Light On Dark Water

Give Up, Liberals and Conservatives

From James Piereson's review of The Fractured Republic by Yuval Levin, in the June issue The New Criterion:

Mr. Levin views the post-war era—roughly the period running from 1945 to the year 2000—as following a coherent trajectory that has left us in a situation in which it is impossible to put into place the grand designs of either liberals or conservatives. As he writes, “In our cultural, economic, political, and social life, this has been a trajectory of increasing individualism, diversity, dynamism, and liberalization. And it has come at a cost of dwindling solidarity, cohesion, stability, authority, and social order.” This is what he means by the “fractured” republic. Over the course of these decades, Americans lived through a cultural revolution that promoted greater freedom and liberation from social norms and a market revolution that promoted dynamism and innovation while destroying the private sector unions and corporate oligopolies that dominated economic life from the 1940s to the 1980s. Conservative attempts to restore social consensus and liberal attempts to restore a managed economy are both bound to fail due to the liberating effects of these twin revolutions.

Seems pretty accurate to me. The book sounds worthwhile, although I probably won't read it just because I have so much other reading I want and need to do. A bit more about Levin's assessment of that post-war era:

The main problem…is that Americans across the political spectrum are caught in a “nostalgia trap.” They assess the current situation in terms of social and economic standards that were established in the immediate post-war decades….

As a consequence, the two political parties are exceptionally backward looking, albeit in quite different ways. Republicans and Democrats long to restore different elements of the post-war order. Liberals and Democrats, for example, wish to restore the corporatist economic structure of the 1950s and 1960s, characterized by powerful labor unions negotiating with corporate oligopolies, while also reigniting the spirit of liberation and rebellion that burned during the 1960s. Conservatives, meanwhile, tend to assess the present in relation to recollections of the social stability and shared values of the 1950s and take their economic and political bearings from the 1980s when, under Ronald Reagan’s leadership, they restored the nation’s economic dynamism following the inflation and slow growth of the 1970s while presiding over a military build-up that helped to win the Cold War. Each side looks back to the post-war period as a kind of golden age and seeks to restore a piece of it without acknowledging how far away we have since moved from the conditions of that era.

Perhaps it's just a matter of what I've happened to see and read, but it seems to me that liberal affection for the 1950s is a fairly new thing. I've been accustomed since the late '60s to hearing the '50s vilified as everything from merely conformist to quasi-fascist. But then I've probably been more exposed to the cultural revolutionaries than to old-line liberals.

Maclin Horton
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165 responses to “Give Up, Liberals and Conservatives”

  1. Janet

    I would love to say something about this concerning Rerum Novarum, but I have to work.
    AMDG

    Reply
  2. Mac

    I should read that again. I’ve developed a bit of an impatient reaction to it because I’ve heard it so often used as a prescription for fixing our problems as if we still lived in the kind of society it assumes. Not that the principles aren’t valid, but that even figuring out how you would apply them to our conditions is not easy.

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  3. Janet

    You should read Tony Esolen’s book about it. That impression that you are talking about is false. Even the title–New Things–isn’t an endorsement of new things, it’s a repudiation of many of them.
    AMDG

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  4. Mac

    You mean my impression that it would not be easy to figure out how to apply it to our conditions? I have read RN itself btw, though it’s been quite a long time.

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  5. Janet

    No, the impression you get from people who slant RN in a liberal direction.
    AMDG

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  6. Janet

    Sorry not to be clear. Work just gets in my way.
    aMDG

    Reply
  7. Janet

    I think what I’m trying to say is that your negative reaction has everything to do with what people say about rather than what’s really there.
    AMDG

    Reply
  8. Mac

    I know how that goes. Such a bother.
    I wasn’t referring to people who slant it in a liberal direction, or not particularly liberal. I’m thinking of the fairly traditionalist Catholics who preach distributism. I’m pretty much in agreement with their principles, but so often they take an almost fundamentalist approach to RN, sounding like we just need a government that will order its immediate implementation. Then sometimes taking the next step and saying but of course that’s impossible so we don’t need to care about actual politics. Ok, but rather ivory-tower-ish.

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  9. Mac

    Cross-posted. Oh yeah, it’s definitely what people say about it, not what’s actually there, that I’m talking about. That’s why I said I should re-read the document itself, to clear away some of that.

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  10. Art Deco

    Misplaced and overstated. Trade and industrial unions encompassed about 28% of the workforce at their peak in 1955. Their decay is largely attributable to the country’s changing industrial mix, in particular the replacement of manufacturing with service employment. If my own experience as a SEIU member is representative, union representation simply does not provide enough value-added in private sector service employment to justify the dues and the transactions costs. Unions for service workers have thrived in the public sector, wherein there are barriers to entry for employees and where budget constraints are less unyielding.
    As for his conception of what Republicans trade in, a reconstruction of the social architecture and cultural norms of 1955 is a project for the ages. Right now, most would be satisfied to be left in peace by the abusive collection of cadres and propagandists who make use of the Democratic Party as their electoral vehicle. They’re not experiencing the harassment of the judiciary or the public interest bar or the school apparat as ‘liberating’.

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  11. Art Deco

    There is one industry where economic dynamism did damage (if not destroy) unions: airlines. The thing is, airlines were for 40 years a federally-supervised cartel, which even heavy-industry oligopolies like the auto makers were not. Just treating the airline business like any other ruined the bargaining positions of unions.

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  12. Art Deco

    I should note also that growth in per capita income was more rapid during the period running from 1970 to 1991 (2.06% per annum) than it has been since (1.58% per annum during the period running from 1991 to 2009). The 1970s were notable for bad monetary policy and misbegotten exercises in wage and price control, not for slow growth.

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  13. Rob G

    “Conservative attempts to restore social consensus and liberal attempts to restore a managed economy are both bound to fail due to the liberating effects of these twin revolutions.”
    This is not unlike what C. Lasch was saying back in the 90s. Economic “liberty” subverts traditional social consensus, while cultural liberation subverts economic solidarity. Both sides embrace things that are in the long run self-defeating.
    Neo-liberalism tries to get around this by combining fiscal conservatism with social progressivism, basically leaving both traditional social consensus and economic solidarity to the vicissitudes of the market.

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  14. Art Deco

    This is not unlike what C. Lasch was saying back in the 90s. Economic “liberty” subverts traditional social consensus, while cultural liberation subverts economic solidarity. Both sides embrace things that are in the long run self-defeating.
    Lasch was a historian who seldom elaborated on social processes on the occasions when he talked like this. What’s your alternative to ‘economic liberty’? A restoration of serfdom? Cartels of merchants and artisans?

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  15. Art Deco

    Neo-liberalism tries to get around this by combining fiscal conservatism with social progressivism, basically leaving both traditional social consensus and economic solidarity to the vicissitudes of the market.
    Hardly any of tthese people exist outside your imagination. ‘Fiscal conservatism’ is not a coherent concept and libertarians of the Reason Foundation / Koch Industries type number in the single digits in Congress if that.

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  16. Mac

    I’ve never been quite sure what “neo-liberalism” is, as an idea. I see the word thrown around a lot. But in any case I think the basic Lasch-Levin view is so obviously true as not to require much argument.
    If “fiscal conservatism” in this context means not “being careful with public money” but “making sure commercial interests stay happy”, then there’s an old lady running for president whom the neo-liberal label might fit.

