Kenny Pierce continues from his ATB post on The Black Pleasure Of Hatred And Cultural Provincialism:
"From debate on the Senate floor about interrogation tactics at Guantanamo:
When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here -- I almost hesitate to put them in the record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report: On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold....On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor. If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners. -- Senator Dick Durbin
I recently wrote a post expressing my concern about the prevalence of hate-speech and hate-rhetoric in modern American politics, in which I used Senator Durbin's demonization of the Guantanamo interrogators as an example of objectionable rhetoric. And a good friend of mine, who happens, like Durbin, to detest Dubya and to consider Guantanamo to be an indelible stain on our national honor, had a response that interested me very much. She couldn't understand why I would have a problem with Durbin's rhetoric; well, okay. But then, even more interestingly, she in the very same conversation complained about conservatives' referring to liberals as "unpatriotic" and as "aiding and abetting the enemy." That is to say, she thinks that sometimes it's okay to demonize, and sometimes it isn't, though she's vague as to how one is supposed to tell what is good demonization and what is bad demonization.
Fairly deep into the conversation she got somewhat plaintive in her frustration over my (to her) incomprehensible take on Durbin's rant:
Why must [Durbin's contention] be put nicely? Why is not this remark evaluated on the basis of the truth that underlies and causes the occasion? Why, Kenny.... why, why, why? :)
The conversation petered out shortly thereafter and we've since moved on to other topics. But the more I think about her question, the more I think it's a question worth a careful and detailed answer. The problem is, there are several reasons to say that responsible people do not, except under exceptional circumstances (if ever), resort to that particular rhetorical tactic. So I think what's called for is a series of posts, each one examining in detail a single reason that demonization is a bad thing, something which we as individuals should not engage in and which we as a culture should not deem socially tolerable. My time constraints being what they are, I may not be able to finish the series (I usually don't manage to finish long series of this nature, because the family-of-eleven things, and the job-that's-demanding-enough-for-me-to-be-paid-enough-to-support-a-family-of-eleven things, tend to rise up and derail me). But I can at least make a start, beginning with what I think is most important; and perhaps other people can pick up the baton when I wind up dropping it.
Now, the very first thing to observe, is that my friend gets upset when demonization is aimed at the people she agrees with and likes, but not when it's aimed at the people she disagrees with and dislikes. This would seem to imply that she objects to demonization because she wants to protect the people who are targeted thereby. But this, I think, means that between her perspective and mine there is a great gulf fixed, right from the first step. For by far my biggest reason to urge people not to indulge in demonization, is the damage I believe it does to the person who is doing the demonizing. When I urge Senator Durbin or Paul Krugman not to demonize President Bush, that's not because I'm worried about Dubya's reputation or feelings. It's first and foremost because I am worried about Durbin and Krugman.
In order to understand why I'm concerned on their behalf, we have to make sure we understand exactly what demonization is. It isn't just calling somebody evil, because the whole implication is that you're rhetorically making the person out to be worse than he really is. For example, it isn't demonization to say, "Satan is the devil." That's just the literal truth. Nor is it demonization to say, "Hitler was Hitler," or, "Stalin was Stalin," or, "Pol Pot was Pol Pot," or, "Dubya is Dubya," or, "Teddy Kennedy is Teddy Kennedy."
In other words, demonization involves some form of exaggeration. It is a subspecies of hyperbole, which is exaggeration for rhetorical effect.
Furthermore, demonization has a particular rhetorical effect in mind. I recently criticized Dubya's stubborn refusal to alter tactics in Iraq until long after it should have been obvious that the tactics required changing (as tactics, in wars, always do). And I expressed the basic idea of, "Dubya stubbornly insisted on trying to win the war on the cheap," by accusing him, tongue-in-cheek, of having thought that he could establish a stable and just society in Iraq with "six Marines, a K-9 unit, and some high-tech weapons," or something to that effect.
Now, that's actually not demonization, for two reasons:
1. It's intended for comic effect, i.e., it's intended to amuse, even though I was in the middle of making a serious point.
2. It's meant to be impossible to be taken literally -- nobody with an I.Q. higher than an oxygen-deprived cocker spaniel would really think that the U.S. has fewer than ten military personnel stationed in Iraq.
Demonization, on the other hand, is intended to evoke or to rationalize outrage (which of course the demonizer and his partisans will describe as "righteous" anger); and it is intended to be something that at least a great many people will think can be taken literally or almost so. The two are related because if the exaggeration is so over-the-top as to be absurd, the initial reaction is likely to be laughter rather than anger, and laughter is most certainly not the reaction the demonizer intends to evoke. Indeed, most of the time demonization isn't just intended to evoke anger -- it's usually intended to inculcate hatred.
Now, let's look again at Senator Durbin's outburst on the Senate floor. Unless we want to consider the Senator a liar, we must presume that he is not trying to convince people of anything that isn't true. Furthermore, unless we want to consider him a complete idiot, we must presume that he is aware of several facts:
1. Honest people can disagree with the Senator about whether the actions of the United States at Guantanamo are unethical. Honest people can further disagree about whether those actions are a wise and acceptable means of protecting the American people. It is therefore entirely possible that the President means well and is trying to protect the country against terrorists, acting perhaps foolishly, but with the best and most honorable of intentions.
2. If what the Guantanamo detainees have undergone qualifies as "torture," then the bar that constitutes torture has been lowered very far indeed, as their treatment is only by the most expansive definitions comparable to the actions that most English-speakers imagine when you pronounce the word "torture." Indeed, nothing Durbin describes is as severe as what our armed forces commonly put our soldiers through in training exercises; and you would not be able to find a prison anywhere in Europe or in America in which the inmates are cared for as well. Great care is taken to ensure that no permanent physical harm is incurred (even when the inmates are trying to hurt themselves); nor are there "mock executions;" nor anything that produces pain remotely comparable to that caused by the rack, or by branding with hot irons, or by suspending somebody from handcuffs until their arms pull out of their sockets, or by starving them to the point at which they eat the grass in the prison yard out of sheer desperation, or by yanking out their fingernails with pliars, or by lashing them with a cat-o'-nine-tails, or by forcing them to work an eight-hour day ditch-digging in waist-deep water in winter. It would, I think, be very difficult for Senator Durbin to explain how forcing somebody to listen to loud rap music can qualify as "torture" unless the imposition of pretty much any degree of physical discomfort whatsoever is now to be defined as "torture." So, if we take out the buzz-word "torture" and replace it with an accurate description of the behavior to which Durbin objects, I think the worst description we can honestly manage is "significant but purely temporary physical discomfort."
3. No country in which the putative "despot" can be vilified in the nation's leading newspapers with the venom and frequency with which Dubya is vilified, is remotely a "despotic" nation. No nation whose "concentration camps" involve the extreme measures for ensuring the health and religious freedom of the inmates that is evident at Guantanamo, is remotely a nation that denies the humanity of its enemies.
Yet Durbin thinks that Stalin and Pol Pot are somehow relevant to discussions of Guantanamo. I can't read his mind, but my best guess is that he wants to posit a sort of slippery slope: if we allow "torture," we put ourselves on a path that will ultimately lead to our being no better than the worst and most inhumane regimes of the twentieth century, even if we step onto that path out of the best of intentions.
Therefore, unless Durbin is a fool or a liar, what he intended to say was something like this: "I know the President means well and is trying to protect the country against terrorists, but his policies are foolish, because if we allow our interrogators to cause significant but purely temporary physical discomfort to their interrogees, this will set in motion a chain of events that ultimately will cause the United States to be engaging in deliberate genocide and operating slave labor camps and death camps that will result in the deaths of millions. Therefore the President should change his policies and cease causing physical discomfort to the prisoners at Guantanamo."
But instead of saying this, the Senator chose, for purely rhetorical purposes, to say that if you were to show an observer a prisoner under interrogation at Guantanamo and another prisoner under interrogation in Stalin's Lubyanka Prison, the observer wouldn't be able to tell which interrogation was which.
So now let us ask ourselves whether the Senator's rhetoric was intended to stir up anger (at the very least) against the President. What do we see when we examine the possibilities?
1. As Senator Durbin well knew, a great many people both in the United States and out were already either enraged about, or predisposed to be enraged about, the subject of Guantanamo; and furthermore, he knew perfectly well that the majority of the enraged were people who had a well-established, settled tendency to hate the President, and specifically to identify Bush (in all grim seriousness) with Hitler.
2. Nothing in the Senator's tone of voice, nor in his phrasing, even hints at any humorous intent.
3. The Senator could not possibly have phrased his accusation in a way that would have made it sound more as though he believed his accusation was literally true. If someone were silly enough to found a belief on the word of a politician, and that someone were to lack the antecedent knowledge of Nazi and Stalinist interrogation techniques necessary to see for himself the absurdity of the comparison, then the Senator would have every opportunity to convince Mr. Gullible that the U.S. guards at Guantanamo really are quite literally equivalent to the K.G.B. interregators at Lubyanka -- and the Senator's audience was an American people whose history knowledge is overwhelmingly gained from the notoriously disastrous American public education system.
4. The Senator's rhetoric and line of attack could be nothing but counterproductive if it were intended to change the mind of the President's supporters, or to win the good will and good opinion of persons who were well-educated, well-informed, and undecided as to the which of the two sides had a better case. Therefore whatever else the rhetoric might have accomplished, it most certainly would not persuade anybody not already predisposed to hate Dubya -- which is to say, it would not persuade anybody who didn't already agree that Guantanamo was an American gulag. If persuasion was the Senator's intent, then the Senator is quite possibly the stupidest person in Washington, D.C., which is saying quite a lot indeed.
