The Revolution Devours Its Children
In my post on the right’s civil war, I saw Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh as in the same camp—a group of hyper-orthodox “ultras” so blind to reality that they not only saw Bobby Jindal as correct in his extreme opposition to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but actually wanted to pretend that Jindal’s speech last week was effective. On the other side were governors like Jon Huntsman and Charlie Crist and columnist David Brooks, all hoping to move the right in a more constructive direction. But Ali Frick reports that during his hour-long address to the Conservative Political Action Committee, Limbaugh went beyond that to condemn Newt Gingrich as too soft and too substantive. He argued that the right has “got to stamp out” all efforts at criticism on the merits:
Everybody asks me — and I’m sure it’s been a focal point of your convention — well, what do we do, as conservatives? What do we do? How do we overcome this? … One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas. […]
Our own movement has members trying to throw Reagan out while the Democrats know they can’t accomplish what they want unless they appeal to Reagan voters. We have got to stamp this out within this movement because it will tear us apart. It will guarantee we lose elections.
Gingrich has managed to get himself branded as an innovative policy thinker. In reality, the agenda he’s offering is mostly just a rehash of tax cuts and “drill baby drill” with little sign of innovative thinking.
Of course it’s not clear why you would expect innovative thinking from a man who first entered the House of Representative in 1978, who first entered the leadership in 1989 and who managed to have an entire dramatic narrative arc with a rise and fall from power all 10-15 years ago. But the fact that among people who congressional Republicans take seriously, the debate is between a “reformer” like Gingrich and an opponent like Limbaugh merely goes to show that on Capitol Hill there’s really no debate at all. You’ve got those who like the current gimmicks and those who want slightly different, slicker gimmicks. Only in the states where it’s difficult to avoid grappling with reality to some extent do you see Republicans actually stepping outside the Gingrich-Limbaugh box.
Still, the rise of personal antagonism between the two key unofficial leaders of the congressional Republicans is interesting, especially given their partnership during the 1993-94 heyday of conservative rejectionism. At his trial, during the French Revolution, the Jacobin (former) leader Danton remarked that “like Saturn, the revolution devours its children” and I suppose that’s what we’re seeing here.
43 Responses to “The Revolution Devours Its Children”
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March 1st, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Re: Gingrich has managed to get himself branded as an innovative policy thinker.
Gingrich is the closest thing to an innovative policy thinker the Right has these days. Which is to say they are intellectually bankrupt. The Right is in a worse state of collapse than the economy. I would sooner expect Citibank to turn a profit before the Right comes up with a new (and usable) idea. The question is whether the Right will pull the GOP down into the abyss as well, or will a handful of still-sane moderates (for black of a better worde) like Crist salvage the party in still viable form.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:26 pm
n thirty years the Republicans, under conservative leadership, has become the party of massive deficit expansion of government. Obama still has a long way to go to rival the 10 trillion in debt these guys ran up.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Why wouldn’t the revolution devour its children? Conservatives taste like chicken hawk.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:31 pm
A fellow at CAP ought to know that Limbaugh, though he may be a Big Fat Idiot, is technically correct. Simply having better policy ideas will not win the nasty game of US politics.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Why do I get the feeling that ThinkProgress isn’t accurately representing Rush’s speech? Oh, yeah, this recent example of them lying about what someone else said.
