Ethnic Identity and the Tea Party Folks
Apr 28, 2010 by
someotherdude
There are a swirling constellation of thoughts, concerning The Tea-Party stuff. I can’t articulate all of them yet, but I have some notes that seem to give them some context.
I found this post, by Pat Buchanan, to be very interesting. He observes the Tea-Party phenomena as a manifestation of an “ethno-nationalist” identity.
For after a year of battering as “un-American,” “evil-doers” and racists, and praise from talk-show hosts and Sarah Palin as “the real Americans,” Tea Party America seems to be taking on a new and separate identity.
Ethnonationalism — the recognition of an embryonic people that they are different from their neighbors, and the concomitant drive to live apart — is, as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote 20 years ago, a more powerful force than any ideology, be it communism, fascism or democracy.
Ethnonationalism is the pre-eminent force of the age we have entered, the creator and destroyer of empires and nations. Even as Schlesinger was writing his “Disuniting of America,” Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union were disintegrating into 22 new nations, along the lines of ethnicity. In Dagestan, Ingushetia, Chechnya, Ossetia and Abkhazia, the process proceeds apace.
It has happened before — and here.
I think agree with Pat Buchanan. I think.
Why use "ethno"? Doesn't he mean "racial"? They don't share similar ethnic identities, do they? Most of the Tea-Party folk share a similar racial identity, don't they? Ethnicity and Race are not fixed, in their definitions, but it seems it would be important to figure this out.
And then...I started thinking of Steve Bruce's Conservative Protestant Politics, (he does a comparative study of conservative Anglo-Protestant Politics in Ulster, South Africa, Scotland, USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand):
In the USA, the greater attachment of southern and mid-western states to traditional Protestant religious forms has represented an element of a ‘nativist’ defense of the culture of native-born Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Influxes of Catholics and Jews and the attempts of a secularist establishment in the north and east to impose unwanted social and cultural patterns throughout the Republic provoked cultural defenses from the peripheries. The more socially peripheral and culturally distinct the region, the more likely religion is to provide a focus of resistance, the more so yet when language no longer provides a viable basis for the assertion of cultural differences (Page, 21).
Bruce sees most conservative religious movements as attempts to preserve "ethnic" identity. He also notes that all of the goals of the Religious Right in the Anglo-Protestant world have never been accomplished. Except, in the field of economics...that is, the tax codes. The Religious Right and the Republican coalition were able to preserve the wealth; they believed was being stolen from them. Although Bruce barely touches on the implications an ethnic defense has on the political economy, I believe economics is just as important, if not more so, when dealing with perceived cultural inheritances.
And then...I'm lurking over at Crooked Timber in the Eugenics and Guilt By Association thread and came across this quote from Heather Richardson review of Nancy Cohen Reconstruction of Anmerican Liberalism:
“Setting out to uncover the roots of modern liberalism, Cohen believes she found them in the thought of late-nineteenth-century economists and social scientists. Liberal thinkers of the first postwar generation, like E. L. Godkin and George William Curtis, faced squarely the implications of the postwar expansion of democracy to include workers and people of color. Quickly, they began to fear that the poor would threaten private property and individual liberty, key tenets of liberalism, by demanding cooperative action and redistribution of wealth. In response, Cohen argues, liberal reformers denigrated political self-rule and elevated the idea of the “economic man” who strove to succeed in the marketplace; they clung to the idea of laissez- faire government; and they abandoned equal citizenship and embraced racism. Their plan was to “limit and constrain the power of propertyless majorities in a polity that had recently erected universal male suffrage as its cardinal political ideal” (p. 220).
The early 20th century has become an important era for the formation of modern American (ethnic?) identity. Allen J. Lichtman’s White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, sees the 1920’s as the beginning of the modern conservative movement. But the introduction to Eric Kaufmann’s The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America really put this into context for me:
Today, in a manner unknown since the arrival of the Pilgrims, the cultural center of the American nation is fragmenting. The results of the year 2000 census show Hispanics to be overtaking African Americans as the largest minority, while non-Hispanic whites have declined to just two-thirds of the U.S. population and have become a minority in the most populous state, California. Contemplating their demographic decline, white Americans are engaging in an increasingly bitter, internecine “culture war” that pits liberal against conservative in a polarized political climate. Against a demographic backdrop known as the “Browning of America,” the forces of multiculturalism vie for influence with popular initiatives proclaiming “English Only,” “immigration reform,” and a Christian America.
Few are aware that the culture wars of today may represent the continuation of an earlier theme. A generalized amnesia brought on by today’s information age may be the culprit, though the postmodern penchant for discontinuity and presentism likely hits closer to the mark. Hence the fallacy has arisen that the once bitter conflict within white America between old-stock Protestants and newer-stock Catholics or Jews has little to do with contemporary cultural issues in which “race” is the key cleavage and “white” Americans are the principal reference point. Finally, in a large society like the United States, the tendency is to imagine that the country operates in a social vacuum, with its own “exceptional” dynamic of change.
This book takes issue with each of these claims, asserting that the United States, like most European nations, possesses an ethnic “core” (A. Smith 1986) and that the unraveling of a dominant “American” ethnic group is a recent phenomenon, a juggernaut that largely determines the vector of American cultural change. The direction of this change, I contend, did not crystallize in the 1960s but was actually set in the early decades of the twentieth century. In contrast to the important recent work of Desmond King (2000a) and Rogers Smith (1997), I consider nativist excess to be a far less distinct feature of the early twentieth century than liberal innovation. I trace this innovation to its sources within WASPdom and attempt to deconstruct the notion of a united WASP ethnic actor. It is the internecine schism within the Anglo-Protestant soul, and not interethnic conflict, that is the principal focus of this book. The victory of Anglo-Protestant Americans’ liberal alter ego was a sea-change of world historical significance whose ideological momentum has set the parameters within which today’s debates operate.
