Third Party & Independents: Archives

Excellent points, Misha. I wonder if you could give an example, though, of a particular course followed by Bush which would be an example of moral certainty trumping practical considerations? I don’t immediately say that such examples don’t exist, but I tend to think that mistakes have been more tactical than ideological—what do you think?

But I want to raise a question: don’t the anti-Bush forces employ rhetoric that exhibits the “moral certainty” they supposedly find so repugnant far more frequently than the administration? When I think of the Cotton Mathers, the Jonathan Edwards (not the current candidate but the puritanical preacher), I see far more similiarities in the fire and brimstone sermonizing of Howard Dean and Al Gore.

The absolute self-assured rightness of those two and their host of accomplices on the left, accompanied by raving, twisted up faces and podium-pounding, looks for more moralistic and self-righteous than anything I’ve seen from anybody at any time in the administration. Those guys scare me. They even scare my cat. I’ve never bought the line that “subtle thinking” and a recognition of moral complication is anything more than a pose with those guys. They think they are definitley in possession of the truth—that Bush and anybody who agrees with him is definitely not. Conservatives by and large don’t incorporate into their self-image, as do leftists, the idea that moral certainty is evil, so they don’t often effectively combat these stereotypes.

Here’s the curiosity of paradoxical leftist thinking: “Moral certainty is EVIL—don’t think about it—just vote Democrat. That’s subtle. That’s intellectual. That’s what gets you an A at your college and your subscription to the New York Times.”

Joe Klein is about as Left as The Eagles are punk rock or Wagner was a socialist. My dears, when people like Klein criticize Bush for his “moral certainty” they are signalling their centrist qualifications, as in these mamby-pamby phrases from his article:

“His remarks there were, as we have come to expect from this President, a stirring mix of humility and certainty”

“The words are wonderful, but such sentiments are easily corrupted”

“The President’s moral convictions are, no doubt, matters of true faith”

“But democracy doesn’t easily lend itself to evangelism; it requires more than faith. It requires a solid, educated middle class”
[Hmmph! Here I thought it required contented riff-raff]

A critique like this is for church ladies, basically. It’s a delicate way of saying the “stirring” Bush has made a mess because he’s really such a good guy at heart - yuck. Me, as somebody who you guys would call “left” (I don’t call me left - I don’t define myself by my relationship to others - but I am to the left of you), well, I don’t give Bush as much credit as a guy like Klein does. I don’t have a problem with moral certainty either. I’m not particularly interested in whether it is Bush’s version of “moral certainty” that is at the root of his disastrous presidency. I don’t care whether he is sincere or not either. I don’t value sincerity over cynicism in disastrous public leaders. This is personality politics junk and it’s what we get in this country for having such an infantile relationship with our own presidents. America elects its daddies.

Relativism vs. Absolute Morality is indeed an engaging philosophic topic though, and I have complicated views on it (too lengthy to share unless you’re really interested). I think there is a lot of fuzzy thinking on the subject, and yes that includes people who imagine they are pure relativists but are really moralists at heart (that surely describes the type of the postmodern leftist, who behaves as a true believer while simultaneously pretending to have undermined all received truth), and people who imagine they are pure moralists but get relativist in dicey situations (say, when whatever they do for a living is involved). I maintain you find these folks across the political spectrum, and sometimes I bet they’re even you and me.

I’d rather have a LOGICAL certainty than a “moral” one, but that’s just me.

The critique from the left (in Europe and America) concerning postmodernism was its lack of moral certainty. Postmodernism was viewed as a threat to Marxist before traditional conservatives jumped on the bandwagon. Leftist (real ideological leftist) are ALL ABOUT MORAL CERTAINTY. It is usually the squishy middle that gets accused of a type of pragmatism that appears to resemble flip-flopping and lack of will.

Then again, Slaveholders of the South were convinced of their own moral certainty when it came to owning other human beings that does not make me admire them. Bin Ladden must be one of the most morally certain men on earth…I think some people throw that phrase around like a new-born Christian abuses the Lord’s name, as if one might forget their moral superiority.

