As for my students defending AIG, I did in fact try to make it a teachable moment, but I have to say I was pretty surprised. I agree that my anecdote is not evidence but I think my point — we are a pretty conservative nation, especially when compared to other wealthy nations when it comes to government programs — stands.

The socialist rhetoric I referred to was inspired by the fiery Lind fantasy speech — I kind of liked it but it also seemed very Grapes of Wrath, and that mooment in history has passed.

Maybe little hobbits will be lowered during the next Obama speech…

His approval numbers are still hovering in the low 50s–we’ll see if this latest, Greatest Speech Evah will turn things around for him. Or more importantly, if it successfully intimidated President Snowe and President Baucus. My guess on the latter is no.

Nice Tap reference, John!

Regardless of whether or not there’s an audience for “socialist rhetoric” in the US, I would point out that the signs spotted at town halls enjoying politicians to “keep your hands off of my Medicare” and the uproar over Bush’s efforts to privatize SS in 2005 would seem to suggest that these *liberal* social welfare programs are, in fact, quite popular.

As to the example of your student–I will admit that it’s a tough anecdote to refute. Mostly b/c there’s no context. Does your student work at the St. Regis Hotel, where the AIG execs were living it up? If not, it is not clear to me that hir job would have been affected if the AIG execs hadn’t splurged on their trip.

As to whether or not hir job is in danger if bailed-out execs are afraid to get caught living it up….Well, maybe this sounds too class-warriorish of me, but the notion of trickle-down economics is pretty much empirically bankrupt at this point. Massive growth in income among the wealthiest Americans has accompanied miniscule income growth among everyone else.

For a recent example, see yesterday’s report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Between 2002-7 (the meat of Bush’s presidency), the average income for the bottom 90% of Americans went up 0.8%. The top 1% saw their incomes rise 14.6%. How’s that trickling down working?

I’m sympathetic to your student’s position. I am often loathe to sound “socialist” enough to tell people what their “true” interest is. I often like to let people decide that for themselves. But the fact is, there’s a basic economic ignorance on the part of your student if s/he thinks that the most efficient way for hir to earn a living wage is to pay AIG execs $85 billion and have them spend hundreds of thousands of dollars at a 5 star hotel. (And again–if your student doesn’t work at the St. Regis hotel where this event was held, I would say with 100% certainly that the most efficient way for your student to earn a living wage is *not* to pay execs a $85 billion bailout in the hopes that they might, someday in the future, splurge at hir place of employment.)

Some might say that your students’ defense of the bailout was a teachable moment. Maybe just not in the way you’ve suggested here.

I just don’t think there’s much of an audience for that sort of talk here in the U.S., though the English professors in my neighborhood would certainly be receptive to it.

Food for thought: I just taught a class in which two students defended AIG’s blowout at a five-star hotel after getting a bailout from taxpayers.

Did the students defending AIG come from wealthy families? No even close… one is a bellhop worried about his employer losing business because fatcats are reluctant to get caught living it up.

I’m just saying we’re not a nation of class warriors. Meanwhile, might H-ann and her readers be willing to concede that the Obama speech revived some momentum and reminded Dems not to blow it?

just a thought

How about if Theodore Roosevelt is lecturing Congress on the malefactors of great wealth in, say, 1907, and the senior senator from the Pennsylvania Railroad, I mean from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, mutters something about “@#%&# mustachiod anarchists?” I think the resulting fray would have been well worth clicking on the “Pay Per View” option at whatever the asking price, probably about $5 (in silver dollars) back in the day.

On the national level, Republicans have definitely been more willing to go for the demagogic attacks than Democrats, at least for most of my lifetime. I didn’t notice this growing up in Massachusetts, since a lot of the people I knew who were strongly liberal didn’t pull any punches when it came to derogatory comments about conservatives. In fact, one of the reasons I became a conservative was because the limited number of conservatives I met seemed to be much more open-minded and less apt to use demagogic slogans than the other side. This hugely affected my perceptions of both sides for a number of years, and I have only gradually come to realize and accept that the situation is very different in the country as a whole.

Interrupting his speech to lecture Mr. “You Lie” would have been a great lesson in the lies and distortions of this summer’s appalling “debate” on health care reform–but since the tenor of his speech was all about how both parties have good ideas, and both parties can cooperate to win, I suppose that would have been too “divisive.”

Imagine if a Dem had screamed that during a Bush speech!