On March 19, 2010, The New York Times published an article entitled: “In Texas Curriculum Fight, Identity Politics Leans Right,” a reproduction of which was sent to me by Albert Nekimken of Vienna, Virginia. I sent it back with my comments interjected in bold text. I set forth below the article with my interjections, but urge you to read the full article first.
Frankly, my reaction to the article was that it was a presentation cheering for the Right, thinly disguised as neutral, and my comments reflect that. However, in preparing this for posting on my blog I belatedly decided to find out more about the author, Sam Tanenhaus. It turns out that he is “the editor of The New York Times Book Review and the paper's ‘Week in Review’ section.” I refer you to Newsweek here for more on the author, who it appears recently wrote “a new, short book, entitled “The Death of Conservatism." In any case I reproduce the article below with my interjections and would welcome the readers reactions.
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The social studies curriculum recently approved by the Texas Board of Education, which will put a conservative stamp on textbooks, was received less as a pedagogical document than as the latest provocation in America’s seemingly endless culture wars.
“Why Is Texas Afraid of Thomas Jefferson?” the History News Network asked, referring to the board’s recommendation that Jefferson, who coined the expression “separation of church and state,” be struck from the list of world thinkers who inspired 18th- and 19th-century revolutions.
Other critics were more direct: “Dear Texas: Please shut up. Sincerely, History,” was the headline of an online column for The San Francisco Chronicle.
This reaction wasn’t altogether surprising. The board’s wrangling over the curriculum had been a spectacle for months, not least because its disputes mirrored those taking place across the nation. In mid-September, citizens showed up with firearms at tumultuous town hall meetings on health care reform, and the Tea Party movement emerged as the vehicle of conservative insurgents. While this appears to be a national phenomenon, I believe it is primarily inspired by what is generally referred to as "rednecks" and is driven by such unreconstructed Southerners.
The majority on the Texas board, who are also conservatives, seemed to be filtering these protests into their deliberations — in the proposal, for instance, that students be instructed in “the individual right to keep and bear arms; and an individual’s protection of private property from government takings.”
Liberals — on the Texas board and beyond — detected an attempt to force-feed children conservative dogma, whether it was the putative religiosity of the nation’s founders, the historic contribution of the Moral Majority and Rush Limbaugh, or the elevation of John Wayne into the pantheon of patriotic heroes.
In reality, this controversy is the latest version of a debate that reaches back many decades and is perhaps essential in a heterogeneous democracy whose identity has long been in flux.
More than many decades and is most definitely not essential. I think it finds its roots in the pre-civil war South and reflects the views of the unreconstructed South, or as this group is sometimes referred to "rednecks". It was certainly empowered in the 60s as a result of the Civil Rights era, which embittered these groups and promoted them to hate the federal government, which was destroying their beloved feudal society - their essentially continuing slave society of sharecroppers.
It was very evident a while ago when the controversy over honoring pre-civil war symbols erupted. I find it outrageous that this would be permitted. They claim it is part of their heritage and indeed it is. To me it is like the heritage of the Nazis in Germany. Can anybody envision Germany allowing honoring the Nazis because it is part of their heritage?
In the 18th century, the American writer Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, himself an immigrant from France, catalogued the continent’s bewildering mix of “English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans and Swedes.” He wondered, “What then is the American, this new man?”
He concluded that in America, “individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men.”
This of course is the mythical melting pot which Moynihan & Glazer debunked in their book "Beyond the Melting Pot" published in 1963 and again debunked by the Washington Post in a series of articles in 1998.
That idea was later fortified by Alexis de Tocqueville’s concept of American exceptionalism, which suggested that the country was exempt from the bitter conflicts — class, religion, imperial ambition — that had convulsed Europe. This was wishful thinking and a misreading. De Tocqueville died on the eve of the Civil War. To be sure the US was for most of its existence less class stratified than Europe but in recent years the US has moved to a more class society with income being re-distributed upward, while Europe has moved in the opposite direction.
Long afterward, amid America’s own convulsions in the 1960s and ’70s, the concept of a single “race of men” looked outmoded. Didn’t race mean “white race”? And didn’t “men” exclude women? American exceptionalism might really be a form of cultural insularity. Of course this is true!!!
So, universities and colleges devised new programs that prompted objections as fierce as those now being made to the Texas curriculum. These objections were a movement to preserve the status quo and the Texas case is a movement to achieve the status quo-ante.
In 1968, when Harvard students demanded a black studies program, “Faculty hawks warned of the fall of Harvard, and even civilization, as they knew it,” as Morton Keller and Phyllis Keller note in “Making Harvard Modern.”
Soon an ever widening range of subjects, from gay studies to feminist legal theory and anthropology, were added, in keeping with the dictates of identity politics. Some of this thinking eventually filtered to grade schools, with children now celebrating Kwanzaa and composing essays, year after year, on the “I Have a Dream” speech.
Many of the changes were liberating, but some were narrowing and erroneous — for instance the theories espoused by Leonard Jeffries Jr., who, as head of City College’s black studies department in the 1980s, lectured on the differences between African “sun people” and European “ice people.” It is unfortunate but every movement will breed its own excesses, and even reverse racism, as was the case with Jeffries.
Meanwhile, conservatives like William Bennett and Lynne Cheney defended syllabuses limited to the Western classics, and the liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. warned that attacks on the “Eurocentric curriculum,” as some called it, were giving rise to “the notion that history and literature should be taught not as disciplines but as therapies whose function is to raise minority self-esteem.” With all due respect to Schlesinger it was time to recognize that there was history and culture in other parts of the world besides the West. Of course in some respects the balance went too far in the other direction, but that is inevitable in any new movement.
In fact, Mr. Schlesinger maintained, these new courses of study might actually disserve minority students. “If a Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan wanted to use the schools to disable and handicap black Americans, he could hardly come up with anything more effective than the ‘Afrocentric’ curriculum,” Mr. Schlesinger wrote. I don't understand the logic!
Though its authors say the Texas curriculum reinforces American traditions, It does - the unreconstructed South!! it may instead reflect the conservative variant of identity politics, and this could invite a similar backlash.
To be fair, some of the board’s recommendations aren’t controversial. Most scholars of the cold war, left and right, think that the Venona documents — communications that record the activities of Americans who secretly spied for the Soviet Union — illuminate the anti-Communist investigations of the McCarthy period. This is a very disturbing comment!! The Venoma documents have been used primarily to defend and justify the outrages of McCarthy and the House UN-AMERICAN committee, which not only ruined countless American lives, but did untold damage to American security. See "The Best and the Brightest" pp. 115-120 of 1992 edition. And historians of the conservative movement will agree that Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly are worth learning about, as are the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association. That depends on the grade and how it is taught. If they are held up as role models it is right wing propaganda. If they are denounced, it is liberal propaganda. If they are discussed as a phenomenon, it may be all right, but it is very difficult to do this in an unbiased way, and not likely too succeed.
Even the Texas curriculum’s most disputed item — its assertion that the Founders envisioned America as a divinely inspired Christian nation — is not as radical as it sounds. I don't know whether it is radical, but it is not accurate. Most of the founders did not consider themselves Christians. They thought of themselves as deists and rejected revealed truths. In the Declaration of Independence, the reference is to "Nature's God.” That is definitely not a Christian God, and the Constitution makes no reference to God.
In 1964, in a series of lectures on America’s founding documents, starting with the Mayflower Compact, the political scientist Willmoore Kendall theorized that “the nascent society that interprets itself in the Compact is in some sense a religious, more specifically a Christian, society, which calls God in as witness to its act of founding.” If you go back to 1620, the date of the Compact, that is undoubtedly true. The early settlers were mostly devout Christians and very intolerant of deviation. They wanted religious liberty for themselves but not for others. But by the late 18th century the thinking in vogue was the enlightenment, and that inspired the founding fathers.
