Monthly Archives: August 2007

On Our Own

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There are a couple of items in the news today reminding us that the conservative philosophy of government is not to govern at all.

Item one, an editorial in today’s New York Times:

Over the last several years, America’s imbalances in trade and other global transactions have worsened dramatically, requiring the United States to borrow billions of dollars a day from abroad just to balance its books.

The only lasting way to fix the imbalances — and reduce that borrowing — is to increase America’s savings. But the administration has steadfastly rejected that responsible approach since it would require rolling back excessive tax cuts and engaging in government-led health care reform to rein in looming crushing costs– both, anathema to President Bush. It would also require revamping the nation’s tax incentives so that they create new savings by typical families, instead of new shelters for the existing wealth of affluent families — another nonstarter for this White House.

Stymied by what it won’t do, the administration has gone for a quicker fix — letting the dollar slide. A weaker dollar helps to ease the nation’s imbalances by making American exports more affordable, thus narrowing the trade deficit.

But to be truly effective, a weaker dollar must be paired with higher domestic savings. Otherwise, the need to borrow from abroad remains large, even as a weakening currency makes dollar-based debt less attractive. That’s the trap the nation is slipping into today. Among other ills, it could lead to a deterioration in American living standards as money flows abroad to pay foreign creditors, leaving less to spend at home on critical needs. Or, it could lead to abrupt spikes in interest rates as American debtors are forced to pay whatever it takes to get the loans they need.

In volatile economic times like now, leadership is crucial — and notably absent with this administration.

I’d say what we’re really dealing with is not a lack of leadership, but negative leadership. By that I mean a stubborn refusal to deal rationally with the nation’s problems accompanied by an equally stubborn refusal not to let anyone else deal with those problems, either. The Bush Administration accumulates power and won’t share it with anyone, but neither will the Bush Administration use that power to anyone’s benefit but its own.

Item two is an article in today’s Washington Post by Spencer Hsu:

A decision by the Bush administration to rewrite in secret the nation’s emergency response blueprint has angered state and local emergency officials, who worry that Washington is repeating a series of mistakes that contributed to its bungled response to Hurricane Katrina nearly two years ago.

State and local officials in charge of responding to disasters say that their input in shaping the National Response Plan was ignored in recent months by senior White House and Department of Homeland Security officials, despite calls by congressional investigators for a shared overhaul of disaster planning in the United States.

“In my 19 years in emergency management, I have never experienced a more polarized environment between state and federal government,” said Albert Ashwood, Oklahoma’s emergency management chief and president of a national association of state emergency managers.

The national plan is supposed to guide how federal, state and local governments, along with private and nonprofit groups, work together during emergencies. Critics contend that a unilateral approach by Washington produced an ill-advised response plan at the end of 2004 — an unwieldy, 427-page document that emphasized stopping terrorism at the expense of safeguarding against natural disasters. …

…Testifying before a House panel last week, Ashwood and colleagues openly questioned why the draft was revised behind closed doors. The final document was to be released June 1, at the start of this year’s hurricane season.

Federal officials, Ashwood said, appear to be trying to create a legalistic document to shield themselves from responsibility for future disasters and to shift blame to states. “It seems that the Katrina federal legacy is one of minimizing exposure for the next event and ensuring future focus is centered on state and local preparedness,” he said.

We’re approaching the second anniversary of Katrina. Soon there will be a flood of retrospective articles documenting how little has actually been done to put New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities back on their feet. As I wrote nearly a year ago, Bush said he wanted “local folks” to make decisions about how to proceed with recovery. But along with the fact that most of the big contracts were made between the feds and their pet contractors — local talent need not apply — the Bush Administration overrode many of the decisions those “local folks” made.

