The Liberal Patriot, Ruy Teixeira, is, in my opinion, the only sane voice I am hearing these days. He's also the ONLY one I financially will support. Thank you, Ruy. Keep up the good work and let's turn up the volume.
I agree. I am a former Republican, unhappy with Republican economic views. However I cannot be a member of today's Democratic Party, in part because of their far left social and cultural views, and in part because of their generally dour demeanor. My politics have come to be, pretty close to whatever The Liberal Patriot espouses.
While I don't think the concept of the big tent is overrated (indeed, if Democrats want to govern for a decade or more, which they should seek to do, they need a big coalition), Ruy is right that it matters who calls the shots within the tent.
The big coalition the Democrats need is one that excludes the far left. Pragmatists in the party need to deliberately piss off anyone who's fine with boys in girls' sports, who wants to phase out fossil fuels, who wears a keffiyeh, and who won't support at least the deportation of people who committed crimes on top of illegal border crossings. Pushing those people out of the party will create room in the tent for a lot of moderates and disillusioned Trump supporters.
"talking about the affordability crisis and the cost-of-living will not induce these voters to forget what the party actually stands for." Spanberger seems to have won by doing just that and overriding Earle-Sears' attempt to make the election about trans stuff.
VA is a a near bright Blue state, that ended up with a Rep Governor after a transgender school rape scandal, that school officials tried to keep from parents. It hit at just the right time., a few months before the election Youngkin won. At the same time the Dem candidate admitted, he did not believe parents should determine what is taught in public schools. The mistakes cost Dems that 1 election. As always, the coverup was worse than the crime.
VA has not voted Red in a Presidential election in more than 20 years. At the same time, VA is not only home to legions of federal workers, but also scads of NGO employees. Both have seen their paychecks disappear with the Shutdown, if their jobs were not gone first with downsizing, all thanks to Trump. Even the VA margins were not really a surprise, when the current specifics are considered.
Keep in mind that the off-year electorate is completely different from the general electorate. The off-year electorate is dominated by college-educated white women, who are unusual liberal compared to college educated men or working class women. Supposedly the "Harris is for they/them" ad had a big impact on the swing states.
Spanberger won by establishing a long, consistent record as a moderate devoted to representing all her constituents, including those who didn’t vote for her.
I can't argue your point, but as a person, how can you not strongly, loudly, and clearly denounce what Jay Jones texted? Does it not speak to a party over character attitude and is not that attitude antithetical to making wise decisions? Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't she refuse to talk about this in the debate, at all, etc, maybe I missed something.
Spanberger did denounce Jones in pretty harsh terms. “After learning of these comments earlier today, I spoke frankly with Jay about my disgust with what he had said and texted. I made clear to Jay that he must fully take responsibility for his words. What I have also made clear is that as a candidate — and as the next Governor of our Commonwealth, I will always condemn violent language in our politics."
Voting had already started when the texts came to light. Somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 ballots had been cast. It was too late to remove Jones from ballots. Would it have been better if stepped down regardless? Maybe, I have real concerns about his judgment and character. But a majority of voters preferred him.
That is not on Spanberger.
I watched the debate and it seemed like they talked about little else. No one who watched the news, read the news, or listened to the radio could miss it. Ads about it were non-stop. Virginians knew what they were voting for.
The Big Tent is fundamentally impossible for Democrats. Take gender ideology as an example.
Suppose the activist base of the party stops ostracizing staunch liberals like JK Rowling. Then they will create a preference cascade in which all the liberals who quietly feel that gender ideology is misogynistic can finally speak out without fear of reputational harm, and then the transgender movement will be over. That will result in a major civil rights violation and a massive medical scandal tied around the Democrats' necks. Creating a big tent will destroy the party for a generation.
"They know the candidate’s party still thinks that transwomen are women, that biological boys should be able to play girls sports, that “gender-affirming” medical treatments for children are a great idea and should be easily available and that to question these ideas is to be on the wrong side of history itself."
Good article, and this says it all. There are those that take their wisdom from the Bible (whether they know it or not), and there are those that do what's right in their own minds. Hence our divide, in a nutshell, God bless the folks at the Liberal Patriot.
"There are those that take their wisdom from the Bible (whether they know it or not), and there are those that do what's right in their own minds. "
Excuse me, but this distinction makes no sense. For those who take their wisdom from the Bible, in whose mind do they do what's right, other than their own? Your own mind is the only one you are capable of inhabiting, and certainly the only one capable of controlling what you do.
At some fundamental level we have to use our minds to evaluate truth-claims. But William's point is that Christians use the Bible as their moral data. By contrast, secular people believe what credentialed experts tell them to believe. For a long time the prevailing belief on the left was that gender was a social construct, but biological sex was real. I once heard this explained as "the difference between boys and girls is what's between their legs, not what's in their heads." This view (falsely) holds that there is no such thing as pink brains and blue brains, but the patriarchy socializes women to have submissive and feminine traits. Then a postmodernist comes along and says "gender is deep and innate but biological sex is a social construct" and all of a sudden lifelong liberals like JK Rowling become hate-filled bigots for not getting the firmware update.
