The Rs DO accept the welfare state, the one that supports corps, MOTUs, PTB. As someone pointed out this morning, Krugman STILL doesn’t get it, i.e. just how biased the system now is.

Paul is spot on correct – he nails the problem – the reason Obama’s bi-partisan is just a cover for giving the right what it wants – because the right in the past 10 years has never given the left anything that did not involve a corporate welfare check.

Obama’s con job may get him re-elected – and that is all he wants. Indeed I expect 18 months of Obama telling us about his principles and feelings as he sells Social Security down the river.

I’m just speculating based on my observations of Americans’ behavior, but I think Krugman is missing one material distinction between conservative and liberal viewpoints.

vis-a-vis the welfare state, I think most conservatives recognize a moral obligation to care for the poor. However, Conservatives believe that this obligation rests on the individual, and reject the idea of a “national obligation.”

I am pretty sympathetic to the philosophical argument that a “nation” is not the type of entity that can have a “moral obligation.” At least, I don’t think it can have a moral obligation to any different extent than the sum of its citizens’ individual moral obligations.

Let’s imagine the U.S. government ended social security, and American citizens allowed their neighbors to starve to death. I think Conservatives and Liberals would all agree that an immoral act has taken place. The real difference of opinion, in my view, is that Liberals would argue that “America” has committed an immoral act, while conservatives would argue that individual American citizens have each committed immoral acts.

In practice, this might explain why conservatives, even when adjusted for income, give more money to private charities than liberals (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123258358706104403.html).

Like I said, just speculation based on my opinion.

I think Krugman is being very naive about the detente on the abortion debate later in the piece (George Tiller, anyone?)

Yeah, I thought that was a bad choice of analogy, not just because of the violence but because it never was a real issue. The abortion issue is totally fake. It was fabricated to pry working people away from the Democrats. The Southern Baptist Convention originally had no problem with Roe v. Wade.

even though demographics and time are on *our* side, it sure seems like a long wait for the great white males to lose their lopsided grip on our political discourse. i would like to think the recent upsurge in violence (and violent rhetoric) is their last gasp, but something tells me they are just getting started.

Yes, the bank bailouts were a perfect example of this. Ditto, re ignoring the foreclosure fraud of the banks. I also seem to remember something about Welfare for Wall Street, but not for Main Street.

The days of the past, when Republicans accepted the welfare state as legitimate, are indeed over …

I was happy to see Krugman explicitly state that Republican acceptance of the welfare state was the reason for that “civility” that the Broders of the world pine for, and that once that was gone, so was the civility.

So the fix is pretty simple, if civility is what you really want.

why use the term “welfare state”? I reject that terminology.

What many, if not most, in the ‘I got mine and you can’t have any’ camp fail to realize is that there will eventually come a tipping point if their world view comes to pass. We’re seeing a growing divide between the haves and the have-nots in this country. Let’s assume this continues. There will come a time when there are so many living in squalor without basic services and health care that they won’t take it anymore. The peasants in France rebelled against the nobility and aristocracy. The serfs rose up against the Czars. It’s happened repeatedly throughout history. Sometimes violently, sometimes peacefully. Those on the privileged Right are really working against their own interests by continuing to pillage the middle-class. Why? Because they get their wealth from a strong and productive middle-class. If you prune a tree too severely, it will no longer produce well. The key to wealth for those at the top lies with a strong and prosperous middle-class. To think and practice otherwise is to cut your own throat.

What is the Right Angry About? Enough Kabuki Already

Obama/Bush tax cuts for the rich “checked”
Obama/Bush wars of stupidity “checked”
Obama hoover economic policies “checked”
Obama/Bob Dole Health Care Bill “checked”

the right has gotten everthing they ever wanted

progressives have gotten really nothing over the last 12 years

Paul Krugman and others in the MSM act like Conservatives and Progressives have a rivalry in DC. In sports a rivalry begins wins both teams win the same amount of times.

We progressives know this one fact, we have not won anything in a decade.

the MSM works overtime to protect their trojan horse OBAMA.

Paul Krugman can’t be serious, he knows the facts above.

