Libertate Virtute (Virtue + Liberty)

February 11, 2017February 11, 2017

The Courts as Demigods

Trump nominates Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, 1/31/17

Today, nominations to the Supreme Court are the casus belli for apocalyptic struggles. It’s understandable. The courts have achieved a god-like status in our political system. A court’s decision is treated as the thundering voice of Yahweh. As demigods, their judgments intervene into every nook and cranny of creation. It was not always so.

Does our Constitution demand the supremacy of the courts? No. Has the judiciary achieved primacy in our constitutional order? Yes. The former is a hot topic of debate in academic circles. The latter is the current reality.

The primacy of the courts is the inescapable result of the way the subject of our government is taught and discussed. Take for example the ubiquitous, and misleading, definition of “judicial review”. Scholastic’s translation would be at home in any public school textbook.

“Judicial review is the power of courts to decide the validity of acts of the legislative and executive branches of government. If the courts decide that a legislative act is unconstitutional, it is nullified. The decisions of the executive and administrative agencies can also be overruled by the courts as not conforming to the law or the Constitution.”

Is it true? Maybe not. Could it be that determining the constitutionality of an act may not be an exclusive power of the courts? The logic of the primacy of a court’s decision, rising above the powers and acts of the other branches, would leave us at the mercy of an unelected cabal, appointed for life. Really, swearing an oath of loyalty to the Constitution upon taking office would essentially mean swearing an oath of loyalty to the Supreme Court, through the meanings it confers on the document.

The other branches (called departments), the executive and legislative, and states would be forced into the thickets of constitutional amendments and impeachment to reverse the ukases of this grand council. Neither of which are likely avenues for success.

Judicial supremacy as currently construed is not prudent nor in conformance with “separate but equal branches” (Federalist Papers, No. 47). The claims of the courts’ primacy is a hot mess.

History gives us a different picture of the courts’ reach. Andrew Jackson was famous for his blunt ripostes. The Supreme Court had just issued its ruling in Worcester v. Georgia wherein it invalidated a Georgia statute governing non-Native Americans on Indian lands. In a letter to John Coffee, Jackson allegedly wrote, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” Since Chief Justice John Marshall didn’t order U. S. marshals to enforce the decision, he avoided a showdown with the hot-tempered Jackson over the matter. He knew the limits of the Court’s authority and didn’t want to test them against Jackson.

Announcement for a meeting to protest the Dred Scott decision

The confrontation wouldn’t happen today because of the expectation of an immediate surrender of the president to the Court, something Lincoln would have found strange. The Dred Scott case is highly instructive in this respect. The ruling created, to put it mildly, an uproar. It led to the rise of the Republican Party, the candidacy of Lincoln, and the first Republican president.

Lincoln’s disdain for the monstrosity of the Dred Scott decision was palpable. In his first inaugural address, with Dred Scott in mind, Lincoln laid out the danger posed by the Court’s claim of supremacy on all matters constitutional.

“… the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, … the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

Once as president, he used his executive powers to put the kibosh to the thing. He ordered the issuance of passports to free blacks in direct contradiction of the Court’s finding that blacks weren’t citizens under the Constitution. There’s more. He supported and signed legislation to ban slavery in the western territories. In effect, gutting Dred Scott through executive and legislative fiat.

What would be the reaction if George W. Bush treated Roe v. Wade with as much contempt as Lincoln did Dred Scott? The wailing and gnashing of teeth from abortion absolutists would be heard for miles. The media, the partisan bloodhounds in academia, and the satraps in the Democratic Party – the usual haunts of progressivism – would be howling for scalps.

Jackson, Lincoln, the founders, and almost anyone on the scene prior to the progressives’ mangling of our Constitution, would have recognized what is referred to today as “departmentalism”. It holds that each department has the decisive authority to interpret the Constitution regarding its core constitutional functions. The concept flies in the face of the court’s pedestal placement in a high school textbook.

Bringing the concept to the present, President Trump could simply ignore the Ninth Circuit’s decision on his temporary travel ban executive order. To borrow from Jackson, he could announce, “Judges Michelle Friedland, William Canby, and Richard Clifton have made their decision; now let them enforce it.” Directing foreign affairs and national defense are, if anything, integral to the functions of a chief executive. Without these powers, he’d be as ill-equipped as a eunuch in a pagan fertility rite. What would be the point in having the office?

The potential for the courts to emasculate a president or legislature is real. What is the check on their power if the judiciary has the final say on all matters before it? Point of act: there is none!

Forget about departmentalism. The Supreme Court killed it. The judiciary has conferred upon itself supremacy. In Cooper v Aaron in 1958 – and in other near contemporaneous rulings- the Court bellowed that all governing entities must bow to their will. As legal scholar Matthew Franck wrote about Cooper,

“It is quite another thing to say, as Cooper did, that Supreme Court rulings are ‘the supreme law of the land’ owing to an exact identity with the Constitution itself, and thus binding with Article VI force on all rival interpreters of the Constitution. From this it would follow that Congress and the president, no less than the states, are bound by their oaths to accept Supreme Court decisions as binding expositions of the meaning of the Constitution.”

From here on out, the judiciary has an unlimited veto power on the other two branches.

Appointed for life, they can stray into any issue arising from the plethora of interactions in all of creation. No limit on the subject matter or their power to intervene. The situation is eerily like Rome’s shift from republic to empire. Our courts are seated like Augustus in the Roman governmental order, the wise check on an unruly Senate. In effect, Rome had an emperor. In effect, we have black-robed jurists, appointed for life, with power to command anything, as our new emperors. The only thing lacking is the hereditary principle.

Maecenas Presenting the Liberal Arts to Emperor Augustus, Tiepolo Giovanni Battista

Don’t worry, some court in the not-too-distant future will read it into the Constitution. It’s coming.

With so much power in the hands of a judge, an Armageddon erupts over every Supreme Court vacancy – if, as of yet, they haven’t given themselves the power to appoint their own successors. Our only hope is the seating of judges who will exercise self-restraint, because there are no external ones.

The juiced-up political battle over filling Supreme Court vacancies is a sign of our dysfunction. Filling a Supreme Court vacancy has much greater weight than electing a Congress or President. All sides recognize its importance, but few understand that it was never meant to be that way.

Missing in the debate is the realization that we’re now ruled by demigods. Do we really want to go the way of Rome? Is emperor worship next?

