Dude, where's my Obama?
It was only a year ago that Barack Obama held liberals spellbound. His every word was taken as the gospel truth to power. But when Obama couldn't convince Massachusetts voters to support Martha Coakley in last week's election he managed to leave liberals in a dizzy spell. Obama wasn't the Anointed One after all and out came the slings and arrows.
Consider what New York Times columnist and fellow Nobel laureate Paul Krugman wrote about Obama in a column titled, "He Wasn't The One We've Been Waiting For":
But I have to say, I'm pretty closed to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.1
This is far cry from the Krugman who wrote of Obama days after the 2008 election, "Can Barack Obama really usher in a new era of progressive policies? Yes, he can."2
Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic expressed similar feelings of dismay in a piece titled, "Where's the Obama I Voted For?":
But the frustration with the administration was palpable among Democrats today. Members of Congress and their staffs were asking the same questions I was: What does the president want? How badly does he want it? A lot of the legislators ended up running for the exits. And while lack of a clear party line from the White House surely wasn't the reason for Democratic panic on Wednesday — the political anger behind the Massachusetts election is real enough — it doesn't appear to have made that panic less likely, either.3
Then there was the spectacle of Obama apologist Chris Matthews and Obamacare critic Howard Dean calling each other crazy on Hardball the night following Scott Brown's election.4 But the confrontation between Matthews and Dean is tame compared to what reportedly transpired between Matthews' MSNBC colleague Ed Schultz and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs following Gibbs' appearance on Schultz's radio program last Thursday. Schultz told an audience in Minneapolis over the weekend that he and Gibbs got into a heated exchange after the program went off the air over health care. Schultz disclosed that he told Gibbs he was "full of sh*t" while Gibbs replied with an f-bomb. He went to say that he told Gibbs that President Obama was "losing his base."5
One must wonder if Obama campaign manager David Plouffe being brought back into the fold was a consequence of the "conversation" between Schultz and Gibbs. Yet bringing in Plouffe has hardly assured liberals. Howard Fineman of Newsweek believes Plouffe could come into conflict with key White House personnel such as Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel. He writes:
But one reason why Obama ran such a stunningly effective presidential campaign is that the internal supply lines were short and the lines of authority were clear. This new setup is anything but.6
The fact Beau Biden won't run for his father's old seat is also an indication that Plouffe's presence doesn't inspire confidence in Democrats. If the son of the Vice-President of the United States can't be reassured then who can be? It would seem that Delaware's Senate seat belongs to the people as well.
Of course, it is entirely possible that this loss of faith in President Obama might be temporary. If a crisis were to come along and Obama were to handle the matter deftly it could help him win back some of his base. Then again Obama has handled the response to the earthquake in Haiti quite well. Yet you would never know it with the way liberals have erupted over the past week. The tremors will certainly begin anew in November if Democrats lose both Houses of Congress.
Should that happen how long will it be before President Obama faces a challenge in the 2012 Democrat primaries? If someone were to challenge him it would almost certainly spell the beginning of the end of his Presidency. Howard Dean has led the charge from the Left against the loss of the public option and would surely love an opportunity to redeem his scream from the 2004 Democrat primaries. Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold (of McCain-Feingold fame) is another potential challenger who has been critical of President Obama's decision to send additional troops to Afghanistan.
Then there's Hillary Rodham Clinton. In 2008, liberal activists looked upon her as if she were a Republican. While she probably wouldn't get a great deal of support from that wing of the Democrat Party she would attract plenty of moderates. However, it could be argued that her health care proposals went further than Obama's and she could run to his left on that issue.7 But regardless of whether she is to Obama's left or the right, can you really see Hillary staying in the White House if it begins to resemble The Titanic? Have Hillary's presidential ambitions been completely excised?
Now President Obama would in all likelihood be able to stave off a primary challenge. But so were Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. Fat lot of good it did them in the general election. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were re-elected in no small measure because they did not have to face a primary challenger.
But as angry as liberals have been at President Obama this week it is well worth remembering the old adage that a week in politics is a lifetime. President Obama does have the luxury of having time on his side. On the other hand a lot of these angry liberals have long memories and might not easily forgive President Obama his transgressions. Or as liberal comedian Dick Gregory put it, "Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned."
Endnotes
1. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/he-wasnt-the-one-weve-been-waiting-for/
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/opinion/07krugman.html?_r=2
3. http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-treatment/the-day-after
5. http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/24/schultz-gibbs-exchange/
7. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296997,00.html
Aaron,
I think that one of the errors we make as conservatives is that we tend to lump democrats, liberals, and progressives together. While they can be found in each other’s company; they are each unique in their degree of ideological allegiance. We often use these three words almost interchangeably on this site to describe our opponents; and I’m not certain if we may be making a mistake.
I don’t think these words can be used interchangeably. I think each has a different set of characteristics; and as such the goals of each of these groups has a nuanced difference with each of the others.
Democrats have traditionally favored farmers, laborers, religious and ethnic minorities, and generally oppose unregulated business and finance.
Liberals seek to focus on a person’s freedom to ‘do’ things. They wish to use the state and its apparatus to enable people, but care little for the station in life that person holds.
Progressives, at all times, advocate for change and reform; from the standpoint that they believe they themselves are the best equipped to decide exactly what that change should be and how to enact all the specifics of the proposal. They never think in terms of individuals.
We can see a real difference of degree here; especially as it pertains to health care. A Democrat would favor regulating the insurance industry. A liberal would favor unfettered access, but a progressive would want to take over the entire system of financing and delivery of health care to the entire population in order to ensure equality (sameness).
We had the opportunity to see these different factions in action during Congressional and Senatorial negotiations. When this all first started the original bill was authored by the progressive wing. After the summer recess, when democratic congressmen faced the open wrath of their constituents, some returned to the House saying; “This is too much! The people won’t stand for it!” Others began to question the price tag. Speaker Pelosi held them in line, allowing 37 of the most vulnerable to vote against the legislation once she had her numbers.
The fight was just as bloody in the Senate. Majority Leader Harry Reid actually kept the Senate in session to ‘protect’ them from their own constituents during the Holiday. Since he had no ‘extra’ votes, he resorted to the open bribery of Senators from Louisiana, Florida, Nebraska, and several other states, carving out ‘special’ favors for these senators in return for their votes. He also was forced to ‘water down’ much of the regulatory and assumptions of power authorized in the House legislation.
After the special election in Massachusetts we can, once again, see these three factions in action. Democrats believe health care is dead, and in order to set a more populist tone for the upcoming mid-term elections, want to drop health care and work on the twin challenges of the economy and federal spending. Liberals believe there should be some focus on jobs, but also think it’s possible to play ‘small ball’ with health care. Tinker around the edges of reform, get some portions passed, and expand them once they’ve had the opportunity to judge the aftermath of the upcoming elections.
The progressives are still demanding that everyone proceed ‘full speed ahead’. They eschew any backtracking or compromise. They want this done. If the Senate bill has to be swallowed whole, then they believe that House Democrats are duty-bound to swallow it! In their mind, there’s too much to lose by not seizing this control now. And for them, that’s what it is about; control. This is why they don’t particularly care for who, or how many, legislators may lose an election over this. With the same fervor that Lenin, Stalin, and Mao went after their respective populations while trying to create utopia; the progressive left is not the least interested in the potential for casualties here, just the power.
So; I really believe that the democratic and liberal portions of the Democrat Party are not ready to give up on Obama, but the progressives already have.
Amazing as it may seem, given my criticisms of Mr. Wavering a while back, I find a great deal to agree with in his comments. I’m fed up with conservatives who see no distinctions among their opponents and routinely call all of us ‘socialists,’ ‘communists,’ or (post Jonah Goldberg), ‘liberal fascists.’ I’m a liberal who believes there is an appropriate role for government (local, state, and federal) in health care. This does not mean that I want some version of Britain’s National Health Service. There are Americans who cannot afford health care, and I am willing that some of my tax money be used to help them.
It’s the beginning of political intelligence to recognize that there are many social and cultural factors that make the majority of Americans unwilling to support a Western European welfare state. So, health care reform in America will have to take different forms than health care in Sweden. Certainly there should be plenty of room for efforts to develop incentives for cost containment where few now exist. Obama’s legislation has little to offer here.
The folks Mr. Wavering calls “progressives” ignore all of this and want to move forward to full-blown government control of health care. I call this point of view “leftist” to distinguish it from my own, which is “liberal Democrat.” There are lots of players in the health care system, and my kind of liberal is interested in working out a variety of compromises that allow them to work on solving problems and not on projecting utopias.
Unfortunately, my kind of liberal Democrat is not now in the ascendancy among national Democratic party leaders. However, there remains something of my orientation among many Democratic voters. Here in Massachusetts there simply are not enough hard-core conservatives to have made up Scott Brown’s winning majority. Many independents and Democrats who voted for him are NOT sending a signal that they want no part of federal health care reform. Of course, as a partisan, I hope Republicans continue to delude themselves that there has been a vast shift in the thinking of Massachusetts voters. Rather, the message is about the specific version of health care reform that Obama and others insist on pushing.
I had expected Obama to do at least some of what he had talked about when it came to working with Republicans, on health care and other issues. My hope was not in Obama the Messiah (although many liberals bought into this) but in Obama the (possible) bringer of common sense wheeling and dealing back into national policy-making. Instead, Obama has shown himself to be more leftist ideologue than deal-cutting politician. Of course, many conservatives simply prefer their own ideologically-driven policies and reject the value of political bargaining just as much as Obama.
As a liberal, my belief is that, in some–not all–areas of human life, government can be an important factor in improving the quality of life. Policies that assist the disabled–while objectionable to conservatives–seem to me amply justified. Many elderly Americans are better off because of Medicare and Social Security, which again raise conservative hackles. Government-funded medical and other areas of scientific research have brought benefits that seem to me undeniable, but, again, conservatives will disagree. And, no, the market does not make everybody a winner, Pareto optimality to the contrary notwithstanding. So my liberal credentials are in good order. However, I am not the sort of leftist that thinks America is the worst nation on the planet, or the oppressor of mankind, or an enemy of non-whites.
Do I expect conservatives to change their tune and start making appropriate distinctions among their enemies? Not really. And I return to the point I tried to make in various earlier exchanges–most of today’s conservatives really don’t know much about their own intellectual origins, nor do they truly grasp the necessity to conform their thinking to its own deepest premises.
>I return to the point I tried to make in various earlier exchanges–most of today’s conservatives really don’t know much about their own intellectual origins, nor do they truly grasp the necessity to conform their thinking to its own deepest premises.
***It’s always great to have some kind, compassionate liberal tell us poor ignorunt con-servatives that we aren’t as racist and uncaring as he thought we was, partikularly ‘cause we base our philosophy on really bad, racist and homophobic stuff unlike Liberals, who just care deeply about humanity.
Have a look at a previous exchange with Gestell on this subject.
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2010/01/11/you-cant-say-that/
I’ve reproduced a couple of the statements he made previously, and my reactions to his silliness. Gestell has picked out a body of literature that he claims represents conservative thought (you know, like the monoliths we are). It’s the most reactionary paleoconservative writings, by the way. From this he projects onto the present — because Kirk and Weaver et.al. said something, this is the only intellectual foundation of conservatism in 2010.
You’ll notice, though, that he rejects applying this same methodology to understanding Liberal thought.
Gestell: A conservative who dismisses the writings and theories of people who lived centuries ago is odd indeed.
*** I haven’t “dismissed anything.” I’ve just repeatedly pointed out the flaw in your reasoning that these authors define modern day conservatism. If I must accept the body of “conservative’ writers you identify as being the only definition of modern day (2010) conservatism, you must accept the same logic applied to such butchers, racists eugenicists and mass murders as Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc. In short, I insist that we apply your standards to a discussion of liberalism, but you expressly reject this same logic to define liberalism. This is agenda driven analysis, not objective analysis.
As for Kirk and Weaver et.al. speaking both for (a) the sole philosophical basis of conservatism, and (b) the modern day application of these principles, it’s just more sophistry. We’ve been through this before with the paleoconservatives, who are a fringe group who adhere to this nonsense. They no more represent the only “conservatism” today than Marx represents all liberalism.
Gestell: conservative who seriously believes that liberalism is indistinguishable from Communist totalitarianism suffers from still more historical illiteracy.
*** This is an application of YOUR logic to this analysis. You are the one who set the pseudointellectual standard for this analysis, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out. I’m doing nothing more than applying YOUR criteria to Liberalism. Your analysis of modern day conservatism is a ridiculous as this parody of a belief that all modern day liberals are Marxists. If you want to write an opinion piece about the philosophical underpinnings of writers who have self-identified as “conservatives”, so go for it. As a history piece, it’s fine.
Your problem is in applying this abstract analysis to modern day policies (“Southern Strategies”, voting right acts, etc,) and then projecting this nonsense onto what drives conservative politics today. As I more than demonstrated with your facile observations about people voting for their own kind, you have no real-world grasp on this issue.
Instead, you do exactly what the paleos do — quote “conservative” authors to show that “race matters”. (they do it because they are in fact racists seeking justification for their fringe beliefs; you do it because you want to brand ALL conservatives as racists while exempting liberals from a similar analysis).
The paleo fringe beliefs about conservatism have been repeatedly debunked by people like me and others with the links I gave you previously.
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2006/09/11/in-their-own-words-the-undisguised-racism-of-the-far-far-far-right/
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2006/09/08/the-%e2%80%9ctrue-conservative%e2%80%9d-racial-purity-quiz/
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2006/09/02/off-to-the-races-the-perplexing-politics-of-political-correctness/
Just to show you how out of step your and the paleos understanding of conservatism is, consider this from one of my links above:
Continuing to cite Kirk and Weaver as evidence that Kirk and Weaver define all things “Conservative” is a classic tautology. It’s much like the circular reasoning that can arise from misapplying Aristotelian logic. All men are made in the image of God. We KNOW God is not a black/Asian/Hispanic, etc. Therefore everyone who isn’t “white” isn’t really a man. The only conservatism allowed is their brand of conservatism. Everyone else who thinks differently is a fraud.
Citing Aristotle as the intellectual soul of segregationist-conservatism proves even less. Aristotle supposedly provides the philosophical foundation for justifying slavery. But when you actually read his works, you see that support for “natural” slavery is not based on skin color, but on other human factors. It was a culturally-based application of logic to a “natural order” that believed in multiple gods, thought the earth was flat, that soil, wind, fire and water were the four basic elements, and arose in a time where people lived and died within miles of where they were born (apart from military expeditions), which also explains the focus of classical theorists on family ties and bloodlines.
Supporting slavery wasn’t a principle as much as it was a judgment about certain aspects of the human condition based on various assumptions that, by the very nature of Aristotelian logic, would be overturned when mankind’s understanding of nature grew more sophisticated.
The process of logic and reasoning taught by these classical scholars is still the basis today for much of the way we scientifically evaluate information. But the conclusions arising from this process are only as good as the information upon which it is based. Modern day racists ignore the scientific method that today would factor in a wealth of more sophisticated variables, and rely only on 2000 year old “conclusions”. The modern day white supremacists pay homage to Aristotle’s conclusions, not the process he taught us to help decide an issue.
So we come now to the modern day disciples of white supremacy who want to tell us that they are the True Conservatives, because their ideas are “validated” by thousands of years of history. And they come to this website seeking to proclaim the “truth” and engage in “honest debate”.
Racists masquerading as conservatives are no more reflective of what conservatism is today than Marx is of what Liberals are. But if you insist on drawing a stupid comparison about conservatism, I’ll continue to point out that agenda-driven stupidity by showing how silly it is to apply it to liberalism.
The only difference between you and the paleos is that they are indeed racist fools, while you appear to simply be a fool who selectively applies his analytical standards to conservatism only.
Oh, dear, I seem to have annoyed Mr. Jackson again. I never claimed that today’s conservatives are racists, merely that conservative principles make it difficult to reject the sorts of arguments that such people as paleocon racists made and still make. Mr. Jackson is also infuriated that I regard Weaver, Kirk, Kendall, et. al. as having any sort of intellectual authority in conservative thought. On this point I have no reason to change my claim, but would simply ask Mr. Jackson to read some books. In ANY account of the major conservative thinkers in this country, the people I mentioned figure prominently. Sorry, Mr. Jackson, you can’t read them out of conservatism. Now your comeback is to tar liberals with the brush of Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc., but this doesn’t work either. The Communist Left has never been a friend of liberalism, either in theory or in political conflict. Real leftists know precisely how and why they differ essentially from liberalism, and it’s only in what we liberals used to call the fever swamps of the Right that anyone confuses liberalism with the Communist Left.
Now I think Mr. Jackson does not want to consider what traditional conservatism has to say about the entire modern world. That’s why, in my previous argument with him, I tried to explain that Burke, deMaistre, and other founding figures among conservatives were opposed root and branch to the political, philosophic, social, cultural, and economic changes that together comprise ‘modernity.’ And now I think I may have figured out why all of this bothers Mr. Jackson. The American Founders were modern men. While they could use the religious vocabulary common to most people at that time, they were, to a greater or lesser extent, men of the Enlightenment. They believed they had made substantial progress in discovering the principles of liberty and sound government over what had been done before, and what they thought they had surpassed is precisely the premodern world to which traditional conservatism sought to return in whatever manner possible. Burke could defend the American Revolution because he, as Russell Kirk would do later, reconfigures it into a minor rebellion in the name of the rights of Englishmen. However, there had never been a government that even attempted to be based on the consent of the governed before the American government. There had never been a government that had built a conception of ‘rights’ into its very fabric before the American Revolution. Of course, this did not stop the real American conservatives of that time–the Southerners and other defenders of slavery–from misreading in a different way, imagining the United States to have been a loose alliance of sovereign states. The Founders didn’t create that sort of regime either, although many conservatives continue to dream of such a thing. Mr. Jackson supposes that traditional conservatism can simply support American political principles without understanding that what I call, polemically, genuine conservatism requires that these principles be regarded with the utmost suspicion. Individualism, government by the consent of the governed, modern natural rights–none of these are conservative principles. Mr. Jackson cam embrace them, but in doing so he shows the truth of the old idea that most Americans, like it or not, are liberals at heart.
