, old-fashioned values: the free play of conflicting opinions; the constitutional responsibility of the rulers to the ruled; that democracy is not a particular way of governing, but a way of determining who governs; that those who are vested with power are not the one or the few, but the many.
These are our values, and our lot should be placed squarely and firmly with those who share them, and we should repudiate anyone who doesn't.
Addendum to my previous post: If only those darn Jews would have respected the Nazis, there would not have been a problem.
This all reminds me of a common problem in immigrant communities. The sense that time stopped in the old country when either they or their ancestors left.
Examples: Angry protestors demanding that there be no gay marchers in the St. Patricks Day parade. Meanwhile, back in the old country, the grumbling is that the gay pride float wins the grand prize every year.
Or a Korean friend whose father endlessly admonished her with "Girls back in Korea don't wear makeup... or short skirts... or..." Of course when they made the trip back to Korea, the teenage girls walking down the street were wearing tons of make-up and clothes that would get them sent home from school in our town. Huge laughs on the kids end.
But, it goes to show how far perceptions are from reality in many situations. And that the people with the misperceptions aren't willing to accept the truth.
As for the home grown Jesus freaks, the real problem that I have is that they are unable to accept Christians who do not share their religious views. I get angry with people who defend them and say that religious liberals should reach out to them. I say you reach out to the people with the "God hates liberals" and "God hates fags" signs. See how far you get.
My answer on the religion issue: (swiped from the brilliant flick Reds)
"Are you a Christian?"
"I believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ."
Get's them every time
You get what you pray for:
http://www.dailycaucus.com/
timbe...timbenson10.jpg
For an example of the ongoing 'enemyfication' of 'liberals', merged with racist hatemongering against 'muzzies' (moslems), the weblog 'Little Green Footballs', the work of noted facist Charles Johnson, bears examination. Here you have nauseating flag-wrapping coupled with some of the most un-american rhetoric of hate and intolerance you can imagine.
David, I am very afraid. Events are spinning out of control.
I agree with various posters above, Steve, Jim, Phaedrus, that while your analysis is correct, the palliative is too little, too late, and rather off the mark. Liberals are fast becoming the new Jews in a new Reich.
As an actual Jew, I can't get behind the idea that "showing respect" for those who would eliminate me will change minds that are far beyond the reach of rational or even emotional appeal from the left. In a country dominated by mass communications, one-on-one appeals to humanity are quickly drowned by the daily assault from talk radio, Fox News and western mega-church pulpits.
Sometimes, one has to take the blinkers off, assess the situation, and realize that all is lost, or quickly will be lost. This is not to say that the courageous among us shouldn't fight toward the day that this mania passes, but it will become increasingly dangerous. Even Germany had its underground resistance.
Frankly, the proposal that we Blue States be "expelled" is one I would welcome. It's increasingly apparent that the Civil War never ended. Perhaps it was wrong to keep the union together, except that it ended the evil of slavery. But we are two countries, and have been from the beginning. A dissolution of the union would mean wrenching changes and population movement, as left moves north and right moves south, but it might be the best way at this point to avoid the coming violence.
Would secession be that bad? Making we can come together to drive us apart. If we called it The Rupture, perhaps semiliterate christianists would go for it.
I've been thinking about the 'Left Behind' book series; in the context of both extraction/aggregation of intelligent people from all over into the cities, especially as occured during the dot com boom, where basic literacy would get you an html coding job, but also in terms of missing the singularity, as in Vinge's _Marooned in Realtime_.
I recall Carl Sagan's idea that spacefaring civilizations would of necessity be decent, having survived their nuclear weapons phase; but instead, perhaps the detrius 'left behind' after repeated singularities includes interstellar vehicles, and all the 'space brothers' are illiterate hicks.
If they want war, what are they going to do when someone takes them up on their invitation?
Do you think that's what they REALLY want? Or do they just want to continue bloviating and intimidating until people voluntarilty close up shop and leave.
My dad always told me to hit the bully square in the nose. A little blood and they run away.
Though the urban prog/whatever community doesn't come close to matching the eliminationist rhetoric of the other side, there is a consistent strain of condescension to rural life in much of the urban world.
It may be subtle enough that you don't catch it if you're not its target. But trust me. As a rural-born autodidact who now passes for an urban intelligentsium, I'm constantly bombarded with the shit.
Go look at some of the comments on highly trafficked prog blogs like Atrios or dKos. "Why should we send our tax money to subsidize their ignorant, intolerant, obese selves?" is a minor paraphrase of one current trope. It's understandable given the context of just losing a crucial election, and it's possible that some of said comments are posted by trolls. But it's there.
The "thin mint man" in The Meaning of Life? Mr. Creosote.
"I look around me, in vain, for those liberals who treat rural Americans and religious people with disrespect. I don't see them. I don't see any such people, not even a tiny number to give some credibility to the notion you propound."
I agree that there's not very much of it. However, my friends will sometimes refer to 'middle Americans' as hicks and rednecks. I believe its little slights like these that the Right picks up on and amplifies in a myriad number of ways.
I've seen a link to pictures of a protest in SF where a man is holding up a 'Fuck Middle America' sign and a Black Bloc is running around causing trouble with the police. Conservatives have been linking to it saying that its indicative of the Left. Bullshit.
It seems that amplification of tiny incidents into huge, national problems is be part of the MO of the whole conservative movement.
Chris Clarke--Can I say: "Stick and stones, etc.?" What is this nonsense about "respect?" Can urbanites be condescending or romanticizing about rural communities? Yes. Most urbanites I know love to drive through the countryside and dream about a more authentic life in touch with an old-fashioned, values-soaked land--but only on weekends. But spare me the hypocrisy of those who tour our Sodoms and Gomorrahs for a little high-life, and then go back to their church picnics and advocate eliminating us.
This "I don't get no respect" line is a canard. Hey, you can't be loved and respected by everyone, and why does it matter that much? The fact is that no one forces anyone to watch godless Hollywood movies or tv, read the NY Times, or stop saying their little prayers. But that's not enough for the prosyletizers. They want me to be like them. Well, I don't respect that intolerance, nor should I.
Okay, I've heard this "red-state/blue-state" talk too much and it's time to respond. The divisions are not that clear, and I've written a webpage about it. It might even make you all feel a little better.
And yes, I know I lost a word at the beginning. I'll fix it tonight.
gk41.home.mindspring.com/2004/perspective.htm
The whole warrior needs an Enemy thing, as it relates to neo-cons and OBL, is beautifully laid out in the Power of Nightmares, part I, II and III, which can be had at good bit-torrent sites around the world, http://www.suprnova.org
search 'power of nightmares'
install bitTornado first (google it).
Download the biggest file (1.3gb), will take about 3-8 hours, and watch it. Burn it to a dvd and give it to your friends.
It does seem to boil down to intolerance, doesn't it. Reality based thinkers can't tolerate folks that don't think for themselves, and "fundies" can't tolerate thinking for one's self. That's truly what we're up against - not ignorant people, just people who refuse to incorporate logic into the process. At the beginnings of our country's colleges, very few courses were taught - but logic was. Now you have to look far and wide to find a college that teaches it. Education, at least for the lesser grade levels, is all about indoctrination these days - not education - and it takes a very strong personality to come out of those 12 years seeking how to think for themselves rather than to continue to have one's thinking done for them. It seems inherent in our system. There is a big difference between religiousity and spirituality. Most of the Left are in the latter group - they can't follow someone else's mindset blinded by words; they have more of a tendency to seek out all sources and make their own decisions and therefore eschew organized religion(s) in favor of spiritual openess. The Right doesn't seem to tolerate that position very well. Alas.
This election was not a true picture of our country. The results were fabricated. The conclusions are therefore based on that fabrication and the conclusions are wrong.
Just reading several of the post here seems to support the idea that we are truly not a divided country. We don't hate rural people. We don't hate religious people. We don't hate conservatives. We don't hate each other. We are all very tolerant of each other (for the most part) and we are all being manipulated by the corrupt powers that control our country. We are like a big game to them as they move us around and play us for the fool.
We can just sit around and talk and discuss how we can make changes in our personal approaches and our lives and continue to let "them" play us or we can do what will really make a difference and that is take back control of our country from the corrupt powers.
This isn't a religious belief question although that is how they have framed it because they are all very skilled players and they know what gets under peoples skin. If we do not take back our country then we are destined to become more and more divided in their game and the end result will not be pretty.
So how do we do it? We can start by taking control or our own election process. Without this we will never get past first base. That should be the focus of all of our attention between now and the '06 election.
Anyone who opposes our ability or right to take control of our own election process (and therefore legitimizing the results) is clearly not someone who supports the constitution of the United States of America. To oppose such an action would be to admit to not wanting democracy to be heard.
We got by for many years without having computers counting our votes and today without the ability to verify computer results we do not have any compelling need to have the computers counting the votes for us.
This fraud that is being hoisted over our country and all of our fellow Americans must stop or it will cause our great nation to crumble. Surely no one wants that.
... there is a consistent strain of condescension to rural life in much of the urban world.
And this is a unique phenomenon, how?
Urban condescension towards country folk has been true as long as there has been cities and it is certainly not unique to American life. In Scandanavia, the country people are called bondjävlar by their urban counterparts. It's true everywhere; but for every "hick" you can find a "city slicker". Remember the book/film 'Deliverance'? The tv show 'Green Acres'? The condescension works both ways.
I think it's a phony issue, anyway. Rather, the right has successfully exploited the intolerance and prejudices of many Americans (no matter where they live) against those who are not, like them, too incurious or lazy or fearful to consider that we live in a complex world. Talk radio and cyncial religious and political leaders comfort them that someone else is to blame for the uncomfortable realities of the world, so they can safely ignore them.
Simply put, the right has framed the political dialogue in this country, such as it is, as 'Us v. Them'. It draws its strength from fear and all the base instincts that flow from it. A perfect formula for the reactionary climate we now live in.
"Liberals", however, recognize that we are all in this world together. Our only "fault", as someone else pointed out, is that we regard intolerance and paranoia and the politics of reaction with contempt.
As hateful and ignorant as the 'Declaration of Expulsion' author is, I would absolutely welcome what he is proposing. Let the reptilian overlords rule their little shithole, while we true Americans are free to govern our own country along lines more compatible with the Constitution.
The fact is that no one forces anyone to watch godless Hollywood movies or tv, read the NY Times, or stop saying their little prayers.
Thanks for illustrating my point rather nicely.
Again, I'm by no means saying that there's anything even remotely resembling parity in the disrespect. But it serves no one to conflate "people who live in the sticks" - or even "conservatives who live in the sticks" with those people who are calling for our elimination.
"This fraud that is being hoisted over our country and all of our fellow Americans must stop or it will cause our great nation to crumble. Surely no one wants that."
You're right, it's not an ideal. It seems though, that the reality we're about to experience will have a toll of several thousand more american dead, not to mention another 100K muslim dead. Secession may be a vehicle to redeem half the american populace in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Falluja seems to me like the warsaw ghetto. It seems we are following an alternate history nazi script where the german people relect Hitler.
If a detailed analysis of Ohio voting shows Kerry should be the actual winner, do you expect anything else than 'He conceded, we're in control, get over it' from the republicans?
Wow. Not even 30 comments yet, and all this chewy stuff to ponder. Sorry for the length: there's a lot to respond to.
As a native Californian, I've thought for most of my adult life that the state has no business being part of the rest of the U.S. I'm glad to hear that there are people on the right who agree. It's going to make the inevitable separation that much easier to negotiate . Sure would be nice if we could leave without touching off a civil war.
And I agree with Chris Clarke up there, who pointed out that the condescension toward rural folks is real, no matter how nice urban folks *think* they're being. Rural areas are routinely mis-governed at the state and federal level. Cities get all the clout and all the tax money; and their legislators (often under the influence of large corporations) blithely pass laws without much rural input that are massively damaging to rural interests. It's always been thus, but it's gotten worse under post-Reagan deregulation.
You can't blame these folks for being outraged beyond reason at the "city liberals" whose misguided policies they see as destroying their towns. Those decades of unrelieved rage are the soil in which their fear of annihilation (thanks for picking up my quote on that, Dave -- I'm honored) has taken root and grown. At this level, it's not entirely irrational.
(I've seen this condecension at work on a personal level, too. As a bona fide hick from the sticks working in the media in LA and SF, I had to be very careful to hide my rural roots. Media folks tend to think in stereotypes, and once they knew my background, they'd often assume I was naive or weak. Condescending? Always. Discriminatory? Yeah, sometimes it bordered on that, too.)
Dave, I'm looking forward to your thoughts about a rural strategy. I wrote Eli Pariser at MoveOn a long memo about this earlier this week. It really is our only hope, and I reckoned MoveOn had the best network going to implement something along these lines. It'll be interesting to hear your take on it.
SG, my husband is also an actual Jew (on his mother's side, the only side that counts). More than anything, that's the reason I'm writing this from Canada instead of California. He took one look at the Patriot Act; recalled the conditions that prompted his grandparents to leave Kiev on the eve of the Revolution; and said, "Pack up. We're outta here."
He and I had very different reactions to 9/11 and the aftermath. My instinct, like that of 10 American generations before me, was to stay and fight. His instinct insisted that a wandering Jew is a live Jew. I let him win on this one -- and am more grateful by the day that I did.
