THE GOOD LIBERAL
I have been criticized on this site, sometimes for good reason, for being too general in trashing the left. This was especially true earlier in the history of this blog when I was enamored of the possibility that total victory by the right was ultimately necessary and possible. I have grown up a bit since then, intellectually speaking, tightened my reasoning and dropped the idea that any of us have a corner on truth. In a real sense, this was liberating as well as satisfying; it describes the world more accurately while allowing the objective examination of all ideas regardless of their source, thus contributing to understanding and knowledge.
But I still admit to a certain intellectual laziness in this regard. It’s always easier to generalize and readers would recognize my rather caustic comebacks to commenters who lump me together with the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
In truth, there are a liberals out there who I read who resist their own impulses to generalize about conservatives, and who offer cogent, logical arguments advancing their positions on issues and countering the arguments from the right in a thoughtful, civil manner. Just a few I can name off the top of my head would be Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Josh Marshall, David Weigel, Jonathan Cohn, Marty Perez and a gaggle of lefties at The New Republic. Most of these gentlemen and ladies I have disagreed with - violently at times - over policy. But they are far above the average lefty blogger whose gross exaggerations and oversimplifications of conservatism really rankle me.
I was pleased today to discover another liberal who I will be able to read without my head exploding. In this reprint of an article in The American Conservative from last December, conservative author Patrick Allitt introduces us to George Scialabba, a liberal “public intellectual” who reflects what is termed a “neo-liberal” point of view on economic matters, while delivering a hearty critique of industrial capitalism.
Scialabba’s views, as they are described by Allitt (I am off to Amazon later to buy his book), sound more Von Mises or Hayek than John Maynard Keynes. Allitt describes him thusly:
Scialabba is a rare bird among serious nonfiction writers in that he’s not a professor or a foundation fellow. In some ways reminiscent of the longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer, he comes to the work of Plato, David Hume, Matthew Arnold, and Karl Marx not on the basis of a life spent in university seminars but from his own experiences as a social worker and office clerk. He can always produce an appropriate insight from John Stuart Mill or a scintillating quip from George Bernard Shaw. He keeps alive the ideals of the Enlightenment, dares to think utopian thoughts, and still feels the romantic pull of the Left, but hardly ever succumbs to wishful thinking. This collection of his essays and reviews from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s makes surprising reading, not least because Scialabba, from a principled position on the Left, makes so many assertions with which conservatives will readily agree.
Those of us on the right who identify with Burke rather than Locke will see a conflict in Scialabba. There has always been more “romance” with liberal ideas and personalities because in many ways, these concepts speak to the longing for if not a perfect world, then certainly a more livable one. There have been very few conservative Utopians - at least not in the traditional sense of the word, because the right realizes such schemes always come with a price; someone’s idea of “Utopia” might not match everyone else’s. The germ of coercion is plainly evident in any practical realization of a “Utopian” society.
Surprisingly, while Scialabba recognizes this by reluctantly accepting the fact that that the world is far too complex for any realistic hope for creating a perfect society, he nevertheless still pushes the idea because something so good is worth striving for anyway:
But must increasing complexity and the sinister reach of propaganda end the dream of a better world? In a meditation on utopianism, Scialabba says no. He understands the intellectual progress of recent centuries as a joint venture undertaken by skeptics and visionaries, who challenged ancient falsehoods and dreamed of a finer world: “The skeptics can be seen as clearing a space for the utopian imagination, for prophecies of a demystified community, of solidarity without illusions. The skeptics weed, the visionaries water.” He is not ashamed to outline his own utopia, a world in which everyone will sing in harmony at least once a week, in which folks will know plenty of great poems and speeches by heart, have useful and stimulating work, enjoy civil arguments with one another, won’t depend on consumerism for a feeling of self-worth, and will be able to hike in unspoiled wilderness. I would be glad to join him there.
Heh - sounds pretty good to me too.
Scialabba also has some thoughts about most modern liberal intellectuals, taking them to task for being too “academic” and not getting into the trenches with other activists to effect change:
Scialabba regrets that most leftist intellectuals have given up on utopia and retreated completely into academic life. They deceive themselves, he argues, when they claim that their esoteric work in critical theory has political significance. Their ventures in multiculturalism, he adds, are often mere academic empire building, which do little or nothing to aid the actual disadvantaged members of society. Worse, by asserting that their academic work is “political,” they feel absolved from doing the hard and joyless work of organizing and agitating that their predecessors generally undertook.
