So conservatives don't read Hofstadter because it's uncomfortable. Liberals don't read him because they're living in what he considers a foreign land, where Christianity has become an armored fist, where questioning authority is considered treasonous by those in power, and where the liberal values Hofstadter assumed as universal have been, on the whole, repudiated.
Everything Bernanke has learned will tell him to maintain liquidity in the face of inflation. He won't raise interest rates to maintain asset values. He will see the housing crash as deflation, and in time lower rates. The result will be a collapse of the dollar.
Conservativism is always the same. It never has new tales to tell. It seeks to replicate the past, always. That is its nature.
A lot of our childhood heroes, it turns out, have feet of clay. Sports stars fade or go down in flames. Politicians likewise. Entertainers may lose touch with the studios, become has-beens. Everyone disappoints. Not Jimmy Breslin.
The time has come, in other words, to teach, to mentor, and to pass on what we know so our children can save this wretched Earth from the mess we have made of it.
Rather than arguing against what a fool believes, wise men will seize the power to reason a way out, a new political thesis that answers the concerns of our time -- energy, the environment, science -- based on the value of this medium.
The ideals and values of the Internet, in other words, work. They're ideals, but they're not just ideals.
Whoever is named as editor should make it their first priority to build an "advisory board" (nominally paid) with representatives from real news organizations, blog organizations, right-and-left blogistan, the whole nine yards. And international -- lots of international.
The proper course, always, was and is the course of maximum peace. Demand justice, and make certain you're subject to it as well. This brings you the support you need to demand justice of the other side, to make the case, to cut off their air supply (the money and people follow real injustice), and to then enforce the law.
The essence of what must happen in our time is the replacement of the Zero Sum Game – its politics, its economics, and its mental assumptions – with those of Moore's Law. That's the only way to decisively win the present struggle.
