Weekly Address: Congress Must Act Now to Stop the Sequester. By Barack Obama. Video. WhiteHouse.gov, February 23, 2013. Video at YouTube.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Marco Rubio’s State of the Union Response.
Full Text and Video of Marco Rubio’s State of the Union Response. The Daily Beast, February 13, 2013. Video on YouTube.
Deluded Republican Reformers. By Michael Tomasky.
Deluded Republican Reformers. By Michael Tomasky. The Daily Beast, February 23, 2013.
Karl Rove Won’t Stand Up to the Tea Party. Who Will? By David Frum. The Daily Beast, February 8, 2013.
Can the Republicans Be Saved From Obsolescence? By Robert Draper. New York Times Magazine, February 17, 2013. Also find it here.
Karl Rove Won’t Stand Up to the Tea Party. Who Will? By David Frum. The Daily Beast, February 8, 2013.
Can the Republicans Be Saved From Obsolescence? By Robert Draper. New York Times Magazine, February 17, 2013. Also find it here.
Ph.D. Problems: Wannabe Professors Need Not Apply. By Walter Russell Mead.
PhD Problems: Wannabe Professors Need Not Apply. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, February 23, 2013.
What’s the Use of a PhD? By Megan McArdle. The Daily Beast, February 21, 2013.
The Humanities, Unraveled. By Michael Bérubé. The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18, 2013. Also find it here.
Mead:
PhD students are in serious trouble, and not only because the job market for professors is shrinking more every day. Over at the Daily Beast Megan McArdle offers some penetrating insights about the attempt of PhD programs to prepare their students for jobs outside academia (called “alt-ac” jobs, alternative to academic):
People with PhDs will have a very hard time getting jobs outside academia, just as they will have a very hard time getting jobs inside academia. For many PhD students, the long years they spent in the program added up, from a career point of view, to a terrible waste of time. MacArdle writes: “I happen to think it’s the most cruel, abusive labor market in America, doing terrible things to bright and idealistic kids who want to be scholars.”
It’s hard not to see her point. PhD programs keep students poor for as much as ten years, taking their time and their money and leaving them with very few prospects on the other end. There are encouraging signs that reform is coming to higher ed. Let’s just hope, for the sake of suffering PhD students, it comes as fast as possible.
What’s the Use of a PhD? By Megan McArdle. The Daily Beast, February 21, 2013.
The Humanities, Unraveled. By Michael Bérubé. The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18, 2013. Also find it here.
Mead:
PhD students are in serious trouble, and not only because the job market for professors is shrinking more every day. Over at the Daily Beast Megan McArdle offers some penetrating insights about the attempt of PhD programs to prepare their students for jobs outside academia (called “alt-ac” jobs, alternative to academic):
Unfortunately, in many cases a PhD sends a negative rather than a positive signal. Some employers are suspicious of people they figure will be a smartypants pain in the ass with no real skills (I’m not endorsing this view, just reporting it). But a bigger problem is that employers know why people get a PhD in Comp Lit or Religious Studies: so they can be a professor. If you go on the job market with that degree, they know that it’s almost certainly because you failed to get a job as a professor.
What makes things worse is that PhD programs train you in a very narrow range of skills really only suited for academia. PhD students are trained to write, but only as professors write, which doesn’t usually translate well into journalism. They’re trained to teach, but usually in the specialized context of large research universities, so the degree wouldn’t really prepare you to teach at the high school level, nor would it give you much of an edge in the brave new world of MOOCs.Now, most potential employers don’t know about the state of the academic job market: that there were only two jobs even offered in anything close to your specialty last year and one of them went to the son of a famous professor and the other went to the top candidate from Harvard. Many will just think of you as someone who couldn’t cut it in academia.
People with PhDs will have a very hard time getting jobs outside academia, just as they will have a very hard time getting jobs inside academia. For many PhD students, the long years they spent in the program added up, from a career point of view, to a terrible waste of time. MacArdle writes: “I happen to think it’s the most cruel, abusive labor market in America, doing terrible things to bright and idealistic kids who want to be scholars.”
It’s hard not to see her point. PhD programs keep students poor for as much as ten years, taking their time and their money and leaving them with very few prospects on the other end. There are encouraging signs that reform is coming to higher ed. Let’s just hope, for the sake of suffering PhD students, it comes as fast as possible.
Misguided Nostalgia for Our Paleo Past. By Marlene Zuk.
Misguided Nostalgia for Our Paleo Past. By Marlene Zuk. The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18, 2013. Also find it here.
Professors on the Production Line, Students on Their Own. By Mark Bauerlein.
Professors on the Production Line, Students on Their Own. By Mark Bauerlein. American Enterprise Institute Working Paper, January 2009. Also find it here.
Executive Summary:
In higher education in the United States, teaching and research in the fields of language and literature are in a desperate condition. Laboring on the age-old axiom “publish-or-perish,” thousands of professors, lecturers, and graduate students are busy producing dissertations, books, essays, and reviews. Over the past five decades, their collective productivity has risen from 13,000 to 72,000 publications per year. But the audience for language and literature scholarship has diminished, with unit sales for books now hovering around 300.
At the same time, the relations between teachers and students have declined. While 43 percent of two-year public college students and 29 percent of four-year public college students require remedial coursework, costing $2 billion annually, one national survey reports that 37 percent of first-year arts/humanities students “never” discuss course readings with teachers outside of class, and 41 percent only do so “sometimes.”
These trends are not unrelated. Academic engagement on the part of students is a reflection of how much teachers demand it. But with the research mandate hovering over them, teachers have no incentive to push it. If the system favors publication, not mentoring, hours in the office in conversation with sophomores are counter-productive or even damaging to career and livelihood.
Universities need to reconsider the relative value placed on research and teaching in the evaluation of professors. This paper offers several recommendations, including limiting the amount of material that tenure committees will review and creating a “teacher track” in which doctoral students are trained and rewarded for generalist knowledge and multiple course facility rather than a highly-specialized expertise.
Diminishing Returns in Humanities Research. By Mark Bauerlein. The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20, 2009.
Research As Self-Branding. By Mark Bauerlein. Minding the Campus, July 24, 2007.
Are the Kids All Right? By Christy Hall Robinson. The American, January 27, 2009. Review of The Dumbest Generation, by Mark Bauerlein.
Unread Monographs, Uninspired Undergrads. By Elizabeth Redden. Inside Higher Ed, March 18, 2009.
Mark Bauerlein asks the “so what”question. By Alex Reid. alex-reid.net, March 2009.
Grad School scrutinized. By David Burt. Yale Daily News, September 21, 2011.
The Humanities, Unraveled. By Michael Bérubé. The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18, 2013. Also find it here.
Graduate Education Is Losing Its Moral Base. By Cary Nelson and Michael Bérubé. The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 23, 1994.
The Tribes That Hire the PhDs. By Daniel B. Klein. Minding the Campus, February 10, 2013.
Superpowers: The American Academic Elite. By Robert Oprisko. The Georgetown Public Policy Review, December 3, 2012.
Academic Superpowers. By Scott Jaschik. Inside Higher Ed, December 5, 2012.
Prestige School Dominate Academic Placement. By James Joyner. Outside the Beltway, December 5, 2012.
Executive Summary:
In higher education in the United States, teaching and research in the fields of language and literature are in a desperate condition. Laboring on the age-old axiom “publish-or-perish,” thousands of professors, lecturers, and graduate students are busy producing dissertations, books, essays, and reviews. Over the past five decades, their collective productivity has risen from 13,000 to 72,000 publications per year. But the audience for language and literature scholarship has diminished, with unit sales for books now hovering around 300.
