A Minor Musing About Political Scars

Over the weekend, Bob Dole expressed doubts that he and Ronald Reagan could make it in today's Republican Party. He also said the national Republican party should "put a sign on the national committee doors that says closed for repairs until New Year's Day next year and spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas."

I expect to hear many young Republicans challenging Dole's credentials and proclaiming him a RINO.

In South Dakota, I have read David Newquist's lament about the lack of young Democrats in South Dakota. I have read two responses; the latter offers a striking metaphor.

Coincidentally, I came across a Rod Dreher post about a "jeremiad" against Louisiana, Dreher's home state. Dreher writes,

 I should add that James’s jeremiad can be read as a screed by someone who hates Louisiana. It is rather, in my judgment, a piece written by a man with a broken heart.

I'm not a Romantic, so I'll suggest a different term, battle weary.  I don't begrudge youth their optimism; indeed, it is a necessary corrective to the pessimism brought on by weariness.

At the same time, the young optimists perhaps need to heed the discouraging words uttered by the tired old folk. Dole and Newquist will disagree on which ideas are best, but they both agree that ideas and culture still matter. Even simple images matter; the optimistic buffalo metaphor that I alluded to earlier needs to be tempered with the reminder that the buffalo were hunted nearly to extinction. The young need to remember that the ability to face the storm doesn't guarantee one will survive the hunter.

Machiavelli advised his prince to develop the qualities of both the lion and the fox. Those in the political wasteland need both the enthusiasm of youth and the wisdom earned by scars.

Evidence Shows Americans Love Their Conspiracy Theories A Little Too Much

Earlier today I mused that folks might think calling Barack Obama the anti-Christ might be too dramatic. I may have to retract that statement soon. Public Policy Polling (PPP) released a poll that shows that more people than I thought believe Obama to be in league with Satan:

13% of voters think Barack Obama is the anti-Christ, including 22% of Romney voters

I was also wrong in thinking that Sibby's views about the New World Order were shared by fewer than 10% of Americans. PPP found that the New World Order is feared by over 25% of Americans including a sizable group of Romney supporters:

28% of voters believe secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government, or New World Order. A plurality of Romney voters (38%) believe in the New World Order compared to 35% who don’t

Some Americans really, really hate TV:

15% of voters say the government or the media adds mind-controlling technology to TV broadcast signals (the so-called Tinfoil Hat crowd)

I should point out that the results were published on April 2, 2013, so they don't seem to be an April Fool's Day prank.

Some results didn't surprise. Climate change has become politicized. Republicans believe it to be a lie; Democrats believe it to be truth:

37% of voters believe global warming is a hoax, 51% do not. Republicans say global warming is a hoax by a 58-25 margin, Democrats disagree 11-77, and Independents are more split at 41-51. 61% of Romney voters believe global warming is a hoax.

The most frustrating results involve 9/11. Despite all evidence to the contrary, a large number continue to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved.

28% of voters believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks. 36% of Romney voters believe Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, 41% do not.

Maybe, these people will soon start blaming Hussein for the Kennedy assassination:

51% of voters say a larger conspiracy was at work in the JFK assassination, just 25% say Oswald acted alone

The full PPP results are here.

Quotation Of The Day: Do Political Labels Have Any Meaning? Edition

From this Daniel McCarthy post at The American Conservative:

On the other hand, the past decade has seen exciting new bad ideas arise on the right, beginning with that of fomenting revolution throughout the Middle East. We already have an excessively financialized economy, but while the left has played a considerable role in bringing that about, the notion that there’s nothing dangerous about concentrating wealth in very few hands—or that American workers should have to compete for wages on a leveled playing field with billions of people in the developing world—is characteristic of the right’s economic philosophy. If you had to say whether America was in greater danger of tilting toward communism or plutocracy, could you honestly answer “communism”?

An overpriced, hyper-militarized foreign policy that fails to protect us from its own blowback; the immiseration of the American middle class; the structural weakness of the global financial system; the diminution of privacy amid the press of technological intrusions and mass taste; and the political/cultural fragmentation that deprives society as well as government of the capacity to act—all these things transcend the late 20th-century American understanding of the left-right spectrum. If your idea of conservatism is that it’s “anti-left,” you won’t be fighting the most important battles.

Yet Another Musing About Big Ideas

On Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish, Zoe Pollock provides a quick summation of reactions to the Neil Gabler essay that I discuss here.

Pollack quotes Will Wilkenson who contends that "more people read and discussed Kant last year than in 1950, or that the size of the class of people who study and produce ideas for a living is now much larger than it was in 1950."  She also quotes Megan Graber who contends that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia are big ideas.  Finally she quotes Kevin Drum who contends,

[B]ig ideas may or may not have been more common half a century ago than they are now, but at least back then we knew where to find them and we have a widely understood set of social conventions about how to discuss them. We haven't yet really figured that out for electronic media, and that makes the discussion of big ideas chaotic enough and inchoate enough that it can often seem as if the ideas themselves don't exist anymore. But I suspect they do. We just have to learn how to talk about them in a new language.

I'm going to play philosopher without a license and contend that  Drum, Graber, and Wilkenson are all missing the point.

First, the technological innovations that Graber and Drum discuss are technological innovations but not necessarily big ideas as Gabler or Wilkenson conceive the term.  More importantly, to use Wilkenson's Kant example, the technological innovations that Graber references have a result that is the complete opposite of Kant's categorical imperative.  Kant based his imperative on the fact that humans are autonomous beings who possess reason.  Wikipedia and Facebook do little to reaffirm a person's autonomy.  In fact, many people now use Wikipedia as a reason for humans to "know" less because everything that one may need to know and remember can be found on the site.  In short, humans should lessen their autonomy and depend on the machine or the cloud.  If the past 500 years have produced a  greater weapon of quiet compulsion than Facebook, I am unsure I want to know of it.

Second, Americans have not been blessed with leaders with the skills or desire to implement big ideas.  FDR created social security; subsequent administrations raided the trust to pay for other pet programs.  Ronald Reagan contended that government was the problem but those claiming to be his disciples grew the size and scope of government.  Further, during the past 60 years, Democrats have offered little except extend the New Deal; Republicans have countered with reduce spending and "starve the beast."  Most recent leaders lack George H.W. Bush's honesty.  At least he admitted he didn't get the vision thing.

Third, too many big ideas have had military or strategic implementations: the interstate highway system, the space program, or the Internet.  Perhaps looking for ideas that don't have military use would help thinkers produce a new set of big ideas.  While we're turning from military use as a source of big ideas, perhaps Americans should stop with the war metaphors.  The wars on drugs and poverty have produced neither ideas nor success.

Finally, the fault may lie in ourselves.  Big ideas take time and offer little immediate reward.  Although, Americans now lack the honesty to admit holding the attitude that "he who dies with the most toys wins," most of us spend far too much time "getting and spending" without acknowledging that such activity causes us to "waste our powers."

Conservatives And Evangelicals May Not Go Together Like A Horse And Carriage

At The Front Porch Republic, Darryl Hart has written a provocative post about evangelicalism and conservative politics.  I am going to hit a few highlights, but the whole article is worth reading.

Hart writes,

The shame here is that we are over three decades into the shot-gun marriage of conservatives and evangelicals and the latter have apparently not learned a thing from the Right. . . . Conservatives were often Christian and shared evangelical convictions about the importance of religion as the basis for culture. But Conservatives were never so biblicist about it.

The alliance between conservatives and evangelicals has always confused me.  Conservatives have seemingly used evangelicals as political cannon fodder but have never awarded their foot soldiers the spoils of battle.  The fact that evangelicals keep returning to help conservatives win elections indicates that they have learned little from their political allies.

Hart also points out that relying on the Bible as the source of one's political conservatism is problematic.  First, the Constitution is not in the Bible and the Bible is not in the Constitution.

For most Protestants, the Bible and the Constitution were in fundamental harmony, or at least Protestants were free to interpret the Bible according to the liberties protected by the Constitution. But anyone who has read the Pentateuch, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Constitution knows that the ideals of checks and balances, small government, and freedom of religion, are not readily found in Scripture.

Second, many conservatives don't accept the Bible as a source of authority; instead they appeal to natural law.

Instead, natural law was a way of appealing to a common set of truths derived from the creator of the universe upon which people could try to establish a peaceful, free, and orderly society. It was also the grounds for trusting neighbors who didn’t have Jesus in their hearts; the law written on their hearts would keep these God-deniers from most criminal activity and maybe even lead to genuinely neighborly acts.

Having differing sources of authority may cause evangelicals to see allies where none exist.  Further, being unwilling to accept natural law as authority may lead them to underestimate the many varieties of conservative.  More importantly, evangelicals seem to have no coherent idea of what to do if given the chance to govern.

[Evangelicals] sincerely believe they are conservative. But they have almost no understanding of the various shades of American conservatism and its different thinkers. They think they are conservative simply because they are Christian, never realizing that at least since the publication of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, a lively debate has been going on about the Right and its borders. They think they are conservative because their Bible tells them they are conservative. Yet, they don’t know the world of American conservatism beyond restoring the Decalogue in public life.

Evangelicals allied with conservatives not because conservatives had the same priorities but because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."  This rationale is ironic.   Evangelicals insist that thought and action must be biblical. but they have based their political alliances on a maxim not found in the Bible.

Reading And Politics And Consequences

Tevi Troy, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former senior aide to president George W. Bush, has an interesting article about the books the current Republican candidates have read or are currently reading.  I won't go through the whole list, but I do want to highlight a few highlights.

First, the epithets that Troy or a headline writer gives some of the candidates prove interesting, illuminating, and descriptive.

MICHELE BACHMANN — THE CONVERTED CONSERVATIVE

MITT ROMNEY — THE CONSENSUS CONSERVATIVE

RON PAUL — THE UNORTHODOX CONSERVATIVE

NEWT GINGRICH — THE VACUUM-CLEANER CONSERVATIVE

RICK PERRY — THE RED-MEAT CONSERVATIVE

Second, Troy's conclusion is thought provoking.

The reading lists of the 2012 Republican contenders reflect not only the wide-open nature of the field, but the still-open question of what it means to be a conservative. Reagan left office more than two decades ago, and the GOP still cannot agree on any one person to take his place — let alone a single book to define modern conservatism. There is no latter-day “The Conscience of a Conservative” to pluck off a shelf or download on your Kindle; and there are no Buckleys or Friedmans to write landmark conservative works.

Yet there seems to be a thirst for big books, or at least big ideas, that Republican candidates can use as guiding lights. It may be a coincidence, but the first contender to withdraw from the race, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, did not really highlight any big books animating his conservatism. (In his own book, “Courage to Stand,” Pawlenty cites Ross Bernstein’s “The Code: The Unwritten Rules of Fighting and Retaliation in the NHL” as an example of the “finest lessons and greatest joys” that the sport of hockey has given him, and explains how it informs his political strategies and dealmaking.)

The variety and unpredictability of the GOP candidates’ reading lists could reflect a willingness to pursue unconventional thinking, for good or for ill, and they contrast with Democratic reliance on a single type of book, which evokes Saint Thomas Aquinas’s warning of hominem unius libri timeo (“I fear the man of a single book”). But the variety could also prove more virtue than defect. The Republicans have become a party of too many ideas, but too few unifying ones beyond low taxes and a newfound fiscal conservatism. This lack of clarity on core principles will be tested in the 2012 primaries, and the results could guide conservatism for years to come.

I need to do much more thinking to come to a sound conclusion, but I am wondering if it's more dangerous to have only one book or only one idea.

Some Depressing Paragraphs to Start The School Year

From the New York Times article "The Elusive Big Idea" by Neal Gabler, a senior fellow at the Annenberg Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California and the author of Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination.  The whole article is worth reading and thinking about, but the following points and paragraphs seem to be the most relevant.

First, it seems we have fewer ideas than we used to.

Ideas just aren’t what they used to be. Once upon a time, they could ignite fires of debate, stimulate other thoughts, incite revolutions and fundamentally change the ways we look at and think about the world.

They could penetrate the general culture and make celebrities out of thinkers — notably Albert Einstein, but also Reinhold Niebuhr, Daniel Bell, Betty Friedan, Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould, to name a few. The ideas themselves could even be made famous: for instance, for “the end of ideology,” “the medium is the message,” “the feminine mystique,” “the Big Bang theory,” “the end of history.” A big idea could capture the cover of Time — “Is God Dead?” — and intellectuals like Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal would even occasionally be invited to the couches of late-night talk shows. How long ago that was.

If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé.

Further, it seems we won't start caring.

It is no secret, especially here in America, that we live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy. While we continue to make giant technological advances, we may be the first generation to have turned back the epochal clock — to have gone backward intellectually from advanced modes of thinking into old modes of belief.  . . .

We live in the much vaunted Age of Information. Courtesy of the Internet, we seem to have immediate access to anything that anyone could ever want to know. We are certainly the most informed generation in history, at least quantitatively. There are trillions upon trillions of bytes out there in the ether — so much to gather and to think about.

And that’s just the point. In the past, we collected information not simply to know things. That was only the beginning. We also collected information to convert it into something larger than facts and ultimately more useful — into ideas that made sense of the information. We sought not just to apprehend the world but to truly comprehend it, which is the primary function of ideas. Great ideas explain the world and one another to us.

Finally, most of us may be so concerned with our immediate wants and needs that we don't care.

Still, while these ideas may change the way we live, they rarely transform the way we think. They are material, not ideational. It is thinkers who are in short supply, and the situation probably isn’t going to change anytime soon.

We have become information narcissists, so uninterested in anything outside ourselves and our friendship circles or in any tidbit we cannot share with those friends that if a Marx or a Nietzsche were suddenly to appear, blasting his ideas, no one would pay the slightest attention, certainly not the general media, which have learned to service our narcissism.

What the future portends is more and more information — Everests of it. There won’t be anything we won’t know. But there will be no one thinking about it.

I Question My Fellow Teachers' Wisdom Again

I thought that NEA acted unwisely when they endorsed President Obama nearly 18 months before the 2012 election.

Today, I'm wondering if SDEA isn't making an equally unwise decision by beginning an initiative drive to increase South Dakota's sales tax by one percent.

This Nathan Johnson post makes a strong case that South Dakota's tax system is unfair and that the proposed sales tax increase to fund K-12 education and Medicaid is a bad idea.

South Dakota’s tax system is currently structured so that is not even close to the reality. In fact, South Dakota turns that expectation on its head.

According to a 2009 study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), the poorest 20 percent of non-elderly taxpayers in the state contributed 11 percent of their income to the state’s sales, excise and property taxes in 2007. The top 1 percent of that same category of taxpayers — those making $423,000 or more — contributed 1.9 percent.

Today, Bob Mercer adds another reason to doubt that the proposal's wisdom.

If the initiative does pass, the Legislature isn’t bound to follow any of the directives within the new law. The Legislature can change any of it. So there is absolutely no guarantee that the $175 million will go solely to Medicaid and K-12 schools.

Today's Argus Leader implies that the Legislature's ability to appropriate the sales tax increase will have a few limits.

However, it would not completely tie the Legislature's hands when the state is struggling. Each of the past two years, the Legislature has changed state law so that lawmakers did not have to increase per-student funding at the same rate as inflation.

The measure would not prohibit the Legislature from doing that again if revenues either shrink or grow more slowly than inflation. However, the relief would be temporary, as the measure would require lawmakers in subsequent years to make back payments for education when state revenues bounce back faster than inflation.

There's nothing in the article that indicates that the Legislature can't change the payback provision at its pleasure.

The notion that one can trick out-of-state pheasant hunters, Wall Drug visitors, and Mt. Rushmore gawkers to fund necessary programs by charging them an extra penny sales tax is tempting.  Unfortunately, yielding to temptation usually provides temporary pleasure and long lasting negative consequences.  We all have our favorite examples:  that fruit in the garden, the handful of Cheetos that turned into a meal of two family sized bags, and that little credit card spree that took six years to pay off.  In this case, the damage done to those least able to pay, the furthering a terrible tax structure, and the uncertainty that the funds will actually be used for the indicated purpose make this temptation's consequences more onerous than most.

On The Need For Compromise: The Devil Is In The Defintions

At the Madville Times, Cory responds to this chart.

Cory writes,

This chart appears to support an observation I made over the weekend, that Democrats are actually the center, seeking practical solutions and good government, while Republicans are the wild-eyed ideologues, who view compromise as the root of our problems.

In certain areas (freedom of speech, human rights), compromise makes me queasy. But compromise lies at the heart of good governing. Compromise is how adults get things done. And if you’re looking for compromise, it appears you’re much more likely to find a home in the Democratic party.

 In the comments, Ken Blanchard writes,

. . . . The whole point of compromise is get as close as one can to one’s principles when other people are involved. . . .

There is a very good reason why a lot of Republicans are skeptical of compromise. They think that politicians go to Washington promising change and then do business as usual. They think that compromise means making promises you can’t keep and spending trillions you don’t have.

Nonetheless, I am tempted to accept your view that Republicans have principles and Democrats don’t. You’d think that when Obama criticized Bush’s national security policies, that the former was speaking from principle. If so, he compromised his principles in a hurry. You’d think that Democrats had a principle that a President can’t start a war without consent from Congress. Obama surely compromised that principle in a hurry, with his utter contempt for the War Powers Act. So maybe you’re right. Compromise is the way to get things done. Principles are just obstacles to good government. Thanks for setting me straight.

First the esteemable Dr. Blanchard correctly observes politics and values and principles create a complicated calculus.  For example, the Christan Right's support for Ayn Rand acolytes confuses me.  He also correctly observes President Obama has violated principle by refusing to follow the War Powers Act.  The President deserves to be condemned for his disdain for Constitutional principles.

It seems, however, that Blanchard has confused "negotiation" and "compromise"  when he asserts the "point of compromise is get as close as one can to one’s principles."  A standard definition of compromise* is

a settlement of differences by mutual concessions; an agreement reached by adjustment of conflicting or opposing claims, principles, etc., by reciprocal modification of demands. [emphasis mine]

In short, compromise means that both sides must make concessions.  Negotiate, on the other hand, seems to carry the connotation of success.  To negotiate is to "arrange or settle by discussion and mutual agreement."  Further, it can mean "to succeed in accomplishing or managing."  Here, the "mutual agreement" can be a win for one side or the the other.  There is an agreement, but there may not be "mutual concessions" or "reciprocal" modifications.  If one has superior talent or resources, one can manage to get everything that one desires through negotiation and refuse to compromise.

Today's New York Times leads with

The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, warned on Wednesday of a “huge financial calamity” if President Obama and the Republicans cannot agree on a budget deal that allows the federal debt ceiling to be increased. Moody’s, the ratings agency, threatened a credit downgrade, citing a “rising possibility” that no deal would be reached before the government’s borrowing authority hits its limit on Aug. 2.

"Huge financial calamity" and "a credit downgrade" indicate that the time for negotiation, getting as much as one can," has ended.  The time has come to compromise.

James Fallows illustrates what I hope most Americans want from their leaders in this situation.

It's easy to forget at times like these, but the whole ponderous U.S. political/governmental system is made of actual human beings, who -- even as they respond to large-scale ideological, political, financial, and interest-group pressures -- can still choose to behave better, or worse, in a given set of circumstances. And the difference between good and bad behavior can make a difference. (If JFK's national security council had been much more hair-trigger and impatient during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or if Khrushchev had been, world history would have been different.)

I'll add another distinction to Fallows's point.  By all accounts Cantor and Obama are intelligent men.  Right now, America needs their wisdom more than their intellect.

*I used the definition of compromise as a noun although I am comparing the definitions of two verbs.  The verb definition "to settle by a compromise" does not do much to further the discussion.

The Adults Are Finally Speaking Up; Will Republicans Listen?

I think that the Bloggers' Rule Book says I'm supposed to answer this question at the end of the post.  I'll break the rule.  I fear the answer is no because ideas, or the lack thereof,  have consequences.

First, conservative columnist David Brooks who scolded,

If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases.

A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.

The party is not being asked to raise marginal tax rates in a way that might pervert incentives. On the contrary, Republicans are merely being asked to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures that are themselves distortionary.

This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers.

But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.

