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Go Home Conservatives, Nostalgia, and Racism

JONATHAN CHAIT AUGUST 19, 2011

Conservatives, Nostalgia, and Racism

BY ISAAC CHOTINER

[Guest post by Isaac Chotiner]

Reihan Salam, in a column today:

One thing that is undeniably true is that American conservatives are overwhelmingly white in a country that is increasingly less so. As the number of Latinos and Asian-Americans has increased in coastal states like California, New York and New Jersey, many white Americans from these regions have moved inland or to the South. For at least some whites, particularly those over the age of 50, there is a sense that the country they grew up in is fading away, and that Americans with ancestors from Mexico or, as in my case, Bangladesh don’t share their religious, cultural and economic values. These white voters are looking for champions, for people who are unafraid to fight for the America they remember and love. It’s unfair to call this sentiment racist. But it does help explain at least some of our political divide. [Emphasis Mine]

Matt Yglesias, noting the higher tax rates and unionization of the 50s and 60s (which presumably conservatives do not miss), adds, "It’s difficult for me to evade the conclusion that on an emotional level, conservative nostalgics like Boehner are primarily driven by regret at the loss of social privilege by white men."

I would phrase it a little differently. Let's be generous and say that nostalgic conservatives are not driven by the regret Yglesias notes, but are rather longing for other, less problematic aspects of the past. My question for Salam is this: how racially insensitive does one have to be to prefer an America with segregation because he or she saw other advantages to 1950s society? What possibly could outweigh the disgusting racial status quo of the 1950s (I am leaving out the status of women and gays)? To wish for a return to that America, I would argue, one has to be so racially insensitive that bigoted seems like an apt descriptor. The alternative answer, of course, is complete solipsism.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

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139 comments

Ask Native Indians what it's like to be pushed aside by immigrants.

- Nusholtz

August 19, 2011 at 9:13pm

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No, it's driven by the flat 15% surtax imposed only on working Americans. Duh.

- rayward

August 19, 2011 at 9:38pm

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An illustration of these different mindsets is in the reactions to viewing Mad Men. Some people watch it and are nostalgic for the dominance and lifestyles of white men at that time, and others see the treatment of woman and minorities, and can't imagine going back to that way of life.

- kluhman

August 19, 2011 at 10:06pm

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Of course the Tea Party ideology is being driven by loss of privilege and some of it is racial. As a campaign issue though this is not a winner for Democrats since the Republican conservative will deny it and it will polarize the electorate. We don't want an "us" vs "them" campaign based on racial themes. This is not the way to go. We need to talk about economics since working class people white and non whites are equally affected negatively by conservative policies.

- arnon

August 19, 2011 at 10:06pm

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If Reihan Salam's hypothetical white voter gets his way, he'll be thrown out of the country with the rest of them uppity feriners.

- tmmats

August 19, 2011 at 11:23pm

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This is a straw-man argument. You don't need to be nostalgic about EVERYTHING in the past. I'm sure that many of these people look back fondly at certain cultural aspects of the past, including, perhaps, by implication, the relative racial homogeneity that was a part of that past, without in any way endorsing the institutional or cultural racism of that society. The fact that Chait assumes that this nostalgia includes nostalgia for the -racist- -parts- of the past, while doubtless accurate as regards some, is also indicative of why such people hate liberals and feel that the Democratic party has abandoned them and looks at them with contempt.

- Curran1

August 19, 2011 at 11:43pm

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My question to Isaac would be: "How racially hypersensitized does one have to be not to understand that PEOPLE SIMPLY WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE!!!" No, you don't have to be among millionairesbillionaires, as your favorite politician likes to say (never mind the crony book deals that made him so undeservingly rich) to understand this. Any middle class or poor person knows that in the 1950s America was a much freeer country, without the choking PC, heavy-handed regulation on business and more privacy than anyone can imagine these days. As for the status of women... Don't fall for the loud militant feminist narrative, which has dominated the airwaves over the past 50 years. Women have always had power over men, what they have achived now is absolute power, the most corrupting status of all. So, they have chosen the fun-at-all-costs life and the white folks have quit breeding. Did I mention the heavy government regulation? Oh yes, the giving hand of the printing press (ehh, around $15T) has implemented the feminist view of life. It (temporarily) pays women to be what they are not, but... I guarantee you, it always collapses by its own weight, I've seen it happen. We shall see the return of equality during our lifetime. Being nostalgic is cool.

- SayNo2TAM

August 20, 2011 at 1:43am

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@Curran: What the hell are you talking about? "Racial homogeneity?" The United States of 1950 was in no way racially homogenous. It only looks that way from here because non-white people were marginalized and ignored. There were just as many black people around in the "homogenous" '50s as there were in the upheaval of the '60s. If you're nostalgic for that "homogeneity," then what you're nostalgic for IS institutional and cultural racism.

- Dausuul

August 20, 2011 at 1:44am

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Hah hah. Women were so free in the 1950's. Sure they were. Sayno2TAM, give us a break. My mom worked for maybe 1/3, 1/4 of the pay she deserved. I'm so sorry to have to tell you this but "freedom" only applied to white males, there was open segregation and terrible discrimination against minorities and women weren't even allowed to participate economically; most jobs besides nurse, secretary, teacher were off limits to them. The occasional exception, like my talented mom, worked for far less than men. Indeed, women still earn far less than men. Of course this includes that "undeserving" Obama who wrote a book, sad to say people liked it and paid money to buy and read it; and he made money from his talent even though he is 1/2 African. But I digress. My sister has letters from my mom to her sister during those years - heartbreaking letters about our impoverished situation. Note my mother was art director of a large printing company. A man in her position would have been leading a middle class existence and were were poor, she was stressed to the max and died young. So go jump in a lake.

- Sophia

August 20, 2011 at 2:30am

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Oh. Well I have an idea for SayNotoWhatever, who is worried that "white people have stopped breeding." We could have White People Breeding Farms, along the lines of a thoroughbred farm, where great horses stand at stud and ladies are brought to them for a large fee. The mares drop foal after foal, of course they are well fed and cared for. And those old boys, the stallions, man they live high on the hog so to speak although they are after all vegetarians, which isn't white, so maybe we'll to think some more on this. But I think my idea has real possibilities!

- Sophia

August 20, 2011 at 2:34am

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Dasuul: That's why I said -relative- racial homogeneity.

- Curran1

August 20, 2011 at 2:53am

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"never mind the crony book deals that made him so undeservingly rich" Huh? To the best of my knowledge, Barack Obama's Dreams of My Father sold extremely modestly back in the mid-1990s when it first came out, and only later became a bestseller when his political career took off. It would seem to me that that's a perfect example of the market working as it should -- the book attracted readers as they had heard it was dealing with things that folks were interested in, and thus they purchased the book. Perhaps when one thinks of the vast number of books (cough) "written" by presidential hopefuls and ex-presidents, a president who has actually written his own book is something we could be proud of, no?

- ironyroad

August 20, 2011 at 3:06am

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While I don't think "complete solipsism" can ever be ruled out as an answer to . . . oh, pretty much anything in contemporary American life, I think Salam is betraying a certain provincialism about the existence of very real racism. I'm not a big of fan of either him or his old partner NY Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat, but they're both intelligent, well intentioned people and that truly counts for something in an era where most Republicans are represented by Fox News, talk-radio, the Corner, The Weekly Standard, etc. So, um, good for them. Anyway, Salam is a young man from multiracial, post-"white flight" New York City who got himself into some very good schools. He's the child of immigrants from Bangladesh and not even the dumbest rube is going to inadvertently say something overtly racist to him about immigrants. Salam now travels between New York and Washington, D.C. (thought not driving a car, like Matt Yglesias he doesn't drive.) Okay, then . . . I would thus question if he's really the person to gauge the racism of whites in rural America and the South. I can assure him that - brace yourself now - overt racism exists to a much, much greater extent that his column concedes. Especially among people who identify strongly as Republicans. He might want to ask himself why in the last election the McCain/Palin campaign tried to pull a last stand and put all its chips on getting white working-class voters (people from union families) in Western and central Pennsylvania voting in large enough numbers to negate Philadelphia and its yuppie suburbs. It's because they knew those people. Thus the entire McCain campaign came down to Appalachian towns in PA composed of aging white Protestants of Scotch-Irish descent and aging white Catholics of Eastern European descent. They already had the South and rural states wrapped up. I don't blame for Salam for being uncomfortable with the thought that many of his political allies would be incapable of getting beyond his skin color, his religion or his name (any of which would truly freak them out), but, alas, that's the fact. And it has nothing to do with their fearing that he doesn't share their "cultural" or "economic" values. Nah, it has to do with the color of his skin, the strangeness of his name and the antipathy they feel to his religion. It has to do with his being different in a way they're uncomfortable with, don't like and (I can assure) Salam won't shut up about when they're with others they perceive as being one of them.

- mtinora@me.com

August 20, 2011 at 4:00am

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Hahhahaha. Did that moron a few posts above actually just say that white people have quit breeding, women have absolute power, and life was more free for all back in the 50's?? Wow. Hey, SayNo2TAM, with your attitude towards women, I don't think "being left alone" is really going to be a problem for you for the remainder of your days on our little plant. And please, enlighten all of us to the personal freedoms the heavy hand of government regulation and the printing press have taken from you over the last few decades. This I have to hear. And "undeservingly rich"????? My my my. That sounds just like something one of us liberal socialists would say. As Irony pointed out, isn't writing and selling a book and reaping the profits thereof a pretty good example of unfettered free-market apitalism? No government grants, no funds gleaned through taxation providing the capital, no purchases made outside those of free Ameicans going out and buying a book. So what part is "undeserved"? At least with dolts like Seattle and the Rat Man you can count on a certain amount of coherence, albeit to illustrate economic arguments that have been thoroughly debunked and proved fallacious. But SayNo2TAM (what is it you're saying no to anyway? Just curious. With your in-your-face mysogeny, I'm going to go with "say no to touching any mammaries") bitches about conditions that have no basis in reality. Where our brother Roid eviscerates economic arugments with no basic in FACT, Soph etc al have the pleasure of responding to arguments like this with no basic resemblence to reality whatsoever. So please write back SayNo, I'm delighted to hear what you have to say.

- Tristan

August 20, 2011 at 10:11am

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Having grown up in the deep segregated South, I can assure you that overt racist sentiments are easy to elicit, especially for those over 60. More subtle racism is seen every day-- including even in the definition of who is black in America. BHO is referred to as our first black president with little or no debate on the characterization-- but he is the son of a white mother and black father. As much white as black (with the biological caveat that there is no such thing as pure white or black from a genetic standpoint). It's not clear how much of the characterization of BHO as black is a racial classification based on pre-civil-war laws defining "blackness" in the South.

