In fact, just the opposite is true: by rallying to insist that a heretofore largely ineffectual establishment GOP wake up in time to stop Obama’s disastrous policy stewardship of the US, crazy nutbag wingnut teabaggers like me are hoping to preserve what’s left of a constitutional republic, wherein we as individuals are granted natural rights, not “managed” rights based on the whims of a liberal fascist President and select bureaucrats and judges in his crony capitalist puppet show.
Is that so wrong?
Michael Gerson, WaPo:
But there is an alternative narrative, developed by those who can’t shake their reverence for Obama. If a president of this quality and insight has failed, it must be because his opponents are uniquely evil, coordinated and effective. The problem is not Obama but the ruthless conspiracy against him.
So Matt Yglesias warns the White House to be prepared for “deliberate economic sabotage” from the GOP – as though Chamber of Commerce SWAT teams, no doubt funded by foreigners, are preparing attacks on the electrical grid. Paul Krugman contends that “Republicans want the economy to stay weak as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House.” Steve Benen explains, “We’re talking about a major political party . . . possibly undermining the strength of the country – on purpose, in public, without apology or shame – for no other reason than to give themselves a campaign advantage in 2012.” Benen’s posting was titled “None Dare Call it Sabotage.”
[…]
For the purposes of this argument, however, it is sufficient to say that all these economic policy debates have two sides.
Yet this is precisely what the sabotage theorists must deny. They must assert that the case for liberal policies is so self-evident that all opposition is malevolent. But given the recent record of liberal economics, policies that seem self-evident to them now seem questionable to many. Objective conditions call for alternatives. And Republicans are advocating the conservative alternatives – monetary restraint, lower spending, lower taxes – they have embraced for 30 years.[…]
The sabotage accusation, once implicit, is now direct among panicked progressives.
It’s nothing personal, really, fellas. It’s just that progressive policies are intellectually wrongheaded, stifling to liberty and the individual, disastrous for the economy, and antithetical to the classical liberalism upon which this country was first founded, and then consequently thrived.
We are Texas. You are Detroit, and California, and Greece, and the UK…
Open your eyes, please, would you? And for Chrissakes, lose the red diaper and put on some pants. You’re making spectacles of yourselves.
(h/t Geoff)
Rather than tackle Gerson’s views in detail, I’d like to step back from his argument with Iglesias, Benen, Krugman et al a tad, to see whether we can’t disentangle the rhetorical charge and counter-charge going on there — that is, the issue muddying rhetorical jujitsu at hand — to get to the underlying problem never shaped to clarity in Gerson’s piece: that is, to identify the ongoing argument between the two contending political ideologies currently at loggerheads in America; not with a view to proposing a solution, but merely for the purpose of getting the damned thing out of obscurity and back into the open again, so we have some particular (and therefore confident) sense we know what it is we’re arguing about.
The mess Gerson describes (creates? picks up from his antagonists?) appears at first glance to be about economic prescriptions, though generated in a negative sense, i.e., “What would one do to sabotage the economy in order to injure one’s political opponents?”.
My question, however, is “What drives this rhetoric?”: my tacit answer is that this is an argument, not about the means to an end, not about sincerely proposed economic prescriptions designed with a view to improving the business or economic lives of the people of the US, nor in the reverse, to injure political opponents by injuring the economics of the nation, but with Paul Ryan I say: this as another form of the argument about the ends of political life in America themselves. What, in other words, would we take to be the purpose or aims of our political organization in a Constitutional Republic in the first place. What we take to be our ultimate, our final, our highest ends.
There, I think, the contention refines to a preference for predominating equality on the one hand and predominating liberty on the other, with the stipulation that in either case, the preference is identified with “the better” or “the best” (the good). And here, in this quarrel over what “the good” means to us, is where we hang.
