The Light from Tucson

January 2011
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The Light from Tucson

14 January 2011

George Rebane

People instinctively try to draw some compensating outcomes out of the Tucson massacre. What they take away and how their ongoing lives are informed by the senseless carnage there illuminates who they are.

The reaction of the broad left to this tragedy has been instant and, in my view, maniacal. I see no counterpart from the broad right. When this is pointed out here and elsewhere as further evidence of the obvious gulf between the ideologies, our middle of the road centrists immediately counsel tolerance and understanding. This as if the mere recognition of the real world is somehow offensive to them. In perusing the media, including the blogosphere, I have found no occasion of the centrists attempting to pour some of their calmative oil on the agitated left. It makes me again question whether there is any real difference between the self-declared centrists and the students of Marx to Alinsky.

The left’s response, from Congress to the progressives, is to immediately renew and again reveal their distrust of the law abiding individual with new proposals to proscribe liberty and expand the state’s monopoly of power.

My takeaway is that I am more confident than ever in the credo that I have carefully built over the decades. Those on the left and center consider anyone who believes as do I in fiscal responsibility, constitutionality, free market capitalism, individual liberty and responsibility, and small government to be an (adjectives deleted) right winger. If that is the only label that allows them to distinguish us from them, then the aftermath of Tucson again makes me proud to proclaim – well, so be it.

In sum, I have yet to find any of my principles weakened by what has happened, nor did I expect that kind of discovery. But I have found that these principles are more dear than ever, and that invitations to come together in some sort of undefined and compromised halfway point appeals to me even less. Why would I want to embrace any of the collective tenets that have always denigrated the individual, see the state as man’s highest achievement, and continue to counsel violent overthrow instead of peaceful and productive transformation? That said, I will never shut my mind to new arguments that seek to paint ‘the middle’ as a happier land. But beyond that muddled middle, to me the left remains as a living lie to all that separates us from the herds of animals.

Posted in Critical Thinking & Numeracy, Culture Comments, Current Affairs, Our Country, The Liberal Mind

12 responses to “The Light from Tucson”

RL Crabb

14 January 2011

Once again, I would have to disagree with you, George. I’ve spent most of this morning throwing cold water on my friends on the left and their narrow definition of the right. (Of course, then I have to go over to Russ’s to do the opposite.) And I’m not the only one. Look around, I think you’ll discover more than a few opinions that mirror mine.
You Utopians are destined to be an unhappy lot if you believe you can ever have it all your way. As a student of history, you should know that by now.

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George Rebane

14 January 2011

Bob, always happy to recognize you as the exception to the rule. But since we on the right have not placed the progressives into Tucson’s causal chain, what are you admonishing us about this time?
Re “Utopians …” ??!! No conservative thought – starting with the Founders’ writings – has ever promised anything that comes close to a utopia if its teachings are followed. The only claim made is that for the most commonly held social utility functions, a conservative/libertarian society will achieve what technically is known as Pareto efficiency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency
But your comment does point out that not only does the left not understand what people like me believe, neither does the middle. We seem to hold a very difficult ideology. The ‘ice cream cone approach’ (link below) of the left will win every time in today’s public forum.
http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2009/05/republicans-need-a-new-strategy.html

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RL Crabb

14 January 2011

By calling you a utopian, I am jokingly lumping you in with your adversaries who also see compromise as a dirty word. The left utopians want to redistribute wealth to level the playing field, the libertarian right utopians believe that by eliminating the social safety net, the well-off will naturally take up the slack through charity. I’m saying something in between is more practical in the real world.