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  17. Art Deco

    I think the basic Lasch-Levin view is so obviously true as not to require much argument.
    It is? I think you’re confusing the social implications of technological innovation and adaptation with the social effects of free exchange. And, of course, it’s difficult to offer more than a speculative thesis of the effects of a discrete innovation on culture.
    As for ‘fracturing’, I’m seeing several things:
    1. A word-merchant element and a professional-managerial element who despise vernacular culture and especially inherited vernacular culture.
    2. A renegotiation of the dialogue between the black population and the larger society and the self-understanding of the black population and the larger society. Among blacks, anxiety persists, but the response is different. At one time, you had a response I’ve seen called ‘Tuskeegee ethic’. Now you have a response of rejection. Thomas Sowell has written about aspects of this, including the spread of Southern black accents to northern populations where it was atypical in 1950 and the persistence and resurgence of ‘cracker-type’ speech patterns among blacks (though unless I misunderstood him, Sowell believes they will eventually wither away). Another manifestation was the practice of giving your children ersatz Africanisant names like ‘D’Shawn’, which began around 1966).
    3. Mass immigration after 1965 in the context of both of these phenomena, and the use of immigrants against elements of the extant population in political struggles.
    4. The mental crack-up of oldline protestant bodies. See Thomas Reeves on his resistance and his wife’s to evangelical protestantism. The idiom is just all wrong to people with a certain sensibility or background. What that’s done is drive a wedge between much of the bourgeoisie and the Christian faith. You’re left with Reeves dilemma. The Missouri and Wisconsin Synod Lutherans are still recognizably Christian, as is one Presbyterian body. Continuing Anglican bodies are tiny and embarrassingly refractory.
    5. The crack-up of the Catholic Church has exacerbated the problem in point 4. The purveyors of suburban Catholicism are the sort of people who like greeting cards.
    6. The relentless colonization of American life by the legal profession. NB, a large fraction of the legal profession is Jewish – i.e. people who have always been alienated from aspects of vernacular culture manifest in such things as public prayer (and secular Jews commonly despise Orthodox Jews as well).
    I’m not seeing how technology (much less free exchange) drives this bar in one realm: the traffick in pornography.

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  18. Art Deco

    You might add the evolution of the schools and the purveyors of media and how these people view the world around them. I’m still not seeing how economic or technological practice is transmuted into culture, as opposed to being an instrument of one sector’s hostility to another sector.

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  19. Rob G

    “Hardly any of these people exist outside your imagination. ‘Fiscal conservatism’ is not a coherent concept…”
    Awhile back you used to regularly hear so-called “moderate” Republicans, and sometimes Democrats, both politicians and pundits, say “Well, I’m fiscally conservative but socially liberal.” My own former senator Arlen Specter was one of them. Nowadays you don’t hear that much anymore, because it’s become somewhat the default mode.
    (Then again, maybe they just existed in their own imaginations. Or something.)
    “I think you’re confusing the social implications of technological innovation and adaptation with the social effects of free exchange.”
    Not unless you believe they’re hermetically sealed off from each other somehow.

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  20. Art Deco

    I don’t care what incantations Arlen Specter offered in his press releases. It’s still not a coherent concept.
    When someone tells you they’re a ‘small government conservative’, they’re signaling an attitude, not referring to a well-articulated profile of the public sector. Same deal.

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  21. Art Deco

    Not unless you believe they’re hermetically sealed off from each other somehow.
    The clip of innovation is enhanced by free exchange. The agent is till going to be technological, not the social relation incorporated in free exchange. Free exchange would be disruptive if the ancien regime incorporated unfree exchange (as was the mode when serfdom remained an institution).

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  22. Mac

    I’m seeing a whole lot of trees there, Art, but it still looks like the same forest.
    “I’m still not seeing how economic or technological practice is transmuted into culture…”
    Really?!? “Transmuted” is not the word I would use, but that they have significant affect culture seems obvious.
    I don’t know that anyone ever regarded the profession of “fiscal conservatism” by the likes of Arlen Specter as much more than political posturing. At best it seemed to mean relatively moderate in terms of advocating huge new expenditures. I remember reading (in National Review I think) investigations of the actual voting patterns of congresspeople who described themselves that way and they were not significantly different from across-the-board liberals. They were basically liberals trying to get Republican votes.
    A possibly more accurate term for the government-corporate romance that seems to be in practice the program of both parties now is “fascist.” However there are a few problems associated with the attempt to use it in this relatively neutral tone….

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  23. Louise

    That seems like a very interesting article, Maclin. I hope to spend some time reading it.

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  24. Mac

    It’s not especially long–2000 words at most, I think.

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  25. Rob G

    “The clip of innovation is enhanced by free exchange. The agent is till going to be technological, not the social relation incorporated in free exchange. Free exchange would be disruptive if the ancien regime incorporated unfree exchange (as was the mode when serfdom remained an institution).”
    Iow, like I said, it can’t be reduced to a binary. Glad you’ve come around.
    ~~~I don’t know that anyone ever regarded the profession of “fiscal conservatism” by the likes of Arlen Specter as much more than political posturing.~~~
    Right. Calling oneself a “pro-business liberal” doesn’t result in many votes.

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  26. Rob G

    Anyways, my point was that you don’t hear many people describing themselves as “fiscally conservative but socially liberal” anymore not because they’ve gone away, but on the contrary, because that description has become the default position for the great majority of the elites. Thus you no longer have to say it — it’s a presumption.

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  27. Janet

    Today, I was having an orientation at the gym that I joined so that I can walk someplace where the heat index isn’t 113 degrees. There are TVs on the machines (you have to have earphones to hear the sound) and I glanced up at one of them. Trump was giving a speech and there were subtitles and the only word on the screen was, “Sartre.”
    I will spend the rest of my life pondering the meaning of this. It was a very existential experience.
    AMDG

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  28. Mac

    There was a series of “memes” on Facebook associating Trump with quotes from Nietzsche. They were pretty funny.

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  29. Mac

    I basically agree with your point, Rob, but I quibble with the term “fiscally conservative” as a description of the current default. I tend to think it’s disappeared from the talking points because nobody votes on that basis anymore, or expects anything other than steadily growing spending. I’d describe the default (as I guess I already did) as “socially liberal but business-friendly.”

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  30. Grumpy

    Maclin, I like those Memes. It’s some college professor, I think. I started by sharing them, then I tried to cut back my anti-Trump ranting. Not very successfully, but I’m trying!

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  31. Mac

    More than anything else I’m just stunned. Just can’t believe this has happened.

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  32. Rob G

    ~~~I’d describe the default (as I guess I already did) as “socially liberal but business-friendly.”~~~
    Yep — no argument from me there. The times I’ve had discussions online with self-described “neo-liberals,” that’s pretty much what their view boils down to.
    I haven’t thought about it, but it’s very likely that “fiscally conservative” means something rather different now than it did 20 years ago.

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  33. Mac

    The social conservative right and the labor-centric left are both pretty much out in the cold now with respect to their usual political parties. Libertine Trump as candidate of the former’s former home, one-time Wal-Mart board member H Clinton of the latter’s.
    Sometimes I wonder if the fiscal problem–the tens of trillions in debt and the lack of any hope or intent of getting out from under it–will actually be the thing that plunges the country into some sort of serious crisis.

