January 2012

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California’s not-so-stringent legal ethics education

by Tim Kowal on January 29, 2012

Every three years, members of the California State Bar have to complete a minimum of 25 hours of continuing legal education (“CLE”).  These include four hours of specifically approved “legal ethics” training.  CLE hours typically run from about $35 to $50 or so per hour, of $875 to $1,250 per reporting period.  Not going to break anyone’s bank—these are lawyers, after all.  But catching up on hours every third January tightens the budget a bit. 

Finishing up my final hour this afternoon, I was struck by the quiz at the end.  Check out the instructions at the top:

image

Passing score is 14% on a 20-question on a true/false exam!  That’s 3 out of 20.  I would have had to actually try to deviate that far from the 50% score I could have gotten by random guessing. 

It made me wonder whether the CLE requirements are really designed to improve the quality of lawyering in the state, or whether, like the State Bar’s annual dues form, they’re just padding the bill.  

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Newt Fatigue

by Tim Kowal on January 24, 2012

My patience with Newt is about up.  I was willing to overlook the fact that he’s a ball of contradictions with a short temper when he was at least bringing sanity and big, fun ideas to the debates.  And, being a red-blooded conservative American, I do love a good zing on the media.  But when he attacked the free market just to take Mitt down a peg or two, it irked me.  And since then, that mean old political operative turned lobbyist is all I see. 

Sure, I’d rather Mitt had made his wealth as a creative inventor a la Steve Jobs than as a financier (though they are two sides of the same free market coin).  Stacking finance against lobbying, however, I’d take even a Gordon Gekko over a Boss Tweed.  Flitting between public office (which doesn’t pay a lot) and powerful lobbying firms (which do) is the very sort of power brokering, Washington insiderism everyone, myself included, is getting really fed up with. 

In political Rochambeau, Jobs beats Gekko, but Gekko beats Tweed.  

Count me a happy Mitt backer. 

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The Best Argument in Favor of Capital Punishment

by Tim Kowal on January 17, 2012

Christopher Carr comments that “if we’re going to have capital punishment, we shouldn’t sugarcoat or whitewash it. We should have public gladiatorial competition or hangings with children in attendance. If we’re going to be barbarians, let’s at least be barbarians with balls. There’s a real deterrent right there.” 

Indeed, it would be a deterrent.  But not a deterrent from barbarism, as Christopher calls it.  A deterrent from acting with moral clarity.  I explained this in response to my cohort’s post, The Best Argument Against Capital Punishment, as follows:

Indeed, the taking of human life—even justifiably—takes a toll on a right-minded person. However, this truth resides in a layer of abstraction that includes other particulars of human political organization. Local police are called upon to use reasonable force, extending often to deadly force, in the discharge of their duties. In some instances, civilians must kill in their own self-defense or in the defense of others, and in so doing are justified by the law.

At a slightly higher level of abstraction, we can also say that jailers who lock up human beings continuously deprive these individuals of their liberty. Sheriffs who enforce on civil judgments must, in the course of their duties, deprive defendants of their property.

What is the common thread in all of these cases? A man who has defrauded another has no moral right to the property he holds as a result of his fraud. A sheriff thus does not deprive the fraudster of “property” in the [proper] understanding of the word. A man who is convicted of crimes of violence has forfeited his moral right to liberty, and thus the jailer deprives him of nothing by locking him in a cage.

Similarly, in a case where a human being has intentionally and imminently threatened the life of another, he is deemed by moral reason to have forfeited his moral right to be free from mortal threat to his own life. A man who kills in self-defense not only has committed no moral wrong: he has saved one innocent life at the expense of none. His courage profits the world an invaluable gift.

What difference is there, then, in the taking of a life forfeited through aggression in the moment of that aggression, and the taking of a life forfeited through aggression at a later time upon conviction through a due process of law? In moral reason, there is none. The decision to kill another in self-defense is no different than the decision to kill an individual convicted of murder and sentenced through due process to death. In each case, that individual has forfeited his life.

