From the AP:
Brushing off a snag in the Senate, House Democratic leaders said they are prepared to finish work by late Thursday on a package of fixes to the big health care law signed by President Barack Obama.
[…]
“The Senate is expected to complete work this afternoon on the improvements bill to the new health care reform law,” said Hoyer, D-Md. “If they finish their work later today as planned, the House will take up the improvements bill with technical corrections this evening.”
After nine straight hours of beating back Republican amendments, Senate Democrats hit a temporary snag in the nighttime hours early Thursday. They had hoped to complete work on the fix-it bill by midday Thursday and get it quickly to Obama without changes to avoid prolonging what has been a politically painful ordeal for the party.
But Republicans learned early Thursday they will be able to kill some language in the bill that relates to Pell grants for low-income college students. That means the altered bill will have to be returned to the House for final congressional approval before it can be sent to Obama.
Democrats described the situation as a minor glitch, but did not rule out that Republicans might be able to remove additional sections of the bill.
[…]
The two provisions are expected to be formally removed from the bill on Thursday. [Reid spokesman Jim] Manley said he expected the Senate to approve the measure without them and send it to the House. He said Senate leaders, after conversations with top House Democrats, expect the House to approve the revised measure.
[…]
As they began pushing the bill to passage on Wednesday afternoon, Democrats ran into a mountain of GOP amendments. Outnumbered and all but assured of defeat, Republicans forced votes on amendments aimed at reshaping the measure – or at least forcing Democrats to take votes that could be used against them in TV ads in the fall campaigns.
“There’s no attempt to improve the bill. There’s an attempt to destroy this bill,” said an exasperated Reid, D-Nev.
“The majority leader may not think we’re serious about changing the bill, but we’d like to change the bill, and with a little help from our friends on the other side we could improve the bill significantly,” answered Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
[my emphasis]
I don’t expect that this is more than a minor inconvenience to Congressional Democrats, who will likely congratulate themselves for withstanding a GOP onslaught. Conversely, I worry that this is perhaps the extent of the GOP’s counter attack — with Congressional Republicans more interested in re-shaping the legislation than repealing it:
In the wake of the passage of health care reform, nearly the entire slate of Republican senatorial candidates seems ready to run on a repeal of the bill. But now, the lawmaker overseeing their election strategy is softening the message. Rather than promising to scrap the bill in its entirety, the GOP will pledge to just get rid of the more controversial parts.
In a brief chat with the Huffington Post on Tuesday, National Republican Senatorial Committee chair John Cornyn (R-Tex.) implicitly acknowledged that Republicans are content with allowing some elements of Obama’s reform into law. And they’d generally ignore those elements when taking the fight to their Democrat opponents as November approaches.
“There is non-controversial stuff here like the preexisting conditions exclusion and those sorts of things,” the Texas Republican said. “Now we are not interested in repealing that. And that is frankly a distraction.”
What the GOP will work to repeal, Cornyn explained, are provisions that result in “tax increases on middle class families,” language that forced “an increase in the premium costs for people who have insurance now” and the “cuts to Medicare” included in the legislation.
The remarks seemingly put Cornyn at odds with the head of all Senate Republicans, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), who signaled on Tuesday that he would support a legislative effort by fellow Republican lawmakers to fully repeal the health care bill. Cornyn himself had previously suggested that he’d support a full repeal campaign as well.
The senator’s comments on Tuesday also included a push to restore funds for Medicare Advantage — an odd political moment, considering the GOP’s self-promotion as the party that trims the fat off entitlement programs.
Notes Allah:
Does Cornyn … not understand that the preexisting conditions exemption will also drive up premiums? If insurers can’t refuse to cover high-risk clients, that risk will need to be spread. And guess who it’ll be spread to.
[…]
To some extent we’re arguing semantics here — “partial repeal plus some new provisions” is equivalent to total repeal plus a substitute Republican law that replicates a few aspects of O-Care — but it’s half-assed to identify individual provisions that’ll be kept in place not because they’re cost-effective or because they’re essential to a grand GOP plan but because they’re “non-controversial.” That’s dangerously close to saying they’ll be retained because they’re popular, which […] is precisely how California ended up in the mess it’s in. The time has come for hard choices. Are they up to it?
If recent history is any indication, the answer is no.
As Mark Steyn noted a few days back — and as I’ve been arguing for some time:
[…] the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture.
It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible.
In most of the rest of the Western world, there are still nominally “conservative” parties, and they even win elections occasionally, but not to any great effect. (Let’s not forget that Jacques Chirac was, in French terms, a “conservative.”) The result is a kind of two-party one-party state:
Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.
Republicans seem to have difficulty grasping this basic dynamic.
The GOP continues to believe, in center-right country, that they must appeal to moderates first — with their conservative / classical liberal base a kind of taken-for-granted afterthought.
But even were it the case that electoral victories were dependent upon making promises to “independents” and GOP moderates, the way to appeal to such voters, I’ve argued, is not through promises of entitlements, but rather by the confident reiteration of foundational principles: smaller government, legal conservatism, individual freedom, free enterprise, and a pride in American exceptionalism.
Doing so would be more than a mere rhetorical strategy; it would let voters know that what “conservatism” offers is a real and palpable alternative to the encroachment of an ever-more rapacious nannystate.
It is a time for tough choices. And the GOP had better take seriously the anger of the bitter clingers, lest the party find itself thrown over for a more compelling future alternative.
(h/t Lazarus Long, Lucianne, JHo)
This boat has already left the dock, will the last one out please turn off the lights.
They’re not paying attention.
s not through promises of entitlements, but rather by the confident reiteration of foundational principles: smaller government, legal conservatism, individual freedom, free enterprise, and a pride in American exceptionalism.
That’s why the strategy of the left (and moderates) has been to discourage us with the mantra that such will NEVER, could NEVER happen.
Of course, the strategy TODAY is to distract with the “Teabaggers are scary” mantra. We’re leaving angry VOICEMAILS. How dare we?
I don’t know. It bould be that the best way to fix the mess is to replace Health Care Reform A with Health Care Reform B, with the understanding that the latter actually hacks its way through the hedge of regulation, and does things that make costs actually go down.
Because if that happens, not only will the people be materially be better off, an object lesson will have been demonstrated to the people: that free-market reforms actually can work.
It doesn’t have the satisfaction of a New Constitutional Convention, and I’m not ruling the latter out. But expecting an instantaneous fix to a decades-old problem may not be realistic.
So the cudgel to beat back the ever encroaching nanny state is to remove pell grant funding?, an apparatus that gives no payback loans to poor students with excellent marks?
Smart effective solutions. Every time.
Patriots really.
Calling what they are doing “fixes” is a bald-faced lie. Congresscritters never actually fix anything. They make shit worse, every time they put their greedy little dirty hands on something.
Yes he has, and yet no GOP lawmaker pays any attention. Whenever Steyn fills in for Rush, it is usually the first topic of discussion. Don’t tell me they don’t listen to the show, or at least have staffers do so, if only for political self-preservation. Why instead, do they bend over backwards to accommodate the Democrats, rather than the people who elected them, when the Democrats would gleefully destroy them at the first opportunity?
Sigh…
It is a time for tough choices. And the GOP had better take seriously the anger of the bitter clingers, lest the party find itself thrown over for a more compelling future alternative.
In my heart of hearts, I know that we will prevail. Most people still want to be free. The worst of the freeloaders may never come around, but there are some who have enough self-respect and ambition that we can win them over, and others with conscience enough to realize that what we’re doing to our kids and grandkids is just wrong.
I don’t give a shit what name the new party has. All that matters is that we reclaim the ground we’ve lost over the past 80 years.
Rassmussen has a poll out showing 26% expecting a good result from the bill, 43% bad, 25% no impact. So 51% expect this will be good or not effect them.
We are fucked.
Easy for you to say. You’ve got the pitchfork market sewed up.
