I spend a lot of time trying to understand how conservatives think, not just the crazy ones and the Straussians, but also the more reasonable ones. ED has written a very good piece describing his own politics; I would describe them as conservative, but too rational and logical to be conservative in the modern sense.
I can summarize it quickly (it’s long): yes to liberal emphasis on facts and reason, no to liberal “grad school elites” (this part is strangely hostile), and a lot of reverence for the magic of local control (I don’t mean “magic” in a demeaning way here). I can’t get with this kind of conservatism, because I’m just not into the magic of anything (though I think it’s fine that others are) and I dislike the level of anti-intellectualism, but it isn’t everyday that I read a conservative perspective that I can more or less respect.
There is one other thing I would add: ED and others speak of not being able to “find a home” on the left. Speaking as a lifelong liberal, I can say with near certainty that there is no such thing as a “home on the left”. That’s just not how the ethos of modern liberalism works. Many conservatives believe they are engaged in some great collective mystical Reaganian/Straussian/C.S. Lewisian quest; they see themselves as brothers and fellow warriors and all that. Liberals mostly like to argue with each other about the public option and the size of the stimulus and so on. The only thing that unites us is our fear of modern conservatism.
gil mann
And that doesn’t even unite us with Democrats.
aimai
Not to make this personal to ED but I sense that “a home” to ED would be a place where he was praised for his insights and his virtue. But ED’s own intellectual application is, to put it mildly, lacking and his virtues, such as they are, are extremely conservative ones. He’s not a giver, and he’s not a thinker, and he’s not a researcher. So if he’s coming to the left, or Balloon Juice for that matter, to have some father or mother figure exclaim “Ain’t he the beatenest?” Its just not going to happen. Its not because of his politics so much as his shallowness. He makes incredibly weak arguments for good positions, and even weaker arguments for bad ones, and then looks around hoping that people will agree with him. Alas, we’ve heard both the bad arguments and the worse ones before. Who needs a pale shadow of something better?
aimai
gnomedad
This lack of definition gives the right a blank canvas on which to paint any straw men and demons they wish.
alwhite
No, I think “magic” is exactly right word. The local Rush wannabe has an editorial in this mornings paper explaining why we all went wrong when we started moving away from states rights. To call his thinking magical is an insult to Houdini. You see the same thing from ED all the time:
“THEN A MIRACLE HAPPENS”
is always part of how the modern conservative method makes everything better. In the face of real world evidence and common sense they insist there is magic in their philosophy.
Chyron HR
Home on the Left? Isn’t that the song where the burglar gets attacked by ghosts?
geg6
I think you have a good description of liberalism, but only half right. The other thing liberals all agree on is that we want all Americans to get equal opportunity, to live productive lives without fear of sudden economic devastation due to no safety net, and for people to have freedom to live their lives as they choose as long as they don’t hurt others in the process. The common good is an important value, even though we disagree about exactly how to achieve it. Facts and knowledge are important and honored and magical thinking is fine in your personal life but has no place in public life. No conservative or libertarian can agree with any of that. If they claim they do, then they are liberals regardless of what they call themselves. I watched a fine example of exactly that on Real Time this weekend. David Stockman, a former personal bogeyman, is now a raving liberal, perhaps in some ways more liberal than I am. It was an amazing thing to see, even though I was already aware of his most recent writings criticizing today’s GOP. I had to keep rubbing my eyes to see if I was really seeing what I saw.
Alexandra
“fear of modern conservatism”? Disgust, more like.
Joey Maloney
“THEN A MIRACLE HAPPENS” is the essential step in way, way, way too much of mainstream political thought. I heard President Obama tell us just yesterday that international “open markets” are the key to job creation. O RLY? How does that work, exactly?
scav
well, if one’s expectation of a home is all Gemütlichkeit and sunshine and muted admiration, it’s not going to be found in an environment that takes thought seriously. In all honesty, in an environment that takes thought seriously, there shouldn’t be a lot of abject surrender to any grad school member either: they should have to fight for their peanuts with the rest of the gallery. One would just hope (pious thought) they’d be slightly better armed.
