…versus Rousseau. This is why I refuse to dignify leftists with the word “liberal.”
[Afternoon update]
I liked this comment on the debate with a Perry/Obama race:
Candidate Perry: My state gained a million jobs with no state income tax and a part-time legislature that meets every other year.
Candidate Obama: But Bush was my predecessor. I inherited what he left.
Candidate Perry: Ditto.
Heh.
Regarding your nomenclature, the problem I see is that you don’t have a way to distinguish between “liberals” (mainstream democrats) like President Obama, VP Biden, etc, and “leftists” like Lenin and Castro.
I anticipate the objection that both the Democrats and the Communists take our money by force. If that’s the sort of objection you’re conjuring up, lets keep in mind that Texas, under Gov. Perry, collected 77 billion in taxes from 2008 to 2009, and that in general, Republicans are in no more hurry than the Democrats to stop taxing American citizens. Guys like Lenin and Castro are different than Democrats and Republicans, but after reading you for years, I think your personal vocabulary intentionally obscures this difference.
Regarding your nomenclature, the problem I see is that you don’t have a way to distinguish between “liberals” (mainstream democrats) like President Obama, VP Biden, etc, and “leftists” like Lenin and Castro.
It’s mostly a matter of degree. There is little “liberal” about any of them, from a Lockean perspective. They are all followers of Rousseau.
@Bob-1:
Where I live the word liberal is similarly misused to mean “right-wing”. Furthermore, over here blue is the colour of right-wing parties and red the colour of left-wing parties. The words liberal and conservative used to have clear meanings, but politics is a game for liars and thieves and it corrupts even language itself.
@Rob-1: We think the difference between “liberal” and “leftist,” as you use the terms, is a matter of degree.
Can you show us lines that the current administration will not cross?
MPM, on almost all election campaign maps until fairly recently, Republicans were blue and Democrats were red. Then the entire media decided to flip the colors, I assume because they thought a sizeable number of blue-collar or military veterans were subconsciously assuming blue was “our” side and red was the “enemy”, just as in NATO war games. Some Berkeley sociologist was probably responsible for the switch, spouting some gibberish about subconscious meta messages and how people in trailer parks respond, and I’m sure the liberal media analysts ate it up.
I meant here in Europe, including the UK.
Bob-1,
This is why I don’t like calling the modern left “liberals.” The term was usurped after WWII by these people (although I don’t this the article fully captures what I think of when I think of a modern leftist).
The best distinction between the two is probably best summarized by Hayek,
As for what to call Obama and Biden? Dullards.
Bob-1,
Are you kidding? You do get that anyone from the ‘center’ politically, going toward the ‘left’ regardless of HOW far left, IS the ‘left, to those of us from the ‘right’, no matter how far right we hail from?
So, nomenclaturally, it’s not just Rand’s nomenclature, or point of view.
And lets go the other way for a minute. PLEASE!!
I sure as HELL don’t see ANYONE from the left making a ‘distinction’ in anyone from the ‘right’. Beyond that they regularly, normally and continually, with name calling, castigation, and open hate, constantly group together ANYONE who isn’t from their part of the ‘left’, with the KKK and Fred Friggin’ Phelps’ Church of the Idiot Blowhard!!
So when YOU start to speak of a lack of distinctions, perhaps someone else will start that ball rolling from the “left” as it seems to me to be the very HOME of name calling and lacks of distinction. Oh, wait, I forgot, the ‘left’ did recently call for less rhetoric. Just before embarking on typical rhetoric? Christie is a Nazi? Laura Ingraham is a slut? God only knows what the Palin skewer-du-jour is, right?
I’ll wait for the ‘left’ to start the toning down Bob. But I am not holding my imperialistic, gun clutching, Bible hugging, lesbo shooting, militaristic, nigger hating, gay beating breath.
Too much? Not if you read a newspaper or watch a TV news report, from any American MSM outlet. And that’s the short list compiled this week Bob.
Pissed off?
Me?
You bet your ass!
Yes, Gov. Perry’s administration collected taxes. Only simpleton think the argument from the right is no government. Actually, most on the right would prefer less federal more state, and less over all.