This is particularly ironic because the brave new world of leftism holds that women are inherently submissive and passive. So instead of saying that women can be tomboys, they are really actual boys. And instead of saying men can be feminine, they are really actual women. Thus submissiveness becomes a much more inherently feminine trait under gender ideology.
A very simplistic summation of things, that also very disingenuously claims that secularists are "told" what to think by others, yet Christians are just have an unquestionable access to the truth. Or, you could say, secularists think for themselves, whereas Christians are told what to think by an old book. Choose your story.
The interesting thing, though, is your agreement with the 'gender radicals' about the "pink and blue brains". It's an irony that the supposedly radical progressive view of the sexes now holds the view that human brains are fundamentally and irreducibly 'pink or blue', despite the fact that the human bodies 'assigned' to those brains are apparently arbitrary. This is not only a very reductive, and unprogressive, view of male/female psychology, but a deeply old-fashioned, Cartesian attitude to the mind/body relationship.
> "A very simplistic summation of things, that also very disingenuously claims that secularists are "told" what to think by others, yet Christians are just have an unquestionable access to the truth. "
The last 15 years are pretty good evidence for this, no? When did the left have a house debate over gender ideology, open borders, DEI, rewriting American history? In fact, they've actively suppressed debate, which is why JK Rowling is so heavily shamed and scorned for daring to question a single plank of the modern left.
> The interesting thing, though, is your agreement with the 'gender radicals' about the "pink and blue brains".
I don't agree with gender ideology at all, for one thing it's hyper-sexualized. The pulitzer prize-winning journalist and trans-identified male Andrea Long Chu identifies the essence of being female with sexual passivity: “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes.” For the sex positive left, that makes perfect sense. But as a Christian I believe sex is about intimacy and mutual giving of self, not dominance and submission. Having said that, the blank slate is demonstrably false and men and women are different.
- the anthropologist Donald Brown compiled a list of human universals - traits that are true in every civilization that we know of - and it includes men being more aggressive and women spending more time in childcare.
- men with 5-alpha reductase have a blind vaginal opening rather than a penis, and are often assigned female at birth. But they show the classic early childhood male preferences on all three markers: toy preference (trucks over dolls), rough-and-tumble play, and preferring the company of boys to girls. If girls only preferred dolls and cooperative play because of socialization, then males with 5-alpha-reductase would also prefer them because they have the same socialization.
- women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia also have lopsided preferences towards trucks, tough-and-tumble play and boy playmates and they are biological females and given female socialization, but they do have higher levels of testosterone pro hormones during development.
- animal studies have shown that the hormones you are exposed to during development change the the brain and corresponding preferences. E.g. Male rats who are surgically prevented from producing testosterone during development show female behaviors. And female rats who are given testosterone during development show male behaviors.
Carol Hooven - the Harvard professor who was forced to resign after going on Fox News professing that there are only two genders - has a book about this. Brain Gender is also good if you want to geek out on the subject.
Well one could ask, when did the right have a "house debate" over any of the quite profound changes in Republican ideology over the last decade? That isn't how ideological change happens (including religion, which is far more historically transmutable than its adherents like to admit)- and its always complex, as many on "the left" don't accept strict transgender ideology either.
I dont know about the "hypersexualised" element of gender ideology- in my experience, its often pretty asexual; I see it as more part of a hyper-consumerist and techno-futurist rejection of the given facts of biology and given reality in all its forms.
I know you dont agree with gender ideology- my point was that it is, by the old progressive metrics, remarkably regressive in many ways, assuming as it does both an absolute distinction between male and female brains, and a profoundly pre-20th century view of the separation of mind and body.
What profound changes have taken place on the right? The Republicans haven't really changed since they were founded in 1854. Free markets, personal responsibility, everyone made in the image of God (abolition then, pro-life now), God and country.
They have rejected elites and become more populist, but that was through an organic and internal debate and the elites lost.
Edit: this dovetails nicely into the "dusty book vs intellectual fads" discussion!
I greatly appreciate the respectful debate amongst Minsky, Jman and Mr Holland. I respect the tone, when we fail to engage in respectful debate, we open the door to dehumanizing each other. We may think some of each other's points are crazy, but we know we have to keep engaging, and I for one always gain some knowledge from their comments. I put this comment on all three of their threads so they would all see it.
Regarding Minsky's Christian comments, all I can say is, when a person truly accepts Christ, not a 'luke warm' Christian (remember God is much harsher on the hypocritical 'luke warm' Christian than the atheist, as, at least the atheist is being honest), but a person who honestly believes in the trinity, shows Godly sorrow, and repents, than the Holy Ghost enters you. It is the Holy Ghost who rewards you with discernment when you are earnestly seeking the Truth (reading scripture constantly (trying to understand it, looking at the original Greek and Hebrew, reading commentaries, etc), praying unceasingly, attending Bible studies, working in the body of Christ mainly through our churches (meaning supporting and serving believers, and the poor, the homeless, the sick, the widows, the fatherless, the hungry; as the building is not the church, the believers are the church). Any pastor worth his salt (pun intended) will tell you true discernment comes from their Holy Ghost (spirit), in communion with God, not necessarily their sermons. Though an anointed pastor can certainly lead many to Christ. Unfortunately, there are also many false teachers, hence our reliance on our Holy Spirit for wisdom, God's gift to His believers, not our easily swayed by pride, lust, basically our flesh, minds.
