Writes Andrew Sullivan, in a NYT review of "CONSERVATISM/The Fight for a Tradition" by Edmund Fawcett. Fawcett calls himself "a left-wing liberal."
The quote I cherry-picked has Sullivan contrasting the conservatism of Edmund Burke — who "believed in pluralism, modest but necessary reform and the dispersal of power" — with the conservatism of Joseph de Maistre — "who found adaptation to modernity to be indistinguishable from surrender" and "saw decline everywhere and always, enemies within and without."
I'm struck by the silliness of the phrase "the balm of Jeb Bush."
Sullivan makes the contrast between moderates and radicals sound like a matter of physical heat. And the best people are the ones whose nature is to remain cool. This distaste for "flamboyance," "bluntness," and "fever" is openly elitist — as we see in the last paragraph:
Moderate conservatism is a vital counterbalance to liberalism, as the Trump years have shown. For it to disappear into a populist cult, hostile to democratic norms, contemptuous of all elites, captured by delusions and sustained by hatred and ressentiment, would not be completely unprecedented. But, unchallenged by moderate conservatism, populist or “hard right” conservatism will be deeply destructive. In that sense, the battle for moderate conservatism is now inextricable from a battle for liberal democracy itself.
IN THE COMMENTS: hawkeyedjb says:
Liberals pretend to respect Moderate Conservatism, but when a moderate conservative like Mitt Romney comes along, they turn him into an evil, money-grubbing, cancer-giving Hitler youth. Just one example out of many that comes down to the same thing: all Republicans, of any stripe, are Hitler in the end. So why not be Trump?That's a different perspective on what — to use Sullivan's phrase — "the Trump years have shown."
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Andrew has always been sorta happy with conservatives having a few bedrooms in the liberal mansion. It only needs to be beaten back when they bring their stench from those rooms to the main common areas of the mansion.
Liberals pretend to respect Moderate Conservatism, but when a moderate conservative like Mitt Romney comes along, they turn him into an evil, money-grubbing, cancer-giving Hitler youth. Just one example out of many that comes down to the same thing: all Republicans, of any stripe, are Hitler in the end. So why not be Trump?
All about style and motivation, nothing about substance and policies? What is being conserved, moderately or flamboyantly? Liberal, Conservative, Populist, so many ill defined (un-defined) labels but no explanation of political philosophy and their respective goals for society.
I will need this author to describe why the people he calls elite have garnered (heh!) any such distinction.
I need that before I know precisely how to mock this drivel.
I'm struck by the silliness of the phrase "the balm of Jeb Bush."
A little dab'll do ya.
"The balm of Jeb Bush"
He's thus said to be a therapeutic of some sort; what disease or disorder does Andrew imagine he treats?
Moderate conservatism is a vital counterbalance to liberalism, as the Trump years have shown.
I fondly remember Andrew’s articles about Trump vitally counterbalancing the past four years of leftism.
I subscribed to the reincarnation of Sullivan's blog for a month or two. My high hopes were dashed by his fevered TDS which I refused to continue to enable with my $5 a month. It's a shame as he is a good writer.
Jeb is more of an unguent than balm or salve.
The swamp doesn't seem to figure in.
This reminds me of Star Trek and Spock vs. McCoy. Leonard McCoy, the emotional doctor, so passionate, so involved, and the unemotional Mr. Spock, the logical, distancing one.
Moderate conservatism is a new phrase for me, I hadn't heard of that before. It sounds like a synonym for RINO.
I find that part about Angela Merkel being the most "properly conservative one of our contemporary leaders" to be a bit of a howler. Nothing screams properly conservative like flooding your country with mostly young, uneducated, unskilled men from Syria and other parts of the Ummah. Plus I don't think you can really compare American political movements with European versions.
Well, I encountered a new word today: ressentiment.
From Wikipedia: "...(r)essentiment is a sense of hostility directed toward an object that one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one's frustration.
The sense of weakness or inferiority complex and perhaps even jealousy in the face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration. This value system is then used as a means of justifying one's own weaknesses by identifying the source of envy as objectively inferior, serving as a defense mechanism that prevents the resentful individual from addressing and overcoming their insecurities and flaws."
Like my grandfather used to say, sounds like a pretty unnecessary $10 word. I'll leave it to the readers to decide which side of the political spectrum it best describes.
Divide it into "wants good things for black people" and "doesn't want good things for black people."
The liberals are the latter. They prefer the swamp.
In what alternate universe is Angela Merkel a conservative?
My cracked, dry hands respond better to Badger Balm than to Jeb Bush.
There are many “calm” Trump supporters, conservative intellectuals whose basic ideals and positions are consistent with those of Trump and/or the “populist” view. They get ignored and shouted down.
There are many “excitable” moderates—Andy himself being a prime example.
Form over substance.
One of the main reasons for Trump’s success is that he captures attention and gets heard. A depressing number of “conservatives” cannot seem to abide Trumps style, to the point that they oppose everything he does or says (National Review).
While I understand the objection to the style, I believe that the failure/refusal to get past it is the height of political cowardice. Grow up!
Well, he made his quota for words and published a meaningless article. Next...
You sure know how to suck me into one of these discussions. Like red meat.
First of all, anyone who thinks Angela Merkel represents 'the most properly conservative of our contemporary leaders', does not understand conservatism. She blew up her country. She did not take a conservative approach to bettering the lives of her own citizenry. She dismissed their lives, and invited in millions of disrupters to their lives. THAT is not saying immigration is bad. But it is saying that massive over-immigration is destructive to your own 'norms', to your own culture, in whatever country you may live in. A conservative would know that and would act accordingly to protect his or her own citizenry first. The 'balm' known as Jeb Bush would not have done that.
Second- the reference to people who view working on the needs of America first and American citizens first as something that is 'hostile to democratic norms'. I always have to question what they consider a 'democratic norm'. After all, these are the same people who used the IRS to attack political opponents, sent pallet-loads of cash to the terrorist Iranian regime and lied about it to the American people, used the CIA and FBI to spy on a competing campaign, falsified FISA applications to gain subpoenas on political opponents, unmasked hundreds of US citizens to spy on them, used falsified docs and a faux dossier to impeach the President, then...completely corrupted the US election, and are about to put into office a man who has provable and obvious corrupt dealings (with his son and brother) with foreign entities who are actual enemies of the US. When such people use the phrase 'hostile to democratic norms' in their argument against the American citizenry, it makes me vomit.
And of course, they tell us that anything right of The Balm, Jeb Bush, is 'hard right' and is therefore- destructive. As destructive as, let's say rioting in, and destroying dozens of major US cities? Perhaps not. But it's interesting that anything on the right is painted as 'hard right' and destructive. Anything on the left, no matter how extreme is painted as 'mainstream'. Maybe the 'hard right' is considered destructive in that it shines a light on what exactly has been going on.
Sullivan needs to see himself as a hero.
"I need unguent." -- Gaear Grimsrud
Ressentiment as he uses it seems to exemplify the motivation for cancel culture:
"The concept was of particular interest to some 19th century thinkers, most notably Friedrich Nietzsche. According to their use, ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed toward an object that one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one's frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority complex and perhaps even jealousy in the face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration. This value system is then used as a means of justifying one's own weaknesses by identifying the source of envy as objectively inferior, serving as a defense mechanism that prevents the resentful individual from addressing and overcoming their insecurities and flaws. The ego creates an enemy in order to insulate itself from culpability."
See also: revanchism.
Fortunately, even with 57 sexes, you only need two to get it on.
Always a morale-booster to see they're scared. We sometimes forget, in the passing defeats of the day-to-day.
Rush Limbaugh has been way more influential to the conservative movement than the Bushes and Buchanan.
There have always been 2 flavors of "conservativism". The real thing is what Sullivan calls "moderate": trying to preserve WHAT WORKS while dealing with a changing world.
The other is reaction: denying the changes and blindly lashing out at what threatens one's interests. Fighting on the side of the ghosts and the king.
And then there are the opportunists: appealing to those base reactionary sentiments, seeking power by stoking fear and revealing new threats at whatever frequency they are needed.
I think young Andy is off his meds. I could be wrong, but that's what my Magic 8-Ball tells me about Andy.
But, unchallenged by moderate conservatism, populist or “hard right” conservatism will be deeply destructive.
It is ironic that moderate liberals saw burning and looting as mostly peaceful protest.
This is from David French's latest newsletter: Take, for example, the response to the racial reckoning in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing. You might be spending more time listening to lawyers than prophets if you’re more familiar—seven months later—with the flaws of Critical Race Theory than with the details of wealth gaps, achievement gaps, or with the systematic violations of civil rights that are all too common in marginalized communities.
Note how quickly French, a #nevertrumper who considers himself a true conservative, has adopted the language of radical socialism, and the racists habit of believing that ethnicity is destiny. This is disgusting. The people who rioted & looted in response to Floyd's didn't riot and loot because they were black, they rioted and looted because they were criminals.
I love that Sullivan is claiming to read the minds of people he has never met and probably avoids meeting because...ewwww deplorable.
I miss Christopher Hitchens, he actually arrived here. Sullivan is swimming somewhere off the coast of England and probably won't make it.
In the abstract, there's truth in what he says. You do need a counterbalance to all the anger at the swamp and disgust with the system. There are a lot of nuts out there and all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories. But the elite or Establishment has had things its way for a very long time and avoided addressing popular concerns or tackling pressing problems.
A reaction of some sort was inevitable and it was nowhere near as dangerous or unhealthy as elite or Establishment types claimed. The two types do need each other, but where was Sullivan when the Bush-McCain-Romney variant was riding high? If he wasn't defecting to Obama and Clinton, he was cheering globalist, free trade, mass immigration conservatism on.
I'm not crazy about his dichotomies. Reagan was able to combine the Bush and Buchanan strains. If Buchanan was "feverish" one reason was that important issues were being ignored by the movement conservatism of the Eighties and Nineties. Jeb Bush was the weakest and most hapless candidate in the 2016 race. Rubio or Cruz were more serious contenders, but they don't fit Sullivan's paradigm as the antithesis of Trump, since they've given Trump a measure of support since the election. And where is big brother George? His brand of "balm" caused us no end of trouble.
Boris is "flamboyant" sure, but he's something of a moderate (at least by American standards). The difference between BoJo and Theresa was competence. It was engagement. Theresa seemed like she didn't know what she was doing, and she couldn't get anything done. BoJo is at least cutting through some of the knots and getting somewhere.
