Bill Maher on President Obama, Saul Alinsky, and the Unhinged GOP

Bill Maher really exposes what I think is one of the biggest problems with the GOP, and which is reflected in the current GOP primary candidates' rhetoric: they have crafted an image of Obama that is so far removed from reality and so way out in stratosphere that to even perpetuate it indicates a kind of mental delusion.  Here's Maher exposing this as it relates to the linking of Obama with Saul Alinsky (a person, by the way, whom no one really seems to know, but whose name sounds enough like Stalin and Lenin and Russian Communists in general to whip up an unthinking, but delusionally "patriotic" Obama-hating mob:



The real irony here, for those who really are in the know, is that Saul Alinsky and his "Rules for Radicals" is quite influential in the grass roots activism of the Tea Party movement.   The "rules" that Alinsky teaches actually have been deployed quite effectively (and sometimes quite intentionally) by grass -roots conservative activists.  What conservatives tend to object to is not the fundamental recipe Alinsky developed for effecting social change, but that he taught them to poor people, racial minorities, and other marginalized groups cut out of power and on the edges of effective participation in our political system.  In a political system that claims to be of the people, by the people, and for the people irrespective of social class, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, religious conviction, or racial/ethnic identity, one would think that any freedom-loving, grass roots advocacy conservative would celebrate anything that mobilizes Americans to find their voice, to speak up, and to challenge authority when it contravenes what they believe is in their best interests, as something essential to, worthy of, and, yes, exceptional in the American idea of democracy and individual sovereignty.

What I find to be revealing about the attempts to link Obama hatred with Alinsky is that what conservatives seem to project is a very elitist and exclusive understanding of American civic life in which only the "right" people should be organizing and participating in grass roots activism.  And if it's not the "right" people, by whom they mean "real" Americans such as Tea Partiers, wealthy businesses, and the like, exercising their voice and collective power through organizing, then it's both un-democratic and un-American.

Shame on conservatives who play this game and attempt to create such a narrative about Obama as if it were a bad thing when that is precisely the game that the current conservative anti-Establishment insurgency is engaged in itself.

The Decline of RWN

One of the conservative blogs that I've been a more-or-less regular visitor to is John Hawkins' Right Wing News.  I started checking out RWN many years ago, when it was just starting out.  At the time, only John Hawkins was writing there, and his blog's look was fairly basic and simple.

John Hawkins himself is a decent writer for the most part.  He has a particular style that I find engaging and easy to respond to.  Now, that's not to say that I agree with Hawkins.  In fact, I vehemently disagree with about 98% of what the man writes.  And sometimes I find his blog incendiary and over-the-top reactionary.  That said, his blog has been a mainstay for my keeping abreast of what this particular rightwing community is saying.  And I've met some really smart and good people in the comment boards over there.

Over the past 6 months or so, I've stopped commenting at that site because of the unabashed censorship of any left-leaning, liberal commenters there.  Maybe it's toned down some since then, but the creep of groupthink there, and the penchant towards growing antipathy towards free expression of opposing viewpoints in comment threads is a shame.  His blog didn't used to be that way.

But that's not the most problematic thing with RWN these days.  I still visit the blog on occasion, though not nearly as regularly as I used to.  Now, John Hawkins maybe writes one or two postings a day.  It's become a kind of rightwing opinion aggregator with a cacophony of voices that make the blog incoherent.

Fewer and fewer people are commenting on the postings there; and, frankly, the blog contributors are not nearly as intellectually interesting and competent as Hawkins was.  If it's not William Teach embarrassing himself with his endless climate change denialist postings on "globull" warming, it's Warner Todd Houston blathering on about the latest obscure incident of some overzealous PC action on the part of some nobody (usually from Illinois).

As the blog's technical and visual structure got more complex and glitzy, the quality of the posting content got weaker and flimsier.  Now it comes across as just a place where rightwing reactionaries can just screech and moan and complain.  There's very little actual provocative thought being generated there by serious intellects.

It's quite a shame, actually.  But so be it.

15 Things That Even Conservatives Should Admit

Conservative blogger, John Hawkins, over at Right Wing News, recently put up a posting in which he laid out 15 statements, claimed that these statements are factual and uncontroversial, and then dared Liberals to disagree with them.  Of course, you can take a look at his 15 statements and you'll find that just about all of them are based on his opinion, are highly contestable, and are not really rooted in objective fact.  But, I'd like to throw the challenge back to him and his conservative minions and dare them to agree to the following statements:

1. Guns actually do kill living creatures, including people.  In fact, that's what they're designed to do.

2. There is no persecution of Christians in the United States.  This meme is both a myth and a lie.

3. Waterboarding is torture.

4. Two gay people getting married has zero impact on my own heterosexual marriage and it has zero impact on my personal religious faith.

5. The electoral college violates the one-person, one-vote concept by giving individual citizens in small population states disproportionate representation in presidential elections.

