Values in danger

25 Replies to “Values in danger”

1. And now a word from the
   And now a word from the Right: I lived through Carter. I believe he is a fine moral man, but he was a total­ly inef­fec­tive Pres­i­dent. I don’t see that as nec­es­sar­i­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry. 🙂 His han­dling of Iran and the econ­o­my were just the most glar­ing exam­ples. Noth­ing of pos­i­tive import was accom­plished dur­ing his term unless you feel the Camp David Accords end­ed the war in the Mideast. He also gave away the Pana­ma Canal. The one thing he did well while in office was his han­dling of the Three Mile Island prob­lem. The fact that he imme­di­ate­ly went there and was filmed inspect­ing the facil­i­ty reas­sured the rest of us that it real­ly was­n’t as dan­ger­ous there as the medi­a’s blath­er was por­tray­ing. His inef­fec­tive­ness was in spite of the Democ­rats con­trol­ling both Hous­es. As I said before: a good man, but a crap­py President.

   Dad

   1. Even grant­i­ng every bit of
      Even grant­i­ng every bit of that, he still did more good than Reagan.

      Who, you will recall, not only gave rock­ets to the Iran­ian islamists, but sold WMDs to Sad­dam. And he and Bush-one pret­ty much cre­at­ed the Tal­iban while they were at it, with their pol­i­cy of “We’ll fight the Sovi­ets to the last Afghan”. In oth­er words, it turns out the entire War on Ter­ror is pret­ty much Rea­gan’s fault. Up against that, the Carter record of leav­ing things no bet­ter or worse than he found them looks pret­ty admirable.

      Lit­tle known fun fact: the sev­en­ties, when every­body felt like the econ­o­my was per­pet­u­al­ly in the toi­let, pro­duced more total job growth than the eight­ies, which every­body likes to describe as this time of vibrant eco­nom­ic revival.

      1. I’m not sure that it is
         I’m not sure that it is worth debat­ing with some­one who claims that any sin­gle per­son is respon­si­ble for the cur­rent war on ter­ror. The US has not been on good terms with fun­da­men­tal­ist Mus­lims since before the Cru­sades. Well, maybe since Muhammad.

         Every­one has heard that Carter pro­duced 8 mil­lion jobs while in office. I haven’t researched that claim, but the fact that the unem­ploy­ment rate jumped to around 8% and stayed there until Rea­gan cut tax­es would cause me to won­der where the jobs were. I sus­pect they must have been short term gov­ern­ment jobs. Your impli­ca­tion that the Carter years were not, in fact, eco­nom­i­cal­ly woe­ful flies in the face of the facts. 20% inter­est rates, 8% unem­ploy­ment and 12% infla­tion got Rea­gan elect­ed, cam­paign­ing almost sole­ly on the “mis­ery index”. Econ­o­mists had to invent a new term to describe the econ­o­my while Carter was in office: stagfla­tion. This described the unprece­dent­ed com­bi­na­tion of slow eco­nom­ic growth and ris­ing prices.

         Dad

         1. Of course, I mis­spoke. The
            Of course, I mis­spoke. The US was­n’t even around before 1776. The US did­n’t have trou­ble with Mus­lim ter­ror­ists until after the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War. That’s when it all start­ed: the Bar­bary pirates in the late 1700’s and very ear­ly 1800’s were the first Mus­lim ter­ror­ists we had to deal with, and they, too, were sup­port­ed and spon­sored by Arab nations. This took place well before colo­nial­ism in the lands of Islam, before oil inter­ests, and long before the found­ing of the state of Israel. 

            Any­way, it goes back before Rea­gan. At least to Jefferson.

            Dad

         2. My point is not that the
            My point is not that the sev­en­ties were par­adise, it’s that Rea­gan’s answer to it was in many ways a cure worse than the dis­ease. Espe­cial­ly giv­en that in hind­sight, we can now see pret­ty clear­ly how it was pos­si­ble to have ris­ing prices in a slow­ing ecomo­ny: just have a car­tel tem­porar­i­ly triple the price of oil. So the stagfla­tion was prob­a­bly by its nature a fair­ly tran­si­to­ry event — some­thing that was­n’t real­ized at the time. In this light, Rea­gan’s one real econ­o­my-fix­ing accom­plish­ment was to flood the petro­le­um mar­ket. Aside from that… in exchange for being freed from stagfla­tion, we’ve pret­ty much hosed our entire mid­dle class. Remem­ber when an une­d­u­cat­ed fac­to­ry work­er could buy a house and his wife did­n’t even need a job? Remem­ber when you could actu­al­ly get a good edu­ca­tion at a pub­lic school? Those were still pos­si­ble in the seventies.

