Obama was criticized yesterday to 'politicizing' the tragedy in NC yesterday by mentioning gun violence.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/06/shocking-hate-crime-in-south-carolina.html
But to say that it shouldn't be politicized is also politicizing it. Stepehen Willaimson was discussing the debate between non-interventionists and interventionists regarding demand stabilization.
"Maybe the world consists of two sets of people. There is a set of non-interventionists convinced by the data that governments are somewhat inept, and should be given a fairly narrow set of tasks to do. The government may be viewed by these people as being just as inept at stabilization policy as at running a health care system, for example. Or non-interventionists may think that the economy works in a self correcting way in that, even if the government is not inept, its ability to intervene is extremely limited. The second set of people - the interventionists - thinks that governments are smart. Indeed, interventionists may think the average Jane/Joe is quite stupid - so stupid that she or he needs the government to help her or him make economic decisions. From the point of view of interventionists, the government should have a lot on its plate, including stabilization policy. The private sector is messed up in long-run and short-run fashions, and needs fixing."
http://newmonetarism.blogspot.com/2015/06/economics-and-deception.html
This strikes me as rather pejorative in how it defines interventionists. Do they believe the government is all powerful or simply that the market unlike non-interventionists is not all-powerful thereby leaving some scope for government? If one believes that neither the government or the market us infallible then one can in theory at least have a scope for both that assumes neither is all-knowing.
To be sure this highly theoretical discussion of macroeconomics may seem out of place with the immediate horror what occurred in SC but this appearance is superficial. In a sense, you can argue that yet again with mass shootings. gun violence, and racially motivated mass shootings we as on economic matters have a pro-intervention and anti-intervention or libertarian side.
SW himself suggests that the debate between libertarians and interventionists can be understood more broadly.
"So, in modern economics, the theory of government could be thought of as an integrated whole. If we're thinking about "stabilization" and the size of government, those are just parts of the same problem. You really can't separate "short run" from "long run." How much of that thinking actually finds its way into discussions among people who actually have some influence on fiscal policy decisions? Very little. But monetary policy is another story. I think it's fair to say that central bankers are pretty serious about using available economic theory and evidence."
Here we are dealing with a vexed and deeply troubling social problem here rather than an economic one but I think the logic of the integrated whole can and should be expanded to include social as well as economic issues.
On the Charleston murders there are also interventionists who want to do something that think it calls out for at least some kind of a government response vs. libertarians who basically are saying 'It's too bad but there's nothing to see here. Some people are just crazy. There''s nothing the government should do that's or sure as that will just make things worse.'
This is exactly what Rand Paul is saying and most on the libertarian Right are saying some version of this.
"“We had a shooting this morning in South Carolina,” Paul said (the shooting happened last night). “What kind of person goes into church and shoots nine people? There’s a sickness in our country, there’s something terribly wrong, but it isn’t going to be fixed by your government. It’s people straying away, it’s people not understanding where salvation comes from. And I think that if we understand that, we’ll understand and have better expectations of what we get from our government.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/18/rand-blames-charleston-shooting-on-people-not-understanding-where-salvation-comes-from.html
To say not to politicize it is the libertarian response-it's too bad but we can't do anything about it.
There was a good piece on CNN this morning-not sure what the anchor's name was but it came at the 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time hour, He made the point that some resist simply calling what happened in that historic Black church a terrorist act.
They want to say it came from one sick individual but had no further ramifications for society. This is again the libertarian response. As the President pointed out, other advanced countries like ours have mentally ill people as well and yet we alone are stuck in this seemingly endless epidemic.
Is it just an accident that we alone have so many readily available firearms? Even to a clearly troubled young man like this who had already been accused of a felony?
http://rt.com/usa/268108-carolina-church-shooting-suspect/
The gun advocates in principle don''t have an absurd policy choice in my mind. I can buy their reading of the 2nd Amendment though it's debatable and even if other countries who totally ban handguns-like Scotland did in the 1990s after a terrible mass shooting in its country-I understand that our culture and history are different.
