Ross Is Right!
My fellow discussants seem to think R&R are starry-eyed dreamers blind to the realities of the party they would reform. After all, what might a Republican administration completely freed from the straitjacket of fiscal restraint look like? Perhaps it would spend tens of billions on new education programs, or hundreds of billions on a Medicare drug benefit. Maybe it would, I don't know, introduce the highest rate of federal government growth since LBJ and increase spending at three times the rate of its Democratic-controlled predecessor.
Yes, much of Bush's profligacy has been in the service of cronyism and corporatism, while Reihan and Ross want to spend on some programs that might benefit someone other than pharmaceutical lobbyists. But as Ross points out, come November this party is going to be licking its well deserved wounds and in search of new direction. Some are going to argue that the Bush administration invited defeat by abandoning any pretense of fiscal responsibility in its foreign adventures and its christening of shiny new federal bureaucracies. R&R need only suggest that the party continue to laugh at libertarians, that a return to an imagined small-government coalition is neither feasible nor desirable, and embrace continuity with the GOP's recent past in a less corrupt form.
Grand New Party's expansive social conservatism is an easier sell than the alternative small-government vision, and much of what R&R would spend on seems worthwhile. Programs that provide housing and basic services to the homeless have been very successful. The wage subsidies R&R propose might do something to improve marriage markets for poor women, encouraging the social stability they seek without reinforcing the pernicious gender norms Dana and I were discussing earlier.
But I worry that a Sam's Club Conservatism--for all its good intentions--will play on the basest instincts of the electorate. In their quite genuine compassion for the American poor, R&R have crafted a program that would feed into the xenophobia, sexism, and hysterical fear of black crime that has characterized the GOP for so long. Theirs is a deeply nationalist vision that seeks to exclude low-skill Latino immigrants to the benefit of those lucky enough to have been born in America, that puts more cops on the street rather than addressing the laws that put nonviolent black men in prison, and that would continue to subsidize the rich by protecting them from competition with skilled foreign workers.
You can't really get through Grand New Party without feeling that anyone who lacks an American passport is an enemy to this vision. We know that it's possible to dredge up a few votes by blaming entrenched native-born poverty on Mexican laborers. Nor is it hard to convince (otherwise) educated Americans that the rise of a Chinese and Indian middle class is a catastrophe rather than an unprecedented increase in human welfare. This is a politics of exclusion, and we are tribal beings.
I agree that it is actually possible to imagine this kind of economic populism taking root in either party.
I'm not sure that I'm convinced by your account of why that's a bad thing. Surely you can be an internationalist in foreign policy, and nevertheless conclude that domestic economic policy needs to focus on the interests of the nation and its citizens.
Economic nationalism may even be a good thing, inasmuch as it gives us a way of resisting the "race to the bottom" that would otherwise be fueled by international competition -- with corporations moving jobs wherever the regulatory pressures are least burdensome.
July 16, 2008 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Economic nationalism" in this country cannot be separated from the cynical exploitation of racial and ethnic bigotry to further a narrow, shortsighted, political objective. Our national soil is far too polluted to even consider such the use of such a phrase outside of the actual way it has been deployed.
July 17, 2008 1:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with most of the comments except this passage;
"Nor is it hard to convince (otherwise) educated Americans that the rise of a Chinese and Indian middle class is a catastrophe rather than an unprecedented increase in human welfare."
I am against free trade in its current form and will continue to be. Not because I think that the development of a Chinese and/or Indian middle class is a disaster. I really think it is a good and very admirable thing. But is the only way to accomplish this noble goal be at the expense of the American worker? I think their (Chinese/Indian) wages should be lifted up to our standards and it shouldn't be something where our wages have to go down so that other's wages can improve. It isn't a 'zero sum' game in my mind.
But I do see the main tool of the GOP to attract votes is by playing on the fears, hatreds and ignorance of some Americans. For them it is a 'tried and true' method for electoral success.
July 16, 2008 4:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
What is it exactly that these people are right about? As far as I can tell they don't even get their history right. Why we liberals let them get away with this revision is a mystery to me.