- drofnats1

August 20, 2011 at 10:38am

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I wonder if it isn't ultimately healthier for these ugly sentiments to be expressed. Still trying to decide. In this forum, it may actually be true. Thoughts? I've always taken hate-mongering personally and responded in the visceral manner I was taught - no banality of evil allowed in my family. I love seeing how many posters were clearly raised in the same way, or came to those conclusions on their own, from the heart. I was taught that bigotry was to be hit on the nose with an oar, like a shark coming at you. That, and it was unbearably rude and vulgar (WASP's were good for something I guess). Public shaming was the only ethical choice. I'm still going to lean that way. But posts like our friends above can also bring out the finest in us, bring people together to fight back against hate with everything we've got. It may also provide an escape hatch for ugliness that could, theoreticaly anyway, pass if we don't attack it - just let it fitz out. Tough call.

- WandreyCer

August 20, 2011 at 11:43am

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Eloquent and well spoken, Wandrey.

- Tristan

August 20, 2011 at 11:58am

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SayNo, the mind reels. "Heavy-handed regulations on business" compared to the 1950s? You mean deregulated banks, airlines, telecom, all of which were tightly regulated until the 80s. "More privacy than anyone can imagine today"? Sure, I'll grant you this one. Back in the day a guy could beat his wife and kids without the neighbors, church, or police getting all nosy about the cause of the visible bruises. And finally, "choking PC." Oh yeah, anyone could say whatever they wanted back in the 50s, no worries of getting blacklisted or anything. You could associate openly with anyone you wanted: 'twas perfectly safe for an interracial couple to walk down any street in the country, and was no reflection on you at all if an former girlfriend went through a Communist phase in college. Ah, the good old days. How did we not know paradise when we had it?

- krlong014

August 20, 2011 at 12:12pm

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what I miss from the the America I grew up in was that Girl/Boy Scout thing about not ok to lie or break the law, that Golden Rule of 'do unto others', high school service clubs, teamwork from sports and it being ok to win and compete, assimilating into English-speaking America as my grandparents did, being taught by both parents about the need to work hard and save. It is not always about racism! I grew up in the segregated south, and still remember the two water fountains at the local supermarket. I always drank from the fountain labelled "colored" because I was hoping the water would be tinted blue or pink :) Considering today's rampant ageism, ongoing sexism, and increasing reverse discrimination, I am not sure America has made progress. Still stunned by the student in 2004 who accused me of racism when I was student teaching and showing a map of Constantinople on the BLACK Sea. America has NEVER been a true meritocracy, and the anti-discrimination laws are toothless. But at least it was always easy to find a job before the MBAs and lawyers took over in the late 1970's.

- K2K

August 20, 2011 at 1:50pm

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"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress." Peter the Hermit (A.D. 1274)

- MikeB.

August 20, 2011 at 3:18pm

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@ Tristan I sure will. But before I do, why don't you tell me exactly how Barak Obama made his $5 or so million. Does he have a profession? A marketable skill? Does he own a company or what is it in his biography that I missed that shows he knows how to make money?

- SayNo2TAM

August 20, 2011 at 3:31pm

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SayNo, Go find someone who's functioning in the 21st century and ask them if having been president of Harvard Law Review is "marketable." Your rantings about how 1950s America was "freer" was - and, man, this is saying something - even dumber. Please stop embarrassing yourself.

- mtinora@me.com

August 20, 2011 at 3:57pm

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Yes, let's bring back the top 91% percent marginal rate on Federal income tax that existed then. You know when according to Stephen Moore and the Club for Growth, et al., We should have had zero economic growth... I think it was freer because there wasn't "PC" like Civil Rights Act of 1964.

- MikeB.

August 20, 2011 at 4:04pm

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quoted from Patrick Dorinson, who blogs at "The Cowboy Libertarian" "...Unlike politicians, a cowboy still makes a deal with a handshake and his word is his bond. A cowboy does not make rash decisions because the wrong decision can be the difference between life and death for him, his horse and those he works with. A cowboy lives by a set of unwritten principles hard wired into his DNA. It is instinctive because it is the example set by those that surround him. Cowboys don't whine and stomp their feet like spoiled children and politicians often do when things don't go their way. They know that whining and wringing your hands don't get the job done. In my interaction with cowboy and ranching community up in Idaho, I have learned it is very close knit and neighbors and families work together. If a neighbor gets hurt and can’t work, everyone pitches in to help. At gathering time in the fall they take turns helping each other bring their cows down off the summer range in preparation for the long winter ahead. And in the spring at branding time families get together to share in this important ritual of ranch life. They lend a hand when needed, mind each other’s kids as if they were their own, and share hardships and special occasions equally. Those values still exist in thousands of communities all across this country. I don’t know much about Rick Perry, but from what I have learned so far that sounds a lot like his early life in Paint Creek, Texas. He comes from the same background and has the same values as my cowboy and cowgirl friends up in Blackfoot, Idaho. Like most voters I want to learn more about him before I decide if he is the right man for the job. But from George Bush the Elder to Bill Clinton to George Bush the Younger to Barack Obama, the last four presidents were all Ivy League educated and certified members of the establishment that has gotten America into the bipartisan mess we find ourselves. Maybe it’s time for a graduate of a land grant university like Texas A&M and a real son of the soil to get us out of this mess. And someone who knows what it means to be a real cowboy." http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/08/19/give-me-cowboy-values-over-washington-values-any-day/#ixzz1VbLhxAZx

- K2K

August 20, 2011 at 4:07pm

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"why don't you tell me exactly how Barak [sic] Obama made his $5 or so million." Are you being deliberately obtuse, or what? He has written two books. One book had minimal sales when it came out first, fifteen years ago. However, after Obama became a national figure, it was re-published and sold millions of copies (and an edited version for younger readers has also appeared). He wrote another book too. That also sold millions of copies. As the author, he receives royalties (= money) from the sales of said books. If you sell lots of books, then you receive a percentage of the profits, get it?

- ironyroad

August 20, 2011 at 5:03pm

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"Cowboys don't whine and stomp their feet like spoiled children and politicians often do when things don't go their way." Maybe cowboys don't, K2K, but then neither do accountants, bus drivers, doctors, teachers, sales assistants, waitresses, research chemists, plumbers (with one or two exceptions), air traffic controllers and all the other people who go out to work every day to keep this country moving. Fantasies of life on the open range are exactly useless for dealing with the issues of a modern urban technology-drive economy. They were anachronistic in 1911 and they remain so in 2011.

- ironyroad

August 20, 2011 at 5:48pm

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@ironyroad Just how many "millions"? In case you don't know how the book deals are struck, some "special" authors collect the "millions" upfront. Some on merit. Some from cronies. And some plagiarize the Coat of arms of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and present it to the "21st century" crowd as a fake presidential seal.

- SayNo2TAM

August 20, 2011 at 9:05pm

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@ ironyclad “If you sell lots of books, then you receive a percentage of the profits, get it?” O. S. I. C.!! You don’t say!!! What if you DON’T? Your (rich-off-the-law-suits) supporters (community) ORGANIZE to buy your books? And somehow they don’t read them either? It so happens, that back in 1993 I read “A Black Theology of Liberation” by Cone. Tell me, is it mentioned in the president’s big best seller?

- SayNo2TAM

August 20, 2011 at 9:14pm

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"It is not always about racism! I grew up in the segregated south, and still remember the two water fountains at the local supermarket. I always drank from the fountain labelled "colored" because I was hoping the water would be tinted blue or pink :)" K2K. You make my point. Many things don't change. You sound as clueless now as cyou were then.

- drofnats1

August 20, 2011 at 9:14pm

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@krlong I mean small business, and you know it. ANd the banks were banned from selling insurance, not forced to give away loans, and then sell them to F/Freddy.

- SayNo2TAM

August 20, 2011 at 9:19pm

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K2K . As for idyllic Idaho cowboys, wasn't it two Idaho cowboy types that murdered the two homosexuals in Shasta county?? But I'll grant that wasn't racist. And it was in Moscow Idaho. The Commie influence from the 50's probably explains it, No??

- drofnats1

August 20, 2011 at 9:30pm

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@all All the cheap personal shots will go unanswered. Now, about the subject matter. You, screaming bleeding hearts, need to know, that the Salams of America are employed and highly paid by the very WASPs of America you’ve been taught to hate. They also live in the same high rent places. I find it only natural that Reihan Salam feels compelled to defend those he interacts with from ridiculous clichés thrown left and right by the professional accusers. So, dear Marxists, social reality may have determined conscience of the baby Reihan, but the adult Reihan spoke from experience, and you CAN’T STAND IT. Why don’t you just take it, it’s good for you. You are stuck in the noise of the 1960’s (sponsored BIG TIME by the USSR), you can’t analyze the reality, you live in a bubble, in which J. Chait calls you favorite prez, who doesn’t have a technical bone in him, a “technocratic meliorist” . LOL The only reason I subscribe to TNR is their discussions of Marxism, which, from all the comments I’ve read this summer, is not understood, and therefore not recognized by the pathetic know-it-alls, who throw insults at me.

- SayNo2TAM

August 20, 2011 at 9:34pm

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@Tristan "No government grants, no funds gleaned through taxation providing the capital, no purchases made outside those of free Ameicans going out and buying a book. So what part is "undeserved"? Ever heard of ACORN? It a voter-fraud gang financed from the budget by the Democrats. We are talking tens of millions of dollars. They go to COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS. Do you know who they are? If you’ve ever lived in or near inner city, you have to know. They knock on your door and tell you to vote absentee for the candidate of their choice.

- SayNo2TAM

August 20, 2011 at 9:41pm

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Tristan, where d'you go? So far your fat argument has been calling me a moron. You are not trying to beed are you? What's up with the absense then?

- SayNo2TAM

August 20, 2011 at 9:46pm

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@Grimes "Go find someone who's functioning in the 21st century and ask them if having been president of Harvard Law Review is "marketable." If you knew anything about academic journals, especially run by students, like HLR, you'd know that the answer is NO. For it to turn into YES you have to do meaningful research and publish it. Would you like to tell me how much of it Obama has done?

- SayNo2TAM

August 20, 2011 at 10:01pm

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OK I'll bite. This is interesting: "And some plagiarize the Coat of arms of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and present it to the "21st century" crowd as a fake presidential seal." What does this even mean?

- MikeB.

August 20, 2011 at 10:16pm

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Sayno dude, you need to get yourself a beer from the kitchen and chill out a little.

- ironyroad

August 20, 2011 at 10:20pm

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Let’s see, the well researched arguments I have received: Dumb, deliberately obtuse, Go find someone who's functioning in the 21st century, hate-monger. Followed by the patting him/her self on the back “… bring out the finest in us,” Hey, FINEST, you are the reason Reihan Salam had to write what he wrote. You are so hateful, because you’ve never seen any real life, including being “hit on the nose” with anything. You can’t argue your position in any way, your only argument is hate, that’s why people fight back. Had you actually seen any pain in your sheltered life you wouldn’t have been so aggressive, you do need to be hit on the nose pretty hard a couple of times. What passes for finesse and eloquence in your fake world is crude degeneracy and emptiness in the real world. Once again, women do grow out of the feminist solidarity straightjacket forced onto them in their 20s and eventually discover their individuality. Watch them turn away from your fanaticism.

