because only the Sith deal in absolutes...

So I went looking for the origins of this split in the party. I found this:

Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should not have more than two children at most. The average working man can support no more and and the average working woman can take care of no more in decent fashion.

- Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger

Maybe it's about time we started questioning whether we can truly call ourselves "democratic" if some people are going to decide on behalf of the working classes what the working classes can or can't do, what they should or shouldn't do, what they need or don't need.

We need to question this, because it goes too far.

"The second step would be to take an inventory of the secondary group such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection, and segregate them on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct...."
Margaret Sanger, A Plan for Peace

We need to question this, because people are still doing it. You cannot excuse Sanger on the grounds that this was a long time ago. We are still operating from the belief that the 'right sort' of person gets to make sweeping political decisions on behalf of the paupers and the illiterates, who get no say in what ought to happen to them because they are not qualified to participate in the discussion. Let the grownups deal with the heavy thinking.

There has always been tension between those who would make the world the way they want it vs. those who are the ones who need to be fixed, corrected, or moved in order to make way for this Utopian vision. It is just plain more fun to be the one who gets to play with the toys than it is to be the toy, and that's especially double-super true when we're playing Scientist and doing experiments. Of course, experiments frequently go wrong - look at housing projects and government cheese. And, thanks to Sanger's once-considered-beautiful vision, our nation now has to confront the reality that we deliberately sterilized people without their consent or even their knowledge. And yet, even today, we mock and ridicule conservatives' fixations with trying to figure out where the line is, or should be, between what we can meddle in vs. what we should just leave alone. (We don't need no stinkin' lines. We'll meddle in anything we goddamned well want to meddle in. Got it? Cuz we is making the world better!)

"Iowa will make the difference," Mrs. Obama said. "If Barack doesn't win Iowa, it is just a dream. If we win Iowa, then we can move to the world as it should be."
- CNN

This election has made me keenly interested in learning more about why conservatives hate - and more importantly fear - liberals. I find I disagree utterly with conservative conclusions - but I sympathize more than I ever thought possible with the anxieties about self-proclaimed Master Planners who want to rearrange the universe to fit their whims. These Master Planners do not acknowledge any need for discussion - they just act as if no discussion is needed, because it's just so obvious that all right-minded people share their vision.

Conflict is part of democracy. Checks and balances are part of democracy. Discussion is part of democracy. You cannot omit these things and still have a democracy.

I have been reading about what science fiction authors apparently call "singularity", a left wing version of the far right's Rapture (and favored by the same "technocrat" class that adores Obama). The Singularity will be a time that will be unimaginably superior to today*, because thanks to the miracles of technology, mortal limits will no longer constrain us. Death and conflict and unhappiness will just be gone. What is unnerving in these utopian visions (available in your local science fiction aisle) is that the vision is of a "post-partisan" world - that is, a world where there is no conflict, because there is no dissent.

No explanation is given as to what will happen to all those who refuse to conform to this vision of the (Unity! Hope! and Change!) future. Will they be brainwashed? Killed? Just decide voluntarily to not breed anymore? Will they see the transcendence and realize the follies of their ways? However it happens, somehow only 'our' kind of people are left, living in a Utopian vision. It's a world created by and for the faithful, only the faith is in the ideals and goals of the science and/or technology, rather than God**.

Or, in some versions (slightly more realistic), conservatives are still around - just reduced to a few wingnuts on the sidewalk with protest signs, there apparently to be laughed at.

Or, in the cheesier science fiction, they're the villain - the final threat to be destroyed before this unspeakably perfect vision can come to pass.

Why is it ok to speak of Republicans in the same threatening tones we dislike when Republicans do it to Democrats? Well, because that's different. They're fascists. They're conservatives. They're Republicans. In one essay, the author said, apparently straight-faced, that there are two kinds of people - those who are guilty of dividing the world into us/them, and Democrats (the good guys). (yes, seriously. This was an essay on why Republicans are bad and Democrats are good.)

They're Sith so we can do "dark side" stuff to them. Really. It does too work that way.

