Look, I’m not crazy about President Obama’s foreign policy right now either. Just three years ago and even through 2012 I thought I had a pretty good idea about what it was. What is called the Obama Doctrine speech from early 2011 laid out clearly what the Obama foreign policy at least was then. And was built on what is called Soft Power. Which means you are strong which includes military, diplomacy and economically so you don’t have to use that strength. Meaning you are so strong that other countries would be crazy to want to mess with you.
Another part of Soft Power has to do with when you use your strength. The obvious one being when you are under attack by either another country or some terrorist group. Or when another country is protecting terrorists that just hit you. Which is the reason why we invaded Afghanistan in 2001 because the then Taliban Afghan Regime was protecting terrorists in their country that were part of the 9/11 attacks. And another being you use force when your allies are under attack and do not have the resources to defend themselves. As we saw with Britain in World War II.
The third one is trickier and a hell of a lot more controversial than just the second one. Which has to do with what do you do when innocent people are being murdered especially by their own government. As we are still seeing in Syria and as we saw in Libya in 2010/11. Do you but out and say “that is none of our business what countries do to their own people”. Even if you can do something constructive about it. Or do you act and say the “developed world or West will not sit on our hands and watch innocent people being murdered”.
But again Soft Power is not just about military force. There are strong diplomatic and economic components to it as well so you never have to use the military to intervene in the first place. Under Soft Power military is always the last option. With Neoconservatives it tends to be first if not the only. With Liberals and Soft Power is a liberal foreign policy military force is generally the last option. Because you only want to risk the lives of your military when you have to. So you take advantage of all of your diplomatic and economic options first .
In the first term except as it related to Syria I thought President Obama and his National Security Council had this policy down. But lately it seems to be that they are worried about disasters and things blowing up in their faces so much which makes it very difficult to act on anything controversial. So what we see instead from this President is inaction. That “it is better to not act and rick some situation blowing up in our faces then to act and making the situation worst”. Which is not Soft Power or Hard Power, but No Power and it makes America look weak as we’ve seen with Russia with their actions against Ukraine.
Oh man Dennis Prager, well at least he is provocative and keeps bloggers in business. And I must say that I respect him in the sense that he tells you what he believes and I really believe he means well. Just like he says that “Liberals are good people to and that he just disagrees with them”. I believe Conservatives or in Mr. Prager’s case Neoconservatives generally speaking are good people to. I just tend to disagree with them, but Bill Buckley and Barry Goldwater are two of my favorite people and I’m a Liberal myself.
“America is not in jeopardy” as Dennis put it because we are becoming less religious. The real and I mean real threats in all due respect to Dennis have to do with a sluggish economy that is not growing fast enough and producing enough high quality jobs that keep people off of public assistance. And with the crazy world that we live in all sorts of terrorists that would want to hurt us. And perhaps the rise of Russia in Europe and Eurasia as well. But not because fewer Americans go to church every week, or even believe in God.
But if you look at what are called the moral indicators that give us an idea how the country is behaving so to speak and how we are treating each other we are doing very well. Crime is down which is really the main thing you want to focus on when it comes to morality how people actually treat each other. Instead of how we live our own personal lives. The religious-right may hate hearing this, but we live in a constitutional liberal democracy with basic individual rights that include personal freedom and privacy.
Morality is not how whether you believe in God or not. As both a Liberal an Agnostic I find the notion that you have to be religious and believe in God to be moral, offensive. Morality is not about how you live your own personal life. Whether you live with your boyfriend or girlfriend before you are married or not. Or have sex before marriage. Or date a person of the same gender. Morality is about how we treat each other as people and how we live up to our own personal responsibilities. Especially as it relates to our family and friends, but people we work with and are associated with.
I know for a fact that religion has been a huge factor and benefit for millions of Americans. I respect that and I do even as someone who has spent less than a handful of days in any house of worship period in my life. But you don’t need to be religious to be moral. You need to be raised well and educated well, loved by the people you depend on growing up and later in life. As well as healthy sense for yourself and intelligence and conscience that stops you from doing bad things to innocent people. And treating people with the respect that they deserve.
Equal pay for equal work makes sense to me as a Liberal as long as it is exactly that. Meaning Joe and Sally who work at a law firm or a bank do the same exact job and are equally productive and are both paid well and the same for that job. But if they have the same job, but Joe brings in more clients as well as more business as an associate attorney, than shouldn’t Joe make more money than Sally since he is more productive? And vice-versa if Sally is more productive than Joe, shouldn’t she make more money than Joe since she brings in more business to the law firm even if they have the same position?
There is nothing wrong with equal pay for equal work as long it is exactly that. The problem that I have with people who push this idea and want more government interference here is that they seem to have this idea that women should get paid exactly what men do for the same job. Even if the man is more productive and brings in more business to the company. And that is where I draw the line and if we want a gender-neutral society, (and I’m not sure radical feminists and their supporters do) than gender really shouldn’t a consideration at all when it comes to compensating workers. But instead we should be compensating workers for what they bring to the company their personal and professional qualifications.
What we should be doing as a society is making quality education K-12 college and even beyond college universal for everyone regardless of income and the income of parents. So every American regardless of gender, race or ethnicity can get themselves the skills they need to be successful in life. And allow for them to make as much money as their skills and production will allow for them. Even if they are making a hell of a lot of money and a hell of a lot of more money than men or women. Because their production and the job they do calls for them to make all of that money. Not paying men and women equally even if one is more productive than the other.
Paul Begala makes a god point that Governor Rick Perry could call up the Texas National Guard himself and then the Federal Government would reimburse him. Unless the Tea Party is able to prevent that funding in the House by not voting for it. Or their allies in the Senate are able to block it and prevent it from coming up for a vote. I would hope that wouldn’t happen, but the Tea Party mindset doesn’t seem to want to allow the Federal Government to do anything that requires more money.
As far as the Southern border crisis. Well this is one of the reasons why Democrats and responsible Republicans in Congress want to pass immigration reform to prevent these crisis’ from happening in the future. The Democratic Senate passed a bipartisan bill last year and are still waiting on the Republican Leadership in the House to do anything as it relates to immigration. And if that is not good enough for Governor Perry, well again he can all up the Texas National Guard to help deal with the crisis.
I’m going to try to put this in a way that perhaps even a Libertarian or Tea Partier could understand. The caller in this video as Senator Sanders said laid out real well or perfectly as I would put it what demand side economics is. Which is when someone invests in something or creates a new product or service that people want at an affordable rate that investment will pay for itself because of the consumer demand that it will bring in return with people buying that product or service. And then of course the money that goes back in the economy and the jobs that get created as a result.
As far as government is concern when it comes to investment. I’m not here to try to make a case that all government investment is good and good for the economy. Or as let’s say the further left is concern “all non-defense or security related investment is good for the economy”. Why because people who actually believe in that do enough of that all the time. But the things that government should be investing in as it relates to the economy they should be investing in it a hell of a lot more and do it in a fiscally responsible way. And infrastructure investment is a perfect example of that.
Government awards money to construction companies to fix and build new infrastructure and now what do you have, but companies with work to do and of course they need workers to do the work. So that is where the jobs come in and now people who weren’t working last week and collecting a public assistance check are working this week collecting a solid pay check for the work they do. What do they do with that money is pay off current bills that they didn’t have the money for previously. But each further check goes into the economy to pay those workers bills and for them to live well and enjoy life. Which creates new jobs because of the new consumer demand.
Demand side economics is a term that I wish I’ve been using a long time ago. But that is exactly what it is and a role and not the only role, but a role that government has in seeing that certain projects that the country needs for the economy to be as strong as possible get done and gets done in a fiscally responsible manner. Which puts money in the economy and creates new jobs as well.
Just to talk about this poll for a minute. Millennial’s aren’t Democrats or Republicans in the sense they tend to be registered in one party over the other. But they tend to vote for Democrats over Republicans because as Emily Ekins put it they are what she calls social Liberals. The way she puts that and I’ve heard social liberal used in different forms, but the way she puts that is that millennial’s tend to be liberal on social issues. Which means they believe in personal freedom which is the classic definition of a social liberal. Someone who believes in a great deal of personal freedom.
The term social liberal in America at least lately has been used to describe what would be called in Europe social democrat. Someone who believes in a high deal of wealth redistribution “that government shouldn’t allow for people to become very wealthy. And you stop that by government taxing people a lot and giving them back that money in a lot of different social services”. While civil libertarian has been the word to describe people who believe in a great deal of personal freedom. But the actual term for people who believe in personal freedom at least as it relates to liberalism is social liberal.
I’m actually more interested in that as a Liberal myself instead of this poll, but maybe that should be the subject for another post. But millennial’s tend to vote for Democrats over Republicans because Democrats tend to be social liberals in the classical sense. And the Republican Party is still so much dominated by the far-right when it comes to social issues and other issues. Even when they run statewide even in swing states. Leaving millennial’s a choice between a mainstream Democrat, or a far-right Republican who wants government to be guided by their vision of the Bible and tell free Americans how to live their own lives. Which is not much of a choice for millennial’s.
I’m trying to think of a conservative vision for social justice and it’s hard. Because it almost sounds like creating an Oxymoron. And what I mean by that is that social justice or economic justice tend to be socialist terms. It’s Social Democrats running for office in this country and in other countries who say “I’m fighting for social justice”! Which is something that frankly makes Conservatives or people who are supposed to pass as today’s Conservatives (which is different) want to puke. Because when they hear social justice people in the Tea Party and Libertarians talk about social justice they automatically think that is wealth redistribution.
But just to take the conservative vision of social justice seriously for a minute for the purpose of this blog (if nothing else) I guess Newt Gingrich would be the best spokesperson for it because it was something that he was truly interested in at least when he was Speaker of the House and throughout his congressional career. And something he talked a lot about post-Congress and when he ran for President in 20011-12. The 1996 Welfare to Work Act was an example of that where they took the best of liberal and conservative ideas to empower people on Welfare to get off of Welfare into the workforce.
Speaker Gingrich when he ran for President was constantly talking about what government of all things could do to empower people on Welfare and Unemployment Insurance to get themselves the skills so they can get themselves a good job. He was constantly talking about the amount of time that someone on Unemployment Insurance spends that they could use that time to get degree at a community college or a bachelor’s degree. Instead of trying to look for a job with the current skills that they have.
I mean if you are truly Conservative who believes in social justice that is empowering people at the bottom so they are no longer on the bottom and trapped in poverty, (and I’m trying to say this without laughing at least based on the Tea Party and libertarian-right) then you believe government has some role here unless you are simply only interested in wrecking the safety net in America. And that role from a conservative perspective is about using market values in government to empower people to be able to make it on their own. Getting good skills to pay the bills to use a pop culture analogy.
That instead of saying that “the problem is the rich are too rich, or just rich period and what government should do is take most of their money to take care of everyone else”. Which is basically the socialist, or social democratic vision of social justice that “we as Conservatives should instead say wealth and work is a good thing in America and good thing about our system. And that these things should be encouraged not discouraged and that the problem is not that we have rich people or too many. But not enough and what we need to do as a country with government playing a role, but not the only role is to empower people at the bottom and near-bottom to become successful and even rich on their own.”
Former U.S. Senator and Representative Olympia Snowe who served a total of thirty-four years in Congress is exactly what the Republican Party needs right now. Because she believes in both economic and personal freedom. And she knows how to govern which is something the Tea Party doesn’t even seem to be interested in Congress, or not capable of doing, or a combination of both. Ronald Reagan was no moderate, but he knew how to govern and is a political hero of Senator Snowe.
Olympia Snowe is as Northeastern Republican as a Northeastern Republican can get as you might have noticed in her accent. She represented Maine in Congress for thirty-four years. That is the wing of the Republican Party and I believe the true conservative wing of the party. Along with the libertarian-right in the West because they are truly anti-big government as it relates to economic and social issues And Northeastern Republicans are dying off. And for the GOP to be a governing party again they need more Northeastern Republicans and Conservative Libertarians to make that happen.
You know you are in trouble as a Republican (well smart Republicans know, not Michelle Bachmann) when someone on FOX News freaking Neil Cavuto of all people who is generally loyal to the Tea Party goes against you and tells you “that you are simply wrong. Stop talking so I can explain to you why you are wrong. Would you just shut the hell up for a minute so I can show you how wrong you are! You are not even a senator you can’t filibuster on my show!”
It is really the first part that I’m interested in. As far as what Representative Bachmann (who will no longer be a Representative in six months) was proposing. Defunding the Executive Branch, how would that work? Isn’t she pro-military and pro-national security and against terrorists and everyone who would wreck America as we know it? Well that is Republicans like her claim they are. Their voting records in Congress tends to suggest something else though. What part of the Federal Government does Representative Bachmann think these key functions of government are part of?
I have a great reform proposal for Congress. That everyone who serves on the intelligence committees has to be intelligent. That should go without saying, but Representative Bachmann just happens to be a member of the House Intelligence Committee. (And you wonder why Americans tend to get stereotyped as stupid) The House and Senate intelligence committees are about intelligence right, again that should go without saying. Well to understand intelligence you first have to be intelligent yourself so you know what the hell you are supposed to be learning.
My new reform for the House and Senate would say to serve on the intelligence committees you first have to show some certain degree of intelligence. Have and IQ north of one-hundred at least and a professional and congressional record that shows you are not only intelligent, but responsible and do not have a record of saying completely false things. Or simply making them up. And under this policy Michelle Bachmann would’ve never been eligible to serve on the House Intelligence Committee. And instead had an army of teachers trying to teach her how to be a U.S. Representative instead. Before she was eligible to serve on important House committees.
I agree with Bob Borosage that there is an emerging economic debate in the Democratic Party about the future of America’s economy and what direction we should go in economically. (Good job Bob!) And The New Democrat does it’s part to get the New Democratic liberal economic message out about what New Democrats would do when it came to economic policy. Our pieces yesterday about the income and wealth gaps and minimum wage last night are perfect examples of that.
The main two factions of the Democratic Party are the New Democrat Liberals that basically came into existence with Jack Kennedy when he was in Congress and really post-World War II. President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale and of course Jack Kennedy in Congress and as President were New Democrats as well. Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Barack Obama are all basically New Democrats as well. President Obama actually between FDR/LBJ and the New Democrats depending on the issue. The other faction are the FDR or New Deal and LBJ Great Society Progressives that came to power with Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s.
The other smaller, but perhaps growing faction of the Democratic Party are what is known as the New Left. A bit further left of both the New Democrats and Progressives and have real strong socialist leanings across the board and are really Social Democrats who are pushing for social democracy in America. But now they are with the New Dealers on economic policy when it comes to redistributing the wealth from the rich to give to government to take care of the poor and struggling middle class.
I mention these things well to put you asleep. No because I’m a political junky. Well the second one is true, but the real reason for the economic debate in the Democratic Party is because we are exactly that. The Democratic Party that believes in inclusiveness and having multiple viewpoints and letting the side that gets the most votes and wins the most support govern. Well most Democrats believe that except for the far-left flank of the party the McGovernites who have strong fascist leanings when it comes to opposition views especially from right-wingers.
But in this debate you have the New Democratic Liberals which I’m a proud member which I believe this blog clearly represents who say that the “main reasons for the income and wealth gaps in America have to do with the education gap”. It was as true in 1970 or 1980 as it is true today that the better the skills that you have, the better you’ll do in America because of the quality of options that you’ll have as far as where you’ll be able to work, or even be able to work for yourself. Successful good companies are always looking for the best and most qualified workers to fill their key positions. And will pay and benefit those workers a great deal to have them work for them.
To put it in pop culture terms. “If you have the skills, you’ll be able to pay the bills”. To translate for the more nerdy and less hip among us that means if you have the skills you’ll be able to not only support yourself, but able to put money away in case you need it later on. If you don’t have the skills, you may end up taking pills (or perhaps alcohol, or stronger drugs hopefully not together) to help you get yourself through your rotten lot in life. Which is poverty and perhaps working multiple low-wage jobs to survive. If you are working at all, plus collecting public assistance and private charity to help you survive.
Now the Progressives and Social Democrats in the Democratic Party will say “education and opportunity aren’t the problems with the American economy. The problem has to do with the rich have so much while everyone else struggles just to survive. And if there is any problem with education it’s those people who want to privatize it and hold educators and students accountable. And give parents choice in where to send their kids to school. And the reason the rich have so much and are so successful is because the rules are rigged in favor of them”.
Now once you get past the education and educational opportunities part (which was hard two write let alone read without laughing), I mean of course there’s a lack of quality educational opportunities in America, but not all of what the let’s say further left of the Democratic Party says about the economy is garbage. (To keep this blog clean) Of course the rich are able to negotiate rules that benefit them. That is called lobbying and you have a problem with that change the lobbying rules. And of course they are better represented in the court system when they are sued. Because they can afford the best defense that money can buy. That comes with being rich and successful in America which is part of our system.
And speaking of the system what the New Democrat will say and I’m included is that the problem with America is not that there are rich people or too many rich and successful people in America. The problem with our economy is that there aren’t enough rich and successful people in America. Which goes to lack of quality education and economic opportunity in America. Which is the main problem with our economic system and for the lack of economic growth and quality job growth. Meaning the lack of quality jobs that this country produces in America.
The Progressive and Social Democrat will say “nah, that’s not the problem with our economy. The problem with our economy is that rich are rich and have too much money. And to go to the distribution point, what government needs to do is to take most of what the rich makes and just leave them enough to survive. And give that money to fund government social programs and create a real welfare state in American to take care of everyone else”. The Progressive and Social Democrat wants to share the current economic pot so no one is rich, middle or poor. The New Democrat wants to expand the economic pot so we can all be successful on our own and not need government to take care of everyone.
And that is the current economic debate in the Democratic Party now. Being debated by the Clinton’s and President Obama to large extend representing the New Democrats. And Senator Elizabeth Warren representing the Progressives and Senator Bernie Sanders representing the Socialists.
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