A conservative, I suppose, is someone who thinks one of these two things: (1) that God must have wanted Jeremy Hernandez to come up short on his tuition, so that, come August 1, 2007, he'd be in a position to save all the kids (the omniscient God view); or (2) Jeremy must have been ethically deficient 8 months ago, and therefore have been undeserving of tuition then, but now that he has demonstrated his mettle, a philanthropist should step up and send him back into mechanic training (the compassionate conservative view).

I guess we'll have to let the conservatives speak for themselves, and certainly there are a lot of different kinds and shades of views that constitute conservatism of one kind or another, but it seems to me that many American-style conservatives would endorse a third view: (3) economic inequality is a fact of life and it is not the role of either government in particular, or society at large, to eliminate that inequality. Because of economic inequality, some people will not be able to achieve ambitions that other people with more means would be able to achieve. That is unfortunate, but that's life in a free market, free enterprise system. Hernandez's economic condition might not have anything to do with any lack of inherent virtue, and be due mainly to the circumstances in which he was born, but that's our system. The virtues of a laissez faire, free market economic system trump its drawbacks.

Wouldn't it be more useful to actually read what conservatives think by, you know, reading their blogs?  Not always pleasant to be sure but better than guessing what they think.

Dan K,

Because of economic inequality, some people will not be able to achieve ambitions that other people with more means would be able to achieve. That is unfortunate, but that's life in a free market, free enterprise system.... The virtues of a laissez faire, free market economic system trump its drawbacks.

I have, what is to me, alot of friends in Minneapolis.  So, I spent much of yesterday and the night before gathering up all my directories, hunting email addresses and phone numbers, sending and leaving messages, and checking back anxiously and periodically amid daily routines.  Then I caught just a little bit of Tucker Carlson's program on MSNBC where there was an audaciously cynical discussion happening over whether the bridge collapse could have been avoided had the infrastructure been privatized.  This is what movement conservatism is all about. 

There is no level too low for these people to stoop as they alternately scare us all into selling out the public sphere and entice the electorate with promises of lower and lower taxes.  In honest times, this would have been known as a protection racket.

Yeah, the conservatives are always honest and thorough in reporting their thoughts on their blogs. Right. What Gitlin was doing was trying to give a generous "reading" to what conservatives would be bound to say, given their stated premises, if they were to follow through to the possible conclusions consistent with those premises. Since the conclusions are as absurd as the premises, this only constitutes a reductio. Since the conclusions are more obviously absurd than the premises, the smarter of the conservatives will avoid openly stating these conclusions - although in private thoughts and discussions, perhaps not so much.

As for the "income inequality a fact of life" argument above: Come on, this is a 20-year-old kid. In the 60s, when America was a Communist state, he'd have gotten his college-level education for next to nothing. Now that we've learned the virtues of Capitalism, we refuse to make it so easy for him to become educated for a trade. After all, we've got a national shortage of car mechanics. By increasing the shortage we'll force the sale of more new cars, which will help the Japanese more fully forgive us for Hiroshima ... or something. We're being rational here!

I disagree too - I'm a pinko myself. I was just trying to articulate what I understand to be one conservative line on social inequality.

Well, there is this little bit of bad timing.

"A liberal also believes that on the whole it would be a healthier society if young poor people trying to improve their lives through training didn't have to fail by reason of...poverty."

A classical liberal (like Milton Friedman) might observe that on the job training is education, and that minimum wage laws and mandatory benefits like retirement fund contributions, unemployment compensation, and health care, which raise the cost of training unskilled employees, place barriers between people who seek training and those who might train them. Why is it better for either people seeking training or for society as a whole that taxpayers support Job Corps instructors at $40,000/year (or whatever) while their students earn nothing, than that entry-level trainees earn $4.50/hr and learn auto mech, carpentry, etc. on the job?

I doubt this point would occur to any compassionate person on reading the account of the bus escape, until prompted by someone trying to make a partisan point.

