tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post7284198284132924615..comments2023-10-16T07:13:12.123-05:00Comments on A plain blog about politics: Progressives and Health Care ReformJonathan Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-49364289730281974362010-05-31T12:55:52.907-05:002010-05-31T12:55:52.907-05:00great sitegreat sitezercathhttp://zercath.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-195455786176682862010-03-15T10:06:01.277-05:002010-03-15T10:06:01.277-05:00You might be taking Beck too seriously and giving ...You might be taking Beck too seriously and giving him too much credit. Too much of his thinking is scatter shot black helicopter stuff from the traditional John Birch right. Wilson was man of his age - progressive for his time: he let Jim Crow laws flourish, but had nothing but contempt for the Klan. <br />Beck would approve of the creation of the League of Nations? Beck has to much go it alone uber nationalist in his blood.<br /><br />Wilson went into Mexico, but he stopped the military from proceeding further - he was no neocon.<br /><br />Wilson used authority and force:has there been a major political front in any western culture that hasn't. Jonah Goldberg, among others, have suddenly taken up the bizarre notion that the qualifier for fascism is the use of force in and of itself. If Beck is picking up on that meme it is because of the Right's current efforts to paint themselves as sweet innocent by-standers of history. In their oxymoronic reasoning it is really the 'liberal fascist/communists' that are to blame for every wrong turn of modern history. They're like the kid with jelly all over his hands and face saying he ain't even been near that jelly sandwich.<br /><br />A very honest look at Wilson for better and worse here. Including some corrections to Goldberg's revisionism of Wilson<br />http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/01/wilson-and-fascism.html<br /><br />On Obama's presidency. What he has tried to do and seems to be slowly changing course - is not legislate from the White House. There is a logic to that approach that agrees with his record of community organizing where you want your agenda to last and change from the ground up is the best way to accomplish that or at least at the city or state level. DADT is a good example. Obama issues an executive order repealing it. The nest guy changes it back. Let Congress change it and it stays changed and it also has the stamp of a more populist appeal. Politicians are loath to change popular polices - especially Democrats. Though as Obama has seen the federal government is another ball game when it comes to big public policy decisions - factor in lobbyist and billions in special K money and as president you're boxing with ghosts. He seems to be coming around to the facts of Beltway life - permanent campaign mode, running between the landmines of lobbyists, unrelenting attacks from the far right and realizing that federal legislators, given a choice between doing the right thing and doing what will get them reelected will almost always chose the later.Painehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499175723535424222noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-28887776747418806082010-03-14T01:38:25.519-06:002010-03-14T01:38:25.519-06:00Everything Obama learned about diplomacy he learne...Everything Obama learned about diplomacy he learned in kindergarten and it is us, the Americans who are paying for him not learing good lessons in the childhood. Hope his putting America on the path of "set a good example and others will follow" philosphy works!<br />CynthiaCynthia Beattie Mcgillhttp://www.princetoncryo.com/control-rate-freezer.htmlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-4500923993896917262010-03-13T15:36:29.423-06:002010-03-13T15:36:29.423-06:00I don't think Beck really knows why he hates W...I don't think Beck really knows why he hates Wilson. All he knows is Wilson is described as "progressive" and "democrat".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-24944937975080622092010-03-13T07:54:52.366-06:002010-03-13T07:54:52.366-06:00"What would Will have said if it were a Repub..."What would Will have said if it were a Republican President who uttered Obama's words?"<br /><br />I think we can answer this pretty well, as it was a Republican President who said "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just as long as I'm the dictator." I believe this is even less consistent with Madison than what Obama said. I don't recall that George Will was among those concerned about that declaration.MSRhttp://constructiveinterference.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-3777073749733023982010-03-13T01:16:49.031-06:002010-03-13T01:16:49.031-06:00I think you nailed this. It was an unfortunate &q...I think you nailed this. It was an unfortunate "unfortunately," but as you say his behavior is 100% true-blue Madisonian interest-politics. ThT was clearly an almost tongue-in-cheek "unfortunately," as in, "Yes, Catie I suppose it would be nice if I could circumvent members' of Congress ability to pursue their interests in the course of passing laws, but [snark]unfortunately[/snark] we have this little thing called 'representative republicanism' written into how the first branch of government is constituted, so I sort of have to work around that..."<br /><br />What is amazing is that Will picks such a fragmentary verbal nothing to build an entire column's worth of false indictment out of, completely regardless of even a cursory review of the record.Michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10559337725063627254noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-34628886067119186192010-03-13T00:02:41.783-06:002010-03-13T00:02:41.783-06:00kth,
