Freedom -vs- Fairness

11th hour notes on debt crisis

2011-07-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

Listening to Diane Rheem this morning, I jotted down these notes...

One of the commentator's said that the agreement almost worked out by Boehner and Obabma was reasonable. If offered long term-reductions - including savings in entitlement programs, but avoided short-term cuts that would damage the currently fragile economy. It raised revenue by closing some tax loop holes. However, apparently neither man managed the agreement process with a great deal of skill, allowing it to be shot down by the Republican right with an assist from the Democratic left.

There is no room in today's political landscape for reasonableness. The position offers no reward to legislators. The American people themselves are not reasonable -claiming to hate deficits and big government but not willing to cut social security/medicare/medicaid/military. They will back symbolic meaningless cuts, eliminating government subsidies to PBS for example, but nothing major.

I wonder if the situation now is analogous to what it is before the start of the Civil War, when both sides stopped talking to each other.

In The Great Disruption Paul Gilding says that the end of growth might have happened in the 2008 recession and that what we are seeing now is a stuttering aftereffect. I wonder if growth did effectively stop and if the current political posturing is a more-or-less unconscious response, an effort to preserve the status quo. Perhaps Democrats are trying to spend us back to the glory days of "full" employment and a robust GDP and Republicans are trying to cut our way back - when in truth neither approach will work.

Regarding Dogs - Inching In on B.F. Skinner

2010-12-03T11:55:00.000-08:00

I'm not ready yet to write the piece about how B.F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity supports the premise of this blog. That is turning into a big deal.

Instead I will write about dogs.

There was a TV show in the past year or so (maybe it is still showing) that features dogs competing in various events. Swimming across pools, jumping through hoops, climbing walls, etc.

I don't think I ever watched a show all the way through. Who was I was supposed to admire? The dogs? The dogs' trainers?

In human contests we admire human pluck, skill, courage, determination - the will to succeed.

But dogs don't have free will. We might admire a dog's behavior - but we know that the dog is not an autonomous creature responsible for its own acts. It is a product of its genes and its environment - its training.

Although many people treat dogs like people (dress their dogs in little outfits - even use the words freedom and dignity with respect to their canine companions) we generally regard dogs differently than people.

Skinner would say this is a mistake. Not that we should regard dogs like people, but that we should regard people like dogs. According to the once-famous psychologist from liberalism's golden era people are complex versions of dogs. We are not autonomous creatures. We have no free will to speak of. There are no ghosts in our machines. We are machines - exhibiting behavior that is the product of genetics and environment.

Skinner's point is this: just as we can breed and train better dogs we can create better people. We can create a brave new world.

Heady stuff. And to think that my friends and I at Cardinal Associates were on the front lines of this particular war.

Serenity (the movie) and Freedom

2010-11-29T05:37:00.000-08:00

(River Tam character in Serenity)

Liberalism is not very entertaining these days.

Consider the movie Serenity. It is a witty space opera featuring likable rouges struggling against an intrusive government (represented by the congenial sword wielding "Operative").

Family (in this case the crew of the beat-up old freighter spaceship Serenity) is what counts. Serenity's few rules and regulations come from Captain Mal. Freedom is immediate and in your face.

The character River Tam says this regarding government...

"People don't like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don't run, don't walk. We're in their homes and in their heads and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome."

Although I'd guess this movie appeals most to young liberals, the message is really libertarian - give me liberty or give me death stuff.

Which is my point.

Reasonableness - the sort of adult attitude required to make large groups (like governments) work does not make for exciting drama. The implementation of a liberal system with rules and regulations debated by verbose people holding conflicting points-of-view is often complex and messy. Not nearly as entertaining and straight forward as River Tam's artful moves.

Reasonable, well meaning people are among the villains in Serenity.

Back in the old days when minorities were being persecuted and telegenic characters like Martin Luther King and John Kennedy were proclaiming dreams and asking us what we could do for our country, liberals might have had the dramatic advantage. But not so today I think. The tea-party folks, the libertarians - they've got the drama now. The best we've got are Barney Frank and Charlie Rangel.

Einstein and Skinner - Scary Points of View

2010-11-25T07:27:00.000-08:00

I've been re-reading B.F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity and plan to post something about how that relates to the Freedom -vs- Fairness premise of this blog.

However, while pursuing that bit of grandeur I stumbled onto other sidebar grandiosity.

In Skinner's extreme form of behaviorism the objective utility of a person's emotions - the interior state is questioned. Feelings are meaningful for those who experience the feelings, for everybody else only behavior matters. (Further, freedom is a costly illusion and dignity a dangerous myth. Or something like that. I am not through re-reading the book.)

My point now - the reason I drag in poor old Albert, is point-of-view. Both Skinner and Einstein propose painful alterations in our point-of-view. Both minimize the personal and subjective in favor of the impersonal and objective.

Both scare the shit out of people - including I suppose yours truly (although I might be beyond freedom and dignity I am not beyond fear).

Einstein says that at the extremes of experience, when speeds approach the speed-of-light, different observers can look at the same phenomena and see something different. Measurements of length, mass and speed vary depending on the speed of the observer relative to the observed. Regarding these matters, there is no universal truth - except for the speed of light itself (which does not change and remains the universal truth).

Although pretty abstract stuff, people seem to get the point. Our personal experience doesn't matter much in the larger universe. That's the implication of Skinner and Einstein - and all the others who simultaneously expand our point-of-view to the infinite while shrinking it to nothing.

It's like an unwelcome insight into death (or God - for those so inclined).

Scary shit indeed.

Touching Junk - Krauthammer on Conservative Rage

2010-11-20T05:08:00.000-08:00

When I first read Charles Krauthammer's column Don't Touch My Junk I thought it was the best statement of conservative rage and frustration I'd seen. I figured that more-or-less liberals like me who want to understand what makes "late-life libertarians" (Krauthammer's phrase) and tea people tick ought to study this piece.

I am not so sure now.

Krauthammer's column does explicate conservative rage. The title refers to a warning issued by a dude who is about to have his private "junk" patted down at an airport checkin. Kaufman sees this as a rallying cry for all those who have had enough of government intrusion - people who are driven crazy by liberal moral mandates (in this case to avoid racial profiling because it might offend minorities).

Krauthammer gleefully points out insane examples of this particular bit of correctness - such as patting down old people and children and scanning pilots for weapons when they are about to get behind the controls of the biggest weapon of all, an airplane.

He seems to have nailed the issue.

But after a second reading one notes that Krauthammer, clever writer that he is, has neatly avoided touching some junk.

He doesn't discuss the real threat that these security measures are designed to alleviate. He doesn't acknowledge that all large organizations become bureaucratic and any bureaucracy will encounter situations where the rules don't apply - when the organization seems insane. He doesn't talk about the extremes and excesses of profiling - where those rules don't make sense. He doesn't mention that Israel, where profiling is said to work, is a special case.

In short, Krauthammer makes no attempt to be fair or balanced. He is a witty hack with an agenda - not interested in truth, but in promoting a point-of-view - protecting his junk.

Hope -vs- Fear At The City Council Meeting

2010-11-09T05:17:00.000-08:00

I joined several hundred people last night at the Mount Holly City Council meeting. Faltering old folks, wiggling kids, everybody in between squeezed into the new City Hall to see what would happen with the proposed Catawba River Greenway project. There was a lot of handshaking and greeting, much hugging. Southern and Northern accents melted into an All American pie (stew?) of voices. There were even Boy Scouts carrying flags.

Up for a vote was the Memo of Understanding (MOU) that would allow the city to be the legal entity acquiring easements for Greenway land. This is the next major step in the process; without it the project cannot proceed.

(The MOU does not commit the city to any expenditures; design and construction money comes from the Mount Holly Economic Development Foundation. Founded seven years ago, the main, but not only, purpose of the Foundation has been to promote and fund the Greenway. So far it has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and involved a number of citizens in volunteer efforts. A majority of us at the meeting last night are Foundation members).

At least 10 people (I lost count) spoke in front of the Council. Everybody was very eager, very polite.

Most urged passage of the MOU. Some cited health benefits from having a nearby greenway. Some cited economic benefits, noting that greenways in other places have promoted economic development. A few people claimed that they had moved to Mount Holly because a greenway was in the works. A number of people looked forward to future generations.

Several spoke against the Greenway. A few (including two council members) were concerned by the maintenance expenses that the city would have to assume once the Foundation builds the Greenway. One couple noted that future expansions of the Greenway would pass through their neighborhood and were concerned about the possibility of crime. A long-haired fellow (a real Libertarian?) with a gentle voice indicated that he and his family had moved from Charlotte to get away from crowds, that they had lived near the McAlpine Greenway and didn't like it.

The underlying theme of the discussion - maybe it's always the theme of such discussions was hope versus fear.

Those in favor of the Greenway hoped for something good and positive; those opposed feared something bad and negative.

In the end hope won out, eight to one.

Superior Republican Narratives?

2010-10-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

(A political narrative starts with a message, which implies a story, which frames a debate - all of which falls under a Big Idea.)

In my previous post on political narratives, I noted that...

Republicans are also good at understanding that the debate being framed by the narrative is not a contest of ideas but of symbols and emotions - shadow wars commanded by ghostly generals (who march out of old stories that neither die nor fade away). Democrats sometimes don't understand this and end up sputtering and sounding phony and foolish.

In my next (this) post I planned to elaborate on why Republicans are so good at the symbolism/innuendo game.

It does not seem so simple now - or maybe it is simply obvious . (Sounds like a liberal.)

My initial observation was prompted by Republican ads showing Democratic Congressmen Larry Kissel and John Spratt alongside Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. I was impressed by how a viewer could use the symbolism of Pelosi and Obama to construct his/her own backstory.

For example...

"Pelosi is the ball-busting liberated woman who uses government to tell us what to do and take away our precious freedoms. And Kissel and Spratt are right with her."

"Obama is the grinning slick talking black man with the Muslim name who would use socialist style government to take away our previous freedoms. And Kissel and Spratt are right with him."

(In this Republican narrative, the Big Idea is always the same - "Our precious freedoms are in peril.")

But since that initial observation I have noted that Democrats have also been offering messages based on emotional symbolism (which should have come as no surprise to me). For example, Democrats have been running ads accusing Republican Mick Mulvaney of wanting to criminalize social security. Several ads show distressed old people. I think one even pictures an old person in jail.

In these ads the Democrats play on the symbolic value of social security and threatened old people. The story - not even implied but stated explicitly is that Mulvaney wants to take away social security and harm old people. The Big Idea is Fairness. Mulvaney is not being fair to old people.

So Republicans aren't the only ones employing symbolism and do-it-yourself back stories. But the question still remains if they are better at it? And if so - is it because of who they are or what they are (or who or what Democrats are)?

This is an empirical question and of course I don't have the answer. That's my problem. I'm just an old blogger with a few ideas - and fewer facts.

However, some examples (facts!) do come to mind.