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  34. Grumpy

    Maclin: More than anything else I’m just stunned. Just can’t believe this has happened.
    That’s how I feel. I never watched the primaries/caucuses before. I was here in 2012 but I dont do TV or newspapers in Lent, and later I couldn’t follow what was happening. To begin with, the 2016 race was very enjoyable, like a long running sports match. I agreed with Queenan in the WSJ that if the primaries didnt last so long, people would have spent six months talking about the Kardashians. It was fun down until January or so. Then conservativ friends began having that debate about whether one had to vote for Trump to block Clinton – that first happened in my environs a little while before super Tuesday. Then it got scarier and scarier, but I was convinced that at some point some ‘deus ex machina’ would intervene and put in someone decent. I couldn’t really believe that they would let this happen.
    As far as Mrs Clinton is concerned, I thought the Dems would try harder to avoid her, too. I think they might have done if she had been up against anyone else. They did make moves toward putting someone else forward, in the autumn, when it looked like an electable Republican could be put up against her.

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  35. Mac

    I know I post a fair amount about politics here, but I tend to be more interested in the big picture than on details, even election details, and not at all in the kind of detail that real political junkies deal in. So I definitely was not paying much attention at this time last year. As far as I can remember the first time I gave much thought to Trump was last August, when he gave a speech in this area and my wife and I watched it on tv out of curiosity. We were stunned and shocked. Most of it was barely coherent egotistical bluster.
    Even then I didn’t take him very seriously for a long time. I thought there was no way he could actually be nominated. I guess the point where I began to be alarmed was probably early in the year, as you say. And then it began to seem tragic, because Trump could have been stopped at several points if most of the other candidates would have dropped out and non-Trump-supporters had gravitated to one or two others. It didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen, and it kept not happening till he won.
    I was certain that he couldn’t beat Hillary, and now I’m not so sure about that.
    It seems very questionable to me whether the Republican party can survive this, or at least whether it can remain a serious competitor to the Democrats. I certainly don’t want anything to do with it at this point. I never registered as a Republican but have mostly voted that way since the early ’80s. I’m very relieved that my vote doesn’t much matter, as my state is very red.

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  36. Marianne

    It’s also going to be really hard to take the Democrats playing up Hillary’s VP pick, Tim Kaine, as a “devout Catholic,” considering his abominable record on abortion the last few years.

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  37. Mac

    It’s horrible but I can’t even be outraged anymore, after all the years of listening to Pelosi and so many others. They make Mario Cuomo–if you remember his pro-“choice” pontifications–seem like a philosopher.
    Now I did feel a bit ill when I heard Kaine described as “a Pope Francis Catholic.”

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  38. Rob G

    And news came out over the weekend that the DNC seems to have been actively involved in working to scuttle the Sanders campaign, which can’t make Bernie’s crowd happy. Not sure it will matter at the convention, though it would be fun to see Sanders pull a Cruz, and take back his endorsement of HRC.
    I’ve never been less interested in an election, except as a sort of car-wreck interest. I think we’re screwed either way.

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  39. Grumpy

    Kaine may drive some more conservative Catholics to hold their noses and vote for Trump.

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  40. Mac

    And the DNC chair who helped run the anti-Sanders stuff resigned, then was instantly hired by Hillary’s campaign. If I were a Sanders supporter I’d be ready to break out the torches and pitchforks. There’s also smoking-gun evidence of severe journalistic malpractice, with journalists working directly with the DNC. No big surprise there.
    Yes, it is a wreck. I can’t help leaning toward a slight preference for Trump winning, even though also I can’t imagine him not being a disaster in some way or other. To say the Democrats will be more competent at this point is to say there will be good progress toward the kind of soft totalitarianism we’ve talked about.

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  41. Rob G

    “I can’t help leaning toward a slight preference for Trump winning, even though also I can’t imagine him not being a disaster in some way or other.”
    My feelings exactly. It’s a “devil you know” vs. a “devil you don’t know” situation, but in this case the former is particularly bad.

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  42. Art Deco

    It seems very questionable to me whether the Republican party can survive this, or at least whether it can remain a serious competitor to the Democrats.
    Rothenberg’s projections indicate the House of Representatives will remain Republican and the Senate will be a 50-50 split. Neither candidate for President will have a walk. The ‘survival’ of the parties is not at stake.
    Our political system really does not permit of resolving any problems at the federal level, merely papering things over until events on the ground resolve them (if that). Frustration, wheel-spinning, stagnation, and slow decay are the order of the day, and, I would wager, will continue to be.

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  43. Art Deco

    because Trump could have been stopped at several points if most of the other candidates would have dropped out and non-Trump-supporters had gravitated to one or two others.
    The resorting which occurred each time a competitor left the race suggested that Trump would have a slim majority in a two-candidate race – at a point where a designated challenger would need a supermajority to wrest the nomination away from him. Voters in tune with the attitudes of the Capitol Hill / K Street nexus would have been inclined to pick up their marbles and go home rather than vote for Ted Cruz, who was anathema to the Senate Majority leader.

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  44. Robert Gotcher

    “I can’t help leaning toward a slight preference for Trump winning, even though also I can’t imagine him not being a disaster in some way or other.”
    Sorry. Can’t do it.

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  45. Janet

    He didn’t say he was going to vote for him.
    AMDG

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  46. Mac

    Correct. I am in fact not voting for either of them. Fortunately I don’t have to wrestle with the question of whether that helps Hillary, because I live in a very pro-Trump state.

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  47. Robert Gotcher

    Right. Still, I’m in a swing state. I’m not going to help it swing either way.

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  48. Mac

    “Rothenberg’s projections indicate the House of Representatives will remain Republican and the Senate will be a 50-50 split. Neither candidate for President will have a walk. The ‘survival’ of the parties is not at stake.”
    I don’t mean whether the Republicans will keep the House and/or Senate. I mean longer term. And not that it will cease to exist any time soon, but it may become marginalized. If Trump loses that could certainly happen.
    “Frustration, wheel-spinning, stagnation, and slow decay are the order of the day, and, I would wager, will continue to be.”
    Yes, but you left out increasing hatred. :-/

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  49. Art Deco

    I don’t mean whether the Republicans will keep the House and/or Senate. I mean longer term. And not that it will cease to exist any time soon, but it may become marginalized. If Trump loses that could certainly happen.
    I cannot figure what your basis is for making that judgment about the shorter term or the longer term.
    As for being ‘marginalized’, that’s already happened with the replacement of legal reasoning with verbal legerdemain promoting the prejudices of the law professoriate, as well as the disappearance of any dissenting voices from arts and sciences faculties. Enablers of the one are politicians of the ilk of AM McConnell and enablers of the other are the sort of lawyers and business executives who sit on boards of trustees.

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  50. Grumpy

    Mac: I can’t help leaning toward a slight preference for Trump winning, even though also I can’t imagine him not being a disaster in some way or other.
    Yes, imagine this: On November 6, would you feel slightly relieved that Trump was stopped, if Clinton wins OR on November 6 would you feel slightly relieved that Clinton was stopped if Trump wins.
    I would feel more relief about the stopping of Clinton.
    That doesn’t mean going in for rationalizations or any kind of Trumpkinism. It doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to stuff like Trump’s ties with Putin, and the follow on that can have for Ukraine and the Baltic states. It doesn’t mean believing that he would appoint three prolife judges, a Life Site news seems fondly to imagine.

