140 Comments

1. Bill R:

All I really know for sure is that I enjoy reading the Belmont club.

Jul 12, 2009 - 5:01 am 2. starling:

There is a burgeoning literature and intellectual community devoted to the study of blogs in general and political blogs in particular. Studies can be found in computer science, artificial intelligence, sociology, information and media studies, and more recently management and management information systems. Two well known lefty blogs–Feministing and Atrios have been the sole subject of some studies. To my knowledge, conservative blogs have not been studied with as much interest in academia.

I recently referenced the above study in a recent working paper of mine on determinants of ad revenue in the political blogosphere.

http://ssrn.com/abstract=1418625

Drawing data from the Liberal and Conservative Blogads networks in late 2006, I also found that the Liberal blogs have more links and more links to each other. Although the number of impressions is by far the strongest predictor of ad revenues, I also found higher revenues among blogs that bridged gaps between otherwise disconnected clusters. This occurred both within and between the two hemispheres and had nothing to do with centrism or being a moderate.

But not all blogging comunities work this way. I have another paper on gossip and hollywood blogs that finds greater returns to blogs that more tightly linked clusters (rather than bridging them).

Here’s a link to the political blogs paper for anyone whose interested. But be warned, don’t read this if you plan to operate heavy machinery or an automobile within three hours. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1418625

Jul 12, 2009 - 5:11 am 3. Lifeofthemind:

Life is change. The NY Sun failed, although the site lives as an occasional post and for the Out&About blog.
These days I rarely go to Little Green Footballs except to check link and news feeds, I visit Drudge a small fraction of when I did a few years ago. Will PJM survive? We should anticipate what the left could do to destroy alternate voices and prepare to meet the attacks. I still think our biggest threats are Moby type extremists, either real or false agent provacateurs designed to discredit us.

Jul 12, 2009 - 5:21 am 4. Glenmore:

Perhaps Conservative sites seem to be more cross-linked and outward-linked than Liberal ones because libertarians are counted more as conservatives than liberals.

Jul 12, 2009 - 5:28 am 5. wretchard:

One of the things that will be increasingly important in the future, with its vast increase in bandwidth, is to find ways to separate the signal from the noise. How do people accomplish this task at the moment? I think one of the ways that time-limited bloggers do this is precisely to rely on links from their own informal gatekeepers to whom they visit for links. This accounts for the topology of their links as much as anything else. It might be the case that if you zoomed in on that red-blue blog cluster that you will find microstructures within the parent cluster. Why? Because microsclusters let individual bloggers separate signal from noise.

Suppose you know nothing about the law. No problem, you just visit Eugene Volokh, Ann Althouse or Glenn Reynolds and if they take a point of view then you use that as your starting point. It doesn’t mean you’ll agree with them, but you will use them as your first pass filter. So the microstructure acts like a kind of tuner which determines what signals it picks up.

As the blogosphere expands, it may be the case that individuals who spend a total of 10 minutes a day on the Internet will be even more dependent on their micro-structures for filters. They’ll visit five or six sites and from it gain their view of the world. The important thing to remember is that those five or six sites may not necessarily include ABC, NBC and CBS.

This is the flip side of the observation I made long ago in the “Blogosphere at War” article of links as amplifiers. They are also tuners.

Jul 12, 2009 - 5:30 am 6. ADE:

As even newer entrants who were never in the “culture wars” before come online via Twitter, Facebook — and the blogs — the topology is bound to change.

It will, and it will be good, as more bottom up evidence emerges from Twitter and Facebook messages.

But who makes sense of it all, separates the signal from the noise? Who draws the trends together, analyses the patterns that lead to the future.

I would suggest that this blog from our esteemed host, and its many commentators, is the exemplar.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

But in the end, it was the concept. You and me. More you than me.

And the concept is with us. Doubt, humility, forgiveness, original sin, will sort out the internet.

ADE

Jul 12, 2009 - 5:45 am 7. mac:

“The important thing to remember is that those five or six sites may not necessarily include ABC, NBC and CBS.”

W, if the seeker has the slightest interest in hearing the truth rather than canned DNC talking points, you can be absolutely certain their search WON’T include ABC, NBC and CBS.

Jul 12, 2009 - 5:49 am 8. Lifeofthemind:

Media companies, NBC CBS, ABC, Fox, are essentially aggregators of independent observers and sub-contractors. Their state sponsored rivals, PBS, BBC, Al-Jazeera are not far behind. This is a return to an 18th century model of information distribution. The border between the blogosphere and traditional reportage will continue to blur. Will accurate and honest reporting by correspondents like Yon and Totten prove economically sustainable? Foundations and NGOs sponsor much of the research or reportage that produces content and I expect that trend to continue. Currently most of those entities are left of center. The old practice of the author having a Patron that the work was dedicated to may need reviving. BTW is everyone aware that Al-Jazeera has found an American outlet? It is PBS, surprise!, as al-J provides much of the content for Martin Savitch’s show, “World Focus.”

mac,
As I said about Charlie Rose on the last thread, it is sometimes useful to observe the distribution of the Democratic Party Line.

Jul 12, 2009 - 5:52 am 9. no mo uro:

“Eventually the liberal transferees began to catch up with the conservative early adopters. Moreover, many of them were professionally trained in the media skills and this added to the perception of liberal predominance. In fact maybe the liberals did predominate for a brief window of time. But maybe that time is now already past.”

“We should anticipate what the left could do to destroy alternate voices and prepare to meet the attacks. I still think our biggest threats are Moby type extremists, either real or false agent provacateurs designed to discredit us.”

This juxtaposing of post and comment says it all. Whatever advantage we might have now could vanish tomorrow. It is inherent in the left mindset to obliterate the ‘other’.

Jul 12, 2009 - 5:58 am 10. Tony:

Blogs as tuners, that’s an excellent description, blogs as pathfinders in the expanding global library. Thanks Prof. W.

This analysis only broadly defines quantity and gross characterization of the sites as right/left/middle. It would be interesting to understand the content of the content. I find that I learn new information on conservative sites, I’m pointed toward facts and logical analysis. On liberal sites, I mostly learn that they hate George Bush, Sarah Palin, etc. and the sparse facts used to support their arguments are often uncited or rely on biased analysis of granular cites out of context.

I know I’m prejudiced, I’ve always viewed the Internet in the dreamy hopes of Bucky Fuller’s “Education Automation” or Vannevar Bush’s memex, a way to continue one’s humble education via rapid, self-directed access to verifiable facts.

Wretchard’s topological analysis of First Fallujah is a perfect example of this, the educational benefitst that drew me to this site and has kept be coming back ever since. How strange that Andrew Sullivan’s site was my tuner to find the Belmont Club. I would bet that there will be less and less of this crossover as the liberal sites become ever more partisan and hateful of the Other, (Sullivan himself being the best example of this evolution) as they consider anyone a hated infidel who doesn’t believe whatever is the latest history or science they must promulgate for political ends.

Jul 12, 2009 - 6:03 am 11. Jamie Irons:

I was interested in the comment above by Lifeofthemind (#3) about LIttle Green Footballs.

Soon after 9/11, which was when I first became interested in blogs, I was led to LGF by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal. I found it to be immensely informative at that time, and reading it was one of the forces that moved me from left to slightly right of center. But in the past couple of years I have found it not as helpful, I’m not sure why.

At this point I find Belmont Club to be indispensable. The host’s originality, breadth and depth are not to be found anywhere else that I’m aware of, and many of the comments also evince an original and unique perspective (my own of course excluded!).

As someone said above, independent on-the-ground reporting, like Michael Totten’s, is another extremely valuable source.

In my view, it is my duty to try to contribute in a modest way financially to these efforts.

Jamie Irons

Jul 12, 2009 - 6:51 am 12. Dave the Kapampangan:

I turned to blogs because MSM stories completely omit any notions of context and completely lack any in-depth analysis. They trumpet a single, 5-second sound byte or propaganda point sandwiched by commercials hundreds of times a day.

For example. “California and other states are going broke!” trumpets the media, 400 times a day.

Where has all the money gone? No answer.

“We need another stimulus package!” wails the media, 400 times a day.

Where has all the money gone? No answer.

Cut to commercials and Hollywood worship. Jennifer vs. Angelina over Brad. Since 2005. More “Sig Heil Nanny Obananarama.” Cut to commercials again. No attention span.

Vapid. Bread and circuses. You’d figure at least someone could trot out a graph or something.

Jul 12, 2009 - 7:17 am 13. I'm Just Plain Dumb:

I think HufPo had superb marketing connections through general media, and that has helped make them more visible as a single site. Plus, make no mistake, it is a planned commercial enterprise – new/opinion as entertainment for the junkies on the Internet. So some of the “shocking” events reported in the news from that site are, shall we say, planned and sensationalized.

Jul 12, 2009 - 7:30 am 14. cjm:

1. does a site provide a unique perspective or voice?

2. does it update regularly?

3. does it provide quality information?

i personally read about 10 sites regularly, maybe the bottom two change over the course of a year. sometimes a marginal site will be linked to by one of my regular sites, and i will read them for awhile — but they usually don’t provide enough value to become a steady.

1. instapundit
2. lucianne
3. belmont
4. national review (only the Corner)
5. strategy page
6. power line
7. chicago boyz
8. The Dignified Rant (military analysis)
9. Dinocrat
10. Urgent Agenda

i don’t read any of the leftists sites as they are all the same, and leftist thought is pretty much set in stone anyway. it’s not like you are ever going to learn anything from one of them, so why waste the time. and the quality of comments is abysmal — i’d rather listen to a drunk in a bar.

Jul 12, 2009 - 7:43 am 15. MTL:

Jamie Irons #11- Substitute LGF for Powerline and I’ve got the same story. The Belmont Club and the comments are one of the few places that I’ve found that has thoughtful insight into varied topics, but avoids much of the ad hominem or vindictive writing found elsewhere. Even within the comments, maybe I’m imagining things, but there seem to be fewer flame wars as well.

Though I suspect this site would end up in the red hemisphere of that graph, I don’t think Wretchard would suppress his analysis on a subject for partisan gain. This site lacks much of the partisan hypocrisy where an opinion on a subject can change depending on who’s in the white house at the time…

As for facebook and twitter bringing the next part of the revolution- I spend plenty of time on facebook, but avoid any political commentary on my page because I’m young and my views are quite unique within my friends. Even though I would love to participate in the Best of the Web facebook page, I would never dare to let people that I’m facebook friends with know anything about my political leanings. I’ve seen the vindictiveness of my peers when it comes to different opinions, and I’d rather not be a target for that…

That was the original reason why I started the twitter page: http://twitter.com/BCinDC in the hopes that people from around here could get together and talk about some of the topics discussed here. Not too much interest in the site though yet, maybe there aren’t any BC readers in DC?

Jul 12, 2009 - 7:51 am 16. NullificationNow:

I recall C-SPAN, in the pre blog days, as indispensable in sourcing information. In their call in format the calls became so annoying with liberal banality I seldom if ever watch now. It is almost impossible for an unbiased informative source of information to exist, we as a society are forever Balkanized. I grew up with elderly people who were raised by those who lived during Reconstruction in the South. I sensed they were far more traumatized by this event than the hostility that proceeded. We are in effect beginning a new “Reconstruction” that will adversely affect many of us and the blogs reflect the depth of difference in the approach in logic as well as vindictiveness.

Jul 12, 2009 - 7:59 am 17. Cannoneer No. 4:

Those of you who self-identify with “The Right” are perpetuating “The Left’s” maskirovka.

The political/philosophical/ideological/cultural divide in America and the world has little to do with who sat on which side of the French Estates General 220 years ago. The divide is between freedom and security.

