Why are liberals so condescending?, Washington Post op-ed Options

[ProblemSolver]

Why did we go into the Great Depression...because in the face of economic meltdown...the Republicans in charge refused to use government to help folks out...to kepe the banks from failing and to help rescuscitate the economy and create a demand for products and services...

This is not only pure partisan rhetoric it is also completely incorrect and displays an excessive lack of knowledge regarding the actual facts surrounding the Great Depression.

So the condescending attitude is the result of stupidity

[rla]

Education should almost be an entitlement program. Intellectual capital is the most important investment area we have left, while many other nations are leaving us in the dust and investment in education is the best investment we can make in the well being and future prospects of the U.S. Our future rests on the technological advances we make which are, in turn, depended on the investment in intellectual capital.

Aside from that, if we are to lead the world, if we are to stay ahead from a competitive standpoint, a national defense standpoint and an economic standpoint, then investment in intellectual capital is crucial.

Not to mention that it is probably revenue neutral at worst and more than likely revenue positive in the long run. Better to have a higher earning, higher tax paying workforce than to have a workforce of low income, low tax paying workforce. And lets not overlook that technological advances will probably pay unseen dividends in job and wealth creation which will fuel our economy in the generations to come.... should we choose to make those investments.

The reason this argument doesn't overcome Krauthhammer's argument is that it is based on a false assumption.
It would be true that sufficient investment in our Education System could solve all our basic problems, if we had
a functional education system to invest in. We don't.

[Snuffysmith]

Liberal Conceit
By Christopher Chantrill
We all know liberal condescension. "Why are Americans so anti-intellectual?" your liberal friend might ask. But Gerard Alexander has written about it -- in the Washington Post. "Why are liberals so condescending?" he asks. Why indeed?

Your average liberal exhibits four kinds of condescension, according to Alexander. There's the notion that conservatives win elections and policy debates not because of the power of ideas, but "because they deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics." Obviously this leads into the second notion that "if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid at worst." This idea has won Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, a weekly column at The Wall Street Journal.

Then there's the conservatives-are-racists meme. "It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants." This one started with Richard Nixon's Southern strategy to win votes in the Old South.

Finally, liberals believe that "conservatives are driven purely by emotion and anxiety -- including fear of change -- whereas liberals have the harder task of appealing to evidence and logic."

You know what this is? It is Scion City. It is the whine of the fortunate son who cannot understand why he is running the family firm into the ground. The competition is cheating! The customers are stupid! It is the bleat of a political movement grown accustomed to its ascendancy, blind to its corruption, and softened by its comfortable sinecures.

This liberal snobbery also serves another purpose: It helps liberals hide from their shame. If liberals are so devoted to "evidence and logic," then how come Social Security and Medicare sport unfunded liabilities two or three times the GDP? If liberals are so shocked by racism, how come they condone the antics of the Justice Brothers and Reverends Jackson and Sharpton? If liberals are so appalled by sinister campaign tactics, then how come they spent 2009, the year the locusts ate, writing 2,000-page bills in secret after concluding corrupt bargains with special interest lobbies?

Shall I tell you what your real problem is, liberals? It is your unjust and oppressive administrative state. The French and the German absolute monarchs invented the administrative state back in the 1700s. They needed to smash the civil society of guilds and local lords so that they could increase taxes to fund their armies and build their palaces. Today, liberals use the administrative state to smash families and civil society to buy votes and fund public sector pensions. Then and now, the administrative state has one overriding purpose: to increase the power of the center and force people to look to the state for all their needs.

The real problem for liberals when it comes to conservatism is ignorance. An alert reader recently e-mailed me about an interview on C-SPAN. Brian Lamb asked a famous liberal professor for his thoughts on Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. The response was "I'm sorry; I haven't read that. I don't know that author."

How anti-intellectual can you get? F.A. Hayek is the standout intellectual critic of the administrative state. Leaving aside his critique of the personal failings of liberals in The Fatal Conceit, he made the unanswerable charge that the administrative state is bound to fail in delivering prosperity because it doesn't have the bandwidth to run everything, for

... decentralized control over resources, control through several property [i.e. capitalism], leads to the generation and use of more information than is possible under central direction.


The science is settled on that, even if liberals "don't know that author."

The man in Washington, or the czar in the White House, cannot begin to know what a million consumers and producers know out in the real world. In fact, he does not want to. He does not want to know what a million consumers or ten thousand producers know; he merely wishes to control them.

We can elevate this concept into a universal principle. Anyone setting up an administrative structure, especially in government, is trying to oppress and control people. Condescending? He ought to be ashamed.

Honesty must admit that liberal condescension has a reflection in conservatism. If liberals worry about sinister campaign tactics, conservatives worry about ACORN. If liberals wonder what's the matter with Kansas, conservatives agonize about the problem with Berkeley and Cambridge. If liberals think conservatives are racists, conservatives accuse liberals of playing the race card.

And just like liberals, conservatives are convinced that the other guys are "driven by emotion," whereas we are swayed only by logic and reason.

The difference is that conservatives don't condescend towards liberals. But give us half a century of political and cultural power, and we could learn.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/liberal_conceit.html

[Snuffysmith]

Palin, Psy-Ops & 'Condescending' Libs

By Robert Parry
February 8, 2010

In the 1980s, while a reporter for the Associated Press, I had the opportunity to chat over the phone with legendary CIA psy-war specialist Edward Lansdale. A mutual friend had set up the contact, which I hoped might lead to a more formal interview.
Share this article


Though that hope didn’t pan out – and Lansdale died in 1987 – I was struck by one thing that Lansdale told me about how he sold his propaganda message inside a target country. He said the goal wasn’t to plant a story in a publication that people knew to be under U.S. control, because their defenses would be up.

