So says the first line of the Guardian‘s report on the unexpected victory of Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National Coalition party in the Australian federal election.
The election was framed as a great climate showdown. The Coalition has held power over a tumultuous six years, which has seen it topple two prime ministers and suffer from catastrophic infighting, largely over energy policy, as the party has been unable to agree on taking action on the climate crisis, or even agree as to its reality.
The Labor party, which proposed introducing a target of reducing emissions by 45% by 2030, said the difference between the parties’ policies on the climate crisis was “night and day, black and white”.
As I have said once or twice before, my level of belief in CAGW is two-and-a-half letters to the left of most people here. If you are curious, “CAGW” stands for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, though as of yesterday the Guardian‘s style guide has changed “Global warming” to “Global heating”. Yes, a rebranding exercise. All that is needed now is a shiny new logo and twitter handle and success is assured. After all it worked for The Independent Group Change UK The Remain Alliance For Change UK.
What with this result in Australia and the French gilets jaunes movement born out of anger at a carbon tax on fuel, does anyone else get the impression that the latest burst of upping the political ante on climate change works splendidly right up to the moment when it meets the voters?
For those who do truly believe that the peril of global warm.. heating is imminent and severe, it is time to get real. It is time to face the fact that drastic changes in lifestyle are necessary; that sacrifices are going to have to be made.
Yes, it is time to drop your enjoyable revolutionary delusions and face the fact that if climate change mitigation is to happen at all it will be done within the capitalist system.
“climate change mitigation” is nonsense. It cannot be done. Not within a capitalist system, and surely not in a Socialist system, which is incapable of doing anything except destroying what was done before.
We do not posses now the means, or technology to produce energy without emissions (forget nuclear). No amount of preaching can change this absolute fact.
Maybe some time in the future some spectacular technological breakthrough or new discovery will provide us with a new source of energy (like John Galt’s fictional motor). When and how this happens nobody can predict.
Now, based on technology known to us, there will be no climate mitigation – whatever the dangers of global over-heating may be.
People mostly understand that the $$$ spent on solar panels and windmills is wasted money.
I can take “climate change” – it always does. “Anthropogenic” may be part of it. But the Believers have been promising us onrushing catastrophe since the Ice Age of the 1970s, and so far they haven’t delivered.
The only catastrophe I see in the potential future is letting the ideologues take over. That would be world-wide Venezuela.
As for Global Heating, it’s as much a mirage as the Coming Ice Age was fifty years ago.
The interesting part of this election, to me, is the fact that so many people must have lied about their vote plans to the pollsters.
Australia polling doesn’t engender the uncertainty over whether the poll results are made up of the people who are actually going to vote. Australia has enforced mandatory voting. So, if you ask adult citizens who they plan to vote for, you ought to be getting a significant result.
And the polls, which predicted a resounding AGW-driven win for the left, were quite off.
“For those who do truly believe that the peril of global warm.. heating is imminent and severe…”
your volunteer labor is desperately needed to build the 30 foot high levee along the US/Mexico border to keep the inevitable 20 foot rise in the Rio Grande at bay!
It’s the problem with silencing people: you stop getting information you need. “You can’t say that!”, hurts us, but it hurts them more. To the old categories of shy tories and shy leave voters we now have definite confirmation of shy climate sceptics.
The believers want to believe we’re stupid, so I fear will not learn from this experience.
If only that were true. Australia’s nominally right-wing party is as polluted as our own. But it seems the voters chose the lesser absurdity.
At this point, I’m hoping PC culture goes full blast.
Yesterday, Candace Owens was banned from Facebook for this:
Uncivil? Threatening? Nope. Merely against Progressive doctrine.
They’re no longer even trying to justify their “safety” argument. The more they act this way, the weaker they become. I’m convinced that Trump is going to (calculatedly) tweet something that will be banned by Twitter, and cause all of this to come to a head. This will guarantee his re-election.
…
Change UK… For Change UKThe CUKs have rebranded themselves as the FCUKs?
I’ve had election communications from Tories, Labour, SNP, Greens, UKIP and the Brexit party – and have seen one from Tommy Robinson, who appears to be running as a one man band in north-west region. But I’ve yet to get one from the whatever-they-call-themselves.
On the other hand, I was pursued round bits of Glasgow a week ago by a ‘Change UK’ car with a loudspeaker, a very repetitive message (I think – but it drove too fast for hearers to really get any of it) and a flukily similar route to the one I was following. No other party has subjected me to that, as yet.
