Joe the Plumber, Two

     One of the unhealthiest features of our current way of life, I'm persuaded, is the removal of "professionals" from the company and neighborhood of truck drivers, carpenters, concrete layers, miners, dressmakers, maids, and plumbers.  When John McCain was growing up, no doubt, there was a certain stratification of American society according to income, as there is now.  But in most places, the doctor lived near the bricklayer and went to the same church; not in the wealthy neighborhoods of the large cities, but in small cities, and small towns like the one where I grew up.  More than that, men had that great experience of learning just what a snotty nose and a degree from Harvard will get you when you're digging a trench in boot camp, or sweating in the barracks on a summer night.  A sergeant major with an unsteady grasp of grammar might put many a baby-chinned lieutenant from West Point in his place.

     What's happened since is apparent in this presidential race, and in the interview with Joe the Plumber.  Take Joe first.  Here is a man who was going to leave the interview to go to a local gas station, because a water main had burst beneath it.  He was being interviewed by a lady who looked as if she had never had to worry, all her life long, about breaking a fingernail at work.  He was going to do a job that required hard, practical knowledge, and if he messed things up, it would mean at least a great mess, and at worst a disaster.  Her job requires no such; the only risk she runs is that she might say something so silly that even a television audience might notice, and put her ratings in danger.  He was about to handle hard, sometimes apparently intractable, materials, things that don't oblige our utopian dreams.  The iron pipe does not condescend to political correctness.  It won't say, "I see that I should move into place no matter who or what is lugging me, because that would be the democratic thing to do."  There's a bracing reality in such things as iron, or earth, or even PVC, not to mention water, that wondrous bringer of life that can bring ruin, too, if it's not under control.  You have to learn to submit to those realities, and yet master them anyway, to the extent that anyone can.  And that's a lesson that should keep you from believing that men are infinitely malleable, can become just what really smart people can make them if only we trust those geniuses with tyrannical power -- when nothing else you see around you is so.

     The anchor lady seems never to have had to learn such a lesson; she spoke to Joe the Plumber with all the bright eyed naivete of someone who believes that the Peaceable Kingdom is just around the corner.  But, more worrisome than that, it is a lesson that Barack Obama has never had to learn.  Not that he couldn't have learned it, had he spent a few years as a dockworker, or had he gone to haul building materials for construction in Kenya.  Instead, he's the sort of person around whom I've spent most of my working life: he's an academic, gone into lawyering and then into politics.  When he says to Joe the Plumber, "I don't want to punish your success; I just want to make sure that the guy behind you has the same opportunity," he says it with the superiority of an old-fashioned snob -- with this important qualitification: many an old-fashioned snob, like Franklin Roosevelt, spent time in the armed services, did a lot of work with his hands on the estate, and lived a vigorous life outdoors, among ostlers and farmers and such.  He says it with not the slightest awareness that Joe is where he is not simply because of some abstract "opportunity," but because of that opportunity seized.  He does not consider what it cost Joe to seize it: the hard work in often lousy conditions; the all-day, all-week jobs; the banged up toes and bruised knees and bad back; the chancy contracts; even the hardscrabble men you have to employ to get the work done.  Obama wants to take Joe's money into his baby-smooth hands.  Had he some half-inch thick calluses around the thumbs, he'd not be so quick to take it.

     He'd understand -- and he does not in fact understand -- that he can sooner bring Ed, who lags behind Joe, up to Joe's standard, not by giving Ed some of Joe's money, but by making Ed adopt Joe's habits, or by giving Ed some of Joe's strengths.  Let Ed be as smart as Joe.  Let him have as strong a back.  Let him not mind rain and mud.  Let him not take so many breaks for food and drink and a cigarette.  Let him have a better eye for the workers who cost you more than they are worth.  Let him treat his customers with the same courtesy and honesty.  Let him build up those same calluses.  Or let him not do it -- perhaps Ed has determined he has better things to do with his time and his strength!  That is fine, too.

     One last thing that neither Obama nor the anchorlady understands.  That is the leadership of men, in rough circumstances, to get a difficult job done.  John McCain didn't grow up in a poor family, but during his teenage years and then in the academy he lived like a spartan, because that's the way things were at his Episcopal boarding school for boys, and then at Annapolis.  Then came the war.  Joe the Plumber is, apparently, a contractor, hiring men to work for him at things like digging up the blacktop at a gas station to fix the water main.  That is far more real than reading a canned text handed to you by a team of platitudinarians.  It is more real than using your lawyer's leverage to funnel money to the local slumlord.  Now if Obama had spent a year or two pounding in joists to shore up a bad roof in a tenement building, I'd revise my remarks.  The point is that he has done nothing of the sort, ever.  And he may be the first major candidate about whom one can say that: the first pure product of the land of Pointless Work; an academic who was handsomely paid for teaching nonsense; then a lawyer handsomely paid for cleaning up no neighborhoods; now a candidate whose deep anthropological appeal -- regardless of what the politically correct anchor lady would say -- is that he is a tall man with a deep voice.  Would that he possessed the habits of life that have been known to go along with those.

Comments

[Stuart Koehl]

You so bad, Tony. Comes the Revolution, they know where you live.

That said, what you say isn't true of all professionals, not even here in the land of the Lotus Eaters we call Washington, DC. I think my wife and I both qualify as "professionals"--but our neighborhood reminds me very much of Boro Park in Brooklyn, when I was growing up. We're pretty well mixed. There are definitely blue collar types (often Hispanic) living cheek-by-jowl with white collar types, as well as professionals of various stripes (the US Park Service archaeologist for all the battlefield in Maryland and Northern Virginia is my next door neighbor. Before the local public school went south, my best friend was a fellow at Brookings, who later moved out to Michigan to become dean of a public university. We all moved here because, well, housing is steep and transportation is a mess, and this neighborhood happens to be both modest and convenient to most places. Sure, we have a lot of transience, but there are also still a few people who moved in here back when the development was completed in 1942. There are many neighborhoods like this throughout this metropolitan area.

