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My laptop has decided to stop charging, so this will be a quick one, whilst I have battery-life before I can go out and resolve the issue (hopefully its just the cable or power-pack/transformer).

I have been thinking about the key differences between the left and the right in general. And I noticed something which seems remarkably obvious, but that doesnt seem to be talked about much.

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In very broad strokes, the left believe in big government; the right believes in limited government.

By big government, the left generally means a body that does what is needed to secure the freedom of the citizenry by doing its best to quash systemic unfairness; the social safety net, free healthcare, free education, etc. In effect, it should be possible to have a decent life, even if youre in poverty.

By limited government, the right generally means doing what needs to be done to limit taxes and the government programs they fundand maximise the individuals ability to spend their own money as they see fit, with as few limitations as possible. Of course, maximising the ability to spend means precious little to people who are in poverty, they already spend, on average, 100% of their income.

Its worth noting that the left in one sense wants the same as the right, they want to spend their money in ways that benefit society as a whole and, in particular, elevates those at the bottom, so they elect the politicians that will do that.

Simplified even further. The left believes that life is not fair, and that, as fellow human beings, we should do what we can to support people when they are negatively impacted by that unfairness. The right believes that life is fairand that people get what they deserve. They will do what they can to improve their lives, and if that happens to benefit others, well thats just peachy.

This means that the right is voting for people like them, but at the same time voting for people who do not represent their interests because their representatives are looking to get into the government that they believe should be minimised. A politician with a long tenure, therefore, benefits from the incumbency effect, despite that incumbency being illustrative of failure to achieve the stated goal of their ownpolitical beliefs.

By contrast, the left is voting for people like them, who do represent their interests, because their representatives are looking to get into government in order to improve the standing of their constituents by expanding government. A politician with a long tenure, then, is a good thing except that politicians are almost invariably more right-leaning than the average left wing voter, especially in the States (because, as I have noted before, politics and religion are primarilyright-wing activities).

Of course, this is not something that those on the right believe, so whilst the liberal politician is almost invariably centrist, they are often painted as 70s-era unionists (in the UK), or outright socialists (in the US), when they are in fact, for the most part, more like the right, than the left-wing voter really wants.

Let that sink in.

The right is voting for people that they dont want in office, at all. The left isvoting for people that will do in the meantime, and who are more representative of the centre ground than the right-wing would care to admit.

Indeed, there does seem to be a trickle of more genuinely left-wing politicians coming through, particularly in the UK (and theyre mostly youngand female). So, there is the possibility that left-wing voters will be able to vote for people that represent their views (though not in the States, until the entrenchment of the two party system is addressed).

In the meantime, the right continues to be the people most likely to vote, and they continue to successfully elevate, and be apologists for, people they dont actually want to have as representatives.

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The absurdity of the Culture Wars - Patheos (blog)

The nod to Orthodox political pressure enraged the organized non-Orthodox Jewish establishment. From cries of boycott Israeli leaders to claims that Israel gave U.S. Jews the finger,liberal journalistic pundits and organizational leaders alike seemingly competed to express the depth of their outrage and disgust.

(A second decision negating a provision that made conversion to Judaism somewhat easier within Israel was also made, though it's attracted much less attention outside of Israel, where conversion requirements are generally less stringent than they are in Israel.)

Consider all this the Jewish worlds internal culture war --a struggle between strict adherence to traditional religious practice versus broadening the practice to accommodate contemporary sensibilities.

Ironically, the brouhaha is of little concern to the average Israeli Jew, the majority of whom are by no means strictly Orthodox, if not outright secular (though culturally staunchly Jewish). Only the minority of ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews are deeply invested in the struggle, resistant as they are to all religious liberalization.

But it's another story for liberally religious North American and other diaspora Jews, who are overwhelmingly non-Orthodox. (In the United States, the vast majority of religiously involved Jews are connected to the Reform and Conservative movements -- the latter, despite its name, is also left of center.)

For them --and I count myself among them --the issue goes to the core of their increasingly fraught relationship with an Israel seen as religiously dominated by a myopic Orthodoxy more devoted to pushing its narrow political agenda than caring about international Jewish support for the nation that, when threatened, has looked to this same external backing for its very survival.