Superking
I completely agree about “finding a home on the left.” There are plenty of liberals I just can’t get with at all. If you call yourself a locavore, or do yoga, or drive a Prius, we’re probably not going to hang out.
Ija
Even if ED is conflicted, I don’t really understand why someone wouldn’t prefer “bland rationalism” and “wonkish rigor” over “reactionary”.
AhabTRuler
@aimai: You said it better and more decently than I would have, but THIS.
greennotGreen
I don’t think the only thing that unites the left “is our fear of modern conservatism.” Don’t all of us also believe that government’s role is to carry out the will of the people which we think is a progression toward a healthier, more peaceful, sustainable civilization? Conservatives, I believe, think such a goal is either unattainable or is best achieved via the private sector.
Calouste
The man is a self-described libertarian. Libertarians might sounds rational and logical, but that’s only because they don’t completely throw the rules of reason and logic out of the window like movement conservatives do. The premises from which they reason however are completely contradicted by hundreds, if not thousands, of years of human experience. The emphasis on facts is only there when the facts fit the message.
Ija
@aimai:
This.
Joy
In my experience, conservatives only believe in “local control” when the locals do things they way they (conservatives) think they should be done. I’m in Tucson, and here anytime the city of Tucson or Pima county attempts to do anything remotely progressive, the state legislature overrides the local effort. That’s been going on for years.
jTh
I think too that liberals are united by concern for the suffering of others, as if that suffering is never something to be indifferent about.
Omnes Omnibus
DougJ, you aren’t kidding about the anti-intellectualism. I would say it goes farther than simple anti-intellectualism though. Kain seems to be exhibiting something that emanates from the right, an anti-expertise attitude. It takes the idea that all people are equal (an idea that I accept insofar as it means that equality before the law and being due equal treatment form others) and blows it up beyond recognition. Expertise exists. A lawyer knows more about the law that the majority of laymen. A mathematician knows more about mathematics. A plumber knows more about his field. This does not make them better people; it does not make them correct when they speak in their area of expertise. It does, however, mean that when they speak on their area of expertise that they might just be worth a listen.
Edited to fix spelling error
AhabTRuler
Also, DougJ, you forgot the Blogospheric Navel-gazing tag, again.
Violet
@Superking:
Seriously? That’s pretty shallow. I know someone whose doctor prescribed yoga for him for a back problem. He’s a classic teabagger type, but does yoga twice a week every week because it keeps his back problems under control. Judging people by whether or not they “do yoga” seems kind of ridiculous.
@geg6:
This. Conservatives get dragged kicking and screaming into letting everyone have an equal shot. Every single time they’re on the wrong side of history.
scav
@Superking:
And yet you can probably sit down to a Turkey dinner with them once a year at least and be perfectly polite, pass them the Tofurkey drumstick, and possibly not even dread the event. There’s this whole unexplored region of human behavior between mild-meld and cannibalism.
Shinobi
You don’t find a home on the left you make it.
Also, I have to disagree about magical thinking being okay in almost any context. Things in life don’t just “work out” any more than they do in politics or our economy. Maybe sometimes a comforting delusion is fine but I know several miserable people who thought that way. Making like or the economy or anything work requires undestanding and hard work.
People who expect miracles are expecting someone else to do the work for them.
gnomedad
Every so often I try to come up with non-pejorative (and possibly, I admit, ahistorical) definitions of liberalism and conservatism that the non-insane on both sides might agree on. It seems easier for conservatism: regard for tradition, caution about “new ideas”, and wariness of government power. Liberalism recognizes that private power is also dangerous, supports individual freedom over “tradition”, and is generally more willing to use government as a guarantor of individual rights. Anyone have better ideas?
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yep. And you know that when conservatives or teabaggers need a lawyer or a plumber they’ll damn well hire one. Because they know what you say is true too, no matter how much they try to tell everyone else it isn’t. They’re known by their hypocrisy.
