Quiet snowy morning here. What better time to serve up some links to material you may or may not have seen this week?
Mark Schmitt takes on “Miss America Conservatism,” the tendency to slice out narrow pet causes of personal interest to the detriment of a larger concern for health care or poverty-reduction. “Having a child who suffers from mental illness would indeed make one particularly passionate about funding for mental health, sure. But shouldn’t it also lead to a deeper understanding that there are a lot of families, in all kinds of situations beyond their control, who need help from government? Shouldn’t having a son whose illness leads to suicide open your eyes to something more than a belief that we need more money for suicide help-lines? Shouldn’t it call into question the entire winners-win/losers-lose ideology of the current Republican Party?”
Matt Yglesias on the story that no one seems to be following: US plans to keep military bases in Iraq. He writes, “That the administration has managed to hew consistently to this agenda without ever stating that this is one of their major policy goals is astounding, and that the American media is consistently unwilling to discuss the point is appalling. What’s even more astounding about it is that one regularly hears and reads in expert commentary that we ought to “make clear” that this isn’t what we’re doing.”
Slate’s Dalia Lithwick wonders what happened to the primacy that conservatives have placed on the institution of marriage. “Of all the ironies at the heart of the Terri Schiavo case—alleged federalists who scoff at federalism; the fact that Schiavo, who’s in a persistent vegetative state, has lived off the winnings in the same kind of medical malpractice suit that Republicans in Congress seek to limit—the most astonishing is this: Congressional Republicans who have staked their careers and the last election on the “sanctity of marriage” have turned this case into a mockery of that very institution.”
Ted at Crooked Timber comments on a proposed Florida law to let college students sue if they feel their beliefs are not respected. My favorite part: “Remember “political correctness”? Remember when John Leo used to wring three columns out of the same absurd complaints from hypersensitive left-wing students who felt victimized? Remember Republicans who would have mocked all the boo-hooing, and made the valid point that mollycoddling these kids in college would backfire when they had to face the real world? I miss those days.”
Peter Levinson, self described deficit hawk, reads James Kenneth Galbraith and wonders if it makes sense to incur a deficit to build infrastructure and human capital.
Once again, Fafnir gets the logic of news cycles right.
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