A conservative, I suppose, is someone who thinks one of these two things: (1) that God must have wanted Jeremy Hernandez to come up short on his tuition, so that, come August 1, 2007, he'd be in a position to save all the kids (the omniscient God view); or (2) Jeremy must have been ethically deficient 8 months ago, and therefore have been undeserving of tuition then, but now that he has demonstrated his mettle, a philanthropist should step up and send him back into mechanic training (the compassionate conservative view).

What a loathsome bit of political haymaking out of tragedy.

I've read and respected Mr. Gitlin's work in the past, but this is so reductive, so any-stick-that's-handy, that I have to reconsider that. This is like the worst caricature of liberal spend-someone-else's-money-freely thinking-- if only Harvard Law School were free, the heroic Mr. Hernandez could go on to sue everybody himself, too!

Right, because more spending always solves everything!

Maybe if the money spent on MSP's boondoggle light rail system had been spent on fixing up the bridges people actually use, the thing wouldn't have fallen. That's more likely to be true, anyway, than this nonsense that the bridge would have been magically fixed if only the state vacuumed up another 10% of everyone's income.

It kinda odd that the bridge fell in so many sections. How many shear pins had to break for that to happen. They must salt the roads pretty heavily in Minnesota. Bridges need a little love too once in awhile, and the fact is that love isn't free.

And Jeremy chose the logical thing to do. Which was to open the only emergency door in the bus,....you don't have to be conservative or liberal to do that.

It kinda odd that the bridge fell in so many sections. How many shear pins had to break for that to happen. They must salt the roads pretty heavily in Minnesota.

It was a chain reaction of structural failure. As one section falls, it drags down the next.

Like how the Twin Towers collapsed one floor at a time, in rapid succession.

(3) economic inequality is a fact of life and it is not the role of either government in particular, or society at large, to eliminate that inequality. Because of economic inequality, some people will not be able to achieve ambitions that other people with more means would be able to achieve. That is unfortunate, but that's life in a free market, free enterprise system.

I think you're right Dan and that this is certainly a viable 3rd choice and I'd bet a pretty common one among average conservative citizens here in America. That said I think it's also sadly naive and ultimately self destructive. I think it's precisely this kind of thinking that leads citizens to elect Republicans to office and remain completely oblivious to the fact that those elected officials are attacking their quality of life. They are attacking their opportunities. They are actively working to CREATE inequality. It's mind boggling to me.

In my opinion, if the playing fields were level then I agree that there would be no need for outside forces to create an artificial parity of any kind. That however is not the case. It looks to me like it's fixed and fixed on so many different levels (see The Top). So maybe we don't need government to create equality for all but rather it's task should be to make sure no one creates and exploits inequality. And I think that that is an important distinction. To do this we would of course have to completely destroy the current incestuous relationship between business and government and that is no small task.

Oh and I live here in California and remember with clear disgust our "energy crisis". I also remember how privatized industry hosed us all and walked away with a fortune thanks in no small part to friends in very high places. No vital industry or service which holds sway over the wellbeing and safety of our citizenry should ever be privatized. Never. I say this because I do not, and will never, trust "the market". I will let "the market" control how many colors of pen I have to choose from and how long the flavor of my gum will last. But we are all in serious trouble when it is allowed to decide how much our electricity is going to cost or how safe our bridges should be. They won't do job X any better they will just charge us all 10x's more for it. Ask the Iraqis how well private contractors did at fixing and running their vital services. Hell you can ask me too because it was our tax dollars that they stole while delivering jack.

Actually, I think you've been pimping a sensational issue and parodying Bill-O.

And a number of liberals, like myself, have pointed out how divisive and unhelpful that kind of sloppy hatchet work is.

From what I recently read, the bridge design in itself is a bad design because it's non-redundant. If one structural member fails the whole thing fails. Most heavy structures have redundant designs these days.

