Then and Now

September 29th, 2007

Here’s a short collection on the topic of who were were — and who we’ve become.

The first is Paul Krugman’s first entry on his new blog — the next, the third in the series on conservatism by John Dean. After that, a blogger from Huffington Post mourns what we’ve given away … and the last piece is from a friend, who prefers to remain anonymous, on the twists and turns of our history and our seeming inability to “Do unto others…” as we’ve been privileged to have done unto us.

George can evidently wait indefinitely for history to tell him who he was [and trusts we won’t ask ’til then,] but only those who know where we’ve come from can truly have the perspective to make the necessary corrections that will take us into a worthwhile future. No first aid will fix our misfit systems now, they’re snarled beyond functionality, gasping their last as militarism sucks the oxygen out of everything in sight; we must reinvent them using a long-missing concept of integrity that appears to be of another time and place.

In that spirit, here are your weekend reads.

Jude

Introducing This Blog
Paul Krugman, ConscienceOfALiberal, NYT
September 18, 2007

“I was born in 1953. Like the rest of my generation, I took the America I grew up in for granted – in fact, like many in my generation I railed against the very real injustices of our society, marched against the bombing of Cambodia, went door to door for liberal candidates. It’s only in retrospect that the political and economic environment of my youth stands revealed as a paradise lost, an exceptional episode in our nation’s history.”

That’s the opening paragraph of my new book, The Conscience of a Liberal. It’s a book about what has happened to the America I grew up in and why, a story that I argue revolves around the politics and economics of inequality.

I’ve given this New York Times blog the same name, because the politics and economics of inequality will, I expect, be central to many of the blog posts – although I also expect to be posting on a lot of other issues, from health care to high-speed Internet access, from productivity to poll analysis. Many of the posts will be supplements to my regular columns; I’ll be using this space to present the kind of information I can’t provide on the printed page – especially charts and tables, which are crucial to the way I think about most of the issues I write about.

In fact, let me start this blog off with a chart that’s central to how I think about the big picture, the underlying story of what’s really going on in this country. The chart shows the share of the richest 10 percent of the American population in total income – an indicator that closely tracks many other measures of economic inequality – over the past 90 years, as estimated by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. I’ve added labels indicating four key periods. These are:

[open link for graph]

The Long Gilded Age: Historians generally say that the Gilded Age gave way to the Progressive Era around 1900. In many important ways, though, the Gilded Age continued right through to the New Deal. As far as we can tell, income remained about as unequally distributed as it had been the late 19th century – or as it is today. Public policy did little to limit extremes of wealth and poverty, mainly because the political dominance of the elite remained intact; the politics of the era, in which working Americans were divided by racial, religious, and cultural issues, have recognizable parallels with modern politics.

The Great Compression: The middle-class society I grew up in didn’t evolve gradually or automatically. It was created, in a remarkably short period of time, by FDR and the New Deal. As the chart shows, income inequality declined drastically from the late 1930s to the mid 1940s, with the rich losing ground while working Americans saw unprecedented gains. Economic historians call what happened the Great Compression, and it’s a seminal episode in American history.

Middle class America: That’s the country I grew up in. It was a society without extremes of wealth or poverty, a society of broadly shared prosperity, partly because strong unions, a high minimum wage, and a progressive tax system helped limit inequality. It was also a society in which political bipartisanship meant something: in spite of all the turmoil of Vietnam and the civil rights movement, in spite of the sinister machinations of Nixon and his henchmen, it was an era in which Democrats and Republicans agreed on basic values and could cooperate across party lines.

The great divergence: Since the late 1970s the America I knew has unraveled. We’re no longer a middle-class society, in which the benefits of economic growth are widely shared: between 1979 and 2005 the real income of the median household rose only 13 percent, but the income of the richest 0.1% of Americans rose 296 percent.

Most people assume that this rise in inequality was the result of impersonal forces, like technological change and globalization. But the great reduction of inequality that created middle-class America between 1935 and 1945 was driven by political change; I believe that politics has also played an important role in rising inequality since the 1970s. It’s important to know that no other advanced economy has seen a comparable surge in inequality – even the rising inequality of Thatcherite Britain was a faint echo of trends here.

On the political side, you might have expected rising inequality to produce a populist backlash. Instead, however, the era of rising inequality has also been the era of “movement conservatism,” the term both supporters and opponents use for the highly cohesive set of interlocking institutions that brought Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich to power, and reached its culmination, taking control of all three branches of the federal government, under George W. Bush. (Yes, Virginia, there is a vast right-wing conspiracy.)

Because of movement conservative political dominance, taxes on the rich have fallen, and the holes in the safety net have gotten bigger, even as inequality has soared. And the rise of movement conservatism is also at the heart of the bitter partisanship that characterizes politics today.

Why did this happen? Well, that’s a long story – in fact, I’ve written a whole book about it, and also about why I believe America is ready for a big change in direction.

For now, though, the important thing is to realize that the story of modern America is, in large part, the story of the fall and rise of inequality. ++

The Impact of Authoritarian Conservatism On American Government:
Part Three in a Three-Part Series
John W. Dean, FindLaw vis Smirking Chimp
Sep 28 2007

This is the final part of this three-part series of columns, in which FindLaw columnist John Dean discusses his recent book, Conservatives Without Conscience. Part One and Part Two appeared earlier on this site. - Ed.

The authoritarianism of the contemporary Republican Party has had a dire impact on all three branches of the federal government. This impact is the subject of my new book, Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches, and a matter I intend to write about periodically in this space as we approach the 2008 Election.

Authoritarian leaders do not govern when they control the apparatus of government; rather, they rule. And given their worldview, they rule from either the hard or radical right. This can best be seen by looking at the way they operate when in control of the government.

Newt Gingrich: A Prototypical Republican Authoritarian Leader

People who knew Newt Gingrich early in his political career have described him–and because he is a man who still wants to be president of the United States, such assessments remain relevant–in less than glowing terms. David Osborne spoke with many of them when he was preparing his telling profile for Mother Jones, and he was given information that describes an authoritarian leader.