5. The Senator's use of demonization does not clarify the issue; it clouds it. Imagine a straightforward explanation of what the detainees were experiencing, one that avoids special pleading by including information (such as the detainees' average weight gain while in Gauntanamo) that the Senator leaves out because it would interfere with his attempt to portray Dubya as a monster, and one that does not implicitly or explicitly impute malicious motives to Bush. (I already imagined one and suggested it, of course, but mine probably doesn't capture exactly what he would say if he were not trying to demonize.) Without knowing for sure exactly what such an explanation would look like, we can at least be confident that it would have laid out the reasons Durbin felt the policy was wrong without attempting to distort the facts by exaggeration. It would, in fact, have made Durbin's point quite a bit more clearly and accurately than Durbin did himself -- and then we wouldn't be sitting here trying to imagine a straightforward version of what Durbin really (on the assumption that he is neither a liar nor a fool) intended to say.
My liberal friend says that "rhetoric such as this is intended to make ideas politically understandable in a less-nuanced way." Now, I don't know exactly what she means by "politically" understandable. If what she means is that the rhetoric was intended to make people feel agreement with Durbin's politics by clouding their understanding, then I think she's quite right, though I think it does a certain amount of violence to the English language to describe someone who is deliberately distorting the facts in order to cloud judgment with emotion as "making ideas understandable." But if she means that Durbin's intent in turning to demonization was to see to it that his hearers had a clearer, more accurate understanding of the behavior he was criticizing and the principles involved, then clearly she is wrong. Rhetoric such as this does not clarify; it muddies.
In other words, the only effect any sensible person could expect the Senator's rhetoric to have, was to take the people who were already convinced that our interrogation techniques were bad, and whip up their anger and hatred against Bush on that account. And I submit to the candid reader that this is always the primary function of demonization as a rhetorical technique.
So either the Senator was doing this on purpose, or else the Senator is an extremely stupid man with no idea of how voters are affected by rhetoric. Now, you may wish to believe that an extremely stupid man who does not understand even the most elementary dynamics of rhetoric upon voters' emotions, could nevertheless manage to campaign effectively enough to win repeated election to the U.S. Senate. If so, why then you may adopt the charitable view that Senator Durbin had no idea that his rhetoric would cause people to be angrier with Dubya than they already were and to hate Dubya more ferociously and unappeasably than they already did. Personally I think such a premise very much strains the boundaries of the believable, but you may see it differently. Alternatively, you may think that Durbin was himself sufficiently ignorant of the actual details of Nazi and Stalinist and Khmer Rouge atrocities, or sufficiently blinded by his own presettled disposition to think the worst of Bush, to have actually talked himself into believing that his statement was practically true on a literal level. This, like my former suggestion, is a way of saying basically that Durbin said what he said because he was a fool.
But if you don't think Durbin was pretty much an idiot, then I think you have to accept that Durbin's rhetorical purpose was to encourage as many people as possible to feel anger and hatred toward Republicans in general and Dubya in particular.
In order to save space, I will proceed with the rest of the post under the assumption that Durbin was not just being an idiot. Frankly, I think idiocy is the most likely explanation. But my friend who wishes to defend him rejects the idiot hypothesis, yet wishes to justify his tactics; and besides the point of the present post is to explore the deliberate use of demonization and whether, and when, it is justifiable. So let's proceed with the assumption, for the purposes of illustration, that Durbin knew exactly what he was doing and did it anyway, and to save space and tedious repetition, I won't keep saying that I myself am not actually prepared to level that accusation in literal fact.
Okay, so Durbin's presumable purpose was to stir up outrage, anger and hatred; and I think we also will assume that he knew that his intended audience would think that his statement was almost literally true. Those two characteristics of demonization are thus both present, leaving us with the question of whether Durbin's speech involved any exaggeration.
Now, there are several different kinds of exaggeration that you can make use of if you wish to demonize. The first, and least objectionable, is to exaggerate in degree only, on a topic in which the question of whether some particular behavior is bad, is not itself a question of degree. Thus, let us say that a person has "lied" to his wife, in that he has told her, "I think you're the most beautiful woman in the world," when in fact he thinks Halle Berry is prettier. If you say that the man ought not be given a position of responsibility at work because, "I happen to know that he has repeatedly lied to his wife," this creates a false impression, even though you could argue that it is literally true.
With such exaggeration we are looking at a fuzzy-logic kind of thing: that is, if there is only a little bit of exaggeration, we might say that demonization was involved, but only mild demonization. If the exaggeration is a whoppin' ol' blue whale of an exaggeration, then we have extreme demonization. One might argue that when Clarence Thomas accused his accusers of attempting a "high-tech lynching," he was indulging in a relatively minor degree of demonization (he wasn't in the least danger of winding up dangling from a tree, though one sees what he was getting at). When Rush Limbaugh refers to "feminazis," we might consider the denomization to be more extreme. And when a teenager complains that his parents' home is "a police state," then he is...well, actually, he's just being a teenager. So, um, bad example. Moving right along...
Slightly more serious is exaggerating the degree of an offense in order to pretend that the target has crossed a critical moral threshold that he did not in fact cross. If you happen to know that a man has fantasized about Halle Berry, and you then say he ought not to be given a position of responsibility because, "I happen to know he's committed adultery," then this is an exaggeration that reaches into the realm of outright falsehood.
Now, the Democrats' view would presumably be that Durbin committed the first type of exaggeration -- that is, that American soldiers have been, strictly speaking, torturing Guantanamo detainees, but that admittedly they weren't torturing them quite as badly as the KGB and the Gestapo and the Khmer Rouge tortured their victims. (Considering that statistics so far would seem to show that it is infinitely less dangerous to be interrogated at Guantanamo than it is to be driven home by Teddy Kennedy; considering that literally millions of people starved to death under both Stalin and Hitler while the average weight change for Guantanamo prisoners, last I heard, was a gain of eighteen pounds; considering that when it comes to inflicting pain and suffering the Guantanamo "inquisitors" strike me as being rather farther from Spanish Inquisition Version 1.0 than they are from Spanish Inquisition Version Monty Python...well, the exaggeration involved here is spectacularly extreme. But the Democrats' premise is that while the degree may be extreme, all the same the exaggeration is still only a matter of degree, not essence.)
Trouble is, you have to be pretty much insane to think that to inflict any physical or emotional distress at all upon another human being counts as "torture," because otherwise you wouldn't even be able to put your child in time out without being a "torturer." Therefore the question of whether a person is a torturer or not may very well be a matter of degree, which means that a person who exaggerates in degree without first having been very careful indeed to address the question of the ethical boundary conditions, is very much in danger of committing the second, and more objectionable, type of exaggeration. There are probably a hundred million people in America who, if they knew exactly what sorts of interrogation techniques had been used at Guantanamo, would say, "Wait a minute, that's not torture." So at the very least, Durbin's technique is meant to make something that is grey look pitch-black.
But let's assume that Durbin (in emulation of Dubya) hasn't bothered to listen to the people who disagree with him, and therefore the Senator thinks that no reasonable person could doubt that what has gone on at Guantanamo is properly described as "torture." In that case, he would not intentionally be committing the second form of exaggeration -- though we could certainly make a case that he was committing the second form of exaggeration and was just too much of an ass to realize it.
This brings us to the third form of exaggeration, which is by far the most commonly used, and by far the most slanderous, destructive, and -- in my opinion -- evil and contemptible. This is the form of exaggeration in which you project upon your target motives that are not in fact the motives that are truly in his heart. The essence of the exaggeration is to take something that you believe he is doing, but that he does not think that he is doing, and implicitly or explicitly accuse him of doing it on purpose.
I pause here to point out, by the way, that if you were to go back over the last several years through all the utterances of the Daily Kos and the Democratic Underground and remove everything they have said that imputes to Bush, without remotely good evidence, evil motives, what you would mostly hear in the aftermath would be the sound of silence. So if this form of exaggeration is bad, then there are a whole bunch of Bush-haters who have a whole lot to repent of. (Not, I hasten to add, that there aren't similar haters on the conservative side as well.)
Now, the most common way to say something like, "Bush is doing all this on purpose," is not to do a Paul Krugman and come right out and accuse Bush of being an evil man who loves evil for its own sake. (The link is to a comment in which my liberal friend quotes Krugman approvingly; as I think Krugman's comment went way beyond the line I refuse to increase his traffic by linking to it myself.) By far the most common way to work this slander in rhetorically is by the following tactic:
1. Find a notoriously evil person who did something that you can claim is in the same class as what you say your target was doing, but who knew exactly what he was doing and did it on purpose. For example, I am a Libertarian who is very clearly aware that everything the government accomplished by law, the government accomplishes by means of violent coercion. So I in all sincerity believe that the use of government coercion to make people think twice before uttering in public sincerely held but politically incorrect beliefs (by, for example, defining "sexual harassment" to include "saying publicly that homosexual behavior is a sin" and then making "sexual harassment" a tort in law), is the same class of behavior as using government force to make people afraid publicly to teach a variant of Christianity other than the officially approved one. Now, if I wanted to inflame passions against persons who were promoting the idea that people ought to be sued if they engage in sexual harassment at work, I might not want to remind people that a lot of the people who support sexual harassment laws are people who mean well but who -- like most Americans -- simply haven't thought through all the implications of their position. So I could use the tactic of demonization and say, "If you didn't know you were in America, you could imagine that you were back in the days of the Spanish Inquisition and its war on heresy."