MonkeyBoy
DougJ sez:
I can actually understand part of this hostility.
Once on the beach in LA, my wife and I were recruited to be in a test audience for a TV pilot. After watching it we were then recruited to be in a focus-group to discuss reactions to the pilot.
Us two, being veterans of graduate student seminars, treated the focus group as just another seminar and wound up getting everybody to agree with our opinion on the pilot. The other focus-group members did not have such training and later may have felt that we steamrollered them.
va
You’re too kind, DougJ. I wrote at LoOG:
Those are the watchwords of his politics, and they’re just vacuous. What can you say about a person like that? (What aimai said.)
Corpsicle
@Superking: What’s with the yoga hate? Then again, hate on, more classes where I am the only man surrounded by beautiful women of all ages in awesome physical condition.
Cat Lady
@geg6:
I had the same experience watching David Stockman. It was disorienting – I think he briefly mentioned he was a “lapsed” Republican or something off hand like that. He still holds some conservative ideas, but they’re conservative in the true sense of the word and based in reality.
guster
I disagree with him completely. Apparently he embraces “a liberalism that emphasizes autonomy and voluntary association, civil society and local empowerment over the unwieldy central state apparatus and its corporate favoritism.”
Not me. I embrace a liberalism that emphasizes the unwieldy central state apparatus and its corporate favoritism.
He’s right about one thing: he’s a romantic. Nobody’s perfect, so he’s going on his dreamy way with clean hands.
burnspbesq
Watching Republicans operate like a parliamentary party and Democrats continue to be uniquely skilled at organizing circular firing squads (at least uniquely for the moment, although the Tea Party movement seems to be emulating the Dems in this respect), I get the idea that the sport that most resembles the right is football, while the sport that most resembles the left is triathlon (where the most elementary form of cooperation, i.e., drafting, is forbidden).
There seems to be no consensus among those who self-describe as left of center, either on what the left-of-center agenda is or what it should be. There also seems to be little willingness to sublimate small-group goals to larger-group goals. Meanwhile, elements on the right that have different agendas are willing to cooperate in order to gain power, with the idea that once they have power, everybody will get what they want.
The other sporting analogy that comes to mind (which is imperfect but still instructive): lefties play for the name on the back of the jersey, while righties play for the name on the front of the jersey. And those of us who play or watch team sports know how that one usually turns out.
Ija
@va:
I’m sure it’s supposed to evoke the specter of central planning, Soviet Union and communism.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corpsicle: I am scared of yoga. No hate here. I am pretty sure that if I try it I will tear something irreparably.
Linda Featheringill
Interesting topic.
Poor ED, who is playing the role of our neighborhood conservative and therefore must carry all weight of that point of view. My sympathies.
However . . . .
First, let me say I miss the Republican Party. I miss reading reasoned arguments for solutions I might disagree with for problems I am concerned about. It is good to have another point of view.
And what problems am I concerned about? Those facing us today and promise to challenge us in the foreseeable future. Some issues have been dealt with. Let’s put them to rest and move on. The US is a union, a nation. That question should have been settled by the Civil War. If you want to live in a confederation of territories, move to Canada. I understand it’s quite nice there. If you don’t like abortion, put your money and time where your mouth is and work to provide alternatives. Then move on.
I have yet to find the thoughtful commentary about the conservative take on how we should deal with rising sea levels, with diminishing fish stocks, with increasing desertification of farmlands, and with global deterioration of fresh water supplies. These are things we humans are going to have to deal with.
To put it another way: I don’t care who hauls away your bloody trash. I would like see a plan for maintaining high food production without causing dead zones in the oceans.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
First I wish someone would define “liberal grad school elites.”
Are these people who received a post-graduate degree who happen to be liberal, or does the receipt of a post-grad degree automatically besmirch the MD, Ph.d, MA, or JD with liberal cooties?
And what about the elite thing? Does this include the guy with the Ph.D. in philosophy who drives a cab for a living and the woman with a Masters in Library Sciences, or are we only talking doctors and lawyers?
Oh wait, I forgot. It’s just another one of those phrases the Cons bark out to scare each other. Never mind.
Linda Featheringill
@Superking:
But perhaps we can agree to cooperate on certain specific issues?
burnspbesq
@gnomedad:
That’s a pretty good description of classical conservative thought. Alas, Burke and Oakeshott are no more relevant in mainstream American right thought than Ornette Coleman or Telly Savalas.
PeakVT
Liberals mostly like to argue with each other about the public option and the size of the stimulus and so on.
I think liberals mostly like to argue about what can and can’t be done, and when the is appropriate time to compromise.
Also, too: localism and local control is nice, but local governments (which I think implicitly means small local governments when conservatives talk about it, not local governments like the City of New York or Fairfax County, VA) just don’t have the ability to control large multinational entities. Nor do they have the wherewithal to put men on the Moon, fund research into new cancer drugs, etc. Local control is nice where can work, but it just can’t work for a whole lot of things in a modern industrial society.
Pongo
I think the notion of a ‘home’ is the very core of what separates liberals from conservatives. Woody Guthrie famously said ‘I don’t belong to any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.’ That flexibility of viewpoint and comfort with not having a rigid ideology is a fundamental difference in world view between the left and the right.
It really boils down to whether you can be comfortable accepting the the world is a messy, fluid place and with having to navigate it using your own reasoning ability or whether you are more comfortable with an authoritarian environment where the world is black and white, there is only one right way to see things and you don’t need to rely on your own perspective because some paternalistic system will establish your priorities for you and thereby create a safe home.
Of course, this generalizing, but it does seem that an (unrealistic, in my view) desire to have a perfectly ordered, controlled world characterizes much of conservative ideology. It is also why they are often incapable of admitting error or even considering that their perspective may be wrong. To do so would create cognitive dissonance.
Pongo
I think the notion of a ‘home’ is the very core of what separates liberals from conservatives. Woody Guthrie famously said ‘I don’t belong to any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.’ That flexibility of viewpoint and comfort with not having a rigid ideology is a fundamental difference in world view between the left and the right.
It really boils down to whether you can be comfortable accepting the the world is a messy, fluid place and with having to navigate it using your own reasoning ability or whether you are more comfortable with an authoritarian environment where the world is black and white, there is only one right way to see things and you don’t need to rely on your own perspective because some paternalistic system will establish your priorities for you and thereby create a safe home.
Of course, this generalizing, but it does seem that an (unrealistic, in my view) desire to have a perfectly ordered, controlled world characterizes much of conservative ideology. It is also why they are often incapable of admitting error or even considering that their perspective may be wrong. To do so would create cognitive dissonance.
Ash Can
@aimai: I disagree with much of what he says, but I can’t caricature him like this. Of all the people with whom we as a group take issue here — trolls, pundits, politicians, assorted miscreants — he’s the one who engages with us on a regular basis. He presents arguments that we disagree with, and that we take apart accordingly, but he does so at length, in detail, and lucidly. And he keeps coming back here. I can respect that much.
If it looks like I’m setting the bar pretty low here, I suppose that’s what I’m doing. But considering where conservatives/libertarians/right-wingers have already set the bar themselves, Kain unquestionably gains by comparison.
ETA: Edited to fix typing-before-coffee grammatical problems.
fasteddie9318
Odd how the conservative movement wants to insist on a false equality of expertise and knowledge, but will also insist that if you’re not a Galtian titan, you should be hunted for sport by those who are. Not very egalitarian, that.
Kirk Spencer
I think if I were to describe liberalism simply, I would say that at heart it holds two principles dear. First, that all people should be allowed to be as individually great as they can. Second, that the future, not the past, holds the golden days for which we strive.
