The Atlantic Magazine email I got today leads with
The Future of the American Idea. As The Atlantic celebrates its 150th anniversary, scholars, novelists, politicians, artists, and others look ahead to the future of the American idea.
So I click through the link, and I get to (subscriber-only, I believe):
Consider The Atlantic’s passage: through a permanent revolution in technology, from the telephone, to the practical fountain pen, to the radio, to the note pad, to the television, to the Internet; through financial crises, beginning in 1857 with what The Atlantic called a national “flurry” over credit (or liquidity, to use the present flurry’s term); through national arguments over slavery, suffrage, evolution, immigration, prohibition, anticommunism, civil rights, feminism, gay rights, evolution and immigration (again); through the international contests of ideology that defined the last century and into the new contest that so far is shaping this one. How has The Atlantic endured? More to the point, why?
…
The Atlantic was created in Boston by writers who saw themselves as the country’s intellectual leaders, and so its scope from the start was national, if rather theoretical. It was founded on an encompassing abstraction, expressed in the words that appeared in the first issue and that appear again on the cover of this one: In politics, it would “honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea.” That sounds pretty good.
And pretty good to me as well. They continue:
In the pages that follow, George F. Will rings an alarm over the danger inherent in embracing a singular American idea, but many of the contributors agree on a rough definition of the idea itself…the easy part, as John Hope Franklin suggests.
So I click through to Franklin’s piece, since I’m a big believer in starting with the easy part.
If the American idea was to subdue Native Americans and place them at the disposal of European settlers, to import several million Africans to the New World and subject them to a lifetime of slavery, to impose on Asian immigrants a lifetime of discrimination, then perhaps the American idea was not so admirable.
If the American idea, once the Civil War had concluded, was to sentence the freedmen to a lifetime of racial segregation, discrimination, and humiliation, then perhaps the American idea was not so praiseworthy.
A litany of abuse and failure follows. I keep digging, looking for an idea, or a pony, and find:
The American idea is the nation’s holiday garb, its festive dress, its Sunday best. It covers up an everyday practice of betraying the claims of equality, justice, and democracy. It calls for Thomas Jefferson to advise his young protégé Edward Coles to abandon his plan to emancipate his slaves and migrate to Illinois, and to reconcile himself to his country’s “unfortunate condition.” While Coles did not accept Jefferson’s advice, many of his contemporaries did, thus strengthening the American idea of inequality and injustice.
It is fairly late in the game, but one hopes that there is still time to grasp the reality of American life for those of different racial and national backgrounds and to embrace the country’s professed ideals of freedom, equality, and justice.
If that’s what ‘the country’s intellectual leaders’ really think, we’re well and truly f**ked. What’s worse is that it reads almost word for word like a slam that I laid out against just that kind of thinking. I did a post on patriotism back in 2002 (yes, I obsess over the issue) and in it I said:
I know two really bad parents. One is a couple that simply refuses to control their children; they love them totally, and so, they explain, they love everything they do. Unsurprisingly, they are raising two little monsters. The other is a single mother who explains that everything bad in her life is the fault of her child, and that everything he does is wrong. Unsurprisingly, her child is depressed, withdrawn and equally badly damaged.
I’ll define patriotism as ‘love of country’. Both the parents above (all three of them, actually) claim to ‘love’ their children. But to blindly smile and clean up when your child smashes plates on the floor is not an act of love. And blindly smiling and waving flags when your country does something wrong is not an act of patriotism.
But – there is a point where criticism, even offered in the guise of love, moves past the point of correction and to the point of destruction. It’s a subtle line, but it exists. And my friend (who is less of a friend because I can’t begin to deal with her fundamentally abusive parenting) is destroying her child. And there are liberals who have adopted an uncritically critical view of America. Who believe it to have been founded in genocide and theft, made wealthy on slave labor and mercantilist expropriation, to be a destroyer of minorities, women, the environment and ultimately they argue, itself.
I’m sorry but their profession of love for America is as hollow to me as that [bad] mother’s profession of love for her son. Are those things true? As facts, they are an incomplete account of this country’s history. As a worldview, they are destructive and self-consuming.
(Note the clever tie to the comment thread below and the connection between patriotism and marriage)
Franklin’s piece is to America what that abusive mother is to her child. An intelligentsia that adopts that kind of attitude is not going to create a culture in which mutual connection and a sense of patrimony exist – the root of patriotism as a concept.
Let me go on for a moment and try and explain why it is so important that we have a healthy patriotism here in America (and why other countries need to have them as well).
Schaar explains it well –
“To be a patriot is to have a patrimony; or, perhaps more accurately, the patriot is one who is grateful for a legacy and recognizes that the legacy makes him a debtor. There is a whole way of being in the world, captured best by the word reverence, which defines life by its debts; one is what one owes, what one acknowledges as a rightful debt or obligation. The patriot moves within that mentality. The gift of land, people, language, gods memories, and customs, which is the patrimony of the patriot, defines what he or she is. Patrimony is mixed with person; the two are barely separable. The very tone and rhythm of a life, the shapes of perception, the texture of its homes and fears come from membership in a territorially rooted group. The conscious patriot is one who feels deeply indebted for these gifts, grateful to the people and places through which they come, and determined to defend the legacy against enemies and pass it unspoiled to those who will come after.”
Successful societies are ones in which each member adds to the social capital that can be passed on to the next generation. To do that – to save, rather than spend, to build rather than consume – requires some sense of obligation, of one’s place in a chain that stretches from your ancestors to your descendents – and which is broad enough to expand ‘ancestor’ and ‘descendent’ to include other than your blood kin.
Habermas talks about it differently. He bases his view in Marxist and Enlightenment philosophy (unlike the Frankfurt School of post-Marxists, he embraces the Enlightenment). He’s always a difficult read, and his arguments are hard (impossible, really) to reduce to bloggable soundbites.
I’ll do something on his views over the weekend.
But the reality is that someone who sees the central American Idea as Franklin does owes – what, exactly – to the future of America?
Yes the things he talks about are part of the American history, people, and idea. But they do not define the American idea, and people who believe they do – as does Yglesias, I’ll suggest (from his own words and from his suggested reading in the area) are fundamentally missing what it is that Middle Americans see in America. And in doing so, they do two things – as the ‘shapers’ of our culture, they mis-shape it in fundamentally damaging ways (thank God for hysterisis), and they isolate themselves increasingly from the mass of American people who are grateful for the patrimony America has given them, and who are willing to contribute to the future.
Perhaps that’s why children are so out of fashion in certain circles…
Welcome Instapundit readers…it appears to be ‘patriotism’ week here, so please check out the four posts I’ve done this week on the subject: ‘Patriotism – Goldberg to Couric to Yglesias‘, ‘You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me‘, ‘Patriotism Rears Its Head Yet Again‘, and ‘Rorty on Patriotism‘
Armed-
You say:
bq. To do that – to save, rather than spend, to build rather than consume – requires some sense of obligation, of one’s place in a chain that stretches from your ancestors to your descendents – and which is broad enough to expand ‘ancestor’ and ‘descendent’ to include other than your blood kin.
Amen. And that is what is missing from those self-proclaimed “intellectual leaders” world view. Those who “…saw themselves as the country’s intellectual leaders…” They see themselves as the common man’s betters and know that they should rule over us common men. I say not and I will fight them for as long as I live. They hate people like me and would rather we just shut up to follow their superior stewardship.
Useless nits…..
The Hobo ver. 3.0
You describe two ends of a spectrum (the bad parenting styles) and point out correctly that the truth lies between them. Embrace and support the good, but correct the bad.
I confidently expect many commentators to miss this critical point, and treat the conflict as a binary choice between “The Left” and “The Right”. Some of the usual folks here happily trash “The Left” as if it were a unified position, so it can be criticized based on its loopiest advocates. Certainly some folks on the other side of the aisle demonize “The Right” in the same way. (Surely few on the Right feel that it is fair to assume that they agree with Ann Coulter!)
You are right to criticize the “America is bad in all ways” position that some take. America is, in fact, the Great Experiment. Not executed flawlessly, but still Great. The fact that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves is a deep disappointment. He was an imperfect human being, capable of great vision and great achievements, but not capable of perfection. And indeed he participated in a great evil. But that doesn’t keep him from being great, and having done great things.
However, the current situation looks different to me. The Bush-Cheney administration is not one that is driven by a great and glorious vision, while being subject to human fallibility. It looks from here like those folks are driven by the need to accumulate power and build empire. They have undercut so many aspects of the Great Experiment, especially its elegant system of checks and balances, that I fear for the future of America. As a patriotic American, I fear that they are destroying our country.
And what makes it even worse, is that they are exploiting many of the best instincts of the American people (and some of the worst), to achieve their imperial ambitions. The American people want to make the world a better place. They want to protect themselves against the fear of attackers. And the Bush-Cheney administration exploits these desires to build their hoped-for empire, using sophisticated PR methods first developed by people like Joseph Goebbels, and carried far beyond that by the political genius of Karl Rove and his ilk.
I know that there are patriots on the Left, and patriots on the Right. There are people on all sides who love the ideals of America, who believe that those ideals are real in spite of our failures to be perfect. But there are also cynical exploiters, who appeal to the best in the American people to try to achieve deeply un-American goals of power and control. Those cynical exploiters exist both on the Left and on the Right, and both must be fought.
But it is the ones on the Right who currently control our nation and its future, and who have led us to the edge of the abyss.
Beard…excellent points. One important issue that your comments raise is the effect of the current administration on Americans’ idea of patriotism (on both sides of the political spectrum). It is nearly useless to attempt to consider the issue without at least trying (rather than dismissing, as happens here constantly) to understand the validity of these concerns. For example, I have become more patriotic in the last 7 years in the face of what I see as an all-out and transparent assault on our system of government and the very things that make it great.
Further to Beard’s comment:
The Roman Republic, I believe, started with high ideals (inherited from the Greeks, it might be added). And we all know what happened to that – it became an empire, and then became cruel and corrupt, and then fell; and the main agent of its fall was from inside, as the people in power spent the empire’s treasure on their own pleasures, on grandoise foreign adventures to distract the masses from the problems at home and on bread and circuses to distract them from same.
The American Republic has become the American Imperium, within the last thirty years or so – it has even revived the principle of inherited power, although in America’s case it is interlocking dynasties and the inheritance happens while the giver of that inheritance is still alive.
I am a Brit, and we have our own problems, some of them the same as yours – but America and the world needs the events in Tom Clancy’s “Debt of Honour”, and it needs Jack Ryan. It needs them bad. It isn’t going to get them, barring miracles – and so America is going to fall. The 21st Century will be America’s last; all the rest of us can do is hope you don’t take the rest of us with you.
Beard and Alan,
To suggest that the current utter lack of faith in patriotism or even a soft nationalism by intellectuals on the left is due to the work of a power hungry, empire building Bush is dishonest, ignorant and I think plays on stereotypes and prejudice rather than fact.
The gravest threats to human liberty and freedom surely come from the left. Denial of speech to conservatives on campus, purging of conservatives from academia, ever greater constraints on individual freedoms by an ever larger Government, political correctness run amok, where all religions save Islam get denied freedom of expression.
A few hundred questionable cases of suspected terrorists, a few data mining operations that maybe cull through some quasi-private speech before they get exposed and shut down by illegal press leaks, and this you think is some kind of oppression?
How has the Bush administration done anything that actually threatens any freedoms of anybody you know? Really? Are libeals in jails? Can liberals not speak out? Not get their views reflected in media of all forms? To continue to compare the honest attempt to fight terrorism hard — not soft — and balance rights versus security as a prelude to National Socialism means you can’t or won’t consider your political opponents men and women of good faith. Then you complain that the right does the same to you. Pot, meet kettle.
Such thinking can trace its lineage to the anti-US strains in similar world travelers in the 30s, 40s, 50s. The juvenile anti-establishment antics of the 60s and 70s that was more about easy sex and access to drugs than any real concern for the “people,” most of whom despised the coarsening of the culture.
The same intellectual elites screamed about Reagan for 8 years and more, until the collapse of the USSR and the liberation of Eastern Europe kind of made a lie of all those years of US bad, Communists good.
I’m with AL on this one. I’m all for a nuanced, full view of American history good and bad, but the anti-patriots among us aren’t happy if all we see and talk abotu is the bad, or that any mention of the treasures that remain, abide, and continue to influence the entire world for good MUST be matched by the old indictments.
Despite the amends to former victims of American wrongdoing, despite the advances made on all fronts today, despite the gains…
And, without any reference to how the rest of the world stacks up rights and wrongs wise.
I always say, when someone says the US has betrayed our principles: compared to whom? What other countries even try to adhere to principles like ours? What do the skeletons in THEIR closets look like?
The erosions of civil liberties that we decry began well before Dubya’s term. Law enforcement and government as a whole covet ever increasing power. The manipulation of others through fear isn’t a top-down problem. It’s systemic. And it isn’t recent. It’s inherent in human nature. Concentrations of power always seek to consolidate and grow. Our government’s checks and balances have impeded that tendency, but people have been at work eroding them for centuries — some for personal gain, but even more with the best of intentions. “If only our side could overcome the hateful opposition, utopia would be just around the corner”. That goes for Dubya’s crowd as well. Insistance that they’re significantly more venial than their predecessors, or opponants, merely demonstrates selective shortsightedness. Every leader believes they are using their power for the collective good. Even most dictators.
The odds are terribly stacked against any effort to scale back government, because nobody sufficiently motivated to achieve the power necessary to do so is likely to want to weaken that power.
Pointing the finger at right or left in this context encompasses only half the problem. The obsession with Bush/Cheney as embodiments of the problem serves only to give a blank check to their successors. Any new government, of either party, will likely take political advantage of contrasting itself with its predecessors. They’re vastly less likely to undo anything of substance. Framing their departure as a “first step” merely makes it less likely that a second will ever be taken. If there’s any hope for “fixing” things, it has to involve focusing on the issues, rather than mere symbolic gestures and demonizing one’s opponants. _That’s_ what most irritates me about Bush Bashing.
dadmanly;
You’re far from grasping the point if you think that questioning whether Bush has silenced “Liberals” or put them in jail, or otherwise negatively impacted the freedoms of “anyone I know” is important or relevant. Or that other countries are worse in some regards.
I’ll also pass up on the “honest attempt to fight terrorism hard…” comment by simply saying that, to most observers, the Bush administration has been neither honest nor diligent in “fighting terrorism”.
Also, I don’t have any “political opponents”, I’m just a citizen of the US, entitled, like the rest of us, to express my views and concerns freely and loudly (and as is the case in all other western democracies). And to be clear (as if this needs to be said anymore) I certainly don’t consider the actions of Bush-Cheney et al to be of good faith, at all. And so what do I think of their supporters? Well, most (like you, I’m assuming) can’t point to any tangible real benefits from supporting their policies, that you can directly ascribe TO their policies (not like “we haven’t had a nuke go off in New York yet”) like the wealthy and powerful media/industrialists can (good times for those folks, that’s for sure). So I am left wondering what motivates, yes. I can only think that it comes down to believing in their articulated principles (which they rarely follow themselves, btw), and while I might think that it is misguided (as in “The gravest threats to human liberty and freedom surely come from the left” or fear of “National Socialism”), I do not think are held or argued “in bad faith”.
