The Death of Pragmatism
According to the political scientists Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who have devised a widely used system to measure the ideology of members of Congress, when Obama took office there was no ideological overlap between the two parties. In the House, the most conservative Democrat, Bobby Bright, of Alabama, was farther to the left than the most liberal Republican, Joseph Cao, of Louisiana. The same was true in the Senate, where the most conservative Democrat, Ben Nelson, of Nebraska, was farther to the left than the most liberal Republican, Olympia Snowe, of Maine. According to Poole and Rosenthal’s data, both the House and the Senate are more polarized today than at any time since the eighteen-nineties.
It isn’t just polarization that has afflicted Washington. It is ideological extremism that is largely to blame for the inaction of Congress in the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression — what one scholar who has studied the problem refers to as “asymmetrical polarization.”
The Republican Party has drifted much farther to the right than the Democratic Party has drifted to the left. Jacob Hacker, a professor at Yale, whose 2006 book, “Off Center,” documented this trend, told me, citing Poole and Rosenthal’s data on congressional voting records, that, since 1975, “Senate Republicans moved roughly twice as far to the right as Senate Democrats moved to the left” and “House Republicans moved roughly six times as far to the right as House Democrats moved to the left.” In other words, the story of the past few decades is asymmetric polarization.
The use of 1975 as a baseline is a little strange. If Professor Hacker had used the year 1972 or even 1974 to plot his graph, he would have found a huge shift among Democrats to the far left as the ’75 “Watergate babies” — almost universally “New Left” liberals who replaced more moderate or conservative Democrats — would have substantially evened the gap between Democrats and the GOP in the House.
No matter. The point is made. For a large number of conservatives and many liberals who are being taunted with the epithet “RINO” or “DINO,” the fact remains that they have not left their party. Their party has left them. Those who can’t stomach the extremism, the obstructionism, the radicalism of the neo-liberals and Tea Party conservatives who both seek to hammer each other into the ground on a daily basis are largely left on the outside, viewing the slow-motion train wreck that politics has become with a feeling of abject helplessness.
It’s not a question of “moderates” not holding power. One can be liberal or conservative and be pragmatic enough to work with the other side on the big issues of the day. The problem is, pragmatism is dead — killed by the excessively ideological base of both parties who view compromise as treason, and comity as cowardice. Both sides are so besotted with a warped and tangled view of each other that they occasionally — unintentionally — provide comic relief for our political culture.
The debt ceiling deal reached by President Obama and Speaker Boehner is one such example of a mirthful interlude. Both sides screamed bloody murder that their guy had botched it and had been taken by the other. It would do no good to point out that it would have been impossible for both sides to be “taken” on any one deal, so one side has to be in error. Guessing which one means that you will be acknowledged a genius by 50% of the extremists from both parties.
This kind of idiocy aside, the lack of pragmatism in both parties means that even the formerly simple tasks of government become ideological mountains to climb. Back in the good old days when Congress was made up of sane crooks and charlatans, the president’s appointments were mostly pro-forma exercises in governance. Cabinet secretaries, undersecretaries, and assistant secretaries were supported (or at least, unopposed) by the opposition as a matter of course. The president was not begrudged the courtesy of being able to pick his own people. Judges — unless they were closet cases or rabid racists (and even then they were sometimes given a pass) — were confirmed by voice vote or desultory roll calls with few dissenting votes.
Today, both parties go to war over federal judges, undersecretaries, ambassadors, and other appointees as if the fate of the republic hung on whether an appointee was too far left or right. Democrats did it to Bush as much as Republicans have done it to Obama. The process is broken and the consequences are a hobbled government at all levels. Whatever efforts to achieve a pragmatic solution — such as the “Gang of 14″ who came to an agreement in 2007 regarding some of President Bush’s judicial appointees — are derided by both sides, undermined, and then destroyed by partisan sniping.
If one defines pragmatism as viewing the world as it is, prioritizing what’s important, and recognizing the validity and good faith of the other side in order to work together to solve problems, then there is a gravestone somewhere on Capitol Hill that might read:
Here lies the remains of pragmatic politics. Killed by excessive ideology and rank partisanship. Survived by the American republic — but for how long, no one can say.
Lines must be drawn. Argue over anything you want after you get your business done. I’m sure there are worse things than Congress and Senate being unable to pass anything not related to the budget.
Rick directly and in a very big way contradicts himself:
“Both parties, liberals [he means Demoraticans] and conservatives [he means Republicans], have contributed to the rapid growth in the federal government and the crushing debt with which we must now deal.”
Then he concludes:
“The evidence that the extremes of both parties have a stranglehold on power in Congress is fairly convincing. The center, for all intents and purposes, is gone. Almost all Democrats are liberals today and all Republicans are conservatives.”
Rick excoriates the way things worked in the past when the massive government was built by parties cooperating. But he says the solution for today’s spendthrift problem in DC is for a return to the way things were in that past. This piece is a heartfelt and passionate plea for a style of cooperation that is putting us and our progeny right into the poorhouse.
In the first quote he says the way things used to be was bad because it got us into a fix with big government and big spending. In the second he says the way things used to be was good because everybody was more moderate and cooperated in building a great big government together.
This piece is a heartfelt and passionate plea for a cooperation that started in the past and has gradually put us and our progeny right into the poorhouse. It is also a mindless logical fallacy.
Oops. Pardon my redundancy. I guess I am also passionate.
Perhaps, but passion, like extremism, in the pursuit of liberty is no vice and therein lies the main fault with this essay. The author is so anxious to be “fair” that he misses the point; the left, liberals is his term though mine is progressives, have little or no use for a free citizenry preferring instead a ruling elite and a dependent lower class both supported by the labors of an obeisant middle class.
It should be no surprise that the conservative wing of the Republican party has grown, that’s really what’s happened, since the forties and fifties as the Democratic party has become dominated by progressivism and flaws in the progressive agenda have become more widely known. All of our current difficulties are the result of congressional efforts to enact this agenda in one form or another.
Currently the key provision is the Patient Protection act which, despite the any protestations otherwise, is intended to make the federal government even more dominant in the health care industry. Once that goal, that is at least de facto government control over the health of the vast majority of Americans, is accomplished the rest of the agenda will be relatively easy to enact. See Western Europe for examples. Part of the problem with addressing this agenda is that most of it is well aligned with that of the typical professional politician, the kind that the media and it’s pundit class keep telling us are needed for their experience with the intricacies of government that are evidently beyond the comprehension of us mere mortals.
Speaking of passionate, I tend to go on about liberty and the threat posed to it by progressivism. I hope I haven’t bored anyone…
Well at the risk of shooting myself in the foot a lot of it went over my head but when your ideology is preventing you from doing something like balancing the flipping checkbook it’s not hard to see the problems.
