Friedman and genesis of the government shut down. (See 1 below.)
===
Republican stupidity never fails to disappoint. (See 2 below.)
===
Caving in never works. Our State Department also never learns! (See 3 below.)
===
Hanson and the medieval liberal. (See 4 below.)
===
Dick
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1The Roots of the Government Shutdown
)By George Friedman
In general, Stratfor deals with U.S. domestic politics only to the extent that it affects international affairs. Certainly, this topic has been argued and analyzed extensively. Nevertheless, the shutdown of the American government is a topic that must be understood from our point of view, because it raises the issue of whether the leading global power is involved in a political crisis so profound that it is both losing its internal cohesion and the capacity to govern. If that were so, it would mean the United States would not be able to act in global affairs, and that in turn would mean that the international system would undergo a profound change. I am not interested in the debate over who is right. I am, however, interested in the question of what caused this shutdown, and ultimately what it tells us about the U.S. capacity to act.
That is one reason to address it. A broader reason to address it is to understand why the leading global power has entered a period when rhetoric has turned into increasingly dysfunctional actions. The shutdown of the government has thus far not disrupted American life as a whole, although it has certainly disrupted the lives of some dramatically.
It originated in a political dispute. U.S. President Barack Obama proposed and Congress approved a massive set of changes in U.S. healthcare. These changes were upheld in court after legal challenges. There appears to be significant opposition to this legislation according to polls, but the legislation's opponents in Congress lack the ability to repeal it and override a presidential veto. Therefore, opponents attached amendments to legislation funding government operations, and basically said that legislation would only be passed if implementation of healthcare reform were blocked or at least delayed. Opponents of healthcare reform had enough power to block legislation on funding the government. Proponents of healthcare reform refused to abandon their commitment for reform, and therefore the legislation to fund the government failed and the government shut down.
Shutdowns and Shifts in the U.S. Political System
Similar shutdowns happened during the 1990s, and I am not prepared to say that divisions in our society have never been so deep or partisanship so powerful. I've written in the past pointing out that political vituperation has been common in the United States since its founding. Certainly nothing today compares to what was said during the Civil War, and public incivility during the Vietnam War was at least as intense.
What has changed over time is the impact of this incivility on the ability of the government to function. Consider the substantial threat that the United States might refuse to pay the debts it has incurred by consent of Congress and presidents past and present. In private life, refusal to pay debts when one can pay them is fairly serious. Though this is no less serious in public life, this outcome in the coming weeks seems conceivable. It is not partisanship, but the consequences of partisanship on the operation of the government that appear to have changed. The trend is not new, but it is intensifying. Where did it start?
From where I sit, there was a massive shift in the 1970s in how the American political system operates. Prior to then, candidate selection was based on delegates to national conventions, and the delegates to conventions were selected through a combination of state conventions and some primaries. Political bosses controlled the selection of state convention delegates, and therefore the bosses controlled the delegates to the national convention -- and that meant that these bosses controlled the national conventions.
There was ample opportunity for corruption in this system, of course. The state party bosses were interested in enhancing their own security and power, and that was achieved by patronage, but they were not particularly ideological. By backing someone likely to be elected, they would get to appoint postmasters and judges and maybe even Cabinet secretaries. They used the carrot of patronage and the stick of reprisals for those who didn't follow the bosses' line. And they certainly were interested in money in exchange for championing business interests. They were ideological to the extent to which their broad constituencies were, and were prepared to change with them. But their eyes were on the mood of the main constituencies, not smaller ones. These were not men given to principled passion, and the dissident movements of the 1960s accordingly held men like Chicago's William Daley responsible for repressing their movements.
The reformers wanted to break the hold of the party bosses over the system and open it to dissent, something party bosses disliked. The reformers did so by widely replacing state conventions with primary systems. This severely limited the power of state and county chairmen, who could no longer handpick candidates. These people no longer controlled their parties as much as presided over them.
Political parties ceased being built around patronage systems, but rather around the ability to raise money. Money, not the bosses' power, became the center of gravity of the political system, and those who could raise money became the power brokers. More important, those who were willing to donate became candidates' main constituency. The paradox of the reforms was that in breaking the power of the bosses, money became more rather than less important in the selection of candidates. Money has always been central to American politics. There has never been a time when it didn't matter. But with the decline of political bosses, factors other than money were eliminated.
Through the next decade, reformers tried to get control over money. Though they had gotten rid of the bosses, getting money out of politics proved daunting. This put power in the hands of business, which by hook or crook, Citizens United or not, was going to pursue its interests through the political system. But in general its interests were fairly narrow and were not particularly ideological. Where before business gave to party bosses, it now donated to candidates and political action committees. Of course, if this route were closed down, still another route would be found. The candidates need money, businesses need to protect their political interests. Fortunately, most businessmen's imagination stops at money, limiting the damage they can do.
