Showing Respect for Your Fellow Man

Barack Obama gives his version of Jesus’ principle of turning the other cheek:

 

May dad always told me that the best measure of a man’s character is how he treats people who are not his peers.  John McCain has a reputation for having a bad temper for bawling out other Senators.  He is notorious on the Hill for the kindness with which he treats staffers. 

Obama may be all goodness and light with his peers (though I doubt that Joe Lieberman would agree after Obama borderline assulted him on the floor of the Senate earlier this year), but this seems to be his way of dealing with average folks, and those who dare disagree with him.

Why wealth matters for class warfare candidates

Jonathan Freedland offers as intersting perspective on Barack Obama’s problems finding traction with the voting public.
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/27/uselections2008.barackobama
 
Freedland’s problem is that he misses the larger point about why Democratic elitism rubs voters the wrong way, while Republican wealth does not.  The difference is ideology.  Democrats claim to be the defenders of the poor and powerless. Their personal background and worldview have a major impact on voters’ perception of whether the candidates can be trusted to know and represent those interests.  Voter perception that a Democrat is out of touch with those interests is fatal to a candidate who claims to represent the weakest classes in society. 
 
Republican’s, on the other hand, reject class-based ideology.  They argue that class divisions are artificial and espouse policies that seek to benefit all classes.  As a result, the background of a Republican candidate is largely irrelivent.  If members of all classes are seen as “Americans,” then it does not matter what class the candidate belongs to, because each class is just as able to represent all of the people.  Since Republicans make no claim to class representation, they receive no punshment for cultural divergence.  All that matters to them, essentially, is patriotism.  That is why you never see Republican candidates with questionable patriotic bona fides. 

How does this relate to the campaign?  Barack Obama can whine all that he likes about McCain’s wealth, but since McCain does not claim to represent the interests of only one class, it does not matter.  McCain’s bona fides as a candidate, like most Republicans, is based on patriotism, which is basically unimpeachable.  Obama’s bona fides, aside from his messiah schtick, are based on his embrace of class warfare.  However, his connection with average voters is weak, his patriotism is at best challengable, and his ability to engage in average voters in a meaningful ay is questionable.  Thus, the guy has problems.

Previewing the Obama Administration

Typically, candidates for President have an extensive record of public service from which voters can extrapolate how the candidates principles operate in the real world.  In Barack Obama, however, we are faced with a truly historic candidacy, in which the candidate has a brief and largely empty public career.  His public statements on most major issues are confusing and contradictory.  How does one evaluate a cipher?  Luckily, the administrations of several governors offer clues as to how an Obama administration would proceed. 

 

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm was elected Governor in 2002 promising change from the policies of long-time Republican Governor John Engler.  Granholm was perceived as an exciting new face on the political scene, and was featured in several national stories with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a person who if not for their foreign birth would be a contender for the Presidency.  Granholm spent much of her first term saying much and doing little, as Michigan industry suffered from high taxes, rising budget deficits, and the state’s hostile attitude toward business.  With unemployment hovering around 7%, Granholm continued to blame her woes on her predecessor, riding this excuse to reelection in 2006.  In 2007, Granholm passed a massive tax increase, driving up the losses of the auto manufacturers on which the economy of Michigan depends, and driving down the ability of local people to launch businesses in the state.  Unemployment continued to rise, and the real estate market imploded.  Listing of foreclosed homes in the Detroit News and Free Press rivaled the rest of the content in the paper.  Today, Governor Granholm is the most unpopular politician in Michigan not named Kwame Kilpatrick. 

