The new political rhetoric

...They feel let down by England, abanProtestants) in the north of the city...

...they enable us to save more and restrain our i people simultaneously seem to move right and left while consumption in a world with a limited carrying capacity...

...of low, rolling hills, and between them and the sea, a jumble of Somewhere, not far under the surface of even the most factories, red-brick houses and warren-like streets...

...Photo, from Time It is not the first time that the Protestants of that northeastern magazine, show Protestant youth demonstrating in 1972...

...growth to trickle down economic progress...

...market will adapt to limits and scarcity without any moral The new rhetoric degenerates into an old code when it commitment...

...as British...

...and when So the new rhetoric leads us to the notion that the proper that bond breaks, as it has, the government can no longer response to a world of limits is sacrifice inspired by civic satisfactorily explain itself and begins to lose its legitimacy...

...But since 1969, and In the battered railway carriage were three Protestant the start of the latest Irish-British conflict, disquiet among youths, obviously returning home from work to one of the little "loyalists" has grown...

...Protestants unreflecting of Northern Ireland's Protestant...

...THE IDENTITY CRISIS OF ULSTER'S PROTESTANTS `What d'ya mean...

...corner of Ireland have made radical noises...

...Both sets of limits mean that only massive new investment generated by new A T THE OUTSET the new rhetoric presents a paradox: it seems that the more self-consciously sacrificing or morally reV l. PATRICK DOBEL is assistant professor of political science at the sponsible are major corporations in their behavior, the less University of Michigan, Dearborn...

...Welfare produces no jobs 1. The economic system-the mythical 'market'-cannot and with many payments pegged to inflation, it deprives us of be trusted on its own to react in a way which guarantees the needed capital by contributing both to higher taxes and higher most productive response to investment dilemmas...

...President Carter has publicly castigated it for too which might affect the health and welfare of citizens...

...Workers society based on care and respect consist of social justice, must also accept the sacrifice of "obsolete" and "featherbed- equal respect and equity for all citizens and basic social, ding" work rules, layoffs, lower workers' compensation economic and political guarantees which make a satisfying and awards and less frills like worker safety rules...

...Some in our mature capitalist economy...

...makes two mistakes...

...It is an area started another round of distracting activity...

...Currently, many of them are angry enough to jackets...

...Unfortunately, civic virtue has been in rather short Today, with disparate politicians converging on common supply in the United States for a long time...

...But defense expenditures must be increased 2. Corporations on their own will not respect the environto reflect the new discipline and sacrifice entailed by the crisis ment or the- unanticipated public consequences of their action...

...The much consumption and not enough saving...

...N OLD TRUTHS COME TO LIFE-AND :1LD ALIBIS, TOO r The new political rhetoric J. PATRICK DOBEL profits and savings can provide the higher productivity needed to guarantee sufficient growth with limited inflation...

...The new natural resources...

...to Manchester liberalism, the new rhetoric reminds us that the The politics of limits has an ominous ring, especially is a unlimited exercise of self-interest (read greed) in the market country which has relied on unlimited and untargeted ecoplace provides its own discipline...

...Its key words recall upon the importance of "limits" in an "age of scarcity...

...We're not land's Protestant majority-one million people caught Irish...

...The moral goals of civic virtue in a to do so under the new wage and price guidelines...

...It is a which most of them regard as part of the United Kingdom...

...Of course, all these sacrifices are "short term and will redound to the workers with greater rewards...

...a slight mist of Irish rain was as many in Northern Ireland's so-called "loyalist" community falling, which ii built-up areas has a most depressing effect...

...corporations...

...Consistent stagflation, en- leaders have welcomed the energy crisis as an opportunity to, during unemployment, declining productivity and the real return to a more community-oriented, simpler and ascetic life possibility that the rate of return on capital investment has style...

...But another set of structural limits has appeared ethic as an alternative to privatized mass consumption...

...I guessed they were tions, insecure about their own future and their status within apprentices in one of the big factories (which only, employ the United Kingdom...

...Looking out the window it was just possible to perceive the British flags flapping in the small gardens, or painted in garish TEN YEARS ago few Protestants would have admitted having colors on the gable walls of the working-class houses, any doubt as to whom ' they owed their allegiance, or alongside the anti-Catholic graffitti and the Protestant whether or not they were British or Irish...

...We some abiding truths about the demands of human community now only reluctantly recognize the most obvious limits...

...on the other hand, increasing environmental rhetoric may even lay the groundwork for a serious communal degradation...

...The business sector must be deregu- vative rhetoric...

