So Conservatism is...software. An app, that can be loaded into any platform that features "traditional rules and existing institutions" under assault by headlong revolutionaries.ETA: Via drifty, Esquire's Charles P. Pierce administers a vivisection of Mr. Brooks, who is attempting to think above his logic.
Fine.
But like so many of Conservatism's dilettante Useful Idiots, Mr. Sullivan cannot bring himself face what happens in the real, non-Beltway world when those abstract, dorm-room ideals are adopted by bad people fighting to preserve despicable institutions.
What happens when those "traditional rules" are the pro-ignorance, anti-science, anti-female, homophobic tenets of Conservative Christian fundamentalism?
What happens when the "existing institution" is white supremacy, girded generation after generation by an ancient, paranoid, rage against those damn Yankee devils and their Evil Gummint in Washington interfering with their traditional, bible sanctioned way of life?
These are the true and terrible realities of what happened to Conservatism in America, which is why Mr. Sullivan instead prefers to jerk off endlessly about what I refer to as (and am probably borrowing from some cleverer person) "Firefly Conservatism". A Conservatism with all the glories and grace notes of the antebellum South -- the nobility of a Great Cause all dressed up in buckskin and clever dialogue about liberty and scrappy underdogs standing up to the Oppressive Buttinski Central Gummint -- shorn completely of the brutal, racist realities out of which that culture grew.
This may be the God Particle of moronic right here. Boot camps do not "engage people as they are." They break people down in order to build them into a homogenous model dedicated to a single purpose. I've never been any closer to Parris Island than Brooks has been, but, Jesus Mary, even I know that dedication to "cultural diversity" never has been high on the To-Do list of drill instructors. Haven't conservatives been battling the idea of "cultural diversity" as contrary to "military virtues" in the con[t]ext of female soldiers, and then gay soldiers, for decades? And, not for nothing, I would not want to be the teacher or the principal who puts David Brooks's idea of a well-rounded education into practice on David Brooks's kid. You wouldn't be able to get Brooks off the ceiling with a crowbar.The soundtrack suggestion was on the money, too.
Still, I take comfort in the fact that before there was any inkling of change in my politics, three other things happened. 1) I moved to Chicago and saw injustice, 2) I met Alicia, this strange girl who seemed to care so much about the downtrodden, 3) I began reading my Bible anew, and saw all the teaching about poverty and injustice as if for the first time. Only then, after a period of years, did my politics begin to change. I'm thankful that it happened in that order.And then he lays out his reasons.
In case I'm not being clear: if you can't even listen to someone who might disagree with you, lest they influence your thinking, you're not being "principled", you're being cowardly -- you obviously don't think your ideas stand up to the challenge. This is aside from the fact that calling the NY Times "liberal" is laughable.
None of this means that the United States is about to fall victim to a fascist coup d'etat as Germany did in January 1933. Remember that no outcome is inevitable. Nor would it be accurate to say that the United States is repeating the exact same events and taking the same course as Germany did during the 1930s, because many other important details are different. For example: Germany was a nation saddled with huge debts and lacking the global political power it needed to reverse its situation; but even with today's high unemployment rates, the United States remains the globe's largest economy, and therefore doesn't face the same fiscal constraints Weimar Germany faced. In fact, a better current analogy may be Greece, which is in a far more similar predicament now.AlterNet has lots of good stuff.
Yet the underlying similarities ought to be troubling -- and are enough to give us pause. The combination of austerity and well-funded right-wing political movements hostile to democracy destroyed Weimar Germany.
(Is it only in America, or only inside the Beltway where baldly selling out to your professional ambitions is a mark of integrity? We owe Axis Sally an apology.)
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Fer cryin' out loud, the reason it's necessary to "rekindle" "conservative" interest in the only thing "conservatives" have been talking about since the 1980 election is the lack of fuel once you get the fire started.
The "Framers' design for limited government", such as it was, didn't survive the Washington administration, let alone two centuries of unimaginable scientific and technical advancement.
