Just so we're all on the same page here: anything with the phrase "A modest proposal" in the title is satire[1].
The main point is that the symbolic and ceremonial responsibilities of reflecting the character and attitude of the nation fall on someone with a real job, while most other countries have a separation of concerns. On the other hand, the United States has a long-standing tradition of treating the government as an enemy rather than an extension of national identity, so we wouldn't actually have that much for such a figurehead to do. The closest that you get is the First Lady taking up A Cause and enacting change at the philanthropic and national-awareness level.
[1] The original "Modest Proposal" put forth the idea of eating Irish babies as a solution to feeding the poor in London, and is regarded as one of the finest satires in the English tradition.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
Governments that deviate from their proper purpose of protecting individual rights become an outright enemy of their citizens when they supress speech to the point that no one can speak to change things for the better.
It is an understatement to say that this American view of government is just a longstanding tradition; see quotes by Jefferson and other founders.
See quotes? See Declaration of Independence. For anyone who hasn't read the full document in a while, a close read probably the best way you could spend the next 10 minutes of your life.
OK, provided that we are clear on the distinction between state rights and individual ones as understood today. Most of the colonies went into the revolution with established churches; all states but Massachusetts reached the first census with slavery legal.
Then, a little investigation proved that it is, ironically, also in the declaration of indipendence Ho Chi Min wrote for the democratic republic of vietnam.
Well, I'm OT but I felt it was interesting to share this :)
It's not ironic. Ho Chi Min was literally inspired by the United States. It's a tragedy that we (the US) and Ho Chi Min became enemies. I'm not a proponent of communism, but Ho Chi Min's Vietnam could have had great potential due to his charisma, knowledge and 'founder' status among his own people.
What other country went from 0-super power in such a short time? While it isn't necessarily the BEST or RIGHT or anything like that, I think it's pretty straight forward to claim the U.S. is 'special'.
> What other country went from 0-super power in such a short time?
Maybe that's a point.
Though, here are some other examples of possible quick rises: Germany past 1971-unification? France after the Revolution shaked up the the country and dragged it kicking-and-screaming into the century of the fruitbat? Japan after its defeat in WWII.
And of course, if only rise to super power counts, look at Britain and how they started the original industrial revolution there.
Soviet Russia was a change in government from Tzarist Russia, which was already a Big Deal in the world, not a 0 to Super Power transition.
And I wasn't suggesting it was a reason to read the constitution, I was suggesting that the United States is, in fact, special. I believe the OP was referencing the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. Maybe it's my jaded, indoctrinated US education, but is the US Declaration of Independence not a unique document, and special on it's own? At least in our (admittedly biased) educational curriculum, it ranks up there with the Magna Carta as an important political document.
We did not talk about the Magna Carta at all in school (as far as I remember), but then, I have a biased German education.
The founding of the US paralleled the earlier founding of the Netherlands. Both fought for independence from a foreign monarchy and were founded at republics. The Dutch also embraced capitalism and a pursuit of happiness. They might not have been as individualistic as the Americans are usually seen as, but the Americans had a very community-minded side to them, too.
"From an economic perspective, the Republic of the United Provinces completely outperformed all expectations; it was a surprise to many that a nation not based on the church or on a single royal leader could be so successful. This period is known in the Netherlands as the Golden Age. The Dutch dominated world trade in the 17th century, conquering a vast colonial empire and operating the largest fleet of merchantmen of all western nations. The County of Holland was the wealthiest and most urbanized region of Europe."
Interesting - I don't think we covered even a tiny bit of Dutch Independence in school. They were just 'there', rocking out with their international trade and huge market place.
Just to offer a royalist British viewpoint (yes, it is possible to be liberal and a royalist :D).
I really enjoy having a Queen as head of state; and I wish the role hadn't become so namby pamby (basically as described in this article). Here the Queen has "effective"/moral power - but it is just accepted she wont use it.
This is a departure even in recent times; go back 60/70 years and that sentence would have read: Here the Queen has "effective"/moral power - but it is just accepted she wont use it if the politicians behave. I wish we could go back to that.
But, anyway, that is to one side - I meant to explain the idea of royalty. You see a lot of people consider it quaint and ye-olde English. But really in modern times the Queen is just our version of American patriotism. You know that patriotic support for ones country etc. I've always liked that; the idea of believing in an "ideal" (even if the reality is a bit rubbish).
I wish there was more of it, instead of less and less.
(I realise this is mildly tangential to the point of the piece; which actually, IMO, had a solid point to make)
Well, not always. There's really two situations where the power can be used in practice. Firstly, if the government supports the actions of the monarch (although you could argue that this isn't much of a power).
More importantly, if there's no government to remove them. The monarch could have the power to resolve a disputed government, or to appoint a government in the absence of one.
It's also important to remember that monarchs are often rich, connected people, so even if they can't use their official powers, they may have influence in other ways.
It is a bit more important than that. The Constitutional function of the monarch is to occupy the position of the head of state so the PM can't have it. The Americans have what they call "checks and balances". This is ours. The PM cannot say to the police, go and arrest the head of the opposition, because the police don't actually report to him - they report to the Queen. Same with the Army, the civil service, etc.
