The Ideas of March
Periodically, about every full moon, some wingnut will resurrect the tired old trope that liberals have no ideas while conservatives are all about ideas. Last time I bothered to deal with it, the culprit was David Frum, but I’ve also seen it lately from Dr. Kraphammer, Darth Kristol, Pantload, and much of the rest of the whole goddamn Hee Haw gang. Though you can be reasonably sure that it’s flat-out wrong, lying-lie wrong, Orwellian wrong just because of who’s saying it (not to mention the wtf? merits of the argument per se), they never, ever stop trying.
I’ve been reading and re-reading good old AJP Taylor lately, smacking around that same argument advanced by his wingnuts, a.k.a. Tories:
[E]ven in the twentieth century the Tories, despite their loyal phrases, were responsible for the only real subversion of modern times, the Ulster rebellion of 1914. If Toryism means anything, it rejects the sovereignty of parliament and the doctrine of the Social Contract… In practice, as Macaulay observed, Toryism amounts to no more than defending Whig achievements of a previous generation. In the world of ideas, the Tories have had to make do with unprincipled adventurers, like Bolingbroke and Disraeli, or to borrow from the other side. Burke, whom [Keith] Feiling calls ‘the largest mind ever given to politics in our island’ and ‘the inspiration of a second party of Tories,’ was a corrupt Whig hack. A century later, the Tories learnt their imperialism from the renegade radical, [Joe] Chamberlain. It would be unfair to blame Toryism for being short of ideas. Ideas are an affair of the mind, and Toryism distrusts the mind in politics. In essence, Toryism rests of doubt in human nature; it distrusts improvement, clings to traditional institutions, prefers the past to the future. It is a sentiment rather than a principle.
— “Tory History”, May 1950, The New Statesman
Disraeli riveted on our political life the conception that politics consist entirely in two parties fighting for office. These two parties were to represent not programmes but interests. What interests Disraeli did not much mind. Sometimes he talked of the Conservative Party as ‘the landed interest’; sometimes he appealed to all who had ‘a stake in the country’ [cf. Nixon’s “a piece of the action” – HTML]; in practice his party was an alliance between the City and the mob. None of this mattered. The important thing was the struggle for power — a tradition which the Conservative Party has faithfully observed to this day. It is true also to Disraeli’s tradition in not knowing what to do with power when it has got it. To catch the other side bathing and make off with their clothes is still its only resource.
— “Dizzy”, January 1955, The New Statesman
Now the cf. here, as it were, is the modern repugs’ obstructionism vis-a-vis… pretty much everything. Macauley’s famous observation holds as true today as ever, except for the fact that modern wingnuts are less sincere than those of his day — or Taylor’s for that matter. Wingnuts at the time insisted that Social Security amounted to the lash of the dictator; now they claim to be for it and protectors of it — mostly disingenuously, of course, since they also want to privatize it. Wingnuts, including St. Reagan and St. Goldwater, insisted at the time that Medicare was the tool of the Marxist devil and would eventually destroy America; during the healthcare fight they cited their desire to protect Medicare as a partial reason why they opposed ObamaCare. Lastly, and most infamously, wingnuts claim to have always been for the Civil Rights victories of the 1960’s, but to the small extent that such victories owe to Republican support, it is to Liberal Republicans, a species wingnuts have driven to extinction (concomitantly, they welcomed the Dixiecrats who continued to oppose civil rights); and their arguments are usually only made in the service of some lame gotcha at the supposed expense of repentant, reformed segregationists like Robert Byrd.
To the extent that they have any “new” ideas they get them from former leftists, aka neocons, who, being what they are, like to have a bit of fun playing games with dialectics. Christopher Hitchens, for instance, and even before his complete transformation after 9/11 into a Kristolmethodist, liked to sneer that the environmentalist movement was “essentially conservative.” After 9/11, of course, he accused everyone opposed to blowing Iraq to bits of “conservative” or “reactionary” sentiment; this sort of thing was then amplified by creeps like Oliver Kamm and the gang of useless idiots at Hurry Up Harry. Anyway, whether about war or about economics, this crap is all of a piece: neocons and neoliberals are merely types of wingnuts; put another way, they are enemies of — destroyers of — social democracy, our work, us. As Taylor said, if it is about anything, it’s about the rejection of the Social Contract. Our ideological ancestors beat theirs to an admirable extent, but the children, our coevals, keep smashing at the result, the Welfare State as idea and in practice, which puts us on the defensive. This is a fact of posture, nothing more; but of course it doesn’t stop wingnuts of all stripes accusing us of embracing what is “old” at the expense of what they’re peddling, which they allege is new and fresh. Tony Judt is good on this:
In the contemporary United States, at a time of growing unemployment, a jobless man or woman is not a full member of the community. In order to receive even the exiguous welfare payments available, they must first have sought and, where applicable, accepted employment at whatever wage is on offer, however low the pay and distasteful the work. Only then are they entitled to the consideration and assistance of their fellow citizens.
Why do so few of us condemn such “reforms”—enacted under a Democratic president? Why are we so unmoved by the stigma attaching to their victims? Far from questioning this reversion to the practices of early industrial capitalism, we have adapted all too well and in consensual silence—in revealing contrast to an earlier generation. But then, as Tolstoy reminds us, there are “no conditions of life to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone around him.”
This “disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition…is…the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.” Those are not my words. They were written by Adam Smith, who regarded the likelihood that we would come to admire wealth and despise poverty, admire success and scorn failure, as the greatest risk facing us in the commercial society whose advent he predicted. It is now upon us.
[…]
We must revisit the ways in which our grandparents’ generation responded to comparable challenges and threats. Social democracy in Europe, the New Deal, and the Great Society here in the US were explicit responses to the insecurities and inequities of the age. Few in the West are old enough to know just what it means to watch our world collapse.[7] We find it hard to conceive of a complete breakdown of liberal institutions, an utter disintegration of the democratic consensus. But it was just such a breakdown that elicited the Keynes–Hayek debate and from which the Keynesian consensus and the social democratic compromise were born: the consensus and the compromise in which we grew up and whose appeal has been obscured by its very success.
… Rather than seeking to restore a language of optimistic progress, we should begin by reacquainting ourselves with the recent past. The first task of radical dissenters today is to remind their audience of the achievements of the twentieth century, along with the likely consequences of our heedless rush to dismantle them.
The left, to be quite blunt about it, has something to conserve. It is the right that has inherited the ambitious modernist urge to destroy and innovate in the name of a universal project. Social democrats, characteristically modest in style and ambition, need to speak more assertively of past gains. The rise of the social service state, the century-long construction of a public sector whose goods and services illustrate and promote our collective identity and common purposes, the institution of welfare as a matter of right and its provision as a social duty: these were no mean accomplishments.
