I know there are a lot of Bacevich readers in the audience here, so I thought I would pass along this link to his participation in a discussion at the TPM Book Club last week (post 1, 2, and 3, and then his participation in a discussion of the future of conservatism that featured this:
The Left has won the culture war, and, at least in the near-term, its victory is irreversible. In social relations, the right to choose trumps all other considerations: to fornicate, marry, breed, abort, divorce, and abandon. That a single mother with six kids should opt for another eight because she feels like it captures the distilled essence of the cultural moment that we have entered. Somehow ritual expressions of support for “family values” don’t quite provide an adequate response.
When it comes to economics, faux conservatives–Ronald Reagan in the vanguard–collaborated with liberals in abandoning even the pretense of prudent fiscal management. The blindingly obvious result: debt and dependency. “Today,” writes Niall Ferguson in a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed, “America is Argentina.” Just so. We can’t pay our bills so we pretend we’ll never have to. Those in power pay lip service to our collective obligation to future generations and then cynically ignore that obligation, appropriating trillions in the hope that somehow or other we can spend our way out of the hole that we’ve dug for ourselves. The only obligation with which the present generation is likely to keep faith is a self-assigned one: to binge, vainly trying to satisfy its own appetite for consumption. What exactly in this Ponzi scheme should conservatives be exerting themselves to preserve?
Bacevich’s statement about the left “winning” the culture wars is so obviously true, but never really explored. The future of conservatism and the fate of the GOP were leveraged for short-term political gain (Terri Schaivo, anyone), and they lost all the battles they were fighting anyway. All that remains now are the tail ends of fights about gay marriage, and despite Prop 8 and other setbacks, the future is clear. Republicans and conservatives will lose this battle, as well.
matt
Couple of great, in depth Bacevich videos on Youtube here and
here.
KCinDC
So Democrats are now the party of big families?
Dave
I have a problem with this line:
That’s not accurate at all. I’m a recovering Republican like you, John, so I’m moderate. My wife is a raging liberal. We are both pro-choice and pro-gay rights. And we’re both incensed by that whack-job woman with 14 kids on food stamps.
Â
Choice should be the default position for our society, because the right to choose is freedom. But that also demands that we be responsible in how we use our freedom, and that issue is neither Left nor Right. How is the woman with 14 kids any worse than the Wall Street jackass who decided to make some extra coin by abusing the system? They both made a choice and both were irresponsible in the extreme.
El Cid
A century ago, before the left won all the culture wars, there were plenty of women having 14 kids. There were even poor families who couldn’t support them. A lot of them died. Even in the pure, unpolluted-by-elite-leftism Appalachia, inhabited by the beloved-by-conservatives Scots-Irish. But I guess you could re-write that as not being a ‘choice’.
It would be nice if today’s grumpy "aw it’s all done gone ta hell" groans were more informed by an awareness of how things actually used to be, rather than how they were in one’s own family or imagination.
And liberals are at fault for Ronald Reagan’s fiscal idiocies? Jeesh.
Bob In Pacifica
Historically, social conservatism often arrives in economic hard times. In poorer societies where wealth and power are greatly stratified, conservative "values" both provide guidance for the hoi polloi and also a means of control.
My point is that if Republicans are successful enough in sinking recovery hopes they can retake power by controlling the fears of the unthinking masses. It worked in Europe in the Thirties.
Josh Hueco
This is something I’ve seen Bacevich discuss before, that, to put it shortly, "Greed Is Good" and "If It Feels Good Do It", the mantras of the 80s and the 60s, are the flip sides of the same coin. We’ve abused the expansions of freedom and choice that have taken place in the past two generations. Now the task at hand is to learn to use that same freedom of choice to place voluntary limits on our indulgences.
The Moar You Know
Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed.
Really, what a crock of shit Bagevich is attempting to unload on the reader here. Fiscal prudence is not a conservative or a liberal value, it is merely good governance. If he wants to have the debate that Reagan and the modern conservative movement are not the party of good governance, I’ll have that debate right now. But to pretend that Reagan wasn’t a conservative at all?
Please.
Napoleon
@Dave:
He is just doing the knee jerk thing that most conservatives do, blame every social ill on liberals.
Separately, I have a bit of a problem saying the liberals "won" the cultural wars since in a lot of ways liberals never were waging a cultural war, which seems to me to be a one sided obsession of the right.
