Month: July 2010

She Can Run But She Can’t Hide

by digby

California’s own Mama Grizzly doesn’t want to be associated with The Big Mama Grizzly, but it’s just too late:

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Afghan Soldiers and their BMWs

by digby

It’s not what you think. In fact it’s so stupid I can hardly stop laughing:

Last month, reports surfaced that a number of Afghan soldiers studying at the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas had been going AWOL. A “Be on the Lookout” bulletin was posted for 17 of them, and the base said they had left the base over the course of 18 months. Afghan soldiers on the loose in the U.S.? Fox News, of course, latched onto the story.

Fox went on to report that seven of the original AWOL Afghans had been accounted for — then upped the number of Afghans that had gone missing over the years to 46. But Fox News’ latest scoop puts quite a, um, twist on the story.

We’ll let them take over here:

A loose network of Mexican-American women, some of whom may be illegal immigrants, have been responsible for helping numerous Afghan military deserters go AWOL from an Air Force Base in Texas, FoxNews.com has learned.

Many of the Afghans, with the women’s assistance, have made their way to Canada; the whereabouts of others remain unknown. Some of the men have been schooled by the women in how to move around the U.S. without any documentation.

The Afghan deserters refer to the women as “BMWs” — Big Mexican Women — and they often are the first step in the Afghans’ journey from Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, to Canada, a diplomatic official told FoxNews.com.

Evidently the Fox audience fears for their lives what with all these big illegals and Afghan terrorists in cahoots and running around God knows where, maybe right in their own home towns. Run for your lives!

How stressful it is to be so frightened of non-whites in this multi-cultural country. They must be incontinent every time they go to the grocery story.

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The Five Circles of Conservative Hell

by batocchio

In American politics today, there are five circles of conservative hell. Unlike those in Dante’s Inferno, these are primarily states of pain and suffering that conservatives seek to impose on others in this earthly world – or places of torment where they drag their fellow Americans for company. After all, there’s no problem in the country that’s not made sweeter by domineering spite!

Note that these are conservative movements, not solely Republican, since the conservative Democrats, the Blue Dogs, are indisputably unrepentant scumbags. That said, it’s movement conservatism that really excels at toxicity and dumb, destructive authoritarianism.

(This post is sorta the shorter, rude companion to the taller, serious Social Contract one. Needless to say, this one is partially tongue-in-cheek. Partially.)

Preserve Cultural Privilege: This category probably has the sharpest party divide, since preserving cultural privilege is really the raison d’être of those French-hating social conservatives. Theocrats and Christian Dominionists can be found here, but they appear further down, too. The anti-gay marriage and forced pregnancy movements operate on this level, as do really all conservative culture warriors. Many of the teabaggers, who are mostly just conservative Republicans after an astroturf-funded makeover and Glenn Beck tongue bath, can be found in this circle. Not all of them are racist, but almost half of the teabaggers feel that blacks are poor because they’re lazy. Meanwhile, teabagger scumbags like Mark Williams and Ryan J. Murdough go much further, testing the very limits of “racist,” “asshole,” and of course “racist asshole.”

Preserve the Aristocracy: No one works this beat quite like David Brooks, leading marketer of the “reasonable conservative” brand. (Sprinkle in a little truth to make them drop their guard, and then spring that false equivalency to disappear the disasters that were the Bush and Reagan administrations!) Unlike some of his more rabid party members, Brooks actually expressed concern for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. However, he is first, last and always a class warrior shilling for the aristocracy. He’ll claim that the rich are harder-working and more virtuous, and compare populism to racism, but he sorta gave up the game when he admitted that “the rich and the powerful do rig the game in their own favor.” (However, according to all Brooks columns, this is in your best interest – he followed that admission with his usual pitch: “Simply bashing the rich and the powerful will still not solve the country’s problems.” Uh-huh.) When Brooks couldn’t derail health care reform by his usual means, he became increasing desperate, lying about Senate procedures, and claiming that something precious would be murdered, forever, if it passed. For if the majority party, the Democrats, responded to this urgent policy need, the desires of the public, and dared to win – it would hurt the Republicans’ feelings. Yes, it was laughably pathetic, but arguably better than claiming that providing health care would kill our sense of adventure, dampen our fighting spirit, or sap our Precious Bodily Fluids. (Flaccid courtier apologia doesn’t just write itself, ya know!)