Something to keep in mind the next time you hear Republicans complaining about "liberal elites" (or "liberal fascism"): Barack Obama hangs out with today's radicals who, like Sanger, are willing to rule and rearrange the working class the way Austria once ruled and rearranged Hungary. Ayers was even willing to toss bombs - because he, and he alone, had a better vision, and that jsutified whatever had to be done to the lesser beings.

Perhaps that is why Obama feels he can do a better job describing the working class white man's problems than us working class whites can do.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.

(emphasis mine)

When Barack Obama presumes to speak about working class issues, he does not speak to the working class. He speaks about us. He speaks to the affluent - the only audience that matters is the audience that gets to participate in decision-making, those who are actually qualified to understand what is going on.

We are not part of the dialogue, but he appropriates our voice, and he talks about us from a viewpoint that claims authority to revise our reality, based on his superior understanding.

And what is worse: he does not appear to be acting in good faith. Either he really didn't do his homework - or he is in fact using this power to usurp our voice unfairly:

He appropriates the right to insert his assumptions as his 'facts': we think our problem involves affirmative action, but really we just don't understand that our problem is the evils of the capitalist system itself.

He appropriates the right to define our motives: whatever we may say about affirmative action, the "reality" is that we just can't stand to see black people having opportunities while our own dreams are "slipping away".

He appropriates the right to decide which evidence should be exhibited: he describes our supposed reaction to outsourcing as the alleged cause of our 'resentment' over affirmative action.

We deserve better than this. We decide for ourselves what we think our problem is, and we deserve a government that will respond to us, not just talk over our heads to the 'elites'.

We don't need that sort of diagnosis. We neither want nor need rearranging. We just want a fair deal. We want to be listened to. We want the right to input into how we are governed. We feel we are as entitled to dignity - to equality under the law - as any other person.

To high-n-mighty elites, that's called "populism", which is considered a dirty word. It is a word that cannot be said without the obligatory derision, sneering laughter, rude comments based on the too-obvious-to-need-stating assumption that there is something inherently absurd about the unwashed masses thinking they ought to have a right to have their own interests addressed by the government. Ha! (Don't they realize it's just obvious (to all thinking people) that no government could ever care about them, and so asking for pandering is like an exercise in futility?) (I don't even know why they still let those people vote, man. - Oh, I know, more than one person has wished it weren't so....)

When liberal elites speak of the importance of economic policies and regressive taxes and other tools of government for weaning people off their bad habits, they use the same tone and the same attitude farmers take when they discuss managing livestock - it's particularly annoying when they're engaging their right wing equals on how we ought to breed***.

But when it comes time for the liberals to actually do something - what do they do? Not much of what we want. Do they make our lives better? They don't even appear interested in trying****. Apparently it's much easier to just rule from on high about what we shouldn't be doing and how we must be punished for continuing to do it anyway. This sort of judgment - it gives the same "I'm so awesome" high as real governance, only without actually requiring anything. (At least not of them.)

Well, to all you lefty leaning latte liberals of the world, I say go unite someone else - the workers of this world need a better deal than you are offering.
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*Maybe the Unity optimists believe that technology will end the struggle for resources?

No wonder they think Obama is the messiah. New kind of politics? Post-partisan? Hope? No need to vote anymore - we just do the Unity thing.

Now all that has to happen is everyone has to wish real hard and then the whole world will agree on the one true right way to allocate goods and services, and the losers will come to accept that they just have to take it in good grace. Sorry. Extinction was always rough, but you know how evolution is. Resistance is futile and all that?

** Funny how a different religion brings about the same end vision of perfection. Only our Kabbalah involves calculus and our priests decipher prophets like Einstein, interpreting His remarks to the rest of us. The point at which it goes too far is when we there's no room for conflict. The original Enlightenment thinkers were the first and fiercest proponents of checks and balances, and, no, that has not been replaced by v.2.0.

Also, who wants to live in a world where everything looks like it did in Star Trek?

*** re: peasant breeding habits - the question appears to be: should we be regulated for the health of the herd or should we be exploited as a source of cheap babies?

