"One side fears the shredding of safety nets, federal programs, and commitments to inclusion and honest history. The other side fears the destruction of traditional family mores, religion, and parental control." .. Why do liberal writers never understand what motivates republican voters, at least the new republicans like me?
The issues you mention are only a small factor. I don't believe the government can do much about traditional family values. I do object to transgender ideology being taught in public schools ( rather than reading, math, writing ). But what flipped me to voting for Trump was the sense that the left was authoritarian and could not be trusted.. The Covid narrative completely undermined my trust in public health experts and the politicians. The whole thing was a ginned up exagerated crisis with shocking government over reach and pharma companies making boatloads of money. Tremendous harm was done to the children who were kept home from school, to the toddlers masked for two years. Gavin Newson had people arrested for walking on the beach ! ( literally the same month that he had a dinner at French Laundry with no masks on!).
I am not saying covid wasn't a bad disease for the elderly. Some measures should have been taken to protect the very old. But the entire world went nuts for reasons we still don't fully understand. We never got a word of apology. Worst of all, the covid virus was most likely created in a lab and funded by the US government! I now believe that government can easily become tyranny ( as it did during covid). Smaller government is thus preferable to larger government. Thus I vote republican.
So you're anti-authoritarian, and decided to vote for the most authoritarian candidate in recent memory? Look, I can't stand the Democrats' authoritarian streak that stems from the guilty-and-purity politics of critical social justice, but Trump represents someone uncontrollable through either law or normal social controls because he respects no laws (they are merely tools to be used when convenient and worked around or ignored when not), and he has no shame. He could have gone to congress to get his tariffs. He didn't because it would have been difficult and he wouldn't have gotten just what he wants...so he disregards the law and convention and simply imposes massive and, in many cases, indefensible -- even under his own "reasoning" about trade deficits -- because he decided that he can declare any emergency he chooses and use it as an excuse to govern by fiat. Similarly, DOGE frequently crossed lines around congressional appropriations. The president doesn't get to decide that the government can simply not spend money congress has appropriated. I guess if you want a smaller government at any cost, that might be okay. If you respect our Constitution and its separation of powers, this should be a concern. Trump has no respect for the Constitution. He swore an oath to uphold it. What do you think that oath is worth? I don't pretend democrats are moral; if almost any Republican other than Trump had been on the ballot, I'd have voted Republican. But I value liberty as the most important of our concerns, and no one is worse on this than Trump, because he fails to respect the most basic parts of our system that were founded on the idea of liberty. Trump is literally the type of would-be tyrant that the founders of our country feared we would elect if we didn't have a well-educated and moral populace.
We agree on the importance of liberty and that we don't like authoritarianism. I don't like Trump either. However in terms of authoritarianism, as I said, the covid tyranny was the worst I ever saw. I know pregnant women who were forced to get the brand new untested mrna covid shot- twice!- or lose a job they loved. I know of one pregnant woman( friend of a close friend) who found out a few weeks after the shot that the baby in her womb had a blood clot in its brain. Did the covid shot cause that? No one will ever know. But no woman should have the anguish of wondering. That's why medical interventions shouldnt be mandated.
In spite of Trumps rude, ignorant and divisive rhetoric, he never did anything as bad as mandating the Pfizer and Moderna shots for millions. I also think he and his party are right about mass immigration. ( again, I deplore his rhetoric). But if we believe in the constitution and the rule of law, how is it okay for dems to basically open the borders and tell illegals its fine to flout the law? The democrats should pass new immigration laws if they want more immigration, not flout existing laws. ( I am echoing your comment on tariffs here)
I don't believe that the state should be unable to mandate medical interventions. I have little problem with the government mandating MMR or other vaccines for school age children; the alternative for parents is to have a religious or medical exception, or to homeschool (or otherwise find a school that doesn't require them, but the state / local schools all do). But outside of infectious diseases, I think the government should have virtually no say in medical interventions that are not fraudulent (or that the government itself must pay for).