But less =! none. Never has.
As for Castro being different than Democrats, I don’t think Rand is the one saying they are the same. I think you are grossly confusing Rand with Michael Moore.
Of course when Gov. Rick Perry took over the national economy was booming while when President Bush took over the economy was collapsing.
Gov. Perry was also helped by the very restrictive mortgage laws in Texas which insulated the state from the housing boom while also helped by the high oil prices.
OMG, they restricted mortgages to people who could actually pay them back, and he was ‘helped’ by it!! Proof again that Texans are a bunch of selfish jerks I guess?!
The economy was collapsing under Bush?
Dude, was that BEFORE or AFTER 9/11? Why is it that 5% unemployment and $2.50 gas is COLLAPSING, nearly double those numbers and it’s thriving!?
This guy is mental!
Of course when Gov. Rick Perry took over the national economy was booming while when President Bush took over the economy was collapsing.
Nice trick, considering both “took over” about the same time. Perry succeeded Bush in office in Texas as Bush stepped up to the national presidency. Or did you mean to say Obama instead of Bush? Either way, Perry comes out looking pretty good. The Texas economy boomed under Perry when times, nationally, were good under Bush and kept booming when the national economy went into the crapper and stayed there under Obama.
Yes, it should have been President Obama. It was President Obama who took over with a collasping economy.
T Matula,
I found today’s Palin Skewer-du-jour. FrIn the spirit, I’m sure, of less rhetoric, he compares Palin to Chairman Mao.
.
.
“My President Palin would lead us through a national cleansing, like Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Nothing as violent, however, not at first. Maybe she might let school kids scribble with crayons on the paintings in the Museum of Modern Art. I’ve never met a soccer mom who wanted a Picasso refrigerator magnet. Or she might close all the high-brow music schools and inaugurate the kind of music that gosh darn real Americans like: harmonica, the musical saw, and tapping your foot to the radio while driving a pickup.”
.
.
I love the hands across the table attitude he (they all) show.
That’s funny… I remember President Bush took over during a recession too (anyone else here remember endless TV newsers featuring the phrase, “the Bush Economy”, starting almost before he had even taken the Oath? I do…) Then there was the largest single destructive act in American history (9/11, not the 2006 elections) with a massive loss of capital and America effectively shutting down for several days… and the unemployment rate was still less than 6% and inflation almost nonexistant.
I guess Barry Obama jsut can’t be judged by the same high standards as George W. Bush… right, Thomas?
Matula’s hating on Obama with that bigotry of low expectations.
DaveP,
don’t expect any kind of answer from this goof. He just keeps throwing stand alone phrases out there, as if no one knows any better, and he doesn’t answer any comments.
But having said that, you are remembering things precisely the way I do. So we’re either remembering things from an alternate universe, or TM is just dead @$$ wrong.
I remember things along the lines of DaveP as well. It wasn’t the Bush Economy per se in 2000, but it was the Republican Congress “that derailed President Clinton’s agenda by pushing too early for a balanced budget, rather than Clinton’s suggestion of reductions over 10 years”. So after 9/11, it was, “President Bush ruined the great efforts by President Clinton to balance the budget”. All the while $2 gas and 5% unemployment was considered a “failing economy”.
That’s not to say the Republican Congress didn’t spend or that President Bush didn’t sign the original bailout. But had McCain became President, I think the Press and Progressives everywhere would be commenting about how disasterous it is to double our deficit in 1 year, maintain a trillion dollar deficit over 3 years, and still have a growing unemployment matched with growing number of people giving up.
Sadly, if you point any of this out, the only response from some simpletons is “you’re a Tea Partier!”
When Bush was running for office in 2000 and pointed out that the economy was slowing, Clinton complained that Bush was “talking down the economy.” This was especially rich coming from Clinton who ran around in 1992 lying about how it was “the worst economy in 50 years.”