Repeal the New Deal: We can still find plenty of teabaggers here, and plenty of conservative politicians, especially in the current climate of kicking the poor and stealing their lunch money. But now we’re also into the long-standing professional wankery of such wingnut welfare outfits as the Peterson Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, National Review… really every conservative think tank and loss leader magazine. Nothing chafes a rich wingnut’s ass quite like the idea of the wrong sort of people living in anything better than abject poverty, especially without their permission. These are the type of people who rewind the first part of A Christmas Carol over and over again and never go to the end, so they can enjoy the part where Scrooge is still a dick. (Yeah, one of the movie versions. What, you think they’re readers?) Republican president Eisenhower made his peace with the New Deal, in large part because it worked extremely well, but these assholes won’t be happy until they’re destroyed the social safety net for all those lesser, “non-rich” Americans, and the elderly have to eat cat food. (The Blue Dogs are fans of cat food, too, and good lord, they give Palin a run for her money in the dumb category.)

Repeal the Constitution: We’re still seeing teabaggers, who want to repeal some of the amendments. Of course, their ignorance on the Constitution outstrips even their impressive ignorance in other areas. The hard-core religious authoritarians who want to impose a Christian theocracy fall here as well. The war porn and neocon penis welfare crowd, led by smirking Bill Kristol, can be placed here, too, given their dual disdain for the wishes of citizens in occupied countries (get out Iraq) and the wishes of American citizens (get out of Iraq, don’t go to war in the first place). Worst of all is the Dick ‘n’ Liz Cheney American Fascism Tour (Now with Extra McCarthyism!). They want to – hell, they just went ahead and did, during the Bush administration – strip all due process and civil liberties from everyone they chose, torture them, and lie about it. Lying the nation into an unnecessary war was fun, sure, but that only devastated someone else’s country, and there’s much more damage still to be done here. Their contempt for democracy would make Machiavelli blush, and it’s impossible to overstate how arrogant, ambitious, delusional and dangerous these people are. Unfortunately, they’ve been getting more company, as with Broder’s best authoritarian buds, John McCain and Joe Lieberman, who also want to strip due process rights. And while Obama didn’t create the messes at Guantanamo or Bagram, he and his administration have continued to hold prisoners without charges, and claim that they can do so indefinitely. This is not the bipartisanship we were looking for, folks.

Repeal the Enlightenment: Several groups can be found here. There’s of course the anti-science folks, of a religious, corporate, or confused bent, who ran many agencies under Bush. The most rabid of theocrats push a Counter-Enlightenment agenda. Most dangerous are probably the plutocrats and Randians, pushing for a neo-feudalist system to undo most of the best ideas of America’s founding, and to eliminate all of the progress achieved since then. They’re a spiteful crowd, and don’t believe that everyone is created equal or deserves basic rights. Theirs is a highly regressive agenda. The economic neo-feudalists are a callous, reckless bunch, but the legal neo-feudalists that flourished in the Bush administration are even scarier. They are probably best described by their ruthless and sometimes violent opposition to the reality-based community. It’s not accidental that they borrowed torture techniques from the Spanish Inquisition. It’s not that they don’t know better; it’s that, like O’Brien in 1984 (which they regard as a how-to manual), they just don’t fucking care.

Why Can’t We All Get Along?

by digby

I missed this yesterday. I guess Charlie Rangel didn’t realize that he was talking to the son of God:

You’d think we’d be past the time when people felt it was acceptable to be rude to the embarrassing nepostistic hire of a late Village king in this country.

I understand Rangle called to apologize, so that’s something, but I think it’s long past time for a Red Bull and Slim Fast summit. This is a major teachable moment.

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Both Sides Do It

by digby

This Politico analysis of the problem with new media is very interesting. They use this week’s “Journolist” leaks and the Breitbart mess as examples of how “both sides do it.” That the first is the result of a right wing web site peddling off-the-record emails and the second is the result of a right wing web site peddling lies doesn’t seem to inhibit their conclusion one bit. In fact, they go out of their way to point out that one of the experts they consult, Deborah Tannen, wrongly sees this more as a one-sided phenomenon.

The fact is that partisan blogs are partisan. I’m not sure why that’s even worthy of comment. But one side has a habit of unethical behavior by any standard — making things up, editing to create a wrong impression — and the other doesn’t, which the Politico manages to elide throughout the piece. Indeed, the entire analysis fails to even address this particular aspect of the story. Evidently, they’ve decided that it just doesn’t matter — it’s part of the “landscape.”