**** You shouldn't pander to them, dear - it will make them aggressive.

swing voter = values voter

It is one side's failure to understand the very real concerns of the other side - or even to acknowledge that the other side has legitimate concerns - that is at the heart of "elitism". Values are about being able to keep the community from falling apart. It's really that simple.

I am beyond angry at the way the liberals in this election have dismissed the 'less educated' or even the 'less successful'. And this from people who call themselves "democratic" (apparently without irony)!

It reminds me of every time I have tried to talk to a school administrator about problems at school. The answer was always the same - you gotta have a degree in education before your opinion can even be heard. You are "only" a parent and therefore you do not understand the situation. What is needed are experts, not a bunch of opinions based on nothing more than listening to a lot of frustrated parents and illiterate students. If there is a role for parents, it is only after the parent submits. If that role is to consist of anything more than mere obedience, that requires the parent first consent to be educated by someone with a degree - someone who is, unlike a mere parent, qualified to have an opinion about how to raise a kid.

In fact, if you are a parent who is going around having opinions without authorization, you are the problem. It's because of you that teachers must spend so much time educating themselves on how to shut you up that they don't have time to teach the little brats to read. You parents should send the kids to school already literate, please. (But, no - just because you are responsible for teaching them does not mean you can just keep them home).

These are the elite (self-proclaimed). They see nothing at all wrong or unnatural about a one-way flow of information. They know better and everyone else should just siddown and shuddup. And by the way, this is the same unpleasant sanctimonious self-righteous power-playing control freak attitude that has been around ever since reformers decided the working classes needed to quit spending their one day off lounging about doing nothing. It is this sanctimoniousness that inspired Jane Austen to invent (or describe) Mary Bennett. It's part of thinking yourself qualified to reform the world, and it is an attitude that can and will kill everything liberals ever stood for if it is allowed to go unchecked.

Liberals have repeatedly waged war when they should build alliances. They have repeatedly mocked instead of building trust. Liberals have dripped their contempt for the muggles - why bother to try to understand them when it's more fun to just bap them across the room?

The real reason people oppose abortion is because they have genuine and, yes, legitimate anxieties about sexuality and the damage that is done to their community. They do have a point. Liberals don't see any connection and don't feel any responsibility. To them, it's all about personal freedom and doing whatever you want to do. They're still thinking Murphy Brown has a right to go out and fix herself up a baby any time she wants to*. Skyrocketing teenage pregnancy rates mean nothing to them - except that it's proof (as if proof were needed) that abstinence only education can't work, won't work, never worked, never will work, HA HA HA mock those who don't agree with us! Did you know that more pornography is bought in red states than blue states? HA HA HA we're so better!

But I want to tell ya (and I am pro-choice) if you're down here on the streets and you care and you're involved and some girl you love (maybe even one whose own mother never finished her education because of a teenage pregnancy) is coming home from school with literature from the local pro-choice group hoping to use the high school kids as pawns in a larger war, and that literature is there to remind her that she has the right** to screw around as if she were an adult - well, it's hard not to get angry. Especially when that literature emphasizes that this girl also has the right** to ignore her parents and the right** to not tell them things and the right** to treat them as if they were the enemy, because in the "real world" poor parents are presumed to be, at best, ignorant - at worst, criminal.

I mean, the fact that an open, casual attitude toward sex might be really appropriate for prosperous people living in Europe - what makes anyone think that this transfers to any culture, anywhere? Have these people ever even been to places like Youngstown, Ohio?

Can we at least get universal health care passed before the liberals take it upon themselves to make our fourteen year old girls aware that they "have the right**" to decide when and whether they can have sex?

Liberals like the idea of parents 'just talking to' their daughters, because if you raise your child just right (and your child happens to be a sensible sort) that is supposed to be enough. They live in the world of how things ought to be, a world where children are absolutely trustworthy and mature enough to make the right choices. The liberals like to emphasize at every turn that a girl has the right to do whatever she wants without her parents knowing. That isn't adequate as a solution, not in a culture that glorifies sexuality and romanticizes rebellion. Not in a culture where, thanks to liberals, it's now considered racist to object to hot explicit lyrics equating female with whore, where pimp means cool and it's just harmless fun for elementary school kids to listen to songs detailing exactly what the singer likes to do to female bodies. And the boys get just as bad with all that shoot-em-up crap. And that's just the schoolyard itself. Liberals do not appreciate just how much money it costs to keep kids on the right side of the gate. Those with ten grand to spend on after-school lessons have no idea what ordinary neighborhoods are like between three and seven o'clock.