Here's a question: would secession really be the worse possible oucome? It's not like the states listed would have a tough time surivivng on their tax rolls or their existing industries.
Yes, the urban condecension toward the rural dweller. Like in CitySlickers, where the guys from the city show the rural folk they're doing it all wrong and the rural guy, played by Jack Palance, is a hopeless incompetent at everything. Or Crocodile Dundee where the big city reporter takes the rural Dundee back to the city where he can't do a thing right and is reduced to tears by the end of the movie -- a real sad sack, that guy. Or Sweet Home Alabama, or Doc Hollywood... you get the idea -- those are just the ones off the top of my head.
And of course The Beverley Hillbillies was the same thing -- an entire series about rural people who can't do anything right in the big city, and whose values are consistently held up as inferior to those of the big city folks like Mr. Drysdale and his wife. And on the other side, there was Green Acres in which a big city lawyer goes out into the rural world and makes a huge success of his farm. (I'm remembering those shows just exactly right, aren't I?)
I've seen enough references to 'moron Americans' and idiots who believe in an 'invisible sky buddy' to agree that David has a point. I've heard ultra-PC types, who would go ballastic over any word or phrase that might be preceived as disrespectful to 'minorities', cheerfully describe all southerners as neanderthals and racists. I also agree with some commenters here who have suggested that the 'liberal contempt' conservative pundits scream about is more a creation of their own paranoid imaginations than an honest reflection of general liberal opinion. Still, why not grant Red staters the same tolerance and respect we give to other cultures? I'm not saying we should be tolerant of intolerance, but can't we at least acknowledge that not everyone who lives more than 50 miles from the coast spend all their time hating on blacks and gays and that a southern drawl is not a sign of mental deficienccy? Can we show a little humility perhaps, and recognize that blue states aren't sinless enough to throw stones either? (If anyone doubts that, I could take them to some Brooklyn neighborhoods that rival the south in their contempt for blacks and 'foreigners'.)
Your point might have been stronger though, David, if you hadn't earlier quoted a Red stater who used the word 'satire' with obvious ignorance as to its meaning and referenced Swift's Modest Proposal without, hopefully, having read it. (I say 'hopefully' because the only other possibility seems to be that he thought Swift really did yearn to dine on Irish flesh and considered slaughtering babies for food, while not a realistic option, at least a pleasant fantasy.)
If nothing else, this peek at right-wing rancor reminds me how asymetrical this 'culture war' really is. If Kerry had won the election, would Michael Moore and Hillary Clinton be ranting about the evils of the Red states? Would Kos and Atrios be posting 'humorous' pieces about the great bodily harm they dreamed of inflicting on those filthy, traitorous conservatives? Of course not. If we'd won we'd be too busy dancing in the streets and patting ourselves on the back to give the 'Red menace' a second thought. The same victory that would have made us joyous has made them, if anything, more vicious and more determined to utterly destroy the cancer that is liberalism.
Still, why not grant Red staters the same tolerance and respect we give to other cultures?
When those other cultures try to impose the more intolerant of their values on me I grow less tolerant of them and they lose my respect. Should it be otherwise?
I'm sure I've demonstrated some "liberal contempt" in my life. But, you know, I'm just some random schmoe on the Internet. In the contest between random schmoes from the left/Northeast and right/Heartland, I have a hard time believing that in the aggregate the former are more disparaging of the latter than vice-versa.
Qat, the literary tradition of the "noble savage" has always been one of the largest condescensions of all. It romanticizes unsophisticated primitives as being more potent, more masculine, and more authentic than effete urbanites.
Sure, it flattering as stereotypes go -- but it's still a stereotype. And all stereotypes are cages and traps that reduce real people into various species of zoo animals. They're a sloppy thinker's way of avoiding the heavy lifting of getting to know real people one-on-one. It's a dangerous habit (arguably at the root of everything we're discussing here -- consider the pernicous use of stereotypes of "liberals" by the right), and you've just proven what a fine job Hollywood does of fostering it.
The "noble savage" stereotype short-circuits clear thinking by allowing urbanites to dismiss actual rural people (especially those who don't measure up to the standards of the stereotype, as most of us don't) as incompetent to survive in the *real* (read: urban) world. Dundee may be a hero against muggers, but he wouldn't survive a day in corporate America. Part of the fun of the movie is that everybody watching it knows that.
And absorbing this stereotype gives city folks the comfortable illusion that they know far more about rural life than they really do, and thus jump to all kinds of inappropriate conclusions. Politicians making farm policy based on what they saw on "Green Acres" may seem ludicrous on its face, but it's not a bad description of the actual situation that created a lot of the anger we're seeing.
It's interesting that you invoked Jack Palance's Curly character. He's the closest Hollywood ever got to putting my dad (who was also a cowboy, from Montana) on film. Despite their similarities, though, Curly probably never earned a master's degree, and my dad did. Which just shows to go ya about how those stereotypes can mess you up.
Qrazy Qat:
It seems to me that you have constructed an Enemy, too. And that's the problem.
The Red states are not the enemy. The people who live in them are not our enemies.
Sure, there's a good solid 30 percent of them (at least) who are gonna vote GOP no matter what. But most of them are fair-minded and sincere people who can be convinced to punch mixed ballots if you frame the debate right and make the right kinds of appeals. You don't have to appeal to their values so much as to their concerns; creating jobs, saving family farms, and building good schools in rural America will do more to draw voters than posing as a churchgoing thumper.
What assurances do we have that if liberals change their tune that this will be in any way reciprocated? I'm looking for something tangible.
Since the Blue states tend to support the Red states tax wise, I say (as a Blue-stater), let's go! It will be interesting to see how quickly the US falls apart when they don't have our money to spend, or our brains to come up with new products. I am beginning to think that we should have let the South go (except Texas, I still love Texas, no matter how screwed up it is) and take our chances.
Assuming this is merely a "modest proposal," how long do you think it will be before the Reds will be begging us to take them back?
And we have to BE THERE. The demonization of liberals could only happen because these folks never see our faces.
The smart kids -- the ones who might have been the town's liberals -- all go away to the city, and they almost never come back. And there might be a few liberal high school teachers, but they soon learn to either tone it down, or move on. So it's a total vacuum -- liberals are almost completely absent from their daily environment.
The local AM radio station blares Rush's anti-liberal diatribes directly into this void for three hours a day, every day. They can get away with it, because listeners will never run into an actual liberal person who might offer a real-world counter-example. For the past 20 years, right-wing hatred has been the only product available in the rural marketplace of ideas.
Any liberal resurgence has got to start by fixing this ASAP. We know that racism and homophobia melt away rapidly when people are exposed to real-life gays and minorities. It's time to put that principle to work for liberalism as a whole.
A while back, a friend of mine wrote a manifesto addressing the profound deficiencies of US media that bears significant responsibility for tearing America apart. What I would like to propose at this juncture is the creation of a declaration similar to Charter 77, the list of grievances and principles and hopes of the opposition movement led by Vaclav Havel and other literati in the former Czechoslovakia.
Our contrasts with the cultural underground that fostered solidarity against totalitarianism in Prague do not prevent us from making use of their strategy of building alliances toward the mutual goal of pluralist democracy.
As one of the Czech literary leaders Ivan Klima put it just after toppling the dictatorship in 1989, "to join together all the antitotalitarian forces...the greatest significance of Charter 77 lay precisely in this unifying act."
David,
I was actually referring only to those people who try to force their narrow, intoleratn values on all, but did put it in the wording of "red state/blue state", which is incorrect. I do see a huge problem with the idea that one somehow shows "repect and tolerance" for someone who is trying to force their intolerant views on others by not opposing them.
And Mrs. Robinson,
The list of movies I gave was an example of how the condecension works both ways, not only in popular culture but in the real world. If you haven't heard it you haven't been listening. It seemed to me that too many people were buying into the idea that it goes one way only.
Fascinating idea, Jay.
Here's a link to Charter 77:
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/...nts/charter.77/
Actually, looking back, David, I see that I didn't put my answer into a "red state" frame -- I said "when those other cultures" and I think that's correct. There are in the USA some cultures which are trying to impose their beliefs on others; in fact there are a lot of them. But they aren't all equally moral, and this is where the argument lies. I view more tolerance for others' views as more moral, and this means that I need to tolerate views which differ from mine -- even views I detest. But it doesn't mean I have to feel respect for the people that not only hold abhorent, intolerant views, but actually try to impose them on others, and who attempt to equate dissent from their views with treason or being unpatriotic. People who do those things have lost my respect.
Do I construct an enemy in feeling this way? I'd say I don't, because they've taken aim at me and named me as an enemy -- recognising this isn't the same thing as constructing.
When I said "those other cultures" (and I'll grant I didn't make this explicit at all) I was thinking of how the person I was responding to used other cultures -- I assumed they referred to cultures from other places, not red states per se. I returned that by pointing out that while I can respect and tolerate other cultures, if they try to force intolerance (and I was thinking of suggesting that if they tried to invade and force intolerance, which would have made my meaning clearer) then no, I wouldn't feel the need to be respectful and tolerant of them -- I'd fight it. Wouldn't you?
Respecting and tolerating is good, but it doesn't mean rolling over when they start shoving. Should we simply respect and tolerate the other cultures pushing the teaching of creationism into Wisconsin schools? This is one example of what I was trying, probably not clearly enough, to get across.
David, I agree with Jim and Steve. Where are these disrespectful liberals you speak of? I've never met any of them.
More importantly, none of them are prominent in our politics or in our national discourse--while blue-state-bashers *are*. They're in the Republican Party and on the bestseller lists.
So forgive me if I react with extreme skepticism to calls for more respect. It seems to me that liberals on the whole treat rural America with a healthy respect, but conservative rural America has a persecution complex which will not go away if the liberals start being even *more* obsequious to the "Heartland."
Mrs. Robinson, your husband was correct.
I know few full-time urban liberals who would be willing to become cultural ambassadors to the red counties across the heartland. There are too many incidents like the roadside crucifixion of Matthew Shepard to make that an attractive option right now.
Your father is obviously an admirable individual, as are all those individuals in the red states who manage to embrace education and the stretching of their cultural horizons, often against long odds. I believe it is up to them to start speaking out. Surely these are the people who have more believability for their neighbors.
I could move to Montana tomorrow. How long would it take before I was tolerated, let alone accepted? Are the celebrities who buy gentleman's ranches there welcomed for more than their money? How long before I had a swastika painted on the side of my house?
Is this stuff supported and perpetrated by the majority of good-hearted red state citizens? No. But the majority of Germans were hardly rabid Nazis. Many just went along to get along. Some agreed with Nazi fascism on some points and not others. But fascism rose to dominance because those who weren't on the receiving end of the scapegoating didn't care enough to stop it.
I have no objection to an effort to carve out a progressive rural strategy—it would be far from unprecedented, historically. But, David, you've really got to stop with the ga-ga "all those red counties" stuff. It's not one square mile, one vote. Look here for a county map (with shades of purple to indicate proportion of red-blue votes) equalized by population. (Bottom of the page.) That is not a map of dire emergency for the Democrats.
SG, I went willingly. Mr R's arguments were persuasive, and we're both keen students of history. (Dave Niewart's writings came up often enough in these conversations that he probably has to answer for some of it, too.) The whole thing felt crazy at the time, but in my heart, I knew he was right.
I wish Dad could raise his voice on this subject, but these days, he's a pile of ashes drifting at the bottom of a High Sierra lake. All I hear of his voice now is the sound of a snowmelt creek rushing into the lake by the rock where he used to fish. It's too bad. That voice used to mean something in at least one small redneck town.
As for moving to Montana, SG, the questions you ask are the ones all immigrants -- from anywhere, to anywhere -- ask themselves. And, for better or worse, we learn to live with the answers.
My 11-year-old son gets constantly teased at school for being American. The teachers try to stop it, but it's not helping. It's an ugly reminder that, even in a welcoming place like Canada, we will always be outsiders.
But that's just part of the whole immigrant package. There are costs, and there are gains, and you hope the latter outweigh the former in the end.
One more point regarding respect and tolerance. I find this an extremely clever and disingenuous attack on liberals' own perceived strength. In other words, liberals are being hoist on their own petard.
I'm a liberal, but my respect and tolerance is not unlimited. I do not find that I *must* respect every bizarre cultural wrinkle. For instance, I do *not* respect female genital mutilation, no matter how it might be viewed in parts of Africa. I do not respect subjugation of a gender or of an ethnic or religious group anywhere in the benighted places of this world where it is the norm.
In this country, I have the deepest and abiding respect for the Constitution, most especially the First Amendment. And here is where the cultural warriors of the right part company with me. I certainly respect their right to practice their faith as long as they are not imposing it on me. And that's the line in the sand that is being attacked. The problem, it seems, is a sect that sets no bounds, that is institutionally militant in its belief in prosyletizing, and is set on a direct collision course with the Constitution. How am I to respect or tolerate that?
There are too many incidents like the roadside crucifixion of Matthew Shepard to make that an attractive option right now.
People didn't let the assassination of Harvey Milk keep them from moving to San Francisco. The hinterlands have nothing even close to a monopoly on hatred.
I could move to Montana tomorrow. How long would it take before I was tolerated, let alone accepted?
This depends on a number of factors. Some of those factors are shameful and other just human nature.
1) are you moving to Missoula, or to Wolf Point?
