Skip to main content

Two coming attractions (or repulsions)

Today was light to non-existent blogging because my daughter had a soccer tournament in New Jersey, and frankly I'm exhausted.

But as inspiration fails to strike for something new tonight, I am working on two new posts for the next few days.

At Delaware Watch Dana is happy about the success of Cash for Clunkers, and believes it almost singlehandedly slays the beliefs of small-government ideologues:

Great news all around, right? But, reader, if you hear a note of weeping in the national celebration of this program's success, it's those economic conservatives who, for entirely doctrinaire reasons, simply cannot admit they were wrong. A government stimulus program worked—in fact, it exceeded expectations—and that must be denied at all costs. You see, if they admit that a government stimulus program worked here, then they'll have to admit that such programs might work in other aspects of the economy as well. Too bad for them. Reality is rarely kind to dogmatists.


This is an interesting point, worthy of an extended response. While I don't necessarily share Dana's enthusiasm for the outcome of CFC, I'm going to spot him as a starting point that he's right--the program succeeded. But, if so, does that mean what he thinks it means? Stay tuned. I'll take a shot at that, and the good part is that Dana will fire back. This is only fun when it is a competitive sport.

My other project has the working title of Do we matter? or perhaps How much do we matter?, and tries to think about the question of just how much impact this blogging thing has--at least in local terms. Are we collectively making some sort of discernable difference, or are bloggers in Delaware merely part of a self-referential community engaged in mutual mental masturbation?

And if we do make a difference, how do we magnify that difference?

Stay tuned.
Labels:

Comments

Libertarian in Colorado said…
If it makes you feel any better. I'm nowhere near Delaware. I'm just happy that I found another sane person out there on the planet that can write Libertarian leaning non-spittle filled blog posts.

Please keep the blog going. This is my refuge from the stupid.
August 30, 2009 at 2:25 AM
Anonymous said…
who is shocked to discover that the government was able to give away money? or that people lined up to get their free money?
August 30, 2009 at 9:42 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...
44 comments
Read more

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...
22 comments
Read more

The disturbing decline of the Delaware blogosphere: a very unfortunate Around the Horn (even if it's not Friday)

I've noticed a change in my own blog-checking habits over the past several weeks, and I don't know if it's just me or the reality of the last month of a divisive political campaign. I automatically used to check out Delawareliberal first and several times a day, because it was where I could find edgy, thought-provoking, and (dare I say it) funny banter going on. These days visit several other spots first, and my visits to DL are both shorter and less engaged. Why? Because the combination of invading neo-con commenters with the stridency of some of the major contributors has led to such pleasant exchanges as a post dedicated to labeling another blogger racist by donviti, whose own sense of provocative humor is generally so far out there that he makes John Belushi doing Samurai bartender on the SNL look positively pro-Asian. Or I can find Delawaredem and jason periodically spewing the idea that anybody who is not a liberal or progressive Democrat is somehow a non-American,...
27 comments
Read more