The Economist adds its voice to the scolding Brooks began,

This newspaper has a strong dislike of big government; we have long argued that the main way to right America’s finances is through spending cuts. But you cannot get there without any tax rises. In Britain, for instance, the coalition government aims to tame its deficit with a 3:1 ratio of cuts to hikes. America’s tax take is at its lowest level for decades: even Ronald Reagan raised taxes when he needed to do so.

And the closer you look, the more unprincipled the Republicans look. Earlier this year House Republicans produced a report noting that an 85%-15% split between spending cuts and tax rises was the average for successful fiscal consolidations, according to historical evidence. The White House is offering an 83%-17% split (hardly a huge distance) and a promise that none of the revenue increase will come from higher marginal rates, only from eliminating loopholes. If the Republicans were real tax reformers, they would seize this offer.

Both parties have in recent months been guilty of fiscal recklessness. Right now, though, the blame falls clearly on the Republicans. Independent voters should take note.

Last night Speaker John Boehner withdrew from negotiations with President Obama.  The New York Times reports,

But the prospect of getting the bulk of his own Republican majority behind a $4 trillion, 10-year agreement was looming as a very heavy political and policy lift for the speaker who is still in his first year in the position.

As potential elements of the plan became public, Mr. Boehner was encountering stiff resistance from fellow Republicans determined to oppose any package containing proposals that could be construed as a tax increase, worried such a deal could cost the party dearly in the 2012 elections. In the initial White House talks last Thursday, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican, broke with the speaker and pushed for a mid-range agreement.

Joe Carter analyzes "X-Cons" and makes the following observations about Generation-X conservatives.

• X-Cons do not have a broad grasp of history. If we have an interest in history, we are likely to have a read a few books which we hold in high esteem and consider authoritative (Paul Johnson's Modern Times is among our favorites). At best, we may have done in-depth study on a particular historical era (the American founding, the Civil War, World War II) but we lack a deep understanding of general history. We have almost no comprehension of the intellectual history of conservatism.

• Talk radio has had a profound influence in shaping our political sensibilities. Just as William F. Buckley, Jr. provided the cast for conservatism in the 1950s, Rush Limbaugh shaped the conservatism of X-Cons in the 1980s and 1990s. Limbaugh provided not only the content but the style in which we conservatives would engage in political discourse: assured, confrontational, snarky. Talk radio taught us X-Cons to appreciate confirmation of our political views. Arguments needn't be persuasive when you are certain not only that we are right and our opponents are wrong, but also that we are right and they are wrong-headed.

• With confirmation came a sense of (virtual) community and a realization that a Ph.D in Political Science wasn't required in order to express a valid opinion on politics. Imbued with a sense of confidence from a young age, we X-Cons grew comfortable expressing ourselves in a conversational style that imitated our talk radio mentors. Blogging was (and remains) a natural outlet for our mode of expression.

• Unlike previous generations, X-Cons do not necessarily associate conservatism with either the East Coast, the preppie-class, or Republicanism. William F. Buckley, Jr. and George Will may still command respect, but they are considered eccentric curiosities rather than exemplary models of conservative intelligentsia. X-Cons associate such elitism with liberalism and consider the GOP, rather than the Democrats, to be the party of the “little guy."

In short, Generation-X conservatives have little respect for experts or intellectuals.  That attitude is having consequences now as Brooks observes,

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it. . . .

The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name. Economists have identified many factors that contribute to economic growth, ranging from the productivity of the work force to the share of private savings that is available for private investment. Tax levels matter, but they are far from the only or even the most important factor.

It's easy to see why a group with "little grasp of history" would "have no economic theory worthy of the name."  Further, a group that doubts scholars, considers intellectuals like Buckley a "curiosity," and believes that many opinions, including those screamed on talk radio, are the equivalent of those who have spent a lifetime studying a subject, will not listen to the adults warning them of the risks they're cavalierly taking

Why Do Christians Vote For Randians?

I posted about Ayn Rand's contempt for religion here.

This ad does a far better job of allowing her condemn herself with her own words. (HT Michael Tomasky)

Conservatives like William F. Buckley did a great service by reminding Americans that ideas have consequences.  Rand's ideas taken to their logical conclusion will produce consequences as pernicious as the totalitarian state she criticizes.

Update: I missed this post by big boy blogger Andrew Sullivan yesterday.  He gives full treatment to this issue.  HT @coralhei

Do They Read The Same Things?