Everytime we've had social progress in this country it has been the result of democratic/labour initiatives. Social security, miminum wage, paid vacation, the right to organize, regulation of trade and banking, workers' environmental laws, sick leave, the G.I. bill, FHA loans, medicare and education loans to name a few, and everytime the republicans have been in power they have done everything in their power to roll back this progress.
Their scapegoat for every kind of social ill is feminism - if it weren't for the pill, if it weren't for divorce, if it weren't for children born out of wedlock...and no one ever calls them on this shit, especially the feminists who flatter and nod in agreement with these two misogynists. Even their silly claim that no one has ever discussed the social ills caused by "the pill" is incorrect, I've been reading that same nonsense from conservatives since the day it was first sold just as they claimed that Margaret Sanger was the enemy of the family because she insisted that birth control information be made available to all classes in this society.
If they gave a damn about children they'd give the tax breaks to them, not the adults. Let any adult raising a child have the help of the government in child care, health care, education and other benefits. Why should any woman have to married to receive benefits for a child? What these two conservatives want is to punish people who don't conform to their narrow precepts of what constitutes a "good" nation. They couldn't care less about the children because if they did they wouldn't require the adults to conform, they would give the children what they need to not only survive but flourish.
Divorce and the pill didn't cause a breakdown in society, what caused the breakdown we see today is the punishing effects the policies of the republicans have had on our society. When the republicans are in power, crime increases, wages go down, unions are busted, taxes increase for the poor while decreasing for the rich, people are sicker when they do go to doctors and hospitals, jobs are lost, the divorce rates go up as do unwed pregnancies, prisons overflow and the cost of defense of the country falls disproportionately on the middle and lower classes.
These people have a longing for a past that never was - that golden era of the "nuclear family" was always a paycheck or an income earner's death or desertion away from disaster, the fact that they have no realization of that, that they think divorce and the pill cause social ills should tell us how foolishly ignorant they are of the reality of living in this country when you're a member of the working class.
If you want to help people, help them, but stop coercing and manipulating and punishing people because you don't happen to like their lifestyles or their use of birth control.
July 16, 2008 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
BevD,
First, if you're going to tout the historic successes of liberalism, be sure you include some of its failures as well, e.g., eugenics and collectivism.
Second, on a somewhat pedantic point, government can't really give benefits directly to kids because by definition they haven't reached the age of majority. They aren't legally responsible enough to decide what to do with the benefits. As for giving "tax breaks" to children - they aren't the ones who pay the taxes, so giving kids tax breaks would be meaningless.
But on a more important note, as I understand the discussion around the book (I confess I haven't read it yet), the authors advocate for a somewhat paternalistic government when it comes to families. If you reject the concept of a paternalistic government, that is a perfectly sensible position to take. But I suspect you don't, because liberals tend to have many nanny-state projects that they wish to impose on society themselves - e.g., encourage actions that mitigate global warming and discourage actions that lead to obesity, just to name a couple. So when you scathingly write:
all you have to do is substitute "these two liberals" for "these two conservatives" and you could equally well describe any two liberal politicians out there today. So the question really isn't should the government be paternalistic, but rather, why should it be paternalistic in the liberal's chosen way rather than the conservative's.
But, by the tone of the rest of your post, I suspect you just want to blame it all on Republicans anyway and not discuss paternalism in general.
July 16, 2008 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why shouldn't republicans be blamed? Their policies directly contributed to the problems. As to global warming, that's a problem will cause global suffering. And by the way, it isn't "liberals" who are pushing for a reduction in obesity, it's the insurance companies just as they do seatbelts and no smoking regulations.
Of course we can directly fund programs that benefit children, we do it all the time.
July 16, 2008 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
And liberal policies of encouraging dependency on the state rather than on familial ties don't contribute to the breakdown of the family? Give me a break. The issues are a bit more complex than "republicans = bad, liberals = good". So, once again, why should we buy into liberal paternalism rather than conservative paternalism?