The truth is that all wingnut activity is done of the service of the only idea they have, and have always had since the beginning of time, perfectly encapsulated by J.K. Galbraith: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” Everything “new” they offer is just a different spin on this theme.
PS — This, from Judt, is good to throw in the face of the next Reasondroid glibertarian douchenozzle you encounter:
Thus Keynes sought an increased role for the social security state, including but not confined to countercyclical economic intervention. Hayek proposed the opposite. In his 1944 classic, The Road to Serfdom, he wrote:
No description in general terms can give an adequate idea of the similarity of much of current English political literature to the works which destroyed the belief in Western civilization in Germany, and created the state of mind in which naziism could become successful.
In other words, Hayek explicitly projected a fascist outcome should Labour win power in England. And indeed, Labour did win. But it went on to implement policies many of which were directly identified with Keynes.
And of course was never fascist. Incidentally, whom does Hayek remind you of here? Ahh. I said it at the time of Pantload’s book’s release and I’ll say it again: Goldberg’s thesis is nothing more than tired glibertarian reiterations of Hayek, but where they had repeatedly scribbled on their chalkboard “According to Hayek, food stamps = totalitarianism”, Pantload stupidly yet, strategically, cleverly substituted the f-bomb, so as to get his own side’s political history off the hook, as it were, and say to liberals in so many words, “I know you are but what am I?”
Even Hayek would get drummed out of the clubhouse if he were writing today. Worker safety, environmental protections, socially guaranteed standards of food, clothing, shelter and healthcare? OMG, HAYEK WAS A FASCIST!!!!!
Kudos.
One of my favorite rants has become attacking the idea that democracy’s highest ideal can only be expressed by removing all fetters from the wealthy and powerful to allow them to become even more wealthy and powerful. As if it’s somehow emblematic of democratic ideals if we lower Paris Hilton’s taxes so low that she doesn’t have to be restricted to one lousy private jet, but can have one in each color to match her outfit. And that if such policies result in the rest of us living in refrigerator boxes, well, tough titty – that’s what freedom is all about.
It’s a quite frankly insane interpretation of the type of outcome democratic government should be expected to produce.
The fact is, facism has come to America with the pass of this health care bill that is just like what Hitler would do.
What libertarians and conservatives are characterized not so much by ideas as by their devotion to ideology. The ideology supplies the answers – tax cuts! fewer regulations! smaller government! – and it doesn’t matter what the question was.
It’s gotten to the point that even the asking of questions is considered heretical to the ideology. Right-thinking people recite answers, rather than ask questions.
The Ideas of March
hear, hear! well said!
although actually writing in english these days will render your prose incomprehensible to its victims
Yes Hitler has always been best remembered as a champion of health care.
Government healthcare vouchers are only accepted at Dr. Mengele’s house of water flouridation and Amero-microchip implantment. Sorry for the inconvinience.
It’s gotten to the point that even the asking of questions is considered heretical to the ideology.
That’s because they long ago ceased to be a political party, and instead became a cult (at the level of the individual voter) and an organized crime syndicate (at the level of the party leaders).
Cults aren’t real big on the whole concept of things needing to possess an internal logic. And that’s exactly the way the gangsters running the operation designed it to operate.
I’m against this for ideological reasons.
S. cerevisiae said,
March 24, 2010 at 3:42
Yes Hitler has always been best remembered as a champion of health care.
Not to mention, immigration reform and granting rights to the wrong-colored peoples.
~
Hitler, okay, take him or leave him, but WHY WHY WHY did he have to be the parent of Paris Hitler???
here’s the thing: the true aim of a
conservativecorporatist party is to further the agenda of big business. this is the real “philosophy” that underlies the movement.to further this end they use two different overall strategies, according to circumstance:
1) transitory justifications for sudden contingencies, but necessarily framed as Grand Principles of Civilization, e.g., “the mandate to buy health insurance is a violation of the constitution”. typically, these transitory Grand Principles get them in to trouble in the long term since they only meant them to apply to the particular contigency and they don’t actually believe in them, e.g. violating the constitution is not terribly troubling to them when it is the “patriot” act eroding the 4th amendment. hence the often heard riposte: “oh!, but that was different!”
2) denigrating their opponents, us, so that our protestations, adducements of factual evidence, logically constructed arguments, and appeals to ancient principles of humanity, compassion, and community can be made to appear to be ridiculous, misguided, products of despised and discredited philosophies, week-kneed, disingenuous, nerdy, unpatriotic, and generally covered with an unsightly greyish film
but here’s another thing: in the end, really in the end, this bullshit storm never quite works. people in the aggregate can be really stupid, but they’re not that stupid
We haff wunderful plans – for Minehead!
It’s gotten to the point that even the asking of questions is considered heretical to the ideology. Right-thinking people recite answers, rather than ask questions.
Let’s see how long it takes for the “drum Frum out of the party” effort ramps up to eleven.
Uh… editing fail “to ramp up to eleven”
I am rubber is the you are glue of liberal fascism. Another excellent post HTML.
I’ve been tinkering with the idea that conservative minds all have this single thing in common, besides oxygen deprivation: for the conservative, the answers to everything must already be known.
If there is something for which an answer does not already exist, there are two possible outcomes: first, the question itself is invalid (an unquestion); second, an existing answer can be made to fit the question.
This thesis appears to cover everything, including the Libertarian and Evangelical aberrations of the conservative mindset. Evangelicals, of course, find that it’s all in the Bible, and if it isn’t, they find it anyway. Libertarians make every ambiguity of human existence fit into the basic paradigm “if it’s not nailed down, it’s mine, and if I can pry it up, it’s not nailed down.”
And for the various feckless fuckers mentioned here, it certainly works. They haul out the same half-dozen brain-tropes every time — war is kindness, freedom is wealth, and so forth — and fit them like a slimy caul over every fresh circumstance, totally disregarding the possibility of a new condition.
Look at climate change. It cannot be, because it hasn’t been. Therefore even if it is, it’s something that already was, for some reason that predates the possibility of being new.
So there’s my deep thought for the day. I’m sure some clever bastard has already come up with it, but we best learn what we discover anew. Unless conservative, natch.
Can someone post the “shorter” version of this argument?
These occasional long-form think pieces really mess with my mind!
