Far be it from me to criticize content on our very own site, but this piece makes no sense to me.
For one thing, the four cited cases -- Pat Robertson accepting global warming, Frank Luntz accepting global warming, Wal-Mart greening its operations, and the Sierra Club endorsing Lincoln Chafee -- have very little in common, politically, economically, or culturally. There's no reason a position on one would imply a position on another.
For another, just who are these reactionary, progress-inhibiting progressives? It's telling that not a single person or statement is cited.
For another, how is it possible that environmentalists are both losing miserably and failing to acknowledge their many victories? Which is it?
The whole thing reads like a bank-shot defense of the Sierra Club's endorsement of Chafee. But if Renstrom and Perkowitz want to defend that, they should defend it directly, as Carl Pope does here and here. I don't agree with it, but it's worth discussing.
Simply lumping those who oppose the endorsement in with some vaguely defined set of anti-progress progressives doesn't do much to advance that discussion.
Comments
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Bart Anderson Posted 10:25 am
10 Aug 2006
Like Agnew, the authors don't make substantive rational arguments. Instead, it's name-calling and the bandwagon effect.
My guess is that the authors have picked up this style of argumentation from right-wing pundits - a poor choice of models, in which brassiness substitutes for logical thought.
Actually, I agree with them about Robertson and Werbach. But can't we talk about these things like adults?
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Emily Cunningham Posted 10:31 am
10 Aug 2006
I have a problem with this too:
For another, just who are these reactionary, progress-inhibiting progressives? It's telling that not a single person or statement is cited.
John Sellers, Barbara Dudley, and Paul Krugman are given as examples of this type of progressive.
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Bart Anderson Posted 10:44 am
10 Aug 2006
Quite frankly, I doubt if any of us has shown as much courage, or written a quarter as well, as he has over the last eight years.
The truth is that the authors disagree with him on a point of strategy. Fine. But name-calling like that is ignorant and counter-productive.
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caniscandida Posted 6:05 pm
10 Aug 2006
I guess Carl Pope is noble enough, in his defense of [Sierra Club's endorsement of] Lincoln Chafee. It just strikes me that that sort of thing would work well in a multi-party system, say in a republic with four principal parties, each able to count on the support of 10 or 15 to 35% of the electorate; but not at all in our own two-party system.
And yet, to my confusion, he quotes Mark Schmitt in his favor, pronouncing that we are not a parliamentary democracy.
No, we are not. So how in the world does that mean we should support even so good (on balance) a Republican as Lincoln Chafee?
As Jonathan Alter wrote in the Newsweek of August 7, and as the editors of the New York Times wrote a bit earlier, regarding Joseph Lieberman: The responsibility of the opposition party is to oppose. Lieberman has failed in that serious responsibility, which the republic imposes upon him.
By extension, the responsibility of the opposition party is to try to regain control of at least one chamber of Congress, during a regime when it controls nothing.
Personally, I would like the fine and upstanding Mr. Chafee to lose in November to his Democratic challenger, and then, staying ever in DC, to dedicate himself to undermining, uprooting and displacing Grover Norquist. Not likely; but you cannot blame for wishing.
(A side note: The Sierra readers who commented on Pope's pieces are no doubt excellent people, whom I would very much like to know; but that conversation was really really bland, sorely in want of some salt and pepper. Nay, that green Yucatan haban~era sauce.)
(Another note: We writers aspire to be magnificently, impeccably stellar, 100% of the time, regarding things like grammar, syntax and orthography. And yet, every now and again, we nod. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weird ... Why, I just noticed, to my horror, that in another comment, I had written "stalward," instead of "stalwart." And, never mind, but that was not all ... Anyway, more out of frank curiosity than from any motive to criticize, I ask now: Should not the title of this posting read, "Which of these four is not like the others?"? I.e., "others," not "other"? Or am I missing something? -- which is not at all impossible.)
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amazingdrx Posted 10:03 pm
10 Aug 2006
Hehey, nobody does it better. Magnificent.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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atreyger Posted 1:42 am
11 Aug 2006
I just don't think that it will allow for good compromises. And if people here do not believe in compromises, then they are extremists in the same vein as hardline Christian Conservatives. In which case, I would have to say that there is nothing that will come out of these discussions.
If someone has an (R) behind their name, does that make them a bad person? I think not, especially since Republicanism has been hijacked by Christian Conservativism, and if anything, what we need to do as a nation is to help them regain their fiscal conservative, local governance ground, instead of attempting to fight them at the 'moral relativist' issues. That only breeds more fundamentalism, just like our 'holy war against the infidels'.
It's a shame so many people jump on the bandwagon of 'let's do away with the effing Republicans'.
We need a common ground.
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