RogerG

Sources:

List of nominations to the Supreme Court of the United States, wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nominations_to_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

Judicial Review, Scholastic, https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/judicial-review/ – major publisher of curricular materials

“Does the Constitution mean only what the judges say it means?”, Timothy Sandefur, Liberty Blog, 6/30/2010, http://blog.pacificlegal.org/does-the-constitution-mean-only-what-the-judges-say-it-means/

“Epimenides paradox”, wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimenides_paradox

“Our Overly Sanctified Judiciary”, Richard Lowry, NRO, 2/10/17, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444775/donald-trump-judge-robart-tweet-was-wrong-not-threat-our-republic

“Judicial Supremacy vs. Departmentalism”, Matthew J. Franck, NRO, 3/23/15,
http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/415856/judicial-supremacy-vs-departmentalism-matthew-j-franck

“Populist Presidents and ‘Demoralized’ Judges”, Andrew C. McCarthy, NRO, 2/10/17, Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444786/donald-trump-judges-attacks-andrew-jackson-did-much-worse

“Worcester v. Georgia”, wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia

“The Federalist Papers : No. 47”, The Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed47.asp

February 8, 2017February 8, 2017

From Equal Opportunity to Fantasy

Thank God for removing barriers to women (pic 1), but why do we have to push it into the land of Orwellian delusions? It’s as if there is a concerted propaganda campaign to habituate us into accepting the falsehood of the physical and martial equality of men and women. A steady stream of TV shows (pic 2-3), movies (pics 4-5), commercials, and video games are perpetuating the lie. Have you noticed?

pic 2 – Xenia Warrior Princess – Lucille Frances “Lucy” Lawless

pic 3 – Kylie Bunbury – Pitch, Fox tv show

pic 4 – Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff in Iron Man 2

pic 5 – Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games

pic 6 – Female Marine recruits Princesse Aldrete, left, and Genisis Ordonez stand in formation following hand-to-hand combat training during boot camp Parris Island, South Carolina.

As a result, we have the absurdity of trying to create a “fair” army, not an “effective” one (pic 6). We have prepubescent, pre-teen girls taking roster spots on Little League teams (pic 7).

If biology is more than a social construct, estrogen isn’t a muscle-enhancing secretion – and the US Civil Rights Commission can’t make it otherwise.

Wait, before you brand me as a misogynist, please consider whether it’s in the interests of our girls to force them into living a lie.

RogerG

February 8, 2017February 8, 2017

Congressional Review Act: Democrats Are Howling

Thanks to Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal (http://www.wsj.com/…/a-gop-regulatory-game-changer-14854780…) for breaking the news that the GOP has a potential political nuke in its arsenal to defang the administrative state. Dems are shuddering at the thought.

It’s all about the Congressional Review Act of 1996. It will post facto confiscate Obama’s “pen and phone”. Rules, regulations, and guidance letters can be reversed by a simple congressional majority. Here’s how it works:

(1) The CRA allows for the repeal of any of the above 60 days from the publishing date or date of report … whichever is latest.
(2) Any rule published without a report could extend eligibility back to 1996, not just the most recent stuff.
(3) Once a rule is repealed, it can’t be resubmitted in a similar form again.

As USC coach John McKay once said when asked about his heavy use of O.J. Simpson, “When you have a big gun, you should use it”. Well, GOP, start firing.

RogerG

February 7, 2017February 8, 2017

How to Bias the Public Conversation: Secular Martyring and the Love of Diversity

The much talked-about divide in America of “blue” versus “red” is real. The two factions conflict at the most basic cultural level. A “blue” mind-set pervades almost everywhere by its control of and access to media, corporate America, and educational institutions. It invades and conflicts with the more traditional outlook of “red” America. You can’t get away from blue-America’s weltanschauung (worldview). It’s omnipresent.

Super Bowl LI provided no sanctuary from the onslaught. An Audi ad has a male voice worrying about the discrimination his daughter will face: “Do I tell her that despite her education, her drive, her skills, her intelligence, she will automatically be valued as less than every man she ever meets?” You can watch it here.

If the commercial was targeting the NFL fan base, the probable $10 million ad buy may have missed the mark. NFL fans are almost two-thirds male, three-quarters white, 91% age 18 or older, and almost three-quarters earning $40k or more (as of 2013). Was this advertising or sermonizing?

An alternative explanation follows the provocation principle of media marketing. Just be over-the-top in some way and you’ll get looks, clicks, and tweets. But why does outrageousness appear to overwhelmingly lean left? I suspect sermonizing to be closer to the truth.

Pontificating wasn’t limited to a compulsive anguish over alleged gender inequities. If the audience wasn’t pummeled with the usual pickups and beer, multiculturalism and its cousin “diversity” were thrust at viewers. Airbnb, a marketer of vacation properties, seemed more intent on establishing its multicultural bonafides than renting a Maui condo.

Coca-cola trotted out a 2014 Super Bowl commercial with the same message. Beauty and goodness are glued to racial and ethnic diversity, not to individual goodness, in these things. To be in the land of the righteous, “difference” as part of group identity is the sanctifying grace. Group “difference” alone is all that matters. It stops there.

Once ethnic and racial diversity is conferred with the halo of goodness, where is a person to stand on the key “diversity” issue of immigration? Quite frankly, opposition to open borders must place you somewhere between purgatory and hell.

An all-in for diversity creates a mind prejudiced against accepting the jarring realities related to “diversity”. Harvard’s Robert Putnam stumbled into a hornets’ nest in 2007 when he uncovered the downside. His research discovered a decline in civic engagement and social capital in diverse communities. People don’t care much about each other and they withdraw into the isolation of their homes. He writes, “People living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’ — that is, to pull in like a turtle.”

Maybe the withdrawal “like a turtle” could have something to do with the ethnic youth gangs. Nortenos and Surenos gang alliances, MS-13, etc., plague many of the poorer ethnic neighborhoods.

Granted, gangs have been evident throughout U.S. history in all slices of the poorer demographic pie.

Camorra mob, NYC – Navy St. Gang – Sicilian, Italian immigrant

Purple Gang, Detroit – Jewish immigrant gang

They are a notable feature of ethnic districts, much replenished with new arrivals during periods of high immigration. It may be a result of a social anomie, an uprooted people without the civic controls of the old country. Still, the prospect of declining public morality is threatening to any family having to live with it. Perhaps, “hunkering down” and separating oneself from the immediate surroundings is an understandable reaction.

My guess is that ethnically and racially diverse neighborhoods have a better chance if residents have common values and language, and a common middle class educational, income, and occupational orientation. That would mean some sense of assimilation. “Assimilation”, though, is blasphemy in the church of diversity.

Many of the Super Bowl commercials were sermons from the diversity seminary. More than that, they are a window into the modern corporate soul. Along with the appropriate dress and manners in the corporate boardroom, part of the uniform includes a blue-America ethos.