Well, my confident prediction in [#2,par.2] has certainly come true in the responses of dadmanly [#5] and Umbriel [#6], whose arguments are essentially “No, it’s the Left that’s bad.” Both of these treat “the Left” as a unified position, to be caricatured beyond any resemblance to reality, and then criticized on the basis of that caricature.
Of course, the Bush-Cheney administration is not responsible for all the ills that have accumulated over many decades. But they are in power now. They are the ones who created an unaccountable prison at Guantanamo. They are the ones who justified a pre-emptive attack on another country based on fictional WMDs. (Sure the dictator of that country was a certified Bad Guy, but there’s a lot of them around.) They are currently banging the gong for another pre-emptive attack on another country that might, possibly, be able to threaten us sometime in the future. Do you think the WWII generation would have attacked another country on a basis like this? (The answer is NO, in case you want to argue.)
It’s true that power-hungry politicians have existed pretty much as long as the human race. One of the greatest aspects of the Great Experiment is the system of checks and balances that restricts the power of those in control. I claim that there is a quantitative and qualitative difference in the attacks on this system mounted by the Bush-Cheney administration (and their neo-con group as it attacked the Clinton administration), and the efforts of any previous administration in history, Left or Right.
That’s my hypothesis. I believe it’s correct, but you could argue against it on the basis of specific facts. Not on the basis of general claims that everyone hassles everyone else. Let me propose to resolve this on the basis of attacks on the judicial system — an essential part of our system of checks and balances. Over the past several decades, which party has done more to prevent the other party from getting its judicial nominees to up-or-down votes before the Senate? (Don’t just cheer for your side: what are the numbers?)
Or, you guys like to talk about big government. Which administrations have grown the size of the government, and which have shrunk it: Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, or Bush II? Which have increased the deficit and which have shrunk it? Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, or Bush II? (Don’t just cheer for your side: what are the numbers?)
Umbriel wants to focus on the issues. That’s what I’m proposing. I’m making the falsifiable claim that the Bush-Cheney administration is worse than most or all of its predecessors in quantifiable ways. (For you non-scientists out there, “falsifiable” is a good thing, meaning that evidence can tell you whether it’s right or wrong.) If I’m wrong, which seems to be what you are claiming, provide the evidence.
I think I will choose to believe that dadmanly’s 5:17 comment is just very, very clever parody. Otherwise, ‘They haven’t come for me or anyone I know yet’, and ‘Woo-hoo! We’re better than Myanmar!’ (in essence) – well, it’s just too depressing.
“If that’s what ‘the country’s intellectual leaders’ really think,”
But, of course, and as you know, AL, it isn’t – it’s instead way on the far end of a very long spectrum (and I wish I could see what’s being said in the rest of the piece). And even then, how utterly +horrible+, to proclaim that we must “embrace the country’s professed ideals of freedom, equality, and justice.”
“The other is a single mother who explains that everything bad in her life is the fault of her child, and that everything he does is wrong . . .”
Poor kid! But this is where, I think, your analogy fails, and not just on irrelevent technicalities. Even if we accept unrelenting criticism and blame for everything as the proper ‘match,’ what’s doing the work here is the concept of the emotional responsibilities of raising a child, where such a relationship would indeed take a heavy toll. But that doesn’t transfer over at all to the relationship between citizen and country: even if I constantly say mean things about America, it’s not going to feel really bad, cry, and require years of therapy. (In contrast,I think you’re right on target with the permissive citizen-country relationship (the first set of parents): it does transfer over, describing a process whereby countries – really, their citizens – can turn into monsters.
“But the reality is that someone who sees the central American Idea as Franklin does owes – what, exactly – to the future of America?
Working to fix it*, in line with “the country’s professed ideals of freedom, equality, and justice.
Now, of course, rather few people see it in such a stark and simplified light: I certainly don’t: instead, good and bad is almost always mixed together in our nation’s history, although there are individuals and moments that are touchstones, that truly stand out for better or worse. But I honestly don’t see the problem you’re seeing. Yes, while it’s certainly not the whole story, America has “been founded in genocide and theft, made wealthy on slave labor and mercantilist expropriation, to be a destroyer of minorities, women, the environment “. So? We work to make it better, *as other Americans have done at every point in our country’s history, in their striving to live up to an ideal.*
*that’s* our patrimony.
that should be:
” Even if we accept unrelenting criticism and blame for everything as the proper ‘match’, what’s doing the work here is the concept of the emotional responsibilities of raising a child”
And yes, obviously proper use of tags is not part of my patrimony. Sigh.
[ Heh. Previous comment fixed per these directions. — M.F. ]
There was a time when a sub-discipline within political science called “Americanism,” headed up by people like S.M. Lipset and E.C. Ladd, studied a genuine understanding and analysis of the “American Ideal.”
(It was also called, simply, the “American Ideology,” and was based on Tocqueville’s notion of “American Exceptionalism.” To my knowledge it was never referred to in this literature as the “American Idea” which seems to be a term coined by Atlantic for the deliberate objective of misinformation.)
And it was once possible to obtain a post in political science without expressing an overtly anti-American position, but that time has mostly passed. There are a few genuine Americanists in academia, holding onto posts at second and third tier institutions, but most of them are teaching in the Junior College system. The ability of the feminist contingent within academia to prevent Larry Summers, an avowed liberal who served in the Clinton Whitehouse, from even speaking at UC Davis demonstrates the total and complete dominance of this quirky worldview on our campuses. It is, indeed, a pretty dire circumstance. And we should not assume it will… “correct itself,” for it lacks both the will, and the ability, to do so.
I might even suggest that we’ll soon see requirements for academic oaths of allegiance to anti-American “social justice” values… but the fact is that they’re already here.
Beard, Alan, Dan C.
I don’t buy in. Go ahead and caricature my position all you want.
Beard starts out with the premise that truth falls somewhere between left and right, a mix of good and bad. Fine, if that’s all he said.
But then he asserts that Bush/Cheney tilted that balance (as in more to the bad or all bad):
It looks from here like those folks are driven by the need to accumulate power and build empire. They have undercut so many aspects of the Great Experiment, especially its elegant system of checks and balances, that I fear for the future of America. As a patriotic American, I fear that they are destroying our country.
So let’s talk specifics. What checks and balances have been undercut? What powers of the Judiciary or Legislative have been usurped?
Whether you talk about FISA or not to FISA, NSA data mining of international telecommunications, Guantanamo and the proper treatment of illegal foreign enemy combatants, you can wrap them all up in one bucket. Those who argue for an aggressive response to international radical islamic terrorism will decalre that these steps are a reasonable balance of security versus privacy, and well within the constitutional powers of the Commander in Chief in time of war.
Opponents, of course, declare otherwise, but most often go way beyond a difference of opinion and ascribe devious and evil intent as motives for taking the aggressive stances as above.
The sum total of your arguments, the basis of your beliefs, rest on subjective characterizations that derive from the a priori hatred and/or distrust and or demonization of Bush and Cheney.
Think not? Then why were and are similar steps taken by the Clinton Administration ignored? Earlier administrations. FDR? Talk about usurping checks and balances, FDR tried to take over the Supreme Court and created all manner of bureaucratic havoc in the name of the public good, much of it reversed.
Your arguments would have more strength if you weren’t so willfully inattentive to the very real threat that terrorists pose to our security in the age of state sponsorship of terror and proliferation of WMDs.
That’s the basis for all the “ill intent” you see in the current administration. To the degree you ignore it, to the same degree you demonize those most dedicated to such fears as real and significant.
dadmanly;
Consider two comments that you made here.
In #5:
bq. To continue to compare the honest attempt to fight terrorism hard — not soft — and balance rights versus security as a prelude to National Socialism means you can’t or won’t consider your political opponents men and women of good faith.
And in #12:
bq. Opponents, of course, declare otherwise, but most often go way beyond a difference of opinion and ascribe devious and evil intent as motives for taking the aggressive stances as above.
bq. The sum total of your arguments, the basis of your beliefs, rest on subjective characterizations that derive from the a priori hatred and/or distrust and or demonization of Bush and Cheney.
Now, honestly, do you think it is fair or honest argumentation to dismiss the concerns of those of us who do see threats to the American ideal from Bush-Cheney as BDS? Especially considering the mountains of evidence and volumes of data that bolster such beliefs? And you accuse us as arguing out of “bad faith”.
If this is your view, then no matter what I say you will have already concluded that it is based on some visceral, irrational hatred of Bush and Cheney and the Neocon intellects and (I’ll say it…Anti-American/anti-patriotic) political/media structure that have propelled them into power. No matter how I attempt to answer your trite and unrelated demand that I provide hard evidence that my personal liberties have been compromised, in your view it will already be tainted by this hatred. Well, not to put to fine a point on it, but this is an insulting accusation that I do not feel compelled, or capable, of dispelling in someone who feels so. So what’s the point.
Here’s another example of a position I find hard to reconcile with your criticism of Liberals:
bq. Your arguments would have more strength if you weren’t so willfully inattentive to the very real threat that terrorists pose to our security in the age of state sponsorship of terror and proliferation of WMDs.
According to you, those who cannot “see the very real threat” or who argue that it has been inflated or misused for political gain are unworthy of serious consideration, am I correct? Once again, why should I even try?
/discussion with dadmanly.
Is it okay for us to just say that the people who work for the Atlantic are not now and never were the “country’s intellectual leadership�
Fletcher Christian:
Before we all jump into the abyss and drag the Brits in after us, let’s put some perspective on this.
America is far less of an “Imperium” than it was before WWII. It is vastly less imperial than it was in the middle of the 19th century, when newspapers (Democrat newspapers, of course) were bellowing for the conquest and colonization of Mexico and Cuba. Or when General Andrew Jackson decided all on his own to take Florida away from Spain.
Inherited power and interlocking dynasties? What the hell are you talking about? Every nation has prominent political families. The greatest of ours was the Adams, and the noisiest is the Kennedys. But family dynasties are an extremely weak force in American political history – the “Washington outsiders” outnumber them a hundred to one.
If a person with a famous name gets elected to office, it has far less to do with the power of his family than it does with the fact that campaigners can market him to the voters like a brand name.
When we have three presidents in a row that are all named Soros, we can start to worry about inherited power.
Do you know how some middle and high schools ban students from wearing particular clothing, or particular colors, because those are “gang symbols”? My kid’s high school once banned students from wearing red!
Demosophist [#11] seems to want to ban people, especially social workers, from being in favor of “social justice”, or worse from teaching their students about it. Because, after all, some horrible Left-wing folks use “social justice” as a code-word for bad things.
Excuse me, but I actually want to live in a just society. I want to live in a society that provides equal opportunity for all, who will then take advantage of those opportunities according to their native abilities and their willingness to work hard. Following his link to the alleged “academic oaths of allegiance”, I actually like having social workers around who are trained to help poor and disadvantaged people figure out the complex bureaucratic maze we have created, to find the help that we supposedly provide so they can actually take advantage of those opportunities.
And, while I’m ranting, I don’t know the details of Larry Summers and UC Davis, but I seriously doubt that the feminists objected to him because of his politics. Rather, it was because of his famous quote as (now former) President of Harvard that the reason for fewer distinguished women scientists on the Harvard faculty was different amounts of innate ability in science among women. Personally, I oppose the idea of dis-inviting someone because you disagree with them (I approved of Columbia inviting Ahmadinejad, and of the criticism he got from Columbia’s President), but let’s get the reason right.
bq. _When we have three presidents in a row that are all named Soros, we can start to worry about inherited power._
It’s a rare and noteworthy event when I agree with Glen Wishard [#15], so I want to commemorate it.
However, to make sure it doesn’t last too long, and still on this topic, let me speak briefly in favor of inheritance taxes as social policy.
Part of the American ideal has been the notion of equal opportunity. Not equal outcome, but an equal opportunity to do well in society, as a function of one’s innate abilities, one’s willingness to work hard, and of course, of one’s luck.
But specifically, not just because of one’s ancestry.
Bill Gates is the wealthiest man in America (perhaps the world, I’m not sure) because of all three of those things. Very sensibly, he plans to give away most of his money. His kids will still be quite wealthy, but their ability to stay in that bracket will depend on their own abilities, hard work, and luck. His grandchildren even more so. Inheritance taxes help make this happen, even if a rich person really wants to create a permanent idle class of descendants.
Inheritance taxes don’t prevent you from giving your kids the best education money can buy, and even a heap of start-up capital to see what they can do with. What those taxes accomplish is to prevent the establishment of permanent immortal fortunes, growing faster than any competitors can because of their sheer size and the power of compound interest, from which their human “owners” dangle as useless appendages.
Let new fortunes be built by new smart, hard-working, and lucky people. That’s where the wealth of a society like ours comes from, not from inherited fortunes.
Beard –
Thanks for the infomercial on Inheritance Tax, but …
Your argument that it prevents the creation of political oligarchs is wrong. Family money is not the royal road to power in America, it is just as likely to be a negative. The Rockefellers never managed to buy their way into the White House.
Sure, being a millionaire can give you good leg up in politics. But millionaires get shot down like clay pigeons all the time. Take a look at the ocean of money the current candidates are swimming in. PACs buy the White House, not families.
When personal wealth does talk, it doesn’t favor any particular message. Liberal millionaires make a virtue of noblesse oblige whenever it suits them. It’s always the other guy’s lucre that’s filthy.
So instead of favoring a tax that gores low-income landowners, not rich lawyers, let’s defund the political parties, shoot the political consultants, and limit the campaign season to three months, not three goddamn years.
Glen,
Do you have any evidence that the inheritance tax has actually gored any specific low-income landowners? As I understand it, people have been looking for years for a family farm lost to inheritance taxes, and having a hard time finding one. Bill Frist claimed to have found one, but he got his “facts wrong.”:http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7647.html
The exemption is large enough to avoid the problems people claim, and you could simply change the law to give family farms a 100% exemption, rather than letting every wealthy person pass on their fortune without inheritance taxes.
“Thanks for the infomercial on Inheritance Tax, but …”
Seconding the bit about ‘ gored low-income landowners’ having, as far as anyone can tell, no basis in reality (and all the groups working for the preservation of the estate tax in fact stipulate rather generous exemptions and allowances). But besides all that, why on earth oppose the estate tax? Besides the bit about the concentration of truly astronomical degrees of wealth within privileged dynasties – which doesn’t seem to fit well with our ideal of a democratic, socially mobile society – we’re talking about protecting the ability of fortunate heirs and heiresses – whose only relevant talent was picking the right parent/s to be born to – to inherit enormous, multi-million dollar legacies upon the death of said parent/s. (As opposed to only hundreds of thousands, maybe a million or two, etc.) Why?
