I hope the answer is that for many people the answer is no. When I went to Mexico City in 2008, I noted that many of the shops had heavily armed-security guards in front of things like department stores. This is a sign of an unsafe society.
I don't think he hates Republicans but it is not usually the reason people join political parties. As I said above, Tod's goals are nobles but probably Sissyphean and I really wonder "why bother?"
I have no knowledge of Tod's family background in politics. Perhaps he comes from a long line of moderate Republicans and is truly upset by the crazyification of the GOP.
There is the part of me that wants a viable opposition for reasons you wrote about several months ago. One-party systems tend towards corruption and complacency. I do not want the Democratic Party to become corrupt or complacent. However, I am not going to join the GOP to try and reform them from within. I don't want to be associated with that crowd.
I agree. In a multi-party system (say four parties or so), there would be a far-right populist party that constantly gathered 15-20 percent of the vote but this would not result in many elected seats. The power would be largely split between a true center-right part and a true center-left party.
This seems to be what happens in Europe most of the time and it nullifies the crazy vote.
This seems to be the driving ID of many on the Right for such a while and it really perplexes me.
I see it most in the Palinista set. There whole reason for existence seems to be "annoy a liberal". There seems to be a whole cottage industry devoted to making t-shirts and bumper stickers with slogans that are just designed to rib on liberals and often in very junior high school ways.
I am amazed and perplexed at how the populist-Right wing has managed to create a whole strawmen out of liberals and that somehow things like health insurance and welfare are really designed to make people unhappy. This is borderlander identity gone wild.
I grew up in bluest of the blue New York. My hometown congressional district is part suburban Long Island (but generally Jewish and Asian) and part-Queens. Republicans were in the minority. I come from a long-line of Democratic voters, no one in my family has been Republican ever.
However, if you are young and grew up in a heavily Republican area and in a heavily Republican family, you are probably going to come out as a Republican.
The GOP is a bit too gerrymandered to be sailing away to irrelevance.
There are probably dozens of heavily gerrymandered Congressional seats in the GOP's favor. These are districts where Congresscritters can only be defeated by a challenge from the right, not the left. Hence, the election of ultra-right congresscritters who say absurd things on TV. These things are not absurd in their very-safe districts.
Plus they do control more governorships than the Democratic Party as Aaron David pointed out.
There could be a chance that they are becoming irrelevant for people our age and younger (anyone born after 1975 or so) but I think there are plenty of late-Gen Xers and Millenialls who are Republican and just as conservative in the Fox News kind of way. Only time will tell.
The saddest part of this treaty debacle is that the UN was basically approving of US law. The treaty is a copy of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
I think Posner was opposed for more than the views outlied here. He was also opposed for his views against the Civil Rights Act and how he thought that racism was bad but there still needs to be a right to discriminate. He did not seem to think that the rights of minorities to fully participate in economic and civic life probably should trump the rights of bigots both legally and morally.
Bork's confirmation was not so much Fort Sumter but Shiloh, the first battle when we realized things we going to be ugly and ugly for a long time. The modern culture already started in the 1960s-70s with the rise of the hippies and the silent/moral majority. The Supreme Court had already filed decisions in Miller v. California, Roe v. Wade, Falwell v. Hustler by the time Bork was nominated. Rehinquist (who was just as noxious as Bork) survived two Senate confirmation hearings. Scalia survived his.
"There is a very large sub-culture of Americans concerned about civil unrest in the context of a natural disaster or a failure of the government. I think the latter is unlikely in our lifetimes but the former is very real."
I have noticed that many concealed carry types do seem to have a Mad Max mentality. In which, they think we are one step away from Science Fiction Warlord Universe or already living in it.
Bullshit. The United States is not Somalia or Afghanistan. We have a very active and effective government and civilian society. There have also been a lot of very serious natural disasters in which society did not collapse. Hurricane Sandy comes to mind from this year alone.
If people think like you described above, they are selling their fellow country people short.
You might be right that there will be no meaningful action done in the wake of the tragedy. I am not sure whether this is because you are taking the stance that there can be no such thing, you think the NRA will eventually rise up and quash any attempt at tighter gun control, the right will stop any legislation aimed at more access to mental health, or all of this.
However, I hope you are wrong. You might be right: Everyone seems frozen in their place on their positions. We need to see how people without strong opinions react to the tragedy. If this does not change the conversation, I am not sure what will.
Recent Supreme Court decisions like Heller and McDonald do not help though.
Details will emerge. How many tragedies do we need before we start having frank discussions on prevention, on access to mental health. We should not be fatalists for these kinds of events? They should not be seen as inevitable and unpreventable.
Perhaps this is my absolute secular-liberalism speaking. Perhaps it also me being defensive because undergrad me could not get a date if my life depended on it. I think Kim's point doesn't really apply to the world anymore. It seems almost quaint. Without appealing to any traditionalist values (or at least religious ones) can you explain to me why the Mormons do it the right way? Or am I just being too much the New York-San Francisco urban, professional liberal here? Keep in mind I was raised as secular as secular can be while still having a Bar Mitzvah and going to once-monthly Hebrew school until 12th grade. I did not grow up in an area where people attended religious services on a regular basis except the one family across the street that was Orthodox (Jewish, not Greek or Russian.)