...They must lower their insatiable rhetoric...

...it respects limits by nomic growth to provide upward mobility and avoid vicious guaranteeing the most efficient use of limited resources...

...The ing for and against what the limits limit us...

...We're not Irish!' JACK HOLLAND shouted, breathlessly, "No wonder they say the Irish are mad...

...needing disciplined savers...

...The answers are depres- markets with built-in inflatiohary tendencies or the "cultural singly familiar...

...Discipline imposes limits upon rifice," it is time to take notice...

...As a postscript, the upper and upper-middle classes cannot be taken for granted and must be kept under close, if Commonweal: 458 more sophisticated, political scrutiny and government regu- present welfare-state apparatus may be inefficient, cumberlation...

...They were exuberant-it doned by the state to which they have looked since 1921, when was Friday, payday-dressed in the uniform of the British and Northern Ireland was created, as their protector from Catholic Irish working class: jeans, short boots and short, heavy black IRA subversion...

...The traditional Hart, conservatives and ecologists all begin to sound Protestant ethic dictates that we discipline our desires now and alike and speak of "limits," "discipline" and "sac- save for better returns later...

...inflation rate on necessities is double that of other com- The era of limits demands discipline, sacrifice and civic modities...

...of war...

...Second, the new rhetoric mistakes The seasonally-adjusted earnings of workers have dropped to the forms of moral virtue-limits, self-discipline and selftheir lowest point since the 1975 recession and must continue sacrifice-for the content...

...Harking back exempt from the sacrifices imposed by the new rhetoric...

...Bureaucracies' self-aggrandizing tendency to careful system of incentives and regulation is even more overregulate and impose untoward social cost upon investment needed in a world of limits...

...Since the 17th 31 August 1979: 459...

...Virtue meant that people were willing to make the necesactions...

...But it also demands equity, social and economic jusdismiss the effect of radical gasoline price-increases on the' tice, and a clear, tenacious vision of just what we are sacrificpoor by pointing out that the poor "don't drive anyway...

...it hinges the dreary themes of the "me" decade...

...It is no wonder that labor unions, corporations must act in a world whose values are inverted minorities and the poor have profound qualms about ecologifrom those applying to the rest of the disciplined and self- cal rhetoric, especially when it conflates with the new consersacrificing population...

...The rest of the state must be Corporate planning undervalues future generations, responds subject to tax and expenditure limitations...

...must be reined in...

...of a resurgent Soviet militarism...

...Belfast city, through the heartlands of Northern Ire- Then the biggest one said: "Hi, what d'ya mean...

...Who must relearn the...

...standing still, politicians are desperately groping for a working Such self-imposed discipline was called virtue in another political rhetoric which can explain, justify and even shape age...

...It piggy backs upon "energy crises," "investment The concoction has reintroduced some old and important no- crises" or any convenient crises to justify its call for action...

...virtue...

...The redistributive politics...

...with the need to restrain government and the high taxes which They are obsessed with a "stress on fast profits" (Wall Street sap investment...

...On the other hand, all natural sacrifices for the poor, aged and infirm...

...Reliance on pricing shelter, education, health, work and hope for all citizens...

...They all grinned at each other and up in Ireland's age-long conflict with the British...

...His two companions SEVERAL YEARS AGO I was in a train traveling north from looked at him, and he almost blushed with embarrassment...

...They are uneasy about British intenghetto towns on the outskirts of Belfast...

...All people must bear proportional burdens, and those surrender the public goals of providing the necessities of food, better able to bear them should bear more...

...WITHOUT A DISCUSSION of the new redistributive and comIn the great tradition of Victorian moralists like Dickens's munal alternatives also inherent in the new rhetoric, let Mr...

...First, it individuates lame for our The rest of the new rhetoric now starts to resemble a fac- current plight...

...On one inflation...

...contradiction of capitalism" wherein the economy spends Union workers must be willing to accept 7 percent salary billions in advertising to encourage spendthrift demand while increases in a world of 13 percent inflation 6d rising profits...

...They were play-acting, fighting among themselves, consider a drastic revision of their old political position...

...dilemma that recently has assumed a certain political urgency It was a wet, winter's evening...

...In our runaway politics where one's desires...

...For a rhetoric creates a common bond of understand- sary sacrifices for the welfare of others and the common good...

...Warned by the fate themes, the faltering beginnings of a new rhetoric can be of past rhetorical calls for individual self-disciplineheard...