Do you see what I mean? Torquemada knew absolutely clearly that he was out to use fire and sword and brutal force to drive the people who disagree with him out of Spain, into hiding, or down to the grave. But many people who vaguely support laws about "sexual harassment" because they think people ought to be nice to each other, aren't consciously aware of the fact that what they are really doing is trying to use the government's power to hurt people in order to frighten into silence people whose views they personally find objectionable. For me, then, rhetorically to identify them with the Spanish Inquisition, is a slander and a lie -- for while I might be able to say that their actions resemble, in certain significant aspects, the actions of the Inquisitors, it is pretty much a lie for me to say that their conscious motives are the same as the conscious motives of the Inquisitors. But the whole rhetoric of association is intended to access the emotions that people feel toward the Inquisitors based on what we popularly presume to have been the motives of the Inquisitors and encourage the gullible to feel those same emotions toward other people who do not act from those evil motives.
Let me put it this way: Neville Chamberlain did a lot more to allow Hitler to overrun Europe than did the Duke of Windsor (formerly Edward VIII). But the Duke was an actual Nazi sympathiser; Chamberlain was not. You could call the Duke a "Nazi," and while you would be exaggerating, it wouldn't be a grotesque exaggeration. But if Churchill had attacked Chamberlain as a "Nazi" on the grounds that Chamberlain's policies were likely to lead to Nazi control of Europe, that would have been an appalling slander.
Or again, you may believe that, objectively speaking, abortion is a form of murder. But that doesn't make it right to refer to women who have gotten abortions as "murderers." For the overwhelming majority of those women (at least in America) have honestly not believed themselves to be arranging for another human being to be killed, and are therefore not on remotely the same moral plane as a mother who in cold blood kills a two-month-old baby. They are at most on the moral level of a clueless and careless deer hunter who shoots what he thinks is a deer and then discovers that he has killed his buddy by mistake. There is a big difference between being a fool and being a deliberately evil person; and when a demonizer equates a well-intentioned person with somebody who willfully and deliberately engaged in evil, the demonizer is himself committing an evil act.
That this is what Durbin was in fact doing is, I think, quite clear. I see no good reason to believe that Bush or the Guantanamo interrogators believe that what they are doing is torturing people in the relevant sense of the word; they do not believe that they are doing anything wrong, and they take all sorts of measures at Guantanamo that demonstrate that they do not, in fact, "have no concern for" the human beings under detention. When you feed your torture subjects better than you feed your own soldiers, and when you go to extraordinary measures to respect their religious sensibilities even though it's in the name of that very religion that a significant number of those detained intend, if given the chance, to kill your innocent countrymen, then clearly nobody involved in the chain of command has toward the prisoners an attitude that denies their humanity, or that demonstrates a Stalinesque or Hitleresque utter absence of conscience. I realize that it is very difficult for most Democrats to accept that a person of good conscience might disagree with the Democratic party line about what is moral and what isn't, but the fact that Democrats are notoriously narrow-minded and self-righteous, doesn't change the fact that nobody in the Guantanamo chain of command from Dubya on down is in fact engaging in the sort of willful evil that the Nazis and the Communists and the Khmer Rouge engaged in. (Okay, I admit I'm amusing myself with a little chain-yanking there.)
But people just don't hate the well-intentioned but confused, with the enthusiastic hatred they are willing to direct at the willfully, knowingly evil. So the demonizer, whose point is to stir up anger (at a minimum) and hatred (more often than not), will whenever possible imply that his target's motives are evil. And the easiest and most common way to do this is to slap on his target a label taken from persons whose motives are known to be evil, rather than to try to give any actual reason to think that the target's motives are anything but well-intentioned.
We know how truly vicious this tactic is by simple experience: how does it feel when other people do it to us? Do we like to have our motives misrepresented? Do we like to be painted as thoroughly black at heart when we know that our intentions at least were good? Of course not.
In fact we like it so little that, when even ordinary, simple descriptive words start to take on negative connotations, we start objecting to being called those words. I originally wrote that it is no demonization to say, "Teddy Kennedy is a liberal Massachusettes Democrat;" but then I remembered that, since a lot of Americans now have negative connotations with the term "liberal," liberals appear to be trying to rebrand themselves as "progressives." So I went the safe version.
Take, for example, the fact that (much to the fury of old-school feminists) young women are notoriously reluctant to call themselves "feminists," even when they support gender-based affirmative action, Title IX, abortion on demand throughout pregnancy, and the Equal Rights Amendment. But this is easily explained: the term "feminist" now conjures up, for most people, not a list of political goals, but a kind of person -- among other things, a person who not only hates men, but even hates other women who choose not to hate men. Therefore young women who support the feminist agenda, but do not hate men, reject the label "feminist," because they reject the implications that term has about their motives rather than about the political policies they support.
Here is where the real power of demonization lies. Human beings are notoriously bad at figuring out other people's motives, and if there's anything that experience teaches us, it's that when people try to ascribe motives to people they don't like, they almost always ascribe to them motives that (a) aren't at all what the real motives were and (b) are much worse than the real motives were. You see it in estranged husbands and wives and parents and children: once you get angry with somebody you get very bad at figuring out what their motives are, and once your anger settles into permanent hatred you can be all but guaranteed to get it wrong. If, therefore, I were to attempt to spell out what I thought were the motives of the person I wished to demonize, I would be likely to come up with something as patently absurd as Krugman's utterly-bereft-of-sanity wild-assed speculation about the near-Satanic motives of The Evil That Is Dubya:
Torture, I believe, appeals to the president and the vice president precisely because itís a violation of both law and tradition. By making an illegal and immoral practice a key element of U.S. policy, theyíre asserting their right to do whatever they claim is necessary.
Now anybody who is not himself blinded by hatred of Dubya will, upon reading that, simply say, "My God, Krugman has lost it," and go on about his business. The danger of specificity, you see, is that the more specific you make a charge, the easier it is for your opponents -- or, in Krugman's case, your readers' simple common sense -- to show the absurdity of your charge, thus destroying its effectiveness: instead of hating your target, people merely laugh at you. So you see, it is far more effective simply to slap on some label that drags in the connotation of evil motives, without ever providing an explicit accusation of evil motives against which your target could defend himself. Specifics can be refuted. Vague connotations cannot.
You could, for example, call Republicans "fascists." Not one Democrat in a hundred could tell you what makes a particular system of government "fascist," nor would those hundred Democrats really care. In modern American language, "You fascist," means, "You're a Republican, plus I hate you." Similarly, to call someone a "fundamentalist Christian" now means nothing much more than, "You think that there's a single moral code that applies to everybody and in particular to me, even if I happen to dislike its requirements, plus you are uneducated and probably toothless and at most a short walk from the trailer park...plus I hate you." "Liberal" is rapidly coming to mean something similar on the other side, and of course I've already pointed out what has happened to the term "feminist."
That's the beauty (from the demagoguic standpoint) of labels. And that's the power of demonization. ---
Okay, but that still leaves us with our original question: " Why is this a problem?"
from Stephanie To quote you: "Talk Radio, for them, is unfair: too free-wheeling, too irreverent, too popular, too politically incorrect."
I don't listen to Talk Radio. I like music, and I listen to music when the radio is on. Plus, Talk Radio, in my limited experience, is often people being obnoxious (either pole)and I have better ways to spend my time. That being said, even if there were two radio programs -- i.e. equal time -- you can choose not to listen to the liberal program. In fact, that's already been done according to conservatives; they had their chance, and their program didn't suit their market. I don't see why giving them a chance to speak is so offensive to you, other than that you do not like what they have to say.
So, why is the Fairness Doctrine so dangerous? If liberals can't compete on talk radio, they can't compete even with the Fairness Doctrine they can merely stay on the air. What's the problem? Balance in bias seems like a good thing for America.
from gringomanStephanie asks why the (sic) Fairness Doctrine is "dangerous."
1. Well, for you, Stephanie the "danger" would probably be minimal, maybe even non-existent. That's because you seem to want the radio for music. It used to be THE medium for music (of all tastes.) And then came the Talk Revolution, blowing away the dominance of the musical format. (See the history of ABC radio as a prime example.)Many believe that the Orwellian-named Fairness Doctrine will return radio to a bland, relatively mindless format. Forcing radio management to hire unpopular broadcasters will in effect destroy the format---which of course would be fine with its opponents who can't cut it unless Big Mommy steps in and protects them. If you know anything about the history of (sic) Air America, I needn't say another word on this.
2. As for "balance in bias", have you done the math on that? If 80% of Americans oppose Washington's willingness to subvert U.S. laws on borders and immigration, 20% support it, but a radio station is ordered by the DC Nanny to pay for an Amnesty-friendly broadcaster who can only command 1/4 the listenership (and by extension ad revenue) of the anti-Amnesty broadcaster, I don't think you even have to be a libertarian to realize that this is not a business model for non-socialist (or State-funded) entrepreneurs.
3. If you don't listen to Talk Radio, you may not realize that "the other side" does get covered, both extensively and intensively, although, granted, generally from the viewpoint of the host who's able to command an audience (allowing the station to exist, which I'm sure you know is how it works outside of the socialist model.) E.g. Liberals are often heard on conservative Talk Radio. Of course, what they really hate is when their taped statements are played back on the air, e.g. practically every single one of GD's beloved Dems are on tape warning about Saddam and his WMD, but that was before they went into "Bush lied, People died" mode---which GD can paste you a whole lot more on when she's doing her regular cover-up for the jackals. Exposing the Dems like this is considered very "one-sided" and "right-wing," despite their taking BUsh on over Harriet Miers, Dem-like spending, Dubai, immigration etc.
