03.09.10
Posted in Ideology at 8:06 pm by Administrator
A commenter in a recent thread cited Wendell Potter as a source for substantiation that the health-insurance industry as a whole routinely tries to skip out on its contractual obligations with its customers.
I have my doubts that he had an abrupt road-to-Damascus moment (although one moment he loves to recount is getting served on gold-plated dinnerware while taking a corporate jet to some meeting). I have an inkling he’s hated freedom for a long time.
Why would he have landed so quickly at the radical leftist, suspicious-of-anything-having-to-do-with-corporations Madison-Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy after quitting CIGNA? I suspect he was into such pungent pools of dog vomit as “economic justice” and “ecological sustainability” for quite a while.
Speaking of that association, Brent Bozell sheds light on why Potter and quintessential Freedom-Hater and America-Hater Bill Moyers looked so cozy during their PBS chat.
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02.24.10
Posted in Ideology at 3:11 pm by Administrator
David Harsanyi on Ron Paul’s CPAC straw-poll victory, and its implications for whether libertarianism will now be taken more seriously or less. As Harsanyi states, Paul is a fundamentally unserious person, a crank with kinky obsessions like ending the Fed.
There are, as Harsanyi points out, two main branches of libertarianism these days: the silly branch (Lew Rockwell, Paul Craig Roberts, Ron Paul), and the grown-up branch (Reason magazine, Neal Boortz, the Cato Institute). The whole movement’s main problem, though, and the reason it never does better than it does in polls or elections, is its excrutitatingly theoretical nature. The basic premise of both branches is that you can be absolutist about human freedom starting right now, this very second. A thorough understanding of history shows that what is realistic and noble to work for is a maximization of human freedom.
You have to look around you and see that there are entire nation-states (and non-state actors with wide networks) in the throes of absolutely mad ideologies that have at their cores the destruction of our freedom-based way of life. In other words, you have to count on war as a constant in the human predicament.
Also, this business of pressing for the legalization of vices like prostitution (as sick an activity as humans have ever devised; it has elements of both slavery and cannibalism) and use and sale of addictive narcotics fails to take into account a little thing called the social fabric.
In short, one way of describing the difference between a libertarian and a conservative is that the former will say, “What your neighbor is doing on his own property is non of your business if it doesn’t hurt you,” whereas the latter will say, “What he is doing has ramifications beyond the confines of his property and it is a noble use of my freedom to do all I can to persuade as many people as possible that it is morally wrong.”
Yes, freedom is central to human well-being. But, unless on is a nihilist, one eventually concludes that there is a point – a moral point – to human existence. That has to be part of the conversation.
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02.23.10
Posted in Ideology, Politics at 7:34 pm by Administrator
Mitt Romney endorses McCain for re-election as Arizona senator. (And while BN endorses Hayworth, it comes with this qualifier: He needs to knock off the birther crap, and right now.)
And Scott Brown shows symptoms of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome, voting for cloture on the jobs bill, andusing terms like “bipartisanship” and “put politics aside.” His election remains glorious, since it roars loudly the mood of the electorate, as well as making it likely that socialist health care is a dead issue. Still, we must expect him to mute our excitement with great frequency.
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Posted in Ideology at 3:33 pm by Administrator
Two keen assessments of Glenn Beck’s keynote address at CPAC:
C. Edmund Wright at American Thinker
Bill Bennett at NRO’s The Corner
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02.19.10
Posted in Human freedom, Ideology at 2:23 pm by Administrator
Several columns are appearing today with the theme of the FHers’ desperate scramble to find a scapegoat for the failure to implement their vision. S.E. Cupp gives the subject a good treatment, as does Jonah Goldberg.
As I say in the title of a recent post, the kind of thing this regime wants to impose on the American people works in societies with cultural histories full of despotism and instability, but in a center-right nation like ours, the outcome is merely a nasty train wreck.
One of my highest values is clarity. It’s bracing when you come across it, due to its short supply in this world. Its opposite takes all kinds of forms: convoluted poll questions, situational deviation from principles, excitement over sudden new cultural phenomena, kooky theories, a course of action based on staying loaded or otherwise tuning out the reality in front of one’s face.
Lefties have been lobbing the “simplistic” accusation at us for decades. Ronald reagan mentioned it in the thunderous October 1964 address that began his political career.
