William Burton writes:

Now, making economic issues the focus of the Democratic Party won’t be easy, but it’s doable. The Republicans will try to make elections about the social policies that win them votes, not about the economic policies that even most of their supporters don’t agree with (*), but that won’t be the biggest problem. The biggest problem will be untangling Democratic policies from the web of donors who keep the party funded.
Right now, the economic polices that would win the most support for the Democratic Party also happen to be the ones that their donors agree with least. As long as the banks, insurance companies, and drug companies can buy themselves influence from Democratic politicians, they will (even if they’d really prefer Republicans to win). As long as they continue to buy influence, the Democrats will be unable to take the economic positions that will win them electoral majorities. Of course, the Democrats also need money to win elections, and they get this money from their donors. There’s a kinda chicken-and-the-egg dynamic going. That’s why I said this would be tougher than fighting off the Republicans’ efforts to make every election about Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion (with their modern sidekicks Guns, God, and Gays).
The most obvious change would be to the positions Democratic candidates take on economic issues. No longer can they try to be marginally better than Republicans while trying mightily not offend anyone who might write them a check. Playing it safe and refusing to take a stand allows the opponents to pick the issues to do battle with. This is how we’ve allowed the Republicans to position themselves as the Lower Taxes Party when they’re really the Lower Taxes for Corporations and Rich Folks Party. The Democrats haven’t put forth any realistic proposals other than opposition to tax cuts (never a winner electorally). Instead, they should’ve put forth their own proposal that dramatically lowered the tax burden on the middle and working classes while doing next to nothing for the top end. Unfortunately, plans like that don’t get pushed by people trying to keep their donors happy above all else.
I’d also suggest a change in image for the Democrats, but not anything superficial. The Republicans have gotten a lot of mileage out of kicking the so-called “liberal elites” who are supposedly trying to make life hell for white male heterosexuals like myself. Now, a lot of that is pure bullshit and a bunch more is due to the confusion of the academic left (which is virtually powerless in real life, but tends to make itself a good target) and the political left as typified by unions and other power brokers within the Democratic Party. There’s not much that anyone can do about leftist intellectuals pontificating and right-wing talking heads making it seem as if they represent the Democratic Party. We can, however, craft an alternate image for the party that revolves around family and community. That’s the kind of thing that appeals to people regardless of their race or religion (and it’ll make the talking heads look like the idiots they are when they try to say that Democrats are against families).

Now he’s dead-on-target on his analysis here and in the balance of the post that I’ve clipped. The New Deal Democratic alliance was shattered by George Wallace and Jane Fonda, and while the ex-partners eye each other with a mixture of melancholy and anger … kind of like ex-husbands and wives … the reality is that the issues which once held them together don’t any more.
So the Democrats are left looking for a core constituency. But they have three: Rich liberals, who value their self-image as ‘just’, African-Americans who know that many of the programs designed for social redress have become giant patronage machines, and the public unions, as noted here by Rob Lyman.
The Democratic ‘investors’ (donors), invest to secure their own positions. The bigger voter audiences in the middle have interests that often conflict with the Democratic ‘investors’, and sadly, when put to the choice, the Party goes with the ‘investors’ almost every time.
Now I think there’s a big constituency out there…the single moms making $30K and barely getting by, the two-income families who realize that they’ll never make more than $25K together, all the way up to the middle-class families making $100K and happy to own a home, but who realize that they can save for retirement or send the kids to college, but not both.
Social and economic policies aren’t aimed at these people. And yet, they are the ones who the ‘invisible hand’ of globalization is hitting the hardest – by limiting opportunity, by exporting jobs, by capping salaries.
I’m not an isolationist. King Canute’s lesson to his advisors has sunk in. But we have to look at how we will manage the changes in the economy, if in no other way than by cushioning the impacts on those who can least afford it.
The problems of the very poor are equally real, and in many ways, more wrenching. But they don’t have far to fall, and the mere ability to get and hold a job gets them through their worst problems.
And, cynically, they don’t vote.
The working classes do. And they are righteously afraid of falling down a level, with all the reason in the world.
That’s the face of the New Model Democratic Party. When we figure out how to make the lives of working Americans better…by getting out of the way and letting entrepreneurs create jobs, while keeping the scam artists from looting the banks and corporations…by designing tax policy that is simple, fair, and tilted toward those who work rather than those who invest (yeah, this is going to be an issue…)….and by figuring out how to provide the public goods and how to get out of the way and let the market provide the private goods these people need to have decent lives.
A long time ago, I became convinced that what most people want…whether they grew up in Oxaca, Compton, or Brentwood…is a decent house to raise their kids in, a meaningful and reasonable secure job, and some sense that their children’s lives had a shot at being better than theirs.
Deliver that, Democrats, and win.