An Unexpected Consequence
There was, however, an unexpected consequence. The reformers' vision was that the fall of the bosses would open the door to broad democratic participation. But the fact was that the American people did not care nearly as much about politics as the reformers thought they ought to. Participation in presidential primaries was frequently well below 50 percent, and in state and local elections, it was far lower.
For most Americans, private life is more important than public life. There is only so much time and energy available, the issues are arcane and rarely involve things that will change ordinary citizens' lives much, and there is little broad-based ideological passion. Citizens frequently don't know or care who their congressman is, let alone who their state senator is. They care about schools and roads and taxes, and so long as those are functioning reasonably well, they are content.
This greatly frustrated the reformers. They cared deeply about politics, and believed that everyone should, too. But in the country our founders bequeathed us, it was expected that most people would concern themselves with private things. And in fact they do: They do not vote in primaries or even in general elections.
The primaries were left to the minority who cared. At the beginning, these were people who felt strongly about particular issues: corporate greed, the environment, war, abortion, taxes, and so on. Over time, these particular issues congealed into ideology. An ideology differs from issue-oriented matters in that ideology is a package of issues. On the right, low taxes and hostility to abortion frequently are linked. On the left, corporate greed and war are frequently linked. Eventually, a bond is created showing that apparently disparate issues are in fact part of the same package.
Particular issues meld to form ideological factions. The ideological factions take common positions on a wide range of issues. The factions are relatively small minorities, but their power is vastly magnified by the primary system. Ideologues care because ideologies contain an apocalyptic element: If something is not done soon, the argument goes, catastrophe will ensue. The majority might well feel some unease regarding particular topics, and some may feel disaster is afoot, but they do not share the ideologue's belief that redemption can come from the political process.
This in part might be because of a sense of helplessness, and in part it might reflect a deeper sophistication about how the world really works, but either way, this type of person doesn't vote in primaries. But ideologues do. Perhaps not all do, and not everyone who votes is an ideologue, but it is ideology that generates a great deal of the energy that contributes to our political process. And it is ideology that, for example, links the deep and genuine passion over abortion to other issues.
A candidate in either party does not need the votes of the majority of registered voters. He needs the votes of the majority of voters who will show up. In the past model, voters showed up because, say, they got their job on the highway crew from the county boss, and they had to appear at the polls if they wanted to keep it. Those days are gone. Now, people show up because of their passionate belief in a particular ideology, and money is spent convincing them that a candidate shares their passionate commitment.
After raising the funds by convincing primary voters of their ideological commitment, the general election can turn into a race between two ideological packages. The winner will only be re-elected if primary voters see him as having been sufficiently loyal to their ideology while in office.
Bosses vs. Ideology
Bosses were corrupt, and in that corruption they were moderate through indifference. Contemporary politicians -- not all of them but enough of them -- live within a framework of ideology where accommodation is the epitome of lacking principle. If you believe deeply in something, then how can you compromise on it? And if everything you believe in derives from an ideology where every issue is a matter of principle, and ideology clashes with ideology, then how can anyone fold his cards? You can't go back to voters who believe that you have betrayed them and expect to be re-elected.
In the 20th century, the boss system selected such presidents as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. I was struck at how a self-evidently corrupt and undemocratic system would have selected such impressive candidates (albeit along with Warren Harding and other less impressive ones). The system should not have worked, but on the whole, it worked better than we might have imagined. I leave to others to judge how these compare to post-reform candidates like Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama.
There is a vast difference between principle and ideology. Principles are core values that do not dictate every action on every subject, but guide you in some way. Ideology as an explanation of how the world works is comprehensive and compelling. Most presidents find that governing requires principles, but won't allow ideology. But it is the senators and particularly the congressmen -- who run in districts where perhaps 20 percent of eligible voters vote in primaries, most of them ideologues -- who are forced away from principle and toward ideology.
All political systems are flawed and all political reforms have unexpected and frequently unwelcome consequences. In the end, a political system must be judged on the results that it brings. When we look at those elected under the old system, it is difficult to argue that reforms have vastly improved the leadership stock. The argument is frequently made that this is because of the pernicious effect of money or the media on the system. I would argue that the problem is that the current system magnifies the importance of the ideologues such that current political outcomes increasingly do not reflect the public will, and that this is happening at an accelerated pace.
It is not ideology that is the problem. It is the overrepresentation of ideologues in the voting booth. Most Americans are not ideologues, and therefore the reformist model has turned out to be as unrepresentative as the political boss system was. This isn't the ideologues fault; they are merely doing what they believe. But most voters are indifferent. Where the bosses used to share the public's lack of expectation of great things from politics, there is no one prepared to limit the role of ideology. There is no way to get people to vote, and the reforms that led to a universally used primary system have put elections that most people don't participate in at center stage.
Each faction is deeply committed to its beliefs, and feels it would be corrupt to abandon them. Even if it means closing the government, even if it means defaulting on debt, ideology is a demanding mistress who permits no other lovers. Anyone who reads this will recognize his enemy at work. I, however, am holding everyone responsible, from left to right -- and especially the indifferent center. I hold myself accountable as well: I have no idea what I could do to help change matters, but I am sure there is something.