Amazon.com has developed a list of the "20 Most Well Read Cities."  Cambridge, Massachusetts  tops the list.  Berkley, California is third.  Salt Lake City, Utah is third.  College towns dominate the list.  I suspect that fact skews Amazon's results a bit.

Amazon should have released more information, especially books that residents of each city read.  Do people is Berkley read the same books as people in Salt Lake?  Do people in Pittsburgh which comes in 13th read the same books as people in Atlanta which was ranked 20th.  How about 19th ranked Portland citizens and 18th ranked Cincinnati residents?  Do some areas read more fiction than others?

Given that Republicans and Democrats watch different television programs for both news and entertainment, it seems unlikely they would read the same books.  Further, conservatives have their own book club; progressives have theirs as well.  I suspect that frugal people will look at recommendations from each list and order from Amazon for bargains.

Part of my curiosity is merely curiosity, but reading is a major source of one's ideas.  Ideas have consequences and should be debated. Groupthink, large or small, is dangerous.  In other words, the New York Times bestseller list shouldn't be required reading, but if one region or political group limits itself to reading only conservative or liberal books, there's no way that ideas can be debated.

What's This Book Going to Cost Me?

Daniel Pink's book Drive has gotten great reviews.I haven't read it; I plan to this summer.  I really hesitate to comment on a book that I haven't read, but the reviews for this book scare me.  The reviews all contain descriptions and quotations similar to those Laura Vanderkam has in her recent review. She writes,

. . . Pink offers a different prescription. The best motivation, he suggests, is intrinsic, that is, when people want to do the work because they find the work itself fulfilling. That doesn’t mean such workers don’t want to be paid well. They do, of course, and they also like free coffee and in-office massages as much as anyone else. But leaders who understand this higher level of motivation compensate people in a way that “takes the issue of money off the table, so they can focus on the work itself.” They pay their employees well for their industry, but equally important, people aren’t pitted against one another through compensation schemes that pay some people way more than others for the same work. These leaders create an environment where people want to do their best. This involves giving people lots of autonomy over their time, their tasks, their techniques, and their teams; providing them an opportunity to work toward mastery of their professional craft; and imbuing their work with a sense of purpose. [emphasis added] (What Drives Us by Laura Vanderkam, City Journal 5 March 2010)

Based on this review, Pink believes that people ought to have a calling rather than a job.  Michael Lewis explains the difference,

The distinction is artificial but worth drawing. A job will never satisfy you all by itself, but it will afford you security and the chance to pursue an exciting and fulfilling life outside of your work. A calling is an activity you find so compelling that you wind up organizing your entire self around it -- often to the detriment of your life outside of it.     There’s no shame in either. Each has costs and benefits. There is no reason to make a fetish of your career. There are activities other than work in which to find meaning and pleasure and even a sense of self-importance -- you just need to learn how to look.(Lewis, Bloomberg 10 December 2008)

In South Dakota, however, callings have consequences, as The Madville Times points out South Dakota pays the lowest wages per job of any state in the nation.  The Times points out "[i]n 2008, the per-job average here was $40,726. The next lowest state, Montana, posts $1462 more per job. The national average per job is $56,116.  According to the Times commentators, the story is  much more bleak; salaries in South Dakota are only about $33,000 whereas the national average is $42,270 (The Madville Times 6 April 2010).

Callings are wonderful.  In Greek mythology, Prometheus had a calling to bring humanity fire.  Clergy, missionaries, and doctors have callings to preach the gospel and help the poor and suffering.  Police and firefighters have callings to protect the public.  Most teachers claim they don't work for the money; in short, they claim to have a calling to teach.

In an ideal world, Pink may be right and his ideas may make workers' lives better and improve employer/employee relationships.  In South Dakota, however, private employers and school boards are more likely to use Pink's ideas to put  negotiations for higher pay in the same category as requests for "free coffee and in-office massages."  In other words, higher salaries are frivolous and a teacher's calling will be "so compelling that [the teacher] should be happy to build the teacher's "entire self around it."  Of course anything that rewarding should be done for the joy of doing it; therefore, no salary is really needed.

That's my fear; I may be wrong, but I doubt it.