            1. Rea­gan’s tax cut did the
               Rea­gan’s tax cut did the very same thing as JFK’s did: it jump­start­ed the econ­o­my. Always has. I sus­pect it always will. That was what pulled us out of the eco­nom­ic dol­drums of the Carter era. We did­n’t (and still don’t) have enough oil reserves to make a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the economy.

               There are many rea­sons we have so many dual income fam­i­lies. One is that the aver­age house has more than dou­bled in size since the late 60’s, and we have to fill all that space with expen­sive “labor-sav­ing” devices. Most peo­ple today would refuse to live in theie equiv­a­lent 1960’s house­hold. So the wife works to sup­port these lux­u­ries. They are sup­port­ing their high­er stan­dard of liv­ing. Also, in the 60’s women were not encour­aged to work out­side the home. That was “their place” in most minds. That said, I know quite a few fam­i­lies who have gone back to a sin­gle income, and they say that the loss of spousal income is sig­nif­i­cant­ly off­set by the sav­ings derived from not working.

               As for edu­ca­tion, that has been on a down­ward trend for at least a hun­dred years. Who among us can quote from the clas­sics in their orig­i­nal lan­guages? That was com­mon among edu­cat­ed folk in the 19^th cen­tu­ry. Today most col­lege grads don’t even have a clue who Chaucer was. But I digress. Yes, you could still get a good edu­ca­tion in the 70’s if you want­ed to. Yes, it is much hard­er now. But the SAT tests were soft­ened in 1974 as well as in 1980 and 1995. Methinks that indi­cates the edu­ca­tion sys­tem was in trou­ble before Carter, let alone Rea­gan. I was pleased to see that this year school test scores went up, thanks in no lit­tle part to the NCLB act. But I agree: our edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem is per­ilous­ly inad­e­quate. The Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties has done nation­wide test­ing of high school juniors, and their lack of knowl­edge is abysmal. (No, they don’t know what that word means, so it does­n’t insult them.) Here are a few exam­ples from their mul­ti­ple choice tests:
               1. When was the First World War? 43% could­n’t pick “between 1900 – 1950”
               2. 70% had no idea what the Magna Car­ta was.
               3. When was the Civ­il War? Only 32% picked “1850−1900”
               4. When did Colum­bus dis­cov­er Amer­i­ca? Only 68% picked “before 1750”
               5. A quar­ter could­n’t pick “Nixon” as the Pres­i­dent forced to resign because of Water­gate. (The oth­er choic­es were Tru­man, Eisen­how­er, and Johnson.)
               6. Half picked Patrick Hen­ry as say­ing “Give me lib­er­ty or give me death.”
               7. Only 36% could iden­ti­fy Chaucer as the author of Can­ter­bury Tales.

               This test was not a “tricky” test, as you can see by the half cen­tu­ry choic­es for when events occurred. One more exam­ple that shows this:
               8. Pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lin­coln wrote:
               a. the Bill of Rights 13.6%
               b. the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion 68.0%
               c. the Mis­souri Com­pro­mise 9.9%
               d. Uncle Tom’s Cab­in 8.5%

               At least the major­i­ty got this right. This study only cov­ered His­to­ry and Lit­er­a­ture, but every study shows our stu­dents falling fur­ther and fur­ther behind the rest of the world in every area, par­tic­u­lar­ly math and sci­ence, yet the Amer­i­can stu­dents, when asked to assess them­selves, place them­selves at the top. I think edu­ca­tion is by far the most seri­ous prob­lem fac­ing the nation, far out­strip­ping the media-hyped issues of war, cli­mate change, or resource deple­tion. Intel­li­gence and edu­ca­tion cou­pled with log­ic and rea­son can solve any prob­lem. Ratio­nal thought is not very com­mon, how­ev­er. Cer­tain­ly not in pol­i­tics or education.

               Dad

            2. ” it jump­start­ed the
               ” it jump­start­ed the econ­o­my.”

               Well, a lit­tle bit of a hop. It cer­tain­ly jump­start­ed the stock mar­ket, but the over­all econ­o­my? Net job cre­ation was weak, wages in pro­por­tion to cost of liv­ing lost ground… if you add Rea­gan and Bush‑1 togeth­er, even total house­hold income went down after infla­tion, for those below medi­an income — and medi­an income itself fell rel­a­tive to mean income, due to increas­ing con­cen­tra­tion of wealth.