A year ago The Center for America’s Future released a report (PDF) documenting the failures of the Bush Administration to respond to Katrina. The Bushies failed to prepare, they failed to respond, and they have failed to rebuild. And behind these failures was more than just sheer incompetence; it was conservative ideology. The disabling factors were rightie disdain for government, their reckless determination to privatize core functions (placing blind faith in the market without oversight or accountability) and their fondness for “pay-to-play” politics, in which money capitalism and personal gain count for more than performance. These three “beliefs,” beloved of the extreme Right, are crippling America.

As I wrote yesterday, the Right was able to “sell” this extremist agenda to America by dominating media and the nation’s political culture, freezing out any point of view but theirs. The Right claimed the center and enforced that claim with bluster and intimidation. And for a time the majority of Americans more or less went along with the Right’s agenda, mostly because that was the only agenda presented to them. Finally people are waking up, but as long as the Bushies and their cronies hang on to power, America will continue to weaken from within and without.

In the last post I wrote that many on the Right Blogosphere sincerely believe America is being weakened by disloyalty to the President. Speaking out against him emboldens the enemy, you know. Never mind that a citizens’ right to speak out against incompetent and mismanaged government is what makes democracy possible. I said, “Right wingers hunger and thirst for authoritarianism, because real freedom scares them witless. They’re happier with a dictator telling them what to do, and they’re too cowardly to admit it.”

Naturally, some brainwashed twit came along and said, “Do you not find anything authoritarian about the Nanny State?”

Let’s think about this, people. In Rightie World, we must not be allowed to have government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We, the People must not elect leaders who will enact government services like Social Security or Medicare or safety net provisions or universal health care. Because, say righties, using elected, representative government to fulfill the mandate of the Constitution — “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” etc. — is totalitarianism.

On the other hand, enforcing knee-jerk loyalty to the President by either law or social pressure is what will safeguard our freedoms.

Can we say, these people are flaming lunatics? I believe so.

I fear that someday Americans will find themselves living in a post-industrial backwater, and our status as the most powerful and prosperous nation on the planet will be a dim memory. Our only hope is to use the representative government established by the Constitution to restore sanity to government. But the right-wing crazies are doing their damnedest to destroy that, too.

Full Circle

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You have to be old enough to remember the Second Red Scare to appreciate this. Or maybe not.

Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa, a self-described “old KGB hand,” says liberals are destroying America.

Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels. This same strategy is at work today, but it is regarded as bad manners to point out the Soviet parallels. For communists, only the leader counted, no matter the country, friend or foe. At home, they deified their own ruler–as to a certain extent still holds true in Russia. Abroad, they asserted that a fish starts smelling from the head, and they did everything in their power to make the head of the Free World stink. …

…Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, for example, Bush critics continued our mud-slinging at America’s commander in chief. One speaker, Martin O’Malley, now governor of Maryland, had earlier in the summer stated he was more worried about the actions of the Bush administration than about al Qaeda. On another occasion, retired four-star general Wesley Clark gave Michael Moore a platform to denounce the American commander in chief as a “deserter.” And visitors to the national chairman of the Democratic Party had to step across a doormat depicting the American president surrounded by the words, “Give Bush the Boot.”…

… For once, the communists got it right. It is America’s leader that counts. Let’s return to the traditions of presidents who accepted nothing short of unconditional surrender from our deadly enemies. Let’s vote next year for people who believe in America’s future, not for the ones who live in the Cold War past.

Now, let’s see if we’ve got this straight. According to Pacepa, Americans must give their leaders unquestioned allegiance, because to do otherwise weakens the nation. Questioning Dear Leader is an act of subversion. This is unlike commmunists, who deified their own ruler. Oh, wait …

Naturally, a whole bunch of right–wing blogs are linking to this with robust approval without noticing the essential un-Americanism of Pacepa’s point of view.

Once more, with feeling:

    “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” President Theodore Roosevelt, 1918.

McCarthyists and Red Baiters were so afraid of being defeated by a totalitarian police state that they wanted to turn America into a totalitarian police state for protection. They always reminded me of a herd of buffalo stampeding over a cliff. No amount of reasoning could get them to see that they were a more immediate threat to America’s freedoms than the Communists were.