Side Note: Talk Radio is "obnoxious?" No, if you mean the genre itself, talk radio per se. It simply is, like The Wild West. Yes, absolutely, if you mean that you can be offended by things you hear in the "Wild West." In fact, you can be offended, revolted, enlightened, informed, amazed, moved, outraged, delighted, angered, and possibly even discombobulated by vox populi or even people who actually know what they're talking about. Like it or hate it, it's far more of what TV can't possibly be: a national forum. Liberals are tearing their hair because they know that increasingly the jocks are not only pummeling Republicans from a conservative viewpoint, but are often sharp lawyers themselves who know the Beltway very well, yet can do what the libs can't seem to do: hold an audience. I guess it is something of a liberal nightmare, since they don't get petted nearly as much on radio as they do on the rest of the media from the 8o% who donate to Dems instead of Pubs.
But granted, it's probably no more suited for strictly genteel tastes than most of America was before becoming prosperous and megalopolitan. But that's another reason why taxes do support something which even liberals will not support without Nanny assistance denied to Talk Radio: NPR (and a few others.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
GD Thanks for pasting the point that the Democrats and Progressive's Favorite Money Changer, George Soros, while attempting to re-make the world in his philosophical image, at least admitted--once-- that he was much better at the money game than with philosophy.
By the way, in your factoidal visit to the Sorosphere, you pasted so much. Is there any reason why you left out George's felony conviction? Or did I miss something?
[New at gringoman: "GET ME A MUSLIM DOCTOR?" (wherein a new category is proposed in the interests of greater semantical clarity in The War.
Posted by: gringoman | Wednesday, July 04, 2007 at 12:05 AM
Some of the youngsters might not understand your reference Kenny.
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 10:03 PM
I might point out, my dear Ghost, that Bill Gates is just as much of a person as you are, with just as much of right to be protected from violence and extortion (as long as he has not been proved, in a court of law in which he was presumed innocent until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt, to have engaged in violence and extortion himself) as is a public librarian or a college student waiting tables -- a fact with which many Democrats seem to have a tremendous amount of difficulty grappling. And another fact with which Democrats have even greater difficulty grappling is the fact that "plutocrats" like Bill Gates and Sam Walton have done more to advance the happiness of other people than have practically anybody other individuals in the modern world, especially manipulative, power-grasping parasites like Teddy Kennedy and Trent Lott -- though this doesn't say a single damn thing about their relative levels of virtue and character. It is not evil to be rich, and there is something deeply, deeply wrong with anybody who thinks that wealth establishes a presumption of vile character, atonable only by agreement with the "correct" set of political prejudices. It is, however, always and everywhere evil to be envious -- yet another inconvenient truth which most Democrats go to lots of trouble to hide from themselves.
If you can't imagine any meaning of the phrase "government of the people, by the people and for the people" other than the highly perverse Democratic Party version in which one can only be considered to be one of "the people" if one has not been sufficiently productive and successful to have earned the envious enmity of the foolish and unvirtuous mob, then you have very little imagination at all -- for the overwhelming majority of the "functions" of government that you wish to consider important, would have been instantly and vehemently rejected by the very people who originally wrote the words, "of the people, by the people and for the people."
"Of the people..." You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean...and neither did James Madison. Whatever rationalization you might put forth for your political agenda, appealing to the principles of the Constitution cannot validly be one of them, for every check and balance that the original Constitutional Convention put into place in order to restrict the power of the government and to keep it from becoming the plaything of a modern-day mob of morons, the modern Democratic and Republican Parties have destroyed and nullified. If you want to make a case that the immense and bloated federal government that the modern-day Democratic and Republican Parties have created in defiance of the Constitution's clear meaning and intent, is a better form of government than the one the Constitution actually lays out, then by all means feel free to make your case. But to pretend that you have the slightest actual respect for the Constitution save as a shamelessly cynical and dishonest pretext for the imposition of your and your fellow-travelers' political prejudices du jour upon the more than hundred million of us who disagree with them -- and who therefore are, as far as I can tell, excluded from your definition of "the people" -- is farcical.
But then, in pretending that the Constitution means whatever you want it to mean even when that is the opposite of what it actually says, I suppose you merely demonstrate that you are eminently qualified -- by the standards of the Democratic Party -- to be a Supreme Court Justice.
Posted by: Kenny | Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 09:36 PM
Revolution
Revolution
Revolution
Revolution
Revolution
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 09:31 PM
Ghost,
[laughing delightedly] You're irreplaceable. If ever there was a person who resorts cheerfully to rhetoric-laden, largely thought-free partisan cliches, it's you -- and then you can come out with a straight face with a line like:
But it's very honest of you to put "logic" inside scare quotes without prompting... ;-)
On a more serious note, it is absolute nonsense to say that only Democrats believe that government "is important and has a function." There is no serious anarchist movement in this country. It is simply that a great many of us disagree very strongly with Democrats on what the proper function of the government might be. You seem to think that destroying the inner-city black family through the perverse incentives of a faux-compassionate "war on poverty" is a proper function of government, but that defending liberty in Iraq -- or providing an environment that encourages investment and job creation by fending off the redistributionist lunacy of the self-destructively envious -- is not. I happen to think it's precisely the other way around. But neither of us thinks that the government has no critically important proper function.
Posted by: Kenny | Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 08:53 PM
Having Trouble Understanding Jane
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 08:18 AM
Oh, you must be referring to the War of Northern Aggression. You are correct.... the slavery-based economy of the South was but one issue within a more general friction over "States Rights"..... that is why I noted how "States Rights" had become a cryptic slogan for Slavery and later segregationist policies.
The Union victory in the Northern War of Aggression was indeed a catalyst for stronger Federal Government..... the strength of the Federal Government has always, at root, been about Blacks and other minorities, hasn't it Stephanie? A source of great Southern Resentment.
Do you know why that is? It is because of the American Constitution. Because the founding fathers couldn't get around the problem of Slavery, they treated Slavery as an individual rights issue..... how so? By covering slaves as an issue of "property rights", underscoring the rights of the individual to own their property without interference of the State..... however the Constitution also enscounced principles and promises that ultimately put it at odds with its own solution.... it had created a built-in problem for itself..... a problem that ultimately could not be resolved peacefully.
The Republican Party has tapped sentiments of resentment that do date back to the Northern War of Aggression with their "Southern Strategy"..... Democrats know this because that used to be their solid voting block until they backed Civil Rights legislation in the 60's. The Republicans took Strom and his entire cast of merry pranksters into their ranks, and never let them go. That is when the Republicans became the "States Rights" Party, and the Democrats became, I guess, the "Nanny State" Party.
Your comments about the "Nanny State" reveals the propaganda you've bought into. I don't think I need to defend any deficiencies in my "logic" if you are going to start there.
Personnally, I think it is specifically the role of a Liberal Democracy TO BE a "nanny" in both the "conservative/libertarian" AND "Liberal" sense above. Who else would the government of the people, by the people, for the people be looking out for but the interests of the PEOPLE writ-large? That includes protections for the industrial infrastructure as well as protections for individuals against corporate excess. The issue is one of degree and dimensions of application..... not a matter of function.
I, for example, think that the Democrats (The Republican Wing/DLC) and of course the Republicans laissez-faire approach to global economics is simply setting us up to re-learn the lessons of the Industrial Revolution on a grand scale. Inadequate protections for the National interests will lead to the exploitation of the Nation's People..... witness Mexico..... a simple pseudo-democratic kleptocracy that exports cheap labor as a National resource for income. Understand that in the long-run laissez-faire global economics would not prohibit in the future possiblity that American Citizens would be compelled to go abroad for employment as cheap labor, simply because transnational corporations have no vested interest in the viability of any one nation.
So.... the function of government.... Liberalism is at the heart of the notion that government serves its people. If that means regulating and protecting industry to maintain long term capacity, infrastructure and wealth, or ensuring that peanut butter isn't poisoning the kids.... I guess government IS expected by the People to be the strict nanny.
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 06:01 AM
Ghost,
"So, the Democratic Party isn't perfect.... but there is one Party of the two that actually has a political philosophy that believes government has a function.... "
Engaging you in the flaws of your logic has not proved fruitful. Therefore, I'm not going to contest your views of either major party -- there's no point. However, I must remind you that there are more than two parties. The two-party system is what has polarized our government beyond all reason. There are third-party and independent candidates with good ideas, sound integrity, and cooperative personalities that actually care about the American people. If this country is ever to get back on track, people are going to have to stop selling their souls to the two major parties. Already, it is evident that swing-voters are those who decide major elections -- not party regulars.
Posted by: Stephanie | Monday, July 02, 2007 at 09:46 PM
Ghost,
"It is paradoxical that Libertarians have been voting Republican for some time now..... "
Not really, considering that pre-NeoCon the Republicans upheld individual freedoms much better than the Democrats have. Now that Republicans are enforcing their own brand of Nanny-Statishness, most Libertarians I talk to are just pissed -- but they don't trust Democrats, because Democrats were the kings/queens of the Nanny State long before the Neo-Cons jumped on the bandwagon.
BTW, something you missed in your history lesson -- the power of the federal government under went a significant change during and after the Civil War. While some believe that the Civil War was fought over slavery, the documents do not support that assertion, as Lincoln was hated in the North for not freeing the slaves sooner. The Civil War was fought over the southern states' fear of federal authority, and the northern states' determination to keep the Union whole. After winning the Civil War, the Northern states cemented the authority of the federal government and her elected representatives over the states, giving the federal government far more power than it had ever before had. While it's true that the Great Depression gave FDR cause to implement more bureaucracies than we'd ever before had, the true start to bureaucratic influence over the lives of individuals was seen at the end of the Civil War. The freed slaves posed a very significant problem, and a bureaucracy was formed that was given the power to integrated the freed slaves into the population. Thus, this bureaucracy had direct contact with and influence over a very significant portion of this nation's population and more independent control of itself than any this country had ever before experienced.