If you need some basic background on the dispute, click here (The New York Times)>, or here (The Times of Israel),or here (Jewish Telegraphic Agency).

Why would the Israeli coalition government led by Benyamin Netanyahu take this step?

Wily politician that he is, he knew the reaction it would generate at a time when legions of diaspora Jewish leaders have warned that Israels right wing political leadership has alienated non-Orthodox, non-Israeli, liberal Jews --the young in particular --straining their needed support for Israels national survival.

The answer is simple: Israel is more than the Historical Jewish homeland. It's also a modern nation with its own distinct political system and perceived needs. Jerusalem --and certainly not Amirim, for that matter --is not New York or Los Angeles, the bi-coastal centers of American Jewish life.

This analysis piece from The Forward, North Americas premier liberal Jewish newspaper, lays it out.So does this opinion piece distributed by Religion News Service. Note that both these pieces were written by prominent liberal Jews.

Both make the point, in much greater and important detail, of course -- which is why I'm not making it easy for you by simply pulling out a nut graph or two -- that I made above. Read one or both of them to gain a full understanding of the issues backstory.

Religion journalists: Your stories on Jewish reaction in your neck of the woods will be enhanced by accessing this background.

Also read this news release issued by the ultra-Orthodox America Jewish organization Agudath Israel to better understand the strict traditionalist argument.

To reiterate: Israel is not the Upper West Side of Manhattan or the west San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.

Additionally, Israels religiously right wing ultra-Orthodox Jews care little about the cries that international Jewish support for the State of Israel --or Zionism itself --is at stake. For them, it's more about faith, the religion of Judaism and it's survival in its most traditional form.

Lastly, Israeli politicians act as politicians do world wide. Priority number one is self-preservation.

As I said, it's a culture war. And like the parallel conflict convulsing the United States over issues of gender, sexuality and public spending, how it all ends has the potential to divide international Jewish society just as its American equivalent has the potential to further tear apart the already divided larger American society.

For the moment, though, I'm going back to staring at the view from my guest house deck.

I need the break.

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Western Wall battle: Viewing Jewish culture wars from a balcony in Israel's Galilee region - GetReligion (blog)

June 28 2017

by Rachel DiCarlo Currie

Everyone agrees that Americas political and cultural debates have become viciously polarized, and everyone has an explanation for how that happened. No explanation is complete unless it mentions the prominent role played by unelected judges in general and the Supreme Court in particular.

For decades now, the judiciary has been declaring that certain hot-button social issues fall outside the boundaries of democratic politics. Indeed, rather than allow the people and their elected representatives to reach some type of compromise on, say, abortion or same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court has chosen to make policy by judicial fiat.

As a result, the losers in Americas culture wars millions and millions of people across the country feel theyve been disenfranchised. Quite understandably, they question the legitimacy of court rulings that have no real basis in the text or history of the U.S. Constitution or American law.

Alas, the Supreme Courts current swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, has contributed to this erosion of democratic government. Whether Justice Kennedy announces his retirement this year, or next year, or four years from now, cases such as 1992s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the Court reaffirmed its central holding in Roe v. Wade, and 2015s Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, will be a significant part of his legacy. (Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Obergefell and co-authored the plurality opinion in Casey.)

Examining that legacy, Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn explains how Kennedy has exacerbated Americas political and cultural divisions:

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What makes issues such as abortion and marriage so contentious is that the opposing moral positions cannot be reconciled. The beauty of democratic politics, however, is its recognition that what free people want and what they will settle for as reasonable are two different things. Justice Kennedys unfortunate legacy on these hot-button issues is to take compromise off the table and thus ensure anger and ill will.

And why not, when the sides are depicted as the enlightened versus the bigots? Though he walked it back in Obergefell, in which he conceded that many who opposed same-sex marriage were acting from honorable religious or philosophical premises, in the 2013 decision overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, Justice Kennedy asserted that the only possible motivation for such a law was a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group.

Anthony Kennedy is an educated man who writes in the smooth tones of Stanford and Harvard Law. The effect, alas, is no less noxious. Next time Americas corrosive politics comes up, its worth remembering that the justice so often hailed as a moderate or centrist has done as much as any to fan the flames of Americas raging culture war.