Gitlin's comments made perfect sense to me, and I didn't find them loathsome at all. He merely characterized two conservative views of people. Incidentally, these two views are incompatible with each other but life is full of contradictions which is what makes it so interesting to participate in. Anyhow, I digress.

Gitlin gave two correct conservative views of life:
(1) God is omnipotent.
(2) Only the strong survive; the rest should get help if they do something outstanding to earn it.

Criticism aside, what is your opinion? Just for illustrative purposes, why should George Bush be entitled to go to Yale and Jeremy Hernandez not be entitled to go to auto mechanic school?

Because one of them has the money, and the other one doesn't.

Oh heavens! What an awful capitalistic cruel Dickensian view of life!

Okay, let's change it. Let's take the money from the former, and give it to all the latters. What is the result? Society has less wealth overall, because the incentive to make money and achieve something in life has been sapped by a government that teaches that wealth is to be taken and reward is to be doled out by government. You used the revealing verb when you spoke of both of them in terms of what they're "entitled" to.

It remains astonishing to me that people can look at the greatest, most prosperous middle class in the history of mankind and say it's evidence that "only the strong survive." And they would trade this "cruel" system for, say, Cuba's oligarchy, where you really DO have to be strong to survive.

everyone has that power, Max

So Kozmik has the power to remove his posts after people have replied to them

No. As I can still see it, it means that you have gotten a low enough karma score average (from low ratings of your comments) that you cannot see comments that have an average rating below 1. If you get some higher ratings on comments, you should be able to see it again. You will also be able to see it again if others rate it high to bring up its average above 1.

A main reason why this kind of rating system was created was that it's an attempt at troll control by making inflammatory comments invisible to members with low ratings themselves, removing the temptation to "feed" and long tit-for-tat insult fests.(Lurkers who are not logged in cannot see comments rated under 1 either, nor can people logged in who have chosen the comment viewing option "ignore low-rated comments.)

as well as remove ratings

everyone can change ratings they have given at any time, including changing back to "not rated."

"So maybe we don't need government to create equality for all but rather it's task should be to make sure no one creates and exploits inequality."

It is and has always been a function of government *mitigate* the effects of (inevitable) inequality (and to do this in part to an extent by redistributing income). As someone said above it's a good investment -- a win-win situation for everyone.

People are thinking a little bit too much in either or terms here.

There's no need to trade our system, nobody's suggesting that. Your personal theories on wealth notwithstanding, we already do have a system of taking from the rich and giving to the poor because:

1. It is the moral thing to do as recognized by most religions which stress brotherhood and not the superiority of one person over another because of wealth. I won't hit you with bible verses.The Declaration of Independence, the spirit of America, also mentions the equality of man.

2. It is the democratic thing to do because the majority of people favor it. That's why we have public schools and fire departments funded by property taxes, for example, and they don't require your daddy to be rich to enjoy their benefits.

3. It is the constitutional thing to do because the preamble to the US Constitution requires us to "promote the general welfare". It doesn't say "allow unfettered accumulation of wealth for the few". In other words the poor are "entitled" according to the Constitution because it promotes the general welfare. The rich don't need help to go to Yale or any school, as you pointed out, but the poor do.

Now if you think these principles are wrong, and you obviously do, you ought to recognize that they are intrinsic to America, and, assuming that you are an American, if you can't accept them you should consider moving. I can't imagine where you'd move to where your ideas have been implemented, but Russia comes to mind.

Yeah, I saw 'em dwindling when I was at Costco today, besieging my way past the full carts and big screen TVs.

