Right Wing Nut House

My friend Stacy McCain has a very long, very thorough, and excellent post that details the FBI doc dump on historian Howard Zinn. In essence, J. Edgar was miffed at some pot shots Zinn took at the Bureau and, typical of Hoover’s paranoia and megalomania, ordered Zinn investigated.

Read all of Stacy’s post for an excellent analysis of why Zinn is one of the few on the left that I gladly refer to as “anti-American.” The FBI files reveal a man deeply committed to Communism and a shameless apologist for Stalin. As Stacy points out, Zinn joined the Communist Party USA after World War II - after the American left’s brief flirtation with Communism (until it came roaring back in the 1960’s) in the 30’s where it really seemed that capitalism had failed and socialism was the only viable model for some. At that time, many very naive, but loyal Americans joined the CPUSA believing as many on the left believe today, that there are shortcuts to a just society and that socialism is the wave of the future. Even after groups like the ADA had purged Communists from their midst, and Henry Wallace had been denounced by liberals like a young Hubert Humphrey, Zinn continued his association with the CPUSA, attending meetings 5 times a week and conducting seminars for initiates.

Clearly, Zinn was a big boy and threw in his lot with the Communists with his eyes wide open. So it is not surprising to find that Zinn was a card carrying Communist. The question is, does it matter?

For many of us who read A People’s History of the United States and were transfixed by the voices Zinn brought to life - the voices of the underclass, blacks, women, and others who had been silenced in American history textbooks - there was rush of insight not granted us previously . Social history had, until that time, been quite selective in which voices were heard. For example, the stories of people included in Arthur Schlesinger’s (senior) social histories (The Rise of the City is still considered one of the best social histories ever written) were inspirational and their activism was guided by a love of America and American ideals.

On the other hand, the raw emotionalism expressed by Zinn’s subjects was a splash of cold water on many reader’s sophomoric notions of America. People beat down by capitalism, racism, and sexism have lost hope and optimism and all that’s left is a cynical loathing that makes many of our pretentious twaddle about America ring quite hollow.

America is a good country that has done very bad things to many people and unless you can accept both of these schizophrenic realities, your understanding of American history is shallow and incomplete. There is no scale upon which you can balance this good and evil to judge America as you might decide a court case. Both exist - many times in the same place at the same time. They are inseparable parts of the same whole and recognizing the dual nature of our history is the first step to truly understanding our remarkable national story.

Zinn wasn’t much of an historian. Most Marxists aren’t. Not only was Zinn rightly accused of shoddy scholarship, but his deterministic view of of history ultimately warped his writing, making it banally predictable and ridiculously shallow. Human beings are not motivated by what the economic determinists believe, nor do they act the way that most historical materialsts conclude they should. It is a tragedy that Zinn himself is taken seriously by so many.

But since we knew Zinn was a radical, a determinist, and a devotee of historical materialism, does it lessen the respect we rightly feel for those who were previously left voiceless and invisible in our national narrative now that we know what we long suspected; that Zinn was a Communist?

I don’t see how it makes any difference except as it adds another strange footnote to the life of an American original who hated the very idea of America, despised her origins, dismissed her accomplishments, and spent his adult life apparently working to bring her to her knees.

Maybe it’s the heat. Perhaps it’s an al-Qaeda plot that has dumped LSD in public cisterns throughout the country. Or, it could be simple, old fashioned, bat guano crazy wishful thinking.

Whatever it is, the very silly season has arrived on the right and with it, diminishing chances that the American people will drink the same flavor of Kool Ade and join conservatives in giving the Democrats a well-deserved paddling at the polls.

A kind of irrational combination of fear and exuberance has infected the right in recent weeks as the number of vulnerable Democrats grows and the realization that at the very least, the House may fall into their laps takes hold. And if the hysteria was limited to the fringes, one might dismiss it as not worthy of discussion.

Instead, illogical ranting has gone mainstream with a call by former Rep. Tom Tancredo in the Washington Times for the president to be impeached, and now the belief that there may be another American Revolution on the way emanating from the pages of the staid, and usually rational Investors Business Daily.

The probable response of those two media organs would be that these are valid points of view and they are performing a public service by airing them. At least, that’s what the New York Times says when they publish off the wall looniness from liberals.

In truth, they are not valid. They are not rational. They are not sane. Tancredo especially, forces one to ask the question; what country is he talking about?

For the first time in American history, we have a man in the White House who consciously and brazenly disregards his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution. That’s why I say the greatest threat to our Constitution, our safety and our liberties, is internal. Our president is an enemy of our Constitution, and, as such, he is a danger to our safety, our security and our personal freedoms.

Now, if you’re familiar with the conservative internet, this is not an uncommon idea. All that’s missing is the charge that President Obama is a Marxist.

Oh, wait…

Mr. Obama’s paramount goal, as he so memorably put it during his campaign in 2008, is to “fundamentally transform America.” He has not proposed improving America - he is intent on changing its most essential character. The words he has chosen to describe his goals are neither the words nor the motivation of just any liberal Democratic politician. This is the utopian, or rather dystopian, reverie of a dedicated Marxist - a dedicated Marxist who lives in the White House.

That’s right. Tom Tancredo believes the president of the United States is a Commie. He’s not even a pinko. He is a dead red, dyed in the wool, “dedicated Marxist.” Left unsaid, but easily inferred from Tacredo’s unbalanced rant, is that President Obama is deliberately out to destroy the country. This is a Rush Limbaugh talking point and many of his 17 million daily listeners fall for it. One would think a former congressman should know better, but evidently, such rationality requires adherence to a worldview that doesn’t see the political opposition as the reincarnation of the Devil.

Is President Obama intent on “changing [America's] most essential character?” Unfortunately, yes he is trying. He is doing it not because he wants to destroy America but because he thinks he is improving her. This misguided, imprudent, and ultimately doomed attempt to alter the relationship between the people and the government can be opposed rationally (as defending it can be argued without resorting to hyperbole or name calling). Tancredo chooses to believe (or lets on that he believes) that in order to oppose the president, one must resort to hysterical exaggerations and deliberate misinterpretation of Obama’s motives. But doing it the logical way will not garner him headlines or make him a hero on the right.

Such is the level to which conservatism has sunk in some quarters.

There is not a shred of evidence that the president has “violated his oath of office” nor is there a speck of proof that President Obama has committed any high crime or misdemeanor that would even hint at the necessity of removing him from office. He has played hardball politics the Chicago Way, rewarding friends and punishing enemies as any other flag waving, patriotic, devious, two faced politician in America has done in the past. Admittedly, using $800 billion in taxpayer monies to play that game is a rather novel gimmick to protect the jobs of the president’s union friends and benefactors. But “impeachable?” Not hardly.

