I wore black today. Black suit, black tie, and a black shroud over the Romney-Ryan sign in my yard. No, I do not think, contrary to countless heartfelt comments one sees on the conservative blogs today, that the republic died today.
But make no mistake: something did die today.
Obama voters, you need to understand this. You need to look into my eyes, into the eyes of your fellow Americans who voted for Romney, and see that something has changed. That this victory of yours is…somehow a dismal one. Something now changes between us.
It’s different this time.
You had four long years to take the measure of this man. Measured by elementary economic yardsticks, his administration has been a clear failure. And for all who have been willing to honestly look, his character has been revealed to be one of arrogance, incompetence, divisiveness, and serial mendacity. Dare I remind us of the fact, by turns preposterous and appalling, that he kept Joe Biden on as his Vice-President? And, you still voted for him and Joe, even in a situation where the Democratic Party did not stand to lose many decisive policy points, since there was no way it could get below a filibuster-sustaining number in the Senate.
“It makes me wonder who my fellow citizens are,” said Marianne Doherty in this news story. You’re going to be hearing different versions of that quote, over and over from your fellow citizens. Your brothers, sisters, family members, warriors, protectors, doctors, and even some of your teachers.
We were told, and we told ourselves, that some unspecified number of you were “moderates.”
Do you see what’s in our eyes?
Many analysts will write the kinds of things they always do after an election. I see that Michael Barone, for example, just posted an essay explaining why he predicted things so incorrectly. Many details there to digest and consider. Others will consider the various mistakes made by the Romney camp, and the smart moves by the Obama one. Libertarian-learners will once again declare that social conservatives sunk Republican chances, and vice-versa. The usual debate about Latino-outreach and immigration policy will occur. All of that is necessary dialogue, and certain details will emerge as the more important ones that plausibly suggest how 2 percentage points might have gone the other way. Very good. By all means, read and reflect. And let the debates about the future of conservatism and the Republican party begin.
But don’t lose sight of the fact that it’s different this time.
Now Romney voters, let me say a few words to you. Too many of you are only now beginning to see that for many months you have lived in a kind of informational and analytical bubble, shaped by conservative intellectual leaders who refused to fully and fairly process what the poll data was suggesting.
(Again, I must point out that here at Postmodern Conservative our Peter Lawler and Pete Spiliakos manfully resisted the pressure, which at times came from yours truly, to get drawn into that bubble. I thank them for keeping me a bit more in touch with the grim reality—even though I’ve been deeply depressed about the closeness of the race since around June.)
And so many of you are genuinely shocked and stunned by the outcome. Your despair, and perhaps your anger at your fellow citizens, is thus all the more dramatic. You might say something like one Mr. Nelson, a commenter at Powerline said today: “This country will be so fundamentally changed from the results of this election that it will never be anything close to what it used to be.” One comment among tens of thousands like it.
The snipers will loudly argue that your anger and despair is primarily a function of being deluded by your leaders and your media, of having your bubble popped. Oh, they will enjoy themselves immensely, and think they are doing heavy intellectual work, by offering competing theories about the “syndrome” they think you got caught in. And some of them will seek to dismiss any future political passion you display as simply a function of that.
(Perhaps harder to take still will be those who, in a Lennon-esque or Bible-commanded cause of reconciliation as they understand it, in all sincerity ask you to put your anger aside now for the good of the nation. Be patient with these sincere ones, for they will not initially understand that something is different this time.)
But Romney voter, after all the necessary criticism of the conservative bubble regarding poll-analysis has been made, the truth is this: the most fundamental reason you remained in that bubble was your belief in your fellow citizens, in the general decency and common sense of the American public. Obama was so obviously bad, that you couldn’t believe that enough of your fellow citizens wouldn’t see it and act upon it. That touching Reaganite faith in America. That duty of fostering fraternal love for your fellow citizens, extended into a kind of respect. The snipers will say you are an extremist, dangerously delusional, subject to all sorts of “syndromes” and scandalously hesitant to enter into the rites of reconciliation. But you know, and those who really look into your eyes will know it too: your bubble was built upon love.
And now, it is popped.
The duties of love become more rigorous. Gentleness now enters the room with a grim face and an urgent tone.
My fellow citizens who voted for Obama, know this: you have betrayed us, hurt us deeply. I say it especially to those of you over 25. You have done a grave wrong. You have not investigated, not hesitated, not considered the plain meaning of the many damnations hurled by your allies towards us over the years.
Quite a few of you have declined to take the time and effort to read serious conservative arguments, to expose yourself to conservative interpretations of the news on a regular basis, and you have little or no shame about this, despite what has long been known about our media environment. But it is your duty. One of things that makes you deserving of the right to vote.
We know it offends, but this is what we believe. We simply have to say it to you. Especially now. We look at the disaster the election of this man represents, the casual abdication of the basic citizenship duty to assess success or failure, bad character or good, math or bankruptcy, and we cannot honestly say that this loss is like 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, 1948, 1960, 1964, 1976, 1992, 1996, or 2008. All of those losses, in many of which there was much more at stake policy-wise, remained within the realm of understanding our fellow citizens’ reasoning. Not this one.
Those of you who know me, know my basic moderation. You know I wasn’t always a conservative, that I voted for Dukakis, for Clinton twice, and for Gore. You know that like Obama, I attended meetings of the Democratic Socialists of America in the 1980s. You know that either as a student or a teacher, my conduct in seminars and classes has consistently sought to bring out the strong sides of every serious argument brought to the table. You know that in daily life, I am in fact reticent about bringing politics into things, and that I enjoy laughing, smiling, good art, good food, and good manners, and with folks from various political, religious, and philosophic viewpoints.
And you might know that my career has been in large part about taking the study of politics pretty seriously—that I have claims to expertise in America’s political history and her Constitution, and that I have “sat at the feet of” and done hard-sweat study of Plato, Aristotle, Livy, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Calvin, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Tocqueville, John Rawls, Michael Harrington, Taylor Branch, Florian von Donnersmarck, and so on.
So if you respect moderation, manners, and education, hear me! Do not quibble, do not latch onto to any one mistake or poorly-chosen phrase above. Understand that the likes of me do not say things like this unless I think the situation really is becoming grave.
Perhaps in another post I will labor to spell out why I judge that the Obama-voters this time have made such an irresponsible choice, and no doubt in the comments we will talk about the burdens of self-analysis all of this puts upon conservatives, but the point of this one is to shock, to dismay, to tear aside the veil of the normalcy and standard modes of analysis that we are so inclined to cling to.
It’s different this time.
UPDATE: More thoughts in this line from the great Jay Nordlinger of National Review. His title, “Bitterfest 2012″ sure is catchy, but I would insist that SOBERFEST catches the reality better.
November 7th, 2012 | 9:21 pm
Good heavens, this is really embarrassing. Get a grip! Nothing is different this time, American is not going to be fundamentally changed. Barack Obama is a conventional center-left American politician. Hopefully, with time, you will realize how silly you sound today.
November 7th, 2012 | 10:42 pm
Thank you for this excellent and thoughtful post – I could not have said it any better myself. As a fellow scholar of Political Theory (albeit a young one), I understand where you are coming from.
November 7th, 2012 | 11:52 pm
When will all you Chicken Littles realize the sky has not and is not falling… When will you realize that everything you think is real is False?
Part of curing an Affliction is accepting that it is there.. It is not just the Polling that the Right Wing Conservative Media Bubble has been Lying to you about. Show some curiosity.. Come out of the bubble and look behind the Curtain. When you do I am quite certain the only people you will be angry and disappointed at is yourselves for being Fooled so easily.
November 8th, 2012 | 4:31 am
I don’t live in a bubble Truthsayer…I have researched and followed exactly what Democrats want to do. I say give it too them…let America see what happens when the largest tax increas in world history kicks in. Let them see what happens to their healthcare, energy prices, The UN Small Arms Treaty…And lets not forget Benghazi TS. Those of us who have served on foreign soil will not. My America is not your America. Look at the Electoral College map TS. Urban America is sucking the life out of Rural America and when the money runs out and the EBT cards stop working those of us who are “True” Americans and can read our copies of the US Constitution will be there to protect the population against all enemies, both foreign, and domestic…and make no mistake…democrats are domestic enemies.
November 8th, 2012 | 5:31 am
Carl,
Have you written on your conversion to conservatism? From the posts of yours that I’ve read to date, I really didn’t pick up that you had been other than conservative as recently (from my point of view) as 2000.