On obesity: Here's Obama himself discussing childhood obesity. It's clear from the comments that he would prefer that physical education be required in schools and that students should drink less soda. Would a President Obama mandate these things via government? Would you favor that? Wouldn't that be paternalistic?
On benefits to kids: Right now programs that benefit kids only typically are associated with schools. What I gathered from your previous post is that you'd prefer that benefits go to kids directly and bypass parents altogether. How are kids supposed to know what to do with them?
July 16, 2008 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Imagine, a president that encourages people to think about what they eat and what they feed their children - can it get anymore totalitarian and authoritarian than that? It's far better to have a president who cares so little for food safety that food processing plants are seldom if ever inspected and our food distribution system is so compromised that food poisoning will become as ubiquitious as it was before World War I. (Another progressive success, food and drug safety regulations dismantled by republicans.)
Oh, what a silly idea, bringing the money directly to the children, why children don't file tax returns and how will a child be conversant in those benefits? Here's an idea, let's bring back the program of public health nurses and doctors who visited new mothers, the elderly, the chronically ill, who inoculated children and performed regular health checks at schools and immigration entry points. (Yet another program defunded by republicans.)
Or how about expanding the children's lunch program to include at least two square meals a day? Of course that would fly in the face of the republicans' solidly held beliefs that there should be no such thing as a "free lunch" even for children and poverty is a character flaw, not a result of circumstances.
This isn't about "paternalism" or "maternalism", this is about human beings treating each other humanely, it's about caring for our elderly and our children and our sick not because we want to entice them to a political agenda by bribes and coercion, but because we can care for them - we have the money, we have the knowledge, we have the technology, we have the distribution system, what we don't have is the will or the compassion to do something without expecting gratitude or a payback or allegiance to some political ideology.
These authors don't care about families, they don't care about parents and they really don't care about children, because if they did they wouldn't make humane treatment of others contingent upon fulfilling their notions of what will further the needs of the state, instead of its citizens. We have liberals who engage in a discussion with these authors by patting them on the back, flattering them and pretending that they offer some sort of civilized resolution to the problems we face as a nation. What they offer is more meanspirited, manipulative and coercive "grand old party" strategy to do as much as they can to horde and contain wealth for a certain few as opposed to helping the many. They are assholes and it's about time someone told them so.
July 17, 2008 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
BevD,
Yes it is about paternalism, you just don't want to use the word when using it to describe your preference for government. Unsurprisingly, you are trying to have it both ways. You rail against the paternalism that Douthat and Salam advocate - that government should deliberately promote
stable families - yet you don't seem to mind liberal paternalism. And government paternalism, by its very nature, requires individuals to conform to a particular mode of behavior in order to get the benefits. How is this not "mak[ing] humane treatment of others contingent upon fulfilling their notions of what will further the needs of the state, instead of its citizens"? Your expressions of moral superiority ring hollow.
Oh, and incidentally, I don't know much about public health nurses, but I do know something
This is an outright lie. The National School Lunch Program was expanded to include breakfasts a long time ago, and Republicans have done nothing to change that. Here are the budget figures for the National School Lunch Program. As you can see the budget has been rising ever since its inception under both Republicans and Democrats. It must be comforting living in Cartoon Land where liberals are saints and conservatives are evil.about school lunches. You write:
July 17, 2008 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the figures on the Agribusiness/Commodities Direct Welfare Payment Act of 2008 otherwise known as the school lunch program. Over 350million a year in direct buy ups of agribusiness surplus plus the Dept.'s "bonus buys" of 60 million for the beef and dairy industry for lunches that fail the government's own standards of nutrition.
Why do you have the need to characterize acts of human decency as "paternalistic"? The only reason to do so is to maintain the power and control men have over resources and to remind people that men do have that power.
July 17, 2008 9:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
BevD,
You write:
Because when such "acts of human decency" are the result of government actions, that's exactly what it is - a paternalistic government trying to dictate behavior, your feminist hysteria notwithstanding. That doesn't mean the behavior itself is bad, or the intent is bad, it's just what it is. Tax credits for buying hybrid vehicles is paternalistic because it is the government attempting to direct individual behavior.