I think most conservatives recognize a moral obligation to care for the poor. However, Conservatives believe that this obligation rests on the individual, and reject the idea of a “national obligation.”

Really? Then why are there so many homeless in the US, something I have seen in Western Europe?

The is no evidence that Conservatives meets “Individual obligations”, and so the need defaults to the state. States are rarely proactive, and are reacting to the LACK of “Individual Commitments” to such “Individual obligations”.

The same is true for regulations: They are generally imposed after a disaster, that is: after-the-fact.

There is little but greed driving the meme “Individual Obligations,” aka: Let Someone Else Do It. “Individual Obligations” are only met after the government imposes tax obligations for the “General Welfare”.

That’s what the phrase in the US constitution about “General Welfare of the People” means.

“Individual Obligations” = Greed. Pure and simple.

Nicely said. I keep asking who’s going to buy the stuff “they” make if no one has any money. They truly are being very self-destructive.

Tunisia

a strawman argument
how can individuals ,who are suffering rescue other sufferers……Katrina?

Are we agreeing or disagreeing?

our gummint will buy the pills up,tech toys ,mebbe not,unless they get more charter schools,which is why Bill Gates LOVES them

you and I are

Regarding the title of the post. That’s Billy Joel, is it not? He also sang Sometimes I go to extremes.
These are some strange times and sadly, the comments here reflect that.
Everyone’s so raw. So sharing things that make me, well, sad. Yes, I’m a jackwagon. And, no, I don’t need a box of tissues. But, thanks. Not saying that I expect anyone to throw a box of them at me.

Bingo .. my thoughts exactly .. and since there are some 275+ millions firearms laying around out there I be thinking that this one will be far from peaceful .. “when you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose” .. just ask the Palestinians ..

Dave Mason?

They’re not in control of what they’re doing. As an example, corporations do things that none of the individuals in the corporation would do, because a corporation is a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Similarly the conservative movement will ultimately be self-destructive and some of the individuals in the movement no doubt realize it, but they can’t stop it. The best they can do is grab as much plunder as they can on the way down.

Written by Dave Mason .. covered by Billy Dean .. *passes her a few tissues .. the one’s with the baby powder in ‘em*

Billy Dean?

Yeah, he covered it. But someone else wrote it.
BTW, I though of you this morning when I saw some wild flowers growing in fields I drove by.

Aww..that’s so sweet! Stuff is coming up little by little here, but its been coooold. brrrrr

I sit corrected. Just glanced at the google. Why I’m going to take a nap now. Thanks. Still, in my head it sounds like Billy Joel. It’s cool, or as Margaret says I’m Hip.

and they are always upping the ante,and the rhetoric,scary times

Ah ha .. I found that wiki says a fellow named Jim Kreuger wrote the darned thing

LOL

Aww come on Demi no one is going to throw anything at you…
How ya doing today down there in La La land. We have finally got some sun finally…

From the WSJ article you cite :

“In May of last year, the Gallup polling organization asked 1,200 American adults about their giving patterns. People who called themselves “conservative” or “very conservative” made up 42% of the population surveyed, but gave 56% of the total charitable donations. In contrast, “liberal” or “very liberal” respondents were 29% of those polled but gave just 7% of donations.

These disparities were not due to differences in income. People who said they were “very conservative” gave 4.5% of their income to charity, on average; “conservatives” gave 3.6%; “moderates” gave 3%; “liberals” gave 1.5%; and “very liberal” folks gave 1.2%.”

Please note the “lie” in the above. If we assume that conservatives are a higher percentage of the wealthy than are “liberals” – and they are by large multiple – then giving more to charity follows because they have more to give – and contrary to the lie in the WSJ – the percentage of income differences mean nothing as the percentages are not weighted by the income of the person reporting. If you are liberal and poor your disposable income after food, shelter, and transportation costs may be near zero – and if you gave 100% of that money to charity you would be reporting a gift of only 1% of your income – if that. So the reporting of average giving, based on a Gallup, survey is meaningless. Even reporting based on IRS claimed gift deductions misses the point that the non-rich rarely have itemized deductions.

