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The Current Crisis
Getting Along With Pew
Two parties, two opposing views. How terrifying.
WASHINGTON — Frankly, I wish the Pew Research Center would occasionally keep its thoughts to itself. Sometimes those thoughts are merely insipid and beneath the attention of serious minds. Sometimes they are alarming and capable of stirring up an already excitable populace. There is talk of cannibalism being practiced by the criminal element. There is Lady Gaga. These are worrisome times. Yet the Pew Research Center has gone and done it again. The center released a study Monday that employed exhaustive polling and ingenious charts to render my fellow Americans restive, or so it seems.
The Pew Research Center’s overall finding is that political polarity in America is tremendously more intense than it has been in decades. Possibly since the Civil War, and 618,000 soldiers died in the Civil War! Of course, intense partisanship is the kind of thing that profoundly troubles Bien Pensants everywhere. It leads to legislative gridlock and stalemate.
The Bien Pensants agree with the memorable plaint of one of their own, Rodney King, who pled: “Why can’t we all get along?” He uttered those imperishable words as Los Angles was going up in flames, and between several more of his epic run-ins with the law, with neighbors, and with the inevitable bill collector. Yet no matter, he was expressing the Bien Pensants’ staunchly held view that if we would all get along we could establish consensus, follow the Bien Pensants’ diktats, and pay more taxes, accept more government, and live happily ever after.
Of course, the Bien Pensant do not exactly put it this way. Instead they say that political polarization is more intense today and troubling. Or as the Pew Research Center’s Andrew Kohut, who directed the study, put it, “The only thing that’s changed is the extent to which Republicans and Democrats go to opposite sides of the room on most issues.” That leaves the center empty and a kind of no man’s land.
Kohut’s colleagues cited a massive amount of evidence, but let me just mention a few to give you the gravamen of their complaint. Twenty-five years ago on the question of the scope and performance of government the Pew researchers found the spread between Republicans and Democrats was just six percent. Today it is 33 percent. On support for a social safety net the spread was 21 percent. Now it is 41 percent. On environmental issues it is up from five percent to 39 percent. Time and again on public policy after public policy the gap between Republicans and Democrats has widened. Consensus is dying. What to do?
The alarmists will say: Come back, Republicans and Democrats. Join together in happy comity at the center of Mr. Kohut’s room. Mr. Kuhut and his friends will tell us what policy to accept and at what cost to taxpayers. Yet in the last three and a half years the federal government has increased its size to almost 25 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, up from under 20 percent. Traditionally in peacetime it has been under 20 percent. Is it really wise to accept the Bien Pensants’ 25 percent now and onto eternity.
There is another matter. Has anyone paid any attention to how effective these policies have been over the past 25 years? Or how expensive they have become? Or what other matters have inched their way up the national agenda, for instance, the federal debt which today stands at $16 trillion. Possibly it is time to review our experience with, say, the scope and performance of government or the social net and seek alternative solutions. Perhaps it is time to learn from experience.
To all the alarmed social scientists at the Pew Research Center, I would suggest that ever more Republicans and even many Independents have learned from experience with these public policies. They want to employ different approaches to them, for instance to entitlements which are putting this country on the path to Greece. For instance, they might want to privatize or follow Rep. Paul Ryan’s policies of choice.
Some people learn from experience. Some people just keep plodding along, spending more money heading for bankruptcy. And some seem to believe they can scare the electorate into doing the same old thing. The colleagues at the Pew Research Center are to be numbered among the latter, but they ought to review the content of the policies that Republicans are deserting. We tried them and they failed.
About the Author
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is the founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. He is the author of The Death of Liberalism, published by Thomas Nelson Inc. His previous books include the New York Times bestseller Boy Clinton: the Political Biography; The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton; The Liberal Crack-Up; The Conservative Crack-Up; Public Nuisances; The Future that Doesn’t Work: Social Democracy’s Failure in Britain; Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House; The Clinton Crack-Up; and After the Hangover: The Conservatives’ Road to Recovery.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (36) | Leave a comment
More Articles by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
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Appleby| 6.7.12 @ 6:56AM
People who have travelled (or at least have read books) know that we are being herded pell mell to Greece, by babies screaming their only answer to impending bankruptcy wholesale and retail: "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
So far we adults are trying to keep some kind of civilization together in spite of the yowling and howling, but many of us are quitely preparing for the day we turn out the lights and lock the door, and Junior and Susie come dragging home from their nightly orgy at the bath house to find a "For Sale" sign on Mommy's house and an eviction notice on their basement door...and they will wait in vain at their Device for the cheque to be deposited in their bank accounts.
