Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

DCCC’s Appalachian Trail advert

The national Republican Party has washed its hands of Mark Sanford — but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is firmly in the corner of his opponent, Elizabeth Colbert-Busch,

As evidenced by the ad above.

Meanwhile, some Republicans seem to be worrying about their association with Sanford even if he wins. The concern seems to be that he would further damage their reputation with women, either way.

In that vein I share the below interview with Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.

Blaming media, Nobel for rise of modern terrorism

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Probably for the same reason I got a second major in history in college, I enjoy when someone takes a step back from events to provide a bit of historical perspective, as Max Boot did this morning in the WSJ on the history of modern terrorism.

And just as Eli Whitney revived the cotton industry and therefore slavery in this country, Boot (I love that guy’s name; sounds like a character Arnold Schwarzenegger would play in a movie) says three things helped launch a wave of terrorist groups around the world about a century ago: the inventions of dynamite, the telegraph and the high-speed newspaper press:

Nobel

It is no coincidence that the era of modern terrorism began at almost the same time that Alfred Nobel invented dynamite: 1867. There had been a few isolated terrorist gangs before then—which is to say, groups that murdered civilians in order to further a political or religious agenda. The Sicarri, the Jewish dagger-men who killed Roman collaborators in first-century Judaea, come to mind. So do the Assassins, the Shiite sect that terrorized Middle Eastern leaders in the Middle Ages. But such examples are few and far between, whereas the late 19th century saw the flowering of the first age of international terrorism, featuring such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, the Irish Fenians, the Russian Nihilists and the anarchists who operated in both Europe and the Americas.

Their growth was greatly aided by the invention of portable weapons such as breech-loading revolvers and especially dynamite, which was 20 times more powerful than the gunpowder that Guy Fawkes and his fellow Catholic conspirators had used in an attempt to blow up the British Parliament in 1605.

Just as important was the invention of the telegraph and the high-speed printing press, which made possible the rise of cheap newspapers and magazines—the world’s first mass media. Terrorism is above all an act of communication, insofar as terrorist groups are too small and too weak to fight conventional armies in the open field. Unlike guerrilla groups, most purely terrorist organizations don’t even attempt attacks on security forces; they prefer to strike “soft” targets such as the Boston Marathon, where they know that their actions, the more heinous the better, will attract widespread publicity. (Note, however, that many insurgencies use both guerrilla and terrorist tactics, striking both security forces and civilians, as the Irish Republican Army and the Viet Cong did.)…

There’s one flaw in this explanation, as it applies to the most recent incident: The pressure-cooker bombs used in Boston may have used black powder, rather than dynamite or plastique.

Still, I like a good theory.

Bishop Guglielmone on Medicaid expansion in SC

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Cindi Scoppe had a column, way back on the St. Patrick’s Day, in which she cited a letter by Bishop Robert E. Guglielmone, the head of the Roman Catholic in South Carolina, advocating for Medicaid expansion in SC.

I meant to say something on the subject then, but didn’t get to it. Which is ironic. Cindi’s not even Catholic (OK, she’s a kind of Catholic; she’s Anglican — but not Roman Catholic).

Anyway, something came up to remind me of it this week — a story in the Anderson paper about religious leaders in SC pushing for Medicaid expansion — so I thought I’d go ahead now and share the bishop’s letter.

It is a letter that, unlike the pronouncements of our governor and the House leadership, makes all the sense in the world:

February 20, 2013
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
To be Christian means that we are concerned about the wellbeing and health of all people. God took on flesh to restore the integrity of broken and wounded humanity. Indeed, Jesus made healing of the sick central to his ministry. “He came to the world to make us fully human, to help us to realize our human dignity as creatures made in the image of God. He came to bring the fullness of life” (USCCB Pastoral Letter: Health and Health Care, Nov. 19, 1981).
Throughout the centuries, the Church has carried on the ministry of Jesus by establishing
hospitals and nurturing the apostolate to the sick in response to the needs of suffering people. Pope John XXIII included medical care as a basic right founded on the sanctity of human life in his encyclical, Pacem in Terris. Reaffirming this traditional concern for today, Pope Benedict XVI wrote that “Health is a precious good for the person and society to promote, conserve and protect, dedicating the means, resources and energies necessary so that more persons can enjoy it. Unfortunately, the problem still remains today of many populations of the world that do not have access to the necessary resources to satisfy fundamental needs, particularly in regard to health. It is necessary to work with greater commitment at all levels so that the right to health is rendered effective, favoring access to primary health care” (Benedict XVI: Message to the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry, Nov. 18, 2010).
The Catholic Bishops of the United States have consistently called for access to health care forall our citizens: “Our approach to health care is shaped by a simple but fundamental principle: ‘Every person has a right to adequate health care. This right flows from the sanctity of human life and the dignity that belongs to all human persons, who are made in the image of God.’ Health care is more than a commodity; it is a basic human right, an essential safeguard of human life and dignity” (USCCB Resolution: A Framework for Comprehensive Health Care Reform, June 18, 1993). While the Church’s call for access to health care reflects an application of the Gospel to a contemporary need and therefore reflects the urgency of the Gospel, determining how to implement such access is open to prudential judgments of how to make it happen most effectively. We must continually discern wise solutions to the challenges we face, solutions that are both economically and politically viable. In that task of discernment, however, we as Catholics bring time-honored principles of Catholic social teaching to inform our reflection.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) now being legally enacted in our
country is an attempt to bring health care access to a broader range of citizenry in the United States. It is not perfect. In fact, the U.S. Catholic Church is deeply concerned about mandates associated with aspects of the law that would require religious institutions to provide contraception coverage, asking us to violate a consistent position by the Church on this. There are also many concerns about how to rein in the costs of health care so that its expansion is affordable to our country. However, providing access to health care is consonant with Catholic social teaching. Indeed, it is more than consonant — it is called for by Catholic social teaching.
This spring, our South Carolina state legislature will consider whether to opt into the expansion of Medicaid as provided for by the Affordable Care Act. Persons eligible for Medicaid would be expanded by about three hundred thirty thousand more South Carolinians who live near the poverty line but previously have not been eligible. Key state-wide elected leaders and many in the General Assembly have voiced their opposition to this expansion. Leaders of our state’s hospitals, including Catholic hospitals, on the other hand, have endorsed this legislation. It will expand their ability not only to serve the poor of our state but to pay for those services. The State of South Carolina would be required to pay for ten percent of the total cost of this expansion after three years of full funding by the Federal Government. This will require us as a state to find the revenue to pay for this expansion. It will cost us.
Bearing a cost for the sake of something greater is the heart of our faith; it brought us salvation. At the same time, we can and must make this expansion and our whole healthcare system more effective and economically viable. If health care funding as envisioned by the Affordable Care Act is not perfect, we nevertheless are not powerless as a society to refine and make it more effective even as we implement it.
I write as your Bishop in noting the call of Catholic social teaching, and I appeal as a fellow
citizen in making a case for acceptance of Medicaid expansion by our state. I urge my fellow Catholics to study this issue and form your own prudential judgment on its wisdom. However, I ask that you start that evaluation with a presumption in favor of what the Church says is a good to be pursued in society, namely, the flourishing of all people through access to health care. Hold as well our faith conviction that shared sacrifice for a greater good and concern for the poor make us more like Christ. Make your views known to your legislators. For my part, I believe Medicaid expansion offers a step forward for South Carolina.

In the Lord’s Peace,
Most Reverend Robert E. Guglielmone
Bishop of Charleston

I heartily disagree with Mia on food stamps and junk food

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Here’s the latest from Mia McLeod:

Dear Governor,

Seriously? Can you just “SNAP” and in an instant, delete certain foods from some South Carolinians’ grocery lists?

