1. I think you will find that Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan have better track records on the 4th Amendment than the "originalists" and Federalist Society of Roberts, Scalia, and company. Most 4th Amendment cases seem to be a 5-4 and the four dissenters who usually side with the defendant tend to be the Democratic-appointed Supreme Court Justices.
2. That regulation of interstate commerce is not BS. It is only BS if you have a fetish for the Articles of Confederation and the strange Federalism which seems to infect certain parts of US politics and nowhere else in the developed world. Or the developed world. I find it absolutely shocking that the idea of decent or at least a reasonable minimum wage is still controversial in the United States. I find it shocking that so many people still worship the majority decision in Lochner and appalling work conditions under some false fantasy of Freedom of Contact. I find it revealing that many of the people who worship Freedom of Contract are absolutely silent when the contract is broken by CEOs when it comes to pension benefits or other employee rights.
There is no way to determine how the Founders would have applied the Constitution to cars or the Internet. There is no way they would have predicted what the Internet is or a post-Industrial society with an Information economy.
People are very bad at predicting how technology will change. Yes it is a cartoon but it is kind of interesting that the Jetsons had a robot maid but could not predict e-mail or a cellphone.
I think there are several things going on here. All sides (or almost all sides) of American (and possibly International) political debate use the language of defending freedom and liberty. The problem is that all sides have radically different notions of what liberty and freedom means and what it entails. Also what freedom and liberty allow the Government to do and not do.
Certain parts of the right are basically hardcore believers in negative rights. They practice a kind of "Don't tread on me" kind of liberty that is deeply rooted in a Jeffersonian agrarian utopia filled with self-sufficient yeoman farmers. Their version of liberty is largely or absolutely unworkable when combined with Industrial or post-Industrial nations where most people live in urban and suburban areas and are interdependent.
This form of right-wing liberty also seems to think that any attempt at government to make better citizens (or make things better for citizens) is a deeply evil social engineering. This includes public health, education, environmental and labor regulations to make sure that the backs and souls of people are not broken, etc. The government is seen as an evil Leviathan that will just not let the people be.
1. What is this "mode of thinking" that leads to racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia?
2. What is morally objectionable or wrong about eliminating racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, etc?
Yes we liberals want to mitigate the effects of racism but there is nothing morally wrong with going for the root of the cause and eliminating the beast itself. Just like the best way to fight crime is to attack the causes of crime (like poverty and lack of opportunity) instead of just locking people up.
It might work better for a liberal or Democratic President (FDR strikes me as a prime example) but I wonder why few politicians say something like: "Yes I grew up with a lot of advantages that many people do not have. I am very grateful for these advantages but realize that many were an accident of birth. I would like to help even the playing field or make sure that people do not struggle with basic necessities."
"Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama inbetween"-James Carville.
I have friends from both the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia-metro areas, the nickname that they give their homestate is "Pennsyltucky"
That being said, the Amish make some of the best ice cream I have ever eaten in my life, the Barnes Foundation is an A plus collection of art, and Bucks County is quite lovely in the Autumn. I really like the Philadelphia area.
I am a Vassar alum. Of course we are the Seven Sister that went co-ed. I still get surprised looks when I tell people I went to Vassar though.
But overall, your post is spot on. Montgomery and Bucks County are the type of formally Rockefeller Republican suburbs that the GOP is losing because of archly right-wing social policies.
Of course the best thing about the Mainline is still Uncle Willy doing weird and wonderful things in the pantry.
I would probably make Latin mandatory for at least a year or two if I were in charge of the setting the standards. Modern language is very important but so is Latin.
Erwin Cheminrinsky is one of the reigning deans of Constitutional Law. He also does the lectures of Bar Review.
He told a cute story about how he once told his sons to be quiet because they were bickering over toys or baseball cards and his son said he had a free speech right. Dean Chemerinsky told his son"The Constitution only applies to the Government." His son retorted "You are like the government to me"
I still think teaching kids to read time is useful. If only because there are still plenty of non-digital clocks and watches around. I use a non-digital watch (same one I've owned since I was 17. It was a high school graduation present).