Hence, by the yardstick of history, questions of immigration and national identity in both the United States and the wider Western world are contested within a comparatively narrow liberal band. Both conservatives and liberals tend to employ the language of Enlightenment liberty and equality (conservatives speak of “equal treatment” and “individual rights,” while liberals use the phrases “equal results” and “individual selfesteem”). Few on the conservative side are willing to speak about an “America for Americans” or to describe nonwhite immigrants as “beaten members of beaten breeds” (King 1998a: 131). Those on the Left likewise refrain from mass appeals to an organic social whole based on the nativeborn working man. Moreover, the notion of an “American” ethnic nation defined in a white or WASP mold is rarely discussed.
Yet it is instructive to note how different things were not so long ago. In the 1920s, the United States consolidated its Anglo-Protestant ethnic character in a series of legislative actions: the Volstead Act of 1920 prohibited the consumption of alcohol; the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 shaped immigration flows around a quota system designed to preserve WASP dominance; and Al Smith, a Roman Catholic of part-Irish extraction, was defeated in his bid for the presidency in 1928. Nativist commentators glowed with praise for a U.S. Congress whose ethnic composition matched that of the Continental Congress of 1787. In communities large and small, powerful Protestant voluntary associations like the Ku Klux Klan, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), Masons, and American Protective Association (APA) nurtured the bonds of white Protestant ethnicity and enforced Anglo-American hegemony. Even as late as the 1960s, 90 percent of white Protestants, Catholics, and Jews married members of their own faith.
By the 1960s, as if by magic, the centuries-old machinery of WASP America began to stall like the spacecraft of Martian invaders in the contemporary hit film, War of the Worlds. In 1960, the first non-Protestant president was elected. In 1965, the national origins quota regime for immigration was replaced by a “color-blind” system. Meanwhile, Anglo- Protestants faded from the class photos of the economic, political, and cultural elite—their numbers declining rapidly, year upon year, in the universities, boardrooms, cabinets, courts, and legislatures. At the mass level, the cords holding Anglo-Protestant Americans together began to unwind as secular associations and mainline churches lost millions of members while the first truly national, non-WASP cultural icons appeared. Not only were barriers to non-WASP ethnic groups virtually eliminated at all levels of American life, but national institutions appeared to be reapplying the idea of communalism in an inverse manner. Namely, minority ethnic communities were now replacing the old Anglo-Protestant ethnie (or ethnic group) as the recipient of collective privilege.
How did such a stunning transformation take place between the 1920s and the 1960s? A recent article by the late John Higham provides the only sustained attempt to focus on this phenomenon. Higham, arguably the most astute observer of his own ethnic group, notes that the full story of the “shattering defeat” of WASP hegemony between the 1920s and the 1960s “has never been told” (Higham 2000: 51–52). Indeed, the best that the current literature can offer is a series of speculative concluding paragraphs in historical works on the ethnonationalism of the 1880–1925 period, together with a number of more recent treatises on the “decline of the WASP” (Gossett 1953, 1963; Higham [1955] 1988, [1975] 1984; Jackson 1967; Schrag 1973; Christopher 1989; Baltzell 1990; Brookhiser 1991; Lind 1995). There also exists a literature on the rise of multiculturalism, which traces this trend to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s (Gerstle 2001, 1993; Glazer 1997; King 2000; Schlesinger [1991] 1993). In most current analyses, the decline of the WASP is treated as a demographic inevitability of only limited relevance to today’s debates about whiteness and multiculturalism.
This book attempts to fill this gap in the literature by examining the decline of American dominant ethnicity—whether in its pre-1960s “WASP” or post-1960s “white” incarnation—as a sociopolitical phenomenon. To probe into this phenomenon is to raise as many questions as answers. Was the decline caused by demographic forces, notably the fertility differentials between WASPs and others? Perhaps politico-economic factors were paramount, a result of “push-pull” conditions that drew foreign labor (and hence voters) to American shores from increasingly non-British or nonwhite sources and propelled their children up the political ladder. Then again, WASP Americanism may have survived by absorbing other white Americans into itself and transmuting into a new “Euro-American,” or “Anglo,” racial group. These are the most popular explanations for what happened.
Yet, even in combination, they do not satisfy. Indeed, it is easy to forget that few of the world’s dominant ethnic groups, if any, have yielded to pressure from contending subaltern ethnies. Less than 10 percent of the world’s states are ethnically homogeneous, and in a third of states, the majority group constitutes less than half the population (Connor 1994: 39).
Comments
Apr 28, 2010, 23:48:37 JanieM wrote:
Don't have time to read the above right now, but thought this might also be of interest:
http://www.jehsmith.com/1/2...
Apr 28, 2010, 23:49:36 JanieM wrote:
By the way, the blog softwhere here seems to be making links out of url's without any markup at this point.
Apr 29, 2010, 10:58:04 someotherdude wrote:
Are Tea Partiers Racist?
A new study shows that the movement's supporters are more likely to be racially resentful.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/...
Apr 30, 2010, 10:58:36 DaveC wrote:
The big issue with the tea partiers is the problem that public sector employees are now better conpensated in salaries than middle class private sector workers and that there are untaxed benefits, both pensions and health care, that must be paid for by people in the private sector. I have always worked for non-governmental entities (private sector) because I am judged by my productivity rather than whether the right people like me.