For the most part society develops on its own organically, without a central plan or some kind of gang of conspirators pushing some social agenda. If gay marriage comes to pass it will be because a lot of different people for a variety of reasons either think it is a good idea or because they are not particularly opposed to it. "The Left" never choose it as something they wanted to push on society (in fact the way I understood it was that organized gay activist were against pushing the issue for a long time).
PeakVT
That a single mother with six kids should opt for another eight because she feels like it captures the distilled essence of the cultural moment that we have entered.
Fetishization of reproduction and medicine for profit are actually rightwing values, so I guess the victory of the left isn’t quite complete. (Personally, this person of "the left" finds that woman’s actions horrifying.)
When it comes to economics, faux conservativesâRonald Reagan in the vanguardâcollaborated with liberals in abandoning even the pretense of prudent fiscal management.
Another one for the "stupid or lying" file.
Napoleon
@El Cid:
In the last 50-60 years everytime the Feds have run a budget surplus it has been under Dems. Nearly 100% of our deficit was run up by Republicans.
But someone like Bacevich just can’t help himself so he heaps equal responsibility on the Dems.
4tehlulz
>>fornicate
I’m sorry; I just have a hard time taking anyone who uses this word, after say 1930, seriously. It’s sort of a marker of a nutball Christard for me.
magisterludi
The woman who was artificially inseminated with what she hoped would turn out to be eight little "gold mines" is a perfect metaphor for the character of Wall Street and the overall ethics-free atmosphere of our financial institutions.
She’s just practicing "free enterprise", after all.
jibeaux
This also struck me. That woman had eight kids at once. She had, in a word, a litter, which is obviously dangerous and not something human women or human babies are designed to go through. It strikes me that a single mother with six kids who then goes on to have octuplets is a) psychologically disturbed, and I definitely question the physicians who facilitated this plan; b) highly, highly unusual, such that discussing what she represents for society as a whole doesn’t make a lot of sense; and c) doesn’t actually have much to do with politics and I fail to see why she is a poster child for liberalism. Did I miss her coming home from the hospital in her Che t-shirt or something?
JL
She’s demonized by MSM and very few Wall Street types are.
Mike
He’s trying to pin the crazy octuplets woman on Teh Libruls? Seriously? He can’t see that her story is grounded in the religious right’s obsession with "snowflake babies?"
If he’s right, then I look forward to meeting the Duggars at the next Drinking Liberally.
jibeaux
This is a good comment from over thataway:
The Other Steve
The reason Republicans lost the culture wars is because they never understood it.
It’s the liberals who are most apalled at this woman, but she fits right in with the pro-life nuts.
eponymous
Hmmm…not so sure. I know Kevin Drum has talked about this for quite some time (in the sense of liberal cultural values ingrained in our society for quite some time). Do you mean never really explored by Bacevich/conservatives?
J Royce
I fail to see why she is a poster child for liberalism. Did I miss her coming home from the hospital in her Che t-shirt or something?
It is amazing how completely the Right was able to conflate liberalism with The Left in the minds of the nation to such a universal degree. This is after Liberals in our history have been the definition of moderation between the insane extremes of the Right and actual Left (communism).
Propaganda works, it really actually truly absolutely does.
El Cid
I laugh every time I hear or recall the phrase "snowflake babies." Out of all the dumbasastump stupidities of the rillyjus right, that’s one of the most amazingly dumbass.
gypsy howell
Bacevich can suck it. Spawning a litter of 8 when you are an unemployed single mother of 6 because you don’t want all your precious snowflake babies to be murdered in their petri dish is the very essence of the whole conservative "culture of life" movement, albeit taken to its pathological extreme.
And BTW, the whole rest of Andy’s post was a bunch of revisionist scapegoating nonsense. But then, that appears to be a dearly held conservative value too.
Napoleon
@J Royce:
My favorite example of this is Andrew Sullivan. Some time ago I read a series of post on his site where he explained why supporting gay marriage was really a conservative thing and then articulated a reason which to me was a perfect explanation as to why in fact it is a liberal position. But he can’t admit to himself that he takes liberal positions on some things and that being a liberal is a perfectly mainstream political position, so he tries to redefine conservatism as including taking positions that involve making changes to a society that are evolutionary in nature and consistant with the underlying values of that society, but all the same are a break from the past (as opposed to those positions on the left or right that basically reject the premises/values behind why a society does things they way they do).
