American Animal Farm?

I read this post the other day, and it really got me thinking.  I like to think that I am less biased and right-wing than a lot of other bloggers out there, even the ones I sometimes agree with.  This particular post reinforces those thoughts.  Although I think this is a little bit too far on the anti-Communist scale for the 21st century, the overall message is one I agree with.

Let's be honest.  The President and Democrats acted as if the debt crisis was a must-be-avoided situation.  As if, on August 2nd, if the debt ceiling was not raised, our entire country would collapse.  Obviously, social security and medicare recipients, as well as veterans, might not get their checks if the debt ceiling wasn't raised.

Instead of refuting these scare tactics, the Republicans we elected to office agreed.  Their point was not that any of these "inevitable" tragedies were not really inevitable.  Their argument was that they were, in fact, inevitable, and that the Republican-majority House would block any efforts to avoid them that did not include significant spending cuts.

Now let's look at the reality.  There is, in fact, an alternative to the "inevitable" tragedies quoted by the Obama administration.  4 out of every 10 dollars we spend are borrowed.  Which means that the government could continue to operate with 60% of its funding.  Do we really think that social security, medicare, and active duty and veteran pay and benefits add up to more than 60% of government spending?

What if, instead, extended unemployment benefits were cut off, retired Congressional pension payments were suspended, or Congressmen got paid 10% less or temporarily worked without pay?  What if federal bureaucrats were laid off or asked to work temporarily without pay?  Unfathomable?  FAA inspectors and air traffic controllers are already doing it!  If the people responsible for the safety of every person to fly in American airspace can work without pay, surely the people we elected to make tough choices, who have caused the enormous deficit which causes this problem, could do the same?  After all, can anyone argue that FAA inspectors and controllers caused the debt crisis?  How about Congressmen?  Can anyone argue that retirees, who faithfully paid into social security out of every paycheck for the last 40+ years of their adult life caused our bankruptcy?  How about the legislators who have resisted social security reform, even though we have known for decades that the system would eventually run out of money?

Democrats threatened inevitable tragedies to the most vulnerable and/or deserving people in our country.  Republicans agreed and used this as leverage.  In the end, we have just extended our credit limit without cutting back our spending.  In reality, neither side grew a pair large enough to make the tough choices necessary to fix the long term problems of our debt and deficit economy.

Were the veterans, the retired, and the disabled really saved?  Or were the elected representatives, making their livings and receiving health and retirement packages most of us could only dream of at our expense, saved?  Maybe it's time for a bigger change and more hope than Obama, or the Republicans, ever asked or hoped for.

Obama's Stance on Libya

This is a few days old, and I'm going to be very brief here, but does this remind anyone else of the start of the Vietnam War?

What starts as a non-combat role soon turns into a few dozen military advisers, and then thousands.  This is wrong.  The idea behind the lag between authorizing military force and declaring actual war is to allow the military to respond swiftly to a direct, time sensitive threat on our national security, not to allow the POTUS to impose his/our political goals on the rest of the world without Congressional approval.  Shame on you, Obama.

On bin Laden's killing

This subject, as well as this post  are somewhat old now, but important enough that I still feel I should comment on them.

Let me preface this by saying that I don't miss bin Laden's life at all.  I am perfectly content that he is no longer with us.

I do, however, agree with some of the points Ron Paul made, as well as have some of my own as to why this was carried out incorrectly.

First of all, there are international norms.  First and foremost is sovereignty.  We had no business sending military and intelligence personnel inside of another country and essentially assassinating someone without at least asking for the host country to arrest him first.  Unless there was a credible reason to believe that the security of the information would have been threatened by involving Pakistan, that country's government should have been involved.

Second, from a norms and moral standpoint, capturing an enemy is always preferable to killing an enemy.  Osama should have been arrested, not shot.

On the same note, Osama lead a movement based on a religion (radical Islam, not all Islam) which still believes in martyrs.  The men bin Laden funded and trained to carry out the 9/11 attacks gave up their lives fighting for their cause.  They are considered heros by radical Muslims.  By killing bin Laden in a military attack, we have made him a martyr.  By capturing him and putting him on trial in a U.S., Western style court, we would have brought about his end through the very system he has spent his whole life fighting.  This would have been a much more clear message to terrorists around the world.

Quite frankly, between the anger over his death and our blatant disregard for the sovereignty of the Pakistani government, and the fact that he died a martyr, I am a little surprised that nobody has stepped up and publicly claimed the leadership of al Qaeda yet.  I also doubt that we will see the anniversary of bin Laden's death without another major terrorist attack.  We have enraged radical Muslims, and given bin Laden the hero's death so many of his followers actively seek.  Do we really think this was the best way to handle the situation?