The trick, he said, was to plant propaganda in a publication that was perceived to be open and honest because the readers’ defenses would be down and thus they would be more susceptible to the message. In other words, they first had to be fooled about who controlled the outlet and what its biases were.

Given Lansdale’s historic work in the Philippines and South Vietnam, he was referring to CIA psy-war operations in those and other foreign countries. But the last several decades have seen many of those CIA-style techniques imported back into the United States, especially regarding how to get Americans to absorb political propaganda.

A key strategy of the Right has been to convince as many Americans as possible that the U.S. news media has a “liberal bias,” a canard that has stuck even though newspapers have been traditionally pro-Republican and most media outlets are owned by giant corporations reflecting the interests of wealthy individuals.

Still, over the past 30 years, the Right has spent tens of millions of dollars building anti-journalism attack groups dedicated to making the “liberal bias” case. At the same time, the Right has invested billions of dollars in constructing its own vertically integrated media apparatus, reaching from print to radio to TV to the Internet.

The “fair and balanced” slogan of Fox News is itself a propaganda message, reminding viewers of the supposed “liberal bias” of the mainstream media.

Making the Right’s strategy even more effective, the Left shifted its emphasis since the 1970s away from media and the so-called “war of ideas.” The Left closed down promising new outlets, like Ramparts and Dispatch News; sold off to neoconservatives and conservatives influential media properties, such as The New Republic and The Atlantic; and watched as others failed for lack of money, such as Air America Radio.

The resulting media imbalance had another consequence: the mainstream media tilted further rightward to protect against career-threatening attacks from the Right. The greatest danger to a journalist’s career was to be tagged with the “liberal” label.

Easy Marks

Despite that reality, many rank-and-file Americans – having heard endlessly the assertions about “liberal media bias” – were on the alert to left-wing propaganda while lowering their defenses against right-wing propaganda.

Thus, they became easy marks for messaging that blamed America’s problems on tax-and-spend Big Government and that equated “freedom” with letting Big Corporations do pretty much whatever they wanted.

With centrists, neocons and hard-line rightists dominating the American media landscape, progressives got the shortest of shrift in U.S. policy debates.

They had little opportunity to weigh in on foreign crises (think back on the run-up to the war in Iraq when anti-war voices were ignored or dismissed as treasonous). Nor did liberals get much of a chance to explain how government intervention was important for addressing domestic problems (the dominant view of both mainstream and right-wing media in recent decades has been a faith in the “magic of the marketplace”).

While there are surely exceptions to this rule – a few liberal editorial writers are permitted here and there and MSNBC is experimenting with a liberal evening line-up – the truth is that the Left has become the favorite punching bag of American politics, absorbing endless blows and lacking the media counterpunch to hit back.

That fact was illustrated again on Sunday in the neoconservative Washington Post, which led its influential “Outlook” section with a giant headline “Why are liberals so CONDESCENDING?” The article by Gerard Alexander, a University of Virginia professor and the Bradley lecturer at the neocon American Enterprise Institute, lambasted liberals for taking pride in grounding their arguments in empirical data.

“American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration,” Alexander wrote.

“Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.”

The Post illustrated this remarkable attack on an entire wing of U.S political thought with photos of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, comedian Jon Stewart, blogger Markos Moulitsas and President Barack Obama.

Pelosi was quoted as saying that Republican congressional “disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views – but of the facts themselves.” Responding to Republican criticism, Obama was quoted as saying: “That’s factually just not true, and you know it’s not true.”

The Left’s weak position in media could not have been better demonstrated than by seeing the neocon Washington Post – what the Right still calls the “flagship” of the “liberal media” – publishing a denunciation of liberals as “condescending” for daring to defend their proposals as anchored in facts.

Palin’s Zinger

Plus, the notion that neoconservatives and right-wingers aren’t condescending toward liberals and progressives is bizarre, after years and years of the Right’s sneering attacks on “lib-rhul” proposals as “communist” and after neocons condemned Iraq War critics as “America haters" and "blame-America-firsters.”

One only needed to listen to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s speech on Saturday night to a Tea Party convention to realize how upside-down the Post’s Outlook article was. Palin’s mocking of the American Left was typical of what can be heard daily across the AM radio dial, on Fox News, and from Republican politicians.

“A year later, I've got to ask the supporters of all that [Obama agenda], how is that hopey-changey stuff working out for you?” Palin said to gales of laughter.

Or you could have tuned in to the influential business channel CNBC on Monday and heard one of its top anchors, Larry Kudlow, denouncing “wacko liberal ideas.”

Yet, it is the American Left that has to defend itself against the charge of “condescension” for having tried to defend its ideas by arguing that they are based on fact and reason.

There is also the inconvenient truth that the Right has operated in a fantasy policy world for several decades to the detriment of the United States and, indeed, the planet. Scientific evidence -- from evolution to climate change -- is dismissed out of hand in favor of faith-based arguments.

The same has been true of economics. George H.W. Bush once correctly described Ronald Reagan’s notion that tax cuts would generate more revenue to eliminate the federal deficit as “voodoo economics.” When Reaganomics was reprised by George W. Bush in the last decade, his father’s assessment was confirmed once more.

The younger Bush’s reckless tax cuts, combined with the bipartisan deregulation of banks and other businesses, contributed to a decade in which – for the first time since the Great Depression – the United States experienced zero job growth. Bush’s policies also took the federal government from surpluses in Bill Clinton’s last year to more than a $1 trillion deficit, while setting the stage for today’s Great Recession. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Lessons from America’s Lost Decade."]

Then, there were the neoconservative falsehoods about Iraq’s WMD and Saddam Hussein’s ties to al-Qaeda.