Osborne reported that Gingrich was dominating, opposed to equality, desirous of personal power, and amoral; that he can be a bully, hedonistic, exploitive, manipulative, a cheater, prejudiced toward women, and mean-spirited; that he uses religion for political purposes; and that he wants others to submit to his authority and is aggressive on behalf of authority.

When Gingrich took charge of the House in 1995 as Speaker, he imposed authoritarian rule unlike that of any Speaker before him. His bullying, demanding style provoked antagonism and incivility, and made demonizing one’s opponents standard operating procedure. Gingrich eliminated the seniority rights of Republicans in the House, and he personally selected committee chairs who would be loyal to him - and who could help raise money, using their posts for the good of the GOP. Gingrich lorded over the House, telling members not to bring their families back to Washington, and even suggesting which books they should be reading.

Not long after Gingrich’s authoritarian approach became evident, a reporter for the Independent (London) observed that Gingrich was an avid reader of Frans de Waal, a Dutch ethnologist whose book Chimpanzee Politics was on the Speaker’s list of twenty-five recommended books. In dead earnest, the reporter noted striking parallels between Gingrich’s rise to power and the efforts of “apes striving to acquire the coveted status of ‘alpha male,’” as de Waal’s study described, in his May 31, 1995 piece “How Newt Aped His Way to the Top.”

The GOP’s Authoritarian House

Authoritarianism is, by its nature, anti-democratic. One look at the House under Republican rule shows how authoritarian behavior has distorted the deliberative processes of this legislative chamber. Under GOP rule, leaders have represented the interest of the Republican Party, and have run the place as if the Democrats who represent over half the country did not exist. For good reason, voters took control away from the GOP in 2006, and as the Party’s members have done nothing to change their ways, we must all hope that voters keep sending the same message until Republicans choose to hear it, and to reconstitute themselves into a party capable of actually governing.

Under Speaker Gingrich as well as Speaker Hastert, who followed him, extreme centralization of the legislative processes of the House occurred. Regularly, GOP leaders wrote the laws themselves - often relying on lobbyists to do the grunt work of drafting - rather than abiding by the regular procedures of the committees, which hold hearings and have professional staff to draft legislation. When not actually writing the laws, the House leaders often drastically changed proposed legislation themselves, typically late in the evening when no one was around to contest their actions.

GOP leaders also changed the rules to eliminate deliberation. Under the rules of the House, only emergency measures can be considered without giving members 48 hours to consider the proposal. Yet Republicans regularly declared matters they wanted to push through to be an emergency, giving other members as little as thirty minutes’ notice, and forcing members of their own party to blindly vote for measures when they had no idea what they were approving.

GOP House leaders also controlled legislation so as to prohibit amendments during the floor debate, and greatly reduced the time available for debate. When House and Senate legislation differed, thus requiring a conference committee, Republicans defied House rules and refused to allow Democrats to attend the conference committee. When votes were close in the House, or when the GOP was losing, they simply suspended the fifteen-minute rule (the rule setting the time period) within which votes are to take place, often leaving the vote open for hours while they twisted arms and literally bribed and cajoled Republicans to get them to comply with the leadership’s wishes.

In sum, during the decade when Republicans controlled the House, they provided an example of the nature of authoritarian rule of the legislative branch. Similarly, but in a very different setting, President Bush and Vice-President Cheney have shown how authoritarian rule works in the executive branch. Neither demonstration has been pretty or reassuring.

The GOP’s Authoritarian Reconception of the Presidency

Nixon was an authoritarian president. So was Reagan. Indeed, it was during the Reagan years that conservatives made a complete change in their thinking about the American presidency. This change — not coincidentally, I believe — occurred as authoritarian conservatives began to dominate the GOP.

The authoritarian conservative philosophy was fully articulated by Terry Eastland, a former Reagan Justice Department Director of Public Affairs, in his 1992 book Energy in the Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency. This is a book that was studied closely by then-Halliburton Chairman Dick Cheney, and then-Texas Governor George W. Bush and his staff, long before they arrived in Washington in 2001.

“Reagan demonstrated that the strong presidency is necessary to effect ends sought by most conservatives,” Eastland wrote. For conservatives, Eastland’s book made clear, a strong president is one who wears his commander-in-chief uniform every day, and tells Americans how they should think and act, rather than one who responds to the wishes of the voters. It is a Father-Knows-Best presidency, one that considers Americans to be children who do not know what is best for themselves.

Nixon created the “imperial presidency.” After the public rejected that concentration of power, in the aftermath of Watergate, Reagan restored the imperial presidency in another guise. Now, Bush and Cheney have created the post-imperial presidency. Using the threat of terrorism as their justification, Bush and Cheney have embraced the so-called “unitary executive theory” - which, in truth, is merely another term for an authoritarian presidency.

Eastland, like many conservatives, thought it a poor showing when Ronald Reagan left office with the highest approval ratings of any post-World War II president. Quoting the voice of authoritarian conservatism, Charles Krauthammer, Eastland assessed this supposedly unfortunate aspect of the Reagan presidency to be “Like dying rich… a great moral failure.” As this comment shows, authoritarians do not want Americans to love or even necessarily like their president; indeed, they believe a president must be doing something wrong if they do.

Bush and Cheney’s actions must surely bring a smile to the faces of folks like Terry Eastland and Charles Krauthammer, as they sink lower and lower in their approval ratings, spending all their good will and then some. Authoritarian conservatives will no doubt be disappointed if Bush and Cheney do not manage to get to single-digit ratings before they leave.

Many observers have suggested that the Bush/Cheney Administration may, in the eyes of history, be the worst ever. Yet this condemnation must seem beside the point to authoritarians, for these people simply do not care what others think of their performance. What is important, in their eyes, is simply that these leaders and their compliant followers are doing things the way they believe they must be done, and enforcing their will upon any who dare to dissent or disagree.

