(no subject)
Well, this is one of the more disturbing things I've read in a while.
Because I can't seem to link to a New York Times article without complaining about their writing style, I have to point out that these two paragraphs made me cringe:
Tea Party leaders say they know their complaints about shredded constitutional principles and excessive spending ring hollow to some, given their relative passivity through the Bush years. In some ways, though, their main answer - strict adherence to the Constitution - would comfort every card-carrying A.C.L.U. member.
But their vision of the federal government is frequently at odds with the one that both parties have constructed. Tea Party gatherings are full of people who say they would do away with the Federal Reserve, the federal income tax and countless agencies, not to mention bailouts and stimulus packages. Nor is it unusual to hear calls to eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The emphasis is mine, and it illustrates one of the reasons to be wary of the Tea Party - and particularly their claim to be full of serious-minded constitutional scholars. Specifically, because the federal income tax is in the Constitution. I suppose you might miss it if you stop reading after the Second Amendment, which often as not seems to be the case; but the Sixteenth is not exactly ambiguous on the subject:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
For a broader point, this points to a few things that bother me about the modern political debate. First, there's the tendency to take something you don't like and equate it to another thing you don't like, regardless of any actual relationship between the two concepts. Regardless of the relative merits of the bank bailouts or the stimulus as public policy, I don't think throwing money at people is particularly tyrannical.
That sort of paranoia would be the second problem, and I think the more disturbing one. Having lived in Iowa City during the height of the Bush era, I saw the same sort of thing coming from the left, and found it troubling enough then. And really, the liberal attitude generally seemed much more defeatist than insurrectionist. (Possibly because the other side had all the guns.)
There's a principle in social science that, when you surround yourself with people who share your views, your views tend to reinforce each other and make all of you more extreme - the echo chamber approach to information-sharing. And one of the sad side effects of having so much information at our disposal is that it's become incredibly easy to ignore anything you don't want to hear. So we create our own reality; and whether it bears any relationship to the way things actually are isn't really relevant because, the people who'd tell you something different probably aren't the sort whom you'll be talking to that much.
I'm biased. It's my job, after all, to research the facts of an issue and tell people how things really are. And I have to deal regularly with the fact that most people - even within the office - aren't really paying attention. And I don't have enough historical perspective to say that civilization is on its way down the drain; could be things were always this dysfunctional, but I just wasn't alive to notice. It isn't fun to watch, though.
Because I can't seem to link to a New York Times article without complaining about their writing style, I have to point out that these two paragraphs made me cringe:
Tea Party leaders say they know their complaints about shredded constitutional principles and excessive spending ring hollow to some, given their relative passivity through the Bush years. In some ways, though, their main answer - strict adherence to the Constitution - would comfort every card-carrying A.C.L.U. member.
But their vision of the federal government is frequently at odds with the one that both parties have constructed. Tea Party gatherings are full of people who say they would do away with the Federal Reserve, the federal income tax and countless agencies, not to mention bailouts and stimulus packages. Nor is it unusual to hear calls to eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The emphasis is mine, and it illustrates one of the reasons to be wary of the Tea Party - and particularly their claim to be full of serious-minded constitutional scholars. Specifically, because the federal income tax is in the Constitution. I suppose you might miss it if you stop reading after the Second Amendment, which often as not seems to be the case; but the Sixteenth is not exactly ambiguous on the subject:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
For a broader point, this points to a few things that bother me about the modern political debate. First, there's the tendency to take something you don't like and equate it to another thing you don't like, regardless of any actual relationship between the two concepts. Regardless of the relative merits of the bank bailouts or the stimulus as public policy, I don't think throwing money at people is particularly tyrannical.
That sort of paranoia would be the second problem, and I think the more disturbing one. Having lived in Iowa City during the height of the Bush era, I saw the same sort of thing coming from the left, and found it troubling enough then. And really, the liberal attitude generally seemed much more defeatist than insurrectionist. (Possibly because the other side had all the guns.)
There's a principle in social science that, when you surround yourself with people who share your views, your views tend to reinforce each other and make all of you more extreme - the echo chamber approach to information-sharing. And one of the sad side effects of having so much information at our disposal is that it's become incredibly easy to ignore anything you don't want to hear. So we create our own reality; and whether it bears any relationship to the way things actually are isn't really relevant because, the people who'd tell you something different probably aren't the sort whom you'll be talking to that much.
I'm biased. It's my job, after all, to research the facts of an issue and tell people how things really are. And I have to deal regularly with the fact that most people - even within the office - aren't really paying attention. And I don't have enough historical perspective to say that civilization is on its way down the drain; could be things were always this dysfunctional, but I just wasn't alive to notice. It isn't fun to watch, though.