I think this Amanda Marcotte piece is pretty interesting.  She touches on the idea of work and community and how the modern workplace has, until very recently, served to cut us off entirely from our loved ones during the day.  This, she asserts, was not always the case.  People used to come into more contact with their loved ones during the day in the past and this served to create a more organic, more humane work place.  She riffs off a TED talk by Stefana Broadbent (below) which talks about how modern communication technology has actually allowed people to regain some of this ability to communicate with loved ones during the work day.

What Broadbent recorded was that the explosion in communications technologies are instead restoring a little bit of what was simply part of life 150 years ago—constant contact with your intimates during your work day.  If you’re over 30, you’ve probably marveled at how much the work day has changed because of this, and as Broadbent notes, it’s extremely different from the era when even personal phone calls were not part of life at work.  (And still aren’t in many blue collar jobs.) It used to be that once you were in the office, the outside world simply didn’t exist.  Huge news events could happen and you wouldn’t find out, and you were mostly ignorant about what your friends and relatives were up to during the day.  Now, between text messaging, cell phones, IM, and social networking, we spend huge portions of our days keeping lines of communication with our intimates open.

But of course, since the isolation was the product of culture, we can’t expect culture not to strike back.  Broadbent notes how people who work in many low status occupations, like bus drivers and factor workers, are facing increasingly punitive monitoring to make sure they don’t check in with family and friends during the day.  Broadbent treats this like a human rights violation, and I’m inclined to agree. If people are getting their work done, monitoring them to make sure they don’t use their downtime to talk to people they love is only going on in order to debase them and suggest that their personal lives don’t count.  I’ll go a step further and argue that the monitoring is valuing debasement and control of working class people over actual economic concerns like profit and saving money.  It uses resources to monitor workers, after all.  But more than that, I’m skeptical of the idea that unhappy people are better workers.  People who can’t communicate with loved ones often spend a lot of their mental energies worrying about those loved ones, in my experience.  Communication that you can control doesn’t offer nearly the distraction that your colleagues can offer by barging in and demanding your attention whenever they want, too.

This makes sense to me.  Then again, the average high school student in America spends five and a half hours a day in front of a screen, and there is little doubt in my mind that this sort of always-online-or-watching-tv culture is bad for society in the long run.  Nor is our increased sedentary lifestyle exactly beneficial to our societal health or temperament. 

That being said, I think the benefits of technology should not be overlooked either, and if new avenues of communication are allowing friends and loved ones to keep in touch more, that’s undeniably a very good thing.

I’ve always thought a more likely reason for our atomization was our car culture.  The ability for families to spread out over such long distances, and the need to drive to get anywhere at all have led to people living further and further apart from one another.  My mom had seven siblings other than herself, and each one lives in a different city now, with their own families.  Only one stayed in her home town.  This was unheard of a generation previously.  Now it is the status quo.  My family has chosen a different path, and has decided to stay in our home town where our families live so that our children will have deeper and stronger ties to their community than we did growing up. 

In any case, I think it is the physical distance we have placed between ourselves and our neighbors, families, and friends that has contributed most to our atomization, and which has led directly to the more psychological and spiritual distances we see forming – as our children are raised either in single-parent homes or without any real connections to their grandparents, aunts and uncles, and communities in general.  In some sense, then, the communication technologies we have developed allow us to compensate for this distance.  Rather than blaming social networking or other communications technology for our increased atomization, perhaps we should view them as a subconscious attempt to remedy something we, as a culture, barely understand about ourselves – as an attempt to bridge the distances between one another.

Watch the TED talk after the leap.

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I think Jason and I disagree less than his critique of my post would suggest.  He is correct that my rather brief treatment of markets (and the purpose of markets) leaves a great deal to be desired.  I was not intending to write a piece explaining the many benefits (or limitations) of markets per say – mainly because, like Jason and the other libertarians here, I am an advocate of the free market.  I am not terribly interested in arguing the merits of a free market economy.  Certainly this will lead only to partisans in both camps hurling strawmen at one another.  As Jason notes, both the success and failure of markets can “discover distributed and inarticulate knowledge about preference and utility.”  And this is a good thing.

I think Jason’s strongest point is this:

But the real question is not whether markets work perfectly. It’s whether any of the alternatives can do the job as well or better. When we consider that the real work of markets is to gather up distributed knowledge and render it publicly legible, it seems clear to me that few other social institutions are even seriously trying. Many of the worst of them, government programs above all included, act as if this work has already been done — as if Hayek’s dispersed knowledge had already been aggregated once and for all, and as if the action at hand weren’t going to upset it all in the process.

To be perfectly clear, markets aren’t the be-all and end-all of public policy for me. They are, however, the option we ought to try first, because properly designed, they tend to tell us what’s going on. This is tremendously important, and it’s very difficult to admit that we don’t know it.

He goes on to argue that markets should also be a last resort – and that if there is a market failure, it is often as not a failure of the “given ruleset” not necessarily the market itself.  Healthcare is a prime example of this.

And of course, in order for markets to work, for human progress to continue, and really for a sane and somewhat rational, stable economy to flourish, above all else we must maintain choice.

Indeed, Jason’s advocacy of choice is compelling, and I tend to agree that the more choice the better, if only because I could not tell you where or with whom we should limit it.  The more freedom the better.  I certainly don’t want to be constrained in my own choices, and I am not nearly paternalistic enough to want to constrain others in theirs. Whatever constraint or sacrifice we make based on coercion is a false one.

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“I don’t want to say that liberaltarianism is dead. But is it endangered? Sure. It deserves to be.” ~ Jason Kuznicki

I think the hopes placed in the Obama administration by libertarians have been fairly well dashed at this point.  On civil-liberties issues and on economic issues, the President has not gone nearly far enough to end the bad practices of the last administration, or to promote anything like market solutions to the many problems facing the country.  Jason goes on to write:

If libertarians seem more conservative lately, it’s not only that we’ve been pushed away by the left. Attendees at this year’s CPAC ranked “reducing size of federal government” and “reducing government spending” as by far their highest policy priorities. They also chose Ron Paul as their preferred presidential candidate. Those same attendees even booed speaker Ryan Sorba for condemning gay Republicans:

I’m not sure the left-libertarian alliance was ever really meant to be anything more than a fragile oppositional alliance to the big-spenders masquerading as conservatives during the Bush years, united by a common antipathy over the wars and the infringements upon civil liberties.  I know Mark has hopes that a populist left-right alliance could rise from the ashes of the current establishment, but I see the fundamental divide between Tea Partiers and progressives as too wide a gap for anything but a similarly tenuous & oppositional alliance.

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Sullivan nods approvingly at this passage from Conor on Avatar’s Na’vi:

The problem with the noble savage cliche is that it is demonstrably untrue. The people who inhabited North America before the arrival of Europeans warred, died for lack of medicine, sometimes killed animal herds so unsustainably that they faced starvation — so despite the manifold wrongs done by the Europeans to indigenous peoples, it is inaccurate and simplistic to screen stories where savage Europeans war with noble natives living in utter harmony with nature.

James Cameron isn’t portraying native people of our world. His alien protagonists aren’t intended as stand-ins for the Navajos or the Aztecs or the Cherokee. In his different world, the native people really are in communion with nature. Were his purpose to comment on European history, this would be a terrible choice, but in fact Avatar is a film whose purpose is allowing humanity to reflect on its circumstances and fallen nature in a novel way. That is why I approve of the decision to portray the kinds of natives that were shown.

Conor is off the mark here.  Cameron’s Na’vi were the noblest of noble savages – hands down the least complicated, least dynamic, most shallow savages written into a major film in – I don’t know – decades?  Years?  A really long time.  And Cameron was commenting on European/American history.  Science fiction is always about history.

The movie theatre I saw this in was packed, and about half the audience were Navajos.  My home town is mostly white, but the second largest racial demographic is Native American – mostly Navajo and some Hopi.  In college, pretty much all my lit classes were on multi-cultural themes, but the vast bulk of time was spent on Native American literature in particular.  I have spent more hours than I care to count thinking about these issues – about Native American rights, land rights, the various myths and religious themes which surround Native American culture, and the ways in which popular culture (and Hollywood) has portrayed native peoples in America.  I have a number of friends (past  and present) who are Navajo (or Diné, as they prefer to be called).  We even have a public elementary school here which teaches one third of all its material in the Navajo language (and one third in Spanish).

So, whether the Na’vi are simple “stand-ins for the Navajos” or whether Cameron was trying to write his very own native-from-scratch is immaterial.  Surely Conor has heard the term “extended metaphor” before.  Cameron’s alien moon, Pandora, may not be the American frontier, and the Na’vi may not be the Diné, but the parallels are obvious and purposeful.  And the real problem is not that such parallels exist but that Cameron’s handling of his Pandoran tribal people is so one-dimensional.

Why not rip off The Last of the Mohicans and have some bad Na’vi thrown into the mix?  That would at the very least be more interesting, and certainly more honest.  A film wherein the natives are not only exploited but turned against one another – whose weaknesses are exploited as well – would be more complex and realistic.  Or Cameron could have taken some pages from the The Mission - a film which took seriously the questions of colonization, religious colonization and the indigenous response, and the merits of passive resistance. [Read more →]

“In short, liberals and conservatives refuse to see the areas in which they have common ground because far too often they simply cannot get past the cultural markers that prevent them from even listening to the substance of what their cultural opposites are saying.” ~ Mark Thompson

In this post Mark is responding to what he sees as Jamelle’s assertion that the “hidden” welfare state is bad, whereas the “visible” welfare state is good.  Essentially Mark is asserting that liberals attempt to build the visible welfare state on top of the hidden welfare state, whereas libertarians and conservatives try to make the hidden welfare state smaller and more visible.

Now, I think this is not really what Jamelle was saying.  I think Jamelle was saying that we have a welfare state and that many Americans both appreciate the services that this state provides while at the same time not really realizing that it’s a welfare state providing them – the whole “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” thing.  He’s saying that Americans exist in an illusion of free markets and bootstraps while in reality we have a very large state apparatus which provides safety nets, subsidies, and numerous other benefits to countless people and businesses.  What he’d like to do is make that more obvious so that people appreciated it more and then, in turn, supported a further expansion of the welfare state once they realized what a good thing it, in fact, was.  Contra Jamelle, conservatives and libertarians would like to draw down the welfare state because they see it – whether it is visible or hidden – as an encroachment upon liberties, upon the economy, and upon prosperity, job growth, and so forth.  These two goals are entirely at odds.

So I don’t think that it is simply a cultural barrier which prevents liberals and libertarians/conservatives from working together.  I think it is a fundamental political difference in core beliefs about the size and scope of the welfare state which separates the two groups.

But it’s also the culture.  After all, politics is secondary to culture.  Cultural beliefs and norms and expectations drive politics – not the other way around. While political shifts can lead to shifts in culture, this is usually unintentional. Mark is certainly correct that it is the cultural divide more than anything which keeps liberals and conservatives from forming a united front, but then again that isn’t the whole story.  I think some groups of conservatives or libertarians could align quite nicely with specific elements of the left.  We’ve seen such an alliance in economics, actually, with the stronger elements of both the right and the left embracing free trade.  But the Tea Party right and the progressive anti-corporate, anti-free-trade left have much less of a chance at uniting because of the vast, gaping cultural divide between the two sides.

Can you honestly see Glenn Beck and Michael Moore coming together on many issues?  Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich may both be united in their opposition to many more mainstream bills and practices in Congress, but when it comes to their political goals the two are – save perhaps on foreign policy – complete opposites.  Their ultimate goals may be similar – a more honest government, working harder for the people and not for the elites and the corporations – but Kucinich and the progressives believe this can be done with a bigger state and smaller private sector, whereas Paul believes that the state is at the heart of the issue and should be dismantled as much as possible.

I’m very drawn to Mark’s liberaltarian cause, and to the idea of the sides working together in this way.  I’m just perhaps too cynical to believe in it.  I myself am rather a mixed bag and can find common cause with both elements.  But most people in these groups are not mixed bags. They’re die-hard partisans.  And they don’t like each other much, or at least what the other stands for and believes in – especially culturally, but politically too.

Jamelle writes:

“In a lot of cases, the aim of liberals isn’t necessarily to massively expand the reach of government as much as it is to add some intentionality and rationality — as well as make explicit — the ways in which wealready intervene in the economy (health care reform is a perfect example of this, I think).  “

Here’s the thing: Jamelle is claiming that liberals use the “hidden welfare state” as justification for expansion of the “visible” welfare state.  In essence, however, the logic underlying this set of preferences is precisely the same as the libertarian, and often conservative, argument for scaling back the scope of government as a way of improving net social welfare.  The broad Right has as much or more problems with the “hidden welfare state” as  do liberals.  There would be, in fact, a fairly easy coalition to be built in favor of simplifying the tax code, doing away with various subsidies, etc.  If this common logic is correct – ie, that existing social injustice is largely a result of the “hidden” welfare state – then removing the “hidden” welfare state would obviate the need for much of the “visible” welfare state. 

In other words, if this critique is accurate, then social injustice may be cured either by growing the “visible” welfare state or by scaling back on the “hidden” welfare state.  Yet liberals expend virtually no effort, and seemingly take very little interest in, the latter, and seem to entirely emphasize the former.  This despite the fact that choosing the latter route would present a seemingly easier path to achieving allegedly liberal ends because of the simple fact that it is an area upon which the broad movement Left and movement Right would seem to be in virtual lockstep – if, in fact, liberals are serious when they rail against “corporate welfare” and the like. 

I think it’s entirely fair to ask why this is.  Why, if the “hidden welfare state” causes so many problems, is the preferred solution the expansion of the “visible” welfare state rather than the elimination or reduction of the “hidden” welfare state?  I can think of a number of possible reasons, but foremost among them is that the cultural divide between movement liberals and movement conservatives prevents them from being willing to work together on many projects where they have actually quite a bit of ideological compatibility.  This forces both movement liberals and movement conservatives to find groups on their side of the cultural divide - or at least not entirely on the other side of the cultural divide – with whom to ally.  We typically call these other groups “centrists” or “moderates.”  In reality, however, these “centrists” or “moderates” are little different from an independent third party, some of whom have “D’s” next to their names and some of whom have “R’s,” with the exact proportion being the primary thing up for grabs in a given election year. 

But I’m increasingly convinced that the divide is far more cultural than ideological.  You see this most obviously in the appeal of Sarah Palin, who, ideologically is really not much different from any other Republican politician in recent years, yet she is adored by die-hard conservatives because she’s “one of us.”  This “one of us” mentality might get expressed in any number of different ways – she’s “plain-spoken,” or she “speaks honestly,” but ultimately, the justification is primarily a cultural one.  And it’s not just a race thing (though that certainly plays a role) – it’s how she speaks, her background, etc.

But it’s more than just that.  Conservatives have a tendency to spend an inordinate amount of time denouncing the “liberal elite” culture of the coasts.  Meanwhile, I’ve seen too many liberals rave about how they simply cannot take anyone seriously who doesn’t believe in evolution, regardless of what the topic of discussion may be.  In short, both liberals and conservatives have this tendency to use cultural markers as a sort of first line of defense in filtering out who they will and will not work with.  Liberals and conservatives may well each hate the centrists in their midst, but they’re also far more willing to work with those centrists, who at least lack the cultural markers of ignorance or elitism (depending on who you’re talking about) than they are to even consider that they may actually have as much or more common policy ground with their cultural opposites. 

In short, liberals and conservatives refuse to see the areas in which they have common ground because far too often they simply cannot get past the cultural markers that prevent them from even listening to the substance of what their cultural opposites are saying.  So rather than having two or more potential sets of negotiating partners from whom to choose on a given policy issue, they are each permanently left with only those centrists who have the right letters next to their name or who in some other way avoid identifying with the “wrong” cultural markers.

Despite my recent disagreements with Conor, one area where he is indubitably correct is in criticizing conservatism’s inability to engage the culture in which it must exist.  This, to me, is not a political issue – it has little to do with winning elections or with governance – but it leaves conservative cultural critiques utterly tone-deaf, ghettoized, irrelevant, and incapable of understanding context.  Sonny Bunch and Peter Suderman notwithstanding, there are few things more dreadful to read than a conservative television, music, or movie critic or even just a conservative attempting to discuss television, music, or movies.  Today presents us with Exhibit 1,234,324 (estimated) of this problem: conservative outrage over this week’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The cause of the outrage?  In the episode, Larry David accidentally urinates on a picture of Jesus Christ hanging in a bathroom.  The typical Curb Your Enthusiasm set of misunderstandings, inappropriate conduct, etc. follows. 

The result is a series of headlines decrying the blasphemous contempt for Christians this displays – how, after all, could anyone think urinating on a picture of Jesus Christ is amusing or socially acceptable or anything other than a blatant attempt to marginalize Christians?

The problem is that this line of thinking completely, utterly, and preposterously misses the point of the show, not to mention the punchline: Larry David is an asshole.  Not just a little bit of an asshole, either, but quite possibly the world’s biggest asshole.  That Larry David’s politics happen to be liberal has not a lick to do with why his show is funny.  Indeed, to the extent his politics are involved at all, it is to make fun of his own politics, which in some cases result in him being an even bigger asshole (witness the episode where he abandoned a woman mid-coitus because he learned that she was a Republican).  David’s character in many ways is in fact supposed to be a liberal Archie Bunker, just without the lovable core.  As such, Larry David’s character is the type of character that could only be played by a liberal; were he played by a conservative, liberals everywhere would be complaining about how the show paints an unfair picture of liberals. 

The point of Curb Your Enthusiasm is absolutely, positively never that you’re supposed to laugh with Larry David, it’s that you’re supposed to laugh at Larry David.  If you ever – ever – think that Larry David is supposed to be a hero or a decent person or that his character intends his actions to be humorous, then you’re not only missing the point of the show, you’re probably a complete asshole yourself.  What makes the scene in this particular case funny isn’t that someone urinated on a picture of Jesus Christ, it’s that Larry David is the type of asshole who would urinate on a picture of Jesus Christ and show absolutely no remorse for it.  In short, he’s not mocking Christians, he’s mocking himself.

And if you honestly don’t think that David would have been willing to, say, draw a picture of Muhammed for similar purposes, then you’re just not getting the point.  Indeed, the main reason why you’re unlikely to see David do that on his show is that in this country it wouldn’t be remotely asshole-y enough; too many people would be cheering him on for it to have any kind of comic effect in the context of the show.

Via Memorandum.

UPDATE: In case the above is still unclear, the difference between laughing at and laughing with a character is summed up by the fact that Larry David’s character on Curb is the type of person who would think that “Jerk Store” is a witty and funny comeback:

The forthcoming issue* of Reason features an exceedingly thoughtful essay by Kerry Howley, in which she argues that libertarianism would be well-served by widening its scope and paying far more attention to infringements on liberty that are the product of cultural forces.  It’s an argument familiar to those of us versed in sociological or anthropological discourse: namely, that systematic cultural conditions can have just as much of an impact on restricting individual liberty as any expansion of the state’s power.  In the process of defending Howley’s critique, Will Wilkinson notes that a fair number of libertarians don’t really seem to get the core substance of Howley’s point:

If you think cultural products such as political ideologies evolve over time, you won’t see the content of “libertarianism” as sharply defined and fixed once and for all. To assert, as Ilya does, that “some cultural issues might well be appropriate object of concern for libertarians as thinking individuals, but not a proper focus for libertarianism,” pretty much begs the question. The claim is that these cultural issues ought to be objects of concern to libertarians because they are matters of liberty that libertarian have overlooked. Kerry’s asking libertarians to care more about the conditions under which people develop the capacity to meaningfully exercise freedom. She’s asking libertarians to not so blithely assume that social relations of exploitation and domination enforced by state power for hundreds of years are no longer matters of liberty simply because the enforcement of longstanding racist and sexist norms was privatized a few decades ago. She’s not asking libertarians to save the whales.

As you’re wondering why it is that so many commentators have had a hard time getting Kerry’s core point, I think it’s worth keeping in mind that libertarianism – as a political movement – is overwhelmingly white and male.  We tend to think of the racial composition of a political movement as just having electoral consequences, but it also has a profound effect on the core ideology of said movement.  At the risk of oversimplifying a bit, marginalized voices – racial and ethnic minorities, women, gays, etc. – are overrepresented among liberals and as such, the left that has been forced to grapple with the issues and concerns of marginalized communities in such a way as to make liberalism better equipped to deal with these issues.

It seems that insofar that libertarians experience oppression or constraints on their liberty, it is through the actions of the state rather than through culture, which makes sense. Libertarians are overwhelmingly white and male, and in a culture which highly values whiteness and maleness, they will face relatively fewer overt cultural constraints on their behavior than their more marginalized fellow-travelers.  Or in other words, a fair number of libertarians are operating with a good deal of unexamined privilege, and it’s this, along with the extremely small number of women and minorities who operate within the libertarian framework, which makes grappling with cultural sources of oppression really hard for libertarians.  After all – socially speaking – being a white guy in the United States isn’t exactly hard and that’s doubly true if you are well off.

*Has it already come out?

Continuing the discussion Chris began earlier, Scott asks:

Erik, in Chris’ opening salvo, he mentions his general disdain for the current political parties and the role they play in US politics as one driving factor in his inability to land on one side of the fence over the other. To what degree does a dissatisfaction with our current political institutions drive your own unique perspective and lack of obvious affiliation? What is the nature of that dissatisfaction and how do you see it playing out on the larger field of political discourse?

I suspect dissatisfaction with political institutions is more or less a state of nature.  When you’re on the winning team (for a while) you must guard your advantage jealously; when you’re on the losing team you must suffer defeat after humiliating defeat.  When you remain an independent you possess the cold comfort of being neither winner nor loser, and share less of the spoils but also less of the suffering.  Always there are gripes to be had.

I suppose my larger dissatisfaction is less political and more cultural.  I’m mostly socially liberal.  I’m pro-life, but I’m also pro gay-marriage, very comfortable in most socially liberal settings, have many liberal friends, and so forth.  Still, social liberals also tend to be very socially liberal, much like socially conservatives tend to be very conservative, and this can be alienating.  Absolutism can be alienating, and we live in a culture, for better or worse, that caters to absolutism, regardless of the vast swath of moderates and independents out there. [Read more →]

Victor Davis Hanson is visiting Europe. More precisely, Italy and Greece. Several profound insights into the nature of continental society follow:

After concluding another 16 days in Europe. I am again reminded how different their form of socialism  is, and yet how closely it resembles the model that Obama seeks for America. The vast majority of citizens lives in apartments, even in smaller towns and villages. Cars are tiny. Prices are higher than in the states; income is lower (The government taxes you to pay for things like “free” college, so you won’t have much to spend on antisocial things like your Wal-Mart plastic Christmas Tree or your second K-Mart plasma TV.)

Mass transit is frequent and cheap,  but often crowded and occasionally unpleasant. The stifled desire to acquire something—large house, car, deposit account—is of course not quite destroyed by socialism, but rather is channeled into a sort of cynicism and anger, often leading to a hedonism of few children, late and long meals, and disco hours until the early morning. The number of Gucci like stores selling overpriced label junk like 200 Euro eye-glass frames and 1000 Euro leather bags to socialists is quite amazing.

Clearly, this reflects Hanson’s experience in Greece and Italy, not “Europe.” And while Hanson’s observations are undoubtedly filtered through his own ideological lens, a lot of what he says rings true: unlike their Northern counterparts, Greece and Italy have always been on continent’s political and economic periphery. Not too long ago, Athens was being run by a military junta. Silvio Berlusconi’s checkered career is proof enough of Italy’s retrograde political culture. Taking either country as emblematic of Europe would be like using Mississippi as a prime example of the American economic and social model. Which is to say, other factors are at work here.

Cherry-picking favorable examples is a time-honored political tactic, which is why the Left is always talking about the dynamism of the Scandinavian economies – Nokia! Erickson! – or the fact that Denmark regularly tops Freedom House’s economic rankings. The bog-standard conservative rejoinder – something I happen to agree with – is that the political outcomes of small, culturally homogeneous European countries don’t necessarily track with the United States’ experience. It also follows that the defects of Greece and Italy aren’t much of a roadmap for liberalism in the Age of Obama.

Denmark and Finland do not vindicate progressive policy any more than Greece and Italy prove its ruinous consequences. The United States is a different country, and the impact of our policy choices tend to differ dramatically from the experience of even our closest political cousins. Hanson’s insights into the nature of “European” society notwithstanding, it would be better for all of us if we shied away from facile country-to-country comparisons.

“Judge Sotomayor was raised in public housing? So was I. Her mother was a nurse working late shifts? So was mine. When did white working poor people disappear off the face of the earth? Where are the eager listeners to their “compelling stories”?”

~John Derbyshire

John “Derb” Derbyshire pendulates between very sensible and very silly.  His defense of evolution and attacks against the ID nonsense in Ben Stein’s Expelled mockumentary (wait – that was a real documentary?) were typical Sensible Derbyshire.  Likewise, his recent assault on talk radio’s wrecking of the Right was brilliant and timely.

But there is also the silly Derbyshire.  The man is undoubtedly as sharp as they come, but he manages, nonetheless, to say some pretty stupid things.  I won’t necessarily hold his opinions against him – it’s his prerogative to be “a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one” as he once put it (and later clarified).  I, of course, disagree with him – especially on his points on homosexuality which I do not view as a “net negative” on society.  [Read more →]

“Rather than deep moral and spiritual renewal leading to civic health, what if it’s our national solipsism and susceptibility to suggestion that pull us together, and pull us through? What if, rather than being stuck with virtue, we discover that, after a few initially painful changes in lifestyle, we can buy spray-on virtue in a can? If enough Americans decide that the TV show of their lives should feature them acting like engaged, conscientious citizens, might that not be just as good as a more “authentic” conversion?”  ~ Matt Frost

Matt has a point.  In fact, one reason why in my search for a workable localism I have dedicated a great deal of virtual ink searching for practical rather than moral solutions, is that I don’t think we will see any sort of moral sea change as a nation any time soon.  National reckonings are at best temporary.   I don’t think we will willingly change or restructure our spending habits – or even that spending in and of itself is a bad thing.  Rather we need to move back toward a style of consumerism which is more responsible - as in, less built on debt, and more on savings and hard work.  It’s much more likely that this sort of shift occurs through the tightening of credit, rather than the voluntary reduction of our appetites.

So what are these “practical” solutions?  There are a number, including reducing our dependence on foreign economies and cutting back military spending.  Restructuring our financial system is also vital.

For instance, we should seriously consider nationalizing troubled banks and then selling them back off with size or regional restrictions.  This would benefit the financial industry in a number of ways.  We need to do away with the terrible anti-capitalist notion of “too big to fail” which props up our oligarchy at the expense of the tax payer and to the detriment of healthy competition; in fact, the continued presence of these “too big” financial institutions may be directly impeding any sort of reasonable recovery that the stimulus at large hopes to usher in.  Commerce is at its best at smaller scales (even if these smaller operations do attain global reach), in which merchants, bankers, investors, etc. operate within communities and the dollars involved remain flowing through those communities, rather than bleeding out into the pockets of distant executives and share-holders, more concerned with quarterly profits than the long term.  This is not always possible, of course, but it’s worth shooting for, especially in our financial sector which obviously, when mismanaged, carries far too great a risk to the health of the global economy. [Read more →]