The Press Will Rot Your Brain April 18, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, politics.Tags: Barack Obama, irresponsible news media, Sarah Palin
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In a recent Facebook message, Sarah Palin manipulated one of Obama’s quotes at the nuclear weapons summit in a way designed to to make him look anti-American.
Here is the Palin message:
Mr. President, is a strong America a problem?
Asked this week about his faltering efforts to advance the Middle East peace process, President Obama did something remarkable. In front of some 47 foreign leaders and hundreds of reporters from all over the world, President Obama said that “whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.”
Whether we like it or not? Most Americans do like it.
But here is what the President actually said:
But what we can make sure of is, is that we are constantly present, constantly engaged, and setting out very clearly to both sides our belief that not only is it in the interests of each party to resolve these conflicts but it’s also in the interest of the United States. It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.
A straightforward reading of Obama’s words suggests that “whether we like it or not” refers to the prospect of getting pulled into conflicts that cost American lives. He is not addressing the question of whether we should remain a superpower but whether we should devote resources to resolving conflicts.
The fact that Palin is either stupid or dishonest is no longer worthy of a blog post—we know she is both.
But what is disturbing is that the Associated Press has a story on Sarah Palin’s criticism of Obama’s remarks about America’s superpower status without mentioning it is an utter fabrication.
Here’s the AP’s lede:
Sarah Palin criticized President Barack Obama on Saturday for saying America is a military superpower “whether we like it or not,” saying she was taken aback by his comment.
It is a given that politicians will distort the messages of their opponents. It should not be a given that the press refuses to point out their dishonesty.
All of our institutions are under threat, but none has fallen farther and faster than mainstream media. No one has any reason to get their news from them.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
Venn Diagrams and Tea Parties April 15, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, politics.Tags: modern conservatism, Tea Party ignorance
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The New York Times/CBS News poll takes an in-depth look at the Tea Party “movement.” The results—tea partiers are very confused.
Of course they are opposed to the usual things conservatives oppose such as health care reform, government spending, and aid to African Americans. But when you get into specifics the ideology collapses like a deflating balloon.
Via Steve Benen:
[I]n follow-up interviews, Tea Party supporters said they did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security — the biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on “waste.”
Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.
Others could not explain the contradiction.
“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”
As Steve Benen said in a very memorable line:
If you were to make a Venn Diagram of the issues Tea Party members care about, and the issues Tea Party members are confused about, you’d only see one circle.
Benen goes on:
These folks claim to be motivated by concerns over taxes, but Tea Partiers tend not to know anything about the subject. They claim to be angry about the Affordable Care Act, but they don’t know what’s in it. They claim to hate expensive government programs, except for all the expensive government programs that benefit them and their families.
And there are some more fun facts in the poll. 57% have a favorable view of George W. Bush, and most absolve the Bush administration from responsibility for either the economic situation or current budget deficits. And a remarkable 84% of tea partiers believe their views “reflect the views of most Americans.”
Sincerity only goes so far. At some point strong beliefs have to bump up against reality.
But Tea Partiers have a long way to go before they are likely to encounter anything that looks like a fact.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
The Right Diagnosis April 14, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Current Events, Dwight Furrow's Posts, politics.Tags: Richard Trumka, what caused the recession
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Our economic problems boil down to this:
The fact is that for a generation we have built our economy on a lie—that we can have a low-wage, high-consumption society and paper over the contradiction with cheap credit funded by our foreign trading partners and financial sector profits made by taking a cut of the flow of cheap credit.
This is from a recent speech at Harvard by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. It should be read by every American:
The jobs hole – and the decades-long stagnation in real wages — are the source of the anger that echoes across our political landscape. People are incensed by the government’s inability to halt massive job loss and declining living standards, on the one hand, and the comparative ease with which government led by both parties has made the world safe again for JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, on the other hand.
Rescuing the big banks hasn’t done much for Main Street. The very same financial institutions that got bailed out have not only cut way back on lending to business, they have never stopped foreclosing on American families’ homes.
The fact is that for a generation we have built our economy on a lie—that we can have a low-wage, high-consumption society and paper over the contradiction with cheap credit funded by our foreign trading partners and financial sector profits made by taking a cut of the flow of cheap credit.
So now a lot of Americans are angry. And we should be angry. And just as we have seen throughout history, there are plenty of purveyors of hate and division looking to profit from our hurt and our anger.