November 8th, 2012 | 7:29 am
djf…I’m not proud of my having clung so long to the pro-life Democrat position…not that it would have mattered with Dole, but by sometime in the mid 90s I should have switched. I finally switched shortly after my Gore vote in 2000, having begun more serious study of pol phil at Fordham…impact of Tocqueville, to some degree Strauss, the brand-new blogosphere, and the commenter you see here occasionally, my friend Paul Seaton. Already not a Democrat by 9/11.
November 8th, 2012 | 8:12 am
Hi Carl,
I have to say had a very similar reaction to yours, about the people’s choice for Obama after four years of seeing him in action (as opposed to hearing the grandiose but empty discourse of his first presidential campaign).
Perhaps Fr. Sirico’s comments on National Review’s Corner blog are spot on – there is an ethical and moral shift going on that has “blinded” many to the problems that are clear from a more conservative stance.
That, and the media, of course. I have seen perfectly reasonable and loving people of my acquaintance casually calling Romney “a terrible person”.
Which is why I think not even the concrete results of these statist and progressivist policies, as mentioned by Michael Johnston, will be seen as much by most people.
Which is too bad, because there is not a whole lot, outside the United States, of support for the Western political tradition and values.
From an ally in Brazil, who spent the last five years in the US at a great Political Theory department…
November 8th, 2012 | 9:27 am
Living in the city, as I do, I have often been surprised at how many urban liberals just can’t comprehend the mindset of conservatives. They rarely meet conservatives, and certainly don’t have any conservative friends. Conservatives, to them, seem to come from another world where up is down and in is out.
Sadly, over the past twenty years, the same has come to be true of conservatives. I see so many of my friends who are expressing the same sense of betrayal discussed here. They can’t comprehend that any of their fellow countrymen could vote for President Obama. Basically, we have allowed ourselves to become fools.
Wisdom is the ability to use knowledge to act well in the world. A part of being able to act well is the ability to make right judgments about the people around you — their motivations and likely actions. In order to act wisely we must be able to put ourselves in another’s shoes and see the world as he sees it. Only a fool can be surprised by betrayal because only a fool is incapable of understanding the actions of those around him.
Someone well-versed in political theory should be the last person to write a column like this. The United States is heading down a path that has been predicted by every competent philosopher of the ancient and medieval worlds, and of a great many of the moderns. They all proclaimed that this was the natural path for any people, particularly those blessed with a democracy. The only hope for a people to keep their democracy is to maintain an unending public effort of education to teach citizens about their own tendency toward despotism and why they must fight against it.
So please, conservatives, get out of your bubble of ignorance that is causing to act so foolishly. Learn once again to teach and persuade. Look to the example of Socrates who could get the Athenians to see his perspective by exposing the logic of their own beliefs. It is exceedingly hard work and is often unsuccessful, but it is the only tool we have in this broken world.
November 8th, 2012 | 10:19 am
Recall the poster from the Suicide Center: Come On, It’s Not That Bad…
November 8th, 2012 | 10:23 am
Good post.
November 8th, 2012 | 12:42 pm
Good grief!
Of all the over the top posts I have read this surely takes the cake. You know what? Half of your fellow citizens are not heathens, stupid or irresponsible. We just don’t see things your way. On what evidence do you base Obama’s poor character? I see him as a good man. You may not agree with him, but the world will go on. As an older person I can tell you “there is nothing new under the sun”, everything goes in cycles, we have a wonderful resilient country.
But I do understand-I felt the same way when Reagan was elected. And I and the Republic survived!
November 8th, 2012 | 2:08 pm
Jane, Renaldo Magnus was an American, with American/Western values. Obama is not.
Obama, Harvard grad that he is, has not idea what a republic may be. Ron knew.
Obama’s policies appeared dedicated to the destruction of said republic. Ron’s econ policies gave us the largest economic growth in the history of the nation.
Democrats are fundamentally evil.
November 8th, 2012 | 2:09 pm
Ethan, the point is to try to convey to open-minded liberals and moderates-so-called some, only some, of what their fellow citizens are sincerely feeling. One thing they need to see is that that anger is not simply a function of ignorance, racism(thanks, Ole Miss idiots), and bubble-dom. It is held by folks like myself also. Folks who do not, BTW, throw words like “fool” around lightly, and yes, who know what political theory, classical especially, teaches about the tendencies of democracy.
I am currently writing a book, FYI, that in part is on just how depressing the message of Plato’s Republic on democracy really is…and I endorse 100% your statement that “The only hope for a people to keep their democracy is to maintain an unending public effort of education to teach citizens about their own tendency toward despotism and why they must fight against it.”
And if I could get a somewhat stable job in our 90% registered-Democrat academia, I’d certainly do my part! But so far…
And here’s the thing. I know that good, intelligent people will vote Obama given the informational (and social) bubble they live in. But not all bubbles are equal, or are equally excusable. The conservative bubble really is, especially on Obama, the more accurate one. I grant you that some of its prominent voices are shrill obsessives, so that we get things like the latest Ed Klein book on Obama, and its current dismissal by the suave and in many ways wise Kwame Anthony Appiah in the latest New York Review of books.
But I seriously think Mr. Appiah’s bubble is more politically misinformed than that of the average Rush listener. I do. On politics, I judge his ignorance and that of most NYR readers, to be worse than that of the Rush listener. And how is the likes of him ever going to hear the likes of me, and the likes of that opinion, if I never let them know that, reasonable, moderate, kind, open-minded people like me are
SERIOUSLY SCANDALIZED BY THIS ELECTION!!!!!
but continue to oh so calmly and typically analyze why, say, the Romney campaign..as if it’s just any old post-election situation?
But no, it’s different this time.
Honest Anger is no vice in the cause of moderation.
November 8th, 2012 | 2:34 pm
Carl says: “But I seriously think Mr. Appiah’s bubble is more politically misinformed than that of the average Rush listener. I do. On politics, I judge his ignorance and that of most NYR readers, to be worse than that of the Rush listener.”
What is your basis for this statement, other than personal bias?
All this moaning about “the evils of democracy” is very unbecoming. Please gain some perspective. IT’S NOT DIFFERENT THIS TIME! You lost an election; it happens to all of us. But most of us manage to avoid such maudlin displays of hysteria.
November 8th, 2012 | 2:50 pm
It’s oh-so-precious to hear liberals bemoaning this post and saying that grown-ups accept that sometimes they lose elections. Clearly said liberals are less than four years old, and didn’t live through the previous administration and the eight-year-long hissy fit thrown by half the country…
November 8th, 2012 | 3:12 pm
Brian says ” learly said liberals are less than four years old, and didn’t live through the previous administration and the eight-year-long hissy fit thrown by half the country…”
That’s exactly why IT’S NOT DIFFERENT THIS TIME! America moves ahead, not matter who is in the White House. The measure of a nation is more than its politics. Way too much mental energy is expended (by both sides) on presidential politics. This is not healthy, since it leads people to make antisocial comments like “Democrats are fundamentally evil”, thereby insulting and degrading roughly half of this nation’s citizens. It’s that type of attitude that threatens democracy, not Barack Obama
November 8th, 2012 | 3:15 pm
To those who accuse us conservatives of being over-the-top and making baseless accusations about the President’s character, all I ask is that you contrast Obama’s recent “victory” speech with his campaign. If one does not see the incongruity between a man who says “Our politics are not as divided as the cynics suggest” and his campaign that intentionally sought to divide (i.e., class warfare, immigration, war on women), there is something wrong with one’s perception. In terms of Plato’s *Republic*, Obama effectively and cynically sent his various drones to incite competing desires within the U.S. population in order to cobble together a majority of the vote. The fact that a majority of the nation could not see through such tactics is, as Carl writes, disheartening. And even though it may be the nature of democracy for everyone to pursue whatever appears to them to be good, it is hard for those who realize goods are not relative to see the people act so thoughtlessly.
November 8th, 2012 | 3:37 pm
Could someone please explain to me why the conservatives at TAC and FPR are taking the election results in stride, why the folks at NRO and PC are freaking out. What philosophical differences within conservatism underlie these divergent responses? I’m just curious…
November 8th, 2012 | 4:16 pm
Because the FPR and TAC types mostly decided to retire to their Epicurean gardens for this election.
November 8th, 2012 | 4:27 pm
I think the above comment by Mr. Cheeks, says it all. “Democrats are fundamentally evil.” Regan understands America, Obama does not.