Mr. Kendall teased out the implications through close readings of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. But his analysis stressed the “symbolic” aspects of those texts, and his nuanced discussion drew on counterarguments by other scholars. I don't understand what this means.
In contrast, the Texas board’s description of America as a “Judeo-Christian” nation treats ideas and events that have been under continual reinterpretation and revision for decades as literal and settled truth. I don't understand what this means.
It is telling, too, that it is secondary-school children — not, as in the past, college students — whose minds are being fought over today on such a scale. This suggests that after so many years of increasingly bitter polarization, Americans stand on the brink of a collective identity crisis and no longer share a set of common ideas about the true character of the country and the true meaning of democracy. No longer? We haven't since the founding of the Republic. That is why the Civil War was fought and it wasn't just about secession. In fact secession showed the deep division. As did all that followed and the progressive eras of Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Johnson did not put things to rest.
In “The American Political Tradition,” published in 1948, the historian Richard Hofstadter suggested that the fad for popular history at the time was evidence of “national nostalgia” — an effort not to understand the past, but rather to evade the present. “This quest for the American past is carried on in a spirit of sentimental appreciation rather than of critical analysis,” he surmised. This I can agree with.
As it happens, a good deal of contemporary popular history is more critical than in Mr. Hofstadter’s day. But it is presented through an ever-narrowing aperture.
The late Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States,” depicts the United States as an epic of oppression in which the privileged abuse the downtrodden. Conversely, “A Patriot’s History of the United States,” by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, describes the New Deal as a calamity that wreaked havoc on the American economy. Both views are exaggerations, but to me the first is closer to the truth than the second.
The two books seem to have captured the spirit of the moment; both are on The New York Times best-seller list. Both are also, in effect, counternarratives. They seek not to revise but to displace more familiar histories and are utterly different in tone from older popular histories like the Daniel Boorstin trilogy “The Americans,” and William Manchester’s two-volume work, “The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America.” Yes, it shows that extremes are ascendant, but they have been ascendant over and over again throughout history. On the Right stands the whole Republican Party with Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh and Palin and the Tea-Partiers - on the left we have had the large following of Naom Chomsky. Clearly, the extreme Right is larger and more powerful than the extreme left.
For all their dissimilarities, Mr. Boorstin and Mr. Manchester convey the impression that America, despite its diversity, is a nation whose citizens share the same essential values, at once democratic and aspirational. But to read these newer books is to inhabit two utterly different Americas that have almost nothing to say to each other. Both are conceived in a spirit of protest, and this explains their appeal at a time when protest seems the most dynamic force in politics. Just as in the 50's with McCarthy & the Dixiecrats, and the 60’s, which upset the status quo, the clash becomes inevitable.
Half a century ago, in his essay, “The Search for Southern Identity,” the historian C. Vann Woodward explored a parallel phenomenon, the confusion that overtook the South after the Supreme Court had invalidated segregation and the region become more urban and industrial, losing its distinctive agrarian flavor. This is where the unrest is the greatest and where the Republican party draws its greatest strength. It is interesting to note that Gingrich said: "They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. True, but were they wrong to do it? Besides it doesn't follow- they are very different issues. But the country is changing as the right wing columnist George Will recognized, saying, "Almost half of House and Senate Republicans are from those 13 states, a higher proportion than ever before. Ronald Brownstein of National Journal notes that it was in 1992 that GOP fortunes in the South and the rest of the nation began to diverge. Since then, those 13 states have provided from 59 to 69 percent of all Republican electoral votes. Obama beat McCain by 14 points in the other 37 states, the third-largest margin ever, after LBJ's and FDR's victories in 1964 and 1936, respectively. McCain actually got more Southern votes than Bush did—but Obama got 2.3 million more votes than Kerry did in states McCain carried."
Republican problems outside the South are compounded by and related to the increasing proportion of minorities in the electorate.
What Southerners should do, Mr. Woodward urged, is subordinate their regional attachment to the country’s “national myths,” for instance the American “success story” that had inspired so many others, like the European immigrants who had “sought and found identity in them.”
Southerners might do this, too, if they gave up “the romantic dreams of the South’s past.” Yes, indeed!!
Today it is not regional or ethnic identity, but ideological commitment that threatens to submerge larger “national myths.” But one thing remains unchanged from 50 or 60 years ago. As Americans struggle to see where they are going, they continue to gaze fondly at the past — and to see in it what they like. Yes, but fortunately, not all!!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
The Vanishing Middle in America
I am increasingly disturbed by what I perceive as the vanishing middle in America. Of course, many will differ as to what constitutes the middle. The media, that institution so vital to our Democracy, increasingly caters to popular opinion, and too often fails in its responsibility to inform. Too often they seek to reinforce what might be called “the conventional wisdom” without questioning its validity or even its basis in fact.
Thus the conventional wisdom on the “middle” might be those many, who proudly claim to be independents, affiliate with no party and claim they vote on the merits of individual candidates, but when we examine their philosophical orientation we find they have none, and that too often they vote on the basis of the candidates charisma, charm, or whether they once met him and found him a “fellow well met”. It was this kind of thinking that brought many voters into the camp of George W. Bush because as was said at the time of his first election, by Chris Mathews of MSNBC among others, that he was a person one would feel more comfortable drinking beer with. Is this a sound criterion for choosing our President?
As can be seen from the positions of the political parties in the Congress they are now so far apart that the filibuster has become a matter of Republican Party policy and compromise has become a dirty word. The “conventional wisdom” is that the filibuster has always been used and that it protects the rights of the minority. But like so many concepts falling into the category of conventional wisdom it is a myth. To be sure the filibuster was at one time used by devoted segregationists and defenders of the right of states to in effect legalize lynching, but it was never used by any political party as a tool of party policy. Thus in 1957 Senator Strom Thurmond, at that time a segregationist Southern Democrat (later the candidate for President on the Dixiecrat slate and finally a Republican) conducted a one man filibuster, talking against a 1957 civil rights bill for 24 hours and 18 minutes.
But while that was dramatic it was also unusual, and Thurmond was unsuccessful. It was so unusual that there was only an average of one filibuster per Congress during the 1950s. But when the Republicans lost control of the Senate in the 110th Congress of 2007-2008, and even though they still had a Republican President who could veto legislation, they used a record 112 filibusters, and so far in this Congress they have already used this tactic over 40 times and we still have eight months to go.
See also this article in US News & World Report.
Republican voters are so unforgiving of compromise that George H.W. Bush was defeated for agreeing to a compromise with Democrats in order to reduce a looming budget deficit which called for both spending cuts and tax increases, thus violating the party’s commitment to never increasing taxes.
Thus with no middle ground between the parties those who claim to straddle between two irreconcilable philosophies can only be compared to a person with one foot on land and the other in a boat well away from the shore and moving further away. They can only drown. They may swing elections, but they will never bring about a positive legislative agenda for they lack a political philosophy.
There is a great misunderstanding about how much things have changed. I keep hearing about how President Lyndon Johnson was able to get Medicare passed with 68 votes, but bills that have the votes to pass attract more votes than they would otherwise get. That is still true today as can be seen from the passage of the jobs bill where only five Republican Senators voted to end the filibuster but eleven voted for the bill on final passage, the idea being to stop the bill if possible, but record a positive vote for a popular bill if it is going to pass anyway.
The fact is that Johnson only had 55 votes for Medicare that he could count on or to quote from a letter written at the time “Thus if all our supporters are present and voting we would win by a vote of 55 to 45.”
At that time it would have taken 67 votes to stop a filibuster, but the Republican Party never contemplated using that unsavory device. How times have changed!
And how has the media and this so called middle greeted this outrage. They have accepted Republican claims that it is the intent of the founders that it should take 60 votes to pass anything, or even to confirm a Presidential appointment, and that attempts to circumvent such obstructionism, whether by reconciliation, or any other means is in some way unsavory.