It is my great hope that voters will reject the option of embracing yet more authoritarianism in 2008, for, even in this three-part series of columns and in my books, I have only touched on its negative impact on America. ++

America Used To Be Really Goddamn Awesome
Bob Cesca, Huffington Post
September 28, 2007

I’ve been captivated by Ken Burns’ The War this week and it struck me how awesome America used to be.

The prevailing attitude of the ladies and gentlemen featured in Burns’ film, and by proxy all Americans of that era, was that if we had to fight a war, we had better do it right. Clearly and with little dissent, we had to fight that war, and without fail, Americans rallied together to do it really damn well.

People from every corner of the nation selflessly pooled their resources for the great cause of World War II, and I’m not sure about this one, but I don’t think President Roosevelt ever once asked the country to sacrifice by going to the mall. And I’m pretty sure he didn’t outsource the construction of tanks, Flying Fortresses, Hellcats and Thunderbolts to Mexico and China. That’s a hell of a thing by today’s standards, isn’t it?

We’ve fallen so far from what we used to be, even as recently as thirty years ago when the comparatively liberal president Richard Nixon opened a dialogue with Red China, whilst Mao supplied arms to North Vietnam. One day long ago, it was okay to wish for an end to a war, without being accused of hating the soldiers who were fighting it. It was once a given that socialized public education, police, fire departments, roads, parks, national defense and the constitutionally mandated General Welfare & Domestic Tranquility were simply a part of the American way of life and would always be there.

And when our nation had to go to war, we would be there for her.

Conversely, when we crumble to the pressure of our reactionary and authoritarian elements, we get Japanese internment camps, the rise of the military industrial complex, and men turned away from service due to the color of their skin. Some of our greatest failures have been conceived when our irrationality, fear and lust for power overrule our traditional American ideals — even during our finest hours as a nation.

And now, 50 years later, in our lives and times, we get President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney.

The Bush Years have been a monumental, cataclysmic failure on most fronts due to its inattention to what has, historically, made American great. The president and his thinning ranks of fawn-eyed Hannities don’t understand this yet. They don’t understand it mostly because they’re too ignorant — blinded by sloganeering — to the very basic reality that Bush Republican style government, in practice, is about as successful and practical as a paper condom. It always has been.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when they compare the Bush Wars to World War II. It’s a desperate notion, one that seeks to conflate our current president with greatness he doesn’t deserve and an historical legacy he will never achieve. It’s also meant to inflate our current “enemies” to Hitler status, and thus proving the case for war.

The comparison is pure horseshit. (Say nothing of the fact that it elevates Bin Laden or the late Saddam or the present Ahmadinejad to a level of villainy they also don’t deserve. It’s like saying a doofus villain like Solomon Grundy is the next Lex Luthor. I’m sure they appreciate being granted superpowers enough to take over the world, though.)

If it’s so fucking important to stay in Iraq, and if it’s so fucking important to invade Iran — and if it’s so fucking important to wiretap your phones and read your mail, and to shit all over your constitutional rights and the Geneva Conventions — and all of it is part of a larger World War II style conflict, then why aren’t the Bushies taking their metaphors seriously by demanding the sacrifices of World War II?

Did President Roosevelt cut taxes or ask veterans to pay higher deductibles? Did President Roosevelt outsource the army by hiring no-bid corporate mercenaries?

From the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the surrender of Japan, automobile manufacturers stopped making cars in lieu of manufacturing hardware for the war effort. Can you imagine, among all of the scrap metal drives — the rationing of everything from gasoline to frying pan fat — if Roosevelt had allowed SUV drivers to receive tax breaks in which sheer vehicular tonnage was rewarded at the peril of even one American G.I.?

If the quintessential symbol of the American character in World War II was Rosie The Riveter, the poster for the Bush Wars has to be that of an SUV driver receiving a tax break while sucking down enough Saudi oil to drive to a mall where he’s expected to buy lead-tainted crapola manufactured overseas — a yellow ribbon hypocrite magnet dangling just above his exhaust pipe and several inches from a fading W04 sticker. The caption: “The Bush Patriot Says: ‘I’m On It, Mr. President!’”

The Bushies can’t possibly take their own World War II metaphor seriously because they don’t truly believe in the comparison.

They know, as you and I do, that these wars have little to do with stopping a new Hitler. If we peel back the layers — if you look at what truly drives little childish men like Hannity and Cheney and Kristol, you’ll find that it has little to do with liberating nations from an occupying Nazi force and ending a brutal holocaust. Beneath the pasty white surface of a typical Bush Republican you’ll find greed, fear, ignorance, anger and a basic lack of understanding of America’s place on the world stage. They’re traits that drive nations into unnecessary wars. They’re also traits that often breed cowardice.

To wit… Those of you demanding a war in Iran, I have one question for you. And no, I’m not going to employ the tired military service argument, but I must ask you this: what is the very minimum you’re doing right now to prepare for your war? Are you refusing to support further tax cuts or pumping less “Islamofascist” oil into your SUV tank?

You’re probably not doing anything because all you’re expected to do is to say that you support the troops (what does that mean in practice?). And as long as you don’t oppose the president as he dismantles the Constitution in favor of a corporate police state, then you’ve contributed to your president’s war effort. That’s the Bush Republican way. Oh, and to shop. You have go to Disneyland and buy shit you don’t need at the mall (what the fuck is a Webkinz?).

How will the Ken Burns of the future portray the Bush Wars? I imagine that a large part of a future documentary about these times will detail what Rick Perlstein sublimely referred to this week as the destruction of America’s character.

Whoever the future Ken Burns might be (hopefully, it’ll be Ken Burns), he or she will have to dig deep into the destruction of our national character and detail the stories of torture and secret detention facilities; outsourced corporate thugs murdering foreign civilians; government scare tactics without substance — it’ll be a documentary in part about your non-military friends and family who supported this president’s war but who sacrificed nothing in its execution.

So here we are in late 2007. The president believes that history will vindicate his efforts to destroy the American character and to bring about the ascendancy of neo-conservatism. After all, he fancies himself the new McKinley — or is it George Washington? Is he Lincoln this week or Truman? Is he still fighting the Vietnam War or is it World War II? Korea or the Civil War? Goddamn him and his marble-mouthed horseshit. That’s exactly why it has to be up to you and me to write the history — the truth — now. It won’t be a proud endeavor because there has been little to be proud of, but we have to make sure that future Americans know exactly what happened in the Bush Years and in the Bush Wars.

