Sarah Bear, Locked and Loaded for 2014


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Sarah Bear, Locked and Loaded for 2014

This speaks for itself about my favorite political maverick.

People keep writing Sarah off (usually with glee), but she always comes back and kicks some old-boy butt.

The name of the video is "Loaded for Bear."

Dayamm, she can pick a slogan...

PALIN RELOADS FOR 2014 ELECTIONS WITH SARAHPAC VIDEO
by TONY LEE
27 Mar 2013
Breitbart

From the article:

In a sign of how active Sarah Palin intends to be in influencing the 2014 elections, SarahPAC, Sarah Palin's Political Action Committee, released a video on Wednesday meant to ignite independents, conservatives, and Tea Partiers for the 2014 midterm elections. These voters propelled Republican candidates in the historic 2010 midterm elections that saw Republicans take back the House of Representatives on the backs of Tea Party voters.

Titled "Loaded for Bear," the video shows footage and headlines from mainstream media outlets like Politico referring to Palin as a "kingmaker" and conservative outlets like Fox News acknowledging how successfully Palin has used her star-power to help elect conservative candidates to office.

Here is the video:

Michael

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You know, a lot of people think that Objectivists often feel like Conservatives, just without the god.

And honestly, threads like this back them up.

Sarah's populist, folksy flavor should be enough to put most Objectivists off - ever read Rand's whithering critique of folk art? And then there's Sarah's general lack of education... no, universities are NOT uniformly cesspits of corruption, and the fact that someone comes off as intellectual doesn't mean they hate freedom (nor does the fact that someone comes off as "like a guy/gal you'd wanna have a beer with" mean they like freedom). And aren't we Objectivists meant to love intellectual achievement?

Sarah Palin waxes lyrical about the small-town "pro-America parts of America," exhalting nationalism and showing aversion to cosmopolitanism. Hardly the kind of person that seems willing to embrace rational free-market positions on trade policy, immigration policy, or farm subsidies.

She seems to just drip Counter-Enlightenment Romanticism from every pore.

Yes, I find smug San-Franciscan-so-called-'intellectuals' to be infuriating as all hell (really, the only difference between them and Sarah is that they are Counter-Enlightenment Romantics towards the rural poor in nations OTHER than America, whilst Sarah applies the attitude domestically), but I don't see how that makes Sarah Palin a better bedfellow.

No Michael, I'm not going to accuse you of anything because of your affection for her. You know I don't play that silly Randian Purity Test game, and I don't think less of you for liking her.

But I have no idea at all what you see in Sarah Palin. Obviously you don't see the swamps-of-counter-enlightenment-romanticism-small-town-wholesomeness-dragging-us-back-to-farm-and-faith-and-jingoism that I see.

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Is conservative-socialism more attractive to the Objectivist community than social-democracy? Aren't both equally based on half-cooked principles?

Not to THIS Objectivist, but many other Objectivists seem more willing to work with the right than the left. Its libertarianism's long-running abusive relationship, also known as fusionism.

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But I have no idea at all what you see in Sarah Palin.

Andrew,

Small government.

Lots of freedom.

Taking apart big government schemes, piece by piece.

Makes up her own rules of how to play the political game and bases them in the Bill of Rights.

Communicates that well to major voting blocks.

Hated by all major power brokers and proponents (left and right) of big government, excluding John McCain (and I believe he will eventually break with her).

That's what I see.

I resonate with that on the deepest level.

Obviously you don't see the swamps-of-counter-enlightenment-romanticism-small-town-wholesomeness-dragging-us-back-to-farm-and-faith-and-jingoism that I see.

I would agree with you if her political record reflected that.

It doesn't.

You might want to look at those facts one day rather than relying solely on your visceral reaction. Why do you hate middle America so much, anyway? They are good productive people. (I'm going by what you have written so far.)

Sarah's record reflects a person mostly immune to the trappings of power and highly effective at pointing the power structures back toward the liberty direction.

Not perfect, but really, really solid on political freedom fundamentals in practice, if not always in word.

My standard in judging Sarah--and judging middle America, for that matter--is to look at what they say, then look at what they do, and if there is any inconsistency, I go with what they do as the better reflection of their intentions.

Michael

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Baal wrote:

Sarah of the Frozen North. My favorite Republican babe.

end quote

I made copies of her famous boob shot and handed them out to several Tea Party goers. What a beautiful face and knockers.

The problem with Sarah is that she is viewed as unfavorable with young women. After discussions with my own daughters, ages 29 and 32 and one of our own, here on OL, I am convinced that her stand on abortion will ALWAYS keep their votes out of her reach.

Michael wrote:

My standard in judging Sarah--and judging middle America, for that matter--is to look at what they say, then look at what they do, and if there is any inconsistency, I go with what they do as the better reflection of their intentions.

end quote

I most certainly agree, and Evita Palin might have my vote as VP. But by deliberately having a defective child she has made herself a pariah to enlightened, upwardly mobile young ladies, making her demographically un-elect-able. Young ladies may loath abortions personally but if they were ever to have an abortion it would be justified in their minds if the potential rights bearing citizen were a mongoloid, had a terrible genetic condition, or (fill in the blank.) They are adamant that a women has a right to her own body during the first trimester of gestation.

studiodekadent wrote:

Not to THIS Objectivist, but many other Objectivists seem more willing to work with the right than the left. Its libertarianism's long-running abusive relationship, also known as fusionism.

end quote

Moe, its soy tun lee not an abusive relationship with the right, for Leonard Peikoff, - nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

Nor for capital L Libertarians and myself. I would agree that OL and Atlas Society Objectivists seem more willing to work with the right than the left, because if Republicans are divorced of their pro abortion, pro religiosity, pro establishment, anti federalism stances then Republicanism is essentially the only viable political arm of the philosophy of Objectivism.

The problem with big L Libertarianism is that it has no moral underpinnings just as anarchism has no way to ensure individual rights. In a sense, old guard Republicanisms religious underpinnings are analogous to old guard Objectivisms insistence on morality in its political philosophy.

Very insightful if not entirely true, studiodecadent. Perhaps your view could be termed incite-ful, as in incite to riot? I can imagine Peikoff, Diana Hseih, and Binswanger, carrying torches and looking for that Libertarian Frankenstein, David Kelley, as if in a Monty Python sketch. Just kidding.

Peter

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The problem with Sarah is that she is viewed as unfavorable with young women. After discussions with my own daughters, ages 29 and 32 and one of our own, here on OL, I am convinced that her stand on abortion will ALWAYS keep their votes out of her reach.

. . .

... by deliberately having a defective child she has made herself a pariah to enlightened, upwardly mobile young ladies, making her demographically un-elect-able. Young ladies may loath abortions personally but if they were ever to have an abortion it would be justified in their minds if the potential rights bearing citizen were a mongoloid, had a terrible genetic condition, or (fill in the blank.) They are adamant that a women has a right to her own body during the first trimester of gestation.

Peter,

That's pretty perceptive.

I think it's a weakness in her armor. But nothing good storytelling and reframing over time can't fix.

Sarah hasn't fought the story war on this one, so the media has run with its own version unchallenged.

Look at what good storytelling and reframing can do. Bill Clinton got the world's most famous blow job in all of political history, bare-face lied about it on camera to all of America while affecting moral outrage, got caught, and is still a hero, leader and kingmaker in the public mind.

The story warriors had their work cut out for them for a while, but they won in the end.

Michael

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Folks:

I'm confused.

Is the philosophy of personal individual choice only to be implented by "Objectivists" and "Libertarians" when it follows the "party line?"

I have known folks who choose to bring their child to birth, even though they knew it was impaired.

Personal choice. Individual decisions. Many of them were not religious fundamentalists.

My believe is that personal integrity is what matters in a political candidate.