You know what they say the real remedy is. Nuance, like a free market, but one that is saddled with all kinds of regulation. Equality for women as defined by feminists but encompassing the reserved right to claim vicitmization at the drop of a hat. “Green” technology, but with pretty much total subsidization since it can’t hold its own in the marketplace. Deference to an “international community” that, when codified into organizations like the United Nations is repeatedly shown to be a cesspool of tyranny, corruption and incompetence.
I hold therapy in ever-lower regard the older I get, but in a sense, that’s what this blog is for me. An opportunity to get clear about what works and what is right, true and good. The leftist utopian vision has reached the point where its core madness is now on full display. The only antidote is exertion of will, a refusal to be sucked into its vortex.
Free markets. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. A foreign policy based on what history tells us about human nature. As Dutch said, not simplistic, but simple after all.
And challenging – indeed, daunting, to see through to reification. That’s for sure.
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01.28.10
Posted in Ideology, Politics at 3:36 pm by Administrator
Andy Wickersham at Pajamas Media looks at what ADA and ACU ratings tell us about how far to the left the Dem party has veered in the last three and a half decades.
No wonder we call them Freedom-Haters.
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Posted in American exceptionalism, Human freedom, Ideology, Politics at 2:35 pm by Administrator
David Harsanyi says the Dems had better see that their problem is not leadership or message delivery, or even any coordinated effort by Pubs. They have an idea problem.
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11.21.09
Posted in Environment policy, Ideology at 2:37 pm by Administrator
Those hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climactic Research Centre obviously tell us a lot about the climate-change movement, but they tell us much as well about the broader post-Communist left.
The one thing about the left that has mystified me for years is the question of how the obvious appetite for power relates to the nature of the left’s grand vision, which is a perversion of reality based on a world in which, ultimately, power becomes an outmoded concept. The point of a leftist’s efforts is to arrive at a state in which everyone is so equal and everything is so fair and equitable that hierarchy or advantage are unknown.
I think what happens is that human nature peeks through the leftist’s carefully constructed mindset, like dandelions in a carefully manicured lawn, and traits such as hypocrisy, arrogance, ruthless ambition and greed present more temptation than the green, diverse, peaceful and socially just leftist can bear. The desire to boss others around, maybe even intimidate them a bit, and live in luxury and bask in public adulation surface in spite of the ongoing rhetoric perpetuating the facade of a New Humanity. There are just too many opportunities to be a star or a don when you become active in the Utopian sphere.
The zeal to make everyone in the world get on board with the Grand Vision means finding some aspect of life to which some kind of urgent need for amelioration can be ascribed. If you can convince people that some basic area of their daily existence is sorely malfunctioning and must be fixed right away, you may be able to motivate unnatural behaviors in large swaths of the populace upon which to build as you progress toward the ultimate goal of a Remade World. That’s why our Congress is in such a hurry to enact wild and unprecedentedly tyrannical legislation dealing with health care and the environment. It’s fairly easy to argue that these are “public” or “common” goods the stewardship of which must be handled communally. You get basics like air, water and health under the control of the state, and the rest of the agenda becomes much easier to accomplish.
Our task is to expose the whole enterprise as a grotesquely unnatural attempt to deny what we are as creatures. It’s often said that free-market economics is actually the absence of any kind of “ism.” It’s the way people engage in commerce when left to their own devices. The same is true of all human activity. No one wants to choke on dirty air. Only isolated cases of those given to wickedness would want their fellow human being to choke on dirty air, or to deny him or her treatment for a broken leg. Under unimpeded circumstances, people generally see the convergence of self-interest and civic and charitable consideration.
What will be realy interesting is to see how the left handles this new revelation about global-warming zealotry. It ought to stop planning for next month’s Copenhagen conference dead in its tracks, but, as we know, human nature involves a fair amount of stubbornness, which is often acted on in combination with a hefty portion of denial.
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11.20.09
Posted in Ideology at 6:19 pm by Administrator
A few years back, I was invited by the local Unitarian-Universalist congregation to give a talk on the evolution of my spiritual views throughout my life. I was told that part of the proceedings would involve my handling the children’s-message portion of the service as well.
This was a congregation I’d been very involved with a decade and a half earlier, and most members knew that I was a conservative. (I’m taking it for granted that the general reader knows that the UU denomination leans heavily leftward, with a few libertarians sprinkled in.)
I outlined my main talk and felt confident about being able to present my points and tie it all together in the space of twenty minutes. The day before, however, I still hadn’t crafted a children’s message. I pretty much came up with my idea as I drove to their – building? – church?
