Michael Moore has a simple, elegant solution

Mary Katharine Ham analyzes Michael Moore's statement that "This country is not broke." Much less Wisconsin. Because the assets of America's billionaires are not THEIRS, they are a "national resource". The video is well-done. Some of the points which get simplified in the video are clarified in MKH's companion piece linked above:

Moore would argue, of course, that those jobs would simply be nationalized and “belong to all of us” after the wealth of their creators is sapped, but who exactly would have an incentive to make Berkshire Hathaway, Microsoft, or Oracle profitable if all of the money they made was considered a “national resource?"

Margaret Thatcher was right: "The problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people's money". And the idea that the property of all private individuals belongs to the State is extremely dangerous (See video at 4 minutes). Even if a government does not go so far as to claim sovereignty over your time, the loss of property rights can affect the poor even more easily than the rich.

The Left tends to conflate money with power, so many of them think that Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and the rest of the "400 little Mubaraks" are as oppressive in relationship to Americans as Mubarak was in relationship to the Egyptians. Like most tyrants, Mubarak stole from his people. But he was also dependent on foreign aid to fund his thefts. He was able to extort this money from the West because of his political power.

Weakening the importance of property rights makes everyone more vulnerable to the government. There are ways to moderate the somewhat aristocratic compensation packages in many big corporations without government intervention. Ironically, with the exception of intervention to prevent the growth of monopolies, government regulation tends to favor the formation of "too-big-to-fail" organizations which depend on special favors from the government to protect their market share.

Allahpundit comments about the video:

In a world of cheap demagogues, few come cheaper than this.

One question, though: When he says America isn’t broke, are we sure he’s referring to the budget? My sense of this guy isn’t that he wants to rob the rich blind to eliminate annual deficits and pay down the debt, it’s that he wants wealth transfer in its rawest form — literally confiscating bank accounts (or taxing them into oblivion) and carving up the principal for distribution to people below a certain income level. Not only would all of the entitlements that are destined to cripple the federal government sooner or later stay in place, but in Mooreworld, they’d probably be expanded. Yet somehow, in some way, that $1.3 trillion wealth transfer from Larry Ellison et al. to the poor that he has in mind would solve everything. What a magical elixir socialism is.

But why stop with the ultra-rich?

What would the United States gain if in fact the government did confiscate the wealth of the so-called rich and taxed at 100% all the income above $200,000.00 per household per year?

Using the latest statistics from the IRS, in 2004 there were 2.7 million adults with a net worth above $1.5 million. If the government were to seize all the wealth above the $1.5 million threshold, Washington would realize a one-time windfall of $4.0 Trillion -- and no one would again attempt to accumulate wealth. Assuming it was applied to the national debt (unlikely with the Left in charge as they would spend it) the national debt would only be reduced from $14.5 Trillion to $10.0 Trillion.

Assuming Michael Moore and Company decide that $200,000.00 per year is sufficient for any household, then in 2008 (the latest IRS statistics) the 6.9 million filers that had adjusted gross income above $200,000.00 would have forfeited all their income above that ceiling to the government. The one-time gain to Washington D.C.: $221.0 Billion; but in the future no one would work long enough to earn more than $200,000.00 per year. Tax revenues in subsequent years would never increase unless tax rates are raised which are self-defeating and historically results in even lower tax receipts.

The long-term impact on the economy and the country would mirror that of the failed socialist nations throughout history.

Text of Moore's speech here. The Nation thinks Moore is on the right track. Reason doesn't, of course. After they tax the rich, who will they tax next? Remember that for many elite liberals, taxes are for the little people.

The age of white guilt and the disappearance of the black individual

An amazing 1999 essay by Shelby Steele, a man born to a white mother and a black father, like the President. He's older than the President, and his family was on the forefront of the Civil Rights movement. He believes that today's institutionalized white guilt leads to blacks donning a "mask" of group identity rather than adding strength to their group by developing as individuals. Every phrase in this essay seems well-placed, and I believe it is worth careful study. It is quite long for today's short attention spans, and therefore makes a useful subject for study by students wishing to expand their capacities to follow a line of argument.

One day back in the late fifties, when I was ten or eleven years old, there was a moment when I experienced myself as an individual--as a separate consciousness--for the first time.

He draws several distinctions between life for blacks before and after 1965, and discusses shifts in "black identity" over time.  He discusses his personal experiences with the "corrupting influences" of institutionalized white guilt.

This essay helps to explain a lot of things, like:

• How "liberalism" abandoned classical liberalism to conservatives and libertarians
• Why black activists beat up conservative blacks and set fire to their vehicles
* Why "black leaders" waged a vicious campaign to get Larry Elder kicked off the air
• Why TODAY'S liberals (actually, leftists) demonize the people who disagree with them
• Why Thomas Sowell so resented Francis Fox Pivens' theories
• Why Francis Fox Pivens fought so hard against Thomas Sowell's concerns for personal freedom
• Why so many former participants in the Civil Rights Movement have turned against the Left

Near the end of the essay, Steele writes about a black author who left America during the Age of Racism, returned to America during the Civil Rights Era then returned to Europe again.  I have emphasized points which seem important to me:

James Baldwin once wrote: "What Europe still gives an American is the sanction, if one can accept it, to become oneself." If America now gives this sanction to most citizens, its institutions still fiercely deny it to blacks. And this society will never sanction blacks in this way until it drops all the mechanisms by which it tries to appease white guilt. Guilt can be a very civilizing force, but only when it is simply carried as a kind of knowledge. Efforts to appease or dispel it will only engage the society in new patterns of dehumanization against the same people who inspired guilt in the first place. This will always be true.

Restraint should be the watchword in racial matters. We should help people who need help. There are, in fact, no races that need help; only individuals, citizens.

This essay also shows a little of how Steele's thinking about the future President Obama developed.  He believed that Candidate Obama would become trapped by the need to present different "masks" to his black and white audiences. He hoped that Obama would eventually be able to rise above the "masks" to express his individuality. The two "masks" could be characterized as the "Jesse Jackson model" - demanding compensation from whites who felt guilty - vs. the "Oprah Winfrey model" - offering redemption to whites who felt guilty.   Steele puts it more elegantly, of course. The President surprised Steele by winning the election. But that was not the last of the President's struggles.

The president always knew that his greatest appeal was not as a leader but as a cultural symbol.

The President now often seems more comfortable with the symbolism of being President than with the duties of office. He even suggested recently that it would be easier to be President of China.  People are starting to seem him more as an individual than they did during his campaign, and to treat him like "The President" rather than as a symbol.

Hat tips: I tracked down this article via Mickey Kaus, who was writing about consolidation of affirmative action and civil rights bureaucracies. He linked to John Rosenberg, who also wrote an interesting piece on "Diversity" as Tribalism. His latest post links the remarkable Shelby Steele essay discussed above.

If by now you haven’t thought of Shelby Steele and his soul-searching writing about white guilt, you should have. . .

Today whiteness is stigmatized by liberals like Yglesias in much the same fashion that blackness has been stigmatized by white racists. . .