I am a student of history, and now is the time to remember our history as a nation. Remember that when President Franklin Roosevelt said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” other voices were on the radio, voices saying that what we really needed to fear was each other – voices preaching anti-Semitism and Nazi-style racial hatred.
Remember that when President John F. Kennedy stepped off the plane in Dallas on November 22, 1963, radio voices were calling for violence against the President of the United States. And the violence came—and took John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and so many others.
But in the United States, we chose to turn away from the voices of hatred at those critical moments in the twentieth century. In much of Europe, racial hatred and political violence prevailed in response to the mass unemployment of the Great Depression. And in the end, we had to rescue those countries from fascism– from the horrible consequences of the failure of their societies to speak to the pain and anger bred by mass unemployment.
Why did our democracy endure through the Great Depression? Because working people discovered it was possible to elect leaders who would fight for them and not for the financial barons who had brought on the catastrophe. Because our politics offered a real choice besides greed and hatred. Because our leaders inspired the confidence to reject hate and charted a path to higher ground through broadly shared prosperity.
This is a similar moment. Our politics have been dominated by greed and the forces of money for a generation. Now, amid the wreckage that came from that experiment, we hear the voices of hatred, of racism and homophobia.
At this moment of economic pain and anger, political intellectuals face a great choice—whether to be servants or critics of economic privilege. And I think this is an important point to make here at Harvard. The economic elites at JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and the other big Wall Street banks are happy to hire intellectual servants wherever they can find them. But the stronger the alliance between intellectuals and economic elites, the more the forces of hatred—of anti-intellectualism—will grow. If you want to fight the forces of hatred, you have to help empower the forces of righteous anger.
And at this moment, the labor movement is working to give voice to the justified anger of the American people. We need help. We need public intellectuals who will help design the policies that will replace the bubble economy with a real, sustainable economy that works for all of us….
Government that acted in the interests of the majority of Americans has produced our greatest achievements. The New Deal. The Great Society and the Civil Rights movement — Social Security, Medicare, the minimum wage and the forty-hour work week, and the Voting Rights Act. This is what made the United States a beacon of hope in a confused and divided world. In the end, I believe the health care bill signed into law last month is an achievement on this order, one we can continue to improve upon to secure health care for all.
But too many thought leaders have become the servants of a different kind of politics—a politics that sees middle-class Americans as overpaid and underworked. That sees Social Security as a problem rather than the only piece of our retirement system that actually works. A mentality that feels sorry for homeless people, but fails to see the connections between downsizing, outsourcing, inequality and homelessness. A mentality that sees mass unemployment as something that will take care of itself, eventually.
We need to return to a different vision….
President Obama said in his inaugural address, “The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.” Now is the time to make good on these words – for Congress, for President Obama and for the American people.
These are big challenges. But it is long past time to take them on. If you are worried about the anger in our country, if you don’t want the forces of hatred to grow, be a part of the fight for economic justice and a new economic foundation for America. Be a critic of power and privilege, not its servant.
Be the source of the ideas that can rebuild our economy and restore confidence in government. As students, as teachers, as workers—all of us can play a role in this great effort. Whether here within the university, at think tanks, in the government, in the press, or even working with us in the labor movement, working people need the help of engaged policy intellectuals if we are together going to build an economy that works for all.
h/t Brian Leiter
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
Mining Disaster April 13, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Current Events, Dwight Furrow's Posts.Tags: Massey Mines
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The mining disaster last week that killed 29 workers is the worst U.S. mining disaster in 20 years.
As widely reported, the mine, near Charleston, WV has a history of safety violations, including 57 infractions just last month for (among other things) not properly ventilating the highly combustible methane, which allegedly caused this accident. Via the Washington Post
The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration has ordered the evacuation of miners from parts of the Upper Big Branch coal mine 64 times since the beginning of 2009 because of safety violations, but federal regulators said the mine did not show the “pattern of violation” that would have allowed them to take harsher measures.
The orders to withdraw miners from the site, where at least 25 workers died in an explosion this week, included one for “imminent danger” because miners had to wade through 48 inches of water in one section, records show. […]
Last night, MSHA said that in the past year, the Upper Big Branch mine exceeded national averages in eleven citation categories and that for the most serious type of safety violation the mine had more than 11 times the national rate.
There were also problems with the mine’s four-mile-long ventilation system. Even though it won the approval of federal regulators last October, it was shown in a test in March to be circulating less than half the volume of air intended to keep levels of combustible coal dust and methane within a safe range.
Massey Mines has had problems with miner safety in the past.