And some are even trying to pass of the Tea Partiers as a grass roots movement. Thus Dick Armey, a former Republican majority leader, who more than anyone else founded and is leading the movement tries to pass them off as, “These are folks who don't care about politics and don't like politics and don't like politicians. They're skeptical and cynical about all of them…” but ignores that these are the same people, or at least the political heirs to the John Birch Society or as one article described them, they are “white, male, older, less educated, Southern and religious…”.
But even now the movement is already the subject of a power struggle between Armey, who resists its nativists impulses as led by Tom Tancredo, or in Armey’s words, “… bungling the issue in a way that would alienate much of the electorate, by failing to keep a lid on such anti-immigrant crusaders as Tom Tancredo, a former Colorado congressman.” And Armey has good reason to be concerned about this for as George Will, one of the so-called intellectual spokesmen of the Right has pointed out, “Demography often is political destiny, and 47 percent of children under 5 are minorities. Hispanics are the largest and fastest-growing minority.”
So where do we find the true middle?
It may or may not surprise the reader to hear that I put a claim on that designation. For if the middle is to be found somewhere between FOX and MSNBC, I fit that description. But in order not to burden the reader with too much verbiage in one post, I will defer an exposition on this claim for a few days. In the meantime I hope the readers will take the time to read at least some of my source material.
Thus the conventional wisdom on the “middle” might be those many, who proudly claim to be independents, affiliate with no party and claim they vote on the merits of individual candidates, but when we examine their philosophical orientation we find they have none, and that too often they vote on the basis of the candidates charisma, charm, or whether they once met him and found him a “fellow well met”. It was this kind of thinking that brought many voters into the camp of George W. Bush because as was said at the time of his first election, by Chris Mathews of MSNBC among others, that he was a person one would feel more comfortable drinking beer with. Is this a sound criterion for choosing our President?
As can be seen from the positions of the political parties in the Congress they are now so far apart that the filibuster has become a matter of Republican Party policy and compromise has become a dirty word. The “conventional wisdom” is that the filibuster has always been used and that it protects the rights of the minority. But like so many concepts falling into the category of conventional wisdom it is a myth. To be sure the filibuster was at one time used by devoted segregationists and defenders of the right of states to in effect legalize lynching, but it was never used by any political party as a tool of party policy. Thus in 1957 Senator Strom Thurmond, at that time a segregationist Southern Democrat (later the candidate for President on the Dixiecrat slate and finally a Republican) conducted a one man filibuster, talking against a 1957 civil rights bill for 24 hours and 18 minutes.
But while that was dramatic it was also unusual, and Thurmond was unsuccessful. It was so unusual that there was only an average of one filibuster per Congress during the 1950s. But when the Republicans lost control of the Senate in the 110th Congress of 2007-2008, and even though they still had a Republican President who could veto legislation, they used a record 112 filibusters, and so far in this Congress they have already used this tactic over 40 times and we still have eight months to go.
See also this article in US News & World Report.
Republican voters are so unforgiving of compromise that George H.W. Bush was defeated for agreeing to a compromise with Democrats in order to reduce a looming budget deficit which called for both spending cuts and tax increases, thus violating the party’s commitment to never increasing taxes.
Thus with no middle ground between the parties those who claim to straddle between two irreconcilable philosophies can only be compared to a person with one foot on land and the other in a boat well away from the shore and moving further away. They can only drown. They may swing elections, but they will never bring about a positive legislative agenda for they lack a political philosophy.
There is a great misunderstanding about how much things have changed. I keep hearing about how President Lyndon Johnson was able to get Medicare passed with 68 votes, but bills that have the votes to pass attract more votes than they would otherwise get. That is still true today as can be seen from the passage of the jobs bill where only five Republican Senators voted to end the filibuster but eleven voted for the bill on final passage, the idea being to stop the bill if possible, but record a positive vote for a popular bill if it is going to pass anyway.
The fact is that Johnson only had 55 votes for Medicare that he could count on or to quote from a letter written at the time “Thus if all our supporters are present and voting we would win by a vote of 55 to 45.”
At that time it would have taken 67 votes to stop a filibuster, but the Republican Party never contemplated using that unsavory device. How times have changed!
And how has the media and this so called middle greeted this outrage. They have accepted Republican claims that it is the intent of the founders that it should take 60 votes to pass anything, or even to confirm a Presidential appointment, and that attempts to circumvent such obstructionism, whether by reconciliation, or any other means is in some way unsavory.
And some are even trying to pass of the Tea Partiers as a grass roots movement. Thus Dick Armey, a former Republican majority leader, who more than anyone else founded and is leading the movement tries to pass them off as, “These are folks who don't care about politics and don't like politics and don't like politicians. They're skeptical and cynical about all of them…” but ignores that these are the same people, or at least the political heirs to the John Birch Society or as one article described them, they are “white, male, older, less educated, Southern and religious…”.
But even now the movement is already the subject of a power struggle between Armey, who resists its nativists impulses as led by Tom Tancredo, or in Armey’s words, “… bungling the issue in a way that would alienate much of the electorate, by failing to keep a lid on such anti-immigrant crusaders as Tom Tancredo, a former Colorado congressman.” And Armey has good reason to be concerned about this for as George Will, one of the so-called intellectual spokesmen of the Right has pointed out, “Demography often is political destiny, and 47 percent of children under 5 are minorities. Hispanics are the largest and fastest-growing minority.”
So where do we find the true middle?
It may or may not surprise the reader to hear that I put a claim on that designation. For if the middle is to be found somewhere between FOX and MSNBC, I fit that description. But in order not to burden the reader with too much verbiage in one post, I will defer an exposition on this claim for a few days. In the meantime I hope the readers will take the time to read at least some of my source material.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Potpourri
I have entitled this commentary potpourri from the musical term for medley because there are so many things I want to touch upon that I decided that I would, on this occasion, cover many subjects, rather than covering one in depth.
First of all at the risk of once again touching on that third rail of American politics the Middle East, and doing something I have never done before, I want to recommend a play to my readers. The play is Palestine. It is playing at The Fourth Street Theater until April 3rd.
It is a one person play, written and acted by Najla Said, who the New York Times described as a Palestinian-Lebanese-American Christian, and the daughter of Edward Said, the Columbia Professor, who along with Daniel Barenboim, the renowned Israeli pianist and conductor, founded the “the award-winning West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, made up of children from Israel, Palestine, and surrounding Arab nations.
The play in my view is non-political, (some may differ) but it gives an insight into the tragedy of the Middle East in a human dimension. I believe that all, regardless of their view on the complex issues of that area can benefit from these insights.
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Those of you who have been following my commentary must be aware that while I have been denouncing in angry terms the lies, distortions and calumnies of The Right in general and Republicans in particular, I have also increasingly been critical of the Left for their doctrinaire approach, which allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. See, e.g. “Doesn't Anybody Really Care?” and I have continued to take exception to some of the positions of organizations that I have long supported. Thus on March 9th I sent an e-mail to the ACLU, which I quote below:
I also continue to take exception to the writings of Bob Herbert of the New York Times who, e.g. on March 8th wrote a column entitled: “The Source of Obama’s Trouble,” where Herbert continues to berate the President for pushing Health Care Reform when so many people are unemployed, as though reform in that area had no bearing on the needs of the underprivileged and unemployed. If Herbert at least offered some constructive suggestions that were economically and politically viable, he might be forgiven, but he offers nothing of the kind. Only negativity. Now when Herbert tackles specific problems such as in his “Cops vs. Kids” or in "Watching Certain People," where he pinpoints problems and offers solutions, I applaud him, but his carping and negativism does neither him nor his causes credit.
On the other hand Paul Krugman, who I have criticized in the past for unfair criticism, finally gets it right in “Senator Bunning’s Universe” when he writes: “What I want to focus on right now, however, is the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties. Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.”
