I actually thought the Joan Williams post linked to was even better than the Atlantic article. At some point we need to start rethinking the way our economy and social contract work. Itll be gradual but in another 30 years I think automation is only going to make the situation worse, and the traditional 40 hour work week, employer provided benefits, and a minimally decent standard of living will no longer be possible for an even bigger chunk of the population.
Supposedly Foxconn already has a completely automated site in China that can operate 24/7 with the lights off and minimal human oversight. The next big hit will be when driverless vehicles start taking over and put millions of truckers and taxi drivers out of work. Our political situation is already showing the results of what happens when you tell the masses to suck eggs and deal with an increasingly precarious economic situation while allowing a very few to become outrageously weathy.
@mike-dwyer @switters This actually probably most accurately gets to what I was trying to convey- I don't see it as a means of administering vigilante justice. That is the concern that I was trying to address.
Interestingly I've never heard the word 'fetishize' used by advocates of stricter laws that way. My intent wasnt to insult anyone who, as in the example you used has learned a skill and discipline they are proud of. What I was trying to convey was more along the lines of 'I do not have an unhealthy obsession with it.'
I don't feel the need to apologize but I do want to reach out to people who don't agree with me in a way that does not make them feel immediately defensive. I'm in a part of the country that's largely hostile to my stance on this and, fair or not, I think that puts the burden on me and people like me to try and change their way of thinking.
For point number 1 you are correct. I'm being deliberately opaque on that though for reasons of personal privacy.
On point number 2 my intent is to address a regular concern that I see raised, which is that people who purchase these types of rifles do so out of a belief that they are a solution to various social problems or see them as a means of intimidation. Im not talking about a soft spot for the shotgun you used to bring down your first buck or something along the lines of the other examples you used.
My position may sound libertarian but I think that is more a result of the broader mainstream left backing away from civil liberties as an important part of their policy platform, something I also see as a mistake. The roots of my concerns come from the problems I see in how law enforcement and the criminal justice system actually work in practice, not how I'd like like the world to be.
That means that when we talk about restrictions I'm also thinking about things like how many more people are going to have to go to jail for a long time, or how many people who havent done anything violent are going to wake up to a SWAT team coming through the door at 4AM, or find out they got put on some secret list that means they can't travel? How will that play out in a society that already has all kinds of serious inequities? Who are we making value judgments about when we set up systems that result in the wealthy being able to exercise important rights due to their ability to navigate the system but not people with lesser means?
Regarding law and order conservatives, I have no qualms about calling them on their hypocracies on this issue. I'm not among them, and my views on economic policies probably make me a Marxist of some kind in their view.
@jesse-ewiak for the record I do not think that people in Japan or European countries arent free, and I would strongly disagree with anyone who takes that perspective. There is a very different legal and cultural history there and it is not my business to tell them what is and isn't right with regard to the firearms policies that work for them.
I would also agree that the best cure for what the NSA is doing doesn't and probably can never realistically involve firearms, but I could see how new restrictions (like all criminal laws) justified expansion of existing or new programs I think are wrongheaded and illiberal.
Thank you for reading and I am absolutely happy to unpack that a bit. First, I do not think that any and all proposed regulation is a step on the way to the gulag. You can see some of my comments above laying out new laws or stricter laws that I am either amenable to, or could be convinced to support under the right circumstances.
My concern is about going further down a similar kind of path that the war on drugs and war on terrorism has already taken us. That would mean things like new exceptions to the 4th amendment, new reasons for the state to start watching, and incarcerating people (no doubt with all the usual class and racial overtones already in the justice system), the kind of thing that I think we've already allowed to become far too normalized. The intent of the passage is to provide that context for the decision. If I lived somewhere where that sort of policy wasn't so prevalent, it'd be easier for me not to feel like hyper-vigilance is necessary on all fronts.
This is why I referred to the abortion issue. I don't have a problem in principle with some basic training that is cheap or free, and easily available for all who are lawfully permitted to own a firearm. The challenge becomes whether or not what is being set up is really about safety, or if it's an arbitrary obstacle to doing something policymakers would prefer you didnt. Even if it's originally about the former it can easily become the latter.
When everything feels like a zero sum game and no one trusts each other the easiest response is to oppose everything.
We've spoken a lot about different political cultures here lately and I don't deny that there are parts of what might be called gun culture out there that fetishize the firearms themselves. I find them... unhelpful and I think they are who most advocates of stricter laws see themselves as arguing with.
Part of the point of posting this is to mitigate that somewhat if at all possible. It isn't fair to ask the other side to moderate themselves and not also put myself out there as well.