The secular martyring of girls and immigrants and the worship of diversity are elements of the dogma. Rob Schwartz, chief executive of the marketing firm of TBWA\Chiat\Day New York (whose clients include McDonald’s, Michelin, GoDaddy, Nissan) at halftime proclaimed, “If there’s anything that’s screaming out here, it’s diversity. People are saying, ‘Is this trolling Trump?’ I don’t think it’s trolling. It’s a big smack in the face of ‘dude, this is America.”

Corporate mission statements are bland affirmations of Schwartz’s enthusiastic declaration. “Diversity” is a mantra in Coca-cola’s self-professed mission: “The Coca-Cola Company’s global diversity mission is to mirror the rich diversity of the marketplace we serve and be recognized for our leadership in Diversity, Inclusion and Fairness in all aspects of our business …. Diversity is at the heart of our business.”

Apple proudly announces its fealty at the “diversity” altar. It’s integral to their employee relations and hiring:

“We see diversity as everything that makes an employee who they are. We foster a diverse culture that’s inclusive of disability, religious belief, sexual orientation, and service to country …. Creating an inclusive culture takes both commitment and action. We’re helping employees identify and address unconscious racial and gender bias. We’re cultivating diverse leadership and tech talent. We’re continuing our advocacy for LGBTQ equality, investing in resources for Veterans and service members and their families, and exploring new ways to support employees with disabilities.”

Apple’s corporate scripture is a veritable laundry list of the fashionable victims’ groups.

Seattle-based Starbucks is similarly hitched to the “diversity” train. Under the mission statement heading “Creating A Culture of Belonging, Inclusion and Diversity” we find the following bullet points,

“At the heart of our business, we seek to inspire and nurture the human spirit – understanding that each person brings a distinct life experience to the table. Our partners are diverse not only in gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, religion and age, but also in cultural backgrounds, life experiences, thoughts and ideas.”

“Embracing diversity only enhances our work culture, it also drives our business success. It is the inclusion of these diverse experiences and perspectives that create a culture of empowerment, one that fosters innovation, economic growth and new ideas.”

A Google search would uncover more of the stuff. Corporate America is immersed in the doctrines of secular martyring and diversity. And so are the kiddies. The education blob is wallowing in it as much as any corporate HR department. Nothing like spreading the faith to the next generation of soon-to-be activists.

“Diversity” has a prominent place in the curricular standards for the youngest of the blob’s clients, kindergartners. Under California’s “Historical and Cultural Context” of the “Visual Arts Content Standards” for kindergarten, the state pays homage to “diversity” in the section titled “Understanding the Historical Contributions and Cultural Dimensions of the Visual Arts”:

“Students analyze the role and development of the visual arts in past and present cultures throughout the world, noting human diversity as it relates to the visual arts and artists.”

The “diversity” incantation is littered throughout your public school protocols. I’ve got nearly 30 years of exposure to the hogwash as a public school teacher at the secondary and community college levels.

How does this secular doctrine enter the state’s mandates for teaching the kids? The stuff percolates from the college ed departments, and they train the teachers and administrators. A sample of such guidance is enlightening.

Lily Wong Fillmore of UC Berkeley, like many of her professional kin in college ed departments, lays out her view of the situation in her study, “The Common Core State Standards & Student Diversity Making them work for everyone !” . Beware, teachers, you’re part of the problem in her estimation. Under the heading “But is diversity the problem?”, she writes,

“The problem has never been that the kids, whatever their background, couldn’t handle the rigors of the school’s curriculum––they could, and would have––the problem has been that educators have doubted that all of their students are prepared or motivated to do the work the curriculum required.”

You see, cutting to the chase, according to Fillmore, teachers and others are not sufficiently devoted to the “diversity” mantra. More likely, teachers face the realities that Ms. Fillmore pretends doesn’t exist. Ms. Fillmore, et al, can’t accept the uncomfortable possibility that “diversity” puts intense stress on public institutions. But don’t mention that, and don’t dare bring into question the false god of “diversity”.

Despite the pressures on the schools, the ed blob’s satellites fully embrace the same party line. The ASCD (the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development), one of the blob’s guidance and lobbying arms, is a stickler for “diversity”. In its “Introduction: Teaching in Diverse, Standards-Based Classrooms”, “diversity” is approvingly referred to as a “mosaic”.

“Factors such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, and language also contribute to the classroom mosaic and may influence the cultural characteristics that students bring.”

And what do the ASCD’s “experts” want to do about it? “Diversity”, the abstraction, is always-and-forevermore good and the young ‘uns must be made to accept it. Littered throughout the “Teaching in Diverse …” document is fetishization of “diversity”. As in,

“Cultural diversity gives students a chance to learn about different languages, customs, and worldviews.”

“Through everyday activities in diverse school settings, students are challenged to find ways of interacting effectively with students who are culturally different. In so doing, they develop important skills in cross-cultural competence.”

The mind-set is buried in the psyche from a person’s earliest days all the way through adulthood. The problem isn’t with “diversity” as such. It’s the worship of “diversity”. The thing absorbs so much of the attention of the school that other necessities begin to recede, like discipline. In fact, “diversity” may be encouraging behavioral problems by giving a green light to grievance, real or imagined. The result can be unsafe schools. Take a look.

What is needed is to replace the overbearing “diversity” dogma with simple human kindness and respect. Yet, simple kindness isn’t nearly as useful in preparing young minds if your goal is the student taking one side in controversial issues … like immigration. C.S. Lewis wrote about the mind-forming potential of a biased curriculum in Abolition of Man.

“It is not a theory they put into his [the student] mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all. The authors themselves, I suspect, hardly know what they are doing to the boy, and he cannot know what is being done to him.”

After years of “diversity” sermonizing, we have a generation much less likely to understand the counter argument to broad and nearly unfettered immigration. Not being able to understand the argument makes it easier to dismiss as mere bigotry. However, the real bigotry is a prejudice against other and unfamiliar arguments. This bigotry was implanted by a tendentious abstraction from the beginning.

Everywhere we look, we find the tentacles of the exhortation to treat girls and immigrants as secular martyrs. Alongside, the drumbeat of “diversity” plants multiculturalism as an unalloyed good. Counterfactual realities are waved aside as nonexistent. From Super Bowl commercials to the corporate boardroom to the classroom, it’s the same mind-numbing message. It’s as if we are expected to ignore the daily realities that brush up against us on the street and in our classrooms.

