As part of my continuing examination of my extremism – because Janet Napolitano believes that as a conservative pro-life low-tax second-and-tenth-amendment activist, I must be an extremist – let’s look at our culture.

“Culture” is a huge topic, and it’s hard to even define where the left and right diverge, or on what each side actually believes, to say nothing of what their opponents believe.

For example, one of the putative big battles in the “culture war” twenty years ago was the campaign by Tipper Gore, wife of then-future lisping fraud and Vice President Algore, to put warnings on music that had “offensive” lyrics.   Was it conservative?  Was it liberal?

Perhaps a little bit of both – and who cares?  Because while that particular argument, like many, mixed elements of both sides of the aisle – conservatives fretting about the downfall of civilization, liberals  about the system that’d make young males write the kind of rap and metal lyrics that’d make them be so antisocial in the first place – it was fairly irrelevant.

Because while there are many facets to what both conservatives and liberals believe what our culture is, and what is should be, it really boils down to two major differences of opinion:

• Conservatives believe that our society is a free association of equals who create a government that governs by consent of the people, and should generally operate within restrictive boundaries – the Tenth Amendment, for a quick example.  Liberals believe that society is – I’ve heard an amazing number of liberals use this exact description – a parent, riding herd on his/her unruly or needy children, trying to help them grow up to be good citizens, kissing their owwies and putting them in time-out and keeping them out of trouble until they’re ready to take over for themselves.
• Conservatives believe that while mankind is deeply imperfect and utterly imperfectible, the concept of the United States is in and of itself one of immense nobility; it is a “shining city on a hill”, a place where government is a useful subordinate to the nobility of the individual.  It’s an ideal toward which most of the world – the sane part – aspires.   Liberals tend to believe that our society is perfectible, through the graces of a benevolent government rather than any intrinsic virtue in the American system.

Now, the battle is usually expressed through an endless series of group ad homina; liberals slur “Tenthers” as advocates of slavery; conservatives see liberals as hive creatures, Borg with no identity outside the larger organism.

At any rate – I believe that America works best when we not only do see ourselves as a free association of equals, but act like it.  And when government limits itself, rather than  you or me.

Yep.  I’m a radical!

So I not only got to attend the Tea Party at the State Capitol yesterday, but it was my immense privilege to be the lead-off speaker; mine was the first in a long stream of excellent speeches, including that of my NARN cohost  Ed Morrissey, whose speech I videotaped and is currently up at Hot Air, and Twila Brase, and Katie Kieffer, who will no doubt post video, also gave an excellent speech.  There were more.  Many more.

Lil’ ol’ me. Courtesy Peter Anderson.

I estimated about 1,500 people at the event at its peak around 6:30 or so.  It was good-sized, jovial crowd – but not quite as big as last year.  Some people were worried about this.  I’m not; last year, people were upset, and wondering what the hell to do, and the Tea Party was like a psychological life ring to a whole lot of people whose political activism had never gone beyond going to the polls, maybe, every couple of years.  Over the past year, though, conservatives have changed; we turn out for rallies; we call Congresspeople in vast numbers; better yet, of the 11,000 who attended last week’s Bachmann/Palin rally, over 1,000 volunteered to be election judges.   We saw similar results last night.  Conservatives are doing what they need to do to turn the spirit of the Tea Parties into the action this nation needs.

One group that was not in evidence were the “crashers”; this wasn’t the case everywhere, and the Saint Paul Tea Party was ready with a sizeable group of volunteers armed with orange vests and cameras to handle security – but other than half a dozen “Tax Me More!” activists who stood across the street for about half an hour, and a “Thanks To Taxes” billboard-truck that desultorily circled the capitol grounds (the billboard seemed to imply that we have children, sunshine and sex because of taxes), there was really no “opposition” at all.

And while last year I saw a few signs that made me cringe, I didn’t even see much of the far-out fringe in the crowd this year, either.  I mean, if you’re one of those lefties who gets the victorian vapours over references to John Galt, then yeah, I suppose the crowd was big and scary.  But the far-out, Alex Jones fringe was mostly absent from the rally itself.  I saw not a single “Birther” sign, much less anything I”d call racist.  Indeed, almost all the far-out fringe contingent…

…was up on stage.   For some reason, one of Toni Backdahl’s co-MCs was a guy from AM1710, a little 15 watt AM station in Maple Grove that could be charitably said to be out there on the Alex Jones fringe of the movement.   And one of the opening “musical” acts was a kid in an “InfoWars.com” t-shirt (these are the folks that make the radical Randers shake their heads and go “good lord, how wierd”) who did a pseudo-rap rant that might have fit in at an anarchist rally and whose message would have made me cringe even had the kid not considered “intonation” part of a socialist conspiracy.  There were also a few speakers that sputtered about the unconstitutionality of the income tax, which is pretty much the norm at these things.

Now, I don’t fault the Tea Party’s organizers for including a lot of people that I, personally, disagree with strenuously – because that’s the whole point of the Tea Party.  It’s a group of people, some of whom would not normally agree about anyting, gathering together for a common cause; making government smaller, more responsible, and less frivolous with our rights and liberties.

And so I say “Yay” to all; the mainstream-of-the-mainstream Republican, the disaffected Democrat, the Ronulan, and everyone in between, and all of us who are united behind the idea that we are all created equal, and that people aren’t free until government is limited; let’s all kick ass in November.

Indeed, the only problem I heard about involved a reporter from “The Uptake”.  He’s a local leftyblogger who usually blogs anonymously; he went by “Steve” on the Uptake’s video.  Now, he interviewed me briefly last year; I never saw his final product, although I was told either his voiceover or his editing really mangled the context of my interview; I wouldn’t know – I don’t watch the Uptake much.  I did another standup with him after I got offstage – I figure if he and the Uptake want to Maye what I said, it says more about him and them than it does about me.   He referred to the people around him as “tea-baggers”; I gently corrected him, but I got a sneaking hunch it was a tell as to “the Uptake’s” overall tone of “coverage”.

But shortly after that, a few of the orange-clad security guys came up to me and said they’d been getting complaints about the Uptake’s crew.  I asked them for specifics; they took me to a couple that that said the Uptake’s crew hadn’t identified themselves as a “news” crew that was going to publish an interview online, and that they seemed to be trying to get them to say something stupid, to make them – Tea Partiers in general, it seemed – look stupid.    The woman said that the “reporter” seemed to be trying to pick a fight with her, trying to one-up her on her knowledge of issues; “I”m not an encyclopedia, I can’t answer all the questions he has right away”, she said, still visibly exasperated.   Her husband, a Vietnam veteran, echoed his wife’s thoughts; “he was trying to pick a fight; he was harassing us”.

I walked away, wondering – is “the Uptake” still trying to be an actual news organization, or are they down to trying to do bogus Jon Stewart-style “attack” man-on-the-street interviews?   It’s entertainment, I suppose, watching a self-professed “smarter-than-thou” taking pot shots at those he and his viewers consider inferiors for cheap yuks.  But is it “news?”

Now, I haven’t contacted The Uptake about this, and I doubt that I will; when it comes to “reporting” on the Tea Parties, even the mainstream media seem to find waterboarding context acceptable.  But I think it’s curious that an organization that is fighting for its standing on the Capitol Press Corps would seemingly take such gratuitous liberties with the whole idea of “journalistic ethics”, whatever they are, with this kind of behavior, if true.

Bill Salisbury at the Pioneer Press, and Jessica Mador of MPR both did good, balanced jobs of reporting on the event; or at least I got no complaints from security about either of them (except from the guard that Salisbury bowled over in his rush to interview Katie Kieffer).

I’ll be looking forward to next year.  Goodness knows there’ll be work to do.