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Do we really have to note just how much the modern "movement" "conservative" gleefully accepts (Republican Presidential war powers, the five-ocean Navy, warrantless government eavesdropping, "extraordinary rendition", the entirety of corporate law) which would have made John Adams blanch? Can't we at least hold them responsible for their facile libertoonianism? Can't somebody punch George Eff Will in the nose, just figuratively, just once?
Dr. Heuer and others said that it was too soon to know for sure whether the new particle, which weighs in at 125 billion electron volts, one of the heaviest subatomic particles yet, fits the simplest description given by the Standard Model, the theory that has ruled physics for the last half century, or whether it is an imposter, a single particle or even the first of many particles yet to be discovered . The latter possibilities are particularly exciting to physicists since they could point the way to new deeper ideas, beyond the Standard Model, about the nature of reality. For now, some physicists are calling it a “Higgs-like” particle.Daughters of the American Revolution in Queens.
Right now, a lot of our problems stem directly from the fact that the wrong sort has finally gotten the upper hand; a particularly brutal and anti-democratic strain of American aristocrat that the other elites have mostly managed to keep away from the levers of power since the Revolution. Worse: this bunch has set a very ugly tone that's corrupted how people with power and money behave in every corner of our culture. Here's what happened, and how it happened, and what it means for America now.Mrs. Robinson examines a particular strain of "elite" and its values. (For background, because this article seems to generalize more than usual: Sara Robinson did a series at Orcinus reviewing a book about the first English settlers [David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America]; the relevant segment is this one about "The Cavaliers," who settled in Virginia and parts South. It's...scary. To balance it off, there's the Introduction, where she explains why she's writing about an old book [and says some problematic things], and Part I, which deals with "The Puritans." Part III takes up "the Quakers" and Part IV doesn't seem to have been written.)
And while I would be the first to acknowledge that there was certainly good in the vision that the founders had for this country, it is always mediated by the terrible things they believed about the many groups who, combined, make up a large majority of this country today.Daisy's Dead Air went online exactly a year before I did, which is what reminded me.
The decision did significantly restrict one major portion of the law: the expansion of Medicaid, the government health-insurance program for low-income and sick people. The ruling give states some flexibility not to expand their Medicaid programs, without paying the same financial penalties that the law called for.
Must this always be said this way? Attention must be paid? Really? As though this great Generational Leviathan insists that Everyone listen to nothing but its incontinently nostalgic soundtrack of 60s Top 40 to Eternity? Codswallop. So far as I know, there's still a Glenn Miller Orchestra touring out there. There are Platters and Coasters and possibly Ink Spots out there, all, like George Washinton's original hatchet, having had the handle replaced five times and the blade six.
Easy nostalgia for money is hardly a Boomer invention. I'm sorry, truly sorry, if it ruins your elevator riding experience, but take that up with the people who peddle shit for money, not people who like to relive the high point of their miserable lives made even more miserable by shit peddlers and their public spokesmen.
It's disingenous of Ms. Slaughter to imagine this story is about her. She has had it all. She's done everything she wanted to do, when she wanted to do it— once she escaped HER gilded cage. Was she ever in one of those? I don't know. At her level of adult privilege, she certainly hasn't been held back. Young people deserve bold chances— all our children deserve that support. Our "work," ultimately, is toward the betterment of the world for our children, and for their children. That's what's upside-down in our world right now— the vanity of the short-sighted, the hubris of elders who destroy the future for youth. You want a movement for "having it all?" Start by giving it back, in spades.(The article, at least what I've seen of it, seems to indicate that individual adjustments to make it possible to give work and family the time needed to do both jobs well are not enough; "society" needs to adjust its demands on people so they can have both a work life and a family life [someone mentioned somewhere that men don't "have it all," either] without scanting one or the other. How to get that entity to act is left as an exercise for the reader.)
But even as we're getting an aggrieved earful from the full chorus of patriarchal bullies, our own pro-choice men have receded into the background of the conversation, to the point where they have no voice at all. Worse: these sweet guys think that by holding their tongues, they're doing us a favor. After all, they understand that getting pregnant is a lot like that old joke about your ham-and-eggs breakfast: the chicken was involved, but the pig was committed. At the end of the day, the decision to carry on or terminate a pregnancy must, by moral right, remain in women's hands -- because while men are involved, women are committed, body and soul.Comments closed here because frankly, I can't be bothered. Comments elsewhere about this post will be zapped. I Have Spoken.
