The Mind of the Left

What is it like to belong to the left? How does the left think? Conservatives ponder this from time to time, as we think about our political adversaries, and as we formulate our ideas.

One of the best ways to look into the mind of the left is to ask a former member. You could ask, for example, Tammy Bruce, the lesbian writer and talk-show host who used to be the head of a National Organization for Women affiliate.

In an interview with John Hawkins to promote her new book The New American Revolution, she tells what it is like to be a left-wing activist. Asked by Hawkins

You said victimhood is the cornerstone of the identity of many liberals and for that reason, it’s very difficult for many of them to give it up. Why do you say that?

Bruce replies:

With an identity that’s based in victimhood, if you find either that you’re not a victim or you find personal independence and power, it literally becomes a threat. (If) your identity (is) based in victimhood (and) that is removed, it literally strikes at the core of the identity of that person.

What about hate mail and death threats? As a person who has had a public life on the left and on the right, is there a difference in the level of hate that you experience from the other side? Says Bruce:

When I was on the left my activism began on abortion rights and even in facing pro-life individuals, I would get the occasional death threat but really nothing to speak of. Upon my being honest and coming out and writing my book and dissenting from the left as a liberal, the threats and attacks are extraordinary. It is a remarkable window into the kind of venom, the kind of hate that drives the left.

And Bruce found that Christian conservatives were happy people.

[I was] quite surprised by how happy they were. I mean, I remember being on the left; no one is happy, trust me. They (are the) biggest group of miserable people you would ever want to meet. Everything is wrong, everything is going bad, everyone is after you, everyone wants to get you, people are building camps.

Modern developmental psychology has quite a lot to say about all this. You can check out one model, Spiral Dynamics, here. In the Spiral Dynamics model it is perfectly natural for many people to live as “red” victims. But they grow out of it, For many people, the way they do this is by accepting the Christian framework of God’s love for sinners and victims.

Does Iraq Have an Army?

In the Atlantic James Fallows reports that Iraq has no army. He writes:

An orderly exit from Iraq depends on the development of a viable Iraqi security force, but the Iraqis aren’t even close. The Bush administration doesn’t take the problem seriously — and it never has[.]

In National Review Online W. Thomas Smith Jr. reports that the Iraq armed forces are developing into the best army in the Middle East. They are turning out “the right sort of men”

"In all the discussion about troop or unit numbers, or fully trained versus trained, we’re missing the real story," says [Gen. Daniel P.] Bolger. "The truth is these guys fight. They want to fight and win, and they do. Some pundits may not know that, but the Iraqis know it."

Who are you gonna believe?

The big question after the fall of Saddam’s regime was whether to rebuild the Iraq armed forces from the ground up, or whether to start with the existing Baathist cadres. The Bush administration chose to build from the ground up. Obviously that takes longer. But it results in an army free of the taint of the Saddam era and more likely to be loyal to the new regime.

Was that the right decision? That will be for the historians to decide.

Vive l'Empereur!

December 2, 2005 is the bicentennial of the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon’s greatest victory. They are having a grand reenactment of the battle on December 3 about six miles from Brno in the Czech Republic, but the part of

Napoleon will be played by an American from Colonial Williamsburg. Mark Schneider is 36, the same age as the emperor at Austerlitz on Dec. 2, 1805, and is probably a better horseman than his historical counterpart.

He also looks like the emperor. Sorry, l’Empereur!

The French are being a bit standoffish about the whole thing, and

President Jacques Chirac and his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, have declined to attend commemorative ceremonies in the Place Vendôme in Paris, whose column was forged from the bronze of captured cannons, and in Slavkov (formerly Austerlitz) in the Czech Republic, where today the battle will be re-enacted. France will be represented by its defence minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie.

The Daily Telegraph notes the importance of the battle. “Like Waterloo, it has given its name to a railway station.” In Paris, of course.

Gloom and Doom on the Economy

What is going on with the economy? On the one hand, GDP is growing at 3.5 to 4.0 percent a year. On the other hand, Americans are saving nothing and racking up huge debts by borrowing against their home equity. On the one hand we have a huge balance of payments deficit; on the other hand the dollar is up about 10 percent against the Euro in the past year. American consumers are buying confidently, yet 43 percent of Americans think we are in a recession, according to Brian S. Wesbury

The uncertainty can be laid to the door of the two big things that the government has done over the past four years. First of all it has flooded the world with dollars to prevent deflation and meltdown in the wake of the Great Bear Market of 2000 to 2003. Secondly it enacted a significant tax cut that cut the tax rate on investment returns for all businesses in the United States.

Three years later we are now in the period of adjustment where we will learn whether these two bold initiatives actually worked. Has the Fed’s anti-deflation policy led to an unsustainable real estate bubble that will soon burst and bring the rest of the economy down with it? Will the tax rate cuts really bring long-term benefits to the economy without deficits as far as the eye can see?

Stay tuned, and place your bets. This time next year we will know whether the gambles paid off or whether they will end in tears.

Phonics Wins in Britain

In case you were worrying, here’s some good news. The Brits just decided to give up on progressive reading programs and mandate the teaching of “synthetic phonics” in the nation’s schools from age 5.

And think. It’s only 30 years since British Prime Minister Callaghan

highlighted the “unease felt by parents and others about the new informal methods of teaching” in his 1976 speech calling for a “great debate” on education.

So that’s all right then. Hey, here in the United States our progressive educators have been pushing “whole language” reading methods for over a century.

But it’s been a long fight to get the Brits back to sanity. The educational establishment fought against phonics tooth and nail. The teachers boycotted testing for eleven years, so it was only in 1995 that national tests exposed “massive levels of illiteracy.”

In 1997 New Labour failed to push for real reform in reading, allowing schools to choose between four reading methods. So another ten years slid by while nothing was done.

The present change in policy is being driven by

the results of a seven-year project in Clackmannanshire, which taught all children using synthetic phonics throughout primary school. When they were tested at age 11, they were three years ahead of their contemporaries across Scotland.

Think of that, mothers of America. How would you like your children to be taught with trendy “child centered” methods and end up three years behind the kids being taught the right way. How, as the saying goes, does that make you feel?

The question that all thoughtful Americans must ask is why? Why has this folly gone on for so long? Why have the schools of education hung onto these trendy child-centered educational methods in the teeth of evidence that they don’t work?

The answer is, I think, that teaching kids the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic is just flat out hard work. So the education establishment keeps coming up with new ways to make schooling less stressful and more interesting—for teachers.

Advice to the Ankle-biters

Many on the right have criticised the president for not doing enough to maintain support for the war in Iraq. Maybe they are right.

But maybe it is better for the president to wait until his opposition attacks before responding with a counterattack.

Suppose he had spent the whole of the last year making speeches on the progress in the war. Why then his opponents would be accusing him of hyping progess, and the Bush Lied folks would be parsing everything he said and would be writing about how on September 17th there really weren’t 95 Iraqi battalions ready for combat but only 87. And that would prove that Bush’s “credibility” was destroyed. And therefore we should bring the troops home.

In any war there are ups and downs. In any war there are horrible mistakes and miscues. In any war you can make a case for disaster any time up to the final battle. In any war there is always a case to be made that the whole thing has been mismanaged from the start, that the leaders didn’t have a clue, that they went in without a plan, that the military contractors are fleecing the government, that the army is broken, that the generals are fools.

In any war there will always be the Falstaffs, whining before the battle in Henry IV Part 1, “I would ’twere bedtime, Hal, and all well.” Do not we all wish that secretly in our hearts?

So the best strategy for the president is probably to keep quiet most of the time and round on his critics, as he did on Wednesday, when they present him with a favorable opportunity for a skirmish.

The best strategy for the Democrats is to keep up the ankle-biting. With their constant carping they have succeeded in eating away at the president’s popularity, and they have kept their left-wing crazies home. If things go south, they can say: “We told you so.” If things go well, they can tell a war-weary nation that it is time for a change.

Of course, that would be dishonorable. But as Falstaff says:

What is honor? A word. What is in that word honor? What is that honor? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon.

Who needs it?

Why GM Failed

The great achievement of General Motors, writes Robert Samuelson, was to figure out a way to build not just one car for everyman, as Henry Ford had done with the Model T, but to build a whole range of cars for every price and taste. General Motors did this, under the leadership of Alfred P. Sloan,

by decentralizing operations (production, distribution) for various products among separate divisions while centralizing policy matters (personnel, finance) at the top.

This strategy worked wonders, at first. But over the years General Motors allowed its costs to increase and it stopped building cars that got people excited and for which it could charge premium prices. Sloan forsaw this problem:

too much success could be fatal. It might dull "the urge for competitive survival," which is "the strongest of all economic incentives." Companies might fail "to recognize advancing technology or altered consumer needs."

In today’s business world, the emphasis is on change, recognizing the “strategic inflection points,” in the words of former Intel CEO Andrew Grove. Its basic reality is a world of change that a business has to ride or fall off. General Motors was built to manage change. Intel is built to respond to change.

General Motors looks like it may go bankrupt. Intel is going from strength to strength.

But really, there is nothing shameful about going out of business. Every business does it, eventually. The day will come when an old and tired Intel will head for the exit, perhaps in a maelstrom of debt and bankruptcy just like today’s auto industry. That’s life.