The politicization of…everything
I love American politics and I generally think people who talk about consensus and bipartisanship are missing the boat. The job of politicians is to give voters clear choices.
If those choices are more and more ideologically distinct — as they certainly are — then at least people going to the polls have a sharp sense for the thinking and policies they’ll be getting when they mark their ballots.
But one area where the polarization of our society troubles me is the increasingly partisan tone of organizations that used to provide an equally important sense of community.
Groups like Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the Roman Catholic Church, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Episcopal church, and the Girl Scouts have all waded deep into the waters of our culture war.
It’s hard to recall those days, not so long ago, when the NRA was a mainstream sportsman’s group, advocating a common sense gun rights agenda — not defined by Ted Nugent’s “cut their heads off” brand of paranoia.
Meanwhile, a lot of rank-and-file Episcopalians are weary of their church’s new role as a pioneer for LGBT rights, a move that has created a deep schism in the pews.
Perhaps the most worrisome aspect of all this is the increasing polarization of the US Supreme Court, ostensibly a place where the rule of law and precedent serve as a backstop against rampant partisanship.
These days, however, the justices are increasingly outspoken, and politically active, with ideological and financial ties to the very activist groups and institutions that drive a lot of the nation’s debates.
More and more, the Supreme Court appears to serve as a sort of mini-Congress, where Democrats and Republicans vote against one another reflexively and the big decisions are often settled on a 5-to-4 split that reflects rather than moderates our culture war.
I recognize, of course, that on one level this is all perfectly proper and healthy. We want as many groups and factions and organizations as possible to shape the direction of our politics.
I’m not suggesting that anyone be silenced.
But some of these organizations were once places where Americans from across the political spectrum would gather, without having to ponder the red state-blue state divide.
You could have parents in a Girl Scout troop with wildly different political views, sportsmen who were members of the NRA with nuanced opinions about gun rights, or businessmen in the Chamber who had no interest in throttling Obamacare.
I wonder if the loss of that common ground might, in the long run, haunt us more than the polarization of our elected politicians.
So what have you seen? Have organizations that you belong to become more political, more partisan? Or less political? As always, your views welcome.
Tags: politics
Okay, here’s Jon Stewart with Michele Obama. Jon Stewart admitted to Roger Ailes that he is a Socialist. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2012/05/late-night-jon-stewart-clarifies-his-support-for-socialism.html
Here’s some good stuff – “Calling Bush a fascist is flatly false; his philosophy and administration met none of the criteria in the definition. Calling Obama a socialist, by contrast, is merely a gross overstatement.” That is from the Wall Street Journal. They did not say that calling Obama a socialist is flatly false. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704293604575342852339887616.html
Obama gave the Medal of Freedom to a Socialist! http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/05/obama-awards-gop-hating-socialist-leader-a-presidential-medal-of-freedom/
Commie Blaster dot com!!! Did you guys know there is a website? http://commieblaster.com/
Walker: You are right. It was Bush who initiated the GM bailout.
That was a mistake, and it does leave a little more distance between Bush and a conservative legacy.
Bankruptcy laws would have been a better avenue for GM, but I think Bush feared the legacy of having GM fail on his watch.
Obama is Bush on steroids when it comes to bailouts, however.
WAIT! My brain is about to explode!
“Obama is Bush on steroids…” But I thought Obama is a Socialist and Bush was God fearing Capitalist oilman/baseball team owning/apple pie loving American.
JDM, you aren’t helping the cause.
This is too good not to share; from CommieBlasterdotcom:
“NOTE: OUR SITE HAS GOTTEN ENOUGH ATTENTION THAT GEORGE SOROS HAS ADDED SOMEONE TO DO NOTHING BUT PRETEND TO BE US ALL OVER THE INTERNET. Media Matters Trolls are now calling us racists and masquerading as Commie Blaster (#38), Commie Blaster (#48), Commie Blaster (#53), etc., all around the Internet. If you see Commie Blaster comments that sound like a socialist talking, you’ll know it’s not us!”
You’ve been warned.
And Kathy, “leveling the playing field” means things like financial aid so the children of poor folk can go to college, so they have half a chance rather than no chance at all. It doesn’t mean giving them million dollar trust funds, like some rich kids start life with.
It really gets the field no where near level. It’s like, rich kids start the hundred yard dash of life on the fifty yard line, while poor kids start it deep in the end zone. What goes by the label “leveling the playing field” aims to at least get them to the starting line, but still leaves them a good fifty yards behind the more fortunate.
I was against the original Chrysler bailout for the same reason and at the time that was just a loan and much smaller.
So Chrysler comes back again now and gets more money. Lee Iacoca was the big hero at the time getting the loan and everything going great, but then they end up failing again. Why didn’t Ford fail? Why didn’t Toyota fail, why didn’t Nissan fail? They didn’t because they are better managed better run more efficient companies than GM or Chrysler and at the end of the day, they make much better cars, MUCH better cars. GM will likely be back again in a decade or so. I can understand having the supports in place so when these companies that are no longer viable collapse as they should, we can have the collapse be in an orderly fashion the government should step in at that point to help the constituents of the company over a period of time.
It is an extension of crony capitalism to do this sort of thing. Will the government bail out the oil companies if we have a green energy revolution? If they should not, why not? Energy companies such as Exon employ as many people as GM.