Equally, he regards the Left’s politicization of high culture as “misguided and counterproductive,” and he deplores the “staggering amount of mediocre and tendentious” art that has been produced on behalf of political correctness. In an essay about The New Criterion, he notes that its editors, Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball, find it difficult to specify the exact aesthetic and moral criteria by which all art should be judged. Never mind, he says, it is enough that they “muddle along, employing and occasionally articulating the criteria that have emerged from our culture’s conversation since the Greeks initiated it, and showing that what used to and still usually does underwrite our judgments about beauty and truth is inconsistent with giving Robert Mapplethorpe a one-man show … or Toni Morrison a Nobel Prize.”
This is a liberal who actually values substance over form, and recognizes that modern liberalism (as much of modern conservatism) has degenerated into a riot of personal conceits where a strict ideological construct prevents freedom of thought: Where forms like “political correctness” and multi-culturalism” stifle independent thinking in attempting to shoehorn art, politics, and cultural conformity into an “accepted” narrow, definitional framework.
No, it is not as “conservative” as it might sound. What Scialabba appears to be after, above all, is an intellectually honest, liberal critique of modernity that, while recognizing the market as a far better mechanism for spreading and creating wealth than any other system, nevertheless takes as dim a view of the right as he does with some of his friends on the left:
Scialabba opposes the standardization and facelessness that often accompany modernity. In an essay on Michael Walzer, he speaks up against abstractions and in favor of particular, usually national, loyalties. “The minimal code of near-universally recognized rights that underwrites international law is too thin to support a dense moral culture. Only a shared history—which usually means a national history—of moral discourse, political conflict, and literary achievement can generate values of sufficient thickness and depth.” Again, conservative readers would nod in agreement.
Moreover, Scialabba resists the temptation to think that the end sometimes justifies the means. He praises Lionel Trilling for his chastened sense of progressivism, his insistence that moral scrupulosity always matters, no matter how desirable the political objective. Trilling’s view, he argues, was “yes to greater equality, inclusiveness, cooperation, tolerance, social experimentation, individual freedom … but only after listening to everything that can be said against one’s cherished projects, assuming equal intelligence and good faith on the part of one’s opponents, and tempering one’s zeal with the recognition that every new policy has unintended consequences, sometimes very bad ones.” Insights like these, scattered throughout this collection, offer a welcome reminder that the distance between at least some parts of the Left and Right is far smaller than our more irritable pundits would like us to believe.
Most conservatives today would take exception to the idea that our differences with the left - on some issues at least - are indeed “far smaller than our more irritable pundits would like us to believe.” But why shouldn’t that be so? After all, we share pretty much the same Enlightenment values (with admittedly a different emphasis on which ones are important), and there are areas of agreement to one degree or another on the value of liberty and human dignity.
Where we part company are on the means to achieve common goals. I am not sure what kind of bridges can be built with most of today’s liberals. But perhaps seeking out areas of commonality is a good place to start.
Most conservatives today would take exception to the idea that our differences with the left - on some issues at least - are indeed “far smaller than our more irritable pundits would like us to believe.” But why shouldn’t that be so? After all, we share pretty much the same Enlightenment values (with admittedly a different emphasis on which ones are important), and there are areas of agreement to one degree or another on the value of liberty and human dignity.
Amen, Rick! The problem is that most people, as in life, don’t have a healthy perspective. Everything here is socialist this, fascist that, when there are countries and even times in America where that actually was the range of opinions. But maybe, the problem is that because both parties are comparatively close by most measures there is this need to distinguish that invites such a need for divisiviness. Whatever the reason, it makes for an extremely ugly political environment.
Comment by Derrick — 11/17/2009 @ 12:03 pm
Amen.
Comment by shaun — 11/17/2009 @ 12:18 pm
Given that the main force that animated the Left throughout the 20th Century was Socialism, and the belief that government was the universal answer to governance. And given that true Socialism is dead (depsite the Tea Party protestations).
What divides left and right today?