The reason is simple: social status here is not determined by wealth, but by power. Power in this town can bring great wealth, but on the other hand, many of the movers and shakers are actually living on civil service paychecks, or worse, toiling as academics at various think tanks. These are what David Brooks in "BoBos in Paradise" called "high prestige/low salary" jobs, and truth be told, a lot of us make less than the local plumber, electrician or Mercedes Benz repair man. Our economic circumstances prevent us from getting too far ahead of our working class neighbors (especially if we're blowing most of our paychecks on school tuition).

Outside of this area, though, I think you need to make a distinction between real "professionals", who actually have a profession--doctors, dentists, architects, and the like--and what are best described as "the chattering classes"--(most) lawyers, academics, lobbyists, journalists, pundits, and assorted talking heads. Everything you say about them is true.

[T. McDonald]

I did just enough crummy work--janitor, lawn care, carpet cleaning (much harder than you'd imagine), and courier--to learn two important things: 1) that I didn't want to do it the rest of my life, and 2) that I deeply respect those who do. I remember riding in the truck at dawn with the my partner for the day, a long-time carpet cleaner, when Jackson Browne's The Pretender came on, with the lines:

I'm going to pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
Ill go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
Ill get up and do it again

My partner turned it up and said, "That's our theme song."

[T. McDonald]

I didn't finish my thought before I posted (parvulus interruptus), which is this: that guy I worked with is the one I'll call when I need to get the dog pee out of my carpet. Joe is the guy I'll call when the pipes spring a leak. My dad is the guy I'd call if I needed any carpentry. I'd never need to personally call John McCain, but I'm glad to know he and men like him in the service are defending us.

However, I simply can't imagine a single moment, at any point in his life, in which I would have any need, or indeed desire, to call Obama. We could get by fine without ever having heard of Obama or his ilk. We'd be dead in the water, however, without Joe, or McCain, and men like them. That's the key difference.

[NTBH]

Just ask Obama's followers, they'll tell you that you're supposed to call him when you need a messiah.

[Francesca]

>>But, more worrisome than that, it is a lesson that Barack Obama has never had to learn. Not that he couldn't have learned it, had he spent a few years as a dockworker, or had he gone to haul building materials for construction in Kenya.<<

Actually, he did work construction, along with some other blue collar jobs, as a student, which may be why he relates to blue collar workers, and which is probably why the plumbers union supports him. Partisans will see what partisans want to see, but I can hardly see calling Barack "spoiled" or "smug" or "snobbish." He and Michelle worked while at college, and only paid off their student loans relatively recently. He was born to a single, teenage mother who was temporarily on food stamps, and he married a woman from a working class family from the South Side of Chicago. For the first 13 years of his marriage, he and Michelle lived in a one-bedroom condo without a garage, meaning he knows what it is to scrape frost of his windshield.

So the elitism charges really are spurious and unfair. How many here have overcome what he had overcome? The only people buying them are the already converted.

Our opprobrium against the spoiled and the entitled would better be directed against the CEOs (e.g., Carly Fiorini, Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns, and Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide) who waltz off with multi-million dollar golden parachutes after being dismissed from their companies.

BTW, I can't view many of the posts from Joe the Plumber, One, including my own. 'Not sure why that is ...

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Partisans will see what partisans want to see, but I can hardly see calling Barack "spoiled" or "smug" or "snobbish." <<<

I certainly can. But then, maybe I should defer to you when it comes to snobbery, Francesca. You seem to have a very highly developed case of it.

[DGP]

>>Actually, he did work construction, along with some other blue collar jobs, as a student, which may be why he relates to blue collar workers, and which is probably why the plumbers union supports him.

Nothing one does "as a student" counts, for it is not where one roots one's identity. Working construction during summer break, for example, to help pay for tuition, and then claiming experience as a construction worker is not much different from going on a one-month mission trip overseas and calling oneself a foreign missionary. That is to say, it's not the same thing at all.

The real test of identification with Joe the Plumber is a test of identity: Who are you? What do you depend upon? Plumbing "as a student" means you're still a student; plumbing because you are a plumber and need to do the job successfully -- that's closer to what Prof. Esolen is getting at.

Hence the poignancy of Sen. McCain's remarks about Vietnam: He was soldiering beforehand, but the experience of imprisonment and torture taught him to *become* a soldier, to be one of the men, to depend upon them, to put his trust in them. If there is any substance to "mere Christianity," it surely includes the shared discovery that the Object of our trust is the key feature of our identity.

It seems clear that from his school years, Sen. Obama became a politician, put his trust in political action -- at least as far as this world is concerned. Sen. Obama's own biography testifies to his early orientation to politics. This is *not* a bad thing. However, it does not insulate him from the charges Prof. Esolen made above.

Then there's the secondary matter of the plumbers' union. Surely you don't believe your own "probably," that the union supports him because of a blue collar history? Is it really all that hard to discern that the union -- not probably, but almost certainly -- supports him for a number of other reasons, far more urgent to them than any incidental history?

[labrialumn]

That's one of the nice things about small towns! No social sequestering.

Francesca, I was under the impression that all of his college records, including who paid for his tuition, was still unreleased. How did you get your information?

[Steve Consilvio]

Joe the plumber is not nearly as heroic as you paint him. He was only interested in gold. Turns out he isn't a licensed plumber, not named Joe, and I have yet to understand the math of 'buying a business that makes 250K." Is that net or gross? Will he take a loan to buy it? It seems very doubtful that Joe will be making 250K anytime soon.

Of course, the intelligentsia have always painted landscapes of the working peasant as the highest order of man. Artists have done it a 1000 times. You have done it again with the written word. You glorify sweat, but don't sweat yourself.

Spartan John McCain? Are the Spartans really the mantle of Christian virtue that you want to claim for him? Wow. Jesus never said blessed are the warriors. Sure, there are plenty making that claim from the pulpit of every religion, but Jesus and God are on the side of the peace-makers. Afterall, there is nothing more difficult than standing between two morons who want to kill one another.

I love also how you demean the anchor woman and her painted fingernails. You think she didn't ask tough enough questions? But look at what you have served up! You are not asking very good questions. She doesn't sweat, but she doesn't mock anybody. You are actually mocking yourself. (Beware the mirror.)