Sure, obesity is a genuine, significant health concern for too many people in this state. But that’s not why you’ve made a recent “SNAP” decision. You know it. We know it. And soon, citizens across this state will know it too.
Contrary to South Carolina’s definition, “SNAP” doesn’t mean “Simply Nonchalant About the Poor.” It’s actually a federal program, fully funded by the USDA. Now, isn’t it ironic that our state’s most notorious critics of “BIG” government, are arrogantly hypocritical enough to assume the despicable role of “BIG Brother” when it’s politically expedient?

As asinine as this latest stunt is, it’s even more offensive. Targeting a segment of the population in furtherance of your own political agenda is one thing. Refusing to allow federally-funded healthcare for hard-working South Carolinians while in the same breath, expressing concern about obesity and its impact on their health and well-being, is another.

You don’t want the federal government telling us whether to accept or how to spend our federal tax dollars when a state match or financial investment is required. But yet, you wanna dictate which foods we can buy with SNAP, a fully-funded federal program that doesn’t even require state funds?

The list of qualifying items that can be purchased with SNAP is very straight-forward. As with any program, there’s always room for improvement. But last time we checked, you were able to make nutritional decisions for your family without our intrusion or input. We’re just wondering why you think we need yours.

And since your cronies are traveling the state at our expense, trying to convince us that this is about obesity prevention, perhaps we’ll remember your “heartfelt” concern on our next nonemergency trip to the ER…if we can even find and get to a hospital that’s still open and accessible.

With all due respect, Governor, when it comes to obesity, it’s not the foods that we’re able to buy on SNAP that are making us fat. Perhaps it’s your empty rhetoric that’s making us sick.

If you really cared about this state’s obesity rates or us, you’d do what is well within your purview and power to ensure that we have access to quality, affordable health care, just like you do.

You’d realize that some of us would love to eat the same fresh and organic foods that your family enjoys, but because of “food deserts” across this state, many of us are without the means or access. If you’re genuinely concerned about addressing obesity, you could start by addressing that.

If only we could “SNAP” back from the regressive, debilitating tactics of centuries past, we’d all feel much better. So while South Carolina continues to reek of ignorance, intolerance and insanity, many of our best and brightest continue to leave this state in search of parity, inclusion and meaningful opportunities.

But unlike obesity and other chronic conditions, many never return. Neighboring states too often become the benefactors of our most creative minds and talented contributors. And we’re left with a weaker South Carolina.

So as you continue to cater to your political base by serving folks like us up on a party platter, the only thing that seems to be getting fatter is your reelection campaign account.

At some point, obesity may no longer be an issue for South Carolina. Under your “leadership,” our state is gradually becoming so malnourished on so many levels, it may not be strong enough to “SNAP” out of it.

But you still can, Governor, before it’s too late.

p.s. – South Carolina’s forgotten citizens (a.k.a. – your “other” constituents) may not be members of the Tea Party. But in number, we’re “the real majority.”

She really doesn’t like the idea, does she?

Well, I do. Still. So I guess I’m playing the “despicable role of Big Brother.”

Yes, there are reasons to be concerned about people who live in “food deserts.” I don’t dismiss that, and I can’t say for certain that the stores that now sell junk food in those communities would shift and sell healthier stuff if that’s all their poor patrons could buy. I think that might happen, but I don’t have the full faith in markets that some do.

So that should be thoroughly studied and taken into account before a final decision is made. But I most certainly do not agree with those who have a philosophical, rather than practical, objection to insisting that tax money not be used to buy foods that ruin the health of the poor.

The populists will call this patriarchal, but we are indeed in a position for taking responsibility for people when we undertake to feed them. We are culpable for providing people with the means of poisoning themselves when we could adopt a policy that prevents it.

When we discussed this previously, my old friend and respected colleague Burl Burlingame noted, “when the government wants to experiment, they do so first on the poor.” That may seem a particularly devastating argument against this change. But I submit that we have been running the experiment for half a century now, and the results are in: Paying for junk food kills poor people. It’s time we stop it, and do what we practically can to have a positive, rather than an actively negative, effect on people’s health.

The thoughtful hedonist: Russell Brand on Thatcher

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You probably don’t want to watch it with your mom, or with your children for that matter, but I have seen few things funnier in recent years than Russell Brand in “Get Him to the Greek.” From his first line, “I’m Aldous Snow, the rock star,” his embodiment of an out-of-control hedonist is so devastatingly spot on, you come away convinced that that is who he really is (of course, his personal biography isn’t that far distant from Snow’s).

But messed up as he may be, he’s a bright guy who can actually be fairly thoughtful (interestingly, there were flashes of that in the Aldous Snow character, tucked among the Jeffrey-induced outrages). He showed that in a piece he wrote for The Guardian a couple of days back. Excerpts:

One Sunday recently while staying in London, I took a stroll in the gardens of Temple, the insular clod of quads and offices between the Strand and the Embankment. It’s kind of a luxury rent-controlled ghetto for lawyers and barristers, and there is a beautiful tailors, a fine chapel, established by the Knights Templar (from which the compound takes its name), a twee cottage designed by Sir Christopher Wren and a rose garden; which I never promised you.

My mate John and I were wandering there together, he expertly proselytising on the architecture and the history of the place, me pretending to be Rumpole of the Bailey (quietly in my mind), when we spied in the distant garden a hunched and frail figure, in a raincoat, scarf about her head, watering the roses under the breezy supervision of a masticating copper. “What’s going on there, mate?” John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. “Maggie Thatcher,” he said. “Comes here every week to water them flowers.” The three of us watched as the gentle horticultural ritual was feebly enacted, then regarded the Iron Lady being helped into the back of a car and trundling off. In this moment she inspired only curiosity, a pale phantom, dumbly filling her day. None present eyed her meanly or spoke with vitriol and it wasn’t until an hour later that I dreamt up an Ealing comedy-style caper in which two inept crooks kidnap Thatcher from the garden but are unable to cope with the demands of dealing with her, and finally give her back. This reverie only occurred when the car was out of view. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon…

The blunt, pathetic reality today is that a little old lady has died, who in the winter of her life had to water roses alone under police supervision. If you behave like there’s no such thing as society, in the end there isn’t. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. It isn’t sad for anyone else. There are pangs of nostalgia, yes, because for me she’s all tied up with Hi-De-Hi and Speak and Spell and Blockbusters and “follow the bear”. What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people’s pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn ceremonial funeral, are values that her government and policies sought to annihilate…

Rough stuff. But then there are bits like this:

When I awoke today on LA time my phone was full of impertinent digital eulogies. It’d be disingenuous to omit that there were a fair number of ding-dong-style celebratory messages amidst the pensive reflections on the end of an era. Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. “I thought I’d be overjoyed, but really it’s just … another one bites the dust …” This demonstrates, I suppose, that if you opposed Thatcher’s ideas it was likely because of their lack of compassion, which is really just a word for love. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one’s enemies…

I found it interesting because it gave me insight into the attitudes of a young Brit growing up in the Thatcher era — someone whose life wasn’t politics. I think he probably speaks for a lot of people in his generation, those who aren’t inclined to engage in the execrable “Ding-Dong” celebrations, but aren’t at all interested in fitting her with a halo, either.

I was also intrigued by the bits of communitarianism that crept into the writing of this young man best known in this country for playing a narcissist, such as “If you behave like there’s no such thing as society, in the end there isn’t.”

I share it as something from an unexpected quarter that broadened my understanding a bit.

So take THAT, all you deductive reasoning types!

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As one who reaches conclusions intuitively, I’ve taken a lot of grief from some of you who are more the mathematical-proof types.