Or to put it another way- what is the Agenda of the Right? The Right was mostly a reaction against Socialism, a defense of free markets. But everyone belives in free markets now- the biggest complaint against Obama’s economic team is that they are too deferential to the bankers, that Chris Dodd/ Barney Frank/ Dianne Feinstein/ Nancy Pelosi are too close to corporate ties.
Conservatism defined itself in opposition to something; now that that something has vanished, conservatism is left without a clear driving idea.
Comment by Liberty60 — 11/17/2009 @ 12:31 pm
“I am not sure what kind of bridges can be built with most of today’s liberals.”
In some cases, there may well be no bridge that can be built. but then both sides agree to disagree and move the hell on to things that CAN be bridged.
Absolutely nothing wrong with different ideas. Either you get exposed to something you hadn’t considered, something that might help expand and develop your own ideas . . . or you decide that the new ideas don’t hold water, and your own ideas become stronger and more tempered for the failed challenge. It’s a no-lose scenario.
I’ve never understood the “echo chamber” mentality of so many on both sides. Why on earth would somebody want to hear what they already believe? I already believe 2+2 equals 4 — I don’t need to hear somebody else try to convince me of that.
For all the ideas I’ve encountered that I reject or disagree with, I’ve never come away from them without learning something new, without getting some additional insight into my own beliefs and understanding of the world.
Comment by busboy33 — 11/17/2009 @ 2:10 pm
I guess the problem I see is that we aren’t in the Land of Ideas much anymore. It would be great if we were. But mostly we’re trapped in a sort of tribalism.
It’s like World War 1 writ small: no one knows quite why they’re fighting, or why so much heat should be generated over such small differences. The resentments are large, there are all sorts of loudmouths profiting from stoking the conflict, there’s hubris and contempt and a sense of loss and all sorts of emotions, but not really very many ideas.
I have a sort of half-thought-out theory that it’s because we Americans won the ideological war so convincingly. Regulated free markets, elections, peaceful transfers of power, basic human rights. No one in the developed world is even arguing the basic premises anymore. There’s no voice in the developed world for monarchy or communism or fascism.
Our only serious ideological opponents are religious Neanderthals demanding a return to the 7th century.
We’re not the French or the Italians or the Japanese. We’re not good at la vie quotidien, daily life. We have this outsized sense of mission — to push westward, to grow rich and powerful and pre-eminent, to defeat evil ideologies, to spread freedom. Well, we’ve gone as far West as we can, we’re the only superpower, and we won the ideological war.
Now what?
Now we sit around and pick at each other like bored kids in the back seat on a long trip.
These are hard times for a nation built on an idea: free people choosing their own government and respecting basic rights. An idea now accepted everywhere that matters. That idea made us special, almost unique for a while. It gave us a mission. Now it’s everyone’s idea.
Comment by michael reynolds — 11/17/2009 @ 2:36 pm
Michael Reynolds said:
This is so undeniably true.
Comment by Chuck Tucson — 11/17/2009 @ 4:53 pm
“There have been very few conservative Utopians - at least not in the traditional sense of the word, because the right realizes such schemes always come with a price; someone’s idea of “Utopia” might not match everyone else’s.”
I disagree, Ayn Rand has massive appeal and influence among conservatives. You’d have trouble convincing that John Galt’s mountain enclave isn’t a Utopia. Sort of a nightmarish Utopia filled with arrogant millionaires, but I bet the snowboarding is pretty good.
Comment by Aaron — 11/17/2009 @ 4:59 pm
Aaron-
You hit the nail on the head. Objectivism was and is a Utopian scheme; what is disheartening is to see the resurgence of her ideas among the Tea Party groups.
They don’t seem to want to improve public functions like schools and infrastructure, so much as eliminate them; it seems as if they have this cult-like faith in Free Market, free of the skepticism and caution that marked traditional conservatism.
Its almost a looking glass world, where the “liberal” party advocates a cautious, mixed economy of public and private ventures, and the “conservative” party puts its faith in a Utopian scheme of radical change, where the public sphere ceases to exist.
Comment by Liberty60 — 11/17/2009 @ 5:30 pm
If only the issues being debated were that clear cut. I believe much of the unwillingness to hear out the other side (or the eagerness for affirmation from one’s own side) has little to do with hearing “2+2=4″ from one’s own side and more to do with hearing “2+2=5″ from the other side.
