Category: Leftism – Statism – Democracy

Trying to Overcome Our Past

Daniel Henninger, writing at OpinionJournal, explains why “Change Is Inevitably Not Popular.” Here’s his key point:

…After three presidential debates, it is clear that George Bush is asking the American people to make[an] abrupt break with the comforts of the political past. Proposals such as Social Security privatization or individually run health-savings accounts are not being offered as just an intriguing “policy” alternative. These ideas are an historic necessity to surviving in the world economy as it exists today.

Intellectually, the case for making the leap is compelling. Emotionally, the way forward is less obvious. Most Americans have already adjusted to the disturbing realities of Iraq and of waging–and leading–a war on global terror. But it’s quite a lot to ask them in the same election to step away from 50 or more years of federally guaranteed social protection. That would have been large without Iraq and terror.

The Kerry campaign is riding on the belief that the American electorate, at the margins in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, isn’t ready to make the break. And they may be right. That to me is the meaning of the relentlessly close poll results that persist in this election. John Kerry is a fundamentally weak presidential candidate, but about half the electorate is uncertain whether it is able to sign up for all the risk and uncertainty implicit in the next Bush presidency.

That’s what 100 years of regulation and 70 years of welfare dependency will do to you. As Henninger says,

Back in the 1920s, Republicans won presidential elections with whopping 60% majorities. Calvin Coolidge presided over an economy growing at nearly 5% annually. A nation tied to business success was working. The Depression changed everything.

Very few Americans can remember the 1920s. Too many can remember the Depression and its legacy of misplaced faith in the regulatory-welfare state. It’s not clear that we can overcome that dependency. Hang on for a bumpy ride.

Nader, the Bogeyman

Ryan Lizza of The New Republic has posted a piece about Nader’s influence on the outcome of the election. Key passages:

…Despite the fact that he is registering barely 1 percent in national polls, Nader is indeed perfectly positioned to cost Kerry the election. Consider Kerry’s current road to 270 electoral votes. The number of true toss-up states has dwindled to eleven: Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico. Nader is on the ballot in all of these states but Pennsylvania and Ohio, where his access is still the subject of litigation. Each of these states is close enough that Nader could make the difference, and the damage he could do to Kerry becomes more obvious when one looks at the combination of states Kerry is likely to need for victory. Assuming Bush wins Florida and Kerry wins Pennsylvania, Kerry must then win Ohio and some combination of three to five of the remaining eight small toss-up states. These eight states have two things in common: in each, the race is almost a dead heat, and, in each, Nader is polling between one and four points. In other words, Nader is doing best in the most closely contested states….

In his pitch to students in San Francisco and Berkeley, Nader talks about the importance of organizing and getting involved in the political process. He notes that politicians only respond when people are mobilized. “It’s very important for the rumble of the people to come back,” he says. It is a bizarre statement in the context of liberal politics in 2004. On the left, there probably has not been as much energy and organization since the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s. Bush has helped create the foundation for an entire New Left counter-establishment. From Moveon.org to the Howard Dean campaign to the liberal blogosphere to Air America radio to new think tanks sprouting up around Washington, D.C., an entire new network of exactly the kind of activists that Nader has long praised is suddenly being born. Their singular goal is to defeat Bush. At 70, Nader’s last great act as a public citizen might be to scuttle all their work. Not even the LaRouchies are that irresponsible.

Hey, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do. If some lefties prefer Nader to Kerry, what are we supposed to do, shoot them in the back as they stand in a polling booth?

Ain’t democracy great? So it takes a bite out of liberty every once in a while, but sometimes liberty bites back.

Advice for the "Disenfranchised"

Some voters, particularly voters in States where a Kerry win is certain, complain that the Electoral College disenfranchises them. They say that their votes don’t count because the election isn’t decided by the national popular vote. I agree with you — 100 percent. So, here’s what you can do about it:

Let’s say you’re a Democrat in New York (or California or Massachusetts, etc). You know that your vote won’t make a difference because Kerry’s going to take your State’s electoral votes, no matter what. So don’t vote. And pass the word to several million other “disenfranchised” Democrats in your State. Suddenly, your State’s Republicans will feel enfranchised, for a change.