6. Intelligence is desirable and is a virtue.

7. Obama is a natural-born citizen of the United States.

8. The death penalty is not a deterrent to violent crime.

9. Liberal Americans are patriotic Americans.

10. Most people who voted for Obama did so for reasons other than his race, just as most people who voted against Obama did so for reasons other than his race.

11. Encouraging diversity and multiculturalism is a good thing.

12. Conservative approaches to illegal immigration are antithetical to free market principles when it comes to labor and thus are economically regressive policies.

13. Women not receiving equal pay for equal work is an injustice and thus requires remedy by state institutions.

14. The Obama administration found and killed Osama bin Laden.

15. The United States is a flawed country, and acknowledging these flaws is not treason.

Rod Dreher and the Conservative/Conservationist Conflation

Rod Dreher, author of the book Crunchy Con, has a habit of referring to what I call "grounded human behavior" as "conservative." Here's his most recent example. However, I think Rod is conflating "conservatism" with "conservationism." The irony here is that when most people think of the notion of conservation, most people think of liberal environmentalists -- those individuals who believe that husbanding and caring for the natural resources of the world in a responsible way with the well-being of future generations in mind. The tree-huggers, the recylcers, the bicyclists, the alternative energy proponents, etc. The notion of "crunchy" behavior -- although it may have some connection to an ideological conservatism in the mind of Rod Dreher -- comes squarely out of an ideologically liberal tradition -- really out of a communitarian tradition. And ideological conservatism (as opposed to conservationism) is decidedly not what Rod Dreher must think it is. I think Friedrich Hayek's explanation of ideological conservatism, which he wrote in his famous treatise The Road to Serfdom, is much more accurate:

Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic, and power-adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place. A conservative movement, by its very nature, is bound to be a defender of established privilege and to lean on the power of the government for the protection of privilege.

So, when Rod Dreher writes of "The conservatism of parenting," he's really not talking about conservatism at all, but of a kind of social conservationism. And this social conservationism is very much in line with how I understand ideological liberalism.

The Beneficiaries of Food Stamps

Are not just the people who need them to survive; but the grocery stores who need them to increase their profits.

If you think food stamp recipients have the power or the wherewithal to lobby Congress to protect their undeserved "handouts," think again.

The power that keeps the food stamp program alive and well are the grocery stores who are just as dependent upon them as the poor people who qualify for the program.

I've always believed that social safety net programs are even more beneficial to the "have plenties" of our society in the sense that it keeps the lid on social discontent with the added benefit of relieving the private sector of the expense of time and money in having to manage the poor and their problems. Much easier to pay taxes, wash their hands of the responsibility, all the while creating a convenient scapegoat in government to blame for when social relations don't always end up harmonious.

Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Patriotic FAIL

I don't expect most Americans to know all that much about all the mythology and symbolism surrounding the American Revolution; but when you wrap that mythology and symbolism all around yourself with the kind of bombast and pretension that many Tea Partiers do (even the name itself harkens to this mythology), and when you use this mythology to vilify others of your fellow countrymen for their apparent lack of patriotic credibility, then you damn better at least know this history beyond the knee-jerk sound bites -- especially if you are a political leader of the Tea Party movement like Minnesota's Michele Bachmann is.

Because when you, you know, not only get it wrong, but get it so epically wrong, like Michele Bachmann did, you make yourself and your movement look like the foolish patriotic poseurs and utterly craven, ignorant pretenders that you are.

Tea Partier patriots who take their patriotism seriously enough to know their early American history are (or should be) embarrassed by Bachmann's arrogance and ignorance.

Patronizing Conservative Elitism and Voter Suppression

The only time I have ever witnessed direct and blatant efforts, similar to the recent one in Nevada, to consciously seek to suppress votes has come from conservatives, whether directly from the GOP or from groups allied to the GOP. One example from 8 years ago concerned the Louisiana State GOP's efforts to suppress black voter turnout in a Senate race pitting Democrat Mary Landrieu against Republican Suzanne Haik Terrell.

But why should this surprise me when there is a widely-held belief in conservative circles that there are too many ignorant citizens who shouldn't be voting in elections.

The patronizing tone that comes across in these voter suppression efforts or in this idea that we'd all be better off if the unwashed, unlearned masses just stayed away from the voting booths underscores the real elitist disdain in the conservative movement for democracy and for the participation in our electoral system of the most vulnerable and marginalized, who are the most likely not to satisfy the knowledge threshhold that certain conservatives think should be a precondition for voting in elections.

And yet we liberals are the ones who are supposed to be the discriminatory elitists here?! Pshaw!

Federalism, States Rights, and Liberty

Thinking on a comments exchange with one of my readers (Eric), I have been pondering the whole idea of federalism and states rights as it relates to liberty. Although I have some sympathy for the idea that the closer one gets to the local, the more effective and efficient politics can be and the more control individuals can exercise over their own affairs, I am wondering how States Rights advocates draw the line between the Constitutional provisions for the breakdown of authority between federal and state governments and the notion of liberty as a guiding principle. Let me try to explain what I mean in greater detail ...

