Avedon Carol has sent some traffic over, so I went to take a look.
Sigh. It’s frustrating to me. I feel like some kind of linguistic hermaphrodite, because when I talk about things like patriotism (and in her case earlier, the Pledge issue), I feel like people who I’d probably somewhat agree with – on many things – look at me like I’m speaking Aramaic.
Carol has a long, discursive post, where she starts with my comment about liberalism and patriotism, and drifts onward to a general comment about ‘the Right wing folks (the Ann Coulters etc.) are crackpots’, with what I take as the clear inference that I’m on Ann’s side.
Well, here’s what I’ve said about Ann Coulter…
THE WOOSH OF CREDIBILITY FLYING OUT THE WINDOW and COULTER’S ROOMATE … IN HELL
Yeah, I’m, a fan alright…
She then defends a bitter joke about Kathryn Harris (the one where someone watched the coverage of the Ryder truck bring in the ballots in Fla and hoped OJ had murdered her) by explaining

This is more of a joke about the famous slo-mo car chase than anything else, but considering the nightmare that Harris had subjected America to at the time, the real outrage is that the woman isn’t in jail right now. Having committed significant crimes, she then ran for Congress and was elected by Republicans.

Right. That makes it OK, then…
I just don’t get it. And, obviously, she doesn’t get me.
That doesn’t matter much to either one of us, except…
…that her group is closer to the seats of liberal power than mine, and they keep getting their butts kicked (yeah, yeah, I know Gore won the popular vote, and this election was close…but the Constitution doesn’t give the popular vote winner the Oval Office, and most Presidential parties lose seats mid-term).
Perhaps this snippet of dialog will help explain why:
From LiveJournal (via A Small Victory) in response to a post on Pearl Harbor…(note that the bold comments are from Chuck Simmons, the blog author)

remember what happened to a nation that attacked us?
yeah, ‘civilized’ america dropped two nuclear bombs and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings, in addition to causing untold environmental damage. Real noble of us. Many things make me proud to be an american; our ultimate response to pearl harbor is one that definitely does not…

The commenter goes on…

There is a moral distinction between us and them (Germans and Japanese). They made war on us and any suffering they had was due solely to their actions. They made an immoral choice and it caught up with them.
Again, it’s not so cut-and-dried as you’d like to think. Judge, judge, judge. “It’s all their fault.” It’s so easy to say.

And on…

Why aren’t you proud to be an American?
I AM proud to be an American, I’m just not proud of some of our history, and some of the present-day things our government is done. I’d have to be crazy not to be proud. Unfortunately, those things that I am not proud of are things that put me in jeopardy in other parts of the world. If I were to travel outside North America, I’d sure as hell try my best to pass as a Canadian. Not because I don’t like being American, but because I don’t want anyone killing me because of my government’s actions.
And finally, if America were power hungry, as you imply, demonstrate our empire. Who are we subjugating? Whose lands do we rape and pillage for our own benefit?
The world is our empire. Look at all the places where we have troops stationed (granted, some of those places want us, but others do not). We are the superpower–what responsibility comes with that is what we’ve given ourselves. The European Union is rather strong these days–what would happen if we take a little step back and put ourselves on EQUAL ground with those nations? Would the world fall apart? I think not. There are plenty of places in the world (SE Asia and Africa are good examples) who need plenty of help of the non-war variety. Food and medicine would be a good start. Where are we? Doing some, but not nearly enough to make a dent. What if we spend all the money we’re putting into this Iraqi “war” on HELPING instead of KILLING? Sure, it sucks to live in Iraq now, but at least they HAVE a fairly stable government. At least they HAVE money. People are starving to death everyday, people are dying from easily cureable diseases and we are spending billions cranking out weapons of destruction and getting ready to cause MORE death in the world? Not too honorable of us.

Get my point?? This is how mainstream America sees liberals…because the cutting edge of liberalism in America is dominated by voices like this.
We can blame it on the big bad media. We can blame it on the conservatives who set the agenda. We seem to be blaming it on everyone but ourselves.
When we do, maybe we can get some liberal things done in this country.
(edited for spelling)
(formatted for clarity)

