Well, I think you can judge. Just read his post. Does it mention Afghanistan anywhere? Does he take a stand against the Afghanistan War anywhere? Or the Iraq Sanctions? These are the obvious ones. I dare not even hope that he’d be informed enough about U.S. policy to condemn, for example, the FBI’s assassination of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos on the 137th anniversary of El Grito de Lares (the date was clearly meant to send a chilling message to the remaining Puerto Rican nationalist movement) or the firebombing of the Phildelphia MOVE on Osage Ave.

The Iraq War is an easy thing to be against, but when it comes to talking about human life, he falls short when it’s something that’s difficult to constrain within the standard liberal anti-war frame. So, I would argue no, even general humanitarian feeling is not an issue with him.

Lastly, I never argued he was my enemy; he is just not my ally.

He has displayed a foundational principle, and I’ve already pointed that out to you. The principle is that human life is valuable and that we have an overriding imperative not to take it nor allow ourselves to be complicit in taking it. Whether he exercises this principle consistently or fully I certainly can’t judge, but it’s blatantly there. And he specifically said he didn’t endorse Paul and would never vote for him. He’s not some kind of monster. He’s not your enemy. He’s just this guy, you know? Let’s keep some perspective.

That’s all I’m interested in saying.

It isn’t, but I also wasn’t the person who introduced the concept of “ideology” into the discussion.

And everything you’ve said is therefore tangential to what I have argued and what I still hold to be true. I’m more than willing to hear a counterargument, but for Christ’s sake I’m certainly not hearing one that is in any way a response to what I have previously argued. What I am arguing is that from what I can tell, HTML Mencken doesn’t have grounding political principles which inform what he believes, including being anti-war. In short, I believe he’s antiwar because it flatters his self-image. To claim that he regards the war as TOTALLY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVAR is not evidence of any firmly-rooted rooted political or ethical position, because it could just as well have been generated by someone using a dart to decide which issue they were going to care about to the exclusion of all others or by someone deciding that this was a politically-convenient club with which to bash the right-wing over the head. It is when I see him evincing some humanitarian concern for people in general, rather than getting up on his high horse to unleash a torrent of “Wite-Majic Attax” on anybody who dares disagree, that I will say I can trust him as an ally.

As far as I am concerned, anyone who is not willing to commit to some foundational principles which cut across issues (being anti-war to the exclusion of all else, therefore, is not a principle because it cannot inform other issues) is at best a fair-weather friend, and when they use their white privilege to start attacking people who dare to suggest that their approach is not constructive, then they are no allies of mine at all.

I don’t think it does anyone any good to ratchet up honest disagreements between good-faith members of a very pluralistic movement to that heated a level.

Well, it’s your privilege to think that. I personally cannot just write off endorsing a white supremacist as an “honest disagreement between good-faith members of a very pluralistic movement”. If I did, then I’d be flying into the arms of the Bo Gritzes of the world.

What is really showing is the uncomfortable truth that white liberals have more in common with white conservatives than they do with people of color, regardless of the PoC’s political position. There are cultural norms which cut across politics, and one of them is the tacit assumption that white people get to have the helmsmanship of whatever movement they participate in, regardless of its political goals. HTML Mencken unleashed those “Wite-Majic Attax” on me not because of a disagreement over tactics, but to establish that it was his absolute right and prerogative to dictate to me what was and was not a permissible opinion in the anti-war movement. What I was trying to do was explain to him both that this was a common feature of the liberal anti-war movement and why I and other people (and not necessarily just PoC either) felt excluded from the movement.

Naturally, I think you’d prefer to see this from the perspective that we’re still part of the anti-war movement, and in a technical sense that is correct, but by employing a linguistically correct concept while refusing to call the anti-war movement on its racism, classism, etc. one simply tosses the deeply-rooted concerns of I and thousands of other people in the garbage. That is why I could not let this pass without raising my objection, and why I do not regard HTML Mencken and I as sharing a common movement.

Well, if “behaving in a way consistent with one’s political or ethical principles and letting those principles inform one’s choices” is your definition of ideology (I’d call it “behaving ethically” myself; I think of an ideology as being somewhat more formalised than that, since for example all the Libertarians I’ve ever met have in fact been of the Everything I Needed To Know I Learned in Intro to Logic 101 school), then Mencken is displaying a consistent ideology or philosophy and sticking to it. He prioritises saving human lives above all other considerations (which is not that unreasonable), and that’s why getting the US out of Iraq trumps all other issues for him. I don’t agree with him that Ron Paul is at all useful, as it happens, but he’s not an incoherent opportunist or a Horowitz-in-training lacking any kind of foundational principles. I don’t think it does anyone any good to ratchet up honest disagreements between good-faith members of a very pluralistic movement to that heated a level.