Update: Ideas like affirmative action, quotas, etc. may not have started as as result of the black civil rights movement in the U.S.: "Former NY mayor Ed Koch reveals new evidence of genuine anti-Semitism on the part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt:"

The transcript of those discussions, which Dr. Medoff cites, reveals what FDR said about the status of the 330,000 Jews living in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia: “The number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions (law, medicine, etc) should be definitely limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole of the North African population. . . The President stated that his plan would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore toward the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a small part of the population, over fifty percent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc., in Germany, were Jews.”

Of course, among the Jews of Europe and the Middle East who had traditionally faced limitations on their rights to hold property, etc., education was one way of surviving (and their religion encouraged education, too).

MSNBC losing contact with reality

From the most egregious to the least, several instances in which commentators on MSNBC have lost contact with reality in an apparent move to narrow their audience down to the hard-core "reality-based community".

Commentator 1

Chris Matthews repeats - with his own layer of apparent make-believe - Media Matters' vicious smear that Mike Huckabee called for Ethnic Cleansing of the West Bank in an interview reported by the Associated Press.  Dennis Prager examines the issue in a short audio clip. Prager points out some of the dangers of such a despicable lie. It puts Huckabee's life in real danger.

Everybody knows that Arabs vote and participate in government in Israel. At least one Arab town in Israel, given the opportunity to leave the State of Israel, declined. Huckabee's position as described in the AP report does NOT require expulsion of Arabs on the West Bank, despite Chris Matthews' definitive statement that "You've got Huckabee saying he's gonna clear out all the Arabs in the West Bank, just get rid of them all!".

And even the Left (well, not the hard left, but at least most Democrats in Congress) came to a position of supporting Jews living in parts of the Left Bank (oops, West Bank - Heh.) and other areas claimed by the Palestinians shortly before Condoleeza Rice expressed concern about a certain development proposed in the West Bank. The American position hardened considerably during the Obama administration. Curtailing Israeli settlements again became a big focus of American foreign policy (slightly simplified and exaggerated in the video. Recent events have changed the focus somewhat).

Although Huckabee's position is now very different from that of the Obama administration, how do Media Matters and MSNBC justify extrapolating the wild claim about "ethnic cleansing" from Huckabee's comments? One of the few times Prager has EVER recommended suing someone.

Commentator 2

Lawrence O'Donnell has been moved into Keith Olberman's prime time slot. Here, Lawrence O'Donnell reaches deep into his own mind to find racist intent in a cartoon about food. He also claims that the cartoonists' portrayal of President Obama is out of line with the exaggerations of other political cartoonists. Quote:

In your most recent cartoons, Bush's ears have become so large they look like airplane wings.

I don't draw Bush as a human being any more. He's become a cartoon character who also has a beak-like nose and circles for feet -- just two simple black circles. I draw Bush smaller and smaller as his incompetence grows larger and larger.

Obama's big ears in the cartoon in question were nowhere near as big as Bush's big ears here (though they did look a little like bat ears. And you know how everybody hates bats). Of course, no cartoonist ever portrayed Bush with the features of an animal Or as a monster. They leave that to commentary on Israel.

And then there's lefty political illustrators.

O'Donnell also told his viewers where the  creators of the cartoon live, and made some pretty wild suggestions about how people should harass them in their private lives. Typical of the Left. You know: sending busses full of union members or ACORN associates to picket at people's personal residences and all. The Left is really into the personal destruction of people who don't agree with them. "Shut up or you'll be next" is the message for the rest of us.

In a more comical vein, O'Donnell also went ballistic over a Republican Congressman sleeping in his office. This is only O.K. when Democrats do it, apparently.  When Republicans do it, it's tax fraud. One certainly can't expect someone from the Democratic Party to be meticulous about paying their taxes.

Commentator 3

I don't think that I would rate Rachel Maddow's recent "False" rating by Politifact (in her claim that Gov. Walker is lying about a budget shortfall in Wisconsin) as her absolute worst departure from the truth. And in this case, she could have just been accidentally selective in reading her source document. But really she should be more careful. Her first "False" rating by Politifacts involved more work in uncovering the falsehoods. And here, she helps David Letterman along in a whole string of falsehoods.

Departure from the above on MSNBC

MSNBC is still not entirely monolithic. On Morning Joe recently, commentators concluded that the coverage of the Wisconsin union protests probably did show some liberal bias. I wonder which way the network will go in the future?

Hollywood, Howard Zinn and the Fellowship of the Ring

Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky deconstruct The Fellowship of the Ring. "I’m pretty sure this is a parody, but, really, how can you tell the difference?" Heh.

Radical historian Howard Zinn died a year ago today. But his influence is still very strong.  It would be fine to have the viewpoint of a radical historian broadly considered in America if so many people did not consider it to be the ONLY VALID viewpoint.

Recommended as companion reading to Zinn's signature book: Paul Johnson's A History of the American People.

Former radical Ron Radosh wrote a piece in Minding the Campus the day after Zinn died:

Howard Zinn's death yesterday affords us the opportunity to evaluate the remarkable influence he has had on the American public's understanding of our nation's past. His book A People's History of the United States, published in 1980 with a first printing of 5000 copies, went on to sell over two million. To this day some 128,000 new copies are sold each year. That alone made Zinn perhaps the single most influential historian whose works have reached multitudes of Americans. Indeed, Zinn found that his book was regularly adopted as a text in high schools and most surprisingly, in many colleges and universities. . .

Zinn was aided in getting his book attention by two youthful neighbors, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. When both became movie stars, they used their celebrity to popularize Zinn's work and to help bring it to a wide audience. As Damon told the press recently, Zinn's message showed that what our ancestors rebelled "against oftentimes are exactly the same things we're up against now." Zinn himself added a few weeks ago that his hope was that his work will spread new rebellion, and "lead into a larger movement for economic justice."

So, Matt Damon ---  from the ultra-rich, insulated, shark-filled artificial world of Hollywood  (a world rife with nepotism,  cronyism and people who believe themselves to be very important)  --- imagines himself to be one of the common folk within   Zinn's "continuous rebellion of the masses against oppression" narrative.  Figures.  Sort of reminds me of the French aristocracy play-acting as shepherds and milkmaids to escape the intrigues of the Court.

From Zinn's perspective, history should not be told from the standpoints of generals or presidents, but through that of people who struggle for their rights, who engage in strikes, boycotts, slave rebellions and the like. Its purpose should be to encourage similar behavior today. Indeed, Zinn candidly said that history was not about "understanding the past," but rather, about "changing the future." That statement alone should have disqualified anyone from referring to him as a historian.

Zinn did not exempt President Barack Obama who he thought was both "a mediocre" and "dangerous president" from his criticism. In the last article he wrote, that appeared in The Nation last week, Zinn argued that Obama's foreign policy was "no different from a Republican," that he was "nationalist, expansionist, imperial and warlike." As for his proposed domestic programs, he found them "limited" and "cautious." He also did not approve of the apparent decision to try those responsible for 9/11, and referred to them as "suspected terrorists," who "have not been found guilty."