Then we wil hear at the front doors of the homes of America, "Mommy, Daddy, where shall I go, what shall I do?"
And Mommy and Daddy will turn to them and say, "Frankly, my dear, I DON'T GIVE A DAMN."
And the city fell on that day, and great was its destruction. Junior and Susie will burn it to the ground and then sit in the ruins and cry because they have nowhere to live.
Pecos Pete| 6.7.12 @ 7:20AM
Appleby: Very astute comment. Convert your "Mommy and Daddy" to taxpayers and "Junior and Susie" to liberal/progressive/Democrat and we have our current situation in the USA.
TLP| 6.7.12 @ 3:40PM
I can't believe I'm saying this.
Nicely done.
Frekki| 6.7.12 @ 7:45AM
Wait until the money runs out, then the malcontents and bums will really whine. Since they vote, they might actually eat the rich. By then though, you and I will be the rich. I say choke them off now while we have the chance.
TLP| 6.7.12 @ 9:08AM
We have a Political Party (Democrats) who would CEASE TO EXIST, if not for Poverty, Strife, and Unrest. Their entire Political Philosophy can be boiled down to: "See that White Guy over there? He's a RACIST, and a BIGOT, and a HOMOMOPHOBE, who Hates Women, Hates Clean Air, Clean Water, Polar Bears, Dolphins, and everybody's Grandmother. Plus, he's got more than you do. GET HIM!"
They have been running on the EXACT SAME THINGS, every Election, for 60 Years. Education/Jobs/Social Security. So, where are all of the Education, Jobs, Social Security UTOPIAS that we should have, by now?
They have had Total Control over so many American Cities for so long, and what have they got to show for it? Empty Factories, Poverty, Blight, Hopelessness, and Despair. These Cities are AT THE BOTTOM, when it comes to Education, and AT THE TOP, when it comes to people living in Poverty. They have had a MONOPOLY, not seen since the days of Ma Bell, with America's Black Community, and to what end?
If the Black Community were a Dog? We'd have it Put Down, or thrown it on the Grill, for our Boy Pharaoh.
We have no jobs, becauses HE wishes it, so. HIS Party has put Social Security on a Bullet Train to Insolvency, with their INSISTENCE, that the only Financing Measure for it - FICA - be ELLIMINATED for the foreseeable future, and To Hell with your GRANDMA.
The rule of thumb that tells us "Nothing happens in a Vacuum" still applies.
We are where we are, because HE wishes it.
Period.
DTOM| 6.7.12 @ 10:27AM
George Patton said it: "If everyone's thinking alike, somebody's not thinking."
We have a two party system for a reason. The suggestion that we all need to think alike is a bank shot at eliminating independent thought. This is a precondition to fascism, isn't it? Obama certainly is sick and tired of people who don't think like he does! After all, he won and we lost.
Our history is full of disagreements. Slavery, trade unions, tariffs, taxes, prohibition, War, monopolies, you name it. And ultimately you should go ONE way or the other.
Lately we have been trying to go down the middle, consider income taxes as part time slavery, or the partial prohibition of excessive DUI enforcement, or the partial, half-hearted, half-assed wars of the last fifty years. (Except we kicked ass in Grenada and then got the heck out!)
Going down the middle has become as ingrained as breathing. Consensus doesn't work in most things: the light is on or it is off, you are dead or you are alive.
I say figure out what we want and then go for it. Look at the government employee unions in Wisconsin. They were not going to compromise an inch and, I'm betting that problem is solved now. Not because Scott Walker offered to split the difference. No, because he said this is the right way and the electorate, whose pockets were being picked clean, backed him up. That's how it's supposed to work.
Don't Tread On Me!!!!
Occam's Tool| 6.7.12 @ 2:38PM
I'm betting that the cost of the Union dues (non-deductable) and the cost of the pension/health insurance increase (deductible) even out or are in favor of the worker.
Doctor Right| 6.7.12 @ 11:11AM
...Whack! Bam!! Pow! Whack!...
(Would somebody please tell TLP that the horse is dead?)
Occam's Tool| 6.7.12 @ 2:39PM
Doc, Tim---I like both of you---a lot. I hope you guys are BOTH having a great summer.
TLP| 6.7.12 @ 3:46PM
The Horse may be dead, but the Horse's Ass is Alive and Well, in the personage of Doctor Dumb@ss.
Period.
Keep writing your Bullsh*t.
You only make me Stronger.
Idiot.
Doctor Right| 6.7.12 @ 5:03PM
Make you stronger?
That's a mighty low bar, Timmy.