If X and Y decide mutually that the extent of their relationship is going to be sex and nothing more on Tuesday and Thursday nights, I have no problem with it and do not see it as immoral.
"Lust is a moral problem because it inclines one to perceive and to treat another solely as an object of desire or enjoyment. The lustful heart beats for flesh, not for a person. It therefore hinders personal encounters and intimacy."
I would say that this is only a problem if one is deceitful about it or leads the other person on.
For example: Let's say we have X and Y (I would normally pick names but want to avoid making this gendered). X only physically desires Y and wants nothing more than sex from Y. However, Y is sincerely in love with X as a person and wants a more significant emotional relationship. If X pretends to be emotionally vested in Y just to get sex, X is being immoral because it is leading Y down a false path with false hopes intentionally.
However if X and Y are completely honest in expressing that it is just about sex and nothing more than it is not immoral.
In short, I see nothing wrong with a Friends with Benefit relationship or mutual hook-up if all parties are honest
"It’s not instrumental to maintaining a public image (voters could care less what time he ran)"
Perhaps it is. A reader to Andrew Sullivan's blog wrote in with a theory of Ryan. Basically almost everyone can agree that Ryan has the look of a nice, small-town, midwestern boy. Perpetually boyish and good-looking in a non-threatening way, always seeming earnest and sincere. He is very good at using his image to hide the radicalness of his proposals and vision for society. The reader theorized that there are a lot of people who respond so positively to Ryan's boyishness that they get defensive for him when he is challenged on his policies. A sort of "But Paul Ryan looks like the nice boy down the street, how dare people say these horrible things about him."
Perhaps Ryan's knows this and wants to troll the left into calling him out for lies, misinformation, and actual information on his policies. Perhaps Ryan knows that there are enough voters who will be defensive for him that such lies are beneficial. Especially the voters are a bit Republican leaning but not complete Partisans. "How dare those outsider lefties accuse Ryan of a misdeed!"
I think partisanship and tribalism go for explaining a lot.
Several years ago, I remember reading a piece by Kathryn Lopez at the National Review where she outright admitted to wanting to go back to the 1950s or the idealized version of the 1950s that she had in her head. This basically said "I want to turn back the clock"
I found her post to be very revealing. I can't seem to google for it right now. I do find stuff about why she hates contraception from 2011 but it is not the post I remember.
I should say most decent people. I think Obama is a fundamentally decent person. There are probably a lot of people in safe house seats that are fundamentally decent people and a good amount of Senators.
I think when politicians get away or do not get away with misdeeds of one sort or another is largely a result of polarization and partisanship.
Let's look at the cases of Elliot Spitzer and David Vitter who both got in trouble for the same issue. Both went to escort services (BTW this is in no way to spell out my own personal position on sex workers and whether prostitution/escorting should be legal or not) and allegedly engaged in some risque/taboo sex. Vitter had his diaper fetish and Spitzer like bareback blowjobs. Vitter remained in power but Spitzer resigned pretty quickly? We have no idea what happened behind the scenes but if Vitter resigned, he would have been replaced by a Democrat because the governor of Louisiana at the time was a Democrat. Spitzer was replaced by a Democrat and there was really no hope at that point for the Republicans to gain the governorship of NY. Spitzer's successor was not very popular but New York was blue enough at the time to make sure that a Republican would not get the seat.
Anthony Weiner and a congressional Republican from upstate were forced to resign because of sending nude photos to women on-line. Both of them were from perceived safe seats but ended up being replaced by a member of the opposite party. I'm sure that if you told Pelosi and Bohener about these results, the parties would have let them stay and repent.
