Discuss the State of the Union Address here

@1 “I refer here to Watergate II.” Several young pastors are doing that during sermons now (I watch online). Last night I saw one again and thought, ‘Is this a fad designer thing?’ Although I do remember seeing speakers years ago with a pitcher of water and a glass nearby. And, of course, at conferences.

Looks like I’m not too late for a lively, edifying political discussion on Cranach.

I didn’t watch it. In fact, I haven’t watched a full SOTU in ten years, with the exception of a few minutes of Obama’s first. Why would I want to watch one stupid egoist give a stupid speech to an audience of hundreds of his stupid egoist peers, after which another stupid egoist from the other “side” gives a stupid response, after which other stupid egoists provide stupid commentary on the whole stupid affair?

OK, let me get this straight; using the Teleprompter for talking to grade school kids is OK, but taking a drink to wet your whistle during a talk is wrong? tODD nails it.

I didn’t watch, but I read part of it, and it was about as I expected. Obama apparently has no use for the data that make it pretty clear his program has been an abject failure, proposes more of the same. Let’s increase the minimum wage and put more minority kids in the city out of work. Let’s put more money into solar energy companies about to go bankrupt. Let’s rebuild more roads and bridges that don’t need to be rebuilt.

And let’s take money out of the hands of people who actually know how to run a business to pay for it. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Also, this: http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18eh0jgv8g2btgif/original.gif

kerner@9:

[I]s there any modern politician . . . who you do not consider a stupid egoist?

No. Do you have any candidates in mind?

Or that you might vote for if he/she were to run for president?

No. Do you have any candidates in mind? Actually, scratch that: I would vote for Chris Christie for the entertainment value (and, frankly, I admire a Republican who can earn a 73% approval rating in New Jersey). But why bother getting excited about voting in a mass democracy where a) your vote doesn’t matter and b) you have no effective choice between the two-headed major party? I’d just as soon live in a monarchy at this rate.

Tocqueville’s dictum was right: democracies tend to select mediocre men as leaders. He was understating.

. . . or even former politician[?]

I admire a few historical political actors. Thomas Jefferson is a current favorite.

[B]ut my primary interest is to understand your attitude toward American politics

I hate it/them. Our contemporary mass democracy is perhaps one of the worst systems of government ever devised. At least Hitler actually cared about the citizens he wasn’t murdering.

The youth unemployment rate is about 17%: http://www.businessinsider.com/unemployment-and-youth-unemployment-rate-2013-1

Raising the minimum wage to $9.00 per hour should do wonders for lowering that rate. Who wouldn’t want to pay an unskilled teen in their first job $9.00 an hour?! In fact, it would be even greater genius to go to $17.00, as John C suggests they do in Australia, or maybe even $20.00 and eliminate poverty! The ultimate would be to just mandate that everyone get a six figure salary, at which point Obama can tax us all as rich and solve the deficit!

Unfortunately, here in southern California our news stations were focused on the Dorner manhunt, so I was forced to miss a whole hour of this kind of genius from our Commander in Chief.

Cin:

I have no particular candidates in mind. Certainly not Chris Christie, who I would have thought was one of the biggest stupid egoists on earth (hence his popularity in New Jersey).

But to expaand on your other statements a bit:

1. Your vote doesn’t matter? Why, because there are 315 million of us (well, probably more like 300 mil, once you eliminate the non-citizen residents), such that one vote among so many is to insignificant to contemplate? Or are there other reasons?

2. We have no effective choice between the two headed major party? So, what would a contemporary politician have to do to distinguish himself from the 2 headed party? Form a new one? Or would taking sufficient distinguishing positions on the issues do (and if so to what degree)?

Your final paragraph throws me for a loop. You hate the mob so much that the dictator actually looks good to you? Even the epitome of stupid egoists, who “cared about” the citizens he wasn’t murdering so much that he substantially shortened or otherwise ruined the lives of almost all of them?

Not that I’m all that thrilled with our present form of government in practice right now myself. But, I can’t say my attitude has descended to the depths of loathing that it has for you. And I really can’t think of another system that would be working any better in this culture. Can you?

Chiming in on the conversation between Cincinnatus and Kerner, the course of human history and human government is not a pleasant one, unsurprisingly, given the depraved state of man. Citizens decry the lawlessness of their fellow citizens, the evils of barons of industry, etc., and clamor for a solution, which is inevitably to concentrate power with a few governing officials. Amazingly, this begets corruption, greed, evil, and incompetence on a grand, governmental scale. The difference, of course, is that there is no recourse against a corrupt government, unlike that available against fellow citizens, because you have accepted tyranny by clamoring for big government. It started with the Israelite people clamoring for King Saul, and history is full of such examples since then, including the unfolding story of present day America.

