Favorite Political Remark of the Past Week or So
11/25/2011
"the right is the party of tragedy"
From Reihan Salam at National Review Online.
The full sentence:
At its best, the right is the party of tragedy and the impossibility of creating a perfectly just human society, but also of optimism about the potential of voluntary cooperation to help us achieve (modest) moral and (immodest) material progress across generations.
The context is a comment on an article in NR on constitutional conservatism, which I haven't read but which could be interesting.
Oh, and while I'm at it, it isn't exactly political, but I really loved something Greg Wolfe posted on Facebook a couple of days ago:
I am the 100%. (Screwed-up, fully implicated, complicit, and responsible.)
(For anyone reading this years from now, the reference is to the Occupy Wall Street movement's "We Are the 99%" slogan.)
I really liked that Greg Wolfe comment, too.
That "We Are the 99%" business really bugs me. It's like NOW speaking for all women.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 11/25/2011 at 12:45 PM
Me too. Artur Davis, who should be our governor now instead of the sanctimonious and not excessively honest Bentley, said something a few days ago about this that I liked: that it puts a well-to-do accountant who took out an ill-advised mortgage that's now under water in the same category as a seriously poor family.
Posted by: Mac | 11/25/2011 at 05:55 PM
I like the Greg Wolfe comment too. But OTOH, I am not the least bit complicit for the financial meltdown of a few years back.
It's a good point that 99% puts too many people in the same boat. "You are the stinking 1% who got filthy rich crippling the economy for everyone else and are still filthy while the rest of us struggle" would be more accurate but it makes a lousy slogan.
Posted by: J Dave G | 11/29/2011 at 11:04 PM
Yeah, I think the "complicit" part is meant more broadly than that, or at any rate I took it that way. For that matter, I took the whole thing that way--more a comment on original sin than any specific problem.
Posted by: Mac | 11/30/2011 at 09:14 AM
Yeah, I heard that bit in it too. That's the part I liked.
Posted by: J Dave Greco | 12/01/2011 at 06:51 PM