i love pre-crazy michael jackson, but....

some thoughts on proposals of change...

just a note or two...

last night i was watching c-span (i know), and newt gingrinch was giving a speech at the american enterprise institute. it was an interesting speech...it was full of thoughtful (if flawed) critique and bold ideas. i was in a listening mood because i had just finished listening to eboo patel talking about pluralism and religion...something that i almost always end up rejecting—not because i don’t agree with that idea; it’s because i don’t think that it’s entirely a workable notion when applied to religion and faith. the very notion of religion and faith seem to contradict the foundational principles of pluralism. however, i find it interesting and strangely satisfying to think and talk about. but, i digest (i love the family guy. i also love thunderlip.)

how about the idea as the american consumer as a consumable product? we’ll talk later...

i caught the last half hour or so of newt’s (heh heh) speech. he was talking about some of the challenges faced in determining the course of our future. specifically, he was talking about economics and culture and how the two inform one another. he talked about the situation in detroit...it’s decline and the policies that led to that decline. i don’t really know much about it—he intimated that it was all the fault of liberals and their desire to manage everything and redistribute wealth and their tendency toward bureaucracy. *shrug* could be...i woke up this morning thinking that there are a few things about which liberals need to be honest. the most important of those being not everything system that we humans encounter can be or even should be managed. economic output, the environment (specifically, wilderness), etc., etc. sometimes, i think that it’s just enough to get out of the way. i digested again.

since i didn’t catch the entire speech i didn’t really understand the point of bringing up detroit. maybe he was saying that since it was the site of so many failed liberal policies that it was time to try something that “makes sense.” anyway, he laid out seven proposals (of which i only remember a couple) to radically change or at least stake out a new direction. ( i think in a lot of ways, he’s making the implicit argument that the “great society” experiment has failed, and it’s time to try something else. though, how he can say that while at the same time our country has experienced the greatest economic expansions in the history of mankind is curious.

how bad-ass was david cook the other night on american idol? another reason to love chris cornell, as if i need more.

anyway, the one thing that he said that kind of stuck in my craw was the idea that adolescence was a contrived notion. it was a contrived notion of 19th and 20th century liberals...all of the things to counteract the growing power of monopolistic corporations...labor unions, child labor laws, etc. etc. but, i absolutely disagree with his analysis of social history. i mean, the reason that he addresses adolescence in particular is because of the amount of crime and the amount of leisure associated with the lives of teenagers. i don't disagree with that...i do agree that a great deal of undirected leisure time can lead to some bad stuff. the point of his analysis with which i take umbrage is the notion that somehow the social and economic reforms of the 19th century somehow created a class of people with nothing to do. on the contrary, the growth of the age group called adolescence has more to do with our astounding economic success than any law. it's the same effect that we see in financially successful families. if the parents go to college and do well for themselves, not only will their kids be more likely to do well, but also the parents will have something to leave for the kids and grandkids--and life becomes "easier" for successive generations. makes sense? doesn't it make sense that the same principle could be applied to a society? doesn't it make sense that as the country as a whole (not just a privileged few) became wealthier and moved through demographic transition, children wouldn't have to work to support smaller and more educated families?