The same organization that did that and that consistently engages in sloppy thinking is now helping BHO make policy.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Your over 40 readers will remember Newt the professor from the 1980s, when he recorded all those “educational” seminars so that his contributors could get a tax deductions for contributions to his “educational” institute. If someone from Mars were to watch the seminars, they would assume the professor was a scientist, what with all those “innovations” and “inventions” he presumably was creating to make life better. He was, and still is, the greatest con man alive. His schtick belongs on late night tv, where you could watch his “seminars,” not on the national political stage. But this whole business about “ideas” has made me look at the right leaning intellectuals in a different light. Watch Matt Lewis and Bill Scher’s recent bloggingheads post. Lewis rattles on and on about conservative ideas and the conservative intellectuals who come up with them, and how he and Scher and Scher’s left leaning intellectual friends are pretty much alike in that they are all about ideas, just ideas from a different perspective. The look on Scher’s face as he waited for Lewis to actually list some of Lewis’ side’s ideas, besides less government and lower taxes, was classic. Which led me to thinking about the right’s obsession about “ideas” without, of course, telling us what they are, from Newt to Limbaugh to Palin to Jindal. It’s as though constantly repeating the word “ideas” would somehow substitute for the real thing.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:50 pm
A variation on a former post …
It makes sense for the Conservative “Revolution” to devour its children, the little bastards my look and act like snakes but they taste like chicken.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
“We don’t need new ideas”? “We all want Obama to fail, I’m just the only one saying it”? I’m starting to think that Rush is drawing a paycheck from OFA.
Though this underscored my thoughts on the matter- the “civil war” isn’t between conservatives and moderates, that’s a cop out. It’s between people who want new ideas (or at least new-looking ones) and people who don’t. I think there’s clearly a right side to this, but it depends on what the “new” ideas are…
March 1st, 2009 at 1:00 pm
I dislike being pedantic but it was Pierre Victurien Vergniaud who said the Revolution was beginning to devour, one by one, its children.
I bring this up because Vergniaud was a Girondin – i.e., a hard liner in the context of 1791-92 but a softie in the context of 1793, whereas Danton was a hardliner in the context of 1792-93 but a softie in the context of early 1794.
Thus – while we can smile now as the tumbril carries Gingrich the insufficiently radical off to the guillotine, we can also look forward to Limbaugh making the same journey in a year or so.
March 1st, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Next week’s Newsweek cover: Limbaugh in a wig and black dress with a load of knitting on his lap.
It was the worst of times.
March 1st, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Gingrich and Limbaugh are offering Republicans a choice. They can be the party of no, or the party of no ideas. Either way, it works for me.
March 1st, 2009 at 1:30 pm
The difference between Rush and Newt is that Newt is, more or less, a grown up. Not that Newt can’t behave childishly on occasion, but he’s capable of relating to the rest of the world on an adult level. Rush’s emotional and intellectual development was stunted somewhere in adolescence. He’s a 58 year old man who still thinks and feels like that unpopular, unhappy, frustrated 16 year old who sits in the back of the class and makes fun of everything everybody else does, without ever doing anything himself.
Mike
March 1st, 2009 at 1:39 pm
The only hope for the future of conservatism is ANDREW SULLIVAN. And the base rallying behind him, is eons away.
March 1st, 2009 at 1:47 pm
“Simply having better policy ideas will not win the nasty game of US politics.”
Exactly the type of line that drive liberals and progressives crazy. I think he purposely states such lines to do so (the crowd laughed not really in agreement, but knowing that this line is so crazy).
March 1st, 2009 at 1:56 pm
As a supporter of liberals and Democrats, I enthusiastically support such internecine battles within the conservative movement.
March 1st, 2009 at 2:02 pm
I agree with Matt and pretty much everyone on these fora that movement conservatism is brain dead, toxic and counterproductive (even from a conservative perspective). However, rather than throwing more red meat to the lions of the left (thank you Sam Harris), I’d like to open up a respectful discussion about something that concerns me. We all know movement conservatism is ridiculous, but what about movement liberalism? It seems to me that movement conservatism originated and coalesced due to the relative ostracism of its ideas from Washington (think of tax rates and regulation in the 1960’s) and a widely shared feeling that the mainstream culture not only belittled their values, but acted as if no one really possessed them. After years frustrating themselves in the political arena with the impotence of moderate, pragmatic incrementalism, many conservatives went “movement,” essentially withdrawing from the stage to work behind the curtains building a grass roots campaign. This meant less dialogue with people who disagreed with them, and quite literally, more preaching to the choir. As a result, what started out as firm beliefs held against a respected opposition turned into a faith-based ideology that belittled their dialectical partners as either idiots or enemies, or both. As divisions calcified, deviations within the movement were derided as heresies (just look at how Andrew Sullivan is treated by his fellow conservatives), and the ideology became more and more extreme and disconnected from reality. Once they were finally catapulted into power, they promptly forgot what it was like spending decades wandering the wilderness of political marginality, dropped whatever remained of their humility, saw any political win as a mandate to rewrite the heavens, and generally acted like total douchebags. Now, my concern is that movement liberalism might take a similar path in the future, with the Yglesias types paving the way.