At the same time, the relations between teachers and students have declined. While 43 percent of two-year public college students and 29 percent of four-year public college students require remedial coursework, costing $2 billion annually, one national survey reports that 37 percent of first-year arts/humanities students “never” discuss course readings with teachers outside of class, and 41 percent only do so “sometimes.”
These trends are not unrelated. Academic engagement on the part of students is a reflection of how much teachers demand it. But with the research mandate hovering over them, teachers have no incentive to push it. If the system favors publication, not mentoring, hours in the office in conversation with sophomores are counter-productive or even damaging to career and livelihood.
Universities need to reconsider the relative value placed on research and teaching in the evaluation of professors. This paper offers several recommendations, including limiting the amount of material that tenure committees will review and creating a “teacher track” in which doctoral students are trained and rewarded for generalist knowledge and multiple course facility rather than a highly-specialized expertise.
Diminishing Returns in Humanities Research. By Mark Bauerlein. The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20, 2009.
Research As Self-Branding. By Mark Bauerlein. Minding the Campus, July 24, 2007.
Are the Kids All Right? By Christy Hall Robinson. The American, January 27, 2009. Review of The Dumbest Generation, by Mark Bauerlein.
Unread Monographs, Uninspired Undergrads. By Elizabeth Redden. Inside Higher Ed, March 18, 2009.
Mark Bauerlein asks the “so what”question. By Alex Reid. alex-reid.net, March 2009.
Grad School scrutinized. By David Burt. Yale Daily News, September 21, 2011.
The Humanities, Unraveled. By Michael Bérubé. The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18, 2013. Also find it here.
Graduate Education Is Losing Its Moral Base. By Cary Nelson and Michael Bérubé. The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 23, 1994.
The Tribes That Hire the PhDs. By Daniel B. Klein. Minding the Campus, February 10, 2013.
Superpowers: The American Academic Elite. By Robert Oprisko. The Georgetown Public Policy Review, December 3, 2012.
Academic Superpowers. By Scott Jaschik. Inside Higher Ed, December 5, 2012.
Prestige School Dominate Academic Placement. By James Joyner. Outside the Beltway, December 5, 2012.
How Wars Start. By Robert Kaplan.
How Wars Start. By Robert Kaplan. Real Clear World, February 21, 2013.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Egypt’s Liberals Have a Weak Hand – and They Know It. By Walter Russell Mead.
Egypt’s Liberals Have a Weak Hand – and They Know It. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, February 22, 2013.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Mead:
When an opposition thinks it can win an election, it normally demands early ones. That opponents of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood are angry about the prospect of an election just a few weeks from now tells us exactly what they think about their popularity in Egypt.
Many things are happening in Egypt, not least of which is a general economic meltdown that threatens to wreck all plans for parliamentary governance. But one of the key factors shaping the country right now is a disconnect between Egypt’s elite and its ordinary citizens. The country’s relatively sophisticated, cosmopolitan, urban, upper middle class wants modern, democratic government, but the majority of Egyptians are not part of this class and have different priorities. Historically this was the situation in France in 1848, and we see it today in places like Thailand. The name “Napoleon” alone won French rural support for Louis-Napoleon; in Egypt the label “Islam” is good enough for many voters.
It’s difficult if not impossible to resolve this kind of division without some kind of authoritarian rule. Either the urban middle class imposes its agenda on the countryside or vice versa. It’s not clear yet which will happen in Egypt, but the opposition’s panicky reaction to new elections does not speak well of their prospects.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Mead:
When an opposition thinks it can win an election, it normally demands early ones. That opponents of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood are angry about the prospect of an election just a few weeks from now tells us exactly what they think about their popularity in Egypt.
Many things are happening in Egypt, not least of which is a general economic meltdown that threatens to wreck all plans for parliamentary governance. But one of the key factors shaping the country right now is a disconnect between Egypt’s elite and its ordinary citizens. The country’s relatively sophisticated, cosmopolitan, urban, upper middle class wants modern, democratic government, but the majority of Egyptians are not part of this class and have different priorities. Historically this was the situation in France in 1848, and we see it today in places like Thailand. The name “Napoleon” alone won French rural support for Louis-Napoleon; in Egypt the label “Islam” is good enough for many voters.
It’s difficult if not impossible to resolve this kind of division without some kind of authoritarian rule. Either the urban middle class imposes its agenda on the countryside or vice versa. It’s not clear yet which will happen in Egypt, but the opposition’s panicky reaction to new elections does not speak well of their prospects.
Obama’s Bad Brotherhood Bet. By Jonathan S. Tobin.
Obama’s Bad Brotherhood Bet. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, February 21, 2013.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Tobin:
For the last few months, conservative critics of the Obama administration’s foreign policy have obsessed about its failure in Libya. The fiasco in Benghazi that took the lives of four Americans including our ambassador deserved more media scrutiny and Republicans are right to continue to demand answers about it. But the unfolding disaster next door in Egypt is a far greater indication of the way the president has blundered abroad than even that tragic episode. Obama’s decision to force the Egyptian military to accept a Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo and Washington’s subsequent embrace of Mohamed Morsi’s regime has materially aided the descent of the most populous Arab country into the grip of an Islamist party. The Brotherhood regime is determined to extinguish any hope of liberalization in Egypt and its drive to seize total power there is a direct threat to regional stability and Middle East peace.
Rather than using the leverage that the more than $1 billion in U.S. aid to Egypt gives it, the administration has loyally stuck to Morsi despite his seizing of powers that are comparable to those of deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak and his efforts to violently repress the widespread dissatisfaction with his government. There is no sign that anyone in the State Department or the White House realizes that the U.S. bet on the Brotherhood is a disaster, but yesterday’s column by one of the leading peddlers of conventional wisdom on foreign policy ought to concern Morsi. If the Islamists have lost Thomas Friedman, then there is at least a little hope that their campaign to swindle American liberals into backing them is going to eventually crash.
In yesterday’s New York Times, Friedman did something we haven’t seen much of in that newspaper: tell the truth about the Brotherhood’s intentions and its ideological drive to transform Egypt. While the paper’s news pages and fellow columnists like Nicholas Kristof have bought into the baloney the Brotherhood has served up to foreign journalists about their moderation and desire for democracy and progress, Friedman made it clear that their tyrannical impulse is no aberration. Even more important, he made it clear that the Obama administration’s apparent belief that they can reinvent the modus vivendi that formally existed between the U.S. and Mubarak with Morsi is a terrible mistake.
As Friedman notes, the Brotherhood has prioritized the cleansing of non-Islamist aspects of Egyptian culture over its supposed hope to reboot the economy. The banning of the Belly Dancing Channel on Egyptian TV made for a comic lede for Friedman’s column, but it is no joke, as it illustrates Morsi’s desire to turn a multi-faceted society into another Iran.
Yet as right as Friedman is about the current situation, his advice about the Brotherhood having to change or fail misses the point about a movement that has no intention of ever allowing power to slip from its hands. Friedman is right that the Brotherhood’s version of political Islam will sink Egypt into poverty. The problem is that they are no more willing or capable of becoming more democratic or open-minded about non-Islamist culture than they are of ever accepting peace with Israel.
Friedman praises what he claims is an Obama administration decision to convey their concerns about the direction of Egypt privately rather than publicly. He also supports an apparent decision to invite Morsi to Washington for a visit where he can try to charm the U.S. into keeping the flow of American taxpayer dollars into his government’s coffers.