- SayNo2TAM

August 20, 2011 at 10:23pm

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@Mike B WHy don't you Google it?

- SayNo2TAM

August 20, 2011 at 10:26pm

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@ironyroad “Sayno dude, you need to get yourself a beer from the kitchen and chill out a little.” Irony, dear, you don’t have an answer, do you? You don’t have to confess, I’ve known it all along.

- SayNo2TAM

August 20, 2011 at 10:29pm

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Wow. This is just getting sad. Um, let's go big picture, shall we? Cultural identification (and fear and resentment) trumps economic self-interest. The first is instant; the second requires thinking and knowledge and transcending the impulse to prejudice. We've seen ample evidence of that on this very comment thread as various living examples of Salam's subject (older, angry, hardcore Republicans who can't deal with 21st century, multiracial America) have been conjured up for us to spout their ignorance and fantasy. They long for cowboys; they're furious about the advances women have made (and tell themselves women were happier before); they refuse to believe the black President can be anything but a dull-witted fraud; they repeat whatever silliness circulates in the lower rings of Republican media (terror of ACORN, the influence of communists, etc.); they have cute stories about the segregated South; they think white people now have it worse today than black people did under Jim Crow. They rage against elites but will always vote for the party of Big Money (just got to have a "cowboy" fronting it, that's all). They're ignorant and they're delusional and they're mad. What's more, they're literally incapable of holding ideas like the decline of industry and organized labor (hmmm, could that play a role in what's been lost?) in their heads for more than a second before they retreat to crazy talk and visceral hatreds. Salam's question remains: How much of this is literal racism? We all appreciate the human volunteers who came on and humiliated themselves. It was instructive, truly. Everyone is to be congratulated for refraining from overt racism, but I'd argue that literal racism remains a big part (much bigger than Salam wants to admit to himself) and that the sputtering rage, risible displays of ignorance and inexhaustible fear and rage at the party of blacks and women that we've seen on this thread is evidence of that.

- mtinora@me.com

August 20, 2011 at 10:36pm

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OK, again I am biting. Here is a nice picture of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic Seal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coat_of_arms_of_Armenian_SSR.png What are you saying with this? I am not attacking right now. I just want to know.

- MikeB.

August 20, 2011 at 10:42pm

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"Irony, dear, you don’t have an answer, do you?" You're right, my friend, I don't. And that's because you don't have an actual question.

- ironyroad

August 20, 2011 at 10:57pm

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"I mean small business, and you know it." Actually, I didn't know it. You wrote "heavy-handed regulation of business." My mind-reading skills are insufficient to know you'd meant to include the word "small" in that phrase. So let's talk small business then. Small business is hardly choked. Small restaurants and laundromats and liquor stores and curio shops still open and thrive. Small law firms and accounting firms stay in business. People still found technology startups, most of which fail, but then most startups have always failed. When a tech startup fails, people shake the dust off their feet and start another one. Small businesses in some sectors have been hit, but not because of regulation. Small bookstores have been clobbered, but then the big ones haven't done much better. My uncle's local hardware store stayed open from the 50s through the 90s; Nixon-era OSHA regulation didn't kill it, the big chains and their economies of scale did. The small regional bank at which my mom spent her career no longer employs nearly as many people, but that's because ATMs have eliminated teller jobs and mergers have made middle management and support staff redundant. Local video stores were killed by the chains, which were in turn killed by the internet. In the years 1900-1950, exactly the same thing happened to small auto manufacturers, appliance manufacturers, aircraft manufacturers, local department stores. Except for the few that became giants and survived, they got bought out or closed. Studebaker and Wright and Brewster didn't go under because of regulation, which was nonexistent. When I look at small businesses in trouble, I see the ordinary creative destruction of capitalism, for better or worse. Maybe regulation has a marginal effect, but if so that's surely to be weighed against the benefits of safe workplaces, clean cooking areas, food inspections, and the like. "ANd the banks were banned from selling insurance, not forced to give away loans, and then sell them to F/Freddy." Glass-Steagal did rather more than restrict banks from selling insurance. And I've never known a banker to make a loan on which it thought it would lose money (which is not to say they never make risky loans; they just make sure the risk is borne by someone else.)

- krlong014

August 20, 2011 at 11:36pm

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Wandrey. After all is said above, my suggestion is you go unpack your oar. Too bad BHO doesn't have or use one. He stands a good chance of sinking not only himself, but also Progressive policies and the American economy for a generation because he doesn't attack all sorts of economic ignorance-- perhaps because in this area he, too, is ignorant.

- drofnats1

August 20, 2011 at 11:56pm

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@MikeB The Obama campaign changed it and made their own. http://www.google.com/imgres?q=obama+fake+presidential+seal&um=1&hl=en&safe=off&sa=N&biw=844&bih=392&tbm=isch&tbnid=A1867ffjy_cEpM:&imgrefurl=http://www.nonstopsite.com/page/68/&docid=6Ct_Kgzb0pdITM&w=239&h=318&ei=ZIVQTo_mCs7qgQfzh5zjBg&zoom=1&chk=sbg&iact=rc&dur=29&page=41&tbnh=106&tbnw=87&start=354&ndsp=9&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:354&tx=55&ty=40

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 12:13am

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@krlong014 Banks first. The latest interpretation of the CRA did indeed force the bankers to abolish redlining and start giving away the loans to people, who could not possibly make any payments on them. If you know any bankers, ask them what a NINJA loan was. Moreover, in the 2000-2001 CNN did plenty of cheerful reporting on ACORN storming into the bank branches and forcing the managers onto their buses in the middle of the afternoon, which took them into the run-down areas as means of convincing them to give loans to people wanting to buy the ugly houses there. That was the stick. The carrot was the speedy buy-out of those loans by Freddy and Fanny, some banks reported the life of those loans in their hands was as short as 10 days. Normal regional banks didn’t want neither the carrots nor the sticks, they mildly resisted, but the big ones were forced into the big loaning, so the NINJAs switched from the run down areas to the McMansions, in which the poor were supposed to get their dignity fixed, and that’s where the big speculators, often the friends of the politicians pushing for this rape of the banking business, got into the game. The well known IndiMAC Bank, with Maxine Waters on its board, was specifically setup for milking the CRA money flows to benefit the board members. This is called Nationalization of Risk, which invited exorbitant risk nicely handled by Barney Frank and Co. I can write a lot about it, especially about tasking the Comptroller of the Currency with taking the non CRA compliant banks to court. Just one example of what would be unthinkable in the 1950s, plus millions of forms you have to have for each stupid law, they just did Basel 3, Dodd-Frank and all that. As for the small business, I look at manufacturing first, that’s where my first career was. It’s not just the OSHA. It’s all forms of wild taxation – the unemployment insurance, workman’s comp, race and sex quotas, for god’s sakes you can’t bring in a chair or a microwave without having to report this to the tax man and being taxed for that. And here come the minimum wage, would you like to talk about that? It shouldn’t exist, but it does, it’s a tax and a job killer. Now, try to bring in a foreign worker legally, where do you, small businessman employing 9 people, have to go? That would be the Department of Labor. And they will tell you to pay that foreign guy more than you pay yourself, otherwise you’ll “price him out of the US job market”. This is tyranny, pure and simple. EPA tells us if you want to have industry in America, it must not produce any pollution of any kind. That pushed everything out of the US into China, study the killing by the OSHA, the unions and the EPA of the textile industry, the first big casualty of the “race to the top”. Did I mention The Great Society? That was the US response to the passing by Krushchev of the plan of achieving Communism in the USSR by 1980. The Soviet plan crashed first, the LBJ’s is crashing right now in front of our eyes, with Obama adding 50% more weight to the heavy top. You think anyone wants to invest into anything right now? You would in the 50s.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 12:45am

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@drofnats1 & Wandrey I have copied your threats to murder me and forwarded them to the police. Not kidding. Long live the 2nd Amendment.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 12:48am

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I am depressed. We could have lived without this nuttiness. For example, about the Armenian seal? Please. Can somebody explain why there's a problem here? Or what this has to do with Obama or the 1950's, or the supposed failure of "white people" to "breed?" Or feminism? Or ANYTHING? Ditto, I don't see any threats against anybody, however people rightly object to the implication that the brilliant, scholarly Obama has somehow unfairly made money selling his books, along with other nonsense about the supposed freedom of the 1950's, a period in which Americans were heavily taxed, don't forget, drafted, and broadly discriminated against merely for being women and/or the wrong color or ethnicity or religion. Let's just address Obama and the fact that he has become a success. Well, why shouldn't he have been a success? He's not some uneducated dullard. He writes beautifully and has a lot to say. And yes, he has a profession, besides being a public servant: he was a professor for 12 years at the University of Chicago and he was also a civil rights lawyer. That's apart from being a state legislator, and US Senator and President of the United States. There's nothing FAKE about any of that. The man ticks me off because sometimes I think he is a Republican, but other than that I admire him enormously. President Obama is brilliant, he's a legitimate scholar; he's an attorney; he's a writer; he's been trained and he has taught at our greatest universities and I don't understand these attacks against him. IMO they really are racist but also, aimed at poor people. The allusions to "community organizing," etc - this is pretty thinly veiled racism against African American people and also the poor. It doesn't fool anybody. This is really sad and I hate to see this stuff on the TNR website.

- Sophia

August 21, 2011 at 2:27am

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PS I can't resist: Tam thinks he is a shark?

- Sophia

August 21, 2011 at 2:29am

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Sophia, everyone who subscribes has legitimate access to the TNR discussion boards. Our new friend Sayno here is a particularly ugly voice -- check out his very first post above -- but he's at his core not unlike a couple of people who have crossed the way in earlier days.

- ironyroad

August 21, 2011 at 2:48am

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@Sophia "And yes, he has a profession, besides being a public servant: he was a professor for 12 years at the University of Chicago and he was also a civil rights lawyer." Would you kindly tell me what it is (what subject) that he taught and what cases he handled as a lawyer? And how is he a scholar? ANy scholarly writings I can access? Objecting the implications is not the same as having facts. Your ode to your idol doesn't have any specifics, which, of course, are not required for admiration. Reading your post makes it easier to understand how milions of victims of Stalin admired that monster while he made their lives miserable. Sophia (wisdom, heh?), it is not wise to idolize a politician in America. His job is to be your servant.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 3:03am

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@ironyroad "Our new friend Sayno here is a particularly ugly voice -- check out his very first post above -- but he's at his core not unlike a couple of people who have crossed the way in earlier days." Thank you, Irony, Most Gracious, Most Merciful! My ugly voice trembles when I think of what you think of me.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 3:09am

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@ Sophia "Ditto, I don't see any threats against anybody..." Do you remember how the Puerto-Rican street toughs took the armoire Kramer was watching for Elaine? No threats, just threatening. They seem to swing by this discussion board once in a while, unpacked their oar for me.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 3:27am

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John Bernard Books (The Shootist): "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I expect the same from them."