Novelists for Kerry

Slate interviewed 31 novelists about their preference between Kerry and Bush. In summary:

Thirty-one novelists participated, with four for Bush, 24 for Kerry, and three in a category of their own.

What do you expect from a bunch of fiction writers? Anyway, here’s my take on the gang of 31:

  • I’ve never read anything by 27 of them (and I read a lot of novels).
  • Of the other four, two (Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike) long ago became boring; one (Amy Tan) has always been boring; and one (Jane Smiley) wrote a passably good mystery about 20 years ago.

Joyce Carol Oates’s comment epitomizes the vacuousness of the knee-jerk pro-Kerry literati:

Like virtually everyone I know, I’m voting for Kerry. And probably for exactly the same reasons. To enumerate these reasons, to repeat yet another time the fundamental litany of liberal principles that need to be reclaimed and revitalized, seems to be redundant and unnecessary. Our culture has become politicized to a degree that verges upon hysteria. And since I live in New Jersey, a state in which an “honest politician” is someone who hasn’t yet been arrested, I have come to have modest, that’s to say realistic expectations about public life.

No wonder her stuff has become unreadable. She has become detached from reality and logic. Maybe she should try “magic realism”.

By the way, the four pro-Bush writers are:

  • Orson Scott Card, a pro-war Democrat.
  • Robert Ferrigno, another pro-war type who says “Most novelists live in their imagination, which is a fine place to be until the bad guys come knock knock knocking.”
  • Roger L. Simon, another pro-war Democrat.
  • Thomas Mallon, who is worth quoting at length:

I’ll be voting for President Bush. His response to the 9/11 attacks has been both strong and measured, and he has extended a once-unimaginable degree of freedom (however tentative) to Afghanistan and Iraq. I am unimpressed by the frantic vilification that has come his way from even mainstream elements of the Democratic Party. The rhetorical assault is reminiscent of—though it far exceeds—the overheated opposition to Ronald Reagan’s re-election in 1984. Back then the intellectual establishment told us how repression and apocalypse would be just around the corner if the American “cowboy” were kept in the White House for another four years. Well (as Reagan might say, his head cocked to one side), I remember a rather different result from RR’s second term. And I’m hopeful about another four years under George W. Bush.

Two of the three agnostics have interesting things to say:

  • A.M. Homes:

Richard Nixon, because I found him so fascinating the first time around I’d be curious to see what he could do from the beyond … ?

  • Richard Dooling:

More than any other election in recent memory, this one reminds me of Henry Adams’ observation that politics is the systematic organization of hatreds.

The left-wing political road rage directed at George W. Bush for being dumb and lying about the war reminds me of nothing so much as the right-wing obsessive invective directed at Bill Clinton for being smart and lying about sex. Rush Limbaugh versus Michael Moore, and let the man nursing the most unrequited rage win. The DRAMA and spectacle of the election will be fascinating to watch, but novelists, even more than actors, should be political agnostics.

The same goes for musicians, Richard.

Arrgh, I Hate Being Right All the Time

Just a month ago I posted this:

Time to Regulate the Blogosphere?

That thought must have crossed the minds of some highly placed Democrat sympathizers in the “mainstream” media when the blogosphere started shredding the threadbare remnants of Dan Rather’s reputation for honest reporting. But the blogosphere is protected by the First Amendment, isn’t it?

There’s stark evidence that the blogosphere can be regulated, if the feds want to do it. Look at the airwaves, which the feds seized long ago, and which the feds censor by intimidation. Look at the ever-tightening federal control of political speech, which has brought us to McCain-Feingold. It’s all in the name of protecting us, of course….

Well, today Vodkapundit points to this AP story at myway:

FEC May Regulate Web Political Activity

Oct 13, 7:55 AM (ET)

By SHARON THEIMER

WASHINGTON (AP) – With political fund raising, campaign advertising and organizing taking place in full swing over the Internet, it may just be a matter of time before the Federal Election Commission joins the action. Well, that time may be now.

A recent federal court ruling says the FEC must extend some of the nation’s new campaign finance and spending limits to political activity on the Internet.

Long reluctant to step into online political activity, the agency is considering whether to appeal.