The number of deaths due to nuclear power accidents is totally insignificant compared to auto accidents, yet we still get in our cars every day. The difficulty lies with a public psychology that refuses to accept any technology which can have large catastrophic effects even if there’s an infinitesimal probability of it happening. If CAGW is such a danger, then it should be obvious that such a psychological barrier for nuke power implementation should be dispensed with given sufficient “education” of the population. That “education” for the inevitability of CAGW has been going on for more than a decade now yet there’s been virtually no such efforts for going totally nuclear. This is particularly the case as the electric car technology is just become practical.
Ah, yes, Mizz Naomi Klein, spreading sweetness and collectivistic darkness everywhere she goes. Quoting from the Amazon blurb on the writing mentioned (my boldface added):
With creds like that, who can go wrong – in giving all of her opinions and conclusions the old heave-ho. (Presumptively, of course. A stopped clock, so forth.)
Breaking (at least to me):
The Heartland Institute has announced ICCC-13, the 2019 International Conference on Climate Change, to be held in Washington on June 25. Be there or be square! *grin*
Among the speakers: Anthony Watts, Roy Spencer, Craig Idso, Myron Ebell.
According to a book I just finished called “Global Warming – a convenient lie” by Bradley J Crandal the total sum of human Co2
output is 3.6% of the whole. The other 96% comes from the seas, volcanoes and rocks etc.
If we all stop driving, flying and breathing what difference would it make (apart from being dead!) to the overall Co2 production?
It will likely turn out that Co2 increases are an effect not a cause, IMO opinion the whole climate change/global warming scare is a crock of crud.
These days policy is advocated by the establishment in the basis of argument from authority and ad hominem.
When it doesn’t matter and especially when identification is possible many people duck out the argument and avoid the smears, only to vote their own opinion in secret.
As long as campaigns are fought this way pollsters have little chance.
The Guardian still runs an extensive travel section, and a motoring section which this month favourably reviewed a nice new Bentley car.
But of course, the planet would be OK if only educated, middle class people like Greens and Guardian readers went on holiday or drove cars.
Expressed preferences not equal to Revealed preferences. Gosh, has that ever happened before?
Jacob wrote:
I have The Motor.
Ayn Rand wrote:
I could write what I have as:
Sorting how that happened and what it means is an exercise I’ll leave for someone smarter.
“According to a book I just finished called “Global Warming – a convenient lie” by Bradley J Crandal the total sum of human Co2 output is 3.6% of the whole.”
The whole of what? There are many different numbers involved.
The current atmospheric CO2 level is the cumulative sum of the differences between a number of very large inputs and outputs.
The atmosphere contains about 800 GtC, the upper ocean about 1000 GtC, the deep ocean about 37000 GtC, fossil fuels about 10000 GtC, Soil and dead biomass about 2300 GtC, living plant biomass about 550 GtC, varying about 10 GtC up and down with the seasons.
Flows are much smaller. About 92 GtC/yr are absorbed by the polar oceans, and about 90 GtC/yr emitted by the tropical oceans. Plant respiration releases 60 GtC/yr, animal/microbial respiration and decomposition releases 60 GtC/yr, which is roughly balanced by 123 GtC/yr of absorption from the atmosphere by photosynthesis. The anthropogenic contribution (fossil fuels, cement manufacture, and other changes) adds about 9 GtC/yr, and the net total of all these flows is a 4 GtC/yr increase in atmospheric CO2.
Thus, we put in 9 GtC/yr into the atmosphere, and the atmospheric content goes up by 4 GtC/yr (i.e. about 400 GtC per century). Our contribution is therefore 225% of the size of the increase per year.
But as a percentage of the natural flows it is smaller, and as a percentage of the carbon in the system it is smaller still. The atmosphere is only a very small part of Earth’s carbon reserve.
But the question we’re really interested in is how much of the cumulative increase we’re responsible for. And that’s an unknown. It depends not only on the size of the flows, but on how they would have changed naturally without man’s intervention, and on how the changes in atmospheric CO2 affect the other flows. Most of the numbers above are flaky estimates with wide error bars, and the dynamics are largely unknown. Nobody knows. In particular, we don’t know that it’s *not* us, either.
If anything the climate is cooling.
The result in Aus is good in that worse shite were kept out.
But the so called Liberals=supposed “conservatives”– are still conservative only in the same sense that BluLabour shite like Treason May are.
So it is a minor cause for celebration only. The war with the scum of the left goes on.