I don't think that's accurate--that presumes a neatly segregated 'moral dataset' that doesn't exist. The texts of theological discourse and scientific discourse are historically and discursively intertwined in all sorts of ways, and the interpretive framework by which they are consumed is always unique to the individual. (There is no free-standing, 'uninterpreted' text--both secular and religious people make that epistemological mistake quite often) So in reality the beliefs of both secular and religious people are influenced by both scientific and religious discourse, and the texts they are rooted in.
Furthermore, religious paradigms are no less subject to change and 'firmware updates' than scientific ones. I.e., the pope is broadly accepted as the supreme religious authority, then suddenly a guy named Luther comes along with 95 theses and *update* actually papal decrees don't mean anything. Then Henry VIII comes along and *update* actually the King is the head of the church. Or, most salient in the American context, chattel slavery is divinely sanctioned by God then abolitionism/civil war/etc. *update* actually it's completely unChristian. As for 'belief in credentialed experts', again, it's not just a secularist thing--I'm sure you're aware of the scores of Christians who only vaguely know what's in the Bible, and rely on the pastor/priest/whoever and the Sunday sermon to tell them what it's all about. Indeed, I'd argue it's that capacity for evolution that keeps religions alive. A religion that completely lacks mutability is one that quickly dies out as the world changes.
I greatly appreciate the respectful debate amongst Minsky, Jman and Mr Holland. I respect the tone, when we fail to engage in respectful debate, we open the door to dehumanizing each other. We may think some of each other's points are crazy, but we know we have to keep engaging, and I for one always gain some knowledge from their comments. I put this comment on all three of their threads so they would all see it.
Regarding Minsky's Christian comments, all I can say is, when a person truly accepts Christ, not a 'luke warm' Christian (remember God is much harsher on the hypocritical 'luke warm' Christian than the atheist, as, at least the atheist is being honest), but a person who honestly believes in the trinity, shows Godly sorrow, and repents, than the Holy Ghost enters you. It is the Holy Ghost who rewards you with discernment when you are earnestly seeking the Truth (reading scripture constantly (trying to understand it, looking at the original Greek and Hebrew, reading commentaries, etc), praying unceasingly, attending Bible studies, working in the body of Christ mainly through our churches (meaning supporting and serving believers, and the poor, the homeless, the sick, the widows, the fatherless, the hungry; as the building is not the church, the believers are the church). Any pastor worth his salt (pun intended) will tell you true discernment comes from their Holy Ghost (spirit), in communion with God, not necessarily their sermons. Though an anointed pastor can certainly lead many to Christ. Unfortunately, there are also many false teachers, hence our reliance on our Holy Spirit for wisdom, God's gift to His believers, not our easily swayed by pride, lust, basically our flesh, minds.
My original point was merely that you and all Christian folk are the same as everyone else, in that your beliefs about, and your faith in the God that watches over you, and your relationship with that God and the religious community you belong to--and the traditions that that community follows--are your own and no one else's. Everyone "does what is right in their own minds," based upon their own individual set of beliefs. That is important to remember, because there are other communities watched over by gods other than the one watching over you, and those gods may ask those communities to follow the guidelines of different traditions, and the members of those communities will draw their own manner of wisdom and comfort and understanding from those gods and those traditions and their own faith in them, and ultimately make decisions based on their own unique beliefs formed out of them. If you lose track of the fact that you and they and all of us are alike in this regard--that regardless of which god it is that guides us, we are all individuals with individual beliefs about what is right and wrong, and we are all acting on those beliefs--you may also lose track of the only universal moral commandment, that applies to all gods and all communities and all individuals everywhere: that we must all try to treat each other decently. At the ultimate, transcendental level, that is really the only distinction there is--not the one between Christian and non-Christian, but the one between those striving to be decent to others, and those doing the opposite.
Political Parties seem to change course about as fast as ocean liners, like over the course of decades, maybe too slowly to miss icebergs. Look at the Republicans, they are still dealing in some quarters with free traders, support for low wage illegal labor, and no taxes on rich folks. It might take Democrats just as long to ditch woke and re embrace the working class.
Ezra Klein might see things in moral terms differently than I do, but he does support the idea of a truly big tent. Remember that essay "Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way"? Ezra disagrees with many positions on issues Kirk took, but Klein strongly supported how Kirk went about advocating his views. A big tent of Kleins would include those he disagreed with I'm sure,
Ruy, you nearly always hit the ball out of the park. Mr. Barro is spot on. Big tent immigration policy is impossible. One cannot have concern for American lower earners and support mass migration. Open borders drive down working class wages, while driving up the cost of affordable housing and overtaxing social services and already low performing schools.