Chico Marx in Duck Soup could very well be the spokesman for the blue-America congregation when he said, “Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

RogerG

Sources:

“Escapism Reigns in Super Bowl Commercials, but Politics Proves Inescapable”, Sapna Maheshwari, NYT, 2/5/17, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/05/business/super-bowl-commercials-politics.html?_r=0

“27 JAN 2013 SPORTS FAN DEMOGRAPHICS”, Danielle Eby, openddorse, http://opendorse.com/blog/2013-sports-fan-demographics/

“Challenge for Super Bowl Commercials: Not Taking Sides, Politically”, Sapna Maheshwari, NYT, 2/2/17, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/business/media/super-bowl-advertising-fox-border-wall.html

“The Common Core State Standards & Student Diversity Making them work for everyone !” Lily Wong Fillmore, University of California at Berkeley, The Common Core State Standards & Student Diversity Making them work for everyone !”

California, Kindergarten: Visual and Performing Arts: Visual Arts Content Standards, http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/vakindergarten.asp

Coca-cola website, http://www.coca-colacompany.com/our-company/diversity

Apple website, http://www.apple.com/diversity/

Starbucks website, https://www.starbucks.com/responsibility/community/diversity-and-inclusion

ASCD, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/109011/chapters/Introduction@_Teaching_in_Diverse,_Standards-Based_Classrooms.aspx

“The downside of diversity: A Harvard political scientist finds that diversity hurts civic life. What happens when a liberal scholar unearths an inconvenient truth?”, Michael Jonas, 8/5/2007, Boston Globe, http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/

February 2, 2017February 3, 2017

Of All People, Why is DeVos Targeted?

Betsy DeVos has run into a particularly energized buzzsaw. Why? Of all the possible flash-points, the Education Department isn’t considered one of the plumb appointments in a president’s cabinet. Could Roxanne Bland’s witticism be the answer? Could be, but wisecracks may be more wit than wisdom. Yet, in the case of DeVos, it’s a starting point.

Yesterday, 2/1/2017, it was announced that two Republican senators would oppose the DeVos nomination – Maine’s Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

What accounts for the defection into the arms of all 11 Democrats on the Senate’s Heath, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee? These two Republicans have an unusually cozy relationship with the two monolithic teacher unions in the country, the NEA and AFT.

To begin with, the DeVos resume’ isn’t one to warm the heart of the NEA’s Lily Garcia or Randi Weingarten of the AFT. These unions represent government employees – government employed teachers – not students, their parents, or education in general. The word “choice” is sacrosanct in regards to abortion in these precincts, but watch the needle fly off the chart when it’s connected to “school”.

The hive flies into action with the mere mention of “school choice”.

DeVos’s claim to fame is vouchers and charter schools, the things that’ll give options to mom and dad but panic attacks to the union leadership. In 1993, along with her husband, she gave contributions to Michigan lawmakers to pass the state’s charter school law. In 2000, they pushed the Michigan Voucher Initiative but failed. Smarting from the loss, they were instrumental in forming the American Federation for Children, a PAC to support school choice candidates. It’s success is admirable with a 121-60 winning record.

But then Trump nominated her to head the Education Department – considered by the unions as part of their fiefdom – and they went into spasms.

Randi Weingarten announced, “The president-elect, in his selection of Betsy DeVos, has chosen the most ideological, anti-public education nominee put forward since President Carter created a Cabinet-level Department of Education.”

Protests were engineered in the usual haunts, like this one in Oakland.

Protesters applaud at a noon rally at the The Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2017. Nearly 1,000 people denounced the appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education after a Senate committee advanced her nomination. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

The union reaction wasn’t limited to ginning up the membership. They have allies in the Senate, on both sides of the aisle. We expect the Democrats to be in lock step for the obvious reasons. The stinky money trail, though, becomes more conspicuous when we follow it into the Republican caucus.

It turns out that both Collins and Murkowski have been on the “take” with the unions for at least the last few elections cycles. In 2002 and ’08, Collins received contributions from the NEA along with a “straight A” grade. The same for Murkowski, only more. She got $23,500 in ’02 and ’08; in 2016, an additional $10,000. Surprise, surprise, they both were blessed with endorsement for 2010 and 2016.

At first, the public hears of two Republicans breaking ranks. A person might be forgiven for thinking it to be a matter of principle over blind loyalty. Think again.

I wonder what the voters of red-state Alaska will think once they learn that one of their Senators is in the corral of one of the worst partisans of “blue” America.

RogerG

Sources:

“GOP Defectors Have Received Thousands From Teachers Union: Collins, Murkowski will vote no on DeVos”, Bill McMorris, Washington Free Beacon, 2/1/17, http://freebeacon.com/politics/gop-defectors-received-thousands-teachers-union/

“What you should know about Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education secretary pick — and what her choice might tell us about his plans”, Philissa Cramer, Chalkbeat, 11/22/16, http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2016/11/22/what-a-betsy-devos-appointment-would-tell-us-about-donald-trumps-education-plans/

“5 Things to Know About Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Pick for Education Secretary”, Emily Deruy, The Atlantic, 11/23/16, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/11/5-things-to-know-about-betsy-devos-trumps-pick-for-education-secretary/508661/

“AFT President Randi Weingarten on Nomination of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education”, AFT press release, 11/23/16 – See more at: http://www.aft.org/press-release/aft-president-randi-weingarten-nomination-betsy-devos-secretary-education#sthash.U3qmAefg.dpuf

“Bay Area teachers band together to oppose DeVos, Trump’s ed secretary nominee”, East bay Times, 1/31/17, http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/01/31/bay-area-teachers-band-together-to-oppose-devos-trumps-ed-secretary-nominee/

January 31, 2017January 31, 2017

Sally Yates, join your mentor in happy retirement.

The Constitution deposits all “executive” authority in the president – not “legislative”, nor “judicial”, just “executive”. Sally, “execute” means to carry out and enforce the law. You, as an appointee, are an agent of the president. Your job is to assist the president, not be the president.

The man that put you in your position is no longer president. He’s a private citizen with a golf bag. Join him on the links.

Sally, your “conscience” is really a bunch of opinions. The guy with your opinions isn’t around. Another guy with different opinions was elected. For peace of mind, please, go join the howler monkeys in the lefty firmament. You’ll be happier … and so will the rest of us.

RogerG

January 31, 2017January 31, 2017

Progressive Enclaves at War with the Rest of America

While reading the December 20, 2016 issue of Forbes, I ran into an article, “The Just 100: America’s Best Corporate Citizens”. It extolled certain companies in a variety of industries for their humane and environmentalist policies.

Further into the issue was a small piece titled, “Giving Big to Change the World”. It identified 10 large donations that go big to “Change the World”. Michael Bloomberg’s $30 million grant to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, the Donald Graham and William and Karen Ackman’s $50 million contribution to TheDream.US for scholarships to the undocumented, and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation’s handout to The ClimateWorks Foundation to mold a “low-carbon society” are but a few examples.