Zinn was certainly entitled to his perspective, widely held by many in the academy, but its danger lies in the favorable reception he often got from those who know little. As one of his proteges, Dave Zirin, writes on The Huffington Post: "With his death, we lose a man who did nothing less than rewrite the narrative of the United States." That, precisely, is the problem.

Back in the day when there was still a difference between "liberal" and "leftist", Zinn was investigated by the FBI, like many of the Hollywood Left. They were later successful in demonizing those who questioned their communist affiliations, and the dominant Hollywood culture still endlessly brings up the blacklisting of those years -- while they blacklist others who don't agree with their ideology.

Orson Bean is old enough to have been blacklisted once in Hollywood for being a communist ("kind of cool, except for losing your career") and again for becoming more conservative. He describes the second blacklisting as much more difficult.  Bean's difficult experiences helped lead his son-in-law, Andrew Breitbart, to rebel against the Hollywood Left and become a libertarian/conservative activist.  Funny how these things are connected.

Negotiating childhood disabilities

Movie review of "The King's Speech" with a link to an interview of the leading actor:

I grew out of a stutter when I was a kid so long ago that I had almost forgotten it, but watching "The King's Speech" over the holidays brought back some painful memories. The "King's Speech" is a wonderful movie, the kind that just about the whole family can enjoy together without embarrassment and that audiences spontaneously applaud when the credits start rolling (as the one we were in did).

Also at Powerline, Thomas Sowell (now 80) wrote a book about fighting through the special education establishment in dealing with his son's disability.  Recommended by parents.

The Disturbing World of the Arizona Shooter

The initial campaign to connect in people's minds the Arizona shootings with "violent eliminationist rhetoric" from the Right continues in the modified form of a campaign to "tone down" violent rhetoric in politics and the media.  We are now witnessing a more subtle and devious way to connect idea of violent rhetoric from the Right with the Arizona shootings. And it deflects attention from the issues which should be under discussion as a result of this terrible tragedy.

This red herring is especially disingenuous after the shooter's friends have said that he was "on the left" politically in high school then apparently stopped watching the news, didn't listen to the radio and stopped taking sides in the normal political process.  But he was obsessed with the 2007 "new-age" anarchist internet movie "Zeitgeist".  Produced BEFORE Sarah Palin and the Tea Party were in the national news.  The shooter was also reported to have said in 2007 that Representative Giffords was a "phony" because she did not answer to his satisfaction his irrational question about government and grammar. He may have also developed a certain obsession with her.  None of his acquaintances seem to connect him IN ANY WAY with "right wing" politics. RS McCain links Dan Collins, a father whose child developed a rare form of childhood-onset schizophrenia, concerning the thought processes of schizophrenics.

 Pima college has release a disturbing video in which the shooter talks about what he is thinking as he walks around campus. It makes Collins' heartbreaking observations come to life. Drew M. says this  about the video:

This appeared last night and the reaction from folks on Twitter and email was that it's a tough watch.

The guy is genuinely disturbed. We knew that but to hear and see it so clearly is pretty shocking.

I would love to sit with Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Paul Krugman and the like to watch this. Then when it's over, I'd like them to explain to me how they think this broken and damaged man was in any way influenced by the 'tone' of our political discourse. . . .

Also read his quote from a commentator in the New York Times about the misuse of this tragedy to further a political agenda.  (The Times has backed off its original story line, probably due to the rapid response of competitive voices and real journalists).

Getting back to the Zeitgeist thing:  The Zeitgeist movie's producers, like many new-age types, paid attention to conspiracy ideas from across the political spectrum.  But the style of their movie was typical of activist art from the Left, and the movie won an award at a lefty film festival.  No wonder, since it attacked Christianity, suggested that the U.S. government was complicit in 9/11 and warned against "banking interests" and secret plots to start wars.

On the other hand, it also stated that the income tax is unconstitutional.  I haven't yet fully figured out why "truther" anarchist filmmakers who hate Fox News often get along very well with big-government leftists at rallies and activist film festivals. I would expect anarchists and big-government leftists to be ideologically incompatible. But then again, sometimes lefty anarchists espouse some big-government ideas -- which sort of makes them atypical anarchists.

Somehow, I am not confident that Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Paul Krugman and the like will now condemn violent rhetoric and images in left-wing activist "art"   like they condemned violent rhetoric and images from the Right. Art must reflect freedom of expression (unless it is critical of one of the Left's more fashionable "communities" of the moment).  These commentators cannot be consistent and retain their affinity with today's progressives. And they already have a designated villain.

Predictions for 2011

Predictions are perilous things. It's usually best not to take yourself too seriously when you make them, because hubris is often followed by nemesis. But never mind, it was always about social control, anyway. "Titillated by coercion"?

The pundits at National Review seem to have a sense of this as they make their predictions. John Derbyshire's predictions about China might not be what you would expect. His wife is from China. Conflicting information here and here. Follow the link on the Instapundit posts.

Auld Lang Syne

Elizabeth Scalia on her remembrances of the Kennedy years and Auld Lang Syne.  She also links a piece on food shortages here in the Central Valley, one of the great food-producing regions of the world.  It is relevant to some of our personal challenges, and those of our friends.  Peggy Noonan talked with several people about their impressions of the song we sing every year:

"Auld Lang Syne" — the phrase can be translated as "long, long ago," or "old long since," but I like "old times past"—is a song that asks a question, a tender little question that has to do with the nature of being alive, of being a person on a journey in the world. It not only asks, it gives an answer. . . .

But "the interesting, more serious message in the song is that the past is important, we mustn't forget it, the old has something for us."

So does the present, as the last stanza makes clear. The song is not only about those who were in your life, but those who are in your life. . . .

A lot of food for thought on New Years Eve day. Hope everyone is looking forward to a wonderful New Year.

Thomas Sowell at 80

A national resource. Entire "Uncommon Knowledge" interview at the link. Part 3, on loss of personal responsibility in America and degradation of Harlem since he lived there in the 1940s.

Peter Robinson says Sowell is popular among college students today. One fan puts up quotes and links to Sowell's columns on Twitter. Sowell's closing advice to college kids,

It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.

Sowell also believes that people were "bigger" during Brokaw's Greatest Generation

Were the people more real when America was less rich? Hope we don't throw away what they built.

Conservative? Then you must hate "the other".

Dennis Prager:

A Washington Post columnist writes a serious column about what could be a parody of conservative positions. If you want to see yourself in the liberal mirror, read on.

Yglesias:

This year, us-vs.-them controversies are proliferating,

And it's all because of the economy. Especially the hatred and zenophobia. Because according to the dominant ideologies of today's left, money and power trump most other moral issues.  Most of the Left is also very concerned about their notions of equality and "diversity".    VDH has a few alternative ideas about the reasons for the present conflicts in our society and politics.

Yes, one walk across the Yale or Stanford campus circa 1975, and one could see pretty clearly what sort of culture that bunch would create when it came of age and was handed power. If that is reductionism, so be it.