Bottom line: Righties hate our freedoms. Right wingers hunger and thirst for authoritarianism, because real freedom scares them witless. They’re happier with a dictator telling them what to do, and they’re too cowardly to admit it.

Update: See Comments from Left Field.

Left Behind

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Among the several people I met in Chicago was Ed Kilgore, former policy director of the Democratic Leadership Council and advocate for all things moderate. I wish I could tell you he told me something insider-y, but since we met at the Teamster “cookout” we were reduced to shouting over the Union loudspeakers, a circumstance not conducive to nuanced conversation.

However, I did get the impression that the DLC is feeling left behind.
Joe Klein wrote last week that none of the Dem presidential candidates visited the DLC annual meeting in Nashville. Not even Hillary Clinton, who is a prominent member of the DLC. And today Martin O’Malley and Harold Ford Jr., governor of Maryland and DLC chariman, have a whiny op ed in the Washington Post asking why no one likes them any more. It begins:

With President Bush and the Republican Party on the rocks, many Democrats think the 2008 election will be, to borrow a favorite GOP phrase, a cakewalk. Some liberals are so confident about Democratic prospects that they contend the centrism that vaulted Democrats to victory in the 1990s no longer matters.

This reminds me of George Bush’s straw man arguments.

“Some say, ‘Well, maybe the recession should have been deeper,’ ” Bush said last summer. “That bothers me when people say that. You see, a deeper recession would have meant more families would have been out of work.”

In Bush’s world, large herds of nameless people go about saying absurd things to which the President strongly disagrees. Some say “certain people” don’t want to be free. Some say we shouldn’t fight terrorists. Some say we should mix thumbtacks into our oatmeal. But I say we must be resolved to keep thumbtacks out of the oatmeal.

So now these same strange and nameless people are following Harold Ford about, also. Some liberals say that centrism no longer matters. Well, Harold Ford and Governor O’Malley disagree.

The temptation to ignore the vital center is nothing new. Every four years, in the heat of the nominating process, liberals and conservatives alike dream of a world in which swing voters don’t exist. … But for Democrats, taking the center for granted next year would be a greater mistake than ever before.

Ford and O’Malley whine along in this vein, talking about a “center” that wants “practical answers,” such as

… smart, New Democrat plans to cap and trade carbon emissions, give more Americans the chance to earn their way through college, achieve universal health care through shared responsibility, increase national security by rebuilding our embattled military and enable all Americans who work full time to lift themselves out of poverty.

And I say, WTF? Capping and trading carbon emissions is fine, but what does “earn their way through college” mean, exactly? Bigger and more glorious work-study programs? And “achieve universal health care through shared responsibility” sounds like “don’t get sick and you won’t mind not having health insurance.”

I looked on the DLC web site and found this:

What is missing today is the political imagination and courage to move to a new vision of universal health care — one in which government takes action in the public’s interest, without seizing control of the system. Such a vision would reject the false choices offered in the stultified left-right debate between those who seek a government takeover of health care and those whose veneration of free markets would leave individuals to fend for themselves. Instead, it would equip Americans with the tools they need to build the world’s best health care system from the ground up.

Translation: We’re not going to risk pissing of the health insurance industry, so you’re on your own.

And we need these people, why? Joe Klein offers this explanation:

In a way, this is just the latest edition of the fight between Northern liberals and Southern moderates that has befuddled the Democrats since… well, since Ted Kennedy challenged the incumbent President, Jimmy Carter, in 1980. But it’s also a consequence of the smug ideological xenophobia that currently afflicts activists in both parties—although, in fairness, the Democrats are playing catch-up to the wing-nut avidity cultivated by Karl Rove as a conscious governing strategy in the Republican Party. The Republicans don’t even have a DLC equivalent.

