Dear Senator Franken

I voted for you twice. I have been an ardent supporter, and I was proud of the way in which you worked to oppose President Trump's nominations, particularly Betsy DeVos and Jeff Sessions. I also lauded your efforts to push for thorough investigations of Russian election tampering, and to fight the Republican legislative agenda. I have called your office to thank you for all of these things.

So when Leeann Tweeden wrote her essay last week, as a constituent and genuine admirer, I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt -- you have worked hard for Minnesota, and you have championed many of the issues that are personally important to me.

I cannot, however, ignore the second set of allegations against you that were published this morning in the StarTribune. For the good of Minnesota, I think it is time for you to make arrangements to end your career in the senate.

I did not weigh in publicly before now, because I was trying to be patient, and I was experiencing so many conflicting feelings. After your eloquent and personal apology to Leeann Tweeden and her acceptance of it, I breathed a sigh of relief and I was prepared to move on. From my remote vantage point, it seemed as though Tweeden was at least open to the idea that whatever happened between the two of you was a misunderstanding.

This second story recasts all of that. The incident occurred at the State Fair - the quintessentially Minnesotan family-oriented event. It was openly discussed by the accuser at the time, and it happened when you were our sitting senator. Even though what is alleged by the second woman is not as bad as what Tweeden said happened to her, it is still terrible, and perhaps worse in its own way: it happened in a context where your conduct should have been far beyond reproach.

I am not saying this out of fear of the narrative that will be spun in some circles -- people often tell tales regardless of truth. My concern is the actual harm that you did to these women. For that, you should step down. Minnesota needs a senator who better represents the values of the progressive movement.

This is not an easy letter to write, and it is not a knee-jerk reaction -- this is my considered opinion as a voter in Minnesota. I have spent a great deal of the last four days thinking and listening to people -- especially women -- and now that I have heard a second accuser step forward, I have come to a realization: you can no longer effectively serve us, your constituents. This story will follow you wherever you go, and it will render you irrelevant at best. I shudder to contemplate the worst-case scenario.

I would rather not take a chance on a special election. But these allegations are not going to go away.

Please do the right and honorable thing. Make us proud one more time.

Keep Calm and Carry On

When Barack Obama was president, one of the most amusing manifestations of cognitive dissonance in his critics was that they cast him simultaneously as both a bungling incompetent and a cunning, manipulative mastermind. But now I see partisans on the left giving Donald Trump similar treatment.

Don't fall for it!

What's happening is not complicated. Simply apply Occam's Razor (or perhaps Trump's Razor): Trump is a greedy, racist con-man with no interest in or aptitude for government or policy, except insofar as they can serve his pride and avarice. No one expected him to win, but due to the quirks of our system (and a massive assist from the FBI and the media), he did. And now he is bungling through, doing awful but contradictory things on behalf of his various advisers and constituents.

Yes, he has some true villains in his coalition, and they have been emboldened by his victory. And this will have real and horrific consequences for far too many people. Meanwhile, supposedly decent Congressional Republicans appear to be ignoring his aggressive yet fumbling attempts to take executive action. But there is a simple explanation for this as well: Trump is useful to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, not the other way around. They tolerate him because they need him to sign tax cut legislation and remove financial and environmental regulations. If Trump is unpopular, that focuses more attention on their activities too. This they do not want, because their policy goals are very unpopular. McConnell, Ryan, and other Republicans will distance themselves from Trump the moment it is clear that his unpopularity threatens their goals.

So keep fighting, because it is working. But keep calm and carry on. 

"Get Over It"

In a discussion thread about the potential consequences of a Trump presidency, one commenter offered me this hoary advice:

Get over it. Let a businessman take a crack at it.

I am certain many others have encountered similar admonishments. But what is this really telling us to do? In the interest of saving everyone's time, I have compiled a list of things that we are being asked to "get over":

• that members of the FBI up to and including its director materially tampered with the election by selectively releasing information about one candidate.
   
• that Russian agents hacked one political party with the intent of damaging that party's candidate and influencing the outcome of the election. The beneficiary of this responded to this not by condemning the cyberattack, but by attacking American intelligence services.
   
• that the "businessman" in question...
• has global financial interests and has refused to divest himself from his businesses, release his taxes, or offer any other assurance that he will put the country's interests before his own.
   