It seems to me that we have the principle of liberty which should transcend any kind of division of authority, whether that authority is the federal government, the state government, or even the local municipal government. And yet we have a constitutional division of authority and power that only speaks of state governments versus federal governments without really any regard to the principle of liberty. In other words, irrespective of the universal principle of liberty which would seem to transcend any exercise of power by any governmental authority, whatever power that the Constitution does not explicitly afford to the federal government in terms of dictating the conditions under which citizens can live, markets can function, and state force can be applied, is afforded to the governments of the individual states. This presumes that either the federal government or the state governments have the power under the Constitution to rule over its citizens, even if this ruling is to constrict liberty, as long as the power to do so fits within the proper division of powers afforded in the Constitution.

Thus, where the federal government doesn't have the right to dictate policy, the states do. Many states rights conservatives often argue that the Constitution, where it limits the federal government, does no such thing to state governments in their reserved powers. Take, for instance, gay marriage. I often hear from states rights conservatives the idea that if state governments decide to discriminate against gay people when it comes to affording the rights and privileges of marriage, they have the authority to do so. Perhaps an even better example is abortion. The argument goes that Roe v. Wade should be overturned as an un-Constitutional exercise of authority by the federal government and that the issue of whether to permit or outlaw abortion should be kicked back to the states, where state governments get to make the final binding decision on the matter. And that's where the argument tends to stop. Many states rights conservatives are willing to accept the power of state governments to enact and enforce legislation that would constrain freedom as a matter of deference to state power afforded under the federal Constitution. Hence, individual liberty or freedom can be duly constrained in one state while it can be advanced in another state. So the notion of the principle of freedom and liberty becomes relativized according the whim of state governments as opposed to being recognized as a universal concept. Theoretically, one can have liberty to smoke marijuana in California, but not even have the freedom to drink alcohol in South Carolina, much less smoke marijuana. It seems clear to me in this sense that California would be a state that is advancing liberty relative to South Carolina, and yet states rights conservatives are often willing to accept the right of South Carolina to constrain liberty in this way. This relativism that sacrifices the principle of liberty on the altar of states rights creates a slipperly slope whereby more pernicious constraints on liberty can be justified -- racial discrimination, gender discrimination, etc. This is why many liberals see the states rights argument often as code for the ability to justify the constriction of liberty. Through this, my friend Eric can argue (and correct me if I'm misunderstanding your position, Eric) that a candidate for governor in New York who would seek to use the power of the state through eminent domain to forcefully prevent the construction of a mosque near to ground zero may be a rotten autocrat for holding this position, but that this is a matter for the state and its residents to decide, so that if this candidate were to be elected governor and were to exercise this power, well then that's New York's business and who are we in the rest of the U.S. to meddle in New York's affairs, even if this exercise of power constricts freedom?

I'm not sure I've expressed myself so clearly here, but I think what I'm trying to say in a nutshell is that there is an inherent tension between the states rights argument as commonly presented by many conservatives and the notion of support for a universal principle of individual liberty. This is why we get candidates like Christine O'Donnell talk about defending the sacrosanct notion of individual liberty, and yet still hold that some authority forcing a dress code or a dance code on people is still tolerable and legitimate under the Constitution and the reserved powers it grants to local authority.

Liberaltarianism

I've been thinking a lot about how I would characterize my liberalism as it relates to other ideologies, and I have to say that a debate that emerged some weeks ago spurred on by a posting from Matt Yglesias some while ago in which he basically differentiated between his small-government tendencies at the local level, coupled with his recognition of a more actively-involved, bigger government at the national level, resonated with me. Here's the crux of Yglesias's point concerning might might be called his liberaltarianism in the form of an example:

Don’t think to yourself “we need to regulate carbon emissions therefore regulation is good therefore regulation of barbers is good.” Think to yourself “we can’t let the privileged trample all over everyone, therefore we need to regulate carbon emissions and we need to break the dentists’ cartel.”

There is a sense, as Yglesias said, that liberals think that the proper role of the state is to protect the freedoms of the little guy over the privileged big actors. This is where I think many small-government conservatives misunderstand the motivations of liberals. It's also what annoys me, too. Because I think there is an appropriate role of the state in constricting the ability of the privileged to manipulate social structures and institutions (and to harness the power of the state) to preserve that which maintains their privilege and constricts the liberty and opportunities of the marginalized -- i.e. that subsidizing student loans making it more affordable and possible for larger numbers of the less affluent to gain an education and thus improve the likelihood of their success in the marketplace, or that having the state ensure basic health care coverage for all, especially the most vulnerable, actually enhances freedom because it removes structural impediments that keep the downtrodden down -- many conservatives would consider me a socialist/communist/anti-individualist whatever. And this couldn't be farther from the truth. And it especially annoying when some of these very same conservatives go to extremes to argue that the legitimate exercise of state power is in preserving the structures that maintain privilege for a particular kind/type of person (i.e. a white Christian heterosexual) and constrict opportunity/freedom for a marginalized minority. For true small-government, liberaltarian-leaning conservatives, there are points of convergence with liberals that should form the basis for collaboration and compromise; but this never seems to be sought after. I wish it were.