But Tancredo’s skewed version of reality can’t hold a candle of idiocy to the ideas expressed in this IDB editorial by former Ford-Reagan treasury department officials Ernest Christian and Gary Robbins. The headline - “Will Washington’s Failures Lead To Second American Revolution?” - is really quite deceiving. You will be glad to hear that except for the lede where the authors compare the internet to the colonial Committees of Correspondence and dreamily wonder whether that alone could lead to another revolution, nowhere in that article do the duo defend the premise of the headline.

Instead, they launch an hysterically exaggerated attack on what President Obama has done so far in office:

Barack Obama, however, has pulled off the ultimate switcheroo: He’s diminishing America from within — so far, successfully.

He may soon bankrupt us and replace our big merit-based capitalist economy with a small government-directed one of his own design.

He is undermining our constitutional traditions: The rule of law and our Anglo-Saxon concepts of private property hang in the balance. Obama may be the most “consequential” president ever.

The Wall Street Journal’s steadfast Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote that Barack Obama is “an alien in the White House.”

His bullying and offenses against the economy and job creation are so outrageous that CEOs in the Business Roundtable finally mustered the courage to call him “anti-business.” Veteran Democrat Sen. Max Baucus blurted out that Obama is engineering the biggest government-forced “redistribution of income” in history.

Fear and uncertainty stalk the land. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says America’s financial future is “unusually uncertain.”

What can be said when grown-ups, former government officials no less, resort to such nonsensical hyperbole? How much courage, really, does it take business execs to call the president “anti-business?” If they had released a statement saying that Obama was really Satan, that might take some balls.

And why is anyone surprised at the liberals engineering income redistribution? It’s what they do for a living. Of course, they’re never honest enough to run on such a platform (recall Obama denying as much vociferously and the liberal pile on of Joe the Plumber for asking about it). But electing Democrats to such huge majorities is an open invitation for the government to pick you pocket - in the name of “fairness,” of course.

I confess to not seeing how any of this leads to a revolution. A shooting war between the right wing and the US army would be over very quickly, to the detriment of the wingnuts. Revolution at the polls is more likely, but who’s going to vote for people who spout nonsense like the above?

Marc Ambinder:

The Democratic strategy in a nutshell is small enough to fit in one but has the protein of a good, tasty nut. The Republicans want to be mayors of crazy-town. They’ve embraced a fringe and proto-racist isolationist and ignorant conservative populism that has no solutions for fixing anything and the collective intelligence of a wine flask. This IS offensive and over the top, and the more Democrats repeat it, and the more dumb things some Republican candidates do, the more generally conservative voters who might be thinking of sending a message to Democrats by voting for a Republican will be reminded that the replacement party is even more loony than the party that can’t tie its shoes. This is a strategy of delegitimization, not affirmation. It is how you reduce independent turnout. It’s how you fundraise for your own party.

A corollary: the House is not going to save itself for Democrats. Let’s stipulate that House Democrats have passed a lot of legislation. It’s too late to convince voters that all of it was good. So selling is not going to work. If you’ve already decided not to buy an Acura, you’re not going to be convinced just because James Spader’s melifluous voice tells you that it’s the right thing to do. Decision science suggests that the only avenue available to Democrats is to prevent people from making the OTHER choice, too.

Ambinder titles his post “Democratic Message: We may be incompetent, but they’re crazy” which is pretty close to the truth. The problem is that people get mad at incompetents but fear crazies. For this reason, the more that people like Tancredo take center stage for the Republicans, and the more respected conservative outlets like IDB publish nonsense, the more those few voters who might be persuadable enough to turn a GOP wave into a tsunami that would wash away Democratic majorities in the House and Senate look in askance at the right and wonder if they can be trusted with power.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

It’s been called “undemocratic,” “a relic,” and worse. Every 50 years or so, a movement gets underway to eviscerate or eliminate it — one of the creakiest compromises that emerged from our Constitutional Convention in 1788.

I refer to the Electoral College — that inelegant, less than perfect, but ultimately useful device by which we ultimately elect our presidents. Over the years, more than 30 Constitutional amendments have been introduced in Congress to gut the college or eliminate it entirely. None have ever passed the legislature and sent to the states for ratification.

A few states have taken it upon themselves to circumvent the Electoral College by joining what has come to be known as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact where no matter the vote for president in their own states, they will apportion electoral votes based on the national popular vote totals. Massachusetts is the latest state to join this Compact, but it is unclear whether it would actually pass Constitutional muster if challenged.

Arguments in favor of the Compact are compelling. Isn’t it always better to have the people choose the president directly? In a nation as much in love with liberty as the United States, such an argument resonates powerfully. Other arguments are equally worthy; such a compact would prevent chaos in very close elections; it would take the focus of elections off the large swing states and thus empower smaller states; and the compact may open the door to more serious third party challenges, thus broadening participation.

But there are two powerful reasons for maintaining the current system. First, as conservatives, we favor tradition - especially when it can’t be proved that changing the rules would make the system better. For every argument in favor of giving the Electoral College the deep six, there are counter-arguments which reveal unintended consequences that would arise if we were to abandon the college and consign its wisdom to the dustbin of history.

The original intent of the College was to keep the decision for president entirely out of the hands of citizens and place it in the hands of “wise men” who would presumably act in the national interest in choosing a president rather than base the choice on the selfish interests of the rabble. The Electoral College was amended in 1804 to reflect the emergence of political parties, and states mostly settled on a “winner take all” formula for choosing electors.

This boosted the influence of states in national elections by forcing candidates to run campaigns that reflected the federal nature of our republic. The early divisions of big state vs. small state in the country were augmented by urban vs. rural, west vs. east, north vs. south, and agriculture vs. manufacturing divisions to which a candidate for president had to address if he were to be successful.

The magic formula to reach a majority of the electoral college votes, therefore, was a test of the broadest possible appeal of a candidate. It guaranteed that no region, no interest would be slighted by a candidate who did so at the risk of alienating key groups and losing precious Electoral College votes in the process. Rural voters from north and south, urban voters from the coast and the interior, were lumped together and specific appeals were tailored to win them over.

The other major reason to maintain the Electoral College is that it confirms the federal nature of the United States government. It is not surprising that the impetus for the Compact is coming from heavily Democratic states. Direct election of a president would place a premium on wholesale politics. In the 2008 election, Barack Obama took 9 of the 10 largest states, running up huge majorities in the popular vote in states like California, Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, and Michigan. In a race decided by the popular vote, the Republican would be at a distinct disadvantage in that he would be forced to run a defensive campaign, trying to cut into the Democrats huge advantage in coastal and heavily urbanized areas while defending turf in far less populous regions. The disparity would mean that the Republican would spend far more per vote than the Democrat.