In the end they pretty much say Breitbart rules their world and that there’s nothing to be done about it. Indeed, they seem to be warmly embracing it — may a million right wing hit sites bloom. And I think we can count on Politico uncritically covering each and every bogus story they print.

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Civil Rights and Shirley Sherrod’s Family

by batocchio

Earlier this week, Digby posted some of Shirley Sherrod’s speech – the parts Andrew Breitbart and his team chose to hide. (Media Matters has the video.) If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s pretty moving and thoughtful.

Three recent posts delve more into her story, her father’s and her husband’s.

“Hosie Miller: Shirley Sherrod’s dad, and a casualty in a forgotten war,” by Will Bunch:

How unusual was it for a black man to be killed by a white man in the Deep South up through the mid-1960s with no one brought to justice. Way too common. We hear a lot about one particular killing in Mississippi — the 1964 murder of a trio of civil rights activists that included two white college kids from up North — but in reality dozens of black men were killed for taking a stand, for trying to vote or just on a whim. If you want to read something sobering, check out this letter from 2007 from the Southern Poverty Law Center, asking the FBI to investigate some 74 additional unsolved deaths from the era.

“The civil rights heroism of Charles Sherrod,” by Joan Walsh:

People who care about civil rights and racial reconciliation may eventually thank Andrew Breitbart for bringing Shirley Sherrod the global attention she deserves. Really. Her message of racial healing, her insight that the forces of wealth and injustice have always pit “the haves and the have-nots” against each other, whatever their race, is exactly what’s missing in today’s Beltway debates about race. What’s even more amazing, but almost completely unexplored in this controversy, is the historic civil rights leadership role of her husband, Charles Sherrod, an early leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, who served on the front lines of the nonviolent civil rights movement in the early 1960s.

Despite Breitbart’s attempt to cast Shirley Sherrod as The, um, Man (“The Woman” doesn’t have the same ring), out to keep oppressed white folk down, under our first black racist president, she turned out to be the opposite, an advocate of justice for everybody. Given that history, it’s fascinating to learn more about her husband, an early SNCC leader known for being willing to work with white volunteers even after tension developed over the role of whites in the organization. Charles Sherrod is important for much more than the fairness with which he treated whites, but given Breitbart’s attempt to make his wife the poster woman for black “racism,” that footnote to his leadership history is particularly noteworthy. If there’s anyone more clueless about our civil rights history than Breitbart, as well as more abusive to it, I’m challenged to think of who it might be. He tests my commitment to nonviolent social change, but I’ll share the work of Charles Sherrod to remember my values.

“Shirley Sherrod and the Dark History of Baker County,” by Elizabeth Holtzman:

The bad news is that the forces of racism and those who cower before it are alive and well. The good news is that both the Spooners, the poor white farmers that Ms. Sherrod helped, and Ms. Sherrod were able to reject that racism to find what connected them. The best news would be if the country would decisively cast off the legacy of Sheriff Screws, Sheriff Johnson, and all the racist evil they represent.

Out here in L.A., some of the local PBS stations have been re-running Eyes on the Prize this year. I doubt Breitbart will watch it, but it seems it’s always timely.
 

Rehabbing Junior

by digby

Connectivity problems solved, and I’m back. Is this this on?

It’s been quite a day at the Netroots Nation what with me being late for my first panel and then spending about three straight hours discussing deficits first and then abortion politics among some very smart people. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll be back to our regular programming.

Meanwhile, it looks like we are already well into the Bush Legacy Project. According to Krugman, they are wasting no time in rehabilitating Junior. That isn’t the worst part. It’s the reason:

Republicans aren’t trying to rescue George W. Bush’s reputation for sentimental reasons; they’re trying to clear the way for a return to Bush policies. And this carries a message for anyone hoping that the next time Republicans are in power, they’ll behave differently. If you believe that they’ve learned something — say, about fiscal prudence or the importance of effective regulation — you’re kidding yourself.

Unfortunately quite a few people might actually convince themselves that things were really great under Junior when we all “pulled together” (under the threat of being called a traitor by every crackpot with a Bush decal on their car.) And for the base, those really were the good old days — bloodlust, Jesus and hating on liberals. I’m fairly sure it’s nostalgia for those heady times that’s driving the Ground Zero mosque business.

