Exploded Clown

Robert Reich’s Blog: 2008 and 1968:

Yet the striking thing about Obama, and the enthusiasm he has stirred up, has little to do with the specifics of the policies he advances. It is rather his almost pitch-perfect echo of the John F. Kennedy we heard in 1960 and the Robert Kennedy last heard in 1968. It is a call for national unity and national sacrifice — not in the interest of military prowess but in the cause of social justice, both in the nation and around the world. His appeal is for more civic engagement, not necessarily more government. He has the voice and wields the techniques of a community organizer (which he was on the streets of Chicago), asking people to join together, calling the nation to form a more perfect union. Not since the sixties has America been so starkly summoned to its ideals. Not since then has America– including, especially, the nation’s youth –been so inspired.

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)

Great article on the appeal of Obama, by one of the Clinton’s oldest political allies, Robert Reich (who I love hearing on Marketplace, I would like to say for the record).

¡Viva Obama!:

Personally, there are some things about silly season that I like.

How is it that this is so awesome and this and this are so terrible?

The lack of cheesy 90s graphics is a definite difference, but the music is the deciding factor. The Obama video is fast and happy and loud, the Clinton video is cloying and saccharine, the Huckabee video is like a bad 80s sitcom opening or a lounge act. But that describes the campaigns, too.

Josh and I were talking almost a year ago about how awesome it would be if the next President declared Bush an enemy combatant specifically to make the point that the President should not have such a power. Today, I was thinking of other such actions to take.

• Issue a signing statement that annexes Cuba. For the greater good.
• Claim that the text of the speech you are currently giving cannot be reproduced, due to executive privilege.
• Also claim that it’s a state secret.
• Announce that you will be holding a secret trial to determine the guilt of (let’s say) the Supreme Court Chief Justice.
• Pause dramatically.
• Announce that he has been found guilty, based on the ample secret evidence.
• Claim that tomorrow, you will be picking a name out of a hat, and that person will be put in jail for suspicious activity, with no trial and no habeus corpus rights. A new person will be chosen each day.

For best effect, announce these in your inauguration.

Listen to the crowds in these two speeches. You only have to get about 10 seconds in to each one.

Obama:

McCain:

(Both Via Talking Points Memo.)

Obama sounds like he is surrounded by hundreds of people who are attentive to his every word. He is. McCain sounds like he’s in a little room with a dozen people behind him and another dozen behind the camera. I don’t know if he is or not, but it sure struck me as a contrast.

kitten vs. frontrow:

(Via Tim Bray.)

I have lost files doing very similar things.

In writing the previous post, I use “liberal” instead of the oh-so-trendy “progressive,” which I decided just today is about as informative as claiming that you are in favor of achieving things. Everybody is in favor of some kind of progress; the important part is what goal you are trying to achieve, and I want a more liberal world, where liberty is given to all who want it. Hence, I am a liberal.

I was watching “The Power of Nightmares” a while back. I’d previously heard about it, but never actually sat down and glued my eyes to the screen. If nothing else, it kicked off the following train of though in my mind.

Strauss, Father of Neoconservatism

One of the two groups the documentary charts the history of is the neoconservatives, and it traces them back to the political philosophy of Leo Strauss. Strauss’ basic argument is that in a liberal system, the individual freedom is more important than the community freedom, which leads to a breakdown of community as individuals choose the selfish route over the greater good. The neoconservatives point to the riots in the 60s and 70s as evidence of this breakdown (Irving Kristol is the one who says it in the film).

This Straussian view got me thinking. It sounds right, but it feels wrong. I paused the show and spent a bit of time examining the disconnect.

What the matter with Liberalism?

Okay, there’s a breakdown of the community in the 60s, I can grant that. Sure, it’s a countercultural breakdown, and it’s largely a liberal movement. But is it because those people were given too much freedom?

“Wait,” says I, “why is freedom suddenly a bad thing? Freedom in markets is good, right? Freedom of religion is pretty nice. Freedom of speech is a perk, too. Freedom to vote seems to be popular.”

So let’s step back. Strauss is characterizing liberalism as a choice between individual freedoms and community freedoms. It’s the social contract; you give up your rights for the greater rights. But is liberalism really about putting the individual above the community? If it’s not, what is it? What is the greater good of liberalism?

The odd part is that as soon as I asked myself this question, the first thing that popped into my mind was that Conservatives want to “reduce [government] to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” They want a limited state, the better to secure the individual’s freedoms. That’s a nice concise philosophy, and it dovetails into the long tradition of government-as-necessary-evil. Madison tells us in Federalist #51 that “if all men were angels, then there would be no need for government.” I had never put those two together before, but now it seems quite obvious.

Calling out the Founding Fathers

But what also seems obvious is that Madison is wrong. Katrina was a problem because it was a hurricane, not because the people weren’t angels, and the government was needed in that case. When someone gets cancer and needs to pay a huge medical bill, it’s not angel deficiency that’s the problem, and a governmental health care program would certainly help. Sometimes life throws you lemons, and it’s not a lack of heavenly hosts that’s keeping you down.

If the purpose of a government is not merely to protect us from the insufficiently angelic, what other duties is it to have? Mr. Madison, meet… er… Mr. Madison, who says that government is to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” There seems to be more than one item on this list.

A Governing Philosophy

But these are all reasons to have a government; they are the goals that the government reaches for. What they are not is a governing philosophy, which constrains how the government goes about its work. Conservatism has such a criteria: be as small as possible. This includes defining the problem as small as possible so as to make the government equally small. Again, that concise “small” philosophy is useful. But why didn’t a similarly concise liberal philosophy jump into my head at any point?

What is the liberal philosophy? What do liberals want in a government? It’s not just government for government’s sake; there’s a reason in there somewhere, but it took me the better part of a day to figure it out.

From a liberal standpoint, government is like any other organization: it’s a group of people getting together to achieve common goals. A company is a group of people who want to make money. Many non-profits are groups of people trying to fix something. Masonic lodges are groups of people supporting each other. A government is a group of people trying to make the lives of those people within it better, by ensuring their freedoms, protecting them from enemies foreign and domestic, and otherwise aiding the club’s membership.

The social contract is that every individual wants those things, and so gives up some freedom so that those goals can be achieved. Instead of a necessary evil, the government is the populous acting on the better angels of their nature, and helping each member because it’s the right thing to do, not because you have to.

Liberalism’s guiding philosophy, then, is helping each other out, because doing so will help you out in the end, too. A rising tide raises all boats.

A Politics for Generation X:

As it turns out, however, the political views of most Xers are more complex and more interesting than that.

Like conservatives, they favor fiscal restraint—but unlike the conservative leadership in Congress, only 15 percent believe that America should use any budget surplus to cut taxes. Like Democrats, they want to help the little guy—but unlike traditional Democrats, they are unwilling to do it by running deficits…

[A] recent poll suggests that the highest priority for the majority of young adults is building a strong and close-knit family…

Improving public education is one of the highest policy priorities for Xers…

Xers are eager to do away with the two-party system. They register particularly strong support for third parties, for campaign-finance reform, and for various forms of direct democracy…

[A] commitment to environmental conservation.

If Xers had their way, the collection of taxes would become more progressive and the distribution of benefits more widespread.

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)

It’s odd reading an article that was written eight years ago and finding almost every paragraph describing my views very closely, despite the fact that I’m not even technically a Gen-Xer, having been born in ‘81 (the article puts the cutoff date at ‘78, which is later than most would have it).

Still, a lot of this resonated with me quite clearly, but reading it with the Obama mindset that Andrew Sullivan had put me into with the link, I’m failing to see a lot of crossover here. These policies are all pretty well accepted by the majority of the candidates, at least on a high level. But then there’s this:

Xers may be poorly informed when it comes to public affairs, but they know enough to believe that our political system is badly in need of reform. At a very basic level they recognize that the political system is rigged against their interests. For one thing, Xers continually see a large gap between the issues they care most about and the ones that politicians choose to address.

That sounds distinctly Obama-esque. But it sounds even more like Edwards, who was my first choice. And that paragraph goes on to say:

Xers long for leaders who will talk straight and advocate the shared sacrifices necessary to correct the long-term problems that preoccupy them most.

And this article was published a month before McCain announced his presidential bid in 2000, which heavily emphasized straight talk and shared sacrifices, topics he still runs on today.

But then, the article also says:

A glimpse of the future may come, strangely enough, in the election of Jesse Ventura as governor of Minnesota.

If that’s the yardstick we’re using, the outlook doesn’t look so great.

TED Talks: Ron Eglash:

I’ve always been fascinated by fractals, even though the math is far beyond me. But here’s a guy who not only is finding fractals all over, but puts up all these little applets to play with them!

YouTube - Yes We Can - Barack Obama Music Video:

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. They will only grow louder and more dissonant. We’ve been asked to pause for a reality check. We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

(Via Crooks and Liars.)

Yes We Can.

The Choice:

In this respect the Obama campaign is uniquely circular: his political appeal is rooted in the fact that he’s so politically appealing. This means that when he loses, the loss affects him worse than it would other candidates, since it also cuts against his message. But when he wins, particularly when he wins big, as he did in Iowa and South Carolina, the win means more because it reinforces the basic argument of his campaign.

(Via Matthew Yglesias.)

Until recently, I was torn between voting for Edwards (the get-the-lobbyists-out agenda speaks to me) and Obama. That choice was made for me when Edwards “suspended” his campaign, but if it hadn’t already been decided, this article might have pushed me over.

I especially like the circular reasoning in this quote, because it’s absolutely true; the reason Obama is a good primary candidate is that he has the potential to be a great general election candidate. It’s not just “electability” (truly, I’d be happy with any of the Democrats and maybe even McCain), but one of (dare I say it) change. Obama has the potential to plow into office with such force as to change the system, just like the Reagan Revolution did twenty-odd years ago: by bringing the country with him.

Now all they need is a catchy alliterative term for it. The Obama Overrun? The Barack Barrage?