Parsing the first principle gets us past straw man attacks. The adjective _all_ is critical. Inevitably the individualism of one will hamper the individual of another, and so we must balance these cases. A cliche sums the obvious balance well: your right to swing your fist ends before it hits my nose. More subtle is that we may have to sacrifice a bit to ensure _all_ people have the opportunity for greatness. So if you’re doing extremely well you should provide so overwhelming burdens on others are minimized if not eliminated.
Second straw man: not communism. Sokialism, yes, but properly described and not turned into a boogieman. We shall provide a floor beneath which none shall fall, and we shall ensure no man shall impose an artificial ceiling on another.
Liberals. We believe in a better future for all.
TR
You raise an interesting point, Doug.
For all of the talk coming from conservatives about how they are the true defenders of individual rights, how they are the Galtian giants who succeed on their own merits and can ride off into the sunset alone if they are not worshiped as gods, when you come right down to it, most conservatives are nothing of the kind.
More than anything else, they think in terms of their tribe, burying their own identity in a larger conservative one. There’s a reason Limbaugh’s fans call themselves Dittoheads, or why Beck’s followers rallied together as the “Tea Party,” or why conservative bloggers selected “Red State,” and on and on. They need validation of their ideas from others, not every now and then, but constantly. They have to be on a team, and it has to be winning. They’re the ultimate in bandwagon fans.
But liberals? For all the claims about how we’re engaged in a collectivist, commie dictatorship regime, we can’t agree on a single damn thing. There’s a reason the most prominent metaphor for the left is “circular firing squad,” and there’s a reason for Democrats it’s “herding cats.”
For as much as liberals don’t make a fetish out of individualism, we sure as hell act like individualists. Much to the detriment of our politics.
Conservatives have a herd mentality in order to advance a politics predicated on individualism. It’s bizarre, but it works.
Ija
I’m not sure who is more annoying, ED Kain with his whine about not finding a home on the left, or Freddie de Boer about how there are no real leftist on the blogosphere. It’s like they both expect people to lie down and bow to the superiority of their principles or something. If you want your ideas to be the ones dominant in the movement, fight for it. No one is going to hand anything to you just because you think you have the bestest, awesomest ideas in the world.
Baud
I honestly think this is why liberals poll far lower are than conservatives, rather than the substance of either sides ideas or policies. Most people who don’t follow politics see a real community on the right but not much of one on the left.
TR
@Kirk Spencer:
Conservatives. I got mine, fuck you.
Corpsicle
@Omnes Omnibus: If you find a decent teacher it is pretty safe. I started 3 years ago at 39, ended up getting my teaching qualification, without any injuries that took more than a week or two to heal. And I’m a clumsy dumbass who tries too hard.
aimai
@Pongo:
Not woody gutherie, who probably wasn’t a democrat at all, but Will Rogers.
aimai
Kirk Spencer
In fairness and in balance to the previous posts, I have an analogy that describes the worth of conservatives.
On the ship of state, liberals are the sails and conservatives are the keel.
The conservative holding with the past prevents being blown about by the winds of fate – or at least keeps it under control and allows us to more-or-less get where we want to get. A well designed and functioning keel actually lets the ship use the sails to move against contrary winds.
FoxinSocks
We’re also united by our love of posting adorable dog and kitty photos.
Violet
@Linda Featheringill:
Thoughtful conservative take:
Rising sea levels: Sea levels aren’t rising. I went to the beach last summer and the water hadn’t got any closer to the hotel. Ergo, sea levels not rising.
Diminishing fish stocks: There are plenty of fish. I had fish for dinner last night. Plus we can farm fish. Ergo, no diminishing fish stocks.
Desertification of farmlands: The dustbowl was long ago and not a normal thing to happen. Ergo it won’t happen again.
Water supplies: Water runs fine from my faucet and my grass is green. There’s no water problem.
Omnes Omnibus
@Pongo: Pedantry alert: Will Rogers, not Woody Guthrie.
I think that you are right about the willingness to tolerate ambiguity and accept messy solutions as a marker for a left/right division. During my first year in law school (anecdote, not data), I found that the majority of students who want AN ANSWER to every question, who could not accept that some are unresolved or unable to be resolved, were almost inevitably on the right politically.