Can’t you see that that is precisely the kind of rhetoric that causes one to lose an election? Americans do not like that. Americans want a vigorous debate about issues, but you can strongly disagree with a person and not accuse them of being a terrible human being!
The fact is-like it or not-the over half of the population of this country you disparage wants compromise, pragmatic solutions and a healthy give or take. Who was it that said that anything Obama put forward during his term was D.O.A?
We are a healthy country that has a way of surviving and thriving no matter what. We have a lot of checks on power in our system.
As far as how the presidential election affects the character of this great nation-not that much. All the many communities throughout this country that contain people of all stripes and beliefs, who share car pools, cheer each others kids on at athletic events, care for each other during hard times and agree to disagree about politics with civility and go out for dinner together after, will continue to exist and thrive I am a Democrat and still love and respect my brother who is a Republican. He does not see me as evil, nor me him. We all need to get a grip and get back to solving some problems.
November 8th, 2012 | 4:47 pm
ATF: TAC is full of “conservative” (many of their writers don’t even self-identify as cons of any sort, I don’t think) folks who hate the GOP far more than they oppose the Dems.
FPR folks have given up on the political system. The GOP, with its focus on big business and big government (though not quite as big as the Dems), doesn’t appeal to them at all.
NRO is very closely tied to the establishment GOP.
I don’t know what “PC” means.
November 8th, 2012 | 4:56 pm
AT, is it “freaking out” to note the reality of the situation? Or is the deep sense of disappointment, betrayal, and mistrust now felt by 25-35% of our nation’s citizens towards their fellow citizens not a significant fact? A big story?
No-one denies all the evidence that Republicans were far more energized this election. What does that mean, “energized?” Such an abstract word…could Republicans being “more energized” possibly have anything to do with the word “heart-break” now? Is half a democratic citizenry’s heart-break no big deal? Just another every four-year thing? So that if we go back and examine the mood after the defeat of Bob Dole, we’ll find just exactly the same thing?
But no, AT Fielder, surely you know that no two heart-breaks are the same, and that some are far more serious, even…devastating.
As for your FPR and TAC “queries,” with the former,my explanation is: too much literary politics, and too much apocalypse-hungering. But they’re good folks, and firmly tethered to reality even when they wander away from it a bit.
Ever since its late-Bush-era hissy fits, TAC just hasn’t interested me much…so I don’t know the explanation because I don’t read TAC. Probably not good of me, but there it is.
November 8th, 2012 | 5:01 pm
Brian: Thanks for your answer. PC refers to postmodern conservative. I should have been more clear.
November 8th, 2012 | 5:02 pm
Jane, my statement was a declaration of fact grounded on the Judeo-Christian worldview.
You people condone the slaughter of the innocents.
You people are crass consolidators that not only erode republican principles but tend to corrupt the ‘democratic’ process/administration thus pushing the central gov’t toward a tyrannical despotism, as it has throughout history.
The question of the polis was always assumed to be grounded on a noetic understanding of the tension of existence. The Democrat Party has no understanding of the ‘good.’
November 9th, 2012 | 1:39 am
Robert Cheeks
Democrats are evil? You’re an idiot. Most of the western world would have chosen Obama over Romney by a much wider margin than in the US. So the western world is evil?
As to the original blog someone is hurting, we understand, but time to snap out of it. Just one example; you bash Obama for keeping Biden as an example of poor leadership. If this was a conservative team you would call it loyalty. It all depends on your point of view. Neither side is evil or uneducated, just different. Accept it or become irrelevant.
November 9th, 2012 | 2:08 am
I’m sorry, but could someone please explain to me what the acronym TAC stands for? I get the other ones, but I have no clue who is being referenced there and these comments which I wish to understand are becoming unintelligible to me.
November 9th, 2012 | 7:31 am
MPB, TAC = The American Conservative. They have a journal and a website.
November 9th, 2012 | 8:50 am
Jdmontana, I’m not quite getting through to you. You’re not seeing that the Obama-voters, of whom you might be a member, really stunned their Republican brothers and sisters with this vote. With its sheer unapologetic irresponsibility: “So our guy lies! So he keeps Biden! Benghazi-gate! Debt-mageddon! So the MSM let’s lots pass! That’s politics. So you’re upset. Politics, baby, get over it.”
You’re not seeing that in our eyes and hearts, it’s different this time. That simple admonitions of “hey, snap out of it” ain’t gonna cut it.
For this is democratic insanity taken to a totally new level, at least for American Presidential Politics since the Civil War. And even those Civil War Southern fire-breather nutters never would have rallied around a (white man) as openly contemptuous of manners and truth-telling as Barack Obama.
But the truth will out. I predict that you too will regard Obama as extremely unworthy of the Presidency before his term is up. Which means you will also look back on this election with no small amount of astonishment, and yes, anger.
Our apologies, MPB, TAC stands for The American Conservative, the paleo-con, Pat Buchanan magazien. FPR stands for the (agrarian-Wendell Berry-ian) website Front Porch Republic, whose writers and and readers we sometimes call Porchers.
November 9th, 2012 | 9:09 am
Carl, respectfully, WHAT makes it different this time? You really believe, objectively, that Obama’s character and convictions are so much more evil than any other politician in recent history that voting for him is literally incredible? If this is the wisdom that an over-devotion to Plato, Tocqueville and Strauss brings, I’d say it is a mess of pottage.
By the way, I’ve been reading FT and TAC and the Weekly Standard for years, precisely in order to find out how people on the religious right, which doesn’t appeal to me natively, think. (I have real Christian inclinations, but they don’t incline me toward the contemporary mainstream right, especially not toward neoconservatism.)
I notice Aquinas is missing from your list of formative influences. Once, again, in probable futility, I’m going to suggest that you read the chapter on “Justice” in Eleonore Stump’s (an anglo-catholic or perhaps Catholic, and a great Aquinas scholar) in her book “Aquinas”. It’s only about 30 pages, can be read in complete isolation from the rest of the book, and is not particularly technical. You are a ‘philosopher’, right? (Aside: Why do ‘political philosophers’ have so little interest in the rest of philosophy?) Why are pomocons so afraid of the actual teaching of Aquinas? If can take in Stump’s take on St. Thomas, maybe you can begin to take in why someone of conscience might diverge from the American Right.
November 9th, 2012 | 9:34 am
This post is a splendid example of what a conservative sounds like when he’s lost all sense of moral proportion. As another commenter noted, Barack Obama is a run-of-the-mill center-left American Democrat — a little more liberal than Clinton 1994-2000, certainly less liberal than Johnson or . . . Nixon! Get a grip.
November 9th, 2012 | 12:53 pm
How in the world is full support of partial birth abortion the average “run-of-the-mill center-left American Democrat” position? How is it moderate for a President to begin forcing people of true conscience to violate their moral principles for the so-called needs of the state?
As I’ve already said, Obama’s rhetoric does not match his actions. If you judged him solely by his speeches with a teleprompter, he sounds center-left. But when it comes time to instituting policies, he is much further to the left. While I don’t agree with his policies to begin with, I would at least like a little honesty about what he wants. It seems to be a theme of the Obama presidency that we don’t find out about the substance of his policies until they’re passed. If you’re inclined to say that this is “just politics,” I second Carl’s response that such an answer is not good enough.
What Carl’s initial post brings out is that, as conservatives, we can no longer stand aside and not be afraid to distinguish good choices from bad ones. When a majority of the electorate re-elects a president with such a dissembling character, there is something wrong with the many’s judgment. The national debt is, as Romney said, “immoral.” Anyone who voted for Obama based upon their own immediate self-interest is an idiot in the original Greek sense of the word: a person interested only in what is one’s own and private. The national debt is not just an excuse to roll back the welfare state. If you want the government to do anything, it needs to have the sufficient resources. The path we are on is unsustainable, and rather than acting on his own words that a multi-trillion dollar national debt is “unpatriotic” (note that Obama did not have the courage to call it “immoral,” good relativist that he and liberals tend to be), he instead added more to it than any single president in U.S. history. Was the debt entirely Obama’s fault? No, but at some point, a leader needs to take responsibility, say this is wrong, and attempt to put things back on the right track. Instead, the American people received a campaign built upon the demonization of Mitt Romney, blatant pandering to the Hispanic vote with the executive order in the summer, the utterly false “war on women,” and the ludicrous notion that taxing the rich will cure the nation’s financial woes. The inability to see these campaign points as desperation to do whatever is necessary to maintain power is a sign of bad judgment. If a leader truly cared about ruling, he or she would do the right thing regardless of the prospects of re-election. Conveniently, our current president put off dealing with pressing fiscal matters until after the election where he speaks as if he is serious about such things. Speech, however, is not a true indicator of whether or not one is serious about anything. Action (and in this case the office) reveals the man.