The same goes for Clinton and Ryan. Both are well-known and polarizing figures. And in Clinton's case, the witch-hunt was led by Newt Gingrich at a time when he was seen as an ultra-partisan who shut down the government. Newt and other House members like Henry Hyde were known adulterers so that added to the sting of partisan hypocrisy. If there is one thing that many liberals and secular types dislike about the religious right is that we sense that they are largely very hypocritical. They preach morals but act in a very different way. No conservative bugs me more than the privilege of the cognitive dissnoance conservative. The kind of person who thinks it is okay for them to drink, smoke pot, and have sex because they are wealthy and white but will then go rail against it. This is why the party rallied around Bill instead of letting him get impeached. Democrats that sided with the Republicans lost a lot of cred in the party for doing so like Newt Gingrich.
Anyway am I being too cynical by wondering how many of our politicians have open marriages or at least a marriage that is more about power than love? Not all of them, Jenny Sanford and Elizabeth Edwards seemed appalled and truly upset by their husbands adultery. Others I am not so sure of. The Obamas (and to be fair The Romneys) seem to have a marriage based more on love and mutual respect than the Clintons. At least in my eyes. For all his faults, Bush II never struck me as an adulterer. It doesn't make him a good President though.
Though I also think you are right and this largely says something about our political process. I think to be a politician in the United States, you need to be made of very strong stuff or even be a bit cold. I don't think that many people can stand the pressure and brutal nature of an American styled campaign. You have to know that the attacks will be brutal, personal, misleading, bring up old ghosts, etc. We have developed a form of campaigning that scares of decent people except from the most safe seats or the most local elections.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “What Progressivism Is (Updated)”
1. I think you will find that Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan have better track records on the 4th Amendment than the "originalists" and Federalist Society of Roberts, Scalia, and company. Most 4th Amendment cases seem to be a 5-4 and the four dissenters who usually side with the defendant tend to be the Democratic-appointed Supreme Court Justices.
2. That regulation of interstate commerce is not BS. It is only BS if you have a fetish for the Articles of Confederation and the strange Federalism which seems to infect certain parts of US politics and nowhere else in the developed world. Or the developed world. I find it absolutely shocking that the idea of decent or at least a reasonable minimum wage is still controversial in the United States. I find it shocking that so many people still worship the majority decision in Lochner and appalling work conditions under some false fantasy of Freedom of Contact. I find it revealing that many of the people who worship Freedom of Contract are absolutely silent when the contract is broken by CEOs when it comes to pension benefits or other employee rights.
"
This is why I am not an originalist.
There is no way to determine how the Founders would have applied the Constitution to cars or the Internet. There is no way they would have predicted what the Internet is or a post-Industrial society with an Information economy.
People are very bad at predicting how technology will change. Yes it is a cartoon but it is kind of interesting that the Jetsons had a robot maid but could not predict e-mail or a cellphone.
"
I think there are several things going on here. All sides (or almost all sides) of American (and possibly International) political debate use the language of defending freedom and liberty. The problem is that all sides have radically different notions of what liberty and freedom means and what it entails. Also what freedom and liberty allow the Government to do and not do.
Certain parts of the right are basically hardcore believers in negative rights. They practice a kind of "Don't tread on me" kind of liberty that is deeply rooted in a Jeffersonian agrarian utopia filled with self-sufficient yeoman farmers. Their version of liberty is largely or absolutely unworkable when combined with Industrial or post-Industrial nations where most people live in urban and suburban areas and are interdependent.
This form of right-wing liberty also seems to think that any attempt at government to make better citizens (or make things better for citizens) is a deeply evil social engineering. This includes public health, education, environmental and labor regulations to make sure that the backs and souls of people are not broken, etc. The government is seen as an evil Leviathan that will just not let the people be.
On “SRSLY?”
Your question was meant to be tongue in cheek but it is seriously getting me to think about free speech and free exercise cases.
What if a kid's religious practices required him or her to wear something that the school considered to be (and is) a wholly unrelated gang sign?
"
A plus to your numerology.
On “On the First Lady’s Speech”
Some questions:
1. What is this "mode of thinking" that leads to racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia?
2. What is morally objectionable or wrong about eliminating racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, etc?