Posted by: Stephanie | Monday, July 02, 2007 at 09:26 PM
Mean Green
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Monday, July 02, 2007 at 09:08 PM
That last block was John Dean on Findlaw.com
One World
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Sunday, July 01, 2007 at 09:37 PM
No. I understand what the Republican Party has become, even if you do not. As Kenny knows, I'm a Yellow Dog Democrat.... the Democratic Party is one of two viable political parties in America, like it or not. All independent runners are spoilers. Ralph Nader would have been a Democrat if he hadn't run as an independent, and all of Ralph's issues were issues with the Democrats.... his beef was that they didn't do enough. Ok.... he taught them a lesson.... so we got Dubya.... yeh rah...
So, the Democratic Party isn't perfect.... but there is one Party of the two that actually has a political philosophy that believes government has a function.... If I'm going to vote for a politician to run government, I at least want him/her to think that government is important and has a function and that the whole thing isn't just a big boondoggle to filter public moneys to corporations.... and by all means, I don't want politicians to be undermining the Constitution and the government that it forms.... the Executive Branch doesn't rule like a King, even in wartime, and we'd kinda like to see it stay that way.
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Sunday, July 01, 2007 at 07:39 PM
Actually, I did the founding Fathers a bit of a disservice.... Adam Smith (and enlightenment Liberalism for that matter), "Government that governs least governs best" in fact saw that there was an issue here for governance.
Smith's belief that competition, the market's invisible hand, would lead to proper pricing played a large role in his economic policy recommendations. He therefore strongly opposed any government intervention into business affairs. Trade restrictions, minimum wage laws, and product regulation were all viewed as detrimental to a nation's economic health. This laissez-faire policy of government non-intervention remained popular throughout the Victorian Era and still plays an important part in present-day economic policy. Capitalists, in particular, supported Smith's policies and often twisted his words to justify mistreatment of workers. They suggested that child labor laws, maximum working hours, and factory health codes constituted a violation of their rights and Smith's golden rule. Similar attempts by factory owners to use Smith's teaching in order to further their own ends continued well into the twentieth century.
Contrary to popular belief, however, Smith was not an apologist for the capitalist class. One of his least repeated statements warned that a group of capitalists rarely gather together under one roof without the talk turning towards collusion against the public. For this reason Smith firmly favored anti-monopoly laws. Furthermore, his support of competition remained contingent on the fact that it encouraged economic growth, something Smith felt would benefit all members of society. He proposed that as long as markets grew, an increased demand for labor would prevent owners from exploiting their workers. But he failed to consider that the process of urbanization wouldreak havoc on the labor market, and his optimism about growth seemingly ignored the possibility that capitalists might disproportionately consume the benefits of expansion. The inability of growth to substantially increase general living conditions became the primary concern of Smith's intellectual descendants. Thinkers such as Ricardo and Malthus postulated that overpopulation, low wages, and starvation would always continue to plague society. Economics, which started with Smith's guarded optimism, quickly became known as "the dismal science".
Adam Smith, of course was not a framer of the American Constitution.... however he was influential in the concept of American capitalism and its place in society..... influential in both his true thesis and those who misconstrue into extremist positions.
One of Smith's followers was Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), an Englishman twenty-five years younger than Smith. With Smith he stood apart from those preaching the benefits of self-denial. He wanted betterment for common people and put a political and democratic spin on Smith's economics, describing everyone as best judge as to his own advantage. He advocated legislating laws that protected common people from criminal offenses, that created fire departments and agencies that fought diseases. He favored government stimulating the construction and maintenance of roads, bridges and the like. And he believed that laws should be passed that provided people with guarantees against starvation. In response to those who were supporting the status quo with talk about natural law, a contract between ruler and ruled, and liberty, in his book Principles of Morals and Legislation, he asked, What liberty? And liberty for whom? Laws, Bentham believed, should be made for "the greatest good for the greatest number" - a point that was labeled utilitarianism.
Bentham was popular among people in Europe, and he was influential in the United States. His point of view won him recognition in France as a citizen in 1792, the third year of the French Revolution.
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Sunday, July 01, 2007 at 03:21 PM
It is paradoxical that Libertarians have been voting Republican for some time now.....
Liberalism refers to a broad array of related ideas and theories of government which advocate individual liberty. Liberalism has its roots in the Western Age of Enlightenment.
Broadly speaking, liberalism emphasizes individual rights and equality of opportunity. A liberal society is characterized by freedom of thought for individuals, limitations on power, the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a market economy, free private enterprise, and a transparent system of government in which the rights of all citizens are protected.
The authors of the Constitution were influenced by the enlightenment and created a complex government with checks and balances to insure individual liberty for all.
What Libertarians miss, and why they get hooked on the Republican propaganda (now totally in the hands of movement "conservatism") is that far from being "the problem", as reflected by the rhetoric dating back to Reagan, but implicit as far back as Goldwater, Liberal Democratic Government is first and formost that which ensures the individual liberties Libertarians desire.....
Modern Republicanism does an interesting bate-and-switch..... beginning with the tacit assumption that Government is the only collective power block that can infringe on individual liberties, it ignores the capacity for other power blocks.... like the mercantile/corporate/profit-motive sector to exploit citizens and diminish their rights and liberties.
If you undermine the Government-of-and-by-the-People, if your agenda is the crippling and destruction of government itself, then in this day and age governance defaults to corporate plutocracy.
As far as the emergence of Federal Bureacracies, there is nothing un-Constitutional about them.... they were derived for particular reasons, specifically regulartory, required and advocated by most citizens due to failures and deficiencies in otherwise laissez-faire economic conditions.
The explicit assumption correlating to tacit assumption that Government "should", i.e. "is the problem", is that laissez-faire, market economies bring all goodness to Society.....
That position, by the way, was once, and is sometimes today referred to as "Classic Liberal Economics"..... And certainly the founding Fathers of the Nation, being Liberals, had something like this in mind for the commerce and economic life of the Nation.
Well and good.... however the founding Fathers did not experience the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, complex economic conditions whereby a combination of roller-coaster business cycles, depressions and the realization that laissez-faire capitalism if left unchecked is not fundamentally an egalitarian game nurturing competition, but instead a major game of monopoly..... inevitably widening an ever-increasing gap between rich and poor, and enslaving more and more people within the confines of their personal economic servitude.
In other words, the founding Fathers had not experienced the conditions confronted by Theodore Roosevelt, a rugged individualist and industrialist who nonetheless realized a need for governmental "Trust Busting" intervention to ensure competitive economics..... he was also an environmentalist that saw a need to create national parks and provide governmental stewardship to the people's environment..... thus preserving the liberties and rights of ALL Citizens.
Neither did the founding Fathers experience the Great Depression that brought about significant changes in the ideas of Citizens regarding the governments role in providing and otherwise supporting saftynets for the sick, elderly and victims of peresonal or large scale economic and/or natural cataclysm.
Laissez-faire capitalism is no longer the mantra of modern Liberalism.... Liberalism learned from its mistakes and understands the economy to be hybrid with government playing a role in regulation and oversight. How this is done, to what degree this is done is a matter for ad hoc debate almost issue-by-issue.....
What the founding Fathers did anticipate was the need for a Liberal Democratic government capable of facing the future.... a government of checks and balances at every level so that the hegemony of any political block is unlikely, or at least difficult to achieve..... and compromise is necessary avoiding the pitfalls of ideological extremism. The idea of Liberal Democratic government is itself an extreme concept for the structure of government in which moderation and pragmatism would likely prevail. It is also the most difficult type of government to keep and maintain, being at the service of the People, and requiring maximum participation by the people.
The Federal Agencies are all quite Constitutional, serving specific functions.... and the Federal versus State administration issue has been around as long as the Nation. Sometimes this issue was even given to "buzz word" meaning, such as "States Rights" being a codeword for first, the advocacy for a Slave economy in the South, and then for Southern resistence to Federal legislation during the Civil Rights movement, barring things like racial segregation.
Most issues that are currently handled by Federal Bureaucracy have State counterparts, and are established to achieve integrated public policy across ALL of the United States..... piecemeal/patchwork application of Environmental protections, for example, creates inconsistant effects that can negatively impact environments crossing state lines.... water, air.... etc..... Similary, America has some very great interest in having some minimum standards to which the young are educated.... a Department of Education at the Federal Level is quite consistant and certainly not un-Constitutional.... the air-waves..... transportation... all the same.
Now... how Federal Law is implemented.... fixing problems, etc.... all part of the deal.....
What some call "movement conservatism", what I call modern Republicanism is, in most cases regressive in the sense that the desired implementation is reminiscent of conditions that existed in the 19th Century..... there is some nostalgia, and some of the rhetoric appeals to the "rugged individualist", the rich and well-to-do. It is, however, an ideology of denial, because the idea that simple laissez-faire market economies are all a Nation needs has been debunked for at least a century, and the proposition depends heavily of collective forgetfullness as a People..... Grover Norquist himself eagerly anticipated the passing of the WWII generation, the generation that lived through the Great Depression and who in majority supported "New Deal" government.... Social Security, etc.... Why? Because that generation hadn't forgotten why all that "New Deal" stuff was there in the first place.
Modern Republicanism is essentially subversive.... it is not "Liberal" in the most fundamental sense in that the government is not something to run efficiently or improve or use for the common good of the American People..... it is something to kill, to undermine, to strangle.
Modern Republicanism has a problem with the Liberal Constitution..... it is not there to support and defend the Constitution, it is there to bury it.
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Sunday, July 01, 2007 at 12:58 PM
As for the "with-us-or-against-us" mentality, were you not making the same statement (without saying it outright) when you assumed that because we do not accept your inferences as to the Republicans' motives that Kenny and I were, therefore, for Republicans?
Posted by: Stephanie | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 11:11 PM
Ghost,
"I've heard Liberals called facists to, but then we'd have to say the Constitution is facist...."