Take Yglesias’ comments threads for example. Now, I really like Matt’s blog, and I really like his commentators. However, it goes without saying that we are a very liberal bunch. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s what you would expect from a liberal blog (indeed, it would be weird if it was, say, predominated by conservatives, libertarians, Islamists, Marxists or some other group). But talking among ourselves can only do us so much good, and we should treat those who practice that rare breed of dissent with utmost respect. By cloistering our beliefs we run the risk of narrow mindedness. If we don’t engage in educated debate with our opposition, our cognitive teeth will grow long and dull. We will fail to evolve, or worse, evolve into some ideological monster (and who wants to see a leftist Newt Gingrich?). All we will be capable of is caricaturing our opponents and mocking them as so obviously wrong as to not merit serious dialogue. When I watch Rachel Maddow or read Matt Yglesias, I am afraid we are beginning to go down this road. While both of these figures do occasionally make serious arguments, they increasingly just deride their opposition as if sardonic quips amounted to reasoned debate. I see this trend magnified among the comments threads.
How many times do you see what could otherwise be a good discussion on this board reduced to ad hominems, petty squabbling and other child-like behavior? Someone disagrees with you on racial policy? They must be racist. Someone disagrees with you on torture? They must be monsters. Someone disagrees with you on war? They must be murderers. Someone disagrees with you on economics? They must be corporate-stooges who hate the poor. This is more than a little reminiscent of movement conservatism. They have similar knee-jerk labels that are merely the opposite of our own: Inverse-racism, terrorist-coddler, hippy pacifist, socialist/communist stooge. We hate this invective when thrown our way, but we seem incapable of not returning the favor in kind.
Part of why I’m liberal is because I thought liberals were skeptical of group-think and the herd mentality. I thought we were all about dissent. Personally, I love arguing, and I believe it is a virtue, and not a vice, to be tough and critical towards oneself and one’s positions. I have no fear of engaging in debate with people who disagree with me for two reasons: 1) There is always a chance that I am wrong; if I am, I would like to find out so I can change my position; 2) I am confidant that I am right, and thus do not see how explaining myself could result in defeat unless I really was wrong (in which case I would like to know); 3) I realize this universe is likely far more complex than any single human can understand, and am thus curious how others see the world. It strikes me that people who don’t treat their opposition seriously are actually intellectually insecure. This insecurity destroyed much of the merit to conservatism via its movement. I do not wish the same upon liberalism.
If this is all too abstract, here is a practical example. As anyone who has read Nassim Taleb will attest, economics is a field that is less well understood than is commonly thought. Matt Yglesias himself makes this point quite often. So, when it comes to questions of economic policy, you might think he would act with a degree of epistemological restraint. Instead he acts with the certainty of any Reaganaut supply-sider worth his salt in ideological obstinacy. Despite being liberal, I am somewhat agnostic on the stimulus. There are people far smarter than me on all sides of the issue. My instinct and intellect suggest Keynes is correct, and I am willing to argue the point, but I realize there is legitimate debate on this issue. Yglesias, and many of his commentators (both left and right), however, act as if their favorite school of economics has been proved by some mathematical equation or else discovered in a laboratory. This is, naturally, nonsense. But what’s worse, it leads to demagoguery.
I don’t wish to find myself twenty years from now divorcing myself from the mainstream of liberalism in the same way Andrew Sullivan has with conservatism. Movements are a tricky thing. They lead to singularity of drive and thought. If we wish to avoid this fate, we must not stoop to the level of movement conservatives. Countering the conservative crusade with a liberal jihad strikes me as the worst of all possible worlds. I think Yglesias has a uniquely sharp mind and is at his best when he acts as if liberalism isn’t a religion. The same goes for the commentators on his blog.