#16:
Utter and irrelevant nonsense. I never said anything even remotely like that, nor could anyone construe anything I said in that light, unless they were determined to shift the emphasis away from an argument they can’t possibly win. The problem in schools of social work isn’t that they “teach the principles of social justice” (in fact, there’s a course at UCLA that teaches both those arguments, and their oppositional arguments, which is laudable) but rather that they require students and faculty to invest in an ideological litmus test in order to advance or graduate. This is not only unethical, and rather smarmy, it’s illegal under the US Constitution. But the perverse notion of speech that has grown up under the thumb of modern political correctness in the academy sees this sort of litmus test as not only allowable, but essential.
Indicative of an awareness that were they not able to demand such a shibboleth they’d have nothing left but vapor.
If that were what the term “social justice” meant there’d be no argument. However, it isn’t. And you’re either making your argument out of ignorance or mendacity. Indeed, you’ll find it exceedingly difficult to pin any of these folks down to a definition, because doing so subjects their philosophical notion to the outrageous slings and arrows of logic and empirical proof. If we have some understanding of what society is, and what justice entails, what in the world is “social justice” besides… er, group entitlement?
As for Larry Summers, of course they disinvited him because of his statement about women in science, and because they simply had to send a warning to any other university administrator who might have the temerity to suggest that we look to logic or empirical analysis for answers that ideology was already answered for us. The point wasn’t that he was dis-invited because of his politics but in spite of them. You’re not allowed to challenge the orthodoxy no matter how impressive your liberal credentials.
And the Bush-Cheney administration exploits these desires to build their hoped-for empire, using sophisticated PR methods first developed by people like Joseph Goebbels, and carried far beyond that by the political genius of Karl Rove and his ilk.
Is there perchance another Bush administration we’re discussing here? Cause I’m thinking of the one involved with Harriet Myers, the Dubai Ports deal, and the whole immigration fiasco. The one led by a President notorious for his unique use of the English language and a Vice-President rarely seen.
If this is sophisticated PR work, it seems one can outsmart the left with construction paper and crayons…
As for the United States being Imperialist, to quote the immortal, you keep using that word but I don’t think it means what you think it means. I don’t think the Roman, Chinese, British, etc. Empires would have ever reached the size they did if they poured money INTO the conquered provinces.
If we’re Imperialist, well, rejoice, we suck at it on a scale never seen before in history.
I don’t think Rove was a genius.
He didn’t sway anyone who didn’t want to be swayed.
The effort to define what happened during WWII, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War is an ongoing project of the “patriotic” right, though.
Nothing wrong with that, unless you base you foreign policy on the…fantasy, of course.
Then you get muddles like Afghanistan and Iraq.
Demosophist & Glenn,
You guys are a breath of fresh air, as usual, on AL’s comment board, as the rest of the Right/Left loonies know no history nor, if brains were gasoline, do they have enough to run a piss-ants motor scooter.
Would that I was as eloquent as loonies, I could join you destroying their sand castles of thought.
bq. _The problem in schools of social work isn’t that they “teach the principles of social justice” (in fact, there’s a course at UCLA that teaches both those arguments, and their oppositional arguments, which is laudable) but rather that they require students and faculty to invest in an ideological litmus test in order to advance or graduate._ [Demosophist, #21]
The idea that schools of social work are bad because they teach about “social justice” seems to be the main argument behind the page at the National Association of Scholars that you linked to. They repeat the assertion several times, but provide no evidence that universities “require students and faculty to invest in an ideological litmus test in order to advance or graduate”.
Many excellent schools teach ideas about social justice from all over the political spectrum so that students can compare and contrast them, and can understand what their implications are for governmental policy. But, as you say correctly about UCLA, that great! That’s what universities are for!
On the other hand, if a student enrolls in a geology course, and insists, “The world is flat!”, or enrolls in a social work course and says, “There is no poverty or racial discrimination in America”, then it is not political correctness that gets them a poor grade. They are simply failing to understand the material, and failing to pay attention to the evidence. There is plenty of room for controversy and discussion about why there is still poverty and racial discimination in America, but there are limits to how much ignorance a university can tolerate.
#15 Glen Wishard:
“Interlocking dynasties” meant, or at least I meant by it, the phenomenon of successive members of the same family achieving high office with the members of another family in between – also the fact that almost all Presidents have had relatives who also attain high office although not quite that high.
Example: the two Roosevelts. Example: the Kennedy family. Example: the two Bushes (and now the current Bush’s younger brother is a state governor, high office by any standard). Example: the two Clintons. (OK, it hasn’t happened yet, but is very likely.)
I didn’t say this in my first comment, but an aspect of this is that all those people with the possible exception of the Roosevelts (my knowledge of the seamier side of American politics is limited) were elected with the help of astronomical amounts of money, and it is pretty well indisputable that it is impossible to achieve high office in America without either being a multimillionaire or being sponsored by one or more. This of course means that the politician in question will have regard first to either his own wallet or that of his sponsors, and a poor second to the interests of Americans as a whole, and a very distant third comes the interests of the rest of the world.
This sort of thing happened in Imperial Rome, too; and they changed from a republic to a plutocracy and then to an empire, and then after that to a tyranny, and then they went under.
America no longer interferes in its locality; now it attempts, often successfully, to impose its will all over the globe, whether it is called conquest or not. As an example of this, American corporations, undoubtedly with the support of American government, are attempting to make it illegal to even mention that a particular food does not contain GM ingredients, in particular GM soya, arguing that mentioning this is defamatory to food that does. They may well succeed in the attempt.
When you have had the will of another country imposed on you, it doesn’t matter all that much whether it was the threat of its soldiers or the actual presence of its lawyers that did it.
There is one very important difference between America and Rome in the days of Caligula and after; Rome did not have the power to render the world unhabitable. America, of course, does.
As an example of this, American corporations, undoubtedly with the support of American government, are attempting to make it illegal to even mention that a particular food does not contain GM ingredients, in particular GM soya, arguing that mentioning this is defamatory to food that does. They may well succeed in the attempt.
What scientifically validated research proves there is any problem at all with ‘GM’ foods? (Please no quotes from unscientific loons like George Monbiot)
This sort of thing happened in Imperial Rome, too; and they changed from a republic to a plutocracy and then to an empire, and then after that to a tyranny, and then they went under.
A process that spanned many centuries. If history repeats itself, we’ve got lots of time.
It isn’t going to get them, barring miracles – and so America is going to fall. The 21st Century will be America’s last; all the rest of us can do is hope you don’t take the rest of us with you.
Given that formerly Great Britain is currently immersed in anti-colonialist, anti-corporate, anti-self defense navel-gazing, when we go, you can be assured you’ll go with us.
When the last great empire fell, we lost the technology that gave us indoor plumbing and decent roads. It took about a thousand years to get it back. Don’t be wishing so hard for our demise.
“The Roman Republic, I believe, started with high ideals (inherited from the Greeks, it might be added). And we all know what happened to that – it became an empire, and then became cruel and corrupt, and then fell; and the main agent of its fall was from inside, as the people in power spent the empire’s treasure on their own pleasures, on grandoise foreign adventures to distract the masses from the problems at home and on bread and circuses to distract them from same.”
Actually, the Romans did fine as a cruel empire. It was when they encompassed Christian values and lost their martial ardor that they declined and fell. There’s probably a lesson in that for the present day, but it’s not what those who make comparisons between America and Rome think it is.
AL, regarding this ongoing debate at WoC over patriotism: Have you seen Todd Gitlin’s new book “The Intellectuals and the Flag”? In it, he analyzes and criticizes the American left’s hostility toward patriotism, writing “the most powerful public emotion in our lives was rejecting patriotism.” Sounds interesting.
Above we saw the comment: “The erosions of civil liberties that we decry began well before Dubya’s term. ”
The reality however is that “the erosions of civil liberties” mentioned are by and large myths. With a few exceptions, like no longer having the ability to carry sharp objects onto airliners, there really are not any civil liberties being eroded. The trendline continues to be that more “civil liberties” are created each year, and virtually none are eroded.
Each time I read or hear an argument about “erosion” of civil liberty, those claiming an “erosion” are more often than not arguing for the establishment of a new civil “right”.
Tell that to Jose Padilla, Robin.
Better yet, tell it to Elio Evangelista.
I have learned to expect knee jerk responses on this subject. Both of you should tell it to Haupt, Dasch, Burger, Heinck and Quirin and their fellows. Those were the ones that were picked up in New York and Chicago during WWII, Haupt a US citizen, and were tried by a military commission as ordered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt instead of a US civil court. And it was upheld as constitutional by the US Supreme Court.
Ah, my apologies Thorley, I missed the joke for a bit.
Fletcher –
This is why the world is coming to an end?
The European Union determines how your food is labeled, not the United States, not Monsanto. I would indeed be worried if I were you, but I would be worried about an entirely different bunch of people.
You worry about my country being an Imperium, when you guys have bought into an Imperium as if it were a condo.
We agree that there is too much money in politics, and too much of the wrong kind of money. That doesn’t argue for “inherited power”, it rather proves that it isn’t inherited.
The Kennedys are a good example of the power of American political dynasties, but they are an equally good example of the severe limits of that power. The results fell far, far short of the expectations.
Beard:
The instances of oath requirements are extensively documented in the report, chapter and verse, by school and by the specific documents involved, including page numbers, etc. Moreover, the CSWE requires such adherence. It’s like, on their website! Either you don’t know how to read, or you’re simply lying. The report is downloadable.
Suspect you’re taking the executive summary to be the entire report, which is about the speed of many of the Kos-type commenters here. I mean, at least try, huh?
Farbeit from me to question the author of *The Decline and Fall*, but it started quite a long while before Constantine… nor did Constantine (or Justinian for that matter) lack cruelty. The fact is that the era of the city-state had come to an end, and the nations had not yet flowered.
The chief advantage that empires have enjoyed hasn’t been so much in their devotion to martial elan, but in their capacity for organization. And they’ve also had a knack for co-opting their opponents. The US has all of those qualities, and more. But as Niall Ferguson suggests, what they lack is a desire for empire. We, as a people, are defined by an ideology that has individualism as its root and branch. Ultimately it’s not the sort of thing you can compel people to accept, but it might be something they’re inclined to grope towards once the lifeline has been tossed their way.
If that’s empire, it’s not what it used to be.
bq. _Either you don’t know how to read, or you’re simply lying._ [Demosophist, #36]
Such a ringing endorsement for intellectual discourse! Let’s try to behave like grown-up here, please, instead of middle-schoolers.
Since I do have a few other things to do, I was relying on the NAS Executive Summary to provide the information I needed and didn’t find, as you suspected. Nonetheless, at your kind recommendation, I have downloaded and skimmed the full report, and I have also searched for and read the “NASW Code of Ethics”:http://www.socialworkers.org/pubs/code/code.asp, which appears to be the core inflammatory statement that the NAS report objects to. Most of the rest of the report documents that schools of social work expect their students to adhere to this Code of Ethics.
Most of the Code of Ethics is pretty non-controversial. Let me pick out the parts that are most likely to be controversial around here, or at least with you. First is one of their five core values.
bq. *Value*: Social Justice
bq. *Ethical Principle*: Social workers challenge social injustice.
bq. Social workers pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people. Social workers’ social change efforts are focused primarily on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice. These activities seek to promote sensitivity to and knowledge about oppression and cultural and ethnic diversity. Social workers strive to ensure access to needed information, services, and resources; equality of opportunity; and meaningful participation in decision making for all people.
I don’t see anything to object to here, except the knowledge that there might be other people whose interpretations of some of the terms like “social injustice” are different from yours. But the value itself seems very reasonable for social workers, if not necessarily for investment bankers.
Here’s another aspect, which is part of the competence that a social worker should bring to the table.
bq. *1.05 Cultural Competence and Social Diversity*
bq. (a) Social workers should understand culture and its function in human behavior and society, recognizing the strengths that exist in all cultures.
bq. (b) Social workers should have a knowledge base of their clients’ cultures and be able to demonstrate competence in the provision of services that are sensitive to clients’ cultures and to differences among people and cultural groups.
bq. (c) Social workers should obtain education about and seek to understand the nature of social diversity and oppression with respect to race, ethnicity, national origin, color, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, political belief, religion, and mental or physical disability.
Again, it is hard to object to the requirement that a person whose job is to help people who are disadvantaged in various ways should understand the role of culture and diversity in those things. You can hold various opinions on the causes and remedies, but to think that none of these are problems means you should get out more. (Perhaps if the people planning the Iraq war had understood this, we might have made better plans.)
Finally, here’s the part that I expect you and NAS object to most strenuously.
bq. *6.04 Social and Political Action*
bq. (a) Social workers should engage in social and political action that seeks to ensure that all people have equal access to the resources, employment, services, and opportunities they require to meet their basic human needs and to develop fully. Social workers should be aware of the impact of the political arena on practice and should advocate for changes in policy and legislation to improve social conditions in order to meet basic human needs and promote social justice.
bq. (b) Social workers should act to expand choice and opportunity for all people, with special regard for vulnerable, disadvantaged, oppressed, and exploited people and groups.
bq. (c) Social workers should promote conditions that encourage respect for cultural and social diversity within the United States and globally. Social workers should promote policies and practices that demonstrate respect for difference, support the expansion of cultural knowledge and resources, advocate for programs and institutions that demonstrate cultural competence, and promote policies that safeguard the rights of and confirm equity and social justice for all people.
bq. (d) Social workers should act to prevent and eliminate domination of, exploitation of, and discrimination against any person, group, or class on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, color, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, political belief, religion, or mental or physical disability.
I suppose one could take a Social Darwinian position that the society should *not* provide for people’s “basic human needs”, as a means of culling the herd. But it seems reasonable to me that the National Association of Social Workers might take a contrary position, and feel that someone holding a Social Darwinian position is not qualified to be a social worker.
Trying to anticipate objections, I can imagine you having a problem with “sexual orientation” in (d). For example, it seems reasonable for someone to object (though I don’t personally) to adoptive placement with same-sex couples. However, the NASW Code of Ethics even deals with ethical conflicts like this.
bq. The Code offers a set of values, principles, and standards to guide decision making and conduct when ethical issues arise. It does not provide a set of rules that prescribe how social workers should act in all situations. Specific applications of the Code must take into account the context in which it is being considered and the possibility of conflicts among the Code’s values, principles, and standards. Ethical responsibilities flow from all human relationships, from the personal and familial to the social and professional.
bq. Further, the NASW Code of Ethics does not specify which values, principles, and standards are most important and ought to outweigh others in instances when they conflict. Reasonable differences of opinion can and do exist among social workers with respect to the ways in which values, ethical principles, and ethical standards should be rank ordered when they conflict. Ethical decision making in a given situation must apply the informed judgment of the individual social worker and should also consider how the issues would be judged in a peer review process where the ethical standards of the profession would be applied.
This all seems very reasonable. The profession is spelling out what it means to be a social worker, and that Code of Ethics allows for differences of opinion and interpretation. As with any human group, how these are applied may vary and may be subject to social pressures, but I certainly don’t see even these most contentious parts of the NASW Code of Ethics to be problematical.
