Category Archives: ethos

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendos in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, March 9-15, 2014

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corporate career success: aka, “giving up your womb”

culture of work: Paul Ryan’s code language for “lazy black folks”. (see below: “inner city,” “human society”, “middle class” and “real conversation about race”.

decisive: another of the qualities Obama is said to be lacking. His indecisiveness “emboldens”(see below)  the Russians, Syrians, Iranians and jihadis. (see also “muscular foreign policy” and “projecting strength”)

emboldened: the overall effect of any “feckless” Obama foreign policy on any opf the “bad guys” opposed to that policy.

feminism: in the approaching “empowered world” of “women only”, this “perfumed jargon” of relationship-building, collaboration, and encouragement will supplant the rhetoric of competition, thus fatally weakening America.

freedom of choice: it turns out that abortion rights’ activists are not arguing for a woman’s right to choose how she controls her own body, but, rather are “Satan-loving worshipers of the savage culture of death”.

human society: entirely made up by people with jobs, according to Peggy Noonan’s March 14 WSJ column.

inner city: yet another Paul Ryan euphemism for “lazy black folks”.

Keystone:  every further day it goes without approval is Obama’s way of “conducting economic warfare against the United States,” and constitutes a “blockade” of US natural gas exports.

middle class: Santorum calls this term a form of “class-envy, leftist language”

muscular foreign policy: the imperative for Obama to “man-up” in foreign policy by 1) intervening militarily in Syria, 2) intervening militarily in Iraq, 3) intervening militarily in Cuba, Venezuela or, 4) opening up all US land and water to oil and natural gas production to drive down the price of energy as a way of punishing Russia. (see also, “projecting strength”)

muzzle: a verb that should only be used to describe Democratic attempts to end or dismiss a policy discussion. Free speech, for example, is always “muzzled” by Democrats (especially the IRS).

projecting strength:  non-consequential but symbolic foreign policy bluster and bullying–what Obama fails at. (see also “muscular foreign policy,” above)

“a real conversation about race”: topics include: how and why Afro-Americans are lazy and have no habits of work, thrift, or self-discipline; how Republicans are the real progressives and liberals the real racists, and how entitlement is no substitute for accomplishment. (see also “human society,” above). Underlying sentiment to always keep in mind: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money.” (Rick Santorum)

regulatory assault: any government regulation or policy.

“stop being poor”: essentially, Paul Ryan’s nostrum to end poverty in America.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendos in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, Feb 23-March 1, 2014

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asset bubble: what a market rally is called when there’s a democratic President.

climate alarmism: the Chicken Littleization of the climate change “debate”.

cultural pressure and insistence:  the Obama admin’s relentless war on traditional, middle-class values. A fancy label for “political correctness”.

dithering: a mandatory modifier for any Dem foreign policy.

decay: the general malaise Obama has mired America in; the result of “cultural pressue and insistence” (see above).  The slow moral rot of the US.

disquisitions: scolding, grandiose Obamaseque pomposities. Lately, the target has been “disquisitions on inequality”.

gender complementarian norm: a fancy-sounding name for marriage between a man and a woman.

host: new GOP synonym for a pregnant woman.

hounding: what any government agency–especially the IRS–does when it enforces regulations, especially against Republicans.

hysteria and misinformation: the by-product of “cultural pressure and insistence” (see above). Whatever arguments and facts Dems muster in any given “debate,” such as this week’s Arizona brouhaha over “religious liberty”.

matriarchal leviathan: the intensifying modifier gives birth to a new monster: Big Mother rather than Big Brother

mischief: the overall effect of Obama’s policies and reforms (aka, “fiats”). All regulations and taxes are seen as “mischief,” as if Obama is Dennis The Menace.

privilege: mistakenly confused for accomplishment by liberals.

sacramentalizing sodomy: GOPspeak for any sex except for missionary-position hetero.

socialism: the secret creed of the Obama administration, closely allied to fascism.

trampling: what liberals always seem to do to religious freedom, especially in the recent Arizona fracas. Inevitably leads to “hysteria and misinformation”–see above.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendoes in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, Feb 8-14, 2014.

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artiste in search of his muse: (aka, “the butterfly guy”) Krauthammerspeak for anyone with a new health care policy who thus can finally give up a hated job and pursue other paths. Overnight, having an ACA health insurance policy became, in GOP talk, a scarlet badge of shame, a ripoff of America. People with health insurance are suddenly a new generation of Obamacare “poverty pimps”.

assault: (see also “runaway,” below): any Democratic policy initiative, as in “Bill Blassio’s assault on so-called ‘progressive’ unions”.

the dignity of work: Ryanspeak for relegating people to non-living-wage jobs with no benefits, day care, consistent hours or workplace safety enforcement. The hope for a decent human life, in other words, gets turned into what is sneeringly referred to as an “entitlement” (now transmuted from what is due someone based on their human dignity to a “handout” to “the takers”).

dynamism: can only be nurtured by free markets, deregulation, lower taxes, the end of environmental protection laws, etc.

industrial-age unions: the new epithet/slur for unions, akin to “trial lawyers”.

the new opportunity society: a nation of Obamacare-enabled freeloaders (aka, “parasites”).

“Progressivism”:  the emerging rhetorical strategy seems to be to always cloak this word in fright quotes as shorthand for saying that old-fashioned Progressives are really regressive, and are launching all the “wars” (see below) on progress.

runaway: any Dem policy initiative, such as “runaway regulatory reform”. Anything the GOP can’t stop.

teachers’ unions: now directly being blamed for poverty and inequality because of their “war” (see below) on charter schools and education reform.

war on….: a war on jobs, a war on small business, a war on the health care system, a war on America’s international influence and prestige, a war on economic recovery, a war on energy independence, a war on the Constitution, a war on educational reform, and a war on minorities. The mother of all wars is The War on Truth.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendoes in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, New Year’s edition, January, 2014.

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agitprop: any Democractic policy statement or any op-ed piece criticizing Tea Party positions. Anything the Dems say is propaganda; anything the Tea Party says is public policy and common sense.

anticapitalists: environmentalists.

card: any Democratic moral position. Always a cynical ploy, as in “playing the race card”. which currently characterized as being in the same suit and hand as other Democratic “cards”: fairness, victimhood, equality, justice. Away to demean all of these moral claims, and demote them to self-serving propaganda status.

civic courtesy: the indecent lack of grace Democrats exhibit every time they criticize the GOP.

consequences: often used by the GOP as a pejorative term for outcomes. “Consequences” are almost always connoted as negative–as in the phrase, “truth or consequences”. Thus, for example, the ACA is said to have nothing but “negative consequences,” whereas tax cuts have nothing but stimulative effects and positive economic outcomes.

cooperation: the new euphemism for competition.

crowd: any Democratic or liberal advocacy group,  always a nefarious, corrupt, and self-serving. e.g.: “the global warming crowd”.

disincentivizing: the overall effect of any government aid programs the GOP opposes, from unemployment benefits to food stamps. Government “handouts” are the opposite of the only force known to truly incentivize: the “free” market. Only regulation and social welfare are holding back a truly Darwinian social, moral and economic golden age.

envy: the main motivating force behind any attempts to raise taxes, regulate markets, bring charges or fines against financial institutions, or offer any form of social welfare.

favoritism:  the main motivating force for any policies helping unions and teachers. Tax breaks for Big Oil, on the other hand, are seen as neutral or even rational ways to stimulate the “free” market.

gambit: any Democratic policy initiative. Dem public policy is always propagandistic, thus nothing but a ploy.

gliding:  the aloof, “lazy” trait of Obama (when he isn’t actively trying to overturn the capitalist system). In foreign policy, Obama is said to be “gliding” when he refrains from potentially counter-productive  interventions, as in “leading from behind”. In political policy terms. he is accused of this whenever he defers to Congress, takes a vacation, or uses any of the perks of office.

hand wringing: any criticism of aggressive, interventionist foreign policy, or of any “sentimental” attempts to help the poor or needy.

lesser mortals: always used sneeringly in reference to Obama’s  hauteur. Obama is always accused of aloofly “talking down” to us “lesser mortals” whenever he makes a moral assertion, especially when pointing out inequalities. Synonyms in this word family include aloof, grandiose, preening, and arrogant.

moral relativism: a perennial GOP rhetorical meme, still employed to attack government policies protecting free speech, religious diversity, and human rights. Thus, for example, the so-called “War on Christmas” is seen as a leveling attempt at relativism, whereas Christmas itself is an absolute–just as Santa is, of course, a white man. The current debate over mandating birth control insurance coverage by Catholic  employers is also contextualized as a form of moral relativism, as if a belief in a woman’s right to choose is not a “moral” position.