Mass migration also results in horrendous human exploitation. NYC food delivery migrants often work 12 hour days, 7 days a week to clear $300 a week, in an expensive city. If their rented bike or scooter is stolen, they will be underwater several hundred dollars, after an 84 hour work week. To say nothing of migrant children trafficked into sexual bondage.
Dems have conflated regular immigration, with mass migration to avoid interior enforcement. Regular US Immigration is a 1 million people a year, with lengthy vetting, mostly economically self sufficient.
Biden's 10 to 12 million migrants often arrived with no ID. 90% economic migrants, they walked into the US on the honor system, were fingerprinted and released, after uttering "asylum". Many from the Northern Triangle finished school between the 5th-8th grade. Venezuela has lacked a real education system for 2 decades.
Sparsely educated and skilled, migrants entered an expensive knowledge economy, with large Cartel debt, and little else. Their care costs, in just Biden's 4 years, totaled nearly a 1/2 trillion state and federal tax dollars. 54% of migrants are currently welfare dependent. 20 years ago immigrants of all kinds comprised roughly 12% of the US poor, today they exceed 25%. If the trend continues, by 2045 non US citizens would comprise 50% of the US poor.
The humane answer is to drastically increase self repatriation payments, with a short fuse. Compared to a life time of welfare and healthcare costs, the payments would be taxpayer prudent and migrant compassionate. Ultimately, the only defendable immigration policy does not negatively affect American opportunity or wages, and is neither exploitable, nor tax payer subsidized. If Dems continue to refuse all interior enforcement for non violent migrants, the size of their tent is unlikely to save them.
That elections for Congress have become nationalized is often lamented by pundits. But that nationalization is completely rational: the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate make laws and regulations at the federal government level. Voters should make their voting decisions with that factor in mind, not who has the most pleasing smile, or who helped Grandma cut through red tape at the Social Security office. Do you overall like what the Republican President is doing? Then vote for Republicans for Congress. If you overall don't like what he is doing, vote for Democrats.
I ifrst noticed this developing feature of American politcs after the 1994 Democratic bloodbath where a number of midwestern, southern and western Democrats went down. In conversation a midwestern colleague said that gun control (Brady and Assault Weapons ban) had killed them. Didn't they vote against it, I asked. Yes, he said, but people are realizing that if the Democrats contol the House you're going to get gun control no matter how your own rep voted. As I recall Marge Roukema eventually quit because she was facing an analogous fate in NJ no matter how she herself voted.
This is an especially weak take. Ruy kind of refutes himself right here:
***"At the margin, that would certainly be helpful. But would that really solve the fundamental image problem that bedevils the Democrats?"***
--both political parties have image problems, and for that reason (plus several others), in the current polarized political paradigm, *all elections are won on the margins*. Winning the margins is how you win power, period. Until the paradigm changes, that isn't going to change either.
The only way folks like Orban, Erdogan, et al. (or, on the left, people like Chavez in Venezuela) have overcome this is by explicit state repression and/or corruption of the electoral apparatus. Absent this, diversification is strength, and lack of a big tent will mean lack of a durable electoral coalition, for either the GOP or the DNC. As such, the underpinning precept behind every argument made in this article applies as much to Republicans as to Democrats. It might be a bit more accurate were the fundamental thesis instead "At the margin, [a big tent/diversification] would certainly be helpful. But would that really solve the fundamental image problem that bedevils [*the two American political parties*]?" No, it wouldn't. But unless a viable third party shows up, or Americans suddenly become comfortable with a monarchical system, there's no alternative to the two parties right now. And Americans are famously *not* cool with monarchies.
Only Mr. Teixeira would have the audacity to come on here and write something so obtuse and devoid of facts or reality after what just happened.
I understand the Mr. Teixeira is still upset that he was invited to play in all the reindeer games while at the CAP, but it doesn’t mean that he a right to pretend what happened didn’t just happen.
Fact is, the economy is not doing well; people do not support Trump’s trade and tax policies. They also have absolutely no chance of working. I understand that pretending that 400 years of economic data which suggests that high tariffs cause overall job losses is good for the soul of the 65 year old retired factory worker, but it doesn’t change facts. Ironically, it is similar to the delusion that just because a person feels like a woman, means that they can be a woman!
I don't think of the Democratic Party as a big tent. I think of it as a flotilla of wonderfully diverse kites, like one sees at a Japanese festival. The problem for the party is that these aren't just decorative kites: they're fighting kites, their strings coated in ground glass, each jockeying to make sure its position in the party is secure while cutting out any dissenting or competing part of the array. As Mr. Texeira points out, some of the competing components of the flotilla are irreconcilably different and can't coexist with any stability. Absent some outside unifying threat (like Donald Trump), the fighting will intensify and the demand for orthodoxy and conformity will grow, ultimately slicing the ties holding the whole thing together.
The Liberal Patriot, Ruy Teixeira, is, in my opinion, the only sane voice I am hearing these days. He's also the ONLY one I financially will support. Thank you, Ruy. Keep up the good work and let's turn up the volume.
I agree. I am a former Republican, unhappy with Republican economic views. However I cannot be a member of today's Democratic Party, in part because of their far left social and cultural views, and in part because of their generally dour demeanor. My politics have come to be, pretty close to whatever The Liberal Patriot espouses.