Gestell:
It’s never annoying to point out the superficiality and hypocrisy of liberal analysis which excuses liberalism from the same kind of ‘rigorous’ intellectual analysis you subject conservatism to; it’s an expected part of debating a liberal.
Like I said, you can tag me with Kirk and Weaver if I get to tag you with Marx and Mao. As a self identified liberal, you now obviously draw upon the intellectual foundation of mass murdering racists. Why should we pay attention to someone who likes to enslave people and sterilize “inferior” races? You can’t hide from this designation — all I need to do is quote your own logic back to you: “In ANY account of the major [liberal] thinkers in this country, the people I mentioned figure prominently.” Anita Dunn and several other current Obama administration officials prominently quote Mao, and Obama’s own economic policy draws heavily from Marxist ideology. The case is clear, using your own analytical framework.
>The Communist Left has never been a friend of liberalism, either in theory or in political conflict. Real leftists know precisely how and why they differ essentially from liberalism, and it’s only in what we liberals used to call the fever swamps of the Right that anyone confuses liberalism with the Communist Left.
*** Ha! What an absolute croc! “Real Liberals” like Gestell get to distance themselves from the insane mass murdering racist theorists of the Left; but if we object to having Gestell pick the only conservative philosophy for us, then we’re anti-intellectual and disingenuous.
By the way, speaking of acquiring some actual knowledge on the subject, I studied at the University of Chicago under Adam Przeworski, Philippe Schmitter, Ira Katznelson and a host of other self-identified “liberals” who expressly drew their intellectual foundation from Marx, Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas, and the insufferable French Marxists, not to Mao and Trotsky, for both political and social theory. I know exactly what colors their traditional liberal ideology — and it ain’t Jefferson and Madison! (In fact, since Adam was on my dissertation committee, I had to use the Przeworski-Wallerstein class conflict model to analyze the United Mine Workers political and economic decisions. I was told you can’t explain the actions of a trade union unless you invoke Marx! The only member of my committee who thought that was ridiculous was the one guy who did not identify himself as a “liberal”).
This is the problem with insufferable pseudointellectuals like Gestell who claim to understand “conservatism” because they read a couple of books at one point in their life. They make facile, rather silly observations about politics — like Gestell’s previous observation that people “vote for their own kind”, which explains of course why Mayor Daley of Chicago voted for fellow Irishman John McCain in the 2008 election.
The simple fact is that in understanding politics today (which is what Gestell professes to want to do), you can’t apply one methodology to understanding conservatism, and reject that same methodology for understanding liberalism. If the actions of my conservative congressman Sam Johnson are explained by invoking Kirk and Weaver (a silly, superficial analysis), then the actions of liberals must be explained by going back 100-200 years or so an invoking the writings and practical applications of the writings of Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc. Even more, since liberals have now become “progressives”, let’s look at the racist underpinnings of the early 20th century eugenics-based progressive movement in America to explain all progressive policies today.
Once again the difference is that I can see how incredibly stupid it is to apply Gestell’s methodology and logic to actually understanding contemporary politics, while he sees nothing wrong with exempting liberalism from the same methodology he uses to explore conservatism.
This is the textbook definition of an agenda-driven political hack (and a pseudeintellectual one at that).
Should be: “…not to mention Mao and Trotsky.” Do you have any idea what it’s like to get trapped at a faculty party and have to listen to whether we live in a true hegemonic bourgeois social order, or one that lacks sufficient self-awareness from the proletariat to allow for a new democratic centralist regime to transcend present-day capitalism — all, of course, within the framework of dialectical materialism?
But of course, even though this is what contemporary liberals actually discuss, none of this has anything to do with any analysis of liberalism. It’s only modern-day conservatism that is irrevocably linked to the theories of past philosophers, even when people today don’t actually invoke all those concepts today to guide their actual actions.
Gestell,
Let’s keep this positive, for the most part, shall we? You say; “So, health care reform in America will have to take different forms than health care in Sweden.” I believe this is true. The population of Sweden is approximately 9.2 million. Although we’ll have more accurate information after the census, the current US population approximates 304 million, 33 times larger. Sweden’s health care costs are 9% of GDP; GDP is $480 billion; so they spend a little north of $43 billion on health care. I’m going to go out on a limb here; but I suppose the Sweden doesn’t have quite the illegal immigration population to deal with that we do.
Latest available figures for the US are; GDP is estimated at $14.2 trillion and health care costs for the US were estimated at $2.2 trillion. This works out to @ 15.5%. So it is obvious that Sweden’s system, while it serves them well, probably wouldn’t work here. There would have to be many more ‘paths of choice’ regarding coverage and cost in order to accommodate the larger population as more people would probably have unique circumstances. This would be a reason that our health care system would require more flexibility as opposed to less (a ‘one-size-fits-all’ government approach). Granted, we spend 35% more per capita, but I believe that with the world’s highest survival rates of cancer, heart disease, and stroke; not to mention the highest survival rate of premature births on the planet; that these costs are well worth it.
However; my original question is; is it possible for you to explain to me exactly why, on God’s Green Earth, the administration was in such a hurry to fix this with 2,500 pages of cumbersome, burdensome, inexplicable, legislation: And why it had to be done ASAP, before jobs, economic health, deficit reduction, or even before the formation of an HIG team to interrogate high value, captured terrorists?
In other words why did health care, which when referencing the above figures gives 33 times as many people, as good a health care as any other nation, for not much more in cost (and decidedly less I might add than the amount of money we’ve added in debt over the last twelve months) took precedence over three of the most important areas of domestic policy and inarguably, the most important portion of foreign policy? And more importantly; if this was such a ‘slam dunk’ regarding cost savings and improved delivery of health care, why was it necessary to ‘bribe’ 25% of the Senate with kickbacks, sweetheart deals, and favors, to secure the votes of a bullet-proof majority in the first place?
I’m not certain, but I believe there was a previous essay posted on IC by your favorite protagonist Phillip Jackson where we discussed at some length the different levels of commitment in political parties. The conclusion was that there was a ‘hard-core’ constituency to each of the ‘institutionalized’ political parties in this country. Just as I drew a difference between democrats, liberals, and progressives in my previous post (see Post #1 to this essay), I believe there to be a similar set of participants on the opposing side. I would call them republicans, conservatives, and supremacists.
A Republican advocates a ‘republic’, a form of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is generally associated with the rule of law.
A conservative adheres to principles of limited government, personal responsibility and moral values, agreeing with the adage that religion and morality are indispensable supports to political prosperity.
A supremacist believes that a particular race, religion, gender, species, sexual orientation, belief system or culture is superior to others and entitles those who identify with it to dominate, control, or rule those who do not.
If you’ll care to review my initial posting to this composition you’ll find definitions of democrat, liberal, and progressive. I believe that democrat and republican, liberal and conservative, and progressive and supremacist, roughly equal each other not only in political fervor/belief but also in percentage of the overall makeup of the parties.
If we were to employ set theory to the two institutionalized parties the set of republicans and conservatives, and also the set of democrats and liberals, would be best represented by intersecting circles. However both the circle of supremacists and progressives would be represented by self-contained, non-intersecting circles.
The approximate percentage make up of each follows
• Democrats 35%
• Liberals 45%
• Progressives 20%
• Republicans 35%
• Conservatives 45%
• Supremacists 20%
* (All percentages are personal approximations derived from a life of political debate.)
There is a hard core 20% of kool aid drinkers on either side of the political debate. These are the folks that are so certain of the superiority of their positions; that their dedication may be compared to that of a religious fundamentalist, an ‘Ideological Jihadist’ if you will. The independents or moderates, pick your term, occupy the middle 45% of each political persuasion. And the balance occupy that final tier where the day-to-day activities of ‘getting by’ consumes most of their time, leaving little time to dedicate to direct political activism.
The two intersecting sets of each party debate each other for short term ideological control of the party, with members of these two groups crossing from one side to the other depending on issue. It is important to note that no one group has a sufficient percentage to exert control for the long term. I would submit that once one group does exert long term control over the others, that that entire party is approaching an ‘Ideological Precipice’. This was a point of my original post. Somehow the progressive wing of your party had seized control of the levers of power in Washington. They were doing their level best to herd the entire party over that ‘Ideological Precipice’ that was health care. Not only running roughshod over the opposition party, but over those of their own who were decidedly less committed. My other point is that they continue to do so. Paul Bagala, Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, David Plouffe, et al; are continuing to beat the drum for the Congress to vote the Senate Bill unchanged and shove this 2,500 pages of scatological nonsense down the throats of the American people! For their own good of course.
This is the danger we face whenever we mistakenly elect a leader from that fringe 20% of either party; as we seem to have done in 2008. If a party leader from that fringe 20% is placed in the highest office in the land, from either political stripe, I believe it does a disservice to the country. This is my reasoning as to why I pray Obama is a single term president. I do not believe him capable of moving outside his ‘circle’.
On to another subject: I’m certain you recall the spirited debate that arose from our contributions to “You Can’t Say That!”
I’ll end this posting with a series of your own postings: This goes back to my premise that you cannot ascribe a characteristic to an entire group, when that characteristic only comprises a small percentage of that group. If you’ll recall, I also attempted to point out that both political parties are similarly affected by a small (20%) percentage of bigots.
• “I never claimed that today’s conservatives are racists.” Gestell post #4 ‘Have liberals Lost Faith in the Anointed One?’
• “I’m sure that she, and other conservatives, would blow the roof off, but I fail to see that she has not indulged in racism.” Gestell Post #2 ‘You Can’t Say That!’
• “Ms. Morgan concludes her column with a sentence in which she writes of “the false illusion that all races and cultures are equal.” Why shouldn’t I conclude that she, as a conservative, has just announced that blacks are racially inferior?” Gestell Post #2 ‘You Can’t Say That!’
• “Now back to principles: First, I’ll explain why I’m correct that Ms. Morgan’s final point is racist.” Gestell Post #13 ‘You Can’t Say That!’
• And finally; ” I’m tempted to just say Q.E.D. here, but I think you still won’t get it.” Gestell Post #13 ‘You Can’t Say That!’
Words mean things. See you “Out There!”
First, I’ll reply to some of Mr. Wavering’s comments.[Mr. Jackson can read along if he wishes]
1. On Obama’s rush to health reform: Darn if I know why he had to hurry this! I had expected a much more politically sensible approach. As I’ve said, Obama sold himself (at least to my kind of liberal Democrat) as someone who would actually practice bipartisanship where possible. And I expected a very different performance from the way Clinton’s plan was formulated. As you may recall, Hillary closeted herself with a handful of her people, worked in near-secrecy, did not bring any major Congressional figures into the discussion, and left out almost all the stakeholders. The result was a plan that was vast, unwieldy, and extremely confusing. I was teaching health policy to undergraduates at the time and I assigned my class to read the huge paperback (around 800 pages) that was published, summarizing the plan. This book actually had lots of exercise sheets to fill in with your own health care insurance information, calculations to perform, etc. to show you how much the plan would benefit you. So I decided to try it and asked my students to do the same. Then we discussed our conclusions. No one, including me, could really prove that he or she would be better off with Hillarycare than without it. Then came the CBO analysis showing how much the plan would really cost. Next the economist who had designed much of the plan deserted his own sinking ship, disavowing the plan altogether. Finally, Daniel Patrick Moynihan said openly in the Senate that the numbers were nonsense. Goodbye to Hillarycare. I had expected Obama’s people to avoid a similar debacle, but they didn’t, or worse yet, they couldn’t. So–in answer to your question: hybris, lots of it.
Now on your comments on partisanship and parties. I’ll dig up some literature cites, but from the political science research in this area, it’s the case that both major parties do have some ideological diversity. However, the most active members of real party organizations (I don’t mean people who just call themselves by a party and vote for it.), are different from those rank-and-filers. Generally, Democratic party activists are significantly more liberal than Democratic voters, and Republic party activists are significantly more conservative than Republican voters.
Now I see that none of you intellectual conservatives is able to see what I think I see very clearly in Ms. Morgan’s final sentence. You think you’ve caught me out because I claim that I’m NOT saying that all conservatives today are racists and that Ms. Morgan’s comment IS racist. No problem here. Just because many or even most conservatives today are not racists does not prevent one conservative from making a racist claim. I continue to fail to see how else one can read that offending final clause. If one says that it is a “false illusion” to say that all races and cultures are equal, then, by sheer common sense, not to mention logic, then obviously some races and cultures are “unequal.” Or: if all A’s are not equal, then some A’s must be unequal. I hope this is finally becoming clear. Now please note that for all I know (or care), Ms. Morgan sends her monthly check to the NAACP. However, her words, to borrow your final line, DO mean things, and this is what they mean. What Mr. Jackson would not do was to try to discuss with me how to understand “equality” and “inequality,” preferring as he does, when he reads my stuff, to start on a tirade about how liberals are no different from communist totalitarians and how I’m some sort of racist jihadist or something. This gets in the way of discussion, to put it mildly, although I certainly will not hesitate to reply in kind. I’ve been arguing against people on the Right for a long while now, and every day I take a look at real conservatism by reading lots of the columnists and posts on Townhall. If you go over there, you’ll find my snarky liberal comments (and the TH readers who regard me as enemy of all things good and decent.)
Now, one more time on my main point: Conservatism isn’t just a partisan political position that calls for less government, or a free market economy, or even for prayer in public schools. Conservatism has a lengthy history of opposition to all aspects of the modern age–its politics, ethical doctrines, culture, social structures, mores and folkways, etc. A present-day conservative who doesn’t know this is not an ‘intellectual conservative.’ Mr. Jackson gets upset when I try to attach him to Weaver, Kirk, et.al, or, further back, Burke or de Maistre. But I deny that a conservative really IS a conservative unless he is saturated with the historical sense of the intellectuals on the Right who have been condemning all of modernity for several centuries now. Mr. Jackson’s tu quoque exercises notwithstanding, conservatism is nothing if it is NOT a deep, multifaceted, serious defense of Tradition (or, as the Straussians would put it, the Great Tradition). At the very least, if conservatism is correct, if it’s account of man and the world is true, then the individualism that has been advocated, celebrated, defended, and more for the past few centuries is wrong and false. And yet many well-meaning American conservatives imagine (mirabile dictu) that they are the real defenders of individualism against the Left. If they are, then they shouldn’t be, because conservatism is about virtue and tradition and not individualism. Libertarians, of course, can be rabid and radical individualists, but it’s more than time to separate libertarians from conservatism. In spite of Frank Meyer’s fusionism, and all later efforts, the two things really don’t belong together. As Wilfrid McClay explains this in his article on ‘individualism’ in “American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia” (ISI 2006, p. 427)For the traditionalist individualism is “one of the chief pathologies of modernity, another element in the abstract, rationalistic, nakedly self-interested, egalitarian, leveling, atomistic, antitraditioinal, and antinomian tendencies that have disordered the present age.” Conservative get this, but only if they truly embrace the intellectual side of conservatism.
Here’s a story for Gestell, which explains a lot about his inadequate methodology for analyzing political issues.
When I was the head of the political science association at the University of Chicago, I was part of the interview process for new faculty. One very bright guy from a state university interviewed for an open position. Like Gestell, he’d read a lot of books, and like Gestell, he didn’t seem to have a very good grasp on what those books actually meant.
The final determination on him was that although he was bright, this candidate lacked the intellectual ability to piece things together (which is different from memorizing and regurgitating text). He had the native ability to think, but because of his inadequate education he suffered from an inability to actually think things through in a challenging intellectual environment. This led to him making superficial, and at times sophomoric statements about complicated things (such as what Gestell has said about people vote for their own kind, and the Nixon “southern strategy” was race based: ignoring the economic upheavals of a fading rust belt economy and the socio-political changes brought about by the 60’s revolution and Vietnam war upheavals in American society).
This is the fundamental problem with someone like Gestell who pontificates about political theory (which he’s apparently memorized really well), but can’t seem to actually relate it to the real world. It’s the problem with assigning philosophical motives to what may be social or economic-driven issues. It’s a problem that manifests itself with reading books about classical conservatism and projecting from this a methodology to analyze modern day politics, while precisely rejecting this same methodology when analyzing Liberal philosophy and Liberal actions.
This superficiality is best illustrated by Gestell when he reduces “conservatism” to a “serious defense of Tradition”. Okay, sure, yeah, if you go by a dictionary definition of the term. But as I pointed out in tracing the issue of “Tradition” to Aristotle:
Aristotle supposedly provides the philosophical foundation for justifying slavery. But when you actually read his works, you see that support for “natural” slavery is not based on skin color, but on other human factors. It was a culturally-based application of logic to a “natural order” that believed in multiple gods, thought the earth was flat, that soil, wind, fire and water were the four basic elements, and arose in a time where people lived and died within miles of where they were born (apart from military expeditions), which also explains the focus of classical theorists on family ties and bloodlines.
Supporting slavery wasn’t a principle as much as it was a judgment about certain aspects of the human condition based on various assumptions that, by the very nature of Aristotelian logic, would be overturned when mankind’s understanding of nature grew more sophisticated.
The process of logic and reasoning taught by these classical scholars is still the basis today for much of the way we scientifically evaluate information. But the conclusions arising from this process are only as good as the information upon which it is based. Modern day racists ignore the scientific method that today would factor in a wealth of more sophisticated variables, and rely only on 2000 year old “conclusions”. The modern day white supremacists pay homage to Aristotle’s conclusions, not the process he taught us to help decide an issue.
It’s the context of Tradition, not the word “Tradition”, that matters most. “Tradition” is not an automatic embrace of things in the past (that’s the dictionary definition of the term, not the analytical understanding of the term). Liberalism also has a “serious defense of Tradition”, which manifests itself in such things as “settled law” for court decisions they support, upholding a woman’s traditional right to “choose”, etc. Liberals constantly defend what they are doing as being perfectly consistent with some perceived decision, action, or principle from the past, even when the actions fly in the face of established law or procedure. They simply pull up another heretofore unknown “right” (like privacy) to ground the decision in “tradition”, instead of identifying it as something anti-traditional.
Once you move beyond a dictionary definition understanding of key terms like “Tradition”, issues like this become understandable in a political context.