First I recall some really awful efforts by Democrats to tap into subconscious space. There was Michael Dukakis looking silly riding around in that tank (trying I suppose to associate himself with macho tank symbolism). And there was poor John Kerry saluting with a sickly grin at the Democratic Convention as he "reported for duty". And Howard Dean's painful yell of enthusiasm - the scream that cost him the nomination.

All these guys seem phony, contrived - unauthentic. Any political narratives of which their actions were a part would not have been very effective.

(All really successful, e.g., two-term, presidential politicians and the narratives they personify seem to have a certain internal consistency, no matter how venal or twisted their external expression. Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Regan, Clinton, the most recent Bush - maybe Kennedy if he had lived.)

As I have noted in a previous post, Democrats seem consumed with irony and cool. Some of us have trouble knowing what we believe. (Not a problem for all of us - see the powerful, unambiguous liberal writing of George Graham).

Republicans seem better able to avoid obfuscating complexity and to create authentic-sounding narratives based on symbolism and innuendo. Republicans own nearly all the effective code words (or images) which serve as the building blocks for these narratives. Here are some (with my understanding of what the phrases mean to Republicans ):

Government (always too big)

Family values (always imperiled)

American people (never understood by the other side)

Washington bureaucracy (evil - big business bureaucracies OK)

Bailouts (they cost more than they were worth)

Taxes (always hard earned, always too high, always restricting free enterprise)

Free enterprise (the answer to everything - always threatened)

Socialism (where we are headed)

Deficit (strangling growth, threatening bankruptcy)

Freedom (underlying all other concerns - always threatened)

States rights (an old code word once used to signify the right of southern states to maintain segregation and now used to signify the rights of states to restrict abortion or whatever)

The list goes on.

But this pretty much takes me back to the starting point of my post.

Are Republicans better at the code word, symbolism game? Maybe so.

Why?

I'm guessing - but I think that Republicans believe more readily than Democrats. Ignoring doubt and other such existential issues, Republicans find it easier to accept the simple answers provided by symbolic code words. Certainty itself might be a bigger deal to Republicans. Citing a reference in another post...

Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

Fear and aggression
Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
Uncertainty avoidance
Need for cognitive closure
Terror management

Of course, all these attributes occur in a continuum. And who is to say, maybe Republicans are not only to the right but right (or not - after all I am a liberal).

Understanding Political Narratives

2010-10-23T04:57:00.000-07:00

This is a two-post piece. In the first post, I try to understand political narratives - which turns out to be difficult, like making yourself see the invisible elephant in the corner of the room, even after it has deposited a steaming pile of shit. In the second post I wonder why conservative narratives seem to work so well.

Background...

Hardly a day - a news cycle - goes by without some reference to political narratives. It's an idea de jour.

In a recent column conservative Charles Krauthammer talks about "... an increasingly desperate attempt to develop a narrative for the coming Democratic collapse". (Although I don't agree with his politics Krauthammer sometimes can be funny.)

The other night when being interviewed by Margaret Warner on the News Hour, special envoy to Pakistan Richard Holbrooke complained that "...people so into the narrative you are hearing" that they don't appreciate how much the US and the Pakistanis work together (or words to that effect).

According to economist and political writer David Boyle, a political narrative has these attributes...

It implies a story

It frames the debate

It implies a big idea

It explains the big ideas

Rephrasing in my own words, a narrative is a multi-layered package...

First there is the message itself (what is said and shown). An example is the Republican ad featuring a viciously smiling Nancy Pelosi and a befuddled looking Barak Obama and a nasal background voice saying "Larry Kissel supports the failed policies of Nancy Pelosi and Barak Obama".

Behind the message is the story (otherwise the message would be just a slogan).

As Boyle says, the story is implied, not explicit. As I say, the message's emotion-laden words and pictures suggest the story without having to tell it. The recipient gets to tell his/her own version (e.g., the personal reasons why someone might hate Nancy Pelosi ). The story can be elaborate or simple (one's Nancy Pelosi story could include references to San Francisco, homosexuals, family values - or simply be a riff on ball-busters). That's what Republicans are so good at - finding messages that suggest much and say little. (Offered in admiration - more in the second post.)

Finally there are the big ideas that underly the narrative - according to Boyle both implied and explained. No matter how faint, how obscured by lesser ideas of fear and hatred, the big ideas are there. If I am right in the premise of this blog, there are two big ideas. For Republicans it's the love and pursuit of freedom. For Democrats it's fairness. Everybody should be fair to everybody - or, as that famous liberal Rodney King once said, "Can we all get along?"

The next post will examine why Republican narratives are so effective.

Note: Although it should be obvious that my comments regarding Nancy Pelosi are those of a hypothetical Pelosi-hating Republican - not me - I will state that I like Nancy Pelosi and think she has done well in a very difficult job.

Another Slant on Conservatives

2010-10-07T03:57:00.000-07:00

Robert (who follows this blog) sent me a link to a recent study regarding the psychology of conservatives. The work was done by researchers from Berkeley (and other schools) so a certain liberal bias might be assumed (although the authors of the study deny it). There is no corresponding study of liberal psychology. Apparently there is less information about liberals. However, a lot of what the article says rings true to me, especially the part about conservatives being fearful and the unable to tolerate ambiguity.

(I recall lunch-time walks with fellow writer Steve - watching the ladies of Ballantyne and discussing politics. We agreed that the culture wars are largely between those who believe - or need to believe, and those who don't - or can't. We also agreed that the trophy wives of Ballantyne are a fit bunch indeed.)

I am not sure how this jibes with the freedom -vs- fairness theory proposed in this blog. Possibly the unfettered freedom to pursue your own interest is simpler than the need to be fair to others as well as yourself. Perhaps ambiguity is inevitable when you consider the needs of others - when you "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" ... or something like that. Maybe relativism happens when fairness gets spread around - sort of like a social disease.

The simpler time envisioned by Regan might have when people (in power) had the freedom to do what they wanted without too much regard to anyone else.

(Note regarding my conservative friends: They are good people; all of them are fair to me and to others they know personally. I think it is the abstract sort of "fairness" espoused by liberals that gives them trouble, coming off as phony and bloodless - and expensive. )

Here is an excerpt from the Berkeley News article and a link to the complete article...

Researchers help define what makes a political conservative

By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 22 July 2003 (revised 7/25/03)

BERKELEY – Politically conservative agendas may range from supporting the Vietnam War to upholding traditional moral and religious values to opposing welfare. But are there consistent underlying motivations?

Fear and aggression
Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
Uncertainty avoidance
Need for cognitive closure
Terror management

"From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," the researchers wrote in an article, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin.

Link to complete article

And a previous post by me on the psychology of conservatives and liberals...

In a Jan 13, 2008 article in the NY Times, Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychology professor, identified fairness as one of our inherited moral "spheres". The others are harm, group loyalty, authority, and purity. In the article he writes...

The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.

Arguing Taxes With Rich Friends

2010-09-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

I've got a few friends who are truly rich, some who are simply well off, and several who struggle to live well but sympathize with the plight of the affluent. Most would describe themselves as conservative.

I am fond of all these people, having known some for over 50 years. Our personal connections outweigh our political differences.

Yet I need to be able to look each of them in the eye and argue that they need to pay more taxes, that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy need to expire. They will hate that - will not be too crazy about me.

There are two issues - fairness and practicality.

Fairness

My friends would argue (I think - we have never discussed the issue) that it is unfair that they already pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than other people - than me for instance. They would argue that we all started out with the same advantages and that they should not be penalized because they made more of their opportunities. They would argue (again, I'm guessing) that their rights as individuals should balance their obligations as citizens - as members of society. Their individual obligation is to make as much money as possible. Others, through the jobs created by my friends' enterprises or through the high taxes they already pay, will profit in turn.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I must note that most of my jobs have been provided by rich entrepreneurs - people willing to risk it all for crazy dreams. I have seen the trickle down business model work - I have been trickled on.)

While respecting everything my rich friends have done, I would counter that they did not start out on an empty playing field. They did not do it all on their own. The rest of us - society - provided the field, the games and the other players (competitors and consumers) . Without us the rich could not get rich. We don't charge a fee for playing the capitalist game. But we do expect the winners to return a portion of their gains back to us - the House. That only seems fair.

(There is also the issue of equality - whether it is fair that a few individuals, playing on a field provided by everybody, should accumulate vast wealth while others suffer. I won't get into that. Anyway, the whole fairness thing smacks of ethics and morality. Either you get it or you don't.)

Practicality

Pointing to my disclosure above about how I have been trickled on, my conservative friends might turn the argument around and note that graduated taxes (that's what we are talking about) are simply impractical - counter productive. They might claim, using my experience as an example, that the most efficient way to get more money into the hands of more people is to turn the entrepreneurs loose. Reduce taxes for the rich and the rich will oblige by creating more jobs and opportunity (not out of a sense of noblesse oblige but simply because that's what happens when they do what they do).

I agree. But I don't think a 3 or 4 percent change in tax rates for the wealthy will alter anything. Unless the tax burden becomes really onerous, the crazy entrepreneurs are going to continue to do what they do. They can't help themselves. It's what they love. As I recall there were just as many - if not more - companies and jobs being created in the Clinton era before the Bush tax cuts went into effect.

But there are other practical considerations.

Given the things that government is doing (whether they need doing is another issue) equally distributed taxes might not work. The middle and lower classes might not have the resources to pay their "fair" share. The money has to come from those who are better off.

Another practical consideration - although I can't prove it, is that the rich are going to get the money anyway. The middle and lower classes - us, tend to spend most of what we earn. It takes everything we make to get by. Where does that money go? For food, houses, cars, clothes, gadgets - stuff made and sold by the rich. Of course in our flat world not all the rich are in the US. But many are. So, tax cuts to the lower and middle classes will eventually end up in the pockets of the rich - like chickens coming home to roost, like salmon swimming up stream to spawn.

So there. Go ahead and pay your taxes. It is the right thing to do. And you are going to get all the money anyway.

Aside...

Of course, none of my arguments are going to make any difference, change any minds. Maybe my arguments are wrong. Or maybe there is something deeper going on in the conservative psyche.

I know that my friends really hate taxes. Part of it is the freedom thing. They hate being told what to do and taxation means that somebody else is deciding how their money should be spent.

Also there is sense that some people are getting something for nothing - that my friend's hard earned tax dollars are being used to subsidize lazy shiftless bums - people who don't work hard. My friends hate lazy shiftless bums almost as much as they hate taxes.

And there is another thing - even harder to pin down. My conservative friends seem really attached to their stuff and seem very suspicious that people (liberals, lazy shiftless bums) are out to get their stuff. My friends got their stuff by sacrifice, hard work, brains (and they might admit, by luck) and they will be damned if anybody is going to take it from them.

Why Are Liberals So Ineffectual?

2010-08-31T14:30:00.000-07:00

(Silly looking liberal)

In a recent post to Clusterf**k Nation, James Howard Kunstler concludes with this question...

The bigger mystery in all this -- if I may perhaps engage in some nostalgia of my own -- is: what happened to reasonable, rational, educated people of purpose in this country to drive them into such burrow of cowardice that they can't speak the truth, or act decisively, or even defend themselves against such a host of vicious morons in a time of troubles?