John Cole
You know what amazes me? How incapable I am at predicting where threads go. Of course the statement about the woman having eleventy three kids is stupid, but I thought this discussion would focus on the fact that Bacevich was conceding the culture wars.
jibeaux
@gypsy howell:
I guess I would just be very wary of playing the same game Bacevich is doing here, by responding that "no, she’s actually a right-winger". She’s actually disturbed, and I think this should be a point of bipartisan consensus. I know what she said about her embryos, but I don’t think we can assume that she is accurately reporting her motivations.
dslak
@John Cole:
He all but does that in The Limits of Power, as well. He did engage in a bit of strawmanning of liberalism in that book, too, but it’s a small mark against an otherwise illuminating piece of work.
jibeaux
@John Cole:
Because it’s just so freaking annoying to "concede" with: "We just can’t compete with the fornicatin’, abortin’, litter o’ baby-lovin’ liberals!" It’s the weirdest, most inaccurate, most ingracious concession I’ve ever read.
Find a conservative concession that says, "when it comes to x, y, and z, we are simply in the minority of public opinion, and all trends to date indicate that we are going to become even more in the minority, ergo I think we have lost x, y, and z" and I think the discussion would focus on the concession.
slag
Amazing. I was just thinking of the octuplet woman last night and how, in spite of the fact that her behavior is a clear outlier in our society, Republicans would somehow seize on her to "symbolize" all of the ways in which liberalism is DESTROYING AMERICA! In the same way they did with that lady who killed her kids back in the 90s.
It doesn’t make any sense, but that doesn’t mean it won’t soon become conventional wisdom in the Village. As it has before.
How egocentric is it to think that neocons and their abettors were only put on this planet to drive me insane?
bootlegger
@Dave:
I heard Bacevich go after this claim. He agrees that this is what freedom has become, but he argues that freedom originally meant freedom from the coercion of an unelected state, i.e. an aristocracy or dictatorship. It slippage into the equivalent of "choice" ignores the responsibility that goes with those choices. I agree with part of this because I think we have slavishly built up choice without similarly insisting that people be responsible for their choices. The woman with 14 kids made a choice, but the rest of us will have to pay for it. And we should pay for it, as caring human beings, its just that she shouldn’t put us in that position with her "choice". So the sense of mutual obligation is lost when freedom=choice.
zzyzx
@John Cole: I think that’s because we already have assumed that winning the culture wars is just a matter of time. None of us have experienced in our lifetime anything other than a movement towards the left on cultural issues so it’s hard to imagine it reversing.
bootlegger
@Josh Hueco:
That’s right. Without the mutual obligations to each other to not indulge ourselves at the expense of others we will fail as a society, no doubt about it. We will overindulge ourselves until we have nothing left and no sense or responsibility to fix it.
Hmmm, sounds familiar….
Napoleon
@John Cole:
I am going to guess why it doesn’t impress anyone is because most people posting here likely have long thought the right was going to loose the culture wars. For the most part the rights true positions are minority positions in society, whether on abortion rights or rights of gays. They are really only successful because in large part they obscure their positions by pushing parts of the issues more popular with the general public then their underlying position. The hard right (ie, 28%) are against all abortion and all or most contraceptives, but focus on stuff like partial birth abortion. The hard right hate gays and see them as no different then child molesters, and given the chance would strip them of all civil rights, but most people thing gays should be protected, so the hard right focuses on gay marriage (which although at one time a minority supported even that is rapidly changing). When my parents first had my brother and me this same segment of the population would have told you about how blacks were genetically inferior.
bootlegger
@John Cole: I don’t agree that Bacevich was saying the whacko single mom with 14 kids was a liberal idea, but rather saying it is an unintended consequence of equating freedom with choice.
slag
@John Cole: You haven’t been a Democrat long enough. We’re well-trained to spot the backhanded concessions conservatives make when they’re really just propagandizing for their ideology.
The real underlying message: "Aren’t you sad that the libruls won America because now we have this crazy octuplet lady to show for it? The golden calf suckered you in. Don’t you want to do something about that?"
torrentprime
I loved "limits of power", but yeah, the fornicate-marry-breed thing set off extremist so-con alarms. The next dog whistle / tell he could give (for which I scanned the rest of the post first before I re-read for content) would be to refer to me and mine as "homosexuals" (instead of gays) that practice a "behavior." Anyone who uses those terms exclusively or first can pretty much be counted on to be in Matt Barber / Sally Kern territory. Couple that with the "Reagan wasn’t conservative (enough)" thing, and now I’m worried I may have contracted something when I read his book. I’m only 5 or so years clean of the GOP, after all; my immune system is still a little weak.
jibeaux
@bootlegger:
This is a thoughtful reading of his point, and a good point on your part. But I still think it’s wrong to use her as an example of almost anything other than "boy, some people could sure use counseling". He’s assuming that she had the kids "because she felt like it", others are assuming that she did it because she couldn’t stand to destroy her snowflake embryos, plenty of people speculate about doing it for fame and notoriety, etc. It’s pretty hard to draw conclusions about the real motivations of someone doing something that crazy.