That said, I think the mandate to get the COVID vaccine was poorly-conceived and authoritarian despite that it was related to infectious disease. If private employers wanted to mandate it, that's their choice, but government mandates to medical personnel that do business with medicare / medicaid (which is to say, almost all medical personnel) was awful. It wasn't unconstitutional (or at least, courts didn't find it so), but a number of the other COVID requirements were and ended up blocked and repealed. So I'm sympathetic to your opinion on COVID vaccination. However, I also think it was an *actual* crisis, at least as best we could tell in 2020, though the further into 2020 you go, the more we knew its real contours (i.e., the profile of those most afflicted). So I find this considerably more nuanced than, say, declaring an emergency because we have trade deficits that we've had for generations then using that as an excuse to impose massive tariffs, even against countries with whom we had no trade deficit. The COVID issue is at least partially motivated by a real crisis. There is zero crisis motivating tariffs.
For immigration, I suspect we are not too far from each other in terms of enforcement: we have laws and they should be enforced, and illegal immigrants should be returned to their home countries. I would add that the return should be swift, but that requires a huge increase in funding to the whole immigration enforcement system (I'm thinking judges and detainment centers here more than walls, but yeah, those too). I favor considerably more legal immigration, but only if we make laws providing for it.
Was the immigration issue authoritarian? In a limited way. It was failure to enforce existing laws properly, and looking for more loopholes to in effect make illegal immigrants able to stay here indefinitely. These kinds of enforcement decisions (laxness or tightness) ebbs and flows in government over time pretty frequently, though I think the Biden administration went significantly beyond that normal ebbs and flows. But I simply don't see it as nearly as authoritarian as deciding, at the whim of the president, which countries get which percentages, which companies get exemptions, etc.
There is a lot to respond to here. I appreciate that you see a problem with covid vaccine mandates. You mention religious and medical exemptions, but in democrat run states almost no exemptions were granted for medical reasons and 4 or 5 states including NY and CA do not recognize religious exemptions for any vaccines, including covid.
My point about immigration is that the Biden admin and the democrats are flouting immigration law by encouraging illegal immigration. They should pass more liberal laws on immigration if they want more immigration, not simply open the border. Again, that seems to me a very major act that is in violation of our norms- we are a society of laws. It's against the law ( as it is nearly every country) to simply come and live here without getting a proper visa before you arrive.
I agree the primary system is broken. Whether you have the right fix, I do not know. But I am sorry, Professor, you need an editor who will get you to the point earlier.
The system you mentioned is not working well at all in Washington state. The “top two” winners of primaries has created an echo chamber of one party rule. Many of our offices have also been redescribed as non-partisan and they’re actually more partisan than ever just with no label to help people discern. I imagine as we move into ranked choice voting in 2026 things are going to get measurably worse. I think this solution it’s actually the problem. I imagine after a couple of cycles of ranked choice we’ll repeal it like Alaska’s citizen effort.
The challenge with an electoral reform is that the legislature is composed of people who won their seats under the old rules—and likely would be concerned that changing the rules will cost them their seats.
Fact: no prior governance model has endured forever. That includes monarchies, republics, dictatorships, theocracies, tribal elders, and anarchy.
So - Why Democracy?
Like Fukuyama’s (very wrong) assertion that liberal world order was “the end of history” - why would we cling to the dogma that Democracy is the “end of governance”?
Medieval Europe was ruled by Kings and Popes for a thousand years. A THOUSAND! Then the printing press was invented and Luther’s writings circulated and brought down the papacy. Technology did a thousand year model a death blow.
Why would we Modern Humans believe “democracy” is the final product in an era of online primacy, global information and communication networks, media bubbles, and emerging artificial intelligence?
Again - can’t we start at least ASKING THAT QUESTION?
Why Democracy?
What might we do even BETTER with modern tools and know how?
Are we clinging to the steam train when a supersonic jet is in our hands?
There are a thousand analysis for showing why Democracy is the end result of last millennial expérience with social contract.
Of course, you raise this question like any good lawyer: ie, you know the answer.
