The bill has finally come due for decades of socialism that began in the 1930s.
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
– Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister
It began as a beautiful cruise to a land of "hope and change," but it has become a nightmare in which the ship of state is being deliberately steered toward a whirlpool of debt from which, if Obama is successful, the nation cannot escape.
One of the primary reasons the U.S. economy has grown over the years has been the confidence in its innovation and productivity. It has generated investment from around the world from those who wanted to profit from our success story. There was a time when U.S. securities were the safest in the world, but that is no longer the case.
On December 24, 2009, the U.S. Senate voted to raise the ceiling of the government debt to $12.4 trillion, described by an Associated Press reporter as "a massive increase over the current limit and a political problem that President Barack Obama has promised to address next year."
On January 20, 2010, barely a month later, Senate Democrats "proposed allowing the federal government to borrow an additional $1.9 trillion to pay bills, a record increase that would permit the national debt to reach $14.3 trillion."
This is the reason, by virtue of the Massachusetts special election; the United States has dodged the bullet of a "reformed" healthcare system which would have slashed a half-trillion dollars from Medicare coffers while adding millions more people to its rolls.
It would have turned the health insurance industry into a public utility. They would have ceased to be private enterprises of competing companies. It would have driven physicians out of practice. It would have bankrupted the nation and reduced a widely acknowledged excellent health system to that of a third world nation.
The proposed "Cap-and-Trade" bill, a huge tax on all energy use, the lifeblood of any economy, must be defeated. This will come most likely from a lack of votes as Senate Democrats are finally scared enough of the electorate to act with some degree of rationality.
In a recent commentary, Jerome R. Corsi, the author of America for Sale: Fighting the New World Order, Surviving the Global Depression, and Preserving USA Sovereignty, wrote, "With the recession and the huge stimulus package added to the beginning of the baby boomers retiring, United States debt is already at 50 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office estimates of the Obama administration plans as they currently stand."
In other words, the U.S. government is committed through various "entitlement" programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, along with other expenditures, to spend more than it takes in via taxes. The other major expense is for defense. These three factors represent half of the annual U.S. budget.
The situation is so grave that, on January 18, the Washington Times editorialized that "Obama is killing the economy."
The bill has finally come due for decades of socialism that began in the 1930s.
"The 2009 budget deficit tripled over 2008. The deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) went from 3.1 percent in 2008 to 9.9 percent in 2009. The deficit for the first month of fiscal year 2010 was $176 billion, which was greater than the $161 billion deficit for the entire 2007 fiscal year."
At present rates, the public debt of the United States will reach 85 percent of GDP by 2018, just eight years from now, and 100 percent by 2022. It would be 200 percent by 2038 unless some brakes on spending are not applied before the ship of state gets sucked down beneath an ocean of debt.
What does President Obama propose? He wants to apply an unconstitutional special tax on banks! And not all banks, but just those banks on "Wall Street" whom he blames for the current recession.
His most recent proposal to regulate the banking system drove down the Dow Jones Average signaling further fears of his intention to micro-manage the economy. It is a recipe for disaster and shares of the big Wall Street banks in particular fell. He is deliberately attacking the great engine of the nation's economy.
Wall Street is not the problem. The government is the problem.
Obama made no mention of the real culprits for the housing market meltdown, the reckless spending of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Community Reinvestment Act that underwrote a program that put $12 trillion of mortgage loans, half of all such loans, in the hands of the federal government!
As John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute points out, "President Obama's proposal (would) bring back 1930s-like separation of commercial and investment banks, dubbed Glass-Steagall II or Glass-Steagall 2.0, (and) would do little to prevent the problem of financial institutions being too big to fail. What it would do is hurt economic recovery, reduce types of financing available to businesses big and small, and give European and Asian financial services firm a huge competitive advantage over their U.S. counterparts."
The billions still unspent in the so-called "Stimulus" bill should be returned to the Treasury. Plans to expand Medicare and Medicaid need to be scrapped. Taxes on greenhouse gas emissions, mostly carbon dioxide, must be avoided if for no other reason that CO2 has nothing to do with a non-existent global warming.
The capacity of the United States to recover calls for an end or at least a cap on the mindless spending of taxpayer millions on the pet projects and crony deals of Representatives and Senators.
It calls for an end to the restrictions on the exploration for and extraction of the nation's vast coal, oil and natural gas reserves, including in ANWR and aggressively in the offshore continental shelf.
It calls for an end to huge multi-million dollar subsidies for "renewable energy" schemes such as solar and wind power.
It calls for an end to the ethanol mandates that dilute the mileage of every gallon of gasoline and actually increase CO2 emissions!
It calls for an end to congressional mandates on the auto industry that have, in part, driven two of its largest manufacturers, General Motors and Chrysler, into bankruptcy. The U.S. must divest its ownership in both companies.
It calls for reining in the rogue government agency, the Environment Protection Agency, that is attempting to unilaterally impose control of CO2 emissions and has long engaged in practices that impede economic growth for business, industry, and the nation's agricultural sector.
There are many reasonable and rational steps that can and should be taken, but it seems clear that the President, with the support of a Democrat-controlled Congress, has no intention of taking any of these steps and, indeed, is intent on bankrupting the U.S. government and its people.
