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Americans tend to apprehend that there is no objectively "best" way to put in concrete, establish, and manage details for how to put every American's mind and muscle to the wheel of work, howevermuch that may enrich society in material terms. We don't need or want a collectivizing or corporatizing manager to organize and mesh us to wheels and gears of hierarchically constrained control --- regardless of whether such organization be by government or by corporate chieftains who come to be effectively licensed or blessed by government. Rather, we need and want leaders who can dance with a Source of Will with which we can all be receptive, who have vision, and who can apprehend and appreciate the Spirit of America and Americans.
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Americans want political leaders who can be receptive to vision for empowering us to pursue a civilization where each citizen is availed to pursue fulfillment. This is a different thing from obtaining leaders who have lived saintly lifes. We need to judge our wannabe leaders less for their personal failures than for whether they can confess failures, learn from them, and offer decent and sustaining visions for civilization. What I wish to apprehend concerning our wannabe leaders pertains to the following: who is interested in the history of civilization, and who is not? Who has learned mainly from history, as opposed mainly from fairy tales, visions of final utopias, or notions regarding the perfectly corporatized world of free corporate trade (wherein everyone can be enlisted to work for a hierarchy of corporate managers who are selected by "The Market" --- however artifically that market may be constructed --- as "knowing best"). Who is concerned with freedom and dignity of ordinary citizens and believes in the exceptional possibilities of human decency and liberty? Who has vision, versus who simply wants to help elites worldwide to organize, manage, milk, and work gullibles? Whose vision entails faith in, and respect for, our unfolding relationship with an Immaterial Reconciler of freedom, dignity, and decent civilization?
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We need a leader who can put those who ridicule God as a flying-spaghetti-monster in their place. Who has the skill, timing, and gravitas to do that? (Actually, the concept of a holistic "flying spaghetti monster" Field Of Consciousness, whose immaterial tentacles interpenetrate to reach and reconcile with every particular and every particular perspective, is NOT inconsistent with natural conservation of matter and energy and capacity of perspectives to come to enlightened empathy in respect of one another. That is, there abides a dance of conservational feedback and respect, whereby parts are reconciled and conserved to the whole. We are NOT chained to any purely linear progression, to build some perfect machine and then retire from the field. The dance implicates feedback and PART-ICIPATION, i.e., interfunctioning with the unfolding expression of Will. Not linear progression to the perfectly organized new world order of corporate material syndicalism.)
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As near as I can tell, the Tea Party consists mainly of Conservers of an America of individual decency and liberty. Why do Dems think that's bad, and why does the Establishment (Maxine Waters go-to-hell types?) celebrate when it can flout ordinary Americans, that is, when it's not giving lip service? The only way the Tea Party fails is if America collapses into collectivism owned by Dino cronies or corporate-owned-collectivism owned by Rino cronies. To root against the Tea Party is to root for Cronies who want to own and make the rules --- of, by, and for cronies. Cronies don't want to make rules to the benefit of any ideal society at large, but to the benefit of unionized mobsters (like La Raza, SEIU, Panthers, CPUSA, ACORN, Cannibal Capitalists, Chinese Princelings, GE sellouts, Government Motors, race baiting poverty pimps). The more the Tea Party grabs cronies by the nose and makes them say uncle, the more America, human liberty, and basic decency have a chance to succeed. Why is that something to sneer against? The more Americans wake up, the more our leaders will find it in their interest to discover that we merit --- and require --- being part of the equation.
We can agree there's a difference between good and bad. And bad that's in the eye of the beholder. As in that's "bad, man," so bad it's good. As in crony capitalism that undermines an antagonistic nation is "good." Maybe Chicom capitalism has its good side. Maybe it seeds good ventures. So, we call venture capitalism the good little cap, and crony the bad. All this labeling. As access to capital accumulates, is there some kind of marker for this labeling, so we can tell when practitioners are bleeding over into cronyism? Do these guys tell us, ok, today I'm venturing, yesterday I was cronying? If we agree crony capitalism is bad, WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT? Just say, Oh dear, you musn't do that!? Does anyone seriously think American laborers can compete with state-run Chinese cronyism by just staying the course? I suspect Romney is a good, decent, competent guy. He has said we need to do more to even the playing field with the Chinese. I realize it would not be well to commit from the hip. But is anyone engaging in any serious discussion, apart from, Stay the course, you ignorant little dolts?
From A. T. -- Re: "the heart of Krugman's view of economics. In that view, people and their choices are to be manipulated and coerced whenever the government declares it."
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People ARE manipulated by materials. That's the idea of economic determinism. Although we may not be entirely predetermined, and there may abide a role for free will, that's a topic for metaphysics. Still, the idea of complete material and economic determinism is rationalized as much by pretensing free marketers as by pretensing communists. I say pretensing because, for example, China only pretends to be a nation of communists. However, it's a nation of princeling crony capitalists, using its people (even their organs) as commodities for buying and selling, by manipulating values of labor and currency with national controls. The masses have no freedom to come and go or to say as they think. There's no equality of distribution and no taking from those in power to give to those in need. The taking and redistributing is from the powerless class to the powerless class. It's fraud to say the main competition in the world is between capitalists and communists. Rather, it's between extreme crony capitalists and less extreme crony capitalists, present advantage to the more extreme (those with fewest hangups against using people and governments as commodities).
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There're no real communists, for there's no real communism. People are NOT wired to be communists. Still, there's much profit in propagating misdirection. Modern competition is mainly between loose syndicates of crony capitalists, operating from territorial bases with which they have little loyalty. There's no "ism" whereby distributions of economic power can be permanently fixed. Rather, "isms" tend to be for dupes and dopes. There're only periodic conventions for resetting balances of political power. Apart from relation to power, money-in-itself would be largely meaningless. Americans won't achieve rebalancing of liberty merely by greasing more antics of venture capitalism while ignoring antics of crony capitalism, NOR by inflating more money to be funneled to cronies for buying up means for organizing and controlling cheap labor.
When a candidate is counter to social conservatism, Libs tend quickly to point out that such looseness does not pick their pockets and to trot out the shibboleth that "you can't legislate morality." (I guess the Jews didn't consider the Decalogue legislation.) When the candidate does advocate social values, all of a sudden Libs say this kind of history matters! However, I suspect what matters most to them is that their fav is being beaten. Now, what does "pick my pocket," as well as the pocket of most Americans, relates to whether a candidate may be a front for international cronies or may be entirely uninterested in doing much of anything to stop the crony hollowing out of America. So far, I have not heard ANY of the candidates speak much about that. When it comes to moral values, I suspect all the candidates have feet of clay. So, I am rather more curious about what they would actually do to check the influence of cronies in hollowing out America while reducing American laborers to compete with third world laborers who toil under despotic regimes. So far, there's much talk about wonderments of venture capitalism, but the sounds of crickets when it comes to ideas about how to address the sell out of America to cronies and despots. Really, how much of the Establishment's heart is in actually enforcing the border? Or in limiting the right of cronies operating under despots to buy out America's resources? Can any Establishment guys be trusted? Until I see some answers to those questions, I can't get very worked up when Libs all of a sudden want to tell me how important a candidate's social history is. Until I see some answers, my preference remains undecided.
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