Bingo! pragmatism is code word for accepting every Left-wing program an bureaucracy and regulation ever enacted into law and any figure such enactments.
Marxists have poisoned our system and polity, and they reside in and.dominate one party. Compromising with people intent on your civilizations deconstruction is just a slower path to oblivion.
If our intent to strive to just get along, we would have the greatest nation on earth. Okay, I got it Rick. If we can elect a man like Rodney King for President, everything will be super. Straddle the fence should be our new national goal.
Rick would have made a great “practical” European politician. In Greece.
Tex is right. On the moderate men, see http://clarespark.com/2011/10/15/baltzell-on-the-good-jews/; also http://clarespark.com/2010/11/06/moderate-men-falling-down/. Pragmatism used to signify a philosophy that tested theories in action; today it means the amoral willingness to compromise in conflicts that are often irreconcilable, not to speak of suicidal. The word “moderate” is a staple of psychological warfare. Who doesn’t want to be “moderate” as opposed to some kind of fanatical extremist? The moderates, in practice, turn out to be statists of the most extreme form, for they stand above the fray, unlike the crazies whose conflicts they claim to “mediate.” They are often protofascist in ideology, though they don’t see themselves that way.
so you would turn everything into a food fight? Please. Both sides managed to cooperate in the steady, relentless growth of imperial Washington. It’s the party of big govt and the party of even bigger govt. The only difference is what they want to spend money on. The Tea Party folks elected in 2010 are the perfect example: the establishment on BOTH sides turned its guns on the newbies for daring to say that 15T in debt (and counting) may be a problem. The current way of doing business is already creating Greece. Rick just happened to say it out loud.
Please see http://clarespark.com/2010/11/06/moderate-men-falling-down/. Moderation is a feel good word, but in the real world, it has come to signify the neutrality of state-appointed arbitrators or mediators who stand above the madding crowd, and offer their neutral skills in conflict-resolution.
What I see as much more of a danger is the way Obama just got away with trashing the constitution with his “recess” appointments when the Senate was still in session. That story just disappeared, and everyone’s busy pretending it didn’t happen.
ZZZ , did you not know that those two Senate sessions were declared invalid by a judge who saw them as a ruse —each of the two sessions had one or two members present long eough to gavel the meeting to order, and not much more.
The process isn’t broken; checks and balances are in play, initiated by voters. Savvy Americans want the hobbling to continue for now, and we look forward to electing many more conservatives until we can function as a republic again. The only middle ground we have with D.C. leftists is the Constitution, and since they’ve chosen to trash it, we have nothing in common. The ugly battle goes on.
You are absolutely correct concerning the Constitution. In the one remark where the author gives credit he mentions the need to change the culture in Washington. A return to and a reverence for the Constitution would be a large step in that direction.
Then author delivers this over-the-top bullcrap….”Elect a Republican and we’ll put poor kids to work after school as janitors, and make their parents dig ditches on a chain gang for their food stamps. We’ll build an electrified fence that the Mexican illegals will get a real charge out of, and then take us back to the good old days when everyone knew their place, gays were in the closet, abortions were in the back alley, God was in our science textbooks, and the federal government’s biggest worry was what to do about the inefficiency of the Post Office.” If ever there was a reason for polarization it’s to be found in that absurd characterization and the author’s willingness to state it.
The further down I read in this article the more I realized that this is worthless nonsense. Essentially the author tells us that for those of us who demand a return to a constitutional republic our rallying cry should be “let’s reach across the aisle” or go “along to get along”! If only we had listened to Bob Dole, John McCain, Dick Lugar, or Gerald Ford we wouldn’t be in the mess we are now. Only later. This is possibly the worst piece of tripe I have ever read on PJM.
Yes.
The Constitution should not be revered, it should be honored, as a contract is honored, because that is what it is. It is, or was, a contract, a DEAL, between people who had differing understandings of what the world was and how to get along best in it.
The statists have reneged on the deal and we need to oppose them just as one would oppose anyone else who has cheated on a contract. And we need to call them what they are – cheats.
The pretense that the Constitution, or anything else, will make everyone happy is part of what screws the deal. Once you put forward that lie, it is too easy for people to complain that they are not happy, that the Constitution is not providing what they want.
Most believers in small government know that government cannot provide what people want, only the security to pursue it for themselves within the rules of the contract. We need to be more vocal in stating and standing up for that.
Yes.
Elect a Republican and we’ll put poor kids to work after school as janitors, and make their parents dig ditches on a chain gang for their food stamps. We’ll build an electrified fence that the Mexican illegals will get a real charge out of, and then take us back to the good old days when everyone knew their place, gays were in the closet, abortions were in the back alley, God was in our science textbooks, and the federal government’s biggest worry was what to do about the inefficiency of the Post Office.
Really? Which Republican candidates espouse these views? It must be fun skewering those imaginary conservative boogiemen what live in your head.
We’re $15,000 billion in debt, more people don’t pay taxes than do, REAL unemployment is more like 12%, contrary to what the Kommisars tells us, and this clown says we need to be more pragmatic. Why? Because some “scientist” says so… Well, I’m no “scientist” but I can tell you until the conversation starts with “Government spends too much and interferes too much” don’t believe it. GAGA republicans (Go Along, Get Along) got us into this mess and practicing their former “pragmatism” isn’t going to get us out. A line in the sand needs to be drawn and the “left” leaning democrats, who are WAY more left than the right leaning RINO’s (regardless of what the so-called “scientist” thinks), brought back to reality. My local paper actually prints op-eds advocating the end to Capitalism, replaced with “benign” Socialism. And this crack pot wants me to be “pragmatic”. To redo a famous movie line- “Stupid is as Stupid writes”
The crux of your argument, as I see it, boils down to four points:
1) Both parties have been taken over by extremists.
2) Neither party will deal with the current mess on its own, opting instead to tackle conservative/liberal issues.
3) Partisanship gridlocks Congress and prevents it from taking action.
4) Pragmatism is the only solution.
If I have that right, then what’s the pragmatic solution to solve the entitlements crisis? Cut defense? Still go broke. Increase taxes? Kill the recovery. Phase out or restructure Social Security and Medicare? Now you’re in partisan territory. Reform them instead? Kick the can down the road.
As for liberty, both parties have shown themselves willing to trample civil rights when desired. How will compromise between them be any help? How will rubber-stamping appointments to federal agencies prevent those agencies from abusing their power? If both parties are scum, why remove their biggest obstacle by having them work together?
Compromise only works when everyone’s on the same page. Meet in the middle on a budget item. Take out the clause that makes people worry about civil rights. But if the options are vastly different, compromise means choosing a side. You can’t bail out the economy and cut spending at the same time. No matter the amount you spend or the amount you cut, one of the approaches is wrong. If pragmatism means picking the right one, it’s still a partisan decision. The only “compromise” is to do nothing, exactly what you’re arguing against. Even that isn’t viable when the status quo leads to failure.