In 2006 another Massey mine, Aracoma Alma No. 1, was recommended for shutdown by a government inspector, who was over-ruled. The subsequent fatal fire killed two miners and led to a guilty plea for 10 criminal mine safety violations, a $2.5 million fine. Massey also paid the federal government $20 million to settle charges of violating water pollution controls in 2008.
J. Davitt McAteer, the former MSHA Administrator, called the Massey conglomerate “certainly one of the worst in the industry” from a safety standpoint. CEO Blankenship, of course, denies McAteer’s and other workers and inspectors’ assessments. “Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process. There are violations at every coal mine in America.”
This utter disregard for mine safety is not surprising. The CEO of Massey Energy, Don Blankenship, is a real piece of work.
He donates huge amounts to conservative causes, has funded a good chunk of the Tea Party movement in West Virginia, famously spent over $3 million to get a friendly judge elected to the state Supreme Court, and donated another $3 million in an attempt to fund a Republican takeover of the state legislature. Blankenship regularly engages in calling Democratic leaders “the crazies” and has said that any move to regulate pollution is the first step toward communism. Grist named Blankenship the “scariest polluter” in the country.
Although Massey appears to be directly responsible for the safety conditions of his mine, the government agency regulating mine safety is apparently without real enforcement powers and is largely ineffective. Because of influential people like Blankenship, the regulatory agencies are designed to be ineffective.
We will hear through the next weeks what we always hear in a situation like this. We’ll hear that the people of the Appalachians are hard-working people, tough people, people who take pride in their willingness to sacrifice to put food on the table for their families. And all that’s true.
It’s true, but all that doesn’t matter one damn bit. There is no honor in dying to save a company money. Nothing admirable in keeping a stiff upper lip so others can line their pockets. Anyone who trots out the idea that there’s something noble in allowing people to be abused, is part of that abuse. Painting a history of poverty, desperation and death as tradition is indulging in a romantic perversion. It’s poverty, desperation, and death. The right thing to do is fix it, not write another blasted song about it.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
Abbie Dorn—Parent and Person? April 12, 2010
Posted by Nina Rosenstand in Current Events, Ethics, Nina Rosenstand's Posts.Tags: Abbie Dorn, parenthood, persistent vegetative state, personhood, Terri Schiavo
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Many of us have never forgotten the case of Terri Schiavo—the woman whose story engaged the entire nation, as well as Congress, in 2004-05 when the two versions of her situation—her parents’ and her husband’s—finally came to a showdown, and the courts sided with her husband: Terri, in a persistent vegetative state for years, finally had her feeding tube removed, and died as her husband claimed she wanted. Her parents, on the other hand, insisted that she communicated with them, and they were willing to care for her for the rest of her life. Terri’s story is much longer and more complex, but I wanted to bring it up because a new “Terri” story is unfolding in South Carolina, revealing a moral problem going in a different direction: this time another young woman, Abbie Dorn, has been in what her husband claims is a persistent vegetative state for 2 ½ years after giving birth to triplets—an event that left her brain damaged and unable to communicate. Now divorced from her husband Dan, at his insistence, Abbie’s condition has—according to her parents—improved, and she is capable of communicating with her eyes; she ( again, according to her parents) now wants legal visitation rights to the three small children. Her ex-husband claims that (1) she cannot express such a wish because she is incompetent, and (2) even if she could, it would not be good for the small children to see her in her tormented, painful condition. According to the Los Angeles Times,
The California Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that disabled parents cannot be denied custody simply because of their handicaps. Parenting, the justices wrote, is as much about emotion as it is about physical ability.
“A handicapped parent is a whole person to the child who needs his affection, sympathy and wisdom to deal with the problems of growing up,” the justices wrote.
But that case was about custody, not visitation, and concerned a quadriplegic parent who had raised his children alone before his injury and who could talk and drive.
Lisa Helfend Meyer, Abbie’s attorney, said, “There is no case in point that addresses Abbie’s particular circumstance, whether someone in her condition has a constitutional right to parent or visit her children.”
The moral problem here is not the right to die, but the right to live as a person, with rights, even if one suffers from a severe disability. Under other conditions Abbie would have had visitation rights (and apparently her husband thinks she should have duties—to pay child support), but that is assuming that she is a person. Is someone who is incapable of communicating still a person? Nobody disputes that Abbie is human—but personhood, with the rights of a person, requires rational thinking and capability to express one’s rational thoughts, at least according to numerous philosophers from Kant to Mary Ann Warren. But the very postulate that Abbie is still a person rests with the evidence provided by her parents—who presumably have an interest in staying in touch with their grandchildren. This is where the parallels to the Schiavo case come in—because we are seeing two very different versions of Abbie’s reality presented in court, her ex-husband’s version (and it would be to his advantage to have Abbie declared incompetent), and her parents, with their personal preference and interpretation of the situation.