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  51. Mac

    That’s a good way to think about it–which would be a relief? And I would feel more relief at Clinton being stopped, too.
    These social conservatives, evangelical Christians, etc., who think Trump is firmly on their side just baffle me completely. I wouldn’t know what to say to them.

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  52. Mac

    “As for being ‘marginalized’, that’s already happened…”
    Well, sure, but it can get a whole lot worse. Up until now there has been at least some resistance from the Republican party as a party. I’m not at all sure that will be the case for much longer.

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  53. Rob G

    “Up until now there has been at least some resistance from the Republican party as a party. I’m not at all sure that will be the case for much longer.”
    If the GOP believes it can carry on without social/religious conservatives, it will almost certainly try to do so.

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  54. Art Deco

    These social conservatives, evangelical Christians, etc., who think Trump is firmly on their side just baffle me completely. I wouldn’t know what to say to them.
    I’ve encountered in these fora social conservatives who favor Trump for one reason or another and dyed-in-the-melt Trump admirers. The venn diagram does not have much intersection. There’s been a controversy at Liberty University. Is that what you had in mind?

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  55. Mac

    No particular instance in mind. There seem to be a lot of them. For instance the LifeSite people that Grumpy mentioned.
    “If the GOP believes it can carry on without social/religious conservatives, it will almost certainly try to do so.”
    I think it will try. And a surprising number, as we’re just discussing, seem willing to hang on desperately.

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  56. Mac

    I mean, there is still a devil-you-know vs devil-you-don’t-know argument that a candidate like Trump might actually, for instance, nominate a constitutionalist for the SC. But it’s a pretty thin thread at this point.

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  57. Mac

    That is, it’s not the lesser-evil sort of choice that puzzles me, it’s the enthusiastic he’s-one-of-us evangelical crowd.

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  58. Art Deco

    it’s the enthusiastic he’s-one-of-us evangelical crowd.
    I’m not aware of any. I think Mike Huckabee’s daughter was a Trump campaign employee at one point.

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  59. Mac

    Oh they’re out there for sure, including some pretty visible ones. Can’t speak to the numbers, or recall any specific names. I’m basing this mostly on news stories I see posted on Facebook, either by said evangelicals expressing enthusiasm or by liberals expressing horror and contempt.

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  60. Grumpy

    In my current line of business I meet a fair number of Trumpkins, and there are more Protestants than Catholics. But there are Catholics too.

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  61. Mac

    C.S. Lewis must have been given a spirit of prophesy when he came up with the name “Trumpkin”.

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  62. Janet

    This afternoon I was trying to remember what Trumpkin did. He was a good guy, wasn’t he?
    AMDG

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  63. Janet

    Yes, really good. I think y’all have to think up another name for followers of the Donald.
    AMDG

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  64. Grumpy

    I believe Louise invented the term Trumpkin and it sounds OK to me.

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  65. Mac

    No, it’s in Lewis. Possibly Louise could have invented it independently, but she’s probably read the Narnia books.
    Anyway: my bad, I was thinking Trumpkin was the treacherous dwarf in Prince Caspian, but he was indeed a good guy. So the name is not as appropriate as I thought.

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  66. Grumpy

    No I mean Louise invented it as a term for the Trump-followers on this blog

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  67. Grumpy

    I remember years ago, in the late 1980s watching the General Election results come in at my brother’s house. Might have been 1987? In any case, it was not an all nighter – by about 2 am it was clear that the Tories under Mrs Thatcher had a majority, for the third (?) time in succession. My brother was no socialist but always to the left of me (which was never difficult). It had been or seemed an open question whether the Tories could get a third term in office. When the final results came through on TV, my brother said ‘I’m relieved.’ I always remember that. One might not be ‘for the Tories,’ and by the late 1980s it had become difficult to be so. Repeated victory had made the wealthy arrogant and unpleasant. There were many scandalous court cases, in which the wealthy were openly favoured, and a great deal of police corruption. Being a paddy or a squatter seemed in some cases sufficient to get one fitted up and charged with planting an IRA bomb. As far as I was concerned, of course, there was all that plus the Tories were insufficiently libertarian for my tastes! And yet there it was, on election night we were relieved to see them returned, and not Labour.

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  68. Mac

    I don’t think I’ve ever had that experience. It’s always been pretty straight-up my candidate lost or my candidate won. Though now that you mention it, when the other guys won I think there was just a bit of consolation in the fact that I wouldn’t have to listen to my candidate be trashed, possibly for good reason, for the next four years.
    Slightly related: I had thought I might do a blog post about this but will go ahead and mention it. I watched the English House of Cards a couple of months ago, and was really struck by the strong anti-Thatcher, anti-Tory malice of it. The American one is, surprisingly, relatively non-partisan. It focuses on a really corrupt and just plain evil couple, but the paraphernalia of the plot doesn’t really get that involved in the issues of the day or go for the usual cheap shots against Republicans. The evil couple in fact are Democrats–pretty strange for American tv/movies–and it doesn’t really matter all that much to the story. The English one was made in 1990 which certainly fits with what you said.

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  69. Mac

    Y’all made me curious about “Trumpkin”. Looks like its first use here was indeed by Louise in a comment on this post. No indication that any of us made the Lewis connection. It isn’t obvious whether Louise had invented it herself, remembered it from Lewis, or had picked it up somewhere else. If she happens along and reads this maybe she’ll remember. Not that it matters, I’m just wondering now.

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  70. Grumpy

    I thought Louise made it up on the spot and it sounded goog to me

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  71. Rob G

    Mac, the other day you asked about my current reading on the religious liberty issue. My concern boils down to this. If democracy tends to the tyranny of the majority, does the American, largely Lockean, understanding of religious liberty likewise tend to the tyranny of the irreligious?
    The Lockean understanding of religious toleration holds no place for any perceived divided loyalty between one’s religion and the state (hence its prominent anti-Catholicism). We’ve now reached a point where the state is moving in an ever-increasing and blatantly “progressive” direction, and to be resistant to this because of one’s faith is to evince, in the eyes of the elites, a suspicious divided loyalty. When you add to this the fact that progressivism is being increasingly driven by the “nones,” who being irreligious have no personal stake in religious liberty, other than in a “freedom from…” sense, I’m wondering if the American version of religious liberty is finally showing an inherent and ultimately fatal weakness.

    Reply
  72. Mac

    Grumpy, if I remember correctly, you don’t care for C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories, so not surprising that you didn’t recognize the name from there. Trumpkin is a dwarf. In (I think) the same book that Trumpkin occurs in, there is an evil dwarf, and I was thinking he was Trumpkin, and that’s what I thought made the name so funny for Trump followers. But as Janet says I was mistaken. Anyway, as you say, it’s a good name on its own. ‘Trumpeters’ is another one I’ve heard.

    Reply
  73. Mac

    Rob, I think it most definitely is. I’ll say more later. Got to take the dog out.

    Reply
  74. Janet

    Trumpeters is something that occurred to me, but that reminds me of Trumpet of the Swan, so I don’t care for that association either. 😉
    AMDG

    Reply
  75. Mac

    My first thought about that was that it sounds too positive. But I’ve been telling myself I shouldn’t be so disparaging about Trump supporters at large. Yeah, a lot of them are awful, but I know some who are perfectly decent people, ordinary Americans who are very upset at the way the country is going and think Trump can change things.

