Mike Lofgren, a now-retired staffer for Congressional Republican budget committees, has a piece on his disillusionment with the national Republican party which seems to me to be essential reading.

He is not kind to the Democrats, by the way, but he seems to see them as merely feckless. He sees the Republicans as transitioning from the more or less responsible Eisenhower model to something increasingly toxic. This sort of thing resonates with me because I agree with it — I’ve never been terribly excited about the national Democrats myself (except Howard Dean – I loved that guy); but I was raised as a Republican and think of myself as basically the same guy, but the national party has moved too far away to be agreeable.

Lofgren identifies three pillars of modern G.O.P. thought (1. Protection and enrichment of the wealthy; 2. Militarism; and 3. Religious fundamentalism) and suggests politicized religious fundamentalism as the key ingredient in the rightward lurch:

It is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in America) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. For politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes – at least in the minds of followers – all three of the GOP’s main tenets.

He traces the drift through Iran/Contra to the 1995 Government shutdown to the Clinton Impeachment to Obama birtherism. He also makes clear that he doesn’t think that racism is a critical component in the antipathy toward Obama. It’s any Democrat. If Hillary Clinton had won the election, we’d probably be hearing more about her role in murdering Vince Foster.

I don’t know anything about Lofgren. The angle generally is to promote his credibility by saying, “this guy was a Republican forever, and look what *he* thinks.” But, I expect he’s already being attacked as a RINO or with some other calumny. I have no basis for judging what axe or axes he has to grind.

(The title doesn’t go all that well with the post; it’s just what popped to mind, and I felt compelled to use it.)

I am one of those who complains about a return to a new Gilded Age. Our economic policy is set up to return more to people as a reward for having money than it is to reward working. But, still, there is a problem — it may or may not be new. What do you do with a work force that is, in some respects, calcified?

When I say calcified, I’m thinking of the sort of worker that has worked for the same company for decades; has come to earn a decent wage with benefits — health benefits being of paramount importance these days — and has organized his life around these facts. His mortgage requires something like his current level of income; he is too old to be easily insurable on the private market but too young for Medicare. Perhaps his kids are ready to go to college. He’s good at his job, and he works hard; but he hasn’t done much else in a long time, and – here is the catch – there is diminishing demand for his company’s product.

Unions are of some use here — they can make sure that it’s really and truly a diminishing demand causing the problem and not simply a desire on the part of management to keep a greater part of the pie for itself.

But, let’s assume that times have changed and the company’s business model is no longer viable. What to do with that worker? Do we worry about “what’s fair?” Do we harden our hearts because, tough shit, he should have known better than to put his eggs in one basket?

I don’t really have good answers. Just some cheerful questions for Labor Day.

Interesting column by Izzy Kalman at Mercator.net (h/t Tipsy) about American versus Scandinavian reactions to bad behavior and how it affects our anti-bullying efforts.

The basic idea is that our anti-bullying efforts mirror our respective approaches to criminal justice and juvenile delinquency. America has a more retributive approach whereas Norway has a more rehabilitative approach.

So why were his results so much better than those in America? The answer may just lie in the discrepancy between the way Scandinavia and America deal with criminals, as revealed in the aftermath of July 22.

Scandinavia comprises what are probably the most socially just countries in the world, with Norway possibly at the top of the list. Its low crime rate and high standard of living are the envy of the world. No wonder Middle Easterners want to live there despite the cold weather! It brings warring peoples to the peace table in Oslo. It steadfastly champions the underdog. Its neighbour Sweden tries to encourage world harmony by giving out Noble Peace Prizes. In the uncut version of Michael Moore’s movie Sicko, we are shown a Norwegian prison for violent criminals. But it looks like an island paradise. The guards do not carry guns and are indistinguishable from the inmates. The prisoners engage in gardening and other productive activities. The staff treat them like decent human beings in the expectation that that’s what they’ll become. And, as a result of their humanistic treatment, the recidivism rate of Norwegian criminals is far lower than that of the US.

Why does Norway limit prison terms to twenty-one years? Because it wants to save people, not destroy them. Imagine you are a murderer. For the coming two decades you will be confined to a place where you are treated with dignity despite your actions. The people in charge care about you and believe that your essential nature is good. Are you not likely to come out a very different-and better-person?

Now, I know there are plenty around here who would say that Norway is just different; such molly-coddling would never work in America. Perhaps they’d point to differences surrounding multi-culturalism, for example. But, knowing my fellow countrymen as I do, I don’t think the humane approach would be embraced even if it could be shown conclusively to result in significantly lower crime.

Retribution is justice! And, here’s the dirty secret: it feels better. It is more personally gratifying to get back at those who have wronged you than to turn the other cheek. It is emotionally difficult to watch a wrongdoer being treated nicely, even if that kind treatment results in the individual no longer doing wrong. Besides, we’re all just sinners in the hands of an angry God anyway; worms condemned to hell but for the grace given to an elect few. Why should we treat the evil among us with more compassion than our Creator dispenses to the non-elect?

We’re coming on a hundred years since the race to the South Pole between Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott. Caroline Alexander, writing for the National Geographic, has a worthwhile article on Amundsen. (h/t Barry).

I’m sure it’s overblown because it makes such a compelling narrative, but I like reading about the distinctions between Amundsen and Scott’s approach which many have ascribed to their respective national characters. The English value the heroic struggle of the amateur. The Norwegians the pragmatic success of the professional. For Amundsen, the goal is getting to the pole in the most efficient manner possible. For Scott, honorable failure is preferable to succeeding in the wrong way.

I tend to be a little skeptical of this because I don’t know that Scott was necessarily aware of a more efficient manner of reaching his goal. But, a lot has been made of Scott’s trudging through the ice and snow with ponies as opposed to Amundsen’s skiing across the terrain with dogs pulling sleds. Amundsen is particularly maligned for coldly calculating the dogs necessary to pull the weight of supplies and then killing the dogs and using them for food as the other supplies were consumed.

Amundsen’s approach was clearly more successful. He got to the pole first and without major incident. Scott slogged his way through his “first rate tragedy” only to find that Amundsen had beat him. Then, he slogged most of the way back only to run out of supplies and get pinned down by a blizzard, just 11 miles from a supply depot, and die.

Afterward, Scott’s reputation was posthumously elevated to that of a national hero. Amundsen lived on, financially strapped and increasingly embittered.

A side-note about Amundsen that I found interesting in Ms. Alexander’s article:

[I]n May 1928, when Nobile’s airship went missing over the Arctic, Amundsen hastened to join the multinational rescue effort, pushing friends to finance a rescue plane. He was poised to get married, and his determination to be involved suggests that, as an essentially solitary man, he was running from this commitment.

The reason I took particular note of this was because I am currently reading King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild which describes Henry Morgan Stanley’s Congo expeditions. Hochschild suggests that Stanley’s engagement to Alice Pike took place immediately before his departure on a multi-year expedition because of his essential fear of women. (She got married to someone else while he was away.)

One of the standard tropes in political commentary is that “both sides do it” false equivalency. If you don’t see it, then you’re partisan. Part of the proof of this is that you never see that “your” side is as bad as the “other” side. Of course, that’s a chicken and egg issue. One would think you’d pick the side that you perceive as behaving itself more.

A problem is that there is very little in the way of indisputable objective criteria to judge who is behaving worse. If you could just put the bullshit on a scale at the end of a political campaign and give the office to the person that comes out lightest; we wouldn’t have this problem. Journalists, who we many times want to serve as referee, are wary of serving this function. They know they are in for a world of abuse from the side that doesn’t get the call. As the Boss said, they end up cringing like a dog that’s been beat too much and spend half their life just covering up. In other words, we get “he said, she said” faux balance. “Candidate Smith says the sky is made of bees. Candidate Jones disagrees.”