With the post below, I’m done with the Burk issue (I reserve the right to respond to clever or significantly dumb comments), although not with the issues of men, women, and children.
I did want to take a moment and give an attaboy to Glenn Reynolds (despite the fact that he didn’t link to me and still, dammit, hasn’t put me on the Big Blogroll and Fount of Traffic); he and I had a long email correspondence about all this and while we’re each kind of puzzed about the other’s position, he was gracious, civil, and picked my most coherent email to promote.

Here’s an excerpt of a paper I wrote as an undergraduate (had to go get it out of a box in the garage…how many of you other people have boxes with old papers, transcripts, letters, and naked photos of your college girlfriends hanging out in the garage? It’s amazing what you find when you go through this stuff):

A Modest Proposal Concerning the U.S. Internal Revenue Tax Codes
Assignment: State and defend one government policy or law change that would have a significant effect on American poverty as discussed in this class.
My proposal is simple.
I believe that we should alter the Internal Revenue codes to make it mandatory to file IRS tax returns every year, regardless of the filers’ income. And I believe that we should further make it a crime to earn less than the designated ‘poverty’ level, and make that crime punishable by death.
I believe that the causes of poverty in America are complicated and have deep roots not only in our economic structures, but in our social and political history as well. To suggest one policy change and assume that it would have a significant long-term effect on the percentages of people who live in poverty is simplistic.
Unless we strike at the root of the poverty problem: the poor.
By taking the one step of eliminating the poor, we can eliminate poverty in America!
…

Commenter Chuck Pelto triggered the thought that maybe I should pre-empt his promised Fisking by quickly explaining the use of satire, it’s identifying characteristics, and the difference between satire, a ‘joooke’, a hoax, and ‘kidding’.
Let’s take my own work, above, as a starting place.
This was for an upper-division undergraduate economics class, taught by an avowed Marxist. He focused on urban poverty in the U.S. as the base condition of advanced capitalist societies, as I recall.
My paper went on to explain the economic benefits to the surviving taxpayers, as tax-evasion would vanish, new jobs in the courts and execution systems would be created, and how we wouldn’t have to worry ourselves about those unseemly poor people cluttering up our cities.
Now my intent, as I reread it (it was too damn long ago for me to have any real recollection) was a) to make the point that there were poor people and that letting them starve probably wasn’t the desirable public policy solution; b) to satirize the simplistic thinking I was seeing from teachers and fellow students who believed that if only we would implement the single-tax, or the negative income tax, or some other simplistic policy that the problem of poverty would go away. I didn’t believe that it would.
Now I won’t try and defend the quality of satire that I was attempting. I was a sophomore in college, and it was doubtless sophomoric, regardless of my self-identification as a peer of Swift.
But the point of satire is, as defined political: The term satire commonly refers to a specific genre or simply a style or tone in literature that employs great wit to point out in a mocking or humorous manner the human frailties or maliciousness of individuals, groups, or the whole of mankind, usually in order to prompt a correction.
From Saxon, Shaun. “Definitions of Five Literary Terms.” The Official Shaun Saxon Website. 1998. 13 August 2000.
My point was both to create empathy for the poor (as opposed to the heartless Capitalists we were learning about) and to suggest that simple solutions would have to be Draconian to work.
I wasn’t making a joke (which would be the logical defense of students dressed in blackface). It wasn’t a hoax (dropping a pink-painted watermelon wrapped in a blanket off the third-floor library balcony while screaming “my baby!” would have qualified as a hoax). And I wasn’t kidding. I was deadly serious about the issue then (as I am now). I just attempted to use a time honored literary form to make my point, by radically exaggerating a position I knew would be abhorrent to the reader and which I hoped would get the reader to consider their positions on the subjects.
Now my personal experience…the professor was horrified, and scrawled “Zyklon B??” on my paper, and I had to go to the library and get him a copy of the Swift book before he’d reconsider and read the paper for credit…may be coloring my defense of Burk in this.
But there’s more.
Reproductive rights and responsibilities are, sadly, like the child King Solomon for whom was asked to judge between mothers. They are fundamentally indivisible, and yet we have to divide them if for no other reason than that men and women each bear different portions of each.
I think that contemporary feminism is no more a monolith than contemporary conservatism or contemporary gun-rights advocacy. They are not Johansen blocks, they are French pastries…Napoleons (known in France as mille-feuilles or ‘thousand sheets’) which consist of a series of distinct layers, each different from its neighbor.
And I do agonize over how to deal with abortion and parental rights. Abortion is brutal because there are three interests which must be considered…the mother’s, the father’s, and the future child’s. I think we are doing a bad job of balancing those interests today; more on this later, it will be a long discussion.
And I believe we are doing a bad job of balancing the interests of men and women and children in allocating parental rights and responsibilities. I’m a twice-divorced father of three sons, and believe me this issue cuts close to home. I have close to the ideal relationships with my ex-es and have my sons more often than not (except for Virginia Guy), and I can tell you how I had to fight the innate logic of the system to get to this point (and have to give props to the moms as well for accepting that this was the way to go). More on this too.
And agree or disagree with Burk, unlike some other layers in the feminist pastry, she’s raising a legitimate issue is suggesting that is contraception was a purely male issue, face it – we’d be all about legal abortions. So I keep feleing that people who are attacking the form of her argument are just being dishonest, and taking a page from LBJ’s political playbook (in mentioning that “his honorable opponent was a pig-fucker”, his comment was “I just want to hear him deny it in public.”)