And Yglesias is truly worried about "America's commitment to religious freedom"? Please.

Actually, he's sort of on the same page with Glenn Beck with regard to the right of Muslims to build a mosque at Ground Zero.*  But there is a very strong current within today's Left which is bent on destroying the influence of traditional religions, except for the one which is an actual, physical threat to it.

Because, when you don’t confront real evil, you hate those who do.

The greatest challenge for the Israeli position isn’t in the media. It’s on the typical college campus. Because there, the truth doesn’t matter. . .

Yes, this unwillingness to show judgment, for judging simply means discerning between two ways, will cause destruction.

To not discern, to lack judgment, is not a mark of intelligence. In fact, a lack pf perception is as handicapped as being actually blind.

* Update: I don't listen to Glenn Beck often, but now he is on early-morining radio, and I heard him say that he had changed his mind, based on the increasing evidence of ties to terrorist groups among the backers of Cordoba House.  How the Gutfield gay bar could get around zoning restrictions.    The Democratic governor of New York is offering State help if the backers will move the mosque further from Ground Zero.

Update 2: Paul Mirengoff does a miniFisk on the Yglesias piece.

Judge Walker's Ruling: Egging On Conflict, Re-affirming Power

What a nightmarish can of worms Judge Walker has opened with his haughty, earth-shaking decision on Proposition 8. It is clear that the Left will never settle for the Rush Limbaugh-Elton John Compromise.

Wretchard:

Although the debate over Proposition 8 is going to be argued in terms of the legal doctrine of equal protection, in the light of recent developments in Arizona, Missouri and Texas, it is inevitably going to seen as another tussle between the Feds and the States, between the Center and the Periphery, and unlikely as it may seem in the case of California, between Red and Blue. What is interesting about these disputes is that they seem to be multiplying and increasing in frequency rather than diminishing. Conflicts normally either disincentive the parties from further argument or egg them on. In this case, the eggs have it. The question is: why?

Later, in the comments, he provides some of his own thoughts:

Leaving the morality and religion out and only the politics in, JC in KZ probably has it right. Marriage, or whatever you want to call it, is part of something that sits underneath the civilizational rules.  It’s rooted in biology. In the statistical distribution of human genes.  It’s like VmWare running under a number of different operating systems.  It is argued that the practical problems of homosexuals can only be solved by getting the OS to take over the VmWare.  But that makes the solution far more complicated than it has to be or maybe even infeasible.

It is politically difficult to sell a solution stated in terms that are intuitively — I will not say rationally but intuitively — repellant to 90% of the population.  There are other ways to meet the practical needs of homosexuals without resorting to cramming it down the majority’s throats in this particular way.  But the Left will have this way and no other.


There’s a certain petulance to this insistence which goes far beyond the actual scope of the problem.  In fact, it’s not a debate about homosexual rights at all.  It is about who gets to officially define human nature more than anything else. Human nature must be made infinitely adaptable to the requirements of the planners. Otherwise there would “high beauties forever beyond their reach”.

I’ll wager that one day the Left will decide gays have no rights. And on that day they will have none.


I don’t think this is about “legislating morality” either way. It is about power. It is an unnecessary, gratuitous and pointless dispute in a world where it is easier to live and let live. And that meaninglessness is the reason it is so compelling to the left. What is power but the ability to insist on the pointless?

Wretchard's statement about future betrayal of gays by the Left is a little shocking.  But he has personal experience with perfidy by leftists.  And maybe "pointless" is an over-statement.  The conflict DOES provide lots of employment among the ruling class. As illustrated in Iowahawk's report on this
 wedgeapalooza.

Update: Random thoghts by Victor Davis Hanson on Angry America. He's our neighbor from up the road. He's a farmer and an academic. He knows about real life, ancient history and theoretical, idealized life. The kicker comes at the end.

Gay marriage - A simple issue? Really?

When I was in elementary school, there was exactly one child among two classes my age, 50 or more children, whose parents were divorced. Well, for a few months there was a second girl, who became my best friend, whose mother was divorced. She and her mother moved suddenly, and we never got a chance to say good-bye. There were no children in my class who were living with deliberately single mothers. Some things have changed since then.

Changes in technology (birth control) and law (no-fault divorce, etc.) decreased the importance of marriage in society. And theories from the Left have knocked marriage first one way and then the other. In my lifetime, marriage has been portrayed by the Left as a meaningless piece of paper, as slavery, as an expression of patriarchy and authoritarianism,  as an institution within which any woman who has sex is being raped, as an arrangement of temporary convenience, as in "starter marriages", and as many other things. Lots of people have felt lots of pain as a result of these various theories. NOW, marriage is suddenly a constitutional right. Until the Left comes up with another goal.

People are starting to talk about some of the legal problems which are posed by same-sex marriage. Like what do you do with the "presumption of paternity" in the case of a lesbian marriage? Or annulment based upon a non-consummated marriage? The law books must be full of wording that will need to be changed, all because of the insistence that the definition of ONE WORD be changed.   What about the Rush Limbaugh-Elton John Compromise?

Gay marriage seems to me to pose the danger of making marriage less attractive to heterosexual men, especially in "at-risk communities" where young men already think of "Sperm Donor"as an ideal family role.

For one thing, the NYT reported that about half of gay married men in Massachusetts do not consider sexual fidelity to be particularly important. Understandably. So, if gay and straight marriage are "totally the same", why shouldn't straight men expect that their wives will be cool with hubby having sex with other people? If your girlfriend doesn't like that idea, why get married and face conflict over your desire for other women? Is there any value to the idea of marriage as a "civilizing bridge between the sexes", requiring both partners to rein in their natural inclinations for the benefit of the partnership?  Should the word "marriage" be made so broad that such social responsibilities become less obvious?

And then there's the recent liberal theme that fathers are, at best, second-rate mothers. Never mind increased pathologies among youths in fatherless homes. Or "daddy-hunger" among young children. Signs of "daddy hunger" such as a child having to be "pried from the leg" of a male day care worker every day are interpreted not as signs of distress over the absence of a father, but as evidence that the child-care worker makes a fine father substitute. When a boy suggests that his two mothers can find a dad to move in with them, it's just "cute". Mentioning those phenomena in a concerned way will soon be "hate speech" directed at a protected minority.

The Left has characterized the idea that children do better if their fathers are involved in their lives as irrational bigotry. President Obama was apparently totally off-base when he tried to convince young black men to take more responsibility for their children.  Sometimes I wonder if the President's opposition to same-sex marriage might be partly due to his difficult experiences as a community organizer in Chicago, dealing with a culture dominated almost totally by women (with the men often entering gangs instead of staying with the mothers of their children).

If fathers get no respect for any unique contribution as a parent, WHY NOT be the sperm donor for a lesbian couple instead of marrying? Or brag about your "baby mommas" raising your kids with their own mothers (since two women make the ideal parenting team).  This would be in line with some old British/American feminist and socialist positions which seem to be making a come-back now.  Though limiting the number of male children is not being pushed currently.