Still, your point is well taken: aggression actually perceived by the senses in the moment of passion better satisfies the moral faculty than does a court judgment many months or years later. There is a difference, however, between a moral faculty that is unpersuaded and one that is inoperative. Beings who have moral reason must also have the moral courage to see it carried out. A man who refuses to execute because he is unconvinced the life is truly already forfeit is courageous for the same reason as he who carries out the order who is convinced of the moral forfeiture. A man who does not believe in moral forfeiture, however, lacks moral reason to begin with.

I take it by Christopher’s comment that he is unpersuaded that life can ever be deemed forfeit by acts of mortal aggression against innocent human life.  We will have to disagree on that point.  However, to those who do not share that view, then obviously it would not profit the human race anything to muddy our moral faculties by infusing more violence into the death penalty process.  Assuming due process has been given (this is no small assumption, granted, but let’s not fight the hypothetical), then what good is there in making the ultimate act more emotional, more gut-wrenching, more tormenting to the tender feelings of the community?  Think back to the fraudster who has forfeited his right to a sum of money: should we collect damages by taking his family’s home instead of “sugarcoating” or “whitewashing” it by levying his bank account?  Or the jailer who has to deprive prisoners of their liberty: should he dangle images of the prisoner’s family in front of him to cause the jailer to witness the anguish the prisoner feels?  Or the victim who kills his assailant in self-defense:  does he owe a moral obligation to defend himself in the most violent manner available to him so that he fully appreciates the gravity of what he’s done?

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No, Americans are not “operationally liberal”

by Tim Kowal on January 14, 2012

Responding to my demurrer to “the old saw that Americans are ideologically conservative but operationally liberal,” Yeggmen sticks up for the saw: 

what researchers have (repeatedly) done is get a bunch of people together and have them fill out a long and comprehensive political questionnaire. They ask them to choose an ideological label, vague questions about principles (e.g., whether the government should do more or less), and ask them thousands of questions on specific policies in order to ascertain the ideological character of their policy preferences.

Here’s what they found:

In the aggregate, Americans are always operationally liberal on average.
They prefer policies through which the government does and spends more to solve social
problems. And they are always symbolically conservative on average: they consistently prefer the
conservative label to the liberal one.

With respect, to explain the saw is not to defend it.  My argument is not that Americans do act consistently with their conservative self-identification.  My argument is that if Americans are “operationally liberal,” it’s because they’ve been painted into a corner.  As I wrote on Yeggman’s blog,

one might say Americans are “operationally liberal” who support laws like RLUIPA, or national education reforms, etc. Point being, liberals have changed the way political structures can be influenced, and conservatives have to play by these rules. For example, I might oppose federal dollars being spent on local schools. But a liberal California court changed the way residents paid for their children’s education, resulting in the passage of Prop 13 by concerned homeowners who suddenly lost the value of their investments due to the ruling, which ultimately wound up starving many California schools. ESL and other programs required by law, as well as overhead for liberal teachers unions also use up limited local funds. Am I “operationally liberal” to approve of federal funds or other national reforms to keep the whole patchwork going at least until my daughter graduates? Again, I think it’s a lousy political dig to say so.

Americans might also be “operationally liberal” because programs like Social Security work like, and may even be branded as, investment arrangements when they are actually generic liberal tax-and-spend programs.  Again, as I wrote in the comments on Yeggman’s blog,

many Americans believe that they’re entitled to social security not because young working people have a general moral obligation to pay for their retirement, but because they understand, incorrectly, that they’ve paid into something of a trust account. Thus, their support for social security is actually quite conservative (notwithstanding the big government aspect of it). I’d guess roughly the same psychological phenomenon is happening with medicare. It is disingenuous to call these folks “operationally liberal” when they have been made to pay into a system that looks like a retirement account and acts like a retirement account but is, by design of New Deal liberals, a liberal tax and spend program.

Public education is an especially impacted victim of 20th century progressive liberalism, suffering the confusion, expense, and indignity of having to incorporate the vagaries of First Amendment decisional law—and later other civil rights, some welcome but many bizarre—into the operations of local schools.  When student performance nosedived in the latter half of the century, there was no use in troubleshooting—everything had been changed.  The only thing left to do was follow one period of rash liberal experimentation with another.  And then another.  There’s no such thing as a “conservative” position on education anymore.  It’s got a century of liberalism’s fingerprints all over it. 

