But perhaps the trickiest part of this reinvention is changing who Mr. Romney is when he steps out from behind the lectern and wades into a roomful of voters: a cautious chief executive who is uneasy with off-the-cuff remarks, unnatural at chitchat and spare with his emotions.They could have pretty much ended the sentence at "...changing who Mr. Romney is."
But Anthony R. Picarello Jr., general counsel and associate general secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, disagreed. “It’s true that the church doesn’t have a First Amendment right to have a government contract,” he said, “but it does have a First Amendment right not to be excluded from a contract based on its religious beliefs.”
mattyglesias mattyglesias Too many liberals have joined the Use Capital Letters Instead of Naming Specific Adversaries caucus. 3 hours ago Retweeted by delongThis would have been more delightfully clumsy had Yglesias written liberals in capital letters, but the effect is the same.
"Personally, I believe that the balance of probabilities is that Ron Paul genuinely does think that the homosexuals, the Jews, and the Blacks are coming to kill us all (or at least the rest of us), but that their stranglehold over the media is so great that he can no longer say so outright--even in private. That's the only interpretation that I can square with Paul's refusal to drop Rockwell and company over the side for betraying him. If he never read the newsletters and the solicitation letters, then they did betray him--and he owes the no loyalty. If he's a cynical con man, dropping Rockwell and company over the side is the obvious winning strategy: you should never give a sucker an even break. Stonewalling is something that only a believer in what is said in the newsletters and the solicitation letters would do."I can think of another reason to stonewall other than being unwilling to disclaim sincerely held beliefs: a cynical recognition that a big chunk of your appeal--to the donors and motivated activists who are the middle orbit of a candidate's constituency--comes from the fact that you are seen as representing these beliefs. They are willing to tolerate a certain amount of disclaiming, recognizing that the paths of victory require obfuscation before a broader audience. But go to far in this, and they begin to believe they have been conned, let down by another huckster, who, when it truly matters, is willing to pander rather than speak truth.
"It would begin not from the assumption that capitalism is dehumanizing, but rather from the sense that too many people do not have access to capitalism's benefits. It would start not from the presumption that traditional practices and institutions must be overcome by rational administration, but rather from the firm conviction that family, church, and civil society are the means by which human beings find fulfillment and are essential counterweights to the market. It would reject the notion that universal dependence can build solidarity, and insist instead that only self-reliance, responsibility, and discipline can build mutual respect and character in a free society. It would seek to help the poor not with an empty promise of material equality but with a fervent commitment to upward mobility."That anyone could write and see this as a "reorientation" of American conservatism--rather than a verbatim affirmation of the policies of American liberalism and the rhetoric of American conservatism from the demise of Federalism through the rise of conservative and progressive Democracy, the Whigs, the Republicans Party, and all the way up to Barack Obama, passing Nixon and Black Capitalism, Fair Deal-ism and Square Deal-ism along the way--reveals a profound shallowness and misunderstanding of American ideological rhetoric and policy.
"“Bobby,” a well-known and rather flamboyant and well-liked gay man in Freeport came to the BBQ. Let me stress Ron likes Bobby personally, and Bobby was a hardcore campaign supporter. But after his speech, at the Surfside pavilion Bobby came up to Ron with his hand extended, and according to my fellow staffer, Ron literally swatted his hand away. Again, let me stress. I would not categorize that as “homo-phobic,” but rather just unsettled by being around gays personally."That seems to be the literal definition of homophobic.
Dickens, however, had mild dyslexia and read Scroggie’s headstone as “Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie – mean man” when in fact it read “meal man,” referring to Scroggie’s trade in corn. Scroggie by most accounts was actually the life of the party.From Marginal Revolution, who gets from Conversable Economist. I like to think that Scroggie delighted in the idea that he would forever be remembered as a "meal man." That's the take-home point of his life. Suppose it beats Grad Student.
Massimiliano D’Angeli, a criminal defense lawyer, said he believed that if more services like those provided by lawyers, plumbers and electricians were tax deductible rather than subject to the nation’s 23 percent value-added tax, people would have an incentive to ask for receipts. Instead, many workers and professionals offer a “VAT discount” for payment under the table.
"a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy"This formulation is what I strive for academically, even as I can't defend it ontologicalally.
"To my brother, Sandy, who married a trapeze-artist and died of drink for so refuting the position of the Hedonists."But the theme of Herod's soliloquy is weightier, for he must, after all, slaughter the innocents. His is a well-governed society, a decent society, and society must be defended from the perdition that will ensue if a King is born and the order unsettled.
"When I became governor, there were 14 of us running for governor that time and all 14 of us were outspoken for segregation in the public schools," Patterson said. "And if you had been perceived not to have been strong for that, you would not have won. "I regret that, but there was not anything I could do about it but to live with it."This from John Patterson, after voting for Obama in 2008. Former governor of Alabama, who famously beat Wallace by "outniggering" him. This, as TNC notes, is much more chilling than anything Wallace ever said. The terrible weight of public opinion, changing the incentives of everyone subject to its pressure. There is no question here of good man or bad man, but only of what is required to win. That is the real horror.