- jacko

August 21, 2011 at 10:51am

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SayNo - murder you? You're almost funny, but mostly just sad. Like so many who have been sucked in to the comforting duality of right wing ideology to soothe themselves in a scary world, you are a paranoid, silly, whining man who wallows in victimology. You rage incoherently at what you don't understand and will never have access to (anything resembling brains or critical thinking skills, access to on-going monetary resources in this increasingly complicated world, probably community too - unless your hectoring buddies on Fox TV count). Please get help. I work with folks with severe and persistant mental illness every day and I know that there is real help available to you. You don't have to suffer. Yes, you are a bitter, hypocritical whiner of the first order, but you're also and a crystal perfect example of the ignorance, scape-goating and racism that still flourish in this country. You allow your fears and paranoia to be fueled and empowered rather than fighting it. After all, you *deserve* your hate and bitterness right? Life has been awfully unfair to you - no one published your books after all! Unfair! You are what unalloyed fear and overly agitating media create in the human mind. In other words: you are straight up no chaser, the real deal. Which makes you very instructive. And for that I thank you sir.

- WandreyCer

August 21, 2011 at 12:11pm

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sayno2TAMMy question to Isaac would be: "How racially hypersensitized does one have to be not to understand that PEOPLE SIMPLY WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE!!!". I take issue with this to the extent it implies that being left alone is more important than anything else. People want income above all else. The economy is more important than anything else. I would say, based on the past 10 years, that if anything, people don't want the Republicans anywhere near the economy. They doused the economy with the theory that only the largest logs can be used to start a campfire.

- Nusholtz

August 21, 2011 at 12:35pm

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The premise (below) is easily refuted: "For at least some whites, particularly those over the age of 50, there is a sense that the country they grew up in is fading away, and that Americans with ancestors from Mexico or, as in my case, Bangladesh don’t share their religious, cultural and economic values" While not over 50, the vast majority of new immigrants are Christian, have a very strong sense of family, and believe in hard work within the private sector -- bootstrapping yourself. These value are much mcuh closes to Republican values than Democratic -- though Democrats do a great job of promoting the Repulbicans are racist meme (or Republicans will deport you meme). And what social priviledge has been lost by white men? Two main premises refuted in 20 seconds. Winning

- mr_rationale

August 21, 2011 at 12:56pm

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rationale - you really are silly with your unsupported proclimations with zero data - vast majority huh? Bootstrapping huh? How'd they measure that bootstrapping thing in the research I know you're going to share now anyway, just wondering. Love the Charlie Sheen worship, it suits you perfectly.

- WandreyCer

August 21, 2011 at 1:07pm

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meant to spell proclamation right.

- WandreyCer

August 21, 2011 at 1:30pm

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"Thank you, Irony, Most Gracious, Most Merciful! My ugly voice trembles when I think of what you think of me." Well, it doesn't have to tremble, but adopting a reasonable tone might be a good idea. The TNR board has quite a number of idiosyncratic posters (not all here these days, unfortunately), and not all left-of-center in a one-dimensional way. It helps if you don't come barging in, shouting and taking a swing at everyone within reach.

- ironyroad

August 21, 2011 at 1:36pm

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WandreyCer: Are you really this un-informed? You don't know that hispanic population increasing? Some facts : The 2010 Census counted 50.5 million Hispanics in the United Sates, making up 16.3% of the total population. The nation's Hispanic population, which was 35.3 million in 2000, grew 46.3% over the decade, and even more sharply in many Southeastern states. Overall, growth in the Hispanic population accounted for most of the nation's growth—56%—from 2000 to 2010. Among children ages 17 and younger, there were 17 million Latinos, representing 23% of this age group, up from 17% in 2000. The Pew Hispanic Center analysis includes counts, growth rates, and rankings for the Hispanic population in each state.

- mr_rationale

August 21, 2011 at 1:41pm

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Sophia: Yes. And they monitor his calls out of his asylum.

- drofnats1

August 21, 2011 at 1:46pm

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You're fun rationale, like shooting fish in a barrel. So what? This proves what in your sweeping generalizations about immigrant political beliefs? That the only immigrants that count are members of a certain, winger approved religion? That every single hispanic immigrant in every state in America manifestly believes your right wing canonical bullet points? You can't just list a number and have it mean anything at all - how do you personally know what 33 million people believe? Are you counting undocumented immigrants as well? Why or why not? How do employment patterns differ between the two groups? Use of social services? How is their mobility is measured? Stability? Before you rhapsodize about hispanic immigrants and their bootstrapping ways (couldn't agree more BTW), you might want to check with the Governors of California, Arizona and other border states about the challenges these immigrants put on goverment provided social services, schools, medical care (and then tell your Tea Party buddies to go jump in a lake about it, considering what they've done to hispanic voting patterns for Republicans). There's not much money to take your kids to the doctor while you're bootstrapping it - taxpayers foot most of that bill in CA for example. I think it's money well spent, but then I'm soft on immigration too. BTW - state breakdowns matter. This immigration pattern does not fully represent New York or Michigan, where immigration patterns are not as concentrated in hispanic populations. Do Middle Eastern, African, people from the former Soviet Republic countries (Georgia, Azerbajian - et all) or Chinese immigrants also fit in to your your same bootstrapping shtick? Or does that only apply to Christians? What if they are Muslim and boostrappy? Is that OK? Again - how is that belief system/bootstrappy thing measured in the actual research? And how does your proclamation (still utterly unproved by your response), in any way "refute" Salam's original observation, which is easily measured by the emergence of an almost entirely older, white Tea Party - suddenly furious at the national debt once a young, well-educated black Democrat with an African name was elected (nary a peep while it was being exploded by Bush, who was handed enormous surpluses): "For at least some whites, particularly those over the age of 50, there is a sense that the country they grew up in is fading away, and that Americans with ancestors from Mexico or, as in my case, Bangladesh don’t share their religious, cultural and economic values"

- WandreyCer

August 21, 2011 at 2:42pm

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@Nusholtz Being left alone means not being subjected to regulatory violence perpetrated by the Trotskyite permanent revolutionaries under the pretext of making my world a better place. My point was you didn’t have to be a millionaire to want less government. And the only response the Trotskyites have is to scream “racism”. You can see for yourself right on this thread how self-imposed hypersensitivity has instilled in most of my detractors a very high degree of religiosity. Anything they have never heard before they threat as blasphemy and immediately call for my death by the oar.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 3:46pm

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sayno, what I find most amusing about you is that by paying money to subscribe to a Liberal magazine, you are financially supporting the "Trotskyite permanent revolutionaries" I find your posts to be greatly amusing, I have no idea what death by the oar is nor do I wish it on you or anyone (outside of Assad or Gadhafi). Might I suggest you might find kindred spirits at Redstate.com or Freerepublic.com, you can all congratulate yourself on how you are fighting the Trotskyites by ranting on a website. As to me, I am on my way into town to buy some Ricavilla Kentucky. I also find great comfort to know that you and I are seperated by thousands of miles and I shall never physically come into contact with you. So rant away and I will chuckle away at you.

- blackton

August 21, 2011 at 4:00pm

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@mr_rationale Thank you, mr_rationale. I can tell you, I haven't been Mexican for one second of my life, but I look sort of Mexican and I have quite a collection of people's reaction to my appearance. Positive by far outweighs the negative, but as far as actually doing business with the bearers of the much hated here Norse facial features, that has been 99% positive. I'm sure Salam (let's get back to the topic of this conversation) had similar thoughts when writing his outrageous blasphemy, which sent the religious fanatics flying off the handle. I think, just like most foreign journalists, the crowd that screams at me never leaves New York to check on the life in the fly-over country. Such a terrible case of insularity, no wonder they are so fanatical they attack me with an oar. And bootstrapping (for Mexicans, Nordics or Pakistanis) is impossible, if the employers’ investment is declared a crime against humanity by a “wonderful scholar” with no professional experience of any kind. After they do this algebraic exercise called financial planning, they see a loss at the bottom of the spreadsheet (which is usually done for at least a 5-year period) and wait for better times. Extending the Bush tax cuts for 2 years was absolutely worthless, 10 years at least is needed, better yet, make them permanent.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 4:10pm

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What's going on here?

- Konstantin

August 21, 2011 at 4:14pm

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Regulatory violence? Jeesh, your paranoia is pronounced SayNo. Yes, many of us experience you as bigoted, not much can be done about that on my end, I'm afraid. But I have no more threatened you than you have threatened me, which is to say - not at all. That is simply delusional. To say that someone disagreeing with you is a threat is your problem to change, no one else's. I see this as more of the dish-it-out-but-can't-take-it syndrome that affects Fox- media saturated wingers. But answer me this - do you think being left alone includes putting lead back in to gas? Or ceasing food inspections? How about requiring proof that new medicines are safe before marketing them? Worker safety standards? Most firms are more than happy to comply. What about building standards - think we should stop inspecting the concrete or metal used? What the heck if a building or two falls in to a heap every now and then and kills people? Is this freedom? Why? Do you think these things are Trotskyites? I am genuinally curious to know if you can you speak in anything but paranoid, resentful, content-free platitudes you've swallowed whole from various Fox news outlets (it seems). You all have the same shtick, word for word.

- WandreyCer

August 21, 2011 at 4:16pm

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Hi Konstantin - we seem to be having a bit of a debate between the Trotsyites and the rest of the world. As I understand it anyway. I'm just so fed up with this idiocy, I am unable to be even pretend to be polite anymore. Apparently I frightened SayNo with a metaphor somehow. I do always enjoy mr rational, he at least tries to make sense. But right wing ideology has simply exhausted my last nerve. I'd better got back to my Trotsyite compound and start planning my next regulatory violence with my coven of liberal women commrades (AKA - I need to make dinner for my little boy).

- WandreyCer

August 21, 2011 at 4:22pm

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Dear blackton, I find Isaac Chotiner’s question genuine. He didn’t just want to provoke a discussion, he ( a rather young chap, it seems) is looking for an answer, and simply telling him that most men in America do grow up and reach the age of 40 is not enough. I did clearly state my interest in TNR, discussions of Marxism that is, and, you should know, they go out of their way to tell the readers that they are not Marxists (which I can dispute, but I appreciate the drift). Also, they have other great topics of interest such as the USSR, which is never in the picture in any discussions of geopolitics in your circles, that’s why I brought up the coat of arms of the Armenian SSR. What’s amusing to me is that you think that TNR is Trotskyite. Take it from me, they don’t really think so. They love decadence way too much, which is quite all right with me. But… Obama & Co certainly are. Now, what’s with “ separated by thousands of miles and I shall never physically come into contact with you” ? Did you have a violent though and then decided not to sound it out?