Ah, but I didn't quite say that Wilson w...kth,<br /><br />Ah, but I didn't quite say that Wilson was fascist -- I said that taken to the extreme, as it was in Gabriel Over the White House, it was proto-fascist, and that I'd still call that Wilsonian. <br /><br />ASP,<br /><br />Very nice. Good call.<br /><br />Back to kth's comment...you know, it's true that Wilson sorts more with scientific management than with anti-rationalism, but he definitely had that communing with the spirit of the people, which he was uniquely able to hear and understand, thing down cold. And of course a lot of the sciencey stuff of the time was, well, not very scientific. Including, of course, the racism. Granted, it's not really fair to load all of that onto the one guy, but he's the one who wanted to be president. Look, I'll admit that this is personal...I don't think that Wilson was a fascist, but it's not hard for me to imagine him becoming a fascist dictator under the right circumstances.Jonathan Bernsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-70192406425708414132010-03-12T17:49:19.554-06:002010-03-12T17:49:19.554-06:00It's certainly legit to call Wilson (and that ...It's certainly legit to call Wilson (and that whole social-evolutionist tendency in early progressivism) authoritarian. But fascist? Not if ordinary language matters anymore. Surely to a non-academic generalist reasonable well-read in history, fascism connotes pitched oratory, military fetishism, racial atavism (Wilson was a stone racist but he wasn't into the white mythology), glorification of the struggle, the appeal to tradition, anti-rationalism. Especially the latter, which Wilson wasn't into at all.<br /><br />Just because a style of government is elitist and paternalist (even racist) doesn't mean it is fascist. Fortunately America, a nation of immigrants and transients, has been less given to the pure strains of fascism than other countries. But the phenomena here that do resemble Continental fascism (e.g., the KKK) are invariably more populist than elitist.kthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12807643816565849458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-64574252799361064252010-03-11T20:09:55.657-06:002010-03-11T20:09:55.657-06:00Obama understands and embraces how democracy works...Obama understands and embraces how democracy works in practice. From his 100th day press conference:<br /><br />This metaphor has been used before, but this -- the ship of state is an ocean liner; it's not a speed boat. And so the way we are constantly thinking about this issue of how to bring about the changes that the American people need is to -- is to say, if we can move this big battleship a few degrees in a different direction, we may not see all the consequences of that change a week from now or three months from now, but 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, our kids will be able to look back and say that was when we started getting serious about clean energy, that's when health care started to become more efficient and affordable, that's when we became serious about raising our standards in education.<br /><br />And:<br /><br />Humbled by the -- humbled by the fact that the presidency is extraordinarily powerful, but we are just part of a much broader tapestry of American life and there are a lot of different power centers. And so I can't just press a button and suddenly have the bankers do exactly what I want -- (laughter) -- or -- (chuckles) -- or, you know, turn on a switch and suddenly, you know, Congress falls in line. And so, you know, what you do is to make your best arguments, listen hard to what other people have to say and coax folks in the right direction.Andrew Sprunghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17601269968798865106noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-35221426627718612482010-03-11T18:54:19.539-06:002010-03-11T18:54:19.539-06:00You would think, as a conservative, Will might hav...You would think, as a conservative, Will might have remembered Churchill:<br /><br /><em>"democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried"</em><br /><br />I forgot. Conservatives never forget Churchill, however much they misremember him. What would Will have said if it was a Republican president who uttered Obama's words?<br /><br />Will strained to give the most uncharitable plausible interpretation.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-11118697910465429312010-03-11T17:03:34.220-06:002010-03-11T17:03:34.220-06:00I've always been a Wilson fan, abstracted away...I've always been a Wilson fan, abstracted away from the racism. Of course, with the whole Progressive movement, that's kinda hard to do. Voter registration was a great way to keep the Irish (or whomever) from voting, for example.<br /><br />For all my love of Madison, I'm closer to a Hamiltonian in a lot of ways.<br /><br />However, I think that a lot of the attacks on Wilson are actually trying to cloak their own arguments for policy in populist terms. There are two great sources for legitimacy in American politics: the Constitution and the people. The whole "cram it down their throats" meme is really hilarious when you consider the Bush presidency.Matt Jarvisnoreply@blogger.com