Two and a half letters? Try three letters.
If:-
Natural global warming (X) + Anthropogenic global warming (Y) = Z = 100% global warming (which it must.)
Then:-
Z – X = Y
What is the % value of Y?
If Y% cannot be known (it cannot) then how can we know by how much Z must be reduced to avoid causing an Ice Age, and by what mechanism?
Given: climate prediction (uncertainty) has a large margin of error, and that margin of error increases the further forward in time we go, how could we measure the effect of anything that is done to alter climate change?
And: what are the Default Global Temperature and the Default Climate for the Earth?
@Jacob
“climate change mitigation” is nonsense. It cannot be done.
We mitigate climate change every Winter when we turn on the central heating, for example, or put an overcoat on to go and play in the snow.
Climate change mitigation means the measures we take to counteract the effects of change – we have been doing it for over 300 000 years… very successfully.
It seems strangely difficult to find details about the distribution of the votes of Australia’s 16.5 Million electors. The overall result in the 151-seat House of Representatives was not what the polls expected — but could that in part be a consequence of voters for a particular party being concentrated in particular areas? Rather in the way that a Democrat presidential candidate in the US can get the majority of votes overall but still lose the election because those votes are over-concentrated in a few states.
Was the Australian election really about Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming? Apparently, former Prime Minister Tony Abbot — who was one of the first to break with Political Correctness and properly refer to the science of climate change as “crap” (per Aljazeera) — lost his seat.
Even more strangely, Australian betting company Sportsbet paid out $1.3 Million to punters two days ahead of the election on the assumption that the fat lady had sung and the Opposition had already won. Were the Russians behind that clear effort to influence the result of the Australian election?
For the most part (possibly present company excepted) you are asking a good faith question to people who are not arguing in good faith.
They don’t care about the value of Y … they only care about the value of Catastrophe Theory as a lever to put “experts” in charge of the economic choices of billions of bourgies and kulaks … then, Man can finally be Perfected, and the Just Society achieved.
All I know about Australia is what I read in the newspapers — so I am definitely under-informed if not positively mis-informed. But what one sees in the media suggests that Australians have a lot more urgent problems to deal with than the ill-founded hypothesis that the planet might get slight hotter over the next hundred year or so.
On one side, Australia has been the Lucky Country, with one of the longest periods of economic expansion on record. On the other side, that economic expansion has largely been based on transforming Australia into a dependent supplier of raw materials to China. Formerly, Australia had an advanced manufacturing economy; now no vehicles are manufactured anywhere on the continent. The government has a National Debt which is still modest by Western standards (about $22,000 per voter), but is steadily increasing that debt by running annual Budget Deficits. (Not to worry; in standard governmental fashion, they project their budget will soon go into surplus).
For individual Australians, the situation might seem troubling. Manufacturing jobs are disappearing; China’s economy may be slowing which would cut Chinese demand for Australian raw materials; and average Household Debt is among the highest in the world, over twice average Household Net Income. A lot of that debt is related to the very high price of housing, and the housing market in big Australian cities is starting to decline.
We should not be surprised if the possible threat of distant Anthropogenic Global Warming does not resonate as strongly with ordinary Australians as it does with well-off Australians in the Political Class.
Bill Shorten and Labor were promising war on climate change, and wouldn’t give figures for costs- it was a moral principle, above budgeting. And he seemed to think that pension funds were for the younger part of the electorate to have.
Natalie, still reading the Guardian… tsk. Still, if it means that we don’t need to, then you should ask for some compensation. Boredom money”
Natalie, still reading the Guardian… tsk. Still, if it means that we don’t need to, then you should ask for some compensation. Boredom money?
Guardian-reader, noun (colloquial): person who hates cognitive dissonance, desires reliably PC-oriented selection and description of news.
Grauniad-reader, noun (colloquial): person who believes in:
– the value of cognitive diversity;
– the necessity of knowing which freedom the PC will attack next;
– the virtue of enduring tedium for the sake of others.
By linking to articles that others on this blog are then more likely to read, Natalie also does her bit to maintaining our cognitive diversity. But I think what did the most for my personal cognitive diversity was Sam Duncan’s comment on the correction. 🙂 He provided no link, so I fear it is satire – but with the Grauniad, can one be sure?
Either way (and I wonder if Sam himself were not the writer, perhaps inspired another Sam, lately groundskeeper at Bag End), I got a good chuckle out of it.