The pendulum keeps swinging further to the right and seldom in our generation has it swung all the way back. When a president can look you in the eye and say he’s going to veto healthcare for children, and his people are fine with that; and when the same sales pitch for Iraq is being employed for Iran — and it’s working, what else can you say about that fucking pendulum? ++

How Soon We Forget
sumitted by Anonymous

In testimony before Congress Ambassador Crocker made a coherent argument that it took the United States years to create a operable government during our revolution; a civil war to eradicate slavery and unify the nation; and another 40 years for women to have voting rights in the world’s largest democracy. How then can we set timetables for democracy in Iraq?

True, but the salient question is, would continued British occupation of her colonies in America have led to a better America? A few apparently forgotten facts:

Not all Americans wanted to be free of Britain. Like the Maliky government, many wealth Americans supported the British and argued for British troops to remain in America to quell the violence, restore order and secure American commerce.

After Yorktown it would have been equally possible for the British General who had quelled the rebellion in NewYork and Philadelphia to have reported to George III that the rebel victory at Yorktown was due solely to the intervention of the French fleet and not rebel power. Indeed, there were “positive signs” he might report to the House of Lords, that throughout the colonies “progress was being made. “Americans” were turning against the rebel terrorists and Washington’s troops were on the brink of collapse.”

Imagine if the English had bought France out of the war, committed to a new offensive, stabilized their “legitimate” colonial government, captured Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Franklin; and publicly expressed shock when their colonial government shot all four of them as traitors to America! Would that have been good for America? Would Fox News be happy then?

Or even more interesting, imagine that after Yorktown the British had not surrendered and the French decided to save us – and in the doing, secure the America for themselves. The French landed thousands of troops from Georgia to Boston; took over the Continental Congress with a guiding hand; painted Adams and Jefferson as traitors. Their troops, unable to speak English, began to efficiently routing out English loyalists/terrorist from their homes and establish blockades throughout the colonies. At the same time, a Catholic fanatic from Montreal decided to re-engage the Indian tribes in “terrorist’s” attack on the frontier, taking advantage of the chaos created by the British, French and American fighting.

Imagine that a few years after the War of 1812, President Monroe declared the Monroe Doctrine which said simply “European powers are no longer to interfere in the affairs of the newly independent nations of the Americas”, Britain, France and Spain decided to teach this infant upstart a lesson. The European powers embargoed all American goods. Imagine Europe blockaded American ports and accused the U.S. of wishing to “dominate its neighbors”. Sounds so familiar, a bit like Iran today. Only Iran has been much less arrogant.

Imagine, forty years later, sentiment against American slavery was riding high in Britain at the outset of the American Civil War. Southern cotton fields – the oil fields of their day – were feeding Britain’s industrial revolution. Christian voices in Britain were shocked at the radical Christianity practiced in the South by those “using the words of their Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, to justify the superiority of white men and the moral righteousness of slavery.” They argued that moderate Christian voices could not allow this criminal distortion of the Lord’s word. At that moment in history, the British Empire, fresh from the defeat of Napoleon, was the most powerful nation in the world. Imagine if they had determined to cripple American commerce for 30 years by imposing an embargo with continuously threats of blockade.

Imagine that after the battle of Gettysburg, where in a few hours, 51,112 Americans died, Britain decided to step in and restore order to its barbarous ex-colony. Press reports of Southern “concentration camps” for Union troops had enflamed British opinion. Accusing the Lincoln and Davis governments of genocide, Britain bombarded Washington with naval guns, occupied New York, Richmond and New Orleans, deposed Lincoln, tried Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and U.S. Grant, and George Sherman for crimes against humanity. After months of frustration they finally “negotiated” a partition of the United States. All in the name of humanity and international stability.

Imagine that in 1898 Americans of Spanish decent in California and Texas began to decry their state of poverty and oppression. They claimed that the U.S. was an occupying power suppressing religious freedom for Catholics. An international Commission composed of Britain, France, Germany, the Vatican and Spain investigated and decreed that California and Texas were the rightful homeland of Catholics throughout the world. They gave no explanation why Spain and Italy were not better choices. The Mission churches were offered as archeological evidence of Catholics moral right to the land. Tens of thousands of Mexicans, Spaniards, Philippinos, other Latin American and Irish immigrants poured into Texas and California looking to escape the oppression against Catholics in their own lands. Border States of Arizona and Oregon were filled with protestant refugee camps. These camps were shelled regularly by Californian’s new Catholic government, in retaliation for border raids by protestant “terrorists”. American police were overwhelmed. Violence brokr out among Catholic and Protestant radicals, led by a Mormon evangelist. Hundreds were dying. Americans in other states became alarmed and decided to stay neutral. Britain and France paid New York, Penn., Virginia and Illinois millions to “stay out of the war.” French and Spanish troops poured into Texas and California to enforce the international “agreement” to return Texas and California to Catholic rule. Imagine! Sound a bit like Palestine to you?

Question: Would America be a better place today if foreign powers had intervened in our tragic history to protect their civilization and our oppressed people? How would Americans have responded? How would Fox News have reported the events of that day?

Will Iraq and Palestine be a better place for our gratuitous help? Perhaps. But who are the “Iraqi people”, or the “Palestinian people” so many in the world seem so quick to stereotype as either martyrs or terrorists?

There are no two moments in history that are exactly the same. But having made the ridiculous comparison of Iraq today with America in 1776 one should be permitted to imagine a different American history. Imagine an America invaded and occupied by a foreign army. Imagine an America frustrated at every step in our arrogant national youth.