As for “What Mr. Jackson would not do was to try to discuss with me how to understand ‘equality’ and ‘inequality,’ this is the same sophistry we get as the typical liberal mantra today that if you don’t agree with their plan/ideas, you have no plan/ideas of your own (think: the health care debate). I already covered previously with Gestell the difference between equality of opportunity (a conservative ideal founded in the Declaration of Independence), and the liberal notion of equality of outcome (grounded in liberal policies like affirmative action and quotas).
A note now about Gestell’s credentials, which he has not seen fit to share with us. Those of you who’ve followed my comments in the past know that I never disparage someone who doesn’t have a Ph.D. In analyzing and understanding politics, common sense is often a more valuable commodity. But when someone professes to teach us about “Conservatism” because he’s read a couple of books with no other apparent credentials, and worse, appears to have no understanding at all of alternative philosophies such as Marxism or Progressivism — and then proceeds to manufacture one methodology for analysis of Conservatism that he expressly rejects for other political philosophies — well, this person is either a fool or a fraud. And here credentials matter.
It’s clear to me that Gestell is book smart, but ideologically-driven, and has no real understanding of the things he talks about. He cites catch phrases without understanding their context, and makes facile observations about the relationship of political philosophy to political action. I can tell from my education that his is largely self-taught (or at best he’s taken a few courses here and there in the past). I can also tell that unlike my almost 20 years in state, local and national politics (three of them in Washington DC), he has no real understanding of how the political process functions. He doesn’t seem to understand what drives actual political and economic decisions, and how (if at all) these decisions relate to 18th, 19th and early 20th century political philosophy).
I point this out only because Gestell has set himself up as an expert on these matters, and I don’t believe his actual experiences and education match his claims to knowledge. He treats political philosophy like a dependent variable in an equation that applies only the political philosophy he does not support, which is why I keep challenging him to apply his same standards and methodologies to an analysis of Liberalism, and he responds by saying that this just “gets in the way of discussion.”
Once again, there have been many people throughout the ages who have claimed to represent a political philosophy. Marx, the Progressives, Lenin, Mao — all have articulated the Liberal point of view in both their words and actions. Their writings must be understood in a relevant historical context to give them the depth one needs to analyze contemporary political behavior, just as Conservative writers need to be treated.
We all know how the paleos have read these same works and drawn their vested-interest conclusions about “race matters”. What Gestell wants to do is adopt the paleo template as the only legitimate expression of modern conservatism to tag conservatives with a racist brush not because he embraces the paleo philosophy, but because he like the rest of us rejects their applications and conclusions of these past writers. (This is why analysis is analysis, because to have true meaning, these words must be placed in an analytical framework. If you don’t understand the framework due to your lack of a genuine education, or proceed from the basis of an agenda-driven methodology, you get a distorted view of reality).
I’d respect Gestell’s efforts as sincere (wrong, but sincere) if he was willing to apply the same methodology he uses to “analyze” Conservatism to analyzing Liberalism. But he intellectually can’t, or won’t — instead giving us the amazing comment that Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc. are irrelevant to discussing liberalism because “The Communist Left has never been a friend of liberalism, either in theory or in political conflict. Real leftists know precisely how and why they differ essentially from liberalism, and it’s only in what we liberals used to call the fever swamps of the Right that anyone confuses liberalism with the Communist Left.”
This is absurd, as I showed in comment #5. And it’s why I continue to point out what a pseudointellectual fraud he is.
You know, I can make this really easy to understand, even for Gestell.
Forget about Gestell’s specific conclusions for a moment, like the Nixon “Southern Strategy” was racist, or that people only vote “for their own kind” (whatever that means).
If what Gestell says is true about one political philosophy, the same reasoning and methodology should also be true when analyzing other political philosophies. This is what distinguishes a real analysis from an agenda-driven hit job.
Specifically, Gestell has picked a body of literature that he interprets exclusively through the paleoconservative prism (where to them “race matters”, as we’ve discussed before on this website). He does that not to validate paleo beliefs as the paleos attempt to do, but to hang all conservatives with the skewed paleo thought process.
Next, he takes these out of context political philosophies of the past, and insists that they are determinative of how modern-day political decisions are made. Policy X is pursued not because a politician has a particular transitory economic or social agenda he wants to achieve, but because those actions are meant largely to advance or inhibit such things as a philosophical discussion of natural rights.
If Gestell’s theoretical construct, and methodology of analysis, is true of “Conservatism”, it must be equally true of any evaluation of Liberalism. Obama does what he does not because he seeks a pragmatic advantage over his contemporary political opponents, but because he is implementing the logic and philosophical underpinnings of Marxism, eugenics-based Progressivism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, and other 19th and 20th century Leftist/Liberal ideologies.
Now, I may believe that Obama is influenced by certain political theories, just as Reagan was influenced by other political theories, but I don’t tag Obama with eugenics-based racism because he self-identifies as a “Progressive”. The simple fact is that many people in power today have virtually no understanding of political philosophy to begin with, and those that do (like Obama) often use it to cherry pick some ideas to advance a private agenda, while rejecting other ideas from the same philosophy.
Political philosophy interacts with contemporary politics more as a non-specific, highly generalized sound bite, than a guiding influence on actual behavior. The only place these kinds of issues deeply matter is among academics and pseudointellectuals who routinely debate theory divorced from reality. They build tightly wound connections that fit together nicely on paper (as long as you don’t ask too many questions about their assumptions and methodology). As an intellectual pursuit, it’s harmless. The problem occurs when these intellectual mind games are assumed to be actual reflections of contemporary real world political decisions, as Gestell has provided several examples.
Clearly ideology has a role in understanding some political decisions. But when you sweep with a broad brush to pain conservatism with an ideological rigidity, then you must apply the same methodology to an analysis of Liberalism itself.
The fact that Gestell not only cannot recognize this, but when confronted with this expressly rejects standards of consistency, tells you all you need to know about his so-called analysis. [See particularly my comment 25 in http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2010/01/11/you-cant-say-that/ where I analyze Gestell’s assertion that “voting patterns in ethnic concentrations in a city is precisely the practice of people voting for their own”.]
Clearly political philosophy has a role to play in contemporary politics. But to understand what that role is, consistent standards of analysis have to be applied to all philosophies, not just the one you want to rail against as racist while excusing the odious features of the philosophy you’ve self-identified with.
The first step in an honest debate is to frame the debate honestly. When one party is incapable of doing this, or refuses to do this, their conclusions must be rejected as inadequate, or worse — deliberately partisan … no matter how many books they say they’ve read.
Gestell,
I agree with your assessment of both the attempt that Hillary Clinton made to remake health care and the recent attempt by the Obama Administration. I couldn’t’ attribute it to anything other than hubris myself.
I also agree with your assessment that; “Generally, Democratic party activists are significantly more liberal than Democratic voters, and Republic party activists are significantly more conservative than Republican voters.”
I tend to have a slightly different view when it comes to the development of conservative values. You state; “Conservatism has a lengthy history of opposition to all aspects of the modern age–its politics, ethical doctrines, culture, social structures, mores and folkways, etc.” Opposition is a rather strong word that, to me, implies antagonism and hostility. I would substitute the word challenging for opposition. To challenge means to question or test.
Add to that the progressive tendency to advocate constant alteration of existing politics, ethical doctrines, culture, social structures, mores and folkways, etc. without regard to consequences.
Conservatism champions a carefully thought out approach to change. An incremental approach that attempts to ascertain the affects of the intended consequences, and more importantly, the potential of the unintended consequences of social or political alteration.
The word ‘modern’ does not equal ‘superior’. If it did then a compendium of ‘progressive’ achievements would have revealed nothing other than the continual alleviation of misery and a consistent track record of the elevation of mankind. The historical record disagrees.
Was Stalin superior to the Tsars? Was Mao more enlightened than the Emperor? Shall we compare Hitler to the Kaiser? History is replete with examples of a ‘modern’ age supplanting tradition to the definite detriment of the people involved. This historical record alone would caution a person to take a slower path to progress.
Who could have predicted the consequences that the institution of Lyndon Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ would have on the American people? I say conservatism could and did. To date we’ve transferred over $1 trillion dollars to those defined as ‘in poverty’ and not only have failed to alleviate poverty, but it’s more pervasive than it did when President Johnson called for his ‘War on Poverty’ over 46 years ago
Progressivism seeks change for the sake of change itself. It leaps without looking, certain that any and all unintended consequences of the ‘change’ it seeks can be dealt with through more ‘change’.
Unfortunately, Mr. Jackson supposes that an extravagant vocabulary of abuse and assertions of ignorance suffice as argument. They do not. He fulminates and roars, trotting out his academic credentials, and accuses me of being an autodidact, or perhaps what the Germans would call “half-educated.”
First, why anonymity? I post on a variety of conservative websites as ‘Gestell.’ I do not want many of the folks who post on Townhall to have any idea who I am or where I live. Redblooded conservatives like Mike Adams love to allude to all the friends they have (heavily armed friends) in federal law enforcement and to how much grief they can visit on the leftist enemy. So, anonymous I shall remain.
Now for credentials (if this is really necessary). I am by training a political scientist which a primary interest in political philosophy. One of my graduate degrees is from a university whose political science department is renowned in the profession for its pioneering emphasis on quantitative research, a reputation it continues to have. Another of my graduate degrees is from a prominent East Coast school. Mr. Jackson, in one of his incarnations, presents himself as a hard-headed, empirically savvy researcher. I think this is why he believes (since he has repeated it several times) that he has nailed me when he shows that he knows that people vote for all sorts of reasons. I never denied that. And yes, I know that people don’t just vote for their own. However, it is well-known that many immigrant communities in American history did indeed vote largely or primarily for ‘their own.’ I guess Mr. Jackson wanted to suggest that there’s something deeply wrong with this, especially when it comes to black voters. Like a number of conservatives, including some black conservatives, Mr. Jackson seems to subscribe to the Marxist-derived theory of false consciousness, appearing to hold that most black voters have been duped and deluded into voting Democratic. I’m pleased that Mr. Jackson knows better than black voters what is in their true interest–I also wonder what empirical methodology allows him to make this judgment.
I’ll take this opportunity to comment on Mr. Jackson’s excursion into the study of Aristotle on slavery. It’s possible to explain Aristotle’s position rather more directly than my critic does. For Aristotle, as his writings on animals make clear, nature and natural things exhibit a hierarchical structure. The ‘natural slave’ is a human being who is deficient in the distinctly human quality of reason, which makes this slave literally unable to exercise rational control over himself. Some scholars gloss this by saying that what Aristotle has in mind is what we would call subnormal intelligence or retardation. This may be a bit too apologetic, but certainly Aristotle does think there are qualitative differences among human beings that make some superior enough to others to serve as masters over them. Aristotle distinguishes between these ‘natural’ slaves and merely ‘legal’ or conventional slaves, such as Greeks enslaved after their city is defeated in war. The whole discussion of ‘natural slavery’ in Aristotle’s “Politics” is one ingredient in his effort, in book I of that work, to move toward an account of the nature of the city that will shed light on the distinctive way in which it must be ruled if it is to be ruled in a way appropriate to it.
The larger argument between Mr. Jackson and me is still unsettled, and, from his utter lack of interest in the history of conservatism (still utterly amazing to me), there can be no obvious bridge to a discussion. I don’t think he truly knows what conservatives have been opposing for a long time. And yes, Mr. Wavering, I do mean “oppose.” For Weaver the fateful event in Western history is the invention of nominalism in the late middle ages that pollutes the Western mind from William of Occam right down to modern science, liberalism, modern democracy, commerce, technology, and, believe it or not, jazz. (I once subtitled a lecture on Weaver with: “From William of Occam to Benny Goodman.” (Goodman is the object of a heated assault that takes up a good part of a chapter in “Ideas Have Consequences.”) By now, of course, Mr. Jackson is saying “so what?” Okay. Here’s what. Remember Bill Buckley’s line about standing athwart history, yelling “Stop!” That was the conservative voice in an especially poignant form. Commerce, democracy, technology are all forces that degrade and corrupt the human spirit: the ‘age of the common man,’ the revolt of the masses, the triumph of gnosticism, the death of chivalry–all of these are conservative formulas of hostility to modernity. Mr. Jackson supposes I haven’t really read these books, but I can tell he hasn’t.
Of course I am not claiming that the ‘conservatives’ who prevail in the Republican Party are applying all of these ideas–I know that they have neither the patience nor the ambition to study anyone’s ideas, let alone those of their intellectual ancestors. And no one tries to turn Eric Voegelin’s ideas into public policy. However, ideas do indeed have consequences, and politicians who do not read Greek are subtly shaped by intellectuals who do.
Now for Mr Wavering, who manages to lump any and all ‘progressives’ together into one hateful, loathsome mass of evil. In particular, he wants to make all of them out to be rabid eugenicists. Well, they did lots of thing, such as invent the initiative, referendum, and recall that conservatives (and liberals) love to use if they think they can win. The Progressives created primary elections, schools of public administration, direct registration of voters, weakened big city machine politics, developed many of the institutions and practices of municipal government from which even conservatives derive benefits, promoted public health programs, and tried to address the problems of the slums. Don’t forget campaigning for regulation of food and drugs. Now I know it’s fashionable on the Right to trash the Progressives, but try living for a while in a town or city that lacked all of the products of reform that stemmed from this political movement.
>He fulminates and roars, trotting out his academic credentials, and accuses me of being an autodidact, or perhaps what the Germans would call “half-educated.”
*** Actually, it’s simpler than that. I just have a strong visceral reaction to pseudointellectuals.
>First, why anonymity? I post on a variety of conservative websites as ‘Gestell.’ I do not want many of the folks who post on Townhall to have any idea who I am or where I live.
*** Nobody asked you to reveal your name. You raise this issue as a distraction, not in response to anything I challenged you on.
>Now for credentials (if this is really necessary).
*** Let’s go back to Gestell comment #4 “On this point I have no reason to change my claim, but would simply ask Mr. Jackson to read some books.”
You raised the issue of my lack of credentials to discuss this subject. I merely asked you to justify yours, since you seem to think a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago is inadequate.
And since the issues I’ve challenged you on relate to contemporary politics (decisions by Nixon, voting behavior, etc.), I asked you to tell us what practical experience you have in this aspect of the discussion as well. I have 20 years, in addition to a Ph.D.
>I am by training a political scientist which a primary interest in political philosophy. One of my graduate degrees is from a university whose political science department is renowned in the profession for its pioneering emphasis on quantitative research, a reputation it continues to have. Another of my graduate degrees is from a prominent East Coast school.
*** Can you be any more deliberately obtuse? I’ll translate for everyone: You have graduate degree in quantitative political science. From a good university you will not name. To get this degree you were required you to take a course or two in political philosophy. And then you have an unrelated degree from another university in some other unnamed discipline.
As I said, in the matter of political philosophy you are “largely self-taught (or at best [you’ve] taken a few courses here and there in the past).” Your own description confirms this.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with this — unless you pretend to be something much more than you actually are. I called you on your lack of credentials, and you’ve validated my claim.
>Mr. Jackson, in one of his incarnations, presents himself as a hard-headed, empirically savvy researcher.
*** No. I’m not an empiricist, and never claimed to be. What I have is a well rounded education in this field, combined with 20 years of practical experience representing clients in the political system (state, local and national), as well as serving as the speechwriter on a successful congressional campaign. I have a good command of why things actually happen in politics, and what motivates these decisions. And it is not sitting around a table trying to decide whether a policy option conforms to the teachings and philosophy of Kirk and Weaver.
In short, I actually know what I’m talking about.
>I think this is why he believes (since he has repeated it several times) that he has nailed me when he shows that he knows that people vote for all sorts of reasons. I never denied that. And yes, I know that people don’t just vote for their own.
*** You may “know” this, but your previous comments suggest none of this knowledge. This is even more shocking since you claim to have an empirical degree in political science. I showed how political philosophy is a more determinative explanation for voting behavior than ethnic affiliation, using actual statistics from Chicago. Your facile observations about this subject were challenged, and refuted. Sorry you don’t like it, but avoid making silly observations in the future and you won’t have to be corrected.
>However, it is well-known that many immigrant communities in American history did indeed vote largely or primarily for ‘their own.’
*** And here we get into the crux of Gestell’s problem. He wants to take the Tammany Hall model of late 18th, early 19th century big city political machines — which indeed had a strong ethnic and racial component to it (not to mention a different voting population where certain minorities were denied the right to vote, as well as all women — and project that on to modern day politics, where decidedly different factors are at play.
This is exactly what I mean by the criticism that Gestell takes 19th and early 20th century political philosophy and superimposes it on a much more diverse political framework today. The conclusions he draws, which make some sense for political actions 100-150 years ago, do not explain politics today. The dynamics of political systems evolve. You can’t simply point to Kirk and Weaver et. al. to explain the dynamics of politics today.
>I guess Mr. Jackson wanted to suggest that there’s something deeply wrong with this, especially when it comes to black voters. Like a number of conservatives, including some black conservatives, Mr. Jackson seems to subscribe to the Marxist-derived theory of false consciousness, appearing to hold that most black voters have been duped and deluded into voting Democratic.
*** Wow! A little inside baseball here. I haven’t heard the phrase “false consciousness,” since the late 1970s. And then it was used mostly to illustrate how NOT to understand Marx. Again, another great example of Gestell unable to actually employ methodologies and philosophical constructs that actually relate to present day politics.
By the way, black voters have not been duped into voting Democrat. They do it because it’s a rational decision on their part, given their socio-economic status where entitlements and incentives are more important to them than other voting blocks. This is true of cities and poor rural communities only, however. In more affluent middle class suburban areas, there is less of a strong Democrat party ID.
None of this has anything to do with Marx. What it does have to do with are rational social, economic, and personal/professional calculations that are played out differently than the rational calculations of other voting blocks (Jews and democrats for example, where different dynamics are at play).
This is just a fraction of what goes into understanding contemporary voting behavior — none of which is seemingly recognized by Gestell, who’s stuck in 1850 looking for an explanation.
> It’s possible to explain Aristotle’s position rather more directly than my critic does.
