The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

California GOP: Falling Down

Posted on | March 19, 2011 | 10 Comments

“After LA lost the aerospace industry during the Clinton Administration, we lost a half million aerospace workers, voters and donors.”
— former California GOP Chairman Shawn Steel

That quote reminded me of the 1993 movie Falling Down starring Michael Douglas as a laid-off Los Angeles aerospace engineer trying to make sense of a world falling apart. And it seems to me that the California Republican Party’s response to its 15-year decline has been scarcely less counter-productive than Douglas’s actions in that movie.

More from Joe Fein’s interview with Sean Steel:

The first question was: How to win Los Angeles in 2012?
Mr. Steel answered by saying, “The formula for winning Los Angeles is 60% Asian, 40% Latino and 55% Caucasians,” He continued, “When we battle, we [in RPLAC and CAGOP] must use the 40 – 55- 60 rule.”

Really? I mean, really? Instead of talking issues, message, organizing and campaign strategy, the first thing that pops into your mind when you’re asked about a plan for victory is demographics? And please explain how you think the GOP is going to get 60% of the Asian vote or 40% of the Hispanic vote when it can only get  55% of the white vote?

When I visited California I was struck by the fatalism of the state’s Republican officials, who simply write off most Democrat-held districts as unwinnable and passively accept the idea that huge swaths of the electorate are immune to GOP appeals.

Go read the rest of Joe’s coverage of this weekend’s California GOP convention. Maybe there’ll be some glimmer of hope.

Or else conservatives everywhere can get an object lesson in how not to run a Republican Party.


Category: California, Election 2012, Republicans, Valley of the Shadow

‘You Pretty Much Call People on the Phone When You Don’t Understand Their E-Mail’

Posted on | March 19, 2011 | 6 Comments

The quote is from a New York Times story about the decreasing use of the telephone for, y’know, talking:

“I literally never use the phone,” Jonathan Adler, the interior designer, told me. (Alas, by phone, but it had to be.) “Sometimes I call my mother on the way to work because she’ll be happy to chitty chat. But I just can’t think of anyone else who’d want to talk to me.” Then again, he doesn’t want to be called, either. “I’ve learned not to press ‘ignore’ on my cellphone because then people know that you’re there.” . . .
When Matthew Ballast, an executive director for publicity at Grand Central Publishing, began working in book publicity 12 years ago, he would go down his list of people to cold call, then follow up two or three times, also by phone. “I remember five years ago, I had a pad with a list of calls I had to return,” he said. Now, he talks by phone two or three times a day. ”You pretty much call people on the phone when you don’t understand their e-mail,” he said. . . .

As James Joyner says, “Even though everyone above the age of 6 seems to carry a phone around with them experts say that the phone call is a relic of the past.”

This is especially true for younger people (who constantly text, rather than talk) and people with 4G devices who use their Blackberry or iPhone to check e-mail from the time they wake up in the morning until they fall asleep at night. You see these people all the time in Washington: Dinners and receptions are less social because everybody is habitually checking messages.

Adler’s comment about his mother’s “chitty-chat” phone calls is on-point: Retirees have more time for talking on the phone, and women in general seem to enjoy talking on the phone than do men. (My wife has lonnnggg conversations with her sister, etc.) But the phone call as a means of business communication seems to be lapsing into disuse.

That people now view e-mail as the essential mode of communication is disturbing to me because I sometimes go an entire day without checking my e-mail. One of Jerry Wilson’s rules at Goldfish & Clowns is “Answer your e-mail every time all the time.”

But I usually get hundreds of e-mails a day. If I attempted to answer every one, I’d spend all day answering e-mail.

In an age of digital information overload, we are losing the human touch — and even, now, the human voice.

Category: Outside the Beltway

Robert Stacy McCain: Six Megahit Man

Posted on | March 19, 2011 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

BAGRAM A.F.B., Afghanistan — Today we passed 6 megahits with a Click Heard Round The World. I’m fairly sure it wasn’t a rocket impact. Or an aircraft cracking up in the distance.

Da-duh, duh duh, da-duh, duh duh. . .

Is it fair to call this blog’s eclectic mix of caffeine, politics, social commentary, nicotine, patriotism, sophomoric humor, spirituality, abrasive gonzo hijinks and news bionic? Maybe not.

Nevertheless, in a world that seems like a test pilot doing an impression of a crumbled beer can rolling through the credits of a 1970’s TV show, the blogosphere has been an essential outlet for me. Wombat, too, I hope. (Get better, man.)

Da-duh, duh duh, da-duh, duh duh. . .

