Sunday, September 13, 2009

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7 comments:

evan said...

I don't think it's the partiality to epithets...I think we have a situation where both the left and the right are increasingly afraid of the other. The left is looking at the lawlessness of the Bush years with respect to personal privacy and is terrified of what the right did in the name of 'national security.' The right is very 'anti-change', and with Obama attempting to push a lot of change quickly, they're scared of what's coming.

September 13, 2009 at 11:13 PM
evan said...

I wasn't thrilled with the phrase 'anti-Change' either, but I didn't want to use anti-Obama; that's too simplistic and doesn't capture what I was really looking for. Maybe anti-Obama-style change is more appropriate. But I don't think the economic response is what's driving the Right. I think it's the trigger but there were plenty of people who saw Obama as illegitimate before he spent a day in office.

September 14, 2009 at 12:08 AM
evan said...

It was in reference to the birthers. The truthers didn't see Bush as an illegitimate President in the sense that he was not eligible to serve as President (although Bush v. Gore is another issue--but in the end he was not considered 'unqalified' to be President in a constitutional sense.)

Even if 8% of the country believes the President is a secret Muslim from Kenya who's usurping the office of the President, that's 26 million people. It's about as many people as those who live in the New York and Houston metro areas combined. In other words, it's a lot of people who don't think that the President is actually legally eligible to be President!

I don't think the number of people who think Barack Obama is ineligible to be president because of his skin color is worth mentioning. But the number of birthers is, in the context of what I perceive as a right-left mutual fear of each other. On the right you have the birthers as sort of a baseline, but add on top of that a general fear of the style of change Obama brings--fast, sweeping reform to major institutions (health care, our economic system, how we handle environmental regulation), and you have people who are afraid of the outcome of that much change.

September 14, 2009 at 12:27 AM
evan said...

I don't see it as the same challenge to the President's legitimacy. Maybe it's just me, but I see a whole different universe between someone who believes there currently is no President under the law and someone who believes the President is doing horrific things in the name of the law.

Equating birthers and truthers on the fact that they're crazy I'll agree with. I see birthers as much more dangerous to both Obama as a person and the institution of the Presidency. If Obama is not actually the President, than nothing he says is legitimate, or even law--and I only see bad things happening from there.

I'm not trying to defend the truthers--I think it's a crazy idea that Bush and Cheney either did 9/11 or knowingly let it happen--but I don't see it as nearly as dangerous to the country as birthers are.

And saying that "opposition to Bush stemmed from the truthers" is not really how I see things. Opposition to Bush comprised of the truthers but it wasn't "derived" from them. Opposition to Obama comprises of the birthers, and while they may have been the 'first' to oppose Obama opposition to him was not somehow derived solely from the birther movement.

Back my original point, though, I do think that a general fear of the other side is what's driving this modern divide, to answer your question.

September 14, 2009 at 12:48 AM
evan said...

Also, saying that there's a baseline 8% of the country that believes he's not the real President, and that this is a "baseline," is offensive? To who? People who really oppose Obama?

I think you're reading what I'm saying as an attack on conservatism, but it isn't. Do you really think the current opposition to Obama is so one-dimensional as to be focused on his economic policy? If you're right, where was the outrage when the debt nearly doubled under Bush?

It's more complex than simply federal spending.

September 14, 2009 at 12:51 AM
TJE said...

I thought you guys might break the 17 comment record.

September 14, 2009 at 8:17 AM
evan said...

Don't worry, Professor, we will.

First of all, Lachlan, if I'm trivializing some portion of Obama's opponents it's because I consider them crazy. The notion that somehow Barack Obama is some kind of illegitimate Kenyan "Manchurian Candidate" is bizarre. I don't think your views are outrageous or anything like that. I'm actually being quite serious, but let's track how this discussion evolved. You posed a question. I gave a response which wasn't tight enough in its wording, so I corrected that. Then you go ahead and say I'm accusing the right of being racists or birthers. I follow up by saying birthers exist. You then equate birthers and truthers and say my argument is invalid since both exist and oppose a President.

I'm not really sure what this dispute is all about. You seem to take offense or find insulting any comment I make on conservatism. I stand by my original statement in general, and my follow-ups in particular, that the reason we're having these epithets being thrown around is because both sides are afraid of each other.

But then you mention this:

"[Obama will] coercively enact those massive changes with the bludgeon of federal power for the not-so-thinly-veiled objective of total upheaval of the American social and economic order."

You're basically saying he's a Manchurian Candidate, except without the "he's Kenyan" aspect! How is he enacting these policies coercively? The TARP program and related actions were put into place under Bush and passed the House and Senate with wide majorities, comprising Republicans and Democrats both. Everyone knew what the ARRA would entail, and it contained one of the largest middle-class tax cuts in history. Republicans pushed and pushed for compromises, got a bill that was about 40% tax cuts, and then all voted against it anyway. And we're having a very open debate on health reform at the moment. I expect a similar situation when Obama decides to finally push cap & trade.

You may disagree with how he's reforming these structures, but saying he's putting in, "coercively," a plan to cause the "upheaval of the American social order" seems unsupported by the evidence to me. It's perfectly reasonable to disagree with all of these policies. I don't think the dissent is illegitimate or anything like that. But do you really think that he's putting in these policies into place, through deception, in order to somehow change the fabric of America into...what? A socialist state? Some kind of liberal utopia?

September 14, 2009 at 10:15 AM

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