While Madame Is Away

Madame M is away on a pleasurable cruise with her husband, so it is just me this week. She is the driving force behind the management of the site, but I will attempt to keep it from cracking up while she’s gone. :)

One of the first things to do is actually answer her previous post:

Good ideas on the states as laboratories and bastions of varying diversity.

You will have to point out Obama’s “defense of policies that have ravaged poor families over the last 50 years.” My reading is that he acknowledges that welfare needed reformed, although he believes a narrow piece of the poverty and disabling entitlement problem was addressed in a vacuum to the detriment of holistic progress.

Beck is right that we need shaken from our apathy. We are Nero fiddling with our electronic devices while Rome burns.

Good reference to the Cultural Revolution. Many about-to-get repressive societies turn against their intellectuals, or co-opt them ruthlessly.

Yes, democracy is an overused word in Obama’s book, as it is by many speakers. Most people are not going to know the political science difference between a democracy (often referred to as pure democracy) and a republic (often referred to as republican democracy) where the people elect their representatives rather than make all the decisions directly. Yet I guess I am not following you on what impact there would be to emphasize republic, even if people generally understood the nuance. Unless you mean the protection of minority views built into the system? Or the checks and balances and separation of powers? Awaiting Madame’s clarification to comment more directly! :)

While we wait, here is more from/on the books that I generally agree with:

Obama says we want more competence and consideration from each other. And he takes to task his fellow politicians. For a sector that preaches values, he says, their “practice of modern politics seems to be value-free. Politics (and political commentary) not only allows but often rewards behavior that we would normally think of as scandalous: fabricating stories, distorting the obvious meaning of what other people say, insulting or generally questioning their motives, poking through their personal affairs in search of damaging information.” Obama 64

Beck is right in one sense that Social Security and Medicare are Ponzi schemes, begun with the best of intentions but shortsighted, bloated, and unsustainable.

“In today’s interconnected world, it’s difficult to penetrate the consciousness of a busy and distracted electorate. As a result, winning in politics mainly comes down to a simple matter of name recognition, which is why most incumbents spend inordinate amounts of time between elections making sure their names are repeated over and over again…And then there’s the role of political gerrymandering in insulating House members from significant challenge. These days, almost every congressional district is drawn by the ruling party with computer-driven precision to ensure that a clear majority of Democrats or Republicans reside within its borders. Indeed, it’s not much of a stretch to say that most voters no longer choose their representatives; instead, representatives choose their voters.”Obama 103

Beck points out rightly the hypocrisy of Congress not following the laws it makes for the rest of us. He asks the question about why we don’t vote all of them out and start over. Well, aside from the fact that it would be a six year process given Senatorial elections, the blunt truth of the matter is that constituents hate Congress as an institution but love their Congressman, and the gerrymandered districts pretty much assure it largely stays that way. Interesting that Beck and Obama use almost the exact same words about gerrymandering.

Obama is a man who recognizes complexity: “I am robbed even of the certainty of uncertainty—for sometimes absolute truths may well be absolute.” 97 And he summons a Republican, the second father of the country, to recognize this as a virtue. For Lincoln maintained “within himself the balance between two contradictory ideas—that we must talk and reach for common understandings, precisely because all of us are imperfect and can never act with the certainty that God is on our side, and yet at times we must act nonetheless, as if we are certain, protected from error only by providence.” Obama 98

Obama does a sobering job of relating how the sausage-making, distasteful, incredibly compromised bills that have to be voted on give endless ammunition for future opponents to twist into misunderstandings to paint a very different picture from reality. The cynical process of what politics has become now means that character is punished, nuance ignored, balance and consideration scorned, and frailty never excused.

And if you are one of our representatives or senators,, you become affected by the money that flows to you and especially around you. It deadens you to the reality that exists for most people elsewhere. It disconnects you from your fellow citizens.

Beck reminds us of Washington’s words about the perils of parties, for Washington watched as the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, each of whom thought the other was going to destroy the infant American republic, very nearly did so in their mighty struggles against each other. One, the Federalists, even used anti-Constitutional means. All this from the very generation that fought the Revolution and devised the Constitution! Their actions should be perilous warning to us: if THAT generation, with all they fought for and accomplished, could nearly undo it all, how much more on guard do we need to be against ourselves?