So, I appreciated this piece in the WSJ over the weekend, headlined “Great Scientist ≠ Good at Math.” The thrust was that it’s a shame that so many people turn away from a career in the sciences because they aren’t good at math. An excerpt:

Fortunately, exceptional mathematical fluency is required in only a few disciplines, such as particle physics, astrophysics and information theory. Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition.

Everyone sometimes daydreams like a scientist. Ramped up and disciplined, fantasies are the fountainhead of all creative thinking. Newton dreamed, Darwin dreamed, you dream. The images evoked are at first vague. They may shift in form and fade in and out. They grow a bit firmer when sketched as diagrams on pads of paper, and they take on life as real examples are sought and found.

Yeah, baby! That’s what this INTP is talking about: Intuitive reasoning!

Not that I’m bad at math or lack skills in that regard. I was always in the 99th percentile on standardized tests of mathematical aptitude in school. I’ve just never been overly fond of it.

I lack the patience for the methodology. Here’s what I mean: In geometry class, I’d be asked to prove that triangle A was congruent to triangle B, or some such (I’ve forgotten most of the basic concepts now, which shows what you can accomplish when you really apply your mind to forgetting). I would say, well, it is congruent, and that’s obvious. I didn’t mean that it looked congruent. I meant that I knew all the theorems and such, and in glancing at the triangles, I could tell that all the tests were met. Because I perceived it holistically. Having to go through all the infant-school steps, one at a time, made me want to bang my head against a wall. I hated it. And as I went on, I didn’t like algebra II, or analytical geometry, or calculus, either. I just took all those courses because I thought that’s what you were supposed to do in school. (And yeah, I suppose that proofs have more relevance when you get beyond such simple stuff as congruent triangles, but I didn’t have the patience to pursue it that far.)

I had a calculus professor in college who was very enthusiastic about what the Brits are pleased to call “maths.” He drove me crazy. One day he came in all excited because someone had taken pi out to a million decimal places. I raised my hand and asked, “Why?” He said because it showed the numbers never repeat, even that far out. I asked what possible purpose knowing that could serve. He said it taught us things about the principles governing randomness. I said randomness had no principles governing it, because it was random. I basically was saying anything I could to damp his enthusiasm, because it irritated me. I was unsuccessful; he was a natural enthusiast.

I wasn’t the kind of kid you wanted in your class.

Of course, I would have run into the same problem in science as in math, since there’s all that mind-numbing step-by-step methodology. (The piece in the WSJ later says, “Eureka moments require hard work. And focus.” And not the fun kind of work, either.)

But I was pleased to see the plug for intuition.

Does anybody out there read ‘terms and conditions,’ ever? If not, it gives me hope…

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I almost ignored the essay in the WSJ today about simplicity, because it started out with something about Henry David Thoreau. I’ve never been a fan. I don’t like anything about Walden. Life can indeed be simple if you isolate yourself from society — simple, but not worth living. (I say this as a person who is given to self-absorption, but that’s not a quality I like in myself, which causes me to react viscerally against Thoreau.) Also, it’s hard to avoid snorting in contempt at anyone who thought “modern” life in the first half of the 19th century had too much hustle and bustle in it.

But my interest was engaged a few grafs on, when I got to this bit:

Do you know anyone who stops to read “click-through” agreements on websites in the middle of performing a task? One company, PC Pitstop, deliberately buried a clause in its end-user license agreement in 2004, offering $1,000 to the first person who emailed the company at a certain address. It took five months and 3,000 sales until someone claimed the money. The situation hadn’t improved by 2010 when Gamestation played an April Fools’ Day joke by embedding a clause in their agreement saying that users were selling them their souls…

For a long time, I’ve meant to write a post asking, “Does anybody out there ever read those ‘terms and conditions’ agreements that you have to click ‘Agree’ to in order to proceed?” I tell myself that no one does, but I was a bit leery of posting the question because everyone might respond, “Of course we do,” at which point I would know for sure that what I’ve often suspected in the past was true: I’m on the wrong planet.

If it turned out everyone else was reading them, it was going to make me feel guilty every time I clicked “Agree” without reading all that crapola. It wasn’t going to change my behavior — I’d rather go to Room 101 than read a single one of those monstrosities. But it would make me feel bad. A little.

Those things always come up when I’ve already been substantially inconvenienced, having been forced to go through unanticipated steps in order to get on with whatever I was trying to do when the process started. You know those nightmare traps, in which you’re trying to do A, but realize that you can’t do A until you’ve done B, and then it turns out that B can’t be accomplished without first having completed C, etc. Those 20,000-word masterpieces of unreadability only come up when you’re fuming your way through G or H, and you’ve had it.

Besides, I couldn’t read one if I tried — not if by “reading” it, you mean get anything out of it. The surface of every letter in such documents is polished, then coated with grease, so that my brain can’t grab ‘hold of them. I can only read them on proofreading level. I don’t know if everyone experiences this or only someone who’s spent a lot of years as an editor, but there’s a certain level of reading on which I can catch spelling, punctuation and even grammatical errors, but when I’m finished, I can’t tell you what I just read. That’s as deeply as I can go into those kinds of documents.

The authors of the essay in the WSJ note with justice that much of the unnecessary complexity of life — the sort that’s too much to deal with — is caused by lawyers and technologists. On the one hand, lawyers try to protect their clients by covering every base to an absurd degree. Then there are those people who think everything can be quantified — people like “Clive,” a character created by John le Carre, of whom he wrote, “He believed that facts were the only kind of information and he despised whoever was not ruled by them.”

But you know what? If everyone else — or at least a goodly proportion of the populace — clicks through all those things without reading them, it gives me some hope for the world.

I tend to lump in this sort of complexity with the lack of trust in the world. I wrote a column back in the ’90s that was sort of my Unified Field Theory of public life. I said everything that was wrong with society resulted from the fact that we didn’t trust each other. Overly lawyered, too-complex-to-read contractual agreements are monuments to this problem. As I wrote in 1995, “A lack of basic trust of each other explains why… We have so many laws, and so many lawyers. We trust nothing to common sense…”

One of the great ironies of this is that so many people come to hate government because they get fed up with bureaucracy and overly complex rules. And yet the reason we have all those excessive rules is that someone insisted that we add them because they didn’t trust government just to use good judgment.

But I just realized something about those agreements I click on without reading: They show that I trust the entity that posted the agreement. I know I’m not signing away one of my grandchildren or my house or whatever, because I know that society wouldn’t stand for that. I know that if the agreement for this software that millions of others have downloaded meant that I was selling myself into slavery, I would have heard about it. Society, that thing too many of us distrust, wouldn’t have stood for it. So, even more than the entity that drafted the agreement, I’m trusting society as a whole. I’m trusting the village, or the wisdom of crowds, or whatever you choose to call it.

Which makes me feel better about the world, and about myself. And about everyone else who clicks on “Agree” without reading the agreement, and gets on with life. It makes me feel better about the world I live in.

Apparently, we communitarians are disappointed in Obama

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I say that because Amitai Etzioni, the acknowledged ultimate communitarian guru, writes the following on the HuffPost:

If you understand where President Obama is headed in his second term, pray send me an email. I like him, wish him Godspeed, and might well support where he is going — if I could just figure out where that is….

During his reelection campaign, the president evoked a vision I found very compelling. I call it thefair society, one in which — as he put it — “everyone gets a fair shot… everyone does their fair share, [and] everyone plays by the same rules.” It was a theme into which one could fold many other specific policies that we must promote, including reducing inequality, ensuring that there are jobs for all, and creating a society that does not discriminate and where special interests at kept at bay. However, the post-election Obama turned very prosaic. I miss the visionary one.