Part 3 of Brink Lindsey’s articles on terrorism is up, and here’s a quote:

The terrorists’ strategy is, of course, delusional to the point of psychosis. No faith, however blind, will make rote memorization of ancient texts, suppression of critical inquiry and dissent, subjugation of women, and servile deference to authority the recipe for anything other than civilizational decline. The Islamists therefore cannot win, at least not as they conceive victory. All they can do is try to bring us down to their level. But on that score, the threat they pose is formidable.
In the longer view, the threat of the new barbarism goes far beyond Islamist totalitarianism. Over time, the chaos of underdevelopment could spawn other radical anti-Western movements. Less speculatively, there are fringe political movements here in the West %u2014 white supremacists on the right, radical environmentalists and animal-rights zealots on the left %u2014 that have already demonstrated their willingness to use violence against their fellow citizens. Likewise, apocalyptic cults can double as terrorist cells, as happened with Aum Shinrikyo in Japan. Although members of such groups may have been born and raised among us, their deep alienation from the larger social order can make them, in effect, internal barbarians – enemies of a civilization that, psychologically at least, they are unable or unwilling to make their home.

Not much to disagree with, from my point of view. I think he misses two key issues, that may provide leverage for dealing with this stuff:
First, that societies live through their philosophies. This isn’t wa-wa incense-waving nonsense. The reality is that societies function because they can constrain the behavior of the people who live in them. What matters a lot is how they do that constraining.
Second, that the dislocation caused by modern technoloigies and modern economies throughout the world tear up the social structures that constrain people’s behavior, and leave the door open for new ones, which may often be pernicious.
We were talking last night about speeding and traffic laws (which I’ve discussed before). I often ride a motorcycle, and the behavior of many of my fellow riders concerns me…they act stupidly, have accidents, the general public gets mad, laws get passed, etc. I’m thinking about how to make stupidity ‘uncool’, and figuring out how to make that a viable meme.
We started talking about the role of ‘belief’ in obeying the law…the same kind of thing I talked about as ‘legitimacy’. I can obey the law because I believe it is right (through upbringing, socialization, rational discourse), or because I am afraid of ostracism. Or, on the other hand, because I’m afraid I’ll be arrested or jailed or fined.
Society depends on the first kind of constraint, on the internal constraints of socialization and conscience. As those are eroded, we’re trying to replace them with remote cameras and email sniffers, but there are a few problems with that model…
– that it is a lot less likely to work;
– that if it works, it will create a kind of society that we may not want to live in;
– that we will gradually (as we have been doing) reduce the ability of people to internally control their behavior, which will go on to make a vicious cycle of more external control, less self-control, more problems, more calls for external control, etc. until the whole system collapses under the weight of the pinpoint control each of us will be subject to.
So for me, the key is the seed…the idea…that we need to plant and cultivate to try and reverse this trend. And that seed is philosophical.

