The Financial Crisis, Political Culture--It Ain't Pretty

"There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle."
--Alexis de Tocqueville
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith
"All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
--Albert Einstein

Today, the daddy is feeling two insightful articles about our political landscape. As comedian Roger Dangerfield said about Phyllis Diller, another comedian, it ain't pretty. Actually, the puffed-hairdo, the crazy laugh, the knee-slapping one-liners--it was all part of a persona. Diller was quite an attractive, intelligent person, especially in her younger years. But, as the two authors below will attest, there is nothing either attractive or intelligent about today's political culture.

The first article is written by Cynthia Tucker, an editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution and a recent Pulitzer Prize this past April for her commentary. The second is by David Michael Green, a political science professor and author of the book "The Europeans: Political Identity in an Emerging Polity (2007).

Credit crisis: Melting pot of problems
by Cynthia Tucker

September 28, 2008

In the midst of a severe financial crisis — a meltdown fueled by clueless home buyers, greedy lenders and money-grubbing financiers — some observers have decided to blame “minorities” for the mess. Though wiser heads have proclaimed the emergency too serious for partisan gamesmanship, some in the conservative commentariat still can’t resist playing the race card.

Several days ago, Neil Cavuto, host of Fox News’ “Your World,” declared, “Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster.”

On WorldNetDaily, a compendium of loopy half-truths, pundit Drew Zahn declared that “when federal regulators demanded parity between racial groups in lending, the only way to achieve a quota would be to begin making intentionally bad lending decisions.”

The conservative National Review Online trotted out a favorite whipping boy, the Community Reinvestment Act, claiming that the legislation was the result of “racially inflammatory campaigns” that forced banks to “make mortgages available to people without much in the way of income, assets or credit.”

Why would anyone inject skin color into a debate over credit?

There is certainly no evidence to support this claptrap. Federal regulators have never “demanded parity between racial groups in lending.” Not ever.

The CRA — designed to stop banks from “redlining,” or withholding loans from entire neighborhoods — has long been under attack by conservatives, but for entirely different reasons. Critics called it vague, contradictory and useless. They claimed it was unfair to banks and thrifts, which were regulated, while other financial institutions were left to lend money as they saw fit.

To read the full story, clicke here at Cynthia.

The Elephant in the Living Room
by David Michael Green

The second most astonishing thing about American politics is that John McCain and Sarah Palin have a respectable chance of winning the White House in 2008. (Or, for that matter, that any Republican could have a shot at any office for which the Democratic candidate hasn’t suddenly died on the stump.)

Yeah, yeah, I know. Barack Obama has a funny name. He’s relatively young and inexperienced. Oh, and – have you heard? – he’s also black. But, just the same, I mean, c’mon. A Republican could win the presidency in 2008? You gotta be kidding, right?

All of this is deeply related, in multiple ways, to what is without a doubt absolutely the first most astonishing fact of American politics. And that is that conservatism (I prefer to call them ‘regressives’) isn’t the most repudiated ideology this side of cannibalism. And that regressive practitioners of this hateful disease masquerading as a political philosophy haven’t been tarred-and-feathered, hung, drawn and quartered, then run out of town on an electrified rail. And that any red-blooded American wouldn’t infinitely prefer in this day and age to be called a pedophile, a terrorist or a European – heck, or all of the above combined – rather than a conservative.

I mean, seriously, people. Now that Wall Street has imploded, potentially taking down with it the entire global economy in a fun reprise of the 1930s, what more could possibly be necessary to repudiate a set of ideas for which a good day is when thousands of people don’t die (again) as a result of anyone, let alone the world’s sole superpower, subscribing to something so astonishingly stupid? Really, is there anything that the regressive agenda has touched so far that hasn’t completely turned into a pillar of salt? Not only do these nice pious Christians show every evidence of actually being the anti-christ, they’ve also managed to be the anti-Midas as well.

To read the full story, click here at regressive.