The president is consistently sticking to his theme that the time has come for nation-building at home. I do not recall an inaugural address or a State of the Union in which foreign policy was mentioned as little as this time around. As Slate’s Fred Kaplan put it, Obama, in his State of the Union address, “barely mentioned foreign and defense policy until 54 minutes after he walked into the chamber — and even drew more of a vague sketch than a policy.” I wonder if Syria, Iran, Pakistan, the Taliban in Afghanistan, or the resurgent al Qaeda will play ball. I fear they will force the president’s hand to be more mindful of what is happening out there.

Maybe it is just a post-election slump or a changing of the guard in the White House. Maybe others have divined where Obama is taking us. If you have, do your good deed for the week and let the rest of us know.

Mind you, I just have communitarian tendencies. I’m not doctrinaire anything, and not necessarily guided by what Prof. Etzioni says. Unlike Democrats and Republicans, I don’t let other people do my thinking for me. But he may have a point. I’m not entirely sure where the president is going these days, either.

The truth about SC: Taxes are low and getting lower, and government is not ‘growing’

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Cindi Scoppe struck another blow today in the lonely fight to base public policy in South Carolina on facts. It’s not only a lonely, but a losing battle, since the people who are driving things in the State House have contempt for facts, preferring to “govern” on the basis of extremist ideology, which holds that facts are bunk.

Basically, she was answering this kind of nonsense:

Consider this analysis from an Upstate anti-government activist, speaking recently to The Greenville News: “Every year our state budget continues to go up, up, up, far exceeding our growth. So we’re getting more government, we’re getting higher taxes.

“They tell us, ‘We cut taxes.’ That’s nonsense. How can you increase spending and cut taxes and yet you claim that we also are not running a deficit? The numbers don’t add up.”

That certainly sounds like a sensible analysis. And there are circumstances under which it could be accurate. If, say, our population were remaining stagnant, or declining. Or if people’s income or purchases remained flat, or declined. But of course none of that is happening.

What’s happening isn’t that complicated. It just isn’t necessarily intuitive…

And what is happening is that tax rates have been lowered over and over for the past two decades. What is also happening is that, while the total amount of state funds spent on government is greater because of our skyrocketing population growth, the amount spent per capita is less and less:

South Carolina’s tax collections are the lowest in the nation, at $1,476.50 per capita; they dropped 18 percent from 2001 to 2011 — more than they did in 48 states. Our combined state and local tax burden per capita was less than all but one state, at $2,742. Our 2012 Tax Freedom Day — the date when we’ve earned enough money to pay all of our federal, state and local taxes for the year — was earlier than all but three states, at April 3.

This is simply not a state in which we’re “getting higher taxes.”

Ah, but our government is growing, right? Well, if by “growing government,” you mean that the total amount spent on state government each year is generally more than it was the previous year, then yes, it’s growing. With the exception of two years during the recession, state general fund expenditures (the money over which the Legislature has the most control) are growing — although this year’s $6.1 billion general fund budget is still down from the $6.7 billion in 2008-09, just before the recession hit.

But remember: While the general fund grew by 12 percent over the past decade, our state’s population grew by 15 percent. That means the Legislature appropriated less general fund money per resident, even without considering inflation, in 2012 than in 2002…

Ah, but what about all those “other funds,” from the feds and fees? Hasn’t that increased the size of government? Consider:

What’s a little surprising is that even with all that federal and other money, the total number of state employees is actually down, from 63,000 in 2002 to 56,000 in 2012. In fact, the total number of state employees has decreased over just about any period you look at during the past two decades, except last year, when it rose slightly from 2011, but remained well below the 2010 level.

So if by “growing government” you mean government is increasing the number of people on the payroll, it’s not.

If you mean government is providing more services, it’s also not. Our state is providing services to more people — Medicaid and food stamps, both funded primarily by the federal government, are prime examples — but it’s not increasing the services to each person…

Actually, you should just go read the whole thing.

Hoffman: Another TV ad from the 1st District

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Looked at from this distance, the contest for the 1st Congressional District GOP nomination has looked like a case of Sanford sitting atop the name-recognition hill, and Larry Grooms exerting the most energy trying to take it from him.

A third candidate I keep hearing from (and let me remind you that my perspective is skewed by the fact that I keep hearing from this guy and Grooms; others could be running just as hard but not making the effort to let me know about it) is Jonathan Hoffman.

No, I hadn’t heard of him, either, so of course he’s running a standard “I’m not a politician” campaign. To the extent that is appealing, he certainly has an advantage over Sanford and Grooms.

But this new TV ad tells me next to nothing. It shows him in uniform, and I thank him for his service. It shows him with the last Republican president. He uses the word “conservative” only once in 30 seconds, which by Republican primary standards shows extraordinary restraint. Of course, he uses other phrases that suggest such values to the base, such as “small business owner.”

And he makes the usual dubious claims that Republicans in SC tend to believe as gospel, such as:

He wants to be elected “to take on out-of-control spending and the growth of government.” Compared to what absolute measure, I find myself wondering. It’s interesting to contrast this belief to what I read this morning in the libertarian Economist, which, after asserting that “By most measures Mr Obama’s positions have been rather moderate,” notes that the public now is in a more conservative mood: “The conservative idea that spending must be cut is taken for granted, even though government spending is already lower in America than in most advanced economies.” Did you catch that? Looked at from outside, the U.S. government is not some out-of-control behemoth. It is only that to people who choose to believe it is.
Then there’s this chestnut: “let’s get back to constitutionally limited government.” Something that, of course, we’ve never left. He doesn’t have to explain what he means because no on in the GOP base would challenge him on it. Me, I want details. Back during the Bush administration, Democrats would say this very same silly thing. They were usually referring to the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 measures that Democrats as well as Republicans voted for and legally passed, under lawmaking provisions of our, ahem, Constitution. Now, Republicans generally mean something like Obamacare. Which, according to the GOP-appointed Chief Justice and a majority on the Supreme Court, is constitutional. Or is he referring to killing U.S. citizens with drones and without the benefit of due process? If so, I’d like to hear him square that with is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with President Bush in fighting the Global War on Terror, which the current president is only guilty of pursuing a tad more aggressively than his predecessor, casting drones far and wide and putting boots on the ground in the very heart of Pakistan.

Mind you, I’m not being critical of Mr. Hoffman. He’s not doing a thing that pols of both parties don’t do in this ridiculously facile medium, the 30-second ad. It would be practically impossible for him to answer the questions he raises in my mind within that format.

But these ads aren’t meant to answer questions. They are meant to communicate, in the most minimalist, Gestalten flicker, a set of emotions along the lines of “he’s like me,” or “I trust that man.” So they deal not in facts, but in presumptions, ones that are shared, even if they fly in the face of reality.

Grooms’ ads are the same. Sanford’s go a bit farther, because so much is known about him, and some of what is known is problematic and has to be addressed. But it is of course addressed in the most emotional, simplistic kind of way, merely communicating, “You must not hold it against him.” Why? Because “I trust that man, despite all.”

But it is on these extremely thin, grossly inadequate bases that we decide elections in this country.

Sorry, but ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ wasn’t Best Picture

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The Wall Street Journal editorial board has been upset with U.S. senators Feinstein, Levin and McCain for criticizing the makers of “Zero Dark Thirty” for making it look like torture was essential to getting Osama bin Laden.

Now, the editors blame the senators for the movie’s poor showing at the Oscars:

As no one should forget, Senators Dianne Feinstein, Carl Levin and John McCain wrote letters to Sony Pictures and the CIA charging that “Zero Dark Thirty” was a “grossly inaccurate and misleading” portrayal of the interrogation of al Qaeda detainees. Ms. Feinstein’s intelligence committee opened an inquiry into what the CIA told the filmmakers, and the letters coincided with a media attack led by those great believers in artistic free expression at the New Yorker magazine.

