Politics and ‘Culture Wars’
Two insightful pieces by two good writers: Roger Scruton states that meaning endures when attached to the search for identity, but that the retreat of Christianity from public and private life is dangerous to self and community. So we must return to the gifts received from our Judeo-Christian tradition. Second, Rod Dreher on the ‘culture wars’:“In America, the culture war will never die, only wax and wane across multiple battlefields. When you live in a large, diverse, pluralistic democracy, it comes with the territory.” I agree with him that Obama’s conciliation is a matter of style, and that substantively, he’s very solidly on the ‘cultural left.’ A creepy partaking in the style of princes, however, only goes so far – the messiness of human political organization will grind on. These months have been a reminder of the limits of rhetoric: politics is most often plays and pay-offs for the support of power, and as we have seen in the closed door rush to pass the (likely to be) biggest spending bill in U.S. history, none do it better than politicans well versed in the Chicago Way.
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There is no point in asking you to give him a chance; you were determined not to give him a chance from the moment he took office.
I’ve been pessimistic ever since his big convention speech in 2004, exactly as I would be for any politican in extremely good standing with one of the most corrupt and bullying political cultures in the country who “inspires” all sorts of “hope.”
This past month has been a vindication of this sentiment, but I certainly don’t take any pleasure in it. That someone would gorge on the incests of various political and business establishments, keep the structures of an agressive foreign policy, give away scores of money to the interests that support him, and leave our children and grandchildren with piles and piles of debt is not exactly surprising.
We had Bush for two terms, after all.
Let us not put our hopes in princes.
That someone would gorge on the incests of various political and business establishments, keep the structures of an agressive foreign policy, give away scores of money to the interests that support him, and leave our children and grandchildren with piles and piles of debt is not exactly surprising.
Aren’t you talking about Bush? and isn’t Obama the one left to clean up his and pseudo-”liberal” Clinton’s messes? And wasn’t the problem that “a rising tide lifts all boats” was presumed to mean letting all financial enterprises going virtually unregulated–a policy that not even Adam Smith endorsed?
Don’t let partisanship or Obama hype cloud judgements. The era of crazed housing policy, for example, through strong incentives to loosen lending standards, began with Clinton, accelerated under Bush, and it appears will continue under Obama. Thus lots of blame to go around: those who got the loans, lenders, the government, Wall Street, all of them. It was bound to come crashing and due, as will the trillion or so of credit we’ve just passed onto the next generation, rammed through in the most partisan way imaginable by our democratic system.
On foreign policy, on corruption (so much in just one month!), on spending money we don’t have – what are the big differences thus far?
So tell me–just as a matter of curiosity–what would YOU have the Obama Administration do regarding the insolvency of most American banks? Just let ‘em go belly-up and take the whole business structure of America along with ‘em?
Well, I certainly would be opposed to this:
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/the-bailout-is-robbing-the-banks/
I expect we are going to be hearing a lot more about this sort of closed door, rushed through corporate coziness, and its all very disturbing….what happened to the hope n change ? More of the same, it seems to me….