No, it's NOT symmetric

On the LT talk pages, conservatives are claiming that liberals are mean, too.

It's also been pointed out that the conservative board is open to all comers - but the 'progressive and liberal' board requires "join this group to post." (Which they take to mean that Cs are more open to dialog - but it might just as easily mean that the P&L board attracts more abusive drive-bys.)

But it's not symmetric. Liberals don't call for the elimination of conservatives. And it's not the nasty mean liberals attacking, say, Brownback, who are forcing CBS to shut off comments on their news stories:

CBSNews.com Turns Off Comments on Obama Stories

Today CBSNews.com informed its staff via email that they should no longer enable comments on stories about presidential candidate Barack Obama. The reason for the new policy, according to the email, is that stories about Obama have been attracting too many racist comments.

"It's very simple," Mike Sims, director of News and Operations for CBSNews.com, told me. "We have our Rules of Engagement. They prohibit personal attacks, especially racist attacks. Stories about Obama have been problematic, and we won't tolerate it."

CBSNews.com does sometimes delete comments on an individual basis, but Sims said that was not sufficient in the case of Obama stories due to "the volume and the persistence" of the objectionable comments. There has been a fierce debate about how news outlets should handle reader comments....

"If you're an African American and you read about someone being called a porch monkey, that overrides any positive thing that you would read in the comments," he said.

CBSNews.com has no plans to disable comments on stories about the other presidential candidates, according to Sims. As for comments on Obama stories, he said the site is open to eventually bringing them back.
-XXX-


This came out at the same time as the announcement that Obama would now be getting Secret Service protection.

It's just not symmetric:
Conservatives get argued with. Maybe conservatives even get insulted.

But liberals get racism and death threats.

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Eschaton on Social Security

Long after the American public put a stake through the heart of Bush's shambling plan to destroy Social Security, Atrios explained to Brad deLong why "saving" Social Security was such a bad idea:

(Scroll down to 15:48, if needed)

Duncan Black on plans to save Social Security

No


Look, people who advocate adding "personal accounts" to Social Security are just stupid people. Really, just morons. There's no reason to do it. There's no reason to take any part of Social Security contributions and put them in a little fund account with my name on it. If you think some Social Security contributions should be invested in the stock market (I don't) to raise returns overall, then it can be stuck into an index fund or managed by a fund manager or whatever. I still think that's a bad idea, but there's a rationale for it. There's no rationale for dividing that up into millions of individual accounts. There's no rationale for letting individuals "control their own money" by letting them choose across some finite number of managed funds. Social Security is a lovely program which works just fine and really needs no changes other than extraordinarily nonurgent tweaks to the tax formula at some point. And, no, there's no need for modest benefit cuts. There's no need for means testing it. There's no need for any of these things The Serious People like Bob Kerrey want to do. There's no need to strike a "grand bargain" which combines some stupid things with some smart things because there's no need to do so. Leave it alone.

There is no problem with the Social Security system. People who continue to argue that there is - and that the problem can be "solved" with the magic private accounts fairy - either have broken brains or are attempting to push an agenda for ideological reasons or for personal enrichment for themselves and their kind.


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Talking Politics With Strangers

My one Conservative Pal and I have tentatively agreed that the liberal/conservative split might be as much a matter of temperment as it a question of ideology.

There are some political discussion boards over on Library Thing; I made the mistake of assuming that the level of discourse among bibliophiles might be higher than it is on your typical internet webstite. (Wrong.)

I've been chased out of a couple political discussions over there: once by a guy who, as it turned out, is literally certifiable (he's gone to jail for stalking...), a guy who was shortly thereafter banned from the site for being crazy; and since then, I was chased out of a discussion by a guy who's both breathtakingly Wrong, AND who is utterly certain of his opinions. (He might be crazy too, but at least he's smarter than the first nut.) When I showed him evidence of how a reasonable person might think his crazy opinions might be incorrect, he denounced me as both "impolite" and - remarkably - as "inane". Neither term is one I've ever heard applied to me before. But there's not much to be gained by arguing with strangers on the internets.

So I try to stay out of the political discussions over there. The liberal boards aren't especially deep, but the conservative boards I still sometimes read for amusement value. (e.g.: "William Blake wrote in response to JS Mill's utilitarianism" - pure comedy gold. Somebody even pointed out to them that that is just anachronistic tosh, but that correction went unregarded and ignored as the conservatives were too busy congratulating the author for his profundity. And he's their smart one.)

I've come to think that conservatives and liberals simply handle ideas differently. Jonathan Haidt is definitely on to something - "Conservatives have Issues that Liberals don't even recognize"; but it might be even simpler than Haidt's schema.

