Sailing along

Romney Flounders in Fishtown is an interesting analysis that raises many questions.  Obama did pretty much what the author describes, by appealing to socialism's moral agenda of equality and fairness, and making a generalized promise of "change" that would presumably move the nation in that direction. As long as it's kept sufficiently vague -- something Obama was careful to do -- that agenda has wide moral appeal.

A GOP candidate must also promise "change," but what should be its moral basis?  On moral grounds, capitalism is unfortunately a much more difficult sell: It's too complicated and indirect, morally desirable outcomes appear as unintended consequences rather than a result of moral intentions, and the goal of increased economic growth and societal wealth is easily demagogued as leading to even greater inequality and unfairness, almost all of it ending up in the pockets of the 1%.

The question here is not what works better, because those results only occur after the sale has been made. This is about making the sale in the first place. Socialism has the great advantage of carrying its morality on its sleeve, for seeming to most people to be moral in its essence; its failures are excused as a result of that essence being subverted by the venality of individuals and accidents of bad leadership.  People fail socialism, not the other way around.

The author argues that Romney cannot succeed by just doing a better job preaching an economic gospel, "but he should also speak to renewing not only the policies and regulations but also the moral musculature and the cultural values that nurtured the most extraordinary economic expansion in human history.  That would be a vision and a basis for a movement.  The Romney campaign has focused too much on Romney himself.  They need to present him as the leader of something larger than himself.  Otherwise, they won’t defeat Barack Obama, and they may not even win the nomination."

When I read that, I think two things. First, I think that's probably correct in principle.  But, second, I think it has about zero hope of succeeding in practice.  At the societal level, "moral musculature" and "cultural values" can't be talked into existence; those things arise from the lives people lead, they're products of the conditions of existence as people experience them. If it were otherwise, Santorum could become president.

History doesn't move by foresight. People become disillusioned with socialism only by direct painful experience, when it fails them catastrophically, as it eventually always does. I think we have further to travel down that road before there will be any realistic probability of going in a new direction. As it is, the massive piling-up of debt has no felt reality at all, and so far most people's direct experience of redistribution/entitlement programs has been to get a lot more out than they put in. The author is shouting into the wind, because our ship is going to sail this course until it crashes on the rocks, which it will, and it won't be turned around before that happens.

Byron      

Obama's farcical DOA budget

More spending, more taxes, and more debt.

No money for D.C. voucher program in Obama’s gigantic new budget, of course; Update: Meanwhile, White House to boost subsidies for Chevy Volt

The almost entirely black D.C. public school system is a catastrophe, and Chevy dealers are up to their ears in Volts, the heavily taxpayer-subsidized car nobody asked for and nobody wants.  But to hell with the kids, and to hell with the taxpayers, Obama does the bidding of the unions to keep himself in power.

Obama acts with impunity because he is sincerely convinced of his own superiority, his ability to manipulate others to accomplish anything he wants.  His only loyalty is to himself, because he is the only one worthy of it.    

Does he respect his own supporters?  A silly question.  No, of course he doesn't.  They are the easiest of all to manipulate, as they hang on his words and bask in the reflection of his brilliance.

Barack Obama is the most cynical president the U.S. has ever had.

Byron

Can We Get to a Brokered Convention?


The GOP nomination fight should be over who has the best plan for reducing the power, scope, and cost of government, not about who can go to Washington and most effectively wield government power to enact a conservative social agenda instead of a liberal social agenda.  Good grief.

I don't want government promoting and enforcing anybody's social agenda, left or right.  What I want is for government to butt the hell out everywhere its presence is not absolutely necessary, right across the board.

The Tea Party took its foot off the gas, and the result is a contest that promptly went straight off the rails.

Byron

Plan B

College To Offer Plan B Pills From Vending Machine...


I've always advocated doing this as soon as safety concerns were satisfied, which apparently they are. Many will strongly disagree for good and sufficient reasons of their own, and I really do respect that. Your conclusions vary according to the premises you start with. Mine are that mistakes, accidents, and moments of irresponsibility have always occurred, and they always will. What happened next was always a matter of luck, and I don't think enormous, life-altering differences in consequences should be compelled to depend on that.

Would I go further and put them in restrooms like the machines that sell condoms? Yes. In the same machines that sell Snicker bars out in the lobby? No, that's in-your-face; I don't see any profit in needlessly affronting people who disagree with you on an issue like this one.

Gay Divorce Shocker

LESBIAN DIVORCE SHOCKER: Same-sex marriages between women are considerably more likely to end in divorce than either same-sex male marriages or heterosexual marriages, according to a study of Norway and Sweden.

In the original study, the differences are described this way:

 "...divorce risk in [gay] partnerships of men appears 50 percent higher than the corresponding risk in heterosexual marriages, and that the divorce risk in [lesbian] partnerships of women is about the double of that of men."

These differences have been commonly noted on an anecdotal level, but here the pattern is documented in a systematic study. What's going on is almost certainly a matter of the authority structure in these marriages -- in every kind of social group, including baboon troops, the less stable and clearly defined the authority structure, the greater the internal conflict. If that's right, then the problem is to figure out why female marriage partners have so much trouble deciding who's in charge. As quoted below, the researchers think it might be because female partners are more similar to each other than are male-male or male-female partners.

To extrapolate a bit, when it comes to adoption, don't these results suggest that female-female households are the most conflictual and the least stable, and therefore the least desirable for placing an adoptive child?  That question is an example of why, with this publication, these authors are quickly going to find that their professional lives have suddenly become much more...um...exciting.  In the social sciences, you poke the PC hornets' nest at your peril, and they have poked it.

Byron