And Merkel? I don't know what she is, but if you have to drag in "the radical outliers of reactionary German nationalism" (who aren't really that much in evidence today) to make somebody look good, they may not be that good. Sullivan can't name an actual German politician to compare Merkel to, so he goes "Godwin's law" on us.
If you want to make a case for balancing the moderate with the flamboyant or blunt or agitated, Merkel is exactly the example you want to avoid. She's somebody who could use a little more populism or severity or confrontationality to avoid being the personification of bland elitist rule. It's curious how liberalism, once about liberty and responsive government, now openly glorifies Germany and Merkel and rule by authoritarian elites.
Burke and de Maistre? I'm out of my depth there. De Maistre's reaction to "modernity" (if that's what you want to call it) was certainly extreme, but it seems like Burke may not provide much guidance for distinctively conservative movements in situations like ours. Yes, oppose revolutionary change. But when the older structures of society are gone, simply executing whatever the elite consensus demands may not be that much of an option, especially if that consensus is already liberal or progressive.
Sullivan has this completely backwards, IMHO. The blunt populism of Trump is what is needed to steer the democratic norms back to basic government that tends to the people that elected it. Trump follows the law, adheres to federalism, and always promotes policies that enhance the most American livelihoods, and hence the lives within which are supported by them.
I agree with stevew... enough of the bucketing of folks into ideologies and/or political stripes. Break out the policies and debate them instead!
Whenever you feel the need to use the word "ressentiment," ask yourself if you're not being complacent yourself. A politics based on resentment or "ressentiment" is bound to be bad and have bad consequences, but sometimes what gets labeled as resentment or "ressentiment" may be a greater sensitivity to where society is going and where it has been. It needs to be controlled or contained or redirected down more constructive channels, but it's trying to tell us something about where we are or where we are going.
The calm balm of moderation. Just the way Ann likes it.
"of Angela Merkel, perhaps the most properly conservative of our contemporary leaders"
I want to like Andy again, but it's hard to get over such BS. Pray tell, what "conservative" values does the EU represent, and what's conservative about admitting a million Muslims in violation of all relevant rules?
"the conservatism of Edmund Burke — who "believed in pluralism, modest but necessary reform and the dispersal of power""
In what way does Trumpian conservatism -- in favor of federalism (as in Covid) and modest deregulation, and opposing politically correct conformity -- deviate from that side of Burke?
"Moderate conservatism is a vital counterbalance to liberalism, as the Trump years have shown"
As Trump himself has shown: he is the moderate. Of course, the radical left has declared love of country
"radical." Which side are you on, Andy? And you, Althouse?
"the battle for moderate conservatism is now inextricable from a battle for liberal democracy itself."
The essential part of the battle is not to let lefties determine the battle lines.
Andrew Sullivan is a student of Oakeshotte. IIRC, he wrote his doctoral thesis on Oakeshotte's ideas about practical knowledge.
So Sullivan drives me crazy because he ignores Oakeshotte's belief that the conservatism is defined by its belief that politics had no telos. To Oakeshotte, politics is like dancing or making pottery. It is a human activity pursued for its own sake, like nest-making is for birds. While a dance or a bit of pottery might have a purpose, dance & pottery themselves have no purpose, no "end point." Dancing and pottery are no better or worse than they were a thousand years ago. We shouldn't expect politics to be working when it propels us further towards some final purpose and to have failed when it does not.
Sullivan, despite calling himself a conservative (at least he used to call himself a conservative), believes that the end point of politics is liberal democracy. Politics is working when it fosters liberal democracy, and fails when it does not foster liberal democracy.
I can think of no less conservative position.
Jeb! certainly balmed in the 2016 primaries.
Divide and conquer.
Bush Balm.
It's not just for cows anymore.
It works on your hands.
We got Trump because of McCain and Romney. They way that they were treated, and the way they, and the GOP establishment as a whole, treated the base such as the Tea Party.
Also, as Glenn Reynolds likes to keep saying, Trump is a renegotiation of all the post-WWII institutional arrangements. "Conservatives" like Sullivan, French, et al. made their living moving in and around those institutions and proposing solutions to problems based on those institutions. But those institutions are increasingly ineffective at best, or outright harmful at worst. So a lot of the establishment hatred for Trump is panic over the idea that they might actually have to produce something of value, rather than living like a parasite off the work of others.
It's really all about trade and immigration and what they are doing to our middle-class society. The Republican and Democratic establishments are both on board with the status quo ante, even though the former tried to hide that fact as long as Trump was in power.
At least we deplorables know who we are and what we are about. The Left is shockingly lacking in self-awareness.
Moderate conservatism is a vital counterbalance to liberalism, as the Trump years have shown... But, unchallenged by moderate conservatism, populist or “hard right” conservatism will be deeply destructive.
"Moderate conservatism," good for whatever ails you!
Like a balm.
I first learned of Andrew Sullivan sometime in the late 90s when I read his book Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality, still the best book on gay politics. I rediscovered him a few years later via Mickey's kausfiles blog and have read him off and on ever since. I discovered Michael Oakeshott through Sullivan, and the influence is quite clear. I too appreciated Oakeshott's rejection of ideological or partisan labels and prefer to see conservatism more as a disposition than a set of policies. "To be conservative ... is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss."
I also shared with Sullivan an antipathy towards the whinging gay left. That said, one thing that has struck me about Sullivan (and a lot of gay people) is the way in which homosexuality seems to consume his entire identity. He has to be a "gay man" rather than a "man who is gay." So much of his work seems to emanate from a need to reconcile his homosexuality with his Catholicism.
I think the most damaging strain of thought in contemporary conservatism has been economic libertarianism, particularly from the 1970s on and buttressed by a mythology of US economic development in the 19th century, which had nothing to do with a laissez-faire economic system. Liberal capitalism is an extremely radical ideology.
In practice, Trump was a remarkably wise, pragmatic and successful manager.
He was never “weird” as Althouse has stated. She’s just obsessed with identity politics, and has no interest in something as mundane as good management. Sullivan is also an identity politics obsessive. Neither Althouse or Sullivan are capable of understanding Trump’s performance because they are blinded to just about everything except their fascination with identity politics.
Trump’s management of the economy in the first three years of his administration was superb. He’s been uniformly a spectacular success in enacting his foreign policy.
Finally, he managed the pandemic brilliantly, producing a vaccine in 6 months against the advice of experts who said it would take years.
I agree with Scott Adams who has stated repeatedly that, as time passes, Trump will be viewed as one of the greatest presidents.
Philosophers. Phooey.
What about “the bluntness of Donald Trump...”? That’s far too great a compliment , right? Bluntness implies something of directness. A cogent idea, stated without precision or embellishments.
Of course “precision and embellishments have always been far beyond the addled mind of Trump. But I don’t even accept the premise that “blunt” is an appropriate description for Trump. Trump has no considerable history as a conservative; Trump has no place among the other conservative leaders of note; Trump doesn’t exude “blunt” conservatism because he’s not operating in any realm of conservatism to begin wit.
Trump’s bluntness is blunt sociopathy.
@Chuck
I suggest you start watching Scott Adams’ Periscope series. You’ll have a hard time because your mind is closed and your mouth is always ranting, and you won’t accept that Adams is in fact very liberal.
Adams regards Trump’s communication and persuasion skills, particularly his use of Twitter, as the work of a genius.
Stop ranting for a while and cease your bloodlust with vendettas and learn something.
The 'Hard right' is a myth. Do tell us who they are.. and what they do? Do name that destruction you are so fearful of, Andrew.
Meanwhile - we have the democrat party. A mixture of socialists (AOC) and old grifters who use their power to enrich themselves. (Pelosi, Biden etc)
I think the most damaging strain of thought in contemporary conservatism has been economic libertarianism, particularly from the 1970s on and buttressed by a mythology of US economic development in the 19th century, which had nothing to do with a laissez-faire economic system. Liberal capitalism is an extremely radical ideology.
U.S. Politics is really a triangle between Progressivism (maximizing all forms of equality), Conservatism (maximizing stability), and Libertarianism (maximizing personal freedom). Most people fall along one edge, balancing two goals while discarding the third. Post WWII, conservatives were split, with white-collar conservatives aligning with libertarians as the Right, and blue-collar conservatives aligning with progressives as the Left. After 1992 that started to change, as the libertarians and progressives aligned on social issues and immigration, and progressives adopted a more open attitude towards free-trade, while both sides turned hostile to their conservative supporters (whom I suspect they never really liked to begin with). Trump was simply the one smart enough to see that there was an opening to grab that conservative support.
Unfortunately for the establishment, many of the "conservative" arguments they're used to deploying over the past seventy years were built with a libertarian core which no longer appeals to conservatives. So the people making those arguments are left increasingly impotent. Commenters like Sullivan are a bit like a cargo cult which keeps repeating the magic words, but can't understand why the planes stopped coming.
@hawkeyedjb:
Liberals pretend to respect Moderate Conservatism, but when a moderate conservative like Mitt Romney comes along, they turn him into an evil, money-grubbing, cancer-giving Hitler youth. Just one example out of many that comes down to the same thing: all Republicans, of any stripe, are Hitler in the end. So why not be Trump?
This is certainly true, and I think a lot of it has to do with the nature of the current political alignment and the rigidness of our two-party system. Obama was a Clintonite centrist, and the right lost its mind over him. He was a radical Marxist communist Kenyan anti-colonialist! Instead, he broadly supported the same neoliberal agenda that coalesced during the Reagan administration.
Neoliberalism is the common enemy of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. We have to find a way to unify those two visions if we're going to have any chance.
What's interesting right now is seeing a lot of people like Sullivan and Fawcett explain what was never, ever supposed to happen in the 2020 election, which was Donald Trump seeing a surge in support from minority voters, particularly in the Latino and Asian communities. He only won a handful of them outright, but his support among them, and even with black voters in areas around the country, was up 20-50 percent from his 2016 numbers against Hillary.
Where Trump lost ground in some areas was with white suburban voters, primarily over his decorum and behavior. But going into 2020, the talking points were Trump was turning the GOP into an alt-right all-white party. Based on the numbers coming out, and the #NeverTrump types' claim that the GOP has to ditch Trumpism to win back the suburban voters, they're actually asking the GOP to target white voters in the 2022-24 election cycle and downplay whatever outreach Trump succeeded with among minority voters.