Whether anyone but Bush dead-enders can be persuaded remains to be seen, but I’m very sure the Republicans are happy to try. And hey — Jebbie’s waiting in the wings.

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Power Ticket

by digby

Can the Democrats get lucky enough to face Palin/Gingrich in 2012? That’s what the Beltway insiders are saying on Hardball today. Evidently being loathed by a majority of Americans is no impediment.

I’m usually all for an easy race but I suspect that this would actually perversely result in more conservative governance than if the Republicans nominate someone more realistic. (Of course it’s hard to see a scenario that won’t result in more conservative governance regardless, so I suppose it doesn’t matter much.)

As a blogger Palin/Gingrich is nirvana. As an American it’s the 7th circle of hell.

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The Social Contract

by batocchio

(Be warned this guest post is a long one.)

Sorely lacking from the chattering class’ discussions on national politics is the concept of the Social Contract. There have been different takes on it throughout history, but the basic idea of creating a fair society, one ‘ruled by laws not men,’ of checks and balances on power, and of shared, basic prosperity, was central to the founding of the United States. The plutocrats, Randians and neo-feudalists preaching today about the pressing need to give more money to the super-wealthy, to cut regulations on powerful corporations and to slash the social safety net seem to have forgotten that the United States began by overthrowing a monarch.

America’s origins are far from perfect of course, given our history of slavery and conquest, and the long denial of voting rights to women and minorities. But as E.J. Dionne wrote for Independence Day, 2006:

…The true genius of America has always been its capacity for self-correction. I’d assert that this is a better argument for patriotism than any effort to pretend that the Almighty has marked us as the world’s first flawless nation.

One need only point to the uses that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. made of the core ideas of the Declaration of Independence against slavery and racial injustice to show how the intellectual and moral traditions of the United States operate in favor of continuous reform.

If you were to create a fair society from scratch, what would it look like? What mechanisms would you put in place to keep it fair? How would you encourage it to self-correct or progress, as Dionne describes? What rights would be guaranteed, how would abuses and excesses be curbed, and what resources would be shared? What if you didn’t know what class or position you’d have in this new society? How might that change your design? How would you help the least fortunate? (Build on the ideas of your favorite “Social Contract” philosopher, or imaginative author, or dip into anthopology if you like.) John Rawls approached these questions by way of the “original position” and the “veil of ignorance,” nicely discussed by driftglass and Blue Gal in one of their June podcasts. But there are many ways to approach these issues.

If we try to visualize what this might be in America – a Social Contract for a fair, sustainable, dynamic system – I think we get something like this:

In this model, individuals, groups and companies have an enormous amount of freedom, but there are certain common sense parameters. The U.S. is a democratic republic, and in theory at least, we have majority rule, and the governing approach should benefit the majority of Americans. However, there are certain fundamental rights such as due process that all Americans possess, and the majority cannot strip these from any minority group or individual (again, in theory for all of this). Companies can pursue their goals, produce goods and make profits, but they face certain restrictions and can’t infringe unduly on the public good. For example, marketing a dangerous, unsafe product or massively polluting public air and water might boost a corporation’s bottom line, but harms the public. That’s a bad, unnecessary tradeoff. Meanwhile, the American Dream rests on the idea that the U.S. is at least partially a meritocracy. If one works hard and plays by the rules, one can achieve some basic prosperity. If one’s particularly talented and industrious, one can excel. Not everyone will start with the same resources, opportunities and support, but everyone deserves some basic tools, otherwise the promise of “freedom” rings hollow. Society as a whole benefits from investment in basic prosperity and opportunity, in public works and services, such as basic education, public libraries, public parks and public roads and transportation.

It’s possible to be extremely individualistic (or even personally misanthropic) and still see the value of public goods such as basic education, after-school programs and a city fire department. Public works and services generally exist for moral, practical and economic reasons. For instance, universal health care tends to deliver better results and be much cheaper than other systems, leads to a healthier workforce, and greatly facilitates job changes and entrepreneurship. (Also, fewer people die unnecessarily.) In some arenas, private enterprise might work better, or coexist well with public equivalents. This model allows for all of that, and for initiative of all sorts. But only individuals of royal wealth could afford to own the equivalent of a national park, the public library system of a major city, the art collection of a local museum, or a state highway network. Public access to these clearly benefits individuals, communities, and the nation as a whole. (It’s also silly to extol Wall Street profits as a the pinnacle of human achievement, de-fund scientific research, the arts and humanities, and then complain about a lack of creativity.)