I think I know the answer. It comes in two parts.

Soul disease...

As I noted in a previous post...

The legacy of the 60's is a syndrome of soul diseases - affecting the left and the right.

For the left it is a bad case of irony and absurdity, leaving the victims too cool to admit any civic or moral passion. Capable of seeing all points of view we can't get too invested in any particular point of view. We stumble over words like evil - have trouble with good and bad. No longer sure about God, we sound phony - to ourselves and others - when we try to use moral language. We have lost our language. We sputter and ramble. In seeking authenticity and self we lost both.

Continuing the above thought... when we try to counter conservatives by displaying all-American authenticity, we simply look silly. In the previous post I told about an incident in the first grade when bully Phil ridiculed me because I had rolled my sleeves up over tiny biceps, trying to look tough. I looked silly. Something like that happened to Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis when he rode around in a tank. He looked silly. John Kerry looked silly when he accepted the Democratic presidential nomination by saluting and announcing that he was "reporting for duty". He also looked silly in his camo hunting garb. (Which is ironic because Kerry had been in war and had actually shot people as opposed to George Bush - who still managed to look almost natural in his codpiece flight suit on the deck of the "mission accomplished" aircraft carrier.)

Fear...

Fear is the other reason liberals (who value fairness above all else) come off poorly in confrontations with conservatives (who value freedom most).

When the crazy passionate conservative gets in our face, we vacillate between cringing diffidence and sputtering rage. Burdened by empathy, reasonableness - and maybe genetics or upbringing, we have trouble getting in touch with the clarifying anger that burns away fear. (In Robert Zemeckis' movie Back to the Future, George McFly suffers at the hands of bully Biff Tannen until a moment of clarifying anger sets him free - one of those universal themes that un-ironic Zemeckis is not afraid to exploit.)

It is fear of unrestrained freedom that makes liberals liberals. We look to government-enforced fairness because we are afraid that in a completely free society with no rules most people will end up dominated by a few rich and powerful individuals. We fear that the disparity between rich and poor will ultimately reduce most people to serfdom in a new feudalism.

Liberals identify with the downtrodden and dispossessed (even though we might not like their company) - because we can see ourselves going there. Freedom-loving conservatives - even if they are downtrodden and dispossessed identify with the rich and powerful. (Which might explain why poor southern boys died in droves in the civil war to defend a way of life that mainly benefited the rich and powerful.)

There are no Martin Luther King's anymore - maybe that's not possible in this media culture. Just Barney Fife's and George McFly's (although there is Barney Frank, a liberal obviously in touch with his anger) . Barak Obama looked promising for a while then became listless and uninvolved - although lately he seems to have become a happier warrior. (The media might give him a new narrative.)

Anyway, Mr. Kunstler, that's what I think is wrong with people like you and me. We are eaten up with irony and fear.

Is Glenn Beck Evil?

2010-08-28T06:26:00.001-07:00

Do I hate Glenn Beck because he is evil or is he evil because I hate him?

The other night at the Thinking Men meeting Bruce seemed shocked when I said I hate Beck which naturally set me off on an exaggerated riff about how I would express that hatred. (How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.) I shut up when everybody started to look at me funny.

If I hate Beck because he is evil then there must be some intrinsic evil of which he is guilty. Leigh, with that quick confidence some women have, said, "Yes he is evil because he is a hate monger. He inspires people to hate one another. He promotes hatred for his own gain."

I understand that - like the Hutus and Tutsis were inspired in Rwanda. Who was more evil - the people who wielded the machetes or the propaganda broadcasters who egged them on? Certainly Beck and Limbaugh and his crowd are evil like that.

But I am not sure that explains my hatred.

This morning thinking about Beck and Palin and Limbaugh I remembered Phil, a bully from grammar school and Sheba the pit bull who used to live next door. Both are dead now. I feel worse about Sheba.

One day at recess in the first grade I rolled my sleeves up over tiny biceps because I thought it made me look like my father. Phil sneered "Who do you think you are, a tough guy?" Afraid, I tried to come up with a rational answer to his taunt. (A typical liberal response - as I said in another post, like bringing a knife to a gunfight.)

A few years ago, Sheba got out. Nobody was home next door and I managed to herd her back into her yard. Then she turned on me. Her snarling mouth was like a portal to hell. Full of fear and rage I screamed at her to get back - knowing that I would find some way to choke her even if she was killing me. She did not stop but slowed down enough for me to retreat from the yard.

I never really hated Sheba but I did hate Phil. When Phil asked if I was a tough guy he neatly slipped into my weakness. Of course I was pretending to be a tough guy. Of course I knew that I wasn't tough, was nowhere close. He opened me up, caused more pain than if he had cut me with a knife. Sheba took no pleasure from my discomfort. Phil did.

Is that evil? Was it evil when Limbaugh mocked Michael J Fox's palsy? Is it evil when Beck and Palin and all the rest say distorted hurtful things?

Yeah, I think so. That's why I hate them. But, of course that's what they want. Because if I hate them then they own me.

Evils of the Day

2010-08-28T02:42:00.000-07:00

This first appeared in my blog Tom's Topical Topics. But it belongs here.

A rambling rant prompted by Ill Fares The Land by Tony Judt - our next book club selection.

We live in a gray time - maybe an evil time - if a liberal can use moral language (if it doesn't seem phony).

Our civic landscape lies in shadows, darkened by the passage of slow-motion black swans.

(A slow motion black swan is an event that takes place so gradually that the present seems inevitable and the past seems impossible. Remember offices with secretaries? Remember when everybody smoked? Remember before the age of irony - before the 60's - when liberals did not second guess their own idealism? Remember when jobs in America were not threatened by workers in China? Remember when someone pumped your gas?)

The birds I have in mind are the 60's and the flat world. They still circle.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

(from Yeats' The Second Coming)

Almost impossible to remember but 30 years ago, we didn't think the way we do now.

Society (a voting majority anyway) used to think that righting wrong and doing good were important. (Remember when we at least paid lip service to those quaint notions?) Teddy Roosevelt busted trusts. Franklin Roosevelt developed the New Deal (and won WWII). Dwight Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System. John Kennedy started the space program and the Great Society. Lyndon Johnson made the Great Society happen. Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford expanded it.

Today, it is all about the market - market models, market metaphors, market efficiencies. The main purpose of society is to facilitate the creation of wealth. Anything (i.e, government) that restricts the freedom of individuals to make money is bad - inefficient. Activities are judged on the basis of economic efficiency.

We are material boys and girls.

(Paradoxically, those who would reduce the role of government in economic matters are most likely to use government to restrict individual freedoms in social matters - to restrict abortions, gay marriage, the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero, etc.)

The individual is paramount; individual accomplishment and competition are revered. We love entrepreneurs, generals, sports heroes, and movie stars. (Of course we always have but it seems different now.)

We love the rich and blame the poor for being poor (even when we are poor). We are freedom lovers.

Collective accomplishment and cooperation are regarded as products of an inefficient process (mostly by government and business bureaucracies) - to be tolerated where necessary - to be eliminated where possible.

Gordon Gekko was right; greed is good - greed works. We curtail greed grudgingly or not at all. When we hear that the CEO of WalMart earns 900 times the average wage of his employees we shrug. But we squirm at the notion of progressive taxation - we call it socialism.

We have no sense of moral outrage - at least no language to express it.

We (liberals) have brought a knife to a gun fight. They (the conservatives) shoot us to pieces.

How did this happen? Judt spends a lot of time talking about that in his book.

I think it was the two slow motion black swans.

The 60's - flap.

A time of the self - self awareness, self reflection, self improvement, self seeking. It started out idealistic. Self-absorbed children out to save the world - if the world would only listen - which it surely would if you gave it a flower - and a toke. But the assassinations happened. Vietnam happened. Hippies started to blow up things and carry knives. Long haired Charlie Manson butchered lovely Sharon Tate. The Great Society got passed but so what? The old guys did that - the establishment. All that belongs to history. Not our thing.

Dying on the floor of the Democratic Convention in the dark heart of 1968, Kurtz did not whisper, "the horror, the horror."

He grinned, "the irony, the irony."

The legacy of the 60's is a syndrome of soul diseases - affecting the left and the right.

For the left it is a bad case of irony and absurdity, leaving the victims too cool to admit any civic or moral passion. Capable of seeing all points of view we can't get too invested in any particular point of view. We stumble over words like evil - have trouble with good and bad. No longer sure about God, we sound phony - to ourselves and others - when we try to use moral language. We have lost our language. We sputter and ramble. In seeking authenticity and self we lost both.

For the right it is greed. Of course, greed has always been there, a variation on self-absorption. Greed even has a philosophical basis in the writings of Milton Friedman and other conservative economists. But in the 60's greed acquired an emotional foundation. For the right, the freedom to do your own thing became the freedom to make money - with as little interference as possible.

The 60's provided the emotional context for the past 30 years.

The economic context was provided by a world gone flat - flap flap.

The term was coined by Thomas Friedman in his book The Flat World. Friedman says that the world has become flat as a result of globalization. Barriers between trade and communication have come down (been flattened). The playing field on which people, companies, and countries compete and play has been leveled. The world is no longer large and round; it is a small and flat. The people on the playing field are just as likely to be brown and Eastern as they are to be white and Western.

Ten forces, some social (such as the falling of the Berlin Wall) and some technical (such as the rise of Internet and broadband communication) flattened the world. These forces converged with business and political developments to create what Friedman calls Globalization 3.0.

Not all people and countries profit (or suffer) equally.

Those who are sick, old, ignorant, and less agile are likely to get squished in the grand flattening. People who are adaptable, smart, and well educated might prosper.

But nobody is assured of a free ride. We fear for our children, grand-children. Will they be among the favored few?

Virtually every person on the planet is in competition with everybody else - if not directly then indirectly. Darwinian rules squeeze the last bit of efficiency out of every transaction, every process. That is why you pump your own gas, pay at the pump, dispense your own soda, check out your own goods at a self service register. That is why we talk to software over the phone, interact with systems over the Internet. (In banking a teller transaction costs the bank much more than an ATM transaction which costs much more than a transaction conducted over the Internet. Guess how the bank feels about its tellers? Guess how the tellers feel about their future?)

If we do not live in a evil time we do live in an anxious time. Gray creeping anxiety that has left us deaf, dumb, and mute.

Emergence

2010-07-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

(Warning - this article represents 120% of what I know on the subject of emergence.)

"Emergence" is what happens when individual components acting according to local rules generate complex systems - when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts - when order arises from within rather than without.

The behavior of flocks of birds and schools of fish, the evolution of order in animate and inanimate systems, the operation of the stock market - all are said to be examples of emergence. Matter might be an emergent property of sub-atomic things following the rules of quantum mechanics. Mind might be an emergent property of a connected neurons - maybe of networks. Life might be an emergent property of chemistry. (I personally think that Traffic - the group behavior of vehicles operated by drivers following rules they might not even be aware of - is an emergent system.)

Although I have never heard liberals and conservatives argue this way (probably just my ignorance) I think emergence relates to their differences, but in odd and contradictory ways.

Conservatives seem to be talking about emergence when they argue against using centralized authority (order from without) to solve complex problems. They say that the problems are best handled locally, by the individuals involved (order from within). The basic premise of the free market is that individuals following their selfish interests (simple rules) are the most efficient managers of wealth .

Most liberals do not trust individuals left totally on their own and would apply a judicious amount of outside order. Politically anyway, liberals might be emergence-unfriendly.

The situation is somewhat reversed when it comes to religion and God. Although the history of western religion in general and protestantism in particular shows a movement away from central authority and toward personal revelation the trend only goes so far. Ultimately, for the religious conservative (maybe for all religious people) order still flows from God. God sits outside and looks in (as well as inside looking out? - I don't know). I expect that many religious people would have a problem with the idea that life is an emergent property of chemistry.

For others (New Agers, old hippies?) God has moved. God (if the term still makes any sense in this context) lives in the rules that govern the operation of the parts of the universe. God is everywhere. Or maybe God is The emergent property of the universe - the ultimate Whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Neat.

Asides...

How does all this relate to the freedom -vs- fairness premise of this blog? Well obviously you've got to have freedom for an emergent system to work. My people, liberals, would interject outside controls in the name of fairness. We believe that the universe, left totally on its own - without our help - is profoundly unfair.

Although I usually get it wrong when I try to anticipate my friend Joe, I'm guessing that he will say the theory of emergence is reductionist. If he does, then I will answer that emergence does not "reduce" the whole to its parts but explains how the whole rises above the sum of its parts.

Politically I'd guess that the penultimate expression of emergence is libertarianism which would do away with most central authority. The ultimate expression is anarchy which would do away with all central authority - expecting order to arise out of the ensuing chaos.

The two interpretations of the second amendment right to bear arms can be viewed from the standpoint of emergence. The politically conservative, emergence-friendly view tends to ignore the part about a "well regulated militia". Control over firearms is extended to the individual - resulting in an armed citizenry with positive emergent properties (self-reliance, self-defense) arising therefrom. My people tend to see the emergent properties in a more negative light (bunches of loons running around with guns looking for excuses to defend themselves and shoot people). We tend to take the "well regulated militia" part seriously.

Wrinkle In Freedom -vs- Fairness Theory?

2010-06-11T03:32:00.000-07:00

(Diane Rehm - whose interview with James T. Patterson prompted this)

I have been aware of this wrinkle since I first wrote about the Freedom -vs- Fairness theory as a way of explaining core differences between liberals and conservatives. I regarded it as an aberration - in scientific terms, something like a statistical anomaly, to be conveniently ignored. But recently while listening to Diane Rehm on my way to meet Yudi and the others at Thursday Chinese lunch I was reminded again.

Diane was interviewing James T Patterson who has written a book called "Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America’s Struggle over Black Family Life—from LBJ to Obama".

The details of the interview and the book are not important here. The relevant point is Patterson's claim that ignorant poor people (black and white) who freely pursue all their impulses (especially the freedom to procreate) are at least partly responsible for the "decline of the American family".

(To be clear I don't think that all poor people are irresponsible, or that uneducated people can't be wise. I have known - and been related to - many responsible poor people and have known wise people who never read a book.)

My question is this - is the sort of freedom that Patterson refers to - the freedom to do whatever you feel like doing without regard to consequences the same as the conservative ideal of freedom I've been talking about in this blog?

Are there two kinds of freedom? (Is there really an anomaly in my theory?)

The conservatives I know would say yes - that the difference is personal responsibility. Their freedom is tempered by responsibility. The do your own thing 60's style freedom of sex, drug, and rock-n-roll is not.

I agree that most of my conservative friends are good responsible people. But so are most of my middle class, middle age (and older) liberal friends. We are all a solid, stable bunch. Our differences are not so much in how we regard our own freedom but the freedom of others - where we stand on the issue of control.

Example - I just saw a kid skateboard down the street in front of the coffee shop where I sit writing this. Probably both old liberals and old conservatives would enjoy seeing a friendly neighborhood cop get the kid off the street - maybe scare him a little bit. We would likely agree that the kid's freedom needs to be regulated.

But what about the freedom of the business executive, say the CEO of BP? How does that compare with the kid's freedom.? My conservative friends would probably regard the executive's freedom differently.

I wonder.

Both the kid and the executive (the BP executive anyway) pursue their own self-interest without much regard for other people. Both cut corners; both take risks. (Both might be likable people - that's not the issue.)

Of course there are differences. The skateboarder at best can only knock down a few old people. The business person can damage whole regions The business person moves in better circles, has better access to power and influence. The business person is probably more articulate and able to construct a better narrative justifying his or her actions.

(And yes, the business person creates jobs and fosters innovation. Most of my career these crazy risk takers paid my salary. I learned to admire and respect them. I also have a sneaking admiration for the kid with enough gall to ride his slate board down the middle of the street. If he survives he might end up running a business, getting rich, becoming a benefactor for those less fortunate - maybe even becoming a writer.)

It is the matter of control where I differ with my conservative friends. They would probably say that the executive, as an adult with free-will, should be minimally constrained. Government (the not-so-friendly neighborhood cop) should stay out of it. Let market forces and personal responsibility take care of the problem.

I say that the freedom of the business person is the freedom of the skateboarder dressed up in a suit. I further claim that many (well some?) business people can exercise no more self- control than the skateboarder. Both are prisoners of their own impulses and must be regulated (minimally, carefully) for their good and the good of others. As the following article suggests, free-will is often not.

I conclude that there is really no wrinkle in my theory of freedom -vs- fairness - that there is only one kind of freedom.

Free Will

2010-04-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

("Big Chicken" - one of the Marietta sights viewed by conservative Bob and Liberal Tom while riding around waiting for Liberal Bill to become available. Chicken has nothing to do with free will - or the lack of it.)

It took almost 24 hours for the talk to get political and even then it wasn't so bad. The three of us were killing time waiting to go out for dinner, sitting in the living room that had been so elegantly decorated by Bill's wife. (Bill and Bob's wives died in November 09; my wife died in December.)

I don't remember exactly what points were made. Not wishing to be misunderstood, but not wanting a fight either, we all joked about our positions. At one point I noted that Bill and I, as more-or-less liberals were fairness guys, and that Bob, the conservative, was a freedom guy. I conceded that fairness guys, in the pursuit of our goals would step on the toes of freedom guys. Bob indicated that fairness was fine but that it ought to be earned (through the exercise of freedom). Then we went out to eat and the next day Bob and I left Marietta and drove back to Charlotte.

Now, thinking about the conversation, it occurs to me that we came close to discussing what I consider a key corollary to the freedom -vs- fairness theory - that is free will. Conservatives tend to act as if people have free will; liberals sometimes don't. For conservatives free will is necessary in order for freedom to work. People need free will to make choices. For liberals it appears that many people are unable (not free) to make the right choices and that government enforced fairness is sometimes necessary.

Consider this example (admittedly a bit extreme - slanted to make my position look better).

A boy grows up in the projects with an absent father and a crack-addicted mother. The boy has never been touched with love and kindness, never held a book until he was five years old. His real "family" is his gang.

Both liberals and conservatives would likely agree on these basic facts. But the attitudes would be different.

A liberal would certainly note the extenuating circumstances in the boy's background, being careful to say "Understand, I am offering explanations here not excuses." The liberal might propose government programs to help the kid. If asked specifically in these terms, the secular liberal would probably say (after convoluted reasoning) the boy is not really free.

Some conservatives (I'm guessing) might say, "Yeah the kid had it tough but so what? Lots of people have had it tough and managed to get by. Why should I help him? I don't ask for help. I made it on own and..." (if he is a rich conservative) "have done quite well thank you."

If the conservative is a Christian he/she might add that God made the boy free - that ultimately the boy is responsible for his own fate (see below for responsibility -vs- free will aside). When asked about the bad things that happened before the boy was old enough to control his own destiny the Christian might note that "God works in mysterious ways" or that "God does not give us burdens greater than we can carry". For the Christian, to deny free-will is to deny God - or at least to saddle God with the burden of being responsible for the evil caused by un-free people.

If the conservative is compassionate (or if the Christian is liberal) he/she might also say that "Yes, even though the boy is responsible for his own fate, he could certainly use some help that I as a compassionate/loving person am morally obligated to provide."

I think these same conservative/liberal positions hold in even less extreme examples.

In Marietta, what prompted the politics was a discussion of the recent housing crisis. Bob's explanation is that it was started - or at least helped along - by social programs pushed by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. In the interest of fairness these liberal legislators (according to Bob) forced financial institutions to make loans to unqualified people. It was the failure of these loans that brought down the house of cards.

Even a liberal could agree with some of this. The difference - at least one difference, would be whom to blame.

Bob blames Dodd and Frank, and the people who got the bad loans. (Right Bob?) He would argue that all of them had the freedom to choose otherwise. They were part of the problem and should pay part of the price. And furthermore it would be unfair to the prudent people who only borrowed what they could pay back to bail out the imprudent borrowers.

Liberal positions, as always, seem more complex. Some of us would argue that even if the imprudent borrowers knew what they were doing it makes no sense to punish them. It would be better for all of us to keep them from going under and dragging everybody down.

Others liberals might suggest that the people with the bad loans really didn't know any better - that they were more-or-less innocent victims of slick talking mortgage loan sharks. If pushed, these liberals might say the bad-loan people, due to ignorance, naivete, whatever were basically unfree. That they had no free-will in this matter.

These liberals would argue that free will is really a scare commodity.

Aside...
Free-will and responsibility are not the same thing. Even those of us who don't believe that free-will is equally available believe that responsibility - except in extreme cases ought to be equally assigned. In other words if the project boy kills somebody, he needs to be held totally responsible - even if he had no control over the events which led him to that point. Otherwise, society could not function. However, many of us would go on to suggest that the right programs, applied early on, could have saved the kid - and society.

Revisiting Freedom -vs- Fairness Premise

2010-03-25T05:07:00.000-07:00

A recent article by thoughtful conservative columnist David Brooks supports the premise of this blog - that liberals and conservatives can be distinguished by their positions on freedom and fairness. Conservatives emphasize the former and liberals the latter.

Brooks says it this way...

"For the past 90 years or so, the Republican Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of personal freedom and economic dynamism. For a similar period, the Democratic Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of fairness and family security. Over the past century, they have built a welfare system, brick by brick, to guard against the injuries of fate. "

As a conservative, Brooks goes on to argue that it has been freedom of the market ("of the disruptive creativity of the entrepreneurs") that resulted in the vibrancy and energy of the country. He is concerned that an aging population, more concerned with security than risk, is in danger of losing this vigor.

My point - the reason I created this blog is that these sort of reasoned arguments are not what motivate most people, especially (I think) the people on the extreme right - the most vocal freedom lovers.

The arguments don't t explain the anger, rage, hatred. They are window dressing for something deeper.

I used to think it was basically a problem with authority. Conservatives just hate being told what to do. But that is too simple. Aside from libertarians, many conservatives seem to like structured authoritarian systems (military, religious, business). They don't mind being told what to do. But it does matter by whom.