Liberals handle ideas as abstractions. Pretty much by definition, liberals can walk all around an issue, and look at it from all of its various angles.
That's why science is essentially a progressive activity. Liberals are forever challenging assumptions, even their own. (This is also part of the reason why conservatives accuse liberals of not HAVING any core values.) Criticize an idea, and a liberal might argue with you, but any liberal worth the name is simultaneously thinking "Hmmmm...there might be something to that" - and they'll then start marshaling evidence for-and-against, to help sort out where the truth lies.

(In passing, let's note that this tends to put liberals at a disadvantage in a debate. I'm thinking of conservative Lew Lehrman's ads attacking liberal Mario Cuomo: "Mario Cuomo says that there ARE no simple answers." This was said as though the ability to recognize complexity was a bad thing.)

Conservatives, on the other hand, hold ideas as part of their identity. They ARE (Fundamentalist)/(Republican)/(Whatever) - and if you attack one of their ideas, you're attacking part of their core identity. Nobody likes that. So they feel completely justified in reflexively counterattacking. Because, you know, they already possess The Truth. (Just ask them.) So an attack on The Truth/Themselves must met with what they consider to be simply a "reciprocal" counterattack. "Challenge my beliefs? You must be nothing but a troll or moron."
The conversations head downhill rapidly after that.

Liberals try to use discussion as a way of working toward The Truth; conservatives seem to use discussion as a means of re-affirming their group identity.

And woe to any liberal who disturbs their mutual affirmations.



Anecdotal Appendix: A year or so ago, My Conservative Pal and I were kicking around the issue of marriage equality, as we seem to do every year or so lately ... and MCP said, "Well, I think homosexuality is wrong"; and I then lured him into My Cunning Rhetorical Trap by asking him innocently, " 'Wrong'? What does that mean?"

To my delight, he fell for it, assuming that, by gum, they really DO exist: he actually was talking to a librul who apparently didn't know the difference between "Right" And "Wrong".

And I got to explain to him that his sense of what's "right" and "wrong" was not a sufficient basis for public policy. Society has already decided that homosexuality - 'right' or 'wrong' aside - was perfectly legal - and that therefore the question was one of equal protection before the law - and not simply what MCP thought was "wrong".

I didn't change his mind, of course. Because being against "gay marriage" is part of who he IS. It's how he defines himself, a part of his identity.

I Still Dream of Orgonon

We'll be spending some days in eastern New England this summer.

I got to wondering "Well, how're things up in Orgonon
these days?"

You can stay in Reich's cabin. Who knew?
Fifty years after his death, you can still stay in the rental cottages at the Wilhelm Reich Museum, 'way up in Rangeley, Maine.

(Unfortunately, the WR Museum is too far north to be anything but a destination in itself. It's probably a couple hours north of Portland.)


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Today's "Fun With Numbers": Homeownership Rates

A couple years ago I was wondering if there was any measure at all by which you could say that life in America was improving under the Bush junta. It turns out that, well, at the time, home ownership rates were going up. Today's unease in the housing markets points out the fact that the rate of homeownership has now been dropping for two years.

So I cracked open my Stat Abstract and poked around. What do the rates of home ownership tell us about American politics? Can you see the differences in public policy reflected in this single statistic?

Conservatives are very big on the idea of home-ownership. If you tie people to mortgages, all sorts of good things are supposed to happen to the community - not least of which (from the Conservative POV, anyway) is that homeowners are then more likely to vote conservative. They may even be right. (The Thatcher regime is exemplary here.)

OK, let’s agree that “every household owns their house” is an untrammeled Good Thing, a goal that society should be working toward. Obviously, home ownership will never reach 100% - any number of people for any number of reasons don’t WANT to own a house - but let’s assume that higher rates of homeownership are a good thing. A nation of home-owning, Jeffersonian/independent, stout yeomen is certainly better than a nation of landlords-and-tenants.

So let’s take a look at the historical data.

For most of the first half of the 20th century, the rate of homeownership was around 45%. WWII changed things: by 1955, the rate was about 55%. The US Census Bureau started tracking this datum in 1965. We now have 42 years of annual data.

LBJ’s second term saw four years of advance: the rate was 63.0% when first measured in 1965, and rose to 63.9% in 1968. +0.9% in four years.

The Nixon/Ford years saw a couple of recessions: even so, they had six years of advances, one year stagnant, and one year of decline. They saw 64.2% in 1969, rising to 64.7% in 1976. Not as good as under the boom years of the previous Democratic administration, but nevertheless, real advances.

