Who needs private sector experience in a “hope and change” world? Apparently not too many cabinet members in the Obama administration.

This graphic certainly explains alot.    It would explain the vast growth in government jobs made available, the lack of understanding or concrete plans for generating private sector jobs, and the disdain for capitalism that sits like a never-ending virus in the Obama administration.

Another couple of interesting tidbits:

Among President Obama, his Vice President and 15 Cabinet officers, number with military experience:  2 (Gates at Defense and Shinseki at Veterans Affairs).

Number of lawyers:  8.

This is the change that NO ONE was waiting for!

Even though Obama is clearly setting a new low standard here, in a broader sense, this graph also depicts how far from their constituents many in Washington can be, even as far back as 1909.  I mean don’t you think at least a comfortable majority of public sector experienced individuals should be a common statistic in cabinet picks?  But that hasn’t happened much in the last 100 years. 

I’m sure the Founders didn’t much count on “career politicians” and lawyers running our country.  Seems in the last hundred years, only Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes understood the need for a big dose of private sector experience when running this country….

(H/T: The American Thinker - Private Sector experienc in Obama’s cabinet…graph of the day)

Conservatives…identify the legitimate environmental issues (they do exists..e.g.: river pollution, mining pollution) and capture the issue…make legitamate changes and deflate this green=red issue.

Am I the only one who finds that the Kagans are relentlessly, almost ideologically, committed to US build-ups overseas, and the regular use of military power and military-related tools generally? I just read the WaPo op-ed from last week. It tells me nothing I haven’t heard from them whether on C-Span, Lehrer, or from their various websites/think-tanks for years. Certainly, Afghanistan may be worth the build-up they counsel. My own thoughts are deeply divided, so it’s not obvious that they are wrong in the op-ed. Nor are they incorrect that military leverage is the ultimate backbone for the exercise of national power. I agree there too. And I know they are a lot smarter, better travelled, and have better access than me. So I do read them usually.

But increasingly I don’t feel like I need to. I already know their answer – more soldiers, and more ‘will’ or ‘backbone.’ As Greenwald has said, these guys seems like robots. They always seem to suggest that more US force is the answer. If Russia misbehaves, we should threaten it implicitly and let southeastern Europe into NATO. On China, belligerence is the obvious way to save Taiwan. Iran should be bombed. Iraq was a great idea. Etc, etc.

It can’t be this easy. There are other tools of national power and influence – diplomacy, aid, sanctions – and these are wildly underfunded. (Compare the DoD and State budgets; the former is funded by 25-30x the latter. And forget about USAID.) I realize that soft power or whatever you want to call it is ‘soft.’ It doesn’t work too well. But counsels to war or war-like build-ups/advisors/military aid, etc, have their own massive costs that I never seem to hear about from them or other ‘neo-cons’ (if that is where the Kagans lie). Walt’ has a nice 2- piece on the huge costs this sort of counsel carries implicitly. You can’t just war and war – it guts democratic freedoms at home, turns you into an imperialist abroad (whether you want to be or not), and breaks the domestic fiscus. (Not to mention that your country becomes responsible for a great deal of death and destruction, regardless of the cause it serves.) Do the Kagans ever blink for a moment when they read about the trillion dollar deficits for the next decade? I am sure they do. They are pretty bright. But is their answer simply to reflexively say we should cut domestic programs to prop-up defense spending at the $6-700 billion level indefinitely? Again it just can’t be that easy.

Republic versus Democracy

As Lord Acton said, ‘historical thought’ is far more important than historical knowledge. Historical thought is using the lessons of history to under­stand the present and to make decisions for the future. In other words, it was by using history as an analytical tool and making use of the lessons of his­tory that our founders brought our Constitution into being.

Even though nearly every politician, teacher, journalist and citizen believes that our Founders created a democracy, they did not. The Founders knew full-well the differences between a Republic and a Democracy. A Republic is representative government ruled by law (the Constitution). A democracy is direct government ruled by the majority (mob rule). A Republic recognizes the inalienable rights of individuals while democracies are only concerned with group wants or needs (the public good). I invite you to join me in raising public awareness regarding this distinction.

Democracies always self-destruct when the non-productive majority realizes that it can vote itself handouts from the productive minority by electing the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury. To maintain their power, these candidates must adopt an ever-increasing tax and spend policy to satisfy the ever-increasing desires of the majority. As taxes increase, incentive to produce decreases, causing many of the once productive to drop out and join the non-productive. When there are no longer enough producers to fund the legitimate functions of government and the socialist programs, the democracy will collapse, always to be followed by a Dictatorship.