But more importantly how is it possible that not one of our elected officials in Congress, sitting across from the graveyards of Arlington, failed to remind Ambassador Crocker of our history; of our own youthful arrogance; of our struggle to free ourselves and indeed the America’s, from all foreign domination. More tragic still, what if no one in Congress actually knows anything about what America did to become a free people and a great power. Perhaps we did only what every nation has the right to do. Perhaps one of our greatest gifts is a history in which other great powers did not intervene. What, indeed, greatest is won and not imposed? ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Entry Filed under: Political Waves

Then and Now

September 29th, 2007

Here’s a short collection on the topic of who were were — and who we’ve become.

The first is Paul Krugman’s first entry on his new blog — the next, the third in the series on conservatism by John Dean. After that, a blogger from Huffington Post mourns what we’ve given away … and the last piece is from a friend, who prefers to remain anonymous, on the twists and turns of our history and our seeming inability to “Do unto others…” as we’ve been privileged to have done unto us.

George can evidently wait indefinitely for history to tell him who he was [and trusts we won’t ask ’til then,] but only those who know where we’ve come from can truly have the perspective to make the necessary corrections that will take us into a worthwhile future. No first aid will fix our misfit systems now, they’re snarled beyond functionality, gasping their last as militarism sucks the oxygen out of everything in sight; we must reinvent them using a long-missing concept of integrity that appears to be of another time and place.

In that spirit, here are your weekend reads.

Jude

Introducing This Blog
Paul Krugman, ConscienceOfALiberal, NYT
September 18, 2007

“I was born in 1953. Like the rest of my generation, I took the America I grew up in for granted – in fact, like many in my generation I railed against the very real injustices of our society, marched against the bombing of Cambodia, went door to door for liberal candidates. It’s only in retrospect that the political and economic environment of my youth stands revealed as a paradise lost, an exceptional episode in our nation’s history.”

That’s the opening paragraph of my new book, The Conscience of a Liberal. It’s a book about what has happened to the America I grew up in and why, a story that I argue revolves around the politics and economics of inequality.

I’ve given this New York Times blog the same name, because the politics and economics of inequality will, I expect, be central to many of the blog posts – although I also expect to be posting on a lot of other issues, from health care to high-speed Internet access, from productivity to poll analysis. Many of the posts will be supplements to my regular columns; I’ll be using this space to present the kind of information I can’t provide on the printed page – especially charts and tables, which are crucial to the way I think about most of the issues I write about.

In fact, let me start this blog off with a chart that’s central to how I think about the big picture, the underlying story of what’s really going on in this country. The chart shows the share of the richest 10 percent of the American population in total income – an indicator that closely tracks many other measures of economic inequality – over the past 90 years, as estimated by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. I’ve added labels indicating four key periods. These are:

[open link for graph]

The Long Gilded Age: Historians generally say that the Gilded Age gave way to the Progressive Era around 1900. In many important ways, though, the Gilded Age continued right through to the New Deal. As far as we can tell, income remained about as unequally distributed as it had been the late 19th century – or as it is today. Public policy did little to limit extremes of wealth and poverty, mainly because the political dominance of the elite remained intact; the politics of the era, in which working Americans were divided by racial, religious, and cultural issues, have recognizable parallels with modern politics.

The Great Compression: The middle-class society I grew up in didn’t evolve gradually or automatically. It was created, in a remarkably short period of time, by FDR and the New Deal. As the chart shows, income inequality declined drastically from the late 1930s to the mid 1940s, with the rich losing ground while working Americans saw unprecedented gains. Economic historians call what happened the Great Compression, and it’s a seminal episode in American history.

Middle class America: That’s the country I grew up in. It was a society without extremes of wealth or poverty, a society of broadly shared prosperity, partly because strong unions, a high minimum wage, and a progressive tax system helped limit inequality. It was also a society in which political bipartisanship meant something: in spite of all the turmoil of Vietnam and the civil rights movement, in spite of the sinister machinations of Nixon and his henchmen, it was an era in which Democrats and Republicans agreed on basic values and could cooperate across party lines.

The great divergence: Since the late 1970s the America I knew has unraveled. We’re no longer a middle-class society, in which the benefits of economic growth are widely shared: between 1979 and 2005 the real income of the median household rose only 13 percent, but the income of the richest 0.1% of Americans rose 296 percent.

Most people assume that this rise in inequality was the result of impersonal forces, like technological change and globalization. But the great reduction of inequality that created middle-class America between 1935 and 1945 was driven by political change; I believe that politics has also played an important role in rising inequality since the 1970s. It’s important to know that no other advanced economy has seen a comparable surge in inequality – even the rising inequality of Thatcherite Britain was a faint echo of trends here.

On the political side, you might have expected rising inequality to produce a populist backlash. Instead, however, the era of rising inequality has also been the era of “movement conservatism,” the term both supporters and opponents use for the highly cohesive set of interlocking institutions that brought Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich to power, and reached its culmination, taking control of all three branches of the federal government, under George W. Bush. (Yes, Virginia, there is a vast right-wing conspiracy.)

Because of movement conservative political dominance, taxes on the rich have fallen, and the holes in the safety net have gotten bigger, even as inequality has soared. And the rise of movement conservatism is also at the heart of the bitter partisanship that characterizes politics today.

Why did this happen? Well, that’s a long story – in fact, I’ve written a whole book about it, and also about why I believe America is ready for a big change in direction.

For now, though, the important thing is to realize that the story of modern America is, in large part, the story of the fall and rise of inequality. ++

The Impact of Authoritarian Conservatism On American Government:
Part Three in a Three-Part Series
John W. Dean, FindLaw vis Smirking Chimp
Sep 28 2007

This is the final part of this three-part series of columns, in which FindLaw columnist John Dean discusses his recent book, Conservatives Without Conscience. Part One and Part Two appeared earlier on this site. - Ed.

The authoritarianism of the contemporary Republican Party has had a dire impact on all three branches of the federal government. This impact is the subject of my new book, Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches, and a matter I intend to write about periodically in this space as we approach the 2008 Election.

Authoritarian leaders do not govern when they control the apparatus of government; rather, they rule. And given their worldview, they rule from either the hard or radical right. This can best be seen by looking at the way they operate when in control of the government.