(At the very least, they're going to have to come to grips with Trump's messaging and actions gaining minority support, but so far I haven't seen anyone willing to do that, though there have been Democrats talking about where Biden went wrong and what he and other Dems have to do to win those voters back.)
Trump’s “bluntness” is the direct manner of a seasoned professional project manager telling his reports to get the concrete poured by end of shift or don’t bother coming in tomorrow. He saw the country was on its ass in the same way that Wollman Rink was on its ass after years of incompetent and graft-riddled rehab efforts by NYC public works, and he approached the problem the same way. Unfortunately his/our government was too thoroughly infested with #Resistance fighters and Swamp critters, so he was unable to do nearly as much as he hoped for and promised; but what he did accomplish was remarkable, often for its substance and always for its effect in exposing the rot.
I do hope the Progs enjoy the next several years, driving us all into the abyss.
I’m not going to go nuts over Biden the way Chuck and so many other fools with TDS did over Trump.
I’m going to wait and see how Biden performs and the country responds. And, I’m going to root for success because I’m a patriotic American.
It’s been 20 years of wild ranting and raving on the internet, and I’m tired of it and bored. There has to be something better.
I very seldom recommend one of my weblog pieces, but I will today: An End to an Eye for an Eye.
Intellectuals don't know much about the world we live in because they have their own tiny secluded village on the hill where people are paid to talk and write about the world they don't know.
"All about style and motivation, nothing about substance and policies?"
That's all you can see from the village on the hill.
His supporters see Trump as a leader par excellence taking over the United States as a platform to defend Reformed Christianity from communism and fascism. As such he will be hard to defeat. And the fat lady hasn’t sung yet.
Angela Merkel was too long a Communist.
Obama was a Clintonite centrist
They were both corrupt, but in different ways. Clinton was corrupt in the traditional Democrat manner, rewarding political allies and building party influence. Obama's corruption was more ideological, rewarding fellow travelers and politicizing government institutions. It is hard to say which was more effective, the Clintons maintain their grip on the party but the government institutions have been consumed by ideology. Biden looks to be along Clinton lines, but it is a dying dynasty, the younger ideologues will probably gain influence.
We are in strange days, both the Democrat and Republican parties are in flux with no dominant leaders. I have no idea how it will all fall out, I'm not even convinced Trump will stay in the picture.
This distaste for "flamboyance," "bluntness," and "fever" is openly elitist — as we see in the last paragraph:
WTF?!?
I would describe Althouse as having a distaste for flamboyance, bluntness and fever! Aren't you always insisting you want boredom from your politicians?
Why else didn't you vote for Trump and against Biden?
Obama was a secret Santa president.
Obama lined up many of the left's bad ideas, dressed those bad ideas up in nice moderate clothes, and sold them. The loyal insiders made mega-bucks, and the rest of us got cash for clunkers.
J. Farmer said...
. . .
That said, one thing that has struck me about Sullivan (and a lot of gay people) is the way in which homosexuality seems to consume his entire identity. He has to be a "gay man" rather than a "man who is gay."
. . .
You may remember that Sullivan was wacko on the topic of water-boarding. Way over the top. Everyone involved had to be brought up for war crimes, water boarding was the worst thing that could possibly be, it brought all of Bush's actions in the GWOT into disrepute, etc.
Then in one piece Sullivan mentioned that he suffered from asthma greatly as a child and a young man and he briefly considered that this might have influenced his thinking about water boarding before dismissing the idea.
But I didn't dismiss the idea. Instead I did an internet search of Sullivan's public writing about how he had felt, being a repressed gay man in a heterosexual world. A lot of the terms he used to describe his feelings were about being choked, smothered, drowned, suffocated, etc.
Sullivan is a very weird dude.
ST says:
"Adams regards Trump’s communication and persuasion skills, particularly his use of Twitter, as the work of a genius."
How does Adams explain the fact that Trump's approval ratings consistently was under 45% and he is the first one-term president in 30 years? Doesn't sound like a master persuader to me.
"Finally, he managed the pandemic brilliantly, producing a vaccine in 6 months against the advice of experts who said it would take years."
The drug companies produced a vaccine in 6 months, not Trump. If he were truly a leader in that effort, wouldn't he have attended the weekly meetings of the task force? He hasn't attended those meetings in months.
The scientists in the administration get credit (ie the deep state), but what did Trump do? What objective measures best supports your position that his management of the andemic was masterful, or even competent? Merely the fact that he predicted the vaccine would be developed in six months (which was consistent with what the drug companies were saying)? Any other of his predictions re COVID come true?
I predicted the Packers would win last week - does that mean I should get some credit for their victory?
Liberals pretend to respect Moderate Conservatism, but when a moderate conservative like Mitt Romney comes along, they turn him into an evil, money-grubbing, cancer-giving Hitler youth
Until of course the next Republican comes along, and then it's "Why couldn't he be more normal like that nice man Romney?"
Every Republican candidate for president has been label a racist, sexist homophobe who wants to put women back in the kitchen, gays back in the closet and Black people back in the chains by the Democrats and the MSM since at least Nixon in 1960.
The scientists in the administration get credit (ie the deep state), but what did Trump do?
Cut red tape and provide resources, and then got out of the way of the people doing the work, instead of meddling like a good Lefty.
The "hard right" boogie man is used to scare everyone while the Pelosi Family gets rich off of laws that are created to make them rich.
SEE here.
but - watch out - scary right wing hardliners are coming for her...and you.
Summary... of the democrat party insider deals.
"This all sounds amazingly secretive and certainly disingenuous. Think about it: those who work for us and have the exclusive right to craft and implement every federal law in existence are very obviously stretching the parameters of their own regulations — like “conflict of interest” — to personally enrich themselves using that power. All the while they are preaching to Americans the government needs more and more tax revenue to “take care of the business and personal needs of ALL Americans.”
Don’t think this story is complete. There are several more instances of Pelosi led financial wrongdoing that we have uncovered. We’re going to come back to you with one you’ve heard of on a broader scale, but I bet you didn’t know Pelosi and her family were right in the middle of it. Do you remember that $792 Billion Obama stimulus? It was actually called the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.” It should have been called instead the “American 2009 Porkulous Investment Act for Political Elites.”
Jeb! could not be reached for comment.
If there’s anything the past 4+ years have shown is, yes Andy, ALL “Elites” are most deserving of contempt. With quite a few deserving much worse if there were a uniform code of justice.
@chuck:
We are in strange days, both the Democrat and Republican parties are in flux with no dominant leaders. I have no idea how it will all fall out, I'm not even convinced Trump will stay in the picture.
I agree that there are tensions within both parties as their old coalitions start to fray. The system put in place in the late 70s and early 80s in response to the stagnation and malaise of the decade was wildly successful. With it becoming the dominant ideology, that left cultural issues as the primary divide between Republicans and Democrats. That system blew up in 2008, and we've been adrift ever since.
1. It's instructive that in the parade of conservatives, there's no mention of Reagan. Presumably because the "calm and relaxed" = moderate conservative"; 'excitable and boorish" = "very conservative" meme doesn't work for him. By their memes ye shall know them. This meme is a straw meme.
2. The conservative v reactionary thing doesn't work. There's literally nobody who thinks, this is great as it is, this is great as it is, oh our opponents have just changed it, oh this new thing is great, this new thing is great.
There's a zone in which that which has changed for the worse can realistically be changed back. And the zone is not a year or two. It can easily be twenty or forty years, or even longer if the changed has been imposed by the Swamp on an unwilling public. Look at Brexit. The EU got hammered and hammered and hammered into the British state, for nearly fifty years, with the opposition to it routinely ignored or treated with contempt. And yet the "reactionaries" popped up again fifty years on and bit the establishment on the backside.
Trump’s “bluntness” is the direct manner of a seasoned professional project manager telling his reports to get the concrete poured by end of shift or don’t bother coming in tomorrow.
This whole debate is a strawman. People don't hate Trump because he is "blunt." People hate Trump because he is a crybaby bully who can dish it out but can't take it. He is a pro wrestling heel.
I bet you know people like this in your personal life I and I also bet you hate their fucking guts.
"Liberal democracy" is apparently the name Liberal Democrats use to describe the way the Soviet Union was governed. A parasitic Nomenklatura ruining the economy of a police state, while holding occasional show elections. I prefer to be sustained by hatred, thanks.
Occupy Wallstreet - was mostly hype. At most, It was a pack of young, dumb, lazy spoiled tech-pocketed leftists who lined up behind a fake movement created in a lab by the press..
REcall Diane Sawyer.... delighted on air how Occupy is spreading to 500 counties around the world!
Occupy was like that movie in Libya that no one watched. Occupy morphed into Antifa. Antifa is real. Antifa was real all along., a small pack of angry anarchists, leftists and assorted mis-fits with Bernie Bro sociopath and psychopath issues.
The Modern Democrat Party elite exists to enrich itself.
Andrew has NOTHING to say about it.
J. Farmer said...
"Neoliberalism is the common enemy of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. We have to find a way to unify those two visions if we're going to have any chance."
The Tea Party and Occupy had some superficial overlap - they were both populist movements organized to oppose the dominant neoliberal narrative and hegemony in our society. But in the end, what the Tea Party wanted was more freedom, and what Occupy wanted was more government, less capitalism, more socialism, more control. The two movements are irreconcilable. Occupiers never saw that their vision would ultimately attract power-seekers worse than the neoliberals they attacked.
I’m so old I remember when “Liberal” meant minding my own business.
occupy was the second iteration of the black bloc, which call themselves antifa, this movement
was the weatherman/black liberation army, in embryo,
Trump follows the law, adheres to federalism, and always promotes policies that enhance the most American livelihoods, and hence the lives within which are supported by them.
This is why he has taken over the Republican voters, if not the party apparatus. The GOP voters sent messages repeatedly. Ross Perot was an early one. In 1992, I might have voted for him if he had not had his meltdown about his daughter's wedding.
Sarah Palin was a message. She had defeated the corrupt Murkowski machine in Alaska. She was nearly destroyed by the Marxists around McCain. The Murkowski machine is still in power, showing how difficult this is.
The Tea Party was the next attempt to make the GOP understand the coming revolt. Obama and the people running him used every government agency, including the IRS, OSHA and the EPA to destroy the Tea Party and the few genuine leaders.