Freedom-lovers want to be left the hell alone to pursue life, liberty and happiness. They want to be able to take risks which may pay off handsomely, and they want to be able to keep their winnings.

Security-lovers want to be protected, especially from the consequences of their poor decisions.

I’m an Anti-Leftist. Also a Cultural Revolutionary. I have given up on Republicans. I’m no longer identifying myself as a conservative, but I still caucus with them on most issues. I reject the term Right-Wing as a description of my politics. That’s the enemy’s term.

The Tea Partiers are Culture Warriors. Their amateurism is a feature, not a bug.

Jul 12, 2009 - 7:59 am 18. Lifeofthemind:

Left Brain? Right Brain? I prefer Pinky and The Brain!

Jul 12, 2009 - 8:03 am 19. Bill C.:

I too used to visit LGF daily as part of my round of websites used to get my daily dose of news and issues. Last year during the Presidential election it seemed to take a turn away from the perspective and issues that had attracted my attention.

Earlier this year, I felt that it had become an apologist for the administration, and that creationism had replaced radical Islamn as LGF’s opponent of freedom.

Needless to say, I don’t visit there anymore.

Jul 12, 2009 - 8:06 am 20. WillDoMathForFood:

I can get The Liberal Viewpoint anywhere. It’s ubiquitous. I’m looking for something I agree with. I’m looking for like-minded people, a community. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, so to speak. A lot of it is about reassurance, though my ultimate goal is a coherent philosophical explanation of what makes society tick, what makes it prosper, what makes it die, why it commits suicide. WHY? That’s why I’m here.

As the blog title suggests, I think a lot of the left/right divide is just because there are two main modalities in the way people think, analytical vs. emotional, which is often way over-simplified with the “left-brain/right-brain” anatomical specialization theory. I think that this is also admirably captured in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test that you can find all over the web. (I’m an INTJ.) Of the four indicators, Thinking vs Feeling (#3) and Judgmental vs Perceptive (#4) probably pretty accurately predict what your politics are. If you are Thinking/Judgmental (meaning you’re analytical and see the world as black/white), then you’re probably a conservative; if you are Feeling/Perceptive (emotional and see the world in shades of gray), then you’re probably a liberal. With all due respect to Whiskey, I think the source of the male/female divide in politics is that women fall into the “Feeling” category by 75%-25%, while men fall into the “Thinking” category by 57%-43%. And I don’t think any amount of education or changing styles of upbringing will change this; it’s a genetic tendency. Mother Nature does what she does. In that sense, the real dawn of liberal dominance in society may really have been the adoption of Universal Suffrage.

This is a real problem for the question of fiscal discipline in society, because there is always suffering; the poor are always with us. Yet to a person of emotional bent, this is a crime that MUST be alleviated. Alleviation of suffering is both priceless and impossible. No amount of money can fix it, so more is always required. There is no possible criterion for “enough”. How does society handle this? Right now, the Feeling philosophy is on the ascendant, and the trick will be to put the brakes on it before it sucks us dry. Right now, my money is on the suck. I’m hoping that I’m wrong about that. My best hope is that there are a few grownups left in the Democratic Party in Congress who will stop it before we’re bankrupt; my next best hope is that the disaster becomes so manifest that even the Feelers will see that eliminating all injustice is just impossible, regardless of how much of other people’s money you spend. Both options look like losers, and even when you win, you lose.

Oh, one thing the MBTI doesn’t measure is optimism/pessimism. I’m a pessimist.

Jul 12, 2009 - 8:08 am 21. Tony:

Here’s a comparison of the content of various sources:

Deus Ex Machina on The Belmont Club on April 30, 2004. The dramatic arrival of Major General Jassem Mohamed Saleh with the newly formed Fallujah Protection Army, to which the USMC is supposed to hand over control of Fallujah, must rank as one of the most surprising episodes of the war.

Or, Bing West’s book, “No True Glory” offers vivid boots-on-the-ground reporting.

Or, turn yourself into an idiot and read “history” as written by the politically crazed community organizers at Wikipedia would like to have it: First Battle of Fallujah As part of the occupation of Iraq, the First Battle of Fallujah, codenamed Operation Vigilant Resolve, was an unsuccessful attempt by the United States Military to capture the city of Fallujah in April 2004.

Jul 12, 2009 - 8:19 am 22. steveaz:

Right Brain, Left Brain…

That flash of yellow in the centre, that’s the Corpus collosum!

Glenmore’s (@#4) Libertarian impact may be driving connectivity between the two hemispheres, bridging the divide even while every marketer’s impulse to brand and distinguish the “right” from the “left” is working to create an ever greater divide.

The Libertarian “center” may be what saves this country from its partisan excesses.

Jul 12, 2009 - 8:50 am 23. JFSanders:

Webpronews: “The Huffington Post is the most popular of standalone sites, grabbing 4.5 million visitors in September, up a whopping 472 percent from last year.”

I suspect it is the same 500 thousand useful idiots continually refreshing their browsers to see if someone has responded to their spew…

I foresee a time when there is a “universal language” that is understood by people from all over the world and used for internet communication. Now what it looks like is anyone’s guess. But I suspect it will be driven by the children. As the social networking sites take on a more international demographic, the need for a Chinese kid to communicate with a kid from Romania who wants to communicate with a girl from Nebraska will germinate into this “language”.

When and IF this happens the ability for govts to suppress information is gone. Isolation will not be possible. And IF this happens education and knowledge will be paramount to the power of the gun. As in someone from around the world will be able to initiate a use of power on an individual basis that results in something happening a half a world away. Maybe.

Wretchard: “This is the flip side of the observation I made long ago in the “Blogosphere at War” article of links as amplifiers. They are also tuners.

This is true and can be influenced just as a jammer would do to radio signals. Look at the number of apparatchiks and such when a meme has to be propagated through the web. The noise ratio goes through the roof when news of the enemies success is disseminated.

Jul 12, 2009 - 8:57 am 24. Cowboy:

I agree with you cjm. Liberal sites just don’t offer much that you can’t easily find or come up with yourself. You can see the same phenomenon in talk radio. Many, many liberals have vowed to take on Rush Limbaugh and had a run at it, from the vaunted Mario Cuomo Show to Air America, and they’ve always flamed out in short order. Who’d want to listen to three hours of that? Apparently very few do. Even liberals will listen to Rush on the EIB before they tune in to Kennedy or Rhodes on Air America.
Likewise, conservative bloggers provoke thought and entertain a wide array of ideas and approaches. The libs tend to come along with preordained, “politically correct”, versions of things that are unsurprising. You easily see passion for ideas on the right, while on the left the passion lies in the polemical displays rather than the content.

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:07 am 25. Gordon:

Agree with those above that LGF has become mesmerized by Creationism and European Nazis and I also no longer go there. Too bad, it was pretty good there for a while.

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:27 am 26. Joe Hill:

“Freedom-lovers want to be left the hell alone to pursue life, liberty and happiness. They want to be able to take risks which may pay off handsomely, and they want to be able to keep their winnings.”

How Jeffersonian but hardly a view you will here expressed at any Jefferson-Jackson Day get togethers nowaday.

“Security-lovers want to be protected, especially from the consequences of their poor decisions.”

Again an idea rather at odds with the cheap money populism that represented the driving force of the Party of Lincoln through most of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Regulate the railroads, debase the currency pay back good money loans with cheap dollars. That is what the middle american yeomanry wanted.

I have been predicting for a while know that we are on the brink of political realignment in this country where both major parties split along fault lines neither wants to address – immigration for instance.

Despite the seeming homogeneity of those blogosphere blobs in the chart I think the issues not addressed by both parties are going to bubble up in ways that will profoundly alter or destroy both of them in the near future. I mean it should be clear by now that Obamaism is not economically sustainable and the “moderate Republicn” well we want to to do the same thing just more responsibly and not as fast or as sweeping is really no alternative at all.

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:32 am 27. steveaz:

Here’s what happens when a bipolar, deliberative organ lacks (or ignores) a mediating center.

Agenesis of key rational faculties kinda sucks.

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:36 am 28. Annoy Mouse:

This plays into Whisky’s now famous screeds. But as much as we cringe “criticizing” our intellectual opposites in mind, it rings true to the extent that it is obvious, embarrassing, and makes one feel uncomfortable. Through time immemorial the conservative male had an upper hand, and men did not dress in diapers and parade down the street, that it wasn’t an insult in theory to suggest that a women “ran” a 500 instead of a 900 V-Twin. But the tyranny of men aside, never before in the course of human history has one side of the brain succeeded in threatening the other with its very existence.

The yin shall eviscerate the yang where an army of intellectual elites will recklessly bash their counterpoint knowing that rightness makes might when numbers are concerned.

I saw a couple of bits on the local university television station where the guest speaker spoke of how the Anglican church, through years of decline of membership decided that they needed to get off of the moralistic message of the foundations of their faith and to expand it to allow others without such convictions to express there faith in the name of the Church of England, preserving a meager fellowship who possessed no precept of Anglicans past.

So a women cast of the ritualistic bonds of a stale patriarchy holds fasts to her revolutionary zeal, Fidel, Hugo and the Negro more the same, God forgives but we humans are nearly free of such quaint notions because the revolution must continue and there are societal precepts to be trashed in the name of a father figure whose firm hand has become the object of scorn.

There is no balance and the separation of powers, church and state, left and right, male female, shall coalesce into one purple semi-spherical blob undifferentiated from the next node and the resulting human DNA will favor the species of the blissfully ignorant because revolutionary females do not procreate except to indoctrinate new clones of themselves, an every diminishing and irrelevant voice of a newly extinct idea.

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:50 am 29. Instapundit » Blog Archive » THE BELMONT CLUB: Left Brain / Right Brain….:

[...] THE BELMONT CLUB: Left Brain / Right Brain. [...]

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:00 am 30. Annoy Mouse:

Just when the world needs it most we have run out of unexplored territories, the West has been conquered, there is no-where to run nowhere to hide and now the pride is feasting on the remains of its own bones. But ideas will find itself multi-variegated against separate interests if not for the self-interest of the ascendant other. If we do not accept ourselves then certainly we cannot expect Russia, China, and Islam, to respect the same. And it is on this point men will stand or fall, women will look forward to the new masters because it is in the psychology and physiology to accept the new order, men must prostrate themselves, castrate, or commit themselves to battle with the wisdom of knowing that it is possible to live through dieing as it is possible to die through living a submission to tyranny that will wipe out the future of men for more robust insects and belly crawlers.

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:04 am 31. Herb:

Starling said: “To my knowledge, conservative blogs have not been studied with as much interest in academia.”

Thats because them ‘fesser’s heads tend to explode when they are exposed to facts contrary to their assumptions and wisdom. Present company excepted.

I am struck by the number and quality of really good essayists that I find on the internet particularly on the BC. Im still trying to find the key on my computer that enables the make erudite function.

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:07 am 32. Mark:

Wrichard’s ‘left brain/left brain’ post title is interesting in several regards.

As Wrichard implies, the difference between left brain and right brain functions is by no means exclusive. Incapcities or damage on one side may elicit compensatory function on the other side.

Viz. Wiki: “If a specific region of the brain is either injured or destroyed, its functions can sometimes be assumed by a neighboring region, even in the opposite hemisphere, depending upon the area damaged and the patient’s age. Injury may also interfere with a pathway from one area to another. In this case, alternative (indirect) connections may exist which can be used to transmit the information to the target area. Such transmission may not be as efficient as the original pathway.”

In terms of the blogosphere, the left is enduring multiple contusions that are damaging communications pathways. The Stimulus, budget deficit, and aggressive social policies are failing. The positive predicted results have not occurred. Global temperatures, worst of all, are dropping. I note that liberal sources are referencing conservative sources and ideas, looking for new predictives. The left in general continues to rely on its old information circuits but gets caught in loops.