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Please, by all means bring videocams and cameras to the Tea Party; if you see someone with an objectionable racist sign, get a picture and send it to your favorite blogger.  More importantly, ask them questions.  Find out who they are, why they are doing what they’re doing.  The left is actively planning to send stooges with racist signs to try to discredit the Tea Parties; this is the sort of thing that deserves to backfire.

And keep it to questions and pictures.  Let the other guys, per usual, do all the violent stuff. 

(But if you are possessed to beat someone up, it’s be so poetically just if you’d wear an SEIU T-shirt when you do).

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The second annual Minnesota Tea Party is coming up this afternoon on the State Capitol grounds.  It’ll start at five, and run well into the evening. 

Last year, at least 7,000 Americans turned out in Minnesota – among a turnout of at least 600,000 nationwide that stunned the nation’s newly-installed “elite”.  It turned out that for a good chunk of America, Obama didn’t bring the change they’d really hoped for. 

Let me say that again; 7,000 Minnesotans (or, as the media said, “dozens), working people with families and lives, turned out on a work day, Tax Day besides, to…protest.  Something that “conservatives” have never done as a group.

It’s going to be much bigger this year.  Polls show more people support the Tea Party’s ideals than those of the President and his administration. 

And the Parties have the Liberals running scared.  They tried to ignore the movement last year – which lasted until the headcount crept into six figures.  Then they tried mocking them – the constant, thud-witted “teabagger” references that have become a sign of a sandblasted intellect among smart people.  Finally came the attacks – literal ones, like the SEIU thugs who put the black conservative protester in the hospital at a town hall meeting in Saint Louis, and figurative ones like the tsunami of defamation in the past month.

More substantive signs of their fear?  If the Tea Party were not a harbinger of a wave of discontent, Pelosi and Reid could have relaxed a bit, and not jammed Obamacare down with the Chicago-like ruthlessness they had to use.  They are scared out of their wits.

I’ll be speaking first at the rally today.  I’ll hope to see you there.

I’ve written about it in the past; blogging changed a big chunk of my life; when I started the blog, in 2002, I was a newly-divorced parent with a couple of young-ish kids. I hadn’t had a lot of time for a social life in quite a while. The blog, the NARN and finally the MOB opened up my social horizons in ways I’d never imagined.

I’ve also kept my day job and my radio and blogging lives pretty religiously separated.  There aren’t two people at my day job who know about the radio show or the blog; I don’t let on where I work to many outside my family and the NARN.

Indeed, in all my years of blogging, I’ve met very few who linked both worlds.

In the nineties, I was working as a technical writer – mostly writing instruction manuals for badly-designed software.  And one of the greats in the field was this guy, Matt Abe.  He was, for many years, the president of the local “Society for Technical Communication” chapter, the professional group where techwhirlies met, networked and looked for that next gig.  Matt had worked with a few friends of mine; everyone said he was a great guy and a great boss.

And then I left tech writing; the ideal tech writer is someone with a left-brained detail focus, and when it comes to details I’m the kind of look at that shiny object on the floor.

So I was pleasantly surprised when we held the first MOB party to find that not only was Matt Abe a blogger (not at all rare among tech writers) but a darned good conservative one; he runs Northstar Liberty, one of the essential conservative blogs in the Twin Cities, especially on (a subject obviously near and dear to my heart).

And he covers the waterfront, subject-wise; an excellent writer (doy, he does it for a living) and a much -better-than-average analyst:

After the passage of Obamacare, the debate on whether to allow video gaming machines to be installed at Canterbury Park and Running Aces may seem like just so much bread and circuses. Yet I spent some time recently researching this topic and exchanging some e-mails with the executive director of Racino Now. I learned a lot about Minnesota’s conflicted attitudes toward gambling, but the legislative debate all really boils down to money.

On the one hand, we have the “trouble in River City” crowd which opposes installing video gaming machines, ostensibly on moral and legal grounds, at two Twin Cities locations: the aforementioned racetracks where gambling is in progress as we speak. Yet these good folks are strangely silent on repealing the Minnesota State Lottery, or shutting down the Indian casinos or the racetracks, or office football and basketball pools. If gambling was such trouble (with a capital “T”), why not shut it all down?

The answer: money.

Read on, of course.

And make North Star Liberty a frequent stop on your rounds of the MOB.  But watch your comma splices when you do.

One of the most useless exercises at any business is the process of “writing a mission statement”.  If you have a business that has a chance at success, the mission is pretty self-evident.  “The Mission of Muffy and Ian’s Kites ‘n Koffee is to provide better coffee and kite supplies to the consumers of West Buyaloopup, Oregon”.   

Most management know better than to ask me for a mission statement anymore – because for the past fifteen years, I’ve told ’em all the same thing; there’ve been two mission statements in all of history that serve as templates for all others:  Baron Manfred Von Richthofen (“My mission is to patrol my sector and shoot down anything I see.  All else is bullsh*t”) and Conan the Barbarian (“The greatest joy mission is to drive my enemies before me and hear the lamentation of his women”).

The simple fact is, for most businesses the mission is bone simple, to the point of self-explanatory.  It’s true for most entities, whether people (“My mission is to be the best person, father and citizen I can be”), families (“The mission of the Berg family to make sure Bun and Zam grow up to be good people and citizens”), blogs (“the mission of Shot In The Dark is to drive liberals before it and hear the lamentation of whatever liberals’ distaff community is determined to be; all else is bullsh*t”), organizations (“The mission of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers is to provide a social outlet for bloggers and blog readers”), or whatever.

With political parties, it’s just as simple; the mission of a political party is to embody the principles that reflect their members’ vision of what government is supposed to be.    All the thousands and millions of ’em.

The Minnesota DFL platform actually does a fine job of conveying that vision.  It states a long list of principles – most of them launching from the notion of “society” doing something, or government fully-funding this or that.  The DFL platform presents a grandiloquently statist vision – a high-level “to-do” list for big government – in elegantly-crafted wrapping paper.

The Minnesota GOP platform [danger – PDF file], on the other hand, is a dog’s breakfast of talking points.   It’s circulated in tabloid form at precinct caucuses; I’ve seen people try to make heads or tails of it, watched their eyes glaze over, and put it down, eyes rolling.   The document is literally written by committee – not just any committee, but one of the biggest committees in all of Minnesota.  At every year’s precinct caucuses, thousands of resolutions get forwarded for consideration to BPOU, Congressional District and finally State scrutiny; few actually get into the platform…

…but “few” of thousands still makes for a huge platform.  There are nine sections to the platform, each with 15-20 planks.  It comes to nearly 20 pages.

And it includes an amazing assortment of things – from lofty ideals (“…policies that reflect that every innocent human being, born and unborn, has an inalienable right to life from conception to natural death”) to practical principles (“Improving the quality of education by maximizing parental choice through expanded support for charter schools, school choice programs, parental rights to home school their children and more competitive and accountable public school systems”) to bald-faced sops to special interests (“Making the Eddie Eagle Gun Safety Program available annually in every Minnesota
elementary and middle school “) to low-level exercises in social micromanagement (“…pornographyblocking software should be installed on all computers having internet access in publicly financed institutions “) to things that principled conservatives should find abhorrent, if they thought about it (” The Minnesota legislature should pass legislation increasing the legal age for gambling in Minnesota to 21 years of age”) to stuff that just doesn’t make sense (“Opposing efforts to put all land and water under the control of the federal government” – I don’t think even Obama has suggested trying this yet). 

It’s time to put the platform on a diet – and make it focus on the things that a political party should focus on; the principles that should guide the party’s members, and especially the party’s candidates and elected officials.

A small group of conservative GOP activists – who shall remain nameless for the moment – have written a rough draft of a statement of princples; they intend, at some point or another, to introduce it as at least the beginnings of a discussion to replace the current War And Peace-sized platform with something a bit more accessible and to-the-point.