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Greg Goodknight

14 January 2011

Robert, you write “the libertarian right utopians believe that by eliminating the social safety net, the well-off will naturally take up the slack through charity.
I think this is a mischaracterization of libertarians on the right side of the Nolan chart, who might counter that “Utopia” is never a real option and that the unintended side effect of a wide social safety net is more and more people using it rather than digging themselves out with harder work and better life choices.
For example Gandhi, subsidizing homespun to help the poor of India, was faced with an explosion in the number of homespinners when the value of homespun thread was artificially increased. Does this mean that poor Indians were just gaming the system? No; it just means that people tend to choose to do what is best for themselves and their families, and subsidizing homespinning meant that was then a more valuable use of their time than what they were doing. And they would not be making choices in their best interest had they not.
It does remain a fact that people start job hunting more effectively when unemployment benefits start running out, and we do a poor job of integrating this into the politics of the safety net. Subsidize a behavior, you do get more of it. Far left utopians really seem to believe ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’ is natural for humanity, despite much evidence to the contrary.
On the left side of the Nolan Chart, I think the practical effect of the onerous restrictions on the formation and operation of business and the taxation (both direct and indirect) of essential goods and services, it would be unconscionable to not have a semblance of a safety net.
It can get out of hand. For example, back in the 30’s, about half the population was dead by age 65, and those still living were all too often poor without any assets. So, in order to give our aged a bit more dignity, and keep them from being a burden on their children and grandchildren, Social Security was instituted.
It worked. Now the elderly are a burden on everyone else’s children and grandchildren, and Boomers are retiring to the pile of IOU’s that are what are left from all the excess contributions they’ve made throughout their working lives. Their kids and grandkids will be paying in their contributions through SS and Medicare, and onerous tax rates to redeem the moral equivalent of t-bills that the Feds pretended to invest Boomer ‘contributions’ in.

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RL Crabb

14 January 2011

I grok your point, Greg, and agree that the safety net has grown too big to sustain. For the past twenty years, my friends have questioned why I don’t apply for diability. (I have a condition known as Ankylosing Spondylitis, which has caused my vertebre to fuse and from time to time leaves me immobile and unable to work.) The tiny part of my brain that considers itself libertarian will have none of it. I’d rather struggle to make ends meet and know that it’s mine, not the state’s. It’s good to know that the option exists, though, in case I really need it.
My biggest problem is that I don’t make enough dough to afford health insurance, not that any of the bastards would insure an old cripple like me anyway. But I also am considered to be too well off to qualify for MediCal. The last time I did so,(emptying my bank account in the process) I received a letter from the state telling me the money spent on me would be exacted from my “estate” upon my death.
Commenters on this blog treated me like I was some kind of leech. Ya can’t win.

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Greg Goodknight

14 January 2011

Bob, I have noted from time to time your very apparent difficulty of movement and am not surprised to hear of your condition.
Regarding your using MediCal to help ease your obvious disability, let me paraphrase Milton Friedman on this: ‘go for it and don’t have a second thought’. The Commons of California is undergoing a Tragedy of the first order, a Bankrupt State Walking, but you deserve that subsidy more than State and local goverment retirees deserve six figure pensions.

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RL Crabb

14 January 2011

I’ve been wondering why I’m so gadamn feisty and combative today. Well, I just found out that for sixty years I believed I was a capricorn, and today I find out that due to the ever-shifting earth, I’m a sagittarius. It’s very disconcerting!

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George Rebane

14 January 2011

Not to worry, if we all could just hang around long enough, all of our stars would align themselves in the right sector. And if not, well … .

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Dave C

14 January 2011

Medicare is scary. Especially when they attach your pension, SS, assets, estate, home etc. and leave the recipient with $75 per month for hair cuts, toiletries, one greeting card or pencil per month and maybe a telephone.

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Bob Hobert

14 January 2011

My most frustrating of friends like to believe they are “in the middle”. Their “middle” almost always counsels the conservatives, however, seldom the liberal left. Rarely will they take a position on current events stronger than warm milk.

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Bob Hobert

14 January 2011

RL – some more data on your shifting horoscope please. Ever shifting earth – am I affected too (Leo for 64 years)? Planetary discombobulation?? Maybe I missed something. I hate that. Please advise.

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Dixon Cruickshank

14 January 2011

Bob I believe its the magnetic north pole change that is occuring, I heard that today about astrology but didn’t take the time. Although mariners are wondering about their compass headings and adjustments to thier compass also, although peline and frisch will always walk in circles to the left hehe
I am a conservative but I do believe there can be and needs to be a safety net, and for example for RL and myself actually, that net has just been getting wider and wider.
Greg is exactly right about his take on this though, the problem is that Gov regulations prevent people from just doing things to survive – on the side, so to speak. Similar to the couple in Houstan that just wanted feed homeless people for free and did for like 3yrs, now the permit people arrive and it don’t work – thats the left/progressives.
Example – after the left blew up the housing/mortgage business, and please no fricken arguements I know – the new rules would prevent me from getting a license probably even if there was any business, which there is not. They now require 2 federal tests – no problem, but they also check credit scores – the requirement I do not know, but if you were in the business as a profession, it stopped overnight, I doubt many would qualify. It basically takes it all to the major banks as they killed any wholesale side, most big banks closed their wholesale side knowing this as they are kinda the Gov, so brokers had no source of funding in any case.

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