I think yours is a better analysis. 'Trump is catering to latent biases and insecurities' just doesn't have the same ring to it (nor does it make him that different from most other presidential candidates).
The Alexander piece as a whole is a great illustration of how the media failed this election and seems bent on continuing to fail.
It'd be nice if someone whose last name isn't Paul would occasionally raise these questions in the halls of power/the mainstream media. You don't have to be a fan of Vlad to consider the possibility that constant brinkmanship with the Russians can provoke as easily as it can deter.
@saul-degraw you won't find any disagreement from me that such a stance is obtuse, and depending on the source, probably wilfully so. I think that's where looking at every racial, political, and class group as monolithic inevitably leads us- faulty analysis and obviously incorrect conclusions.
That may be the case, and @jaybird 's point below probably also has some truth to it. I'll readily admit it's easy for me to be dispassionate in this instance. I'm a fellow traveler with the broader left in the sense that I'm part of the blue demographic and, despite having a lot of libertarian instincts, have made my peace with the welfare state.
That said I know I'm not really part of the tribe and therefore critiques of it never feel personal to me.
Points 1 and 2 I largely agree with. Point 3 is a bit more complicated. Trump seems to me to have run on an economically populist (even if incoherent) platform. It isn't clear to me how popular scrapping or privatizing the welfare state really is outside of the conservative intelligentsia.
Points 4 and 5 is where I think there is a big oversimplification going on in the broader mainstream left (or at least the upper middle class, media savvy left). I think you're right, that culture matters, and it's hard to envision policy changes in a culture that is overwhelmingly hostile to the beneficiaries of the policy or finds it immoral. However, where I think progressives are getting it wrong is the belief that culture is always in the driver's seat. I see it as a factor (which itself is always evolving) along with economics and policy decisions.
From a pragmatic perspective relying on cultural conversion alone is never going to be enough to win. IIRC you yourself have referenced John Mcwhorter on this. It's ridiculous to think that a country the size of a continent with over 300 million people is ever going to uniformly adopt the culture of the coastal college educated urban class. Relying on that seems to me like a recipe for defeat. All I hear Freddie and the Bernie supporters saying is that the broader left needs to be willing to work with people who aren't part of the culture and digging in with snark and disdain the way the right has is counterproductive.
On point 6 I don't really have a strong opinion. I'm not on Twitter so all I know is what I observe, and what I observe is that the progressive side is as vicious as anyone in online exchanges.
I guess I just read it differently. He's never struck me as particularly abrasive (just direct). His critics on the other hand (at least that I've read) have always seemed to me to go much more for the ad hominems and fail to address his points in intellectually honest ways.
Regarding taking his advice well... I'd just say that people who have made similar points to Freddie are looking a lot more prescient right now than the folks going apoplectic.
Well I don't entirely disagree but I'd quibble that I do think it's fair to call the EC flawed at this point. It's increasingly giving disproportionate influence to a smaller and smaller part of the population at the expense of the more populous and economically important parts of the country. Now I would agree that there is a means of changing that, and the Democrats had as good a chance as any in 2009 to push that. For that reason I do think it's tough to take the complaints now particularly seriously.
I think Saul is right in that the complete and utter panic by mainstream progressives is unjustified. A flawed system produced a bad outcome. At some point, sooner or later, Democrats will return to power. Our system is set up to be slow and gradual, and while Trump will nudge things in certain directions, absent something both unprecedented and unlikely he won't be able to remake the country anymore than any other president.
Of course all of this isn't really Freddie's point. His critique has always been that progressives, particularly in media, have gotten into a bad habit of putting culture before policy and it's become an impediment to effectuating positive change. I can never understand why this gets under so many people's skin, especially when the same side often makes similar criticisms about right wing echo chambers in talk radio or Fox News.
I also think the whole 'white middle aged males have problems with HRC because reasons' is really disingenuous given how often those reasons have been discussed. Even then I think the vast majority of people here would've preferred her to win.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Atlantic: Democrats’ Answer for the Rust Belt”
I actually thought the Joan Williams post linked to was even better than the Atlantic article. At some point we need to start rethinking the way our economy and social contract work. Itll be gradual but in another 30 years I think automation is only going to make the situation worse, and the traditional 40 hour work week, employer provided benefits, and a minimally decent standard of living will no longer be possible for an even bigger chunk of the population.