You’re right in that elected officials from both parties have been doing an atrocious job of protecting liberty, putting checks on the government, and finding solutions to major problems, a trend that can only be fixed by a cultural shift in Washington. But on some issues there is no middle ground; a compromise is worse than gridlock. The pragmatism you’re seeking would lead to disaster.
The answer is to pick a side and clean it up. Push back against all the peripheral noise, deal with the major problems we all share, and stand strong in defense of your approach. Compromise only if the resulting plan will be a success, assuming you’ve picked correctly. You don’t have the luxury of hedging your bets, but that’s the nature of the problem. And as far as the neo-liberals and the Tea Partiers are concerned, making the parties take a side is the only way there’s a hope of reaching a solution. Pragmatism means taking a side.
the pragmatic approach is to realize that a problem exists and finger-pointing over blame is pointless. Jesus on a biscuit; it’s not like Repubs are the children of god and the Dems are exemplars of evil. The GOP establishment, more than anything else, wants to win the Senate so IT can control the money. Oh sure, Boehner and his ilk give lip service to the debt but their rhetoric is almost as hollow on the topic as Obama’s. The problem is spending. Debt does not care what ideology you follow, what color you are, what party you belong to, or what your stance is on social issues; it simply has to be paid. Period. Exclamation point.
For some reason I was thinking about this very death of pragmatism this morning, kinda day-dreaming I guess.
I posited as a possibility that in America before 1960 people generally didn’t have trouble saying something was brilliant or stupid, a good idea or bad, simply based on what they observed.
Today morality and success, failure, competence and smarts are filtered through a bewildering variety of race, sexual orientation, party affiliation and race. Sure, there have always been biases and stereotypes but one gets the feeling that stereotypes always came from some germ of truth compared to today.
Today in America, the Democratic Party’s Rainbow Coalition is obsessed with the idea that everyone is equal, regardless of race or creed. Yet that party stubbornly insists that gays are not quite as capable of bigotry or murder as the average person, that blacks are not quite as capable of hate or racism, that rich people are not quite as moral as a college student or taxi driver.
What has done this to America? Have we simply been watching too many movies?
I think your article lays out symptoms of the problem and leaves out a critical part of the structure. Politics is polarized, but so is the electorate. To some degree even the hard idealogies are polarized within themselves, even though at voting time they will likely vote together. Politics is reflecting what is.
I think some of the causation is that there are no givens anymore, that so many things are decided to be relatives, that it is hard to do anything in unity. In fact there can’t be anything but polarization under those conditions because there is a genuine, hard, and valid disagreement about them. Pragmatic can even look different depending on which side of the fence you view it from.
“President Obama has adopted the cover story of “fairness” to mask his drive to convince middle-class Americans that the real reason some people are better off than they are is not because they’re smarter, or work harder, or have a better idea to sell in the American marketplace, but because they cheat — climbing to the top on the backs of overworked, overtaxed, and underpaid Americans.”
Another politician said the same thing, only in a different language. Who was he? Hmmm, let me see. He was bald, had a thin beard and moustache, and wore cheap suits. Oh yes, I remember now, his name was Lenin. And he promised the Russian people a lot, too, while he was in power. What became of his “promises?” Well, he only gave you one of the worst dictatorships ever created and it sure was a far cry from what we know as democracy.
I can’t stand Obama’s class warfare shtick. I know that most politicians will say just about anything to get elected, but to take a page out of the Communist handbook on how to run a government is downright chilling. And where are the people in the mainstream media calling him on this? Why are they hiding what Obama is doing under lousy labels like “progressive” or “populist?” It is no such thing. When you are talking about the forcible redistribution of wealth through the Federal Government, you are talking about Socialism at best or Communism at worst, depending on how far you want to look at this. So when we get to the point where the Government can take most of what you earn, tell you how to live, what to eat (under Obamacare), and what medical care you can get (also under Obamacare), not to mention that it has nationalized the auto industry and most of the banking industry (let’s see what happens to the banks once the Fed stops printing its huge sums of money), then you have a government that is a far cry from what democracy is all about, let alone what the Founding Fathers wanted. We really need to stop all of this in NOvember and at least try to restore this country to what it once was, a constitutional republic.
The supreme court created this entire mess. All the good things about the USA can be traced back to the constitution. And the reason things are no longer great is simply because the constitution is no longer implemented.
Heck even the FBI is unconstitutional. It has gone so far that even discussing the text of the constitution itself is meaningless.
SCOTUS don’t make rulings based on the text at all. They create their own “tradition” based on public sentiment and political affiliation.
So in effect the US no longer have a constitution. Instead the country has a group of political appointees writing the constitution as they go to pave the way for an increasingly larger power grab by the people who appoint them.
As long as this goes on, the problems are unsolvable.
Rick, thanks for the rather lengthy synopsis of the lowest common denominator political opinion gleaned from mass media. In its place you’ve made an argument for ideology-free pragmatism. What in the world is that? Where and when has such a thing ever existed on Earth?
“If one defines pragmatism as viewing the world as it is, prioritizing what’s important…” Priorities are decided according to one’s particular ideology and one’s particular world view. There is no such thing as a singular world view that is inherently or universally ‘pragmatic’. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Political Science 101.
Pragmatism will be the death of this nation.
Please stop pining for it.
Bumr50 —
I hold that pragmatism is the last refuge for totalitarians!
What a confusing and incoherrent article. Is the author suggesting that, as I suspect he is, the “problem” is a general refusal on both sides (Left & Right in this case) to compromise? Over the last forty years or more the Right has done nothing BUT compromise, while the Left has not and does not. Self-styled and self-appointed saviours (Leftists) have no need to compromise you see, they are heroic champions of everyone, or so they tell themselves, and heroes do not compromise. Every “compromise” by the Right takes us further and further into Socialist hell but the author would have us believe that any instance of the Right refusing to continue to do so is half of the problem. Utter nonsense.
I suspect this author suffers from political/media Stockholm syndrome and has developed an affinity for his captors. How else would one explain such incoherrence and fuzzy logic?
Yup!
And so King Solomon called for a sword to be brought before him. He declared there is only one solution: the living child must be divided…
Political pragmatism in the present day resembles baseline budgeting. In the latter, the budget is scheduled to increase by X amount and any reduction from the scheduled increase is called a reduction in the budget. The ongoing political baseline equivalent is:
1) the increase in the size and cost of our government;
2) the increase in national debt;
3) the increase in the number of regulations;
4) the decrease in our personal freedom;
5) the decrease in our adherence to the Constitution;
6) the decrease in manufacturing;
7) the decrease in our exploration of the universe around us;
7+1) the decrease in the number of (worthwhile) patents;
9) the decrease in the academic capability of the average American student;
10) the decrease in the quality of our infrastructure;
etc.