• has been embroiled in more than 3500 lawsuits, declared bankruptcy on multiple occasions, and in at least one instance, committed outright fraud.
   
• bragged proudly and publicly about adultery, sexual assault, and lechery.
   
• did no preparation for the job of POTUS.
   
• that the "winning" candidate lost by almost 3 million votes, but will be installed as the victor thanks to an antiquated system designed to empower rural white slave-holders.
   
• More repugnant than anything else, we are being asked to "get over" the fact that seemingly normal people made common cause with literal Nazis and Klansmen -- i.e., actual villains -- in order to elect a racist, plutocratic, authoritarian degenerate. 

Orange Is The New Darkness

Here's what I can't understand: in this election, people who appear on the surface to be good and decent made common cause with literal Nazis and Klansmen in order to elect a racist, plutocratic, authoritarian degenerate. In this task they were abetted by a Russian dictator and his spies.

AND. FOR. WHAT.

A fucking tax cut? Because abortion is icky? Hillary had an email server? Because brown people are so scary? I just do not get it. I do not think I will ever be capable of getting it. Might be time to revisit Viktor Frankl.

The inimitable Driftglass, in July:

The Democratic Party held a brilliantly coordinated, four-day political convention. The Republican Party held a four-day, wingnut Ghost Dance intended to resurrect the Confederacy.

Here's the punchline: it worked.

Long will it be before I can forgive those who collaborated with Trump and his deplorables.

Truth and Consequences

Yesterday morning I felt confident that the country would be waking up today to the election of the first woman president.

I could not have been more wrong. 

So what happened?

This article from last week describes the weakness of Clinton's coalition that I (and many others) missed: from the standpoint of the electoral map, her strengths were over-represented in democratic strongholds and under-represented in swing states. In retrospect, it tells the story: Clinton was defeated by these demographic realities and by the anachronism that is the Electoral College, by lower Democratic turnout, and by an unusually high white rural voter turnout. It's also possible that voter suppression laws had an effect on the outcome, but that is more difficult to measure. 

What seems more pressing are the potential consequences of a Trump presidency. With this upset victory, the Republicans suddenly find themselves with more power than ever before. Despite a policy gulf between Clinton and Trump larger than in any election in memory, these differences went shamefully unreported.

Here's a preview of what we might expect from President Trump, Majority Leader McConnell, and Speaker Ryan:

- an end to environmental regulation enforcement
- a supreme court justice who is against choice, gay marriage, labor rights and voting rights
- a repeal of Obamacare, which will strip 22 million people of insurance
- a repeal of Dodd-Frank, and an end to the Consumer Financial Protection Board
- our National Parks could be sold and/or leased for development and/or mining/resource exploitation
- capital gains and other tax cuts for upper incomes
- increases in fees and other regressive taxes for lower incomes
- Medicare replaced by voucher system

- privatization of Social Security
- block grants to states for everything from education to food stamps

All in all, a pretty grim picture.

Welcome to Kansas, America.

Update: SteveM has more. 

Let That Sink In

Republicans have been saying for the last eight years that Barry HUSSEIN Soetoro is a terrible president, an illegitimate president, one of the worst presidents ever. The obvious implication of all of the piling-on is that Republicans believe that they can do better, much better with the executive branch of government.

Donald J. Trump is the product of this belief. 

A Mystery That May Never Be Solved...

Looking at this chart, it's almost as if something happened in the mid-1960s that re-aligned Americans' party self-identification.

I wish there was some way to know what happened.

Republicans for Clinton

Update V: Former President George H. W. Bush (41) says he'll vote for Clinton. When the one-time national leader of your party plans to vote for the opposition (and also the wife of the candidate who unseated him), it might be time to give up the idea that Donald Trump is an ordinary candidate.