Wouldn't you provide it for us?
That is to imply, any presentation here will be futile!
Yet, let me cite one that is unknown among the literaty in this part of the world: Works by Dr. Amartya Sen.I had my high going kid read most his work on Development and Democracy, while noticing mediocre repeat- job school was doing.. whence, the uprising of millions of maga, whipping in the dark...LMAO
Well, it seems like the human race evolves. With new tools come new realities. Democracy, and our constitution, were written by 18th century rationalists. The best there was. Still, they wore powdered wigs, churned butter by hand, and wrote our sacred founding document with a feather, dipped in an ink well, by firelight. They couldn’t contemplate new tools like electricity. Or the internet. Or iPhones. Or Instagram. Or Substack. Or space stations. Or ChatGPT. So, maybe the sacred document was a world class invention of its time. Like the steam train. But maybe our new reality should push us to rethink the underlying premise of our 300 year old system. I mean - if YOUR house were 300 years old - wouldn’t YOU be thinking about a remodel?
Imagine a hyper-connected socially networked globe like our ruled with new ideas. Like subscriptions instead of taxes. Like different services for different plan holders. The Blues get all the expensive health care services they long for (and Blue subscribers worldwide pay the bill). The Blues get abortion services at their facilities while the Reds do not. The two pool common resources to pay for basic real-world things like roads, bridges, border security, and national security. A baseline of legal immigration is agreed on. Above this, if Blues want extra immigrants- they pay 100% of the cost to house, feed, train them while Reds do not.
We have all the technology tools to do exactly this today - SHOUJD we ever find the will. We COULD secede in place with modern tools and know how. We could virtually parse our land based on this.
But, let’s be honest: we’d rather not.
We’d rather force our vision of right and wrong on our fellow countrymen-whether they agree or not. It’s repulsive to allow The Other to practice their deplorable beliefs in OUR America. We will jam this down their throats and they’ll thank us later (when they come to their senses).
It is this that will lead us to violence. Civil war. Unspeakable atrocities. Because neither will relent. And it WILL turn into a winner-takes-all across the West.
All because we’re selfish and self righteous and refuse to reasonably split these world views into peaceful solutions well within our reach.
I think this misses the key source of the problem. It is that Democrats ran out of other people's money and shifted into negative campaign mode. In other words, Democrats could no longer sell any great society ideas, so their only recourse was to destroy the brand of their opponent to look better by comparison. The Democrats use emotional terrorism through their media control to foment negative emotions (resentment, anger, disgust, etc.) within the electorate so that voters vote against and not for political choices.
This is the root cause of all the political division.
Democrats ran out of other people's money for two reasons. One is that they have ignored fiscal realities. Two is that Republicans jumped on board the easy spending game to buy votes. Three is that both pushed the globalism project and thus put the US in great economic competition with countries with lower business taxes and regulatory costs.
The Biden era was the last gasp of Democrat massive spending programs, and it has really broken the economy. National debt interest payments exceed defense spending and will grow to exceed all other spending categories. Continued pumping of government money into the economy has resulted in massive inflation that is destroying working class family finances.
The problem is that Democrats needed to pivot to a Trump-like platform, but instead they adopted a scorched earth strategy. And it worked a bit for them. The Dodd decision allowed Democrats to farm female rage and rage motivates voting more than does defense against rage. However, this isn't sustainable. Rage cannot be a long-term motivation strategy because it does not solve problems. It only exploits the narrative of problems. In fact, it required more problems to generate more rage. Democrats are stuck in a place where their political strategy requires a lot of problems and is harmed when the problems are solved. They cannot and will not pivot because Trump is living rent free in their heads.
But that is what will be required to fix what is broken. The Democrat Party is going to have to let go of the negative campaign strategy and begin to put forth a vision for the future that solves the big problems and Makes American Great Again.
"One side fears the shredding of safety nets, federal programs, and commitments to inclusion and honest history. The other side fears the destruction of traditional family mores, religion, and parental control." .. Why do liberal writers never understand what motivates republican voters, at least the new republicans like me?