Both pieces shared space with an article on Silicon Valley’s tech dynamo NIVIDIA and one of its founders, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang. Not uncommon for the Valley’s success stories, the author, Aaron Tilley, celebrated the lavish employee perks and environmentalism that permeates the corporate culture.

((Huang and NIVIDIA)

What’s the point? Colossal corporate America, big philanthropy, and Silicon Valley inhabit “blue” America. By “blue”, I mean bastions of progressivism, modern liberalism, and the Left. The terms are practically synonymous. And “blue” America is toxic to the rest of the country, called “red” America.

Today’s progressivism encompasses a fixation on sexual/melanin-count/ethnic diversity and solipsism (the relativistic libertine individual as the center of all things). It also incorporates environmentalism. Environmentalism isn’t science. It’s ideology. It is a cluster of beliefs at home with progressivism.

People sometimes confuse environmentalism with science, and try to bleach environmentalism of its “ism”. The two are distinct things. Science can depict the heat-trapping properties of CO2. It can’t predetermine policy choices requiring more than “heat-trapping” as a consideration. Filling the gap from fact to decision is environmentalism’s ideological bias to socially engineer a particular definition of the better person and society. The alleged betterment aligns with the prejudices of “blue” America to the detriment of “red” America.

The consequences are a purging of progressives in “red” America as “blue” America’s policy preferences threaten to destroy the livelihoods of many in “red” America. The 2016 election was a clash of the two Americas.

A group of coal miners wave signs for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as they wait for a rally in Charleston, W.Va., Thursday, May 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

In Salena Zito’s piece in the Washington Examiner (1/29/17), “The Democrats’ diversity challenge”, the Democrats are facing near extinction in “red” America. As Kevin, a longtime Johnstown, Pa., Democrat and Hillary voter, said,

“There is no one who looks like me in the party anymore. Every single thing that is part of my weekly routine is constantly under attack by my own party. I am a gun owner, I am pro-life and I work in the energy sector. That pretty much makes me an enemy of my own party.”

The party is in the process of cannibalizing the more moderate Blue Dogs in its caucus. The faction has shrunk from 44 in 2006 to the 17 of today. The handwriting for the Dogs appeared on the wall in 2006. Joe Lieberman (D) of Connecticut, a classic Blue Dog, lost the party primary to the leftist Ned Lamont. Lieberman won the general running as an independent. Today, the party is the result of the cross-breeding of the Sierra Club, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. There’s no room for the pro-lifer … or the coal miner.

The party is reflexively Left and increasingly relegated to urban islands, college towns, and the coasts. The collapse of the party in the vast region between the West’s Coast and Cascade Ranges and the western edges of Atlantic coastal plain is recounted in the loss of statehouses, governorships, and federal officeholders in this vast area not normally seen as haunts for the beautiful and trendy people.

The denizens of “blue” America are surprised that a West Virginia coal miner might find the infatuation with low carbon as a threat to the family income. Amazingly, the very thing that the trendy lefties are trying to destroy, coal, along with thousands of livelihoods, may end up rescuing states like California from the self-inflicted blackouts that will strangle those Santa Clara server farms.

You see, that “low-carbon” future may mean a chaotic energy one. “Sustainable” energy really means “variable” energy. Solar and wind don’t track household use. Solar peeks during the day while the ac continues whirring away at night. And, of course, the wind is the wind.

Sorry, there’s no way to store any surplus generated during the day or when the wind is howling. You use or lose it.

To keep energy flowing in the grid at all times during peaks and when lunar radiance has replaced solar, you need the backstop of nuclear, fossil fuels, hydro, and geothermal. But the phobia of climate change, so much in vogue in the blue bubbles, has resulted in a breakdown of the backstop. Blue states like California will feel the pinch.

Natural gas is the backstop. It is preferable not only because it’s cheaper. It’s because the alternatives have been executed (coal), fallen into obsolescence (nuclear), and nature doesn’t cooperate with droughts (hydro) and subsurface volcanism (geothermal).

For the lefty tekkies, coal is evil coal. A coal company exec will be a lonely person in the Santa Clara social circuit. Those coal-fired plants in the blue fiefdoms have long since gone the way of the dodo bird. Obama’s people were trying to exterminate the things nationwide before the Trump train disrupted the endeavor.

That leaves natural gas. Fracking – another thing despised by the activists – has made it cheap, for now. Prices are expected to rise this year. It is transported by pipeline, another thing on the activist hit list.

Storage is limited in a few central locations. If anything should happen to those places, especially in states handcuffed to windmills and solar panels, well, buy a generator, get a gun for protection (do this at least 2 weeks before things go dark), and barricade yourself in your home.

California was warned by FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) of blackouts last year. In 2005, LA’s Aliso Canyon gas storage facility was closed due to a leak. It has only partially reopened. The nearby La Paloma plant will close soon as the direct fallout of the state’s climate change policies. The backstop in Southern California is beginning to be dismantled.

New York, and much of the northeast, has similarly tacked left. Tony Clark, ex-FERC commissioner, said, “The Northeastern states are notorious for policies that de-industrialize their economies. They are nothing if not consistent.” If you lack a graduate degree in computer science, a resume’ chock-a-block full of tekkie employment, and sufficient personal wealth to rise above the over-inflated market, make a mad dash away from the coasts. Rescue yourself from “blue” lunacies.

When the lights start going out, will that sober up Angelinos and those in Manhattan penthouses to a greater appreciation of coal?

“Red” America understands that “blue” America is trying to impose a fantasy. If “blue” America is granted the power to do it, “red” America loses its livelihoods and “blue” America gets to experience “Escape from New York”. Lose, lose. Eh?

2016 was the year red said “no” to blue.

RogerG

Sources:

Forbes, 12/20/16

“The Democrats’ diversity challenge”, Salena Zito, Washington Examiner, 1/29/17, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-democrats-diversity-challenge/article/2613114

“Coal to the rescue”, John Siciliano, Washington Examiner, 1/30/17, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/coal-to-the-rescue/article/2613181

January 30, 2017January 31, 2017

Playing Gotcha While Ignoring the Integrity of the Vote

What conceivable reason could a person give for opposing a requirement for a valid ID before voting? Could it be that ID’s “suppress” and “disenfranchise” voters? Surely, some people have good reason for not having a valid ID at the time of voting. Can the circumstance be handled without obstructing ID laws? Certainly. Provisional ballots can be issued till identification is verified. It’s already being done.