Yet perhaps what is more disturbing than what I’ve listed in the paragraph above is the continued assault on the family. Although things may be reaching a point where little can be done to prevent more states from legalizing gay “marriage,” our country continues to move in the direction of saying nature does not teach certain ends for human life. This assault on nature is only compounded when one considers the new possibilities opened up by the HHS mandate. If the state can force members of religious institutions to violate their consciences through the provision of abortions and contraceptives, what’s to prevent the state from forcing church’s to wed homosexual couples? Such things are already occurring in parts of Europe. If these policies begin take hold within the U.S., we will not only see a continued reduction in religious freedom, but also legal sanction of a marriage that has no basis in nature. Raise a couple generations of children in such a country and the population begins to lose sight of the natural basis and end for the primary political unit of the family.
Liberals can hurl the charges that conservatives like myself are being “over-the-top” all they want, but the truth is you either do not see the dangers we face or simply don’t care so long as your own self-interest is satisfied. Whatever the case may be, such ignorance can no longer be shrugged off by conservatives of good conscience.
November 9th, 2012 | 1:46 pm
“Do you see what’s in our eyes?”
Yeah, Carl, and what I’m seeing is someone needs their meds, and fast!
November 9th, 2012 | 6:51 pm
John A., fine comment, reminding us why Damon is quite inaccurate. I agree with your peril to religious liberty and the family argument, while thinking the danger is further down the road. For the U.S. A chilling article on brazenly anti-Christian legal actions in the U.K. can be found in the latest issue of First Things.
But we’re a couple generations from that, I think. For one, many of our best-educated boomer and older liberals are seriously committed to various hard-core ACLU-type positions on the First Amendment, especially on speech, and that will help. Sometimes even when its interpreted poorly, our Constitution keeps thing sane.
The other thing I would say John A. is that I could respect a President who was on the liberal extreme vis-a-vis abortion, and other various issues but who didn’t:
a) constantly resort to mendacity;
b) demonize conservatives every opening he gets;
c) continually display evidence of a high degree of incompetence;
d) never get called on any of these three by the legacy media. This is what really alarms.
And, his evident willingness to push the Constitutional envelope on Executive powers is extremely troubling too.
I’d be fine with saying, “Yeah, my current president’s very liberal. That, in part, is who we are, and we Americans run with it.” But how can I say that when he won’t even admit it? I of all Republicans would find it pretty cool if Obama were to openly admit and talk about his DSA days.
But with Obama and his media, his Democrat Party, a media and party that scandalously agree with George Lakoff’s advice for “talking Democrat” that one should never “…repeat conservative language or ideas, even when arguing against them” http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/postmodernconservative/2012/07/09/liberal-thou-shalt-not/, what can I do? He refuses to acknowledge the mere REALITY of my political beliefs! It’s not just,”Carl, sorry, you’re a conservative of this sort, and you lost,” but a systematic erasure and denial of the fact that there ever was any person in the U.S. with political beliefs like Carl…
What the the deficit number is: with Obama and friends, a wildly disputable number.
(Ask yourself: was it that wildly disputed under Clinton? Carter?)
What the basic conservative positions are: with Obama and friends, again, its wildly disputable.
The fact that the HHS mandate does what it does: another wildly disputable, corrections never formally admitted, thing.
A man like Stanley Kurtz is slandered for reporting facts about Obama’s democratic socialist past? The White House says nothing, confirms nothing, denies nothing, lets the slandering continue.
And this has happened on issue after issue, fact after fact, week after week after week.
Yes, things “like these” have happened before. Facts have been disputed, blurred into nothingness, yes. Demonizations have been orchestrated. By as with the deficit number, with the Obama presidency, everything is multiplied. By at least three.
Oh, and he talks, or rather drones, to all of us as if we were children.
November 9th, 2012 | 6:51 pm
Holy Crud! Obama has mostly center-right policies! If the GOP hadn’t careened to the extreme right, and blocked all the sensible, formerly conservative items on Obama’s agenda, the economy would be BOOMING right now.
Most Americans saw through the cynicism of the GOP’s “blame Obama” strategy, and now you are largely back in the wilderness, where you belong.
One other thing: the GOP should thank it’s lucky stars that liberals didn’t show up in 2010, or you’d be COMPLETELY irrelevant.
November 9th, 2012 | 7:08 pm
Had a long comment to this stuff, mostly complimenting John A., but I botched it. Must be me meds again!
Okay, one bit: John is right, and Kevin and Damon are wrong, that Obama is anything close to be a centrist Democrat. Being so on a few issues means nothing. But, I would be much, much happier with an uber-liberal president who: a) did not resort to mendacity so regularly, b) demonized so much, c) pretty consistently displayed basic competence, and d) was not give a pass by the legacy media on all of this.
November 9th, 2012 | 7:14 pm
A bunch of you are going to look pretty silly in 4 years. And it won’t be the Obama supporters. I mean, calling the decision to stick with a VP who was a long time Senator with extensive foreign policy experience, who is by all accounts a smart guy even if he has an unfortunate tendency to run his mouth, “preposterous and appalling” is just ridiculous. Unless the Senate is tied or the President is killed, the VP does nothing. But Biden is an appalling choice? Puh-lease.
Life goes on. The past four years have not been a disaster – the economy was in freefall when Obama is elected, and now it is not; and while not in great shape, it would probably be in better shape if the Tea Partiers in Congress didn’t reflexively block every attempt to improve the situation legislatively. And if the next four years are a disaster, it will probably be because of factors outside of the US government’s control, like the European economy collapsing or a sustained string of freak weather events.
Obama is not a socialist (or if he is, even US President of my lifetime has also been one), America is not over, and nothing is different… not even the caterwauling on the side of the losers.
November 9th, 2012 | 7:39 pm
jdmontana:
“Democrats are evil? You’re an idiot. Most of the western world would have chosen Obama over Romney by a much wider margin than in the US. So the western world is evil?”
Now you’re beginning to see some light, you arrogant, uneducated clown. Democrats by the corrupt and sinful nature of their party platform are the spawn of Satan. Any questions?
November 9th, 2012 | 8:13 pm
Have you considered — and I mean this seriously — the possibility that you are mentally ill?
November 9th, 2012 | 8:40 pm
This is the most narcissistic blogpost I have ever read. If debt is immoral, I am sure you must have been outraged when President Bush urged passage of the Medicare prescription drug plan without paying for it and engaged in two wars without paying for them. And let’s be honest, Romney had no realistic plan for reducing the debt. The 47% of the people Romney insulted should have voted for him anyway to avoid disappointing you. Somehow conservatives like David Frum have failed to see how clear-eyed Rush is. Wow!
November 9th, 2012 | 8:42 pm
Thank you for the compliment, Carl! And thank you again for your post. I’ve shared it with family and friends and they all appreciate it.
November 9th, 2012 | 9:21 pm
“My fellow citizens who voted for Obama, know this: you have betrayed us, hurt us deeply. I say it especially to those of you over 25. You have done a grave wrong. You have not investigated, not hesitated, not considered the plain meaning of the many damnations hurled by your allies towards us over the years.”
“…is it “freaking out” to note the reality of the situation? Or is the deep sense of disappointment, betrayal, and mistrust now felt by 25-35% of our nation’s citizens towards their fellow citizens not a significant fact? A big story?”
Seriously?
No and heck no.
We (Obama voters over 25), and the people you think we “betrayed” you for, have felt – and truly have been – betrayed and disappointed by the ruling conservatives in this country for over a generation.
Now that the MAJORITY of our country agrees with us, you get to feel as we’ve felt for many a long year. That being said, I doubt we’ll run as roughshod over your side as you yours did ours. Know why? Because our side is the one where all the compassion, the empathy, and the willingness to work together for the betterment of ALL is found.
November 9th, 2012 | 10:21 pm
jdmontana:
“Democrats are evil? You’re an idiot. Most of the western world would have chosen Obama over Romney by a much wider margin than in the US. So the western world is evil?”