And there is something to be said for the charm of presidential campaigns as they are currently run. True, swing states like Ohio and Florida get an inordinate amount of attention from candidates. But would smaller states receive more stroking from candidates if we were to switch to a popular vote model? I can’t imagine it. In a close election like 2004, John Kerry and George Bush criss-crossed the country in those final days, hitting smaller states like New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, and Washington, in addition to the larger markets, fighting for each and every electoral vote. I doubt very much whether that scenario would play out in a direct election scenario as it would be more efficient and prudent to appear in states with the largest TV markets to maximize the effort to win as many votes as possible.

The argument for or against the Electoral College is a close one. But in the end, bowing to the wisdom of the Founders has rarely steered us wrong through the centuries. In this, as in most things, their prescience in doing what was best for succeeding generations of Americans has been born out with great success.

After weeks of speculation where war opponents were licking their chops and the administration was sweating bullets, Wikileaks has released 92,000 documents summarizing in detail the day to day operations on the ground in Afghanistan as well as pungent assessments of our Afghan allies and our supposed friends in Pakistan.

In truth, there are only mild surprises gleaned so far from the document dump. Three news outlets - The New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Speigel - were given access to the material weeks ago with the caveat that they not release anything until yesterday.

A few highlights courtesy of the New York Times:

• The Taliban have used portable heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft, a fact that has not been publicly disclosed by the military. This type of weapon helped the Afghan mujahedeen defeat the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

• Secret commando units like Task Force 373 - a classified group of Army and Navy special operatives - work from a “capture/kill list” of about 70 top insurgent commanders. These missions, which have been stepped up under the Obama administration, claim notable successes, but have sometimes gone wrong, killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment.

• The military employs more and more drone aircraft to survey the battlefield and strike targets in Afghanistan, although their performance is less impressive than officially portrayed. Some crash or collide, forcing American troops to undertake risky retrieval missions before the Taliban can claim the drone’s weaponry.

• The Central Intelligence Agency has expanded paramilitary operations inside Afghanistan. The units launch ambushes, order airstrikes and conduct night raids. From 2001 to 2008, the C.I.A. paid the budget of Afghanistan’s spy agency and ran it as a virtual subsidiary.

There is also extensive documentation and speculation about the role of Pakistan’s wayward intelligence agency, the ISI, in cooperating with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Again, this is not earth shattering news as the American government has been lodging complaint after complaint with both the former government headed by President Musharraff and the current government about a blind eye being cast by the military and civilian authorities in Pakistan toward activities by their own intelligence service.

In the New York Times report, a good point is made about the provenance of this intelligence:

Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

Much of the information - raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan- cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.

Thus, a critical reason why clueless idiots like Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, should be prevented from acting like idiot children in dumping this startling amount of information raw, unexpurgated, without context and without reason on the public. The fact is that Assange doesn’t care what effect his triumphal act of America-hate has on live troops, the debate over the war, the effect on policy where thousands of lives are at stake, or even on advancing understanding of what is happening in Afghanistan. This was a reckless, petulant, adolescent, tantrum thrown by a cold, calculating, glory hunting ignoramus. And that goes double for the individual who purloined these documents in the first place.

Clearly, too much information gathered by the government is being classified as “Secret” or “Top Secret.” Many times, that classification is used to hide perfidious deeds or even simple political misbehavior. The volume of classified documents grows astronomically every year with more and more government bureaucrats given the ability to classify what they are doing. This is not a prudent use of the necessary secrecy that attends some government functions and actions. And if Assange was a crusader to rectify that imbalance, he might receive a little more sympathy from me.

But he is not. His purposes are malevolent - to destroy the credibility of the United States government and deliberately undermine public confidence in the war. And his methods are unconscionable. He - a foreigner after all - has presumed to inject himself  into a domestic political debate. I don’t want to hear that crap about our actions affecting everyone else in the world and that therefore, foreigners have a perfect right to butt their noses into our domestic politics. That is so nonsensical as to be sky blue idiocy. The very same people who make that argument would scream bloody murder if we injected ourselves into their domestic arguments about policies that affected the United States. Assange doesn’t have a leg to stand on morally, or politically for that matter. That’s because for all the hype, for all the worry that this document dump engendered in government, this may be the most spectacularly banal scoop in history.

Certainly, these are no Pentagon Papers. The information that has been held back from the public appears to be reasonable and necessary to the war effort, including the idea that the war was not going as well as some in the military and White House were saying. Did people expect otherwise? Besides, it is impossible, given their nature,  for these reports to have documented the broad strategic efforts by the military since most of the documents appear to give a worm’s eye view of the conflict, reporting on purely local conditions rather than trying to judge the overall progress made by both the American military and the civilian rebuilding efforts.

The only revelations that might merit a page one story in the media were the news that the Taliban has gotten a hold of some relatively ineffective (old) ground to air shoulder fired missiles (probably Stingers) and the larger extent of civilian casualties that the Pentagon chose not to publicize. As for the latter, the Pentagon may have not been forthcoming, but regional media was not shy about reporting on Afghan civilians being killed in our drone and manned air strikes. Domestic media was not reluctant in picking up on those reports either.

As for the missiles, the incident reports show that while there have been some successful strikes, many more were failures. That would seem to indicate either the Taliban don’t know how to use the missiles or they are older ordnance with attendant problems as far as aged rocket fuel, bad electronics, and perhaps even dud war heads. Was it necessary to keep their existence secret?  Probably not. Then again, there may be tactical reasons for not revealing our knowledge of this. Perhaps we want the Taliban to think we don’t know they possess such weapons. It is a certainty that Mr. Assange doesn’t know and just as clearly, doesn’t care.

The civilian casualty cover up is more serious. The American people certainly have a right to know what their military is doing in their name. However, it should be obvious to anyone except the most willfully blind (Glenn Greenwald) that the extraordinary lengths to which our forces go not to kill civilians that comes through crystal clear in the incident reports gives the lie to contentions by Assange and others that war crimes are being committed. Even after General McChrystal altered the Rules of Engagement to reflect the most careful and prudent measures taken to not even carry out offensive operations if civilians were in the area - at the risk of the lives of our own men - civilians were wounded and killed. If you want to make an argument against causing any civilian casualties, you might as well go all the way and argue against the war. Anything less brands you as a hypocrite.

There were also domestic politics at play in Afghanistan in covering up civilian casualties. Do we know if the Afghan government was also reluctant to give the whole story about the deaths of ordinary people? Would it matter? It’s a tougher call than if you simply examine the surface of the story and not reflect on the broader implications involved in going out of our way to announce the deaths of Afghan civilians.

