Pulling Up the Stakes

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."

– Rousseau, On the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men

While property in some form is possible without liberty, the contrary is inconceivable.

-- Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom

In this week's sift:

• Property vs. Freedom. You won't often hear the debate over SOPA/PIPA phrased that way, because Property is supposed to be Freedom's inseparable partner. But they actually have a fairly contentious relationship.
• The Frontrunner Turns Into a Newt and other horserace notes. A wild week of Republican politics tempts me into covering the horserace instead of the issues.
• We Need More Bureaucrats and other short notes. IRS budget cuts increased the deficit and hurt customer service. One million signatures to recall Walker. Obama wants to see Betty White's birth certificate. That famous McDonald's coffee lawsuit might not be what you think. And more.
• Last week's most popular post. Four Fantasy Issues of the Right got 167 views. Under the radar, Why I'm Not a Libertarian continues to rack up about 80-90 views a week, and is over 20,000 now. The most-clicked link was What If Tim Tebow Were Muslim?.
• This week's challenge. Don't let the media filter tomorrow's State of the Union address for you. Watch it yourself before anybody tells you what's in it.

The sequel to Escalating Bad Faith got crowded out again.

Profit and Property, or People?

When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

-- Martin Luther King

In this week's sift:

• Four Fantasy Issues of the Right. It's hard to have the political debate our country really needs, when so much of what we end up talking about is baseless: creeping Sharia, things Obama never said, voter fraud, and lies about Obama's birth, religion, or political philosophy.
• What is Job Creation? What keeps our businesses from hiring isn't lack of capital, it's lack of customers.
• Truth Vigilantes and other short notes. The Times gets an earful from its readers.  Defending corpse desecration doesn't support our troops. What if Tebow were Muslim? Colbert's Super-PAC demonstrates the absurdity of our campaign-finance system. The Republican establishment shuts down criticism of Romney. The charming geekiness of Vi Hart. And more.
• Last week's most popular post.The Four Flavors of Republican got 441 views on this blog, and was also popular on Daily Kos. The most-clicked link was Explaining Socialism to a Republican.
• This week's challenge. Friday is the anniversary of the Citizens United decision that expanded the corporate personhood doctrine and let corporate money flood into our elections. Occupy the Courts is organizing a national day of protest at federal court buildings around the country.

The sequel to last week's Escalating Bad Faith is delayed to next week.

Inventing the Narrative

When we talk about the process, then, we are talking, increasingly,
not about “the democratic process,”
or the general mechanism affording the citizens of a state a voice in its affairs,
but the reverse: a mechanism seen as so specialized
that access to it is correctly limited to its own professionals,
to those who manage policy and those who report on it,
to those who run the polls and those who quote them,
to those who ask and those who answer the questions on the Sunday shows,
to the media consultants, to the columnists, to the issues advisers,
to those who give the off-the-record breakfasts and to those who attend them;
to that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out,
the narrative of public life.

– Joan Didion, “Insider Baseball” (1988)

In this week's sift:

• Escalating Bad Faith, Part I: Recess Appointments. The controversy over President Obama's recent recess appointments sounds boring and technical, but it's a symptom of a cancer in our democracy that has been growing for decades.
• The Four Flavors of Republican. How NeoCons, Corporatists, Theocrats, and Libertarians co-operate and conflict.
• My Boring Primary Season and other short notes. Ah, for the halcyon days of 2007, when presidential candidates by the dozen vied for my attention all summer. Mitt as "locust capitalist". Why "equality of opportunity" is a risky meme for conservatives. The real lesson of Kim Jong Il. Santorum's Grampa was "free" to owe his soul to the company store. Montana's Supreme Court rejects corporate personhood. And more.
• Last week's most popular post wasn't that popular: Under-reported Stories of 2011 got 143 views. The most-clicked link was the Salon Hack List.
• This week's challenge: If you don't already know, find out who the likely congressional candidates are in your district, and whether you have a senatorial election this year.

Predictions

I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years . . . Ever since, I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions. -- Wilbur Wright, 1908

Within the next few decades, autos will have folding wings that can be spread when on a straight stretch of road so that the machine can take to the air. -- Eddie Rickenbacker, 1924

In this week's sift:

• Is a Boom Coming in 2012?Karl Smith and Matt Yglesias predict one, for not-entirely-crazy reasons.
• Iowa Preview. Santorum? Could it really be Santorum?
• Under-reported Stories of 2011. While the media was telling you about Charlie Sheen and Kim Kardashian, some genuinely important things were happening.
• Strategic Voting and other short notes. When does it make sense to vote in the other party's primary? WikiLeaks has a priceless commercial. What real 3DTV looks like. Why Romney won't release his taxes. And two good Krugman columns.

The Yearly Sift of 2011

What's past is prologue.

-- William Shakespeare, The Tempest

In this week's sift:

• Sifting the Sifts of 2011: Escape From Bizarro World. This year I got tired of playing whack-a-mole with bogus news stories, and instead focused more on the question of how the Right creates and maintains its bizarre worldview.
• Politics in 2011: The Tragedy of the Tea Party. The main story of 2011 was the assumption of power by the Tea Party candidates elected in 2011, which exposed all the Party's tragic flaws.
• The Sifted Books of 2011: Rethinking Economics. I didn't set out to have a theme in the books I reviewed, but there was one: looking for a new way to think about economics.
• The State of the Sift. The Sift got lot more page-views after it moved to weeklysift.com in July -- half of them from one post.

Pressures From Below

Silence never won rights. They are not handed down from above; they are forced by pressures from below.

-- Roger Baldwin

In this week's sift:

• Detention Without Trial. President Obama isn't going to veto the NDAA after all. How big a problem is that?
• Christopher Hitchens and the Politics of Atheism. I come to bury Hitchens, not to praise him. But all the same, there are some things you have to give him credit for.
• Victoryish, and other short notes. What's the right way to mark the end of the Iraq War? NPR can't find the jobs that a millionaires' tax would kill. Are co-ops the future? More Rick Perry parodies. Links to my holiday stories. And more.
• Last week's most popular post. In an extraordinarily slow week on the Sift, Perry and Parody was the most popular post with 107 views. (Whenever I have a low number to report, somebody always reminds me that around 300 people access the Sift in ways that don't show up in these statistics.)
• This week's challenge. As you plan your holiday donations to charity, check out the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania. Don't just give your money away, give it away as effectively as possible.

Campaign Update

It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.

-- attributed to just about everybody

In this week's sift:

• Your 2012 Deep Background Briefing. Forget the day-to-day of who's up and who's down. What's this campaign going to be about?
• Evangelicals and the New Newt. Mainstream pundits are puzzled by how the religious right can rally to a morally challenged Newt Gingrich. It's really not that mysterious.
• Perry and Parody. Rick Perry's "Strong" is the most disliked and most parodied political ad ever.
• Hallelujah and other short notes. Now that corporations are people, they have reason to sing the Hallelujah Chorus. Not even rats are so ratty that they don't have empathy. What "freedom" means to MasterCard. Jon Stewart declares war on Christmas. The Santa Venn diagram. And more on news deserts.
• Last week's most popular post. Liberal Media, Conservative Manipulation was the most popular post for the second week in a row.

Have an unchallenging week, everybody.