Two of my favorite blogs offer instances of bizarre misuses of words.
First, Samefacts:
Tyler Duvall is the chief policymaker at US DOT; he favors funding for experiments in congestion pricing. In transportation-policy analysis, this is roughly as controversial as vaccination programs are in health policy. He also favors, more broadly, privatization of road building and operation, which has a mixed record so far.Peter DeFazio is the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure highways and transit subcommittee, and represents the nice people of Eugene, Ore. At least a few of whom might be scratching their head at
“Tyler Duvall is a little pointy-headed neocon with grand ideas about the future of transportation, and they all involve tolling,” DeFazio said. “He's bright, young, energetic—just totally wrong, and has a bizarre, neocon view of transportation.”I must have missed Irving Kristol’s broadsides against the federal gasoline tax, that nine-part series in Commentary on the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, and Paul Wolfowitz’s scheme to disband the Baghdad Rapid Transit District.
“Neocon” serves roughly the same purposes in the outer rings of the Democratic Party as “gay” does for junior-high-school boys.
Then Daniel Drezner:
Read the whole thing. The article chronicles a variety of tactics designed to impair Al Qaeda's strengths on the web and in the hearts and minds of Muslims.It's good stuff. But it's not "deterrence" in the Cold War sense of the word.
Successful deterrence of Al Qaeda would be taking place if the organization decided not to take action because they feared retaliation by the United States against assets that they held dear. Deterrence works if an actor refrains from attack because they calculate that the cost of the adversary's response would outweigh any benefit from the initial strike.
But that's not in the U.S. strategy. Instead, what U.S. officials appears to be doing is decreasing the likelihood of a successful attack -- by sowing confuson, interdicting logistical support, and reducing sympathy for the organization. The closest one could come to deterrence is if one defined Al Qaeda's reputation as a tangible asset that would face devastating consequences after a successful attack. Even here, however, the U.S. strategy is primarily to weaken Al Qaeda by increasing the odds of an unsuccessful attack.
The more appropriate word to use here is "containment."
Now if we can just get people to stop calling big government Democrats "communists", and market liberals "fascists", we'll really be getting somewhere . . .
"Now if we can just get people to stop calling big government Democrats "communists", and market liberals "fascists", we'll really be getting somewhere . . ."
Sniff, oh, this is so nice to see from you, Megan. Maybe we can be friends after all...
Karl Marx's "10 Planks" to seize power and destroy freedom:
1. Abolition of Property in Land and Application of all Rents of Land to Public Purpose.
2. A Heavy Progressive or Graduated Income Tax.
3. Abolition of All Rights of Inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the Property of All Emigrants and Rebels.
5. Centralization of Credit in the Hands of the State, by Means of a National Bank with State Capital and an Exclusive Monopoly.
6. Centralization of the Means of Communication and Transport in the Hands of the State.
7. Extension of Factories and Instruments of Production Owned by the State, the Bringing Into Cultivation of Waste Lands, and the Improvement of the Soil Generally in Accordance with a Common Plan.
8. Equal Liability of All to Labor. Establishment of Industrial Armies, Especially for Agriculture.
9. Combination of Agriculture with Manufacturing Industries; Gradual Abolition of the Distinction Between Town and Country by a More Equable Distribution of the Population over the Country.
10. Free Education for All Children in Public Schools. Abolition of Children's Factory Labor in it's Present Form. Combination of Education with Industrial Production.
"Western nations including the United States have gradually implemented virtually all of Marx's 10 key steps toward creating a dictatorship. What are some examples can you find? Americans would be wise to study the "Ten Planks" and demand that the President and Congress abolish all laws, regulations and agencies which govern these (and all other) unconstitutional seizures of power."
http://www.conservativeusa.org/10planksofcommunism.htm
seems like we do have us some Communists, after all..
Hilarious, MEH. #1 is nowhere in sight. #2 has been in decline since the 1970's, to our detriment. #3 is nowhere in sight and never has been. #4 is nowhere in sight (emigrants we may have, but rebels?). #5 is nowhere in sight. #6 is nowhere in sight. #7 is nowhere in sight. #8 is nowhere in sight. #9 is nowhere in sight. And on #10, are you seriously contending that child factory labor is a GOOD thing?
As far as implementing dictatorship, you don't have to go much farther than the Bush administration for an example of just that.
Seems like we do have us some tinfoil-hatters, too.
Vote Democratic, MEH. We're for the Constitution, not Communism.
"As far as implementing dictatorship, you don't have to go much farther than the Bush administration for an example of just that."
Really? I mean, seriously....Really?
I don't think you know what the word dictatorship really means.
I'm pretty sure a leader facing a hostile legislature, generally hostile judiciary, hostile press, and a final year of a lame duck presidency where you have to {literally) dance on the White House portico to get the attention of the media is not what most people have in mind when they think of dictatorships.