Finally, the NAS report you cited describes three cases of social work students who have been mistreated by their professors in various ways. In the first case, the courageous and energetic student protested vigorously, and the university involved took disciplinary action against the professor. In the other two cases, one student is still hoping for a good resolution, while the other withdrew from her program. Both felt abused.
Welcome to the human race! There are professors out there who will abuse their positions. Do you suspect they are more numerous in schools of social work than in schools of business or law? Out of courtesy, I will assume that the prevalence is the same, but it would tempting to suspect that abuse would be more common at least in law schools, where abuse is a celebrated part of the curriculum (see _The Paper Chase_).
Now, I work in the sciences, not in the humanities. The sciences are particularly impatient with ideological differences. We tend to look for empirical evidence or mathematical proof, though of course that limits our scope to problems simple enough to apply those methods. The humanities and social sciences tackle messier and more difficult problems, so their methods can’t be as crisp and rigorous.
My take on the NAS report is: They have a few reasons to complain, but their argument for systematic oppression is overblown.
I also hope I’ve provided an example of what it means to disagree firmly and clearly with someone without calling names.
Aside to A.L.,
This digression to dissect the NASW Code of Ethics is actually still related to your basic topic of patriotism.
Many of us patriots on the Left feel that some of the most important strengths of our wonderful country are things like equality of opportunity, the ability of people to rise from oppression to success, and the availability of freedom of speech and the press to correct misuses of power within our own government.
Social workers, for all their flaws and limitations, are often the ones on the front lines, helping those who need help the most. They are American patriots, along with those who serve on the front lines in our armed forces. Different kinds of service, different challenges, different risks, but working to help people who need help.
Where is this garden of eden which the US is implicitly being compared to? Didn’t America and English fight to abolish slavery? Didn’t we lead the way in civil rights, not just recently but all the way back to the Magna Carta?
You know, you put out a fire and the idle people around you will say you smell like smoke. To hell with them. It’s time someone started shining some serious light on the intelligencia for once.
“Social Justice”, short-form:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Ability and need determined by the best-educated pigs (philosopher kings) on the farm.
#33 Robin;
1) Is that the best you can come up with….an example from the WWII era? Which do nothing to contradict my point about Padilla anyay, who was not tried by a military or civilian court, or even charged, for many years.
2) Another example of an “erosion” of our civil liberties….warrantless wiretapping and eavesdropping on US citizens. No hard proof of this (yet) but certainly enough circumstantial evidence to warrant deep suspicion. When the president or AG breaks the law, then yes, my rights as a citizen have been affronted.
3) You said above
bq. Each time I read or hear an argument about “erosion” of civil liberty, those claiming an “erosion” are more often than not arguing for the establishment of a new civil “right”.
Care to give a specific example to support your assertion? And not just an example of a group or citizen asking for the establishment of what you want to classify as a “new civil right” (although a specific example of this is requested as well) but also that these same individuals are the ones claiming that there is an “erosion” of existing liberties. Because that is your claim.
Let’s see if you can answer this with something from the last 5-10 years.
4) Also, no one on this thread has yet answered my question above:
Can you point to any tangible real benefits from supporting the Bush administration’s policies, that you can directly ascribe TO their policies (not like “we haven’t had a nuke go off in New York yet”)?
This would really go a long way toward helping me (andmost other people) understanding what motivates his core 30% support level. dadmanly asked above that we grant him honesty of conviction in his support, yet no one has yet gone beyond “Liberals are worse”…which of course opens a window into the character of such people.
Whether you want to classify it as “knee-jerk” or not, I did answer your simple (and off-point, diversionary) question, so the courtesy of a reply would refute the idea that you would rather dismiss than consider the viewpoints of those who do not see the world through your conservative or Republican eyes.
I’ve numbered the isues for you so you can reply to each.
The American idea is the notion of self government, not the idea of perfect government. Perfect government would require perfect people in charge.
The Ancient Greeks had 6 kinds of government, and further asserted that three were good, and three were bad.
The Good
Monarchy; Rule by One for the good of the many.
Aristocracy; Rule by the Best, for the good of the many.
Democracy; Rule by all the people, for the good of the many.
The Bad
Tyranny: Rule by one, for his own good.
Plutocracy; Rule by few, for their own good.
Anarchy; Rule by each person, for his own good.
The problem is in recruiting. A Monarchy has to recruit a virtuous monarch, but has no recourse when he devolves into a less than virtuous tyrant. An Aristocracy has to recruit the best people, but then has little recourse when they devolve into a less than virtuous plutocracy. Democracy places its trust in the whole people, but at some time a majority realizes they can vote themselves money from the public purse. Either the productive people flee, or the money is debased, so noone can hire anyone, and you are left with anarchy.
Socialism always begins with lies, proceeds to theft, enslavement, murder, and finally reaches it mature stage; perversion.
Alan #31 – “Tell that to Jose Padilla, Robin.”
Tell that to Herbert Hans Haupt. Oh darn, you can’t because this American citizen was executed by FDR’s military commission 45 days after he was captured as an unlawful combatant in the US.
So you can site the fact that Padilla is still alive years after he was caught evidence that Bush and the government outside DoD isn’t serious about terrorism, but to claim him as some sort of bizarre “destroying civil liberties” plot is insane.
I’m commenting after #8, I’ll go back and finish reading but I had to address “I don’t believe they are acting in good faith”.
Why not? Let’s take the #1 “evil”, the invasion of Iraq.
The tactics were pretty horrible, but what was the alternative? Imagine a world in which the invasion did not take place. Sanctions would have crumbled by now. Saddam and his sons would still be running rough-shod over the Iraqi people. Saddam’s support of terrorists (direct payments to Palestinian families of suicide bombers is an undisputed example) would be continuing. Afghanistan would probably be more-or-less like it is now. Islamic nutcases would be doing better (we’ve killed 1000s of them – they would all still be alive thinking we were afraid to kill them). Libya would have nuclear weapons. Iran would not be afraid. Things would probably be more “peaceful” – but the festering problems would be getting worse.
The invasion of Iraq was a bold, good-faith move to avoid bombing the entire Middle East back to the Stone Age.
The goal – in good faith – was to attempt to transform a country in the Middle East into an ally. The precedent that it could be done via invasion is well established: Germany and Japan.
The way it has played out is less-than-ideal, but there is still a chance. A chance every liberal should be rooting for.
There WILL be a major attack on America by Islamic jihadists. It’s just a matter of time. By trying to transform Iraq, we’re trying to avoid the obvious reaction: The Middle East becoming the worlds largest glass bowl.
If the Iraq project fails, Arab and Islamic culture will be destroyed in nuclear fire within our lifetime.
Trying to avoid that, however ineptly, is an act of great faith.
Re: The inheritance tax:
What right do you have to take the money? The rich person earned it. What right do you have to have any say in the matter? If he wants to burn it, that’s his business. If she wants to leave it to her grandchildren, that’s her business.
There’s the fundamental Left/Right divide: The Left believes they have a right to even have an opinion, let alone enforce their will, about what other people SHOULD, let alone can, do with their money.
re: The Atlantic
God, I miss Mike Kelly
“Each time I read or hear an argument about “erosion” of civil liberty, those claiming an “erosion” are more often than not arguing for the establishment of a new civil “right
Habeas corpus is a “new” civil right?!
Huh. Well, in terms of, say, the length of time since our species evolved, or since the development of agricultural and urbanization, I guess that’s true, but . . .
Re: estate tax (inheritance tax, while far better than the manipulative “death tax” moniker, suggests that all inheritances are affected. In reality, of course, only a tiny percentage are.)
“What right do you have to take the money? The rich person earned it.
Sure (to some degree at least -for example, a fair chunk of Paris Hilton’s dad’s wealth initially stems from his dad, although he genuinely did earn the rest). They earned it, thanks both to their talent and hard work, and the existence of roads, police, public schools, libraries, and universities, and so on and on. Now they get to give back.
“What right do you have to have any say in the matter?
Democracy. Woo-hoo!
“ If he wants to burn it, that’s his business.
Sure.
If she wants to leave it to her grandchildren, that’s her business.
Sure. And she can. If she died this year, for example, she wouldn’t have to worry about the federal estate tax at all unless her estate exceeded 2 million dollars. If so, her grandkids would still get a cool 2 mil estate tax-free. Only the portion of her estate over that amount would be taxed – this year, at 45%. So if her estate had been valued at 3 million, the U.S. will get $450,000, while her grandkids get $2,550,000.
Again, organizations working to preserve the estate tax are fine with this state of affairs – UFE, for example, wants a 2 million individual exemption. Given that the nation does need to raise some tax revenue to function – however we might disagree on the exact details – it’s hard to think of a better instrument. After all the person who actually worked for the money is dead. The only folks losing out are heirs who, whatever their good qualities, did nothing whatsoever to earn it – and are still getting rather substantial inheritances. It encourages philanthropy – something the right often speaks out in favor of – and acts to prevent the accumulation of vast quantities of dynastic wealth. And to the degree it helps fill the public coffers, it reduces the tax burden on actually living people engaged in economically productive activities.
“There’s the fundamental Left/Right divide: The Left believes they have a right to even have an opinion, let alone enforce their will, about what other people SHOULD, let alone can, do with their money.
You just called Andrew Carnegie a lefty. (Man, he would have been horrified to hear that.) After all, he strongly supported having an estate tax. So did Theodore Roosevelt. See for example here.
“the length of time our species has been evolved,”
good lord. That should either “has been around” or “since our species evolved”). Ack.
[ the second choice. — M.F. ]
Beard:
I’m not sure why you’ve avoided the specific references in the report itself. Of course there are reasonable things in the NASW code of ethics. But the term “social justice” is a rather obvious reference to group identity, entitlements, and equality of outcome. Yes, we’re all in favor of justice, and we all like society. But there is no definable principle called “social justice” that has anything to do with individual rights and responsibilities. It’s simply a demand for income redistribution in order to guarantee outcomes.
The term “cultural and social diversity” is another concept that sounds warm and fuzzy, until you realize that what they’re actually talking about is ideological conformity, not diversity. It certainly doesn’t include black conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Jean Cobbs, or Condee Rice.
I have no problem with your advocacy of such positions, but I have a problem with making such advocacy a condition for graduation or advancement, or program accreditation, in higher education. And I suspect that if it were ever to reach the SCOTUS they’d have a problem with it too.
We shall see…
I wish some people would love America as much as they love the Estate Tax.
Beard:
The history of social work is varied, and until recently there was no “social justice” requirement. In fact, for a long time, what social work meant was, in part, exemplifying the work ethic, helping people achieve the skills necessary for employment, etc. Not that all elements of the profession always conformed to that approach. Indeed, there has been a distinct political advocacy element within the social work movement for a long time (which, I think, started with the Settlement House movement). But the point is that the imposition of this value on an education program is abominable pedagogy. It demonstrates the weakness rather than strength of the idea.
As far as I can tell the program at UCLA manages to maintain itself without an overt requirement for allegiance, but it probably does so because it’s just too prominent to be slapped down by the CSWE. Not that the UCLA program is conservative, by any means, but it at least presents a formulation of social work professionalism that doesn’t demand that one promote rank income redistribution. The fact that UCLA’s program is an outlier is, in fact, a scandal. I don’t know what else to call it.
“the length of time our species has been evolved,”
_good lord. That should either “has been around” or “since our species evolved”). Ack._
Better, “the length of time our species has been evolving”.
Not like it’s stopped. Sometimes there just isn’t much solace beyond “think of it as evolution in action”.
“I wish some people would love America as much as they love the Estate Tax.
Ha! But, of course, I don’t ‘love’ the estate tax because it’s cute or funny or whatever, but because it can help support what I see as American values – not a de facto hereditary aristorcracy, but democracy, social mobility, equality of opportunity, etc.
“The term “cultural and social diversity” is another concept that sounds warm and fuzzy, until you realize that what they’re actually talking about is ideological conformity, not diversity. ”
This sort of thing has become a bit of a talking point, which is unfortunate since it doesn’t seem to have any relation to reality. But perhaps I’m mistaken – can you point out language in that Code of Ethics about “cultural and social diversity” that supports your point?
Mrsizer – I must be reading your comment #45 incorrectly. You seem to be saying that our country is so depraved, so morally twisted, so cowardly, and so cravenly nihilistic that we would respond to a “major attack” by “Islamic jihadists” by carrying out indiscriminate nuclear genocide. My god! Why do you hate America so much?
The patriotism problem is very real, and very relevant.
Too many Leftist elites are looking for Unreal Perfection and, in not finding it in real America, are claiming … Bush is bad. Or claimed that Reagan was bad… or that Nixon was bad (I voted Jimmy C because Ford pardoned Nixon; never for a Dem since, most Libertarians).
Elites have long hated capitalism, and with a special destructive envy against the rich — “social justice” is an attempt to rationalize taxing the rich more. Whether it really helps the working poor or not, the poor are used as an excuse to punish the rich.
Patriots compare the real America with other real countries, whether Myanmar/ Burma, or Sweden, or China, or France, or Iraq, or Sudan.
Recently, Stanford’s Prof. Zimbardo (of the Prison Experiment, 1971), wrote about evil. In his Stanford Mag interview he discussed: America’s Abu Ghraib, Israeli lobbyists, and Hitler. A good example of a basically “America is evil” undercurrent message.
Hitler is the main evil that Leftists accept — with little mention of our alliance with the Evil Empire’s Stalin in order to stop Hitler; but WW II was before I was born.
In 1973, Nixon “won” the Vietnam war with the Paris Peace Accords. But then in 1974 the Dem Party Congress voted to stop any US troops from returning, for any reason; and in 1975 reduced funding for the corrupt, incompetent, and cowardly S. Vietnamese democracy, full of US allies who supported human rights. The USSR continued to fund N. Viet commie aggressors who attacked, in violation of their written but unenforced treaty, and did win the Vietnam war. And proceeded to kill thousands of those who had surrendered.
China was funding Cambodian commies and there was no America stopping Pol Pot.
Thanks Dem Party, thanks Zimbardo, for opposing the fight against evil communism.
Who is responsible for the Killing Fields — the worst genocide in MY lifetime?
Beard, you want to know what Bush has done right?
1) Bush liberated Afghanistan.
2) Bush liberated Iraq — look at at Iraqi Kurdistan for what his “plan” for post-Saddam Iraq was, “letting freedom ring” and letting the Iraqis develop on their own.
3) Bush has supported pro-life justices to the US SC. A couple more and the terrible, culture-destroying Federal power grabbing Roe decision might well be overturned, returning some power to the states. (Allowing diversity?!)
4) Bush has supported tax-cuts.
Tax cuts has resulted in the rich corporations getting so much richer that they’ve hired MORE Americans, and especially more Americans willing to work.
Rich employers who offer jobs — money for work — do far more to support “social justice”, as well as to truly empower the people, than the social worker ‘dependency pushers’. (Perhaps those who really want to help the poor should start a business and offer the poor jobs?)
On falsifiability, please try to find out how many girls, as compared to boys, got perfect 800 scores on the math SAT tests. If there is a significantly greater number of boys, Larry Summers was fully justified in suggesting a difference.
_“In the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are, in fact, lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.â€_
(why didn’t you get the quote right, and look it up? Lazy AND Inaccurate Leftist). In the same Debra Sanders “SF Chronicle piece”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/02/24/EDGJJBFG2I1.DTL
she note the Leftist support of Ward Churchill, who wrote about _”little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the Twin Towers.”_
Many Politically Correct, intolerant Leftists, hate real America, hate success, hate Bush, and all too many hate Jews.
The “anti-patriotism” decried by Armed Liberal didn’t pop up in the last six years. Ward Churchill was a “respected scholar” for decades, with nothing to justify it except a clever anti-American schtick. Howard Zinn issued his People’s History of the United States a generation ago. Intellectuals of the Left have a visceral distaste for patriotism and for the military, going well back into the 1800s.
There was reason for it: imperialism and militarism led to many grave crimes. But over the last century this attitude has hardened into a mindless reflex. Blame America first! Embrace the Other!
How else to explain a reasonably prestigious university (Hofstra) inviting a disbarred attorney and convicted felon, an unrepentant supporter of terrorist murder, to teach a seminar on “Legal Ethics”, accompanied by her most vehement defenders?
How else to explain a major American newspaper (the Boston Globe) publishing pictures of “U.S. soldiers engaged in rape” that were _obvious_ fakes?
There is much wailing about the detention camp at Guantanamo, where inmates are represented by dozens of pro bono attorneys from high-powered U.S. law firms. And why is the camp at Guantanamo? Because anywhere else in the world, the detentions would be lawyered to death even more. The manifest absurdity of applying criminal arrest standards or jury trials to terrorist gunmen captured in battle in foreign countries doesn’t matter to the Left, or those obsessed with procedural purity according to the rules _they_ like. The same absurdity exists in demanding POW status for terrorists who wear no uniforms and target civilians.
Instead we hear references to “the Gulag of our time” (which is almost blasphemous, when one considers what was done to the inmates of the real Gulag – or to the present inmates of Communist prisons in Cuba and North Korea).
How else to explain students at the University of Washington protesting a memorial to WW II flying ace “Pappy” Boyington, a UW alumnus, because it honored a killer?
This war is the most legalistic in history. The invasion of Iraq was explicitly approved by both Houses of Congress beforehand, and tacitly re-approved each year by the appropriation of additional funds. It was approved by the U.N. Security Council, which has re-approved it every year since. The actions of U.S. and Coalition soldiers are subject to absurd and extreme second-guessing and nitpicking. Recently a U.S. sniper was charged with murder for shooting a known and identified terrorist leader in Afghanistan, because at the time he was not holding a weapon. A Canadian sniper whose superb work got him recommended for the Bronze Star by the U.S. forces was harassed and threatened with court-martial for allegedly desecrating a dead body.
According to Harvard Professor Jack Goldsmith, in his book _The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration_, “the war on terror has been lawyered to death.†Officials are worried that anything they do may be treated as a criminal offense by a future administration.
How to explain this except by a deeply ingrained hostility to the U.S. in a broad swath of American opinion? To the West in so much of Western opinion?
It’s notorious that jihadi propagandists quote extensively from Western and American intellectuals and pundits and politicians. The last communique from Osama bin Laden read like a transcript of Democrat talking points.
The Left should be concerned about who is agreeing with them, but such their self-satisfaction is invincible.
Dan S (#55) – I think I’m on your side re the inheritance tax; structural inrequality – meaning inequality without mobility – is the biggest long-term threat to our republic, in my view.
But you’re being silly on the very real risk that a major domestic attack might well lead to a national “nuke ’em” reaction – one that the politicians might lead or might just get swept away in.
No viable society turns the other cheek very often.
A.L.
bq. _But the term “social justice” is a rather obvious reference to group identity, entitlements, and equality of outcome. Yes, we’re all in favor of justice, and we all like society. But there is no definable principle called “social justice” that has anything to do with individual rights and responsibilities. It’s simply a demand for income redistribution in order to guarantee outcomes._ [Demosophist, #51]
No, it’s not. That may be how some people use that phrase, but they don’t have a copyright on the phrase that binds it to that meaning. This is why, back in [#16], I made the point about the foolishness of high schools that ban wearing red because it’s a “gang color”. What they should do is establish that it’s everyone’s color.
If you think that an ideologically-motivated group is mis-using the term “social justice”, then write essays about what the term really means. Encourage people who share your beliefs and have a high media profile to do the same. Explain why the term “social justice” ought to include individual rights and responsibilities. (At the same time, you might be forced to confront the fact that “social justice” cannot be *only* about individual rights and responsibilities. There’s this “level playing field” thing too.)
I looked very carefully in the NASW Code of Ethics for signs that they want to mandate equality of outcome rather than opportunity, and I didn’t find them. Some of the people you encounter may want that, but I don’t believe the Code of Ethics mandates it.
bq. _The term “cultural and social diversity” is another concept that sounds warm and fuzzy, until you realize that what they’re actually talking about is ideological conformity, not diversity._ [#51 again]
Here again, you’re letting someone else take a perfectly good phrase away from you.
Believe it or not, I’m trying to help you here. You’ve got a case to make. So make it. Don’t just let those nasty social workers keep you from using words for what they mean. But be prepared to discuss the issues.
The single most powerful predictor of party affiliation is children. People with children vote overwhelmingly republican and vice versa for democrats. In light of the above, this makes a lot of sense.
Rome did, indeed, do fine as an Empire, survived its periods of decadence, and adapted Christianity to its needs.
What made “Rome fall”, as a Western Mediterranean concern, was the indifference of its citizen elites coupled with a devaluation of Roman citizenship.
Roman citizenship was extended to the whole Mediterranean in 212 AD: the Constitutio Antoniniana. After that, there was no Rome; only “Roman-ness” (Romania). The primary interest of “Romania” was control of the Eastern Mediterranean; and when the Eastern Mediterranean became threatened by Persians and Balkan Goths, the “Romanians” who meant anything moved to Byzantium and renamed it “Constantine City”. In the sixth century the now-Byzantines gave up on the West, and in the seventh they gave up on the Near East.
The equivalent here would be if we gave US citizenship to the whole of Latin America, and then voted (majority rule!) to move our capitol to Caracas. Not that the Bush administration would ever propose such a thing…
bq. _The single most powerful predictor of party affiliation is children. People with children vote overwhelmingly republican and vice versa for democrats._ [brad culkin, #60]
You got data for this, brad? It’s an interesting claim, and I’m deeply skeptical of its truth, but you must have heard it somewhere. Provide a link, please. “I heard it on the web” doesn’t provide a lot of credibility.
“Social justice.”
One of the most sinister phrases in the English language.
It means “We’re going to destroy everything you hold dear.”
Tom –
‘Elites have long hated capitalism, and with a special destructive envy against the rich”
You do realize how little sense this makes, right? I mean, I realize “elite” has taken on an very interesting tinge in rightwing discourse, where it sketches out a demon-figure combining both populist anger and culture-war/anti-intellectual resentment – but still, this just doesn’t actually make sense.
“Whether it really helps the working poor or not, the poor are used as an excuse to punish the rich.”
Nah. I mean, I realize “Nah” isn’t the most sophisticated argument, but this just isn’t true. Get to know actually people involved in ‘social justice’ work, or otherwise advocating such things: whether or not you agree with their methods or even aims, it’s all about helping those in need, and building a more just society – this fantasy that it’s all just some big lie used to justify ‘punishing the rich’ for its own sake- Nah.
“Too many Leftist elites are looking for Unreal Perfection ”
No doubt ‘Unreal Perfection’ could have been used back in 1850 or so (by some, at least) to describe an future America where slavery is blessedly abolished, where women can become doctors or lawyers or scientists, where everyone – black or white, male or female – has the vote, and where it is entirely possible that our next President could be a black man or a white woman. But we got here, y’know (and that’s definitely something to be proud of). America’s a work in progress.
Tom and Rick – you both mention Ward Churchill as if he was some major and well-supported figure on the ‘left’ – (which in reality, of course, is hardly so: most of the figures described as such are actually fairly centrist liberals). Again, let me be honest: when folks started making a fuss about his moronic essay – several years after it had been written, which should already tell you something about his importance – most of us liberals and lefties had absolutely no idea who he was (in fact, I was initially rather bewildered for a few minutes, thinking that for some bizarre reason people were denouncing Winston Churchill). Many of his ‘supporters’ were actually people who quite bluntly stated that he was an offensive idiot, and were involved only because they felt that nevertheless, free speech and academic inquiry had to be protected.
AL : I think we agree on that first point. The second – well, I hope you’re wrong.
“which in reality, of course, is hardly so”
this is maybe a bit unclear? I’m trying to say most of what’s called ‘the left’ today simply isn’t, by most standards.
Beard is fluent and almost persuasive, then destroys his(?) own argument. Sorry, Beard. One can almost think you believe your own BS.
Support of the inheritance tax means two things and two things only: DESTROY THE SUCCESSFUL! and CAPITALISM IS EEEEVIL! The first makes a mockery of any claims of favoring equality of opportunity over equality of outcome. Hammer those tall nails! The second is perhaps somewhat more subtle, because any industrial or post-industrial society requires amassing large pools of funds to buy and build the infrastructure necessary to support it. An inheritance tax accomplishes nothing except to require that such pools be the province of Government and Government alone.
But the real litmus test is Abu Ghraib.
American soldiers at that facility misbehaved in atrocious ways: take that as a given. Another soldier reported that misbehavior; higher authority took note, investigated, and tried and convicted the malefactors. The overall lesson should be that Americans are neither existentially “bettor” nor more virtuous than any other people; our population contains malefactors of all types, just as every other population does. The difference is that we try to discover, frustrate, and punish them, instead of giving them Civil Service sinecures complete with retirement plans and bonuses for energetic prosecution of their perversities.
The Standard Narrative about the events at Abu Ghraib posits that Americans are (or should be) existentially better than others in the world; considering that the behavior of the malefactors somehow stains the whole effort is pure and simple vanity and egotistical bigotry. The stains are already there, including on Beard. The real task is to try to do the right thing anyway, as the Army did in that case. Pretending some sort of saintly Virtue — needing the capital letter — that is somehow questioned by the existence of Bad People is an arrogant of self-importance not justified by the facts on the ground.
Regards,
Ric
Dan, Churchill (Ward) was a minor figure; how about Howard Zinn? Chomsky? Michael Moore? I’ll come back to the Netroots folks in a bit…Those are all pretty significant figured in the American intellectual left these days…
A.L.
“Social justice” is a perfectly good phrase only in the same sense that “People’s Republic” is a perfectly good phrase. Both, from the very day of coining, have been semantic frauds intended to disguise the ugly true nature of the concept promoted under the name, their advocates trying to claim the virtues (love of justice, love of democracy) of their opponents.
Alan #42, yes, the best I can do is come up with an example of something that you’ve not refuted – that the case of Ex Parte Quirin was the law of the US with respect to when the executive could try unlawful combatants outside of the civil justice system and which remained the law of the land until just a few years ago with the Hamdi case.
Dan #48, see my #33 which is about that very topic. Habeus corpus was not applied to military detentions until very recently, there were several Civil War cases on the issue as well as Ex Parte Quirin in WWII. The idea that habeus corpus was a writ that extended to captured combatants is indeed a “right” whose life is best measured in months.
bq. _Support of the inheritance tax means two things and two things only: DESTROY THE SUCCESSFUL! and CAPITALISM IS EEEEVIL!_ [Ric Locke, #66]
Who told you this?
First, the inheritance tax only applies to successful people who *die*. They have to die first. they are not destroyed by the tax, or even their fortune. It doesn’t even destroy their children’s ability to be rich with unearned wealth. It just decreases how much they get, and makes it less likely for the fortune to become self-perpetuating. If the kids are smart and hard-working, they have the capital to start getting rich in their own right. If not, they have to be more careful, or the money will run out, and they’ll have to get a job.
Second, the inheritance tax *supports* capitalism, by somewhat increasing the extent to which wealth reflects one’s own abilities, hard work, and luck, not your parents’ or grandparents’. And the notion that only wealthy family fortunes accumulate investment capital is totally wrong. The world (especially California and South Asia) is full of venture capitalists, running large funds that pool money from wealthy people, looking for really smart entrepreneurs to invest in, so they can grow their pool further.
What the inheritance tax actually does is make it more difficult for the non-productive children and grandchildren of successful people to stay wealthy without working.
I don’t have a problem with that. Do you?
You misspelled hysteresis.
I only mention this because I tried to look it up. 🙂
Beard –
“Pew data on Party Affiliation.”:http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=750
I wouldn’t use Brad’s term “overwhelming” to characterize it. A majority of single Americans are Democrats, and a majority of married Americans are Republicans, with a stronger Republican majority among married couples with children.
That’s post-9/11 data. Obviously it was not always so, but anyone familiar with the changing political landscape since 1968 should not be surprised.
#2 from Beard at 3:04 pm on Oct 05, 2007
‘But it is the ones on the Right who currently control our nation and its future, and who have led us to the edge of the abyss.’
Or the democrats, devoid of new ideas, choosing to adopt the extreme paranoid rhetoric about their political opponents presented by the socialist / conspiracy theorists of the far left… as an alternative for serious thought… or serious program (wow, min wage hike, way to go… eye roll…)…
#4 from Fletcher Christian at 5:09 pm on Oct 05, 2007
‘ am a Brit, and we have our own problems,’
Wow, a Brit trying to make arguments about America becoming an empire… that’s about as rare as a French person complaining about our over reaching [non] culture… or Germans saying that Bush has the media in lock step since he is a criminal and virtual dictator… Infantile… project your shadows onto the boogie man… and no one calls you on it back home I suspect… lame…
bq. _Pew data on Party Affiliation._
bq. _I wouldn’t use Brad’s term “overwhelming” to characterize it. A majority of single Americans are Democrats, and a majority of married Americans are Republicans, with a stronger Republican majority among married couples with children._ [Glen Wishard, #72]
I really appreciate the pointer to the data. This kind of thing helps a lot in having a substantive discussion, as opposed to just shouting back and forth.
And you are right: the majorities are there, but they are not “overwhelming”. In fact, the report you point to is based on 2003 data, and much of it focuses on the changes over the 1997-2003 time period. It would be very interesting to see what changes have taken place between 2003 and 2007, since the country has clearly moved towards the Democratic Party during that time.
Obviously, I am partisan, but I would attribute this shift, in part, to people realizing that the Bush-Cheney administration does not embody the kind of conservative values, particularly fiscal responsibility, that motivated them to vote Republican.
bq. _Beard is fluent and almost persuasive, then destroys his(?) own argument. Sorry, Beard. One can almost think you believe your own BS._
bq. _Support of the inheritance tax means two things and two things only: DESTROY THE SUCCESSFUL! and CAPITALISM IS EEEEVIL!_ [Ric Locke, #66]
After responding [#70] to the substance of Ric’s comment, I’ve been thinking about its form.
Ric, the feeling you had there is the experience of actually listening to a new idea, thinking about it, and starting to agree with it. Then the various slogans you had learned came rushing back to slam your mind closed before you might change your opinion.
This is one sign of a really effective marketing campaign, aimed at keeping your eye on the demonized opponents, so that your pocket can be picked while you are not looking. One way to recognize this is, as the saying goes, to *follow the money*.
Who wins, if inheritance taxes are abolished? It’s not going to be you and me. It’s not even going to be the wealth-builders themselves (since they are the ones who die). It’s going to be the (adult) children and grandchildren of wealth-builders, and (even more importantly) the professional caretakers of large fortunes, who are the ones who will actually get the power associated with large amounts of money, while its nominal “owners” are out on their yachts.
Who loses? Everyone else, since that loss of government income will be significant, and it will have to be paid for somehow, either with higher taxes or lower services.
A really valuable discipline is to listen to yourself. Read your own writing before clicking “Post”. If you find yourself repeating a slogan, from whatever side, ask yourself whether you really believe that slogan to be true. Do you have actual evidence on either side? Try this out. It starts out annoying and difficult, but it really grows on you, and ends up giving you a feeling of power. Try it. You’ll like it.
_But the real litmus test is Abu Ghraib._
_American soldiers at that facility misbehaved in atrocious ways: take that as a given. Another soldier reported that misbehavior; higher authority took note, investigated, and tried and convicted the malefactors. The overall lesson should be that Americans are neither existentially “bettor” nor more virtuous than any other people; our population contains malefactors of all types, just as every other population does. The difference is that we try to discover, frustrate, and punish them, instead of giving them Civil Service sinecures complete with retirement plans and bonuses for energetic prosecution of their perversities._
Ummm. No.
We punished soldiers for following CIA orders independent of their own chain of command.
But the CIA guys who gave the orders, who did their own atrocious misbehavior? They have their Civil Service jobs complete with retirement plans and likely bonuses. Not sinecures, they do have to go to smelly prisons in foreign countries and torture people, it isn’t money for nothing.
“Dan, Churchill (Ward) [ha! -ds] was a minor figure; how about Howard Zinn? Chomsky? Michael Moore? ”
What about them? The rhetorical function (purpose, perhaps, but I dunno) of invoking Churchill in those comments would seem to be further demonization and fear-mogering- OMG! Crazy scary Lefties!! “Little Eichmanns”! Ahhhgh! Zinn and Chomsky and Moore (oh my?) are really in another category altogether. (And still, one of these are not like the others: Moore is neither intellectually influential -had he been around in 1807, he would have be a scribbler of lively partisan pamphlets) nor any sort of radical. When one looks at his actual causes, detached from the attention-getting and simplification, they’re rather vanilla: corporate malfeasance, downsizing, the effects of globalization & better working conditions; gun culture; Bush’s War; health care. Agree of disagree, we’re simply not getting into what one commenter termed – incorrectly, I think – anti-patriotism.) We can talk about them, their virtues and limitations, and what they say about the ‘left’, but that would be a very different – and far more honest – conversation then one involving little Wardy-poo.
“Support of the inheritance tax means two things and two things only: DESTROY THE SUCCESSFUL! and CAPITALISM IS EEEEVIL! ”
Oh, come on now, Ric! The proper usage is as follows: CAPITALISM IS EEEEEVIL!! – that’s five E’s, and two/i> exclamation points, as was established during the annual Stalin-Mao Appreciation Day meeting in ’97. Get your facts straight, you capitalist running dog!
– or of course, we could deal with reality: Beard’s two comments in response are quite good here. It’s odd, really, because the rest of your comment #66 is very interesting and far more sophisticated (although rather disagree).
Preview is my friend; I miss it. : (
Wasn’t the GI who turned in the photos of Abu Ghraib driven out of his hometown?
_”What the inheritance tax actually does is make it more difficult for the non-productive children and grandchildren of successful people to stay wealthy without working.”_
…and what’s wrong with this? People work hard so their children and their descendants after them don’t have to work as hard as they did. It’s called good parenting.
_”Who wins, if inheritance taxes are abolished? It’s not going to be you and me. It’s not even going to be the wealth-builders themselves (since they are the ones who die). It’s going to be the (adult) children and grandchildren of wealth-builders, and (even more importantly) the professional caretakers of large fortunes, who are the ones who will actually get the power associated with large amounts of money, while its nominal “owners” are out on their yachts.”_
Who gives a flip what a person does with their money, or the money their ancestors worked to make and hand down? So they won without trying? Awesome! Be glad we live in a world where not everybody has to work for a living. I like the idea that I can make my kids a part of the idle rich, _if I choose to do so_. That’s a great thing, in my book, and so much better if the IRS looks wistfully on, powerless to tax my earnings a _second_ time.
Here’s where your assumption really shines with personal bias: the assertion that children with rich parents will become idle wasters. That, so far as I can tell from your postings, is the general basis for your theory. It’s nice that you want to keep them working, but that’s a silly exercise in want vs. need. You want them working and they don’t need to. Heck, even you don’t need them working as it doesn’t do anything for or against you.
_”Who loses? Everyone else, since that loss of government income will be significant, and it will have to be paid for somehow, either with higher taxes or lower services.”_
Government service? Er, like welfare? How about the Government tightens the belt, keeping it from the need to steal (yes, steal) the funds of dead people to power its excesses.
Of course, the proven “less taxes = more taxable revenue”, seems to be ignored in this circular merry-go-round, but personal opinion doesn’t require logic or facts to back it up. That’s why nothing said, or reported _to_ you will change your opinion.
You just don’t like rich kids who don’t have to work. Jealous is a hard master, isn’t it?
_…Jealousy is a hard master, isn’t it?_
Apologies for the error. I’d blame my keyboard but it requires input.
“. . . the question which forces itself upon thoughtful men in all lands is, Why should men leave great fortunes to their children. If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection. Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for the children that they should be so burdened. Neither is it well for the State. Beyond providing for the wife and daughters moderate sources of income, and very moderate allowances indeed, if any, for the sons, men may well hesitate; for it is no longer questionable that great sums bequeathed often work more for the injury than for- the good of the recipients. Wise men will soon conclude that, for the best interests of the members of their families, and of the State, such bequests are an improper use of their means.
It is not suggested that men who have failed to educate their sons to earn a livelihood shall cast them adrift in poverty. If any man has seen fit to rear his sons with a view to their living idle lives, or, what is highly commendable, has instilled in them the sentiment that they are in a position to labor for public ends without reference to pecuniary considerations, then, of course, the duty of the parent is to see that such are provided for in moderation. There are instances of millionaires’ sons unspoiled by wealth, who, being rich, still perform great services to the community. Such are the very salt of the earth, as valuable as, unfortunately, they are rare. It is not the exception however, but the rule, that men must regard; and, looking at the usual result of enormous sums conferred upon legatees, the thoughtful man must shortly say, “I would as soon leave to my son a curse as the almighty dollar,” and admit to himself that it is not the welfare of the children, but family pride, which inspires these legacies.
. . . The growing disposition to tax more and more heavily large estates left at death is a cheering indication of the growth of a salutary change in public opinion. The State of Pennsylvania now takes-subject to some exceptions-one tenth of the property left by its citizens. The budget presented in the British Parliament the other day proposes to increase the death duties; and, most significant of all, the new tax is to be a graduated one. Of all forms of taxation this seems the wisest. Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, the proper use of which for public ends would work good to the community from which it chiefly came, should be made to feel that the community, in the form of the State, cannot thus be deprived of its proper share. By tax ing estates heavily at death the State marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire’s unworthy life.
It is desirable that nations should go much further in this direction. Indeed, it is difficult to set bounds to the share of a rich man’s estate which should go at his death to the public through the agency of the State, and by all means such taxes should be graduated, beginning at nothing upon moderate sums to dependents, and increasing rapidly as the amounts swell . . .”
-Andrew Carnegie, _The Gospel of Wealth_
“I like the idea that I can make my kids a part of the idle rich, if I choose to do so.”
This may be what inspires such dislike of the estate tax, especially among people who realistically are unlikely to have such an option. And of course, remember, you pretty much can, if that ends up being the case – the estate tax means that out of an estate valued at $30 million, say, this year heirs would receive 2 million tax free and 15.4 million of the remainder. Again, I cannot see that the production of a hereditary aristocracy is quite consonant with (quite long-standing) American ideals . The current system seems to be a quite reasonable middle ground, as opposed to, for example, total gov’t confiscation of large estates upon death, or the entirely unopposed creation of a vastly wealthly hereditary elite. It’s not jealousy, but prudence.
I was thinking about how to answer Kresh [#80], when Dan S [#82] did it so well, using the wise words of Andrew Carnegie, who was certainly in a position to know.
We are each part of society, and we owe a debt to that society for having helped and supported us. This is especially true the more fortunate we have ended up being. One sign of character is being able to recognize that debt, and make payments toward it. As Andrew Carnegie points out, it is not unreasonable for the society to enforce such payments, if someone of considerable wealth has been so improvident as to die before making them.
I think I’ve heard something like this sentiment before, with slightly different phrasing. How did it go, again? Oh yes, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Let’s talk elitist intellectual anti-American snobs in the Rorty thread?
OK. See [#40] over there.
But what about us elitist intellectual pro-American snobs?
Coming late to this game (what can I say, it’s been a busy weekend) …
Looking at the True Meaning of Social Justice(tm) from the Ethical Principle mentioned in #38:
Social workers’ social change efforts are focused primarily on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice.
So, along with a blank check ‘other forms of’ category, there are three things defined as social injustice: Poverty, Unemployment, and Discrimination.
So, Poverty. How is poverty intrinsically unjust? While it can certainly be a sign or symptom of injustice, I don’t see how it is an injustice all on its own. Of course, one could argue that it’s inherently unjust for one person to have more money than another, but that leaves aside questions of relative effort put forth in earning and budgeting that money and strays perilously close to ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’ country.
Likewise Unemployment. There might be an unjust reason for Joe Smith being out of a job, or he might just have been a chronically-late, goldbricking troublemaker (in which case his being fired was just to the on-time, hardworking team players).
Then there’s Discrimination. Well, discrimination on the basis of what? And resulting in what? If I’m running a bakery and choosing between Tom, Dick, and Harry for a single donut-making position, short of picking a name out of a hat, I’m inevitably going to discriminate against two of them on some basis. If that basis is Dick is white and Tom and Harry are black, okay, that’s unjust. But what if it’s that Dick has vastly more donut-making experience than the other two? Unjust?
(So far, I’m not impressed with the Ethical Principles of social justice).
These activities seek to promote sensitivity to and knowledge about oppression and cultural and ethnic diversity. Social workers strive to ensure access to needed information, services, and resources; equality of opportunity; and meaningful participation in decision making for all people.
Nothing objectionable there, unless you try to define ‘sensitivity to’ as ‘lickspittle appeasement of’ or ‘meaningful participation’ as ‘dictating terms.’
Shad writes:” think I’ve heard something like this sentiment before, with slightly different phrasing. How did it go, again? Oh yes, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
Beard, what were you saying some comments back about slogans and such? : )
Anyway, this is rather silly on several levels. For example:
1) whatever one thinks of the estate tax, does it _really_ make sense to describe folks like Andrew Carnegie, Theodore Roosevelt, and Warren Buffet as Marxists?
2) given this is a thread nominally about patriotism, one might think that statements like Beard’s of responsibility towards our society might be recognized as representing one kind of genuine patriotism, and the contrasting I’ve-got-mineism as a a certain disengagement in regards to our nation, but . . . (although to be fair, the latter is arguably more a case of just very different ideas about what America stands for, what freedom is, etc.).
And so on. Honestly (and perhaps quite wrongly) – asuming that Kresh (comment #80) has very little chance of being wealthy enough that the estate tax ends up a personal (albeit posthumous) concern, it’s quite interesting that they have come to feel that this is such an important and almost morally offensive issue. Now, I’m all about empathy with the downtrodden and victims of injustice, but frankly, neither deceased millionaires, nor unfortunate heirs reduced to paltry inheritances of only $17 million rather than $30 million, strike me as particularly convincing in these roles. And considering that the likely outcome isn’t a disciplined reduction of government excess, but tax hikes and/or the underfunding/end of important and valid gov’t services, both aimed at the lower/middle class, while Washington, exquisitely sensitive to the cultured tones of large contributions and well-paid lobbyists, concerns itself ever less with society as opposed to Society . . . well, it is a wonder . . .
“Then there’s Discrimination. Well, discrimination on the basis of what? And resulting in what?”
Oh, give me a break!
bq. _Nothing objectionable there, unless you try to define ‘sensitivity to’ as ‘lickspittle appeasement of’ or ‘meaningful participation’ as ‘dictating terms.’_ [Achillea, #87]
Well, that sort of definition is popular with the Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter crowd, so they can have something to point fingers at.
As to poverty, unemployment, and discrimination, yes, you can define all of them as being just in certain peculiar cases. But I’d say the statistics are against you. But in the real world, there are a lot of people who would really like jobs. How much do you, personally, know about the availability of jobs in the real working-class world? Look through your local paper. How many of those offer health benefits? How many are part-time, and might ratchet up closer to full-time, but they will never schedule you that last hour that would get you benefits? But you had better be available all 80 hours of the week they might want to schedule you for, so you can’t take a second part-time job to make ends meet. Do you know about those tricks? It’s a tough world out there.
When you make remarks about the justice of poverty, unemployment, and discrimination, you might remember Marie Antoinette’s famous quote,
bq. _They have no bread? Then let them eat cake!_
The point is not the poetic justice of her losing her head later, but the utter cluelessness of the upper classes about the actual lives of the poor.
Interesting arguments here, but it seems a few items are missing. The main pro-tax argument seems to be based around the idea that undeserving people might become too rich. By whose standards, and who is appointing themselves judge of who is deserving?
Then…
“Who loses? Everyone else, since that loss of government income will be significant, and it will have to be paid for somehow, either with higher taxes or lower services.”
This concept deserves to die a sudden death. Whose loss? This presumes that government, rather than the designated family, is entitled to the funds. It is NOT lost income if government doesn’t get to extract money from a family: it is income not moved from the family to the government. That this MUST be a bad thing has to presume that money used by the heirs is always less productive or beneficial than if it were used by the government–a very difficult proposition to support.
I understand a distaste for over-powerful family dynasties; it’s a reasonable concern, but it’s not well-addressed by estate taxes, especially not as structured now. And the idea that the wealthy should “give back” to society has merit, but in the arguments above, it’s completely ignored that they ALREADY HAVE, in the form of income and capital gains taxes, plus whatever other wealth they created in the process of building their enterprises.
I was a small-time inheritor, back when the cutoff level for inheritance taxes was much lower. My dad had set aside a fairly substantial sum for the kids, but not what you’d consider a fortune. Actually, if he’d lived a few more years, it would have all been consumed by medical expenses. He had paid 30%-70% in income taxes before the funds made it into the estate, plus capital gains taxes on stocks. Top it off with estate taxes, and by the time the money got to the heirs, it was about 35% of what he had to earn originally. There were several heirs, so the total to each of us was about enough for a good college education. Better than nothing, hey? But the threat to the country from an idle rich class is probably overblown, and the double taxation of inheritances isn’t very nice.
“ The main pro-tax argument seems to be based around the idea that undeserving people might become too rich. By whose standards, and who is appointing themselves judge of who is deserving?
It’s not, really: I don’t have any inherent opposition to the ability of a Paris Hilton to buy even larger numbers of tiny rat-like dogs, for example, after she inherits 10s or 100s of millions of dollars – it’s about the effect on society in general in the long run. However, given these questions, well, the judge in this case would be the people (through their elected representatives). As for standards – oddly enough, it’s _conservatives_ who have most strongly stressed the virtue of hard work, responsibility and such like, no? I mean, such enormous inheritances are in one sense welfare for the wealthy, who don’t even have the excuse that their kids might not get enough to eat otherwise . . . .
“Whose loss? This presumes that government, rather than the designated family, is entitled to the funds”
While one could make such an argument – rightly or wrongly – we’re not talking what _should_ be, but rather, what _is_ – at current, the estate tax provides a chunk of gov’t revenue, and the likely outcome of taking that away is less prudent belt-tightening and more what’s mentioned above.
“but it’s not well-addressed by estate taxes, especially not as structured now.”
No? In what way? I mean, if you think giant fortunes should be taxed at _even_ higher rates, well, I won’t necessarily disagree, but . . .
“it’s completely ignored that they ALREADY HAVE, in the form of income and capital gains taxes
Actually, in many cases a fair amount of the estate’s assets _haven’t_ been previously taxed, but I’m in a bit of a hurry, so more later on that, maybe . . .
“I was a small-time inheritor, back when the cutoff level for inheritance taxes was much lower . . .”
It’s a good point, but again, that’s why everybody supporting the preservation of the estate tax wants it to be adjusted to present realities, so that hard-working parents seeking to leave decently generous but certainly not enormous bequests to their kids don’t run into that kind of situation.
bq. _The main pro-tax argument seems to be based around the idea that undeserving people might become too rich. By whose standards, and who is appointing themselves judge of who is deserving?_ [Sam_S, #91]
The standards have been well laid out by Adam Smith, who initially described the principles of free-market capitalism, and in the quote by Andrew Carnegie provided by Dan S. in [#82]. The argument is that wealth brings power, and society is better served if the wealthy are wealthy because of their own efforts, rather than because of inheritances. Those who earn wealth are more likely to understand personal responsibility than those who are born to it. And society is better served by such people.
Our Founding Fathers declared that the People have the right to determine the government under which they live. If the People decide to encourage wealth due to individual effort, and make it more difficult to maintain wealth due to inheritance, then they have the right to decide that. (Logically, they must also have the right to select rule by a God-appointed monarch or by a hereditary aristocracy. But then, presumably, they have the right to change their minds a few generations later, if the monarch or aristocrats will let them.)
The core idea behind capitalism is the same as the core idea behind evolution by survival of the fittest. The merchant who offers the best value will get the most customers, and hence will become the wealthiest. Those who offer poorer value will get fewer customers, and will either go out of business, content themselves with relative poverty, or change their ways. This is a pretty good scheme for resource allocation, though it’s not appropriate for all situations.
And even where it is appropriate, it requires rules to ensure a level playing field. In particular, the barriers to entry for small entrepreneurs cannot be too large. This is why we need anti-monopoly laws. It is natural for a dominant firm to try to exclude competitors before they can become a challenge. Once IBM dominated the computer industry so thoroughly that its competitors were called “The Seven Dwarfs”, and you don’t even remember their names.
Major successes like Apple, Microsoft, and Google came out of essentially nowhere, and by offering great value for low prices, became huge and made their founders among the wealthiest people in the country. (They are now fighting to retain dominance by erecting the biggest barriers to entry they can to prevent their competitors from getting any traction, but that’s another story.)
There is a clear value judgment here. Whatever you think of them, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin have contributed, and continue to contribute, vastly more to our country than Paris Hilton and her ilk.
Yes, I am an unabashed elitist here. I am prepared to say that they are better than she is. And that our society should continue to set up its laws, not to take away her money, for she still has plenty, but to prevent her kind from dominating our economy.
It’s just a fact of life that a huge fortune makes it easier to make money. Without some means, like the estate tax, to level the playing field in favor of the little guy with a great idea, our economy would be dominated by huge corporations and wealthy families, even more than it already is.
Even having to argue this here seems very peculiar. I feel like a Liberal teaching the Conservative gospel to the Troglodytes.
It’s just a fact of life that a huge fortune makes it easier to make money. Without some means, like the estate tax, to level the playing field in favor of the little guy with a great idea, our economy would be dominated by huge corporations and wealthy families, even more than it already is.
Gates, Page, and Brin did fine with the inheritance tax the way it is, and they would have done fine with no tax at all. Next argument.
The truth is, you (or I) are not qualified to judge who is worthy, and if you think the aforementioned 3 worthies are less qualified to judge who gets their money after they die (than the government, I mean), please explain why.
And, I should think this one had been retired by now, while you can find a few cases of the rich who pay little or no tax, the vast majority of national taxes are paid by the rich. Most inherited wealth has had huge amounts of taxes paid on it already. Rather than waste a lot of polemic or keystrokes on it, I’ll make you a substantial dollar bet to that effect, but I’d advise looking up where most federal tax dollars come from before betting.
Double taxation of wealth isn’t fair, and it’s not a particularly American principle (to get back to the patriotism thread).
Guys, can I pull the plug on the inheritance tax part of the thread and invite everyone back to the main topic?
A.L.
Sure thing. Sorry for the distraction, but it’s been fun.
B.
Sure thing. Thanks for the opportunity to make a point only vaguely related to the main post. And good luck finding a pony under Frankin’s dung-heap — I don’t think it’s there. Conversations like these are useful, but I don’t think there’s much cause for worry, ultimately, about his ideas spreading much. Everybody moves on eventually from freshman poli sci.
#69 Robin;
1. On Padilla:
You’re not making a very convincing case against Padilla. The case you cite supports the use of military tribunals as mechanisms of justice but does not address the issue of the rights of US citizens.
bq. From Wikipedia:
bq. The eight men involved in the case were Ernest Burger, George John Dasch, Herbert Hans Haupt, Heinrich Heinck, Edward Keiling, Herman Neubauer, Richard Quirin and Werner Thiel.
bq. All were born in Germany
And furthermore the US had declared war with Germany, while to my knowledge we are not currently at war with any nation, officially (legally).
As I said above, which you have yet to refute, Padilla was held for many years without being charged with a crime. In my view that is a serious breach of his civil rights as a US citizen.
In fact, to draw such a distinction between US citizens and foreign nationals is wrong as well; I believe all people held anywhere against their will should be charged or freed. US citizens do not have any special human rights as the Right is fond of trying to claim (talk about your special rights, eh?).
2. On Habeus Corpus:
Your second point about Habeus Corpus seems a cleverly worded dodge to avoid confronting the issue of declaring American citizens as “enemy combatants” in an undeclared and undefined war.
bq. The idea that habeus corpus was a writ that extended to captured combatants is indeed a “right” whose life is best measured in months.
This is contradicted by
bq. In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004), the Supreme Court reaffirmed the right of United States citizens to seek writs of habeas corpus even when declared enemy combatants.
The use of the word “reaffirmed” is important in this context.
What it seems you are trying to do is offer a defense of this Administrations efforts to assume more unitary power over US citizens than is their current legal right to do. You can spin this any way you like, but in the end it still comes down to an effort to erode civil liberties and grant greater power to the Executive branch.
I am quite certain that I would (or will) be arguing the same position when and if a Democrat is elected president in 2008. What I will be curious to see is whether all of the Anti-Libertarians like John Yoo and yourself take the same view if control the Executive Branch switches parties. I’m anticipating that the polarity of these views, in many cases, will flip rapidly. There’s just too much passion and too little intellectual honesty behind these views to suspect otherwise.
Alan,
RE: #98, If the Democrats are willing to use whatever methods are necessary to stop terrorists and are willing to do to suspected terrorists what’s been done to Padilla, I’ll reconsider my determination never to vote for them. My problem with the loyal opposition is that they are _un_willing to use the methods that the Bush adminstration has used.
Fred, we made it this far including 2 world wars, a civil war, and a number of other conflicts, without the need to turn ourselves into a dictatorship or police state where citizens will give up their rights to buy into the illusion of safety and security. I’d rather die than live in such a place.
The “methods” you support are not necessary to effectively combat terrorism. But they certainly go a long way toward locking in the hold on power of a certain group of citizens for whom such concerns are mere propoganda tools.
“Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither”–Benjamin Franklin.
Fred;
What has the Bush administration used? Do we even know? Furthermore, what has the Bush administration convinced others to do for us? Rendition is a great example of plucking individuals up, sending them for torture elsewhere, and once they do not appear to have the infomormation we need, we return them without charge or explanation.
That seems quite contrary to my understanding of the bill of rights.
I think the Bush administration is doing this with the best of intentions, but our bill of rights is laid out for a reason… to prevent the slipperly slope of good intentions.
I feel like when I ask pointed questions about ‘rendition’, I’m not criticizing ‘America’, which has given me the chance to make these statements in the first place. I’m criticizing practices that take america away from what made it great in the first place.
Although it’s difficult to say, because we have little idea of what’s actually happening. I don’t think the founding fathers would be too keen on that idea either.
Alan, you don’t understand the Supreme Court cases at all. Wikipedia is not a reliable source so I don’t care if the Wikipedia author used the word “reaffirmed” – it shows an ignorance of the history of the applicability of habeus corpus during wartime. Ex Parte Quirin explicitly dealt with a habeus corpus claim and said that even though the German saboteurs were caught inside the United States that FDR’s administration could try them in military tribunals and that they had no right to a writ of habeus corpus. Hamdi spent more time dealing with the question of what authorization that Congress had made for the military commissions.
Secondly, one of the German saboteurs in Ex Parte Quirin claimed US citizenship and the Supreme Court said that it didn’t matter.
Further Alan, when you say that:
“We made it this far including 2 world wars, a civil war, and a number of other conflicts, without the need to turn ourselves into a dictatorship or police state where citizens will give up their rights to buy into the illusion of safety and security”
You in fact illustrate a great ignorance of the history of abuse of power in this country during wartime. Woodrow Wilson put political opponents in jail during WWI and the Anarchist/Bolshevik scare aftermath. People who advocated against the draft were imprisoned for their speech. Learn about the history of Eugene Debs. FDR’s administration intercepted communications in violation of federal law, wiretapped without warant, rounded up people and put them in camps based on their race and executed American citizens by military tribunal.
Your attempt to label me “anti-libertarian” is just nonsense. My point is that the rhetoric used in attacking the Bush administration is deliberately false with respect to the scope of the Bush administration’s proposals, and it is false to claim that their actions are so unprecedented.
1) The point is?
bq. Hamdi spent more time dealing with the question of what authorization that Congress had made for the military commissions.
And?
2) Another obfuscation?
bq. Secondly, one of the German saboteurs in Ex Parte Quirin claimed US citizenship and the Supreme Court said that it didn’t matter.
….perhaps because he wasn’t a US citizen?
You’ve once again dodged the issue of US citizens, their classification as enemy combatants, and Habeus corpus rights. Hamdi would seem to have settled that. Your reply only points out, correctly, that the use of the word “reaffirmed” by the wikipedia author may or may not be legally accurate. But nor have you convinced me that it isn’t by citing cases that apply to foreign citizens.
It doesn’t take much knowledge of history or law, Robin, to see that the arguments you are making are directed at issues that are immaterial to the case of Padilla, who was held without charges, access to legal representation, and was quite possibly tortured.
You also seem intent to demonstrate that, since there are historical precedents for the treatment of captives in wartime, then 1) it is OK to do so again, and 2) that the current situations are analogous.
As for 1, my position is that it wasn’t right then, and it isn’t right now.
As for 2, WWII and the GWOT are not equivalent from a legal standpoint for the reasons I wrote about above. Your points fail to persuade unless you can convince me that they are.
bq. _You in fact illustrate a great ignorance of the history of abuse of power in this country during wartime. Woodrow Wilson put political opponents in jail during WWI and the Anarchist/Bolshevik scare aftermath. People who advocated against the draft were imprisoned for their speech. Learn about the history of Eugene Debs. FDR’s administration intercepted communications in violation of federal law, wiretapped without warant, rounded up people and put them in camps based on their race and executed American citizens by military tribunal._ [Robin Roberts, #102]
So what’s your point, Robin? Were those abuses of power or not? Were those necessary acts by previous administrations that saved the nation, and should be praised and emulated by future administrations? Or were they previous failures that we are and should be ashamed of, and should be trying not to repeat?
You do succeed in arguing that Bush’s abuses of power are not “unprecedented” in some ways. The real question is whether they violate our American values.
Not to speak for Robin, but I believe that the original point was not to argue that such things were good, but that to state that Bush is eroding civil rights and turning the country into a fascist police state, whilst somehow ignoring Roosevelt who locked up thousands of US citizens without charge or trial is an interesting example of selective vision.
Roosevelt is a far more relevant example of a president bending his powers beyond what was intended (Supreme Court packing, 3rd term, etc). Nothing Bush has done is even close to that league.
One of the biggest problems with the detainees is that there is no clear approved procedure to follow. Should US soldiers have to read Miranda rights to all detainees lest they prove to be US citizens and we’ll need to try them later?
The NSA currently, when monitoring a known terrorist groups sat phone has to stop the tap and quit listening when that phone calls a US number. Logic states that those would be the most important calls to tap, but no, that would be WARRENTLESS WIRETAPPING OF US CITIZENS.
The hysteria is getting in the way of finding rational solutions to these issues. Ignoring a very long history of negotiating a rational middle (with varying degrees of success) between rights and security isn’t helpful to put it mildly.
bq. _Alan, you don’t understand the Supreme Court cases at all. Wikipedia is not a reliable source so I don’t care if the Wikipedia author used the word “reaffirmed” – it shows an ignorance of the history of the applicability of habeus corpus during wartime._ [Robin Roberts, #102]
Let me point out (by example) that snotty put-downs work a lot better when you provide an explicit and authoritative citation, and when you have checked that the point you are making is correct.
It’s easy to find and read the actual “Hamdi Supreme Court decision”:http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/28june20041215/www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/03pdf/03-6696.pdf
In it, Justice O’Conner writes:
bq. _We hold that although Congress authorized the detention of combatants in the narrow circumstances alleged here, due process demands that a citizen held in the United States as an enemy combatant be given a meaningful opportunity to contest the factual basis for that detention before a neutral decisionmaker._
To my eye, that amounts to “reaffirming” _habeas corpus_ in this case. The Wikipedia author was justified in his description, and so was Alan.
_perhaps because he wasn’t a US citizen?_
And what process was used to adjudicate his citizenship claim? Secret military tribunal. I assume that is not acceptable, but it apparently was, and is, constitutional.
I’m not too afraid to use Wikipedia. *Herbert Hans Haupt*
bq. _ was the son of Hans Max Haupt and Erna Haupt (Froehling). Hans Haupt was a World War I veteran who came to Chicago to find work in 1923 . His son and wife followed in 1925 . Herbie Haupt became a US citizen when his parents were naturalized in 1930._
…
bq. _In 2001, Haupt was in the news again as President Bush attempted to use military tribunals to try American citizens after the 9-11 attack. A Supreme Court ruling on Haupt, the only US citizen executed in the affair, was cited again. (Ex parte Quirin)_
“Herbert Hans Haupt”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hans_Haupt
Beard,
What Robin has failed to demonstrate, in my view, is that the treatment of Padilla is not unprecedented, in a legal sense (her basis for argument). It might not be “unprecedented” in a broader definition of the word where Presidents may act at the limit of their individual authorities in a moment of national crisis or wartime. But that’s not her point.
But again, her argument, and Treefrogs, rests on the contention that the WWII and current situations are analogous, from a legal standpoint, and as such hinges primarily on the very broad interpretation the Bush administration is taking of the 2002 Iraq war authorization. In my mind, it’s not even a case, as I don’t see any connection between Jose Padilla and Saddam Hussein (although I’m sure some creative Rightwinger can make one).
#108
Haupt
bq. The origin of the term “naturalization” is that it gives to a resident alien almost all of the rights held by a natural-born citizen.
bq. In general, basic requirements for naturalization are that the applicant hold a legal status as a full-time resident for a minimum period of time and that the applicant promise to obey and uphold that country’s laws, to which an oath or pledge of allegiance is sometimes added.
Jose Padilla
bq. Jose Padilla was born in Brooklyn, New York, but later moved to Chicago, Illinois.
Alan:
You’re confusing the Iraq war authorization with the
SG, yes, I did mean the AUMF:
bq. Public law 107-40, the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, one of two resolutions commonly known as “AUMF” (the other being “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002”), was a joint resolution passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 2001, authorizing the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001. The authorization granted the President the authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those whom he determined “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11th attacks, or who harbored said persons or groups.
Still doesn’t sweep Habeus Corpus away, nor explicity permit the executive to declare US citizens as “enemy combatants”, nor suggest that terrorism outside of that which occurred on Sept. 11 is included.
Alan, you seem to spend more time on strawman arguments than on what I wrote. In fact, you’ve repeatedly misrepresented what I have written and I’m beginning to think its no accident. I don’t care if you see no analogy between WWII and the war on terror, it does not change the constitutional dimensions of the powers of the Federal government, Congress and the Presidency.
And you’ve gotten completely lost on the citizenship question, even the Hamdi decision specifically states that in Quirin, Haupt was a US citizen.
Beard, given that pre-existing Supreme Court precedent held that Haupt and his comrades in the Quirin case did not have habeus corpus rights, Hamdi did not “reaffirm” habeus corpus but rather distinguished the Hamdi case from the Quirin precedent with some discussion about the scope of the Congressional AUMF. Note that the Fourth Circuit’s decision, which the Supreme Court overruled, specifically cited to Quirin. It is certainly an exaggeration to say that Hamdi “reaffirmed” habeus corpus when Hamdi’s majority opinion specifically states that even though a US citizen, Hamdi may be detained during the scope of hostilities if he was indeed a combatant. And when done, Hamdi does not authorize a full habeus corpus proceeding examining all the facts of Hamdi’s detention, but just a limited one on whether or not he was in fact a hostile combatant.
But when one is done, the bottom line is that it is clearly arguable that the Bush administration was acting within the powers it had read for itself in the Quirin case ( certainly the Fourth Circuit thought so ) and in the Hamdi case, the Supreme Court “clarifies” the existing precedent to add a veneer of due process to the determination of who is an enemy combatant. So to return to my earlier comment: ‘Each time I read or hear an argument about “erosion” of civil liberty, those claiming an “erosion” are more often than not arguing for the establishment of a new civil “right”‘ remains. There simply is not significant “erosion” of civil liberties found in this case.
Still doesn’t sweep Habeus Corpus away, nor explicity permit the executive to declare US citizens as “enemy combatants”, nor suggest that terrorism outside of that which occurred on Sept. 11 is included.
Neither did the declaration of war on Japan, and yet…I recommend taking this up with Lincoln, he started it.
Which is an interesting question, did the North ever explicitly declare war on the South?
I’d also almost forgotten but Grant suspended Habeus Corpus during the KKK uprisings in the 1870s.
bq. I don’t care if you see no analogy between WWII and the war on terror, it does not change the constitutional dimensions of the powers of the Federal government, Congress and the Presidency.
The issue is not nearly as well defined as you are making it out to be. In which case what I and my fellow citizens of like mind think is very relevant to the issue, whether you choose to care or not. And with the current administration testing the “constitutional dimensions” constantly (Yoo, torture, Comey/Ashcroft, etc.), it becomes necessary to man the bulwarks and push back. Make no mistake-that is why we live in a society that is as free as it is, not because the Executive branch has excercised restraint over it’s power.
And for that we are treated with the kind of derision and disrespect and contempt that every one of your posts has demonstrated.
Treefrog:
No, they did not, because the US never recognized the existence of a “Confederate States of America”, just as it never recognized the right of any state to secede.
The war was officially against rebel persons occupying US territory.
Incidentally, Lincoln’s actions in suspending habeas corpus affected Maryland above all, and Maryland’s Democratic governor praised the action, saying “The only problem I have with it is that the government has let some of those people go.”
Robin, Treefrog, et al,
Just out of curiosity, if it turns out that a President Clinton or President Obama is elected in 2008 and takes office in 2009, are you going to have the same enthusiasm for the unchecked power of the Presidency that you have today?
Personally, my allegiance is to the Constitution and to the system of checks and balances that (to be blunt) weakens the power of the Executive. But you have staked out a clear position on the other side. Will you stick with that position when the occupant of that exalted office is someone you have greater disagreements with?
That President will still be the Commander-in-Chief, and will have just as much responsibility for defending the Nation against its enemies. That President will surely adopt different policies from this one. It may be helpful for the Nation to give that President a “honeymoon” period during which he or she can try to get something useful done.
Will you be a _loyal_ opposition?
Just asking.
Beard, that’s just strawman rhetoric actually. I don’t have an “enthusiasm” for “unchecked power of the Presidency” because that’s a misrepresentation of what is going on currently. The President’s power is far more “checked” than the frothy rhetoric. There are areas where I think that the Presidency is too constrained today – a key one being another A.L. thread here about the silliness of the interpretations of FISA. There are other areas where I think that the administration has gone a bit too far – such as Jose Padilla himself.
But more important, its a diversion from what I’ve been saying here repeatedly. And that is that overall there is really no “erosion” of civil liberties going on in this nation when one understands the actual history of civil liberty and contrasts current events to past events. Despite living up to a higher standard than those practiced in the past, the Bush administration is cast as fascism incarnate.
Alan wrote:
The first two points you make have historical precedent as wartime powers of the CinC. And you’re simply mistaken on your third point. The AUMF explicitly grants the CinC wartime authority “to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
Note: Precedent notwithstanding, I don’t agree with denying habeus to US citizens, not at this time. And I think it’s a good thing that people are being vigilant. I just think much of the current concern is expressed as hyperbole and I fear that the current hyperbole leads us to reenact the boy who cried wolf.
SG, now you raise the issue of how “wartime” is properly categorized. The AUMF is not a declaration of war, as far as I can tell.
Yes, Alan, the AUMF is a declaration of war for all the purposes of the US Constitution. There are no magic words constitutionally.
Alan:
Everything I’ve read says that Congress knowingly intended the AUMF to represent a declaration of war. This reflected the popular sentiment and it wasn’t a controversial interpretation.
Also, I’m (thankfully) not a lawyer, but the AUMF includes the following language:
(b) War Powers Resolution Requirements-
(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.
(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS- Nothing in this resolution supercedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.
Furthermore, the language is consistent with the AUMF for Iraq. Would you argue that that Operation Iraqi Freedom was not wartime?
I’m uncertain as to the distinction you’re drawing. What’s the basis for your claim that the AUMF against Terrorists does not represent a Congressinoal grant of war powers to the CinC?
To be clear, I’m not necessarily claiming that war is the best tool for fighting terrorists, only that it’s a tool that Congress has given to the CinC, and that Bush has kept his use of that tool well within established historical precedents. The soundness of his use of that power remain well open for debate.
SG [#122]: I agree with your final caveat about the advisability of this approach to fighting terrorism. *Fighting fire with gasoline* is my favorite phrase for the current so-called “strategy”.
We are, in fact, facing dangerous enemies who have every intention to do us harm. And who have, on 9/11, demonstrated the ability to do so in a dramatic way. (Though it has to be said that they were incredibly lucky to be so successful. Any number of things would have foiled their plot. Some were incompetence on our part, but many were just luck.)
There’s a much longer discussion to have about how best to fight terrorists. But from my perspective, it’s hard to imagine how any leader of the USA could have done more than George W. Bush has done to make all of Osama bin Laden’s dreams come true.
Without going into all the details, the Bush/Cheney policy has elevated OBL from the leader of a small, nasty criminal terrorist gang to an existential threat to the most powerful country in the world. OBL has goaded the USA into killing large numbers of Muslims, surely including a certain number of terrorists, but also surely including large numbers of people in no way connected to al Qaeda.
We’re fighting fire with gasoline, and making our problems a lot worse.
Beard
I think the real lesson here is that here we are, almost 150 years after Lincoln first famously bumped into this problem (and to be honest it probably came up before and the violations weren’t even remarked upon), and it still hasn’t been solved.
Blaming Bush for failing to fix what, to be honest, far better Presidents have failed to fix is hypocrisy of the first order.
How many Congresses have convened since the Civil War? Quite a few. How many have gotten off their duffs and fixed the problem by legislating a correct procedure to follow? 0.
So we have wartime Presidents flailing around trying to figure out where the lines are with predictable results. Leaving it up to the courts to draw the lines results in some incredibly fuzzy boundaries.
The ‘sky is falling’ ravings are EXACERBATING THE VERY VIOLATIONS THEY CLAIM TO BE PREVENTING. There are very real practical problems on the ground that need to be solved. How do you handle an American citizen captured on a foreign battlefield? Try him as a civilian and have the case dropped because the troops who captured him didn’t give him his Miranda rights?
There are very real issues of jurisdiction and procedure that need to be hammered out and no one is doing the hammering. So the Executive Branch flails and the results are distinctly sub-optimal. If more people quit hyperventilating over Bush and started demanding Congress solve the problem, then you’d see improvements. But I suppose it’s better to throw useless verbal bombs at Bush then demand concrete action from the people who are supposed to actually be setting the rules…
Am I the only one who doesn’t see the problem here? As far as I understand it, we are talking about people who were captured while engaging in active armed conflict with the armed forces of the USA. And it’s certain that very few of them were in any sort of uniform.
If they were American citizens then, by the very fact of opposing the American Government in armed conflict, they were committing either treason or sedition, both of which are capital offenses. If they were not Americans then they were enemy belligerents out of uniform, to whom the Geneva Convention makes very little reference and the reference is that they may be summarily executed by any convenient means, and in any event are not entitled to the privileges of prisoners of war.
In either case, they HAVE no rights. So what should America have done? Simple. Wring them dry of any useful information by any means necessary, and then shoot them and throw them in the nearest cesspit where they belong.
What’s the problem?
#117 from Beard:
I would be in the “et al”.
It is profitable for Godzone Country for the Americans to be victorious and have a large and influential place in the world. Said profit is first in terms of values (mateship etc.) but equally compelling is security, trade, cultural and other terms. Bluntly, since the Americans underwrite a security environment and a cultural market that is good for Australia, the Americans must win, or be made to win, regardless of who is right. (If I thought the Americans were morally wrong, it would not change my strategic orientation.)
Also, starting at the very latest with the Bali Blast of 12 October, 2002, Islam has demonstrated that is is a system that generates values, ambitions and cultures inimical to any true Australia. (As distinguished from the Australia of Sheik taj El-Din Hilaly’s aspirations, where Aussies would be subjugated by a Muslim over-class and Aussie women would be “uncovered meat”.) More Islam will be bad for Australia and Australian values, and less Islam would be better.
In the jihad wars overall, my advice to the Americans, and the British, and for that matter the the Hindus and even the Russians etc. can be summed up as: “Just win, baby.”
I think that the idea of fighting to install and build up Islamic states (in Afghansistan and Iraq so far) is so misconceived that you would be better to drop it. We would not have beaten Communism by fighting to establish and build up Communist states, and we won’t reduce Islam this way either. In this, I disagree with Armed Liberal, and I believe I agree with Fletcher Christian.
But on our overall view that Our Gang has to win, I do not think you will find a difference of opinion between me, Armed Liberal and Fletcher Christian.
If the American federal legislature would like to step up to its responsibilities a good deal more than it has, and if it does a good job: great. I’d like to see that. Or if letting the federal executive run the war conforms better to constitutional law and the requirements of military effectiveness, that’s fine too.
#117 from Beard:
Just win, baby.
One area where I radically disagree with Armed Liberal is, he sees America as a moral system unlike any other nation, and with a patriotism unlike and better than any other nation’s; whereas I see America as the most successful and powerful nation in the family of the English-speaking peoples. It’s a nation, it’s not a system with a destiny to prevail. It can win and lose like any other nation, and the point is to make it win, whatever it takes.
You are but mortal. You can lose. Think about what the world looks like if you do. It’s not pretty.
I’m always open to argument, but I’m unlikely to revise that fundamental perspective, and it’s one that makes the American federal executive a tool for the Americans to use rather than an evil to be feared by all.
#117 from Beard:
Jimmy Carter already had the maximum power: he had enough power to guarantee the defeat and humiliation of America and its allies in any conflict where other nations were foolish or unlucky enough to find themselves on America’s side or needing America’s support. That’s the kind of stuff that matters.
So I don’t see hypersensitivity over exactly how much power beyond that the American President gets is all that relevant.
Except that I’d like it if the Americans allowed their federal executive enough discretion to win wars, not just to get into them and lose them.
#117 from Beard:
Aussie Aussie Aussie, oi oi oi!
Above this, there is only God.
That’s my loyalties clear as an azure day, I hope?
#125 from Fletcher Christian:
No.
#125 from Fletcher Christian:
I am in favor of dispensing with the initial wringing and proceeding directly to the shooting.
I don’t think our soldiers should be involved in “wringing”. This has to do with our honor and my perception that whatever we got out of the enemy has proved of less value than the troubles we’ve had from keeping them alive to talk to. It has nothing to do with any rights the enemy may be alleged to have.
Also I am strongly in favor of swift and dignified burials and not mucking up cesspits.
#125 from Fletcher Christian:
Our cultures appear to produce blind spots that the enemy can exploit.