Newt Gingrich: A Prototypical Republican Authoritarian Leader

People who knew Newt Gingrich early in his political career have described him–and because he is a man who still wants to be president of the United States, such assessments remain relevant–in less than glowing terms. David Osborne spoke with many of them when he was preparing his telling profile for Mother Jones, and he was given information that describes an authoritarian leader.

Osborne reported that Gingrich was dominating, opposed to equality, desirous of personal power, and amoral; that he can be a bully, hedonistic, exploitive, manipulative, a cheater, prejudiced toward women, and mean-spirited; that he uses religion for political purposes; and that he wants others to submit to his authority and is aggressive on behalf of authority.

When Gingrich took charge of the House in 1995 as Speaker, he imposed authoritarian rule unlike that of any Speaker before him. His bullying, demanding style provoked antagonism and incivility, and made demonizing one’s opponents standard operating procedure. Gingrich eliminated the seniority rights of Republicans in the House, and he personally selected committee chairs who would be loyal to him - and who could help raise money, using their posts for the good of the GOP. Gingrich lorded over the House, telling members not to bring their families back to Washington, and even suggesting which books they should be reading.

Not long after Gingrich’s authoritarian approach became evident, a reporter for the Independent (London) observed that Gingrich was an avid reader of Frans de Waal, a Dutch ethnologist whose book Chimpanzee Politics was on the Speaker’s list of twenty-five recommended books. In dead earnest, the reporter noted striking parallels between Gingrich’s rise to power and the efforts of “apes striving to acquire the coveted status of ‘alpha male,’” as de Waal’s study described, in his May 31, 1995 piece “How Newt Aped His Way to the Top.”

The GOP’s Authoritarian House

Authoritarianism is, by its nature, anti-democratic. One look at the House under Republican rule shows how authoritarian behavior has distorted the deliberative processes of this legislative chamber. Under GOP rule, leaders have represented the interest of the Republican Party, and have run the place as if the Democrats who represent over half the country did not exist. For good reason, voters took control away from the GOP in 2006, and as the Party’s members have done nothing to change their ways, we must all hope that voters keep sending the same message until Republicans choose to hear it, and to reconstitute themselves into a party capable of actually governing.

Under Speaker Gingrich as well as Speaker Hastert, who followed him, extreme centralization of the legislative processes of the House occurred. Regularly, GOP leaders wrote the laws themselves - often relying on lobbyists to do the grunt work of drafting - rather than abiding by the regular procedures of the committees, which hold hearings and have professional staff to draft legislation. When not actually writing the laws, the House leaders often drastically changed proposed legislation themselves, typically late in the evening when no one was around to contest their actions.

GOP leaders also changed the rules to eliminate deliberation. Under the rules of the House, only emergency measures can be considered without giving members 48 hours to consider the proposal. Yet Republicans regularly declared matters they wanted to push through to be an emergency, giving other members as little as thirty minutes’ notice, and forcing members of their own party to blindly vote for measures when they had no idea what they were approving.

GOP House leaders also controlled legislation so as to prohibit amendments during the floor debate, and greatly reduced the time available for debate. When House and Senate legislation differed, thus requiring a conference committee, Republicans defied House rules and refused to allow Democrats to attend the conference committee. When votes were close in the House, or when the GOP was losing, they simply suspended the fifteen-minute rule (the rule setting the time period) within which votes are to take place, often leaving the vote open for hours while they twisted arms and literally bribed and cajoled Republicans to get them to comply with the leadership’s wishes.

In sum, during the decade when Republicans controlled the House, they provided an example of the nature of authoritarian rule of the legislative branch. Similarly, but in a very different setting, President Bush and Vice-President Cheney have shown how authoritarian rule works in the executive branch. Neither demonstration has been pretty or reassuring.

The GOP’s Authoritarian Reconception of the Presidency

Nixon was an authoritarian president. So was Reagan. Indeed, it was during the Reagan years that conservatives made a complete change in their thinking about the American presidency. This change — not coincidentally, I believe — occurred as authoritarian conservatives began to dominate the GOP.

The authoritarian conservative philosophy was fully articulated by Terry Eastland, a former Reagan Justice Department Director of Public Affairs, in his 1992 book Energy in the Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency. This is a book that was studied closely by then-Halliburton Chairman Dick Cheney, and then-Texas Governor George W. Bush and his staff, long before they arrived in Washington in 2001.

“Reagan demonstrated that the strong presidency is necessary to effect ends sought by most conservatives,” Eastland wrote. For conservatives, Eastland’s book made clear, a strong president is one who wears his commander-in-chief uniform every day, and tells Americans how they should think and act, rather than one who responds to the wishes of the voters. It is a Father-Knows-Best presidency, one that considers Americans to be children who do not know what is best for themselves.

Nixon created the “imperial presidency.” After the public rejected that concentration of power, in the aftermath of Watergate, Reagan restored the imperial presidency in another guise. Now, Bush and Cheney have created the post-imperial presidency. Using the threat of terrorism as their justification, Bush and Cheney have embraced the so-called “unitary executive theory” - which, in truth, is merely another term for an authoritarian presidency.

Eastland, like many conservatives, thought it a poor showing when Ronald Reagan left office with the highest approval ratings of any post-World War II president. Quoting the voice of authoritarian conservatism, Charles Krauthammer, Eastland assessed this supposedly unfortunate aspect of the Reagan presidency to be “Like dying rich… a great moral failure.” As this comment shows, authoritarians do not want Americans to love or even necessarily like their president; indeed, they believe a president must be doing something wrong if they do.

Bush and Cheney’s actions must surely bring a smile to the faces of folks like Terry Eastland and Charles Krauthammer, as they sink lower and lower in their approval ratings, spending all their good will and then some. Authoritarian conservatives will no doubt be disappointed if Bush and Cheney do not manage to get to single-digit ratings before they leave.

Many observers have suggested that the Bush/Cheney Administration may, in the eyes of history, be the worst ever. Yet this condemnation must seem beside the point to authoritarians, for these people simply do not care what others think of their performance. What is important, in their eyes, is simply that these leaders and their compliant followers are doing things the way they believe they must be done, and enforcing their will upon any who dare to dissent or disagree.