The Carter years saw a recession: still, the Carter years saw four years of advance, from 64.8% in 1977 to 65.6% in 1980. For all the talk of "stagflation" and "the misery index" (...to say nothing of prime interest rates OVER 20%...), we had BETTER growth under FOUR years of Carter than we had seen under the EIGHT years of the Nixon/Ford years. (+0.8% growth in four years of Dems, vs. +0.5% growth under the previous eight years of Rs.)

So in the first 16 years of tracking this, there were eight years of Dems, and eight years of Rs: eight years of advances under Dem, and six yrs of (smaller) advances under Rs. Note that 1980's “65.5%” was a peak, a high-water mark not to be exceeded for nearly a generation.

Q: If home-ownership rates continued to rise right through the Carter recession, what would it take to make that rate decline?

A: An anti-worker Republican administration. After Carter lost in 1980, the nation would LOSE a full generation of progress.

Which leads to the sad story of the Reagan years: seven years of decline, and one year of advance. America fell from a homeownership rate of 65.4% in 1980, down to 63.9% in 1988. At the end of Reagan’s administration, home ownership had dropped to what it had been at the end of the Johnson years, fully twenty years before. The nation lost ground, as measured by an index that the Republicans pretend to care about.

By this metric, there has never been a worse administration - before or since - for the American middle class than the Reagan administration. Say it again: The Reaganauts set the American middle-class back more than a quarter century. We are still suffering from the damage they did.

Under Real President Bush: two years of advance, two years stagnant: 1992 saw the index climb back to almost as high as it had been in 1969, 23 years before.

In 1993, The Dems regained the White House. Under Clinton, the nation recovered from the Reagan-Bush nightmare: a year of continued decline, a year of stagnation, and then six years of advances, two of which were regaining the ground lost under Republicans; but then on to four successive years of record rates of homeownership.

By 1995, home ownership exceeded what it had been at the end of the Reagan-Bush nightmare - a homeownership rate comparable to what we had had back in 1974, 21 years before. It took until 1997 before home ownership finally exceeded what it has been at the peak back in 1980, under Carter. 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 were new record high rates of homeownership.

Under the Pretender: we have six years of data so far - four years of advances, to new record highs, but now two years of decline off that peak. And the news hints that 2007 is starting to look like it’s going to be remarkably bad, too. (Note that Bush the Lesser's record here is already less good than Clinton's, with two years still to endure.)

So: we now have 42 years of data - 26 years under Republicans, 16 under Democrats.

16 yrs under Ds: 1 year stagnant; 1 year of decline (both instances coming out of a R recession); and 14 years of advances. 12 of those advances were to record high rates of homeownership.

26 years under Rs: 3 years stagnant, NINE years of declines, 14 years of advances.
Six of those advances were recovering lost ground; only 8 of those advances were to record highs.

Again, in a bit more detail:
Under the Dems the ONLY recorded decline ever seen was a single instance of - 0.1%, coming out of the Bush recession in Clinton's first year.

By party:
Under 16 years of Dems: A +5.1% increase in the rate of home ownership.
Under 26 years of Rs: +0.6%
Annualized, that's 13 times more progress under Ds than under Rs.

By term:
LBJ: the net change from start-to-end of the second term was +0.9%
Nixon/Ford: + 0.8%
Carter: +0.9%
RR: -1.8%
Bush41: +0.3%
Clinton: +3.3%
The Pretender (1st 6 years): +1.3%

Ideologically:
Clinton and Carter were both more conservative than Nixon.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that the Nixon/Ford years were part of the post-war liberal consensus and that there really WAS a Conservative Revolution that began with RR.
So look at LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Clinton together:
that's a change of +5.9% in 24 years.
Contrast that with the Conservative Republicans: RR, GHWB, GWB:
that a net change of -0.2% in 18 years.
18 years of conservative rule saw a net motion DOWNWARD.
Homeownership slips under conservatives.
Conservatism is bad for conservative principles.


So what do we conclude from looking at the home-ownership numbers?

a) The Reagan era was a disaster for home-ownership rates in America. That is to say, a disaster for the middle class, and for those aspiring to the middle-class. It wasn't just that we stopped making progress in the Reagan era: rather, we lost ground. It wasn't just "12 years of treading water" - no, by this measure, the Reagan Era set the country back by about a quarter-century. (And this was far from the only damage they did: see my previous post on unemployment.)

b) IF home-ownership - a stand-in metric for "the security of the middle class" - is important to you, then you should know and understand that, historically, the Democrats are at least ten times as good on this issue as are the Rs. You could defend the assertion that the Dems are demonstrably thirteen times as good for getting people into the home-owning middle class as are the Rs. Look at the data, and stop listening to their lies.

c) And if you care about the facts, and about how public policy affects every one of us, and if you care about improving the lot of the American public: then "home-ownership" is yet another reason why you should never, ever pull the lever for a Republican.