“But even were it the case that electoral victories were dependent upon making promises to “independents” and GOP moderates, the way to appeal to such voters, I’ve argued, is not through promises of entitlements, but rather by the confident reiteration of foundational principles: smaller government, legal conservatism, individual freedom, free enterprise, and a pride in American exceptionalism.”
The reiteration needs to be accompanied by confident statements about how these principles lead to better results as well. Gibbs has already started with the “for the children” mantra when asked about appeals to repeal O-Care. I can’t remember the last time I heard a republican of any stripe reject the buried premise that the only way to help “the children” is through more government control, and not less. Or to question whether the self-styled champions of the down-trodden really care about anything but their own power.
I am really discouraged these days. Look at healthcare and education. In both, the more the people in government meddle, the worse the results. Their answer at every turn is to give them more control. Is there a national republican seriously making any efforts to fight this dynamic? Bush sure didn’t. As Ric Locke always stated so well, he just moved more slowly. And I have to wonder if the “pragmatic conservatives” don’t see this, or see it and don’t care.
I guess elected Republicans don’t mind being mere “seat warmers” if they get invited to the Capitol Hill cocktail parties, and get warm fuzzies from the Washington Post…
Actually, combating, the cudgel was removing the federal government’s obligation to provide erectile dysfunction drugs to rapists and child molesters. Unfortunately, that voter bloc is too precious to the current majority.
If combative violates you for more than four hours, call a doctor.
no payback loans
Isn’t that a ‘gift’?
Just sayin…
Sure, just ignore the violence! Don’t you have anything to say about the violence, teabagger?
“But Republicans learned early Thursday they will be able to kill some language in the bill that relates to Pell grants for low-income college students”
PS Entropy I was talking about the loans, I could honestly care less what drugs sex offenders are prescribed by their doctors.
I wanted to bring to light that the language that was gleefully killed in the bill would take funds away from low income college students. Individuals most likely the first in their families to attend university and thus its an attempt to keep them there and avoid crippling debt.
Throw the kids a bone.
Its serving a positive function.
If the bill needs to be re-shaped wouldn’t it make more sense to launch a tactful and appropriate conservative/Republican response that didn’t…take money from the hands of vulnerable low income groups…its a pattern…just sayin.
Combaticus is a liar. That is all.
That’s not the same thing as it having a positive effect — which is the true test.
Also, changing your handle on every comment is a sure way to not have your commentary taken seriously. Settle on one.
RACISTS is the pattern.
Elaborate on the negative effect.
My family made under 50k.
Pell Grants allowed me to attend university and graduate in 4 years with manageable debt.
Helping poor people go to school. That is the effect.
Sure, if you’re a small govt. fiscal con you are supposed to cut down this bill.
This decision just reeks of vindictiveness and class based animosity.
Or just a complete ignorance to the needs of the 18-30 year olds.
Who voted for O by 66%. go fig
What exactly do Pell grants (and student loans, which are basically taken over by the federal government in this bill) have to do with health care “reform”, anyway?
Free college for everyone, or you are a vindictive oppressive racist !!!
I never mentioned race.
The system is not free.
They are merit based grants, they are earned.
They are only for low income students who meet certain criteria.
College graduates and other educated people have a higher, healthier quality of life than people who do not. It seems to be a nontraditional approach at preventative care to send people through a university system that proves to create more healthy human beings. While at the same time reinforcing the idea that poverty does not have to be multigenerational.
College graduates are healthier? That’s your thread to link Pell Grants to Medicare?
Why not just say that poor people tend to be less healthy, and therefore we should just give everyone $50,000 a year to sit on their asses and vote Democrat?
I did not mention race. No, you did not have the spine to do so. You were just being coy, making allusions to teh oppressed, underprivileged, etc, standard leftist dogma. We deem you a twatwaffle, in a multi-partisan manner.
Pell Grants allowed me to attend university and graduate in 4 years with manageable debt.
In free-market exchanges, the seller determines the lowest possible price and the buyer sets the top limit by saying, “that’s too much to be worth it.”
The Pell grants and low-interest loans take away that top limit, because no matter how high the tuitions go, students can find a way to pony up the dough, either through daddy’s wallet or gubmint largess.
So they keep raising tuition because they can.
Which, that’s another reason that health-care costs are so high: no matter how much they charge, someone will pay for it, one way or another.
RESIST. REPEAL. REVIVE.
That comment by combaticus is a perfect example of leftist thought, and how this travesty called HCR will be used by the leftists to encroach on more and more aspects of your lives. Rich people are healthier so let’s give everyone $1,000,000.
This decision just reeks of vindictiveness and class based animosity.
Or just a complete ignorance to the needs of the 18-30 year olds.
12 years of college? No wonder we’re fucked.
You know, how ’bout society’s need for kids to grow up. Preferably before 12 years of post high school education. Dang. shit or get off the pot.
One group of government bureaucrats handing out the money, and another group of government bureaucrats raising the price.
What kind of circle jerk is that?
This decision just reeks of vindictiveness and class based animosity.
Or just a complete ignorance to the needs of the 18-30 year olds.
How do you argue with such shit? Why should you argue? What could be accomplished?
What you’d be debating is not even the disagreement. You could debate policy all day long and never touch the actual point of disagreement. You’d have to debate such things as the meaning of the word ‘need’. You’d need to resort to semantics, upon which they’d promptly dismiss you for arguing semantics. The disconnect is in it’s underlying assumptions. The epistomology. The moral imperatives. The variance of interpretation of the empirical de facto. ‘It’s red, look, red; no it’s green, look’.
Things which, in our society where the concensus is the decision is made by majority concensus, the overwhelming majority neither understands, nor understands the relevance of, nor wishes to understand, nor has the attention span for, nor depth of thought to even approach.
I mean, he’s probably right (if you assume his definitions of words like ‘vindictiveness’, ‘need’, ‘class’ and ‘animosity’ – yes it is true to say so, in the way he means to say them).
It seems wholly more appropriate and utterly necessary we divorce each other entirely.
Personally I’m running out of ways to tolerate them, if they won’t help me by hiding themselves from me.
Please understand that this isn’t a center-right country. A lot of folks are center-right if you publicly ask them, until you ask them to pay for their positions. Then you find out they secretly voted for someone else to (do it or) pay for it. One answer to a polling entity (“Can I ask you a few questions? It will only cost you your time”)and a completely different answer to a charity/polling booth (“Can I have some of your money to fix these ills?”). Charities do get more from the right, but not enough overall to make the government irrelevant.
States already provide huge subsidies for state colleges. Public and private universities already provide a wide array of scholarships based on merit, poverty, and/or particular skills. Foundations provide scholarships in furtherance of their philanthropic missions. Corporations provide educational aid to employees and their dependents as a form of employee benefit.
Every one of these programs provides benefits that are targeted and administered far better than any federal program could be. They are more accountable to their funders, and are better able to change as local conditions warrant.
Federal programs are rife with waste and corruption, prone to political manipulation, and staffed by bureaucrats more concerned with perpetuating their bureaucracy than with providing services. They are worse in almost every way than the existing programs whose resources they mean to steal.
These arguments apply almost one-for-one with health care.
So, as a proponent of wasteful, inefficient, inflexible, bloated, unresponsive, corrupt, and unaccountable federal programs, I must ask: Why do you hate the sick and the uneducated? What kind of sadist would condemn people to live with these horrible programs, when so many better solutions already exist?
No, that’s the function.
The effect is, for one thing, colleges devote huge amounts of resources teaching college-age students fundamentals they should have learned before graduating high school. Because now damn near everybody goes to college.
K-12 school districts have shifted the responsibility for basic competency to make room for non-fundamental subjects like global warming and subconscious racism.
And then there’s that tuition inflation dicentra mentions, which is exactly like the effect of subsidized health care on medical expenses.
Effects, you see, are long-term, real-world consequences — not intended outcomes. A function is what something is supposed to do. An effect is what it actually does.
Sending more poor people to college is the function, not the effect. And I’ve just given your for free what your schools and college did not.
Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.
Republicans seem to have difficulty grasping this basic dynamic.
I am getting more depressed.
This decision just reeks of vindictiveness and class based animosity.
Only because you need it to. Because you need us to be horrible, cold-hearted people so that you can feel morally superior without having to question your assumptions.
Let me enlighten you, combaticus, on our thought processes.
A. We don’t mind helping the helpless. At all. In fact, we on the starboard side open our own wallets and give much more money directly to the poor than the port side. For example, I give copious amounts to my church’s welfare system and to the local food bank. When I give to the IRS, I pay for boondoggles and pork and earmarks and union payoffs.
B. We don’t confuse products with their labels. That O-care has been sold as a way of “helping the poor” doesn’t mean it will help them, especially not in the long run.
C. The insurance mandates force insurance companies to accept all comers and only charge $X. Then the mandates force the insurance companies to pay out $X + infinity. You don’t need to be a particle physicist to know that the insurance companies will go bankrupt in fairly short order.
D. After that, the fed will step in and “save” the system by instituting single-payer, which was the plan all along. And when the government is running healthcare, the point of the exercise is not to save lives but to save money. Doctors’ fees will plummet—45% already plan to cut back on their services or retire entirely—which results in long lines and shortages. How does that help the poor? How does that help anyone?
E. Like those who rescure injured wild animals then rehabilitate them to return to the wild, we believe that human beings are better off “in the wild” instead of being penned up in a zoo, even though zoos provide free healthcare. We are eagles: we would rather risk the danger that comes from living free and wild so that we can soar through the skies the way we were meant to.
F. Entitlements are the heroin of the dependent. You do no one any favors by doing for them what they are able to do for themselves. It is NOT proper for the government to position itself as a parent that keeps us in perpetual adolescence. Europeans already fail to reproduce, care only about food and vacations, and couldn’t live “in the wild” if they had to.
How pathetic is it that the Greek government unions are out protesting cutbacks even though the whole country is on the verge of economic collapse? Like petulant teenaged drug addicts, they pitch a fit when their cushy lifestyle is impinged on even the slightest bit.
I will not consent to being reduced to a child in my own country. I will not consent to being kept by my government as an animal in a zoo.
RESIST. REPEAL. REVIVE.
i have an intense hatred for the sick and uneducated both of these maladies being impermanent states that we should all share the moral imperative to remedy
cure the sick
educated the stupid
those two goals i’m hoping are a mutual rallying point
so when an ideology sets forth to prevent the education of the stupid and the effective curing of the sick i take issue with that
Charities do get more from the right, but not enough overall to make the government irrelevant.
If we had more money in our pockets from lower taxes, and there were fewer safety nets around to support people who do not need to live on the dole, we would be able to take care of the helpless and the victims of bad luck.
We see the need, we rise to the occasion. Try us.
Combaticus, my last comment to you was a voluntary act of educating the stupid. No government program needed.
so when an ideology sets forth to prevent the education of the stupid and the effective curing of the sick
You’re deluded if you think there’s only one way to skin that cat. And that government intervention is the best way to do it.
Look, if you think that the gubmint is the best solution to the problem, then you and yours need to do the following:
1. Determine the minimal amount that you need to live on.
2. Compare it against your salary.
3. Calculate the difference.
4. Write a check for the difference and make it out to the IRS.
What? You won’t do it? Not unless everyone else is forced to do it too?
We get people over here who say that they don’t mind paying extra to help the less fortunate. But these same people don’t go ahead and pay that extra to the IRS without a law in place.
Those of us who give to charity voluntarily do so without any regard whatsoever to whether other people are contributing. I contribute what I CAN, based on MY evaluation of whether the charity is worthy of my support.
I never, never insist that I’ll give more only if other people do. Or are forced to.
Hypocrites, all.
*This decision just reeks of vindictiveness and class based animosity.*
I tend to get that way when a. i paid my way through college and I came from a lower middle class family, with neither parent ever going to college b. I’m tired of being told I have to pay to make the lives of (primarily) minorities, when all they have to do is show up and cash the check which includes my money.
The thing about democrats is, they expect to say stuff like “OMG the poor” “OMG the disadvantaged” and conservatives are supposed to melt and just hand over their wallets. You’ll see less and less of that, the more the nanny state takes over.
so when an ideology sets forth to prevent the education of the stupid and the effective curing of the sick i take issue with that
You keep beating that strawman.
i just reject your obsession with suffering
there is no dignity or honor in toiling for generations in a nation that cannot acknowledge that our system is unequal by design and thus act accordingly to even the scales on any basic level
that masochistic ethic has really lost its resonance as modernity churns on
its kind of a relic but it drives most of these discussions
the European model allows for the living of a decent and productive life
if you can have capitalism and still ensure time off, medical care, child care, education and general social services at very little or no social cost to freedom or the general welfare people will accept it
despite the groans of a stubborn cohort that will slowly but inevitably fade away
If we had more money in our pockets from lower taxes, and there were fewer safety nets around to support people who do not need to live on the dole, we would be able to take care of the helpless and the victims of bad luck.
Yup. This is around the time that my family usually makes very generous contributions to the local zoo, science museum, nature conservatory, and social charities. Except this year, when that money and more had to get shipped to Washington and Columbus.
Sorry. Uncle Sugar decided he deserves it more than Jack Hanna et al. After all, he has bureuacrats and union thugs to feed.
Speaking of reeking of vindictiveness and class-based animosity, this from VDH:
Amen, Victor. A. Men.
combatus, just call Baracky and get an Executive Order. They’re cheap!
Honor and dignity aren’t provided by the government, combatus. An honest days work for an honest day’s pay is honorable. Reaping the fruits of one’s blood sweat and tears is dignified. Holding your hand out to Uncle Sugar is evidence of a personal inability which is neither dignified nor honorable.
“educated the stupid”
You can’t fix stupid.
You are a prime example.
there is no dignity or honor in toiling for generations
Sweetheart, deal with reality. We’re not a coral reef, where we can stick out our tentacles and draw in the plankton that drifts by. We’re not trees that can synthesize our own sugars through photosynthesis.
We have to work and toil and sweat and drudge to put food on our plates and clothes on our backs and roofs over our heads. Wealth must be generated. The second law of thermodynamics applies here too.
the European model allows for the living of a decent and productive life.
They are not productive, and their lives are not decent. They do not innovate, they don’t reproduce, and their entire system is on the brink of utter collapse. They are not producing enough wealth to support their massive entitlements. They can’t. People stop working when they can free-ride off the gubmint, and because they don’t grow up and have children, preferring rather to live with their parents well into their thirties, they have fewer and fewer workers supporting more and more retirees and free-riders.
One in five households in England lives off the dole. That’s 20%. That’s unsustainable. And most of the jobs in Europe are with the government bureaucracy, a parasitic entity that does not generate wealth but rather consumes it while also suppresing its creation.
Europe is in steep decline, dude. If you want to live there, fine. Live there. But America was set up as a laboratory of freedom and liberty and self-reliance. We’re the ones who generate most of the wealth, most of the innovation, most of the technology.
You put us in Europe’s decent path and the whole world loses.
RESIST. REPEAL. REVIVE.
Let’s stop by the banilieus of Paris, shall we? You can drive. Then maybe we can go take in a Greek riot.
Cornyn says he was misquoted.
We’ll see.
Di, Rush is going on and on about the hypocrisy VDH talked about.
Example. Remember when the Iraqi journalist threw the shoe at Bush. He became a hero of the left. Now the poor socialist leftists are the victims of taunts. Awww…
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind motherfuckers.