Mind you, I am not a big fan of Obama either. I know what he is, and what he isn't. Politics is the art of fear. McCain has been in overdrive of late, trying to spread more fear. But let's visit Orwell for a minute. How does McCain condone the US torturing people, when he himself was tortured? He has become that which he fears. There may be a lesson in that for you as well.

Any moron can lead men to kill. That is what Osama bin Laden has done, our President, and countless others through history. Christians teach men how to love one another. You need to decide which side of the divide you are on.

Christians see the good in all men struggling to get out, and how fear consumes them and leads them to error. Obama has less fear and less pride than McCain 'the war hero' which makes him a better choice, imo. But not by much. He believes in all the same fairy tales as McCain, if you listen closely.

[Bill R]

"Nothing one does "as a student" counts, for it is not where one roots one's identity. Working construction during summer break, for example, to help pay for tuition, and then claiming experience as a construction worker is not much different from going on a one-month mission trip overseas and calling oneself a foreign missionary. That is to say, it's not the same thing at all." - DGP

So true. I remember one college summer I spent as blue-collar worker. I was on the graveyard shift: 1 am to 8 am (lunch at 4 in the morning!). I never sweat so much in my life (we had salt tablet dispensers next to our drill presses so that we could avoid fainting on the job). The guys were decent toward me, but they knew I wasn't for real. I'd be going back to school in the fall, and they'd still be sweating at the press at 3 in the morning. I was sure I'd be dead from heat stroke at 30, if I stayed. It's so much more comfortable to be in the chattering class (and, no, I'm not referring to living through a Wyoming winter!)

[Stuart Koehl]

Since nobody can see Joe the Plumber One, here is the best place I can find to post this deliciously apposite quote from Robert Heinlein's "To Sail Beyond the Sunset":

The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a "warm body" democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction.... [O]nce a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader — the barbarians enter Rome.

[Beth from TN]

I also cannot view many of the comment posts, both on the first "Joe" thread and on one of the others that's grown rather long. Does anyone know why this is? I've tried IE, Safari, and Firefox browsers without success.

[Stuart Koehl]

My guess is one of the internal preference setting has been set to display only so much and no more.

[Stuart Koehl]

Gee, Steve Consilvio,

Do you have anything useful to say that is not an inane Democratic talking point?

[DGP]

>>Jesus never said blessed are the warriors... but Jesus and God are on the side of the peace-makers. Afterall, there is nothing more difficult than standing between two morons who want to kill one another... Any moron can lead men to kill.

Warriors are against peace? Warriors are morons who want to kill each other? Any moron can lead men to kill? You write this, and complain that Sens. McCain and Obama are prideful? Do you really think posts like these will incline anyone to credit you with any knowledge of Jesus, humility, peace, or leadership?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Warriors are against peace? Warriors are morons who want to kill each other? Any moron can lead men to kill? You write this, and complain that Sens. McCain and Obama are prideful? Do you really think posts like these will incline anyone to credit you with any knowledge of Jesus, humility, peace, or leadership?<<<

I wonder what friend Steven would make of the term "Milites Christi"?

[Joe Long]

"A sergeant major with an unsteady grasp of grammar might put many a baby-chinned lieutenant from West Point in his place."

Dr. Esolen, this still happens routinely - although the Sergeant Major's unstead grasp of grammar might not necessarily reflect the MA he very well might hold, in today's military. (It is routine for senior NCO's to have acquired undergrad degrees along the way, and graduate degrees are not unheard-of.) The problem is getting your "professional" type to do something as pre-postmodern as serving his country - in a uniform within a hierarchy, no less, and with the possibility of actual danger. (Did anyone, at all, for an instant, believe Senator Obama when he talked earnestly about how he had "considered" military service? The Ivy League school don't even ALLOW Reserve Officers' Training Corps on campus!)

The other problem is, once he's done so, he may never speak to his old liberal buddies again - and when he does they won't understand him.

"Student jobs" slumming with the blue-collars for pocket change, certainly do not necessarily grant deep insight - nor did brief military service, back when the upper classes considered that to be a GOOD thing to do. But they don't hurt, even if they simply confirm to some folks that no, they DON'T care for fresh air, sunshine, or blisters.

Old story: a college boy on a summer job in a logging camp, has been paired with a veteran on a two-man saw. The student is enthusiastic but inept, and a while later the logger is heard advising him:

"Son, I honestly don't mind if you're going to ride on the other end of that thing - but it would be easier for me, if you wouldn't drag your feet on the ground."

That sort of indulgence probably extended even to listening to the kid preach socialism at lunchtime...but maybe not; there's only so much men can endure.

[Joe Long]

>>Jesus never said blessed are the warriors... but Jesus and God are on the side of the peace-makers.

The effective peacemakers are nearly always warriors. It is cheap moral superiority to them, which "any moron" can achieve.

Christ (God Himself, by the way) told the peacemakers of his time "be content with your pay" - warning Roman soldiers against corruption, rather then insulting their divinely-mandated profession and its happy, and unique, achievements. (The Pax Romana has never been duplicated by a disarmed and friendly "Pax of Good Intentions".)

[Joe Long]

"Jesus never said blessed are the warriors... but Jesus and God are on the side of the peace-makers."

The effective peacemakers ARE (and have always been, and this side of glory, always will be) warriors - sometimes largely in a metaphorical sense, but quite often bearing quite practical and prosaic weapons. It is cheap moral superiority to the warriors which "any moron" can achieve.

"The LORD is a man of war; the LORD is his name". (Ex. 15:3) (The LORD there is "Jesus and God".) Even the peace of the New Jerusalem will be ushered in with a day of battle. Christ did not rebuke the profession of arms in the meantime, nor should you.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

One of the smartest guys I know at my company is an Army NCO reservist. He has an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in computer science. He does some really nifty things that I can't at all talk about.

[Judy K. Warner]

>>>Joe the plumber is not nearly as heroic as you paint him. He was only interested in gold. Turns out he isn't a licensed plumber, not named Joe, and I have yet to understand the math of 'buying a business that makes 250K." Is that net or gross? Will he take a loan to buy it? It seems very doubtful that Joe will be making 250K anytime soon.< <<

Isn't the point that he is interested in gold? That is, in bettering himself, and Barack 0bama wants to take the fruits of any success he achieves, and give it to somebody else?

