Man, my street credit just SHOT up...

This is pure sinful pride and narcissism of the first order... but I have to share:

We had a busy Saturday here at the joint.  I was running the high limit room (far less glamorous than it sounds) and all the BJ games were $100 or better, and all were going strong.  Three were reserved for $250k players or better... and we had some big lines in the house because Andrew Dice Clay was doing a show at our house.

So, it's a couple of hours before the show kicks off, and in walks the Diceman himself.  Plain clothes, an eyepatch (go figure) and some really freaky hair.  He has no account with us, so he buys in for $8k and goes to town.  I pay him almost no mind... too busy a room to even look twice at a less-than-$10k buy-in... until he asks if the cage has safe deposit boxes for guests.  I tell him no, but each hotel room has a safe in it that only the guest can access.  He nods, thanks me... then asks me where he knows me from.

I have two shift bosses, two floors, at least one dealer and a cocktail waitress all hear this question, and they ALL turn to me to see what I'm going to say.  I told him we had met about ten years ago in Biloxi, at the Grand Casino when he did a show there... and he asked how I made out after the storm.  We end up talking for a few minutes, and he talked about doing shows down there after the storm.

I guess no one else in the house ever met the Diceman before... but I had.  That was all ANYONE could talk about for the last few hours of my shift.  I think I made out pretty well... once again, Titus is cool beyond words.

[flex]

Good shows gone bad...

Time was, I was a big fan of British documentary maker Michael Wood.  He's taken on some big topics, and made some very good shows.

Then I noticed "Legacy" in my Instant Queue on Netflix and watched it.

The show was made in the early 90s (no reference to 9-11, only the '91 Gulf War... and repeated references to the USSR), but the cultural bias is so amazingly HUGE even then, it almost makes the show impossible to watch.

The show is a study on the five starting points of "civilizations" throughout history:  Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, China, Meso-America, and Europe.  It shows the geographical, climatological, demographic and political machinations that brought about "city living" across the scope of history.

I slugged through all the episodes, waiting to get to the last episode (The Barbarian West).  All were good, but I couldn't help but wonder at his over-emphasis on the "peaceful" nature of ALL the first four starting points.  Then I saw the Barbarian West.

You'd think that not a single fist was ever raised in anger that didn't originate in or come in contact with the "West".  The emphasis that our Western culture has placed on the strengths found in individual freedoms in the last two centuries are not mistakes... they aren't even the exceptions.  You'll have to watch it for yourselves... but he really seems to be trying to convince the viewers that our Western society (going all the way back to Alexander, mind you) is the ONLY male-oriented, militaristic, religiously intolerant, imperialist, and genocidal culture to ever have found itself rampant on the Earth.

Where does slavery still exist today?  Not in the "West".  Where is infanticide still a tool of the state to control population?  Not in the "West".  Where is the role you play in society dictated by the form of employment that your fathers and grandfathers were "born to"?  Not in the West.

I was amazed that the man used the Nazi Holocaust as an example of the irrational nature inherent in a culture that proposes to be based in the "Age of Reason"... and dismisses the Japanese Holocaust as "Western" influence in Imperial Japan.  The Chinese first Emperor couldn't be called "genocidal" in the manner and means by which he unified China, and then built the Great Wall?  Kublai Khan wasn't every bit as "militaristic" as Napoleon in his goals and objectives?  Saladin wasn't simply "responding" to the Crusades when he seized, sacked and destroyed Damascus... a Muslim city that the Crusaders couldn't take... he was cementing his own personal power base, just as Saddam Hussein was in 1990.

His assertion that communism in the East has failed because it is contrary to the 5,000 history of the Asiatic peoples is utterly baseless.  Communism, in any guise, is doomed to fail... but communism in China and North Korea bears as much resemblance to its Marxist-Leninist roots as tofu does to pepperoni, so saying that it is a "Western" philosophy that is alien to Eastern culture is utter crap.  Cultures, across the globe, have habitually taken from one society and incorporated into their own.  We owe the Chinese for gunpowder, pasta, the printed page, and shrimp fried rice... but Chinese culture is just as dependent today on things gained from the West, and not all of them are BAD.

What a load of bunk.

Let's go the next step...

If for no other reason than I am not busy this morning until such time as I can get outside and cut grass.

You wrote:  "You "would do" for yourself, or you would assume your Rights yourself, because those Rights were inherint, not granted."

Are there any circumstances under which the Fed can "do for you" outside of the inherent rights already defined in the Constitution?  Is there a line between legitimate support for a citizen and welfare?  What "rights" are granted by government and what benefits arise from those rights?

For example, completing a four year term of service in the US military gets you trained, fed, housed and remunerated for the entire term... once that term is up, do Federal benefits that continue the rest of your life constitute "welfare" or "support"?  Pensions that only Congress are eligible for (and health benefits) cost the taxpayers millions each year, and these benefits continue even after they are out of office... welfare or legitimate support?  What about the FEMA money some of us received after Katrina?  Welfare or support?

Fair Enough

I know I added comments (& text you an "alert"), but in the interest of posterity (after all what would future generations do without a succinct reading of our discourse ever ready to guide them through times of tumult?), I chose to dump those and add them more cohesively here.

My title, "fair enough", is my only response to your last ... a sincere response, no glib parting shot intended.

On your post,"Wait a Second", you defined my meaning of "the Founders were interested in process, not results" damn near perfectly. We have no beef. No misunderstanding.

My describing FDR as technically operating with the "process" was me trying to cede a small point (in my mind) to get to the larger. In other words I thought you were defending FDR (i.e. "he didn't fundamentally change anything") as honoring the Founders intent because he technically operated "within" the "process" (duly elected, etc). I thought it was a rudimentary interpretation of my process point, but I didn't want to get hung up on that because I believed you took the overall point quite well (and clearly you did). If I misinterpreted your "he didn't fundamentally change anything", then I apologize.

Now, I'll go even further (in terms of Obama being right - whoa, did I actually just write that?). If this process of government, including the charter of "negative liberties", operates in the way the blueprint was set up, then the entire point of the process was that government could not do anything "to you" (or "for" as Obama defines it and demands that it must). You "would do" for yourself, or you would assume your Rights yourself, because those Rights were inherint, not granted.

In any event, when it comes to my "fine point" as you put it (ok, now I'm being gratuitously self congratulatory - if for nothing else than perseverance), we are on the same page.

On my faith in New Deal...

Speaking of bad form... I conceded the point, in its entirety.  I cannot claim to be any more right than you are, since I can't make you (or anyone else, for that matter) see the basis of my point.  All I "clarified" was that you hadn't convinced me of the absolute nature of your argument anymore than I had convinced you of mine.

I'm the first to admit I'm a stubborn son of a gun, on the best of days... I don't like losing an argument to you or anyone else.  If I couldn't make you see even a portion of my point, and even my own brother doubted the validity of my position, then I was forced to admit that my position might be as untenable as you claimed it to be.

My "faith" lays with God, the Church and what I know to be true and undeniable... the depression that started in 1929 was over by 1934, two years after FDR won his first election.  Since that time, with such "progressive" behemoths as the SEC, FDIC, the Federal Reserve, Social Security all soundly in place, there has never been another depression; no recessionary economy has lasted more than 9 months;  the United States has reached unprecedented highs in the realms of economic growth, domestic prosperity, personal wealth and opportunity;  and we still maintain the highest standard of living (across the board) of any populous since the dawn of recorded history. 

I simply have decided to stop trying to convince anyone that New Deal contributed more to the efforts to end the era of the Great Depression than it hindered.  I could very well be wrong in my assumptions, conclusions and ideas, but until such time as I am able to prove them, the debate is over and I concede that your point wins.

Wait a second...

I see your point about the greater expectation of the citizenry in regards to what they receive from the government... "results", as you say.  FDR could very well have put himself in a role as "provider" more than he did a "leader" and that is not good, intentional or otherwise.

But lets not confuse the excellent point you made earlier.  You said the Founders were "interested" in the process of government, and not the results.  I took that to mean they were "motivated" by the process of how government would operate, not by what government would do.  In that regard, there is merit in what Obama said about a charter of negative liberties... they only ever intended to specify what government COULD NOT do, the boundaries that government could not cross.  In doing so, they specified what inherent rights the government recognized as greater than itself, and thus what it must always protect above all else.  It is the ideal blueprint for a government charter... you can go this far, and no further.  The rest is up to the people elected and filling the offices of government itself.  In short, the role government plays in the lives of the citizenry, as long as it doesn't deny the rights protected already, is outside of the realm of what the Founder's planned at all, isn't it?

As harmful as you may think FDR and his policies were to America in the 1930's and beyond, by the very definitions you seem to espouse of the role that a "leader" like the PotUS must take, FDR did what the people mandated he do.  Had the status quo of previous President's and their policies sufficed, he wouldn't have had the opportunity to accomplish any of the "bad" things we keep talking about.  His "ideology" wouldn't have appealed to the voting public at all.

"claryifying" concessions

That's always a messy business, and just bad form.

