Category Archives: Random Blogging

Age and Perspective

One of the (very few) benefits of growing old is that you gain perspective. Sometimes, that also leads to a modicum of wisdom, sometimes not–but it does mean that one’s frame of reference is larger and longer. To use a very common example, you can’t truly appreciate how dramatically the internet has changed society if you were born after the invention of the world wide web.

This morning’s Paul Krugman column reminded me again that those of us born in the mid-twentieth century have a vantage point to assess political change that younger folks don’t have.

My students are frequently aghast when they learn that I was a Republican for most of my life–that I even ran for Congress as a fairly conservative Republican, and won a primary. But as Krugman points out, and as I try to explain to my students, the positions that made me “conservative” in 1980 make me a pinko/socialist/liberal today. Most of my students grew up in an environment where conservative Republicans reject evolution and the science of climate change, talk a lot about fiscal prudence, but practice “borrow and spend” economic policies, and are totally without compassion for the less fortunate. The only Republicans they’ve known are those who preach limited government while insisting on their right to control women’s reproduction and their right to discriminate against gays. They are shocked to learn that I was pro-choice and pro-gay rights and still was able to win a GOP primary.

Krugman explains the change with his usual clarity, beginning with the example of the Tea Party’s “let ’em die” eruption at the recent GOP Presidential debate:

“In the past, conservatives accepted the need for a government-provided safety net on humanitarian grounds. Don’t take it from me, take it from Friedrich Hayek, the conservative intellectual hero, who specifically declared in “The Road to Serfdom” his support for “a comprehensive system of social insurance” to protect citizens against “the common hazards of life,” and singled out health in particular.

Given the agreed-upon desirability of protecting citizens against the worst, the question then became one of costs and benefits — and health care was one of those areas where even conservatives used to be willing to accept government intervention in the name of compassion, given the clear evidence that covering the uninsured would not, in fact, cost very much money. As many observers have pointed out, the Obama health care plan was largely based on past Republican plans, and is virtually identical to Mitt Romney’s health reform in Massachusetts.

Now, however, compassion is out of fashion — indeed, lack of compassion has become a matter of principle, at least among the G.O.P.’s base.

And what this means is that modern conservatism is actually a deeply radical movement, one that is hostile to the kind of society we’ve had for the past three generations — that is, a society that, acting through the government, tries to mitigate some of the “common hazards of life” through such programs as Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid.”

What Krugman fails to note, and these radicals fail to understand, is that if they actually are successful in their frantic efforts to keep government from “stealing” even a penny in taxes to be distributed (in their fevered imaginations) to the “less deserving,” they would also be impoverished. What Hayek understood–and what those who invoke his name without reading his arguments do not-is that, just as a rising tide lifts all boats, an ebbing tide lowers all boats. They remind me of a two-year-old snatching a toy from a playmate while screaming “mine, mine, mine.”

What we are seeing from this radical fringe is not a political shift. It’s a tantrum.

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A Logic Question

Tom Friedman is not a favorite columnist of mine–although I often agree with him, he often seems a bit too smug, a bit too self-satisfied with his own superior analytical skills. But today, he hit one out of the ballpark. After asking “Is It Weird Enough Yet,” he eviscerates Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry for their insistence that climate change is just a hoax, perpetrated by research scientists to generate funding. Not only does Friedman explain (in language that even Rick Perry should be able to understand) how the extreme weather we are experiencing is a consequence of global climate change, he explains what is necessary if so-called “green jobs” are to generate real economic growth.

But let’s say you still aren’t convinced.

Ever hear of “Pascal’s wager”? The philosopher Blaise Pascal was dubious about the existence of God, but he reasoned that–since one could not know for certain–the logical course of action was to act as though he did.  If it turned out that God was real, great. If not, you would have lived a good life. In other words, by acting as though you believe even if you don’t, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Global climate change invites a similar logic. If we decide to act on the advice of the 98% of scientists whose research supports the finding, and climate change is real, we’ll save the planet. If it turns out that our fears are ill-founded or exaggerated, we’ll end up doing a lot of things we need to do anyway–recycle, use energy more efficiently, etc.