The dot.bomb burst had already started dragging down the economy before Bush took office. That’s also when Perry took office in Texas. The immediate aftermath of 9/11 was reported to have cost the economy at least a trillion dollars. Things were bad in 2009 when Obama took office but one thing is very hard to deny: He made it worse. If Obama had deliberately been trying to severely damage America’s economy, there is little he’d have done differently and what he continues to do.
The man couldn’t pick a Keynesian stimulus plan out a of a lineup with a cheat sheet. And the non-Keynesian plans that might work are taboo.
The dot com bomb was not anywhere as bad as the great recession President Obama had to deal with. Nor was it as world wide.
Larry,
And exactly how did President Obama make it worst? Details please?
Don’t waste you time Larry, Matula can read it all for himself.
The dot com bomb was not anywhere as bad as the great recession
Quite right. Because the government response to the former was determined by George Bush, who has a brain and common sense (plus business and governing experience), whiel the government response to the latter was determined by Barack Obama, who has a phlosophy and ideals and experience giving speeches.
I realize your thought here was that the nature and course of a recession is intrinsic to the kick-off events, whatever they are, and that therefore the leader who attempts to cope with it can’t be expected to do all that much, in the face of so much inertia. I trust you realize that does not square with Team Obama’s own contentions that their stimulus or health-care reform or laser-like focus on jobs could actually do anything useful, and therefore justified outrageous deficit spending.
You can’t have it both ways, you know. Either a President can strongly determine the course of a recession after it starts — long or short, deep or shallow — or he can’t. If he can, then Obama is on the hook for a massive screw-up, one that can’t be blamed on intransigence by Republicans, because of the enormous majorities Democrats had in Congress for the last six years.
And if he can’t — then there’s no reason at all to continue to rob our grandchildren of $trillions and put up with onerous government meddling (“regulation”) designed by the likes of that scum Barney Frank, because it isn’t going to do any good anyway.
Which is it, Tom?
Zim: “But I tried to help! I put the fires out!”
Officer: “‘Put the fires out’? Zim, you made them worse!”
Zim (looking crafty):”Worse? Or…. BETTER?”
Obama burned the economy down, and now his supporters are alternating between bragging about how much better it is, and trying to blame GWB for the fact that Obama is a failure.
Even Invader Zim would’ve blushed.
The dot com bomb was not anywhere as bad as the great recession
One reason for that – the dot-com bust wasn’t caused by the government. The private-sector can’t hurt economies as much as the public sector can.
The dot-com bust was a natural phase of infant industries. New industries are flooded with new entrants with a bunch of different ideas on how to make the industry work, most of which turn out to be wrong. The failed experiments go the way of Compuserve and the Bernoulli box, our government allowing them to fail. Jobs are lost, the inverse of the money multiplier effect goes into motion, and meanwhile the successful entrants make it big and bring about economic rebound.
In banking, the government orchestrated the implementation of a business model proven by centuries of finance history to be unsound – making loans to high risks at interest rates normally earned by low risks. The bubble was allowed to persist long after its untenability was obvious even to morons. The government prevents failures from leaving the market – Fannie and Freddie have not been justly liquidated, and lenders are pressured into not foreclosing on homes as quickly as they normally would.
Leland,
You link makes even less sense the you do.
Alan,
The key contributions the government made to the mortgage meltdown was not regulating derivatives and repealing the laws that prevented the too big to fail banks from being created in the first place. And oh yes, lets not forget Newt Gingrich’s Tax Relief Act of 1997 that turned houses from homes into tax free capital gain machines….
The laws you point to encouraging minority lending were around since the 1970’s and accounted for only a small percentage of the mortgage failures AFTER the housing crash. Most of your mortgage failures were the result of folks buying houses to make use of the capital gains holiday on them. Even today the main problem is middle class homeowners who are able to pay their mortgages but are walking away from them.
No, the great recession had its roots in the deregulation when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House and pushing for deregulation under President Clinton, not under President Obama, spin it as you might. He just got stuck cleaning up Newt Gingrich’s mess.
Most of your mortgage failures were the result of folks buying houses to make use of the capital gains holiday on them.
Don’t look behind the curtain! I am Freddie Mac, and I command you!