Now We Are Six

Used to be there was childhood and adulthood.  Then there was old age.  Then, about a hundred years ago they invented adolescence.

Now they’d added a new one.

So now David Brooks, emerging from behind the Times Select wall of silence, can write:

There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age.

“Odyssey” is the new stage. 

During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.

Well, yes.  It’s true.  But only to a limited extent.  Liberal 20-somethings do all that.

And you can go back a couple of hundred years and see the odyssey years emerging in the children of the educated middle class in the early nineteenth century.  Take Marx and Engels.  They were traveling around Europe in their twenties having a grand old revolutionary time.  Then they settled down to write a manifesto.

But there’s a problem.  Adolescence and odyssey only make sense for the children of the educated middle class, the kind of people who do sixteen years of education straight off the bat and then look around for a creative quest to engage their adult years.  For everyone else adolescence and odyssey are a waste of time,

Often the adolescence and odyssey years are worse than a waste of time, they are actually profoundly harmful.

Take the young man who hates high school.  He’s really learning stuff, isn’t he, as he sits in high school wanting desperately to get out into the world.

Take the twenty-something slacker.  He’s really having an odyssey hanging out in Austin, TX, or Seattle, WA, doing nothing much.

Take the thirty-ish career women.  She’s got about eighteen months to get married and start a baby before fertility problems start to set in.

The worst thing is that this adolescence/odyssey culture has been forced on our youth more or less at the point of a gun.  Unless you organize your life in the approved liberal fashion, this society really isn’t set up to help you. 

In fact it actually hinders you.  Suppose you are the son of a building contractor.  Best thing for you would be to get out on the building site at about age 12 and drive equipment around. Maybe you would take time out for a few courses in drafting and business finance.

But you can’t do that.  The operators’ union will be after you for underage equipment operation, and the school district will be after you for truancy.

So you are left just hanging out until you are allowed to start your life by the liberal gatekeepers.

Brooks is right.  Our society does have an “odyssey” decade.  But now we need to relax the liberal cultural hegemony so that other life paths are allowed.

Or even encouraged.

Check the "Back Story" of every Dem Sob Story

The right-wing blogosphere has been having a grand old time with the Democrats’ latest poster child.  A 12-year-old boy gave the Democrats’ weekly radio address a couple of weeks ago and used the opportunity to advocate for the S-CHIP program, a government health program for not-so-poor children. 

Democrats have recently passed an expansion of S-CHIP and President Bush has vetoed it. So Democrats have been hauling out the sob stories to develop the political momentum to override the president’s veto.

The centerpiece of their campaign, reported by Samantha Sault on the Weekly Standard blog, is

Graeme Frost, the 12-year-old boy from Baltimore, MD, whose parents relied on Maryland’s S-chip program to pay for his health care following a severe car accident.

The MSM dutifully copied the Democrats’ talking points without using its army of editors and fact-checkers, but the blogger icwhatudo did check up on the Frost family.  Among other things he found out that

Graeme and his sister Gemma attend the Park School, a private school that costs $20,000 per child.

Their parents live in a recently remodeled 3,000 sq ft home and father Halsey Frost owns his own business.

We’ll see a lot more of this sort of shell game from the Democrats and I have a theory about it.

Liberals really don’t know any poor people, so a lot of the juicy government programs don’t really go to benefit poor people: they go to benefit well-connected Democrats like the Frosts.  And why not?  If you can save on health insurance for the kids and get the taxpayers to foot the bill why then you can spend money on private education and home-remodeling.

(But I suspect that the Frosts also have some private money.  Check with grandma, fellas.)

The thing about government programs is that there’s only about enough media bandwidth for the average person to know about, say, five programs.  After Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and the public schools the whole thing starts to become a blur.  Who has the time to do the research to find out what program you are eligible for?

I’ll tell you who: well-connected Democrats.  Imagining, advocating, managing, and just knowing about government programs is what they do in life.  So you are always likely to find a well-connected Democrat at the head of the line for the next government handout.

Bottom line: checking on the back story of Democrat sob stories is going to be a rich vein for conservative bloggers to mine.  Because the chance is always going to be high that any poster boy or girl that the Dems present for a media opportunity is going to be only a couple of degrees of connection from a powerful Democratic politician.

Democrats' Pretzel Patriotism

The fuss over Rush Limbaugh and the “phoney soldiers” (is it phoney or phony?) flap is all about patriotism and the questioning thereof.  Jonah Goldberg gets deep into the subject.

[L]iberals routinely and righteously condemn the “questioning” of anyone’s patriotism — until they have a chance to do it themselves. For example, in the debates over the formation of the Department of Homeland Security and the passage of Patriot Act, Democrats accused George Bush and the GOP leadership of questioning Democrats’ patriotism.

Or John Kerry before the Council on Foreign Relations:

“I know what the Bush apologists will say to this — that it is unpatriotic to question, to criticize and to call for change.”  

You are not allowed to call Democrats unpatriotic, and generally speaking, Republicans don’t.  They merely hint at it.  But the rules don’t apply to Democrats.  Writes Goldberg:

Sen. Bob Graham called Bush’s war policy “anti-patriotic at the core.” Kerry dubbed Bush’s “creed of greed” — you guessed it — “unpatriotic.”

John Kerry?  Calling someone else unpatriotic?  Sure, and he’s not the only one.

And now with Rush Limbaugh, Democrats, starting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, are lining up to call the radio host “unpatriotic” and do whatever they can to discredit him.

The truth is, of course, that Democrats are caught in a bind here.  For decades they have been mocking the idea of patriotism and nationalism.  They have been urging us to move on beyond the primitive nation state to a global world order.  They are all in favor of things like the United Nations and the European Union.

Their adepts, the left-wing netroots, are fully invested in the idea. They went to college and listened to their liberal college professors and they agree with their teachers.  Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. They don’t understand why the Democrats don’t stand up for their principles.

The reason, dear netroots, is that they can’t.  The overwhelming majority of Americans are patriotic and they believe in the nation state.  Democrats can tell each other in the faculty lounge that patriotism is a form of bigotry.  They can even say it in liberal precincts like San Francisco and Seattle.  But they can’t say that on the campaign trail if they want to be elected to state-wide or national office.  You just can’t get elected to national political office in America by trashing America. 

In fact, the Democrats tried it once, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.  It didn’t work too well.  President Ronald Reagan was the result.

Since then Democrats have twisted themselves in knots with Pretzel Patriotism.  They demand that nobody questions their patriotism.  That’s because they can’t afford to let that happen.  They have to come up with weasel notions like Howard Zinn’s: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” 

But when it comes to patriotic Americans like Rush Limbaugh, hey, it’s Katie bar the door. Take anything he says out of context and blast him for assaulting the patriotism of the anti-war crowd.

But wait a minute.  I thought the Peace people had got beyond primitive notions like the nation state.

Understanding the Left

It’s a week in which leading Democrats have determined to demonstrate that in spite of the pressing nature of the Social Security crisis and the Medicare crisis the most important use of their time is to send letters to the head of Clear Communications to complain about Rush Limbaugh.  And for a United States Senator to threaten to censure someone who isn’t a member of the Senate.

Did he or didn’t he? Call honest Democrats “phoney soldiers?”  Did he or didn’t he call Brian McGough, the poster boy of VoteVets.org anti-Rush TV commercial, a “suicide bomber?”

You have to wonder, what does it take for Democrats and Media Matters to so wilfully take peoples’ comments out of context and use them as political bludgeons?

The answer comes from the review of a book by a British lefty who made the journey from the left to the right.  Matthew Parris writes about Andrew Anthony’s The Fall-Out: How a Guilty Liberal Lost His Innocence.

In political journalism, as in warfare, relish is taken in a parade of defectors. Media neocons will therefore cheer the publication of the very personal tale of one Observer journalist’s journey from the dovecote to the hawks’ nest

But Parris notes that even though Anthony has traveled to the right he still belongs in the culture of the left.

I followed his progress across the ideological spectrum and saw him start doing, from the anti-Left, exactly what he used to do from the Left — labelling people, labelling groups, labelling ideas, ferreting out absolutist and blood-curdling claims made by individuals on the other side and brandishing quotes (the way the Israelis and the Palestinians do) with a triumphant ‘you-see-what-kind-of-bastards-we’re-dealing-with[.]’

I guess he is talking about the politics of personal destruction.

There is another way, Parris points out.  It is not a satisfying black-and-white Manichean certainty, but something more tangled and shaded.

And the lefties at Media Matters could learn a thing or two as well—even from Rush Limbaugh, who conducts his show with a jaunty optimism even on conservatism’s darkest days.

The power of Limbaugh’s voice is that he does not play the blood-curdling game of brandishing quotes.  He does not use the angry sneer.  He just brings out the quotes and laughs at the opposition.

Paying for Health Care -- and Education?

For a century we have lived with the idea that things like education and health care were too important—and too complicated and expensive—for ordinary people to do on their own.

That’s why we have the government spending about 0.85 trillion dollars a year on health care and 0.75 trillion dollars a year on education.  You could look it up.

Here’s a fearless prediction.  We are going to have to give up the whole idea of government-run education and health care and go back to paying for it ourselves.

Because the only thing that a government can do—or should do—is run a war.  Oh, and catch criminals.

Here’s libertarian John Stossel talking about Whole Foods and how they switched from a low-deductible health plan to a high-deductible health plan for their employees.  They put the difference, about $1,500 a year, into Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) for their employees.  HSAs are tax-sheltered accounts like IRAs.  Writes Stossel:

CEO John Mackey told me that when he went to the new system, "Our costs went way down."

Most important, since employees control the money, their behavior changed. Whole Foods workers started asking "how much things cost," Mackey said.

Yes, but when people have to think about how much it costs before they go to the doctor won’t they skimp on health care?