It’s increasingly easy to throw liberals off balance. One merely points out that their arithmetic isn’t working. People in general can still count and know that two plus two equals four. Surely this basic arithmetic is behind Obama’s falling polls.

Benj used to say that “Won’t Get Fooled Again” is an anthem of the Right. He’s right.

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:14 am 33. LFMayor:

re: 28 Annoy Mouse.
All dead on sir, however, it only takes a good shot of adversity to bring yang back to the front. Problem solving, fortitude under pressure and the removal of obstacles is alien and quite possibly impossible for the yin to perform.
Like any predator/prey matrix, when one population crashes it spells hard times for the other, overbalancing followed by balance.
Nurture and community must equate order and violence, we’re just seeing a little too much nurturing right now. I might even equate their sudden rise to power with that of a heavyweight boxing champion, this month’s rap musical hit act or a star NBA player who suddenly walks into untethered millions. They have no idea of how to steward or improve upon their windfalls and presently burst into flames and crash.
Those flames and crashing bits are what now cause me to worry and prepare.

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:17 am 34. LFMayor:

“quite possibly impossible…” that’s what I get for trying to be flowery Okay A.M, then let’s pick another compass heading. We could always try re-conquering one of the seaboards, eh?

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:22 am 35. LFMayor:

Herb, I empathize in full. I always feel like I’ve walked into a black tie dinner wearing cutoffs and the shoes I wore mowing the yard.

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:29 am 36. Gerry:

“Common sense suggests that sites which bridge disconnected parts of the Internet (at the collision point of these two memetic clouds) may get more traffic than those which remain in their own little corner. It is almost always better to be at the “crossroads” than in the cul-de-sacs.”

I don’t think common sense suggests it, and I think your last sentence has a flaw in it’s analogy that leads to the disconnect. While it is generally better for a business to be at a crossroad than in a cul-de-sac, that is the wrong allusion. It is better to think of it in terms of being better for business to be in a dense population center, such as a city, than to be on a remote stretch of highway between cities.

The problem with a ‘moderate’ or centrist approach is that it is going to annoy either of the dense populations half the time. I assert that people do not read blogs, in general, to have their entire worldview challenged. Rather, they read them to have their worldview enhanced, and to become armed with greater knowledge to assist them in fighting for their worldview.

It is not akin to a general store, where one can stock product that appeals to widely divergent tastes and thereby gain customers from across the spectrum. It is more similar in concept to trying to have a store that sells porn and Bible study materials. Half of the selection will alienate a large percentage of the customers and half of the selection will alienate another large percentage and others will be put off by the whole idea.

Further, if one thinks of a moderate as holding some conservative and some liberal precepts in somewhat equal balance, then another moderate could disagree on each and every single issue.

“It’s been said that newspapers in the past attempted to adopt a magisterial tone in order to attract a mixed readership of liberals and conservatives, thereby broadening their audience, and consequently their ad revenues.”

How did that work out for them? The fact that very few seem to have maintained that approach suggests to me that the concept did not lead to the expected results.

It is a partisan world and we are just living in it. The best we can hope to strive for is a more civil, yet still polarized, online political debate. I suspect, however, that even this is a pipe dream, for certain political mindsets believe the ends justify the means; that demonizing those who politically disagree is good and right because it works.

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:36 am 37. Chiral:

The psychological effect of equivalence by such pairings as left and right are horrible. Liars think they are entitled to lie as a matter of balance against those who speak truth. Fairness through symmetry has never worked, except to paralyze and hide behind generalities.

Which just happens to explain the name that I use here.

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:43 am 38. maak:

I read some Liberal stuff daily because I think it’s good to “know the enemy” and it ensures that I get a laugh on a daily basis. I’m not kidding.

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:46 am 39. Annoy Mouse:

LFM – “We could always try re-conquering one of the seaboards, eh?”

I think it is a known adversity that is precisely what we lack. For want of an old adversary we as a people are impelled to invent new ones by taking the vector of our last successes and to extrapolate them to new untold dimensions until an unambiguous failure occurs. This is how pendulums seem to swing, never settling out on a compass course that the minds eye has laid out before it.

I wonder if all this isn’t just a reflexive reaction to mans accent over disorder, a faltering of vigilance that will ultimately, like any pendulum, right itself after over asserting its own correctness. It is this corpus coliseum of society that translates the bitter swings of feast and famine and manages to forget its shortcomings as optimism lends to itself.

But I for one would rather stake out my own little safe harbor here and now than be on the first wave of explorers aboard the USSC Albert Gore, well on their way to a future Mars, looking to escape the ever-impending tragedy of anthropogenic Mars warming, though I will support their attempts to do so.

We live in curious times.

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:49 am 40. buddy larsen:

It is hard –really hard –to be centrist, to be cooperative or inclusive, when your brain cells are aware that they are meeting a bad idea halfway. It’s not that the meeting dilutes the good, it’s that it prevents the bad from proving itself. So you walk, but with a limp.

Another way to look at centrism, is that it’s fine as an empirical, a description of what really happens in a successful polity, but as an ideal, as a formal position, it results in a nameless craven quality that is at once vain (”I shall choose left or right on a case basis, and i shall be fair”) and dishonest (”I do not matter, only the people matter”).

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:50 am 41. NahnCee:

“It’s been said that newspapers in the past attempted to adopt a magisterial tone in order to attract a mixed readership of liberals and conservatives, thereby broadening their audience, and consequently their ad revenues. Why have the blogs divided into two camps instead of merging into a single blob?”

I thought the main reason why newspapers are uniformly failing across the country is that they deliberately CHOSE a liberal tilt, and have been printing lies to support their theories, and people choose not to pay for the privilege of being lied to. It’s different if you’re logging onto HuffPo and getting your lies for free — then you’ve self-selected as someone who’s comfortable being manipulated.

I also have to wonder how much liberal blogs function as a social networking scene, where people can hook up with like-minded other people with an end-goal of sex. I’ve seen that in the real world, where liberal acquaintances will attend a function such as a rally or a demonstration with the goal of “scoring”.

Which brings me to the topic of LGF. I quit reading the comments at LGF a couple of years ago when it became more of a chatty social scene full of flirtatious banter.

More recently, I have found it to concentrate on a very few topics that don’t interest me that much: creationism, right-wing conservative “terrorists”, and support for the Obama administration. I managed to get myself banned for suggesting that Johnson change the name of his blog to “The Daily Obama Apologia”, which is fine because I’m really teetering on the brink of taking it off my favorites list altogether because it just doesn’t bring anything to my internet party any more. I don’t care about creationism (think the threat is highly over-rated), I have a feeling that Mr. Johnson might consider me to be a conservative terrorist, and I’m not into the on-line chitty-chatty flirting that lonely or bored people engage in, attempting to either mimic a life or to create one.

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:51 am 42. Cannoneer No. 4:

Joe Hill, The Party of Lincoln was the radical, redistributionist, statist party through most of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Party of Jefferson-Jackson Day get togethers believed in State’s Rights and property rights back then.

Jul 12, 2009 - 11:11 am 43. Annoy Mouse:

Gerry- “It is more similar in concept to trying to have a store that sells porn and Bible study materials.”

Great imagery. I think a point that is being made in general is that conservatives are more likely to cross over the bridge of their own ideology to hear the points of views of their adversaries. If this is true it remains to be seen whether the balance of self proclaimed Libertarians are in play or if it is the age old adage that one should keep their enemies even closer. For me I‘ll wade into the Leftist revolutionary swill up to my knees before I retreat into more familiar territory.

Old media had the printing presses and could play the magisterial part on one side or the other as they had a monopoly over history, only to recently uncloak their true intentions when it really counted. The MSM now has shown its hand and we know what side they are on so the question is, is that good for business? Well it depends on what you think your demographic is. The American Communist Party thinks that their minority point of view is the true cause as do their close cousins the American Nazi Party. The fervent moderates are in the majority but are not bloody enough to lead the front page.

Personally it is the ‘cause celeb’ like homosexuality advocacy or global warming, or teen pregnancy, or pederasty that stand out as the issues that I realize will filter out all objectivity from a journalists insight. As important as these issues may or may not be if you can’t tell me the time of day without fitting in your pet promulgations in the doing I have no faith in your objectivity and there is no market in me to hear the same specious arguments over and over. If Fox News and CNN were polar opposites both of them are too pegged to the mimes for my interests. I’ll listen to a little of both and a good measure of PBS to boot but they don’t cancel one another out as much as eliminate themselves from any perception of objectivity.

“that demonizing those who politically disagree is good and right because it works.”

It sells as entertainment. But then again, any reasonably astute person can separate the kernel from the chaff but having new legions of under-educated voters will lead to ruin for sure. I think this is why the elites are so keen on universal suffrage even to the extent that they patronize foreign day labor. If the gentry class must share the vote, certainly those under their tutelage should have a majority voice as well. That ought to balance things out for the Lay class.

Jul 12, 2009 - 11:31 am 44. steveaz:

#31, Herb,
Your posts are as erudite as they need to be. You get yourself across just fine.

But, if you wanted to appear more erudite, it’s easy to do.
1. add fancy punctuation. Use a semicolon once in a while (it’s the colon key, just no-shift). No need to use it correctly. No one else does and so they won’t notice.
2. Tags, man! Tags! Use italics a lot. When you use (or attempt to use) html tags in a comment, you get big points for trying. (Just don’t send us off to some Left-wing “cookie-farm” with the NYT logo on its front page.)
3. Hables latin? Toss in gobs of latin. Post hoc. Ad hoc. Ad nauseum. Did you notice the fringe benefit? Ya get to use italics! See number two, above.

Caffeinated and full of nifty advice! Happy Sunday, BC’ers!
-Steve

Jul 12, 2009 - 11:35 am 45. Mongoose:

Well, BC is the best read as far as I am concerned: Great Poetics, great prose, not addicted to determinism of any sort, capable of reaching outside of positivism, scientism and materialism yet a truly practical resource in worldly and political matters, open to people of faith, a respect for language and real thought and an almost instinctual rejection of cant and pseudo-intellectual claptrap–can’t beat it. I think that the general lack of trolls speaks volumes about BC. They just do not know aht to do about it.

The club claims a broad swathe of sensibilities, talents, skills and experiences. If it lost either Richard or the commentators it would be not be the same. A truly poetic balancing act.

I must have over a 120 political blogs in my reader, including the major lefty ones (only for the purpose of recognizance, mind you,) but I never click though to BC from there. BC first and then the reader/

Only Wretchard knows its reach, but I have in my travels been surprised of who knows of it.

If only we had more of these sorts of outlets.

I will say that the next beg challenge online will be video, and it will be a tussle.

Truth is that our opponents are prone to a herd mentality. We are not. We are too independent and too rational to create a commercial alternative to HuffPo nor should we be forced to. What is needed is some sort of platform that can somehow finance a few thousand BC’s and the local level; that and the abiilty to bring the best of those bubbling to the top. Let a thousand flowers bloom…

Jul 12, 2009 - 11:41 am 46. buddy larsen:

here comes an instalanch!

Jul 12, 2009 - 11:46 am 47. AWH:

Wretcherd’s earlier post (maybe 1 1/2 weeks ago?) seemed to be pushing us to get involved. Today’s post is not directly involved in that, but I think it is related. The people on this site are incredibly diverse and intelligent – not to mention capable. If all of us build our networks and use the web and technology to the fullest, there really isn’t a limit to how much we can accomplish.

I’ve been motivated and started my own blog. now I just need to build enough momentum to get started….

Jul 12, 2009 - 11:46 am 48. john:

When I saw the tangled little red and blue dots, the word ‘interesting’ was not the first word to mind.