Thoughts?
March 1st, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Matt seems to now realize that the American Right is a revolutionary movement (or bewegung, more correctly), not a conservative order. That is, it has very little to do with any concrete American tradition (all of which are liberal, since there is nothing to “conserve” within any possible American regime) and has more to do with nihilism.
March 1st, 2009 at 2:06 pm
The only hope for Republicans is that better times will come.
The Republican party has been the party of tactics (appeal to hate, fear, and selfishness) for about one hundred years. The only idea they have had in that time is to use the political process to serve the rich. The only difference between Republicans now and Republicans during, say, the McCarthy Era is that there are less of them now due to the failure of their tactics. Appeals to hate, fear, and selfishness don’t work when the swing voters are more afraid of their immediate economic future than they are of their neighbor’s sexlife or Commies or welfare mothers or illegal immigrants or whatever hate/fear tactic the Republicans are employing.
So, as soon as the economy rights itself and people are comfortable again, the swing voters will sigh with relief and do what they have done before: forget that their economic security comes from Democratic policies and go back to being manipulated by the hate/fear/selfishness messages of a quickly reviving Republican party.
The Republicans have never needed ideas to get elected. They just need enough independents and swing voters to be comfortable enough that they can afford to vote based on relativley trivial hot button emotional issues rather than the vital issue of immediate short term economic self interest.
The tactical error Republicans are making is rooting for failure. They need success to get back in power.
March 1st, 2009 at 2:07 pm
“…One thing we can do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas…” Due to the heavy use of ellipses it is hard to see what Rush’s argument was here, but this statement by itself isn’t necessarily a rejection of policy substance. It could be a recognition that most people are rationally ignorant and don’t vote on policy substance. Rather than joining pressure groups, they see elected officials as agents who take care of policy day-to-day.
People may vote for a candidate they think they can trust (a determination heavily influenced by cultural prejudices); a candidate who is charismatic (if they, like many Obama voters, believe that charisma is a desirable trait in a President); they may vote on the basis of outcomes (47 million uninsured, unemployment x%) without specific consideration of policy.
A considerable number of people doubtless vote on ideological grounds, but this is still not policy substance. For instance, some people believe that Bush pursued a “laissez faire” policy or even dismantled much of government, and that this led to the financial crisis; or, at a still more abstract level, that the free-market “mindset” (a favorite word of our current President) has been discredited. Possibly a few people actually believe that the Bush tax cuts led to the economic crisis. But far fewer people have a detailed understanding of derivatives, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and the like.
March 1st, 2009 at 2:08 pm
On movement conservatism and the current moment, the only interesting question is “just what magic trick is Gingrich doing in that photo, and was Dole able to figure out the legerdemain part of it?” Anything else, I say let ‘em stew, and let Limbaugh do the seasoning. I don’t mean to be cruel or heartless, but there’s something telling that the party is led by a deaf guy who had fake hearing installed.
March 1st, 2009 at 2:18 pm
“Part of why I’m liberal is because I thought liberals were skeptical of group-think and the herd mentality. I thought we were all about dissent. Personally, I love arguing, and I believe it is a virtue, and not a vice, to be tough and critical towards oneself and one’s positions.”
I fairly strongly disagree with you. Your position assumes too much rationality and intelligence broadly spread among the populance. It is too much to assume that large numbers of a population are able to reason carefully from first principles – instead, we know that attempting to do so often leads to the worst regimes of history.
This is the problem: liberal regimes usually do not rest on liberal foundations. Most often, they rest on several more or less irrational potential grounds:
1. Our liberal regime is the one we’ve always had (the argument in nineteenth century England or later twentieth century America) – an argument from tradition.
2. Our liberal regime is the best way to get the experts to rule – the experts being defined as the senior academics or government functionaries (the argument in early twentieth century America or in most of Europe today) – an argument from authority.