Define your use of "Liberals" please. Do you refer to Democrats as "Liberals"? The distinction is important.
In the Constitution the federal government has a very limited role. The way our country is run has changed quite a bit from the role defined in the Constitution. FDA, FCC, U.S. Dept. of Education -- all these bureaucracies and more are not given to federal control in the Constitution, yet the Democrat politicians very much want control of them. These are, by the Constitutions, matters that should have been left to the states. However, the "Nanny State" mentality so often attributed to Democrats defies the definitions of the Constitution.
Libertarian is the only brand of "Liberalism" that I am aware of that holds to the notion of returning to the Constitutional definitions of the federal government. Yet, if you are Libertarian by affiliation, it seems odd that you would defend Democrats so strenuously.
Posted by: Stephanie | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 11:08 PM
Oh.... someone else you might like Gringoman in the vein of academic discourse on the commonalities and differences inherent within historical manifestations of Totalitarian and/or Authoritarian Regimes....
As you know I equate totalitarian Nazis with totalitarian Stalinism much in the same way as Hannah Arendt..... wherein lies much of my critique that simply comparing aspects of modern Republicanism with facism or communism is not inherently "demonization" insofar as there is truth in some mutually revealed component or phenomena worthy of comparison.
Soros, for example, confronted with the "with-us-or-against-us" rhetoric of Dubya's Republican administration was reminded of Nazi and Communist rhetoric which he had personally experienced. He admits that he should probably have "kept that to himself".... however, in an open society, why would that be the case? If there are historically clear parallels to the much analyzed totalitarian tendencies of the past, why would they not be used as examples..... and even more seriously..... why would they not be used as alarms? As canaries in the coal mine of freedom, so to speak?
Because it will hurt somebody's feelings? Because a simile does not EXACTLY duplicate the historical extremes a tendency has formerly achieved when left unchecked?
That is nonsense, and such suggestions are merely intended to suppress criticism, especially when they have been presented in such nuanced context as we find with Soros, and with our original example, Durbin.
Do we doubt that freedom can slowly slip away as we submit to one authoritarian Republican regime after another?
If we do doubt that possiblity, we do so at our own peril and despite unfortunate periods of our own history..... did you know that there were high-profile Nazi sympathizers, Captains of State and Industry in both America and England prior to World War II? Did you know there was a rightest conspiricy to overthrow FDR?
America is far more susceptable to rightest ideologies than it ever was to the leftest varieties.... both end up in something quite different than Liberal Democracy..... I for one do not wish to go down that road, and if the occasional comparison to facism hurts a Republican's feelings.... that is a small price to pay. I've heard Liberals called facists to, but then we'd have to say the Constitution is facist....
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 09:25 PM
Ghost,
Please know that you discredit both your self and your objectives by your stubborn resistance to reason.
Posted by: Stephanie | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 09:10 PM
I know Gringoman.... You're wondering "Who could Karl Popper be to have so influenced George Soros in his passion for open societies?"
So Gringoman.... I would say that I probably like George Soros..... and Karl Popper for that matter, more than dislike them.
I mainly dislike modern Republicanism, and I don't think either Soros, or the late Popper are now, or would have been Republicans understood in its current manifestation.
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 08:43 PM
George Soros Compares Dubya to Nazis
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 08:14 PM
Well I don't have to infer much Stephanie.... What I related to you was not DNC interpretation.... I don't even have the DNC bookmarked. I read PNAC for my insights in to NEOCON Global Politics.
I love Grover Norquist for Republican Economics..... and if you think that he and his ilk don't/didn't have influence, think again: PBS Interview
You can believe or not that the Republican Party is anti-government except where it has to do with ensuring coporations make massive profits. You can read it in their literature, and you can see it in their governance. No clairvoyance required. They have a very specific political philosophy and they practice regimented political discipline.... so even if there is a guy you like and like what he says..... when he's in the hot seat he is going to vote the Republican mantra.... and if they don't, there are major consequences.
The Republican Party hasn't always been like that.... however for the last 10-15 years it is quite apparent what they have become..... this Republican administration is the epitome of the rightest political philosophy that planted seeds after Goldwater, was refined during Nixon and by the time 1994 rolled around with Newt Gingrich at the helm, it was a well oiled machine.
Now.... the Democrats? Totally different animal.... First of all there are more groups under the Democratic umbrella than the Republicans could ever dream of..... Democrats
Comparing the two partys is apples and oranges.... maybe apples and kumquats.....
Now, you can tell me that you like Republican Political Philosophy, that you like "Starve the Beast", and politicians running for government office that don't believe government has a real function, or that you are very very rich and don't think you should have to pay taxes, or that America should be a Evangelical Christian Theocracy with Pat Roberts the spiritual advisor to King George serving at the pleasure of God.....
But don't tell me I cannot discern their motives..... because I can, and you can too. And it doesn't take claivoyance to do it. Are they deceitful? Yes.... however modern Republicanism has become so transparent..... well.... most American's right now wonder why Dubya and his sympathizers even open their mouths.
But hey! Albanians LOVE Dubya! Link
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 04:56 PM
Gringoman,
Holding allegiance with neither the RNC or the DNC, I have often wondered at the up-roar over the Fairness Doctrine.
To quote from your source:
"The public relies instead on the judgment of broadcast journalists and its own reasoning ability to sort out one-sided or distorted coverage of an issue."
I've witnessed this myself. And, considering that reasoning/critical thinking is no longer taught in high school (at least not as a core requirement), I must say that balanced coverage seems like a good thing to me. Being that I live in a "blue" state, balanced coverage -- if it were applied to print media as well -- would give the conservatives a chance to speak out where the "market" often silences them.
To quote you: "Talk Radio, for them, is unfair: too free-wheeling, too irreverent, too popular, too politically incorrect."
I don't listen to Talk Radio. I like music, and I listen to music when the radio is on. Plus, Talk Radio, in my limited experience, is often people being obnoxious (either pole)and I have better ways to spend my time. That being said, even if there were two radio programs -- i.e. equal time -- you can choose not to listen to the liberal program. In fact, that's already been done according to conservatives; they had their chance, and their program didn't suit their market. I don't see why giving them a chance to speak is so offensive to you, other than that you do not like what they have to say.
So, why is the Fairness Doctrine so dangerous? If liberals can't compete on talk radio, they can't compete even with the Fairness Doctrine they can merely stay on the air. What's the problem? Balance in bias seems like a good thing for America.
Posted by: Stephanie | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 03:30 PM
Kenny,
Hidden...hidden...you said hidden tongue-in-cheek. I was expecting something that alluded to past discussions. I didn't think that particular balance between independence and interdependence qualified as hidden.
;-)
"So you're not going to convince her."
I didn't think I was going to convince her, but it seemed fair on my part to warn her that I was no longer going to take the time to read it (unless it's worth was proven by her own material).
"she now goes to rather a lot of trouble to use blockquote tags so that you can tell at a glance which parts are hers and which parts are other people's"
Which is very much appreciated. It means I can skim/skip the quotes without skim/skipping her.
Posted by: Stephanie | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 02:58 PM
Ghost,
"simply reading the blueprint"
You are infering what you feel those blueprints mean to Bush & Company, and imputing the motives you suspect they have on the basis of that inference.
"know who is influencing the Republican Party/Dubya"
You are infering how much influence you feel Norquist's sound bytes (as translated into DNC sound bytes) has on Bush's thinking, and imputing motives on the basis of the suspected influence.
Not to mention, assuming the DNC's (as well as the reporters/pundits) analysis of Norquist is wholly accurate and that they have a clear sense of Norquist's motives.
"if the shoe fits wear it"
The shoe you made? No, let them wear their own shoes, it's enough to hold against them -- trust me.
Listen, you do not have to infer meaning or even assume motive. Is their actions right/responsible? If not, then don't vote for them. If you want to take it one step further, explain to other why their actions are not right or responsible in your opinion. You do not have to tread the slippery slope of faux-telepathy to make your point, Ghost.
Posted by: Stephanie | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 02:53 PM
GD,
Ma'm,(I'll refrain from Kenny's 'Honeychile,'if you don't mind) in your Cut n' Paste Crusade to preach the righteous superiority of Democrats, who you presume to be less rotten and ignoble than their Pub counterparts, you tend to wiggle. I mean 'wiggle' as in dodging or evading the pointed specific. E.g. I (and conceivably others) still await your answering my questions re George Soros. You indicated that you're working on it. Good. Work away. In the mean time, could you get specific and concrete and maybe even up-front on another Dem fave? I refer to the Fairness Doctrine. Would you care to expose yourself on this?
FYI The recent gringoman post,(coincidentally)is 'THE (sic) FAIRNESS DOCTRINE'. In the interests of real fairness, you may use this as a launching pad, attack it, or just subtly denounce it, or (probably the safest) just ignore it. (It concludes, incidentally, with an off-topic remark about Monica Crowley (ABC Radio) and the Fred Train that's comin' round the bend, and which Monica thinks will chug, eventually, to a screeching halt.) Here's the beginning of 'THE (sic)FAIRNESS DOCTRINE'.
The Fairness Doctrine would likely attract George Orwell. He had a nose for shifty language. The Fairness Doctrine is to fairness as Air America is to America: camouflage for socialist frustration with the free market.
Of course Democrats and progressives and Soros workers feel a fatal attraction. The Fairness Doctrine targets their bane of banes, conservative Talk Radio. Such uppity Talk Radio unnerves them, despite the explosion in other media outlets for every imaginable opinion, lunacy and ideology , from Stalinism to Hitlerism to Hillarycare. The (sic) Fairness Doctrine, by sigging the dogs of Bureaucracy, PC Police and "equal time" on radio---an idea too ludicrous to use against corporate MSM and other media--- would in effect shut down what's become the national Town Forum.