narcissism: one of academia’s main character traits, (along with “an obsession with victimhood” and the drive to reduce everything to race and class politics). Rhetorically linked to “moral relativism”. What society’s “takers”are indulging in when they try to redress “oppression”.

rogue: an adjective used to describe any deviation from Tea Party orthodoxy.

steadfast resistance, refusal: any principled moral stand on an issue opposed by Democrats. Called recalcitrance or a “gambit” or “hand wringing” or “agitprop” when the Dems do it.

unrestrained growth:   a very bad thing when it comes to things the GOp opposes (such as entitlements), but a very good thing when it comes to the “animal spirits” of corporate profits and unfettered market.

victimhood: said to be one of the main Dem rhetorical meme or “card” (as in, “the race card”).  Linked in a complex semantic web to “envy”, “redistribution, “oppression”, “grievance”, “obsession with race and class,” and “fairness”.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, phrases and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, Dec. 16-17, 2013

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bureaucratic bloat: a redundancy, because, from the GOP perspective, government is inherently excessive, toxic, and unnecessary.

class warriors: anyone arguing for economic equality, equal opportunity, or the end of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

credibility and deterrence: everything the Obama/Kerry foreign policy lacks, no matter the content or the result. credibility comes from the barrel–or at least the direct threat–of a gun.

fawning: any pro-Obama editorial.

full-bore democracy: akin to “perfect Marxism,” a political ideology and practice not yet tried in America, due to liberal intransigence and re-distribution schemes. In a “full-bore” democracy, corporations are people, my friend, and corporate rights have precedence over human rights or civil rights.

half-truths, misdirections, puffery: any Obama policy statement. Everything the administration says is to be suspected of mendacity and subject to interrogration.

runaway spending: any spending; see “bloat”, above. The point is that Democrats have no self-control when it comes to government spending.

winners and losers: most characteristically used in the phrase “there are always going to be winners and losers”. A naturalizing phrase,  always used by the winners, to justify not helping the losers.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, phrases and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, Nov. 1-3, 2013

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the American people: In the rhetoric of Ted Cruz’s Manichean morality play, always under threat by any Democratic policy or initiative. Rhetorically, they serve as his ethical lodestar and source of fathomless pathos. The ACA is portrayed as an especially dire existential threat to them. Note: Democrats–or even Republicans opposed to any Cruz policy or vote–are excluded from this group.

arbritrary standards: the provisions of any Democratic policy the GOP rejects. (aka, “diktat”). In the case of the ACA, this becomes a blanket indictment of coverage for maternity care, preventive medicine, family planning, substance abuse, mammograms, etc. Other  “arbitrary” standards would include annual or lifetime reimbursement caps, rate equity for women,  and exclusions for preexisting conditions. The rhetorical irony here is that, strictly speaking all “standards” are “arbitrary”, as opposed, I suppose, to inherent, absolute, or natural. Values, morals, and ethics are all ultimately “arbitrary,” but that doesn’t make them any less defensible or legitimate. The GOP uses “arbitrary” as a pejorative term, while their policies are, on the other hand, “common sense” “model reforms” or “realistic”.

death spiral: what the ACA is purportedly headed into–all imaginary, premature, and unmitigated wishful GOP thinking.

overpriced: all aspects of the ACA, due to its “arbitrary standards”. Never mind that comparing it to the lesser coverage of current policies is comparing apples and oranges, the rhetorical purpose of this descriptor is to undercut all ACA provisions by invidious comparisons.

paternalistic: any imposition of “arbitrary standards” by the “nanny state” or the “urban, genteel elitists”. When Republicans ban abortion, they of course are being “paternalistic,” but “pro-life”. AKA, “liberal paternalism”.

Progressivism: a political, social and economic movement in the united states that lasted from the tun of the 20th Century until the Autumn of 2013, with the coming of Obamacare. progressives were especially known for their “hatred” of free markets, property, and private enterprise.

public outrage: when the GOP astroturfs a citizens’ uprising, it’s called Jacksonian democracy; when the Democrats talk about concepts such as “corporate welfare” or “the 1%,” it’s called divisive class warfare and phony or misplaced anger fomented by “special interests”. AKA, “witch hunt,” “cramdown,” “intimidation” or “inquisition”.

scheme: any Democratic bill or policy–ACA proponents pushing this “scheme” are now seen as liars, grifters, or con artists.

showered: how campaign contributions are bestowed on Democrats.

stacking: what Democrats do when they nominate anyone for an executive or judicial branch appointment.

statists: those who believe government has a role in public policy.