My mom was an early Feminist. She went to college in the mid-60s and said she was always shocked and baffled by the women who openly said they were looking for their "MRS" degree. She also seemed baffled that the women would fall for the guys who would talk big about being able to provide the biggest suburban house. She thought how could any 20 year old guy say that with a straight face?
College students are still kids. They might be legal adults but to my eyes they are still young and learning their way through the world. There is nothing wrong with people having some time to explore. Most people enter college without knowing what their future careers will be and leave in the same state. Doesn't research show that marriages last longer when the couples marry later and are more settled in their careers and done with 20-something strum und drang?
2. Get into a good college/university (Ivy or Equivalent)
3. Study hard
4. Work a bit or go to a good grad school (grad school needed to happen eventually). 20s are for exploring and having some fun/wild oats as well.
5. Get establishedess in your career
6. Now you can get married and have kids instead of having kids when you are in grad school and living in a three floor walk-up in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn or Jersey City.
I wasn't saying that there is anything wrong with getting married young. I was just more pissed at Kim for implying strongly if it does not happen by 23, it is probably not going to happen.
On “Arkansas Town Declares Quasi-Martial Law to Fight Property Crime”
I really liked TNC's take of the whole issue.
Do we really want to live a world of maximum guns? Do we really want to live in a society where everyone is packing heat and is quasi-militarized?
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/a-world-of-maximum-guns/266320/
I hope the answer is that for many people the answer is no. When I went to Mexico City in 2008, I noted that many of the shops had heavily armed-security guards in front of things like department stores. This is a sign of an unsafe society.
On “Sailing Away to Irrelevance, Epilogue: In Which the GOP is Finally and Inevitably Made Irrelevant”
I don't think he hates Republicans but it is not usually the reason people join political parties. As I said above, Tod's goals are nobles but probably Sissyphean and I really wonder "why bother?"
I have no knowledge of Tod's family background in politics. Perhaps he comes from a long line of moderate Republicans and is truly upset by the crazyification of the GOP.
There is the part of me that wants a viable opposition for reasons you wrote about several months ago. One-party systems tend towards corruption and complacency. I do not want the Democratic Party to become corrupt or complacent. However, I am not going to join the GOP to try and reform them from within. I don't want to be associated with that crowd.
"
I agree. In a multi-party system (say four parties or so), there would be a far-right populist party that constantly gathered 15-20 percent of the vote but this would not result in many elected seats. The power would be largely split between a true center-right part and a true center-left party.
This seems to be what happens in Europe most of the time and it nullifies the crazy vote.
On “The First Contemporary Culture Warrior”
This seems to be the driving ID of many on the Right for such a while and it really perplexes me.
I see it most in the Palinista set. There whole reason for existence seems to be "annoy a liberal". There seems to be a whole cottage industry devoted to making t-shirts and bumper stickers with slogans that are just designed to rib on liberals and often in very junior high school ways.
I am amazed and perplexed at how the populist-Right wing has managed to create a whole strawmen out of liberals and that somehow things like health insurance and welfare are really designed to make people unhappy. This is borderlander identity gone wild.
On “Sailing Away to Irrelevance, Epilogue: In Which the GOP is Finally and Inevitably Made Irrelevant”
This is a task that is noble but possibly Sissyphean
"
I concur. It seems to me that Tod's joining the GOP is an attempt to revive the old moderate block.
"
Right. I am not surprised.
I grew up in bluest of the blue New York. My hometown congressional district is part suburban Long Island (but generally Jewish and Asian) and part-Queens. Republicans were in the minority. I come from a long-line of Democratic voters, no one in my family has been Republican ever.
However, if you are young and grew up in a heavily Republican area and in a heavily Republican family, you are probably going to come out as a Republican.
"
The GOP is a bit too gerrymandered to be sailing away to irrelevance.
There are probably dozens of heavily gerrymandered Congressional seats in the GOP's favor. These are districts where Congresscritters can only be defeated by a challenge from the right, not the left. Hence, the election of ultra-right congresscritters who say absurd things on TV. These things are not absurd in their very-safe districts.
Plus they do control more governorships than the Democratic Party as Aaron David pointed out.
There could be a chance that they are becoming irrelevant for people our age and younger (anyone born after 1975 or so) but I think there are plenty of late-Gen Xers and Millenialls who are Republican and just as conservative in the Fox News kind of way. Only time will tell.
The saddest part of this treaty debacle is that the UN was basically approving of US law. The treaty is a copy of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
On “The First Contemporary Culture Warrior”
One obituary rued that the Saturday Night Massacre was largely absent from mentions of his biography.
I was alive during his confirmation process but not during Watergate. Not that Borking was one of my memories from being alive back then.