The model above stands in stark contrast to the hierarchical model of feudalism or modern authoritarian regimes, where any degree of freedom, justice or prosperity depends almost entirely on the whims of those in power. However, this diagram represents more a philosophy of governing than a socioeconomic pecking order. There’s also room for considerable debate within its framework. (What’s the right level of regulation? What’s the right amount of infrastructure investment? What civil liberties are essential?)

I’d say most modern democracies follow something like this model, even if the execution or mix varies significantly. It can work extremely well. America has employed some version of it, and we still have some vestiges, but obviously many of the principles behind it have been under assault in this past decade, and really the past 40-some years. America has staggering income and wealth inequity (as explored in more depth in an earlier post). Progressive taxation, social spending and other factors (represented by the red and blue parts of the diagram) helped close those gaps from the New Deal up until the onslaught of Reaganomics. Since at least Reagan, those gaps have widened again, and now income and wealth inequity are back to Gilded Age levels. Meanwhile, it’s disturbingly common to hear rich pundits express disinterest in or active disgust at the idea of helping their fellow Americans. This isn’t a coincidence. As Bill Moyers puts it, “Plutocracy and democracy don’t mix.”

There’s really nothing that new about that diagram – half the point is that these are very old principles. It’s just that these days, it’s not uncommon to hear the red, blue and even gray elements attacked as radical, socialist or un-American. The Social Contract in America has been badly torn by incompetent and corrupt governance, by selfish and reckless ideology, and by plutocrats eager to destroy any social safety net for their fellow Americans. Randians and neo-feudalists have no interest in the “self-correction” or improvement mentioned by Dionne. Some aggressively seek to impose a more regressive system on America, while others simply pursue personal gain and power, damn the consequences. Given this situation, restoring, honoring and improving the Social Contract is kinda the height of patriotism. After all, the concept is intrinsic to our origin as a nation.

Foundations

Some Social Contract philosophers were suspicious foreigners with funny-sounding names like you might find on some artsy TV show, and unlikely to pass muster with the flag-wavin’ Texas State Board of Education. However, America was founded with basic ideas about core rights and balancing principles in mind. Let’s start with the gray foundation of the diagram. On the rights of individuals, and the potential tyranny of the majority over the minority, Thomas Jefferson stated:

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Moving on the red part of the diagram, in terms of regulations and restrictions, Thomas Paine asserted that “government even in its best state is but a necessary evil,” but also that:

Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.

James Madison expressed similar thoughts in The Federalist No. 51:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

This also speaks to the “freedom” section of the diagram. A key concept throughout all these passages and most of the founding documents is balance. Freedom is the overall goal, but realistically, this requires a balance of power, sometimes countervailing forces, and often wise judgment. Liberty and equality can clash at times, and how do you balance one person’s freedom with another person’s rights?

When it comes to basic prosperity and opportunity (the blue part of the diagram), the Founding Fathers and later generations of Americans have argued about the details, but most have supported the general concept. The Declaration of Independence’s most famous words are probably: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The preamble to the Constitution includes the term “promote the general welfare.” Thomas Jefferson, who founded the University of Virginia, was a fierce advocate for publicly-supported education; he saw it as an unqualified good. First, it was a basic right:

I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it.

Second, it was a means of spurring activity and innovation:

The object [of my education bill was] to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind which in proportion to our population shall be the double or treble of what it is in most countries.

And third, an educated, informed electorate is a necessity for a healthy democracy:

…Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right.

Jefferson also assumed that local governments would care for the poor in some manner. Later Americans have fleshed out the idea of public works and support. Teddy Roosevelt was a champion of national parks. Eisenhower created the national highway system. Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the New Deal and Lyndon Baines Johnson had his Great Society. Activists such as Dorothea Dix, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martin Luther King and many others worked both to secure fundamental rights for all Americans and to let them share in some basic prosperity.

Some of these measures have more contentious than others, of course. But in terms of finding “common ground” with one’s opponents, I feel it’s possible to work with people who differ on the details but agree with this basic model, who believe in a social contract and actually want to run things well. The wonks and sincere, responsible adults have plenty to discuss within this basic framework.