Here it is:

Individuals, businesses and the country succeed and prosper when government stays out of the way of the people – those who act on their own initiative, and who lead the way with integrity, responsibility, charity, hard work, humility, courage, gratitude and hope. 

Goverment has a role in our society – but that role is carefully enumerated in the United States Constitution.  The Republican Party of Minnesota believes that a good government does not eclipse roles that are best carried out by families, houses of faith, charitable organizations or businesses.

We, the members, candidates and elected officials of the Republican Party of Minnesota, support the following principles:

1) America is a great nation; we have been a “Shining City”, an exemplar of virtues for all other nations and their people.  The greatness of the American nation, the virtues of its people, and the success of the American experiment are a beacon of hope for the whole world.

2) Liberty is essential for our society to advance and prosper.  The freedom to explore advances in culture, business, faith, science, and government politics improves all of our lives; on the other hand, excessive government regulation and control hinder that development. The ability and freedom to disagree with each other and our government must also be
protected; any hindrance to the free market of ideas will sap the ability of America to advance and to better herself.

3) We have more hope and trust in the individual than the government to solve society’s problems, and to lead us into the future.  We value and protect the freedoms and the rights of the individual in preference to those of government.

4) Faith is where we derive our moral compass and come to understand the eternal rules of order and rights in which our creator has ordained. We believe each person needs to be free in order to explore their faith.

5) Life is sacred; it must be protected and defended from government control.

6) The Family is among our society’s most important institutions.  Government must not be allowed to infringe on the sanctity of the family.

7) The Pursuit of Happiness is essential to our existence, we support equal opportunities,  not equal results.

8 ) Charity comes best from the heart of individuals, and cannot be forced or coerced via taxation and regulation.

9) All citizens are equal before the law.

10) The law abiding citizen must be trusted to defend their life, family and property.

These are the principles we, the people of this nation and the members of this party, believe lead to a just society, a secure nation, and a better future for our children.

The committee struck out someone’s suggestion for a final line; “…, and to hear the lamentation of their women, and all else is bullsh*t”, but otherwise I like it.

Comments?  Feedback?  Leave a note in the comment section (and be advised that while all commentary is welcome, this is MN GOP business, and thus limited to the grownups; criticism is fine, but addlepated anti-Republican buncombe will be mutilated for the sole amusement of the blog owner.  While my comment section is generally the most open forum anywhere in the American media, this thread will be controlled.  Deal with it).

Larry Kudlow breaks with current conservative orthodoxy by claiming that not only are we in a recovery, but in fact it’s a pretty good one:

Sometimes you have to take out your political lenses and look at the actual statistics to get a true picture of the health of the American economy. Right now, those statistics are saying a modest cyclical rebound following a very deep downturn could actually be turning into a full-fledged, V-shaped, recovery boom between now and year-end. Conservatives shouldn’t trash it.

I’m aiming this thought especially at many of my conservative friends who seem to be trashing the improving economic outlook — largely, it would appear, to discredit the Obama administration.

The real point, of course, is that you don’t have to trash what’s going on right now to trash the Administration:

At this point it’s impossible to project a long-lived economic boom, such as we had following the deep recession of the early 1980s. For one thing, tax rates will rise in 2011 for successful earners and investors, quite unlike the Reagan cuts of the 1980s. So it’s possible that entrepreneurs and investors are bringing income, activity, and investment forward into 2010 in order to beat the tax man in 2011. This would artificially boost this year’s economy, stealing from next year’s economy.

Recall that when Hillary Clinton took her Rose Law Firm bonus in December 1992, rather than January 1993, she knew full well that her husband Bill would raise the top tax rate in 1993. So the fourth quarter of 1992 grew at nearly 4.5 percent, but the first quarter of 1993 saw less than 1 percent growth. The temporary growth spurt for all of 1992 was 4.3 percent, but activity dropped to 2.7 percent the following year.

In other words, “Irrational lack-of-suicidal-depression?”  The economy is getting its spending done while it can still afford to?

We won’t know for sure until next year – but the Administration’s sandbagging on numbers for next year indicates they’re both preparing the field for a bad 2011 and wanting to claim that things are “better than expected” in time for the 2011 races.

And – today’s putative “V” notwithstanding – this could turn out pretty bad:

It could happen again in 2010 and 2011. Although the Obamacons deny it, tax-rate incentives matter a lot.

And at some point, monetary policy will tighten, with higher interest rates on top of higher tax rates. That, too, could slow growth markedly next year. And then there’s the dozen tax hikes in the Obamacare health takeover, and a possible VAT attack from Paul Volcker, all of which will work against growth in the out-years.

Clearly, we are not operating a supply-side, free-market model today. What I wish for is sound money and lower tax rates, which would promote sustainable economic growth. Instead, we’re getting easier money and higher tax rates, which could mean a temporary boom today and disappointingly slow growth after that.

There is one big hope, here:

But then again, who knows? Maybe the tea-party revolution overturns the obstacles to future growth and the boom is sustained. Free-market populism and a return to Reaganism, along with an anti-federal-spending coalition that is the most powerful force in politics today, could right the economic ship.

That’s the big question; does the American people have the attention span to spend 2-6 years to amputate the tentacles the Obama Administration is shooting into the economy?

As much as many of my colleagues and clients revere the dissertations of Larry Kudlow, I think he may be extrapolating a wee bit too much at this early juncture.

Sometimes you have to take out your political lenses and look at the actual statistics to get a true picture of the health of the American economy. Right now, those statistics are saying a modest cyclical rebound following a very deep downturn could actually be turning into a full-fledged, V-shaped, recovery boom between now and year-end. Conservatives shouldn’t trash it.

I’m aiming this thought especially at many of my conservative friends who seem to be trashing the improving economic outlook — largely, it would appear, to discredit the Obama administration.

To assert that Republicans may deny that Obamanomics is working at their own peril misses at least a few critical points. It’s also premature.

Capitalism recovers, that’s what it does. Free enterprise by definition, finds a way over, around or through whatever obstacle is thrown at it; be it world wars, epidemics, market bubbles and even an administration hell bent on putting it on a short leash.

The economy is showing signs of recovery no doubt, but it lacks a few factors key to a V-shaped recovery and I think Mr. Kudlow, with all due respect, is suffering from premature jubilation.

Let’s begin with the March employment numbers recently released by the Labor Department. Those numbers were solid. People say small businesses are getting killed by taxes and regulations from Washington, but the reality is that the small-business household employment survey has produced 1.1 million new jobs in the first quarter of 2010, or 371,000 per month. If that continues, the unemployment rate will drop significantly.

But it probably won’t continue, Larry.

On the contrary, politically speaking, unemployment will ultimately be the Achilles heel of the Obama administration.

I could stop right there.

Growth of the GDP and the Dow may serve to buoy consumer sentiment but high unemployment will continue to weigh heavily and a couple months’ reversal does not a trend make.

Much of the “recovery” to date is simply a regression to the mean of sorts, which is to say that much of the crisis was manifested in a national overreaction, by employers cutting inventory and staff more severely than was necessary and by the stock markets overselling. The recovery thus far is simply employers and the markets seeking equilibrium.

For a V-shaped recovery there will need to be found a new rung on the ladder and right now I don’t see it.

Past recoveries, at least of the V-shaped ilk, had catalysts. In the case of the Great Depression, it was World War II, the and the young entrepreneurs that survived it.

More recently, In the nineties, it was computers, the internet, and the wireless industries who created jobs and at the same time bolstered productivity.

After the recession of 2001-2002 it was the housing boom then bubble and the leveraging-up that it afforded the consumer eager to fill those homes with stuff. Alas, maybe that one was a false recovery in retrospect.