And about school lunches: First you say Republicans have slashed school lunches; then when I point out they haven't, you claim that Republicans have corrupted the program. Care to provide any evidence for this? I doubt you can because you just seem to want to blame Republicans for everything.
July 18, 2008 11:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
BevD: "Of course that would fly in the face of the republicans' solidly held beliefs that there should be no such thing as a "free lunch" even for children and poverty is a character flaw, not a result of circumstances."
This is so hilarious, I have to believe you are joking. In case you aren't, I will explain it to you. Republicans aren't against free lunches. Rather, it is an economic fact that there IS no such thing as a free lunch. In other words, everything, ultimately, has to be paid for by SOMEBODY. It is not surprising that this concept is difficult for a liberal to understand.
July 17, 2008 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
be sure you include some of its failures as well, e.g., eugenics and collectivism.
I know nothing about eugenics, but I know something about collectivism.
The first collectivist form to permeate our country was the invention of the modern limited liability corporation in 1862.
In 1860, when the nation went to war against itself, it had the broadest distribution of wealth in history, even with three million trapped in slavery. Ironically, after the war to end slavery concludded successfully in freeing the Slaves, the nation managed to descend into a great era of concentrated wealth, known commonly as the Guilded Age, the Age or the Robber Barons, Le Belle Epoque.
The source of squalor was the corporation. This country is based upon one principle, free contract. In such a society, bargaining power is everything. One way to address the dystopia of collective ownership, is collective bargaining, and so, ....
But that initial wave of collectivism, that's a gift of the Republicans.
July 17, 2008 12:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's funny when Conservatives talk about the "failure of collectivism".
What the fuck do you think constitutes a functioning neighborhood? A bunch of pricks that keep building taller and taller fences around one another, or a community of people who know, speak to, and interact with one another?
This is ugly. I just spent the whole day reading Natural Capitalism, especially re: the benefits of organic design and community-oriented neighborhoods, and I come home to this claptrap. Thanks.
July 17, 2008 7:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
No, she is not required to address the alelged failings of liberalism in the same breath as the failings of conservatism. The subject under discussion is conservatism.
I agree wholeheartedly with BevD on at least one point -- these two hate feminism. They grudgingly accept that it is irreversible, but then busily plot government assistance programs that reward those who reject its implications and that would ultimately undermine feminism as a whole -- shoring up the wages of MALE heads of households (they don't put it this way but the intent is clear); and explicitly trying to prop up two parent families as a reward for marriage. I am actually in support of family friendly policies but I reject the narrow notion of what constitutes an "acceptable" family structure.
Sure, you can't give tax breaks directly to children, but you can condition tax breaks on the parents' need for such breaks to care for their children, and not as a reward for maintaining the kind of family that makes conservative hearts melt.
July 17, 2008 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
You write:
So if I understand you correctly, what you are really saying is that you support the same goals as Douthat and Salam, just with a different definition of family.
July 17, 2008 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the question is more *how* should governments "solve problems." I'm struck by how *even what the Democrats* have been putting forth under the rubric "universal healthcare" is effectively a government mandate *to purchase* health insurance in a lightly regulated market, into which they'll throw a "public plan" in *the hopes* that that will lead the lightly regulated market to lower the cost of their plans, through "managed" competition.
This strikes me as a spectacularly pro-FIRE industry (finance, insurance, real estate) plan, out of the universe of possible plans. I would even say that this "mandate" could represent a windfall for the insurance industry, on the backs of the unemployed, underemployed, and women working clerical jobs in small businesses across this great nation of ours.
I think the era of big government is over, kids. I know it would be nice if the nanny state would pay Douthat to have sex and procreate and do nothing but blog for the rest of his life while forcing his wife to put up with him. Wow. Talk about a wet dream. I'm sympathetic-- really, I am-- but I kind of don't see it.
I think there's a somewhat better chance that the financial sector will get re-regulated back to the Glass-Steagal level (and even that is going to mean re-seizing emergency powers they just handed the Fed) because the babyboomers won't like what's happened to their 401K plans while they were preoccupied slogging it out in their 9 to 5s.