As for the question of should the documents have been published? Of course not. Anyone who gave that anti-American nutcase Julian Assange - an Australian by birth - access to those documents should be arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to jail for a very long time. Untold damage is being done simply because no one knows what use of this information will be made by the enemy. What intelligence can they glean from its contents? Certainly the Taliban can figure out some of our weaknesses by reading through these documents. For that reason alone, Assange himself should be relentlessly pursued and arrested.

It is highly likely that this irresponsible release will result in additional American casualties.

Both the Sherrod matter and the Journolist revelations have one thing in common that the ideologues from both sides remain blissfully and determinedly unaware; the controversies are excellent examples of epistemic closure on both sides.

To jog your memory, Julian Sanchez defined epistemic closure thusly:

One of the more striking features of the contemporary conservative movement is the extent to which it has been moving toward epistemic closure. Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. (How do you know they’re liberal? Well, they disagree with the conservative media!) This epistemic closure can be a source of solidarity and energy, but it also renders the conservative media ecosystem fragile.

While Sanchez formulated his definition in order to apply the term to conservatives, does any of that sound familiar with regards to the Journolist?

Jonathan Chait defines the liberal reality during the 2008 campaign when the Democratic primary debate on ABC became the only major media event where Barack Obama was confronted with even mildly tough questions about Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers:

The first thread came on the heels of a Democratic primary debate in Pennsylvania, in which the moderators almost completely ignored public policy and asked both candidates a series of questions revolving around Barack Obama’s alleged lack of patriotism or American-ness. Some members of the list, put off by the ABC News team’s questions, decided to write a letter expressing their umbrage.

A couple points pertain. First, the Daily Caller notes, “Journolist members signed the statement and released it April 18.” This is literally true but probably gives readers the impression that all of Journolist signed the letter. In fact, 41 people signed the letter, out of 400 people on Journolist. In other words, Journolist was a vehicle for them to network with each other. This was not an effort “by Journolist.” Most people on Jounolist had nothing to do with it.

Chait has created a reality - or, more accurately, reflects a reality created by Journolist - where questions about Obama’s radical associations, especially with regards to Wright who the candidate identified as a “spiritual advisor” and a major force in his life, are actually questions about “lack of patriotism or American-ness.” The idea that the liberals who belonged to the list (even if they didn’t respond to that specific thread) parroted this talking point far and wide is significant because it reveals why even if list members remained silent, they had absorbed the thinking of the group and rejected any notion that the questions about Obama’s association were legitimate.

Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks-in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

“Discourse that serves the people?” Or serves the cause of electing Obama? It’s easy to confuse the two when your version of reality is heavily influenced by those who share the common goal of electing a particular candidate to office.

Isn’t this a rejection of “objective” reality? Isn’t this a question of dismissing criticism of Obama just because it comes from outside the myopic reality generated by the list and not based on anything save a closed ideological loop that the Journolist represents?

Further:

The members began collaborating on their open letter. Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones rejected an early draft, saying, “I’d say too short. In my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough in highlighting the inanity of some of [Gibson's] and [Stephanopoulos's] questions. And it doesn’t point out their factual inaccuracies …Our friends at Media Matters probably have tons of experience with this sort of thing, if we want their input.”

Note again that legitimate questions about the radical associates of the potential next president of the United States are defined as “inanities.” (I wonder if Obama had hung around with known mafia figures and was asked about it if that would have been more “inanities?”) There was not one quote from a Journolist member in the Daily Caller story who ventured outside the tightly controlled reality created by the group who rejected the inauthentic premise that the questions asked of Obama about the numerous radicals in his past and present were legitimate.

The Journolist was a self-reinforcing feeback loop of  consensus driven opinions, totally rejecting any criticism coming from conservatives (and most of the contrary liberals in the group), while creating a reality based not on objectivity but on a constantly evolving notion of what could be realized for political gain. Hence, the eagerness to pick a conservative name out of a hat and toss the “racism” charge, or the open coordination of a media strategy to manipulate or kill the Reverend Wright controversy.

Chait and other Journolist defenders can talk until they are blue in the face about the innocence of the group regarding their intentions, but the objective  facts speak for themselves. It doesn’t matter how many list members participated in a discussion. The talking points were disseminated to all. And while Chait has a point that we should not assume that everyone read every email, or that everyone adopted the consensus strategy and opinions that emerged from these discussions, we can safely assume that every one of them wanted Barack Obama to win and were not bashful about using the list to promote that end.

As an example of epistemic closure, the Journolist is right up there with what the right did with the Shirley Sherrod story.

The first 12 hours after Andrew Breitbart released his heavily edited video of Sherrod’s  speech before the NAACP recounting a 24-year old incident, there was the usual feeding frenzy on conservative blogs and websites. No one in the conservative camp needed to be instructed on how to handle the story. No coordination was necessary. The issue was starkly laid out and  the reaction was instantaneous and predictable; a real “gotchya” moment by Breitbart that would bring down the NAACP (and their allies in the Democratic party) a peg or two on the credibility scale.

But trouble was brewing about the story. Andrew Sullivan linked to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story where Sherrod tried to explain herself. It was here that the part of the video left on the cutting room floor suddenly became very significant and important to understanding the context of Sherrod’s bigoted words.  Then, as the day went on, the drip, drip, drip of revelations about the actions of the White House, the Agriculture Department, the NAACP, and Breitbart himself turned the story 180 degrees in the opposite direction. A full, 43 minute video was found of Sherrod’s remarks and despite the curious exoneration of the USDA employee by the left (Sherrod admitted her bigotry but then proceeded to turn a racial incident into a quaisi-Marxist class warfare parable), the right continued to defend Breitbart and refused to ask questions of him; questions that someone not caught in the epistemic closure so prevalent on the right would have asked within 5 minutes of seeing the video in the first place.

Where did the video come from? Does the unedited version of the video give context that would be important to the story? Why should we care about an incident that occurred a quarter of a century ago — especially since there are more contemporary examples of  blatant racism of the so-called civil rights group?

The lock-step response on the right to the Sherrod video blew up in its face when the left was successful in turning the story from a question of racism at the NAACP (the reaction of the audience to Sherrod’s remarks about discriminating against a white man seems to have been lost in the shuffle) to how Breitbart tried to smear the NAACP. In this case, objective reality reveals a story turned on its head by an effusion of facts that, in some ways, contradict Breitbart’s narrative and in other ways, makes many of his points moot.

