The "New Paradigm" Lie

Remember the Internet bubble? Remember all those Silicon Valley eCommerce businesses going public and making fortunes for their employees and shareholders? Until the bubble burst and billions of dollars evaporated, destroying bank accounts and lives. The infamous rationale for that financial feeding frenzy was captured in a phrase: “new paradigm”.

Why are Internet companies trading at insane multiples? Where are the earnings? Where is the cash flow? Hey you don’t understand--it’s a new paradigm!

Of course, that assertion turned out to be disastrously wrong. There was nothing quaint or obsolete about the fundamentals of financial analysis. The present value of future cashflow was and remains the foundation of our capital markets. The new paradigm turned out to be a novel way to separate investors from their money.

Years later, we’re being sold the same bill of goods by Republicans, namely Karl Rove and his talking-point spinmeisters. They claim that Democrats are stuck in the pre-9/11 world while they are busy shaping the post-9/11 world.

Let’s call their theory the Post 9/11 Paradigm.

According to Conservatives, all the rules changed after the twin towers fell. Torture became necessary. Rendition became acceptable. Indefinite detention without recourse became the norm. Wiretapping without warrants became justified. After all, human nature and the principles and values we hold dear fundamentally changed on 9/11. It's a new paradigm!

Oh?

With the Bush Doctrine of Preemptive War collapsing and the clamor for investigations, censure and even impeachment rising, the Post 9/11 Paradigm seems to be bursting like the Internet bubble before it.

People are beginning to realize that compassion, tolerance, justice, due process, moderation, oversight, caution, diplomacy, discretion, thoroughness, capability and service still form the foundation of our nation’s values.

Torturing our presumptive enemies (whose actual guilt or innocence hasn’t even been ascertained) is just as repugnant, barbaric and regrettable as ever. It still opens our own citizens to the possibility of vengeance and blowback. Indefinite detention is still as grotesque and inhumane as it was when the Soviet Union used gulags. Secret wiretapping can still lead to the same destructive, unjust and unconstitutional abuses it led to in the past.

No, human nature and the consequences of injustice didn’t change on 9/11. What changed was the level of our fear, and the willingness of politicians to stoke that fear for their own aims. So the next time I hear a Republican accusing Democrats of being part of the pre-9/11 mindset, I’ll remember a broker trying to sell me a hot internet stock based on a new paradigm--nothing but mistaken, self-serving garbage.