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2) Republicans NEVER Cease To Disappoint
By:Howard Galganov
When the entire House voted to pay the Furloughed Federal Workers all of their back pay, once the government Shut Down comes to an end, it was OVER-THE-TOP for me.
Because of this ludicrous policy supported by Republicans . . . ALL OF THEM, the Shut Down has morphed into nothing more than a forced PAID Vacation. If I were a Federal Civil Servant, I would be praying for the Shut Down to go on forever. Why not?
When we read and hear that more than EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND furloughed federal workers are NOT ESSENTIAL, the question that comes to my mind is this:
If they’re NOT ESSENTIAL, why are they even employed by the government?
THE GREAT DEFAULT LIE:
We are hearing and reading how America will DEFAULT if the Debt Ceiling Limit is not raised. That is not only untrue and inaccurate . . . IT IS A BALD FACED LIE.
If the Debt Ceiling is raised, it only means that the government will be able to burrow MORE money that it will never be able to pay back, to grow an already bloated government and add more entitlements the country cannot afford.
If the Debt Ceiling is NOT raised, it means that the obligations will still be paid to the lenders, but the government will have to cut from its “non-existent” budget, reducing the size or closing down useless projects and government agencies. Where’s the downside in that?
THERE ARE VERY FEW GOOD GUYS IN CONGRESS ON EITHER SIDE:
It is not only disgusting and painful to see a great deal of Republicans playing the game of Democrats, as they shake their weak knees at the prospect of actually doing something right, opposed to doing something politically expedient, that I truly believe Tea Party Conservatives should consider breaking from the Republican Party if the Party crumbles . . . crumbles even a little bit on the Continuing Resolution and the Debt Ceiling.
Bankrupting America, which is what’s on the Democratic Table, is not a solution for the fiscal and social nightmare wrought upon the country by LEFTIST Democrats and big spending Republicans over decades of incompetent run-a-way governments. But that’s what they are indeed doing.
OBAMA, THE LEFT, AND RINOS ARE MAKING CANADA LOOK REAL GOOD:
As most of you know, I am a Canadian. I am not in love with Canada’s Conservative led government, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything represented by the JOKE that Congress and the White House have become.
Our Prime Minister (Stephen Harper), his cabinet, and Conservative Back-Benchers stay far away from the media, unlike the media hounds in Congress and the White House who race towards the cameras and microphones in search of celebrity.
Our Prime Minister quietly goes along his way to develop every drop of Canadian energy he can, in the quest of making Canada 100% energy self sufficient and wealthy as an energy exporter.
IT’S SLOW AND PAINFUL . . . BUT IT’S MOVING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION:
Our Conservative government, after many decades and generations of escalating government growth and costs at the hands of Liberals and small C Conservatives is finally doing what they can to reverse that by bringing the size, costs and efficiency of Public Sector Jobs in line with the Private Sector.
They’re just not doing it fast enough for my taste.
Even on the International scene, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made it clear during the last federal election, that his unequivocal support for Israel and Israel’s RIGHT to exist in peace and security WITHOUT preconditions is something he supports and will continue to support, even if it costs him his Leadership, his Parliamentary Seat, and the Party the Election.
Even with this statement of support for Israel, in a country that has been all but hostile to Israel at the UN, he won a majority government.
And on the environment too . . . our Conservatives are weighing many things into GREEN decisions, beginning with the well being of the people and Canada’s economy. And in spite of the usual GREEN criticisms and vitriol, Harper will not be deterred.
CANADA'S SHIFT IN PUBLIC HEALTHCARE:
We’ve had publicly financed healthcare for several generations (since 1984), and until recently, it has worked well enough. But, as time goes on, and more demands are placed on what has already become a severely overburdened system, where things like hip replacements can take more than a year to have done, Canada’s Single Payer System is becoming more and more TWO-TIER, where private healthcare is becoming an option for those who can afford it.
WE’RE BECOMING YOU . . . AND YOU’RE BECOMING US:
In essence, where the USA is hurtling itself towards a Socialist Society, where Canada has already been since the 1960’s, Canada is heading in the opposite direction towards where the USA is coming from. Unfortunately though, we won’t go far enough.
Don’t get me wrong . . . as I wrote in the preceding: “I am not in love with Canada’s Conservative led government . . .” because Canada is still too far to the LEFT. But, at the very least, we’re heading in the right direction.
Our politicians are still too controlling, especially at the grass roots level where pissant mayors and councilors feel empowered to pass bylaws that severely trample upon individual and property rights because our Constitution (Charter of Rights and Freedoms) is nothing more than a list of suggestions controlled by the courts.
Our provincial politicians are for the most part incompetent, who spend the people’s money as if the government won it in a lottery, severely driving up deficits and debts . . . making things in the Great White North less than great.
But, Canada is not the USA. Canada does not set the standard for the rest of the world to follow. And we do not carry international influence over everything from currency values to peace and war.
We are a really nice country with a massive landmass that is home to only Thirty Three Million People, making us a player of sorts, but not really all that significant.
As history has shown repeatedly . . . Canada can just about always be relied upon by all of our friends and allies, and will just about always do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, but we are not world leaders.
So . . . as a Canadian who always looked South for inspiration, it gives me and other Conservative Canadians enormous sadness to see what has become of the American Dream. And how the lights of that Shining City On The Hill are dimming before our very eyes.
And as an outside observer, I cannot blame the LEFT for what is happening to America, anymore than I could blame a rattlesnake for biting someone who knowingly put his or her hand in its mouth.
But . . . I do BLAME with 100% conviction, the Republicans for not only allowing all of this to happen, but for being an active part of it, for either being big spenders, big regulators, and/or political cowards.
Let me repeat this in case you missed it at the beginning.
If the Republicans cave on the Continuing Resolution and/or the Debt Ceiling in spite of the Chicken Little Rhetoric coming from the LEFT, the Media and RINO Republicans, Tea Party Conservatives should split from the RINOS and go on their own.
Not only that . . . if the Party caves – the Conservatives should run their own candidate for President, because at this point, it doesn't matter if the LEFT wins again or not, since so much damage has been done because of the RINOS, that anything less than a political/social revolution to the RIGHT will be irrelevant.
And when it all hits the fan as it will, that’s exactly what is going to happen, since a TWENTY-FIRST Century Revolution because of the cowards and appeasers of the Republican Party, will have all but made this America’s new DESTINY.
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3)On Saturday night a Palestinian terrorist snuck into the Israeli community of Psagot, north of Jerusalem and near Ramallah, and either shot or stabbed a nine-year-old girl, Noam Glick. Noam was rushed to hospital in Jerusalem and, fortunately, is in stable condition.
The terrorist, however, melted back into the Palestinian population and has not yet been apprehended, and the attack was part of a pattern.
In the Jewish year that ended on the Rosh Hashanah holiday on September 4, a single Israeli was killed in a Palestinian terror attack, though there were scores of potentially lethal rock- and firebomb-throwing incidents and kidnapping attempts, as well as some thwarted suicide bombings.
In the new year, however, two Israelis have already been killed by Palestinian terror: 20-year-old Sgt. Tomer Hazan on September 20 and 20-year-old St.-Sgt. Maj. Gal (Gabriel) Kobi on September 22.
While Hazan’s killer was quickly apprehended, the sniper whose bullet killed Kobi is yet to be found.
Meanwhile it was reported on Friday that terror attacks of all kinds rose “dramatically” in September, with a total of 133 (including, again, large numbers of rock- and firebomb-throwing incidents) compared to 68 in August.
It was last July 29 that the new round of ostensible Israeli-Palestinian peace talks was launched in Washington. It took months of heavy pressure on both sides by the new secretary of state, John Kerry, to reach that outcome.
The clincher was U.S. and Israeli acquiescence to the demand of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas that the talks be accompanied by Israel’s phased release of 104 “pre-Oslo” (pre-1993) terrorists, including convicted murderers of men, women, and children. The first batch of 26 were released on August 13.
The justification given for the talks, and for the large-scale freeing of murderers, was that the talks would “calm the Palestinian arena” and possibly lead to peace in nine months, the time span that Kerry determined for them from the outset.
If it’s clear by now that the Palestinian arena has not been calmed (let alone making peace preparations), it’s not the first time that talks have in fact prompted a spike in terror.
The original “Oslo” talks in 1993 were followed by almost three years of Palestinian terror attacks that killed hundreds of Israelis. The 2000 Camp David talks were followed by the even more lethal five-year Second Intifada, which killed about a thousand.
There are indications, too, that the current round of talks has been causative of the new terror wave.
Two weeks ago Palestinian-affairs expert Khaled Abu Toameh reported that “a connection seems to exist” between the two phenomena, with Palestinian groups—including the armed wing of Abbas’s own Fatah movement—vowing to escalate terror and stop the talks. It was already known that all the Palestinian organizations, from the Islamist Hamas to the relatively secular Fatah itself, fiercely opposed the negotiations.
Saturday night’s attack in Psagot sparked demands from right-of-center cabinet ministers and Members of Knesset that the talks be halted. Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom claimed Israel would reconsider further prisoner releases.
With Israel facing strategic threats, particularly from Iran to the east but also from the Syrian imbroglio and from Hizballah to the north, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wants to get along with Washington as well as possible and will not easily take such steps. Israel, having entered the talks, may also be in a damned-if-we-do, damned-if-we-don’t position, with 58% of Palestinians predicting a Third Intifada if the talks “fail.”
For now, though, some points should be kept in mind:
● Although cooperation between Israeli and PA security forces—against a common foe, Hamas—has been vaunted as an achievement and promising sign, there has been no indication of any cooperation whatsoever by PA security forces in locating the murderer of Gal Kobi or the attacker of Noam Glick. Palestinian society has long regarded such individuals as heroes.
● Nor has there been any condemnation of these acts by PA officials. Only once, speaking in English to a small group in New York, was Abbas pressed into making a reluctant, equivocal noncondemnation.
● As Netanyahu emphasized in Sunday’s cabinet meeting, “the Palestinian media continues to promote incitement” and “the Palestinian Authority cannot wash its hands of it.” The latest example: Fatah’s Facebook page praised the shooter of the nine-year-old girl, combining him with Gal Kobi’s killer into a single mythic figure called “the sniper of Palestine.”
● Finally, in his speech to the UN on September 24, President Obama said that:
In the near term, America’s diplomatic efforts will focus on two particular issues: Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. While these issues are not the cause of all the region’s problems, they have been a major source of instability for far too long, and resolving them can help serve as a foundation for a broader peace.
In reality, the “Arab-Israeli conflict” is now on the back burner, and Sunni Arab states mainly see Israel as a tacit ally against Iran. As for the Palestinian dimension of that conflict, it is not clear how many dead and wounded there will have to be until it is understood that, so long as the Palestinians view Israel as the incarnation of evil, prodding them toward “peace” only makes matters worse.
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3 Kerry's Peace Process Exploding
P. David Hornik
On Saturday night a Palestinian terrorist snuck into the Israeli community of Psagot, north of Jerusalem and near Ramallah, and either shot or stabbed a nine-year-old girl, Noam Glick. Noam was rushed to hospital in Jerusalem and, fortunately, is in stable condition.
The terrorist, however, melted back into the Palestinian population and has not yet been apprehended, and the attack was part of a pattern.
In the Jewish year that ended on the Rosh Hashanah holiday on September 4, a single Israeli was killed in a Palestinian terror attack, though there were scores of potentially lethal rock- and firebomb-throwing incidents and kidnapping attempts, as well as some thwarted suicide bombings.
In the new year, however, two Israelis have already been killed by Palestinian terror: 20-year-old Sgt. Tomer Hazan on September 20 and 20-year-old St.-Sgt. Maj. Gal (Gabriel) Kobi on September 22.
While Hazan’s killer was quickly apprehended, the sniper whose bullet killed Kobi is yet to be found.
Meanwhile it was reported on Friday that terror attacks of all kinds rose “dramatically” in September, with a total of 133 (including, again, large numbers of rock- and firebomb-throwing incidents) compared to 68 in August.
It was last July 29 that the new round of ostensible Israeli-Palestinian peace talks was launched in Washington. It took months of heavy pressure on both sides by the new secretary of state, John Kerry, to reach that outcome.
The clincher was U.S. and Israeli acquiescence to the demand of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas that the talks be accompanied by Israel’s phased release of 104 “pre-Oslo” (pre-1993) terrorists, including convicted murderers of men, women, and children. The first batch of 26 were released on August 13.
The justification given for the talks, and for the large-scale freeing of murderers, was that the talks would “calm the Palestinian arena” and possibly lead to peace in nine months, the time span that Kerry determined for them from the outset.
If it’s clear by now that the Palestinian arena has not been calmed (let alone making peace preparations), it’s not the first time that talks have in fact prompted a spike in terror.
The original “Oslo” talks in 1993 were followed by almost three years of Palestinian terror attacks that killed hundreds of Israelis. The 2000 Camp David talks were followed by the even more lethal five-year Second Intifada, which killed about a thousand.
There are indications, too, that the current round of talks has been causative of the new terror wave.
Two weeks ago Palestinian-affairs expert Khaled Abu Toameh reported that “a connection seems to exist” between the two phenomena, with Palestinian groups—including the armed wing of Abbas’s own Fatah movement—vowing to escalate terror and stop the talks. It was already known that all the Palestinian organizations, from the Islamist Hamas to the relatively secular Fatah itself, fiercely opposed the negotiations.
Saturday night’s attack in Psagot sparked demands from right-of-center cabinet ministers and Members of Knesset that the talks be halted. Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom claimed Israel would reconsider further prisoner releases.
With Israel facing strategic threats, particularly from Iran to the east but also from the Syrian imbroglio and from Hizballah to the north, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wants to get along with Washington as well as possible and will not easily take such steps. Israel, having entered the talks, may also be in a damned-if-we-do, damned-if-we-don’t position, with 58% of Palestinians predicting a Third Intifada if the talks “fail.”
For now, though, some points should be kept in mind:
● Although cooperation between Israeli and PA security forces—against a common foe, Hamas—has been vaunted as an achievement and promising sign, there has been no indication of any cooperation whatsoever by PA security forces in locating the murderer of Gal Kobi or the attacker of Noam Glick. Palestinian society has long regarded such individuals as heroes.
● Nor has there been any condemnation of these acts by PA officials. Only once, speaking in English to a small group in New York, was Abbas pressed into making a reluctant, equivocal noncondemnation.
● As Netanyahu emphasized in Sunday’s cabinet meeting, “the Palestinian media continues to promote incitement” and “the Palestinian Authority cannot wash its hands of it.” The latest example: Fatah’s Facebook page praised the shooter of the nine-year-old girl, combining him with Gal Kobi’s killer into a single mythic figure called “the sniper of Palestine.”
● Finally, in his speech to the UN on September 24, President Obama said that:
In the near term, America’s diplomatic efforts will focus on two particular issues: Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. While these issues are not the cause of all the region’s problems, they have been a major source of instability for far too long, and resolving them can help serve as a foundation for a broader peace.
In reality, the “Arab-Israeli conflict” is now on the back burner, and Sunni Arab states mainly see Israel as a tacit ally against Iran. As for the Palestinian dimension of that conflict, it is not clear how many dead and wounded there will have to be until it is understood that, so long as the Palestinians view Israel as the incarnation of evil, prodding them toward “peace” only makes matters worse.
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4)Medieval Liberals
Unlike classical liberals, the liberals of today hew to doctrine in the face of the evidence.
Villains of the manor can suffer nobly in apartments and part-time jobs, nourished spiritually through the faith that their state is going green, with the proliferation of new high-priced solar panels and windmills. Would the part-time administrative assistant really rather pay $150 per month to power his rental through combustion of cheap, though hot-burning, natural gas, when he could pay $400 knowing that wind and solar do not create carbon emissions? We surely can borrow $300 billion for high-speed rail, on the idea that the best way to fix those distant decrepit freeways — the dinosaurs of our parents’ age that “they” use daily — is to force millions onto rail.
Wood is to be imported for fine floors in a few tasteful and elegant vintage homes, not to be harvested in our Sierras for 2 x 6s to build thousands of new, tasteless tract homes. “Diversity” is the Chilean professor’s only child or the Chinese national’s wonder kid at the local Montessori, not something like the Madera or Porterville schools, where half the students do not speak native English. A “gorgeous mosaic” is what you see when you walk across the Stanford campus appreciating the diversity of the children of the world’s elite, not what you would find a few miles away in sometimes dangerous East Palo Alto or Redwood City among the much praised and more avoided other.
Unlike classical liberals, the liberals of today hew to doctrine in the face of the evidence.
Villains of the manor can suffer nobly in apartments and part-time jobs, nourished spiritually through the faith that their state is going green, with the proliferation of new high-priced solar panels and windmills. Would the part-time administrative assistant really rather pay $150 per month to power his rental through combustion of cheap, though hot-burning, natural gas, when he could pay $400 knowing that wind and solar do not create carbon emissions? We surely can borrow $300 billion for high-speed rail, on the idea that the best way to fix those distant decrepit freeways — the dinosaurs of our parents’ age that “they” use daily — is to force millions onto rail.
In this regard, Al Gore is the medieval liberal par excellence, whose own life is not lived in accordance with his ideology, and who is more interested in becoming wealthier than in leading a modest but principled life. Like the worst of medieval clerics, Gore is an elitist who spouts pieties to save his soul, as compensation for selling it to the highest bidder for fossil-fuel-generated dollars.
Wood is to be imported for fine floors in a few tasteful and elegant vintage homes, not to be harvested in our Sierras for 2 x 6s to build thousands of new, tasteless tract homes. “Diversity” is the Chilean professor’s only child or the Chinese national’s wonder kid at the local Montessori, not something like the Madera or Porterville schools, where half the students do not speak native English. A “gorgeous mosaic” is what you see when you walk across the Stanford campus appreciating the diversity of the children of the world’s elite, not what you would find a few miles away in sometimes dangerous East Palo Alto or Redwood City among the much praised and more avoided other.
For the medieval liberal who has created two classes out of the old three, he knows that such places as Bakersfield, Mendota, Inglewood, and Los Banos exist, but he knows few of the unfortunates who actually live there. These areas can be safely driven by on the way to the John Muir Trail. If he is a Silicon Valley magnate, he praises high taxes and regulations, and then does his best to outsource production abroad and keep his capital offshore.
The medieval liberal is certainly self-righteous and pious. Suggest to him that more timber could be harvested in our forests rather than left to burn, and he may become irate: You are a tree killer who would slash the wilderness. Politely point out that fracking and horizontal drilling might lower power and fuel costs, provide millions of new jobs, and jump-start the economy, and you are subverting all that the environmental movement has worked for. Inquire whether cutting taxes and regulation might entice job-creating firms back to California, and he sneers that you are a Rick Perry smokestack Neanderthal. Ask whether we could close the border and work with aliens already here through classical modes of integration, assimilation, and intermarriage, and he snickers that you are too white, too old, and too few, as if uttering that statement provides exemption and ensures that he is not and will never be too anything.
He is worried that banks and businesses are not sufficiently racially diverse, rarely that progressive magazines and the White House staff are mostly white and male, apparently because they are the good white and male — a sort of self-determined affirmative-action category.
The medieval liberal could not imagine himself the materialist and reactionary that he most certainly is, wedded to Detroit and Chicago nostrums of big government, high taxes, increased entitlements, tyrannical unions, racial condescension, and apartheid — and in pursuance of the metrosexual good life.
As recompense, he is not just liberal, but liberally hip and cool. The zillionaire wears jeans to his Mountain View work cockpit; at Starbucks, who can distinguish the scruffy billionaire from the unemployed? The high priest of the educational technocracy has $10,000 worth of cutting-edge hiking boots, tents, sleeping bags, and camping appurtenances. The muckraking journalist can nonetheless write a thesis on the comparative advantages of iPhones and their epigones, and in his 50s he listens to Jay-Z and Beyoncé as well as Springsteen and the Dead. Cool and privilege are the two hallmarks of the contemporary medieval liberal, sort of like the obese friar with a neat tonsure.
Cool is Barack Obama, not necessarily what Barack Obama has done. He symbolizes the medieval liberal’s view of the underclass, arising from the privileged Choom Gang at Punahou. Platitudes and ritual dominate — late-term abortion regrettable but a necessary evil; gay marriage somehow vital, while civil unions just won’t do; no IDs for voting, though they’re still needed at Bloomingdale’s; irrigation water for the noble three-inch smelt, and a bit higher food prices at Whole Foods with fewer jobs for some losers somewhere; Obamacare for most, exemptions from it for us; illegals trimming bushes outside, but their kids not beside mine in fifth-grade geometry; private profiling is proof of racism, but should we really go tonight to that hip new bistro that borders a sort of iffy transitional neighborhood?
The medieval world of two classes, lord and peasant, continued for centuries. What was hated, then and now, was the newcomer, the upstart, the man without contractual obligations, neither rich nor poor, neither dependent nor surrounded by dependents, the skeptic who Tocqueville thought would keep America from becoming what it is becoming.
The non-medieval mind always fails to perceive the romance of the poor, and fails to hanker after the tastes and culture of the lord. Translated, that means he is the uncouth ignoramus who has no clue what Sidwell Friends or the Menlo School is, no grand strategy of how to get Junior into Princeton or Stanford, no idea what a Hobie or Cannondale is, but maybe knowledge of a handgun, a jet ski, a camper, or any other of the many superfluous appurtenances that are proof that the tax rate is too low.
I think America is becoming sick and tired of being lectured by some young pompadour who made a billion dollars in Silicon Valley and therefore deems himself Socrates; by some ossified Washington Sixties-era careerist who believes the laws that he passes simply cannot apply to himself and his kind; and by some crusading hip talking-head whose self-absorbed material aspirations and values make the 1950s suburbanite seem bohemian in comparison.
We need a cultural Reformation, a Renaissance in classical thinking, a return to true diversity and real intellectual tolerance that rejects the medieval reactionary’s mind, exposes his hypocrisy, and recreates three classes from his two.
A classical liberal was characteristically guided by disinterested logic and reason. He was open to gradual changes in society that were frowned upon by traditionalists in lockstep adherence to custom and protocol. The eight-hour work day, civil rights, and food- and drug-safety laws all grew out of classically liberal views. Government could press for moderate changes in the way society worked, within a conservative framework of revering the past, in order to pave the way for equality of opportunity in a safe and sane environment.
Among elite liberals today, all too few are of this classical mold — guided by reason and empirical observation. By far the majority are medieval and reactionary. By medieval I mean that they adhere to accepted doctrine — in this case, the progressive doctrine of always finding solutions in larger government and more taxes — despite all the evidence to the contrary. The irony is that they project just such ideological blinkers onto their conservative opponents.
Reactionary is a good adjective as well, since notions of wealth and poverty are frozen in amber around 1965, as if the technological revolution never took place and the federal welfare state hadn’t been erected — as if today’s poor were the emaciated Joads, rather than struggling with inordinate rates of obesity and diabetes, in air-conditioned apartments replete with big-screen TVs, and owning cell phones with more computing power than was available to the wealthy as recently as the 1980s. Flash-mobbing sneaker stores is more common than storming Costcos for bags of rice and flour.
In the medieval-liberal worldview, gun control stops violence like that in Chicago or Detroit. Solar panels are the energy way of the immediate future; fracking is not. Voting fraud is almost nonexistent and mostly a right-wing conspiracy trope. High-speed rail is an efficient and economical means of transportation. The problem with public assistance is that there is too little of it, not too much. Affirmative action ensures fairness. Climate change is proven; further debate is counterproductive, and disturbing data to the contrary are little more than propaganda of the ignorant.
Like a medieval bishop, the new medievalists also seek to avoid the ramifications of their own ideologies. Like residents of a walled medieval city or religious order, they prefer enclaves and cloisters filled with others of their kind.