               “Always has. I sus­pect it always will.”

               Then how do you explain how it is that the real­ly big leap in the econ­o­my, with dra­mat­ic job and income growth — even a brief rever­sal of the thir­ty year decline of wage buy­ing pow­er — only hap­pened after Clin­ton passed a tax increase? And how now that we have a tax cut again, the econ­o­my can’t seem to restart from what looked at the time like a minor hic­cup recession?

               “So the wife works to sup­port these lux­u­ries. They are sup­port­ing their high­er stan­dard of liv­ing. Also, in the 60’s women were not encour­aged to work out­side the home.”

               That is the broad­ly accept­ed con­ven­tion­al view. It’s wrong. It would be more on the mon­ey to say that it worked in the reverse direc­tion: it became accept­ed for wives to work out­side the home after it became com­mon prac­tice, in order to com­pen­sate for a low­er stan­dard of living.

               We don’t live in big­ger hous­es today, we live with more peo­ple hav­ing no house at all. If the aver­age house is big­ger, that prob­a­bly has more to do with house own­er­ship becom­ing a mark of class priv­i­lege than it has to do with ever-increas­ing lux­u­ry for aver­age citizens.

               Around here, there are still plen­ty of tiny hous­es. I know some­body who owns a free stand­ing house of only about 400 square feet! In fact, I don’t think I know a sin­gle acquain­t­ence today who owns a house as big as the one I lived in as a kid (5 bed­rooms). Which my par­ents bought for like two years’ worth of my dad’s salary, and lat­er sold for like four years’ worth. Nowa­days it would prob­a­bly go for like eight or ten years of what I now earn, which is at a com­pa­ra­ble career level.

               “As for edu­ca­tion, that has been on a down­ward trend for at least a hun­dred years.”

               Only the last 25 or so, I think. The amount of stuff that peo­ple know has most­ly gone up over the last cen­tu­ry. Psy­chol­o­gists who mea­sure IQs have nev­er yet come up with a test that sep­a­rates native intel­li­gence from edu­ca­tion, and the result of this is that they keep hav­ing to move the base­line, because peo­ple keep scor­ing high­er than the peo­ple of a decade ago did on gen­er­al intel­li­gence tests. Some­body just came out with a book mak­ing a strong case that the aver­age Amer­i­can has come to be far more able to deal with com­plex­i­ty than they were 50 years ago — I can’t remem­ber the name, unfortunately.

               As for a tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion in the clas­sics, that’s great if it’s in addi­tion to, rather than instead of, know­ing mod­ern stuff… but from what I’ve heard, the kind of edu­ca­tion that the elite pri­vate schools gave 120 years ago was, like, Greek and Latin are the only required sub­jects, his­to­ry and geog­ra­phy are rec­om­mend­ed, math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence are strict­ly option­al. We’re doing a good deal bet­ter than that. 100 years ago a large por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion were farm­ers who got, by mod­ern stan­dars, hard­ly any edu­ca­tion at all. The long term trend is pos­i­tive — the recent declines most­ly come down to the efforts of cer­tain fac­tions to attack and under­mine pub­lic edu­ca­tion, leav­ing us all too often with ghet­to-cal­iber schools even in the sub­urbs, and dis­turbing­ly, a ghet­to-like atti­tude toward school tak­ing hold in rea­son­ably well-off young peo­ple. Espe­cial­ly here in Cal­i­for­nia, where the cut­backs over the last thir­ty years have been more dra­mat­ic than in most states.

            3. It is an inter­est­ing
               It is an inter­est­ing coin­ci­dence that yes­ter­day the Wall Street Jour­nal print­ed their analy­sis of the 25 years since Rea­gan was inau­gu­rat­ed. Their con­clu­sion con­tra­dicts yours com­plete­ly. Basi­cal­ly, they say that Reaganomics worked, and it worked excep­tion­al­ly well. If you are inter­est­ed in their analy­sis and the data, here is the link: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007843

               Dad

            4. the Wall Street Journal

               [quote]the Wall Street Jour­nal print­ed their analy­sis of the 25 years since Rea­gan was inau­gu­rat­ed. .…. Basi­cal­ly, they say that Reaganomics worked, and it worked excep­tion­al­ly well.[/quote]

               They did work well for the kind of nose-up-Ayn Rand’s-dead-ass­hole pricks who write for The Wall Street Journal.