I love the complaint that he isn't licensed. He is working legally where he works, in his own area, and if it weren't for the unions' success at restricting the supply of plumbers to increase their own wealth he would already be licensed. As it is, he is working towards getting licensed. But unlike the chattering classes and their clientele, he does not have the time or the money or the sponsorship of the powerful to be able to protest unfair rules.

The 250K income Joe is talking about is not the same as a salary that pays 250K. In the tax status that many small-business owners use, much income that goes right out again in expenses is counted as income for tax purposes. Many small businesses have that much income on the books, but that doesn't mean the owners are rich.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>One of the smartest guys I know at my company is an Army NCO reservist. He has an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in computer science. He does some really nifty things that I can't at all talk about.<<<

Most members of Army Special Forces are non-commissioned officerss (MOS-18). All of them have a bachelors degree, and most have the equivalent of one or two masters degrees in everything from anthropology to engineering to electronics; those who are trained as medics would have little difficulty completing medical school. Most speak at least two foreign languages, at least one of them fluently. On top of this, they have the physical conditioning of an Olympic athlete, and know dozens of ways of killing you with their bare hands. They are masters of dozens of different weapons, know how to use explosives, how to call in an air strike or artillery barrage, and how to jump from an airplane in the middle of the night from 25,000 feet, landing in a clearing dozens of miles away. They are experts in small unit combat, outstanding teachers and awfully effective social workers.

For this, they get about 50,000 a year, including jump pay, hazardous duty pay, and their housing allowance. If the Army offers them $100,000 bonus to reenlist, you're getting good value for money.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>The 250K income Joe is talking about is not the same as a salary that pays 250K. In the tax status that many small-business owners use, much income that goes right out again in expenses is counted as income for tax purposes. Many small businesses have that much income on the books, but that doesn't mean the owners are rich.<<<

The "Professional Licensing Fee" that I pay to Fairfax County comes off my gross; after expenses, my net is about 40% of that. My business, being based out of my home, does not use any county services for which I am not already paying as a homeowner, so this amounts to double taxation, on several levels--the money Fairfax County has already taxed me on gets taxed again at the state level.

[Tony Esolen]

Mr. Consilvio:

I think the appropriate response to Mr. Obama's suggestion that Joe needed to spread the wealth around was, "And who in the hell are you to be the one spreading it?" I'll repeat a point I made in the previous post. We pay taxes for things that redound to the common good -- and I mean that in an immediate and usually tangible sense. We need roads. We (might) need schools (though not necessarily run by the State; the community will do for that). We need national defense. And then there are other things that a community needs to have a real community life: a parade once in a while (though voluntary contributions can go a long way towards defraying those costs).

Taking money from Joe to give it to Ed is not part of the common good. I'm persuaded that state-run welfare is abysmally unjust both to the poor and to those who are taxed to pay for the programs. It is not charity. It corrupts the peoples that come to depend upon it. It is a self-perpetuating industry. I could yield to some state assistance for the indigent. But that is not what Obama was talking about. He was, in that glib moment, talking socialism, leveling for leveling's sake.

On warriors: read your New Testament carefully, and note how often the ancient counterparts of lawyers and academics (the scribes, for example) are subjected to withering criticism, and how well the simple soldiers come off by comparison. Yes, there are soldiers at the crucifixion, and they no doubt did not comport themselves well. But there were Pharisees there, too, and they comported themselves far worse. And it wasn't an intellectual who said, BEFORE the Resurrection, indeed at the moment of Jesus' death, "Surely, this man was the Son of God." That was a centurion. The New Testament has a soft spot for simple men trained up in the arts of obedience. If I criticize my own profession -- and God help me, the LAST thing I want is a professor to be president; I see what Faculty Senates are like! -- why is that necessarily a mark of pride? If I praised it, I'd be considered proud on that account, too.

Let me then make things clear. William Buckley once said that he would prefer to be governed by the first one hundred people in the Cambridge phone book, than by the faculty at Harvard. I would take him up on that, so long as we made sure to exclude any professors that might be among them! History shows that the worst people to have in power are those whose visions of the world are granted by, say, political theory. Lenin, anyone?

[James Kabala]

It's funny; just the other week a female news anchor (not Katie Couric, obviously) said in the alumni magazine that you were her favorite professor! Even before I read this post, I thought to myself "If only she knew what he really thought of her career choice..."

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I think the appropriate response to Mr. Obama's suggestion that Joe needed to spread the wealth around was, "And who in the hell are you to be the one spreading it?" <<<

Obama, of course, does not understand that just because HE is not doing the spreading, that no wealth is in fact being spread. Wealth is spread every time somebody hires Joe to fix a pipe, every time Joe goes to his supplier to buy some pipe compound, every time the manufacturer of the pipe compound buys the raw materials that go into making it, every time the people who extract the raw materials pay people to mine or harvest them. This goes on continuously, in billions upon billions of individual transactions between free individuals for the mutual benefit of both parties. It is not only a more efficient, but also a much more fair way of allocating resources and rewarding work than Obama's method of arbitrarily picking winners and losers, robbing from Peter to pay Paul. But, Obama's way has one very distinct benefit--for Obama: the one who robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the vote of Paul.

[Judy K. Warner]

Obama's way also has the benefit (for some) that the government takes a slice of every dollar spread around.

[Stuart Koehl]

if you work for the government. One thing I do remember from my (required) microeconomics course at Georgetown is the multiplier effect of government spending is equal to 1. That is, one dollar of government spending generates one dollar of new wealth. On the other hand, private enterprise brings back a much higher multiplier and therefore creates more wealth and gives a better return on investment.

[Francesca]

>>Then there's the secondary matter of the plumbers' union. Surely you don't believe your own "probably," that the union supports him because of a blue collar history?<<

DGP, no, I think the union supports him because he can relate to blue collar workers, not because he once worked as an artisan. As the union itself says, "unlike McCain's, Obama's outrage for the middle class is real." That Obama can relate to so many different groups rests in part on his multi-faceted identity, based on rich experience within many different milieus.

I'm not sure why McCain is so eager to wave around J the P, a man whose very existence contradicts everything he stands for. As Obama has pointed out, McCain is fighting for "Joe the CEO, and Joe the hedge fund manager."