2) Do you honestly listen to other people with viewpoints that differ from yours, or do you treat them as walking stereotypes?
3) Are you a liberal, or a black gay liberal?
4) do you play a good game of pool?
5) do you stop and help your neighbor winch his truck out of the mud, or do you lock the doors and drive past?
There ARE yahoos in them there sticks, no doubt about it. But I think you'd be surprised how far winching that truck out of the mud would go to smooth the path toward acceptance even for the above-mentioned black gay liberal - assuming you've got a winch on your Subaru Forester.
Mrs. R., I am saddened by your loss, and that town's loss.
I would join you in Canada, but my husband refuses to leave NY. He's not Jewish, and can't see what we see. So I'm praying and doing what I can to avert the whirlwind that's stirring.
I am angry that so many beautiful places in this country seem like hostile territory to me now. Long ago I traveled cross country and I looked forward to doing it again. Not now. I think my Volvo wagon with NY plates wouldn't survive the trip. No matter how much 7-11 coffee I drink, it would probably be mistaken for lattes.
I should add, SG, that I agree wholeheartedly with your point about not having to agree with every insane offensive cultural idea that comes down the pike.
But the "blue state" siege mentality isn't just counterproductive or "unfair to the hicks": it grants Rove et al one of their main contentions - that the majority of the people in this country are on their side. This election notwithstanding, I'm not willing to cede that just yet. Frame the issues differently, and that slightly larger slice o' pie would have gone to Kerry.
Qat,
I agree it's a lot easier to be tolerant at a distance, but I think that's part of the problem. We're perfectly willing to be tolerant as long as it doesn't cost us anything. We smile condescendingly at 'primitive' values as long as there's an ocean between us, but scream bloody murder the minute one of them tries to move in next door. It's natural and even reasonable to do that, but there's something in it that smacks of condescension and even hypocricy. (I have the uncomfortable feeling I'm piling on here. You seem to be getting it from all sides. You do know we we still love you, right? :->)
I wonder if a lot of the problem isn't do to a basic difference in mindset between reds and blues. We lefties tend to favor self-criticism, looking more closely at flaws in our own group. Conservatives tend to do the opposite, quick to point out the sins of the enemy, but tolerant of the same faults exhibited by one of their own. To them, that seems natural, and they expect us to feel the same way, so when they see us turn a blind eye, for example, to Arab homophobia while railing against the homegrown version, they assume that we must be identifying more closely with the Middle East than with Middle America. Of course the opposite is true. We're more critical of Americans than Saudis because they are 'one of us.' Unfortunately, they don't see it that way.
Spinning Tops, that would be a good question if we were sacrificing something, but I don't think that's what David's suggesting. If anything, correcting our own tendencies toward intolerance and hate will make us stronger. No one's suggesting we support the ban on gay marriage, only that we recognize that some people do think that homosexuality is a sin. We don't need to tolerate them imposing those views to the detriment of the rest of us, but maybe we can refrain from treating them as pond scum just for feeling that way.
Jay, I love it. The does seem like a good time for a clear statement of basic principles to give the left something to rally around, and perhaps provide the right with a view of our beliefs that doesn't involve anti-Christianity and treason. We might also consider something along the lines of the Geneva accords. I don't think there's much chance of making peace with the right any time soon, but finding common ground for a future settlement might be a good start.
Chris, my liberal, violin-playing, Brooklyn-born husband would stop anywhere for anybody and help. I've seen him do it. He believes in the fundamental goodness of people, even when he's been sorely disappointed. As for me, I've got a bad back. I'd have to go get help.
But what happens when I don't show up for Sunday services? What happens when I don't respond to god-talk? What happens when I ask for certain books at the library?
Comparing the milieu of the Shepard murder with the murder of Milk in San Francisco is off the point. It's a matter of critical mass. In the swaths of red-state America there is a critical mass toward one vision. In the cities, population numbers guarantee a huge number of like-minded people wherever one sits on the political spectrum.
We're supposed to be the ones for the people, and we should remember that. We should avoid calling our fellow citizens "moron Americans" or assuming that religious faith automatically equates with hypocrisy and ignorance. And as < a href="http://tinyurl.com/6ub56">Mark Schmitt points out, we shouldn't assume we know what people's self-interest is better than they know it.
We should search for common ground where it's available. In some areas, it isn't. I'm not willing to teach creationism in the schools or criminalize homosexuality. If not for the power of the federal government, I think that racial discrimination would still be rampant. Those are not negotiable issues. But neither do we need to adopt a language of disdain for those who hold them. One liberal value, I think, is that accumulating money isn't the goal of life, so we shouldn't be helpless in the face of people who vote on beliefs that are not totally economic (although I firmly believe that it's economic erosion that leads them to beliefs that give them self-respect at the expense of rationality). In other words, we should be asking, "Why do they vote that way?" with the aim of coming up with an answer other than "Because they're stupid."
Meanwhile, we need to push a vision of the society that we want. Democrats have been just too damned reality-based! The carefully crafted programs may be doable, but people who think there were WMDs in Iraq aren't doing policy analyses in their living rooms. Democrats have been trying to explain the feasibility of their specific proposals in the current political climate. We should just focus on the outcomes -- here's what your health care program ought to provide you, here's the way employment ought to work, here's what your tax dollars should buy for you, here's the limit on how we should exploit the environment, and so on. Don't use political campaigns to work out regulatory details, but to address real problems.
Let's move away from personality issues, both at the electoral level (it's selecting representatives, not American Idol), and at the grassroots level.
And somehow we think secession is an answer? Like "they" would allow such a concept w/o the hue & cry being raised. I think not. As was pointed out above, there are too many tax $s in the Blues. And, as Mussolini said - fascism should more correctly be called corporatism... - the brownshirts will not let our people go and we all know that. Mrs. Robinson - is there room at your inn?????
In the cities, population numbers guarantee a huge number of like-minded people wherever one sits on the political spectrum.
Excellent point, SG. But the previous sentence:
In the swaths of red-state America there is a critical mass toward one vision.
is overstating things. Sure, there's an exodus of free-thinking types from small towns to the coasts and cities - I'm one of the exodists. Buut for everyone who escapes to SoHo, there's at least one who can't afford to leave.
The pressure to conform in rural-small town America is considerable. But not everyone agrees. Some people may submit silently, but we sell them short - and their ability to affect change - if we forget they exist at all.
Anyway. "Going to get help" works just fine if you're one a them city folk with their cellular phones.
But what happens when I don't show up for Sunday services? What happens when I don't respond to god-talk?
A majority of people in Montana wouldn't even notice.
What happens when I ask for certain books at the library?
Nine times in ten, the librarian will get a lovely, moist twinkle in her eye and be thrilled that someone finally came in who knew what a "Chomsky" is. I mean, we may be talking flyover country, but we're also talking *librarians.*
As someone who has lived on both sides of the conservative-liberal divide, I can tell you that both sides nuture unwarranted stereotypes of the other side. I can also tell you that the rural conservatives are not going to reach out to us to bridge this gap. I've read a lot of handwringing accounts on liberal blogs that we urban liberals now have to reach out to the rural conservatives on moral values. It seems typical of liberals to accept more than half the responsibility for the gap and to take all the action to bridge it. To rural conservatives, this tends to confirm their stereotype of urban liberals as people with mushy values.
Further, it doesn't help that this sudden burst of enlightenment comes on the heels of an election loss. It looks rather odd to conservatives that liberals suddenly get "religion" only after they've lost an election. At the worst, it appears to them that liberals are opportunistic and cynical. They will therefore not take you seriously because of the timing.
I believe this "moral values" argument is a red herring. Kevin Drum on his Political Animal blog How Bush Won the Election provided an analysis of exit polls to show that the war on terrorism and the economy were the major drivers and that Bush got the benefit of the doubt on these issues. Liberals could waste an awful lot of time and energy trying to deal with the moral values issue and still miss the real message for them in last week's election.
Chris, I don't even like Chomsky. And I don't have a cellphone. What can I say? I'm not a stereotype either.
I hear what you're saying, and it gives me a tiny, tiny ray of hope. That ray of hope is only that, at some point, the silent ones will speak up and waken their communities to the danger that's gathering.
A generation ago, liberals were wrong to think that barging into black communities and telling everyone what was good for them, while sprinkling a few federal programs around, would solve the problems of the ghetto underclass. Some of those who escaped the ghetto went back to help, and their credibility is miles deeper than an East Side liberal's.
Similarly, I would hesitate to barge into red-state communities where I am a stranger and think I know best. Would you be willing to return? Would the silent free-thinkers be willing to speak up?
There are some liberals who believe that social and economic pain in small-town America is so severe and hopeless that people find succor in Dominionism, far-right evangelicalism, and the worst of Bush Republicanism. This may be so. Can we expect, then, that renewed prosperity and growth in the abandoned heartland will co-opt people out of these beliefs? I doubt it and even if that were so, the prospects for America's economic future are looking increasingly dim for everyone but the real elite.
It's a question of class, but the monied far-right has succeeded in turning it into a question of immutable "values."
Beth, it's not a matter of distance to me -- and I was trying to make myuself clearer -- it's a matter of whether or not someone is trying to force me to accept intolerant and even hateful "values" as the way we (and that includes me) do business. Shoving gays back in the closet and sideswiping black people are to me things that shouldn't be done. If folks want to think it should be done, that's okay by me -- I think they're wrong but they are entitled to think that way. They can even say it aloud, trumpet it from TV and radio and newspapers (and they do). But trying to enshrine it in law is a problem for me, and when they do it, I just can't go along. At that point, I think they've lost any reasonable expectation of tolerance and respect. And even then, I'm one of those people who doesn't have a with their living their lives, although the feeling, I've noticed from many pundits and radio hosts, is not mutual.
And you know, this call for "tolerance and respect" is a little too close to the recent calls for "civility" in that they seem to be directed only toward one side of the debate, with the other side unconstrained by tolerance, respect, or civility.
OK, do we liberals want something really serious to worry about? Here's a topic that doesn't get any discussion on a hate crimes blog because it's economic but it is the most near-term danger I can imagine for us. Check out this post on Brad DeLong's blog about the funding of our current account deficit: It's a Little More Complicated.
So what's the connection between hate crimes and the economy? It appears there is very little standing between us and the meltdown of the US economy but the willingness of Asian central banks to fund our current account deficit. They are in effect lending us money to continue buying their relatively inexpensive products. If it stops, then our economy will likely fall into a serious recession, if not outright depression. Who do you expect the conservatives will blame for it? Can you imagine them screaming "backstabbers" at the liberal elitists? The blame ought to fall on the Bush administration for doing so little to avoid this eventuality but life isn't fair, is it?
Currently we're getting only verbal threats from conservatives and some actual violence from the lunatic fringe. I'm guessing it'll escalate considerably if a lot of Americans are under severe economic distress. I hope it doesn't happen but it'll pay to keep a watchful eye on this economic trend.
SG, no stereotyping intended. I do like Chomsky and I have a cellphone, which I hide when I work in the Bay Area and take out in the desert.
We're thinking about "returning" - not to where I came from but to somewhere outside megalopolis - but we're taking our time deciding. Real estate prices being what they are, leaving CA now would be a one-way trip.
Mushinronsha, I agree.
Beth, there's a limit to what I'm willing to put up with. I want to see a reciprocal effort, or it's nothing but a waste of time.
QrazyQat, re your first paragraph, I agree completely. Re your second, what can I say? As a lefty, I tend to favor self-criticism. ;-> Seriously, I see this as a very different issue from 'civility' which all too often is code for 'shut up and take it.' If that's how calls for "tolerance and respect" are interpreted. I'll join you in decrying it. It's obvious to me and, I assume, to most people here that intolerance is much more in evidence on the right than on the left, but does that mean we can't do better or shouldn't try?
Intolerance is not a weapon, at least not for us. Fascists and totalitarians of all stripes use it to cement loyalties and attack outsiders, but it does nothing for the rest of us but make us uglier and more stupid. The civil rights marchers wouldn't have been more powerful if they'd sung, "We will not be moved, you ignorant, inbred hicks," and neither will we.
Spinning Tops, what exactly am I asking you to put up with? What sort of effort would you have to make?
nihil obstet, well said.
A couple of useful distinctions we probably need to make here:
1: Respecting someone else's freedom of speech and religion does not mean that we have to hold all ideas as equally valid. Certain speech and certain beliefs that are patently WRONG, and the free marketplace of ideas depends on balanced argument -- with all sides fully engaged -- to arrive at the truth of any matter.
We got here because, in the name of "tolerance," we didn't hold up our end of that balance. They've been allowed to do all the talking. Things won't come around right again until we get back in the conversation with strong words and strong ideas.
2: It's important to separate the ideas from the speaker. Ideas can be wrong. You can get wherever you need to go by simply arguing them on their merits. But it gets us nowhere to get all ad hominem and insist that the speaker is an idiot to boot. Just because our opponents do this all time doesn't mean we have to stoop to it, too.
"Stupid ideas" versus "stupid speakers" is a subtle distinction, apparently too subtle for many right-wingers to grasp. But we'll avoid a lot of trouble if we bear it in mind.
The odd thing about this post is that David has spent 90% of his effort describing a right-wing that very creatively makes their own "liberals" to bash. David then concludes by saying liberals have to break this impasse by being better.