In 2002-03, when a few brave souls dared dispute those neocon lies, the powerful neocons questioned the patriotism and even the sanity of the dissidents. The Bush administration, aided and abetted by the Post’s neocon editors, waged a years-long jihad against former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his CIA officer wife, Valerie Plame, for Wilson’s criticism of Bush’s case for war.

After all that history of abuse directed toward Americans who stood up for the truth, the Post’s neocon editors now have opened up a new line of attack against liberals and progressives, accusing them of “condescension” for having the audacity to assert that their arguments are based on fact.

Alexander’s article in the Post is, in essence, a fancily written version of the Right’s “populist” anti-intellectualism. Anyone who insists on checking out facts and applying reason must be an “elitist.”

That this “condescending” attack line against the Left is being trumpeted by the supposedly “liberal” Washington Post makes it all the more powerful to many Americans.

Reagan’s Heir

Now, with the emergence of Sarah Palin as the latest heir to Ronald Reagan’s legacy – and as a potential next President of the United States – it is clear that empiricism will be snowed under again by a blizzard of half-truths, emotional appeals, historical myths and nasty zingers.

Anyone who dares speak up for facts and reason will be portrayed as a pointy-headed intellectual out of touch with “real Americans.”

It wasn’t an accident that Palin opened her speech to a Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tennessee, on Feb. 6, by noting Reagan’s 99th birthday. Amid the sustained applause that greeted her, Palin said, “I am so proud to be American. Thank you. Gosh. Thank you. Happy birthday, Ronald Reagan.”

Beyond positioning herself as Reagan’s ideological descendant, Palin put herself on the side of “real people, not politicos.” She spoke up for “commonsense, conservative principles” and put the blame for all that was wrong in America on Obama and the Democrats, while accusing them of falsely blaming George W. Bush for the mess.

In hailing Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts as a “shout-out revolution,” she drew laughter by claiming that “yet again, President Obama found some way to make this all about George Bush,” adding:

“The only place that the Left hasn't placed the blame is on their agenda. So some advice for our friends on that side of the aisle. That's where you've got to look because that's what got you into this mess. The Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda will leave us less secure, more in debt and under the thumb of Big Government. That is out of touch and is out of date. And if Scott Brown is any indication, it is running out of time.”

[To read a transcript of Palin’s entire speech, click here. To watch it, see below.]

The American Right again has taken on the “populist” mantle of the plucky underdog facing down the “elitist” Obama and his arrogant entourage of House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, defenders of Big Government, not to mention the “liberal” news media.

In this narrative, Palin, the Fox News personalities and poor Rush Limbaugh are the real victims who must face the cruelty and condescension of an all-powerful, arrogant Left.

Whether or not Edward Lansdale would be proud that his psy-war theories are coming back to America to roost isn’t clear, but he would have recognized what the neocons and the Palinistas are up to.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/020810.html

[NiteOwl]

Liberal Conceit
By Christopher Chantrill
We all know liberal condescension. "Why are Americans so anti-intellectual?" your liberal friend might ask. But Gerard Alexander has written about it -- in the Washington Post. "Why are liberals so condescending?" he asks. Why indeed?

Your average liberal exhibits four kinds of condescension, according to Alexander. There's the notion that conservatives win elections and policy debates not because of the power of ideas, but "because they deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics." Obviously this leads into the second notion that "if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid at worst." This idea has won Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, a weekly column at The Wall Street Journal.

Then there's the conservatives-are-racists meme. "It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants." This one started with Richard Nixon's Southern strategy to win votes in the Old South.

Finally, liberals believe that "conservatives are driven purely by emotion and anxiety -- including fear of change -- whereas liberals have the harder task of appealing to evidence and logic."

You know what this is? It is Scion City. It is the whine of the fortunate son who cannot understand why he is running the family firm into the ground. The competition is cheating! The customers are stupid! It is the bleat of a political movement grown accustomed to its ascendancy, blind to its corruption, and softened by its comfortable sinecures.

This liberal snobbery also serves another purpose: It helps liberals hide from their shame. If liberals are so devoted to "evidence and logic," then how come Social Security and Medicare sport unfunded liabilities two or three times the GDP? If liberals are so shocked by racism, how come they condone the antics of the Justice Brothers and Reverends Jackson and Sharpton? If liberals are so appalled by sinister campaign tactics, then how come they spent 2009, the year the locusts ate, writing 2,000-page bills in secret after concluding corrupt bargains with special interest lobbies?

Shall I tell you what your real problem is, liberals? It is your unjust and oppressive administrative state. The French and the German absolute monarchs invented the administrative state back in the 1700s. They needed to smash the civil society of guilds and local lords so that they could increase taxes to fund their armies and build their palaces. Today, liberals use the administrative state to smash families and civil society to buy votes and fund public sector pensions. Then and now, the administrative state has one overriding purpose: to increase the power of the center and force people to look to the state for all their needs.

The real problem for liberals when it comes to conservatism is ignorance. An alert reader recently e-mailed me about an interview on C-SPAN. Brian Lamb asked a famous liberal professor for his thoughts on Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. The response was "I'm sorry; I haven't read that. I don't know that author."

How anti-intellectual can you get? F.A. Hayek is the standout intellectual critic of the administrative state. Leaving aside his critique of the personal failings of liberals in The Fatal Conceit, he made the unanswerable charge that the administrative state is bound to fail in delivering prosperity because it doesn't have the bandwidth to run everything, for

... decentralized control over resources, control through several property [i.e. capitalism], leads to the generation and use of more information than is possible under central direction.


The science is settled on that, even if liberals "don't know that author."

The man in Washington, or the czar in the White House, cannot begin to know what a million consumers and producers know out in the real world. In fact, he does not want to. He does not want to know what a million consumers or ten thousand producers know; he merely wishes to control them.