The issues you mention are only a small factor. I don't believe the government can do much about traditional family values. I do object to transgender ideology being taught in public schools ( rather than reading, math, writing ). But what flipped me to voting for Trump was the sense that the left was authoritarian and could not be trusted.. The Covid narrative completely undermined my trust in public health experts and the politicians. The whole thing was a ginned up exagerated crisis with shocking government over reach and pharma companies making boatloads of money. Tremendous harm was done to the children who were kept home from school, to the toddlers masked for two years. Gavin Newson had people arrested for walking on the beach ! ( literally the same month that he had a dinner at French Laundry with no masks on!).
I am not saying covid wasn't a bad disease for the elderly. Some measures should have been taken to protect the very old. But the entire world went nuts for reasons we still don't fully understand. We never got a word of apology. Worst of all, the covid virus was most likely created in a lab and funded by the US government! I now believe that government can easily become tyranny ( as it did during covid). Smaller government is thus preferable to larger government. Thus I vote republican.
So you're anti-authoritarian, and decided to vote for the most authoritarian candidate in recent memory? Look, I can't stand the Democrats' authoritarian streak that stems from the guilty-and-purity politics of critical social justice, but Trump represents someone uncontrollable through either law or normal social controls because he respects no laws (they are merely tools to be used when convenient and worked around or ignored when not), and he has no shame. He could have gone to congress to get his tariffs. He didn't because it would have been difficult and he wouldn't have gotten just what he wants...so he disregards the law and convention and simply imposes massive and, in many cases, indefensible -- even under his own "reasoning" about trade deficits -- because he decided that he can declare any emergency he chooses and use it as an excuse to govern by fiat. Similarly, DOGE frequently crossed lines around congressional appropriations. The president doesn't get to decide that the government can simply not spend money congress has appropriated. I guess if you want a smaller government at any cost, that might be okay. If you respect our Constitution and its separation of powers, this should be a concern. Trump has no respect for the Constitution. He swore an oath to uphold it. What do you think that oath is worth? I don't pretend democrats are moral; if almost any Republican other than Trump had been on the ballot, I'd have voted Republican. But I value liberty as the most important of our concerns, and no one is worse on this than Trump, because he fails to respect the most basic parts of our system that were founded on the idea of liberty. Trump is literally the type of would-be tyrant that the founders of our country feared we would elect if we didn't have a well-educated and moral populace.
We agree on the importance of liberty and that we don't like authoritarianism. I don't like Trump either. However in terms of authoritarianism, as I said, the covid tyranny was the worst I ever saw. I know pregnant women who were forced to get the brand new untested mrna covid shot- twice!- or lose a job they loved. I know of one pregnant woman( friend of a close friend) who found out a few weeks after the shot that the baby in her womb had a blood clot in its brain. Did the covid shot cause that? No one will ever know. But no woman should have the anguish of wondering. That's why medical interventions shouldnt be mandated.
In spite of Trumps rude, ignorant and divisive rhetoric, he never did anything as bad as mandating the Pfizer and Moderna shots for millions. I also think he and his party are right about mass immigration. ( again, I deplore his rhetoric). But if we believe in the constitution and the rule of law, how is it okay for dems to basically open the borders and tell illegals its fine to flout the law? The democrats should pass new immigration laws if they want more immigration, not flout existing laws. ( I am echoing your comment on tariffs here)
I don't believe that the state should be unable to mandate medical interventions. I have little problem with the government mandating MMR or other vaccines for school age children; the alternative for parents is to have a religious or medical exception, or to homeschool (or otherwise find a school that doesn't require them, but the state / local schools all do). But outside of infectious diseases, I think the government should have virtually no say in medical interventions that are not fraudulent (or that the government itself must pay for).