Finally when WQXR was sold by the NY Times to NPR and continued to air the Lutheran Hour, I dispatched letters to both the ACLU and WQXR pointing out that since WQXR now receives public financing they have no right to air religious programs, since it violated the separation of church and state doctrine of the Constitution. It took many months before either responded but finally I received an answer from both assuring me that the practice had ceased as of the 1st of the year. They didn’t explain why the Constitution only worked by the calendar year.
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In the latest issue of Newsweek, John Meecham, one of its editors, and under consideration for a position as a host on a new PBS program, wrote an article entitled: “Democracy Is a Pesky Thing” in which he equated Fox News with the New York Times as examples of a Right leaning and Left leaning news source. I find such inappropriate comparisons deeply offensive. Fox News is a propaganda organ worthy of the communist newspaper Pravda, while the NY Times is one of the most respected newspapers in the world. In fact I find it hard to find a Left leaning publication that lies and distorts the way Fox does. Certainly, MSNBC, which might be considered the counter to Fox, has never indulged in the kind of demagoguery that Fox indulges in, and even such leftist publications as Mother Jones do not indulge in this practice.
To be sure the Times has a liberal editorial policy, periodically has articles that point to liberal solutions, and has more liberal columnists than conservative ones, but that is not the same as the use of lies and inflammatory messages that Fox indulges in. In fact in so far as the Times has been caught in falsehoods it has been in slandering liberals, see e.g. "The Media! (Watergate/Clinton)", "The Media II - Falsehoods about Gore" and "The Media III - Falsehoods about Kerry" and Judith Miller writing for the NY Times has become notorious for giving support to the fabrications that the Bush Whitehouse fed her about Iraq’s WMDs.
David Brooks in the NY Times tries to do something similar to Meecham, equating Left and Right. See: The Wal-Mart Hippies.
The frequent media attempt to show even handedness by equating outright lies with minor misstatements, instead of serving the greater end of truth, wherever it might lead, serves neither the media nor the American public.
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On the bright side the minions of the Right and the Republican Party in general, who very recently showed their lack of principle or even patriotism, when they turned the fight against terrorists into a political football, see: “Liberals Charged As Condescending!” have finally shown a commitment to principle and the rule of law for the first time in years when they criticized a video released by Lyn Cheney that questioned the loyalty of Justice Department lawyers who worked in the past on behalf of detained terrorism suspects. According to the New York Times, “many conservatives, including members of the Federalist Society, the quarter-century-old policy group devoted to conservative and libertarian legal ideals, have vehemently criticized Ms. Cheney’s video, and say it violates the American legal principle that even unpopular defendants deserve a lawyer.”
Hurray, its been along time coming to see a principled position from that notorious quarter. Let’s hope we see it more often.
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And the Washington Post reports that: “House Democrats ban earmarks for private contractors”. This is still another item of good news.
First of all at the risk of once again touching on that third rail of American politics the Middle East, and doing something I have never done before, I want to recommend a play to my readers. The play is Palestine. It is playing at The Fourth Street Theater until April 3rd.
It is a one person play, written and acted by Najla Said, who the New York Times described as a Palestinian-Lebanese-American Christian, and the daughter of Edward Said, the Columbia Professor, who along with Daniel Barenboim, the renowned Israeli pianist and conductor, founded the “the award-winning West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, made up of children from Israel, Palestine, and surrounding Arab nations.
The play in my view is non-political, (some may differ) but it gives an insight into the tragedy of the Middle East in a human dimension. I believe that all, regardless of their view on the complex issues of that area can benefit from these insights.
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Those of you who have been following my commentary must be aware that while I have been denouncing in angry terms the lies, distortions and calumnies of The Right in general and Republicans in particular, I have also increasingly been critical of the Left for their doctrinaire approach, which allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. See, e.g. “Doesn't Anybody Really Care?” and I have continued to take exception to some of the positions of organizations that I have long supported. Thus on March 9th I sent an e-mail to the ACLU, which I quote below:
“I am increasingly disappointed in the ACLU. I have been a member for many decades and have always been proud of that fact. I supported the ACLU when it was under attack for defending the right of Nazis to march and during other controversial decisions. Lately, however I have become ashamed and have considered resigning. The Unions decision to support corporation as having almost unlimited 1st amendment rights is repugnant to me. I do not believe that corporations should have any rights under the first amendment and that designating them as "persons,” even though long enshrined in the law, is fundamentally wrong. They are not like associations or partnerships and to pretend otherwise is dishonest.
“But while I agree with you on trying the 9/11 suspects in Civil Courts, I resent the inflammatory ads depicting the President as morphing into George Bush.
“I am reluctant to resign because much of what you do is needed. But I can not for long continue to support an organization that I believe is increasingly departing from my values.”
I also continue to take exception to the writings of Bob Herbert of the New York Times who, e.g. on March 8th wrote a column entitled: “The Source of Obama’s Trouble,” where Herbert continues to berate the President for pushing Health Care Reform when so many people are unemployed, as though reform in that area had no bearing on the needs of the underprivileged and unemployed. If Herbert at least offered some constructive suggestions that were economically and politically viable, he might be forgiven, but he offers nothing of the kind. Only negativity. Now when Herbert tackles specific problems such as in his “Cops vs. Kids” or in "Watching Certain People," where he pinpoints problems and offers solutions, I applaud him, but his carping and negativism does neither him nor his causes credit.
On the other hand Paul Krugman, who I have criticized in the past for unfair criticism, finally gets it right in “Senator Bunning’s Universe” when he writes: “What I want to focus on right now, however, is the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties. Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.”
Finally when WQXR was sold by the NY Times to NPR and continued to air the Lutheran Hour, I dispatched letters to both the ACLU and WQXR pointing out that since WQXR now receives public financing they have no right to air religious programs, since it violated the separation of church and state doctrine of the Constitution. It took many months before either responded but finally I received an answer from both assuring me that the practice had ceased as of the 1st of the year. They didn’t explain why the Constitution only worked by the calendar year.
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In the latest issue of Newsweek, John Meecham, one of its editors, and under consideration for a position as a host on a new PBS program, wrote an article entitled: “Democracy Is a Pesky Thing” in which he equated Fox News with the New York Times as examples of a Right leaning and Left leaning news source. I find such inappropriate comparisons deeply offensive. Fox News is a propaganda organ worthy of the communist newspaper Pravda, while the NY Times is one of the most respected newspapers in the world. In fact I find it hard to find a Left leaning publication that lies and distorts the way Fox does. Certainly, MSNBC, which might be considered the counter to Fox, has never indulged in the kind of demagoguery that Fox indulges in, and even such leftist publications as Mother Jones do not indulge in this practice.
To be sure the Times has a liberal editorial policy, periodically has articles that point to liberal solutions, and has more liberal columnists than conservative ones, but that is not the same as the use of lies and inflammatory messages that Fox indulges in. In fact in so far as the Times has been caught in falsehoods it has been in slandering liberals, see e.g. "The Media! (Watergate/Clinton)", "The Media II - Falsehoods about Gore" and "The Media III - Falsehoods about Kerry" and Judith Miller writing for the NY Times has become notorious for giving support to the fabrications that the Bush Whitehouse fed her about Iraq’s WMDs.
David Brooks in the NY Times tries to do something similar to Meecham, equating Left and Right. See: The Wal-Mart Hippies.
The frequent media attempt to show even handedness by equating outright lies with minor misstatements, instead of serving the greater end of truth, wherever it might lead, serves neither the media nor the American public.
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On the bright side the minions of the Right and the Republican Party in general, who very recently showed their lack of principle or even patriotism, when they turned the fight against terrorists into a political football, see: “Liberals Charged As Condescending!” have finally shown a commitment to principle and the rule of law for the first time in years when they criticized a video released by Lyn Cheney that questioned the loyalty of Justice Department lawyers who worked in the past on behalf of detained terrorism suspects. According to the New York Times, “many conservatives, including members of the Federalist Society, the quarter-century-old policy group devoted to conservative and libertarian legal ideals, have vehemently criticized Ms. Cheney’s video, and say it violates the American legal principle that even unpopular defendants deserve a lawyer.”