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 4:29pm

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Wandrey. I appreciate your efforts, but unlike BHO, you must learn when to quit trying to reason with those that won't. In the words of Barney F., your talkin' to a table. Or more likely, inmates of a ward in Bellvue in the summer that are transferred to a ward in Chattahoochie for the winter--- and disappointed the latter is no longer segregated.

- drofnats1

August 21, 2011 at 4:31pm

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** "Women have always had power over men, what they have achived now is absolute power, the most corrupting status of all." ** Oh, would that this were true. I'd be glad to hand over all governmental power exclusively to women. That'd be change I can believe in.

- Konstantin

August 21, 2011 at 4:31pm

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Wandrey: You are too dense to continue the banter Do some basic research on the demographics of Hispanics. They are mostly Catholic, come to the US to work (not in public sector), and have a very strong sense of family, extended family. If you are too stupid to find the demographic studies -- let me know.

- mr_rationale

August 21, 2011 at 4:33pm

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@Konstantin "I'd be glad to hand over all governmental power exclusively to women. " The great virtues of diversity are taught in any stats course. Diversity prevents the mean from taking on extreme values. Oh, wait, it's about ideas, not sex... How about Cleopatra. She used her body to advance the power of Egypt. Konstantin, never hand over your power to anyone, men or women. You are in America. You have the power. You may not have the time to exercise it, so you hire a representative to act on your behalf, and that's it.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 5:20pm

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Drofnats quoting Barney!!! Whew, a lone nut I can handle. Now I know your name, droffy, it’s don Quijote de la Mancha. See that windmill, man!? Char-r-ge!!!

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 5:37pm

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I didn't hire that imbecile Renee Ellmers to represent Fort Bragg & me. Policy-wise, she is what those of us who aced Advance Placement Statistics in our junior year of high school would call an outlier. Unfortunately, much of the composition of today's Republican party is outliers. The current American right wing mean is extreme; way too many Republicans vary by more than what the standard deviation should be. I've never been an Obama fan. I thought he was the least qualified of all 2008 POTUS candidates, and I'm a little surprised at just how much of a Republican he's turned out to be, but I look forward to voting for him again.

- Konstantin

August 21, 2011 at 5:52pm

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this choir needs to watch Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino". at least twice. Maybe then you might begin to understand the America outside your "everyone-is-a-racist" silo. no wonder the left is shrinking. blind and deaf. Reading this thread reminds me of the first time I rode the elevator alone with Charles Barron, Brooklyn City Council (I was working in David Paterson's office, one floor below the City Council at the time). Barron auto-pilot, assumed I was a racist, but was open-minded enough to change his mind by the time we reached the lobby. Hasta la vista, ideologicos.

- K2K

August 21, 2011 at 5:53pm

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I've watched Gran Torino more than twice K2K. What is it that you think the movie teaches? Dhurtado

- NR143296

August 21, 2011 at 6:11pm

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@ Wandrey “But answer me this - do you think being left alone includes putting lead back in to gas? Or ceasing food inspections? How about requiring proof that new medicines are safe before marketing them? Worker safety standards? Most firms are more than happy to comply. What about building standards - think we should stop inspecting the concrete or metal used? What the heck if a building or two falls in to a heap every now and then and kills people? Is this freedom? Why? Do you think these things are Trotskyites?” Wandrey, if you are so much into this, you’ve got to know the difference between the Progressive and the Trotskyites. In the chronological order of appearance that is. But, you forgot the classic “you love the freeways, don’t you?” Well, when it comes to chronology Obama supporters are usually helpless, so here it is. Progressive view of life, just like Marketing, arose from the new needs of oversupplied society created by free enterprise. It was absolutely free to create beautiful and ugly things. Yes, higher quality, especially for food, was advocated from within the society by rapidly developing health care industry, which had difficulty treating food-borne illness and, as a son of a doctor, I must tell you, any normative advice to patients coming from a doctor always has a totalitarian feel to it. Progressive ideas were filling an empty legal space, I can’t write a longer story of that for you right now. What you don’t want to see is the political power acquired by the Progressives in the legitimate pursuit of the improvement of bad situations reported, magnified and overblown by another rising institution – mass media. You need to draw the timeline on paper to see the concurrency. What you absolutely don’t see was the part of Progressivism that took over the food and safety concerns and became THE BIG GOAL - a better human. Eugenics spearheaded the process of progress, and you know what, Wandrey, the best human had to be VERY NORSE. If your picture of Progressivism does not include that simple fact, you can’t possibly talk about bigotry, racism and discrimination. Get these undeniable truths from me: 1. All early Christians were Jews. 2. Water is wet. 3. Sun is bright. 4. Progressivism is highly racist. It also helps to study the rise of statistical thinking in the 19th century, which provided the necessary explanations for progress in food, safety, and, you need to know , genetics. In fact the biggest name in statistics is that of a big Progressive British thinker, evolutionary biologist, geneticist and EUGENISIT. Funny, his own genes would have to be disqualified from participating in further progress due to his extremely poor eye sight. Point, Wandrey, the Progressives acquired big power. For a reason, I’ll grant you that, but… The legal space was filled. In fact, it’s overflowing. Report every $600 move to us, what? No one ever gives up power willingly. Back to the timeline. To keep power they, Progressives, usurped the media and forced the useless and harmful “improvements” such as promotion of (super racist) unions, farm aid and minimum wage. Pushing that further did, indeed, required the Trotskyite push, which only appeared (half way around the world) half a century after the Progressive push and did, necessarily, have worldwide goals of anti private property brutality and no rest of any kind for property owners. But what the heck, power is everything, we’ll just lie about everything. Guess what. Hyper - hypocrisy became very necessary next. Very loud, lying and permanent. Oh, we, racists, hate racism. We, super rich, get rich by suing for non-compliance with the legislation we have passed. It’s good for you, it’s very progressive. We’ll pass more, sue more and get richer, and we’ll get some young clueless people to do the propaganda for us. We, taxmen, are not taxed enough, we tell you about the virtues of high taxation and use every loophole we have put into the laws we have written to pay as little taxes as possible. Very loud, lying and permanent. No, they would not surrender their own property. On the contrary, they keep the power, grow THEIR property by confiscating mine, and enlist scores of young, naïve and extremely loud foot soldiers to fight for their power. Are you one of them?

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 6:35pm

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@Konstantin She's a woman, isn't she? For that reason, according to you, she must have... what was it?? Oh yeah: " hand over all governmental power exclusively to women" Insults you use are a sign of your own imbecility as far as I am concerned. Well, you are in a good company, most people here resort to insults immediately upon hearing a dissenting poit of view.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 6:45pm

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SayNo: "Do you think these things are Trotskyites?" Hm. Aren't "Trotskyites" normally people, rather than things? But now that I think about it, I have a pretty left-of-center microwave, which is always lecturing me about the New Left and SDS whenever I'm in the kitchen. Is it a "Trotksyite," do you think?

- ironyroad

August 21, 2011 at 6:57pm

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Ellmers deliberately conflated "Muslims" and "terrorists" in her campaign ads. For the most part, she copy-&-pasted the Tea Party platform to her campaign and rode the right wing wave to office. The NYC mosque was the one "issue" on which she took a strong stance to make a name for herself and appeal to my more ignorant neighbors. Anderson Cooper tore her down repeatedly, but she enjoyed the forum he offered her regardless. Maybe she's not a racist, but she plays one on TV.

- Konstantin

August 21, 2011 at 7:00pm

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Dhurtado: "I've watched Gran Torino more than twice K2K. What is it that you think the movie teaches?" besides the pleasure of a great Clint Eastwood film? My first reaction was "instant American film icon" but that is the film part of my brain. It helps depict the America that older people miss - respect for veterans, the value of hard work, the retired Ford UAW vet who "clings to his guns" :), Walt's disdain for what he sees as the disrespect of youth especially his granddaughter and the 'gang-bangers', how he takes the time to start seeing his Hmong neighbors differently...and a great ending where he gives his life for moral reasons. Interesting twist on religious values, in the contrast between the Catholic Church and the Hmong form of what seemed to be animist Buddhism. No way for this TNR liberal choir to ever understand Walt Kowalski in "Gran Torino". They prefer to singlemindedly echo "all older white people are racist". Clearly, none of them was ever a Boy or Girl Scout. dhurtado: what did you take away from "Gran Torino"? I might come back tomorrow - there is an "NCIS" marathon on USA channel tonight, and former Marine sniper NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs is my favorite alltime tv character. Ironic that the character was born in "The West Wing" when Mark Harmon was the Secret Service Agent protecting CJ from a stalker. But no more ironic than Aaron Sorkin authoring "A Few Good Men", which gave birth to "JAG", which I am currently finally watching on dvd. Go Navy. Semper Fi. Thor has re-appeared so I am about to lose power...

- K2K

August 21, 2011 at 7:08pm

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SayNo - you're too far gone for me, you're just too marinated in dehumanizing hooey. People are just infinately more nuanced than you're willing to see or work at seeing. Ideology is not all. I'm not a Progressive, a center lefty or anything else political. I'm a Californian, the daughter of military folk who taught me to love Israel, I love literature a good medium rare steak, a good wave (I surf), I love New York city now too and by family (husnad is a Scotsman, a Progressive Wall Streeter and a terrific guitar player). THAT'S who I am. rational - ditto. How did I know you'd ignore my entire post - I'm SHOCKED. I peg you at 18. I work with 18 year olds so I say that w affection. I loved Gran Torino BTW - great movie. I'm not sure what the point is, but I loved it. Because no real argument was made for why this movie was relevant, I'll assume it was because it was a seeingly intolerant old white man who had great nuance and basically died protecting a kid of color - and who also died feeling guilty for kiiling kids like him in a war. There is nuance there, but I didn't see a bit of that in SayNo's posts - will look harder next time. Peace.

- WandreyCer

August 21, 2011 at 7:21pm

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oops - seeingly = seemingly.

- WandreyCer

August 21, 2011 at 7:22pm

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Irony - I have a right wing microwave, it's incapable of anything but too hot to eat or inedibly cold.

- WandreyCer

August 21, 2011 at 7:24pm

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SayNo, You clearly have no idea of the dialetic. Most readers on TNR, are indeed part of the revolutionary vangaurd that Lenin talked about. In that sense we are not Menshivicks or Trotsky. First of all we see Obama as a sell out to the corporate impearilist masters. Some of us thought that "socialism in one country" was possible, but clearly now with globalization it will take an awakening of the lumpenprotletriat on a global scale who are often easily manipulated by capital to hate their brother proletriat who have different skin color. The older white worker never had the luxury of the revolutionary education, so they are more prone to this.