The US facing a real short term crisis in liquidity. The ‘current ratio’ is defined as current assets divided by current liabilities is most troubling.
The US currently has gold reserves totaling $228.5 billion, foreign exchange reserves of $134 million, and approximately $69 billion in oil reserves for a total of almost $300 billion. We have a short term debt of $1.5 trillion. Usually accepted practice says this ‘current ratio’ in a perfect world should be 1:1 with short term liabilities equaling on hand assets. Our current ratio is 20% meaning we owe five times more money in short term obligations than we have assets to cover.
The reason you don’t want this number so out of balance is simple. If all the banks, credit card companies, and other companies you personally owed money to suddenly called their notes, what would happen to your finances?
It is the same for the country. If all the foreign and domestic investors in the US were to collectively call their notes, we would not be able to pay any more than twenty cents on the dollar. Under any measure this is called bankruptcy.
When George Bush left office, this ratio was 60% which was bad enough. But the current administration has made it three times worse in twelve months. On top of this the current administration wants to expand Medicare and Medicaid, add healthcare, and pile on cap & trade. One would almost believe that Obama cannot ruin the currency quickly enough to suit his purposes; whatever those purposes may be.
This goes beyond naïveté regarding how markets work; this smacks of deliberation.
“Wall St. is not the problem. The government is the problem” according to this author. It’s much more realistic, however, to postulate that government is merely the symptom, it’s really Americans that are the problem. When you think analytically about social change in free societies, a familiar pattern always emerges – and it doesn’t matter whether you’re examining the so-called “free market economy”, formal religion, sexual morals, our state funded educational systems, science, etc. – it even surfaces when determining acceptable dress codes.
And this pattern of peaceful social change unfailingly exhibits a 3 step process. Step #1 is “exceptions” are granted to the widely accepted “rule”. In Step #2, the exceptions become much more widespread and numerous – the exceptions and a willingness to grant ever more exceptions to the rule become the normal state of affairs. In the final step, Step #3, the many exceptions are no longer considered exceptions, they are considered desirable actions and usually rationalized as “necessary” and “beneficial” to the smooth functioning of society.
This phenomena of social change repeats itself over and over within our various social institutions – social scientists aren’t sure why – but it’s difficult to dispute the reality of its functioning dynamic. Within the “free market”, the exceptions started in the era of what some historians call “Robber Baron” capitalism. The citizenry needed protection from businesses that sold tainted meat, from being severely maimed or killed due to unsafe working conditions, from seeing young children ruthlessly exploited in sweat shops – governmental interference in the free market was deemed a necessary “exception” under certain conditions to the general rule of strict non-interference. As the years rolled by, the exceptions became more and more numerous and covered increasingly diverse aspects of the free market/government relationship.
Finally, in Step #3, the exception granting process becomes more than the norm, it becomes a desirable goal and is no longer seen as an exceptional condition. Today, we see widespread evidence we’ve finally reached that state in the Obama administration and it has become so blatantly obvious it’s impossible to deny we’ve fully passed into Step 3. Regulating health care, controlling the operation of banks, bailing out industries like the auto companies, controlling pollutants to the extent the level of global temperatures is seen as requiring active government control – and so on.
Whether you’re a social scientist or simply an intelligent adult, we know this pattern of social change is driven by two factors: Human frailty and circumstances of birth and childhood development. Human frailty today is variously excused as “fairness”, “being non-judgmental”, “equal rights” “secularism” and many other code phrases boiling down to the simple fact we make bad decisions because we’re weak humans and, additionally, because we refuse to accept the consequences of our actions. Legalized abortions are a perfect example of this “argument based on frailty”, it was originally condemned by most religions and was initially allowed only as a rare exception – “to save the mother’s life”, “to prevent the mentally ill or mentally defective from having children”, etc. The Judeo/Christian sects call our now institutionalized concept of “human frailty” by the old fashioned term “sin”.
In the normal course of this familiar social change process, more exceptions must be granted as we voice strong objections to allowing exceptions under specific conditions for some people but not for other people under more diverse conditions – and these “other conditions” are usually those conditions that affect us personally and make us argue the general “rule” is unfair. Finally, after 50 million abortions, we have enshrined what was formerly a rare exception to “personal choice based on the right to privacy” as a “good thing” for society in general – not as an exception to some “outdated” rule.
In the economy, both human frailty and conditions of birth and development play an equal role. Some folks simply aren’t intelligent enough to compete on an equal basis in our economy, they were born that way or their development to adulthood kept them culturally and educationally ignorant thereby setting major roadblocks in the way of their ability to achieve a so-called “rightful” share of the “good life”. We see such folks as exceptions to the normal “dog eat dog” rule of free market capitalism, they are “dogs with handicaps”. As the social change dynamic took its normal course, Americans mandated more and more exceptions for such folks, usually involving the government providing financial help on a temporary or, infrequently, on a permanent basis.
When it comes to our economy and the free market, we call this aspect of the social change process “sliding toward socialism”. But regardless of what we call it, we can’t consciously change this 3 step process, we must experience a severe or, in some cases, a catastrophic breakdown forcing us to re-think the reason we granted the original exceptions in the first place.
