Why liberals should love the Second Amendment
A well argued case for a strong liberal defense of the right to bear arms: Daily Kos: Why liberals should love the Second Amendment.
I have to say, I am a contradiction. I was an expert marksman in the Army, but I haven’t shot a weapon before or since or outside of duty. I don’t really care for guns much and I don’t own a gun, don’t plan to. Yet my sense of civil liberty (and all the reasons stated here) causes me to lean toward a strong defense of the right to own guns. As with all civil liberties there are instances of reasonable regulation (can’t shout fire in a theatre, can’t threaten the president with death, can’t discriminate in the public square in the name of religion), and there is with the 2nd amendment. I’ll agree with much of what is said here, we should be defending the 2nd amendment as vigorously as the others.
The GOP vs Gays And Latinos – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
The GOP is now doing to Latinos what it did to gays. Its leaders – by backing the Federal Marriage Amendment in the last decade and now the Arizona law in this – are essentially saying that they do not understand how these measures could impact a minority’s collective psyche. Whatever the technical merits of either measure – and there were intellectually coherent (if, to my mind, unpersuasive) defenses of both – the lack of empathy or understanding is the real issue. It places the Republican “us” against the minority “them.” This is not just a failure of empathy; it is failure of judgment. The votes of Latinos will be massively important in the very near future, and the number of people who know and love gay people grows daily.
There’s more, read it:
The GOP vs Gays And Latinos – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.
The totality of individual liberty
Democratic Strategist has an interesting post up on the meaning of liberty. As with all things in life, things aren’t black and white. I strongly believe that individual liberty and autonomy are the highest good that government is instituted to protect. And yet, as she writes here, we often must give up some freedom in order to ensure greater liberty for ourselves. Defense is a good example. She gives another:
Normally, the point of driving is to get somewhere. The traffic laws enable us to get where we are going much more quickly and safely than we would if each of us had to decide for him- or herself which side of the street to drive on. The traffic laws do not tell us where to go. They leave the choice of destination, and for that matter the decision whether to drive at all, entirely up to us. They simply tell us which side of the road to drive on, that we should stop at various points, and so forth. By taking away our freedom to drive on the left, or to blast through busy intersections, they grant us much more freedom in the form of a greatly enhanced ability to get wherever we want to go quickly and safely.
Anyone who thinks that the traffic laws enhance our freedom should acknowledge that in some cases, including this one, government action can enhance our freedom, even if that action takes the form of restrictions on what we can and cannot do. An enormous number of questions about which (other) forms of government action might enhance our freedom would remain to be answered, but the fact that some government policy involves either a more active government or new restrictions on our action would not, by itself, imply that it diminishes our freedom.
Of course the problem then becomes, how do we measure personal liberty? If our goal it to increase the total freedom and liberty of all individuals, what restrictions will do that and which ones will not. That’s the basis of a lot of arguments and debates.
If we can agree, and I think most sane American Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and others do, that individual liberty is a paramount goal of government, then we can have civil (if vehement) disagreement as how that is to be accomplished. I usually have an optimistic outlook that civil and even sometime heated debate and discussion, by those in power and those in opposition can lead to legislation that increases to totality of individual liberty. Unfortunately, I have not seen that in the last 10 years. I lay that problem squarely in the lap of Bush-Rove-Cheney and the Republican party who spent the first 8 years of this decade not only demolishing the whole idea of personal liberty, but demonizing the opposition as unpatriotic and anti-American, or using gay men and women as scapegoats. Unfortunately, many in the Republican party even now shout communism, tyranny, socialism and fascism against all sane and reasoned consideration. It’s not particularly conducive to governing. This is not to say that Democrats and those on the left haven’t had their share of insanity. I’ve read some of the diaries on DailyKos, I’ve seen it. In fact, in 2004, I started myself to get a bit over the top.
I’d hope we could agree that our basic premise we share is the increase of individual liberty and respectfully disagree on some of the best ways to get there.
Arizona is killing the Republican Party
Arizona Republicans are quickly handing the Democrats a gift this year and into the future, and killing the Republican brand among a huge segment of the U.S. population.
The population of Arizona is nearly 30% Latino, current trends will increase that percentage. Latinos in Arizona have traditionally been split between Republicans and Democrats. 40% of the Latino vote has traditionally gone Republican since many Latinos are socially conservative.
First, there was the near-passage of a law that requires future presidential candidates to produce birth certificates to get on the ballot (in an naked anti-Obama push) which struck many as near-racist (no such law was suggested before Obama) and lunatic fringe. That didn’t sit well with many Latinos, even Republican ones.
Then the climax, the Republican legislators in Arizona pass a law, and the Republican governor signs it, that requires individuals to produce ‘proof of citizenship’ if law enforcement ’suspects’ they are illegal immigrants. This law would seem to be a slap in the face of traditional libertarian and Republican aversion to “National IDs,” and undue power of the government over individuals (really, “Your papers please?”). The Republican state passes a law that would seemingly be against traditional Republican and libertarian principles and the National Republicans are nearly silent and many supportive of that law. Of course the natural conclusion to this seeming contradiction of principles is because the law would not affect ‘white’ individuals, so it’s all right?
That at least seems to be the Latino reaction (and frankly, I can see little other explanation), because the polls are suggesting that already the Latino voters in Arizona are starting to leave the Republican party in droves. Just as Prop 187 has contributed to the rapid decline of the Republican party in California, it seems that this law will now contribute to the rapid decline of the Republicans in Arizona.
And now today, the Arizona legislature passes a law banning ‘Ethnic Study” courses and programs. Though one might sympathize with the reason (treat people as individuals, not ‘groups’ is the stated reason), the purpose seems suspect given the current rash of laws.
Three strikes and you are out.
Statehood for Washington D.C.
I agree, with a population greater than that of Wyoming and comparable to North Dakota and Alaska, the citizens of the city of my birth (D.C.) deserve either statehood or, my personal preference, retrocession (becoming part of Maryland again). It’s a libertarian/liberty/taxation without representation issue and seems quite straightforward to me:
Why Not Statehood For DC? – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.
47% of Americans don’t pay income taxes
Interesting, I never new this. This is income tax, not SS or Medicare, still, that’s a lot of people. As this post suggests though, most of that is due not to deductions, but to ‘tax credits’ given tax payers, namely the “Earned Income Credit” (affecting a small portion of the population who are poor) and the “Child Tax Credit” (affecting low and middle income families). The former is Democrat-supported, the latter is a bipartisan-supported credit and the biggest portion and contributor to the numbers of people who don’t have to pay federal income taxes. In fact, Republican congresses (with some Democratic help) have been part of this move towards “socialism” (the top half income earners paying for the bottom half). From the post linked above:
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- In 1997 every “normal” married couple with two children that earned $24,000 or more (in today’s dollars) had to pay at least some income taxes. The top nonpayer threshold for a family of this size was just under $24,000. This means there were some four-person families with income just below $24,000 that owed no income taxes.
- In 1997 a Republican majority Congress and President Clinton enacted the Balanced Budget Act. At the insistence of Congressional Republicans, this law created a $400-per-child tax credit which began in 1998. This caused the top nonpayer threshold to jump more than $7,000, to about $31,300. Millions of families with kids with incomes between $24,000 and $31,300 were “taken off the rolls” because the child tax credit wiped out the small income tax liability they owed.
- As a result of the 1997 law, in 1999 the child tax credit automatically increased to $500 per child, and the threshold for a married family with two kids grew to $32,800 in today’s dollars.
In 2001 President Bush and the Republican Congress enacted a major tax law that increased the child tax credit to $600. This law also introduced the 10% income tax bracket, which lowered by 5 percentage points the lowest income tax rate. The combination of these two tax changes raised the top nonpayer threshold to $38,700. That law further phased in over time increases in the child credit to $1,000 per child.