Well, mission accomplished. The film was among the best reviewed of 2012 and has done well at the box office. But the attacks had their desired effect of intimidating Hollywood. Director Kathryn Bigelow was denied an Oscar nomination and the film won only a single (shared) award for sound editing. The Oscar ceremonies were Sunday night.

A day later, Reuters reported that the Senate is dropping its investigation of the film and CIA cooperation with the filmmakers…

The WSJ’s reasoning seems to go like this: Feinstein and Levin are liberals (McCain and his experienced-based objections to torture are conveniently forgotten). Hollywood is full of liberals. So Hollywood was cowed into stiffing ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ by fear of straying from liberal orthodoxy. Or something.

But the editors are ignoring something: “Zero Dark Thirty” didn’t deserve Best Picture honors, or Best Director. It was good, even important (important enough that I don’t blame senators at all for taking a political stand on it). But Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” which did win the Best Picture honor in 2009, was a more impressive, highly original film.

And the torture scenes? Speaking artistically and not politically, they went on too long. Long enough that it’s perfectly understandable that someone who doesn’t want our national defense to depend on the mistreatment of prisoners to think a political point was being made, and to object to that point. If this had been a work of fiction, devoid of political content, I think most critics would say the interrogations scenes were a drag on the storytelling.

I actually think the point being made by the filmmakers was neutral. I don’t think they were saying torture is good or necessary. I thought they were just saying (oversaying), it happened. And it sorta kinda maybe helped find bin Laden. It’s something to throw into the mix of how we feel about all that. War, including asymmetrical war, is filled with moral ambiguities.

I think they thought it would have been dishonest to leave out that part. Maybe they were right. In any case, they did not make this year’s best picture. Not this time.

Now, changing the subject slightly — what should have been Best Picture? Well, I can’t judge that, because I haven’t seen “Argo.” But I can say with all confidence that I wouldn’t have given it to “Zero Dark Thirty” in the same year that “Lincoln” came out. And if a director was slighted this year, it was Steven Spielberg.

E. J. Dionne: ‘The best choice for pope? A nun.’

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Over the weekend, E.J. Dionne — who does this sort of thing every week with David Brooks — was kind enough to write me and say he’d caught my bit on Weekend Edition Saturday on NPR, and “I wanted to tell you that you were excellent.”

Which, along with similarly kind plaudits I got from other friends and family, made my day.

While he had me, as a fellow RC he brought up Pope Benedict’s retirement, and asked whether I had read his “make a nun Pope” column.

I had not, but I went and read it immediately, and really enjoyed it. Excerpts:

In giving up the papacy, Pope Benedict XVI was brave and bold. He did the unexpected for the good of the Catholic Church. And when it selects a new pope next month, the College of Cardinals should be equally brave and bold. It is time to elect a nun as the next pontiff.

Now, I know this hope of mine is the longest of long shots. I have great faith in the Holy Spirit to move papal conclaves, but I would concede that I may be running ahead of the Spirit on this one…

Nonetheless, handing leadership to a woman — and in particular, to a nun — would vastly strengthen Catholicism, help the church solve some of its immediate problems and inspire many who have left the church to look at it with new eyes…

More than any other group in the church, the sisters have been at the heart of its work on behalf of compassion and justice. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times made this point as powerfully as anyone in a 2010 column. “In my travels around the world, I encounter two Catholic Churches,” he wrote. “One is the rigid all-male Vatican hierarchy that seems out of touch. . . . Yet there’s another Catholic Church as well, one I admire intensely. This is the grass-roots Catholic Church that does far more good in the world than it ever gets credit for. This is the church that supports extraordinary aid organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas, saving lives every day, and that operates superb schools that provide needy children an escalator out of poverty.”…

Throughout history, it’s not uncommon for women to be brought in to put right what men have put wrong. A female pope would automatically be distanced from this past and could have a degree of credibility that a male member of the hierarchy simply could not…

And a church that has made opposition to abortion a central part of its public mission should consider that older men are hardly the best messengers for this cause. Perhaps a female pope could transform the discussion about abortion from one that is too often rooted in harsh judgments (and at times, anger with modernity) into a compassionate dialogue aimed at changing hearts and minds rather than changing laws.

Unborn children are vulnerable. So are pregnant women. In my experience, nuns are especially alive to these twin vulnerabilities…

There was a lot of other good stuff, about how consistent this would be with the church’s devotion to Mary, and other points. But I fear I may have exceeded the bounds of fair use already.

You might wonder, “Is Dionne kidding? He knows this can’t happen, right?” Yes, he knows it won’t happen, and no, he’s not kidding. At the least, he hopes “they at least consider electing the kind of man who has the characteristics of my ideal female pontiff.

I urge you to go read the whole, well-reasoned piece.

Graham and Senate GOP block Dems’ attempt to push Hagel vote

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At least, I think that’s accurate. This WashPost story doesn’t actually mention Lindsey Graham, which surprised me:

Senate Republicans blocked a vote on Chuck Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense on Thursday, launching a filibuster whild demanding more information and more time to study their former colleague’s speeches and finances after he left the Senate in late 2008.

Falling one vote shy of the 60 needed to move forward on the nomination, the Hagel filibuster brought stark condemnations from President Obama and Senate Democrats for its precedent-setting nature — the first time a defense secretary nominee had been filibustered. The setback came during what many believe is a critical period for the Pentagon as it winds down troops from Afghanistan and implements costly budget cuts.

Republicans predicted they would relent to a simple majority vote, guaranteeing confirmation, later this month — but only if they see more information about Hagel’s post-Senate foreign policy speeches and his work in private investment groups. Senior Republicans initially scoffed at those demands, first raised by freshman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), as unnecessary, but now party leaders hold them up as the main cause for delay…

But it made it clear that all Republicans except for three — and none of the three (no surprise here) is Graham — are standing against an early vote on the Hagel nomination. And a WashPost blog post earlier in the day — when it was believed the vote would not come on Friday, before the Democrats made the tactical mistake of trying to move it up — had made clear what I was pretty sure I already knew about Graham’s central role in the delay-Hagel movement:

At the center of this drama are Graham and McCain. McCain is likely to support his “amigo” Graham if Graham feels he is still getting stiffed by the White House. Graham has every reason to hold out for the information and to further endear himself to conservatives whose support he will need in his reelection bid. Once we see how Graham and McCain are leaning, we’ll know which way the vote is going to go on Friday.

Anyway, we have a bit of an impasse here. Democrats are understandably upset, although their claims that this delay puts the nation’s security in danger are a bit overwrought. When Harry Reid said:

“This isn’t high school, getting ready for a football game or some play that’s being produced at high school,” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said during an angry floor speech Thursday morning. “This is – we’re trying to confirm somebody to run the defense of our country, the military of our country.”

I thought, Exactly. And if one has sincere doubts about the nominee’s fitness — which I believe Graham and McCain do — it’s not responsible to rush into confirming him.

Yeah, I know, a lot of my friends here on the blog are sick of Graham and McCain and all their doings. Well, to them I say that it’s not like they are alone on this. Moderate Republicans who are less likely to preen on the national talk shows on this subject are also reluctant to be rushed on this. Such as my old Tennessee source Lamar Alexander:

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) told reporters that cutting off debate is “premature.”

“When we come back from the recess 10 days from now, senators should have had sufficient time to consider Senator Hagel’s nomination, and I will vote to have an up-or-down vote,” Alexander said. “I know of many of my colleagues who think that’s enough time. It would be better for the institution and the country if we had enough time to consider Senator Hagel and then have an up-or-down vote, so we don’t get into a habit of making it look like we’re suing the filibuster to block Cabinet nominees. That’s not the case here.”