Supposedly Foxconn already has a completely automated site in China that can operate 24/7 with the lights off and minimal human oversight. The next big hit will be when driverless vehicles start taking over and put millions of truckers and taxi drivers out of work. Our political situation is already showing the results of what happens when you tell the masses to suck eggs and deal with an increasingly precarious economic situation while allowing a very few to become outrageously weathy.
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
@joe-sal
I nevet meant to imply i dont also have fun with it. Politically speaking though it's a matter of putting my money where my mouth is.
"
For what it's worth I can't think of any reason to object to that either. I'd imagine it would just be rolled up in homeowners or renters insurance.
"
@mike-dwyer @switters This actually probably most accurately gets to what I was trying to convey- I don't see it as a means of administering vigilante justice. That is the concern that I was trying to address.
"
@mike-dwyer
Interestingly I've never heard the word 'fetishize' used by advocates of stricter laws that way. My intent wasnt to insult anyone who, as in the example you used has learned a skill and discipline they are proud of. What I was trying to convey was more along the lines of 'I do not have an unhealthy obsession with it.'
I don't feel the need to apologize but I do want to reach out to people who don't agree with me in a way that does not make them feel immediately defensive. I'm in a part of the country that's largely hostile to my stance on this and, fair or not, I think that puts the burden on me and people like me to try and change their way of thinking.
"
@mike-dwyer
Thanks for reading.
For point number 1 you are correct. I'm being deliberately opaque on that though for reasons of personal privacy.
On point number 2 my intent is to address a regular concern that I see raised, which is that people who purchase these types of rifles do so out of a belief that they are a solution to various social problems or see them as a means of intimidation. Im not talking about a soft spot for the shotgun you used to bring down your first buck or something along the lines of the other examples you used.
"
Just to add I'm not saying that you aren't cognizant of these issues or don't care about them, just trying to explain my own thought process.
"
My position may sound libertarian but I think that is more a result of the broader mainstream left backing away from civil liberties as an important part of their policy platform, something I also see as a mistake. The roots of my concerns come from the problems I see in how law enforcement and the criminal justice system actually work in practice, not how I'd like like the world to be.
That means that when we talk about restrictions I'm also thinking about things like how many more people are going to have to go to jail for a long time, or how many people who havent done anything violent are going to wake up to a SWAT team coming through the door at 4AM, or find out they got put on some secret list that means they can't travel? How will that play out in a society that already has all kinds of serious inequities? Who are we making value judgments about when we set up systems that result in the wealthy being able to exercise important rights due to their ability to navigate the system but not people with lesser means?
Regarding law and order conservatives, I have no qualms about calling them on their hypocracies on this issue. I'm not among them, and my views on economic policies probably make me a Marxist of some kind in their view.
"
@jesse-ewiak for the record I do not think that people in Japan or European countries arent free, and I would strongly disagree with anyone who takes that perspective. There is a very different legal and cultural history there and it is not my business to tell them what is and isn't right with regard to the firearms policies that work for them.
I would also agree that the best cure for what the NSA is doing doesn't and probably can never realistically involve firearms, but I could see how new restrictions (like all criminal laws) justified expansion of existing or new programs I think are wrongheaded and illiberal.
"
Thank you for reading and I am absolutely happy to unpack that a bit. First, I do not think that any and all proposed regulation is a step on the way to the gulag. You can see some of my comments above laying out new laws or stricter laws that I am either amenable to, or could be convinced to support under the right circumstances.
My concern is about going further down a similar kind of path that the war on drugs and war on terrorism has already taken us. That would mean things like new exceptions to the 4th amendment, new reasons for the state to start watching, and incarcerating people (no doubt with all the usual class and racial overtones already in the justice system), the kind of thing that I think we've already allowed to become far too normalized. The intent of the passage is to provide that context for the decision. If I lived somewhere where that sort of policy wasn't so prevalent, it'd be easier for me not to feel like hyper-vigilance is necessary on all fronts.
"
This is why I referred to the abortion issue. I don't have a problem in principle with some basic training that is cheap or free, and easily available for all who are lawfully permitted to own a firearm. The challenge becomes whether or not what is being set up is really about safety, or if it's an arbitrary obstacle to doing something policymakers would prefer you didnt. Even if it's originally about the former it can easily become the latter.
When everything feels like a zero sum game and no one trusts each other the easiest response is to oppose everything.
"
Nope, I am neither a doctor nor am I in Indiana, just another lawyer on the east coast.
Thanks for reading!
"
Thank you!
"
We've spoken a lot about different political cultures here lately and I don't deny that there are parts of what might be called gun culture out there that fetishize the firearms themselves. I find them... unhelpful and I think they are who most advocates of stricter laws see themselves as arguing with.