Read the whole thing.

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How the Supreme Court Has Inflamed America's Culture Wars - Independent Women's Forum (blog)

Angela Nagle seems fearless. Who else would dive deep into the Alt-Rights swamp of Pepe the Frog memes, conspiracy theories, and anonymous depravity unified by a hatred of PC culture, feminism, and multiculturalism, and a love for Donald Trump? Her new book, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right, documented this section of the internet at a time when most on the left dared not lookwhen just mentioning 4chan or Gamergate seemed like an open invitation for a slew of misogynistic and racist hate mail.

Yet after Trumps election, every mainstream news source suddenly had to get an interview with those involved in the new edgy, nihilistic youth subculture dubbed the Alt-Right, a deviation from the right wings conventional National Review bow ties and Evangelical Christian moralizers. Whether covering former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos campus speaking tours or framing white nationalist Richard Spencer as a surprisingly dapper fascist (as if Nazi leaders werent from the suit-wearing elite), the liberal media class came off looking decidedly unprepared to combat the truly horrifying, utterly contradictory ideas this new wave of Alt-Right/Alt-Light espoused.

Kill All Normies provides much-needed context for the violent rise of a fringe internet subculture of mens rights activists and gamers into the public sphere, and it does so without undeservedly praising the liberal left. Instead, the book argues that the materially empty slacktivism and virtue signaling of liberals helped inflame these reactionary politics. She begins with the election of Barack Obama, the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the re-emergence of cyber-utopian visions on the left. An intense fervor of optimism surrounded new technology and social medias leaderless revolutions that would make the world more democratic and better off. But what followed were cycles of momentary outrage, fizzling passions, and mockery as seen in internet campaigns like Kony 2012 and #JusticeForHarambe. The same 4chan poised to lead the anonymous hacktivist tide did wind up making cultural waves, but they came from the far right.

Nothing typifies the culture wars more than late Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbarts statement that [p]olitics is downstream from culture. Though the phrase was popularized by those on the far right, Nagle comes to attach it to the liberal Tumblr view of politics. In modern politics, liberal leaders are forgiven for drone bombing as long as theyre cool with gay marriage, while on the right, enacting policies that devastate families and stable communities was cheered on at any cost as long as it dealt a satisfying blow to the trade unions, as we saw during the Reagan and Thatcher years, she writes. Nagle counters the false dichotomy of the culture wars, and Trump has so far disproven Breitbarts thesis. Material policy comes before culture. The millions of Americans primed to lose their healthcare so some hemophiliac old-money Republican trolls can get a tax cut make Sean Spicer getting called fat by a white nationalist ghoul like Steve Bannon seem pretty trivial.

While Kill All Normies may be a critique of liberal involvement in the culture wars, it is by no means purely cynical. Rather, its a call to organizenot just to #resist Trump, but to dismantle the culture and structures that allowed him to rise in the first place. For the left to move forward in a meaningful way, it must shed the faux pragmatism of centrist-liberal narratives like America Is Already Great. Nagle posits that the only way out for the left is to refocus energy onto improving the material conditions imposed by capitalism on working people. That might take the form of granting all people access to healthcare and education, ending the mass incarceration of Black and brown people in the United States, or divesting from imperial proxy-wars in the Middle East. Nagles call is a weighty oneshe asks readers to look beyond the individual actors that the culture wars assign blame to and instead toward the structures built to enable violence. Its a difficult turn, but its one we must take. After all, the Alt-Right cannot be the other option.

Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right by Angela Nagle (Zero Books)

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Slouching Toward the Beltway in Kill All Normies - The Portland Mercury

The United States Congress is trying hard to defund Planned Parenthood, once and for all. For a period of one year, the proposed American Health Care Act would prohibit federal funds from going to non-profit organizations that provide family-planning services, including abortions, and get more than $350 million in reimbursements under Medicaid, which provides health insurance to the poor, the elderly, children, pregnant women, and people with disabilities. When the Congressional Budget Office evaluated this clause of the bill, it identified only one organization that would be affected: Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates and clinics.