Jul 12, 2009 - 11:46 am 49. programmer:

My two cents. We, the good ol’ USA, as a social entity have made stupidity a survivable character trait. Notice, I said “survivable”, not “a survival”. A whole lot of genes that should be disappearing from the pool are still out there swimming around because soft hearted (and soft headed) people can’t bear to see the “poor, dear things” reap the consequences of their just plain, downright, bone headed stupidity. So…. we get a lot of people who voted for President Obama and/or democrats. And then, and then…they have the temerity to impugn the intelligence of the conservative soldiers, police, firemen, builders, farmers, miners, etc. that made their stupidity survivable. Grrrrr, what an absolute waste of my money and time spent in the military. I risked my life for this… Arghhhhhh (footstep sounds stomping off with spitting, sputtering, foaming, flecking [is that a word?] sounds fading into the distance….)

Jul 12, 2009 - 11:48 am 50. LFMayor:

Re: 48 Programmer
I fully agree. If we took the mandatory warning labels off of 5 gallon buckets and plastic bags it would be a fine start. I’m thinking when the power goes out and the motor transport of foods ceases to the big cities we’ll see the real human race begin.
All it will take is one miscalculation, one step too fast too far and the thread holding the whole works together will snap. Hunger is second only to fire for motivational purposes.

Jul 12, 2009 - 11:58 am 51. Josh:

Just to note that sites link to like-minded sites because of the “hey he said it good” factor, an attempt to get a single clear view, not (necessarily)the seeking of consensus or a close-mindedness to other positions. It’s being part of a whole, allowing an individual (blog) to specialize.

Jul 12, 2009 - 12:06 pm 52. WillDoMathForFood:

There’s always Douglas Adams’ solution to the left/right dichotomy: tell the useless and stupid half of society, the slackers like professional telephone sanitizers, that they need to get on the Space Ark immediately (USSA Albert Gore?), before the world gets eaten by the onrushing Giant Space Goat.

The only problem was that after the useless half of society left the planet, the remaining half were wiped out by a contagious virus that lurked on unsanitized telephones.

Jul 12, 2009 - 12:17 pm 53. Dave the Kapampangan:

1) Difference between the Left and the Right:

The Left wants government to be a huge system of collective payments for individually incurred costs. Trouble is, the entitlement mongers get greedy, the regulation gets totalitarian, and the Left quickly runs out of other people’s money.

The Right wants individual freedoms, individual consequences, and individual charity in a huge free market system. Collective government is used sparingly for necessary services (defense, infrastructure and so on) and for regulating transparency instead of entitlements. The advantage is, it’s economically viable and prosperous.

2) Meeting in the middle

If you wanted to meet in the middle, you could create a huge, VOLUNTARY pool of non-government leftist people volunteering collective tax payments (say a 10% tithe) to help specific lefty causes.

They could meet once a week. They could call themselves the Sunday morning “Charitable Headquarters for United Renewal of Collective Humanity.” I’m sure no one on the Right would mind, as long as it was voluntary.

Jul 12, 2009 - 12:31 pm 54. PA Cat:

I quit reading the comments at LGF a couple of years ago when it became more of a chatty social scene full of flirtatious banter.

I bailed on LGF about the same time for the same reason. I should add that one reason I appreciate the generally erudite (maybe “respectful” would be a better term) tone here at BC is that I get tired of the potty-mouth syndrome that shows up on too many threads over at Ace of Spades. There are some good commenters over there but there are also a number who have never grown past a juvenile (and tiresome) type of bathroom humor.

And yes, I’m another INTJ.

Jul 12, 2009 - 12:43 pm 55. WillDoMathForFood:

PA Cat @ 53: I’m pleased to meet a fellow-traveler!

Jul 12, 2009 - 12:50 pm 56. winslow:

The capitalist (freedom) and socialist(safety) cultural streams are fundamentally incompatible. That is why there is so little overlap between the red and the blue. People, whether liberal, conservative or libertarian, seek out conversation with people in their own cultural stream.

There was a time when newspapers managed their content to maximize subscribers. Clearly that time is long past. The big money people who attempt to control politicians seem to have learned that its worth while to own a newspaper. Even when it is a money losing proposition, it is a cost effective way of influencing both politicians and voters.

We can expect that money losing media will soon be supported by the government.

Jul 12, 2009 - 12:55 pm 57. Annoy Mouse:

WDMfF – I think you’re on to me.

Jul 12, 2009 - 1:00 pm 58. steveaz:

I notice an outlying link-clot on the “blue” hemisphere. That oddity combines with the relatively greater interconnections in the “red” hemisphere to indicate two things:
1. The “red” ’sphere is comparatively more self-propagating, self-centered and self-referential than the “blue” one (not bad traits for a confident, partisan faction to possess).
2. The “blue” ’sphere is being led from without, like an uncertain toy-poodle being led on a leash (good for the leash-holder, not so good usually for the dog).

Could that dead-ended, blue smudge lurking alone off to the far left be a sulking Soros-funded 527, beep, beep, beeping plaintively? – calling out to the HuffingtonpostDailykoscrowd, “Please, please link me. Link me. LINK ME!”

Jul 12, 2009 - 1:03 pm 59. Joe Hill:

“Joe Hill, The Party of Lincoln was the radical, redistributionist, statist party through most of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Party of Jefferson-Jackson Day get togethers believed in State’s Rights and property rights back then.”

Cannoneer – that is exactly my point. How did that happen? Left became right and Right became Left. In Europe when they talk about liberal economics they are referring to free market capitalists. Invoking Lincoln, despoiler of the constitution as the patron saint of a modern conservative party is as ridiculous as invoking Jefferson and Jackson as the patron saints of a modern statist party. Put Jackson in charge today and the first thing he would do is abolish the Fed and install a public water board on the White House lawn to deal with recalcitrant heathens and anyone who invoked the phrase Aztlan.

Just as both major political parties have done a 189 turn in the last say 100 years I think they have both increasing focused on subjects they are comfortable with rather than the problems and issues that are realy central to the voters at large and so politics has narrowed to two clans figting over control and not real issues. The public is disaffected, confused, and willing to grasp at any hopey changey BS. The problem is this time around the BSer in chief I believe has used the BS to mask real ideological extremism.

Because neither party wants to stand for anything except re-election there is a slow burn going on out there that most folks are either missing or misconstruing. The central political fact that is beginning to dawn in the American public is that the system ain’t working and neither major party is offering eith solutions or real alternatives.

BTW anybody who thinks american newspapers were centrist back in the day simply hasn’t read many 19th or early 20th century newspapers.

Jul 12, 2009 - 1:12 pm 60. bogie wheel:

We, the good ol’ USA, as a social entity have made stupidity a survivable character trait.

Exhibit A: Texting NY teen falls down manhole; her family says they intend to sue.

Exhibit B: Woman opens washer during spin cycle, reaches into spinning drum, snags her hand in the clothing and loses a finger. Sues Maytag and the laundromat.

I could go on, but you know the drill. In the good ole days these are exactly the type of humans who would have been picked off by wolves or pumas. Or at the very least have caught cholera after drinking water from the stream near the latrine area in spite of granny’s stern and repeated advice to drink only the well water.

Unfortunately, not only has stupidity become a survivable trait in our present culture, it can in certain instances, with the right attorney, be a lucrative one as well. Where stupidity is concerned, it seems we have distributed the risks but individualized the rewards, instead of vice versa.

Alas, too many juries don’t get the connection that when they award that $238 billion in damages to poor Mrs. McGillicuddy for the hot McDonald’s coffee that spilled in her lap, it ain’t McDonald’s that pays in the end. It’s all of us.

Jul 12, 2009 - 1:24 pm 61. no mo uro:

It strikes me that too many people have convinced themselves that any memeset can just be unbundled and reassembled with chunks from other memesets into whatever the individual wants. It’s a major fantasy of so-called moderates. The problem is that this inevitably produces irreconcilable cognitive dissonance which seems to always degrade liberty.

I know there are examples of incidents when ideas from disparate camps can work together, but usually not. Small government and capitalism are synergistic in a way which produces liberty. Large government and collectivism greatly reduce liberty. Attempts to combine the two ALWAYS slouch towards collectivism and autocracy, as Hayek and Rothbard eloquently proved.

Trying to cobble together some chimera of left and right is generally a fools errand.

Jul 12, 2009 - 1:25 pm 62. Annoy Mouse:

“Trying to cobble together some chimera of left and right is generally a fools errand.”

You’d think so but polls made by Newt Gingrich and company have shown that there are cases of overwhelming congruence amongst the American electorate. Government prospers in the realm of wedge issues.

That’s why when the budget can’t be balanced the first thing to happen is they let all the criminals out of jail and furlough the police and fire departments. Hell no, some bureaucrat doesn’t lose his job.

Jul 12, 2009 - 1:38 pm 63. buddy larsen:

ha –lively, lively, language out of arizona these days –

Jul 12, 2009 - 1:39 pm 64. dtmack:

no mo uro

Yeah, but there’s a lot of issues where political ideas converge, even if for different reasons.

One that quickly comes to mind is the war on drugs. Many people from across the political spectrum agree that what we’re doing is not productive – this unites most Libertarians, many Progressives, and more than a few Conservatives.

Another is that society should be set up to reward people who do the right thing, and let the others reap the consequences of their decisions. The big difference here is the definition of “right thing”.

The media generally sees politics as a hard right/left division, unless they’re blathering on about some poorly defined bipartisanship. There’s a lot of issues that I put under the common sense umbrella that can be used to unite people politically, at least on that particular issue. How to do it is another question.

Jul 12, 2009 - 1:44 pm 65. steveaz:

Annoy Mouse said it:
“Government prospers in the realm of wedge issues”

The evermore ridiculous platforms of hyper-kinetic, urban politics designed to wring every last vote from the last “angry” voter is killing our country. Bike paths, don’t-feed-the-pigeons initiatives, Public Interest Research Group admonitions, even pooper-scooper laws: each is flaunted and hyped to cajole the next urban voter to unknowingly fleece herself.

An informed citizenry would balk at the tactic. Where’s ours?

Jul 12, 2009 - 1:49 pm 66. Night Owl:

Re: 20- “In that sense, the real dawn of liberal dominance in society may really have been the adoption of Universal Suffrage.”

The problem I have with this conclusion, (and I’ve seen it elsewhere so I am not trying to pick on this individual commenter) is that while it may be true, the arguments leading up to it often appear to gloss over or ignore the root cause of the tyranny of leftist thought; the testosterone driven quest for power among megalomaniacal men and women.

In a nutshell, leftist ideology is a compelling lie that pretends to be about fairness and security for all; when in reality it is about concentrating power into the hands of a few, using the lie as the carrot to attract the “useful idiots”. People who feel disenfranchised make great useful idiots for lefties. Hence the leftist focus on and ability at attracting women and minorities. Leftists also need to perpetuate the feelings of disempowerment among their “idiots”, hence the rise in victim-think ideology, and continued denial of the reality that these groups have more power than at any other time in history.

Long story short- don’t kid yourself into thinking that removing women’s suffrage would solve the issues of tyranny, whether it come from the left or the right. It existed long before women had any real power, and will continue as long as competition and fear run in our blood.

The counter-punch to the leftist plan is more empowerment to those who feel weak. Education is the key. Teach people that they can think for themselves, and run their own lives. The focus should be there, and not on turning men and boys into another victim group. That only plays into the leftist agenda of divide and conquer.

Unfortunately leftist thought dominates in the educational arena (and the mass media). So it will be an uphill battle.

Jul 12, 2009 - 1:50 pm 67. steveaz:

AZ is gearing up for its rainy season this month, Buddy. There’s electricity in the air!