Basic truths that people hold dear and use as a foundation for the rest of their belief system getting questioned doesn’t usually sit well. People are willing to hear out the other side when it comes to whether “1/3=0.3″ or “1/3=0.33″. Neither is accurate, but one is “more accurate”. People don’t mind fighting around the edges or being swayed gently toward a position 5 degrees off center from their own, but telling someone “black is white” is a non-starter for most people. Therefore it’s easier to sit and digest daily doses of “2+2=4″.
Many people are scared to have their belief system questioned and take it very personally. If the foundation they’ve developed is shaky or the knowledge on a particular topic is questionable, they’d much rather sit in the warm arms of agreeable screechers than wander into the wilderness. A second grader who knows 2+2 equals 4 may still not feel comfortable arguing that point or at least arguing the “why” behind it.
Internet forum environments do little to quell this fear. Many “n00bs” shutter at the thought of wandering into the lion’s den of the opposing side and debating an issue. Nature pushes those people to the friendly environments they’re comfortable in. As they gain more confidence in their “positions” they gradually drift out of the nest. And typically, rather than argue the finer points, we just hear “2+2=5″…oh, and you’re an idiot if you don’t think so.
I rarely agree with you, but your comment makes a lot of sense. Without an ideologically common enemy, America has turned inward and begun debating the nuances. That’s likely why America as a unit pulls together so quickly when a common enemy does rear its ugly head. We’re fine arguing amongst ourselves and dismissing our own as ignorant buffoons, but if an outsider comes and tries to start a fight, we’ll put aside our own differences to kick their ass into next week (ideologically or otherwise).
Comment by sota — 11/17/2009 @ 5:35 pm
“But why shouldn’t that be so? After all, we share pretty much the same Enlightenment values (with admittedly a different emphasis on which ones are important)”
I believe the New Left, the spawns of neo-Marxist Critical Theory are *NOT* children of the Enlightenment as were say the New Deal Liberals but a different species of political animal. Marxist Critical Theory is so critical because it wipes away all those moralistic liberal shibboleths, alongside conservative moral moorings. The new leftists have learned lessons from the leftists who admired communist totalitarians in the 1930s-1960s and since have infused elements of radicalism into the US body politics. This fact is both a large reason for the ugliness of American politics (”politics of personal destruction”) and a source of confusion by the right. It is now further muddling things, because the old-fashioned liberals start sounding like cultural conservatives -worried about antique ideas like the community, moral values, and civilizational coherence.
I shake my head at the well-meaning status quo Republican types (Whether Rick Moran or GWB) who ‘dont get it’, who don’t get the ideological core that animates the left, and think bi-partisanship is possible with such folks. How can you work with people you dont understand?
Maybe Rick will play his good-conservative bad-conservative routine, and write up a “Bad Liberal: Saul Alinsky” article and answer the question: “How much has Saul Alinsky influenced Barack Obama?”
Comment by Freedoms Truth — 11/17/2009 @ 6:18 pm
FT:
Show me some radicalism.
I’m a liberal — certainly by your standards.
I’m 55. My father was a 20 year soldier, bronze star, two tours in Vietnam.
I’ve worked full time since I was 16.
I’ve been married to the same woman for 30 years, we have two kids. A 12 year- old who is our biological son, and our 9 year-old, an adopted daughter from China.
I work hard, so does my wife, and because of our work dozens if not more people have jobs. I pay my taxes. I obey the law — except for the occasional speeding. I live in a very Republican neighborhood, keep my lawn mowed. I help my kids with their homework. I teach them to love their country.
The other day my daughter and I had some alone time in the car when I had to — not for the first time — try to explain how it wasn’t her birth parent’s fault they’d abandoned her, but a result of a very evil man named Mao, and a government — not a people — who did not believe in freedom.
If you were 14 and read my books you’d find evidence that I am tolerant of gays, intolerant of bigots which I suppose is “liberal.” You’d also find that I treat people of faith with respect, that one of my most admired characters is a young capitalist who creates a gold-based currency in this dystopian world of mine, and because of his belief in basic capitalism, manages to feed a population.
The other liberals I know are much of a kind. We take our kids to soccer practice, most of them go to church, some are New Age goofs, most are Catholic or Jewish.
I’m not sure where you find these crypto-Marxists of yours. I’m a real person, living in the real world, with real beliefs, and real problems, and a real job, and a real love for my country. And yet here in Rick’s domain I’m one of the people most likely to disagree with you.
