Mike:
What is politics really all about?
There isn't much question about what politics has been made by
most politicians. For local officials politics is about jobs for people
who vote them into office in the first place, it is about what is
entirely practical in terms of economic benefits. There are also
justice issues and the need for regulations when the private sector
cannot police itself -and such things as support for easy-to-understand
issues like better schools or better roads.
It would be foolish to dismiss any of these kinds of concerns, they all
have
their place in the political system. Some of these issues matter to
business people, others matter to parents of children, still others
matter to farmers or construction workers or health care professionals.
However, to limit politics to these kinds of considerations is absurd or
-more to the point- hopelessly small-minded. That is, politics is also
about
public policy and that is clearly what matters most. The question that
is critical to everything else is: What kind of nation are we and
should we be?
"All politics is local" could only have been said by someone who simply
had no comprehension of politics as anything that could be called a
realm of ideas and who had no commitment to culture or to any kind
of higher cause.
I know who made that statement and so does everyone else but, as smart
as Tip O'Neill was, he also was not a man of ideas. He was the best
-the very best- hack politician in America in his time but you
cannot, in honesty, say more about him. He was a bread and butter
politician like no other, and he was open to major shifts in public
opinion,
but not once that I know of did he ever lead a moral crusade or
champion serious innovations in ideas or anything else of
such nature.
In any case, as valuable to any established party as someone like O'Neill
may be, -another was his older contemporary Larry O'Brien, although he
was an "idea man" at least now and then- politics at the policy level
requires a vastly different skill set.
Politics at that level requires a Renaissance man, or woman. Which is one
reason why I like your concept of a new American Renaissance.
We need people at the top who have a deep base of knowledge
not only about nuts-and-bolts issues that usually play themselves out
at the local level, we need people who have the background and
desire to see the big picture and who want to work with fundamental
concepts, cutting edge ideas, and who have a comprehensive
approach to all problems that have a national dimension.
Eisenhower had this ability, so did JFK, and this was also the case for
presidents like TR and Lincoln. But in all the years since there has been
no-one else who has come close to this ideal, no-one. It is about time
that there was another. Which many voters also thought when they
voted for Obama in 2008, they believed they were getting a true
Renaissance man, only to end up with a poorly educated small-time
operator whose Ivy League credentials were pure sham; he was one
more under-qualified product of affirmative action. To date, with few
exceptions, he has been wrong about every issue that matters.
And his ideas exemplify shallowness like no-one in the White House
that I can think of, going all the way back to..... George W. Bush.
For that matter, less cynically, all the way back to Gerald Ford.
Besides issues that can only be thought of as ecumenical -all inclusive,
effecting multitudes, demanding encyclopedic knowledge- there also
are issues that have the potential to inspire the masses. Civil Rights
is the prime example for all the years since the 1950s; in the past it was
such things as justice for the working man in the 1930s and investment
is America's future in the years after 1865 when railroad expansion
meant opportunity not only for capitalists but millions of others.
And the railroads captured the imagination of just about everybody.
What has been rammed down everyone's throats since the election of William
Clinton in 1992 has been a false equivalence between black people and
sexual perverts. Supposedly today's "gay rights" cause is morally
no different than the Civil Rights cause of the 1960s and later.
Which, however, is completely ridiculous.
To say that you feel strongly about homosexual rights is no different
than saying you feel strongly that someone's rectum is an appropriate
substitute for a vagina, that a bull dyke's tongue is a good substitute
for man's penis, that it is OK for homosexuals to recruit grade school
kids into sexual perversion, that eating feces or rolling in feces
is perfectly normal behavior with no adverse consequences,.
that the collected wisdom of almost all the religions of the world
is all wrong and that the nihilistic values on which homosexuality rests
are superior to religious values.
This is what it amounts to. The issue of "rights" for homosexuals
is a pure smoke screen that conceals the ugly truth about
the sick and polluted nature of homosexuality itself.
Not that idiot Rightists understand what should be done.