The feminist position on sex education remains:

What is important here is to separate sex from procreation

And hence, from parenthood. As liberal policies have done in the South Side of Chicago.

The push to encourage acceptance of gay and bisexual relationships as "normative" also seems to be having an effect in "at risk" populations. A friend who works at a Job Corps reported that a very high percentage of the students, upwards of 40%, self-identified as gay or bisexual, with a high percentage of those claiming to be bisexual. I am bracing for the liberal push for "bisexual marriage rights".

During the relatively short period in ancient Greece when male homosexual relationships were revered as "purer" than those with women, because there were no concerns of marriage or inheritance, bisexual behavior increased dramatically. And the independence and status of women were also reduced in Athens during this "golden age", with sequestration and veiling of upper-class wives. Prostitutes had more freedom than other women. But at that time, marriage and homosexual relationships were thought of separately.

 Who knows what bisexual "family relationships" will be promoted in the near future by the "marriage is a constitutional right" crowd? Whatever they are, they will not fit the ideal model demonstrated by large-scale studies, which show that the best environment for growing children is in a stable, low-conflict home with both biological parents. (As far as I know, most of the smaller comparative studies with same-sex parents compared those families to heterosexual families with divorced and re-married or co-habiting  parents, due to the small number of children raised from infancy in a same-sex household).

I was not particularly surprised that many young women in the Job Corps would claim to be bisexual, as more information is coming out recently concerning the "fluidity" of female sexual orientation. Plus all the stories about women in Hollywood and elsewhere who seem to change their sexual orientation, and pornography directed at men which feature lesbian sex.

 But my friend said that there was also a high percentage of young men who claimed to be bisexual. Interesting how the old hard-left theme that sexual orientation is just a matter of "social conditioning" is now making a comeback, after the Left spent years trying to convince us that sexual orientation is totally immutable. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle, with many women being more "flexible" in their sexual attractions. More information needed. Exciting, unsettling times ahead.

"Taxes are for the Little People" - Yachting and Vacation Edition

From the Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe:

From Newport, R.I., where Kerry’s ‘Isabel’ was berthed before heading to Nantucket, to Rhinebeck, N.Y., where Chelsea Clinton was married in a mansion modeled after Versailles, today’s Democrats are looking more like Louis XVI than Tip O’Neill. Kick in the First Family’s vacation plans for Martha’s Vineyard, and there’s a real air of Marie Antoinette & Co. retreating to idyllic gardens, while Fox News whips up revolutionary flames. The ethics charges against Representative Charles Rangel of New York are added foie gras.

The author goes on to make a case that the image is only superficial, because:

While Republicans drape themselves in middle class values, they are sticking it to the middle class. It’s all in the effort to deny Obama and the Democrats any positive political message.


Last week, Senate Republicans rejected a bill to aid small business with expanded loan programs and tax breaks.

BUT she leaves out some details about the bills they voted against:

First, the tax provisions to which she refers are a provision of Obamacare which requires the issuance of a 1099 for anything purchased over $600. Insofar as every Republican in the house and senate voted against Obamacare, they already voted against this nonsense. Secondly, in an effort to repeal the mistake which nearly every Democrat in the house and senate voted for, they proposed a bill repealing the provision, but enacting a large tax increase as well. It was for this reason that Republicans voted against the bill; because it was a tax increase.

So which is Joan Vennochi? Is she a liar or an ignoramus?

She also mentions Scott Brown's vote against a bill to extend unemployment benefits. What doesn't make it into the news, because of people like Joan Vennochi, is that the Republicans explained that they were voting against the bill BECAUSE IT WAS 'FUNDED' BY ADDING IT TO THE DEFICIT. They proposed funding extended unemployment benefits with unspent "stimulus" money. It is true that they were trying to hold the Democrats' to their "pay as you go" pledge, so their opposition was partly political. But they were also voting in favor of the interests of FUTURE middle-class Americans. And probably in the interests of middle-class Americans not too far into the future. Not that they didn't lose their way in the past with their own deficit spending. But deficit spending during this administration is WAY out of control and truly threatens rising generations.

Roger L. Simon on the Party of the Rich and the Press:

But wait, as they say, there’s more. At this moment, two of their leaders from a supposedly disadvantaged minority are about to be tried for ethical transgressions (read: thievery) even Congress couldn’t sweep under the rug. Never mind that these transgressions mostly exploit the very minority these people purport to represent. It’s part of the game. Convince minorities they should act like victims. Extort guilt payments from the majority and keep the change. Meanwhile, nothing improves for the minority because it would interrupt the system.

This all occurs during the administration of a president who once trumpeted “transparency” and “change,” pronouncements that seem to have been made so long ago now you can’t remember if it happened before or after the fall of the Roman Empire. This same Democratic president, however, continues to collect big royalties from books he may or may not have written. He’s certainly not the first.

Furthermore, in recent days, some Grub Street drones have been revealed to be enablers, or perhaps cheerleaders, of all the above. Particularly clueless, this crowd does the low-paying grunt work for their truly plutocratic Democrat employers from Huffington to Sulzberger. At least the Dems’ Hollywood supporters are making some decent money off their useful idiocy.

Talk about a confederacy of dunces. . . .

I used to think, as I wrote in my book on Hollywood of a couple of years ago, that these limousine liberals created “mini-me” clones out of the Austin Powers flicks to proclaim publicly their undying support for the common man; so that, in their private lives, these same “progressive plutocrats” could go on raping and pillaging as before. Barbra Streisand is a typical example, but George Soros, more than any movie star, is the poster boy for that kind of behavior.


But these days, it seems, even the “mini-me” is being abandoned. The pretenses are gone. No more Mr. Good Guy, phony as he was. No more obeisance to Mother Teresa (she’s dead anyway) or special concerts for African AIDS. It has evolved to another stage. Chelsea Clinton gets her multi-million dollar wedding no matter how it looks to the rest of us. John Kerry acts as if having tax issues for your yacht is just another average problem for Joe Normal, and Al Gore … well, the less said about him the better.


When I say it has evolved to another stage, I also mean that our political leaders now behave more or less like members of competing Mafia families. The Clintons do not invite the Obamas — or the Gores, for that matter – to their wedding. That Jenna Bush’s wedding cost a paltry one hundred grand is forgotten, a thing of the past barely commented upon. Chelsea marries into a family whose connections are no more savory than the Corleones, as Ron Radosh reminds us.


Meanwhile, the tea partiers are accused of racism that no one can prove. The illusion that the Democrats are the party of the people continues. And the beat goes on.

Chelsea Clinton's Wedding and "Social Justice"

Glenn Reynolds:

THE PARTY OF THE LITTLE GUY: Chelsea Clinton’s $2M Wedding. “The rehearsal dinner is reportedly taking place at the nearby Grasmere, a 525-acre estate boasting a Federal-period manor house with formal gardens, stucco guest cottages and a large stone barn complex. Another area manse rumored to be serving the family over the weekend will be Glenburn, where the Clintons are said to be staying over the weekend. Glenburn is the Rhinebeck home of Eric and Andrea Colombel. Andrea Colombel is the daughter of billionaire financier and longtime Clinton supporter George Soros.”