Hey, can you write something tomorrow about how Obama is a liar and a socialist??
Pretty please????
'Cuz that would REALLY be news to people!
TLP| 6.7.12 @ 5:20PM
No.
I'll write a column on how Stupid, Insipid, and Pathetic you are.
As if everyone didn't know this, already.
It must be terrible for you, to know, that you will ALWAYS be just a shadow, of me.
Your smallness sustains me.
Cobalt| 6.7.12 @ 7:02PM
Obama's Third-Party History
By Stanley Kurtz / NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
http://www.nationalreview.com/.....nley-kurtz
Jack of Spades| 6.7.12 @ 8:17AM
What the Pew study should tell us is that the "Third Way" so beloved by liberals is losing its grip on the public's imagination. Could it be that the Third Way doesn't exist?
Von Mises Jr| 6.7.12 @ 8:33AM
Jack, the "Third Way" is fascism where the government controls versus owns the means of production. It is moot. It is like the excuse when my dog bites the neighbor that I don't own the dog. He lives in my house and I control him, but he is his own dog.
Von Mises makes it very clear that there is no "Third Way." It is a socialist ploy to make "Fat Cats" the target of government corruption and inefficiency. That is why they coined it "crony capitalism." It is not capitalism at all, but stupid people will confuse fascism for some form of capitalism and demand the government fix it.
JD| 6.7.12 @ 3:01PM
They want people to demand that the government fix it. Fascism advances when the people support it.
The most dangerous single lie in politics today is that fascism is far-right. It is far-left - a melding of government and business that is ruled by the government. It only differs from socialism and communism in that industries remain NOMINALLY private for purposes of misleading the masses into thinking that private business is causing whatever problems exist.
That's why fascism works better than communism or socialism - it sustains itself politically by deflecting voter angst to its enemies . Smart liberals like Obama know that fascism is their panacea.
Von Mises Jr| 6.7.12 @ 4:55PM
You got it brother.
Ron Ackenberry| 6.7.12 @ 8:10PM
Fascism is as far right as it gets in that it does not support liberal freedoms for the individual, but insists on obedience from the corporate/government masters.
"Nominally private"? And, how is that different then from "nominally public"?
Let's get this down to a more concrete level, if you were in charge of deciding which uniform to wear, which would you choose?
Black or brown?
Von Mises Jr| 6.7.12 @ 8:28AM
The only reason for our Constitution is to protect our unalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (property and finances), and to enumerate about a dozen and a half items to a central power that cannot be managed by individuals or the states.
Today you have people who live by those precepts and want to live, work and be left alone versus those that want to use the power of government to steal your rights and property. The latter are called socialist. They want something for nothing. But Milton Friedman told us that "there are no free lunches." So the conflict will continue.
cuban pete| 6.7.12 @ 10:20AM
You are on a roll lately.
Some one once said," I will vote for the party that charges me the least amount of blackmail to leave me alone."
Your second paragraph addresses that nicely.
Regards,
cp
Ron Ackenberry| 6.7.12 @ 8:11PM
When big oil wants more tax rebates and so on is the a "something for nothing" thing?
Just wondering.
Cobalt| 6.7.12 @ 11:17AM
Some would call this beast "neosocialism."
The Leftists don't like our U. S. Constitution, or a free-market society.
Beware "state capitalism;" something Obama has more than a passing interest in.
JD| 6.7.12 @ 3:05PM
"State capitalism" is their pseudonym for fascism, that liberal system that mirrors socialism, but enacts government control of industry through regulation and subsidy rather than overt government ownership. Like how they call handouts "refundable tax credits" to pretend conservatives should like them.
Petronius| 6.7.12 @ 11:49AM
Here with the ending of "days that the locust has eaten."
Tom Kyba| 6.7.12 @ 12:26PM
And of course it goes without saying(oops) that "come back Republicans and Democrats" means "we Democrats aren't getting as free a ride as we are entitled to so it must be the result of some other(Conservatives) making political discourse intolerable."
Who Knows?| 6.7.12 @ 12:34PM
Some people are color blind. Their eyes, extensions of the brain, translate the visual spectrum of energy, of which all is composed, differently. Whereas most “normal” humans see green, the “fringe” might see red, say.
So it goes physically.
What about psychically, or shall we say wrt thoughts and opinions and mental “images”? Alas, so many belief systems, so little time!
Maybe one of the gains from abortionists killing off possible fellow travelers, and the graying of America, in combination with ever increasing productivity, is that there will be, over time, an increasing percentage of voters who “grow in office”. That is, they become wisely beaten down by experience, and realize that being conservative is the grown up choice, the ONLY way.