But it does make you a card-carrying “Progressive”, Pablo.
if you can have capitalism and still ensure time off, medical care, child care, education and general social services at very little or no social cost to freedom or the general welfare people will accept it
despite the groans of a stubborn cohort that will slowly but inevitably fade away
No social cost to freedom? WTF does that even mean? Any time you take money out of my hands, it has a social cost to MY freedom. Any time a business gets taxed at a higher rate and has to let folks go, or not expand, or perhaps even go out of business, that is a “social cost to freedom” of anyone who works for that company.
that masochistic ethic has really lost its resonance as modernity churns on
It has lost it with YOU. Modernity has nothing to do with it, but being Spoiled Americans does. Like astronauts who lose bone and muscle mass in null gravity, our lack of hardship has softened our spines and made us ungrateful and immature.
You think people in the USA are poor? Really? You lived in a third-world country and seen real poverty, ever?
I have. Our poor are rich compared to most of the people who have ever lived on the planet.
Only an immature brat is worried about inequality, the way children calibrate their cake portions to make sure no one’s is bigger than the others.
The real question is whether people have sufficient food, clothing, and shelter, not how wide the inequality gap is.
Grow up. Reality doesn’t conform to your Utopian tantrums.
If you don’t mind being a modern-day serf. Hey, but you get unemployment benefits for life!
“Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind motherfuckers”
Which incidentally, would make a good title for a post…
…it helps the politicians gain in power and self-worth, the heroin of the messianic.
The link goes to my blog, apologies, trackback doesn’t work on blogger.
Cornyn is weak.
Carin,
Eggs, omlettes. You know the deal…
at very little or no social cost to freedom or the general welfare people
When the economy collapses under the weight of our debt and unfunded liabilities (most of them “entitlements,”) then come talk to me about the social cost to freedom.
But let me put this question to you, combaticus: Do you pay extra taxes to help the poor? Has it even occured to you to do so?
“our lack of hardship and celebration of decadence has softened our spines and made us ungrateful, weak and immature.”
Thought it could use embellishment.
di,
Or ever donated to charity. I think we know the answer to that: to progressives, charity isn’t charity unless it’s compulsory, and administered by the federal government.
npr and the red cross
im not part of the.001 percentile of humans that i strongly suggest we tax the fuck out of
Why does combaticus think the underprivileged are stupid?
But the U.S. Government will never default! It’s so big! It’s so rich! Such things never fall!
The Democrat “beating off the Republicans” onslaught.
Decorum in the House is not what it used to be.
NPR? Well that’s extra taxes, isn’t it?
“im not part of the.001 percentile of humans that i strongly suggest we tax the fuck out of”
I think that nicely sums up the Kleptocrat mindset right there.
Neither are we! Neither are we!
Combaticus was transparent from its first comment. You racist RetugliKKKans want to keep people from getting healthcare and education, especially the underprivileged. And the government should tax the holy fuck out of you evil rich and successful people. People like it aRe only generous with other people’s money.
Out of 6.5 billion people, I guess that would be every single American who makes more than you do.
Maybe I’m just cynical, but our new progressive friend “combaticus” presents such a laughable stereotype of the leftist/socialist/progressive Democrat that I have to wonder if one of our regulars is pulling our leg here.
There is one other function in the grants you didn’t spell out in 35 McGehee, though I suspect you know it’s there. Namely, purchasing votes with other peoples money. A very simple and effective transaction at the root.
Oh, I meant to write “Out of 6.5 billion worldwide, …”
Apologies if that caused any confusion.
Whoa. Must see Cantor, who’s had his office windows shot out.
The second law of thermodynamics applies here too.
So does the first. Nothing is free, nothing is produced without cost.
Every human act is a purchase and a trade. For the motion of my hands in typing I must spend calories. And time.
combaticus=nishi?
I’ve decided combaticus is just nishi again.
Great minds, bh!
Look at comment 44 specifically. The old themes are there.
Goes without saying.
Heh, McG.
Well yeah, if you’re talking with me alone. But it can’t be assumed when communicating with a progg, can it?
That is one of those features/bugs thingies, sdferr.
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. So, what would be the benefit of pointing that function out to Paul?
JD wants in on the great minds thing too.
The benefit is only in filling out a truthful description of the manner of our governance, I suppose. There is a growing body of knowledge devoted to plumbing the extent to which this behavior runs throughout the acts of political actors. Articulating the phenomenon, revealing it where it exists, may contribute to arming us to further restrict the behavior as one preternaturally opposed to the interests of the polity itself. That’s all.
“A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. So, what would be the benefit of pointing that function out to Paul?”
Further, thinking on it a bit, part of the point may be to persuade Paul that though he appears to gain a benefit in the seen and tangible handout, in the net calculation of effects, he may suffer an unseen detriment on the long run. That is, his long term deferred interests could be of greater benefit, where the general interests of the polity enable greater rewards to himself at a cost to the pseudo-charitable politician.
They’re not robbing Peter to pay Paul. Peter has accountants and lawyers to make sure he never gets stuck with the bill. In actuality, they’re robbing Paul Jr. and Paul III to pay Paul.
This cannot be emphasized strongly enough.
Too true.
“our lack of hardship and celebration of decadence has softened our spines and made us ungrateful, weak, and immature.”
Works for me! :D
npr and the red cross
im not part of the.001 percentile of humans that i strongly suggest we tax the fuck out of
So the purpose of taxation is to stick it to the bastards whom you envy and hate (h8r!), not to raise revenue?
I asked you if you had ever gone ahead and paid extra taxes, all the better to fill the gubmint’s coffers as it helps the poor.
BTW, NPR doesn’t feed, clothe, or house the poor.
Am I missing something here? Or are a big chunk of the commenters missing something?
Let me state something for the record: Every Republican voted AGAINST this bill. I’m not sure what the hell else we can expect, when the dems have such overwhelming majorities in both houses.
If in 2013, repubs take back the white house and have majorities in both houses, and they DON’T repeal this thing, then I’ll jump on this bandwagon. Until then, all of this gnashing of teeth is pointless.
The point is making sure that the new majority is made up of people who will work to roll this back, and not a bunch of wussy statists who’ll be content to rearrange the deck chairs while we all go down to the deep. It’s not enough to hold your fire until after the election. Doing that will just get us some more Arlen SPECTREs.
Good point. Of course, when we’re dealing with people like nishibaticus who don’t know the difference between function and effect, the task becomes far more complex and involved than merely noting the the Dems are stealing our money to buy their (proggs’) votes.
Whoa. Must see Cantor, who’s had his office windows shot out.
They all get threats and vandalism.
A couple weeks ago, Glenn Beck was giving a live stage performance in NYC. Minutes before he was to go on, the FBI came to him and handed him a flack jacket because they had received credible threats against his life.
He says that the FBI continue to work with him because they are aware of some horrific, credible threats against his children, and more than that he cannot say.
Let me emphasize that the FBI contacted him first, not the other way around. Glenn has needed bodyguards for some time now.
Search Twitter for @glennbeck and see the vitriol amid the praise. It’s sickening but par for the course.
Glenn observed today that the Secret Service was probably not thrilled when Pelosi and company did their victory walk through the crowds surrounding the capital. But they insisted on doing it anyway to egg on the crowds. They wanted something to happen while knowing at the same time that they would not be harmed in the least.
Would they have walked through the same crowd at a G-20 summit?
No. No, they wouldn’t.
Harry, you mean in particular our gnashing, or would you include any such gnashing going on in the strategic calculations of the Republicans themselves as they decide on their goals (ostensibly to be our goals), their tactics to achieve those goals, etc.? And if: how lowly are we to have no hope to affect those who represent us.
Amen. The next Congress is their last chance.
npr? Bwuahahahahaha…Really? NPR? Sounds like combaticus is nothing but the usual, ignorant, lazy deadbeat democrat. Envy will kill you boy.
How do you combat a mindset that thinks there is anything moral about taking from the rich just because they are rich and can thus afford it?
To expand on my #96, educating people is absolutely essential if the republic is to be saved — but that’s a long-term project that can’t be associated, and is in fact much better off not associated, with government or electoral politics.
The end purpose of such a project ought to be to foster the growth of the limited-government vote, so that both major parties (whatever they may be ultimately) have to court them for support, knowing that unless they deliver there is a credible threat that the other party will.