*** No real argument from me here. Whether your explanation is “better” than mine is not the issue. The issue is — as I’ve repeatedly stated — you cannot simply take a philosophical concept written in a previous era and apply it to contemporary times without understanding its context. It’s just as silly to think that Aristotle’s writings had anything to do with the issue of slavery in the US at the time of the Civil War, as it is to insist that you must accept everything Kirk and Weaver say (just as they said it) to be a “conservative” in 2010.
This point is lost on you, which is why you continue to direct the conversation back to what Kirk and Weaver wrote, instead of addressing my challenges to your methodology for analyzing contemporary political behavior, and the assumptions behind them.
>The larger argument between Mr. Jackson and me is still unsettled, and, from his utter lack of interest in the history of conservatism (still utterly amazing to me), there can be no obvious bridge to a discussion.
*** This again is another dodge. I’ve repeatedly pointed out that the assumptions and methodologies you employ to analyze conservatism are pointedly rejected by you when the issue of liberalism is discussed. You huff and puff, and dodge and weave, and try to make this into an utter lack of interest on my part to discuss “conservatism” (or more correctly, what you insist is the only “conservatism” that can be discussed).
All of your dissembling about nominalism and Benny Goodman avoids the direct challenge to your so-called unbiased scholarship. You excuse from a discussion of liberalism the very things that you insist must be part of a discussion of conservatism — a strict adherence to what has been written previously by “conservative” authors.
This isn’t analysis. It’s agenda-driven crap (I believe this is the proper technical term we employed at Chicago when some clown tried to pull this same kind of stunt and was called on it then just the way I am calling you on it now).
Again I repeat my sole criticism of you. You do not apply your so-called analytical framework to understand and explain modern day conservatism to other philosophies (such as liberalism). You excuse from Liberalism the very things you condemn conservatism for.
This is hypocritical at best, ignorant at worst. Either way, none of what you say can or should be taken seriously because your intentions and motives are clearly in question.
I’ve got to amend part of my previous comment on Gestell. As a self-identified Liberal who applies one methodology and underlying set of assumptions to analyze conservatism, and another to analyze Liberalism, I forgot that his sentences need to be individually parsed to discern their true meaning.
I’ve claimed that Gestell’s self-professed expertise is a sham. Gestell responded with a listing of his “credentials”. I initially took what he said (which was deliberately obliquely) to mean that he had a graduate degree in political science, but one that was geared toward quantitative analysis — not philosophy. Now I’m not so sure.
“I am by training a political scientist which a primary interest in political philosophy.”
*** Translation: I have a BA degree in political science. Note: the use of the word “training” is a bit awkward. People don’t generally go around saying they are “trained” historians, or a “trained English Lit. major.” They normally say they have a “degree” in a particular subject. So, it is possible that Gestell has no real degree in political science/political philosophy, but instead as I suspected is self-taught/trained. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here that he actually majored in poli sci in college, but it would be a lot easier for all of us to understand if he’d just say things clearly — particularly since he’s the one who raised the issue about credentials in the first place.
“One of my graduate degrees is from a university whose political science department is renowned in the profession for its pioneering emphasis on quantitative research, a reputation it continues to have.”
*** Translation: I also hold a graduate degree from a university that teaches political science. Notice that he didn’t claim that he has a graduate degree in political science — just that he has a degree from a university that “is renowned in the profession for its pioneering emphasis on quantitative research.” It’s like me saying that I’m a “trained physician” because I have a Ph.D. from a “renown university” with an exceptional medical school. Once again, it’s a little suspicious that someone claims an advance degree they won’t actually name, from a “pioneering” school they won’t actually identify. Since a “pioneering” school, by definition, is unique, it shouldn’t be a big deal to actually name it.
“Another of my graduate degrees is from a prominent East Coast school.”
*** Translation: I have another unrelated degree that has nothing at all to do with the study, or understanding, of political philosophy.
For those of you who think I’m being deliberately mean to Gestell by mocking his so-called credentials, remember that he raised the issue first.
I will admit it’s a guilty pleasure of mine to punch holes in pompous windbags like the paleos I’ve crossed paths with, and now Gestell, who profess to tell us all what Conservatism is. I’d be more generous with Gestell if he’d apply the same twisted methodology and assumptions to Liberalism that he reserves exclusively for analyzing Conservatism. The discussion then would be about how he is wrong on both counts.
But instead, Gestell wants to use this peculiar methodology he’s developed to analyze only contemporary conservative politics, while deliberately exempting liberalism from the same analysis. This is simple agenda-driven fraud.
This agenda is explained by the offensive characterization of conservatives Gestell himself supplied to justify hiding all the details of his life. “Redblooded conservatives like Mike Adams love to allude to all the friends they have (heavily armed friends) in federal law enforcement and to how much grief they can visit on the leftist enemy. So, anonymous I shall remain.”
I publish my comments under my own name. I’ve been threatened by neo-Nazis for exposing the hypocrisy of their beliefs, and just two days ago by some loon on the Left for comments he didn’t like about things he said. But I don’t go around condemning all Right wing and left wing nuts as potential assassins.
No one cares if Gestell wants to continue to use a pseudonym. Lots of people who comment here do, and no one criticizes them. But to claim that he does this because he’s afraid some “redblooded conservative” will shoot him is offensive, fatuous bile. It allows him to hide behind phony credentials that pretend to give us deep meaningful thoughts about the true nature of conservatism, and when challenged on this matter, to say he can’t publicly justify his knowledge base because he’s afraid we’re all going to hunt him down and shoot him.
The simple fact is that Gestell is an agenda-driven Leftist ideologue who is attempting to pervert a discussion of modern day politics by selectively invoking the writings of certain individuals — and worse, superimposing the 19th and early 20th century expression of their ideas onto 2010 actions. He does this to ‘prove’ a preconceived point, while deliberately excusing any analysis of contemporary Liberalism or Progressivism from the same analytical approach.
It makes no difference how many books Gestell has read, or how well he’s memorized certain quotes. What makes a difference is the way he approaches the analysis of an issue.
On all counts — from telling us about his education, and his pseudo-analysis of modern day conservatism — he’s proven himself to be a dishonest debating partner.
Gestell,
You are correct. I do “… lump all PROGRESSIVES together into one hateful, loathsome mass of evil. Please refer to Post #1 where I said; “I don’t think these words can be used interchangeably (democrat, liberal, & progressive my emphasis). I think each has a different set of characteristics; and as such the goals of each of these groups has a nuanced difference with each of the others.”
In response to that comment; you posted the following (refer to post #2); “Amazing as it may seem, given my criticisms of Mr. Wavering a while back, I find a great deal to agree with in his comments. I’m fed up with conservatives who see no distinctions among their opponents…” Concurrence?
Continuing with your second post; “The folks Mr. Wavering calls “progressives” ignore all of this and want to move forward to full-blown government control of health care.” Once again; concurrence Gestell? Have we finally arrived at your admission that there is a minority of YOUR OWN POLITICAL PERSUASION that presents a clear and present danger to society BECAUSE of their strident beliefs? Quite a advance! Phillip Jackson would be proud of you.
Logically then; we can extend this to include both progressives and supremacists by stating that on each side of the political spectrum there exists a ‘radicalized’ sub-set that comprises @ 20% of the ideology of both sides.
Congratulations! With just a little effort you’ve finally discovered the conclusion I’ve been attempting to get you to admit to since we began this discussion back in “You Can’t Say That” on January 11th. You’ve acceded, through your own statements and your own validation of mine, that a radicalized minority of the philosophical array of persons described as the democrat/liberal/progressive set does indeed have a vocal minority of strident, narrow-minded, arrogant, self-righteous persons that believe they should be the last word in total government control over the population for that population’s own good. What a breakthrough! I guess there really ARE bigots on both sides of the ideological fence, huh?
Continuing to quote from your latest posting; “Now for Mr. Wavering, who manages to lump any and all ‘progressives’ together into one hateful, loathsome mass of evil.” This statement is also essentially correct. I certainly believe the progressive PERCENTAGE of the democrat/liberal/progressive set of people to be both twisted and dangerous; just as YOU agree they are. However; you yourself, through the words ‘all progressives’ are the one tying your entire ideology to that one definition! I’ve always asserted there was a difference. I believe the democrats and liberals may be reasoned with, but not the progressives.
Once again; I’ll remind you that you proclaim that “I’m fed up with conservatives who see no distinctions among their opponents…” but do not hesitate to erase such distinctions yourself. It is you who repeatedly have insisted on ‘lumping’ this nuanced republican/conservative/supremacist set under its most radical label in order to dismiss them in entirety; displaying none of that superior ‘distinction of degree’ you claim to possess.
This supports my earlier conclusion that you indeed belong to that exclusive, dangerous 20% we both define as ‘progressive’. Moreover it serves to prove, in practicality, that bigotry does exist on the democrat/liberal/progressive ideology.
In closing; thank you for your assistance in demonstrating that I was correct in our original discussions of three weeks ago when I said there were racists and bigots on BOTH sides of the political spectrum. Although I must admit I never would have expected you would offer yourself as Exhibit ‘A’.
Bill: Great comments!
Like you I’ve had to follow Gestell across several articles to illustrate that he’s just a hack masquerading as an objective analyst. He invents one methodology to analyze “Redneck” conservatives, while excusing liberals and progressives from the same standards. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to identify the supposedly prestigious university he attended. No credible institution would sanction such an obviously flawed methodology.
The difference between we Conservatives and Gestell is that we recognize the fringe groups who try to associate themselves with conservatism and actively distance ourselves from their distortions and racism. Gestell has to be backed into acknowledging that the racist lunatic Left actually exists. But even when he is forced to admit this reality, his focus is to explain away or ignore their actions by invoking a different analytical construct for them, thus allowing him to get on with his agenda-driven purpose for entering the discussion: to condemn conservatives as singularly, inherently racist.
Phillip,
Gestell recognizes his methods. He knows that there is a difference between the democrat, the liberal, and the progressive. He identifies himself as ‘liberal’ in an attempt to align himself with the most innocuous of the groups within his ideology; neither uncaring, nor a goose-stepping ideologue. This is ‘part & parcel’ of his particular progressive nature. Hide, obfuscate, bob and weave. After all; “Who’s afraid of a little reasonable debate; especially with lil’ ol’ me?” He probes for weakness; cherry picks examples, redefines principles, and ignores data that does not fit his preferred worldview. The same intellect found in some of the most destructive examples of his persuasion.
What exposes him as a real danger is the unconscious ease with which he ‘homogenizes’ the three factions of his own, and other’s, ideologies. Progressives are not the least shy about manipulating any group from any side of the political spectrum. The end justifies the means, and the potential for leverage may be found, from time to time, in any of the three groups from either of the two sides of the debate.
Progressives have no compunction about working behind the scenes to achieve their goals. Like a ‘nested’ computer program; his overriding interest is that his agenda drives the debate; that his conclusion is the only destination.
His own statement; “…but try living for a while in a town or city that lacked all of the products of reform that stemmed from this political movement.” convicts him. I’d love to see how successful this country, or the world for that matter, would be without these ‘products’ of progressive reform he espouses.
We’ve written at length about the legacies of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. These are the most famous of the ‘documented’ historical horrors of progressivism. Allow me to offer but a few of the more insidious aspects of his ‘Ideological Jihadism’ that affect us as Americans directly. I’m certain he would claim all the following as creations of ‘progressive’ genius.
The FED – Thomas Jefferson himself said; “[A] central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution.”
The FED was responsible for the contraction of the money supply that led to, and exacerbated, the Great Depression. The ‘progressive’ federal government then further took advantage of the chaos this institution created to lay the groundwork for the establishment of the modern American ‘welfare’ state. One may reasonably argue that the short term suffering of the nation during the 1930’s pales in comparison to the generational suffering subsequently inflicted upon untold millions of delibrately impoverished Americans since its inception. Think Katrina but imagine Haiti. This is the world he envisions, with progressives in charge of course. Literally everyone standing around, impatiently waiting for ‘them’ to deliver succor. They imagine the masses intoning; “Give us this day our daily bread.” Progressive religious dogma in a nutshell.
With the recent ‘games’ being exposed regarding the FED’s suppression of information relating to the AIG affair and their disguising of the funneling of 100% repayments on holdings belonging to other, administration favored, large Wall Street financial institutions; not many would point to the FED as a shining example of ‘progressive’ economic truth and stability today, nor of them being a ‘liberal’ protector of the middle class. Imagine total financial control; the ability to support or destroy a financial institution according to progressive whim, while using the people’s hard earned deposits to accomplish the feat.
The ‘progressive’ income tax – Interesting that this abomination actually carries his ‘preferred’ moniker. The income tax was instituted in order to facilitate the ‘spreading of wealth’ to ‘favored’ groups while further choking the money supply, and continues to this day. It solves four progressive challenges simultaneously; it removes capital from those deemed ‘undeserving’ by the progressives, gives them access to wealth they cannot possibly create themselves, permits them the ability to feel ‘charitable’ without incurring any ‘personal’ expense, and allows them to re-direct that confiscated wealth to causes they pronounce worthy. A real victory for progressive politics that, in actuality, can be labeled as nothing short of the ‘forced theft’ of legitimate earnings from the productive members of society. This unconstitutional creation marked the beginnings of the progressive policy labeled today as “Social Justice”.
At first this was sold as a levy against only the rich, and pronounced to be a miniscule percentage at best. But the definitions of ‘rich’ and ‘miniscule’; like all definitions in the progressive lexicon, should come with the warning ‘terms subject to change without notice’. The tax applies to all ‘producers’ today; even to those on the lowest rung of the income ladder whom, I’m forced to point out, have had double digits of their earned wealth withheld by the imperial federal government for over the last 60 years. Progressive genius at work!
World War I – The progressives gave us the ‘War to end all Wars’. How’d THAT work out for us, huh? Nuff’ said!
The League of Nations – In a conceited effort to prove they could pay off on their promise to banish all future conflict from the planet they gave us the League of Nations which, once it collapsed, eventually morphed into the United Nations; arguably the most inefficient, overbearing, graft ridden, redistributionist, agenda driven, racist institution ever conceived by the mind of man. This is quite obvious to anyone who has ever witnessed any of the current membership castigating the Jewish nation for daring to protect its people from attacks by Palestinian terrorists.
Oddly enough, it was the progressives that originally formed the Jewish State after WW II. They magnanimously bequeathed the ‘bung hole’ of the planet to these displaced people; they just never thought they would survive the month, let alone turn that land into the jewel of the Middle East. A jewel the entire Arab world covets, I might add.
It was just another way to look compassionate while removing their collective fingerprints from, what they believed (wink, wink) would be a ‘sanctioned’ genocide. Their mistake was trusting absolute morons to carry out their unspoken execution order. That they still work behind the scenes to bring this about should be most appalling to any reasonable person.
These constitute merely a few of the more notable examples of the “products of reform that stemmed from this political movement.” Some of these institutions were driven from the democratic side of the aisle and some from the republican side. But the common thread is that all were produced by individuals wrapping themselves in the mantel of ‘progress’; offering ‘authorization’ to their ‘favored’ groups while savagely curtailing the liberties of all other individuals they deliberately exclude.
In truth, progressives are more ‘dispassionate’ than ‘compassionate’. The only goal is control. It doesn’t matter where the ‘leverage’ is found, only that it is found and exploited. One group is controlled through the provision of ‘bread & circuses’ the other through the mailed fist of centralized government.
I do challenge one of Mr. Jackson’s premises—that Marx and Mao somehow belong in the liberal camp and are properly located historically in liberalism. With his usual subtlety, he thinks he scores a point by reversing one of my sentences to read ““In ANY account of the major [liberal] thinkers in this country, the people I mentioned figure prominently” where the people in question are Marx and Mao. Apart from rightwing polemics, I don’t know of a literature that DOES lump Marx, Mao and liberals together as Mr. Jackson clearly wishes to do. A history of liberalism would likely include Locke, Mill, various 19th century British liberals, but also possibly Benjamin Constant and Alexis deTocqueville. Of Marx and Mao there would be little or nothing. So: I am claiming that any version of ‘intellectual conservatism’ that does not feature the various iconic figures I’ve mentioned is just really poor history. Or, to return to Mr. Jackson’s argument: No, the far left, the revolutionary Communist left, the 20th century totalitarian left ,doesn’t belong in anybody’s history of liberalism. Many conservatives, of course, just can’t believe that. They see no difference between the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Soviet gulags, and love to entertain the thought that if your government adopts the former, then the latter lies not too far down the road. Liberals can be stupid, liberals can make massive political mistakes, liberals can push for unwise policies—and I have never denied this—but one thing liberals have not done is to run gulags.
Now one thing I have not done, or even tried to do, is to argue that every move made in real-world American politics by conservatives requires them to consult their Weaver and Kirk. I too know that ordinary politics doesn’t work like that. The role of any ideological tradition’s big names is usually much more subtle than that. Even Weaver, in “Ideas Have Consequences,” never claimed that the evils he saw in his own time’s liberal Democratic politicians were the results of any of them having read Marx or William of Occam. The role of serious political philosophy on politics is more diffuse than that. There is such a thing as a climate of opinion and political philosophers have some impact on it. Of course, this climate is further subdivided into climatic zones, and we find ourselves fitting in better with, or being persuaded more, by one than another.
However, I return to my claim that Mr. Jackson gets conservatism wrong at the level of basic principles because he seems to know so little about these principles. Now if he is a hard-headed political animal who is mostly interested in getting conservatives into office or driving liberals from office, there is no problem. He can practice the political arts, and very effectively, without having read a line of Weaver or even Edmund Burke. However, Mr. Jackson seems to want to present himself as a heavy-hitting conservative intellect, and if this is his intention, he simply needs to do more homework.