Hurray, its been along time coming to see a principled position from that notorious quarter. Let’s hope we see it more often.
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And the Washington Post reports that: “House Democrats ban earmarks for private contractors”. This is still another item of good news.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Liberals Charged As Condescending!
In an article that appeared in the Washington Post entitled: “Why Are Liberals So Condescending?” Gerard Alexander sets forth a long list of images that he claims Liberals have of the Right. The article can be found here and I urge readers to read it, because not only do I plead guilty to having those views, but I assert that they are all true and much more besides. I think it is a perfect description of the Right (Republicans). I couldn't have described them better. It is not condescension. It is fact!
On economics they have only one prescription for everything--cut taxes.
Under Bush they turned the biggest surplus in history into the biggest deficit in history and gave us what could have been a depression to rival that of 1929, and while we have avoided the worst, we are still suffering from its after effects.
In well-researched writing on my blog entitled Lying Pays Off!!!!! Smears Succeed!!!! Obstructionism Is Rewarded!!!! I document the behavior of Republicans in the Congress and out.
In the face of this Mr. Alexander says:
Thus we see such reputed moderate Republicans as Susan Collins engaging in fear mongering and lying when she says:
The new "moderate" Senator from Massachusetts said similar things. It is a charade indeed, but the charade goes the other way.
The New Yorker sums it up succinctly saying:
John Brennan who is a career CIA officer and has served in numerous Administrations in ever higher positions and was the Acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center under President Bush said on Meet the Press that he is "tiring of politicians using national security issues as a political football"
But this kind of libel is not new to the Republican Party. Richard Nixon accused his Democratic rival Helen Gahaghan Douglas of "being soft on Communism". Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the Truman Administration of "twenty years of treason" which Ann Coulter decided to top this with “Liberals are up to their old tricks again. Twenty years of treason hasn’t slowed them down.” Indeed, “in my next book, [I’m] going through 50 years of treason by Democrats.”
When Clinton aide Vincent Foster committed suicide Rush Limbaugh "claim(ed) that Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton."
Alexander writes with derision of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," charged by Hillary Clinton during the Clinton Administration as showing essentially a paranoid view. But was it? "Mr. Scaife, reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, spent more than $2 million investigating and publicizing accusations about the supposed involvement of Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton in corrupt land deals, sexual affairs, drug running and murder" and he certainly didn't work alone. They took a land deal the Clintons were involved in, that they had in fact lost money in, known as Whitewater, and made it look like the biggest fraud of a century. They pushed it until Clinton felt compelled to ask for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the affair. Now in all previous cases the court which was to choose the prosecutor under the then existing law, had always chosen one of the party of the person being investigated, so as to make sure that there would be no hint of partisanship. But here that tradition was violated when a partisan Republican panel appointed Kenneth Starr, who already had a reputation for a high level of partisanship. They then financed a suit by one, Paula Jones, thereby keeping the Clinton Administration off balance and unable to fully function. They eventually succeeded in catching the President in a lie in the Lewinsky affair, leading to Clinton's impeachment on a straight party line vote. It was obvious from day one that they, and it wasn't just Scaife, were determined to get Clinton by fair means or foul.
Let us move forward to the Health Care debate and the falsehoods told there. They have never engaged on the merits. they have used lie after lie, the claim of Death Panels being the most outrageous, but not alone. See: Health Insurance Reform - Lies and Damned Lies.
Well Mr. Alexander might say that was just Sarah Palin, but aside from the fact that Palin is a leading Republican light, not a single Republican disavowed these lies. But see also: Health Insurance Reform.
How can one have a serious policy discussion with a group that relies on so many falsehoods.
Whether it is the fault of the media, or the fault of the Administration, the lack of knowledge on the part of the public is appalling. According to the Pew Research Center's News just 32% know that the Senate passed its version of the Health Care legislation without a single Republican vote. And, in what proved to be the most difficult question on the quiz, only about a quarter (26%) knows that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate and force a vote on a bill.
If we look back on the build up to the Iraq war and beyond we find again the total lack of accurate information that the American Public has. In 2005 a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 56 percent of Americans still thought that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al-Qaida terrorist network — notions that had long since been thoroughly debunked by everyone from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee to both of Bush's handpicked weapons inspectors, Charles Duelfer and David Kay.
Alexander talks about "The Republican War on Science" as though it were some kind of fiction. But the record of Bush Administration agencies ignoring the evidence of their own scientific staff, has been documented too often to require further discussion. Their refusal to acknowledge global warming in the face of an almost unanimous scientific consensus, speaks for itself.
He argues that evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda. That is simply not true. Of course there are costs to cap and trade. Nobody denies that. This is an example of their favorite tactic of setting up of a straw man. The point is not that there would be no costs, but that the cost of doing nothing is far greater. Not only does CO2 present a mortal threat from global warming, but it is causing untold health problems which are a burden on the economy and the Health Care system. But Alexander here illustrates exactly why it is so hard to have a real discussion. That straw man is a favorite tactic substituting for honest discussion.
Alexander says: "But, if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid at worst. I wouldn't say stupid, but as I have illustrated, the public is so ill informed and so consistently lied to, that the ability of Democracy to function becomes a sham. Voting does not Democracy make. An informed public is necessary to the process, and when we have a whole party that consistently misrepresents, fear-mongers, and appeals to prejudice, we as a society and as a democracy are in trouble.
Let us remember that the Nazis came to power by the vote of the people.
Says Alexander that "It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants." But that is absolutely true. What else is behind the birther movement against Obama. Why is his birth more in doubt than say McCain's (who in fact was not born in any of the 50 states) or any previous President.
It was not so long ago that then Republican majority leader Trent Lott said in praise of Strom Thurmond that the country would have been better off if segregationist Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948.
In addition, while it is not widely known, since the Johnson civil rights legislation era, no Democrat for President ever achieved a majority of the white vote in the US. Obama got 43 percent of the white electorate which was more than any previous Democratic candidate got, but it hardly shows that the race issue is dead.
As for anti-immigrant, a few weeks ago I received an e-mail being widely circulated of a 1929 song that went something like, "If you don't like things here, go home, go home". Unfortunately the link is no longer active and so I can't reproduce it.
According to the Washington Post of February 11, 2010 "Former House member Tom Tancredo, famed for his attacks on illegal immigration, gave backers of the racial explanation all the ammunition they needed."
"In an astonishingly offensive speech, cheered by the Tea Party crowd, Tancredo declared that 'people who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama....Even worse, if that's possible, Tancredo harkened back to the Jim Crow South that denied the right to vote to African Americans on the basis of 'literacy tests' that called for potential black registrants to answer questions that would have stumped PhDs. in political science...The reason we elected "Barack Hussein Obama," according to Tancredo, is "mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country."
As for Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he was no neo-conservative. He was a liberal, and a Democrat, if ever there was one. Yes, it is not to the credit of other liberals that they discounted his concerns, but what does that prove? That liberals are not always right. Conceded gladly!!!
As for the Supreme Court Decision of Free Speech for corporations I addressed that at length here.
Mr Alexander suggests that we need to listen to the Tea partiers, but their message is incomprehensible. "Don't touch my Medicare - I am against government programs." and it tells us something about them as they cheer Tancredo and Palin and their hate-mongering.
All I can say is that Alexander indicts the movement by describing its character. The liberal impression is not one to apologize for, for it is accurate in describing the Republican Party. It was a vicious party during McCarthy and Nixon, it did great damage under Reagan, but nothing that went before, compares to what it has now become.
Liberals aren't always right, and I have severely criticized them on my blog, under the heading: Doesn't Anybody Really Care? where I also further documented the viciousness of the Republican party, but to read the Right even among its so called intellectuals like Krauthammer or Wills is not particularly elucidating.