I am willing to gamble that a person who has the integrity to act on their beliefs in the personal sphere and refuse to impose those beliefs on the citizens at large, "the people" in the Constitutional sense are worthy of electing to office.

A,,,

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My believe is that personal integrity is what matters in a political candidate.

I am willing to gamble that a person who has the integrity to act on their beliefs in the personal sphere and refuse to impose those beliefs on the citizens at large, "the people" in the Constitutional sense are worthy of electing to office.

Adam,

That's a great example of a proper premise for the story wars in this case.

Imagine a documentary that uses the hero's journey as a storytelling format where integrity is the boon the hero finds in the belly of the beast--and run Sarah's journey both through her political accomplishments (when integrity was the issue) and her decision to have the child.

Make it about integrity instead of abortion.

A perfect reframe and a new powerful story to counter the mainstream image...

Michael

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My temptation is to say, "I sure wish she were smarter." This has nothing to do with her politics.

But a little bit of reflection reveals that most politicians are not very smart. So why should this sin be held against Sarah?

I am not sure if MSK is painting a rosy picture of her overall record or not, but which politician in the past X years has an unblemished record when it comes to the issues of importance to those who visit this site?

And yet, and yet...I can't get around the fact that she seems to be a pea-brained bullshit artist. That's what my gut tells me, I am afraid.

I had sort of hoped she would go away. She has taken her 20 minutes of fame into double-overtime, but I suppose we could do worse.

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And yet, and yet...I can't get around the fact that she seems to be a pea-brained bullshit artist. That's what my gut tells me, I am afraid.

David,

That's what the old-boy crony capitalists who traffic in oil thought when she ran for governor of Alaska. That's what they thought even when their jaws dropped because she won. You should read the media stuff from back then.

They didn't think that way after a while. She took them apart without mercy. Like she said about Ted Cruz, she chewed the nails off their backroom structures and spit out rust.

You should look into her record a bit and see if your media-informed gut will still feel the same.

Granted, she was stupid to put a law in place as governor that allowed her opponents to sue her with ethics complaints without mercy. The cost was the reason she resigned (there she went, not playing by the rules once again).

btw - All complaints were dismissed in court. Not one had any merit. I don't think she believed in the rottenness of her enemies to abuse the system like that when she promoted the law.

I've mentioned several times here on OL the reason I first became fond of her. She is an evangelical Christian who practices temperance. However, right at the start of her political career, she fought--and won--a battle against the state, which had come up with a new law that required Wasilla bars to close early. After her campaign, the bars could stay open all night. Her convictions about freedom while in office were far stronger than her convictions about booze.

There are only three ways you can know anything about people: what they say, what they do, what others say about them.

Unfortunately, most people who make derogatory statements about Sarah only know of her from what others say about her (mostly the media and what people repeat from the media), punctuated by looking at her image sporadically in the news.

It's a story war and she hasn't fought it as well as she could have. She gets the colorful part right (and the zingers), but her enemies have tainted her with a dingbat social climber image. It doesn't really stick except as a vague feeling because of that other thing--a women who can shoot and dress a moose--is mixed in, and that scares the holy crap out of lots of people. Her image control has let this stuff run without too much engineering and I believe that's a mistake.

To me, her biggest liability is John McCain. She owes him big time for her national prominence, but he stands for the exact opposite of what she does. He's a big government progressive and she's about as close to a libertarian as a conservative can get.

I think it's a good thing she backed off from constant public presence for now (especially to let her get some distance from McCain) and has been helping overhaul Congress, one Congress member at a time, almost under the radar.

After 2014, let's see how many new Congress members and other office holders will owe her. Then, if she runs in 2016 (or even later in 2020), she will have one hell of a base of powerful people--libertarian-leaning politicians--in her back pocket and lots of tokens to cash in.

A "pea-brained bullshit artist" does not do things like that.

Michael

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And yet, and yet...I can't get around the fact that she seems to be a pea-brained bullshit artist. That's what my gut tells me, I am afraid.

David,

That's what the old-boy crony capitalists who traffic in oil thought when she ran for governor of Alaska. That's what they thought even when their jaws dropped because she won. You should read the media stuff from back then.

They didn't think that way after a while. She took them apart without mercy. Like she said about Ted Cruz, she chewed the nails off their backroom structures and spit out rust.

You should look into her record a bit and see if your media-informed gut will still feel the same.

Granted, she was stupid to put a law in place as governor that allowed her opponents to sue her with ethics complaints without mercy. The cost was the reason she resigned (there she went, not playing by the rules once again).

btw - All complaints were dismissed in court. Not one had any merit. I don't think she believed in the rottenness of her enemies to abuse the system like that when she promoted the law.

I've mentioned several times here on OL the reason I first became fond of her. She is an evangelical Christian who practices temperance. However, right at the start of her political career, she fought--and won--a battle against the state, which had come up with a new law that required Wasilla bars to close early. After her campaign, the bars could stay open all night. Her convictions about freedom while in office were far stronger than her convictions about booze.

There are only three ways you can know anything about people: what they say, what they do, what others say about them.

Unfortunately, most people who make derogatory statements about Sarah only know of her from what others say about her (mostly the media and what people repeat from the media), punctuated by looking at her image sporadically in the news.

It's a story war and she hasn't fought it as well as she could have. She gets the colorful part right (and the zingers), but her enemies have tainted her with a dingbat social climber image. It doesn't really stick except as a vague feeling because of that other thing--a women who can shoot and dress a moose--is mixed in, and that scares the holy crap out of lots of people. Her image control has let this stuff run without too much engineering and I believe that's a mistake.

To me, her biggest liability is John McCain. She owes him big time for her national prominence, but he stands for the exact opposite of what she does. He's a big government progressive and she's about as close to a libertarian as a conservative can get.

I think it's a good thing she backed off from constant public presence for now (especially to let her get some distance from McCain) and has been helping overhaul Congress, one Congress member at a time, almost under the radar.

After 2014, let's see how many new Congress members and other office holders will owe her. Then, if she runs in 2016 (or even later in 2020), she will have one hell of a base of powerful people--libertarian-leaning politicians--in her back pocket and lots of tokens to cash in.

A "pea-brained bullshit artist" does not do things like that.

Michael

I get all that. I do. I lived in Alaska during some of the events that form SP's narrative.

I'm not trying to pull rank here, but one of my best friends was the Attorney General of Alaska around the time she made her splash. Another good friend has occupied the Governor's Mansion in Alaska as well and he is a man of 100% integrity. I think they might tell you she has spun her narrative about those days against the so-called "Good Ole Boys" pretty craftily. There is more to that narrative than meets the eye. Let's just say that.

Pea-brained may be too strong. Bullshit artist probably isn't. But then again, as I waffle once again, which particular politician are we aware of who is not, at the end of the day, a bullshit artist...?

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Why do you hate middle America so much, anyway? They are good productive people. (I'm going by what you have written so far.)

I don't hate middle America, not at all.

What I hate is romanticism and its assorted philosophical attitudes.

The vast majority of Americans (including middle Americans) are good, well-intentioned, honest people. I agree with you.

However, where I disagree is when people start thinking of middle America as "the real America" or "the pro-America parts of America" or, in essence, a far more virtuous class of people than "those San Franciscan elite effete homosexual latte-sippers." What I hate is the valorization of the rural poor as morally pure/closer to the earth/more authentically American/more authentically human/etc.

Like I said, I find this attitude disturbingly close to Blood And Soil Nationalism. Philosophically speaking, its a Rousseau-esque romanticization of the "noble savage" just applied to the American rural poor instead of some far-flung tribe off in West Africa or something. Indeed, in so many respects it is the right-wing version of the environmentalist/primitivist attitudes we both disdain.

