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anonymous

Myth of a spending surge. - 0 views

www.slate.com/...myth_of_a_spending_surge.html

shared by anonymous on 22 Jan 13 - Cached
  • People are very interested in partisan politics. Political partisans are very interested in the presidency. The president is an important player in federal budget debates. And thus people are very interested in questions about federal government spending "under Obama." But the national economy doesn't care about why money gets spent or which level of government spends it.
  • If you believe that restraining government spending should supercharge private sector economic activity, then you ought to know that since 2010 we've been living through a nearly unprecedented level of public sector spending restraint. Counterfactuals are, of course, hard. Perhaps private sector growth would have been even weaker had public sector spending risen at a more normal level. But an unusually low level of spending growth isn't a policy we might try in the future, it's a policy that we're trying right now and have been trying for the past few years.
  • anonymous on 22 Jan 13
     
    "People are very interested in partisan politics. Political partisans are very interested in the presidency. The president is an important player in federal budget debates. And thus people are very interested in questions about federal government spending "under Obama." But the national economy doesn't care about why money gets spent or which level of government spends it."
anonymous

How to Turn Republicans and Democrats Into Americans - 2 views

www.theatlantic.com/...8521

politics partisan republican democrat america

shared by anonymous on 24 Jun 11 - Cached
  • When Democrat Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House, the leader of the lawmaking branch of government, she said her priority was to … elect more Democrats. After Republican victories in 2010, the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said his goal was to … prevent the Democratic president’s reelection. With the country at war and the economy in recession, our government leaders’ first thoughts have been of party advantage.
  • Ours is a system focused not on collective problem-solving but on a struggle for power between two private organizations.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Jun 11
       
      That modern parties vote in party-first ways is not an accident, yes. But, I'm not convinced that the unintended consequences of our political parties was something other than an accident. That point isn't well made enough.
  • What we have today is not a legacy of 1789 but an outdated relic of the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Progressives pushed for the adoption of primary elections.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • the primaries, and the nominating conventions, were open only to party members. This reform was supposed to give citizens a bigger role in the election process. Instead, the influence of party leaders has been supplanted by that of a subset of party activists who are often highly ideological and largely uninterested in finding common ground.
  • Americans demand a multiplicity of options in almost every other aspect of our lives. And yet we allow small bands of activists to limit our choices of people to represent us in making the nation’s laws.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Jun 11
       
      However, *too* many options paralyzes us. This is standard choice/marketing stuff, but I see how, if you tilt your head, something like this would seem inevitable.
  • I am not calling for a magical political “center”
  • Nor am I pleading for consensus
  • And I’m not pushing for harmony
  • The problem is not division but partisanship—advantage-seeking by private clubs whose central goal is to win political power. There are different ways to conduct elections and manage our government—and strengthen the democratic process. Here are some suggestions designed to turn our political system on its head, so that people, not parties, control our government.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Jun 11
       
      I wonder if, with the best of intentions, partisans slowly conflate the party with the nation until it wouldn't dawn on them to consider themselves seeking party favor first, and nation second.
  • Break the power of partisans to keep candidates off the general-election ballot.
  • Because activists who demand loyalty and see compromising as selling out dominate party primaries and conventions, candidates who seek their permission to be on the November ballot find themselves under great pressure to take hard-line positions. This tendency toward rigidity—and the party system that enables it—is at the root of today’s political dysfunction.
  • As a result, members of Congress would have greater freedom to base their legislative decisions on their constituents’ concerns and on their own independent evaluations of a proposal’s merits. They would be our representatives, not representatives of their political clubs.
  • Turn over the process of redrawing congressional districts to independent, nonpartisan commissions.
  • Although legislative majorities continue to draw district lines in most states, 13 states (most recently, California) have established nonpartisan or bipartisan redistricting commissions, and two additional states have created merely “advisory” commissions. The systems vary—some use commissions to propose plans that legislatures must approve; others strip the legislature of all redistricting authority—but each of the 13 recognizes that the partisan drawing of congressional-district boundaries has hurt the democratic process, leaving elected officials dependent on, and beholden to, the party bosses who draw their districts.
  • Allow members of any party to offer amendments to any House bill and—with rare exceptions—put those amendments to a vote.
  • “closed” rules, preventing members from offering amendments, simply tell citizens their preferences don’t matter.
  • Speaker John Boehner deserves credit for promising greater opportunities for the minority party to have its amendments considered. Under his speakership, the Republican-dominated House has actually accepted some Democratic amendments.
  • The House should adopt rules guaranteeing that any proposal receiving a significant level of support—say, 100 co-sponsors—would automatically be allowed a committee hearing, an up-or-down vote in committee, and then, even if it fails in committee, a vote on the House floor.
  • Change the leadership structure of congressional committees.
  • We should change congressional rules to provide for a chairman from the majority party and a vice chairman from the minority (no such position exists in today’s Congress, except on certain special non-legislating committees); the vice chairman need not ascend to the chairmanship in the chairman’s absence, but each would have the authority to bring a bill forward and to invite expert witnesses to offer testimony. The process might be slower, but consideration of alternatives would be more thorough.
  • The current committee process is transactional, not deliberative.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Jun 11
       
      Translation: "What can *we* get?"
  • Fill committee vacancies by lot.
  • The derivation of leadership in Congress from an internal version of the party primary or convention is an artificial construct. In every informal congressional subgroup—the Human Rights Caucus, the Rust Belt Caucus, the Flat Tax Caucus—leaders are chosen without regard to party affiliation.
  • Imagine how different the congressional dynamic would be if that practice prevailed in committee assignments.
  • They would be freer to vote as they saw fit.
  • Choose committee staff solely on the basis of professional qualifications.
  • But if the goal is to legislate for the country, not for a party, then committee staff members should be selected by a nonpartisan House or Senate administrator and obligated to serve all members equally without regard to party agenda.
  • The Constitution grants Congress most of the federal government’s real powers—to spend, tax, create federal programs, declare war, approve treaties, confirm federal court appointments.
  • By thinking of the House and Senate in constitutional rather than partisan terms, we would eliminate party-driven links between Congress and the president and avoid the spectacle of legislative leaders acting as though they were either members of the president’s staff or his sworn enemies.
  • Our current political dysfunction is not inevitable; it results from deliberate decisions that have backfired and left us mired in the trenches of hyper-partisan warfare.
  • The goal is not to destroy parties but to transcend them; to welcome their contributions but end their dominance; and to take back from these private clubs control of our own elections and our own Congress.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Jun 11
       
      This is a really good read. Quite layman-friendly and concise. Without knowing more about the deeper mechanics of the government's procedure, it all (at least) seems quite plausible. When I started reading this, I thought I'd be buried under polemic, but this has almost an engineer's eye. An insider looks at the structure he's been within and thinks, "hmmm, we can fix it. Adjust here, here, and here." Which is not to say that these bullet-point items would be a hard solution, but they could be tweaks that move us in an *improved* direction.
  • anonymous on 24 Jun 11
     
    Thanks to Erik Hanson for the pointer. With a reminder from Ian Dorsch. Wishful thinking? Maybe. But I'd like to try any approach that hastens the departure of the uglier elements of American political shouting. From the Atlantic. "ANGRY AND FRUSTRATED, American voters went to the polls in November 2010 to "take back" their country. Just as they had done in 2008. And 2006. And repeatedly for decades, whether it was Republicans or Democrats from whom they were taking the country back. No matter who was put in charge, things didn't get better. They won't this time, either; spending levels may go down, taxes may go up, budgets will change, but American government will go on the way it has, not as a collective enterprise but as a battle between warring tribes."
anonymous

The danger of the partisan mind - 0 views

www.economist.com/...partisan_bias

politics

shared by anonymous on 20 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Mr Waldman is right to suggest that today's Republican alarm and Democratic light-heartedness are partisan phenomena. But one is no sillier than the other. The majority of Democrats who saw government as a threat in 2007 were right to do so, and nothing truly significant has changed since then. Likewise, the overwhelming majority of Republicans who were at ease with the state in 2007 were profoundly misguided; one wishes they had been roused from their oblivious slumber for better reasons.
  • The Gallup graph is truly troubling because it shows us that each party's base of supporters is more or less blind to government's threat to freedom when their favoured team is in power.
  • anonymous on 20 Oct 10
     
    ""What happened to send the line for Democrats and the line for Republicans in opposite directions?" Mr Waldman asks. "Oh yeah-a Democratic president took office." Mr Waldman is correct to note that "[o]ur partisan predispositions affect not just what we think about candidates, or about policy proposals, but how we think about the objective facts of the world," and that since Barack Obama's election conservative elites "have been telling [right-leaning citizens] that our freedom hangs by a thread."" By The Economist on October 20, 2010.
anonymous

Exclusive Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State - 0 views

billmoyers.com/...anatomy-of-the-deep-state

shared by anonymous on 23 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The conventional wisdom has it that partisan gridlock and dysfunction have become the new normal.
  • But it is also imperative to acknowledge the limits of this critique as it applies to the American governmental system.
  • the present objective of congressional Republicans is to render the executive branch powerless, at least until a Republican president is elected
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • Democrats controlling the Senate have responded by weakening the filibuster of nominations, but Republicans are sure to react with other parliamentary delaying tactics.
  • This strategy amounts to congressional nullification of executive branch powers by a party that controls a majority in only one house of Congress.
  • Despite this apparent impotence, President Obama can liquidate American citizens without due processes, detain prisoners indefinitely without charge, conduct dragnet surveillance on the American people without judicial warrant and engage in unprecedented — at least since the McCarthy era — witch hunts against federal employees (the so-called “Insider Threat Program”).
  • Despite the habitual cant of congressional Republicans about executive overreach by Obama, the would-be dictator, we have until recently heard very little from them about these actions
  • These are not isolated instances of a contradiction; they have been so pervasive that they tend to be disregarded as background noise.
  • During the time in 2011 when political warfare over the debt ceiling was beginning to paralyze the business of governance in Washington, the United States government somehow summoned the resources to overthrow Muammar Ghaddafi’s regime in Libya
  • At a time when there was heated debate about continuing meat inspections and civilian air traffic control because of the budget crisis, our government was somehow able to commit $115 million to keeping a civil war going in Syria and to pay at least £100m to the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters to buy influence over and access to that country’s intelligence.
  • Since 2007, two bridges carrying interstate highways have collapsed due to inadequate maintenance of infrastructure, one killing 13 people. During that same period of time, the government spent $1.7 billion constructing a building in Utah that is the size of 17 football fields. This mammoth structure is intended to allow the National Security Agency to store a yottabyte of information, the largest numerical designator computer scientists have coined.
  • My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.”
  • That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched.
  • Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called “groupthink,” the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers.
  • A more elusive aspect of cultural assimilation is the sheer dead weight of the ordinariness of it all once you have planted yourself in your office chair for the 10,000th time.
  • Government life is typically not some vignette from an Allen Drury novel about intrigue under the Capitol dome. Sitting and staring at the clock on the off-white office wall when it’s 11:00 in the evening and you are vowing never, ever to eat another piece of takeout pizza in your life is not an experience that summons the higher literary instincts of a would-be memoirist.
  • The Deep State does not consist of the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department.
  • I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street.
  • All these agencies are coordinated by the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council.
  • anonymous on 23 Feb 14
     
    Bill Moyers: "There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power."
anonymous

Olbermann, O'Reilly and the death of real news - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2010111202857_pf.html

media partisan politics

shared by anonymous on 12 Nov 10 - Cached
  • We celebrate truth as a virtue, but only in the abstract. What we really need in our search for truth is a commodity that used to be at the heart of good journalism: facts - along with a willingness to present those facts without fear or favor. To the degree that broadcast news was a more virtuous operation 40 years ago, it was a function of both fear and innocence. Network executives were afraid that a failure to work in the "public interest, convenience and necessity," as set forth in the Radio Act of 1927, might cause the Federal Communications Commission to suspend or even revoke their licenses.
  • On the innocence side of the ledger, meanwhile, it never occurred to the network brass that news programming could be profitable.
  • It was an imperfect, untidy little Eden of journalism where reporters were motivated to gather facts about important issues. We didn't know that we could become profit centers. No one had bitten into that apple yet.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Broadcast news has been outflanked and will soon be overtaken by scores of other media options. The need for clear, objective reporting in a world of rising religious fundamentalism, economic interdependence and global ecological problems is probably greater than it has ever been. But we are no longer a national audience receiving news from a handful of trusted gatekeepers; we're now a million or more clusters of consumers, harvesting information from like-minded providers.
  • anonymous on 12 Nov 10
     
    "And so, among the many benefits we have come to believe the founding fathers intended for us, the latest is news we can choose. Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone." By Ted Koppel at The Washington Post on November 14, 2010.
anonymous

You've Got Them All Wrong, Mr. President - 0 views

www.tnr.com/...t-voters-barack-obama-midterms

partisan politics america

shared by anonymous on 18 Nov 10 - Cached
  • In other words, the White House blamed Democrats' 2010 defeat on the loss of independents, and to win them back, it will try to slow the growth of government, encourage a bipartisan spirit in Washington, and reform the government process by eliminating things like earmarks.
  • Here are some salient features of independents.
  • (1) There is no Party of Independents
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • (2) Not all independents actually vote
  • (3) Many independents are disguised partisans
  • The Shadow Republicans, who make up 26 percent of independents, are very likely to vote Republican.
  • Shadow Democrats, who make up 21 percent of Pew’s sample, are more affluent and educated than the average Democrat.
  • “A reluctance to confess a party preference,” he writes, “is nothing more than a reflection of the inclination of Americans to prefer to think of themselves as independent-minded and inclined to judge things on the merit.”
  • (4) About one-third of independents are important swing voters
  • It’s fair to characterize them as white working-class voters. Why are they independents and not Republicans and Democrats? According to the Pew poll, both groups believe that “parties care more about special interests than average Americans.”
  • From 1968 through 1994, many white working-class voters in the South and Midwest, alienated by Democratic support for civil rights, abortion rights, and gun control, became partisan Republicans.
  • Many of these voters are susceptible to populist appeals, especially during a downturn. After all, they blame special interests for their plight.
  • What is an effective political response to this group? After the 1994 election, Bill Clinton, faced with massive defection of white working-class voters, adopted a strategy of rhetorical appeasement, declaring that the “era of big government is over.” He also eschewed any new major spending programs. But Clinton was blessed with an economy that, unbeknownst to voters in the 1994 election, was about to enter a boom. It really didn’t matter what Clinton actually did: By November 1996, he could take credit for the economic revival. And the boom was what mattered most to these voters.
  • It’s the actual condition of the economy that wins or loses their votes.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 18 Nov 10
       
      The actual condition of the economy matters, but the hallucinated perceptions of the public drive elections.
  • anonymous on 18 Nov 10
     
    The White House thinks that Democrats got drubbed in the election because they lost the support of "independent" voters. Obama's advisers, the Washington Post reported, "are deeply concerned about winning back political independents, who supported Obama two years ago by an eight-point margin but backed Republicans for the House this year by 19 points. To do so, they think he must forge partnerships with Republicans on key issues and make noticeable progress on his oft-repeated campaign pledge to change the ways of Washington." By John B. Judis at The New Republic on November 18, 2010.
anonymous

The Democrats Are Doomed, or How A 'Big Tent' Can Be Too Big - 0 views

blog.okcupid.com/...-how-a-big-tent-can-be-too-big

partisan politics perspective

shared by anonymous on 30 Mar 10 - Cached
  • anonymous on 30 Mar 10
     
    From OkTrends. A great article (referenced by Dave Gottlieb) and pointed to from within this Buzz entry: http://www.google.com/buzz/111803955882817854729/QB9Mdp8jY6j/Partisan-Bipartisan-Crooked-Timber
anonymous

The new party of Reagan - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...gIQAuckfOI_story.html

reagan politics partisan

shared by anonymous on 20 Jul 11 - Cached
  • After he switched to the Republican Party in 1962, Ronald Reagan famously quipped: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.”
  • At Tuesday morning’s meeting of the House Democrats, caucus chairman John Larson rallied his colleagues for the day’s debt-limit debate by playing an audio recording of the 40th president.“Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility,” Reagan says in the clip. “This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations.”
  • Tea Party Republicans say they would sooner default on the national debt than raise taxes; Reagan agreed to raise taxes 11 times.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Reagan in 1988 signed a major expansion of Medicare.
  • Republicans have continued their ritual praise of Reagan during the debt-limit fight. Rep. Trent Franks (Ariz.) claimed that the budget caps would allow America to be “that great city on a hill that Ronald Reagan spoke of.”
  • Most recently, Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr. (Calif.) called Reagan a “moderate former liberal . . . who would never be elected today in my opinion.”
  • This spring, Mike Huckabee judged that “Ronald Reagan would have a very difficult, if not impossible time being nominated in this atmosphere,” pointing out that Reagan “raises taxes as governor, he made deals with Democrats, he compromised on things in order to move the ball down the field.”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 20 Jul 11
       
      Holy shit. You mean he *governed*?
  • anonymous on 20 Jul 11
     
    "Tea Party Republicans call a vote to raise the debt ceiling a threat to their very existence; Reagan presided over 18 increases in the debt ceiling during his presidency." Reagan was a much more complex thinker than most of us realize. I do not agree with all of his policies, but that hardly makes him an outlier president (personally). More importantly, though, he defies the assumptions that partisans have of him. It makes me want to revisit a few other Reagan bookmarks lodged in Diigo (which I scratched together over the past few years).
anonymous

We Have To End Republican Nihilism - 0 views

andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/...ses-debt-ceiling-strategy.html

shared by anonymous on 13 Dec 12 - Cached
  • There are two procedural issues on which, it seems to me, true conservatives should be outraged at Republicans.
  • The first is the massive, unprecedented, destructive and radical use of a non-filibuster filibuster to make the Senate unable to pass anything significant without 60 votes, rather than 51 (or 50 with the veep). This is not conservative. It's a blatant attack on tradition in defense of pure partisanship.
  • I think the president should at some point personally take this on. Most Americans aren't fully aware that a filibuster today doesn't need even a few minutes of what we always thought of as filibustering.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Expose them, Mr President, as the revolutionaries they are. Mock them. Expose their laziness and obstructionism at a time when a huge majority wants compromise; and the country and the world need it.
  • The second is the outrageous ploy to threaten to destroy the country's credit rating every time there is a conflict over debt. This is a form of legislative terrorism. It is an attack on the entire country in defense of a single fanatical faction.
  • There is no mention of the last election, and what it was fought on. There is no mention of the American people or the global economy. There is merely an insular ideological determination to wreck the country if necessary in order to maintain a purer "brand" for a faction. This is what the Founders warned us of when describing the toxicity of factionalism in a democracy.
  • Thiessen is an anti-conservative. He saw the rule of law as something to be gotten around so he could enable the torture of prisoners of war, using Nazi techniques. He sees the very credit of the country he allegedly loves as a mere instrument for partisan brinksmanship.
  • When you see a political party that openly flaunts these attacks on the American constitutional balance and the country's credit for purely partisan reasons, you begin to see how deep the rot has gone. This is not a party worthy of any role in government. It's a destructive, self-interested faction, threatening the stability of this country's constitution and economy. Obama is absolutely right not to yield on this. This anti-conservative radicalism is anti-American, uncivil and unpatriotic.
  • anonymous on 13 Dec 12
     
    "The Obama administration is utterly steadfast on this point: They will not suffer a repeat of 2011, when they conducted negotiations over whether the United States should default. If Republicans go over the cliff and try to open up talks for raising the debt ceiling, the White House will not hold a meeting, they will not return a phone call, they will not look at the e-mails. They will move to an entirely public strategy, rallying voters and the business community against the GOP's repeated brinksmanship."
anonymous

Mischief follows in partisan Bible translations - 2 views

www.patheos.com/...in-partisan-bible-translations

bible

shared by anonymous on 22 Mar 12 - Cached
Erik Hanson liked it
  • Junia is a woman’s name and it just wouldn’t do to have people reading about a woman who was an apostle — let alone one who was “prominent among the apostles.” For patriarchal Christians who insisted on a male-only hierarchy, Junia was intolerable. So they got rid of her. They translated her into an imaginary man with an imaginary name.
  • Politics — specifically, the political desire to control women — shaped the translation of that text. The translators changed the words of the Bible to make it seem like it supported their political agenda. They changed the words of the Bible so that others reading it would not be able to see that its actual words challenged and contradicted their political agenda.
  • Here is how Exodus 21:22-25 read in the New American Standard Bible’s 1977 revision of its 1971 original translation:And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is not further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • But here’s the same passage in 1995 in the updated current version of the NASB:If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
  • “So that she has a miscarriage” has been replaced with “so that she gives birth prematurely.”
  • The KJV’s “her fruit depart” is a literal, but ambiguous rendition of the original Hebrew. If we ignore the context of the surrounding verses, then we could interpret that as meaning either what the 1977 NASB or what the 1995 NASB says. It could mean “she has a miscarriage” or it might mean “she gives birth prematurely.” Right?
  • It turns out that English-speaking Christians aren’t the very first people ever to read the book of Exodus. The Jews got there way, way before we did. It seems Jews actually wrote the thing. Plus they’re pretty good at reading Hebrew.
  • And for anti-abortion American evangelicals, Exodus 21:12-27 was unacceptable. It suggested that striking and killing an unborn fetus was in a separate category from striking and killing a “person.” Strike and kill a free person, you get the death penalty. Strike and kill an unborn fetus, you get a fine.
  • Politics — specifically, the political desire to control women — shaped the translation of that text. The translators changed the words of the Bible to make it seem like it supported their political agenda. They changed the words of the Bible so that others reading it would not be able to see that its actual words challenged and contradicted their political agenda.
  • If that’s what you believe about the Bible, then doesn’t this passage mean that you ought to approve of slavery? Of course it does — because that’s precisely why this form of inerrant, infallible, etc. biblicism was invented here in America. It arose in defense of slavery — slavery of an even more appalling and more brutal sort than that which this biblical passage describes. So, yes, a biblicistic, proof-texting approach to scripture designed in defense of slavery does, in fact, compel those who accept it to defend slavery.
  • But those defenders of slavery weren’t the only ones reading the Bible. Nor are those who learned to read the Bible from those defenders of slavery the only ones reading it now.  “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God …”
  • anonymous on 22 Mar 12
     
    Remember Junias? He was the imaginary male apostle with the unique and implausible name. "Junias" was invented by patriarchal Bible translators and inserted into the text of scripture because those translators didn't like what the text actually said.
anonymous

'The Righteous Mind,' by Jonathan Haidt - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...us-mind-by-jonathan-haidt.html

shared by anonymous on 27 Mar 12 - Cached
  • That’s what makes “The Righteous Mind” well worth reading. Politics isn’t just about ­manipulating people who disagree with you. It’s about learning from them.
  • David Hume, the Scottish philosopher who notoriously said reason was fit only to be “the slave of the passions,” was largely correct. E. O. Wilson, the ecologist who was branded a fascist for stressing the biological origins of human behavior, has been vindicated by the study of moral emotions.
  • To the question many people ask about politics — Why doesn’t the other side listen to reason? — Haidt replies: We were never designed to listen to reason. When you ask people moral questions, time their responses and scan their brains, their answers and brain activation patterns indicate that they reach conclusions quickly and produce reasons later only to justify what they’ve decided.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The problem isn’t that people don’t reason. They do reason. But their arguments aim to support their conclusions, not yours. Reason doesn’t work like a judge or teacher, impartially weighing evidence or guiding us to wisdom. It works more like a lawyer or press secretary, justifying our acts and judgments to others.
  • Haidt’s account of reason is a bit too simple — his whole book, after all, is a deployment of reason to advance learning — and his advice sounds cynical. But set aside those objections for now, and go with him. If you follow Haidt through the tunnel of cynicism, you’ll find that what he’s really after is enlightenment. He wants to open your mind to the moral intuitions of other people.
  • The worldviews Haidt discusses may differ from yours. They don’t start with the individual. They start with the group or the cosmic order. They exalt families, armies and communities. They assume that people should be treated differently according to social role or status — elders should be honored, subordinates should be protected. They suppress forms of self-expression that might weaken the social fabric. They assume interdependence, not autonomy. They prize order, not equality.
  • These moral systems aren’t ignorant or backward. Haidt argues that they’re common in history and across the globe because they fit human nature. He compares them to cuisines. We acquire morality the same way we acquire food preferences: we start with what we’re given. If it tastes good, we stick with it. If it doesn’t, we reject it.
  • This is Haidt’s startling message to the left: When it comes to morality, conservatives are more broad-minded than liberals. They serve a more varied diet.
  • Haidt treats electoral success as a kind of evolutionary fitness test. He figures that if voters like Republican messages, there’s something in Republican messages worth liking. He chides psychologists who try to “explain away” conservatism, treating it as a pathology. Conservatism thrives because it fits how people think, and that’s what validates it. Workers who vote Republican aren’t fools. In Haidt’s words, they’re “voting for their moral interests.”
  • Saving Darfur, submitting to the United Nations and paying taxes to educate children in another state may be noble, but they aren’t natural. What’s natural is giving to your church, helping your P.T.A. and rallying together as Americans against a foreign threat.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 27 Mar 12
       
      From Chris Blattman: Haidt's previous book, The Happiness Hypothesis, was a fantastic introduction to the psychology of behavior and morality. And I think the basic message of the new book rings true. So I am inclined to recommend it. My impression from the last book: Haidt has a very slight tendency to hyperbole, and it's a shame he doesn't distinguish between the weak and strong evidence. He's a skilful writer and his own research looks clever, and so I think he could fix this without making his books boring. I'm curious, though. Readers who actually know something about cognitive psychology: what's Haidt's street cred? http://chrisblattman.com/2012/03/27/the-tyrany-of-moral-intuition/
  • anonymous on 27 Mar 12
     
    You're smart. You're liberal. You're well informed. You think conservatives are narrow-minded. You can't understand why working-class Americans vote Republican. You figure they're being duped. You're wrong. This isn't an accusation from the right. It's a friendly warning from Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who, until 2009, considered himself a partisan liberal. 
anonymous

Objectivism & "Metaphysics," Part 14 - 0 views

aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/...ivism-metaphysics-part-14.html

objectivism criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 06 Oct 10 - Cached
  • Exhibit 1:I was astonished at how closed she typically was to any new knowledge [testifies Nathaniel Branden] .…When I tried to tell her of some new research that suggested that certain kinds of depression have a biological basis, she answered angrily, ‘I can tell you what causes depression; I can tell you about rational depression and I can tell you about irrational depression—the second is mostly self-pity—and in neither case does biology enter into it.’ I asked her how she could make a scientific statement with such certainty, since she had never studied the field; she shrugged bitterly and snapped, ‘Because I know how to think.’” (Judgement Day, 1989, 347)
  • Rand is claiming because people have free will, they cannot possibly be influenced by biological factors. But this is merely an a priori rationalization of the worst sort. Claims about the biological basis of an emotion can only be settled experimentally, through empirical testing. The evidence for the hypothesis that biological factors can influence emotions is overwhelming and not in dispute among psychiatrists familiar with the relevant research. If anyone has any doubt on the score, just consider how diseases of the brain can affect emotion and personality.
  • So how exactly does evolutionary psychology explain the misery, the jealousy, the lying [that occurred as a result of Rand’s affair with Nathaniel Branden]? When Rand and her followers tried to wish away obvious facts about humans' emotional constitution, their feelings didn't change. But they made each other miserable pretending that they felt the way they were supposed to feel. Rand and Nathaniel had to pretend that Nathaniel was attracted to Rand. Their spouses had to pretend that they weren't jealous. Rand and Nathaniel had to pretend that they believed that their spouses weren't jealous. The more they tried to talk themselves into having feelings contrary to human nature, the worse they felt. Nathaniel coped not by admitting error, but by finding a mistress and lying to cover it up. Since Rand had already ruled out the obvious explanation for Nathaniel's behavior, she went on a wild goose chase to find the "real" explanation. Etc...
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Human beings evolved in small groups where good relations were vital for survival. People who weren't interested in other people's opinions had trouble staying alive and reproducing. Caring about the opinions of others isn't as immutable as our sexual preferences, but it's very deeply rooted.
  • To deny a human nature consisting of innate propensities is a far more serious matter than denying facts about quantum mechanics or Einstienian relativity.
  • anonymous on 06 Oct 10
     
    "Where the Objectivist metaphysics seriously leads its partisans astray is on the issue of free will and human nature. For Rand, free will is axiomatic, which means, "self-evident" and "fundamentally given and directly perceived." Now whether free will is self-evident I will leave for another post. Here I'm only interested in specific facts that are sacrificed on the alter of Rand's free will." By Greg Nyquist at Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature on October 5, 2010.
anonymous

The Democrats Are Doomed, or How A 'Big Tent' Can Be Too Big - 0 views

blog.okcupid.com

shared by anonymous on 30 Mar 10 - Cached
  • anonymous on 30 Mar 10
     
    From OkTrends. A great article (referenced by Dave Gottlieb) and pointed to from within this Buzz entry: http://www.google.com/buzz/111803955882817854729/QB9Mdp8jY6j/Partisan-Bipartisan-Crooked-Timber
anonymous

5 Reasons Humanity Is Terrible at Democracy | Cracked.com - 0 views

www.cracked.com/-terrible-at-democracy_p2.html

shared by anonymous on 24 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Polls consistently show that we think those who disagree with us politically are simply bad people, on a personal level.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Mar 11
       
      What's fascinating is how irrelevant our partisan political affiliations are, on a day to day basis, but oh how we imagine them to be the center of our being.
  • Now take a look at this study, which compared a person's average political knowledge with their primary source of news. The results were surprising: The most knowledgeable groups were viewers of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Hot on their heels? Fans of Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.
  • Never mind the fact that it's a pretty bad sign when the most politically educated people in the country are relying on either comedy shows or political pundits for their news. The key is that these outlets are primarily about ruthlessly mocking and dismissing the other side. Yet they attract more knowledgeable voters, not less.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • In the world of psychology, they call this attitude polarization; the more times the average person spends thinking about a subject, the more extreme his position becomes -- even if he doesn't run across any new information.
  • once you get to the point where you're rooting so hard for one side of an issue that you're just short of painting your chest in team colors, then all that time spent reading up on the issues stops being about becoming an informed citizen and becomes more about accumulating ammunition for the next argument.
  • #1. We Hate Each Other Over Imaginary Differences
  • For example, a study asked Americans of various demographics and political stances about the ideal way they feel wealth should be distributed across the country. Young or old, male or female, Republican or Democrat, the answers they provided were almost identical.
  • Don't get us wrong; it's not that there are no disagreements, it's just that we vastly overestimate the degree to which we disagree, because the differences are all we focus on.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Mar 11
       
      For instance: During the Obama-McCain debates, their stated foreign policy stance was virtually identical. It was only on matters of how quickly a withdrawal would occur, not whether, if and how. This was almost completely glossed over by the left. In fact, the broad continuance of foreign policy is evidence of a geopolitical 'pull' that exists beyond partisanship and personalities.
  • We don't want the news to just give us information -- we want a story, and every story needs a villain, a battle between good and evil.
  • Knowing this, the news media decades ago started covering politics like a war, or a sport (in the biz, they call it "horse race coverage") where the reporting is entirely about which side is winning -- at the expense of figuring out the actual impact the resulting election or legislation will have on you as a human being. We tune in for "Us vs. Them," so that's what they give us.
anonymous

How to Turn Republicans and Democrats Into Americans - 1 views

www.theatlantic.com/...8521

politics partisan

shared by anonymous on 22 Jun 11 - No Cached
Erik Hanson liked it
  • With the country at war and the economy in recession, our government leaders’ first thoughts have been of party advantage.
  • This is not an accident. Ours is a system focused not on collective problem-solving but on a struggle for power between two private organizations.
  • Partisans decide what bills to take up, what witnesses to hear, what amendments to allow.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • George Washington and James Madison both warned of the dangers posed by political parties. Defenders of the party system argue that parties—including Madison’s own—arose almost immediately after the nation was founded. But those were not parties in the modern sense: they were factions uniting on a few major issues, not marching in lockstep on every issue, large and small.
  • What we have today is not a legacy of 1789 but an outdated relic of the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Progressives pushed for the adoption of primary elections.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 22 Jun 11
       
      Finally, a way to spit out the word "progressives" that inevitably turns the finger toward "conservatives" if you accept the spitting of the initial word.
  • many of the most important steps forward in our history have not come from the center at all, including women’s suffrage and the civil-rights movement, and even our founding rebellion against the British crown.
  • anonymous on 22 Jun 11
     
    "ANGRY AND FRUSTRATED, American voters went to the polls in November 2010 to "take back" their country. Just as they had done in 2008. And 2006. And repeatedly for decades, whether it was Republicans or Democrats from whom they were taking the country back. No matter who was put in charge, things didn't get better. They won't this time, either; spending levels may go down, taxes may go up, budgets will change, but American government will go on the way it has, not as a collective enterprise but as a battle between warring tribes."
anonymous

Jon Stewart to Christie, 'If you have cancer and don't have health insurance, that's Sa... - 0 views

www.politicususa.com/insurance-hurricane-sandy.html

shared by anonymous on 07 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • On The Daily Show, Chris Christie claimed there was a difference between disaster relief and setting up the health insurance exchange. Jon Stewart replied, ‘If you have cancer and don’t have health insurance, that’s Hurricane Sandy.’
  • Christie said that he vetoed the health insurance exchange because he wasn’t sure how much it would cost his state. Stewart pointed out that the government didn’t stonewall Christie on disaster relief by asking for all the details first. Gov. Christie replied, “The difference is that here, we have people in New Jersey who are in a crisis situation that could not be anticipated. And from my perspective, the federal government’s always stood up for that proposition, whether it’s Katrina, Ike, Gustav, they’ve come forward and done that, so they are not doing anything different here. Stewart said, “Here my point, and this is where I part ways with the Republican Party in an enormous way. If you have cancer and don’t have health insurance, that’s Hurricane Sandy.” Gov. Christie said that not having a state exchange is not the same as not having coverage. Stewart made a broader philosophical observation about the Republican Party, “It always seems to me that for the Republican Party. If it’s not something they need, it’s an entitlement of the forty seven percent that are sucking things out of the government. But when they need it, there’s all the reasons in the world it should be there to the tune of thirty billion dollars.” Christie said that he was representing all of New Jersey, while dancing around the idea of priorities. Stewart expanded on his point, “The philosophy that I always seem to see from them is things that other people need are entitlements. Things that they need are things that should be done quickly and immediately…They have empathy for things that affect them, but have a hard time seeing the picture that other people are suffering.”
  • Chris Christie dodged Stewart’s point that Republicans appear to have an inconsistent set of priorities. They are all about the federal government when they need something, but the federal government is bad when they try to extend healthcare coverage. How would Christie like it if the federal government told New Jersey that no disaster relief would be released until the exact cost was known? Christie didn’t want to tell Stewart the truth. Last month the Koch Brothers warned him not to set up the health insurance exchange. His veto had everything to do with trying to get back into the good graces of the right wing billionaires who will be critical to his 2016 presidential campaign. Christie doesn’t want his “brand” tarnished by working with the Obama administration on the health insurance exchanges. That’s what this is really about. The Republican governors who are taking an ideological stand against these exchanges are hurting the people of their states. I believe that the state/federal partnership option would be the most effective. States should at least have a hand in running these programs, because local and state governments understand the needs of their residents and are in the best position to efficiently run these exchanges. But when Republican governors put partisan politics or presidential aspirations ahead of doing what’s right for their states, the result is a muddled and inconsistent philosophy like Chris Christie’s. Jon Stewart was right. For the uninsured who are dying everyday, their illness is their Sandy. Chris Christie doesn’t want to say this, but he’d rather be president than help the uninsured get the best care possible.
  • anonymous on 07 Dec 12
     
    "Gov. Christie said that not having a state exchange is not the same as not having coverage. Stewart made a broader philosophical observation about the Republican Party, "It always seems to me that for the Republican Party. If it's not something they need, it's an entitlement of the forty seven percent that are sucking things out of the government. But when they need it, there's all the reasons in the world it should be there to the tune of thirty billion dollars.""
anonymous

America's Real Criminal Element: Lead | Mother Jones - 0 views

www.motherjones.com/...lead-crime-link-gasoline

shared by anonymous on 06 Jan 13 - Cached
  • More generally, we all have a deep stake in affirming the power of deliberate human action. When Reyes once presented her results to a conference of police chiefs, it was, unsurprisingly, a tough sell. "They want to think that what they do on a daily basis matters," she says. "And it does." But it may not matter as much as they think.  
  • Another reason that lead doesn't get the attention it deserves is that too many people think the problem was solved years ago. They don't realize how much lead is still hanging around, and they don't understand just how much it costs us.
  • So in round numbers that's about $20 billion per year for two decades. But the benefits would be huge.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • By Mielke and Zahran's estimates, if we adopted the soil standard of a country like Norway (roughly 100 ppm or less), it would bring about $30 billion in annual returns from the cognitive benefits alone (higher IQs, and the resulting higher lifetime earnings).
  • Estimates here are even more difficult, but Mark Kleiman suggests that a 10 percent drop in crime—a goal that seems reasonable if we get serious about cleaning up the last of our lead problem—could produce benefits as high as $150 billion per year.
  • There's a flip side to this too. At the same time that we should reassess the low level of attention we pay to the remaining hazards from lead, we should probably also reassess the high level of attention we're giving to other policies. Chief among these is the prison-building boom that started in the mid-'70s.
  • There's always an excuse not to spend more money on a policy as tedious-sounding as lead abatement—budgets are tight, and research on a problem as complex as crime will never be definitive—but the association between lead and crime has, in recent years, become pretty overwhelming. If you gave me the choice, right now, of spending $20 billion less on prisons and cops and spending $20 billion more on getting rid of lead, I'd take the deal in a heartbeat. Not only would solving our lead problem do more than any prison to reduce our crime problem, it would produce smarter, better-adjusted kids in the bargain. There's nothing partisan about this, nothing that should appeal more to one group than another. It's just common sense. Cleaning up the rest of the lead that remains in our environment could turn out to be the cheapest, most effective crime prevention tool we have. And we could start doing it tomorrow.
  • anonymous on 06 Jan 13
     
    "Mark Kleiman, a public policy professor at the University of California-Los Angeles who has studied promising methods of controlling crime, suggests that because criminologists are basically sociologists, they look for sociological explanations, not medical ones. My own sense is that interest groups probably play a crucial role: Political conservatives want to blame the social upheaval of the '60s for the rise in crime that followed. Police unions have reasons for crediting its decline to an increase in the number of cops. Prison guards like the idea that increased incarceration is the answer. Drug warriors want the story to be about drug policy. If the actual answer turns out to be lead poisoning, they all lose a big pillar of support for their pet issue. And while lead abatement could be big business for contractors and builders, for some reason their trade groups have never taken it seriously."
anonymous

The Liberal Narrative is Broken, and Only Populism Can Fix It - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...275600

shared by anonymous on 08 May 13 - Cached
  • It is time to go populist.
  • A major reason for the limited support liberals gain (even within the Democratic Party) is a basic misunderstanding of the way democratic politics work.
  • Liberals console themselves, when they learn that for every American voter who identities as a liberal there are two conservatives, by saying, Ah, you don't get it; studies show that the majority only subscribe to conservative philosophies but they are 'operational' liberals.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • This lovely thought does not have a leg to stand on, because people cannot vote for these programs.
  • Instead, they must cast one vote that covers all the various programs and issues -- domestic and foreign -- before them. In doing so, they do not build some kind of index where they award five points for promoting Social Security, four for Medicare, three for parks, minus two for farm subsidies, and so on.
  • Rather, voters fall back on political philosophy as a shortcut to reach their summary choice -- the only one they have.
  • And when it comes to general philosophical leanings, the overwhelming majority of the population lean conservative, as these graphs show.
  • On the philosophical level, the liberal approach does not play for many because it is too abstruse.
  • When CNN asked a group of Democratic voters to recite the Republican message, they did so crisply, on the spot. When they same group was asked to recite the Democrats' message -- they hemmed and hawed.
  • Thus, President Obama stated in the 2013 State of the Union, "It's not a bigger government we need, but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth."
  • Previously he told Americans, "I believe government should be lean; government should be efficient. I believe government should leave people free to make the choices they think are best for themselves and their families, so long as those choices don't hurt others."
  • He followed in the footsteps of the popular Bill Clinton, who made his mark by declaring that the age of big government was over and ending welfare as we knew it. Both cases reflect the pressure on liberals to kiss the we-don't-favor-big-government ring before they can hope that the majority of Americans will give their message a chance.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 08 May 13
       