Sorry to be a reductionist Makewi, and hoping I don’t do injustice to your question, which I think worthy enough itself, but it appears to me that we might as well ask “How do you combat a mindset?” and be done with it. Whatever the presumed error we seek to correct, our methods will be more or less the same, no?
Yes, sdferr. Our methods will likely be the same every time we attempt to persuade. I guess what I need is what are likely to be the effective steps to countering the idea that it is OK to take from those who have more because having more somehow makes you less worthy of consideration. The truth is that you probably don’t, since those who are likely to think this are those who find it reasonable to counter a moral question with “But…problem containing emotional appeal”.
dicentra noted upthread one possible avenue of attack on the argument “it is ok to take from those who have more because having more somehow makes you less worthy of consideration” and that is simply to point out that “having more” is relative to what frame of reference? If restricted to some narrow locality, the rule would be stripped of its universality, and hence of its truth. If the frame is expanded to take in the people’s of the world, the proponent of this rule is going to be stripped of every good they possess and for which they deem life worthy of living. They will then be in the position of having to make a choice: keep their rule or be seen as one of the wealthy unworthy of consideration.
we might as well ask “How do you combat a mindset?” and be done with it. Whatever the presumed error we seek to correct, our methods will be more or less the same, no?
Depends on the mindset. If we’re talking about people who are ignorant because they haven’t been paying attention, and once they’ve clued in they get it, that’s one thing.
If we’re talking about group narcissitic personality disorder (NPD), that’s another.
Even though the individuals may not have NPD, as a group Leftists do, and NPDs are notoriously impossible to change. They absolutely do not believe that they need to change. They are singularly virtuous because of the poses they strike, not because of their actions.
Emotionally, narcissists are eternally frozen in time as six year olds. From the link:
Here‘s a somewhat related column from Don Boudreaux that people might like.
(found via Cafe Hayek)
#102
McGehee, everyday I find myself doubting there are even enough people left to be educated. The entire educational system in this country has become focused on the “give a man a fish” philosophy. They don’t teach kids how to catch a fish; how to teach themselves.
For instance – Cliff Notes. In and of themselves, pretty harmless, helpful tools to review the important points of a book’s story, themes and characters. But too many kids use them as a replacement for reading the book and figuring out all of the above themselves. They practice mimicry, not understanding.
Kids coming out of 1-12 have little to no critical thinking skills. To be honest, the thing that pushed me fully out of the bubble was 9/11. I was a senior in high school at the time. Difference was, I read the assigned books for class. Other kids used cliff notes. I could teach myself to improve and expand my horizons, other kids couldn’t/wouldn’t.
I don’t think there are going to be enough open or able to learn that their ideas are wrong and are leading us down into the gutter. They can’t accept that they are wrong, its always someone else.
If we were to take your bifurcation as step one dicentra (and I’m not sure we ought, since we may have to identify many other such “mindsets” as well and just as urgently), then we have immediate need to be able to distinguish the one from the other, and do this very dependably without any large error in sorting. What though, in the case where the target of our persuasion is learned and clever at disguise, as I suspect may be common to such a one, themselves confronted with the problem of dealing with strangers who have no knowledge of their personal history and hence practiced in the deploy of such disguise? And do this, apart from the doubtful assignment of individual psychological characteristics to a group.
simply to point out that “having more” is relative to what frame of reference? If restricted to some narrow locality, the rule would be stripped of its universality, and hence of its truth.
They do not believe in the universality of truth. They flatly reject it. They think ‘reductio ad absurdem’ is an absurd logical fallacy. They proclaim themselves ideologically as pragmatic non-ideological moderates.
They reject the primacy of reason as a prejudice.
If the frame is expanded to take in the people’s of the world, the proponent of this rule is going to be stripped of every good they possess and for which they deem life worthy of living.
They exclude themselves from their rules and justify it with their emotional intent.
It is enough that they had to have wanted, supported, made and enforced the rule to satisfy their requirement, not abide by it. That part is for you, who did not want it, and who made it necessary by lacking the intent.
They circumvent the law, and justify it by saying everyone tries to circumvent the law, it’s greedy human nature, that’s why we need the law, and still assert moral superiority on account of accepting their (all our) debased nature, and at least supporting a law to enforce betterment upon ourself as best it can be enforced, with whatever draconic measures you might imagine to do so.
keep their rule or be seen as one of the wealthy unworthy of consideration.
Their consideration is not placed deontologically or consequentially. It’s mostly social affections. Tribal insignia. Symbols of belonging and conforming to a group.
Worth of consideration lies within the group, not the individual.
In which case, Entropy, I guess that particular object of persuasion cannot be persuaded, just as a gang of thieves cannot be persuaded. Which brings us straight to headcracking time.
Hey, Entropy. Glad you’re commenting more here.
(But not in a gay way.)
People are persuaded sdferr. Former muddled thinkers sometimes change their ways. It happens a lot actually. What might be useful is identifying what it was that made them “see the light”, try to find a list of common denominators and then craft a line of persuasion based on that. Some will never be convinced, but others will. Even if no one is persuaded, kernels of truth sometimes have a way of wiggling into the minds of true believers and become part of a more effective feedback loop for them.
I hope you didn’t take me for believing that people aren’t persuadable Makewi, as that proposition would make something of a nullity of my life.
The people that are persuadable are not the ones that tend to be drive-by’s or pig ignert trolls.
And I’m of the opinion that people who drop by just to read, and who hesitate to jump into the conversation for various reasons, give evidence of being persuadable by that very fact: they read first.
I was very, very young the first time I was instructed that I learn more by listening than by talking.
…and now I’m 48 and I still get instructed thus from time to time. But I digress.
I don’t think that about you sdferr.
Persuasion is not always instantaneous JD. I think the seed parable is applicable to this argument.
I tend to agree that the likelihood of overtly persuading the drive by’s and pig ingnant is small, however the mind processes information in ways we can not always predict and in ways that the individual are not even aware are occurring.
Oh dear. Ace sez AEI gave David Frum his walking papers.
Fun-employment!
Makewi, taking your excellent post at 113 and the practical questions it raises as a spring and tying it together with the lot here assorted, McGehee’s, dicentra’s, Entropy’s, and bh’s (linked), why might we not suggest that the practical common denominators we seek, the kernels we need are themselves nothing more than willingness to advocate and use reason, to be amenable to reasonable demonstration, to proof well constructed, whether in the mathematical sense or the more generally logical sense? What more powerful sorting device could we find?
BH – thanks. I don’t know why. I’ve been kind of a dour killjoy.
sdferr – I think he was saying such people as I’ve mentioned are persuadable (although I don’t know how).
Isn’t that what they’re all about though?
Postmodernists (perhaps I abuse the term but you know what I mean, eh?) reject universal absolute truth – or at least reject that we can ever know it or interact with it in such a way that it’s existance or non-existance is a difference without any distinction.
Like Jeff seems to me to often be saying – haven’t many (perhaps most) of our fellow citizens swalled this foundational principle? Even many on the right? As well as other bits I mentioned (like PC group identity)?
To varying amounts. Some not so much, functionally. We probably cannot justify cracking all their heads.
I can point to plenty of right-wing bloggers who are mostly level headed and right but also spout all sorts of “you can’t say that” propriety. Wherein they steal someone’s meaning and redistribute it to an approved minority political action group.
I do not see how you break through it though.
Especially when their attention span to/interest in this admittedly esoteric type of subject is precisely 0. They’ve never wanted to think about it. Much easier to osmose whatever propriety they picked up in school or at large in pop-culture.
That’s the one’s who only accept these principles somewhat.
The ones who’ve thought on the subject and come to these principles on their own are the ones who are really really inaccessible by such argument.
2 things come to mind:
1 I’ve heard from Rush Limbaugh – You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t use reason to get to in the first place.