This time around, that catalyst has failed to materialize. Apple’s release of the new iPad isn’t quite enough, not to mention the fact that sales have been sub-par. This era of “green jobs” the president keeps talking about is a distraction at best; political bullshit at worst. Moreover there are still factors that could hold us at this rung on the ladder and possibly even knock us down one or two in what could be the dreaded “W” recovery.

The biggest fear among business leaders, save a protracted 30’s style depression, is 70’s style inflation, which will hide in the wings until the consumer starts spending. To say that Obamanomics is working at this point belies that fact that the extreme monetary policies implemented to pull our system from the brink have not yet been retracted to any semblance of normalcy.

Our economy is still lying in a gurney with a big federal IV bag pushing meds into it’s wrist and the patient, now trying to get up out of bed, is a bit dazed. Soon she will realize she can only walk so far down the ICU hallway without taking it with her lest she pull the needle out.

Assuming we get our economy out of the ICU, we have escalating energy costs, due in part to the weak dollar, and soon to be multiplied by a return of demand as the global economy struggles to recover.

Also there are to be continued and excruciatingly persistent pressures on real estate values, which have always been an emotional, if not substantive, source of consumer confidence and optimism as well as the de facto basis for most personal wealth and the ability to obtain credit. Once real estate values begin to recover in earnest, which is to say an increase in the proportion of non-distressed transactions, there will be a wave of baby boomers, nearing retirement and divesting themselves of homes too large, too expensive and that represent too much of their illiquid net worth. They will take advantage of the $500K capital gains deduction before Obamanomics forces closure of the loophole.

Next up, we have the President’s health care “reform”; nobody wants it but everybody will have to pay for it. To what extent this will undermine the economy is not known but insurers and providers alike are scrambling to figure out what needs to happen when the first elements of the assault come ashore in September. Many large employer’s cost estimates do not bode well for jobs growth.

Lastly, we have the nearly unbearable weight of a federal government hell-bent on gorging itself under the guise of a crisis, the long-term deleterious effects of which have long since reached a fatal tipping point. Taxes must go up and anyone that thinks higher taxes lead to sustained economic recovery surely isn’t paying them and is suffering from the same form of delusion that put Obama in the White House.

So Larry, it’s too soon to be calling this a “V”, and I’m glad to see that later in your piece, that you agree:

…at some point, monetary policy will tighten, with higher interest rates on top of higher tax rates. That, too, could slow growth markedly next year.

…hence the “W” moniker.

…then there’s the dozen tax hikes in the Obamacare health takeover, and a possible VAT attack from Paul Volcker, all of which will work against growth in the out-years.

Clearly, we are not operating a supply-side, free-market model today. What I wish for is sound money and lower tax rates, which would promote sustainable economic growth. Instead, we’re getting easier money and higher tax rates, which could mean a temporary boom today and disappointingly slow growth after that.

We have become an economy unto ourselves; an economy driven by service industries and consumption and right now consumers are not yet convinced that the Obama administration has solved everything and that they should go back to what they were doing. Even if they if they did, they haven’t the means or the desire to do so and are not yet prepared for what is coming.

As long as unemployment stays high and the consumer suffers malaise, Republicans, if they so chose, will have plenty of legitimate economic fodder to lob at the Obama administration for years to come.

PJ O’Rourke once observed that social change happens wherever the babes are.

Wags over the years have noted evidence in Ukraine…

…and Lebanon…

…and there’s evidence all around us

I’m not the one to say conclusively if that’s right or not.  But if it is…

…then the left is screwed blue.

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Ever wanted to take your shot at being a TV reporter of sorts?

This Thursday – April 15, at the Tea Party – is your big chance:

Tea Party TV — the go-to place for news on the Tea Party Movement — will be streaming comprehensive coverage of the Tax Day Tea Party events. They are inviting citizen reporters to help cover those events. Last year, more than 800 citizen reporters submitted videos and photos to PJTV as they reported on the tax day events in their home towns. This year, 900 citizen reporters have signed up already. You may want to add your voice to these rallies.

Click here to find out how.

It’s especially important to have lots of video and pix of the Tea Party; the left has sent ringers with outrageous, racist, homo/xenophobic signs to other Tea Party events, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure they’ll do it again.

(Not sure if the group in that last link is legit or not; investigation is underway).

I’ve told the story before.  One of the most illuminating lectures I’ve ever gotten on human nature was from my 11th grade history teacher, Mr. Dudley Butts – who was perhaps the most “Big Lebowski”-ish football head coach I’ve ever met. 

He’d been drafted during the Vietnam War; he was proud to point out that he’d been stationed in Washington DC, and the Viet Cong never attacked the Capitol on his watch; mission accomplished. 

And he told us that during basic training, as they were doing any of the things that mimicked killing people – at the rifle range, while doing bayonet drills and hand-to-hand combat practice – the drill sergeants never referred to their targets as humans.  They were always collections of not-quite-human memes; “gooks” and “charlies” and “slopes” and so on.  It took him a while to realize this wasn’t just the mark of a bunch of bigots with sergeant stripes; there was a method to it.  It was much easier to train people who’d spent 18 years of their lives being taught “thou shalt not kill” to kill if you taught them to kill something that wasn’t really human. 

Likewise, the theory goes, it’s easier to convince people you’re right if you get them to believe that your opponent isnt’ operating from rationalism or intelligence.

The Alinski-schooled left has known this for decades, of course.  Which is why over my years of blogging the left has followed such utterly predictable memes in referring to conservatives – “ignorant wingnuts” in their parlance.  Christians are “extremists”; Second Amendment activists are “crazy gunnies”; they never get exercised and motivated, they “Melt down” or “whine”.  Above all – or, in terms of plausibility and intelligence, below all – they never operate from bases in rationality, experience, knowledge of history or cognitive processes of any kind; the only conservative motivation is “fear”. 

I’ve never accused Lori Sturdevant of being much more than a willing water-girl for the DFL and all it stands for.  I didn’t expect any different from her “coverage” of the Bachmann/Palin rally.    I wasn’t disappopinted:

Minnesotans who tuned in to Wednesday’s Minneapolis rally on behalf of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann and featuring former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin heard a lot about “freedom” and “liberty.” Those words are taking on a new partisan edge in this election year, not unlike the tinge acquired by the words “family values” a few years back.

Well, let’s shoot for accuracy, here – and we’ll have to do the shooting, because Sturdevant certainly won’t; the “partisan edge” to “family values” was pretty much entirely a product of the left and media (ptr). 

It’s a digression – but then, so was Sturdevant’s reference.  Offsetting penalties. 

Onward:

Those words also seem to be acquiring new definitions in the mouths of Republican politicians. Freedom seems to have a lot to do with the ability to avoid buying health insurance, thereby forcing others to pick up the tab for one’s hospital stay, should one’s good health run out.

Right.  That’s the motivation behind the Tea Parties and all of conservatism, Lori; getting someone else to pick up your tab.

It has nothing to do with believing in limited government, let alone the sense that for most people, Obamacare “fixes” something that needed a tune-up, not a complete overhaul.

Liberty, on the other hand, seems to be about building new nuclear power plants, drilling for oil just about anywhere, paying little or no taxes, and avoiding health and safety regulations in one’s business life.

Oooh, can I play?

Liberalism seems to be about being ashamed to be an American, being thankful to Mother Government for allowing you to exist, and shutting up and doing what your lords and betters tell you to do!

Liberty is also evidently compromised or diminished when the federal government takes emergency action to limit the collapse of major banks and prevent the demise of the nation’s homegrown auto industry.

Well, yeah.  As a matter of fact, it is; when there is no freedom to fail, then there is truly no freedom to succeed.  Badly run businesses should fail; in a true free-market economy, no business ever gets to be “too big to fail”. 