I don't recall anything like this in my lifetime.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/06/30/heres-the-growing-list-of-big-name-republicans-supporting-hillary-clinton/

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-meg-whitman-joins-chorus-of-republicans-1470224405-htmlstory.html

http://www.newyorkupstate.com/news/2016/08/rep_richard_hanna_we_should_all_be_done_with_donald_trump_commentary.html

https://goplifer.com/2016/07/22/resignation-letter/

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/01/politics/sally-bradshaw-jeb-bush-donald-trump-florida/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/08/02/christie-trump-clinton-comella/87970914/

Update: not exactly coming out for Clinton, but this is a aggressive kneecap -
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/08/politics/republican-national-security-letter-donald-trump-election-2016/index.html

And I believe Collins is only the second sitting US legislator to come out against Trump -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gop-senator-why-i-cannot-support-trump/2016/08/08/821095be-5d7e-11e6-9d2f-b1a3564181a1_story.html

Update II: this is getting ridiculous. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/republicans-who-support-hillary-clinton/494636/

Update III:

[conservative talk radio host Michael] Medved attended Yale Law School with Hillary and her future husband; while he didn't much care for Bill, he remembered her as "intensely likable." Indeed, he said, "to this day I don't know anyone, literally not anyone, who didn't like her, find her warm, sympathetic, a manifestly good person, a well-meaning person, not full of herself, not puffed up at all, down-to-earth, and a good friend . . . much nicer than what (her) critics think."

Emphasis mine. From http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/joe-conason-republicans-love-hillary-clinton-article-1.2740094

Update IV: consolidated list from Vox.com: http://www.vox.com/2016/8/15/12444376/top-republicans-wont-support-donald-trump

Hillary Clinton Is Trustworthy

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it,
people will eventually come to believe it. -Joseph Goebbels

I read the other day that something like sixty-seven percent of Americans don't think that Hillary is trustworthy. It's the big lie that people have come to believe.

In the course of a single conversation, I have been assured that Hillary is cunning and manipulative but also crass, clueless, and stunningly impolitic; that she is a hopelessly woolly-headed do-gooder and, at heart, a hardball litigator; that she is a base opportunist and a zealot convinced that God is on her side. What emerges is a cultural inventory of villainy rather than a plausible depiction of an actual person. -Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Is Clinton perfect? No. Is she one-hundred percent honest? Absolutely not! She's a politician, after all. But the idea that she is uniquely untrustworthy is complete and utter nonsense. Stop believing it.

On the contrary, by the standards of politicians, she is quite trustworthy.

So where does all this misleading information about Clinton come from?

And who is she really?

Some essential reading:
http://www.vox.com/a/hillary-clinton-interview/the-gap-listener-leadership-quality

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/6/11/1537582/-The-most-thorough-profound-and-moving-defense-of-Hillary-Clinton-I-have-ever-seen

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/04/07/hillary-clinton-was-a-more-effective-lawmaker-than-bernie-sanders/

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/02/26/hating-hillary

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bipartisan-praise-for-hillary-clinton-as-she-moves-on/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/28/hillary-clinton-honest-transparency-jill-abramson

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/03/hillary-clinton-fundamentally-honest-and-trustworthy

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opinion/campaign-stops/all-politicians-lie-some-lie-more-than-others.html

http://www.mormonpress.com/lying_liars_who_lie_2016_edition

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/all-the-terrible-things-hillary-clinton-has-done-in-one-big-list-2016-02-04

If you have doubts about how to vote in November, you really should give her another look.

The More You Know...

If you are repulsed by Donald Trump, but you also think that there is something so wrong with Hillary Clinton that you don't feel you can vote for her, I have something for you to think about. Please consider that the same people and the same forces that ushered Trump into a place of prominence in national politics have been relentlessly trying to malign Clinton for twenty-five years.

It could be that many of the negative impressions you have about Clinton are the product of a long-term smear campaign, and just plain wrong.

Police Thyself

The last couple of days have given Americans stark and horrifying reminders of the nexus of problems surrounding race, police brutality, and gun culture. Others have written with more force and eloquence about the issue of racism in law enforcement. I defer to them.

Instead, I'd like to focus on what might be done to transform police departments around the country. Cops have struggled with racism for a long time, and on top of that increasingly have become militarized over the last 30 years.

Today, as President Obama discussed the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, he pointed out that two years ago (in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown) his administration created a task force charged with drafting and implementing recommendations to improve the quality of policing. Honestly, I didn't remember this chapter of the story. So I looked them up. After reviewing the recommendations, I thought, well, implementing these would solve some problems, and would be a great way to improve public relations. But I also thought: what would it take to not simply fix some issues at the margins, but really transform policing into an ideal?