Victor Davis Hanson:

One requisite to being a cultural elite, unfortunately, is a certain allegiance to untruth, to saying one thing and doing another. . .


In short, money, privilege, and status create in the cultural elite both a fear of mixing it up with others that might jeopardize position and placement, and yet guilt for that very sense of entitlement and exemption. All that, in turn, only heightens the shrill and sanctimonious rhetorical demands on less blessed others to prove their morality.

But then again, Chelsea DID look lovely in the dress, with her hair back. Happy Family.

History: Where Chelsea was married.

Mom is apparently out of money now.

The Postmodern Cultural Elite

In a piece which echoes s few of the ideas here, VDH identifies what he thinks are characteristics of the "New Aristocracy" of our day:

This ad hoc meditation on cultural elitism was all prompted last week by listening to a poor white tree-trimmer lecture me on the various merits of his three different chain saws, while I was talking on the cell phone with a nasal-voiced, snotty Washington reporter — out here south of Fresno — but, in minutes, to be on the way to work at the antipode at Stanford. . .

The five characteristics he identified:

1) Truth

One requisite to being a cultural elite, unfortunately, is a certain allegiance to untruth, to saying one thing and doing another. . .

In short, money, privilege, and status create in the cultural elite both a fear of mixing it up with others that might jeopardize position and placement, and yet guilt for that very sense of entitlement and exemption. All that, in turn, only heightens the shrill and sanctimonious rhetorical demands on less blessed others to prove their morality.

Barack Obama was a genius in recognizing all this, and at a very early age no less. The subtext of Dreams from My Father, and indeed Obama’s life from 18 to 45, was to allay elite fears, guilt, and suspicions. . . .

2) Nature

The cultural elite class tends to romanticize nature, since it has little contact with it. Energy Secretary Steven Chu cheaply announces that California farms will dry up and blow away, with no clue how the tomatoes in his salad or the lamb chops on his plate are grown, cleaned, shipped — and land in his mouth. . . .

3) Muscularity

An elite is often characterized as staying fit entirely by the workout, the gym, the jog — never by chain sawing, digging, climbing, or hammering. Yet here too arises contradiction. The elite, being largely progressive, champion the muscular classes to the degree they can stay distant from them. . .

4) Gender

. . . Why can’t any of our actors talk like a Humphrey Bogart, Glenn Ford, Lee Marvin, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Bill Holden, or Gregory Peck? I’m not asking for Jack Palance or Fess Parker, just a normal male mainstream voice. I know there are Al Pacinos and Robert De Niros, but they too seem to fade before the new wave of DiCaprios. Elites talk (and probably sound) like the freedmen in Petronius’s Satyricon

5) Logic There is little logic among the cultural elite, maybe because there is little omnipresent fear of job losses or the absence of money, and so arises a rather comfortable margin to indulge in nonsense. The idea that taxes cause scarcity, and subsidy abundance is a foreign concept. The notion that entitlements create dependency is considered Neanderthal. . . In other words, take a deep breath and imagine the opposite of everything you know by experience to be true, and you have mostly the worldview of the sheltered cultural elite, who navigate in rather protected channels and not in the open seas of the real world.

Breitbart vs. NAACP thread

The NAACP got Andrew Breitbart's dander up with the way they smeared the Tea Party organization as racist. I have never seen as much misinformation over a short-term issue as I've seen on this one.  I've decided to start a thread so I can add information as the dust clears.

EARLY DEVELOPMENTS

July 22: Soros-funded Media Matters publishes a timeline which is picked up by Huffington Post, with the ridiculous claim that the timeline shows collusion between "right wing" bloggers and Fox News, rather than bloggers reading each other's posts. They accuse The Anchoress of participating in the "disturbing coordination" WHEN SHE EXPRESSES DISSATISFACTION WITH THE PLACE THE BREITBART VIDEO CLIP ENDED.  Maybe they were upset that she was the only popular blogger or media person to point this out before Sherrod was forced to resign. That's where I first saw the story mentioned, so maybe I'm part of the "disturbing coordination" too.  The "disturbing coordination" amounted to FOUR BLOGGERS picking up the story before CBS News, and FIVE BLOGGERS before Drudge. And this was after Breitbart had threatened to release evidence of racism at an NAACP event, which would be expected to clue bloggers and others in the media to be watching his site.  Pretty lame "coordination", if you ask me.   Especially compared to the irresponsible spread of the lies about Tea Party racisms  by the mainstream media back in March.    Read about the McClatchy timeline, immediately "amplified" by the New York Times and many others in the mainstream media, and watch the video.   Breitbart has since released additional videos countering the reports by the CBC members. He increased his reward for proof of racial epithets to $100,000 but has had no takers, despite all the recording devices at the scene.

 Note that the fake hate crimes were repeatedly reported as if they were true in the New York Times as late as FOUR MONTHS after initial reports had been contested with a reward for evidence supporting the story. And it was AUGUST before the Paper of Record published a lame, face-saving "correction" indicating that there was no evidence that epithets reported by members of the CBC came from members of the Tea Party.  In contrast, every "conspirator" named in the Media Matters timeline above, including Breitbart,  IMMEDIATELY issued corrections once the full Sherrod video was released, and several apologized to Ms. Sherrod.

Media Matters must really be feeling sensitive about the Journolist scandal, in which liberal journalists and "opinion leaders" were shown to have shared ideas about how to shape the news. For example, one journalists suggested that they could kill coverage of the Reverend Wright issue by picking a conservative - any conservative - and calling him a racist.

I think Media Matters also misrepresented the 1:40 notation concerning Fox Nation on their timeline, as later reports indicated that Sherrod's name had never been mentioned on air before she resigned. Additionally, early reports by Fox (including an internet post) stated that Fox was "seeking comment".  Which is more than the USDA and the White House did.

Interesting that the Breitbart report didn't hit the big-time breaker-of-news, Drudge, for FIVE FULL  HOURS. Breitbart used to work for Drudge. That story really spread "like wildfire", alright. The tape first aired on Fox News AFTER Sherrod resigned.  Seems to me that the USDA and White House were the ones who acted like Sherrod was "on fire".  I don't think they expected "push-back" from her.

BREITBART VS. NAACP ON TV

Chris Matthews defends Breitbart - then sends program down the memory hole. Fascinating. Chris Matthews Vs. Howard Dean.

Well, there you go. [Quoting Ms. Sherrod] “I opened my eyes. I realized it wasn’t about black and white. It was, but it was about other things, about poverty.” So, Joan, that part, that part in there about redemptive revelation was actually in the initial tape.

You can judge for yourself if Joan Walsh is misrepresenting the "scare tactics" she says the right are using. Breitbart's original post, before the full tape was located and released:

In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

August 3:  Breitbart decides to sue MSNBC.  Heh.