But they do not care, because affluent liberals not so secretly enjoy judging less affluent parents as unworthy and inferior. The parents who are most inclined to outsource childrearing to shrinks and summer camps and fancy "programs" for misbehaving teens have nothing but contempt for those of us who actually deal with our own damned kids***.

This isn't about sexuality. It's about management. Governance. Democracy. The right to have an opinion and be heard and be taken seriously. We're people, darnit. We have to live in this neighborhood and we are the ones who have to take care of these kids and if reformers are going to come in and have opinions about how people "ought" to raise their kids, as if we didn't deserve the right to raise our kids any way we think best, well, those reformers can at least not be totally clueless. But the Democratic party is populated by the self-righteous, and the rest of us are expected to just shut up and let liberals with good intentions**** do our speaking for us.

While I tend to side with the Democrats on the environment, on racism, on sexuality, etc. that is really changing, and it isn't because I don't care about racism or don't care about the environment or don't care about women's choice. But people cannot rely on incompetent leadership. We need leaders who actually take the time to understand the issues, and that includes understanding why there is opposition. We need leaders who will respond appropriately to what ends up being about management and governance.

The problem with affirmative action is that the real need today, right now, is not with college admissions. I don't know what life was like in 1970, but I tell you what we have today: we have a crisis in the K-6 classrooms. Anyone who has actually spent real time in real inner city classrooms vs. more affluent white classrooms can see that it's just absurd to let kids go to this school and then try to 'fix' the problem by giving them a college education later on.

And furthermore, stop thinking you can just throw more money at the problem and it will go away. Those of you who want to get credit for being all about fixing the world have to do better than that. You have to get off your lazy butt and come down here and see for yourself what is going on. More money won't do anything. What is needed is for those who care to wake up and get out of the bubble. Listen to the parents and the kids and what is really happening. If you don't know where to start, find that one teacher who is singlehandedly trying to fix the whole system and ask her. She'll tell you - if she isn't totally exhausted from trying to teach nine hundred third graders how to read while everyone else is too busy blaming (parents) and whining (about money) and crying (pooooor me, how can anyone be expected to teach kids like these?) and protesting (because they hate everyone else for not fixing things).

And, yes, there will need to be an adjustment made to the culture - to the values.

OK. Here's another one: people oppose medical research because the liberals and the scientists have been insensitive to the sacredness of life. I don't oppose medical research myself, but I can understand the concern here. It's a legitimate concern. It's real.

Anyone who wants the political middle to come back needs to understand that these concerns are based in the reality of living life in this world, the one we have - not the one that we could have someday if everyone would just cooperate. Anyone who wants to truly fix the problems associated with the environment, with sexuality and choice, with the right to die and the progress of medical research and the hope of real equality for all Americans, needs to come to understand these concerns. For four decades now the liberals have been pursuing their goals at the expense of mainstream Americans, who are expected to just give way and shut up. It is time for liberals to make allies of those who oppose them. Mainstream America really does know things you don't. Like why the same old tired stuff you've been doing for forty years isn't working. Ask us.

The conservatives' deep anxiety about the sacredness of life is not conservative stupidity. It is because they have a different approach to a question that is absolutely beyond being right or wrong - the question of why we exist in a seemingly random world. They do not believe that you can just say, oh, well there's no reason, it's all random. That is a logical answer, but it is not a thoughtful one. If you really believed it all to be random, you'd go mad. This is the real meaning of "there are no atheists in foxholes" - the quote is not about how people secretly believe in God so much as it is about people being forced to confront their own cognitive dissonance (something that often happens when one must face one's own mortality).

I think conservatives are the ones being logical when they point out that medical science ain't going to provide a meaning in life. Liberals think that logic will somehow lead to the eradication of death, and to that end they are willing to sacrifice the very idea of "the sacred". But liberals are the ones who haven't thought much about it. Why do we even have this idea of "the sacred"? Anyone who cannot answer that isn't in much of a position to say what we can or cannot sacrifice in our quest to make the world a more scientific place.

The conservatives' deep anxieties about female sexuality are not all about being hateful. Some conservatives are, some of them are not. (The same can and is said about liberals.) There are reasons beyond that. You don't have to agree with those reasons. Understanding is not the same as agreement. But when you can understand their viewpoint without feeling rage, then and only then will you be able to make meaningful progress toward real freedom for all people - regardless of gender.

And, yes, the feelings of men do count too. Even narrow insecure ones. Unless you are going to kill all the hetero white men, you have to include them in your world. It's an either-or. You cannot have equality without everyone being equal.

I am in favor of full equal rights for homosexuality, but it's not my pet cause. I tell you what, though - if it were, I would spend a whole lot of time trying to find out why conservatives are so afraid of homosexuality. Instead of thinking you know - why don't you find out? Because I can see that "oh he is just afraid of his own sexuality" is not adequate. I see issues with boundaries. I can see why a logical person might be afraid of boundaries being blurred or destroyed. I would check that out further. If it's about boundaries, then the homophobic person might be perfectly okay with the existence of homosexuality once the gays stop belittling the desire for clearly marked boundaries and instead start finding ways to build fences that everyone can live with. Isn't that the very essence of the saying good fences make good neighbors?

Because, let's be honest - the 20th century destroyed a lot of boundaries, and that's anxiety provoking. Don't attack them for being anxious. We're all anxious. Anxiety is a normal and healthy response to all the craziness that has happened.

The conservatives' deep anxieties about values and the so-called "work ethic" has a basis in reality that the liberal position has failed to comprehend time and again. It is not success or material prosperity that brings happiness. The struggle is the point. Achievement without having earned it means nothing. This is the message we need to be teaching our children.

The self-proclaimed elites need to grow up. No more major elections are likely to be won until they do. Those who want to be granted the respect and authority we grant to leaders have to actually be a real leader. I want them to all stop throwing tantrums because nobody wants to follow them. I want them to accept the challenge. It is a responsibility, not a privilege.

If you are a liberal, use compassion and understanding. Liberals are so fond of thinking they are good at that. It's time to demonstrate that.

Oh, and quit using the word Republican as if it were an insult. That just sounds so stupid.

update: if you think I sound like a Republican, please think about what that suggests. Why do you suppose "flyover country" has been turning steadily red? Answer: because the Republicans have been recruiting former Democrats - by listening to our issues. It has given them power over America - power that we need the Democratic party to be challenging. Especially right now.
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* To rich people, babies are apparently things you go and appropriate from whatever poor nation is selling, and there is no sympathy whatsoever for the kid who wants to know the truth about who s/he really is, because we all know that kid who is so so beloved so how dare you upset your mother by asking such a question?

What? I can't say that? Why can't I say that?

**these "rights" are based on the typical liberal assumption that any parent who does not agree with them on issues relating to childrearing are not qualified to have an opinion, and must be overridden - forcibly if needed.

***Unfortunately, less affluent parents must find a way to get through without relying on that staple of the spoiled upper middle class type: bribery. It is out of our price range.

So, no "do what I say, or else you can't go on that trip to China".

And no" get good grades or else I won't buy you the car you want."

And no, "if you do that one more time I'll take your cell phone away."

From what I have seen, I would guess that most reasonably affluent parents today would be absolutely defenseless against their own teen if they were for some reason stripped of their bank account.

****yeah, that's a dig at how Barack Obama appropriated to himself the right to speak on behalf of the white working class - and then told us what our problem "really" is, insinuating that he knows us better than we know us. "Marxist" false consciousness? Liberals missed how angry that made some people. (Conservatives didn't.)

Not that I believe Barack Obama has good intentions. I've seen pictures of the slums in his district.

zero sum is not a sustainable environmental policy

It wasn't enough to reignite the affirmative action debate. Now Obama wants to start wearing Jimmy Carter's sweater.

Of course Carter did some really good stuff and should get full credit for the work he did to promote solar energy and better windows and so forth. He tried to address an important problem and he had some great ideas about how to fix specific things. But politically he was a nightmare - living proof that handling a situation badly can be worse than not handling it at all. Thanks to that sweater of his, anyone who openly supported alternative energy was heavily stigmatized in the 1980s. The backlash was like a tsunamis.

What Carter failed to appreciate is why so-called tree huggers had come to be so thoroughly hated by the time the 1970s were over. It isn't because people enjoy seeing the environment trashed. It is because the Democratic party has consistently structured the environmental movement as a zero sum game. The hatred springs entirely from approaches that fall most heavily (or entirely) on the working class.

To borrow a phrase, it isn't sustainable.

The conservatives are already having a field day. Notice how this quote zeros in on the zero sum:

And when Obama says, "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," he almost seems to suggest a finite worldview, in which someone's bounty by needs must come at someone else's expense. So our bountiful food means others go without?

I once encountered a situation where people fought the establishment of a nature preserve. The appropriate liberal response is supposed to involve labeling these people - "low information", tree haters, etc. - and then move on, cluck-clucking about how the world would be so much nicer if only people would do what liberals tell them to. I was curious, though. Why would anyone not want a nature preserve? Answer: because their schools are funded by property taxes and their schools are already experiencing economic distress. These people genuinely do believe liberals love trees more than children*.

When the latte crowd wants something, the traditional approach is the lazy one: just say gimme. If that doesn't work, they make their signs bigger. When that doesn't work, they chain themselves to something. (I SAID GIMME.) They do not build alliances. They focus on building their own power - which is to be used to force other people to GIMME GIMME GIMME. When they encounter objections, their response is to simply demonize anything that opposes their desires. Rather like little children. Just like the supporters of Obama's campaign ('if the working class won't vote for the candidate we want, they must be _______').

There are always the same three questions the latte types don't want to face (and never do):

• Does it work? (How is the actual benefit measured?)
  
  
• Unintended consequences? (Is anyone keeping track? Anyone even paying attention?)
  
  
• Who is really paying the cost?
  

This is not the way to "save" the environment.

• Because you can't win that way.
  
  
• Because you do harm that way.
  
  
• Because it creates backlash and that works against the environmental movement.

To cite just one example, instead of waging war on the people who cut down lumber, environmentalists could put that energy into making bamboo a viable alternative for lumber and grass into a viable alternative for paper. But they don't do that because that would be real work. It's easier to just wage war on those evil, naughty lumberjacks. Bad lumberjack!

(And just in case the economic attacks weren't enough, we'll bring The Lorax and his friends right on into the classroom, for the express purpose of shaming the lumberjack's children**.)

If the environmentalists win, the working class tends to lose. That is why the working class backlash is so intense that they will deliberately destroy things that environmentalists worked so hard to save. They have nothing but fury for a movement that cares nothing for poverty or whether schools for poor kids are funded, but who will work this hard for a tree.

Obama does it again when he suggests that high prices are a necessary part of forcing people to cut back on gasoline usage. By the time such an approach even reaches the SUV drivers who waste fuel, the poor will be completely unable to access transportation. So what about them? Oh wait: nobody is going to care about them until their distress suddenly becomes a crisis of the sort that affects those Americans who do matter. (That's official Democratic party policy - right? When Bill Clinton changed all that, the liberals called it "moving to the center".)

The environment does not have to be a zero sum game. The Democratic party has made it that way. Some groups - the ones that are actually dedicated to saving the environment (as opposed to being dedicated to making liberals feel good about themselves at someone elses' expense) are actively seeking ways to make alliances instead of setting up either-or scenarios.

But that isn't how the liberal elite like to look at things. Too lazy to actually think about what it would take to save the world, they like how Democrats reduce things to simple slogans. Put your cans in the bin and the world will be just fine, thanks.