Beyond education, many liberal policies have become status quo.  And people don’t tend to assign labels to the political furniture they’ve become accustomed to.  Should we have a progressive tax code?  Well geez, haven’t we always?  Next.  Should the government require that workers get a “living wage”?  What should they get, a dying wage?  Next.  Should we spend a lot of money to protect the environment?  Aren’t we already?  And there’s always those folks mouthing off about how badly we’re still doing.  Better not do any less, then, I guess.  Next.

If this is what “operationally liberal” looks like, you can go right ahead and spare me. 

And this is not to mention favoring policies that directly benefit those being polled, such as laws favoring unions or subsidies, etc.  When President Bush sought to introduce personalized accounts into the Social Security system, a 2005 survey showed the most negative responses to the proposal was from respondents in their 50s—older baby boomers.  This was explored by Andrea Louise Campbell in How Policies Make Citizens.  Government policy was directly connected to this constituency’s well-being.  It would be obtuse to call this “operational liberalism.” 

(I’ll drop this in as a parenthetical, because I can’t figure out how to read the report Yeggman cited.  But the “political questionnaire” referenced there provides only topics, not actual questions.  E.g., “Spending on Welfare,” “Spending on the Poor,” “School Choice,” “Abortion,” etc.  How are the researchers interpreting responses to any of these topics as “conservative” or “liberal”?  I can think of both conservative and liberal reasons to favor and disfavor each of them until they’re made into English sentences.)

There’s all sorts of deck-stacking that goes into why people favor particular policies.  And it’s easy for liberals to sell a single policy, because they sound nice taken individually.  But when offered a choice between political philosophies, theories, worldviews, whatever you want to call them, Americans identify as conservative.  That counts for something.  It means that the informed liberal knows it’s going to take some doing to get these conservative Americans to endorse their policies.   More than just huckstering.  Americans are smarter than they’re sometimes given credit for. 

If Americans won’t be sold on the liberal narrative, then the liberal’s play is scorched earth:  convince them that all narratives are a stupid waste of time.  Liberals, in fact, don’t even have a narrative.  That’s offered as proof enough.  Narratives are then subverted by modern social science that villainizes “value judgments” through which to interpret the endless data it collects, and divorces science from human ends and destroys our ability to learn from or build upon the past.  Sound bite politics works well in this cause.  If I get all my politics in op-eds and four-minute news segments, that’s just enough to hear the conclusions of some of the aforementioned liberal social science data miners.  There’s no possibility I’ll learn the role liberalism played in creating the problem at issue, and thus why I should reject the solution it offers.   Status quo, ho. 

Just please stop calling it liberalism.

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On the Third Rail: Race, Poverty, Culture

by Tom Van Dyke on January 14, 2012

“Generational poverty” is often used or taken as code for “black.” Even by those who mean well.

However, rural poverty is just as persistent, and it of course is as caucasian as it is anything else and usually more so. I do find Thomas Sowell’s “Black Rednecks” thesis intriguing, that it’s lowbrow Scots-Irish culture that infects the poor of both races:

[Wiki, sorry]: “Sowell argues that the black ghetto culture, which is claimed to be “authentic black culture”, is historically neither authentic nor black in origin. Instead, Sowell argues that the black ghetto culture is in fact a relic of a highly dysfunctional white southern redneck culture which existed during the antebellum South. This culture came, in turn, from the “Cracker culture” of the North Britons and Scots-Irish who migrated from the generally lawless border regions of Britain.

Sowell gives a number of examples that he regards as supporting the lineage, e.g.,

an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship,… and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery.”

I’ve done some poking around on my own, and as recently as 1950 or so, both marriage and employment rates for blacks and whites were approximately equal.

[See also Herbert G. Gutman's seminal The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925.]

Something happened since then. Indeed, whites have been similarly beset by an increase in these pathologies, albeit not as accentuated as in the urban black community.

Indeed, see Theodore Dalrymple’s Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass, of which John Derbyshire wrote

Americans may find it surprising that most of the people wallowing in this slough of ignorance, illiteracy, promiscuity, bastardy, intoxication, vice, folly, lawlessness, and hopelessness are white English people. Much of what is described here is the sort of thing Americans instinctively associate with this country’s own black underclass. There is some satisfaction, I suppose, though of a very melancholy kind, to be drawn from the revelation that sufficiently wrong-headed social policies, persisted in with sufficiently dogged refusal to face simple truths, will visit moral catastrophe on people of any race.