Parallel GOP Universes: Hyperbolic and Counter-Intuitive GOP Claims, Myths and Canards, April 30-May 6, 2013

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Mr. Summers says governments should borrow more now at near-zero interest rates to invest in future growth. But this is what we were told in 2009-2010, when Mr. Summers was in the White House, and the $830 billion stimulus was used to finance not primarily roads or bridges but more unionized teachers, higher transfer payments, and green-energy projects that have since failed. Why will it be different this time? It will only be different this time if the GOP stops blocking Obama’s call for more stimulus spending for roads and bridges.     “Debt and Growth”, WSJ
Clearly, we need faith as a component, and its just silly to say otherwise. You know the Age of Enlightenment and Reason gave way to moral relativism. And moral relativism is what led us all the way down the dark path to the Holocaust…Dark periods of history is what we arrive at when we leave God out of the equation Penny Nance, CEO, Concerned Women For America.Bet you didn’t know that the Enlightenment led right to the Holocaust.
The legislation, being worked up by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), represents the latest-and bluntest-attack on NSF by congressional Republicans seeking to halt what they believe is frivolous and wasteful research being funded in the social sciences. Last month Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) successfully attached language to a 2013 spending bill that prohibits NSF from funding any political science research for the rest of the fiscal year unless its director certifies that it pertains to economic development or national security. Smith’s draft bill, called the “High Quality Research Act,” would apply similar language to NSF’s entire research portfolio across all the disciplines it supports. “US Lawmaker Proposes New Criteria for Choosing NSF Grants,” Science.The end of the Enlightnment.
On Fox News last night Senator Lindsey Graham drew parallels between the Obama administration’s response to the Boston Marathon bombing and the 9/11 attacks in Benghazi, saying it “sounds like Susan Rice all over again.” “Right after Benghazi [they said] there’s no evidence of an al-Qaeda connection here,” Graham told Sean Hannity. Graham says the administration downplayed the idea of a “broader plot” in the Boston bombing and portrayed it as an isolated, “spontaneous” event. “The more you know about these two guys, they certainly didn’t learn all this in the bottom of their basement,” he added. “This administration doesn’t want to admit . . . bin Laden’s dead, but radical Islam’s on the rise.” Graham warned. “We need to up our game.”   “Graham Sees Similarities Between Boston and Benghazi,” National Review.

They see parallels between EVERYTHING and Benghazi. Call it BDS—Benghazi Derangement Syndrome.
This all fits what the TrueSpeak Institute’s Jim Guirard calls Obama’s “harm offensive.” The one-time chief of staff to Louisiana’s late Democratic senator Russell Long says, “Obama’s strategy, tactics, and constant modus operandi seem to be ‘First, do all possible harm’ to the public in managing the mandated spending limitations, and then blame the damage, the suffering, and — in the case of airline safety — the deadly danger on the Republicans.”… Obama is doing something diabolical: harming and endangering Americans so they will scream for more spending. Targeting the people this way confirms that Obama’s reign has little to do with good intentions and lots to do with swelling Washington’s budget and deepening its penetration in our lives. “Sequester Cynicism,” National Review. Another impeachable offense that the American public are inexplicably overlooking.
As homosexuals come out of the closet, Christians go into it. “Authenticity” is highly prized in society today, provided that what one feels falls safely within the dictates of political correctness. Sports analyst Chris Broussard stepped briefly outside of the Christian closet on Monday and paid the price for it. “Personally I don’t believe that you can live an openly homosexual lifestyle or an openly premarital sex [lifestyle] between heterosexuals. If you’re openly living that type of lifestyle, the Bible says you know them by their fruits, it says that’s a sin,” Broussard said on ESPN. “If you’re openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be, not just homosexuality, adultery, fornication, premarital sex between heterosexuals, whatever it may be. I think that’s walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ.”   “A Sportscaster Comes Out As A Christian,” The American Spectator. That’s right– middle-aged white, American male Christians are among the most oppressed.

Freedom From or Freedom To?: Politiscripting Obama’s Second Term

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President Obama used his second inaugural address to establish some throughlines for his entire second term. The emerging keywords/contrasts in the speech were

journey/fixed set of rights

principle/absolutism

politics/spectacle/

collective action/individual freedom

reasoned debate/name-calling

As James Fallows argues on The Atlantic website:

The rhetorical and argumentative purpose of the speech as a whole was to connect what Obama considers the right next steps for America — doing more things “together,” making sure that everyone has an equal chance, tying each generation’s interests to its predecessors’ and its successors’ — with the precepts and ideals of the founders, rather than having them be seen as excesses of the modern welfare state.

As in the one-sentence summary at the start of the speech, Obama wants to claim not just Lincoln but also Jefferson, Madison, Adams, George Washington, and the rest as guiding spirits for his kind of progressivism. In this passage he works toward that end by numbering among “our forebears” — those honored ancestors who fought to perfect our concepts of liberty and of union — the likes of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martin Luther King and other veterans of Selma including still-living Rep. John Lewis, and the protestors 44 years ago at the Stonewall.

Right on cue (and speaking of “name-calling”), the Republican commentariat has likewise wasted no time laying out their own rhetorical maps. Snides and sneers prevail, calling Obama a “dogged collectivist” (Jennifer Rubin); an elitist who wants us all to bow to his “superior moral purposes” (the Wall Street Journal editorial page); “alienating”, “sour”, “paranoid”, “self-pitying” and “strange”  (Peggy Noonan);  “untrustworthy” (Ramesh Ponnuru); and, of course, a pusher of “big government” (Fred Barnes).  These commentators take strongest exceptions to Obama’s “progressive myth” (aka, “the journey”), which runs counter to their bedrock belief that “the primary task of government is the protection of a fixed set of rights from ever-changing threats” (Ponnuru),  They seem to be in great fear of what Gerald Seib calls Obama’s “pent-up agenda,” his “misplaced” emphasis to “roll over his foes”, or, as Erick Erickson puts it, Obama’s inclination to make people “the subjects of government, not citizens in charge of it”. They see Obama as one super-demonic “threat”.

At the heart of the fray is Obama’s contention in his speech that “individual freedom requires collective action”. This runs entirely counter to, say, the Journal’s claim of Obama’s vision of an “activist, expansive government”, with “activism” being at least as much of a pejorative as “community organizer” was in Obama’s first campaign. Denying collectivism and almost any moral dimension to government, the Republican right offers nothing new, but only their unwavering counter-agenda:

Probably more than any other party in the world, the Republicans have in recent decades stood unflinchingly for the cause of liberty abroad, and, at home, with a bit more uncertainty, for limited, constitutional government and for the principle that government exists to serve free men and free markets, not the reverse. (William Kristol)

Government vs. markets is one succinct distillation of the principles underlying the endless and debilitating gridlock and rancor to come. They essentialize government as something alien and other, as a hydra-headed entity that has a mysterious life of its own. They do not see it as shared sacrifice and purpose, as an expression of collective will. Obama’s head may explode as he tries to figure out how the vision of a collective city on a hill, whose whole exceeds the sum of its parts, has been reduced to markets, being left alone, and thinly-veiled Social Darwinism; how the “freedom to” create something new in the world has degenerated into “freedom from” any binding and ennobling social obligation.

Republicans have a thousand ways to describe encroachments on their freedom, but seem to have run out of words to describe what they want to do with that freedom. They are “absolute” in their irrational hatred of government. They are not willing, to use Obama’s own words, “take the risks that make this country great”. They reject his paradoxical, “united we stand” dictum that “preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action”.

Republicans’ War on Green Energy and Their Curious Born-Again Populism

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While the last couple of weeks have been absorbed with gun control and the “fiscal cliff,” the Wall Street Journal editors have also been uncommonly obsessed with energy issues, mostly contrasting “green energy” with fracking.  The five editorials between Dec. 17-Jan 4 on these two subjects paint the usual Manichean world of growth vs. regulation, and “market-driven” natural gas investments vs. “trendy eco projects”. The key editorial in this sequence, “The Jackson Damage” (12/27), lays all the blame for high unemployment at the feet of retiring EPA Director and she-devil Lisa Jackson, whose “aggressive and punitive” regulators have “contributed to business uncertainty and stole dollars otherwise available for private investment.”