Men still enjoy the luxury of being able to choose their level of parental engagement. Some walk away and never see their baby. Others dedicate the rest of their lives to their kid's welfare. Which path they choose is totally their decision, and they can (and do) reconsider that relationship at any time, at will.
Women have no such choice. Once we're pregnant, we're in it, full-on, for the next 20 years, whether we want to be or not. Since we don't enjoy the wide leeway men are granted on the engagement front, it's essential that we maintain control of the one choice we do have -- that is, whether or not to go forward with the pregnancy at all.
Here we begin to see the real consequence of all this getting and spending. It’s not that campaign money has direct power over the public mind—that one advertising dollar can be counted upon to yield one vote. Nor is it true that the public is invulnerable, that we judiciously weigh these messages and see through the lies. The problem is that by putting such a price tag on the White House, we have imported market logic directly into our politics. Yes, even the village socialist will still get to vote, not to mention the village idiot. But in order to be a candidate—to be the kind of person who can make those calls to billionaires and get them to “double down”—Americans will have to undergo a far more rigorous process of ideological winnowing and executive training. And anyone who isn’t an absolute zealot about maximizing shareholder value will fail to make the cut.We may be in trouble...
Although I have read fairly extensively about the rise of the Nazis, I would hardly say that I am an expert on the subject. But I have thought a great deal about the general issues involved, and about the dynamics that explain why people in many historical periods and places have so blithely accepted the steps by which their society descends into hell.(Incidentally, I'm coming to think that invoking Godwin has done a disservice. The Nazis really were that bad.)
Some might argue, I guess, that if a conservative like Adelson wants to spend a billion dollars, well, a liberal billionaire can counterbalance him. But this misses the point. The rich, conservatives and liberals alike, have interests that the rest of us do not share. Billionaires, whether conservative or liberal, cannot be expected to truly look out for the interests of the poor. A democracy in which elections are fought on the terrain the rich create with their unlimited campaign contributions is not much of a democracy at all.I take bribes (said hopefully); send one hundred thousand dollars in cash, and I'll
11 And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:[King James Version]
12 And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
13 And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?
Adel has been in prison for four years. Not only is he innocent, we rewarded the men who condemned him. This sort of thing used to exist in Russia. In the France of the Terror, it was called denouncing. I suppose we are better than Revolutionary France, we; after all, aren't sending the denounced to Madame Guillotine, but rather keeping them in cells, depriving them of human contact, isolating them from family, religion and the world.Pecunium on the injustices being committed in the name of the war on terror by this country. It's eloquent. It's not a petit-four. Read it. And then let's talk about making officials understand that they need to correct this situation NOW.
Furthermore, the discussion about this child-raising issue presents a false dichotomy. It suggests that a given child has two choices: to be raised by their biological parents (who are married to each other), or to be raised by a same-sex couple. In actual reality, those are very rarely the choices. In most cases where there's a child who's about to be raised by a same-sex couple, the chance of that kid being raised by married bio-parents is extremely low. If you want to make the outcome for that kid as good as it can be, and your options are to demonize the parents or support them, which one do you think is better for that particular kid?PhoenixWoman disputes the definition of "same-sex relationships" (see the headline for the not-correct blooper).
...[I]f I have identified one issue that may prove to be of special value, it is my analysis of the ways in which the formation of a tribal identity is inextricably and inevitably tied to Alice Miller's discussion of how the most commonly accepted methods of raising children -- and teaching them the primacy of obedience to authority above all -- severely impair or even destroy a child's sense of genuine, autonomous personal identity.[Emphasis added.]
Akin and Brunner’s willingness to cede the rights of working women is bad enough, but I’m gonna focus on Steelman for a special correction because Sarah Steelman’s politician self has always benefited from the protections she just said she didn’t think American women deserve.