The conservative attack on modernity isn’t some odd, arcane bit of obscure text in some old book that nobody reads anymore; it is part and parcel of intellectually serious conservatism. The big name conservative thinkers associated with “National Review” in its founding period certainly understood this, and it was for many of them a genuine, important question whether the American founding could pass muster for real conservatives. The solution most of them embraced was to de-emphasize anything at all ‘revolutionary’ about the American Revolution, and to greatly overestimate the extend to which the founders were Bible-believing Christians something like today’s fundamentalists. Above all, the Founders had to purged of any vestiges of Enlightenment philosophy because the Enlightenment is for traditional conservatives an unmitigated disaster for all things good and decent. For Roman Catholic traditional conservatives, the big enemy, of course, is the Reformation, and conservatives of a few decades back loved Eric Voegelin’s demonstration that Protestant Christianity was a collection of Gnostic heresies. I’ve already mentioned Weaver’s excursion to the early 14th century to find the source of all modern errors in late medieval nominalism, and from this standpoint the Renaissance comes in for its lumps as well. Now I suspect that Mr. Jackson’s resistance to all of this is very typically American. Many Americans find history of almost any sort ultimately tedious and irrelevant. That was the point of de Tocqueveille’s remark that American was a country where the lessons of Descartes were not studied, but were applied. Americans came quite readily to the break with the past that Descartes had to argue for by means of philosophy. And so I now see conservatives who don’t even think historically, who find it incredible that their ideas have a history extending back over centuries. I think this is why conservatives such as Mr. Jackson have such a difficult time with ‘tradition.’ Genuine conservatism requires a deep, spiritual affection for tradition. That is why I said that conservatives must be saturated with history. The rich, emotional attachments to the ways things were done in the past, and to the way of life that was not disrupted by commerce and technology should be a crucial part of the conservative’s intellectual and emotional core. The Southern Agrarians embodied this aspect of conservatism most fully among American conservatives. Now Mr Jackson can rant at the paleocons, who play this tune today, but he cannot possibly deny them their conservative identity.
Mr. Jackson accuses me of being unfair to his side because he says that I am “excusing the odious features of the philosophy you’ve self-identified with.” The ‘odious features,’ of course, are the ideas and practices of the totalitarian Left, but Mr. Jackson fails to see that he has lumped the totalitarians and the liberals together to the point where he, like so many conservatives, simply can’t see any differences. This failing does not give a lot of trust in his ability as a political analyst, something he remarks upon every few sentences when he gets tired of calling me a jihadist. Or perhaps Mr. Jackson truly believes there are no differences between Left totalitarians and liberals. Perhaps he sees a history in which ending slavery, giving women the vote, antitrust legislation, federal quality standards for the food industry, and the secret ballot were all dear to the hearts of Lenin and his fellow revolutionaries. I don’t see any such history, but Mr. Jackson has already made clear his conviction that I barely know enough to come out of the rain so maybe my history is wrong, and there’s no big difference between John Stuart Mill and Mao.
I was deliberately vague about my academic background. I knew that if I was not, I’d hear no end of it from Mr. Jackson, who would leap to the task of propagating clichés as fast as he could come up with them. So, here goes. I have a masters degree in political science from the University of Michigan, where among other things, I studied quantitative methods and was exposed to the “Michigan” school of voter research. So, yes, Mr. Jackson, I have some idea that there may be lots of factors that contribute to explanations of voting behavior. I have a Ph.D. from Harvard, where I studied political philosophy. Now comes the opportunity for conservative clichés about Harvard leftism. Not quite. The place is not nearly as leftist as you guys would like it to be. And besides, one of my professors was Harvey Mansfield, Jr.—hardly a liberal. I also studied political organization under James Q. Wilson. In addition to classical political philosophy, I studied medieval and modern political philosophy. I have taught in a university for nearly 40 years, offering courses in political philosophy and American politics. I have taught in my university’s doctoral program in public policy and was director of its masters in public affairs program. I have published two books, with a third in press. One of my interests is the history of conservatism. I also served on my town’s finance committee for 9 years, working to develop the town’s annual budget and then trying to persuade citizens at town meeting to support it. Now I doubt if anything I’ve said here will either (1) be believed—I can just imagine Mr. Jackson locking and loading about now or (2) matter.
Now Mr. Wavering goes off like a 4th of July skyrocket with his breathless discovery that I can actually acknowledge that there are bigoted and crazed progressives. Does this mean I think these folks are thee sort of threat to the republic that he does? No. And his characterization of them is vintage rightwing hyperbole. He writes of: s “radicalized minority of the philosophical array of persons described as the democrat/liberal/progressive set does indeed have a vocal minority of strident, narrow-minded, arrogant, self-righteous persons that believe they should be the last word in total government control over the population for that population’s own good.” They may be strident, narrow-minded, etc. and, again, I have never denied this, but do they believe that they should have “total government control,” etc.? No, not even close. I suppose Mr. Wavering believes that Nancy Pelosi wants to become commissar of health care. No, she just wants to keep the Democrats in power in the House, satisfy her constituents and others to whom she chooses to respond, and herself in office. Of course, your superheated rhetoric depends upon your belief that Obama’s healthcare proposal is one element of a vast leftwing conspiracy to reduce all Americans to the condition of citizens of Soviet Russia. Your use of standard conservative boilerplate is surprising, because, in your earlier comments, you sounded like you weren’t a fanatic. As a liberal (who may or may not be ‘progressive’ in your sense), I say: Obama’s proposal is half-baked, in need of drastic revisions, and, thus far, presented in an intransigent, politically inept way. If Obama’s some sort of neo-Trotsky, he has some serious quality control issues.
Note that Mr. Wavering says absolutely nothing about my lengthy list of the actual things DONE by the Progressive movement early in the 20th century in the US. His silence has two possible meanings: one, that his indictment of Progressives extends to all of these things as well, and that he wishes they could all be undone. If he was willing to say this, he would at least be a conservative willing to speak frankly. If he somehow likes all or even most of these policies, then he is not quite a conservative but something closer to what used to be called, in English politics, a ‘trimmer.’ Maybe that’s what he’s about politically. Once liberals or Progressives have fought against conservative resistance successfully and gotten some policies implemented or some institutional changes accomplished, then gallant conservatives like Mr. Wavering can come along and cherry-pick a few things that benefit them. If you have any elderly persons in your family, Mr. Wavering, do you (1) pay for their health care entirely yourself (2) expect them to pay for it entirely themselves, or (3) expect them to use Medicare? If your answer is (3), I rest my case.
Mr. Jackson’s final salvo is puzzling. Anyone who tries to write about politics has an agenda. Any and all things belonging to politics, every proposal made to government to do or not do one thing or another, is of necessity going to involve an agenda, and it is going to part of some conflict. Here’s where I do differ from many of my fellow liberals, who are often unwilling to understand that politics is essentially conflict, and any consensus can only come from conflict. Here, by the way, is part of Obama’s problem, in my opinion. He began his presidency as the kind of liberal who really thinks that everyone will simply see the wisdom of his proposals, agree that they are the right ones, and then support them. He never thought he’d have to do hard political work to develop support, and that he would have to make concessions to his opponents. I much prefer an old-fashioned politician of the Harry Truman variety, who knew how to make deals. Obama may, or may not, learn to do this; if he does not, he will be, perhaps justifiably, a one-term president.
Gestell:
Michigan is a fine school. Harvard too. I have a lot of friends from there. So, once again your stereotype of conservatives fail you, because rather than doubt your credentials or disparage your education, I am perfectly willing to accept what you say. What causes me suspicion is someone who is deliberately vague or evasive when they don’t need to be, supposedly because they fear that I’ll hunt them down and shoot them because I’m a conservative.
This is your main problem. You are riddled with agenda-driven fantasies about modern day conservatives because you cannot separate a discussion of traditional political philosophy from contemporary political practice. You play word games with traditional descriptions of “liberal” thought and apply them to the way liberal politics is practiced today, just as you’ve taken “conservative” philosophy of a different era and applied those writers out-of-context to contemporary “conservative” politics.
This is academic word games, not political analysis. It allows you to simultaneously tag conservatives in 2010 as inherently racist while arbitrarily excluding Marx and Mao from any association with contemporary liberalism because they are not ‘classical liberals’. This ignores the pragmatic definition of “liberals” and “conservatives” that have evolved through political practice and associations over the years, where Marx and Mao clearly fit into this camp.
You protest that this is a bastardization of the term “Liberal”, and I agree that it is. Like I said in my earlier post, if all you intended to do was give a discourse on Classical Conservatism or Classical Liberalism, you’ve done a fine job. The issue arises when you want to apply the classical terms to contemporary politics. There’s no 1:1 relationship here. In fact, in many cases, there’s no real relationship at all.
A case in point: “Progressivism” as it originated a hundred years ago, was a race-oriented, eugenics based philosophy. It’s just as perverted a notion to say Conservatives in 2010 are defined by the writings of Kirk and Weaver, as it is to suggest that Obama, in giving a ‘shout out’ today to his “Progressive friends”, is paying homage to the idea that certain races are inherently inferior, and that people need to justify their continued existence every 5 years or so to be permitted to continue to live.
This is the point you’ve continued to ignore. You use philosophers from a different era, writing in a different historical context, to demonstrate the supposedly inherent racism of Conservatism today, while refusing to apply the same standards to analyzing liberalism and progressivism as practiced today. Just as you can’t read the Constitution as it is written and ‘understand’ what it permits and restricts today without looking at how those terms have evolved and been defined (and redefined) over the years by the Supreme Court, you can’t just pick out phrases of past philosophers and plop them down on 2010 politics.
This is the basis of my challenge to you, not whether you’ve understood Locke or Burke correctly.
Which gets to the subject matter you raised about who and what I am. Since I’ve published more than 100 essays on this site, my approach to politics has always been easily recognized. From the first day I said my focus would be on practical politics, not political philosophy. That’s where my academic “training” and real world experience is. I leave the esoteric art of political philosophy to others, and only enter these discussions when someone does something foolish — like try to explain the Nixon “Southern Strategy” purely in philosophical terms.
By the way, you may have studied political organization under James Q. Wilson, but I studied actual politics under Bob Beckel and Jody Powell — hardly “conservatives”. I’ll match my understanding of how politics actually works in this country against what you’ve said your training and experience is. Mine isn’t relegated to the academic world. It’s grounded in high level national and state politics.
As for your point — “Mr. Jackson’s final salvo is puzzling. Anyone who tries to write about politics has an agenda. Any and all things belonging to politics, every proposal made to government to do or not do one thing or another, is of necessity going to involve an agenda, and it is going to part of some conflict.” This again is more silly, superficial analysis.
Everybody has an opinion about something too. That doesn’t mean that all you need to do in offering a political analysis is simply state an opinion. I argued against “agenda-driven” analysis, where the analysis is a fraud to cover a pre-conceived position you want to make. This means you apply standards to an analysis of contemporary conservative actions that you expressly reject for analyzing contemporary liberal actions. Apparently you cannot distinguish between the two concepts, which is somewhat of a puzzlement for a man with your credentials.
Unfortunately, you’re kinda beyond the point where anyone is taking you seriously anymore, which is a pity. If you actually entered a discussion without suggesting we’re all a bunch of lunatic racists ready to hunt you down (no “agenda” here), we might have actually had a decent conversation.
To close the loop on my last round of comments, what you have in this exchange between myself and Gestell is a great example of the difference between analyzing politics from two different standpoints: the university, and real life.
I appreciate the fact that Gestell shared his academic credentials with us, because it helps explain a lot about why we are on opposite sides of this issue. This isn’t meant to be a snarky comment about his Ph.D. compared to mine, but rather a comparison of his academic career examining politics to my professional career living politics.
My Ph.D. aside, my analysis of contemporary politics is driven by years of hands-on experience with political campaigns, and the practical experience of representing clients in the local, state and national political arenas. By contrast, Gestell largely draws from his academic background to understand the operation of modern day politics.
Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with a university-based knowledge of reality. And there’s nothing wrong with abstract debates about the nature of politics that’s conducted from a purely philosophical perspective. The problem occurs when you combine (a) a lack of real world hands-on knowledge with (b) an over-reliance on abstract excursions into political philosophy to explain things like Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”, or to conclude that the actions of present-day conservatives/liberals are motivated by the thoughts and analyses of classical conservative/liberal writers.
Again, so as not to be misunderstood on this point, I’m not claiming that contemporary politicians (or the public that supports them) operates in a philosophical vacuum. If the TEA parties and recent resurgence of the “Progressive” label have shown anything, it’s that people like to ground/justify their present day actions in homage to the past. But it’s my contention that two things happen here when this occurs.
First, the concepts both the Right and Left employ to justify or ground their actions are usually poorly understood by the people mouthing these words, or mean something entirely different in 2010 than it meant in 1910. Even if they understand who Locke, or Tocqueville, or Kirk and Weaver are, they don’t really understand or frame the issues the way these authors expressed them. Ask 10 people or politicians to define what is meant by “natural rights”, and you’ll get 10 different variations on this theme.
Which relates to the second truism: the terms themselves (Liberal and Conservative) mean something different in 2010 than they did 100-200 years ago. Hell, they mean something different in 2010 than they did 50 years ago. To call JFK a “Liberal” today the way Nancy Pelosi is called a “Liberal” is to use the same word to describe almost completely opposite world views on anything from fiscal policy to international affairs. The same with the label “Progressive”. I doubt seriously that modern day Progressives have any real understanding of the philosophical foundation of this political philosophy. They use the term because it sounds, well, more “progressive” than “Liberal”, which has come to stand for irrational incompetence domestically, and genocidal excesses internationally.
All of which again goes to my point. Gestell wants to take the classically pure definitions of the terms Liberal and Conservative, and use them to analyze contemporary political behavior. This is how he intellectually justifies tagging present day Conservatives to the race based bilge of certain authors, and exempts modern day Liberals from any association with Marx, Mao, etc.
Abstractly, I understand exactly why this is done, because it relies on an internal logic that focuses on philosophy divorced from policy. As an intellectual exercise, I have no criticism of this — not because I don’t think it’s a silly way to link political thoughts together (which I do), but because, as an academic exercise, I find it absolutely irrelevant to understanding contemporary politics, which is the subject of this discussion
Politics is about the practical and pragmatic. It’s a misleading and worthless exercise to rely on word games to make a real-world point. Marx and Mao are not part of what political philosophers consider to be Classical Liberal Literature, so [and here is where the sleight of hand comes in] Liberal politics as practiced for the past 100 years has no relationship at all to Marx and Mao. This is as foolish as claiming that blacks cannot be “racists” because they lack the institutional power to discriminate. It arbitrarily removes the “race” component from “racism” to make an academic point. That’s not analysis. That’s academic gobblygoop.
All this is why Gestell focuses on a “history of liberalism” (meaning Classical Liberal Philosophy) to discuss present day activity associated with the Liberal Left, and I focus on the practical definition of Liberalism today (what they actually believe and do from a policy standpoint) to look to “philosophical” justifications for these actions. “Liberals” today draw the justifications for their actions more from Marx and Mao than Locke and Mill. This point isn’t even arguable — Obama’s white house aids (Anita Dunn) quote Mao, not Mill.
It only becomes confusing when you take, as Gestell has, the academic history of Classical Liberalism and use that to ‘understand’ how liberalism functions in 2010. This is simply playing games with words. It’s like saying that the “gay rights” movement in 2010 cannot have anything to do with homosexuality, because being “gay” in 1910 was a heterosexual activity.
So I leave you with this thought. You can use words, phrases, categories and classifications to inform, or confuse. If you are going to explain modern day actions by referring to a body of political philosophy, you have to do more than ground your analysis in what the proper “historical” definition of a term is.
You focus on the historical consistency of a term if your focus is either history, or abstract philosophical discussions. However, when you move away from a history lesson or purely philosophical discussion to analyze real world politics, much more is needed than this. You do not impose classical definitions on present day actions because the words “Liberal” and “Conservative” are still used today, but mean different things pragmatically than they did 100 years ago.
I would no more support re-writing the history of political literature to conform to present-day uses of the term Liberal and Conservative, than I would support applying these traditional concepts to explaining present day “Liberal” or “Conservative” political behavior.
By the way, I’ve got a quick, easy way to demonstrate the validity of my approach to understanding modern day politics compared to Gestell’s. [Remember, the subject of all these discussions has been to analyze the actions of contemporary politicians and political activity, not to see who can provide the most comprehensive philosophical history about Classical Conservatism]
Gestell: “Apart from rightwing polemics, I don’t know of a literature that DOES lump Marx, Mao and liberals together as Mr. Jackson clearly wishes to do. A history of liberalism would likely include Locke, Mill, various 19th century British liberals, but also possibly Benjamin Constant and Alexis deTocqueville. Of Marx and Mao there would be little or nothing.”
Jackson: If you want to understand why American Liberals supported Stalin, opposed the Vietnam War, love Obama, are in favor of socializing health care, etc., look to the philosophical writings of Marx and Mao.
Gestell says that Marx and Mao are irrelevant to understanding the activities of American Liberalism over the past 100 years because Marx and Mao are not Classical Liberal Theorists.
I say who cares whether they are “Classical Liberal Theorists” or not. Their philosophies that have influenced — if not guided — the actual actions of American Liberals over the past 100 years. [Yes, American Libs were influenced by more than Marx and Mao, but influenced by Marx and Mao they were (and heavily!) --- as opposed to the “little or nothing” attribution Gestell assigns them.]
I look to the real philosophies that guide real actions. Gestell ignores the real philosophies unless they fit into Classical categories.
Gestell say that to be an “intellectual conservative” you must examine pragmatic politics through the prism of political philosophy. I say this absurd, and in fact anti-intellectual.
If your focus is history or philosophy, you can stick to the “classics.” But if you want to understand Nixon’s Southern Strategy or Obama’s health care attempted takeover, you need to look at the real, current, existing, underlying ideologies and philosophies that drive these decisions — which means more than searching for the word “Liberal” or “Conservative” in a classics data base of political philosophy.
Should be: “Their philosophies have influenced — if not guided — the actual actions …”
Gestell,
We’ll deal with your latest posting one object at a time, shall we? The bulk of posting # 19, as with most others deals with the ongoing ideological battle being waged between yourself and Mr. Jackson. As well it should. You at least seem to well enough versed in strategy to recognize the more virulent threat to your claims. He is a political scientist much as you claim yourself to be. Me; I’m just an engineer.
We’ll begin with your statement; “Mr. Wavering believes that Nancy Pelosi wants to become commissar of health care. No, she just wants to keep the Democrats in power in the House, satisfy her constituents and others to whom she chooses to respond, and herself in office.” This is a terribly incorrect analysis, especially for one claiming your specific training.
While Nancy Pelosi does indeed represent such a progressive district as to be unaffected by almost anything that happens in Washington. However; especially since the election in Massachusetts, she has been attempting to get her entire Congressional Delegation to swallow the Senate version of health care; urging them to leap off the precipice for the sake of the party. The writing is already on the wall; if she is to save a modicum of her majority, healthcare must die. She knows this. This is not her concern. She and her ilk would gladly crawl over broken glass and hot coals for the institutional control offered by the Senate Bill. And you know this too.
Next up; “Note that Mr. Wavering says absolutely nothing about my lengthy list of the actual things DONE by the Progressive movement early in the 20th century in the US.”
From your post # 13; “Well, they did lots of thing, such as invent the initiative, referendum, and recall that conservatives (and liberals) love to use if they think they can win. The Progressives created primary elections, schools of public administration, direct registration of voters, weakened big city machine politics, developed many of the institutions and practices of municipal government from which even conservatives derive benefits, promoted public health programs, and tried to address the problems of the slums.”
Initiative, referendum, and recall; all inventions to attempt to circumvent the will of the people. If the people make the ‘mistake’ of voting the ‘wrong’ way on progressive policy, (Proposition 8 in California immediately comes to mind) then we’ll use initiative and referendum to overturn the people’s voice. Recall was created for the same reason; a method to harass politicians unwilling to ‘play ball’ with progressives.
Primary elections, schools of public administration and the direct registration of voters. The progressives use primary elections to ‘force’ their captured political base to coalesce around their chosen candidates. Look at the result of the 2008 primaries. Which ‘victim’ group would remain ascendant; Women or Black Americans? People of thought know why the primaries went the way they did. Progressives wouldn’t have been able to exert ‘behind-the-scenes’ control over a seasoned politician like Hillary Clinton. However; Obama’s naiveté was a ‘two-fer’. His political résumé was so short as to seem innocuous, but the real hard-core progressives knew they had an ideological puppet.
Schools of public administrations, like prisons, allow groups to congregate and share methods on how to best fleece the real victims, in this case the taxpayers. New methods for shoving the progressive agenda down the throats of the American people are invented, explored and fine-tuned prior to deployment. The most apt comparison would be weapons research. We shan’t even bother to review ACORN’s record of ‘direct registration of voters’ OK?
Both your ‘public health’ programs and your work in the impoverished inner cities have done little more than magnify these problems (for financial gain, of course; think Jessie Jackson) and cement entire generations to poverty; requiring your presence to ‘fix’ things. Although they never get fixed do they? The issue is worth much more than the repair as it yields reelection for progressive politicians
I do notice that you are guilty of the same neglect that you accuse me of; “…say[ing] absolutely nothing about my lengthy list of the actual things DONE by the Progressive movement early in the 20th century in the US.” The FED, the depression, the income tax, social security, War, the UN, Medicare, and Jewish persecution. I suppose I’ll take it as you stipulating to all this chaos?
Finally you decide to get personal. I wondered when this would happen. You declare; “If you have any elderly persons in your family, Mr. Wavering, do you (1) pay for their health care entirely yourself (2) expect them to pay for it entirely themselves, or (3) expect them to use Medicare? If your answer is (3), I rest my case.” This response will be lengthy; but the Medicare system and the Social Security system will be proven to be much more uncaring, unresponsive, and unusable than I believe you’ll care to know.
I originally moved to the State of Arkansas in order to care for my ailing parents. This is truly a double edged sword. On the one hand I believe I was given a jewel beyond price as I received four years of close contact with my Father and more with my Mother (she lived for ten). The other edge is that you have to watch them die.
I watched as my Father laid out countless tens of thousands of dollars of his own money to receive treatments for his stomach cancer that were denied to him by Medicare. On January 31st of 2001 he succumbed to his tumors. Dad died sixteen days before my parents 56th Wedding Anniversary, and Mother was never the same. They’d both spent a lifetime paying into these systems. Now these same systems were going to shift into ‘high gear’ in an attempt, through incompetence, to separate them from as much wealth as possible.
At this point your vaunted Social Security system took over. We filed Dad’s death certificates with all the appropriate institutions within 10 days. Believe me; I was always scrupulous when it came to caring for my folks. On February 4th 2001 the imperial federal government transferred the Social Security payment to Mother’s checking account. On February 16th 2001 that same government contacted Mom’s financial institution, not her, and demanded the institution immediately return $1,200 dollars to the government paid to them in January of 2001. See Dad didn’t live out the entire month, so they wanted January’s entire payment back. Meanwhile, Mom, uncontacted by the ‘progressive’ government, is still writing checks. On February 23rd, the government contacted the bank demanding another $1,200 for the ‘overpayment’ of February’s social security. On March 3rd the social security administration, once again automatically over-deposited her monthly check. On March 5th we received her banking statement showing that she was over-drawn by $956.63 and that she owed the bank another $325 in ‘bounced check’ charges for the 13 checks that failed to clear. By March 9th when I got to the bank to attempt to unravel this for my mother; the ‘progressive’ federal government had removed another $1,200 for March. Her checking account was so screwed up that it couldn’t be balanced! We finally fixed this by withdrawing $15,000 from her savings, foregoing the interest, opening a new checking account to operate from, and placing the other $5,000 in her existing account so this insane schedule of federal deposits and withdrawals wouldn’t drive her balance negative again.
This see-saw of social security deposits and withdrawals continued until July! In July they finally deposited the correct amount, as they never demanded a subsequent withdrawal. At no time during this six-month debacle did the ‘progressive’ federal government EVER send any letter of explanation to my Mother. There was NO CONTACT whatsoever! We closed her temporary account, and we went back to using the original checking account they had had for over twenty years. The final result of this was, because of the fluctuation in her accounts and the negative information reported to credit companies due to accounting balance and fee problems directly caused by the almighty social security system, Discover declined to renew her card in late 2002, so now her credit, built up over a lifetime was completely destroyed. Thanks to the ‘progressive’ federal government
We continued to care for her in her own home until November 11th of 2002 when she fell and broke her hip. There was some contention between her doctors as to whether she fell and broke her hip, or her hip shattered first due to osteoporosis
Medicare will only pay for 30 days of rehabilitative therapy after an operation. Due to the fumbling of paperwork requirements between the ‘progressive’ federal government and the hospital, she laid there for over a month before her operation. By that time her mobility was so degraded that thirty days of therapy wasn’t nearly enough time to get her walking again. She was admitted to a nursing home. She died there five years later.
Even the best of nursing homes is no place for an aged parent. Without the surroundings of their accumulated life, they withdraw and weaken. I watched as my Mother died a piece at a time over the next fifty-one months. I went there four times each week. My wife and I spent all holidays; Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and birthdays at her side. She eventually lost a leg due to diabetes. During the last year of her life she wouldn’t even feed herself. I’m certain she missed her husband so much that she just wanted to let go. The fees for the nursing home were $4,600 a month. Even after her Medicare Part D discounts, her drugs were an additional $1,600 each month. That’s $234,600 in living expenses and an additional $81,600 directly ‘out-pocket’. Total for both Mom & Dad’s medical bills over the last years of their lives was $445,842.74; and they paid EVERY F*****G PENNY! The government tried their level best to ensure she and Dad left this earth as penniless as they arrived! I watched, as an unfeeling ‘progressive’ federal government did their best to thwart two of the most beautiful people on the planet at every turn just when they needed it most. Progressive safety net, my dying ass! Not only was there next to no assistance, the state was actively involved in exacerbating the problems. And, before you even suggest such a thing; this is not ‘sour grapes’ over a lost inheritance. My sister and I both still got over $300,000 each from the remaining estate. I imagine your biggest complaint is that, due to current estate tax law, the ‘progressive’ federal government had no way to seize a significant portion of the wealth your ‘progressive’ federal government managed to miss while they were alive. We are both debt free, and the majority of OUR windfall is in precious metals, far from the grubby hands of your ‘progressive’ federal government.
Dad was a brilliant man. An Army Air Corps Veteran of WW II, educated as a Chemical Engineer. He was part of the R&D team at Pittsburgh Plate Glass that originally developed the process still used today to make latex paint. Those royalties made him rich! I had to watch as over the last 63 months of their lives your celebrated ‘progressive’ federal government broke both their spirits and tried its level best to break them financially as well!
I can’t wait to hear what progressives will have in store for me when I reach their age. Probably something along the lines of your President’s statement about “…going home and taking a pill”, huh?
Don’t you ever take a condescending attitude with me regarding health care; especially as it pertains to senior citizens. Because I have personal experience as to exactly how the ‘progressive’ imperial federal government cares nothing at all for senior citizens and actively engages in creating additional problems for these individuals due to their dispassionate, bureaucratic nature.
Your ilk has created the most uncaring, dispassionate, life stealing, idiotic, system imaginable! As niggardly as the reimbursement rates are; I stand in awe that such a system can simultaneously be so fiscally out of balance. Social Security and Medicare are Ponzi schemes that Mr. Maddoff would be proud of.
These systems are so fraught with deliberate financial malfeasance as to be both untraceable and irreparable. They burden future generations with tens of billions of dollars in debt. Yet, with a straight face you claim them as ‘crown jewels’ of progressive achievement!
An army of dedicated progressives have all stated, since Massachusetts “Pass the Senate Bill unamended. This will negate the loss of our bullet proof majority in the Senate. We’ll just ‘fix’ it later. Grab the power now. Don’t worry about how broken it may be. Don’t worry about the will of the people either as they don’t know what’s good for them.” How DARE you sir? How dare you?
Your existing ‘progressive’ retirement and medical systems are no bargain, nor can they even be construed as a ‘benefit’. They are designed to ensure that a senior citizen is destitute before they will step in and assist. The Lord only knows how degrading your newly conceived system will become. I submit that you and those like you are a clear and present DANGER to the very future of this nation.
Bill: Once again, great observations.
It’s been 30 years since I received my Ph.D. and taught any university classes. A lot has probably changed in the discipline since then — but not the fundamentals of political analysis. While I don’t doubt Gestell’s credentials, I can tell you that the Gestellian Methodology he practices is not normally employed for analyzing contemporary political actions and decisions.
Rather, Gestell’s approach appears to be an over-extension of a legitimate exploration of the philosophical roots of Classical Liberal and Classical Conservative theory, in which he superimposes these terms and theories onto modern day political practices to support an agenda-driven conclusion that Conservatism is inherently evil, while Liberalism suffers from none of these same deficiencies.
Note: This is the same kind of methodology that the paleos use to claim the mantle of “True Conservatives”, and insist that anyone who doesn’t believe that “race matters” is a Marxist, liberal, anti-intellectual, etc. Gestell takes this same approach — defining modern day Conservatism and Liberalism solely through the prism of classical writers (who, by the way, formed their theories and expressions in a different context, where some of the words and concepts they used then, though sounding similar, are pragmatically different today) — and uses it as a club against Conservatism. This same club expressly excuses the excesses of modern day Liberals because from a purely academic standpoint, Marx and Mao have never been listed under the body of literature academics describe as “Classical Liberalism”.
As an academic exercise, what Gestell is doing has some merit. It’s interesting intellectually to see if what Obama or Nixon did follows more along the lines of what Kirk and Weaver wrote, or John Stuart Mill. Unfortunately, as an academic exercise, it must have some additional real-world components to make it truly reflective their actual decisions.
I’ve seen Glenn Beck’s documentary on Progressivism, for example. While what he says is accurate about their race-based eugenics-riddled philosophy, modern day “Progressives” are not racist eugenicists. This is because people today who practice politics by borrowing images and phrases from the past to identify themselves as Progressives don’t always (a) fully understand the full nature of the philosophy they borrow from, and (b) what a philosophy stood for 100 years ago isn’t always what it stands for today. Like everything in life, the essence of things change. JFK was a Liberal in 1960; Nancy Pelosi is a Liberal in 2010. Same descriptor; but different pragmatic philosophies in many key respects.
This is my fundamental problem with Gerstellian Analysis: his rather intellectually sloppy way of transitioning from political philosophy to political analysis. It manifests itself in many of the examples he uses, and conclusions he’s drawn, to support his positions.
When I challenged Gerstell on his statement that people vote for their “own kind”, he used the example of a big city, Tammany Hall-type political system to validate his claim. He’s actually fairly correct in his analysis, as long as we’re looking at the mid-late 1800s when circumstances were entirely different from today. Ethnic and racial groups were often forced into ghettos and tightly-knit communities, certain races were excluded from voting (as were women as a whole), and even the jobs taken in government had an ethnic component to it (Irish cops come to mind).
But no one would look to this “context” to describe politics today. Superimposing the Tammany Hall model on the entire USA in 2010 is, well, in a word, silly. It can’t possibly begin to explain why political decisions are made today, or voting groups today act the way they do in support or opposition of those decisions.
This leads to my next major criticism of Gestellian Methodology. When I criticize agenda-driven political analysis, Gestell responds by saying “Anyone who tries to write about politics has an agenda. Any and all things belonging to politics, every proposal made to government to do or not do one thing or another, is of necessity going to involve an agenda, and it is going to part of some conflict.”
This is pure intellectual sophistry. Both the phrase “agenda” and “agenda-driven” have the word “agenda” in it. But who honestly treats the two phrases as identical? To acknowledge that, as human beings, we do not begin every analysis from a blank slate is not to say it doesn’t matter whether you have a pre-conceived, agenda-driven point you are trying to ram through regardless of the facts at hand, which is what an “agenda-driven” analysis is.
The interesting thing here is that, paradoxically, this doesn’t really matter to the modern day Left. To Gestell in particular, and modern day Liberals/Progressives in general, there is no real distinction between “agenda” and “agenda-driven”. It explains why we’ve seen so many on the Left justify or explain-away agenda-driven Global Warming/Cooling/Climate Change conclusions (who cares if the data was deliberately manipulated, the matter of climate change has been “settled”?). It also explains why when Conservatives argue against “illegal immigration”, Liberals ignore the word “illegal”, and claim that this is an anti-immigrant philosophy period.
Our side strives for objectivity when analyzing a situation, even to the point of acknowledging and condemning the bigots who use “Conservative” words and phrases to support their agenda-driven conclusions. The Left views political analysis as a weapon, playing word games to condemn Conservatives for the very things they ignore or excuse as basic components of contemporary Liberal ideology.
A third area involves the Gestellian notions of “Tradition”. Clearly tradition plays a strong role in Conservative thought. But putting aside my earlier point that not every conservative focuses in on the same “traditions”, it’s clear that Liberalism is Tradition-driven too. Obama today pays homage to the “Progressive Tradition”. When Liberals want to insert a new right into the Constitution (such as the right to privacy), they don’t justify it as a “new right”. They justify it as something that is in keeping with the basic Constitution itself. Gestell’s false dichotomy of “Tradition” doesn’t aid in the understanding of modern day politics.
Looking at words instead of trying to understand actions leads to the kind of analytical sophistry you picked up on as well. Take the example of this exchange between Gestell and you (Bill Wavering): “If you have any elderly persons in your family, Mr. Wavering, do you (1) pay for their health care entirely yourself (2) expect them to pay for it entirely themselves, or (3) expect them to use Medicare? If your answer is (3), I rest my case.”
I think the Social Security system is a Ponzi scheme. But when I turn 62 in a few years, I intend to cash my social security checks. I think Medicare is a horrible system. But when I qualify for it, I’ll use it unless there’s another realistic option available to me at that moment in time. None of this makes me a kindred philosophical soul who actually supports these programs. I live in a society where, thanks to Liberals and Progressives, certain structural changes have been forced on me that I must either ignore, or utilize. I hate these systems, but am not stupid enough to never cash a Social Security check, or never have Medicare help defray my expenses. I’ll work within the system as I try to change it. That’s the way the real world functions, not the phony options and conclusions Gestell offers.
Which brings me to my final point. If someone wants to propose a methodology that helps explain contemporary politics, they need to have something that is grounded in the way the world actually functions; not something that simply conforms to academically-created categories of Classical Liberalism or Classical Conservatism.
Gestellian Methodology can’t do this, which is why he does the following. I point out that from a practical standpoint, modern day Liberals have drawn on the political philosophies of Marx and Mao more than John Stuart Mill. I gave examples of why this is true (Liberal support for Stalin in the 20’s and 30, The Left’s view during the Vietnam War era on capitalism and “imperialism”, the desire today by the Left to socialize 1/6 of the US economy [health care], to set compensation policy on all ‘key private industry sectors’ [not just TARP recipients], etc.).
Gestell’s response is to say that Marx and Mao have “little or nothing” to do with Liberalism. Yes — little or nothing to do with the academically-identified body of “Classical Liberalism”, which is not the subject of the discussion of why people and politicians act the way they do today! This is the contrived defining-away of a problem, not the analysis of a political action.
If Gestell was to respond to this, he’d say I’m being “anti-intellectual” because I’m flouting decades and decades of solid academic inquiry into the subject of Classical political philosophy. But in fact, I’m doing nothing of the kind. I’m not commenting at all on whether Marx and Mao are “classical liberals” as defined by the academic literature — I’ll concede they aren’t. What I am saying is that American Liberalism as practiced in the political arena throughout the 20th century IS heavily influenced by Marx and Mao. Understanding the actions of the American Left is not an academic exercise of fitting them into academic categories of analysis. It’s looking at the philosophical foundations of these actions, regardless of how academics want to lump people together.
And in making these comparisons, we need to do more than define the words “Liberal” and “Conservative” solely in terms of abstract classical literature. These are also practical descriptors that in many cases are applied to individuals by these individuals themselves. If I want to understand what Liberals and Conservatives actually think and do in America, I don’t necessarily start with classical philosophical literature. I’m almost better off looking at the purely political manifestos and polemics they produce, some of which pay homage to certain philosophies, others of which are simply ideological justifications for pragmatic political actions. An obvious case here is the National Socialist movement of the 1930s. You understand Hitler and the Nazis by starting with Mein Kamph, not “classical” political theory.