We can elevate this concept into a universal principle. Anyone setting up an administrative structure, especially in government, is trying to oppress and control people. Condescending? He ought to be ashamed.

Honesty must admit that liberal condescension has a reflection in conservatism. If liberals worry about sinister campaign tactics, conservatives worry about ACORN. If liberals wonder what's the matter with Kansas, conservatives agonize about the problem with Berkeley and Cambridge. If liberals think conservatives are racists, conservatives accuse liberals of playing the race card.

And just like liberals, conservatives are convinced that the other guys are "driven by emotion," whereas we are swayed only by logic and reason.

The difference is that conservatives don't condescend towards liberals. But give us half a century of political and cultural power, and we could learn.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/liberal_conceit.html

More conjecture from someone else who doesn't get it. Typical stereotyping... not understanding.

[tazvil04]

Why did we go into the Great Depression...because in the face of economic meltdown...the Republicans in charge refused to use government to help folks out...to keep the banks from failing and to help rescuscitate the economy and create a demand for products and services...

This is not only pure partisan rhetoric it is also completely incorrect and displays an excessive lack of knowledge regarding the actual facts surrounding the Great Depression.

Don't just make the statement that it is wrong...prove that its wrong...if you can...

Demonstrate where Hoover spent money to help people...he did not...in the face of a deficit he refused to spend money...

It took FDR's election for that to occur and by that time it was too late to avoid the economic collapse...

Obama learned from the Great Depression and the Lost Decade in Japan that if you do not spend money up front to stem the downward spiral...the result can be calamitous...

A clear lesson from the Depression of the 1930s is that reducing deficits at a time of economic fragility undercuts recovery.

This is exactly what the Republicans are trying to do...

So I guess you would disagree with Rosen...and his text -- Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and the Economics of Recovery.

The Hoover Administration--and indeed a long line of GOP administrations before it--had embraced a series of principles that Rosen characterizes as the “Sound Money School.” These principles included maintenance of the gold standard, deflation of the dollar, balanced federal budgets, aversion to deficit spending by the federal government, limited federal intervention in domestic economic affairs, and maintenance of the U.S. economic role in international monetary discourse.

[rla]

Palin, Psy-Ops & 'Condescending' Libs

By Robert Parry
February 8, 2010

In the 1980s, while a reporter for the Associated Press, I had the opportunity to chat over the phone with legendary CIA psy-war specialist Edward Lansdale. A mutual friend had set up the contact, which I hoped might lead to a more formal interview.
Share this article


Though that hope didn’t pan out – and Lansdale died in 1987 – I was struck by one thing that Lansdale told me about how he sold his propaganda message inside a target country. He said the goal wasn’t to plant a story in a publication that people knew to be under U.S. control, because their defenses would be up.

The trick, he said, was to plant propaganda in a publication that was perceived to be open and honest because the readers’ defenses would be down and thus they would be more susceptible to the message. In other words, they first had to be fooled about who controlled the outlet and what its biases were.

Given Lansdale’s historic work in the Philippines and South Vietnam, he was referring to CIA psy-war operations in those and other foreign countries. But the last several decades have seen many of those CIA-style techniques imported back into the United States, especially regarding how to get Americans to absorb political propaganda.

A key strategy of the Right has been to convince as many Americans as possible that the U.S. news media has a “liberal bias,” a canard that has stuck even though newspapers have been traditionally pro-Republican and most media outlets are owned by giant corporations reflecting the interests of wealthy individuals.

Still, over the past 30 years, the Right has spent tens of millions of dollars building anti-journalism attack groups dedicated to making the “liberal bias” case. At the same time, the Right has invested billions of dollars in constructing its own vertically integrated media apparatus, reaching from print to radio to TV to the Internet.

The “fair and balanced” slogan of Fox News is itself a propaganda message, reminding viewers of the supposed “liberal bias” of the mainstream media.

Making the Right’s strategy even more effective, the Left shifted its emphasis since the 1970s away from media and the so-called “war of ideas.” The Left closed down promising new outlets, like Ramparts and Dispatch News; sold off to neoconservatives and conservatives influential media properties, such as The New Republic and The Atlantic; and watched as others failed for lack of money, such as Air America Radio.

The resulting media imbalance had another consequence: the mainstream media tilted further rightward to protect against career-threatening attacks from the Right. The greatest danger to a journalist’s career was to be tagged with the “liberal” label.

Easy Marks

Despite that reality, many rank-and-file Americans – having heard endlessly the assertions about “liberal media bias” – were on the alert to left-wing propaganda while lowering their defenses against right-wing propaganda.

Thus, they became easy marks for messaging that blamed America’s problems on tax-and-spend Big Government and that equated “freedom” with letting Big Corporations do pretty much whatever they wanted.

With centrists, neocons and hard-line rightists dominating the American media landscape, progressives got the shortest of shrift in U.S. policy debates.

They had little opportunity to weigh in on foreign crises (think back on the run-up to the war in Iraq when anti-war voices were ignored or dismissed as treasonous). Nor did liberals get much of a chance to explain how government intervention was important for addressing domestic problems (the dominant view of both mainstream and right-wing media in recent decades has been a faith in the “magic of the marketplace”).

While there are surely exceptions to this rule – a few liberal editorial writers are permitted here and there and MSNBC is experimenting with a liberal evening line-up – the truth is that the Left has become the favorite punching bag of American politics, absorbing endless blows and lacking the media counterpunch to hit back.

That fact was illustrated again on Sunday in the neoconservative Washington Post, which led its influential “Outlook” section with a giant headline “Why are liberals so CONDESCENDING?” The article by Gerard Alexander, a University of Virginia professor and the Bradley lecturer at the neocon American Enterprise Institute, lambasted liberals for taking pride in grounding their arguments in empirical data.