First, some disclaimers: I'm not a law enforcement expert. I know that there are good cops -- I've interacted with many. I'll add also that the problems so appallingly on display this week are systemic and structural in nature, and not necessarily caused by specific individuals. I know that a lot of communities are working on this topic already. I am just trying to make sense of what happened this week, and brainstorm on what else might be done.

Here is a list of principles that I'd add in order to shape the debate about what can and should be done to radically re-think and re-structure the way the hard work of policing gets done.

Profiling Candidates. Data suggests that the psych exam typically screens out only about 5 percent of those tested. That's a good start, but given the current state of policing, there is plenty of room for improvement. Identifying candidates with anger management issues, control fantasies, and white-supremacist views must be made a priority. And typically, contracts to perform psychological evaluations are awarded on a low-bid basis. That is unacceptable. There should be higher standards and a stronger commitment to weeding out those unfit for the job.

Training Recruits. Twelve to fourteen weeks. That's all that is required before a candidate is put on to the street for on-the-job training. This is an astonishingly low bar to clear for what is in reality a very high-skill, high-stress career. I couldn't find anything more current than 2006, but as of then, here is a chart of median hours spent in training. All of the hours listed are shockingly low and should be substantially increased, but I highlighted the areas in need of special attention. For example, eight hours of mediation skills/conflict management? I mean, I consider that to be one of the essential job functions of a police officer. They should spend weeks, or even months on that topic alone. Only 14 hours of domestic violence instruction? Only 4 hours of coursework on hate and bias crimes? Nothing on rape, harassment, and stalking?

Officer Residency. Less than six percent of the officers in the Minneapolis Police Department actually live in Minneapolis. SIX PERCENT. That is not a force with a personal investment in the safety and stability of our community. The national average for large cities is 40%, which is still a little low. I think a residency requirement of 1/2 or even 2/3 of the force is reasonable.

Continuing Education. See above.

Accountability. Body cams. Dash cams. Three-hundred sixty degree review of officer-involved shootings. Police should meet a higher standard of conduct for the use of violence, and especially deadly violence, than an average civilian. Stronger sanctions and stiffer sentencing. Independent Prosecution.

This is obviously just a rough cocktail napkin list, but the idea is to start discussion. Police violence is not only a police problem, it is a societal problem. The police are us and we are the police. And it is up to all of us to fix it. It is a long-term problem and requires difficult, expensive, multi-faceted solutions. But apart from health care and education, I can't think of anything I'd rather spend my tax dollars on than the safety and security of all citizens.

Did You Get The Email

Tuesday's announcement that there would be no indictment regarding Clinton's email servers didn't surprise me. As I wrote a few months back: "I don't have a crystal ball, and in these strange times it seems like literally anything can happen. But that said, Hillary will not be charged, much less indicted for this email 'scandal.' She simply did not do anything outside of the boundaries of what entitled, powerful people do. She did not jeopardize national security; she did not break the law. There is no conspiracy to protect her and her interests. In spite of four years of investigating Benghazi, and dozens of hours of testimony from countless people regarding this 'scandal,' no evidence of wrongdoing has been found. And I doubt there will be." I'm pleased to be vindicated, even though I was very far from the only person to make such a prediction.

I work for a large financial institution. It might be hard for younger folks to believe, but when I started here in 2001, which really isn't so long ago, executives didn't even use email -- they had secretaries to print out their messages. So it doesn't take much for me to believe that, just as smart phones were starting to become a thing, a not-very-tech-savvy, boomer-aged executive took the advice of the first person who came along and said she could keep her BlackBerry. Basically, she wanted a productivity tool for her job, and her employer could not or would not provide it, so she got it set up for herself. That is the beginning and end of this story.

It should be noted: Clinton didn't hide this! She used it openly and with the apparent knowledge (and expressed concern) of all relevant parties. So is it even bending the rules if she's doing it with the knowledge and without the sanction of the parties who oversee electronic security for the State Department? Hell, I don't know. IANAL, YMMV. But I didn't think so, and since the FBI has now confirmed that no laws were broken, at this point I really do not care.