- MikeB.

August 21, 2011 at 7:26pm

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MikeB - there is genius in that response.

- WandreyCer

August 21, 2011 at 7:38pm

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John Bernard Books (The Shootist): "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I expect the same from them."

- jacko

August 21, 2011 at 8:19pm

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@MikeB Being facetious or is it just an exercise in Marxist vocabulary? Whatever it was, you might want to know that according to David Duke you and the rest of TNR readers you mentioned are actually horrible neocons and supporters of Bush’s war in Iraq. Since you didn’t bother to show the connection between the dialectic and the rest of your post, I’d like to point out that I’m talking to about a dozen people who, among other things, argued for physically harming me on the basis of my (poorly understood by them) views. So that you know, socialism, for any period of time, can only survive on the back of capitalism, which must exist somewhere, many times in the underground. After reaching certain size though, say $14T, it necessarily collapses by its own weight and the badly injured capitalism can go back to work for the benefit of humanity.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 8:37pm

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David Duke is part of the impearilist capitalist racist capital power structure. We unite with any in the Popular Front who will oppose fascism! Au Contraie, Capitalism can not exist for one second without explotation of the proleteriat. The fact is that global capital is getting more and more concentrated and as Marx and Engels predicted they will start eating themselves. The proletriat grows with each day. It is up to us to educate them in their duty and to forsake the false consciousness that the capitalist power structure has given them (and you it seems). Capital does not exist for the benefit of humanity. It exists as a result of dialetic materialism. The stage we are in is coming to an end. We may see in our lifetimes, "From each from his ability, to each to his needs..."

- MikeB.

August 21, 2011 at 8:45pm

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@WandreyCer I do not find the history of statistical thought or eugenics dehumanizing or hooey or both. What frustrates intelligent folks like you is complete disdain for history as such, chronology and facts in general. I also like using dates in my reasoning, say 1994-2006 (prosperity), but that, again, brings back the need to know history.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 8:45pm

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@MikeB Mike, I still think you are being facetious, otherwise you wouldn’t like TNR. Have you read “Don’t Blame the Wall Street” on this site? They skipped LBJ’s little thing called The Great Society in that analysis, otherwise, I highly recommend it.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 8:48pm

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"No way for this TNR liberal choir to ever understand Walt Kowalski in 'Gran Torino'." Is there something about this thread that leads people astray? What's with the stupid and insulting remark, K2K? What's gotten into you?

- ironyroad

August 21, 2011 at 8:49pm

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I was raised by Walt Kowalski and I utterly adored him.

- WandreyCer

August 21, 2011 at 8:52pm

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@MikeB "Capital does not exist for the benefit of humanity. It exists as a result of dialetic materialism." Mike, it's a little weird, unless you are talking about Freddy and Fanny.Dialetic materialism is a method for mixing epistemologies ©, and capital is a cow, you can touch it.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 8:53pm

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SayNo - OK. But huh? I just wanted to hear more what you were like as a person, rather than politically. One thing i can say about recent history, is that the media trains people to reduce each other down to bullet points. I have to fight it too. I was raised a certain way too - by my Walt Kowalski of a father. Racism was fighting, period. You just started swinging. That didn't mean a discarding of nuance. Walt was perfectly allowed to be bitter at the changing of his neighborhood - it would have been borderline racist not too (liberal patronizing racism), everyone is accountable for their behavior, period. I think that's what Walt meant. But he also saw more - and was not afraid of learning and growing in ways that surprised himself. Nuance. Humanity.

- WandreyCer

August 21, 2011 at 8:58pm

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@Wandrey Wandrey, I’m sorry, I guess I misunderstood you as far as asking about me as a person, and, as you can see, I’ve been staying away from the Walt Kowalsky discussion, you know why? I’ve been to a large number of cocktail parties hosted by and attended by a wealth well-meaning liberals (although I cringe at the thought of those folks using the world “liberal” as their label, it’s mine, I’m a true liberal). I’ve heard enough whisper, very humanizing, that made we a little condescending after seeing though their mask of loud egalitarianism, anti-racism, feminism and such. They are human, kinda racist, nicely sexist (I have to mention this, but the inner thighs of both legs of mine had been visited more than once by hands of super loud slightly drunk “feminists”) but sure enough, we all agreed on the greatness of blue cheese. I’m all for decadence, within limits, of course. Anyway, if you scratch the surface of Barney Franks of America, you can easily find Walt Kowalski under it. I don’t mind being slightly personal here. As a believer in Meyers-Briggs (85% of what they write about me is correct) I’m an INTJ.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 9:12pm

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"I’ve been to a large number of cocktail parties hosted by and attended by a wealth [of] well-meaning liberals . . . " Maybe so -- but that's no reason to come in on this discussion thread as if you were there now. It's not a wealthy cocktail party here, as you'd know if you spent a little time listening instead of thumping the bar counter. I couldn't understand why you started off so aggressively with a bunch of people you hadn't had one single previous exchange with. If you don't like the responses you got, maybe you should think about how you might have done at least a little to provoke them. FWIW I'm generally known as a fairly reasonable discussion partner around here, SayNo, but I'm allergic to being shouted at.

- ironyroad

August 21, 2011 at 9:44pm

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My feelings are particularly excited, being as I am an ardent supporter of TAM. How dare you sir?!

- bunthorne

August 21, 2011 at 9:54pm

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ironyroad is a horrible human being, and he owes me $20! Yes on TAM!

- Konstantin

August 21, 2011 at 10:26pm

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I do? But yes, what's with this weird hostility toward a small Brazilian airline?

- ironyroad

August 21, 2011 at 10:58pm

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K2K- I enjoyed Gran Torino for much of the same reasons you did. But I think you have missed some of what the movie taught. Respect for veterans? Sure. Respect for elders? Sure. The value of hard work? Sure. The "retired Ford UAW vet who 'clings to his guns"? I am not so sure. I grew up in the Detroit area and my father worked his whole life for GM and was a long-time UAW member. I am not aware of many of the UAW workers carrying around a .45 caliber pistol. And, although the scene in which Walt intimidates the gang-bangers with that pistol is very satisfying, in "real life" the more likely result is that the gang-bangers also would have had weapons and would have killed Walt as well as the girl and boy he was trying to save. Likewise, in real life, his standoff with the shot-gun, as gratifying as it was in the fantasy-land of the movies, is likely to have resulted in his being blown-away, rather than in him intimidating anybody. That's all a carry-over from Eastwood's Dirty Harry movies. But what I took away from the film is that war is a horrible thing that took its toll on Walt; that the killing he did during the war partially destroyed him and made it nearly impossible for him to have a healthy relationship with his wife, his children or his grandchildren. Walt also harbored prejudices, but that did not mean he was without value as a person or that he was irredeemable. He was able to, at least in part, overcome his prejudices. But I did not see it as him “taking the time to understand his Hmong neighbors,” but as his Hmong neighbors, in particular the girl, making the effort to reach out to him despite his evident bias. So I don’t see the film as somehow glorifying gun-toting veterans, but as glorifying the effort to overcome our prejudices, and as advocating the notion that we are not irredeemable in that regard. As to your statement that the “TNR liberal choir” prefers to “singlemindedly echo that all older white people are racist,” that is self-evidently a false accusation. That said, Walt Kowalski WAS a racist. He partially overcame that racism with the help of the people against whom he was prejudiced. Dhurtado

- NR143296

August 21, 2011 at 11:15pm

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I'm an INTF SayNo, one point from a T :) It sounds like you went to these parites with categories of people all set up in your mind. I know plenty of conservative women (in one small part of their identity anyway) who would have grabbed you if they felt like it after a few drinks as well. Bully for them. We're all humans first, not categories. What I think is decadent is probably not what you think is decadent. This is the human condition. Humility first is pretty much what every religion says. It's true what Irony says BTW - he's a brilliant poster, and the most patient among us really.

- WandreyCer

August 21, 2011 at 11:26pm

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@ironyroad "I couldn't understand why you started off so aggressively ..." I answered directly to Isaac. He worded his question quite harshly, that's the tone he wanted on the thread he started, I'm sorry it caused negative emotions in you, I'm all for cardio-vascular health. After all, what do these authors want? They want people's eyes on their pages, so be it. I used the word BREEDING, as I often do, which is not heard here often. I also pointed out the fact, that it's not racism people want back from the 50's, it's less regulation, no one had to tell the IRS what they spent $600 on. Also, there are different types of people with nordic facial features. It's wrong to think of one aspect of America in the 1950's only, which is racism. The usual McCarthy narrative is only half true, but for those who haven't studied the events around the Venona project it's the whole truth about the 1950's. I can go on and on.

- SayNo2TAM

August 21, 2011 at 11:58pm

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Technology acceptance model (TAM) is the dominant theoretical framework in my field. I'm just looking for someone on here who dislikes it as much as I do. I've traveled in Europe and North America, but haven't been to Brazil yet. I have flown on some Brazilian jets though called EMBRAER.

- SayNo2TAM

August 22, 2011 at 12:04am

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INFJ? Observing people at parties was just a start. I’m a libertarian and I’m all for having a choice, didn’t judge their behavior, but did see the difference between the declared and real attitudes. Book reviews (BTW TNR has some good ones) – yes, history – no; feelings – yes, facts – highly selective, practically no, and so on.

- SayNo2TAM

August 22, 2011 at 12:18am

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OK, SayNo, fair enough. But if your first point was that, as you say, there might be a nostalgia for a less regulated society rather than a hankering for a racist America, why did you immediately veer off into this: "No, you don't have to be among millionairesbillionaires, as your favorite politician likes to say (never mind the crony book deals that made him so undeservingly rich) to understand this." In case you don't know, this is classic Obama-hating conspiracy/paranoia stuff. It would seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with your original argument against Isaac's question (an argument that has some merit).

- ironyroad

August 22, 2011 at 12:39am

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SayNo sounds like a scramble-brained moron that makes little to no sense. I don't understand why people are even responding to his totally psychotic rants. He's a right-wing nutjob!

- rover27

August 22, 2011 at 1:09am

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@ironyroad Because "racism" is the only argument that he, his supporters and those in business of painting the picture of the 1950's use against anyone who disagrees with hyperregulation, not present in the 1950's and quite understandably feeling nostalgic. It was called the jet age in my book. Space race. Nuke race. Amazing management achievements, awesome new technologies, new industries. Also, tons of proxi wars between the US and the USSR, Berlin and Vienna spy stories, songs about Paris and Italy, the US reformed West Germany and Japan, protected South Korea and Taiwan, I can go on and on. How about home automation, cheap appliances, check out Diffusion of Innovation Theory. There was an awesome debate in the field of Philosophy of Science in the 1950's, how about "better life through chemisttry" and tons of other important things. And all we hear is RACISM. It's just myopic and unfair.