I sincerely believe that what the Republicans and the Right in general seeks is a country of aristocrats, giving out of the goodness of their hearts and with condescension, a handout here or a job there. The old Russian model of serfdom seems to appeal to them. They have said that they believe that the only function of government is defense against external and internal foes. That means no public school system, no SS, no Medicare, etc., etc. Can no one hear them.
On economics they have only one prescription for everything--cut taxes.
Under Bush they turned the biggest surplus in history into the biggest deficit in history and gave us what could have been a depression to rival that of 1929, and while we have avoided the worst, we are still suffering from its after effects.
In well-researched writing on my blog entitled Lying Pays Off!!!!! Smears Succeed!!!! Obstructionism Is Rewarded!!!! I document the behavior of Republicans in the Congress and out.
In the face of this Mr. Alexander says:
"A few conservative voices may say that all liberals are always wrong, but these tend to be relatively marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck." Well, I don't remember it being phrased as "liberals are always wrong" that would be far too mild for the minions of the Right. No they accuse liberals of far worse things and it clearly is not limited to "marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck."
Thus we see such reputed moderate Republicans as Susan Collins engaging in fear mongering and lying when she says:
“The Obama administration appears to have a blind spot when it comes to the War on Terrorism. . . . There’s no other way to explain the irresponsible, indeed dangerous, decision on Abdulmutallab’s interrogation. There’s no other way to explain the inconceivable treatment of him as if he were a common criminal. This charade must stop. Foreign terrorists are enemy combatants and they must be treated as such. The safety of the American people depends on it.”
The new "moderate" Senator from Massachusetts said similar things. It is a charade indeed, but the charade goes the other way.
The New Yorker sums it up succinctly saying:
"According to Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies, in Washington, the military can’t simply grab suspects inside the U.S. and hold them without charge or a hearing. 'It violates the Constitution, which extends to everyone inside the U.S.,' she said. 'You can’t be seized without probable cause. You have the right to due process, and to a trial by a jury of your peers—which a military commission is not.' Confusion on this point may derive from the Bush Administration’s controversial handling of two suspected terrorists, José Padilla and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. Both men were arrested in the U.S. by law-enforcement officials, and indicted on criminal charges. But Bush declared Padilla and Marri to be 'enemy combatants,' which, he argued, meant that they could be transferred to military custody, for interrogation and detention without trial. (Neither suspect provided useful intelligence.) The cases provoked legal challenges, and in both instances appeals courts ruled that Bush had overstepped his power. The Administration, not willing to risk a Supreme Court defeat, returned the suspects to the civilian system."
John Brennan who is a career CIA officer and has served in numerous Administrations in ever higher positions and was the Acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center under President Bush said on Meet the Press that he is "tiring of politicians using national security issues as a political football"
But this kind of libel is not new to the Republican Party. Richard Nixon accused his Democratic rival Helen Gahaghan Douglas of "being soft on Communism". Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the Truman Administration of "twenty years of treason" which Ann Coulter decided to top this with “Liberals are up to their old tricks again. Twenty years of treason hasn’t slowed them down.” Indeed, “in my next book, [I’m] going through 50 years of treason by Democrats.”
When Clinton aide Vincent Foster committed suicide Rush Limbaugh "claim(ed) that Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton."
Alexander writes with derision of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," charged by Hillary Clinton during the Clinton Administration as showing essentially a paranoid view. But was it? "Mr. Scaife, reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, spent more than $2 million investigating and publicizing accusations about the supposed involvement of Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton in corrupt land deals, sexual affairs, drug running and murder" and he certainly didn't work alone. They took a land deal the Clintons were involved in, that they had in fact lost money in, known as Whitewater, and made it look like the biggest fraud of a century. They pushed it until Clinton felt compelled to ask for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the affair. Now in all previous cases the court which was to choose the prosecutor under the then existing law, had always chosen one of the party of the person being investigated, so as to make sure that there would be no hint of partisanship. But here that tradition was violated when a partisan Republican panel appointed Kenneth Starr, who already had a reputation for a high level of partisanship. They then financed a suit by one, Paula Jones, thereby keeping the Clinton Administration off balance and unable to fully function. They eventually succeeded in catching the President in a lie in the Lewinsky affair, leading to Clinton's impeachment on a straight party line vote. It was obvious from day one that they, and it wasn't just Scaife, were determined to get Clinton by fair means or foul.
Let us move forward to the Health Care debate and the falsehoods told there. They have never engaged on the merits. they have used lie after lie, the claim of Death Panels being the most outrageous, but not alone. See: Health Insurance Reform - Lies and Damned Lies.
Well Mr. Alexander might say that was just Sarah Palin, but aside from the fact that Palin is a leading Republican light, not a single Republican disavowed these lies. But see also: Health Insurance Reform.
How can one have a serious policy discussion with a group that relies on so many falsehoods.
Whether it is the fault of the media, or the fault of the Administration, the lack of knowledge on the part of the public is appalling. According to the Pew Research Center's News just 32% know that the Senate passed its version of the Health Care legislation without a single Republican vote. And, in what proved to be the most difficult question on the quiz, only about a quarter (26%) knows that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate and force a vote on a bill.
If we look back on the build up to the Iraq war and beyond we find again the total lack of accurate information that the American Public has. In 2005 a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 56 percent of Americans still thought that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al-Qaida terrorist network — notions that had long since been thoroughly debunked by everyone from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee to both of Bush's handpicked weapons inspectors, Charles Duelfer and David Kay.
Alexander talks about "The Republican War on Science" as though it were some kind of fiction. But the record of Bush Administration agencies ignoring the evidence of their own scientific staff, has been documented too often to require further discussion. Their refusal to acknowledge global warming in the face of an almost unanimous scientific consensus, speaks for itself.
He argues that evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda. That is simply not true. Of course there are costs to cap and trade. Nobody denies that. This is an example of their favorite tactic of setting up of a straw man. The point is not that there would be no costs, but that the cost of doing nothing is far greater. Not only does CO2 present a mortal threat from global warming, but it is causing untold health problems which are a burden on the economy and the Health Care system. But Alexander here illustrates exactly why it is so hard to have a real discussion. That straw man is a favorite tactic substituting for honest discussion.
Alexander says: "But, if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid at worst. I wouldn't say stupid, but as I have illustrated, the public is so ill informed and so consistently lied to, that the ability of Democracy to function becomes a sham. Voting does not Democracy make. An informed public is necessary to the process, and when we have a whole party that consistently misrepresents, fear-mongers, and appeals to prejudice, we as a society and as a democracy are in trouble.
Let us remember that the Nazis came to power by the vote of the people.
Says Alexander that "It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants." But that is absolutely true. What else is behind the birther movement against Obama. Why is his birth more in doubt than say McCain's (who in fact was not born in any of the 50 states) or any previous President.
It was not so long ago that then Republican majority leader Trent Lott said in praise of Strom Thurmond that the country would have been better off if segregationist Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948.
In addition, while it is not widely known, since the Johnson civil rights legislation era, no Democrat for President ever achieved a majority of the white vote in the US. Obama got 43 percent of the white electorate which was more than any previous Democratic candidate got, but it hardly shows that the race issue is dead.
As for anti-immigrant, a few weeks ago I received an e-mail being widely circulated of a 1929 song that went something like, "If you don't like things here, go home, go home". Unfortunately the link is no longer active and so I can't reproduce it.
According to the Washington Post of February 11, 2010 "Former House member Tom Tancredo, famed for his attacks on illegal immigration, gave backers of the racial explanation all the ammunition they needed."
"In an astonishingly offensive speech, cheered by the Tea Party crowd, Tancredo declared that 'people who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama....Even worse, if that's possible, Tancredo harkened back to the Jim Crow South that denied the right to vote to African Americans on the basis of 'literacy tests' that called for potential black registrants to answer questions that would have stumped PhDs. in political science...The reason we elected "Barack Hussein Obama," according to Tancredo, is "mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country."