Robert Cheeks:
“Now you’re beginning to see some light, you arrogant, uneducated clown. Democrats by the corrupt and sinful nature of their party platform are the spawn of Satan. Any questions?”
Cheeks’ response had me rolling on the floor laughing. Seriously, Bobby? You’re gonna condemn millions of your own countrymen as being irredeemable monsters just because they don’t agree with you? You’re no doubt going to accuse me of being morally inferior to you just because I’m an atheist. Well, let me tell you what I see when I look Christianists like you: people who refuse to realize that there is no such thing as a “One True Faith.” Simple logic dictates that a supreme being who loves all humanity simply would not condemn billions of people who are not part of a particular faith to eternal torment. Such a monster who would do that would be judging people by who they are (their religious identity) instead of by what they do.
November 9th, 2012 | 10:25 pm
Furthermore, such a god is morally inferior to me.
As for my morality, I hold to the belief that people should be allowed to control their own bodies without government interference, which is why I am solidly pro-choice and why a pro-life libertarian is nothing but a contradiction in terms.
November 9th, 2012 | 10:29 pm
Oh, and Bobby? because you’re so ready to condemn millions of our own countrymen as “the spawn of Satan” or somesuch to eternal torment just because they came to a different political choice, then you are morally inferior to me. I’m going to enjoy spending the next four years (at least) laughing at you and your ilk and demography shrinks your slice of the elctorate to nothing.
Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that the Southern Strategy died three days ago. It will not be missed (by right-thinking people).
November 9th, 2012 | 11:42 pm
Why is it that conservatives must always frame policy differences and value orientations in terms of right and wrong, good and evil?
I thought I saw the word “postmodern” here somewhere. Are you sure you know what this term means?
Sure, there are some rights and goods in political life. One of them is democratic practice by a democratic public.
You just saw that.
But popular sovereignty implies concession to the value orientations of a public, a kind of cultural agnosticism once you have stepped beyond the basic good that inheres in the process.
Betrayed you?
This is precisely why the right loses. Because there is no room on the right for legitimate disagreements about the kinds of society (much less policy) that different individuals—with different backgrounds, cultures, beliefs, and needs—would like to see.
The “big tent” is neither a myth, nor complex. The winning ethos that has built the present center-left coalition is the simple gentleman’s agreement that “We may each like to see something different out of life; let’s vote on it, shall, we, and let the will of the plurality be done if it is not a matter of moral imperative that we do otherwise.”
The problem for the present right, of course, is that every issue, no matter how small, has been cast as just such a matter of moral imperative. A fully articulated blueprint of the moral society can be gleaned in the negative space of the right’s crusades in so many various and sundry areas of policy.
That, my friend, is utopianism, and the insistently nonideological American public has long been resistant to it. The fact that you see differences over policy to be a betrayal, rather than a necessary consequence of citizenship in a state so constituted as is ours is evidence of the very same tendency on your part.
In short: grow up. You can’t always have it your way. And in those cases when you don’t get it your way as the result of democratic practice, don’t immediately let yourself sound like the worst offenders of twentieth century Marxism, mistaking simple differences for false consciousness, conspiratorial structural processes, counterrevolutionary malice, or any other such nonsense.
Good people can disagree. Until the right realizes and internalizes this most basic of moral premises, it will continue to wander at length in the wilderness.
From a fellow (at least, it sounds this way from your post) academic.
November 10th, 2012 | 12:09 am
“arrogance, incompetence, divisiveness, and serial mendacity.”
Add to this list deceit and unfaithfulness and you have Bill Clinton. And you admitted you voted for Clinton in spite of all this (and this was well before Monica Lewinsky). And you’re worried about Obama supporter’s souls?
How would you react if this was a Kerry supporter writing such a screed from eight years ago? You make it sound like voting for Obama was the same as committing a crime.
I was going to advise you to find an old supporter of George McGovern and I sure you could both share in your disbelief of your fellow citizen.
But in reading this I have to conclude you are lying about who you voted for in the past, naive or a fool. As a Clinton supporter, I can see where the narcissism was an attractive reason to vote for him. It certainly shows up in your writing.
November 10th, 2012 | 12:24 am
I’m a moderate conservative who grew disenchanted with the Republicans during the incompetently managed, anything-but-conservative Iraq war. Ever since then, I’ve been waiting for the Republican party to come up with a convincing reason to earn my vote…. but they haven’t.
Too many republicans in this country still seem to be plugged into a “Matrix” of crypto-racist conspiracy theories and delusions that Obamacare is some sort of far-left Final Solution (despite being foreshadowed by a Heritage Foundation paper and the Romney administration in Massachusetts.) And really, how can the Republican Party expect to be taken seriously after their farcical “seven dwarves” primary excreted Romney, an oily candidate with a tax plan that LITERALLY did not add up?
I gave the guy a chance to argue that his economic policies would’ve been better than Obama’s. But that would have required a plan that actually made sense.
I don’t agree with all or even most of Obama’s policies, but I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for the eternal shape-shifter, Romney.
November 10th, 2012 | 3:53 am
Wow, you don’t know how happy it makes me to read this. If you really believe all that you’ve wrote then you deserve to be unhappy and you don’t deserve to have your preferences advanced.
This screed reminds me of my six year old when I tell him it’s time to turn off the Wii. The only difference between the two is that one is a tantrum over consequential things that reasonable people should be able to disagree on and the other is pouting over irrelevancies. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which is which. I have some doubts that you can.
You and the Jay Nordlingers and Eric Donderos need to grow up and join the adult world. After all, your drivers license says you are old enough to vote. You really should act like it.
November 10th, 2012 | 4:53 am
I’m frankly surprised this post hasn’t been deleted by its by-now doubtless more sober-minded author. I didn’t vote for Obama, so you can be sure that I don’t fit the caricature that you draw above. Keep that in mind when I tell you: For goodness’s sake, man, try to comport yourself with some dignity! The fact that you’ve been able to vote in more and earlier elections than I have means you’re not a little bit older than I am, which makes this nearly cosmic display of self-pity – it may as well be performance art! – even more embarrassing. Politics isn’t The Oprah Winfrey Show, and, despite what you claim, those who voted for Obama aren’t responsible for your inability to control your emotions (as your response to Jdmontana above seems to indicate). Apparently you’ve never considered the possibility that there have been other people in the past who’ve felt as you have – they’ve invested quite a bit emotionally in the outcome of an election, only to be disappointed. Some of them may not have even been conservatives or Republicans! But the pain that YOU feel is obviously of a different magnitude, heretofore unprecedented in history – after all, “it’s different this time!” Please get over yourself. The sooner you begin to feel a proper sense of shame over this display, the better – it will keep you from making similarly intemperate mistakes in the future. Start today.
November 10th, 2012 | 5:52 am
Carl, in November 2004 you voted to reelect George W. Bush after four years of blunder after disaster after sacrilege. Now you want to speak of “the casual abdication of the basic citizenship duty (sic) to assess success or failure”! You truly are unmoored from sanity. You seem like a nice man, but you are lost. What I’ve just read….it’s utterly, utterly mad.
November 10th, 2012 | 7:47 am
I saw (and agree with) Daniel Larison’s comment on this piece at TAC. Quick question (for someone pro-life and familiar with Just War arguments): where does the Iraq war, and Romney’s readiness to embrace its proponents, fit into your calculation?
November 10th, 2012 | 10:01 am
For those who say, “of course it’s not different, Obama is just a conventional center-left politician who advocates things that could be and have been advocated by Democratic politicians from Franklin Roosevelt to John Kerry and Bill Clinton.
That’s true of course, but only in a trivial sense. You’re missing the crucial point — why this time it really is different.
He’s BLACK! He’s BLACK! He’s BLACK, BLACK, BLACKITY BLACK BLACK BLACK!
Jeez, can’t you see that?
November 10th, 2012 | 10:09 am
“Or is the deep sense of disappointment, betrayal, and mistrust now felt by 25-35% of our nation’s citizens towards their fellow citizens not a significant fact? A big story?”
If it is a big story now it is a big story every presidential election. Why is the rage of the conservative base a sad warning of decline and the rage of the liberal base a ridiculous circus?
A bit of self-awareness and perspective would do here.
November 10th, 2012 | 10:11 am
Dan, you’ve hit the nail on the head: “it might as well be performance art.” When I read that, it all clicked – this is the Postmodern Conservative, right? This probably is a postmodern think piece, an attempt by the author to live through and experience the insanity of a extreme right-winger as they live through the re-election of Barack Obama. It’s pomo!