But the more time the U.S. takes in conveying the message that it will not back an Egyptian government intent on an Islamist kulturkampf, the less chance there will be that it can influence events in Cairo. We already know what a bad bet Obama has made in backing Morsi and the Brotherhood. It may already be too late to reverse the damage that was done by the president’s feckless embrace of the Islamists. If, as Friedman acknowledges, the direction the Brotherhood is taking Egypt, and by extension the region, is one that can lead to chaos, tyranny and violence, an American decision to cut Morsi off can’t come too soon.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Tobin:
For the last few months, conservative critics of the Obama administration’s foreign policy have obsessed about its failure in Libya. The fiasco in Benghazi that took the lives of four Americans including our ambassador deserved more media scrutiny and Republicans are right to continue to demand answers about it. But the unfolding disaster next door in Egypt is a far greater indication of the way the president has blundered abroad than even that tragic episode. Obama’s decision to force the Egyptian military to accept a Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo and Washington’s subsequent embrace of Mohamed Morsi’s regime has materially aided the descent of the most populous Arab country into the grip of an Islamist party. The Brotherhood regime is determined to extinguish any hope of liberalization in Egypt and its drive to seize total power there is a direct threat to regional stability and Middle East peace.
Rather than using the leverage that the more than $1 billion in U.S. aid to Egypt gives it, the administration has loyally stuck to Morsi despite his seizing of powers that are comparable to those of deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak and his efforts to violently repress the widespread dissatisfaction with his government. There is no sign that anyone in the State Department or the White House realizes that the U.S. bet on the Brotherhood is a disaster, but yesterday’s column by one of the leading peddlers of conventional wisdom on foreign policy ought to concern Morsi. If the Islamists have lost Thomas Friedman, then there is at least a little hope that their campaign to swindle American liberals into backing them is going to eventually crash.
In yesterday’s New York Times, Friedman did something we haven’t seen much of in that newspaper: tell the truth about the Brotherhood’s intentions and its ideological drive to transform Egypt. While the paper’s news pages and fellow columnists like Nicholas Kristof have bought into the baloney the Brotherhood has served up to foreign journalists about their moderation and desire for democracy and progress, Friedman made it clear that their tyrannical impulse is no aberration. Even more important, he made it clear that the Obama administration’s apparent belief that they can reinvent the modus vivendi that formally existed between the U.S. and Mubarak with Morsi is a terrible mistake.
As Friedman notes, the Brotherhood has prioritized the cleansing of non-Islamist aspects of Egyptian culture over its supposed hope to reboot the economy. The banning of the Belly Dancing Channel on Egyptian TV made for a comic lede for Friedman’s column, but it is no joke, as it illustrates Morsi’s desire to turn a multi-faceted society into another Iran.
Yet as right as Friedman is about the current situation, his advice about the Brotherhood having to change or fail misses the point about a movement that has no intention of ever allowing power to slip from its hands. Friedman is right that the Brotherhood’s version of political Islam will sink Egypt into poverty. The problem is that they are no more willing or capable of becoming more democratic or open-minded about non-Islamist culture than they are of ever accepting peace with Israel.
Friedman praises what he claims is an Obama administration decision to convey their concerns about the direction of Egypt privately rather than publicly. He also supports an apparent decision to invite Morsi to Washington for a visit where he can try to charm the U.S. into keeping the flow of American taxpayer dollars into his government’s coffers.
But the more time the U.S. takes in conveying the message that it will not back an Egyptian government intent on an Islamist kulturkampf, the less chance there will be that it can influence events in Cairo. We already know what a bad bet Obama has made in backing Morsi and the Brotherhood. It may already be too late to reverse the damage that was done by the president’s feckless embrace of the Islamists. If, as Friedman acknowledges, the direction the Brotherhood is taking Egypt, and by extension the region, is one that can lead to chaos, tyranny and violence, an American decision to cut Morsi off can’t come too soon.
The Regime’s Sensitivity Training. By Rush Limbaugh.
The Regime’s Sensitivity Training. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, February 22, 2013.
Obama: Republicans’ Refusal to Raise Taxes on the Wealthy Is What “Binds Their Party Together.”
Obama: Republicans’ Refusal to Raise Taxes on the Wealthy Is What “Binds Their Party Together.” By Susan Jones. CNSNews.com, February 22, 2013. Video here.
Obama To Al Sharpton: View That “Nothing Is Important Enough” To Raise Taxes Is What “Binds” GOP. By Meenal Vamburkar. Mediaite, February 22, 2013. With complete audio.
Obama on Al Sharpton: It’s hard for Republicans to see the obvious answer. By Michal Conger. Washington Examiner, February 21, 2013.
Obama: Cuts that Hurt the Economy are GOP’s Raison D’etre. By John Sexton. Breitbart, February 21, 2013. Audio at YouTube.
Obama: Helping Rich “Thing That Binds” GOP Together. Washington Free Beacon, February 21, 2013.
Obama: Helping Rich “The Thing That Binds”Republicans Together. Real Clear Politics, February 21, 2013.
And Another Thing About Obama’s Appearance Al Sharpton’s radio show! By Debra Heine. Breitbart, February 22, 2013.
Mark Levin blasts Obama for smearing American people, and GOP for throwing in with Obama. The Right Scoop, February 21, 2013.
Obama on Republicans:
My sense is that their basic view is nothing is important enough to raise taxes on wealthy individuals or corporations. And they would prefer to see these kinds of cuts that could slow down our recovery over closing tax loopholes, and that’s the thing that binds their party together at this point.
Heine:
This is our president talking about us – all Republicans. We only care about the rich. We are motivated only by a selfish, base desire to protect ourselves from paying our “fair share,” “millionaires and billionaires” that we all are. Our selfishness is what binds us together.
It couldn’t be that we think more taxes would kill jobs and slow down the economy – it couldn’t be that we believe we have a serious debt problem and spending has to be reduced to prevent a financial meltdown.
My God.
We’ve gotten so used to being demonized in this way, we’re numb to it – it barely causes raised eyebrows anymore. But I still remember how shocking it was in 2009 to see the President of the United States behaving like a rabble-rousing community organizer – writ large – gleefully pitting Americans against each other.
It took this epic rant from Mark Levin to make me notice that, yeah, Obama was attacking us, again, and wow – how galling of him to use this class warfare argument in light of the fact that he and Michelle are the ones constantly running off to West Palm Beach, Hawaii, Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard, etc.
Where’s the Republican leadership? Why do they let him get away with that? Marco Rubio touched on Obama's tendency to impugn the motives of his adversaries in his response to the SOTU. That was for me, the best part of his speech because it was a stake in the heart of Obama’s favorite Alinsky tactic. No wonder all libs wanted to talk about afterward was Rubio’s drink of water.
Republicans need to be calling Obama out on that every time he does it, and honestly explaining to the American people the dire straits we’re in, instead of cowering in fear and worrying about who gets the blame.
Obama To Al Sharpton: View That “Nothing Is Important Enough” To Raise Taxes Is What “Binds” GOP. By Meenal Vamburkar. Mediaite, February 22, 2013. With complete audio.
Obama on Al Sharpton: It’s hard for Republicans to see the obvious answer. By Michal Conger. Washington Examiner, February 21, 2013.
Obama: Cuts that Hurt the Economy are GOP’s Raison D’etre. By John Sexton. Breitbart, February 21, 2013. Audio at YouTube.
Obama: Helping Rich “Thing That Binds” GOP Together. Washington Free Beacon, February 21, 2013.
Obama: Helping Rich “The Thing That Binds”Republicans Together. Real Clear Politics, February 21, 2013.
And Another Thing About Obama’s Appearance Al Sharpton’s radio show! By Debra Heine. Breitbart, February 22, 2013.
Mark Levin blasts Obama for smearing American people, and GOP for throwing in with Obama. The Right Scoop, February 21, 2013.
Obama on Republicans:
My sense is that their basic view is nothing is important enough to raise taxes on wealthy individuals or corporations. And they would prefer to see these kinds of cuts that could slow down our recovery over closing tax loopholes, and that’s the thing that binds their party together at this point.
Heine:
This is our president talking about us – all Republicans. We only care about the rich. We are motivated only by a selfish, base desire to protect ourselves from paying our “fair share,” “millionaires and billionaires” that we all are. Our selfishness is what binds us together.
It couldn’t be that we think more taxes would kill jobs and slow down the economy – it couldn’t be that we believe we have a serious debt problem and spending has to be reduced to prevent a financial meltdown.
My God.
We’ve gotten so used to being demonized in this way, we’re numb to it – it barely causes raised eyebrows anymore. But I still remember how shocking it was in 2009 to see the President of the United States behaving like a rabble-rousing community organizer – writ large – gleefully pitting Americans against each other.
It took this epic rant from Mark Levin to make me notice that, yeah, Obama was attacking us, again, and wow – how galling of him to use this class warfare argument in light of the fact that he and Michelle are the ones constantly running off to West Palm Beach, Hawaii, Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard, etc.
Where’s the Republican leadership? Why do they let him get away with that? Marco Rubio touched on Obama's tendency to impugn the motives of his adversaries in his response to the SOTU. That was for me, the best part of his speech because it was a stake in the heart of Obama’s favorite Alinsky tactic. No wonder all libs wanted to talk about afterward was Rubio’s drink of water.
Republicans need to be calling Obama out on that every time he does it, and honestly explaining to the American people the dire straits we’re in, instead of cowering in fear and worrying about who gets the blame.
Egypt and Tunisia: New Leaders, Same Brutality. By Erin Cunningham.
New leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, same security forces. By Erin Cunningham, Global Post, February 21, 2013.
China’s “Leftover Women,” Unmarried at 27. By Mary Kay Magistad.
China’s “leftover women,” unmarried at 27. By Mary Kay Magistad. BBC News Magazine, February 20, 2013. Also at PRI.org.
Sheng nu (leftover women). Wikipedia.
Elite Single Chinese Face “Leftover Lady” Discount. By Jia You. WeNews, September 11, 2011.
For China’s Educated Single Ladies, Finding Love Is Often a Struggle. By Sushma Subramanian and Deborah Jian Lee. The Atlantic, October 19, 2011. Also at Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
China’s “Leftover” Women. By Leta Hong Fincher. New York Times, October 11, 2012.
China’s “leftover women” choosing to stay single. By Leta Hong Fincher. CNN, August 21, 2013.
Letter to Parents Worried About Their Daughter Becoming a “Leftover Woman.” By Joy Chen. The Huffington Post, March 4, 2013. Also at Global Rencai.
China’s “Leftover Women” Desperate to Find Mr. Right. By Susan Donaldson James. ABC News, July 11, 2013.
China’s shengnu, or “leftover women,” face intense pressure to marry. By Julie Makinen and Don Lee. Los Angeles Times, July 13, 2013.
A good man is hard to find: China's “leftover women” look for love abroad. By Isobel Yeung. South China Morning Post Magazine, April 27, 2014.
Over 27? Unmarried? Female? You’d be on the scrapheap in China. By Marta Cooper. The Telegraph, April 30, 2014.
If Asian Women Hit on White Dudes the Way White Dudes Hit on Asian Women. By Alanna Vagianos. The Huffington Post, November 11, 2014.
“Yellow fever” fetish: Why do so many white men want to date a Chinese woman? By Yuan Ren. The Telegraph, July 1, 2014.
Yellow Fever: Dating as an Asian Woman. By Lauren sMash. Persephone Magazine, January 26, 2012. Also at Everyday Feminism.
The Startling Plight of China’s Leftover Ladies. By Christina Larson. Foreign Policy, May/June 2012.
Author Joy Chen on marriage, work and life. Video. chinadailyus, December 11, 2012. YouTube. Also at YouKu.
Sheng nu (leftover women). Wikipedia.
Elite Single Chinese Face “Leftover Lady” Discount. By Jia You. WeNews, September 11, 2011.
For China’s Educated Single Ladies, Finding Love Is Often a Struggle. By Sushma Subramanian and Deborah Jian Lee. The Atlantic, October 19, 2011. Also at Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
China’s “Leftover” Women. By Leta Hong Fincher. New York Times, October 11, 2012.
China’s “leftover women” choosing to stay single. By Leta Hong Fincher. CNN, August 21, 2013.
Letter to Parents Worried About Their Daughter Becoming a “Leftover Woman.” By Joy Chen. The Huffington Post, March 4, 2013. Also at Global Rencai.
China’s “Leftover Women” Desperate to Find Mr. Right. By Susan Donaldson James. ABC News, July 11, 2013.
China’s shengnu, or “leftover women,” face intense pressure to marry. By Julie Makinen and Don Lee. Los Angeles Times, July 13, 2013.
A good man is hard to find: China's “leftover women” look for love abroad. By Isobel Yeung. South China Morning Post Magazine, April 27, 2014.
Over 27? Unmarried? Female? You’d be on the scrapheap in China. By Marta Cooper. The Telegraph, April 30, 2014.
If Asian Women Hit on White Dudes the Way White Dudes Hit on Asian Women. By Alanna Vagianos. The Huffington Post, November 11, 2014.
“Yellow fever” fetish: Why do so many white men want to date a Chinese woman? By Yuan Ren. The Telegraph, July 1, 2014.
Yellow Fever: Dating as an Asian Woman. By Lauren sMash. Persephone Magazine, January 26, 2012. Also at Everyday Feminism.
The Startling Plight of China’s Leftover Ladies. By Christina Larson. Foreign Policy, May/June 2012.
Who are
you calling “leftover?” Huang Yuanyuan (front) and her colleague Wang Tingting.
Author Joy Chen on marriage, work and life. Video. chinadailyus, December 11, 2012. YouTube. Also at YouKu.
Plight of young “leftover women” in China. By Chip Reid. Video and transcript. CBS This Morning. CBS News, June 28, 2012. YouTube.
National Rifle Association Ad: Stand and Fight, “We Are America” Video.
National Rifle Association Ad: Stand and Fight, “We are America” Video. The Daily Caller, February 20, 2013.
Who’s winning the message war over gun control? Video. America Live with Megyn Kelly. Fox News, February 22, 2013.
NRA Stand and Fight: We Are America. NRA Videos, February 20, 2013. YouTube.
A sharp, visually powerful statement of the Jacksonian concept of liberty.
NRA:
In a recent closed-door speech to donors, politicians and media, Bill Clinton spoke about American gun owners:
“A lot of these people … all they’ve got is their hunting and their fishing.”
“Or they’ve been listening to this stuff for so long that they believe it all.”
And we all remember Barack Obama’s 2008 comments to a room of San Francisco elites:
“It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion.”
The arrogance of their superiority requires this reminder:
They don’t rule us.
They don’t give us rights. We grant them power.
They don’t make us safe. We pay to protect them.
They don’t make us free. We’re free already.
And as long as we have the Second Amendment, we always will be.
We are America and our politicians are only as powerful as we, the people allow them to be.
NRA STAND AND FIGHT
Who’s winning the message war over gun control? Video. America Live with Megyn Kelly. Fox News, February 22, 2013.
NRA Stand and Fight: We Are America. NRA Videos, February 20, 2013. YouTube.
A sharp, visually powerful statement of the Jacksonian concept of liberty.
NRA:
In a recent closed-door speech to donors, politicians and media, Bill Clinton spoke about American gun owners:
“A lot of these people … all they’ve got is their hunting and their fishing.”
“Or they’ve been listening to this stuff for so long that they believe it all.”
And we all remember Barack Obama’s 2008 comments to a room of San Francisco elites:
“It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion.”
The arrogance of their superiority requires this reminder:
They don’t rule us.
They don’t give us rights. We grant them power.
They don’t make us safe. We pay to protect them.
They don’t make us free. We’re free already.
And as long as we have the Second Amendment, we always will be.
We are America and our politicians are only as powerful as we, the people allow them to be.
NRA STAND AND FIGHT
Thursday, February 21, 2013
John Adams on Property Rights and Liberty, 1787.
John Adams on Property Rights and Liberty, 1787. “Defence of the Constitutions of
Government of the United States.” The
Works of John Adams. Edited by Charles Francis Adams. 10 vols. Boston:
Little, Brown & Co., 1850-1856. Vol. 6, pp. 8-9. Also find it here.
Suppose a nation, rich and poor, high and low, ten millions in number, all assembled together; not more than one or two millions will have lands, houses, or any personal property; if we take into the account the women and children, or even if we leave them out of the question, a great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables. Would Mr. Nedham be responsible that, if all were to be decided by a vote of the majority, the eight or nine millions who have no property, would not think of usurping over the rights of the one or two millions who have? Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.
Suppose a nation, rich and poor, high and low, ten millions in number, all assembled together; not more than one or two millions will have lands, houses, or any personal property; if we take into the account the women and children, or even if we leave them out of the question, a great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables. Would Mr. Nedham be responsible that, if all were to be decided by a vote of the majority, the eight or nine millions who have no property, would not think of usurping over the rights of the one or two millions who have? Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.
Female Teachers Having Sex with Their Students. A Disturbing Epidemic in American Schools.
Female teachers having sex with their students. Video. The O’Reilly Factor. Fox News, February 21, 2013.
The “Factor” examines a disturbing epidemic in American schools.
The “Factor” examines a disturbing epidemic in American schools.
College Hosts Sex, Masturbation Tutorial – Inside a Church. By Katie McHugh.
College Hosts Sex, Masturbation Tutorial –Inside a Church. By Katie McHugh. The College Fix, February 21, 2013.
The Female Orgasm, Fifty Shades of Grey,and Feminism’s Schizophrenia. By Elizabeth Husmann. The College Fix, February 8, 2013.
The Female Orgasm, Fifty Shades of Grey,and Feminism’s Schizophrenia. By Elizabeth Husmann. The College Fix, February 8, 2013.
British MP George Galloway Refuses to Debate with Israelis. By Jonny Paul.
British MP refuses to debate with Israelis. By Jonny Paul. Jerusalem Post, February 21, 2013.
George Galloway Storms Out of Debate with Israeli Student. Video. The Next Viral Videos, February 21, 2013. YouTube.
Michael Coren on anti-Semitic clown George Galloway. Video, February 21, 2013. YouTube.
George Galloway Storms Out of Debate with Israeli Student. Video. The Next Viral Videos, February 21, 2013. YouTube.
Michael Coren on anti-Semitic clown George Galloway. Video, February 21, 2013. YouTube.
John Bolton: Suspend U.S. Aid to Egypt Over Access to Benghazi Suspect.
Cut U.S. Aid to Egypt Over Access to Benghazi Suspect? Amb. John Bolton Weighs In. Video. America Live with Megyn Kelly. Fox News, February 21, 2013.
U.S. denied direct access to Benghazi suspect held in Egypt. By Catherine Herridge. FoxNews.com, February 21, 2013.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
U.S. denied direct access to Benghazi suspect held in Egypt. By Catherine Herridge. FoxNews.com, February 21, 2013.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Changing Poverty Into Opportunity. By Jim Wallis.
Changing Poverty Into Opportunity: A Moral Cause To Bring Us Together. By Jim Wallis. Sojourners, February 21, 2013.
Wallis:
Ideological debates over the role of government are the real battle in the nation’s capital — more than the debt crisis. Political calculations about the next election are more important to many of our political leaders than the common good of the country.
It’s just time to move on from the partisan politics that has polarized and paralyzed us for so long — by committing ourselves to moral issues that could and should bring us together. The first will be comprehensive immigration reform, which will change the lives of 12 million people in this country, lift many out of poverty, and help the economy at the same time. This is a clear example of how the faith community has changed, and now come together to become a political game changer in Washington, D.C., at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue on both sides of the aisle.
And it’s time to make another moral commitment in the midst of our growing economic recovery — to include poor families and change poverty into opportunity. Fighting poverty must not be a partisan issue. When we look at both the causes and the solutions, this battle should bring both liberals and conservatives together. Overcoming poverty, by creating opportunity, happens because of three very basic things that most of us can agree on: family, education, and work. All three are crucial and necessary in moving people out of poverty and into opportunity.
Let’s break it down.
Family: Helping to create and support strong and stable families is foundational to overcoming poverty. All the data — from both liberal and conservative think tanks — show that. The experiences of those of us who have lived and worked in poor neighborhoods show that. Good parenting from both mothers and fathers can do more than anything else to shape and guide the lives of children; and fractured and dislocated family environments lead to all kinds of destruction.
Education: Learning, training, acquiring skills, and developing good habits and disciplines is clearly the best pathway out of poverty — all of our data and experiences show that too. Success in school clearly leads to success in life, while failures in school lead to lives of one failure after another. Teachers are the key here. They are the people who are with our kids long enough every day to help change their lives — or not. Where schools are not doing their jobs, students can’t escape the prison of poverty — and we need education to work all the way from pre-school to college.
Work: If you work hard, full time, and live responsibly, you should not have to live in poverty in America — but many families still do because they don’t have jobs that pay them enough to succeed. We need good jobs that can support strong families; it is as simple as that. Living well requires jobs that pay living wages, and we have been losing that battle now for decades. America’s creed as the land of opportunity has all but disappeared, as we now have less social mobility than any other developed nation except for Great Britain! For the first time, children are not doing better, or even as well, as their parents did. Work has to pay.
When you think about it, both liberals and conservatives could and should support all three of those crucial ingredients to overcoming poverty with opportunity: family, education, and work. But instead they just continue to fight and blame each other for poverty.
Wallis:
Ideological debates over the role of government are the real battle in the nation’s capital — more than the debt crisis. Political calculations about the next election are more important to many of our political leaders than the common good of the country.
It’s just time to move on from the partisan politics that has polarized and paralyzed us for so long — by committing ourselves to moral issues that could and should bring us together. The first will be comprehensive immigration reform, which will change the lives of 12 million people in this country, lift many out of poverty, and help the economy at the same time. This is a clear example of how the faith community has changed, and now come together to become a political game changer in Washington, D.C., at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue on both sides of the aisle.
And it’s time to make another moral commitment in the midst of our growing economic recovery — to include poor families and change poverty into opportunity. Fighting poverty must not be a partisan issue. When we look at both the causes and the solutions, this battle should bring both liberals and conservatives together. Overcoming poverty, by creating opportunity, happens because of three very basic things that most of us can agree on: family, education, and work. All three are crucial and necessary in moving people out of poverty and into opportunity.
Let’s break it down.
Family: Helping to create and support strong and stable families is foundational to overcoming poverty. All the data — from both liberal and conservative think tanks — show that. The experiences of those of us who have lived and worked in poor neighborhoods show that. Good parenting from both mothers and fathers can do more than anything else to shape and guide the lives of children; and fractured and dislocated family environments lead to all kinds of destruction.
Education: Learning, training, acquiring skills, and developing good habits and disciplines is clearly the best pathway out of poverty — all of our data and experiences show that too. Success in school clearly leads to success in life, while failures in school lead to lives of one failure after another. Teachers are the key here. They are the people who are with our kids long enough every day to help change their lives — or not. Where schools are not doing their jobs, students can’t escape the prison of poverty — and we need education to work all the way from pre-school to college.
Work: If you work hard, full time, and live responsibly, you should not have to live in poverty in America — but many families still do because they don’t have jobs that pay them enough to succeed. We need good jobs that can support strong families; it is as simple as that. Living well requires jobs that pay living wages, and we have been losing that battle now for decades. America’s creed as the land of opportunity has all but disappeared, as we now have less social mobility than any other developed nation except for Great Britain! For the first time, children are not doing better, or even as well, as their parents did. Work has to pay.
When you think about it, both liberals and conservatives could and should support all three of those crucial ingredients to overcoming poverty with opportunity: family, education, and work. But instead they just continue to fight and blame each other for poverty.
As Country Club Republicans Link Up With the Democratic Ruling Class, Millions of Voters Are Orphaned. By Angelo Codevilla.
As Country Club Republicans Link Up With The Democratic Ruling Class, Millions Of Voters Are Orphaned. By Angelo Codevilla. Forbes, February 20, 2013.
America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution. The American Spectator, July/August 2010. Also find it here.
Codevilla, As Country Club Republicans . . .:
On January 1, 2013 one third of Republican congressmen, following their leaders, joined with nearly all Democrats to legislate higher taxes and more subsidies for Democratic constituencies. Two thirds voted no, following the people who had elected them. For generations, the Republican Party had presented itself as the political vehicle for Americans whose opposition to ever-bigger government financed by ever-higher taxes makes them a “country class.” Yet modern Republican leaders, with the exception of the Reagan Administration, have been partners in the expansion of government, indeed in the growth of a government-based “ruling class.” They have relished that role despite their voters. Thus these leaders gradually solidified their choice to no longer represent what had been their constituency, but to openly adopt the identity of junior partners in that ruling class. By repeatedly passing bills that contradict the identity of Republican voters and of the majority of Republican elected representatives, the Republican leadership has made political orphans of millions of Americans. In short, at the outset of 2013 a substantial portion of America finds itself un-represented, while Republican leaders increasingly represent only themselves.
By the law of supply and demand, millions of Americans, (arguably a majority) cannot remain without representation. Increasingly the top people in government, corporations, and the media collude and demand submission as did the royal courts of old. This marks these political orphans as a “country class.” In 1776 America’s country class responded to lack of representation by uniting under the concept: “all men are created equal.” In our time, its disparate sectors’ common sentiment is more like: “who the hell do they think they are?”
The ever-growing U.S. government has an edgy social, ethical, and political character. It is distasteful to a majority of persons who vote Republican and to independent voters, as well as to perhaps one fifth of those who vote Democrat. The Republican leadership’s kinship with the socio-political class that runs modern government is deep. Country class Americans have but to glance at the Media to hear themselves insulted from on high as greedy, racist, violent, ignorant extremists. Yet far has it been from the Republican leadership to defend them. Whenever possible, the Republican Establishment has chosen candidates for office – especially the Presidency – who have ignored, soft-pedaled or given mere lip service to their voters’ identities and concerns.
Thus public opinion polls confirm that some two thirds of Americans feel that government is “them” not “us,” that government has been taking the country in the wrong direction, and that such sentiments largely parallel partisan identification: While a majority of Democrats feel that officials who bear that label represent them well, only about a fourth of Republican voters and an even smaller proportion of independents trust Republican officials to be on their side. Again: While the ruling class is well represented by the Democratic Party, the country class is not represented politically – by the Republican Party or by any other. Well or badly, its demand for representation will be met.
. . . . . . . . . .
In our time, the Democratic Party gave up the diversity that had characterized it since Jeffersonian times. Giving up the South, which had been its main bastion since the Civil War as well as the working classes that had been the heart of its big city machines from Boston to San Diego, it came to consist almost exclusively of constituencies that make up government itself or benefit from government. Big business, increasingly dependent on government contracts and regulation, became a virtual adjunct of the contracting agents and regulators. Democrats’ traditional labor union auxiliaries shifted from private employees to public. Administrators of government programs of all kinds, notably public assistance, recruited their clientele of dependents into the Party’s base. Democrats, formerly the party of slavery and segregation, secured the allegiance of racial minorities by unrelenting assertions that the rest of American society is racist. Administrators and teachers at all levels of education taught two generations that they are brighter and better educated than the rest of Americans, whose objections to the schools’ (and the Party’s) prescriptions need not be taken seriously.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of American education’s centralization, intellectual homogenization and partisanship in the formation of the ruling class’ leadership. Many have noted the increasing stratification of American society and that, unlike in decades past, entry into its top levels now depends largely on graduation from elite universities. As Charles Murray has noted, their graduates tend to marry one another, perpetuating what they like to call a “meritocracy.” But this is rule not by the meritorious, rather by the merely credentialed – because the credentials are suspect. As Ron Unz has shown, nowadays entry into the ivied gateways to power is by co-option, not merit. Moreover, the amount of study required at these universities leaves their products with more pretense than knowledge or skill. The results of their management– debt, decreased household net worth, increased social strife – show that America has been practicing negative selection of elites.
Nevertheless as the Democratic Party has grown its constituent parts into a massive complex of patronage, its near monopoly of education has endowed its leaders ever more firmly with the conviction that they are as entitled to deference and perquisites as they are to ruling. The host of its non-governmental but government-financed entities, such as Planned Parenthood and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, argue for government funding by stating, correctly, that they are pursuing the public interest as government itself defines it.
Thus by the turn of the twenty first century America had a bona fide ruling class that transcends government and sees itself at once as distinct from the rest of society – and as the only element thereof that may act on its behalf. It rules – to use New York Times columnist David Brooks’ characterization of Barack Obama – “as a visitor from a morally superior civilization.” The civilization of the ruling class does not concede that those who resist it have any moral or intellectual right, and only reluctantly any civil right, to do so. Resistance is illegitimate because it can come only from low motives. President Obama’s statement that Republican legislators – and hence the people who elect them – don’t care whether “seniors have decent health care…children have enough to eat” is typical.
. . . . . . . . . .
In sum, the closer one gets to the Republican Party’s voters, the more the Party looks like Goldwater and Reagan. The closer one gets to its top, the more it looks like the ghost of Rockefeller. Consider 2012: the party chose for President someone preferred by only one fourth of its voters – Mitt Romney, whose first youthful venture in politics had been to take part in the political blackballing of Barry Goldwater.
. . . . . . . . . .
A new party is likely to arise because the public holds both Republicans and Democrats responsible for the nation’s unsustainable course. Indebtedness cannot increase endlessly. Nor can regulations pile on top of regulations while the officials who promulgate them – and their pensions – continue to grow, without crushing those beneath. Nor can the population’s rush to disability status and other forms of public assistance, or the no-win wars that have resulted in “open season” on Americans around the world, continue without catharsis. One half of the population cannot continue passively to absorb insults without pushing back. When – sooner rather than later – events collapse this house of cards, it will be hard to credibly advocate a better future while bearing a label that advertises responsibility for the present. Why trust any Republican qua Republican?
