Heritage's Mike Lee: What's next for conservatives?

You know me, I'm all about equal time and the Fairness Doctrine, so I'm linking here in full a speech on October 29 by former Senator Mike Lee, the director of the Heritage Foundation.

Very quickly, Lee has taken Heritage from a right-wing think tank to an activist wing of the Tea Party; and many on the Right call Lee the leader of the Tea Party movement.  He very much positions himself as outside the "Republican establishment," whatever that is. 

(Everybody except John Boehner and Mitch McConnell? I guess "outside the establishment" is what you call yourself instead of "outside the Beltway" when you're actually located inside the Beltway, like Heritage is.)

Just a few interesting lines I'd like to point out that sound OK on the surface, until you get to the ideas part. Such as:

It’s hard to believe, but by the time we reach November 2016, we will be about as far – chronologically speaking – from Reagan’s election as Reagan’s election was from D-Day! Yet as the decades pass and a new generation of Americans faces a new generation of problems, the party establishment clings to its 1970s agenda like a security blanket.

The result is that to many Americans today, especially to the underprivileged and middle class, or those who have come of age or immigrated since Reagan left office the Republican Party may not seem to have much of a relevant reform message at all.

This is the reason the G.O.P. can seem so out of touch. And it is also the reason we find ourselves in such internal disarray.

And here's Lee's guidepost:

Where do we begin? A generation ago, conservatives forged an agenda to meet the great challenges facing Americans in the late 1970s: inflation, poor growth, Soviet aggression,along with a dispiriting pessimism about the future of the nation and their own families.

I submit that the great challenge of our generation is America’s growing crisis of stagnation and sclerosis – a crisis that comes down to a shortage of opportunities.

This opportunity crisis presents itself in three principal ways: immobility among the poor, trapped in poverty; insecurity in the middle class, where families just can’t seem to get ahead; and cronyist privilege at the top, where political and economic elites unfairly profit at everyone else’s expense.

OK, so far, so good. Sounds like good 'ole liberal rhetoric, I'm liking it.

Lee goes on to talk about breaking up corrupt cronyism of business and government elites, of backing the "little guy" again, and helping the middle class with one of its biggest expenses: health care.  (Lee supports "a comprehensive health reform plan proposed by Representatives Steve Scalise and Phil Roe" that I'm sure you all heard about when it was rolled out in September...?) 

Lee says there are, "[F]our leading challenges facing middle-class families today: the cost of raising children; the difficulties of work-life balance; the time Americans lose away from work and home, stuck in traffic; and the rising costs of and restricted access to quality higher education."  

OK, maybe those aren't America's top four problems, but they're definitely up there, so I'm liking the rhetoric.

He says the Republicans have proposed legislation to address these four challenges.  Now we get into the problems....

To address the cost of raising children -- about $300,000 per child, cites Lee -- he proposes (yep, you guessed it), a tax cut for the middle class.  Yet more right-wing social engineering through the tax system.  I'm against trying to do policy through the tax code.  That's what our tax code is so darn complicated.  Moreover, what's to say the right won't turn around and call these same middle-class families "moochers" and part of the "47 percent" that doesn't pay net income tax?  

Anyhow, Mike Lee says the middle class should keep more of its own money, "not give parents more of other people's money."  That's just dandy, but the median U.S. income is $25,000. Double that and a two-income family with two children would owe only about $500 in income tax anyway.  So what good would a $5,000 tax cut do them?

Mike Lee has the answer: a $2,500 per-child tax credit that can offset income and payroll taxes.  Now he's talking about taking the 47 percent of moochers and exempting them from the only taxes they do pay, Social Security and Medicare.  What about our yawning deficits? What about, "You should pay taxes if you want to participate in our democracy"? No answer. It's just more conservative voodoo economics: cut everybody's taxes, then cry about deficits. And then call the middle-class beneficiaries of this tax system a bunch of moochers.

Next, Lee proposes old-school liberal policies: mandatory flex-time for working parents; and more investment in infrastructure and mass transit, so that people don't spend so much time in traffic.  Fine!  Great!  Welcome to the Democratic Party.  

But there's always a "but."  Mike Lee proposes to to build new highways and mass transit... but by cutting taxes (you knew that had to be part of it!) and shifting responsibility for infrastructure projects to the states.  That's not a solution; that's passing the buck. That's magical thinking.