Which is another reason I am a Radical Centrist. I have nothing
but contempt for the incompetence of the Religious Right
which simply is incapable of intelligent thought on the
issue of homosexuality and insists on framing the issue
in terms of a paradigm of thought that was falling apart
in the 1950s and that has vanished everywhere except
a few isolated fastnesses since.
What I am about is not revitalizing what may be called "King James
culture,"
on the contrary the objective is creation of a new kind of culture in
which the lessons of science are center stage -in defense of all the
actual truths of religious faith whether these truths are best expressed
by Christians or Jews or Buddhists or Hindus.
I completely agree that we should-
"Increase government investment in tech, medical, etc. research
that serves the public good."
It is about time that we did so, and do so in a big way.
It is clear that the public sector only has limited interest
is this objective.
And a "Job Guarantee" as a
fundamental
human right"
is definitely a goal worth mobilizing support for. Count me as
someone who strongly favors this idea. And the sooner the better.
All of this said, these kinds of issues are not -by any means-
what is most important. At the top of the list has to be
two things, one negative and one positive :
(1) Discredit the entire homosexual cause, demolish the entire
support base for homosexuals, re-criminalize homosexuality
even if "punishment" should be mandatory therapy to end
homosexuality in the lives of all homosexuals rather than sending them
to prison as was the case as late as the 1950s in most states -although
prison is exactly where pedophiles / pederasts should be sent In any case
we need some kind of massive program to bring America to its senses
and de-homosexualize society from top to bottom.
(2) Create a new moral consensus that valorizes healthy relationships
between men and women, that encourages normal marriage even if it
allows for some variations, those we know can work because history
is very clear that they do work, if not for everyone, for some, namely
polygyny, and strictly voluntary age-of-consent heterosexual prostitution
that criminalizes pimpery.
Added up this is a mix of Left and Right, in each case strong Right
and strong Left.
Is this controversial? So what if it is? At least within limits I thrive
on controversy. I have a journalist's love of controversy
as a matter of fact.
What Lenin said about omelettes I will say about controversy:
You can't make a pot of tea without boiling water. You need
controversy to get things done, that is, to get important things
done in the political sphere. And the more the better.
Another reason I like TR, or for that matter, Abraham Lincoln.
I have just finished reading Jonathan Steinberg's Bismarck, A Life.
All 480 pages. Not sure what to think about his interpretation of
the Chancellor's life and values but can say one thing, Bismarck was
anything but controversy-adverse. He more-or-less manufactured
two wars in order to achieve the unification of Germany from
a collection of over 100 states of various sizes and power.
In his opinion this was not going to happen unless the people
were mobilized against forces that might threatened everyone
at the same time, hence, first the war against the (then) Austrian
empire, followed a few years later a war against France.
There was also a small scale war against Denmark that
undermined his domestic enemies among aristocrats.
That did the trick, overcoming decades of special interest
politics and entrenched nobilities.
What is more, with his mission accomplished he knew when
to quit; there were no more wars under Bismarck for
the remaining decades of his rule.
Bismark, from every indication, was about as Machiavellian
as a political leader can get. This side of him is depressing,
but there is his other side, that of his political genius.
Almost all of his thirty years in power he never had a
working parliamentary majority -and those times were
few and far between. But he understood politics
at every level so thoroughly that he was able to
out think and out scheme his opponents at every turn.
He didn't need majorities when he was able to
play all the parties for and against each other
like an organist plays an organ and out comes
a grand opus that changes history.
Radical Centrism has the potential to change history
in fundamental ways at national scale. "Centrism" has
no such potential, moderate politics has no such potential,
and -except as an expedient for special purposes-
I have no interest in either.
Politics is about what you most value in the secular world.
For me there is one answer above all others: Creating
a social movement that changes American culture completely
relegating today's Left and Right to irrelevance.
Choose whatever road you think is in your best interests.
However, do understand that there are consequences
if you choose unwisely.