"The gentleman wants all the colored population of Ohio to have a vote .Now he had one radical objection to it. It was this: Every negro in Ohio is a Whig and if he is allowed to vote, the Whigs will get a great accession of strength. The Whigs have too many voters now, for the good of the country. He believed that if the Union is to be perpetuated, it is to be through the perpetuation of democratic principles, and he did not to put in the hands of the enemies of a republican form of government, the means to overthrow it."Sawyer, Ohio constitutional convention, 1851. Report of the Debates and Proceedings, Vol. 2, p.637
1928: "March 20 - after the Penn basketball team defeated Princeton to become Intercollegiate League champions.... A crowd of about 1000 students set fire to trolley wires, pulled trolley poles from overhead wires, and lit bonfires in front of Psi Upsilon Fraternity. When firemen arrived, different groups of students carried off the fire hose, made away with a large red Philadelphia Rapid Transit automobile trailer, and changed the workings of the "automatic traffic semaphore." Seventeen students were arrested on a charge of inciting a riot.... Included among the arrested students were Jack McDowell, president of the senior class who was arrested as he tried to quell the disturbance, and Thomas S. Gates, Jr., manager of the football team who was arrested when he went to the station house to gain the release of McDowell. It is interesting to note that young Gates would become a banker and Secretary of the Navy under the Eisenhower administration; at the time of his arrest his father, Thomas Sovereign Gates, Sr., was a prominent lawyer and also a University trustee, who would be named Penn's President in 1930."It goes on, item after item, until the practice died out in the 1970s. White riots indeed. The riots of the upper class? Well, it might be ivy but it's still Penn. So riots of the upper managerial class might be more accurate.
The particle is named for the University of Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs, who was one of six physicists -the others are Tom Kibble, the late Robert Brout, Francois Englert, Gerry Guralnik, and Dick Hagen - who suggested that a sort of cosmic molasses pervading space is what gives particles their heft. Particles trying to wade through it gather mass the way a bill moving though Congress gains riders and amendments, becoming more and more ponderous.From the Times.
"Gentlemen who profess the greatest sympathy for the negro, have, in their admiration of his character, compared him and his struggles for freedom to the Hungarians and Poles, who fought against desperate odds for their political rights. But, sir, there is this great difference between the two: The Hungarians fought as a nation, and were recognized as a nation—not as isolated individuals; the case of the negroes cannot be compared to this, for they have no name or existence as a nation; even on their native continent they live in barbarian tribes of the lowest scale of sentient being; in this country, they exist only in two classes—the slave and the nominally free—and no one expects that we shall be engaged in a civil war with them. There is a vast difference, sir, between the moral spectacle of a national army, arrayed against the armies of another empire seeking to subjugate them, as was the case with Hungary, and here and there a straggling " nigger" absconding from the cotton field or kitchen of his master? [Laughter.] No, sir, there will never be a civil war between the two races in this country, unless, indeed, through the misguided sympathy of certain gentlemen, known as Abolitionists."I am compiling a dataset on the justifications given by delegates to state constitutional conventions for exclusion or inclusion into the suffrage. This does not fit. But I intuitively feel that it is important, that it captures an undercurrent to American racism that has long been present. We live, even now, in an age of nationalism: the nation is an appropriate and legitimate actor, ideal, community. The 'race' used to be, it is no longer. I have often encountered various claims that African Americans are de-racinated; that they were stripped of any ethnic identity, and thus the potential for a national identity. This is, in one sense, the Moynihan thesis. Stripped of the capacity to be a nation, they could never achieve what the Irish achieved, the Quebecois mostly achieved, what colonized peoples the world over have achieved: national liberty and self-determination. I find this bunk, but it potentially had de-mobilizing consequences.
"It was remarked by the gentleman from Posey, that he feared women did not receive the same consideration which they would receive if they were allowed to exercise the right of suffrage; [Holman] feared that the same justice is not meted out to them, that would be if they exercised the rights of the politician. I have no doubt, sir, that in such an event, our whining politicians would be everlastingly weeping over the wrongs done to the rights of the fair voters, as they are now, upon every occasion, mourning over the wrongs which their fellow citizens are suffering, with very commendable patience however, but I doubt, sir, whether the sparkling eyes of our fair friends would grow any brighter, or that their rosy lips would wear any sweeter smiles if they were besieged by politicians asking hnmbly for their votes."God forbid.