While I don't think the concept of the big tent is overrated (indeed, if Democrats want to govern for a decade or more, which they should seek to do, they need a big coalition), Ruy is right that it matters who calls the shots within the tent.
The big coalition the Democrats need is one that excludes the far left. Pragmatists in the party need to deliberately piss off anyone who's fine with boys in girls' sports, who wants to phase out fossil fuels, who wears a keffiyeh, and who won't support at least the deportation of people who committed crimes on top of illegal border crossings. Pushing those people out of the party will create room in the tent for a lot of moderates and disillusioned Trump supporters.
I'd rather they stay and vote, but not have a place on the platform or legislation, or even as interns etc.
"talking about the affordability crisis and the cost-of-living will not induce these voters to forget what the party actually stands for." Spanberger seems to have won by doing just that and overriding Earle-Sears' attempt to make the election about trans stuff.
VA is a a near bright Blue state, that ended up with a Rep Governor after a transgender school rape scandal, that school officials tried to keep from parents. It hit at just the right time., a few months before the election Youngkin won. At the same time the Dem candidate admitted, he did not believe parents should determine what is taught in public schools. The mistakes cost Dems that 1 election. As always, the coverup was worse than the crime.
VA has not voted Red in a Presidential election in more than 20 years. At the same time, VA is not only home to legions of federal workers, but also scads of NGO employees. Both have seen their paychecks disappear with the Shutdown, if their jobs were not gone first with downsizing, all thanks to Trump. Even the VA margins were not really a surprise, when the current specifics are considered.
Keep in mind that the off-year electorate is completely different from the general electorate. The off-year electorate is dominated by college-educated white women, who are unusual liberal compared to college educated men or working class women. Supposedly the "Harris is for they/them" ad had a big impact on the swing states.
Agree that this was a low-engagement, low-turnout round of elections.
Would next year's midterms be considered an "on" or "off" election?
"Off" if the goal is to generalize to 2028.
Spanberger won by establishing a long, consistent record as a moderate devoted to representing all her constituents, including those who didn’t vote for her.
I can't argue your point, but as a person, how can you not strongly, loudly, and clearly denounce what Jay Jones texted? Does it not speak to a party over character attitude and is not that attitude antithetical to making wise decisions? Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't she refuse to talk about this in the debate, at all, etc, maybe I missed something.
Spanberger did denounce Jones in pretty harsh terms. “After learning of these comments earlier today, I spoke frankly with Jay about my disgust with what he had said and texted. I made clear to Jay that he must fully take responsibility for his words. What I have also made clear is that as a candidate — and as the next Governor of our Commonwealth, I will always condemn violent language in our politics."
Voting had already started when the texts came to light. Somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 ballots had been cast. It was too late to remove Jones from ballots. Would it have been better if stepped down regardless? Maybe, I have real concerns about his judgment and character. But a majority of voters preferred him.
That is not on Spanberger.
I watched the debate and it seemed like they talked about little else. No one who watched the news, read the news, or listened to the radio could miss it. Ads about it were non-stop. Virginians knew what they were voting for.
The Big Tent is fundamentally impossible for Democrats. Take gender ideology as an example.
Suppose the activist base of the party stops ostracizing staunch liberals like JK Rowling. Then they will create a preference cascade in which all the liberals who quietly feel that gender ideology is misogynistic can finally speak out without fear of reputational harm, and then the transgender movement will be over. That will result in a major civil rights violation and a massive medical scandal tied around the Democrats' necks. Creating a big tent will destroy the party for a generation.
"They know the candidate’s party still thinks that transwomen are women, that biological boys should be able to play girls sports, that “gender-affirming” medical treatments for children are a great idea and should be easily available and that to question these ideas is to be on the wrong side of history itself."
Good article, and this says it all. There are those that take their wisdom from the Bible (whether they know it or not), and there are those that do what's right in their own minds. Hence our divide, in a nutshell, God bless the folks at the Liberal Patriot.
"There are those that take their wisdom from the Bible (whether they know it or not), and there are those that do what's right in their own minds. "
Excuse me, but this distinction makes no sense. For those who take their wisdom from the Bible, in whose mind do they do what's right, other than their own? Your own mind is the only one you are capable of inhabiting, and certainly the only one capable of controlling what you do.
At some fundamental level we have to use our minds to evaluate truth-claims. But William's point is that Christians use the Bible as their moral data. By contrast, secular people believe what credentialed experts tell them to believe. For a long time the prevailing belief on the left was that gender was a social construct, but biological sex was real. I once heard this explained as "the difference between boys and girls is what's between their legs, not what's in their heads." This view (falsely) holds that there is no such thing as pink brains and blue brains, but the patriarchy socializes women to have submissive and feminine traits. Then a postmodernist comes along and says "gender is deep and innate but biological sex is a social construct" and all of a sudden lifelong liberals like JK Rowling become hate-filled bigots for not getting the firmware update.