False equivalency encourages abuse. If you’re going to get blamed just the same as the other guy, no matter what you do; what’s your incentive for restraint? If you’re trying to beat up the other guy, and he’s trying to kill you; you’re going to lose. With no referee to call foul, you might as well bring your AK-47 into the ring. After all, the other guy is cheating too; he’s coming at you with a folding chair.

I saw a headline to the effect that a bunch of Ball State students got arrested for underage drinking. Just wondering if we should dial down the drinking age or if we think that making kids sneak their drinking for awhile builds character somehow.

In my house, growing up, drinking in high school was a hanging offense (unless you asked Mom or Dad and drank with them – a glass of wine at age 16 or 17 was o.k. under direct supervision.) Once you hit college, drinking was pretty well taken for granted. Part of this might have been that we lived right next to the Ohio state line where, when my older brothers and sister turned 18, it was legal.

So, put me in the lower the drinking age to 18 camp.

Ed Brayton passes along a Wall Street Journal report on an extremely generous interpretation of the tax break for parsonages. Apparently a $400,000 second home was tax exempt in the case of Phil Driscoll’s home in Cleveland, Tennessee.

Mr. Driscoll, who won the Tax Court ruling, leads Mighty Horn Ministries of Greensboro, Ga., which had income of more than $6 million from 2005 to 2009, according to tax filings.

Mr. Driscoll turned to the ministry after a popular music career that included playing a trumpet solo on the last “Ed Sullivan Show” in 1971 and composing for Joe Cocker and the band Blood, Sweat and Tears.

In 2005, a federal grand jury accused him of diverting ministry funds for personal expenses. Prosecutors said he used ministry funds from 1996 to 1999 for luxury cars, funeral bills for his mother and other personal items.

The report also mentions the $6.2 million home of Kenneth Copeland.

Philosophically, I question the propriety of offering tax breaks to any religion simply for being a religion. More appropriate would be tax breaks commensurate with the charitable works performed, regardless of whether the works were religiously motivated or otherwise. But, as a practical matter, I can’t get too worked up about what I believe to be the typical situation – church groups of modest means that put aside some property to house their minister who is not lavishly compensated.

But the Copelands and, I suppose, the Driscolls of the world make it clear that such breaks can be abused to where it looks like corrective action is necessary. If the tax code needs to keep the exemption, we should probably further complicate it by specifying one house per congregation and set a dollar limit of some sort.

Per Hunter, it’s like Jesus said:

[T]he poor are poor because they lack virtue. If they were virtuous, after all, they would not be poor: QED.

[A]ny help to the poor will only coddle them. They should attend church, and feed their souls; if they are virtuous, God will feed them himself. Poor people get divorced, but rich people do not. Poor people are ignorant: if God truly loved them, he would pay for their education (because of course the rest of us should not.) Poor people are not hard workers, unlike the better off: any layabout can pick crops for ten hours a day. Poor people tend to be born out of wedlock, which makes them bastards, which makes them impure.

Above all, poor people are depraved, and should certainly not have their lives made more comfortable and sustainable at our expense. If they cannot feed themselves, they should die. If their children need medical care but the poor have not saved enough money for it, those children should die. If they cannot pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, if they cannot stay in school instead of giving it up in order to earn enough money to eat, if they cannot go to Harvard like the rest of us and educate themselves, damn them, then they are not worth saving. We should tell them to work harder, we should tell them to go to church, and we should tell them to stop getting divorces: after that, our hands are tied.

Clearly, poverty is righteous punishment for immoral behavior, and it would be presumptuous of humans to interfere.

In seriousness, a lot of times, moral behavior is economically advantageous behavior. We should encourage people to be diligent and industrious. But, that’s not the whole story and that’s not the end of the story. Sometimes, people are in financial trouble for reasons that are not immoral. And, just because you can plausibly fix the blame on the person for their own condition, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are justified or even sensible in washing your hands of them.