      See also: Clinton & Blair's "Third Way"
  • More important, many government activities have become indefensible.Reports are published daily showing very large parts of the government are no longer serving the people and that they have been captured by special interests.
  • One reads on Monday that Congress voted 394 to 1 to extend a subsidy program started in 1925 to ensure there would be enough helium for zeppelins, but now serves only a few private interests.
  • On Tuesday, that casino and private prison corporations who declare themselves real-estate investment trusts (REITs) although they have nothing to do with the real-estate business have gained IRS approval not to pay taxes on their profits.
  • On Wednesday, that a hospital chain requires its physicians to hospitalize 50 percent of the seniors who set foot into its ERs and automatically orders a battery of tests for them whether they need it or not, all charged to Medicare.
  • On Thursday, that when 19 of the largest Wall Street firms violated anti-fraud laws, rather than face criminal prosecution, they were made to promise not to break the law in the future. When they broke it anyway, in 51 different cases, no charges were filed and the offenders were simply made to repeat their promise to behave.
  • And on Friday one is reminded that not one of the fine people who brought us the finical crisis that lost millions their homes, jobs, and life savings have been jailed, including those who hired people to systematically commit massive fraud. And that that the banks we bailed out are still too big to fail, while their executives got big bonuses and are carry on brewing the next financial bubble.
  • On it goes. Moreover, one must assume that for every government capture by special interests the press reveals, there are quite a few others not aired.
  • No wonder many found that the Tea Party spoke to their anger. True, the movement also attracted some people who hold racial prejudices and oppose gay marriage.
  • But it is a serious mistake to hold that this is the main attraction, or ignore the Tea Party's key message: namely, that the government is not working for us, is not responsive to our needs, is not hearing our voices.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 08 May 13
       
      Salience.
  • Instead of dismissing Tea Partiers as a bunch of redneck hicks, liberals should tell them they are half right -- the government all too often is not serving the people -- but have the wrong address for their very justified anger.
  • It should be directed at the special interests
  • Readers may wonder why, if it is true that large segments of the public are open to populist appeals, did Occupy Wall Street fare so poorly?
  • First, because it had no clear narrative and was mainly an expression of a very diffuse sentiment; second, because it mixed populist with liberal messages; third, because it was unclear who the bad guys are -- Wall Street? The bankers? The one percent? The System?
  • A populist narrative must clearly focus on special interests, even admitting that they may include some with liberal feathers. And it must call for liberating the government from special interests so that it might once again serve the people. This is a thesis that could unite liberals with many others who have many very sound reasons to be furious.
  • The next step, a major first step to return the government to one for the people, by the people, is actually a relative easy one to outline: rolling back the negative impact of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.
  • However, few will be ready to support major limitations on the private monies gushing into elections until they have come to see the source of our malaise. It is as simple -- the message ought to be simple -- as this: The culprit is not the government but the unfettering of the special interests who all too often have captured its reins.
  • anonymous on 08 May 13
     
    "The left dare not answer conservatives by simply saying government is good. Instead, it must make special interests a rallying cry."
anonymous

Repulsive progressive hypocrisy - Salon.com - 2 views

www.salon.com/...singleton

politics partisan hypocritical

shared by anonymous on 08 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 08 Feb 12
     
    "During the Bush years, Guantanamo was the core symbol of right-wing radicalism and what was back then referred to as the "assault on American values and the shredding of our Constitution": so much so then when Barack Obama ran for President, he featured these issues not as a secondary but as a central plank in his campaign. But now that there is a Democrat in office presiding over Guantanamo and these other polices - rather than a big, bad, scary Republican - all of that has changed, as a new Washington Post/ABC News poll today demonstrates" Thanks to Erik Hanson for the pointer.
  • Erik Hanson on 09 Feb 12
     
    I don't know that this was me. My take on this whole thing is that liberals mostly feel that Obama has let them down by being too centrist, but that they'll still vote for him over Rom-tor-rich anyday.
  • anonymous on 09 Feb 12
     
    I coulda sworn you did...sorry. And I share your sentiment. That's the kind of trap left-centrists and leftists have. I surely don't hate Obama. I think I understand that presidents make concessions. But when you made such a big, _big_ stink about it during the race, at the very least, don't... say... _increase_ drone strikes. The crux, though, doesn't have anything to do with this stuff. It's about rhetorical inconsistency. Someone yesterday remarked "This is why I think Obama is not the lesser of evils." Keeping Guantanamo open and increasing drone strikes is exactly the kind of thing that self-described Conservatives *supported* during G.W.'s administration. But, we're really not that different after all. Once 'our man' gets the office, we make retroactive justifications. Isn't it fun to be a human animal?
anonymous

Against Evil - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...against_evil

geopolitics history

shared by anonymous on 27 Jul 10 - Cached
  • it is more likely yet another example of the refusal of liberals to acknowledge the success of Reagan's Cold War policies: first, rebuilding a disastrously diminished security establishment (diplomatic and political as well as military), then challenging the Soviet Union in a way that surely hastened the demise of the "evil empire."
  • What many of us who served in the Reagan administration do argue is that the delegitimization of the Kremlin dictators (accomplished, in part, by what Beinart calls "virulent Cold War rhetoric"), the rebuilding of American military capabilities, and a skillful arms control strategy (that eventuated in Soviet acceptance of Regan proposals they began by categorically rejecting), led to the Western victory in the Cold War.
  • Reagan barely took notice of what was an insignificant "demand" for détente.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Reagan knew what he wanted and he knew how to achieve it. He was rock solid in defining -- and sticking with -- policies he believed were right. This was especially true with respect to arms control, where, often against the advice of the experts, the liberals, and much of the media, Reagan stayed the course until the Soviets gave him the agreement he wanted. 
  • What the article calls Reagan's "sudden infatuation with arms control," is pure invention. Beinart refers to the failure to conclude a U.S.-Soviet arms control treaty in Iceland in 1986 and implies that Reagan, his heart and mind changed by political expediency, had abandoned the tough policies to which he had been committed.
  • But Reagan, following his own beliefs and proceeding in his own way, achieved results no liberal foreign policy has approached -- or is likely to achieve.
  • anonymous on 27 Jul 10
     
    A rebuttal against Peter Beinart's "Think Again: Ronald Reagan." By Richard Perle at Foreign Policy on July 27, 2010.
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