tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post7485734731088949182..comments2024-03-29T02:03:49.151-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: Reasonable Americans?David Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-41497705259792340182012-03-31T00:42:42.323-04:002012-03-31T00:42:42.323-04:00The one thing, sir, you seem to forget is that we ...The one thing, sir, you seem to forget is that we are a nation comprised of individual states and territories, not just one nation with a top down approach to governance. Frankly, I am surprised a professional historian would blithly ignore that fact.<br /><br />Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to solving our health care delivery system, why not adopt the approach the Founders had in mind when they wrote in the Tenth Amendmend? For example, Massachussetts' approach would be quite different from the one Texas or Utah may employ since their citizens' worldview is quite different and they have different needs and desires. One other thing that really is quite curious is the fact liberals claim they want diversity and choice and yet offer neither when it comes to health care.<br /><br />For you to ignore our Constitution is quite remarkable. Why is it that liberals seem to always want to dictate to the rest of us how we should live our lives? I realize you believe they are much smarter than us mere peons, but so did the British aristocrisy, and look what happened to them.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-47104120720497698492012-03-16T16:42:35.017-04:002012-03-16T16:42:35.017-04:00I see an interesting juxtaposition: the Boomers wh...I see an interesting juxtaposition: the Boomers who couldn’t see to give themselves to anything larger than themselves and yet too those Boomers (reinforced by 1930s-type social activists (often Democrats) who gave themselves over wayyy too unthinkingly to Large and Great Causes.<br /> <br />But the generation of politicians in power in the late 1960s and early 1970s who originally embraced the change-agendas of the late 1960s and the 1970s were not Boomers. Not even Teddy K and Joe Biden were Boomers.<br /> <br />Ideally, I think, we could have expected the pols to do with the change-agendas what the old BuShips used to do for proposed add-on arrays to existing hulls: take all the proposals for new arrays and new missions and see if they could each and all fit on the hull without overloading it or dissipating its efficacy to the point where nothing would work and the ship (and crew) couldn’t ‘platform’ the whole shebang.<br /> <br />But that wasn’t done by the Beltway, whose elected denizens simply kept adding things on and on to the national ‘platform’ until now nothing seems to really work efficaciously at all.<br /> <br />Sooner or later somebody is going to have to do it. Nor can this difficult task of assessment be sidestepped because of ‘interests’, whether those interests are based in the fiscal desire to keep their trunk into the federal funding trough or for ideological purposes or whatever.<br /><br />Nor can ‘good intentions’ justify such gimlet-eyed assessment: there are lots of good ‘arrays’ or missions that simply constitute too much for the platform to handle well.<br /><br />I recently came across a March 1967article by Theodore Lowi about “interest group liberalism”.<br /><br />In that month and year he was concerned for the 1950s and very early 1960s Beltway strategy of letting interest-groups (at that time, the farmers, the unions, trade association and manufacturers’ groups) have a strong say in the crafting of legislation and regulations that would affect them.<br /> <br />This was a dubious strategy back then. Of course, by the late 1960s and early 1970s that strategy had been added on to all those interests (industrial, agricultural, financial) the assorted numerous ‘advocacy’ groups pushing an incomprehensible number of agendas and demands.<br /> <br />Without getting into the ‘legitimacy’ or ‘urgency’ or anything else about all those agendas and demands, clearly the strategy of allowing those groups to simply write their own ticket was as unwise as BuShips – in the terms of my analogy – allowing DOD contractors to go to town loading up a ‘platform’ with all of their assorted new arrays and systems without any supervision whatsoever.<br /> <br />The national ‘Platform’ is now in a very difficult and perhaps dangerous condition.<br /> <br />And the Beltway is now populated with Boomers and post-Boomers “who know not Joseph” and don’t recall much of those old days or, I regret to observe, the original onerous but vital oversight responsibilities of Congress. At this point, nobody can ‘just say No’.<br /> <br />Or even care to wonder if they should.Publionhttp://www.chezodysseus.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-6900525892772584032012-03-09T04:05:37.924-05:002012-03-09T04:05:37.924-05:00Exceptional piece David,
I have unwisely missed y...Exceptional piece David,<br /><br />I have unwisely missed your blog for awhile and what an incredible piece to come back to.<br /><br />Thank you for the perspective.Evan Hurrlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11962424495262193410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-4907387539817992382012-03-07T01:42:36.486-05:002012-03-07T01:42:36.486-05:00North by North West 74 said...
"I think the ...North by North West 74 said...<br /><br />"I think the Tea Party movement is the first of many different institutional responses from the generation(s) after the Boomers to bring stability and moderation to society. As it is x'er influenced, the pragmatic, cut and dry, black and white responses...whether one agrees with them or not is refreshingly authentic and different than what had been encountered from 86 to 08."<br /><br />Actually, speaking as somebody born well before 1972, "different" and "refreshing" are pretty much the last words I'd use to describe the Tea Party crowd. They're nothing more than another iteration of the '68 Wallace crowd, the "Reagan Democrat" crowd, the '92 Perot crowd. When the Tea Party gang pretty much explicitly let themselves get co-opted by the Republicans, it was the non-story of the decade. From the moment they started putting on the silly tricorner hats it was **always** obvious that they'd toe the GOP line.<br /><br />While it's too soon to tell what effect the "Occupy" movement will have, its approach to party alignments is a stark contrast to the Tea Party clown show. The Occupy people have been very careful to keep Dem opportunists at arm's length. It's astute: The Occupy people understand that the parties work for the oligarchs -- who are the enemy. The Tea Party began with justfiable resentment against the oligarchs, but they were easily goaded back into stock left-right schism feuds. It's been pathetically simple to dupe them into becoming de facto shock troops for the oligarchs.<br />-- sgloverAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-5087441239416048072012-03-05T22:04:14.828-05:002012-03-05T22:04:14.828-05:00Professor,
As an x'er, I appreciate your insi...Professor,<br /><br />As an x'er, I appreciate your insights into a world where "government" was a respected and somewhat trusted institution that could generally be entrusted to better society as a whole.<br /><br />This is a foreign concept to dare I say anyone born after 1972.<br /><br />Further, as you mention the Boomer generation has exhausted most of their life cycle taking for granted, criticizing and eroding this modern garden of Eden for further self actualization to the point of now robbing from future generations to subsidize it all.<br /><br />Tragically, this generation has essentially eroded both the institutional and financial underpinnings of a functioning liberal democracy all for self serving interest whether on the left or right side of the spectrum.<br /><br />I think the Tea Party movement is the first of many different institutional responses from the generation(s) after the Boomers to bring stability and moderation to society. As it is x'er influenced, the pragmatic, cut and dry, black and white responses...whether one agrees with them or not is refreshingly authentic and different than what had been encountered from 86 to 08. I would say essentially bookended by Iran-Contra and the Financial Crises.<br /><br />I think as more counter weight enters the system in the form of X'er (cut the crap, save the hyperbole and get to the point attitude) as well as Millenium (all of one, one for all, save the world attitude (?)) to counter balance and eventually over take and repair the effects of the last 65 years of Boomer impact.<br /><br />Indeed the regency will be televised, just the catalyst and primary driver for the change is not yet known. <br /><br />That I think that depends on if the true crises ends up being financial based, foreign policy based or environmentally based or any combination thereof. Fortunately I believe there are spefic traits inherent in each generation that can rise and will rise to the occasion to resolve the crisis and restore institutional order and societal cohesion<br /><br />It's just not come into focus yet.North by North West 74noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-72138766866244765792012-03-04T23:24:24.327-05:002012-03-04T23:24:24.327-05:00Professor
Many provoking issues,
broached at onc...Professor<br /><br />Many provoking issues, <br />broached at once......<br /><br /><br />I have to suggest that there is very much new, about everything everyone now faces, <br /><br />both developed and developing worlds, <br /><br />each civilization, <br /><br />Western Civilizational civil war politics,for the last 200 years, the end of the ancien regime, fall of The Proud Tower, etc, middle or lower class, bourgeoisie or proletariat,Communism or fascism,<br /><br />(it turns out that the lower class is closer to fascism than Communism when it hits the fan) <br /><br />somewhat aside, in future.<br /><br />Further, the larger issues, facing each, are not usefully called merely generational, in my judgment; <br /><br />re Asia, and all its multifarious issues, why bother really, with merely a generational prism?.Bozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-64165605872080458932012-03-04T10:23:10.241-05:002012-03-04T10:23:10.241-05:00http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137287/reih...http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137287/reihan-salam/the-missing-middle-in-american-politics?page=show<br /><br />good article above.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-40263767936016588632012-03-04T10:12:16.362-05:002012-03-04T10:12:16.362-05:00At last, you have explained the current impasse in...At last, you have explained the current impasse in stark accuarcy!<br /><br />But I fear you have also implicitly revealed an almost subliminal cause of the impasse: Both left and right have, in different ways, exalted similare cults of the individual to the detriment of the whole body politic. <br /> The right's cult of the Individual's unfettered right to exploit, cheat and fraud; and the left's narcissistic focus on the "self", the "little Me" and it's over-blown "feelings" as paramount to all else, are, unfortunately, the same thing in different flavors. <br /> Now, huge, barely-understood new forces of "social media", psycho-targeted advertising and 24/7 monitoring of our lives is reality, we are on the cusp of an Orwellian nightmare. This is an escalation of elite control and subversion of our private selves and may become even scarier than the elite's control and subversion of our political process.<br /> More practically, the left's studious "principaled" refusal to exert leadership of the nascent 3rd party, a potentially "people's party" represented by the "99%" of Occupy Wall Street, is final proof of the absence of prospect with which you conclude your excellent, if very sad, blog.Bob in NCnoreply@blogger.com