The last government did their very best to politicize these services, and I don't know exactly what she should have done, but the Queen's job, her only mission, is to prevent that happening.
Well, yes. It's not just comforting, it's also practical.
Nobody ever gets to be head of state because that position is already taken by the royal family, who in turn are expected to behave and not mix in with politics.
Stephen Fry touched on this in his book/miniseries on the US and made a pretty interesting observation: in his opinion, the flag takes the place in Americans' minds that is occupied by a royal family in other countries. The problem is that a flag can't ask a chief of government to justify his policies in the same way a monarch with decades of experience can.
As an American, I can see how having a head of state with decades of experience who's nominally higher than the chief of government, but with no formal power might help check corrupting influences and promote accountability. Of course, it's rife with problems of its own.
More realistically, how about a Constitutional amendment that designates the Vice President, in his role as President of the Senate, to be the titular Head of State for all functions ceremonial?
When someone entitles something "A Modest Proposal", they're usually referencing Swift, and are attempting to point out the absurdity of the current situation, rather than suggest a serious solution.
This is very cynical. Are we really to believe that the only part of Obama's reaction one would find lacking is his lack of theatrical anger?
I would argue that his actions are coming up short too. The simple fact of the matter is that Obama is presiding over a country that is allowing its largest businesses to gain immense profits at the cost of its taxpayers. A few examples include Goldman which is arbitraging the markets with funds borrowed at a near-zero Fed discount window and oil companies such as BP whose profits (6.2 billion EBIT in Q1) clearly indicate that the leases on which it is drilling are priced far too low and don't possibly cover the external costs of drilling.
That is besides the point. The main point of the article is that people want to see him get emotional and thats just not who he is. Its silly for people to want that... its a waste of time. But, since people will always want it, lets get someone good looking to do it and let him do his job.
If his actions are coming up short, thats very important. In fact, thats what we should be discussing. Thats where we should be pressuring him to do better. So we are, in fact, in agreement that the President's actions should be under the closest scrutiny and open to criticism that he should take into account.
The point of the article however is that the President (whoever it may be) is also called upon to do two things:
1) Seemingly react with the same emotions as the American people.
2) Take part in various ceremonial activities.
Especially with respect to the first (and to some degree with the second, though this can be debated more easily) this is absurd. Just because people are angry with something, why should the President show the same anger. At times, it may be strategically sound to do so, but at times it would be a bad idea.
This, I think, is the main idea of the article. Note that I have not mentioned any specific President or any specific disaster or event. This is a general point. If you take issue with Obama's actions, thats all well and good, but its not what the article was getting at (at least in my reading).
This covers the same point as a blog post I once read: http://t-a-w.blogspot.com/2010/05/want-democracy-get-figureh.... That post uses a ranking of countries by democracy to conclude that figurehead monarchs provide the most democracy of the types of government examined.
I think that there is nothing else besides the New York Times behind the "national campaign to get President Obama to emote." It is hard for me to believe that the government is taking the problem seriously without meetings between the president and the BP's leadership (as what happened during the financial crisis).
Having a popular 'government celebrity' (king or queen) can be bad even if they have no formal power. It can become a sort of national lynchpin or dependency and contribute to political instabillity as in Thailand.
I suspect the king of Thailand actually provides stability rather than instability--imagine how bad the coups and so forth would be if there wasn't someone who could effectively back one faction over another in these disputes.
the portrayal of monarchy by the pro-collectivist modern era is a caricature. monarchy is an actual method of organization, not a broken form of democracy. for a contemporary example see private corporations, the military, and certain religious institutions.
Obama should have declared the entire fiasco a National Emergency and repossessed the entire operation, repossessed all the engineering information and subcontracted out the fix to Exxon under the command of the Army Corps of Engineers or better, DARPA. If BP is the first and only operator drilling at 5k feet and royally screwed the pooch than how worse of a job could Exxon do?
When the President of the United States thinks that BP is the best we can do, we are all well and truly boned. Not because that is obviously not true, but because the President has more or less abdicated his power.
This is a capitalist country, which means that personal property is sacred and cannot be taken without due process of law. Imagine if the President could just take over whatever property he wanted as long as it was for "national security." The abuses of power would be incredible! Point is, Obama neither has, nor should have the power to repossess the operation.
Hey sp332, I'm with you. We are a capitalist country and personal property is sacrosanct. In an era where the Government is looking to takeover virtually everything in sight from how health care works, to how we make cars to how Wall Street operates how can this calamity be off limits? If media reports are to be believed [1][2], which are the best we can go on at the moment, I have no doubt that BP will be shown to have been negligent and hope against hope, criminally at that. I can only hope that BP execs do hard time for this.
Will you say that this is not an environmental catastrophe? As an environmental catastrophe is this incident not a national security incident? How can the only answer to this problem be that BP be in charge of fixing it? It would be like saying that Lehman Brothers broke the economy and they are the only ones who can fix it. Obviously that is not the case as evidenced by the Governments extreme, forceful and more than a handfull of people would say illegal intervention.