I get these calls from the Fraternal Order of Police, and Firefighters and so on asking me for money for widows and that sort of stuff. Those guys at my age makee close to $50,000 a year more than I do. Quite frankly it pisses me off that they act poor. This bullshit about the greedy capitalists is just that, bullshit. The (teachers and SEIU) protesters in Sprinfield, IL, shouting "Raise my taxes" do nothing but raise my resentment. They are trying to coerce me to pay them more money when they already make more than I do.
The health care bill caused my company to force my wife to be dropped from my insurance because it is a "Cadillac Plan" and dependents who are employed elsewhere would trigger a tax penalty against the company. And I will have to drop mty daughter as well, buut the college student insurance plan will probably not be available because they do not meet the coverage requirements.
To me this is just a nightmare, and it startd with the huge slush fund obligation of the recovery act back in Feb 2009, where Fed and state govts, instead of cutting back on expenditures, actually increased them. In Illinois, we have 80 billion of unfunded pension obligations. Now if that has to be paid from a househld of 4 people that amounts to $8000 out of my pocket, and including debt service, minimally $2,0000 or god foebid if state bond ratings go non-safe,and interest on debt goes 3 to 6 times higher, thats $60,000 - $120,000. Where does that money come from?
That is what the tea partiers are about. Sure you can find racists anywhere you go, in any group, and certainly the media are focusing on this. I read Eric Zorn and Clarence Page in the Tribune and see this tea partiers = racist stuff all the time, and it is just wrong. Just as wrong was the 9/12 TP protest estimate that there were only 60000 people. That was because the protesters were not allowedon the Mall in Wash DC, and only the people right in front of the Capitol were counted. In fact there were over 1 million people on Pennsylvania AV protesting the for a more transparent health care bill, and they were completely whitewashed out of the account. Some of us know that, and don't trust the government, don't trust the evening news (or in my case the Chicago Trib - I know it is an anachronism nut I still suscribe, after they begged me.)
So anyway, that may be a little insight into what the tea partiers think. If Illinois isn't the most corrupt state, it is pretty damned close, and the US Federal Govt is run by IL politicians. The Recovery act that was supposed to keep unemployment below 8% was just a slush fund. Look where we are now.
But then again I am a WASP, what do I know? ((actually not a AS my guys won in 1066 so I must be Danish or French or Viking or something like that :)
Apr 30, 2010, 14:07:23 someotherdude wrote:
So what’s your argument? That, if the private sector were the receipts of tax monies, you would be better off? Do you know how expensive it is to run a nation-state? I suspect most of today’s right-wing white families expect their entitlements will pay for themselves ;-)You get the nation-state you pay for…and you want a Western nation-state at 3rd World prices. Entitlements for white men soak up the majority of the taxpayer’s money.
Between WW2 and the 1980s, the American bureaucracy shifted, from placing WASPs into the middle-class to assisting “ethnic” (Southern European and Eastern Europeans) into the middle-classes. Between the Mid 1970s to the present it has been the biggest source for people of color (primarily Black and Latino).
The Defense Industry became the new middle-class maker for, white men, (which was perfect, since there were so many swarthy white folks in their old jobs), and then “ethnic” whites became cool (and the GI Bill didn’t hurt) and started showing up to get the government handouts for “defense” and then… the end of the Cold War, of course…which gave birth to Rush and the present day Right-Wing movements.
Then again the top 10% (of which are primarily white men) have seen their salaries and investments (of course they would never earn wages) grow at an extraordinarily huge rate. And then you advocate for policies that keep them richer while you fight for crumbs with your neighbors of color.
May 03, 2010, 21:54:55 russell wrote:
Dave, you write software, right? Me too.
I hold the apparently somewhat bizarre opinion that cops, firefighters, and teachers ought to make at least as much money as I do.
Cops maintain public order and work what is quite often a dangerous job.
Firefighters are expected to walk into burning buildings to pull our sorry behinds out.
Teachers are expected to give kids the tools to function effectively in the world.
I participate in building a pretty good, pretty useful, and pretty popular software product line.
Who adds more value to the world? You tell me.
And it may well be that your continued employment is solely and completely due to your awesome productivity, and not at all due to "who likes you", but that would make you a fairly exceptional individual, in either the public or private sector.
And for the record, you may want to do some fact-checking on the "public employees are paid more than middle class private employees" tip. Some are, some aren't.
May 03, 2010, 23:45:04 russell wrote:
Regarding tea partiers: whenever I listen to these folks this is what I hear:
Bitch, bitch, bitch.
Following on Dave's comment, here is what the bitching boils down to:
The government is taking my money and giving it to that guy over there.
"That guy over there" used to be welfare moms and young bucks eating T-bones. Now it's cops, firefighters, and teachers.
SSDD.
IMVHO the tea partiers should count their blessings and get on with life. It's not healthy to wallow in that much resentment and self-pity.
If they want to make the world a better place, they can get off of their behinds and make a contribution. And no, wearing funny hats with tea bags attached and waving the Gadsden flag around is not "making a contribution".
That's my take on the tea party. YMMV.
Regarding Pat Buchanan, the guy is a belligerent anti-American thug. You would do as well to listen to the collected radio broadcasts of Father Coughlin and spend your time reading Buchanan's screeds.
"Conservatism" to Buchanan means the world should forever be ruled by white Christians. F**k that.
And to bring it all back home to sod's post, I'm getting weary of the folks who pine away for the good old days of white protestant dominance, in this country or anywhere.
There's nothing in the US Constitution about being "white" or about being "Christian". Even the stuff that was about being "black" didn't actually mention skin color, and that stuff has since been overridden.
In a little while, "white Christian", and in particular "white Protestant Christian", and *really* in particular "WASP", is no longer going to describe the majority of the population.