3. gibberish about how liberal regimes best foster capitalism – a crude vulgar appeal to the basest of self-interests.
March 1st, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Rush’s emotional and intellectual development was stunted somewhere in adolescence. He’s a 58 year old man who still thinks and feels like that unpopular, unhappy, frustrated 16 year old who sits in the back of the class and makes fun of everything everybody else does, without ever doing anything himself.
Exactly. The conservative-media bigshots are adult versions of the C-students who sat in the back of the class shooting spitballs at everyone else.
March 1st, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Smarmy Liberal,
That was reaaaalllly long winded and hand-wringing, even though I sort of agree with you in the abstract. I would in fact expect liberalism to again become calcified, but I’m not really worried about it right now. The priorities at the moment are to patch the economy back together and achieve comprehensive reform in energy and healthcare.
Professional Movement Conservatism has shown itself to be unworthy of respect and all decent people should help drive a stake through it’s heart and salt the earth so we don’t have to listen to the same bullshit again 20 years from now.
Obama has enough of a (small c) conservative temperment to avoid the pitfalls you mention and the blogosphere progressives engage with libertarians enough to keep them sharp. In short, there’s a lot to do and you’re kind of worrying about a non-existent problem at this point.
March 1st, 2009 at 3:01 pm
“I fairly strongly disagree with you. Your position assumes too much rationality and intelligence broadly spread among the populance.” –burritoboy
Yes, I think you’re quite right–this is indeed the exact point of our disagreement. As I said yesterday, this is perhaps the central dividing line between two types of liberal thinkers. One type argues that most people are stupid and that they know better than these stupid people what is good for them. People can’t be trusted to make reasonable decisions on their own, thus the government must encourage or force them (to varying degrees depending on the situation) to make smarter decisions. Because stupid people are stupid, you can’t reason with them and must instead try and hoodwink them. This is an endorsement of the Noble Lie that would leave Plato, Leo Straus, and Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor beaming with pride. Needless to say, I do not endorse this position. Nor, for that matter, do I think it is particularly liberal.
I would argue that calling this liberalism is actually a bit of a cruel joke. In reality, it is called paternalism, quite literally because it is the attitude one has when addressing a child. And indeed, the image of a parent directing a child’s life is more than a little apropos. It’s no coincidence that fascist and other totalitarian regimes invoke a similar image of filial obedience and family-based authority. Big Brother could just have well have been mom or dad.
“It is too much to assume that large numbers of a population are able to reason carefully from first principles – instead, we know that attempting to do so often leads to the worst regimes of history.” –Burritoboy
I don’t understand. If anything, the opposite is true. I can’t think of a single regime that did not benefit from demanding too much evidence for a given proposition. Skepticism and dissent serve to undermine authority, not enhance it. Even if it were true, however, that “large numbers of a population are [not] able to reason carefully,” certainly some of us are. So should we have a technocracy run by rationality? No. Why? Because just who these individuals are is impossible to divine.
March 1st, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Numebr one myth of Rush is that Obama has to rely on the Reagan voters.This is what Pat Buchanan loves to focus. Obama won a 7 point, 8 million vote, electoral mandate WITHOUT the traditional Reagan Democrat coalition. Obamam lost white men by 16 points and white women by 7 points, and still managed to coast in on a landslide.
March 1st, 2009 at 3:04 pm
“That was reaaaalllly long winded and hand-wringing” –Waingro
Yeah… that’s kind of my style.
“Obama has enough of a (small c) conservative temperment to avoid the pitfalls you mention” –Waingro
Agreed.
“In short, there’s a lot to do and you’re kind of worrying about a non-existent problem at this point.”
Totally. The entire point of my post was to start worrying about something that does not yet exist but that I fear will one day exist. Kind of like worrying about an economic collapse before the economy actually collapses.
March 1st, 2009 at 3:29 pm
“It could be a recognition that most people are rationally ignorant and don’t vote on policy substance.”