I find this essential to keep in mind while discussing this subject. Race may be a factor but only in degree, not kind. “Code” is unnecessary [and then the predictable implication of a racist agenda] in looking at the problem, if we’re to look at it at all.

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Merger Mania in 2012!

by Tom Van Dyke on January 13, 2012

Interesting emailia from me Dad:

1. Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush, and W. R. Grace Co…
Will merge and become: Hale, Mary, Fuller, Grace.

2. Polygram Records, Warner Bros., and Zesta Crackers join forces and become: Poly Warner Cracker.

3. 3M will merge with Goodyear and become: MMMGood.

4. Zippo Manufacturing, Audi Motors, Dofasco, and Dakota Mining will merge and become: ZipAudiDoDa.

5. FedEx is expected to join its competitor, UPS, and become: FedUP.

6. Fairchild Electronics and Honeywell Computers
will become: Fairwell Honeychild.

7. Grey Poupon and Docker Pants are expected
to become: Poupon Pants.

8. Knotts Berry Farm and the National Organization of Women will become: Knott NOW!

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About Tebow Time

by Tom Van Dyke on January 13, 2012

According to a recent poll

jesus tebow

Hispanic fans also feel that a holy power is helping the Broncos quarterback as 81 percent of those polled believe God is behind Tebow, compared to 59.5 percent among blacks and 38 percent among whites.

It’s fun and PC-acceptable to mock all those fundie caucasoids for believing such things, but this one will pass without comment by the chattering classes.

The Tebow Time run ends Saturday against the Patriots, since God doesn’t like to be too obvious about things. And it’s not as like I think God actually cares who wins football games.

But do I believe He let Tebow win all those games just to give the fundie-haters and atheists fits? Hell, yeah. What, God can’t have some fun too?

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“Ideologically conservative but operationally liberal”

by Tim Kowal on January 11, 2012

Kevin Drum:

You all remember the old saw that Americans are ideologically conservative but operationally liberal? It means that lots of Americans say they’re conservative and like to believe they’re conservative, but when it comes to specific government programs they turn out to be pretty liberal. They like Medicare and Social Security and federal highways and disaster relief and unemployment insurance and all that. Try to cut these things and you learn very quickly just how operationally liberal most Americans are.

Yes, I remember that old saw.  It’s rubbish.  Try it in another context:  A lot of Americans say they eat healthy, and like to believe they eat healthy, but put a bunch of tasty junk food in front of them and, Bob’s your uncle, they turn out to be pretty unhealthy after all. 

Of course people are not going to give up Medicare and Social Security after those programs have been dangled in front of them their entire working lives.  (They’re just tax-and-spend programs, remember, so we’re not “investing” in our own “trust accounts”—we’re paying for them because we like them so much because, again, we’re all “operationally liberal.”)  To suggest this means the whole thing’s a draw politically is pretty crooked scorekeeping.

In fact, I was surprised that Drum would be this transparent about the fact that, when it comes to underlying objectives concerning redistribution and centralization, liberals don’t bother appealing to intellect.  They’re going to appeal to base desires, and they’re going to capitalize on crises when the value of principles is depressed.  When people get something for nothing, they’re unlikely to give it up voluntarily, and in fact are probably going to ask what else is on the menu at the same price.

Drum goes on:

When Americans hear about free enterprise from conservative politicians, it’s usually accompanied by images of sunrises over wheat fields, hardworking farmers, and small-town construction workers heading home after a day of honest labor. It is very definitely not accompanied by images of well-coiffed guys in suits and green eyeshades, making millions by sitting in boardrooms and approving mass layoffs by adding a quick line to a spreadsheet before they head out to lunch. But guess what? That’s what you get with Romney whether you like it or not. Americans may be ideological free marketers, but operationally they’re just folks who believe in a day’s pay for a day’s work. If you rub their noses in the the true face of modern capitalism, they aren’t going to like what they see.

