Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/452792
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS By Jason Stanford Wecomplainaboutatwo- party system that's stuck in ideological ditches, but some- how it never occurs to us to embrace pragmatism, the uniquely American philoso- phy that was created as a reac- tion to ideological stagnation. Unless Republicans and Dem- ocrats getting madder at each other suddenly starts working, maybe it's time to give prag- matism a chance. When I was a child, I used to say that Ben Franklin in- vented electricity. My mother, ever patient, would remind me that he discovered it, not invented it. So maybe that's how we should talk about the American thinkers who came up with pragmatism as a philosophy. Maybe William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey didn't invent pragmatism. Maybe they just discovered it. Either way, be- fore then we didn't have a way to describe thinking as a prob- lem-solving tool. That was back in the 1870s when they were still getting over the Civil War, which was truly a conflict of ideologies. In that case, it was abolition versus white supremacy. These ideas could not coexist, contributing to the inevitability of the war. I'm not saying James, Peirce, Dewey, and other lead- ing intellectuals of the day such as Oliver Wendell Holmes sat down after the Civil War and said, "Well, that was stu- pid. How do we avoid that in the future?" But the post-war period fermented an explosion of ideas in the United States and Europe. That's when we came up with the scientific method, with psychology, po- litical sociology, a legal educa- tion based on case studies, and Darwinism. Pragmatism was created in this kitchen. Suddenly, we un- derstood that we could direct our minds to solve problems and not merely reflect reality. This golden age of Amer- ican thinking continued un- til the middle of the 20th Cen- tury, when once again we went to war along ideological lines, first against fascism, then against Communism. We're still fighting an ide- ological war, except this time we're fighting against our own countrymen once again. We have chosen up sides in this cold civil war — North versus South, Democrats versus Re- publicans. Inevitably, Congress has retreated into ideologi- cal trenches, prioritizing party purity above getting anything done. We're stuck in a negative cycle of crisis management, conducting the basic affairs of government only under the threat of catastrophe. It's gotten so bad that peo- ple don't realize that par- tisanship only recently be- came synonymous with ide- ology. Almost a half century ago, Democrats and Repub- licans voted with their par- ties seven out of 10 times. In the 1990s, party loyalty in- creased, but there were still conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans, and get- ting stuff done was more im- portant than avoiding a pri- mary challenge. Not any more. Congress is now more ideologically po- larized than any time in our country's history. Democrats can accurately point out that Republicans are more ideolog- ically rigid than they are, but only by 2.5 percent. Put an- other way, when Bill Clinton was first elected, Democrats in Congress voted along party lines 86 percent of the time. Now that figure is 91 percent. The problem is real, and there are no good guys. Many smart people have looked at this problem and di- agnosed America with a bad case of galloping partisanship, but I think the problem is that our parties have ideologically segregated themselves. Partisan politics worked in the past when it wasn't merely an expression of distilled ide- ologies. But with party switch- ing, primary challenges, and redistricting, there are no lon- ger any politicians on the figu- rative common ground. That's where you get shot. It's safe in the trenches, but you don't make progress when you're hunkered down. This can change, but only if we have leaders who can em- brace that great American in- vention, pragmatism. Pick any policy debate we're stuck on—education, taxation, na- tional security—and you'll see both sides guided by their principals. They repeat be- liefs founded in ideologies in- stead of proposing solutions grounded in evidence. No won- der nothing happens. The first side to embrace pragmatism will find a willing and grateful public. All Con- gress has to lose is their re- cord-low approval ratings. Who knows? If pragmatism catches on in Washington, maybe Con- gress will become more pop- ular than root canals, cock- roaches, and traffic jams. I know — dream big. JasonStanfordisaregu- lar contributor to the Austin American-Statesman, a Dem- ocratic consultant and a Tru- man National Security Proj- ect partner. You can email him at stanford@oppresearch.com and follow him on Twitter @ JasStanford. Commentary Whatever happened to pragmatism? Cartoonist's take We have chosen up sides in this cold civil war — North versus South, Democrats versus Republicans. Inevitably, Congress has retreated into ideological trenches, prioritizing party purity above getting anything done. AssemblymanJames Gallagher 150Amber Grove Drive, Ste. 154, Chico 95973, 530895-4217, http://ad03.asmrc.org/ Senator Jim Nielsen 2634Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530879-7424, senator.nielsen@senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown State Capital Building, Sacra- mento 95814, 916445-2841, fax 916558-3160, governor@ governor.ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug La- Malfa, 507Cannon House Office Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415393- 0707, fax 415393-0710 Contact your officials Burt Bundy, Supervi- sor, district 5, and cur- rent Chairman, will ap- pear before the Tea Party Patriots to provide attendees with an up- date and take questions. My first choice for a column topic is the "snake oil" salesman-like, du- plicitous performance of "Em- peror" Obama in his circus of misstatements, straw men, and reality-defying assertions. That would be his State of the Union speech from a week ago, wherein was the predictable laundry list of yet more grand and generous (with other peo- ple's money) government good- ies combined with thinly-veiled proposals to stick middle and upper middle class Americans with fees and tax hikes to pay for them. Believe me when I say that the only laundry list that could be agreed upon by honest ob- servers was the serial obfusca- tions and, well, lies. Obama's polling numbers have risen to 40+ percent approval based on a mildly growing economy. That is based on recent 5% growth that I provided proof showing it was only due to Obamacare's mandated hikes in health insurance spend- ing by consumers, reflecting no actual improvement in the broader economy. Economic improvement, in turn, has been due to lower gas prices resulting from private sector and state-driven oil and gas drilling—in spite of Obama's policy opposing such drilling, not because of it. Blatant fabrications included that he is "stopping [the Is- lamic State's] advance," is "opposing Russian aggres- sion" (toothlessly, if at all), and is ending a Cuba pol- icy "long past its expiration date." That falsehood was predicated only on the sup- posed policy ineffectiveness— itself a misrepresentation of how Cuba's malign influence in our hemisphere has suc- cessfully been neutralized directly due to 50 years of America's embargo policy. "Once again, we heard how much he hates cynicism and partisanship, defining cyni- cism and partisanship in his own special way: disagree- ment with Barack Obama. The president denies this, of course…And yet, prior to the great 'shellacking' of 2010, Obama governed as if the Re- publicans were at best a nui- sance. When Republicans ex- pressed concern over the partisan nature of the stim- ulus, he responded, 'I won.'" (Jonah Goldberg, nationalre- view.com) For example, given complete Demo- crat control of Congress for 2 years, the faux- magnanimous Obama chortled, "We don't mind Republicans join- ing us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back." To the "Em- peror," the debate over health care reform was over the min- ute Democrats had sufficient votes to ram it through, proce- dural rules and disapproving public opinion be damned. Goldberg: "And when Repub- licans had a historic victory in the 2014 midterms, largely by running against Obama and his record, the president re- sponded by unilaterally side- stepping Congress on every is- sue he could, from Cuba and Iran to carbon-emission stan- dards and immigration. This is Obama's real understanding of 'bipartisanship'; it is a polit- ical hack's cudgel to unleash on your opponents, not a tool for governing." I see Obama as perhaps the most villain- ous man to ever hold the office; and that competition includes some pretty incompetent and malignant characters. We can only hope that, in addition to presiding over the single larg- est decline in federal and state elective seats held by a pres- ident's party, the Obama leg- acy will lead to a conservative, America-defending Republican president in 2016 and a long term inoculation against left- ist, redistribution-based fed- eral taxing and spending prac- tices. On the other end of the vil- lain vs. hero spectrum, I saw "American Sniper," directed by Clint Eastwood and star- ring Bradley Cooper as the legendary Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle (known to fellow sol- diers and Marines as simply "The Legend") locally on Fri- day the 16th. I found the story of the deadliest, most success- ful sniper in American military history (over 160 confirmed kills, possibly over 220 total) to be what, in the apparent opin- ion of many millions of Ameri- cans, is a story of heroism and valor lacking in virtually all of the many movies churned out by a wildly leftist, anti-war Hollywood. It is not unlike how the movies about the Vietnam War seemed intent on advancing the worst narratives possible about the military conflict and the inevitable (in movie mak- ers' warped view) twisted psy- chological and emotional toll that turned veterans into (fill in the blank demon-possessed character). Then, when an ac- tual reality-based movie came along, like Randall Wallace's "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young," Americans flocked to see an inspiring version of our military that they know in their bones is the truthful nar- rative—which holds little ap- peal to the military-hating Hollywood film-making estab- lishment. Take the time to search, by title, "The 'American Sniper' Freakout—Why the left can't tolerate this movie" by Mark Hemingway at weeklystan- dard.com. The list of mov- ies advancing the ambivalent to despicable attitude toward America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and our military, is long: Stop-Loss, In the Val- ley of Elah, Redacted, Green Zone, Grace is Gone, War, Inc. Mild improvements were The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty — condemned for showing how water-boarding produced actionable intelli- gence. A genuine inspiration was Act of Valor, in which ac- tual SEALs (simpler to teach SEALs to act that it was to teach actors to be SEALs) were brought in to present a truth-based story of a mission to recover a kidnapped CIA agent. Only by watching "Ameri- can Sniper" can you share the experience of clapping with heart-thumping pride in an au- dience of like-spirited Ameri- can patriots. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at don- plsn@yahoo.com. The way I see it Villains and heroes among us Don Polson This is Obama's real understanding of 'bipartisanship'; it is a political hack's cudgel to unleash on your opponents, not a tool for governing." I see Obama as perhaps the most villainous man to ever hold the office; and that competition includes some pretty incompetent and malignant characters. OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, January 27, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4