That said, I think the mandate to get the COVID vaccine was poorly-conceived and authoritarian despite that it was related to infectious disease. If private employers wanted to mandate it, that's their choice, but government mandates to medical personnel that do business with medicare / medicaid (which is to say, almost all medical personnel) was awful. It wasn't unconstitutional (or at least, courts didn't find it so), but a number of the other COVID requirements were and ended up blocked and repealed. So I'm sympathetic to your opinion on COVID vaccination. However, I also think it was an *actual* crisis, at least as best we could tell in 2020, though the further into 2020 you go, the more we knew its real contours (i.e., the profile of those most afflicted). So I find this considerably more nuanced than, say, declaring an emergency because we have trade deficits that we've had for generations then using that as an excuse to impose massive tariffs, even against countries with whom we had no trade deficit. The COVID issue is at least partially motivated by a real crisis. There is zero crisis motivating tariffs.
For immigration, I suspect we are not too far from each other in terms of enforcement: we have laws and they should be enforced, and illegal immigrants should be returned to their home countries. I would add that the return should be swift, but that requires a huge increase in funding to the whole immigration enforcement system (I'm thinking judges and detainment centers here more than walls, but yeah, those too). I favor considerably more legal immigration, but only if we make laws providing for it.
Was the immigration issue authoritarian? In a limited way. It was failure to enforce existing laws properly, and looking for more loopholes to in effect make illegal immigrants able to stay here indefinitely. These kinds of enforcement decisions (laxness or tightness) ebbs and flows in government over time pretty frequently, though I think the Biden administration went significantly beyond that normal ebbs and flows. But I simply don't see it as nearly as authoritarian as deciding, at the whim of the president, which countries get which percentages, which companies get exemptions, etc.
There is a lot to respond to here. I appreciate that you see a problem with covid vaccine mandates. You mention religious and medical exemptions, but in democrat run states almost no exemptions were granted for medical reasons and 4 or 5 states including NY and CA do not recognize religious exemptions for any vaccines, including covid.
My point about immigration is that the Biden admin and the democrats are flouting immigration law by encouraging illegal immigration. They should pass more liberal laws on immigration if they want more immigration, not simply open the border. Again, that seems to me a very major act that is in violation of our norms- we are a society of laws. It's against the law ( as it is nearly every country) to simply come and live here without getting a proper visa before you arrive.
I agree the primary system is broken. Whether you have the right fix, I do not know. But I am sorry, Professor, you need an editor who will get you to the point earlier.
The system you mentioned is not working well at all in Washington state. The “top two” winners of primaries has created an echo chamber of one party rule. Many of our offices have also been redescribed as non-partisan and they’re actually more partisan than ever just with no label to help people discern. I imagine as we move into ranked choice voting in 2026 things are going to get measurably worse. I think this solution it’s actually the problem. I imagine after a couple of cycles of ranked choice we’ll repeal it like Alaska’s citizen effort.
How about having elections on Sunday, not a workday where the vast majority of voters have to go to work.
The challenge with an electoral reform is that the legislature is composed of people who won their seats under the old rules—and likely would be concerned that changing the rules will cost them their seats.
Danielle - thank you. Well said.
A Thought Challenge: Why Democracy?
Fact: no prior governance model has endured forever. That includes monarchies, republics, dictatorships, theocracies, tribal elders, and anarchy.
So - Why Democracy?
Like Fukuyama’s (very wrong) assertion that liberal world order was “the end of history” - why would we cling to the dogma that Democracy is the “end of governance”?
Medieval Europe was ruled by Kings and Popes for a thousand years. A THOUSAND! Then the printing press was invented and Luther’s writings circulated and brought down the papacy. Technology did a thousand year model a death blow.
Why would we Modern Humans believe “democracy” is the final product in an era of online primacy, global information and communication networks, media bubbles, and emerging artificial intelligence?
Again - can’t we start at least ASKING THAT QUESTION?
Why Democracy?
What might we do even BETTER with modern tools and know how?
Are we clinging to the steam train when a supersonic jet is in our hands?
There are a thousand analysis for showing why Democracy is the end result of last millennial expérience with social contract.
Of course, you raise this question like any good lawyer: ie, you know the answer.