But as a case study of epistemic closure, the Sherrod story typifies conservative internet media. The additional evidence that would appear to exonerate Sherrod of racism charges (not for spouting Marxist idiocies) has been ignored by many on the right. In a piece for today’s Human Events, Dan Riehl attempts to defend the indefensible:

Atty. Gen. Eric Holder said America is a nation of cowards on matters of race. He was correct, but in a manner he likely didn’t predict. The racism Breitbart revealed is the racism of the Shirley Sherrods of the progressive-leftist Democratic Party and the NAACP. Afraid to honestly look at and address that, the usual leftist suspects are simply turning the tables as a distraction in a weak effort to instead attack Breitbart.

Breitbart did exactly what he set out and claimed to do, put the inherent racism of the NAACP and the American left on full display.

Perhaps it’s not so much what Breitbart did but what he failed to do; explain the context of the video and give a reason why this edited snippet of tape about an incident that occurred 24 years ago  is relevant to making his case. A more vigorous, less closed conservative media might have pushed those questions to the forefront, challenging their colleagues on the basis of fairness and transparency. Instead, no one dared challenge the narrative lest they be accused of being “liberal” or simply wanting to please the liberal media so they would be invited to the best cocktail parties. Since any such challenge would be rejected out of hand, none was made by those who fear to be ostracized by the group for their apostasy.

These two examples of epistemic closure, one from each side of the ideological divide, point up the perils of a closed information loop. Creating realities based on false authenticity; possessing a worldview that squeezes facts through an ideological or hyper-partisan prism, generates an inability to objectively perceive events  in a rational and logical manner. Perhaps more importantly, it prevents both sides from talking to each other as each is in possession of a separate reality that neither recognizes as the truth.

It is an article of faith for many on the right that government regulation of anything is inherently wasteful and inefficient; that government’s role as a watchdog or arbiter can only lead to less freedom, more restriction of the free market, and a less vibrant economy.

More learned people than I make that argument so I will not dispute it. The question then; is there a case to be made for government regulation anyway?

We’re getting into slippery territory by weighing the bad against the good; a loss of freedom in the market in exchange for some semblance of order. The notion that this is a bad trade off in every case is mistaken, in my opinion. Certainly there are compelling reasons why the only entity large enough to ride herd on the gigantic corporations who run our financial industry upon which we all ultimately depend is the federal government. Trusting these mega-banks to do the right thing without careful, and calibrated adult supervision contradicts the conservative principle that you can’t change human nature (Russell Kirk’s principle of the “imperfectability”) - that given the means and opportunity, the financial giants will act in ways that would be detrimental to the promotion of necessary fairness and transparency, thus damaging the free market anyway.

Kirk’s “well ordered society” and “prudent restraints upon power” should inform any regulatory scheme that seeks to balance the needs of society to protect itself and the necessity of the free market to operate. In this way, there is a conservative case for financial regulatory reform to be made. It’s just too bad that GOP lawmakers are so terrified of their right wing base that they didn’t dare work with Democrats to come up with a bi-partisan FinReg bill that would have been a more prudent, less intrusive, and more effective than the one that passed the senate yesterday. Working with the enemy is verboten and that goes double for anything that smacks of using the government to regulate Wall Street.

It is a legitimate question to ask whether Democrats would have listened to Republicans - any Republican - on a FinReg bill in the first place. Not even trying to work with the opposition on such significant legislation is irresponsible governance. Those few Republicans who exposed themselves to the fury of the base by trying to work with Democrats will get precious little thanks for their efforts. What meager concessions that senators like Scott Brown, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe were able to wangle from the majority will do little to alleviate the impression that this is a Democratic bill through and through, passed once again in the dead of night, with little understanding of what the senate has wrought, and will place an inordinate amount of power in the hands of regulators to make sense of the bill’s 2000+ pages.

Prudence is a lost civic virtue.

The tragedy is that there are indeed, some aspects of this bill that any conservative could have gotten behind. For the first time, a light will shine on the shadowy world of derivatives and credit default swaps - the abuse of which became a primary cause of the downfall of Bear Stearns and AIG. The NY Times Steven Davidoff:

Shadow Banking. The bill establishes record-keeping and reporting requirements for most derivatives (Section 727 and 729). It also establishes a registered derivatives exchange and requires all of these derivatives to be submitted for clearance on an exchange (Section 723). The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission can regulate and ban abusive derivatives as well as decide which derivatives are required to be cleared (Section 714). Nonfinancial companies do not need to clear derivatives if there is a commercial reason for the transaction and they notify the S.E.C. of their ability to financially meet the obligation (Section 723). These provisions as a whole ensure that there is a more open process for derivatives and the ability of regulators to assess their systemic risk.

Treating the derivatives market in a similar fashion that we regulate the stock exchange is a reform long overdue. Previously, we were treated to the spectacle of derivative traders actually betting against the plays of their clients - a grossly unethical practice. At least regulators will get a heads up if there are the kinds of abuses in the system that led to the meltdown.

What about bailouts?

The bill establishes an intricate series of provisions to place ailing financial institutions and systemically significant nonbank financial companies into receivership (Title II). The bill also has provisions allowing the government to deal with systemically significant foreign firms and foreign financial subsidiaries of American companies (Sections 113 and 210). Had these provisions existed, the government could have dealt effectively with the disastrous problems at the American International Group, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

The bill requires that in any resolution, senior management is placed farther down the line of creditors of the firm than they would in a normal bankruptcy (they are placed after the unsecured creditors and just before shareholders) (Section 210). The bill also allows the government to break financial contracts, like credit default swaps, in the resolution process (Section 210). These two provisions allow the government to avoid an A.I.G.-type situation where it is forced to hand over collateral under these derivatives contracts or otherwise pay out money to undeserving management.

There is no guarantee that a company will be “too big to fail” but it makes a taxpayer bailout a matter of last resort rather than panicked action by government. The point being, even if we allow a failing giant to go out of business, it must be managed very carefully so as not to spook the rest of the market and guarantee an orderly exit for the business.

Not perfect but probably the best that could be achieved under the circumstances.

The bank capital requirements are mostly sensible to me, although there is the risk that too stringent requirements will lessen the competitiveness of our financial institutions. As a prime example of unintended consequences, a regulatory regime that is too restrictive in how much cash and assets a bank should have on hand is a probable outcome. Regulators, by nature, are overly cautious and this area of the bill would seem to lend itself to overregulation.

There’s plenty not to like in the bill. A fairly thorough and intelligent take on this comes from Conn Carroll over at Heritage blog. No doubt there are other unknown consequences that will emerge over the next few years. All we can do is hope that Congress will ride herd on the bureaucrats and mitigate the worst of what they can do.

Could the GOP have done any better - that is, if they were of a mind to regulate Wall Street to begin with? I really don’t know. Would a GOP bill have incorporated more suggestions from the industry? Would it have been as tough on derivatives as the current bill appears to be?