To understand why this is so, recall that in Step #3, the exceptions are no longer even viewed as exceptions, they have become the accepted norm and desirable in and of themselves. To break the widespread hold the Step #3 rationalizations have on the general populace, it takes considerable misery to force us into re-examining our thinking. This process of re-examination can take decades, sometimes centuries, but it always occurs, followed by a return to original virtues in the case of human frailty or “sin” – or to a less unrealistic view of reality in regard to those adults who, for one reason or another, can’t compete on an equal basis with the rest of us. When that stage is reached, the 3 Step process starts the cycle all over again.
We’d like to break this inexorable cycle of social change, this 3 Step process that enslaves us, but we can’t – maybe it’s related to population density, maybe to mob psychology, maybe to unconscious motives we don’t yet understand. What is clear, however, is that no amount of rhetoric demanding a return to “core values” can change the course of events one iota. And that’s a pity.
Pat,
Agreed on all points. Equality of opportunity morphs into Equality of Outcome. The actual physical danger of a mother’s life becomes the ‘tragic’ inconvenience such a child would represent to the mother at this time. Financial ignorance changes into just plain ‘bad’ luck. We’ve attempted to create a ‘no fault’ society. At some point in time it becomes clear to the most opaque of thinkers that the system, as adjusted, is fundamentally flawed. The question is; how thoroughly must the misery be spread before enough is enough?
Bill Wavering;
You raise a good point – how widespread is the misery before Americans realize they should re-examine the social change process? Confess I don’t know and social scientists don’t know either, apparently. We know change, along with the accompanying misery, can be imposed from outside our free society, the Muslim culture imposing such change on America and Europe is a recurring nightmare expressed on the blogs each and every day. But determining what prompts internal change to be self-imposed is much more difficult.
And, in some areas, we do re-examine our thinking after experiencing considerable misery (in our case, the Civil War) but often fail to reverse the underlying 3 Step process, we only think we have. Slavery as an institution is a good example – it took centuries to go from a normal free state of existence for mankind to allowing various forms of institutionalized slavery, cradle to grave in some cases, as a temporary state in other cases when you consider the practice of legally holding bondservants. Finally, civilized nations re-examined the concept and decided it was “abnormal” for one human being to “own” another human being.
But having broken the Step 3 thinking of individual slavery as “normal” and even “just” under certain circumstances, we started the cycle all over again as sociology predicts we would. We substituted the concept of state, not individual, ownership of human beings for the concept of individuals owning slaves while the state merely defends their right to do so. Our experiences with communism are a good example of the state “owning” you.
And even while we were attempting to revoke that normative condition in many formerly communist nations, we gravitated back toward the “slavery” concept that mothers “own” their unborn children and can dispose of them at will. We abhor slavery as a general rule but couldn’t resist granting the predictable Step 1 exceptions to that rule.
There seems to be some form of strange, subjective calculus at work in the process of collectively deciding we’ve reached the required level of misery thereby forcing us to re-examine our thinking – at least that’s as far as my thoughts take me.
Pat,
An interesting set of examples; slavery, communism, and abortion. The common theme is that of ‘ownership’. Plantation owners ‘possess’ slaves, the state ‘possesses’ its people, and the woman ‘possesses’ her offspring. In each case the being ‘owned’ is defined by the controlling interest.
The plantation owner decides the fate of the slave; House or field, free or bonded. The state defines the roles of its citizens; farmer or factory worker, teacher or manager. In the case of a pregnant woman; she decides the ultimate; baby or fetus, human being or tumor.
Your ‘three-step’ process is probably most well described by the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s comment regarding the situation that exists between crime and criminal justice when he employed the catchy alliteration; “Defining deviancy down.” The term implies that the problem is public tolerance of intolerable behavior and that the solution is resurrecting traditional standards by stepping up repression of undesirable conduct.
Another form of this same problem is when current members of civilization re-define an Indian War hero as a genocidal racist through the application of current cultural norms that developed over the ensuing 120 years that have elapsed since his actions. Or judging a Founding Father as a white supremacist, slave owning misogynist by analyzing his life through a cultural lens that took over 230 years to fashion.
The real challenge we face currently is the compression of the time frame between the decision of activity or lifestyle choice as being outside the realm of propriety and the excoriation by opponents regarding that decision. Pick a lifestyle or a choice; single-parenthood, polygamy, homosexuality, enhanced interrogation, sequestering enemy combatants without trial, execution. All these are societal choices; and as such are subject to immediate condemnation or commendation almost before an explanation of why this is the proper stand can be formulated.
It’s not just the time frame that is compressed; it’s as if the first group to define the term frames the entire debate. There is a rush by people of all political ideologies, to be first to define a term, characteristic, or policy; believing that this first definition they ascribe becomes the ‘original’ definition and frames the entire future of the debate in the pejorative or affirmative terms the group desires to project.