    Reply
  76. Janet

    Yes. This morning in Mass, where I shouldn’t go if I feel like disparaging people, I started thinking about how it’s a bad idea to lump a group of people together and think up bad names for them.
    AMDG

    Reply
  77. Craig

    Point taken, Janet, but I heard somebody use “Trumplodytes”, and I thought that was pretty funny.

    Reply
  78. Mac

    Yes. Unfortunately “Trumplodytes” is funny. So is “Sandersnistas”.

    Reply
  79. Janet

    Yeah, that’s pretty funny.
    BTW, Craig, I was trying to remember where to find those YouTube videos with the chant that show the written music as you go along.
    AMDG

    Reply
  80. Louise

    I think I got Trumpkins from twitter (sadly, I can’t claim to have coined it). I still think it’s funny, though the connection with Trumpkin the dwarf doesn’t really work, does it.

    Reply
  81. Louise

    What about Trumpits?

    Reply
  82. Grumpy

    Yes, I have seen Trumpkin on twitter now too, but I heard it first from Louise.
    Not at all Mac, I am very fond of Narnia. I have read it many times, but still forgot Trumpkin the dwarf. Its Lord of the Rings and above all Potter that have my anathemaa sit.
    There was a piece in First Things comparing Trump to one of the Narnia dwarfs. It has received a huge number of hits. This is quite funny because there is a general unspecified ban on articles mentioning CS Lewis (more like an ‘O No’ than a ban), and the editorial line of the magazine is not hostile to Trump.

    Reply
  83. Mac

    Rob, when I asked you about that a week or two ago, I think I was wondering if you meant the current situation, and I said something to the effect that it seems pretty straightforward to me, which it does (a clear intention to marginalize and restrict Christians).
    As to the historical background, I don’t know enough about Locke specifically to say, but I certainly think you’re broadly right. I’m seeing a lot of that “divided loyalty” stuff–not in those words, and not directed against Rome as it would have been long ago, but an assertion that religious dissent from progressive prescription is unpatriotic and un-American. There’s really a certain delight in some quarters of the left in being able to wield those weapons, which for song were wielded against them.

    Reply
  84. Rob G

    Right, Mac. I guess I’m wondering if the current situation is a recent “bug” or the unintended consequence of a deep-seated “feature.” How we answer that question might help us in our response.

    Reply
  85. Mac

    A feature, I think, albeit an unintended one. Having to do with the absence of a positive metaphysic. It’s all negative–stay out of here, don’t go there, we don’t commit to any definite view of what human life is all about. So when the underlying consensus broke down…
    Grumpy, I knew you didn’t like Tolkien, guess I figured Narnia fell under the same ban. I love Tolkien but don’t consider Rowling in anything close to the same league.

    Reply
  86. Janet

    I keep thinking there is an old children’s poem with the word “trumpkin” in it. It’s driving me crazy. You could never find it on Google because there are a billion pages of Narnia and Trump.
    AMDG

    Reply
  87. Mac

    Doesn’t ring any bells with me, for what that’s worth.

    Reply
  88. Robert Gotcher

    Are you thinking of “Thumpkin?” Sung to the tune of Frere Jacques.

    Reply
  89. Janet

    Yes! Thank you! I think it’s Thumbkin, because it’s about a thumb.
    AMDG

    Reply
  90. Robert Gotcher

    Oh, right. That is what I meant.
    “Where is middle-man, where is middle-man?
    Here I am! Here I am!….”

    Reply
  91. Rob G

    Possible game-changer wrt my potential support for Trump: a friend told me last night that the Democratic platform this year has as a stated goal the repeal of the Hyde Amendment. I haven’t done any checking on it yet, but if that’s true it makes me a very probably Trump voter.
    As much as I dislike the GOP, at least it’s not full-throttle for buggery and baby-killing.

    Reply
  92. Mac

    I think that’s correct about the Hyde amendment. At any rate I’ve read the same thing. Yeah, the “at least…” reasoning is what’s made me vote for Republicans for years.

    Reply
  93. Rob G

    Yeah, I have no illusions anymore about the GOP being “pro-life.” But they’re not trying to make me pay for abortions, which is meaningful in my book.

    Reply
  94. Mac

    This is an instance of what I had in mind when I said the religious liberty situation is pretty clear.
    It’s so clear, in that practical sense, that I’ll never even consider voting for anyone who proposes to increase the power of the federal government. That’s why I never even bothered to learn anything about Bernie Sanders.

    Reply
  95. Rob G

    Absolutely with you there.
    My problem is that when you vote GOP you’re voting to increase corporate power, which in this day and age is in many ways just as problematic. It’s like you’re voting for either one head or the other of the Leviathan, which of course doesn’t get you anywhere.

    Reply
  96. Robert Gotcher

    “It’s like you’re voting for either one head or the other of the Leviathan, which of course doesn’t get you anywhere.”
    Yep. Or maybe it is like the Hydra’s head. You defeat one and two come back.

    Reply
  97. Mac

    I’ve always tended to view corporate power as somewhat less dangerous because they can’t (legally) put you in jail or kill you. The old monopoly on violence argument. But the two are getting more closely connected all the time.
    Related: a day or two ago on Facebook someone said there is a new word, “pinkwashing”, which describes corporations that ostentatiously go all out for the gay agenda in order to distract attention from their use of quasi-slave-labor in third-world countries.

    Reply
  98. Mac

    Realized after posting the above that I should just Google the word if I want to know whether it’s a real thing or not. Yes, but not necessarily with the particular twist I heard:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkwashing_(LGBT)

    Reply
  99. Rob G

    “But the two are getting more closely connected all the time.”
    Yep, that’s the problem esp. as the corporations get larger and more powerful.

    Reply
  100. Janet

    They may not be able to put you in jail or kill you, but they seem to be able to get your property away from you rather handily if they have enough money–not much of which goes to you.
    AMDG

    Reply
  101. Louise

    “his is quite funny because there is a general unspecified ban on articles mentioning CS Lewis”
    That’s interesting, Grumpy. Do you know the reason for this?
    “Pinkwashing” is interesting.
    From wiki: “The phrase was originally coined by Breast Cancer Action to identify companies that claimed to support people with breast cancer while actually profiting from their illness.”

    Reply
  102. Stu

    I know mine is a small weak voice when it comes to politics on this blog, but the reason I vote D and not R (like many, I don’t particularly like either, and consider myself an Independent) is that I believe the former have some interest in the poor, marginalized and middle class, while with the latter it is only lip service.
    Putting aside things like abortion (which remains the law of the land after each Republican president ends his term), the progressive “agenda” (whatever that is), and attacks on religious liberty (an indistinct claim to me – which religion, and what are they not free to do?).
    Yes, unfortunately the way the Dems want to do most things is by growing government to cover it, and then we all pay. It seems like we pay anyway. Helping silly people that have a dozen kids and won’t work is still better than the war in Iraq and everything that has come from that.
    So it’s not really liberal and conservative for me, it’s who is going to really try and help people? So far I see no plan on the right except that all will be fixed because their candidate is so grand. It will certainly be interesting if he gets in, to see where this grandiosity leads.

    Reply
  103. Grumpy

    Mac, I don’t mind The Hobbit all that much, and I love Leaf by Niggle. It’s LOTR which I don’t like at all. So it’s too strong to say I don’t like Tolkein. I actually don’t mind the first few chapters of the Silmarillion, but it seems to ramble after that.