The question raised by the L.A. Times article (which clearly sides with Abbie and her parents) is, Is Abbie a parent, with rights? Does parenthood entail the mere fact of being a birth parent, or must there be evidence of closeness, caring, etc.? But philosophically, the deeper question is, Is Abbie still a person? Should we apply the concept of personhood as a matter of principle, in recognition of the discrimination some human individuals and groups have felt, in previous times, because of a lack of political power—- so that any human being is a person, period? Or should we decide that personhood is all about interactive relationships, and if there is no discernable hope of interaction, assessed by disinterested parties (such as a court-appointed neurologist being kept up-to-date with the latest therapeutic assessment), then there is no personhood, either?
My own take on this: it’s not such a hard question. Be Solomonic. Err on the side of inclusive personhood—as long as there is a chance that Abbie is having experiences and wishes, respect them, and her. She is on a long, dark journey, and adding insult to her terrible injury by disregarding her potential personhood is unworthy these days. On the other hand, there is no reason why visitation rights should be granted from one day to the next, with the risk of traumatizing her toddlers. After all, she’s not asking for custody. If Abbie’s parents, and Abbie, want the best for the children (who at this point don’t even know they have a mother), they should be left with their father, and slowly be introduced to the story, with pictures, video, etc. Writing letters and drawing pictures to their mother could be the start of a relationship, building up a unique situation over months. I would assume that having a mother without a voice, or without arms that can hold them, but with loving eyes speaking a language of their own (if indeed Abbie herself is still behind those eyes), is a whole lot better than having no birth mother at all in their lives, and being told the story later when it is too late to amend the situation …what “might have been” is going to be cold comfort…
Another religious threat to education April 11, 2010
Posted by michaelmussachia in Uncategorized.Tags: Education, politics, religion
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Simon Gardner posted a commentary on RichardDawkins.net (http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=110266) about a proposed “Religious Bill of Rights” in the U.S. senate:
“Colorado Senator, Dave Schultheis proposed a bill, SB089 (1), this past week, which would have undermined important democratic institutions. Fortunately, poor negotiating skills made killing the bill in committee possible(2). The vehicle for this subversion was a Religious Bill of Rights, that, in addition to being an insult to the First Amendment, was deemed generally redundant to the ‘real’ Bill of Rights.
This Bill was purportedly necessary for the protection of religious persons from attacks on their religious rights in the public school system despite the fact that there was no evidence or even anecdotal testimony to support such ridiculous claims. The particulars of the Bill and it’s outrageous demands have been well covered (3)(4). The two most controversial areas of concern are first, that teachers would not have to teach anything that may disagree with their religious views, and that they could openly display their own religious material in their classrooms and, second, that students could refuse or oppose course material for the same irrational reasons(1). The part of the story that I would like to draw attention to is the resulting affect any such Bill would have on the ability of the elected officials of the school board to implement the wishes and demands of the electorate. What is the affect on our democracy if the curriculum of our public school system is influenced by dictates from either one, or even several competing, religious theologies?”
While it looks as though the bill isn’t going anywhere, it’s nature reveals the degree to which religious zealots in this country are still trying to undermine education. It’s 2010. We’ve sent space probes beyond the solar system, explored the nature of matter down to the subatomic level, and gained tremendous insight into the evolution of life, including ourselves, and yet we still have to defend scholarship, science and reason against religious fundamentalists. I wish some of these people could crawl back to the Dark Ages where they would feel less threatened in their beliefs.
How Quickly They Forget April 8, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, politics.Tags: conservatism and liberalism, ideological polarization
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Political philosopher William Galston points to a disturbing trend in a recent poll:
The daily commentary about the Obama era has largely overlooked a trend that is now unmistakable—namely, the growing conservative sentiment in this country that goes well beyond the tea-party rallies and Glenn Beck’s rants.
Gallup offered the first piece of compelling evidence. On January 7, 2010, it reported that self-identified conservatives had increased from an average of 37 percent of the electorate in 2008 to 40 percent in 2009. (By contrast, moderates and liberals each decreased by one percentage point during that period.) Gallup based its conclusion on a synthesis of surveys taken throughout 2009, with a total sample of nearly 22 thousand and a margin of error of less than +/- one percentage point. It found, moreover, that ideological shifts among independents—a three-point drop in moderate identifiers, coupled with a five point-gain in conservative identifiers—accounted for most of the overall change.
