Mini-report — Foley-free edition

October 2, 2006

Let’s see, seven stand-alone posts in one day on the Foley scandal. How about some other, non-Foley stories that I didn’t get to today?

* Wal-Mart: always awful business practices. Always.

* Markos Moulitsas (you know, Kos) makes a compelling argument for “The Case for the Libertarian Democrat.”

* I’m amazed reporters are still getting the story wrong about Democrats taking Abramoff money. (They didn’t.)

* I’m even more amazed Bill O’Reilly suggested, with a straight face, that “religious fundamentalists” have “no influence” on politicians and the media.

* Ned Lamont has a good new ad called, “Message”

* I’m not positive, but Chris Mooney, whose great book is now out in paperback, sounds almost as busy as me.

* As far as Sebastian Mallaby is concerned, “Because Democrats disagree with my ideas, they are the party of no ideas.”

* John Tester shows how to oppose the Patriot Act with pride.

* The Christian Coalition of America has a new president. Political world responds: “The Christian what?”

* And in Georgia, the wacky state Board of Education is holding a public hearing on whether to remove the Harry Potter series from local public school libraries.

If none of these particular items are of interest, consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

If you want to spend more time working, you’ll have to spend less time playing. And vice versa. That’s the way time works: what you increase here, you have to lose there. At first glance, freedom shouldn’t work like that. Just because you have more sexual freedom, you shouldn’t have to have less political freedom. In theory, you should be able to have more of both.

In practice, it hasn’t worked like that. As sexual freedom has increased in Western societies, political freedom has diminished. In 1928 a lesbian novel called The Well of Loneliness was prosecuted in Britain for obscenity. One reviewer commented:

I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul.
By the end of the twentieth century, anyone looking for hot lesbian love action would not be disappointed. It’s not just written about but photographed and filmed in minute and highly explicit detail, and the police don’t blink an eye. After all, some of them are too busy viewing it themselves. The same goes for homosexuality. In 1928 men got sent to prison for practising it; in 2005 there are openly declared homosexuals in politics and the police force, and homosexual pornography is freely available in every part of the country. Sexual freedom has increased hugely over the past eighty years. But political freedom has diminished.

  • If you want to spend more time working, you’ll have to spend less time playing. And vice versa. That’s the way time works: what you increase here, you have to lose there. At first glance, freedom shouldn’t work like that. Just because you have more sexual freedom, you shouldn’t have to have less political freedom. In theory, you should be able to have more of both.

    In practice, it hasn’t worked like that. As sexual freedom has increased in Western societies, political freedom has diminished. In 1928 a lesbian novel called The Well of Loneliness was prosecuted in Britain for obscenity. One reviewer commented:

    I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul.
    By the end of the twentieth century, anyone looking for hot lesbian love action would not be disappointed. It’s not just written about but photographed and filmed in minute and highly explicit detail, and the police don’t blink an eye. After all, some of them are too busy viewing it themselves. The same goes for homosexuality. In 1928 men got sent to prison for practising it; in 2006 there are openly declared homosexuals in politics and the police force, and homosexual pornography is freely available in every part of the country. Sexual freedom has increased hugely over the past eighty years. But political freedom has diminished.

  • Hey all I just heard on my local news that the FDLE has obtained a warrent for Foley’s residence and office here in FL. Beings that another puke ordered an investigation they probally are trying to beat the feds.

  • From the CCA:

    “Dr. Hunter, a longtime conservative who seeks to build consensus across party lines, approaches politics in a biblical and balanced manner.”

    Unless you don’t believe in the Bible. Then he becomes unbalanced.

    Do these goons have any idea how stupid they sound?

    Sorry, that was a stupid question.

  • Well, CB, I think the issue in the WaPo article I’d like explored is the quote from Cheney saying that Rumsfeld had to stay because if he went, they’d be after Cheney next and Bush after him.

    Which means, to Cheney and Bush, Don Rumsfeld is just a means to cover their ass. How can we try and impeach them as long as Rummy is in office and his ‘crimes’ are so much worse.

  • * Markos Moulitsas (you know, Kos) makes a compelling argument for “The Case for the Libertarian Democrat.” CB

    It is the case for the libertarian Democrat that has created much discussion and not a small amount of controversy when I first introduced the notion in what was, in reality, a throwaway blog post on Daily Kos on a slow news day in early June 2006. -Kos

    Ah, but Mr. Kos. The world did not begin on the first day of blogging. 🙂 The concept of the Libertarian Liberal has been around for a long time. I guess you could call it Compassionate Anarchy. I think its foundation was not property so much as freedom of the individual. And it wasn’t about letting corporations roll all over everyone either. It was the freedom of the individual up to the point that the individual or group was harming others, whether that was drafting our children or polluting our environment.

    Interesting article though.

  • In response to Kos I see liberalism as social expansion and conservatism as civil consolidation. Those institutions which expand knowledge/power, such as education, media and sciences tend to be inherently liberal. Those which consolidate this energy, such as business and government, tend to be inherently conservative. The government social programs of the last century created a form of conservative liberalism, often referred to as PC. The reaction to this was a liberal conservatism, aka libertarianism, which sought to redistribute civil control back to the presumably more culturally conservative local level. Having been originally based on a simplistic rejection of government, this movement is now in trouble because it lacks a serious civil philosophy, leaving its social conservatives and economic conservatives little more than a toxic coalition of greed and cultural rigor mortis.

  • No, Coe—Kos means “Libertarian Democrat.” Now climb back into your mist-filled bong, before I sic the DEA on your shallow little hide.

    Compared to the tangled web of economic rape and pillaging committed by the current “neoconservative felons” in Washington, the Liberal/Progressive coalition that forms the Democratic Party today would fit a fair portion of the defining term “Libertarian.”

    Democrats do not want to pry into a person’s usage records at a public library; Republicans do.

    Democrats do not want to tell people what they can read, or see, or hear, or say, or think. Republicans do.

    Democrats do not want to tell people that they have to buy expensive prescription drugs from obscenely bloated pharmaceutical conglomerates, and that they cannot go to Canada for less expensive, just-as-good prescription refills. Republicans want the drug-store border closed and “protected” by armed troops who search through little old ladies’ handbags.

    Regardless of how it’s measured, the “Big Government” of the Democratic Party is, far and away, smaller than the Gargantuan Government of Herr Bush and his feeding-trough cronies.

    And the conservatives who deny this fact are “the party of cut-n-run” when it comes to simple political Truth.

    Also, consider that the Democratic Party, by consisting mainly of “Liberals” and “Progressives,” is a somewhat out-of-balance construct. There is a Left, and a Middle, yet there is an empty spot where the Right should be. That empty spot; that philosophical void, could be filled quite nicely by the “Libertarian Democrat” that so many find politically incomprehensible. Such inclusive balance has yet to be achieved by any political party of historical record or merit; yet, such a thing would, in all likelihood, bring a not-so-quick, yet exquisitely-painful end, to the vile behemoth that is today’s GOP.

    Eventually, such a grand coalition may result—due to various perks that are unique to the disparate subgroups in the “inclusive” Democratic Party—in a fragmentation that forms four distinct parties: Liberal, Progressive, Moderate, and Conservative. No one party could ever hope to gain an insurmountable majority in a land with such textual behemoths as the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution and its varied Amendments. Government would become similar to a “bell curve”—occasionally skewing a bit to either extreme, but remaining pretty much in the Center (due to a Progressive/Moderate coalition). The two extremes would counter each other—and the one extreme would, by default, be the hunting grounds of the “traditional” Libertarian.

    But for such a construct to exist, the idea of a Libertarian Democrat must, by default, be embraced by the Democratic Party as a whole. Otherwise, it will continue to be the same-old/same-old, with cycles of Dems holding power being interrupted by cycles of Rethugs holding power—and the growth of the Republic’s ideals—the expansion of the Great Experiment that is these United States of America—becomes static, and then stagnant….

  • 11, TAIO.

    And that was in *March*. Now, with the new, lawless law, expect neighbors to “report” neighbors because they don’t like the sound of their dog barking. Or because the neighbor’s child is doing better in school. Or because the neighbor has a do-dad on his mantelpiece that is desirable to the “reporter”… We’ve seen it all before, during the Hitler’s and Stalin’s rule.

    The Foley Follies is our best chance to nail the bastards and undo the laws they put in place but it still makes me sick — literally — that the Torture Bill passed with barely a ripple n the nation’s conscience

  • I just sent a link to Tester’s (for MT-Sen) ad to Sherrod Brown’s campaign (for OH-Sen).

    Brown voted against the Patriot Act, but hasn’t been good in articulating the reasons why. Naturally DeWine is attacking him on it…

  • #11,

    Wow! We oppose terrorist groups opposed to Iran. I suppose that’s what happens when you fight “Global Wars on Terror” rather than actually naming your enemies.

    “Taleb-Jedi was among 200 Muhjahedeen Khalq members detained and questioned by the FBI in 2004 after U.S. military forces took over parts of Iraq once controlled by the group, the documents said. U.S. soldiers seized tanks, anti-aircraft weapons, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and more than 420,000 pounds of plastic explosives.”

    Amazing. We can seize their weapons but somehow we can’t plan to seize the weapons depots of the Iraqi Army?

    Says a lot about Rumsfeld if you ask me.

  • Okay, I’m going to have to appeal either directly to ‘withallourmight’ or to CB to filter this guy.

    Withallourmight, if you do indeed have a point to make, you are losing your credibility by:

    a) Copying and pasting all of your posts
    b) Not attributing your quotes to their original authors
    c) “double-clutching” the ‘Post’ button.

    ‘a‘ might be forgiven if you’d use quotes and attribution.
    ‘b‘ is just bad form, period.
    ‘c‘ could be forgiven if you weren’t already treading thin ice.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I find your quotes and links compelling (and, to your credit, you did use links on your last post, so you are clearly paying some attention and you apparently took advice and corrected your old habit of copying and pasting massive amounts of text.

    Having said that, I think I can speak for everyone here when I say that we’d at least like to see something like “I found this article interesting…” or an occasional opinion of your own (a congenial “my bad” would be a nice start). 😉

    Otherwise, your behavior is very much like that of a spammer and your posts should be filtered (or as we used to say in the “old days”: PLONKED).

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