But vice chairwoman Ellen Weintraub said the Internet may prove to be an unavoidable area for the six-member commission, regardless of what happens with the ruling.

“I don’t think anybody here wants to impede the free flow of information over the Internet,” Weintraub said. “The question then is, where do you draw the line?”…

Hey, Ms. Weintraub, you’ll have to pry my blog out of my cold, dead hands.

Favorite Posts: Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech

A Left-Winger Grasps at Libertarian Straws, and Misses

Kos is all excited because he stumbled onto a Cato Institute paper that purports to show the advantages of divided government: lower spending and less chance of going to war. I guess it’s the war part that Kos has latched onto. Surely he’s not for less government spending, and surely he favors divided government (Kerry in the White House, Republicans in Congress) only as a way station toward undivided, all-Democrat government.

Be that as it may, I long ago debunked the Cato paper in question, as well as a later, more detailed analysis along the same lines. My take:

There is a very strong — almost perfect — relationship between real nondefense spending and the unemployment rate for the years 1969 through 2001, that is, from the Nixon-Ford administration through the years of Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton. Using a linear regression with five pairs of observations, one pair for each administration, I find that the percentage change in real nondefense spending is a linear function of the change in the unemployment rate….

[equation here]

In words, the work of the New Deal and Fair Deal had been capped by the enactment of the Great Society in the Kennedy-Johnson era. The war over domestic spending was finished, and the big spenders had won. Real nondefense spending continued to grow, but more systematically than it had from 1933 to 1969. From 1969 through 2001, each administration (abetted or led by Congress, of course) increased real nondefense spending according to an implicit formula that reflects the outcome of political-bureaucratic bargaining. It enabled the beast to grow, but at a rate that wouldn’t invoke images of a new New Deal or Great Society.

Divided government certainly hampered the ability of Republican administrations (Nixon-Ford, Reagan, Bush I) to strangle the beast, had they wanted to. But it’s not clear that they wanted to very badly. Nixon was, above all, a pragmatist. Moreover, he was preoccupied by foreign affairs (including the extrication of the U.S. from Vietnam), and then by Watergate. Ford was only a caretaker president, and too “nice” into the bargain. Reagan talked a good game, but he had to swallow increases in nondefense spending as the price of his defense buildup. Bush I simply lacked the will and the power to strangle the beast.

Bureaucratic politics also enters the picture. It’s hard to strangle a domestic agency once it has been established. Most domestic agencies have vocal and influential constituencies, in Congress and amongst the populace. Then there are the presidential appointees who run the bureaucracies. Even Republican appointees usually come to feel “ownership” of the bureaucracies they’re tapped to lead.

What happened before 1969?

The beast — a creature of the New Deal — grew prodigiously through 1940, when preparations for war, and war itself, brought an end to the Great Depression. Real nondefense spending grew by a factor of 3.6 during 1933-40. If the relationship for 1969-2001 had been in effect then, real nondefense spending would have increased by only 10 percent.

Truman and the Democrats in control of Congress were still under the spell of their Depression-inspired belief in the efficacy of big government and counter-cyclical fiscal policy. The post-war recession helped their cause, because most Americans feared a return of the Great Depression, which was still a vivid memory. Real nondefense spending increased 2.8 times during the Truman years. If the relationship for 1969-2001 had been in effect, real nondefense spending would have increased by only 20 percent.

The excesses of the Truman years caused a backlash against “big government” that the popular Eisenhower was able to exploit, to a degree, in spite of divided government. Even though the unemployment rate more than doubled during Ike’s presidency, real domestic spending went up by only 9 percent. That increase would have been 28 percent if the relationship for 1969-2001 had been in effect. But even Ike couldn’t resist temptation. After four years of real cuts in nondefense spending, he gave us the interstate highway program: another bureaucracy — and one with a nationwide constituency.

The last burst of the New Deal came in the emotional aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination and Lyndon Johnson’s subsequent landslide victory. Real nondefense spending in the Kennedy-Nixon years rose by 56 percent, even though the unemployment rate dropped by 48 percent during those years. The 56 percent increase in real spending would have been only 8 percent if the 1969-2001 relationship had applied.

As for Bush II, through the end of 2003 he was doing a bit better than average, by the standards of 1969-2001 — but not significantly better. He now seems to have become part of the problem instead of being the solution. In any event, the presence of the federal government has become so pervasive, and so important to so many constituencies, that any real effort to strangle the beast would invoke loud cries of “meanie, meanie” — cries that a self-styled “compassionate conservative” couldn’t endure.

Events since 1969 merely illustrate the fact that the nation and its politicians have moved a long way toward symbiosis with big government. The beast that frightened conservatives in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s has become a household pet, albeit one with sharp teeth. Hell, we’ve even been trained to increase his rations every year.

Tax cuts won’t starve the beast — Friedman, Becker, and other eminent economists to the contrary. But tax increases, on the other hand, would only stimulate the beast’s appetite.

The lesson of history, in this case, is that only a major war — on the scale of World War II — might cause us to cut the beast’s rations. And who wants that?

Upside-Down Logic on the Left

TalkLeft links to and quotes a report by Human Rights Watch about the risks to women who vote in Saturday’s Afghan elections. Here’s some of the quoted material:

When a U.S.-led coalition invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, one of the justifications for the war was that it would liberate women from the misogynistic rule of the Taliban. There have been notable improvements for women and girls. More than one million girls are enrolled in school and the new Constitution contains guarantees for women’s equal rights.

However, warlords and the Taliban are undermining Afghan women’s participation in the political process through ongoing threats and attacks. Throughout the country, militarized political factions are using force, threats, and corruption to stifle more legitimate political activity and dominate the election process.

About which TalkLeft says:

We’ll be listening to Bush in the debate closely as he credits his Administration’s achievements for Afghans, particularly women. I hope the mainstream media and bloggers will be fact-checking him.

So there have been “notable improvements for women and girls,” however, “warlords and the Taliban are undermining Afghan women’s participation in the political process through ongoing threats and attacks.” I would say that the notable improvements are to Bush’s credit and the efforts to undermine those accomplishments are to the discredit of the warlords and Taliban.

How is it Bush’s fault if things are better but not perfect in Afghanistan? That’s like saying it’s a cop’s fault if he grabs two muggers and a third one gets away because the cop has only two arms.

Poll-Shopping on the Left

I love it when lefties find a poll that shows Kerry ahead, then make a big deal of it, as Atrios does today at Eschaton.

I guess Atrios doesn’t like to look at realclearpolitics.com, where Bush now leads in 6 of the 10 most recent polls and is tied in 3 others. Rasmussen’s tracking poll, which realclearpolitics.com doesn’t cover, also has Bush ahead. Then there are the truly meaningful “polls” — namely, the betting markets — at Iowa Electronic Markets, TradeSports, and intrade, for example. Guess who’s favored to win, at all three sites? (Hint: It’s not Kerry.)

Give it up Atrios. We’ll let you know if and when Kerry actually pulls ahead of Bush. In the meantime, stick to other subjects about which you’re equally ignorant.

More about Israel, and the Left

I wrote recently and approvingly about Israel’s Gaza offensive. Now, according to an AP story, Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has pledged to escalate a broad Israeli offensive in northern Gaza, saying troops will remain until Palestinian rocket attacks are halted. Sharon’s resolve is sure to invoke more wrath and scorn from the left, which reflexively hates Israel.

Why does the left hate Israel? Richard Baehr of The American Thinker spells it out:

1. It is an easy way to express one’s hatred for America.

2. Israel is viewed as an outpost of colonialism, and an active practitioner of it.

3. Israel is a western nation, and hence can be judged by the left. Israel is not protected by cultural relativism, as the Arabs are.

4. Leftist Christian churches can escape any lingering guilt about the Holocaust, by turning Israel into a villain. Some leftist churches hate Israel because they think this will help protect their members in the holy land — in other words they feel threatened.

5. Ferocious Muslim hatred of Israel and the Jews reinforces the natural cowardice of many on the left who go along with the Muslims to stay out of their line of fire.

6. Jewish leftists are prominent in the anti-Israel movement. This opens the floodgates for everybody else.

7. Israel is attacked because the secular left is appalled by the influence of religious settlers and their biblical connections to the land of Israel, and by the support for Israel by evangelical Christians, and Christian Zionists.