At the center of the controversy is a gentleman named Al From, a former Senate aide who helped found the DLC in reaction to the Walter Mondale presidential wipeout in 1984 and now serves as its CEO. From is a moderate who acts like an extremist. Early on, he gleefully picked fights with various crumbling pillars of post-Vietnam liberalism—trade unions, antiwar activists and ethnic pleaders. Many of these battles were worth waging, especially on social issues like crime and welfare reform, where Democrats had drifted into a slough of guilt and warped good intentions.

There is a germ of truth there, although you have to do some weeding to get to it.

There are many factors that came together in the 1960s and 1970s that resulted in a weakened, spineless, and soulless Democratic Party, and I explained these in some detail here. But there are three major factors I’d like to point out:

In the 1970s and 1980s, white voters left the Dem Party in droves and began to vote Republican, mostly because Nixon, Reagan, and others did a bang-up job exploiting racism. I think the racist backlash to Dem support of civil rights and antipoverty programs cost Democrats far more, in the long run, than the war in Vietnam did.

Second, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, New Left ideologies discouraged young activists from getting involved in party politics. Instead, progressivism broke up into single-issue advocacy movements that competed with each other for funds and attention.

Third, the New Deal coalition, which had sustained the Party from FDR’s day through the 1960s, dissolved. More critically, nothing took its place. Thus, the Democratic Party itself lost clear identity and purpose. But someone should explain to Joe Klein that trade unions are not vestiges of “post-Vietnam liberalism.” They were the cornerstone of the New Deal coalition, and the relationship between the unions and the Democratic Party goes back many, many decades. New Left activists, on the whole, were uninterested in labor issues.

And while the Democrats were in decline, the Right was busily establishing its almighty infrastructure of think tanks and media outlets. Mondale in 1984 and Dukakis in 1988 ran adequate campaigns for the pre-VRWC age. But the shift in political and media culture that the Right had imposed stymied both of them.

Al From and others found a strategy for playing by Right-wing rules and winning an election here and there. But they never confronted the real problem, which is that politics and media came to be dominated by a faction of Right-wing extremism subsidized by corporate power, making it nearly impossible for any voices but the Right’s to speak to the American people. The Right claimed the center and enforced that claim with bluster and intimidation. And for a time the majority of Americans more or less went along with the Right’s agenda, mostly because that was the only agenda presented to them.

Noam Scheiber wrote for the New York Times,

Before the Clinton presidency, the leadership council’s critique of the Democratic Party had merit. Many voters emerged from the 1970s and early ’80s deeply skeptical of liberalism. As Mr. Clinton put it in his 1991 speech, people who once voted for the Democrats no longer “trusted us in national elections to defend our national interest abroad, to put their values in our social policy at home or to take their tax money and spend it with discipline.”

The council grew out of frustration with Walter Mondale’s crushing 1984 defeat. Mr. Mondale had maneuvered to win the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s endorsement during the Democratic primaries, but his victory was pyrrhic. The endorsement solidified Mr. Mondale’s reputation as the candidate of special interests. In order to shake the label, Mr. Mondale proposed raising taxes to cut the deficit, which only worsened his image among swing voters.

Let’s look at this more closely. What, exactly, had the Dems done to lose the nation’s trust?

The nation’s economy had stalled halfway through the Nixon administration, and stagflation reigned through the Ford administration. (Ford’s economic policy, as I remember, was handing out “Whip Inflation Now” pins.) President Carter, it is true, made little headway against the economic problems handed to him. But the problems were handed to him by Republican administrations, notice. Then in 1979 the Federal Reserve clamped down on the money supply, which whipped inflation. Reagan’s first term was marked by a deep recession that was especially painful for blue-collar Americans. Reagan’s economy heated up, then cooled off just in time for George H.W. Bush to take over. The Bush 41 years saw whopping income disparity and mass layoffs.

And dontcha love the part about trade unions representing “special interests”?