Wouldn't you provide it for us?
That is to imply, any presentation here will be futile!
Yet, let me cite one that is unknown among the literaty in this part of the world: Works by Dr. Amartya Sen.I had my high going kid read most his work on Development and Democracy, while noticing mediocre repeat- job school was doing.. whence, the uprising of millions of maga, whipping in the dark...LMAO
Well, it seems like the human race evolves. With new tools come new realities. Democracy, and our constitution, were written by 18th century rationalists. The best there was. Still, they wore powdered wigs, churned butter by hand, and wrote our sacred founding document with a feather, dipped in an ink well, by firelight. They couldn’t contemplate new tools like electricity. Or the internet. Or iPhones. Or Instagram. Or Substack. Or space stations. Or ChatGPT. So, maybe the sacred document was a world class invention of its time. Like the steam train. But maybe our new reality should push us to rethink the underlying premise of our 300 year old system. I mean - if YOUR house were 300 years old - wouldn’t YOU be thinking about a remodel?
Imagine a hyper-connected socially networked globe like our ruled with new ideas. Like subscriptions instead of taxes. Like different services for different plan holders. The Blues get all the expensive health care services they long for (and Blue subscribers worldwide pay the bill). The Blues get abortion services at their facilities while the Reds do not. The two pool common resources to pay for basic real-world things like roads, bridges, border security, and national security. A baseline of legal immigration is agreed on. Above this, if Blues want extra immigrants- they pay 100% of the cost to house, feed, train them while Reds do not.
We have all the technology tools to do exactly this today - SHOUJD we ever find the will. We COULD secede in place with modern tools and know how. We could virtually parse our land based on this.
But, let’s be honest: we’d rather not.
We’d rather force our vision of right and wrong on our fellow countrymen-whether they agree or not. It’s repulsive to allow The Other to practice their deplorable beliefs in OUR America. We will jam this down their throats and they’ll thank us later (when they come to their senses).
It is this that will lead us to violence. Civil war. Unspeakable atrocities. Because neither will relent. And it WILL turn into a winner-takes-all across the West.
All because we’re selfish and self righteous and refuse to reasonably split these world views into peaceful solutions well within our reach.
I think this misses the key source of the problem. It is that Democrats ran out of other people's money and shifted into negative campaign mode. In other words, Democrats could no longer sell any great society ideas, so their only recourse was to destroy the brand of their opponent to look better by comparison. The Democrats use emotional terrorism through their media control to foment negative emotions (resentment, anger, disgust, etc.) within the electorate so that voters vote against and not for political choices.
This is the root cause of all the political division.
Democrats ran out of other people's money for two reasons. One is that they have ignored fiscal realities. Two is that Republicans jumped on board the easy spending game to buy votes. Three is that both pushed the globalism project and thus put the US in great economic competition with countries with lower business taxes and regulatory costs.
The Biden era was the last gasp of Democrat massive spending programs, and it has really broken the economy. National debt interest payments exceed defense spending and will grow to exceed all other spending categories. Continued pumping of government money into the economy has resulted in massive inflation that is destroying working class family finances.
The problem is that Democrats needed to pivot to a Trump-like platform, but instead they adopted a scorched earth strategy. And it worked a bit for them. The Dodd decision allowed Democrats to farm female rage and rage motivates voting more than does defense against rage. However, this isn't sustainable. Rage cannot be a long-term motivation strategy because it does not solve problems. It only exploits the narrative of problems. In fact, it required more problems to generate more rage. Democrats are stuck in a place where their political strategy requires a lot of problems and is harmed when the problems are solved. They cannot and will not pivot because Trump is living rent free in their heads.
But that is what will be required to fix what is broken. The Democrat Party is going to have to let go of the negative campaign strategy and begin to put forth a vision for the future that solves the big problems and Makes American Great Again.
perhaps you need a good reading of Paul Krugman...LMAO
Oh, I read his books for comic relief.
hm, remarks would not give out this erudition ...for " fun"...rather typical of welknown maga crowd...au contraire..