The above is a representative sample of the rate of decline of our Republic. I guess the pragmatic approach is to negotiate with the opposite party to either speed up or slow down this generational decline relative to the current baseline. By that standard, anyone who wants to reverse the actual decline (versus reducing the baseline decline) is an extremist.
Mitt Romney seems like an eminently pragmatic person. Good luck with that America!
Thank you. Considering the alternatives, I think that it is the Republic’s best shot. Let’s deal with the art of the POSSIBLE.
I see somebody’s a Pratchett fan. Also, good points.
Yup!
Republica non amo futurus
The fact is there is no middle ground between those who want to fundamentally transform America into a (failed) European style socialist state, and those who wish to restore the republic to what the founders intended, the two goals are diametrically opposate to each other. A house divided against itself can not stand. Maybe it’s time to think the unthinkable…a two state solution for America?
I can understand how some could suspect that Rick Moran is a Lefty plant.
It’s his brand of ‘pragmatism’ and ‘compromise’ that has us staring at $15 Trillion national debt and trillion dollar plus annual deficits.
RJE: Amen brother.The rino charge is usually over used on right leaning blogs,but Mr. Moran defines it.
If we had pragmatic compromising Rinos in charge, we might still be at only $14 Trillion.
Moderation is a wonderful thing; in some areas. Diet and alcohol would be a good example. To extend the analogy to the moral spectrum becomes problematic. If we set one foot on a red hot stove and the other on a block of ice, they should average out, eh? Moderates sometimes remind me of middle children caught in a family dispute, or the child cowering in the bedroom as the parents argue in the living room. If I side with Dad, Mom will hate me, if I side with Mom, Dad will hate me. Better to parse a third position, that sweet spot would be perfect. ‘Would be’ is the key phrase here. What Mommy and Daddy actually are arguing about is the missing element, and usually what the moderate won’t or is unable to deal with. Did Daddy just go on a spending binge with the family credit card? Did Mommy just give the family savings to an alcoholic on a street corner? It doesn’t have to be scorched earth, but sometimes political strategies must not be allowed to work. Let the chips fall where they may…
Great, a hijacked link takes me to HuffPo. But as the author says “this kind of idiocy aside”, the lack of pragmatism, in fact, results from the dearth of ideological differences between the two major parties. They agree on 99.9999% of everything, thus the minor differences must be elevated to galactic proportions and they must be seen as disagreeing with one another. The arguments that author, and the rest of the moron media, make are utterly baseless in fact and are nothing but emotional screeds designed to render the listener incapable of rational thought. And who makes those arguments… is it the Tea Party member, the “hick in the sticks” or is it the moron media and the major party operatives? Who wants a real ideological debate to take place, who wants to focus on the serious issues of the day, and who will do anything and everything to prevent those discussions from taking place? Who wants the Presidential candidates to lay out a concrete platform, full of specifics, and who wants meaningless twaddle that means everything and nothing?
In summary, the lack of an honest debate stems from a one-party system masquerading as a two-party system. Those running the scam are deathly afraid that if we pause for a moment to consider the results and take a peek behind the curtain we won’t find any governance ongoing, instead we’ll find Organized Crime. And it’s clear that they’ll do anything at all to keep us away from the curtain.
Well said. Tammany Hall operatives would feel right at home with the current dealings going on in DC.
Thank you, Mr. Moran, for this excellent analysis of how paralysis by polarization has Washington again at the point of sweeping our vast problems under the rug for the next generation to address. I beg to differ with many who have thus far posted responses. I think it IS possible for our elected officials to move us closer to long-term solutions by compromising on ideological non-essentials. One may preserve his/her ideological core identity all the while. I hope and pray for Senators and Representatives who would sacrifice their future electability for the good of the country.
But we are all Alinskyites now in that we need an ENEMY. We need to be fighting EVIL, or else politics on the internet, especially, has no meaning. Newt sounds as if he is fighting someone or something, so many genuflect.
Iraquis apparently loved firing their guns up into the air; the mock fight of the clueless. Or leave a bomb somewhere, that will blow up someone. The liked the idea that they were tough guys.
Well, Dwight, I’m glad you have taken sides at last. The fact that you have taken sides with Romney and government by continued tax and spend policies demonstrates you are some type of conservative. After all, Mitt says he is a conservative, doesn’t he.
“Conservative” has morphed as much as “Liberal” has. To half the people here “conservative” now means someone who talks like Newt does or howls about smiting the evil on the other side.
I prefer to take a conservative approach. Fancy that.
My heart soars like an eagle.
Ok, soar away, but I hope that you got my point; taking a conservative approach as used in that expression, not the foam-flecked, gun-swaggering stuff.
Why do I feel that Barack Obama wrote or sponsored this essay? This seems to be a continuation of the SOTUA.
Great piece. Mr. Moran is right. One clue to our current predicament lies in the reception given to the Bowles-Simpson recommendations, which were shelved shortly after being made public. For decades, liberals have been insisting on ever larger government, while conservatives have insisted on ever lower taxes. Hence the constant borrowing. And hence the annual deficits and the crushing National Debt. Bowles-Simpson blew the whistle on both parties. The report offered a reasonable and practical way forward, telling us that spending would have to be cut, that taxes would have to be raised, and that endless borrowing was not a sustainable path forward. But this is bad news, and politicians of all stripes just hate delivering bad news. And so they didn’t. Instead, they retreated to their time-honored habits of raising the debt ceiling and keeping taxes low. And then they doubled down on demonizing the other side. Eventually, of course, the markets will administer the necessary discipline, and there will be great discomfort all around. Until then, pass the peanuts and enjoy the show!
I agree. I think that Simpson Bowles espouses the principle of 2-2-2. We need someone to sell the principle of Simpson-Bowles and 2-2-2 and then fight against either side when necessary to follow it. But most would-be centrists are soon driven back to their base for reliable support and then have to cater to that base. Such will always be the case, but if you have a relatively achievable principle like Simpson Bowles, vs an unachievable one like “getting back to the Constitution,” you might actually get something done. It will be messy, but then, what isn’t?
In the law there was a term used called the Reasonable Man. When presented with facts of what someone did it was judged against ‘what a reasonable man would do under the same or similar circumstances’.
Unfortunately, he died during the Clinton Administration.
Pragmatism tried to fill in for the Reasonable Man but was only his shadow, not his soul.
“Pragmatism” — isn’t that code for “slow surrender of our liberties”?
Yes. Yes it is!
Yes. And the degree of pragmatism applied is directly proportional to the speed in which those liberties decline.
IMO pragmatism is just another word for surrender.
There was a term in law called the Reasonable Man. When facts were presented as to what someone had done it was compared with ‘what a reasonable man would have done under the same or similar circumstances’.
