Well there are several. The Greeks could vote to leave the monetary union (and suffer for it) or they could vote to enact heavy austerity and tax regimes that are not easily evaded (and suffer for that instead). Or, they could vote to keep the monetary union but refuse to accept the austerity and less evadable taxes required and thus empower technocrats by default. They appear to be embracing option C.

Ah memories, good times.

*Claps*

You could use pedophile as well to accurately eliminate the whole Greek aspect but then that'd then be including the massively more common practice of men predating on prepubescent little girls. Please note that I am not suggesting that such men are heterosexuals nor do I assert that the practice of raping little girls is a time honored tradition in religions (Christianity not the least among them) or that it is a behavior the right condones or winks at.

I suppose it was inevitable that NAMBLA would be brought up sooner or later on this subject.

We do Tom, people can be a little over the top here from time to time so there's little sense getting excessively exercised.

 Still, I'm surprised; you've taken to your fainting couch over considerably less than having an entire group of people being accused of being sexual predators of little children. Or the entirety of the left being in the process of legitamizing such.

Well it is NARTH after all.

I'm afraid I'll have to ask for some citations on that last part Bob. Where are there progressives trying to justify this monstrosity.

Bob, the man who perpetrated this crime is not a homosexual, he is a pederast. For a man who puts as much weight as you do in the importance of words  and especially The Word I would think you would be more hesitate to abuse them in this manner.

Ultimately this seems pretty moot. Romney seems an effortless shoe in for the nomination and he's clearly playing things safe in the debates (and who in his position wouldn't?).

Actually that is, in plain language, what I meant. Personally as a liberal I think trading eliminating the capital gains exemption for eliminating the corporate tax rate is a mind blowing no brainer.

James, wouldn't your #5 necessitate also doing away with the preferential taxation of capital gains? Otherwise you're replacing double taxation with half taxation for certain income groups.

 This is quite well written. I'm going to have to mull it over a bit but one part that lept out for me was the portion regarding buying off the poor. I thought that was rather well done, normally libertarians I chat with just assume that the poor in the libertopia would naturally be noncoercively provided with enough to satisfy them as a matter of course. Good job.

 I don't think he's necessarily a hypocrite. But he has demonstrated himself to be an astonishingly cautious (uncharitable read: cowardly; charitable read: hands off) politician.

This juxtaposes very jarringly with his campaign which was about dramatic audaciousness.

Word.

Thank you for your contributions. Especially your insights on MacArthur.

Feh, I am pretty confident that most wearers of Che's mug have little in the way of a knowledge of the mans history or his politics. He's worn as a way of torking off the right (and it works). If the guano madonna had shown up in Che's era maybe she'd have been used instead.

 Bruce, my claim is much squishier than you may be getting from your reading of me. Remember that in this little article I'm primarily talking about the fundamentalists, not the masses, of the left and right respectively. The assertion that the broader left and the institutions of the left were anti-soviet and anti communist is one I would agree with which is why they were able to achieve electoral success and govern well. But their spiritual extremist brothers were definitely true believers in communism and while they would roll their eyes and snort at their idealisms there was some sympathy I think.

My own impressions certainly could be entirely wrong; I was born in ’79 so I certainly experienced none of it firsthand.

 The Authority label is a broad one, I concede, but my own reading is that American conservatives merely substituted alternative authorities for the old monarchs. They used the authority of tradition, of authority figures, of religion and of less palatable things like race. Note that we're talking left/right rather than Republican or Democrat since Dixie politics actually muddled the connections a lot during that era.

Indeed, can't they both lose?

Yes, my point as well. It doesn't help with your angry libertarian thing either.

Roger, I wouldn’t necessarily disagree. My point was not to launch fireworks in praise of the left on this subject  but rather to question priorities.

Welfare reform has happened all over the world. Specific to this country, the left recently controlled all branches of the government and no significant effort was made to undo that particular reform. Welfare, while certainly not peanuts, is not a program that leaps to mind as being one that is a significant fiscal problem for the national fisc. Economists generally agree that welfare currently is a relatively automatic and useful economic stabilizer. This strikes me as pretty good evidence that welfare specifically is both in a relatively sustainable mode in the US and is accepted as such by the practical left.

Why then, is it such a focus for the slings and arrows of the right; possibly because it’s easy? Aiming the guns at social security, defense spending or industrial subsidies often comes off as an afterthought if mentioned at all when the right starts bloviating about personal responsibility. Possibly this is because touching the statist goodies of one’s own base is considerably less comfortable than going after safety regulations and food stamps for minorities and the impoverished.

Perhaps if the right put corporate welfare and the areas where their own sacred cows violate their small government principals square in their sights people would take the entire government shrinking agenda more seriously. Or, to poach ED’s terminology, maybe if the right cut the chains off first it’d give them some credibility to make arguments (like Mike’s above) that they could be trusted with removing the crutches as well.

Talk is cheap. The left controlled every rein of government just a few short months ago. Reversal of the 90's reforms of the welfare program would have been quick and relatively easy. No serious motion was made towards such. Actions speak louder than words.

 Yes, I suppose it would be, but lest you forget: the current policy, the current status quos is that signers of petitions names and info is in the public record and is publicly disclosed. The onus is on those who would conceal this information to prove that it is preferable to do so both in practical terms and on principled terms. I would submit that they fail on both. You can offer only a consequentialist argument of fear of retaliation which hasn’t been a significant issue in the past on this matter or other matters. Meanwhile in principal and legally it’s an utter route in favor of the information remaining public.

Indeed he did. Setting aside his personal magnetism for people of all genders (I know women who never liked him as a politician who were positively giddy after meeting him) Clinton did not addess his infidelity to his first wife by replacing her. For that matter he didn't address his infidelity to his second wife by replacing her with a third wife. We don't know what exactly went on between Bill and Hill but he's still with his first wife. I'm not a woman myself but I would assume that contrasts very sharply with Newt.