Frankly, I've heard this before. Black people were supposed to "overcome" the sterotypes and prejudices used to bar them from equality.
Well, it sure didn't work for Saddam. We know now he had no WMD, didn't work with terrorists, and posed no threat to us. These facts have no effect on the beliefs of 2/3 of the Bush supporters.
Nor do I buy David's equally creative and unsupported leap to equate the right-wing with the country living. In my county a lot of people drive 50 miles to work in a city or live on a pension. The most "rural" thing you would notice about us are the two dozen abandoned cars around many houses. This comes nowhere close to the Jeffersonian ideal of growing a healthy balanced diet at home.
We are actually grappling with two phenomena here- first, suburban superchurches with worshippers in ankle-length crinoline dresses, and second, a long-standing legislative imbalance giving the rural areas an effective veto on measures proposed by urban dwellers.
This imbalance has already effectively reduced the U.S. to second-world status, and it's not even crunchtime yet.
Think about it- if you live in the city you can't buy a small slow car that would meet your needs. It's not legal to sell those cars in the U.S.. If you live in the country you get a subsidy for buying a 10-mpg gas guzzler. How did that happen?
Wanna get pissed off? Go to the ferry terminal in Bremerton and look down into the shipyard. On their own reservation the feds use dozens of tiny trucks that get 80-100 mpg, but we can't buy or license such vehicles because of the rural-Republican lock on the legislature.
So, fine, talk about 'values' and how liberals need to be more sensitive, but remember there's a real world out there with real problems we created pushing us into a corner. We may need to hear some plain talking before we get out.
What Mrs. Robinson said. All of it! Also Mushinronsha and Beth. "Tolerance" doesn't mean lying down and enjoying rape.
Another things that's annoying about all this regionalist stereotyping is that we're too quick to assume that all conservatives are red-state rural folk. There's plenty of eliminationist right-wing talk among the right-wingers of the blue states. (Ann Coulter, for instance, is from Connecticut.) We should remember that Bush did better among suburbanites and the college-educated this year than he did in 2000; and I don't think that's all due to terrorism. We should also consider the extent to which fundamentalism is associated with upward mobility; think of all those suburban megachurches! The stereotype of the trailer-trash redneck listening to Rush just won't cut it anymore. My guess is that much of the right-wing media (Fox News, The Weekly Standard, etc.) has demographics to die for.
For all those of you writing from the blue states, let me tell you what it is like here in Fundamentalist Florida...Over the past year I have been having discussions with a fundamentalist Christian "friend" over gay rights, abortion, and other issues, such as the possibility that there may be more than one valid way to approach God and that "truth" may have more shades than just black and white. She just emailed me her delight in Bush's victory. I am afraid I flipped and explained to her that our world views are too different to continue being friends, that her religious cohorts want to legislate my ideas of morality into oblivion. Her response: she will "pray for me" to come to Jesus. Do y'all really think it is possible to remain respectful of people who cannot respect your right to be different?
Ignorance isn't the exclusive province of the provincial, but it is certainly true that isolated communities have much better institutions for enforcing conformity, keeping out new ideas, and propegating tribalism that's easily mobilized to violence.
Those seeking to change conditions in these communities clearly have an uphill fight. But from what we've seen, efforts to extend the power of the metropolitan liberal state into rural enclaves - e.g. abortion rights, gay rights, even Civil Rights - by law has only met with hardened resistance, validated local fears of being embattled and belittled, and done only a little to improve the lot of the intended beneficiaries.
There's still freedom of movement in this country. The effort to break the grip of oppression (on behalf, of course, of those who want it broken) in isolated communities in America has stalled. The best we can do is keep what we've got where we've got it, so that those who choose to vote with their feet have somewhere they can go.
What would the process of seceeding entail?Can the citizens of an individual state make the decision or does the union make the decision collectively?225 years is a long time to be hanging out with the same people.
In California, I'd imagine it would start with a statewide referendum. It seems to be the preferred way to get anything serious done in the state these days.
The referendum would specify a date of secession, specify what would happen on that date (US troops out, federal offices closed, etc.), and authorize the convention of a committee to write a new national constitution (detailing how delegates would be chosen, what they would be expected to produce, and when it would be due). It might also specify the date of the first national election, and mandate that the existing state constitution would serve as the law of the land until the new one could be written.
Stuff like that. And then we'd vote. And then....who knows?
Apparently Mr. Thompson has no sense of irony, for if he had, he would see that many of the states he wishes to expel to create an ideal America were members of the original 13 colonies.
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland.
I think ignorance doesn't even begin to describe what we're dealing with.
One idea on splitting into two countries, blue
and red. As of a certain date, everyone gets to decide which color they want to reside in and adequate time to move. Then the blue states
would have 60 to 65 percent of the economic
power, at least that much of the college grads
and they could then stop supporting the red
states through the federal tax system. They
would have more of the best schools and much
fewer of the bigots, racists and people who
just thrive on hatred.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/200..._state_to_reds/
QrazyQat,
Outstanding post. One more example I would add is Forrest Gump. Heartwarming story of a retarded guy from the sticks who can't seem to do anything right and needs to be guided along through life by the liberal intelligentsia. Um... except not.
I anticipate one problem with secession. Eventually, as the Red States of America find their position deteriorating, they would launch a pre-emptive war against the terrorist-harboring Blue States of America. The RSA is a culture more enthusiastic about martial virtues and now supplies, I believe, a disproportionate number of recruits to the armed forces. The BSA would have to get armed and ready right quick.
Mrs. R has it right on the procedure (as she has been right throughout this thread). In addition to the referendum process in CA, Oregon has the same and has for my 50 years had a strong independent streak towards its relationship to the nation and California. Would they team up and go together? Tough call. WA has been a bit more connected to the US, but also has a strong referendum movement and a big blue population in the west. In fact the blueness of the west coast states is really just in the west part of the states/large cities. Would CA, WA and OR be willing to split themselves so that their east side citizen did not feel coerced into the bargain. This is a strong thread in politics in these states, not to be ignored.
To avoid unnecessary conflice and thing CA would also need to let Orange County down to the Mexico border stay in the red 'nation'. These areas lean red themselves and would preserve the Pacific seaport.
In the end this reorganization would be different and as with all grand changes would have many unintended consequences, but there is not reason for it to turn into civil war. People on both sides of the divide have made strong arguments for the value of the idea.
I do think that the immigration issue needs to remain open for all current citizens so that people have this lifetime to choose their place/nation.
Rather than become fully independent I would argue for this western blue zone to become a Canadian province.
I also think that we need to prepare for the Midwest and South to split into 2-3 separate zones once they lose the common antagonist of the coastal liberals.
In the end the population of the US has grown too large to be governed as one and a less centralized power structure needs to be found.
Even to approach finding common ground with adversaries requires unmediated communication, as well as mutual motivation. Attempting to do this without preliminary research into which credible leaders might participate in good faith and which provocateurs would likely work to sabotage or obstruct such endeavors is probably not going to produce desired results, and may very well result in deepening cynicism and distrust.
The Center for New Community in Chicago made some inroads in establishing networks to steer discontent over family farm crises into productive channels through rural pastors. The Institute for Washington's Future did something similar in economically dislocated timber towns.
Political Research Associates in Massachusetts has a reference library and national network database of folks doing this kind of educational outreach.
One of the hangups to doing this work is that foundations fund direct action, campaigns, lobbying, and public relations marketing. Not very imaginative nor effective in supporting on the ground efforts. Without funded opposition research and conferences to discuss strategy, we have people jumping into dangerous situations without a clue what they're up against.
Thompson goes on to lay out a plan of expulsion. The 12 states that must go: California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware. (It's hard to say why he omits other Blue states, such as Washington, which after all now has not only voted for the Democratic candidate in every election since 1988, it maintains an all-Democratic Senate delegation, and five of its eight congressional seats are held by Democrats as well. Perhaps because if he excluded all the Blue states, including ours, the America he envisions would have no ports on the Pacific.)
Maybe because Nazis like him have always considered the Pacific Northwest the future Aryan homeland?
It is kind of funny though that "red" Amerka will include Seattle and all those gays on Capitol Hill.
As far as the talk of conflict between the two (or more) 'nations', remember that Canada has a very different government (semi-socialist) and goes largely ignored by US fascist-conservatives. Why? Because Canadians are not trying to change to rules that these people live under, but liberals in the blue states are doing just that in their minds. We arent just debating with people who want a theolgically based country, we are also at odds with those that think any government is bad government.
The major countries of Europe have survived as long or longer than the US, even through wars, only to return to their prior borders. The one exception seems to be England/Northern Ireland where a struggle has gone on for centuries trying to force assimilation of a culture that does not want to be assimilated.
Imagine if when the south seceded we let them go, but openly and actively supported immigration amnesty for all slaves in the North. Then followed that with the kind of economic pressure we use today against recalcitrant nations.
In spite of what some assert, the US is a construct of people, not god(s), and is subject to cohesion or alternation depending on the actions of those people.
Donkey, I've also wondered who, in the long run, really won the Civil War. It's tempting to think that both sides might have been better off by now if they'd been able to make the divorce final way back then.
But while Washington and Oregon might make a good geographic and cultural fit with Canada, I don't see why California would need to go that route. On its own, it's got everything it needs to be a viable nation. Culturally, it's as far from Ottawa as it is from Washington, DC. Once they got their freedom, I don't see Californians needing to send federal tax money anywhere beyond Sacramento. I think the energetic, focused California business style would fit disasterously with the more laconic Canadian way of doing things. And there are more Californians than there are Canadians, so it would really mess up the balance of power in Canada.
But I like your point about California's political fault lines. Maybe the referendum should be done on a county-by-county basis, so each county could choose for itself whether to stay or go.
I could readily see my home turf, the Eastern Sierra, staying in. Not only does it lean Republican and feel very ignored by Sacramento (most state politicians can't find it on a map -- those 14K high mountians completely put it out of sight and out of mind), but folks there consider anything that puts further distance between LA and their water supply a good thing.
And I'd considered the conservatism of OC and San Diego. It might be better for all concerned if they stayed. That way, the US could keep its largest Pacific navy base and Camp Pendleton in as well.
It doesn't seem unworkable, does it?
As for Canada being "ignored' by the American right: I wish. FOX News started broadcasting here last week. The Authoritarians have already started creeping across the border, using the same tactics they started with in the US. They're funding think tanks, buying politicians, and cultivating young conservatives...I've seen this movie, and know how it ends.
Americans have a long history with these people, and know what they're up against. Canada has no such history, and hence no cultural reference points to inform them about what they're up against. They're greeting this onslaught with the same benign "tolerance" most Americans did 20 years ago, without a single clue about just what it is they're tolerating. Frankly, my dear, it scares me.
At the big Kerry rally in Philadelphia, there was one person holding up a sign bearing a picture of a bloody aborted fetus. While I strongly disagree with the idea that abortion should be illegal, I was very pleased and proud to see that no one tried to get rid of that sign or its bearer. He or she (I couldn't tell) went on holding the sign for, I would say, about 45 minutes.
I am in favor of protest by either side! What I really hate - "dislike" doesn't express my feelings adequately - is intimidation, bullying, by either a majority group or by a minority group. It just isn't right.
Now, to be thoroughly honest, I have to add a postscript to my happy account of the rally. There was one woman carrying a big sign that stated "MY BUSH WILL VOTE FOR KERRY." No one disturbed her, any more than they bothered the person with the bloody fetus sign, and she ("MY BUSH WILL VOTE FOR KERRY") got up and started dancing around very jubilantly on top of a white trailer which was serving some purpose or other. The person with the bloody-fetus sign edged over, though remaining on the ground, and pushed his or her sign up towards the dancing woman, as if to cancel her out! Then the "MY BUSH" woman, I do admit, briefly tried to use her sign to beat ineffectually at the fetus sign, pushing it back down toward ground level, away from the trailer. Since this all seemed relatively harmless, maybe even good-natured, and since the bloody-fetus person initiated that particular encounter, I still claim the Kerry rally displayed TOLERANCE rather than disdain for the anti-abortion protester.
How long would a similarly dissenting person have lasted at a Bush rally? We know the answer: about fifteen seconds!
In a column in the wake of 9/11, Eric Alterman called for some people who had commented on the event to be "rejected for reasons of honor and pragmatism" as the "'Hate America' left."
The pragmatic reason was as protection against the "McCarthyite thuggishness" so amply on display in public discourse. At the time, I wrote:
"But as Alterman himself notes, right-wing pundits are already reaching for 'examples so tiny as to be virtually nonexistent' in order to tar 'anyone with a wartime question.' In light of that, does he really imagine that falling back into CYA mode, draining limited political and emotional capital in declaring 'Oh no no no, they're not with us!' will make any difference? Will it stop the attacks, the accusations, the journalistic tarrings? Has it ever?"
What's my point? Well, have city dwellers condescended to rural folks? Have rural folks condescended to city dwellers? Is there a tradition of anti-intellectualism in the US? Did I just a couple of weeks ago hear a commercial fisher sneer at the supposed ignorance of marine biologist "college boys?" Yes to all.
So the issue is not if or how much "liberals" stereotype "rural people." (Sidebar: Speaking of stereotypes, why are we acting as if rural people, including rural folks in "red" states, can't be liberals?) The issue is the right wing's deceit and manipulation of information to generate an atmosphere of division and hate.