All liberals and some conservatives would do well to study the classics. Compare the Greek’s failed Democracy to the Roman’s failed Republic. They both end in tragedy as unfettered Democracy leads to ‘mob’ rule, which then leads to an Oligarchy (Oppression). The clear distinction between the Greek and the Roman governments is that the Roman Republic lasted longer and was the envy of the world. It wasn’t until the Roman Republic allowed LIBERALS to kill the Republic by becoming a pure Democracy (mob rule). This then led to an Oligarchy (the reign of the Caesars), and eventually the Roman Empire collapsed under its own bureaucratic, liberal weight. Quite simply, the Roman government tried to give the people too many entitlements and then had to oppress the people just to maintain them.

This is the reality that our Founding Fathers were great students of. They understood that a Democracy would ultimately crumble under its own weight. This is why you will not find the words ‘Democracy’ anywhere in the Constitution. But you will find the word ‘Republic’. You can also read the Federalist Papers, where you will also find the Founders clearly warning against pure Democracy. And in the end, this is why we have the 10th Amendment.

So, conservatism is not dead. What is dead is the misguided straying away from and attempts to redefine conservatism. True Conservatism seeks limited government, individual liberty, and the preservation of the Republic (from the Latin translation Rule of Laws). Democracy (from the Latin translation Rule of the People) seeks to destroy the Republic, destroy individual liberty, and ultimately establish an Oligarchy… or oppression.

To date, a representative Republic is THE most successful and humane form of government the world has every known. There is not ‘one’ successful Democracy (in its pure form) that hasn’t been consigned to the ash-heap of history (name one if you can). Therefore, our Founding Fathers gave us the gift of a Republic, not a Democracy. It is true that conservatism seeks to maintain our Republic. Liberalism and liberal paternalism is tyranny, and our Founders astutely new that. In the Pledge of Allegiance we all pledge allegiance to our Republic, not to a Democracy. “Republic” is the proper description of our government, not “Democracy.” It is too bad that we don’t teach the classics to our children.

Yesterday I went to the library looking for good primers on basic political philosophies. Among others, I brought home an interesting-sounding book called The Conservative Soul. The name of the author, Andrew Sullivan, sounded sorta familiar but I couldn’t place it. After looking him up I realized I had read a few of his articles on The Daily Dish and elsewhere. I had always kinda thought he was a liberal, and judging by reviews of his book on Amazon.com, apparently so do many conservatives. After reading the first couple of chapters, he’s certainly drawing a clear distinction between what he calls “fundamentalist” conservatism — which is the variety that prevails in the U.S. today — and a more classical conservatism that is independent of the religious right and cares more about limited government, strong national defense, and states rights than ensuring that fetuses have rights but gays don’t.

Sullivan is British, Catholic, married to another man, and endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, so he’s clearly not espousing the sort of WASP-y conservatism I would have expected from a book with this title. I can tell that this treatment of right-wing politics will appeal to me far more than, say, Sarah Palin’s. To that end, I’m glad I picked up this book, because I am trying to find sympathetic expositions of any given political ideology. There’s no shortage of books with titles like “LIBERAL FASCIST NAZI MURDERERS: WHY THE LEFT WANTS TO BLIGHT AMERICA’S SOUL AND TEACH YOUR CAT TO BE GAY” — which certainly have their place — but I’d like to at least start with people who can thoughtfully express their own deeply held beliefs and explain why (and how) I should share them.

More thoughts on this book to follow.

There are two parts to this post. I am addressing two arguments that movement conservatism has deviated from traditional Burkean conservatism.

The notion that Edmund Burke is the father of conservatism is so deeply ingrained in the American intelligentsia that even liberals acknowledge it. Editor of the New York Times Book Review and author of The Death of Conservatism, Sam Tanenhaus admits that Burke was “the great originator of modern conservatism.”[1] The Death of Conservatism was met with widespread liberal acclaim, for obvious reasons. Tanenhaus argues that Obama’s election was the death knell for conservatism. He says that movement conservatives have strayed from their Burkean roots and have become “the heirs of the French rather than of the American revolution.”[2]

One of Tanenhaus’s arguments for movement conservatism’s deviation from Burkean principles is that movement conservatism has become an ideological “orthodoxy,” blindly followed by its adherents. Even when there is supposed evidence that the majority of Americans no longer desire conservative values, movement conservatives are unwilling to compromise. That unwillingness is antithetical to the Burke’s politics of prudence. And because the present iteration of conservatism, movement conservatism, is no longer Burkean, it is no longer conservative. Therefore, conservatism, Tanenhaus argues, is dead.

