Wellll . . . somewhat, but never, ever entirely.
Agreed, BrainGlutton. The term “morality” is used far too often for things that have nothing to do with it, and I’m glad to see someone trying to take it back.
The protesters in Ukraine killed police, set shit on fire, and generally broke things. And their “standing around” involved seizing Kiev. Can you imagine the reaction if something like that happened here? It’d be an apoplectic meltdown.
Well, let’s call it Plan B for now . . .
As a small-l libertarian, I wish no one would take it. Your morality shouldn’t be forced on me. If you can make an argument that a policy benefits the country as a whole, then I’m willing to listen. But if you argue that we have to do SOMETHING because THE CHILDREN, then you do something. Leave me out of it, unless what you’re doing is effective.
This is more about forcing it on the state.
Which is exactly the point. “SOMETHING because THE CHILDREN” isn’t morality, and shouldn’t be described as such. When people say things like “You can’t (or shouldn’t) legislate morality”, they’re getting it exactly backwards: You can and should legislate morality, and the things they’re saying you shouldn’t legislate, the reason why you shouldn’t is precisely because they aren’t morality.
Nonsense. Small-L libertarians want the state to do nothing except have a massive infrastructure in place to enforce the wholly artificial concept of private property rights. As long as they’re enforcing those artificial rights, they’re not leaving you out of it: the state’s putting its fingers into every pie in order to stultify ownership of material goods.
And that’s a good thing. But don’t pretend like it’s nothing: it’s a big freakin’ deal, and it’s one piece of the larger project of making sure folks in a society have what they need and are protected from danger. It’s a means to an end, not the end itself.
So yeah: making sure that children have food, health care, and education in our society is the moral thing to do, and it’s profoundly immoral to stultify material goods without ensuring such. And no: we’re not gonna leave you out of the project, because you’re part of it whether you like it or not.
Got a problem with that? I hear there’s real estate on the moon.
On a similar note: McCrory recently declared that he wanted to find more raises for teachers, but it’d depend on Medicaid rolls.
In other words, he’ll pay teachers sufficiently, as long as all those pesky poor people don’t demand doctors, because after our state rejected the Medicaid expansion, it’d sure be expensive for us to provide care for poor people.
He’s a piece of work, and Moral Monday organizers are going to be getting the message out over the coming months. I honestly hold little hope that the state will flip, but what hope I have lies in the hands of the MM organizers.
Small-l libertarians aren’t fanatics like the LIbertarian Party. We just expect value for our taxpayer dollar, and the burden of proof to be on those who support regulating us or taking our money, rather than just assuming it will be for a good cause and then not follow up on whether it actually is. It’s small-l liberals who will support a program that gets miserable or even counterproductive results, and when challenged, respond, “Do you have a better idea? It’s better than nothing!”
What’s better than nothing is letting people keep their money. To take it away, you’d better have a damn good reason and you’d better deliver results with my money. If you think that’s too much to ask, you just might be a liberal.
And speaking of results, if Moral Monday can’t keep Kay Hagan in office, that’ll be a pretty big sign they are being ignored. Returning Hagan to office is the best way the people of North Carolina have to send a message to their Republican state government.
Note how you transform from mainly complaining about “For the children!” arguments to a stupid straw-man of liberals. No, adaher: I disagree, we shouldn’t try to get our tax dollars to be spent effectively. We liberals prefer it when tax dollars are wasted. Is that what you want to hear?
I have high hopes Hagan will stay in office–but we’re working against some deep-pocketed zealots. On the one hand, you have a mass movement. On the other hand, you have Pope and his allies. I certainly hope money won’t buy the election, but I won’t make any predictions.
If you want to predict Hagan’s defeat, though, please do: it’d put my mind at ease :).
All liberals SAY tax money should be spent effectively, but how often do you see liberals support ending a program that isn’t accomplishing much? Um, that would be never. Because if a program isn’t working, it must not be funded enough.
And Hagan will be defeated. Not because of big money, but because when push comes to shove, she represents the President, not North Carolina.
Remember the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (at one point called the National Performance Review) headed by Al Gore during the Clinton Administration?
From the link:
[quote]
As of March 1998 – the fifth anniversary of the creation of NPR – reinventors could point to a number of important achievements.[ul]
[li]The size of the federal civilian workforce has been cut by 351,000 – the smallest since Kennedy held office and, as a percentage of the national workforce, the smallest since 1931.[/li][li]We recommended action on about 1,500 issues in 1993 and 1995. Agencies completed about 58 percent. Of the original recommendations, they report 66 percent completed. For those requiring Presidential or congressional action, President Clinton signed 46 directives and Congress passed and the President signed over 85 laws.[/li][li]Over 1,200 federal teams have been recognized with Hammer Awards; over 350 Reinvention Labs have been created to pilot innovations.[/li][li]We had recommended about $177 billion in savings over a 5-year period. Agencies locked into place about $137 billion. In addition, as of March 1998, the Hammer Award winners estimate savings or cost avoidances of about $31 billion because of their actions.[/li][li]Agencies eliminated about 640,000 pages of internal rules, about 16,000 pages of Federal Regulations, and are rewriting 31,000 additional pages into plain language.[/li][li]Agencies are sponsoring 850 labor-management partnerships. A 1998 survey of employees show those in organizations that actively promote reinvention are twice as satisfied with their jobs.[/li][li]Over 570 federal organizations have committed to more than 4,000 customer service standards.[/li][li]Most importantly, public trust in the federal government is finally increasing after a 30-year decline. Various polls have shown a clear and steady increase over the past four years. While it is not clear this is directly linked to the results of reinvention, we believe reinvention has made an important contribution.[/ul][/li][/quote]
I remember it well because it was awesome. I also never considered the Clinton-Gore administration liberal. That was the whole point of their campaign, that they were New Democrats with a new approach to governing that abandoned the old liberal ways of tax and spend.
I’d also remind you that the Democratic Congress responded to Reinventing Government the same way they responded to Reagan’s Grace commission. Clinton did what he could with his executive powers, but Democrats rejected almost all the real cuts proposed. we had to wait for the Gingrich Congress to get real movement on the things a Democratic President wanted.
Clinton not a liberal. You heard it here first, folks.
Also from my link, in the section discussing Phase I results in 1994:
[quote]
[ul][li]Working with Congress in the passage of 34 laws enacted a quarter of all of our recommendations needing legislation. This included authority to reduce the size of the workforce by offering bonuses for employees leaving voluntarily and major reforms to the government’s procurement system.[/ul][/li][/quote]
Enacted a quarter of the recommendations that required legislation. And it doesn’t say they rejected the rest; there may just not have been time to get to them during the congressional session.
Clinton not a liberal was heard from the left for a long time. A lot of them say the same thing about Obama, although not as many.
adaher: No true liberal supports ending a federal program!
Robot Arm: Here’s a liberal who supported ending a federal program.
adaher: Then he’s no true liberal!
Gotcha.
At the time Clinton was the liberalest liberal EVAR. Until Obama came along, and now Obama is the liberalest liberal EVAR and Clinton was actually a conservative because his economic policies worked and GWB was also a liberal because his didn’t.
Because that how these things work.
Also: Bernie Sanders on deprioritizing the standardized testing component of NCLB, because it doesn’t work.
Chuck Schumer reduces retirement benefits for veterans.
Chris Murphy calls for ending “wasteful subsidies to agri-business.”
So, yeah: liberals do call for reducing spending when they don’t think it’s effective.
Bull.
Liberals generally want to end farm subsidies and other “corporate welfare” and cut Pentagon programs that are nothing but pork for military contractors (or for weapons the Pentagon says it doesn’t even want). Just a few off the top of my head. And many liberal voices are out there calling for some cuts in entitlements too.
Meanwhile, conservatives would like to boost spending in some areas.
Both sides have their spending priorities. Liberals generally want to spend more overall, but don’t pretend they never want to cut anything.