Yes we liberals want to mitigate the effects of racism but there is nothing morally wrong with going for the root of the cause and eliminating the beast itself. Just like the best way to fight crime is to attack the causes of crime (like poverty and lack of opportunity) instead of just locking people up.
"
Agreed.
It might work better for a liberal or Democratic President (FDR strikes me as a prime example) but I wonder why few politicians say something like: "Yes I grew up with a lot of advantages that many people do not have. I am very grateful for these advantages but realize that many were an accident of birth. I would like to help even the playing field or make sure that people do not struggle with basic necessities."
On “What Not Getting It Looks Like”
"Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama inbetween"-James Carville.
I have friends from both the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia-metro areas, the nickname that they give their homestate is "Pennsyltucky"
That being said, the Amish make some of the best ice cream I have ever eaten in my life, the Barnes Foundation is an A plus collection of art, and Bucks County is quite lovely in the Autumn. I really like the Philadelphia area.
"
Hello fellow Seven Sister!
I am a Vassar alum. Of course we are the Seven Sister that went co-ed. I still get surprised looks when I tell people I went to Vassar though.
But overall, your post is spot on. Montgomery and Bucks County are the type of formally Rockefeller Republican suburbs that the GOP is losing because of archly right-wing social policies.
Of course the best thing about the Mainline is still Uncle Willy doing weird and wonderful things in the pantry.
On “Reading, Writing, and Ridiculous?”
IIRC (this was in the 1980s) we only had analog clocks. Plus all the nice watches are analog only.
"
I would probably make Latin mandatory for at least a year or two if I were in charge of the setting the standards. Modern language is very important but so is Latin.
"
If it is a public school, she is technically a government employee.
If I had a kid who said this, I would be rather impressed. You might still have to lecture them but I would be impressed and proud.
"
Erwin Cheminrinsky is one of the reigning deans of Constitutional Law. He also does the lectures of Bar Review.
He told a cute story about how he once told his sons to be quiet because they were bickering over toys or baseball cards and his son said he had a free speech right. Dean Chemerinsky told his son"The Constitution only applies to the Government." His son retorted "You are like the government to me"
On “Is Lust Really Immoral?”
Blinded Trials. A question about how professions are portrayed on film and TV turned into something about Hipsters.
On “Reading, Writing, and Ridiculous?”
Cursive might also teach fine motor skills!
"
I think we started cursive in third or fourth grade.
"
I still think teaching kids to read time is useful. If only because there are still plenty of non-digital clocks and watches around. I use a non-digital watch (same one I've owned since I was 17. It was a high school graduation present).
Cursive I am less sure about.
On “Is Lust Really Immoral?”
If X and Y decide mutually that the extent of their relationship is going to be sex and nothing more on Tuesday and Thursday nights, I have no problem with it and do not see it as immoral.
"
Yup
"
"Lust is a moral problem because it inclines one to perceive and to treat another solely as an object of desire or enjoyment. The lustful heart beats for flesh, not for a person. It therefore hinders personal encounters and intimacy."
I would say that this is only a problem if one is deceitful about it or leads the other person on.
For example: Let's say we have X and Y (I would normally pick names but want to avoid making this gendered). X only physically desires Y and wants nothing more than sex from Y. However, Y is sincerely in love with X as a person and wants a more significant emotional relationship. If X pretends to be emotionally vested in Y just to get sex, X is being immoral because it is leading Y down a false path with false hopes intentionally.
However if X and Y are completely honest in expressing that it is just about sex and nothing more than it is not immoral.
In short, I see nothing wrong with a Friends with Benefit relationship or mutual hook-up if all parties are honest
"
Something about knowing it in his mycordial valve.
On “Why (things like) Paul Ryan’s marathon lies matter (to me.)”
"It’s not instrumental to maintaining a public image (voters could care less what time he ran)"
Perhaps it is. A reader to Andrew Sullivan's blog wrote in with a theory of Ryan. Basically almost everyone can agree that Ryan has the look of a nice, small-town, midwestern boy. Perpetually boyish and good-looking in a non-threatening way, always seeming earnest and sincere. He is very good at using his image to hide the radicalness of his proposals and vision for society. The reader theorized that there are a lot of people who respond so positively to Ryan's boyishness that they get defensive for him when he is challenged on his policies. A sort of "But Paul Ryan looks like the nice boy down the street, how dare people say these horrible things about him."