- The 2003 tax law enacted by President Bush and the Republican Congress accelerated the $1,000 per child amount to be effective immediately. This increased the threshold to $47,400 in 2003. That’s a huge jump. It was incredibly popular, and it helped create political impetus for the 2003 law which also accelerated rate reductions and cut capital gains and dividend rates.
Of course the Democrats have had a hand in increasing this too (keep reading the article).
I’m afraid that most people, Republicans, Tea Party, Democrats and the like, would not go for a cut in this credit. It would be political suicide.
We need to cut spending, but that will not balance the budget (unless you want to cut defense and a few other huge expenses) so we need to change the tax code. I suspect that’s not going to happen.
Why do so many Americans pay no income taxes? | KeithHennessey.com.
Tax disconnect
Daily Kos: Taxes lowest in 60 years.
When 98% of the country’s families got tax cuts, and taxes are the lowest they’ve been in 60 years, it makes one wonder about the origins of the protestations of ‘communist’ and ’socialist.’
Libertarian pot
This referendum might just pass: Tax Cannabis 2010, allowing the legalization of cannabis, allowing the selling and purchasing of small quantities (but each county can decide whether to allow sales or not) and taxing it.
I have never smoked pot, unless you count inhaling the smoke from some a certain relative of mine threw into a campfire once. I never plan to smoke or ingest it. You can put me on the ’social conservative’ end of the spectrum when it comes to personal habits. I don’t smoke tobacco, rarely if ever drink alcohol or coffee even and have never taken non-prescription drugs (ok, so there was that time when I was 16 and drank some Jimson weed tea, which was really stupid). So I don’t have a horse in this race.
Yet on a policy side, I tend towards libertarian on this issue. Marijuana is relatively harmless when compared to two other legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco (though in comparison to eating vegetables, it’s not particularly benign either) and the enforcement of the anti-marijuana laws cause more problems than ever would be caused by legal use. I say, allow individuals to make the choice to use it or now, redirect resources to enforcement of laws against more egregious crimes, and perhaps save and make some revenue.
Who’s a conservative?
A review of Karl Rove’s book asserts that Karl Rove is no conservative, as his memoir shows. Of course, by extension, since the policies mentioned are all Bush’s, Bush was no conservative, if by conservative we mean ’small-government, fiscal responsibility’ conservatism. Between No-Child-Left-Behind, Department of Homeland Security, warrantless wiretapping, Medicare extensions, deficits, Patriot Act, bank bailouts and takeovers, optional war in Iraq and more, Rove and Bush acted less like traditional conservatives and more like authoritarian reactionaries.
Interesting that todays self-proclaimed tea party ‘conservatives’ are up in arms now, when they were not over the last 8 years.
Especially considering that many on the left see OBAMA as the conservative, decrying the private health insurance plan, offshore drilling and more. Obama, though I would not label a “conservative,” is arguably in many ways more “conservative” in the traditional sense than Bush/Rove/Cheney, less authoritarian, more pragmatic.
All part of the plan
Yep, it looks like I was right as this hill staffer suggests:
Obama preempts the other side’s most resonant arguments, which forces them to come up with more and more extreme claims in order to differentiate themselves…
…At the same time, the policy is a tailored, measured version of what the Republicans have urged — so, yes, the headline is, ‘Obama Allows New Offshore Drilling/Presses For Energy Independence,’ but at the same time, California/Oregon/Washington where opposition is strongest isn’t included, and there are environmentally-friendly changes to Alaska leasing policy announced at the same time. And again, as we’ve seen before, Republicans are sort of forced to twist and parse, and even to oppose things they have long supported, just because the Administration hasn’t gone far enough.
As I said yesterday, Obama is playing chess and all his opponents and supporters are playing a bad game of checkers. Of course the purity progressives do their part, as do the Republicans through Boehner.