In fact, most slavery advocates were not morally certain, and used the same equivocal arguments people now use (especially in the abortion and war debates). Saying “how do you know you are right about slaves?” and “you mistreat your workers, so how dare you say we cant keep slaves” and “its our states, its none of your business.” Sounds very similar to “how does america know democracy is best”; “how dare you tell us we cant have dictatorships, look at the problems in your country” and “its not America’s business what is done within another nation’s boarders.”

The ones who were charged with being too morally certain were the radical abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, who said that slavery was immoral and shameful.

Also, Marxism also operates on the belief that there is no such thing as right and wrong, just material determinism.

Of course what it comes down to isnt who is certain, most people are about their beliefs. Garrison was praiseworthy because he was RIGHT, not because he was certain. Bin Laden is evil because he is wrong, not because he is certain.

I am not saying that most on the left are moral relativists, they arent that stupid. What I am saying is that they actually DO realize there is right and wrong- and they should stick to pointing out that Bush is wrong rather than always saying that he is so certain, because that is just hypocritical.

> I wonder if you could give an example, though,
> of a particular course followed by Bush which
> would be an example of moral certainty trumping
> practical considerations?

Sure.

Moral Certainty: Saddam is a bad guy and needs a whoopin’ ASAP.
Practical Considerations: Maybe it would be a good idea to continue to squeeze Saddam into a tighter and tighter box first - and then, failing that, it would be a good idea to have a large number of other countries on board for more aggressive actions. It also might be a good idea to plan for a difficult and long occupation. Oh, and maybe we should put the billions of dollars in financial cost into our budget projections.
Outcome: Iraq invaded post haste!

Moral Certainty Wins! Practical Considerations Lose!

Here’s another:

Moral Certainty: Gay people are destroying American families.
Practical Considerations: No they’re not, that’s hateful crazy talk.
Outcome: Anti-Gay Marriage Constitutional Amendment Endorsement

Moral Certainty Wins! Practical Considerations Lose!

Whee! Here’s another:

Moral Certainty: All taxes are bad no matter what.
Practical Considerations: Taxes are what we use to pay for government programs, including the cool stuff like the military and Homeland Security.
Outcome: White House predicts drastic, across the board budget cuts in 2006, including the cool stuff.

Moral Certainty Wins! Practical Considerations Lose!

This is fun. I could go on forever.

With regards to the left/right thing, well, both sides claim a certain degree of moral certainty. The left isn’t the only end of the spectrum that thinks that we’re right and they’re wrong. The difference here is that the Bush administration in particular, even when compared to pragmatic conservatives like Powell, McCain, or Lugar, comes across as pretty darn dogmatic and stubborn. They are unable to craft or adopt nuanced, long-term policies that are even the slightest bit inconsistent with a basic set of simplistic political guidelines that even a child could use to run the country (“fight the bad guys”…”protect business”…”get re-elected”). So we end up with hamfisted massive tax cuts and hamfisted premature invasions.

Even the Nixon and Reagan Administrations, whose conservative credentials are unquestionable, were comparatively limber compared to this Bush Administration.

-Cf

See I dont agree Christopher. i actually think the reason McCain is preferable to Bush is because he sticks to his moral convictions- take for example, their positions on the size of the government. Or even take an issue i disagree with McCain on, campaign finance reform. he stuck to his guns and got it through, because he believed it was right. Now Bush realized that this measure was an anti-free speech measure that should be opposed. But did he use his veto power- NO. Practical considerations (wanting to remain popular) wins over his so-called convictions. The same thing can be said about McCain and Bush’s positions on the Medicare Plan ect.

As for your point about Gay Marriage- i think its a perfect example of what I am talking about. You and I are morally certain that there is nothing wrong with being gay, and that gay people should have equal rights. We are just as certain as Bush is that there is something wrong with gay marriage. We should critize Bush by saying that he is wrong, not that he is certain. Because we are just as certain as he is.