Perhaps Ryan's knows this and wants to troll the left into calling him out for lies, misinformation, and actual information on his policies. Perhaps Ryan knows that there are enough voters who will be defensive for him that such lies are beneficial. Especially the voters are a bit Republican leaning but not complete Partisans. "How dare those outsider lefties accuse Ryan of a misdeed!"
I think partisanship and tribalism go for explaining a lot.
On “Marriage as Leadership and Submission”
Several years ago, I remember reading a piece by Kathryn Lopez at the National Review where she outright admitted to wanting to go back to the 1950s or the idealized version of the 1950s that she had in her head. This basically said "I want to turn back the clock"
I found her post to be very revealing. I can't seem to google for it right now. I do find stuff about why she hates contraception from 2011 but it is not the post I remember.
On “Why (things like) Paul Ryan’s marathon lies matter (to me.)”
I should say most decent people. I think Obama is a fundamentally decent person. There are probably a lot of people in safe house seats that are fundamentally decent people and a good amount of Senators.
"
I think when politicians get away or do not get away with misdeeds of one sort or another is largely a result of polarization and partisanship.
Let's look at the cases of Elliot Spitzer and David Vitter who both got in trouble for the same issue. Both went to escort services (BTW this is in no way to spell out my own personal position on sex workers and whether prostitution/escorting should be legal or not) and allegedly engaged in some risque/taboo sex. Vitter had his diaper fetish and Spitzer like bareback blowjobs. Vitter remained in power but Spitzer resigned pretty quickly? We have no idea what happened behind the scenes but if Vitter resigned, he would have been replaced by a Democrat because the governor of Louisiana at the time was a Democrat. Spitzer was replaced by a Democrat and there was really no hope at that point for the Republicans to gain the governorship of NY. Spitzer's successor was not very popular but New York was blue enough at the time to make sure that a Republican would not get the seat.
Anthony Weiner and a congressional Republican from upstate were forced to resign because of sending nude photos to women on-line. Both of them were from perceived safe seats but ended up being replaced by a member of the opposite party. I'm sure that if you told Pelosi and Bohener about these results, the parties would have let them stay and repent.
The same goes for Clinton and Ryan. Both are well-known and polarizing figures. And in Clinton's case, the witch-hunt was led by Newt Gingrich at a time when he was seen as an ultra-partisan who shut down the government. Newt and other House members like Henry Hyde were known adulterers so that added to the sting of partisan hypocrisy. If there is one thing that many liberals and secular types dislike about the religious right is that we sense that they are largely very hypocritical. They preach morals but act in a very different way. No conservative bugs me more than the privilege of the cognitive dissnoance conservative. The kind of person who thinks it is okay for them to drink, smoke pot, and have sex because they are wealthy and white but will then go rail against it. This is why the party rallied around Bill instead of letting him get impeached. Democrats that sided with the Republicans lost a lot of cred in the party for doing so like Newt Gingrich.
Anyway am I being too cynical by wondering how many of our politicians have open marriages or at least a marriage that is more about power than love? Not all of them, Jenny Sanford and Elizabeth Edwards seemed appalled and truly upset by their husbands adultery. Others I am not so sure of. The Obamas (and to be fair The Romneys) seem to have a marriage based more on love and mutual respect than the Clintons. At least in my eyes. For all his faults, Bush II never struck me as an adulterer. It doesn't make him a good President though.
Though I also think you are right and this largely says something about our political process. I think to be a politician in the United States, you need to be made of very strong stuff or even be a bit cold. I don't think that many people can stand the pressure and brutal nature of an American styled campaign. You have to know that the attacks will be brutal, personal, misleading, bring up old ghosts, etc. We have developed a form of campaigning that scares of decent people except from the most safe seats or the most local elections.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.