As for Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he was no neo-conservative. He was a liberal, and a Democrat, if ever there was one. Yes, it is not to the credit of other liberals that they discounted his concerns, but what does that prove? That liberals are not always right. Conceded gladly!!!
As for the Supreme Court Decision of Free Speech for corporations I addressed that at length here.
Mr Alexander suggests that we need to listen to the Tea partiers, but their message is incomprehensible. "Don't touch my Medicare - I am against government programs." and it tells us something about them as they cheer Tancredo and Palin and their hate-mongering.
All I can say is that Alexander indicts the movement by describing its character. The liberal impression is not one to apologize for, for it is accurate in describing the Republican Party. It was a vicious party during McCarthy and Nixon, it did great damage under Reagan, but nothing that went before, compares to what it has now become.
Liberals aren't always right, and I have severely criticized them on my blog, under the heading: Doesn't Anybody Really Care? where I also further documented the viciousness of the Republican party, but to read the Right even among its so called intellectuals like Krauthammer or Wills is not particularly elucidating.
I sincerely believe that what the Republicans and the Right in general seeks is a country of aristocrats, giving out of the goodness of their hearts and with condescension, a handout here or a job there. The old Russian model of serfdom seems to appeal to them. They have said that they believe that the only function of government is defense against external and internal foes. That means no public school system, no SS, no Medicare, etc., etc. Can no one hear them.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
In Defense of the Banks
The title probably makes the blood pressure go up for quite a few people. The banks after all are the villains that brought our economy down, and that is undoubtedly true.
But it overlooks one cogent and vital point and that is the nature of our capitalist system. Now some of my audience may react that this is exactly why we need to get rid of the capitalist system, but I say to them, nobody has as yet come up with a better one. China, India, the USSR and a number of other countries have tried planned economies, and all they got were shortages, a low standard of living, and more poverty than any capitalist system has ever seen.
So as far as I am concerned I am for a capitalist system, or more accurately, a mixed economy with regulations that prevent inappropriate risk taking, and unethical behavior. Regulations have been the US model going back long before Roosevelt’s New Deal, and as least as early as 1890, when the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was enacted. A mixed economy goes back to the founding of the Republic, when the Constitution mandated that certain businesses, such as the delivery of the mail shall be a government function. Since then the US government has taken on innumerable business functions, from building canals, to land grants, to subsidizing the railroads, building highways, developing a widely envied (at least it used to be) public education system, establishing our National Parks, creating unemployment insurance, Health Insurance in the Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and VA programs and Social Security, to name just a few.
But why would I defend the banks? Well, they did what all businesses do in a capitalist system. They try to make as much money as they can, and that is what the banks did. So where was their fault. They used overly risky, ill considered and even unethical means toward their end of maximizing profits. But as long as what they did was not illegal, they did nothing wrong under our system of laws or even ethics.
Some, particularly in Republican circles, joined to some degree by left wing organizations, such as moveon.org, decried the bank bailout, and felt that they should reap the consequences of their reckless behavior. On a level of pure theory they are right, but we live in a real world, and the consequences of a melt down of our banking system would have had disastrous consequences for the whole economy, indeed the whole world. The failure to save Lehman brothers, which shook the economy, gives some indication of the abyss, which we were facing. Let us remember that F.D.R. dealt first with the banking crisis when he was inaugurated and despite unprecedented actions still had a 22% unemployment rate after 5 years in office.
In my opinion the fault lay in a misconceived believe that the capitalist system is self-regulating. Some, despite all evidence to the contrary, still believe that. Fortunately, many, among them the great apostle against regulation, the former Chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan, have recognized that they were wrong, or as the conservative British newspaper, the Guardian, said:
Even former President Bush, in his last year in office recognized the crisis and urged a bailout of the banks which was authorized by the Congress in a display of bipartisanship not seen since, with both Presidential candidates, McCain and Obama, voting for it along with a majority of Democrats, and a minority of Republicans, who clinging to their faith that the markets would right themselves, were willing to risk a total meltdown in pursuit of their ideology, and now oppose regulating the banks, having learned nothing from this crisis, or for that matter earlier crisis, and the people who through their votes support such irresponsible behavior.
We now see similar behavior from the Toyota company who resisted recalls and an emphasis on safety for fear that it would have a negative effect on their bottom line and we saw it during the Savings and Loan crisis of the ‘80s and ’90 which like this crisis was caused by the removal of regulations that until then prevented the calamity and would have prevented it had they remained in force, or as About.com explained it:
Unfortunately, the lessons of that crisis were not learned, particularly since that too resulted in an essential bailout under a Republican Administration. Or as About.com puts it:
But why any of this should be a surprise is difficult to fathom. Sport analogies are so very popular in our culture, and here there is one that is at much on point as any could be. Our capitalist system works on competition. Competition is the heart and soul of sports. But can anyone imagine sports without regulations and umpires to enforce them. With the Super Bowl just behind us, can anyone imagine that game without rules, among them unnecessary roughness, holding or other tactics considered unfair.
The President has introduced legislation that would begin to repair this situation. The banks and their protectors in the Republican Party want to block these. They are essential if we are to avoid endless repetition, but even they are not enough. We need to once again separate investment from commercial banking, by reenacting the Glass-Steagall Act, as ably set forth by Thomas Frank in the Wall Street Journal: We need to cap usurious interest rates, whether disguised as fees, or in the form of charging interest for a month when the loan is in fact for a day.
The idea that competition, the heart and soul of our capitalist system, can function without regulations and strict enforcement should by now be self-evident. The villain is not the banks, but the government that fails to set up regulations, the agencies that fail to enforce them, and the people who through their vote create such a government.
But it overlooks one cogent and vital point and that is the nature of our capitalist system. Now some of my audience may react that this is exactly why we need to get rid of the capitalist system, but I say to them, nobody has as yet come up with a better one. China, India, the USSR and a number of other countries have tried planned economies, and all they got were shortages, a low standard of living, and more poverty than any capitalist system has ever seen.
So as far as I am concerned I am for a capitalist system, or more accurately, a mixed economy with regulations that prevent inappropriate risk taking, and unethical behavior. Regulations have been the US model going back long before Roosevelt’s New Deal, and as least as early as 1890, when the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was enacted. A mixed economy goes back to the founding of the Republic, when the Constitution mandated that certain businesses, such as the delivery of the mail shall be a government function. Since then the US government has taken on innumerable business functions, from building canals, to land grants, to subsidizing the railroads, building highways, developing a widely envied (at least it used to be) public education system, establishing our National Parks, creating unemployment insurance, Health Insurance in the Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and VA programs and Social Security, to name just a few.
But why would I defend the banks? Well, they did what all businesses do in a capitalist system. They try to make as much money as they can, and that is what the banks did. So where was their fault. They used overly risky, ill considered and even unethical means toward their end of maximizing profits. But as long as what they did was not illegal, they did nothing wrong under our system of laws or even ethics.
Some, particularly in Republican circles, joined to some degree by left wing organizations, such as moveon.org, decried the bank bailout, and felt that they should reap the consequences of their reckless behavior. On a level of pure theory they are right, but we live in a real world, and the consequences of a melt down of our banking system would have had disastrous consequences for the whole economy, indeed the whole world. The failure to save Lehman brothers, which shook the economy, gives some indication of the abyss, which we were facing. Let us remember that F.D.R. dealt first with the banking crisis when he was inaugurated and despite unprecedented actions still had a 22% unemployment rate after 5 years in office.
In my opinion the fault lay in a misconceived believe that the capitalist system is self-regulating. Some, despite all evidence to the contrary, still believe that. Fortunately, many, among them the great apostle against regulation, the former Chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan, have recognized that they were wrong, or as the conservative British newspaper, the Guardian, said:
“… Alan Greenspan has conceded that the global financial crisis has exposed a "mistake" in the free market ideology that guided his 18-year stewardship of US monetary policy.