GOP Professionals, like Dick Armey, finished the job by following Eric Hoffer's rule: " “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
Then came Trump. I was skeptical like many at first but voted for him as I would throw a brick through the window of a hated criminal enterprise like the Clintons. I was pleasantly surprised that he acted as he did in spite of the hysterical opposition from not only the left but the establishment of the GOP.
People like Kristol and Sullivan are whores. They write what their funders want to see. At one time, I was concerned that Sullivan had AIDS dementia and that was long before Trump appeared.
Blogger Owen said...
Trump’s “bluntness” is the direct manner of a seasoned professional project manager telling his reports to get the concrete poured by end of shift or don’t bother coming in tomorrow. He saw the country was on its ass in the same way that Wollman Rink was on its ass after years of incompetent and graft-riddled rehab efforts by NYC public works, and he approached the problem the same way.
Yes, that was an early indication that he was serious and not just on an ego trip.
What happens next ? I have no idea. The hysteria of the left and the TDS sufferers assume that those of us who supported Trump "Hate Biden and Harris." Just like some hysterics imagined that we "hated" Obama. I thought Obama was an empty suit and harmful but did not go beyond that. I thought Bill Clinton was a skilled liar and politician, which are much the same thing. He benefitted enormously from the tech boom of the 90s. If the Biden people who are running him leave the normals alone, we will endure. I'm not sure they can.
T E A
Taxed
Enough
Already
The idea that the left over-lap with that? Never.
The left are all about punitive taxes.
Perhaps the only over-lap - an abstract anger at the powerful and wealthy. The dreaded 1%!
The problem is the left refuse to admit any negative or corrupt deal going on - at the top of the party they vote for.
Blogger Shouting Thomas said...
@Chuck
I suggest you start watching Scott Adams’ Periscope series. You’ll have a hard time because your mind is closed and your mouth is always ranting, and you won’t accept that Adams is in fact very liberal.
Adams regards Trump’s communication and persuasion skills, particularly his use of Twitter, as the work of a genius.
Stop ranting for a while and cease your bloodlust with vendettas and learn something.
I want to take a moment to respond to this, because of the seemingly cooperative intersection between Adams’ media consumers and Althouse’s readers.
Unlike Althouse, every moment I’ve ever spent with Scott Adams has left me feeling less informed, and with the powerful notion that he has wasted my time. The Donald Trump Presidency will go down in history as the most sustained, concentrated political malpractice of our lifetimes. Adams and Trump are purely loathsome in my view; fortunately for me, Trump is now just a loser on his way out. And Adams can just suck on the loss. Scott “I no longer care about the fucking law” Adams can just marinate in the Trump loss as long as he wants, and that’s fine with me.
DD Driver - The way the left acted over the last 4 years - that's your collective cry baby bully right there.
And yet Burke, Sullivan's hero, was a Whig who supported the American Revolution. Sullivan's "principled conservatives" ("liberals" used to call them "responsible conservatives," meaning: "no real threat to the Plantation") are the equivalent of Tories.
@Lee Moore:
Look at Brexit. The EU got hammered and hammered and hammered into the British state, for nearly fifty years, with the opposition to it routinely ignored or treated with contempt. And yet the "reactionaries" popped up again fifty years on and bit the establishment on the backside.
I take your point about reactionaries. However, I disagree strongly with this interpretation of Brexit. Opposition really dates back to 1993 and the Maastricht Treaty. And it was really only after 2007-2008 that there was a sizable backlash to the EU in Britain. I think Johnson managed to negotiate a deal that will end up leaving everyone dissatisfied. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the dissolution of the UK within the decade. Peter Hitchens remarked, "We could have saved the country by destroying the Tory Party. Instead, we destroyed the country to save the Tory Party."
Peter is a proper conservative in that he hates the Conservatives. His 1999 book The Abolition of Britain is a wonderful distillation of contemporary British history and the social forces that culminated in Tony Blair's revolutionary government. Just as Reagan had produced the New Democrats, so too had Thatcher produced New Labour.
"We have to find a way to unify those two visions if we're going to have any chance."
What we have to find is a way to stop Democrats from stealing American elections. And rubbing Jeb Bush around our assholes doesn't strike me as a promising beginning.
Sullivan contrasts Burke on American and French revolutions.
Andy want to balm Jeb's posterior.
Obama was a Clintonite centrist
Yeah, because Obamacare, especially with its anti-small business provisions, was a centrist program. Pretty obvious that it wasn’t nor was he. Your mistake — blunder — is in paying attention to his rhetoric and not to his results. That, and your foolish assumptions about where the center really is.
eternal shorter Chuck:
'I hate Trump so much - any corrupt leftwing jerk-off is good by me.'
Where Trump lost ground in some areas was with white suburban voters, primarily over his decorum and behavior. But going into 2020, the talking points were Trump was turning the GOP into an alt-right all-white party. Based on the numbers coming out, and the #NeverTrump types' claim that the GOP has to ditch Trumpism to win back the suburban voters, they're actually asking the GOP to target white voters in the 2022-24 election cycle and downplay whatever outreach Trump succeeded with among minority voters.
Similar to how journalists always write about whatever fad is popular among their journalist friends as the "next big trend," the GOP establishment is obsessed with winning white suburban voters because those are their wives and their social circle. No one wants to be the lone Trump defender at the cocktail party.
crybaby bully who can dish it out but can't take it
The Democrat image of Trump was manufactured by propaganda for political reasons and has little to do with reality, but it has been effective.
sullivan was enraged by the mildness of the huntress, who was way too civil to this mob, she trusted mccain and her son went over to iraq and afghanistan, he was damaged by what he underwent there, and the little care the va was offering,
Buckley’s phrase about standing athwart History “and saying, “Stop!” still seems at least as informative as Sullivan’s snotty and blinkered observations. Liberal used to mean tolerant and open minded. It no longer does. Progressive thought has always indicated a desire to destroy and remake as if people are “perfectible” while conservatives wish to conserve those rights and privileges established by law and custom. So there is always tension among the “changers” and “stay the same-ers” as technology allows us to spend more time arguing and less struggling to survive. As the Scientific Method tests hypotheses, so does Reality test ideas. To acknowledge these different groups disagree about “what works” is to see the Big Picture in part.
Conclusion: Sullivan is occasionally interesting but consistently “wrong” in his analysis.
Trump has covid dementia it appears. Silly to find balm a silly word for Jeb's politics while treating Trump at the end as anything but a loon.
I guess people would say I was a conservative merely because I am a Catholic, Republican, prolife, Trump supporter. But I want the abortion policies changed that are killing disproportionately large numbers of minority babies, especially in the black community. I want the schools that are not educating the surviving minority children changed. If 40 % of young black men end high-school without a high school degree, then how can they get into college in numbers proportionate to their share of the population? How can they get good jobs in numbers proportionate to their share of the population when they are competing against members of better-educated groups? And I want the global trade policies changed which send manufacturing jobs out of the country when the 40% of young blacks without high school degrees (and others, too) need those jobs to have a decent life and a chance to advance. And I want to stop immigration policies which import unskilled labor. No more until our own unskilled labor reaches full employment. And this group of policies is a radical change from post World War II policies. It may conserve human life and dignity but it does not preserve the familiar past-their-sell-date policies of either the Democrats or the Never Trump Republicans. And these policies could be enacted and would work and best of all, would work for everyone as has been shown. Once you know that then you aren't conservative even when you most are which is when you are wearing a triple crown of folly: believing Catholic, prolife, Trump-supporter.
@hawkeyedjb:
"But in the end, what the Tea Party wanted was more freedom, and what Occupy wanted was more government, less capitalism, more socialism, more control."
That is what I mean when I say that "the most damaging strain of thought in contemporary conservatism has been economic libertarianism." The Great Recession was not a result of us being insufficiently free or spending too much money or too big a government. It was a result of thirty years of market liberalization, deregulation of the financial industry, reduction to trade barriers, mass immigration, and lower taxes.
The quote I cherry-picked has Sullivan contrasting the conservatism of Edmund Burke — who "believed in pluralism, modest but necessary reform and the dispersal of power" — with the conservatism of Joseph de Maistre — "who found adaptation to modernity to be indistinguishable from surrender" and "saw decline everywhere and always, enemies within and without."
And, oh gosh, what was the difference in life experiences between Burke & de Maistre? How about the fact that Edmund Burke got to criticize the French Revolution from the safety of a Britain at peace with itself, while de Maistre saw his France destroyed & hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens killed by the French Revolution up close & personal. That's the sort of experience that'll give a feller a rotten attitude, let me tell you!
There's a reason that a hard-assed conservatism is referred to as "reactionary". It's just that the Left never wants to talk what sort of events are those hard-assed righties "reacting" against, because then they would have to answer for shit like La Vendee.
@Chuck,
You missed the part where I suggested that you cease ranting and foaming at the mouth for few moments.
Do you have any idea how intemperate and rage besotted you are?
You need to take a few months off from Althouse, ignore politics and try to quiet your mind. Your mind is convulsed with vendettas.
Liberals pretend to respect Moderate Conservatism, but when a moderate conservative like Mitt Romney comes along, they turn him into an evil, money-grubbing, cancer-giving Hitler youth.
John McCain was the belle of the ball until he had the temerity to run against The One.
Sullivan surprises me with this
"a populist cult, hostile to democratic norms, contemptuous of all elites, captured by delusions and sustained by hatred and ressentiment,"
It's surprising because one could say that Sullivan himself has often been victim of:
"an elitist cancel-culture cult, hostile to democratic norms, contemptuous of ordinary Americans, captured by delusions and sustained by hatred and ressentiment"
No?
“ Blogger Luke Lea said...
It's really all about trade and immigration and what they are doing to our middle-class society”
This is a true statement, trump smashed the gop open borders and invalid trade agreements, they couldn’t stand for it.
As far as hating and resisting Biden and the democrats, I am right there like a red hot poker. They have stolen a presidential election and as we have seen time and time and time again, they are using their media partners to delay, delay, delay and cover it up.
I personally no longer feel any association with democrats anywhere. I will love my democrat family members because blood is thicker than politics, but any other democrats I would gladly support insurrection against.
In fact, since Antifa and BLM has shown republicans how effective rioting really is, they should take it up and improve it.
Big Mike said...
Obama was a Clintonite centrist
Yeah, because Obamacare, especially with its anti-small business provisions, was a centrist program. Pretty obvious that it wasn’t nor was he. Your mistake — blunder — is in paying attention to his rhetoric and not to his results. That, and your foolish assumptions about where the center really is.