Sunday, my old training partner from cycling showed up with her husband. (Hey, before you accuse me of being a wimp, note that she’s twenty years younger than me and was a pretty competitive collegiate racer – not that I’m insecure or anything.) He’s Iranian, came here after the Revolution like so many others, and was just back from Iran where he visited his family.
We visited for a while, and I unsurprisingly started asking him about what things were like right now.
He said that even the rank-and-file fundamentalists are disgusted with the current regime and are looking for change. There is a core, however, who he believes will not just step aside is politely asked. And unlike the last revolution (in which I gather that he participated in Phase I, deposing the Shah, but not Phase II, bringing in the mullahs), the ‘street’ appears to have not yet developed a taste for the fight he believes will be needed to actually make a change.
So he describes a country where things are slowly grinding to a halt as more and more people wait for something … anything to happen.
The religious police are suddenly timid…he typically gets interviewed and harassed every time he goes back. This time they called his mother, asked for a number where they could call him that night…and never called back.
And then he described going to the airport to come home, and the difference between out two societies was made clear to me. As he approached and then entered the airport in Tehran, we was thinking the whole time about how far he could go before he couldn’t run away…at what point in entering the airport he would be unable to escape the security police and would, if they wanted to arrest him, be theirs.
I’ll think about that the next time I get annoyed at the TSA folks for swabbing my laptop.

Two stories from the L.A. Times today (requires registration; use ‘laexaminer/’laexaminer’).
First, Cuts Target Ill and Aging:

As part of the budget-reduction package that he has proposed to close a huge shortfall this year, Gov. Gray Davis is urging lawmakers to cut an array of services to the elderly and ill, such as cutting back on syringes for diabetics and reducing payments to nursing homes that care for 200,000 aging and infirm Californians.
Educators were among the first to complain about Davis’ budget proposals, which include $3.1 billion in cuts to public school spending. But the Democratic governor also proposed $2 billion in cuts to welfare and health-care programs primarily for the poor. Health and human services spending cuts amount to his second-biggest target.
Lawmakers face stark choices when they arrive in Sacramento today to begin vetting Davis’ overall proposal to start filling the state’s $21-billion-plus budget gap by a combination of cuts and other adjustments that amount to $10.2 billion. Those represent the first move toward closing the budget deficit, which includes the estimated shortfall in this year’s budget as well as the projections for an even bigger problem for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

Then, A Little R&R in Maui Precedes the Budget Battle:

At 7 a.m. Saturday, California Sen. Richard Alarcon, a Democrat from Sylmar, ordered a coffee to go from the terrace restaurant at the Sheraton Hotel here. A warm breeze from the beach crossed the resort’s palm grove and koi pond and whispered across the veranda, launching another lovely December day in Hawaii.
Today, Alarcon will be back in Sacramento to confront an ugly task: cutting government services and possibly raising taxes to close a projected revenue gap bigger than the entire budgets of many states.
But over the weekend, he was hundreds of miles away — in Maui, snorkeling, working out at the hotel fitness center and playing golf at taxpayers’ expense.
Like nearly a dozen fellow lawmakers, Alarcon flew to Maui on Wednesday to attend a conference sponsored by the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., the 26,000-member union of prison guards. The conference involved three morning panel discussions on Thursday and Friday — one of which Alarcon skipped — leaving lawmakers ample time for play before their departure Sunday.
Attendees included three out of four of California’s legislative leaders, and the wives of many of the lawmakers. Most of the politicians promised to pay for the Maui trip with their own money or campaign accounts, which in some cases include thousands of dollars in donations from the prison guards.
But Alarcon said he would have the Senate — California taxpayers, in other words — foot the bill for his $450 flight. The rest of the costs, including his $300-a-night room at the swank Sheraton, would partly be covered with the tax-free $125 senators receive each working day for living expenses.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think there was a benefit in coming here,” said Alarcon, looking island casual in khaki shorts and a T-shirt. “Relationship-building is critical in this business.”
…
Announcing his $10-billion budget-cutting package Friday, Davis said no area of government would be spared. The Department of Corrections, however, fared better than most. Under Davis’ proposals, the agency would lose $13.56 million from its overall budget of about $5 billion. By comparison, Davis proposes $74.3 million in midyear cuts, from an overall budget of $4.48 billion, to the University of California, and nearly $60 million, from a budget of $3.45 billion, in reductions for the state university system. This year the guards union won pay raises of 37%, spread over five years, from the Davis administration, a package that will cost more than $500 million annually when fully implemented. Only one legislator, state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), voted against the raises.

Now I don’t want to get all “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” on you. But in case you wonder why it is that taxes go up, budgets go up, levels of service go down, and deficits go up, don’t watch Tony Soprano managing his pet politicians on his Jersey City projects, just take a look at the above.
Now I’ll buy some favor with Ann Salisbury by pointing out that this isn’t the Governor’s problem alone; everyone is standing at the trough. But like Captain Renault, I’m sure he’s “shocked, just shocked” to find that the state is being bought and sold. Sadly, I’m not.