Thanks to Sam for posting, and to Niall for reminding me of it. :>))
It seems The Guardian has decided we’re not being alarmed enough!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian-is-changing-the-language-it-uses-about-the-environment
Others have noted
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/05/18/the-guardians-editor-has-just-issued-this-new-guidance-to-all-staff-on-language-to-use-when-writing-about-climate-change-and-the-environment/
I think it was a combination of issues – not just one.
Yes the voters rejected a hysterical approach to CO2 emissions (although that does NOT mean they want nothing done – for example Australia has lots of uranium why not more and better NUCLEAR power) but there were other policy concerns.
Most importantly Australian voters rejected more immigration from groups hostile to their own (those “Progressives” who regard culture and beliefs are unimportant, that people are all the same, are just MISTAKEN). And voters rejected wild government spending.
Economist magazine style policies, open borders, regardless of who wants to come in (regardless of how much the would-be immigrants and their children HATE the existing population and wish to DESTROY them), and endless wild government spending on benefits and “public services”, have been rejected by voters – and I think the voters were correct to reject Economist magazine policies.
Re
FCUK?
According to Guido:
Is that what’s know as “Fcuk Off“?
The real loss in this election is the defeat of Tony Abbott – a charming and sensible man – by some crowd-funded, cloud-headed clown supported by all the mushy virtue-signallers.
“Climate change mitigation means the measures we take to counteract the effects of change”
Climate change mitigation means what the greenies say it means, which is – more solar panels and windmills. Never mind that it mitigates nothing.
When I think about the climate change debate (or more accurately non-debate) it brings me back to a question I often ask which is — how to make a argument that will actually convince? I have had debates with people for a long time on this and other subjects and I am thoroughly convinced that presenting a logical, well thought out, evidenced backed argument is almost never convincing, except for a small group already ripe for the picking. I think in particular the argument of “go look at this study” is about the most unconvincing thing you can say.
I think as a general rule people want to believe what they want to believe, and then search for evidence to support their beliefs. There is a certain meta belief system (one such being the philosopher king belief system that often energizes the left) that is productive of other beliefs. And CAGW is really a product of this belief. Some scanty evidence from some dusty and obscure science is grabbed to substantiate a product of this meta belief, and we have what we have today in the theory of CAGW.
When someone forms a belief they then entangle it into the whole web of beliefs that they have about other things, and it can become so entrenched in there that is is as hard to unpick as a Gordian knot.
What I think does work is the production of a cognitive dissonance. Making an argument that the interlocutor will agree with in isolation, and then tying it back to the actual belief you are trying to address, or alternatively taking the original argument and taking it to a conclusion that the interlocutor will not like at all.
For example, take Arthur Scargil (please someone take him.) He is as leftie as they come, yet is stuck in a very dissonant position — advocating for CAGW remediation measures by the government puts him out of business as the ex boss of the Coal Miners union.
Or take a George W Bush, a “small government” spending guy, and then also a “foreign war intervention” guy, the two are utterly at odds with each other.
Or on a social issue, say religion, contrast the position of “God is love” with “God massacred women and children in the Old Testament”, or “Mohammed is the holy prophet” contrasted with “He consummated his marriage with Aisha when she was nine years old.”
Or, although I am a firm believer in evolution, another example might be the argument used against Huxley in his debate on evolution: “Are you descended from a monkey on your father’s side or your mother’s side?” Here the dissonance is between the Victorian ancestor worship and the scientific evidence (much more scanty in his day) favoring just such a descent.
Presenting the two consequences of their belief system that are dissonant forces a re-evaluation when done appropriately. People are extremely good at compartmentalizing these dissonances, and so, from my experience, the most effective argument strategy is to break open the compartments and allow the dissonance to bring about cognitive change. Such change, because beliefs are so deeply intertwined, can often take time to integrate. So, good manners demands that we allow people time to integrate the change, and be kind enough to allow them to save face.
A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. And so it is only possible to convince him with his will, which is to say to set him on a comfortable path leading to the conclusion you desire.
Dear Miss Solent
If you are curious, “CAGW” stands for
Catastrophic AnthropogenicComputer Aided Global Warming,…Fixed it for you.
Does this mean the climate is not allowed to change any more?
Just asking for a friend.
DP
Jo Nova is an Australian climate sceptic blogger. She covers Oz politics as well as climate stuff and is an interesting read. From her blog I learned that Australia has been a kind of crash test dummy for renewable energy. They went above the call of duty with windmills and solar panels and crashed their electricity grid several times and managed to destroy an aluminium smelting works as a result. Of course, you will already be aware of all this via the BBC news.