Jul 12, 2009 - 1:51 pm 68. JFSanders:

Warning fancy HTML tags in use!
¡Advertencia! Etiquetas HTML en uso!
Attention! Dans l’utilisation des balises HTML!
Cảnh báo! Các thẻ HTML trong sử dụng!

WDMFF “The only problem was that after the useless half of society left the planet, the remaining half were wiped out by a contagious virus that lurked on unsanitized telephones.”

That uses the assumption that those left behind were too stupid to wipe the phone themselves. Which does not follow logically.

@ 57. steveaz; (snicker)

You are most likely correct in your theory. As I have long believed that the left is populated by “true believers”.

@ 59. Bogie wheel; (did it again…)

Oh no they know exactly who pays. They also believe that a society that doesn’t limit ones ability to eliminate one’s self is an unjust society. They seek security at all costs. If that means they have to stifle the economy then so be it. It is a societal psychosis. And yes Whisky is right about how it came to be. But I do not argue a return to yesterday’s oppression of women. I argue that society will turn on statism when it is proved that it is no more capable of providing security than capitalism yet it removes all ability to prosper.

Jul 12, 2009 - 1:52 pm 69. bogie wheel:

The Party of Jefferson-Jackson Day get togethers believed in State’s Rights and property rights back then.

Yah, and those “property rights” for some included the ability to treat Negroes as property.

I think it’s problematic when one claims one’s freedom (individual, or that of one’s state) in whole or in part in an effort to deny someone else their freedom. I’m a proponent of the 10th Amendment, but the historical hitching of the state’s rights wagon to the slavery/Jim Crow star was neither prudent nor just, IMO. The association of the cause of state’s rights with the historical episode of the secession of slave-holding Confederate states is with us to this day and, again IMO, is an unfortunate drag on what is not just a good idea (the vigorous assertion of state’s rights being a strong bulwark against federal abuse of power) but a critical one at this time in our nation’s life.

I think there’s a reason why T.S. Eliot said what he did about bad acts born (at least in part) of merited motives. “The cause” gets tainted for a long, long, long time.

Or maybe I’m just a stink-stirring Pennsylvania Yankee.

Jul 12, 2009 - 2:01 pm 70. dtmack:

65 Night Owl

The cure for our leftist disease is simply to shine the light on their ideas. They’re good at stealth, not so good at actual policy.

The left is useful in that it asks many questions that need to be asked. Then they generally propose a solution that flies in the face of all human nature, and will only make whatever the problem is that much worse.

I think there is room in politics for a movement that will ask these questions, and then come up with proposals that may actually help to solve the problem. But we don’t have that yet.

Why don’t lefties run on their true beliefs? Because they’d be defeated everywhere but in a small handful of places.

Jul 12, 2009 - 2:15 pm 71. whiskey:

I think you are all missing what Obama plans to do.

Among other things, shut this place down. And all others like it. There is “hate speech” legislation moving through the House that will do just that. Allowing Holder to designate any he please as “hate speech” and Alcee Hastings has sponsored a bill which would set up concentration camps for those espousing an end to abortion, the second Amendment, and so on. Shades of Obama’s pal Ayers.

Obama and Holder are going to prosecute Bush and his officials, and also the CIA, for “torture” of AQ figures like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, as a prelude of course to releasing Mohammed.

Obama knows his economic plans are not working, cannot work, and will create the “mancession” as Glen Reynolds has deemed it, with most women working and most men not. Women are now the first time majority of the workforce, and layoffs have been 82%. All Obama needs is fifty percent “plus one” to win, and that’s his goal with Stalinist show trials, and he hopes, a successful nuclear attack on the US so he can play Marshal Petain to AQ. His dream, and many others.

What the intelligentsia, the coastal elites, Blacks, Hispanics, Women, all want is their own form of Vichy’s “National Revolution” which in this case is a reactionary turn to the values of 1968. Much as Petain’s Vichy officials hated Jews, Communists, Leftists, reformers, individual rights liberals, and Anglo-oriented small government people, the current elites and groups hate gun owners, conservatives, “uncool people,” rural residents, cultural conservatives, and so on.

Part of the reason France collapsed so quickly, so absolutely, without even a pretense of fighting onwards, in contrast to Greece, the USSR, Yugoslavia, was that France itself had probably most of the population eager to surrender so that the Nazis might be enlisted in wiping out domestic opponents, opponents not just on the political but the cultural and social side. Including of course free enterprise and other untrammeled economic activity that threatened dirigisme which was a pioneering feature of Vichy life and is now present in the US. Even Yugoslavia, which was deeply divided, had more fight against the Germans and Italians because they knew well surrender meant annihilation.

Obama’s true model, his dream and that of his followers is Vichy France. Sadly we lack our own De Gaulle.

Jul 12, 2009 - 2:19 pm 72. programmer:

JFSanders,

I am green with envy! Any one who can write in more than two languages leaves me awe struck!

Jul 12, 2009 - 2:24 pm 73. b goldman:

The reasont blogs don’t follow the old mass-medium, middle-of-the-road-to-attract-a-broader-and-therefore-bigger-audience model may be that bloggers aren’t in it for the money. But it may also be that for several decades now, successful marketing has moved away from that model to tightly targeted, committed niches. The Internet is particularly suitable for this, since it has the capacity to mimic one-to-one communication by tailoring content according to known demographic data. Unless your product is so huge and so commonly used that it’s practically universal (e.g., Coca-Cola, the CEO of whose Australian advertising agency once became famous in the industry for defining the target audience as “everybody with a *#@$%! mouth”), mass marketing is both expensive and wastefully so.

Jul 12, 2009 - 2:27 pm 74. JFSanders:

@71. Programmer;

Not me. Just a semi good translator. And you have to run it back and forth just to make sure the syntax is correct. And sometimes it still does not work for any writing larger than a sentence.

I was poking fun at all of the warning labels that come attached to everything you buy. And at a previous comment about HTML tags being used by the elites of society. Hell, it isn’t as bad in Europe as it is here. But then again the U.S. is the MOST litigious society on the planet.

And Whisky, I have plenty of gall, it isn’t De Gaulle. But it will do for the work ahead.

Jul 12, 2009 - 2:34 pm 75. WillDoMathForFood:

Night Owl @ 65: Don’t get wrong. I don’t advocate removing womens’ right to vote. You are absolutely correct in saying that tyranny existed before women were allowed to vote, and male-dominated tyranny is still tyranny. I would also venture to say that tyranny in a society in which women are powerless is many times more brutal than a society in which women are a political force to be reckoned with. But I am trying to say that Universal Suffrage did change politics forever. The people whose primary mode of thought is emotional are fertile ground as useful idiots: they are easily convinced by a slick ad campaign with lots of pathos. Look at the “Earth vs the Suits” edition of the BC on July 2nd: lots of music, attractive, enthusiastic people being oppressed, cute children, evil men in suits who want to destroy the planet, dancing on the sand, a cartoon of science…no facts, but compelling imagery. A lot of people eat that up and ask no further questions. A large percentage of men fall into this category, too (43% by my statistic). Education is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for overcoming it. We’re certainly not giving our children the proper education in the sort of critical thinking that is necessary for making critical decisions about, not what is good or bad, but what is better or worse. Few choices are win-win. (A lot of them are lose-lose, but not obviously so.) I’m not sure how to fix this; I completely agree with you that leftist-dominated education is an enormous roadblock. In an earlier blog, there was a discussion of Leo Linbeck’s efforts to promote private education, and I wasn’t entirely facetious when I asked how I could invest in it. There’s a serious groundswell of disgust with public edu-ma-cation, so I think there is fertile ground there. Trouble is, education is expensive, and few can afford to pay for it twice, once in taxes, and once for real. But a lot of people I know are doing it anyway, either through private schools or home schooling. I think vouchers are a great idea – which the Teachers’ Unions with crush at any cost. It’s bad, alright.

Jul 12, 2009 - 2:39 pm 76. WillDoMathForFood:

JFSanders @ 67: I only repeat the story. Trying to be funny, not serious, sorry for the confusion.

Jul 12, 2009 - 2:43 pm 77. buddy larsen:

so is de gaulle de goal ?

Jul 12, 2009 - 2:46 pm 78. steveaz:

Whiskey,
If you’re correct, then Obama’s plan has a glaring Achilles Heel. You can’t build a lasting political scheme on the shifting sands of “urban cool.”

What is “cool” anyway?” It depends, doesn’t it? JCrew cargo pants, a “butterfly” neck tattoo, $80 haircuts, 5000 sq.ft. houses, Gabanna purses and the 2010 Audi A-5, leased, are all fleetingly cool, but only during bubble-times, or during one’s vain adolescence.

To illustrate further, a teenage friend of mine who waits tables in a nearby college town thinks it’s “cool” to get big tips. Later in life when he’s taking his family out to dinner, he’ll have a different “cool” in mind. So you see, most peoples’ “cool” is situational, peer-determined, and often entirely temporary.

Now, how about distressed levis and a worn t-shirt, or a modest, paid-off pick-up truck, an obedient dog, and a cute, woodsy girl-friend with piggie tails? That type of “cool,” American cool, is timeless.

But, unfortunately for the Democrats, ever the chasers of European fashions – from Marxism to multi-culturalism, that’s one low-gloss image that they’re way too polished to credibly don.

If America can just find it’s “blue-jeans center” again, we’ll still stand a chance.

Jul 12, 2009 - 2:57 pm 79. LFMayor:

Whiskey, I understand what you mean by what the left wants to do, I do not see the how or who of it being possible by the forces the left have at their disposal.
I also doubt that 20 some million veterans in this country (you might want to fact check that number) are going to be shuffling to the smokestacks, staring at their shoes. There you’ll find your De Gaulle sir, legions of them if the issue gets forced.
I saw a small 8×10 picture of our dearest leader at a gun show yesterday on one of the tables. The caption read “2009 Gun Salesman of the Year”.

Jul 12, 2009 - 3:05 pm 80. buddy larsen:

steveaz is right –in fact they ought to reprise “Deliverance” and reverse the confrontation beween the hillbilly pervs and the (sub)urban trekkers. Nowadays we know who is getting what delivered where and who is doin’ the deliverin’.

Jul 12, 2009 - 3:19 pm 81. JFSanders:

According to the 2000 census there are approximately 26 million veterans in the U.S.. Of these over 9 million lived in the southern part and 6 million live in the mid west. The west had just under 6 million. The northeast had 4. 6 million.

But just being a veteran does not imply that someone will do the right thing when it comes to protecting the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. I know of veterans that look at the govt as the be all and end all. And that support O and have voted for him and his policy of destroying this republic as it stands.

Jul 12, 2009 - 3:32 pm 82. steveaz:

Buddy,
Your ref’ence to Deliverance, (oops! Deliverance (for erudition points)), strummed a string…

A majority of our rural property owner’s association officers were violating our assoc’s codes and covenants, but they wanted to reserve the right to enforce the same codes against our association’s general members. Folks from Chicagoan school boards, Condo associations and Union committees will have seen this before.

In order to thread this needle, the board’s Secretary (poor thing got tasked with dignifying her quorum’s violations to a packed general meeting) stooped to comparing others’ violations to the movie, Deliverance. Some background, she’s a wealthy CA resident with a boat yacht and a summer cottage in the Catalinas, who should be able to follow an elected bylaw. And her antagonists, “Deliverance Personified,” were simple, working class landowners trying to make the best of their rural holdings.

I guess I find it interesting which direction references to “Deliverance” are intended to cut.

Jul 12, 2009 - 3:49 pm 83. LFMayor:

re:80 JFS. To (mis)quote Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: “They chose poorly”.

Irregardless, I don’t think I’m going to be all alone in the last and worst of situations. If I am, well then you all deserve what you get, anyways.