I’ve written at length about the charge that Dems are “soft” on security. See, for example, “Don’t Blame McGovern,” “Don’t Blame McGovern II,” and “How the Democrats Lost Their Spines.” This is a history that goes back to the end of World War II; in short, the Right took credibility on national security away from the Dems through years of hysterical charges and lies. And the Wingnut Generation (b. 1970, give or take) were heavily imprinted by Jimmy Carter’s failure to resolve the Iran Hostage Crisis and the perception that the nation had been made strong again by Reagan. The fact that Democrats saw the nation through World War II, and the way Democratic President John Kennedy stared down the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis, were entirely forgotten. Carter-Reagan became the only recognized narrative for both parties.

So how did Mrs. Clinton respond in 1991? We’re sorry we’re such screwups. We promise to do better from now on. In other words, instead of correcting the narrative, the “New Democrats” validated the narrative and attempted to win elections by riding piggy-back on Right-wing propaganda. See? We can electrocute mentally retarded criminals and blame poverty on welfare queens, too! Can we say Republican Lite?

The DLC came along and had some success with a short-sighted strategy: Ignore the base, because they don’t have anyone else to vote for, and try to pick off “swing voters” by moving to the Right. But now the American people are desperate for someone to lead them away from the failed policies of the Right. As Ford and O’Malley say, “George W. Bush is handing us Democrats our Hoover moment. ”

Let’s see, what did Franklin Roosevelt do with his “Hoover moment”? Did he mince around and say, Don’t worry, I won’t do anything drastically different from what Herbert Hoover did. I’ll just institute a few tweaks. I don’t think so.

The base — and please note, Mr. Ford and Gov. O’Malley, we vote too — is sick to death of “leaders” who are too timid to lead.

Steven Thomma writes for McClatchy Newspapers:

The Democratic Party is growing more liberal for the first time in a generation. …

…The Democrats’ shift to the left carries some risk, but probably much less than it would have in years past. That’s because independent voters — the ones who swing back and forth and thus decide elections — also have turned against the war and in favor of many more liberal approaches to government.

“There is greater support for the social safety net, more concern for inequality of income,” said Andy Kohut, the president of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. “More people are falling into the liberal category based on their values.”

Dear DLC: Step aside, fellas. We’re doing the leading now.

Update: See also the BooMan, who was also in Chicago.

Conflict Avoiders

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Few of us leftie bloggers have endorsed a Dem presidential candidate, and much is being made of this. Michael Scherer writes,

Even some of the netroots founding members have begun to take notice. “The bloggers are I think in many ways taking themselves out of the debate by not participating in it,” explained Jerome Armstrong, the proprietor of MyDD.com, who co-wrote a book with Moulitsas on Democratic blogging. “They are becoming sort of conflict avoiders in the primary.”

However,

Another prominent blogger, Matt Stoller, who recently co-founded OpenLeft.com, described what was happening to progressive blogs as a temporary loss of liberal momentum. “People feel confused,” he said. “Because that’s what happens to a movement that hopes if you get Democrats elected it will solve some of our problems, and then our problems aren’t solved.” He predicted that the blogs will again find their voice on intraparty matters once it becomes clear that the current crop of presidential candidates do not sufficiently represent the liberal cause on everything from telecommunications laws to military withdrawal from Iraq.

What I don’t think Scherer sees clearly is that “netroots” bloggers are not exactly “Democratic Party” bloggers. Progressive bloggers on the whole see the Dem Party as a means — and just a potential means, at that — not an end in itself. Progressive bloggers may work for, with, and through the Party, but most of ’em are not of the Party.

I can speak only for myself, but I haven’t endorsed a Democratic presidential candidate for the simple reason that, so far, no one has stood out at THE candidate I want to support above all others. They all have pluses and minuses. Of those candidates with even a snowball’s chance in hell of being nominated, there are none I would not support over any Republican in the general election, and certainly none I would not vote for in the general election. In contrast to the clown show that is the Republican candidate field, the Dems on the whole are serious and accomplished people.