Finally, Lee proposes opening up the accreditation system for higher education and vocational training. This is a pretty complicated subject and I won't go into it now, except to say that accreditation for alternative forms of education like apprenticeships and e-learning matters because only accredited institutions are eligible to participate in federal student loan programs. In other words, Lee wants to allow more educational-training providers to benefit from federally subsidized student loans. This could be good or bad -- bad if it ends up as a federal subsidy for businesses to provide training to their employees, which would not really be the intention.

Lee concludes in very un-Tea Party-like fashion [emphasis mine]:

Especially in the wake of recent controversies, many conservatives are more frustrated with the establishment than ever before. And we have every reason to be. But however  justified, frustration is not a platform. Anger is not an agenda. And outrage, as a habit, is not even conservative. Outrage, resentment, and intolerance are gargoyles of the Left. For us, optimism is not just a message – it’s a principle. American conservatism, at its core, is about gratitude, and cooperation, and trust, and above all hope. It is also about inclusion. [Ha! -- That made me LOL. -- J]  Successful political movements are about identifying converts, not heretics.

But anger sure can pack a town hall meeting!  A message of exclusion -- of welfare-mooching minorities, gate-crashing illegals, and culture-subverting gays and intellectuals -- sure turns 'em out at the polls!  Indeed, Lee's message here is not hopeful -- it's hypocritical and delusional. Anger and fear are the real drivers of today's Republican Party, not optimism.

Interestingly, in a recent highly quoted interview about politics, English comedian Russell Brand quoted the same phrase: that the Left's problem is that it is always looking for heretics -- those who are not pure enough -- while the Right is looking for allies. That may be true of Britain, but the opposite is true in the U.S. right now. The Tea Party is on a perpetual RINO hunt; whereas Democrats are too embarrassed to even call themselves "liberal" anymore; they're grateful to let any politician put a [D] behind his name, even he's a Republican by 1991 standards.

Zakaria: Beware the dark side of conservatism

Zakaria may tend to lift material from other journalists, but even so, he's lifting the right stuff. This one gets posted in full!  I mean, this is simply epic. Check it out [emphasis mine]:

But compared with almost any period in U.S. history, we live in bourgeois times, in a culture that values family, religion, work and, above all, business. Young people today aspire to become Mark Zuckerberg. They quote the aphorisms of Warren Buffett and read the Twitter feed of Bill Gates. Even after the worst recession since the Great Depression, there are no obvious radicals, anarchists, Black Panthers or other revolutionary movements — save the tea party.

And here's the upshot of his smackdown:

The era of crises could end, but only when this group of conservatives makes its peace with today’s America. They are misty-eyed in their devotion to a distant republic of myth and memory yet passionate in their dislike of the messy, multiracial, quasi-capitalist democracy that has been around for half a century — a fifth of our country’s history. At some point, will they come to recognize that you cannot love America in theory and hate it in fact?

Ouch!  And so... as my Tea Party friends dust themselves off and wipe the figurative blood from their noses, here's a stylistic note for my journo colleagues: it really is incorrect and misleading to refer to the "tea party" in the singular. They should always be referred to in the plural. They have no overarching organization, leadership, common platform, or even history of playing nicely with each other. They run the gamut from billionaire-funded astro-turf operations like Americans For Prosperity to local coffee klatches in Flyoverville, MO.  

This is why blithering, bilious idiots like Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint or Ted Cruz can rightly claim to speak for the Tea Parties: they have just as valid a claim to leadership of this brainless millipede of an "organization" as anybody does. To be totally honest, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have the most legitimate claim. They speak directly to the Tea Parties everyday, and humor their every paranoid anti-government fantasy.  

Conservatism needs to lighten up

By Fareed Zakaria

October 17, 2013 | Washington Post

The crisis has been resolved, but this respite is temporary. We are bound to have more standoffs and brinkmanship in the months and years ahead. To understand why, you must recognize that, for the tea party, the stakes could not be higher. The movement is animated and energized by a fear that soon America will be beyond rescue.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) put it plainly at the recent Values Voter Summit in Washington: “We’re nearing the edge of a cliff, and our window to turn things around, my friends, I don’t think it is long. I don’t think it is 10 years. We have a couple of years to turn the country around or we go off the cliff to oblivion.”

Cruz dominated the summit’s straw poll, taking 42 percent of the vote, more than three times his nearest rival. His fundraising committees reported this week that they took in $1.19 million in the third quarter, double the total in the preceding quarter. Cruz’s national approval rating may be an abysmal 14 percent, but to the base of the Republican Party he is an idol.