Still, the progressivists must and will try. Talk Radio, for them, is unfair: too free-wheeling, too irreverent, too popular, too politically incorrect. In other words, too American, too democratic in a dangerous sense, too vox populi for governmental taste. Worse yet, it seems to tilt Right at a time when most intelligentsia, bureaucracies, academics, junkies, pornographers and speculator billionaires like George Soros want the U.S. tilting Left. European eliteniks and their U.S. counterparts, either in envy or horror, see American Talk Radio as a Wild West of megaherz and kilohertz. It's just too American! It must be tamed, or better yet, destroyed.
The Left, earnest foe of cannibal capitalism, has a perennial fairness dilemna : How to deal with the huge numbers it sees as either too ignorant or too ill-intentioned for Mondo Socialismus. The Left appears to know how smart, knowledgeable, sophisticated, legalistic, and righteous it is. Its press and publications constantly demonstrate this to itself. Books, judges, bureaucrats and tenured professors back up the Truthiness. On the web many thousands will spout these accepted Truths handed down from the mandarin elite. It's heady. They feel empowered, kicking U.S. imperialist butt. It can also bolster their potty-mouth anger against "the idiots, the morons, the wingnuts, the anti-abortionists, the Christian crazies etc. And don't forget the corporate overlords who won't invent energy-saving electric cars, or let us invent them. They profit from oil and war, the bourgeois bastards, and make the muslims mad at us."
Yet the problem continues. Outside of Hollywood and the campus soviets, so many still don't adopt the Left's vision thing. Worse yet, so many flock to Talk Radio, The crux of the problem: Left media, despite decades of effort, can't seem to function in a free market. It advocates for The People, yet the People turn away, even run away. Despite "listener donations," unless it gets hand-outs from Government and/or "progressive" philanthropists, it dies like a dog. The Left and a free market (of ideas too) mix like oil and water. For the "progressive" and anti-American imperialist of all ages and pedigrees, this is deeply frustrating. Likely embittering. Without Congressional pork or Soros-type subsidy, they feel like the brunette who loses the guy to the blonde. It's not fair! And they're right. It's not fair. It just is. Air America (despite the pretentious name, astonishng amount of free publicity and support by the 'non-biased' MSM) failed even in New York City, a Liberal Valhalla. Fair? Maybe not. Galling? And how. Ratings, being free market, apparently can't be manipulated like elections......
(Complete at gringoman.com)
Posted by: gringoman | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 01:06 PM
Kenny you silly.... you know you have no defense against me :)
Link
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 09:15 AM
The tongue-in-cheek bit was just that in saying that I had never needed help to defend myself against the Ghost, I appealed to everybody else for...um...help in making my point. ;-)
Stephanie, everybody and his mother has asked the Ghost not to cut and paste big chunks of other people's opinions into the comments section. So you're not going to convince her. But it's not that she's just ignored everybody; she now goes to rather a lot of trouble to use blockquote tags so that you can tell at a glance which parts are hers and which parts are other people's...when she first started commenting here, you couldn't tell because they were just all mixed together. What you see now is a compromise approach.
My impression is that a lot of the regulars just skip all the cut-and-pasted parts. I don't necessarily skip them but I don't usually respond to them, because naturally I'm more interested in what the Ghost is thinking.
Posted by: Kenny | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 06:24 AM
Well.... wait a second..... I'm looking for Kenny's tongue....
Not imputing motivations.... simply reading the blueprint..... know who is influencing the Republican Party/Dubya.....didn't have to rely on sound bytes..... right wing think tanks publish political philosophies, strategies for the last ten years or more.... PNAC, NEOCONS, Norquist.... if the shoe fits wear it.... excerptations are always germane even if you don't understand them.... comments incisive even if idiosyncratic.....
Tongue.....tongue.... tongue.... where is the tongue..... not in my ear....
Tongue Tricks
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 05:45 AM
Kenny,
I don't know about hidden tongue-in-cheek, but I must admit amusement at the mixture of biblical and speculative fiction allusions. Sounds like the kind of thing I would do.
Posted by: Stephanie | Friday, June 29, 2007 at 10:56 PM
Ghost,
I must, respectfully, request that you refrain from dumping lengthy quoted passages for me for two reasons:
1) When I want to read what the reporters, pundits, and politicians have to say, then I'll seek them out myself.
2) If I'm engaging you in debate, I want to read what you have to express; therefore, unless the passage is integral to the discussion -- meaning facts, proofs or support for your argument -- I'm not going to read an article that's just dumped on me.
What do you have to say? What are you thinking? Politicians, political pundits, and "news" reporters get plenty of air-time. On a blog, it's your chance to speak out. That's why I blog. I'm interested in speaking out, and I'm interested in speaking with people who agree or disagree with me. I actually care to know what you think, and that's why I'm here. So, please, please, please, tell me what you think, not what you've read.
"It's ok to admit you were dooped....."
Okay, first, I've never been a Republican. I've voted for Republicans, Democrats, third-party, and independent candidates. More over, I have admitted that I believed -- mistakenly -- a great deal of what Bush said. That was over two years ago. I also am a firm believer in voting against incumbents -- to the tune of devoting my time, energy and money to that very cause as the Secretary of the Board of Directors.
The very simple fact is that you do not have to like Republicans just because you don't swallow whatever the DNC shovels out. It's called thinking independently. BTW, the DNC's brand of "liberalism" is, imo, just as dangerous to this country as Bush & the neo-cons version of "conservatism." Elitist plutocrats do not seem to have my best interests in mind when they sell their votes to the special interest group of their choice. If they do think they are looking out for my best interests, or the best interests of this nation, then there is something wrong with their thinking; however, I don't claim to know what it is they are thinking. I just know that their actions are such that I cannot vote for them.
Now, Ghost, please tell me what you think about my response.
Posted by: Stephanie | Friday, June 29, 2007 at 10:39 PM
[laughing delightedly] My dear Ghost, if you want to convince us that you are capable of reading the minds and motivations of a bunch of politicians whom you have never met or spoken with, don't you think it would be wise not to attempt a mind-reading performance on us, who can't possibly help but know how completely off in the wilderness you are in your speculations?
Hon, why in heaven's name would I think you are judging me (who you know perfectly well thinks Bush is an ass and has an overall low opinion of the Republican Party) when you go on and on incessantly about how the Bush circle's motives are evil?
I can't speak for Stephanie, of course, but I can tell you that you are in a fantasy-land that isn't within light-years of reality if you genuinely think that my gentle warnings about imputation of vile motives, comes from a place where I'm saying:
"Oh.... we're just well meaning people.... how could we know? How could we know? Nobody knows the future? We're just incompetent boobs that mean well! And if we didn't know, how could you know, and how can you judge our self righteousness as impure? How could you, how could you? Help Help.... we're being victimized once again by those awful Liberals who are judging us! Help!"
I mean, Ghost, it had never until this moment crossed my mind that in your obsession over Bush you might be including me on the list of persons-who-have-sold-their-soul-to-Satan, and that therefore I should be feeling defensive about slurs on my character...
[still chuckling] Honeychil', you gotta reel yourself back in at least a little bit.
I mean, I appeal to the regulars here at ATB: can any of you imagine a scenario in which I feel it necessary to say, "Somebody please help me! Help me! I can't defend myself against the Ghost! She's judging me and I'm incapacitated by my distress! Help! Help!"??????
(There's a bonus point opportunity at one point in this comment, by the way, for people who like to play find-the-tongue-hidden-in-the-cheek. I will explain this dark and mystic utterance after a while in a later comment.)
Posted by: Kenny | Friday, June 29, 2007 at 09:32 PM
I believe what Grover and his Republican buddies say, don't you? :)
Actually, Kenny and Stephanie.... your tact that "I can't really can't know the motives of the Republican Party" is pretty lame.
You two are using a common Republican argument now that their reign and ideology are proving bankrupt that "Oh.... we're just well meaning people.... how could we know? How could we know? Nobody knows the future? We're just incompetent boobs that mean well!"
And of course the corrollary...."And if we didn't know, how could you know, and how can you judge our self righteousness as impure?"
"How could you, how could you? Help Help.... we're being victimized once again by those awful Liberals who are judging us! Help!"
Oh.... there's more:
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Friday, June 29, 2007 at 07:49 PM
Ghost,
I will refer to something I said earlier, and something Kenny has said in more than one phrasing.
"All you know is the sound bytes you hear and the inference you take from those sound bytes. You don't know what's at the heart of their decision-making process."
So, let's try again, how do you come to conclude that your inference of the reasoning behind the sound bytes is an accurate representation?
Posted by: Stephanie | Friday, June 29, 2007 at 04:24 PM
Ghost,
I feel the need preemptively to say something about the series of blog posts that I think Alexandra's going to have up shortly (she just got back from safari or the Antarctica or whatever it was, and has a 2,000-message e-mail backlog): I wrote all of it two or three weeks ago. That means that I didn't specifically design it with your comments in mind.
(I figured I'd better say that because your comments in the last two weeks -- most recently having to do with your belief that you can accurately judge the motives of people whom you dislike -- have been one long series of illustrations of my points, and I don't want you to think I aimed the whole series at you. I wasn't actually intending to use you for all my bad examples -- so please don't get upset if it looks like I'm picking on you when the posts start coming up.)
Posted by: Kenny | Friday, June 29, 2007 at 03:41 PM
How indeed.... why they tell me Stephanie, they tell me....
Norquist: .....Democrats should be content with being like neutered farm animals. ......"Bipartisanship is another name for date rape," ......"drown government in the bathtub" .....It's not ALL government, just the part that provides a safety net for the most vulnerable in our society.
