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Posted inPolitics: National

Labels

Frustrated_Arizonans_Rejecting_Tea_Sanity_Rally
Labels in political discourse are incendiary and misleading. They are useful shorthand and inevitable. Yet today they are more challenging than ever.

Let me take a couple of examples. To label someone a racist, anti-semite, sexist, or homophobe immediately disqualifies their arguments. Some people undeniably fit those labels. Others may say something racist but they still deserve to be heard in the public square, offering positions that are more textured that the simple label would imply.

Another is the tart "limousine liberal." This was coined in the 1970s to identify, say, a liberal lawmaker who supported busing while sending his children to private schools. In other words, he was a hypocrite. This term resonated especially with the white working class, many of whom would become Reagan Democrats.

Lately on this blog we have had a debate on the admissibility of the term "sociopath." While we can argue over the precise clinical definition and the care needed to apply it to individuals, I think it's fair game.

Look at the behavior of the banksters, certain businessmen, and politicians, and they fit the bill. This is especially so in their contempt for the commons, for the public interest, and the things we do together as a civilization. Indeed, many of them not only have contempt for these things but they deny they exist at all, outside the fever dreams of bleeding-heart liberals.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Say you want a revolution?

I was in Phoenix over the weekend to help celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Poisoned Pen Bookstore and mark the launch of the short-story collection, Phoenix Noir. For those of you with thin skins, be proud of the cool new restaurants downtown. And that Barry Schoeneman of Men's Apparel Club, who sells the best suits for the lowest prices in America and has toughed out a retail-hostile downtown for more than 4 years, is moving to a bigger store uptown, but still in the central core. And if you care (I don't), there are still plenty of hip, skinny, rich people at Snottsdale nightclubs despite the overall depression. More gravel. Less shade. More vacant lots. Fewer completed projects. Light rail still succeeds (gloat). Yea, my hometown.

But what caught my attention most was not this or even another well-intentioned civic project rolled out in the Information Center. It was an article on the front of the Viewpoints section, beneath pieces trumpeting this well-intentioned project. It was headlined, "A rebuttal: Why I am a conservative," by the "school choice movement" activist lawyer Clint Bolick, who now has what seems to be a well-endowed sinecure at the local Krack-Pot "Think" Tank. I thought: Why is this a rebuttal? The reactionaries have won in Arizona and the efforts of the latest well-intentioned project will go nowhere. They, not Bolick, should be the rebuttal to the ruling reactionary/growth status quo. But it was just bad newspaper design. Bolick was chastising my former colleague Richard Nilsen who had the guts to write an op-ed saying why he was not a conservative. In Arizona this is an enterprise akin to trying to teach opera to pigs (it's futile because it can't be done and it irritates the pigs).

Read and enjoy. But the biggest problem with the argument is that the "conservatives" that rose to prominence after 1980, and especially 1994, didn't want to conserve. As Sam Tanenhaus makes clear in his new book, The Death of Conservatism, today's "conservatives" are radicals, with little connection to the Burkean conservatives who sought to conserve the best of the old, showed respect for tradition and custom, etc. But thanks to the fecklessness and corruption of the Democratic Party, these radicals still control the agenda.

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Posted inPhoenix

The conscience of the Kookocracy?

They wish they knew how to quit me. Even though it's been two years since I wrote a column for the Arizona Republic, I keep popping up on various Web sites as the devil that's missed by the Kookocracy. After all, who can they now denounce as a SOCIALIST!! — Clay Thompson? The pretty-in-pink Moms Like Me page? Anyway, this was brought home again in a story last week about a conference on the flatlined-in-a-body-bag Arizona economy.

One commenter generously wrote: "Jon Talton preached this for nearly a decade, yet no one believed him.
In fact, the GOP-led Legislature and the Real Estate Industrial Complex
put a lot of pressure on The Arizona Republic to silence him, and in
the end, Talton was run out of town. Perhaps if those idiots had
actually paid attention to what Talton had to say, then the state
wouldn't be in this mess. And legislators wouldn't have to solicit
advice from ordinary Arizonans, as they did just last week. Fools." This was followed by — I am not making this up: "You mean John Talton the corporate socialist shill?" Etc. Spelling has never been their thing.

