Monday, January 09, 2006
RINO Musings...
*** GLENN REYNOLDS IS A CONSERVATIVE? Good Lord. Has anyone told him? ***
We still have a lot of desperately poor people in our country, and we don't do enough to help them. Well of course there are. Many of them don’t do enough to help themselves. Some are in that situation through no fault of their own, but I've known too many people who were born into poverty and got out to doubt that it is both possible and indeed almost inevitable if the will is present.
The question is this: given that people have varying incomes and different levels of discomfort with the poverty of others (as well as divergent ideas of how best to “help the poor”) how comfortable are you with Lyndon Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty’ approach? After 40+ years, poverty in America is still endemic. I’d say it’s a bloody quagmire. Perhaps Reagan and Moynihan were right: big government solutions don't work - they're a lazy man's answer because we don't want to have to traipse down to that soup kitchen ourselves. Maybe the old solutions - self-help and private charity - are still the best.
There are a lot of dishonest businessmen. There are a lot of dishonest people, period. Businessmen are just more efficient at what they do.
I think that golf is our most destructive sport. Had you said time-wasting, I might have agreed. Judging by the incarceration rate of the participants, I’d have gone for the NBA or NFL myself. The combination of ridiculous salaries at a very early age with lack of accountability is a character-eroding experience.
I do not understand the impulses behind conspicuous consumption, "keeping up with the Joneses" or any other motive for consumption that depends from a desire for status or recognition. People who believe -- consciously or otherwise -- that a big house or expensive watch will confer class in and of themselves are quite mistaken. I think you’re wrong. Stupid people are impressed by stupid things. I have an eye for good design, but I’m a bargain shopper. When I worked in California I took vicious delight in informing some of my snobbier co-workers (when they asked) that the to-die-for sweater/skirt/outfit I was wearing was purchased at Target, K-Mart, or TJ Maxx just to watch their faces fall. I’ll spend $400 on a business jacket if it’s really classic and tailored beautifully, but it had better be something special and it will stay in my closet for years. And next to it will very likely be a shell from Target, one of my favorite places to shop.
End "corporate welfare" now. I may have to defer to TH on this one. My instincts say he is right, but I can see instances (urban growth, for instance) where government may have an overriding interest in favoring business over the short term. I suppose this is where you see *my* lefty thoughts come peaking out. As much as I hate much of what FDR did, I also see the long-term benefit of the infrastructure all those federal dollars poured into this nation: an infrastructure that is now being eroded and not replaced. And this disturbs me mightily. This is an area where I believe conservatives are short-sighted, as I explain here. Yes, I'm advocating a massive federal spending program to benefit the oppressed masses. I think Screwy just fainted :)
Tom Delay is a greaseball, whether or not Ronnie Earle is a partisan thug of a prosecutor. Agreed. In spades.
For the life of me, I did not understand the public reaction to Janet Jackson's breast revelation at the Super Bowl a couple of years ago. What's to understand? It crossed the line. TH and I have gone round and round on this one.
I’ll tell you what I don’t understand. I don’t understand why people think they should be allowed to watch or do whatever they want 24/7 in public and families with small children or elderly parents should have to worry all the time about them hearing profanity or viewing pornographic content or public nudity. Where do you draw the line? Because wherever that line is drawn, people like Janet Jackson will continue to push it. Is it too much to ask for adults to comport themselves in public with a modicum of decency? It wasn’t when I was growing up. When did this change?
I swear like a sailor, but I am able to contain myself in public out of consideration for others who may not find my penchant for inventing cussing amusing. All I ask is that you do the same. In private, you may do as you please, but in public you have no right to inflict your taste for nudity or profanity on others who find these things extremely offensive and cannot avoid them unless they remain locked in their houses and never venture out. To insist otherwise is boorish.
I think homosexuals should be allowed and even encouraged to get married, because I think it will promote, rather than degrade, social stability. It is also the kind thing to do. And I favor civil unions, for all of the same reasons. I believe marriage has a very special meaning and that gay marriage is a new thing: close, but not quite the same. Words have meaning, and to give a new thing the same name is to gloss over essential differences between two distinct things. I believe distinctions are important.
If being married had no legal ramifications and if children were not involved, this would not matter. I think a gay couple who love each other are no less ‘married’ than a straight couple in the emotional sense. But because of the ‘slippery slope’ problem and the issue of unforeseen consequences, I think it is vital to preserve the legal distinction between the two types of marriage, and boy will what I’m going to say next make some people angry. This allows society, if it wishes to, to legally discriminate between the two, in the sense that they can choose to treat the two differently for public policy reasons. Again, this matters where children are involved. Whole posts can (and should) be written about this. For starters, I will refer you to this situation.
There is something very insidious about the way that Congress, the Pentagon brass and big defense contractors relate to each other. Ummm, yeah.
I don't really understand why people get so bent out of shape over porn. Or pot. Oh goody. Then you'll really enjoy the website I just found with the live webcam of your wife and daughter. Such talent really ought to be encouraged.
Yes, that was a bit below the belt, but it rather brings it all home, doesn't it? Because although there are some men who wouldn't mind, the vast majority of men who do like porn would most definitely not want other men to see either their wives or their daughters in that position.
And yet the women they are looking at are the wives or daughters of other men. And you have no way of knowing how old many of those young ladies are. Many of them are underaged. Some of them are children.
Do I have a moral objection to soft-core, voluntary (in that the woman is not coerced in any way into participating) porn? Nope. Not really.
Do I have any other objections? OK, I'll go out on a limb for some of my oppressed sisters and y'all can pile on and tell me how messed up I am. I'll tell you how it makes me feel. Not that it matters, because as a matter of law, this is completely irrelevant. But TH's question was why do some people object to porn, and that's what I'm answering.
I'm 46 years old, moderately attractive, and can still, at my age, stand in front of a mirror completely naked and like the way I look. That's pretty neat. Until I see pornography. There is no way in heck I can measure up as a woman to some 17 year old with 44DD surgically-enhanced breasts and a 17 inch waist. And frankly, the idea that I am expected as a female to remain faithful to my husband, yet he should be allowed to look at other naked young women, is a huge sexual turnoff for me. If he can do that because he finds it sexually gratifying, why can't I flirt (but go no farther) with other men? I'm not "cheating". I'm just indulging in a little harmless fantasy! Hey - women are different from men - we need emotional gratification (like men need 'visual gratification') - something to "fantasize about" - you know...to keep things fresh in the old sack. Is the picture getting any clearer? Yeah. It didn't quite work for me either.
Not all women feel this way about pornography. Some even like it. But many, many women (in fact, the vast majority I've talked to in my lifetime) view it as a sexual and emotional betrayal in a marital context. And that's as honest as I can be on the subject. Your mileage may vary, and objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.
After years of living in New Jersey (after having grown up in Iowa), I have reluctantly concluded that when government has to do something, the feds will do a better job of it. Wow. I have to be honest here. I have no idea whether this is true or not. There are definitely economies of scale and issues of central coordination where I can see an argument for the feds doing a better job. On the other hand, for smaller jobs, I'd think the states would have the edge if they can keep graft at bay.
We are not taking the risk of global climate change seriously enough. Even if the observed changes are ambiguous in their magnitude and causation, the "precautionary principle" that explains our offensive war against Islamic jihad also justifies much more attention to the possible impact of climate change. [I depart from my lefty friends, though, in what I think should be done, and why.]
And I depart from TH in two respects: I don't think the science is nearly good enough for us to tell definitively that there is global climate change (how many times have we seen The Next Big Theory utterly debunked, and I believe the dangers of pre-emptive course correction may outweigh the benefits. What does make sense? Make companies clean up as they go and bear the true economic costs of their actions. Again, some of *my* lefty thoughts coming out. This, again, is one area where I'd like to see government subsidies for energy production, etc. if it meant a cleaner environment. Because of the free rider problem, there is a case for spreading the pain via the tax burden. Don't hate the messenger.
... certain businesses (including state agencies) exploit human weaknesses. Sometimes this is virtually harmless -- who cares if DeBeers convinces a lot of dumb men that diamonds lead to sex with supermodels? But sometimes it is horrendous -- is there any doubt that certain consumer credit companies promote high cost credit to people who do not understand it and cannot handle it? Is there any defense for the tactics used in the advertising of state lottery programs? Whoa, whoa, whoa there Big Guy.
Yes, it's a big, dangerous world out there. Full of dangers. Full of opportunities. And some folks are smarter than others. And some folks, no matter how hard you try to make them, just will not read the fine print. And some banks, like one I used to work for, will continue to drop credit card apps over insane asylums and cc operators will get calls like the one I got in 1988 from a woman who'd just returned from Vegas with $5000 in cash advance charges on her bill that she didn't want to pay for.
She made them. To get money to play the slots. But she didn't feel she should have to pay for them, nor the exorbitant 2% cash advance fee, because she didn't understand what she was doing at the time. You see, she was just having fun, and she didn't win any money. Anyway, she lives with her cat, but he doesn't pay the bills.
How do you protect someone like that from themselves? Refuse to issue them credit? That's discrimination, and we can't have that anymore. Now that's one thing. Greed (your lottery program) I have no sympathy for.
I believe that government-mandated monopolies are appropriate in certain circumstances. [I think that inventors of novel and useful drugs should benefit from them, and leftists believe that primary and secondary education should be a monopoly, but we both believe in monopolies.]
I do, too. 'Nuff said.
I think that the Bush administration was guilty of wishful thinking in its handling of the Iraq war, particularly after the government in Baghdad collapsed. Why didn't they realize that we would be greeted both "with flowers" and intransigent resistance? If 80% of the population throws flowers and 20% hates your guts, it is going to be a problem, especially if the 20% is armed to the teeth. It was obvious that they could be right in general and still have a huge security problem, so why were they so little prepared? [As disappointed as I am in this, I also believe that (a) this sort of wishful thinking is tragically repeated in American history, and (b) the war was and remains the right policy among painful alternatives.]
Aieeeeee! Perhaps I'm guilty of overly-Byzantine thinking here, but this really seems like a no-brainer. It did even then and my opinion - and my assessment - hasn't changed one bit. Why on earth do you assume they didn't realize it? Why assume their public statements reflect their private assessment? When has anyone in Washington been able to say what they thought openly? Has that *ever* been a wise course of action? Did the earth move?
Was Ted Kennedy's stately blowhole suddenly sealed shut, making it safe to "share" the innermost thoughts of White House planners with the
You want some criticism of the administration from me? Fine. During his first term when Rumsfeld was running bloody roughshod over Colin Powell, Powell should have had the balls to go to the President and say, "either let me do my job or I'll resign". It's that simple. The State Department should have been in charge of reconstruction, but they were shoved aside by DOD because for whatever reason, Rumsfeld was allowed to prevail and Powell allowed that to happen, and Bush wouldn't stop it. But frankly, Bush had bigger fish to fry and Powell wasn't entirely trustworthy. He needed to have the courage of his convictions and he didn't. That's a confrontation that needed to happen, and because it didn't, the entire course of the war has been affected negatively. DOD is performing several functions it was never intended to, and this is, IMO, wrong.
I'm not a Powell fan. He travelled less than any Sec. of State and I think our national image suffered as a result. Not many will stand up to Rummy and he may have tried and been shot down. But if he was, he should have resigned. You're either in charge or you're not. He was popular enough that he could have forced a confrontation, and I don't think it would have been about ego. It would have been about what was good for the nation in the long run: making sure his Department was doing their part. And then he should have cracked some heads together and made sure they did a bang-up job. But I think he lacked the fire in the belly needed to make that happen, which is a damned shame.
There is something depressing in American consumerism. I despise malls - when I go there I'm like a commando on a mission. In and out with as few casualties as possible.
Corporate capitalism has its pros and its cons, and while I think the former massively outweigh the latter, all is not sweetness and light. One of the flaws is that certain industries fight to grow even when their growth is not necessarily the best thing for the community or country. Consider the processed food and chain restaurant businesses. Our population isn't growing, but our waist lines are. The only way these industries can grow is to persuade the weak-willed among us that we are not fat enough and need to eat even more. Or the homebuilding industry. We are paving over farmland, meadows and forests to build tract housing that is extravagant in its requirements for land, energy and infrastructure (such as roads), while the older stock in many cities crumbles away. Some of this is the result of political systems -- monopoly schools drive a lot of the sprawl. Much of it, though, is because the building industry invests a lot of money in advertising to persuade people that they should want a particular kind of house and in local politicians who want a certain kind of development. Good Lord. I think you're wearing me down. Agreed.
The "war on drugs" is just dumb. No you're not. Maybe we're going about it all wrong, but this strikes me as the type of thing people like you and Glenn Reynolds (who have never had to live in a crack-infested neighborhood and wouldn't know what to do if your SUV broke down in DC and you had to walk through SouthEast) love to say. Do me a favor. Go down to any urban hospital and volunteer for a few weeks to hold crack-addicted babies and then tell me how "just plain dumb" the war on drugs is. Or maybe you could fork over part of your salary to help that black kid with the colostomy bag who got hit in the drive-by last week.
Because that's a whole lotta pain that neither you nor I can take away. And none of those children would be where they are if it weren't for drugs.
Most of the time, capital punishment is more trouble than it is worth. And so, because we are fallible...we should...what? Not make any more tough calls?
The American love of cheap gasoline is very expensive in treasure, and increasingly so in blood. No war for oil? Lefty thoughts indeed.
We need a more efficient method for conferring medical care on the "working poor" than emergency rooms and hidden subsidies inside the hospital system. Argghhh!
We need to find a way to bring the American descendents of African slaves decisively into the mainstream of American life. I absolutely, unequivocally, call BS on this. Blacks need to bring themselves into the mainstream. They are not our inferiors in any respect and are fully capable of succeeding. Misguided social tinkering that severs the bonds of responsibility between black fathers and their children has all but destroyed the black family and perpetuated persistent black poverty and underachievement:
According to testimony given last fall to a Senate subcommittee by Ron Haskins of The Brookings Institution, from 1970 to 2001, the overall marriage rate declined 17% but 34% for blacks. The overall rate for out-of-wedlock births is 33% compared with 70% for blacks.
...research has shown that marriage provides significant benefits for men and women. Most important, children who are raised by their married, biological parents do better across every measure of economic, social, health and educational well-being than children raised in other family arrangements. In fact, when comparing families of similar socioeconomic status, these black children have similar outcomes as their white counterparts. Marriage is the great equalizer.
In many ways, the War on Poverty should have been named the War on the Black Family.
Peace is better than war. Not in all cases. War is horrible, but there are worse things than fighting in a just cause. I hope we never forget that.
Freedom is better than oppression. Justice is better than injustice. Those in a position to alleviate war, oppression and injustice and do so are better people for it. These are all reasons nations sometimes must go to war. Any why my family have served since the time of the Revolution. That said, it would be a beautiful thing if one day, my great grandchildren could say they'd never seen a war in their lifetime. Not because no one was willing to fight, but because we'd found a better way to resolve our differences.
And no, in my opinion, your position in the conservative 'sphere isn't all a sham, but feel free to snap one day and start taking gratuitous shots at Glenn Reynolds. We could use a good blog war :) But leave Wretchard alone - I have a feeling he's armed.
And for God's sake don't go wobbly like Sully - I should hate to have to start mocking you mercilessly.
And no. You are not a righty poseur. We all have doubts. I get them when I'm driving in my car. Doubts are a good thing - they make us question our premises.
May it ever be so.
25 Comments:
By 
TimDido, at
Mon Jan 09, 08:52:00 AM:
'End "corporate welfare" now...I suppose this is where you see *my* lefty thoughts come peaking out.'
Can I just dispel the notion that favoring corporate welfare is a "righty" thought? Proper conservative economists (Friedman, etc.) support FREE MARKETS. This means corporate welfare is ridiculously and shamelessly at odds with that. This notion that conservatives favor big business is ridiculous. Conservatives should (and the real ones do) take the side of maintaining fidelity to the system of free markets - not choosing teams between the 'big' guy and the 'little' guy.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Jan 09, 09:16:00 AM:
You're not a 44DD?!?
I understand the points against porn, but implicit in the "wife/daughter" argument is the idea that the "actors" aren't in a position to make sound judgments on their own. Perhaps they aren't, but if that's your view then it begs the next question: what else should we be paternalistic about?
A few other points, before I disappear into the world of work:
I offered no solution to the question of poverty. However, I spend a lot of time in the company of pretty affluent people. Most of them do not think about the problems of people who are much less fortunate as much as I was raised to do. Indeed, how much "black tie" charity really helps people in need? I'm not saying that we don't need museums, but I am at least a little worried that the rich in their gated communities and golf course developments are a bit too removed from the problems of people in the wrong spot.
2. On the question of the descendants of slaves (and I am being very precisely in my language), my use of first personal plural ("we need") was not at all meant to exclude blacks from responsibility for changing. I was using "we" in the broad, "we are all Americans" sense.
3. On the question of climate change, there are two unproven questions. First, is the climate changing in some measurable way that will affect us in some important way? By this I do not mean reductions in the ecosystems for certain indigenous trees. I am talking about sea-level changes that pressure coastal cities and weather changes that destroy harvests. Second, if the answer to the first is "yes," then what is the cause?
My own view (carefully hidden from my rant) is that it does seem that there are fairly dramatic changes in temperature going on. Even some anti-Kyoto types argue this, by pointing to evidence that the climate has swung dramatically before human economic activity could have affected it. OK, so shouldn't we get prepared for big swings in climate? I would invest money in developing crops that can thrive in higher temperatures, shorter growing seasons, dryer coditions. I would have plans for resettling people who live in places that will not survive a big increase in sea level. I would think about what the world economy does if it loses Europe's agricultural surpluses (which could happen if the North Atlantic salt conveyer stops). There's nothing inherently wrong or unnatural in climate change, but the impact on human settlement of even a natural change could be huge. We should be thinking about that, but we aren't because the entire debate is between leftists who really do not like industrial economies and rightists who don't want to hear that driving an SUV to the grocery store is anti-social. Both groups are arguing about the society they live in rather than thinking about how to respond flexibly to rapid changes in climate.
On the war on drugs, I think we're going about it all wrong. I'm not keen on legalizing heroin, if that's the objection.
I'm not sure I get your "Arrgghh!" on my incredibly perceptive health care point. :)
Thanks for straightening me out!
By Cardinalpark, at
Mon Jan 09, 09:18:00 AM:
Well I'm very glad you did that.
I would observe that many, perhaps most, of TH's musings were less about left and right, than about spirituality and morality versus decadence. Some of those musings went further and introduced a value judgment into government intervention into those issues.
We all struggle with internal conflict here, because we daily make choices that are at odds with our innate sense of right and wrong. Let's ask a few questions:
1) Who among us who supports the legality of abortion doesn't at heart undeerstand that there is (or maybe) a fundamental moral wrong in "terminating" a pregnancy?
2) Who in business isn't embarrassed by the "meaning of Enron?" Because as we read about Lay and Skilling and Fastow and Koppers, etc., don't we know that we too have also pursued making money? Lots of it. More than we need for sure. We're embarrassed because Enron is the unchecked reflection of the core profit motive which moves business leadership. It is frightening. So it must be punished severely in order to serve as a mitigating beacon -- do not go close to the line. Back off.
3) There is justice. There is "reparations" or compensation. There is revenge. There is equality of access and opportunity. And there is liberty. These things compete and are in conflict with each other. But let's be very clear and quite granular about what concept we are discussing when then discussing public policy. When we are talking about the law, people must be treated equally under it in order to have a just society. That is not true when we are talking about economics. People cannot be treated equally economically or we deprive them of their liberty. That certainly will lead to economic outcomes which are not equal - sometimes obscenely (from a spiritual perspective). That does not make then unjust or unfair.
4) Are you devout? Or not? Many of the concepts you're onto are about spiritual morality. And yet you depart from that when discussing drugs or abortion. Why? I am convniced that in their youth men adopt "cool" positions, ostensibly to impress peers and girls. They drink, the get stoned and they support a woman's "right to choose.
These become habits of course. But then you have children, you mature, you try to set a better example. And you try to recover your sense of values. Should government promote a proper sense of values? Should it condone drug use? Should we sanction gambling?
These are all tough and interesting philosophical questions. But they also cannot be asked in a vacuum. This country was definitely founded by peoplw who intended the nation's government to be infused with a value system. It would not sanction an established religion, like the Church of England. It would promote instead freedom of religion and tolerance. But the absence of an established religion should not be taken to say it was intended the US would be a secular nation. No way.
So many ponderables. I am much more with Cassandra here. Many of the "policies" which we ultimately choose to support reflect our own willingness (or lack of it) to reconcile these contradictions truthfully, or own up to hypocrisy. But these are our human issues, not government issues.
By Cardinalpark, at
Mon Jan 09, 09:23:00 AM:
Oh - one more. Peace if better than war. That is utter hogwash TH. Peace without liberty sucks. This is why pacifists like Screwy would sanction fascism. Enslavement is war by another name. So one should qualify that remark a bit.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Jan 09, 09:32:00 AM:
CP - A careful reading of my "peace is better than war" paragraph reveals the contradictions you spell out.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jan 09, 09:43:00 AM:
One day, I really *ought* to recycle a very interesting post from my Jet Noise days.
I was re-reading Plato because there is a very interesting concept that is fundamental (and scary) to what Cardinalpark is talking about: is it a proper role of government to encourage virtue?
Oddly enough, I think both liberals and conservatives would answer: "yes". They simply define "virtue" differently.
Liberals want us to abjure war and take care of the weak and helpless, and never say anything that hurts anyone's feelings. Oh, and make sure no conservatives are allowed to teach at university :D
Conservatives want society to support the "nucular" family, keep those horrid gays from marrying dolphins, and keep Janet Jacksons mammary glands off national TV.
The 'human vs govt' dichotomy is the one thing I have never understood about liberal ideology. Liberal profess such distrust for authority in general and government in particular, yet they seem oddly willing to delegate way too much power to government over our daily lives if it achieves some end they desire. Nowhere is this more evident than in their open advocacy of using SCOTUS to achieve via judicial fiat what they cannot via the ballot box. It is profoundly undemocratic and forever removes certain issues from public debate when the Constitution clearly provides a mechanism (amendment) for doing this. They just know they can't must the popular support so they do an end run around the Constitution. It scares the hell out of me.
This "end justifies the means" thinking is mind boggling to me - it's fine as long as you trust whoever is in power, but they don't even profess to trust government. Whence, then, this blind "trust" that government will solve all social ills?
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jan 09, 09:45:00 AM:
Oh, and I didn't think I was 'straightening you out' TH.
I just couldn't resist adding my two cents. I'm female - what woman can resist the chance to yammer on...and on...and on...?
It was a fascinating topic, actually. Food for thought, as so many of your posts are. I wasn't quite sure what I would think on many of your points until I sat down this morning.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jan 09, 09:48:00 AM:
...and to be fair... (thanks to Levi) sometimes conservatives don't want to do *anything* to fix what's wrong.
Far lefties want to take over your life and have government to fix everything. Far righties want to tell you what to do and want government to fix nothing.
Pppphhhhtt.
And I'm not in favor of either. There is a happy medium.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Jan 09, 09:54:00 AM:
Agreed.
Years ago, my father (who was an extremely thoughtful guy and originally thinking who I desperately wish were here to talk about the fascinating times in which we live) wrote a letter to some editor about liberal bias in the university. He observed (when he wrote his letter about 30 years ago) that the pervasive leftism of the faculty on American campuses actually hurt "liberal" undergraduates more than conservative students. He posited that one of the purposes of a university education was to challenge one's assumptions about the world. He argued that conservative students, who were forced to rethink everything they believed, were getting much more out of their education than liberal students, who tended to have all their instincts reinforced on campus. He himself was a devoted Republican, quite bizarre for an expert in medieval France, but he always taught me to read stuff that I was unlikely to agree with. It is the challenging that's important.
Naturally, I read a lot of lefty stuff, including blogs, the Grey Bitch, the NYROB, etc. I generally don't do it to snark (ask Screwy), but to think it through. I find that I often agree with thoughtful lefties about the problems in the world (as I outlined in my hanky-twisting post). My point of departure is almost always in the policy solution.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jan 09, 10:06:00 AM:
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jan 09, 10:16:00 AM:
sigh... toned down version:
Well now that's an interesting insight.
You know I attended Dartmouth for one year. I arrived there a flame-breathing liberal. I would have made Jane Fonda nervous, I think. I led with my heart.
So are the lion's share of the faculty there. The student body, on the other hand, are largely conservative. You know how I love to argue: I thought most of them unbearably insular, wrongheaded, and smug - probably because they were richer than I was and also because they didn't seem to see how people from different backgrounds might view life through a different lens.
I'm still don't regret leaving, and it still surprises me that I almost invariably won arguments, though I now believe, ironically, that I was both ill-informed and flat-out wrong much of the time.
I have to say that the liberal faculty were instrumental in my conversion to conservatism. Sometimes hearing a *bad* argument expressed jolts you and gets you thinking (well hell - EVERYTHING makes me think!). And I went INTO this expecting to agree with these people! And they were far better educated and smarter than I! Yet hearing them repeat certain things I'd never questioned made me realize they didn't quite add up.
By 
, at
Mon Jan 09, 10:28:00 AM:
Cassie,
Brilliant. One other thing; while I see porn the way you do, I also have other reasons to detest it.
It has figured in some pretty hideous crimes against children and women and
in terms of decency, Hefner and the early days of 'Playboy' were downright WHOLSEOME.
Having said, that, I will come back again to re read.
I also liked your excellent take on the differences betweeen lefties and righties.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jan 09, 11:02:00 AM:
Well I agree and you know it. I didn't want this to get sidetracked into one of my rants.
I was actually in an antique store the weekend before last and there were some vintage pinups there.
I even offered to buy some for my husband if he saw one he liked. you know me - I'm not a prude by any means.
He declined, because he is a sweetie, but they were truly lovely. One or two were nudes. I can appreciate loveliness of the female form - to me, that's not "porn". Like they say, I know it when I see it.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jan 09, 11:04:00 AM:
...and I couldn't really compete with the pinups either :)
But they were beautiful. And real.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Jan 09, 11:13:00 AM:
Sigh. Now I'm "the porn guy." I blame myself.
I am against abusive labor practices in any industry. Perhaps they happen more in the porn industry than in, say, hardware stores. But they probably happen more in the production of produce in the San Joaqin Valley than in the porn industry. No defense for that.
I also do not think anybody is weird for not liking porn. That really wasn't my point. I just don't get why people who don't consume porn (or whatever it is that one does with porn) seem to spend a lot of time thinking about people who do.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jan 09, 11:51:00 AM:
You're not "the porn guy" (at least in my mind :)
But you *did* bring it up!
Strangely enough, women feel equally defensive about being made to feel bad for wanting to shield our children from it, or from not wanting to have our marriages ruined by it (and though many guys are just casual enjoyers, there's a lot of research that shows that for some guys, like lots of 'vices', porn - especially online porn - can be incredibly addicting to the point where they won't even have sex with their own wives anymore). What a tragedy.
As one author observed (and she went into her study convinced, like you, that people were blowing the controversy out of proportion) the people who were enjoying sex the most were married folks who didn't use porn and the ones who were getting the least sex and were the most miserable were ones who were obsessed with it!
So much for being repressed.
Like I said, I have no real desire to control the behavior of others, so long as there is no impact or harm to third parties. It's really not my business. I don't even think about it unless someone else brings it up, or someone else's sexuality gets shoved in my face when I least expect it (Janet Jackson, or VS bondage at Tyson's Corner). I'm all for a little fun, but hey - get a room!
You just asked why it bugs some people.
I've been vilified for saying (when someone asked *me* the question) that I didn't much care for it and that IMO it was probably a net harm to most *marriages*. Now the single guy on board ship? Ppppphth. Don't care. I don't know enough about men. I do know this though. I worked in the Navy Exchange and the guys who bought the harder core stuff like Hustler did not treat women well.
The difference was noticeable. There was a distain that was palpable - you don't make sexual remarks to a 19 yo pregnant girl with a wedding ring on who isn't making eye contact and isn't bothering you. That's just disrespectful, and it comes from somewhere. It used to be that men were protective of women with babies. I think there is something of a coarsening effect sometimes, where *some* men get the loopy idea that there are two kinds of women - ones you respect and ones it is safe to trash, and that sex has something to do with that. And it's working its way into popular culture, all the way down to little girls' clothes, and frankly I find that more than a bit disturbing.
I'm not sure that's an idea we want to encourage. And frankly, I like men and I think sex is wonderful. And shouldn't porn, if it's a moral neutral, make men *like* women? But sometimes it seems to have the opposite effect - we're becoming a throwaway commodity.
By Cardinalpark, at
Mon Jan 09, 12:04:00 PM:
To add onto Cassandra's Plato reference and question about government and virtue. Popular government cannot actually be neutral on the matter of virtue. If one does not legislate virtue, to some degree, than government can find itself condoning deeply antisocial behavior -- detrimental to people. So any form of legislation - murder, rape, etc, is a form of "imposition of virtue."
Then it's a question of "how far?" The problem is, to borrow your porn analogy ("you know it when you see it"), people don't necessarily agree on what they see and when. That's why you have a popularly elected government - votes matter. But individuals must consent ultimately to a system which is, on these matters, majoritarian.
And that is where the intellectual "elite" on both sides just falls down. They can't stand it. They would therefore prefer to legislate from the bench -- or wherever. Smart people in the minority on any issue in a free society always try to work around democracy. They just argue that the majority is just ignorant.
Someone once asked of an indicted man if he wasn't interested in a fair trial. He responded, no, that he wanted to be found not guilty.
People want a desired result - the process is less interesting in practice than in the abstract. So they work around and cheat. Ends and means and all that.
By , at
Mon Jan 09, 12:26:00 PM:
This is a sort of general, catch-all response to a few recent posts (this one, TH's original "lefty thoughts" post, and Cassandra's "MoronWatch" and abortion posts), so please bear with me if it doesn't quite fit the specific topics of this thread.
A common theme in all four of these posts is striking the right balance between individual rights and both (1) others' competing individual rights and (2) the best interests of society. Based upon my observations of American lefties (running the gamut from some of my own relatives to Howard Dean himself), the impression I have of their idea of this balance is that true freedom is, by definition, decoupled from all responsibilities, risks or other negative consequences, whether or not they flow from, or are enforced by, government. (Hence, for example, the Left's annoying habit of crying "censorship" even when government is not involved in their being denied a forum.)
My composite image of the Left's worldview is that liberty tied to responsibility isn't really liberty at all, but rather just another social contract that's no better morally than any other, and so they might as well cast their lot instead with the kind of social contract that actually reflects their own values (e.g. the socialist nanny state, or even out-and-out Communism).
Now, I, like TH, have quite a few "blue streaks" myself in spite of my generally red state of mind. Some of my blue streaks are the same as TH's, and I have others too, although for brevity's sake I'll save them for another day and another post. But I (and presumably most of the contributors and readers of this blog) reject the lefty notion that freedom is a monolithic concept or an all-or-nothing proposition.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jan 09, 12:53:00 PM:
I think, too, Joshua, that when you get right down to it, most of us are more centrist than we admit.
Even Screwy :) (Yes, I'm needling you...)
In a way, I dislike the labels because I think they get in the way of our finding the areas where we might actually agree - it all becomes a shouting match where both sides stop listening to "those Reich-wing Rethugs" or "those moonbatty Leftards" (heh...) and both sides start making avec les grands eyepokes because it's more fun (and less strenuous intellectually) than honest discourse.
Which is a bit of a shame, really. We could learn so much from each other if we just stopped throwing brickbats and threw a few roses instead. I think there are serious structural flaws in Leftist rhetoric, but then I'm sure there are some serious problems with some of my ideas as well.
It's just that I'm so danged good looking and eloquent that no one's been able to point them out to me, yet.
*running away*
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Jan 09, 02:46:00 PM:
We men are easily confused. When we can tear ourselves away from the porn, that is.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jan 09, 03:13:00 PM:
Well I suppose the sight of all those 44 DD's has got to be pretty overwhelming.
Even I stop and stare in awe every now and then when an arrant email lands in my Inbox. Frank Lloyd Wright didn't do cantilevering like that.
I am not getting my work done... well, I am halfway done but I hate this. Back to the salt mines.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jan 09, 03:14:00 PM:
Arrghh.
errant.
What is wrong with me today? I must be getting a migraine - I always use the wrong word when that happens - it's like there's a short circuit in my brain.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Jan 09, 04:49:00 PM:
That's what happened to me when I wrote the word "porn." I meant "corn." Silly, silly, me.
By KJ, at
Mon Jan 09, 06:09:00 PM:
I just bought a new car. It is better than most of the Jones's automobiles.
I feel superior.
Oh, and porn is bad. But it should be legal to adults.
The drug war is bad. Those crack babies exist when drugs are already illegal. There might be a better way. (Cass and I have argued this one many times)
Janet Jackson's sin was based on expectations. I don't want to outlaw adult oriented programming. I watch the Sopranos and Rescue Me and I know to not let a kid in the room while I do. I shouldn't be surprised by nudity during the halftime show of the Super Bowl or by Blue and his human friend getting a beastiality going during Blue's Clues.
I won't oppose homosexual civil unions, but I want it done at the ballot box and I want you to leave the definition of marriage alone. It has a meaning -- quit changing the meanings of my words.
Government mandated monopolies? I don't get it. Copyrite and patents are really just property rights that expire. What do you mean? I say no, especially to the monopoly of education.
Most death penalty cases are not about guilty. Only about sentencing.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jan 09, 07:06:00 PM:
KJ! You have to tell me all about your new car - no holding out.
And yes we've argued the drug war but you are still wrong and I am still right :) (you're still a *man*, aren't you?)
Where you and I differ is that there are *some* very few things (I think crack is one) that overcome the will. Yes, you should never have used it in the first place, but we all make mistakes, especially when young. But I can't look at a baby, KJ - I can't see the devastation drugs have wreaked on inner-city neighborhoods, and not want them out of my country. They do NO good and way too much harm. I'm sorry - I think some things are just soul-destroying. Hard drugs are one. The only people I hear defending them live in white-bread neighborhoods. They don't have to live with the devastation they defend.
And now I will shut up because you know how much I adore you, and you are my favorite Livid Terrier, and I don't want to refight this war :)