Obamacare was written and implemented by Mitt Romney first.
Farmer was not wrong about Republicans and Democrats being a neo-liberal political alliance.
He was wrong about Reagan being a part of that coalition though. Reagan was a direct challenge to the WASP/Progressive political alliance.
Reagan believed what made this country great was the people outside of DC.
That is directly antithetical to Obama neo-liberalism.
I’m pretty upset with the theft of the election, too, but the reality is that Biden is going to be president.
Maybe he’ll surprise us and be a remarkably effective president.
I hope so. Before I go nuts with BDS, I’ll wait to see what happens.
I want to know how I can contribute to the Hunter-Biden, Paul Pelosi, Chelsea Clinton life made easy by hardworking tax payer dollars fund.
Google, the Mordor of our day, knows how to wield power but pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Blogger Big Mike said...
Obama was a Clintonite centrist
Yeah, because Obamacare, especially with its anti-small business provisions, was a centrist program. Pretty obvious that it wasn’t nor was he. Your mistake — blunder — is in paying attention to his rhetoric and not to his results. That, and your foolish assumptions about where the center really is.
Obama had little to do with Obamacare other than getting elected. The bill, a monstrosity like all legislation written by the Administrative State, was written by Insurance company lobbyists and 25 year old lawyers on Pelosi's staff. They had learned from Hillary's mistake. She had the bill written in secrecy and excluded all providers and insurance companies. As a result, the insurance companies ran the "Harry and Louise" ad campaign and defeated, not only the bill, but the Democrat Congress.
This time, Nancy and Chuck let the insurance lobbyists write the bill. The problem, other than Democrat incompetence at running anything but elections, was that the insurance companies needed compulsion to force all citizens into the exchanges. This backfired politically after the small groups that insured a lot of urban Democrats were destroyed. The backlash alerted the unions which were not about to give up their negotiated health plans. The Democrats had to back down and this led to the Roberts' "tax not penalty" decision.
The law has pretty much destroyed American Medicine. It will take a decade to show but medical school applications are already down. The EMR requirement bankrupted the U of Arizona medical center, one of the best medical facilities in the Southwest. As a result, the university sold the medical center to a for profit company named "Banner." I know skilled physicians who changed their mind about working there. Some faculty have left.
J. Farmer said...
That is what I mean when I say that "the most damaging strain of thought in contemporary conservatism has been economic libertarianism." The Great Recession was not a result of us being insufficiently free or spending too much money or too big a government. It was a result of thirty years of market liberalization, deregulation of the financial industry, reduction to trade barriers, mass immigration, and lower taxes.
You are mixing things together than should not be mixed.
Taxes and tariffs are the same thing. It is the balance between them that matters. Taxes on domestic production should be low. Tariffs on foreign imports need to be at least as high as taxes on domestic production.
There is nothing wrong with mass immigration as long as the people immigrating want to work hard and contribute to society. We should just pass the Canadian immigration system and be done with it.
The federal government needs to tax and regulate interstate businesses and commerce. Small businesses and anything inside a state or even to some level inside our borders should be beneath the federal government.
The government produces nothing. It provides the stage. Nothing more. Anything the Government takes out of the economy beyond providing for basic liberty and infrastructure is a loss.
You have them calmly brazen lies of George W. Bush, and the well credentialed corrupt and incompetent insiders who held the senior ranks of his administration, which led to thousands of Americans killed and maimed, and tens of thousands of foreigners killed and maimed, for no reason, or no reason that can be spoken aloud. And that’s one of many, many reasons that you got Donald Trump.
Blogger Readering said...
Trump has covid dementia it appears. Silly to find balm a silly word for Jeb's politics while treating Trump at the end as anything but a loon.
I think Readering has a terminal case of TDS, like Chuck. Too bad. Sane, they might have been worth conversing with.
Wildswan: Excellent.
Michael K observes: I think Readering has a terminal case of TDS, like Chuck. Too bad. Sane, they might have been worth conversing with.
Readering, maybe.
“This is certainly true, and I think a lot of it has to do with the nature of the current political alignment and the rigidness of our two-party system. Obama was a Clintonite centrist, and the right lost its mind over him. He was a radical Marxist communist Kenyan anti-colonialist! Instead, he broadly supported the same neoliberal agenda that coalesced during the Reagan administration.”
Not sure why you think that Obama was a centrist. My view is just the opposite, that he was fairly radical. Ant-colonial, which translates into anti- American, or at least the opposite of America First. Probably the most ideological President in a long time, at least on the left - an ideology formed from emulating his absent Communist father, close association with wealthy domestic terrorists, and 20 years of listening to Rev Wright in church.
The other thing though is that he has always been lazy and self indulgent. He was the perfect front man for someone, or some group - and even 12 years later we don’t really know who they are/were. His past was carefully scrubbed, and his way greased with mysteriously opened sealed court records. He got to live in the big house, with the servants and the basketball court, and maybe had control over a couple agencies, like the DOJ, but most of the rest of his Administration was run as private fiefdoms of various Dem interest groups.
Possibly the weaknesses of his foreign policy can be attributed to having given the State Department first to the venally corrupt Clinton, followed by the anti-American, pro Chinese and Iranian, Lurch Kerry. Her foreign policy mistakes seemed most often the result of having sold American foreign policy for money, or, possibly good sex (yes, I am talking about her relationship with Huma Abedelin, her family connection to the Muslim Brotherhood, and the damage to the Middle East as a result of all that). Lurch flipped our foreign policy from Clinton’s support of Sunni terrorists to preferring Shiite terrorists, along with their Iranian backers, and probably Chinese enablers. It could be as simple as the Sunni Arabs supporting their coreligionists in China, the Chinese then siding with the Iranians as a counterweight, and Kerry dutifully doing his part for his long term Chinese masters.
As far as I can tell, Biden, if he is inaugurated, is headed to be Obama’s third term, which means parceling out the various departments to various constituencies, and allowing them to be run as fiefdoms of these constituencies. For Obama it was laziness, and adhering to the bargain that got him the Big House for eight years. For Biden, it is his rapidly encroaching dementia. Again though, we really have little idea who is actually pulling the strings, just that they are being pulled. I think for Obama’s second term, it was China more than anyone. And as always, all the Russian collusion nonsense is to take our eyes off of Chinese meddling. The problem for the Chinese is that their candidate, Biden, is fading rapidly. My guess is that Harris owes more of her loyalty to the big tech companies, many based in the state she represents: CA. I expect some conflict between these two power bases, but a lot of accommodation too.
Who here can say with confidence that the Machine would NOT have taken mild balmy Jeb! and turned him into a cardboard Hitler just like every other GOPer is treated by the DNC-Media complex? Sullivan would have gone along with them too. Because there is an endless supply of Prog answers to the question “what is wrong with [insert name] Republican?” and the Machine never stops. I’m coming to the belief that all writing on politics is bad writing.
Yeah, read DJT twitter feed then use TDS on Chuck and Readering!
Comparing Sullivan review with these comments. Yikes.
There won't be any Biden Derangement Syndrome. He is a confused and pathetic old man who evokes pity and maybe laughter but not vitriol. Biden is not our enemy. That would be the Deep [and Getting Deeper] State and its global analogs.
soros schwab, maybe elements of maurice strong's order, obama carried forward ayers vision of gramscian integration into the institutions, as practically possible, as well as schemes for gun registration, through the joyce foundation,
yes jeb would have been demonized and quickly given up the ghost,
orwell said as much, he took the three totalitarian superstates, from ex trotskyite james burnham, he took his experience with the bbc world service, as the structure of winston's existence, you can get a taste of this with the bbc has played the narrative justifying a shutdown,
"Balm" equals "bland" and morphs into "unctuous". Little Jebbie was the answer to a question that no one asked.
The Maestros told us to put the balm on..
Jeb Bush was Preparation H.
I've got a rash, where's that Bush Balm®?
Wait, that didn't sound right...
The problem with conservatism in the US is that it has conserved nothing. In general, they are all grifters. Even now, you see they are funded by people who keep them as token opposition- in essence, Conservatism Inc. today is the KY Jelly of progressivism.
@Achilles:
There is nothing wrong with mass immigration as long as the people immigrating want to work hard and contribute to society. We should just pass the Canadian immigration system and be done with it.
Even ignoring the potential cultural problems arising from mass immigration, the reason it is supported so enthusiastically by the business community is because it helps to push down wages. One of the easiest ways we could help people at the bottom of the wage scale is by clamping down on immigration.
The government produces nothing. It provides the stage. Nothing more. Anything the Government takes out of the economy beyond providing for basic liberty and infrastructure is a loss.
The US established the Patent Office in early 1800s, the US United States Survey of the Coast was established in 1807 to chart waters and aid navigation in rivers and harbors in an effort to support international trade. The army made numerous expeditions to the west to chart and provide topographical information. There was a national bank to foster commercial investment. States built roads and waterways like the Eerie Canal. The state greatly expanded the territory through the Louisiana Purchase and invasion and conquest of Mexico. Railroad companies were given huge land grants in order to build railroads and finance themselves.
"We discover that the fortunes realized by our manufacturers are no longer solely the reward of sturdy industry and enlightened foresight, but that they result from the discriminating favor of the Government and are largely built upon undue exactions from the masses of our people. The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor.
As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters." -Grover Cleveland, 1888 SOTU
Chronic State-fellator J. Farmer would hate anti-statists so much less if they would just submit and not insist so damn much on their liberty. This had probably been the desire of statists since the first gang of cavemen decided to seize the furs and mastodon steaks of the other cave-dwellers "for the Common Good."
Gee, and Sullivan had just started to make sense again. But I suppose if you want to show up in the New York Times now and then, this is what you have to do.
"John McCain was the belle of the ball until he had the temerity to run against The One."
-- My three favorite media points from that campaign:
* The entire media turning on McCain for stopping campaigning to go back to DC to try to fix the crisis at the time... because Harry Reid and specifically asked him to come back. And the story was about McCain's mistake.
* How McCain was the only of the two candidates to stick to the agreement to use public financing... Obama pulled out. It was raved as a tactical win by Obama to allow him more money than his opponent instead of McCain sticking to his word while Obama lied.
* The entire Vicki Iseman affair.
Political parties are always on the lookout for issues and subjects of disagreement because they want to stay competitive. If issues are taken off the table, they scramble to find new ones.
The great nightmare of any party is to have to throw their hands up and say, "You win. We can't beat you. We'll just stay the permanent minority party." Something like that happened to the Federalists in the early 19th century, to the Democrats after the Civil War, and to the Republicans after FDR.
Party competitiveness and fear of being left behind account for the rise of social issues at a time when there wasn't great disagreement on economic matters. And maybe they have more than a little to do with the current agitation about tone, decorum and norms. Parties are always going to find reasons to hate and despise each other, because the alternative is to cry uncle and give up.
It wasn't like that fifty years ago, but nowadays, with two parties bent on remaining competitive and prevailing, moderate conservatives and moderate liberals face just about as much malice from the other party as those who take more resolute and uncompromising positions. To some extent that's justified: "moderation" on economic issues tends to be mixed with more uncompromising stands on social and cultural issues of race/gender/sexual preference with rhetoric heating up even as parties draw closer together on other issues.
FWIW Language is tricky here. The usual alternatives to "moderate" - "radical," "extreme," "far" - all have pejorative connotations (as do the new terms people try to drag in like "revanchist"), so having a conversation that does both sides justice can be difficult.
So, Farmer, the function of government is to restrain capitalism? It is the government who should be 'servants of the people' and yet they are anything but.
Obama had little to do with Obamacare other than getting elected. The bill, a monstrosity like all legislation written by the Administrative State, was written by Insurance company lobbyists and 25 year old lawyers on Pelosi's staff.
@Dr. Michael K., he had little or nothing to do with crafting the Bill, agreed. But he embraced the nickname and put his prestige as President and leader of the party behind its passage.
I agree with the remainder of your comment.
There have always been 2 flavors of "conservativism". The real thing is what Sullivan calls "moderate": trying to preserve WHAT WORKS while dealing with a changing world.
What does work? What doesn't? And what works FOR WHOM? What works for you, may not be working for me. Those are all points in contention. The conservatism that Sullivan likes often ignores difficult questions. The conservatism he doesn't like is often asking "Where is this going? If it appears to 'work' now, where will it take us in 20 years or 40 years?" And that seems to behind a lot of political debate. You have the current arrangement and the expedients that keep it going, but how sustainable is it really? That's also a question that the left can and does ask about the policies of the right, moderate or otherwise.
This debate is similar to what was going on almost 60 years ago with Goldwater and Johnson. Goldwater was wrong. The country isn't going back to where it was before the New Deal. Government has definitely taken on new responsibilities since Coolidge was president. But Goldwater and his supporters did sense where Johnson's politics would take us and felt things that the president's supporters didn't. Being able to easily dismiss Goldwater's campaign as a product of "ressentiment" made it easy for some very bright people to close their eyes to possible future developments. This debate between the moderate or pragmatic and the more fundamentalist ideological strains also happens on the left, where the less pragmatic side is sometimes labeled "prophetic." Maybe there is also something of the prophetic in the conservatives Andrew Sullivan doesn't like.
BTW, like "ressentiment," "opportunism is a word that ought to be used carefully in reference to politics. "Opportunism" is the essence of the game. Just who is and who isn't an "opportunist" in a deeper or more dangerous sense may not be easy to say. Too often the positioning and repositioning, the equivocating and posturing of professional politicians is ignored and the outsider who addresses issues that have been ignored is labeled an opportunist for asking uncomfortable questions.
Burkean conservatism rested on the idea that there was a permanent, largely "conservative" Establishment of Church and State. Burke, a Whig, could see himself as a defender of that established order to an even greater degree than the Tories on the other side of the benches. When you leave monarchy, aristocracy, feudalism, agrarianism, and established churches behind it's harder to make use of the Burkean framework. There are competing elites and the plans that they want carried out, but not much to indicate whose authority is legitimate, whose order is just, or whose plan for the future is best.
There is nothing wrong with mass immigration as long as the people immigrating want to work hard and contribute to society.
You can have lax immigration laws or a welfare state, but you can't have both.
Some smart guy said that.
We now have open borders and hand out money and services to whoever gets here...unsustainable.
As an evil conservative, I say clamp down on illegal immigration, but have worker programs so migrant workers can be tracked, pay taxes, and are paid a decent wage.
I am OK with paying more for strawberries.
Even Caesar Chavez was on my side...he wasn't a fan of illegal Mexicans taking the jobs of his unionized farmworkers.
And blacks should be pissed off, as illegal Mexicans are eating their lunch every damn day.
So far we’ve kept the Constitution relevant, and traditional American values are alive and well in every corner of the land still. The few who vote, and the fewer who count votes, and the even smaller cohort of those who lead the counters especially seem to trend toward trying to cancel our charter but so far we’ve held onto our constitutional republic, God bless us. So there’s that. The private can own the culture and flirt with international alliances as long as we keep our constitutional republic.
Blogger Readering said...
Yeah, read DJT twitter feed then use TDS on Chuck and Readering!
I assume the only reason why leftists like Readering comment here is to troll the rest of us. Has anyone seen him/her post any item that concerned policy or political philosophy? Chuck is here only to rant his TDS. Several years ago, I recall Chuck posting a comment on a med-mal case he was working on. I have not seen a rational comment since.
How boring! But then Sullivan always is.
How to write a Sullivan column:
01) throw out all reason and logic.
02) Pretend to be a special snowflake Moderate-libertarian, or leftwing-Conservative.
03) Pretend you're taking "edgy" positions while agreeing with the NYT 95% of the time.
04) Attack liberals 10% of the time, and conservatives 90% while proclaiming you're independent.
05) Constantly jabber about "-isms" and call people you don't like "-ists". This will impress idiots, and makes it easier to pad out the column.
06) Avoid hard facts or talking in detail about the issues.
07) Always avoid reasoned arguments. Call people names instead. (see No. 5 above)
08) Corollary to No. 7, always caricature and strawman the opposition.
09) Pretend to be a Christian while always attacking Christians
10) Talk about being an oppressed Minority - Remind people you're Gay every column.
Yancy, my comment above was in response to your what have we conserved question. It’s a short but important list.
when Sullivan forthrightly attacks the NYT for:
1) Suppressing the Hunter Biden story
2) Suppressing the election Fraud committed by Biden and the D's
3) Lying about Trump Russia collusion for 3 years
4) Supporting the phony impeachment.
5) Lying about Illegal immigration and 5,600 page Pork/CV-19 bill.
Then I might have SOME respect for him.
Sullivan is often impervious to evidence. Look at the Palin thing. Same with Trump. Whatever you think of Trump he is nothing like the warmonger antisemite stormtrooper Sullivan decided he was back in 2016. But to Sullivan he is and always will be.
To Democrats and the media, all current Republicans are Hitler. Years later, the dead ones are looked at as moderate. The key is the next ones to come along are always worse than Hitler.
As far as I can tell, Biden, if he is inaugurated, is headed to be Obama’s third term, which means parceling out the various departments to various constituencies, and allowing them to be run as fiefdoms of these constituencies. For Obama it was laziness, and adhering to the bargain that got him the Big House for eight years. For Biden, it is his rapidly encroaching dementia. Again though, we really have little idea who is actually pulling the strings, just that they are being pulled. I think for Obama’s second term, it was China more than anyone. And as always, all the Russian collusion nonsense is to take our eyes off of Chinese meddling. The problem for the Chinese is that their candidate, Biden, is fading rapidly. My guess is that Harris owes more of her loyalty to the big tech companies,
Exactly. The incompetence of the people running Harris is that they thought she was a serious candidate. The dysfunction of the "elites" can be seen in such examples as Oregon's catastrophic rollout of Obamacare. I don't recall how many billion dollars it cost but it never got working. Never. And the Governor at the time was an ER doc I had met. Kitzhaber was a level sounding guy but turned out to be a typical leftist.
I agree that Biden will have no role, aside for being a front, in "his" administration.
People hate Trump because he is a crybaby bully who can dish it out but can't take it.
The man has taken it and taken it every day for over four years. I have never seen the like.
Two movies? I suspect it's more like two universes, and Spock has a beard in that one.
Whenever a Republican wins a democratic election, there is someone bemoaning a threat to "democratic norms."
Somehow, it feels like a typo when the complainer doesn't capitalize the "D" in "Democratic."
Q: why degrees of "conservatism" but not for "liberalism"?
(I don't understand either) - just wondering why!
@Bilwick:
Chronic State-fellator J. Farmer would hate anti-statists so much less if they would just submit and not insist so damn much on their liberty.
Unless you're an anarchist, fuck off. You live in a state with the greatest destructive power of any state in history. Nuclear weapons put you on the frontlines, while the political and military leaders are in the bunkers. In a world full of powerful, centralized states, the US is not going to become a small, decentralized state. If the goal is to shrink the size of the state, you've been failing for 200 years.
This had probably been the desire of statists since the first gang of cavemen decided to seize the furs and mastodon steaks of the other cave-dwellers "for the Common Good."
States have existed for only a tiny fraction of human history. Most of the time we lived in roving bands of kin , and the only good was the common good. Labor was divided only by sex and by age. Class division doesn't come until you get excess production. But once you get agriculture, controlling land becomes a source of power. The institutions put in place to manage this become the earliest states and the earliest empires shortly thereafter. Today, you either have a state or you're a part of somebody else's.
I find that O'Keeffe's Working Hands Hand Cream is a much better balm for chapped hands than Jeb Bush. Plus I didn't have to spend $100 million for it to lose Florida...
@mockturtle:
So, Farmer, the function of government is to restrain capitalism? It is the government who should be 'servants of the people' and yet they are anything but.
The problem with a phrase like "government is to restrain capitalism" is that it assumes "government" and "capitalism" are discreet entities. People sometimes talk this way about the "government" and the "economy." There is no such distinction. The two are interwoven in a complex way. Corporate law is a political decision. They are created in law with the intention of fostering business. Early state corporate rules were written in such a way to explicitly prevent them from gaining too much wealth or power.
The US and state governments worked to foster commerce and enterprise throughout the 19th century. The US obtained a huge amount of territory by forcibly taking it from Mexico. It then gave it away to settlers, railroad companies, and states to build colleges. The US regularly intervened with force in Latin America on behalf of behalf of US business interests. Even under Coolidge, laws were passed to regulate air commerce and radio.
There has never been a "free market" in the United States. The size of the state has grown right along with its power and complexity.
Comparing Sullivan review with these comments. Yikes.