It sees the modern, cosmopolitan, (classical) liberal extended order as alienating us from our "true" "authentic" selves and consels a return to the Good Old Days With Their Good Wholesome Ways (like wife-beating, child-beating, Jesus and Jingoism).

Now, before you start thinking of me as a smug elitist, please remember that I'm NO fan of so-called "high-culture" either. I love popular culture much more than most "high art" and find it a far more fascinating object of study. And my favorite place in the world to be a tourist? Las Vegas! I've been there four times before (fifth time this September!) and I adore the city, which is an archetypal mass-market mass-produced tourism destination that provides better value for money than anywhere else on the planet and amazing food (and I'm a blackjack player). The place is full of Middle Americans and whilst they're usually scared of me (can't blame them, I wear full goth gear when gambling in the Bellagio) we always get along very well and have civil conversations.

I don't hate Middle America. I haven't even been to New York or San Francisco (I have been to LA though, and I had a very punk experience eating foie gras there just before the foie gras ban came into effect! Screw You, Jerry Brown! California Uber Alles!). I don't fit into either the leftist or rightist cultural stereotypes.

But neither the leftist nor rightist cultural stereotypes are beyond criticism, and I still don't see why so many Objectivists seem to feel more comfortable with the right than with the left culturally. Chris Sciabarra noted that many Objectivists have a cultural "feel" that is basically no different to a conservative Republican but without the religion, and I've noticed this too. And it confuses me, since our philosophy is equally opposed to the counter-Enlightenment mentalities on both sides of the political spectrum.

In short, if we feel absolutely comfortable with pouring disdain upon Elitist San-Franciscan Social-Justice High-Culture Technocrat Nanny-Statist Hippies, I simply don't see why we shouldn't be equally comfortable pouring disdain upon... well... the right-wing equivalents. And Sarah Palin, at least culturally speaking, is a terribly good example of this archetype! Rural, religionist, romanticist, nationalist/jingoist, pining-for-small-town-wholesomeness-and-Pleasantville, Moral-Guardian-Soccer-Mom, vote-for-me-because-I'm-just-like-you Populist, etc.

This doesn't mean all of Middle America is like that (it quite clearly isn't). And I don't hate middle America. But I don't see why stereotypical right-wing culture seems to get far more sympathetic treatment here relative to stereotypical left-wing culture.

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Andrew,

Your narrative is wrong.

I come from hillbillies. I assure your that your San Francisco image is barely on their radar. Most were union people (from the coal mines) when I was growing up. Many even had hippy kids. (I know. I was one for a while.) They all coexisted just fine. A little friction at times, but nothing more than usual.

That SF narrative is just wrong from the things I have lived and seen.

(I've had this problem concerning the Muslim culture, too. The narrative I have seen in O-Land does not have anything to do with what I have seen and lived. And a second part to that is my life experiences are generally not accepted as even possible by the narrative people. Fanatics are fringe--granted a larger fringe than normal in Islam, probably because of oil money. But most Musims are just good people trying to get along.)

I've been with middle America folks, too. Once again, the furthest thing from their minds is San Francisco follies. If you want to establish a dichotomy, try stuck up Ivy League intellectuals who look down their noses and like to tell others what to do. Or "big city folks." Those are on the radar as a potential opposite.

I have recently been looking at a lot of videos of ex-Mormons. I am enormously interested in cults and cult thinking, so I have been looking at how a lot of Mormons migrate to evangelical Christianity and why this instead of, say, becoming agnostic or cooling off on religion altogether. (Some actually do, but the ex-Mormon evangelical movement is pretty well organized and highly motivated.)

Do you know what a main preoccupation is with these people on the social conservative spectrum?

Polygamy.

That's no surprise, but it's not like you might think. It's certainly not anything like I thought it would be, which was considering it in the same boat as adultery and other sexual relationship "sins" mentioned in Biblical verses.

Apropos, I get the impression that many evangelicals don't go along with things like homosexuality, not because they are against them inside their hearts. Since I know that culture, I can say I have been around a lot of such folks. They just don't care about it one way or another--maybe a light discomfort. Except... in their understanding, these practices are against the Bible. Since they have to follow the Bible, they have to be against those things. They go through the motions, but their heart is not in it.

Young males in group are a true exception. These can get hateful and bigoted for real inside their hearts. Especially if they start drinking. But get them out of the group and many soften to the quasi-indifference I mentioned. (Like I said, I speak from experience of seeing it from the inside.)

Back to polygamy. The undercurrent, tone of voice, focus, etc., of ex-Mormons (and even Mormons) who discuss this comes with an eerie emphasis. Something I wasn't able to put my finger on. It's the same kind of importance they would place on buying a home, for instance, or going on a mission overseas. A serious matter. Of course it's negative, but it's intense in the wrong place to an outsider.

Then one of these people mentioned the problem. About half the population of Utah comes from polygamous relationships in their past.

No wonder the intensity...

Well,these people can resonate strongly with a Sarah Palin kind of heartland patriot image and not even think about San Francisco or homosexuality or whatever except in a remote, abstract, slightly negative, but almost unemotional manner. Their big negative issue (I mean, one of the real biggies) is polygamy. The polygamy of their folks.

Who woulda thunk something like that? I know I didn't until I started watching these videos.

(I'm tempted to post one showdown I came across between an evangelical ex-Mormon and a practicing Mormon because it is a stereotype shootout on steroids. Not the social conservative one, though. The fireworks show presents Randian stereotypes of Christians, believe it or not. Hell, I just might do that in another thread. We need some entertainment around here. :smile: )

But as you move around middle America, I am pretty sure you will find intense local problems much more on the minds of these people than your dichotomy. I am going to keep my antenna attuned to this as I go along to start seeing what these intensities are. These people really do work--and work long hard hours. They don't have time for all the intellectual bickering city people do.

I grant that you can find some of the stereotypical thinking you mentioned in some of the more fundamentalist pastors. But the people they preach to generally go along to get along. They think more about their family problems than social issues. When they get riled up, it's usually against a rival Christian denomination.

Michael

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Michael wrote:

My standard in judging Sarah--and judging middle America, for that matter--is to look at what they say, then look at what they do, and if there is any inconsistency, I go with what they do as the better reflection of their intentions.
end quote

Peter Taylor wrote:
I most certainly agree.

My only standard in judging politicians is by their track record: I only consider what they have done, or are doing. I usually disregard what they say because they'll say anything to get elected and stay elected.


I ignore educational credentials or appeals to intellectuality in politicians. Neither mathematicians nor Grand Masters in chess would necessarily make a good President. William F. Buckley, Jr. (an intellectual conservative who graduated from Yale) once said:

I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

I agree. Most soi-disant intellectuals from the Ivy League schools are functional ignoramuses.

Obama is a soi-disant intellectual from two Ivy League schools, Columbia University and Harvard. Except for flattering portraits (much of it fabricated) about himself, has he written anything important and profound? No. When we was editor of the Harvard Law Review, did he contribute any articles? No. When he taught law at University of Chicago, did he publish scholarly articles on legal issues? No. Has he ever run a business? No. Is he knowledgeable about economics? No. Is he especially knowledgeable about the health insurance industry? No.

The U.S. has always prospered far more under do-nothing hick Presidents than it has under Ivy-educated elites. In 1920, the stock market crashed, sending the economy into a depression. Lucky for the U.S., it had a do-nothing hick President in Warren Harding (a graduate of Ohio Central College). He ignored all of the trendy advice from the Federal Reserve to inflate; he ignored all of the advice from his Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover (!!!) to raise taxes and increase federal spending, and instead, Harding severely cut both federal spending and federal taxes. Guess what? The economy turned around in a year.

We need more Warren G. Hardings, and fewer Woodrow Wilsons and Franklin D. Roosevelts. (And we don't need any Barack Hussein Obamas.)

