Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.
I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes.
Empathy is simply a codeword for an inclination toward liberal activism.
At one level, Krugman makes an important point, which is simply to remind us of what Lakoff taught us in Moral Politics: the liberal worldview is based on empathy and compassion, while the conservative worldview is based on an adversarial orientation that holds empathy in contempt as a form of weakness and indulgence. Which is a fairly fundamental reason why there is no fundamental equivalence between "extremists on both sides."
But that's just one level.
As it turns out, of course, the National Review is spectacularly wrong. The evidence by now is overwhelming that Obama's empathy is heavily skewed towards the haves and have-mores who oppose him and away from the have-nots and have-lesses who support him.
Right wing's breathtaking bait and switch on Tucson
In the week since the Tucson, Ariz., massacre, pleas for "civility" have turned into accusations of incivility, and the whole, useful discussion of "civility" versus "vitriol" has turned into the usual argument over competitive victimhood. The vast right-wing conspiracy has played President Barack Obama like a violin.
And they've done a pretty good job of messing with the heads of the liberal media as well. As a result, anyone who even raises the issue of who might be responsible, or more responsible, for the "atmosphere of vitriol" in which we conduct our politics is guilty of contributing to it. In just a few days, it has become the height of political incorrectness to suggest there might be any connection between the voices on right-wing talk radio and the voices in Jared Lee Loughner's head.
Moral: Empathy is for suckers, and Obama is the biggest of them all.
Bomb planted along MLK parade route in Spokane today (doubledown)
An incendiary device found along the route of a Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Wash., was "likely capable of inflicting multiple casualties," the FBI said today.
A city employee found a backpack Monday morning, just before the parade was to start, in a parking lot that was both on the parade route and across the street from a performing arts center that hosted a pre-parade rally.
As this latest incident serves to remind us, the right simply can't help itself anymore. They can say whatever they want to when the spotlights are on, but the legacy of who they are will continue to have its way in the shadows. Like the scorpion in the story in The Crying Game, they can't help it: it's just their nature. There are already so, so many incidents that they've gotten a pass for in the past, and now that the fruits of violence have been raised to such a fever pitch and high level of visibility, they may have smooth-talked their way out of this one, as Kinsley argues, but they're all the more exposed for the next incident, and the next one, and next one after that.
this doesn't help me. I think it intentionally evades some key issues.
Are Progressives socialists, or perhaps more accurately social democrats? If so, why are these terms being avoided?
This made me realize that I haven't done a good enough job of articulating what I'm trying to do. And if I want to be successful--particularly since I see this as necessarily a group process that I'm organizing and initiating--then making the purpose clear is of utmost importance. So let me give you a quick description, and then try to flesh it out enough to have a meaningful discussion about it.
Basically, what I'm trying to do here is not to arbitrarily include some people out and some people in. I'm trying to herd cats, as it were. (The secret to herding cats? Fish!) I want to find a rational way to include as many people as possible not by resolving all our differences, but by finding a good enough (not perfect) principled framework that allows us to continue working together even as we disagree with one another in various different ways. (Our differences, properly dealt with, are a productive resource rather than an impediment.) I do have particularly strong problems with certain groups and tendencies--the neo-liberal third "Third Way" most particularly--but it's my intention that by getting to fundamental principles we can discern a framework through which those in that group--as well as any others--can choose individually and collectively if they are with us or against us, rather than issuing a blank edict.
In Don't Think of An Elephant, George Lakoff wrote:
From the point of view of a cognitive scientist, who looks at modes of thought, there are six basic types of progressives, each with a distinct mode of thought. They share all the progressive values, but are distinguished by some differences.
1. Socioeconomic progressives think that everything is a matter of money and class and that all solutions are ultimately economic and social class solutions.
2. Identity politics progressives say it is time for their oppressed group to get its share now.
3. Environmentalists think in terms of sustainability of the earth, the sacredness of the earth, and the protection of native peoples.
4. Civil liberties progressives want to maintain freedoms against threats to freedom.
5. Spiritual progressives have a nurturant form of religion or spirituality, their spiritual experience has to do with their connection to other people and the world, and their spiritual practice has to do with service to other people and to their community. Spiritual progressives span the full range from Catholics and Protestants to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Goddess worshippers, and pagan members of Wicca.
6. Anti-authoritarians say there are all sorts of illegitimate forms of authority out there and we have to fight them, whether they are big corporations or anyone else.
All six types are examples of nurturant parent morality. The problem is that many of the people who have one of these modes of thought do not recognize that theirs is just one special case of something more general, and do not see the unity in all the types of progressives. They often think that theirs is the only way to be a true progressive. That is sad. It keeps people who share progressive values from coming together. We have to get past that harmful idea. The other side did.
Back in the 1950s conservatives hated each other. The financial conservatives hated the social conservatives. The libertarians did not get along with the social conservatives or the religious conservatives.
And many social conservatives were not religious.
I'll return to the conservatives briefly later on. For now, I want to look at what Lakoff said about progressives.
While the report focuses attention on the current sorry state of the airline industry, and its underlying structural problems that lie behind the recent rash of airline crashes and near-misses such as the crash of the Continental/Colgan flight to Buffalo, it traces current conditions back to the decision, 30 years ago, to deregulate the airline industry.
How's this for an astonishing fact: Since 2000, U.S. airlines have reported net losses of more than $33 billion--almost twice their accumulated profits from 1938 to 1999!
Of course, the trump card for the deregulators is the claim of low fares, and broad affordability, but the executive summary notes:
[Economist Alfred] Kahn [the "father of airline deregulation"] and others have taken refuge in the argument that deregulation has produced lower airfares and wider access to air travel. The Demos report concludes that even this benefit is widely overstated. "While the price of flying has come down over the past thirty years," the report notes, "it decreased at a comparable rate from the 1940s through the 1960s. In any event, low airfares are as much a problem as an achievement if they leave an industry without the resources to maintain service standards and make crucial investments in equipment, technology, and human capital."
If anything this understates the case. If deregulation has resulted in net industry losses, those fare reductions were paid for by the airlines creditors! What kind of a business model is that? Considering the amount of technological innovation, and the increased traffic volume, it seems altogether possible that fares would have fallen more without deregulation! Heck, the food might even have been edible!
This is only one industry, but the story's the same everywhere you look: the deregulation mania has been a disaster for America. Sure, stupid regulations can be a pain in the ass. But that's about stupidity, not regulation per se.
This is an excellent report, but we need to build on this and other detailed reporting on specific failures of de-regulation to develop a new narrative stressing the positive value of smart, far-sighted regulation in crafting systems that work for everyone. If freedom means anything, it's not just freedom from arbitrary restraints, it's freedom to do things of one's own choosing, and the capacity to do things depends in part on soundly-functioning systems, from cars that won't blow up to government that won't get you killed for reasons they lie to you about. That's why smart regulations expand our freedom, rather than restricting it.
A few juicy tidbits from the report on the flip--along with some broader thoughts on history, transportation and freedom.
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