The second is, Aldous Huxley (specifically in his essay ‘A Brave New World Revisted’) so much as postualated that the future of our liberty depends on being able to reason people out of a position they didn’t use reason to get into. To counteract irrational propaganda with rational propoganda. Irrational propoganda is all about controlling the subject, eliciting the desired response. Rational propoganda is about informing, educating, persuading of mutual self interest, eliciting a choice.
He had no answer either.
Somewhat similar to your reasoning, sdferr, I sometimes make note of how many logical fallacies a person makes when deciding how to deal with them. Simply based on their initial statement without any interaction.
Much like my A is A remonstrance with meya. If she won’t even agree to that, it’s time to point and laugh.
Nothing wrong with killjoys, Entropy. They have a distinct aversion to shooting sunshine up your ass.
An aside Entropy, somewhat apart from the subject at hand:
“Postmodernists (perhaps I abuse the term but you know what I mean, eh?)…” to which I probably ought to answer, “perhaps not, but that because I don’t know that I know what I would mean in my use of the term, not being well or carefully enough read into them to have much grasp on their “stuff”, which is to say by stuff “content”. This is an ignorance I’m at fault for. I don’t know a defensible excuse to say the truth about it. I might say it’s something like Socrates’ daimonion, warning me away from them, but that would be far-fetched in the extreme.
I do think we should teach formal logic classes in grade school.
Oh, children will understand it fine. They’ll catch it much easier in fact, in some ways it may be the only time they’re accessible.
Kids learn language easier and kids that play musical instruments before 5 are much more likely to have perfect (or better) pitch hearing.
I never got a formal logic class. Not even in High School. I guess that’s a college elective thing. I wish I had. More useful info then trigonometry even.
But yeah that’s… y’know… entirely up to 5000 local schoolboards.
sdferr
What you are describing is the quality of the soil and the method into which we will place our seeds. What I am looking for is a label on those seeds so that we can better hope to not sew weeds.
Back to the point at hand though.
Some — or much — of what we undertake is done on our own account. We all make errors. Some of us, like me for instance, make them frequently, copiously, obstinately and at times even, as Dennett has said, incorrigibly. So we work at it.
Human reason, no matter the eruditon involved, can’t be separable from it’s ordinary, everyday, ubiquitous applications. These, it seems to me, are all one. Counting, sorting, distinguishing, listing, prioritizing and the rest of our everyday reasoning behaviors are inescapable. Crazy complex in their simplicity, we still haven’t come to the end of our road of a full and satisfactory explication of these things, all while we put them to work in everything we do. So we might ask our reason deniers: how else will you live?
It’s perfectly fine to augment one’s reason-based arguments with appeals to emotion. Hence, my new crusade to emphasize that these giant federal programs not only perform worse than existing local programs, but also impoverish our children.
The power brokers in Washington have invested fortunes in convincing people that they’re the only game in town. We need to push back against that message: your state, your county, your city, and your neighborhood can all do these things more effectively. If they can’t do it today, they can learn from all the other states and municipalities that are.
You don’t have to come across as an ogre when you say, “I understand that my opponent wants to help people. So do I. I’m just saying that his way doesn’t work very well, and that my way helps more people for less money and doesn’t rely on 17,000 IRS agents using force to make everyone go along with the scam.”
I remain convinced that people don’t like the IRS. They don’t like bureaucrats meddling in their schools, their cities, and their personal lives. People still value freedom, and if we offer them an option that gives them more freedom and assuages their liberal white guilt at the same time, people will buy it.
But it can’t be done by the guys who’ve been living in Washington for so long. They don’t understand how much they’ve become part of the problem. This needs to come from our cities and states. They can stand up and say, “We’ll take care of this ourselves.” They can send people to Washington who’ll let them take care of things themselves.
We talk a lot about “our guys” and “their guys,” but the truth is that very few of “our guys” can be found inside the Beltway. Most of “our guys” are a lot closer to home. We need to identify them, convince them to run and to serve, and give them the support they need to win. Most of that support is monetary, but a fair portion is getting the message out there that the current system is broken and unfair.
We can appeal to intellect and to emotion. And our secret weapon is that we don’t have to lie, and we don’t have to fool anybody. My five-year-old niece already owes the Chinese tens of thousands of dollars. By the time she graduates from high school, she’ll effectively be carrying a mortgage. There are millions of parents out there who don’t understand this. We need to make them understand.
see what I mean? there’s an i in that fancy word erudition.
then we have immediate need to be able to distinguish the one from the other.
Dude. Dog whistles.
If the information is out there in reasonably easy-to-digest form, those in the NPD group won’t understand it at all; the rest will catch on.
I don’t think there are going to be enough open or able to learn that their ideas are wrong and are leading us down into the gutter. They can’t accept that they are wrong, its always someone else.
On the other hand, if you’ve been kept ignorant all your life, sometimes when you are exposed to a whole new way of looking at things — when hidden information becomes revealed, such as the True History of Progressivism and what the Founders really were all about — some people will find that they’re hungry — nay, starving — for the truth.
They told Glenn Beck that nobody would watch him if he just stood there and wrote all over a chalkboard, especially if he was dredging up history lessons about Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover and economic theory and stuff.
Instead, Beck’s astronomical success demonstrates that people are desperate for someone to not talk down to them, to NOT feed them sound-bite pablum the way the MSM and the educational system does.
There’s a “market” for classical liberalism. Let’s go fill it.
I’m of the mind to say no. Nishi uses capital letters, punctuation and doesn’t have those weird line breaks that common-moonbat-icus seems to have.
Nishi also doesn’t hide when she changes her handle.
Imma go with geoffb on that one, leaning especially in my case on his last sentence. nishi is nothing if not proud to be nishi.
I don’t know. The line breaks are quite similar, just imagine ellipses and leetspeak.
And the themes are pure nishi. Especially #44.
Modernity churns on. European model. The death of the stubborn cohort. Etc.
I think the seed parable is applicable to this argument.
Here it is, from Matthew 13 (with apologies to sdferr for the theology):
As Makewi says, we can’t control who is in these groups (or whether the groups exist) but we CAN ensure that the seed is of good quality.
For the pearl-clutchers among us, that means that we should worry about who we ARE and what we DO instead of what the MSM says about us. They will condemn us and lie about us no matter what we do.
We only have to control the quality and content of our own hearts and to ensure that we ARE on the right side of history, even when we don’t appear to be.
It’s not nishi. The thought processes are different. Combaticus is not making “trans-humanist” arguments.
No apologies for theology is necessary for my sake dicentra (jesus h christ I wish I didn’t have to say that! Something has got lost in translation, I’m thinking.)
So, pressing the metaphor (parable) not for the purpose of pressing the metaphor but for the purpose of understanding, what we want — the label — is to distinguish the right seed (wheat, say) from the wrong seed (Spanish needle, the bane of my un-grassy yard), where these “seeds” are arguments for …? Now here, perhaps, is where my own theological predilections will take hold: are these to be political arguments for political purposes? Or will we have theological arguments for political purposes?
Trans-humanism is only one of nishi’s themes and she doesn’t go to that well every thread. She does often speak of cultural evolution (modernity churns on), the social democrats as next stage (the European model) and the death of the WEC (the fading away of the stubborn cohort).
Maybe I’m wrong. Who knows.
Just seems unlikely to me that a random drive-by troll would accidentally recapitulate nishi’s entire griefing routine in one paragraph.
Far from nishi, I find myself wishing Mr Locke were here to set us straight. Take Mr. Locke whichever way you choose.
Only the host would know for sure.
An odd and non-intended benefit of the sockpuppets is the linguistic, textual, and cyber analysis practice they give so freely.
where these “seeds” are arguments for …?
The seed is to be any bit of edumacation we can knock into the noggin of any nitwit that, someday as he stands in his shower pondering whether or not he needs to wash the bottoms of his feet and gets hit in the head with a bottle of shampoo, will blossom into the Moribund Epistemology of the Debunked Patriarchal Enlightenment Paradigm.
Sort of.
