cheese it, the cops!

constitutional terrorists

so now everyone (including maybe joe biden) is chorusing terrorists! about the tea party. (richard cohen is late to the nihilist party.) nocera says they are "waging jihad on the american people." and you were getting ticked with hints that obama was unamerican? the rhetorical pitch is excruciating; there's no hiigher place to jack it up to. ok, tell you what, you can have these tropes as long as you don't mind at all when i call nancy pelosi a maoist who hates god and is trying to destroy our sacred american way of life. it's true that obama isn't a muslim. he's a satanist, etc. so chill out about that; surely it's a fairly mild criticism. and just don't start appealing to your reasonableness and fact-based opinions. obviously we're all well beyond that.

i'll insist on this: if someone takes a shot at michele bachmann or rand paul, or opens fire at a vbs, i want joe nocera and richard cohen to accept exactly as much responsibility for that as they assigned to right-wing or anti-muslim or anti-immigrant blogs for the norway shootings, or to sarah palin on gabby giffords. remember last time you said 'words have consequences' etc? then think about the idea that tea partiers are terrorists and jihadists and nihilists who are trying to destroy our country and who are beyond the reach of rational discussion.

why

i think that the mainline left wants government growth in order to accomplish specific admirable goals: the amelioration of poverty, for example. but i also do think that there's an underlying commitment to statism almost no matter what, because the basic idea is that the state is all of us together; it's our collective action and identity; it ameliorates not only poverty (well...) but our aloneness, our individuality. this is why inside that discourse 'individualism' is a name for evil, what we're supposed to be fighting against. the state is our solidarity, our unity, or even our love etc. now all of this would be relatively groovy, if the whole thing did not obviously rest on coercion. the reality so luridly puts the lie to the ideology that i find it hard to imagine how the ideology persists.

true

jackie calmes in the nyt points out the obvious: that the debt debate is really coming down to a fundamental difference about the 'scope and role' of government. there is much to be said for a clash on this basic question, for the occasional foray into basic political visions/principles. now i think it's true that the republicans want to aid the wealthy. but on the other hand they are opposing any increase in taxation on anyone for any reason: indeed a rigid position (and a principled one). but from the other side, you get the feeling from the left that government is simply and obviously a good thing, good for its own sake, that higher taxes and a bigger 'public sector' is self-evidently good in itself. that's the sort of position rachel maddow takes up, i think. and also some of my facebook friends (nadelhoffer, anyone?). i suppose that no one will simply flatly state that, but that doesn't mean it isn't in effect what they hold: we will accept no position that doesn't include revenue increases; obama will veto it if there isn't more tax money. when the position gets that raw, i just have to say it just can't be right. we are on the edge of showing that statism and leftism amount virtually to the same thing in our actual political spectrum. well, you could start backwards into keynes, marx, and rousseau, for example: cultists of the state. a libertarian left is possible and sensible; i'd just like to see more of it.