Modified Directions

I'd like to take this blog in a bit of a new direction. I started it as a way to work out responses to the specifics of the 2008 election. Now my goal is to write more broadly on the political clash going on in the country today. The mainstream media -- or at least the lazier portions thereof -- portrays it as liberal vs conservative, but that's simplistic and misleading. There are in fact two disputes going on, which are merged, but which require different responses.

The first is conservatism versus reason. The conservatives that run the republican party are saying and advocating things that simply cannot be reconciled with what is going on in the world today, or with how humans actually act and behave. One cannot have a rational discussion with these folk. But one must point out the error of their catch-phrase-based argument to those who would otherwise not want to spend the time digging through the muck.

The second is a sort of pseudo-Randianism (as in Ayn Rand) versus American liberalism. Jonathan Chiatt recently hit on a perfect description - the pseudo-Randians mistake American liberalism as somehow an offshoot of communism. This is false.

On an economic front, Keynes and Marx were two very different beasts. Short but sweet, Marx said capitalism could never work, because it had an inherent boom-bust cycle that harmed too many people. His solution, communism, was a bad solution, but he did see some fundamental flaws with free-market capitalism.

Keynes saved capitalism. He explained how a government could smooth out the boom-bust cycle, thereby sparing the greater society from the worst that capitalism would otherwise visit on them.

American liberalism is firmly rooted in Keynesian economics. It rejects Marx and communism completely.

So, those are areas I hope to think and write about in a bit more detail. Anyone interested is invited along for the ride.

Happy 2010!