The Reasonable Man died during the Clinton Administration.
Pragmatism tried to replace the Reasonable Man but was really only his shadow, not his soul.
I don’t know where you work Mr. Moran, but you sure don’t work with the same sorts of people in politics I’ve worked with for the last thirty-odd years. I can tell you exactly when pragmatism began to die: 1972 when the Left seriously began their takeover of the Democrat Party. By the ’80s that takeover was nearing completion but had produced unelectable condidates thus far. The Voting Rights Act was making minority districts beyond safe so minority representatives could be howling mad communists and still get elected and re-elected. Burgeoning and radicalizing public employee unionization made the Blue States safely and deeply Blue and all but totally unaccountable to their taxpayers.
The minimum winning coalition had been the staple of US politics in name since the ’60s and in practice for even longer. A young radical governor who’d taken the Alinsky methods of coopting the appearance of moderation seriously was head of the DLC. He and his accomplice, Algore, morphed the minimum winning coalition away from assembling a constituency and doing things that constiuency wants into assembling a minimum winning coalition, identifying its issues, and talking about them endlessly and feeling the “pain” associated with the issues. Were you to actually solve and issue, you’d lose the constituency associated with that issue, so when pressed for a solution, you offer the most expensive, pie-in-the-sky solution that you know the opposition will reject out of hand. With that you get to keep the constituency AND tar the opposition for their insensitivity to your constituency. In twenty years of dealing with AFSCME, I never saw them make a serious proposal and from the time they arrived on the scene in my state, I never saw an AFSCME-backed politician, all Democrats, of course, make a serious proposal, just as the Country has never seen Comrade Obama make a serious proposal. The Democrats all take bargaining positions that pander to the craziest and most extreme members of their constituency and then place the other side in the position of bargaining with themselves to try to come up with something that will get the Democrats’ allies in the media to stop calling them names. This sound familiar with the debt ceiling, the so-called jobs bill, the Bush Era tax cuts? The only way you get agreement with them is by giving them what they proposed and as often as not they’ll excoriate you for going back on the promises you made when you were opposing what they proposed. “No new taxes” sound familiar?
Frankly, Newt Gingrich is the only conservative who has had real power since the new and improved Democrats came to power in the ’90s. He had to try to advance a program and keep a majority in the face of the nominal inventor and a very skilled practitioner of the “feel your pain” school of politics. I think he did very well most of the time, though Clinton, using the public employee union strike playbook, handed Gingrich his head on the government shutdown and Clinton’s lackeys in the media handed the Republicans generally their heads on the attempted impeachment. But what we are seeing now is Gingrich being castigated by the left, right, and center for the steps he had to take to keep a program going and a government running in dealing with the Democrats.
The rules are simple: you cannot bargain in good faith with a Democrat, you cannot believe a Democrat, you cannot trust a Democrat to keep any promise or agreement, oral or written, public or private. Democrats will do or say anything to keep their butts in the big chairs. You can only get an agreement with a Democrat (or a union) if you have the power and the will to hurt them, politically, socially, financially, or even physically if necessary. They can actually think fairly clearly when they have a gun, figuratively of course, pressed to their temple. But, after you an agreement with them by such means, they will never keep that agreement unless you are in a position to once again press that gun to their temple, figuratively, of course.
And you propose that we sane people, we “problem solving” Republicans, be more pragmatic with people like that? The pragmatic solution is to exterminate them, but baseline human decency forbids that.
Just so. Once Marxists get a hold of your toe, they never let go until the infection spreads to the brain. Or in other words, to mix metaphors, the Democratic Party has been taken over by the Borg. They believe resistance is futile and treat any and all opponents as an enemy to be assimilated or killed. You know, just like their buddies in the Muslim Brotherhood. Birds of a feather and all that.
“They can actually think fairly clearly when they have a gun, figuratively of course, pressed to their temple. But, after you an agreement with them by such means, they will never keep that agreement unless you are in a position to once again press that gun to their temple, figuratively, of course.”
You say “figuratively,” but have had other comments lately that do not sound figurative. What is with all the gun blather lately? I don’t think that gun-swagger talk strengthens our right to bear or much of anything, really.
That was me.
And I don’t think I care what somebody too chickens&*t to put their name on a post thinks.
Er, don’t confuse absent-minded with chickensh*t, but then you probably already know that you have overindulged. Just don’t let it happen again….or I’ll have to go clean my guns, and fondle them.
Guess I come from a less “civilized” world where the gun idiom is just a natural thing, just as having them is a natural thing. I know the urban castrati are all afraid of them and their knowledge of guns is limited to something like, “they’re noisy, black, and scary,” but you don’t expect many of that sort here.
In my former life for as far back as I can remember, getting a forced resignation was referred to as giving someone “the German choice” or if you were the one doing it saying you were going to “go put the pistol on so-and-so’s desk.” I guess that’s reallly scary and offensive, too. My preferred way of dealing with someone who’d done something that could cause them troubles at home such as internet porn, sex with an inmate or somebody under supervision, quid quo pro sexual harrassment, and such was to call them in, give them an already written resignation letter “for personal reasons” and tell them, “sign this and you can go home and tell your wife whatever you want to.” I guess all that cynical and confrontational stuff makes me a bad person.
Cleaning and fondling my guns is probably what I need to do but none of them are dirty; it hasn’t been above zero in a couple of weeks now except for the ocassional heat wave of single digits around midday for weeks, so I haven’t been to the range in ages. I just had some tricky work done on my Saiga 12 guage and I haven’t even tried it out yet. If you’re ever thinking of a weapon to stave off a zombie attack, anything I’d recommend more highly than a well-tuned Saiga 12 guage takes an FFL to own.
1). The problems we face as a nation are not uni-dimensional. They can not be addressed with single-focus solutions.
2). While pragmatism and compromise certainly are hallmarks of a nation with a healthy democratic process, it’s much less certain that imposing them on a fractured society without addressing the fundamental underlying issues which caused the fractures in the first place will result in a healthy democratic process.
3). Our problems are complex and entrenched – we did not just wake up on 20 January, 2009 and find ourselves in some deep hole. We’ve been working hard to end up in that hole since the 1960′s or maybe even the 1950′s. The solutions to our problems are not so easy or quick that simply agreeing to agree is going to make us whole again.
4). We’re a nation which started seriously fragmenting in the 1960′s and we’re now approaching the point at which that fragmentation is great enough to break us apart. We’ve broken apart in our past and that tells me there’s a likelihood that we could break apart again. We’ve also reunited in our past which tells me we can accomplish that again in our future. But at minimum, we have to find a way to get back to the point at which a majority of people in this country place the well-being of the country ahead of the well-being of their own identity group. As long as identity group politics dominate our national dialogue, we risk falling apart.