But then again it would depend on who is in office. A Republican from Texas might very well bail them out. A Democrat from Chicago is more likely to take care of unionized care companies. There is the rub from these sorts of payouts and kickbacks using our taxpayer dollars.
khl: “Obama is Bush on steroids…”
that’s funny. You take my comment so out of context.
I think it was pretty clear that with respect to bailing out GM, Obama has bailed out other companies, like Bush’s GM bailout on steroids.
Just drop the context and reword the quote, and you can come up with anything.
Walker: “children of poor folk can go to college”
A couple of thoughts. What if children of poor folk don’t want to go college?
What if they can’t make the grades?
Hopefully, the same thing that happens to them as when children of rich folk can’t make the grades.
Yes, JDM, I took it out of context but jeezum crow, how can you make that sort of comparison between Obama and Bush? Comparisons like that let the terrorists win.
“What if children of poor folk don’t want to go college?” Then they don’t go.
“What if they can’t make the grades?” Then they flunk out.
What’s your point?
No one is suggesting that we equalize outcomes for everyone, just opportunity.
Remember– we’re the land of opportunity, right? These days it’s hard (though not impossible) to get ahead if you don’t go to college, and we no longer have state colleges and universities with free tuition, as we did fifty years ago.
Capitalist society is the most bloody and warlike in human history … this pamphlet [International Socialism; John Rees; 1967] looks at why capitalism breeds war.
Any Socialist will welcome such opposition to war when it comes from workers and students who are sickened by the barbarity of the society in which they live.
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/contemp/pamsetc/socandwar/socandwar.htm
We don’t call ourselves Capitalists and Socialists – yet. We are Conservatives or Liberals/Progressives. President Obama has shown primarily which camp he is in. His world view is clear even though he believes in capitalism and the free market.
Kathy, you’re killing me here. Since when is everyone playing by the same rules Socilaism?
I thought I was clear. Socialism wants thinks fair. The words used on his website support this.
I am not saying he is a Socialist. I am saying that his world view is heading our country in that direction.
We are heading toward a system that doesn’t cross the threshold of the old, technical definition of socialism, yet it has departed a long way from a free market society.
Therefore, it is not fair to blame the ills of today on a free market, nor is it technically correct to call it socialism.
I got some input from an economist. He calls it “targeted legislation favoring monopoly-like practices”.
Not at all fair outcome, if you ask me. Closer to “crony capitalism”, but my economist friend didn’t agree to using that term, either.
We’ll have to come up with a catchier phrase than what the economist come up with.
No one is suggesting that we equalize outcomes for everyone, just opportunity.
Walker, the opportunity is already there.
Life is not fair. We cannot make it perfect for everyone. Yes, we can make improvements. But how far do we go?
In our “land of opportunity”, anyone can go to college (if they have the grades – and even if they don’t in some cases). Back in the day, it was common to take a semester off to work to pay for it. Rare these days.
And don’t talk to me about unemployment. I know far too many today who will not take a second job or flip hamburgers.
Our society is not what it was. Can you agree?
I just want to reiterate that I do not think Obama is a Socialist. Far too many emails circulate with bogus claims and fanatical thinking.
Any ship is on a course going somewhere. I want to know where we’re going and where we’ll end up.
Both sides have their flaws. I am willing to admit that. Are the liberals on this forum able?
I stand corrected on the auto bail-out.
The really cool part about our country is the federalist experiment. We can indeed have states that choose to veer more toward a government involved system and we can have some states choose to be much more based on smaller governments and less regulations and taxes. We can than choose to live where we think it works best for us. We can also study the results and I find them very interesting.
There is some literature that show’s that socialism or more government actions working better among smaller states or countries that are not diverse. So we see it working in places like Vermont or Sweden. Larger diverse states like New York or California are going to have a harder time making it work correctly.
Socialism is a wonderful concept if freely joined. We have a choice to live our lives in a socialistic sort of way. At their core families are socialist. We own things in common, we make joint decisions for the good of all. Other examples are monastic communities, Hudderite communities, communes (which still do exist).
The concept itself is wonderful, the execution is the problem.
Actually, Kathy, many liberals are convinced that Obama’s flaws are mostly in the direction of being not liberal enough– we’d like to see single-payer health care, we’d like to see a return of Glass-Steagall, we’d like to see a Consumer Protection Agency with teeth, we’d like to see Wall Street banksters in jail, we’d like to see an end to unneeded corporate subsidies.
As for flaws in liberalism itself? I’ve already mentioned that I’d love to see fraud and abuse stamped out in welfare programs, if it can be done humanely, along with ending fraud and abuse in corporate America (which I believe costs the American public far more than welfare cheats do). And sure, it would be wonderful if one could somehow prevent welfare dependency– though I’m not convinced that it can be done via draconian cuts without harming the children of the poor excessively.
So Mervel, do you think single-payer healthcare is working reasonably well in Canada, France and the UK? Do you think our system is working better than theirs?
oh no our system is much worse.
I don’t consider government funded healthcare to be truly socialist though.
If all of the doctors worked for the government than maybe, but that is not what happens in government funded health care.
I was just making the point that true government forced socialist societies mean the use of force by the government. But socialism itself can be freely joined by groups of individuals and it is done and practiced in the US. Its up to us.
Obama’s plan however is neither, it is simply a mandate to buy overpriced drugs from ripoff big drug companies and buy insurance from rip-off insurance companies, it is crony capitalism not socialism.