The current fear derives from Obamacare, but that is only the most recent cause for alarm. Modern American conservatism was founded on a diet of despair. In 1955, William F. Buckley Jr. began the movement with a famous first editorial in National Review declaring that the magazine “stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” John Boehner tries to tie into this tradition of opposition when he says in exasperation, “The federal government has spent more than what it has brought in in 55 of the last 60 years!”

But what has been the result over these past 60 years? The United States has grown mightily, destroyed the Soviet Union, spread capitalism across the globe and lifted its citizens to astonishingly high standards of living and income. Over the past 60 years, America has built highways and universities, funded science and space research, and — along the way — ushered in the rise of the most productive and powerful private sector the world has ever known.

At the end of the 1961 speech that launched his political career, Ronald Reagan said, “If I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” But the menace Reagan warned about — Medicare — was enacted. It has provided security to the elderly. There have been problems regarding cost, but that’s hardly the same as killing freedom.

For most Americans, even most conservatives, yesterday’s deepest causes are often quietly forgotten. Consider that by Reagan’s definition, all other industrial democracies are tyrannies. Yet every year, the right-wing Heritage Foundation ranks several of these countries — such as Switzerland — as “more free” than the United States, despite the fact that they have universal health care.

For many conservatives, the “rot” to be excoriated is not about economics and health care but about culture. A persistent theme of conservative intellectuals and commentators — in print and on Fox News — is the cultural decay of the country. But compared with almost any period in U.S. history, we live in bourgeois times, in a culture that values family, religion, work and, above all, business. Young people today aspire to become Mark Zuckerberg. They quote the aphorisms of Warren Buffett and read the Twitter feed of Bill Gates. Even after the worst recession since the Great Depression, there are no obvious radicals, anarchists, Black Panthers or other revolutionary movements — save the tea party.

For some tacticians and consultants, extreme rhetoric is just a way to keep the troops fired up. But rhetoric gives meaning and shape to a political movement. Over the past six decades, conservatism’s language of decay, despair and decline have created a powerful group of Americans who believe fervently in this dark narrative and are determined to stop the country from plunging into imminent oblivion. They aren’t going to give up just yet.

The era of crises could end, but only when this group of conservatives makes its peace with today’s America. They are misty-eyed in their devotion to a distant republic of myth and memory yet passionate in their dislike of the messy, multiracial, quasi-capitalist democracy that has been around for half a century — a fifth of our country’s history. At some point, will they come to recognize that you cannot love America in theory and hate it in fact?

1955 film: The wonderful world of bygone capitalism

(HT: Chief).  This great '50s movie with its Rod Serling soundalike narrator cheerleading American pluck and industry gives us many modern issues to consider. Many things are still true today... or they are lost truths, unfortunately, such as the vital role of the federal government in regulating inflation and aggregate demand. 

Other things are outdated and proven false; for instance, nowadays nobody thinks industry's job is robotically to "match production to consumption" via distribution and marketing, (with their focus on bigger production to lower marginal costs), and priming consumption with advertising.  Today it's all about innovation and delighting customers.  Marketing's primary job is to get closer to the customer and listen, perhaps start a dialogue with him, not simply beam "buy this!" messages at him.

To me, what's most poignant is the video's optimism about the future -- looking at big demographic trends, seeing big opportunities everywhere, and recognizing government's role in seizing those opportunities. We don't think that way anymore; it smacks too much of socialist central planning. But that's indeed how America used to be run: by ambitious, idealistic, unabashedly big thinkers.  

Whereas today we have what is encapsulated in the title of Paul Krugman's textbook on macroeconomics: The Age of Diminished Expectations.

The end of the film about the opportunities presented by increasing leisure time is also poignant. The film predicts: "Both trends, rising productivity and shorter hours, will continue."  But with the benefit of future hindsight, we know one of those trends, shorter hours, stopped sometime in the 1970s.  Meanwhile, productivity gains have continued -- U.S. workers are still the most productive in the world -- but real U.S. wages have been stagnant for about 30 years.  

For those in service industries, today we have a whole new problem: too few hours.  Employers and temp agencies have taken the concept of "just in time" production with machines and applied it to human laborers, who are now struggling to get enough regular work hours to take care of themselves and their families.  They can forget about bygone-era benefits like paid vacation, health insurance and a company pension.