November 10th, 2012 | 10:41 am
Get a hold of yourself.
November 10th, 2012 | 11:01 am
Chrissy (Ferandez), I didn’t condemn anyone. People, freely chose to love God or to turn away from God. Democrats, as I’ve said before, pounded an abortion plank in their statist political platform back in the early 70′s.
Thus, you people embrace the slaughter of the innocents and consequently true Christians can not be a card-carrying member of a political party that is so closely aligned with the Nazi’s and Communists of the previous century.
I understand you people are promoting euthanasia, again. That’s why you’ve been identified as ‘the party of death.’
Remember, Chrissy, you condemn yourself, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s fine with me.
November 10th, 2012 | 12:16 pm
Mockery is not a sufficient stand-in for reasoned refutation. Cf. the Enlightenment’s critique of religion.
November 10th, 2012 | 2:05 pm
Americans, led by conservative Republicans, demonstrated their willingness to re-elect a man known to be of bad character in 1972 (and probably on some earlier occasions). It’s not different this time even if Obama were a worse man than Nixon, which he isn’t.
And Joe Biden as VP horrifies you? What does that make John McCain?
November 10th, 2012 | 2:09 pm
Ross, regarding your observations about Bush and the deficit, you ever heard of this thing called the “tu quoque” fallacy? And this other thing called “the multiplication table?”
Or is it only med-needing narcisists like me who have heard of such things?
November 10th, 2012 | 2:12 pm
Egypt Steve, you have no shame. You don’t know me from Adam.
If you ever wake up wanting to work with your fellow citizens, rather than assuming the worst about them, try the great black conservative website Booker Rising.
November 10th, 2012 | 3:26 pm
I think Adam is the naked guy who thinks God speaks to him, and who blames his wife for everything. Or would that describe you, too? Maybe I wouldn’t know you from Adam.
November 10th, 2012 | 4:48 pm
Carl, re:
“If you ever wake up wanting to work with your fellow citizens, rather than assuming the worst about them”
The problem is you do just that.
“That this victory of yours is…somehow a dismal one”
“My fellow citizens who voted for Obama, know this: you have betrayed us, hurt us deeply. I say it especially to those of you over 25. You have done a grave wrong”
“Perhaps in another post I will labor to spell out why I judge that the Obama-voters this time have made such an irresponsible choice”
If you want to have an intelligent discussion you might start out by treating those who voted differently from you with respect. Like others I have the urge to strike back at you, but that’s no way for civilized citizens to treat one another.
November 10th, 2012 | 6:01 pm
Michael Johnhson:
“I don’t live in a bubble Truthsayer…I have researched and followed exactly what Democrats want to do. I say give it too them…let America see what happens when the largest tax increas in world history kicks in.”
Wong.
“Let them see what happens to their healthcare, ”
It will improve.
“energy prices,”
Currently dominated by the Chinese economy, however renewables will help.
” The UN Small Arms Treaty”
Bircher lies.
“…and lets not forget Benghazi TS. ”
Terrorists killed US personnel; the right seeks to capitalize on it.
“Those of us who have served on foreign soil will not. ”
If you think veterans are all Democratic, then you are deluded. And right now the Iraq/Afghanistan veteran contingent in Congress shades quite blue.
“My America is not your America. Look at the Electoral College map TS.”
Yes, and your America s*cks.
“Urban America is sucking the life out of Rural America and when the money runs out and the EBT cards stop working”
We fund you. We subsidize you.
” those of us who are “True” Americans and can read our copies of the US Constitution will be there to protect the population against all enemies, both foreign, and domestic…and make no mistake…democrats are domestic enemies.”
It wasn’t Democrats who trashed this country, that’s for sure.
I have one piece of advice for most of the commenters here:
Stop lying. We’re tired of it, and will no longer politely nod while you lie.
November 10th, 2012 | 8:28 pm
“Ross, regarding your observations about Bush and the deficit, you ever heard of this thing called the “tu quoque” fallacy? And this other thing called “the multiplication table?”
Ross did not commit a tu quoque.
Per Wikipedia:
“A makes criticism P.
A is also guilty of P.
Therefore, P is dismissed.”
It seems to me that you are reading the argument this way…
Carl:*Deficits are bad, and Obama has big deficits. Voters should have rejected Obama because of his deficits.
Ross*: Bush has big deficits too and Romney has no credible plan to reduce deficits, so deficits are not a problem.
That would be an example of tu quo que.
But the real argument being made is:
Carl:*Deficits are bad, and Obama has big deficits. Voters should have rejected Obama because of his deficits.
Ross*: Bush had big deficits too and Romney had no credible plan to reduce deficits, so deficits are not a reason to vote for Romney since we have no reason to believe he would reduce them.
roughly;
“A makes criticism P.
A is also guilty of P.
Therefore, A is dismissed.”
That’s no kind of fallacy at all.
I confess, I haven’t a clue what you intended by your comment about multiplication tables.
*apologies if I have misstated anyone’s position.
November 11th, 2012 | 2:19 am
Ridiculous diatribe without any substance.
“You had four long years to take the measure of this man. Measured by elementary economic yardsticks, his administration has been a clear failure.”
Actually, the economy has recovered quite rapidly, despite the post-2010 opposition of House republicans, and the global recession that goes on.
“And for all who have been willing to honestly look, his character has been revealed to be one of arrogance, incompetence, divisiveness, and serial mendacity”
Is this supposed to be a joke or just empty vitriol?
A conservative/republican accusing Obama and “arrogance” and “divisiveness”, oh the irony! you really live in a mirror-covered bubble.
Do i need to remind you of the “make Obama a 1st term president” pledge?
Or the “never raise taxes EVER” pledge that led to the ratings cut on US debt?
November 11th, 2012 | 2:22 am
BTW Einsteins of the Right:
EVERYBODY knew that Obama was going to win.
ALL betting markets showed a large margin of victory for Obama. I got a nice payoff betting on it.
Analysts like Nate Silver predicted the outcome of EVERY SINGLE STATE by a margin of LESS THAN 1%:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
November 11th, 2012 | 1:17 pm
Good grief! Of all the first world problems. Things will never be as bad as you fear and as good as you hope. Grow up! Stop whining! Work for the greater good.
November 11th, 2012 | 3:22 pm
Quite frankly, the tone of many of the comments above is disheartening. Phrases like “Stop whining!” and “Take your meds!” reflect a total lack of consideration of the serious issues at stake in the past election. Sadly, this is no surprise given the wholly unserious campaign that won re-election last week.
Now, what I would like to say in what follows comes from a sincere intention to move this discussion beyond party lines. Admittedly this is hard to do because much of our political discourse takes place within the context of positions staked out by each political party. Nonetheless, I think there are a number of commenters here who are missing the big picture. In order to provide a glimpse of that perspective, I would like to appeal to a small section from Jonathan Swift’s *Gulliver’s Travels.*
In his voyage to Brobdingnag, Gulliver has a long discussion with the King about the politics of Great Britain. Recounting his conversation about economic matters, Gulliver says, “He [the King] fell next upon the management of our treasury; and said, he thought my memory had failed me, because I computed our taxes at about five or six millions a year, and when I came to mention of the issues [i.e., expenditures], he found they sometimes amounted to more than double; for, the notes he had taken were very particular in this point, because he hoped, as he told me, that the knowledge of our conduct might be useful to him, and he could not be deceived in his calculations. But, if what I told him were true, he was still at a loss how a kingdom could run out of its estate like a private person. He asked me, who were our creditors? And, where we should find money to pay them?” (Part II, Chapter VI).
Perhaps the first takeaway from this passage is that politics never changes, but the more important point is the virtuous King’s perplexity at the fiscal insanity of Great Britain. Common sense indicates (or at least it used to) that no government should spend more money than it has. Interestingly, the King acknowledges that while private individuals are more likely to spend more money than they take in, government should not. While a private person stands only to lose his estate if he outspends his income, thereby only harming himself, a government losing its estate hurts everyone beneath it (cf. Greece, Spain, Italy). Further, the King realizes that if a country borrows more and more money on credit in order to defer payment, one day the bill will be handed down and there will be no money left to pay it back. One can only hope that such creditors are not like Shylock since it is clear our politicians are nowhere near as wise as Portia.