“Pragmatism” works with liberals & conservatives; however, it does not work now with the Communist, President Obama, in the White House. A pragmatist will be steamrolled into submission. It’s why Senator John McCain & other RINO’s are increasingly irrelevant as the Tea Party rises in strength & power. We need a powerful Conservative Republican to counter Obama’s Collectivism.
After reading the article, I have a point the author may have forgotten to include. The hyperbolic rhetoric not only of our elected officials, but of our media, injects too much emotion into the discussion which is the enemy of pragmatism and compromise.
Really ‘digging ditches on chain gangs’?
Allow me to offer a suggestion. Those of you who are team boosters should focus on holding your own team accountable to acceptable terms of play, and worry less about the fouls the other team is committing. And all of us (including the players on the field) should focus on acknowledging our own hypocrisies and inconsistencies instead of pointing fingers.
Describing the Tea Party as ‘extreme’ is bogus. To want to cut taxes and shrink the size of government to a reasonable size are mainstream, middle-of-the-road goals. The notion that you can take a reasonable demand (shrink our bloated government) and compare it with the radical demands of the OWS movement or Obama’s utopia of total state control and then draw a midpoint between them and call it moderation, is absurd. Some people on the right may indeed espouse extremism, but the fairly modest demands of the Tea Party aren’t them.
so true
most of americans are tea partiers whether they know it or not
By extension (and at risk of using a label most people haven’t bothered to try to understand), I think most tea-party members are libertarians and don’t realize it.
i would consider myself more libertarian than conservative to be sure but i would never vote for a Libertarian or (ron paul) unless the alternative was obama
fwiw i firmly believe my home state of california is much more libertarian than they realize but people are so out of it here the path of least resistance flows surely into the democrat party
Please tell us Mr Moran when exactly has the left been “pragmatic”?
Which programs have they cut? Which have they declared unsuccessful and ended?
This seems eerily similiar to another buzzword in our current lexicon, Bi-partisan. Which really means compromise with the left and not the right.
Sorry, all you have done with this article is define the political landscape in purely liberal terms and come up with a conclusion that is seriously flawed.
If the Republicans were “conservative” as you assert, they would have shut down the government (well some of it anyway, since a “shut down” is wink wink — not really) to acheive real spending reductions last year. That they did not blows the premise of your article and turns it on its head.
Bravo! Exactly!
Allow me to extend my remarks at 25. Pragmatism, and specifically Republican pragmatism, is the problem we have in America today. I’ll always remember GWB saying as the Katrina debacle was coming down around his ears “We’re problem solvers.” Horowitz identifies this fact of Republican politics as well; we tend to have a managerial outlook and take the steps to solve a perceived problem. But, of course, anytime a Republican proposes a solution to a problem, the Democrats and their allies in the bureaucracy and media start their “we can do it better” routine. If you let them they’ll keep you talking about how to “do it better” while you are being leaked, thwarted, and sabotaged and your poll numbers are swirling around in the bowl as you reach election time, whereupon the Democrats attack you for having done nothing. Or, the Democrats propose some crazy-assed pie in the sky hyper-expensive solution and then pragmatic people that we are, we try to “work with them” to come up with an acceptable solution. For them, there is NO acceptable solution to any Democrat constituency’s problems that can be proposed by ANY Republican; they WILL NOT LET YOU do anything that might help one of their constituencies. They WiLL NOT LET YOU take credit for anything good happening to one of their constituencies. In the best economy we’ve had in decades, perhaps the best that any nation at any time has had, they had half the Country convinced that GWB had them in the worst economy since the Great Depression – and then produced the worst economy since the Great Depression in order to elect Comrade Obama.
The Democrat Party has been controlled by communists since the mid to late ’80s. Bill and Hill were just as radical, she perhaps moreso, as Comrade Obama, but they overplayed their hand and provoked a counter-revolution in ’94. Under Clinton and then in Congress during GWB, the Democrats skillfully took advantage of a good economy and Republican propensity for porking to pour money to the unions and to set up Democrat sinecure using federal grants and contracts in every government in the Country. The conquest was almost total by ’06 when they retook the Congress and set the stage for the intallation of a genuine Red Diaper Baby communist who’d been groomed and was waiting in the wings, Comrade Obama. We teetered on a counter-revolution again in ’10, but we are now like the White Russians, more interested in fighting each other than in fighting the Bolsheviks. The only problem is; we don’t have Paris or New York to run off to with as much of our money as we can keep and then peacefully live out our days sipping vodka and talking about what might have been – there’s no place left to go.
But the great irony may be that the center is now ready to accept a good Republican manager, while many of you are saying that you always lose with the good managers. Of course the other side will go after you, it is what they do, but good and ARTICULATED management (I’m not sure that GWB could do either) is (y)our best shot. Because you can, and even feel that you have to, blabber the extreme stuff, does not mean that is a winning electoral hand in the general. Surely you must know that.
These really are perplexing questions. I am against pragmatism and managerialism both, because they are both fallacious philosophies in my opinion. Leadership is antithetical to both, because leadership requires vision and courage, and these ‘realistic’ philsophies eschew both. Steve Jobs is being paraphrased to death these days, but the difference between him and an ordinary manager could not be more clear. He had the ‘vision thing’ in spades. I think all corporations should start using a CO/XO kind of management team like the military, because that way you can combine leadership and management into an effective team–not very many people can do both. Good managers are often bad leaders, and good leaders bad managers.
Pragmatism is an anti-capitalist fantasy even more than managerialism. Both presuppose that human beings have the ability to understand how to reorganize gigantic systems with ease, when in reality no human being can even understand, much less ‘fix’ almost any problem. Pragmatism always tends towards statism, because the easiest way to ‘fix’ things is to by negative laws or regulation, i.e. forbidding things, whether it be drugs or 3.5-gallon toilets. Pragmatists is what liberals THINK they are; conservatives may call it pie-in-the-sky but they call themselves the ‘reality-based coalition.’
Leadership, on the other hand, rarely requires the force of law. Example and creating new traditions work instead. George Washington gave up the presidency to John Adams and set the precedent. He created the Order of Cincinatus and with it a tradition in our military that has prevented us from ever suffering a military coup or dictatorship, unlike nearly every other republic in history. He set the standards for others to follow, and even those who despised his politics, like Jefferson and Madison, followed in his footsteps.
The fact that Romney has a background in management troubles me greatly. The question is whether his education in a fallacious philosophy at Harvard will be counteracted by the Mormon tradition of leadership over management. (BTW Hugh Nibley gave an excellent speech on it in the 70s, if you care to hunt it up.) His time at Bain doesn’t feel managerial to me, but I can’t really say for sure. Indeed, success in that arena is more likely the result of leadership than management, as it is in many parts of corporate America (like Apple). Daring, risk, and endeavor mark the leader, and young corporations are usually led to greatness and then managed into bankruptcy or merger. His experience at Bain includes both old and young, and he was a founder of the particular division, not a usual place for a go-along-to-get-along manager.