Speaking of Howard Dean, the liberal attack machine which pushed the story that Sherrod was fired because of Fox News coverage seems to have lead Dean into heaping false charges upon Fox News, and getting caught with his facts down.   So embarrassing.  Scroll down to watch the whole clip, in which he also jokingly compares Glenn Beck to the murderous regime in Iran.   (This is typical of HATERS on the Left. Have you ever heard a Republican official say anything this divisive about, say, Keith Olberman?)

But then again, maybe Dean wasn't misled in his comments about Fox. I say this because he repeated his mischaracterizations  after being corrected. He seems to be good at making charges of racism against people and organizations "out of context". Doesn't he have the responsibility to check his facts before making malicious claims like this?

Oveer at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, who bears false witness on national TV against more people  than any woman I can think of, made news in Australia on July 22 for her paranoid belief that Fox News got Shirley Sherrod fired before mentioning her on air. Maddow used three clips of Fox News reports which aired AFTER SHERROD HAD BEEN FIRED to prove that Fox News was to blame for her firing. Because no such pieces had aired before she was fired.

By the way, Maddow also falsely suggests that there was nothing to the ACORN tapes shown on one of Breitbart's sites because James O'Keefe did not wear his grandmother's fur "pimp coat" into the ACORN offices (only in the introductory bits on his videos), and because the tapes were edited.  But there is no way he could have faked the efforts of the ACORN volunteers to help them set up a brothel, give advice on managing underage prostitutes from El Salvador, and evade taxes. Prosecutors couldn't find a cause for legal action against some of the workers, I guess.  But ACORN had been getting away with illegal activities FOR YEARS at taxpayer expense, because of their friends in government.  Embezzlement, voter fraud, etc.  And there was a black whistleblower within the organization, too.  ACORN lost much of its government funding as people started to look into its other activities as a result of the tapes.

Here, she helps David Letterman get even more facts wrong.  The typical arrogant bigotry of today's American Left is demonstrated by their belief that they know the motives of the people they are discussing.  And her agreement with Letterman's exaggerated, false summary is completely irresponsible for someone in her position, who reports the "news" during her program.

Watch him go on about getting the facts right, while getting them completely wrong. It isn't about facts at all with these people, it's about the narrative.

More on the decline of David Letterman:

Whatever was left of Dave’s edgy sense of irony died while engaging in a serious discussion about the ethics of journalism with… Rachel Maddow… of…. MSNBC…

Signs of change: Anderson Cooper Says He Was Wrong to Let Shirley Sherrod Smear of Andrew Breitbart Go Unchallenged.  "Well, at least his learned his lesson, as have many. It was a teachable moment on race, I guess, just like the President wanted. . . ." Follow the link from Instapundit above to learn more about Shirley Sherrod's appearances on CNN.

Now we go back to Fox and the sometimes-dramatic  and sometimes odd Glenn Beck, who stated that Sherrod had been treated unfairly after she was fired.  After Sherrod was offered her job back, Beck did a Howard Stern-type bit (minus the obscene language) on Keith Olberman's imcomparable dramatic comparison of Sherrod's ordeal to being imprisoned on Devil's Island. Olbermann:

”Shirley Sherrod has been to her own Devil’s Island thanks to the perpetual fraud machine that is FOX News and the scum that is the assassin Breitbart.”

As one commenter to another piece noted, Breitbart didn't get Shirley Sherrod fired. The hyper-vigilant atmosphere produced by unsupported charges of racism from the Left got Sherley Sherrod fired. Along with the actions of her employers, who, if they were in the private sector, would be facing a big lawsuit for the way they handled this.

July 31: Andrew Breitbart at Uni-Tea - speech presenting his story. Whole speech, PJTV. Part 1 - Need for unity vs. design to divide - "tainting the Tea Party as racist" as a political strategy. Part 2 - How watching the Clarence Thomas hearings changed his political views. Part 3 - Congressional Black Caucus makes false charges of racism. Part 4: Rebellion against the stifling of dissent and continued collusion of mainstream liberal media with politicians.

BLACK FARM WORKERS VS. CHARLES AND SHIRLEY SHERROD

Unexpected Black vs. Black fallout - Monday, Aug 2: Ron Wilkins, a former organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1974, under an assumed name, hired-on at New Communities Inc. The Emergency Land Fund, an Atlanta-based black land retention organization, which shared oversight responsibility for NCI’s progress, wanted to know the basis for NCI’s continued poor performance. He reports that the Sherrods exploited and mistreated black workers, including children, at New Communities, Inc. He was fired after organizing a union action.

This would be an explosive accusation to make if it weren't true, especially since Shirley Sherrod has already promised to sue Breitbart for defamation. But there also seems to have been a lot of in-fighting in the leadership of these various black activist groups, so it's prudent to take that into consideration in weighing the veracity of this story.  August 3:  Glenn Reynolds notes that the quality of information in CounterPunch is "not especially reliable". Wretchard, July 21:

The public policy arena can be compared to a grand opera house, whose foundations were laid in turmoil, and which despite the magnificence of the Grand Staircase and Grand Foyer is reputed to contain numerous secret passages and dank cellars. Two of the chambers marked “do not enter” are the Hall of Race and the Chamber of Journalistic Collusion respectively. This week the patrons of the opera, unsettled by the changing times, have taken a turning into these dark chambers. Now they’re there, what is going to happen next?

August 5: Zombie finds an old union publication which confirms the story that the Sherrods exploited and mistreated blacks on the neo-Marxist commune they ran - land held in their names. So, why were the Sherrods the big winners in their Pigford lawsuit, instead of the people who made 67 cents an hour working for them?  Her participation in exploiting black people under slave-like conditions puts her charges that Andrew Breitbart wants to see blacks back in slavery and that those who protested the takeover of health care by the federal government are racists in a different light.

From the comments: 

As the well-known legal scholar, Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

"Think Progress" Presents Fraudulent "Tea Party Racists"

Well, Progressives are really desperate to portray the Tea Party movement as racist. Think Progress has prepared a video portraying several fraudulent examples of racism at Tea Party events. Bob Owens:

“A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.”

--Jonathan Swift

The liar who prepared the video interned at the similarly untrustworthy Media Matters, one of the many Progressive organizations in America funded by George Soros.

I wonder why Progressives are not embarrassed to have their "message to America" delivered largely by a hedge fund high-roller who has, in the past, destroyed the currencies of Asian nations and the pensions of British widows?

Quote of the Day

P.J. O'Rourke:

Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.

America's Ruling Class -- and the Perils of Revolution

Update: I typically highlight ideas I find valuable in this blog, more than I add a lot of original content. Sometimes I am reminded how pedestrian my writing here is. Like when I write about a piece I have read and then find that Wretchard has also written about it.

Janet Daley of the UK Telegraph and Angelo de Codavilla of Boston University, in what will be a landmark essay, argue that overt class struggle has come to America. Not the classic Marxist class struggle in which the wretched of the earth arise to break their chains. Rather the reverse, one in which the Masters of the Universe impose their unutterable vision upon the benighted masses. . .