General Criticism of Moral Politics

So far, I've discussed in my last two posts my issues with Moral Politics and its handling of Libertarianism.  There is a far more general, larger problem with the book, however.  Although the author exposes his political bias both at the beginning and at the end of his work, even without his explicit acknowledgement, it would be fairly obvious.

He is right to repeatedly use the disclaimer that he is speaking of "central" cases, and that there is such a thing as an "ideal case."  His bias, however, clearly affects what he views as both the central and ideal cases of the Strict Father and Nurturant Parent models of family values, which lead to certain moral worldviews, and thus, certain political worldviews.

In particular, his view of the nurturant parent model seems much more central, and ideal, than what he points to as the real, central case of the strict father parenting model.

The style of parenting which he calls strict father parenting, and which he points to as a large part of his reasoning for being liberal, would seem extreme to many strict parents.  In fact, he debunks with the idea of strict father parenting (and thus, conservative politics) largely by quoting the religious right in their parenting manuals which support physical punishment, often extreme physical punishment, and then citing research which shows the negative long term affects of physical punishment.

Many conservative, traditional, or otherwise strict families believe in and use strict parenting, without physical contact, and certainly without abusive physical contact.  Many strict families also do not value the maintenance of moral order over all other values.  The most obvious example that came to mind reading this section is a severe, and troubling one.  Would most traditional families really punish a female child for accusing an older male relative of molesting and/or raping her?  While this is a common fear of many victims, that they will be accused of lying, or blamed for the attack, very few parents, if they believed their daughters, would punish her for speaking out.  According to the image painted in Moral Politics all strict father parents would.

Moreover, I can tell you, that while there were certainly nurturant aspects of my upbringing, being raised by my mother who worked a lot of hours, in a big city, it was mostly strict parent child rearing.  I was spanked once, when I was three.  But I was punished for breaking the rules.  I was allowed to debate with my mother, and to ask questions, or ask for exceptions to rules.  But, for example, when I was in high school, my curfew was generally 10 p.m.  If I wanted to go to a concert that didn't end until 12, meaning I would get home at around 1 a.m., I could ask my mother.  I could explain it was a band I really wanted to see.  I could tell her I would be right home after the concert.  Sometimes she would agree, sometimes she wouldn't.  When she didn't, 10 p.m. it was.  I was home at 10, and I knew that there would be consequences to my actions if I was not.  Never physical violence, but punishment.

Although I was only spanked once, I was often disciplined, even in public.  I was taught manners very early.  Keep in mind that I did not grow up in Las Vegas, but in the more temperate Midwest.  If I misbehaved at a restaurants, my parents would warn me once.  If I couldn't behave appropriately for a restaurant, I wouldn't eat in a restaurant.  If I continued fidgeting, running around, crying, playing with my food, throwing a tantrum, or whatever other inappropriate behavior I had engaged in, they would take me to the car, roll down the windows a bit, and lock me in until our food came.  They would then ask for the food to go, and we would eat it at home.  This was obviously a punishment for disobeying them, as well as disobeying society's norms, or "the moral order."  It was not physical agression.

I was not allowed to eat dessert if I didn't finish my main meal.  If I was bad, I went to bed early and without watching TV.  If I broke something at school, I paid for it out of my allowance and was not allowed to go out and use my allowance for anything fun until it was paid for.  None of these sound like nurturant parent parenting to me.  Yet, only once was a finger lifted in disciplining me.  And it was not by the more active parent in my childhood.

I would argue that most conservatives, or even liberals and moderates who believe in strict father child raising, had similar experiences.  We were respected, and allowed a voice in the family discussion.  But when our parents made up their minds, we knew they meant it.  They were the boss.  And we knew there would be immediate, non-negotiable punishment for disobeying them.  A strict parent can be strict without being physically violent.  This simple reality invalidates most of the author's arguments in favor of liberalism.

Finally, to look at the biased and unfair treatment of these two systems by the author, we need only look at the titles he has given the two models.  They are loaded with moral judgment for the liberal, or even modern, reader.  The idea of a "Strict Father" parenting model screams sexism.  "Nurturant Parent" on the other hand points toward an egalitarian, PC, modern-style family arrangement.  The reality is that "parents" can be strict, and "fathers" can be nurturant.

Lakoff presents an interesting way of looking at politics, but perhaps because politics and political science are not his specialty, his bias is obvious throughout the book, inhibiting him from providing a truly balanced view using his paradigm.

More on Moral Politics and Libertarians

So, having re-read all of Moral Politics, the author actually specifically addresses Libertarians within his frame of thought.  And it is even more irritating than what I thought was his total emission.

First of all, he covers Libertarianism in all of one page.  Second, he uses that page to basically say, "Libertarians won't admit it, but they are Conservatives at heart."  His argument is lacking in several aspects.

First, he defeats it with his own arguments.  His explanation of Libertarianism is that inherent with "Strict Father" (i.e. Conservative) morality and politics is the inherent reality that a) a strict father raises his children that way so that once they are mature, they can be self reliant, and b) there is resentment from an adult child whose father is overly intrusive and does not allow him to "sink or swim" in adulthood.  Libertarians focus, rather than on other aspects of Strict Father morality, on this resentment of the overly-intrusive father figure (i.e. the government).  Well, that would seem to make sense, except for a couple things.  First, this is a side effect of the Strict Father morality and politics, not a central issue of it.  Focusing on a side effect of the system does not mean Libertarians buy into the system.  Second of all, according to his own explanation of Strict Father morality, and why Conservatives can support policies that don't seem to actually achieve their ends, he brushes this off, as saying that, in Strict Father morality, preservation of Strict Father morality is always priority number one.  So, if his explanation of the priorities of Strict Father morality is true, then Libertarians cannot truly be a part of this, if their emphasis is on removing an overly-strict father from the picture, rather than on preserving absolute adherence to Strict Father values.

Although he does not address it in his discussion of Libertarians specifically, the author dismisses the idea that Libertarians, or anyone else, could have a political theory based on something other than either "Strict Father" or "Nurturant Parent" family-based morality.  He argues that because the family is biologically and socially our primary point of reference, it is impossible to look at morality without considering the family.  And, because politics is necessarily moral, it is therefor impossible to have a political theory not based on morality, and thus on the family.  This argument looks bullet proof at first glance.  Upon a closer look, however, it is faulty.  This would be equivalent to saying that because physical nutrition is our foremost requirement, everything we do, think, or say, must be based on food.  Just because something ranks high on our ladder of priorities as individuals and a society does not mean everything below it must be based on it.  It just means that, at the end of the day, if it comes down to food or family, we take food.  If it comes down to our family's survival or our moral values, we choose family.  Look, for instance, at conservative families who embrace their gay and lesbian children.  They place their family over their personal moral values.

Yes, our political discourse is filled with references to the family.  It is also filled with references to  money, war, sex, relationships, geography, death, survival and dozens of other things.  This does not mean it is based on any one of these things.  It means that either a) they are all factors, b) our politicians are skilled at using terminology that will pull at people's deepest instinctual and emotional strings, or c) some combination of the two.  In sciences, and even in social sciences, there are two questions too often overlooked by people trying (consciously or subconsciously) to prove a point.  First, is the relationship causal, and second, which direction does the causation run?  While Moral Politics lays out a relationship between family values, morality, and politics, it does not answer either of these questions.  Are the three linked by a causal relationship?  Do family values lead to morality to politics, or some combination of them?  Or are they all just such large factors of our lives that they inherently cross paths and influence each other?  If we accept that there is, in fact, a causal relationship, which way does that run.  Do people hold the values they hold because of their family values?  Or do we raise our children a certain way because of our political and/or moral outlook?  The book does not adequately answer any of these questions.

Finally, even if we accept that Conservatives are Conservative and Liberals are Liberal because of their respective systems of child-rearing and the moral values those systems instill, it does not mean that every political ideology will necessarily be based on a family-based moral outlook.  Even if we accept that they all are, however, there is no evidence to support the idea that these are the only two ways of raising children, or the only two systems of moral values that guide child-rearing.

In short, the author has laid out a wonderful hypothesis.  It's time to prove it.  Using links and value hierarchies, however, does not prove a causal, much less an exclusive causal relationship.

I would argue that Libertarianism could just as (if not more) easily be viewed as a Nurturant political system as a Strict political system.  In fact, it is based on the (according to the work Nurturant) idea that we should be able to make our own choices, and choose to be creative, to express ourselves, etc. There is also another factor.  Libertarians believe that perhaps the government is not the best at nurturing its citizens.  Libertarians support private charity, small businesses creating jobs, freedom of expression to express ideas and educate each other through art, etc.  Perhaps, then, Libertarians fit within our own family values system.  Perhaps it is the Nurturant Sibling, or Orphan, family morality which guides Libertarians.  Like families who have been neglected by parents, where an older sibling supports and raises a younger sibling, Libertarians may feel our government has not been there to provide the nurturing "upbringing" it was supposed to.  Despite years of over-regulation, social welfare programs, public education, arts education, etc. look at where we are?  We are soon to be overtaken as the world's largest economy.  A (relatively) small dip in the world markets has left millions unemployed and kicked out of their homes.  The poverty rate in our country is still abysmal for a country which consumes so much.  Perhaps the Libertarian philosophy is that our parents (the federal government), our foster parents (local governments and government subsidized big business), and the system have let us down.  It's time for them to back off and let the big siblings, who have done well, create jobs, education, and other infrastructure, and nurture our "younger siblings" who need a little extra help.