For me the jury is still out; I’m a Mormon too and I hope that our religious traditions will defeat the spurious philosophies of hubris in Romney’s (possible) presidency. But every time I see Harry Reid’s face I wonder whether it’ll be enough…
We’ve really not had that “good Republican manager,” GWB certainly wasn’t, since Reagan, and really Reagan was the “management by walking around” sort of manager who had big objectives and put smart people in charge of achieving them. I have seen another Republican at the National level with the personal confidence and security to surround him/herself with smart people and let them do their jobs. Since Reagan, Republicans at all levels have tended to act as if governing was a zero sum game in which you only got ahead by making someone get behind.
Likewise no one since Reagan, and barely he, has been able to get past the flak barrage thrown up by the running dog media. This is where Gingrich has some advantages in that they came at him the same way they came at Reagan and it wasn’t the Left that got him, it was the zero sum types on the Republican side.
We have a serious problem with the way we groom and vett candidates and officeholders. We insist, and would be forced to insist by the media if we didn’t, on the “nice guy.” Nice guys are just meat to the grinder for skillful Democrat operatives, of which we have NONE. We have skillful election operatives but we don’t have people who can move the switches and levers of a government and make the damned thing to things for them instead of to them. We could have the “nice guy” candidate, but the Republican aversion to confrontation and controversy is such that they cannot make themselves be in any fashion associated with anyone to whom controversy has attached or who is at all controversial. That’s why Romney is so attractive to the Beltway Bandit and officeholder cohort of Republicans; it’s not that he’s a “moderate” or a “conservative,” however one defines those, but rather than he is a nice guy, so nice that he couldn’t say s&*t if he had a mouthful of it, and that’s why the Democrats are just salivating about running against him. They can accuse him of baby rape and all he’ll do is ask them to please think of another way to express themselves. I’d be OK with a Romney so long as we had one body of Congress and he had a COS who was a real SOB. He’d be a nightmare for conservatives if the Democrats controlled the Congress.
” I have seen another Republican …” Should be: I have NOT seen …
The old saw about statistics not lying is bull-dribble. Especially when in the hands of a Yale Prof. Saying the right has moved further right than the left has moved left is a real hoot, Rick. You really believe that crap don’t you?
I was a Scoop Jackson type democrat in the 70′s and 80′s. Care to speculate which party Jackson would associate with were he alive today?
Another in a long line of meaningless articles by RINO Rick.
So what are Newt, Mitt, and Mitch, based on this chart?
I think the flaw in your reasoning is that you say “Most of us on the center-right tend toward “live and let live” social and cultural things.” meaning, I assume, that those who are concerned about the cultural stuff are necessarily further right, but someone like Santorum shows that you can be a compromiser on some budget things, more so than the center right you seem to represent, but extreme on the cultural things. By my algebra, that would make both of you center right, just extreme in different parts of the spectrum. Someone extreme on both would be closer to far right, but I am sure there are other variables beyond that. Newt SOUNDS very conservative, more so than Mitt and Mitch, but IS he?
Dwight —
The mention of algebra lost me. Spectrum implies a 2-dimensional space. Somehow you magically jumped to a 3- or n-dimensional space by talking about “both of you center right, just extreme in different parts of the spectrum”. I can’t follow your ordering in a 2 dimensional space – one or the other must be further right, no?
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Are you saying they straddle the extremes of the center to far-right of the “spectrum”?
P.S. No offense, I think cfbleachers is closer to the mark than whatever algebra you were describing. (BTW, I don’t think its possible to capture political thought or behavior on a 2-D plot).
You are undoubtedly correct that for the model to be three dimensional, as apparently spectrum implies, it would take calculus, (beyond my pay grade) rather than algebra.
Nevertheless, CFB’s underlying assumption appeared to be that cultural conservatives, would also be budgetary and foreign policy conservatives, which I assert is not necessarily the case. Huckaby, maybe comes to mind. There is something about cultural conservativism which may SEEM more conservative, but if someone wants abortion outlawed, prayer in school permitted, and less money spent on foreign entanglements, are they more or less conservative than other combinations of same? I assume that there is a group who rates pols for such things, in fact some contender referred to said rating recently.
In reality, there are too many variables for most of these formulas to work. Newt barks and growls in cadence and therefore sounds conservative. His track record might indicate otherwise. Huntsman supposedly had a much more conservative record, but sure didn’t sound like it.
This forum does not permit a Likert scale for the myriad of possibilities, it simply allows for a bit broader strokes.
People generally considered center-right, where they split from those folks to the right of them…GENERALLY speaking…is on adherence to social issues. The ones Mitch Daniels called for a “truce” on…while we attended to fiscal and economic policy related items.
My seminal point was suggesting that moral equivalency as a differentiator was a cheap, lounge lizardry way of sitting on both sides of the fence. That is much different from taking solid positions, but not necessarily walking in lockstep with those to one’s right…on your own side of the spectrum GENERALLY speaking.
This is a reply to a comment that has been exiled.
Apparently moral equivalency has its limits of critique.
In 1776 and 1865 the country developed an irreconcilable split, where only one view could prevail, colony or free, slave or free.
We could easily see a third over the use of government money to establish political clienteles. Put another way, are we as a country to pay for personal choices of part of the citizens?
Education is a major issue because it is the way we can increase our personal or national well-being. Our education system is concerned with serving its members, and certain social goals, which are not part of education. It is impossible to image any politician saying: “Everyone should have as much education as they want and can use. If you are not there to learn be gone.” If you need holding areas, let that be, but don’t fool yourselves. NYC is a beautiful example.
I have to laugh at the right wingers here thinking that we are a center right country just because Fox or Rush or the other hate radio stations scream it. We are and have been a center left country based on our laws that we have passed and today on the very issues that our citizens support. The right thankfully has been and will continue to lose as they are on the wrong sides of the issues Americans want. But I do enjoy the thrashing around. Watching the reality show called the Republican primary is a case on who can say the dumber things. Now I must admit I miss Michelle and Herman and Rick as they brought some entertainment to the show but with what is left this morning I’m signing Fly Me to the Moon in honor of Newt.
I really have to laugh when Ron Paul started to say something last night Mitt looked like he was ready to cringe wondering what he was going to say that embarrassed them. As usual he did not disappoint. Although I must say when he said when he was a doctor in 1962 things didn’t cost so much. Well gee whiz let’s use 1962 technology to treat patients now. Of course one must look at all those socialist countries like Canada where private doctors deliver healthcare at 1/2 the cost. I can’t wait for Obama to lay into mittens. Life is good but I know how you feel – I lived through Mondale, Dukakis, and Kerry so I do have some sympathy.