Part of the point of posting this is to mitigate that somewhat if at all possible. It isn't fair to ask the other side to moderate themselves and not also put myself out there as well.
"
Thanks for the response! And I actually don't have any issue with those types of rules, provided administration is fair.
On “On Reversing the Tide”
I think yours is a better analysis. 'Trump is catering to latent biases and insecurities' just doesn't have the same ring to it (nor does it make him that different from most other presidential candidates).
The Alexander piece as a whole is a great illustration of how the media failed this election and seems bent on continuing to fail.
On “Freddie: they’re going to keep losing”
It'd be nice if someone whose last name isn't Paul would occasionally raise these questions in the halls of power/the mainstream media. You don't have to be a fan of Vlad to consider the possibility that constant brinkmanship with the Russians can provoke as easily as it can deter.
"
@saul-degraw you won't find any disagreement from me that such a stance is obtuse, and depending on the source, probably wilfully so. I think that's where looking at every racial, political, and class group as monolithic inevitably leads us- faulty analysis and obviously incorrect conclusions.
"
Oh believe me I know. I'm in-house. If I wasn't very patient with non-attorneys/willing to teach I'd be out of a job very quickly.
"
Take it a step further and imagine what a client would think if you snidely added 'it isn't my job to explain this to you, educate yourself!'
"
That may be the case, and @jaybird 's point below probably also has some truth to it. I'll readily admit it's easy for me to be dispassionate in this instance. I'm a fellow traveler with the broader left in the sense that I'm part of the blue demographic and, despite having a lot of libertarian instincts, have made my peace with the welfare state.
That said I know I'm not really part of the tribe and therefore critiques of it never feel personal to me.
"
Points 1 and 2 I largely agree with. Point 3 is a bit more complicated. Trump seems to me to have run on an economically populist (even if incoherent) platform. It isn't clear to me how popular scrapping or privatizing the welfare state really is outside of the conservative intelligentsia.
Points 4 and 5 is where I think there is a big oversimplification going on in the broader mainstream left (or at least the upper middle class, media savvy left). I think you're right, that culture matters, and it's hard to envision policy changes in a culture that is overwhelmingly hostile to the beneficiaries of the policy or finds it immoral. However, where I think progressives are getting it wrong is the belief that culture is always in the driver's seat. I see it as a factor (which itself is always evolving) along with economics and policy decisions.
From a pragmatic perspective relying on cultural conversion alone is never going to be enough to win. IIRC you yourself have referenced John Mcwhorter on this. It's ridiculous to think that a country the size of a continent with over 300 million people is ever going to uniformly adopt the culture of the coastal college educated urban class. Relying on that seems to me like a recipe for defeat. All I hear Freddie and the Bernie supporters saying is that the broader left needs to be willing to work with people who aren't part of the culture and digging in with snark and disdain the way the right has is counterproductive.
On point 6 I don't really have a strong opinion. I'm not on Twitter so all I know is what I observe, and what I observe is that the progressive side is as vicious as anyone in online exchanges.
"
I guess I just read it differently. He's never struck me as particularly abrasive (just direct). His critics on the other hand (at least that I've read) have always seemed to me to go much more for the ad hominems and fail to address his points in intellectually honest ways.
Regarding taking his advice well... I'd just say that people who have made similar points to Freddie are looking a lot more prescient right now than the folks going apoplectic.
"
Well I don't entirely disagree but I'd quibble that I do think it's fair to call the EC flawed at this point. It's increasingly giving disproportionate influence to a smaller and smaller part of the population at the expense of the more populous and economically important parts of the country. Now I would agree that there is a means of changing that, and the Democrats had as good a chance as any in 2009 to push that. For that reason I do think it's tough to take the complaints now particularly seriously.
"
I think Saul is right in that the complete and utter panic by mainstream progressives is unjustified. A flawed system produced a bad outcome. At some point, sooner or later, Democrats will return to power. Our system is set up to be slow and gradual, and while Trump will nudge things in certain directions, absent something both unprecedented and unlikely he won't be able to remake the country anymore than any other president.
Of course all of this isn't really Freddie's point. His critique has always been that progressives, particularly in media, have gotten into a bad habit of putting culture before policy and it's become an impediment to effectuating positive change. I can never understand why this gets under so many people's skin, especially when the same side often makes similar criticisms about right wing echo chambers in talk radio or Fox News.
I also think the whole 'white middle aged males have problems with HRC because reasons' is really disingenuous given how often those reasons have been discussed. Even then I think the vast majority of people here would've preferred her to win.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.