As we all know now, the marvelous cycle of U.S. mass production and consumption described in this film came crashing down some time in the 1980s when middle managers realized they could get a nice promotion and a raise by cutting costs of production by moving operations overseas, then marketing what used to be U.S.-made products back to U.S. consumers.  This worked for a while... until everybody did it.  Industry didn't stop to think who would buy their products when nobody had good-paying manufacturing jobs anymore. Thousands of "invisible hands" of business choked middle-income workers' wages and hence America's overall economic prosperity.

My man Chief agrees with all that, but for him the most interesting aspect of the video is that it "reflects what was then a CONSERVATIVE position!"  I mean, this video was produced by "American Industry," that's what it says.  You don't get any more conservative than that. Continued Chief: 

Look at how far rightward the conversation has drifted from 1955 until today...  For the longest time, under Alan Greenspan, there was this unbelievable dogmatism surrounding the idea of removing regulatory fetters from the market. And notice, this video doesn't talk at all about growth in the financial sector (where most of the growth has been over the last quarter century).  All it talks about is "industry", not stock options or the Dow.... I just find it fascinating that what amounts to Republican, pro-business propaganda in 1955, is left of center in today's economic conversation.

Indeed the good ole' days keep changing, depending on who's doing the reminiscing.

The Wonderful World of Capitalism, in 1950s Cartoon Form

Courtesy of the Prelinger Archive

URL: http://bcove.me/wbyjuuvc

Taibbi: We're all 'Big Government conservatives'

Matt Taibbi's latest post is worth reading in full but here are the best parts:

All year, the press has been banging a similar drum, i.e. that Mitt Romney and his budget-slashing sidekick Paul Ryan are for small government, while the closet socialist Barack Obama and his old-school New Dealer VP Joe Biden are the obvious big-government candidates.

The only problem with this new line of rhetoric is that it isn't really true. The almost certain reality is that we'll end up with a big (and perhaps even a rapidly-expanding) government no matter who gets elected. People seem to forget that this time four years ago, George W. Bush was winding down one of the most activist, expensive, intrusive presidencies in history, an eight-year period that saw a massive expansion in the size of the federal government.

And it's not only Dubya who was a hypocrite; we're all "Big Government conservatives" at heart:

In the abstract, most Americans want a smaller and less intrusive government. In reality, what Americans really want is a government that spends less money on other people.

Hurricane Sandy is a perfect, microcosmic example of America's attitude toward government. We have millions of people who, most of the year, are ready to bash anyone who accepts government aid as a parasitic welfare queen, but the instant the water level rises a few feet too high in their own neighborhoods, those same folks transform into little Roosevelts, full of plaudits for the benefits of a strong state.

The truth is, nobody, be he rich or poor, wants his government services cut.

That's right, Big Gubument is here to stay:

The point is, we will end up with a big government no matter who wins next week's election, because neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama is supported by a coalition that has any interest in tightening its own belt. The only reason we're having this phony big-versus-small argument is because of yet another longstanding media deception, i.e. that the only people who actually receive government aid are the poor and the elderly and other such traditional "welfare"-seekers. Thus a politician who is in favor of cutting services to that particular crowd, like Mitt Romney, is inevitably described as favoring "small government," no matter what his spending plans are for everybody else.

So is it any wonder that U.S. politicians refuse to be honest with voters when voters refuse to be honest with themselves?

It's this weird national paranoia about being seen as needy, or labeled a parasite who needs government aid, that leads to lunacies like the idea that having a strong disaster-relief agency qualifies as a "big government" concept, when in fact it's just sensible. If everyone could just admit that government is a fact of life, we could probably do a much better job of fixing it and managing its costs.  Instead, we have to play this silly game where millions of us pretend we're above it all, that we don't walk on regularly-cleaned streets or fly in protected skies. It shouldn't take a once-in-a-generation hurricane for Americans to admit they need the government occasionally, but that's apparently where we are.

Let the silly game continue this Tuesday....

Hurricane Sandy and the Myth of the Big Government-vs.-Small-Government Debate

By Matt Taibbi

November 1, 2012 | Rolling Stone

URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/hurricane-sandy-and-the-myth-of-the-big-government-vs-small-government-debate-20121101

Bloomberg: U.S. economy powered by slavery

Just keep this in mind when folks talk about going back to the "good old days" of the 18th and 19th centuries.

America's economy was powered by slavery, and the wealth generated by slavery reverberates in today's companies like Lehman Bros., Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase.