Back to this big summit, convened by the Greater Phoenix Economic Council. Chairman Michael Bidwill "said that…the state relies too much on retail and contracting revenues." Yes, he of the Arizona Cardinals whose taxpayer-funded stadium in the cotton field was meant to be a magnet for contracting and retail. Glendale Mayor Elaine Scruggs said, "It's overwhelming. It's really overwhelming when you look at all the areas where we are deficient." Duh, ace, as we said in fifth grade. You get the picture. Deeply unserious — another summit to nowhere. But rather than go back to discuss the real problems and solutions, which you can find here, I want to encourage the Kookocracy to use Teabag Day to redouble their efforts.

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Posted inPhoenix

The Kookocracy gets its moment

Now Janet Napolitano heads to Washington, leaving not much of a legacy in Arizona, despite what the Sewing Circle cult of personality would have us believe. She was a victim of her native caution and the unwillingness to take on issue No. 1 (land use and all its permutations, including sprawl and water) — to do otherwise would have caused the Real Estate Industrial Complex to destroy her ambitions. Michael Lacey has some further trenchant thoughts on immigration policy and deals with devils. But the biggest reason for Napolitano's failure is simply that the Legislature is by far the most powerful branch of government (the second being the media-ignored Corporation Commission). And the Legislature is dominated by kooks.

Now they will have one of their own as Secretary of State Jan Brewer ascends to the governorship. This is change I can believe in. Brewer is a member of the Kookocracy, having politicized the office charged with the integrity of elections. Except for Attorney General Terry Goddard, Arizona will now have an all-Kookocracy leadership. And I say, go for it. I want no Jane Hull-like temporizing or moments of sanity from Gov. Brewer. I want her to lead Arizona into the brave future that the minority who actually votes has consistently demanded.

This is the state where the most popular politician is Joe Arpiao, the civil-liberties-optional sheriff of Maricopa County. The state where Andrew Peyton Thomas won a resounding re-election as Maricopa County Attorney. Both have waged a thuggish war on the poor, underclass and minorities in the guise of "fighting illegal immigration." Funny, I have yet to see a big construction mogul or developer do a perp walk for hiring them by the hundreds.

It's time for Arizona to get the government it deserves.

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Posted inPolitics: National

In search of McCain conservatism

President-elect McCain, his worshipful media coterie in tow, visited New Orleans and declared that the response to Hurricane Katrina had been "disgraceful and terrible," and, according to the doting New York Times, "pledged it would never happen again." The corporate media seemed especially relieved that the "senator from Arizona" had distanced himself from the toxic Texan currently residing in the McCain’s next mansion.

Yet the federal response to Katrina was the natural outgrowth of "conservatism" as it has come to be practiced by the mainstream of the party of Lincoln. The calamity was not an aberration. It was pretty much what would be expected from the combination of ideology, policy and practice from today’s "conservatives."

Maybe the "senator from Arizona" will redefine conservatism. The media desperately want him to be Barry Goldwater (I hear from excellent sources that the elderly Barry, a real senator from Arizona, was dismissive of the carpetbagger McCain). But even Goldwater never ran the government, never contended with the issues facing a 21st century, continental, diverse empire/nation. My experience is that McCain is not much of a hard-core ideologue, except for being a tightwad, a naysayer and, oddly for a combat veteran, trigger happy with the armed forces and eager for foreign adventures.

So what will McCain Conservatism be?

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Posted inPolitics: National

Is it already over for Obama, II?

From today’s New York Times, a story that adds ammo to my skepticism that Obama can win. The headline: "Obama’s Test: Can a Liberal be a Unifier." Imagine a similar question about McCain: Can a conservative be a unifier? The historical record says no, but set that aside for a moment. The supposedly liberal media continue not only to give McCain a free ride, but to buy into the destructive narrative about "liberals" and "conservatives."

The Times writes:

To achieve the change the country wants, he (Obama) says, “we need a leader
who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and
bring Democrats, independents and Republicans together to get things
done.”

But this promise leads, inevitably, to a question: Can
such a majority be built and led by Mr. Obama, whose voting record was,
by one ranking, the most liberal in the Senate last year?

Also,
and more immediately, if Mr. Obama wins the Democratic nomination, how
will his promise of a new and less polarized type of politics fare
against the Republican attacks that since the 1980s have portrayed
Democrats as far out of step with the country’s values?

So are we to believe that breaking the military in endless wars of choice, installing a theocracy of ‘family values’ intolerance, ignoring global warming, wrecking the constitutional separation of powers and whittling away the middle class in favor of a corporate elite are "in step with the country’s values"? God help us if they are.

 

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