What is certain is that we have another imprudent example of how not to govern an industrialized democracy in the 21st century. These gigantic “comprehensive” reform measures hand too much power to unelected bureaucrats by Congress abdicating its responsibilities to carefully weigh the consequences of their proposals before greenlighting them. The most disheartening aspect of Obama’s agenda is not that little thought is given in this area, but that no thought at all is invested in figuring out the downside to these legislative initiatives. It is beyond irresponsiblity that the Democratic Congress has placed us in thrall to government apparatchiks who care more about aggrandizing power and elevating their position than in promulgating intelligent regulation. That is the nature of bureaucracy - something that the Democrats have forgotten, or simply about which the Democrats don’t care.

Reason enough to boot them from power in November.

This post originally appears on The Moderate Voice

I don’t often write in apocalyptic terms about the current administration, largely because America is too big and government too unwieldy to countenance sudden, dramatic change.

However, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress have made it quite obvious that they’re willing to give radicalism the old college try because America pre-Obama was not to their liking. Indeed, a look at America on January 20, 2009 would have revealed a country in need of reform in many areas. Few would argue that the previous administration didn’t leave much to be done in health care, the economy, energy, and the twin wars we are fighting against radical Islam.

The question about Obama’s radicalism has never been that the problems he has sought to address aren’t in need of attention; the question has always been does he have to destroy the America that we have always been to accomplish reform?

If Obama and the Democrats had sought incremental, prudent change while keeping an eye on the federal budget deficit, I doubt very much if the tea party movement would have arisen. Every initiative that the president has undertaken had elements within them that would have enjoyed much broader, bi-partisan support if he had reined in the real radicals in Congress who made no bones about what they were trying to accomplish. From taking over one-sixth of the American economy by federalizing the health care system, to the impossibly wrong headed cap and trade idea, to financial reform that will hog tie the financial industry desperately in need of regulation but not the kind of anti-market rules currently stuck in Congress, President Obama has proven the upside down adage more is less, and much more is unmitigated disaster.

There is nothing “moderate” in any of this. The insistence of many commentators who apparently believe that simple repetition of this “moderate Obama” mantra suffices as far as describing reality would be laughable in another context - pitiful it is in our current dilemma. Using language as a beard to hide the true nature of Obama’s reforms - not to mention out and out lies about the consequences of them - is part of the motivation of the tea party movement. They, like the rest of America, are blessed with two eyes, two ears, and a decent passel of common sense. It’s hard to fool citizens who have taken the measure of this administration’s extremism, and have found much to fear.

Is the fear driven by exaggeration and lies by the opposition? To some extent, yes. But that’s politics that goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson who ran for president in 1800 accusing the Federalists of trying to set up a monarchy and ratcheting up fear and loathing against the opposition by trying to convince voters that John Adams was going to hand America back to the British. It is not an exaggeration to say that the “Democratic Republicans” of Jefferson tried to portray the election as the choice between liberty and tyranny. Needless to say, it worked. And ever since then, both parties have pushed the boundaries of fair play while stretching the truth to the breaking point in order to win in every single election, and when arguing every issue of import in our nation’s history.

More to the point today, the tea party movement is animated by more than “death panels,” and “Obama is a closet Muslim” prevarications. Millions of ordinary Americans have detected a disconnect between what Obama and the Democrats are trying to accomplish to mold America into what their particular vision of our country they wish to realize, and the words, the spirit, and the tradition of the Constitution. In order to change the subject, obfuscating what the tea party movement is really about, we have witnessed desperate attempts to describe their opposition as a by-product of racism, or far right, paranoid delusions. The people aren’t buying it, as evidenced by a strong plurality of citizens who support at least some of what the tea partiers stand for.

Bill Kristol believes that a sense that America is in crisis coupled with “alarm” is what is driving the tea party toward embracing radical change:

This sense of crisis is what animates the Tea Parties. I had the pleasure of attending the “Proud to be an American July 4th Tea Party” outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It featured patriotic songs and speeches, and expressions of support for our troops and praise for our country. Yet the mood of patriotic gratitude was mixed with expressions of alarm from my fellow Tea Partiers about the administration now in charge of our government. The combination of patriotic gratitude and urgent alarm produces a determination to act and a willingness to deal boldly with the crises in the economy, in foreign policy, and in self-government that the country faces.

In this respect, the Tea Parties are ahead of the two major parties. As established political parties are wont to do, both remain constricted in their views, attached to business as usual, and invested in established modes and orders—too much so to easily come to grips with a moment like the present.

Kristol is advocating radicalism to address what ails us:

But the GOP can be the party of the future as well as the present. It can be the party of fundamental reflection and radical choice as well as the party of day-to-day criticism and opposition. This isn’t easy. It can lead to mistakes and missteps, tensions and confusions. But it’s what the moment requires.

So fear not the Tea Parties. Be open to fundamental reforms. Belt-tightening and program-trimming, more transparency and greater efficiency, are not enough. The danger for Republicans isn’t that they will address the current crisis too boldly. It’s that they won’t be bold enough.

Fight radicalism with radicalism? Kristol, as impatient with the notion of evolutionary change as Obama, would substitute Republican “mistakes and missteps, tensions and confusions” for the Democratic blunders and idiocies that we are living through today. At the final bell, we end up in the same place; ideologically driven politicians and agendas that alienate half the country while failing to address the real, intractable, long term problems that threaten our financial future and our traditions of liberty.

The Tea Party movement has its uses as both the sharp end of Republican politics and as a prod to get politicians of both parties to pay attention to what ordinary people are thinking. Kristol is right in describing the reaction of Democrats and Republicans to the tea partiers as still being “attached to business as usual, and invested in established modes and orders…” In this, the tea partiers are enemies of the status quo, and thus, very dangerous to politics as usual. But is what they are advocating - if it can ever be determined exactly what it is they are seeking - as bad in its own way for America as anything the far left Democrats in the White House and Congress have been pushing on us?

Indeed, many in the tea party movement advocate a radical shrinking of government, which would be as damaging in its own way as the gargantuan expansion of government we are experiencing under the current administration. The abandonment of prudence by conservatives - a virtue by which every conservative should try to live their lives - would mean that the right agrees with Obama in principle; that change should not be governed by incrementalism and contemplation of consequences, but rather by whim and emotionalism. Tearing up the social compact between government and citizen and picking up the pieces later on isn’t going to work for Obama and the Democrats and it surely won’t work for Republicans who wish to do the same, albeit hoping for the opposite outcome.

