We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
I doubt I can say anything new or add to what we already know or believe about Kavanaugh v. Blasey-Ford. But what has happened is concerning on so many levels. As a man, you worry about being viewed as 'tone-deaf' to women's needs or being hurtful of victims. As a woman, you will be questioned if you're not lined up behind the accuser simply because 'you know' what it's like. As a citizen, you worry about the clown show in Washington and the damage it is causing to the standards we have.
Living in the NYC region, I see and hear things the rest of the country has to hear (media center) but doesn't really want to. I get it in double-barreled doses, though. NYC really is a bubble of tremendous proportions. A friend of mine, today, told me he doesn't think Kavanaugh is fit for the Supreme Court, but not because of yesterday. He felt the Fox interview was weak and showed someone without great knowledge or understanding. Then he added, "His emotional outburst yesterday showed me someone who can't control his temperament." Basically, yes, it was about yesterday. Kavanaugh's background puts his other concerns to rest, but this is Progressive Central - the People's Republic of New York is taking shape.
Let's address the outburst. Kavanaugh's reaction was understandable. If I was held accountable for all the stupid things I did when I was 15, I think I'd probably go nuts. If I was being held accountable for something I know didn't happen, I'd be angry and ready to take on the world. Damn right I'd be pissed. The media is judging him poorly because of his emotions. His identity is now being carefully packaged as a person unable to control his anger. I think having to discuss my 15 year old farting would, on its own, piss me off.
My friend said "this appointment is bigger than yesterday." Yes it was. Now it's not. Now it is about yesterday. The Democrats chose a battlefield, spent two weeks preparing that field with full media support, failing to expect what happened. They expected the Republicans to cut and run. For once, the Republicans fought back. From my perspective, and I was never a huge Kavanaugh fan, I shifted my views. I thought he was barely an OK choice originally. Good background, solid credentials, but weak in areas that matter to me. The Democratic strategy made me realize he was an excellent choice. It wasn't about yesterday until it was. It certainly changed my view on his desirability, and I was sold. His identity is one of candid and thoughtful forebearance. Anger plays a role at the right time. But Kavanaugh never attacked his accuser. He showed sympathy and concern. He lashed out at the politics of identity utilized to smear him.
Well-meaning white progressives... treat black Americans more like the family pet than the family friend, condescending to praise us when we align with their views, and ferally attacking when we don’t. The conversation about race in America has been framed by progressive media and co-opted by the Democratic party to supplement the coalition that supported Obama during his presidency—presumably in the hope that blacks would gratefully support Hillary in her run for office. But Democrats have come to take the black voting bloc for granted—even though 44 percent of black voters consider themselves moderate and another 27 percent consider themselves conservative, black Americans still overwhelmingly vote Democrat (90 percent).
They still got a few shots in, because they do have their sheep to tend to. But at least on the main point, they admit he not only is doing what Obama tried to do, but also signed an agreement critical of Russia. Because that's what Russian agents do.
It's the one thing all Americans have in common, other than summer vacations. If it's too malleable, it's nothing, and then America is nothing. The Constitution embodies the radical idea (with a few compromises to get it accepted - all since corrected).
Krauthammer:
“America is the only country ever founded on an idea. The only country that is not founded on race or even common history. It's founded on an idea and the idea is liberty. That is probably the rarest phenomena in the political history of the world; this has never happened before. And not only has it happened, but it's worked. We are the most flourishing, the most powerful, most influential country on Earth with this system, invented by the greatest political geniuses probably in human history.”
I think one major impetus for my change was the fact that, despite being in default liberal environments all of my life, I nevertheless always adored the works of the Western literary tradition. And when I saw the 1980s’ multiculturalism taking over university campuses, and ignorant students who had never read the works of the Western canon feeling empowered to reject those works on the basis of the gonads and melanin of their authors, that to me was appalling.
Ironically, people I don’t think understand this distinction, in the 1970s, which was the height of this very abstruse literary theory known as deconstruction, that you mentioned, and that I was an uncritical acolyte of. However odd the theories of language were, holding that meaning is impossible, that the human self is just a fiction, a trope of language, we read the canon without ever once thinking to say, if I’m a female, “Oh, gee, I can’t read Milton because he’s a dead white male.” It never came up. So, I fortunately had a strong grounding in greatness, in beauty, in eloquence, in sublimity. And when that came under attack, that started to turn me away from the broader trends that were going on in academia.
Whenever I read on this topic, I am reminded about how radical and idealistic it all was. Equal rights, the sanctity of property rights, weak government subservient to the citizens, and attempting to take into account all we know about the flaws in human nature while counting on virtue, religion, and self-reliance to keep the nation on a wholesome track.
With all of their opportunities to seek power, those guys tried to set up a system with as limited and contained power as possible. Quite a remarkable, bold, and humble experiment into the unknown and untried.
Even as government power and authority have grown like Topsy over two centuries, the US remains the desired destination for millions on this planet, for better or worse. Sad to say, I think that is more about economics than the ideal of individual freedom. That ideal is not native or natural to most societies and cultures.
