Showing posts with label Lionel Trilling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lionel Trilling. Show all posts

Monday, June 27, 2022

Someone who takes her libertarianism far too seriously is haunted by a hobgoblin, amusingly faults so-called folk libertarians for inconsistency and channels her inner liberal Lionel Trilling to jeer at their "irritated" jerking

 Real libertarianism like hers is a creature of liberalism and the left, not of the right, and so is primarily critical in nature, distinguishing as she does no fewer than five different types in her short polemical foray against Ron DeSantis.

Put a hundred of these people in a room and none will find another person with whom to agree about libertarianism, except maybe that the buffet was OK. 


In The Daily Beast here:

Yet even linking this impulse to that new center may suggest a more formal political program than folk libertarianism entails. Douthat characterized it as “a reflexive individualism disconnected from the common good,” and the reflex is fundamentally reactive, a series of irritated jerks away from unwanted strictures as they come. Folk libertarians have “an instinctive dislike of being bossed around,” as my former colleague Samuel Goldman has observed in The Week, but they lack the broader principle of opposition to bossing others.

 

Saturday, February 19, 2022

The Financial Times says Trudeau has gone too far invoking the Emergencies Act against the peaceful protest of the Canada Freedom Convoy, calls restrictions on truckers' cross border travel "government over-reach"

 Here:

Canadian leader Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act this week in response to the occupation was a step too far, however. The measures are designed to respond to insurrection, espionage and genuine threats to the Canadian constitution rather than peaceful protest, no matter how irritating and inconvenient. The right to such protest is fundamental to a free society. Such protests often involve inconveniencing people, whether that means the pickets of striking workers, Britain’s anti-climate change group Extinction Rebellion, or the Freedom Convoy.
 
https://www.ft.com/content/1f83d3dc-a95b-4947-92ba-4f08899228a3?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9 

 
 
 
 
 
The editorial oddly refers to the draconian financial repression undertaken by Trudeau under the Act without actually condemning it, saying only in a general way that the government's response has been illiberal and mishandled.
 
Trudeau's henchman, Chrystia Freeland, has had a long association with The Financial Times from the 1990s.
 

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

President Trump could easily veto these spending bills and get spending compromises from Congress, but won't because he's a wimp

The narrow majorities of Democrats in the House and Republicans in the Senate mean there would be great difficulty achieving 2/3 majorities to override the veto except for the most necessary spending, which means Trump has the upper hand.

President Trump is in the catbird seat when it comes to spending, but he does NOTHING. All he does is veto the occasional "Joint Resolution", which is meaningless to the taxpayer and in the same class as conservatism in this country, which has again been reduced to this or that irritable mental gesture.

Donald Trump is a complete and utter fool who knows nothing about the power he has.

Ann Coulter was right to say Trump has replaced Bush 41 as biggest wimp ever to serve as president.
 

Monday, July 15, 2019

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Republican enthusiasm for the Line Item Veto began under Reagan and was their version of the imperial presidency

No different than Reagan's enthusiasm for federal mandates like EMTALA, which is the proximate cause of ObamaCare. But J. T. Young doesn't remember it that way, or that far back, here:

'Unmentioned in Obama's legacy is that he killed the line-item veto. While not having done so directly, Obama's presidency has ended this long-time Republican goal just as assuredly as if he had. The political and fiscal role reversals between the Congress and presidency - and between Republicans and Democrats - transpiring for twenty years, have culminated with this administration.

'Twenty years ago, Republicans, armed the Contract with America, dramatically rode to Congressional majorities for the first time in decades. Prominent within that important document was a call for a line-item veto for the president.

'The intent was to give a president power to eliminate wasteful federal spending with pinpoint accuracy. Instead of having to veto an entire bill, and risk shutting down all, or part of the government, a president would be able to stop particular provisions but leave a larger spending bill intact. This authority would reverse the "Hobson's Choice" that prevailed between Congress and a president.'

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'Ronald Reagan said to Congress in his 1986 State of the Union address, "Tonight I ask you to give me what forty-three governors have: Give me a line-item veto this year. Give me the authority to veto waste, and I'll take the responsibility, I'll make the cuts, I'll take the heat."'


WHATEVER CONSERVATISM IS, IT MOST CERTAINLY IS NOT ABOUT SEEKING TO ACQUIRE MORE POWER BUT RATHER ABOUT SEEKING TO DIFFUSE AND DISTRIBUTE IT, SOMETHING THE CONGRESS DELIBERATELY BETRAYED IN THE 1920s WHEN IT DECIDED TO STOP THE NATURAL EXPANSION OF REPRESENTATION. NO BRANCH OF THE GOVERNMENT MAY BE SAID SINCE THAT TIME TO BE IN ANY WAY CONSERVATIVE IN SPIRIT, EXCEPT IN THE OCCASIONAL IRRITABLE MENTAL GESTURE IN THAT DIRECTION WHICH IS USED AS A CLOAK FOR MORE SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT. NO ONE ANYWHERE RETAINS "SELF-RESTRAINT" IN THEIR LEXICON.





Sunday, February 24, 2013

New York's Puritan Mayor Bans 2-Liter Pop With Pizza Deliveries

Story here.

It used to be conservatism and reaction which in 1950 were said not  to exist as real ideas but only as mere actions or irritable mental gestures. Now it's liberalism and progressivism occupying that role, but without actually resembling ideas. They represent emotions instead, usually of revulsion, especially for people who are fat, or of shame, especially for holding otherwise intelligent opinions critical of other people's culture, way of life and religion.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Liberal Massachusetts Town Institutes Fines For Public Swearing

The move actually de-criminalizes public swearing in order to remove it from the penumbra of First Amendment applications, as reported here:


Middleborough, a town of about 20,000 residents perhaps best known for its rich cranberry bogs, has had a bylaw against public profanity since 1968. But because that bylaw essentially makes cursing a crime, it has rarely if ever been enforced, officials said, because it simply would not merit the time and expense to pursue a case through the courts.

The ordinance would decriminalize public profanity, allowing police to write tickets as they would for a traffic violation. It would also decriminalize certain types of disorderly conduct, public drinking and marijuana use, and dumping snow on a roadway.

Just another expression of the reactionary impulse and not really a bona fide idea, an irritable mental gesture which only resembles an idea, right?


Thursday, January 5, 2012

Sunday, November 20, 2011

An Irritable Mental Gesture of Liberalism Visualized:Only Resembling The Idea of Showing Respect

"In the United States at this time Liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation. This does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to conservatism or to reaction. Such impulses are certainly very strong, perhaps even stronger than most of us know. But the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." -- Lionel Trilling, 1950