I’m going to go to the dentist and get treatment for TMJ, I’m gnashing my teeth so god-damned strongly right now.
Let me start by suggesting a simple test for all of us to look in the mirror and try out.
Recite the plaque that legend holds was over the desk of Lord Keynes when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer – “When I’m wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?”
Go do it and come back. I’ll wait.
*shuffles paper on desk*
Now let’s talk about some people who don’t seem to get it.
I’m beside myself with frustration right now. I read and respect a variety of sources; one of them is Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit. I may disagree with some of his policy pronouncements, and I hate techno, but overall I find that his arguments are sound and fact-based. If anyone can bring me over to the Dark Side, he would be a damn good candidate.
But today, he continues hammering the Martha Burk story based on his revised dictum that it wasn’t about self-evidently loony policy in her article (the original charge), but about the hypocrisy that permits left-wing writers to lampoon the other side, but won’t let right-wing writers (except maybe those named P.J. O’Rourke) lampoon the left. I’m not going to argue this point (I agree that there is too much sensitivity on all sides, everyone who reads my stuff knows I hold no truck with P.C. or victimology), but I’ll bet that if I had a spare two hours I could drag out right-wing satire as out there as Burk’s.
But then he goes on to laud this moronic column … and in saying this, I’m offending the IQ challenged, because any one of them could have written a better one … by Wendy McElroy in Fox News.
This column was actually written by Robert Fisk, as far as I can tell. Seriously, this author must have gone to the same rhetoric and disregard-for-facts school.
Here we go:

A recent flap in the media captures how PC feminism is fabricating conflict and then refusing to deal with the consequences.

Actually, it is the right-wing commentators (Lopez, the present author, and sadly, Instapundit) who are fabricating, as we’ll see below.

The controversy involves Martha Burk — the virago who blasted the privately owned Atlanta National Golf Club for not admitting women members. An old article Burk wrote for the Nov-Dec. 1997 issue of Ms. Magazine has surfaced. In the piece, entitled “The Sperm Stops Here!”, Burk advocates the mandatory sterilization of men at puberty as a solution to the abortion debate.

Wow, the ‘virago’; that’s rhetorically setting the stage for a fact-based argument. OK here are an opinion, two factual assertions, and a fabrication. Ms. Burk may or may not be a virago (A loud, overbearing woman; a termagant). She is challenging Augusta’s males-only position, and she did write an article (note link added) for Ms. Magazine. The question is whether Burk ‘advocated’ forced sterilization of men as a solution to the issue of abortion.
I’ll suggest that she probably didn’t, and that anyone with a reasonable liberal-arts education should have known it. McElroy continues:

“The Sperm Stops Here!” was allegedly intended as satire. The tip-off is Burk’s lead-in: “A modest proposal …” This refers to Jonathan Swift’s famous 1729 satire “A Modest Proposal” in which he exaggerates British policies in Ireland in order to discredit them. He carries British callousness to its logical conclusion by suggesting that the English farm and eat Irish babies. Swift intends to elicit horror in his readers.
But is “The Sperm Stops Here!” really a hoax?

OK, on what possible basis would you suggest that it wasn’t a hoax, but was rather a policy position? First, and foremost, the tip-off as above is pretty damn conclusive. How many clues would McElroy want? More importantly, when she goes to the movies, does she walk out wondering where they found the flying Ford Anglica to use as the Weasley’s car?

Kathryn Lopez in National Review and Rush Limbaugh on his radio program took the article at face value — much to both of their embarrassment. But there is nothing to be embarrassed about.
For example, in contrast to Swift’s classic piece, Burk was defending a policy — abortion — by ascribing absurd positions to its opponents, which they have never held. She opens by stating that both sides believe “if all babies were planned … women wouldn’t seek abortions.” If abortion is outlawed, therefore, men at puberty must be chemically sterilized. Then state tribunals (and women) could plan all babies. Burk is eliciting contempt for those who question abortion.