Cyrus
Yeah yeah yeah, us liberals don’t want any part of her, but is this even true? It seems to me that Bacevich is being disingenuous, or at least assuming the worst intentions of the woman for no good reason. I know almost nothing about in vitro fertilization, but implanting multiple embryos is a standard practice on the assumption that only a few of them will mature, right? People seem to be saying that it was bad medical practice, but that’s due to her age as much as anything else. I would be amazed if either she or the doctor expected eight out of eight embryos to turn into babies.
Personally, ever since I saw her name, I’ve been pleasantly surprised that right-wingers haven’t been making a big deal about the fact that she’s an Arab. It’s just what Mark Steyn and Debbie Schlussel are always talking about – help, the brown people are coming over here and outbreeding us!
Shygetz
Dear Bacevich, Sullivan, and Unnamed Co-Conspirators,
Conservatism is as conservatism does. Your side lost the argument, and are no longer "conservatives". Find a new label and stop trying to rehabilitate a soiled brand.
Sincerely,
The World
Andrew
Where’s Rick Santorum to guide us through this crazy baby lady crisis?
bootlegger
@jibeaux: True, but blogging under 100 words doesn’t lend itself to not jumping to conclusions. I jump a lot :-)
Conservatively Liberal
John, maybe you were expecting the left to be happy about someone on the right saying ‘they won the culture wars’? You know, high-fiving and all mosh pit like at the idea they ‘beat’ the conservatives at the culture wars?
;)
Maybe that is the case, maybe not, but it would be something I would expect some on the right to concern themselves with: The libs must be celebrating their asses off!! The assholes WON!! Grrr…!! In my view, most people who lean left don’t look at it as winning so much as making things better and breathing a sigh of relief. Why be happy with winning when we have so much more to do?
On the woman and the kids, my thought is that while she is free and has the right to do what she wants regarding her embryos/children, that doesn’t make it right. But that is her decision to make. That is about all I can really say about it.
John Cole
Has anyone checked on Malkin regarding that woman, btw? This is tricky territory- how do you celebrate the culture of life while simultaneously calling her a welfare queen? Would love to see how she splits that baby, if you pardon the expression.
bootlegger
@John Cole: She could liveblog her head exploding.
Grumpy Code Monkey
The "culture war" is nothing more than a bunch of old white guys complaining that they can’t order women and brown people around like they used to. Much of the "culture war" revolves around the fact that midway through the 20th century, women and minorities realized that they could think for themselves and make their own decisions. It was about extending freedom and self-determination to groups who had been denied those things for generations. Of course the old guard was going to lose eventually; it always does.
The Moar You Know
@John Cole: All Bagevich is doing is indulging in self-pity and butthurt. Liberals didn’t win shit. The one main "victory" I’ve seen in the last twenty years is that gays are somewhat less likely to get the shit beat out of ’em for being gay, but that depends largely on where they live.
Women still make less than men. Religious zealots have made great strides in undermining the work of science. Atheists are still scared shitless to come clean about their lack of religion. Admitting one is a Muslim is like inviting people over to your house to beat the shit out of you. Religious leaders have enormous political influence, to an extent that was unthinkable 20-30 years ago. Republicans have so completely dominated our political discourse for the last three decades that people are ashamed, if not scared, to self-identify as liberal, whereas our current president, who is well to the right of Richard Nixon, is smeared as a socialist.
I’ll say it again. We didn’t win shit.
And if this is winning, I would hate to see what losing would look like.
The Moar You Know
goddamned spam filter
Shygetz
I’ll be the asshole in the room and bring it up…I don’t think she should have that right when she’s using my money to raise ’em. News reports have said that she is on food stamps with just the six kids she already had. (Before people get all on a tangent–I know and agree that corporate welfare is very real and BoA will cost much more money than this one woman, and I’m against corporate welfare without big caveats as well, so get off my back). I think anyone on public assistance should hold off on mothering/fathering more children until they are off of public assistance. I’m not talking about people on SS disability who decide to have children that they can support above the poverty line without further assistance. I’m not talking about taking kids away from large families that have fallen on hard times. What I’m talking about is the family that has four kids and is on welfare and food stamps deciding to have a fifth.