I had the kids join me on the riser by the altar – pretty standard fare for that kind of exercise. I picked out an object central to us all, the chalice on the stand. I asked several kids to describe the chalice from their perspectives – shape, color, any shadows that the light in the sanctuary was making on it. My point was that each of us is positioned somewhere in the universe and that necessarily forms the basis of our perspective on anything. The young folks got it, and the adults in the pews, particularly those who knew me, thought it was an effective way to set the table for my main talk and the subsequent Q and A.
Since the electoral rout of a year ago, there’s been much discussion and debate among Republicans / conservatives about what constitutes “authentic” right-ism. The notion of the “big tent” has been disparaged and lauded. Fault lines have been pointed out, and their significance either minimized or magnified, depending on who was doing the pointing-out.
The conversation has been freshly ramped up with the publication of Going Rogue by Sarah Palin. Not only is the book and its author exposing anew the basic division between left and right in America (or whatever we are to call this land now that it’s in the grip of the FHers), but it’s reviving the pro- and anti-Sarah schism on the right so prevalent in the fall of 2008.
The latest to weigh in is Rick Moran at Pajamas Media, and he’s got a mouthful to say and then some. I’m reading Going Rogue right now, and I have to say, his overall point is not without validity. Edmund Burke she ain’t. (I’m also currently reading In Defense of Freedom, a 1962 work by Frank S. Meyer, who had been one of the founders of National Review, and the contrast is palpable to say the least.) The I’m-just-a-normal-gal-from-Wasilla-who-gosh-darn-it-wants-to-see-America-strong-and-free tone of Palin’s book would leave a blank-slate reader looking for a substantive presentation of conservativism perhaps not empty-handed but certainly not adequately served.
I’d invite you to explore a link Moran offers, to a three-part series of posts on his own blog, Right Wing Nuthouse, on intellectual vs. populist conservatism. Depending on you perspective, you may consider it important and / or helpful to the cause of restoring adult discourse in America, or you may, like me, find that he unfairly lumps together various figures on today’s conservative scene, and indeed winds up underrmining the basis for a consistent conservative worldview at all. In other words, while it’s almost certainly not his objective, he winds up extolling Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome as a virtue.
For one thing, he sees no need to winnow Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter – both serious minds excrutiatingly informed and ferociously principled – from those pop-cons about whom I would agree with him: Hannity (about whom I’ve written disparagingly) and Savage (who is clearly a crank). I think Moran feels that the whole medium of talk radio has somehow supplanted the old infrastructure of magazines and think tanks (which are still around and doing just fine). I will grant him that certain industry practices are problematic – the need to have obnoxious theme music, the way the format’s time limitations cause hosts to sometimes short-circuit paths of argument with callers – but the really great talents transcend these limitations, as is the case in any mode of expression. (Coulter, while not a host, is a frequent guest on both radio and TV talk shows, and we all know the tone she brings to those appearances as well as her books. Her book titles and initial replies to questions when she’s a show guest are deliberate taunts. She knows the listener or reader is thinking, “By itself, that sounds like juvenile name-calling. You’d better be able to back that up with some substance or you’re toast in my book.” She delivers every time, razor-sharp mind that she is.)
In Moran’s three-part series, he also goes into the subject of Peggy Noonan. Moran shows himself capable of polemical integrity when he grants that Noonan is elitist and can miss the mark big-time. Still, he holds her up as someone whose shortcomings are outweighed by her essential brilliance. Would that he would actually put Rush or Coulter on such a scale. That he doesn’t makes plain his very tin ear for the current juncture at which our country finds itself.
Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are not in their lines of work to become rich celebrities. That happened, but their message is not given to them by show-biz handlers. It is of their own devising. I’ll even say that this is true of Hannity, fo all his hoke and ninth-grade-debate-team tendency to overheat.
Moran poses a question I find downright creepy: How long would Beck or Limbaugh last if they ever even touched the subject of areas where they agree with TCM? What the hell is he saying, that TCM is a nuanced, nice human being with a complex mix of views on the various matters facing him? It’s this kind of chin-rubbing – perilously close to a Reasonable Gentleman stance – that makes me wonder how overtly and uniformly hard-left someone would have to be for Moran to characterize him as beyond the pale.
Teh comment thread under Moran’s PJM piece is worth a perusal. A theme emerges after a few posts: Erudition is one component of a robust conservatism that embraces many branches, but so is the immediate connection that basic hoss sense makes possible between freedom-loving citizens who spend the bulk of their days concerned with family, livelihood and general living.