To represent the country class, to set about reversing the ills the ruling class imposed on America, a party would have to confront the ruling class’ pretenses, with unity and force comparable to that by which these were imposed. There will be no alternative to all the country class’ various components acting jointly on measures dear to each. For example: since the connection between government and finance, the principle that large institutions are “too big to fail,” are dear to America’s best-connected people who can be counted on to threaten “systemic collapse,” breaking it will require the support of sectors of the country class for which “corporate welfare” is less of a concern than the welfare effects of the Social Security system’s component that funds fake disability and drug addiction – something about which macroeconomists mostly care little – and vice versa. Similarly the entire country class has as much interest in asserting the right of armed self-defense as does any gun owner, because the principle of constitutional right is indivisible. Nothing will require greater unity against greater resistance than ending government promotion of abortion and homosexuality. Yet those whose main concerns are with financial probity cannot afford continuing to neglect that capitalist economics presupposes a morally upright people. All this illustrates the need for, and the meaning of, a political party: disparate elements acting all of one and one for all.
Diversity is not a natural barrier to pursuing common interests. Franklin Roosevelt’s Democratic party included every unreconstructed segregationist in the South, as well as nearly all Progressives in university towns like Hyde Park, Illinois and Madison, Wisconsin – people who despised not only the segregationists but also the Catholic Poles, Italians, and Irish from Milwaukee to Boston whose faith and habits were as foreign to them as they were to Southerners. Yet all understood that being mutually supportive of Democrats was the key to getting what they wanted.
The common, unifying element of the several country class’ sectors is the ruling class’ insistence, founded on force rather than reason, that their concerns are illegitimate, that they are illegitimate. The ruling class demonizes the country class piece by piece. Piece by piece it cannot defend itself, much less can it set the country on a course of domestic and international peace, freedom and solvency. None of the country class’ politically active elements can, by themselves, hope to achieve any of their goals because they can be sure that the entire ruling class’ resources will be focused on them whenever circumstances seem propitious. In 2012 for example, the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms seemed politically safe. Then, one disaster brought seemingly endless resources from every corner of the ruling class to bear on its defenders. The rest of the country class’ politically active elements stood by, sympathetically, but without a vehicle for helping. Each of these elements should have learned that none can hope for indulgence from any part of the ruling class. They can look only to others who are under attack as they themselves are.
Far be it from a party that represents the country class to ape what it abhors by imposing punitive measures through party line votes covered by barrages of insults: few in the country class’ parts want to become a ruling class. Yet the country class, to defend itself, to cut down the forest of subsidies and privileges that choke America, to curb the arrogance of modern government, cannot shy away from offending the ruling class’ intellectual and moral pretenses. Events themselves show how dysfunctional the ruling class is. But only a political party worthy of the name can marshal the combination of reason, brutal images, and consistency adequately to represent America’s country class.
America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution. The American Spectator, July/August 2010. Also find it here.
Codevilla, As Country Club Republicans . . .:
On January 1, 2013 one third of Republican congressmen, following their leaders, joined with nearly all Democrats to legislate higher taxes and more subsidies for Democratic constituencies. Two thirds voted no, following the people who had elected them. For generations, the Republican Party had presented itself as the political vehicle for Americans whose opposition to ever-bigger government financed by ever-higher taxes makes them a “country class.” Yet modern Republican leaders, with the exception of the Reagan Administration, have been partners in the expansion of government, indeed in the growth of a government-based “ruling class.” They have relished that role despite their voters. Thus these leaders gradually solidified their choice to no longer represent what had been their constituency, but to openly adopt the identity of junior partners in that ruling class. By repeatedly passing bills that contradict the identity of Republican voters and of the majority of Republican elected representatives, the Republican leadership has made political orphans of millions of Americans. In short, at the outset of 2013 a substantial portion of America finds itself un-represented, while Republican leaders increasingly represent only themselves.
By the law of supply and demand, millions of Americans, (arguably a majority) cannot remain without representation. Increasingly the top people in government, corporations, and the media collude and demand submission as did the royal courts of old. This marks these political orphans as a “country class.” In 1776 America’s country class responded to lack of representation by uniting under the concept: “all men are created equal.” In our time, its disparate sectors’ common sentiment is more like: “who the hell do they think they are?”
The ever-growing U.S. government has an edgy social, ethical, and political character. It is distasteful to a majority of persons who vote Republican and to independent voters, as well as to perhaps one fifth of those who vote Democrat. The Republican leadership’s kinship with the socio-political class that runs modern government is deep. Country class Americans have but to glance at the Media to hear themselves insulted from on high as greedy, racist, violent, ignorant extremists. Yet far has it been from the Republican leadership to defend them. Whenever possible, the Republican Establishment has chosen candidates for office – especially the Presidency – who have ignored, soft-pedaled or given mere lip service to their voters’ identities and concerns.
Thus public opinion polls confirm that some two thirds of Americans feel that government is “them” not “us,” that government has been taking the country in the wrong direction, and that such sentiments largely parallel partisan identification: While a majority of Democrats feel that officials who bear that label represent them well, only about a fourth of Republican voters and an even smaller proportion of independents trust Republican officials to be on their side. Again: While the ruling class is well represented by the Democratic Party, the country class is not represented politically – by the Republican Party or by any other. Well or badly, its demand for representation will be met.
. . . . . . . . . .
In our time, the Democratic Party gave up the diversity that had characterized it since Jeffersonian times. Giving up the South, which had been its main bastion since the Civil War as well as the working classes that had been the heart of its big city machines from Boston to San Diego, it came to consist almost exclusively of constituencies that make up government itself or benefit from government. Big business, increasingly dependent on government contracts and regulation, became a virtual adjunct of the contracting agents and regulators. Democrats’ traditional labor union auxiliaries shifted from private employees to public. Administrators of government programs of all kinds, notably public assistance, recruited their clientele of dependents into the Party’s base. Democrats, formerly the party of slavery and segregation, secured the allegiance of racial minorities by unrelenting assertions that the rest of American society is racist. Administrators and teachers at all levels of education taught two generations that they are brighter and better educated than the rest of Americans, whose objections to the schools’ (and the Party’s) prescriptions need not be taken seriously.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of American education’s centralization, intellectual homogenization and partisanship in the formation of the ruling class’ leadership. Many have noted the increasing stratification of American society and that, unlike in decades past, entry into its top levels now depends largely on graduation from elite universities. As Charles Murray has noted, their graduates tend to marry one another, perpetuating what they like to call a “meritocracy.” But this is rule not by the meritorious, rather by the merely credentialed – because the credentials are suspect. As Ron Unz has shown, nowadays entry into the ivied gateways to power is by co-option, not merit. Moreover, the amount of study required at these universities leaves their products with more pretense than knowledge or skill. The results of their management– debt, decreased household net worth, increased social strife – show that America has been practicing negative selection of elites.
Nevertheless as the Democratic Party has grown its constituent parts into a massive complex of patronage, its near monopoly of education has endowed its leaders ever more firmly with the conviction that they are as entitled to deference and perquisites as they are to ruling. The host of its non-governmental but government-financed entities, such as Planned Parenthood and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, argue for government funding by stating, correctly, that they are pursuing the public interest as government itself defines it.
Thus by the turn of the twenty first century America had a bona fide ruling class that transcends government and sees itself at once as distinct from the rest of society – and as the only element thereof that may act on its behalf. It rules – to use New York Times columnist David Brooks’ characterization of Barack Obama – “as a visitor from a morally superior civilization.” The civilization of the ruling class does not concede that those who resist it have any moral or intellectual right, and only reluctantly any civil right, to do so. Resistance is illegitimate because it can come only from low motives. President Obama’s statement that Republican legislators – and hence the people who elect them – don’t care whether “seniors have decent health care…children have enough to eat” is typical.
