Libertarians and those on the left today enjoy a happy camaraderie. We find ourselves in coalition in a long twilight struggle against right wing authoritarianism. We are usually in agreement on most of the big issues from torture, to hefty farm subsidies to big business, to useless pork, to obvious corruption, to a startlingly hawkish foreign policy, and, most importantly, to government sponsored intolerance. This makes it very tempting for leftists (note: I don't use the term “liberal” because it is a term that, depending on the context, can include both left wing politics and libertarianism) to acquiesce with libertarians, to simply nod and smile when they talk dreamily of an America with greater freedom, and to imagine that their concept of freedom is much the same as yours. After all, attacking libertarians in our troubled time feels a bit like Legolas criticizing Gondor for its lack of respect for nature just as Sauron is poised to crush Middle-Earth.
Then again, this attitude has made libertarianism one of the least attacked ideologies currently around in American politics. Leftists have the aforementioned attitude and also find it harder to attack than conservatism with all its bizarre excesses; meanwhile, conservatives usually decline to attack libertarians specifically, since they have a soft spot for their tax policies. In addition, Libertarians have not been in power for at least a hundred years (depending on your interpretation, maybe not since Thomas Jefferson...maybe never) so they've never have power worth attacking, and have never recently had to defend their ideas converted to actual policy, which is where most ideologies fail. Libertarians always have the luxury of accusing those in power of not being libertarian enough, and of corrupting their good ideas with shoddy execution.
Obviously I recognize that libertarianism is a respectable ideology in which an intelligent person could honestly believe, and I do know some passionate libertarians. However, I feel that a lot of young college students and recent college graduates are libertarians because of the things expressed in the preceding paragraph. That is, they can always be on offense and rarely have the bright light of criticism focused on them. They are socially liberal enough to not get their liberal activist friends furious at them, while also having economic views conservative enough to not get chortles from economics professors, lawyers, and the businessmen that interview them for jobs. When you're a libertarian you can be sophisticated, popular, give endless shit, and take absolutely none. It's a pretty tantalizing political viewpoint.
To me, this means that leftists need to focus their energy more on refuting libertarianism and less on making snide jokes about the Bush administration. True, our biggest quarrel is still with conservatives, but I think our future quarrel will be with libertarians. The future of the right isn't in the Southern-fried conservatism of George Bush, but with the selfish yet tolerant ideology of libertarianism. If the fad goes unchecked, it could well be more than a fad; it could become the accepted conventional wisdom of our generation
Friday, December 22, 2006
Thursday, December 07, 2006
The Iraq Study Group Report
Christ! When are we getting out of Iraq? How many people have to die before we realize that our objectives can't be achieved by keeping more Americans around and getting them slaughtered?
I just don't understand what everyone is thinking. The Iraq Study Group talks about how we need to help the Iraqi government and train the Iraqi army, but neither even exists in any meaningful sense. Oh sure, there is a group which we call the government of Iraq and a guy the President can meet with called the Prime Minister of Iraq, and even a bunch of troops we can train called the Iraqi army. But, is a government really a government if it can't enforce some rule of law over any significant part of the country it represents? Is the Iraqi Army really a national army, a unifying force, if different troops in that army have different loyalties? Is a nation really a nation if people don't even identify with it?
I just can't help but feel the report is something for politicians to say they tried before, inevitably, we have to pull out of Iraq. Because I just don't see how engaging with an ineffective government to train a divided army to keep together a country whose residents think of themselves as members of an ethnic group rather than citizens of said country makes any sense at all. I especially don't see why it's worth another 1000 or 2000 lives, which is approximately the difference in casualties between starting to get out now and staying another year like the ISG wants to do.
P.S. My blog is now on Facebook...so hello Facebook readers!
I just don't understand what everyone is thinking. The Iraq Study Group talks about how we need to help the Iraqi government and train the Iraqi army, but neither even exists in any meaningful sense. Oh sure, there is a group which we call the government of Iraq and a guy the President can meet with called the Prime Minister of Iraq, and even a bunch of troops we can train called the Iraqi army. But, is a government really a government if it can't enforce some rule of law over any significant part of the country it represents? Is the Iraqi Army really a national army, a unifying force, if different troops in that army have different loyalties? Is a nation really a nation if people don't even identify with it?
I just can't help but feel the report is something for politicians to say they tried before, inevitably, we have to pull out of Iraq. Because I just don't see how engaging with an ineffective government to train a divided army to keep together a country whose residents think of themselves as members of an ethnic group rather than citizens of said country makes any sense at all. I especially don't see why it's worth another 1000 or 2000 lives, which is approximately the difference in casualties between starting to get out now and staying another year like the ISG wants to do.
P.S. My blog is now on Facebook...so hello Facebook readers!
Monday, August 28, 2006
Fox News and other items
It sometimes seems that my dislike of Fox News has prompted me to see flaws in it that don't exist. Whenever I watch it , I usually can pick out some underlying message that supports some conservative agenda. I wonder if this is actually the case or if I am just imagining things. Last night, for example, Fox ran a groundbreaking story on the subject "college is expensive." Now, I do forgive Fox for being unoriginal, because I'm sure just about every news network has run something similar, especially in the slow months of summer. But in the story, I thought I saw the faintest whisper of something I despise.
Let me set the scene:
Fox is following a family whose daughter has been accepted to several mid level schools like the University of Massachusetts and SUNY Binghampton (sp?). The daughter was a straight A student who was involved in several clubs at her high school. The parents though were afraid of how much it would cost to send their daughter to college, despite the fact that they had a combined income of $132,000 a year. The Father even suggested her going to community college at one point, but the Mother objected saying that her daughter would never go to a community college when she got straight A's. A Fox voiceover then chimes in "but many experts say (the Mother's name) is wrong about community college."
In my mind there are so many problems with this:
Problem #1: Really this family is being a little pathetic...they make a combined income of $132K a year, their daughter went to PUBLIC schools, and now they are bitching about a University that will cost them a relatively inexpensive $17K a year (SUNY Binghamton). Somewhere their priorities aren't straight. Even if the parents wanted to pay the bill on thier own, up front, they would still have over 50,000 in after tax disposable income (probably more since they get tax breaks for mortgage and having a dependent and everything else), AND they wouldnt' have to support their daughter at home. But, there are even easier financing options with loans (student and otherwise) where they would easily be able to cover this sum. There are millions of people who have to get by on much tighter budgets. Suck it up and don't buy the flat screen TV until 2010.
Problem #2: This kind of goes along with #1, but how is the problem with the system with the people who can't pay all of their tuition bills in four years? This story pushes this myth that the problem of higher education is one of woe-begotten upper middle class people who might have to take out a home equity loan to invest in their children's education. This is not that big of a deal, and they can even have their child go into a little debt if needed. The real problem with our higher education system is with people who can't get access to the credit or the money to go to college, not the people for whom it's a sacrifice.
Problem #3: Fox also seems to push the mistaken notion that community college and universities are basically the same thing, except one has less liberal indoctrination. This is just false. The benefit of a good University is that your mind can expand in ways in never could if you stayed near your hometown and went to school with local kids.
This is my biggest problem with the report, and I think Fox presented it in this way because they don't believe the university experience is a valuable one. To SOME parts of the conservative movement, a university is a dangerous place because a good one will teach the young mind that the world is a complicated place filled with people, and not stereotypes. A large part of the sucess of the conservative political movement in recent years has been the creation of stereotypes, and the simplification of the world. It makes sense to not want the government to help the poor when they are a lazy, stupid mass of people. It seems obvious that you should act with the utmost ferocity and unrestrained violence against those in the Middle East who hate you if you don't think of them as people, but rather as mindless zombies obeying their corrupt leaders.
But when you see both Muslims who hate America and the poor not as stereotypes, but as people who are in a certain position and who believe a certain thing for a reason, misguided or not, you realize that the world is a more complicated place which may require more complicated solutions than the anti-intellectual brand of conservatism would support. A good university will give you that experience by exposing you to people in situations in which you would never find yourself, and by exposing you to professors who are professionally obligated to speak responsibly about people as people and not as caricatures.
Let me set the scene:
Fox is following a family whose daughter has been accepted to several mid level schools like the University of Massachusetts and SUNY Binghampton (sp?). The daughter was a straight A student who was involved in several clubs at her high school. The parents though were afraid of how much it would cost to send their daughter to college, despite the fact that they had a combined income of $132,000 a year. The Father even suggested her going to community college at one point, but the Mother objected saying that her daughter would never go to a community college when she got straight A's. A Fox voiceover then chimes in "but many experts say (the Mother's name) is wrong about community college."
In my mind there are so many problems with this:
Problem #1: Really this family is being a little pathetic...they make a combined income of $132K a year, their daughter went to PUBLIC schools, and now they are bitching about a University that will cost them a relatively inexpensive $17K a year (SUNY Binghamton). Somewhere their priorities aren't straight. Even if the parents wanted to pay the bill on thier own, up front, they would still have over 50,000 in after tax disposable income (probably more since they get tax breaks for mortgage and having a dependent and everything else), AND they wouldnt' have to support their daughter at home. But, there are even easier financing options with loans (student and otherwise) where they would easily be able to cover this sum. There are millions of people who have to get by on much tighter budgets. Suck it up and don't buy the flat screen TV until 2010.
Problem #2: This kind of goes along with #1, but how is the problem with the system with the people who can't pay all of their tuition bills in four years? This story pushes this myth that the problem of higher education is one of woe-begotten upper middle class people who might have to take out a home equity loan to invest in their children's education. This is not that big of a deal, and they can even have their child go into a little debt if needed. The real problem with our higher education system is with people who can't get access to the credit or the money to go to college, not the people for whom it's a sacrifice.
Problem #3: Fox also seems to push the mistaken notion that community college and universities are basically the same thing, except one has less liberal indoctrination. This is just false. The benefit of a good University is that your mind can expand in ways in never could if you stayed near your hometown and went to school with local kids.
This is my biggest problem with the report, and I think Fox presented it in this way because they don't believe the university experience is a valuable one. To SOME parts of the conservative movement, a university is a dangerous place because a good one will teach the young mind that the world is a complicated place filled with people, and not stereotypes. A large part of the sucess of the conservative political movement in recent years has been the creation of stereotypes, and the simplification of the world. It makes sense to not want the government to help the poor when they are a lazy, stupid mass of people. It seems obvious that you should act with the utmost ferocity and unrestrained violence against those in the Middle East who hate you if you don't think of them as people, but rather as mindless zombies obeying their corrupt leaders.
But when you see both Muslims who hate America and the poor not as stereotypes, but as people who are in a certain position and who believe a certain thing for a reason, misguided or not, you realize that the world is a more complicated place which may require more complicated solutions than the anti-intellectual brand of conservatism would support. A good university will give you that experience by exposing you to people in situations in which you would never find yourself, and by exposing you to professors who are professionally obligated to speak responsibly about people as people and not as caricatures.
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