However, where I disagree is when people start thinking of middle America as "the real America" or "the pro-America parts of America" or, in essence, a far more virtuous class of people than "those San Franciscan elite effete homosexual latte-sippers." What I hate is the valorization of the rural poor as morally pure/closer to the earth/more authentically American/more authentically human/etc.

You've been to Las Vegas and Los Angeles, but not, Houston, or Wichita, or Salt Lake City, or Tulsa, or Boulder, or Santa Fe, etc., etc., all of which are culturally "middle America" and geographically, the proverbial "fly-over states," because they're the states the elites have to fly over to get from New York to San Francisco or Los Angeles (all 3, hotbeds of hyper-leftism). In your view, all of these cities are stuffed into a neat conceptual pigeon-hole labeled "the rural poor." Very convenient.

If it's the "rural poor," would you mind explaining to me why many of the so-called "elites" are moving out of cities like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and moving into cities like Houston and Dallas? Is it because they like rubbing elbows with "the rural poor"? No. It's the economy! Gee, I wonder if vibrant, dynamic economies like those in Texas and North Dakota (another "rural poor" valorized state in your view, yet the one with some of the consistently lowest unemployment, now slightly above 3%) tend to follow as a result of certain economic policies flowing from certain cultural attitudes?

The fact is this: classical-liberal policies of voluntarism, free trade, low taxes, low gov't spending, etc., can be defended by means of reason and sound economic models; but historically, they have never flowed into practical application simply as a result of reason and sound economic models. They flowed from certain cultural attitudes, e.g.: hard work is good; thrift is good; saving is good; deferring immediate enjoyment in the present in favor of a more distant future is good; children are good because they represent the agents of this more distant future; traditional heterosexual marriage is good because it's main purpose has always been to produce children and provide a stable environment for them; fidelity is good because it provides a stable basis for marriage; disrupting influences — drugs, promiscuity, homosexuality, practices leading people away from this cycle of future-oriented activity, are condemned. Now, these cultural attitudes, if accepted by enough people, then resonate throughout other aspects of the culture: in books, movies, television, music, art, etc. True, the British Classical school of Ricardo, Mill, Senior, etc., made excellent arguments in favor of abolishing trade barriers in their day, but their theories were "reinforcement" of cultural attitudes regarding "middle-classness" (the so-called "bourgeois virtues") that were already in place, which is why the majority of people (and hence their democratically elected government) supported them so enthusiastically.

>>>I find this attitude disturbingly close to Blood And Soil Nationalism.

Blood and Soil Nationalism of the Nazi variety is not the upshot of middle-class virtues and middle-class values. The middle-America that I know has no feeling for the notion that "the State is God", which is what Blood and Soil Nationalism of the 1930s European variety rested on.

>>Philosophically speaking, its a Rousseau-esque romanticization of the "noble savage" just applied to the American rural poor instead of some far-flung tribe off in West Africa or something. Indeed, in so many respects it is the right-wing version of the environmentalist/primitivist attitudes we both disdain.

You're projecting a fiction movie about the U.S. that you wrote, directed, and produced.

>>>> I still don't see why so many Objectivists seem to feel more comfortable with the right than with the left culturally.

Good question. Here's the answer: Objectivists sense what I wrote above: that certain cultural values tend to lead to certain economic and political conditions (not the other way around). This is certainly true. Because of their reading of Rand, Mises, etc., they desire the economic and political effects (capitalism, liberty), but they either see no connection between those and the cultural values out of which they grow, or they simply profess disgust for the values, claiming they are ultimately "based on faith" and not "rationally derived". The latter happens to be correct: love of freedom (the value-precondition of establishing capitalism) can be rationally defended, but it requires a certain sense-of-life to implement. That sense-of-life is not learned in a classroom by means of textbooks and lectures. It is not rationally-self-consciously derived.

Go to Amazon.com and obtain some of the writings by economist/historian Deirdre McClosky. You'll find them (and her) quite interesting.

>>>Chris Sciabarra noted that many Objectivists have a cultural "feel" that is basically no different to a conservative Republican but without the religion, and I've noticed this too. And it confuses me, since our philosophy is equally opposed to the counter-Enlightenment mentalities on both sides of the political spectrum.

I think you feel confused because you feel the same way that many of those other Objectivists do, and you don't know why. If this is the case, then it's probably time to check your premises in a very serious way.

>>>In short, if we feel absolutely comfortable with pouring disdain upon Elitist San-Franciscan Social-Justice High-Culture Technocrat Nanny-Statist Hippies, I simply don't see why we shouldn't be equally comfortable pouring disdain upon... well... the right-wing equivalents.

Because elitist SF nannie-state hippies tend to lead to welfare states with high poverty, high unemployment, high crime, low innovation, low birth rates = low expectations for the future. "Right-wing equivalents" tend to lead to the opposite. So if you value the opposite, it's a good idea not to heap disdain on the people and the values that make it possible.

>>And Sarah Palin, at least culturally speaking, is a terribly good example of this archetype! Rural, religionist, romanticist, nationalist/jingoist, pining-for-small-town-wholesomeness-and-Pleasantville, Moral-Guardian-Soccer-Mom, vote-for-me-because-I'm-just-like-you Populist, etc.

That's part of the movie you're projecting in your head. Her actual track record as governor says otherwise.

>>>This doesn't mean all of Middle America is like that (it quite clearly isn't). And I don't hate middle America. But I don't see why stereotypical right-wing culture seems to get far more sympathetic treatment here relative to stereotypical left-wing culture.

Not sure where you're getting your information from. Sympathetic treatment by whom? The mainstream media (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS, The NY Times, The Washington Post) savage traditional American values (a/k/a "right-wing culture"), just as they have savaged (and continue to savage) Sarah Palin.

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I prefer President Calvin Coolidge. He said little and did less.

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Andrew,

Your narrative is wrong.

I come from hillbillies. I assure your that your San Francisco image is barely on their radar. Most were union people (from the coal mines) when I was growing up. Many even had hippy kids. (I know. I was one for a while.) They all coexisted just fine. A little friction at times, but nothing more than usual.

That SF narrative is just wrong from the things I have lived and seen.

(I've had this problem concerning the Muslim culture, too. The narrative I have seen in O-Land does not have anything to do with what I have seen and lived. And a second part to that is my life experiences are generally not accepted as even possible by the narrative people. Fanatics are fringe--granted a larger fringe than normal in Islam, probably because of oil money. But most Musims are just good people trying to get along.)

I've been with middle America folks, too. Once again, the furthest thing from their minds is San Francisco follies. If you want to establish a dichotomy, try stuck up Ivy League intellectuals who look down their noses and like to tell others what to do. Or "big city folks." Those are on the radar as a potential opposite.

I have recently been looking at a lot of videos of ex-Mormons. I am enormously interested in cults and cult thinking, so I have been looking at how a lot of Mormons migrate to evangelical Christianity and why this instead of, say, becoming agnostic or cooling off on religion altogether. (Some actually do, but the ex-Mormon evangelical movement is pretty well organized and highly motivated.)

Do you know what a main preoccupation is with these people on the social conservative spectrum?

Polygamy.

That's no surprise, but it's not like you might think. It's certainly not anything like I thought it would be, which was considering it in the same boat as adultery and other sexual relationship "sins" mentioned in Biblical verses.

Apropos, I get the impression that many evangelicals don't go along with things like homosexuality, not because they are against them inside their hearts. Since I know that culture, I can say I have been around a lot of such folks. They just don't care about it one way or another--maybe a light discomfort. Except... in their understanding, these practices are against the Bible. Since they have to follow the Bible, they have to be against those things. They go through the motions, but their heart is not in it.

Young males in group are a true exception. These can get hateful and bigoted for real inside their hearts. Especially if they start drinking. But get them out of the group and many soften to the quasi-indifference I mentioned. (Like I said, I speak from experience of seeing it from the inside.)