“A long-time cheerleader for deregulation, Greenspan admitted to a congressional committee yesterday that he had been "partially wrong" in his hands-off approach towards the banking industry and that the credit crunch had left him in a state of shocked disbelief.”
Even former President Bush, in his last year in office recognized the crisis and urged a bailout of the banks which was authorized by the Congress in a display of bipartisanship not seen since, with both Presidential candidates, McCain and Obama, voting for it along with a majority of Democrats, and a minority of Republicans, who clinging to their faith that the markets would right themselves, were willing to risk a total meltdown in pursuit of their ideology, and now oppose regulating the banks, having learned nothing from this crisis, or for that matter earlier crisis, and the people who through their votes support such irresponsible behavior.
We now see similar behavior from the Toyota company who resisted recalls and an emphasis on safety for fear that it would have a negative effect on their bottom line and we saw it during the Savings and Loan crisis of the ‘80s and ’90 which like this crisis was caused by the removal of regulations that until then prevented the calamity and would have prevented it had they remained in force, or as About.com explained it:
“Savings and Loans were specialized banks that used low-interest, but Federally-insured, deposits in savings accounts to fund mortgages. In the 1980's, the popularity of money market accounts reduced the attractiveness of savings accounts, so the banks asked Congress to remove restrictions. In 1982, the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act was passed, which allowed S&L's to raise interest rates on deposits, make commercial and consumer loans, and removed restrictions on loan-to-value ratios. At the same time, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board regulatory staff was reduced thanks to budget cuts.
“In an attempt to raise capital, banks invested in speculative real estate and commercial loans. Between 1982 and 1985, these assets increased 56%. In Texas, 40 S&L's tripled in size, some growing 100% each year.
“By 1983, 35% of the country's S&L's weren't profitable, and 9% were technically bankrupt. As banks went under, the state and Federal insurance began to run out of the money needed to refund depositors. However, S&L's kept remained open, making bad loans, and the losses kept mounting.”
Unfortunately, the lessons of that crisis were not learned, particularly since that too resulted in an essential bailout under a Republican Administration. Or as About.com puts it:
“By 1989, Congress and the president knew they needed to bail out the industry agreed on a taxpayer-financed bailout measure known as the FIRREA provided $50 billion to close failed banks and stop further losses. It set up a new government agency called the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to resell Savings and Loan assets, and use the proceeds to pay back depositors. FIRREA also changed Savings and Loan regulations to help prevent further poor investments and fraud.”
But why any of this should be a surprise is difficult to fathom. Sport analogies are so very popular in our culture, and here there is one that is at much on point as any could be. Our capitalist system works on competition. Competition is the heart and soul of sports. But can anyone imagine sports without regulations and umpires to enforce them. With the Super Bowl just behind us, can anyone imagine that game without rules, among them unnecessary roughness, holding or other tactics considered unfair.
The President has introduced legislation that would begin to repair this situation. The banks and their protectors in the Republican Party want to block these. They are essential if we are to avoid endless repetition, but even they are not enough. We need to once again separate investment from commercial banking, by reenacting the Glass-Steagall Act, as ably set forth by Thomas Frank in the Wall Street Journal: We need to cap usurious interest rates, whether disguised as fees, or in the form of charging interest for a month when the loan is in fact for a day.
The idea that competition, the heart and soul of our capitalist system, can function without regulations and strict enforcement should by now be self-evident. The villain is not the banks, but the government that fails to set up regulations, the agencies that fail to enforce them, and the people who through their vote create such a government.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Eating Crow
On January 21 2010 I posted a commentary on my blog entitled: "Lying pays off!!!!! Smears succeed!!!! Obstructionism is rewarded!!!!"
I received a comment from Bruno Lederer of Stamford, Conn. that read as follows:
When I published my commentary: “Doesn’t Anybody Really Care," I intended to use this comment in the body of my opinion piece, but in doing so inadvertently misquoted the comment and misrepresented it. This led to the following exchange between Bruno Lederer and me, which I am publishing in order to correct this misrepresentation.
Bruno wrote:
To which I responded:
I received a comment from Bruno Lederer of Stamford, Conn. that read as follows:
“It is true that there were many smears and lies by the Republicans, and that that had some influence on the outcome in Mass. However, the main reason for the voter revolt there and in NJ and Va. was the use of federal money to rescue the automobile companies, AIG, and the banks, coupled with the unemployment situation in the country, and the fear that the health bill would result in more taxes. The trouble with Obama's approach was not that it was wrong, but that there was no real attempt to educate the voters as to the reason for his policies. I know that it does not seem fair for voters to penalize the democrats for policies that are much more reasonable than those of the Bush administration but that is the way voters are. The fact that special deals were made with the senators from Louisiana and Nebraska rubbed many voters the wrong way, and confirmed their negative view of Congress and politics. It is now imperative to fashion a health bill that will be acceptable to Olympia Snow, if possible, though the road will be much rougher now. Moreover, there is still time for Obama to try to educate the voters.”
When I published my commentary: “Doesn’t Anybody Really Care," I intended to use this comment in the body of my opinion piece, but in doing so inadvertently misquoted the comment and misrepresented it. This led to the following exchange between Bruno Lederer and me, which I am publishing in order to correct this misrepresentation.
Bruno wrote:
“Just two short comments in response to your recent misquote of my letter and mischaracterization of what it contained. Your changed "Republicans" to "Republican" in the first line, giving the impression that I was referring only to Sen. elect Brown as the person guilty of lies, smears etc. when I was referring to the Republican party as a whole. I also never said that the filibuster may have had some influence on the outcome in Mass. when I was not referring to the filibuster as influencing the election result, but the lies and smears of the Republicans. I also take exception to the statement that my letter shows no indication that I care, which I do, as you should know.”
To which I responded:
“I just spent quite a bit of time reviewing your complaints. At first I could not figure what their basis was, and then as I searched further I saw your point. You are right!
“I was careless, though none of it was intentional."
“The dropping of the s in Republicans was the result of a spelling and punctuation check, though that should not have applied to a quote. In adding a comma, I apparently substituted the comma for the s."
“As for my misquoting you on the filibuster when you referred to the "many smears and lies" again inexcusable carelessness, due to my equating them in my own mind."
“I will distribute this exchange, or any other statement you wish me to make, though I recognize that corrections never undo the damage done by the original misstatement."
“What bothered me about your comment was that I had written an angry commentary which can best be summarized by its title, "Lying Pays off!!! Smears Succeed!!! Obstructionism is Rewarded!!!" and you came back with what I considered to be a dispassionate analysis of the election. Of course, I know you care, but I don't think that one could tell by what you wrote. But in any case, I was not intending to attack you, but looking for a good lead in to the contention that we liberals should be able to muster at least as much anger and outrage as the Tea party people.
“You may be right that Obama did not spend enough time educating the voters, but that is a difficult, if not impossible task, when you are being savaged by not only the opposition, but by the liberal organizations whose support you should be able to count on, not to speak of the media, whose job is to inform. How much space has been devoted in the press to the Democrats being blocked at every turn by an unprecedented use of obstruction, requiring unanimity on the Democratic part. As I pointed out, people like Krugman, actually lie (distort) in attacking Democrats, ignoring that compromises which they may disapprove of were unavoidable. MSNBC which is supposed to be a counterweight to Fox joins in the attack, distorting the realities of the political scene and demanding that the President undo acts of Congress by executive order - "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"; not defend acts of Congress though that is a duty of the Solicitor General, and take hopeless appeals where the law is settled. They demand that the previous Administration be prosecuted for war crimes in connection with torture.”
“It isn't the voters who infuriate me. It is the ‘liberal organizations, like moveon.org and the others mentioned…, as well as Krugman, Herbert, MSNBC, etc.”
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