Is getting an ID so onerous that it places an undue burden on the disadvantaged? Well, if it is, banks and stores are imposing a “disparate impact” on the needy. Where was Obama’s DOJ in enforcing “equal access” to check-cashing and retail services?

Obama’s DOJ is nowhere to be seen around check-cashing counters and cash registers. Getting an ID is easy. It takes some time and a little effort. Instead, the Obama’s DOJ warriors targeted efforts at purging voter rolls of invalid registrants, while denying access to the fed’s database. They didn’t hesitate hauling state officials before the federal bar for having the same condition to vote as for boarding a plane, entering a federal courthouse, and to buy booze.

Much of the media is complicit in the charade. Instead of a balanced treatment of the issue, we get a drawn out game of gotcha. Trump tweets something and many in the media rush to the “fact-checking” websites to contradict him.

They get hung up on the factoid. Proving Trump wrong is more important than the core issue. The real issue isn’t the accurate number of illegal votes, whether its 3 million, 5 million, or 346. The real contest is between maximizing voter turnout at all costs and ensuring the integrity of the vote. The two positions are at odds.

The zeal to contradict Trump is an adjunct of the zeal to show vote fraud is rare. Since it is said to be rare, measures meant to prevent it are assumed to be grounded in racial animus, xenophobia, white privilege, and the rest of the “Occupy” check list. Thus, full speed ahead to making it easier to vote than to buy toilet paper.

Did it ever occur to anyone that the alleged rarity of a crime is, quite frankly, irrelevant to the need to prevent it? For example, take murder. Murder is certainly rare in comparison to all crimes. It’s statistically infinitesimal. Following the logic of the no-ID crowd, efforts to define the act and to forestall its occurrence must be a waste of time.

Is it a wild analogy? Think again. Infinitesimal percentages are concocted by comparing a small number of occurrences with a much larger pool of instances. Applying the math to the case of voter fraud, the number of discovered occurrences is infinitesimal to the large pool of 125 million votes.

The reasoning for laws about voter fraud is the same as for laws about murder. The laws aren’t dependent on the frequency of their occurrence. The laws exist because the acts occur, unless the no-ID claque is asserting vote fraud is at absolute “0” (absolute zero is 0 Kelvin or -459F). Now that’s absolutism … and silly.

It’s safe to say that vote fraud is significantly above absolute “0”. The need to buttress the already shaky proposition of the no-vote-fraud/no-ID-laws clamor leads to the flailing about for other sources of support. Mentioning Colin Powell or court decisions is a common and worn out tactic. Neither one has much validity.

Both are examples of the fallacious exercise of argumentum ad verecundiam (argument from authority). People throw out names or opinions as if these are dispositive. They aren’t. Without more substance, their use will fill up space in a column but add nothing to the argument.

The practice of citing court opinions is particularly weak. Court opinions on issues like voter ID laws range all over the issue landscape. One reason for the variance is the tactic of court-shopping by activists. People seek judges and courts with a history of a particular bias. Yep, bias exists in the judiciary. Just because a judge has spoken, don’t assume God has. Search long enough and you’ll find another jurist to contradict somebody.

Facetious arguments such as these only cloud an already hazy situation. The multiplicity of geographical actors in the system is astounding. Voting occurs in millions of homes through mail-in ballots, in over 110,000 polling places (a guesstimate) across the country, all managed by the 50 separate states. The interactions of this crazy quilt would overwhelm the skills of the X-Men. It’s a fertile environment for gaffes, waste, and abuse.

Some coordination among some of the states to help clean up their voter lists has occurred with the Electronic Registration Information Center of 21 states and the 30 states belonging to the Interstate Crosscheck Program sponsored by the Kansas Secretary of State. The country’s most populous state, California, doesn’t appear to belong to either club.

In the headlong rush to rock the vote, California has left a few zombies on the voter rolls. Dead people vote. One reporter for the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles found 265 dead voters, with 215 in LA County alone. 146 were Democrats. On person who went cold in 2003 nonetheless voted in ’04, ’05, ’06, ’08, and ’10. Another commuter from the grave entered it in 2004 but later roamed out to vote in ’08, ’10, ’12, ’14. 32 of the walking dead voted in 8 elections apiece.

In fact, California was the last state to come into compliance with the Help America Vote Act of 2002. It took 14 years and the final weeks before the 2016 general election for the state to make itself legal, after it rushed into online registration up to 15 days before the election, and the wave of 600,000 new registrants in the weeks before the June primary.

They don’t even record IP addresses so one enterprising soul with a laptop hanging out at Disneyland’s Star Tour could register the crowd in the waiting line. Pardon me but I’m skeptical about something called “verification”.

Compounding the difficulties is the campaign to expand the electorate into the margins of the politically casual and ignorant.

It means making voting as easy as turning on the tv set. It means voting at home and by mail. Of course, the mail-in vote puts the kibosh to the secret ballot. Plural ballots sent to the same address presents the delightful opportunity of one person filling out everyone’s ballot. Who knows what takes place at the kitchen table.

For some states like California, going to the DMV to register your car, or obtain or renew a driver’s license, will nearly lock you into the voter list. If a person misses the citizen/non-citizen section on the form, the state will seek you out for an answer. If you refuse one, they’ll register you anyway.

If you explicitly checked “no”, the state will hunt you down with a letter to verify the “no” answer. Apparently, what part of “no” don’t they understand?

What about that driver’s license, the ticket to all things requiring ID, as in registering to vote? States like California issue them to illegal non-citizens. Illegals get one nearly indistinguishable from a 4th generation native.

Except for a notation in the upper right hand corner and on the back, the thing is exactly like my sons. How this avoids a violation of the Real ID Act, Title II, Section 202 – “uses a unique design or color indicator to alert Federal agency and other law enforcement personnel ” – is beyond my understanding. I can only hope the small print catches the attention of the eagle eyes of the counter clerk. Good luck.

But then again, you don’t need it to vote in a state life California. In that zoo, it’s illegal to even ask for the thing at the polling place. No better word describes elections in many places in America than “slipshod”. How did it get this bad?

Well, if your goal is to maximize turnout, you cut corners on vote integrity. You’re willing to accept some cancellation of legal votes by illegal ones in the rush to get a ballot into everyone’s hands. Disparagement of the desire to protect legal ones from cancellation is part of the propaganda onslaught that we’re experiencing today.

The absurdity of criminalizing a request for an ID, obstructing access to federal lists that might expose illegals on the voter rolls, pushing for avenues of voting that make a hash out of the secret ballot, and the embrace of the fetish of corralling the inattentive and uninterested into the electorate makes a mockery of our republic.

It raises an interesting question: Why vote? Devoting the time and effort to keep up on things will prove to be no asset once your ballot joins those others.