It’s just that there isn’t one among them whose nomination will cause me to melt into indescribable bliss. And, frankly, that’s OK with me. I don’t fall in love with candidates any more. I am old and jaded and have been burned too many times.

Some people are, I think, drawing a false comparison between support for Howard Dean in 2003-2004 and today. Glenn Greenwald’s new book has a section on the Dean campaign, which reminded me that as governor of Vermont, Dean was essentially a moderate, DLC-style Democrat who balanced budgets and stayed on good terms with the National Rifle Association. He became a lightning rod in 2002-3 because he “stood up and objected to the uncritical national war dance,” as Glenn says. Pretty much the rest of the party was tripping over itself to declare support for whatever Bush wanted.

But just as the Right flew into Total Demonization Mode over Dean, so too did many Netizens of the time latch on to Howard Dean as the Only Pure Candidate. I wrote in January 2004:

Is it me, or is there an unusually high level of nastiness going on between the candidates’ camps? For example, some Dean-supporting web buddies, people with whom I have had a warm virtual relationship going back several years, recently turned on me like a pack of rabid pit bulls.

And why would that be? I like Howard Dean, I think he’d make a good president, and I often defend him against the unfair smears of the pundits and other candidates. But I am tainted because I also like Wesley Clark. So, now I am brainwashed; I have been dazzled by the uniform. I am told President Clark will declare martial law and start World War III as soon as he takes the oath of office (I’ve been brainwashed?).

Democrats who complain that the Republicans are a pack of intolerant, knee-jerk partisans are turning into intolerant, knee-jerk partisans.

That part about Deaniacs accusing Clark of declaring martial law and starting World War III was no exaggeration. I stumbled into a nest of Deaniacs who actually believed that. Some people had become a tad unglued.

Both Howard Dean and Wes Clark gave excellent speeches at YKos, btw. These are both very smart guys who see our lunatic political situation with more clarity than I’ve seen from any of the candidates. Dean in particular is probably the best thing that’s happened to the Democratic Party since John — nay, Jackie — Kennedy. But, folks, none of ’em walks on water.

Even though our situation remains dire, for many of us it feels less desperate. The very fact that all but one of the official Dem presidential candidates came to our convention and performed for our approval is proof that much has changed. I think we’re all appraising the merchandise with cooler heads these days.

Scherer continues,

Last summer, when YearlyKos met in Las Vegas for its inaugural convention, such harmony was difficult to imagine. Prospective presidential candidates seemed desperate to ply bloggers with drink and attention. Wesley Clark threw a riotous party for bloggers at the Hard Rock Casino, while former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner spent around $50,000 to entertain bloggers with a John Belushi impersonator and a chocolate fondue waterfall at the top of the Stratosphere casino. At the time, all the buzz was about which candidate could win over the blogs. Even Moulitsas got caught up in the frenzy, comparing the Warner party to a “first date.”

Poor Mark Warner spent all that money on the Las Vegas party and got nothing to show for it. The infamous YKos 2006 Warner bash even drew criticism from the hair-shirt purist crowd on the Left, who seemed to think a few free drinks amounts to corruption. So no parties paid for by candidates this year (thanks loads, hair-shirt purist chumps).

A year later, it is hard to see how any single Democratic candidate emerges before the primary as the prohibitive choice of liberal bloggers. Instead the various campaigns are fighting a battle of margins. Not a single candidate or campaign threw a party at this year’s conference. “There is just not critical mass moving to one candidate right now,” said Joe Trippi, the former Dean campaign manager who is now overseeing the Edwards campaign. “Every campaign has been competing like crazy for every inch they can get on the Internet and the blogosphere.”

Yes. And this is good. If they want our support, what’s wrong with making them work a bit to get it? In the 2004 campaign cycle we complained that the Democratic Party thought we bloggers were just a bunch of web ATM machines, and if they coughed the Boilerplate Bullshit at us we’d respond with buckets of cash. Now, I assure you — Joe Biden excepted — they are at least a bit more respectful.