"Joe" only earns about $40K a year, so he would actually pay less tax under the Obama tax plan than under the McCain plan (assuming, that is, that he ever gets around to paying his taxes.) If he were to run a small business making $250K-$280K a year, some analysts also believe he would also pay less tax under Obama than under McCain.

As the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing
and Pipe Fitting Industry said in a recent statement:

" ... John McCain made Joe the Plumber a household name. His manufactured outrage on behalf of Joe would be a lot more believable if his economic plan had anything to do with helping working people deal with the economic crisis. Instead, it washes the middle class down the drain. McCain's plan gives massive tax giveaways to CEOs and mega-corporations while leaving working families out in the cold. At a time when our economy is bleeding jobs, McCain also opposes investment in infrastructure spending, which would create good jobs and help put our economy back on solid footing.

As the first union to endorse Barack Obama for the presidency, the UA looked long and hard at which candidates would put the needs of all the Joes in America first. Barack Obama has a plan to cut taxes for working people while investing in good jobs and lifting wages. Unlike McCain's, Obama's outrage for the middle class is real. He will turn us in a new direction, not keep us on the same, tired old path of the Bush years."

[DGP]

>>I think the union supports him because he can relate to blue collar workers, not because he once worked as an artisan.

No, I think you deceive yourself again -- or perhaps not even yourself. They don't care if he "relates" to blue collar workers or not; for all they care, he could be a parlor communist who never stepped out of Manhattan.

The union supports him because he credibly promises them more power. Many union officials may sincerely believe that an advance of their own political and economic power would be better for the nation, or at least for blue collar workers, but their remote purposes are at best secondary: The proximate objective is power.

[Francesca]

>>They don't care if he "relates" to blue collar workers or not; for all they care, he could be a parlor communist who never stepped out of Manhattan.
The union supports him because he credibly promises them more power. Many union officials may sincerely believe that an advance of their own political and economic power would be better for the nation, or at least for blue collar workers, but their remote purposes are at best secondary: The proximate objective is power.<<

DGP, I'm sure you're familiar with genetic fallacies. Had J the P embraced Obama's ideas, I rather doubt that he'd have become the latest conservative plaster saint (Ashley Todd just got demoted,) despite the preternatural insights apparently showered on those who work with intractable materials. And I suspect the motives of the plumbers union would be more charitably acclaimed by some if the union had endorsed McCain, rather than Obama, back in early 2008 at a time when he was trailing in the polls, particularly if said union had cited the candidate's record of service to working class families as the main reason for the endorsement. But even if your judgment is accurate, union officials that fail to serve their workers typically don't have power for very long, which is why the decisions of the officials and the opinions of the majority of plumbers are generally in harmony. Both say Obama relates better to blue collar workers and at least one of them cares. Several Joe the Plumbers (some of whom really are called Joe and really are plumbers) are publicly endorsing Obama. But then a lot of people are publicly endorsing Obama these days, including many prominent Republicans ... Colin Powell, Charles Fried, Ken Adelman, Scott McLellan, former governors William Weld and Arne Carlson ... Apparently it's because they haven't spent enough time crafting their identity by working as plumbers, so they don't have calloused hands. I don't know why, but it just is.

[DGP]

>>But even if your judgment is accurate, union officials that fail to serve their workers typically don't have power for very long, which is why the decisions of the officials and the opinions of the majority of plumbers are generally in harmony.

There are several things here -- union leadership, union bureaucracy, union policy positions, union popular opinions, and actual union interests. If the rest of the world is any indication, those things don't dovetail as neatly as you seem to think. A leader who discerns the real interests of his union is just as likely to come into conflict with the bureaucracy or with popular opinion as he is likely to receive their support -- perhaps more so.

People rarely get power by ascertaining the "correct" policy positions and then sitting back to wait for popular support to come in. All too often, and especially in established institutions, power comes from being able to hurt others -- their personal or career ambitions, their projects or incomes or reputations. A man can maintain institutional power not because he advances the institution, but because he is capable of destroying it, or many of the men in it, or related institutions.

Union officials are men, and men everywhere are pretty much the same, so I suspect unions instantiate this dynamic as frequently as any other group of men.

[Judy K. Warner]

Once Obama repeals the Bush tax cuts, all those plumbers and everybody else who pays taxes (and many who don't) will find themselves with hefty tax hikes, which won't be offset by Obama's welfare checks. I don't know why McCain doesn't talk about that. DGP is exactly right: the unions support Obama because they will gain massive power if he is president. One of his priorities is the card check system to herd workers into unions, a proposal so radical that even George McGovern is against it. He also intends to make it easy for unions to organize workers in even the smallest businesses, an action which would put many of them out of business instantly. Obama is about power, and like formal Communists he will say anything at all to gain power.

[Francesca]

>>All too often, and especially in established institutions, power comes from being able to hurt others -- their personal or career ambitions, their projects or incomes or reputations. <<

You mean they might actually, like, try to hurt the reputations of those who disagree with them by suggesting they're motivated only by power?! Say it ain't so!

[DGP]

>>You mean they might actually, like, try to hurt the reputations of those who disagree with them by suggesting they're motivated only by power?! Say it ain't so!

Or they might pretend to be hurt so as to hurt others -- implying they are cruel, bigoted, racist, anti-union, or whatever. I think you've illustrated my point rather nicely.

[Francesca]

>>Or they might pretend to be hurt so as to hurt others -- implying they are cruel, bigoted, racist, anti-union, or whatever.<<

Oh, I don't think too many people are getting away with either faux outrage or irrational negativity or stereotypes anymore. Even the VP of Fox News said of the story of the big, scary black man who supposedly attacked a young McCain campaign volunteer: "If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting." Bang goes Willie Horton II. And Colin Powell, in endorsing the mighty Barack, expressed disappointment in the "over the top" negative tone of the GOP campaign. He was particularly critical of McCain's robocall campaign linking Obama to former 1960s radical Bill Ayers, which he felt was a blatant attempt to scare people into believing Obama is somehow connected to terrorist inclinations or sympathies. I think people in general are getting more reality-based and are tending to infer conclusions on the basis of known information, rather than relying on fanciful and unproven speculations. That said, those who routinely employ genetic fallacies in their arguments apparently still have company.

[Judy K. Warner]

>>>Even the VP of Fox News said of the story of the big, scary black man who supposedly attacked a young McCain campaign volunteer: "If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."<<<

If what he said were true, it would mean only that the power of the media on behalf of the Democrat Party is so great that an incident which was not planned, committed, approved of or known about by McCain could be blown up by them to destroy an innocent man. This does seem to be the kind of strong-arm stuff that you like, Francesca, only you call it "reality-based" for some reason.

[Juli]

>>>Even the VP of Fox News said of the story of the big, scary black man who supposedly attacked a young McCain campaign volunteer: "If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."<<<

>If what he said were true, it would mean only that the power of the media on behalf of the Democrat Party is so great that an incident which was not planned, committed, approved of or known about by McCain could be blown up by them to destroy an innocent man.

I assume the point being made by the Fox News exec was that the McCain campaign was actively pushing this story before it had been vetted by the police; iow, the McCain campaign was seeking political mileage out of this story. At least some conservative talk radio (Hugh Hewitt) and right-wing blogs were playing up this story as if it proved something about the Obama campaign. (How could an incident that was not committed, approved of, or known about by Obama reflect on his campaign?)

[Juli]

>>>Even the VP of Fox News said of the story of the big, scary black man who supposedly attacked a young McCain campaign volunteer: "If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."<<<

>If what he said were true, it would mean only that the power of the media on behalf of the Democrat Party is so great that an incident which was not planned, committed, approved of or known about by McCain could be blown up by them to destroy an innocent man.

I assume the point being made by the Fox News exec was that the McCain campaign was actively pushing this story before it had been vetted by the police; iow, the McCain campaign was seeking political mileage out of this story. At least some conservative talk radio (Hugh Hewitt) and right-wing blogs were playing up this story as if it proved something about the Obama campaign. (How could an incident that was not committed, approved of, or known about by Obama reflect on his campaign?)

[DGP]

>>Oh, I don't think too many people are getting away with either faux outrage or irrational negativity or stereotypes anymore.

You're trying.

[Stuart Koehl]

Well, if we wish to discover who injected race into the campaign, I would suggest looking no further than the Democrats themselves. It was the Hillary Clinton camp that began playing upon Obama's race and his associations with black radicals. It was Obama and his followers who began by intimating, and now explicitly state, that to vote against Obama is evidence of racism, as is questioning Obama's economic policies; his twenty-year affiliation with Rev. Jeremiah Wright (maybe a lot of people give him a pass because they, too, have slept through twenty years worth of sermons); his association with terrorist William Ayres (yes, Ayres is a terrorist, and for comparison, imagine if John McCain had been buddies with Timothy McVey); his foreign policy expertise; and, of course, his overall slimyness.

Then there is the little matter of the voter fraud and intimidation, the illicit campaign contributions, the fact that more than 90% of blacks indicate their intention to vote for the Chosen One (note: this is NOT evidence of racism, though the fact that Obama is supported by slightly less than half of white voters IS). Basically, voting for Obama defining test of moral rectitude, and if you do not want to vote for Obama, then not only are you racist, but probably a fascistic pig who hates women and children, and kicks puppies.

David Gelernter had an interesting observation:

"One of the central fallacies of Obama-style left-liberalism is the belief that political attitudinizing is a replacement for personal virtue. If the left believed in beatitude or salvation, you would get there by sending money to the correct campaigns, casting the correct votes, hating the right people, and reading the New York Times, religiously."

[Stuart Koehl]

And while we're on the subject of thugocracy, here's a good example of it:

Death Threats Sent to Pollster

After releasing this morning’s numbers showing McCain ahead in Ohio and Florida, the Strategic Vision polling company received several death threats through the contact e-mail on the company’s web site.

David Johnson, the CEO of Strategic Vision, shared the messages with National Review Online.

One of the messages stated:

My goodness, your polls stinks. There are 3 polls that have Obama by double digits and only yours has Obama down. WOW!. How come your poll is the only one giving Palin high favor ratings? I think you nee dto be careful tonight when you get in your car and might want to check underneath your car. SCRAP YOUR IDIOTIC POLLS OR ELSE!

Another stated:

A poll that gave Sarah Palin and Barack Obama the same favorability rating is wrong off the bat. Be careful going outside tonight because you might not see tomorrow.

A third message stated:

Why would your presidential election poll results be so drastically different from every other reputable poll taken over the same time period? Are they that dumb or are you guys that smart? Smart guys wind up dead.

The company has contacted the FBI and appropriate authorities, Johnson said. There was, thankfully, nothing in the messages that indicated that the sender had actually sought out the location of the company or its employees. Johnson noted that while the messages came from different addresses, they all came within a short period of time, and that it was possible they were from the same person.

Johnson said he’s not fearful, but taking appropriate measures.

“It’s probably just a bunch of nut cases, but this is first time we’ve ever experienced something like this,” Johnson said. “It’s highly, highly unusual. We get messages in the vein of 'your numbers are wrong, the other guy's numbers are right' all the time. But this has never happened before.”

[Joe Long]

* (How could an incident that was not committed, approved of, or known about by Obama reflect on his campaign?)

Well, I've been judging the twentieth century's messianic socialists ("national" and otherwise) awfully harshly, then. Lots of brown shirts, Maoist Red Guard and their brethren retained that sort of deniability.

Some experiece ACTUALLY serving his country would have taught B.H.O. that the Commanding Officer is rightfully held responsible for a great many things beyond his direct supervision. As he hasn't (and never ever would) he'll have just the excuse above, after the post-election riots when his roused rabble rage at his defeat (or celebrate his victory - whatever. Just stay away from the party, if you value your health and property.)

In a sad way, I'm almost glad a fake hate crime was finally committed on the Right, so the MSM finally gives real air time to that common variety of pathetic fraud.

[Rob G]

"after the post-election riots when his roused rabble rage at his defeat (or celebrate his victory - whatever. Just stay away from the party, if you value your health and property.)"

If Obama wins, something tells me you're not going to see a whole lot of Whitey liberals driving down to the hood to concelebrate the victory.