The problem is, I don’t know how I’d legally treat a parent who decided to violate such a law. Forced abortion? Forced adoption? Force her off the welfare rolls so her kids starve? I can’t think of an answer that doesn’t make me retch. But I think it’s wrong to have kids you already damn well know you can’t support, and I think its moderately foolish to implicitly condone such activities.
passerby
Thanks for posting this John, an interesting, thought provoking read indeed.
@Dave:
"Choice should be the default position for our society, because the right to choose is freedom. But that also demands that we be responsible in how we use our freedom, and that issue is neither Left nor Right. How is the woman with 14 kids any worse than the Wall Street jackass who decided to make some extra coin by abusing the system? They both made a choice and both were irresponsible in the extreme."
I think this goes to the heart of the matter: responsibility.
I often wonder how the debate between "conservative" and "liberal" got away from addressing responsibility with regard to government rule vs personal freedom. I often hear others refer to themselves as fiscally conservative but socially liberal. I count myself in that number.
Live and let live. The creation of government programs to nanny up for individuals or for institutions is not fiscally sound nor do I believe it to be the purpose of government.
On the social side of the argument, I read Emerson’s essay: "Self Reliance".
Unfortunately, the whole Republican v Democrat script that dominates politics and the media is devoid of any real substance WRT philosophy. Blurred lines.
The Moar You Know
@Shygetz: I don’t think it’s too much to ask that as a condition of receiving public assistance, women should be required to use Norplant.
With the case of our local human puppy mill, although her actions are truly horrific, she is a outlier – I can’t get that bent out of shape about what she’s done because she is literally the only one in that situation. I don’t think we need new laws or a new legal framework to deal with what she has done.
That being said, she needs to be institutionalized (she is obviously insane) and the state needs to take her kids.
The Moar You Know
Posted again due to spam filter hating certain political persuasions:
@John Cole: All Bagevich is doing is indulging in self-pity and butthurt. Liberals didnât win shit. The one main "victory" Iâve seen in the last twenty years is that gays are somewhat less likely to get the shit beat out of âem for being gay, but that depends largely on where they live.
Women still make less than men. Religious zealots have made great strides in undermining the work of science. Atheists are still scared shitless to come clean about their lack of religion. Admitting one is a Muslim is like inviting people over to your house to beat the shit out of you. Religious leaders have enormous political influence, to an extent that was unthinkable 20-30 years ago. Republicans have so completely dominated our political discourse for the last three decades that people are ashamed, if not scared, to self-identify as liberal, whereas our current president, who is well to the right of Richard Nixon, is smeared as a soc!@list.
Iâll say it again. We didnât win shit.
And if this is winning, I would hate to see what losing would look like.
Shygetz
The woman with 14 kids is absolutely an outlier. But the unemployed woman having a second (or third, or etc.) kid while on government assistance is not an outlier.
That said, it would be unfair to only require women to use Norplant. What about men? They have financial obligations to their kids too? Can we surgically implant a condom? Obligatory vasectomies?
Laura W
@jibeaux:
and I would add her close family and friends who seem to have enabled it, or at least not intervened. I could be wrong. Haven’t followed it because I mute or click away every single time I see the story. But I concur with what I think you’re expressing here.
And to your other point, this story disturbs me greatly, as do cat/dog hoarders. I think there is a very similar pathological dynamic in action. And that’s about the extent of the story, IMO.
I see you’ve said this later in the thread and I don’t have time to read it all right now but just wanted to say WORD.
rock
It is odd to hold up a women having 8 children as an example of liberalism. A conservative government/country would do what? Forced abortion? Limit the number of children someone can have? Isn’t that the antithesis of conservative/libertarian thought? Honestly, I don’t see how this woman’s actions exemplify either political philosophy.
I dislike the use of an anecdote to posit something is a crushing problem (8 kids = tons of irresponsible birthing = too much choice). If you think kids being born to get government assistance is problem, do a thorough study and prove it so. And then suggest a remedy.
I assume the conservative remedy is that the woman & children should receive no assistance. And honestly, I understand the appeal of that stance. She should be responsible for her own decisions; taxpayers who did not agree to her having these children should not have to support them. But of course, that has consequences for our society as well and I am not sure that the end-result would lead to a strong society. Or at least one that I would want to live in.
passerby
@Shygetz:
I don’t think you’re an asshole for bringing this up. I don’t believe any of us should have to be forced to be financially responsible for her decisions.