I think there’s a lot of merit in what Baehr says. I’m especially persuaded by the first three points, and the rest seem more than plausible.

Here’s my take: Israel owes its existence and strength, in large part, to the United States, which is Israel’s longtime benefactor. Israel and the United States are natural — if tacit — allies in the war on terror. The left hates America because America isn’t what the left wants it to be. In fact, the left’s hatred for America is so strong and deep that it’s fair to say that the left regards America as its main enemy. Israel — a staunch friend of the left’s main enemy — is therefore the left’s enemy, as well.

The Meaning of "Hate Speech"

The left is fond of saying that those who challenge the veracity and virtue of leftists, leftism, and leftism’s lapdogs are guilty of “hate speech.”

I wondered how it could be hateful to say, truthfully, that John Kerry consistently voted against programs that would help the armed forces of the United States deter and defeat our enemies. Yet, Democrats strove mightily to portray Sen. Zell Miller’s righteous anger about Kerry’s voting record as hatred.

Similarly, Democrats strive mightily to portray those who favor self-reliance, free markets, and property rights as “haters” because they don’t believe in the redistribution of income and wealth.

Thinking about all of that has led me to this insight: If the left hates what you say, it’s “hate speech.”

Ha, Ha Funny Stuff from the Left

So Daily Kos comments about something or other that Fox News’s White House reporter Carl Cameron wrote about Kerry, apparently in jest, which Fox News quickly retracted and apologized for. Kos says this:

If a network calls itself “fair and balanced”, it shouldn’t have a blatant anti-Kerry reporter on the beat.

Okay, so how about if all the networks that don’t call themselves “fair and balanced” — because they know better — take all their blatant anti-Bush reporters off the White House beat? That would leave a lot of empty seats in the press briefing room, wouldn’t it?

Not to mention empty anchor desks. But, the anchors I have in mind are empty suits, anyway.

P.S. By Fox’s standards, CBS should have apologized for the fake National Guard memos about Bush’s service before airing them.

Whose Side Are They On, Anyway?

The American Thinker highlights more moral confusion on the left. First, Thomas Lifson:

…John F. Kerry pledged that he would end America’s program to develop miniature nuclear “bunker-buster” weapons, the type of weapon which would be suitable to remove the threat from underground nuclear weapons facilities belonging to rogue states. Yet in the very same debate, Kerry decried the progress made by North Korea and Iran toward nuclear weapons, weapons which are produced using underground facilities of the type which could only be destroyed by ultra-powerful bunker-busters.

How do we explain Kerry’s position that the United States should not possess weapons capable of stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons to rogue states, a threat he identified as the most important one facing the United States? The answer to that question can be found in the writings of leftist theoreticians, critical of what they call American “dominance.”

They have openly expressed their fears that a world in which the United States is the most powerful actor will be unjust, and is undesirable. Of course, no candidate for president will go so far as to baldly state the thesis that the United States is not to be trusted with power, and that we need to be checked and balanced by the power of foreign states, comparably armed and able to project their power against us. But these intellectual doctrines seem to have been incorporated into the national security thinking of John F. Kerry, the would-be next Commander-in-Chief, because they explain his peculiar views on disabling America’s ability to address the threat of North korean and Iranian nukes….

Then, Justin Hart:

Al Gore’s now infamous MoveOn.org speech in May 2004 highlights a theme that has “dominated” left-leaning scholarship for last three years. Said Gore: “An American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does.”…

This “dominance motif” is the bedrock of modern leftist thought, seeding a host of conspiracy theories and birthing a thriving industry of Bush-bashing tomes. Understanding the history, rhetoric and proponents behind these claims illustrates the flawed worldview of the left….

[There is] a vein of leftist scholarship and publications warning of the “imperial grand strategy” that the Bush administration has “embraced.” All of these writers allude to the 2002 policy document, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America….