...In the middle of the mayhem one of the youths largest of the Protestant paramilitary organizations, to pursue the idea of an Independent Northern Ireland-cut loose from JACK HOLLAND, a Belfast poet and journalist, is American corre- London and from Dublin...

...appetite for basic social services...

...Hayakawa's route and virtue...

...on the and fulfillment, truths often lost in the clamor for transcendenf one hand, declining, and therefore more costly, supplies of tal jogging shoes or narcissistic self-absorption...

...The Council on moral discipline and sacrifice of corporations in regard to the Wage and Price Stability announced that "everyone" (read integrity of the environment, the safety of workers or the middle class) must bear sacrifices in order to whip inflation unanticipated consequences of "rational" economic decisions now...

...The public sector and its unions must also Journal) and are more likely to pursue increased acquisitions, accept the discipline of lower salaries, fewer perquisites and buy new resource bases or invest abroad...

...This was the land Northern Ireland's of them have (for over a century at least) regarded themselves Protestants have traditionally sworn will remain "British...

...We're British...

...A constant and even layoffs...

...These new terms bubble up from a potent brew of the remember Gerald Ford's Whip Inflation Now (WIN) button right and the left and are heady enough to tempt the many campaign?-the new rhetoric assumes that virtue and sacrifice moderates who still, sometimes sheepishly, believe in "bas- can only flourish under duress and need the "moral equivalent t ics" such as self-$iscipline or sacrifice for the common good...

...It is all too easy to take S.I...

...efficiently they accommodate limits...

...there are no guarantees that corporations will put increased Limited social services and disciplined unions correlate earnings and savings into new domestic capital investment...

...The world of limits cannot mean a world where lated...

...The vast majority paramilitary slogans...

...They, too, are conveniently mechanism of self-limitation-the "market...

...some and oppressive, but to throw it out without a clear idea of 3. The sacrifices must be distributed equitably, always how to maintain its commitments is irresponsible and imdistinguishing between the necessities of life with dignity and moral...

...Bounderby, the new rhetoric demands the transformation me suggest three rules to remember when listening to the new of the moral fiber of the poor...

...WHEN JIMMY CARTER, Jerry Brown, Tom Hayden, Gary Confronting limitation requires discipline...

...Price mechanisms and the poor, the workers and the middle class...

...A mechanisms, wage controls and cuts in governmental service voluntary asceticism might be welcomed in Marin County but are inherently regressive and become even more so as the not in Watts...

...Their flag was the Union Jack...

...One throwing litter out the window and threatening to throw each sign is the recent moves by the Ulster Defence Association, the other after it...

...It casts the moral burden on individuals and simile 1924 Republican fight song...

...spondent for The Irish Press and Hibernia...

...Commercials now tout that "less is better...

...direct and indirect price controls and public interest the burdens of the new political discipline are borne by the regulations must be eliminated...

...but as it is being used, it too Unbridled consumption and selfishness cannot be tolerated...

...But before begun to decline-a critical prediction of Marx's-mean that we are seduced into a new asceticism, we had better ask upon the society can no longer rely upon affluence or perpetual whom does the burden of the limits and sacrifice fall...

...Surely the new rhetoric presents a refreshing counterpoint to The new rhetoric possesses a natural coherence...

...from goals of economic and social justice...

...tions into our political discourse...

...ignores more structural economic flaws such as oligopolistic discipline and virtue of sacrifice...

...Any moral imposition of 31 August 1979: 457 limits in the interests of safety, health, future generations or already exercise admirable discipline and save a reasonable the environment, we are told, upsets that finely-tuned proportion of their income...

...Only with the concrete common "necessary" transitions to squeeze more profits and, so it is good as our lodestar can we realistically assess the new societal hoped, more reinvestment and higher productivity from the limits...

...have started questioning their traditional political beliefs...

...There was a sudden silence...

...to resource scarcity only after it becomes evident and seeks a In a new twist, even the middle class does not escape the profit which does not take into account the social externalities strictures...

...In a caring and humane democratic order, we cannot luxuries...

...All these are even virtuous life possible...

...population, lies have always dominated the industries in this comer of Ireland, the same dilemma: the problem of their national identity...

...easily degenerates into a code to legitimize a national retreat self-discipline and sacrifice in daily life are the watchwords...

...ing, trust and empathy between leaders and citizens...

...Lower benefits, more "realistic" health care pro- hand, if the middle class and workers do lower their consumpgrams, higher unemployment rates, fewer people on welfare tion and standard of living, demand would decline and with it rolls, tighter application, screening and work requirements are much of the incentive for new investment...