The condescension toward the cow-tippers in flyover country is palpable. 

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So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star

by Tom Van Dyke on January 6, 2012

A tasty bit of emailia that came my way:

Craigslist Ad:

We are a small & casual restaurant in downtown Vancouver and we are looking for solo musicians to play in our restaurant to promote their work and sell their CD. This is not a daily job, but only for special events which will eventually turn into a nightly event if we get positive response. More jazz, rock, & smooth type music, around the world and mixed cultural music. Are you interested to promote your work? Please reply back ASAP.

A Musician’s Reply:

Happy new year! I am a musician with a big house looking for a restauranteur to come to my house to promote his/her restaurant by making dinner for me and my friends. This is not a daily job, but only for special events which will eventually turn into a nightly event if we get a positive response. More fine dining & exotic meals mixed with some ethnic fusion cuisine. Are you interested to promote your restaurant? Please reply back ASAP.

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Book Report, 2011

by Tim Kowal on January 2, 2012

Along with my lists from 2009 and 2010, I logged 101 books over the past three years.  Here’s the list from 2011:

  1. Real Education, by Charles Murray.  It’s become commonplace in the conversation about education to sigh about how there are no easy answers.  This is probably as much because we are only prepared to accept answers that comport with certain preconditions utterly at odds with reality, insisting on the same results for every American kid, and thus guaranteeing failure.
  2. A Fierce Discontent, by Michael McGerr.  An excellent book about the Progressive Era, which I reviewed earlier this year (part 1; part 2).
  3. The Great Stagnation, by Tyler Cowen.  A quick and interesting read.  I discussed it a bit here.
  4. A Long Way From Home, by Tom Brokaw.  Brokaw has a vivid and detailed memory, and is a fine biographer of the Boomer experience.  While their parents rinsed and reused paper towels, Boomers proceeded to make themselves sick on the excesses of the 80s.  Rebels indeed! 
  5. What Hath God Wrought, by Daniel Walker Howe. A very well done account of the forgottenest era of American history.
  6. Never Enough: America’s Limitless Welfare State, by William Voegeli.  I reviewed this book here.
  7. The Liberal Mind, by Kenneth Minogue.  I also made references to this book in my review of Never Enough.
  8. The Conscience of a Liberal, by Paul Krugman.  I reviewed this book here.
  9. Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith, by Greg Bahnsen.
  10. The American Political Tradition, by Richard Hofstadter.  A preeminent work by a preeminent U.S. historian.  Highly recommended.
  11. By This Standard: The Authority of God’s Law Today, by Greg Bahnsen.
  12. The Affluent Society, by John Kenneth Galbraith. Thoughts on this important work on liberal economics here.
  13. War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life, by Wendell Cox.  Founder of Demographia, Cox is a leading scholar demonstrating how New Urbanists’ policies actually work against them as well as everyone else.
  14. After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, by Mark Steyn.  Some thoughts here. 
  15. Manliness, by Harvey Mansfield. A discourse on an increasingly outdated topic.
  16. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein. TANSTAAFL!
  17. The Gated City, by Ryan Avent.  The unintended consequences of urban planning and hyperactive land use regulations.
  18. The Truth About Obamacare, by Sally C. Pipes.  A survey of what Obamacare does, and some of its expected consequences.  Not a lot here you didn’t hear about in op-eds leading up to its passage, but it’s a decent digest.
  19. Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character, by Claude S. Fischer.  Despite off-handed accounts to the contrary, the American debt-culture is not a new phenomenon.  As production increased and transportation costs decreased from the 18th century onward, the notion that everyday Americans “deserved” certain commodities—whether tea, umbrellas, or high-speed internet—took hold. (One wonders whether such high sentiment is driven by financiers and industrialists, who enjoy the profits of the new credit accounts and increased sales it generates.)  What is new under the sun are the incredible advances in health care and the unique pressures the growing elderly population are bringing to bear.  Economically comfortable and politically powerful, these Americans tend toward a post-materialism in which, “[s]ecure in body, they now focus on the soul—on higher personal goals, such as self-improvement, and higher social goals, such as saving the environment.”  While Boomers hold onto their property and power and write laws that eliminate the economic opportunities they enjoyed, successor generations are left to pay the tab for their forebears’ entitlements and high-minded social goals.  This, not consumer debt or wealth inequality or crony capitalism or international turmoil, is the truly unprecedented challenge 21st century America faces.