Briefly turning back to contemporary politics, the current negotiations about the fiscal cliff and debt ceiling focus on how much money the United States will continue to borrow to sustain its expenditures. The “deal” worked out last summer only delayed confronting this issue, and there is no clear indication that this will not happen again. But make no mistake about this: at some point, the U.S. will have to pay back what it has borrowed. That burden will fall upon the future, and it should be clear that putting the problem off only makes adjustments more severe and the impacts on individuals’ private lives more devastating (again, look at Europe).
As far as presidential politics are concerned, I think one can fairly offer the opinion that the Romney campaign was not specific about how to deal with the current financial crisis. Admittedly I am no expert in economics, but I don’t think one can fairly demand specifics about dealing with so large a problem when any potential solution our government puts forward will require give and take from each side of the political spectrum. Further, even if Romney may have been vague about how he would handle the current economic crisis, how often did Obama talk about the national debt? Rather than focus on the biggest issue facing this country, Obama ran a campaign based small things in order to ensure his re-election. It is very hard for anyone to make the case that Obama was at all serious about our nation’s current financial crisis. If he were, he not only would have talked more about it during this campaign, but he wouldn’t have deferred the fiscal cliff for a year and a half until after the election. Politicians are elected to govern, not to get re-elected. To anyone with common sense, it is clear what type of campaign Obama ran.
But enough with the campaign issues. I want to go back to the big picture Gulliver presents to us. I will admit that immediately after the passage I quoted, the King of Brobdingnag asks why Great Britian wages so many wars. There is no denying that two wars started by the Bush administration have greatly affected our national debt. The merits of those wars are also up for argument, but I think the more pertinent question this election should have been the following: “Given our present situation, what should we do to get our house in order?” The simple fact is that something must be done about our current financial crisis. Trying to figure out how we arrived at this point is only useful for trying to figure out what not to do in the future; it cannot do anything to fix the current situation. One would think $16 trillion in debt is absurd, but for some it appears to be business as usual. While reasonable people will always disagree about the proper ends and scope of government, people need to be honest with themselves and realize that an absurd national debt and ridiculous deficit will become an obstacle to fulfilling government’s most basic end: preserving the lives of its citizens. Perhaps healthcare is essential to that end, but the fact remains that our government is still going to have to find a way to pay for it. As things stand right now, it is doubtful that our government will have the financial resources available to care for future generations.
There is plenty of blame to go around for the current fiscal situation in which we find ourselves. Now, however, is not the time for pointing fingers. We need our leaders not only to take responsibility for this situation, but also to reconsider the ends for which government spends its money and the amount sufficient for meeting those ends. It is astounding to think that the notion that one should not spend more than one has is considered “austerity.” But such are the problems with money, in large part because it serves the desires (both of the individual and the state), which are always infinite. What the United States needs right now is moderation, or at the very least, self-restraint.
November 11th, 2012 | 11:46 pm
I really recommend Daniel Larison’s response to this post:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/a-romney-supporters-lament-its-different-this-time/
It’s a breath of fresh air after the disturbing nonsense of this post and some of the comments.
There are long comments in this thread from people who sound as though they’re self-educated. Lots of word salad babel, not much broad understanding, intellectual curiosity or discipline. That’s where studying at university (not bible college!) is helpful — you’re required to examine other points of view and think critically…
IMO, the most insightful, intellectual comment in this thread was: HE’S BLACK, BLACK, BLACKITY BLACK!
Because I suspect these outraged folks are rednecks using big words to hide their resentment of a (truly) educated, articulate, competent black man. They’re living in “Romney’s America”, red states that can’t pay their way in taxes and couldn’t survive without hand-outs from the blue states. Whiteness is all they’ve got…
Truly the most surreal (and scary) nonsense I’ve ever read online. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so appalling.
November 12th, 2012 | 7:40 am
I wish there were some way to take the bile oozing from this post and add it to the water supply in red states. It needs to spread far and wide, because nothing will help Democrats more than having as many conservatives as possible join Mr. Scott in chastising voters instead of trying to understand and appeal to them.
November 12th, 2012 | 2:15 pm
Robert Cheeks (@November 9th, 2012 | 7:39 pm): “Now you’re beginning to see some light, you arrogant, uneducated clown. Democrats by the corrupt and sinful nature of their party platform are the spawn of Satan. Any questions?”
Robert Cheeks (@November 10th, 2012 | 11:01 am): “Chrissy (Fernandez), I didn’t condemn anyone.”
Thank you, Bobbie. You have just demonstrated yourself to be a complete and total liar. You said you did not condemn anyone but as your own posts have shown, you did, in fact, condemn half of your countrymen as “arrogant, uneducated clowns,” “corrupt and sinful” and as “the spawn of Satan.” These are your words, sir. Not mine. Yours. This makes you a liar. As a self-described Christian, you have just violated the Ninth of the Ten Commandments (Thou shall not lie/bear false witness). Now, I don’t know if you know this, but the Ten Commandments (also known as the Decalogue) are (so I’m told) the most important rules for a member of the Christian faith to follow. For you to violate one of the most important tenets of your faith makes you a sinner (whatever that means) and an epic fail at your own faith. You need to recognize your own flaws before you can speak of others’ flaws, Bobbie. Have you forgotten Matthew 7:5? “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” For that matter, perhaps you should re-read Matthew 7:1: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”
Bobbie, you would serve yourself and everyone else much better by becoming more knowledgeable about your own faith, sir.
“Robert Cheeks (@November 10th, 2012 | 11:01 am): People, freely chose to love God or to turn away from God. Democrats, as I’ve said before, pounded an abortion plank in their statist political platform back in the early 70′s.
Thus, you people embrace the slaughter of the innocents and consequently true Christians cannot be a card-carrying member of a political party that is so closely aligned with the Nazi’s and Communists of the previous century.
I understand you people are promoting euthanasia, again. That’s why you’ve been identified as ‘the party of death.’ Remember, Chrissy, you condemn yourself, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s fine with me.”
Except for the fact that the idea that “life begins at conception” is a religious idea that has no basis in fact and at least half the country don’t think that a clump of cells smaller than the period at the end of this sentence constitute a human being. American criminal law states that a human becomes a person once it is “born alive.” That’s why whenever someone kills a pregnant woman, it only counts as one homicide, not two. And state constitution personhood amendments that would change that have been brought to a referendum in several states, including Mississippi of all places and all FAILED by wide margins. It’s self-evident that not everyone agrees with you that a fetus is a person, so you can’t force us to agree with you.
As for me being “condemned,” a non-existent sky-fairy can no more harm me than one of your farts. I have nothing to fear from you, your god or any god.
November 12th, 2012 | 2:20 pm
Please distribute this article to all your fellow Romney voters as well as to those Republicans and conservatives and libertarians and evangelicals and misanthropes who forgot to vote for Romney.
I volunteer to offer my services to help you in this noble effort.
There is nothing better for the future of this country than for the brains of the members of all these groups to forever be in a state of delusion.
November 12th, 2012 | 2:35 pm
I second the immediately preceding comments, which identify the ridiculousness of this article.
Beyond the conclusion – confusion inherent in the author’s explanation of his political process and research, I remain agape, attempting to fully take in an earnest person’s self-delusion.
To enlist the phrase “this was about love” to describe the Republicans, Romney & Ryan ?
Sigh: That this campaign were simply about the misguided passions of love ( not: lust for power )
November 12th, 2012 | 4:49 pm
Man, this is one tough bubble you people are living in. I can’t begin to address all the cray-cray over here, so I’ll just say one thing: you’ve just described PERFECTLY how we liberals felt when Nixon, Reagan, and Bush the Lesser were all elected and then re-elected. Calm down. The nation soldiers on, whether you despair or not.
November 12th, 2012 | 5:11 pm
To the author; methinks your problem is not with President Obama’s black character but more to do with his black skin.
And to the stellar individual who promises to treat those who voted differently from him as an “enemy within”, you were thought of when the Constitution you claim to venerate was written. Our ballots are secret precisely because of people like you who, if given the chance, would threaten and intimidate anyone you knew to be voting against your candidate/issue.
The democratic process has spoken, the Republic will survive, unless enough of you decide to trash the Constitution and take matters into your own hands.
All my love,
Gillian
November 12th, 2012 | 5:56 pm
Not surprising that such childish, self-regarding melodrama would provoke scathing responses. If Mr Scott’s screed had been balanced and thoughtful, and borne even a glancing relation to the facts, he would have received different responses.
November 12th, 2012 | 7:22 pm
When Bob Cheeks agrees with you, you know you’ve got something seriously wrong.