Travels

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I’m still in Chicago, but just about packed up. As soon as I’ve finished posting this, I’ll stuff the laptop into my backpack and check out of the hotel.

This was an outstanding convention overall, albeit a tad frayed about the edges. This year’s convention was larger than last year’s. The convention center here is beautiful, but panels were spread out over a huge area, which scattered us all a bit. A smaller percentage of the panelists were bloggers, which I think was not a good trend.

Lots of grumbling about FISA and lobbyists, which I’ll post about when I get home.

Still, there’s a lot of spirit and strength of purpose here. I’m very glad I came.

Essentials: What is Conservativism and What is Wrong With It

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Maha noted some time ago how Bush expects gratitude from the Iraqis, apparently for what wonderful things he thinks he has done for them by destroying their country. A bit more of this attitude oozed out during British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s recent visit:

Just in the last week, Bush has let people know what a privilege it is to be near him. During his brief press meet with British PM Gordon "Not-Neutered Poodle" Brown, Bush was extolling to the UK leader how wonderful America is by pointing out, regarding a reporter who had just turned 38, "Here you are — amazing country, Gordon, guy is under 40 years old, asking me and you questions. It’s a beautiful sight." Oh, how everyone laughed, Brown a bit uncomfortably, as if he realized he was standing next to someone who would feel at home with both Charles Manson and Henry Ford. We could dismiss this as a mere joke if Bush hadn’t done it so often in the past.

The Rude Pundit connects the dots on this.

I’d like to use this occasion to showcase a terrific, classic article by Philip Agre. I off-handedly linked to it in an earlier posting, which commenter Pat saw and wrote back with a few questions. I’m sure some of you have seen it. Agre’s article is called What is Conservativism and What is Wrong With It. It directly connects conservativism with aristocracy. It explains how this has been with us since human beings have had cities, and it explains how it is completely antithetical to the founding ideas of America.

Bush’s aristocratic attitude toward us, is and feels obnoxious, because it’s based on a lie. It’s a deception that’s been used by all aristocrats of all times and all places. Moreover, in this country, in our time, it’s a fiction that’s become increasingly threadbare and harder to accept. Agre explains:

…the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are. Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use "social issues" as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality. Economic inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them.

The key to Bush’s success, apart from all his familial advantages, is his unshakable belief that others should defer to him, and his ability to get others to believe in this, as Agre explained. His glad-handling charm is a cover for manipulating people into this deception. Bush further cements this belief, when, in his narcisism, he believes he has a direct line to God. The VRWC is the mighty external machinery, a public relations effort, that vastly amplifies the power of this fiction. Agre on PR and politics:

Conservatism has opposed rational thought for thousands of years. What most people know nowadays as conservatism is basically a public relations campaign aimed at persuading them to lay down their capacity for rational thought.

Conservatism frequently attempts to destroy rational thought, for example, by using language in ways that stand just out of reach of rational debate or rebuttal.

Conservatism has used a wide variety of methods to destroy reason throughout history. Fortunately, many of these methods, such as the suppression of popular literacy, are incompatible with a modern economy. Once the common people started becoming educated, more sophisticated methods of domination were required. Thus the invention of public relations, which is a kind of rationalized irrationality. The great innovation of conservatism in recent decades has been the systematic reinvention of politics using the technology of public relations.

See Philip Agre’s What is Conservativism and What is Wrong With It.

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I have thought about doing a series on "the Essentials" – articles like Agre’s which clearly and simply express what liberalism is about and why it has nothing to be ashamed of, and why conservativism (as we know it) is so corrupt and incompatible with American ideals. Many of these Essentials are what they are, because I’ve found them very effective in equipping myself for rebutting the right wing worldview. Agre’s article is in this class. Another classic is A Day in the Life of Joe Middle Class Republican. If you would like to nominate others, drop me a link in the comments.