Those, like Kristol, who are dazzled by the Tea Party Movement’s grass roots appeal should resist the idea of revolution and settle on adapting the spirit and patriotism of the tea partiers as the basis for pragamatic change in Washington. Change can be bold without being radical. If that’s the only lesson we learn from the Obama disaster, it will hold us in good stead as conservatives attempt to reclaim power from the radical leftists who are running this country into the ground.

Recently, we’ve witnessed a rash of controversies about various media figures being fired, or “blackballed,” or disrespected, ostensibly due to their political beliefs or because they thought their 140 character musings on Twitter were either privileged communications or shouldn’t count against them if they tweeted something idiotic.

Andrew Sullivan sees the dark hand of oppression at work:

Froomkin was fired for opposing torture a little too passionately; Weigel was forced out because his private emails revealed he was not acceptable to the partisan right; Frum is cut off from conservative blogads funding; Moulitsas is barred from MSNBC for criticizing Joe Scarborough; and Octavia Nasr is fired for offending the pro-Israel lobby over a tweet expressing sadness at the death of a Hezbollah leader.

[...]

Notice a pattern here? We’re all on notice, I guess. I’m extremely fortunate to work at a place where open exchange of views and ideas is valued, not penalized.

Froomkin was not fired “for opposing torture a little too passionately.” The idea that Sullivan presents this reason as fact is due entirely to his own pet theory for why Froomkin was let go by the Washington Post:

“Dan’s work on torture may be one reason he is now gone. The way in which the WaPo has been coopted by the neocon right, especially in its editorial pages, is getting more and more disturbing. This purge will prompt a real revolt in the blogosphere. And it should.”

Note that Mr. Sullivan appears to be a lot less certain in the immediate aftermath of Froomkin’s dismissal. Instead of the declarative statement made today about Froomkin’s opposition to torture being the sole reason for his being let go, at the time, Sullivan thought it “may one one reason” he was dismissed.

And was Weigel forced to resign because he pissed off the right? Or was it perhaps because the emails revealed the fact that his animus toward many conservative personalities brought into question his ability to write about the right in a professionally detached manner? I’m not even talking about not being biased. Weigel’s bombast - once publicized - would make it impossible for him to be taken seriously as a journalist.

Frum was cut off from Hawkins conservative ad network because John didn’t think that David was a conservative. His ad network - his opinion. I disagree with it but equating the public functions of the Washington Post with the private nature of Hawkins ad network is nonsense. Would Tom Friedman be able to join the Liberal Ad Network? It would be interesting to see. And if Friedman would have been rejected, would that be evidence that our thoughts were being “policed?”

The tweets of Kos and Ms. Nsar are the kickers. Moulitas evidently tweeted about the death of a Joe Scarborough intern as a “scandal” for the former congressman and was surprised that after viciously biting the hand that feeds him, he would be banished from MSNBC.

Are you kidding me?

Even more clueless was Nasr who innocently said nice things about Hezballah’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. She called his death “sad” which might raise an eyebrow but is hardly a firing offense. But it was her characterization of Fadlallah being a “giant” that she “respected” that got her into hot water. Respecting someone who had devoted his life to wiping Israel off the face of the earth? Someone who approved of suicide bombings against women and children? Her subsequent “explanation” only made things worse. She tried to explain that her respect for the dead, terrorist supporting giant was based on his attempts to wipe out honor killings, writing that the Ayatollah thought the practice “primitive and nonproductive.” I guess beheading infidels and blowing up innocents was “modern and productive.”

Sullivan must have been joking when he called her response “nuanced,” right? Nasr’s views are not out of the ordinary if one happens to think that Hezballah is more than just a terrorist group/political party out to seize power from the Lebanese government. (Nasr tried to separate Fadlallah from Hezballah in her apologia by saying that he was respected by other religious leaders and even beyond the borders of Lebanon. This was true. He was also a religious and political fanatic - a fact that escaped Nasr’s “nuanced” journalism.)

Her tweet made it clear that she was incapable of seeing the role played by Hezballah in her Middle East beat with sufficient skepticism and objectivity. What’s sort of scary is that CNN was unaware of her views for 20 years. I’m not sure that calls into question all of CNN’s Middle East coverage, but it should wake up the network to how their coverage is shaped.

The lesson of all these cases of media malpractice? Don’t make a public idiot of yourself. If you feel the need to prove yourself to be a clueless, partisan git, try old fashioned diary writing. At least that way, you’re guaranteed to stay off the internet.

It is an article of faith among most conservatives that the growth of government under the presidency of Barack Obama has resulted in a loss of individual liberty. This is an extremely serious criticism of any president and the manner in which the charge is so casually tossed about by my friends on the right makes me uneasy. A deeper examination of the subject is necessary in order to ascertain the truth of the criticism as well as catalog any specific freedoms, or rights, we have lost - if any.

Let’s start with the obvious; the Bill of Rights. As far as freedom of expression, I can report that I still publish exactly what I want, when I want, without so much as a by your leave from government. It’s true that the DISCLOSE Act will curtail free speech for corporations. But let’s stick to individual liberties because that seems to be the nub of the matter for tea partiers and conservatives. Being an atheist, I am free to practice no religion at all, or if a sudden conversion were to occur, I could go back to being a Druid. The tea partiers mass in the thousands so it would seem that freedom of assembly is still intact. And have you counted how many lobbyists are in Washington? The right of redress is alive and well, thank you.

Gun rights (2nd amendment) have expanded substantially (no thanks to Obama). I haven’t been ordered to put up any troops (3rd amendment). I have not personally been subject to unreasonable search and seizure (4th amendment), although that particular right has been eroding long before Obama came to office. Since I haven’t committed any crimes, I haven’t had my 5th amendment rights tested. Ditto the 6th and 7th amendments. And aside from Zsu-Zsu making me watch Dancing with the Stars, I have not been subjected to any cruel or unusual punishment (8th amendment).

The 9th and 10th amendments deal with federalism. It is here that Obama has transgressed against the Constitution most egregiously, although as far as personal liberty is concerned, it is difficult to connect the president’s federal overreach with individual rights being violated. Our collective rights as citizens might be at risk but what president in the last 50 years hasn’t claimed powers “reserved to the States respectively, or to the people?” True, Obama may be the presidential Gold Medalist when it comes to trashing the 10th amendment. But how does that translate into a loss of personal liberty?

It seems clear to me, that as far as our personal, constitutionally guaranteed liberty is concerned, Obama has done very little to attack our rights head on. But there is more to American freedom than those liberties codified in the Bill of Rights. And it is here that the president and the Democrats have done the most damage. I am talking about the limiting of choices in the economic sphere and our personal lives that threatens to undermine the foundations of freedom in America expressed in the clear intent of the framers 222 years ago.