At the beating heart of this robbery are Obama’s “repressed green id” and the risible Democratic bias toward “racial justice and economic redistribution”. This bizarre psychoanalysis of the environmental movement seems confused insofar as it pits the desire for social justice, labeled as elitist and “anti-growth”, against American workers’ best interests.

A further twist of this inverted logic occurs in the Jan. 2 editorial, “Crony Capitalism Blowout,” which summons Republicans to a “new populist message” based on–wait for it- less corporate regulation, fewer constraints on corporate profit, lower taxes and less government. In this brave new populist America, “the social service planners who can’t run health care, education, or public housing” will be eclipsed by small businesses, investors, and the affluent. The ants (“those who save their money”) will triumph over the grasshoppers (“those who spend their money”).

But the ants are also due a huge tax break because the $5 million exemption on the estate tax is a “pittance for 50 years of work and thrift”, and should be raised. Only in GOP la-la-land is $5 million a “pittance”. Populism spreads to the 1%!

We Build That: The Re-emergence of Obama’s Communitarian Script

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President Obama’s election night victory speech marked a return from political exile of a rhetoric of communitarianism, a turn toward an ethic of caring and sharing. The sense that the whole  of society is greater than the sum of its parts; that individualism is not the ultimate answer to the question of “what is a good life?”, and that we cannot be fulfilled if we deny our ties to others–all of these sentiments drove the speech.

Right away, for example, after talking of the need to continually be “perfecting our union” (union thus having a double meaning: our state and our common identity), Obama talks of “you” (meaning all of us–no more 47% or 99%) “reaffirming the spirit.” This identifiable “spirit”  (newly “reaffirmed”–a religious concept at heart) that has “lifted the country” is much more than the belief in “our individual dreams”, it is also “a belief that…we are an American family, and we rise or fall together as one nation and one people.”

Talk about the unitary executive! Talk about family values! Call it collectivism or unitarianism or communitarianism, what it amounted to in the speech is a radical rejection of Romney/Ryan/ Ayn Rand Social Darwinism.

What values are most worth caring about in this big family? Spoiler alert: not tax cuts, the sainthood of “the entrepreneur”, self-deportation, radical deregulation, or forcible transvaginal ultrasounds. Instead, we witness the re-emergence of some of the unmentionables, the family members hidden during the campaign: redressing inequality, doing something about a “warming planet,” turning America  back into a “generous…compassionate…tolerant” county again, and so forth.  It’s been a long time since privatization has been made to seem so small-minded and mendacious.

To make sure we don’t miss the point, he later returns to this communitarian rhetoric, talking of our “shared destiny”, our “obligations” and “responsibilities”. He even takes on “American exceptionalism” by inverting its Republican connotation of world dominance by saying “what makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth.”  Even patriotism is honored, but as part of a “responsibility” for “love and charity and duty and patriotism”. Responsibilities as well as rights–a radical re-balancing of the national moral equilibrium–suddenly, magically, we are, once again, “greater than the sum of our individual ambitions.”

In a single speech, Obama reaffirmed what the New Yorker editors argued in their Oct. 25 endorsement of Obama:

The choice is clear. The Romney-Ryan ticket represents a constricted and backward-looking vision of America: the privatization of the public good. In contrast, the sort of public investment championed by Obama—and exemplified by both the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Affordable Care Act—takes to heart the old civil-rights motto “Lifting as we climb.” That effort cannot, by itself, reverse the rise of inequality that has been under way for at least three decades. But we’ve already seen the future that Romney represents, and it doesn’t work.

The reëlection of Barack Obama is a matter of great urgency. Not only are we in broad agreement with his policy directions; we also see in him what is absent in Mitt Romney—a first-rate political temperament and a deep sense of fairness and integrity. A two-term Obama Administration will leave an enduringly positive imprint on political life. It will bolster the ideal of good governance and a social vision that tempers individualism with a concern for community. Every Presidential election involves a contest over the idea of America. Obama’s America—one that progresses, however falteringly, toward social justice, tolerance, and equality—represents the future that this country deserves

Maybe it’s too much to hope that we are  more than a country that knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Maybe we have at least temporarily undermined a rhetoric of cold market reasoning; maybe, in the light of common day, we can collectively turn back to that project of “perfecting” our “union.”