For example; there was a time during the debate over health care that the party in power raised the issue of ‘bad’ lifestyle choices and the possibility of such bad choices raising a person’s premium. Obesity, smoking, and illegal drug use were all raised as legitimate reasons to expect a person participating in such a lifestyle choice to ‘suffer’ the consequences of his/her actions through additional premium costs. Strangely absent were those who deliberately participated in unprotected homosexual sex; despite overwhelming evidence of the increased percentages of HIV/AIDS infections among such groups.
So it would seem that political ideology has a portion to play in this ‘subjective calculus’ you see at work. This may be a reason that progressives are always pushing the envelop regarding normative or acceptable behavior. As a political school of thought, progressives are outcome oriented. Equality of outcome or ‘sameness’ seems to be the goal they strive for in all endeavors. Those of a more pragmatic bent already realize that it is impossible to make everyone rich, but it is possible to spread the misery evenly. The retort I’ve received most often when I point this out to a debate partner is; “If everyone is equally miserable; how does anyone KNOW they are miserable?” This is a weak argument at best. While I’m certain that all people were essentially equal during the heyday of the old Soviet Union, the people also knew, in their gut, that the quality of their lives could be improved upon immensely.
Bill:
I’m not sure there is a direct linkage between a 3 Step process of social change and the motivations of the various folks debating current issues. More specifically, I don’t think the ideological differences between Progressives (formerly Liberals?) and Conservatives actually create the various exceptions in Steps #1 and 2 and then proceed on to generate those rationalizations which convert the numerous existing exceptions into a new social baseline of generally accepted rules culminating in Step #3.
In fact, an enduring pattern of collective social behavior probably has little to do with abstract thinking surrounding any current political issue. Conversely, there isn’t much we can say about the 3 Step process beyond the fact it appears pervasive and consistent over successive generations of human beings living within a relatively free society. That’s the problem with pattern recognition in these cases – we can examine aspects of the behavior pattern but it doesn’t tell us the “why”, simply the “how”.
For example, professional therapists and counselors postulate a multi-stage pattern regarding the human grieving process – “denial”, “anger”, “acceptance”, etc. Recognizing the overall pattern and determining where the suffering individual currently resides within the pattern tells us nothing about why we go through these stages following the loss of someone we love deeply – we simply know that we do.
I think there may be other behavioral patterns which explain the ideological battles within our society. For instance, some zoologists and sociologists have characterized our society as being one of “inward antagonism”. And the social science buzz words are unimportant, they simply serve to differentiate our American society from one of “outward antagonism”.
But there are specific characteristic behavior patterns and physical circumstances of the inwardly antagonistic society. The physical characteristics of this theoretical behavior pattern were first observed and derived from certain monkey species who live within a relatively abundant food environment – the search for food doesn’t consume much time within their daily existence leaving the monkeys with what we would term “a lot of free time on their hands”.
The behavioral pattern consists of threat displays and provocations at the territorial boundaries between extended and separate family groups within the same species occupying contiguous geographic areas. In simpler terms, the monkeys get up each morning and then immediately rush to their territorial boundary where they screech insults and provocations (assumed through observation) at another monkey group who have also appeared at the geographic border to accept the insults and scream their own insults in return. This process can last for up to several hours, with individual members of the extended family groups participating and then wandering off only to return later for more insults with the same opposing group or to initiate the insult process with a different opposing group.
An important point regarding this behavior is no physical violence is initiated, this isn’t a prelude to war, no blood is actually shed during the process. Zoologists have attempted to explain this behavior pattern as a form of “stimulus” to combat the constant boredom of a species living within a relative physical “paradise”, complete with abundant food and a low intensity “struggle for survival”. It’s a highly emotional process and appears to fulfill some need within the species.
Naturally, sociologists glommed on to these observations and extended the pattern to explain human behavior in a fashion that was popularized by evolutionary biologists who believe our social and psychological behavior is an evolved form of primate behaviors. This doesn’t imply we are simply carrying out monkey behavior on the internet and within our political forums. But, the environmental conditions and behavioral actions do appear to match up in a general manner.
For example, the lack of physical violence means no actual harm is intended despite the provocative insults and threat displays. When Ted Kennedy died, Conservative pundits wrote relatively “friendly” tributes to Kennedy, they may not have agreed with his politics but they didn’t celebrate his passing or gloat over his demise either. The Progressives acted in a similar manner when Bill Buckley died. So, the many insults and curses heaped on Kennedy over the years by Conservatives never resulted in direct violence against his person or his supporters and could have been merely threat displays meant to relive boredom rather than an indication violent harm was intended if the opportunity presented itself.
In conclusion, Americans, generally blessed with “a lot of free time”, may be rushing to our abstract territorial boundaries to heap insults and provocations on opposing groups simply to relieve boredom by creating artificial stress. There are real ideological differences to be sure, but it’s difficult to say whether these bones of contention actually facilitate social changes over time or are, at most times, simply a means to satisfy our society’s apparent need to antagonize each other.
Pat,
I’m positive I’m entering mucky ground here. To revamp an old and often used phrase; “Dammit Pat; I’m an engineer, not a doctor!” but I’m going to attempt to slog through this anyway.
In your posting you say; “In fact, an enduring pattern of collective social behavior probably has little to do with abstract thinking surrounding any current political issue.” I think that the ‘collective’ pattern of engagement IS the driver of change; in both social and political issues.
