David Brooks: Moron or Liar?

David Brooks's op-ed this past Tuesday brought me to the edge of my seat (which is a cube skeleton made solely of edges). It's the latest installment in his long-running performance art piece, David Brooks: Moron or Liar? David's columns rivals the Cremaster cycle for beautiful incomprehensibility; he keeps threatening to prove something, only to whirl away from logic at the last instant like a toreador. "The Limits of Policy" dares to ask why brown people are poor. Dare we answer? Oh wait, David Brooks has the answer. They did it to themselves!

Arizona's Racist, But Minnesota's Like Your Loopy Crazy Uncle

I'm amused. This week, we thought Arizona had the unconstitutionally crazy achievement award. But we might have to limit that state to the unconstitutionally racist award, because Minnesota just threw in its bid for the crazy award.

Senate Republicans introduced a constitutional amendment Wednesday that would make Minnesota the first state to require a two-thirds majority vote in the legislature to approve federal laws affecting the state. “Minnesotans enjoy inherent, natural, God-given rights,” the bill states, and “Citizens of Minnesota are sovereign individuals, subject to Minnesota law and immune from any federal laws that exceed the federal government’s enumerated constitutional powers.”

Good luck with that.

(via The Debate Link)

The Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives

Paul Krugman has a blog post up today explaining that liberals and conservatives are not mirror images, that just because they are obsessed with small government for its own sake, it doesn't mean we want big government for its own sake. We want government to be involved where it's needed to produce results.

Jon Chait actually wrote a great piece about this in 2005 where he goes into a lot more detail, but comes to the same conclusion. I think this explains a lot about our current political culture, and how we're always talking past each other. Sadly, I think both sides misunderstand this.

Conservatarians: Liberals do not want big government for its own sake. Not a single one does. Get that straight. We mostly don't care one way or another about the "evils" of big government - we just want to help people and combat some of the inherent unfairness of life.

Liberals: It's not that conservatives/libertarians hate poor and black people. They just don't care one way or another whether people die from lack of health care or can't get jobs or political power because of their being born poor or black, as long as government is small enough for us to be free.

Yeah, I think I'm on the right side of this one.

Oh, and a quote from Jon Chait's piece (in 2005, remember) might explain why so many conservatives today actually believe liberals are socialist:

If liberalism is not the mirror image of conservatism, what is? The more apt parallel is probably socialism. True socialists believe that allowing capitalists to keep some of the fruits of workers' labor is inherently immoral. They also tend to believe that free enterprise does not work very well. But, like the conservative belief that big government doesn't work well, this empirical belief merely sits atop a deeper normative belief. For committed socialists, doing away with 'exploitation' is an end in itself.

If they believe we want big government for its own sake, they actually believe we're socialist. Believe it or not, it's totally logically consistent!