When that happens, the stars will not fall from the sky. Life will go on, and it will be fine.
Everything changes. You can deal, or you can sit in the corner and cry. I recommend dealing.
May 04, 2010, 01:51:20 nous wrote:
Thanks, russell. Think you sum things up nicely.
AFAICT the Tea Party is a manifestation of jealousy -- in the sense of the jealousy/envy binary where envy is wanting something that someone else has and jealousy is about wanting to keep someone else from getting what you have. Which is why the rallying cries for Tea Partiers all have to do with not losing their current coverage or choice or not wanting to pay more in taxes if it goes for services from which they think they do not benefit.
I think with them it registers as a loss of security and a sense of being exposed or vulnerable and this brings with it a sense of betrayal because they have done everything that we are told brings success and security in the US.
To those who have been looking at the building crisis for a while and looking at the big picture instead of the more intimate picture of the family their vulnerability (and for those who were middle class, but less fortunate in health or employment) the jealousy appears to be less about a loss of security (which is an illusion, given the circumstances) and more about a loss of unseen privilege and good fortune -- the rising tide is swamping all those without yachts.
May 04, 2010, 02:00:29 nous wrote:
Finishing my thought -- I think that Tea Partiers look at those who have no insurance and see people who made bad choices or who didn't do enough to get ahead and build a cushion or just straight-up deadbeats. They resent 'socialism' because they see it as taking away what they have worked for and giving it to those who haven't done as much. I think for them poverty is sometimes synonymous with social justice in the sense that they see it as something many people earn through their choices or lack of effort.
May 04, 2010, 02:05:35 John Thullen wrote:
I can only add, Dave, that we like you but we're clearly not the right people.
May 05, 2010, 07:04:55 John Thullen wrote:
Re: government workers making more money than those in the private sector.
I was wondering where DaveC found the claim that this is a big issue for the Tea Party.
Right there in Illinois.
http://progress.illinois.co...
However, I certainly agree about the calls from the police and firefighters for charitable donations.
Those pushy folks need to go to work cold calling for a Wall Street bucket shop.
May 05, 2010, 07:09:30 John Thullen wrote:
Try this instead:
http://progressillinois.com...
May 05, 2010, 12:12:04 russell wrote:
Public vs private:
Compare your share of the cost of police services in your town with what it would cost you to hire private security.
Compare what it costs you to send a letter by Fedex with what it costs you to send a letter by the USPS.
Compare what your share of the cost of public schools in your town with what it would cost you for eight hours of day care for about 200 days of the year.
Compare what you pay for the water that flows out of your tap with what it would cost you to buy that water from a private vendor.
You won't be able to make a comparison for the fire department because, to my knowledge, there is no such private vendor.
Dave C should take a week of his vacation time and, instead of writing code, ride in a squad car with some cops, or walk into some burning buildings wearing 50 pounds of gear, or keep 30 ten year olds in line for six hours while getting the basics of English, math, and US history in their heads.
Try it on and let us know how you make out.
May 06, 2010, 09:12:47 DaveC wrote:
How has it has gotten to the point that we have here in IL, as Prof Green pointed out on WGN this morning, if all state employees were fired the state would still be running a deficit? It's because the money that was supposed to go to education, law enforcement, etc., was raised, but then spent elsewhere.
Now, teachers here do not pay any Social Security, do not contribute to their pensions, and oftentimes retire early. Retiring early does reduce the average salary for state employees, but you have to add in the benefits in the overall compensation per employee. I'm not sure about all state employees,and dont have time to check. The numbers can be manipulated. I only have the 2 weeks of vacation, not enough really to set aside half of it for an experiment, you see; the teachers have a bit more.
I paid for 15 years of K-8 private education and so far 6 years of private college/university, because I did not think that schools' main purpose is to provide day care. And also because it was in my best interest, my kids' best interest, if that is greedy to spend money on private education after paying for public schools, then so be it. I have a right to complain about things, if that's whining then so be it. Apparently there are a lot of greedy whiners out there and their motivations must be really terrible, but thats the way it is. The people in Govt may be pretty smart. All I can say is that they had better deal with it.
May 06, 2010, 23:08:10 Slartibartfast wrote:
[quote]I think agree with Pat Buchanan.[/quote]
I'd check twice, thrice, and more before I'd consider that we were Buchanan and I were in agreement. And that's just on sky-is-blue kind of stuff.
Mostly I just disregard the guy, which I justify because he currently has little to no political power.
[i]Bitch, bitch, bitch.[/i]
Which is certainly not illegal, is it? Probably more interesting is whether they're legitimately unhappy about government, or if they're unhappy about First Black President.
May 06, 2010, 23:08:34 Slartibartfast wrote:
Oh. BB code skillz nonexistent.
May 07, 2010, 18:39:10 libjpn wrote:
Not your fault, Slart, when I upgraded the installation, the bbcode widget seemed to break. It says it is installed, but doesn't work.
And a quick note to thank someotherdude for an interesting post. I've moved a big chuck of my teaching online, and telling students they are right or wrong on the internet reduces the desire to tell y'all you are right or wrong. Having said that, I don't see how a post about questions of ethnic identity among tea party folks moves to a discussion of Illinois teacher salaries. I mean, I'm sure that there is some connection, but it seems via Neptune.
May 08, 2010, 01:27:34 russell wrote:
"I have a right to complain about things, if that's whining then so be it."
Live it up.
"Probably more interesting is whether they're legitimately unhappy about government, or if they're unhappy about First Black President."
There's another option, which is that they don't really care one way or another about the color of Obama's skin, *and* their complaints are not particularly reasonable or legitimate.