All the crap about a third way is just poop on top of piles of excrement known as the second way---socialism.
Eventually, childhood is over, and adulthood comes. Those clinging to “mommy”, aka socialists, are just stuck in dependency—arrested development.
The stages of life DO matter, after all.
Grow up, Americans!
Ron Ackenberry| 6.7.12 @ 1:21PM
Roughly 50 cents of every income tax dollar is flushed down toilets like Afghanistan for defense expenditures. Our enemies include ignorant Muslim natives dressed in rags and hooligans standing on public property at Occupy demonstrations and .
I think we could fight those enemies cheaper.
But, conservatives have a blind spot on defense spending.
They use that same eye to intensely focus on finding ways to eliminate expenditures to assist the "tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free".
So, I must agree with you on one of your views: Intense resistance to the ways of the conservative evil eye are to be encouraged and cause for celebration, not alarm.
JD| 6.7.12 @ 2:57PM
I've never been criticized by a liberal in my life, because I've never met a liberal who has addressed what I stand for. Instead, we get straw man arguments like the tripe above.
Derek Leaberry| 6.7.12 @ 1:23PM
I write this with a sense of humor. Conservatives have the guns, we have the farms, we have the land, we have the know-how when it comes to the important trades like carpentry, home building, plumbing and barbequeing. We have better looking women and make more kids. Liberals are good at sitting in chairs and bureaucrating, sitting at home watching TV, and being chefs at 4-star restaurants. Liberals make good sommeliers. Liberals are also very good at birth control and abortion. So let Civil War Two begin.
Anthony| 6.7.12 @ 2:12PM
Damn right Derek, on all counts. I say bring the lefties to their knees, make them beg for their arugula and spike their Chateau Lafite Rothschild with kool aide, Jim Jones style.
JD| 6.7.12 @ 2:56PM
Democrats have one vehicle for implementing their agenda: the slippery slope. They claim that they'll only ever want some limited thing, and that to accuse them of actually wanting something more extreme is a crazy conspiracy theory. Of course, a few years later, they demand exactly what they used to say they'd never ask for. This tactic works for them because they can always denounce "slippery slope arguments" and "conspiracy theories" when people recognize their behavior.
Democrats also have only one vehicle for RETAINING their "progress": compromise. They compromise as does a man who steals your wallet, then offers to split its contents with you. They make dramatic power grabs, then demand that any concessions to the right come with matching concessions to the left, all starting from a status quo that is far left of the original center. Witness the fact that if today's Republicans got everything they ask for, we'd still be far left of where we were even in FDR's heyday.
Of course, if you tell a liberal this, they'd call you insane for wanting to go back to a political "stone age". That's because they think their political moves deserve credit for all of the advances that have actually occurred in spite of them, thanks mainly to technological advances.
Bill84728| 6.7.12 @ 2:58PM
Legislative gridlock and stalemate? People talk about that like it's a bad thing...
Controse| 6.7.12 @ 4:03PM
Pew has it right and ain't it grand. There is no middle between dependence and independence. Once the political sides are exclusively debating the best ways to attain and sustain independence we can once again talk of compromise. As long as seeking social justice is the goal of the Democrat Party only total victory of capitalism over communism will do.
Ron Ackenberry| 6.7.12 @ 8:02PM
So, you stand for calling posters who annoy you, "liberal"?
Is that worthy of criticism in your opinion?
If so, ....let me drift back to junior high, oh yes:
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but ignorance will never hurt me....something like that it went.
Ron Ackenberry| 6.7.12 @ 8:17PM
Today's so-called conservatives remind me of chimps trained to paint. Left paw goes in the white bucket of paint, right in the black.
Then it's time to smear it on the canvas, the wall, themselves and everyone they can reach.
Somehow the paints never mix and every painting is a ugly blob of black and white nonsense.
RJ| 6.7.12 @ 11:04PM
As someone who has twice seen Los Angeles in flames during riots, I will always be grateful to Rodney King for his heartfelt words encouraging the residents of LA to "get along." Mr. King showed much more leadership that day than the Mayor of LA.
As for the growing gulf in the views between liberals and conservatives, Emmett nailed it. America has tried liberal ideas such as the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society, Jimmy Carter's Departments of Education & Energy, and ObamaCare and "Stimulous" and they don't work. In fact, much of it diverted limited resources from the people who earned it, and was spent recklessly and wastefully.
The Tea Party represents responsible, self-reliant people who want less government control over their lives while the Occupy Wall Street mob are dependents who demand to live off of others.