These freedoms are not necessarily written down in the Constitution, but rather form the intent of the framers as far as their effort to define a free society. Ask yourself if losing the freedom of choice to carry health insurance is a loss of personal freedom? It may be stupid, but it is clearly a personal matter where government - at least no government that purports to represent a free people - has any business dictating to the people what or how they should spend their money.

It may be that you can’t afford insurance, or that a pre-existing medical condition makes you too big of a risk for an insurance company to carry you. Some on the right argue otherwise, but subsidizing people who want to buy insurance and covering others who are refused is a legitimate function of the national government in this, the early 21st century. (Fixing the reasons for why insurance is so expensive would mean eliminating most government intervention in the health insurance field - a politically impossible goal at this point.)

In this case, it is government dictating a choice that is an attack on personal liberty. It is possible that the Supreme Court will see it that way, in which case Obamacare will die because there would be no way to pay for it. Indeed, the administration is now arguing that the mandate is a “tax,” which reveals the true reason for it in the first place; they need everyone signed up on the dotted line in order for the plan to work. They can claim it’s in my best interest to have insurance, or that it is in the best interest of America (a dubious and unprovable argument) until they are blue in the face but they can’t get around the fact that a personal insurance mandate represents a loss of personal freedom. They may even make the argument that this loss of freedom is a necessary trade-off in order to relieve suffering or give other Americans peace of mind. Is that a legitimate argument?

We have made trade offs of this nature before. When states refused to grant equal rights to its citizens, the federal government took it upon itself to intrude on previously sacrosanct ground - local elections - in order to insure equality before the law. In this respect, the ability of government to reach down and interfere in matters that had never been contemplated previously resulted in a growth in federal power with unintended consequences we are still trying to deal with today. Few would argue that this growth in the size and scope of government was unnecessary. But did expanding freedom for some limit freedom for others?

The answer is yes. But when that freedom was abused to oppress others, the government had a moral duty to intervene. In this, the vast majority of Americans now agree, and in this case, the massive increase in the size of government engendered by the necessity to enforce civil rights laws appears to have been a positive good.

(What has happened to civil rights law subsequent to the 1960’s is another article altogether, and a good argument can be made that even here, the good inherent in enforcing equality has been used as an excuse to expand the size and scope of government unnecessarily with a consequent loss of individual liberty.)

But beyond national health care, just where have Obama and the Democrats limited choices? Their proposed financial regulation overhaul will limit choices for those of us who hold stock, mutual funds, mortgages, credit cards, and other financial instruments. But that bill has not been passed yet and it is not clear what will be in the final package. The assault on businesses that Democrats don’t care for might be construed, in a roundabout way, of limiting consumer choices, but that may be something of a stretch. The takeovers of banks, auto companies, and others limits economic freedom but how relevant is it to you and I? Are you planning to start a Fortune 500 oil company or bank anytime soon?

The courts are doing their part to limit our freedom but the current make up of the Supreme Court is a 5-4 conservative majority. So why the anger? Why the fear that the Democrats are “taking away” our freedoms?

More than what Obama and the Democrats have done specifically, there is a feeling, grounded in reality, that the federal government is closing in - that all of these takeovers, power grabs, thumbing of the nose at the 10th amendment, and crony capitalism has resulted in the palpable feeling of a boa constrictor tightening its coils around the throat of individual Americans. It is the rapidity of growth that the behemoth is enjoying under this administration and Congress that has most Americans worried and some conservatives consumed with fear about the future.

Growth of government does not necessarily translate directly into a loss of freedom. There is a difference between scale and scope and this distinction is made by Robert Higgs in his masterful Crisis and Leviathan.

The real damage to freedom comes not necessarily from government growing bigger but rather from Big Government. The former is about scale, the latter about scope. So much of the Tea Party talk seems to be about scale: how much government spends, taxes, and borrows. Little of it has been about scope: the powers that government has to interfere with the rights of individuals.

Even most on the left would have to agree that while big government is not, in and of itself, a threat to personal liberty, it becomes one when it gathers unto itself powers and responsibilities best left to individuals or the several states. The left is big on “trade off” scenarios where we lose a little personal freedom so that “social justice” is served, or some nebulous social progress yardstick is achieved. That’s no way to run a free society - as any of the Founders could have told them.

In summary, I don’t think there’s any doubt that, fueled by hysterical jack asses on talk radio, many on the right have turned into 13-year old drama queens when it comes to their portentous declamations about Obama stealing our liberties, or the Democrats deliberately destroying America. The reality is bad enough without exaggerating. What the Democrats have tried to do to this point has been to put themselves in charge of parts of the economy - a loss of collective liberty to be sure with the potential, as in Obamacare, to detrimentally impact our personal freedoms.

Toying with our freedoms as the Democrats are doing is irresponsible governance. But then, what else do you expect from people who have eschewed prudence and enacted legislation that no one knows yet how it will impact our personal liberties?

My latest is up at PJ Media and in it, I riff off comments made by Rep. John Boehner about the Democrats “snuffing out” the America of his youth:

And yet, this isn’t really what Boehner was talking about when he wondered aloud about where the America of his youth had gone. For liberals like Tomasky, it is very difficult to grasp the inexpressible sadness in Boehner’s words. The congressman is not referring to the grand plans of statesmen and social engineers, or the yardsticks of social progress that so enamor the left. Boehner was referring to a state of mind about America that is disappearing.

What else is America except a place that has lived in the dreams of men since we organized ourselves into nation-states? Each of us alone defines our own America, imbuing it with our own hopes, animating it with our own definitions of liberty, consecrating it by our embrace of its traditions and values. It is this feeling about America that Boehner believes is threatened. But is he right? Is his implication that the growth of government under the current administration — the largest expansion in history — can destroy what we “grew up with” as a vision of America in our minds?

There are other things we grew up with in America — those of us of Boehner’s age and a little younger — and not all of them bring pleasant memories to the surface. In fact, a significant number of them we wanted “snuffed out.” Certainly, the casual kind of racism and intolerance that was not unfamiliar in the America of my own youth should have been snuffed out. The second-class citizenship accorded women (cemented in both tradition and the law) needed to be left behind, as did attitudes toward gays, the handicapped, the mentally ill, and others in society who lived on the margins, largely invisible to the majority of us, and who suffered in silence until their concerns were given voice a decade or two later.

I know what Boehner is saying about the kind of America he grew up in and there is certainly much of that America that needs to be protected and cared for. Boehner’s America of strong communities, strong families, an expansive view of personal liberty, and a government that had yet to flex its muscles in an effort to control us is worth preserving. It is worthwhile to save as much of that America as can be accomplished without rolling back the genuine progress we have made in other areas of our national social life.