Definitely agree. I see Mearsheimer and Walt somewhat regularly as the PBS newshour is really the only national news show I watch anymore (its not my only source, just my only mainstream TV media source).

It would take a lot, and a shakedown of unelected officials in State and other branches would cause some turmoil politically for someone with such power like the POTUS. Which is why I was hoping to see a lame duck Obama start the domino train to that direction.

I think part of some of the old guards fears come in the realization that our standing armies were pretty fat and inexperienced/unprepared in terms of combat experience in the 80's and it showed in a few conflicts of the 90's (ie: Serbia, Kuwait etc) even though it was never tested due to our sheer power and size, especially on the technology front. However this period also showed that our training and lessons learned from previous conflicts allowed our military to get up to speed VERY quickly and the lack of experience was overcome rather easily.

But it still seems that the some of the current justification of our "need" for perpetual warefare of our current standing military is continued experience, which seems somewhat of a progression of the old "domino theory" that was projected to the masses post WWII with Korea and Vietnam.

We seem to be in need of another FDR, someone willing to try different approaches, go nuts with a Veto power and show he isn't willing to pander even when not a lame duck. And I simply keep hoping someone emerges from the crowd to do just that.

Well said. I would only add that I feel the 500 lb gorilla here is our old enemy the military-industrial complex, particularly its power over Congress and the Pentagon. I have no prescription for fixing that problem, but I agree it will take the kind of leadership, force of will, empathy, and political skills not seen since FDR.

Yes, repetition makes it right

I prefer to think of it as examining the consequences of your policies. If your primary focus is GDP then the US is doing everything right. If your primary focus is on people's lives then not so much.

But keep your downvote bury brigades out of here. They have obviously followed.

I haven't downvoted you. But from my reputation history your own downvote brigades have followed you here as well. So we have the option of continuing reddit's unfortunate voting behavior or we can acknowledge that it's the pot calling the kettle black and learn to keep our fingers off that button except when flagging unrelated content.

And yes, your next response would say I have none. Taylorism was a result of Progressive ideals...and you embrace it as a good thing and distant from it it when it does not fit your agenda.

I do trust the good people here, and I will let them decide.

Seems to me that you two are in vicious agreement, and talking past one another. Your point is fine, and you’ve made it clear enough, but even if you’re only wielding a whiffle bats, you could let up on beating one another about the face and neck.

I know both of you well enough to know that one, neither of you downvoted one another, and two, that neither of you is happy about the tone set here.

The other guy’s point in this case is, and you know it on some less contentious level, about the charged meaning of the term ‘socialism’ and whether every other country in the world is, for a particular interpretation, socialist. Let’s consider the ‘happiness metric’ on a purely Snapzu level and try not to get carried away, even if you are wearing protective headgear for this conversation, kids.

The other guy’s point in this case is, and you know it on some less contentious level, about the charged meaning of the term ‘socialism’ and whether every other country in the world is, for a particular interpretation, socialist.

I'm fully aware of the connotation of the word "socialist" and the way it's been dishonestly advertised. Which is why I challenge the notion that socialism is inherently bad for us or that the US' reticence to adopt it the way every other industrialized nation has created benefits for any but an elite minority.

I've seen people tie Taylorism to progressivism before, but it bugs me. You could make a case that scientific management was part of the Progressive Era, or that it was an effort at progress in some loose sense of the word. However, you should know that Taylorism is diametrically opposed to what you’ve called progressive ideals.

It bugs me in a similar way as when I see Cato claim that unions are labor cartels. Or the way it might bother you to see someone claim that Cheneyism is an outgrowth of conservatism, instead of a scaly, shambling thing clambering out of a sulfurous pit of evil.

What I think of as progressivism is investigative journalism; food and workplace safety, child labor, environmental, housing and anti-trust laws. Taylorism — ruthless, brutal, short-sighted exploitation of individually-worthless completely-interchangeable employees — it’s fair to say, the precise opposite of the progressive ideals you're throwing around above.

Seems as though people are randomly assigned their political worldviews around progressivism or conservatism. How else is it such a precarious, stalemated, balance maintained? But mixing up progressivism with socialism with Communism with Taylorism as just all being on the other side, somehow, is worse than wrong, it’s unfair distortion.

Taylorism is, in no fair sense, anything at all to do with progressive ideals.

That said, due respect.

Oh, I know that, and you know that. The other guy might know that too, I’ve found, if you point out that the U.S. military, that they may’ve served in, is a centrally-planned government-run socialized institution. In this particular case, yes in fact the other guy served.

Or if you point out that government spending is a full third of the U.S. economy without which the other thirds collapse. That's all around convincing, though, rather than defending, which you’ve done admirably well.

Hang around long enough, watching people talk and word get around, you hear things. Like that teeming majorities of people whatever their political stripe or color share some key exceedingly common views. Not the McCarthyism and Bushism that years on /r/politics/new might lead you to believe. Instead, you notice, vast numbers of people know they’re being used by what we laughingly call leadership and that there’s precious little to be done about it as things are.

A challenge we all have is finding any kind of unity given the Punch and Judy show of our politics, and the wounded pride of our shared long defeat. You two are a microcosm.

"According to Rakesh Khurana of the Harvard Business School (in From Higher Aims to Hired Hands), the first corporation managers came from an industrial engineering background and saw their job as doing for the entire organization what they’d previously done for production on the shop floor. The managerial revolution in the large corporation, Khurana writes, was in essence an attempt to apply the engineer’s approach (standardizing and rationalizing tools, processes, and systems) to the organization as a system.

And according to Yehouda Shenhav (Manufacturing Rationality: The Engineering Foundations of the Managerial Revolution), Progressivism was the ideology of the managers and engineers who administered the large organizations; political action was a matter of applying the same principles they used to rationalize their organizations to society as a whole. Shenhav writes (quoting Robert Wiebe):"

Taylorism was absolutely a product of the Progressive era thought process of that time.

All that means is that not everything in the Progressive movement was good, no more than Cheney, part of the Neocon regime, was good.

And I must apologize to spaceghoti I am deeply sorry for saying that bury brigades followed you.

Pease accept my apology.