    Reply
  104. Mac

    Oh, I thought I remembered you just disliking fantasy in general, with special antipathy for talking. I love Leaf By Niggle, too. The Silmarillion…well, I’m not sure it’s even meant to be read as a novel, as opposed to a somewhat dry chronicle. I only read it once and that was long ago.

    Reply
  105. Janet

    Not fantasy, magical realism.
    AMDG

    Reply
  106. Grumpy

    Answering Louise: there is a kind of generic Christian-conservative article which uses a quotation from Lewis as a kind of ‘magic bullet’. As if just quoting Lewis’ words made the argument convincing or persuasive. Imagine working on the editorial side of a conservative-religious magazine: you would get hundreds of articles in every year which quote Lewis in this reverential style. You would read hundreds of articles which cite ‘The Abolition of Man’ as if it were holy writ, and as if no one had ever presents its theses before. You would read citation upon citation of Lewis buzz phrases like ‘men without chests’. You would not want that stuff in your magazine, and you would get so sick of it that it would elicit the feeling of ‘o nooooo’ whenever you received yet another submission containing references to Lewis.

    Reply
  107. Mac

    Yeah, she mentioned that just recently. I thought I remembered something from years ago expressing a general dislike of fantasy but I’m probably just remembering dislike of LOTR.
    Ha, I just noticed “special antipathy for talking” in my previous comment. That was supposed to be “Tolkien.” Unfortunately I can’t blame auto-correct for that, as I wasn’t on my phone. That’s actually what I typed, brain and/or hands substituting a rough homonynm

    Reply
  108. Janet

    I could have sworn I read Tolkien.
    AMDG

    Reply
  109. Mac

    Good!

    Reply
  110. Janet

    I am not unsympathetic toward that view of Lewis, Grumpy. Maybe it’s too many years in the CSL Society.
    But I love the Fiction.
    Maclin, you weren’t thinking “talking animals” were you?
    I don’t think I could bring myself to read The Silmarillion again, but when reading LotR, I frequently wish I could remember what I had read about certain characters in the past.
    AMDG

    Reply
  111. Art Deco

    is that I believe the former have some interest in the poor, marginalized and middle class, while with the latter it is only lip service.
    I got a good chuckle out of that, Stu. The Democratic Party has an interest in the teachers’ unions, the trial lawyers, and Hollywood. If they gave a rip about the poor, the homicide rate on the south and west sides of Chicago would not be 47 per 100,000 (about what it is in Detroit and outside the safe zones in Baltimore). The homicide rate in analogous parts of New York City averages 13 per 100,000 (or near the metropolitan means of 1980) because Rudolph Giuliani did care about the welfare of people living in the South Bronx and Harlem and the Lower East Side, rather than just seeing them as a constituency which gave votes for patronage.
    As for the marginalized, our academics and jurists have defined who gets no protection from traditional constitutional government. It is not a Democratic constituency.
    As for the ‘middle class’, no clue who you think lives in the suburbs, exurbs, small towns, and countryside that are electorally dominated by the Republican Party. (Answer: like anyplace else, the modal element would be wage-earners who think of themselves as part of the broad middle sector). What do you fancy Democratic pols would do for them which is not done now?

    Reply
  112. Marianne

    An op-ed in the L.A. Times by the executive director of Democrats for Life and an associate professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University — “How the Democratic platform betrays millions of the party faithful” — that’s worth a read.

    Reply
  113. Art Deco

    My problem is that when you vote GOP you’re voting to increase corporate power
    Sorry, Rob G. The tech sector’s a Democratic constituency. The casino banking sector’s a Democratic constituency. Hollywood and media companies are a Democratic constituency. Other sectors view politicians as fungible and split their donations (as dos the American Bankers Association, Blue Cross, and the National Auto Dealers Assn). The most persistent donors to Republican causes would be the nexus of enterprises around Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers, as well as some real estate interests. There are dozens of Democratic constituencies as significant or exceeding in significance these three.

    Reply
  114. Robert Gotcher

    Corporations sure can kill unborn babies and old people.

    Reply
  115. Stu

    You can’t convince me that the Republicans are the warm and fuzzy party, Art. I think that politicians in general are disinterested in the people (sadly), but the Dems try to shift monies towards services and the Rs try to fund the military. Again, generally speaking. Then there is Ted Cruz who tells us government isn’t even necessary, but seems to be living well off the public!

    Reply
  116. Art Deco

    You can’t convince me that the Republicans are the warm and fuzzy party, Art. I think that politicians in general are disinterested in the people (sadly), but the Dems try to shift monies towards services and the Rs try to fund the military. Again, generally speaking. Then there is Ted Cruz who tells us government isn’t even necessary, but seems to be living well off the public!
    1. The military is an inherently public function and an inherently a function of the central government. There is no such thing as a private sector military nor can one devolve the functions of the military on provincial authorities. As we speak, the military consumes about 4.5% of gross domestic product, near the nadir of the last 75 years.
    2. Neither Ted Cruz nor anyone defending him is obligated to shadow box with your fantasies about what he thinks or your caricatures of what he thinks.
    3. The ‘services’ in question are candy for Democratic constituency groups (see porkulus). If you were concerned about the welfare of the impecunious, provision through public agency or sector-specific subsidies would be of scant interest to you unless the market in question had some dysfunctions (which the market for groceries and rental housing does not), as you get more bang for the buck with cash transfers. Milton Friedman promulgated his idea for a negative income tax in 1962. It’s never been an item on the Democratic agenda, accept in bastardized forms which chronic problems.
    4. The word is ‘uninterested’. ‘Disinterested’ means impartial, and that the Democratic Party never is.

    Reply
  117. Grumpy

    I very seldom like fantasy, and I detest magical realism.
    To me, it seems there’s a difference between a work for which the intended audience is children, and a work for which the intended audience is adults. For instance, George McDonald’s childrens books (the Curdie books) and his unreadable fantasy novels for adults. I cannot put my finger on why exactly this makes a difference, but it seems to do so. Thus, eg, the Hobbit is a children’s book, and works, whereas LOTR seems to be aimed at adults, but does not work artistically. Aristotle said a literary work had to be plausible, and I think one may add ‘to its intended audience’. A child of 8 or 9 can almost kinda think that one could step through a wardrobe into another world. So the book is plausible, from the perspective of the intended audience. Whereas a fantasy novel for adults is written for people who know its implausible and whose artistic suspension of disbelief is therefore rather different.

    Reply
  118. Art Deco

    “Corporations sure can kill unborn babies and old people. ”
    Kermit Gosnell ran a professional practice, not a commercial company. Planned Parenthood is also part of the non-profit sector. Some nursing homes are run by commercial companies, some not.

    Reply
  119. Mac

    I have to say I lean more toward agreement with Art here, broadly speaking, about corporations–just in that I don’t think there’s a lot to distinguish Rs and Ds in that respect anymore. The tech industry is the closest thing we have today to the J.P. Morgan types of old, and it is very solidly in the D camp. Corporations in older sectors are just going to try to maximize their influence with power, regardless of who wields it or why.

    Reply
  120. Mac

    I can’t really argue the point about fantasy, Grumpy. As a matter of critical principle I neither favor nor disfavor fantasy per se. I don’t seek it out. I can only say that Lord of the Rings definitely works for me. As does Lewis’s sci-fi trilogy.
    Well, I can also hide behind Auden’s skirts (heh). He loved LotR.