The Truth About Education and Teachers' Unions

This is an old article, but important enough that I'm still going to write on it.  Basically, it goes into the numbers and debunks the myth that teachers' unions lead to better schools.  More interestingly, it uses statistics and facts usually hailed by liberal and progressive groups to do so.

In short, liberals are claiming that unionized teachers create better schools.  The argument debunks this, pointing out that, in fact, what makes a lot of the model states for this argument either rank well or poorly on education is actually socioeconomic makeup.

Again, to me, the most interesting part of this is that this is a typically liberal argument about education and equality, particularly racial equality.  Statistically speaking, poor and minority students don't do as well, and their school districts don't rank as well.  The states at the bottom end of the achievement scale have largely poor or minority students, while those at the top have largely middle and upper class white students.

The blogger actually goes a step further and breaks down test scores within each state by race.  In fact, many of the non-union states' white students do quite well.  It is the effect of combining these scores with the larger minority populations which make the overall state averages lower.

As the author points out, there are several reasons minority students don't do as well.  They tend to come from less wealthy, and less educated families, who have survived without the benefit of a college education.  They are less likely, therefore, to think that a college degree, and the success it requires in high school to get one, are entirely necessary to survive in today's economy.  They also likely come from communities without a lot of well-educated role models.  They are less likely to know that if they do well in high school, they will be able to afford to go to college, or to a top tier college.

Many minority groups (with the exclusion of black and Native American groups), also face the increased challenge of many of their members not living in English as a first language households.  Not being raised in an English-speaking home can negatively affect performance both in school and on standardized tests.

Finally, there has long been an argument that standardized tests themselves contain a racial bias.  While this may be hard to believe, it is quite plausible.  Much of these tests revolves around reading comprehension, mathematical word problems, etc.  While these are noble attempts to allow students to apply their knowledge in a real world setting, for those who grew up in less affluent areas, or in an ethnic enclave, these backgrounds can be anything but "real world."

Let's not get started on the issue of school funding.  The schools most in need of help often receive the least funding, as they are in poorer neighborhoods.

All of these issues add up to explain why minorities don't do as well on standardized tests.  This explains far more about nationwide education rankings than the presence or absence of teachers' unions.  Instead of trying to fight for or against teachers' unions to improve student performance, perhaps we should focus on making real changes in our education system.  Offering school vouchers to allow students and parents to choose the best school for their child.  Improving inner city and minority-populated schools.  Rewriting standardized tests to be a fair representation of a student's knowledge and intelligence, rather than biased toward those with a fortunate upbringing.  Allowing non-traditional teaching methods into the classroom.  Rewarding teachers for their performance, not their length of service.  All of these are issues which will close the achievement gap, and raise the bottom-ranked states up the national education ladder.  Coincidentally, many of these are ideas which teachers' unions oppose.

How Libertarians are Different

So every once in a while, I like to reread my college books.  One that I just started to reread is Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think.  It's interesting, because now with my own political views more shaped, even just from the introductory chapter, a lot makes sense.

The basic premise of the book explains why both of the major parties are so similar on so many major issues, and why their basic philosophical stances are so similar.  It also explains why the Libertarian party is so different from the Republicans and Democrats.

The basic premise of the book is that our political thoughts are shaped by a series of metaphors based on morality, and, particularly, family morality.  According to the author, Republicans believe in a strict father family model, and the Democrats believe in a nurturing parent model.  Nevermind the obvious bias in implying that the Republican view is inherently more sexist than the Democratic view.

The key is that both of these thoughts are based on the premise of our nation as a child, and the government as its parent.  This view, according to Libertarians is flawed.  We are not one child.  We are a collection of millions of individual adults.  Who should be free to make our own decisions without being concerned about what our government thinks.  Moreover, as the author of the book points out, the words for parents have multiple connotations.  One is the figure that raises and nurtures a child, another is the genetic figure.

This last explanation provides further support to the idea that the Republican and Democratic models are fundamentally flawed. Our government did not sire, birth, parent, or otherwise create us.  We created it.  If anything, we should be the strict father or nurturing parent to our government, not the other way around.

The alarming part of my thoughts on this book as it relates to Libertarianism is that it also explains why we will probably never be as successful as the major parties have been in mainstream politics.  The author of the book is not a political scientist, but a cognitive linguist.  This field concerns itself with explaining the basic functioning of the human mind.  The author's argument is that everything we do, think, and say, is based in a metaphorical relationship between that action or thought (in this case politics), our moral values, and our experiential well-being.

The concerning part is that even if we can recognize that the Libertarian view is more emotionally detached, logical, and reason-based than the major political systems, this is not how an election is won.  The metaphorical and emotional ties are what win votes.