What makes us think some "self-examination" will stop that? What makes us think they will not simply, if necessary, reach for "examples so tiny as to be virtually nonexistent" and amplify them, as they already do?
Yes, present a rural agenda. Yes, talk about preservation of family farms. Yes, discuss land use, water and power and transportation. Yes, talk about values of decency, respect, neighborliness.
But I will be damned if in the face of those who want to say I'm not an American, who threaten me, who want to expel me, foster hate against me, eliminate me, that I am going to act like some cliche battered wife and spend my energy searching my soul to see how I brought this on myself.
As I said just today, in discussing arguing with right wingers (not, I note rural dwellers but ideologues):
"Do I sound cruel, unforgiving, rigid, dismissive of some? Then so be it. This is a battle for justice, it has been for decades, not a battle of violence or arms, but a battle of rhetoric (I don't say ideas because we're the only ones who have any) and commitment - and I'm tired of being expected to play nice with the bullies and bigots."
"Respecting those from rural areas, those who hold deep religious beliefs, doesn't force progressives to compromise their own beliefs or standards. It simply means being part of a democracy, which is enriched by its diversity. Certainly traditional rural values should have a place among all that diversity that liberals are fond of celebrating."
I'm so glad that this has been expressed this way. I grow up in a fiarly small liberal town (Charlottesville) in Virginia, and have had no small amount of interaction with rural conservatism in the counties around me. I, for one, took the election last week as a bit of a wake-up call as to just how deep the resentment is that rural voters have for urban voters. In a certain way, I believe that liberals do have to do the "reaching across," because whatever amount of urban snobbery (which I agree, is exaggerated, but not invented, by Republican marketers), has had an amazing effect in being misread by rural voters as a deeper sort of dislike than it actually is. It is up to liberals, particularly urban ones, to revise their worldview on the diverse lifestyles that they accept and celebrate, setting aside any resentment in kind for rural conservatives, and pleading our case (not adjusting it) to people whom have felt disenfranchised (I believe inadvertantly), for years. I believe that liberals are the people who are good enough at turning the other cheek to "enemies," and that is precisly what we need to do right now. I, personally, would prefer it if all mocking of rural voters would stop immediately, and we put forward a strong, welcoming hand, portraying liberalism for what it actually is, for those who have only heard it defamed on conservative talk radio.
Mrs. Robinson: It is not just Canada that they are setting up think tanks in; its the whole world. Take a look at the Atlas Economic Research Fundation's directory Major areas of concentration appear to be South America and eastern Europe. Of particular interest in the directory is the advanced search, which lets you identify which think-tanks the Atlas Economic Research Foundation helped to establish, and which institutions they have helped to coordinate.
I've read and participated in this thread for a day and a half now, and it's a mess. Together we represent liberals of all stripes, from across the country, urban, suburban, rural, ex-pat, formerly rural and now urban. We are all unfailingly polite, concerned, intelligent, and yet we can't even begin to agree on causes or cures. We're not even clear on the nature or depth of the crisis of bifurcated culture that confronts us.
Yesterday, Steve Gilliard posted an email that examined these questions from a more, shall I say, empassioned viewpoint.
Larry E says above: But I will be damned if in the face of those who want to say I'm not an American, who threaten me, who want to expel me, foster hate against me, eliminate me, that I am going to act like some cliche battered wife and spend my energy searching my soul to see how I brought this on myself.
This just about sums it up for me. I find too much of the soul-searching above tending to excuse or justify hateful attitudes on the religious right and seeking to find explanations in attitudes and "bad" behavior on the left.
If we can't shake that mindset, we'll be inched farther and farther into helpless marginality. The right gets away with this crap because they've been allowed to, while the left seeks to conciliate, understand, ameliorate. It's a losing stance. It's a loser for Congressional Democrats, for moderate churches, for liberals in nominally red counties and states.
If we don't believe in the right of our own cause, we are surely doomed against those who are unshakeable in their convictions.
It's time for every liberal and elected Democrat to stand up and say loudly and longly: This is unacceptable. We will not accept this assault on our honor, our patriotism, on our Constitution. This is a fight in which we can give no quarter.
If this leads to violent civil war, secession, or whatever, the fight must still be fought or everything we believe in will pass into a forgotten history. I do believe the situation has become that serious.
Yugoslavia couldn't stay together. Iraq will likely devolve into separate states. Artificial constructs that push mutually hostile cultures together for reasons of economic or political convenience must contend with instability and violent clashes. I'm not willing to countenance a strongman like Tito or Saddam to keep the warring factions together.
As I said above, we are still fighting the Civil War and the wrong side is winning today. Yes, I say the "wrong" side. I won't equivocate, explain, demure, or indulge in cultural relativism.
We all would like to see these differences resolved peacefully. But capitulation is not resolution. I do not believe our side (and there are sides now) will prevail if we think that reaching out and explaining things better will impress our adversaries. Yes, the
[post continued, because I'm particularly long-winded today...]
Yes, they are our adversaries. Our adversaries may be very nice people at home. They may be loving parents, helpful neighbors, hard-working and generous people. But in the larger community they are talking, voting and furthering an extremist agenda that seeks to destroy those who don't agree.
It's not acceptable! Can we agree on that point? And if we do, can we start to agree that this is not our fault and we must fight?
I would love to secede, but that only delays the inevitable day of reckoning. We must make our stand here and now.
I don't mean to hijack this thread with my long-windedness, but I'd like to add one more point:
It's not just the culture wars we are confronting. We must also deal with an increasingly entrenched one-party government that is supported by the monied class for its own benefit. There are already grave signs that the election may have been stolen. If this proves true, even if it remains only suspicion, our democracy survives only on critical life-support from liberals. This will be an uphill battle against two adversaries: the culture warriors and the corporatist plutocrats.
After 9/11, conservatives found a simple, comforting answer to the question of why the Arabs hate us -- they hate our freedom -- and declared the matter closed. When some liberals tried to probe a little deeper, they were labeled traitors and blame-America-firsters. The 'patriots' closed their ears that negativity and set out courageously to defeat the enemy....in Iraq.
Now we on the left seem to be falling into that same trap. We've found comforting answers to the question of why red-staters hate us -- they're stupid or brainwashed or religious fanatics -- and those who look a little deeper are met with howls of outrage from other liberals. If we're not careful, we'll end up the same way, in a futile war against the wrong enemy that ultimately makes us more vulnerable, not less.
Thinking is not a sign of weakness. Taking an honest look at ourselves and those who oppose us isn't defeatism, it's our best chance for success. We've spent the last four years bemoaning the stupidity of Bush and his followers. Now we have the opportunity to show that we're smarter than that. Let's not blow it.
To unite with people who voted for an entire set of "values" that is contradictory to my own: corporate greed, racism, pre-emptive war and hatred would be the ultimate hypocrisy, so then what is the solution? Secession is not an option. If we look at the "purple map," we can see that the blue states are greatly intermingled w/red ideology - we are really not so separate and apart as the straight red/blue map would lead us to believe. Our own purpleness would not allow for such secession voting. It seems to me the only thing that might be possible is to boycott just about everything. Stop our cash cow at its source; our wallets. If we stopped everything, we might make a difference. But, still there's the purple - if we do work stoppage, half will show up; if we boycott purchasing power, half will spend. Is this checkmate or merely check and I can't see my next move? We should all be throwing open our windows and shouting that we are "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore," but we didn't (not in 2000 & certainly not in 2004) & we don't even now that yet another vote is in question. Why? Are we that afraid of our government? Perhaps the answer is Yes.
The national strike is a long and honorable leftist tradition. That tends to be forgotten, since the U.S. hasn't seen a good one since at least the 1930s.
The Red State social conservatives aren't even getting the social agenda they voted for.
Bush's first "political capital" speech after the election mentioned cutting taxes and privatizing Social Security. Not a peep about abortion and gay marriage.
Bait and switch. As somebody said on an Atrios thread a few days ago, even conservative judges hesitate to overturn precedents--even when they think Roe is bad law. And the GOP establishment isn't going to take any decisive and final action on gay marriage and abortion, even if they had the votes to do it. If they did, those would cease to be wedge issues. Instead, they'll tinker around the edges and throw the fundies an occasional bone with parental notification or "partial birth" abortion. That's it.
The fundies are to the GOP what organized labor is to the Democrats: they get the red meat rhetoric in election years, before both parties get back to their primary mission of serving Wall Street.
The fundies need to be repeatedly challenged: "You've got God's anointed in the White House, and your three judges on the Supreme Court. So why is Roe v. Wade still law? Oh, yeah--why has God's anointed (who doesn't go to church, BTW) said he's for civil unions?"
The hardest-core of the social conservatives may not ever vote Democratic. But after they find they got all the sizzle and none of the steak, they may very well get demoralized and stay home next time.
Kevin C: indeed, not a peep about gay marriage, but he did stand by whilst Specter was trashed by certain conservatives on his "warning" to the President on SCOTUS appointments.
So we privatize part or all of Social Security - what does that mean exactly? Perhaps it means the federal govt. directly uses our personal withholding SS$$ to invest in corporations (probably of its choosing i.e. Halliburton) - merger of state and corporate powers = fascism. Currently, we're still somewhat able to freely travel, although in the more remote areas close to our borders the border patrol is running road blocks on interstate highways; so we get the national driver's license ID card and then its "may I see your papers, pleazzzzz." Where and how do we draw the lines necessary to stop all of this? Do we still have a united voice that will cry out? Will the right join the left when this process truly begins to exert itself upon us as a people? By the time the right sees all (any?) of this, will there be enough time to stop the bleed?
Whether you are liberal, conservative, a libertarian like me, or wherever you are on the spectrum, focus on making your life a living affirmation of the positive values that you believe in.
Yes, it is sad that we seem to live in a red state/blue state country, but the freedom to move anywhere in this country is one of the great things about this country. Yes, if you are gay, for instance, it is sad that you might not feel welcome in Wyoming or the Florida panhandle, but you are more than welcome in my neck of the woods in New York.
It doesn't mean that we should not combat intolerance when we see it, certainly not, but ultimately, the only people we have control over is ourselves. If you live in New York City or San Francisco, work to make those places even better than they are instead of trying to make rural America like or accept you.
Hey concerned,
Partial privatization of Social Security means that you would have the voluntary option of putting a portion of your FICA tax into a private account similar to the government's Thrift Savings program, which consists of a stock mutual fund, a bond fund and a money market fund. Your FICA tax would not be used to invest directly in Halliburton. If the government itself use everyone's FICA taxes to invest directly in the market, then that would be very dangerous.
On the one hand, I like the idea, because I would rather control my retirement instead of the government, but on the other hand, it would just be another account I would have to keep track of on top of my work pension, my 401K, my IRA, my wife's IRA, my wife's annuity etc. I would rather have a FICA tax cut of 2% so that I could put the money into retirement accounts I already have rather than starting a new account from scratch. If a way could be found to lower the tax burden, either as a credit against federal income tax, by increasing the amount of income that FICA tax would be collected, raising the age for eligibility for full SS retirement benefits for people under the age of 45 to 70 or a combination thereof, I think that would be better.
Further to my post above about living your life as an affirmation of your values, my financial goal is to be wealthy enough in retirement so that I can forego collecting social security benefits. If I can get a tax credit for sending my kids to private school or homeschooling them, then I can be proud of the fact that my neighbors are not being forced to pay taxes to pay for the education of my children. I know some of the liberals who post here don't agree with my views about these things, but you can't argue that my desire for independence in these areas harms any of you in any way.
SG: "As I said above, we are still fighting the Civil War and the wrong side is winning today. Yes, I say the "wrong" side. I won't equivocate, explain, demure, or indulge in cultural relativism."
Yes, SG, we are indeed re-fighting the Civil War and they are winning. When I was a kid growing up in the South, there was a saying that "the South would rise again!" I never put much credence in it but it appears to have been a prophecy which has now coming true. I'm still a bit puzzled on how the South coopted their Midwestern and Western brethern into joining their cause but there's no doubt this alliance is carrying the day for them.
The South's success in 2000 and again in 2004 will embolden them to push their agenda harder than ever. I'm hopeful that they will push it to the point that even their Midwestern and Western allies can't stand it . But, in the meantime, we can't count on that happening soon. We have to stand rock-solid on our liberal principles even if it seems our principles are getting in the way of winning elections. If we find common cause with others who don't feel exactly as we do, let it be because they will tolerate our values and not the other way around. Once you've compromised your principles, you have little left to sustain you.
Mushinronsha,
Yes, exactly. As far as the south's "success" in bringing in the Midwest, don't you think the industrial revolution and the depression contributed to the basic philosophy of the old south migrating to the industrial places closely available such as St. Louis, Kansas City & Chicago?
Mr. Kearney,
Re: FICA - it's a big IF tho, isn't it? At this point we just don't know. The FICA issue went from merest of mention during the campaign (w/gay & abortion taking center stage) to the 1st item up on the prez spending his "earned capital." I support your affirmation for independence very much, but I do wonder how much longer any of us might be able to remain "independent" no matter what our net worth - unless, of course, you are very, very wealthy. The elite, the prez's "base."
I'm hearing consensus forming around two strategies.
The first is to ensure the security of the blue areas of the country, building political and economic defenses around them to ensure their continued existence as havens of sanity in the craziness to come.