The seeds are seeds for whatever argument they are for. In that they are seeds, he means they will not believe a damn thing you argue today, but your words will stick in his mind and in 10 years he’ll come to realize you were right (assuming he remembers who said that, which he won’t).
We will have whatever argument succeeds in doing that.
As for whether it is a political argument, or a theological argument – which words shall be necessary to plant for what ideas to sprout come harvest – that is the labels he is asking for.
I rather much like his metaphor.
sdferr
To my mind they aren’t really arguments at all, and as such are freed from any weight other than they be an accurate description of something which can be proven to a reasonable degree of certainty by employing logical truths, and that they be morally constrained. Where I believe the trick comes in is to be able to do this in such a way as to maximize potential for those “seeds” to take root. Not every seed will work for every field and not every distribution system will work for every seed.
Forgive me Entropy, but “The seeds are seeds for whatever argument they are for.” strikes me as tantamount to saying “there is no need to distinguish [the content of] one argument from another”, though I very much doubt you intend it in that way.
I don’t believe combaticus is Nishi.
Secondly, no-one in their right minds believes the 0.001% of the human race, it wants to tax, can pay for the trillion dollar deficits – Only taxing the fuck out of the middle class can do that.
– Or that the 0.001% would stick around to be taxed if the taxes went that high. If you are that rich you can make a nice lifestyle anywhere.
Makewi, may I ask? What do you intend by arguments in the phrase “they aren’t really arguments at all”?
For my part, arguments consist of nothing less than “an accurate description of something which can be proven to a reasonable degree of certainty by employing logical truths, and that they be morally constrained.” So I don’t know that we differ as to that. Logical propositions or sentences, we might even say. In any case, something very broad (and not contentious, as such).
No, I mean only that if you plant an asparagus seed, you get an asparagus plant. If you plant a carrot seed you get a carrot plant.
What are the seeds for? They are for the growing of whatever they grow.
If it becomes a cherry tree, you label it a cherry seed.
If we find labels to distinguish a right seed from a wrong seed, each seed is for what we’ve labeled it.
Hence the need to use the right seed – you cannot grow apples with corpse flower seeds.
I guess I’m thinking of arguments defined as equivalent to sides of a debate in which the utterances are used to advance a position. In that case they carry with them a weight which may not be helpful.
Now it appears that it isn’t the proper seed that is wanted at all, but something else, some “such a way” hold this and this characteristic. I’m lost here, I’m afraid. For this, I must blame myself.
Entropy, the question of right [seed] and wrong [seed] in politics is always the problem. One says: “We need cherries! That will be better!” The other says: “No! We need apples! That will be better! Cherries will be worse!”
Which is good, which bad? Which will make for better, which for worse.
To be fair, sdferr, the idea isn’t fully formed in my own mind so it isn’t surprising that it is clear as mud.
That’s cool, we’re here to help you (and ourselves along the way) to firm it up, pare it down, give it a shine.
The seeds are seeds for whatever argument they are for. In that they are seeds, he means they will not believe a damn thing you argue today, but your words will stick in his mind and in 10 years he’ll come to realize you were right (assuming he remembers who said that, which he won’t).
This actually dovetails nicely with how things get done in my family. If we told grandma point-blank that she needed to give up her home and move to an assisted living center, she’d dig in her heels and we’d never get anywhere.
So instead, we’d ask about how her neighbor Bertha was doing at her new place, knowing full well that Bertha really liked her new apartment and being surrounded by new friends and plenty of activities and having care providers close by.
Then we’d ask about the weeds in her garden, or whether she was planning to get the window frames painted this year, or how hard it was getting to the market and the beauty parlor each week.
Within a year, Grandma had talked herself into moving out of the old house and into the retirement condo. We didn’t have to drag her kicking and screaming; we merely planted some seeds.
That’s a good picture Squid. Still, I think it elides the political problem again. You and your family have already made the essential political decision, i.e.: “what is good for grandma?” The good thing is a settled issue, now it’s on to how to bring Grandma to see her interest in agreeing. The struggle in politics, however, is always over the question, what is good (or better), what will be bad (or worse)?
The struggle in politics, however, is always over the question, what is good (or better), what will be bad (or worse)?
True, but our problem is more fundamental than that. Our problem is that in the span of 200 years we have gone from the idea that the individual is the institution for which it all was built to the idea that the individual needs must always come secondary to the larger societies interests. A step backwards if you ask me.
So then our goal needs to be to right that disconnect so the next time side A yells “Apples” and side B yells “Cherries” the part of the masses that have been sufficiently scraped can yell back “What right do you have to insist on fruit?”
To be fair, I have my doubts about the potential for success at this point, but to not at least try seems like such a waste of what is supposed to be a very nice country.
In the abstract at least, I find it difficult in human affairs to discover anything more fundamental than the good vs bad distinction. So for instance (and taking liberties): “…we have gone from the idea that the individual is the institution for which it all was built [good] to the idea that the individual needs must always come secondary to the larger societies interests [competing good].”
Which is good, which bad? Which will make for better, which for worse.
If I have an apple seed and a orange seed, which will make for better?
Depends on whether I want apples or oranges. Right seed and wrong seed is at the perogative of the planter. But you must have each labeled and know what they do.
That is why I say ‘they do what they do’. Regard them as tools. Each does what it does. Which is the right seed for your purpose, which is the wrong seed for your purpose? Depends entirely on your purposes. What you do with them once you’ve got them has not yet entered the discussion… since we haven’t any seeds. At least not ones with clearly printed labels.
‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ as in correct and woops, not desirable or undesirable. Each one is the right seed to use to grow whatever the hell it grows, and the wrong seed to grow anything else.
Thus, the desire to label them: What does this grow into?
where these “seeds” are arguments for …?
The American religion: Classical liberalism. Restoration of history after the progg whitewash of same.
The “tares” (weeds that closely resemble wheat but produce bitter grain) would be any progg-lite assumptions that some on the starboard side have absorbed without realizing it (or who refuse to admit it).
e.g., Huckabee-esque use of the gubmint for “good conservative causes,” the assumption that the gubmint is there to fulfil needs instead of to stay in its enumerated box, calls for CIVILITY NOW without demanding it from the Left, battered-wife syndrome, etc.
the question of right [seed] and wrong [seed] in politics is always the problem. One says: “We need cherries! That will be better!” The other says: “No! We need apples! That will be better! Cherries will be worse!”
But when you’re dealing with proggs, they tell you that cherries are the best thing in the world, that everyone must have cherries, that anyone who doesn’t want cherries is a problem, and then they plant effing Ailanthus altissima seeds, which grow quickly, don’t produce cherries, stink when you cut them, sucker up all over the yard long after you’ve cut them down, spread their hellish drop hither and yon, poison the soil with their allelopathic leaves, and are generally impossible to get rid of.
Entropy, what are to be “…[y]our purposes” is the question. The political question, it seems to me, everywhere and always.
Once the question of purpose is settled, the issue apple or orange has effectively been settled. I cannot assume the issue between the left, so called, and the right, so called, is a settled one, though I stand on the right side of the question. The left is telling us, telling me, “No, you have it wrong, you right-siders, you do not know what is good. We on the left know what is good, and that good is not what you recommend.”
what are to be “…[y]our purposes” is the question. The political question, it seems to me, everywhere and always.
Hrm… yes and no. You’re right, but not here.
The issue then is what seeds do we plant in the minds of others that make them want what we want. Make them realize what we want is what is best. The act of settling the issue is what we are after.
I do not think any of us are trying to argue whether we want the seeds of Classical Liberalism or the seeds of Marxism.
What we’re puzzling over is, which seeds grow into Liberalism in the minds of Marxists?
As for them not agreeing with us…. irrelevant. We’re not going to ask them before we plow them, as is our 1st ammendment right.
In the abstract at least, I find it difficult in human affairs to discover anything more fundamental than the good vs bad distinction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Genealogy_of_Morality
If you can plow through his prose, I find it to be worth the effort.