If all Gestell wants to do is give us a history lesson about Classical political philosophy, again, that’s fine. But if he wants to use Classical literature as the primary base to evaluate contemporary actions, he cannot dodge the issue of what is really going on by playing games with semantics. An analytical framework is supposed to tell you something real about the world we presently live in. It’s not just an academic exercise to see whether an action or philosophy in 2010 conforms to the Classical definition of a word (“Liberal” or “Conservative”).
Maybe it’s just the fact that I’ve lived a lot of this stuff instead of studied it academically that Gestell and I see things so differently. If this makes me an ignorant anti-intellectual redblooded conservative hell bent on shooting anyone who disagrees with me, well, it’s just a classification I’ll have to endure. Rather than use my education to manufacture an academic understand of how things actually work, I’ve used it to actually understand and navigate through the political system. This is why my commentaries always begin with the practical application of political ideology, not the classical roots of political philosophy.
I’ll close with a real world example of what I mean:
The following quote is from Obama’ State of the Union address: “Even if you doubt the evidence [about “Climate Change”], providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future,”
Now, here is an analysis from a 12/7/09 essay I wrote on the “next phase” of the global warming hoax
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2009/12/07/the-man-made-global-warming-hoax-phase-4/
[W]hat happens to the momentum that was building for “world wide action” to stem this growing [Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change] GCWCC crisis [when this fraud is finally exposed]?
Well, nothing. It will continue to build, just be repackaged slightly. Instead of Climate Change in all its iterations, a new mantra will emerge: we need to address the impending Global Environmental Health Crisis!
Any effort to fundamentally transform a society must involve the entire planet, so calling the crisis “Global” is a given. The real interesting sleight of hand will be the next word in this phrase, “Environmental.”
The foundation for this has already been laid. When the earth actually started to cool these last 10 years or so — and the dire predictions of global climate catastrophe didn’t appear even though the essential fixes to correct the problems were not put into practice — the GCWCC Hysterics began to subtly mix their metaphors. We began to hear about “pollution” in association with climate change. Cap and Trade would help clean up the planet. Driving smaller cars not only meant less harmful exhaust polluting the atmosphere, but you needed to be smaller to fit into these new vehicles comfortably. Regulating transfats, taxing soft drinks, and promoting a healthier lifestyle were all part of the magic to save the planet.
So what if reducing our dependence on fossil fuels doesn’t really impact the climate the way we originally thought? It makes the air cleaner. And besides, going green is the more responsible way to act anyway. Is a Western lifestyle with its reliance on big houses, big cars, fast food, and red meat good for us anyway? Wouldn’t we all be better off if we changed our ways? Okay, sure, maybe the sun and the natural cycles of the Earth have more to do with the planet’s climate than SUVs and factories, but being overweight can kill you. You need to change for the sake of the planet, and your own good. …
All of Gestell’s discussion about Classical Liberalism or Classical Conservatism does absolutely nothing to tell us why the Obama administration does what it does today.
Here it is again with (hopefully) the proper coding.
Bill: Once again, great observations.
It’s been 30 years since I received my Ph.D. and taught any university classes. A lot has probably changed in the discipline since then — but not the fundamentals of political analysis. While I don’t doubt Gestell’s credentials, I can tell you that the Gestellian Methodology he practices is not normally employed for analyzing contemporary political actions and decisions.
Rather, Gestell’s approach appears to be an over-extension of a legitimate exploration of the philosophical roots of Classical Liberal and Classical Conservative theory, in which he superimposes these terms and theories onto modern day political practices to support an agenda-driven conclusion that Conservatism is inherently evil, while Liberalism suffers from none of these same deficiencies.
Note: This is the same kind of methodology that the paleos use to claim the mantle of “True Conservatives”, and insist that anyone who doesn’t believe that “race matters” is a Marxist, liberal, anti-intellectual, etc. Gestell takes this same approach — defining modern day Conservatism and Liberalism solely through the prism of classical writers (who, by the way, formed their theories and expressions in a different context, where some of the words and concepts they used then, though sounding similar, are pragmatically different today) — and uses it as a club against Conservatism. This same club expressly excuses the excesses of modern day Liberals because from a purely academic standpoint, Marx and Mao have never been listed under the body of literature academics describe as “Classical Liberalism”.
As an academic exercise, what Gestell is doing has some merit. It’s interesting intellectually to see if what Obama or Nixon did follows more along the lines of what Kirk and Weaver wrote, or John Stuart Mill. Unfortunately, as an academic exercise, it must have some additional real-world components to make it truly reflective their actual decisions.
I’ve seen Glenn Beck’s documentary on Progressivism, for example. While what he says is accurate about their race-based eugenics-riddled philosophy, modern day “Progressives” are not racist eugenicists. This is because people today who practice politics by borrowing images and phrases from the past to identify themselves as Progressives don’t always (a) fully understand the full nature of the philosophy they borrow from, and (b) what a philosophy stood for 100 years ago isn’t always what it stands for today. Like everything in life, the essence of things change. JFK was a Liberal in 1960; Nancy Pelosi is a Liberal in 2010. Same descriptor; but different pragmatic philosophies in many key respects.
This is my fundamental problem with Gerstellian Analysis: his rather intellectually sloppy way of transitioning from political philosophy to political analysis. It manifests itself in many of the examples he uses, and conclusions he’s drawn, to support his positions.
When I challenged Gerstell on his statement that people vote for their “own kind”, he used the example of a big city, Tammany Hall-type political system to validate his claim. He’s actually fairly correct in his analysis, as long as we’re looking at the mid-late 1800s when circumstances were entirely different from today. Ethnic and racial groups were often forced into ghettos and tightly-knit communities, certain races were excluded from voting (as were women as a whole), and even the jobs taken in government had an ethnic component to it (Irish cops come to mind).
But no one would look to this “context” to describe politics today. Superimposing the Tammany Hall model on the entire USA in 2010 is, well, in a word, silly. It can’t possibly begin to explain why political decisions are made today, or voting groups today act the way they do in support or opposition of those decisions.
This leads to my next major criticism of Gestellian Methodology. When I criticize agenda-driven political analysis, Gestell responds by saying “Anyone who tries to write about politics has an agenda. Any and all things belonging to politics, every proposal made to government to do or not do one thing or another, is of necessity going to involve an agenda, and it is going to part of some conflict.”
This is pure intellectual sophistry. Both the phrase “agenda” and “agenda-driven” have the word “agenda” in it. But who honestly treats the two phrases as identical? To acknowledge that, as human beings, we do not begin every analysis from a blank slate is not to say it doesn’t matter whether you have a pre-conceived, agenda-driven point you are trying to ram through regardless of the facts at hand, which is what an “agenda-driven” analysis is.
The interesting thing here is that, paradoxically, this doesn’t really matter to the modern day Left. To Gestell in particular, and modern day Liberals/Progressives in general, there is no real distinction between “agenda” and “agenda-driven”. It explains why we’ve seen so many on the Left justify or explain-away agenda-driven Global Warming/Cooling/Climate Change conclusions (who cares if the data was deliberately manipulated, the matter of climate change has been “settled”?). It also explains why when Conservatives argue against “illegal immigration”, Liberals ignore the word “illegal”, and claim that this is an anti-immigrant philosophy period.
Our side strives for objectivity when analyzing a situation, even to the point of acknowledging and condemning the bigots who use “Conservative” words and phrases to support their agenda-driven conclusions. The Left views political analysis as a weapon, playing word games to condemn Conservatives for the very things they ignore or excuse as basic components of contemporary Liberal ideology.
A third area involves the Gestellian notions of “Tradition”. Clearly tradition plays a strong role in Conservative thought. But putting aside my earlier point that not every conservative focuses in on the same “traditions”, it’s clear that Liberalism is Tradition-driven too. Obama today pays homage to the “Progressive Tradition”. When Liberals want to insert a new right into the Constitution (such as the right to privacy), they don’t justify it as a “new right”. They justify it as something that is in keeping with the basic Constitution itself. Gestell’s false dichotomy of “Tradition” doesn’t aid in the understanding of modern day politics.
Looking at words instead of trying to understand actions leads to the kind of analytical sophistry you picked up on as well. Take the example of this exchange between Gestell and you (Bill Wavering): “If you have any elderly persons in your family, Mr. Wavering, do you (1) pay for their health care entirely yourself (2) expect them to pay for it entirely themselves, or (3) expect them to use Medicare? If your answer is (3), I rest my case.”
I think the Social Security system is a Ponzi scheme. But when I turn 62 in a few years, I intend to cash my social security checks. I think Medicare is a horrible system. But when I qualify for it, I’ll use it unless there’s another realistic option available to me at that moment in time. None of this makes me a kindred philosophical soul who actually supports these programs. I live in a society where, thanks to Liberals and Progressives, certain structural changes have been forced on me that I must either ignore, or utilize. I hate these systems, but am not stupid enough to never cash a Social Security check, or never have Medicare help defray my expenses. I’ll work within the system as I try to change it. That’s the way the real world functions, not the phony options and conclusions Gestell offers.
Which brings me to my final point. If someone wants to propose a methodology that helps explain contemporary politics, they need to have something that is grounded in the way the world actually functions; not something that simply conforms to academically-created categories of Classical Liberalism or Classical Conservatism.
Gestellian Methodology can’t do this, which is why he does the following. I point out that from a practical standpoint, modern day Liberals have drawn on the political philosophies of Marx and Mao more than John Stuart Mill. I gave examples of why this is true (Liberal support for Stalin in the 20’s and 30, The Left’s view during the Vietnam War era on capitalism and “imperialism”, the desire today by the Left to socialize 1/6 of the US economy [health care], to set compensation policy on all ‘key private industry sectors’ [not just TARP recipients], etc.).
Gestell’s response is to say that Marx and Mao have “little or nothing” to do with Liberalism. Yes — little or nothing to do with the academically-identified body of “Classical Liberalism”, which is not the subject of the discussion of why people and politicians act the way they do today! This is the contrived defining-away of a problem, not the analysis of a political action.
If Gestell was to respond to this, he’d say I’m being “anti-intellectual” because I’m flouting decades and decades of solid academic inquiry into the subject of Classical political philosophy. But in fact, I’m doing nothing of the kind. I’m not commenting at all on whether Marx and Mao are “classical liberals” as defined by the academic literature — I’ll concede they aren’t. What I am saying is that American Liberalism as practiced in the political arena throughout the 20th century IS heavily influenced by Marx and Mao. Understanding the actions of the American Left is not an academic exercise of fitting them into academic categories of analysis. It’s looking at the philosophical foundations of these actions, regardless of how academics want to lump people together.
And in making these comparisons, we need to do more than define the words “Liberal” and “Conservative” solely in terms of abstract classical literature. These are also practical descriptors that in many cases are applied to individuals by these individuals themselves. If I want to understand what Liberals and Conservatives actually think and do in America, I don’t necessarily start with classical philosophical literature. I’m almost better off looking at the purely political manifestos and polemics they produce, some of which pay homage to certain philosophies, others of which are simply ideological justifications for pragmatic political actions. An obvious case here is the National Socialist movement of the 1930s. You understand Hitler and the Nazis by starting with Mein Kamph, not “classical” political theory.
If all Gestell wants to do is give us a history lesson about Classical political philosophy, again, that’s fine. But if he wants to use Classical literature as the primary base to evaluate contemporary actions, he cannot dodge the issue of what is really going on by playing games with semantics. An analytical framework is supposed to tell you something real about the world we presently live in. It’s not just an academic exercise to see whether an action or philosophy in 2010 conforms to the Classical definition of a word (“Liberal” or “Conservative”).
Maybe it’s just the fact that I’ve lived a lot of this stuff instead of studied it academically that Gestell and I see things so differently. If this makes me an ignorant anti-intellectual redblooded conservative hell bent on shooting anyone who disagrees with me, well, it’s just a classification I’ll have to endure. Rather than use my education to manufacture an academic understand of how things actually work, I’ve used it to actually understand and navigate through the political system. This is why my commentaries always begin with the practical application of political ideology, not the classical roots of political philosophy.
I’ll close with a real world example of what I mean:
The following quote is from Obama’ State of the Union address: “Even if you doubt the evidence [about “Climate Change”], providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future,”
Now, here is an analysis from a 12/7/09 essay I wrote on the “next phase” of the global warming hoax
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2009/12/07/the-man-made-global-warming-hoax-phase-4/
[W]hat happens to the momentum that was building for “world wide action” to stem this growing [Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change] GCWCC crisis [when this fraud is finally exposed]?
Well, nothing. It will continue to build, just be repackaged slightly. Instead of Climate Change in all its iterations, a new mantra will emerge: we need to address the impending Global Environmental Health Crisis!
Any effort to fundamentally transform a society must involve the entire planet, so calling the crisis “Global” is a given. The real interesting sleight of hand will be the next word in this phrase, “Environmental.”
The foundation for this has already been laid. When the earth actually started to cool these last 10 years or so — and the dire predictions of global climate catastrophe didn’t appear even though the essential fixes to correct the problems were not put into practice — the GCWCC Hysterics began to subtly mix their metaphors. We began to hear about “pollution” in association with climate change. Cap and Trade would help clean up the planet. Driving smaller cars not only meant less harmful exhaust polluting the atmosphere, but you needed to be smaller to fit into these new vehicles comfortably. Regulating transfats, taxing soft drinks, and promoting a healthier lifestyle were all part of the magic to save the planet.
So what if reducing our dependence on fossil fuels doesn’t really impact the climate the way we originally thought? It makes the air cleaner. And besides, going green is the more responsible way to act anyway. Is a Western lifestyle with its reliance on big houses, big cars, fast food, and red meat good for us anyway? Wouldn’t we all be better off if we changed our ways? Okay, sure, maybe the sun and the natural cycles of the Earth have more to do with the planet’s climate than SUVs and factories, but being overweight can kill you. You need to change for the sake of the planet, and your own good. …
All of Gestell’s discussion about Classical Liberalism or Classical Conservatism does absolutely nothing to tell us why the Obama administration does what it does today.
Phillip
Marxism differs Progressivism in that Marxism is ‘revolutionary’ while Progressivism is ‘evolutionary’.
Correct me if I’m wrong here (You are the political scientist) but Progressivism believes in the secular manifestation of the perfection of Man here on Earth. If all resources and assets are ‘perfectly’ accessible to the entire population; then strife, competition, war, poverty, sickness, and all other forms of inequality simply cease to exist. Under such conditions, the ‘inherent’ good within Mankind will manifest itself as ‘perfect’ harmony with each other and the planet.
Conservatism’s major contention with this philosophy stems from our belief that Man is a ‘flawed’ creature; and as such any creation of his genius must also be flawed (i.e. government and its programs).
Pursuit of ‘Perfection’ is like pursuit of ‘Happiness’ while you are guaranteed the right to pursue these things there is no guarantee you will ‘catch’ (achieve) them.
It’s almost like the different manner in which physicists go about trying to unify field theory. There is a ‘macro’ faction (the theoretical physicists) that believes you can ‘roll up’ the four fundamental forces into one ‘master’ equation that governs all. There is the ‘micro’ faction (the particle physicists) who believe that we must define ever ‘smaller’ (i.e. smaller in duration, charge, but not necessarily mass or effect) will eventually describe physics at such a minute level as to unify the forces because of the truncations of time distance, and charge.
Progressives may be compared to these particle physicists; a more minute set of controls, a more short term definition of equality: If we keep shortening the duration and more stringently controlling the experiment, we will eventually arrive at a set of conditions that must result in ‘unification’.
Bill: what you say seems accurate to me — but my knowledge of (and interest in) political philosophy is limited. As a unique field of study, I find it to be virtually worthless (kind of like “women’s studies” and “art history”; interesting, but worthless from a practical standpoint). It’s just a sophisticated form of mental masturbation where academics create categories and taxonomies and then fit these artificial constructs together, without necessarily relating what they’ve done to the real world.
Rather than memorize the reading list of Classical Liberal, Conservative, Progressive etc. authors, I approach everything from the pragmatic political standpoint. People who call themselves “Progressives” in 2010 believe certain things (which may or may not be the same as what Progressives believed in 1910). These present day beliefs are the things I look at, and to the extent I see them draw upon Marx or Mill to support their ideas, I draw a linkage. But this linkage is not really all that important to me — it’s just an academic exercise. Whether Obama is more properly labeled a fascist or socialist (by linking his present actions to these bodies of philosophy/ideology) is irrelevant to me. I focus on the things he’s actually doing, and relate them to broad distinctions (capitalism vs. socialism/communism; free markets vs. state controlled fascism, etc.).
So, to answer your question, while I don’t disparage attempts to do what you’re doing, I’m not really the guy to comment on how well you’ve grasped the basic concepts of classical conservatism, progressivism, etc. What I can do, which is what I did with Gerstell, is point out how flawed it is to link classical definitions of terms like Liberalism, Conservatism, etc. to people who self-identify (or are labeled by others), and then somehow assume that this academic exercise actually explains anything of real substance about what people do today, and why they do it.
Having said this, though, in a broad sense I believe you are correct. Marxism, socialism, progressivism, etc. seem to have a common underlying theme that believes the government of man is the driving force to evolving humanity into a higher form of positive social and economic interaction (i.e. perfection), while those who don’t associate with this philosophy (the dastardly “conservatives”) believe that individuals themselves provide this driving force, with the government’s role limited to providing national security, and a stable economic and social framework within which individuals apply their individual talents.
Progressives don’t actually believe they’ll attain 100% perfection, but from what I see they think near perfection is attainable. “Conservatives” don’t believe that humanity can never improve with the help of government, they just think this improvement is inherently limited because individual action, not collective will, is the driving force of improvement. Thus, it takes a Bill Gates to create a Microsoft, not the US government. Churches are better educators of morality than government bureaucrats. Even militias (individual citizens with the right to bear arms) are needed to support defense — it’s not something that should be done entirely by restricting gun ownership to the US military. Etc.
This is just the thumbnail, though, because conservatives also recognize limited need for governmental support for the indigent where the community support is inadequate, and even Marxists and communists allow limited private enterprise to exist. But as a general rule I think this is a fair observation. It’s just not sufficient to arbitrarily include or exclude individual theories and actions because they don’t fit an academic taxonomy of what “properly” belongs in a given category.