The second is to reach out from those bastions, and propagate our memes throughout a darkening nation. There are a lot of ideas about this, but I don't think that in the end it will be as complicated as people think it will be.
And I don't see these two goals as mutually exclusive. In fact, they go rather nicely together. The wingers can demonize New York, California, and the others all the want -- but the fact is that these states have economies that work. And our liberal values are a major reason why. We don't have to apologize for that. If they want a seat at our bountiful table, they will need to abide by our values.
As for Social Security: Thomas, it seems likely that you've never watched a 401K lose over half its value in under a year. I've had that experience (along with most of the rest of Silicon Valley); and from a survivor's perspective, your faith in private retirement funds sounds...well, a bit naive.
Right now, I wouldn't put ANY money into ANY US markets. The most respected brokers and money managers I know agree. In fact, that goes for simply holding dollars as well. You may have heard that the Chinese are selling off their US currency this week, to the tune of almost half a trillion dollars. They are casting their vote against Bush -- and probably signaling the beginning of a catastrophic US economic crisis ahead. Devaluation cannot be far behind.
This is why, as of today, the last of our moveable capital is coming out of the US, and being converted into Canadian dollars. (Mr. Robinson is a the bank right now making the necessary transfers.) We've had a 15% gain in the past 9 months on the money we've already moved -- and that's *before* the US dollar went into free fall.
And so it begins. Buckle your seatbelts, gang. It's gonna be a hell of a ride.
Well, Mrs. Robinson, my portfolio is doing pretty good of late.
I am not naive. I am fully aware of the risks of investing. To follow your line of argument to its extreme, people shouldn't be allowed to invest in IRAs or 401K's at all. Let's just ban private investing and triple the Social Security tax so that Social Security can provide for 100% of our retirement needs.
I'm sure though that you are not advocating that. And yes, I saw my IRA dip in value a lot from 2001 onward. But at a relatively young 35, I can ride it out. As I get closer to retirement, I would, as any intelligent investor would do, shift my investments to safer investment vehicles with low risk.
And lastly, I believe that I already stated my reasons why I think private Social Security accounts would be more of a hassle. Besides, I don't think private accounts of any type will really happen unless someone offers an intelligent way to pay for the transition costs.
One thing faith-based economists like to ignore is that the money that goes into those private accounts, has to come out of something else, in this case the already strapped social security system. It's possible that they could deal with that by cutting benefits to those already approaching retirement, but I can't imagine that any politician would risk alienating a voting bloc as large and committed as baby boomer retirees. In short, you'd better stick with those high yield investments, Thomas. I suspect you're going to need a lot of cash just to pay your share of the interest on those boomer benefits. And don't count on the government supplementing your retirement. The SS piggy bank will have been long since smashed.
Everyone - did you see Michael Moore's link of the week? Go now: http://72.3.131.10//gallery/57/
You'll all feel much better - well, a little bit better for sure!
A note to all you brave blue staters, determined to stand up for your principles by charging into battle against the villianous red states. Before you take up your swords, please take a look at the farmer's latest offering. You might discover that rather the the valiant knights you imagine yourselves to be, you're really only pawns.
concerned: "Yes, exactly. As far as the south's "success" in bringing in the Midwest, don't you think the industrial revolution and the depression contributed to the basic philosophy of the old south migrating to the industrial places closely available such as St. Louis, Kansas City & Chicago?"
Concerned, you could be right but I'm not sure. I don't have any insight to offer regarding the Midwest because I've never lived there. If I were throwing out a guess, not based on any evidence at all, I'd say that Southerners and Midwesterners are probably at a juncture where interests conveniently overlap. I suspect the cultures of the two regions are quite different and this "convergence of interests" could be temporary. If so, the Southerners would be well-served to not get too cocky about last week's election. But since Southerners are cocky by nature anyway, they just can't seem to to deny themselves the pleasure of gloating. But if the South can rise again, it can surely fall again too. For those who haven't read it yet, I recommend Mark Schmitt's post on his "The Decembrist" blog: Is the White South About to Overplay its Hand?
For a conservative who doesn't "like" liberals, Michael Savage lives at a funny address. Larkspur, California, one of the most liberal places on earth.
"A note to all you brave blue staters, determined to stand up for your principles by charging into battle against the villianous red states. Before you take up your swords, please take a look at the farmer's latest offering. You might discover that rather the the valiant knights you imagine yourselves to be, you're really only pawns."
Its Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas," writ large.
http://www.theonion.com/news/ind....php?
issue=4045
Sometimes The Onion is absolutely right.
However, I don't agree with their last statement:
'Added Bush: "God bless America's backwards hicks, lunchpail-toting blockheads, doddering elderly, and bumpity-car-driving Spanish-speakers."
Decentralizing power is a noble goal, but not a particularly achievable objective without considerable civic upheaval, including armed insurrection, sabotage, and brutal repression. For me, I think I'd rather focus on building an effective opposition through various forms of moral sanction that creates lasting alliances to garner adequate influence to someday get what we need.
If that requires greater regional or local autonomy, add that to our petition of grievances. Just because Bush behaves like Milosevich doesn't mean I want to endure what they did in Yugoslavia.
Oh, yeah, same kind of urban-vs-rural stuff happens in Canada too.
I read a funny anecdote in the Toronto Star one time about a Toronto couple that dropped their high-paying corporate jobs and bought a charming but run-down historical house in a little village hundreds of miles from the city. They completely gutted the house and made look like something out of a decorating magazine.
But they were surprised to find that no matter how kind they tried to be to the local yokels, they were continually spurned--- nobody would come to their house for dinner, etc.
After a year or two of this kind of treatment, they reluctantly put their beautiful home up for sale and decided to move back to the city again.
About a week before moving day was to arrive, a young couple knocked on their door and asked to use their phone to call the CAA because they needed a towtruck to pull their vehicle out the ditch.
While the two couples waited for the towtruck to arrive, the hosts went all-out to provide their guests with snacks, imported beer, etc. and a fine and sociable time was had by all.
Finally the towtruck came, and as the visiting couple stood at the front door getting ready to leave, the departing wife said to their hosts:
"Thanks so much for welcoming us into your home. You folks are really nice!--- not at all the way everybody talks about you down at the legion!"
"The dying liberal-democratic system had opinions that were changeable, relative and not binding, but it did not have an absolute worldview in which people could put their faith... The result was chaos, sterility and relativism. The most wretched viewpoint could take center stage because sure faith was lacking..."
http://corrente.blogspot.com/
200...000845117024995
Add one to the GOP done been wronged side of the ledger. Three people have been arrested for vandalism against the Publicn office in Raleigh
Salon newswire
What's weird is that the story takes about a mob of 100... but it never indicates that the 100 did anything wrong. So why are they mentioned? Unclear. Sounds like an attempt to make something far more menacing out of what was most likely some drunk NCSU students.
The three, however, will end up charged with B/E and attempted arson, one would imagine. Given how loosely the law is written, they could easily be charged with terrorism.
Raleigh anarchists represent!
Thomas Franks article in the Seattle P-I 'Opinion' section today, in which he notes the 'exurbs'.
Suffice it to say that imagining pick-up drivers with rifles in racks may not really describe what's happening.
MIKE SAVAGE'S LETTERS TO ALLEN GINSBERG
http://www.radarmagazine.com/
fre...elligence.html#
RADAR MAGAZINE - Since recapping his racist and homophobic rants in our premiere issue, we've learned that the ex-liberal (aka Michael Weiner) whose syndicated radio program The Savage Nation (aka Sieg Heil on the Dial) was scooped up by a desperate MSNBC was once a close friend and pen-pal of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. It took a search of the Howl author's collected letters at Stanford University to discover just how close:
"March 8, 1970 Dear Allen: After speaking to you on the phone about how nice the black-white thing is in mountain villages in Fiji, I walked downstairs to the school courtyard, where a little-known black brother looks at me, takes my hand gently, we do some old-world Lower East Side finger tricks, and he peacefully kisses the back of my hand - I do the same for his hand. I told him about our brief talk, and he says, 'I must have felt the vibes.' - Michael Weiner Botany Dept. University of Hawaii Honolulu, HI"
Beth,
I already mentioned in an earlier posting that it is my goal to be wealthy enough in retirement so that I don't need to collect SS at all. You see, my personal motto is if you want to make the world a better place, then don't add to its problems. By not collecting SS benefits, I am in a sense helping to save it because I will have paid into it all my working life and will not have collected a penny from it.
I reiterate again that I do not support personal SS accounts if the transition costs cannot be paid for. I already said that I would support raising the income ceiling at which FICA taxes are collected and raising the age of retirement to 70 for people under the age of 45, because of increases in life spans, which would increase SS revenues while helping to cut costs. I am only 35, so even if I were to end up collecting SS when I retire, I am in effect advocating raising the age at which I can collect it. How many other posters on this comments section are willing to either forego collecting SS benefits if they don't need them or to raise the age at which they can collect them? You may not like my libertarian viewpoint Beth, but you can't deny that my position is principled and honest, and that I am not advocating some starve the beast line of argument like Grover Norquist and others.
If anything I am saying is still unclear to you Beth, feel free to e-mail me personally. Just because I am not a liberal does not mean that I am not a genuinely nice guy.
As I said up-thread, I'm not willing to comprise my principles and values but if conservatives are willing to work on practical solutions to differences on values which don't violate their principles or mine, I'm willing to give it a try.
Atrios best expressed my stance on his blog today. Here's a sample of what he said:
"I don't have to share your views on abortion to support policies which are likely to help reduce their numbers. The compromise position is about supporting policies which reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies before the fact, and economic policies which make fewer pregnancies unwanted after the fact by reducing providing genuine economic help (especially medical care). Sounds like good Dem policies to me."
Here's the link to his complete post:
Values
Mushinronsha,
I agree with the compromise position on abortion. Both sides should work together to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. Plus, I have to wonder if in the near future if morning after pills or other non-surgical procedures will be more feasible. If abortion clinics become obsolete when a woman's doctor can just prescribe her something in the privacy of the doctor's office, then the so-called pro-life movement would likely wither on the vine.
Being a secular person, I guess I would be in the middle of the road on the abortion issue. It is not an issue that resonates much with me personally, mainly because I am a man, but I recognize what a hot button issue it is for others who hold deeply held opinions on both sides of the issue. Like I wrote above, let's work on reducing unwanted pregnancies.
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has 'closed', the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. AND I AM CAESAR." --Julius Caesar
Hey Concerned,
That passage is not in Julius Caesar, as Barbara Streisand was embarrased to find out after quoting it somewhere where she was speaking. Sorry to burst your bubble pal!
Thomas, I really wasn't trying to attack you or your libertarian beliefs. I was mostly trying to point out that even if you're prepared to cope with your own retirement costs, that doesn't mean privatization will help you financially, and in fact it may even hurt you. Sooner or later the government will have to make up those losses, and an increase in your share of the tax burden could quickly offset you realized by not paying taxes on some of those investments. Far from criticizing libertarianism, I was trying argue that privatization in the current situation should be as distateful to libertarians as to liberals (and judging from your opinion of it, it appears that I was right).
I'm not opposed to your libertarianism because I don't really know what it is. I am at heart as much anarchist as liberal, so pure libertarianism isn't that far from my own beliefs. On the other hand, I've noticed that when many people call themselves 'libertarian' what they really mean is they want to reduce the power of government only insofar as it interferes with the power of big business. On balance that increases the total power of the 3 traditional 'rulers' (church, state, and capital) and so it offends both my anarchist as well as my liberal beliefs.
If you're the first type of libertarian, we'll have some areas of disagreement, but some areas of agreement as well. If you're the second type, you're entirely my opponent (not my enemy though. I reserve that for fascists.) Either way, I see a lot of value in discussions involving people with a wide range of beliefs, so I hope I didn't offend you and that you'll keep posting.
Mush and Tom: You are, of course, clear-eyed and right on where the compromise position on abortion lies. However, there are at least some ideologues who would reject it out of hand precisely because it IS a compromise. *Sigh.*
Tom, drug-induced abortion is the anti-choice crowd's worst nightmare. As this moves into place as the primary form of abortion (it's on its way to becoming so), they lose almost all their emotional handles on the issue. No more "abortion chambers," no more sidewalk dramas in front of clinics, no more photos of mutilated feti, and no way to stigmatize either doctors or women over the procedure. Abortion will be, once and for all, put beyond reach of their intrusive manipulations.
Many doctors are already using combinations of existing drugs (already approved and marketed for other primary uses, which makes them hard to legislate or litigate away) that are very effective abortifacients. This makes the procedure truly private, between a woman and her doctor; and relocates the act from the doctor's office to the inviolable privacy of a woman's home. (Even the most rabid anti-choicers realize that it's bad PR to firebomb private homes.) So, as usual, they're trying to complicate this simple equation by dragging other "authorities" into the decision -- in this case, by targeting pharmacists (the only other people involved in the drug transaction).
We can only hope that this tactic works as poorly as previous attempts to involve judges, legislators, doctors, parents, employers, insurance companies, and demonstrators have. In this case, the end-run is as easy as making it customary for doctors to dispense these drugs directly, cutting the pharmacists out entirely.
In short, drug induction is our best hope for preserving first-trimester abortion in the face of the coming crackdown.