But, hey, that's just me. I'm sure you read that Bush is a dictator on some blog somewhere, so you run with it.
#2 has been in decline since the 1970's, to our detriment.
The first half is arguably correct, but judging by your all too typical unreal grasp of economics as displayed in the second half of that sentence, I would suggest that another sort of #2 is quite prolific. You may wish to fire that bovine, as he is leading you far astray.
To turn back to nomenclature...
Realizing that "Socialist" and "Communist" are insufficiently accurate and overly broad labels for left-leaning enemies of Classical Liberalism, I've been using "Statist" in their place. But is there a term that could be deployed to refer to those supporting economic planning in particular? (Statism seams, to me at least, appropriate for either economic or social governmental interference. I'm looking for something like "Plannerist," but far less kludgy.)
I'm completely discomfited... I mean disconcerted... by such sloppiness.
Re: Western nations including the United States have gradually implemented virtually all of Marx's 10 key steps toward creating a dictatorship.
Other than the part about public education, which of the the 10 steps have we implemented fully and completely? OK, the income tax is progressive, but steeply so? Not since 1981. Nor is there any serious proposal out there to eliminate all inheritances, just to keep a tax on truly large inheritances. The rest are not even on the drawing board.
JonF,
#5 is the big one, we know it as "The Federal Reserve"..
"The nation, whose founders included such individualists as Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, James Madison, John Adams and Patrick Henry, has gradually turned away from the principles of individual rights, limited constitutional government, private property, and free markets and instead we increasingly have embraced the failed ideas and nostrums of socialism and fascism."
http://www.laissez-fairerepublic.com/TenPlanks.html
I don't quite understand the neocon stuff. Before you jump at the word, it's important to understand that what he is proposing is not a full liberalization of transportation, but rather a shift from socialized roads to corporatized roads. The companies still enjoy tons of government benefits, including money from the issuance of government-backed bonds and eminent domain rights. That is, if the structure was even built by the private company. And then, does it really matter who runs I-95 in Florida if the whole rest of the system (think: network effects) is planned by politicians and bureaucrats?
So yeah, he seems to fit the profile of a neocon: talks a good libertarian game, but then brings in the cushy government contracts. Sadly enough, one of the ideological backers and benefactors is Charles Koch himself, funder of all things libertarian.
I don't quite understand the neocon stuff. Before you jump at the word, it's important to understand that what he is proposing is not a full liberalization of transportation, but rather a shift from socialized roads to corporatized roads. The companies still enjoy tons of government benefits, including money from the issuance of government-backed bonds and eminent domain rights. That is, if the structure was even built by the private company. And then, does it really matter who runs I-95 in Florida if the whole rest of the system (think: network effects) is planned by politicians and bureaucrats?
So yeah, he seems to fit the profile of a neocon: talks a good libertarian game, but then brings in the cushy government contracts. Sadly enough, one of the ideological backers and benefactors is Charles Koch himself, funder of all things libertarian.
to Stephen's Q:
"does it really matter who runs I-95 in Florida if the whole rest of the system (think: network effects) is planned by politicians and bureaucrats?"
"The first step toward understanding how to make America’s roads and highways safer and cleaner (and just plain tolerable to navigate without losing one’s mind), is to recognize that the type of road provision that we currently have in this country is a pure form of socialism. That is to say, since America’s roads and highways are funded purely through tax money (and "fees," if you prefer Mit Romney’s double-speak), they are therefore managed wholly by faceless government bureaucrats and politicians in precisely the same manner that tractors and rubber boots were managed and produced in the former Soviet Union. The provision of roads in this country thus has absolutely no link to the preferences of the consumers of the "service," all of whom are forced to pay for it whether they want to or not. (And, if any of us poor saps should sensibly try to opt out of paying the taxes that fund these horribly mismanaged assets, we will very quickly find ourselves rotting in Federal prison.) Hence, the first step toward understanding how to remedy the gravely disordered road system in this country is simply to recognize that the current system of road provision in the U.S. blatantly satisfies Arthur Balfour’s famous definition of socialism: "Socialism means the public ownership of the means of production and distribution; that is Socialism and nothing else is Socialism." (See Garret Garret’s powerful essay The March for this definition). "
http://www.lewrockwell.com/crovelli/crovelli12.html
liberalrob,
Come on, you're better than that.
MEH engages in exactly the sort of ridiculous behavior that Megan is discouraging here, and in retaliation... so do you?
You're obviously right in refuting his silly points, but then you try to claim that the Bush administration has implemented dictatorship? You can't even manage the same rigor that MEH did. Let's see some reasonable definition of dictatorship, and you can explain to us how the Bush administration has implemented it.
It's not using neocon in the usual sense, but I can get the idea: clever ambitious people with absolutely no knowledge of the subject, and absolute faith that ideology trumps their lack of knowledge. The kind of people that have made Iraq such a success story.