I think we can look forward to mass convulsions of leftist anti-Americanism when girly mouthed Kos and the rest of these cretins get their twelve stitches worth of elbow in ’10. If America says “fuck you and the horse you rode in on” when they’ve had a Vulcan leftist ubercreep in the White House, veto-proof majorities and a media which has taken a cue from the mainstreaming of prOn to submit itself to Baracky Bukkake, there’s going to be nowhere else to turn when the depth of their failure and rejection is realized. America is teh suxxor. Waaah!
Leftist thought and policy is like a drug: dangerous to start, hard to break away from. It tells you what you want to hear (“you’re good, and right, and moral, and compassionate”) while shakling you with a system that eats its own supporters, over promises and underdelivers, and makes serfs of freemen. Once a leftist regime is established, you have to ween off of it much the same as a drug. Or go cold turkey, but that can get messy.
I don’t really have much to add other than “These people are nuts!” and I just wanted to make sure I was registered here.
shutting down drilling in the gulf, taking over health care, nationalizing car companies,et al team r is a piker compared to these obots
Retread CA Gov. Jerry Brown has been conspicuously absent from the state since the election. He’s not returning reporter phone calls, he’s not making any statements about how he’s going to address the fiscal crisis or public unions post-election …
So PLEASE keep an eye on California, because it really is going to show whether the Congress – especially the newly elected Republicans – will hold CA responsible for its own mess.
So Matt Yglesias warns the White House to be prepared for “deliberate economic sabotage” from the GOP
I trust everyone appreciates the irony of this little twerp writing for Soros funded, ThinkProgress warning of economic sabotage.
this as another form of the argument about the ends of political life in America themselves.
Absolutely.
While Gerson does acknowledge there are always at least two sides, when he says “[y]et this is precisely what the sabotage theorists must deny he is either avoiding or denying the possibility that such fundamental principles may be at stake.
Because once you do acknowledge the presence of such principles then the adamancy exhibited by either side may prove to be not only more uncerstandable, but also entirely appropriate, and even necessary.
This however is not very pragmatic. Particularly for the pragmatists who always seek to have their way in exchange for not promoting or provoking a more permanent resolution.
In the minds of progressives, the land and the king are one.
Not only are Republicans and Tea Partyers piling up kindling under the vast kettle that’s boiling the current Administration (having already bitten off a chunk of the unpalatable Congress and spat it out) but pure businessmen and women, the hiring class, who refuse to play the game anymore, given the onerousness of the taxes, regulations and the seemingly permanent Academic – Government – Moocher – Looter mentality that’s directing this faltering Republic today.
River Galt is running deep and wide, and will continue to do so until this current mess is washed away.
In fact, just the opposite is true: by rallying to insist that a heretofore largely ineffectual establishment GOP wake up in time to stop Obama’s disastrous policy stewardship of the US, crazy nutbag wingnut teabaggers like me are hoping to preserve what’s left of a constitutional republic, wherein we as individuals
are grantedpreserve our own natural rights, not “managed” rights based on the whims of a liberal fascist President and select bureaucrats and judges in his crony capitalist puppet show.Can we go with that?
” For the purposes of this argument, however, it is sufficient to say that all these economic policy debates have two sides.
Yet this is precisely what the sabotage theorists must deny. They must assert that the case for liberal policies is so self-evident that all opposition is malevolent.
And this is exactly the strategy they’ve used since Obama’s taken office. Republicans are the party of “no”.They offer no ideas, they just want to stop progress, etc. Rinse, repeat.
dirty socialist Associated Press propaganda whore Sandy Shore sure doesn’t want bumblefuck to fail…
What’s a few extra bucks? Higher gas prices won’t hurt holiday spending much, shoppers say*
From Yglesias:
yes. We’d better get that employment up so we can get Obama re-elected. Is there something backward here?
The Nation‘s editors’ view of the Republican’s political stance at present:
And from their “About” page:
It’s a “really” critical spirit, I suppose, which makes no mention of an opponent’s stated rationale for arriving at a particular policy recommendation, but grooms all manner of malevolent and mendacious attributions in its stead.