Read the whole thing.

Here, Wretchard discusses some partial dissents and further thoughts from Codevilla's piece, by Ross Douthat and Jay Cost. Fascinating ideas.

Following are some ideas from Codevilla's piece which stood out to me:

"Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust."

Follow the link to a rather deep piece which attempts to identify characteristics of America's "bipartisan" ruling class, gives a little history of how it came to be our ruling class, and how it differs from the ruling classes in other countries, like, say, France. It also attempts to explain much of the conflict now occurring in America.

This piece is fairly long and complex for a magazine article in 2010, when we're impatient with thoughts which require more than a soundbite. You may want to read it more than once before forming your own thoughts on the issues raised. It begins:

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets' nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.

When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term "political class" came into use. . . .

The following topics are addressed. I've chosen some excerpts only a little longer than "soundbites" from them:

The Political Divide

The Ruling Class

The Faith

The Agenda: Power

Dependence Economics

Who Depends on Whom?

In Congressional Government (1885) Woodrow Wilson left no doubt: the U.S. Constitution prevents the government from meeting the country's needs by enumerating rights that the government may not infringe. ("Congress shall make no law..." says the First Amendment, typically.) Our electoral system, based on single member districts, empowers individual voters at the expense of "responsible parties." Hence the ruling class's perpetual agenda has been to diminish the role of the citizenry's elected representatives, enhancing that of party leaders as well as of groups willing to partner in the government's plans, and to craft a "living" Constitution in which restrictions on government give way to "positive rights" -- meaning charters of government power.

Consider representation. Following Wilson, American Progressives have always wanted to turn the U.S. Congress from the role defined by James Madison's Federalist #10, "refine and enlarge the public's view," to something like the British Parliament, which ratifies government actions. Although Britain's electoral system -- like ours, single members elected in historic districts by plurality vote -- had made members of Parliament responsive to their constituents in ancient times, by Wilson's time the growing importance of parties made MPs beholden to party leaders. Hence whoever controls the majority party controls both Parliament and the government.

Disaggregating and Dispiriting

The ruling class is keener to reform the American people's family and spiritual lives than their economic and civic ones.

Meddling and Apologies

America's best and brightest believe themselves qualified and duty bound to direct the lives not only of Americans but of foreigners as well. George W. Bush's 2005 inaugural statement that America cannot be free until the whole world is free and hence that America must push and prod mankind to freedom was but an extrapolation of the sentiments of America's Progressive class, first articulated by such as Princeton's Woodrow Wilson and Columbia's Nicholas Murray Butler. But while the early Progressives expected the rest of the world to follow peacefully, today's ruling class makes decisions about war and peace at least as much forcibly to tinker with the innards of foreign bodies politic as to protect America. . . .

former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev tells us that in 1987 then vice president George H. W. Bush distanced himself from his own administration by telling him, "Reagan is a conservative, an extreme conservative. All the dummies and blockheads are with him..." This is all about a class of Americans distinguishing itself from its inferiors. It recalls the Pharisee in the Temple: "Lord, I thank thee that I am not like other men..."

In sum, our ruling class does not like the rest of America. Most of all does it dislike that so many Americans think America is substantially different from the rest of the world and like it that way. For our ruling class, however, America is a work in progress, just like the rest the world, and they are the engineers.

The Country Class

Describing America's country class is problematic because it is so heterogeneous. It has no privileged podiums, and speaks with many voices, often inharmonious. It shares above all the desire to be rid of rulers it regards inept and haughty. . . . While the country class, like the ruling class, includes the professionally accomplished and the mediocre, geniuses and dolts, it is different because of its non-orientation to government and its members' yearning to rule themselves rather than be ruled by others.

Even when members of the country class happen to be government officials or officers of major corporations, their concerns are essentially private; in their view, government owes to its people equal treatment rather than action to correct what anyone perceives as imbalance or grievance. Hence they tend to oppose special treatment, whether for corporations or for social categories. . . . . Thus the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Kelo, which allows the private property of some to be taken by others with better connections to government, reminded the country class that government is not its friend.

Congruent Agendas?

Not being at the table when government makes the rules about how you must run your business, knowing that you will be required to pay more, work harder, and show deference for the privilege of making less money, is the independent businessman's nightmare. But what to do about it? In our time the interpenetration of government and business -- the network of subsidies, preferences, and regulations -- is so thick and deep, the people "at the table" receive and recycle into politics so much money, that independent businesspeople cannot hope to undo any given regulation or grant of privilege. . . . . "The sum of good government," said Thomas Jefferson, is not taking "from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." For government to advantage some at others' expense, said he, "is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association." In our time, more and more independent businesspeople have come to think of their economic problems in moral terms. But few realize how revolutionary that is.

The Classes Clash

If self-governance means anything, it means that those who exercise government power must depend on elections. The shorter the electoral leash, the likelier an official to have his chain yanked by voters, the more truly republican the government is. Yet to subject the modern administrative state's agencies to electoral control would require ordinary citizens to take an interest in any number of technical matters. Law can require environmental regulators or insurance commissioners, or judges or auditors to be elected. But only citizens' discernment and vigilance could make these officials good. Only citizens' understanding of and commitment to law can possibly reverse the patent disregard for the Constitution and statutes that has permeated American life. Unfortunately, it is easier for anyone who dislikes a court's or an official's unlawful act to counter it with another unlawful one than to draw all parties back to the foundation of truth.

Glenn Reynolds has some ideas about what to do to reduce the ambitions of America's ruling class. Lots of ideas from Glenn, readers and others. Here's Glenn's final one:

Finally: Don’t act like a subject. Rulers like subjects. Don’t be one. As a famous man once said: Get in their face. Punch back twice as hard. Words for the coming decade?

"All Racism, Only Racism, 24 Hours a Day"

The reason for those bogus charges of Tea Party Racism?  Insufficient empathy and diversity among liberals!

Timothy Dalrymple:

It is essentially a failure of imagination. Liberals cannot imagine themselves into a way of thinking in which conservatives do what they do and believe what they believe for good reasons. And since they cannot believe that conservatives are motivated by rational beliefs and admirable motives, they must appeal to darker, more primitive impulses to explain their behavior. The racist motive presents itself as a natural and convenient explanation.

Case In Point

Chris Matthews focuses on race as the obvious explanation for the nomination of an Indian-American by the Republican Party in South Carolina. Sounds shockingly malicious, but then maybe it's just the "liberal failure of imagination" concerning the motives of conservatives.

In Hollywood, racism is all about politics. In Illinois, too.

"Think Progress" is so heavily invested in portraying the Tea Party as racist that they use liberal-produced "Crash the Tea Party" signs as evidence of Tea Party racism.

Now Al Queda is racist, too. There are lots of possible explanations for the President's new "racist AQ" theme. But perhaps partly because multi-culturalism dictates that all religions are morally equivalent, it is forbidden to mention Islamic extremism as a motive for terror in the Obama administration.   Racism falls under a different category in the liberal mind.