There's some kind of self-dramatizing instinct that insists on believing things are really tough today, when they've never been cushier. I was old enough, and poor enough, in the 70s to know what a real recession was like. My folks certainly knew what the depression was like. And I know enough of history to know that the natural state of man has been borderline starvation and a "nasty brutish and short" existence. Instead now we have poor people with an obesity problem. Yeah, you can come up with this or that that Sweden does better than us in (partly because, of course, we shoulder the bill for defending them), but what you can't do is come up with much of anything that 1940, let alone 1840, 1740 or 1240, would give us cause to be jealous of. As you say yourself, "Living today is simply an entirely different experience than it was that long ago," but the comparison is hardly useless-- it shows how much better off we are in virtually any way you can name.

But believe what you want, play statistics in an attempt to disprove the butt-obvious if you want.

You don't have a low Karma score just from me. A lot of people have rated you a troll. And it's because the quality of your comments is very low, unsubstantiated, and frequently throwing bombs. Plenty of people on TPMC disagree reasonably and don't get troll rated, because they post higher quality content.

In the case above, certainly spending money to inspect and repair that bride would have helped in that particular case. That is not at all the same thing as saying "more money always helps" and that is an obnoxious and childish distortion along the lines of anti-government winger talking points.

Similarly, saying he came here for economic oppurtunity, does not at all follow he came here to be on a bridge collapsing due to infrastructure neglect. Again, that is a totally intellectually dishonest winger troll typical of FOX News.

And nobody is defending the quality of your posts AFAICT.

It's just a "principled defense of trolls" or something, which I've always found obtuse, but some people live by. (There may be a correlation with people who actually believed Judith Miller was defending the press, as opposed to abusing that right.)

btw: while I'd defend even a Nazi's right to free speech and to demonstrate in a permitted public event, I would not defend anyone trolling a private site under false pretenses. There is a big difference.

Mgmax’s posts are well above average for this site in my opinion. He gets low ratings since he does not often toe the party line and nearly all those who rate here rate based on the extent to which they agree with the commenter, contrary to site guidelines.

Can you point to some posts or posters that you consider to be average or below average? I don't share your evaluation of Max's posts, especially insofar as his posts on this thread are representative. So, I have to wonder what you think is bad.

Really? Looking at the statements of conservatives on this (we shouldn't invest in better infrastructure maintenance, nor in better education, because that's too expensive) and comparing them to a real story is a PARTISAN wedge? No, it is a POLICY wedge. It is analyzing a case study. "How do the right wing talking points stack up to reality?" is a valid question, not a partisan wedge. If you can't respond to this by countering the logic, then don't bother to respond. This man's heroic act is exactly the reason we must reject the conservative view.

Milton Friedman was a liberal? Were there two economists by that name, or are you out of your mind? Milton Friedman, the one who went to the University of Chicago, was anything but a liberal. He was clearly as conservative as they come, as he believed in virtually no use of government intervention to solve societal ills.

How about just rudimentary job training programs, and maybe sufficient spending on roads? Or would that decrease the incentive to work too much? And what about corporate welfare for companies like Halliburton, or do those reduce incentives to work?

I hope you are not advocating the never ending cycle of responding in kind to untruths and hatchet politics. Going back to 2000 and 2004 (or to 1992 and 1996, eh Hillary?) keeps a nonproductive cycle of attacks and counterattacks going. Time to break the cycle, "turn the page," debate new ideas and move forward.

An afterword to one and all who have joined in:

There is a long and noble tradition of philosophical rumination on the meanings, or lack of them, of disaster.  You can trace it back to the vehement debate about what God intended, or didn't, after the devastating Lisbon earthquake of 1755, a subject that brought forth Voltaire's immortal Candide as a riposte to Leibniz's reaction to the earthquake...and so on. (There's a wonderful discussion of the post-Lisbon debate in Susan Neiman's magisterial Evil in Modern Thought.)  My little post originated spontaneously in this tradition, as a meditation on the bravery of Hernandez as portrayed in the fine NYT piece.  

Why a meditation on the causes and causal arabesques of a disaster should be blithely dismissed as "partisan" escapes me.  Ordinarily, that charge is nothing but a refusal of arguments and facts.  One of the more idiotic fillips of contemporary political debate is to sidestep a reasoned case in favor of a namecall.  It's intellectually and morally shabby.  It's "playing politics" rather than thinking.