I think that’s true, for the most part. But there’s a couple notable exceptions, and one of them really cuts to the heart of this matter- tax cuts. Republicans have, by design, become singularly identified with tax cuts. Everyone knows that if Republicans are elected, they’ll cut our taxes. Obama and the Democrats have even done a good job convincing people that it’s the Republicans’ ONLY policy (And it’s damn near close, look at the stimulus debate).
And the problem is, that’s not working anymore. The Republicans are inextricably linked to tax cuts, and nobody’s voting for Republicans. So they HAVE to offer something else. It doesn’t have to be particularly GOOD, or particularly CONSERVATIVE (’cause as we’re all admitting, people don’t pay THAT MUCH attention to policy) but it’s going to have to be something IN ADDITION to tax cuts, ’cause voters have heard that one, and it’s not moving them anymore.
March 1st, 2009 at 4:10 pm
One shouldn’t make too many assumptions about why people visit various blogs.
For a lot of people, the blog world is very different from the discourse and viewpoints encountered in daily life, and for some of us, that’s a good thing.
I’ve had an entire lifetime being a liberal / leftist / fringe nut in the midst of very conservative if not hard right viewpoints in regular life. And apart from seeing an astounding shift away from Republicanism away from people who used to be die-hard Democrat-haters, that’s still the same.
March 1st, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Swarmy: So should we have a technocracy run by rationality? No. Why? Because just who these individuals are is impossible to divine.
Really? So you don’t feel you can competently say that, for example, Obama is superior to Bush on technical merits?
March 1st, 2009 at 9:19 pm
One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas.
In due fairness, this is probably not a statement against having better policy ideas, but rather a statement that having better policy ideas in and of itself doesn’t get you anywhere. You have to have a good strategy for selling your ideas, or at least for selling yourself so that you can implement your ideas.
I am under the impression that one of Jimmy Carter’s biggest problemsin effectiveness, at least early on, was that he believed that all he had to do was come up with good policy and it would sell itself. As a result, he often had a hard time getting things done.
March 1st, 2009 at 9:22 pm
“People can’t be trusted to make reasonable decisions on their own, thus the government must encourage or force them (to varying degrees depending on the situation) to make smarter decisions. Because stupid people are stupid, you can’t reason with them and must instead try and hoodwink them.”
I think you mistake my point. There are numerous other defenses of liberalism that wise people can plausibly make amongst themselves. But, these reasons are not those reasons that are popular amongst the people, and in fact, can’t be reasons that are popular amongst the people.
Empirically, I just don’t see the evidence that very large numbers of people can follow the (potentially) true arguments for a liberal regime – they’re simply unable to reason at that level. We’ve had numerous massive failures of reason amongst the oldest liberal states – the bizarre white suprematicism constant throughout the entire history of American South, the horrible class system in England, the addiction of modern Italy to Berlusconi, the McCarthy Red Scare and so on…..and on……and on…….
Further, we have empirical evidence that the level of popular rationality assumed within liberal thought simply isn’t there. The same level of rationality is assumed within neoclassical economics – indeed, classical economics was developed by the exact same philosophers as liberalism (Hume, Smith, JS Mill, John Locke, etc.) – as is assumed in liberal thought. The homo economicus is merely the economic face of their homo politicus.
And we now know empirically the efficient markets hypothesis is either dead or of extremely limited value. Which means that, in the area most of interest to the population (their own personal individual wealth, which is the subject you’d expect them to be the most rational about), that they do not meet the standards of neoclassical economics as rational agents.
March 1st, 2009 at 9:38 pm
“So should we have a technocracy run by rationality? No. Why? Because just who these individuals are is impossible to divine.”
Um, we in fact do have a technocracy run by experts (whether the experts are in fact experts is a different question, but modern democracies rely heavily on claims of expertise – there’s a reason why Larry Summers keeps popping up endlessly). That IS the basis of modern democracies – otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to have regulatory agencies at all.
“Skepticism and dissent serve to undermine authority, not enhance it.”