“American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration,” Alexander wrote.

“Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.”

The Post illustrated this remarkable attack on an entire wing of U.S political thought with photos of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, comedian Jon Stewart, blogger Markos Moulitsas and President Barack Obama.

Pelosi was quoted as saying that Republican congressional “disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views – but of the facts themselves.” Responding to Republican criticism, Obama was quoted as saying: “That’s factually just not true, and you know it’s not true.”

The Left’s weak position in media could not have been better demonstrated than by seeing the neocon Washington Post – what the Right still calls the “flagship” of the “liberal media” – publishing a denunciation of liberals as “condescending” for daring to defend their proposals as anchored in facts.

Palin’s Zinger

Plus, the notion that neoconservatives and right-wingers aren’t condescending toward liberals and progressives is bizarre, after years and years of the Right’s sneering attacks on “lib-rhul” proposals as “communist” and after neocons condemned Iraq War critics as “America haters" and "blame-America-firsters.”

One only needed to listen to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s speech on Saturday night to a Tea Party convention to realize how upside-down the Post’s Outlook article was. Palin’s mocking of the American Left was typical of what can be heard daily across the AM radio dial, on Fox News, and from Republican politicians.

“A year later, I've got to ask the supporters of all that [Obama agenda], how is that hopey-changey stuff working out for you?” Palin said to gales of laughter.

Or you could have tuned in to the influential business channel CNBC on Monday and heard one of its top anchors, Larry Kudlow, denouncing “wacko liberal ideas.”

Yet, it is the American Left that has to defend itself against the charge of “condescension” for having tried to defend its ideas by arguing that they are based on fact and reason.

There is also the inconvenient truth that the Right has operated in a fantasy policy world for several decades to the detriment of the United States and, indeed, the planet. Scientific evidence -- from evolution to climate change -- is dismissed out of hand in favor of faith-based arguments.

The same has been true of economics. George H.W. Bush once correctly described Ronald Reagan’s notion that tax cuts would generate more revenue to eliminate the federal deficit as “voodoo economics.” When Reaganomics was reprised by George W. Bush in the last decade, his father’s assessment was confirmed once more.

The younger Bush’s reckless tax cuts, combined with the bipartisan deregulation of banks and other businesses, contributed to a decade in which – for the first time since the Great Depression – the United States experienced zero job growth. Bush’s policies also took the federal government from surpluses in Bill Clinton’s last year to more than a $1 trillion deficit, while setting the stage for today’s Great Recession. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Lessons from America’s Lost Decade."]

Then, there were the neoconservative falsehoods about Iraq’s WMD and Saddam Hussein’s ties to al-Qaeda.

In 2002-03, when a few brave souls dared dispute those neocon lies, the powerful neocons questioned the patriotism and even the sanity of the dissidents. The Bush administration, aided and abetted by the Post’s neocon editors, waged a years-long jihad against former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his CIA officer wife, Valerie Plame, for Wilson’s criticism of Bush’s case for war.

After all that history of abuse directed toward Americans who stood up for the truth, the Post’s neocon editors now have opened up a new line of attack against liberals and progressives, accusing them of “condescension” for having the audacity to assert that their arguments are based on fact.

Alexander’s article in the Post is, in essence, a fancily written version of the Right’s “populist” anti-intellectualism. Anyone who insists on checking out facts and applying reason must be an “elitist.”

That this “condescending” attack line against the Left is being trumpeted by the supposedly “liberal” Washington Post makes it all the more powerful to many Americans.

Reagan’s Heir

Now, with the emergence of Sarah Palin as the latest heir to Ronald Reagan’s legacy – and as a potential next President of the United States – it is clear that empiricism will be snowed under again by a blizzard of half-truths, emotional appeals, historical myths and nasty zingers.

Anyone who dares speak up for facts and reason will be portrayed as a pointy-headed intellectual out of touch with “real Americans.”

It wasn’t an accident that Palin opened her speech to a Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tennessee, on Feb. 6, by noting Reagan’s 99th birthday. Amid the sustained applause that greeted her, Palin said, “I am so proud to be American. Thank you. Gosh. Thank you. Happy birthday, Ronald Reagan.”

Beyond positioning herself as Reagan’s ideological descendant, Palin put herself on the side of “real people, not politicos.” She spoke up for “commonsense, conservative principles” and put the blame for all that was wrong in America on Obama and the Democrats, while accusing them of falsely blaming George W. Bush for the mess.

In hailing Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts as a “shout-out revolution,” she drew laughter by claiming that “yet again, President Obama found some way to make this all about George Bush,” adding:

“The only place that the Left hasn't placed the blame is on their agenda. So some advice for our friends on that side of the aisle. That's where you've got to look because that's what got you into this mess. The Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda will leave us less secure, more in debt and under the thumb of Big Government. That is out of touch and is out of date. And if Scott Brown is any indication, it is running out of time.”

[To read a transcript of Palin’s entire speech, click here. To watch it, see below.]

The American Right again has taken on the “populist” mantle of the plucky underdog facing down the “elitist” Obama and his arrogant entourage of House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, defenders of Big Government, not to mention the “liberal” news media.

In this narrative, Palin, the Fox News personalities and poor Rush Limbaugh are the real victims who must face the cruelty and condescension of an all-powerful, arrogant Left.

Whether or not Edward Lansdale would be proud that his psy-war theories are coming back to America to roost isn’t clear, but he would have recognized what the neocons and the Palinistas are up to.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/020810.html

Hayek said, "Conservatives embrace the free market because they want to stand still and Liberals embrace the
free market because they want to go somewhere."