Anyway, I think a delay is worthwhile. For the very reason that, as Sen. Reid says, this decision is crucial to the nation’s security, I don’t think we need to be doing this on a party-line vote, when by waiting a few days we might get something closer to consensus. What do y’all think?

Thoughts on the State of the Union?

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As I type this, Marco Rubio is wrapping up his response to the State of the Union. And I find myself wondering yet again, as I do every year this time, no matter who is in the White House… how did this ridiculous ritual get started?

I don’t mean the SOTU; I mean the response. The State of the Union is the president fulfilling a constitutional duty — which, by the way, he can do in writing (just a suggestion). But as much as that has transformed into political theater, the response is nothing but theater.

And you know what? It always comes across as lame, no matter which party is delivering it or which up-and-comer they choose to be the face of it. It rubs our noses in the fact that partisanship is so obligatory and ritualized today that an elected official can’t even deliver a constitutionally-mandated message without the other party immediately standing up to say “nyah-nyah, that guy’s full of it.”

The artificiality of it is underlined by the fact that it is not a response at all, but a speech prepared ahead of time — a set of partisan talking points that the party wants to deliver regardless of what the president said.

Anyway, to me, the party delivering the response always comes across as petty and pointless. To me, anyway. Kind of sad, really.

Enough about that. Thoughts on the real speech, the one the president gave? Here’s an assessment from over at the WashPost:

That was an incredibly ambitious speech.

Imagine, for a moment, that President Obama managed to pass every policy he proposedtonight. Within a couple of years, every four-year-old would have access to preschool. The federal minimum wage would be at $9 — higher than it’s been, after adjusting for inflation, since 1981. There’d be a cap-and-trade program limiting our carbon emissions and a vast infrastructure investment to upgrade our roads and bridges. Taxes would be higher, guns would be harder to come by, and undocumented immigrants would have a path to citizenship. America would be a noticeably different country.

Yes, it was ambitious. About everything. I found that no particular part of it stood out for me, because he touched on so many things that he didn’t fully focus on anything. But maybe that’s just me.

I did like the communitarian touch at the end, about “the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another.”

Which of course Rubio summed up as “growing government.” Whatever. Although I’ll say that the president wanted to do so much that anyone would have to wonder at some point how we’re going to pay for it.

What did y’all think?

Graham’s threat to put a hold on nominations

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Before I wrap up for the day, I need to mention one of the first things I read this morning, at the very top of The Wall Street Journal‘s “What’s News” column:

Sen. Graham plans a “hold” on CIA, Pentagon nominees. The South Carolina Republican said he would make use of the procedural practice until the White House gives more information about the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. Democrats criticized the call to block Brennan from the spy agency post and Hagel from Defense, calling it “unprecedented and unwarranted.” A McCain aide said the Arizona senator backs the move. Both lawmakers said they don’t support a filibuster.

What’s missing from the story that links to, and from other stories I’ve seen, is an elaboration on exactly what information Graham still wants from the administration regarding Benghazi. This has been going on so long that I lose track, and a bill of particulars would be helpful. I’ve emailed his office seeking that, and will pass on what I get back.

Meanwhile, a vote on Hagel has been scheduled for Tuesday in the Armed Services Committee. John McCain, for one, has said he will not participate in a walkout during the committee meeting, as he wants the nomination to proceed to the floor: “I will not participate in any walkout of tomorrow’s committee vote—an action that would be disrespectful to Chairman Levin and at odds with the best traditions of the Senate Armed Services Committee.”

Talk among GOP member of the committee about such a walkout have fizzled, says the WSJ.

Pope Benedict the Quitter?

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As the world received the surprising news that Pope Benedict will be the first pope in just under 600 years to retire rather than die in office, the commentariat struggled to produce instant analysis. A typical facile effort (particularly typical for Slate), was this Tweet linking to a piece by the late Christopher Hitchens asserting that this pope’s “whole career has the stench of evil.” Not that they wanted to be critical or hostile or dismissive or anything. (Of course, as always, the Hitchens piece is powerfully written. If atheists had a Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Hitchens would have been the perfect guy to head it up. Whatever he had to say, I almost always admired how well he said it.)

By contrast, I was impressed by the quick-draw thoughtfulness of this piece from The New Yorker. An excerpt:

One thing is clear: Benedict has made a conscious choice not to be John Paul II, who turned his own wrenching, illness-filled last days into something like a parable. It could be hard to watch John Paul wave at a crowd with a hand that trembled, and he knew it, and sought consciously to use that time to emphasize his community with anyone who hurt, and with his God. Say what one will about John Paul II, but one couldn’t honestly read his biography without being moved—he worked in a limestone quarry during the German occupation of Poland, studying at a secret seminary—and one can’t quite blame Benedict for not matching that, or for lacking John Paul’s Popemobile charisma or the manner that made his faith seem so manifest. But then it was John Paul II’s conservatism, particularly in the selection of cardinals, that assured Ratzinger’s succession. And which way is really better? Should pain—not only of the ill, but of the poor—simply be borne? One can argue that Benedict is far more honest—and by providing a valuable example of his own about knowing when one is done, perhaps he is doing the Church a six-century-overdue favor. But it is inescapable that Joseph Ratzinger has not lived, and will not die, as Karol Wojtyla did.

That’s an interesting thing to contemplate. There is an object lesson, and particularly a spiritual one, for the world in how a man perceived as so powerful deals with the powerlessness of age and sickness. Like John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin (Columbia’s homeboy) did what he could to be an exemplar of how to face a terminal illness, showing solidarity with the weak and suffering of the world. In other words, they imitated Christ.

On the other hand, does not the head of any major organization, including the church, have a stewardship responsibility to make sure there’s someone in the job who’s up to it?

I thought it an intriguing question to raise, particularly since I’m not entirely sure how to answer it. The Pope’s made his decision, though, and as is his habit, he didn’t check to see what I thought first…

The new party’s principles and platform

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Lovelace addresses the meeting.

First, some news I found particularly welcome: The name that Jim Rex and Oscar Lovelace have proposed for their new political party, which had its initial public meeting today in the Tapps building downtown, is negotiable, or as one of them said, a “first draft.”

Good, thing, too. Not only does “Free Citizens Party” sound like it could have been one of the contenders for the Tea Party’s name, it doesn’t represent at all what they’re trying to accomplish. But they rejected a far more descriptive name — Common Ground — because they couldn’t get ownership of it. Ditto with another name they liked (and for the best of reasons, because it expressed what we all have in common, rather than what divides us), “American Party.” What they didn’t mention was that that would have been a bad idea because of the unfortunate association with George Wallace.

But more than that, the name puts them on the wrong side — from their own perspective — of the constant strain between rights and responsibilities. As I’ve written so many times in the past, one of the things contributing to the destructive polarization of our politics is that we couch far too many issues in terms of “rights,” which, being absolutes, are non-negotiable. Take the right to life vs. the right to autonomy/privacy. The right to health care vs. the right to be left alone. What we need more than anything is to stop demanding more and more personal rights — stop acting like a bunch of two-year-olds crying gimme-gimme — and think a bit more of our responsibilities as citizens.

And indeed, Rex and Lovelace spoke repeatedly of the lack of responsibility in our politics. First, there is the abdication of responsibility of disengaged citizens who are turned off by politics and leave our public life in the hands of the squabbling ideologues (which this new party is intended to address by providing a new challenge to involvement for the disaffected). Then, there is the lack of responsibility of the parties, which concern themselves only with winning, and stick by the very worst of their members. Then, there is the lack of responsibility to the people on the part of elected representatives, who grow complacent in their “safe” seats (at least, that’s how Rex and Lovelace see it).