I think you’re entirely too glib about this. Huge amounts of dissent (from both Right and Left) against the Weimar Republic did not lead to it’s replacement by a moderate regime. Huge amounts of dissent against the comparatively good post-WWII consensus in the US did not lead to it’s replacement (the comparatively much worse US of between 1968-2008) being a more moderate or less authoritarian regime. Huge amounts of dissent by the pre-Civil War South led to the tyrannical, irrational and evil regime of the Confederacy. Opposition to the Romanov Czar was good, but the exact form of what became the leaders (i.e. Lenin, Tolstoy, Stalin, Dzerzhinsky) of that opposition was extremely negative.
Rather, it’s not dissent alone that’s valuable, it’s reasoned and prudent dissent.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:19 pm
“we in fact do have a technocracy run by experts (whether the experts are in fact experts is a different question, but modern democracies rely heavily on claims of expertise – there’s a reason why Larry Summers keeps popping up endlessly)”
My fear is that our perceived technocracy is in fact corruption as was suffered by the late USSR. I mean, we’re completely ignoring our ACTUAL experts in every single policy debate.
I think any discussion of the conservative movement as good faith ideologues is being way too generous to the Abramoff Young Republicans, who were effectively above-ground mob bosses, as well as the Southern Bloc–which has dominated the GOP since Nixon’s fall.
My reading of the political history of the South was that, before the Revolution, power was concentrated in wealthy land owners. After the Revolution, these same land owners maintained power until they were threatened by liberalized labor laws (ie, abolition); in response, they attempted secession–not due to deep seated belief in white supremacy as much as for self-preservation. Inexplicably, after the Civil War ended these SAME PEOPLE became governors and senators again, and managed to lose neither power nor money.
During the Civil Rights Movement, there was a national partisan reconfiguration, such that the Democrats became the egalitarian party and Republicans became the aristocratic party; this same group of Southern politicians, without in change in philosophy, switched parties to maintain power. The Southern Bloc has always only been self-interested; it’s why it’s perfectly suitable for Jim DeMint and Jeff Sessions to annihilate any hope of the GOP appealing to national voters.
They don’t HAVE to win a national election. They only have to win in their districts, and prevent any national institutional change from threatening the power structure that’s been in place for 400 years.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:42 am
Thoughts?
I think I’m not going to read that.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:30 am
As far as I know, the only proven cure for these ills is to spend a lot of time discussing things with smart people who disagree with you
It’s also important to read smart people who do agree with you, lest the only intelligent writings one reads be from people you’re fundamentally opposed to. Eventually you’ll need some help bolstering your own arguments, and you aren’t necessarily going to come up with those on your own.
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:19 am
This is why Conservatives have no difficulty casting Liberalism as a threat to Democracy (taking a moment to acknowledge that the United States is a Republic, rather than a true Democracy).
If that isn’t one of the most elitist statements I’ve ever read, I don’t know what is. The public is under no obligation to prove their rationality, or powers of reason, by understanding and accepting Liberal political and economic principles. Liberal thinkers have the obligation to demonstrate the applicability of their principles to the people they wish to see governed by them.
I find it particularly ironic that the writer goes on to list “the bizarre white suprematicism (sic) constant throughout the entire history of American South” as an example of such a failure of reason, when those selfsame White Supremacists would tell you that they were simply following the same reasoning – they wouldn’t have seen any evidence that Blacks could follow the correct arguments in favor of having only the best people in charge, and were convinced that Blacks were simply incapable of reliably governing themselves (or anyone else, for that matter).
Once you go down the path of presuming that one is entitled to rule due to one’s own moral or intellectual superiority, and no longer feel the need to demonstrate the superior wisdom or utility of one’s policies, it’s very easy to come to the conclusion that access to the franchise should be based on one’s ability and/or willingness to abide by “right principles” rather than citizenship.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Burritoboy, the problem with your argument is best exemplified by your opposition. Conservatives also complain that the public is irrational and cannot reason with the obvious superiority of conservative truths. This logic is completely self serving and inured with echo chamber denialism. Everyone thinks their beliefs are superior to their opposition. It is only through reasoned debate that one side can be said to triumph. Otherwise, what you have is essentially Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor. You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth! That attitude is far too paternalistic to survive in an open society. Haven’t you been on the other side of this reasoning and found it wanting?