Recent History and the Current Day

Unfortunately, if we limit discussion today to those who “want to run things well,” it disqualifies some politicians from one major political party, and almost everyone in the other. As Misty at Shakesville recently pointed out, the Republican Party platform of 1956 expressed many of the values espoused above, but as Digby’s pointed out, they’d be denounced as socialists by today’s GOP. Paul Krugman shows in The Conscience of a Liberal that during most of America’s post-war boom from the mid 40s to about the mid 60s, the Democratic and Republican Parties were far more bipartisan than they are today in terms of voting on each others’ measures. However, this wasn’t blind Broderism; it was because they generally were working together on shared goals such as investing in the middle class and national infrastructure. (Not coincidentally, this more “liberal” economic approach was highly successful, and a huge improvement on the approach of previous eras.) Eisenhower, a Republican, made his peace with the New Deal and built on parts of it rather than trying to repeal it. The New Deal worked, and it was popular, so why not? Of course, not everyone shared in that national prosperity or had the same freedoms, particularly women and minorities. Thus, the Civil Rights Movement hit its full stride in the 60s out of necessity. With LBJ pushing civil rights legislation, Nixon developed the Southern Strategy in response, and the party of Lincoln started exploiting racial resentments to win elections. Reagan further perfected the conservative shell game, telling voters that it was minorities and the cultural elite who were oppressing them, rather than the wealthy elite. He then cut taxes to give massive amounts to the super-rich and ramped up military spending, making the deficit and debt skyrocket. His attacks on unions and business regulations didn’t help, either. He might have seemed avuncular to the middle class citizens who voted for him, but he was screwing them over.

During the Bush administration, Dick Cheney remarked privately that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” It’s this statement, this attitude, that encapsulates movement conservatism and the modern Republican Party: Who cares about running the country well if we win elections? Who cares about the country as a whole if we can enrich ourselves and our donors? Thom Hartmann provides a good brief history in “Two Santa Clauses, or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years,” but the conservative approach results in spending huge sums of money to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and to increase military spending, all while attacking social spending. It’s not exactly a secret, but you’ll rarely hear Beltway reporters put it all in context. Meanwhile, certainly no one could have predicted that crony capitalism, horrible governance, fantasy-based policy, abandonment of the rule of law, a drowned city and two wars under Bush would make things disastrously worse.

The Republican Party has not been run by responsible adults for decades now. Their leaders have no interest whatsoever in running the country competently. They don’t give a damn about the consequences of their reckless decisions – deficits are things to be balanced during Democratic administrations, if at all. The same goes for ending wars and any of a number of other problems. Conservative pundits – who cover politics for a living, after all – get paid for pretending not to notice any of this, most of all their own side’s damning culpability. (While the Democrats aren’t stellar, at least they occasionally do things for their average constituents.) None of these dynamics will be revelatory to political news junkies. For just one glaring example, check out Talking Points Memo’s piece “It’s Unanimous! GOP Says No To Unemployment Benefits, Yes To Tax Cuts For The Rich.” Read the piece, and you’ll see, for the umpteenth time, leading Republicans spout outrageous falsehoods about important matters. Some of them may know better and are lying, some may be zealous true believers, but as a whole, it’s that they simply don’t give a damn whether what they say is true or not.

Realistic Models versus Dogmatic Demands

National political news would benefit immensely from fact-checking, but also from some degree of nuance. Issues are also often framed in an overly simplistic, prejudicial and sometimes downright juvenile way. Consider regulation, covered in the red part of the diagram above. Continuing our theme of balance (and not in the “he said-she said” reporting sense), regulation can be visualized like this:

(Update: Here’s an alternative graphic.)

Looked at one way, “regulation” itself is a public good that requires balance and good judgment. Looked at another way, “regulation” itself is neither good nor bad, it’s a necessity. The sweet spot of regulation is optimal, while on either side, overly restrictive and dangerously permissive regulations need to be adjusted. If, for example, a specific financial regulation is silly or ineffectual, get rid of it or rework it, but eliminating financial regulation altogether makes no sense.