            5. Up to now this has been a
               Up to now this has been a fair­ly rea­son­able dis­cus­sion. Your type of vit­ri­ol seems to be com­mon to peo­ple who have no facts to debate with.…

               Con­sid­er your­self spanked and your mouthed washed out with soap.

               Dad

            6. No amount of soap will wash
               No amount of soap will wash away the truth!!

            7. woops, that was me. So was
               woops, that was me. So was the remark about the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the WSJ opin­ion depart­ment, which has been hir­ing 100% pure par­ti­san hacks with zero integri­ty for twen­ty years or more.

            8. “Con­sid­er your­self spanked
               “Con­sid­er your­self spanked and your mouthed washed out with soap.”

               Yeah, fine, “Dad.”

               While we’re spank­ing and wash­ing, your state­ment regard­ing the Wall Street Jour­nal is known in the land of rhetor­i­cal fal­la­cy is “ad vere­cun­di­am,” an “appeal to author­i­ty.” Use­less if you don’t say WHY their study came to those conclusions.

               Let’s take a clos­er look at my inflam­ma­to­ry (ad hominem) statement:

               “They did work well for the kind of nose-up-Ayn Rand’s-dead-ass­hole pricks who write for The Wall Street Journal.”

               I still feel a ton of resid­ual anger from Rea­gan’s time in office. I was broke and dis­en­fran­chised. In my young life, I’d nev­er expe­ri­enced the depths of that atti­tude of “we don’t give a shit about any­one but the peo­ple who are direct­ly respon­si­ble for us being in pow­er.” Not with John­son, Nixon, Ford, or Carter.

               For 12 years of my life I felt like an out­sider in my own coun­try. I’m still seething with anger about it. If you’re writ­ing me off as a pissed-off Demo­c­rat who did­n’t get what he want­ed, well, in 1980, I vot­ed for Ander­son, for whom I would have vot­ed had he stayed with the Repub­li­can par­ty. I was pret­ty much a Repub­li­can until 1980, when that par­ty sent a big “fuck you” to peo­ple like me.

               That is Rea­gan’s lega­cy with me: legit­imiz­ing self­ish­ness. From what I’ve read of Ayn Rand, that’s her big trip as well: being only con­cerned with one’s own inter­ests is good for the world. I don’t claim to be any kind of author­i­ty on her, because I’ve found her books pret­ty unreadable.

               Yes, Rea­gan’s poli­cies did work well for some, and those peo­ple were most­ly those who already had access to eco­nom­ic pow­er. The peo­ple who now write for the Wall Street Jour­nal are such peo­ple. We can­not expect them to be free of bias when doing their study or draw­ing con­clu­sions from it.

               Who am I? Some Bay Area hip­pie com­mie pal of Steve’s, perhaps?

               I’m in my mid-40’s and have my own elec­tron­ics busi­ness. Proud and hap­py capitalist.

            9. The WSJ opin­ion page has not
               The WSJ opin­ion page has not the slight­est trace of the cred­i­bil­i­ty that the WSJ’s news depart­ment has.

            10. The same has been said for
                The same has been said for ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, NY Times, et al, for decades. Gosh! Who can you trust? At least the WSJ has­n’t been caught mak­ing up par­ti­san sto­ries as all the above have.

                Dad

            11. There’s no com­par­i­son.
                There’s no com­par­i­son. You’re talk­ing about indi­vid­ual cas­es that are excep­tions to the rule, in orga­ni­za­tions which peo­ple con­tin­ue to expect integri­ty of in gen­er­al. The WSJ opin­ion page has no such cred­i­bil­i­ty left to lose — it isn’t even com­pa­ra­ble to Fox News.

                So yeah, peo­ple have said that CBS et al were just hir­ing par­ti­san hacks, but the WSJ opin­ion page is where the charge actu­al­ly sticks.

         3. I was­n’t say­ing Rea­gan
            I was­n’t say­ing Rea­gan caused the gen­er­al pat­tern of blood­shed in the mideast or Islam­ic anti-Amer­i­can­ism, I was say­ing he caused the par­tic­u­lar war(s) we are now in: Iraq and Afghanistan. His Afghan pol­i­cy even indi­rect­ly brought about 9/11, because it was bin Laden’s expe­ri­ences in Afghanistan, fight­ing the Sovi­ets as a catspaw of the CIA, that con­vert­ed him to the cause of anti-Americanism.