“Really? So you don’t feel you can competently say that, for example, Obama is superior to Bush on technical merits?” –Realist
I do think he is. That’s why I voted for him. But as smart as he is, I know he isn’t omniscient and can thus make huge blunders. Hence I’ll vote him out if he sucks. No amount of expertise can counter the randomness of life. This is why democracy is preferable to technocracy, and why free markets are preferable to planned economies. Even the smartest people are immensely incapable of micromanaging life.
“I agree that there is nothing about “left” politics versus “right” politics that makes people on the “left” inherently immune to various intellectual failings, including group-think. Heck, I personally think as soon as you start taking reductionist notions like left versus right (or progressive versus conservative, or whatever) too seriously, you are already well down the path to things like group-think.
As far as I know, the only proven cure for these ills is to spend a lot of time discussing things with smart people who disagree with you (or at least reading what they have to say on a regular basis). And even that might not be enough–this is an outgrowth of the tribalism in human nature, which for a long time evolution rewarded, and thus for some people the lure of tribalism is just too powerful to resist.” –DTM
I’m an atheist, but Amen! That post deserved to be reposted in full. Very wise words, DTM.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:33 pm
“If we don’t engage in educated debate with our opposition, our cognitive teeth will grow long and dull.”
One cannot engage in debate — educated or otherwise — with those whose agenda is anti-intellectualism: “de” = two. The far-right lunatic fringe as represented by Get rich and Rash Limburger does not debate or even attempt to do so — if they even know the meaning of the term.
As a whole, all the far-right lunatic fringe is name-call, and shout down everyone who [perceivedly] disagrees with them. And the great unwashed functionally illiterate — being told by O’Reilly and Hannity, et al. — that they are engaging in debate, when in fact they are not, adopt that infantile abusiveness as “debate”.
So those who man their keyboards in effort to advance the interests of the far-right lunatic fringe do nothing but name-call and yell.
None of them LISTEN to any of their perceived oppostion for fear of being INFECTED with the subversiveness that is actual thought. (Yeah: it subverts anti-intellectualism, and proud stupidity as a mode of operation.)
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I have been trying to tell those who will listen that it does not move the conversation forward to call those of the other side “trolls” for wanting to engage those with whom they disagree.
Thank you, Smarmy Liberal and burritoboy for (at last) a discussion on this subject.
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:22 pm
“The public is under no obligation to prove their rationality, or powers of reason, by understanding and accepting Liberal political and economic principles.”
But the claim of the Declaration of Independence is: “We hold these truths to be self-evident”. If Thomas Jefferson’s claim is correct, then the basis of liberalism is self-evident. If it’s not self-evident, then you’re the one with a problematic argument, not me – again, I think liberalism is defensible proposition without assuming consistent popular enlightenment as a necessary condition.
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:30 pm
“Everyone thinks their beliefs are superior to their opposition. It is only through reasoned debate that one side can be said to triumph.”
Reasoned debate, not debate simply. (Just as dissent simply is not necessarily positive, but only reasoned and prudent dissent). The question before us is empirical: has the Enlightenment worked or failed? I would argue the evidence is too mixed to say the Enlightenment has definitively worked well, and it needed by it’s own estimation to be a great success. I.E., the Enlightenment was never nowhere near successful enough to support the political system it envisioned.
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:38 pm
“If that isn’t one of the most elitist statements I’ve ever read, I don’t know what is.”
Elitist is apparently some sort of boogieman word for you, like perhaps “devilish” would have been to a ninth-century peasant. Except at least the ninth-century peasant would know that he’s operating from faith, but you don’t know that you are as well. He knows more than you do and operates from a more solid foundation. Of course, me personally, I think the ninth-century peasant has a better grasp of politics (and thus, is more likely to be an actually active citizen in an actually successful democracy) than almost anyone today.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
How are you. America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
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