Jul 12, 2009 - 4:03 pm 84. bogie wheel:

If Math @ 20 is right about the 75/25 split of feeling females vs analytical females, then that 25% would equate to about 38 million women and girls in this country who are primarily thinkers in their approach to life. This is not an insubstantial population, both in numbers alone and in influence. (I somehow don’t picture hard-thinking females as mushy go-along types.)

Given the nature of this blog, it would also stand to reason that the type of female reader it attracts would be overwhelmingly from that 25% who value logic over emotion.

Considering that, and the fact that no one, not even Wretchard, actually knows what percentage of readers of this blog are female, it does help to avoid sloppy generalizations about how “all” women think/believe/want this or that. I can assure you that the thinker-women who do read BC are well aware of who the sob sisters are (and it’s not the entire population of the 75% feeler-women, just the most vocal & conspicuous segment thereof), and have as much if not more disdain for unproductive squishy-feely reactions to life’s problems as thinker-men do. Just as there’s an almost visceral revulsion amongst the fraternity of courageous men against cowards, there’s a revulsion amongst the sorority of hard-headed women against sniveler-victim and tra-la-la-superficial females. The happily married guys on BC can probably attest to comments from their wives about said wives’ views on “weak women.”

So any excoriation of this particular portion of the female population is, mehhhh, pretty much preaching to the choir where women readers of BC are concerned, IMO.

Jul 12, 2009 - 4:14 pm 85. Doug:

“There are Far More Conservatives than there are Liberals.

There are Far More Conservatives than there are Republicans.

There are Far More Democrats than there are Liberals.

Democrats need to reach out to moderates to build on their partisan base.

Republicans need to reach out to conservatives to build on their partisan base.”

– Rasmussen

Jul 12, 2009 - 4:24 pm 86. NahnCee:

I don’t think there’s just a Right and a Left. There’s also the center “moderates” that everyone else is fighting for to claim their 51% victory at the polls.

So if we have 30% Right and 30% Left, then the remaining 30% may truly be the Estupido’s who just don’t care or know any better (and get their news from MSM because it’s easier).

Jul 12, 2009 - 5:22 pm 87. Annoy Mouse:

“then the remaining 30% may truly be the Estupido’s who just don’t care or know any better ”

Sure, but what about the other 30%?

Jul 12, 2009 - 5:31 pm 88. trangbang68:

Whiskey;
“paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
starts when you’re always afraid
step out of line the man come and take you away..

or how about:

Wine is fine
But whiskey’s quicker
suicide is slow with liquer
Take a bottle drain your sorrows
THEN IT FLOODS AWAY TOMMOROW!!
Evil thoughts and evil doings
Cold, alone you hang in ruins
Thought you’d escape the reaper
You can’t escape the master keeper
‘Cause you feel life’s unreal and you’re living a lie
Such a shame who’s to blame and you’re wondering why
Then you ask from your cask is there life after birth
What you saw can mean hell on this earth
hell on this earth!!
Now you live inside a bottle
The reaper’s travelling at full throttle
It’s catching you but you don’t see
The reaper is you and the reaper is me
Breaking laws, knocking doors
But there’s no one at home
Made your bed, rest your head
But you lie there and moan
Where to hide, suicide is the only way out
Don’t you know what it’s really about
Wine is fine
But whiskey’s quicker
Suicide is slow with liquer
Take a bottle drown your sorrows
THEN IT FLOODS AWAY TOMMOROW

Brother, while you no doubt sense the fears many do of the threats to our liberty ,you’ve crossed the parameters of reason into the dark side.

“women seem wicked when you’re a stranger…”

Take a rest brother, go on a date, take in a ball game, eat some enchiladas. This too shall pass or maybe it won’t.

Jul 12, 2009 - 5:32 pm 89. rickl:

Regarding LGF, which some have mentioned on this thread:

Charles Johnson was a 9/11 “conservative” who has since returned to the 9/10 world. I deleted that site from my bookmarks over two years ago.

Jul 12, 2009 - 6:03 pm 90. blert:

rickl…

The transition occurred when Chuck acquired a new lover.

Overnight his world view shifted.

Yeah, he’s in 9/10 land.

Jul 12, 2009 - 6:17 pm 91. JFSanders:

82. LFMayor:

“I don’t think I’m going to be all alone in the last and worst of situations.”

I am standing next to you my brother. Oooo RAH!

Jul 12, 2009 - 6:20 pm 92. Walt:

Has anyone noticed the exploding dot red blue and yellow graphic at the beginning of this post very closely resembles the wig worn by the fellow who showed up at all the big ball games in the 80s with a sign that read, John 4:13? Just sayin’

Jul 12, 2009 - 6:30 pm 93. Charles:

I posted this one over at FR and one of the guys there posted this link and called it “music to read this thread by”

Trace Adkins – This Ain’t No Thinkin’ Thing

Jul 12, 2009 - 6:36 pm 94. twobyfour:

blert/89

The [LGF] transition occurred when Chuck acquired a new lover.

Ah! Couldn’t pinpoint what was behind it… so it was “mutabor per vaginam”!

I started to drift away from LGF when he appropriated all the aspects of the RatherGate, not giving proper credit where was due, he seemed to me to be a bit “slippery”.

Jul 12, 2009 - 6:54 pm 95. buddy larsen:

JFS/80; heard today that the national police chiefs association (formal title escapes at the mo) has issued a strong statement of support for the Sotomayor nomination.

Jul 12, 2009 - 6:55 pm 96. JFSanders:

Walt @ 91.

Rainbow Man, (Rollen Stewart) John 3:16.

Is now serving 3 consecutive life sentences for kidnapping.
He is unhinged to say the least. But he was good at getting past the director’s attempts to keep him from getting on camera. He tried to choke his wife during the 1986 world series because she stood in the wrong place with her placard.

I would say he wasn’t living up to his saviour’s gospel.

Jul 12, 2009 - 7:02 pm 97. buddy larsen:

85 and 86; you two is both wrong. here is how to figure it out.

This is the Obama ‘plunge protection team’ training film.

Jul 12, 2009 - 7:16 pm 98. Walt:

JFSanders @95

Thanks for the update. As the great Fats Waller used to say, “One never knows, do one?”

Jul 12, 2009 - 7:33 pm 99. Batman:

So many trends come together in this discussion, some topical and some eternal.

Freedom vs. Security is as old as the Bible. No sooner had the Israelites escaped from Egypt than they were on the shore of the Sea of Reeds complaining that they were taken out of Egypt only to die in the desert. No sooner had they crossed the sea than they complained that the food was better in Egypt and that they didn’t have enough meat. And on and on.

Erich Fromm discussed this at length in his book Escape From Freedom.

Combine this with another book, The True Believer, by the former longshoreman Eric Hoffer, in which the tendency to latch onto irrational ideas is impervious to factual refutation.

Then consider the long term effects of decades of deconstruction (there is no truth and meaning itself is reduced to a matter of opinion), relativism (there are no absolutes, everything is relative, your view is no better or worse than mine, and there is no external standard by which we can compare), and multiculturalism (a culture that burns the wife after the husband dies, another culture that performs clitorectomies and clothes their women in what amounts to black hazard suits, and a culture that emphasizes freedom are all equally commendable).

Finally, add to these the deterioration of education, the abolition of history, the abdication of teaching our own values, and the near disappearance of logic.

All these add up to our present situation.

Discussions often deteriorate into caricatures of what I remember watching on the old McNeil/Lehrer Report during the Iran Hostage Crisis. The two sides shared no common logic system and no common agreed upon referents. So they just talked past each other with their sound bites. That is what happens nearly all the time when liberals and leftists converse with conservatives. Yeats’ center truly has not held.

Whiskey @70 helps me see why Obama has supported Zelaya. The problem for Zelaya is that he wanted to use a plebiscite to overturn his constitution. Fortunately the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court blocked him and the military enforced the constitution. I could not fathom why Obama would put the US on the side of overturning constitutional law. Whiskey’s prognostications give me the first plausible theory.

But back to the main point. There is no longer a broad American cultural consensus. The values of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the historical meaning of American exceptionalism are no longer taught nor are they accepted widely. So there is no center to gravitate toward.

The comments about moderates are quite apt. One “moderate” may believe in abortion rights (libertarian), fighting terrorism with all we have (conservative), and a government run health system (leftist). Another may be “pro-life,” against the death penalty, and a pacifist. (These last three could be argued to be consistent by some.) These two “moderates” would hardly agree on much.

What moderate used to mean was thoughtful, willing to let data and logic settle opinion questions, a belief in the ultimate goodness of America while acknowledging things that could be improved, a live and let live perspective, a low titer of envy for the achievements and wealth of others, and a generally tolerant attitude toward those different from ourselves. That is no longer the case.

Freud said there were TWO opposites to love — hate and indifference. In the same spirit there are two opposites to fanaticism — tolerance and apathy. And the right/left split, by dividing us into two camps, doesn’t quite do the situation justice.

The political spectrum is more like a horseshoe than a line. The extremes at each end are closer to each other than either is to the middle. There is now an extreme right (fairly small), a strong left (growing every day), a center-left and a center-right (each about the same size), and a growing apathetic middle.

The center-right does seem to be more willing than the center-left to align with those having less than a 100% agreement with them. That is one of the things that dot distribution figure tells me. But we are not going to win the day with apathy. Nor are we going to win the day until history, logic, and a rebirth of our cultural roots are achieved. By the latter I must make it clear that I am speaking of unapologetic American Exceptionalism, the energy of the Declaration, the restraint and humility of the Constitution, and the insistence that when we welcome others to join our band (and I am very appreciative of the vitality immigrant populations have brought to America) they sign up for an American culture, not a multiculture.

Thanks for being patient with this overly long post.

Jul 12, 2009 - 7:39 pm 100. peterike:

The vast majority of the time, the reason a given person is a “moderate” on a particular issue is because they don’t understand it. They have some vague notion about it, they realize it’s a vague notion, and they know they can’t defend either a Right or Left position. So they huddle to the middle, figuring it’s safe there.

I would note that those who take a Left position more often than not “defend” it with completely invalid emotional arguments or flat-out lies and ignorance. But they think those arguments are valid — they don’t know that they don’t know — so the point stands. Generally speaking, Leftists are educated to a level of stupidity well beyond that of moderates.

Jul 12, 2009 - 7:55 pm 101. Mad Fiddler:

There is Ph.D. Thesis material to be mined just from the comment stream of Belmont, E3, and several other sites now associated with Pajamas Media.

That’s in addition to the wisdom and breath-taking breadth of vision of the authors of those blogs.

I guess this is what it was like when people were building their own crystal radio sets, and sharing the shows by placing the earphones in a ceramic mixing bowl to amplify the sound…

Jul 12, 2009 - 8:14 pm 102. Mad Fiddler:

Dear LOTM, responding to your post #03 – I have noticed that there are a number of posters whose noms-de-web I do not recognize, making statements that are fairly extreme.

I know that some of my own comments could be put in that category, except that I strive to provide references, parallels in history, and some sort of arguments to show how I arrive at the conclusions or predictions I offer.

There are some folks who seem to be simply planting provocative statements without any sort of background. Some seem deliberate “setups” by agents provocateur attempting to discredit the whole site.

Jul 12, 2009 - 8:24 pm 103. Charles:

94. buddy larsen:

Most people on the ten most wanted for murder in the USA in biggest cities in the USA are hispanic. About a third are hispanic in the midsized cities. In both cases a high percentage of these are illegals.

Jul 12, 2009 - 8:29 pm 104. JFSanders:

Moderate-
one who is moderately ignorant of the issues.

A person who skews election results by actually believing propaganda.

Goebbels best friend. AKA useful idiot.

Moderation in politics is like being slightly pregnant. One either believes in Life, Liberty and Property or you don’t. There can be no in between.