The problem with certainty, of any kind, is that statements of certainty are easy to break down and prove wrong. Bush says Saddam is evil and he is good. Then U.S. troops torture Iraqi prisoners (many of whom were admittedly bad guys and many others whom were admittedly being held to pressure family, friends, and neighbors into surrendering to the will of the provisional authorities) in ways similar to the torture used by Saddam in the same prison Saddam tortured prisoners. Now, how do you bring this statement of certainty into agreement with what has actually happened? You can’t.
The problem is not that Bush made statements of moral certainty in cases which he should not/could not, but rather the tone he took in making these statements. He has defined the world in terms of absolute good versus absolute evil when, even Bush could see, that there is some evil in America and some evil in himself and some good in Iraq and some good in Saddam. Isn’t that one of the foundations of both Christian world views and the liberal democratic world views which inform/ed both the modern left and the framers of our constitution?
Certainty is not bad because it is certain. It is bad because it’s dangerously fragile. At the same time though, there is no way to effectively argue a political point of view without using statements of certainty, making it a necessary evil.

Hussien was worse to his people than Bush but that doesn’t change the fact that the Iraqi war has no moral or legal justification. All manipulative moralizing relies on the tendency to see the familiar (ourselves) as “good” and unfamiliar as “evil”. Moralizing is manipulative whenever it is do as I say, not as I do. All Politicians use morality to obscure a hidden agenda of greed. What is better overt or covert coersion? Many slaves prefered the overt oppression of the South to covert Northern exploitation. Like Poles, they could see it and overthrow it, when an opportunity to organize against it presented itself. It both cases “morally grounded” churches provided that opportunity.

You ask how Klein knows that tax cuts for the rich are supposedly a bad thing. That’s an easy one - because trickle-down economics have never been proven to work. If so, this would have been shown during the Reagan and GHWBush years. Accordingly, tax cuts have not brought about an economic miracle over the past year. And when we are laying out billions and billions of dollars on two concurrent wars, tax cuts for the rich are not merely a “bad thing” - they are complete and utter madness.

I agree with your assertion that the US was founded by people who had a large degree of moral certainty.
That is undoubtedly true.
However, there’s a huge difference between the moral certainty of the Declaration of Independence where their belief was: ” all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator… etc, etc.” - and Dubya who believes that: “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction”, “God told me to go to war…”, “This war could last the rest of our lifetime…”, “Saddam doesn’t have WMD”s - but what’s the difference? He needed to be removed…”, and “We’ve got to stay the course in Iraq…”
The former is a philosophy that is a reason for pride and hope for Americans, while the latter is mere speculation or wishful thinking.
Bush’s brand of moral certainty looks to be the kind that will go down in history as illogical, rash, and dangerous and Gulf War 2 as a war waged by men with hidden agendas and ulterior motives.

I think Misha is on to something. It is the fanatics of the center (there are such things, Clinton for example was not a lefty, he was a raving centrist) not the left who freak out over moral certainties being expressed.

One error on the pro-Bush left — at least by columnists like say Jim Hoagland — is to say that the President’s “you’re either with us or with the terrorists” is an example of moral clarity. No, that statement is classic moral relativism (right or worng depend on what someone is for not who they are) . It may happen to be right under given circumstances but to make us the measure of right or wrong is not moral clarity.

I think Misha is on to something. It is the fanatics of the center (there are such things, Clinton for example was not a lefty, he was a raving centrist) not the left who freak out over moral certainties being expressed.

One error on the pro-Bush right — at least by columnists like say Jim Hoagland — is to say that the President’s “you’re either with us or with the terrorists” is an example of moral clarity. No, that statement is classic moral relativism (right or worng depend on what someone is for not who they are) . It may happen to be right under given circumstances but to make us the measure of right or wrong is not moral clarity.

From everything I have ever read, the statement that “Our country was built upon moral certainty” is so far from the truth it could be considered a fantasy. The motives and personalities of the founding fathers pretty much mirrored the politicians of today.

Franklin was an adulterer, Jefferson lived above his means and was always in debt and Alexander Hamilton was an elitist S.O.B. (which is what got him shot).

For a good read about the early days of the democracy try:
Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned, by Kenneth C. Davis

I believe a quote from it goes “America agreed that Washington should be president then never agreed an anything ever again.”