Harvard Business School professor Regina Herzlinger says studies show that "people who have these high-deductible health-insurance policies take a lot better care of themselves. They have more yearly physicals. Because they’re saying, ’If I keep myself healthy, in the long run, I’m going to be spending less money.’"

Republican politicians dare not tell us this, and Democratic politicians will fight it to the last taxpayer, but you are going to be paying for your own health care in the future.

And my guess is that we’ll be paying for education as well.

And that’s a good thing.  Because the most soul-destroying thing in America today is the K-16 compulsory bums-on-seats government education system.  If we had to pay for education, we’d be out of there in a flash.

Why spend money on stuff you don’t need and don’t like?

Is Rush Limbaugh That Important?

What’s the point?  That’s the question I have.  Why would Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) come back to Washington DC on Monday and get right onto the floor of the United States Senate to blast—not Al Qaeda, not the revolutionary government of Iran, but—talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, the jaunty conservative optimist of the air-waves?

Now we know that the “phony soldier” issue, the idea that last week Rush Limbaugh criticized all members of the armed forces opposed to the war, was raised by Media Matters, which is, as Noel Sheppard writes,

an organization is linked directly to Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as billionaire leftist George Soros.

OK, that’s their job, to conduct a Clintonian politics of personal destruction.  That’s what they were hired to do.

But what is so outrageous?  Suppose it were true?  Doesn’t Rush Limbaugh have a right to criticize people he disagrees with and call them phonies?  Without the Senate Majority Leader rushing out onto the floor of the Senate to criticize him?

So you have to wonder.  What is really going on here?  What has changed in the last month?

Well, we know.  In the last month the Democratic presidential candidates have switched sides on the war in Iraq.  They no longer advocate getting out immediately.  They propose to keep US troops there.  Because the Bush strategy seems to be working.  And because they don’t want to get on the wrong side of the American people for the 2008 election.

But what do you do about all the netroots and the liberal partisans that you’ve riled up about the war for the last six years?

You execute a misdirection play.  You sicc them on Rush Limbaugh.

You have to wonder.  Rush Limbaugh is an amazing talent.  His “jaunty optimism” does more to keep the conservative base cheered up than anything else going.

But is Rush Limbaugh so important that the Senate Majority Leader must pause in the execution of the nation’s vital legislative business to criticize an off-hand remark by a media celebrity?

What is going on here?

The other interesting thing about the “phony soldiers” issue is that it mostly concerns veterans who have been trying to obtain VA benefits for which they are not entitled.  Here’s a report from the US Attorney’s Office of Western Washington on Operation Stolen Valor.

U.S. Attorney Jeffrey C. Sullivan today announced some of the results of “Operation Stolen Valor,” a year long effort to investigate and prosecute those who lie about their military service for financial gain or other reasons.

Here are the names of the targets of Stolen Valor as given in the US Attorney’s statement:

• Jesse Macbeth, 23, Tacoma, Washington
• Reggie Buddle, 60, Puyallup, Washington
• Larry Lewis Porter, 52, Seattle, Washington
• Roy J. Scott, 71, of Port Angeles, Washington
• Merrick K. Hersey, 64, of Vancouver, Washington
• Michael D. Heit, 58, of Harrington, Washington
• Elvin J. Swisher, 70, of Idaho
• Carlos Riosvalle, 83, of Portland, Oregon

Notice the ages of these folks!  They were indicted or sentenced for crimes including: “Altered Military Discharge Certificate,” “fraudulent claims of military service,” “Unlawful Wearing of United States Military Medals and Decorations,” and “Theft of Government Funds.”

So they were accused of doing things like altering their discharge certificates to obtain government benefits for which they were not entitled. 

Phony soldiers indeed.

UPDATE 10:19am: Rush agrees! The attack on him is a ploy to distract the liberal and anti-war base from the fact that the Democrats in Washington have utterly betrayed them.

Obama revises plan on tax cuts

All the Democratic presidential candidates started out firm in their determination to repeal the evil Bush tax-cuts-for-the-rich.  You know the kind they mean.  The kind of tax cuts that Paris Hilton gets (whatever that is).

Apart from the fairness issue, for of course it is only fair for rich people to pay a higher tax rate than the middle class like you and me, the candidates needed the money to pay for universal health care.

But now Sen. Barack Obama isn’t so sure, according to Brian DeBose. Of course he is determined to make rich people pay their fair share of the estate tax.

Senator Obama has been a consistent opponent of repealing the estate tax because he believes it is both fiscally responsible and morally right when ultimately the vast majority of people who benefit from these tax breaks are millionaires who do not need the money as much as middle class families struggling to make ends meet," said the campaign.

Yeah!  Squeeze them until the pips squeak! But now the campaign is not so sure.

But the campaign is not sure whether the estate tax would return to the pre-2001 rates, with the government taking 55 percent of inheritances of $650,000 and higher or conform to other recent proposals.

Well, nobody said that dealing with reality was painless.