Jul 12, 2009 - 8:42 pm 105. JFSanders:

Batman,

Would you agree that politics range from Anarchy to Totalitarianism? This is true because all types of govt can be placed under one or the other in varying degrees. Not a horse shoe shape. As we can see tyranny of the Statist and tyranny of the Dictator are tyranny/Totalitarianism.

If so, then our founding fathers tried to set our govt at the point of the least amount of govt that would keep Anarchy at bay and to prevent the collection of power in one branch to prevent Totalitarianism.

I wonder where all the Obamanites are. I thought that at least Benji would have chimed in by now.

Jul 12, 2009 - 8:51 pm 106. buckets:

peterike @ 99,

I think you’re right about the myth of the moderate – that it is mostly a result of disinterest or lack of information. Before the rise of the modern Left, the word moderate did have a meaning. But these days… How can one be “moderate” about abortion? It seems to me it’s either state-sanctioned murder or a woman’s right to choose; not much middle ground there. How can one be moderate about AGW? Either we are killing the entire planet or it’s a neo-Luddite con game.

As the economy continues to get worse, and the empty promises of O and the Dems will no longer satisfy the mob, we will see a lot less of the moderates.

Jul 12, 2009 - 8:54 pm 107. blert:

Being a moderate is = voting present during the civil war…

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:02 pm 108. steveaz:

Batman,
Your deliberate disqualification of America’s bedrock center, (and subsequent leashing of your libel to Whiskey’s sexist thesis, which I have always respectfully countered), spurs me to retort, Sir!

America’s Naturalist and Pragmatist traditions are well-documented, and they register prominently in our nation’s founding documents. “Don’t Tread On Me” and the Boston Tea Party is as American as Betsy Ross and Apple Pie, no matter what your kids’ teachers told them. I’m too lazy to link right now, but, trust me, even Wiki knows ALL about this.

(It’s late, so please pardon my tone, but, why don’t you know this?)

One piece of trivia needs plugging here: there was a time when Europe’s intelligentsia revered American thinkers, I mean, really revered them. It was ’round the time Ralph Waldo Emerson was touring European capitals, wowing the Paris Set with truly revolutionary ideas, like self-reliance, constrained government and his personal, euphemistic variations on John Stuart Mill’s “social contract.” He filled studio-halls, swashed university auditoriums and swamped concert halls with students, professors and grandees hungry for these leading, order-shaking, revolutionary ideas.

For comparison, and please forgive the ungracious prod, but President “Empathy” Obama got a lei, a native dance and twenty minutes at a podium in Ghana. It’s a gratuitous aside, I know, but it still needs saying, “Love” isn’t CNN’s dotage. It adheres to those who think, lead and dare. The American Pragmatist tradition did all of these.

The world might really love us again, and we, ourselves, if we got back to our quintessential, Pragmatist roots. And if maybe, for some, “center” is the wrong word – they should use “foundation” then. Whatever you choose to call them, Batman, the ideas that so flummoxed Rousseau, and, at least temporarily, liberated us from Hobbes’ Leviathan are America’s Libertarian center. It’s the “core” of what makes America exceptional, and the fulcrum for the “see-saw” ride, left-right, left-right, left-right, that passes for information-age politics right now.

I beg you Sir, please give this thoughtful retort some thought as you gather wool in this time of unprecedented uncertainty. There’s a home for everyone, Muslim, Christian, male, female, child, adult, all, in America, so long as they’re not busy meddling in their neighbors’ personal lives…

Which, maybe, just maybe, is the reason why “progressives,” socialists, eugenicists and other gross-manipulators find it necessary to lobby interminably against America’s exceptional allure.

Please, winged-rodent man, fleet of word and sharp of mind, don’t lose yourself among them.
-Steve

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:10 pm 109. F:

JFS @ 23:

Interesting thought — a universal language starting with youngsters. There is an example of this (or at least there was when I lived in Kenya in the early nineties). The college-age kids were developing a local patois that combined vocabulary and grammar from Swahili, English, and a variety of local languages like Luo and Kikuyu. It was known as “Shang” and from what I could tell largely relied on contractions and abbreviations to further mask it’s meaning. It was not yet a written language when I was there, but with the advent of ubiquitous email and Twitter it might now be one. I doubt it will take over the world as it requires a working knowledge of Swahili and English to begin to understand. A more likely candidate would be something that combines, say, Hindi and English or Chinese and English. Perhaps one or both of those already exist — out of my area of experience. F

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:32 pm 110. Annoy Mouse:

Walt – I’m trying to do something with the clown rainbow wig Gestalt, but can’t quite get it out of my mind.

Buddy,
I think that moderates are @ssholes…

Let me explain – there once was an argument between the heart and the brain…

[you should be familiar with the admonishments; 'If you are not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you are not Conservative by 40, you have no brain']

The brain said; “I am the most important organ, without me, nothing functions, I control everything”, but the heart quickly retorted; “I am the pulse of life, without me there is no blood flow and you will die”. About this time the @sshole piped in and said; “I am the most important organ” The heart and the brain scoffed; “butt out hole, you are not important”. So the @sshole puckered up while the heart and brain continued to argue. But after a while the brain wasn’t doing too well, the septic shock was keeping it from functioning, and too, the heart started to beat arhythmically. Finally the heart and the brain concluded that the @sshole really was the most important organ.

Moderates are @ssholes.

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:35 pm 111. Bob Murphy:

9. no mo uro
“It is inherent in the left mindset to obliterate the ‘other’.”

Prescient and succinct nmu. Very nice.

I’ll keep that.

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:44 pm 112. mark_b:

I got no end of grief for being one of the two ENTPs in a department of nearly a hundred INTJs.

However, the department manager did frequently seek out my perspective because of this.

My solution to the Socialist problem: Legalize Marijuana.

The stoners will either forget to vote or be too paranoid to leave their homes.

Hey, it worked under Carter.

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:45 pm 113. steveaz:

Batman, I reread your post for comprehension, and noticed that I missed a lot. Apologies for my reflexive retort.

Steve’s response, shortened (mercifully): ” The center is, too, still there. Ya just gotta get in her, start her up, and take’r for a ride.”

That’s all, folks! It’s been a rousing day at BC today. G’night.

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:51 pm 114. Annoy Mouse:

This is a funny read -

http://www.pacifier.com/~dkossy/rainbow.html

“I don’t consider him to be a nut. I consider him to be a religious zealot.” said LA Police Detective Tom King.

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:56 pm 115. Annoy Mouse:

and you have a rousy day yourself… nevermind

Jul 12, 2009 - 9:58 pm 116. buddy larsen:

Re ‘moderates’, some political moderates are just traders who see themselves as ‘results-driven’ synthesizers. GWB, for example, prioritizing as he did the Iraq War, may have –just to avoid being forced to lose it a la Viet Nam –made a sort of (probably tho not assuredly merely atmospheric) deal with Dems –whereby they could have the traditional Dem strongholds (including UN, Fannie & Freddie) sans serious GOP interference, in return for their antiwar-ism confining itself to the rhetoric.

Such a Faustianism first materialized when for no apparent reason the clinton foreign policy establishment was given the handling of the UN and Kofi Annan’s fate during the oil-for-food scandal. A close Sorosian, Mark Malloch Brown, ended up as Annan’s new ‘fixer’ chief of staff, you may recall. Additionally, Bolton would’ve killed at his up or down–even after all the continual borking, had the recess appointment not been lapsed with a bare whimper. So Bush was ‘moderate’ on the UN, Oil-for-Food (which handled rationally would’ve nulled the increasingly corrosive “No WMD! –Bush Lied” grand opera). And that’s just one early example of what GWB got in return for his many ‘moderate’ positions. Had he governed from the hardest right, his enemies could’ve been no nastier to him personally –but they may well have ginned up their street units to “do Viet Nam”. Speculation all, but….

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:33 pm 117. Bob Murphy:

80.JF Sanders
According to the 2000 census there are approximately 26 million veterans in the U.S.. Of these over 9 million lived in the southern part and 6 million live in the mid west. The west had just under 6 million. The northeast had 4. 6 million.”
But the ones that count when and if it all hits the fan will tend to have been grunts (grunts as in trigger pullers) not REMFs, JF. And I have a hunch how most of them regard the Obamas and the Kerrys of the world and how effective their skills would be if used.
I knew some weathermen and SLA types in SF in the late ’60s and their martial incompetence used to just crack me up. They just didn’t get it.

Jul 12, 2009 - 10:34 pm 118. buddy larsen:

charles/102; but i don’t see why the race vs crime stats would lead the police chief’s national association to endorse ANY supremer-nom befo da hearings even got hoid.

“What if there’s a bombshell”, the police assoc must have wondered, “…shouldn’t we (being police, responsible for law enforcement under either political party and thus like the military pointedly apolitical) just shaddap and wait for the hearings?”

Somebody had to’ve answered that question. Somebody has to’ve said “No. Do it now. Before the hearings start.”

All downside, for the police chiefs, it would seem. So what’s the upside –what’s the deal, and what does it mean?

Jul 12, 2009 - 11:04 pm 119. buddy larsen:

AM/108; while you’ve elimated the nonessential (and i must emit i’m boweled over by your splashy presentation), you’ve dropped the ball in papering over an important distinktion: without a heart the a*hole won’t long give a sh*t, and without a brain, it’ll sh*t all over everything.

Jul 12, 2009 - 11:16 pm 120. mark_b:

Buddy L:
All downside, for the police chiefs, it would seem. So what’s the upside –what’s the deal, and what does it mean?

—————————–
Or we’ll “upgrade” your Crown Vic Interceptors to economy model Impalas.

Jul 12, 2009 - 11:24 pm 121. buddy larsen:

AM/108; PS –if you could float the argument that sometimes a constriction toward linearity is the only move that will flush out the also-rans and separate the skids from the serious groan-ups, i think the objection would taper off and the entire disagreement would slide past and disappear.

***
mark_b –that could be IT –forgot about that GM ’sales’ quota –!

Jul 12, 2009 - 11:47 pm 122. JMH:

MTL:

As for facebook and twitter bringing the next part of the revolution- I spend plenty of time on facebook, but avoid any political commentary on my page because I’m young and my views are quite unique within my friends. Even though I would love to participate in the Best of the Web facebook page, I would never dare to let people that I’m facebook friends with know anything about my political leanings. I’ve seen the vindictiveness of my peers when it comes to different opinions, and I’d rather not be a target for that…

Have you ever heard of a Preference Cascade? It’s a phenomenon that can occur in an environment where certain veiws are deemed socially unacceptable and people are made to feel that expressing those views publically would have severe consequences. In that sort of environment, many people will go around keeping their views to themselves, assuming they are a very small minority and that their peers would shun (or jail, or kill) them if they let the secret get out. But that means that nobody really knows how widespread the “unaccptable” position is. It could be that a vast majority actually holds the opinion, and the “correct” opinion is held by a rather small minority. Then something happens to pop the illusion, and suddenly people start voicing their true feelings. The dominant position collapses alost instantaneously. This is what happened with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Millions of Soviet Citizens kept their mouths shut for fear of the government, but they hated it, were tired of it, wanted something different, but dared not say it. Then Boris Yeltsin stood up on a tank and the old regieme vanished.

Only to have certain elements turn up again later, but that’s another story.

My point it, have hope. Your peer group may not be as captured as you think, and some event may come along to shed the scales from their eyes. Perhaps you’ll even have some role in causing that. Facebook is the sort of thing that can accelerate a Preference Cascade. Who knows? A small FB update from one person saying “Obama sounded like a dork in his speech last night” could be all it takes. Suddenly thousands of people might chime in, with the sentiment getting amplified to “I’m so tired of that clown – why does anyone think he’s a good speaker? He just sounds dumb.”