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It Can't Happen Here

Turkish news reports that there was a public demonstration recently:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/11/11/ecevit.obit.reut/index.html

Ecevit buried amid secularist chants
POSTED: 12:05 p.m. EST, November 11, 2006
ANKARA, Turkey (Reuters) -- Thousands of Turks chanted in defense of secularism on Saturday as they buried veteran leader Bulent Ecevit, best known for winning EU candidacy for Turkey and invading Cyprus in a five-decade political career.

Crowds keen to protect Turkey's official secularism booed Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan -- whose party's roots are in political Islam -- as he arrived at the state funeral in Ankara.

"Turkey is secular and will remain secular," chanted members of the crowd, which a police official estimated at 50-80,000.

Mainly Muslim Turkey is officially secular but defenders of secularism suspect the AK Party government of having a hidden Islamist agenda.

The funeral chants follow a demonstration by secularists last Saturday, and in May some 25,000 marched in defense of secularism at the funeral of a judge shot dead by a suspected Islamist gunman.

Ecevit, who attended that funeral, said earlier this year that the government posed a threat to the secular order.

Secularists concerned that Erdogan may run for president -- which he has not ruled out -- shouted: "Cankaya (the presidential palace) is secular and will remain secular!"

Supporters of Ecevit, the former prime minister who had a stroke in May and died on Sunday aged 81, wore and carried pictures of the leftist nationalist politician. Some cried, waved flags and chanted: "Ecevit, man of the people."

Unionists and miners wearing helmets joined the crowd, and the huge funeral was also attended by members of the cabinet, former presidents -- including one who interned Ecevit after a 1980 military coup -- and the leader and former leader of the Ankara-backed enclave in northern Cyprus.

Copyright 2006 Reuters

and

Some People Feel Uneasy Over Slogans "Turkey Is Secular And Will Remain Secular", Baykal Published: 11/14/2006


ANKARA - "Some people felt uneasy over the slogans 'Turkey is secular and will remain secular' chanted during the funeral of late former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit," Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal said on Tuesday.

Taking the floor at CHP group meeting, Baykal said, "Turkish Prime Minister (Recep Tayyip Erdogan) should know that there are reasons requiring people to reiterate this characteristic of the Republic. Because Justice & Development Party (AKP) and the Prime Minister put in jeopardy this fundamental characteristic of the Republic."

"The incidents that occurred in the funerals of Ecevit are rearing of social conscience and awareness" he said.

the earlier funeral refered to is reported here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4993444.stm

A judge was assassinated last May (by a religious zealot, of course), and the crowd at THAT funeral had the same chant.



Got it? There are public demonstrations where crowds of Turks chant "Turkey is secular and will remain secular". (Which is probably a catchier slogan in Turkish, but still.)

My point in quoting all this is to point out that you couldn't get 25,000 Americans into the streets of an American city to express similar sentiments.
They're 'way ahead of us.

"Some peo-ple..."

George "F." Will is telling lies about Senator-elect Webb's meeting with Bush.
Bush razzed him about Webb's son being in harms' way; Webb refused to be drawn.

Shorter George Will: "Political discourse is getting to be SO uncivil that you can't even destroy the Republic without Certain Rude People getting snippy about it."

Traditional Marriage

I've been arguing with my conservative pal about Gay Marriage. he thinks it'll destroy 'traditional marriage' but won't say just how. I think it's just a simple matter of "equal protection under the law." The 14th Amendment should apply.

(There's also the fact that this country attaches access to health care to one's employment status: if we won't let gays marry, we really should let domestic partners have affordable health care.)

I got to brooding about the idea of "traditional marriage" and it occurred to me that it's already gone: marriage has been in a process of redefinition for centuries, but back in the '80s, the last major inequality was removed: marital rape was criminalized. That's a pretty profound redefinition.[more to follow]

Ah, the internet: Three different sources cite three different "First State to criminalize marital rape":
1)"Another reform has made marital rape a crime in many circumstances, with South Dakota becoming the first state to institute such law reforms in 1975."
2) "1976:Nebraska becomes the first state to abolish the marital rape exemption."
3) "Oregon first state to repeal marital exemptions in rape statute (1977). "
Find a link and take your pick, I guess.

Sol Wachtler was the judge in NYS who overturned it here.