And honest-to-God, I don’t even know what you’re talking about with your Marxist Critical Theory. Me? I’m a capitalist.
Comment by michael reynolds — 11/17/2009 @ 8:50 pm
FT:
You compare these “New Leftists” to the New Dealers- unfavorably. Apparently the New Dealers were reasonable, non radical folk.
As George Will would say…
Well!
The New Deal was about as close to actual, real socialism as America ever got. Not only did the government provide direct employment to millions of people through the WPA, CCC, CCC, and so forth, during WWII Roosevelt actually took over about 1/2 of the economy.
He dictated to Detroit what they could produce; tires, nylons, sugar, wood, and paper were rationed; over a third of the nations workers were unionized; The national debt rose to over 100 percent of the gross domestic product, a level never seen before or since; Marginal tax rates were in the range of 80% for top earners.
The New Deal assumed a degree of government intervention in the economy never before seen outside of Bolshevik Russia.
And these dangerous radical “New Leftists”?
Basically, Obama has proposed programs that are more conservative than Truman;
Obama is proposing a health plan more limited than one proposed by Richard Nixon;
Obama is proposing tax rates lower than Dwight Eisenhower.
So please, tell us what radical leftist programs or policies are being proposed by Obama.
Comment by Liberty60 — 11/17/2009 @ 9:11 pm
Thirty years of people like Limbaugh and Hannity telling them that it’s all some one else’s fault, the hippies lost the war, the Mexicans have our jobs, the gays want your kids, have set their opinions into cement.
Their heads have turned to rock and no facts known will sway their opinion that liberals are worse than the clan, we all hate our country and that only Republicans are fit to run it.
It’s well known I will never, ever vote for a Republican because I really don’t like their politics. But with few exceptions (George Bush being a massive one) I can live with the times they win at the ballot box because the political process usually stops the most egregious excesses in either direction.
This time around the conservatives have decided that not only is Obama a liberal, he is a demon unfit to hold the office. The belief in the danger to the country of ObamaHitlerMao is serious and dangerous in a way it’s never been before.
The rise of the militias again is one sign of trouble to come. Tim McVeigh sized trouble.
Comment by Richard bottoms — 11/17/2009 @ 9:18 pm
I’m a conservative who doesn’t understand why this Saul Alinsky fellow is always thrown around by our side. I mean who cares about this guy? Not me.
Democracy is about ideas being thrown around, debated, implemented, improved, thrown out. Some of us put more emphasis on the individual some more on the society as a whole. That’s pretty healthy.
I did notice some blogger some days ago already felt we are in pre-civil war state. People like that are nuts. If they feel they need some more adventure I suggest they sign up to serve in a country that is already post civil war, Afghanistan.
Comment by funny man — 11/17/2009 @ 10:29 pm
@sota:
“Many people are scared to have their belief system questioned and take it very personally.”
That I’ve never understood (although I agree it is certainly true). If your belief system can’t stand up to questioning . . . why do you believe it in the first place? And just because I believe “x” doesn’t prohibit me from understanding why some people believe “y” (even if I don’t).
I have religious faith, but I certainly understand why athiests believe the way that they do. I don’t agree, but they aren’t crazy . . . and my daddy raised me tough enough that someone telling me “you’re wrong” doesn’t reduce me to crying in the corner.
@FT:
“I believe the New Left, the spawns of neo-Marxist Critical Theory are *NOT* children of the Enlightenment as were say the New Deal Liberals but a different species of political animal.”
Of course you do. Life is so much easier when everything is pure black and white, isn’t it? The soldiers for Truth and the drooling, gibbering demonic legions that want to drink human blood as they rub their hand maniacally in smoky rooms plotting how they can be more evil today than the last.
Ah . . . to be 12 years old again.
Remember FT — all liberals believe exactly the same thing, behave in exactly the same way. They all march in lockstep, one monolithic entity deviod of individual thought. They pass their secret manifesto to each other carefully, so as not to arouse suspicion, its hypnotic words draining all who read it of identity.
And then the C.H.U.D.s came . . .