 

Rod Blagojevich was elected Governor of Illinois the same year as Granholm.  A close ally of Barack Obama, Blagojevich followed policies broadly similar to her.  He forged forward with increased spending for health care programs while ignoring the impact on the state budget.  Blagojevich  also launched an ambitious program of infrastructure development to be accompanied by tax increases and a state Keno game.  How did he pay for this?  By withholding money from the state’s pension fund, a practice that would earn a corporate executive an indictment for fraud.  Though Blagojevich had campaigned on promises to clean up the state government, his supporters and allies had different ideas.  Blagojevich’s administration has been plagued by a series of high profile corruption scandals.  Like Granholm, Blagojevich was able to successfully pass the buck well enough to secure reelection in 2006.  However, the prosecutions of the culture of corruption surrounding Blagojevich and his political allies has continued.  The scandals of the Blagojevich administration culminated with the indictment of one Antonin Rezko, of whose work you may be familiar.  Having snatched the mantle of America’s most unpopular governor from Granholm, Blagojevich hopes that his friend and political protégé Barack Obama is elected President and is able to keep him out of prison. 

 

Our third governor is so similar to Obama that the two have shared speechwriters and even phrases.  Deval Patrick was swept into office through his eloquence and likeability.  Though he has only been in office since 2007, but has already proven himself to be a candidate to dethrone Rod Blagojevich as America’s worst governor.  He got his administration off on the wrong foot by spending $75,000 to hire a staff assistant for his wife, and for engaging in some ethically questionable lobbying on behalf of a bank.  Patrick also made headlines for describing the terrorist attack of September 11^th “A mean and nasty and bitter attack on the United States,” caused by “the failure of human beings to understand each other and to learn to love each other.  “Mean,” “Nasty,” “Bitter,” doesn’t that sound familiar?  While Patrick has not yet plumbed Pelosian depths of unpopularity, for a man who has been in office for slightly over a year he is off to a strong start. 

 

What lessons do these governors offer for an Obama administration?  Obama faces challenges similar to Jennifer Granholm, and offers similar solutions.  Obama offers no plan to balance the budget, promises to increase corporate and income taxes, and generally stick it to business.  In Michigan, these policies have resulted in increasing debt, political polarization, and economic implosion.  The United States may be in a recession, but Michigan is in a depression, the only state in the union with a contracting economy.  Rod Blagojevich, a product of the same Chicago political fraternity as Barack Obama, came into office with good intentions.  The people who got him there, however, did not, and Blagojevich was unable to reign in their thievery.  Deval Patrick is an inspiring speaker, but the evidence continues to mount that he was perhaps not quite ready for the office of governor.  Patrick has made mistakes, mistakes which cost money, money that costs jobs.  At the root of all of these governor’s problems, though, is a common faith in a New Left ideology that they share with Barack Obama.  In these states, this ideology has been tried, and the results have been tragic for those families who have lost jobs to poor economic policies, malfeasance, or incompetence.  Can we afford to inflict this experiment on the entire country?

The Nuance of Nuance

It has become something of a cliché in academic and journalistic circles that the best type of answer to a question is a nuanced one. After all, there very process of delivering a nuanced answer requires the respondent to give the listener a demonstration of their command of the details of a subject, typically resulting in a hybrid or compromise conclusion.  However, the demonstration of nuance is at best an incomplete expression of mastery of a subject.  In fact, I would argue that it demonstrates that the responder has not fully thought through the question sufficiently to offer a genuine solution. 

 

 

Let’s take the causes of the Civil War as an example.  If you ask the average American what the cause of the Civil War was, they will respond “slavery.”  A nuanced answer to the cause(s) of the Civil War would include territorial expansion, prejudice, economics, industrialization, tariff policy, states rights, universal white male suffrage, and a variety of other topics.  It would surely include that the North had no interest in racial economy, and based its opposition tot he expansion of slavery as much on a desire to exclude African Americans from the West as any commitment to their human rights.  It would blur the moral distinctions between the sections.