If the folks in Dave's state could fire all of the public employees and still run a deficit, I doubt the public employees are the heart of the problem.
If Dave is unhappy with the deal he has with his employer, he should get another job, and quit complaining about the fact that cops and teachers get to retire "early" after 20 or 30 years on the job.
Lather, rinse, and repeat for most of the complaints of the tea partiers, as best as I can make out.
They cite big principles, but when they are asked to explain what they are upset about in concrete terms, it's always "government is taking my money and giving it to that guy over there". Where "that guy" is always less deserving than they are.
Where did the "tea party" meme start? It started with Rick Santelli b*tching on CNBC about having to pay for somebody else's mortgage.
It continues with people b*tching about how they shouldn't have to pay for anybody else's health care.
And now we have Dave b*tching about how cops get to retire early and he has to keep working.
Bring something positive to the table, or the rest of us are going to ignore you. We have our own list of stuff to b*tch about, we don't need to hear yours.
If you think you're pissed about how things operate in this country right now, you have no idea how it looks from my lefty perspective. None.
Find a constructive path from where things are now to where you want them to be and bring that to the table. Otherwise as far as I'm concerned you're just another noisy malcontent.
Don't mean to be harsh, that's just the way it is.
May 08, 2010, 04:57:01 John Thullen wrote:
"Now, teachers here do not pay any Social Security, do not pay into their pensions, and oftentimes retire early."
"you see, teachers have a bit more."
I wrote a comment about this yesterday but decided not to post because I exceeded even my ample quota of George Carlin's seven words, for f--k sakes.
Teachers don't pay into Social Security, nor do they collect Social Security.
According to the Chicago Girl Blues Blog (add whatever three chord blues progression you want to sing along (the Tea Partiers don't know what they are talking about, I say, the tea partiers don't know what they talkin bout, listen to me baby), among other sources (see her April 1, 2009 post), Illinois teachers pay a goodly amount of their salaries into the TRS pensions.
"you see, teachers have a bit more"
Yeah, some of them use the time off to work at Wal Mart; others tutor or teach summer school; others visit the Amalfi Coast in Italy to bone up on the romance languages, and good for them.
Teachers receive nine months pay for nine months work and they choose to pro-rate the salary over 12 months.
Teacher pay rates are public record.
Dave, has your salary been published in the newspaper? Of course not. Because if it was, the guy sitting next to you doing the same thing you do with the same level of productivity would find out one of two things, either you are being paid more than he is, or he's being paid more than you are and someone is going to be unhappy.
But you thought it was because you're employer was respecting your privacy, right?
Plus what Russell said.
May 08, 2010, 05:22:41 Slartibartfast wrote:
"It continues with people b*tching about how they shouldn't have to pay for anybody else's health care."
Some people even have the audacity to maintain that the government has no right at all to require citizens to purchase health insurance.
Some people bitch about their personal freedoms; others bitch about how much money the Fat Cats are making. I actually have a bit more sympathy for the former.
May 08, 2010, 05:56:11 John Thullen wrote:
I used "you're" instead of "your" in the last sentence of my comment.
I would blame my English teachers through the years, but they're dead and no longer sucking off the public titty, the parasites.
Actually, I'd maintain it was my typing teacher's fault ... kind of like the bad typist who somehow managed to cause Accenture stock to plunge from $41 a share to 1 cent per share within ten minutes yesterday on Wall Street.
He or she probably suspects it was an overzealous regulatin bureaucrat who was ultimately at fault for the latter effup, cause it's always the gummint's fault.
... not mine.
May 08, 2010, 06:12:15 John Thullen wrote:
Yes, I would say between b#tching and porn, bandwidth is pretty much used up in these here United States.
May 08, 2010, 06:37:52 russell wrote:
"Some people even have the audacity to maintain that the government has no right at all to require citizens to purchase health insurance."
I don't have a problem with that. To be honest I'm not all that comfortable with it either. It seems to me that, by framing the requirement as a tax, we're finessing the Constitutional question, and all to get buy-in from the health insurers so they will give up the pre-existing condition exclusions and recission.
Personally, I'd prefer a straight-up single payer solution. I'm sure other folks would prefer a straight-up pure market solution, with no public intervention. Nobody's getting their first choice.
I don't have a problem with folks who object to the requirement to buy health insurance products on Constitutional grounds.
May 08, 2010, 21:57:06 libjpn wrote:
from http://www.huffingtonpost.c...
on the worst paying college degrees, says nation wide, teachers make an average yearly pay of $33,000, so if Illinois teachers are making out like bandits, then some other states must be getting really shitty salaries...
May 09, 2010, 03:43:59 nous wrote:
Everytime I look for info on Illinois teacher wages and salaries on right-leaning sources I see a list of the top compensated teachers in the state making in excess of $150k. I have yet to see a report there that talks about mean and median pay or about starting pay. So I guess I'll add envy back into the equation.
This is just like all the Horowitz crap about professors who work 6 hours a week and make huge bucks standing in for all instructors when most are working in excess of 50 hours a week (if they are lucky enough to be full time) and making significantly less than six figures and many less than half that.
There is an equity problem in education between top and bottom and between admin and teachers both in terms of power and compensation, but no one on the education reform bandwagon understands or is addressing the root problems there. I include the teachers themselves in this, but that's mostly because they are too busy fighting to stave off privatization to be able to address their internal problems.
May 09, 2010, 23:05:10 DaveC wrote:
Can public employee pension plans work when they are honestly administered?
[url]http://www.chicagobusiness....[/url] This suggests that it is possible
May 10, 2010, 22:01:03 russell wrote:
"Everytime I look for info on Illinois teacher wages and salaries on right-leaning sources I see a list of the top compensated teachers in the state making in excess of $150k."
What the hell is wrong with the most highly compensated teachers in the state of Illinois making $150K?
Why is that even controversial? Anyone here who thinks $150K is just too high a number for the very top earning school teachers in a state the size and wealth of Illinois, please explain why. Because I really would like to know.
May 10, 2010, 23:26:10 russell wrote:
DaveC, thanks for the link to the article about the IMRF. I don't think anybody has any argument with the idea that retirement funds, whether public or private, should be run responsibly.
I note this at the end of the article:
"Eventually, he adds, IMRF is going to have to switch from a defined-benefit to a defined-contribution system, just like most of the private sector has."
That may well be true. And if it is, public employers -- cities, towns, counties, public school systems, etc -- will find that they will have to offer compensation just like the private sector has if they want anyone to work for them.
The most highly compensated folks in any private-sector profession make a whole lot more than $150K a year.
TANSTAAFL. Isn't that how the saying goes?
May 11, 2010, 00:16:14 nous wrote:
Russell - "Anyone here who thinks $150K is just too high a number for the very top earning school teachers in a state the size and wealth of Illinois, please explain why. Because I really would like to know."
I don't think it is too much, especially compared to private sector jobs. I do think there is a problem, however, when the top earners are at $250K and the entry level pay is $18K for the same work. I'd like to see more given to the lower end. Same goes for Universities where the top earners also have tenure and the adjuncts only have contracts for the classes they are teaching that quarter.
What I don't think, however, is that the top earners are paid too much for their work given their experience and training. I do think that the gap needs to be reduced over time. I'd be willing to give up the top 10% of my potential earnings as a professor to give the bottom tier a measure of security now.
Mostly I think what a skewed set of priorities we have when people complain about the top pay but are perfectly comfortable paying our beginning teachers at all levels the equivalent compensation of working at Wal-Mart while bitching about how bad the quality of education has gotten.
May 11, 2010, 01:09:31 libjpn wrote:
I think that kind of pay hierarchy is going to occur whenever you have positions that are generally open and low paying, but you need to encourage people to stay on in order to establish institutional memory, but you don't have a clear metric as to who would be an ideal candidate ahead of time. I know this won't make davec very happy, but the problem is structural and it won't be until someone can develop a bloodtest that identifies good teachers that it will be solved.
May 11, 2010, 01:52:51 someotherdude wrote:
May 06, 2010, 23:08:10 Slartibartfast wrote:
[quote]I think agree with Pat Buchanan.[/quote]
I'd check twice, thrice, and more before I'd consider that we were Buchanan and I were in agreement. And that's just on sky-is-blue kind of stuff.
#######################3
Pat Buchanan knows his conservative whites…which is why I do listen to him.
He and some VDARE writers, did an assessment of Hispanic voters and why they are NOT a natural fit, for the Republican Party…it certainly had racists overtones (Anglos are “inherently” suspicious of government, while Hispanics are inherently Statists, was one observation), but he was right about Hispanics, as a voting bloc, are more willing to accept State interference, with issues concerning social justice. Even wealthy white Cubans are more apt to see government assistance.
May 11, 2010, 11:30:02 DaveC wrote:
[i]Yes, I would say between [b]b#tching and porn[/b], bandwidth is pretty much used up in these here United States.
...
I would blame my English teachers through the years, but they're dead and no longer sucking off the public titty, the parasites.[/i]
This is a unique combination John, but I prefer not to think of my old teachers' titties, even the ones who were kind of hot back then. My eighth grade English teacher's husband had taken up bow hunting, and she claimed that after he bagged his deer he wanted tan the hide and then have her gnaw it so that it would be supple. I suppose this was like a shared "authentic" extension to the bowhunting experience, but it sounded about as wierd to her students as it did to her. (no formal vote was taken, just my recollection.)
May 11, 2010, 11:36:19 DaveC wrote:
dude, the Mexicans were the first to come up with term limits:
http://www.nytimes.com/1994...
[quote]AT the first moment of the first day of his first term in office, the new President of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, became a lame duck, and he was not alone. He accepted the red, white and green presidential sash Thursday in front of the 628-member federal legislature, 31 state governors and a number of Mexico's 2,392 mayors, all of them freshmen who cannot run for re-election when their current terms end.
While in the United States the urge to curb the terms of public officials is becoming a passion (22 states now restrict the time congressmen may serve), Mexico has been living with the most severe of term limitations almost since the blood of the 1910 Mexican Revolution was spilled to oust an elected dictator who stayed in office too long. [/quote]
Maybe not always the best idea, but there is at least some virtue in the "throw the bastards out" sentiment.
May 11, 2010, 11:59:48 Slartibartfast wrote:
"Pat Buchanan knows his conservative whites…which is why I do listen to him."
"His conservative whites" mostly repudiate his views. Buchanan has been PNGed by the GOP for quite some time, now.
May 11, 2010, 12:02:54 Slartibartfast wrote:
And...VDARE? Are you fucking kidding me?
Might as well caricature _all_ liberals as aspiring murderous commies. Not that it hasn't been done, but we expect better out of our commentariat, at least over at OW.
May 11, 2010, 21:16:02 libjpn wrote:
Hmmm, I may be mistaken, but I don't think the VDARE reference was to smear anyone, just to suggest that they may have some particular insights into the dynamics of these things.
It may be a fool's errand to try and figure out why various groups of people think the way they do, but my impression of VDARE is more people who pride themselves on debunking things and view themselves as being bravely iconoclastic, such that the vehemence of people's reaction stands as evidence of how bold they are to not be suckered like everyone else. I think it is a common enough human flaw, but when it gets mixed with something as convoluted and problematic as race relations in the US, it's like gas on fire. Of course, that's just a view from the peanut gallery, so you can take that with the requisite NaCl.
May 12, 2010, 01:10:38 Slartibartfast wrote:
Dynamics of what things? I don't think VDARE has any special insight into anything other than their own peculiar worldview.
May 12, 2010, 20:08:28 libjpn wrote:
Well, I entertain a generally optimistic view of humans as individuals (this turns to pessimism when we are in groups) I also think that racist views are in the realm of sociopaths, so to resolve that cognitive dissonance, I believe that people who end up in the VDARE arc are those who exhibit the traits I mentioned above. I may be totally wrong, but I've known enough people who had particularly screwed up world views but were actually nice people. The alternative is to seize on everything that someone says and hold that up as evidence of sociopathy. Perhaps I am granting people who hold these beliefs too much slack, but the alternative seems to be stress inducing.
May 13, 2010, 04:41:01 someotherdude wrote:
I suspect VDARE represents a type of thinking which is prevalent and influential on the US Right. Warts and all. I’m sure their isolationism and anti-Israel stances might be a smaller strain; however their ethnic/racial identity politics seem to animate modern day conservativism.
May 13, 2010, 10:26:49 JanieM wrote:
Speaking of the Tea Party, they staged a platform coup at the Maine Republican convention last weekend:
http://www.kjonline.com/new...
Four years ago the Republicans picked the farthest rightish candidate in the priirmary to run for governor, and, totally predictably, he lost. Looks like they're headed in that same direction again. (No mourning from me.)
But besides the platform coup, some of them were apparently up to some other, more appalling shenanigans over the weekend:
http://www.kjonline.com/new...
The Constitution is anti-American because it's the ACLU that prints it? What other kind of sense does this make?
Idiots.
It would be funny if it weren't the ghost of Joe McCarthy rising again.
Nevertheless: Idiots.
May 13, 2010, 10:27:26 JanieM wrote:
Ooops, this is the correct 2nd link:
http://www.kjonline.com/new...
May 13, 2010, 22:00:42 russell wrote:
As an interesting exercise, it can be fun to ask people who feel very strongly about limiting the federal government to "only those powers enumerated in the Constitution" to name those powers.
Or even just a random half-dozen of them.
Or maybe just how many there are, give or take a couple.
Or where (Article and Section, please) they appear in the Constitution.
Or whether they apply to all branches of the government, and if not all, which ones.
I did click through to read the new platform statement. I particularly like this bit:
"Congress participates in the same health care plan as the general public".
What freaking plan is that? Do you guys have universal public health up there in Maine? If so, I'm moving up there.
May 13, 2010, 22:18:10 JanieM wrote:
We don't have universal public health in Maine, ha ha. We do have Dirigo Health, which is a state-subsidized program to make coverage available to people who can't otherwise get it:
http://www.dirigohealth.mai...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
(if you care).
But somehow I doubt that's what the Tea Party folks were thinking of in their platform. I think it was more the mentality and sparkling intelligence level of people who say "Get the government out of my Medicare" and "If English was good enough for Jesus it's good enough for America."
Or the mentality of people who would rifle a teacher's belongings and take down his posters and replace them with Republican party bumper stickers.
May 13, 2010, 22:24:05 JanieM wrote:
Or maybe they're smarter than I thought, and by "the same health care plan as the general public" they mean none, or one with high deductibles or high copays or whatever.
May 13, 2010, 22:49:20 russell wrote:
"They're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore".
I feel their pain. We're all pissed off about one thing or another. And life's a lot easier if there's a conspiracy to blame it all on.
I grew up with an uncle who was a strong Bircher. A guitar player buddy of mine had family members who sheet-rocked guns into the walls of their Long Island suburban home, because the feds were going to come and take them away.
There have always been cranky people with an axe to grind.
The problem is going to be when tea partiers get down in the weeds in the actual political process and discover that they aren't going to get their way about everything. They can make all the strong demands they like, issue all of the manifestos they like, hijack all of the state party platforms they like.
Lots of different kinds of people live here, we all have things we feel strongly about, we're not all going to agree, and none of us are going to get our way about everything. Most of us aren't going to get our way about most things.
They have every right to say whatever they want to say. They even have the right to act like jerks if that's their desire, although the rest of us also have the right to curb that as needed.
And just like everybody else, they are going to have to make their case as best they can and then live with the results.
Either that or they can try to overthrow the government and tell all of the rest of us how it's going to be from now on.
Gadsden flag, b**ches!!!!
I think they will find that less appealing in real life than it is in the movies they play in their heads.
For one thing, it will mean they have to give up their social security disability checks, their Medicare, their VA benefits.
For another thing, in real life people shoot back.
There's nothing special about tea partiers, everybody's pissed off. If they want to engage constructively in the political process, fine with me. If they want to act like jerks, they will get their 15 minutes of fame, and then the rest of us will ignore them and get on with life.
If they work really, really hard, they will get about five irascible cranks into the House this fall, and they'll make a dent in local races in a slightly larger handful of states and towns. Then, those folks will either have to quit b*tching and start finding a way to engage constructively in the process, or they will be out in the next election cycle.
It can be fun to be all self-righteous and indignant. Trust me, I know. But then you have to either deal and make good things happen, or pack up your things and go home.
There will be approximately a single-digit percentage of the tea partiers who will have the grit and sap needed for the long haul. That's fine, some of them might actually have something constructive to say, and we'll all look forward to that.
The rest will have fun going to rallies this summer while the weather's nice, and then they will put the funny hats int the close and will go play with the grandkids.
May 13, 2010, 22:52:39 russell wrote:
then they will put the funny hats in the closet and go play with the grandkids.
The case of the wandering "t".
May 13, 2010, 23:56:07 Slartibartfast wrote:
"I suspect VDARE represents a type of thinking which is prevalent and influential on the US Right."
To the extent that guys like Pat Buchanan are influential on the US Right, perhaps.
I suspect that you've got some unkind predisposition toward the US right and are indulging in selection bias.
There are just a few names in VDARE's stable that would gain anything outside of narrow recognition; really, only Michelle Malkin and Pat Buchanan have any kind of influence. Pat is bound to the paleocon camp and has basically been ostracized from the Republican Party.
May 13, 2010, 23:59:38 Slartibartfast wrote:
" I think it was more the mentality and sparkling intelligence level of people who say "Get the government out of my Medicare" and "If English was good enough for Jesus it's good enough for America." "
I would think that what they meant is they want Congress to have to live under the same healthcare constraints they're requiring others to have. That probably stems from some of the rhetoric about penalizing "Cadillac plans".
May 14, 2010, 00:46:09 russell wrote:
If we are going to get all hard-core originalist I'd like to add my personal short list to the tea-partiers demands.
Absolutely no federal recognition of corporate personhood. Ask the ghost of any founder if they ever, in their worst fever dream, could have imagined the perversion of the word "person" that we live with every day. For purposes of interpreting the Constitutional rights guaranteed to persons, no corporations - not one -- are persons. Period.
No standing army above and beyond the bare minimum needed to maintain a trained corps of officers and technical specialists.
Federally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms limited to members of citizen militias that recognize and are subject to the authority of state governments. States can grant whatever arms-bearing rights and privileges they like above and beyond that, that's up to them.
Except in cases of clear, immediate threat, US armed forces are not to be committed to armed conflict, anywhere, ever, except by explicit authorization of Congress.
No person, of whatever legal status, imprisoned, for whatever reason, in the United States or by any agent of the United States, shall be subject to treatment that amounts to torture as defined in the US Code or any treaty that the US is signatory to.
No terrorism or national security exceptions to any of the rights guaranteed to US persons in the Constitution or Bill Of Rights. Warrants granted under FISA are more than generous enough, nothing further is needed.
If we want to extend it to the state level, I'd like to see all corporate charters reviewed, automatically, every few years. It should be normal for a modest percentage of charters to be pulled for reasons of malfeasance, departure from the original intent of the charter, or because the original purpose of the charter was fulfilled.
That's my short list. I got my very own tea party. Can I wear a funny hat now?
May 14, 2010, 01:36:44 John Thullen wrote:
No, funny hats are not mentioned in the Constitution.
There was a Declaration on Haberdashery Rights back in the day, but the Framers decided they were going to put funny hats behind them, having seen what the Brits and the French were wearing.
Drab, unimaginative hats worn by seriously unfunny people with half-assed grievances are permitted, but only at the local level and accompanied by matching holsters.
Regarding Congress having the same healthcare plan as they have mandated for the rest of us, I think that's in the plan just passed, to begin in 2014.
Which is ass-backwards, just the way Americans like it. The American people, all 300 million plus of us, should have been brought under the FEHB Congress and federal employees are under in one big group, not to be confused with commune (for the idiots JanieM's state unfortunatly has no monopoly over
Simple, universal, lots and lots of private choice, no recissions (and cheaper incisions), no discrimination, subsidized at some percentage, and deducted from your paycheck.
Health insurance divorced from your employer and made portable.
Too easy, too good for the many whining interests in America.
May 15, 2010, 03:05:24 someotherdude wrote:
Slartibartfast,
I think those views are represented by a strong and influential rank-and-file,...I have two white Uncles (and their group of friends) and two Hispanic Uncles (and some of their friends) who know nothing about VDARE and an inttellectual Right, but have views which resemble the average VDAREr. It is a very traditional ethno-nationalist view of American politics.
May 16, 2010, 05:03:22 Slartibartfast wrote:
You are an academic, yes?
You are familiar with the scientific method, yes?
You are aware of the problematic nature of anecdata, yes?
I think you need a larger sample.
White people don't all have the same kind of opinion, you know. Or maybe you don't.
May 16, 2010, 05:05:28 Slartibartfast wrote:
On the other hand, I don't have any problem with the proposition that there's substantial overlap between paleocons and VDARE. I just don't think there just aren't that many paleocons.
May 16, 2010, 05:24:54 russell wrote:
You haven't met my uncles. :)
May 17, 2010, 03:33:06 someotherdude wrote:
You are an academic, yes?
You are familiar with the scientific method, yes?
You are aware of the problematic nature of anecdata, yes?
I think you need a larger sample.
LOL...fair enough...I will point to the NY Times polling on the Tea Partiers...and their observations conserning the government's involvement in the Black community (outside of state discipline) certainly seems to be animated by an ethno-chauvinism.
May 18, 2010, 00:43:45 Slartibartfast wrote:
"You haven't met my uncles. :)"
The relative I have that's closest to being a paleocon is a Wisconsin Democrat, actually.
Which is kind of weird, but there you go.
"I will point to the NY Times polling on the Tea Partiers"
That'd be nice.
May 19, 2010, 04:27:15 nous wrote:
Slarti -- been thinking about your responses on this and mostly agree with your insistence that Tea Party allegiance is complicated because it is a loose coalition (I've got relatives there as well who don't fit neatly).
As far as methodology goes I think the purpose of these anecdotes is to provide what modern anthropologists would call "thick description" of participants. It's not hard data, it's soft, and it's more about building context than analyzing data.
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