Best wishes
Billy
------------------------------------------------
9/10/2015 5:56:07 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected]
writes:
Tyler Cowen wrote a couple popular economics books that got the Right and
Left in a frenzy a few years ago. A couple quotes:
"A lot of our recent innovation are 'private goods' rather than 'public
goods.' Contemporary innovation often takes the form of expanding portions of
economic and political privilege, extracting resources from the government
by lobbying, seeking the sometimes extreme protections of intellectual
property laws, and producing goods that are exclusive or status related rather
than universal, private rather than public; think twenty-five seasons of
new, fall season Gucci handbags."
"The 'rise in income inequality' and the 'slowdown in ideas production'
are two ways of describing the same phenomenon, namely that current
innovation is more geared to private goods rather than public goods."
A bunch of proposals that could be wrapped into a "True Center" economic
program; it would be a modern New Deal:
1. Increase government investment in tech, medical, etc. research
that serves the public good
* The fruits of the research would be released directly to the
public
2. Crack down on patent troll
s
3. Press the "Job Guarantee" as a
fundamental
human right
* Government block grants to states and municipalities to fund
"Employer of Last Resort" programs
, ensuring the guarantee
* Mandate work for able-bodied non-senior adults to receive
any social services
, increasing the nation's total output
4. Day-care
/Pre-PreK
credits for parents who have 40+ hour per week employment
5. Block grants to states for continuing education programs for
workers
6. Further economic programs would need to pass the following test:
"are the benefits of this proposal in the direct interest of the general
population, rather than simply a segment?"
On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 8:01 PM, <[email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected])
> wrote:
Mike:
Not the least problem with your diagnosis. Makes completely good sense.
The issue, it seems to me, is how do we redesign the system so that
the outcomes you just discussed become obsolete and there can
once again be a rising middle class.
Previous fixes, primarily income redistribution schemes, are highly
unpopular
and sure death politically. Then there are grossly simplistic schemes like
the "flat tax"which supposedly are cure-alls, one easy pill to swallow
and everything works out swell. That kind of claptrap is nonsense.
Keynes understood one truth with utmost clarity, to fix systemic problems
you need to design as new system. It should be impossible in the future,
impossible structurally, for the kinds of injustices that are routine now
to arise again. I do not think that Kingdom economics, as it currently
is constituted, is "the answer." But it seems to point in the right
direction
and for that reason I'd like to take a closer look and see what
its ideas might lead to.
Its pretty rare when I adopt anyone's system -about any subject- whole
cloth.
New (to me) systems are just starting points.
------------
About a third issue for RC to promote, in addition to economics
and a new kind of politics especially focused on Independent voters,
how about some kind of computer-educational issue.?
I'm muddling through some ideas, nothing specific at this time,
but if we could come up with an issue that addresses the place
of computers in people's lives, then that could reach out to
at least half the population. To make this worthwhile
there should be some kind of tie-in with education,
that is, with learning -whether or not it has anything
to do with formal schools. But most people use computers
in some way each and every day. You can't get more relevant.
What should we be saying about computers that no-one else
is saying, that deals with real word questions that matter
to people, and that is directly related to Radical Centrism?
Billy
===================================
9/10/2015 4:02:55 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected]_
(mailto:[email protected]) writes:
I suspect that, more than income inequality, it's a lack of economic
mobility at the heart of the issue. The OECD authored a 2010 study showing
that
economic mobility is negligible in the US, and lags Nordic countries,
Australia and Canada. Recent studies have shown that one of the top predictors
of economic status is the economic standing of one's parents. The Atlantic
just reported on a study showing that job flexibility drives a lot of this
-- parents with a high amount of job flexibility have more time and money to
spend with their children.
The result is that the "American Dream" is perceived as limited to those
whose parents have great, high paying jobs, exposed their children to high
culture and expensive hobbies, traveled the world, hired private tutors, and
used their connections to get their kids into the best schools. Most
working class children, in contrast, begin a part-time job at 14 or 16, take
care of their younger siblings, and have to struggle to get quality nutrition,
all while going to underfunded inner-ring public schools without the
resources to properly teach basic concepts. This is great for
character-building
and a solid "college essay," but it's not going to get people up the
income ladder, if they can even make it through freshman year of college with
a
middling knowledge core. At the end of the day, I think our 19th century
education system combined with a lack of quality child-care (allowing parents
to earn a full income) is at the heart of the issue... and at the heart of
many, many other problems.