From the Benen article:
I hope everyone caught the article on Harry Reid yesterday in the WSJ. (Link goes to my blog, for those who don’t have an WSJ subscription – I’m not sure if it’s behind the paywall or not). They talk about the legislative pile-up.
Kinda funny. You know, pot calling the kettle black.
Krugman wants blood…
I don’t think he ‘gets it’ quite yet. What’s necessary is what we are doing, Chumpman; what you desire is going to fail. Calling for blood isn’t what you want. Trust me on this.
Sdferr – Thank you for those links. It should warrant surprise, but sadly, that type of behavior is par for the course nowadays.
Krughole is terrified the economy might could get better without his prescribed spending orgy ever happening I think.
And now a word from Paul Krugman.
Obama declared sometime back — what, last May or so? — that he planned to challenge the Republicans after the Nov. election with a stark choice, a thing he seemed at the time to think his positive hole card, namely, “What will you cut?”. I haven’t seen him pull that hole card yet, but can’t we count on it coming? It sure as hell would be nice to find a serious list of items handed him when he does pull it.
the white house budget
Oh look! More Projection from the Left. Who saw that coming?
FIFY, Mr Benen.
What, in other words, would we take to be the purpose or aims of our political organization in a Constitutional Republic in the first place. What we take to be our ultimate, our final, our highest ends.
sdferr, I have had this discussion with numerous proggies. Without exception, the question is almost ridiculous. This idea you have of foundational principles is meaningless. There is a need for “fairness”, for “social justice” that all right thinking people endorse, and only progressive politics can deliver this. It is the only way. Your “ends” are antediluvian, retrogressive. No progressive gives a toss as to the ideal of liberty you mention.
It is, as you say, the ends. We don’t share them. We never will.
I trust everyone appreciates the irony of this little twerp writing for Soros funded, ThinkProgress warning of economic sabotage.
Not irony: projection. Whatever it is they accuse us of, that’s what they are actually doing. And have been doing for awhile.
http://theothermccain.com/2010/11/27/did-someone-say-desperation/
Re: sdferr #1 and Silver Whistle #24.
While I agree that the argument is over the ends to which our political system is to be aimed, I see something else which causes those ends to be selected for.
I see the main point on contention between what we call the left and right to be over what is to be the basic unit of society that is the ultimate sovereign. The unit that then lends its sovereign power to the government for it (the government) to use in defense of the interests of that sovereign.
On the right this most basic unit is the individual person. Government is established to defend, protect the interests and natural rights of the individual from all that would strip them away. This leads to the end being liberty.
On the left the basic societal unit that is sovereign is always a group, a collective, a committee. Individuals are always considered for political purposes, which is to say for all purposes, to be members of a group. Government is formed to protect the (self proclaimed) rights of these groups from other groups.
Instead of individuals having equality before the law it is the varied and shifting groups which are to be made equal in the eyes of each and every other group. This may only be accomplished by forcing each individual, whatever group they are part of, into being equal, as in interchangeable, with all other individuals so that all groups will be equal too.
Thank you newrouter in #26.
I was going to also make that point about the failed equivalence argument Gerson made at the end of his piece.
My only addition is that since we now have the Verona papers and many files from the USSR to peruse the conspiracy that Stormer wrote of did exist and as Stanley Kurtz has documented is still extant today both within the Democratic Party and in the community organized groups which supply the activists for that Party.
“Varied and shifting” sounds our invitation to arbitrarily chosen “whatevers“.
Does the radical left proclaim a desire for arbitrary rules, whether it may surreptitiously resort to them now and again or no? Has any leftist scheme we can think of honestly claimed to honor arbitrariness as such (which is almost as good a description of the primary principle of the Tyrant as I can imagine), as opposed to the vaunted unfolding of the dialectical Spirit of History, say?
Rules?
Please.
It’s all Calvinball, all the time.
I used the “varied and shifting” to mean that the composition of the groups varies with time and that the qualities which are seen to be attached to the group can shift over time also. I don’t see these “groups” as foundational but they seem to be considered such on the left.