Back to polygamy. The undercurrent, tone of voice, focus, etc., of ex-Mormons (and even Mormons) who discuss this comes with an eerie emphasis. Something I wasn't able to put my finger on. It's the same kind of importance they would place on buying a home, for instance, or going on a mission overseas. A serious matter. Of course it's negative, but it's intense in the wrong place to an outsider.

Then one of these people mentioned the problem. About half the population of Utah comes from polygamous relationships in their past.

No wonder the intensity...

Well,these people can resonate strongly with a Sarah Palin kind of heartland patriot image and not even think about San Francisco or homosexuality or whatever except in a remote, abstract, slightly negative, but almost unemotional manner. Their big negative issue (I mean, one of the real biggies) is polygamy. The polygamy of their folks.

Who woulda thunk something like that? I know I didn't until I started watching these videos.

(I'm tempted to post one showdown I came across between an evangelical ex-Mormon and a practicing Mormon because it is a stereotype shootout on steroids. Not the social conservative one, though. The fireworks show presents Randian stereotypes of Christians, believe it or not. Hell, I just might do that in another thread. We need some entertainment around here. :smile: )

But as you move around middle America, I am pretty sure you will find intense local problems much more on the minds of these people than your dichotomy. I am going to keep my antenna attuned to this as I go along to start seeing what these intensities are. These people really do work--and work long hard hours. They don't have time for all the intellectual bickering city people do.

I grant that you can find some of the stereotypical thinking you mentioned in some of the more fundamentalist pastors. But the people they preach to generally go along to get along. They think more about their family problems than social issues. When they get riled up, it's usually against a rival Christian denomination.

Michael

Michael,

I think you're slightly misunderstanding me. I'm not trying to allege that all of middle America is the Bible Belt. That is quite obviously untrue. And I am also aware that plenty of people that live a religiously conservative lifestyle are not interested in enforcing such a lifestyle on other people. The majority of America is not interested in fighting the culture war, at least not any more.

I am talking about cultural archetypes here. I'm not alleging they are perfectly reflective of reality.

Like it or not, these cultural archetypes do exist and do resonate somewhat. They've been focus-tested over and over again and they resonate. If cultural signalling to the "bases" of either "team" didn't matter, these archetypes would not exist.

All I am saying is that Sarah Palin, or at least the public persona she cultivates politically (for all we know it could be an elaborate hoax but that's irrelevant to the question), is a very, very good example of someone that embodies the cultural archetype of the "right."

And this archetype has a multitude of philosophical origins and associations which I find deeply unpleasant.

I'm not saying that everyone who likes Sarah Palin swallows these philosophical attitudes (you clearly don't, for one). Most people don't hold complex philosophical worldviews in the first place.

However, where I disagree is when people start thinking of middle America as "the real America" or "the pro-America parts of America" or, in essence, a far more virtuous class of people than "those San Franciscan elite effete homosexual latte-sippers." What I hate is the valorization of the rural poor as morally pure/closer to the earth/more authentically American/more authentically human/etc.

You've been to Las Vegas and Los Angeles, but not, Houston, or Wichita, or Salt Lake City, or Tulsa, or Boulder, or Santa Fe, etc., etc., all of which are culturally "middle America" and geographically, the proverbial "fly-over states," because they're the states the elites have to fly over to get from New York to San Francisco or Los Angeles (all 3, hotbeds of hyper-leftism). In your view, all of these cities are stuffed into a neat conceptual pigeon-hole labeled "the rural poor." Very convenient.

If it's the "rural poor," would you mind explaining to me why many of the so-called "elites" are moving out of cities like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and moving into cities like Houston and Dallas? Is it because they like rubbing elbows with "the rural poor"? No. It's the economy! Gee, I wonder if vibrant, dynamic economies like those in Texas and North Dakota (another "rural poor" valorized state in your view, yet the one with some of the consistently lowest unemployment, now slightly above 3%) tend to follow as a result of certain economic policies flowing from certain cultural attitudes?

The fact is this: classical-liberal policies of voluntarism, free trade, low taxes, low gov't spending, etc., can be defended by means of reason and sound economic models; but historically, they have never flowed into practical application simply as a result of reason and sound economic models. They flowed from certain cultural attitudes, e.g.: hard work is good; thrift is good; saving is good; deferring immediate enjoyment in the present in favor of a more distant future is good; children are good because they represent the agents of this more distant future; traditional heterosexual marriage is good because it's main purpose has always been to produce children and provide a stable environment for them; fidelity is good because it provides a stable basis for marriage; disrupting influences — drugs, promiscuity, homosexuality, practices leading people away from this cycle of future-oriented activity, are condemned. Now, these cultural attitudes, if accepted by enough people, then resonate throughout other aspects of the culture: in books, movies, television, music, art, etc. True, the British Classical school of Ricardo, Mill, Senior, etc., made excellent arguments in favor of abolishing trade barriers in their day, but their theories were "reinforcement" of cultural attitudes regarding "middle-classness" (the so-called "bourgeois virtues") that were already in place, which is why the majority of people (and hence their democratically elected government) supported them so enthusiastically.

>>>>> I still don't see why so many Objectivists seem to feel more comfortable with the right than with the left culturally.

Good question. Here's the answer: Objectivists sense what I wrote above: that certain cultural values tend to lead to certain economic and political conditions (not the other way around). This is certainly true. Because of their reading of Rand, Mises, etc., they desire the economic and political effects (capitalism, liberty), but they either see no connection between those and the cultural values out of which they grow, or they simply profess disgust for the values, claiming they are ultimately "based on faith" and not "rationally derived". The latter happens to be correct: love of freedom (the value-precondition of establishing capitalism) can be rationally defended, but it requires a certain sense-of-life to implement. That sense-of-life is not learned in a classroom by means of textbooks and lectures. It is not rationally-self-consciously derived.

Go to Amazon.com and obtain some of the writings by economist/historian Deirdre McClosky. You'll find them (and her) quite interesting.

>>>In short, if we feel absolutely comfortable with pouring disdain upon Elitist San-Franciscan Social-Justice High-Culture Technocrat Nanny-Statist Hippies, I simply don't see why we shouldn't be equally comfortable pouring disdain upon... well... the right-wing equivalents.

Because elitist SF nannie-state hippies tend to lead to welfare states with high poverty, high unemployment, high crime, low innovation, low birth rates = low expectations for the future. "Right-wing equivalents" tend to lead to the opposite. So if you value the opposite, it's a good idea not to heap disdain on the people and the values that make it possible.

First, do not distort my argument. I am not calling everywhere in middle America the same thing as the "rural poor." The mention of the rural poor came in a discussion of Romanticism, not a discussion about the facts of America's geography.

I am quite aware that the "flyover states" are full of industrious, large, developed cities.

Second, I am familiar with Dierdre McCloskey. I am an economist by education.

Third, I (and the economic literature) would contest your proposition that conservative social values lead to free market economics. Here I would disagree and I would point to the literature on innovation and entrepreneurship, which would contradict your proposition.

As both Schumpeter and Rand pointed out, the "soul" of Capitalism is innovation and entrepreneurship, which is typically the product of individual creativity. Richard Florida has continued this line of reasoning and argues that the majority of wealth comes from what he calls the "Creative Class" (these were the people that went on strike in Atlas Shrugged, essentially).

Now, I ask you to look at the last great technological shift of our economy - the information technology revolution.

If socially conservative values were the fundamental underpinning of the market economy, then you'd expect the IT revolution to have occurred somewhere in the bible belt. No, it happened in Silicon Valley, i.e. in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Creative Class is by and large cosmopolitan and tolerant. Plenty of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were in fact ex-hippies (Steve Jobs, anyone?). They were the children of the 60's counterculture, which for all of its political new-left stupidity was animated by a cultural embrace of individualism, a spirit of breaking away from convention and doing one's own thing on one's own terms (it is no surprise that the counterculture was followed by the Reagan Revolution given how, as Rand said, free minds and free markets are corrolaries).