How Slavery Led to Modern Capitalism: Echoes

By Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman

January 24, 2012 | Bloomberg

URL: http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-24/how-slavery-led-to-modern-capitalism-echoes.html

Study: Smart people are liberals, atheists

Well, I'm obviously a night owl (check the local time of this post), and I'm certainly liberal, but am I a statiscial outlier: a dumb liberal? I'll leave that to you, my esteemed readers, to decide. Regardless, science don't lie, so if you're a religious conservative, chances are, you're not quite as sharp. Sorry to break it to you this way. Here's some consolation though: you've still got Sarah Palin, Pat Robertson, and Glenn Beck to feel superior to... I hope.


Liberals and Atheists Smarter? Intelligent People Have Values Novel in Human Evolutionary History, Study Finds
February 24, 2010 | ScienceDaily

More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

The study, published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Social Psychology Quarterly, advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values. The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years."

"Evolutionarily novel" preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess. In contrast, those that our ancestors had for millions of years are "evolutionarily familiar."

"General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions," says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles."

An earlier study by Kanazawa found that more intelligent individuals were more nocturnal, waking up and staying up later than less intelligent individuals. Because our ancestors lacked artificial light, they tended to wake up shortly before dawn and go to sleep shortly after dusk. Being nocturnal is evolutionarily novel.

In the current study, Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals.

Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) support Kanazawa's hypothesis. Young adults who subjectively identify themselves as "very liberal" have an average IQ of 106 during adolescence while those who identify themselves as "very conservative" have an average IQ of 95 during adolescence.

[Now I admit I would have identified myself as "very conservative" in my stupider adolescence, but you might say that my genes got the better of me, and my innate intelligence forced me to become a bleeding-heart, Marxist/socialist liberal in adulthood. - J]

Similarly, religion is a byproduct of humans' tendency to perceive agency and intention as causes of events, to see "the hands of God" at work behind otherwise natural phenomena. "Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid," says Kanazawa. This innate bias toward paranoia served humans well when self-preservation and protection of their families and clans depended on extreme vigilance to all potential dangers. "So, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists."

Young adults who identify themselves as "not at all religious" have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as "very religious" have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence.

In addition, humans have always been mildly polygynous in evolutionary history. Men in polygynous marriages were not expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate, whereas men in monogamous marriages were. In sharp contrast, whether they are in a monogamous or polygynous marriage, women were always expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate. So being sexually exclusive is evolutionarily novel for men, but not for women. And the theory predicts that more intelligent men are more likely to value sexual exclusivity than less intelligent men, but general intelligence makes no difference for women's value on sexual exclusivity. Kanazawa's analysis of Add Health data supports these sex-specific predictions as well.

One intriguing but theoretically predicted finding of the study is that more intelligent people are no more or no less likely to value such evolutionarily familiar entities as marriage, family, children, and friends.

Limbaugh's socialist NFL sympathies show

I don't really care about all that Rush-racism controversy. Yawn.

However, I think it tells you a lot about Rush's conservative "principles" that he longs to be an owner in a league that is profitable thanks solely to corporate socialism in the form of local subsidies and tax breaks, and which for decades has practiced redistribution and shared wealth -- from richer to poorer teams -- in order to survive as a national league.

Check it out!:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/31/217

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-nfl-oilers-a-case-study-in-corporate-welfare/

The players ought to ask Mr. Limbaugh what his turnaround plan is to make the Rams profitable on their own merits without handouts from taxpayers or the league!

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 6:20 PM, TM wrote:

Rush Limbaugh is no angel, but neither are a lot of other sports teams owners.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113825348&ft=1&f=1055\

Can you spot a socialist?

When asked directly, Jeb Bush answered "I don't know" if Obama is a socialist. "Define socialism for me," he asked his CNN interviewer.

It's odd that a leader from a party that uses the words "socialist" and "socialism" on a daily basis to describe the opposition can't tell a socialist when he sees one. Methinks Jeb lacks the courage of his convictions.

Indeed, I get e-mails all the time from conservatives claiming Obama is a closet socialist. They have no doubt whatsoever. And right-wing radio jocks and FOX bloviators use these two words on the air as often as "um" and "er," and almost as often as "Ronald Reagan."

Maybe we can teach Jeb (and ourselves) something today. Let's see how 3 of the most popular online dictionaries define socialism:

From Dictionary.com:

URL: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/socialism"1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles."

From FreeDictionary.com

URL: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/socialism"1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved."

From Merriam-Webster's online dictionary:

URL: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism"1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done"

Clearly, all these definitions are in substantive agreement on what socialism is.