It is my great hope that voters will reject the option of embracing yet more authoritarianism in 2008, for, even in this three-part series of columns and in my books, I have only touched on its negative impact on America. ++

America Used To Be Really Goddamn Awesome
Bob Cesca, Huffington Post
September 28, 2007

I’ve been captivated by Ken Burns’ The War this week and it struck me how awesome America used to be.

The prevailing attitude of the ladies and gentlemen featured in Burns’ film, and by proxy all Americans of that era, was that if we had to fight a war, we had better do it right. Clearly and with little dissent, we had to fight that war, and without fail, Americans rallied together to do it really damn well.

People from every corner of the nation selflessly pooled their resources for the great cause of World War II, and I’m not sure about this one, but I don’t think President Roosevelt ever once asked the country to sacrifice by going to the mall. And I’m pretty sure he didn’t outsource the construction of tanks, Flying Fortresses, Hellcats and Thunderbolts to Mexico and China. That’s a hell of a thing by today’s standards, isn’t it?

We’ve fallen so far from what we used to be, even as recently as thirty years ago when the comparatively liberal president Richard Nixon opened a dialogue with Red China, whilst Mao supplied arms to North Vietnam. One day long ago, it was okay to wish for an end to a war, without being accused of hating the soldiers who were fighting it. It was once a given that socialized public education, police, fire departments, roads, parks, national defense and the constitutionally mandated General Welfare & Domestic Tranquility were simply a part of the American way of life and would always be there.

And when our nation had to go to war, we would be there for her.

Conversely, when we crumble to the pressure of our reactionary and authoritarian elements, we get Japanese internment camps, the rise of the military industrial complex, and men turned away from service due to the color of their skin. Some of our greatest failures have been conceived when our irrationality, fear and lust for power overrule our traditional American ideals — even during our finest hours as a nation.

And now, 50 years later, in our lives and times, we get President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney.

The Bush Years have been a monumental, cataclysmic failure on most fronts due to its inattention to what has, historically, made American great. The president and his thinning ranks of fawn-eyed Hannities don’t understand this yet. They don’t understand it mostly because they’re too ignorant — blinded by sloganeering — to the very basic reality that Bush Republican style government, in practice, is about as successful and practical as a paper condom. It always has been.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when they compare the Bush Wars to World War II. It’s a desperate notion, one that seeks to conflate our current president with greatness he doesn’t deserve and an historical legacy he will never achieve. It’s also meant to inflate our current “enemies” to Hitler status, and thus proving the case for war.

The comparison is pure horseshit. (Say nothing of the fact that it elevates Bin Laden or the late Saddam or the present Ahmadinejad to a level of villainy they also don’t deserve. It’s like saying a doofus villain like Solomon Grundy is the next Lex Luthor. I’m sure they appreciate being granted superpowers enough to take over the world, though.)

If it’s so fucking important to stay in Iraq, and if it’s so fucking important to invade Iran — and if it’s so fucking important to wiretap your phones and read your mail, and to shit all over your constitutional rights and the Geneva Conventions — and all of it is part of a larger World War II style conflict, then why aren’t the Bushies taking their metaphors seriously by demanding the sacrifices of World War II?

Did President Roosevelt cut taxes or ask veterans to pay higher deductibles? Did President Roosevelt outsource the army by hiring no-bid corporate mercenaries?

From the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the surrender of Japan, automobile manufacturers stopped making cars in lieu of manufacturing hardware for the war effort. Can you imagine, among all of the scrap metal drives — the rationing of everything from gasoline to frying pan fat — if Roosevelt had allowed SUV drivers to receive tax breaks in which sheer vehicular tonnage was rewarded at the peril of even one American G.I.?

If the quintessential symbol of the American character in World War II was Rosie The Riveter, the poster for the Bush Wars has to be that of an SUV driver receiving a tax break while sucking down enough Saudi oil to drive to a mall where he’s expected to buy lead-tainted crapola manufactured overseas — a yellow ribbon hypocrite magnet dangling just above his exhaust pipe and several inches from a fading W04 sticker. The caption: “The Bush Patriot Says: ‘I’m On It, Mr. President!’”

The Bushies can’t possibly take their own World War II metaphor seriously because they don’t truly believe in the comparison.

They know, as you and I do, that these wars have little to do with stopping a new Hitler. If we peel back the layers — if you look at what truly drives little childish men like Hannity and Cheney and Kristol, you’ll find that it has little to do with liberating nations from an occupying Nazi force and ending a brutal holocaust. Beneath the pasty white surface of a typical Bush Republican you’ll find greed, fear, ignorance, anger and a basic lack of understanding of America’s place on the world stage. They’re traits that drive nations into unnecessary wars. They’re also traits that often breed cowardice.

To wit… Those of you demanding a war in Iran, I have one question for you. And no, I’m not going to employ the tired military service argument, but I must ask you this: what is the very minimum you’re doing right now to prepare for your war? Are you refusing to support further tax cuts or pumping less “Islamofascist” oil into your SUV tank?

You’re probably not doing anything because all you’re expected to do is to say that you support the troops (what does that mean in practice?). And as long as you don’t oppose the president as he dismantles the Constitution in favor of a corporate police state, then you’ve contributed to your president’s war effort. That’s the Bush Republican way. Oh, and to shop. You have go to Disneyland and buy shit you don’t need at the mall (what the fuck is a Webkinz?).

How will the Ken Burns of the future portray the Bush Wars? I imagine that a large part of a future documentary about these times will detail what Rick Perlstein sublimely referred to this week as the destruction of America’s character.

Whoever the future Ken Burns might be (hopefully, it’ll be Ken Burns), he or she will have to dig deep into the destruction of our national character and detail the stories of torture and secret detention facilities; outsourced corporate thugs murdering foreign civilians; government scare tactics without substance — it’ll be a documentary in part about your non-military friends and family who supported this president’s war but who sacrificed nothing in its execution.