At one point, Rex even invoked one of my alternative names for the UnParty — the Grownup Party. And that leads directly to the problem with naming the kind of party we really need in this state and country (which, I believe, is what Rex and Lovelace are trying to create) — if you call it the “Responsibility Party,” or the “Grownup Party,” it’s not exactly going to set a focus group on fire. Too much like “Eat Your Vegetables.” And yet that is exactly what we need — an “Eat Your Vegetables” party.

As for the “Citizens” part: Again, this is not about “I’m a citizen and therefore I’m entitled,” the way I hear the word used by some nativists. In fact, in explaining the name, the two principals invoked “the Greatest Generation” — people who paid a price for our freedom, who fully embraced the responsibility inherent in citizenship.

Anyway, just to get the ball rolling, Lovelace and Rex are calling this the Free Citizens Party, and they’ve put some ideas into writing, which invites us all to shoot at them. So, with a minimum of commentary, I’ll pass on what they’ve sent up the flagpole.

First, there are their four party principles:

Legislate and govern from the middle.
Increase economic competitiveness.
Term limits — public vs. self-service (their words, of course, not mine at all, as I see this as their most problematic proposal)
Increase responsibility/accountability. (There’s that word.)

Then, they presented their Eight Platform Priorities:

Decrease national debt through balanced approach.
Strong, choice-driven public school system/early education. (Public school choice, you’ll recall, was a priority of Rex’s as superintendent.)
Efficient, effective healthcare. (To bring in Dr. Lovelace’s particular area of concern.)
Reform campaign funding/transparency.
Ethics reform legislation — state and federal.
Support 2nd Amendment w/ reasonable regulations. (Rex stressed that, being a hunter, he has “a lot of guns.”)
Simplify tax code — promote work, saving, investment.
Comprehensive immigration policy reform. (They brought up an argument for strong borders that I don’t recall hearing advanced before — their concern for public health, wanting to prevent the spread of pandemics.)

After presenting all that, the two masters of ceremony entertained questions and comments from the audience for quite some time.

About that audience — I’m thinking fewer than 100, but not a bad turnout for something that had so little publicity. It was mostly middle-aged (in other words, Grownups), although there were a few who didn’t fit into that category. Based on the questions and comments, a serious, thoughtful bunch who are frustrated with the status quo. (And guess who came up and introduced himself afterwards? Our own “tired old man!”)

Lovelace pointed out that no one should be discouraged about the turnout. He said this group was bigger than any county GOP gathering he ever spoke to during his run for governor in 2006. And Rex chimed in that he had the same experience as a Democrat. Their point being that if the existing parties are so formidable, their county gatherings should be bigger than this fledgling meeting.

Before I close this report, a word about their embrace of term limits, which I believe is based in a misdiagnosis of what is wrong. Rex at one point spoke of how offensive the term “safe district” is, and he’s right. But he misses what is most offensive about it. The main problem is not that a district is safe for the incumbent (although the courts allowing incumbent protection as a basis for reapportionment is a problem). The problem is that it is drawn to be safe for a party. And the more extreme the two parties get in their polarizing ideologies, the worse the representation will be from that district.

Rex walks through the eight platform priorities.

Rex speaks of the complacency of incumbents in “safe” districts. I don’t see them as complacent at all. I see them running like scared rabbits, constantly building their “war” chests to protect themselves, and against what? Not a challenger from the opposite party, or from some moderate independent. They’re protecting themselves against a challenge from someone in their own party who is more extreme than they are. They do two things to protect themselves from this — they raise money, and they become more extreme themselves, in their words and in their actions.

And how do they raise money? They do it by constant appeals to their own partisans, making wild charges against the opposition, stirring fear and loathing in their bases. And that is the problem — that the current system rewards polarization and gridlock for their own sakes. They are good for the business of politics. And johnny-come-latelies are just as guilty of taking advantage of this dynamic as are incumbents. That is the cycle that must be broken by a party that appeals to reason, to moderation, to the interests that we all have in common rather than what divides us.

If incumbents are replaced, who replaces them? Not some Mr. Smith goes to Washington, but a partisan who convinces the primary voters that he’s more extreme than the incumbent. Think what happened to Bob Inglis. Or any of those incumbents either taken out by, or seriously threatened by (which in turn affects their behavior and makes them more extreme), Tea Partiers in recent years.

Anyway, enough about that. For now. These guys are trying to do a good thing, and they have enough of an uphill climb without me carping about the details. They’re shooting for the 10,000 signatures to get their party on the ballot by the 2014 election — really 12,000, given that many signatures get successfully challenged.

And they know that’s not easy. Dr. Lovelace ended the meeting with a quotation from Machiavelli:

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things; for the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new…

Obviously, they have not hired a political consultant, or they wouldn’t go around quoting Machiavelli. But the point is dead-on. I know, from the unsolicited feedback I’ve gotten over the years from all sorts of thoughtful, rational people across this state — like the strangers who come up and tell me how much they agree with what I write — but they’re seldom the ones who stand up to be counted. It’s defenders of the status quo, and at least as bad, the advocates of terrible ideas for change, who have all the passion. The people who simply want rational, responsible government don’t storm barricades, or make demands. They make for lukewarm advocates.

As it happened “tired old man” had brought with him a printout of a Yeats poem that I think makes the point better than Machiavelli did (not least because it doesn’t have Machiavelli’s name attached). I quoted it not long ago here on the blog. The relevant passage:

… Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

That’s my experience. What we need is for the best to embrace conviction, and advocate for rational government with passionate intensity. Good for Rex and Lovelace for trying to get that going.

A portion of the modest crowd that attended.

John Yoo on the Obama administration’s drone memo

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When I first read of the Obama administration’s drone memo earlier in the week, I idly wondered what John Yoo would think of them.

You remember him. He’s the lawyer who wrote the “Torture Memos” for the Bush administration.

Well, now I don’t have to wonder, because he wrote what he thinks of the latest development in The Wall Street Journal today.

The general thrust of his piece is that the great flaw in the current administration’s justification for its drone program is that it’s based not in the assumption that we are at war with al Qaeda, but on the assumption of so many on the antiwar left that terrorism should be treated as a crime. As he puts it, “the Obama administration is trying to dilute the normal practice of war with law-enforcement methods.” Which means you have to go through extra gyrations of rationalization to order a drone strike.

I’ll let others argue over that. What intrigued me was the ethical question Yoo raised at the very end of his piece:

Rather than capture terrorists—which produces the most valuable intelligence on al Qaeda—Mr. Obama has relied almost exclusively on drone attacks, and he has thereby been able to dodge difficult questions over detention. But those deaths from the sky violate personal liberty far more than the waterboarding of three al Qaeda leaders ever did.

That’s something else I’ve been thinking about: Which is worse, taking someone captive and mistreating him, or killing him?

There’s the related question: Is the killing of our enemies with essentially a deus ex machina from the sky, with no risk to Americans, rather than facing them in battle, the morally preferable course? OK, most Americans would probably say “yes,” to that one, but let’s address the first question: Is killing preferable, morally and ethically, to capturing and torturing?

And no, those aren’t the only two options we have. But that’s the question Yoo posed, and I find it an interesting one.

What SC needs is a good UnParty think tank

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Speaking of “conservative, conservative, conservative,” repeated as a mind-numbing mantra…

This came in today:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Ellen Weaver – 803-708-0673, press@palmettopolicy.org

JIM DEMINT ANNOUNCES FORMATION OF NEW S C THINK TANK
Palmetto Policy Forum to serve a vital role in policy research, innovation and collaboration

Columbia, SC – Today, former U.S. Senator and Heritage Foundation President-elect Jim DeMint announced the launch of the Palmetto Policy Forum, an independent, South Carolina-based think tank.