I disagree somewhat. The modern Right in America is really about sadism and cruelty. That’s why they love war (from a safe distance, of course), why they love torture, why they love kicking the poor and the disabled when they’re down -even children aren’t safe from their fiendishness. They are like Major Tetley from The Ox-Bow Incident. They know that what they’re doing is not only wrong, but cruel and wicked. Tetley’s son described them to a T when he accused his father of lynching three men he knew were innocent:
You loved it. That’s why you kept them waiting so long. I saw your face, it was the face of a depraved murderous beast. There are only two things that have ever meant anything to you, power and cruelty. You can’t feel pity. You can’t even feel guilt. In your heart, you knew those men were innocent, yet you were cold – crazy to see them hanged….
At least Tetley had the necessary self-respect to kill himself when his sadism was exposed.
Shorter: I got mine, unless you got any, in which case, give it here.
I’ve been tinkering with the idea that conservative minds all have this single thing in common, besides oxygen deprivation: for the conservative, the answers to everything must already be known.
The denigration of doubt, the eschewing of empiricism.
Srsly, to shorter the Mencken screed, which I think is about the length it needs to be to cover the big points: conservative = always responding to change the same way, by opposition; change = improvement in circumstances outside their control.
The denigration of doubt, the eschewing of empiricism.
Reet!
Sorry, Bogarting the thread.
Can someone post the “shorter” version of this argument?
Not really, but the gist of it is right there after the long second double blockquote:
There’s stuff about why the Galbraith quote is true, and stuff about what the implications are – so it completes the story of the intellectual bankruptcy of the conservative movement. And it pre-emtively rebuts conservative counter-argument (You know who else…HITLER THAT’S WHO) with a simple “the progenitors of your movement have already made that argument” or “that’s what your mom said”.
I agree with Galbraith.
Hitler, okay, take him or leave him, but WHY WHY WHY did he have to be the parent of Paris Hitler???
I asked Teh Great Gazoogle about Paris Hitler and he lead me to the Mighty Corrente Building. Coincedence or conspiracy?
You know, the whole idea that they called the HCR bill “ObamaCare” gives their game away.
Not many savvy political actors, who were trying to build majorities and sway people to their opinions, would name their opponents’ proposal after a guy with approval ratings in the 50-60% range.
“ObamaCare” is a wingnut-only tribal identifier, a call to political (and, apparently, literal) vandalism.
Shorter this piece: conservatives stand athwart history, shouting HERP DERP!
Great fucking post.
When I was in law school, back in the 90s (I was a second career student 37 years old when I entered law school), I used to enrage the Federalist Society by referring to them as the “Tory Society”
I’ve put up the Greater Wingnuttia Butthurt Alert over at my joint.
It seemed the quickest and easiest way to sum up all the conservative blogs, Faux news, and the radio heads in a concise shorter.
Jennifer, I love you.
I have mad ideals, yo. I’m all about the ideals.
Hey does anyone know whether Marty Peretz is really broke? I have this awesome column about how awesome it would be if Israel just started blowing shit up over there and I need to figure out whether to run with it….
Not to oversimplify it, but…
We just went through a rock-em-sock-em legislative process w/r/t healthcare wherein the only Republican policy ideas put forth were:
– Tort reform!
– Make healthcare work like credit cards!
Ergo, I think that one’s been put to bed, and by bed I mean grave.
Additionally, what’s with the boner on Ezra lately? And yeah, I saw the thing he wrote that Glennzilla shat all over, but is that it?
Yeah, but think about it:
Nrrrrroooooom …. BOOOOM! Acka acka acka acka! Poom poom poom! And then there’s flames like FWOOOM! And people screaming!
Randomly and only tangentially related to the post: I really love that Adam Smith quote. I’ve been throwing it at Free Market worshipers for years, and it’s one that deserves more publicity.
People just be hatin’ on me coz I straight up got mine, yo. I’m just chillaxin’ on this boat with Rahm, Chuckles Rose, Brooksy, and YOUR MOM.
Mah homey? In the big White House.
Cash money: Trust funds, sinecures and column space. Livin’ the dream.
Interest Groups? Relegated. Smacked down. In their twilight, yo.
My souffle? Always soft and fluffy.
Speaking of the wingularity, I think there’s a danger to imagining the regressive mindset lends itself to an actual inciting event, after which the thralls rise up and uh like do something, and whatnot.
One of them occasionally breaks from the herd (McVeigh, Joe Stack, ad nauseam) and kills somebody, but for the most part, they’re terrified of acting at all, not just alone. So I don’t worry about a mass insurrection.
The threat lies in how, by their absolute devotion to “reality” being (and always having been) whatever new suggestion is thrown at them by their masters, they act as a glue that fixes said reality in the new position. They’re like termite spit, cementing the Overton Window ever-rightward.
There isn’t any equivalent force on the left of the spectrum, because we’re limited in our adhesive properties by intelligence-based things like remembering what reality meant yesterday, for example, and being able to note when a “new” paradigm is either 1) the same old shit warmed over, or 2) nonsense.
I think this is what happened in H*tler’s Germany — millions of people that would otherwise have been harmless dumbfucks woke up every day and believed what they were told, with a fervency and assurance that was totally belied by observable reality. But then — reality began to bend, to conform itself to their made-up world. They took this as proof they were right.
Ten years later, Europe is in flames.
So on the one hand, I don’t think there’s a moment at which this stuff reaches critical mass. Which is comforting to a degree. But because there will always be malleable idiots incapable of independent thought, and someone will always be leading them, Pied Piper-style, down the road to despotism, we’re always losing ground, like someone running up an endless down escalator.
That’s why I fervently hoped Obammy would push back hard. For all the outrage, he’s actually playing very comfortably within the wingnut envelope; it’s just that they’re trained to juke right no matter what, so no a tiny bit of tinkering with insurance has become WWIII. We’re still moving rightward.
For “so no a tiny bit” read “so now a tiny bit.” Sue me, I’m editing a book.
t D.N. Nation–
Ezra sent me a mean email once. Oh, that’s a silly reason to hate on somebody…..
BOOM PWN3D!@
Sorry I’m being so loquacious and heavy tonight. I think it’s because this is the first time in six months I haven’t been stoned to the gills by 6:00 PM.
Also, on topic, from HTML’s post:
Lastly, and most infamously, wingnuts claim to have always been for the Civil Rights victories of the 1960’s, but to the small extent that such victories owe to Republican support, it is to Liberal Republicans,
I remember when I was a little kid, I was watching Firing Line with my dad. Buckley was interviewing AuH20, and even 20 years ago, “respectable” Cons like Buckley were trying to pimp this line. So he did his Mr. Mumblyponce schtick about how Barry and his Conservative buddies were the real heroes of the Civil Rights era and, amazingly, Goldwater wouldn’t bite. If I remember correctly, he demurred politely at first and then the second time it was with a little more feeling. My dad’s comment was along the lines of “When that dangerous old lunatic is honest like that, it almost makes me feel bad for throwing eggs at him when he ran for President.”