Social-cultural liberalism, and I mean this in the classical sense, is a necessity for the generation of new ideas, novelty and innovation. Religionist, mystical, conservative, authoritarian cultures will remain permanently stifled. This is why Japan's economic growth was based on reverse-engineering Western technology and why most of China's growth is based on foreign direct investment - without individualistic social capital, you can't internally generate economic dynamism (you have to import it).

But, as I read your case, you're talking mostly about generating broad-based political support for free market economic policies, right? Well then I agree with you - framing one's policies as a fulfillment of popularly-embraced moral beliefs is a great way to make one's policies become more popular.

The problem is that both sides can do this, and as Ayn Rand pointed out the anti-free-market sides have a built-in advantage: free market economics acknowledges the profit motive as natural and ultimately beneficial, but the traditional moral wisdom handed down to us over milennia tells us to Not Be Selfish Or Greedy.

Rand's solution was to criticize the traditional moral wisdom. You seem to be arguing that politically this is an absolute non-starter and pursuing this path will lead to only a rational minority embracing market economics. But that's a matter of political strategy/messaging, and I am more concerned with my arguments being correct with my arguments being politically palatable. I'm an economist after all - the profession of brutal honesty.

And honestly I am extraordinarily uncomfortable with judging arguments on the basis of political utility rather than on the basis of truth.

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First, do not distort my argument. I am not calling everywhere in middle America the same thing as the "rural poor." The mention of the rural poor came in a discussion of Romanticism, not a discussion about the facts of America's geography.

I'm not distorting your argument. I'm quoting you. I don't see any mention of Romanticism here:

studiodekadent wrote in post#16:

>>>However, where I disagree is when people start thinking of middle America as "the real America" or "the pro-America parts of America" or, in essence, a far more virtuous class of people than "those San Franciscan elite effete homosexual latte-sippers." What I hate is the valorization of the rural poor as morally pure/closer to the earth/more authentically American/more authentically human/etc.

It's obvious your equating "middle America" — the America you've never visited — with some idea you have of them (whether derived from Rousseau or not) as "rural" and "poor." It's complete fantasy.

I am quite aware that the "flyover states" are full of industrious, large, developed cities.

I'm confident you are. What you don't seem to be aware of is that those developed cities are precisely what many Yanks regard as "middle America." For some reason, you abstract them out of your screenplay of "middle America".

>>>Second, I am familiar with Dierdre McCloskey. I am an economist by education.

Not sure what this means. You've studied economics but don't work professionally as one? (It's not that important for the discussion. Just curious.)

Third, I (and the economic literature) would contest your proposition that conservative social values lead to free market economics. Here I would disagree and I would point to the literature on innovation and entrepreneurship, which would contradict your proposition.

You're mistaken. Point of historical fact: conservative social values (as I briefly described them in my last post, especially regarding the placing of a high value on the future) have, in fact, led to free-market economics. Read "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" (by Marxian historian R.H. Tawney), "American Civil Religion" by Robert Bellah, and a review of "Democracy in America" by Tocqueville wouldn't hurt.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are both oriented toward a greatly improved future state of affairs. Perfectly consonant with the conservative values I mentioned previously.

As both Schumpeter and Rand pointed out, the "soul" of Capitalism is innovation and entrepreneurship, which is typically the product of individual creativity.

Except that Rand had an atomized view of individualism and individual creativity unrelated to social structures like "family" (which is always presented negatively, at least in Atlas Shrugged); etc. Edison was one of the most creative individuals the U.S, or any nation, ever produced. He was nurtured by his mother and completely home-schooled. This was also, in general, true of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Hill, etc. They didn't emerge out of a vacuum, armed with courses in philosophy taught by Hugh Akston at Patrick Henry University. Certain values were cultivated in them. Rand, of course, never shows that in AS. The children in that novel are the major characters — Dagney, Francisco, Eddie Willers — and in Rand's universe, they were the same as children as they are as adults. Just smaller. No growth. No mistakes. No loving admonitions from parents. That's fine. When Petr Beckmann complained to Peikoff that he found the lack of discussion about children and family in AS to be a major lacuna in the novel (given that it's obviously meant to illustrate an entire philosophy), Peikoff apparently told Beckmann, "You want the novel to contain everything??" (As if children and family are some minor footnote to the business of living life. For Rand, of course, they were.)

>>>If socially conservative values were the fundamental underpinning of the market economy, then you'd expect the IT revolution to have occurred somewhere in the bible belt. No, it happened in Silicon Valley, i.e. in the San Francisco Bay Area.

LOL! Right, but not by native San Franciscan flower-children or swingers from Haight-Ashbury! The physical, geographical location is irrelevant. It's the kind of people who comprise innovation-revolutions that's important. And following Mises in this analysis, while "the creative class" — entrepreneurs — are undoubtedly the spearheads of the revolution, the "battery" that provides energy for their innovations is capital; i.e., unconsumed wealth, earned and SAVED by the "capitalist class" . . . all those boring, family-oriented, church-going dentists, school teachers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, etc., in the flyover states . . . you know them well: you called them "the rural poor." They're the ones who LIKE what the creative-class does, and who make it possible for them to continue doing it.

>>>Plenty of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were in fact ex-hippies (Steve Jobs, anyone?).

Ex-hippie. He chose not to remain one. You choose only to see the significance of his having been a hippie, but not the significance of his having given it up. I see the latter as more important — both for himself and for everyone else.

>>>They were the children of the 60's counterculture, which for all of its political new-left stupidity was animated by a cultural embrace of individualism, a spirit of breaking away from convention

You've been listening to too many Joan Baez records. The '60s were all about "conforming to non-conformism." If I remember correctly, Rand even wrote an essay about it.

Social-cultural liberalism, and I mean this in the classical sense, is a necessity for the generation of new ideas, novelty and innovation.

Necessary but not sufficient. The cultural yearning for freedom didn't come from people reading Adam Smith, smacking their foreheads, and proclaiming, "He's right! I never saw it before, but he's convinced me!" It came from changes in values first; then they read Adam Smith, smacked their foreheads, and proclaimed, "I'm so happy a smart guy like professor Smith can articulate what I already suspect and feel to be true."

Religionist, mystical, conservative, authoritarian cultures will remain permanently stifled.

So will atheistic, rationalistic, libertine ones. The Soviet Union didn't produce much of anything; neither did Communist China, Cuba, or North Korea. Neither did Haight-Ashbury. Come to think of it, neither has Holland recently.

That rather leaves the Christian/Protestant value system peculiar to a group of Anglo-Saxon countries as having had the value system that became the "golden mean" between those two extremes.

This is why Japan's economic growth was based on reverse-engineering Western technology and why most of China's growth is based on foreign direct investment - without individualistic social capital, you can't internally generate economic dynamism (you have to import it).

C'mon. Japan's growth and China's growth are simply examples that cultures emerging out of authoritarianism in which the State is God, or the Emperor is God, must rely on foreign ideas, foreign capital, and foreign investment to jump-start their economies. It obviously won't happen with micro-loans, and there's no reason they ought to engage in completely native capital-deepening when there's a whole big world that has already done so, and which they can "leverage" to their own advantage.

And by the way, much of US wealth comes from Foreign Direct Investment, as well: recent numbers were about 2 trillion dollars. There's nothing wrong with foreigners investing in production-goods (stocks, bonds, real estate, R&D), as opposed to simply buying ready-made consumer goods. China, no doubt, wishes MORE people would invest in her capital-accounts side of the foreign-trade ledger. That the world doesn't do so (yet) proves that most investors are more impressed by the returns promised by high-productivity (e.g., the U.S.) than they are by the returns made possible by low-wages (e.g., China).

you're talking mostly about generating broad-based political support for free market economic policies, right? Well then I agree with you - framing one's policies as a fulfillment of popularly-embraced moral beliefs is a great way to make one's policies become more popular.