So here we are in late 2007. The president believes that history will vindicate his efforts to destroy the American character and to bring about the ascendancy of neo-conservatism. After all, he fancies himself the new McKinley — or is it George Washington? Is he Lincoln this week or Truman? Is he still fighting the Vietnam War or is it World War II? Korea or the Civil War? Goddamn him and his marble-mouthed horseshit. That’s exactly why it has to be up to you and me to write the history — the truth — now. It won’t be a proud endeavor because there has been little to be proud of, but we have to make sure that future Americans know exactly what happened in the Bush Years and in the Bush Wars.

The pendulum keeps swinging further to the right and seldom in our generation has it swung all the way back. When a president can look you in the eye and say he’s going to veto healthcare for children, and his people are fine with that; and when the same sales pitch for Iraq is being employed for Iran — and it’s working, what else can you say about that fucking pendulum? ++

How Soon We Forget
sumitted by Anonymous

In testimony before Congress Ambassador Crocker made a coherent argument that it took the United States years to create a operable government during our revolution; a civil war to eradicate slavery and unify the nation; and another 40 years for women to have voting rights in the world’s largest democracy. How then can we set timetables for democracy in Iraq?

True, but the salient question is, would continued British occupation of her colonies in America have led to a better America? A few apparently forgotten facts:

Not all Americans wanted to be free of Britain. Like the Maliky government, many wealth Americans supported the British and argued for British troops to remain in America to quell the violence, restore order and secure American commerce.

After Yorktown it would have been equally possible for the British General who had quelled the rebellion in NewYork and Philadelphia to have reported to George III that the rebel victory at Yorktown was due solely to the intervention of the French fleet and not rebel power. Indeed, there were “positive signs” he might report to the House of Lords, that throughout the colonies “progress was being made. “Americans” were turning against the rebel terrorists and Washington’s troops were on the brink of collapse.”

Imagine if the English had bought France out of the war, committed to a new offensive, stabilized their “legitimate” colonial government, captured Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Franklin; and publicly expressed shock when their colonial government shot all four of them as traitors to America! Would that have been good for America? Would Fox News be happy then?

Or even more interesting, imagine that after Yorktown the British had not surrendered and the French decided to save us – and in the doing, secure the America for themselves. The French landed thousands of troops from Georgia to Boston; took over the Continental Congress with a guiding hand; painted Adams and Jefferson as traitors. Their troops, unable to speak English, began to efficiently routing out English loyalists/terrorist from their homes and establish blockades throughout the colonies. At the same time, a Catholic fanatic from Montreal decided to re-engage the Indian tribes in “terrorist’s” attack on the frontier, taking advantage of the chaos created by the British, French and American fighting.

Imagine that a few years after the War of 1812, President Monroe declared the Monroe Doctrine which said simply “European powers are no longer to interfere in the affairs of the newly independent nations of the Americas”, Britain, France and Spain decided to teach this infant upstart a lesson. The European powers embargoed all American goods. Imagine Europe blockaded American ports and accused the U.S. of wishing to “dominate its neighbors”. Sounds so familiar, a bit like Iran today. Only Iran has been much less arrogant.

Imagine, forty years later, sentiment against American slavery was riding high in Britain at the outset of the American Civil War. Southern cotton fields – the oil fields of their day – were feeding Britain’s industrial revolution. Christian voices in Britain were shocked at the radical Christianity practiced in the South by those “using the words of their Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, to justify the superiority of white men and the moral righteousness of slavery.” They argued that moderate Christian voices could not allow this criminal distortion of the Lord’s word. At that moment in history, the British Empire, fresh from the defeat of Napoleon, was the most powerful nation in the world. Imagine if they had determined to cripple American commerce for 30 years by imposing an embargo with continuously threats of blockade.

Imagine that after the battle of Gettysburg, where in a few hours, 51,112 Americans died, Britain decided to step in and restore order to its barbarous ex-colony. Press reports of Southern “concentration camps” for Union troops had enflamed British opinion. Accusing the Lincoln and Davis governments of genocide, Britain bombarded Washington with naval guns, occupied New York, Richmond and New Orleans, deposed Lincoln, tried Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and U.S. Grant, and George Sherman for crimes against humanity. After months of frustration they finally “negotiated” a partition of the United States. All in the name of humanity and international stability.

Imagine that in 1898 Americans of Spanish decent in California and Texas began to decry their state of poverty and oppression. They claimed that the U.S. was an occupying power suppressing religious freedom for Catholics. An international Commission composed of Britain, France, Germany, the Vatican and Spain investigated and decreed that California and Texas were the rightful homeland of Catholics throughout the world. They gave no explanation why Spain and Italy were not better choices. The Mission churches were offered as archeological evidence of Catholics moral right to the land. Tens of thousands of Mexicans, Spaniards, Philippinos, other Latin American and Irish immigrants poured into Texas and California looking to escape the oppression against Catholics in their own lands. Border States of Arizona and Oregon were filled with protestant refugee camps. These camps were shelled regularly by Californian’s new Catholic government, in retaliation for border raids by protestant “terrorists”. American police were overwhelmed. Violence brokr out among Catholic and Protestant radicals, led by a Mormon evangelist. Hundreds were dying. Americans in other states became alarmed and decided to stay neutral. Britain and France paid New York, Penn., Virginia and Illinois millions to “stay out of the war.” French and Spanish troops poured into Texas and California to enforce the international “agreement” to return Texas and California to Catholic rule. Imagine! Sound a bit like Palestine to you?

Question: Would America be a better place today if foreign powers had intervened in our tragic history to protect their civilization and our oppressed people? How would Americans have responded? How would Fox News have reported the events of that day?

Will Iraq and Palestine be a better place for our gratuitous help? Perhaps. But who are the “Iraqi people”, or the “Palestinian people” so many in the world seem so quick to stereotype as either martyrs or terrorists?

There are no two moments in history that are exactly the same. But having made the ridiculous comparison of Iraq today with America in 1776 one should be permitted to imagine a different American history. Imagine an America invaded and occupied by a foreign army. Imagine an America frustrated at every step in our arrogant national y