DeMint, who is investing a portion of his remaining campaign funds to help establish the group, will also serve as its Founding Chairman.

Joining him on the Founding Board is a roster of prominent South Carolina leaders including C. Dan Adams, President and CEO of The Capital Corporation; J. Gresham Barrett, Stewardship Director of NewSpring Church; Michael R. Brenan, Group/State President of BB&T; Michael H. McBride, Chairman of the Board of Directors of HMR Veterans Services, Inc.; and Stu Rodman, Founder and Vice-Chairman of the Board.

The organization will be led by newly-appointed President & CEO, Ellen Weaver, a seasoned veteran of policy, communications and politics. Weaver has worked with DeMint in both Washington, DC and South Carolina, most recently serving as his State Director. She will assume full-time duties with Palmetto Policy Forum on March 4, to allow for the completion of an orderly transition between the former DeMint office and that of newly-appointed U.S. Senator Tim Scott.

Dr. Oran Smith, a trusted advocate for conservative policy during his many years of service in South Carolina, will join the staff as Senior Fellow, applying sharp analytical skills to legislative research and policy innovation.

Kate Middleton Maroney, who worked on Capitol Hill in the office of U.S. Representative Trent Franks, will join the staff as Executive Assistant and oversee management of new media outreach.

“While Washington is stuck in an endless cycle of debt, “cliffs” and crisis, a growing number of states are seizing the initiative to implement bold policy innovation that will expand opportunity and economic prosperity for all of their citizens. Conservative success at the state level will be the catalyst that saves our country,” said DeMint.

He continued, “I am pleased to have this opportunity to invest in Palmetto Policy Forum and the future success of the state I love. I believe South Carolina can lead the nation with the most principled, powerful and effective conservative advocates in America. The Forum will play a key role in cultivating the bold and visionary ideas that we know form the ladder of opportunity for every American. In my new role at The Heritage Foundation, I look forward to working with Palmetto Policy Forum and like-minded groups all around the country to lead an opportunity renaissance that speaks to the dreams and aspirations of every American.”

“South Carolina needs an organization that will develop a broad spectrum of well-researched policies, rooted in conservative principles and promoted in a positive, coalition-building way. There is no reason why South Carolina cannot lead the nation in passing market-based policies that we know form the foundation of long-term economic and social success. On behalf of the Board, we look forward to the work ahead,” said Founding Board Member, Mike Brenan.

Forum Senior Fellow, Dr. Oran Smith said, “An opportunity like Palmetto Policy comes along once in a lifetime. I am honored to add a portfolio at The Forum to my duties as President of Palmetto Family. Positive, conservative but winsome policy entrepreneurship is what South Carolina needs, and that is what Jim DeMint and The Forum represent.”

In closing, Forum President Ellen Weaver stated, “Our challenge – and opportunity – is to develop principle-based policies and to promote them in a way that connects back to the shared values of people all over South Carolina. By promoting best-practice conservative ideas from around our state and nation, we can show the way forward to increased opportunity for all. It has been an honor to serve in the DeMint office for the past 12 years and I am humbled to have now been asked to oversee this exciting new venture. I look forward to the chance to work with our board, staff and South Carolina leaders to launch positive policy solutions for the future of our state and those willing to follow South Carolina’s lead.”

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Really? Somebody looked at South Carolina, with its SC Policy Council and its SC Club for Growth, and its Nikki Haley and its GOP controlled Legislature, its two Republican senators, and its congressional delegation with one token Democrat, its ranks purged of anyone not pleasing to the Tea Party, and decided that what this state really needed was another entity to advocate for the currently fashionable definition of “conservatism?”

I’ll tell you what SC needs — a forum for ideas that aren’t handcuffed to ideologies, a force that advocates for practical policies that help move this state forward to where we’re no longer last where we want to be first, and first where we want to be last. Which, by the way, is what multiple generations of leaders who conformed to their day’s definition of “conservatism” got us. In antebellum times, we had the most conservative form of government in the nation (powerful legislature, weak executive). Our “conservatism,” our passionate defense of the status quo, led us to secede from the union. After that ended in disaster, forces of reaction in our state managed to restore the same form of government that had served the slaveholders before 1860, although now it served no one in SC. Generation after generation since then has worn its avowed “conservatism” like a glorious crown. And now we are afflicted by a generation that thinks it invented conservatism, and that all that went before it was rabid socialism.

As one who wants the best for my native state, this is discouraging in the extreme.

I’ll be glad to help run such an UnParty think tank, if somebody will put up the money. Ah, there’s the rub! For in South Carolina, there are always millions to be found for bumper-sticker ideology, but not a thin dime for reason and pragmatism.

Todd Kincannon seems to have found his own Heart of Darkness

26 Replies

I’m not sure how else to put it.

I’ve known Todd, slightly, for several years now. Once, I would have said, “I know him to say hello to.” Now, I say, “I know him to exchange Tweets with,” which I have done frequently. I’ve only met him in person a handful of times, and when I have, he’s been a polite, friendly young man who seems to know how to behave himself in public.

But lately, his Tweets — and there are a LOT of them; I don’t personally know anyone who Tweets more constantly — have been trailing off into a strange, dark, extreme place. Following them is like traveling up the Congo (or, in Coppola’s version, the Mekong) in search of Kurtz, who had lost himself in savagery. Increasingly, they are of a sort that I can’t quote here without violating my own standards. Even showing you the ones that this post is about is a departure. But now that Todd has gone on national media to defend these truly indefensible Tweets, and not backed down an inch or admitted in any way that they are beyond the pale, and been identified to the world as a former executive director of the state GOP, well… I’m laying them out before you.

Here’s the one that the above video interview is about:

Here’s another related to it:

I don’t know what has led Todd on this path. I know that when he stepped it up (or rather, down) a few degrees a month or so ago, he found himself gaining a lot more attention, and I’ve seen that do bad things to people’s heads before.

Is it just immaturity? When Rusty DePass posted something on Facebook that deeply offended all who saw it, he immediately took it down (too late; it had been grabbed and preserved) and truly, sincerely apologized to everyone for it. (I think Kathryn, and others here who know Rusty, will back me up as to his sincerity.)

Todd operates in an environment where… well, the maturity level is pretty well established in the language used in this Wonkette piece criticizing him. A place where there are no rules of civility, or at least it seems that there aren’t — until Todd manages to find a way to violate them. (The problem with Wonkette’s reaction, of course, is that it helps Todd believe in his explanation that this is just a left-right thing, and he’s just doing what everybody does to people on the other side.) A place where obscenities that would only sound daring to a 7th-grader are the standard.

How hard is it to simply say that, for instance, Trayvon Martin was just this kid, you know? He was neither an angel nor a devil, he was just a kid who didn’t deserve to die because he had a run-in with this George Zimmerman guy, who wasn’t an angel or a devil either. MIsguided people on the left and right have glommed onto these people as some sorts of symbols, but they were just people. And his shooting was what the prosecutors in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities would have called a “piece a s__t case,” a case that’s just a horrible, tragic mess any way you look at it, with no heroes, no one to admire, no good coming out of it, no redeeming lesson to be drawn.

But one thing is clear: Now that the kid’s dead, he sure as hell doesn’t deserve to have his memory trashed in terms that shouldn’t be used in public under any circumstances, about anybody.

Todd’s performance in the above video is nothing short of appalling. I don’t know what to say but to define it in Conradian terms, and express how sorry I am to see it. He might not be sorry, but I am…

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