And then the Obama Youth will start in trying to savage people and they’ll be shouted down, told to shut up, give it a rest. Put a cork in it.

Someday. It’ll happen. Hang in there, do what you can to help it along.

Jul 13, 2009 - 1:02 am 123. SKMurphy » A Conversation with Ed Lee on the Changing Media Landscape for EDA:

[...] Fernandez wrote in “Left Brain, Right Brain” “The major drivers of the democratization of the Internet have not been content [...]

Jul 13, 2009 - 2:03 am 124. buddy larsen:

MTL, powerful forces are trying just under the surface to make it about race. But you already understand that that is just part of an ideology that says if a tail can merely be called a leg, then no one can dispute that a dog has five legs. You will need a tactic for dealing with logical nonsense. Disdain is one such –as sophistry is sophistry because it knowingly drains trust from the common meanings of words, desiring to corrupt the signal emblem of civlization –the word itself.

For example see “false consciousness” (beware your sources, BTW). Once you savvy that one principle of marxist theology, marxist theology is revealed for what it is, for what powers it offers to you in trade for your free standing.

Jul 13, 2009 - 2:24 am 125. Herb:

Steveaz Thank you for your support

I found a text formatting toolbar for Firefox here (note nifty embedded link)

The left/right disconnect is caused I think by the difference between their analysis styles. On the Right and the Libertarian, the style is usually based on a series of self evident truths that are violated only in extremis. (Latin) (Libertarians tend to limit their truths more than Conservatives) Left/fascists tend to view everything as malleable to gain control over individuals which is anathema to the right. Its not surprising that there is little overlap. Malleability requires no discipline of mind which accounts for the pottymouth stridency of kos et.al.

Centrists are just saying cant we all just get along. That also requires little discipline and makes them suckers for whatever the left gins up. They are the people who say it doesnt matter.

Jul 13, 2009 - 6:29 am 126. Batman:

RE: @105 JFSaunders — yes, there are many ways to arrange the political spectrum. What I had in mind was that Communism was generally seen as the extreme left and Nazi/Fascism on the extreme right, but both share totalitarianism in common and therefore are closer to each other than either is to center/left or center/right. The architecture of government and politics can be configured in different ways and yours is a perfectly legitimate one, although Hobbes may say that anarchy leads directly to totalitarianism and is in fact the shortest path to it.

RE: @108 & 113 Steveaz — What I was trying to say, perhaps not artfully or clearly enough, was that toleration for differences is precisely a core aspect of American culture. The melting pot that allows so many divergent faiths and cultures to thrive together requires that all of them subscribe to the basic American central core culture.

Further, I do not attach myself to Whiskey’s more extreme statements. I only reflected on the similarity of Zelaya’s attempt in Honduras and Obama’s inexplicable backing of Zelaya over the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court, and Constitution with Whiskey’s “prediction” @70.

Yes, there was a time when the American prospect was admired by some in Europe. Sadly that remnant resides only in former Communist countries now. Reagan was more admired in the gulag than in the capitols of Western Europe.

As to Pragmatism, in its lighter political form it has served our nation well. In its more serious philosophical form it is a mixed bag — even self-contradictory. One can find in John Dewey something to support nearly everything, as he was quite self-contradictory in his writings.

But thanks for the correction @113. I greatly enjoy the to and fro of this superb site.

Jul 13, 2009 - 7:22 am 127. Pseudo-Polymath » Blog Archive » Monday Highlights:

[...] Left and right … blogging and linking. [...]

Jul 13, 2009 - 7:47 am 128. Stones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e76v1:

[...] Left and right … blogging and linking. [...]

Jul 13, 2009 - 7:50 am 129. Cannoneer No. 4:

59. Joe Hill

How did it happen that The Party of Lincoln became the radical, redistributionist, statist party through most of the 19th and early 20th centuries?

The Whigs disintegrated, and their role as Federalist Party in opposition to Anti-Federalist Party was assumed by a coalition of Northern ex-Whigs, Free Soilers, Know-Nothings and anti-slavery Northern Democrats. Their whole raison d’être was to demonize a certain class of property owners, have that peculiar institution declared politically incorrect, and mobilize half the Republic to despoil the other half.

Jul 13, 2009 - 8:36 am 130. Cannoneer No. 4:

69. bogie wheel:

A class of property was declared politically incorrect, and the owners of that property demonized, and their wealth confiscated with fire and sword.

Jul 13, 2009 - 8:48 am 131. The Count:

Wretchard, I prefer to think of you as my personal shopper rather than a tuner. But that’s just me.

Jul 13, 2009 - 12:11 pm 132. steveaz:

Batman,
Another oops on my part:

I confused John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” with John Locke’s “Social Contract.”

Some might say they couldn’t be farther apart. My bad!

[Thanks, thoughtyoudliketoknow, for cluing me to my error!]
-Steve

Jul 13, 2009 - 12:54 pm 133. SpeakEasy:

91. JFSanders:

82. LFMayor:

“I don’t think I’m going to be all alone in the last and worst of situations.”

I am standing next to you my brother. Oooo RAH!

There are many of us out there biding our time (and tightening our shot groups) until the tipping point. Pray for peace but prepare for war. And stay informed.

Jul 13, 2009 - 4:25 pm 134. Night Owl:

@75 WillDoMathForFood:

Sorry for the delayed response. My initial attempted response was too long-winded, so I gave up on it. Hopefully meaning is not lost in this pared down attempt.

“But I am trying to say that Universal Suffrage did change politics forever. ”

Agreed. For the better. Otherwise how would we determine which group(s) decide which POVs are the valid ones, and which ones should be ignored? As you touched on, you can’t do that w/o some sort of tyranny of one group over another.

“The people whose primary mode of thought is emotional are fertile ground as useful idiots”.

I would argue that people in general are emotional creatures. Most sane people instinctively learn, or can be taught, to not be ruled by their emotions. But, even people ruled by their emotions may one day realize, or be taught to recognize when they are being played. “Feelers” are not necessarily morons. Obama’s continued hypocrisy and broken promises may be education enough for many. I also applaud efforts like those of Mr. Linbeck.

To write off a large segment of the population because they are perceived to be a lost cause, means you lose them to those who embrace them. The would-be tyrants among us are savvy enough to know that they can play on people fears and insecurities to their advantage.

They use our past sins of slavery and disenfranchisement of half of the population to indict our country and all its traditions. Traditions that build strong individuals are destroyed as the good gets tossed out with the bad.

On the plus side, this advantage should wane as younger generations not directly affected by institutionalized racism or sexism, will be harder to play using this tool.

@ 70 dtmack: “The cure for our leftist disease is simply to shine the light on their ideas.”

I agree. Expose the lie.

Thank you both for the thought provoking responses.

Jul 13, 2009 - 5:07 pm 135. dueler88:

Unless I totally missed it (I’ve been browsing more than reading intently), a critical component of the discussion seems missing:

The Media broadcasts only the extremes because that’s what gets people’s attention.

The vast majority of people, I think, are pretty near the middle and reasonable thinkers. But it’s just too eye-catching to portray Conservatives as Bible-thumping anti-abortion gun-toting rednecks, and Liberals as tree-hugging 0bama-is-the-messiah out-to-save-the-world Socialists. There are certainly many real examples of both of these archetypes, but they do not represent the majority in either example.

That’s reason no. 1 why I don’t read newspapers or watch TV news any more. Reason no. 2 is that I don’t think ANYBODY can be non-biased in their reporting – the MSM (including NPR) claiming to be non-biased is just plain stupid. I want to listen to people who actually think critically about the content of the media they’re consuming or communicating.

Bring on the death of the MSM – faster, please.

Jul 13, 2009 - 5:10 pm 136. Bob Murphy:

@134. Night Owl
referencing @75 WDMFF (love that nome de plume [sp?])
“But I am trying to say that Universal Suffrage did change politics forever. ”

Agreed. For the better. Otherwise how would we determine which group(s) decide which POVs are the valid ones, and which ones should be ignored? As you touched on, you can’t do that w/o some sort of tyranny of one group over another.

But, Night Owl, you make a presumption of reason methinks. Wasn’t one of the 1st results of universal sufferage Prohibition?

With all its attendant ills including the creation of organized crime and the criminalisation of vast numbers of reasonable people?

Jul 13, 2009 - 5:36 pm 137. Joe Hill:

“How can one be “moderate” about abortion? It seems to me it’s either state-sanctioned murder or a woman’s right to choose; not much middle ground there.”

buckets – I think there is a moderate position on abortion. I am about as pro-life as you can get but even I wouldn’t want to force a woman to have her rapist’s child. Most Americans if we believe the pols are against abortion on demand and I can’t believe any responsible parent would want their 14 year old to get an abortion without their knowledge and consent even if they do believe in principle that it is a woman’s decision. The problem is and the reason why the moderate middle barely exists except for those who are either apathetic or uninformed is because the left has made any kind of compromise impossible by taking this and so many other political questions out of the political realm and into the courts.

Gay marriage, abortion, gun ownership, affirmative action, you name it and the left wants to argue it out in the courts not at the ballot box or in the legislature. I believe the Left actually wants these to be polarizing issues and has in fact made them so they can only be polarizing issues.

If the courts minded their own business and let democracy work and allowed the states to function as the constitution intended then there would be a variety of policies with regard to abortion suitable to the moral beliefs of the vast majority of people and I doubt if anywhere we would be seeing third trimester babies getting their brains sucked, the heads crushed, and their bodies dismembered by quaks with medical licenses.

Jul 13, 2009 - 8:40 pm 138. Joe Hill:

Cannoneer – I am hard pressed to make heroes out of those who would wring their wealth from the sweat of another man who stands in peril of the lash and the chain no matter how time tested and approved it might be. I mean I’ve always been under the impression tat the Enlightenment was, all and all a good thing. Similarly I recognize that the Party of Lincoln despoiled the constitution both during and after the war. o the question is where were the good guys and where are they today?

Surely some day there is due to emerge a political party that recognizes that all men are endowed by their Creator with the right to life liberty and property – and that no man can be held to be another’s chattel. Both the Republican Party and the Democrat were deeply flawed in the 19th century and they each ideologically morphed into the other in the following 150 years and remain as flawed as ever.

Jul 13, 2009 - 9:29 pm 139. Night Owl:

@136 Bob Murphy
“Wasn’t one of the 1st results of universal sufferage Prohibition?

With all its attendant ills including the creation of organized crime and the criminalisation of vast numbers of reasonable people?”

Fair question.

Your description of the aftereffects of prohibition sounds like the war on drugs, doesn’t it? Nixon creates the DEA, we get the Medellin cartel, and the criminalization of horticulturalists. Do those who fear legalizing drugs today lack reason? Or do they have reasonable concerns?

What seems obviously flawed in hindsight may seem a rational response to deplorable social conditions at a given time. Do we presume the temperance women knew beforehand that the policy would fail? Was it an irrational reaction to the growing social ills caused by drunkenness? If so, why would rational male legislatures cave to an irrational women’s temperance movement?

Women don’t hold a monopoly on attempting to legislate morality. There have been blue laws since before universal suffrage.

“you make a presumption of reason”

I was unaware that presuming women had reason was inappropriate. I’m sure I have at least one rational thought a day.

Jul 13, 2009 - 9:46 pm 140. Cannoneer No. 4:

Joe Hill, is it easier to make heroes out of those who would wring their wealth from the sweat of another man who stands in peril of starvation and hypothermia?

Do capitalists “wring their wealth from the sweat of other men” or do they acquire wealth through the intelligent application of labor towards the production of something profitable?

Where the good guys were all depends on what is “good” in your eyes. Who the good guys are today is for each of us to decide for ourselves as best we can with the information available to us.

Jul 14, 2009 - 9:10 am

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