Now look at how Conservative-Resources.com defines socialism:

URL: http://www.conservative-resources.com/definition-of-socialism.html"[9] The definition of socialism, then, may be said to be a formal economic system in whichsociety exerts considerable control over the nation's wealth and property in the pursuit of social justice. "Considerable control" may or may not entail public ownership, while "social justice" usually depends upon the whims of a bureaucratic elite. Generally speaking, a market-based economy is antithetical to socialist principles, and some form of benevolent planning is advocated."[10] Of course, such a definition of socialism is exceedingly vague, but the pursuit of "fairness"—the ultimate goal of socialism—is necessarily vague, given that each of humanity's several billion individuals has a unique view of what 'fairness' entails." [Emphasis mine]

See what's happening here? Conservatives are distorting the definition of socialism to sound a lot like liberalism. (Since we all know conservatives don't give a toot about social justice or fairness.) Conservatives are claiming that any definition of socialism is "exceedingly vague," despite the fact that we have several examples of socialist economic systems in the former Soviet bloc to enlighten us, if we're in any doubt what a socialistic country actually looks like. In fact, try asking somebody who lived in one of these formerly socialist states if America, or the Democratic party, comes anywhere close to being socialist. You would probably get a confused/disbelieving stare in reply.

If you agree with Rush Limbaugh that "words mean things," and you are creeped out by Orwellian definition-creep, then educate yourself and don't abuse or misuse our English language. Don't call anybody to the left of Joe Lieberman a "socialist." You're only making your friends dumber, and yourself look stupid.

Outraged at lack of outrage?

This letter (see below), which has been bouncing around conservatives' inboxes and blogs for months now, is a real "everything but the kitchen sink" diatribe. It worries me that some Americans seem so outraged and frightened at so many things. They're seeing a different America than I do. 

 My comments:

- George Soros, Al Gore, and Barbra Streisand (the Usual Suspects?) all have money and power, but there are people on the right, left and middle with lots of money who try to influence our country. America's monied elite is not solely a liberal group, not by a long shot.

- The whole "press 2 for Spanish" thing is an example of the free market at work. Hispanics have disposable income, too, and U.S. companies want their business, hence they try to make it easier for them to spend their money. That's capitalism. If there were 45 million American consumers speaking Swahili, you'd hear "press 3 for Swahili." Laissez-faire conservatives, take note.

- People who can't communicate in English are already marginalized, socially and economically. And they know it. Immigrant parents want their kids to learn English and enjoy the fruits of America and the English-speaking global economy, not speak their native language at school and be left behind. Indeed, we should assume that immigrants who were willing to abandon their native country, friends, family, and customs and endure untold hardships to come to America had nothing but the future on their minds; they were not thinking about what would be the easiest thing for them in the short term.

- Maybe America is in moral and ethical decline, I don't know, but by what measure? Who's to judge? The number of Americans who call themselves faithful, attend church regularly, practice abstinence before marriage, avoid illegal drugs, volunteer in their communities, etc. is no less than it was 20-30 years ago, and is by some indications even greater. Or is she complaining about our politician's morals, like Sanford's? Or perhaps Wall Street's morals? If so, she has a legitimate beef. Personally, I think it's a normal phenomenon for aging people to see change as negative and equal to moral decline. "Things were better back in my day," is something older folks have been saying for generations.

Contrary to the hell-in-a-hand-basket myth, take note that we don't lynch our fellow Americans anymore. We don't deny anybody the right to vote. We don't let children work in sweatshops all day. We protect our kids from pedophiles better than ever. We recognize that there really are workplace behaviors called "sexual harassment" and "racial discrimination" and we seek to minimize them. Almost all U.S. corporations now acknowledge, and sometimes even practice, the concept of "corporate social responsibility." Our rivers don't catch on fire anymore. We don't allow our old and infirm to wallow in isolation and excrement anymore. We don't ignore it when priests molest our kids anymore. I could go on, but you get the point. We might be declining in some respects, but America is getting a heck of a lot better in many respects.

- All I will say about Iran/Ahmadinejad is this: we can't debate this topic until you folks come out and say what you want. Why can't you be forthright about it? You want to start a preventive war against Iran. If you neoconservatives have the courage of your convictions, and you're certain talking to Iran is "appeasing a madman," then please don't dance around it. It insults my intelligence.

- If Tyson wants to give its Muslim workers day off, that's their right. It's America! What, would conservatives have Big Government step in and prevent them?