All that to say that we should resist the enlargement of government, at any level, with every fiber of our being if we have any desire to remain free and to preserve our dignities. So, Cincinnatus @ 12, a monarchy? Really?

DonS@16:

I’m not a monarchist. But, yes, factually speaking, a limited constitutional monarchy–such as England had for much of its post-Roman history–would be small (actually, is and was) smaller and less intrusive than what we have today. When one considers that the word “monarchy” isn’t synonymous with Louis XIV’s absolutism, one might wonder how you could suggest that today’s mass democracy–actually, mass technocracy–is “smaller” than the late medieval and early modern governments of Western Europe. Come to think of it, actually, our “democratic” state boasts prerogatives and powers that Louis XIV couldn’t even have conceived.

Some historians have made a convincing empirical case that modern democracies and democratic revolutions almost always lead to larger governments. Many political theorists, meanwhile–Tocqueville and Jouvenal, for example–have shown that these historical results are actually intrinsic to the logic of mass democratic government.

So, yes, I would prefer King Edward III–or even Louis XIV–to President Reagan.

Cincinnatus @ 18: Well, clearly, there has never in world history been a government so overgrown and obese as today’s U.S. federal government, in absolute terms. But not in terms of government spending to total GDP. Not by a longshot. I don’t know how the limited constitutional monarchies of, for example, England, compare in that respect either. Perhaps they were smaller in terms of government spending/taxation to GDP, but I rather doubt it.

The real difference, though, is in terms of human rights. Unless you were nobility, you didn’t have many in merrie olde England. Nor did you have much opportunity for economic advancement — job prospects were extremely limited, in large part because you had no hope at all of ever owning any land.

The Pilgrims didn’t think much of the religious freedoms offered by the British monarchy and the lovely Church of England, either.

What is unique and special about our government is that it was founded on the principles of inalienable human rights. I know most of our citizenry no longer appreciates that distinctive, preferring to relinquish those rights in exchange for the government’s illusory bowl of entitlement pottage, but I still think they’re worth fighting for.

Cin:

I actually am kind of a fan of localism. I see this country’s salvation in the remaining ability of the states to exercise some measure of control (however weakened) over their own affairs. I have rarely been so pleasantly surprised as when our own state bit back against the “technocrats” as you call them, spending 2 years in political turmoil to do it. And I fully agree with you that the rise of a governing class is a much bigger problem than the so called mob. Frankly, the way government workers deem themselves entitled to benefits beyond what we can afford and or choose to pay reminds me of feudalism.

And remember that local control was an earmark of feudalism. If you were a serf, or a local businessman in Merry Olde England, it was the local lord and his men at arms that were your biggest worry, not the king who probably didn’t know or care that you existed. But local control doesn’t seem to have made life any easier for the serfs or the burghers. They were still subject to arbitrary power.

But my point is that locally Americans ARE resisting the new feudalism that the left is trying to impose on us. I remember you being very critical of Gov. Walker in threads past, but I don’t remember why. I’m not claiming he’s a genius. He certainly has trouble maintaining the level of integrity I would like to see among his own administration. But he doesn’t seem to be grossly corrupt himself and he is chasing the tyrannical technocrats away from the public trough. Part of the 2 headed beast or not, I have to support somebody like that.

I don’t blame you for having no faith in Rubio, but it hardly seems fair to conclude out of hand that he is stupid without some data to support your conclusion. It would be a statistical miracle for any politition in any era to not be afflicted with SOME degree of egoism. But I don’t begrudge him the fact that he may have a little of the Rock-Star cachet that presidential candidates seem to need these days. This is a mass media driven culture, and the successful candidate will be mass media savvy (and I don’t mean merely TV). That’s why Obama who is a master of today’s media won. It is also why the Romney, who relied on media (talk radio and Fox News, etc.) that are 25 years old, lost. Rush Limbaugh’s problem isn’t that he is wrong (although he has been wrong plenty of times), it is that he is old and in a rut (because the rut he and several others are in has made him very wealthy and he is loath to give it up). But of course the Republicans don’t know what else to do on a national level. But maybe Rubio and his contemporaries will think of some ways to play the game by the new rules that will take the Democrats by surprise (as Reagan and Talk Radio did in the 1980’s-1990’s).

And I really don’t know why you don’t like Ronald Reagan. There was a guy who changed the direction this country was going. I was there and I remember the change. The problem was that he had no like minded successor. Every Republican presidential candidate nominated since Reagan was either a relic of the statist past or clueless about a non-statist future (actually, W. might have had some clue, but he jettisoned it after 911 and never got most of it back). There have been some who weren’t nominated who seemed to have some of his vision, but they either lacked the connections or the charisma to move to the front of the pack.

So the Global Financial Crisis had no impact on employment in 2007-2009, bike bubba.