There is something about Nancy Pelosi and Barak Obama. (For me there is something about Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin.)

Maybe it comes down to core values. Perhaps it is a matter of morality, with all the emotional baggage that entails. That's what Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychology professor thinks.

Summarizing an earlier post in this blog...

In a Jan 13, 2008 article in the NY Times, Steven Pinker identified fairness as one of our inherited moral "spheres". The others are harm, group loyalty, authority, and purity. In the article he writes...

The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.

So there.

Grandiosity Aside - Continuing the theme from other posts on my various blogs, this post has at least two levels of grandiosity. There is grandiose idea that I could have anything worthwhile to say about this complicated subject. There is the grandiose idea that anyone will care. (Of course, this sort of grandiosity is shared by millions of bloggers who labor unnoticed under the long tail of the Pareto curve - see slides 16 and 17 in the Intro To Black Swan slideshow for an explanation of that.)

New Conservative Taxonomy

2009-11-05T06:55:00.000-08:00

This blog is based on the proposition that liberals love fairness above all else and that conservatives love freedom. I think the distinction has held up pretty well.

However, the current schism in the Republican party between really conservative conservatives (Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and that crowd) and somewhat less conservative conservatives (John McCain, the elder Bush, Olympia Snow, and various other politicians and pundits) makes me wonder if conservative taxonomy requires another category.

So here goes...

All conservatives hate/dislike/distrust government - but for different reasons. (Which is where the new taxonomy come in.)

Really conservative conservatives hate government because they hate being told what to do. That’s what freedom means for them. Not having some smug smart ass running your life. They are the shouters and the screamers, the tea baggers - the crazies with wild eyes and flying spittle. No taxation without representation! Water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants! Give me liberty or give me death!

These are the ones I had in mind when I started the blog. They scare me the most.

The other conservatives (and remember this is a continuum not a binary thing) dislike government simply because they don’t think it works very well. They believe that decisions are best made by the smallest possible autonomous units - by those closest to the facts who best understand the situation. Capitalism works, they argue, because it is a natural sort of process emanating from individuals in pursuit of their own self-interest (never mind that those individuals may not understand their own self-interest). Some problems (health care, social injustice) are simply too complex to managed by government.

Freedom for these conservatives means being left alone to do what (they claim) works best - or at least not having to do what doesn’t work.

So that is the new conservative taxonomy - the distinction between those who throw tantrums and those who think

Asides...

Another distinction might be that the really conservative conservatives tend to be an unpleasant crowd, whereas the other conservatives are often witty and urbane - witness David Brooks, George Will, and Newt Gingrich. Even Pat Buchanan, Mike Huckabee, and George Bush the Younger are sometimes funny.

Both categories of conservatives in the new taxonomy seem self-centered. The wild-eyed crazies who fling spit and proclamations are self-centered in the way of children screaming me! me! me! The other conservatives are more subtle. By emphasizing competition and individualism over cooperation and empathy they diminish the social side of human existence. Like Nietzsche and Ayn Rand (who admired the German philosopher before she didn’t admire him) they have created a philosophy based on self-centeredness.

(This is an elaboration on a previous post, "Liberal Hope".)

Innovative Regulations

2009-09-16T14:53:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me a link to a recent column by Thomas Friedman about the loss of U.S. initiative in the emerging solar panel industry. Friedman notes that Applied Materials, a U.S. company, has 14 factories for making solar panels - all overseas. That is where solar panels are being sold and used. According to Friedman, one reason that other countries are moving ahead in green technologies is because of the creative regulations imposed by the governments involved.

This observation about the positive benefits of regulation reminded me of something I wrote 25 years ago in the book Automotive Computers and Control Systems (Prentice Hall - 1984). The gist of it was that government pollution control measures in the 1970s (combined with several other "black swans") forced industry to develop computerized engine control systems. The result was a quiet revolution in automotive design.

Although cars looked pretty much the same and had pretty much the same components, they became much cleaner and efficient. A 2.4 liter four cylinder engine today often develops more power, gets better mileage and lasts longer than a 4 liter V-8 of from previous generations. Although improved manufacturing techniques and better lubricants have had a major impact, much of the improvement has to be the result of computerized engine controls developed in response to anti-pollution regulation.

And as I recall from that time 25 years ago, the same voices argued against doing anything - claiming that big-government regulations would ruin the industry and cost jobs.

So there.

Below are copies of the pages I wrote back then.

Click images to enlarge

Freedom -vs- Fairness at the Roundabout

2009-09-06T12:47:00.000-07:00

(Shared Space roundabout in Dutch town of Drachten)

Several European Union communities are experimenting with an approach to controlling traffic that seems to contradict the socialist style that is supposed to be the model for that region. Rather than being regulated by traffic lights and signs at intersections, people are left free to fend for themselves. Motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians must decide on their own who goes and who stops.

So far, the results have been encouraging. There have been fewer fatalities and wrecks. People, aware of the danger, seem to have become very careful and considerate.

According to Hans Monderman, the traffic guru who designed the project(called Shared Space) the system works because...

"...it shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk, to the driver being responsible for his or her own risk. The many rules strip us of the most important thing: the ability to be considerate. We're losing our capacity for socially responsible behavior. The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people's sense of personal responsibility dwindles."

This sounds like a libertarian manifesto.

My questions is would such freedom work in the United States - where at least half the population already passionately believes there is too much government control of our lives? Would the freedom-lovers cooperate?

Of course no one knows. But perhaps, paradoxically, those who value freedom most might need the most regulation. (Just as predatory social animals, like wolves and Southerners, need elaborate ritual behaviors to keep them from killing each another.)

Consider that in so-called socialist countries where fairness and order are highly regulated people either through habit or inclination have learned to behave in a civilized manner. It might not be surprising that such people continue to behave well at the roundabout even in the absence of overt rules.

However in countries like ours where freedom and competition are the rule, the behavior at the roundabout might be different. It would depend on how serious conservatives are about their convictions. A consistent conservative who values his/her freedom might, for philosophical reasons, resist giving way at the roundabout. According to the precepts of Ayn Rand and George Will, the strongest, the most aggressive person should prevail. That would be the natural order.

Of course, in reality even consistent conservatives might hesitate before entering a laissez-faire traffic circle for fear of being run off the road by an even more dominant conservative. A socialist intersection, with or without the traffic signs, might be a safer bet.

Little Liberal's Dilemma

2009-08-12T07:59:00.000-07:00

Liberals are losing the health care debate - what would Rambo do?

Sixty years ago I sometimes got up enough nerve to argue that it wasn’t fair the way black people were treated in Shelby, the little town in North Carolina where we lived. Negroes weren't allowed in restaurants and movies, had to sit in the back of buses, drink out of separate water fountains, go in separate bathrooms, and on and on - the litany is well known.

Sometimes my arguments would be calmly countered by reasonable seeming children who’d tell me well just look at them (pointing to whatever black person that was handy) - you think they are as good as you and me? Other times, I’d venture my positions and get shouted down by miniature zealots-in-training, standing close enough that I could feel their spittle in my face.

Little liberals like me stuck pretty much to the issues but little conservatives (many of them anyway) knew even then that such argument weren’t about reason and logic, but power and domination. Who could yell the loudest, who could intimidate the most. Shouting “nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah!” has always been an effective tool in childish debates.

Wordy little liberals, bound by facts and rules, always lost to passionate little conservatives who were free to do anything - twist the facts, shout, scream - even beat up the little liberals if that became necessary.

Nothing has changed.

Liberals are losing the health care debate because they don’t understand that it is not really a health care debate but a (potentially) bloody fight about power, race, and basic political differences. Elected conservatives are enraged because they have lost power; bigoted conservatives are enraged because a black man engineered this take over, and doctrinaire conservatives are enraged because the hated central government is usurping their freedom. Health care, although a complex issue with legitimate differences, is for many conservatives simply a lens for their rage. (Of course, professional pundit conservatives - like Limbaugh and Coulter are joyous because rage is very profitable.)

What is the answer? That is the little (and big) liberal’s dilemma. Do we get involved in shouting matches? Should gun-toting liberals face off with gun-toting conservatives and water the tree of liberty? Countering rage with rage seems satisfying but history suggests that it just makes things worse. However, trying to have a reasonable discussion with someone who is spitting in your face doesn’t seem to work either.

What would Jesus do - or Martin, Siddhartha, Mahatma, etc? What would Rambo do?

Caveat - Being a little liberal to whom fairness is important, I have to note that I have been unfair to some conservatives. Not all conservatives are shouters, spitters, and fact twisters who will do anything to win (in the case of Anne Coulter cross her legs). Some are quite reasonable. And I have to admit that liberal bullies also shout and spit.

Government Accomplishments

2009-08-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

These days there is even more talk than usual from the conservative right regarding failures of government, the evils of socialism, etc.

Just to keep things straight, recall...

The Manhattan Project
D-Day (and the rest of WWII)
The Apollo Program
The Interstate Highway System
The First Gulf War
Medicare
Social Security
Your local Police Department
Your local Utilities Department
Your local Fire Department
The U.S. Parks System
The U.S. Mail System
The entire US defense establishment
The FDA

The list goes on.

And yes - such programs are large, inefficient, and wasteful. But they got the job done and in some cases are still doing it - which is more than can be said of a lot of private enterprise. Most of the companies I've worked for during the past 50 years are out of business. Government does not have the luxury of failure.

So there.

Why Conservatives Hate Slick Talkers

2009-07-27T05:12:00.000-07:00

(Obama talking)

In a recent column, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer called Obama "the master rhetorician". Then he went on to present various arguments about health care, all of which make some sense - at least in the context of his column (Krauthammer is no mean rhetorician himself).

Not knowing exactly who to believe in the health care debate, my interest is primarily in the "rhetorician" comment. Kruathammer has said this before, damning the president for his skill with language. Various conservative commentators have said the same thing - not just about Obama but about other well-spoken liberals, including Bill Clinton - who was characterized as "Slick Willy".

I wonder - why do conservatives seem to hate those who speak well (as opposed, say, to the Bushes, father and son)?

I think the answer is in these questions…

Do your actions speak louder than your words?
Is your talk cheap?
Do you put your money where your mouth is?
Can you walk the walk as well as talk the talk?

Mr. Krauthammer seems convinced that Mr. Obama and other wordy liberals would answer No, Yes, No, and No (and that the Bushes would answer the opposite).

It’s the Man of Action thing, all wrapped up in the Freedom thing. The Man of Action symbolizes and requires Freedom. He does stuff and talks tough. He is Charlton Heston waving a musket, Anne Coulter (a Woman of Action) waving the flag, Bill O'Reilly waving his fist. He is Mel Gibson as Braveheart yelling “Freedom” while the bad British pull out his guts.

Conservatives love the Man of Action and hate the Man of Talk.

Asides...

The theme pops up all over the place.