"
On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
A copy editor in a pear tree
"
I am not so sure about your last sentence but otherwise spot-on.
"
Interesting essay.
I think Posner was opposed for more than the views outlied here. He was also opposed for his views against the Civil Rights Act and how he thought that racism was bad but there still needs to be a right to discriminate. He did not seem to think that the rights of minorities to fully participate in economic and civic life probably should trump the rights of bigots both legally and morally.
Bork's confirmation was not so much Fort Sumter but Shiloh, the first battle when we realized things we going to be ugly and ugly for a long time. The modern culture already started in the 1960s-70s with the rise of the hippies and the silent/moral majority. The Supreme Court had already filed decisions in Miller v. California, Roe v. Wade, Falwell v. Hustler by the time Bork was nominated. Rehinquist (who was just as noxious as Bork) survived two Senate confirmation hearings. Scalia survived his.
On “Today”
I still don't understand the whole Kim dynamic in this community.
"
Here are some issues or questions that I have:
1. Do you think that urban/suburban residents have different needs when it comes to gun policy than rural or exurban residents?
2. If yes, what are the differences and is there an equitable way to create a policy that meets the needs and desires of both groups?
3. Are you personally concerned or freaked out by any of the attitudes of the gun lobby? If yes, what are they?
On “Where Do We Go From Here?”
Mike,
"There is a very large sub-culture of Americans concerned about civil unrest in the context of a natural disaster or a failure of the government. I think the latter is unlikely in our lifetimes but the former is very real."
I have noticed that many concealed carry types do seem to have a Mad Max mentality. In which, they think we are one step away from Science Fiction Warlord Universe or already living in it.
Bullshit. The United States is not Somalia or Afghanistan. We have a very active and effective government and civilian society. There have also been a lot of very serious natural disasters in which society did not collapse. Hurricane Sandy comes to mind from this year alone.
If people think like you described above, they are selling their fellow country people short.
On “Before the Gate of Hell”
The struggle carries on.....
This is what every member of the left needs to take into their hearts. The left knows defeat but we never stop dreaming for the better world.
"
You might be right that there will be no meaningful action done in the wake of the tragedy. I am not sure whether this is because you are taking the stance that there can be no such thing, you think the NRA will eventually rise up and quash any attempt at tighter gun control, the right will stop any legislation aimed at more access to mental health, or all of this.
However, I hope you are wrong. You might be right: Everyone seems frozen in their place on their positions. We need to see how people without strong opinions react to the tragedy. If this does not change the conversation, I am not sure what will.
Recent Supreme Court decisions like Heller and McDonald do not help though.
On “Thoughts and Prayers”
This song seems appropriate today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ga_M5Zdn4
"
This is absolutely heartbreaking news.
Details will emerge. How many tragedies do we need before we start having frank discussions on prevention, on access to mental health. We should not be fatalists for these kinds of events? They should not be seen as inevitable and unpreventable.
On “Playa’ In the Hoooouse!!! : Lady Killer’s Guide to Picking Up Women at Bars”
I am not married and avoid watching guys behave like this by not going to meat bars or clubs.
On “When to Get Married, Revisited”
Perhaps this is my absolute secular-liberalism speaking. Perhaps it also me being defensive because undergrad me could not get a date if my life depended on it. I think Kim's point doesn't really apply to the world anymore. It seems almost quaint. Without appealing to any traditionalist values (or at least religious ones) can you explain to me why the Mormons do it the right way? Or am I just being too much the New York-San Francisco urban, professional liberal here? Keep in mind I was raised as secular as secular can be while still having a Bar Mitzvah and going to once-monthly Hebrew school until 12th grade. I did not grow up in an area where people attended religious services on a regular basis except the one family across the street that was Orthodox (Jewish, not Greek or Russian.)
My mom was an early Feminist. She went to college in the mid-60s and said she was always shocked and baffled by the women who openly said they were looking for their "MRS" degree. She also seemed baffled that the women would fall for the guys who would talk big about being able to provide the biggest suburban house. She thought how could any 20 year old guy say that with a straight face?
College students are still kids. They might be legal adults but to my eyes they are still young and learning their way through the world. There is nothing wrong with people having some time to explore. Most people enter college without knowing what their future careers will be and leave in the same state. Doesn't research show that marriages last longer when the couples marry later and are more settled in their careers and done with 20-something strum und drang?
"
Well things don't always happen when they should.
"
It was more of this order:
1. Study hard
2. Get into a good college/university (Ivy or Equivalent)
3. Study hard
4. Work a bit or go to a good grad school (grad school needed to happen eventually). 20s are for exploring and having some fun/wild oats as well.
5. Get establishedess in your career
6. Now you can get married and have kids instead of having kids when you are in grad school and living in a three floor walk-up in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn or Jersey City.
"
I wasn't saying that there is anything wrong with getting married young. I was just more pissed at Kim for implying strongly if it does not happen by 23, it is probably not going to happen.
"
It was more meant to make you feel old ;)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.