Day: August 25, 2014

In the multiple threads we've had here in the Ferguson incidents and the operation and obligations of the police, we had a request to talk about the long-standing poor relationship of African Americans with the police. Frankly, I think that the long history of this poor relationship pretty well mirrors the status of African Americans in the American community. When you are subject to slavery and apartheid for most of your history here, you aren't going to see the country's police forces as allies and friends. On the other hand, throughout our history, newly immigrant populations have documented problems with over-policing as well. Irish and Italian immigrants in particular lived with the kind of policing that African Americans have always been subject to and that's reflective of the wishes and prejudices of the majority population that the politicians who direct the police are responsive to. Bu rather than rehash history, I'm going to post the Storify record of a series of Tweets from Gene Denby, the editor of NPR's Code Switch blog. In about 25 tweets, Denby breaks down why different demographics may view Ferguson and other incidents like it through very different lenses. I admire what he did here -- it is focused and too the point without fingerpointing that inspires defensive postures rather than conversation.

GOP columnist and consultant David Frum is down but not yet out on his Republican Party.

Three big trends have decisively changed the Republican Party over the past decade, weakening its ability to win presidential elections and gravely inhibiting its ability to govern effectively if it nevertheless somehow were to win. First, Republicans have come to rely more and more on the votes of the elderly, the most government-dependent segment of the population — a serious complication for a party committed to reducing government. Second, the Republican donor class has grown more ideologically extreme, encouraging congressional Republicans to embrace ever more radical tactics. Third, the party’s internal processes have rigidified, in ways that dangerously inhibit its ability to adapt to changing circumstances. The GOP can overcome the negative consequences of these changes and, in time, surely will. The ominous question for Republicans is, How much time will the overcoming take?

And yet... he still delusionally believes that a multiethnic, socially tolerant conservatism is ready to take over in the cyclic response to the Liberal Obama years, just as the alleged Compassionate Conservative Bush years followed the Liberal Clinton years, just as the law and order conservative Nixon years (a contradiction in terms) following the chaos of the liberal 1960's. Just as, more generally, small government Reaganism was in response to New Deal Rooseveltism.