The Founding Fathers valued freedom of speech and of the press not because they saw some sort of inherent, God-given right to speak one’s mind, but because they knew that the only way to keep the Republic honest was to insure a broad supply of ideas and opinions. We have no sure way of ascertaining the truth; therefore, rather than attempt to censor falsehood, we must rely on a flood of opinion, a competitive marketplace of ideas in which only the most truthful ideas prosper. But conservative loyalty drives conservatives out of the competitive marketplace of ideas and into a small, uncompetitive corner, where falsehoods can go unchallenged. Chris Crawford ☀
Populations are increasing and noses are getting crowded more tightly together; that necessarily means that individual freedoms must be eroded. Americans tried to evade this squeeze by creating expansive suburbs that gave each person his own plot of land and private home. But the rising price of oil is pricing this strategy out of reach of the middle class, forcing people to accept higher density living — and with it, the conservative fantasy of the rugged individualist taking care of himself. The American frontier closed in 1890, over a hundred years ago, yet conservatives today still dream of the good old days when men were men and freedom was preserved with firepower. The problems of the 21st century are all problems arising from more and more people crowding together. This will necessarily drive our society further and further to the left. In this narrow sense, liberalism is the wave of the future and conservatism is the flicker of the past. Chris Crawford ☀
Let’s move on with an observation that, in effect, shatters the underlying principle on which conservatives base their position. Let’s ask the conservative, would you refuse to share some of your wealth to feed a starving child? Of course, nobody is monster enough to insist that property rights are more important than the life of an innocent child. And that admission pulls the rug out from underneath the conservative’s claim that property rights are sacred. This example establishes that property rights must be subordinated to some sense of basic human decency. So the issue here is not any sacred principle, but drawing a line between two principles. Where should we draw that line? How much money should a wealthy person surrender to provide food, clothing, shelter, and education to a poor person? We have already established that the answer is not “zero”. And since the idea of taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor constitutes socialism, we come to the conclusion that all non-monstrous conservatives have already accepted the principle of socialism. “Garsh, I thought I was just writin’ stuff, but now it turns out that I’ve been writing prose all my life!” Yes, even Rush Limbaugh, I would guess, is a socialist. Chris Crawford ☀
When it comes to foreigners, American justice is not blind; it actively discriminates against foreigners. If you’re an American citizen, then we apply the 100 to 1 rule to you. But if you’re a foreign Muslim, then that figure is more like 1 to 100. We’d rather incarcerate 100 innocent foreign Muslims than release 1 guilty foreign Muslim. You think I exaggerate? Look at the numbers. We’ve released about 500 prisoners from Guantanamo. Of those, the Department of Defense claims that some 60 have “returned to terrorist activities”. Their definition of “returning to terrorist activity” includes “having your lawyer write a letter of protest”, because that’s the basis on which one person has been so categorized. In terms of actually participating in violent activity, there are only two cases that have been publicly announced, and perhaps five cases that have been mentioned. These numbers are squirrelly; they seem to change every month, so I won’t attempt to document them. Whatever the real numbers are, they’re obviously tiny. So I think it fair to say that, in actual practice, our “guilty to innocent” ratio for detaining foreign Muslims is about 1 to 100, the exact reverse of our ratio for American citizens. Chris Crawford ☀
The Republicans will likely continue their destructive behavior, spewing their bile and slandering everybody who’s not part of their tribe. That Rovian crap worked for ten years, but it has burnt out the American public. There are still millions of hateful and hate-filled Americans who will continue their negative, cynical antics. They will cheer on Ms. Palin and who knows — she might even win their nomination in 2012. If that happens, the Republicans will suffer the most ignominious defeat since McGovern’s disaster in 1972. Let them revel in their sewage. The jig is up, the American people finally recognize how bankrupt that whole style of politics is, and the Republicans have no hope until they learn to purge those partisans from their ranks. I for one will be glad to see the Limbaughs, Kristols, Roves, Palins, and Cheneys sent back to their caves where they can gnaw on bones and growl at the world. Chris Crawford ☀
The conservative movement has been infiltrated by anti-rationalism, and that attitude will poison your movement. You have a core of about 25% of the American public that is fiercely loyal to the conservative cause, and some portion of that group is ferociously anti-rational. But the fact remains that a far larger number of Americans are pretty rational. They really do listen to the facts. When people on your side claimed that Mr. Obama is a socialist, many Americans concluded that your side is crazy. Chris Crawford ☀
But conservative loyalty insured that conservatives stayed in their own corner of the marketplace, never straying into other areas. Nowadays a conservative listens to Rush Limbaugh on the radio while driving, watches Fox News on television, and reads any of the many conservative blogs for conservative news and opinion — without ever being exposed to opposing points of view. The end result is that these people live in an alternative reality of their own creation. Ideas bounce around in this “conservasphere”, picking up more and more momentum until they have reached absurd proportions — and there’s no reality to hold them in check. Chris Crawford ☀
Are we facing a future in which conservative troglodytes do battle with liberal eggheads? And if we do, what happens if the troglodytes win? Chris Crawford ☀
I am not claiming that George Bush is a modern-day Adolph Hitler, nor am I suggesting that conservatives are Nazis. I am not arguing that Guantanamo is comparable to Dachau. Nor am I suggesting that Guantanamo is the first step in a slippery slope towards concentration camps. What I am claiming is that the same bogus arguments used to justify Guantanamo were used by the Nazis to justify Dachau. Chris Crawford ☀
The Gini Index of the USA is well above average — and the USA has higher rates of street crime and higher costs for its criminal justice system than most of the countries with low Gini Indexes. The overall cost of crime in the USA is estimated by various sources to be somewhere between $500 billion and $1.7 trillion per year. The total cost of all welfare programs in this country — including Social Security and Medicare — runs to maybe $500 billion per year. If we spend more money on the latter, will the former costs go down by an amount equal to or greater than our increment in expenditures on welfare? I don’t know. In fact, nobody can know — it’s simply too complicated to calculate. However, we do know that there are societies on this planet that spend a lot more of their GDP on welfare and also spend a lot less of their GDP on crime. Chris Crawford ☀
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