I used to have a more favorable view of Cato before I found out they were riddled with scheming Leninists plotting against the best interests of the American people for the benefit of Big Business, (not unlike the neocons):

Title: ACHIEVING A “LENINIST” STRATEGY

Cato Journal, vol. 3, no.2 (Fall 1983) (700kB PDF). copyright © Cato Institute.

It began in 1982 at the "Rebuilding Social Security" Conference at the radical-right Heritage Foundation, but the plot against Social Security was fleshed out by Butler (a Cato director) and Germanis (an analyst at Heritage) in the Fall 1983 issue of Cato's journal, summarized through quotes here: [Emphasis added.]

"Lenin recognized that fundamental change is contingent upon ... its success in isolating and weakening its opponents. ... we would do well to draw a few lessons from the Leninist strategy. (p. 547)

"we must recognize that we need more than a manifesto ... we must ... construct ... a coalition that will ... reap benefits from the IRA-based private system Ferrara has proposed but also the banks, insurance companies, and other institutions that will gain from providing such plans to the public." (p. 548)

"By approaching the problem in this way, we may be ready for the next crisis in Social Security." (p. 548)

"From a purely political standpoint, it should be remembered that the elderly represent a very powerful and vocal interest group." (p. 549)

A Plan of Action

"The first element consists of a campaign to achieve small legislative changes that embellish the present IRA system, making it in practice a small-scale private Social Security system. ... the natural constituency for an enlarged IRA system must be ... welded into a coalition for political change." (p. 551)

"The second main element ... involves what one might crudely call guerrilla warfare against both the current Social Security system and the coalition that supports it." (p. 552)

Creating a Private Model

"The reason for designing a “super IRA” law with these restrictions is purely political." (p. 552)

"Social Security reform requires mobilizing the various coalitions that stand to benefit from the change, ... the business community, and financial institutions in particular ... "(p. 553)

"The banking industry and other business groups that can benefit from expanded IRAs ..."

"... the strategy must be to propose moving to a private Social Security system in such a way as to ... neutralize ... the coalition that supports the existing system." (p. 555)

"The next Social Security crisis may be further away than many people believe. ... it could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible. But then, as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform." (Concluding paragraph, p. 556)

http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/Cato-Heritage-1983-Lenin-Plan.pdf

http://zfacts.com/p/486.html

ondelette - Things I do not assume you haven't considered, but that I am selfishly motivated to write out for my own satisfaction:

"whether there is a fundamental difference between thinking in metaphors and thinking in logical progressions"

Are you thinking about this difference in words? I.e., while expecting to write something out that will explain your thinking about thinking to other people? That might mess it up - that is usually where I screw things up completely - my hobby these days is trying to figure out how to formulate communication to communicate exactly how communication fails.

--

"if I zero in on the metaphors, they break down into small logically plausible steps taken to pull together all the meaning implied by the comparison."

- yes, but they only do that afterwards - not before. The logically plausible steps are unconfirmable and therefore, potentially, irrelevant. If you are working on the difference between logical steps and metaphoric insight, why do you try to turn the metaphors into logical steps before accepting them? Proving you aren't a Turing machine? [smile]

It is late, and I have a low communication inhibition threshold right now. And, possibly, reading too much Melville. I can't come up with an elegant save to topicality - h/t to WT.

But the idea of mounting a primary challenge to George W. Bush in 2004 never crossed the mind of any prominent conservatives, at least not publicly.

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Gol dang. I really assumed this was unheard of when it wasn't done in 2004. I kept waiting for it to happen. When it didn't I thought it was illegal, maybe. If ever there was a time....ok I need to get over 2004.

Anyways Glenn, so glad you are getting quoted by the cons and even the marginally real journalists (Cough). Froomkin quoted you as well. You are a national treasure. A brain box of a man.

I used to have a more favorable view of Cato before I found out

Sure you did. Right up until the last few hours in which you Googled to find Lenin or some other odious historical figure with whihc to link some person at Cato, in this case a guy who was discussing social security reform in 1983, and thus announce they are as much a Leninist cabal as the neocons.

Nice try. But I don't think you'd see Greenwald approvingly linking to them as relatively frequently as he does were that the case. You know, like when they issue scathing reports denouncing Bush and his theories of Executive tyranny. Glenn likes that stuff. Poor deluded fool -- you be setting him straight now, ya hear?

An ancient riddle. I'm not sure it needs to be solved, but it's certainly worth puzzling over a bit.

Yes, William, except that this one arose naturally by trying to turn a brain inside out by cutting little veined (Poincaré) disks to look like little double fans, stringing them all on a bracelet, and then gluing the tops and bottoms together to get a funny donut with a wire around the outside and nothing but treetops on the inside. Suppose you got to the center of someone else's universe and all that was there was a very fancy battery?

It's all well and good to be thinking of xuan (mystery) when you are in a Laodz class (you have to memorize it anyway). I'm not satisfied with that either, it always seemed it should be "the even mysteriouser part of mysterious" and miao (essence) is earlier equated with "nothing" -- B.F.Skinner, here we come.

Now, how do you write the computer program so people believe you?

certifiedprepwn3d -- I like the website, this makes 3 days in a row that I have heard the name Marcel Proust -- my calculus teacher had always said the perfect way to spend a summer was on a chez lounge in the backyard with a pitcher of lemonade and all of Marcel Proust. He's on your card -- I'm sorry, my memory is limited, you must ask the right question -- What's the difference between two people talking and two brain cells talking? That, son, is the right question.

But, if the essence of conservative versus liberal lies in the 14th amendment as SanPasqualCA says, then isn't the metaphor of taking on a body to enjoy equal protection under the law the essence of conservatism?