Social Democracy is just another word for socialism. Socialism is for the Total State, just like Fascism is.
“I agree with Galbraith.”‘
As succinct a synopsis of what conservativism really is as I have yet seen. Conservativism is a self-serving cult masquerading as an ideology. The ideas they “believe” in are whatever they need to advertise to serve their real (often subconscious among the non-elite cons) goals.
Sorry for any typos,liberals, still learning to type on my new iPhone. And Tintin can’t block this.
The short form of the conservative credo is: “I upped my income. Up yours!”
The vocal faction is addicted to fear, the warm feeling you get when you piss your pants. It used to be the scary Muslims; this yea?T?|’s galloping socialism.
Yeats? “The center cannot hold. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” or something like that. Not what I meant.
It should have been “this year it’s” but I’ll settle for “now”.
Social Democracy is just another word for socialism. Socialism is for the Total State, just like Fascism is.
You’re a child. You have a child’s understanding of everything. Why do you care about any of this? What are you doing here?
The ideology supplies the answers – tax cuts! fewer regulations! smaller government!
Other way around, surely. The answers supply the ideology.
Oh, look, a soapbox with mangoes in it! I’ll climb aboard.
I’m a socialist, personally. I like the idea of a society sets up mechanisms to keep its members from falling too far, or too hard, during a setback. It makes the idea of flying high a little less daunting for the venturesome, too, and those who don’t have much ambition or aptitude can still live meaningful lives because they’re not chasing crusts of bread down the storm drains. This isn’t cheap, but it takes the concept of shared risk, which is the core of human success, to its utmost extent. Sure, it costs money. But misery costs life, and life is worth more than
galtgelt.That’s socialism when it works, which it often does.
Communism is a different beast. With communism, everybody owns everything, and nobody owns anything, which is antithetical to human nature. Communism sucks, unless you’re really into driving tractors.
Anyway, I’ll leave these mangoes here. If I share, everybody can have some.
“Liberal” & “conservative” are actually becoming kind of useless terms in politics – there’s far too many people in the big mushy middle who are libs on social policy, cons on foreign policy, & none of the above on economic policy … or any of numerous other combinations.
Ironically, it so happens that Glenn “Whattaya Mean, Mercury Isn’t A Vitamin?” Beck, in reviving the term “progressive,” may be doing political discourse a big favour in the long run. He & his ilk are openly & fanatically regressive – & the divide between progressive & regressive policy is the one that really matters. It’s not just a precious semantic game – the labels we use shape how we think about the things we attach them to, & I suspect neither liberalism nor conservatism is going to cut it in the future we’re shaping for ourselves right now.
Science has left politics in the dust in terms of progress, & that’s a very parlous state of affairs – like having a Mega-Voltron being controlled by somebody who’s fried on Quaaludes. Without a serious dose of progress in how we govern ourselves, we’re going to get fragged on our own techno-petard.
Archaic terms may be comforting but they engender confusion. A lot of parties that identify as “Conservative” elsewhere in the world would be called far-left in the US – & where I live, the right-wing neocon provincial party is the BC Liberals.
That’s TWO words. Not to mention being hilariously inane. Please go back to playing Call Of Duty 2 & leave the adults alone. You have nothing to add here except non sequiturs & futile rage. Perhaps you should ask your physician if Ritalin is right for you.
Spengler slayed this post. Clappity clap clap.
Can anybody get Html a speaking gig in the House of Representatives, or maybe a speech writing job for the President? Because holy shit, we have a statesman who can eloquently deliver a punch.
Reasondroid glibertarian douchenozzle – The alliteration conjures a vision of Schlussel and McCardle melded into one female. Thank God there’s nothing “oulter” in there.
But misery costs life
If you’re going to appeal to the libertards, misery also costs money. A lot more money than what it costs to create social housing (preventing homelessness), looking after people with disabilities, mental illness, and so on.
Study after study has documented the cost savings of social programs, including the provision of unemployment insurance benefits.
“Liberal” & “conservative” are actually becoming kind of useless terms in politics – there’s far too many people in the big mushy middle who are libs on social policy, cons on foreign policy, & none of the above on economic policy … or any of numerous other combinations.
No, I think this is always how it goes. Liberalism* remains as it is – the only plausible answer to the big question; “How can humans organize their world for maximum happiness?” But there are a lot of people who are confused, with many poor and incoherent ideas in the grand masses.
Most people don’t think about this stuff very much, and in the morass created by the malefactors of great wealth to keep liberalism down and those who would benefit from it, divided, we end up with lots of people who like tax cuts and social security, who like fucking out of marriage while using birth control, but oppose gay marriage, etc.
Conservatives are really never going to get a majority solidly behind their terrible real ideas, but if they can keep most people divided and confused their bloc can have more effect in a plurality-wins system.
* – I use a wide definition of “liberalism” that includes progressives, social democracy, etc and not including any form of libertarian including the “classic liberal” sophists who think it’s still 1855 and “let them buy cake” is still what liberalism is about
We should probably not make the error of thinking that political-economic developments of the past 150 years represent the height of solving questions regarding the organization of human society.
I’m rather optimistic that this simply isn’t the best there is.
This “disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition…is…the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.” Those are not my words. They were written by Adam Smith.
Adam Smith had some issues, but he was spot-on with this. He predicted Randism long before she was a glint of despair in her mother’s eye. Going Galt has always been about Orwelling and Gordon Gecko-ing negative traits into positive ones, wherein the labour that supplies the capital is considered worthless because the labourers don’t have the sense to keep the money for themselves, so therefore it is only right and proper to pay them less so you can make more. Being selfish then becomes the only absolutely moral path.
Galt Repubs hate socialism because they can’t think more than one move ahead in the great chess game of life, whereas socialism says “sure, you’re giving up a little now for a greater good down the line”. The repub sees only the loss of a pawn, the socialist sees how sacrificing that pawn has set them up for the win.
The racism, sexism, and general bigotry is just the icing on the cake to lure in the unwashed masses they exploit – it’s all about the money. The icing is the promise of things going back to the way they were* when only good, sky-cake fearing white men were allowed to hold jobs and earn money, so there was more money and less competition for cake.
The assholes they indoctrinate are too stupid/fearful/easily swayed to realize that they are just as despised by their overlords as the “queers, bitches, and [racial slur I will not say even sarcastically]” they want to subjugate.
*In their minds.
If you are in to A J P Taylor, make sure you also get piece of J A Hobson – this is the most righteous anti-imperialist tome ever printed. As the Serious amongst us are wont to say, Read the Whole Thing.
Dear Editor, I don’t like Obama. There’s just something about it. It’s not the skin color, my barber is black, but there’s something about him. It may be the fact that I didn’t vote for him, and I’m not saying he’s the AntiChrist but I’m not willing to not say that he’s not..uh, yeah. Isn’t there another country we could invade to get the economy re-restarted? I don’t like spending but it makes me feel good when we make others feel really, really bad. Draconian thinking like mine will usher in a new error [sic] in prosperity for bankers and HC execs. This harbinger of progress will not stand — despite it’s similarities to Mitt Romney’s plan.” –John F Swenson, Spooner Street, Rhode Island
We should probably not make the error of thinking that political-economic developments of the past 150 years represent the height of solving questions regarding the organization of human society.
No, but like Churchill said about Democracy, it’s sort of the best deal around as imperfect as it is.
Social developments are evolving just as society evolves. The problem is, there’s a lag effect: society and civilizations evolve faster than our mores and customs can.
It was less than two hundred years ago that urban areas became what we might recognize today: a concentration of people living in such close quarters that it was impossible to build out. We had to build up.
How you deal with your neighbors in a high rise of even a few stories is very different than how you’d deal with them if they lived down the road a piece. Because our only natural responses to stress are fight or flight, and since flight is not an option if you have to go to work in the morning, we had to learn to develop skills that allowed us to weigh the level of annoyance against a measured response.
It’s no secret and no accident that progress comes from the city center out, and that countries with denser populations tend to be more liberal than those with wide open spaces.
It’s also no secret that libertarianism, the sociological equivalent of kindergarten as espoused by assholes like Ben Stein and Irk Irksome, is the first principle philosophy of adolescent societies: these are people who never developed the social skills necessary to respond to a changing society and therefore don’t want to be bothered with teh scary stuff.
Liberalism, particularly as I’ve highlighted with the Matt Santos quote at my blog, is an attempt to correct this, and to usher in the theme that we’re all in this together, that the Declaration of Independence establishes basic rights for us all not for selfish reasons, but for communal and altruistic ones: by me taking on the rights and freedoms of America, I accept the responsibility to ensure those rights and freedoms are inherent for all people.
“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” is the libertarian creed, and I acknowledge it’s a good one, but look what the Founders wrote just after that: That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
In other words, the Founders anticipated that there would come times when the old system no longer worked and that a new system had to be instituted. This is progress. As society has developed from a thinly populated agrarian culture to a densely populated urbanized environment, the needs of people to “effect their Safety and Happiness” have become more complex, requiring more infrastructure and intervention.
People died in the streets in NYC in the 19th Century, of disease, poverty, and violence. That same wave worked its way through America as a whole until the 1950s, when we finally recognized that areas of rural America like Appalachia were still starving, and that the elderly were the last minority in America to be abandoned.
And we fixed that.
And we still need to fix things like healthcare because a sick neighbor doesn’t just hurt himself and his family, but diminishes us as a nation and could conceivably make us as ill as he.
We need to fix housing because people without houses create other problems like crime and disease.
We need to fix jobs, because a person with a job is a person not committing more crime.
No, our progressive ideals are not the perfect “end of history” ideals this nation needs.
They’re just a road to the future. Like Martin Luther King Jr once said “we, as a people will get to the promised land.”
Oops. That went a bit longer than I thought it would. Sorry.
Oops. That went a bit longer than I thought it would. Sorry.
That’s what I said to DKWs mom!
This is an excellent post, and the subsequent comments are also excellent.
I would just like to add: POOP.
I know you are but what am I?
Been tuning into Limbaugh at 9am local time lately, just for the Schadenfreude, because you know, the bitterest is the best…
Anyway, he’s also the king of projection. Yesterday, it was “It’s impossible to get along with liberals. They hate all of us. They’re unapproachable and refuse to compromise.”
Yeah. It’s like that all the fucking time and they never tire of it.
God, but I sure do. So I switched to Thom Hartmann for a dose of reality and then back to CD mode and listened to the rest of Valleys of Neptune.
No, but like Churchill said about Democracy, it’s sort of the best deal around as imperfect as it is.
Even broader, as the Text Markup-less Mencken said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
“A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.” Woodrow Wilson
“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.” John Stuart Mill
One more that is rather poignant:
“What is conservativism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?” – Abe “Too Tall” Lincoln
Actor: I recommend Shain’s “Myth of American Individualism”. Very, very good book.
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-American-Individualism-Barry-Shain/dp/0691029121
“Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals” -Mark Twain
My favorite, because it’s bipartisanly funny:
“A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth” – Jacques Barzun
One more, then it’s off to check the new XKCD: “A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt. ” WW
Woodrow, thanks. I’d never heard of that one. It sounds good.
“The justification for conservatism is the desire to preserve the truths and standards of the past; its dangers, of which we are seldom aware, is that in preserving those values, we may miss the infinitely greater riches that lie in the future.” – Dale E Turner
“I’m conservative, but I’m not a nut about it.”- George HW Bush
LoLoRz
Excellent post, thread, etc.
Spengler: Not Bogarting at all. A good pernt.
What hooked me from Taylor was this:
“Toryism rests of doubt in human nature; it distrusts improvement, clings to traditional institutions, prefers the past to the future. It is a sentiment rather than a principle.”
Yes, if by “sentiment” he means, a psychological state, an emotional pre-condition to subsequent actions and speech. As always with the right, we immediately reach for the language of pathology. Since they routinely violate what few “principles” they claim to have (“smaller government” = larger military), it’s clear that everything they say and do is in service to the pre-existing condition of their emotional state.
Of course, this is true about youse and me and everyone. It’s the nature of that emotional state that makes all the diff.
The range of this emotional state is not as narrow as it seems. On the one side, among the powerful (and those craving power), sheer greed. (Hence Galbraith’s “moral justification for selfishness.”)
In the middle (among the shouting, incoherent Tea Baggers), fear. These are Rush’s and Hannity’s fans.
At the other end, where the Confederate Wankee and his peeps live (alongside Mohammed Atta and other Moslem desperadoes at war with modernity), a kind of existential despair and even embarrassment, a desire to fill an empty self-image and feel important. These are the posturing nitwits who speak in faux-18th century tropes about “the blood of tyrants” and “not in my land.” They’re not really patriots, but they do play one on the tv of their imagination.
Are ANY of these types amenable to rational discussion? Sadly, no.
Mr Wonderful, that was wonderful. Kudos.
…
Oh, fine, I won’t break out the “great Ku Klux Klan” or “segregation is a benefit” quotes. In the interest of comity.