So the WSJ sells the lie that conservatives give a lot, ignoring the fact that in our modern society they have taken all the wealth from the middle class and thereby have a lot to give – so a tiny percentage of income looks large, even though it represents a miserly gift.

The WSJ is not telling the truth. Every report I have ever read says that middle class people give a much larger
percentage of their money to charity than the rich. I just don’t believe the WSJ.

It’s tax reduction related or tithe related.

At least Krugman isn’t being tauntingly faux naive as David Brooks is in suggesting that the first project we should work on, to forge a new civility and bipartisanship, is “comprehensive tax reform”. Nothing but abortion would fan the flames of uncivil discourse hotter, and David Brooks knows it.

But I agree, Krugman is being too gentle and leaving unsaid the consequences that are likely to follow when one major party wants to shut down government, but for waging war, controlling society and paying lobbyists, and the other side only meekly clings to its past aspirations of also having government work for the common man and woman – the people who pay for it. I wonder whether the NYT would publish his column if he addressed what he’s left unsaid.

a moral nation does not let its weakest and most vulnerable sleep on the streets, or walk around sick, or choose between food and medicine.

Indeed, and the very concept of “civility” is a slap in the face to those “weakest and most vulnerable”, in that it equates the moral wrongs done them with the merest breaches of etiquette in public discourse.

As Matt Taibbi (in effect) pointed out in Griftopia, we undercut our message against true evil by phrasing it with excessive politeness. The content of our message may condemn its targets as scoundrels, but by phrasing it “civilly”, we imply that they are still worthy of respect. Taibbi describes the “uproar” caused by his Rolling Stone article on Goldman Sachs:

But in our media you’re not allowed to just kick the rich in the balls and use class-warfare language. The taboo isn’t so much the subject matter, the taboo is the tone. You’re allowed to grimace and shake your head at their shenanigans, but you can’t call them crooks and imply that they haven’t earned their money by being better or smarter than everyone else, at least not until they’ve been indicted or gone bankrupt.

(Griftopia, pages 207–208). And:

My contribution to this was to launch a debate over whether or not it was appropriate for a reputable mainstream media organization to publicly call Lloyd Blankfein a motherfucker. This was really what most of the “vampire squid” uproar boiled down to.

(Griftopia, page 230).

Back in 1996, Benjamin DeMott, in a cover article for The Nation, put “civility” in its true perspective. The closing paragraphs of that article (emphasis in the original):

Democracy continues to oblige citizens to resist—as Richard Hoggart once put it—“the constant pressure to undervalue others, especially those who do not inhabit ‘our own’ publicly articulate world.”

Democracy continues to oblige citizens to render serious, right-valued judgments on others as well as upon themselves.

Democracy can coexist with the belief that all humans are sinners but not with the belief that all sins are equal.

Democracy has within each of its camps, not excluding the civilitarian camp, thugs in number. And when you’re in an argument with a thug, there are things much more important than civility.

DeMott B. Seduced by civility: political manners and the crisis of democratic values [cover story]. The Nation. 1996 Dec 9;263(19):11-19.

The concept of “civility” is such a grab-bag of things of wildly disparate levels of importance and merit – from not using words like “motherfucker”, to not shouting down our opponents, to not shooting anyone whose political views we don’t like – that the mere use of the “civility” concept almost amounts to affirming the democracy-destroying “belief that all sins are equal”. If you want to say that we shouldn’t shoot our political opponents, then just say so – and leave the vile concept of “civility” out of it.

Rachel Maddow has in the past used the concept of “civility” in her “IntimiNation” program segments. More recently – after the Giffords shooting – she walked that back, indicating that she merely wanted us specifically to avoid violence (and, even more specifically, assassination) as a form of discourse, regardless of any issue of “civility”.

Thank you, Rachel. I had been waiting a long time to hear that from you.

A wise decision.

Taking the line that “we,” meaning both sides, need to “tone down” rhetoric and hold hands and stop arguing and sing kumbyaa just falls into the right-wing myth that it is “both sides” that are indeed guilty of over-the-top verbal transgressions or somehow poisoning the political atmosphere in Washington and beyond. That’s generally not true.