Imagine that there are no public programs that give $$$ to her. What would become of her? The churches and the community where she lives would step up (or not) to assist her. She chose to do this. Would she have made the same decision knowing that governmental financial support would not be available?
Make no apologies for making this point. I think it’s a good one.
The Moar You Know
@Shygetz: Men don’t qualify for public assistance. Additionally, there is no reversible birth control for men.
Don’t get me wrong, I get your point. But women are who we pay the benefits to.
If I had my way, people wouldn’t have a choice; men and women would be on mandatory birth control unless they could obtain a license from the state to have kids.
bootlegger
Probably. I brought the issue of responsibility up earlier, but where I disagree with Conservatives is the need to punish people who make bad choices by letting them, and especially their children, suffer. To me, health care, shelter and food are basic human entitlements, we have far too many resources for this not to be the case. So I would not agree with taking away their welfare, in whatever form, because of irresponsible choices. Rather than the stick, let’s use the carrot.
passerby
@bootlegger:
I am for socialized medicine (if you can afford better care, i believe you should be able to buy it). But, I believe the food and shelter can be available through community/church efforts as it was before government programs existed when communities took care of their own and had more influence over its members.
liberal
It’s actually pretty easy to explain: the main factors are economic.
Families are a lot wealthier these days. In the "good" ole days, if a man left his family, the kids would likely starve to death.
The secondary factor is technological, namely, "the pill," which allowed women true control of their sexuality.
The politics is really following these trends, not driving them.
liberal
@passerby:
I think that’s wrong-headed.
Nations have been coping with "welfare" since the dawn of capitalism.
Furthemore, in the good old days of community-based welfare, lots of people starved to death.
Finally, the idea that a minimal level of human welfare (particularly as regards children) should rely mainly on the capriciousness of local charitable institutions is, to be frank, repulsive. While those institutions sometimes do good work, the state should provide a minimum well-being for all. (Particularly when the state mainly stuffs about 10–20% of GDP in landowners pockets for doing nothing.)
liberal
@rock:
Uh, actually, she has 14 children now.
A rational government would permanently de-license any fertility doctor who EITHER (a) implanted 6 embryos in an IVF procedure (which is nuts), or (b) decided to treat someone who already had 6 children.
The real issue isn’t people having too many children; that’s not that common, as you point out. The issue is that fertility doctors are not really regulated.
Remedy is pretty simple: any doctor doing what this guy/gal did should lose their license permanently.
aimai
How can we help but focus on Bacevich’s demonization of the octuplet mother as an exemplar of feminism? For god’s sake it doesn’t even make sense in its *own terms.* Motherhood without having sex and without *fornicating?* Isn’t that the very definition of perfect womanhood in conservative terms. The last time I saw anyone celebrating that was at a fornicatin’ catholic mass for mary mother o’ you know who. And it wasn’t bella abzug. When you read this stuff from otherwise sensible people it makes you despair that conservatives can ever dig themselves out of the deep pit of stupid into which their hatred of women, feminism, freedom, liberty, and democracy seems to condemn them. This poor octuplet mother is very screwed up, sure, but she’s screwed up in some fairly typical *conservative american cultural ways.* She wanted motherhood and fame more than she wanted an adult, liberated, feminist lifestyle in which she had an adult sexual relationship and a significant job. As others have pointed out she just jumped over some of the necessary steps when no wealthy Duggar type daddy entered the picture. That just makes her technologically savvy, not liberal. It makes her celebrity focused, not leftist. It makes her the logical heir of the far right natalist movement and the semi religious valorization of the pregnant woman. alas for her she didn’t actually look a little farther into the political and cultural wars to realize that lots of little non white babies withouten any christian daddies would instantly go from "aw…cuuuute" to "litter of rats" in the blink of a ceasarian.
aimai
srv
Yeah, Bacevich is crazy about Reagan being a faux conservative. Reagan cut the size and budget of government dramatically and attacked only countries that were legitimate threats with the aid of real Republicans like Tip O’Neill.
liberal
@passerby:
(yawn) The main nanny program is shoveling 10–20% of GDP every year into landowners’ pockets for doing absolutely nothing.