One is motivated by a deep love of liberty and country, which is a bit different than Stacy’s fundamental interest in eating. Our non-approach to a working relationship is an anti-chemistry that manages not to explode despite itself. I flatter myself that I’m a better writer for all this fun.

And then there is the cast of thousands in the blogosphere. Not only do our readers make the blog itself worthwhile, but they restore faith that the country isn’t completely shot. It’s not important that one agree with everyone on everything.

No, we’re just one more unit in the Army of Davids, striving against Socialist odds to answer the Franklin challenge:

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

And, as an added bonus, corny sound effects:
Da-duh, duh duh, da-duh, duh duh. . .

Previously:

Category: Blogging, R.S. McCain School of Journalism

Mises on ‘Christian Socialism’

Posted on | March 19, 2011 | 6 Comments

“Christian Socialism, as it has taken root in the last few decades among countless followers of all Christian churches, is merely a variety of State Socialism. … Agriculture and handicraft, with perhaps small shopkeeping, are the only admissible occupations. Trade and speculation are superfluous, injurious, and evil. … It is the duty of legislation to suppress these excesses of the business spirit. …
“In the economic system which they have in mind there is no entrepreneur, no speculation, and no ‘inordinate’ profit. The prices and wages demanded and given are ‘just.’ …
“[Christian socialists] have anxiously avoided drawing the logical conclusions of their premises. They give one to understand that they are combating only the excrescences and abuses of the capitalist order; they protest that they have not the slightest desire to abolish private property; and they constantly emphasize their opposition to Marxian Socialism. …
“It can be seen at once how the Christian Socialism of today corresponds to the economic ideal of the medieval Scholastics. The starting point, the demand for ‘just’ wages and prices, that is, for a definite historically attained distribution of income, is common to both.”
— Ludwig von Mises, Socialism (1922)

This is something I had been meaning to cite since Friday, when the subject of Althouse-hating Madison radical Jim Shankman’s “distributivism” came up in Dan Riehl’s interview. Shankman’s particular species of opposition to market capitalism is nothing new under the sun. Indeed, as Mises shows, it is a fundamentally medieval concept.

Yet reading Mises is a challenging task: Socialism is more than 500 pages long, and not written in a glib or entertaining style. So it is hardly surprising that, among the many who have read The Road to Serfdom by Mises’s disciple F.A. Hayek, only a comparative handful have gone on to tackle Socialism (my copy of which includes a foreword by Hayek, written in 1978).

In 21st-century America, of course, the language of politics is much different than it was in early 20th-century Europe. When Socialism was first published, the Bolshevik takeover in Russia was only four years old, and various socialist parties were popular and influential. Whereas here and now, any attempt to analyze the American Left’s agenda must avoid the term “socialist,” which is always rejected and condemned as an outrageous accusation by the Left, no matter how socialistic their agenda may actually be.

Nevertheless, the rhetoric of “just” wages and “fair” prices, along with the condemnation of “excess” profit and so forth, has a clear political pedigree and Jim Shankman’s Facebook references to Dorothy Day and Rerum Novarum connect Shankman’s ideology to the “Christian Socialism” that Mises analyzed so astutely nearly 90 years ago.

PREVIOUSLY:

Category: Ann Althouse, Economics, Wisconsin

Important Rule 5 News: March Madness Sweater Puppy Contest

Posted on | March 19, 2011 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

No Sheeples Here deftly trumps the President’s brackets:

The Second Annual March Madness Sweater Puppy Contest was officially launched today. Enter early and often for your chance to win a magnificent trophy suitable for placement in a prominent place in your man cave or your website and for some therapeutic breast staring. Enjoy boys!

I’ll let Little Miss Attila decide if we should pry the last two words apart with a comma, but I’m still not asking or telling.

Category: Little Miss Attila, No Sheeples

The Wisconsin Restraining Order as a Harbinger of 2012?

Posted on | March 19, 2011 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Walsh at The Corner is sounding just a teeny bit alarmist about what’s going on in cheeseland:

Yes, a mighty jurist in Dane County with the Dickensian name of Maryann Sumi has halted publication of the new law restricting collective-bargaining privileges for the state’s public-sector unions until she can rule on its merits.

Welcome to Election 2012, the preview edition.

As I’ve been saying, Wisconsin is a test-case battleground for the special forces and new weapons that each side will bring to bear next year. Okay, make that one side, since the Republicans continue to play by the old rules — you know, contesting and winning elections, passing laws, stuff like that — while the Democrats deploy their fleets of teachers, cops, firemen, and lawyers like Panzer divisions. For the Party of Alinksy — the unholy offspring of ’30s machine-politics gangsters and ’60s Marxist radicals — there is no tactic too thuggish, no argument too ridiculous, and no thing they will not attack, including the very legitimacy of the system that gave them their law degrees.

You better wise up, Janet Weiss: Until the Stupid Party figures out that not only have the rules changed but the game itself has undergone, shall we say, fundamental transformation, this adamant refusal to accept defeat on the part of the Left will continue, undermining the very foundations of our country’s legal and political system.

I’m not sure many of the conservative third of the country want to believe that the Left is essentially engaging in low-intensity-conflict. The uncaring third will stay glued to the Xbox in any case. The notion of any constituency in the country conspiring to undermine her foundations is an uncomfortable one.
And yet, given the existence of things like JournoList, and the media pivot on the “New Tone” since Tuscon, one is dragged closer to wondering to what extent the US Constitutional order is, in fact, under siege.

More at Big Government.

Category: Wisconsin

‘Valley Of The Shadow’ Reports From A Convening Of Springs In The CA Republic

Posted on | March 19, 2011 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Stacy was disgruntled, I gather, that the Koch brothers didn’t decide to send him to California Republican Spring Convention. But we do have the Valley of the Shadow on scene, providing an effort worthy of your attention, albeit slightly less gonzo.
The economic train wreck that is California promises to be important and riveting viewing.

  • Will the CA GOP decide that the re-election of Jerry Brown was tantamount to electing Jack Kevorkian?
  • Will California Republicans recover from Fiorina and Whitman?
  • Will Little Miss Attila grow disgusted with it all and commence to regulating?

Interesting times.
Also attending the gathering: The ‘Stache. The man behind the facial follicles is neither pleased with the current US policy on Libya, no ruling out a run for the Republican Presidential nomination:

. . .John Bolton continued to criticize Pres. Barack Obama’s handling of the explosive situation in Libya, as well as creating some fireworks of his own by throwing the door wide-open to speculation about a possible run for the White House in 2012.

When asked directly about a bid for the presidency, the Bush-era diplomat and foreign policy expert said that though he does not have a timeline for making a decisions, he “is considering” it. Bolton laid out his reasons for believing that a late entry into the contest–one that he characterized as having no clear leader at this early stage–did not disadvantage any chances to snag the Republican nomination.

It remains to be seen whether American disdain for a foreign policy seemingly crafted in the Land of ‘Punt’ would draw more attention to The ‘Stache’s vigorous approach, when Americans typically vote their wallets. In other words, can Bolton make a convincing domestic policy case alongside his overseas chops?
Hopefully VotS can score an interview.

Category: California, Valley of the Shadow

In E-Mail to Dan Riehl, Shankman Claims ‘Very Mainstream Catholic Theology’

Posted on | March 19, 2011 | 20 Comments

This is a very significant message from Wisconsin pro-union cyberstalker James L. Shankman:

With regards to distributivism, it is very mainstream catholic theology. You could ask James O’Keefe, who says he is personally inspired by G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton is the main political philosopher of distributivism. The last couple pages of What’s Wrong With the World are instructive here. Someone equated distributivism with liberation theology, which is not the case. Distributivism is the stance that the church endorses AGAINST liberation theology, and you can see this in the theology of pope benedict during his disputes with the liberation theologians.

You see from this paragraph that Shankman is not casually or superficially acquainted with the doctrines by which he justifies his radical politics. No, indeed: He appears well-versed in the literature of “distributivism,” cites the works of Chesterton, alludes to Ratzinger. (Although I detect nothing like “distributivism” in Ratzinger’s 1984 “Instruction” against liberation theology, perhaps I’m overlooking something.)  

Now, go back and read my Friday post about Shankman’s religious/economic views, including his citing of Rerum Novarum. Also read the commenters disputing Shankman’s interpretation (or my interpretation) of Catholic “social teaching” on economics. The point is that these doctrines are subject to interpretation, and Shankman’s angry radicalism is an interpretation that many Catholics do indeed adopt. (Richard Trumka, for example.)

“Yeah, but Shankman’s just a kook,” many people will say. Indeed, but the specific content of his madness cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. Kook though he may be, Shankman says that his beliefs are “very mainstream Catholic theology.” If he believes that this justifies his threats — “WE WILL F*** YOU UP” — then I suggest we take his beliefs seriously. Before somebody gets hurt.

UPDATE: Mises on ‘Christian Socialism’

Category: Ann Althouse, Dan Riehl, Economics, Terrorism, Unions, Wisconsin
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