Vigorous debate over matters of policy and ideology will happen and are supposed to happen in a multi-party democracy. Left and right somehow abandoning bipartisanship is not the reason Bachamnn called for “armed and dangerous” Republicans, why Palin put cross-hairs on Gaby Giffords, or why Angle talked up “second amendment remedies.”
http://www.sunstateactivist.org/ssablog

It’s not “civil” to leave 10-20% of your neighbors unemployed, to leave tens of millions of them without access to adequate health care, to make the poor and middle class work until they drop in order that they not retire with some measure of dignity, to wage foreign wars built on lies while ignoring the need to improve education, health care and infrastructure back home.

It is uncivil for government to hide what it does, while monitoring your entire digital life, your phone, internet and credit card records, with no restriction on what it does with it.

It is remarkably uncivil to hold prisoners indefinitely, sometimes in brutal or tortuous conditions, on the unexamined claim that it will somehow make us friends and keep us safe.

Krugman is completely clueless on this. I should have known better than to believe he actually knew what was going on outside of economic theory.

way too sensible/

well-stated!

I was really surprised by Krugman’s holding up the abortion debate as some kind of model of vigorous disagreement within essentially civil boundaries. It didn’t quite make sense, for just the reason you named.

Not to mention that the ‘charities’ the rich give to are the Met Mus of Art, NYPL Main (Lion) Branch, ballets, etc. etc. All the places they can show up in in their fancy dress for the annual ‘gala’ and be seen by all the other wealthy donors & be covered by the society pages. (Do they still exist? Oh well, doesn’t matter. They get the face time with each other and get to vie for the best #ered table.)

They might give to hospitals if they get to name a wing, esp if it dispenses expensive high tech medicine to their fancy friends.

It’s a racket.

BMiller,

I understand your frustration – I will be 57 yro next Friday, w/m/professional woman.

We’ve been waiting AT LEAST 40 years – these ole whyte guyz in office are the SAME old white guys in office when I was in my 20s.

WAITING…….STILL WAITING…….

Well said!

Yes right on. Marx predicted that unrestrained capitalism would drive the majority of the population into desperate poverty at which point revolution occurs. Of course we do not have capitalism anymore. We have fascism, state controlled economy whose primary purpose is to provide corporate welfare at our expense. Krugman however, as usual has his head up his ass, proving he is just another elite moron who thinks he knows everything but is totally divorced from reality and incapable of thinking outside his liberal Democratic box. That box is a prison, making him blind to what is actually happening. Where does the money come from to support this Sweden like welfare state? Why do people need welfare to begin with – because there is no equity, opportunity, jobs or a fair tax system. Our economy is deader than a doornail, so where Mr. Krugman, is the money supposed to come from to provide this welfare and why do we continue to need welfare? Because we are serfs and the taxation to create this welfare state will come from us not the rich, just furthering the impoverishment of the middle class.

The WSJ is just Fox News delivered on a dead tree

Would another group other than old white males be “kinder”, Seems that in every country, there’s a ruling group of people and to varying degree’s oppressed minorities. Seems more like human nature to just be greedy…

The whole civility argument is a bunch of nonsense. It’s just another way our government is trying to slide into censorship, something they would love to do, to destroy our freedom of speech. The Tea Party did not get its message across by whispering poliitely, no viable political movement ever has or ever will. People are angry and they are right to be angry and they need to shout and rage at the machine. Do you think civil rights were accomplished by polite discourse? Absolutely not. They were accomplished by violent demonstrations, by angry black people with guns threatening to burn down cities, by people screaming the truth about their condition and the injustice of it. That is what we need now, not this wailing about why aren’t people more civil. Sometimes you have to fight for freedom and justice.

snort – good one !

Research shows, as a sensible person might guess in advance, that some humans are greedy and some express altruism. As is true of apes. After all, humans are herd animals, and if they don’t help each other, the species would cease to exist. Don’t know enough about the literature to know what kind of statistical distribution this spectrum is thought to lie on.