VERY nice piece here. The usual Amanda.

We should look under a rock here and there and find out
what the remnant John Birchers are ‘thinking’.
They’ve always hated the CFR and, of course, ANY other.
Mebbe ’specially those JEW people.
Good fit for this Paulist movement.
[But watch how some are comparing Paul to the other MD,
of recent memory, Howard Dean..smearing the label]

But he didn’t try to cut off student aid for everybody; he just did it for Persians. Surely you see the distinction.

If you are referring to the fact that he would dismantle the Department of Education,

If…? For crying out loud, I made the nature of my objection clear even to a Randroid. Paul’s proposal to eliminate busing programs and other things designed to ameliorate segregation in a context where schools are as segregated as they’ve been in the last fifty years, and to then turn the operation of the public schools entirely over to the states means that segregation as both a de jure and de facto reality is going to increase. This is racism in action.

Yeah yeah, I know it makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside if the federal government is spending tax money on “education”, but has it really improved our schools?

Erm…do you need a refresher in the term “anarchist” or are you deliberately ignoring what I’ve already mentioned to you?

Are test scores up since the 70s?

Yes. The average score of the mathematical section of the SAT has been climbing steadily ever since 1980, after a small decline during the 1970s. In 1972 it was 509, and in 2005 the average was 520. The verbal portion of the test has remained more or less the same on average, although it is more inclined to secular fluctuations. In 1976 it was 508, it’s 509 in 2005, with it going up or down alternately over the years. The verbal portion of the SAT, however, has always been the most arbitrary.

Drop-out rates down?

Yes again. Dropout rates in the non-institutionalized portion of the juvenile population declined from 15% in 1972 to around 10% in 2003-2004.

The results haven’t been very impressive for the amount of money spent.

Considering that you’re evidently ignorant of what the results are, by the choices of examples you’ve used, I’ll give the subjective standard of how “impressed” you are all the due consideration it deserves.

Meanwhile, teacher are subject to intrusive federal regulations (see: No Child Left Behind) which forces them to teach to tests designed by federal bureaucrats in D.C.

You’re complaining that they’re forced to teach to the tests, and you use standardized testing as a metric for gauging student success? I have to say I’m not “impressed”. In fact, I find that strongly hypocritical. Naturally, I know that your true objection is rooted in “it’s the gubmint!” and think that you’d appear like less of a hypocrite if you just said that rather than rooting around for fake objections to bolster your case which conceptually contradict other statements made previously.

The minimum wage ends up doing one of two things: absolutely nothing when low since employers end up paying more anyway, or actually pricing poor and minorities out of the labor market when high enough.

Wow, no kidding! And here I was foolish enough to believe that the concept of “poverty” was linked to wage! Instead, I find that if the minimum wage is high enough, it prices the poor out of the labor market, employers apparently preferring to pay out at rates which make their employees middle class or wealthy in these conditions, rather than the hiring the poor. Who knew?

No. I can only speak for myself on a person’s psychology, but even that grants me the ability to contradict that sweeping statement. I’m not an anarchist because I am psychologically predisposed to need to be one, but because I view it as the only solution that remains valid when addressing systemic inequalities created by governments and other forms of hierarchies. Psychologically, the journey from being a moderate conservative was a series of grueling series of disappointments in finding that everything I’d been taught in respect of the American system of government was dead wrong in practice, and if I had been looking for a psychological security blanket I would have stopped at “American liberal” because it combines faith in the existing systems of American government with a belief in the need for reform. Sadly, I didn’t view American liberalism as being grounded in a realistic view of the role of American government or its capacity for change, so I had to move on.

Claiming that decisions about real-world action can be boiled down to some deduction from a set of foundational principles certainly isn’t an intellectually rigourous position.

*sigh* Can we please cut it out with the strawmen already?

Or are you seriously telling me that you see no distinction in behaving in a way consistent with one’s political or ethical principles and letting those principles inform one’s choices and claiming that Everything I Needed To Know I Learned in Intro to Logic 101?

Aren’t all strongly-held ideologies serving that same essential emotional-intellectual security blanket function? Claiming that decisions about real-world action can be boiled down to some deduction from a set of foundational principles certainly isn’t an intellectually rigourous position.

No, no I don’t.

Its very simple.

Non-lieral Democrat != Bush Republican.

But, Jesus, we should be thankful that you can manage to go outside without the help of a caring adult if you think the world’s problems aren’t due to people making bad decisions for selfish reasons but for bureaucracy.

You’re naive in the extreme if you think once The Right People(tm) get in charge everything will work fine.