[brossignol]

Education should almost be an entitlement program. Intellectual capital is the most important investment area we have left, while many other nations are leaving us in the dust and investment in education is the best investment we can make in the well being and future prospects of the U.S. Our future rests on the technological advances we make which are, in turn, depended on the investment in intellectual capital.

Aside from that, if we are to lead the world, if we are to stay ahead from a competitive standpoint, a national defense standpoint and an economic standpoint, then investment in intellectual capital is crucial.

Not to mention that it is probably revenue neutral at worst and more than likely revenue positive in the long run. Better to have a higher earning, higher tax paying workforce than to have a workforce of low income, low tax paying workforce. And lets not overlook that technological advances will probably pay unseen dividends in job and wealth creation which will fuel our economy in the generations to come.... should we choose to make those investments.

Education is not already an entitlement?

I will say it again: We are the only country that tries to equally educate everyone.

It is not fair to compare the top x% of students' test scores from other countries to ALL of the students' test scores from the US.

What we need to do is scrap our Victorian educational system and design something better.

[brossignol]

Why did we go into the Great Depression...because in the face of economic meltdown...the Republicans in charge refused to use government to help folks out...to kepe the banks from failing and to help rescuscitate the economy and create a demand for products and services...

This is not only pure partisan rhetoric it is also completely incorrect and displays an excessive lack of knowledge regarding the actual facts surrounding the Great Depression.

So the condescending attitude is the result of stupidity

Ah....... No.

[rla]

Education should almost be an entitlement program. Intellectual capital is the most important investment area we have left, while many other nations are leaving us in the dust and investment in education is the best investment we can make in the well being and future prospects of the U.S. Our future rests on the technological advances we make which are, in turn, depended on the investment in intellectual capital.

Aside from that, if we are to lead the world, if we are to stay ahead from a competitive standpoint, a national defense standpoint and an economic standpoint, then investment in intellectual capital is crucial.

Not to mention that it is probably revenue neutral at worst and more than likely revenue positive in the long run. Better to have a higher earning, higher tax paying workforce than to have a workforce of low income, low tax paying workforce. And lets not overlook that technological advances will probably pay unseen dividends in job and wealth creation which will fuel our economy in the generations to come.... should we choose to make those investments.

The reason this argument doesn't overcome Krauthhammer's argument is that it is based on a false assumption.
It would be true that sufficient investment in our Education System could solve all our basic problems, if we had
a functional education system to invest in. We don't.

So what kind of Educational system do we need?

[brossignol]

Why did we go into the Great Depression...because in the face of economic meltdown...the Republicans in charge refused to use government to help folks out...to keep the banks from failing and to help rescuscitate the economy and create a demand for products and services...

This is not only pure partisan rhetoric it is also completely incorrect and displays an excessive lack of knowledge regarding the actual facts surrounding the Great Depression.

Don't just make the statement that it is wrong...prove that its wrong...if you can...

Demonstrate where Hoover spent money to help people...he did not...in the face of a deficit he refused to spend money...

It took FDR's election for that to occur and by that time it was too late to avoid the economic collapse...

Obama learned from the Great Depression and the Lost Decade in Japan that if you do not spend money up front to stem the downward spiral...the result can be calamitous...

A clear lesson from the Depression of the 1930s is that reducing deficits at a time of economic fragility undercuts recovery.

This is exactly what the Republicans are trying to do...

So I guess you would disagree with Rosen...and his text -- Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and the Economics of Recovery.

The Hoover Administration--and indeed a long line of GOP administrations before it--had embraced a series of principles that Rosen characterizes as the “Sound Money School.” These principles included maintenance of the gold standard, deflation of the dollar, balanced federal budgets, aversion to deficit spending by the federal government, limited federal intervention in domestic economic affairs, and maintenance of the U.S. economic role in international monetary discourse.

You said they refused to use government to help folks out.

I said that was wrong. You said nothing about spending money.

I was thinking in terms of the Davis-Bacon Act. But I guess we could look at the Mexican Repatriation program as well. And what about the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Emergency Relief and Construction Act?

Then in order to pay for such programs, he rolled back previous tax cuts raising the taxes on the highest incomes from 25% to 63%.

So let's recap:

Why did we go into the Great Depression...because in the face of economic meltdown...the Republicans in charge refused to use government to help folks out...to keep the banks from failing and to help rescuscitate the economy and create a demand for products and services...

False. Thanks for playing.

[ProblemSolver]

Why did we go into the Great Depression...because in the face of economic meltdown...the Republicans in charge refused to use government to help folks out...to kepe the banks from failing and to help rescuscitate the economy and create a demand for products and services...

This is not only pure partisan rhetoric it is also completely incorrect and displays an excessive lack of knowledge regarding the actual facts surrounding the Great Depression.

So the condescending attitude is the result of stupidity

Ah....... No.

Ah, so liberals are condescending for other reasons

[brossignol]

Why did we go into the Great Depression...because in the face of economic meltdown...the Republicans in charge refused to use government to help folks out...to kepe the banks from failing and to help rescuscitate the economy and create a demand for products and services...

This is not only pure partisan rhetoric it is also completely incorrect and displays an excessive lack of knowledge regarding the actual facts surrounding the Great Depression.

So the condescending attitude is the result of stupidity

Ah....... No.

Ah, so liberals are condescending for other reasons

Probably. I only know why *I* am condescending.

[ProblemSolver]

This is not only pure partisan rhetoric it is also completely incorrect and displays an excessive lack of knowledge regarding the actual facts surrounding the Great Depression.

So the condescending attitude is the result of stupidity

Ah....... No.

Ah, so liberals are condescending for other reasons

Probably. I only know why *I* am condescending.

So liberals are condescending, but the reasons are not clear

[TheRestofUs]

Why did we go into the Great Depression...because in the face of economic meltdown...the Republicans in charge refused to use government to help folks out...to keep the banks from failing and to help rescuscitate the economy and create a demand for products and services...

This is not only pure partisan rhetoric it is also completely incorrect and displays an excessive lack of knowledge regarding the actual facts surrounding the Great Depression.

Don't just make the statement that it is wrong...prove that its wrong...if you can...

Demonstrate where Hoover spent money to help people...he did not...in the face of a deficit he refused to spend money...

It took FDR's election for that to occur and by that time it was too late to avoid the economic collapse...

Obama learned from the Great Depression and the Lost Decade in Japan that if you do not spend money up front to stem the downward spiral...the result can be calamitous...

A clear lesson from the Depression of the 1930s is that reducing deficits at a time of economic fragility undercuts recovery.

This is exactly what the Republicans are trying to do...

So I guess you would disagree with Rosen...and his text -- Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and the Economics of Recovery.

The Hoover Administration--and indeed a long line of GOP administrations before it--had embraced a series of principles that Rosen characterizes as the “Sound Money School.” These principles included maintenance of the gold standard, deflation of the dollar, balanced federal budgets, aversion to deficit spending by the federal government, limited federal intervention in domestic economic affairs, and maintenance of the U.S. economic role in international monetary discourse.

You said they refused to use government to help folks out.

I said that was wrong. You said nothing about spending money.

I was thinking in terms of the Davis-Bacon Act. But I guess we could look at the Mexican Repatriation program as well. And what about the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Emergency Relief and Construction Act?

Then in order to pay for such programs, he rolled back previous tax cuts raising the taxes on the highest incomes from 25% to 63%.

So let's recap:

Why did we go into the Great Depression...because in the face of economic meltdown...the Republicans in charge refused to use government to help folks out...to keep the banks from failing and to help rescuscitate the economy and create a demand for products and services...

False. Thanks for playing.

Hoover was a good and able man personally. He gets a bad rap. His Administration did try but it was too little too late.

Roosevelt was far bolder and made fundamental changes. The kind that were needed including regulating the banks and his "New Deal" programs and the Wagner Act allowed for the growth of Unions and began to grow a Middle Class. His only mistake was in listening at all to the Republicans railing against the spending to help people in one year during the 30's.

Obama is trying to do the right things and he's read about the history of the Great Depression. He also is constrained by a totally corrupt Republican Party which has lately shown it is willing to shut down the Senate with unprecedented abuse of the Filibuster for example.

I can only hope he recognizes just what he is dealing with, learns the right lessons, and acts accordingly.

Just my opinion.

This post has been edited by TheRestofUs: Feb 9 2010, 09:09 PM

[brossignol]

Hoover was a good and able man personally. He gets a bad rap. His Administration did try but it was too little too late.

Roosevelt was far bolder and made fundamental changes. The kind that were needed including regulating the banks and his "New Deal" programs and the Wagner Act allowed for the growth of Unions and began to grow a Middle Class. His only mistake was in listening at all to the Republicans railing against the spending to help people in one year during the 30's.

Obama is trying to do the right things and he's read about the history of the Great Depression. He also is constrained by a totally corrupt Republican Party which has lately shown it is willing to shut down the Senate with unprecedented abuse of the Filibuster for example.

I can only hope he recognizes just what he is dealing with, learns the right lessons, and acts accordingly.

Just my opinion.

I don't know if it was "too little too late" or really just the wrong methods. Trying to put programs into place, but still largely depending on the private sector to "fix itself".

It could have been a combination of the two.

[TheRestofUs]

Hoover was a good and able man personally. He gets a bad rap. His Administration did try but it was too little too late.

Roosevelt was far bolder and made fundamental changes. The kind that were needed including regulating the banks and his "New Deal" programs and the Wagner Act allowed for the growth of Unions and began to grow a Middle Class. His only mistake was in listening at all to the Republicans railing against the spending to help people in one year during the 30's.

Obama is trying to do the right things and he's read about the history of the Great Depression. He also is constrained by a totally corrupt Republican Party which has lately shown it is willing to shut down the Senate with unprecedented abuse of the Filibuster for example.

I can only hope he recognizes just what he is dealing with, learns the right lessons, and acts accordingly.

Just my opinion.

I don't know if it was "too little too late" or really just the wrong methods. Trying to put programs into place, but still largely depending on the private sector to "fix itself".

It could have been a combination of the two.

Hoover launched road building and airport construction projects and started the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) which shored up banks and farms and railroads to the tune of 2 billion dollars. But even though it was a mix of corporate and public it wasn't enough and you're essentially correct he relied too much on the private sector bad actors to fix themselves.

Obama needs to take bolder action IMO and we need to help him by throwing the totally uncooperative (make Obama and America fail) Republican Party even further from the train.

Just my opinion.

[brossignol]

Hoover was a good and able man personally. He gets a bad rap. His Administration did try but it was too little too late.

Roosevelt was far bolder and made fundamental changes. The kind that were needed including regulating the banks and his "New Deal" programs and the Wagner Act allowed for the growth of Unions and began to grow a Middle Class. His only mistake was in listening at all to the Republicans railing against the spending to help people in one year during the 30's.

Obama is trying to do the right things and he's read about the history of the Great Depression. He also is constrained by a totally corrupt Republican Party which has lately shown it is willing to shut down the Senate with unprecedented abuse of the Filibuster for example.

I can only hope he recognizes just what he is dealing with, learns the right lessons, and acts accordingly.

Just my opinion.

I don't know if it was "too little too late" or really just the wrong methods. Trying to put programs into place, but still largely depending on the private sector to "fix itself".

It could have been a combination of the two.