(Writing about Rousseau)In the Confessions, he claimed to be “drunk on virtue.” And indeed, it turned out that “virtue” for Rousseau had nothing to do with acting or behaving in a certain way toward others. On the contrary, the criterion of virtue was his subjective feeling of goodness. For Rousseau, as for the countercultural radicals who followed him, “feeling good about yourself” was synonymous with moral rectitude. Actually behaving well was irrelevant if not, indeed, a sign of “inauthenticity” because it suggested a concern for conventional approval. Virtue in this Rousseauvian sense is scarcely distinguishable from moral intoxication. Anyone who has contemplated the suppression of free speech in the name of sensitivity and identity politics on our college campuses will understand what I mean.
Establishing the reign of virtue is no easy task, as Rousseau’s avid disciple Maximilien Robespierre discovered to his chagrin. All those “particular wills” -- i.e., individual men and women with their diverse aims and desires -- are so recalcitrant and so ungrateful for one’s efforts to make them virtuous. Still, one does what one can to convince them to conform. And the guillotine, of course, is a great expedient. ..
Prof. Peterson's talk begins at the 18-minute mark. "'What I feel like doing' is a superficial guide for life activity."
Ain't that the truth? This is one of his better speeches. "Don't be a blight on the world - be useful." Also, "You're damned utopia always turns into hell."
Was Kelo decided rightly or wrongly? The Supremes decided the case against Mrs.Kelo and her little pink house 5-4. Naturally, the little people of the USA were horrified by the decision which indicated that a local government could take your property for the use of a private business.
At Powerline re economic inequality, "... the 400 richest Americans control more wealth than the poorest 80 million households, and “the richest citizens continue to capture the lion’s share of new wealth."
It is an absurd discussion, because the only way wealth can be "captured" is by theft, fraud, or taxation. The zero-sum fallacy is there, as usual. Still, the best solution to extreme statistical inequality suggested there would be to confiscate the assets of the top 400, or 1000, or 10,000, or 100,000, and to ship those people to New Zealand or Tasmania just in case they might be tempted to try to get rich again in the US.
When rid of the richest, you can begin to go after the kulaks. After a while, there is nobody left to tax and economic equality ensues (except for our Leaders, of course - some pigs are more equal than others). It's great. No, it's awesome.
Conservative fiscal policy, coupled with the missteps of rival states, helped bolster the Connecticut economy throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. New York State’s top income-tax rate surged into the double-digits around 1960, and an extra city-level tax was imposed in 1966. New York’s combined top state and city gross income-tax rate reached a peak of 19.7 percent in 1976. By contrast, Connecticut’s gross income-tax rate was zero, and would remain so until the early 1990s. During New York’s fiscal crisis, debates about the city’s future often invoked fears of residents and businesses fleeing to Connecticut, where taxes were lower and services widely considered superior.
This lovely Yankee state, "The Land of Steady Habits," is broke. It is still a wealthy state, thanks to Fairfield County's proximity to NYC, but the rest of the state is on a downhill slope. The prosperous cities are a distant memory. The government is now mainly ruled by the unions which drove manufacturing away. Currently, the tax structure is driving wealthy residents away. Six months + one day gets you Florida residency, so you can summer in CT with your friends.
Your moral and intellectual superiors and experts feel fit to run your life. We regular people know that they put their pants on one leg at a time just like us, and that we probably have more real life experience and practical sense than they do.
In the 19th century Alexis de Tocqueville described the phenomenon of bureaucracy almost before it had revealed itself. He called it centralized administration, which he considered the new form of despotism that democracies must fear if they are to remain free. This democratic disease had not yet infected the Jacksonian America he examined; in fact, he praised America for its burgeoning civil and political associations, and for the absence of centralized administrative rule. The Constitution and a federal system had allowed for a decentralized political and administrative system of government, which inhibited the rise of the administrative state. Nonetheless, Tocqueville in Democracy in America warned against abandoning those traditional political and social institutions that had prevented its growth...
I have never been convinced that Freedom is a common or powerful human aspiration. A noble one, probably, but there are many things most people care about more. Freedom is scary. There are reasons people will cling to external and internal tyrannies.
A minority of Americans were in favor of the War of Independence.
One more shooting. One more chance for the Progressives to screech and whine about gun control. I'm really tired of this cycle. Progressives complain about the cycle, too, because they want action, and they want it now. In 3 weeks they'll be bored again, or outraged about something new such as the fact that Trump doesn't have a dog and doesn't seem to care for them. Progressive try to make it seem like those of us who actually support freedom and the Constitution are uncaring, because we don't do something other than the one thing they deride - "Thoughts and Prayers". I've noticed some are taking a new tack. Not necessarily better. Like every other event, they trot out the same emotions, same flawed statistics, bizarre comparisons to nations without cultures remotely similar to ours, and then one or two tricks. Progressives are not old dogs. They are young dogs and haven't learned that new tricks aren't necessarily smarter or better.
I wrote about mass shootings, and school shootings in particular, slightly over 5 years ago. Have my views changed since then, and the presumed thousands of mass shootings that Progressives point out? No. Not in the least. Does the fact this involved children change my views? Nope. Am I cold and heartless? No. I'm just rational. Gun control won't stop this. People who want to kill will kill and they will use whatever method they can. The Progressive argument is "with guns, you can kill MORE" and that's just not proven to be true. It's an assumption based on incomplete data sets. What is the real issue that needs to be discussed after a shooting and the outrage is building?
Why is it called "science"? To make it sound more serious? The distribution of power is serious enough.