Todd Gitlin

There is a difference between classical liberals and what "liberal" has come to mean in recent times. Classical liberalism is much like libertarians of today.

I thought the post put things rather nicely (in the sense of accurate and economical).

"...(A) high risk environment for injury and death" does not characterize many workplaces. Apprenticeship is a viable option for many occupations. According to John Gatto, it is routine in Switzerland (which does not mandate a minimum wage).

I don't see that the immigration angle applies to the policy choice between apprenticeship and trade school in any decisive way. Could you expand on this point?

"Your model also produces irregular skills and lacks any type of formal certification..."

So to do trade schools produce an uneven product. I regard the lack of formal certification connected to school as an advantage. Separating certification from schooling would make schools more honest. Employers can test applicants themselves. Reduce the downside to hiring and more employers would give applicants a trial run.

"Schools dedicated to training skills, from carpentry to soldiering, can scale output to meet needs far more rapidly than an apprentice system can." Is there the slightest evidence that trade schools, separated from employers, are more sensitive to shifting demand? I doubt this.

"Liberal" used to mean, approximately, "laissez faire". This is the sense in which Mussolini uses the term when he excoriates liberalism in his essay "What is Fascism".

Yep, I live in the Legislative District where the I-35W Bridge once was, and perhaps it would be useful to table some facts about the 59th Legislative District of Minnesota.

The district extends from NE Minneapolis down to the St. Paul City line on the East side of the Mississippi, but in the downtown area it also includes the precincts around the University on the west bank -- meaning unless you move 35W -- the reconstruction will all be in 59. In 2004, the district voted 78% for John Kerry. That is about 5 points higher than Martin Sabo used to do in Congressional Races -- and he was a very high end vote getter.

The State Senator representing 59 is Larry Pogemiller, who generally wins by about 80% of the votes, and last year he was elected Majority Leader of the State Senate. It was Larry who went toenail to toenail with Pawlenty over the Transportation and Transit bills vetoed in the last hours of the session. He could not get Pawlenty to even meet with key legislators as they were finishing up the Budget, in fact in the late weeks of the session, Pawlenty went off to Iraq to visit our National Guard troops, that are just arriving home after 16 months in the last few weeks.

But it looks like for the moment Pawlenty has caved in to reality. Having refused before, he now seems to be in agreement with a special session to re-do the Transportation and Transit pieces of the Budget, he is now willing to consider the Gas Tax as a way of funding things, and after having done everything he could over ten years to kill the Light Rail line which opened two years ago, he is now down on his knees kissing the rails. He and his Republican circle kept saying no one would ride Light Rail -- but it is now doing 4 times the projected ridership. While the bridge is out, they will need more cars, and more park and ride lots, and more connector busses. All of his people are already on board with these emergency plans.

Morning after the collapse Mayor Rybeck held a Newsconference, with the Senators and our Rep, Keith Ellison attending, but Pawlenty was so funny -- he kept introducing Larry Pogemiller, and saying nice little things about our Poggie. He has to deal with him for the rest of his Governor's term -- and Poggie is the progressive leader on the Education bills, the Transport and Transit ones, and before he became Majority Leader he chaired the Tax Committee. So during the newsconference, Larry was standing there, said nothing, but just had that look on his face saying "I told you So" but also following discipline which right now is that we shall all be Minnesota Nice and not talk about some of the past sinful matters -- so long as we get a whole lot of changes made in the direction of solid State Government of the sort Minnesotans expect. There is a reason the Republicans lost 19 seats in the House last year here in Minnesota, (lost their one vote margin), and our polling tells us there are three issues on state governmment voter's minds. Education, Health Care, and Transportation and Transit. In the cities, Ed and Health Care lead, but in the Suburbs the DFL won seats on Transportation and Transit. And no, around here no one is at all interested in privately owned and operated roads. Forget that. Just forget it. There could not be a district in the country less interested in that philosophy than the 59th. Among other assets in the district, we have much of the University of Minnesota, a school with 55 thousand students, about 60% of whom commute, with another 25 thousand staff and faculty, We host the Twins, The Vikings and the Minnesota Gophers. We have the new Gutherie theatre -- 4 stages, and a block out of the district, the Minnesota Timberwolves. We have two large and several smaller entertainment districts, and in recent years have moved industry off the river creating an urban park along both banks, with many new Condo's built back from the river, but with river views. It is all complete with bike paths, running tracks, venues for all sorts of gatherings. Much of the business along the river is private, and for the next couple of years there will be much interest in preserving those businesses with accommodations from Government. One way or another the customers for the Restaurants will need access, as will those who wait tables.