Come on man, if you want to ask me all those questions, ask them, but to restate the "conditional concession" ... oy. I didn't misread it the first time. The "realizations" , epiphany as you called it, that I spoke to in my post were simple, and what I thought you were basing your concession on: you are not a liberal because a results oriented planned economy policy does not work. You can not point to any version of such policies working before New Deal. You can not point to any working after New Deal. Hence, you could not adequately defend it (using historical examples or personal ideology); nor prove conclusively that from 1929-1945 it worked. I got it. To reiterate just because I waxed on a bit in the follow up post is, well, bad form (to me anyway, what did you think would happen at the conclusion of a decade long debate?). Concede or don't, but I got it the first time. Your "belief" that "something" must have worked (your words), despite the ability to offer "proof" (also your phrasing) has now reached an almost religious level. The conscious and rationale of an adult may have been enough to compel you're concession of the argument, but it certainly hasn't shook your "faith" in New Deal. And apparently I can no more to talk you out of that religiosity than I can Catholicism. Nor will I try.

Two points:

1.) You wrote (I'm paraphrasing): "Despite FDR's efforts, nothing fundamental has changed." It's true he didn't literally alter the Constitution, or its' process. However, his tenure did fundamentally alter the interpretation of the commerce clause (which we suffer from today in both 2nd Amendment restrictions and Obamacare); and more than that, he altered government's relationship with the individual citizen. He set the standard, used to this day, of a government concerned with "results." An ideology I contend became prominent first with Wilson. The expectations of those elected to office, and those who get the goodies they promise, have changed. In fact, I believe those expectations of, and relationship with, government fundamentally changed under FDR, forever. I mentioned this when I wrote that his "great success" to progressives like Obama is that he altered the American fabric to "expect" their government to ensure certain "results." And he did so even by the programs that failed or were tossed out. The attempts are expected now. The standard in a crisis, any crisis now, is government interventionism, typically on the federal level. THAT is a fundamental change that I ascribe to FDR. Others may disagree who is to blame, but the relaity of its' existence is clear. Now you can certainly argue that "nothing fundamental changed" if you're saying all that happened under New Deal was that legislation was passed by a duly elected congress, signed into law bu a duly elected chief executive, and declared Constitutional or not by a duly appointed Judiciary, thus he didn't alter the fabric of the process. That's fine. I don't disagree. The problem is that all those duly elected and appointed individuals are now influenced by the emphasis on "results" that FDR/New Deal embedded in American society. "The Constitution as I understand it..." versus as the Founders understood it, or at least its' plain meaning (case law precedent rather than Constitutionality, the commerce clause, just as examples), is prevalent today. I believe FDR made it so. My opinion, anyone can disagree. Although I doubt any Progressives do, the reasons I laid out against him are the very ones they worship him for.

2.) When is enough government interventionism "enough." This is a fine debate tactic, kudos. It's much like the one I've oft used on those Left of center who ascribe the need for a more punishing progressive tax code. It's a simple way to destroy their argument. Ask: "What percentage - give me a number - of a person's income is it fair for the government to take?" Typically, not knowing the top marginal rate, they'll pick a number lower than is currently in place; or they'll pick a number so high I it will reveal themselves as not serious players at best, commies at worst (ha). I can't go over the litany of 236 years of American domestic policy and say here, here, here are too far; here, here and here are just right ... I'm not a historical Goldie Locks. I can only answer specific examples. The War on Drugs? Legalization is not the answer. And no new laws need be passed. We are a sovereign nation. We have every right to enforce the boundaries of that sovereignty. I'm not being glib here, but our land border is more porous than our borders over bodies of water. Much like immigration, we must enforce our boundaries. And every president in my lifetime (including Reagan) has utterly failed in this fundamental responsibility of the Federal Government. Hezbollah agents, suitcase nukes, illegal immigrants, angel dust, or bad Tylenol, none of it should come across - its' a legitimate function of the Feds to disallow illegal crossings of humans, goods, drugs, weapons, or supplies (or anything for that matter, if it's an "illegal" crossing).

Look, I appreciate the kind words about emphasis on results versus process. It is the sea change I think Wilson started, and FDR took to its' next logical level; LBJ took up again; and Obama is attempting today. My point about FDR is he made it a standard part/expectation of American society. After Lincoln his successors didn't go around suspending state legislatures when it suited them (or AZ would be in trouble today). However, every Republican president since Eisenhower has upheld the New Deal Policies (more or less) that remained, and every Democrat has expanded on their theme with programs of his own. FDR (or any of them) didn't have to fundamentally change the process to get Americans to fundamentally focus on results; they merely had to change the focus of government from one to the other. And that's what I think FDR did "better" than any of the other names we bandied about - he made normal the American citizens expectation that his or her government should concern itself with results. And he did so within the process the Founders set in place. If you want to label him "successful", than do so for that. It was an awesome (destructively so in my estimation) achievement.