Didn’t this guy Taylor write a really silly book about World War II? IIRC, he just about absolved Hitler of responsibility for starting the war. His comments on Tories seem to make sense, though.
That’s the Gertrude Himmelfarb spin on the book, but it’s more accurate to say that Taylor, who was always anti-German and who organized against appeasement in the 30’s, thought Hitler was the natural extension of German statesmen, all of them bellicose opportunists who didn’t have any master plan in foreign policy other than doing blarg-awful when they could get away with it. IOW, he didn’t mean to get Hitler off the hook; he meant to totally condemn the line of German leaders since Bismarck.
Well then … not sure where to begin here.
Guess I’ll start by noting that this is one of the best blog posts I’ve ever read on any subject. Ever. The initial post, the comments (Spengler’s work has been brilliant on several levels) … just all around applause.
Now, onto my probably useless thoughts …
—–
Conservativism — most especially in its modern form — isn’t just a big ball of FAIL when it comes to what passes for their policies, nor is it dangerous just for its desire to shred, set on fire, and then shoot into space any type of social programs that may help those Not Like Them. And yes, they’ve decided that bigotry and racism are pillars of their political faith.
Those are problems, to be sure. But none are the “It” problem.
The “It” problem for the conservative movement is that, to survive, it must practice coordinated and institutionalized cognitive dissonance by treating itself as a faith-based belief system, rather than a political movement.
Without that dissonance, everything falls apart for them. The only way they can keep advocating for something that’s already been proven a failure is to act as if it was a great success, or never existed in the first place.
I mean, think about it: The Invisible Hand of the Free Market … The Culture Wars … The Laffer Curve … Welfare Queens … all are absolute pillars of the modern conservative. Yet all have to be taken as faith because the facts have proven them false.
That’s more than just rank hypocrisy or being clinically fucking stupid. It’s a coordinated effort to deny any reality that conflicts with the True Conservative Faith, and to indoctrinate people who find that faith is much easier than doubt.
It’s pathetic, sad, and as we’ve seen lately, possibly dangerous. Which, of course, begs the question: What the hell do we do about this?
The biggest problem we on the left have had since Goldwater — and are going to have in the upcoming years — is that we’ve been trying to deal with these folks rationally … to discuss policy and ideas and how best to govern.
They, on the other hand, have spent that entire time arguing about their faith.
There’s got to be a way to counteract that. I just don’t have a clue what the hell it is …
There’s got to be a way to counteract that. I just don’t have a clue what the hell it is …
Hear hear, Mark. Great comment.
That is the biggest threat to progress today: arguing with people who think facts aren’t facts because they don’t agree with them. It’s as if independent thinking is some kind of sport that only losers play — like racquetball. Discussing things in a rationally is futile. The only way we can get conservatives to think is to present them with easy to understand stories that almost sound conservative in nature. But, that begs the question: does reverse psychology work on the psychotic?
“…Discussing things
in arationally is futile.”I can’t type.
We don’t have to argue with wing nuts or their die-hard followers. We don’t have to attempt to reason with them. We don’t have to jump into a pit of quicksand to prove that, with luck, we can climb out.
It’s with the people to their left (and our right) that we have to reason with, and most of them are amenable to that. Ie, with the center. And not only reason with, but inspire, inform, etc., etc.
Then the issue becomes where the Overton Window is and how one reconciles the ideal with the possible. But isn’t it always?
Yes, it’s “with them that we have to reason with.” The extra “with” is because I’m INCLUSIVE.
Lots of nice thoughts and analysis here as to why repigs are reprehensible slime mold. I’ll add one more long, carelfully-reasoned argument to the bunch:
Conservatives are fucking assholes.
The “It” problem for the conservative movement is that, to survive, it must practice coordinated and institutionalized cognitive dissonance by treating itself as a faith-based belief system, rather than a political movement.
There’s a big problem, tho.
It can be neither. It cannot be a political movement or a religious movement. It has to be both, and that is its downfall in a constitutional democracy.
Eventually the conservative movement is doomed to crack under the stress of trying to keep the social and economic conservatives together. People who worship the dollar and people who worhship the Lord are eventually going to fall apart.
Hell, the Bible even says “A man cannot serve two masters” and then talks about giving unto Caesar and the love of money being the root of all evil.
You’re going to hit a crossroads where, what is good for the economic royalists in the party is bad for the social conservatives, or what is bad for the economic royalists is good for the religious crowd.
One way or other, the two sides will be at loggerheads and the party will crack. We’re already seeing it. The religious right stayed home in droves in 2008 without the gay marriage issue they had dangled in front of them in 2004 (else they would have stayed home then, realizing Bush was not one of them after all).
They’ll stay home again in 2012 unless someone who is as socially conservative as they are is a candidate. This is why Palin stands a chance when any reasonable person looks at her and laughs.
Conversely, the economic royalists will stay out of the election if the candidate doesn’t provide a sop to them, and I don’t mean this dishwater warm talk of tax cuts, but actually bona fide handouts. They see political contributions as an investment and damned if they will invest for no reason. That money is critical to the GOP chances, since they don’t have the grassroots fund raising that Obama has.
The cracks will only deepen over time. This is not good news for the Democrats. We saw in 2008 how we had to adjust our message to more centrist positions to win Congressional seats and that will only happen more and more as more and more Republicans peel off.
Where Democrats differ is, we can keep two factions together under a tent because we have general agreement on social and economic issues (altho we vehemently disagree on how to get there and how much of those we want). Why we don’t win elections is we can’t get one side to shut up long enough to unify the party.
This has been a problem for the conservative political movement in America since the New Deal (perhaps even longer). If you read conservative publications, essays, etc., the authors write a lot about the divisions within the movement and what to do about it. The binding material for conservatives in the postwar period ended up being anticommunism; it’s the one principle that every conservative could agree upon.
You see echoes of that in all the talk about “socialism”. But the word has been overused and coupled with the fact that there is no longer a manifestation of socialism comparable to the Soviet Union, the word doesn’t have the power it once did.
Wonderful post, actor, and Linnaeus hit on something I wanted to: namely, that conservatives have done a great job of finding enough issues to appease both the fiscal and social conservatives to keep their coalition together.
While that is most definitely starting to crack, and politicians are finding it harder and harder to straddle the line, Obama is now serving as that unifying force, replacing the recent immigrants and Muslims (and always-hated liberals) as their focus.
But if it hasn’t cracked yet, I’m not sure what the hell else has to happen. There just aren’t that many sane conservatives left to leave the party — they’re already gone or have been driven away.