We are now miles and miles off-thread; but since this thread seems to be petering out anyway, I'm not going to bend over backwards making apologies....
'Thomas Franks article in the Seattle P-I 'Opinion' section today, in which he notes the 'exurbs'.
Suffice it to say that imagining pick-up drivers with rifles in racks may not really describe what's happening.'
--serial catowner
I can't find it. I did find an article about exurbs by David Brooks though...
Regarding the compromise position on abortion:
There are many people on the pro-life side who will reject anything that aborts a fetus--no matter what. I recently had a conversation with someone who held this opinion and who actually fits reasonably well into the profile that Thomas Frank outlined in his book.
The man's about 60 (my estimate) and was an IT professional for many years. He and a whole bunch of other IT/support people were fired from their jobs with little or no warning and had to scrounge for employment afterwards. The best he could come up with was working as a night security guard at one of the campus libraries.
My conversation with him started on the topic of Linux vs. Windows. Then he started telling me how much he hates Microsoft (he always called it 'Mickeysoft') because they charge too much for their software and--more importantly--Bill Gates contributes money to Planned Parenthood.
He boycotts all Microsoft products because of this, talks to students staying overnight in the library to try and convince them to switch to Linux, and has been going around to local churches in his spare time and convincing them to switch over to Linux because its the moral thing to do (and it runs better than Windows...).
The election came up at one point and he mentioned that he completely agreed that it was--and should be--primarily about moral values. Yes, he voted for Bush.
So, here we have a man who was fired from his high-paying, high-tech job and subsequently couldn't get anything better than night-shift security guard at a library. He constantly harps on abortion (the topic seemed to come almost out of nowhere). He sees the notion that moral values played a key role in this past election as essentially good and correct.
And he voted for the Republican candidate.
Does anyone else see the disconnect between social and economic issues here? Or am I making something out of nothing?
On the abortion issue- there was a recent story about a woman unable to get her long-standing birth control prescription filled, because of the pharmacy worker's "moral" beliefs.
I work in a machine shop. Can you imagine my refusal to work on a particular customer's parts because I felt we did not share the same core values?
People like the one mentioned above should be terminated immediately, without benefit of unemployment insurance. If indeed the employer supports such behavior, their business should be closed down by the State.
Do these people feel that their oath to support Bush supercedes anything they may have been tought about fair and equal treatment of their patrons?
On pseudo-fascism:
Because of the tenacity and virulence of this Bush/Cheney-Neoclown-Halliburton-Idiot Cowboy Tyranny, i am curious as to the roots of this particularly nasty strain of Republican excrement.
(can't eradicate a thing until you pull up their roots, completely.)
Bilmon had written an interesting and informed description of its roots, going back to Barry Goldwater. But i am under the impression that its roots go much, much deeper: i'm thinking WWII-->Wm McKinley & the Robber Barons-->??
Actually, when i try to identify its truest source, it appears to have something to do with events that preceeded the founding of the country. i'm considering the (American-Carribean)-European-African tyrannical nexus of tobacco-rum-slavery.
the mentality of slave traders: everything & everyone is to be exploited for the higher good -- in other words, profits & power for the "elite."
An analysis of tyranny and its demise throughout history may be a helpful field of study in which to exploit the innumerable weaknesses of the (Bush)-Cheney Regime.
the only historical parallels that i can think of at the moment, however, are too disturbing to even entertain imaginatively.
bottom line: if we don't start hacking away vigorously at the roots of this foul, in-bred abomination, the world and everything we have come to value will soon be destroyed, absolutely.
In a word, the Bush clones are unquestionably MAD.
Time to EXPOSE & SHAME the rethugs for their degenerate hideousness.
thanks orcinus -- it's exquisitely pleasant to read your trenchant analyses and surmises regarding the nature of "the beast" while so many blogs and journalists have finally gone over to the join the dark side of the Sith, unawares.
I'm sorry but these people are neither moral or Christian. I was rasied as a Baptist and let me tell you - no one in my congregation ever advocated mass murder. I have read several accounts where "liberal Christians", who stayed in their churches hoping to change minds, had to leave when they heard the majority of their congregation advocating either mass slughter of Iraquis or the "nuking" and killing of the entire population of Iraq. Reasoning with these people is like trying to reason with any other group of neo-facists or extremeists. Reason didn't stop Hitler, overwhelming military might did. Reason didn't stop Mussolini, millions of fed up Italians did. Asking for those of us who disagree with those who want us dead to reason with these people is like asking a lynch-mob for reason. Ain't gonna happen. For those who site Ghandi and MLK, remember even THEY realized reason didn't work with their opponents. Their resistance was peaceful but they did resist. They didn't accommodate.
Mrs Robinson: "Mush and Tom: You are, of course, clear-eyed and right on where the compromise position on abortion lies. However, there are at least some ideologues who would reject it out of hand precisely because it IS a compromise. *Sigh.*"
Mrs R, I was being a good liberal and showing I'm willing to agree to some practical solutions to a tough moral issue without compromising my principles. But you're right, their "holy warriors" will likely not accept any solutions that fall short of total victory. They believe they are ascendent now and we have been routed; so, there's no room for accomodation (as they see it). Their victory is less complete than they think and one can only imagine they are going to overreach and have it come back to bite them eventually.
We elitist urban intellectual liberals are "out of touch" with our rural brethren? They feel slighted by us? They vote republican to spite us?
Come on, Dave, that's just not true; it goes much deeper than that and it's not all our fault. I lived in the rural Midwest for most of my 30’s, and now in my 40’s I live in the heart of “Blue” America in Philly. I know rural America. I am NOT out of touch with it. In my opinion, rural America is out of touch with itself.
As Thomas Frank discovered while writing What's The Matter With Kansas?, the right-wing has done a very nice job, in a relentlessly ambitious p.r. campaign (well financed by wealthy donors to right-wing think tanks and media outlets) over the last 20 or so years, of making the rural folk become out of touch with his or her own self-interest.
With the one hand the right stirred up the emotions of the rural folk by a "divide and conquer" strategy to make them hate progressives and liberals over fringe issues like abortion, school prayer, political correctness, gay rights, etc. Pay no mind that, because of liberal and progressive policies, the rural folk were much better off in the late 20th Century than they were at the beginning of it. The right, using specious arguments and facts, convinced rural folk that the evil "liberal" was the enemy in their lives.
Meanwhile, with the other hand, the right used the traditional Democrat-voting rural votes they stole to enact legislation that not only didn't address the fringe issues, but in fact dismantled the very programs and institutions that helped rural folk.
Get it? Convince John Q. Farmer that he’s a Republican because of abortion or gays or cussing in Hollywood movies, and yet John Q. Farmer certainly didn’t want his federal subsidies or programs that benefited him cut, but no matter, God and moral values are on the side of the Republicans. It’ll all work out once the evil liberals are gone. Or so they think.
So I disagree with your conclusions, Dave. The rural folk are out of touch, period, not only with the world outside their narrow confines, but with themselves and their own world and self-interest. I am not afraid to say this even if it makes me sound arrogant. I know from my own personal experience it is true.
Like I stated, I hail from the rural Midwest, spent eight years away from there after high school, then returned to live there again for most of the 90's. When I returned I was shocked by the "Limbaughization" of rural thinking. I do not think of rural folk as stupid or moronic, but I do think they have always (since the republic was founded) been susceptible to demagoguery, sophistry, false prophets, and charlatans. And the right exploited that brilliantly.
My own battles with the Creationists seeking to ban the teaching of evolution in Terre Haute, Indiana taught me how effective this anti-liberal, ant-intellectual campaign had become. Divide them over religion and divisive
(con't)
...then conquer them ALL on economic policies. Brilliant.
It is only a matter of time, when Bush and his gang dismantle the 20th Century progressive institutions further (all New Deal and Great Society programs) that the rural folk will wake up and realize they've been bamboozled.
Sorry for the long-winded comments. I am a huge fan of this weblog and I admire you and your work deeply. But on this subject, and in this essay you've writen, I feel you are being way too self-flagellating.
Beth,
I agree with you that some so-called libertarians really only care about keeping government out of business, and that if a company treats its workers like shit (sorry for the brown word!), well hey that's too bad, they chose to work there didn't they? A true libertarian should oppose workplace tyranny just as much as government tyranny.
My libertarianism is more in the personal sphere in that people should be free to do what they want so long as they are not harming anybody. If I want to smoke a joint on my day off from work (not that I personally do that), I should be free to do so. I support homeschooling, civil unions for gays, ending the ban on travel and trade with Cuba, allowing good people to immigrate to the United States regardless of race, color or creed and so forth. I support maximum freedom exercised with maximum responsibility.
My problem is with statist liberals who don't want people to be independent of the social welfare institutions that statist liberals support and to some degree benefit from. Homeschooling is a perfect example of that. The NEA, the largest teachers union, passes a resolution at its convention every year condemning homeschooling. In some districts, public school officials will try to force home schooling parents to comply with regulations outside of the scope allowed by law. I remember a couple of years ago TIME magazine did an article on homeschooling. A couple of weeks later, they published a letter from someone who wrote that homeschooling parents are selfish because they only want to be part of the community on their terms. Well, duh! Isn't that part of what it means to be a free society?
Mrs. Robinson, thanks for the info about drug induced abortion. That is exactly what I would like to see, a decision between a woman and her physician removed from the political decision making process.
Let's deal with this homeschooling issue head-on. Schools, and education, aren't necessarily about something the parents are going to teach at home. Maybe society can't force you to learn something, but society is well within its rights to require a diploma, certificate, or evidence of achievement at an ACCREDITED institution as an entry requirement for job or preferment.
Liberty is not license.
Most homeschooling around here is done so that the little kiddies won't have to ever see the evil brown children, let alone become friends with them.
I vehemently disagree with you serial catowner. Your assuming that a homeschooled education (which of course does not necessarily have to be confined to the home, home schooled children take karate lessons, participate in community theater, take classes at community college) means that there is no learning going on.
Some school districts engage in social promotion, serial catowner, they pass kids on up to the next grade, even graduating them, without the kids having learned the subject matters, but since those schools are "accredited", then it is okay, huh?
I have no problem with requiring home schooled students taking assessment tests to show that they are learning what they should, and I would be the first to argue that home schooling is not for everybody. But people like you don't even want to allow that. In the end it should be what you know, not the path you chose that should matter.
serial catowner,
Most of the education or training that employers are likely to want proof of is from secondary or technical schools; and that's not something homeschoolers are likely to try on their own in the K-12 years. In any case, specific competency tests oriented to the job in question are more relevant than a piece of paper stating you showed up at a government school and were breathing at the time.
You might want to look into the history of the government schools. Despite all the progressive rhetoric, the state school systems were set up about the same time that factory employers needed a docile workforce that had been trained to show up on time, line up on command, and eat and piss at the sound of a bell. And the main thing people get from their twelve years of indoctrination is the habit of not making waves, of jumping through whatever hoops are put in front of you to please the authority figure who has control over your advancement, and getting a gold star for the day.
Ivan Illich. Deschooling Society
John Taylor Gatto. An Underground History of American Education
Gatto. A Short, Angry History of American Forced Schooling
Gatto. Some Lessons from the Underground History of American Education
Gatto. Radical Democracy and Our Future
Anything by the New Leftists Joel Spring and Paul Goodman is also excellent. I also recommend Phaedrus' lecture on the Temple of Learning in *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*.
Sorry, that etext of Illich is down. Here's one that works:
Ivan Illich. Deschooling Society
Catowner and Jason:
Yes. I'll cop to it. I homeschooled my kids for six years in part to keep them away from the little brown children (45% of the kids in our district).
This became necessary because some of the little brown children were mugging my daughter (who was in a full-time Spanish Immersion program, BTW, and counted many little brown children among her closest friends) on a daily basis for her lunch, and the district refused to guarantee her continued safety while she was on their campus. This was, in part, because they refused to confront the miscreants' parents and demand better behavior from those kids.
For my son, it became necessary because he was learning too well those lessons that Catowner insists can only be taught in school. In short, he was learning to use foul language, be insolent to grownups, and to communicate with other children by fighting. "But, Mom, that's how the boys act...." Not my boy.
What he was not learning, OTOH, was anything related to academics, because the school district refused (legal mandate be damned) to give him instruction that addressed his severe dyslexia.
So I brought both my darlings home. They have returned to school this year (at 11 and 14), and are doing very well. We are not surprised: 20 years of studies have found that the overwhelming majority of homeschooled kids out-perform and out-test their schooled peers by high school, and WAY outperform them in college. Strikingly, this happens regardless of the educational level of the teacher/parent.
And most of those kids have no problem getting credentials. You can take the GED, get into a community college, and transfer to a university in a year or two. Many do. (I know homeschooled 14-year-old kids who are taking community college classes, and pulling As.) Many universities accept our kids on the strength of a strong SAT score. Some go the military route. You don't need a high school diploma for any of this.
One last note: If you're a homeschooled kid applying to Stanford, they are twice as likely to take you as they are a graduate of even a top-level prep school. Evidently, the admissions officers there don't have the same issues with homeschooling that you do.
We are now miles and miles off-thread; but since this thread seems to be petering out anyway, I'm not going to bend over backwards making apologies....
Mrs. R, I think you've contributed enough really spot-on on topic posts to this thread to have earned the right to go as OT as you like. ;->
Does anyone else see the disconnect between social and economic issues here? Or am I making something out of nothing?