In [leftists’] minds, there is…something inherently sinister about it. To summarize their fears: The birth of “neocons” during the first Gulf War gave rise to the “Bush Doctrine” of “forward deterrence.” Before the 2001 attacks, “preemption” was a rhetorical device employed by U.S. administrations since WWII, that has now become a declarative policy under Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell and associates. Employing an “Arab façade”, the Bush Administration has struck a “Faustian bargain,” vying for U.S. hegemony while simultaneously “socializing” a military economy, driving huge deficits and creating “powerful pressures” to cut federal spending.

Bush is seen as a “born-again global crusader,” fixated on enriching his oil-rich peers. He advocates a Pax Americana, with a swagger of “open contempt” for international law, and displays an insatiable desire for global dominance. The common premise across these worldview conspiracies is that the Bush Administration has insidious designs to dominate and “run the planet by force to protect their privilege.”

Empire, where’s the empire? Where’s the global dominance? Where’s the international law? (Hint: It’s not to be found in the United Nations.)

Have these people died and gone to some magical kingdom where lions and lambs commingle in peace? Tell me how to find it. I’ll check my weapons at the gate.

Dribble from Drabble

Margaret Drabble remains a favorite author, in spite of dribble like this:

My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness.

Unlike John the Square, Drabble has kept her anti-Americanism out of her fiction — except in mild, typically Brit-snob doses. My tolerance has limits, however. She goes off my list of favorite authors when her novels become hysterically anti-American, like John the Square’s Absolute Friends. So presposterous I couldn’t finish it. Nor will I link to it.

Kerry’s Slave-Labor Plan and Shell Game

Kerry’s website used to carry a statement about his position on national service. The statement was taken off the site, but intrepid (no doubt pajama-clad) bloggers have found a cached version. Here’s a bit of it, courtesy Say Anything:

As President, John Kerry will ensure that every high school student in America performs community service as a requirement for graduation. This service will be a rite of passage for our nation’s youth and will help foster a lifetime of service. States would design service programs that meet their community and educational needs. However, John Kerry does not believe in unfunded mandates. No state would be obligated to implement a service requirement if the federal government does not live up to its obligation to fund the program.

So, Kerry would make slave laborers of high-school students. But he wouldn’t make the States fund the slave-labor program. No, he’d simply ship the money to the States from Washington, D.C., where money grows on trees. Oops, no, that’s not it; Washington’s money comes from the citizens of the very States that he’d ship the money to. Nice try, John, but we’ve seen that move before.

What’s Wrong with Canada?

The New York Times asks — and fails to answer — that question in “Canada’s Prophets of Pessimism (Is It the Weather?).” The article hints at the problem by noting that

The country…has seemingly come to define greatness by how much money it sinks into health care or day care. Even so, education budgets are shrinking and there is brain drain of doctors and other professionals to the United States.

And why? Because Canada has become something of a socialist paradise, along the lines of East Germany. Then, there’s rampant suppression of speech. And a lot more.

Democracy vs. Liberty

A point worth pondering, from a review by John B. Judis of Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom:

…Zakaria argues that the United States suffers from an excess of democracy, which is threatening liberty. The analysis appears to come full circle — liberty leads to democracy and democracy ends up undermining liberty, prompting him to call for “a restoration of balance” between them….

A return to constitutional principles would do the trick. But how to get there?

Carter’s Election Strategy

It’s simple: Preemptively discredit the outcome in Florida. From BBC News:

Florida officials stand by ballot

Election officials in Florida have rejected a suggestion that the state’s preparations for the presidential election are seriously flawed.

Jimmy Carter, the former US president and veteran election monitor, predicted polling in the key state would be neither free nor fair….

Mr Carter said that Florida’s top election official in 2004, Glenda Hood, showed “strong bias”.

He accused of her of favouring Republicans by trying to get the name of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader included on the state ballot, knowing he might divert Democrat votes.

The former president also alleged that an attempt had been made to disqualify black Americans more likely to vote Democrat on the basis of criminal records….

Hey, Jimmy, even the Florida Supreme Court, not known as a mouthpiece for the Republican Party, said that Nader should be on the ballot. But I guess it’s “un-Democratic” to offer citizens too many choices.

As for the charge about disqualifying black Americans with criminal records. You don’t want to open that bucket of worms, do you, Jimmy?