Conversely, should Obama lose, whites will be the target in the ensuing riots and I doubt whether the rioters will stop to ask to see one's voter registration card before they bussa cap in yo' ass.

[steve consilvio]

Much of what makes Obama stupid he learned at Harvard. I would agree on that point, but Harvard is not liberal, it's conservative. Only a conservative would hoard billions of dollars and beg like a pauper and carelessly put families and children in debt. Yale, MIT,Boston College, Princeton, etc., all do the same.

McCain has the same mindset. He has 11 houses. How will he solve the homeless or foreclosure problem? He will buy more houses cheap so he can make more profit, etc., and encourage people to get rich by making others poor. It's the same old same old. The rich think they are smart, when they are the greatest fools of all. (Like Scrooge.)

Liberals can be plenty stupid with their faith in taxes, but they are not nearly as dumb as conservatives. Osama bin Laden is a conservative, too. Every war is between two conservatives. (Every war is a civil war, too, which then follows trade routes.) Liberals, despite all their other faults, at least understand that killing one another won't help solve anything.

Joe the plumber does a real days work, but he is uniformed and misinformed and follows blindly, much like soldiers. I had to laugh when McCain said in the debate that soldiers should go straight to the classroom to teach, without bothering with certification. Because, ya know, soldiers are automatically wiser and more intelligent than the people they allegedly protect. oy! There is a reason why Paul was the soldier Saul first. Christianity doesn't need soldiers, it needs followers.

Anarchus' maxim seems to always hold true: democracy is a system where the wise speak and the fools decide. The fools always elect a fool like themselves. Representative government works perfectly, for better and ill.

The original essay is as good as any of an example of the yeast of the pharisees, and how hypocrisy works its way through the whole loaf.

immoral moralists
authoritarian libertarians
regressive progressives

There is a lot of hypocrisy going around, the same as always. Beware the mirror.

[Francesca]

>>I assume the point being made by the Fox News exec was that the McCain campaign was actively pushing this story before it had been vetted by the police<<

Yes. Also, the discussion revolved around faux outrage. It's interesting that a Fox News exec, given that Fox tends to cultivate a sense of aggrievement in its listeners, would show at least a little caution. On the other hand, he did say: "If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee." Maybe he wasn't being so objective:-/

[Joe Long]

"Only a conservative would hoard billions of dollars and beg like a pauper and carelessly put families and children in debt."

Sounds like every third-world Marxist kleptocracy to ME!

[Rob G]

Murtha is a buffoon who may cost Obama the state (here's hopin'). If his idiotic statements last week didn't hurt Obama's campaign in W. Pa., the Lightbearer wouldn't have been so quick to come here to Pittsburgh today to do damage control.

[Stuart Koehl]

Francesca's getting shrill (well, more shrill than usual). Must mean that Obama is really slipping big time.

[Bob]

Let's hope so, Stuart. How do things look to you? Are we going to have Barry Soetero in the (Must-be-racist-because-it's) White House come January?

[Judy K. Warner]

McCain doesn't own the houses, his wife Cindy does. Mostly their relatives live in them; they're not investments. Obviously it's extremely immoral to invest in houses, so it's lucky for their souls that the houses are put to use. It really was boorish of Cindy's father to build a successful business, wasn't it, and make her a rich woman? 0bama wouldn't allow any such thing. Though I don't know why I'm writing this comment; the one I'm replying to is not really worth answering.

[Stuart Koehl]

Racist pig that I am, I say McCain 52-48, with 286 electoral votes.

[Bob]

See, Stuart--and you'll have to excuse my ignorance here, however much that sounds like fake humility--I expected that we'd have McCain winning the popular vote but the electoral votes going Obama's way. I imagine I think that mostly because the media have been saying that all year. I want to believe, Stuart. . .

Racist pig that *I* am, I have to be glad that I live in a town that's ninety-something percent white--if O Face loses, I don't want to be near the rioting.

[Steve Consilvio]

Marxists revolutionaries have a lot in common with other revolutionaries. A fascist is the same as a socialist. Washington and Jefferson kept slaves. Lenin and Washington were not very different from one another; they both overthrew the State and named a city after the,selves, and killed whoever got in their way.

Similarly, Lincoln and Stalin were the repressive state that was previously overthrown. History repeats itself because men make the same errors. Obama doesn't have a good sense of history. He is a typical immigrant with a pie-in-the-sky opinion of America. That has been going on since John Winthrop on the Mayflower.

McCain, however, has a different sort of self-righteousness. He believes might equal right. He would sell his soul for a ribbon.

Anyway, there has only been one way to get rich in the world: overcharge and underpay. While some people see that as a virtue, it is the exact opposite of what Jesus said to do. So choose your master and vote accordingly, but you cannot serve two masters.

If you believe in wealth and war, then you may have some explaining to do when you meet your Maker.

[Joe Long]

Stuart, I assume you're using the Coulter definition of "racist": "Anyone winning an argument with a liberal".

[W.E.D. Godbold]

Mr. Consilvio,
You sound unhinged to me (Lenin and Washington?! They both killed whoever got in their way? Okay, I'm game, let's look at the "murdered" lists for each. Then we can move on to Lincoln and Stalin.)

I preached a sermon this Sunday on rendering unto Caesar and rendering unto God. It's true that Jesus and God don't have good things to say about those who make themselves fat while their neighbors are in need. But soldiers are not, in general, criticized in the OT or the new (except implicitly by John when he urges them to "be content with their wages"). There is also a rather detailed and elaborate "just war" tradition in the Christian church. One of our parishioners is an army lawyer (and West Point grad) who has written in intra-army circles about the modern permutations of this. She is also in the midst of teaching a Sunday school for us on the topic. Unfortunately, I can't go (since I accompany four of my younger children to their Sunday school where they are learning to sing), but my wife and my two oldest boys go and they've enjoyed it. Here is one of the episodes (#4) that has been placed on Youtube. You can find the others in the list if you search for them.

[Michael]

>>A fascist is the same as a socialist.<<

Same result, far, far different core principles. The fascist believes in the centrality of the state and the union of its populace to be unbreakable (hence the name), the socialist believes in the dissolution of the state so that its populace may be made equal. In effect, both will birth a managed economic system meant to flatten the competition into unity. Fascism, however, will do this with alliance to the state itself, whereas socialism will do this with material commitment to the populace. This is the case in any "ideal" setting of the two being played out. The ultimate goal of the socialist, again, in the abstract, is to so brainwash the populace that the state is no longer needed except as a mediator between one part and the other in wealth redistribution. The ultimate goal of the socialist is to elevate the state such that it is ignored by the populace as the way things are. Core principles are important--because the fascist believes in something higher than himself (wrongly), but the socialist believes only in the material wealth of man (and thus himself alone). What do they teach people in high school civics these days? Honestly.

Washington and Jefferson did indeed keep slaves, but Jefferson resolved to release his upon his death, or upon the payment of his debts--which was never done, thus the slaves were sold to cover his estate upon death--and also wrote into the Declaration a statement condemning the peculiar institution, which was struck from the final to gain the vote of Georgia (enraging John Adams and the Massachusetts delegation). Not to mention that he wrote: "Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them." In other words, he ought to be lauded by the liberal for observing a justification for Affirmative Action--we'll always be a little racist because of history! Disgusting logic, I know. But you did bring it up.

Washington, meanwhile, has this from Wikipedia: "Washington was the only prominent, slaveholding Founding Father who succeeded in emancipating his slaves. His actions were influenced by his close relationship with the Marquis de La Fayette. He did not free his slaves in his lifetime, however, but included a provision in his will to free his slaves upon the death of his wife. At the time of his death, there were 317 slaves at Mount Vernon – 123 owned by Washington, 154 "dower slaves," and 40 rented from a neighbor."

The spiritual capitalist (Jefferson and Washington) may deny the worker his freedom but never his personhood. The spiritual socialist, on the other hand, denies the worker of both: you are a slave to the state to produce for others' needs, not your own ends. In this, the loss of freedom is obvious. The loss of personhood stems from the denial of the very things that make him a person: the ability to be spiteful next to the ability to be compassionate of our own volition, the ability to own but also the ability to loose, the ability to pursue desires (or heck, even having desires!) above base natural needs. Socialism makes man an animal, and treats him as a pet. A home, food and water, nothing more--needs alone.

I'll take fascism's core principles over socialism's any day. On the whole, though, I'd much rather hold to a managed capitalism, a free economy with national security built into it via protection of domestic companies (via tariffs among other things). This is why I will not vote for Obama but, though I did not favor him in the primaries, will give my vote to McCain in a week.

Well, that along with Obama's denial of even potential personhood to the fetus, his blatant ignorance of how war works, and naive view of the most vile of an already vile, fallen race (man; wouldn't you love to sit at a table and talk with a man threatening to nuke Israel). He is confident, calm, and obviously intelligent. That confidence is sadly bloated into arrogance, the calm to smugness and the intelligence to invincible ignorance.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>The fascist believes in the centrality of the state and the union of its populace to be unbreakable (hence the name), the socialist believes in the dissolution of the state so that its populace may be made equal.<<<

Good one, Michael. Since socialism requires state ownership of the means of production and the subsequent distribution of wealth on an equitable basis (decided by the state), your description of the relationship between socialism and the state is tendentious at best. In any case, I think Jonah Goldberg has made a very persuasive case that both socialism and fascism are brothers under the skin. If you go far enough left, you come out on the right and vice versa. One tends to forget that Mussolini was first and foremost a man of the left, or that the full name of the organization was National Socialist German Workers Party, or that a great many of the New Dealers were fervent admirers of Il Duce, to say nothing of Stalin.

[Michael]

>>Good one, Michael. Since socialism requires state ownership of the means of production and the subsequent distribution of wealth on an equitable basis (decided by the state), your description of the relationship between socialism and the state is tendentious at best.<<

I was speaking of the "ideal" socialist construct. The revolution of the proletariat, on paper only, was meant to dissolve the state, and natural human decency, or commitment to "compassion", would make the state unnecessary, for all the proles shared the same plight, thus would act freely to redistribute the wealth evenly. Of course, Marx and Engels were pathetically naive about the actual nature of their philosophy played out:

The proletariat doesn't believe in equality of the masses, he believes in his own entitlement to the spoils of the rich. And thus greed, the natural human desire for more and greater things (eternal Theosis, isn't it?) corrupted, takes over those who have seized power. The socialist wants to believe that those who overthrow (or in the case of the more refined socialist, whose tools of war are not tanks, but politics and labor unions, take over) the establishment will eventually fade away when their intended establishment (universal "compassion") is made. But of course this never happens, which is why socialism always results in a coercive kleptocracy. This is what Mr. Consilvio himself ought to be able to take away from twentieth century history when he criticizes Obama for not "hav[ing] a good sense of" it.

And I doubt New Dealers admired Il Duce and Stalin for their principles, but rather for what they accomplished on the social economics--put people to work, improve infrastructure. I may be looking at 1930's Democrats through rose-colored glasses here, but FDR is reputed to have hated Stalin, but knew what it was to make deals with the lesser of devils. I want to believe--and if I am wrong, please point me to the literature--that putting people to work was a (flawed) means to pull us out of a depression, not to actually socialize the economy.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>And I doubt New Dealers admired Il Duce and Stalin for their principles, but rather for what they accomplished on the social economics--put people to work, improve infrastructure.<<<

Oh, no, it was both. No doubt there was a large pragmatic element to their admiration, but there were many who really, truly felt that democracy (in its traditional American form) had run its course, and that the complexities of the modern economy could only be managed by enlightened experts such as themselves. Therefore, in both their policies and beliefs they fell very much in line with Mussolini's dictum, "Everyone for the state, no one against the state, nothing outside of the state".

See not only Goldfarb's "Liberal Fascism" but also Amity Schlae's "The Forgotten Man". You can find in both rhetorical parallels between Roosevelt and the fascist dictators that is quite frightening. When you cannot tell the difference between a speech by Hitler and one by FDR, the extent towards which the almost embraced the fascist temptation is scary. Good thing World War II discredited fascism, while at the same time allowing FDR to engage his penchant for industrial management and social mobilization.