- SayNo2TAM

August 22, 2011 at 1:58am

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Eh, I guess I give him credit for not really walking through the door I presented and standing up for Renee Ellmers or her policy positions. Now all he needs is some plutonium, a flux capacitor, and enough pavement to hit 88 mph so he can go back 60 years, to the time when everyone rightly rejected that devil TAM and all was well with the world.

- Konstantin

August 22, 2011 at 2:02am

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@Konstantin TAM came out in 1989. And how do you present a door? So that you know, DeLorians are still being made, about 2500 each year.

- SayNo2TAM

August 22, 2011 at 2:18am

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@ironyroad Forgot this: Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Peyton Place, Elvis, The Comets, Buddy Holly, I hated The Catcher in the Rye, but you might like it, and how could anyone forget Atlas Shrugged, 1957. Was never a big fan of Dean, but a ton of movies came out back then that anyone must know about. If you spend a night or two with the very liberal, but enjoyable TCM, you'll love Ben Hur, all the Marilyn movies and all that. I'll tell you, for the cultured types at those cocktail parties I was a hit precisely because of all the convos about the old movies, especially about Adventures of Don Juan (well, it came out in 1948).

- SayNo2TAM

August 22, 2011 at 2:36am

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How is TCM "very liberal?" Because there's no commercials, it smells like PBS or something? That's the station that bloody celebrates your fave decade, plus it showed me MAN-HUNT (1941) several years ago, the movie that taught me to defy my fascistic liberal masters and hate Nazis despite my obvious innate left-wing affinity for all things socialist. Ted Turner gets a lifetime pass for everything just because he gave us TCM. PATHS OF GLORY is the best movie of the 1950s, and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise.

- Konstantin

August 22, 2011 at 2:48am

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@Konstantin My favorite decade is the 80's. ANd TCM is very liberal, because of the tastes it promotes such as all things Art Deco, which I happen to love. Its owner, Ted Turner is, of course, a big liberal, whom I have never criticized, because he is not a hypocrite and indeed practices what he preaches. So, if you were able to find at least one movie you love from the 1950's I can rest my case. Racism is not the only thing one should attribute to America of the 50's.

- SayNo2TAM

August 22, 2011 at 3:53am

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To the anti-regulation complaints of today's conservatives, I ask: which regulations should we get rid of or scale back: safe drinking water, safe air, seat belts, protection against Thalidomide, protection against commercial banks acting like investment banks with too low reserves? There is an awful lot of useful, better quality of life regulation that has been generated since 1960 that makes all Americans' lives more fair and less dangerous. Do you want to scrap it all. If so, we need to create a straight forward referendum that lists out all the regulations that will go away and then discuss the likely consequences on everyday life. I think if that happened, your "scrap the regulations" foolishness would go down to ignominious defeat. Nostalgia is for people terrified of the present. Why the present terrifies you so much that you wish a wholesale retreat into a less than perfect past is the real question. Who or what in the present terrifies you so much. You need to understand that problem is much more depth than you are willing to delve into. Things are not so bad, but you have been manipulated into believing the world is coming apart because conservative, GOP media are drilling that overwrought message in your head 24/7 --not because it is objectively true. The Party of Fear collects another gullible adherent. Time to wake up and walk out of the Cave and into the sunlight.

- mdoyle

August 22, 2011 at 9:16am

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dhurtado: I did not take the time to better explain the lessons of "Gran Torino". I agree with all you wrote 08/21/2011 - 11:15pm EDT, especially "...as glorifying the effort to overcome our prejudices, and as advocating the notion that we are not irredeemable in that regard." I just get so tired of some TNR commenters (and this post) that stereotypes older people who are nostalgic for some of the values of the 1950's are 100% racist. As to Walt's gun-toting? yeah, the Dirty Harry legacy, but it also fits that "clinging to their guns" stereotype that Obama had, and may still have. If you have insight as to why "Gran Torino" was such a huge hit in Japan, please enlighten me. Sometimes, I track the international box office for certain American films. "Defiance" came out about same time as "Gran Torino". "Defiance" fared poorly outside USA, which surprised me because Daniel Craig is usually a big draw. (anything with Angelina Jolie is huge international box office). GT did well everywhere, but HUGE in Japan. America's image abroad is as much about our film/tv exports as anything any president does or says.

- K2K

August 22, 2011 at 10:51am

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The Obama campaign took the Armenian SSR seal and made it their campaign symbol? Holy freakin' cow. Yes, I guess there's some similiarities, like being round and having the colors red, white, and blue. the Armenian SSR also has purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain. Could it be . . .? And I am so tired of any consideration for the rights of women, minorities, any empathy at all being passed off as "PC". PC was so clever in 1988, but please, move on. If any group gets it's knickers in a bunch over the smallest slight, it's conservatives, viz, the annual "War on Christmas" and the hysteria anytime anyone says "Happy Holidays"

- dubyadoubte

August 22, 2011 at 11:08am

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"Because "racism" is the only argument that he, his supporters and those in business of painting the picture of the 1950's use against anyone who disagrees with hyperregulation" Sorry, SaNok, but this is just nonsense. Have you the slightest, and I mean the slightest, evidence of anything the president has ever said that might justify this loopy assertion? One of the notable, even striking, things about Obama's approach is his almost perfect score (I say 'almost' because of the Skip Gates affair) in avoiding using racism in any political argument whatsoever -- even when he's clearly been the target of it himself e.g. Joe Wilson's "Liar!" yelp during the State of the Union in 2010. It seems to me that there is often complete confusion in people's minds between legal regulation and bureaucracy: legal regulation is what Congress does, and is supposed to do. Layers of pointless bureaucracy developed over time by agencies are something different, and this administration has been engaged in trying to reduce them (as have other administrations, the Clinton administration in particular). Indeed, to the best of my knowledge (I'll defer to anyone who knows more) federal forms now carry an approximate time commitment for filling them out and there are procedures in place for challenging particular bureaucratic demands if they seem more of an imposition than they need be. Other than that, on the completely separate issue of whether the music, the movies, or even the politics of the 1950s were at times exciting and moving, I agree with you. And I'd add Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe and Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate to the list of novels. But remember, the '50s were also Little Rock, the demonizing of State Dept people who had been right about China, atmospheric nuclear testing, and a lack of concern about cardiovascular health (an interest of yours, I believe?).

- ironyroad

August 22, 2011 at 1:09pm

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Ooops! Sorry SayNo -- I didn't mean to call you SaNok, which has an odd North Korean echo :)

- ironyroad

August 22, 2011 at 1:43pm

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SayNo Sorry for being late to the party, but I was wanting to clarify something you wrote much earlier, e.g. "The latest interpretation of the CRA did indeed force the bankers to abolish redlining and start giving away the loans to people, who could not possibly make any payments on them. If you know any bankers, ask them what a NINJA loan was" Couple of questions 1. What percentage (roughly) of CRA forced loans went into default? And of the loans in default that caused the crash, how many were CRA loans? 2. What does the CRA have to do with No Income, No Asset (or variations thereof) loans? 3. You mention "the latest interpretation of the CRA", but then mention prohibiting redlining which was one of the primary purposes of the act in its original form in the 70s. What changed that "made" the banks give out bad loans?

- Nari224

August 22, 2011 at 2:50pm

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SayNo- I do find it regrettable that many of the posters on this thread, many of whom have shown themselves to be articulate and thoughtful commentators, have jumped all over you with ad hominem attacks, rather than either responding to your assertions on the merits, or simply ignoring them. You have to admit, though, that one would have to be very naïve to think one could make statements to the effect that women have absolute, corrupting power, and that white women, by choosing a “fun-at-all-costs” lifestyle, have caused “white folks” to “quit breeding,” without provoking some hostile responses. I think you are not naïve. I think you are probably having a ball – like the school-boy who drops a toad or a mouse amongst a group of school-girls. And many of the posters here have played right into it. Without diving deep into the fray, I am constrained to comment that your last statement, “Racism is not the only thing one should attribute to America of the 50s,” is not responsive to anything anyone, including Mr. Chotiner, has said here. Salam observed that American conservatives are overwhelmingly white, and he hypothesized that at least some whites over the age of 50 are uncomfortable with the increase in the population of Mexican-Americans and other ethnic minorities who they perceive as not sharing their “religious, cultural and economic values.” He says it is not fair to characterize that discomfort as racist. He might be right about that. On the other hand, it might be fair to characterize that discomfort as culturally or religiously chauvinistic. Be that as it may, I think both Yglesias and Chotiner unfairly characterize what Salam said. Yglesias characterizes Salam’s proposition as being that “cranky old white conservative nostalgics aren’t racists they’re just white people who are nostalgic for a whiter, more racist America.” But I think Salam is attempting to distinguish between racism, on the one hand, and the fear that one’s culture is being threatened, on the other hand. While that distinction may not morally exonerate those who hold the fear, it is a real distinction that warrants examination rather than a back-of-hand swipe as being a nostalgia for “a whiter, more racist America.” That said, though I think Yglesias is being unfair, he is not saying racism is the only thing that one should attribute to the 50s. Chotiner, in turn, says let’s assume that old white conservatives are not nostalgic for a more racist society, but are nostalgic for salutary aspects of the 50s. He argues that they are nevertheless racist if they are willing to accept the racism of the 50s in exchange for the things they liked about the 50s. I think that is an extremely shallow analysis that barely warrants being printed. It assumes that anyone who is nostalgic for certain aspects of a certain time period necessarily accepts all the aspects of that period, and, more specifically, that people who are nostalgic for the 50s for whatever reason are actually contemplating the racism of the 50s and concluding that they would accept the racism of the 50s if only they could have the 50s back. As stupid as that analysis may be, Chotiner is not saying that racism is the only thing that one should attribute to the 50s. Dhurtado

- NR143296

August 22, 2011 at 4:34pm

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@Nari224 I put together a report some 3 year ago for my MBA class which has some of the answers for you. If I recall my numbers from there, the total amount of real, as in verifiably "poor" CRA loans was small, around $40B. You chose to ignore the carrot part of my post, which showed, that the stick - the COmptroller of the Currency, sometimes in concert with the regional Fed threatened to punish the banks through courts and then - here comes the carrot - guaranteed the backing of those CRA loans through F&F, which, in turn, triggered the wild MBS slicing and mixing, approved, as requested by the government, by the rating agencies. Once again, read my post, that invited big time risks due to abolishment of the pre-CRA risk assessment through income/asset verification, the NINJAs were the speculators posing as poor because the CRA allowed them to do so, and the SEC alowed the MBSs to float, because the CRA would stop working without them. Not only did the CRA kill the risk assessment standards, it punished the banks for reviving them.