I think there's a chance for a venture capital/ government partnership in developing alternative energy, which may employ a few science and engineering types and perhaps they'll include some "American jobs" type industrial component should anything actually get produced. It's certain to involve too many money managers and will probably be largely about creating small cap companies to hype on Wall Street to keep the leisure class and professional trading casino in capital gains. I'm not convinced any real technology will result.
That's if we get Obama.
Beyond that we have the war, we have the deficit, we have lots of promises on "universal healthcare" that will likely founder on the unwieldy costs that can't be assessed to the unemployed, underemployed, and clerical staff without huge personal loans from (a failing) Citibank at usurious interest rates. And, just like in California, the labor movement that wanted it and (actual) progressives will have to kill it. And that's about the best you can look for in your lifetime.
If we get McCain, it's more and bigger tax cuts for the billionaire libertarian cranks and seizing the Iraqi oil supply, which will balloon the deficit probably only a couple trillion more.
So, don't vote Republican. Unless you think he'll really flip you that tax credit to buy your health insurance with in some state level market like the one they had to kill in California.
I don't know, maybe you need it.
July 16, 2008 10:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think, in hindsight, the Republican ideology was just a ruse.
What supposedly passes for governance was jaw dropping wanton recklessness. They never attempted to govern the least bit responsibly.
Instead they hoped to rely on some kind of new age corruption/political machine that would allow them to spot rogue ideology as the common wisdom through a compliant media, while stealing elections through voter suppression, candidate supression (justice-gate), and fooling the people (wingnut religiosity).
The Bush regime is a complete train wreck, not because of ideology, but simply because it wanted to concentrate wealth and power, mainly through tax cuts and targeted spending.
They allowed 9/11 to happen, then invaded at least one unthreatening nation, all while trying to export management of our ports to Middle East countries then claiming to be tough on terror. They got away with a lot of this because the corporate media was owned and opperated by the same folks taking the tax cuts.
Really, there is no repairing these guys.
Here's the real strategy: They'll let time pass again. People will forget, they'll concoct some cockimany ideology, that's half of what they have now and half of what the Democrats implement after coming to power (Neo-Eisenhowerism), then they'll claim they can do it better than the Dems, who will have hopefully slacked off some , and get reelected again. Hopefully it won't take 20 years, as with Roosevelt. And hopefully the Dems won't have someone as charismatic and as smart and as compassionate as Roosevelt, and if they do, they've always got the Lee Harvey option that they can dust off the shelf.
July 17, 2008 12:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
you think repuglitards would spend billions on education when they could just steal the money for themselves ???
where do you live ???
fantasyland ???
July 17, 2008 7:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
There may have been a time when Republican ideology mattered, but that was when Republicans still cared about the integrity of their ideas. Now Republicans use ideas as smoke bombs, to impede and destroy and subvert discourse. They have no rational attachment to the ideas they espouse, they just toss them out to give cover to their true agenda, which is the unbridled pursuit of power and money.
As one small example, let's compare the supposedly defining Republican ideal of small gov't. with Republican policies under Bush. There is simply no correspondence between the idea and the policy. The Baer Stearns/Fanny-Freddie bailouts are not just poorly crafted policies but they run completely counter to the rationale Republicans offer in sinking other policy initiatives. And the bailouts represent a tiny fraction of gov't. profligacy under Bush.
Debating Republican ideology is like plotting a new course for the Titanic as it founders in the North Sea. Democracy doesn't work with only one party interested in a sincere debate about issues, and Republicans have abandoned all interest in sincere debate, in their ideals, in democracy itself. Before any new ideas can bring new life to the Republican enterprise, Republicans need to get a lesson in civics. They need to find the integrity of their principles, and as elitist and effete as it may seem to them, bring their ideas to the table and hammer out policies through democratic discourse. America will continue to suffer while we wait for Republicans to take responsibility for their role in making democracy work.
TB
July 17, 2008 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink