Feb
8
- Rich Lowry, “For Government, Let the Good Times Roll” – the statistics listed here are frightening.
- George Will, “The United States of Fiscal Folly” – the above is how government expands while we’re in a recession, and talks about how more gov’t employees are getting relatively cushy jobs while others in the private sector are hoping for employment. This focuses on the fact that an aging population that spends more on medical care cannot create a vibrant, self-sustaining economy long-term.
- Jay Cost, “America is Not Ungovernable” – from the article: …some analysts have suggested that the lack of major policy breakthroughs in the last year is due to the fact that America has become ungovernable…. Nonsense. America is not ungovernable. Her President has simply not been up to the job…. He has been narrow, not broad. He has been partial, not post-partisan. He has been ideological, not pragmatic. No number of “eloquent” speeches can alter these facts. This is why his major initiatives have failed, why his net job approval has dropped 50 points in 12 months, and why he is substantially weaker now than he was a year ago.
- Megan McArdle, “The Reality of Health Care Plans” – from the article: I want to turn the Federal government into an income-based catastrophic insurer, for expenses that exceed 15-20% of AGI. I don’t think there’s much hope of controlling cancer treatments or heart surgery. But I think we could eliminate a hell of a lot of unnecessary day to day expenses–the ER visits of convenience and CYA tests for diseases there’s no indication the patient has. But the only way we’ll do that is by making the consumer responsible for those costs.
Feb
8
Open Thread on “Settling,” Marriage and Relationships
Filed Under links, love | 2 Comments
Lori Gottlieb, “Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough”
This article is from a while ago, and I’m not sure whether I agree with it fully or not. I obviously think the lessons hold for women and men, but that the author telling us about her personal experience can’t be generalized too much. Still, I don’t pay much heed to the “as you get older, the market favors men” argument. Being lonely sucks, and getting older and staying lonely sucks worse, regardless of gender. I’d rather not make this a he said/she said game and instead get to the question of whether we have the right attitudes or not. It seems like something we should definitely discuss in the comments, to wit:
What I didn’t realize when I decided, in my 30s, to break up with boyfriends I might otherwise have ended up marrying, is that while settling seems like an enormous act of resignation when you’re looking at it from the vantage point of a single person, once you take the plunge and do it, you’ll probably be relatively content. It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you’re married, it’s not about whom you want to go on vacation with; it’s about whom you want to run a household with. Marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.
I don’t see many articles – including ones that are more realistic – stress the self-evident boring parts of living together. But I think what’s really interesting is how complicated our mindsets regarding relationships are:
I thought that the person I married would have to have a sense of wonderment about the world, would be both spontaneous and grounded, and would acknowledge that life is hard but also be able to navigate its ups and downs with humor. Many of the guys I dated possessed these qualities, but if one of them lacked a certain degree of kindness, another didn’t seem emotionally stable enough, and another’s values clashed with mine. Others were sweet but so boring that I preferred reading during dinner to sitting through another tedious conversation. I also dated someone who appeared to be highly compatible with me—we had much in common, and strong physical chemistry—but while our sensibilities were similar, they proved to be a half-note off, so we never quite felt in harmony, or never viewed the world through quite the same lens.
It’s easy to condemn the author and forget just how articulate and self-reflective she is. Most of us are probably being really picky about relationships and not even knowing it. At the same time, I do wonder if some of us are being picky enough. I know some women and men who’ve gotten into bad situations because of making their criteria too lax to begin with. Still, “settling” itself is pretty hard, all things considered:
And no matter what women decide—settle or don’t settle—there’s a price to be paid, because there’s always going to be regret. Unless you meet the man of your dreams (who, by the way, doesn’t exist, precisely because you dreamed him up), there’s going to be a downside to getting married, but a possibly more profound downside to holding out for someone better.
So I do encourage you to read the article and comment here, because I’m interested in the truth of these reflections and other questions we can raise.
Feb
7
About that Tea Party Convention…
Filed Under links, politics | Leave a Comment
It’s pretty clear to me that the Tea Party convention in Nashville was all sorts of crazy, and should be attacked and dismissed by anyone with common sense. Of course, Pajamas Media thinks this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and they’re even launching “Tea Party TV” to demonstrate their commitment to impartial reporting. Most of the links below are from LGF, but I’m not always going to be linking to his work directly, because I want the impression of “this is how you look to the rest of the world” to sink in to any Tea Partier that might have a sliver of a doubt about what they’re participating in:
- The “kickoff” (their term) speaker for this thing was Tom Tancredo. You might know him as the guy Karl Rove kicked out of the White House for his anti-immigrant hate. Of course, here’s a sample of the pleasant things he had to say: The opening-night speaker at first ever National Tea Party Convention ripped into President Obama, Sen. John McCain and “the cult of multiculturalism,” asserting that Obama was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.” The speaker, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., told about 600 delegates in a Nashville, Tenn., ballroom that in the 2008 election, America “put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House … Barack Hussein Obama.” Tancredo did not stop at the Democratic president — ripping McCain, R-Ariz., the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, for shaping up to be a repeat of “Bush 1 and Bush 2.” “Thank God John McCain lost the election,” he said, voicing his belief that McCain would have presided over big budgets and lacked a tough stand against immigration. If you’re wondering about what a civic or literacy test isn’t even a veiled allusion to, go read LGF on the matter.
- No Tea Party Convention is complete without giving a standing ovation (albeit a short one) to someone who repeatedly questions whether the President is a citizen. Nor is it complete without turning issues about gays into an “us vs. them” platform, accompanied by a call to arms among 2nd amendment enthusiasts: “Go forth armed in the holy cause of liberty,” he told the cheering tea partiers.
Charles Johnson brought up this observation from Mary C. Curtis at Politics Daily, and it is worth repeating:
Where Are the Young?
A funny thing about the break-out session “How to Involve the Youth in the Conservative Movement” – not too many young people showed up. Mishelle Perkins, a 44-year-old mother of five children, worries about the paucity of young people at local meetings. The Rutherford County, Tennessee activist came Friday to get some tips. Jordan Marks, executive director of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom, suggested that activists use Facebook, volunteer to speak at high schools (“bastions of liberalism”) and simply do fun stuff that hooks high school and college-age kids. Marks described a bowling party he organized – “Knock Down the Pinheads of Communism.” A strike equaled Mao, a spare, Pol Pot. Perkins said she supplements her children’s education with books by Tea Party authors, but right now it’s hard to get them too interested.
I know a lot of conservatives are older, and don’t feel any sense of shame, not like they used to (to this end: I am so, so grateful for my readers that are older conservatives and give my thoughts a chance). In the face of change, one feels defiant. Well, I’ve got news for them: there aren’t gonna be any young people who pay attention to you unless you present something worth having or emulating. It’s up to older people to set an example, not just indulge in craziness and feel justified. Some of you will recall that I’ve brought this issue up before, in “Why do we need a party?” I’m going to go further than just raising the question of winning elections now, and say this: if you choose to be an extremist, you are accountable in this life and most certainly the next, if there is one. One cannot ruin the future for everyone else and say it was the fault of liberals, not when it is clear one wants to indulge in conspiracy theories. The things I’m interested in – whether or not we can have fraternity as Americans, whether or not we can have a culture of life that takes precedence over rank materialism, whether or not we can have an economic order that celebrates freedom – they may sound idealistic and stupid to you. All I can say is that I’m not young any more, and that my causes are worth fighting for.
Feb
5
Megan McArdle, “My Quarterly Plea for Comment Thread Civility”
It’s been a while since I’ve read and taken seriously any comment thread on more popular sites. A major reason for this is that the threshold for what constitutes a good comment is so, so low elsewhere. Really and truly, we’re talking about “good” comments 1) being publishable, not just trying to get everyone to form a lynch mob 2) conveying decent information, not promote conspiracy theories 3) not aiming to make the blog author look bad, but demonstrate some graciousness.
If it seems to you like most comments on the Internet can’t meet those ludicrously low standards, you’re exactly right. In fact, commentators on the Internet reveal a heck of a lot about themselves through comments, and very rarely does one get the impression “hey, that’s someone I’d like to talk to, maybe meet in real life.”
Does that mean comments should be closed? Of course not. Comments are a necessity – I know I hate it when I can’t comment on something online – and sometimes even fun. I certainly learn from the comments on this site, but then again, my readers are exceptional. They actually read, and have demonstrated over and over that they have the quality of patience to an exceptional degree (heck, they read this blog). But I can tell you that I get a different sort of troll that’s just as vicious as the types listed above, if not moreso. I’ll typically get someone who thinks they know more than me and goes to exceptional lengths to prove I’m an idiot in a thread, not quite realizing they look like a psycho and that I’ll delete their comment no matter how learned it is (and if I was wrong, take the correction too and amend the post later). I do care about the intent of people who post on my blog: if you let people be hateful toward you, they will take full advantage of that, and it’ll ruin the blog for your other readers. People who are civil and treat others well on the blog – including the blog author – should be given first priority.
Which brings up a serious question: are comments revealing of something deeper? I actually think they are – they absolutely demonstrate our political immaturity, that we’ve learned the worst lesson we possibly could from pundits and talking heads. We think we can shoot off about any topic, that our comments are just as good as any “expert’s.” And we hold that we have some magical right to be heard by everyone, even as that involves saying our speech matters more than someone else’s. We don’t think “hey, that blog is someone else’s property, it’s a privilege that they’ll let you talk and even respond.” We don’t realize that commenting on everything is only a demonstration that we hear one voice, the voice that matters, and are actually closed to a number of others. I do wonder if the very concept of mass media created this problem, where each man is a broadcast tower unto himself. The nice thing about the Internet is that there are people who do play nice, and it’s fun to learn how to have a public persona even if one does make some mistakes (rest assured, I’ve made plenty).
Feb
4
Links, 2/4/10
Filed Under links | 2 Comments
Busy. If you have questions about Socratic continence (Memorabilia I.2.1), now is not the time; been thinking about that way too much. Just some links concerning recent news:
- Megan McArdle, “Toyota’s Weekus Horribilus” – I don’t think the public humiliation of Toyota was some UAW/auto industry plot or something government officials wanted to do. I do think the conflict of interest the federal government has – as it owns large stakes in American auto manufacturing – is an enormous problem. There have been an inordinate number of articles discussing President Obama’s progressivism and post-partisan rhetoric, and how he doesn’t hold a vision that is compatible with republican governance. I’ve been dismissive of those articles, because they’ve dismissive in a certain way of the fact that his views have to operate within the scope of our modes and orders, and they do operate (or, as we see, fail to operate) within that scope. To me, the real issue re: progressivism is how the populace can’t see basic things like national security failures or thinks that extremist rhetoric is just a part of a political game. Our government won’t be better until we’re better, and I know political scientists would be wiser to spend their time on that set of issues instead of joining the pundit chorus. However, I am not so dismissive of the government having a vested interest in its property being more valuable than someone else’s private property. That’s a real sticking point, and an issue that does blame the “few” directly: property rights are the foundation of our order, even if we’re talking about a foreign corporation, and government should know better.
- David Weigel, “Campus Right Unbowed by O’Keefe Scandal” – I used to be admiring of these groups, and I still think they do thankless work in terms of journalism and even activism that goes unnoticed. But I now know that the Right’s emphasis on things like journalism, think-tanks, legal foundations, etc. is all a way of avoiding education and opening minds (heck, some might even say – and not entirely wrongly – that certain schools are a way of avoiding independent thought). It only sees the Left as an enemy, and to some degree, that is necessitated (is what is necessary also what is good?), and it is a grab for power or a grab to stop others from attaining power. Yeah, I’m being that severe: this problem is at crisis proportions. The issue is not whether there are capable, thoughtful professionals and a few nuts. The real issue is the state of the electorate, and who we are as Americans. I see things getting worse, not better, and I think given my not-so-successful labors it’s time to start placing blame.
- North Carolina Schools May Cut Chunk Out of U.S. History Lessons (foxnews, h/t Josh) – sounds like dumb liberals and even dumber neoconfederates have found common cause on the school board. The “new” history lessons will skip over the entirety of the Civil War.
- Soldier Deaths Draw Focus to U.S. in Pakistan (nytimes) & Soldiers find time for hockey in Afghanistan (msnbc) – both h/t Josh; self-explanatory.