RogerG

January 25, 2017January 25, 2017

Healthcare Myth-making: Scandinavian Medicine and The Shell Game

It’s amazing. Did you know that there are adults who actually believe in the prosperity-generating potential of the robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul principle of governance? It’s like the “shell game”. If the peanut under the shell represents wealth, then shuffling it about through taxing schemes will magically produce more peanuts. Right?

Wrong, if one stays clear of the hallucinogenics and other intoxicants, and has the mental maturity beyond a preteen. Clinging to the illusion isn’t much different than insisting on the corporeal existence of Santa Claus.

The shyster logic isn’t understood to be shyster logic among those “feeling the Bern” and within the Democratic Party hive. It’s holy scripture. Santa Claus is real to them. Translation: Socialism is great! It’s no accident that the subjects in the 2 previous sentences begin with “S”.

No better example of the phenomena can be found than the unbridled faith in “socialized medicine”, Obamacare, “single payer”, the “public option”, and similar disfigurements of the language.

Of course, while appealing to the feeble-minded, the idea of a fat dude falling down a chimney delivering “free” goodies without any concept of cost may not be so convincing to the sober-minded. So, the equivalent of the North Pole must be created. For health care, and all things tax-and-spend, it’s Sweden or, more generally, Scandinavia … which also has the added advantage of being not too far from the North Pole.

But as in all dreams, one must awaken. Bernie Sanders invoking Sweden/Scandinavia may be more Santa Claus than the reality of mom and dad running up the credit card debt for the goodies placed under the tree. His image of Scandinavia is sheer fantasy.

The case of Robert Nielsen in Denmark, above, is instructive. He proudly boasts that he’s been on Danish welfare since 2001. He owns his own co-op apartment and eschews work. (4) This rise of dependency has shocked many Danes. It’s a problem spanning many Scandinavian countries.

The “Carina” (a psuedonym) story also outraged many Danes. She, 36 and a single mother, has been on welfare since age 16, currently receiving $2,700 a month. Many Danes are thinking the formerly unthinkable – welfare reform.

Karen Haekkerup, the minister of social affairs and integration, in 2013 exclaimed,

“In the past, people never asked for help unless they needed it. My grandmother was offered a pension and she was offended. She did not need it. But now people do not have that mentality. They think of these benefits as their rights. The rights have just expanded and expanded. And it has brought us a good quality of life. But now we need to go back to the rights and the duties. We all have to contribute.”(4)

There are more problems than the refusal to wean from the government teat. Sweden is forced to grapple with difficulties associated with a bountiful healthcare teat. One unavoidable problem arises from the necessity of implementing the “California DMV” model of provisioning government medical care. You’ll be assigned a client ID number, a priority number, take a seat and … wait. It’s how government naturally responds when confronted with millions of users for all things advertised as “free”.

(LA DMV office, 2014)

In Sweden, patients, like cattle, are herded into monolithic facilities like the one below. Everyone is assigned a district (landsting) and must utilize it’s hospital. In many cases, there ‘s only one per landsting.(1)

(Sodersjukhuset, Stockholm hospital, 2014, by Arild Vagen)

Since “free” outperforms price, public (government) eviscerates private care. The remaining private medical operations are heavily regulated by the state. They might as well be “public”. (1)

Another of the ways that the DMV-style of healthcare adapts to the crowd seeking “free” is the ranking of patients. Government prioritizes according to “future taxpayer value” and similar numbers-driven analytics. Woe be to you if you’re old and need a procedure normally assigned to the aged.(1)

Government behavior will produce a sinking sensation when one hears “wait times”. Emergency room wait times are 5-7 hours during the 9-5 slot and only Monday through Friday. Beware: Don’t get sick or injured after-hours and on weekends. Furthermore, sickness and injuries should be avoided during the public employee vacation season of June to August.(1)

“Wait times” for a general practitioner are typically a month. It’s worse for specialists. If your son is experiencing gender-identity difficulties, the surrender to surgery may have already occurred in the 18 months before seeing a child psychiatrist.(2)

Klaus Bernpainter, Swedish healthcare expert, captures the situation in an anecdote.

“When I moved to the U.S., our family health insurance took three months to kick in. One of my family members broke a leg in this period. We found a ‘five-minute clinic’ half an hour away, had the leg X-rayed, straightened and casted, with no waiting time — all for $200 cash. That kind of service is non-existent in Sweden.”(1)

Of course, the whole thing is executed by functionaries with the caring and affection of a protected, tenured DMV counter clerk.(1)

(Still from the 1962 film adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial.)

If you can’t apply the word “panacea” to Scandinavian healthcare, what about Scandinavian education? Well, their education Borg could be confused with our own. Sweden’s math and reading scores, according to OECD numbers, are more dismal than ours. For all of Scandinavia, they’re treading water with us.(5)

Much of the freebie government stuff has become a problem for them, and many in the upper northern latitudes know it. Yet, many Americans trek on up to places like Copenhagen and Stockholm and return with sugar plums dancing in their heads. Many natives have a different point of view. They notice the decline, and the depressing realization that they’re living off the fumes of the past.

Freebie-Scandinavia didn’t always exist. For example, Sweden was one of the poorest countries in Europe, hence all the 19th-century immigration to places like Minnesota and a football team named after them. Starting in 1870, an economic renaissance began. Free-market reforms on taxes, tariffs, and property rights produced a surge of prosperity. Sweden experienced the highest GDP growth in the industrial world from 1870-1936.(3)

Then, something happened on the way to the future. Forgetting the legacy in the late 60s and 70s, they embarked on an escalator of soaring taxes, spending, and welfare rolls, with the attendant rise in crime, drug addiction, welfare dependency, and red tape. In 1976, Time Magazine summarized what many Norse were thinking, “Growing numbers are plagued by a persistent, gnawing question: Is their Utopia going sour?”(3) Indeed.

And those “feeling the Bern” and the pandering, identity-politicians of the Democratic Party want us to jump on board the sour-utopia train. Much of the Trumpophobia is rooted in the fantasy of Scandinaviophilia.

We’d be much better served by keeping in mind Friedman’s old maxim TINSTAAFL – There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. The fact is, politicians can’t bring on the eschaton and its paradise.