I currently have several postings under another composition entitled; “Have Liberals Lost Faith in the Anointed One?”; where I originally hypothesized that we, as conservatives, make an error when we interchange the terms democrat, liberal, and progressive without regard as to what those terms might actually represent. In posting #1 to that article I defined those groups and attempted to demonstrate how each of those groups may see a political issue from a different perspective. (We were dealing with health care. Gee, what a surprise!)
In subsequent postings to this essay I endeavored to define terms for the opposing party as well and attempted, in my own ham-handed way, to describe how my experience has taught me how these groups interact. Portions of Post #7 follow;
” If we were to employ set theory to the two institutionalized parties the set of republicans and conservatives, and also the set of democrats and liberals, would be best represented by intersecting circles. However both the circle of supremacists and progressives would be represented by self-contained, non-intersecting circles.” And ” The two intersecting sets of each party debate each other for short term ideological control of the party, with members of these two groups crossing from one side to the other depending on issue. It is important to note that no one group has a sufficient percentage to exert control for the long term. I would submit that once one group does exert long term control over the others, that that entire party is approaching an ‘Ideological Precipice’.”
Here the intention was to describe, based upon my own limited experience, how these groups interacted with each other in order to make ‘issue’ decisions. These two intersecting sets have cross-over with each other as well. This would normally be defined as ideological debate. I would hazard that this ‘ideological’ give-and-take is the basis for adjustment in social normative behavior as well. The debate is constantly engaged by society. That fundamentalist 20% that make up the fringes succeed, once in a while, in moving the line of demarcation between acceptable and unacceptable social behavior. This results in your three step pattern approach to social change.
I realize that you’ve offered statements from professional therapists regarding “…a multi-stage pattern regarding the human grieving process…” and evidence from zoologists and sociologists regarding the behavioral patterns of small bands of apes. I must confess that I’m way out of my depth here (that ground I spoke of before is getting softer by the minute). But one would think that as the group under scrutiny increased in population, that one could predict the pattern of progression form step to step with a greater degree of certainty. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m completely ignorant about this aspect of social science, but a Google search of ‘Predictive Behavior Modeling’ yields over 1.5 million hits.
As society evolves, social normative behavior will be constantly redefined. As ever larger portions of the necessities of survival are guaranteed, social behavior will gravitate further toward the satiation of ‘socially’ coveted indulgence.
Name your poison; war, poverty, liberty; climate change, social justice, equity of resource distribution; abortion, homosexuality, religion; and a plethora of other social issues I’ve not taken the time to mention. All these are proceeding, each at their own pace, down the path of your three step process. At some point there is an intersection, a crossroads. Society is constantly deciding, en mass, whether we continue down the path or change direction. If we’ve been sufficiently desensitized, we continue. If we’ve finally reached the point where this ‘satiation’ has reached the point of such a grotesque manifestation of the behavior that it slams into taboo, we alter ‘societal’ course.
Your thoughts?
Bill:
I should have elaborated on my “theories” rather than just making a generalized statement. And, keep in mind, these are purely personal observations gleaned from general reading, I’m not entirely sure how well they fit the real world, but I think they may describe an alternate way of looking at the issue of social change and the dynamics which drive it.
First, I think there may be completely different processes going on simultaneously when we analyze what drives social change – at least 3 in fact. One process would describe folks such as yourself – serious adults who have thought long and deeply about our society from a political and philosophical perspective. You have ideas you’ve tested over the years, viewpoints along the same lines and are willing to debate those who have different ideas and viewpoints in a sincere attempt to benefit and ultimately strengthen our society. Your constituency is the folks your ideas reach within forums like Intellectual Conservative.
But, relative to social change, you possess intellectual power but lack institutional power – in other words, you, Phil Jackson, sedonaman and others like you don’t hold high political or judicial office – and, consequently, your ability to affect social change rather than influence it is quite limited and narrowly focused. When you think about how the process functions in actual practice, one common vehicle for exerting your influence is writing a 3 page letter to your elected officials, say to both of your state’s senators for example, describing in a logical fashion your specific objections to Obamacare. I, on the other hand, could write a similar message to these same senators saying simply: “Vote against Obama’s Health Care bill, thanks”. We may both receive a polite, form letter acknowledgment complete with senatorial weasel words. But, behind the scenes, some clerk will tabulate our letters under “Opposed” and hand the Senator a summary, our words will never be read by the addressee. Your robust ideas and concerns vs. my simple demand receive equal weight relative to influencing social change.
Then, as a separate process, there are those childlike adult who are simply looking for a verbal fist fight, the foot soldiers within our “inwardly antagonistic” society. You see them everywhere, or rather hear their voices and they fall into the familiar Liberal/Conservative categories. Like the callicebus monkeys, they rush to the territorial boundaries on the web and hurl insults, issue provocations and make threat displays. At times, on Intellectual Conservative, you’ll witness one of their boundary disputes, the reader comments can reach over 200 in number before they lose interest and energy, with the gist of the comments eventually devolving into “Oh yeah”, “sez who” and “you’re an idiot”. Tomorrow, they’ll wake up, rush to their territorial boundaries and start the process yet again with a different subject. Are these folks sincere in trying to influence social change or, more accurately, simply hoping to pick a fight to relieve their boredom? Do they actually influence social change and to what degree? Or, is their primary effect promoting antagonism, with influencing social change a remote second?
But I think the most important and the primary process which influences social change is initiated by those folks who may never write an essay on Conservative or Progressive principles. And such folks, in their vast numbers, are the ones who demand the “exceptions” to the existing rule and therefore drive social change within the 3 Step process. At this moment, there are many Americans engaged in exactly that activity – they want jobs, they demand their government do something to create jobs, or keep them from losing their jobs, or save them from defaulting on their mortgages and losing their homes.
Self-interest ignites passion, seeks allies and calls previously unrelated individuals into formidable groups through a little understood sociological process. And demands for “exceptions” come boiling out of self-interest with a force abstract philosophical discussions can never provide. Consequently, self-interest doesn’t require an understanding of philosophical nuances to function, it’s quite effective on its own. But, though it may be indifferent to deep thinking, it won’t reject an ally from either the deep thinker or the inwardly antagonistic groups.
Politicians can read opinion poll results better than most and understand what the citizens want, even if their constituents’ need doesn’t reconcile with what they personally want. So, as politicians, their goal is to find the right “exception” to convince the voters they alone provided the needed solution. The exception here is more government meddling in the marketplace – but – and it’s an important but – if the economy improves, whether entirely on its own or through help from the government, the exception the politicians introduced is not forgotten. What happens next time the economy falters? Do citizens remember the “exception” from last time, the one that “worked”? Do they demand the same exception next time around? Is the “exception” now enshrined as a solution that worked and therefore will become a relatively permanent change to the status quo of accepted “societal rules”?
Meanwhile, the latest, popular “exception” is being considered within Congress and the media, you may legitimately object to its enactment based on established Conservative principles and also point out that, pragmatically, the exception won’t really work – giving Nancy Pelosi more money in a second Stimulus Plan to distribute among her friends and political supporters within the Bay Area doesn’t create jobs. Your opponents will argue the exact opposite citing their Liberal principles and pragmatically insisting the high-fat content pork, earmarks and grants actually do create more jobs. Simultaneously, the usual bar fights will start over this particular exception among the foot soldiers within the Army of Antagonism, threat displays, insults and provocations – not much intellectual meat will be served at their party but a good time will be had by all.
So, three separate processes in a complex stew that I probably oversimplified for brevity’s sake. And whether it’s religious theology within the Anglican church concerning homosexual clerics or the legality of late term abortion among women voters, I think these processes work exactly the same way as they do when considering government meddling within the economy. The issues change, the “exceptions” affect diverse social institutions and address different social problems, but we as citizens never change, we’ll follow this 3 Step process until disaster topples our shaky edifice, then we’ll return to Original Principles as a result and the exception process will start once again.
Pat —
I’d add one more component to your analysis.
Social change begins with an understanding of the status quo. This understanding is partially the result of personal experiences, but it is also heavily influenced by the popular perception of current reality.
This perception (in the US) has traditionally been driven by two main sources: a national media, and leading universities. To this end, the Vietnam war was winnable until Walter Cronkite said it wasn’t. And, FDR’s New Deal helped end the Great Depression because this is what is taught at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.
In this regard, the actual “facts” of the matter are not as important as the official public version of reality. This is the starting point for social change — whether that starting point is an accurate reflection of objective reality or not. Certain things may in fact not change much over the years, but if the media and universities say that conditions have changed, then perception becomes reality. [A great example of this is the modern day epidemic of child abductions. It’s not at all clear that this “danger” is greater today than in the 1950s, but the perception today is that a child molester lurks behind every corner, where in the 50’s you could leave your child’s bedroom window opened without concern].
The interesting thing about these two variables (media and university) is that up until a decade or two ago, the “media” consisted of a few TV companies and newspapers, and the only legitimate source of academic evaluation were from Ivy League universities. Today, thanks to the internet and independent media like Fox News, the monopoly of public information has been broken. We don’t need to rely on ABC/NBC/CBS or the New York Times to tell us about the world today, we can easily consult other sources of information to get a different version of reality from the ones they offer Moreover, with the spread of influence of niche colleges (Christian universities, university of Pheonix-type schools, websites/blogs in lieu of universities, the debate spurred by Sarah Palin’s educational background, etc.), Harvard, Yale et.al. have lost their singular prominence. Look at the way the alternative media has re-defined the “climate change” issue in ways the elite never tolerated.
So, in evaluating the issue of social change, unlike the past where there was a fairly well understood ‘starting point’ for comparison (even if that starting point was not completely accurate), today there are several starting points. Some sectors of the country see great change because their starting point is different from others on a particular matter, just as the opposite is true.
It makes political analysis more difficult, but explains a lot about the passion some people bring to a discussion of issues that others see as non-issues, or issues of limited value/change to begin with.
Pat,
I tend to agree with your statement regarding a person’s ability to affect social change; particularly with your assessment of the ‘lack’ of institutionalized power. I recently came to exactly the same conclusion and, as a result committed myself to run for political office this election cycle. Here’s what I’m testing:
Politicians are not making decisions in accordance with my established ideological priorities; and I believe those priorities to be correct. As you you pointed out; I possess a set of ideological and philosophical principles developed over my lifetime of experience. My question: Will my campaign demonstrate that a voting majority of others share my values.
An ideological difference with one’s party must be solved from the inside out. Just as my faith (I’m Catholic) requires that I maintain my life-long relationship with my religious denomination and repair its faults from within as opposed to abandoning my faith for a new set of dictums and blaming my defection on their shortcomings. I strongly believe the same regarding political party.
The government that affects the people most directly is the government closest to those same people. So, wanting to test the popularity of my viewpoint, and test the theory of the effectiveness of ‘locality’; I’m campaigning for Justice of the Peace here in Arkansas this year. (In any other state a JP would be called a County Supervisor.) I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is in order to discover if it is possible for one person to spearhead social change on a local scale.
Further along in your post you state; “At this moment, there are many Americans engaged in exactly that activity – they want jobs, they demand their government do something to create jobs, or keep them from losing their jobs, or save them from defaulting on their mortgages and losing their homes.” I must confess that I’m slightly confused as to where the ‘institutional’ power of these people comes from. The letters they author or the calls they place to government officials are summarized just like your or mine. They possess no more ‘access’ to their representatives than you or I. What means are they using to affect a politician’s behavior that we lack? They are no more likely to be polled than I am, and maybe less so as I’ve personally participated in every election ever held in my precinct since I first reached the age of eligibility.
You say that there are ‘vast’ numbers that demand ‘exceptions’ to existing rules. Yet the examples I can think of do not include such enormous populations. Gay and lesbian activists are waging a campaign across the country for gay marriage. They number, at best, between 5% and 7% of the entire population. Illegal immigrants and their advocates are demanding civil rights for ‘undocumented workers’ yet 13 million of them doesn’t amount to 4% of the citizenry. In example after example; my experience tells me that these groups of activists are miniscule in number as compared to the resident population.
When it comes to politicians, that number is even smaller. 535 Congressmen and Senators have spent most of the last year designing legislation to revamp the nation’s health care system. That number is negligible as compared to the 304 million Americans that will have to live with their decision.
In this case people applied the theory of the ‘angry mob’. TEA parties overflowing with people led up to, and unruly townhall meetings were a staple of, the recent Congressional summer recess. They outnumbered the population of the legislative branch of the federal government by 10,000:1. Not that all that activity seemed to make any significant difference in the manner in which Congressional and Senatorial liberals conducted themselves while in session. Rather, I believe, the elections in New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts had more effect. But even the total amount of voters in all those elections were a wispy percentage when compared to this country’s population.
But society is more than elections. There are social constructs within this country that have little to do with the voting booth. By what method do the ‘majorities’ make themselves heard in these areas? Are they even majorities? Is it all activism?
Activism would go quite a ways in explaining how we arrive at certain social/moral codes. My Brother-in-Law was a member of the UAW for over thirty years. He once related a story to me about his factory in Wisconsin. He said that even though there were several hundred employees and all belonged to the union; there were only seventy or so that were interested enough to actually participate by attending all the union meetings. These seventy employees ultimately set the work and grievance policies for every employee in the plant.
If social change is merely a matter of ‘the squeaky wheel getting the grease’; I guess that may explain your three steps. Under those conditions, a small vocal minority has the ability to ‘readjust’ the social norms for an entire society.
If my assumptions are correct (and yes, I do realize the ramifications of the word ‘assume’!) Then your three-step process is circular. Exceptions are ‘demanded’ by a vocal minority, a majority judges the exception to be innocuous, and we proceed to step two. As the exceptions become more prevalent, this same ‘silent’ majority doesn’t protest. There may be some who sound alarm, but for the most part it is a less than noteworthy quantity. Once step three occurs and the societal alteration is accepted it becomes the new starting point for step one all over again. The only possible means available to ‘short circuit’ the process is for that ‘silent’ majority to awaken from its lethargy, rise up, and say “Stop!”
If that’s the case, then vigilance is the price the majority must pay, as a group, if they want any measure of control over social change. Individual attention does no good; a clear majority must be involved.
Bill — you ought to link your name to your website (like my name is linked to my website) so people can contribute to your campaign if so inclined. If the TEA party movement has proven anything, even local elections have been nationalized.
Phil:
Agree the media and the academy are leading “playahs” when it comes to influencing social change, but they also lack institutional power and can’t actually affect social change. And I believe your point regarding the status quo as being defined by the media/universities is quite valid. But, I also think the 3 Step process operates independently and, in a manner very similar to the political arena, when you consider areas the media/universities generally ignore.
A recent article in the religious journal “First Things” caught my eye relative to social change. The gist of the article was the decline of Mainstream Protestantism, an area of little ongoing interest to the popular media and universities. The article claims the status quo is seeing a reversal of the 3 Step exception process, the historical “exceptions” have culminated into a new status quo which is being rejected by their former church members through a shift back to “old style religion”.
The Anglicans in particular, but also the Lutherans and Presbyterians, have been in this “exception” process of change for decades, the Anglicans since the Lambeth Conference of 1930, well before our modern media practice of publishing partisan political and cultural positions as “facts”. Lambeth started the exceptions in the area of sexual morality by allowing contraception for married folks only and only under “certain conditions”, which were both rare and specific, contraception in general for married couples followed later, contraception for unmarried couples was added, abortion was later “allowed”, ending finally with practicing homosexuals as ordained clerics. The current “status quo” among the Anglicans sees these collective changes as “desirable” and “normal” as per the Step #3 stage of converting the previous exceptions into a new baseline.
But the result has been a movement away from this new baseline and back to more fundamentalist religious teaching adhering to traditional disciplines. The Anglicans have gravitated towards a “if it feels good, do it, God won’t mind” position that is dropping their membership like a hot rock, not to mention being disavowed by the international Anglican community, particularly in Africa.
Members are deserting the Anglicans for other more traditional Protestant sects (the media calls them fundamentalists) and the Roman Catholic Church in a search for a theology that aligns more closely with traditional Christian values. To add to their woes, replacement members aren’t being raised within the faith, parishioners who are mentally comfortable with abortion as just another form of contraception won’t be raising large families, so the average age of the dwindling congregation members is rising significantly. The same phenomena can be seen in Judaism, Orthodox Jews are experiencing membership growth and thriving, Reform Judaism is in decline.
And while these demographic changes in religion may not catch the eye of the mainstream media and the academics, they are real nonetheless. What “First Things” asserts is that this example illustrates the initial “exception”, followed by more “exceptions”, with a new social baseline established and then a retreat back to original values process. And that would make it contra to an assumption we move in lockstep with the media, the politicians and the Ivy League academics on all social positions – which is a good thing in my mind – there’s hope for us yet.
Not sure I gave your comments justice, but I think “the People” at times demand exceptions – at other times they go along with proposed exceptions in the hope the exceptions will address their specific concerns – or, with the thought (or hope) the exceptions won’t impact their specific individual interests. And I don’t believe “the People” react differently to political vs. non-political issues as noted in the religious example above. I’ll close by noting that most but not all issues have become “political” due to government activism, but I’m not convinced Americans without institutional power follow a different sociological exception process dependent on whether it’s political or non-political.
Bill:
Your point regarding Gay and Lesbians affecting social change while being less than 10% of the population illustrates the exception process quite well. But you should recall the “exception” they demanded has been roundly rejected by the general populace, twice in California alone. Those with institutional power have forced the exception through in some locales and, as you noted, Federal and State judges combined with sitting Congressmen constitute less than 1% of the populace. So, is gay marriage an actual exception demanded by “the People”, or is it an exception forced through by those with institutional power?
And if Obama does change the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy within our military to a position favorable to the Gay community, does that mean the majority of service people, their families and our many living veterans demanded it? Or, does Obama use his institutional authority as commander in chief to mandate it?
Does it matter how the exception comes about, grass roots or being imposed from the judiciary or the politicians? I think it does matter to the process, legalized abortion has been imposed for 36 years but it still generates bitter controversy – the widespread social acceptance characteristic of Stage #3 hasn’t been clearly reached within this area in contrast to racial non-discrimination in voting rights and other areas of our society which I believe has reached Stage 3. Recall that legal and non-legal racial discrimination was not beyond the pale at one time in this country.
Nor was the Civil Rights movement lacking in popular grass roots support, I’m old enough to have witnessed the practice of legal racial discrimination in Mississippi first hand as a young man – I thought it was obscenely wrong long before the Civil Rights legislation reached its nadir. Were we ready as a people to overturn this wrong – or was it forced down our throats and we simply got used to it? Depends on who you listen to and whether history has been re-written for self-serving reasons by certain politicians and social activists. But, personally, I believe many Americans had moved to the present position long before the politicians claimed it for their own.
Are vast numbers of Americans demanding the government find some means to restore jobs and alleviate mortgage defaults? I believe they are, even when they don’t write letters. Politicians also study opinion polls, put a wet finger in the wind, examine the entrails of the sacrificial goat as well as analyzing arithmetic voting trends prepared by their clerks – at least the good ones do, the inept ones are back home working in private industry.
What does it all mean – confess I’m not sure in every instance for every issue, but I agree with you on your conclusion; if escalating misery occurs, we’ll need folks who question the status quo in more areas of society than just the political arena. You’ve written about the rampant irresponsibility and future perils inherent in massive federal borrowing and escalating debt ceilings – but I’d recommend you also consider the synergies inherent in accumulating “exceptions” broadly across the social spectrum. We have no reliable mathematics to predict how these exceptions interact and what the cumulative result could be in terms of “things are really getting better” or “we’re about to step off the cliff”.
By the way, good luck on your political efforts, we need honest and decent men and women striving to influence our politics, we already have a 50 year supply of the other varieties.
Pat: I don’t think we’re in any real disagreement. My comments were just some added context for yours, not necessarily an opposing view. Phil
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”
- Alexander Fraser Tytler (also attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville)
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