Fraser Orr: “People are extremely good at compartmentalizing these dissonances, and so, from my experience, the most effective argument strategy is to break open the compartments and allow the dissonance to bring about cognitive change.”
If that strategy has worked — Great! All power to you. Unfortunately, most of us seem to be descended from Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen, and have no problem believing impossibly contradictory propositions simultaneously. One need look only at the horror expressed by ‘Open Borders’ rich white San Francisco Lefties when it was proposed to drop the illegal aliens in their wealthy neighborhoods — a horror which did not change their commitment to open borders.
Like you, Fraser, I am intrigued by the issue of how to convince people, and especially whether it is possible to change minds (except on the margin). Here is another possible approach. We human beings are naturally social animals, and most of us would rather go with the herd (although we call it peer pressure). The question is — what direction will the herd go in? And why? Think of a flock of birds or a school of fish continuously wheeling & changing direction for no apparent reason. Most of us human beings are also unduly influenced by celebrities (however we choose to define them), especially these days. Put those two characteristics together, and another possible way to change minds appears — maybe the key is to change the minds of the ones at the front of the herd?
In the same category as Arthur Scargil, consider the impact that John Browne had as CEO of British Petroleum when he drank the Cool-Aid and embraced the CO2-is-Evil philosophy. He claimed that BP meant Beyond Petroleum, adopted a sunflower as the corporate symbol, and eliminated corporate funding for researchers who did not mouth support for the CAGW scam — all while continuing to pump oil as fast as possible. Was that cognitive dissonance or manipulative hypocrisy? Only one person on the planet knows. But it certainly set the direction for permissible thought among the employees of his company.
But this hypothesis leads back to the same question — How do we change the minds of the leaders of the herd?
I think that’s the wrong question, because I don’t believe that the “leaders of the herd” are leading the herd for their stated reasons.
I think those leaders are composed of three groups: one of scientists who saw an opportunity to turn their small ponds into huge lakes, one of rabid environmentalists who see humanity as a blight on the earth, and one of politicians and leaders all over the world who see this as an opportunity to draw wealth and power away from the superpowers and into their own hands.
Arguing urban hotspots and temperature records with such people makes no difference, because they’re not driven by those factors. They’re not worried about AGW per se – they’re using AGW to push their own agendas. If they worry about such factors at all, it’s only to the extent that they worry about their followers not questioning them.
The best results I’ve obtained in leading some to question the AGW dogma has been to show them one or two of the several excellent writings explaining the fallacy of the 97% myth.
People naturally want to follow any belief that 97% of the experts profess, and so this fallacy is quite powerful. It’s easy to express and remember, and it makes argument sound ridiculous.
But it’s a deliberately-crafted lie, and not even a good one – it’s easy to disprove if you can make someone read about ten paragraphs. Once people see this, it leaves them at least open to moving on to the next point.
(I’ve also gotten a lot of mileage out of the leaked Climategate files – especially the notes by the programmer about his examination of one of the programs for the early temp model, which was essentially a kludge used to arrive at a predetermined result – but they’re usually only useful once someone has read about the 97% lie.)
How democratic is democracy? For anyone interested, here are the current available vote counts on the Australian election.
Out of the 17 Million Australians eligible to vote, about 16.4 Million actually enrolled. Australia has compulsory voting enforced by fines, although people can turn in a blank ballot if they so choose. At the time of the following figures, about 76% of the votes had been counted.
The ruling coalition of 4 parties had together won 4.9 Million votes, and was projected to win 77 seats of the 151 seats in the House of Representatives.
The other 6 parties + independents + non-votes had gained 6.9 Million votes and were projected to win 74 seats. As a subset of those, the climate-changing Labor Party & Green Party together had won 5.2 Million votes, and were projected to win 69 seats.
Sounds like the climate-changers got about 300,000 more votes than the coalition, but 8 fewer seats.
Whatever this election was, it can hardly be presented as a resounding democratic rejection of CAGW. Unfortunately! But nor was it really resounding democratic support for CAGW.
@Gavin Longmuir
and have no problem believing impossibly contradictory propositions simultaneously.
Indeed, our brains are excellent at compartmentalizing, that is why it is so important to break the compartments and let the contradictions mingle. People do like to pretend they are logically consistent, even though they plainly aren’t. (And by people I mean everyone, including me. I think I have thought things through probably a lot more than most, but my mind is still full of irrational, contradictory nonsense that I have picked up one place or another, or generated out of my particular meta philosophy.)