"whenever you begin to talk about making negroes equal with white men, I begin to think about leaving the country."This would be mocked throughout the country at the time, and, to my ears at least, rings in Mark Twain's portrayal of Huck's pap:
"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio -- a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane -- the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me -- I'll never vote agin as long as I live.Back to Indiana: the delegate was offering an amendment, to the a resolution inquiring as to whether the committee on the elective franchise would find it expedient to report back a separate provision on black suffrage that would be sent to the people for popular rejection, for such was the foregone conclusion. The amendment was that anyone who would vote at the referendum in favor of black suffrage would themselves lose the right to vote, unless the egalitarian suffragists were in the majority. Dobson continues:
"The substance of my amendment is--and I want it fairly understood --that if those who are in favor of negro suffrage are in the majority, we will leave the country; and if we are stronger than they, let them leave and we will remain. Let every man be asked this question at the polls, and, as he shall answer, let it be known who he is. The free soil question does not come up here that is quite a different thing. But as far as the question of negro suffrage is concerned, if we are to have any more of it, I want to act upon jt in this most definite manner. I am satisfied that perhaps three fourths of the citizens of the State would rather leave, if the negroes were to be allowed to come here and exercise the elective franchise."One delegate, Barry, who disclaimed and qualified and caveated, nonetheless had the courage--for it is courage, of a sort--to offer an amendment directing that the committee report back a suffrage clause allowing blacks to vote. He would not support his amendment. This, more daring stand was undertaken by Edward Ralph May, a Democrat and a member of the state legislature. The vote was 1-122. He would die one year later, with his wife. Time to praise famous men.
" Respecting woman, sir, it is unbecoming in me to say much. My theory, however, is this: I believe woman to be essentially the same with man. Whether we regard her moral, her physical, or her intellectual nature, we find her the same with man, yet different. And, sir, as I think, in that difference consists woman's excellency .... [U]pon the vexed question of woman's rights. My theory is simply this, I can give it in a single remark: In my treatment of women I would always act upon this general principle, to grant unto woman whatever rights and privileges she demanded at the hands of man. ... I say then , in all my legislation for women I would be guided by the one principle to grant unto her whatever, on the whole she might think necessary for her good--I do not mean what some individual one might ask, not what the young girl might heedlessly wish, or the old woman might peevishly crave, but what women in the aggregate, women collectively, might ask for--... And, sir, for one, I very frankly say that if after such a mutual consultation and such a deliberate consideration, women should then ask to share the rights and privileges of man, I would be the last person to withhold from them a single one. But, sir, I would also ask woman to recollect that from the exercise of man's rights and privileges would result certain duties from the performance of which she must not seek to shrink."Now there is still plenty in here to condemn and critique, the categorization of different types of women, from the foolish to the peevish. But, as I've written before, the past can be lonely. You search in vain for someone who will not disappoint, but are left a heart with no companion, a soul without a king. So you take what you can get. Obviously, I expect May to be defending slavery an all-out assault on the rights of labor in the next few pages, but I will savor the moment while it lasts.
Pubic opinion is the test of [a] polity; the best opinion which, with its existing habits of deference, the nation will accept: if the free government goes by that opinion, it is a good government of its species; if it contravenes that opinion, it is a bad one. Tried by this rule, the House of Commons does its appointing business well. it chooses rulers as we wish rulers to be chosen. If it did not, in a speaking and writing age we should soon know. I have heard a great Liberal statesman say: "The time will come when we must advertise for a grievance."...The working classes contribute almost nothing to our corporate public opinion, and therefore, the fact of their want of influence in Parliament does not impair the coincidence of Parliament with public opinion. They are left out in the representation, and also in the thing represented.Burke:
I have often endeavored to compute and to class those who, in any political view, are to be called the people.... In England and Scotland, I compute that those of adult age, not declining in life, of tolerable leisure for such discussions, and of some means of information more or less and who are above menial dependence, (or what virtually is such) may amount to about four hundred thousand. There is such a thing as a natural representative of the people. This body is that representative; and on this body more than on the legal constituent, the artificial representative depends. This is the British publick and it is a publick very numerous. The rest, when feeble, are the objects of protection; when strong, the means of force. They who affect to consider that part of us in any other light, insult while they cajole us; they do not want us for counseilors in deliberation, but to list us as soldiers for battle.
Of these four hundred thousand political citizens, I look upon one fifth, or about eighty thousand, to be pure Jacobins, utterly incapable of amendment, objects of eternal vigilance, and, when they break out, of legal constraint. On these, no reason, no argument, no example, no venerable authority, can have the slightest influence. They desire a change; and they will have it, if they can. If they cannot have it by English cabal, they will have it by the cabal of France, into which already they are virtually incorporated.These are English quotes, but what is striking to me is how closely they match the pre-Revolutionary, and especially the pre-Jeffersonian language of America. Statements such as this do live on in America in the antebellum period, but never so brashly, always couched, and almost always on the losing end. This does not necessarily mean they are no longer believed or maintained, but that the new political order makes their defense intolerable.