Norquist: "My ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed-carry permit. Because that person doesn't need the goddamn government for anything, "
Indeed, Republican bridge-builder to the 19th century bringing back the laissez-faire of the 1890s McKinley era, when corporations plundered without regulation, workers' rights were abused, environmental protection didn't exist.
Now.... if you are a "moderate" Republican, you might not have noticed that the Party of Lincoln and Eisenhower has been hijacked by rightest (not "right" or "conservative"..... rightests).
In the next edition, I'll tell you about K Street.....
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Friday, June 29, 2007 at 05:02 AM
I thought of that gadfly.... really don't understand the Democrats on this one.... however, if they wanted to do that, they would wait until there was a Democratic President and a majority in Congress....
Dubya has been sucking up to Mexico on immigration reform since the day he took office..... in addition to all the corporatist reasons for amnesty.... suppression of labor costs..... and political reasons..... straining welfare systems and maybe Social Security..... I also think Dubya thinks he is perceived as the great Republican El Presidente, actually winning votes for the Republican Party.
The Democrats position on all this (some of them, not all) is just goofy..... makes no sense.
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 09:37 PM
Ghost,
"Of course I know the motives of Republicans."
How?!?
Posted by: Stephanie | Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 09:24 PM
:-D Oh, that's funny. "concerns about their living conditions and life style"
Right. No, GD, their concern is legalizing new Dem voters. Nothing more.
Posted by: gadfly | Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 06:13 PM
Of course I know the motives of Republicans.
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 05:26 PM
Ghost,
You're assuming you know the motives of both Democrats and Republicans -- which you don't. All you know is the sound bytes you hear and the inference you take from those sound bytes. You don't know what's at the heart of their decision-making process. And that something you consistently don't seem to understand on this post.
Can you read their minds? Can you read their hearts? Or, can you just read the words written about them through your particular lens like the rest of us?
Those rich Democrats gain significant amounts of money from their corporate investments; just like Republicans do. Where does their money come from? Does it rain down from heaven for their goodness? No, it comes the same way Republican money does -- investment, work, and inheritance. So, how can you assume that Democrat money is good and Republican money is bad. Democrats are benevolent; Republicans are greedy.
Does the recent news about Edwards raising money for the poor and using it to get a jump start on his presidential campaign give you not the least bit moment of pause?
Posted by: Stephanie | Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 03:04 PM
I wonder if repeatedly associating the terms "conservative", "conservatives", and "conservatism" with this Republican administration and modern Republicanism in general is in fact demonizing conservatives?
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 05:03 AM
Oh, excuse me Stephanie.... I see a qualitative difference between bleeding-heart Liberal rich politicians who want to, ill-advisedly, support amnesty legislation for illegal immigrants because of concerns about their living conditions and life style, and those who support it because it would generally suppress labor costs and strain the system of social services including Social Security which they want to break anyway.
In this unfortunate example, we see the same advocacy for two very different reasons..... one humanitarian, and one economic laissez faire.
Also, rich politicians that bring in Corporate leaders to write legislation intended to regulate corporations are qualitatively different then rich politicians that view governmental roles more like the Democratic Party does.... you know.... oversight, regulation, protections for the citizenry against exploitation and corporate excess.....
Also, rich people who donate to political parties with governmental philosophies tantamount to corporate plutocracy are qualitatively different than those who think government has a role in the economy or protecting the environment, for example.
I'm studying up on Soros to see if I like him or not Gringo....
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 04:53 AM
GD,
M'am, thank you for the paste job on Warren Buffet. Would a little time-out from evasion be possible? Sorry, as this is not a Sunday TV Meet-the-Pol format, I thought you might be willing to address the subject raised and possibly give a straightforward answer. The subject raised---if I can remind you--- was George Soros, and how much of his Open Society/Open Borders/Diplomacy-With- Jihadis Agenda For Planet Earth you embrace or do not embrace. Whether or not you see him as the Democrats' secular Father Divine, you clearly have BDR in common with him, and the Democratic wish to exploit Bush's Iraq inadequacies by U.S. surrender instead of leadership with a plan for success.
What else can you reveal about you and George? Fairness Doctrine? Legalized drugs? Roe vs. Wade forever? Suzy wedding Samantha?
Warren Buffet? Nice try, but Buffet is never considered megalomaniacal, determined to push an agenda wherever in the world he can get a foothold, which in effect means the ultra-tolerant West. Nor is he known to fund, directly or indirectly, media that will advance a radical political/cultural agenda and target opponents. Warren Buffet is, well, simply an American humanitarian billionaire from the Mid-West. He's never seen as a driven World Commissar who happens to have dollars to push an agenda . He's first and foremost a philanthropist, not first and foremost a prog. He wants the poor to be less poor and the rich to be less rich, and he thinks his money can help, which makes him a instrument for the Clinton Machine. Soros may want that too, while believing that his money can do a lot to social engineer humanity, which makes the Clintons an instrument for Soros.
Or maybe you don't see Soros this way. Maybe you think that the Democratic Party today is not even in his periscope, let alone his pocket. Maybe he isn't even a co-ideologue of yours, or an anti-neocon neo-com. And maybe now you will take this opportunity to clarify and set the record straight?
Posted by: gringoman | Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 12:18 AM
Ghost,
That is a description Democrats like to share amongst themselves; that doesn't mean that difference is the least bit accurate. Bread and circuses doesn't amount to noblesse oblige.
Posted by: Stephanie | Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 10:26 PM
plu·toc·ra·cyÂ
n.  pl. plu·toc·ra·cies
- Government by the wealthy.
- A wealthy class that controls a government.
- A government or state in which the wealthy rule.
pa·tri·cian–noun
1.
a person of noble or high rank; aristocrat.
2.
a person of very good background, education, and refinement.
3.
a member of the original senatorial aristocracy in ancient Rome.
4.
(under the later Roman and Byzantine empires) a title or dignity conferred by the emperor.
5.
a member of a hereditary ruling class in certain medieval German, Swiss, and Italian free cities.
–adjective
6.
of high social rank or noble family; aristocratic.
no·blesse o·blige
–noun
the moral obligation of those of high birth, powerful social position, etc., to act with honor, kindliness, generosity, etc.
Certainly both political parties have their rich politicians and rich patrons.... one almost has to be independently wealthy to actually be able to run for high office in America.....
What has been described as the difference between the modern Republican and the Democratic patrician is the Republican rich typically lack a sense of noblesse oblige..... they are creatures of greed that advocate greed as the highest virtue bringing forth all public good deserving attention.
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 09:36 PM
Yeah, GD, whatever.
heterogenous
Fascism? Socialism?
peace, love, tolerance
Bush is the enemy
just dancin'
Posted by: gadfly | Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 06:21 PM
In other words, in the Ghost's vocabulary, Teddy Kennedy -- despite being a person who was born into wealth (pluto-) and power (-cracy), is not a plutocrat...because "plutocrat" means nothing more than, "rich person who disagrees with the Ghost's political views."
Posted by: Kenny Pierce | Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 10:22 AM
To decomplicate a potentially convoluted and anecdotal response.... three points.... first.... the Democratic Party is far more heterogenous and undisciplined than the Republican Party.... comparing the character of the two is almost apples and oranges.
Second, my criterion for rejecting modern Republicanism is that it not only abhors America's Liberal roots, but when in power actively attempts to undermine the governmental architecture that sustains the provisions of and hopes contained in the American Constitution. The extremist polarity is categorically rightest (not "right" as in center-right-Liberal), but rightest in the sense that "if we win, we RULE, and can do whatever we want including stacking the deck so we stay in power" (Tom Delay). Paraphrasing, of course his message by deed.
Third, just because one is a rich industrialist does not equate to Corporate Plutocrat.... there have been and are many rich Liberal people who believe in the Liberal Constitution and understand that mercantile/market/corporate activity does not necessarily precipitate pure goodness on human beings, and government has a role and function in ensuring fairness for "the rest of us" not blessed with monumental fortunes but faced with existential realities like old-age, illness and death (the people who need Social Security for example).... as well as other human concerns that do not involve the priorities established by the profit motive.... clean water and air for example.
Alluding back to my original point about the heterogenous nature of the Democratic Party, Buffet was addressing the Republican-wing of the Democratic Party..... the right-of-center Clinton DLC is very pro-corporate, and will probably get a LOT of corporate backing..... I wonder who Soros will back?Â
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 05:14 AM
GD,
M'am, as a tireless apostle for today's Democrats, can you clarify your attitude or position with respect to the world's most successful money changer, the billionaire George Soros? Is it fair to say that you do not consider today's Democratic Party to be a subdivision of Soros Enterprises, as some--possibly mean-spirited rightests---are suggesting? You probably know that the Hungarian Soros, after being unceremoniously booted out of Russia by Vlad Putin, continues his extensive philanthropizing globally, including great efforts to develop Eastern Europe's tolerance for drugs, lesbianism, love instead of war, multy-cultiness, post-nationalism, homosexual marriage, State nanny projects etc etc. And you probably know that Soros, like you, wants the Democrats in and Republicans out. In fact, after becoming a U.S. citizen, he proclaimed in a speech, "Vee vant to take bok Ameyrika!"
Specifically, is there anything in the Gyorgi Soros Agenda you do not embrace? Or can you specify what you---as a presumably native-born liberal advocate--- do and do not embrace of this progressive plutocrat?
Posted by: gringoman | Tuesday, June 26, 2007 at 11:24 PM
I don't think the problems of the Republican Party and this Republican administration has anything to do with demonization. They have proven themselves to be at least incompetent, possibly cynical, and ideologically bankrupt..... and the American People are waking up..... that's their problem.
Posted by: Ghost Dansing | Tuesday, June 26, 2007 at 09:41 PM