Thank you Robert.

One time I posted three paragraphs on some issue-- temperate, historically learned (I believe it brought in some issues from the Cleveland administration to a modern discussion), cogently argued.

And one of these pipsqueaks promptly rated it zero, trollbait. Yeah, three paragraphs of Gilded Age trollbait. That's why I pay it no attention (except to call out the most flagrant cases of misuse).

Basically the rating system turns TPMCafe into a sorority. Ohmigod did you see what she was wearing? Zero her, girls!

Well, you can always get over it, Max. Low ratings don't hurt you.

I write tons of brilliant comments and I am always disappointed when I don't get any ratings. If only we could rate ourselves . . .

Yeah, you can come up with this or that that Sweden does better than us in (partly because, of course, we shoulder the bill for defending them),

Nope, we don't.   Blame what you want on Sweden, but it doesn't sup at the defense trough, never asked to, never has.

aMike

Stephen from Minneapolis

Sara

Good post.

"if only Harvard Law School were free"

Then the most talented students would be attending it, regardless of economic means, instead of the children of rich parents, leading to greater equality of opportunity, and thereby greatly benefitting society. The children from modest income homes could outcompete the children of the economic elites.

HORRIBLE, WE CANNOT HAVE SUCH AN UPSETTING OF THE ESTABLISHED ECONOMIC ORDER!!!! :-)

Increasing equality of opportunity increases the size of the economic pie, it does not decrease it. We have an unexploited free lunch here. By increasing equlity of opportunity we can both increase GDP and reduce inequality.

There is a fundamental and probably irreconcilable difference in social philosophy between

1. People who want to organize society on a dog-eat-dog, everyone is on his own, winner take all and the devil take the hindmost basis.

2. People who want to organize society on a nurturing, caring, "we are all in this together" basis.

Laissez faire appeals to the first group and not to the second.

"some people will not be able to achieve ambitions that other people with more means would be able to achieve. That is unfortunate, but that's life in a free market, free enterprise system. "

This is actually a very powerful argument that a free market, free enterprise system is an unjust, immoral economic system. There is no virtue in such a social arrangement. Society does not have to accept such a state of affairs. Government policies to increase equality of opportunity can and should change this state of affairs. This is a perfectly legitimate role of the government.

In addition, policies that increase equality of opportunity by making it possible to make full use of all people's potential actuallly increases the size of the economic pie. Therefore policies that increase equality of opportunity provide society with a free lunch. They reduce inequality and at the same time increase the size of the pie.

"Hernandez's economic condition might not have anything to do with any lack of inherent virtue, and be due mainly to the circumstances in which he was born, but that's our system."

Time to get a better system.

If you can invent one that produces greater overall societal wealth, by all means.

Of course, the record of most "more equal" systems demonstrates that they are invariably neither more equal nor wealthier.

They don't speak Russian there either.

DeGaulle: Tell the Americans I want their soldiers out of France.

Dean Acheson: Ask President DeGaulle if that includes the ones in the cemeteries.