Certainly I and not many others right now have been arguing for out and out taking everyone's guns. But can we have no regulations whatsoever? I mean can't we even say that a youth already accused of a felony-even if he''s not yet been found guilty shouldn't be allowed to have a gun at least until he's found innocent? Is even that a bridge too far is the slippery slope that powerful?
As for not being allowed to call it terrorism this is a political choice as well. Ie, it's just as political as calling it terrorism. Evidently the Right seems to think that terrorists all come in the same package-and particularly all have the same religion.
Only Muslim Jihadist terrorists are a problem even if since 9/11 more American lives have been lost to domestic white hate groups than foreign Jihadists.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/muslims-only-carried-out-2-5-percent-of-terrorist-attacks-on-u-s-soil-between-1970-and-2012.html
http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/america-s-radical-right-hate-groups-numbers-down-deadly-incidents-up/19237-america-s-radical-right-hate-groups-numbers-down-deadly-incidents-up
Meanwhile Dylan Roof had a pretty clear and obvious political motive.
http://time.com/3926593/charleston-killer-flags/
Maybe part of why this hits so close to home is the fact that Roof had a Confederate flag on his license plate and the SC still flies the Confederate flag.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/18/1394227/-Will-South-Carolina-fly-its-Confederate-flag-at-half-mast?detail=email#
So we can't talk about guns because that's political, we can't call it terrorism as only political violence by Muslims can be called terrorism and, the libertarians don't even like it to be called a hate crime. No they claim that Roof had some other motive than racial hatred!
http://diaryofarepublicanhaterblogspotcom.sharedby.co/share/d3DM0v
One narrative seriously being tried out is that Roof was a secular liberal crazed by hatred of Christianity.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/18/1394329/-Rick-Santorum-turns-South-Carolina-massacre-into-political-fodder?detail=email
At the end of the day it comes down to this. Whatever the solution to this problem can be it will by definition be a political one. There is no other solution. To say 'don't politicize it' means don't bother solving the problem.
The only way to solve the cycle of mass shootings and hate killings is to politicize it.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/06/shocking-hate-crime-in-south-carolina.html
But to say that it shouldn't be politicized is also politicizing it. Stepehen Willaimson was discussing the debate between non-interventionists and interventionists regarding demand stabilization.
"Maybe the world consists of two sets of people. There is a set of non-interventionists convinced by the data that governments are somewhat inept, and should be given a fairly narrow set of tasks to do. The government may be viewed by these people as being just as inept at stabilization policy as at running a health care system, for example. Or non-interventionists may think that the economy works in a self correcting way in that, even if the government is not inept, its ability to intervene is extremely limited. The second set of people - the interventionists - thinks that governments are smart. Indeed, interventionists may think the average Jane/Joe is quite stupid - so stupid that she or he needs the government to help her or him make economic decisions. From the point of view of interventionists, the government should have a lot on its plate, including stabilization policy. The private sector is messed up in long-run and short-run fashions, and needs fixing."
http://newmonetarism.blogspot.com/2015/06/economics-and-deception.html
This strikes me as rather pejorative in how it defines interventionists. Do they believe the government is all powerful or simply that the market unlike non-interventionists is not all-powerful thereby leaving some scope for government? If one believes that neither the government or the market us infallible then one can in theory at least have a scope for both that assumes neither is all-knowing.
To be sure this highly theoretical discussion of macroeconomics may seem out of place with the immediate horror what occurred in SC but this appearance is superficial. In a sense, you can argue that yet again with mass shootings. gun violence, and racially motivated mass shootings we as on economic matters have a pro-intervention and anti-intervention or libertarian side.
SW himself suggests that the debate between libertarians and interventionists can be understood more broadly.
"So, in modern economics, the theory of government could be thought of as an integrated whole. If we're thinking about "stabilization" and the size of government, those are just parts of the same problem. You really can't separate "short run" from "long run." How much of that thinking actually finds its way into discussions among people who actually have some influence on fiscal policy decisions? Very little. But monetary policy is another story. I think it's fair to say that central bankers are pretty serious about using available economic theory and evidence."