Moreover, yesterday the State Department seemed to contradict Comey's and the FBI's contention that any classified material was sent:

MR KIRBY: Generally speaking, there's a standard process for developing call sheets for the secretary of state. Call sheets are often marked -- it's not untypical at all for them to be marked at the confidential level -- prior to a decision by the secretary that he or she will make that call. Oftentimes, once it is clear that the secretary intends to make a call, the department will then consider the call sheet SBU, sensitive but unclassified, or unclassified altogether, and then mark it appropriately and prepare it for the secretary's use in actually making the call. The classification of a call sheet therefore is not necessarily fixed in time, and staffers in the secretary's office who are involved in preparing and finalizing these call sheets, they understand that. Given this context, it appears the markings in the documents raised in the media report were no longer necessary or appropriate at the time that they were sent as an actual email. So it appears that those --

QUESTION: That the calls were already made?

MR KIRBY: -- no -- that those markings were a human error. They didn't need to be there. Because once the secretary had decided to make the call, the process is then to move the call sheet, to change its markings to unclassified and deliver it to the secretary in a form that he or she can use. And best we can tell on these occasions, the markings – the confidential markings – was simply human error. Because the decision had already been made, they didn't need to be made on the email.

(Emphasis mine.)

So what we have is yet another ginned up controversy. And that's what troubles me: this is another red herring nurtured by her political enemies. Sure: make a case that she's entitled. Make the case that she is loose with standards and regulations and with national security. But whispered notions of conspiracies and a 'rigged system' undermine your argument.

ETA: here is a good piece that further explains why this case is mostly nonsense.

Sometimes...

Sometimes, something in the background is just something in the background...

But other times, the background is significant.

The Modern Conservative Movement, In One Image

Saturn Devouring His Son, Francisco Goya 

A Few Thoughts About Mass Shootings And Gun Violence

1. I am not 'scared' of a mass shooting any more than I'm 'scared' of being struck by lightning or 'scared' of being hit by a car. I want to do something about mass shootings (and other gun deaths) because they are preventable and tragic and unnecessary.

 2. Jeb Bush made a good point when he said, "stuff happens, there's always a crisis. And the impulse is always to do something, and it's not necessarily the right thing to do." That's a fair quote, but he's being attacked for the first part and not the second, which is unfortunate. The problem with what he said is that in fact, we know that good, effect policies exist that can and have effectively addressed the problem of mass shootings and other gun violence. Doing nothing is only a tenable position if there is nothing more that can be done. That's not the case with gun laws to address gun violence.

3. I have a difficult time understanding people like NRA president Wayne LaPierre, neurosurgeon-cum-presidential candidate Ben Carson, Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, and Douglas County, Oregon Sheriff John Hanlin, who call for more guns in the wake of a gun-slaughter. It strikes me as an extreme form of fear-mongering. "Better get a weapon or next time, they'll get you."

4. But more basically, haven't any of the above heard of friendly-fire? Have they not seen the myriad stories about accidental shootings? My only answer to these questions is "yes, they absolutely have." Which means that they are disregarding their own answers to these questions because a) they are pandering to gun-culture, b) they believe that the blood of innocents is a price that must be paid, or c) both. All of which are personally appalling.

5. Blocking funding to study the problem of gun violence is a particularly grotesque form of cowardice.

6. My last thought: the conversation about guns always seems to drift into the need for personal security. To me, genuine security looks like this:

And not like this:

This:

And definitely not this:

Islamophobia Creeps Into LinkedIn

I'm pretty disappointed with LinkedIn right now.

Every few days, I get an electronic newsletter from LinkedIn. This email contains links to a variety of professional development articles and other business-related news tailored to my career interests. I know email is pretty passe, but I review these messages regularly; I almost always find something relevant to my job or that I think might help solve issues I face in the workplace. It is one of my chief methods of staying current with my industry, and one of the features of LinkedIn that I use and like.

A few days ago, however, was a different story. I was quite frankly shocked by one of the articles that was included in the message.

Surprised by this provocative and suspicious title, I clicked through to investigate the story. It was worse than I expected: the article ominously claimed that "some areas" in the U.S. were governed (or close to being governed) by "Sharia Law." It contained no useful or thoughtful opinions; no sources were used to corroborate any of its claims, no names were given, and no specifics of any kind were provided. It simply asserted that this was so. To describe this piece as written is to refute it. In short, it was simply prejudicial fear-mongering at its worst.

Okay, so what? Lots of people believe this kind of nonsense. But this isn't some back-water basement blogger who sent me this tripe - this is LinkedIn, ostensibly a clearinghouse for professionalism, and the third largest social media site in the world. I expect more from a site like LinkedIn, and I would guess that from a bottom line perspective, it might not be such a good idea to alienate a quarter of your potential customers.

What is even more troubling is that the content of the article violates their own community guidelines: "Do not use LinkedIn's services... for hate speech acts like attacking people because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, political or religious affiliations, or medical or physical condition." [emphasis added]

Needless to say, I contacted customer support to try to answer the question, "how did this come to be in my version of LinkedIn's official newsletter?" I am almost more gobsmacked that they have not yet seen fit to answer my question.

LinkedIn, I await your reply.

UPDATE: searching on LinkedIn.com, I was able to find what appears to be the source of the link, but seeing it here does not explain how the link got into my copy of LinkedIn's newsletter. I hope that a thorough explanation is forthcoming.

UPDATE II: I changed the title of this post to be less snarky, because LinkedIn finally did contact me, escalated the issue, and seem to be genuinely concerned about it. I hope that something positive comes out of this. 

UPDATE III: Fox has apologized for promoting this story as news. But LinkedIn is still standing by this story under the cover of "free expression." What gives? 

Your Friday Video Funland

Some withering and hilarious satire by Kristen Schaal, and an excellent rant by Lewis Black. You're welcome.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

He's Still On The Hook

While catching up on some internet reading, I came across an old article the other day.

If you want to look kindly on Bush’s presidency, you can fairly say that, while he deserves significant blame for ignoring warnings of an Al Qaeda strike and the housing bubble, the disasters of his tenure were not entirely his fault. But what did he do? His economic policies exacerbated income inequality without producing prosperity. His massive increase of the structural budget deficit, which ballooned to over a trillion dollars before President Obama took office, left the United States less fiscally equipped to respond to the economic crisis he also left his predecessor. He initiated a costly war on the basis of both mistaken and deliberately cooked intelligence, and failed to plan for the postwar period. His policies not only ignored the crises of climate change and a costly and cruel health insurance system, but made both much harder to solve.

It came up because I was reading a more recent piece by Chait in which he unpacks recent comparisons that Obama has drawn to Bush the Lesser. Basically, Chait exposes this as so much nonsense.  He shows that Obama never enjoyed any support from the Republican party, whereas Bush did not face a sustained and unified opposition for the first five years of his presidency. This was not because Bush was less partisan or more centrist, but because democrats in Washington made a political calculation to negotiate in order to appear bipartisan and win concessions. As Chait argues, it was only when Bush began to push his second term agenda to privatize Social Security that democrats abandoned this posture.

Both pieces are worth a read.

It's Just Contraception, Right?

Wrong! Here's why the Hobby Lobby lawsuit, the suit that challenges the provision of ACA mandating contraceptive care coverage, should concern you: in addition to being unreasonable and unfair on its face, it also further enshrines corporate personhood, and opens the door for any number of exceptions due to firmly held beliefs.

These aren't the droids we're looking for. 

Those Social Issues Are Not A Mask

I came across this explanation of conservatism a while back, and it has really stuck with me. (edit: link no longer works, original essay was by UCLA scholar Phil Agre) I've been sitting on it for some time, trying to come up with some thoughtful commentary to accompany an excerpt, but it needs nothing from me. It stands very well on its own. 

"From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, in nearly every urbanized society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy. These people and their allies are the conservatives.

The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are. Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use "social issues" as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality...

More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them. Of course this notion sounds bizarre to modern ears, but it is perfectly overt in the writings of leading conservative theorists such as Burke. Democracy, for them, is not about the mechanisms of voting and office-holding. In fact conservatives hold a wide variety of opinions about such secondary formal matters. For conservatives, rather, democracy is a psychological condition. People who believe that the aristocracy rightfully dominates society because of its intrinsic superiority are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.

The defenders of aristocracy represent aristocracy as a natural phenomenon, but in reality it is the most artificial thing on earth. Although one of the goals of every aristocracy is to make its preferred social order seem permanent and timeless, in reality conservatism must be reinvented in every generation...

A main goal in life of all aristocrats... is to pass on their positions of privilege to their children." 

Speaking of Burke, one person has recently written a book in which he traces a line from Burke to Sarah Palin. It's on my reading list.