Unfortunately for Tanenhaus, he has severely misunderstood not only the present situation but also the Burkean politics of prudence.  By calling conservative opposition to policies ideological and therefore anti-Burkean, Tanenhaus is ignoring the history of Burke’s political life and his views on representation in government.

Burke opposed all forms of abstractions and blind ideology, and prudence dictated his politics. According to Tanenhaus, Burke saw governing as “to engage in perpetual compromise… In such a scheme there is no useful place for the either/or of ideological purism.”[3] Movement conservatism, Tanenhaus asserts, is fanatically ideological. Movement conservatism has a set of ideological principles, “right reason,” Tanenhaus calls it, and if the public disagrees with this ideology, so be it, “because the public is so often wrong.”[4] Tanenhaus opines that “There is a fundamental difference between the two parties and the politics that guides them. The modern liberal worldview is premised on consensus. Movement conservatism emphasized orthodoxy.”[5]

Movement conservatives, such as Charles Krauthammer and Newt Gingrich, paint Obama as a socialist, opposing him steadfastly, ideologically. But, to Tanenhaus, the Burkean “politics of consensus would have required Krauthammer and Gingrich to acknowledge an inescapable fact: the public favored Obama’s proposals. But the politics of orthodoxy imposes no such obligation.”[6]

Applying Burke’s politics of prudence and compromise to this example shows an extreme misunderstanding of Burke’s political life.

Burke has a history of not being swayed by populist public opinion. Burke wrote that

It is said, that twenty-four million ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic. This sort of discourse does well enough with the lamp-post for its second; to men who may reason calmly, it is ridiculous.[7]

This interpretation of Burke, as a man lacking principles, who placidly accepts whatever policy the public demands is utterly false. Why then would Burke go against majority public opinion in his efforts to reconcile with the United States of America?

When his constituents in Bristol did not like his opposition to the mercantilist policies regarding the colonies, Burke gave his “Speech to the Electors of Bristol,” where he said,

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. [8]

To Burke, a representative should not conform his judgment to that of his constituents. He is instead elected on his own virtue and his own judgment. How then, is a loyal conservative opposition to President Obama’s policies ideological, and anti-Burkean, because it goes against public opinion, if Burke himself went against public opinion frequently and Burke thought the will of the majority meant little?  Aside from a few short intervals, Burke himself spent the vast majority of his career as a leader of the Loyal Opposition.

The answer is that the conservative loyal opposition is not ideological, is still prudently Burkean in its goal (to preserve American governmental values), and conservatism is still alive.

[2]Ibid. 19

[3] Ibid 18

[4] Ibid 23

[5] Ibid 21

[6] Ibid 23

[7] Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

[8] Edmund Burke, “Speech to the Electors of Bristol,” 1774

What would WFB do? Why not just ask him?

I’m enjoying your bemused/disgusted reaction to your own poll, in which Rush Limbaugh was voted the “Most Influential Conservative Voice In America:”

In a “Rush” to judgment, Mr. Limbaugh scored the most with 26 percent of the vote. His competitor, Mr. Beck edged out the last two Republican vice presidential candidates by a nose. It goes to show that you can attain more influence being an entertainer with a face for radio than by being potentially one heartbeat away from becoming leader of the free world. Republican Congressman John Boehner, the only elected member listed in our poll, came in dead last. Boy, the great Bill Buckley would have had a field day with this one.

Now, now — why the faux-exasperation? You asked folks to name the most influential “voice” — so not surprisingly, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck sprang to many minds by an overwhelming margin. Cuz they’re, like, on the radio.

And since you only listed “one elected member” on your very own poll, that might explain why the winners were those “mere” entertainers you put on the list, along with two  politicians you’ve been encouraging your fellow Americans to obsess over. Still, you profess (or more accurately, pretend) surprise and disappointment at the results. Odd.

(And would it be rude of me to wonder where  60 Minutes or Vanity Fair would place in a similar survey of “The Most Influential Liberal Voices in America”, even if the poll had been helpfully pre-seeded with your names? Just askin’…)

More importantly, I’m intrigued by your strange new affection for William F. Buckley (now that he’s safely, respectably dead, of course.)

Especially since your dictionary’s definition of “field day” must be different than mine…

RUSH: Well, but, Bill, you know, as I study things today, you are now treated and received — and properly so — with great affection and great respect, and there are some who say that, “Oh, we wish for the old days of Buckley conservatism when it was urbane and erudite and polite.” They say that the modern era of conservatism has descended into harshness and other things.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, that’s a weapon. People use that when they want to be anti-Limbaugh. (…) It is, as I say, simply a polemical device.

Here’s a free tip for you mainstream media opinion makers, “investigative journalists” and self-appointed gatekeepers from a lowly blogger who never went to J-School:

I found that transcript in less than one minute. It’s called Google. You can have a field day with it.

Speaking of which: here’s my admittedly untrained and therefore completely unprofessional idea of what an actual “field day” might look like:

Some random lady from our office (I didn’t even turn to see who it was) stopped by and was talking to Bob about taxes.  Bob bragged about how he has fought and beat the IRS twice.  Then he said when his son moved he forgot to pay school district taxes.  Bob advised him not to pay: “let them figure out that you owe them money.”  Then, when his son got a bill for school district taxes plus steep penalties he was outraged.  The damned “liberal mayor” just had to get his hands on every red cent of his son’s hard earned money!

As Bob rambled on I saw the poor lady out of the corner of my eye inching toward the door.  He kept going on new tangents just to keep the conversation alive (“I heard the post office is closing a few branches…”).  What is it about old people that makes them continue talking to someone who has clearly lost interest?

I recently read a minor right-wing blogger’s reaction to the election of Barack Obama, our first Black president. The blogger congratulated Obama for his victory and then said something to the effect of “See, America is such a wonderfully free place that even a Black guy can get elected here!”

As a country that stopped herding millions of Jews into gas chambers, Germans are obviously a model of religious tolerance.

A bunch of White guys hammer a Black guy into a bloody pulp. While the Black man lies crumpled in a pool of his own blood, one of the White guys feels a twinge of guilt and decides he’ll call 911 for the Black man before he flees the scene like the other Whites have. While the White man is talking with the 911 operator… a right wing blogger shows up! “Wow,” the blogger marvels “Look at that White man selflessly assisting Black man in trouble! We truly live in a post-racial society!”

Or maybe a bit like Germany bragging that it’s so tolerant of religious minorities that… they no longer send them to concentration camps. Wow! Want a cookie?

Kamilla Ludwig has a good reflection on Carrie Prejean and how she shouldn’t be the face of conservative Christianity.  (ht: Bayly Blog)

…two essential conditions which are attached to all true rights; first, the capacity of individuals to claim and exercise the alleged right; second, the correspondent duty that is married to every right. If a man has a right to marry, some woman must have the duty of marrying him; if a man has a right to rest, some other person must have the duty of supporting him. If rights are confused thus with desires, the mass of men must feel always that some vast, intangible conspiracy thwarts their attainment of what they are told is their inalienable birthright.

Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

A beautiful day for uniting to pool some rally energy to take us through winter.

James O'Keefe, the ACORN buster

We learned from park ranger estimates that the crowd was around 4,000 strong. Wonderful that so many could join us on a holiday weekend.

The arriving crowd.

The gulag. You dare refuse subpar government faux-care? Into the gulag with you!

Hoft and I were thrown into the gulag:

Speaking of Hoft:

Uh oh, they got Michelle Moore and her husband, too:

John Burns rounds ‘em up, loads ‘em in:

Bill Hennessy, event emcee, addresses the crowd.

Nurse and activist Stephanie Rubach.

Dave McArthur

Activist Jay Stewart

Addressing the crowd. Photo courtesy Andrew Sondag of the Red Bud Portrait Place.

Reboot Congress has more, plus some good video of Jay Stewart’s knock-out speech.

Keyboard Militia has some great photos as well.

Jim Hoft reports. Also: Black Conservative Jay Stewart A Huge Hit At St. Louis Tea Party.

Rob Brenner says this is the new Minute Man with this great shot and I agree:

[Via]

KMOV coverage

KSDK coverage

We’re going to be selling shirts and hoodies featuring the above official St. Louis Tea Party logo online very soon to help offset costs incurred from permits, helping people with travel, et al. We don’t have a big sugar mama like HCAN or OFA like the astroturfers do, so we’re asking that you keep this in mind when making purchases this holiday season!

In this morning’s (Sunday) NYT, the following article runs–

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/us/29foodstamps.html?_r=1&hp

Full of pathos appeals, coupled with some interesting statistics, the article tracks increasing use of food stamps across the country.  In and of itself, that’s not terribly surprising.  In a difficult economy, people need help buying food.

What I found surprising and worth mulling over are a couple of facts–

1.  Growth in food stamp use is about the same in the 600 counties where it’s historically been highest, and the 600 counties where it’s historically been lowest.  That is, use of foodstamps is increasing rapidly in places where it hasn’t before.  The article isn’t terribly precise about this next point, but suggests a couple of times that the second batch of counties tend to more conservative than the first, which means that reliance on government support is (again) penetrating into places where conservative dogma says it shouldn’t.

2.  It’s not just poor people who are using food stamps.  The article makes very clear that working people and families at many levels of the economic hierarchy need support–job losses, housing bust, medical expenses, etc, are all contributing to hunger.  At the very least, the data challenges the conservative wisdom that only lazy people rely on government support.  Of course, anybody who’s paid a lick of attention for the last 30 years has known that’s crap, a fabrication of the Reagan campaign in order to fan poor white people’s indignation, while at the same time keeping them from doing much to help themselves.

3.  Notable are a couple of interviews with self-identified conservatives who are accepting government support for (what sounds like) the first time, although depending on how you define “government support,” you could argue that they’ve been accepting it their entire lives.  It’s good to see at least one of the interviewees acknowledge that food stamps aren’t just for poor, lazy people.  One of them says something like, “These are people I could be having lunch with.”  The classism of that aside, at least she recognizes something of value.  Somebody makes the point that poor people are often just as resistant to government aid as others, which was helpful to see.  But the one that really gets me is the guy who, with one hand reaches out to grab the money, and with the other slaps people who take it.  Hypocrite.  And the guy from the Heritage Foundation who (shockingly) pulls out the example of the person who lives in an expensive home and drives a Mercedez, and generalizes from her to the entire world.

If one person abusing a system were enough to call for the destruction of the system, then the Bush administration would be responsible for having smoked the Constitution; Blackwater’s rapes and murders in Iraq would be enough to destroy the US military.  And on and on.  The double-standard here is so Orwellian that it’s hard to address (thank you, John Birch, for legitimizing this kind of political discourse).

At the end of the day, what this article demonstrates is that everything conservatives say about government aid is wrong.  The system isn’t fraught with people abusing it–that’s nothing but a lie.  The system doesn’t enable laziness–it feeds working people who can’t feed themselves because our pro-corporate, anti-worker economic policies have utterly failed them.  Self-righteousness shouldn’t dictate accepting hunger as a condition of living in the wealthiest nation in the world. And conservatives who scream bloody murder about government support at the same time they accept it need to think a little harder about what they’re screaming.  I won’t argue, as some others do, that they should refuse to accept help.  It’s not the government’s job to decide who’s worthy of care based on how they exercise their First Amendment rights.  It is, however, deeply troubling that some of these folks really seem not to understand the problem here–that if they win their arguments at Tea Parties, the very support they rely on for survival will go away.

Watching our lawmakers debate over health care has been almost as entertaining as me trying to pull hair out of my head. It is has turned into nothing more than single issue and special interest gabble over nothing. No one in congress gets it. With the exception of a few minor details most of them are all playing along like this has passed. As someone who is avidly opposed to abortion, I still sit in stunned amazement at all of the representatives who sit there arguing over abortion language in the health care bill like that is the only problem they have with the entire bill.

It’s quite a message that is sent when I see the number of people who are only opposed to the bill because of that one single issue, almost like they’ve sold out on the entire rest of the bill. Not to mention the fact that the Stupak language isn’t even included in the Senate version of the bill. It was used as a way of getting the bill through congress, although never intended to actually become part of the finalized bill.

Let me make this clear I will never support abortion, but there is so much more to this thing that must also be opposed. There is nothing in the entire bill that improves anyone’s quality of care. This is about the Unions, and those who supported the president in his campaign. If you read the bill its unbelievable how much is left to the discretion of the health commissioner. Loophole after loophole, The bill is an absolute disaster.

The democrats sit and bask in the cost of the bill and how it will actually reduce the deficit over the next ten-years. It’s very simple math to determine how they figure that. New taxes to cover the cost of the bill will begin immediately after the bill is signed. They will not begin dispensing benefits until 4 years later. They are figuring their numbers with 6 years of payout and 10 years of tax collecting. Extrapolate that to a period in which the payout and tax collecting go on concurrently for the entire ten year period. That savings turns into a substantial loss. This is absolute buggery by our government and the people are going to be left powerless in its wake if the passage of this bill is not stopped.

You need to keep this in mind – our government owes 105 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities! A September post in the American Thinker lays this out very clearly:

 Our unfunded liabilities far exceed our assets. Adding up all unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Government sponsored pension funds gives us a figure slightly in excess of  $100 TRILLION dollars. That’s TRILLION with a ‘T’. The Federal budget deficit for fiscal 2009 will be approximately $1.84 TRILLION. That’s TRILLION with a ‘T’. Over the next ten years the projected deficit will be $9 TRILLION +. That’s $100,000,000,000,000.00 — TRILLION with a ‘T’. Of course, this projected deficit comes from the Congressional Budget Office and has to be considered a conservative estimate. In 1966 the feds estimated that the cost of the Medicare program by 1990 would be approximately $9 billion dollars/year; the actual cost was $67 billion dollars/year.

This is an incredibly perilous and unsustainable path. This country is being driven into the ground and if a stop isn’t put to this soon, there won’t be a country left. You wonder why I’m upset that Abortion is the only thing people are bringing up. Not that it isn’t a noble issue, but its a far cry from where this bill needs to be – in the shredder.

There are days when my mind is skimming rocks across the pond, not enough for a plate full of rant, just enough for a few glancing blows across the bow. I sent my men off hunting today, the house is empty, and I can now see the benefits of twitter – short, sweet outrageous bites of ripe words.

Holdren should be strung up high by his gonads. This incompetent spawn of political persuasion has no business running Justice. We’ve been given a man who’s plays hopscotch using widely interpretive federal law as a rock to be tossed serving nothing more than Obama’s current scatological executive prerogative.

Michelle Obama is plum ugly. Ton’s of posts this week on the woman’s poor fashion sense and major backlash against the mainstream press promoting her non-existent X factor grade of no-where-near pretty. This woman is unfortunately ugly. Yes, she’s fit and thinnish, but the woman’s uglier than my dog’s hind end. Which is surprising considering that our successful boy wonder is no where near ugly. Why would this ambitious, handsome man marry someone so unattractive? I figure it’s some sort of liberal hair shirt badge of male honor.

Sarah Palin. I won’t be reading her book, she didn’t write it and I could not care less about last year’s campaign trail. She’s a private citizen now, smartly cashing in on circumstance. I wish her well in her commercial endeavors, may she reap the beast of public consumption and grow fabulously rich. God help us if her populist drivel ever takes hold, the republic has already been raped to shreds by enough simplistic, pluralist pro-democracy political hacks baying “people power” to the ignorant masses.

This country’s smart modern day conservatives imagine that the perpetual promised land of America’s founders is based on a few simple premises;  a place where were we are free to achieve, innovate, excel, cash in, choose and create a life without interference from the state. The people who believe in these tenets have no need of populist politicians, yet they continuously embrace their alarmist calls as a last measure, furthering the state into more regulation of man’s freedom.

Populism is the antithesis of conservatism, it’s more socialist happy juice for the underclass, a jizz of simplistic dogma that appeals to ignorant voters, a simple knock down, two step of soft moves for the people, by the people. You’ll never have independence when you indicate a willingness to bow to the will of a self-serving, tax-less people. The masses will annihilate your every avenue of success out of sheer, ruthless perversity. They’ll vote for your demise out of blind spite. The founders knew this core truth of human nature.

The conservative brands do it as well as the liberal ones, it’s all about feeding the state. Our girl Palin is busy shoveling heaping dumb bucketfuls of bromides to that ancient beast of polity. I happened upon a ridiculous post today equating her in fond terms with Thomas Paine. I was appalled at how many ignorant people were lapping this shit up. Are you fucking kidding me? Paine and Palin?  That’s a partnership that would cause most true conservatives to grab some rope if they didn’t immediately succumb to congestive heart failure.

I would be a happy woman if I saw more people going rogue, questioning the people and parties in power, taking a large step back from the personal and giving the direction of  our country a clear hard, dispassionate look. Yeah, that would be good.

Contrary to what some believe, I don’t think Vice President Biden’s Delaware senate seat is really in danger of switching parties. It’s too blue a state and the Vice President’’s son, Beau, who is the probable Democratic nominee for the seat, is what Matthew Yglesias rightly calls “the best possible replacement pick.” It’s going to be a tough race for Mike Castle, the Republican candidate.

I shouldn’t be surprised that there isn’t much enthusiasm among conservatives for Castle. The state is so blue that even if the Republican Party were to repeat what happened in the NY-23rd and start supporting a very conservative candidate, as seems to be the trend in other places like Kentucky, the young Biden’s chances would probably be much better than his conservative contender’s.

Still, I think this situation is a tad unfortunate. I may be liberal but I do want there to be a strong Republican Party with tempting ideas and a range of viewpoints that are to the right of the political spectrum. If Castle were to win it might show the party that a bigger tent can payoff sometime, it can win you some seats and help you get back in the majority as liberals have realized. Sure, a big tent is not as good as one would imagine (Read: Landreiu, Lieberman, and Lincoln on the healthcare debate) but it’s still better than moving farther to the right and seeing your party shrink.

SMH:

”We have to move forward,” said Hockey. ”Clearly this issue has done us incredible damage and I hope the Australian people forgive us for having this very public display. But I say to the Australian people: we are a progressive party.”

With all the turmoil and intrigue of the Coalition’s civil war, it’s been easy to miss some of the little details. Far more interesting than theorizing over a Liberal Party disintegration that isn’t going to happen is this important piece of rhetoric from the man who might be their leader as soon as next week.

Australian politics, though not to the extent of its American counterpart, has shied away from overt expressions of left wing ideology in recent decade. Even Keating, with his heartfelt embrace of reconciliation, the republic, an improved relationship with Asia, and other such small-l liberal causes, he was still an economic rationalist who had little time for old Labor socialism. John Howard proudly proclaimed his conservatism, as did his fellow party-members. Such was the benefit of being associated with the right wing that Kevin Rudd, as a new Opposition Leader, invented a reputation for himself as “an economic conservative.” The last thing any self respecting member of mainstream Australian politics wished to claim was an affiliation with the greenie, latte-sipping, chardonnay-swilling, inner-city left. In fact, the only time in recent years that being seen to be a conservative was a problem was for the NSW Liberals in 2007, and that’s because no one in the state could quite believe anyone could be to the right of NSW Labor. (Barry O’Farrell won’t make the mistake Peter Debnam did; that’s why he’s clamping down on the hardline conservatives in his party causing troubles with Hitler parodies.)

But all of a sudden, thanks to the 2007 election, the unpleasant aftertaste of 11 years of John Howard, and issues that resonate within the electorate like climate change, being a leftie ain’t that bad anymore. Look at Uncle Joe up there!

Excuse his blatant falsehood; whatever stance the Liberals should form on climate change, they are not a progressive party. Not even Petro Georgiou is anything more than a moderate conservative who knows how to act like a human being around refugees. The Liberals have long liked to call themselves a, well, liberal party, but after a half-century of conservative policies, it’s hard to believe them.

This, though, is different[1]. Hockey is adopting a tag usually associated with students, Greens voters and other assorted ratbags: progressive. Liberals are never progressive. They can be “wet,” or “moderate” or “centrist,” but never “progressive”; unlike the Labor party with its right wing, their centrists aren’t described as lefties. But here Hockey sees a political benefit for his party in the public perceiving them as more left-wing than they actually are. It’s the same mechanism Rudd used with his social-conservative schtick; the public didn’t trust his party to be economically responsible, so he claimed the opposing ideology for it.

And you can see why Hockey’s doing it, even though a big chunk of his party is determined to convince the country they’re anything but progressive. The Australian political center is definitely to the left of the Coalition on this issue. They don’t support an ETS as strongly as they used to, but they still greatly approve of doing something about climate change. The Coalition is simply not progressive enough on this issue, and in the words of Ian Macfarlane, “Malcolm Turnbull is modernising the parliamentary Liberal Party … He is bringing the party into the 21st century and there are some people who want to keep the party in the ’60s.”

On this issue, being progressive is, for once, not a dirty word. In fact doing what the Liberal Party is doing, as Turnbull says, is ”irresponsible from an environmental point of view and it is completely and utterly self-destructive from a political point of view.”

—

[1] I think adopting “progressive” and “liberal” are different things, because liberal is not only the name of their party, it has suggestions of classical liberalism about it. Progressive is just calling yourself a pot-smoking vegetarian friend-of-the-ABC.

This Thanksgiving week, Congressman Mike Pence delievered the weekly Republican address to the nation. Pence’s optimism for the future, candid assessment of the present, and respect for those who went before us in this great country come through in this statement, which is one of the better Republican addresses.