  20. Baby Boomer Bust, by Roger Chiocchi. Mostly anecdotes from poll data taken by the author.
  21. One Nation Under AARP, by Frederick Lynch. Some interesting data here, which I will discuss in a longer piece hopefully later this month.
  22. The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan, by James C. Humes.
  23. Popper’s Tort Reform, by Andrew F. Popper.  Persuasively makes the case that tort reform is too complicated an issue to fire-off as a campaign one-liner.
  24. Republic, Lost, by Lawrence Lessig.  Highly recommended; reviewed and analyzed here.
  25. The Conscience of a Conservative, by Barry Goldwater.
  26. A Disquisition on Government, by John C. Calhoun. A flawed but important contributor to 19th century American politics.
  27. Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution, by Elihu Root. Published in 1913 between the second industrial revolution and the New Deal’s reinvention of American government, Root captures the modern role of government.  No longer insulated in small, organic economic communities, Americans were both enriched by and involuntarily swept into a national economy fueled by instant communication and efficient transportation.  Government, then, must “do something more than merely keep the peace—to regulate the machinery of production and distribution and safeguard it from interference so that it shall continue to work.”  And yet “The utmost that government can do is measurably to protect men, not against the wrong they do themselves but against wrong done by others and to promote the long, slow process of educating mind and character to a better knowledge and nobler standards of life and conduct. We know all this, but when we see how much misery there is in the world and instinctively cry out against it, and when we see some things that government may do to mitigate it, we are apt to forget how little after all it is possible for any government to do, and to hold the particular government of the time and place to a standard of responsibility which no government can possibly meet.”
  28. Utopia, by Sir Saint Thomas More.
  29. The Housing Boom and Bust, by Thomas Sowell.  Sowell provides data and analysis further explaining the particular hell the Boomers have wrought on their successors with respect to the housing market and, as a result, the credit market. More to come in a longer post later this month.
  30. Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists, by Luigi Zingales and Raghuram Rajan. As much blame as we heap on the finance sector, we ought to consider the powerful role credit markets have played in reducing poverty and creating opportunities for the have-nots.  In countries with greater government intervention, crony capitalism is a feature, not a bug.  It yields stability—a premium for fledgling or rebuilding nations—at the expense of full and fair opportunity to all. 
  31. A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.
  32. Throw Them All Out, by Peter Schweizer.  Also discussed in a recent post.
  33. Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It, by Louis Brandeis. Justice Brandeis displayed a more intimate familiarity with how bankers and corporatists worked than perhaps any other Supreme Court justice. 
  34. Inside American Education, by Thomas Sowell. Spending more money on education and inflating our kids’ grades and test scores, predictably, have not improved American education.  Even class size appears to be a red herring, as America is outperformed by Japan and its high student-teacher ratio.  And higher education is a racket—see Claude Fischer’s quote regarding the premium on “higher social goals,” which have spurred policymakers to push Americans to take on more and more debt, purportedly with the goal of sending very kid to college.  This greater demand put pressure on the supply of higher education, driving up its cost, the consequence of this “higher social goal.”  Unintended though this consequence may have been, it could have been unexpected by someone wholly illiterate in basic economics. 
  35. NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education, by Samuel Blumenfeld.  A conspiracy theory, for sure, but somewhat entertaining with some useful history of the national education unions.  I hesitate to call them “teachers’ unions,” since the NEA was started by administrators and textbook publishers. 
  36. Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky.  At a general level, much about Alinsky’s teachings about community organizing apply to Obama’s great success as a campaigner and failure as a president.  Alinsky treated people as foot soldiers to accomplish his own agenda, and told them what they needed to hear to mobilize them.  Because political issues have a shelf life, it’s necessary to keep finding new outrages to keep people engaged.  Community organizing is a Ponzi scheme that way: as people tire of political protest, they need ever more and greater reasons to keep them from just going home and getting back to their lives.  People might give an Alynskyite one election; they’ll be too worn out to give him a second.

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