Another thought: unfailing “civility” toward barbaric assholes is a form of submission to authority. From Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority (1974), page 77 (describing a subject who went all the way to the maximum 450 volts of [faked] shock at the command of an experimenter; emphasis added):

The subject’s performance more or less speaks for itself, but we may note a few points. First, despite his numerous, agitated objections, his continuous and persistent dissent, he continues to administer the shocks as ordered by the experimenter. There is, thus, a dissociation between words and action. Second, by no stretch of the imagination can it be said that this man wanted to administer shocks to the learner. To the contrary, it was a painful act for him, one which came about because of his relationship to the experimenter. Third, we note that “responsibility” is an issue important to the subject, and it is only when the experimenter explicitly accepts responsibility that, after several seconds of hesitation, the subject is able to continue. Finally, the language employed by the participant is revealing. Despite the considerable tension of the situation, a tone of courtesy and deference is meticulously maintained. The subject’s objections strike us as inordinately weak and inappropriate in view of the events in which he is immersed. He thinks he is killing someone, yet he uses the language of the tea table.

Contrast this with Milgram’s description of a variant experiment in which the authority figure is the one receiving the shocks, and a non-authority is giving the orders (page 103):

At the first protest of the shocked experimenter, every subject broke off, refusing to administer even a single shock beyond this point. There is no variation whatsoever in response. Further, many subjects literally leapt to the aid of the experimenter, running into the other room to unstrap him. Subjects often expressed sympathy for the experimenter, but appeared alienated from the common man, as if he were a madman.

Or another variant, in which no experimenter is physically present during the delivery of shocks, and no person involved is an authority figure (pages 97-98, emphasis added):

Thus the subject was relieved of personally administering the shocks to the learner but witnessed a harrowing scene in which the aggressive coparticipant single-mindedly pursued his plan of increasing the shock step by step. Of the sixteen subjects exposed to this situation, virtually all protested the actions of the coparticipant; five took physical action against him, or the shock generator, to terminate the administration of shocks. (Several attempted to disconnect the generator from its electrical source; four physically restrained the coparticipant.) One, a large man, lifted the zealous shocker from his chair, threw him to a corner of the laboratory, and did not allow him to move until he had promised not to administer further shocks. However passive subjects may have seemed when facing authority, in the present situation five of them rose heroically to the protection of the victim. They felt free to threaten the common man and were not reluctant to criticize his judgment or personally chastise him; their attitude contrasts sharply with the deferential politeness subjects invariably displayed in other experiments, when an authority was at the helm. There, even when subjects disobeyed, they maintained a courteous, even a deferential relationship to the authority.

Krugman should read Milgram’s book cover to cover, if he hasn’t already. So should everyone on the Left. The Milgram obedience experiment is widely known, but getting the full impact requires more than just hearing the basic story; it is essential to read the full description of all the variant experimental conditions, which are described in detail in the book.

The U.S. government is a shock generator, and the world is strapped in.

Katrina? There was a good bit of violence vs. blacks during Katrina. And a lot of people died.

A proactive government – getting people evacuated before the storm and making sure help reached them quickly — would have been much more moral from any point of view.

Thank you for stepping outside the liberal box! The evils going on in our country are the result of a band of elitist pricks who run the show because they’ve stolen all the money and grabbed power. Obama and his merry band of liberal fascists are no different than the conservative fascists who are driving us into the dirt. The power elite are beyond party affiliations and ideologies. They are nihilists. They blow pink smoke to make us think there is a difference. There is no difference at all. They are still making war to expand the British Empire. They are still allowing Wall Street to rob us blind, we are still in a boom and bust economic crisis, they are still de-industrializing this country to provide jobs for China and wealth for multinational corporations profiting from slave labor, who work to create the lovely cell phones everybody likes. They are nihilist thugs murdering people all over the globe, impoverishing us, chipping away at our rights and freedoms and we are dupes arguing about civility and political parties who are in fact no different. Just an illusion devised to dupe us further.

True – “philanthropy” has more rackets than Wimbledon.

As for donating to hospitals, if they think it’s going to guarantee them ideal care, they’ll be in for a rude shock. All of medicine – even that for the elites – depends on the results of scientific studies, which are routinely skewed to the benefit of PhRMA, and on “guidelines”, which are routinely skewed either to the benefit of PhRMA (overtreatment), or of the insurance racket (undertreatment), or a hodgepodge of both. If they really want the best possible treatment, they’ll need to reform biomedical science from the ground up.

I so tired of pundits ,repugs, dems, or anybody equating the violence on the left and the right as the same, I just don’t see that, and it really pisses me off when I hear some asshole do that. Another thing that I am very angry about is how outraged America is when we have violence like we did in Arizona, and we should be, but where is the outrage over these imperialistic wars we are in and the daily death of innocent men women and children . Obama needs do a self inventory about what he can do to make this a more peaceful world.

I wouldn’t disagree with that one iota. But that opens a whole other can of worms.

But but but, war IS peace. O said so in his Nobel PP speech.

I also wonder if WSJ included giving to churches and other religious organizations whose charity consists of nothing but telling people they are going to hell unless they adopt their brand of faith? I’d dare say the giving of a hundred conservatives to Focus on the Family has less real help for the needy than the giving of one liberal to Red Cross.

You`re not thinking your argument to its logical end. The decision to let individuals take care of individuals who fall by the economic wayside — leaving aside how the Good Samaratain act can actuallyi work — is a social decision, not a private one. It is a social decision to let private persons take care of people other than their immediate families. It is a social decision to let people who lose their job through no fault lof their own — because the banks let their firm go belly up, or their job was outsourced, or that the product their firm makes is simply no longer in demand — fall to the bottom on their own.

One side of the political spectrum says, it’s just their bad luck, and since luck is random, it is just part of the cost of living. You didn’t get to choose your parents either. The other side notes that the distribution of bad events is not random, but is highly race, ethnic, and income-specific, and generation-specific as well. And since no one gets to choose his race, ethnicity, parents income or generation, it is reasonable to help persons who got a bad draw out.

Sure, there’s moral hazard. There is when people ensure their cars and their houses, and you pay for the cheaters when you ensure your house and car. But I bet you don’t stop ensuring yourself for all that. It is the same with social insurance. Think it through to the end. Don’t stop an argument in the middle of a logical chain.

Or more clearly, what % of church donations actually go to helping real people as opposed to keeping telepreachers in multimillion $$$ lifestyles.

As usual, the right is getting out their talking points on ’1,000 points of light’, which bear no relationship to reality, while the left is caught flat footed and several years behind.

I agree with Krugman’s assessment of our fundamentally different mindsets – I reached the same conclusion early in Bush 43′s term – but for the life of me I cannot understand the Conservative/Right viewpoint. That viewpoint – that I am self-sufficient and will always be able to care for me/mine, and so should everyone be – is so totally shortsighted as to be irrational. Are these people completely unable to envision any situation in which a safety next might be important and useful for themselves, since they are unwilling to provide it for others?

The same mindset drove their enthusiastic willingness to exchange civil liberties for security after Sept 11, mainly because they could not imagine themselves in a situation where legal protections ensuring habeas corpus and blocking warrant-less wiretapping, indefinite imprisonment, and torture might be necessary to assist them.

is a social decision, not a private one

Perfect. It’s one of the reasons govt exists to begin with. Certain human decisions are inherently social, not individual.

This is nonsense. You should know better.

The call for civility is not just. It ignores the basic justice concept of self defense.

It’s basically the same problem I have with the ban in most schools on fights. If two elementary boys are caught in a fight they both get punished. I reject the idea, “It takes two to fight.” Sometimes one of the boys is a bully and the other boy is simply defending himself. They should not both be punished. Of couse justice requires investigation to prove the guilt of the one accused of bullying the other.

As a mental health counselor who works in the schools, I do not teach kids non-violence. In the real world of individuals in oppressed communities where violence is normalized, non-violence is a non-starter when having to deal with bullies. I instead teach minimal violence. I used the original Kung Fu movie to help teach this. Use as little violence as needed to stop the problem. If you can avoid a fight, then avoid it. If you can’t avoid it but can just keep the other from hitting you, then just do that.

This philosphy actually works in minimizing violence in this kind of setting. It doesn’t have the unjust blaming of both sides when one side is the aggressor.

I am committed to non-violence beyond the individual’s right to defend himself or herself, especially in dealing with social injustice. But that doesn’t mean we have to be civil with those who are bullies.

The lie being spread now, and in my opinion Obama and Jon Stewart are part of spreading this lie, is that both sides in the fight are wrong. But the problem is only those who aren’t bullies will “tone it down.” Bullies always look for weakness to determine whom to bully. This is exactly what they want.

Their use of deadly metaphors and our pointing out that is hate speech are NOT the same thing.

I reject civil language and in it’s place I push for prophetic language: speaking truth to power, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. I will only reject using deadly metaphors.

The democrats are almost equally responsible for the hard right shift this country has taken in the last 30 years simply because they’re a bunch of limp wristed pussies who don’t know how to fight back. The party needs its own litmus test. If you don’t have the balls to fight, don’t run.

Oh, the “truth is a valid defense” defense. With that & $2.25 (or is it $2.50 now?) you can get around NYC on the subway.

The spinelessness is a feature. It is deliberate to allow the Oberton window to shift right, while claiming ‘our side sucks less.’

The Oberton window? I haven’t heard that one, please fill me in. From the context, it sounds like it means something like the advancing loop of a sidewinder rattlesnake – first the center moves to the right, then the left moves to the center.

There’s this thing called teh google. Overton window. Basically a way of moving the political ‘dialogue unidiretionally. In current case, to the right, of course. Sorry about using ‘b’ instead of ‘v’ but if you’d have googled my wrong version teh google would have schooled you accurately.

The call for civility is not just. It ignores the basic justice concept of self defense.

Sounds pretty winger to me.

non-violence is a non-starter when having to deal with bullies

I have NEVER found that to be the case.

My personal experience is as a dumpy blond older woman on Wall St.

I’ve met my share of bullies. Every one I’ve met face-to-face has folded instantly when I’ve just refused to be cowed by them. I’d be more than happy to provide examples, of which I am quite fond. Including the biggest bully of all, Leon Cooperman, who accused me of bullying him, when I merely spoke to him in simple declarative sentences, words of one syllable.

Not suggesting the macro problem is as easy as the pattern I inadvertantly fell into, only to strenuously contend your assertion that bullying cannot be countered by nonviolence.

I know about Google – and Wikipedia – but I wanted to know what you meant by it. Just remember “teh” children’s game of telephone. I find search engines and online encyclopedias immensely useful – and I’ve more than once corrected errors of fact in Wikipedia – but neither is a substitute for telepathy, especially when working with vague and multi-faceted concepts.

If you wanted to know what I meant by Overton window, why is not that what you asked in 69, and tried to discredit in your response to my 70.

You touch on one of the major conundrums I come back to over and over again.

Don’t Republicans eat, drink, work and live as we all do? How can they not be touched by shrinking wages, rising prices, the monstrous cost of healthcare/insurance, tuition debt bondage, aging relatives, etc.etc.etc.? How can they feel that they are remote from the necessity of social safety nets? Do they utilize Medicare? Do they accept their Social Security checks? Aren’t their towns and cities losing jobs and employment like everyone else’s?

They seem to be hung up on one concept only – lower taxes. Perhaps we have to hit a tipping point of unemployment and healthcare bankruptcies to get them to realize that for taxes/deficits to be the priority, people have to have the wages and income to be taxed in the first place.

And now I foresee in our Kumbaya New Civility World, Republicans and Democrats in Congress will open the door for one another and say “After you,my dear Alphonse” and link arms in unity as they gut the New Deal and leave us all to our bleak new Shock Doctrine futures.

I don’t understand your reply to my comment. Could you do a little unpacking for me on it? Thanks. ::smile::

I’m not talking about verbal bullies dealing with adults, there. I’m talking about grade school boys dealing with bullies who use physical violence. If you tell these kids to use non-violence in dealing with kids beating them up they will tune you out. Minimal violence works because it makes sense to them.