Wingnuts Shout Down Troops

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There’s a video of Wesley Clark’s Friday morning keynote speech here. It’s not streaming smoothly for me right now, but maybe it’ll work for you. If the video is watchable it is very much worth watching.

I call it to your attention not just because it was an excellent speech, but because it was a very pro-military speech, and conference attendees — and most of the 1,500 or so people attending the conference were present — cheered and applauded lustily whenever Gen. Clark praised the troops serving in Iraq.

After Gen. Clark’s keynote, he and Jon Soltz of Vote Vets remained to moderate a panel called “The Military and Progressives: Are They Really That Different?” I would have stayed for it but that was at the same time as my religion panel (which went well, btw).

Apparently a veteran in the audience stood up and argued that the surge was working, which seems to have drawn some reaction. LGF headline: “Serviceman shouted down at Yearly Kos.” Yes, once again, we lefties hate the military.

Actually, in his speech Gen. Clark said it was “working” in a purely limited sense, meaning that whatever parts of Iraq are patrolled by U.S. troops do tend to settle down. The problem with that is, of course, that the insurgent/terrorists just move somewhere else, since there aren’t enough troops to be everywhere. And the surge is having no impact on Iraq’s political situation, which was the point of it.

The irony is that if you want to see real anti-troops hysteria, you can’t beat the righties themselves. They went after Scott Beauchamp like a school of piranha. Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money wrote,

…virtually the whole of the right blogosphere erupted in a torrent of the most vile abuse and intimidation against Scott Thomas Beauchamp, based at first on the assertion that he didn’t exist, second on the assertion that he could not be part of the military, and third on the assertion that, even if he were in the military, he must have made it all up. …

… It’s very simple, people. A TNR diarist wrote about a series of events. Righties freaked out, insisting that the stories couldn’t possibly be true. Lefties didn’t assert that it was true, but insisted that it could be factual. Battle ensues. It turns out that the story is, apart from an irrelevant detail, true. Righties claim victory based on that detail, and those who gave credence to the most brutal and idiotic attacks declare the affair over, without bothering to wonder how they got taken in by people who are obviously con artists, and stupid ones at that. TNR diarist, incidentally, is successfully intimidated and effectively silenced.

That last part was, of course, the point. Scott Beauchamp has been shouted down.

The Wisdom of Doubt: The Series

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As mentioned in the Friday morning “Faith or No” panel at Yearly Kos, here are the links to the entire Wisdom of Doubt series, so far.

Part I: The religious need more than faith. They also need doubt.

Part II: Why “moral clarity” is about bullshitting yourself.

Part III: Why moral absolutists aren’t moral.

Part IV: Christopher Hitchens is a true believer.

Part V: The late Susan Sontag said religion American style was more the idea of religion than religion itself. So true.

Part VI: Authoritarian religion plus government equals big trouble.

Part VII: The “God Gap” is a myth.

Part VIII: The origins of fundamentalism.

Part IX: Fundamentalism before and after Scopes. What were they afraid of?

Part X: The Fundies strike back.

Part XI: Scripture doesn’t have to be literal to be true. . In fact, literal interpretation of scripture wrings the truth out of it.

Part XII: How to tell the difference between religious faith and fanaticism.

Other recent religion posts:

“Taking Faith on Faith”

“The Last Magician”

“What Jesus Said”

“Heresies”

“Idolators”

“Discover Jesus”

Also — moonbat’s “Escape from Fundamentalism”

I have a couple of book recommendations. Dangerous Words: Talking about God in an Age of Fundamentalism by Gary Eberle (Shambhala, 2007) is the sort of deep analysis of our current state of religion that I just love. It’s also very readable. Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, edited by Eugene Kennedy (New World Library, 2001) , is a short collection of essays and lectures by the late Joseph Campbell that sparked many thoughts that ended up in the Wisdom of Doubt series.