For example, in The Hurt Locker, a recent Iraq war movie with no obvious political message, the well-spoken character gets blown up. He literally talks himself to death. In The Big Country, an old movie with Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston, the mild-mannered, somewhat wordy James McKay (played by Peck) quits talking and has a fine fight with the tough cowboy played by Heston. Then, thoroughly shaking off his Atticus Finch persona (a Peck character from To Kill A Mockingbird) McKay fights (and beats) another cowboy and has a duel. Mel Gibson is a master at turning thinkers into doers. In Braveheart and The Patriot, he has bad guys kill off family members which allows the Gibson characters to discard intellectual encumbrances and go off on satisfying killing sprees.

It even shows up in religion.

Consider: Which version of Jesus do conservatives prefer - the Jesus who delivered the Sermon on the Mount or the One who drove the money lenders from the temple - the talker or the doer? I am sure most conservative Christians would answer, "both". But I wouldn't believe them.

Liberal Hope

2009-07-13T04:38:00.000-07:00

George Will wrote an article recently (Robert McNamara and the audacity of hope) in which he ridiculed the liberal tendency to believe that not only can complex social and political problems be solved but that they can be solved by government. He cites the failures of Robert McNamara during the Vietnam war as an example of this overreach. He says that President Obama suffers from the same sort of hubris.

He refers to it as "the liberal expectancy" - a phrase coined by Patrick Moynihan, whom Will says was one of the first neoconservatives.

Will's point seems to be that we simply aren't smart enough to handle the really big, complex problems. He and other intellectually inclined(?) conservatives argue that social science is not like physical science - that the issues don't lend themselves to exact analysis and solutions. In the terms of my hero, Nassim Taleb, there are too many black swans flying around. Planning just isn't possible.

In the view of Will and others , government is ineffectual at best and damaging at worst. As I understand them, the best thing to do is figure out what doesn't work, stay out of the way, and let the natural processes play out. Bad stuff will happen but it's unavoidable.

So, are these guys right?

Evidence suggests that they have a point. Obviously we don't plan well and events seem to have a life of their own. The best-laid plans are just that. Viewed from any scale, government is a mismanaged hodgepodge. It wastes money and screws up as often as it gets things right.

However, evidence also suggests that despite all the mistakes things do get done. Roads get built. Laws get enforced. Parks get protected. People get helped (I like my social security and medicaire thank you). Inventions get invented. Businesses get started (not all die). Groups do slog through projects which eventually get done (late and over budget, but done).

So is George right? Beats me - it's too complicated.

Aside - I'm not sure how this fits into the freedom-vs- fairness theme of this blog. Hope seems apply to both predilections. However, the hope - the belief that problems can be solved and that government can do it does seem to be a liberal trait.

Yuky Stuff

2009-06-06T04:39:00.001-07:00

An earlier post on this bog refers to studies that suggest conservatives have a moral problem with impurity. Makes you wonder if that is why fundamentalist Christians, Jews, and especially Muslims seem to hate and fear women. Do they regard women as being unclean, sort of like pork? Without getting too psychological, do they fear women because they fear sex - the loss of control, the complexity, the chaos? Interesting.

Meme at Work - Affirming Premise of Blog

2009-05-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

In a column posted today, Nicolas Kristoff affirms one premise of this bog, that there are built-in differences between conservatives and liberals. He mentions studies which suggest that liberals tend to value fairness and that conservatives tend to have more respect for authority - and have a lower tolerance for disgusting, yucky stuff.

It's interesting how such ideas move around. Called "memes", they promote themselves via people - sort of like viruses promote themselves via somebody else's DNA.

It's pretty obvious that Kristoff got his idea (or his idea got him) from the same sources cited by Steven Pinker in a Jan 13, 2008 article in the NY Times. I linked to Pinker's article in my April 4th post in this blog.

A Harvard psychology professor, Piinker cites studies on the neurobiological foundations of morality. He writes in part...

The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.

Sotomayor and the Myth of Unambiguous Law

2009-05-27T12:24:00.000-07:00

Thinking in print (I need to figure out where I stand on Sotomayor - in case her nomination comes up in conversation)...

There is a conservative myth that the language of the law is unambiguous, requiring only application, not interpretation. According to this myth, liberal judges make laws, conservative judges apply the law as it is written. (I think it has got something to do with the conservative right's problem with ambiguity. See Empathy and Ambiguity under Corollaries.)

In reality, all language - including the U.S. constitution is ambiguous and subject to interpretation. Consider the phrase "well regulated militia" added to the second amendment. Exactly what does this mean? Should only the National Guard get guns? (Same thing holds for literal biblical interpretations.)

In reality, all judges, liberal and conservative, must interpret the law when deciding such issues.

So when Sotomayor says that Latina judges can decide race and sex discrimination cases better than white male judges she might have a point (given the possibility of some dumb Latinas and some smart white guys). Same thing with her comment about policy being made in the court of appeals. Given the inexact nature of legal language, where else can people go to find out what the lawmakers really meant. She was just stating the obvious.

Beyond Right and Left - New Empiricists

2009-05-14T05:24:00.000-07:00

Empiricists Rahm Emanuel and Barak Obama

Three things:

I recently finished a piece on Nassim Taleb's Black Swan book.
Someone used the term "empirical" again in connection with the Obama presidency.
A spate of articles came out about the decline of the Republican party.

Given that a theme of Taleb's book is how we'd be better off by practicing skeptical empiricism and that one reason for Republican decline might be an excess of non-skeptical partisanship, I wonder if Obama, "The Empirical President" might be on to something.

Maybe there is a new political movement in this country (or a resurgence of an old movement), informed by the right and left but mostly motivated by the need to get things done, to solve problems that affect everybody.

Such a movement would be skeptical of all ideologies, and would be criticized equally by the extremes from both sides. The fact that Obama is not only being pilloried by the Freedom Lovers but starting to get hammered by the Fairness Freaks might be signs of that.

The practitioners of such a political philosophy would be called calculating, without principle, Machiavellian. This is how Obama is seen by purists from both sides. This is how doctrinaire Republicans view moderates who wish to reopen Regan's Big Tent.

(One suspects that those on the extreme right prefer a sincere-seeming idiot to a slick-talking empiricist. Just as those on the far left prefer those whose feelings are consistently correct.)

And probably, Obama is not the first Empirical President. Although I'm no historian, it seems to me that all the greats have combined empiricism with principle. Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt - potentially Kennedy. The two worst presidents in my memory, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush were ideologues. Johnson started out as an empiricist, but became ideological about the Vietnam war. A skilled empiricist, Nixon's ideological shortcoming was his own pride.

Unchristian Christians

2009-05-06T06:07:00.000-07:00

(Leonard Pitts)

In a recent column, Leonard Pitts observed that Christians do some pretty unchristian things. A majority remained silent on the Holocaust (while it was happening), did not speak out about racial oppression in this country, did not speak out about AIDs (except to condemn the victims), and now appear to support torture performed during the Bush administration.

Of course, Pitts was making a point - a liberal point at that. Many Christians do follow the teachings of Christ. Many don't. Nothing much new here.

My interest is a little more self-serving. Can I find something in the freedom-vs-fairness paradigm proposed in this bog to explain such unchristian behavior? Can I milk this topic?

Maybe.

The mistake that Pitts and others might be making is to ascribe religious motives to these unchristian Christians. In every one of the examples Pitts cites above, the real issue is not religion, but difference. The holocaust was happening to Jews. Persecution was happening to Negroes. Even after AIDS spread outside the gay community, it was still sexual and dirty. And the Bush hard men only tortured Muslims. All were outsiders. All different. Not us but them.

I wonder if the unchristian Christians are conservatives first and Christians second. For these people, part of being free means being able to distrust, demonize, and dehumanize anyone who is different. Steeped in the virtue of individual competition and not burdened by the liberal need/ability to empathize, such conservatives are free to hate.

The Christian admonitions, "do unto others" and "turn the other cheek" are replaced by the more primitive injunction, "an eye for an eye".

See the corollaries (especially Empathy and Ambiguity) for more on this.

Liberal Fairness -vs- Pareto Principle

2009-04-29T13:11:00.000-07:00

I noted in a previous post that conservatives might be so mad because they are on the wrong side of history. Now I wonder if liberal notions of fairness are on the wrong side of reality.

This idea came to me while doing background research on something called the Pareto Principle for a report on Nassim Taleb's Black Swan book. The principle, formulated in the 18th century by Vilfredo Pareto, says that 20% of people have 80% of wealth - thus leading to the so called "80/20" rule. This distribution has been shown to apply not only to wealth, but to all kinds of relationships. For example, relatively few titles dominate book sales; a limited number of web sites and blogs possess most of the inbound links (the rest of us rely on random hits and email blasts inflicted on friends and acquaintances).

It appears that there might be some scientific justification to the admonition offered to children, "The world is unfair." Maybe 20% of the people have 80% of the good looks. And 20% of the people make 80% of the good grades. And 20% of the people have 80% percent of the popularity, or coolness, or cachet, or whatever.

When charted, the Pareto distribution (also called the power law) looks like this - with the favored few dominating the head of the curve and the rest of us fighting over the "long tail" to the right.

So where does this leave liberals for whom the pursuit and promotion of fairness is paramount? I am not smart enough to know, but I'd guess it means we better know our limits. Surely the Pareto distribution curve can be skewed a little bit one way to another. Maybe we can (actually we do) preferentially tax those lucky enough to be at the head of the curve - after all, the rest of us provide the population necessary for them to be better than. And maybe we can increase the total quantity of stuff under the curve so that everybody gets more. However, we can't change the basic shape of the curve. The communists tried that and look where it got them.

What We Hate

2009-04-24T09:29:00.000-07:00

In a recent statement, Rick Perry, conservative Republican governor of Texas, coyly suggested that if Washington did not stop thumbing its nose at the American people "who knows what may come of that?". He was insinuating that those being treated so disrespectfully might just secede from the union. (See Bill Moore's post for additional insight on Rick Perry and Texas.)

It sounds as if the governor (or his base) might just hate somebody.

Given the possibility of hatred, I thought it would be fun to list some conservative and liberal hatreds. I'll try to handle both sides. Anybody with their own hatreds, jump in. (You might hate old liberals who make lists.)

Conservatives hate...

The word "fair" when used by liberals.
Being told what to do, think, or say by smarter-than-thou liberal snobs.
Giving away hard-earned money to support lazy deadbeats.
Not being respected for hard work and contribution to society.
Those who disrespect traditional values.
The smirking image of Jon Stewart (or any member of the effete corps of impudent snobs).
Those who use slick talk to make simple issues complicated.
Those who prefer talk and compromise to action and competition.
People like Bill and Hilary Clinton.
The hubris and arrogance of those who believe that government has the answer to every problem.
Ambiguity.

Liberals hate...

The word "freedom" when used by conservatives.
Those who persecute the weak and underprivileged.
Those who ignore the plight of the weak and underprivileged.
Those who contribute to the plight of the weak and underprivileged.
Mean bullies.
Raw sewage dumped into creeks; glaciers receding, and species going extinct.
Those who use dumb talk and slogans to make complicated issues simple.
The smirking image of Karl Rove.
Lee Atwater-style politics (do anything, say anything to win).
People who employ these tactics (Anne Coulter, Karl Rove, Bill O'Riley, Sarah Palin)
Hypocrites who preach values and hide behind flags.
The dumb goobers to whom these tactics appeal.