November 12th, 2012 | 8:24 pm
Mr. Fernandez,
“Uneducated clowns, the spawn of Satan, and the corrupt and sinful” can always gain redemption and salvation the usual way. It’s their choice, I do not condemn them. You people condemn yourselves.
I wish you well in future endeavors.
Cheers,
Bobby
November 13th, 2012 | 12:13 pm
White supremacists are so bummed out these days.
November 13th, 2012 | 1:01 pm
Voters chose Obama over Romney. You’re neglecting to account for Romney’s flaws, which I’d say probably had more to do with his loss of moderates than Obama’s merits (leaving aside the questioning of Obama’s merits). The presidential election isn’t simply about one guy, it’s about the best given the options, and a large part of it is usually which candidate is WORSE. I would say generally voters perceived worse flaws in Romney’s character and policies. If you’ve examined why voters might have decided to vote AGAINST Romney, then I applaud your intellectual honesty.
November 13th, 2012 | 1:36 pm
Something that’s not often put into so many words: the reason for the GOP’s existence is corruption. From a commenter on Kevin Drum’s blog:
“…the GOP establishment is a business opportunity. They are not there to govern or legislate for The People, they are looking to make their upper end wealthy through diversion of tax and donor dollars into private accounts.
As far as the GOP establishment is concerned, the US government is a business and the profits should go to the major shareholders. Failing business units should be eliminated and extraneous labor should be pink slipped.
Masters like Rove have been amazing at getting them [the GOP faithful] to vote against their own self interest by appealing to deep bigotry.”
From http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/11/question-day-was-mitt-romneys-campaign-delusional-or-incompetent#disqus_thread>
November 13th, 2012 | 2:40 pm
Romeny’s belief that gay people shouldn’t marry, his lack of commitment to protecting the environment, and his belief that tax cuts for the wealthy stimulate the economy (a belief for which there’s no evidence), were the reasons for my vote against him. It’s not confusing.
November 14th, 2012 | 9:17 am
Let me trade hyperbole for hyperbole, mister: we Obama voters were oppposing a man who represented an entirely unholy (not to mention intellectually bizarre) alliance between delusional, science-denying fundamental Pharisee-Christians, and usury-obsessed back-patting Objectivist financiers.
You tell me we committed a grievous sin by electing what I truly see as the equivalent of a European moderate — what you call a “socialist” — and I tell you, you are a damn fool and can take your lecture straight to hell.
November 14th, 2012 | 9:18 am
Also, please note this block post has been held in my time capsule for utter mockery 4 years from now. See you in four! <3
November 16th, 2012 | 11:57 pm
I presume this post was a parody. At least, anyone who posts at a religiously oriented web site should know better than to strain at Joe Biden but swallow Dick Cheney.
November 24th, 2012 | 1:39 pm
Mr. Scott,
I am just coming across this cri de coeur, and I hope my message reaches you. It is weeks after your essay’s first publication, and distance allows deeper reflection.
You are still right. Your essay is still on target. Don’t flag, don’t falter, don’t fail: your critics do not understand.
And it is precisely this lack of understanding from your “get over it!” and “what an embarrassing exaggeration!” critics that is so disturbing about the disconnect from our fellow citizens. If they were on the same page, we wouldn’t be so disturbed. Their giggle fits demonstrate we aren’t anywhere on the same page; indeed, we may be reading entirely different books.
Look, no single election solidifies a nation’s destiny. But gradual trends exhibit spectacular moments of confirmation, such as this year’s ballot. The confirming event isn’t the cause of our “cry from the heart” but rather the stark moment of its prompting. The tragedy is the trend, and now we must stare the reality of that trend in the face in a way we could still avoid (through optimism, hope, and wishful thinking) prior to November 6′s clear and unmistakable declaration.
We don’t want to hear about the failure of GOTV phone apps or near-even electorates or you’ll have another chance in two years. That’s all beside the point. The trajectory is clear, and now it’s locked in. A Romney squeaker wouldn’t have altered the trajectory; at best it would have kept it from being locked down for a presidential term. Anything but a resolute statement opposite to the electorate’s lethargy would have stemmed the momentum of decline even momentarily.
Decline is a choice, and in our “time for choosing” we sent a word of indifference, ambivalence, and sloth (at best) when a robust spirit of renewal was required. That apparently minority spirit still remains, now seeking an outlet. If November 6 foreclosed the possibility of political deliberation — as all the crowing about demographic change and the obsolescence of “old” “white” “men” indicates — then it will be channeled into apolitical efforts. It must go somewhere.
We are not shocked that our side lost so much as that divisiveness was rewarded, that slicing-and-dicing constituencies and cobbling them together to make 50.7% is now politically operable. We are okay with losing legislative fights, so long as we know our voice is part of the discussion and seriously considered. We are okay accepting “taxation” so long as there is “representation” of our interests. Every major legislative, executive, and judicial decision (save a few token, and perhaps pyrrhic, court victories) of the last four years was passed not just without our consent, but with open contempt for the very idea of our consent.
The horror of what’s happening has nothing to do with the candidates or their shortcomings. Rather, it has everything to do with the quality of our political reflection, as you indicate in your essay. That your expression of anxiety brought out more evidence of the decomposing nature of our public discourse only further demonstrates the wisdom of our concern that “this time” it really is “different.” The fact that these concerns are not just lingering but intensifying weeks later shows to us — we who choose not to whistle past the graveyard but rather maturely contemplate our mortality — that the separation is even more advanced than we feared. “We might have been a free and great people together….”
For some, September 11 went away weeks after the shocking event. For others, such as me, it still defines their lives. This is not nostalgia or obsession with the past. This is how seasoned thinkers and actors approach occurrences of the magnitude worthy to be considered as defining events. The election this month was one of those events where living in denial became impossible. There will be no passive solution — that seems clear if not obvious now — and therefore all good men must begin to contemplate whither to invest their “Lives,” their “Fortunes,” and their “Sacred Honor.”
In Truth,
M. King
November 29th, 2012 | 6:04 pm
[...] reckon, would award a second term to a president hellbent on extirpating Christianity.As Carl Scott inveighed in First Things, the ecumenical conservative journal:So if you respect moderation, manners, and education, hear me! [...]
November 29th, 2012 | 7:31 pm
[...] reckon, would award a second term to a president hellbent on extirpating Christianity.As Carl Scott inveighed in First Things, the ecumenical conservative journal:So if you respect moderation, manners, and education, hear me! [...]
November 30th, 2012 | 10:45 am
“Mr. Fernandez,
‘Uneducated clowns, the spawn of Satan, and the corrupt and sinful’ can always gain redemption and salvation the usual way. It’s their choice, I do not condemn them. You people condemn yourselves.
I wish you well in future endeavors.
Cheers,
Bobby”
Translated into plain English:
“If you’re not a member of my religion, my imaginary sky-fairy is gonna send you to hell just, y’know, because.
I wish you well in your future endeavors.
Cheers,
Bobby”
Man, that Bobby really loves his supernatural delusions, doesn’t he? :-)
Oh, and M. King? If you’re so sure our country is in decline, you can always leave and try to find a better life elsewhere in the world. You might try Eurpoe. Oh wait, our unemployment rate is decreasing (at 7.9%, where it was when President Obama took office) while Europe’s is at 12% and still increasing. Dunno about the rest of the world’s economy but it seems that America’s economy is going to continue to improve over the next four years, assuming the Congressional Republicans get over their aversion to taxes on the wealthy and don’t drive us over the fiscal cliff. And if we do go over the cliff, the Republicans will deservedly take the blame for it.
So it looks like you’re not going anywhere and you’re stuck with us.
Sucks to be you, I guess.
December 3rd, 2012 | 6:56 pm
Ahh, this was the best. I love listening to the poor loser republicans any time but yours is the best. I am saving your article, I soo love listening to you squeal.
March 30th, 2013 | 5:08 pm
Like something one would read at National Review. At National Review on a very bad day. Not what one should expect to find at First Things, not on any day. You’ve hit a new low, publishing this lazy, un-analytical, fact-starved, and, I fear, emotionally unbalanced exercise in self-indulgent logorrhea. If Republicans merely wish to spend the 21st century holding each others’ hands and moaning, this is a perfect liturgy for your dementia. It’s certainly no good advertisement for the party. And, frankly, in a journal that, at least in the past, purported to be Christian, it would seem as if it were deliberately designed to repel people from the faith.
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