Sarah Palin, the Gulf Oil Spill, and Faux-Conservatism

I remain constantly amazed that Sarah Palin somehow continues to carry the mantle of conservatism around this country. With regard to the Gulf Oil Spill, Palin is demagoguing the Obama administration's response to the efforts by BP to handle the gulf oil spill. Her complaint? That Obama is too cozy with BP, which is preventing the administration from getting more directly and precipitously involved in mitigating the disaster and in handling the crisis. And, yet, the Obama administration's response has been decidedly conservative, so much so that he's taking some heat by activist liberal environmentalist groups for not asserting government authority even sooner and more forcefully.

The Obama Administration's reluctance to push BP aside seems to have as much to do with a recognition that it is BP, and not the Federal Government, that possesses the capacity, knowledge, and experience to deal with this. It seems to me that the Obama administration is promoting a responsible position with regard to its involvement in mitigating the crisis. It is a position that is actually quite conservative. In fact, it appears to be even too conservative for Sarah Palin, who is supposed to be the very face of conservatism.

I'd like to know from Sarah Palin what her response would be? If she were President, would she be demanding a precipitous federal intervention in the process, pushing BP aside?

I think Palin's response is rich with irony. And it exposes her unconservative populism. She's supposedly not only the pro-industry "drill, baby, drill" cheerleader, but also the anti-government intervention conservative. What gives? And why do conservatives continue to support her?

Thought of the Day: The Anti-Elite Elite

Have you noticed how "tres chic" it is among the conservatve hoi polloi to condescend towards anything that approaches exceptionalism? The word "elite" is a dirty word among this crowd. It's the new anti-elite elitism. Heck, even conservative elites have to pretend that there's nothing more admirable than mediocrity and that there's nothing better than being the average Joe the Plumber. In a very ironic way, it's the conservative version of Marxist egalitarianism. In short, to the anti-elitist conservative, to be demonstrably superior in any way to the average American is, essentially, to be anti-American.

Is This What Passes For Fiscal Conservatism?

When I read Stephen Ohlemacher's article on the Federal Congress's recent tax package, I came to a section where I had to do a double-take. Sure enough, what I thought I read was, indeed, actually what I read. It was this:

President Obama supports the tax package, including the tax increase on investment managers and the crackdown on international tax havens.

Democrats argued in favor of the tax increase, saying Wall Street financiers shouldn't be taxed at a lower rate than workers making less money.

Republicans argued that the tax increase would reach far beyond Wall Street, hitting real estate investment funds across the country. Instead, Republicans said, the tax breaks should be financed by federal borrowing, increasing the budget deficit.

I thought Republicans were chastened about deficit spending and are basing their whole opposition to Obama's fiscal policy largely on the expansion of the federal debt. What gives? Is this something that Republicans actually said? Or is Ohlemacher just making all this up?

An Epiphany about Modern Conservatives

Maybe plenty of others have figured this out already, but I think I've finally put my finger on the thing about modern conservatism that most bothers me: that sense of self-righteousness and proprietorship over the concepts of freedom and liberty. I started to think about what mantras conservatives embrace and really gave careful consideration to them one by one.

First, there's the idea of limited government. The notion that the smaller the government and the more it keeps its nose out of the affairs of individuals and their relations with others, the better. My reaction to this conservative mantra is that while I probably differ considerably over the degree to which government has a legitimate and important role to play in the public sphere, conceptually I don't think I disagre that much at all with the idea of limited government. And I can see how this idea of limited government is connected to the ideas of freedom and liberty, but the way some conservatives talk about our current government as some kind of threat to freedom and liberty I think is way overblown. Regardless, the upshot is that I can deal with conservatives who identify this mantra as their driving motivation for being conservative.

Second, there's the idea of low taxes, balanced budgets, and fiscal sanity. Frankly, I don't know of anyone who has a great love of taxes, nearly all Americans understand the value and need of living within a budget (even if some of us have difficulty doing so), and everyone I know in this country doesn't want to see us go bankrupt. So the fiscal side of conservatism I can definitely understand; and, in fact, I even find myself generally closer to conservative orthodoxy on the fiscal side of things.

Third, there's blind patriotism and military hawkishness. I guess I consider myself to be as patriotic as the next person, but I do think there can be an exaggerated and dangerous nationalism that patriotism brought to the extreme can mean. And there are those among the conservative population who I think express a kind of distorted patriotism that will rally behind just about anything done in the name of the national interest. I have to admit, these conservatives make me uncomfortable. Not because I am uncomfortable with patriotism, but rather because I am uncomfortable with a hard edged nationalism cloaked as patriotism which has room for only a narrow idea of what it means to be American and a citizen of this country. On the military hawkishness side of things, I can understand those who rally behind a strong display of military force, especially when the nation appears to be threatened by an external enemy. And even though I would personally prefer to test diplomacy and peaceful resolution of disputes and dialogue and treating even our enemies with a measure of human dignity, I generally don't find fault with those who prefer a more robust military and are more eager than I to use this military.

And there are some other issues that define conservatism these days that I won't get into now, but which don't really bother me all that much. I may find some of it annoying, and some of it misguided. Or I may recognize that some vocal elements of conservatism (such as the theocratic Christian fundamentalists who would love nothing more than a fusion of church and state) to be a fringe (albeit a loud one) within the conservative family. These I can just dismiss as irrelevant to the more defining elements of conservatism.

But what really rubs me the wrong way about conservatism is the tendency among conservatives to talk about freedom and liberty as if only conservatives really represent these values. It irks me because we liberals are, I'd say, perhaps even more committed to freedom and liberty than conservatives. But the difference is that we liberals tend not to speak of these things as if they were the exclusive privilege of our ideology. Modern conservatives, who speak of freedom and liberty as if they are constantly under assault by liberals, just because we express our own different priorities and values about life and government, would like nothing more than to see our freedom and liberties, that is the freedom and liberties of us liberals to pursue our own agendas, to be constrained and limited. I find this attitude to be insulting and even antithetical to the very notions of freedom and liberty themselves. Whenever I ask a conservative to demonstrate to me exactly where his or her freedom and liberty is constrained, I mean really constrained, the only semi-palatable answer I can get has to do with taxes. Outside of that, there is nothing we can't do within the bounds of generally acceptable law. I get up in the morning, and I really can do whatever I want (within the law) as long as I am willing to accept the consequences. I can go to church. I can go to work. I can NOT go to work. I can eat a ham sandwich. I can drink a beer. I can go ride bikes in the park with my daughters. I can go have breakfast at a local diner with my dad. And I can write this blog posting. In short, the freedom and liberty we have in this country is astounding. And it is preserved, protected, and promoted by conservative AND liberal governments and citizens alike. So, when conservatives project a notion that freedom and liberty belong to them, that they are the ones who exclusively protect and promote freedom and liberty, they couldn't be farther from the truth. When conservatives hurl out the charge that liberals and the Democrats are assaulting liberty and freedom, they couldn't be more wrong. And when it comes to freedom and liberty, I can assure you that I could never be a party to a movement that seeks to take such values, values that define all Americans, and use them to bludgeon another simply because we may have a political disagreement about some policy. It just dawned on me that when I hear conservatives complain about the loss of freedom and liberty because of us liberals, that is what disgusts me about modern conservatism. And I could never be (and I wouldn't ever want to be) a part of a movement that sees any American as somehow illegitimate and a threat to freedom and liberty simply because of their ideology or their party affiliation.

Hayek, the Rule of Law, the Bush Administration, and Torture

I am brushing up on my Friedrich Hayek these days, and I am reminded of Hayek's chapter on the Rule of Law in his famous book, The Road to Serfdom. Hayek would chafe at the Bush Administration's Department of Justice and the work of the Office of Legal Counsel in drafting bogus memoranda legitimizing (post-facto, even) the arbitrary use of state power in the interrogation of suspected Islamic terrorists. In fact, there is nothing freedom-loving at all in how the Bush Administration usurped popular sovereignty for its own secretive and power-grabbing ends. Think about the following passage from The Road to Serfdom as it may apply to the Yoo and Bybee memos in the Bush Department of Justice, memos which sought to grant post-facto juridical cover from the legal prohibitions against torture and an arbitrary exemption from what Hayek would call the Rule of Law:

The idea that there is no limit to the powers of the legislator is in part a result of popular sovereignty and democratic government. It has been strengthened by the belief that, so long as all actions of the state are duly authorized by legislation, the Rule of Law will be preserved. But this is completely to misconceive the meaning of the Rule of Law. This rule has little to do with the question whether all actions of government are legal in the juridical sense. They may well be and yet not conform to the Rule of Law. The fact that someone has full legal authority to act in the way he does gives no answer to the question whether the law gives him power to act arbitrarily or whether the law prescribes unequivocally how he has to act. It may well be that Hitler has obtained his unlimited powers in a strictly constitutional manner and that whatever he does is therefore legal in the juridical sense. But who would suggest for that reason that the Rule of Law still prevails in Germany?

To say that in a planned society the Rule of Law cannot hold is, therefore not to say that the actions of the government will not be legal or that such a society will necessarily be lawless. It means only that the use of the government's cooercive powers will no longer be limited and determined by pre-established rules. The law can, and to make central direction of economic activity possible must, legalize what to all intents and purposes remains arbitrary action. If the law says that such a board or authority may do what it pleases, anything that board or authority does is legal--but its actions are certainly not subject to the Rule of Law. By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable. ...

The Rule of Law thus implies limits to the scope of legislation: it restricts it to the kind of general rules known as formal law and excludes legislation either directly aimed at particular people or at enabling anybody to use the coercive power of the state for the purpose of such discrimination. It means, not that everything is regulated by law, but, on the contrary, that the coercive power of the state can be used only in cases defined in advance by the law and in such a way that it can be foreseen how it will be used. -- [The Road to Serfdom, pp. 82-84 of the 1962 Phoenix Books edition. The italicized portions of the text cited above are mine.]

Now, Hayek was writing this with the legislative practices in Germany, Italy, and Russia prior to WWII in mind, practices that basically gave a semblance of legal cover to the dictatorial rule of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. Though he doesn't mention specifically the similar practices of manipulation of the law from within the executive branch of government, I think it is a safe bet that Hayek would have been even more disturbed by the Bush Administration's behavior because its legal shenanigans in parsing the law so as to give post-facto cover to the illegal practice of torture did not even make a pretense to democratic sanction through an elected legislative body, but rather was conducted in secret within the executive itself. In essence, the Bush Administration's behavior was even more arbitrary and dictatorial than what Hayek was even imagining. In fact, I imagine that Hayek would have been shocked and mortified by the Bush Administration's behavior and would have been equally shocked and mortified that Americans claiming to be Hayekian conservatives and advocates of the ideas contained in The Road to Serfdom would defend the Bush Administration's behavior.

Cass Sunstein and the Myopia of Conservatives

As someone who is familiar with Cass Sunstein's writings and who has read (and discussed) Sunstein's most recent book, Nudge, a collaborative effort with Richard Thaler, I have to say that I find the conservative opposition to Sunstein's appointment as the director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama Administration's Office of Management and Budget to be very puzzling. Sunstein's basic thesis in Nudge was very much coming out of a libertarian tradition that prioritizes the freedom of choice and looks suspiciously on any practice or policy that might compromise choice beyond a fairly innocuous "nudge," whether that practice or policy originates in the state or the private sector.

Conservative columnist and pundit, David Frum, (currently a pariah among modern movement conservatives for his opposition to Sarah Palin and his criticism of the unthinking reactionary conservative bombast of folks like Mark Levin and Glenn Beck) has written an extremely thoughtful piece defending, with a persuasive conservative rationale, the appointment of Sunstein.

Here's part of what he said:

To anyone who knows anything – anything! – about what Cass Sunstein has actually written or actually said, it’s [conservative opposition to his appointment] a travesty and scandal. And ironically enough, if successful, it would have been a travesty and scandal in which conservatives would find themselves the main victims.

Had Cass Sunstein somehow been stopped, the next OIRA nominee would certainly have been less favorable to markets, enterprise, and competition. The next nominee would not have supported John Roberts and Michael McConnell, would not have chaired seminars with the American Enterprise Institute, might not have been endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, and very likely would not have shared with conservatives so many of the values that Beck purports to uphold but in fact betrays.

I, too, think Sunstein is better for conservatives, by leaps and bounds, than any other potential Obama administration appointment. If conservatives want to be masochistic, and work to dump Sunstein in favor of someone more radical from the left, that's their prerogative. It just makes no sense to me.

Quote of the Day: On Hayek

"According to the current Republican orthodoxy, Friedrich Hayek was a socialist." Andrew Sullivan.

Sullivan quotes directly from Chapter 9 of Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, one of the canonical, almost biblical, texts of conservatism. Read Sullivan's whole entry, which focuses on Hayek's defense of the kind of government program of the sort that the healthcare reform proposals of today represent.

I, myself, have been giving Hayek's book a re-reading over the past weeks to try to understand how far "modern" conservatism, the Limbaugh/Bachmann/Hannity/Wilson kind, has strayed from conservative orthodoxy into the realm of the absurd.

More Hayek pearls of wisdom from The Road to Serfdom will be coming soon. Stay tuned!

Modern Conservatives and F.A. Hayek

In a recent exchange that I had in the comments section of a posting at a Conservative blog, the subject of F.A. Hayek's classic treatise "The Road to Serfdom" was up for some discussion. Of course, modern conservatives think the world of Hayek and often refer to his arguments as both a defense of conservatism and an attack on modern liberalism as an inevitable path towards totalitarianism.

I have read Hayek and find that I agree with him on some issues (his more libertarian bent), but disagree with him on others (such as his mischaracterization of welfare-state liberals as Marxian socialists). I respect his work as a provocative and thoughtful "conservative" intellectual and scholar, and I believe any modern liberal thinker worth his or her salt needs to be familiar with Hayek's work.

But I feel the need to point out to my modern conservative rivals that Hayek did not consider himself a conservative in the way that term has come to be defined. No. In fact, he considered himself to be a classical liberal. And, in fact, he recoiled from the notion that he should be considered a conservative. The reason for this is that he recognized the reactionary tendencies within conservatism as he understood it and found that conservatism posed as much of a potential threat to freedom and democracy as did the modern liberalism he equated with socialism. I firmly believe that Hayek would reject the fundamentalism and the reactionary character of what has come to define modern conservatism today. In fact, this is what Hayek had to say in the Foreward to The Road to Serfdom, written in 1956, 12 years after the original publication of the book, and included in the 1962 Phoenix Books edition of the text published by the University of Chicago Press, page xi-xii:

But true liberalism is still distinct from conservatism, and there is a danger in the two being confused. Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic, and power-adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place. A conservative movement, by its very nature, is bound to be a defender of established privilege and to lean on the power of the government for the protection of privilege. The essence of the liberal position, however, is the denial of all privilege, if privilege is understood in its proper and original meaning of the state granting and protecting the rights to some which are not available on equal terms to others.

Those who would call themselves conservatives in America today, I believe, reflect much of what Hayek finds deplorable, dangerous, and backwards in conservatism. He would see the fanaticism of folks currently benefitting from government-run healthcare through Medicare opposing an expansion of such benefits to others as "defending established privilege" and their disruption of health care town hall meetings as an effort to "lean on the power of government for the protection of privilege." Hayek would see the movement among conservatives to establish a federal marriage amendment to the Constitution as another example of reactionaries seeking to "lean on the power of government for the protection of privilege" as anti-thetical to his arguments and as much a recipe for totalitarianism as left-leaning "socialist" policy would be. He would view the Patriot Act and the powers of the executive to claim the unchecked authority to monitor private phone conversations, for instance, even if this authority were never exercised, as very troublesome and against the entire grain of his argument. I remain firmly convinced that Hayek would not recognize the character of what passes for conservatism in the United States today and that he would think of such Palin/Limbaugh conservatives invoking his name to defend their demagoguery and exclusionary fundamentalism with abject horror.

Conservatives and Race

I've written about this before, but it's worth repeating again in the context of Gatesgate and this new poster making the rounds in the blogosphere that has Obama gussied up like Heath Ledger's joker.

I'll leave the whole Gates incident aside for the moment and speak just a little bit about the Obama-as-Joker poster. At a conservative blog I frequent to keep my pulse on what is riling the conservative blogosphere and punditocracy, I made a passing comment on this Obama-as-Joker poster that has stirred up all kinds of vitriol and animosity towards me. I think I was point-blank called a racist about a half dozen times, and sometimes for nothing more than being a liberal Democrat.

What did I say to get conservatives in such a tizzy? Well, in response to this conservative blogger's efforts to spread the poster out to the far corners of the country to undermine Obama as President, I wrote: "A black man in whiteface. Yeah, that'll do it. Just keep at it folks."

When the other commenters predictably started frothing at the mouth calling me a racist, I felt the need to explain that recognizing that this poster might stir up racial resentments linked to the history of race and the practice of black/white facepainting in an effort to demean another human being might not be the best way for conservatives to go about criticizing Obama. And then this discussion progressed, again, to the meaning of race in America. Of course, I argued, as I usually do, that race has meaning to cultural identity and that there's nothing wrong with that as long as that meaning isn't one that seeks to justify discrimination, oppression, and civil rights violations. But, many conservatives, whether through having become so gun-shy about being labeled racist, simply can't seem to recognize that race has meaning to cultural identity, even when they acknowledge such a thing implicitly. For instance, when conservatives speak about the "black" church and its alignment with conservative values on such social issues as gay marriage and the morality of homosexuality are ascribing some meaning to black identity that is distinct from that of other racial or ethnic communities.

For my part, I am readily willing to acknowledge that there is such a thing as black identity and that there is nothing inherently wrong with this. However, conservatives always pretend towards color-blindness and claim that race has no meaning at all in the public square. I think this is simply absurd. They simply cannot seem to grasp that discrimination in social policy on the basis of race is distinct from a shared racial cultural identity. The former is racism, the latter is simply a cultural identity marker much like gender, language, sexual orientation, regional association (i.e. Southern), religion, etc., are. For instance, as a Catholic, I can travel across the world and feel some kind of solidarity and companionship with other Catholics simply because we share this common identity and all that it means. There is nothing wrong or out of the ordinary in that. And so to suggest that the Obama-as-Joker poster, which paints a black man in whiteface, might have ramifications based on the history of race in this country, is nothing more than acknowledging that race has meaning in this country. But when conservatives can only respond to this suggestion with the claim that anyone who says as much is a racist, then I think it is fair to say that conservatives have become the race-obsessed people hurling charges of racism at the drop of a hat, people that they claim to detest, instead of the color-blind people that they would fashion themselves as being. But maybe I'm missing something myself in this whole subject; so if you have some thoughts on this, please enlighten me.

A Christian Nation

By Christopher Taylor**

Recently, while in Turkey, President Obama had this to say about America (courtesy Atlas Shrugs):

"We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. uh uh We consider ourselves uh uh a nation of US citizens"

All together now: ARRRRRRRRRRRGGHH!!