Your point about what happens to the sane folks is a great point, though. What I’d like to see happen:
— Republicans become the far right nuts, eventually dying out in the next decade or so. They really do deserve to die as a party, given the utter destruction they’ve brought upon our nation (well, except for rich folks).
— The Democratic Party becomes what used to be the GOP, and where those who left the GOP of today wind up. They are full of moderates (Obama, Reid, et al) and folks that are pretty conservative (Nelson, et al) without being clinically insane. They are for social justice and programs, but are so from a more religious slant. They’re also truly fiscally conservative, willing to both cut spending and raise revenue (taxes).
— A new, truly liberal party emerges. Not as some counter-balance to the teabaggers (think the WTO protesters) but as the truly liberal voice that’s disappeared from our discourse over the past 40 years. It has the likes of Franken, and Grayson, and Weiner in its ranks, and takes pride in things like the New Deal and the Great Society. They pull the Overton Window back to left, providing a balance that America has lacked for way, way too long.
Of course, since this is my life, the exact opposite will probably happen, and we’ll have President Palin from 2012 – 2013.5 …
Mark,
Money follows politics which follows money. All political parties in a winner-take-all electoral system will tend towards the middle. The Teabaggers are a blip on the radar screen, just as a liberal movement would be a blip, until and unless a major source of financing can be found.
And I’m not talking about a George Soros or Richard Mellon Scaife. I’m talking about a structure of funding in the billions specifically earmarked for politics. The Republicans had that for decades. The Democrats managed to grab some of it in the past two elections.
This is what distrubs me most about the recent SCOTUS ruling about corporate political contributions. Not that corporations have a voice or even a voice more powerful than a citizen or even large groups of citizens.
No, it’s that a conglomeration of corporations could conceivably finance their own political system and do away with any freedom we have. THAT scares the crap out of me.
The only way money is going to follow a liberal or uberconservative movement is if an idea can be sparked in that movement that people can’t help but be attracted to. That was the “tax cut” mantra until taxes were cut too much. Now it has less power.
And the anticommunism and antisocialism messages were powerful up to a point, as well, just like Nixon’s “tough on crime” code was powerful. Money doesn’t like to follow soft ideas, tho.
Clinton was successful because he could create concrete concepts out of mushy vaporware: retooling factories, retraining workers. Obama sort of had that on the campaign trail but the game changed under his feet and he hasn’t been able to get traction lately.
Thanks for brightening up my day, pal …
😉
Your points are 100% correct … but also 100% correctable with a rather easy change, at least in theory:
Publicly funded elections.
**POOF**
Big money is removed, and a lot of the kickbacks and favors are unnecessary since that money isn’t needed to run for office and stock campaign war chests.
Sadly, expecting elected officials on either side of the aisle to pull their Gravy Trains onto a siding is pretty stupid, since it’s about as likely to happen as the Royals winning the World Series this year. It’s self-preservation for them.
But it really, truly is the only solution to the money and influence problem. It just is. There are no other viable, simple, and completely fair and doable way.
Even the First Amendment claims against it — that limiting contributions equals an Unconstitutional infringement upon free speech — are weak at best. The SCOTUS has already ruled that the government can, in fact, regulate the time, place and manner of speech if it serves the greater national interest.
Well, how the holy hell would publicly funded elections NOT be in the greater national interest?! Sure seems more important than, say, regulating a half-a-second shot of some pastie-covered nipple on national TV.
::sigh::
You know, the more we discuss this, the more I’m convinced our nation is just too collectively stupid to reach our full potential. There are enough common sense ideas just on this one thread to create a fantastic system of government from scratch. Yet tinkering around the margins of the one we have is painted as revolutionary and something to be feared — and painted that way by those who want to destroy the whole thing anyway.
Madness. Just … madness.
Publicly funded elections.
Nah gawn happ. I wish it would. The US is the only nation that doesn’t have a really effective form of public campaign finance.
And even if it did, it wouldn’t stop a corporation from funding an ad in support of a candidate on its own. Freedom of speech, you see.
You know, the more we discuss this, the more I’m convinced our nation is just too collectively stupid to reach our full potential.
Which is why I’ve got dual citizenship and real estate brochures. I really truly feel we’re about to collapse.
I! N? W?
🙂
More honestly, UK? Canada? And how the hell does one do that, anyway?
Just, you know, out of curiosity …
My dad was born in Finland, so his citizenship became available to me when the EU started forming. I think that window closed now on most countries, but some, like Italy, will take you if you have a vowel at the end of your name, practically.
I’m a socialist, personally. I like the idea of a society sets up mechanisms to keep its members from falling too far, or too hard, during a setback. It makes the idea of flying high a little less daunting for the venturesome, too, and those who don’t have much ambition or aptitude can still live meaningful lives because they’re not chasing crusts of bread down the storm drains.
I disagree with the first, agree with the second. I think the way in which the socialist society creates innovation is that there is time and space for your nerdy, non-self-promoting types, or even just your highly intelligent types who have social skills, to be creative and think about problems in new ways, instead of just struggling to survive. (Also, as part of the lesser inequality, the population is better educated and you aren’t constantly fighting off insanity or idiocy like global warming denialism or creationism and can actually put your energy into moving forward.)
There are some people who become VERY productive when they feel cornered. These people feel frustrated in a socialist society (because they are “social dominators”) and so they come to the US (fun! for all!) where the tax code lets them at least fantasize about becoming a BSD. However, the majority of these people are not very bright, and the ones that are waste it on trying to dominate others. (Like Bill Gates. Anyone who was actually forced to use his software knows very well that he cost the US economy billions in productivity for years; the party line is that he added to it. Exhibit A: WordPerfect vs. Word. Enough said.)
All of the technological advantage the US had in the late 20th century was from the university system taking an influx of refugee Jews during the 1940’s followed by US companies in the paternalistic days putting up socially-retarded nerds in their own buildings where they were allowed to play all day and come up with cool stuff like solid state electronics and Unix. Over time the military-industrial sucked all of that up which is why I (third generation nerd) said fuck it and walked away. We may build the smartest bombs but all the TVs come from East Asia.
Recently Wall Street has been taking in the nerds that didn’t go to the military-industrial complex … and yes, there is also some money being paid by the govt for bio research, which is why we are keeping up in that sector… but re: quants, we all know how well that one turned out. Instead of curing cancer, they’re bringing the global economy to its knees. What A Fucking Waste.
PS: Mencken, nice post. Thought-provoking.
Oh … I was hoping for something a tad more … warmish.
But if you got space for three people and a pair of dogs as semi-permanent guests, I can get used to ludefisk and half a year in darkness. Plus, I love rally racing.