- The Jewel of Medina was indeed published in 2008. What, would conservatives have Big Government step in and force Random House to publish a book? Companies do cowardly things for PR/marketing reasons all the time. When they cave in to one of conservatives' demands, it makes them happy. When they cave in to some liberal constituency, or some whacky group, conservatives cry "moral decline!" In business everything comes down to profit. In a capitalist system, you have to take the bitter with the sweet.

- We can debate the science or practicality of environmentalism, but 99.99% of environmentalists believe that they are doing the right things for the right reasons. That is the very definition of personal ethics. There is no conspiracy.

- "I don't even feel like my vote counts, I am so outnumbered by those who disagree with me," she concluded. I hope to goodness she is outnumbered.

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This letter was sent to the Wall Street Journal on August 8, 2008 by Alisa Wilson, Ph.D. Of Beverly Hills , CA in response to the Wall Street Journal article titled "Where's The Outrage? Really." that appeared July 31,2008.

Really. I can tell you where the outrage is. The outrage is here, in this middle-aged, well-educated, upper-middle class woman. The outrage is here, but I have no representation, no voice. The outrage is here, but no one is listening for who am I?

I am not a billionaire like George Soros that can fund an entire political movement.

I am not a celebrity like Barbra Streisand that can garner the attention of the press to promote political candidates.

I am not a film maker like Michael Moore or Al Gore that can deliver misleading movies to the public.

The outrage is here, but unlike those with money or power, I don't know how to reach those who feel similarly in order to effect change.

Why am I outraged? I am outraged that my country, the United States of America , is in a state of moral and ethical decline. There is no right or wrong anymore, just what's fair.

Is it fair that millions of Americans who overreached and borrowed more than they could afford are now being bailed out by the government and lending institutions to stave off foreclosure? Why shouldn't these people be made to pay the consequences for their poor judgment?

When my husband and I purchased our home, we were careful to purchase only what we could afford. Believe me, there are much larger, much nicer homes that I would have loved to have purchased. But, taking responsibility for my behavior and my life, I went with the house that we could afford, not the house that we could not afford. The notion of personal responsibility has all but died in our country.

I am outraged, that the country that welcomed my mother as an immigrant from Hitler's Nazi Germany and required that she and her family learn English now allows itself to be overrun with illegal immigrants and worse, caters to those illegal immigrants.

I am outraged that my hard-earned taxes help support those here illegally. That the Los Angeles Public School District is in such disarray that I felt it incumbent to send my child to private school, that every time I go to the ATM, I see "do you want to continue in English or Spanish?", that every time I call the bank, the phone company , or similar business, I hear "press 1 for English or press 2 for Spanish". WHY? This is America , our common language is English and attempts to promote a bi- or multi-lingual society are sure to fail and to marginalize those who cannot communicate in English.

I am outraged at our country's weakness in the face of new threats on American traditions from Muslims. Just this week, Tyson's Food negotiated with its union to permit Muslims to have Eid-al-Fitr as a holiday instead of Labor Day. What am I missing? Yes, there is a large Somali Muslim population working at the Tyson's plant in Tennessee . Tennessee , last I checked, is still part of the United States . If Muslims want to live and work here they should be required to live and work by our American Laws and not impose their will on our long history.

In the same week, Random House announced that they had indefinitely delayed the publication of The Jewel of Medina, by Sherry Jones, a book about the life of Mohammed's wife, Aisha due to fear of retribution and violence by Muslims. When did we become a nation ruled by fear of what other immigrant groups want? It makes me so sad to see large corporations cave rather than stand proudly on the principles that built this country.

I am outraged because appeasement has never worked as a political policy, yet appeasing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is exactly what we are trying to do. An excellent article, also published recently in the Wall Street Journal, went through over 20 years of history and why talking with Iran has been and will continue to be ineffective. Yet talk, with a madman no less, we continue to do. Have we so lost our moral compass and its ability to detect evil that we will not go in and destroy Iran 's nuclear program? Would we rather wait for another Holocaust for the Jews - one which they would be unlikely to survive? When does it end?

As if the battle for good and evil isn't enough, now come the Environmentalists who are so afraid of global warming that they want to put a Bag tax on grocery bags in California; to eliminate Mylar balloons; to establish something as insidious as the recycle police in San Francisco. I do my share for the environment: I recycle, I use water wisely, I installed an energy efficient air conditioning unit. But when and where does the lunacy stop?Ahmadinejad wants to wipe Israel off the map, the California economy is being overrun by illegal immigrants, and the United States of America no longer knows right from wrong, good from evil.. So what does California do? Tax grocery bags.