Those countercyclical rescue efforts came in for repeated scorn, from Bachmann, Palin and their warmup man, Gov. Tim Pawlenty — although many of the moves were initiated by a president they supported, George W. Bush.

“A President they supported?”  I can’t speak for Pawlenty, Bachmann or Palin, but I don’t know a single genuine conservative who supported Bush’s Kennedyesque spending. 

Let’s step aside for a moment, here.  When it comes to analyzing dissent, there are really two types of commentators; the ones that painstakingly develop taxonomies that shoehorn all of human nature’s wondrous complexity into implausibly neat but inevitably-pejorative, utterly-unnatural and completely self-serving boxes to make themselves sound all academic and serious, and everyone else:

Times of major economic and social change seem to spawn two kinds of political leaders in America — those who seek to help people overcome their fears and adapt, and those who play on fear and offer the vague promise that unsettling changes can be slowed or reversed.

Which is, of course – pardon a rare disgression into Old English – festering, reeking bullshit.

All political motivation is a complex mixture of education, tradition, self-interest, fear, communitarianism, and all manner of base and noble impulses.  Every person’s motivations are different; I’m a conservative because my study of history shows that statism is a cancer, and that limited government leaves the most room for humanity’s most noble natures to emerge, because the Constitution is fundamentally libertarian-conservative and if we don’t follow the Constitution then what the hell do we follow, because I “fear” the competence and motivations of this nation’s current “elite” and what it’ll do to the country I’ll leave my offspring, and because it is my right and duty as a free American citizen to fight for what I believe within our political process.

Likewise, Lori Sturdevant is a liberal because she’s been painstakingly indoctrinated into being a petty statist and D-list elitist, all of the “cool” people in her field have always been liberals, and she fears all of us peasants.

I mean, as long as we’re oversimplifying and caricaturing those we disagree with…

 Bachmann and Palin demonstrated Wednesday why they are among the nation’s leading exemplars of the latter category. Their success, this year and in 2012, will depend in large part on Americans staying fearful for a lot longer than Americans typically do.

I saw no fear on Wednesday.

But I read it all throughout Sturdevant’s column on Thursday.

Like Mr. Butts’ drill sergeants, Sturdevant is trying to tell her audience that her enemies – all us Teabaggers, Gunnies, Taxpayers-Leaguers, Wingnuts, God-Botherers, Bitter Gun-clinging Jeebus freaks and the whole lot – aren’t really as human as they are.

It’s an axiom of politics – all politics, really – that people get the government they deserve.

Kevin O’Brien at the Cleveland Plain Dealer thinks that people are finally starting to realize they deserve better:

For many a year now, officeholders of both major parties have worked hard to earn the distrust of ordinary Americans. It appears that they finally have succeeded.

If only ordinary Americans hadn’t been so inattentive. If only ordinary Americans hadn’t been so trusting. If only ordinary Americans hadn’t been so damnably nice, the country would be in a better position to manage its finances today.

But when have Americans not tried to look for the good in every situation? When have we not been slow to recognize the need to deal with forces, foreign or domestic, aligning against our best interests?

Somewhere along the way our media and current ruling class (PTR) got the idea that “unity” and “bipartisanship” and phony harmony was better than conflict in pursuit of our best interests.

Over the past year, this has gotten rocked on its heels:

This past year,

Hallelujah.

The people who are angry today are more in tune with this nation’s founders than ordinary Americans have been in decades.

“But wait! The founding fathers were smart!”

Er, yeah.  Smart enough to know that government needs to be taken out and beaten back down to size with baseball bats once in a while.

The United States has an intricate system of checks and balances, and a government structure based on a separation of powers, and a Bill of Rights that safeguards the rights of states and the rights of the people precisely because the greatest collection of political talent and philosophical insight ever assembled on this continent — and maybe anywhere on this planet — looked at the concept of government and said, “We need to make a really small cage for this thing, then be careful not to overfeed it.”

We seem to have lost the care-and- feeding instructions about a century ago. We let government out of its little cage and it has been consuming everything it can lay its paws on ever since. In the last 45 years, it has been on a real binge, and in the last year and a half, it has taken bigger bites than a lot of people thought possible.

What was the stupid old bumper sticker?  “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention?”

Well, outrage isn’t needed.  Just a whole bunch of the focused motivation that comes from a constructive response to anger.

According to Janet Napolitano and most of the mainstream media, I’m an “extremist”; I’m pro-life, anti-tax, pro-Second-and-Tenth Amendment…

…which, to some, means “anti-government”; as if “wanting just the parts of government we really need” is in some way the same as wanting the government to be overthrown.

Here’s one of my “extremist” beliefs; that the government that governns best, governs least.  Of course, that was really Thomas Jefferson – who, let’s never forget, was also an extremist.

Look – most of the case for limited government boils down to this:  The Constitution really defines what government is supposed to do; defend the nation, look out for the “general welfare”, raise taxes for federal functions (which at one point meant “functions that were properly the province of the Feds, although that’s been bastardized beyond recognition for the past couple of generations),  sign treaties with foreign governments, interpret the Constitution and, since the end of the Civil War, make sure that “equality before the law” is a unform, national thing; above all, per the Tenth Amendment, to keep its hands off of everything else.

But you can hear that from the entire Libertarian Party, and a fair chunk of the libertarian wing of the GOP; that’s Conservatism 101 (or, if you’re talking with Keith Olberman or Nancy Pelosi or Janet Napolitano, “extremism”, but I digress).

There’s another, ethical reason to limit the size and power of government.  It does in unbendable fact what capitalism supposedly does; it arbitrarily picks winners.

Imagine that you’re a barber.  You live in, let’s say, Portland, Oregon, a city with nine other barbers.  Now, being plagued with hippies, it’s not the best town to be a barber.  But you get word that the guys from Phish are going to all get flattops; knowing what a bunch of “non-conformists” hippies are, you and your nine fellow barbers are getting ready for an avalanche of business.

As one of your items of business, you set up a PAC – call it “Portland Cares about Hair”.  You publicize photos of bad flat-tops.  “Portland must demand better”, the ads say.  And you go before the Portland City Commissariat Council, and convince them that bad flat-tops are something that government must prevent – so they should impose a license on the barber trade, with licenses going to would-be barbers who have passed a license exam issued by the “Board of Barber Examiners” – a panel of three barbers drawn from among the ten of you.  Which means that, as the hordes of hippies wander about looking for flat-tops, there are only ten shops to go to; all of the hippies who try to start their own barber shops are busted by the cops and fined for “barbering without a license”.

In other words, you and your nine barber friends have just used government to give you a better, more commanding market position.

Business does this all the time; the bigger the business, the bigger the likelihood they’ll get government to clamp down on the market for them:

Yes, that’s the largest investment bank on Wall Street calling for stricter regulation from Washington. Stoll has a pretty straightforward explanation:

What [Goldman CEO Lloyd] Blankfein and Mr. Cohn are now saying is that their desire for higher capital requirements isn’t related to concern about their ability to control Goldman‘s risk-taking (“Please, Mr. Government, supervise me more closely, allow me to borrow less money, and force me to take less risk”), but their ability to assess and judge the risks of their counterparties, the other firms they are doing deals with.

Why should Goldman have to pay for mitigating the risk of its deal-partners when the SEC or the Fed can do Goldman’s work for it — on the taxpayer dime?

This is further evidence of what I’ve been saying for months: just as tobacco regulation was a gift to Philip Morris, toy regulation was a gift to Mattel, and health-care “reform” was a gift to Big Pharma, financial reform will improve Goldman’s profitability, Obama’s populist rhetoric notwithstanding.

Government has no more business picking winners than it has defining who shall lose.  At least, it shouldn’t.

I know.  What an extremist I am.

I’m feeling better and better about this November.

I was in the Press Pit at yesterday’s Bachmann/Palin rally at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

I’ll say this about the GOP; there was a time when most of the great speakers were Democrats; Ronald Reagan was something of an anamaly (and a few steps beyond being just a great stump speaker).

Ever watched video of a World War II airplane engine starting up?  The propeller starts to spin, as the starter cranks the engine over.  You know it’s spinning, as the spark plugs start to fire and you hear a few cylinders coughing, but you wonder when the airplane is going to take off.  And then, suddenly, it catches – and the propeller smoothly speeds up, and the engine takes on that hearty roar that catches you in the pit of your gut, and you just know that someone’s gonna get a bomb dropped on them.

That’s what watching Michele Bachmann speaking is like.  When she gets to the podium, you can tell she’s a ball of potential energy waiting to explode; she speaks without notes, and I suspect she goes onstage with a few ideas of where she wants things to go, and tries a few of them…

…and, imperceptibly, as the crowd warms up and as she, like that engine in the B17, catches on, suddenly she and the whole room just take off, and the plane lifts off the runway, you just know that a bunch of Sixth District liberals and sanctimonious state Dems and the national media are going to be dodging explosions the rest of the day.

And Sarah Palin?  When you hear the woman talk, you can see why the national Democrats and media (pardon the usual redundancy) have had to switch to full-time defamation mode, attacking her education, her family, her baby, her hobbies, her looks (and occasionally her term in office, although less-often substantively than, say, by filing and referencing disposable “ethics” complaints (attacks that Palin disposed of with grace and sharp, pointed humor – which is hard to see coming from most of her thud-witted competition).  If they had to take her on on the force of her personality and the power of her speaking, they’d be a third party. She spoke for about twenty minutes; while I compared Bachmann to a Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engine, Palin is more like a heat-seaking missile; she rocketed right off the rail toward her target.

Neither of them needed a teleprompter, by the way.

As to content?  Both of ’em borrowed from Reagan, addressing the character of the American people when challenged; the obvious subtext is, “we’re being challenged now”.

As to the crowd?  They said 11,000 tickets had been given away, including 1,000 at the door.  I stood up on my seat in the press pen – there were maybe 1,000 bleacher and floor seats, and the rest was standing room, and the place (Hall D at the Convention Center) was as packed as a good mosh pit.

Afterward, I wandered ovdr to the Hyatt, to see if there was any visible sign of the Dems’ purported counter-rally.

Other than a few black-clad hypstrz, I didn’t see a thing.  Not that I wanted to walk into the Hyatt to find out; I was feeling too good.

More later.

If there’s anyone that an extremist hates worse than their enemies, it’s an apostate.

For example, in all the decades of the battle between Palestinians and Israelis, the most dangerous thing to be remains a moderate Arab.

Likewise, to the American left, there’s no evil worse than any of “their” constituents – blacks, women, latinos, gays – going over to “the enemy”.

Now, there are plenty of conservative women, and they come in for some pretty mind-numbing disgraceful abuse if they rise to any kind of prominence.  But it was a partly academic exercise with blacks and Latinos for a long time; there are black, latino and asian conservatives, but not enough to make for a trend.

Now, of course, significant numbers of blacks are joining the Tea Parties.  How’s the left taking it?

Oh, how do you think?

“I’ve been told I hate myself. I’ve been called an Uncle Tom. I’ve been told I’m a spook at the door,” said Timothy F. Johnson, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a group of black conservatives who support free market principles and limited government.

“Black Republicans find themselves always having to prove who they are. Because the assumption is the Republican Party is for whites and the Democratic Party is for blacks,” he said.

Johnson and other black conservatives say they were drawn to the tea party movement because of what they consider its commonsense fiscal values of controlled spending, less taxes and smaller government. The fact that they’re black—or that most tea partyers are white—should have nothing to do with it, they say.

“You have to be honest and true to yourself. What am I supposed to do, vote Democratic just to be popular? Just to fit in?” asked Clifton Bazar, a 45-year-old New Jersey freelance photographer and conservative blogger.

Opponents have branded the tea party as a group of racists hiding behind economic concerns—and reports that some tea partyers were lobbing racist slurs at black congressmen during last month’s heated health care vote give them ammunition.

The reports were, in every case, lies; the $100,000 Andrew Breitbart offered for proof that anyone had actually lobbed a slur remains pristinely unclaimed.

But the larger point – that the left attacks black conservatives, as well as any of “its” voters, women or latinos, asians and gays – that start thinking for themselves – is more important.

I’ve repeatedly asked liberals to show me a single instance of a conservative woman, black or latino that their movement, and usually they themselves, haven’t tried to destroy.  The question remains unanswered.

I don’t think it’s going to change.

Among the DFL’s “Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota”-chanting clacque, you rarely see much sympathy for tax cuts; suffice to say that once Obamacare kicks in, we won’t see any for a long, long time.

But when it comes time to try to save jobs, suddenly, even the hardest-core DFLers get religion; Governor Pawlenty just signed a series of tax exemptions intended to try to keep the Saint Paul Ford plant open.  The plant is scheduled to close next year; the law would incent Ford to retrofit the very old plant to build vehicles other than the Ranger pickup.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, who’s often been at odds with Gov. Tim Pawlenty over cuts in state aid to cities, applauded the governor for signing the bill later this morning.

Said the mayor:

“This legislation gives Saint Paul the means to do our part in protecting the workers at the Ford Plant. As Ford continues to look at their options, this bill stands as evidence that the City of Saint Paul, and its world class workforce, are ready to work with them in any way we can to keep this plant open.”

That’s right, Mayor Coleman.  Just imagine how many businesses would come to Saint Paul if all our taxes were lower!

Les Lucht, a good friend and Ford employee, writes at Ademocracy to thank everyone involved:

Little background on the plant is over 90 years old, The machines are over 25 to 30 years old.
It would cost about 1 billion to clean up the site. And the City and State will lose more than 90 millions dollars in taxes. Beside other business nearby will close additional taxes loss of one to two millions in loss of taxes. Plus another 750 unemployed employees, loss of more tax dollars.

Southern state have got federal aid to get job there. mainly auto companies. And to keep them.

I’m opposed to state subsidies on principle, and a tax cut that Peter gets but Paul doesn’t is pretty much a selective subsidy.  But Lucht is right; the market for big auto plants is like the market for stadiums; governments at all levels have skewed the market by being in the game so very deeply.

A few years ago, as the ’08 campaign was heating up, up, you started seeing the stories, asking “are evangelicals leaving the GOP?  The story was like so many – an idea looking for a trend – that fairly screamed “someone’s trolling to get ahead of a curve that doesn’t exist yet”.  (The answer, by the way, was “no – evangelicals just stay home if they’re not thrilled with their choices.

So I’m not sure what to think of this story, a CNN poll showing Democrats joining the Tea Parties:

They are not typical Tea Party activists: A woman who voted for President Obama and believes he’s a “phenomenal speaker.” Another who said she was a “knee-jerk, bleeding heart liberal.”

These two women are not alone.

Some Americans who say they have been sympathetic to Democratic causes in the past — some even voted for Democratic candidates — are angry with President Obama and his party. They say they are now supporting the Tea Party — a movement that champions less government, lower taxes and the defeat of Democrats even though it’s not formally aligned with the Republican Party.

I spoke at the Constitution Day Tea Party last year, and I took a very informal poll of my own; I asked people to give a shout and wave their arms when I mentioned their label of choice.  There was a small film of people who responded to “Democrat”.

The CNN poll, wonder of wonders, found…more or less the same thing:

To be sure, the number of Democrats in the Tea Party movement is small. A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll shows that while 96 percent of Tea Party activists identify themselves as either Republican or Independent, only 4 percent say they are Democrats.

On the other hand, you can see where some Democrats – especially the blue-collar ones that stand to be damaged the most by Obama’s plans – might find some resonance; their parents did the same thirty years ago when Jimmy Carter presented them with the same dismal future.

Some of these disgruntled voters are taking part in the current Tea Party Express tour. The tour began in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, Nevada, on March 28 and is making 44 stops across the nation. It ends in Washington on tax day — April 15.+

Which is where I’ll be – at the State Capitol for the Minnesota Tea Party, after work on April 15!

See you there!

With the government’s sudden fixation with violence and terrorism (as defined by Janet Napolitano, at any rate), it’s worth going over what “security” is.

The big picture, of course, is important; government has a constitutional duty to defend the country.  It’s one of a very, very short list of duties actually spelled out for a legitimate government in the Constitution; it’s one of the few legitimate reasons any government exists. 

Secure the borders?  Absolutely.  There is not a nation in the world worth the title that doesn’t protect its own sovereignty.  There’s a reason for this; we formed a nation for a reason.  We intend it to be disctinct from other nations.  If tomorrow all of the world’s other nations upheld freedom, the rule of law, the value of the individual, and (after November, 2012, God willing) the free market.  Of course, the United States is a nation of immigrants, and indeed we need immigrants to keep rejuvenating this nation; nations with unchanging cultures become ossified and stagnant.  But the key is that immigrants must come to the United States, rather than bringing Ireland or Finland or Greece here. 

But that’s fodder for the upcoming “Culture” installment.

Protecting us from criminals?  Yep.  That too.  The law-abiding citizen should be secure on his/her property, with his/her possessions, and his/her rights.  The law should

Which is where government keeps screwing up.  It’s not just governments run by crime bosses and warlords – Russia and Tadjikistan and the Congo – that break this rule.   In the UK, a law-abiding citizen who defends his home, property or self from a burglar, robber or attacker with any kind of force frequently faces stiffer punishment than the criminal involved.  In Chicago – a city prowled by gangs armed barely a degree behind the Fedayin Saddam fashion curve – the full weight of the city’s legal system waits to fall upon the citizen who dares resist the thugs with a .22 handgun.

Any dictator can make you “secure”; the streets of Rome were safe enough under Mussolini.  But that’s not security, any more that a dictator (or university dean) giving you a few minutes to say what you want within a bunch of carefully set-up guidelines is “freedom of speech”.  “Security” that exists only at the pleasure and to the purposes of ones’ leaders – masters, really – isn’t security at all.  It’s the kind of “Security” that a flock of sheep get when escorted by a pack of wolves; it exists only for the needs of the wolves, not the flock.

“No problem, Mitch.  America’s not like that!”

Gun control laws that burden the law-abiding more than criminals – that’s almost all of them – don’t enhance “security”. 

Property forfeiture laws that penalize the innocent (which one is supposed to be, until proven guilty) do not make us more “secure”.

Federal “watch lists” that stimatize mainstream (if temporarily out-of-power) dissent make us less secure.

A government policy that is more accomodating to those that would kill us than to those who have defended us doesn’t make us more secure.

That’s what I want; that’s what this nation needs; a government that knows “Security” protects the nation while upholding the citizen.

Wow.  I am an extremist!

What is “Prosperity?”

10,000 years ago when our anscestors were hunter-gatherers, it was a field or a stretch of forest or river that some other family of hunter-gatherers hadn’t pretty well plundered already. You – and, hopefully, your tribe – would have the means to keep up their strength until spring brought a new, less-meager bounty staved off starvation for another year.  Maybe.

Back then, the worst thing that could happen was another tribe moving in and deciding that you, Clan Urk, were going to be Happy To Pay For A Better Clan Thag.  The results meant moving long and far to find more forage.  Or dying.  Or both.

500 years ago, when 999 out of 1000 of our forefathers were subsistance farmers?  Wealth was some extra potatoes or sauerkraut or wheat stored away that nobody else had a claim to, in case there was a drought the next year.  It was the knowledge that your family, and ideally your village, could ride out some of the hard times without starving to death.

The great  impediment to properity for most of our peasant anscenstors?  The nobles who claimed a percentage of what you, the peasant, grew and stored. in exchange for the privilege of having their protection (and the plague, rabies, accidents, wars, cholera, typhus and dropsy).  Their cut came off the top; if your cut wasn’t enough to feed the family?  Well, peasants could always create more kids.

Today?  The topline definitions of “prosperity” have moved quite a bit in the past five to 100 centuries, but in one way or another it’s still the same as it was for both groups of anscestors; make life less tenuous.  Whatever “tenuous” means. 

Of course, we moderns have less to worry about in terms of starvation, plague and dropsy than our hunter-gatherer and feudal forebears. 

The nobles?  Well, they’re still out there, and they’re still a problem.

Why do you work?  Wouldn’t life be a lot more fun if you got to hang out, drink and play Wii all day?  Of course – until you starved!  That’s why, eventually, most people (yes, except the odd trust fund baby) needs to actually work in some way or another to support themselves, whether digging ditches or underwriting bonds.

How prosperous one is is largely – not entirely, but mostly – a function of choices one makes.  Ones’ future hinges to a sometimes depressing extent on choices one makes when one is not old enough to be making life-altering choices.  Decide to knuckle down and get straight “A”s, maybe with the help of a family that encourages it?  Decide to party your way through (or out of) high school?  They’ll likely lead one down different paths by the time one is thirty. 

But once one is on a path – neurosurgeon or night stocker, programmer or truck driver – ones work is what one does to feed oneself and one’s family, to provide shelter and clothing and internet and private school for the kids and that yacht in the Seychelles. 

And whatever one does, whatever ones’ abilities, whatever one did to get to where they are in life, “prosperity” today means the ability to make ones’ life as secure as one can, given the talent they have and the work they do. 

Now, government does have a purpose in ensuring prosperity.  A prosperous city, state and nation need everything from enforceable contracts to safe streets to the rule of laws rather than men to a work force and entrepreneur class that is capable of building the things and institutions needed to prosper.  Those mean courts, law-enforcement, defense, some form of education, and all the kinds of infrastructure that enables commerce, from roads and harbors to currency and a legal system – even the prevention of starvation and epidemics.  The sorts of things a government very well should be doing, within limits.

But a big chunk of our society doesn’t recognize the concept of limited government; to many, government has no limits.  And a government that has no limits – that decides that its job is to provide an income (not “prosperity”, mind you), health insurance, cradle to grave social security and the engineering that society “needs” – is taking a huge, utterly discretionary bite out of your prosperity.  Government becomes another mouth, or two or three, in everyone’s family.  It becomes Clan Thag, competing with all your Clan Urkers for the resources that are out there, making Clan Urk’s – your family’s – existence that much more tenuous.

So I want government to promote, rather than retard, real prosperity.

“But Mitch – what do you mean real prosperity?”

Prosperity that one controls oneself.  Clan Urk doesn’t have to ask Clan Thag for permission to hunt and gather; your group of peasants keeps the grain they grow, rather than giving it to your good-for-nothign duke who hasn’t done a damn useful thing in his life since he got back from Yale.  Because prosperity that exists at someone else’s discretion isn’t prosperity; it’s being a pet.

So that’s what I believe in.

Gosh – I am an extremist!

Speaking of  Quinnipiac polls…

The health care deform bill has already lit up the tea partiers…which could be good…or could be bad for the GOP.

It depends.

…on how (truly) conservative the GOP wants to be next time around.

Americans say they’ll vote for a Republican over a Democrat in the November elections by a 44 to 39 percent margin.

But the addition of a Tea Party candidate to the ballot changes the dynamic: The Republican candidate drops dramatically to 25 percent and the Democrat only slightly to 36 percent, while 15 percent would back the Tea Party candidate.

It strains the imagination to think that there are still 36-39 percent left that would still vote for a Democrat yet at the same time this data shows it’s the GOP’s race to lose and a right leaning candidate won’t fly (again).

In light of this data, loyal readers, who do you think is our (Wo)Man?

So is Obama and his money-and-power grab on the permanent ascendant in American politics?  Or is it an ugly, profoundly-damaging flash in the pan?

Flash, says Ross Douthat in the NYTimes:

Before the 2008 crash, it seemed like this new liberalism might be poised for a long run of domestic policy triumphs: First health care, then climate-change legislation, then card check and immigration reform and so on down the list. But in the wake of the Great Recession, our rendezvous with fiscal retrenchment has been accelerated, and the chances for a rolling series of progressive victories have diminished apace. Barring an extraordinary economic boom, the American situation will soon require the slow and painful restructuring of the welfare state that liberals have spent decades building.

And I think we can pretty safely bar a big economic boom.

This environment may or may not lead to a revival of D.L.C.-style centrism among the Democrats, but at the very least it’s hard to see it proving congenial to further adventures in sweeping social legislation.

As much as the GOP struggles with its own internal contradictions – between fiscal hawks, moderates and social conservatives – pale compared to the war between the Kossacks and the moderates, which has effectively led to a near-purge of moderates.

Which helps explain this past weekend’s scorched-earth assault on the free market:

I’ve talked to liberals who seem to understand this: The reckoning is coming, they allow, and the theory of health care reform has always been to get everybody inside the barrel before it goes over the falls. (I’d lay good money that this is Peter Orszag’s view of the matter.) But seen in this light, the health care victory looks less like the dawn of a bold new era, and more like the final lurch forward before a slow retreat. you might say; now they have to hope that it turns out better for them, and for America, than it did for Napoleon.

Which is where we come in.

I took a rare trip to a Minneapolis strip joint the other evening.

I was sitting at the bar drinking a vodka/sour when I saw a prominent DFL legislator getting a lapdance from Maria, a cute latina who’s been working there for a couple of months.  He was enjoying it in the way that DFLers always express enjoyment – by complaining and demanding.

“Tell me your little hermano needs to have his croup looked at, and could I preese herp he see a docta!”, he yelled, not a trace of mirth in his face.

“Er”, Maria said,  “Sure.  You gonna tip me?”

The DFL legislator shouted “Everybody!  Pony up so that I can tip Consuela, here!”

Maria got up and walked away.

“Hah, hah, hah” yelled the prominent DFL legislator.  “Your Hermano or whatever his name is will never see a doctor!”

He got up and finished his drink, and started staggering toward the door.  I followed him, intending to ask what his problem was.

We walked out onto Washington Avenue and walked toward the parking ramp.  I was walking to catch him when he stopped by a drunk sitting on the sidewalk leaning against the wall of a plumbing supply store.  He leaned down and grabbed the bum’s bottle of Mad Dog and took a long, greedy swig.  He then tossed the bottle into the street.  “When you win elections, you get to keep your booze.  When I win, I get to take your booze!  Hahahaha!”

He staggered away as the bum looked, nonplussed. 

“I rule the woooooorld!”, he bellowed as he walked through the door of the ramp.  “I can do anything I waaaaaaaant!”

I bring this episode up only because Charlie Quimby of Across the Great Divide is working so tirelessly to improve America’s supply of metaphorical observations. He was writing about a tweet by Kevin Watterson, who is a communications guy for the House GOP Caucus.

Quimby:

That means he is a government employee who works for people who derive at least part of their livelihood from the government, and he draws a pay check from the tax payers.

Right.  Because as libertarian as I am, even I would balk at privatizing the legislature.  Perhaps I should aim higher?

I digress:

So it’s curious that he would tweet something like this:

Sat on a bench in Target for 20 wating for pharma 2 open. Guy next to me the whole time gets up & opens it. Imagine when he’s a govt worker.

Got that? A guy who’s a government worker observes a private-sector employee and uses him to impugn government workers.

I’m trying to figure out what the problem is.  Is it that Quimby believes government workers (and future ones!) should all march in solidarity with each other?  That a government employee has no right to criticize his fellow employees or future colleagues (much less the legislation that our current pack of nutslaps are trying to pass into law?)   That a government worker should lead the lesser proles by example?

What was Watterson’s offense?  That he, a “government worker”, doesn’t want to waste time (yaaay, Kevin!), and sees, correctly, that government healthcare will be an even more catastrophic time-suck than it is today in the not-too distant future?

I’m not going to argue that government at any level is a total paragon of efficiency, enterprise or long-term decision-making.

(And yet they’re the ones Quimby’s side wants running your family’s healthcare!)

But the people arguing the loudest for defunding the public sector seem to believe that government is incapable, while the private sector is a model of efficiency, creativity and adaptation that will save America from the cesspool of creeping socialism.

Got that? Watterson sits apparently inert waiting for a private business to open — presumably at the time it has established its business hours — and uses the occasion to demean any government employee who might do the same.

Yep.

And better yet, Watterson is right to do it. 

Because Kevin, today, can go to the sluggard’s manager and complain, and likely get results; ever tried to complain to government about government?

Because Kevin today can voice his disgust at Target by turning on his heels and going to WalMart, DVS, Cub, Walgreens and dozens of other pharmacies who are happy not only to fill his prescription but will do it when they say they will, if Target won’t.  (And so Target will, too – or they’ll leave the business).  What imperative is there for government to improve service?  To whom is government accountable?  Fellow bureaucrats, themselves accountable to more layers of bureaucrats.

Watterson was right. 

Next week: My evening with three prominent DFL legislators at a dog fight.

In the immortal words of some Oscar-winning song or another, It’s Hard Out There For A Pimp.

Even a poverty-pimp who’s held a sinecure largely on the basis of “elite” business connections that’d make Ken Lay blanche with embarassment.

That’d be Barney Frank.  The guy’s got a tough row to hoe, and I think the strain is catching up with him:

“It’s like the Salem witch trials, and healthcare is the witches,” Frank said. “There is mass hysteria.”

That’s right.  Obamacare is an innocent victim, caught up in mob hysteria (because what is the only thing mass movements do, when they’re not electing pretty-boy empty suits  to the Presidency?), supported only by a political party that came into this term with a near-epic mandate (although get back to us in November). 

Just like those witches.

I’ll give him some credit.  He got it half right.  At least Obamacare deserves to be lit on fire.

President Obama polishes a turd:

“We proved that this government — a government of the people and by the people — still works for the people,” the president said late Sunday, beginning his sales pitch from the White House one hour after Congress passed the sweeping measure.

It works “for the people” – 55% of whom oppose the bill.  That’s two percent more than his final vote total in ’08.

He’s like the Cheshire Cat; “”For the people” means what I say it means.  Ummm, no more and, aaaahm, let me be perfectly clear, no less!”

The good news yesterday? The House GOP caucus stood firm, even though they were prohibitively outnumbered.

And conservatism got a new hero:

Paul Ryan (R-WI)

“The philosophy advanced on this floor by the majority today is so arrogant, it’s condescending, and it tramples upon the principles that have made America so exceptional.”

“My friends, we are fast approaching a tipping point where more Americans depend upon the Federal government than upon themselves for their livelihood; a point where we, the American people, trade in our commitment and our concern for our individual liberties in exchange for government benefits and dependencies.”

“More to the point, Madame Speaker, we have seen this movie before, and we know how it ends. The European social welfare state promoted by this legislation is not sustainable.”

“This is not who we are, and this is not who we should become”

“If this passes, the quest to reclaim the American ideal is not over. The fight to reapply our founding principl,es is not finished.  It’s just a steeper hill to climb.  And it’s a climb that we will make!”

I’ve heard “Ryan For President!” talk.  Today, I could be persuaded.