Thank You Commentors

2009-04-24T06:10:00.000-07:00

It's neat to get comments.

Thanks to the one who calls me "Daddy" and to the other who identified himself/herself as "Stand Mute" and who said...

"Freedom only matters when you have nothing else left"

"Hope was the only evil kept in Pandora's box"

John Rosemond on Liberal "Freedoms"

2009-04-23T05:09:00.000-07:00

In a recent column in the Charlotte Observer, John Rosemond, a conservative-oriented family psychologist, complained about the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). He argued that extending state-mandated "rights" to children - such as "freedom of association" usurps the authority of parents.

Maybe so. One suspects the devil is in the details that both sides leave out of (and leave in) their arguments.

What interests me, and what is relevant to this blog, is the use of the term "freedom" with respect to liberal positions. That seems to fly in the face of the premise that conservatives love freedom more than anything and that liberals love fairness.

Does this disprove the premise? Well, naturally, I don't think so (although it is all a bit semantic).

The orientation of liberal freedoms are different from conservative freedoms. Liberals advocate freedoms of fairness for others (the freedom of association for children); conservatives seem most interested in freedom for themselves (the freedom for me to avoid taxes). The pursuit of liberal freedoms often requires the application of external order (in the form of government authority). The pursuit of conservative freedoms often means loosening external controls.

Kathleen Parker Uses Magic Word Five Times

2009-04-22T13:14:00.000-07:00

In a recent column "Diversity as the New Patriotism" , semi-conservative writer Kathleen Parker uses the phrase "fair" five times. The fairness she is referring to is what happens as a result of racial and ethnic diversity. Her complaint, as she is quick to point out, is not about diversity per se (she likes her diverse neighborhood thank you) but about the mantle of correctness that liberals put on when talking about it.

She says that new fair housing radio ads "are the sort of treacly propaganda that cause sober drivers to run off the road. "

Like George Will, Charles Krauthammer and other conservatives, she seems to be offended by the word "fair" - and by the perceived unfairness of liberals in pursuit of fairness.

Beyond Freedom and Fairness

2009-04-18T04:50:00.000-07:00

In a recent Washington Post column, George Will references a recent Wall Street Journal column by a Daniel Akst decrying the wearing of denim - how it is silly, ugly and phony - juvenile in fact. Will goes on to call it an "obnoxious misuse of freedom".

Which is my point. Not about denim (I don't care about that) but about how juvenile behavior and Freedom and Fairness are connected. At the extremes, both points-of-view seem somewhat childish.

Children seek, want, demand, strive and cry for freedom. The two year old will lie on the floor kicking and screaming when being told what to do (sort of like Mel Gibson in Braveheart screaming "Freedom" just before the British cut off his head).

Children also complain when things aren't fair. The child cries, "That's not fair!". To which the exasperated parent replies, "Life is not fair."

Of course, the connection between denim and political orientation only goes far. And I expect that George Will didn't have conservatives in mind when complained about the misuse of jeans and freedom - more likely it is was old liberals who got their start in the 60's. But is fun to imagine that adult political orientation stems in some small way from childish behavior. That the angry tax protester houses a willful child who doesn't like sharing, and that the passionate environmentalist is really a pouting adolescent complaining about the unfairness of it all.

Maybe most of us are still trying to redress childhood ills. Perhaps real maturity is getting beyond freedom and fairness - which may explain why real adults are so alien and scary.

Why Are Environmental Issues Political?

2009-04-17T03:31:00.000-07:00

Friend Steve and I took a lunch walk along the McAlpine Greenway in South Charlotte. Traversing two miles of picturesque wetlands, we saw ducks and geese, one crane perched in a large nest at the top of a tall tree, and various other humans, alone or in the company of dogs, children and other humans. It was all very nice, all very FAIR.

As usual, we talked politics and writing. The political discussions touched on how some smart conservatives are able to cite “scientific evidence” to support bogus opinions (to us anyway) on environmental issues. One guy Steve knows claims he has read a book that proves recycling costs more than it saves. Another guy we both know says he has read a book which disproves global warming. Both these guys insist that their authorities have valid scientific credentials and that unless you have read these books you don’t know what you are talking about.

Maybe so.

My question is why do we all care so much? Why have these environmental issues become political issues?

Naturally, these days, I look to the Freedom -vs- Fairness paradigm for answers. And, naturally, I find them.

I think that liberals, burdened by empathy and the ability/need to see other points-of-view, have expanded the concept of fairness to include the non-human world. Not only do we care about fairness for people, we care about fairness for the planet - including all the animals that live on the planet (maybe the plants too). And, because we are liberals, we are willing to restrict the freedoms of other humans in pursuit of our agendas. We are willing, albeit reluctantly, to impose taxes and restrictions in the cause of environmental correctness.

Conservatives, whose points-of-view tend to be a little more local, see this as an abridgment of their freedom to do whatever they damn well please so long as it doesn’t interfere with the freedom of others to do whatever they damn well please. The liberal pursuit of fairness for all at the expense of fairness for some strikes the conservative as infuriatingly unfair.

So there. See the relevant corollaries.

(But what about the questions raised by those two guys. Is recycling cost effective? Is global warming real? Common sense and the weight of public opinion prompt me to answer “yes” to both question. Of course I don’t know for sure. Both sides can find “experts” and “evidence” to support their liberal and conservative biases. And, as noted in my Secular Faith In a Sane Universe post in another blog, I don’t regard all experts and evidence equally.)

Trying to Explain Conservative Rage

2009-04-16T05:47:00.000-07:00

(Continuing a thought from previous post.)

Of course the liberal-left also gets angry. Recall Keith Olbermann's rants back in George W's day (has it been that long?). Those who are out-of-power are certainly going to be mad at those who are in power. It's part of the game.

However (and this might be my own bias showing) there seems to be something especially vitriolic about conservative anger. For example, this appeared in today's Observer Forum...

"Mr. Krugman, what is it about the Republicans that embarrasses you? Is it the love for our country, the crazy idea that the U.S. is a Christian nation, or the idea that capable people should work for a living and quit depending on the government?"

One assumes that extreme anger prompted these sarcastic comments. But where does it come from? And just as importantly, can I fit the answer under the rubric of "Freedom -vs- Fairness"?

As noted in a previous post, I think that part of the answer can be found in the Empathy and Ambiguity Corollary. Not being as driven (as liberals) by the need for fairness and cooperation, conservatives are less likely to see the other's point of view. (Which is not to say that any liberal can really identify with someone from the right - just that the liberal is more likely at least pay lip service to the idea.) Therefore, not being as burdened by the notion of understanding, the conservative's anger has the freedom to build up a full head of steam.

However, lack of empathy does not still seem to explain the depth of conservative anger. It has an emotional quality that seems missing in the more abstract liberal rage. It might be an ambiguity issue. If you can't handle multiple, conflicting points of view (as a liberal or conservative) then you might get frustrated (angry) when presented with differences.

(But I still don't think this fully explains conservative anger. It also seems to be a moral issue, as noted by psychologist Steven Pinker. Maybe I need another corollary that explains how conservative freedom values cut closer to the emotional core than liberal fairness values.)

Tax Day Tea Parties

2009-04-15T11:42:00.001-07:00

Members of the conservative-right are celebrating tax day (April 15th) by staging tax protest "tea parties"around the country. They are symbolically rebelling against not only Obama's budget, but excessive government spending in general.

My question, naturally, is this - can the anti-tax movement be explained by the Freedom -vs- Fairness theory or any of its corollaries (including any I might make up for the occasion)?

I think so.

First, as noted in the Unfairness and Loss of Freedom Corollary, there is the unfairness of it all, at least according to conservatives. They are being asked to pay for incompetence, waste, and policies they don't believe in. That is simply not right (so to speak).

Second, and, even more basically, there is the underlying freedom -vs- fairness thing. Free people should do for themselves. Government should stay out of it. If some people (liberals) want to help other people, they should do it with their own money. That's what private charities are for.

Note: Liberal writer Thom Hartmann has an alternative take on the original Boston Tea Party. Rather than protesting "no taxation without representation" it was a protest against unfair tax advantages provided by the Crown to multi-national East India Company. In other words, the tea party was less a conservative freedom issue and more a liberal fairness issue.

Conservative Outrage Over Religious Statement

2009-04-15T07:39:00.000-07:00

(Michael Lind)

Friend Steve sent me a link to an opinion piece in Salon.com by liberal writer Michael Lind. Lind argues that Obama's recent statement about the U.S. not being a Christian nation is in keeping with views of various founding fathers, including Washington and Jefferson. Lind goes on to note how Obama's statement has enraged the "conservative talking heads".

Ignoring the validity of the argument (seems pretty reasonable to me) why are conservatives enraged? Is it a tactical maneuver, a way to incite the base and gain advantage over Obama, or do they really care?

Even more importantly, can I shoehorn an explanation into my Freedom -vs- Fairness paradigm?

Part of it might be explained by the Unfairness and Loss of Freedom Corollary. Just as the liberal-left is willing to sacrifice fairness for some in the name of fairness for all, the conservative-right might be willing to sacrifice the freedom of those who say things which could be construed as critical of religion. Although no one claims that conservative Christians are ready to kill blasphemers, there is some similarity to the situation with fundamentalist Muslims in Swat, as reported in a previous post in this blog.

The anger expressed by conservatives might be explained by the Empathy and Ambiguity Corollary. Not as driven (as liberals) by the need for fairness and cooperation, conservatives might be less able to tolerate other points-of-view, especially when they conflict with the religious authority to which conservatives seem drawn.

Of course, part of the anger could be simply a response to the perception by religious conservatives that they are on the wrong side of history - that the tide is not going their way.

Freedom in the Swat Valley

2009-04-14T17:03:00.000-07:00

(Masked Taliban fighter in Swat)

After several years of insurrection against the central government, the Taliban has won the freedom to impose fundamentalist Islamic sharia law in the Swat valley of Pakistan. In other words, the conservative-right minority in that region has gained the freedom to restrict the freedom of the majority.

See the Unfairness and Loss of Freedom Corollary.

Rights, Fairness and Foreclosure Squatting

2009-04-11T05:32:00.000-07:00

Max Ramo from Take Back the Land appeared on Saturday morning Good Morning America arguing that people have a "right" to housing. His organization helps homeless people move into empty foreclosed houses. Kate Snow, GMA co-host, asked is it "fair" that some people get to live rent free while others have to pay? Although Ramo did not respond with a counter-fairness argument, he could have - asking if it is "fair" that some people have housing while others do not. He could have responded that his organization was addressing a larger fairness issue.

Although this is a fuzzy question, it seems likely that the conservative-right would come down on the side of the property owners (the banks), citing not only unfairness (living rent free). but basic property rights. Even though no one loves the banks, especially now, they are still the legitimate owners and their rights should be observed. The conservative would probably reject the notion of housing rights.