So, America , although I can tell you where the outrage is, this one middle-aged, well-educated, upper middle class woman is powerless to do anything about it. I don't even feel like my vote counts because I am so outnumbered by those who disagree with me.

Alisa Wilson, Ph.D. Beverly Hills , California

Kristof: Liberals hit their dads

Very interesting theory. I wonder, what does it make you if you'd slap somebody else's father?

I'm constantly disgusted. I nearly faint at the sight of my own poo. And I wash my hands like 20 times a day. I guess that makes me a fascist.

Seriously though, I've long believed that one's political persuasion is immune to logical persuasion. It's like arguing about what flavor of ice cream is the tastiest. (Of course, I am the exception, as my correct beliefs are based solely on impeccable logic and universal experience.)

Would You Slap Your Father? If So, You're a Liberal

By Nicholas D. Kristof

May 27, 2009 | New York Times

How's this: Would you be willing to slap your father in the face, with his permission, as part of a comedy skit?

And, second: Does it disgust you to touch the faucet in a public restroom?

Studies suggest that conservatives are more often distressed by actions that seem disrespectful of authority, such as slapping Dad. Liberals don't worry as long as Dad has given permission.

Likewise, conservatives are more likely than liberals to sense contamination or perceive disgust. People who would be disgusted to find that they had accidentally sipped from an acquaintance's drink are more likely to identify as conservatives.

The upshot is that liberals and conservatives don't just think differently, they also feel differently. This may even be a result, in part, of divergent neural responses.

This came up after I wrote a column earlier this year called "The Daily Me." I argued that most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices. To overcome that tendency, I argued, we should set aside time for a daily mental workout with an ideological sparring partner. Afterward, I heard from Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia. "You got the problem right, but the prescription wrong," he said.

Simply exposing people to counterarguments may not accomplish much, he said, and may inflame antagonisms.

A study by Diana Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania found that when people saw tight television shots of blowhards with whom they disagreed, they felt that the other side was even less legitimate than before.

The larger point is that liberals and conservatives often form judgments through flash intuitions that aren't a result of a deliberative process. The crucial part of the brain for these judgments is the medial prefrontal cortex, which has more to do with moralizing than with rationality. If you damage your prefrontal cortex, your I.Q. may be unaffected, but you'll have trouble harrumphing.

One of the main divides between left and right is the dependence on different moral values. For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty — and revulsion at disgust.

Some evolutionary psychologists believe that disgust emerged as a protective mechanism against health risks, like feces, spoiled food or corpses. Later, many societies came to apply the same emotion to social "threats." Humans appear to be the only species that registers disgust, which is why a dog will wag its tail in puzzlement when its horrified owner yanks it back from eating excrement.

Psychologists have developed a "disgust scale" based on how queasy people would be in 27 situations, such as stepping barefoot on an earthworm or smelling urine in a tunnel. Conservatives systematically register more disgust than liberals. (To see how you weigh factors in moral decisions, take the tests at www.yourmorals.org.)

It appears that we start with moral intuitions that our brains then find evidence to support. For example, one experiment involved hypnotizing subjects to expect a flash of disgust at the word "take." They were then told about Dan, a student council president who "tries to take topics that appeal to both professors and students."

The research subjects felt disgust but couldn't find any good reason for it. So, in some cases, they concocted their own reasons, such as: "Dan is a popularity-seeking snob."

So how do we discipline our brains to be more open-minded, more honest, more empirical? A start is to reach out to moderates on the other side — ideally eating meals with them, for that breaks down "us vs. them" battle lines that seem embedded in us. (In ancient times we divided into tribes; today, into political parties.) The Web site www.civilpolitics.org is an attempt to build this intuitive appreciation for the other side's morality, even if it's not our morality.

"Minds are very hard things to open, and the best way to open the mind is through the heart," Professor Haidt says. "Our minds were not designed by evolution to discover the truth; they were designed to play social games."

Thus persuasion may be most effective when built on human interactions. Gay rights were probably advanced largely by the public's growing awareness of friends and family members who were gay.

A corollary is that the most potent way to win over opponents is to accept that they have legitimate concerns, for that triggers an instinct to reciprocate. As it happens, we have a brilliant exemplar of this style of rhetoric in politics right now — Barack Obama.