Some perspective for David Brooks, from Charles Murray:
You don’t increase spending by those amounts without changing the role of government in ways that go to the heart of the American project. That truth is reflected in the qualitative record. In 1963, 30 years after the New Deal started, the federal government still played little role in vast swathes of American life, from K-12 education to the way people went about providing goods and services to their fellow citizens. We can argue about which of the subsequent interventions were warranted and which were not, but not about this: The way that presidents and Congresses see their power to intervene in American life in 2010 is profoundly different from the way they saw it in 1963. In 1963, among mainstream Democrats as well as Republicans, it was accepted that an overarching purpose of the American Constitution was to limit the arenas in which government could act. Now, the recognition of that purpose has all but disappeared—in the executive branch, in the Supreme Court, and in Congresses controlled by Republicans as well as by Democrats. There has been big change, reflected in big government.
And that, not racism, is what the Tea Party is about.
you, and everyone else trying to sell to Walmart, have to spend all your time figuring out how to produce the same product with less. Walmart’s ruthless focus on reducing prices is driving producers everywhere to cut the costs of production: to switch to cheaper materials, use less packaging, cut down on waste of all kinds and to consolidate and rationalize both production and distribution. The result is a steady and inexorable decline in humanity’s impact on the environment for every unit of GDP.
The Green Police couldn’t do it any better. In fact, given the political cluelessness, uncertain signals (is nuclear energy a good thing or a bad thing?), and anti-scientific knuckle dragging from environmentalists on subjects like the use of GMOs in agriculture, it’s likely that a world run by Walmart would be both richer and cleaner than a world run by Greenpeace. Not that I want Walmart (or Greenpeace) to run the world, bu at the end of the day, being ruthlessly cheap is the most important way of being green. To cut out waste, to use methods of production that cut the energy consumed at every stage in the process, to strip packaging to the barest minimum, to reduce the amount of raw materials in every product: this is the mother lode of green. This is how a growing human population limits its impact on the earth. This is where Walmart and green are as one.
I still say that Sam Walton was a greater humanitarian, and did more to improve the lives of the poor, than any politician ever born.
It is impossible to read Dirty, Sexy Politics and come away with the impression that you have read anything other than the completely unedited ramblings of an idiot. This being a professional website for which I have a great deal of respect, I searched for a more eloquent or gentle way to accurately phrase the previous sentence – but could not find one.
The numbers: Bank bailouts, 61 percent disapprove versus 37 percent approve; national health care, 56 percent disapprove versus 39 percent approve; auto bailouts, 56 percent disapprove versus 43 percent approve; stimulus, 52 percent disapprove versus 43 percent approve. Only financial reform, with 61 percent approve versus 37 percent disapprove, is a winner for the representatives and senators seeking re-election.
OK, not entirely. I think that the financial reform was a mess, and will prove disastrous as well.
What I can’t figure out from this article, and I don’t have time to dig into the underlying documents, is what they’re defining as “right wing” versus “left wing.” And where do radical (i.e., those who actually follow the Koran and submit to the dictates of Mohammed) Islamists fall?
As for the fools in comments who say that both the Islamists and the “right wingers” in America want a theocracy, where is the evidence? (And no, Glenn Beck doesn’t want a theocracy.)
Me, I’m a simple sort of guy. I think that people who like big and powerful government, for whatever purpose, whether running peoples’ economic or personal lives, are left wingers. Those who value the liberty of the individual are on the “right,” and by that definition (unlike the nutty ones that the leftists come up with) I’m happy to be called a “right winger,” and even a “wingnut.” If we can’t agree on that, then the whole concept of “left” versus “right” is pretty meaningless. The only issue is where to put the so-called anarchists? The reason I say “so called” is that they don’t believe in a limited government to protect the natural rights of individuals. They don’t seem to believe in much at all, other than violence.
I think that, at this point, the SPLC should be relegated to the historical dustbin of conspiracy loons. And they’ll probably be very disappointed when the people start to take the country back in a few weeks without a shot fired.
…why do the perceptions of violent Islamists suddenly matter when it comes to the movement of the mosque but not to the original placement of the mosque?