JohnR
I wonder what a "conservative" is any more. I think of myself as one, but I’m not a lunatic Christian Taliban, and I admire and desire good government. I still regard many of the more wild-eyed left with distrust and a certain amount of amused contempt, but the overtly fascist remnants of the Republican Party drove me out 15 years ago. My wife (probably not surprisingly) is pretty far to the left (her favorite reading material is the Daily Worker, or whatever it’s called nowadays, and many of her friends are vigorous demonstrators and include members of the American CP who are so extreme that even other members of the ACP think of them as dangerously radical). We both agree that this "litter woman" is disturbed and needs help, judging by the (dubiously trustworthy) press accounts. Still, using her to further a political agenda is rather despicable; like dragging a Down’s Syndrome baby around to political rallies to generate sympathy and support. That’s the real indicator of our culture – not so much this silliness about "The Culture Wars" (for goodness’ sake; humanity has been engaged in "Culture Wars" for pretty much the entire time that we’ve had 2 sexes and rudimentary language). Using damaged or disturbed individuals to define your enemies or bolster your side is an old and revolting human tactic, and should be universally met with ‘shame and spitting’.
aimai
Hello? Poor Laws? Back in the good old days medical care as well as elder care were minimal, rudimentary, and consisted of mere food and shelter. Church and community *never* supplied what we would consider adequate health care today, nor can they today. Plus, people don’t belong to communities in that pre-capitalist sense. And they stopped belonging to communities, meaninfully, after the end of feudalism. That is exactly what the Poor Laws were meant to deal with–a mobile labor force results in a situation in which localities (church and community) get left with the very people who can’t take care of themselves and are pretty soon bankrupted by that. Federal taxes on income and Federal level redistribution of same is the only way to counteract the problem of people using one community and its tax base for child care and schooling and then moving away and refusing to pay their share when they need it for elder care and hospice care. its the same tragedy of the commons in health care. A highly segmented, for profit, local system of health insurance by random employment undercuts generic attempts to insure the health of all americans by cutting the insurance pool into small groups and creating incentives for the temporarily healthy to opt out in the hopes that they can return when they are truly sick.
aimai
clark
One might quibble with some of what Bacevich says, but those who seem to think he is the equivalent of Malkin and Limbaugh are as dumb as Malkin and Limbaugh.
clark
P.S I almost forgot to invite everyone who disagrees with me to "suck it."
jrg
Shorter Bacevich: "Despite our best efforts to legislate otherwise, people continue to use their naughty parts. I blame a liberal conspiracy. And Reagan, who conservatives exhume and fellate on a bi-annual basis, is actually a liberal. Also, too."
I’d like to add that Al Sharpton is Bristol Palin’s baby-daddy.
paul in kirkland
John, I tend to agree with the poster who said that you don’t realize I back-handed conservative bitch slap when you see one.
That’s ok though. You’ve only recently went through librul orientation, got your coffee mug, and made it through Liberalism 101: How to Legislate As If You’ve Lost, so we understand. :)
It’s amazing how the "Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed" mantra keeps rearing it’s ugly head. Reagan’s a faux conservative? They named the DC airport after him and they’re still trying to get him on money and Mt Rushmore. And now he’s a faux conservative?
I respected Bacevich’s views on the military, but after reading this he’s now in the wingnut aisle with the rest of them.
bootlegger
@passerby: Um, if it was so "available" back in the day then why were death rates from hunger and exposure so high? No doubt churches did some of the good work, but they simply don’t have the same organizational capacity as the government.
passerby
@aimai:
Aimai, perhaps if you re-read my comment you will understand that I don’t expect that community and churches be responsible for providing medical care.
passerby
@bootlegger:
Um, if it was so "available" back in the day then why were death rates from hunger and exposure so high? No doubt churches did some of the good work, but they simply donât have the same organizational capacity as the government.
Disagree.
In the three months I spent in New Orleans following Katrina, after they drained the city, church groups from across the country with mobile kitchens providing food and lending an ear to hear peoples’ storm stories were a common occurance. [One group had some music equipment with some dudes belting out jesus rap–my sister and I found that hilarious and we ate our BBQ chicken and mustard greens.]
There was a crew of Mormons moving from street to street helping people with Step 1: gutting houses.
The Salvation Army vans would roll thru neighborhoods passing out hot lunches and t-shirts (yeah, sometimes it was just Chef-boy-ar-dee Spaghettios but hey, it was hot and free.)
My 80 y.o. dad, who rode out the storm only to be trapped by the flood, was picked up by N. LA sheriff dept. and brought to a bus pick-up point. On arrival in Dallas, he and each passenger was greeted by church members and given a $20 bill and the loan of a cell phone.
Some animal activists drove down from the NW, living in their cars, rolled thru the ‘hoods cataloging and feeding abandoned pets (mostly cats). [I came out one day as they were trying to lure my cat into a cage with a can of cat food, whoa.] They were big hearted zealots and happy to be on the mission.