            1. That claim is total­ly
               That claim is total­ly unsup­port­ed by fact. The CIA did sup­port the Afghans through the Pak­istani ISI, but bin Laden per­son­al­ly fund­ed the MAK arm of for­eign Arab fight­ers. Why would US aid in fight­ing the Rus­sians turn him against us? That makes no sense. The truth is that, as he has pub­licly stat­ed, he hates us for three reasons:
               1. The exis­tence of Israel.
               2. The “crime of Andalu­sia” or preva­lence of sec­u­lar gov­ern­ments in the Mid­dle East.
               3. The pres­ence of U.S. mil­i­tary bases in Sau­di Arabia.

               He has nev­er said that he hates the US because we sup­port­ed him in Afghanistan. Israel pre­ced­ed Rea­gan by 30 years; we have sup­port­ed sec­u­lar gov­ern­ments in the area longer than that; and the bases in Sau­di Ara­bia were there pri­or to 1980 as well.

               You might as well blame 9/11 on Eisen­how­er for sup­port­ing the Shah of Iran or for Clin­ton freez­ing Osama’s assets and try­ing to assas­si­nate him with cruise mis­siles. Every Pres­i­dent we have had has con­tributed at least as much as Rea­gan to the present state of Osama’s anti-Americanism.

               Dad

            2. All those old exist­ing
               All those old exist­ing mid­dle-east­ern issues don’t explain him switch­ing from ally-of-con­ve­nience to bit­ter ene­my in the ear­ly nineties (or ear­li­er, I’m not sure). By all reports I’ve seen the change took place when he was in Afghanistan, not in any mid­dle east­ern coun­try. Which prob­a­bly has a lot to do with why he based his oper­a­tion there lat­er on.

               I don’t know what went wrong in Afghanistan to pro­voke him, but one pos­si­ble rea­son is the fact that, to get the Afghans to spill more blood, our diplo­mats promised them lots of recon­struc­tion aid after­wards, which was nev­er delivered.

               (We seem to be doing the same thing again now.)

               By the way, a for­mer house­mate of mine once toured Afghanistan in the mid­dle of the long bat­tle with the Sovi­ets, just for the hell of it… he report­ed that sol­diers on both sides would rou­tine­ly sell their weapons and ammo to their ene­mies for cash. The degree of ide­o­log­i­cal fer­vor in the bat­tle was appar­ent­ly a lot low­er than one might expect. Well, I guess it’s not unex­pect­ed on the Sovi­et side.

            3. I sus­pect that the pres­ence
               I sus­pect that the pres­ence of Russ­ian infi­dels on Mus­lim land in Afghanistan reaf­firmed his fun­da­men­tal­ist beliefs and caused him to car­ry his jihad to oth­er “unclean” nations.

               When asked why his gov­ern­ment was so hos­tile to Amer­i­ca, Ambas­sador Adja from Tripoli said “that it was found­ed on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was writ­ten in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowl­edged their author­i­ty were sin­ners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wher­ev­er they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Pris­on­ers, and that every Mus­sel­man who should be slain in Bat­tle was sure to go to Paradise.” That was in 1786 and noth­ing much has changed since.

               Dad

            4. Spec­u­la­tive.
               
               Spec­u­la­tive.

            5. Of course it is! But so is
               Of course it is! But so is say­ing that Rea­gan cre­at­ed Osama’s anger. At least I pref­aced mine with “I sus­pect”. I also sus­pect that prob­a­bly Osama him­self could­n’t tell you pre­cise­ly what caused it. But I offered a plau­si­ble theory.…

               Dad

            6. But I was­n’t guess­ing, I was
               But I was­n’t guess­ing, I was pass­ing on what I’d seen report­ed by those who looked into the background.

2. Did I miss some­thing or is
   Did I miss some­thing or is there final­ly some evi­dence, any evi­dence at all, link­ing Rea­gan with Iran/Contra? Nobody could pro­duce any at the time of the hearings.

   Just try­ing to keep you on your toes.…

   Dad

   1. The Iran-Con­tra affair
      The Iran-Con­tra affair did­n’t hap­pen until 1985. Do you think Rea­gan got Iran to release the hostages with a promise that some­thing might hap­pen five years or so down the road? Reset your con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry. Occam’s Razor sug­gests that the sim­pler the­o­ry is cor­rect: That Rea­gan would fol­low up on his cam­paign threats and destroy Iran if they did­n’t release the hostages. Or that at best, the Aya­tol­lah hat­ed Carter so much that he want­ed to make Carter look bad. It worked.

      Dad