Political & Elections

Winchester, all you're saying is that you don't like the Obama administration's priorities, and don't want the Democrats' legislative agenda to succeed. That's fine, but it has nothing to do with compromise. If there were a compromise on offer that moved the situation closer to your political priorities, you would be in favor of it. You don't object to compromise at all; that's a red herring.

This is a mostly correct interpretation of what I’ve been trying to say. The red herring comment is a constructive criticism that helps me to pinpoint an idea I’ve tried to communicate and have thus far failed to do so adequately, which is:

The real red herring regarding the politics of compromise is being offered by Obama and the Democrats, and they’re doing it in several ways (or at several levels.)

First, they represent the idea of compromise as if it is an inherently good thing, thereby implying that any refusal to compromise is a bad thing. This is a false choice. Compromise is just one tool in the toolbox. Compromise, in and of itself, is no more “good” or “bad” to a politician than a hammer is to a carpenter. There are times when it is appropriate and there are times when it is not.

Second, by suggesting that compromise is a bad thing they imply that compromise should be valued more highly than principle. This too is a false choice. The principles of our founding should never be compromised.

Third, their idea of compromise seems to be to settle for only most of what they want (e.g., they had to “compromise” for a version of Obamacare that was not everything they wanted because the public option was not included in it.) It’s as if they propose to cut the legs off our founding principles, and then “compromise” by saying “OK, we’ll only take one leg.” ( And then they hope to come back later to take the other one.) One leg or two, neither choice is acceptable.

In every instance Obama and the Democrats use the notion of "compromise" to divert attention from the real issue(s). It's just one big red herring designed and intended to avoid having to defend their progressive agenda and show how and why it does not undermine and erode our founding principles because such a defense is impossible. It simply can’t be done, and so their only option is to foist one huge red herring they call "compromise" on all of us.

How well has "policy knowledge" served the nation?

The economy is in the dumper and we are straining our military to the limit.

The rich keep amassing more and more while the former "middle class" and "working class" are being squeezed into oblivion.

There is not one person in Washington DC who knows or can do anything of value.

Do our "elites" somehow imagine they will be able to exert sovereignty over an economically robust and increasingly well armed China?

There was a war, an economic war. We lost.



-- Edited by BigG on Monday 3rd of January 2011 10:19:31 AM

Winchester, all you're saying is that you don't like the Obama administration's priorities, and don't want the Democrats' legislative agenda to succeed. That's fine, but it has nothing to do with compromise. If there were a compromise on offer that moved the situation closer to your political priorities, you would be in favor of it. You don't object to compromise at all; that's a red herring.

Abyss, BigG, geeps: In my view, we don't pay enough attention to policy knowledge. Politicians have to vote on a number of complex issues, and they need to take the time to understand the problems. New politicians take a while to get up to speed; they simply don't know enough about the issues they need to vote on. For that reason, they are vulnerable to unelected lobbyists. As much as I might dislike politicians, I dislike lobbyists a hundred times more. I'd rather have my legislature in the hands of politicians, who can be voted out, than lobbyists, who can't.

Because of California's term limits, which I opposed when they were enacted and still oppose, California's legislature has, for many issues, been captured by lobbyists. In my view, this is a bad result, to be opposed.

may I remind you that the grand idea of the founders was equality for everyone who happened to be white and male.

There are many problems with this widely held conventional wisdom.

One problem with it is that it confuses the founding principle of equality with the people and the society which formally claimed it. I stand by my paraphrasing of the principle: Equality means one set of laws that applies, and is applied, the same for all people.

Another problem with it is that, while it does contain a kernel of truth, it is such a gross oversimplification that it amounts to a falsehood that, as historian Bernard Bailyn said, "inverts the proportions of the story." (full quote below)

Other problems related to it are more general in nature, having more to do with the general notion of “conventional wisdom” than with any single statement of it. Nonetheless they do go directly to some key points of my own personal perspectives on politics and are a direct response to some of the comments in this thread and others.

First, we tend to think and communicate with one-liners like the one I quoted above. The problem with this is that one-liners tend to be the intellectual equivalent of concluding what an assembled jigsaw puzzle looks like after examining only a single piece. We eschew context in favor of isolated facts, statements, and conventional wisdom that is not so wise; we eschew critical thinking in favor of glib Power Point bullets. (This is partial explanation, by the way, for why so many of my posts tend to be long. The full story of any idea seldom lends itself to communication by Power Point.)

Second, the immediate blame for all of this lies with K-12 education in America, which, when it comes to our founding principles, promotes glibness over critical thinking, and favors the resulting falsehoods over the truth. The ultimate blame lies with all of us for letting ourselves and our culture to get to this point.

I think part of the solution to all of these problems is for each of us to spend less time reading and listening to each other with the aim of finding logical technicalities and verbal “gotchas” and more time reading and listening for the purpose of understanding the key ideas, themes, and principles that the other is trying to convey. When it comes to the education of our young about our founding principles I think we need to hold K-12 education to the same standards.

Here are some quotes from noted historians that help to illustrate what I’m talking about.

many of our leading sophisticates today would rather talk about the Founders' failures. Instead of the victories they won on 'behalf of freedom, we hear loud complaints about their supposed racism, sexism, and elitism. The Founding Fathers, we are told, did not really believe that "all men (and women) are created equal."Washington and Jefferson owned slaves. Women and the poor were excluded from voting. So how can we take seriously the Founders' supposed belief in human equality?

These arguments are well entrenched in the conventional wisdom of our time. They are repeated endlessly in the media and in popular books, by professors [and textbooks] and politicians,…
…
It is surprisingly easy to show that these claims are false. We will see that the Founders believed that members of these supposedly "excluded groups"[blacks, poor, women] really are "created equal." (By the term "Founders," I mean those who served in notable public offices from about 1765 to 1800, especially the authors of constitutions, laws, and other important public documents.) We will see that George Washington was correct to call his political convictions "liberal." We will see that the Founders were sincere in their professions of the rights of humanity and their commitment to popular government. We will also see that their actions were consistent with their opinions. The Revolution clearly improved conditions for blacks, women, and the poor.

The above is from "Vindicating the Founders,” by Thomas G. West, professor of politics at the University of Dallas and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.



[At the time of our founding] Everywhere in America the principle prevailed that in a free community the purpose of institutions is to liberate men, not to confine them,and to give them the substance and the spirit to stand firm before the forces that would restrict them. To see in the Founders' failure to destroy chattel slavery the opposite belief, or some self-delusive hypocrisy that somehow condemns as false the liberal character of the Revolution-to see in the Declaration of Independence a statement of principles that was meant to apply only to whites and that was ignored even by its author in its application to slavery, and to belieye that the purpose of the Constitution was to sustain aristocracy and perpetuate black bondage-is, I believe, to fundamentally misread the history of the time.

To condemn the founders of the Republic for having tolerated and perpetuated a society that rested on slavery is to expect them to have been able to transcend altogether the limitations of their own age.
…
To note only that certain leaders of the Revolution continued to enjoy the profits of so savage an institution and in their reforms failed to obliterate it inverts the proportions of the story. What is significant in the historical context of the time is not that the liberty-loving Revolutionaries allowed slavery to survive, but that they-even those who profited directly from the institution-went so far in' condemning it, confining it, and setting in motion the forces that would ultimately destroy it.”

The above is from an essay by Bernard Bailyn, in the book “Essays on the American Revolution.” Bailyn won the Pulitzer Prise for his book “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.”

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
– Mark Twain

doesn't surprise me Fang..

I'm absolutely against term limits. I don't see how replacing greedy bastards with other greedy bastards is any kind of an improvement.

SLS - right on.

As for adapting the Constitution over time, the Founding Fathers adapted it themselves!  After all, the Bill of Rights were amendments, not built into the original document. 

It's amazing to me that some of the things Tea Partiers claim to want are things that we had at the beginning, but which failed abysmally.  Having the states decide to follow or not follow a federal law, for instance.  That was a disaster we got rid of when we got rid of the Articles of the Confederation.  Also term limits for Congress - that was tried in Pennsylvania early on, and they got rid of it because it didn't work. 

Is it that people don't know we already went down these paths, or do they just want to try again regardless?

Quote:
And may I remind you that the grand idea of the founders was equality for everyone who happened to be white and male. /Quote

The ideal was even more narrow than that. You had to have been white, male and land owning.

The left is in an uproar. In the wake of the president's capitulation on the public option, tough financial regulations and Bush tax cuts for the rich, a wailing chorus sees President Obama as unprincipled and spineless, a serial compromiser who never drew a line in the sand he wouldn't later erase.

It's a given the author feels this way but I'm curious as to the numbers of the "left", the ones that really feel this way: one out of ten? Twenty?

Winchester,

I don't see how it's illuminating to pick a legislative result you dislike-- in this case laws intended to compensate for perceived inequalities among different classes of people-- and say it is a result of legislative compromise, and therefore legislative compromise is bad.

All laws, the ones you like as well as the ones you dislike, are the result of compromise. And may I remind you that the grand idea of the founders was equality for everyone who happened to be white and male. I'd say moving to a more inclusive idea of equality was an improvement-- and plenty of legislative compromise was involved in that struggle.

The exhaultation of principals over practicality will be the death of the US.

The internet exacerbates this by giving extreamists the illusion they are predominant and thus entitled to have their own way.

If one does not want the government to do anything, not even be practical and effective with respect to economic policy, this is good.

Of course the Chinese are laughing all the way to the bank...