Recently, I had a online chat with an old friend, W, who is a banana: Yellow on the outside, white on the inside. (She also claims to be an inner blonde.) Obviously, I am not a banana. I am a mango. The fact that W is often bananas, i.e. crazy—and I’m speaking the way an adult does of a cute but mischievous pet–—cannot be stressed more.

At the prospect of a meal consisting of the much-touted wagyu beef burger, W’s fingers went ahead of herself and typed ‘Thank you! MUAH!’  In her glee, the m word came out unfiltered and unabashedly in uppercase on my chatscreen.  [Remind me to get her a HEPA filter for Christmas.] Conservatism has never been her strong point. To her credit, she tried to backtrack. “Am I allowed to do that?”

I ignored that sudden outburst of spontaneity; afterall, I was exiting the MRT station going home and needed to focus on getting on escalators, crossing bridges. Besides, the use of muahs, in written/cyber form,  are still reserved for kids and significant others, right?

There’s a scene in Departures, one of my favourite Japanese films, where a man and a woman get into a quarrel. They kneel on the tatami, a square table dividing them, and they exchange words. Their terse sitting positions never change, only their words are circling the air, tense and bitter, edged with a sharpness that can cut through the soul.  They are husband and wife, but you would not guess it if you just chanced upon that scene. Conservatism in its ultimate expression–displayed between husband and wife.

Quintessentially Japanese, wouldn’t you say? And in the scene where she breaks the news that she is expecting their first child, the husband’s first reaction is not to go around the kitchen island to embrace her, but to express his joy in words.

One simply can’t go around giving everybody muahs, whether in word form or otherwise. Not when conservatism is the order of the day.

She apparently thinks differently. The written form, she says, is a simple outburst of spontaneity, nothing more, nothing less. In this classic instance of east meets west in cyberspace, my banana friend eschewed conservatism and showed warm gratitude at my gesture of the wagyu burger.

She defends her lack of conservatism, citing years of living in a Western culture.  Perhaps if I did study music in a place like Berklee (the famous music conservatory in Boston), my ingrained conservatism might have eroded a little. Things might have been different, I conceded. I imagine bohemian Asian musicians, walking examples of east-meets-west, walking around the campus, blithely sprinkling muahs in their e-mails, smses, online chats, and blogs, free to express themselves as they most certainly do in their musical forays.

“I used to be conservative, you know,” she said. “Still am. But spontaneity… That is allowed room for expression sometimes, right?”

Perhaps. Maybe more so when one has gone bananas for a long time.

[Link to this post]

Democracy. Democracy. Is anyone there?

The Federal Government and Melbourne City Council will provide $2.5 million to the The Parliament of the World’s Religions convention which is scheduled for December 3 this year.

The 2010 Global Atheist Convention will be held at the same venue in March of next year will receive $0 from the government.

David Nicholls, president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia told The Age “This is a world-class event with world-class academic and intellectual speakers.” That it is in anyone’s books.

Yes there is an agenda. Yes it goes against beliefs of those at the top. And that’s what is wrong with the decision not to fund the event – to the tune of a measly $270,000. This is an ideological decision by the government. Not a democratic one.

From an economic point of view it is a good investment for the government. The event is set to sell 2500 tickets and features 24 speakers from Australia and abroad. That can’t be bad for the economy.

Thankfully one of the speakers, PZ Myers, an Associate Professor in biology from the US, has had the balls to take on Tim Costello, one of the patrons of the World’s Religions event. Costello claims that “90% of the world is deeply religious” to this Myers retorts in his typical crude but on-the-ball fashion,

I … think he’s lying. A majority of the world is casually religious, not deeply or profoundly. I’d go further: most of the people in this world are stupidly religious, with ingrained beliefs that they did not acquire through thought or study, but through regular indoctrination from childhood on.

It does not matter, though. The fact that atheists are a minority does not argue that they deserve no consideration at all. I thought this was a well understood principle; the danger in a democracy is the tyranny of the majority, and safeguards have to be put in place to protect the rights of minorities. Since Costello is a “reverend”, unfortunately, that probably means he’s an ignorant ass who has never learned.

The event will go ahead with or without funding. Ticket sales will cover expenses. But it shouldn’t be left just as that. This isn’t necessarily the tyranny of the majority, if  Australian’s asked their thoughts on funding such events I am sure the answers would not align with the decision by the government at all. I actually have a feeling that tax payers would prefer no funding for any such events.