When we have everything to gain by a particular course of action, and nothing to lose, refusing to take that action is more than weird. It’s self-destructive.

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Missing the “Rest of the Story”

I’m old enough to remember listening (on radio, not TV) to Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story.” For those of you too young to know what I’m talking about, the format was always the same: Harvey would start out–in his deep, resonant voice–by telling a story drawn from history or headlines. There would then be a break for a commercial, following which Harvey would come back with “the rest of the story”–what we might call today the backstory. It almost always cast the introductory narrative in a different light.

What made me think of those broadcasts was one of those “cute” emails that circle endlessly on line. A friend had forwarded it, and it WAS cute. It was in the form of an obituary, and the “deceased” was Common Sense. Most of it was unexceptional, but I found two items irritating, because they displayed how urban myths gain traction: we live in a time and place that has lost any appreciation of nuance or complexity. We no longer hear “the rest of the story.”

Two of the items provided as evidence that common sense is dead were 1) the story about the elderly woman who spilled hot coffee at McDonalds, and 2) the “fact” that prisoners are treated better than their victims.

And now for the rest of those stories.

The coffee spilled at  McDonalds  scalded the elderly woman so badly she had to be hospitalized and undergo skin grafts. She sued ONLY for reimbursement of her medical costs. McDonald’s refused. It turned out that there had been multiple previous cases against McDonalds alleging a practice of serving unreasonably and dangerously hot coffee, but no remedial action was taken. In other words, McDonalds knew their coffee was so hot that it posed a hazard, but ignored the danger. The jury awarded damages in an amount intended compensate the victim AND to send McDonald’s a clear message.

Anyone who thinks that we “coddle” prisoners–treating them better than we treat their victims-should arrange to join SPEA Criminal Justice majors in one of their periodic site visits to jails and prisons. If it is a first visit, students usually return visibly shaken. The glib assertion that prisons are like country clubs is ludicrous; it betrays the ignorance of the speaker.

Ironically, no one seemed to note the inconsistency of these two “examples.”  The McDonald’s verdict is cited for the proposition that “the system” is TOO solicitous of victims. The prisoner example is cited to show we are INSUFFICIENTLY solicitous of victims.

I don’t mean to be too harsh about what is essentially intended as a joke. But as these sorts of stories get embedded in our national mythology, we increasing lose the capacity to recognize that–as an old pol of my acquaintance used to put it–it’s a mighty thin pancake that only has one side. Or as Paul Harvey would say, that there’s usually a “rest of the story.”

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Comedy, Tragedy and 9/11

This morning’s comics were virtually all devoted to the subject of 9/11. One of my favorite strips is Crankshaft (my husband and I tend to relate to old and cranky); this morning’s had Crankshaft sitting in front of his television, listening to a blond announcer give a really lovely tribute that ended with the following sentiment:

“Our nation will survive and grow, secure in knowing that knowledge always overcomes ignorance, and an open, inquisitive mind always overcomes fear.”

I am sad today, not only for the people who died in the towers that day, not only for the brave firefighters and police officers who died or became terribly ill trying to save them, but for the death of my faith in that very belief.

In the wake of the attacks, there was an outpouring of human kindness, a recognition that however different we might be otherwise, we were all Americans. In the wake of a tragedy,we had a rare, precious window of opportunity to rise to the challenge and be a better, kinder nation. Instead, we were told to go shopping, and we did. We embraced a more pernicious invasion–an attack by our own government on our civil liberties. We took out our new fears on our Muslim neighbors (and our neighbors who looked like they might be Muslim). We invaded a country that had no connection to the attack and put its costs on the national credit card so that our generation wouldn’t need to pay for it. We shut our eyes to torture and rendition. Rather than using the tragedy to contemplate how we might improve our communities, we closed our minds, turned on each other, and gave in to ignorance and fear.

The attack was a test and we failed it.

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