Instapundit is rightfully (Right-fully, get it?) outraged at the pass that Trent Lott is getting for his stupid and evil comments as noted below.
I did a quick search through the major media:
New York Times – nada.
Washington Post – story
Chicago Tribune – nada
Los Angeles Times – nada
San Francisco Chronicle – story
CNN.com – nada
Memphis Commercial Appeal – nada
Yahoo.com – nada
Now, maybe it’s just me, but I thought the liberal media were against racism.
And to discover that one of the most powerful men in the country is an unreconstructed racist…as opposed, say, to discovering that he doesn’t want women to play golf at Augusta…would seem to me to be pretty damn pressing news.
So what’s here that I am missing, exactly??

Me: NOBODY READS MY SPECS!! I HATE MY LIFE!!
programmer: I read your spec!
programmer: the fields are in the database
Me: but you didn’t build it!!
programmer: because I disagreed!
Me: Ohmigod, it’s a democracy!!
programmer: no, that’s where you are wrong… since I code it, all you guys do is make recommendations &ltgrin&gt
programmer: &ltducks&gt
Me: &ltflings&gt
programmer: &ltruns&gt

…was screened in San Pedro last night.
So we went, of course.
Along with Tenacious G (who is Japanese-American), Middle Guy, Littlest Guy, and two friends…a young Dutch computer programmer and a psycho ex-Los Angeles County Sheriff who is one of my best friends.
There were a bunch of people there…I’d estimate the theatre’s capacity at a little over a thousand, and that it was three-quarters full or better.
There were four or five Pearl Harbor vets there, recognizable by their age, Hawaiian shirts, and white pants, along with a number of exhibits of WW II era hardware, including a beautiful Packard convertible with 1941 Hawaiian licence plates, and two restored carbon-arc searchlamps which lit the sky.
We got there early (the tickets said 5:00, but it turned out that the program started at 6:30), so took Littlest Guy out for a bite then went back just as the program started.
It was small-town Americana at it finest. Little League politics all the way.
The local VFW had a color guard of aging, potbellied men march the flags down the aisle. My first reaction was slightly disparaging; amusement at these older men clinging to the uniforms of their youth, their self-importance and the somewhat shabby display.
But then a couple of funny things happened.
The crowd snapped to silence (at least the folks in the auditorium) and stood as one when they saw them enter. And the regard of the crowd changed my view of the men I was watching. I didn’t see men pathetically clinging to their moment of glory or artifacts of their youth. I saw them as I believe they saw themselves, as bearers and guardians of our nation’s sacred symbols, and more importantly, as those who had participated in some way in consecrating those symbols.
And when they walked back up the aisle and out, the mood of the crowd was different.
A Pearl Harbor veteran stood up and recited some anecdotes from a stack of 3 x 5 cards, and basically told about his war. The stories were self-depreciating, funny, occasionally frightening. He told of reporting to his hangar the morning of the attack, after spending the night on liberty, and finding one of his colleagues casually shoveling dirt onto a stream of molten metal from one of their destroyed Catalina seaplanes, so no one would burn their feet when walking on it. His friend turned to him and asked “So, did you have a good time??”, and they both laughed. He discussed taking a hammer and a cold chisel to a live 500lb bomb so it would fit into the new bomb racks, and the gentle suggestion from his commanding officer that he might want to do that just a little further away from the hangars.
He was an awful speaker. His stories were mundane, not exciting, not bloodily horrible. But he was riveting all the same, because in the mundane events that he’d seen through his war, he was a perfect example of an American archetype, of Willy and Joe trudging through horrors of war in Europe while talking about their socks and whether rain on a helmet sounds like rain on a tin roofed house.
There were three interesting political notes in the evening.
A woman (who I assume was associated with the city-owned theater) came up as he finished his talk, and made the very pointed point that this was the first in a series of “movies about war and peace. We’ll be showing other war movies, and then a series of peace movies.” I don’t know if it was just that my skin is oversensitized to it, but it felt schoolmarmish. This was a night to remember the fallen from a war, and a war that we waged and won. Questions of war and peace are much on many of our minds these days, but it seems as inappropriate to have interjected this here as to have interjected a salute to the Delta Force at a Quaker prayer circle.
The crowd didn’t react overtly to much in the film, except for a smattering of applause when Yamamoto first expressed his doubts about angering America, and wild applause when the first P-5140 shot down a dive bomber.
Lots of applause at the end,when they displayed Yamamoto’s famous non-quote (he never said it) “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve”.
The film itself was good, if somehow unexciting…maybe because it was so consciously realistic and kind of documentary-like. It should make Jerry Bruckheimer and the rest of the folks behind Pearl Harbor a little bit ashamed, since so much of it was a lift (rent Tora Tora Tora and see for yourself).
But the event was a reminder to me that the roots of greatness in our nation aren’t in the salons of the powerful, but in the shabby displays of patriotism out here in the hinterlands.