No. I'm saying popular support of classical liberalism won't occur without a change of values, first. And by the way, those "rural poor" in middle-America, for the most part, have already been steeped in those values for generations, which is why they mostly support free-market policies. That's precisely what the leftist establishments on both coasts despise about them. As just one example: what many liberals (in today's sense of the term) hate about Sarah Palin is the fact that she chose not to abort her last child who was born with Down's Syndrome.

Anyway, you seem to have in mind that idea that capitalism needs to be packaged in a certain way, rhetorically, and then people will buy it. Not so. Reagan didn't package it in any exotic way. He explicitly told people "Government IS the problem." He articulated what they already believed. The "rural poor" today in middle-America don't need or want any special rhetorical branding of capitalism to vote for a free-market candidate. The problem is whether or not the U.S. has enough "rural poor" to be a voting majority.

You might try navigating to PJmedia ("Pajamas Media") and looking for videos of Bill Whittle. I haven't followed him lately, but he started to do something quite interesting after the last election: he started a "virtual Presidency" (with himself as the virtual POTUS), in which he "shadows" Obama, i.e., after Obama gave his inauguration speech, Whittle webcast his own "inauguration" speech, demonstrating what an actual conservative/libertarian POTUS would sound like. He did the same thing after the State of the Union Address. In his view — which I agree with — capitalism doesn't need any special branding to be sold to people. The main problem is that — outside of professional economists like Thomas Sowell, Russ Roberts, etc. — most politicians and businessmen can't articulate why people should want capitalism. Mitt Romney certainly couldn't (perhaps because he's not really for it himself).

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You might try navigating to PJmedia ("Pajamas Media") and looking for videos of Bill Whittle. I haven't followed him lately, but he started to do something quite interesting after the last election: he started a "virtual Presidency" (with himself as the virtual POTUS), in which he "shadows" Obama, i.e., after Obama gave his inauguration speech, Whittle webcast his own "inauguration" speech, demonstrating what an actual conservative/libertarian POTUS would sound like. He did the same thing after the State of the Union Address. In his view — which I agree with — capitalism doesn't need any special branding to be sold to people. The main problem is that — outside of professional economists like Thomas Sowell, Russ Roberts, etc. — most politicians and businessmen can't articulate why people should want capitalism. Mitt Romney certainly couldn't (perhaps because he's not really for it himself).

If follow Whittle frequently. He is a decent, intelligent man. While I do not share his religious views I endorse his political and economic views. He is wholly committed to free enterprise capitalism, private ownership of the means of production and most important the private ownership of one's own money earned honestly. He detests and despise what the government has become, under both democrats and republicans.

Another reason I admire Whittle is that he is a fellow pilot. Pilots and mathematicians are among the best of the human race.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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First, do not distort my argument. I am not calling everywhere in middle America the same thing as the "rural poor." The mention of the rural poor came in a discussion of Romanticism, not a discussion about the facts of America's geography.

I'm not distorting your argument. I'm quoting you. I don't see any mention of Romanticism here:

>>studiodekadent wrote in post#16:

>>>However, where I disagree is when people start thinking of middle America as "the real America" or "the pro-America parts of America" or, in essence, a far more virtuous class of people than "those San Franciscan elite effete homosexual latte-sippers." What I hate is the valorization of the rural poor as morally pure/closer to the earth/more authentically American/more authentically human/etc.

It's obvious your equating "middle America" — the America you've never visited — with some idea you have of them (whether derived from Rousseau or not) as "rural" and "poor." It's complete fantasy.

I am quite aware that the "flyover states" are full of industrious, large, developed cities.

I'm confident you are. What you don't seem to be aware of is that those developed cities are precisely what many Yanks regard as "middle America." For some reason, you abstract them out of your screenplay of "middle America".

>>>Second, I am familiar with Dierdre McCloskey. I am an economist by education.

Not sure what this means. You've studied economics but don't work professionally as one? (It's not that important for the discussion. Just curious.)

Third, I (and the economic literature) would contest your proposition that conservative social values lead to free market economics. Here I would disagree and I would point to the literature on innovation and entrepreneurship, which would contradict your proposition.

You're mistaken. Point of historical fact: conservative social values (as I briefly described them in my last post, especially regarding the placing of a high value on the future) have, in fact, led to free-market economics. Read "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" (by Marxian historian R.H. Tawney), "American Civil Religion" by Robert Bellah, and a review of "Democracy in America" by Tocqueville wouldn't hurt.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are both oriented toward a greatly improved future state of affairs. Perfectly consonant with the conservative values I mentioned previously.

As both Schumpeter and Rand pointed out, the "soul" of Capitalism is innovation and entrepreneurship, which is typically the product of individual creativity.

Except that Rand had an atomized view of individualism and individual creativity unrelated to social structures like "family" (which is always presented negatively, at least in Atlas Shrugged); etc. Edison was one of the most creative individuals the U.S, or any nation, ever produced. He was nurtured by his mother and completely home-schooled. This was also, in general, true of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Hill, etc. They didn't emerge out of a vacuum, armed with courses in philosophy taught by Hugh Akston at Patrick Henry University. Certain values were cultivated in them. Rand, of course, never shows that in AS. The children in that novel are the major characters — Dagney, Francisco, Eddie Willers — and in Rand's universe, they were the same as children as they are as adults. Just smaller. No growth. No mistakes. No loving admonitions from parents. That's fine. When Petr Beckmann complained to Peikoff that he found the lack of discussion about children and family in AS to be a major lacuna in the novel (given that it's obviously meant to illustrate an entire philosophy), Peikoff apparently told Beckmann, "You want the novel to contain everything??" (As if children and family are some minor footnote to the business of living life. For Rand, of course, they were.)

>>>If socially conservative values were the fundamental underpinning of the market economy, then you'd expect the IT revolution to have occurred somewhere in the bible belt. No, it happened in Silicon Valley, i.e. in the San Francisco Bay Area.

LOL! Right, but not by native San Franciscan flower-children or swingers from Haight-Ashbury! The physical, geographical location is irrelevant. It's the kind of people who comprise innovation-revolutions that's important. And following Mises in this analysis, while "the creative class" — entrepreneurs — are undoubtedly the spearheads of the revolution, the "battery" that provides energy for their innovations is capital; i.e., unconsumed wealth, earned and SAVED by the "capitalist class" . . . all those boring, family-oriented, church-going dentists, school teachers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, etc., in the flyover states . . . you know them well: you called them "the rural poor." They're the ones who LIKE what the creative-class does, and who make it possible for them to continue doing it.

>>>Plenty of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were in fact ex-hippies (Steve Jobs, anyone?).

Ex-hippie. He chose not to remain one. You choose only to see the significance of his having been a hippie, but not the significance of his having given it up. I see the latter as more important — both for himself and for everyone else.

>>>They were the children of the 60's counterculture, which for all of its political new-left stupidity was animated by a cultural embrace of individualism, a spirit of breaking away from convention

You've been listening to too many Joan Baez records. The '60s were all about "conforming to non-conformism." If I remember correctly, Rand even wrote an essay about it.

Social-cultural liberalism, and I mean this in the classical sense, is a necessity for the generation of new ideas, novelty and innovation.

Necessary but not sufficient. The cultural yearning for freedom didn't come from people reading Adam Smith, smacking their foreheads, and proclaiming, "He's right! I never saw it before, but he's convinced me!" It came from changes in values first; then they read Adam Smith, smacked their foreheads, and proclaimed, "I'm so happy a smart guy like professor Smith can articulate what I already suspect and feel to be true."