And I can’t say enough about the American Red Cross that had supply stations: brooms, mops, boxes, cleaning supplies, bleach, ice!, and more, set up across the city, a service made possible through donations of millions of American Citizens–not some federally subsidized agency.
Except for the LA Natl. Guard who would patrol the deserted neighborhood at night, I saw no sign of Federal Assistance.
It was how I came to understand that this world is slap full of good people not one of whose name was Uncle Sam.
srv
@paul in kirkland:
Ah, well an airport is all the context we need. Bacevich would be well to the right of Buchanon and most paleocons on every President since forever. He doesn’t say anything nice in his books about Ike, Dick, Ronnie or the Bush clan. He doesn’t hold back berating any "conservatives" of these eras.
But he’s wrong to keep using that term conservative that way, sorta like all those Truman/Kennedy/LBJ/Clinton/Obama get-your-war on, national-security-state "liberals".
Persia
Some of the rumors say she had the implantation done outside the US. What happens then?
Wile E. Quixote
@Cyrus
You don’t need to know anything about IVF. This woman already had six children, all under the age of 8. As far as I’m concerned going in for IVF when you already have six children gives you damned good reasons, at least six of them, to assume the worst of Nadya Suleman. That’s before you add in the facts that she’s unemployed, disabled and unmarried and apparently, according to her grandmother, completely fucking batshit insane.
You know, if Bacevich had used John Thain as an example of what was wrong with America I’m willing to bet that the ignorant assholes on this blog, none of whom have read the man’s books or really know anything about him, would have said a thing. Hell I’ll bet that some of you would even be applauding him and saying "Damn, he speaks truth to power. You go Andy!"
Laertes
Everyone’s done a good job of connecting this lady to the so-con fertility cult, so I needn’t go there.
But I’ve got a question for the folks who think that we shouldn’t be obligated to support this woman’s kids since she obviously can’t: Why not?
Yeah, she’s crazy. She’s irresponsible, and the doctor who helped her litter again ought to lose his license. But there are eight new little facts on the ground, and they’re what matters most. Their mom may be an idiot, but those babies are my countrymen, and it’s my responsibility to see to their care if their mom isn’t up to the job. I elect people to see to it, and pay taxes so they’ve got the resources to do the job.
Libertarians are correct when they say that behind every law there is a gun. It’s easy to say "she shouldn’t have more kids," but what’s the "or else?" She did. And let’s suppose for the sake of argument that she litters again in a few years. What then?
Any effective sanction I can imagine is worse than the offense it’d prevent. If she can’t support her kids, we have mechanisms for dealing with that. DCFS deals with that kind of thing all the time.
pattonbt
@The Moar You Know:
"If I had my way, people wouldnât have a choice; men and women would be on mandatory birth control unless they could obtain a license from the state to have kids".
I love this idea in the abstract. Ive always joked (semi seriously) that if I were king this would be the first rule I would put in place.
Then of course Ive always added, I know I wouldnt pass my own application standards (very few would) and the human race would be gone in a generation or two.
I dont think I would be a good king.
pattonbt
@paul in kirkland:
The thing is conservative ideology can never succeed. It presupposes making humans things they, in totality, can not be. Its doesnt allow the reality that is the nuance of human nature to exist. To try and make humans what they can not be dooms them to failure. I dont mind trying to attain an ideal, but to try and mandate it and chastise those who can not attain it is epic fail.
The problem with progressives is that nuance is tough and they recognize there is no ‘one’ solution but we at least ‘try’ to accommodate that nuance. We know no ‘one’ answer can mollify everyone and solve all the problems, so we ‘try’ and find the best compormise. We hardly ever succeed, though. But we do a damn sight better than the conservatives.
You cant fight human nature and expect to win without some seriously intrusive social controls over behavior and moralistically twisted and contradictory stances on issues.
pattonbt
@liberal:
"Itâs actually pretty easy to explain: the main factors are economic"
I actually disagree a bit. I think the culture wars were ‘won’ because of the freedom of information that is available. Those who have been previously demonized (women, blacks, whatever) could be demonized because people couldnt ever see that the charactization being sold to them was wrong.
But as people can see with their own eyes that teh gheys arent evil child molestors and Wiccan’s arent devil worshippers the demonization starts to lose power.
The more people see those who are demonized are just like you and me the more umph is taken out of the culture wars arguments.
Its the light that shines on the subjugateds normality that makes the culture wars a lost cause (in the long run – there are still many battles to be fought).