Don’t forget the Bill of rights was added as an after thought when they couldn’t get enough signatures.

Good points, Bob. Our founding fathers were incredibly flawed in so many areas and nonetheless managed to create the conditions and advance the principles for the most liveable, creative and flourishing country that humankind has ever seen. The line between Bush and the democratic principles championed by Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin can’t be dismissed as easily as pointing out the flaws in any of these great visionary men.

Moral certainty doesnt mean moral perfection. The Second Paragraph of the declaration of Independence is a statement of moral certainty ,hypocritcal or not.

Misha, I agree with you that ultimately the “moral certainty” issue is minor compared to the premise that some things are just right and some things are just wrong. I was just bringing up a few examples of how Bush’s “certainty” was based on silly oversimplifications and that his certainties often tend to fly in the face of all of the evidence in front of him.

I think it’s great when politicians stick to their guns on things that they are certain of (especially when their policies are what I consider to be “right”!). In Bush’s case, unlike McCain’s, his policies are ultimately grounded on adolescent philosophies that lack the ability to flex to accommodate real world situations. Even disagreeable conservatives like Reagan and Bush’s father realized that taxes have to be rasied sometimes to keep the government funded enough to keep the country running at all, or that making enemies of the entire Muslim world might not be something the US should be stepping into. Bush Jr’s philosophical models are so retarded that he cannot even figure out why they are backfiring on him.

-Cf

I think someone conservative should enter this obviously liberal (read “moderate”) fray. While the things I’ve been reading here are certainly well thought out, they suffer from just that: over-analysis, ad nauseum. If you guys can’t come to some simple conclusions based on the information you take in, then you doom your conclusions based on what is left: idealism (exactly the thought process that allows us NOW to be exploited and terrorized).

Moral certainty vs. logic? What is this? Mr. Spock speaks out on Bush? If you don’t acknowledge evil in this world, run the tape back to 9/11/01. And if you don’t understand WWI, WWII, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Bin Laden are evil- you need to go back to kindergarten & try Sunday school, I know 4 year olds smarter than that “intellectualizing”. Try reading up on the Wahabis - Sleeping With The Devil by Baer is a good start. After that try Kingdom of Hate by Dore Gold. Then come back and talk about that naive world view Bush has.

Rob:
“Then U.S. troops torture Iraqi prisoners (many of whom were admittedly bad guys and many others whom were admittedly being held to pressure family, friends, and neighbors into surrendering to the will of the provisional authorities) in ways similar to the torture used by Saddam”

Similar? I submit that you need to review the techniques used by Saddam. Granted, those weren’t splashed all over the news the way the U.S. incidents were, but I’m sure it won’t break your mind in half to do at least a cursory bit of research before drawing this laughable comparison.

And a statement of ‘moral certainty’ is not a guarantee that every member of one’s chain of command is absolutely on the same page. Applications of the UCMJ are needed from time to time to correct faults in the organization.

Again, though, I prefer ‘logical certainty’ to ‘moral certainty’ because while ‘morality’ deals with ‘truths’ that can be relative to one’s perspective, what is logically true is true, incontravertibly. A = A, and all the ZEN in the world is not going to change that.

The right needs to step away from the biblical apocalyptic scenarios and get more logical.

The left needs to step away from the emotional knee-jerk reactions to anything the right ever does in any situation, and get more logical.

Logic knows no “wing”. Not fanatically so, anyway.

“Certainty is not bad because it is certain. It is bad because it’s dangerously fragile.”

Logical certainty is quite strong, I think. It’s the moral certitude which quivers and splinters in the face of situations or applications that call it into question.

Adrienne:
“trickle-down economics have never been proven to work. If so, this would have been shown during the Reagan and GHWBush years”

There are a few subtle problems in this construct. One is the lumping of anything smacking of a free market with “trickle down”, which is faulty; another is the labelling of a presidential administration to suggest that all economic policies ever implemented during those years were absolutely void of any influence of the opposition party’s filibusters, etc., in Congress—another falsehood.

So long as the “industry” or economic sphere in question is not to do with education, legal defense, or health care, then really the market should be QUITE free—if you work hard or invest wisely, you absolutely should enjoy more toys, bigger houses, more powerful cars, etc. You should not be giving your offspring special educational privileges, or be above the law, or get a better triage situation medically, but in the creature comforts of life, be absolutely capitalist and absolutely fabulous with your glitzy, glamourous self.

Whether wealth “trickles down” in a free market doesn’t matter. What it means is that there is opportunity for anyone to grasp that brass ring if they are bold enough to take the chance, and exceed the abilities of their competitors in doing so. For creature comforts, a Darwinian approach is valid. Now, we don’t want elbows in the face of the competitors or hits below the belt or other dirty ways of trying to get ahead, and for that we need certain “socialistic” boundaries to the big game. (To that extent, a rule of law itself is “socialistic” in spirit!)

This is why I summarize my belief as “darwinian socialist”. ;)

Matthew:
“to say that the President’s ‘you’re either with us or with the terrorists’ is an example of moral clarity. No, that statement is classic moral relativism (right or worng depend on what someone is for not who they are)”

Its key problem is that it’s fallacious. It’s the Faulty Dilemma Fallacy. A good study of logic would have prepared the U.S. audience to be as unreceptive of this propaganda as Europe has been.

Unfortunately, logic butts heads with PC educational curriculae, so it gets diminished in favor of warm fuzzy self-esteem-building exercises.

The American left can learn much from the European left, in that regard.

Bob J:
“the Bill of rights was added as an after thought when they couldn’t get enough signatures”

Well, the lack of signatures was indeed due to the lack of guarantee of certain personal liberties on the part of the citizens of the new Republic. While technically “after” the creation of the Constitution’s body itself, the Bill of Rights did deal with a core desire of many of the Delegates in the Constitutional Assembly.

Iraqis will probably have a similar quarrel over a “Bill of Sharia law” being added, and its status of “afterthought” will be just as purely technical. Yes, there are Christian and Jewish Iraqis, and the Sunni and Shiite versions of Islam differ, but the vast majority of Iraq is Muslim, and in order for that to reconcile in any way with “democracy” (majority rule), Sharia will have to be dealt with, with the same tender diplomacy that Jefferson and others dealt with Christian fundamentalism (which is why you see archaic engravings of the 10 Commandments in some courthouse walls—a consolation prize to religious nuts at the time to soothe the pain of not being able to establish a full theocracy!) Don’t think that Sharia can’t be tolerant at all though—they just need to use the Suleyman/Turk interpretation of it rather than the Bin Laden/Wahabbi one. Co-opt with subtle interpretation to steer the religious laws away from anything particularly savage or intolerant. That’s the way to peace and democracy there, one which the west should be able to accept as well.

Jimbospaghetti:
“Mr. Spock speaks out on Bush? If you don’t acknowledge evil in this world, run the tape back to 9/11/01”

I could just as easily run the tape back on the fire-bombings of Dresden, or Hiroshima, or Nagasaki. Perhaps in Bin Laden’s mind, there was just “collateral damage” in what was a perfectly valid strategic strike. The ‘moral’ certainties in judging these things break down. Logic does state, however, that we were attacked. It is universally accepted among humans that when attacked, retaliatory force is politically and legally defensible, to the extent required to make any further danger to one’s person, cease. On that bedrock of logical certainty, the world accepted our incursion into Afghanistan. On the ephemeral hype of how Bush “justified” going into Iraq, there was far less acceptance, because it lacked the critical element of logic.

NeoDude, that exegesis of yours just reminded me why I’m not Christian, LOL. (I lie somewhere between Gnostic “God is knowable” and Agnostic “God is unknowable” because I state that we don’t even know what we don’t know about this alleged “God”. Unknown, but also unknown as to whether it can be known or not. For shorthand and facile labels, I still use “agnostic” though—it’s close enough for mass consumption.)

Ciggy quoted me:
Adrienne:
“”trickle-down economics have never been proven to work. If so, this would have been shown during the Reagan and GHWBush years”“

Ciggy:
“There are a few subtle problems in this construct. One is the lumping of anything smacking of a free market with “trickle down”, which is faulty;”

Where did I imply that I was lumping free market practices with “trickle down” or “Voodoo” economics?

“another is the labelling of a presidential administration to suggest that all economic policies ever implemented during those years were absolutely void of any influence of the opposition party’s filibusters, etc., in Congress—another falsehood.

Starting with Reagan we had presidents who had an ideological agenda to create huge federal budget deficits in order to achieve the conservative goal of crippling government’s capacity to regulate corporate America and conduct domestic social programs. Regardless of Congress and the Senate, they were able to put these agendas to work.
Reagan’s own budget director David Stockman said: “It’s kind of hard to sell ‘trickle-down,’ so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really trickle-down.” He also called this “starving the beast” which is a way to describe the strategy of using deficits to shrink government.

By 1989, the last year of Reagan’s term, the distribution of wealth and income had become more unequal than at any time since the 1920s. The federal deficit increased from $73 billion to $155 billion during the Reagan years, and the national debt ballooned from $711 billion to $2 trillion. This completely killed off any prospect for new social spending. In fact, “starving the beast” worked like a charm because domestic social programs declined from 4.5 percent of the economy in 1981 to 3.2 percent in 1988.

People who liked Reagan and Bush Senior have always wanted to take credit for the boom of the late ’90s. But the truth is, Clinton’s economic policies reversed Reaganomics by increasing taxes on the wealthy and cutting taxes on the working poor. Contrary to the supply-side theory, the result was an even stronger economy than during the late ’80s, with a side benefit - the federal budget started showing a surplus and inequality declined.

The conservative Republicans who returned power to the Radical Right Wing: Bush/Cheney in 2001 didn’t like the booming economy and the miracle of a budget that was actually balanced. In three years, Bush has managed to push through three successive tax cuts totaling $1.9 trillion, with 54 percent of the benefits going to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population.
In an August 2001 press conference, Bush declared that the disappearance of Clinton’s surplus was  “incredibly positive news” because it would put Congress in a “fiscal straitjacket.”

To me it looks like Reagan and Bush Senior focused on killing off the Great Society Programs of the 60’s and now Dubya is intent on killing off Roosevelt’s New Deal. They won’t be happy until American Aristocrats recoup the kind of money and power that they had at the turn of the last century.

Ciggy:
“So long as the “industry” or economic sphere in question is not to do with education, legal defense, or health care, then really the market should be QUITE free—if you work hard or invest wisely, you absolutely should enjoy more toys, bigger houses, more powerful cars, etc.”

Sure, sure, bigger everything, okay. But the Rich should still be made to pay their fair share of taxes. Taxes are the dues we should all have to pay - and the middle class shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden just because the upper class is so freakin’ greedy.

“You should not be giving your offspring special educational privileges, or be above the law, or get a better triage situation medically,”

Yeah, but they already do all that, don’t they?

“but in the creature comforts of life, be absolutely capitalist and absolutely fabulous with your glitzy, glamourous self.”

I’ll go along with that only when they start paying their fair share of taxes. And I suggest that they learn to deny their mercenary little hearts a few of those creature comforts and pull their weight with the rest of us.

“Whether wealth “trickles down” in a free market doesn’t matter.”

Yes it does, but “Trickle Down Economics” isn’t the way it happens.

“What it means is that there is opportunity for anyone to grasp that brass ring if they are bold enough to take the chance, and exceed the abilities of their competitors in doing so.”

Do you honestly believe this? To me it seems like nowa days nobody gets to grab the brass ring who hasn’t already been born with a silver spoon in the their mouths.

“For creature comforts, a Darwinian approach is valid.”

Okay. They get a bigger gravy boat, but I’d still like to see everybody get a seat at the table.

“Now, we don’t want elbows in the face of the competitors or hits below the belt or other dirty ways of trying to get ahead, and for that we need certain “socialistic” boundaries to the big game. (To that extent, a rule of law itself is “socialistic” in spirit!)”

We certainly do need some boundaries when we are talking about people with power and money. The first step would be to make them pay their fair share of taxes. The second would be to reinstate the “death tax”.
which as we all know is an inheritance tax and should be viewed as income when we are talking about the super rich.

“This is why I summarize my belief as “darwinian socialist”. ;)”

I’ve never cared for Darwin - I like Spinoza better. ;)

Adrienne,
“Where did I imply that I was lumping free market practices with ‘trickle down’ or ‘Voodoo’ economics?”

Implication is by definition not explicit. Its more of a subliminal drum-beat to try to curry favor for anti-free-market initiatives, and to put free market economics in a bad light. It’s subtle “guilt by association”, because those who embarrassingly defend Capitalism because “wealth trickles down”, or who make the mistake of claiming that the less you tax, the more revenue you bring in (which is true to a certain point but only TO that point, after which there is a decrease), those are always used as the poster-children and a launch pad for Anti-Darwinian Socialists to rail and bleat about the evils of Capitalism. While a credible critique of the Dan Quayles of the world, it’s a straw man to the rest of us.

“Starting with Reagan we had presidents who had an ideological agenda to create huge federal budget deficits in order to achieve the conservative goal of crippling government’s capacity to regulate corporate America”

That’s just untrue, and patently so. The first big deficits (as a function of GDP) came with the American Revolution and we’ve been financially dicey ever since, if you want to wax historical about it. Some time periods have been more dangerous than others for our fiscal solvency, which is why the Louisiana Purchase was harshly criticized of Jefferson, at first, because it was deficit spending which at the time seemed impossible for taxpayers to repay. It would be charming to need a French passport to visit New Orleans, but the way things turned out was also acceptable to me.

My chief objection with all aspects of our current national debt being touted as “Reagan’s fault” is that it’s, well, a lie. Reagan inherited a debt, partly from the Great Depression, partly from WWII, partly from Vietnam, and partly from LBJ’s attempts to buy people’s votes with boondoggles. Reagan was also not the first president to try to outspend the Russians. JFK’s challenge to land on the moon, just to show that we could get there before a Communist nation could, that was indeed Cold War spending, for the same strategic purpose.

Where Reagan slipped up in method, if not result, was in thinking the Cold War spending to be vital enough to also allow the left to have blank check on THEIR pet spending programs all THEY wanted, in exchange for their support in trying to outspend the Russians militarily. I think in hindsight, if there had been the necessary showdowns in Congress as happened in later administrations, with a real debate before the American public as to what masses of cash the Democrats wanted to shovel out to their constituencies in pork, versus the “guns” needed to keep Russian tanks from rolling through NYC, the later successes of Gingrich and others would indicate the soil was ripe for that kind of harvest even during Reagan’s time. He need not have capitulated to the left’s demand for deficit spending on social programs.

“credit for the boom of the late ’90s”

The joke is on those who proudly wrap themselves in that credit, because it was a FALSE boom. A bubble, which burst, not atypical for any type of Anti-Darwinian ponzi scheme.

“Bush has managed to push through three successive tax cuts totaling $1.9 trillion, with 54 percent of the benefits going to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population.”

That’s where I part company with Bush and the GOP today. The tax cuts should have been primarily middle class and small business. Kerry and Soros needed to keep paying at their previous levels, and if anything, remove some of their shelters.

“To me it looks like Reagan and Bush Senior focused on killing off the Great Society Programs of the 60’s and now Dubya is intent on killing off Roosevelt’s New Deal.”

And once a similar approach is taken with the Military Industrial Complex, we can start to rebuild and generate a reasonable matrix of public assistance for the working poor, universal health care, and an agile defense agency that works smarter instead of harder. A few more strikes of the sledge hammer and we can start to pour the concrete and rebuild. From my Darwinian Socialist POV anyway. ;)

“But the Rich should still be made to pay their fair share of taxes.”

Absolutely. I don’t disagree with that. I think a flat rate of anything above the cost of living, while mathematically “graduated” and “progressive”, is still fair. You should pay X% of anything not needed to maintain survival, regardless if you make $50K or $5 Million, “X” should remain the same.

Me:
“You should not be giving your offspring special educational privileges, or be above the law, or get a better triage situation medically,”

Adrienne:
“Yeah, but they already do all that, don’t they?”

Precisely a condition I would reform in my flavor of Socialism. In spite of my talk bolstering free market economics, the industries of education, legal defense, and health care should be “socialized”, IMO. It’s a needed levelling of the playing field.

“To me it seems like nowa days nobody gets to grab the brass ring who hasn’t already been born with a silver spoon in the their mouths.”

That’s where the reform of education, legal defense, and health care come in. Some would still be born with the silver spoon, but the brass ring would be available to all if the only thing keeping you out of a Harvard-class school were academics, for example.

“They get a bigger gravy boat, but I’d still like to see everybody get a seat at the table.”

That’s what I’m saying, too. At the expense of reducing this to a mantra: education, legal defense, and health care. Those are the components of the seat at the table from what I can see.

“The second would be to reinstate the ‘death tax’.”

Death tax is considered “a state thing” (no pun intended with ‘estate’), but I agree with the principle that inherited wealth is helpful neither to the individual doing the inheriting, nor the society at large. If a parent didn’t lavish the child with enough financial support during life, too bad when they’re dead.

What might make more sense, and also be a mitigating factor to some rough criminal enterprises out there, is if there were a national life insurance program, where wealthy estates get subsumed into it, and a life insurance benefit is paid out of it, with a qualifying factor that beneficiaries need to be children, full-time students, and dependants of the individual who passed away.

Just an initial thought on that—it may need some refinement.

Sorry Ciggy, I simply can’t agree with the first part of your post. I truly believe that Reagan’s over spending and economic policies were extremely harmful to the majority of the American people.

I wrote:
“To me it looks like Reagan and Bush Senior focused on killing off the Great Society Programs of the 60’s and now Dubya is intent on killing off Roosevelt’s New Deal.”

You wrote:
“And once a similar approach is taken with the Military Industrial Complex, we can start to rebuild and generate a reasonable matrix of public assistance for the working poor, universal health care, and an agile defense agency that works smarter instead of harder. A few more strikes of the sledge hammer and we can start to pour the concrete and rebuild. From my Darwinian Socialist POV anyway. ;)”

We need a Reasonable approach to Military spending - and we need to keep a sharp eye on those guys (remember those seven hundred dollar toilet seats?).
As for public assistance, what’s wrong with the Great Society programs and Social Security? Both seemed to be working pretty well until the rug was pulled out from under them by the Radical Right Wing of the Republican Party.
However, I do agree that we need universal heath care. We should also demand that drug companies charge reasonable rates for their products. I don’t buy the argument that they need to do so to continue to research and develop new drugs - because they are making an absolute killing (no pun intended) on us.

Me:
“”But the Rich should still be made to pay their fair share of taxes.”“
You:
“Absolutely. I don’t disagree with that. I think a flat rate of anything above the cost of living, while mathematically “graduated” and “progressive”, is still fair. You should pay X% of anything not needed to maintain survival, regardless if you make $50K or $5 Million, “X” should remain the same.”

Yeah, but people will have differences of opinion of what is needed to “maintain survival”. Those fast cars and big houses and all the trappings of that glitzy lifestyle you mentioned previously are things that could be claimed as necessary to some people, you know?

“What might make more sense, and also be a mitigating factor to some rough criminal enterprises out there, is if there were a national life insurance program, where wealthy estates get subsumed into it, and a life insurance benefit is paid out of it, with a qualifying factor that beneficiaries need to be children, full-time students, and dependants of the individual who passed away.”

What do you mean by “rough criminal enterprises” - who are you referring to?
I doubt this whole idea will go over very well with the rich - they’ll fight to the death over their inheritance money - after all, they do so with their own relatives!
I just think we need to bring back the inheritance tax - set a resonable limit on the amounts anyone can receive before they have to claim it as income and be taxed accordingly.

“Just an initial thought on that—it may need some refinement.”

I think its always has been and always will be an uphill battle trying to get Weathy People to do something for the public good. But all the battles that have been fought and won for the working class - from an eight hour working day, to Equal Opportunity, to OSHA, right up to fighting Dubya when he recently tried to take time and a half away - have all been fought by Progressives.