Where is the extreme, forceful intervention the nation is begging for now? How can the POTUS be impotent when we need the "buck" to stop with someone who has the power to do something meaningful?
Ya, I'm mashing a whole bunch of things together but, eh, whatever. When virtual numbers flash on a screen in the wrong directions the world basically comes to a halt and there is no limit to the power and absolute authority of the Government. But when an actual real life, physical catastrophe is at hand, the Government is impotent and has no tools or imagination at it's disposal.
Probably just hasty typing, but in order to "repossess", one must first "possess", either actually or as a point of law. Obama and/or the federal government never possessed either the operation or the engineering information.
However under all the various and sundry legislation enacted over many years governing environmental matters and matters on the high seas, you would think somewhere in there the POTUS has power to make some sort of executive action that would have taken more control (and that this is still possible to do).
Apart from the legal issues, I am extremely unconvinced that having the government suddenly take over all the equipment which is currently being used to fix it would have done any good. Handing over control to someone who has no idea what they're doing rarely fixes problems.
It does seem to me that the US government could be doing more with the cleanup, though, instead of just standing on the sidelines and shouting "Hey BP! Fix this faster!"
I mean, if I caused an accident on the freeway and crashed into a truck, causing toxic waste to spill out across twelve lanes of the interstate, would the Highway Patrol show up and tell me to clean up the mess I made? Hell no, they'd use government resources to clean the mess up as quickly as possible, and worry about punishing me for my negligence later.
Could do more as in "let BP and Louisiana dredge sand to build barrier islands in front of vulnerable marshes"?
I just can't figure out what's up with Obama's pocket veto of that....
Or as we recently learned, turning the Netherlands down flat when they offered to come over and help. I think I read that offers by 13 nations have been refused.
OK, you made me google it myself because this all sounded very suspicious.
When I googled the dredge stuff the first link was from RedState, a hyper-partisan republican blog, so that made me more suspicious. I found some info such as this, http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/co..., where the Corps of Engineers has approved one such project to test the idea. And I found info about BP pushing back on paying for these projects. But I definitely did not find anything about an "Obama pocket veto". Except for Republican propaganda sites.
The Dutch refusal stuff, after wading through all the republican propaganda blogs, apparently has to do with some law I didn't understand.
The refusal of Dutch help is due to section of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920[1], also colloquially known as the "Jones Act." Basically, like Wikipedia says, anything going by water between two US ports, or to/from the same US port, with no stops at an international port in between, must go by way of US-flagged ships. The Dutch ships that can do the cleaning would obviously be going from Louisiana to the Gulf and then back Louisiana, or from Louisiana to the Gulf and then to Mississippi, etc. That would be a violation of the Jones Act.
There have been waivers[2] granted in the past, but very rarely. Some are advocating for a Jones Act waiver[3][4], but that's considered unlikely, due to a mix of politics, business, and possible stubbornness.
As [2] notes, waivers have been used as recently as Katrina for national emergencies, which this most certainly is. It's hard for me to imagine that any pressure group could politically get away with resisting a long term waiver if the spotlight was turned onto them, and it's hard to see why they'd do it in the first place, since this is a unique situation where there's more than enough work to go around for all.
But let's cut to the chase, has Team Obama even tried?
And just how long did the Corps of Engineers take to approve one 2 mile long barrier island test?
"Obama pocket veto" is my term for his sitting on the direct request from Republican governor Jindal for weeks (more than a month as I recall) before even approving that one "test".
You may dislike the truth as presented by "hyper-partisan republican blog[s]", but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that half or more of the nation isn't listening to those sorts of sources. Or do you expect the NYT et. al. to honestly and quickly report on Team Obama's failings?
You might want to listen to the Ragin' Cajun James Carville on this general subject (full disclosure, I'm half Cajun myself and my mom grew up pretty close to the coast) for another partisan view.
I don't think that delegating to Exxon would be the smartest idea. The big reason this happened was because excessive interference by high level BP executives.
The president could demand all engineering information be made available, and let the Coast Guard/ACE/DARPA manage the operation, without "repossessing" any real property.
would you ever build a bajzillion dollar oil rig in the vicinity of a country which had decided to magically nationalize one, for any reason?
not if you could find oil anywhere else.
confiscating BP's equipment and whatever the hell else is not the fastest way to get the mess cleaned up. it's the fastest way to guarantee oil companies think twice about engaging in any capital construction projects in the vicinity of the united states.
The main point is that the symbolic and ceremonial responsibilities of reflecting the character and attitude of the nation fall on someone with a real job, while most other countries have a separation of concerns. On the other hand, the United States has a long-standing tradition of treating the government as an enemy rather than an extension of national identity, so we wouldn't actually have that much for such a figurehead to do. The closest that you get is the First Lady taking up A Cause and enacting change at the philanthropic and national-awareness level.
[1] The original "Modest Proposal" put forth the idea of eating Irish babies as a solution to feeding the poor in London, and is regarded as one of the finest satires in the English tradition. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal