The Little Red Blog

On The Fourth

This is from a private letter of Thomas Jefferson, dated July 12, 1816, forty years after the Declaration of Independence:

"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors...Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs."

Two hundred years later--two centuries filled with the experience of self-government, including a bloody civil war--one assumes that America has learned a thing or two.  Those who worry obsessively that we might stray from the wisdom and the principles of our founding generation are missing Jefferson's point; the real concern is that we might remain so in awe of the Founders that we fail to grow in wisdom of our own and fail to adapt to a world that has changed so much since 1776 as to be virtually unrecognizeable.

We should by all means honor, as we do today, those who founded this nation.  But we should remember as well as our own continuing right, and even duty, "to begin the world anew" (Thomas Paine).  America is not a one-act play, a set-piece to be solemnly re-enacted in perpetuity; it is an ongoing narrative, a sprawling unfinished epic, in which each generation plays a part.  The 4th of July shouldn't be merely about remembrance of the past, however heroic; it should be a reminder that we hold the future in our hands, and that our fate is ours to determine.

A Country Too Busy To Hate, But Never Too Busy To Eat

"Bueller?  Bueller?  Bueller?"

Wonkette has brought to my attention an article by Ben Stein in the March 2014 issue of The American Spectator, and it is a doozy indeed.¹ It seems that Ben and family took a trip, back in January, to Greenville, South Carolina; it also seems that the Greenville Chamber of Commerce must have paid for the junket:

“This is a story of what has been accomplished in the South, and in particular in Greenville, over the years. This is a city on the move, very likely the most rapidly growing industrial center in the South. It has no time for hate or racial fear. Tears came to my eyes as I thought of how magnificently the South has risen to meet and defeat the challenges of racism. I am thinking of how this country has shown its essential nobility in Greenville and all over the nation. Again, this country is far too busy to hate, and Greenville is setting the pace.”

This is a story of a superb hotel breakfast—“Scrambled eggs. Sausage. Bacon. Steak. Biscuits and gravy. Fried shrimp. Pancakes. Orange juice. This is all for less than 20 dollars per person in a room at least as elegant as any room I have ever seen in New York City”—and of the Waffle House (“It is sad that there are no Waffle Houses in Los Angeles, but there are not.”), and of Ben Stein’s “absolute favorite dining spot on the planet, The Poinsett Club, a highly paneled enclave where people eat in perfect civility with the talented and beautiful Jean Begg at the piano playing my favorite songs, especially ‘That’s All.’”  This is also a story of places called Tupelo Honey and The Nosedive and the Carolina Alehouse; Ben Stein clearly enjoys his food.  He also enjoys the fact that in Greenville “the whole town knows my name and every face that passes calls out to me, and it’s like being back on 114th street next to Columbia in 1965.”  Apparently, Greenville S.C. (a city of almost one million people) is as cozy and familiar as the bar Cheers, at least if you’re Ben Stein.

This is a story of “Christ Church Episcopal School” in Greenville,where even “the building is happy, abounding with kids who look like they came out of the Brooks Brothers catalog. The boys and girls are not only good-looking but also inspiring.”  And then, because every story must have some element of conflict, there is, mercifully briefly, the Upcountry Historical Museum where Ben went “to see an exhibit about Greenville in the Civil Rights era.  Photos of lunch counters.  Of a mob that lynched a poor black man looking happy as they were acquitted—that was 67 years ago.”  Yes, that was all the way back in 1957 and can therefore be summarily dismissed, because times change and “What glorious progress we have made as a nation and a people”: progress, it should be noted, which has usually come about despite the opposition of Ben Stein and his conservative colleagues at places like The American Spectator.

Finally, this is a story of Ben’s miserable plane ride home (“Then the bad times began for my wife and me”), followed by his trenchant evaluation of President Obama’s State of the Union address:

“Why did Barry want to be president when he is obviously bored by the job? His State of the Union was a bad joke of boredom and triviality. Does he really not get it? Job retraining rarely works. Oil and gas production are up despite his followers’ objections to hydrofracturing. How dare he brag about that? Then also, what is he talking about spending billions, trillions, to send kids to schools when they can barely get through the day without getting high and nodding off? I wonder if he knows that unemployment is falling because his pals² are dropping out of the labor force altogether and thus making the employed a higher portion of the labor force.

There was no eloquence, no wit, just the plainest vanilla of big government promises.  Even Bill Clinton was better—far, far better. Clinton’s “The era of big government is over” has been replaced by variants of “40 acres and a mule.” ³ If Barry did not want the job, why did he run?”

For once, words fail me.  I only wish they had failed Ben Stein first. 

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¹ http://wonkette.com/549938/aint-nobody-got-time-for-racism-declares-ben-stein#more-549938  and http://spectator.org/articles/57731/southern-sanity

² “his pals are dropping out of the labor force”?  What the hell does that mean?

³ Even though “40 acres and a mule” historically has to do with promises made (and, as usual, broken) to freed slaves after the Civil War, Ben Stein’s use of the phrase to describe President Obama’s proposals should not be considered racist, because Ben Stein would firmly deny it and then write an article about how anyone who opposes "Barry’s" policies is sure to be demonized as a racist.  In other words, it’s just not worth pointing it out.

Standing On A Precipice, Watching All The Filth Go By

Todd Starnes, who is a person who works for Fox News, has written a book he would like you to buy.  If you’d like a preview of both his substance and his style, try this, from his latest on-line column¹:

“The White House is waging an all-out assault on religious liberty. Public schools are indoctrinating our children with the gospel of secularism. Hollywood is spewing toxins into our homes. The soundtrack of our lives is a pulsating mix of sex and violence and filth. The American family is in ruins. What was once wrong is now right and what was once right is now wrong.

Our nation stands on a precipice. Freedom hangs in the balance. We live in a postmodern and post-God nation. The perfect storm is brewing. Do not be deceived. There may be a war on religious liberty, but the true target is Christianity.”

Wow!  That is exciting stuff!  Todd Starnes is surely the Paul Revere of America’s much-needed moral revolution, sounding the alarum and crying out “The toxins are coming! The toxins are coming!”  Note the trans-valuation of values that has taken place and the topsy-turvy moral landscape in which an entire nation stands on a precipice while its freedom hangs in the balance; and all that drama set to a pulsating soundtrack of sex and violence and filth.  Scary stuff, huh?  (And yet strangely arousing...)

Don’t think that Todd Starnes doesn’t have the facts to back up his feverish claims.  He has personally documented “600 recent examples of religious hostility. Six hundred. American stories. Our stories. Their documentation included many stories I have covered during my career at Fox News Channel."  And here is just a sampling of the horrors he has seen:

"The Obama administration wants to force religious organizations and Christian business owners to provide insurance for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs in direct violation of their religious beliefs. The military conducted training sessions that labeled Evangelical Christians and Catholics as examples of religious extremists. The Internal Revenue Service launched investigations into pro-life organizations, demanding to know the contents of their prayers.

This is happening right here, right now, in the United States of America. We are under attack from within -- from an enemy who wants to remove any mention of God from the public marketplace.”

Oh, it’s happening, alright; it's going down.  And it’s bad, catastrophic, and even apocalyptic:

“In these early days of the 21st century, the fire is flickering and the footprints are few. Storm clouds are gathering. The winds of persecution are blowing. But friends, no matter how difficult these days have become, let not your heart be troubled.²

The time has come, brothers and sisters, my fellow countrymen. Who among you is willing to take a stand for religious liberty? Who among you is will to risk everything for the cause of Christ? Who among you is willing to rise up and declare that we are still one nation under God?”

Who indeed?  Who will save us?  Well, did I mention that Todd Starnes has a book he would like to sell you?  Allow him to elaborate:

“Author's note: I write about stories just like this in my new book, “God Less America – Real Stories From the Front Lines of the Attack on Traditional Values.” It’s available wherever fine books are sold including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.”

Thank goodness, all is not lost; we can buy Todd’s book and thereby save ourselves and our nation!

 Todd Starnes’ jeremiad, hysterical as it is (in both senses of the word), coincides with a Supreme Court decision upholding sectarian prayers in public forums like town meetings; it’s okay, said the Court, to invoke “the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who shed His blood upon the cross to secure eternal life for all who believe on His Name” as a prelude to discussing the latest municipal sewer project, so long as you now and then let Allah and Buddha get their turns at the plate (By the beard of the Prophet, may we arrive at a satisfactory solution to our waste disposal problem…). 

I wish I had a punchline of my own for all this, but I’ll just steal one (not for the first time) from Charlie Pierce: Jesus, these people…

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¹http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/05/06/can-god-bless-godless-america/

² I could be wrong, but isn't "let not your heart be troubled" Sean Hannity's line?

Sunday Miscellany

By way of introduction, allow me to ask, What the hell is wrong with all these pundits?  Is it something in the water of late, or in the air?  (Great song, by the way: Something in the Air, by Thunderclap Newman. Tom Petty has done a fine cover version, but with bowdlerized lyrics, omitting the lines Hand out the arms and ammo, we're going to blast our way through here...)

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Anyway, first: at Ezra Klein’s Vox, Matthew Yglesias makes the case that Elizabeth Warren can’t save liberalism. Save it from what?  From liberals’ supposedly unrealistic expectations, which in turn lead to subsequent demoralization: all of which represents, says Yglesias, an "airy, immature, dream-like approach to American politics that shows just how little liberals have learned over the past eight years."  By contrast, Yglesias offers this mature, realistic counsel:

"None of which is to say that given a contested primary, people shouldn't support the candidate they like better. That's what they hold the elections for. But turning real or hypothetical presidential primary campaigns into your main vehicle for achieving political change is a recipe for a downward cycle of disappointment and despair. First liberals place unrealistic expectations on their would-be savior. Then when he (or she!) lets them down they become demoralized, exacerbating the problem, and instead of recognizing it they start looking for a new savior. Real change takes a much broader and deeper form of engagement."

Thank you, Matthew Yglesias, for sharing your Deep Thoughts.  I completely agree with you, sir, except for the part about liberals taking an airy, immature, dream-like approach to politics, and also the part about liberals having unrealistic expectations and looking for a savior.  Also, I don’t agree with the part about disappointment, despair, and demoralization; and I'd like Elizabeth Warren to run for president. Other than that, though: well done, Mr. Yglesias!  

http://www.vox.com/2014/5/3/5655486/elizabeth-warren-in-the-white-house-wont-save-liberalism

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Second: also at Vox, Zach Beauchamp explains “The psychology behind the Republicans’ Benghazi obsession”.  Beauchamp rejects the notion that the obsession is just a cynical ploy to keep the Obama administration on the defensive, or that it’s a pre-emptive effort to damage Hillary Clinton’s chances for election in 2016.  No, says Beauchamp, this is an honest-to-goodness genuine obsession for the GOP, and he can prove it:

"Everything we know about Benghazi suggests that Republicans are serious about it. Take the Speaker of the House: one Republican aide described John Boehner as "obsessed" with Benghazi. He apparently "brings it up all the time" in personal conversations. Boehner is the reason the new special select committee on Benghazi is happening, and has been a major force behind past investigations. So it's not a cynical ploy."

There you have it: one Republican aide says that John Boehner can’t stop talking about Benghazi, ergo QED. You can hardly get any more conclusive or objective proof than that.  The aide doesn’t say why Speaker Boehner is so obsessed with the issue, but that’s where Zach Beauchamp steps in, arguing that the Benghazi fixation fits perfectly with the Sunstein-Vermeule “conspiracy cascade” paradigm (you’ll have to read the article).  Beauchamp notes that

"After the actual attack on September 11th, 2012, Benghazi immediately became the top issue in both the right-wing press and, really, the whole American mediasphere. To conservatives, it was more than just a national tragedy. It was confirmation of their belief Obama wasn't up to the task of confronting anti-American extremists…Then the Obama administration's initial story on Benghazi fell apart. The attack was a targeted strike on a US facility, not a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islam film. Conservative journalists and policymakers, already primed not to trust Obama, became convinced that there was a scandal. The Administration failed, then seemingly lied about their failure. They had to be hiding something!"

As you can see, the Republican reaction to Benghazi had nothing to do with seeking electoral advantage by attempting to use the event, two months before the presidential election, to discredit the Democratic candidate.  At least, since Beauchamp doesn’t mention it, I assume that Republicans did not harbor such a cynical, mean-spirited, and self-serving motive.

Give credit where credit is due: aside from Glenn Beck, I don’t think it’s occurred to anyone to link, in whatever indirect a fashion, Cass Sunstein to Benghazi.  Reading Beauchamp’s article, I could almost see Beck scribbling furiously on his white board, drawing circles around names and then triumphantly linking them with arrows: Sunstein, Benghazi, Susan Rice, Samantha Powers, George Soros! 

It all makes sense now.

http://www.vox.com/2014/5/3/5675362/benghazi-sunstein  

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Third: speaking of “linking,” Damon Linker (at The Week) has humorously tweaked liberals for wanting daddy to save them.  Linker’s article, “Barack Obama and the Left’s daddy issues,” uses a recent column by Maureen Dowd to chide liberals who, like Ms. Dowd, implore the President to

 "think bigger." And "hit home runs." You know, like Babe Ruth. Because "a singles hitter doesn't scare anybody."  And scaring people, or at least bad guys, is what presidents need to do.

Addressing Obama directly, Dowd issues the core of her indictment: "It doesn't feel like you're in command of your world." And Maureen Dowd wants above all to feel that someone is in command.”

Before anyone leaps in to scream, Maureen Dowd does not speak for the Left! Damon Linker has a rebuttal:

“Dowd is hardly the only liberal with daddy issues — and plenty of those liberals are men. Shortly after Dowd's column appeared on The New York Times website, for example, Ron Fournier tweeted that he wished he'd written it. I bet Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, author of a late-March paean to presidential omnipotence, felt the same way. And of course who could forget David Brooks' recent mediation on Obama's "manhood"?”

So: according to Damon Linker, Ron Fournier, Fred Hiatt, and David Brooks (!) are liberals.  That in itself is newsworthy.

Linker acknowledges that conservatives also want a President Daddy to save them.  He points out, though, that “We expect this kind of thing from conservatives, whose love of in-your-face leadership fits quite well with their fetish for toughness in all things and their ready willingness to inflict suffering on the poor and weak (all for their own good, of course).”

Well, okay; as long as they’re consistent.

http://theweek.com/article/index/260872/barack-obama-and-the-lefts-daddy-issues

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Finally: you know who else recently meditated on Obama’s manhood?  Peggy Noonan, a conservative pundit whose Daddy issues are a matter of record (WHEN CHARACTER WAS KING is perhaps her most embarrassing heartfelt revelation).  In a column titled “Apathy in the Executive,” Ms. Noonan rhapsodizes about how “great leaders engender gratitude, loyalty and love…Great leaders are clear, honest, suffer for their stands and are brave…”  And, just like Maureen Dowd, Peggy Noonan does not think that Barack Obama, um, measures up:

“The aspect of the presidency he seems to enjoy most is the perks—the splashy vacations, the planes, the hoops, the golf. When his presidency is over there will be the perks of the post-presidency—foundations, libraries, million-dollar speeches, staff, protection. A literary agent estimated he'll get up to $20 million for his memoirs, Michelle Obama perhaps $12 million. So no, you don't get the impression he'll have to suffer for where he stands, or who he is.”

Did Ronald Reagan ever take splashy vacations?  No, he did not.  Did he ever enjoy the perks of the post-presidency?  No, he did not.  And did Ronald Reagan suffer?  Well, he survived an assassination attempt, and he had Peggy Noonan working for him; so yes, it seems he suffered.

On the other hand, if President Obama takes the time—one hopes he does not—to read the constant stream of inane twaddle that Peggy Noonan writes about him, then I’d say he’d be doing his fair share of suffering as well.

(http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304677904579536170749456890

Two Links To Linker

Before Bubble Boy takes over this blog and Fox News takes over my life for the month of February, I’d like to recommend the work of Damon Linker, whom I do believe I’ve mentioned before.  Mr. Linker writes for This Week (among other places) about politics, culture, and religion—really, about whatever interests him.  He has previously been editor of First Things, has written speeches for Rudy Giuliani (nobody’s perfect), and is a proud (I assume) graduate of Ithaca College.

In two recent articles, Linker has discussed, respectively, income inequality and America’s apparently endless “culture wars”.  He is not particularly sanguine about our prospects of resolving either of those issues any time soon, but he has some things to say that are worth considering.  Here is (part of) his take on our new plutocracy:

In theory, capitalism provides equal opportunities to every individual, allowing him or her to use innate talent and ambition, combined with more than a dash of luck, to achieve economic success. Also in theory, economic failure is supposed to be justly earned, a product of a deficiency of talent, ambition, and luck.

The reality, of course, is very different — and becoming more so with every passing year. We start out our lives profoundly unequal. Some Americans grow up impoverished, attending chaotic, academically worthless schools, and exposed to an enormous range of social and cultural obstacles to achievement both at home and in the local environment. Others, by contrast, receive a world-class education at school, continual emotional and scholastic support at home, access to tutors, test-prep, and even pharmaceuticals to compensate for a range of cognitive and behavioral deficits.

That’s nothing compared with what we see at the very top of the income hierarchy. The upper middle class might enjoy all kinds of advantages over the poor and lower middle class in getting their children into elite colleges. But the superrich play by different rules. An upper middle class mom might be able to use a network of well-connected friends and colleagues to get her son an interview at a top firm shortly after graduation. But Henrique De Castro’s boss gets herself invited to the White House for some face time with the president of the United States.

America is well on the road to producing a class of self-perpetuating, self-insulating, self-aggrandizing oligarchs who enjoy luxury, power, and access many orders of magnitude greater than anyone else in the nation.

Savor, and take seriously, that last sentence; then read the whole thing here: http://theweek.com/article/index/255626/the-shameful-self-dealing-of-americas-super-rich  

After that, you should go on to read Damon Linker’s piece about what he calls “the cultural fracturing of the United States”:

The old talk of a red state/blue state divide got at part of what's going on culturally, but only a small and misleading part. Even the bluest state has red communities within it, and the same holds for blue areas in red states. Looked at through different lenses, our divisions can be described as regional (North vs. South; coasts vs. heartland), geographical (urban vs. rural), intrareligious (traditionalist believers vs. liberal believers), interreligious (observant vs. secular), and technological (like-minded people coming together online and forming ideologically and morally homogenous communities without regard for real-world distances).

Here in “red state” Montana, ensconced as some of us are in the true-blue community of Missoula, an hour’s drive from Tea Party factions to our south and white supremacist militias to our north, we are well aware that the picture gets pretty complicated and that cultural common ground can be hard to find (though all of us, out here, love Montana).  In theory, says Linker, the ties that bind us should hold—but in reality, will they?

The liberal political theory that influenced and inspired America's founders tells us that these disagreements shouldn't be a problem. First devised in response to the bloody clashes of Europe's religious civil wars, classical liberalism proposes that a modern, liberal nation can cohere around devotion to the ideals and institutions that make it possible for its citizens to live together freely and in peace, despite their differences about the highest human goods.

But is that really enough when the differences go so far beyond early modern Christian factionalism, to include disagreements about fundamental questions of life, love, sex, pleasure, family, and even the very nature of reality and meaning of existence? Is there any upward limit on how much cultural difference is compatible with national cohesion? How long are Americans stationed on different sides of our numerous cultural fissures likely to feel bound together with strangers who view the world so very differently — especially when each side increasingly treats the others with open contempt?

Can a nation of more than 310 million people bind itself together with little more than an attachment to the very institutions that permit and foster its cultural disunity?

Take some time to ponder that disturbing but very real question and (again) then read the article for yourself: http://theweek.com/article/index/255660/what-if-the-culture-war-never-ends

I don’t know where Damon Linker falls (or where he thinks he falls) on the ideological spectrum or which side he takes on partisan issues.  I do know that his writing is thoughtful, intelligent, and refreshingly lacking in invective.  Sadly, Bubble Boy will have to give Mr. Linker a pass for the next month, but you shouldn’t.

Fifty Years Ago. Today.

To paraphrase the Beatles: It was fifty years ago today that Lee Oswald shook the USA...

Fifty years ago.  Today.

He was a friend of mine, he was a friend of mine
His killing had no purpose, no reason or rhyme
Oh, he was a friend of mine

He was in Dallas town, he was in Dallas town
From a sixth floor window a gunner shot him down
Oh, he died in Dallas town

He never knew my name, he never knew my name
Though I never met him I knew him just the same
Oh, he was a friend of mine

Leader of a nation for such a precious time
Oh, he was a friend of mine

                                    (Roger McGuinn)

Fifty years ago.  Today.

Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people, 
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he's gone.

Didn't you love the things that he stood for?
Didn't he try to find some good for you and me?
And we'll be free someday soon…

                                                (Dion, adapted)

Fifty years ago.  Today.  

Buffalo Bill's

               defunct

                      who used to

                      ride a watersmooth-silver

                                               stallion

               and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

                                                                Jesus

               he was a handsome man

                                    and what i want to know is

               how do you like your blueeyed boy

               Mister Death

                                                    (e.e. cummings)

Fifty years ago.  Today.

 

                                              

Charlie Pierce: It's On Us

Since I don't have time this morning for weighty thoughts of my own, or for considering the likely effects of the President's attempt to "fix" Obamacare's "insurance cancellations" problem, allow me simply to present an extended excerpt from Charlie Pierce.  I hope that quoting at such length does not violate any journalistic or blogging standards; but Charlie Pierce is a national treasure, a writer both fierce and funny, and his words (he blogs at Esquire) should be read by as many people as possible.  So here is the conclusion of one of his posts today:

"It has become remarkable how the people of this country, an ostensibly  self-governing republic, fail to get what an overwhelming percentage of them say  they want from their government, over and over again. You can argue, and I have,  about the power of money, increased by an order of magnitude through the  egregious Citizens United decision. You can argue, and I have, about  the unforgivable vandalism practiced by the Republican party and the modern  conservative movement that has been the prion disease in the party's higher  functions that has driven it mad. But the fact remains that, dammit, there has  to be a political price to pay for actively opposing something 66 percent -- or,  in the case of the background checks, 91 percent -- of the people say  they want. And the electorate is the only body of citizens empowered to exact  these penalties, and it has been shamefully lax in doing so. Parts of the  country have contented themselves with electing morons and crazy people. (How in  the name of god does a buffoon like Louie Gohmert ever run unopposed?) Great  portions of the country can be duped, or frightened, into voting against their  own economic interests. And the great undifferentiated apathy that attends most  of our elections is a deadweight on the democratic process that grows heavier by  the year. If our politicians are not responsive to our needs, then it's time for  new politicians, and we're the only ones who can bring that about. And yet, it's  easier to complain about an inconvenient website, or a scary letter from an  insurance company, or bullshit anecdotes that fall apart under the barest  scrutiny. The country is ungovernable because we, The People, have decided not  to govern it any more. That, to borrow a phrase from the president, is on us." ¹

The man--Charlie Pierce, that is--pulls no punches.  On a daily basis, he names names and calls out corruption and incompetence wherever he sees it, including in the body politic itself.  He does not mince words and he does not suffer fools at all, much less gladly, in particular the fools who have somehow managed to gain control of the levers of our federal government and, having done so, are doing their damndest to bring that government ("A machine that would run by itself," as our constitutional system has been called) to a grinding halt. 

If I had to pick one man and one man only to speak up for what is Good and Righteous and True in America, I'd pick Charlier Pierce.  In fact, I'm going to launch a campaign to elect Elizabeth Warren and Charlie Pierce to the White House in 2016: two people who speak truth to power, consequences be damned.  We could use a lot more like them, but for now we should at least be grateful that we have them both.  We should also listen to them, dammit.

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¹ The Upton Bill And Self-Government - Abandoning Self-Government - Esquire 
@Esquiremag on Twitter | Esquire on Facebook / Esquire.com 

The Shining Trailer Park On A Hill

Time’s latest journalistic atrocity is billed on the magazine’s cover as “The United States of Texas: Why the Lone Star State is America’s Future.”  Inside, the article itself is titled “Why Texas is Our Future”.  Written by hotshot economist Tyler Cowen, it’s essentially an infomercial for the great state of Texas, combined with a plug for the thesis of Cowen’s new book, AVERAGE IS OVER; that thesis being that America is becoming an increasingly stratified society, a society of rich and poor with few in between, and that there’s nothing we can (or should) do about it.

That’s not surprising, given Cowen’s credentials as a self-described “libertarian”.  Other than insisting that “across the country, our K-12 education system needs to be much more rigorous, so that more Americans will be prepared to succeed in the new high-tech era to come,” Cowen’s only suggestion for government response to economic stratification is for governments to get the heck out of the way: deregulate building codes, ease up on zoning, and “scale back much of the occupational licensing that exists at the state and local levels” for “low-skilled workers” like barbers, cosmetologists, and economists interior designers.^*

Cowen assures us that the Texas model—“The state’s social services are thin. Welfare benefits are skimpy. Roughly a quarter of the residents have no health insurance.  Many of its schools are less than stellar.  Property-crime rates are high. Rates of murder and other violent crimes are hardly sterling either.  A recent report from the FBI found that [Texas] led the nation as the place the most people got punched or kicked to death in 2012.”—will not “be the dystopia that it might sound like at first.”  That’s because, in our brave new Lone Star world, not only are many goods cheaper than ever, some of them are even free: “There is already plenty of free online education, graded by computer bots, and free music on YouTube.  Hulu and related online viewing services are allowing Americans to free up some money by cutting the cable cord.  Facebook soaks up a lot of our free time, and it doesn’t cost a dime.  The near future likely will bring free or very cheap online medical diagnosis.”

Gosh, that sounds encouraging, as does the prospect that “A new class of Americans will become far more numerous.  They will despair at finding good middle-class jobs and decide to live off salaries that are roughly comparable to today’s lower-middle-class incomes. Some will give up trying so hard—but it won’t  matter as much as it used to, because they won’t have to be big successes to live relatively well.” ¹ 

Are there any downsides at all, besides shrinking incomes, despair at the absence of good jobs, and widespread loss of ambition?  Well, “A lot of health care will become more expensive and harder to access.”  So much for the wonders of online medical diagnoses—you still require actual, in-person treatment, but unfortunately, you probably won't be able to get it.  Also, “Many Americans will have to downsize their living quarters involuntarily,” which won’t be so bad if, like the folks Tyler Cowen probably hangs out with, you’ve got more room than you need to begin with.  Oh, and “People in the shrinking middle class who want to have more than one child may find the costs too high.”  So a reduction in our population—but hey, if we keep importing cheap labor from Mexico, no problem!  A nation of one-child families, not by government decree (that would be tyranny) but by economic necessity: nope, nothing dystopian about that at all.

Cowen makes much of the fact that people have been moving to Texas from other states, thus proving the desirability of the Texas model.  It’s true that some people seem to like what Texas has to offer; Cowen offers us, anecdotally, a young couple who run an alternative-energy business in “the magnificent but remote region of West Texas,” a young woman who left her gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood and now works “at a hip marketing company in Austin,” and a Cal Poly graduate who switched from being an engineer in southern California to becoming a sign painter in (guess where) Austin.  Cowen doesn’t, of course, talk to any Texans who are not hip, young, or successful, but why should he?  Even if he did, why would he care what they said?  In the libertarian/Texas model, winners win and losers lose and that’s just the way it goes; and since all of America will inevitably become more like Texas, there won’t be any place for those losers to escape to. 

To summarize: “the new settlements of a Texas-like America could come to resemble trailer parks—culturally rich trailer parks, so to speak.²  The next Brooklyn may end up somewhere in the Dakotas.  Fargo, anyone?”

If I didn’t know better, I’d think this article was a put-on, but I’m sadly sure Tyler Cowen means every word of it.

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^*The logic of making education “more rigorous” while lowering licensing and credentialing for various occupations is unclear to me, but I don’t really think Cowen means it anyway—at least not the part about education.  All essayists for Time are required to stress “better education” and “higher standards” when talking about how we must prepare our young people for the future.  Trust me, if Texas really is our future, “more rigorous” education will be neither necessary nor possible.

¹ Living “relatively well” apparently means “sitting in front of a computer screen all day, getting your education, entertainment, and socialization online.”  Which sounds suspiciously like my life, and I honestly don’t recommend it.

² How inspiring: America, the “shining trailer park on the hill”.  And remember, when Tyler Cowen says “culturally rich,” he means Hulu and Facebook.

 

 

Conservatives Are Liberals?

Patrick Deneen is one of the leading voices of what might be called the new Catholic Conservative movement.  A graduate of Rutgers University, Mr. Deneen is currently the David A. Potenziani Memorial Associate Professor of Constitutional Studies at Notre Dame.  Last year he authored a controversial essay (for First Things) titled “Unsustainable Liberalism,” in which he reiterated the argument (trust me, it’s not a new one) that liberalism has exhausted the “cultural capital” upon which it is based—Christianity, in particular—and is therefore doomed because it cannot stand on its own.  Deneen’s essay provoked numerous responses; my own take is that the supposed unsustainability of liberalism has been predicted almost as often as the demise of religion, and with equally little success—in this case, as many of Deneen’s interlocutors pointed out, much depends on how you define “liberalism”.  Further, it seems odd that a Catholic, of all people, would believe that the cultural inheritance of Christendom could ever be “used up,” much less in the span of two or three centuries; you’d think that the God-given gospel, the Truth, the Eternal Word, the Logos etc. would be able to survive even the assaults of modernity.  Mr. Deneen’s lack of confidence may not bespeak a lack of faith, but it’s hard to see it otherwise.

Regardless, I find Patrick Deneen worth reading.  His latest essay (which I found at The American Conservative) is titled “What is an American Conservative?”  That question seems especially worth asking right now, in view of the ongoing hijacking of conservatism (and of the Republican Party) by a cadre of zealots who stand somewhere to the right of the John Birch Society.  Said hijacking, of course, follows on the heels of previous hijackings by economic ideologues, culture warriors, and neo-conservatives: it’s been a rough few decades for American conservatism.

Deneen’s counter-intuitive thesis is that “Today’s conservatives are liberals…”  He arrives at that conclusion by linking his version of liberalism to a variety of phenomena which he claims today’s conservatives also support:

 “an economy that wreaks ‘creative destruction,’ especially on the mass of ‘non-winners,’ increasingly controlled by a few powerful actors who secure special benefits for themselves and their heirs; a military that is constructed to be only loyal to the central authority in the capital, frequently moved about to avoid any rooted loyalty, and increasingly isolated from most fellow citizens; an increasingly utilitarian view of education aimed at creating individuals who will become cogs in a globalized industrial system, largely without allegiance or loyalty; proponents of an increasingly homogenized society whose allegiance is to a set of ideas, especially a ‘more perfect union,’ which Francis Bellamy expressed, inspired by the example of the French Revolution.”

I’ll leave it to others to decide whether any, much less all, of that agenda sounds like “liberalism” as it’s generally understood.   Accurate or not, that particular description enables Deneen to conclude that “If conservatism is broken today, we need only blame liberalism.  There is only one party in America—your choice is liberalism with deliberate speed, or liberalism in a hurry.”

Yes, Mr. Deneen says, “broken” conservatism is the fault of liberalism, and in fact its progeny—because, argues Deneen, conservatism too often takes the form of  “simple reaction to the opposition.  As a reaction to the left, conservatism has always been prone to drift—it will tend to articulate its position in opposition to the current stances of progressives.” ¹ And as progressives move (supposedly) further to the left, they drag conservatives in their wake:

“Where once American conservatives opposed an expansive commercial economy, today they are its champions.  Where they once decried identification with the nation over localities, states, and regions, today they are the most vociferous nationalists.  Where once they deeply mistrusted ‘foreign entanglements’ and insisted upon a citizen militia…today they are the close allies of the ‘military-industrial complex’.  In each instance, they have moved to occupy the positions once occupied by the left.” ²

Whatever you think of all that, the most interesting part of Deneen’s essay is his invocation, not of the Founding Fathers, but of their bête noire, the “anti-Federalists”.  For Deneen, true American conservatism traces back to the opponents of the American Constitution, who feared the power and reach of the federal government and the corrupting influence of an industrialized, commercial economy: “Among the virtues [they] most prized,” writes Deneen, “was frugality, and they opposed an expansive, commercial economy that would draw various parts of the Union into overly close relations, thereby encouraging avarice, and [they] particularly opposed trade with foreign nations, which they believed would lead the nation to compromise its independence for lucre.”

What goes unmentioned here is the role that slavery played in all this.  The Southern anti-Federalists had good and specific reason to fear “overly close relations” with the rest of the Union; such relations would more than likely have imperiled their “peculiar institution” and, in the process, undermined the foundation of their economy and of their culture. Patrick Deneen would have us believe that disinterested philosophical considerations, rather than ordinary self-interest, motivated the anti-Federalists; let’s say that it’s likely there was some combination of both motives at play.

Deneen doesn’t come out and say as much, but the positions of the anti-Federalists very much resemble those of today’s Tea Party—and, to a large extent, those of ante bellum Southerners and states' rights advocates like John C. Calhoun.  For Deneen, it seems that the true American conservatives are the ones who opposed the Union in the first place and who sought to resist its reach, if not abolish it, in the second.  He’s not wrong, of course, in saying that some of what the anti-Federalists predicted has come to pass: a strong executive branch, a powerful Supreme Court, a tendency toward centralization, etc.  Whether those developments are necessarily bad is another question, but Deneen certainly believes so.  He is, however, overlooking one important detail: those developments, for better or for worse, have taken place with the approval, by and large, of electoral majorities.  The anti-Federalists may have been right on their principles, but they spoke for what was then and is now a minority of Americans.³  

Deneen’s essay also touches on the “conservative disposition…articulated perhaps most brilliantly by Russell Kirk,” which includes such elements as “piety toward the wisdom of one’s ancestors,” a reluctance to change social arrangements or institutions, and a respect for “the only iron law of politics—the law of unintended consequences”.  Conservatives by nature “tend toward a pessimistic view of history, more concerned to prevent the introduction of corruption in a decent regime than driven to pursue change out of a belief in progress toward a better future.”

Conservatism, then, is at least three things: reflexively reactionary, pessimistic at heart (both as to history and as to human nature), and—at its best, says Deneen—repository of “a conscious political philosophy” in the mold of the anti-Federalists.  The solution to today’s conservative dilemma, he argues, is to discard the first tendency—since mere reaction to liberalism leads only to “liberalism lite”—while combining the other two: “Only by linking a conservative disposition with relevant substance can we avoid the tendency of conservatism simply to march a step behind the left, of becoming a ship buffeted by historicist winds with a permanently leftward drift.” ⁴  

The problem for Mr. Deneen’s agenda is that neither the conservative temperament—pessimistic and cautious—nor the anti-Federalist ideology commands a majority in this country; they never did, which is why liberalism (and a diluted progressivism) triumphed.  Americans tend to be optimistic, albeit sometimes undeservedly so; they tend to be nationalistic, sometimes to the point of xenophobia (“American Exceptionalism”); and they tend to be relatively sanguine about the moral corruptions inherent in affluence, though they spend a good deal of time denouncing the moral corruptions of the poor.  I do think, though, that there is a constituency for Patrick Deneen’s conservatism: it can be found in places like contemporary Texas and in northern Idaho, and it can be found in South Carolina circa 1860.   All it would take to cobble together a winning coalition would be a time machine that would enable Deneen and his ilk to go back to 1787 and refight the Constitutional Convention, or back to 1861 and refight the Civil War.  Until such time as that can be accomplished, I think Mr. Deneen is going to have to settle for being right—as far as he’s concerned, that is— rather than for winning the argument.

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¹ The conservative (or the human) tendency toward “simple reaction to the opposition” would explain why Republicans have been unable to accept a single thing that the Obama administration has done or proposed, even when such proposals have been explicitly based on Republican/conservative ideas (e.g. the individual healthcare mandate and the Obamacare insurance exchanges). It would also explain the refusal of conservatives to accept or acknowledge global warming, and their denounciation of it as a liberal hoax/plot/conspiracy of some kind: if liberals are for it, apparently, conservatives must be against it.

² Deneen doesn’t consider the possibility that “the left,” too, has done some drifting, or that many on the left now seem to have staked out positions once considered the province of conservatives.  In his view, the left just goes further and further out on its unsustainable limb, luring conservatives after it.  Why conservatives are foolish enough continually to fall for that ploy, I do not know.

³ Not that there's anything wrong with that.  A minority opinion, after all, may still be correct.

⁴ I don't know why "historicist winds" should have a "permanently leftward drift," but if they do, then Patrick Deneen is advising conservatives to head straight into them, a course which may be brave and romantically appealing, but generally has little chance of success (an experienced sailor might prefer to do some tacking instead).

Government By Tantrum

“[The id] is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learned from our study of the Dreamwork and of the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of that is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations... It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle."                              --Sigmund Freud (1933)

If future historians agree on nothing else about the Obama presidency, they’ll at least agree that it brought to light (or liberated, if you prefer) the raging id of the American public.¹  That id has always been there, of course—an ugly, mean-spirited, narrow-minded, truculent, selfish, petty, paranoid, bigoted and ignorant psychological and ideological streak, the sort of thing that has given birth to lynch mobs and other forms of vigilante “justice”—but it’s mostly stayed out of sight; and even when it’s been uncovered from time to time, it’s been kept at the margin of our politics.  But thanks to Barack Obama, we’ve now had five years and counting in which to observe the American id in action, mainstreamed via Fox News and the Republican Party; and it shows no sign of relenting.

Arizona State Representative Brenda Barton is only the latest example of the unrestrained American id; responding the other day to the news that shutting down the federal government meant shutting down national parks, Rep. Barton screeched,

“Someone is paying the National Park Service thugs overtime for their efforts to carry out the order of Der Fuhrer… where are our Constitutional Sheriffs who can revoke the Park Service Rangers authority to arrest??? Do we have any Sheriffs with a pair?”

I’m trying hard to remember the last time an elected official in this country referred to our own President as “der Fuhrer,” but frankly, I can’t remember it happening, any more than I (or anyone else) could remember a Congressman shouting out “You lie!” during a State of the Union address.  The lack of simple respect accorded this President is unprecedented, both in terms of vituperative rhetoric and in terms of legislative obstruction, that latter now culminating in a refusal by the Republican minority to allow the President even to preside over a functioning, albeit fiscally hamstrung, federal government.

I’m not going to rehearse the vitriol and calumnies that have been aimed over the years at President Obama, nor am I going to claim to understand what it is about him that has inspired such hysteria and such an unleashing of the ugliest parts of our national psyche.²  All I know is that what was once outré is now de rigueur: the likes of Alex Jones and Eric Erickson are invited by major TV networks to opine, as if they had something to offer besides crude insults and (in Jones’ case) unhinged rants about government conspiracies and “false flag” events.  The abandonment of both civility and rationality is evidence that the id has taken over.  So, too, is the embracing of childish wish-fulfillment as a political strategy, exemplified by 2012 GOP presidential hopefuls (and one time front-runners) Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, and Rick Santorum. So, too, is the prevalence of what is now called "government by crisis" but which is more accurately termed "government by tantrum": a series of tantrums, really, in which the House GOP threatens to hold its breath until it gets its way.  

Last year, Republicans somewhat reluctantly nominated Mitt Romney as their standard bearer.  Mr. Romney is no one's idea of an embodied id (thus the GOP's reluctance); he is, if nothing else, a rational, controlled, adult human being who has actually succeeded in the past at both business and governing (he is also an empty suit and a simulacrum, but that's a different matter). Yet Mr. Romney, in deference to his party's id, felt compelled to seek the endorsement of the egomaniacal buffoon Donald Trump and to accept the endorsement (and active support) of the detestable Ted Nugent: all because such characters appeal to the Republican “base,” which in this case at least is aptly named.

The party of Lincoln is now preeminently the party of the American id; Republicans are dragging our politics and our government down into the fetid cesspool of ignorance and anger (or, in Freud’s words, “cauldron of seething excitations”) which is the id’s own element.³ I have no idea how long it will take to repair the damage that they’re doing, or how long before both their id and their ideology break against the ramparts of reality.  What I do know is that, however long it takes, there must and will be a reckoning for the lunacy they’ve unleashed and the havoc they’ve created: hoist on their own petard comes to mind.    

That sort of hoisting can’t come soon enough, as far as I’m concerned.  Eventually, wrote Freud, "where id was, ego shall there be": in other words, the Republican right is going to grow up sooner or later.  Let's just hope it hasn't wrecked the nation with its antics before that happens.

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¹ Please don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not saying that all of America has surrendered to its collective id, and I’m certainly not saying that the phenomenon is unique to America: every country has an id beneath the surface of its politics.

² I do, however, have a theory, which I will offer at some undetermined time: spoiler alert—it is not about racism.

³ It might be worthwhile for someone to explore the connection between “id” and “ideology”.  It’s also helpful to recognize the difference between “principles,” political or otherwise, and “ideology”.  Daniel Larison explained that difference succinctly last June:

“Principles are firm moral and/or political commitments that one has made and relies on to guide one’s practical judgment and actions…Ideology is above all intended for the justification and use of power over and against other people…One important difference between ideology and political principle is that ideology is generally used to excuse and permit vicious behavior against others for the sake of some supposedly “greater” purpose, and political principle typically creates obstacles to committing vicious acts. For ideologues, the ends usually justify the means. In the end, the most important difference between the two is that ideology is used to deny the dignity and humanity of other people because they happen to fall on the wrong side of the “ideological struggle” of the moment.” http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/ideology-vs-principle/

When today’s Republicans claim to be “standing on principle,” don’t believe them; they’re driven by ideology, and by id.