RogerG

Sources:

(1) “The Truth About SwedenCare”, Klaus Bernpaintner, The Mises Institute, 7/10/2013, https://mises.org/library/truth-about-swedencare

(2) “Sweden’s healthcare is an embarrassment”, The Local, se, Johan Hjertqvist is President of Health Consumer Powerhouse, a Swedish-based organization which compares healthcare systems around the world (This is an abridged version of an article originally published in Swedish bySvenska Dagbladet.), http://www.thelocal.se/20150127/swedens-health-care-is-a-shame-to-the-country

(3) “No, Bernie Sanders, Scandinavia is not a socialist utopia”, Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, 10/15/2015,https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/10/15/bernie-sanders-scandinavia-not-socialist-utopia/lUk9N7dZotJRbvn8PosoIN/story.html

(4) “Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault”, Suzanne Daley, NYT, 4/20/13, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/world/europe/danes-rethink-a-welfare-state-ample-to-a-fault.html

(5) “Scandinavia Isn’t a Socialist Paradise: If you’re looking for a prosperous European country to emulate, don’t look to the high-tax social democracies of Scandinavia. Check out Switzerland, instead. ”, Kelly McDonald, The Federalist, 8/11/15, http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/11/scandinavia-isnt-a-socialist-paradise/

(6) “The strange death of social-democratic Sweden”, The Economist, 9/16/10, http://www.economist.com/node/17039151

January 21, 2017January 22, 2017

The Distressed Working Class and the 2016 Election

Understanding the 2016 election requires something more involved than a 140-character tweet or an abbreviated Facebook post. Much has been written about the white working class in the lead up and aftermath to the Trump victory. The video is an AEI panel discussion with J.D. Vance and Charles Murray on the topic from October of 2016. First, watch the conversation and then read the essay below it.

Our politics seems increasingly disjointed as many see the electorate as disparate victims’ groups. Some call it “identity politics”. A semi-official status as “victim” normally follows an intense period of political activism. The process was evident for unionized workers, all sorts of hyphenated Americans, and gays (now to be added to the “hyphenated” category). Did the 2016 election cycle insert the “white working class” to the list? Can it claim addition to the growing list of the “oppressed”?

Indeed, something significant has been happening to the white working class; something ignored by the culturally powerful. It’s a story of the isolation and ignorance of the culturally influential from the everyday lives of average working Americans. It’s a story of the negative impacts of an insular elite’s popular causes on people outside the elite redoubts, in a place I call “middle-America”.

Middle-America is an entity culturally, economically, and geographically defined. Culturally, middle-Americans are least likely to experience haute couture and an Ivy League setting. Dining preferences ranges from a good steakhouse to a bar/grill to fast-food. Economically, they occupy the rungs hovering around the poverty line to blue collar, wage-earning incomes. Geographically, they reside in areas conducive to their livelihoods. They increasingly have been weeded out of the now expensive coastal enclaves and gentrified, trendy inner-city neighborhoods. More and more they are identified with the vast stretch between the Appalachians and the West’s Coast and Cascade Ranges.

Middle America is a swath of the country in distress. Socially, many middle-Americans are mirroring the experience of the African-American underclass. Marriage rates are down; illegitimacy is up. Church attendance is down; social pathologies like drug use and crime are up. Unstable families more and more characterize life for many children. Educational attainment is stunted. Workforce participation by males is in decline. The upshot is an evisceration of human capital that will be handed down to the next generation. (1) (2)

Factors like the decline of private-sector unions aren’t the cause as some claim. The decay of these unions is a symptom, like all the rest, of a broader blue collar malaise.

These conditions are far removed from the cultural and economic elect. They congregate in particular aesthetically pleasing nodes on the west coast and in places like Vail, Co. They dominate financial and media centers and the surrounding neighborhoods, and college-centered communities. Their children predominantly experience stable, intact families. While church attendance is increasingly rare, values of hard work associated with formal education are stressed. The backstop of strong families gives them a leg up in a world they’ll increasingly dominate.

Today, the two slices of America rarely intersect. In the past, as recounted in the works of Charles Murray and Robert Putnam, they did. It was common for the wealthy to rub elbows with workers and the poor. Residential districts weren’t far apart and frequently shared the same schools, stores, and churches.

“Deindustrialization” has shattered this unity. Some factories, the mainstay of some communities, have closed as economic weight gravitated to centers of financial services, technology, and higher education. An outlook, distinct and secluded, has developed within each group. (2) (4)

Beliefs, as a consequence of isolation, begin to take hold among the two slices of the population. Of particular note are the ideological obsessions and prejudices of the emerging upper class. J.D. Vance makes reference to the slights of “hillbillies” and “rednecks” as acceptable language in conversation among so-called sophisticates.

Environmentalism has come to replace Christianity as a focus of near worship among cultural and upper class elites. (5) It may be speculation but the attraction of the ideology probably has much to do with aesthetic cleanliness and neatness, just taking the form of environmental purity – thus the love affair with recycling, climate change, almost anything labeled “sustainable”, biodiversity, the preservation ethic for public lands, etc.

Furthermore, a formally educated elite has a predilection for the rule of “experts”, a foundational tenet of progressivism. Environmentalism’s prescriptions lend themselves to the rule of “experts”. Of course, the “experts” tend to be themselves.

The consequences of these views being translated into policy for those outside the elite enclaves is profound. Yet, these effects aren’t maturely appreciated by this class of self-anointed “betters”. For the elites, the forests are in essence parks that are to be treated as recreational preserves for the REI-crowd. For a blue collar worker, the woods represent jobs and the stuff that fills a Home Depot. Different perceptions, but it’s the REI-crowd who has magnified influence beyond their numbers.

The whole gamut of environmentalism’s causes has deleterious effects on working people and their communities. Their safety-net is threatened as tax revenues decline. Jobs disappear, only to be replaced by unemployment checks and part-time work. Communities watch the housing stock deteriorate and store fronts board up.

Why? One possible answer can be directed at the policy prescriptions whose origins lie in the perceptions of a particular, insular cultural elite.

The elite’s response to anyone harmed is a galling condescension and social engineering. Opposition is ridiculed. People experiencing the negative fallout will be directed into the “proper” behaviors and “proper” occupations. Their children will be directed into the “proper” thoughts. The near totalitarian dimensions of the outlook is obvious.

The political dimensions are equally obvious. The blue along the coasts, and in the urban and college islands, corresponds with the cultural elite (map above). The red is everyone else. The Trump movement was a revolt, a revolt of middle-America against the condescension and effrontery of a cultural claque residing in “blue” America.

It will be interesting as the Democrats try to reshuffle their ideological deck to make it more appealing to blue collars. I’m reminded, though, of the adage about lipstick on a pig.

RogerG

Sources:

(1) Losing Ground, Charles Murray

(2) Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, Charles Murray

(3) Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J.D. Vance

(4) Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, Robert D. Putnam

(5) “Diversity in Environmental Organizations”, Sierra Club, 9/9/14, http://www.sierraclub.org/planet/2014/09/diversity-environmental-organizations