Bolo, I think the answer to that question depends on whether his obsession with abortion predated his job loss. It seems fairly common to react to a dramatic/traumatic life-changing event by getting obsessive about some cause like that. If that's what happened here, it's probably better described as a neurotic vs. economic issues.
My libertarianism is more in the personal sphere
Well that's a relief, Thomas. ;-> re: home schooling, the one argument I've heard that could absolutely justify stricter regulation is that physically and sexually abusive parents often pull their kids out of public schools to avoid getting caught. I don't know how serious or widespread that is, but it's one place I think government definitely has a right to step in. Generally though, I support the right of parents to homeschool (as well as the right of the NEA not to like it and say so publicly).
the social welfare institutions that statist liberals support and to some degree benefit from
That's not really fair. I'm sure some people who vote Dem benefit, but not most. There's been a lot of talk about how red staters tended to vote against their own economic interests, but the same is true of blue staters. We generally pay in more to those institutions than we get out of them.
Beth,
I fully agree with your two categories of libertarian.
An individualist anarchist I know, Shawn Wilbur, divided them into "anarcho"-capitalists and anarcho-"capitalists."
The first category is made up of people who defend the interests of Big Business, and define "free market" as whatever helps large corporations. They tend to see the only beneficiaries of big government as being workers and consumers, and to see big business as the poor, put-upon sacrificial victim of the progressive state. A good example of this is Ayn Rand, who considered big business a "persecuted minority" and dismissed the Military-Industrial Complex and a "myth at best."
The second category believes, as Murray Rothbard said, that the main function of big government is to subsidize the accumulation of capital, underwrite the operating expenses of big business, and protect it from competition. Or as Roy Childs put it, "Liberal intellectuals have been the running dogs of big business."
The second category is much closer to the genuine spirit of classical liberalism. The classical liberalism of the early nineteenth century was a revolutionary doctrine aimed at breaking the power of privileged mercantilists and the landed oligarchy. Some classical liberals, like the market-oriented Ricardian socialist Hodgskin, attacked the rising power of the industrial capitalists on the basis of the same principled opposition to state-enforced privilege.
The mainstream of classical liberalism (what Marx called "vulgar political economy), from mid-century on, unfortunately turned to the defense of plutocratic interests. Their ideological heirs today, people like Milton Friedman, are apologists for the contemporary institution most resembling the mercantilists and feudal landlords in their power--the large corporations.
But there are still many dissident free market libertarians: individualist anarchists like me, Left-Rothbardians, Georgists of one stripe or another, etc.
Oh Beth, just when I thought we were starting to get chummy.
Please allow me to amplify my remarks. With the homeschooling issue in particular, public schools get a lot of their state aid funding based on the number of pupils they have. Therefore, every child in a public school district who is home schooled in the eyes of some administrators represents lost dollars. Therefore, some of them figure that if they can make life difficult for home schooling parents, the parents might give up and enroll the kids in the public schools. Another example are people who work for organizations to assist immigrant refugees, on its face a very noble effort. But the people who work for these organizations have a vested interest in making sure that we accept ever more refugees precisely because without the federal funding, they would have to find another job. I apologize if I seemed to be smearing all liberals with a broad brush, that was not my intent. Nor do I mean to say that some on the right don't support policies or programs that personally benefit them. A recent issue of The Nation looked at how the Bush Administration is funneling federal dollars to Christian and conservative organizations.
And about homeschooling and child abuse. The cases are few, to my knowledge, and in a lot of them, particularly a recent one in New Jersey, the child welfare authorities were aware of a problem but failed in their duties. Some on the left who hate homeschooling want to use a handful of abuse cases to justify greater oversight of homeschooling when the problem wasn't caused by homeschooling but by the failure of the child welfare agencies who were supposed to be monitoring the situation.
I also believe that some on the left don't like homeschooling because a lot of homeschoolers are evangelical Christians. Maybe David might want to chime in on this in the context of divisions between secular liberals and religious conservatives.
Since I am secular, I personally don't like that the HSLDA, the largest homeschooling advocacy group, is inserting itself into issues like the gay marriage debate, and I have made my displeasure known to them, for what it's worth. It is precisely my concern that if the homeschooling movement is viewed by the left as a way of creating Christian stormtroopers for the right, that liberal politicians and bureaucrats will try to restrict homeschooling freedoms in the blue states in reaction to it.
Kevin, I confess my own thoughts on the two types of libertarian weren't nearly that well informed or well thought out, though I do recognize Randians as 'bad libertarians". I appreciate the additional thought and info on the subject.
Thomas, I only said 'if'. Abuse could justify stricter regulation if it's widespread enough, but if you're right that it's a miniscule issue, then we're still on the same side on this one.
It's not that I agree with the NEA, just that I support their right to have an opinion. I disagree with Jason for similar reasons. I hate the idea of parents imposing their racism on their kids, but I support their right to hold and act on hateful beliefs as long as it doesn't involve abuse and doesn't interfere with other people's rights.
Yes, IF abuse was widespread, then I would support stricter regulation too. However, I am always wary of politicians or activists on any side of the political spectrum who try to inflate a problem to justify regulation or intervention in a particular area.
Possibly, Thomas, but in my observation as a British expat in NY, it's more often the case that the abuses (or at any rate the misuses and the neglect) are real than that they are inflated.
'I also believe that some on the left don't like homeschooling because a lot of homeschoolers are evangelical Christians.'
Yes. The few homeschoolers I've met have come from highly religious families and really creep me out. I wouldn't necessarily say that its just 'some on the left' that don't like homeschooling because of this though. Frankly, anyone who's rather secular in their beliefs can be put off by fervent religious convictions, no matter what their politics.
I know that there are plenty of non-evangelical homeschoolers who just want their kids to get a better education than what public schooling allows. I just haven't met that many of them.
Bolo, there are two distinct homeschooling cultures in the US, each with their own publications, conferences, and preferred curricula providers. The numbers I've seen indicate that the total number of hsers nationally is probably split right down the middle -- fifty/fifty -- between these two camp.
There's the fundie culture, which I think most people have a fairly solid picture of. And then there's the vast secular/liberal homeschooling culture, which takes in a wide range of parents:
* Well-educated, politically liberal mothers who have given up their careers to stay home with kids, and realize that they can probably do a better job (and have more fun doing it) than their local schools. These moms will typically put their kids back into the system at high school -- but not always.
* Parents of kids who have special athletic or artistic gifts, and who need lots of time during the day to work on those gifts. (This includes child actors, dancers, musicians, and so on.)
* Parents who travel a lot, for career or educational reasons, and want to bring the kids along with them on their adventures. (Mr. Robinson was homeschooled for third grade because his sociologist parents spent the year in Mexico. When he came home, the school district skipped him a grade because he'd made so much more progress.)
* Parents whose children have physical or learning disabilities that the schools cannot or will not address effectively. When you consider that one in five American kids is dyslexic, and one in 20 has ADD, you can see that there are a huge number of parents in this boat -- perhaps a third of all the parents in the country. They (we) really are on their (our) own, without much in the way of alternatives to doing it ourselves.
When you start going on about fundie homeschoolers, remember that half the people doing this are NOT fundie. And a good percentage of them were forced into it, because their kids had issues that "professional" educators refused to touch.
See Mrs. Robinson, there is something you and I seem to agree alot on! 
Naturally I am flattered to have so many incorrect opinions and motives attributed to me. I won't apologize for going OT on homeschooling, as it is obvious that there needs to be some serious dialogue here, judging from the response to my comment.
As the autodidact son of a teacher (and managed to accumulate over 300 credits in my 15-year path to a BS) I encourage you to teach your children at home. If you are a world class scientist and know which curriculum will make your child a scientist too, more power to you.
And that, of course, would be the first point- it's mighty darn hard to choose the exactly right curriculum. But that's about education, and schools are only partly about education.
Schools are jails, to keep other people's children out of our property. Schools are conditioning centers to produce people who wake up in the morning. Schools are lie factories that gloss over the facts of war and pretend sex is something it isn't, and that it isn't something that it is.
Public schools are a public project, and they try to teach what the public wants. Now, everyone who didn't understand my first post, it's not that long, please re-read. I'm not saying you can't teach your child, or that they can't get into college or fly to the moon.
Now, if you want to abolish public education, make your case. If you still believe free universal educatin is a good idea, deal with it. Maybe schools would improve if they didn't have to teach creationism, or if they're open campus, or if you don't send in drug sniffing dogs. Maybe when you gripe constantly about teachers and other people who spend most of their lives devoted to education, you are complaining about the wrong people.
However, in my own experience, if you can afford to attend school it's the greatest bargain you can get. A good professor will make it possible for your learning machine to run at 100% capacity, 12 hours a day, for months at a time. It's like the difference between having a motor, and having a motor in a car with a driver at the wheel.
In any case, it's silly for anarchists on the left and right to fight about something like this. If I had any children I'd be steamed.
Modest suggestion for rural renewal: schools should be 24/7 centers for the community. The campus should offer childcare and schooling including community college courses. The campus should also have a dining hall for seniors, a clinic, transportation facilities, community police office, electronic library, social services etc. The facility would be used and in use year-round, no 'wasted' summer months. As described it would fill a tremendous number of gaps in rural infrastructure.
Or am I just dreaming?
The thread seems quiet so maybe I will daydream...the seniors come to dinner, and maybe if they come early they can earn their meal by doing an hour of daycare. The homeless can also come- they won't seem so threatening if they can get a shower, wash their clothes, or, all else failing, there is a community police office to reassure the citizenry.
Education is a major problem in ruraltania because of the large distances to trade schools or post-secondary. Addressing this with local courses would also make it easier for local people to hire trainees for simple work, and provide trained labor close to local employers.
We're already paying to have most of this done extremely badly, so the money is there when we decide to do it right.
In fact, the Native Americans, using the money from their casinos, are (and quite literally) the bright lights in a darkened Western Washington rural economy. You're driving through a landscape that looks like the Ukraine would have, if the Germans hadn't burned it down in 1942, and suddenly you come to a new community with housing, clinics, police, schools, and a clean well-lit casino where the food is probably good and there is - miracle of miracles- LIVE ENTERTAINMENT.
So, it can be done, and, in fact, the tribes are using our money to do it, so we know we can afford it.
It's just a question of whether it's something we really want to do.
OT (but who's counting): David Cobb and Michael Bandarik are teaming up to demand a recount in Ohio, but they need $110,000 to make it happen. You can donate to the cause here. I don't know whether this could change the outcome of the election, but there's something even more important at stake here, the integrity of the voting system. Especially with the rise of electronic voting and the Republican move to ban exit polling, we need to do something to make it clear that faith-based balloting simply isn't acceptable. They might be less inclined to try something in the future if they know we're going to keep looking over their shoulder.
Besides, this is a wonderful example of liberals and libertarians working together for the common good. Surely that's worth supporting.
Beth: "Besides, this is a wonderful example of liberals and libertarians working together for the common good. Surely that's worth supporting."
Indeed. Pity there wasn't more coordination before the election.
Those are some good ideas in the last post, serial catowner.
While we're at it, let's take schools back to being neighborhood institutions under the actual control of the people they serve: abolish city-wide school boards and make each school directly responsible to the parents of its students--effectively turning it into a consumer's co-op.
Citywide school boards were originally advocated by public educationists a hundred years ago because neighborhood boards had too many small businesspeople and workers. Citywide school boards, they thought, would attract the proper kind of "professionals" who were known throughout the city and could afford to campaign everywhere. It was the same motivation behind at-large aldermen. The idea, in general, was to "professionalize" government and place it under the apolitical control of "experts."
My intro to school politics really started when I was about 10 with an article in the local paper. They noted that heating costs for a new high school could be halved using electric heat pumps, but a school board member who also owned the oil distributorship had vetoed the plan.
In high school we learned that the school administration wanted to have an open campus, but the storeowners of the town wouldn't let it happen- they wanted us locked up during the day.
These kind of incidents have left me a little cool to the wrong kind of local control. Some, in fact, have suggested that maybe the American peculiarity of lodging control in umpty-zillion local fiefdoms, with no formal qualifications required, just can't produce the same results as a national system like Japan or France.
However, trying to do a little CPR on this thread, I offer up The New Farm, an electronic Rodale publication, and urge everyone (still standing) to check it out- stories about how you can actually farm and not go broke, and a lot of the issues around that issue. Nuff said:
http://www.newfarm.org/index.shtml
I'm slowly working through this thread after being away from a computer for a week. (Furthermore, suffering from intense jet lag). But had to respond to SG's comment about moving to Montana and having the possibility of having swastikas painted on his house.
Talk is cheap and categorizing people is too. As I think David was trying to point out, there are good, fair-minded people everywhere and, I believe, in the majority. This doesn't necessarily mean that they are liberals!
The sort of thing SG refers to did happen in Montana not very long ago - the people of Billings mobilized in a Not in Our Town program to stop neo Nazi behavior and the consequent victimization of certain of the town's citizens.
We really have to be careful about dealing in sweeping generalizations.
I think there was a memo on the Bush mandate, but I didn't get that one.
Or maybe I did. The memo I've got: The girly mandate.
Are they the same thing?
testing
Just a note... striking that the majority of Blue States are the original 13... the Founder`s base.
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