perfidy

Investors 

So I guess you're an equality of opportunity guy, I'm more an equality of outcome guy. I'm willing to leave it at that on an agree to disagree. 

India 

I'm of the opinion that imperialism is never benign. It always involves subjugating another people and reducing them to a sub-human status. That one form of imperialism appears more benign than another, to draw an analogy, is like saying "Well I shot this guy in the face, but I only knee-capped this other guy." But beyond that, the Amritsar Massacre alone indicates that British conduct on the Indian subcontinent, despite attempts by the Viceroy's office to distance themselves from the event, carried negative consequences for the indigenous population. 

Americanism 

I'm not responding to Judson because he can sit and spin. I'm responding to Steve. I don't believe in the freedom to bear arms. Yet I do believe in the freedom to arm bears. What happens to my citizenship? 

Teacher's Unions 

Well we're kind of on different pages on this one, since I'm in post-secondary education. Things are probably a bit different there, as are the unions. My first concern is always my students. I will gladly continue to teach at sub-minimum wage levels without a raise. When I worked at a certain Jesuit University that shall remain nameless, I personally opposed a TA walkout to protest budget cuts because I didn't want to leave students hanging, even a little bit. I honestly don't know what's going on with secondary education teacher's unions. But here in the city colleges, they're just trying to get a few more dollars for adjuncts, if possible. If not, I won't strike, I won't quit, I'll continue to give my best possible effort as a professor. It's all I know how to do (aside from playing the fiddle, I'm nearly competent with it these days) and it's all I've ever wanted to do.

Well, that is a tough one. America is an ideal. Americans are those who hold those ideals. They include, but are not limited to, the these beliefs: that we each have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that we all should have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to bear arms; in the idea that government exists to benefit the people, not the other way around; independence and self-reliance; in rule of law and that we are all equal before the law; and a generalized hatred of the French. Well maybe not the last one.

But that is the core of it. People who do not agree with the things on that list are, at least in some sense, un-American. I freely cribbed these concepts from a couple of pages I found on the IN-TER-NET. Check 'em out.

Well, the problem with the FCC is that it is deregulating the top of the market without deregulating the bottom. It is impossible (and I know people who have tried) to get a broadcast license for radio or TV in this country, unless you are already part of a large network. Cable TV provided a loophole, which is now being closed. While I am not against allowing large companies to merge in principle, the flip side is that you must allow new entrants into the field. As older dinosaurs calcify and grow stagnant, new dinosaurs move in. However, if you lock out the bottom of the market, you assure that the current players will stay there forever. 

We never truly deregulated broadcast media. That is the problem.
 

That the weaknesses of the Soviet Bloc did not appear until the seventies is ridiculous. The only thing that changed in the seventies is that the Soviet Bloc was now trying to do two things with an inefficient economy, instead of one. In the sixties, the Soviets were spending 10-15% of GNP on defense, and even higher if you count nominally civilian projects with military uses. They were spending a larger fraction of a smaller economy on defense. But the nightmares of the Soviet economy go back to forced collectivization, the rural electrification projects, and the like in the twenties and thirties. To say that economic problems suddenly developed in the seventies ignores the inefficiencies that were always present in the Soviet system.

Mike, they're good for you. If they get you a raise, I will be happy for you. But are teacher's unions helping or hurting education for our children? Probably not, because it is the job of union to improve the situation of its members. Every union, and every special interest group is a conspiracy against the interests of every other segment of society. We have to look at the balance between benefitting the members of that group, and the larger society. Children's education in this country is in the shitter. I will not send my child into that cesspool. Mrs. Buckethead was forced to be a member of the NEA despite her total disagreement with their agenda. She was a teacher in Ohio and Virginia, and can vouch for the sad state of affairs that has been to some extent engineered by the NEA, even in the best school districts.

Yeah, but over half of the households in the United States are now part of the "Investor Class." This is not exactly all the wealth piled up at the top of the pyramid. And before anyone points out the richest 5% blah blah blah, the fact that there is inequity in incomes and wealth is not the issue. Do we want everyone to make 37,000 a year, or whatever the median income is? It is more important that everyone have the equal opportunity to pursue happiness (or wealth) in their own way, to whatever limits their talents allow. Equality of outcome is incompatible with liberty. If we allow everyone liberty, some will do better than others.

The peoples of the Indian Subcontinent were no doubt happy to see the back of the British Imperial administration. But it was the British trained Indian Civil Service that made that country function beyond the typical third world dog's breakfast that is the normal state of affairs. The British were certainly the most benign of the Imperial powers, and while the subject peoples chafed under imperial rule, the British introduced rule of law, railroads, medicine, education - rather like the scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian:

REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? XERXES: Brought peace. REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up!

The United States, only two years later, experienced a periodic downturn in the economy, which caused a national leader to get the boot. Deficits in the United States also happened, but were soon corrected when the economy had expanded sufficiently. Nevertheless, the economic boom of the nineties in both the US and the UK is the result of the structural reforms instituted by Reagan and Thatcher in the early eighties.

Mike, your description of the "open stratification system" seems to make a distinction without a difference. The extreme fluidity of movement between "classes" seems to render this concept somewhat irrelevant. There are no lasting voting patterns based on class - other breakdowns tend to explain voting better. For example, black voters vote overwhelmingly democratic, no matter what their income.

I see in our comments that Ross Judson has levelled a challenge to Buckethead, pursuant to our discussion last week on whether the Left hates America:

Hate America, Hate American. If you get to pick the set of concepts that define America, you can manufacture a hater out of anyone! Why not do a little subdivision...just so we can be clear on exactly what kind of America you think is most American.

How about it, Buckethead? It's an incredibly interesting question, on several levels.

What is "American," and what is "un-American?" Just how big is this tent? It's obviously a complicated question. Just this weekend came the news that Eric Rudolph was found hiding out in the very woods he grew up in. From his point of view, Rudolph has been arrested for fighting the good fight against encroaching un-Americanism, and some members of the community have acted in his defense. (Although, many may have helped him hide out because of family or community ties, while still thinking he was a nut). But was Eric Rudolph actually acting in an "American" fashion? I'd say absolutely not, yet many other people see him as a patriot and defender of true Americanism, holding the line against moral decline and globalism. (After all, he did bomb abortion clinics, gay bars, and the Olympics, which makes his agenda pretty darn clear.) Who is right, and is there room for both camps under the rubric of Americanism?

[moreover] Answer: Terrorism is terrorism. The American Revolution was settled in 1865. Or 1876, either way, it's done. Period.

Well, they done gone and did it. The FCC voted today 3-2 to ease ownership restrictions on media outlets. There's a great deal of debate over whether this is a good or bad move, and some good points have been made on both sides.

However, the right answer is that it's a bad move. Period. I'm right. In a perfect world, where the ineffable guiding hand of the market nurtures the good, kills the week, and makes things beautiful, the new vote would be endorsing good policy.

Unfortunately, the media world in general is more like the way Hunter Thompson describes it: "The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason." Whereas media companies control information in the grubbiest and least-glorious sense, I'm fine with keeping a leash on their behavior. I know some of these people personally, and their commitment to "integrity" (*chuckle*) is entirely nonexistent. This decision by the FCC: will prevent new entries into the media-ownership market at any level; will, along with other FCC decisions, further freeze local, independent providers out of the bandwith and license auctions; will lead to an integration boom much like the music industry has seen, where four companies control the mainstream and most of the fringe with a concomitant rise in quantity and decline in overall quality; and will be my personal punching bag until I'm too old to care anymore.

I will blog more on this at a later date, but I cannot today. I sprained my wrist in a freak baking accident on Saturday (shut up.... it's not what you think. I'm a klutz. It's not what you think, the bread was delicious), and typing is rather painful. It's actually a benefit for you, dear reader that I am so disabled, as I'm sure reading my drivel is also rather painful.

[moreover] Time will prove me right or wrong on this count. Except that I'm right.

Nat from I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, is back from his self-imposed exile (some would call it "vacation") in the American Southwest. He has left in our comments this thought in response to our discussion on Reagan/Thatcher's role in toppling the Eastern Bloc and ending the Soviet Union.

Hey, John--this is related to a subject from further down on the page related to Reagan et al and the Cold War. 

The weaknesses of the Soviet bloc economies did not develop until the mid 1970s. The period of detente allowed the communists countries to attempt to solidify some bases of popular support by introducing some elements of consumer production. Furthermore, they attempted to engage in more legitimate finance in order to gain loans from international banks. Correspondingly, these countries lowered their investment in arms production. However, they were always limited in their economic performance. Reagan et al took advantage of these NEW CIRCUMSTANCES in order to bankrupt the communist economies. 

My point: the necessary conditions for "winning the Cold War" did not exist before Detente. No American leader could have done what Reagan had done because the consumerization of communist economies had not yet occurred. Even conservative stallwarts like Kissinger were prepared to compromise with the Soviet Union in order to assure US survival. 

(see Kaser, Economic History of Eastern Europe, 3 vols, 1986.)

Well, then. Good point. Still, I can't really envision Jimmy Carter, Jerry Brown, or Walt Mondale going down the same road with any aplomb. Reagan did come from show business and timing, as they say, is everything. 
 

Via Winds of Change comes this post on Fearful Symmetry (permanent link broken: visit main page and scroll down to 5/31). It's an attempt to categorize the various types of Leftism in America, breaking the Left down into four movements: Intellectuals, Social Democrats/Liberals, Bureaucrats, and Democrats. 

He focuses exclusively on foreign policy, but I think the larger analysis holds, at least in a cafeteria discussion. There are some points to disagree with (strongly, depending on who you are), but an interesting article nonetheless, and quite germane to our recent discussion about whether the Left is Anti-American. His closing line: "Perhaps the left and right can come to some accommodation in this regard. If leftists won't claim that the editors of Southern Partisan speak on my behalf, then I won't claim that Noam Chomsky speaks for them. Is it a deal?" 

It's a deal.
 

Buckethead wrote that, "In our country, the federal workers' and teacher's unions are far more powerful than they should be." 

A teacher's union is currently attempting to secure better wages for me and other adjunct professors. A powerful teacher's union can help me and others.
 

Buckethead wrote that, "Considering the vast expansion of the investor class, ironically one of Marx' dearest hope - that the proletariat would own the means of production, has kind of happened." 

Even though this was an off-hand remark, I'm still going to comment. As I've argued before, the world has changed a great deal since the mid-late nineteenth century. At this point, in the United States, there are very few urban industrial workers involved in manufacturing thanks to globalization, environmental restrictions, the shortsightedness of unions in the 1950s and 1960s, and other factors. Workers, and members of the working class, are now overwhelmingly people involved in the service sector. They are waiters, busboys, pizza deliverers, janitors, auto mechanics, grocery store personnel, etc. They, and educated, therefore technically middle class people, who nonetheless have a low income such as archivists, adjunct professors, and the like, do not have excess capital for investment.

Investors, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly middle and upper income middle and upper class people who, while they work, are involved in white-collar office, financial, business, and other professions. Workers are wage-workers. They don't have salaries. They have no capital for investment, they are not investors, therefore, the workers, overall, do not kind of own the means of production. 

There are and have been manufacturing plants, and some other businesses, that are employee owned, but they are few and far between. They also have a tendency to go under since the white-collar types would sooner buy cheaper goods made in other countries where operating costs are lower due to a lack of minimum wage, fewer, if any, environmental restrictions, etc. Hence, globalization rears its ugly head to defeat employee owned businesses in the United States. But back to the aforementioned workers in the first paragraph, janitors do not own the businesses they clean. Busboys and waitstaff do not own the restaurant. Auto mechanics do not usually own the shop, but are rather employed by it. Therefore, it is not fair to say that the workers even kind of own the means of production. The vast majority of wealth and the means of production that exist, in whatever form, are largely concentrated at the top of the pyramid. Besides, Marx prophesied total worker ownership of the means of production, and society is very far away from that. 

Anti-Irish-Americanism in the Ivory Tower 

In case anyone is interested, I'll explain the presence of anti-Irish-Americanism within American ethnic history. Since the 1960s, with the birth of new social history, American ethnic history became a heavily studied field. As such, Irish Americans have historically been the whipping boy of American ethnic history. For example, Oscar Handlin in Boston's Immigrants painted the Irish as racist, mean-spirited, and money-grubbing. Hasia Diner in "Erin's Daughters in America" painted Irish immigrant women as insane, perpetually drunk, and morally bankrupt. Irish men were painted as drunken wife beaters who often abandoned their families. Noel Ignatiev in "How the Irish Became White," argued that Irish-Americans, get this, entirely and consciously made an effort to become white by hating and mistreating African-Americans. The notion of an entire ethnic group consciously and totally making an effort to do anything is absurd. Did all the Irish in America get together at a caucus and unanimously vote to become white? I'd like to see the minutes of that meeting. The whole whiteness concept is equally absurd, but perhaps that's a post for another time. 

Other historians not even dealing with Irish-American topics nevertheless can't resist taking a swipe at American ethnic history's favorite target. Deborah Dash Moore, in "To the Golden Cities," chronicling primarily Jewish migration from New York to Miami Beach and from Chicago to California, quoted several people who felt they just had to get out of Boston because of Father Coughlin. He lived in Detroit. How was he a threat in Boston? According to Moore, each and every Irish-American in Boston was a raging anti-Semite who worshipped Father Coughlin. Robert Orsi, in "The Madonna of 115th Street," claimed that Irish Americans dominated the Catholic Church and virulently hated Italian Americans for being such bad Catholics. Hence, Irish Americans are evil. By the way, Irish Americans were always virulently conservative in their political views according to many ethnic historians, who argue that conservatism makes them evil. I'm sure Buckethead will enjoy that. But, these historians say, you'll never find, say, a socialist or even an MADL Irish American. They're like Santa Claus. 

But, Mike, you might ask, why aren't the WASPs hated and reviled by American ethnic historians? Simple. When the parents or grandparents of many historians arrived in the United States, they never saw any WASPs. The Irish, however, as previous arrivals, occupied many foreman and floor management positions in industry, and therefore created closer quarters and opportunities for conflict. Many Irish-Americans not of the middle class were also in very close quarters with the new immigrants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

But there's something deeper here. New social historians have glorified and lauded the actions of reformist WASPs, such as Jane Adams, while failing to recognize that those reformists were attempting to forcibly assimilate their grandparents. But the new social historians still just can't get enough of those temperance/abstinence advocating, evangelizing, criticizing progressives. No, no. The progressives were great. Irish Americans, according to the aforementioned and other historians, were more evil than Satan himself. 

Is all this criticism fair? No. Particularly because the strokes are so broad. Of course there are Irish Americans who are racist. But what American ethnic group is utterly devoid of racism right down to every member? Are other groups entirely devoid of anti-Semitism? My mother used to tell me there's good and bad in all kinds. Apparently, other American ethnic historians weren't paying attention when their mother told them that.

Had Thatcher's Tory government made alternate arrangements for workers and miners that would have eased their transition. But they were pretty much just out on the street. It doesn't make much sense to solve high unemployment problems by creating more unemployment. As to Thatcher overhauling Britain and improving its economy, historian Kenneth O. Morgan, in The Oxford History of Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) argues that while Thatcher's policy did introduce some recovery to Britain's economy in the early 1980s, the economy tanked again in the late 1980s after a decade or so of Thatcherism. According to Morgan, 

"Most serious of all [difficulties], the apparent revival in the economy began to lose credibility. The tax-cutting policy of the Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, was now seen to have led to a huge balance of payments deficit, at 20 billion pounds the worst figure on record. Unemployment rose sharply and the pound came under pressure. Worse still, the conquest of inflation, the government's main boast, was now threatened by a consumer-credit and spending boom. Bank rate soared to 15 per cent, and the impact was felt by every mortgaged home-owner in the land" (Morgan 660). 

[Note: I tried to block this appropriately but can't figure out how. Apologies.] 

[ed: fixed it for you!]

Morgan goes on to describe the backbench revolt that removed Thatcher from Tory leadership, partially because of the economic dislocation, partially because her "imperious style of leadership now seemed more of a liability" (Ibid). Thatcher's government saw the same cyclical ebb and flow that affects market economies in general, with some policies reviving elements of the economy, and some policies injuring elements of the economy. But overall it trundled along, up and down, like any other market. Nonetheless, unemployment, particularly for laborers, was a perennial problem during Thatcher's government that she and her cabinet never really sorted out. 

As to the Falklands, given your comments, the inhabitants, the hundred or so sheep on the islands, must have declared themselves subjects of baaaritain. B'dom. Chish! 

While I appreciate your comments on British policy in Ireland, I'm not sure that they, the peoples of the Indian subcontinent, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Iraqis, black South Africans, the Sudanese, or anyone who had to put up with Cecil Rhodes at some point would agree on their "largely positive impact on history in general." I'm sure you were referring to Britain's representative democracy as example, various contributions in letters, arts, and sciences, and such, which is true. For a small country, they made an indellible mark on the world and offered many positive contributions. But the aforementioned subject peoples were probably glad to remove that mark (work in progress for the north of Ireland), and wish that the British would have made their contributions from home instead of inviting themselves to dine at their tables.

Correct. The masses never got behind a global class war/revolution, or even in Imperial Russia. The Marxist prophecy never materialized. It didn't happen. Marx prophesied that the vanguard of the proletariat would initiate the class war and the rest of the proletariat would quickly follow. That did not occur. As far as I know, Jesus hasn't shown up again either. The Marxist prophecy will never happen because the world changed significantly after the mid-nineteenth century, and no, the workers never got behind it, nor will they ever.

The United States does have a class system, but as you indicated it is what the sociologists call an open stratification system. Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day so the sociology folks were bound to get something right thanks to law of averages. But still. Just because mobility is possible between classes it does not mean the classes do not exist. They are fluid, but they are there. Upward and downward mobility is possible, people can go from working to middle to upper and back down to working again. But at every step, there is a step. A permanent social structure is called a caste system. That's when the social ladder is entirely hereditary and is also known as a closed stratification system where no mobility is possible.

In the United States, classes are based entirely upon wealth and education. There is no hereditary aristocracy, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a class structure. See, in Britain and much of Europe, with the industrial revolution, the hereditary aristocracy constituted the upper class, non-titled wealthy and well-to-do educated professionals, shopkeepers, etc. constituted the middle, urban and rural workers the working class. With the industrial revolution, Britain and Europe moved from a caste to a class social structure when mobility became possible between the working and middle classes. Not guaranteed, no, but possible. Hell, some people in the middle class even bought themselves a title to move into the aristocracy. Thus, it is mobility that distinguishes a class from a caste structure, and the United States holds the possiblity fo mobility, be it upward or downward. My terminology in describing the United States as a nation with a class structure was correct.