 

That being said, this picture is still incomplete.  A common thread runs throughout all of these secondary issues: slavery.  Territorial expansion was a passionate issue between the sections because of the question of whether slavery should expand there.  Predudice was critical in understanding why Northern whites cared about the expansion of slavery.  The sections diverged on economic policy because the export-oriented slave economy of the South had conflicting needs in comparison with the domestic-production oriented industrializing free labor economy of the North.  This emphasis on exports divided the slave plantations of the south from the small farms, shops and factories of the North on tariff policy as well.  Southern slaveholders devoted themselves to state’s rights largely to ensure the survival of their slave society and ideals of white racial equality based of African American inferiority.  Indeed, universal white male suffrage in the South was seen to be not only congruent but based on African American slavery.  In each instance, the divisions between North and South were based on slavery, more exactly the expansion of slavery. 

 

Which answer better reflects the truth: the nuanced answer, or the basic one? 

 

Privileging nuance above everything only makes sense if one believes that there is no deeper truth to be uncovered.

 

The best way to judge if a person actually knows what they are talking about is whether they can describe what they know to a laymen.  Think about Stephen Hawking.  Hawking knows as much about it field as anyone in the world, and there are at best a roomful of people in the world who could discuss astrophysics with him as a peer.  Yet Hawking is just as capable of describing his work to laypersons, as illustrated by his bestselling books, as he is able to converse effectively with fellow specialists, because he as developed a thorough understanding of the field. 

 

Barack Obama has been praised for his nuanced grasp of issues, but his nuance is generally of the superficial postmodernist variety.  His nuanced remarks typically end with a rhetorical shrug, rather than a statement of truth.  This tendency was best captured in his response in the Saddleback forum to the question of when life begins.  “Above my pay grade” was classic Obama, and classic postmodernist nuance without substance. 

VP Pledge

I’m not a big fan of Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.  But lots of folks are, and I want to make those folks a deal.  If Romney or Huckabee gets the nod, I will swallow hard, slap on a smile, and bang the drum for the ticket.  I expect you to do likewise. 

Basically, as long as McCain nominates someone to the right of Kim Jong Il, it will be a better ticket for America than Obama-Biden.  Let’s never lose sight of just how crazy Obama is, and how much damage he will do.  No possible VP pick, Romney, Huckabee, Lieberman, Palin, Ridge, or anyone else is in Obama’s league.  Let’s all remember that.

Fair enough?

Is Al Gore the Tabanga?

 

Tabanga

 

 

 

Gore

 

 

Is Al Gore the legendary Tabanga?  Let’s examine the facts:

 

Gore starred in a low-budget movie: An Inconvenient Truth.

 

Tabanga starred in a low budget movie: From Hell it Came.

 

Gore is wooden, Tabanga is wooden. 

 

Gore is motivated by revenge, Tabanga is motivated by revenge.

 

Gore was betrayed by voters, Tabanga was betrayed by tribe.

 

Gore is slow and plodding.  Tabanga is slow and plodding. 

 

Gore is angry at his own country.  Tabanga is angry at his own tribe. 

 

Gore was revived by radical scientists.  Tabanga was revived by radical scientists. 

 

Gore draws his power from pollution.  Tabanga draws his power from pollution. 

 

Gore never smiles.  Tabanga never smiles. 

 

I’ll leave it to the reader to judge.

Taking a Break

Howdy all!

Just want to apologize to anyone posting over the next week: I’ll be taking a vacation, and that means from the campaign as well.  There will still be postings, but I’ll be too lazy to check it.  Have a safe and happy Labor Day weekend!

What Obama Supporters Think of You

What Obama Boosters Think of You

 

What Rob Dreher thinks about your intellect:

 

“You couldn’t find one American in a thousand who could locate Georgia on a map.”

 

Really?  While this sounds like an indictment of the leftist dominated education system, it is more revelatory of the ignorance of the author than the filthy masses he is looking down on.  I’d be willing to take that bet.  I asked my dad, a factory worker with a high school education, and my stepmom, a factory worker with a GED, where Georgia is.  They knew. 