On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 5:51 PM, <[email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected])
> wrote:
Mike:
Ernie and I have exchanged a couple of e-mails about the need to focus
on some specific ideas, issues we become identified with and,
in the process, appeal to actual constituencies.
We need at least two such issues, maybe three. More than that and
focus becomes diluted.
One that strikes me as having real potential is what has been referred
to as "Kingdom economics," viz, seeking to develop a system that
is fair to the vast majority of people and not just to the top 1%
or even the top 10%. That is, while the idea needs to be reframed
so that it can interpreted as Dharma economics for Buddhists, etc,
it would essentially be a "moral economics" and not a finance driven
economics. Viz , what is good for all people not just good
for the monied classes.
OWS, now defunct, at least tells us that there is a constituency 'out
there'
for this kind of idea.
Ernie said he would look for some sites to examine; he had found several
some years ago but we never developed the concept in any way.
If you just look for "Kingdom economics" all kinds of off the wall
stuff shows up along with all kinds of religious material since
the phrase comes from "the kingdom of Heaven" in the Bible.
But as it is used by actual economic thinkers who happen
to be Christian it is an actual form of economics based
on actual ethics.
I was also thinking about what makes RC possible in the real world
of American politics. There is one significant example historically,
the era of TR and Grover Cleveland, roughly the mid 1880s until
about 1908, where something like an 'RC system' actually existed.
Maybe you could add the Eisenhower / JFK years but that is a stretch
and in any case was the last of it at the presidential / federal level.
But surely there must be something along these lines at the state level
somewhere, if not current, recent, so that we could point to the fact
that RC is plausible, can actually work in the real world, and is
worth time and effort.
Seems to me that we need a few good "galvanizing issues" so that
we have a real chance to appeal to people in terms of concrete
self-interest. With that we would be in a position to
attempt some recruitment and organizing.
I think that Kleinsmith has that much right. He is a smart guy
but see my remarks in a previous post.
Billy
-----------------------------------
9/10/2015 2:10:17 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected]_
(mailto:[email protected]) writes:
There's also the possibility of something more asymmetrical than a
traditional party structure. The Religious Right, for instance, is organized
through a series of institutions (Focus on the Family, Moral Majority,
Christian
Coalition, etc.) who mobilize grassroots support through media outlets and
the pulpit, and support candidates independent of party affiliation.
On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 4:35 PM, Mike Gonzalez <[email protected]_
(mailto:[email protected]) > wrote:
I share the same ultimate goal of a full party with a robust political
philosophy that can either compete with both parties directly or supplant one
of them. I've had a long (about 8 months now) series of debates with a guy
named Solomon Kleinsmith (he posted briefly on the RC forum) about building
a strong centrist movement, in addition to some of Christine Todd
Whitman's old staff.
It traditionally takes decades to build a strong party foundation. I
argued to Kleinsmith that the advent of technology radically decreases costs
to
organize and operate. He eventually won me over to the fact that technology
can shorten some tasks, but there is still the matter of breaking the
duopoly and getting people to believe that they're not "throwing away their
vote" by voting for someone who's neither Dem or GOP.
One point of agreement was that existing centrist groups (Centrist Party,
US Centrist Party, Modern Whigs, etc) act like third parties; that is, the
parties exist with no legitimate intention of challenging the GOP or Dems
for any meaningful control. Centrist parties have no ballot access, meager
organization, and a scant political win record. It's a shame too, because
if the Modern Whigs weren't utterly incompetent and hapless, I'd say they'd
be a good model for an RC party (looking at their positions on issues,
they're actually quite RC). Without an implicit goal of working up to directly
challenging both parties for dominance, we wouldn't be doing RCers a
service........
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