. . . . . . . . . .
In sum, the closer one gets to the Republican Party’s voters, the more the Party looks like Goldwater and Reagan. The closer one gets to its top, the more it looks like the ghost of Rockefeller. Consider 2012: the party chose for President someone preferred by only one fourth of its voters – Mitt Romney, whose first youthful venture in politics had been to take part in the political blackballing of Barry Goldwater.
. . . . . . . . . .
A new party is likely to arise because the public holds both Republicans and Democrats responsible for the nation’s unsustainable course. Indebtedness cannot increase endlessly. Nor can regulations pile on top of regulations while the officials who promulgate them – and their pensions – continue to grow, without crushing those beneath. Nor can the population’s rush to disability status and other forms of public assistance, or the no-win wars that have resulted in “open season” on Americans around the world, continue without catharsis. One half of the population cannot continue passively to absorb insults without pushing back. When – sooner rather than later – events collapse this house of cards, it will be hard to credibly advocate a better future while bearing a label that advertises responsibility for the present. Why trust any Republican qua Republican?
To represent the country class, to set about reversing the ills the ruling class imposed on America, a party would have to confront the ruling class’ pretenses, with unity and force comparable to that by which these were imposed. There will be no alternative to all the country class’ various components acting jointly on measures dear to each. For example: since the connection between government and finance, the principle that large institutions are “too big to fail,” are dear to America’s best-connected people who can be counted on to threaten “systemic collapse,” breaking it will require the support of sectors of the country class for which “corporate welfare” is less of a concern than the welfare effects of the Social Security system’s component that funds fake disability and drug addiction – something about which macroeconomists mostly care little – and vice versa. Similarly the entire country class has as much interest in asserting the right of armed self-defense as does any gun owner, because the principle of constitutional right is indivisible. Nothing will require greater unity against greater resistance than ending government promotion of abortion and homosexuality. Yet those whose main concerns are with financial probity cannot afford continuing to neglect that capitalist economics presupposes a morally upright people. All this illustrates the need for, and the meaning of, a political party: disparate elements acting all of one and one for all.
Diversity is not a natural barrier to pursuing common interests. Franklin Roosevelt’s Democratic party included every unreconstructed segregationist in the South, as well as nearly all Progressives in university towns like Hyde Park, Illinois and Madison, Wisconsin – people who despised not only the segregationists but also the Catholic Poles, Italians, and Irish from Milwaukee to Boston whose faith and habits were as foreign to them as they were to Southerners. Yet all understood that being mutually supportive of Democrats was the key to getting what they wanted.
The common, unifying element of the several country class’ sectors is the ruling class’ insistence, founded on force rather than reason, that their concerns are illegitimate, that they are illegitimate. The ruling class demonizes the country class piece by piece. Piece by piece it cannot defend itself, much less can it set the country on a course of domestic and international peace, freedom and solvency. None of the country class’ politically active elements can, by themselves, hope to achieve any of their goals because they can be sure that the entire ruling class’ resources will be focused on them whenever circumstances seem propitious. In 2012 for example, the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms seemed politically safe. Then, one disaster brought seemingly endless resources from every corner of the ruling class to bear on its defenders. The rest of the country class’ politically active elements stood by, sympathetically, but without a vehicle for helping. Each of these elements should have learned that none can hope for indulgence from any part of the ruling class. They can look only to others who are under attack as they themselves are.
Far be it from a party that represents the country class to ape what it abhors by imposing punitive measures through party line votes covered by barrages of insults: few in the country class’ parts want to become a ruling class. Yet the country class, to defend itself, to cut down the forest of subsidies and privileges that choke America, to curb the arrogance of modern government, cannot shy away from offending the ruling class’ intellectual and moral pretenses. Events themselves show how dysfunctional the ruling class is. But only a political party worthy of the name can marshal the combination of reason, brutal images, and consistency adequately to represent America’s country class.
The GOP’s Intellectual Unfreezing. By Peter Wehner.
The GOP’s Intellectual Unfreezing. By Peter Wehner. Commentary, February 19, 2013.
How to Save the Republican Party. By Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner. Commentary, March 2013.
Reaganism After Reagan. By Ramesh Ponnuru. New York Times, February 17, 2013.
Wehner:
Ponnuru in his op-ed, and Gerson and I in our essay, offer up policies that we believe address the issues facing America in the 21st century. People can read both pieces and judge the merits of our recommendations. But I want to make two other points.
The first is that there is an intellectual unfreezing that is taking place within the Republican Party that is all to the good. People from different parts of the party and who represent different strands within conservatism are offering up ideas for what needs to be done. Not all of them are wise, of course, but competing ideas need to be heard. Fortunately the impulse to attack people as heretics who should be expelled from the party is for the most part being held in check. That’s not true of everyone, of course. Some people are temperamentally attracted to an auto-da-fe. But it seems to me that in general there’s a real openness on the part of Republican lawmakers and conservatives to recalibration.
The second point is that Reagan himself was a fairly creative policy entrepreneur in his own right. He advanced what was essentially a new economic theory, supply side economics, and replaced détente and containment with a strategy of rolling back the Soviet empire.
Those approaches are well known and seem obvious now, but at the time they were unorthodox and controversial. It was Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan who in 1980 confessed, “Of a sudden, the GOP has become a party of ideas.”
Ronald Reagan adjusted his policies to meet the challenges of his time, and two generations after Reagan, Republicans and conservatives need to do the same thing.
Let the recalibration and rethinking continue.
How to Save the Republican Party. By Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner. Commentary, March 2013.
Reaganism After Reagan. By Ramesh Ponnuru. New York Times, February 17, 2013.
Wehner:
Ponnuru in his op-ed, and Gerson and I in our essay, offer up policies that we believe address the issues facing America in the 21st century. People can read both pieces and judge the merits of our recommendations. But I want to make two other points.
The first is that there is an intellectual unfreezing that is taking place within the Republican Party that is all to the good. People from different parts of the party and who represent different strands within conservatism are offering up ideas for what needs to be done. Not all of them are wise, of course, but competing ideas need to be heard. Fortunately the impulse to attack people as heretics who should be expelled from the party is for the most part being held in check. That’s not true of everyone, of course. Some people are temperamentally attracted to an auto-da-fe. But it seems to me that in general there’s a real openness on the part of Republican lawmakers and conservatives to recalibration.
The second point is that Reagan himself was a fairly creative policy entrepreneur in his own right. He advanced what was essentially a new economic theory, supply side economics, and replaced détente and containment with a strategy of rolling back the Soviet empire.
Those approaches are well known and seem obvious now, but at the time they were unorthodox and controversial. It was Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan who in 1980 confessed, “Of a sudden, the GOP has become a party of ideas.”
Ronald Reagan adjusted his policies to meet the challenges of his time, and two generations after Reagan, Republicans and conservatives need to do the same thing.
Let the recalibration and rethinking continue.
Gallup Poll: Americans Support the Global War on Terror. By Walter Russell Mead.
Gallup Poll: Americans Support the GWOT. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, February 20, 2013.
A Meteor Reveals the Russian Character. By Masha Gessen.
Fatalistic, Reckless, Distrustful. By Masha Gessen. New York Times, February 18, 2013.
Hellfire, Morality and Strategy in the Drone Wars. By George Friedman.
Hellfire, Morality and Strategy in the Drone Wars. By George Friedman. Real Clear World, February 19, 2013.
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