The War on Bad Philosophy continues.
I’m still working today, so I can’t give this the depth it deserves, but I want to point folks to an article on Free Speech and Postmodernism, by Stephen Hicks, a Randian liberal arts professor, and commentary on the article by Arthur Silber on his blog Voice of Reason. (link originally via Instapundit)
First, I’m not a big fan of Rand and Randians. As a group, they tend to exhibit the confusion between logic and reason that many bright teenagers display (I should know, I’ve got two…). But while there is a framework in both articles I’d take some exception to (and will when I get a moment), there are a couple of 18kt gems worth pulling out and handing around. From Hicks:

What we have then are two positions about the nature of speech. The postmodernists say: Speech is a weapon in the conflict between groups that are unequal. And that is diametrically opposed to the liberal view of speech, which says: Speech is a tool of cognition and communication for individuals who are free.
If we adopt the first statement, then the solution is going to be some form of enforced altruism, under which we redistribute speech in order to protect the harmed, weaker groups. If the stronger, white males have speech tools they can use to the detriment of the other groups, then don’t let them use those speech tools. Generate a list of denigrating words that harm members of the other groups and prohibit members of the powerful groups from using them. Don’t let them use the words that reinforce their own racism and sexism, and don’t let them use words that make members of other groups feel threatened. Eliminating those speech advantages will reconstruct our social reality—which is the same goal as affirmative action.
A striking consequence of this analysis is that the toleration of “anything goes” in speech becomes censorship. The postmodern argument implies that if anything goes, then that gives permission to the dominant groups to keep on saying the things that keep the subordinate groups in their place. Liberalism thus means helping to silence the subordinate groups and letting only the dominant groups have effective speech. Postmodern speech codes, therefore, are not censorship but a form of liberation – they liberate the subordinated groups from the punishing and silencing effects of the powerful groups’ speech, and they provide an atmosphere in which the previously subordinated groups can express themselves. Speech codes equalize the playing field.

I haven’t read a better description of the postmodernist take on speech and power.
I believe Hicks to be off base in his explanation of the root of this construction; he explains it as a political tactic adopted as the previous tactic – affirmative action – began to fail. He’s wrong; this is a manifestation of the underlying philosophy behind affirmative action – the primacy of group identification, and the construction of politics as conflicts between identified groups.
I’d suggest going back to Marcuse’s ‘Repressive Tolerance’ for a historic touchstone.
A bit more bloggage then back to work…

…as Trent Lott gives back the advances the GOP has made in the last few years. In today’s washingtonpost.com, via the entire freaking blogpverse.

Speaking Thursday at a 100th birthday party and retirement celebration for Sen. Thurmond (R-S.C.) in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Lott said, “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”
Thurmond, then governor of South Carolina, was the presidential nominee of the breakaway Dixiecrat Party in 1948. He carried Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and his home state. He declared during his campaign against Democrat Harry S. Truman, who supported civil rights legislation, and Republican Thomas Dewey: “All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches.”
On July 17, 1948, delegates from 13 southern states gathered in Birmingham to nominate Thurmond and adopt a platform that said in part, “We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race.”

Being a racist in 1948 was evil.
Suggesting in 2002 that that was a good thing is amazingly stupid and evil.
In case all my GOP commenters wonder why I haven’t switched parties…

I was just planning to excoriate William Burton (I’m in that kind of mood; even my friends better watch their asses…) for this post:

I would first point out that the traditional Democratic donor groups don’t scare me, nor do they scare most people likely to vote Democratic. The unions, trial lawyers, environmental groups, abortion rights groups, and socially liberal Hollywood types are the most solidly Democratic donor constituencies. Try as they might, the Republicans have never gotten significant numbers of people to vote against the Democrats because of who gives money to them (people may vote pro-life, but they’re not changing their votes if the Democrats stop taking money from NARAL). These traditional Democratic donor groups line up pretty closely with good Democratic policies.

The problems occur when Democrats start relying on money from traditionally Republican groups. When Democrats start depending on money from banks, from insurance companies, from the investor class, and from big business in general, then they find themselves in an untenable position. To keep these donors happy, they must abandon traditional Democratic policies and the political advantages that come from representing the majority of the American people against those with outsized power and influence.

He’s wrong in more than a couple of ways here…
…but because I’m so effing backlogged, I didn’t get around to it until he’d posted this:

I believe that FDR’s appeal was not to minorities, the poor, and to union members just because they belonged to those groups (even in the 30’s that wasn’t enough to win elections). I believe that his appeal to them was part of his greater appeal to huge chunks of the American electorate. That appeal was more psychological than based on race or other identity. FDR spoke to and for what America as a whole was feeling during the 30’s and 40’s, and that is still applicable today.

I’d say that FDR had two basic constituencies, with a great deal of overlap: the anxious and the powerless. Speak to those constituencies today and you win elections (a great deal of Reagan’s popularity was his appeal to those who felt anxious about the future and those who felt powerless in the face of government).

Whatever the drawbacks (and they’re too many to list) of the era, there was a lot less anxiety in the 50’s and early 60’s than there is now. If you had a job assembling cars, you could be pretty sure that the job would stick around and that you’d be able to support your family with it. If you had a job in middle management at GM or at a bank, you could be pretty sure that job would be there your whole life. If your kids were in college, then you could be pretty sure that good jobs would be waiting for them when they graduated. Things were more predictable, and that made people less anxious.

Compare that to the 30’s and 40’s, in which the Great Depression and war made everyone anxious. You couldn’t be sure that your job would be there in a year. You couldn’t be sure your son would be alive in a year. You couldn’t even be sure that your way of life would be around much longer. FDR dealt with this anxiety by letting people know that we were all in this together, and by using the government to actively make things better. He knew that when things are bad, people don’t want the government to simply step out of the way and let nature take its course (the Hoover approach); they want the government to step in and make things better.

This activist approach to government is very popular and should be just as big selling point for the Democrats now as it was then. While social dislocation and unemployment is nothing close to what it was in the 30’s and the War on Some Terror Funded by Some People (none of whom happen to be Saudi) pales in comparison to WWII, the public today is still quite anxious. A factory employee, a middle manager, even a professional doesn’t know for sure that his job will be there in a year. If it’s not, he doesn’t know for sure he’ll be able to replace it. He doesn’t know if his kids will find good jobs when they graduate college; nor does he know what the world will be like in even a few years. This leads to a lot of anxiety, and elections will go to those who act to calm it and are willing to take steps to make things better.

Damn.
How can I criticize someone who’s so perfectly right?? I’m gonna go home and kick the cats instead.

I’’m under the weather and under water at the same time right now, so didn’’t realize until just now that Instapundit and Jeff Cooper both linked to me, so thanks guys!

To Glenn, I’’ll comment that while my posts are pretty critical of the DNC establishment, they are critical with an eye toward creating an unassailable Democratic hegemony… – so watch out!!

Jeff went back and looked at my post on patriotism and his response, and he came up with a very smart thing which I hadn’’t completely thought through, which was to disassociate patriotism as ‘love of country’ from patriotism as ‘supporting a strong national defense’.

He’s absolutely right, but reading him sent me off on a tangent (exhaustion does that), so let me suggest something slightly different to go along with his point.

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 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.
I believe in progress and change. A long time ago, when discussing those convicted of Central Park Jogger assault and rape, I said:

My reaction is actually surprisingly different. I’’m thrilled. And excited. And proud. I feel bad for the youths wrongly convicted (although my bad feelings are somewhat offset by the admitted fact that they had been wilding – …randomly assaulting innocent people in the park…). I’’m bothered by the fact that poor kids of color get worse legal representation than rich white guys like Skakel.

But none of this changes the fact that I’’m proud because we live in a society where we are willing to face up to and admit our mistakes. To correct them where possible. No politically connected prosecutor was able to bury the confession or prevent the DNA testing that ultimately appears to have exonerated them. I’’m thrilled that we have been able to take the fruits of our technology and apply them, fairly and objectively to support the interests of people who would normally be beneath consideration. I’’m excited because I believe that these tools… – the technology and the open legal system – …that are the product of this society will be used in the future to prevent bad things from happening – …like convicting the wrong people of horrible crimes.

I’’m interested in why our three reactions are so disparate, and it cuts to one of my significant core issues, the alienation of many of us from our society and the overt disgust with all the instruments of government. In other words, the collapse of legitimacy.

I’’m interested in why it is, when we correct the injustices of the past, and devise tools to ensure that it will be difficult to make the same mistakes again, we are dwelling on the “Oh, no, we were so bad” rather than the “we’’re getting better”. See, I think that real liberalism… – the kind that builds schools and water systems and improves people’s lives… – comes from a belief in progress.

It’s a difference of worldview, folks, a difference of philosophy. A dash of hope to offset the bitterness of history, that’s what I believe it takes to love one’s country.

So thanks, Jeff, for making me think about it (and damn you for taking me away from my pressing work!!).

(edited for punctuation and grammar)