If Sarah Palin is the next GOP candidate for president, I’ll support her enthusiastically. She is no Russell Kirk. She could use some boning-up on the particulars of policy. What she has, and what is instantly recognized by the throngs turning out for her book-signings, is core conviction that she is not wrong about what she values and what reality is like. The three pillars that I’m assuming Moran and I are in agreement on – free-market economics, Judeo-Christian values, and a foreign policy based on what history tells us about human nature – would be in fine hands with Barracuda at the helm.
There comes a point at which the urge to disqualify perfectly fine individuals as conservatives has to stop. I’m not asking for lockstep, monolithic solidarity, but at least the kind of determination to prevail that our enemies on the left harbor without waver. There will be plenty of time for our hair-splitting sessions in the gruel line at the gulag if we lose the larger war.
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11.15.09
Posted in Culture, Diciness of Western civilization's survival prospects, Ideology, National Security at 5:09 pm by Administrator
I’m starting to come to a conclusion about the worldwide post-communist left: It’s really not very effective, even on its own terms. A recent example on the international level would be the increasing likelihood that those convening in Copenhagen next month will put off signing anything binding regarding “climate change.” An example here in America would be TCM’s continued dithering on Afghanistan, even as its consequences reach to the point of a rift between General McChrystal and Ambassador Eikenberry.
This phenomenon is partly explained by the fractious nature of the modern left. Its various elements have some common objectives – most notably controlling people – but they have divergent interests aplenty, too. That’s what we see in cases such as those described above. The “developing” nations – basically those that have been habitually governed dictatorially and therefore remain mired in historical intertia – want all the cool stuff that the big shots have – modern industry and technology – but reluctantly understand, when they make themselves admit it, that they can’t avail themselves of the knowhow for obtaining it if they destroy successful nations’ capacity for sharing it, which is what the effect of all that carbon-cap hooey would be. Regarding Afghanistan, this was going to be TCM’s big chance to act on his vision of a gloriously flat, grey egalitarian world in which we ever-so-non-judgementally brought peace to troubled lands with scarely a shot fired, and our troops then able to come back home promptly and en masse.
BN readers know one of the pet terms in the BN lexicon is “Aquarian Totalitarian.” It’s a moniker for the current president, but it really sums up much about the way the left has been headed since the days of William Appleman Williams and C. Wright Mills. The New Left differed from the solid commitment of Communism with a capital “c” in that it was so nearly anarchistic that its various attempts at party-forming always led to hopeless factionalizing and splnterings-off, such as the Weather Underground’s break with SDS. Even in the early days of SDS, its youthfully whimsical ways alarmed old-schoolers like the League for Industrial Democracy.
New Left types and post-New Left types became so enamored of identity politics beyond basic class struggle – think here of ethnic balkanization, feminism, gay activism, and increasingly silly developments like transgenderism – that it became easy to the point of unavoidable to step on someone’s toes, no matter what one did. That is at the root of the paralysis that keeps TCM and his ilk from actually delivering on all those revolutionary schemes.
This is not to say that the (post?) modern left isn’t dangerous. As I said, all the constituent interest groups within it share a common goal, which is the same as was the goal of their actual Communist forbears – totalitarian rule. They harbor great zeal for this in their hearts, however flower-power the form it takes in their self-manipulated minds. They have their ways of moving towards this; witness the thirty-nine “czars’ in the current regime who answer to no one but TCM.
Also, because of the gentle-hippie, we’re-doing-this-to-make-the-world-safe-for-hugs-and-rainbows nature of the way they’ve gussied up the totalitarian impulse, and the everybody-bumping-into-each-other chaos that has resulted, a vacuum has developed into which some real totalitarians who do indeed have supreme focus and discipline and who don’t take a second to worry about coddling aggrieved identity groups has rushed. And that bunch, because the United States and the West have become a half-assed giant Woodstock with Castroite overtones, is having quite an easy time of acting on its agenda.
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10.04.09
Posted in Ideology at 11:25 pm by Administrator
Neoneocon reflects on a universal human tendency - continuing to believe something that one is hugely invested in even after all evidence points to a contrary conclusion - and concludes – aha! one must eventually do so, no matter how complete – or not - one’s amassing of data – that, while the right falls prey to this on occasion, it is essential to the left’s sense of its own coherence. She cites thinkers from George Orwell to Whittaker Chambers to Hilton Kramer. Important reading.
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