This is a simple, pretty common-sense model, with the aim of running things well. But many politicians and pundits, especially among conservatives, reject any model this accurate or complex in both their rhetoric and their voting. Newt Gingrich isn’t interested in making government effective, or as Bill Scher puts it, “representative, responsive and responsible.” Gingrich isn’t aiming to make government as large as it needs to be, but as small as possible. He only wants to shrink government (often by privatizing or eliminating effective public services). Grover Norquist isn’t interested in finding the optimal tax rate. He’s working hard only to lower taxes, regardless of the circumstances, and eventually to eliminate taxes altogether. John Boehner and many other Republicans aren’t trying to find the right level of regulation. They’re aiming to halt regulations, or eliminate them altogether.

In the same vein, libertarian John Stossel can, like Rand Paul, argue that private businesses should be able to racially discriminate. The idea of good or necessary regulation, or finding a balance, seems to be entirely beyond his vocabulary (whether for cognitive or profitable reasons, or both). In any case, Stossel can also decide to ignore the near collapse of the world economy from lack of financial regulation, to argue instead that the main problem with government is – it over-regulates. His proof? Ayn Rand decried regulation, and banning fish pedicures is silly! (Seriously, that’s about all he’s got. Follow the link.) Therefore, all regulation is bad, or something. Never mind about the global financial meltdown, or any of a hundred other examples! If you merely ignore world events and human nature, and instead cherry-pick minutia and cite really crappy fiction, you, too, can become the proud, smug, intellectual giant that is the dogmatic libertarian. (To be fair, Stossel has a point – when fish pedicures are outlawed, only outlaws will get fish pedicures.)

For freedom to really flourish and society to function – and not in a fantasy realm or feudal state – there needs to be some sense of balance and some sort of healthy social contract. Anonymous Liberal summed this up nicely in a piece on Rand Paul’s views:

While libertarians claims to be driven by a goal of maximizing freedom, what they mean by “freedom” is not what most people take that word to mean. To a libertarian, the only freedom that really matters is freedom from government intrusion. But often, meaningful freedom can only be created through government intervention.

Take education, for example. The existence of a public school system greatly enhances freedom by giving everyone the opportunity to get at least a basic education and opening the doors that go along with that. Similarly, without a social safety net (government programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, unemployment insurance, etc.) people would literally starve or die of from lack of medical care and extreme poverty would be epidemic. This isn’t conjecture. This was the reality before these programs were put in place. That’s not “freedom” in any meaningful sense.

Indeed, in the health care context, I am continually perplexed by the suggestion that universal health care somehow inhibits freedom, rather than enhancing it. How liberating would it be to know that you could do whatever you choose from an employment perspective and not have to worry that you or your family will be denied access to health care? How liberating would it be to know that there’s no risk that illness or injury will unexpectedly derail your dreams and bankrupt you? Even if the only freedom you care about is entrepreneurial freedom, how can it be denied that lack of universal health care discourages people from taking entrepreneurial risks, that there are people out there who would love to quit their jobs and start a business but can’t because they would lose access to affordable health insurance?

Similarly, government spending on roads, transportation systems, and other infrastructure increases our physical freedom to move around and enjoy our physical environment. Government spending on law enforcement reduces crime and enhances our freedom from a physical security standpoint. Government regulation of industry keeps the air that we breath and the water we drink clean and the food and drugs we ingest safe. It gives us the freedom to enjoy our physical environment and partake of the myriad of products and services available to us without fear and without significant risk to our well-being. These are all very liberating things. I don’t know about you, but my conception of freedom is not a world where I can’t get a breath of fresh air, can’t swim, fish or enjoy the outdoors because of pollution, and am constantly playing Russian roulette every time I go to the grocery store.

I realize there are tradeoffs with everything, that in exchange for these freedom-enhancing benefits, I have to pay a little more in taxes and deal with a little more red tape if I want to do business. But libertarians seem to deny that there is any tradeoff going on; they seem to think that freedom is only a factor on one side of the equation. The reality is that lawmaking involves balancing freedoms…

Yup. That’s well put, but the core ideas are pretty much common sense.

For some issues, it might be useful to modify the original diagram:

Here, government and major forces are in the frame versus outside it and implied. And better models can certainly be devised, but one virtue of the first diagram is that it depicts a healthy society and good governance as a balancing act versus using an overly simplistic, black-and-white paradigm.

Competing Icons

One last way of looking at the Social Contract is through competing political icons.