Galston argues that this is part of a long-term increase in the polarization of the electorate—moderates over the past 30 years have increasingly identified with either liberalism or conservatism. But the recent shift is clearly toward conservatism. I suppose that is to be expected in the midst of a long recession with high unemployment.
But it is troubling that, in two short years, a significant number of people have simply forgotten that our current difficulties are the direct consequence of disastrous conservative governance.
It is troubling but not surprising. As I argued in Reviving the Left, conservative values are the default position in this country. When things go wrong, the source of the problem is always the government (or the urban, educated elites who run it), and authoritarianism and individualism will always appear to be the solution.
It is the American way.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
Asceticism Run Amok April 7, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Art and Music, Culture, Dwight Furrow's Posts.Tags: technology and art
2 comments
Steve Almond laments the rise of new music listening technologies:
But for all the joys of such wizardry, I’ve been experiencing a creeping sense of dread recently when it comes to iTunes, a dark hunch that technology has impoverished the actual experience of listening to music.
See, back when I was a kid in the ’70s, the way I listened to music was pretty simple. I put an LP on the turntable, dropped the needle, then sat on the living room rug and listened to every single note. If I liked the record a lot, I would listen to it two or three times in a row, usually with the album cover on my lap, so I could study the lyrics and artwork. […]
I really miss the fact that listening to music used to be a concerted sonic and emotional event, rather than the backing track to some flashing screen. It was more inconvenient, to be sure. But for me, this inconvenience was part of the whole point.
I liked that I could only listen to my albums on a turntable in the living room. I liked yearning for my favorite records. I can still remember spending the entire day at school counting the minutes until I could get home to listen to the transcendent power chords of Styx’s “Paradise Theater.”
I even liked that there was a whole process involved before you got to the songs. You had to thumb through your collection, put the record on the turntable and then set the needle down with the utmost care.
I don’t get this. I understand the experience of focused, repetitive listening. It conforms to my own experience. (Aside from his interest in Styx who were dreadful)
But I don’t see why technology is to blame for his missing rapture. If he wants a “concerted sonic and emotional event” he can now have it anywhere he wants with any music he likes. If he listens only when tied to a “flashing screen” while distractedly multi-tasking, the problem is not the technology but his listening habits.
And the chore of archiving cumbersome albums, dealing with turntables, and waiting for the damn radio to play something good is surely not to be missed.
I’m surprised he doesn’t tell us about the whips he employs for his daily self-flagellation.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
Fact Free April 6, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, politics.Tags: Tea Party ignorance
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There are consequences to watching Fox News all day:
On March 16 the Tea Party crowd showed up for yet another demonstration on Capitol Hill in Washington. Curious about the factual knowledge these people have regarding the issues they are protesting, my friend David Frum enlisted some interns to interview as many Tea Partyers as possible on a couple of basic questions. They got 57 responses–a pretty good-sized sample from a crowd that numbered between 300 and 500 people. (Survey results are here.)
The first question that was asked concerned the size of government. Tea Partyers were asked how much the federal government gets in taxes as a percentage of the gross domestic product. According to Congressional Budget Office data, acceptable answers would be 6.4%, which is the percentage for federal income taxes; 12.7%, which would be for both income taxes and Social Security payroll taxes; or 14.8%, which would represent all federal taxes as a share of GDP in 2009.
[...]
Tuesday’s Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944.
To follow up, Tea Partyers were asked how much they think a typical family making $50,000 per year pays in federal income taxes. The average response was $12,710, the median $10,000. In percentage terms this means a tax burden of between 20% and 25% of income.
Of course, it’s hard to know what any particular individual or family pays in taxes, but according to IRS tax tables, a single person with $50,000 in taxable income last year would owe $8,694 in federal income taxes, and a married couple filing jointly would owe $6,669.
But these numbers are high because to have a taxable income of $50,000, one’s gross income would be higher by at least the personal exemption, which is $3,650, and the standard deduction, which is $5,700 for single people and $11,400 for married couples. Owning a home or having children would reduce one’s tax burden further.
[...]
Tea Partyers also seem to have a very distorted view of the direction of federal taxes. They were asked whether they are higher, lower or the same as when Barack Obama was inaugurated last year. More than two-thirds thought that taxes are higher today, and only 4% thought they were lower; the rest said they are the same.