Well, as opposed to those on the pro-life side who rain contempt on those who support choice? This is an issue with a lack of reasoned voices, that’s for sure. So pot, meet kettle. But my favorite part of this argument is this: Burk’s argument can’t be satire because she is defending a policy…abortions…as opposed to opposing one…say, prohibiting abortions. Whatthehell?? McElroy, were you a journalism major in college by some chance? Did you ever take a logic class?? There’s a great book I’ll suggest for you… Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments.

Then, those who object to this hamfisted tactic are doubly attacked as being so stupid or humorless as to not “get” that the article is a hoax.

Well, since a hoax is different than a satire, yes, you are stupid and ignorant. You’re embarrassing yourself, the cause you’re arguing for, your university, your high school, your elementary school home room teachers, and your parents and siblings. Jesus Christ, this is infuriating.

Consider Burk’s Nov. 12 appearance on CNN’s Crossfire. Co-host Tucker Carlson asked Burk about the mandatory male sterilization. Burk responded, “Hey, if they’re going to restrict abortion, buddy, we’ve got to do it this way.”
When attorney Debbie Schlussel had the audacity to take that response seriously, Burk countered, “Do you guys know what a spoof is?” Thus, she was able to make her point and retract it at the same time. Burk’s point: The reproductive rights and responsibilities of women and men are in direct conflict. Her retraction: Anyone who objects doesn’t have a sense of humor. Burk’s “now I mean it, now I don’t” approach accomplishes one goal very well: It blocks honest discussion.

Well, in writing, that’s called “having it both ways” and is an old and time honored rhetorical device. But that’s not what Burk was doing. She wrote a spoof. Schlussel took it seriously by dealing with the proposals as facts, as proposed policy, rather than as arguments meant to display the issues between men and women as reproductive rights are divvied up. Burke said it was a spoof, and McElroy won’t believe her, because it suits her political agenda.
The only people not saying it was a spoof are the people who tried to use it to smear Burk and by extension, fight her on the issue of integrating Augusta.
And what infuriates me, really, is not only that they jumped the gun in accusing her of this wacky policy, but that on being shown that a) it was obviously satire; and b) she said it was a satire, they reply “she couldn’t possibly have meant it”, they didn’t just go, “My bad” and move on.
You can’t have discussions with these people; you can only have yelling matches.
And I’m just baffled that Reynolds, who as I’ve said before is no moron…who is in fact hella smart…won’t just go “I was wrong. I changed my mind.” It doesn’t mean he agrees with Burk on Augusta, or abortion, or anything at all, except that we give her credit for meaning what she said when she said it, and that’s a basic courtesy we should extend each other.
That’s how we begin to have arguments and debates, as opposed to yelling matches, and it’s the only way we will ever get out of the horrible political loop we are trapped in.
I’ll have more to say on reproductive rights later on…amazingly, I actually agree with McElroy (assuming of course, that she meant to say what she said, and not what someone is going to tell you she really said, in spite of the words she used) on some of this. But I’m embarrassed to.
Damn.
(fixed grammar)
(edited for clarity)
(commenter Chuck Pelto dings me for not linking to the original article so people can make up their own minds. Duuh. here it is)

Brink Lindsey has a great series started on terrorism. Part 1 covers the history of conflict between settlers and warriors (who I agree are closely tied to terrorists), and Part 2 talks about how the complexity of modern society … and the high levels of interpersonal trust that make that complexity possible … are a key part of our vulnerability to terrorism.
Glenn Reynolds referred me, and leverages off this to talk more about the potential strength of packs (as opposed to crowds) in defending us against this, and I agree with him (and want to extend the discussion to talk, like a good liberal about how the government could encourage and harness this).
Lindsey is sounding damn worried about these things:

Here is the gist of it: We find ourselves, once more, in that paradoxical vulnerability that our forebears suffered for more than 20 centuries. The old menace, long vanquished, has returned in new guise. We are threatened again by an enemy whose weaknesses in peace become strengths in war. Our civilization is exposed to ruin by the very sources of its greatness. After a long respite, the barbarians are at the gate again.
(from part 1)
Terrorism, of course, is nothing new: Its modern history dates back at least to 19th-century Russia. But the march of economic development and technological progress has, perversely, led to a qualitative increase in terrorism’s virulence. The power to inflict physical damage has grown by orders of magnitude, while the escalating intricacy of the division of labor means a similar, exponential increase in the economic and social costs associated with any particular act of physical destruction. As a result, the leading edges of civilization are now prone to outside attack for the first time in half a millennium. If we do not now take the full measure of this threat, and bend our considerable energies towards countering and neutralizing it, we are likely to pay a grievous price for our complacency.
(from part 2)

…and from my point of view, he’s absolutely right to be.
We have some key problems:
– the destruction of intermediate economic and social structures in both rich and poor societies, which lead in the short run to alienation and poverty in poor societies as traditional support structures are eroded, and alienation and anomie in richer societies as the spiritual and psychological support structures are eroded;
– the rapid and free movement of goods and people that has accompanied globalization increases the ability of destructive actors to get access to and gather resources for attacks;
– the wide diffusion of the ability to use, if not create, destructive technology – ranging from small arms to WMD;
– the increasing dependence of our economy and cultures on complex, easily damaged infrastructures.
Each of these suggests both that at this moment in history there are more threats, and that we are increasingly vulnerable to those threats.
Lenin suggested a long time ago that capitalists would sell the communists the ropes that would be used to hang them. Modern Western societies are inventing and manufacturing the technologies that will be used … hell, have been used … to attack us.
Our objective, as I note below, needs to be both to reduce the vulnerability to threat, and to reduce the level of threat.

So I’ve never been a good shopper, so I went to Turner’s and bought 100 rounds each of handgun, long gun and shotgun ammo.
I haven’t done anything with a shotgun in a while; time for some skeet and sporting clays…

So I went to Comdex, the big computer trade show in Las Vegas with some young guys who are working on a project with me.
The show was disappointing; small and poorly attended, which worries me as it is a sign of economic health (or lack thereof). We had our scheduled meetings, went around and looked for the people we’d targeted to meet, and made two laps of the show floor by 2:30 on Monday afternoon. We’d planned to spend Tuesday as well, but didn’t see the point.
I mentioned the Leonid showers, and suggested that we leave around midnight, and drive back the back way, past Death Valley via Pahrumph and Baker, and spend some time in the desert looking at the meteor shower; they bought into the idea, and headed to the tables, with a plan to meet for a late movie and head out.
It felt like I was breaking curfew somehow to do this … somehow wonderfully un-adult and kind of irresponsible (believe me, I’m feeling it today).
We saw ‘8 Mile’ (more comments on this later), and hit the road at 2:00 a.m. On the 160 over to Pahrumph, we saw some large fireballs, as well as smaller streaks.
By 3:00, we were literally in the middle of nowhere…ten or fifteen miles south of Pahrumph (which looks like it is growing pretty quickly, considering that as far as I know, it consists of gas stations, fireworks stands, two or three bordellos, and an auto and motorcycle race track. Can someone give me any idea why people live there?? Other than to be close to Art Bell??).
And when we stopped, it was wonderful. Once the car (the mighty Odyssey minivan) quit cooling off, there was no noise except the wind. The moon was full and lit the haze brightly enough that we were casting distinct shadows, sadly obscuring all but the brightest meteors; we saw maybe ten or so in the time we could stand outside without chattering teeth (Death Valley is cold on winter nights).
Then we had the perfect moment … just as we couldn’t stand the cold any more, the haze broke up, leaving traces in the sky and a ring around the moon, and we had one brilliant meteor that framed the composition perfectly. We wanted to go “oooh” like you do at a fireworks finale.
Then we had a few minutes of dark sky, as the illuminated haze blew away, and I was reminded of the immensity and depth of the sky. It’s a wonderful feeling, and at the same time frightening.
I realize that those stars don’t care if we are happy or if we live or if there is peace anywhere on Earth; they will continue in their paths regardless. So we’d better care.
Then we drove home, re-entered ‘reality’, and were trapped in traffic on the 10 from Ontario to Santa Monica for three hours. I don’t know how people do that every day …

Here’s an old post on this. I’m aware ofthe Grameen Bank stuff commented on in the comments below, and I’m a huge fan…

I’ve already complimented the Bitch Girls, but had to point out two awesome posts here and here on shooting…