Are Republicans Crazy?

Crazy is not a word that encourages dispassionate discussion, but may be appropriate for beliefs that are counter to the lessons of history. In today's NY Times Steven Rattner talks about these ideas espoused by Republicans:

* Bachmann, Paul and Romney: opposed raising the debt ceiling

* Bachmann and Paul: will never vote to raise the debt ceiling

* Cut, cap and balance bill: cut government spending by 25%, taking US back to 1966 level

* Balanced budget amendment: no government flexibility to manage

* Ryan budget proposal: replace Medicare with vouchers

* Perry: would not have supported TARP financial rescue

* Perry: repeal 16th amendment to eliminate income tax (80% of federal revenue)

* Paul: abolish Federal Reserve to prevents previous panics and busts

* Bachmann: no extension of unemployment insurance for jobless

* Bachmann and Romney and others: repeal Obama health care plan

* Bachmann: repeal Dodd-Frank financial reform

* Bachmann: General Motors and Citigroup should have not received government support, should have gone bankrupt

Rattner quotes UCal professor who found idealogical divergence in Congress the greatest in 120 yrs - since the decade that led up to the Civil War. And the increased polarization is from Republicans moving further to the right than ever before.

In general, Republicans want to remove all the protections that have grown up over the last 100 years that attempt to prevent business abuses, protect the poor, stabilize the economy, and support a government of a size necessary for a vastly large economy. I wonder if they defend the Gilded Age when large corporations - trusts - did whatever they wanted, the working week was 50-60 hr, child labor was common, full time workers lived nearly in poverty, and retirement meant instant poverty. Are any of those conditions ones we should try to re-establish?

All You Need is Opinion

Here is a great quote from an article in today's NYT:

It is no secret, especially here in America, that we live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy. While we continue to make giant technological advances, we may be the first generation to have turned back the epochal clock — to have gone backward intellectually from advanced modes of thinking into old modes of belief.

There has been a general decline in rationality, but the faith, opinion, etc approach is the hallmark of conservatives. Belief is all they need. Just as in the long period of European history known as the Dark Ages.

NYT article: The Elusive Big Idea by Neal Gabler

A Lack of Critical Thinking

Today in the New York Times Frank Bruni wrote that both sides in the recent debt ceiling fiasco were at fault for being true believers. I objected with this comment:

You are making a more sophisticated version of the standard - and wrong - comment that both Democrats and Republicans were equally at fault for the debt ceiling crisis, or that there is equally valid pro and con evidence for evolution. This is like the barber shop converrsation that there isn't a dime's worth of difference between them so throw all the bums out. But there is vast difference between conservatives who refuse to negotiate at all because of a pledge, not to the United States but to a belief, and who fail to recognize that low taxes and uninforced regulations under Bush did not lead to growth and jobs. And for evoution, global warming, the age of the Earth, and stem cells there is vast scientific evidence - meaning there is a process to challenge and test hypothesizes - that far outweighs the 100% religion-based arguments of deniers. Please recognize that there can be profound differences in the quality of arguments and don't imply that all are equal and their proponents are equally rational.