The fact is, the average American is not the ignorant rube that he is often portrayed as.  In fact, if you could transport an average American back 150 years ago, they would know more about medicine, physics, sceince, and cartography than any living human being.

What people of the left fail to realize is that there are very little difference in intellgence between people.  How many people have you encountered in life who are much smarter than you, or much dumber?  I’m guessing the list is quite short.  The difference is that some people know different things than you do.    

 

Here is my theory.  I think that self-absorbed leftists don’t know their geography because they are too intensely focused on maintaining their own gargantuan egos, and project their ignorance onto the rest of us.  Average Americans, not trusting their “betters” to give them the truth, know how to find out what they need to know and think critically about things.  Critical thinking is fatal to leftist thought.  Maybe leftists shoud try listening to and learning from those around them.  Of course, if they did this, they would no longer be leftists.

The Passion of Sean Wilentz

 

One of the more interesting minor stories of this political season for me has been how the Obama campaign has played out in the historical profession.  Being a center-right historian (though this alignment makes me a reactionary in the field), I have watched with some amusement and more than a little horror the way that Sean Wilentz has morphed from a outstanding man in the field to a near outcast over the course of the last 12 months. 

 

By all objective measures, Wilentz should be a scholar at the pinnacle of his career.  He has published one of the seminal works on political culture in the 19^th Century, Chants Democratic.  He single-handedly revitalized the moribund Jacksonian Democracy thesis of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in The Rise of American Democracy.  He recently published a groundbreaking work, The Age of Reagan, that interprets the era of Republican dominance from 1968-2008 through the prism of comparison to the Age of Jackson and Roosevelt (which seems somewhat obvious to a lay person, but is a major admission by a historian).  In addition, Wilentz is a brilliant, kind, and engaging man.  The panel on which he appeared at this year’s American Historical Association annual meeting was so packed that the false wall had to opened to accommodate the crowd. 

 

Wilentz, however, made two fatal mistakes.  First, he decided that Barack Obama was not qualified to be President.  Second, he publicly supported Hillary Clinton.  Soon, historian friends of mine who knew and cared nothing about Wilentz’s and my field started coming up to me to ask about what was going on with him.  Knowing that I was critical of his work (I disagree strongly with the Jacksonian Democracy thesis, though I respect Wilentz deeply as a historian), they figured I would be up for some bashing.  I was shocked at how angry they were at him.  He was a traitor, a closet Republican, drunk with celebrity, and was not a very good historian anyway.  The first time, I chalked it up to a fluke.  When European medievalists started coming to me to complain about Wilentz, though, it had gotten creepy.  I found myself in the strange position of sticking up for a very liberal Democrat, whose narrative interpretation I hope to some day debunk, against other very liberal Democrats.  By June, I was hearing Wilentz being mentioned in the same breath as Eugene Genovese, the heretical ex-Marxist historian who fell in love, abandoned revolutionary Leninism, converted to Catholicism, and endorsed Ronald Reagan.  Genovese went from being President of the AHA to an outcast in the field.  Hopefully, Wilentz’s apostacy will not earn him the same fate. 

 

Luckily for Wilentz, he is sticking to his guns.  Hopefully, he knows that there are a few of us out here sticking up for him. 

The Royal Feast of Balshazzar Barack and the Money Kings

I really have nothing to add to this story.  If you cannot see the problem with a candidate who has based his campaign on attacking the wealthy and “fighting special interests” integrating his campaign so intimately with such corrupt plutocracy, then I don’t have any hope of getting through to you. 

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Conventions/story?id=5648474&page=1

 

My God, I mean…wow.  Here we see how the Billion Dollar Man stands up to lobbyists and interests   If a man’s deepest principles are reflected in his actions, not his words, then Obama is the most pro-plutocrat candidate since McKinley, and the most open to illicit influence sicne Nixon.

 

The question I have is this:  How much good could the money lavished on Obama delegates have done if donated to charity?  How many families could the $1 billion dollars Obama will raise for this campaign have helped?