(1) Homosexuals overwhelming support the Democrats. (2) Democrats support Muslim extremists, e.g., Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar. (3) Muslim extremists regard homosexuality as a capital offense, e.g., ISIS, Omar Mateen, the theocracy in Iran. Logically conclusion: American homosexuals have a deep-seated death wish.
That's Jeb! to you.
"Please clap."
Sullivan is a conservative like David Brooks is a conservative. That is, he is a conservative as defined by left-wing journalists who also define racism, fascism, Islam and Christianity for us — inaccurately.
Trump is a conservative? Really? Maybe. If patriotism and non-collectivist egalitarianism are conservatism. Are the journalists and politicians who disdain the Constitution, particularly the First and Second Amendment, other civil liberties, Christians, personal responsibility, history and reality, liberals, as they often characterize themselves? No, they are not.
They are moral relativists who define political labels in accordance with their preferences of the moment. If Fawcett, Sullivan and Brooks ever knew of conservatism, the knowledge has disappeared into the barrage of left wing bullshit the inundates us.
I was in Palm Springs yesterday, a very Gay and liberal city.
And a liberal, Gov. Newsom, is killing it. City is usually bustling, but it was pretty dead.
Name me one policy of Trump’s that’s conservative?
He’s a populist, but spending neo-liberal economically and he’s a mishmash of perspectives socially. He’s against illegal immigration but for prison reform. He’s definitely pro-working class, regardless of race or ethnicity through economic protectionism.
He’s been hostile to the 2nd amendment but he’s not been particularly supportive of any of the bill of rights amendments.
He’s been less likely to start new wars but slow to withdrawal troops from existing wars.
"of Angela Merkel, perhaps the most properly conservative of our contemporary leaders"
He used to have a brain, too bad he destroyed it.
Merkel is a lying sack of garbage who decided she would "grow" the "conservative" Party by moving to the Left. "After all, where are [the voters who are actually conservative] going to go?"
To call her "properly conservative" is to show one lacks, at a best, any real understanding of the subject.
For it to disappear into a populist cult, hostile to democratic norms, contemptuous of all elites, captured by delusions and sustained by hatred and ressentiment
1: It is the elites who are hostile to, and destructive of, or democratic norms. See al they ways they fight to empower vote fraud.
2: It is only sane to be contemptuous of the incompetent and corrupt people who make up the Western "elite"
3: "Captured by delusions" like "non-binary"? 57 "genders"? Storms are happening because "Mother Earth is angry with us"?
4: "Sustained by hatred and ressentiment" you mean like the scum at the CDC who decided that "essential workers" should get the Covid vaccine before the over 75 crowd? A decision that will lead to tens of thousands of deaths per month. A decision that has no scientific, moral, or ethical justification, other than the hatred of "white people" and the disire to see them die.
(Covid is 270x as deadly to the 75+ crowd as to the 19 - 50 crowd. They're not even saving "black lives" by this decision, because more blacks in the 75+ crowd will die for lack of vaccine than will be save in the "essential workers".)
It's sad to see that Excitable Andy is still just as stupid as he's been ever since he let a desire for government endorsed "same sex marriage" turn his bruin into gruel.
Jeb Was a solid governor of Florida.
He may have made a better president than George. We won't ever find out because we are all sick of family dynasties.
"The balm of Jeb Bush" said no one. Please Clap!
"the battle for moderate conservatism is now inextricable from a battle for liberal democracy itself."
Yes, it is
Phase 1: Keeping away from the "leadership" of "moderate conservatism" any person who supports using a "Covid relief" bill to pass out trillions of pork, with occasional dribs and drabs to the Americans who have been harmed by the Federal and State government response to Covid (lockdowns, etc).
A real "moderate conservative" would produce a clean bill with unemployment support, PPP loans, maybe a subsidy to all Americans, and that's it.
No foreign aid of any sort (that goes in a different bill). No subsidies to State or local governments. No "education funding" with rules that force it to only go to public teach union owned schools. No riders of any sort that advance any left wing political goals.
That's what a moderate conservative would support. Are there any of those in the US Senate or House?
Tom, Trump was less likely to start new wars? As in, he started zero? Can we also count the four countries with new peace treaties with Israel as four wars stopped? So he's at minus four wars, compared to previous presidents? And he sacked his SecDef for not winding down US involvement as fast as he desired. Trump avoided conflict with North Korea and Iran, who both love a bit of conflict with the US for domestic purposes.
Tom, you have some pretty stringent requirements for recognizing antiwar presidential ideology and practice, cuz if Trump didn't succeed in impressing you, nobody will.
I always turn to leftwingers - and those fixated on Sarah Palin's vagina - to find out what type of conservative I am today. It's very educational.
Tom said...
Name me one policy of Trump’s that’s conservative?
His whole approach to Covid was and is intensely conservative. He understands and follows the rules of our Federal System:
1: States have generalize police power, Feds do not
2: Job of Feds is to protect the border, and handle nationwide issues (see Operation Warp Speed), while baking up the States to handle their things there way
He was often limited by the crap nature of the people in the US Civil Service "jobs". But he did well, and far better than Obama did with H1N1.
He’s a populist, but spending neo-liberal economically and he’s a mishmash of perspectives socially. He’s against illegal immigration but for prison reform. He’s definitely pro-working class, regardless of race or ethnicity through economic protectionism.
IOW, he's pro-America, and pro-American, especially pro the common citizens. Again, intensely conservative
He’s been hostile to the 2nd amendment but he’s not been particularly supportive of any of the bill of rights amendments.
That's quite the claim. Got any support fo it?
What anti-2nd Amendment things has Trump done? He's certainly appointed Justices and judges who are far more supportive of that Amendment than those who were on the Courts when he came into office
‘the balm of Jeb Bush.’
I wonder if it’s anything like that Santorum Balm Sullivan wrote of several years ago?
On second thought... Eewwwwwww!!!!!
Trump is pro-life, pro 2A, pro family, pro individual liberty/dignity, pro rule of law, loves his country deeply, to name a few of his conservative values...
Jeb! would have locked down the state of Florida and crushed its economy if he were still governor.
DeSantis has been terrific.
Libertarianism is self-moderating. Liberalism is divergent. Progressivism is unqualified, monotonic change. Environmentalism is out-of-sight and out-of-mind. Feminism is chauvinistic. Conservativism is moderating. American conservativism is Pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. #PrinciplesMatter
Trump had a pretty good run until Covid-19. Remember where were until last March? Low, low unemployment and robust economic activity.
Trump ran into a force (the virus)that he couldn't talk around, and he fell into the hands of the public health experts, who apparently believe that no one should ever get sick--even if most of those who do get better. What has followed is a nine-month-long episode of attempted economic suicide on a global level, ordered by various politicians at the behest of public health officials.
We have the constraints suggested by the "experts", but we also have a lot of illnesses--because the constraints don't help much. Those with a lesser risk of death--those under 65--constitute virtually the entire workforce, and those under 50 are extremely unlikely to die from this. There ought to be a better way to manage this than lockdowns.
Trump lost the election when he couldn't keep away from the Fauci/Birx press conferences. He should have let Pence do it. He certainly should not have spent time trading insults with the know-nothings of the press corps.
But there are virtually no politicians in the world who have handled this right. Those remote island nations Australia and New Zealand took advantage of their remoteness and may have delayed things until a vaccine is available, but their situations are almost unique. By the way, both are serious about controlling their borders.
I read an interesting article contrasting Australian and US political philosophy. In the US we are influenced by John Locke and Rousseau--natural rights and liberty. The Australians' political godfather is Jeremy Bentham--utilitarian and majoritarian. The Australians come down hard on those who don't obey the expressed will of the majority. The writer pointed out that Australians are the descendants of convicts--and prison guards.
G'day, mate.
"Trump had a pretty good run until Covid-19."
And then it mysteriously appeared from China.
What a coincidence.
I'm an engineer. To me what works in a society is what maximizes "happiness". What is happiness? For me it's a machine that works. Sort of a syllogism. If we were all engineers, then we would have a very different way of organizing society.
Since we aren't all engineers, we have to go with what works for a society of mentally handicapped humans. Capitalism is what works, mostly because it allows accumulation of sufficient concentrations of capital to produce the Things that make people happy (and make engineers happy by letting us build stuff). Unfortunately it produces hierarchical social organizations. Interesting that engineer-led enterprises always experiment with breaking down hierarchies, but the finance people who inevitably take over the aging enterprise revel in the hierarchy, until the enterprise collapses.
So, I'm that contradictory Millsian Conservative. Opportunism as "the essence of the game" is anathema to me, because it's not a game.
Trump ran into a force ...
That exposed his essential ineptitude. Like his inaugural speech it was an opportunity to show that he was something better than an opportunist. Another opportunity wasted, and now he is as good as gone.
Bentham referred to the idea of natural rights endowed by the Creator--as set forth in the Declaration of Independence--as "nonsense on stilts", a phrase I have often used to describe various pronouncements of the woke.
One man's nonsense is another man's guidestar. One man's guidestar is another man's nonsense.
"That exposed his essential ineptitude"
Well, yes, but is his ineptitude part of his essence? What do we make of Cuomo, Fauci, Pritzker, Whitmer, Newsome, Tapper, Stelter, everyone that works at MSNBC, the NYT, WaPoo, all of whom disgraced themselves and continue to do so? What about their ineptitude?
Is Operation Warp Speed part of Trump's essential ineptitude? If Obama or Biden were president, wouldn't we be hearing that because of their great leadership, we'd be getting a vaccine in 2023 instead of 2027?
"Trump ran into a force ...
That exposed his essential ineptitude."
I call bullshit. The media turned it into ineptitude.
Hillary or Biden would have done worse by not shutting down flights from China.
They also would never have mobilized private industry to manufacture respirators, nor would they have cut regulations to enable a vaccine in less than a year.
For that alone he should get a (any) Nobel Prize.
jim said...
Trump ran into a force ...
That exposed his essential ineptitude.
Really? Trump went on national TV and told everyone that there was no reason to wear masks?
No, that was Fauci.
Trump created a "Covid test" that was contaminated with Covid, and cock-blocked anyone else from releasing a Covid test?
No, that was the "experts" at the CDC and FDA.
Trump ordered LTCFs to take in Covid+ patients, leading to the inexcusable deaths of 10 of thousands of people?
No, that was the Democrat Governors of the Northeast. Starting with Cuomo.
Trump totally fumbled the vaccine production?
No. We were told by all the experts that it would "take a miracle" to get a Covid-19 vaccine before the end of the year, like Trump was promising.