See! I’m practically Finnish already!!
A tad more seriously, we looked into moving various places, but they’re all full or cost too much. But if we had the money, we’d be prepping ourselves the same way you are — I just think the right is going to go into full-on, total apeshit mode. Hell, they have already, and at some point some clown is going to make what McVeigh did look like a firecracker in a plastic bottle.
And that’s not paranoia — there are too many trend lines for it to be so …
Listen, with Finnish citizenship comes EU citizenship, so HELLOOOOOOOOOOO Riviera!
Mark, there are several small Caribbean nations where you could live comfortably on about $40,000 a year if you’re willing to lower your living standards a tad (e.g. slower internet, no more filet mignon, cheap beer and wine, smaller apartments and the very real possibility of power outages and the occasion water rationing).
But it these are civilized islands: no jungles to hack through or mobs of American hating vandals.
You know, not Alabama, in other words.
Education. Yeah, sounds trite n’ shit, but it’s true. When I was a young douchebag, I used to believe that climate change was an environmentalist conspiracy, that people were living it up on welfare, that tax cuts and privatization are always the answer, and so forth. I changed my mind about all of those things because various people beat the hell out of me with the stout club of reason. Now I’m a middle-aged douchebag, but at least I don’t believe as many fucktarded things.
At any rate, what I’m saying is that we need to club wingnuts like trusting, helpless fur seal pups… with knowledge. Not an actual club. Because that’s illegal.
Not to beat a dead thread, but …
actor–Oh, living off $40K wouldn’t be much of a lowering of living standards, especially since The Mrs had her job eliminated. And we do likey the beach … 🙂
Marian — But how do you educate people who are so willing to utterly, totally, and completely ignore anything and everything you throw at them?
I’ve tried the “I will send you a bajillion links proving you’re wrong, including some from Fox News!” thing with countless wingnuts I know, and it does no good. At all. They just brush it off, move the goalposts, or claim it doesn’t count.
At this point, the only real solution is to hope they wind up blowing each other up, rather than the rest of us …
we need to club wingnuts like trusting, helpless fur seal pups… with knowledge.
AWRIGHT!
… with knowledge
*putting away baseball bat engraved “FACT”*
Damn. Wrong bat.
You might be surprised; on climate change, for example, I didn’t just take a look at the facts and say “D’oh, I was wrong.” It took years for me to finally realize “Hey stupid, you’re stupid.” I suspect that’s typically the way it goes.
And for the people who never, ever have that sort of epiphany, there’s always withering mockery. It worked at keeping the racists at least semi-closeted for awhile.
I suspect that’s typically the way it goes.
Which is why the gazillion links meme has value. If it works one time on one nutcase and it takes four years to do it, that’s still one more piece of evidence for that person to change his or her mind.
Hello All,
I was directed to this thread by my Dad and in the hope that he reads it I wanted to say, thanks Pop. This is excellent stuff. Now I know why you hand me my ass (in a good thought provoking way) when we have discussions on certain subjects 😉
Apologies if I go on a bit here, I’m new to this stuff.
For years I have struggled to understand why so many of my socio-economic brethren continually voted against their own interests. Was it simply the Horatio Alger myth (nutshell: Don’t tax the rich, I’m gonna’ be one of them soon as this lottery ticket hits) the “christian values trifecta” (nutshell: gay people are bad,unborn babies are good, bring on the rapture!) or the ever popular “good old days” sham (nutshell: Life is swell! Provided you are A: Male and B: White and C:well, that’s about it.)
It appears I was over thinking things. My failure to find a rational argument for so many poor anglos voting Republican wasn’t due to a flawed search but rather a flawed question. I believe someone above called it an “unquestion”. Essentially, the reason I couldn’t find the rational argument is because there isn’t one. The conservative ideology isn’t about ideas or rational thought.To borrow from Mark D. above, “it must practice coordinated and institutionalized cognitive dissonance by treating itself as a faith-based belief system, rather than a political movement”
Ah! The lightbulb having been lit, it has suddenly become much easier for me to understand the Beckists and Rushers and Hannitites of the world. They don’t NEED to ask questions because the answers are always the same. Everything that is, is already known in their universe. It’s a static womb that allows the far right edges to become further and further radicalized. Eventually, as we are now seeing, certain impulse-control-issue individuals within that camp start committing criminal acts with the belief that what they are doing speaks to a higher authority. Usually some conflation of The Founding Fodders, Jeebus, and Zombie Reagan as if they are going to pop out of the grave to post some jackass’s bail after he vandalizes a house.
I think trying to “reach” or reason with the 29 percent of the population that is flat-out crazy is pointless but what can I say to the entitled factory slugs who populate my working class Suburban Detroit neighborhood when they can’t see past their next unemployment check? I’m constantly dealing with the “I’m gettin’ mine” (and yours if you aren’t looking closely) attitude? Many “White Labor-liberals” are basically rednecks once they lose their jobs (Bart Stupak et al) after all and that’s been happening here quite a lot as of late. While they love to “sturm und drang” at the coffee shop about “Beck says” or “I heard” , they really have no interest in debate and would much rather hold court than have to debate or defend their positions.
How the hell do I have a dialogue with these WILLFULLY ignorant motherfuckers?
““The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.””
This.
“Cults aren’t real big on the whole concept of things needing to possess an internal logic. And that’s exactly the way the gangsters running the operation designed it to operate.”
And this. You’ll look in vain for any kind of consistency in that “exercise in moral philosophy.” The closest thing to a consistent core value in conservative philosophy is the concept of property rights and the idea that private property is inviolable. But even that principle immediately stops applying if the property isn’t owned by them or someone they like.
E.g. even Ayn Rand had no problem firmly siding with Israel as it stole land and homes away from Arabs, because as she explained the Arabs were pre-industrial savages and the Israelis were “civilized” and that’s what it was all about. (Her distaste for socialism in Israeli politics came second to her racism, which is incredible given how much the old crone just hated anything that smelled of the left).
“Right-thinking people recite answers, rather than ask questions.”
The caveat to this is that if you recite the right answer at a time when it’s not convenient for The Movement, you’re as guilty as if you’d recited the wrong answer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Bartlett
The guy above was fired by the Texan think tank he worked at in 2005 for accusing George W. Bush of not being a true conservative. The funny thing is, in 2008, the right wing uniformly came to the same conclusion which is why you suddenly started hearing the drumbeat that “Bush was a liberal, Bush was a liberal, Bush was a liberal” –
But you never heard a single voice saying “Bruce Bartlett was right.” He remains excommunicated forever for having been prematurely right, when The Movement hadn’t yet said it was okay.