One need look only at the horror expressed by ‘Open Borders’ rich white San Francisco Lefties when it was proposed to drop the illegal aliens in their wealthy neighborhoods — a horror which did not change their commitment to open borders.
Sure, but that is the brilliance (from a political/Machiavellian perspective) of this move. I think it is something that may well have changed some minds. Even though I doubt he ever had much intention of actually following through it is perhaps his most brilliant political move.
another possible way to change minds appears — maybe the key is to change the minds of the ones at the front of the herd?
I think you are right, but it does rather beg the question. “Leaders” are actually in a rather precarious position. One the one hand they have the power to lead, but on the other hand there is a limit in how far they can lead lest they lose their support. And the tricky part is that there really is no way to readily measure where the breaking point is. “Uneasy” we are told “is the head the wears the crown.”
Moreover as a general rule these leaders are not so much expressing their actual beliefs, but rather are at their core manipulative, willing to say and do anything to retain their power. Which is odd, they are powerful in a sense, but in another sense they are at the mercy of their followers. Nonetheless, the way to get a leader to lead in a different direction is to convince him or her that it is in his or her best interest to do so.
There are some exceptions. AOC for example is a true believer. And these are the most frightening of all.
One thing I have learned over the past few years is that the supposedly emasculated press are actually extremely powerful. Were it not for their constant disinformation and dishonesty about President Trump then he would be guaranteed to win in a landslide in 2020. It is almost exclusively the power of the press that has prevented that from happening. However, in fairness, Trump wields the press better than almost anyone else. Without that skill he would have been crushed completely by now.
Just to be clear, I am not a particularly big fan of Trump, but there is no doubt that his policies are directly responsible for the almost unbelievable explosion in the american economy over the past two years (partly this is due to the release of the pent up energy from eight years of being smothered by Obama.) I think this is best illustrated by a story I read about how local companies are holding job fairs at the local prison because they want to grab the guys getting out of prison before they get sucked up into the unbelievable good job market. I can also tell you from my personal experience as a computer consultant that consulting rates are up at least 30% due to the shortages, and that is something I have literally NEVER seen before in my many years of working as a computer consultant.
Should the AOC crowd get power it will destroy the economy within six months.
George Walker Bush was NOT a “small government guy – a small spending guy” – the very first things he did as President was push through the “No Child Left Behind” education measure (an increase in Federal Government control of education) and Medicare Part D. (yet another benefit).
This was long before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the war in Afghanistan was forced on the United Stated by the 9/11 attack, and the decision to remove Saddam Hussain in Iraq was taken (by Congress – and due to his endless violations of the Cease Fire agreements) BEFORE Mr Bush was even elected President.
The Bush family are not Conservatives – they are not socialists either, they are the last gasp of something else.
There was a stain of the Republican Party that viewed government in a positive way…..
Today most Republicans hold that the various (ever more expensive) government schemes have to be kept because it will be election suicide to try and seriously reform them – whether this is true or not is a matter for debate. But this was NOT the attitude of a strong strain of the Republican Party in the past.
In the past a lot of Republicans did NOT hold the position of “we have to keep this insane stuff because the voters want it” the position of the “Rockefeller Republicans” (named after Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York State – who EXPLODED the size of government in New York State) was that government was a POSITIVE GOOD, that government could SOLVE PROBLEMS.
The Bush family are “Rockefeller Republicans” or “Progressive Republicans” – they always have been.
Indeed one can trace this view of a positive view of government all the way back to John Jay – Governor of New York and first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
John Jay was in many ways a good man – for example he ended slavery in New York (including freeing his own slaves), indeed John Jay freed more slaves than any other politician up to his own time.
However, Governor Jay of New York had a rather “innocent” view of government – as long as it was in the correct hands (the hands of major landowners – such as himself).
For example, Governor Jay thought that a system of government supported schools would “enlighten” the young (and save them, horror-of-horrors from religious schools – including ones run by Roman Catholics) and Governor Jay also believed that a system of government prisons (rather than flogging violent criminals) would “reform” the criminals.
I would like to take Governor Jay by the hand (should he return to this world) and show him a typical government school in New York and typical government prison.
“My dear Sir – how much “enlightening” and “reforming” do you think is going on in this place?”
That would be my question to the late Governor John Jay – or to any “Progressive Conservative” (an oxymoron) today.
We do not possess the ability to walk down to the shops anymore (forget feet)…