Even if you do not agree with his evaluations or opinions, for the methodology. The breakout. What is good and what is bad, not as in what is describable as such but what is the descriptor itself. What is the concept. What is… well, the geneaology of morality.
It is very difficult to even describe in plain words, which mitigates his presumptuous demands you ‘ruminate upon’ him.
The human concept of it, at least, seperate and having nothing to do with any Divine truth it may or may not be a reflection of. The secular geneaology of the human understanding of morality.
You most likely will not agree as to what good is good, or what bad is bad. The man was a raving antisemetic palingenetic pseudo-nihilistic existential proto-postmodern protofacist.
But he was brilliant.
I’ve read him Entropy, though years ago. And others, some his targets. Another approach, offered in reciprocity.
If I’m following you correctly, Entropy, are you bringing up Nietzsche because of his notion of the transmutation of values? Hence, sdferr’s primal good v. bad question being malleable by culture?
I’ve never read the work you reference so I have no idea.
In the abstract at least, I find it difficult in human affairs to discover anything more fundamental than the good vs bad distinction.
Actually I think there is something more fundamental than the distinction between good and bad, and that is how we determine that which is bad and that which is good to begin with. Is it reason that informs us of which is which, divine fiat, or simply the the reaction we get from others based on our actions and how that reaction makes us feel?
As an idiot, I’ll link to the idiot’s guide in re the Nietzschean transmutation of values.
Don’t know if I’ve listened to that, sdferr. Thanks for the link. Something to listen to on Sat when I clean the garage.
Makewi is correct there, I should say. Would you allow me to alter my expression “human affairs” to “human political affairs” Makewi, without my having pulled a fast one?
Actually I think there is something more fundamental than the distinction between good and bad, and that is how we determine that which is bad and that which is good to begin with
That is what I meant by invoking Nietzche.
The transmutation of values stuff is the part I would not expect him to agree with. I’ve got disagreements. He was indeed kind of a philosophy troll. Blah blah christ sucks. Oh yeah? Well christ sucks! Nyah! Stupid christers! You suck! Jew!
That bias, in my opinion, was him at his least intellectual and his biggest failing. I think the dude just had issues. He got touched by a priest or something. It’s all justification. For a man who thought so deeply, and originally, I do not think he would even truly consider he might have his conception of theology pegged wrong and had made a straw jew.
He was really anti-straw-semitic. But then again aren’t all of them? I’ve yet to see any antisemites hate them for what they actually do, as opposed to what antisemites fancy them doing.
They may as well be evil pixies or something from Norse myth.
The evangellical atheists have the same thing going on for their straw-xianists.
These people suffer from a fundemental lack of kobolds in modern times.
I kinda digress.
I’m less interested in his judgements upon actual moral systems then in his analysis of what actually constitutes an abstract moral system and observations on differences amongst them.
But yeah… in that it is malleable by culture, at least perception of it, it is perhaps the least fundemental thing. You figure everything else out first, then toss ‘good’ on what you want and ‘evil’ on what opposes you (to grossly simplify). And there’s a meaningful distinction between good/bad, correct/incorrect, and good/evil.
Now that’s not any Natural Right/God thing… That kind of morality would be something else entirely though. It’s the perception of it. Which we can’t escape. There’s such a thing as a relative human-made morality EVEN IF there is an absolute divine morality because we’ve created 8 of them, which means AT LEAST 7 are wrong, which means 7 aren’t divine and were relative and inabsolute/un-universal. I suck at postmodernism but the one half-true part applies here. That little half-truth is where they get you. In Nietzche, in existentialism, in post modernism, deconstruction, it’s the same on this bit.
It’s mostly all lies. But if it was all a lie it might just die. They got that 1 tiny overworked half-a-point skeptical solipsitic thing keeping the whole thing tottering for them.
Like I can’t actually technically prove I’m not in the Matrix right now.
“…there is something more fundamental than the distinction between good and bad, and that is how we determine that which is bad and that which is good to begin with…”
But this is not the pre-political circumstances of “…[h]uman reason, no matter the erudition involved, can’t be separable from it’s ordinary, everyday, ubiquitous applications. These, it seems to me, are all one. Counting, sorting, distinguishing, listing, prioritizing and the rest of our everyday reasoning behaviors are inescapable. Crazy complex in their simplicity, we still haven’t come to the end of our road of a full and satisfactory explication of these things, all while we put them to work in everything we do” mentioned upthread?
But this is not the pre-political circumstances of “…
I don’t know.
But if I said yes, wouldn’t that make them not fundemental at all? That all the erudite reasoning comes first, and morality is just among the ‘ordinary daily applications of sorting and discriminating’ after the mind is made up?
Alter away, sdferr. No foul. In any case these sort of distinctions are only really useful to us if they help us work around the basic fact that people more often than not do and want what they want and find ways to justify it later.
The real work must be in figuring out how to get people to want what we think they should want. Easier I think in the earlier days of this country in which those present had the sort of pioneer-leave-me-the-fuck-alone spirit that comes with someone willing to chuck it all and move to a new and dangerous land. Much harder now that the reasoning behind instilling fundamental protections against governmental tyranny seems like something that never could have happened.
Erudition has nothing to do with it. The point, I thought, was rather that we do not know what makes up the reasoning of which we speak? And yet we carry on “doing” it, whatever it is, willy-nilly (or inescapably is perhaps better).
You can probably guess that I agree with Hume that we do what we do because it pleases us, or rather the reaction of others to our actions is what pleases us, and that is how we generally determine what constitutes good and bad. With the caveat that we often justify this by thinking our actions informed by reason as put forth by the likes of Hobbes & Locke.
Although I’ve been in a bit of a mood lately.
So we are simply hedonai, Makewi? Is this too rough, for me to suggest we equate the good and the pleasant? For there are at least two strains to this argument laying in our past.
Not necessarily sdferr. Our feelings about good and bad is based on how others react to our actions. If the reactions of others to something like adultery (likely pleasurable) is scorn and ridicule, we will likely alter our behavior to avoid it. OTOH, if the reaction is praise and or no reaction at all. Well…
The good news, great news really, is that if this is indeed true, then it is changeable and a trajectory can be modified.
Chemotherapy as treatment for various cancers is said to be terribly unpleasant, in some cases excruciatingly so, while still judged to be a good to be suffered. So the suffering, undertaken in expectation of the future pleasures of extended life, is merely a hedonic thing at one remove [and this assignment is not an ex-post rationalization]?
Or contrariwise, we know that overindulgence in certain pleasures good enough in themselves when taken in moderation, like alcohol, can lead to very unpleasant consequences like Korsakoff’s syndrome or cirrhosis of the liver, so we guide ourselves (by means of reason) to avoid these potentialities and again achieve our pleasure, our hedonic goal, at one remove [and again, this is not an ex-post infill]?
However, adjure that we live according to a golden rule, to undertake to do unto others as we would have them do unto ourselves, it seems to me anyhow, is going to draw us into no small difficulty where it comes to obtaining our own pleasures at the expense of our fellows. Rather, it appears to me that once we admit that, as Socrates puts it in the Gorgias, it is better to suffer an injustice than to commit an injustice, better to pay the penalty for a wrong done for justice’ sake rather than escape the penalty unjustly, our pleasure principle is on shaky ground indeed.
sdferr, as an aside since you mention Strauss, have you ever read this?
http://pcr.hudson.org/files/publications/Ceaser2006BradleySymposium.doc
Interesting read. It is the discussion paper for the 2006 Bradley Symposium by James Ceaser.
After a too long introductory anecdote about political demographics that seems a wholely irrelevant nicety designed to establish a polite analytic tone it gets into foundational concepts of modern political movements.
Which Strauss evidently had quite a bit of influence upon.
No I hadn’t seen that and thank you for the reference Entropy. I’ll give it a read.
Judging only from Ceaser’s statement
we could guess it to be written prior to AG Holder’s decision and non-rationale rationale on the trial of KSM et al.