Hoover launched road building and airport construction projects and started the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) which shored up banks and farms and railroads to the tune of 2 billion dollars. But even though it was a mix of corporate and public it wasn't enough and you're essentially correct he relied too much on the private sector bad actors to fix themselves.

Obama needs to take bolder action IMO and we need to help him by throwing the totally uncooperative (make Obama and America fail) Republican Party even further from the train.

Just my opinion.

I don't see where Obama has tried the concept of a public-private partnership - maybe through the stimulus bill, but that has still only been put to limited use and thus has been implemented imperfectly.

What I have seen in the past year is an administration (I still like to use that rather than "Obama") that has lacked a sense of direction and a Congress that has done nothing but play political games.

I would like to see someone be able to say that they tried something and it failed rather than just throw anything away without really trying anything at all.

[TheRestofUs]

Hoover was a good and able man personally. He gets a bad rap. His Administration did try but it was too little too late.

Roosevelt was far bolder and made fundamental changes. The kind that were needed including regulating the banks and his "New Deal" programs and the Wagner Act allowed for the growth of Unions and began to grow a Middle Class. His only mistake was in listening at all to the Republicans railing against the spending to help people in one year during the 30's.

Obama is trying to do the right things and he's read about the history of the Great Depression. He also is constrained by a totally corrupt Republican Party which has lately shown it is willing to shut down the Senate with unprecedented abuse of the Filibuster for example.

I can only hope he recognizes just what he is dealing with, learns the right lessons, and acts accordingly.

Just my opinion.

I don't know if it was "too little too late" or really just the wrong methods. Trying to put programs into place, but still largely depending on the private sector to "fix itself".

It could have been a combination of the two.

Hoover launched road building and airport construction projects and started the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) which shored up banks and farms and railroads to the tune of 2 billion dollars. But even though it was a mix of corporate and public it wasn't enough and you're essentially correct he relied too much on the private sector bad actors to fix themselves.

Obama needs to take bolder action IMO and we need to help him by throwing the totally uncooperative (make Obama and America fail) Republican Party even further from the train.

Just my opinion.

I don't see where Obama has tried the concept of a public-private partnership - maybe through the stimulus bill, but that has still only been put to limited use and thus has been implemented imperfectly.

What I have seen in the past year is an administration (I still like to use that rather than "Obama") that has lacked a sense of direction and a Congress that has done nothing but play political games.

I would like to see someone be able to say that they tried something and it failed rather than just throw anything away without really trying anything at all.

Its been implemented "imperfectly" because he tried to cooperate with Republican demands for more tax breaks for the rich instead of more infrastructure spending. Also the Stimulus Program money is only about half spent.

I didn't say anything about public-private partnerships per-se but I guess the Auto Industry and other bailouts could be called that.

I think he's done what he had to do in the short term given what we all were facing. He should now do what would improve the situation instead of just pulling us out of the hole Bush and the Republicans dug for us.

Just my opinion.

[brossignol]

Hoover was a good and able man personally. He gets a bad rap. His Administration did try but it was too little too late.

Roosevelt was far bolder and made fundamental changes. The kind that were needed including regulating the banks and his "New Deal" programs and the Wagner Act allowed for the growth of Unions and began to grow a Middle Class. His only mistake was in listening at all to the Republicans railing against the spending to help people in one year during the 30's.

Obama is trying to do the right things and he's read about the history of the Great Depression. He also is constrained by a totally corrupt Republican Party which has lately shown it is willing to shut down the Senate with unprecedented abuse of the Filibuster for example.

I can only hope he recognizes just what he is dealing with, learns the right lessons, and acts accordingly.

Just my opinion.

I don't know if it was "too little too late" or really just the wrong methods. Trying to put programs into place, but still largely depending on the private sector to "fix itself".

It could have been a combination of the two.

Hoover launched road building and airport construction projects and started the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) which shored up banks and farms and railroads to the tune of 2 billion dollars. But even though it was a mix of corporate and public it wasn't enough and you're essentially correct he relied too much on the private sector bad actors to fix themselves.

Obama needs to take bolder action IMO and we need to help him by throwing the totally uncooperative (make Obama and America fail) Republican Party even further from the train.

Just my opinion.

I don't see where Obama has tried the concept of a public-private partnership - maybe through the stimulus bill, but that has still only been put to limited use and thus has been implemented imperfectly.

What I have seen in the past year is an administration (I still like to use that rather than "Obama") that has lacked a sense of direction and a Congress that has done nothing but play political games.

I would like to see someone be able to say that they tried something and it failed rather than just throw anything away without really trying anything at all.

Its been implemented "imperfectly" because he tried to cooperate with Republican demands for more tax breaks for the rich instead of more infrastructure spending. Also the Stimulus Program money is only about half spent.

I didn't say anything about public-private partnerships per-se but I guess the Auto Industry and other bailouts could be called that.

I think he's done what he had to do in the short term given what we all were facing. He should now do what would improve the situation instead of just pulling us out of the hole Bush and the Republicans dug for us.

Just my opinion.

While it can be argued that Bush & the republicans may have helped to make the hole deeper, the hole was really dug prior to 2000.

But the hole is there. Fix the problem, not the blame and all that.

I just don't see how Republican demands for more tax breaks have been met. Have there been more tax breaks this year? And where were they hidden because didn't the majority of Republicans vote against the stimulus bill?

I think that largely nothing has been done because no one has really known what to do and they are reacting to problems as they poke their heads up high enough while trying to pursue their ideological goals at the same time.

There again, lack of direction.

I am hoping to see some direction, but if the congressional democrats keep playing the power trip games and the republicans keep playing the victim games then there is not much hope of anything getting done unless Obama can step up and provide that direction.

We shall see.