This is where I diverge not just from most conservatives, but many Christians as well. While awkward and silly, he's right in two senses.

First, he's speaking to an Islamic nation, albeit a fairly moderate one. Many, perhaps most Muslims around the world have been raised and taught that religion and government are one, that there is no "secular" portion of society, and that there's absolutely no separation, not even a distinction between church and state. The religious leaders in Muslim nations are government, they command and control everything in your life from what food you eat to where you travel to what taxes are levied. For these Muslims, the concept of a nation not ruled by a religion is alien and perhaps even inconceivable. President Obama wants these people to know - just like President Bush did before him - that America is not run by Christians the way Islamic nations are run by Muslims. That much is a fact. In the sense that Muslims understand church and state, America has not ever been a Christian nation.

Second, it is indisputable that the founding fathers and the bulk of this nation's history was heavily influenced by and seen through a Christian worldview. That much is simple history. However, we're beyond that point now and are post-Christian: the general worldview of the nation is decidedly not Christian. In many ways it is anti-Christ, as in "in the place of" Christ, rejecting the Gospel and the Bible and God not just as neutral but even for some pernicious and destructive.

So he's not entirely wrong here. Where he's wrong is that many, perhaps most people in America do think of the country as a Christian nation not only because of its heritage, but because the majority religion in the country is Christianity. He's wrong to say that we simply think of ourselves as "US citzens." But the gnashing of teeth over his statement about a Christian nation is simply foolish. The United States is not Christian. To whatever extent it ever seemed to be, we're not any longer.

We should remove "In God We Trust" from the money, we should remove "under God" from the pledge of allegiance, we should remove the Bible from oaths. To keep them in is a lie and hypocrisy. The US is under God, as are all nations, but the country doesn't recognize that, doesn't act like it, and rebels continually against it.

God have mercy on us.

**Christopher Taylor is a conservative blogger and will be contributing a conservative perspective at The Huck Upchuck on occasion.

Investment Advice in a Failing Economy

By Christopher_Taylor**

With the stock market plunging around the world and banks collapsing, many people are looking for a better place to put their money, a superior investment. I can give you one right now, a secret that only a handful of people have been able to take advantage of. With this investment scheme you will make not just double, not just triple, not even a hundred times as much back as you invest, but thousands, even tens of thousands. What is this scheme?

Buy a congressman.

“Remember that AIG’s largesse — $9,342,839 in individual, PAC, soft money and 527 contributions since the 1989 election cycle — is dwarfed by the $170 billion in support the firm has gotten. That’s $18,195 for every dollar contributed. It certainly seems like subsidizing the pols led to quite a good return, as it did for Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, General Motors and others.”

I've long been amazed at how much a company who contributes a few thousand dollars per person (there are specific limits on how much a person or company can legally donate to a politician in the US) gets back from their congressman in terms of earmarks and contracts. Donate a few grand, get back millions in federal funding. That's such a good deal, such a powerful investment, it is worth donating the thousands to every single guy you can. If only one of them wins and throws you back a fat contract or a bailout, you've made back the kind of money that even Hillary Clinton can only dream of, even with her astounding cattle futures investment.

What congressmen do is take care of their contributors, taking care of them to an absurd degree of benevolence, far beyond the benefit they've gotten from campaign contributions. But wait, it doesn't stop there. Remember the campaign, how desperately the legacy media sold out any semblance of credibility, objectivity, and reliability to get their guys elected? I suggested that some believe that was out of a hope that they'd be saved through this effort and was mocked by a commenter for saying such a thing. Senator Cardin (D-MD) thinks otherwise:

“With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.

‘This may not be the optimal choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains but it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat,’said Senator Benjamin Cardin.

A Cardin spokesman said the bill had yet to attract any co-sponsors, but had sparked plenty of interest within the media, which has seen plunging revenues and many journalist layoffs.

Cardin's Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies.”

What is the one force in a free market that can save a largely obsolete, fading and disliked industry? Government intervention. Yet, as Dan Reihl snarks:

“Congress can't make newspapers non-profit. For most practical purposes, they already are.”

This would allow newspapers to continue, being treated as non profits for "educational" purposes without needing to actually generate a profit. It would prop up the businesses even if they lose customers and cannot show an actual earning to investors and their board members. The bill wouldn't actually save newspapers, it would just allow them to continue dying slowly rather than collapsing abruptly like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. People would continue to move away from newspapers for their information, advertisers would continue to abandon the papers for other media, but the papers could technically limp along longer. And for a while, their influence - already overemphasized by a small group of influential people in the country - could continue.

Having problems figuring out where to put your money? The only sector in the world that thrived in the great depression was the federal government. Get yourself a congressman and you'll see amazing returns on your investment. Until the economy totally collapses, at least.

**Christopher Taylor is a conservative blogger and will be contributing a conservative perspective at The Huck Upchuck on occasion.