Here we are dealing with a vexed and deeply troubling social problem here rather than an economic one but I think the logic of the integrated whole can and should be expanded to include social as well as economic issues.
On the Charleston murders there are also interventionists who want to do something that think it calls out for at least some kind of a government response vs. libertarians who basically are saying 'It's too bad but there's nothing to see here. Some people are just crazy. There''s nothing the government should do that's or sure as that will just make things worse.'
This is exactly what Rand Paul is saying and most on the libertarian Right are saying some version of this.
"“We had a shooting this morning in South Carolina,” Paul said (the shooting happened last night). “What kind of person goes into church and shoots nine people? There’s a sickness in our country, there’s something terribly wrong, but it isn’t going to be fixed by your government. It’s people straying away, it’s people not understanding where salvation comes from. And I think that if we understand that, we’ll understand and have better expectations of what we get from our government.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/18/rand-blames-charleston-shooting-on-people-not-understanding-where-salvation-comes-from.html
To say not to politicize it is the libertarian response-it's too bad but we can't do anything about it.
There was a good piece on CNN this morning-not sure what the anchor's name was but it came at the 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time hour, He made the point that some resist simply calling what happened in that historic Black church a terrorist act.
They want to say it came from one sick individual but had no further ramifications for society. This is again the libertarian response. As the President pointed out, other advanced countries like ours have mentally ill people as well and yet we alone are stuck in this seemingly endless epidemic.
Is it just an accident that we alone have so many readily available firearms? Even to a clearly troubled young man like this who had already been accused of a felony?
http://rt.com/usa/268108-carolina-church-shooting-suspect/
The gun advocates in principle don''t have an absurd policy choice in my mind. I can buy their reading of the 2nd Amendment though it's debatable and even if other countries who totally ban handguns-like Scotland did in the 1990s after a terrible mass shooting in its country-I understand that our culture and history are different.
Certainly I and not many others right now have been arguing for out and out taking everyone's guns. But can we have no regulations whatsoever? I mean can't we even say that a youth already accused of a felony-even if he''s not yet been found guilty shouldn't be allowed to have a gun at least until he's found innocent? Is even that a bridge too far is the slippery slope that powerful?
As for not being allowed to call it terrorism this is a political choice as well. Ie, it's just as political as calling it terrorism. Evidently the Right seems to think that terrorists all come in the same package-and particularly all have the same religion.
Only Muslim Jihadist terrorists are a problem even if since 9/11 more American lives have been lost to domestic white hate groups than foreign Jihadists.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/muslims-only-carried-out-2-5-percent-of-terrorist-attacks-on-u-s-soil-between-1970-and-2012.html
http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/america-s-radical-right-hate-groups-numbers-down-deadly-incidents-up/19237-america-s-radical-right-hate-groups-numbers-down-deadly-incidents-up
Meanwhile Dylan Roof had a pretty clear and obvious political motive.
http://time.com/3926593/charleston-killer-flags/
Maybe part of why this hits so close to home is the fact that Roof had a Confederate flag on his license plate and the SC still flies the Confederate flag.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/18/1394227/-Will-South-Carolina-fly-its-Confederate-flag-at-half-mast?detail=email#
So we can't talk about guns because that's political, we can't call it terrorism as only political violence by Muslims can be called terrorism and, the libertarians don't even like it to be called a hate crime. No they claim that Roof had some other motive than racial hatred!
http://diaryofarepublicanhaterblogspotcom.sharedby.co/share/d3DM0v
One narrative seriously being tried out is that Roof was a secular liberal crazed by hatred of Christianity.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/18/1394329/-Rick-Santorum-turns-South-Carolina-massacre-into-political-fodder?detail=email
At the end of the day it comes down to this. Whatever the solution to this problem can be it will by definition be a political one. There is no other solution. To say 'don't politicize it' means don't bother solving the problem.
The only way to solve the cycle of mass shootings and hate killings is to politicize it.
No comments:
Post a Comment