This is particularly ironic because the brave new world of leftism holds that women are inherently submissive and passive. So instead of saying that women can be tomboys, they are really actual boys. And instead of saying men can be feminine, they are really actual women. Thus submissiveness becomes a much more inherently feminine trait under gender ideology.
A very simplistic summation of things, that also very disingenuously claims that secularists are "told" what to think by others, yet Christians are just have an unquestionable access to the truth. Or, you could say, secularists think for themselves, whereas Christians are told what to think by an old book. Choose your story.
The interesting thing, though, is your agreement with the 'gender radicals' about the "pink and blue brains". It's an irony that the supposedly radical progressive view of the sexes now holds the view that human brains are fundamentally and irreducibly 'pink or blue', despite the fact that the human bodies 'assigned' to those brains are apparently arbitrary. This is not only a very reductive, and unprogressive, view of male/female psychology, but a deeply old-fashioned, Cartesian attitude to the mind/body relationship.
> "A very simplistic summation of things, that also very disingenuously claims that secularists are "told" what to think by others, yet Christians are just have an unquestionable access to the truth. "
The last 15 years are pretty good evidence for this, no? When did the left have a house debate over gender ideology, open borders, DEI, rewriting American history? In fact, they've actively suppressed debate, which is why JK Rowling is so heavily shamed and scorned for daring to question a single plank of the modern left.
> The interesting thing, though, is your agreement with the 'gender radicals' about the "pink and blue brains".
I don't agree with gender ideology at all, for one thing it's hyper-sexualized. The pulitzer prize-winning journalist and trans-identified male Andrea Long Chu identifies the essence of being female with sexual passivity: “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes.” For the sex positive left, that makes perfect sense. But as a Christian I believe sex is about intimacy and mutual giving of self, not dominance and submission. Having said that, the blank slate is demonstrably false and men and women are different.
- the anthropologist Donald Brown compiled a list of human universals - traits that are true in every civilization that we know of - and it includes men being more aggressive and women spending more time in childcare.
- men with 5-alpha reductase have a blind vaginal opening rather than a penis, and are often assigned female at birth. But they show the classic early childhood male preferences on all three markers: toy preference (trucks over dolls), rough-and-tumble play, and preferring the company of boys to girls. If girls only preferred dolls and cooperative play because of socialization, then males with 5-alpha-reductase would also prefer them because they have the same socialization.
- women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia also have lopsided preferences towards trucks, tough-and-tumble play and boy playmates and they are biological females and given female socialization, but they do have higher levels of testosterone pro hormones during development.
- animal studies have shown that the hormones you are exposed to during development change the the brain and corresponding preferences. E.g. Male rats who are surgically prevented from producing testosterone during development show female behaviors. And female rats who are given testosterone during development show male behaviors.
Carol Hooven - the Harvard professor who was forced to resign after going on Fox News professing that there are only two genders - has a book about this. Brain Gender is also good if you want to geek out on the subject.
Well one could ask, when did the right have a "house debate" over any of the quite profound changes in Republican ideology over the last decade? That isn't how ideological change happens (including religion, which is far more historically transmutable than its adherents like to admit)- and its always complex, as many on "the left" don't accept strict transgender ideology either.
I dont know about the "hypersexualised" element of gender ideology- in my experience, its often pretty asexual; I see it as more part of a hyper-consumerist and techno-futurist rejection of the given facts of biology and given reality in all its forms.
I know you dont agree with gender ideology- my point was that it is, by the old progressive metrics, remarkably regressive in many ways, assuming as it does both an absolute distinction between male and female brains, and a profoundly pre-20th century view of the separation of mind and body.
What profound changes have taken place on the right? The Republicans haven't really changed since they were founded in 1854. Free markets, personal responsibility, everyone made in the image of God (abolition then, pro-life now), God and country.
They have rejected elites and become more populist, but that was through an organic and internal debate and the elites lost.
Edit: this dovetails nicely into the "dusty book vs intellectual fads" discussion!
I greatly appreciate the respectful debate amongst Minsky, Jman and Mr Holland. I respect the tone, when we fail to engage in respectful debate, we open the door to dehumanizing each other. We may think some of each other's points are crazy, but we know we have to keep engaging, and I for one always gain some knowledge from their comments. I put this comment on all three of their threads so they would all see it.
Regarding Minsky's Christian comments, all I can say is, when a person truly accepts Christ, not a 'luke warm' Christian (remember God is much harsher on the hypocritical 'luke warm' Christian than the atheist, as, at least the atheist is being honest), but a person who honestly believes in the trinity, shows Godly sorrow, and repents, than the Holy Ghost enters you. It is the Holy Ghost who rewards you with discernment when you are earnestly seeking the Truth (reading scripture constantly (trying to understand it, looking at the original Greek and Hebrew, reading commentaries, etc), praying unceasingly, attending Bible studies, working in the body of Christ mainly through our churches (meaning supporting and serving believers, and the poor, the homeless, the sick, the widows, the fatherless, the hungry; as the building is not the church, the believers are the church). Any pastor worth his salt (pun intended) will tell you true discernment comes from their Holy Ghost (spirit), in communion with God, not necessarily their sermons. Though an anointed pastor can certainly lead many to Christ. Unfortunately, there are also many false teachers, hence our reliance on our Holy Spirit for wisdom, God's gift to His believers, not our easily swayed by pride, lust, basically our flesh, minds.
I don't think that's accurate--that presumes a neatly segregated 'moral dataset' that doesn't exist. The texts of theological discourse and scientific discourse are historically and discursively intertwined in all sorts of ways, and the interpretive framework by which they are consumed is always unique to the individual. (There is no free-standing, 'uninterpreted' text--both secular and religious people make that epistemological mistake quite often) So in reality the beliefs of both secular and religious people are influenced by both scientific and religious discourse, and the texts they are rooted in.
Furthermore, religious paradigms are no less subject to change and 'firmware updates' than scientific ones. I.e., the pope is broadly accepted as the supreme religious authority, then suddenly a guy named Luther comes along with 95 theses and *update* actually papal decrees don't mean anything. Then Henry VIII comes along and *update* actually the King is the head of the church. Or, most salient in the American context, chattel slavery is divinely sanctioned by God then abolitionism/civil war/etc. *update* actually it's completely unChristian. As for 'belief in credentialed experts', again, it's not just a secularist thing--I'm sure you're aware of the scores of Christians who only vaguely know what's in the Bible, and rely on the pastor/priest/whoever and the Sunday sermon to tell them what it's all about. Indeed, I'd argue it's that capacity for evolution that keeps religions alive. A religion that completely lacks mutability is one that quickly dies out as the world changes.
I greatly appreciate the respectful debate amongst Minsky, Jman and Mr Holland. I respect the tone, when we fail to engage in respectful debate, we open the door to dehumanizing each other. We may think some of each other's points are crazy, but we know we have to keep engaging, and I for one always gain some knowledge from their comments. I put this comment on all three of their threads so they would all see it.
Regarding Minsky's Christian comments, all I can say is, when a person truly accepts Christ, not a 'luke warm' Christian (remember God is much harsher on the hypocritical 'luke warm' Christian than the atheist, as, at least the atheist is being honest), but a person who honestly believes in the trinity, shows Godly sorrow, and repents, than the Holy Ghost enters you. It is the Holy Ghost who rewards you with discernment when you are earnestly seeking the Truth (reading scripture constantly (trying to understand it, looking at the original Greek and Hebrew, reading commentaries, etc), praying unceasingly, attending Bible studies, working in the body of Christ mainly through our churches (meaning supporting and serving believers, and the poor, the homeless, the sick, the widows, the fatherless, the hungry; as the building is not the church, the believers are the church). Any pastor worth his salt (pun intended) will tell you true discernment comes from their Holy Ghost (spirit), in communion with God, not necessarily their sermons. Though an anointed pastor can certainly lead many to Christ. Unfortunately, there are also many false teachers, hence our reliance on our Holy Spirit for wisdom, God's gift to His believers, not our easily swayed by pride, lust, basically our flesh, minds.
My original point was merely that you and all Christian folk are the same as everyone else, in that your beliefs about, and your faith in the God that watches over you, and your relationship with that God and the religious community you belong to--and the traditions that that community follows--are your own and no one else's. Everyone "does what is right in their own minds," based upon their own individual set of beliefs. That is important to remember, because there are other communities watched over by gods other than the one watching over you, and those gods may ask those communities to follow the guidelines of different traditions, and the members of those communities will draw their own manner of wisdom and comfort and understanding from those gods and those traditions and their own faith in them, and ultimately make decisions based on their own unique beliefs formed out of them. If you lose track of the fact that you and they and all of us are alike in this regard--that regardless of which god it is that guides us, we are all individuals with individual beliefs about what is right and wrong, and we are all acting on those beliefs--you may also lose track of the only universal moral commandment, that applies to all gods and all communities and all individuals everywhere: that we must all try to treat each other decently. At the ultimate, transcendental level, that is really the only distinction there is--not the one between Christian and non-Christian, but the one between those striving to be decent to others, and those doing the opposite.
Political Parties seem to change course about as fast as ocean liners, like over the course of decades, maybe too slowly to miss icebergs. Look at the Republicans, they are still dealing in some quarters with free traders, support for low wage illegal labor, and no taxes on rich folks. It might take Democrats just as long to ditch woke and re embrace the working class.
Ezra Klein might see things in moral terms differently than I do, but he does support the idea of a truly big tent. Remember that essay "Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way"? Ezra disagrees with many positions on issues Kirk took, but Klein strongly supported how Kirk went about advocating his views. A big tent of Kleins would include those he disagreed with I'm sure,
Ben - who are the Republican politicians that support low wage illegal labor? Who are the Republican politIcians who want rich people to pay NO taxes?
Ruy, you nearly always hit the ball out of the park. Mr. Barro is spot on. Big tent immigration policy is impossible. One cannot have concern for American lower earners and support mass migration. Open borders drive down working class wages, while driving up the cost of affordable housing and overtaxing social services and already low performing schools.
Mass migration also results in horrendous human exploitation. NYC food delivery migrants often work 12 hour days, 7 days a week to clear $300 a week, in an expensive city. If their rented bike or scooter is stolen, they will be underwater several hundred dollars, after an 84 hour work week. To say nothing of migrant children trafficked into sexual bondage.
Dems have conflated regular immigration, with mass migration to avoid interior enforcement. Regular US Immigration is a 1 million people a year, with lengthy vetting, mostly economically self sufficient.
Biden's 10 to 12 million migrants often arrived with no ID. 90% economic migrants, they walked into the US on the honor system, were fingerprinted and released, after uttering "asylum". Many from the Northern Triangle finished school between the 5th-8th grade. Venezuela has lacked a real education system for 2 decades.
Sparsely educated and skilled, migrants entered an expensive knowledge economy, with large Cartel debt, and little else. Their care costs, in just Biden's 4 years, totaled nearly a 1/2 trillion state and federal tax dollars. 54% of migrants are currently welfare dependent. 20 years ago immigrants of all kinds comprised roughly 12% of the US poor, today they exceed 25%. If the trend continues, by 2045 non US citizens would comprise 50% of the US poor.
The humane answer is to drastically increase self repatriation payments, with a short fuse. Compared to a life time of welfare and healthcare costs, the payments would be taxpayer prudent and migrant compassionate. Ultimately, the only defendable immigration policy does not negatively affect American opportunity or wages, and is neither exploitable, nor tax payer subsidized. If Dems continue to refuse all interior enforcement for non violent migrants, the size of their tent is unlikely to save them.
That elections for Congress have become nationalized is often lamented by pundits. But that nationalization is completely rational: the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate make laws and regulations at the federal government level. Voters should make their voting decisions with that factor in mind, not who has the most pleasing smile, or who helped Grandma cut through red tape at the Social Security office. Do you overall like what the Republican President is doing? Then vote for Republicans for Congress. If you overall don't like what he is doing, vote for Democrats.
We're going to need a new tent.
Oh Ruy. Let the progressives, socialists, and antisemites have their fun.
I ifrst noticed this developing feature of American politcs after the 1994 Democratic bloodbath where a number of midwestern, southern and western Democrats went down. In conversation a midwestern colleague said that gun control (Brady and Assault Weapons ban) had killed them. Didn't they vote against it, I asked. Yes, he said, but people are realizing that if the Democrats contol the House you're going to get gun control no matter how your own rep voted. As I recall Marge Roukema eventually quit because she was facing an analogous fate in NJ no matter how she herself voted.
This is an especially weak take. Ruy kind of refutes himself right here:
***"At the margin, that would certainly be helpful. But would that really solve the fundamental image problem that bedevils the Democrats?"***
--both political parties have image problems, and for that reason (plus several others), in the current polarized political paradigm, *all elections are won on the margins*. Winning the margins is how you win power, period. Until the paradigm changes, that isn't going to change either.
The only way folks like Orban, Erdogan, et al. (or, on the left, people like Chavez in Venezuela) have overcome this is by explicit state repression and/or corruption of the electoral apparatus. Absent this, diversification is strength, and lack of a big tent will mean lack of a durable electoral coalition, for either the GOP or the DNC. As such, the underpinning precept behind every argument made in this article applies as much to Republicans as to Democrats. It might be a bit more accurate were the fundamental thesis instead "At the margin, [a big tent/diversification] would certainly be helpful. But would that really solve the fundamental image problem that bedevils [*the two American political parties*]?" No, it wouldn't. But unless a viable third party shows up, or Americans suddenly become comfortable with a monarchical system, there's no alternative to the two parties right now. And Americans are famously *not* cool with monarchies.
I feel like the Libertarians were gaining some steam there for a while. Where did all of them go?
The Democrats must still change on social and cultural issues. They cannot just ignore these issues.
Only Mr. Teixeira would have the audacity to come on here and write something so obtuse and devoid of facts or reality after what just happened.
I understand the Mr. Teixeira is still upset that he was invited to play in all the reindeer games while at the CAP, but it doesn’t mean that he a right to pretend what happened didn’t just happen.
Fact is, the economy is not doing well; people do not support Trump’s trade and tax policies. They also have absolutely no chance of working. I understand that pretending that 400 years of economic data which suggests that high tariffs cause overall job losses is good for the soul of the 65 year old retired factory worker, but it doesn’t change facts. Ironically, it is similar to the delusion that just because a person feels like a woman, means that they can be a woman!
I don't think of the Democratic Party as a big tent. I think of it as a flotilla of wonderfully diverse kites, like one sees at a Japanese festival. The problem for the party is that these aren't just decorative kites: they're fighting kites, their strings coated in ground glass, each jockeying to make sure its position in the party is secure while cutting out any dissenting or competing part of the array. As Mr. Texeira points out, some of the competing components of the flotilla are irreconcilably different and can't coexist with any stability. Absent some outside unifying threat (like Donald Trump), the fighting will intensify and the demand for orthodoxy and conformity will grow, ultimately slicing the ties holding the whole thing together.
See my piece on American Thinker:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/12/kite_fighting_in_the_democrat_party.html
Excellent!