Voluntary sacrifices are ok (when we say so) but real costs get passed on to those who don't have the political power to fight back.

There have even been environmentalists who suggest, straight faced, that the planet is overpopulated so someone has got to go. Of course they do not mean themselves.
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* Of course, they realize liberals love their own children. It's working class children who are disposable - because the working class itself is disposable. At least, that's what working class people think rich liberals believe. There certainly isn't much to contradict that view, anyway.

** Worth asking if this tactic would still be acceptable if it were a cute cartoon creature that "speaks for the unborn babies", instead of one that "speaks for the trees".

p.s. my favorite approach to make grass into a viable alternative for paper? find some way to grow paper-useful high-volume weed grass on landfills or toxic waste sites - places that are no good for anything else and need to be rehabilitated.

My preferred approach to overpopulation? We seriously, seriously need to get out into space. No, I am not kidding. It is the only thing that can relieve overpopulation - frontiers have always been good for economic growth. It is safe to assume that ecological entities follow the same rule that businesses, economies, and biological organisms do: if they are not growing, they are declining.

Oh - and like I said here, the key to the problem of gas overconsumption is not to dump hate on them for what they're doing that you don't like. Actually solving the problem means actually addressing the issue of what exactly they are supposed to be doing instead of driving. What is the alternative?

politics & economics gotta checks-and-balances each other

To those who think the economists' say-so is the only measure of what's good in this world, let me ask you this: if I can prove that child labor is beneficial to the economy, does that mean child labor laws are bad?

ABC reports that Hillary Clinton refuses to name a single economist who says that her gas tax plan is good, from an economists' viewpoint. Well, duh.

ABC News' Mary Bruce reports: Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., declined this morning to name a single economist who backs her call for a gas tax suspension.

"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists," Clinton said in an exclusive appearance on a special edition of "This Week" from Indianapolis.

But, you know, Hillary Clinton isn't an economist. She's a politician. And lucky for us, too, because it's no great secret that capitalism concentrates wealth (and tends toward monopoly). An ideal world according to economic models would be one with no people in it. (People are irrational.)

But, fortunately for us, politics exists, to bring us quality of life to balance out painful economic efficiency:

In light of fierce criticism from economic experts, Clinton said, "We've been, for the last seven years, seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion basically behind policies that haven't worked well for the middle class and hard-working Americans. ... I know if we get it right, if we actually did it right, if we had a president who used all the tools of the presidency, we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively."

It seems to me quite clear that a real solution to the energy crisis is going to be a pretty big deal. This is just addressing one of the more untenable symptoms, and in a very short term way.

"This gas tax issue to me is very real, because I am meeting people across Indiana and North Carolina who drive for a living, who commute long distances, who would save money if the oil companies paid this $8 billion this summer, instead of it coming out of the pockets of consumers," Clinton said. "Now, look, I have long-term plans too. I mean, it's a misnomer to say this is all that I'm doing. It's not. I have a comprehensive long-term energy plan that would go right at dependence on foreign oil."

(emphasis mine)

Transport - both the ability to move and the ability to receive - is linked to poverty in numerous ways. And that means transport is also very tied up in the economy. We are already at a point where the high price of gas is already forcing some people to cut back on behaviors that are good for our economy.

Taxing people is not solving the problem. Actually solving the problem means actually addressing the issue of what exactly they are supposed to be doing instead of driving.

What is the alternative? If all you are doing is punishing the end user, you are putting it onto their shoulders to figure out what they ought to be doing to save gas. And you won't like what they come up with.

I have heard many people argue that "we must lead people away from energy consumption". Have such arguments stopped to think how much of an effect rising gas prices can and will have on the working class before it even begins to dent the SUV drivers, the ones whose behavior is truly wasteful? In my opinion, this entire argument makes about as much sense as taxing food to "solve" the problem of overeating. You incidentally solve the problem of overpopulation as well. It's not a real solution. It's not an acceptable solution. It's the equivalent of choosing to throw someone overboard on the totally untested assumption that lightening the load will somehow save the boat.