Well, thanks to President Trump's "Operation Warp Speed", the miracle has happened. And we've got two different 95%+ effective vaccines in million+ dose distribution in the US, before the end of the year.
I would that all, or even some, of are "experts" and "elites" were as "inept" as President Trump
"That exposed his essential ineptitude."
This was exposed when he won the 2016 election while spending half as much money and getting millions fewer votes. How inept!
Sullivan has been cracked on more than one occasion -- the year-long rant about Sarah Palin, wherein our Gynecologist-In-Chief explained endlessly that Trig couldn't possibly be Sarah's baby, was just the worst. (Lurker21, that sums up what Sullivan was doing during the McCain time.) But he remains a very interesting writer.
People like rcocean are simply not reading well. Sullivan isn't, e.g., "pretending to be a Christian." He is in an honest mess, as a gay Catholic who thinks gay sex is OK. To me the answer is fairly clear: If the Catholic Church teaches something that you cannot accept, then you aren't a member of the Catholic Church. Sullivan seems to be waiting for a successor of John XXIII (or Francis) to make clear that what he does is fine with the RCC. I don't think that's anywhere as likely as he does, but I do understand the dilemma.
I signed up for the Dish (now weekly, not daily) to see what was going on there. So far I have no particular with it. Also, VFYW is back, and the ingenuity of his readers -- who have mostly stuck with him, or at least kept an eye out for rehabilitation -- is there for all to see.
Some call for a 2nd Party. Most Democrats hate the Democrat Party. Most Republicans hate the Republican Party. The response is always the same...ooh, if you don't vote for our thoroughly corrupt party, the other team wins. We have mascots, dammit. Elephant/Donkey. We have team colors, dammit, given to us by Democrat Tim Russert. Red/Blue.
Tim Russert was so smarty-smart that he bought his Dad, an 'extended Warranty' on the Lincoln Tim gave his Dad a few years earlier.
Extended Warranty? Do you recognize that is just a revenue stream for the Dealership that sells it?! (OK, let me settle down. I sold cars, and know the 'extended warranty' scam.)
Tim Russert was a multi millionaire back then, and so was smarty-smart. Still...a frkn extended warranty? Oh man, when you got millions, you can virtue signal to your Dad.
Anyway, for the last 30 years, children are taught from Kindergarten through 12th grade, that Democrats good. Republicans bad.
The brand is irretrievable. It's a bad brand.
Some folks talk about Trump creating a media empire. If he wanted to jet off to Fuji, I wouldn't blame him...but...if he wanted to continue the fight, he could start a 2nd Party in these United States. You want to talk about unity? You wanna see 70% of Americans lock arms and fight the greatest threat that America ever fought? This fight is with Progressives.
Pestering Progressive busybodies.
Yeah, it's trolling to point out to AA's commenting community (how did it ever come together here?) that the president has been spouting deranged nonsense since he contracted covid, and nonstop lies since he realized he had lost the election. Even lost the comic timing that meant so much to AA. (Thanks once again for the meta commentary, Michael K.)
Blogger J. Farmer said.......
..... You live in a state with the greatest destructive power of any state in history. Nuclear weapons put you on the frontlines, while the political and military leaders are in the bunkers. In a world full of powerful, centralized states, the US is not going to become a small, decentralized state. If the goal is to shrink the size of the state, you've been failing for 200 years.
This had probably been the desire of statists since the first gang of cavemen decided to seize the furs and mastodon steaks of the other cave-dwellers "for the Common Good."
States have existed for only a tiny fraction of human history. Most of the time we lived in roving bands of kin , and the only good was the common good. Labor was divided only by sex and by age. Class division doesn't come until you get excess production. But once you get agriculture, controlling land becomes a source of power. The institutions put in place to manage this become the earliest states and the earliest empires shortly thereafter. Today, you either have a state or you're a part of somebody else's.
Nice example of first principles thinking.
Trump lunacy, Exhibit xxx. Tonight's signing and signing statement.
Blogger readering said...
Yeah, it's trolling to point out to AA's commenting community (how did it ever come together here?) that the president has been spouting deranged nonsense since he contracted covid, and nonstop lies since he realized he had lost the election. Even lost the comic timing that meant so much to AA. (Thanks once again for the meta commentary, Michael K.)
Trolling merits a "C" but keep trying. Do you ever think about policy? You know, governing and stuff? I assume you have no ideas of your own.
Blogger jim said...
Trump ran into a force ...
That exposed his essential ineptitude. Like his inaugural speech it was an opportunity to show that he was something better than an opportunist. Another opportunity wasted, and now he is as good as gone.
Just another crazy lefty. Do you know Readering ?
The "force" Trump ran into was the news media. Can you imagine what the last four years would have been like, and especially the period of the Presidential Election campaigns, if the news media had been even-handed in its treatment of Trump. And by even-handed, I really mean "no more anti-Trump than they were anti-Reagan in 1980". Remember when? I hope that Trump uses his skills and wealth to create a really fair news vehicle -- or several of them.
Dreaming of the day Michael K awards me a C+.
Blogger Readering said...
Dreaming of the day Michael K awards me a C+.
Trolling is really all you can do ? No original thoughts ?
"People like rcocean are simply not reading well. Sullivan isn't, e.g., "pretending to be a Christian." He is in an honest mess, as a gay Catholic who thinks gay sex is OK."
Are you stupid, or merely dishonest? If Sullivan was really a Christian he wouldn't spend 90% of his words on religion, attacking everyone on the "Religious Right" or the Catholic Church or anyone else who dares to support the Christian viewpoint in the public square over abortion, and standard Christian views.
If Sullivan was really a supporter of Christianity, who just disagreed over the issue of Gays, he'd be attacking anti-Christian beliefs from the MSM and the Democrat party. He'd be saying "while, i disagree over the sinfulness of gay sex, I agree with the rest of Christianity, and stand with them against secular/anti-Christian attacks from the New York Times, and other publications"
But Sullivan NEVER writes that. Instead, its:
" I hate Falwell, Robertson, the Religious Right" "I hate all those Conservative Christians" "The Catholic Church is full of child molesters" And sure this SOUNDS like the sort of thing that every Atheist/liberal writes, BUT I -Andrew Sullivan- am different, I'm a Gay Christian" .
What fucking bullshit!
when are people on the Center-right going to stop being gullible rubes? just because someone say they're a Christian, doesn't mean they are one. Just because someone says they're some sort of "Conservative" doesn't mean they are one. Just because a pundit says: "Hey, I'm on your side" doesn't mean they are on "our" side.
You need to read pundits for context and see not only what they say, but what they DON"T say. If during the cold war, someone was constantly saying " I hate communism, and I'm an Yankee doodle dandy" but refused to attack Joe Stalin, defended everything the USSR did, and always attacked the USA, no one but a gullible rube would believe he "hated Communism".
Michael K, you would really rather comment on me than comment on events? So it appears.
"[J]ust because someone say they're a Christian, doesn't mean they are one."
When will the scales fall from Christian Trumpists' eyes on the paganism of our self-proclaiming "Christian"-pagan president?
"I'm an Yankee doodle dandy but refused to attack Joe Stalin, defended everything the USSR did, and always attacked the USA."
rcocean, even if you were an adult for Joe Stalin, you should still get out more.
But once you get agriculture, controlling land becomes a source of power. The institutions put in place to manage this become the earliest states and the earliest empires shortly thereafter. Today, you either have a state or you're a part of somebody else's.
You know, the whole nation-state, civilization thing is a real drag, but I still prefer it to hanging out in caves, eating half cooked meat and picking lice of each other.
@rcocean:
If Sullivan was really a Christian he wouldn't spend 90% of his words...
Is it really for you to judge who is and isn't "really a Christian," let alone what "a Christian" would or "wouldn't" do? As best I can tell, your complaint is that Sullivan doesn't write about the things you think he should write about.
You say he is "boring" and "always is," you give a 10-step list on recreating his columns, you talk about what he spends "90% of his words on" and what he "NEVER writes." So, why do you read what he writes?
when are people on the Center-right going to stop being gullible rubes? just because someone say they're a Christian, doesn't mean they are one. Just because someone says they're some sort of "Conservative" doesn't mean they are one.
Who gives a fuck if Sullivan is really a Christian or really a Conservative? I understand that Sullivan makes references to these beliefs, but what difference do they make to the validity or strength of his argument? If you could somehow know for a certainty that Sullivan was a Christian, would you then agree with what he said?
@Gahrie:
You know, the whole nation-state, civilization thing is a real drag, but I still prefer it to hanging out in caves, eating half cooked meat and picking lice of each other.
Indubitably. That's why back-to-land-movements are so often affectations of the elite and upper classes. It was easy for Thomas Jefferson to romanticize the small family farm and agrarianism. He had a bunch of slaves to do the work for him. A desire to escape the city and return to an idealized natural realm is practically as old as urbanization itself. You can see its themes in Garden of Eden story and in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Aristotle, Xenophon, Cicero, and Virgil all praised the farming lifestyle. Notice, of course, none of them actually did it.
Pat Buchanon is the only one mentioned that is a Conservative.
Mike (MJB Wolf),
Your 11:53am comment was short, important, and misleading: everywhere those values still exist, they are under serious, sustained and mostly successful attack.
Lurker21,
May I ask how long it took you to write your 8:05am comment?
I ask because you wrote it for free, and I'm curious about the effort involved since it seems far more valuable, and includes much more actual thought, than what Sullivan got paid to write for our most prominent newspaper.
It's a crazy mixed-up world, for sure.
readering said...
When will the scales fall from Christian Trumpists' eyes on the paganism of our self-proclaiming "Christian"-pagan president?
Are you really that stupid?
the issue is not "is Trump a good Christian?" No, he isn't.
The issue is "will President Trump protect Christians from attacks by the Christian hating Left?"
And the answer to that is "Yes, he will!"
Want Christians to stop supporting Trump? That's easy.
Stop attacking Christians. but, since you Lefties are a bunch of hate filled bigots, you can't stop the attacks.
The part I can't figure out is trying to figure out how stupid you have to be, to fail to understand why Christians support him
This world makes up names. Christian. Communist. Democrat. Republican. Buddhist. .et.al.
Try to follow the Christ. It is impossible. There's a shortcut though. With God, all things are possible. Here's the bad news...you have to Let go. You have to face the abyss, and dive into it. You have to...let go.
BTW..I got a haircut today.
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