In California, the medieval liberal thinks it is terrible that the state’s public schools test near rock bottom in science and math. Cannot such testing be postponed? Are multiple-choice tests sufficiently sensitive to the contours of class, race, and gender? He senses that teachers’ unions and politicized mandates from the state may have something to do with the decline. Perhaps privately he is fearful that the vast migration of illegal aliens from Latin America, coupled with the inability of many African-Americans to achieve social parity, might be a contributing factor to the implosion in public schools, as well as the degeneration of the nuclear family across class and racial lines. Yet, in his projection, he accuses others of such blasphemous thoughts, even while he is usually guided by them in decisions he makes for his own progeny. For now, ensuring that the transgendered can use either public-school restroom is about all that he can offer to raise test scores and create a safe high-school campus.
The medieval-minded progressive clings to all sorts of calcified bromides for educational chaos — higher taxes, more mandates and regulation, more entitlements, and always more money. Charter schools, deunionization, a back-to-basics curriculum, or restored standards of discipline and behavior just rub the medieval liberal the wrong way.
He is more interested in spreading doctrine and saving souls than in the concrete welfare of his flock. The result is that medieval liberals talk grandly while adroitly navigating their own children’s way through the school system, preferably through a top charter or public school in a good coastal enclave, or, if need be, through a high-priced prep school. Unlike the East Coast, in California the elite were once almost universally publicly educated. The introduction of our versions of Andover and St. Paul’s into the coastal strip is a relatively new phenomenon brought to us by medieval liberals. In our best new private schools, diversity is praised as much as the methods of avoiding its consequences are institutionalized — or it is de facto defined as elite gays, women, and affluent Asians, rather than the products of the inner city and the barrio.
The medieval liberal of California either makes good money or inherited it — enough of it, at least, that he is not particularly worried that he pays the highest gas, income, and sales taxes in the nation and gets in return the country’s near-worst schools and infrastructure, with high poverty levels to boot. That others cannot afford what he takes for granted is regrettable, but can be offset, at least psychologically, by the medieval idea of penance or exemption. For the administrative assistant who lives in a one-bedroom apartment in San Jose, the Atherton tech lord offers something far better than an economic plan that would lead to better jobs, lower taxes, cheaper homes and energy, good schools, and affordable fuel.
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In the medieval-liberal worldview, gun control stops violence like that in Chicago or Detroit. Solar panels are the energy way of the immediate future; fracking is not. Voting fraud is almost nonexistent and mostly a right-wing conspiracy trope. High-speed rail is an efficient and economical means of transportation. The problem with public assistance is that there is too little of it, not too much. Affirmative action ensures fairness. Climate change is proven; further debate is counterproductive, and disturbing data to the contrary are little more than propaganda of the ignorant.
Like a medieval bishop, the new medievalists also seek to avoid the ramifications of their own ideologies. Like residents of a walled medieval city or religious order, they prefer enclaves and cloisters filled with others of their kind.
In California, the medieval liberal thinks it is terrible that the state’s public schools test near rock bottom in science and math. Cannot such testing be postponed? Are multiple-choice tests sufficiently sensitive to the contours of class, race, and gender? He senses that teachers’ unions and politicized mandates from the state may have something to do with the decline. Perhaps privately he is fearful that the vast migration of illegal aliens from Latin America, coupled with the inability of many African-Americans to achieve social parity, might be a contributing factor to the implosion in public schools, as well as the degeneration of the nuclear family across class and racial lines. Yet, in his projection, he accuses others of such blasphemous thoughts, even while he is usually guided by them in decisions he makes for his own progeny. For now, ensuring that the transgendered can use either public-school restroom is about all that he can offer to raise test scores and create a safe high-school campus.
The medieval-minded progressive clings to all sorts of calcified bromides for educational chaos — higher taxes, more mandates and regulation, more entitlements, and always more money. Charter schools, deunionization, a back-to-basics curriculum, or restored standards of discipline and behavior just rub the medieval liberal the wrong way.
He is more interested in spreading doctrine and saving souls than in the concrete welfare of his flock. The result is that medieval liberals talk grandly while adroitly navigating their own children’s way through the school system, preferably through a top charter or public school in a good coastal enclave, or, if need be, through a high-priced prep school. Unlike the East Coast, in California the elite were once almost universally publicly educated. The introduction of our versions of Andover and St. Paul’s into the coastal strip is a relatively new phenomenon brought to us by medieval liberals. In our best new private schools, diversity is praised as much as the methods of avoiding its consequences are institutionalized — or it is de facto defined as elite gays, women, and affluent Asians, rather than the products of the inner city and the barrio.
The medieval liberal of California either makes good money or inherited it — enough of it, at least, that he is not particularly worried that he pays the highest gas, income, and sales taxes in the nation and gets in return the country’s near-worst schools and infrastructure, with high poverty levels to boot. That others cannot afford what he takes for granted is regrettable, but can be offset, at least psychologically, by the medieval idea of penance or exemption. For the administrative assistant who lives in a one-bedroom apartment in San Jose, the Atherton tech lord offers something far better than an economic plan that would lead to better jobs, lower taxes, cheaper homes and energy, good schools, and affordable fuel.
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