The left wing of the Democratic Party is in power now and it looks like they will pass their budget and their agenda for the next year or two or four. There’s every reason to think it will be a disaster for the country. It’s not looking so great so far and the disaster may arrive ahead of schedule. I’d say there’s a nontrivial chance the country will be irreparably harmed by our American mid-life crisis. It’s going to suck, big time. All Republicans can do is be the party that says, this is a bad idea and we should return to what we really believe in. We should wear the label the Party of No as a badge of honor. No to higher taxes. No to soaking the rich. No to nationalizing health care. No to abadoning Israel (just wait — that’s coming). There will be a lot to say no to. No to tyranny. This whole country is founded on a No.
Obama’s ideas are a mushy rehash of tired ideas from the 1930’s and 1960’s packaged for an era of twitter users. We don’t have to hope they will fail. They can do that all on their own. Conservatives as they are called in this country remain attached to ideas that date back to our founding, ideas of limited government, virtuous citizenship and the worthiness of commerce. We don’t have to wait for anybody because they already got here some 200 years ago. We should say No to the revolution Obama wants to lead. We can certainly hope that enough people wake up soon enough that the country is not ruined first. But our job is not to find more sellable ideas. There’s nothing wrong with the ideas.
Civil Society
Quote of the Day
The spirit of the Obama-Pelosi “stimulus”, and the conscious atmosphere of corruption and payoff that surrounds it, is consistent with today’s negative, if not sour, leftist worldview. The New Dealers believed they were building a more “scientific” and much more prosperous world. There was a great deal of genuine idealism among them. Today’s triumphant political class does not seriously imagine that it will promote economic growth and prosperity. The political class is, at best, ambivalent about whether it even wants such things. What today’s political class wants is a massive transfer of power and money to itself. This is what the “stimulus”, and much else that will follow, is openly intended to do. If there were a spirit of optimism and generosity and idealism about it, as there was among the New Dealers, there would at least be reason to hope that things wouldn’t quickly degenerate into corruption. It seems to me that there is little such spirit, or none at all, today.
Instinctive Lout, Instinctive Hero
British drunkenness is not a pleasant story. I can remember years ago reading for some class or other of gin and the 18th century. Hogarth portrays a world little different from the ghetto of the crack whores a decade or two ago. Alcohol may seem fun, but it doesn’t always look all that good.
One of the numerous reasons I got fed up with running a business in the notorious strip across from our local university were the tiresome drunks. Wedged between bars, our copy shop gave us a front row seat on – well, on a guy pissing on the window with such glazed over eyes that his only reason was probably the most primitive – nature called. The night guy complained to me the next day- he’d tried to place himself between the window and the young girls working with him; he knew animals – he’d just gotten his PhD. in ag – and he knew the world – he’d just returned from a Peace Corps tour in Africa; he wasn’t shocked but he was angry. Thirteen years of locking up late at night and walking out into the cool night air to see two drunks “helping” an equally drunken girl into a car, of seeing evidence that many had relieved themselves in the bushes and in the gutter around us didn’t make me sad to sell. Yes, drunken man is not noble man; he does show us how vulgar and selfish our instincts can be – and why it is a good thing they are restrained. Then there was the guy whose intentions were clearly dishonorable toward another of my workers as she moved toward her car; since he was falling down, tangled in the pants he was trying to get off, she found him less threatening than disgusting. Man can be loutish. (And if drunks dominate here, I don’t remember the druggies on the Drag in Austin being any prizes, either.)
What England did in the Victorian years is Himmelfarb territory – and it is a remarkable century in terms of restraint and duty and productivity. For instance, the number of crimes that were punished by hanging went down, but the police became respected and so were women. (The few crimes more punished at the end of the century than the beginning were against women.) Those gin-soaked mothers became the hands that rocked the cradle. As both the Chicagoboyz and Dalyrmple note our culture can encourage or discourage. But we also need models. The manliness of firefighters asking for last rites as they went into the burning towers or of the Iraqi man throwing himself on the suicide bomber headed toward his mosque – these are in my head and I’m thankful for them.
But if our species demonstrates an instinctive & eternal vulgarity, an ugly & base self that seeks oblivion in drinks or drugs or mob violence, we also long for consciousness, our heroism instinctive, too.
Kaus critiques the Mumbai responses, but if the tragedy demonstrated failings in law enforcement, it also showed us what man could be. A&L often links to cynical academia, but this time it found virtue. Michael Pollock’s “Heroes at the Taj” concludes:
It is much easier to destroy than to build, yet somehow humanity has managed to build far more than it has ever destroyed. Likewise, in a period of crisis, it is much easier to find faults and failings rather than to celebrate the good deeds. It is now time to commemorate our heroes.
Going to the Dogs
I form very strong emotional attachments to my own dogs. They are all rescues that I collect starving and injured off the street. (Three at a time is my limit, so don’t get the impression that I’m like one of those crazy cat ladies.)
But speaking as someone who has actually worked in law enforcement, I can say that dogs are merely chattel. Property. My own dogs might be very dear to me in a personal sense but they are all mixed breed strays, which means that they are particularly worthless property at that.
This post alerted me to a news story where a police officer in Texas pulled a car over. It seems that the driver was rushing his choking dog to the pet clinic, and he managed to reach a speed that was close to 100 MPH (160 KPH).
The officer was uncaring and flippant, and he kept the motorist by the side of the road for 15 minutes. Both the journalists who report the story, as well as the comments at the blog post that discuss it, seem to think that an egregious breach was committed by the cop. The facts of the matter are that the officer might well have shown more tact, but he was essentially correct in his actions because he was doing his job and safeguarding lives. Human lives.
This is an example of something I’ve been noticing a lot more recently. People seem to be quicker to complain about whether or not they feel insulted when they interact with the police.
Conservative British think tank: Abandon Liverpool
This from the Times:
David Cameron has been embarrassed by his favourite think-tank after it suggested that Liverpool, Sunderland and Bolton should be abandoned because the North would never improve.
The Tory leader, who begins a two-day tour of the North today, firmly rejected a report by Policy Exchange, which suggested that the Government should help northerners to relocate to Oxford and Cambridge. It suggested that Britain’s two university towns are likely to be able to “form the basis of strong, successful, substantial cities”.
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“No one is suggesting that residents should be forced to move, but we do argue that they should be told the reality of the position: regeneration, in the sense of convergence, will not happen, because it is not possible.”
and this from the BBC:
The Policy Exchange report said coastal cities like Sunderland and Liverpool had “lost much of their raison d’etre”.
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It said the largest coastal cities like Liverpool and Hull had built up for reasons that had since disappeared – like ship building.
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Policy Exchange, a registered charity, has been described as Mr Cameron’s favourite think tank. But Mr Cameron, who will be keen to minimise any embarrassment as he tries to gain ground in traditional Labour heartlands, distanced himself from the organisation’s findings on Wednesday, saying the report was “insane”.
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“I think the idea that cities can’t regenerate themselves, they were built for one purpose and can’t do another purpose, is just nonsense.
He is certainly right about that. If those cities turn out to be unable to reinvent themselves, they are going to wither away in the long run, but chances are that they are going to be able to adapt and prosper. There are a lot of formerly decrepit cities around the world that have done just that. This think tank seems to have lost contact to reality.