If this bill goes through, it would represent an existential threat for Planned Parenthood. The organization would be less able to serve poor women who are covered by state Medicaid programs, and it would likely have to close clinics or reduce its services because of the loss of funding. The main motivation behind this provisionand others like it that have come up at the state levelis opposition to abortion. This has lead some, including Ivanka Trump, to wonder why Planned Parenthood doesnt just spin off its abortion services into a separate organization.

Cecile Richards, the organizations president, will have no such thing. The minute we begin to edge back from that is the minute that theyve won, she said during an interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Monday. Despite the renewed push in Washington to stop the organization from getting government funding, Richards believes Planned Parenthood can win the culture wars and make abortion widely acceptable in America. Weve got to quit apologizing or hiding, she said.

Technically, the federal government already prohibits funding for most abortion services. Under the so-called Hyde Amendment, first passed in 1976, organizations like Planned Parenthood cant get reimbursed by Medicaid for performing elective abortions. But pro-life advocates often argue that Hyde doesnt go far enough. Since Planned Parenthood can get public money for some of the other services it provides, taxpayer dollars still effectively go to fund abortions, they say.

This characterization is completely inaccurate, Richards said. Other health-care organizations, including many hospitals, provide abortions, she argued, and they, too, get reimbursed under Medicaid for their other services. Somehow, Planned Parenthood is being held to a completely different standard, she said.

Richards believes the political discourse around abortion has become toxic in recent years. There was a time when the Republican Party embraced individual liberties, she said. In fact, many of our Planned Parenthood affiliates were founded by Republicans. While more Republicans used to consider themselves pro-choice, she said, their ranks have been significantly been reducedRichards name-checked Maine Senator Susan Collins and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski as the only two left in the Senate.

Weve got to pull the curtains back and be open and honest about this procedure.

Even in the face of so much opposition, Richards isnt willing to have Planned Parenthood separate abortion from the rest of its health-care servicesquite the opposite. She believes Planned Parenthood can and will win the culture wars to end the stigma of abortion.

Its more important than ever that we stand loud and proud for the ability of any womanregardless of her income, her geography, her immigration status, her sexuality, her sexual orientationto access the full range of reproductive health care, Richards said. Weve got to pull the curtains back and be open and honest about this procedure that one in three women will have at some point in their lifetime, and their right to make that decision.

Richards cited the way pop-culture depictions of abortion have changed in recent years. Ill shout out Teen Vogue and Cosmo and Glamourwomens magazines that are putting abortion stories into their magazines. Thats never happened before, she said. Or abortion will show up on television: Shonda Rhimes, who recently joined Planned Parenthoods board, featured abortion in an episode of Scandal, dealt with not in hysterical terms, as Richards put it.

Richards repeatedly claimed that the vast majority of people in this country believe that abortion should be safe and legal, and thats even more true today than its ever been. The available polling does not necessarily back up this assertion. As of 2016, about 57 percent of American said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to Pew Research Centera level that has been roughly consistent over the past two decades, and slightly lower than what polls on this issue found in 1995.

Gallup found that half of Americans said abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances in 2016, and that 46 percent of Americans identify as pro-life. The numbers also dont differ radically by generation: According to Pew, between 37 and 42 percent of all age groups said abortion should be illegal in all or most cases in 2016.

Ill fight until the end of my days for every woman to make that decision themselves.

Richards sees the recent legislative efforts to end funding for abortion as the first battle in a long war. A cautionary tale: These folks arent just against Planned Parenthood, she said. Theyre against birth-control access. ... Anyone who thinks that if we didnt provide abortion services, somehow, they would quit this attack on womenIm sorry. Its just the beginning.

Her answer is to commit to abortion: to stop hiding, de-stigmatize it, and most of all, keep performing the procedure. Having been pregnant myself, my children are the joy of my life, she said. But that was my decision to make. And Ill fight until the end of my days for every woman to make that decision themselves.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the people most likely to be affected by the AHCAs one-year ban on reimbursement for family-planning services have low incomes and live in areas without a lot of health-care options. About 15 percent of this population would lose access to reproductive-health care, the CBO projected. Despite Richardss confidence, a clear majority of the House has voted to defund Planned Parenthood. If the Senate follows its lead, the organization will struggle to survive.

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Planned Parenthood Still Believes It Can Win the Culture Wars - The Atlantic