Is it laws we have passed or judicial fiats of the left that has determined our center left country you imagine?
That said, I think you have pointed out a central tension in our body politic (without meaning to do so– I suspect) in that we are a center right country with center left laws, regulations and so on…
You have defined the origin of the Tea Party — Thanks!
I have to laugh at lefty useful idiots who think anyone here cares what they think.
I can only go by the information provided to me…when people self-identify, more people identify as not slimy, Marxists who dominate the goosestepping leftist fascism movement.
And laws passed in reconciliation are not evidence of the will of the people. Laws passed that have hidden agendas tucked within them do not reflect the will of the people.
Recess appointments, loading up the DOJ with radical extremists, ACORN/SEIU voter registration fraud, Blank Panter polling place threats of violence and intimidation, the Socialist Scholars convention, Cloward Piven gunk and Soros’ skullduggery…may be the big hit at MSNBC, Kos Kidz and OWS stinkathons…but they don’t reflect the American people.
We Won’t Be Fooled Again.
– We’ve reached and impasse so give in to us.
“The center, for all intents and purposes, is gone. Almost all Democrats are liberals today and all Republicans are conservatives.”
Conservatism is the middle; we just haven’t been represented for years.
Pragmatism without principles will put both feet on the slippery slope. To engage in successful pragmatism a fence of principles must be erected and agreed as a boundary. The right will not cross the principles in our founding documents. The left sees that boundary as an unworkable restraint. To them the ends justify the means and that’s being generous enough to make the assumption that they’re benevolent in their objectives; something I do not believe but insert for the sake of argument.
We are at war, then. Pragmatism is code for voluntarily surrendering your principles. We’re not at odds over choices to build a bridge or two or none. Those are issues lending themselves to pragmatic compromise. We’re at odds over whether to be a pure democracy which is boundless in purpose and power by design, or a constitutional Republic where compromises can take place within a very small, fenced in area or responsibilities and powers that enable the fulfilling of them.
The problem with both parties is that they differ in approach only by objective and degree. They both practice pure democracy. Tjey both hold back a little so as not to cause alarm. But that cat is out of the bag.
This is why the ends of the political spectrum have gone radical. The left sees the time is ripe for coming out of the closet for pure democracy. The right sees the danger and responds. Most people, the author included don’t believe any of that.
Rick Moran and others who bemoan the lack of “pragmatism” fail to recognise that “business as usual” will result in the United States becoming an economic basket case like Argentina and most 3rd world countries.
We spend 45% MORE than we earn and our debt to GDP has rocketed past 100%, despite that orgy of spending the economy continues to deteriorate and a significant proportion of the country is becoming desperate as a result.
Look at Greece today, then what happened in Argentina in 2001, that will be US very soon…
A second Obama term will end in a re-run of the great depression or a possible hyperinflationary collapse.
We can to better, we must or the United States is finished as a first world country.
Here! Here! Well said.
Finishing the US as a singular world power IS Comrade Obama’s objective. So far, he’s succeeding, and he still has his 52% confirmed idiots.
We didn’t defeat the NoKos and ChiComs in Korea and we’re still having trouble with them. We didn’t defeat the USSR and we’re still having trouble with Russia. In fact, history shows again and again that true pragmatism is to completely destroy your enemies at the first opportunity. The Golden Rule instructs that they will certainly do the same to us.
It may be neither party that has radicalized arguments but the American public itself, but on the Left. Republicans have mostly been between if it ain’t broke don’t fix it to fixing what the Left introduces.
The problem with political correctness in America is that it takes no prisoners. People not on board with Obama or the Martin Luther King holiday are racists; people not on board with gay marriage hate gays and are bigots. If you’re against affirmative action or illegal immigration you’re back to racist and all of AZ is racist apparently.
Framing arguments in such a way doesn’t leave any room for maneuver: it’s either shut up and join in out of sheepishness of take it on the chin – valid disagreement is not an option.
Making this even more galling is the conspicuous racial advocacy of the Left, especially among black Americans. Today at The Root, which is owned by the Washington Post and edited by Henry (beer summit) Gates, an article is titled “Black Professionals: We Got Obama’s Back.” If such an article had appeared in The National Review in 2008 titled “White Professionals: We Got John McCain’s Back” and white folks voted for McCain to the tune of 96% as did black folks for Obama, there would’ve been outrage on the Left and the Right fitted for KKK hoods.
The fact that black Americans can so smugly and openly engage in lite hate speech while denying far lesser events to their prospective opposition such as “food stamp President” or “blah” as “blatant racism” just adds to the frustration of the lack of any kind of fair play being applied to today’s political discourse. In fairness to Republicans, though they don’t represent me, they at least don’t engage in prominent doublethink or demonization that invites comparisons to retarded people.
Ah, here’s the good old RIckNO Moran we all know and love: Calling for Republican moderation when the Democrats have shown no sign of such for all these years. Knife to a gunfight, folks, knife to a gunfight…
Pragmatism is selecting the less desirable target if you can’t get a clear shot at your #1 target.
Compromise is two parties deciding which target to aim for.
Neither compromise nor pragmatism makes any sense at all if the other party has a completely different set of targets in mind.
If I want freedom and liberty for me and mine, no amount of compromise with statist swine makes any sense at all.
This is incoherent. Pragmatism, if it means anything, simply describes a methodology for arriving at a given end. It completely begs the question of what end one should seek. It tells you nothing about whether having $15T in debt is bad or good. It is agnostic on the question of what is the proper role of government. A pragmatist couldn’t care less if it is wrong or right for one man to be held responsible for another’s health(care).
The issues we face are all of a moral/philosophical nature. Until we decide as a society what are the correct answers to these issues, it won’t matter a lick whether we are successful at implementing “solutions”. And, once we do decide, achieving solutions will be relatively easy.
And of course, it will be better to do nothing along the way as opposed to pursuing “solutions” that assume the wrong answer to those questions. Our founders’ genius lay in part in ensuring that was the case.
http://authspot.com/thoughts/let-me-explain-some-thing/
Notice, per Moran, it is always the pragmatists like he who are good, while the people killing the country are those who disagree with the questions that Moran routinely begs, and who hold different opinions about the motives of a left he continues to believe is acting in good faith. If the left is in the business of creating problems they then rush in and demand we solve, then “pragmatists” who just want to acknowledge the problems and work together to solve them are merely useful idiots for a left who isn’t playing by Moran’s drawing room rules.
Note, to, that for Moran, pragmatists view the world as it is, and … what? Are forced in perpetuity to follow its trajectory, even if intellectually and ideologically they think that trajectory wrong and dangerous? — all because that’s what marks one as a pragmatist in the first place?
Now who’s being the ideologue…