No I do not see them “proclaim a desire for arbitrary rules” nor to “honestly claim[ed] to honor arbitrariness”. They do however constantly work to implement policies which do inject arbitrariness into the system the policy effects. This arbitrariness is called “fairness” or “social justice” to disguise it. These they do proclaim for and honor though not honestly.
“crazy nutbag wingnut teabaggers like me are hoping to preserve what’s left of a constitutional republic”
We haz met the enemy, and theyze aru us?
Calvinball….maybe. My seriously unintellectual thought? well GEEZ folks, again and again and again, the cute little proggies are projecting their wildest dreams upon us. ’nuff said
oh noes for baracky
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/8165137/Will-release-of-new-Wikileaks-secrets-blow-Obamas-nice-guy-image.html
dominoes falling:
link
back story
Oh, it’s simple enough: the 2012 election campaign retooled on 3 November 2010. Once it was certain that there would be a Republican majority in the House, the goal became one of shifting the responsibility for the economy onto the House, and the Republicans in general. If the Democrats are successful in pushing the meme that the Republicans are actually trying to sabotage the economy, to unseat President Obama, then even if the economy does not improve it won’t be the Democrats’ fault.
The Democrats ran their 2008 campaign again in 2010, and it didn’t work. Now they think they can run their 2008 campaign again in 2012, and have better luck.
hoochie from ak
Grateful Dead – Scarlet Begonias – 4-27-77
…but could also seriously damage his foreign policy.
– Bummblefuck has a foreign policy?
– Well, other than apologizing for American sins to every crackpot dictator in the world, or spending millions on failed trips, going hat in hand, begging for favors, and getting bupkus for it.
– Oh, and least I forget, warning Israel it better stop picking on terrorists, shamelessly promoting freedom, and defending itself.
And building places where people might live in Jerusalem, let’s not forget.
Hell, they might even expose the separate agenda of the State Department we’ve all suspected.
Obama the racist? Another call from the left for him to go farther left.
Or perhaps a way to make him appear to be a centrist and moderate as opposed to those radical Republicans.
On the radio they reported that Hillary is already making calls to the affected parties. Apologizing in advance?
Breakup? and bankrupt.
I see the second link only goes to a preview so here is more at Instapundit.
geoffb, I heard the other day on Minitrue that the possibility of PIIGS bondholders having to take a haircut was now being openly floated. This would surely prove the end of the euro. Portugal needing a bailout is certainly around the corner, but Spain might be a step too far for the German economy; there appear to be several routes to EUthenasia.
See here for more on Irish welshing.
I managed to stifle a laugh at that one. But when it came to “and even Belgium”, I’m sorry, I couldn’t keep it in any longer.
Yea, I read that the other day geoff.
Hamtramck – a bit of trivia for those non-Michiganders – is completely enclosed inside of Detroit. It’s weird. An old Polish community, it has slowly been transformed into Arab. It started out largely Calean, but I think that’s even become increasingly muslim. The main part of town- (its not very big) many of the signs are in Arabic.
With Sinn Fein winning a recent by-election, Cowen’s majority in the Dáil is cut to two. Presumably there will be some squeaky bum time in Dublin until the bailout is passed. Can you imagine if the vote goes against?
Yes, “even Belgium” is a good punchline. You could think of many gags to fit it.
Yes, “even Belgium” is a good punchline. You could think of many gags to fit it.
– So it must be Tuesday?
I hope you get your restraint and lower taxes that you bad stepdaddies advocate.
suck this beaver cleaver
Get back in the box,cynn.
E.J Dionne gets into the act this morning as well, though he chooses to go after his opposition with accusations centered in national security policy rather than on economic grounds. Did I mention I despise people like Dionne? Must have been an oversight on my part then. What a putz.
So, giving up our advantage in missile defense is vital to our nation’s security? I did not know that.
[…] “economic sabotage” attacks of Democrat mouthpieces like Steve Benen or Paul Krugman earlier. Today we find a novel codification (pdf) of that particular Democrat ‘strategic’ […]