Comment by busboy33 — 11/18/2009 @ 12:47 am
For my part, the reason I mistrust “idea” arguments is because of the rank ineffectiveness of modern American government. Why bother arguing that people “deserve health care” if our government is incapable of delivering it efficiently and effectively, and the program on the table is a power-grab by the SEIU and lobbyists? Why bother with theories about “improving the public schools” if the unions and political machines running them will thwart you at every turn? Why bother with debates about infrastructure if the implementation turns into a massive porkfest, with contracts costing far more than they should?
Obama has tried to argue that this take is “cynical”, but so what? Cynics are often right. And this is why Randian stuff is so popular nowadays (even though I’m not personally a big “Objectivism” fan myself).
Sure, there are many selfless heroes in public service, but simple statistics show that there are not enough of them to offset the massive waste and corruption in the system.
This is the reality on the ground, not just at the federal level, but at the state and local level too.
I suppose Rick’s blog is an “idea blog”, but beautiful ideas aren’t worth diddly-squat if they can’t be implemented.
If you want my idea on this, it’s that government needs a massive restructuring. Currently, it’s organized in a fashion that would be familiar to Teddy Roosevelt’s bureaucrats, while organizational structures in other areas of life are completely different.
I’m not enough of a wonk to know the solution, but there’s definitely a systemic management problem at all levels of government, and until this is addressed, normative arguments about what it should do are irrelevant.
Comment by Foobarista — 11/18/2009 @ 4:24 am
I consider myself a moderate Democrat and I’m highly amused that a certain strain of “conservative” think that Democrats and liberals have a secret Marxist plan to reshape America. Newsflash: Were too busy raising our kids, paying our mortgage, car payment to take over America. Any free time I have I watch Badger football and my inept Packers.There is no marxist agenda,but Rush and Sean have their sheeple convinced there is. How sad.
Comment by Joe — 11/18/2009 @ 6:17 am
Won’t find me shedding any tears. They inflicted George Bush on us for eight years so of course the answer to the mess they made is to give them the reins again so they can “fix” it? Ha. We’ll lose seats in 2010 then we’ll crush them in the next presidential year.
Moose & Squirrely/2012
Comment by Richard bottoms — 11/18/2009 @ 7:47 am
@foobarista:
I can’t say that I disagree with your assessment of the government, but I don’t think your solution is practical.
Let’s assume that there IS a “fix” for the government (which, as you say, you and I don’t know). To refuse to move forward on more pressing matters until that is implemented doesn’t make sense. If there is such a fix, it’s not an overnight, flip-a-switch type of fix. Do we stop funding the wars until we know the government won’t foolishly waste money or lose pallets of cash? That’s a bad idea, even given the proven assumption that funding the war WILL result in the government wasting some money.
The only middle ground is something like “well, we will keep funding the important stuff, but we will stop funding the not-important stuff”, but that gets us back to the same problem . . . what the word “important” applies to. That’s not a failure of the government structure, but a natural disagreement in a democratic society. I don’t think everything the government does is important or necessary, but if the people elect representatives that vote for it, then my opinion was considered and rejected, and I’m stuck with that.
Getting more “meta” with the problem, making a lean, mean efficient government machine raises a host of problems. The founding fathers designed the government to be in some manner self-defeating, specifically to limit its damage-causing potential. Between inefficient and dangerous, they chose inefficient as the lesser of two evile . . . amd I can’t say I disagree with that. Just read the comments here and elsewhere. Both liberals (last administration) and conservatives (this administration) worry that the government is barreling down the path of societial destruction . . . and that’s WITH it’s basic inability to accomplish much of anything. Imagine what would happen if things ran smoother and faster.
Compare the issue to automobiles. They are actually stunningly inificient contraptions. For example, it decelerates by wasting all of its kenetic energy (converting it to heat via the brake pad). It would certainly be more practical to do it by some other method, such as using the kenetic energy to power a storage cell, slowing the vehicle and then re-using all that energy. Perhaps re-designing the thing from the ground up would be a good idea . . . but deciding not to take any steps toward managing automobiles until a “perfect” redesign is completed would be foolish and dangerous. No need to worry about fuel economy standards or safety standards . . . why bother until we have all new designs?
Certainly “fixing” the government is an admirable long-term goal. But there are short-term things that need addressing at the same time, and ignoring them just doesn’t strike me as wise.
Comment by busboy33 — 11/18/2009 @ 8:07 pm