It is less clear where the liberal-left would stand. Liberal heart strings are tugged by the thought of homeless children (so are the sympathies of compassionate conservatives - it is just that being tough is also a conservative virtue). The classic liberal, burdened by the ability to entertain multiple points of view might also be bothered by the unfairness and the property rights questions - and the notion of housing rights might strike even liberals as a stretch.

The liberal response (at least the response of this liberal) might be to find a compromise. Always trusting the power of rational thought, the liberal might try to work out a deal with the banks and homeless advocates so that needy people could temporarily occupy foreclosed houses until the economy turns around and the houses could be sold.

See the Rights and the Unfairness and Loss of Freedom Corollaries.

Krauthammer Implies Obama A Girly Man

2009-04-10T05:41:00.000-07:00

In his 4/10/09 piece in the New York Post, conservative columnist Charles Kruathammer criticizes President Obama for being weak on foreign policy. Krauthammer mentions a few specifics - Obama's measured response to the recent missile launch by North Korean, and his concilliatory approach to Europeans during last week's trip to that region. He even echoes George Will's disdain for the phrase "community of nations" mentioned in a recent post in this blog. However, it seems that Kruathammer mostly hates Obama's style, describing the President's utterances as "grandiloquent" and "fatuous". Without saying it in so many words, Krauthammer accusses Obama of being a weak girly man.

See the Competition and Cooperation Corollary.

Freedom and Correctness in Mount Holly and Belmont

2009-04-08T05:31:00.000-07:00

Mount Holly and Belmont are middle-size bedroom communities across the Catawba River from Charlotte, separated North and South by I-85. Both vote conservative; both would probably be equally resistant to directions coming from a central planning office. However, Belmont seems planned and Mt Holly doesn’t.

In Belmont, well-kept old mansions have been occupied for years by the same families, aged now into genteel antiquity (the houses anyway). Walking down the main street, the visitor passes a city park with a bandstand, a general store with chairs out front, and several restaurants and up-scale taverns. Walking down the main street in Mount Holly is also nice, but not the same visual treat as strolling with the crowds in Belmont. Despite costly new sidewalks and facades, the town looks as though it was left on its own for a long time. The visitor is impressed not by exquisite old houses but by cheap apartments.

It is pretty obvious that local entrepreneurs have had a free rein in Mount Holly, but that some control has been exercised in Belmont. Assuming that Belmont is really a freedom-loving place, how could that happen? Where did the correctness come from?

According to stories, Belmont's founding mill owners continued to live in town, whereas Mount Holly's original oligarchy sold out and moved away. Or, as the lady who explained it to me said, "The Belmont money stayed home and called the shots."

One can speculate that in Belmont, families like the Stowe's, having exercised freedom to achieve wealth and influence, used their power to restrict the freedom of others. They imposed their sense of long-term community aesthetics on the short-term financial interests of less well-placed entrepreneurs. In Mount Holly, it appears that either a hierarchy dominated by a few individuals never emerged, or if it did, the guys at the top didn't care all that much for town beautification. Correctness was never enforced.

See the Correctness and the Unfairness and Loss of Freedom Corollaries.

Aside - I'm just assuming that Belmont's aesthetic-minded founders were of the conservative-right persuasion. Maybe they belonged to the liberal-left. Maybe a real, freedom-loving, conservative elite never forces its aesthetic sense on the larger community. Maybe they don't care.

George and Arianna on "Community of Nations"

2009-04-05T10:47:00.000-07:00

On This Week with George Stephanopoulos, conservative George Will and liberal Arianna Huffington argued about the latest missile provocations coming out of North Korea. The core of their disagreement was over Huffignton's use of the phrase "community of nations". She said something to the effect that North Korea was jeopardizing its position in this community and was risking further sanctions coming from said community. Will's basic response was "nonsense". The community of nations is a fiction, a liberal myth. There is just a collection of individual states each pursuing its own self-interest. His tone was snooty, erudite - an experienced man explaining the workings of the world to a naive woman. Her tone was hopeful, hesitant - indicative of a "yes, but" approach to things.

See the Competition and Cooperation Corollary.

Pinker on Fairness

2009-04-04T15:12:00.000-07:00

Krauthammer On Fairness

2009-04-03T06:09:00.000-07:00

In his 4/3/09 piece in the New York Post, conservative columnist Charles Kruathammer neatly summarizes the premise of this bog - that the basic differences between the conservative-right and the liberal-left are differing emphases on "freedom" and "fairness". My position is somewhat neutral. Krauthammer's is not. Writing with great disdain, but much erudition, Krauthammer says...

Obama has far different ambitions. His goal is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the relationship between government and citizen. He wants government to narrow the nation's income and anxiety gaps. Soak the rich for reasons of revenue and justice. Nationalize health care and federalize education to grant all citizens of all classes the freedom from anxiety about health care and college that the rich enjoy. And fund this vast new social safety net through the cash cow of a disguised carbon tax.

Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it upon the American social order is his mission.

Fairness through leveling is the essence of Obamaism. (Asked by Charlie Gibson during a campaign debate about his support for raising capital gains taxes -- even if they caused a net revenue loss to the government -- Obama stuck to the tax hike "for purposes of fairness.") The elements are highly progressive taxation, federalized health care and higher education, and revenue-producing energy controls. But first he must deal with the sideshows. They could sink the economy and poison his public support before he gets to enact his real agenda.

See the Freedom -vs Fairness Theory.

Theory

2009-01-01T06:06:00.000-08:00

Arguments between the conservative-right and the liberal-left (at least in the United States) can be explained by differing emphases on Freedom and Fairness.

Freedom
The conservative-right believes everybody should be free to pursue power (money, fame, etc.) with as little interference as possible from big government. How power is ultimately distributed depends on the individuals. Some will always end up with more power (money, fame, etc) than others. Inequities happen. But one should still respect the authority of individuals at the top.

Fairness
The liberal-left believes that no one individual should be allowed to have undue power over another individual. Inequities should be minimized. The power of central government shall be used to restrict the power of some to protect the power of others.

Corollaries

2009-01-01T05:09:00.000-08:00

Given the differing emphases on freedom -vs- fairness, other differences follow:

Free-Will and Responsibility
To the conservative-right, a corollary of freedom is free-will. Individuals know their own will and should be free to choose what is best (unless acting freely violates a moral code). People are responsible for their choices. There are no reasons for bad behavior, just excuses. According to the liberal-left, free-will is a relative commodity. Some are more free than others. There are reasons for bad behavior - extenuating circumstances. Individuals don’t always know their own best interests. Those with more free will sometimes need to help, guide (or manage) those with less free will. Although people might always be held accountable for their acts, they are not always responsible.

Competition and Cooperation
According to the conservative-right, freely-acting individuals will inevitably bump into one another. The resulting competition is the basis for most human activities - politics, sports, economics. This is the most efficient way - the natural way, for getting things done. Anything else is unnatural. Competition is tough, manly. Cooperation is weak, girly. According to the liberal-left, competition must be tempered by cooperation. As a social species, it is also natural for humans to get along. Unchecked competition is primitive, testosterone diseased. Cooperation is wise.

Empathy and Ambiguity
In the pursuit of fairness and cooperation, the liberal-left is compelled to see all points of view. It is no accident that a "liberal" is writing this blog that purports to see both sides of issues. The liberal develops a tolerance for ambiguity. For the conservative-right, concerned more with personal freedom and competition, there is less need for understanding. Excessive empathy might be regarded as a disadvantage. Tolerance for chaos and ambiguity might also be less well-developed.

Unfairness and Loss of Freedom
In the pursuit of fairness for all, the liberal-left is unfair to some (e.g., graduated taxes, business regulations, trade rules, etc). In the pursuit of freedom for all, the conservative-right allows individuals at the bottom of the heap to be dominated by those at the top. Only freedom of opportunity is equal.

Both sides impose order (and sacrifice freedom and fairness) in the name of correctness. For example, the conservative-right might censor speech and freedom in order to preserve a particular hierarchical structure (resulting from some individual’s exercise of freedom). The liberal-left might censor speech in order to ensure that one group does not speak unfairly about another group (this is “political correctness”).

At the extremes, both the liberal-left and the conservative-right can (and have) resulted in totalitarianism. The unfettered liberal-left tends toward communism. The unfettered conservative-right tends toward dictatorship.

Correctness
There are correct expressions, utterances, views. Both the liberal-left and the conservative-right have notions of correctness that arise (or not) from their core positions. For the conservative-right, religion is often viewed as correct because it stems from individuals in the pursuit of freedom. Gun ownership is correct for the same reason. The liberal-left is concerned with speech; it should be fair and correct. Unfair speech is incorrect. Certain community aesthetics are also subject to correctness (public art, landscapes) imposed by either the right or the left - depending on who is in power.

Rights
Rights are guarantees provided by government (or God) ensuring certain human freedoms - in the US, the freedom to bear arms (more or less), freedom of the press, freedom of/from religion, etc. Although all rights generally restrict the power of government over individuals, some rights are associated more with the liberal-left and some with the conservative-right. Liberals are generally associated with rights that promote public fairness - the freedom of the press and the freedom from religion. Conservatives are generally associated with private freedoms, such the freedom to bear arms, freedom of religion, and the freedom to do what you want with your own property.

Celebrations of the Right
The conservative-right with its emphasis on individual power favors hierarchical organizations headed by dominant individuals. It celebrates the strong man, the tribe, the team. The conservative-right loves competition, aggression, dominance. It respects authority (of the right sort).

Hubris of the Left
When devising rules of fairness for the operation of a political system, the liberal-left must presume to understand the operation of the system. Those devising the rules of the liberal-left must assume they know better than those for whom the rules are being devised. When exercising power in the name of a public esthetic the liberal-left must assume that its esthetic is correct.

Symbols of the Right
• Mel Gibson shouting “Freedom” in Braveheart.
• Charlton Heston holding a musket in front of the NRA giving his “cold dead hands” speech.
• A flag (especially the Confederate battle flag).
• Patrick Henry shouting “Give me liberty or give me death.”
• A lion.

Symbols of the Left
• Gregory Peck arguing, “All men are created equal.” in To Kill a Mocking Bird
• Martin Luther King saying “I’ve got a dream”.
• Abraham Lincoln saying “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
• A bonobo mokney.

Religious Orientation
The religious orientation of the conservative-right is toward Jehovah and Allah. The religious orientation of the liberal-left is toward Jesus and Buddha.

Economics
Positions on economic issues can also be grouped along fairness -vs- freedom lines.

The conservative-right believes in the freedom of individuals to pursue wealth without interference from central authority. The inequalities that result when stronger, smarter, more aggressive people rise to the top of the economic heap are to be tolerated. Unfettered capitalism - without external controls is the most efficient system for managing goods and services.

The liberal-left believes that unfettered capitalism will result in an unfair concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. It also believes that in a managed economy where everyone gains wealth, the total wealth of the system increases. Even though the slices of the pie might be remain unequally divided, the total size of the pie gets bigger.

Capitalism, even when managed, seems to be a system of emergent rules - where the order springs from the system itself.