We’ll start with Ronald Reagan. In his successful 1980 presidential campaign, he said, “Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago?” In one sense, it was a fair, basic question, and Reagan did mention unemployment and other national issues. However, Reagan was also presenting the election as a referendum on Carter, not really as a contrast in policies and governing styles, with true evaluation of the consequences. Reality-based conservative Andrew Bacevich, no fan of Carter, nevertheless finds fault in Reagan’s pitch:

Reagan did not call on Americans to tighten their belts. He saw no need for sacrifice. He rejected Carter’s dichotomy between quantity and quality. Above all, he assured his countrymen that they could have more…

To call Reagan a hypocrite is to miss the point. The Reagan Revolution was never about fiscal responsibility or small government. Far more accurately than Carter, Reagan understood what made Americans tick: they wanted self-gratification, not self-denial. Although always careful to embroider his speeches with inspirational homilies and testimonials to old-fashioned virtues, Reagan mainly indulged American self-indulgence.

Reagan ignored the energy issues Carter highlighted, and that was just the beginning. George H.W. Bush called Reagan’s policies voodoo economics; Reagan was always selling a fairy tale. Rather than asking “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” or “Am I not better off today?” Reagan could have have asked, “Are we better off today? Is America? What do we need to improve it, and fix these problems?” But Reagan didn’t, nor was this accidental. The Reagan method is one approach to governing, and we’ve seen its harmful effects over the past 30 years. In a similar vein, after 9/11, rather than issuing a national call to service, or fostering a new sense of community, or working toward energy independence, Bush told Americans – to go shopping. (Oh, and also to attack Iraq.)

In sharp contrast, John Kennedy famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” (He continued, “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”) This sentiment absolutely hinges on the idea of the Social Contract. (Predictably, the speech disgusted Ayn Rand.) Kennedy’s plea rings hollow if the government is oppressive, if society gives nothing to the individual, and if public institutions don’t fulfill their part of the contract and provide basic rights, basic protections and basic opportunities. Government should be “representative, responsive and responsible.” However, if one is given these things, what’s the rationale for opposing Kennedy’s words? It’s a stirring call to action. Don’t most human endeavors that don’t screw over one’s fellow human beings contribute in some small way to the nation as a whole? Doesn’t doing something well, and fairly – running a small business or a medical center or a school or a library or a community center or creating a work of art – make the world a better place?

Zealots like Ayn Rand see the world in black and white, in paranoid terms of domination and submission, as a zero-sum game. Control and power are their aims, not running things well. They cannot truly grasp any idea of balance, equality or sharing of power. Nor can they acknowledge the value of public goods, or that investing in basic prosperity for everyone has a positive ripple effect throughout the entire nation.

The same dynamics hold true for Glenn Beck and his teabagger groupies, screaming about “taking our country back.” Taking it back from whom? The party that fairly won the last two major national elections? Their fellow Americans? (And were they comatose for the past decade?)

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin could hear 12-year old Graeme Frost speak about how a government health care program for kids helped save his life and his sister’s after a horrific accident. Malkin’s response was to say, How dare you presume that I would care about a fellow human being! I refuse to, even for a child! What America really needed, in her view, was the launching of a spiteful War on Compassion. The Social Contract is a fool’s game, you see. Not acting like a complete and total asshole would play right into the liberals’ hands.

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Ayn Rand saw this as a threat. She couldn’t hear its poetry. That’s sad, but it’s okay. There’s plenty of room in the country for those who can’t hear America singing, or can’t sing the body electric, or those who churn out 2000 plus pages of tedious agitprop grunting out “the song of myself, and only my glorious, superior self, you goddam moochers.” It’s just that such people can’t be trusted with power. There are far better ways to run a country that the Randian, plutocrat or neo-feudal models. There are more wonderful things in America and humanity than are dreamt of in Rand’s dogma. Kennedy’s words were never about some ridiculous, absolute self-denial or martyrdom. They were a renewal of the Social Contract, an invitation to cooperate, to work together to improve the America we all share.
 

Strengthen Social Security

by digby

Have you heard about Strengthen Social Security, Don’t Cut It? Click the link. This is going to be an important resource for all of us.

I’ll be appearing on a panel this afternoon at Netroots Nation called Obama’s Social Security “Death Panel”: Engaging Activists to Defeat the Drive to Cut Critical Social Programs, if you happen to be there. (I’m not sure if it will be streamed online.)

This is going to be one of the huge battles, unfortunately (and unnecessarily!) but the coalition that’s coming together to fight is an impressive one. You can sign up at the link to get emails and information.

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