That kid is as American as any of us. He grew up here and has been educated here, and America is his home. This is America. Who cares where he or his family is from? Other than Minnesota, of course. Who among us here even know? He demonstrated his personal values and his worth to America, but those were things he had before the bridge collapsed and he did what he did to save those kids.

Your problem, Mgmax, is that he has brown skin and an Hispanic surname. Because of that you want to make it as hard for him and his family to succeed as you can. You find no pleasure in his aspirations, promise and successes; and you will offer no assistance to help him become more productive and more successful.

Why?

That kid is worth something to all of us, and was even before the first TV camera began rolling. You, in the meantime, demonstrate by what you have written here that you are a waste of a human skin.

Shame on you for such pathetic demagoguery.

This is where your pompous philosophizing has led, Gitlin. You've just about got the yahoos whooped into a lynch mob. Find the racist free marketers! Ferret out the running dog Friedmanites! Kill them!

The irony, of course, is that Mexicans are one of the most entrepreneurial, free-market-oriented immigrant populations in America. They don't want your patronizing welfare state help.

As for my racism, I made a documentary about Mexican entrepreneurs once. What have you done?

Maybe if the money spent on MSP's boondoggle light rail system had been spent on fixing up the bridges people actually use...

Have you ever BEEN to Europe?  Have you ever USED a comprehensive public transportation system?  Never mind.  I know you will say you have.   

You show your profound ignorance when you poo-pooh light rail and other public transportation systems in favor of the heavily subsidized car/highway system.

Everyone's life would be easier (and cost less) if we had a comprehensive public transportation system that we could all depend on.  Just a simple question:  what costs more -- 50 people riding on a bus, or 30 cars going to the same destination?  Don't respond by saying it wouldn't work; it works every day in hundreds of countries in the world.

Jan

Yes, I've used one in London, Paris, Brussels, Madrid, Barcelona, Budapest, Berlin, Munich, and a couple of others not coming to mind at the moment. More to the point, I use one every day in a city (Chicago) that's built for it and where it makes sense from an organization and density standpoint. Minneapolis is not such a city.

Yes, I was interested to learn from an above post that the Ivy League was a reward for W's hard work.

So you're saying that we're all wards of the state?

No. We're all members of society. It's in our interest to see other citizens receive education. If they can't pay for it in the short term, their increased productivity will pay for it in the long term. We're not all wards of the state. It's the other way around. It's our job to manage the state in such a way that it benefits everybody who lives here.

Americans are plenty productive, and wealth abounds in GNP numbers, yet we have fewer benefits than citizens of other, "poorer," nations.

I love America, but I can't help but notice that everywhere else I go (Canada, Europe) people seem to be a lot healthier, happier, calmer, and have much more free time.

I'm going for a walk. Happy Sunday everybody!

If folks like RT, RickB, and for that matter Todd Gittlin can resort to the crudest caricatures, so can I.

The difference is, I actually know something about the arguments on the other side-- indeed I agree with them in large part; what I object to is attributing the failure of the bridge wholly to a caricature of conservatism and demonizing the free market system and capitalism as heartless (when, of course, it's the alternatives to capitalism which have achieved new levels in inhumanity, while the heartless free market systems spreads wealth and general happiness).

But what do I know, I'm less defensible than a Nazi and a waste of my own skin (which RickB is doubtless eyeing for a lampshade at this moment).

Badum-ching!

Caricature, know thyself!!!

This is like the worst caricature of liberal spend-someone-else's-money-freely thinking-- if only Harvard Law School were free, the heroic Mr. Hernandez could go on to sue everybody himself, too!

No pure system is adequate to the chalenges of society. The USSR proved the failure of controlled economies. Countless third world nations have proven the failure of unfetterd capitalism. The US and Europe have shown that Social Democracy with the benifits of capitalism but having its grossest inequities relieved by the state safty-net is the best system found to date. The real debate is over the balance the system should strike.