- SayNo2TAM

August 22, 2011 at 4:40pm

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K2K- I've been dropping in and out of these TNR threads for over 2 years now, and have not seen anyone assert that "older people who are nostalgic for some of the values of the 1950's are 100% racist" -- until now that is. As I noted above, I think Chotiner's assertion to that effect is ridiculous. But I didn't notice any of the some 120+ comments agreeing with that hypothesis. Regarding the "cling to their guns" stereotype, I'm not sure what that is or what you mean. Whatever that stereotype is, do you think Eastwood's character busted that stereotype? Or do you think it reinforced it? Dhurtado

- NR143296

August 22, 2011 at 4:49pm

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@Dhurtado/NR143296 It's hard to disagree with anything you say, except for the part about women. You seem to be very thoughtful, so I hope you wouldn't mind if I take you into the territory, which is definitely visited by some of TNR's writers, but not many posters here. I'm talking about a subject called "Scientific Communism" developed in the USSR along with Marxism for Catholics (Liberation Theology) and other teachings aimed at proving that the world, as predicted by Marx, follows the societal development pattern, which calls for replacement of capitalism with socialism and socialism with communism. Now, any textbook on Scientific Communism you can find (most of them are in Russian, German or Spanish) clearly lists the avant-guard participants in the revolutionary struggle (you see, that societal development doesn't really happen, it requires conspiracy, organizing and big time violence) on the bases of sex, race, and, most important, class. In the early 1960's (late 40's and 50's as well) scores of rather fanatical followers of Scientific Communism (I'll have to write about that separately) went out to recruit the footsoldiers for the struggle, and, sure enough, the most impressionable - teenage white girls - were target #1 in the US. Long story short. They were brainwashed into wanting to change the world, in which the power (check the list above, who's missing? white males) in politics, in industry, in the media belongs to them. It was accomplished through the legislative process, but the newly legislated powers were in reality applied to the usual target of female influence - the males, as in the male next door, the husband, the boyfriend. You see where I'm going - It's the man's world by James Brown. As a rsult of this legislated superpower the women break up marriges very quickly, the child bearing period is shorter than before, fewer babies are born, so more immigration is needed to compensate for the shortage, because the business needs people.

- SayNo2TAM

August 22, 2011 at 5:04pm

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I notice you skipped neatly past my response, SayNo, so I'll reprint yours: "Because "racism" is the only argument that he, his supporters and those in business of painting the picture of the 1950's use against anyone who disagrees with hyperregulation" I ask again, have you the slightest, and I mean the slightest, evidence of anything the president has ever said that might justify this assertion?

- ironyroad

August 22, 2011 at 5:45pm

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@ironyroad Just because you asked, here's one: Mary Frances Berry Professor of American Social Thought and History, U. Penn admitted this at the Politico: Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness. If you want me to spend my time looking for the endless accusations from Nancy Pelocy, I'll do it, but later. And that's about more or less prominents Democrats. I know plenty of people on campus who do that rutinely.

- SayNo2TAM

August 22, 2011 at 6:36pm

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Dhurtado: well stated at 4:34pm about the post, which is what I was originally responding to. I have no need to dissect the auto-pilot "racism" charge made anywhere, but it is pervasive in attacks on the GOP/TEA party in the age of Obama. Jon Stewart did a great job when he slammed the "black cloud" is Obama 'mistake' by Ed Schultz. It was Obama who used the "cling to their guns" stereotype in 2008. I found that offensive and seriously out-of-touch at the time, and still do. Americans do not "cling" to their guns. We are a gun culture, from day 1. One example is Sergeant Alvin York, the Medal of Honor winner from WW1. You asked me " Whatever that stereotype is, do you think Eastwood's character busted that stereotype? Or do you think it reinforced it?" Neither. I think Walt Kowalski was a lot like my dad about guns even though my dad never engaged in combat in WW2 or Korea. My dad, USN, left photos of his rifles in his 'special memento' box, and I found two hand guns hidden in his neatly organized garage workshop after his death. Proud of his service in logistics, and kept a hand gun handy as the old neighborhood, and got more dangerous in the 1980's, not because of the immigration, but because of the drug wars and general lapse of moral values. Guess the Boy and Girl Scouts fell out of favor in the 1980's :) I am still proud of my riflery badge, and shooting the lizards in our backyard with my beebee gun as a kid, always under dad's supervision. my dad was the least racist person I ever knew, probably from having grown up in North Carolina as the son of educated Jewish immigrants, so I am not comparing him directly to Walt K. I admit that I really hate the anti-war left, ever since Vietnam. They allow no nuance or context, and exposure only makes me realize the intolerance of the left, and increasing alienation as a lifelong dem. I am neither a Wilsonian nor a neo-con. Still working on whether I am a Jacksonian, only because I DO believe in the necessity for a politically independent central bank :)

- K2K

August 22, 2011 at 8:45pm

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So one academic at the U of Penn sent one email in which she indicated that the teabaggers have made themselves ripe for charges of racism. That's your "evidence" for Obama's responsibility? One single-paragraph and notably inaccurate comment by one individual? I ask again, SayNo, in what way has President Obama, who has avoided making race any kind of issue whatsoever in his administration, set himself up as a justified target of this accusation? I ask again, in what way has he suggested that anyone opposed to, say, the Dodd-Frank banking regulation bill (or any other law of your choice) is a racist who wants the 1950s back? I ask again, in what way do weird conspiracy-theory allegations about the publication history of Obama's two books cast any light on anything useful? I have that if Berry is all you can come up with, you're an empty suit.

- ironyroad

August 22, 2011 at 10:28pm

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that sense,

- ironyroad

August 22, 2011 at 10:29pm

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Yes, I knew you were referring to Obama's comment, K2K, but was not sure what the "stereotype" was, or how it is that Walt's gun-toting "fits that 'clinging to their guns' stereotype that Obama had." And I still don't get it. Was Walt "clinging to his guns"? Or was he an example of how one can own guns without clinging to them? Of course, if you believe America is a "gun culture," then it seems you are only objecting to semantics in objecting to the epithet that Americans are"clinging" to their guns. That said, though guns certainly dominate our pop culture, I'm not sure I agree with you that we are a "gun culture" in the sense that most of us own or use guns. That certainly was not the case in the circles in which I grew up. I am pretty confident that only a small minority of Americans owns guns, and that an even smaller minority owns handguns. Intolerance is a by-product of extremism, and it is to be found on both the hard left and the hard right. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many Democratic politicians that are reflexively anti-war. Obama clearly is not one of them. Dhurtado

- NR143296

August 22, 2011 at 10:34pm

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So you mean you were surprised, SayNo, that your comments about women provoked a vigorous, if not hostile, rejoinder? That's all I said about women -- that you would be naive to think your comments would not induce that response. Dhurtado

- NR143296

August 22, 2011 at 10:40pm

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129 posts. Not bad. Enough for a frequency analysis. It's now easy to count the number of insults the heralds of tolerance throw at someone whose views differ from theirs. I never insulted anybody, merely answered a question, and look what I've got thrown at me. Folks, next time you demand evidence of your stereotypical treatment of political opponents, start right here. Analyze yourselves, you are all highly educated, right? Just want to remind you that Idolatry is a form of paganism, which easily leads to religious fanaticism. And that's what moved so many to attack the warm and fuzzy me. I call on you to embrace diversity, do away with stereotypes and judge each individual not on the basis of the color of his skin, but on the basis of his deeds. Denounce hate, threats of violence (especially oar and regulatory violence) and cultural intolerance. Let there be light.

- SayNo2TAM

August 22, 2011 at 10:47pm

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@Dhurtado "That's all I said about women -- that you would be naive to think your comments would not induce that response. " Then I have to accept the fact that I am naive, and most people here have to accept the fact that they don't know women very well. Isaac's question was based (very uncritically) on the old rigid militant feminist/critical race narrative. I just tried to show a bit of reality in my answer. Being allergic to reality doesn't give anyone the right to insult the messenger. I'd like to say such aggressive stance is very harmful to the society at large.

- SayNo2TAM

August 22, 2011 at 10:56pm

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@ironyroad It's not one academic and you know it. Remember the "funny name" speech? I'd say you can see hundreds of pieces of evidence on YouTube, I know you go there. I also watch all kinds of TV stations, including FRANCE24, TV5MONDE, RT, DW and many others (some of what I just mentioned can be seen on C-SPAN). Obama's operatives are all over there. How many French talk show hosts are attacked on American TV? Tell me. They got the French, and the Brits and the Russians to hate someone they wouldn't even bother to look at, you know who I'm talking about? You don't have to believe me, all you need to do is read some critical race theory writings, books I've already mentioned, I can recommend a 1994? interview of Cornell West with TIME magazine and many other things. Don't deny reality, Irony. Good Trotskyites must and do attack all the time. Race is a weapon and the lawsuit settlement is (a very unTrotskyite) reward. Are you allergic to reality?

- SayNo2TAM

August 22, 2011 at 11:10pm

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Once again SayNo, can you offer the slightest shred of evidence that anyone in the administration from the president on down has declared or even implied that, for example, someone who opposes the Dodd-Frank banking regulation bill (or any other law of your choice) is a racist who wants a white-supremacy 1950s back? This was your original accusation. If not, and I suspect not, I call you out as a liar and a blowhard.

- ironyroad

August 23, 2011 at 2:26am

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And what a coincidence! This just in from Political Wire tonight: "Former New Jersey Assemblyman Pat Delany (R) abruptly resigned last month after his wife sent a 'racially tinged email' to state senate challenger Carl Lewis, the former Olympic Gold medalist, PolitickerNJ reports. The text of the email: 'Imagine, not having to pay NJ state income taxes...It must be nice. Imagine getting a court ruling overturned so your name could get put on the ballot. Imagine having dark skin and name recognition and the nerve to think that equalled (sic) knowing something about politics. Sure, knowing someone with fat purse strings is nice, but you have no knowledge.' Delany said he was 'deeply disappointed in my wife's decision to send that email,' adding: 'In an attempt to repair the serious damage this has caused to our marriage, and to protect our kids from public humiliation, I decided to leave public life. On behalf of my family, we sincerely apologize to Mr. Lewis for any pain this caused him.'" You know what, SayNo, I wouldn't worry: probably Obama conspired to arrange it secretly with his crony publishers.

- ironyroad

August 23, 2011 at 2:32am

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Irony Why don't you study some open sources I have listed in my posts. Critical race researchers' "action research" methods. Scientific Communism books, which list the tactics to overthrow capitalism and the participants for the action. Women and minorities are enlisted in the big struggle before they are even born. Why don't you listen to the loud daily rants of the big Chicago boys like Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright or the hourly rants of Janeane Garofalo right there on YouTube or just go to their websites. Oh, yeah, be sure to check the commander-in-chief's 57-states-one-more-to-go speech,Dan Quayle will look like a professor of geography or a spelling bee champion after that.

- SayNo2TAM

August 23, 2011 at 2:07pm

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