As noted earlier, federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president. And given the economic circumstances, it’s hard to imagine that a tax increase would have been enacted last year. In fact, 40% of Obama’s stimulus package involved tax cuts. These include the Making Work Pay Credit, which reduces federal taxes for all taxpayers with incomes below $75,000 by between $400 and $800.
According to the JCT, last year’s $787 billion stimulus bill, enacted with no Republican support, reduced federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and another $222 billion this year. The Tax Policy Center, a private research group, estimates that close to 90% of all taxpayers got a tax cut last year and almost 100% of those in the $50,000 income range. For those making between $40,000 and $50,000, the average tax cut was $472; for those making between $50,000 and $75,000, the tax cut averaged $522. No taxpayer anywhere in the country had his or her taxes increased as a consequence of Obama’s policies…
In fact, there hasn’t been a federal tax increase of any significance in this country since 1993.
Modern conservative propaganda asserts that government is the problem not the solution. So if your short of cash it must be the government’s fault.
As Digby wrote last week:
This isn’t about issues, it’s about a delusional worldview formed by people who listen to a bunch of hucksters who have successfully looted the country while persuading about half the people that the government was doing the looting and giving it in the form of “handouts” to people who didn’t deserve it. It’s a great scam and a lot of people have made a lot of money promoting it.
It’s a shame that these same people are getting screwed six ways to Sunday, but I’m getting less and less sympathetic as I see them throwing dollar bills into the faces of disabled citizens and telling them go somewhere else looking for a handout. These aren’t just misguided souls. They are cruel jerks.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
A “Ruse” On Morality April 5, 2010
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, Ethics, Science.Tags: evolutionary psychology, Michael Ruse, morality and emotions
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One of the most important and intriguing ideas to come out of modern biology is that human morality is largely a product of our evolutionary history. The consensus view among biologists is that the tendency to be generous, fair, and kind to others, at least in some contexts, confers a survival advantage on beings like us who must cooperate to survive. This is not to say that we aren’t self-interested as well; rather we are a battleground between self-interested desires and desires directed at the good of others. [-See Michael’s recent post on this topic]
But I am puzzled by some of the conclusions scientists and some philosophers often draw from this. Here is Michael Ruse on the implications of this research:
God is dead, so why should I be good? The answer is that there are no grounds whatsoever for being good. There is no celestial headmaster who is going to give you six (or six billion, billion, billion) of the best if you are bad. Morality is flimflam. […]
Morality is just a matter of emotions, like liking ice cream and sex and hating toothache and marking student papers. But it is, and has to be, a funny kind of emotion. It has to pretend that it is not that at all! If we thought that morality was no more than liking or not liking spinach, then pretty quickly it would break down. […]
So morality has to come across as something that is more than emotion. It has to appear to be objective, even though really it is subjective.[…]
Am I now giving the game away? Now you know that morality is an illusion put in place by your genes to make you a social cooperator, what’s to stop you behaving like an ancient Roman? Well, nothing in an objective sense. But you are still a human with your gene-based psychology working flat out to make you think you should be moral
This is just utter nonsense. True, morality is rooted in emotions and desires which are explained by our evolutionary history, but it is not just a mere preference like a preference for ice cream. A human being who dislikes ice cream will do fine; a person who lacks moral emotions will likely end up in prison. From the fact that something is an emotion or desire it does not follow that it lacks import.
Surely, the fact that a practice enables me to cooperate with others in order to secure goods and to respond responsibly to the needs of others are “grounds” to pursue that practice. They are not “apriori” grounds but philosophers long ago gave up the notion that “rational” is identical to “apriori”.
Morality isn’t “pretending” to be something other than emotion. Everyone except a few hyper-rationalist philosophers are quite aware of the emotional content of morality. But morality can’t be only emotional if it is to perform its function. The fact that it is rooted in emotion does not entail that is opposed to reason or immune to self-control. Emotions have be properly trained and habituated if they are to serve our interests—they are not merely urges.
And if morality is a function of natural selection, how on earth is it an “illusion” or “subjective”? It would seem to be both real and objective. Granted, as intelligent, self-reflective beings we have lots of control over when and how we express these moral emotions. We can resist moral impulses if we wish, just as we can resist the desire to eat ice cream. But that fact does not entail that morality is an illusion—it is a central feature of the human condition as real as hearts, lungs, and language.
Instead of being puzzled about morality’s pretentions, Ruse should wonder about why an interest in science leads some people to be contemptuous of ordinary human traits.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com