    Reply
  121. Mac

    ” tech industry…is very solidly in the D camp.”
    That understates it considerably. They are enthusiastic collaborators in the progressive cultural program. E.g. the tech boycotts of Indiana and North Carolina.
    And it isn’t just tech. ESPN, for goodness sake, wants to stomp those who aren’t on board.

    Reply
  122. Mac

    Seems to be true about the Dem platform and the Hyde amendment. This is not the only place I’ve read it. And Tim the Devout is on board with it.

    Reply
  123. Rob G

    “I don’t think there’s a lot to distinguish Rs and Ds in that respect anymore”
    Very true. But the Dems have only relatively recently jumped on the Big Business train, whereas the GOP’s been aboard since day one.

    Reply
  124. Mac

    Also true.

    Reply
  125. Marianne

    In that L.A. Times op-ed about the Hyde amendment by pro-life Democrats I linked to above, there’s also this:

    A commitment to religious liberty in the context of abortion, which was included in the 2012 platform, has been removed.
    … removing even a nod toward “religious liberty” from the platform puts Democrats at fundamental odds with the many religious organizations whose mission is nonviolence and protection of the most vulnerable.

    Not even a nod will be tolerated. That seems to apply to so many things now.

    Reply
  126. Robert Gotcher

    I was thinking of the pharmaceuticals.
    If you expect an adult fantasy to be like a novel, you’ll be disappointed. If you look at it as a romance, you are less inclined to be disappointed.

    Reply
  127. Grumpy

    The science fiction trilogy is so bad, its unspeakable

    Reply
  128. Mac

    It’s among my personal favorites.

    Reply
  129. Mac

    Marianne: I never thought I would see a day when journalists and politicians started putting “religious liberty” in scare quotes, as I see them regularly doing now. Or prefixing it with “so-called.”
    I feel a little sorry for pro-life Democrats. Sounds kinda like “socialist Republicans.”
    Iowa is considering (not sure whether it’s passed or not) a law that would subject church services to scrutiny for bad attitudes toward homosexuality. Stu was wondering earlier what this is all about. Well, it’s about whether Christians (and others, but of course it’s mainly directed at Christians) will be allowed to follow their consciences in matters like this. The Democrats clearly intend that the answer will be no.

    Reply
  130. Mac

    Interesting piece on the situation of religious conservatives and the GOP:
    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438431/donald-trump-religious-freedom

    Reply
  131. Stu

    “Neither Ted Cruz nor anyone defending him is obligated to shadow box with your fantasies about what he thinks or your caricatures of what he thinks.”
    Although I love this sentence, I don’t believe I tried to state what Ted Cruz thinks.
    Well, I am a Tim Kaine Catholic everyone, sorry. I believe that abortion falls into the sphere of personal sin dictated by ones conscience, and is not a public matter. It is legal. If it was illegal, women would still seek out abortions, at great risk. I am personally against abortion, as I am against the death penalty, but I am not “the state”.

    Reply
  132. Mac

    It may come as a surprise but I’ve thought for a long time that it’s permissible for a Catholic to hold a sort of passive don’t-criminalize-it view on abortion. Or at least that it’s not necessarily wrong to support politicians who have that view. But the Democrats at this point go way, way beyond that.

    Reply
  133. Art Deco

    Although I love this sentence, I don’t believe I tried to state what Ted Cruz thinks.
    OK, the person who uttered this sentence:
    “Then there is Ted Cruz who tells us government isn’t even necessary, but seems to be living well off the public!”
    is a sock-puppet appropriating your handle. Right?

    Reply
  134. Art Deco

    If it was illegal, women would still seek out abortions, at great risk.
    People who commit violent crimes are not generally risk-averse. As a rule, people do not object to the existence of penal codes (nor, bar a scatter of disoriented clowns like Jerome Miller and sundry ACLU lawyers, do they object to punishment).

    Reply
  135. Art Deco

    But the Dems have only relatively recently jumped on the Big Business train, whereas the GOP’s been aboard since day one.
    You’d be hard put to locate a Democratic member of Congress (the late Andrew Jacobs, Jr., perhaps) who did not see himself as an advocate of the industries in his district. The major difference between the Democratic legislative caucus and the Republican caucus has been that from about 1935 forward they tended to side with unions looting businesses. While we’re at it, industry-wide master contracts (the preferred mode of proceeding by industrial unions ca. 1955) presume either cartels or oligopolies. Maybe in the era of Adolph Berle the Democratic Party as an institution had an objection to big business per se.

    Reply
  136. Art Deco

    Iowa is considering (not sure whether it’s passed or not) a law that would subject church services to scrutiny for bad attitudes toward homosexuality. Stu was wondering earlier what this is all about. Well, it’s about whether Christians (and others, but of course it’s mainly directed at Christians) will be allowed to follow their consciences in matters like this. The Democrats clearly intend that the answer will be no.
    What sort of people make up the Democratic Party as an institution?
    1. The educational apparat at all levels
    2. Lawyers
    3. The helping professions
    4. Union shills
    The first operates in a world where they have (or fancy they have) an in loco parentis function or a master-apprentice function. The 2d fancies that the world would be a better place if social interaction runs through them. The 2d and the 3d have a patron-client relation with the rest of the world (or manufacture such a relation). The 4th is institutionally antagonistic to the idea of a free agent in labor markets.
    All of which is to say that 3 of the 4 major sorts of cadres in the Democratic Party have a fundamentally condescending outlook on life and on their world.

    Reply
  137. Stu

    “All of which is to say that 3 of the 4 major sorts of cadres in the Democratic Party have a fundamentally condescending outlook on life and on their world.”
    Seems like it would be the perfect party for you, Art. Bill and Hillary will be glad to have you!

    Reply
  138. Art Deco

    Seems like it would be the perfect party for you, Art. Bill and Hillary will be glad to have you!
    You forgot to add nyah nyah at the end of your post.

    Reply
  139. Rob G

    “You’d be hard put to locate a Democratic member of Congress (the late Andrew Jacobs, Jr., perhaps) who did not see himself as an advocate of the industries in his district.”
    True, but that advocacy generally included a strong support for workers’ well-being that was often lacking in the GOP’s pro-business, anti-union approach. The notion that the Democrats were the “party of the working man” may have been exaggerated, but there was still a core of truth to it.
    “The major difference between the Democratic legislative caucus and the Republican caucus has been that from about 1935 forward they tended to side with unions looting businesses.”
    True again. But surely it’s possible to be critical of Big Business and of union overreach at the same time? I grew up in Pittsburgh, and have seen plenty of bad practice and bad faith on both sides.

    Reply
  140. Rob G

    I am personally against abortion, as I am against the death penalty, but I am not “the state”.
    I’m also against both. But your logic doesn’t hold. Surely you wouldn’t make the same argument regarding, say, slavery, or segregation? If you lived in England in the 19th century, would you be okay with the advocating of taxing Wilberforce in order to build slave ships?
    Also, there is a huge difference between the d.p. and abortion: the former involves the punishment of criminals by the state, the latter involves the death of innocents by private citizens. Now we can certainly argue that it’s a bad idea for the state to be putting criminals to death. But how can you then argue that it should be legal for private citizens to kill innocents, and what’s more, to kill them on my dime? One would think that the consistency here would entail being anti-d.p. and anti-abortion.
    In every instance that I know of liberals always decry the use of violence as a solution to problems. Why doesn’t that apply to abortion, the inherent violent of which cannot be argued?