I’ve refrained from commenting because you guys, Bill & Phil, are doing such a great job,
This is what an intellectual site should be like. I’ve just gotten an education.
Even Gestell’s (cute German nom de blogue) obtuseness was helpful in drawing you guys (Phil & Bill) out.
Unfortunately, anyone who has a robotic dislike of Conservatives will, as Phil himself notes, dismiss Phil with his own words:
Maybe it’s just the fact that I’ve lived a lot of this stuff instead of studied it academically that Gestell and I see things so differently… Rather than use my education to manufacture an academic understand of how things actually work, I’ve used it to actually understand and navigate through the political system. This is why my commentaries always begin with the practical application of political ideology, not the classical roots of political philosophy.
I don’t have anything intellectual to add to this thread but, to channel Gestell’s Germanic impulse, I’m enjoying some schadenfreude, (intellectual schadenfreude, of course) based on years of arguing with Liberals who (continuing a meme of the 1930s) were want to call my intellectual underpinnings “fascist”.
I feel that we Conservatives were not so much outsmarted as out-emotionalized. That’s tougher to overcome.
So, I welcome Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism & Glenn Beck’s reiterating the connection of Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger (who lived in Inwood for a time) with Eugenics or comparing 2010 Liberal thought to Marxism. And, as a lawyer, his explaining that law students don’t study, the, ya know, actual text of the Constitution, but, rather, cases about the Constitution. (OK, he confused Roscoe Pound with Christopher Langdell, but his point was correct.) It drives my Liberal friends crazy. It beats them at their own game.
OK, schadenfreude (even intellectual schadenfreude, of course)is perhaps a disorder not an intellectual bragging tool. But a number of people, some of whom who don’t want to be identified as “Liberal”, “Leftist”, or “progressive”, think that there somehow is a free lunch & that Conservatives are meanies & that somehow socialism, as modified of course, can work this time. Rationing? Nevermind. Do you know who I am? And that Obama will govern towards the center. And they fail to realize that the Left in control or striving for control of the political process has always been about power, ego, status, and, yes, control, masked by faux genuine concern for the planet or for
your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore…
Problem is that when I’m at a social gathering, or the ‘net, some RC “Social Justice” poseur filibusters with bromides & clichés & no one in the crowd will take him/her on. Even if I say simply that I demur, some “peacemaker” will say “How ’bout them Mets”. Or a trimmer will say something like: “My great aunt was helped by the Little Sisters of The Poor & I don’t want to hear a discouraging word about nuns for peace & justice.” I recently said, in exasperation at this comment, that I’d heard that Margaret Cho & Sandra Bernhardt had been the featured speakers at the recent fundraising for the good sisters. Unfortunately, no one in the room had heard of those two so my wit was wasted.
BTW, I never start this stuff. There’s always someone who starts the Conservatives = rightwing nuts, religious fanatics, fascist warmongers, racist descendants of some one of those 1810/1910 Conservatives mentioned here, as well as Israel apologists, & Republicans are gonna take away great aunt’s Social Security & Medicare. (And cost me money!) Even if I simply laugh, it starts this person into paroxysms of propaganda, nowhere as good as Gestell’s.
Inwood,
I disagree: You do have something to add. Your declaration that; “I feel that we Conservatives were not so much outsmarted as out-emotionalized.” speaks volumes. We are certainly out-emotionalized on most occasions. If you exclude the T.E.A. Parties; I can think of no time when conservatives showed out in the numbers, or with the attitude of liberal protests. From Gay rights to illegal immigration rallies; liberals normally out-perform conservative in numbers, voice, and anger.
I happen to believe that we’re also outsmarted from the standpoint that liberals are all about government but conservatives see government as one of several aspects of life. Their dedication to government gives them an edge.
Bill
Thanks.
On a serious note, you’re right when you say
we’re also outsmarted from the standpoint that liberals are all about government but conservatives see government as one of several aspects of life. Their dedication to government gives them an edge.
So many Left, Liberal, Progressive, whatever the latest term is, officeholders have gone from law school right into government work & are interested in power without having to meet a payroll themselves or actually do any work. That’s why they see government as the solution to everything & sit around the virtual campfire & sing songs of the Depression & FDR.
On what Liberals are now calling a non substantive matter (after all it’s not like he can’t spell “potato”) The Anointed Ώne needs his teleprompter programmed phonetically so he can avoid embarrassing mistakes like the one yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast. Seems that not once but twice, while trying to say “corpsman,” he, apparently following the “speak-as-you-spell movement” pronounced the silent “p” & “s” so that it came out “corpse-man.”
Douglas MacArthur is spinning in his grave!
http://www.breitbart.tv/obama-mispronounces-navy-corpsman-twice/
As some wag said, it’s a good thing that a corpsman doesn’t wear a sword!
And when I bring up an Obama’s faux pas (the “x” & the “s” being silent, of course), Liberals & even some Conservatives say “we gotta get beyond that nit-picking stuff.
As Victor Davis Hanson said recently: “Bushisms became a media pastime, but no one suggests that a president who says Cinco de Quatro, or 57 states, or references the “Austrian” language is a Dan Quayle wrestling with potato.”
Bill
On the other hand:
a NYT Op-Ed columnist
Asks: How can people simultaneously (a) rave about Obama’s eloquence and (b) concede that he’s not getting through to a lot of people?
And Answers: The Anointed Ώne is too “studious” for us and doesn’t understand. The profanum vulgus Americans are “suspicious of complexity”.
And Explains: “The president must communicate within the environment he inhabits, not the one he envisions. The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, ‘Mr. President, we’re down here.’” If the American people only had The Anointed Ώne’s great intellect, temperament, & ‘attention span”, everything would be as it was at noon on 1/20/09.
Translation: Ya see, we are the ones not worthy of such a leader as he.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/opinion/30blow.html?ref=opinion
Inwood,
I appreciate your insight. I’d like to first address your statement; “So many Left, Liberal, Progressive, whatever the latest term is…” I’ve contended in past postings to this web site that we conservatives are guilty of using these words interchangeably and that is imprecise. Words mean things and as such should be carefully chosen.
The words democrat, liberal, and progressive; while describing an overall ideology we would define as ‘The Left’ are separated by orders of magnitude when it comes to dedication. Democrats are the ‘least’ committed if you will. Spending more time raising children and working though life, they are the least likely to engage in political activism or debate. Liberals are the ‘debaters. They have a passion regarding their beliefs and are genuinely interested in discussing points of ideological difference in an attempt to seek solution. Progressives are the bomb throwing, kool-aide drinking activists. They’re belief in their own superiority, both in intellect and ideology is beyond arrogant. These are the people most often reduced to spittle flinging tirades when faced with a logical refutation of their positions. (Think Keith Olbermann or Raymond Ingles!)
There are groups on the right that fit these categories as well. I’ve named them republicans, conservatives and supremacists; but you may have other definitions. It is the liberals and conservatives that will ultimately, in my opinion, solve political issues.
I belong to an apolitical group called the C4AA that grew out of our local T.E.A. Parties. We care not for political affiliation and as such have drawn both conservatives and liberals to the meetings. We’ve already achieved something of a breakthrough from the standpoint that we’ve collectively come to the conclusion that it is not so much the issue we need to debate but the proper role of government in that issue. It makes for interesting discussion; interesting level-headed discussion.
Here’s my take on progressive versus conservative in the political arena. Since progressives believe so avidly in the ability of government, their offspring are groomed from birth to be bureaucrats. The best and brightest of these gravitate to elected public office.
Since the overwhelming majority of conservatives are capitalists first, their offspring are trained for business. They gravitate toward business and the best and brightest end up in the boardrooms of our Fortune 500 companies.
As a result conservatives are constantly fielding the ‘B’ team against progressives. Nothing made this plainer than the 2000 election where a ‘failed’ businessman, George Bush, took on a second generation bureaucrat groomed for the Presidency in Al Gore. That Bush beat Gore was astonishment in itself: But it was so particularly overwhelming for progressives that it reduced them to a mindless rage as they struck out at each aspect of his personality.
This dovetails into your post #32 where you ask;”… How can people simultaneously (a) rave about Obama’s eloquence and (b) concede that he’s not getting through to a lot of people?”
As response I’ll ask this: How was it possible for progressives to simultaneously hold two mutually exclusive viewpoints of George Bush? They constantly accused him of being so inane as to be sub-human while at the same time being so manipulative and cunning that no one in the country could realize how evil he was. Just trying to keep these two thoughts in my mind at the same time gives me the same headache as when I eat too much ice cream to fast! How could anyone walk around in that kind of pain all day, huh?
First a Q from you (you apparently not agreeing with the NYT columnist’s obvious solution to what seemed to us dense uns to be prima facie Obama’s ineffective eloquence) to which I will give a simple answer:
Q How was it possible for progressives to simultaneously hold two mutually exclusive viewpoints of George Bush? They constantly accused him of being so inane as to be sub-human while at the same time being so manipulative and cunning that no one in the country could realize how evil he was.
A. As Phil & others like Ann Coulter have pointed out, Liberals can be & are inconsistent without even themselves seeing the illogic in that. Since they get away with it, “illogic” has no meaning in the political context anymore.
Let me expand by two quick examples similar to yours
(1) On Day One, Leftists, Liberals, Progressives (& zee snob Cons) categorize Conservatives as knuckle dragging “retards” (at least ‘til Rahm Emanuel put this word on the Index of Forbidden Words, a/k/a, “Hate Speech”), who marry their siblings.
On Day Two, Leftists, Liberals, Progressives categorize Conservatives as Malevolent Machiavellians (or is it Machiavellian Malevolents?) who are part of a VWRC.
(2) On Day One, Leftists, Liberals, Progressives aver that the 1st Amendment must be read literally &, QED, is absolute regarding no abridgment of free speech. End of discussion, please.
On Day Two, the same Leftists, Liberals, Progressives aver that “Hate Speech” codes are absolutely necessary & that dissenters (deniers?) must stop being racists, homophobes, sexists by raising phony 1st Amendment sidebar references.
(On Day Three, self-styled urbane Leftists, Liberals, Progressives aver that the the 2nd Amendment cannot be read literally, which kinda, sorta contradicts Day One, but I digress).
Bill
Re Your #33, Leftist/Liberal/Progressive, to which you add “Democrat”, my apparent confusion is actually the confusion of those on the Left who have seen the visceral feelings of many to the term “Liberal”.
As I see it, “Liberal” has become, even with those who are (usually disparagingly) referred to as “Reagan Democrats”, a description of an airy-fairy guy (I can say that without being called a homophobe, no?) who hasn’t seen that government is not the solution to all our problems.
I do see your division of those on the Left side of the Left/Right scale, but I would describe this division as ranging from Moderate Left of Center to Extreme Left of Center. And I would distinguish those who are socially liberal & economically conservative or vice versa & wind up on either side depending on how one’s Left/Right scale is labeled. (Aside, sometimes those who are extremist on both social/economic issues, but Left socially & Right economically or vice versa are mistakenly called “Centrist”!)
Here’s a NYT piece (Straddling Liberalism and Conservatism) about an anti-abortion, anti-in-your-face homosexuality, but otherwise bien pensant liberal, priest:
The church’s views on issues like abortion and homosexuality put Father Groeschel on the opposite side of the political spectrum from many who support his work for social justice.
“I used to be a liberal, if liberal means concern for the other guy,” Father Groeschel said. “Now I consider myself a conservative-liberal-traditional-radical-confused person.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/25WEpeople.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Father%20Groeschel&st=cse
And many whom I consider “moderate” Dems still seem willing to call themselves Liberal without shame.
So I would rather go from (a)”Moderate Left”, “Center Left”, or “Left of Center”, to (b)“Liberal”, to, ultimately, (c)“Socialist/Extreme Left-wing/Leftwing nut jobs” in describing those who are on the Left side of the Left/Right scale.
But again, many Liberals, & all Extreme Leftwing nut jobs eschew the “L” word in favor of “Progressive”. And, unfortunately, the MSM & academics tend to label everyone to the Left, no matter how far Left he actually is in his own words, as simply “Left of Center” or, now “Progressive” unless this guy insists on calling himself a socialist or communist. And even then maybe not.
So many on the Left have taken lately to calling themselves “Progressives” to avoid the “L” (Liberal) word, despite what Phil correctly notes about the racist underpinnings of the early 20th century eugenics-based progressive movement in America.
Perhaps this endemic fuzziness is encapsulated in the meaningless 2008 Campaign drivel postulated in the following by Sen. Barack Obama as he:
“invites us to discard the mutual blame inherent in the red-state-blue-state thinking in favor of a broad-based progressive sensibility that is both civic and civil”.
And many so called Reagan Democrats just want not to be labeled.
Bill
You refer to:
the 2000 election where a ‘failed’ businessman, George Bush, took on a second generation bureaucrat groomed for the Presidency in Al Gore. That Bush beat Gore was astonishment in itself….
Actually Gore was a failed bureaucrat, a failed student, & a failed communicator, & is now a failed scientist (but very rich guy from siding with a group of failed (actually lying) scientists who knew how the shake the government money tree. And how to get a splendid sample of sham science published in the mainstream to make even more money.
But your overall point is correct. We no longer have intellectual diversity or diversity of life experience in our political class or our chattering class.
And even these bureaucrats who wish to be top politicians usually need to have gone to an elite school. And mis-pronouncements by these elitists are OK if those in the Media would probably pronounce the words the same way due to their lack of familiarity with them. You betcha!
Bill
One More:
Sarah Palin was a blithering idiot until she became a devious genius.
So here’s Mark Leibovich, writing in the NYT, about the powerful political position Sarah Palin has devised for herself:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/06/us/politics/06palin.html
H/T Althouse
From her commenters:
(1)It must be embarrassing for the Democrats not to have already destroyed an effing retard.
How hard could it be?
(2)I think it is hilarious. Palin was defamed, slandered, and insulted in the worst possible terms because she supposedly was not as smart as those Eastern Democrat elitist effetes.
So the Democrats win with Joe Biden as Vice President. A bumbling, doddering, blithering idiot.
Joe Biden makes Palin look like a member of Mensa.
Well, OK, one more for you & Phil:
Why are liberals so condescending?
By Gerard Alexander
Sunday, February 7, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020403698_2.html?sid=ST2010020403858
Innwood,
As to your post #34: I agree that the evidence of such simultaneous ‘dual’ positions is ubiquitous on the left. But that doesn’t offer much insight as to the disease. It’s almost a form of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) but with political positions as opposed to personalities.
As for your post #35, I certainly have no argument with your particular method of classification. As I previously said; “…while describing an overall ideology we would define as ‘The Left’ are separated by orders of magnitude when it comes to dedication.” Whatever best fits your personal experience is what will work for you. I’m just pointing to the fact that, in my personal experience, there are nuances; different levels of commitment if you will, within the overall group of people defined as “The Left”. I do believe that to lump them all together is imprecise and may allow us to miss a genuine opportunity at dialog.
As for your #36: I also have no quarrel with your description of former Vice President Gore; except to say that while he certainly failed as a divinity student in college and a communicator in the 2000 election; I don’t believe his effectiveness as a bureaucrat can be questioned. He was raised and trained as a politician from a family of politicians.
The proof is in the record. He was well enough prepared to have been involved in American politics for 24 years, serving first in the U.S. House of Representatives (1977–85) and later in the U.S. Senate (1985–93) ( always representing Tennessee) before becoming vice president and serving as the Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001.
Add to that his decade long assault advocating climate change and I’d say the record speaks for itself. That he has ultimately failed is not the issue for the progressives. His latest offensive has provided them with valuable information as to how to frame the future of the debate. Progressives are always probing for weakness, trying to discover the right combination of fear, feigned compassion, and self-righteous indignation that will reward them with the goal they seek; control over larger sections of the population; either through dependence or regulation. He is already being revered in progressive circles for what he’s taught them about how to, and more importantly, how not to go framing the climate change debate in the future. Anyone who has a documented record, spanning almost two generations of dedicated service to the progressive cause cannot be classified as a failed bureaucrat.
Believe me, I’m not a fan; this is just my opinion…
Bill
You say
Anyone who has a documented record, spanning almost two generations of dedicated service to the progressive cause cannot be classified as a failed bureaucrat.
Point taken.
I should’ve said that he’s a failed person (he also left law school early), personifying the failure of “the progressive cause”, & that, while he’s a failed scientist or failed climatology reporter, he’s been, up to now, a successful calamitologist.
Bill
Can we say that Algore is leading a “corpse” of calamitologists?
Phil & Bill
Apparently some now think that a younger Dustin Hoffman could play Palin as The Rain Man!
Phil
From those wonderful folks who bring the calamitologists the official reports:
This is what I found in The Baltimore Sun website:
A likely record, but experts will get back to us.
Measurement problems prevent meteorologists from saying for sure.
The powerful nor’easter that buried Central Maryland in more than 2 feet of snow Friday and Saturday will be ranked among the biggest in the region’s weather annals. But meteorologists at the National Weather Service were unable to say Saturday precisely how much snow fell. Problems with measurements at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport have left Baltimore without an official tally.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/weather/bal-stormrecord0206,0,4657792.story
Calamitology: It’s an art, not a science.
Inwood,
“successful calamitologist” indeed. You’re a laugh riot! LMAO!
Regarding your post #41. I think Sarah Palin will be a force to be reckoned with in 2012. Apparently; she learned a lot in 2008. Her PAC is distributing money; and not just to anyone either. They’re being careful to back candidates with great chances to win. She’ll need the backing of those future officeholders if she decided to further her political career.
I’ve never questioned her ideological credentials. I do believe she was woefully unprepared for her role in the McCain campaign in 2008. I also believe she didn’t’ do herself any favors by resigning her governorship. For my money; I think she needs to shop at the same store Hillary Clinton does and buy herself a few sets of iron underwear.
As for your last post. I’ve always dreamed of being a weatherman. I cant’ think of another profession where you can make big bucks being wrong so often. The only thing better that being a weatherman in general, would be being a weatherman in California. Can you imagine? “Today’s forecast; nice. Tomorrow’s forecast; nicer. Where’s my check?”
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