Lileks Nails the Sunday Times Set

I used to subscribe to the Sunday edition of The New York Times. I quit when I got tired of being pounded by a point of view, in every damned section (even Sports). I hung on until I found that I no longer enjoyed the Magazine. Then I quit taking the Sunday Times and did my bit to prevent deforestation. James Lileks knows whereof I speak:

The Sunday Times is the weekly sermon: let us reinforce your world view, your sense of belonging to the Thinking Class, the Special Ones….Anyway, it’s a sunny fall morning – well, noonish. Now comes the capstone moment when you lay the slab of the Times in your lap and begin the autoposy of the week. Scan the A section headlines – yes, yes, yes, appalling. Scan the metro: your eyes glaze. The arts section – later. Travel – Greece again? Good for Greece….No comics . . . there was always comics on Sunday back home. But that was IOWA, for heaven’s sake, what else would you expect but Blondie and Ziggy and the rest . . . ah.

The Magazine.

Let’s begin! A little humorous piece – not funny haha funny, but, you know, arch, which is very urbane. Then there’s an essay on words, which is wonderful because you love words, and then a big serious piece about that horrible situation the administration isn’t doing anything about. You’ll read it later – skim the pull quotes for now. Best of all are the ads, because you really wouldn’t want to wear any of that stuff but it’s fun to look at….

(The New York Times Sunday Magazine is placed on the top of the toilet tank)

(The New York Times Sunday Magazine slides off the toilet tank, reminding you why you don’t put it there)

(The New York Times Sunday Magazine is strategically placed on the coffee table to alert anyone who comes into your flat that you read the New York Times Sunday Magazine)

(One week later, unread and unobserved, it is replaced by another edition. Cover story: global climate change and tourism threatens biodiversity in Antarctica. But you suspected as much. The whole world is going to hell. Except for New York. New York is fabulous. It just has to be.)

(Two weeks later: none of your friends are bloggers and none of your friends read blogs. So nevermind.)

But then there was the Book Review, which I kept taking (by mail) for a few more years. Then the Book Review began to get ever more serious — less fiction, more “relevance” — and ever more stridently left-wing — with a few libertarian-conservatives thrown into the mix, just for fun, in the spirit of “let’s show our compassion to the masses by inviting some anti-globalist protesters to our black-tie party.” Well, I quit taking the Book Review, too.

So, I’ve kicked the Times habit, and I wake up every morning feeling better about myself.

Fighting Myths with Facts

REVISED AND RE-DATED

Liberals and deluded economists (the same thing) constantly decry the fact that one-fifth of the nation’s households are in the lowest 20 percent of the income distribution. (A quasi-intellectual joke — get it?)

Anyway, there’s this clamor for someone (namely taxpayers) to do something (namely redistribute income or simply tax higher earners to provide expensive and needless training, healthcare, and daycare programs for low earners). Many sensible economists (a rare breed) know better. They know two important facts:

1. There’s a lot of up and down movement in the distribution of incomes.

2. Even those who stay near the bottom of the income distribution are a lot better off than they used to be.

The first pont is illustrated by these data* from a panel of families surveyed in 1975 and again in 1991 (income quintile in 1975 and percentage that had moved to the top two quintiles in 1991):

Lowest Fifth – 59% moved to the top two quintiles

Second Fifth – 52% “

Middle Fifth – 49% “

Fourth Fifth – 70% remained in the top two quintiles

Highest Fifth – 86% “

The second point is illustrated by this** graphic:


__________
* Source: Myths of Rich & Poor, W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, via Arnold Kling, writing at Tech Central Station.)

** Source: The Washington Post, via Wizbang.

Recommended Reading

From my son:

Escape from the Soviets, by Tatiana Tchernavin, 1934. Just finished it. An account of a woman’s escape with her husband and son across the border into Finland. It’s the kind of book we should have been given to read in school. I seem to recall that the worst thing about the USSR, as we understood it, was that jeans were expensive and people had to stand in long lines. Amazing that with accounts like this people only began to admit to Soviet concentration camps (word author uses in the original, before the German variety became well known) and massive deaths through executions and starvation in the 1980s. If nothing else, it’s an excellent commentary on socialism, which she doesn’t hesitate to excoriate.