    Reply
  141. Stu

    If you’re looking for logic I may not be your man! Like so many things, our feelings seem to be more the rule than our intellect.
    I hate to get into a discussion about abortion at all, and especially so in an online forum, because I know that the subject causes deep anguish for people and I do not take it lightly.
    I believe all life is precious. I also believe that making something illegal does not necessarily make it stop. Despite what they are doing, I do have sympathy for women who see this as their only solution. It is a terrible thing.

    Reply
  142. Mac

    “taxing Wilberforce”–if the subject weren’t so dreadful I’d think that was funny. Good twist on a familiar argument, unfortunately made very applicable by the new Dem platform.
    I have the same sympathy, Stu. It is a terrible situation for anyone to be in. Which makes me think of one vicious untruth which is constantly repeated by the pro-abortion people: that pro-lifers do nothing to help women in that situation. That’s just plain false. You can always say they could do more, but they certainly do a lot.

    Reply
  143. Janet

    Like so many things, our feelings seem to be more the rule than our intellect.
    I’m not sure who the “we” in this sentence refers to. This is a recipe for complete disaster, and unfortunately it seems to be the rule for a great deal of society today, but it cannot be the rule for Christians. You might be surprised at who I would be if I lived by my feelings.
    I think most of us have a great deal of sympathy for women who get abortions, and even more sympathy than abortion supporters because we care what is happening to their souls. I’m not just talking about whether or not they will go to heaven, but the fact that they are destroying some part of themselves. It’s like the person who drinks to forget his problems. He may forget them temporarily, but then he’s even less able to deal with them afterward.
    AMDG

    Reply
  144. Robert Gotcher

    “Which makes me think of one vicious untruth which is constantly repeated by the pro-abortion people: that pro-lifers do nothing to help women in that situation. That’s just plain false.”
    Like my daughter, who works full-time helping pregnant women in distress.

    Reply
  145. Mac

    God bless her.
    You may have noticed I didn’t use the word “lie.” In many cases people are just repeating it thoughtlessly. But there’s some lying at the root of it.

    Reply
  146. Art Deco

    I think most of us have a great deal of sympathy for women who get abortions,
    The two cases of which I have personal knowledge do not stoke my sympathy.
    If the numbers I’ve seen are true, about 2/3 of the abortions in this country are performed by 2% of the GYN-OB specialists. I rather suspect the film Juno captured the air at such abattoirs quite well.

    Reply
  147. Janet

    That’s why I said “most of us,” Art.
    I started to say that I had sympathy for those who feel like they have not choice, but then, I feel the worst for those who do, because they are in very bad shape indeed, and in great danger of being in worse.
    AMDG

    Reply
  148. Mac

    The older women who long ago hardened their hearts can be disturbing.

    Reply
  149. Janet

    Yes, they are. I don’t think, though, that they are beyond redemption.
    AMDG

    Reply
  150. Mac

    No, certainly not.

    Reply
  151. Marianne

    Kathryn Jean Lopez wrote a piece about some of the responses to the actress Patricia Heaton’s tweet praising the work of the Northwest Center, a pregnancy care resource in Washington, D.C. I’ve often wondered how Heaton, who’s associated with the group Feminists for Life, is able to still find work in Hollywood.

    Reply
  152. Mac

    I’m a little surprised that she does, actually. Has she done much since Everybody Loves Raymond?
    “If you watch the actual video, you hear from women and men who found a “save haven” in circumstances where they had “no support” otherwise. “I didn’t really have anywhere to go.” And the Northwest Center was there for them, and became a part of their lives.”
    Exactly what we were talking about earlier.

    Reply
  153. Janet

    There are several homes around the country for women who are pregnant that not only take them in when they are pregnant, but keep them with their babies for a couple of years. I wish we had one here.
    AMDG

    Reply
  154. Marianne

    Mac, Heaton’s currently in the TV sitcom The Middle about a working-class family in Indiana. It’s been on for quite a few years, I think.

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  155. Art Deco

    The older women who long ago hardened their hearts can be disturbing.
    For a number of years, NARAL was run by an Episcopal vicarette named Bea Blair. She died in 1994 and a friend sent a relation of mine her NYT obituary. Said relation vaguely recalled she’d been on the board of the local Planned Parenthood ca. 1972 on which had sat a good friend who was at the house for dinner that evening. She hands her the clipping and asks, “S____, didn’t you know her?” And, yes she had. And, yes, Bea Blair had been on the Planned Parenthood board. Imagine an exclamation in an intense Philadelphia mainline accent. “Oh, she was an icicle!”.

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  156. Art Deco

    That’s why I said “most of us,” Art.
    Janet, there’s a great deal of seedy negligence in those transactions. Much of the time, sympathy is improper.

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  157. Robert Gotcher

    “I wish we had one here.”
    Janet?
    Art, my experience and those I know who spend time in front of the abortion clinics is that the women are usually young and scared. There is a lot of pressure from the fathers of the baby and from the parents of the mother to get an abortion. Sometime even the father of the baby doesn’t want it, but is pressured into it. Sometimes it happens without the father of the baby knowing it, because of pressure from parents or teachers or even pastors.

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  158. Janet

    So I could help with one, Robert.
    Yes, that is what I have seen and heard about also.
    Art, anybody that is that hard and cold is pitiful because they are missing the only thing that matters. I don’t know how they got that way, but I know that they were created to be one with Our Lord, and that that is what He wants still. Yes, I have sympathy for them.
    I have had two friends who had abortions and I have watched the way it has eaten into them. I think in that case you have to either repent or make yourself an icicle.
    AMDG

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  159. Art Deco

    Art, my experience and those I know who spend time in front of the abortion clinics is that the women are usually young and scared.
    ‘Young and scared’ is not how I would describe a 31 year old social worker or a 39 year old clinical psychologist.

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  160. Art Deco

    I think in that case you have to either repent or make yourself an icicle.
    Bea Blair was born in 1929 and died in 1994. She had children, one of whom was born in 1956. She was subsequently divorced around about 1970. It’s exceedingly unlikely she ever had an abortion. The affection of women of that type for contraception and abortion has esoteric sources; Maggie Gallagher suggestd it was located in the same part of the brain that induces such women to hire a service to douse their lawns with Weed B Gon.
    Neither of the women I referenced were or are icicles. One of them might have been less of a scourge to the world around her if she’d been less engaged with her roiling emotions.

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  161. Louise

    “You would not want that stuff in your magazine, and you would get so sick of it that it would elicit the feeling of ‘o nooooo’ whenever you received yet another submission containing references to Lewis.”
    Thanks, Grumpy. I thought it might have been something like that.

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  162. Robert Gotcher

    “‘Young and scared’ is not how I would describe a 31 year old social worker or a 39 year old clinical psychologist.”
    I’m talking about the women who go into the abortion clinics when I and the people I know are there.

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  163. Mac

    Everybody deserves sympathy, although not always for the reasons they think they should have it.

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  164. Art Deco

    I’m talking about the women who go into the abortion clinics when I and the people I know are there.
    And I’m talking about people I know face to face and have known for decades.

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  165. Art Deco

    Everybody deserves sympathy, although not always for the reasons they think they should have it.
    No. Some people might benefit from sympathy. Whether they deserve it or not is a more involved question.

    Reply

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