Religionist, mystical, conservative, authoritarian cultures will remain permanently stifled.

So will atheistic, rationalistic, libertine ones. The Soviet Union didn't produce much of anything; neither did Communist China, Cuba, or North Korea. Neither did Haight-Ashbury. Come to think of it, neither has Holland recently.

That rather leaves the Christian/Protestant value system peculiar to a group of Anglo-Saxon countries as having had the value system that became the "golden mean" between those two extremes.

This is why Japan's economic growth was based on reverse-engineering Western technology and why most of China's growth is based on foreign direct investment - without individualistic social capital, you can't internally generate economic dynamism (you have to import it).

C'mon. Japan's growth and China's growth are simply examples that cultures emerging out of authoritarianism in which the State is God, or the Emperor is God, must rely on foreign ideas, foreign capital, and foreign investment to jump-start their economies. It obviously won't happen with micro-loans, and there's no reason they ought to engage in completely native capital-deepening when there's a whole big world that has already done so, and which they can "leverage" to their own advantage.

And by the way, much of US wealth comes from Foreign Direct Investment, as well: recent numbers were about 2 trillion dollars. There's nothing wrong with foreigners investing in production-goods (stocks, bonds, real estate, R&D), as opposed to simply buying ready-made consumer goods. China, no doubt, wishes MORE people would invest in her capital-accounts side of the foreign-trade ledger. That the world doesn't do so (yet) proves that most investors are more impressed by the returns promised by high-productivity (e.g., the U.S.) than they are by the returns made possible by low-wages (e.g., China).

you're talking mostly about generating broad-based political support for free market economic policies, right? Well then I agree with you - framing one's policies as a fulfillment of popularly-embraced moral beliefs is a great way to make one's policies become more popular.

No. I'm saying popular support of classical liberalism won't occur without a change of values, first. And by the way, those "rural poor" in middle-America, for the most part, have already been steeped in those values for generations, which is why they mostly support free-market policies. That's precisely what the leftist establishments on both coasts despise about them. As just one example: what many liberals (in today's sense of the term) hate about Sarah Palin is the fact that she chose not to abort her last child who was born with Down's Syndrome.

Anyway, you seem to have in mind that idea that capitalism needs to be packaged in a certain way, rhetorically, and then people will buy it. Not so. Reagan didn't package it in any exotic way. He explicitly told people "Government IS the problem." He articulated what they already believed. The "rural poor" today in middle-America don't need or want any special rhetorical branding of capitalism to vote for a free-market candidate. The problem is whether or not the U.S. has enough "rural poor" to be a voting majority.

First, re. romanticism:

I concede my phrasing was sloppy. But the point I was making was that there is a long tradition in philosophy that sees cosmopolitan urban life as corrupting and degenerate and alienating and unnatural, and sees the "simple life" of "rural folk" as morally superior, more natural, more authentic, 'closer to earth' etc. This philosophical tradition is romanticism.

I then suggested that Palin's statement was an attempt to invoke it.

Statements like "the pro-America parts of America" are geographically imprecise as all hell, but it seems pretty clear she was invoking this romantic populist attitude.

In short, romanticism's veneration of the rural poor is applied, by Palin, to all "the pro-America parts of America." Whether everyone in this classification is in fact correctly described as rural poor is irrelevant to the point I am making but I have already agreed that they aren't correctly conflated with the rural poor.

Now, since I've clarified my view above, I'd ask you to stop being offended.

I will also freely concede that this attitude is not exclusive to the right. It is used by the left as well, typically on ethnic minorities, but Matt Damon's recent anti-Fracking film does this to... well.... the rural poor in Pennsylvania.

Second: "economist by education" means I am currently not employed as an economist but I do have a BEcon and MBusEcon.

Third: historically you may have a point, but considering that conservative social values have always gone on about the evils of greed and have often been highly suspicious of technological innovation, it seems to me that the rise of Capitalism is an unintended consequence of these values, and specifically an unintended consequence of the long-term time-preference of these values.

This doesn't mean the specific code of values themselves is either correct or critical to maintaining Capitalism. If your hypothesis is true, then any code of values with a long-term orientation will work.

Entrepreneurship may be consistent with a long-term orientation, but it is INCONSISTENT with a huge amount of conservative social values ("don't be selfish! be humble! don't think for yourself!"). Again, one incidental feature of conservative social values having positive effects hardly justifies the entire code of morality.

Fourth: Since when is "family" and "homeschooling" synonymous with conservative social values? One can easily have a family formed on not-conservative value systems and one can easily homeschool children whilst teaching them absolutely up-to-date evolutionary biology and giving them a completely secular education. Yes, individual minds develop in a context - religious values and the like can be just as good (if not moreso) at sabotaging individual creativity and development than at nurturing it.

Fifth: Yes, Capital Accumulation is important, but as I stated, any code of values which focuses on the long term would have the same effect (encouraging saving). You can't justify an entire moral system because one incidental value it embraces is correct. Especially when the consequence of this moral system's adoption happens to be a consequence which that moral system CONDEMNS (in this case, Capitalism).

Sixth: Steve Jobs never fully gave up his counterculture roots. He still believed in alternative medicine (this is probably why he died so young). Sure, he started a business; that's hardly the same as embracing Evangelical Christianity. Some people say I have a ridiculous stereotype in my head about the Religious Right - but I think you have an equally ridiculous stereotype in your head about the Counterculture.

Seventh: Atheistic, Rationalistic and Libertine.... well, the Atheistic Rationalistic cultures of the Soviet Union were HARDLY libertine. Many people living under them actually adopted Western pop culture as a way to rebel against their regimes (Gillespie/Welch's "The Declaration of Independents" has a chapter on this). Marxism is hardly the embodiment of social liberalism - it never has been. Indeed, Marxism once argued that gay people were Capitalist Decadence and everyone would be straight in a truly socialist society. Indeed, I don't think in the history of the world, there has EVER been a culture that is simultaneously atheistic, rationalistic AND libertine...

And before you accuse San Francisco and the Counterculture of being that, they are NOT rationalistic (they're just as prone to romanticism as the right) and you could argue the environmentalists can't be called atheistic either (Gaia being the substitute for God). And California bans Foie Gras and controls smoking viciously... hardly particularly libertine in the first place.

And seriously, citing NORTH KOREA as rationalistic, atheistic and libertine? North Korea is the most religious nation in the world - their religion just deifies specific political figures.

Eighth: Yes, Japan and China are totally permitted to use FDI etc etc. Im not contesting that. I am simply saying that WITHOUT the foreign world to either poach ideas from or get investment from, China and Japan would never have developed.

And I know a lot of US wealth comes from FDI. That said, it is irrelevant to the point I am making.

Ninth: If, as you say, Middle America is willing to embrace laissez-faire or at least more free markets, why are they so protective of farm subsidies? Why are so many of them foreign policy hawks? (no, its not JUST the neocons, and yes I'm aware Toby Keith is in fact a Democrat but he isn't the only one). Why do they fear less restricted immigration? And of course, free markets in drugs and porn scare them. The barrier between social and economic issues is in many ways a completely artificial separation.

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I prefer President Calvin Coolidge. He said little and did less.

In case anyone hasn't heard of Dorothy Parker's famous quote, when somebody told her that President Coolidge had died, she said, "How could they tell?"

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I prefer President Calvin Coolidge. He said little and did less.

In case anyone hasn't heard of Dorothy Parker's famous quote, when somebody told her that President Coolidge had died, she said, "How could they tell?"

There's another one about this wealthy socialite who bet her friend that she could get "Silent Cal" to say more than two words and she was sitting across from the President at a formal dinner and she whispered to him what the bet was and would he help her win.

His response was, "You lost."

A...

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