Category: The Dish

Finally, Americans have grasped the fact that the Republicans have abandoned their role as the fiscally responsible party. In the new Time poll, we find the answer to the question: Which party would do a better job of managing government spending? Democrats get 46 percent; Republicans 31 percent. Yes, the GOP will as usual talk about "big-spending Dems" and "big government Dems." But this rhetoric may have made sense in the 1980s and early 1990s. We now have clear evidence that if you want bigger, more corrupt and more debt-laden government, you should vote Republican. Republican profligacy should be punished the only way they understand. Depending, of course, on your local representative or senator, your impulse as a fiscal conservative this fall must be to vote Democrat. They may not be much better; but they couldn’t imaginably be worse; and punishing the GOP for betraying a fundamental principle is the only way they’ll rediscover its importance.

Er, yes.

Rick Hertzberg brought my attention to this little gem of an essay by Geoffrey Wheatcroft on the life and writing career of Dwight Macdonald, a man who has inspired many of the best left-of-center writers of our day. Macdonald had a fearless streak, and his intellectual independence made finding a congenial publishing home for him sometimes awkward. If he were alive today, I’d expect him to have a blog. If you’re a writer, his story is inspiring, in its way. He died a pretty miserable death, but so do many writers. Orwell springs to mind, an austere English suicide of sorts. I enjoyed this early dig at Bill Buckley:

"Of late, Mr. Buckley has been much celebrated, what with his 80th birthday and the 50th of the National Review. As an antidote, try Macdonald on the ‘very argumentative and very ambitious’ Bill Buckley, whose book defending Joseph McCarthy was ‘written in an elegantly pedantic style, replete with nice discriminations and pedantic hair-splittings, giving the general effect of a brief by Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft on behalf of a pickpocket arrested in a subway men‚Äôs room.’ (Mr. Buckley’s first critics, by the way, included Peter Viereck, McGeorge Bundy and August Heckscher, whom Macdonald called ‘three leading spokesmen for the neoconservative tendency that has arisen among the younger intellectuals.’ Does any language maven know an earlier sighting of that potent word than 1952?)"

A good question. Any takers?

(Photo: Henry Grossman/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images).

This time from Hindus protesting a cartoon depicting Bush as Lord Shiva. They’re going to burn Bush in effigy as a protest, which seems a little unfair on the president. But no one seems to be threatening the paper, the IHT; and no one is threatening violence.

Here’s a pic from a free speech rally in Trafalgar Square. More here.

A reader writes:

"I had never seen or heard the Sandra Day O’Connor quote you gave yesterday. The quote with the line about "defining the mysteries of life" for one’s self. Oh man, what a rich load of blather that is. I come from a background of "hard" science (I’m a Electrical Engineer), the same sort of science that deals with a little thing we call the real world, a place where there are such things as facts, and where there exists obvious right (as in "correct") and wrong (as in "incorrect).
It doesn’t take a overactive imagination to guess what legal topic caused O’conner to was so poetic; hmmm, abortion maybe? Ask a biologist if we get to define our own "mysteries" of life … and everyone’s own meanings be correct.  Sandra simply conjurs out of thin air such metaphysical ideas as "personhood" for determining whether to bestow any rights – in fact the ultimate right, that of life – upon a living human being, and then turns phrases about the mystery of it all. Gag me. Sandra isn’t fit to carry Scalia’s lunch tray…"

Well, tell us how you really feel. One small point: the quote may be Kennedy’s, it turns out, although O’Connor joined the opinion with Souter. It’s confusing from the PDF I read who actually wrote those sentences. (Anyone settle it for sure?) One larger point: I agree that it’s a stretch to go from that definition of human freedom to constitutional protection for all abortions. But the statement of where liberty is most important – in the freedom to decide for yourself what you believe about what cannot be known – seems to me to be an excellent standard. The electrical engineer has no special expertise over these matters, except as a human being and citizen. And neither does anyone else. Hence our radical equality under the constitution; and the fundamental freedom it guarantees. To believe or not to believe: that is a question the American government should be entirely neutral about.

Don’t believe the hype.

"My head’s going to explode just thinking about this. The clerics claim that it’s an insult to G-d, which is a barrel full of tripe. It is Muslims who are insulted by [Rahman]’s conversion to Christianity, not G-d. More specifically, it’s the self-hating and insecure kind who can‚Äôt stand to see this man continue to draw breath. Make no mistake, if he is executed it’s not any different from an HONOR KILLING," – Murat Altinbasak, a moderate Muslim blogger in Rhode Island, on the potential death sentence in Afghanistan for a Muslim convert to Christianity.

A reader writes:

I was struck by Jason Alexander’s most impassioned comments on the Bill Maher show last night. They related to his children’s exposure to forces that were not "wholesome". He was the "liberal" voice on the panel – speaking on Iraq, etc. – but somehow kept coming back to his efforts to limit his children to those influences that they were emotionally prepared to handle, and exactly how difficult that was in current society.

I think it’s a point that is not sufficiently written about. Everyone is so stuck on left vs. right – family-values-christian-right vs. amoral secularists.  I am a married and childless 38 year old female who lives in the West Village in New York. I am considered a "liberal" by my deeply Republican siblings (3) who all live in Republican suburbs in various U.S. locations. (I am an "Economist" liberal — i.e. a righty in the U.K. but that’s not relevant.) While my siblings fiind my surroundings shocking (I live opposite a transvestite club), I am deeply shocked by what passes for normal in Republican suburbs. I spent some time researching and designing costumes for my 6-year old niece’s dance recital because the costumes proposed and readily accepted by the majority of the mothers were in my eyes prostitute garb. I spent some time encouraging my sister to object to the costumes as only a handful of other mothers agreed with her that the proposed costumes were a bit risque for the 6-year old set.

It’s a not very well understood fact that there are a great many "liberals" who bristle at the "family values" tag but who feel deeply about morality and the value of individuals. I turn off at the "family values" label because I understand it to be anti-women. The friend with whom I most often discuss the horror of today’s morals (inadvertently buying "Dinner Date Barbie" for a 7-year old niece and finding out that said Barbie comes equipped with a black lace teddy) is a card carrying Democrat and regular donor to Emily’s list.

Or maybe I am too naive. The corporate-driven and supported ubiquity of Britney Spears has long been attributed to the permissiveness of the left. The reality of course is quite different. It’s obvious that the current culture is seen as a problem by a broad cross-section of people. Maybe it’s time to define morality in non-political terms that a majority of Americans can get behind.

I should concur that while I’m very easy-going around adults, I too get very socially conservative around kids. I don’t believe in sheltering them from the world, but I do believe in protecting them for a while, and I can certainly sympathize with parents who want their children not to be exposed to what is now available. That doesn’t mean I’d censor anything; just that, if I were a parent, I’d be vigilant. That doesn’t quite fit into the crude red-blue axis, does it? But then a lot doesn’t. Which is part of our predicament.

This is one of so many stories that never usually make it into the press. This one did, because the D.C. cop died while going out of his way to do his job. No, Gerard Burke wasn’t shot on duty; and the crime he was pursuing was not the most dangerous or important (although it was certainly not trivial). But he did his duty, even when he was off-duty, and his family and friends now have to go on without him. In this, his life is like that of so many other good cops whose work is unsung and without whom, we’d live in hell. It’s worth stopping every now and again and saying thanks.

(Photo: MPDC).