PeakVT
@Pongo: It was Will Rodgers, not Woodie Guthrie, who authored that quote.
ETA: Rodgers was a gold mine of quotes like that.
Kirk Spencer
@TR: Not all of them, not all of the time. For a loud and significant minority yes, but again not all.
It is that which gives me hope.
Baud
@FoxinSocks: I don’t visit conservative blogs. Do they not do this? How sad.
aimai
@Ash Can:
It wasn’t a caricature, actually–I see his coming back and back again as a sign of his neediness and also his unwillingness to relinquish his “special” status as a self selected interlocutor (an “ombudsman” if you will). Kain’s willingness to come talk in the comments, which I admire, is not balanced by any real attempt to *listen* to the comments or deal with the ways they consistently undermine his basic premises.
In academia you often meet people like this–they have a degree in one subject but dabble in another. To lawyers they play at being economists and to economists they play at being lawyers, for example. This leads them to never have to take full responsibility for any of their ideas with subject matter experts. They tend to co-author papers with people outside their area of expertise and make claims that people who really know their field can identify as tendentious or outright lies.
aimai
fasteddie9318
@TR: Another important difference–liberals want to increase the pie so everyone gets a slice, while conservatives act like we’re all in Lord of the Flies.
aimai
@Kirk Spencer:
No, not the keel, which would be a link to fundamental first principles and balance but the anchor, tossed overboard and dragging along the ocean floor, back to our former port.
aimai
JGabriel
DougJ:
That and a general sort of progressivism leading to a more perfect union, as the founders put it.
We agree on a lot of the same goals: universal education and health care as a right; expanding the franchise of people to whom rights apply (in the past 220 years, we’ve added men without property, blacks, women, we’re working on gays); increasing the size, purchasing power, and standard of living for the middle class (i.e., support for labor); increasing access and opportunity for all classes to the privileges enjoyed by the wealthy; etc.
What we mostly argue about is how to get there, and whether we can do it quickly or if a more incrementalist approach is necessary.
.
geg6
@burnspbesq:
You are right about this. But I could not disagree more with your description of liberals. Perhaps it’s your conservative left of center persona here that makes you see it that way, but my experience in working with and among liberal groups is the exact opposite of your description. Nobody gives a shit about football analogies or getting glory for themselves. It’s about doing for others and giving everyone a hand up, the whole “team,” if you will, liberals and moderates and conservatives alike. IMHO, you have it exactly backwards. Conservatives are all about the name on the back of the jersey and liberals would like only one name on the front, one that includes all Americans.
Davis X. Machina
Liberals, in the best sense, have to argue with each other.
Russell said it best a hundred years ago: “The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.”
p.a.
@Omnes Omnibus:
They’re against expertise when it tells them something they don’t want to hear. Let their doctor find a shadow on an xray and they don’t go running to faith healers; they’re not anti-expert then. (Well, the educated ones at least don’t go to faith healers.)
Omnes Omnibus
@JGabriel:
Yep.
ETA: FYWP for the blockquote fail. Isn’t it still two underscores between paragraphs?
DougJ DougJson
@AhabTRuler:
I dont see this one so much that way.
jomo
Sorry – I don’t think of ED as being the other half. He voted for Obama – he’s reasonable. He listens to the arguments of others. If the house caucus was filled with Republicans like him -i wouldn’t fear that all parks, train lines, social programs and arts were going to be gutted. I understand that he doesn’t feel that he has a home on the right. Cut the guy some slack on the left
Svensker
@Linda Featheringill:
Those things don’t exist so why should there be a “conservative take” on liberal fantasies? Or at least that’s what my brother tells me.
Ash Can
@aimai: Fair enough, but I see his coming back here more as a function of his relationship with John than a search for validation from us hoi-polloi. After all, he already has a well-established “home” at LoOG; why should he bother with this joint?
Raenelle
My one sentence definition of the difference between liberals and conservatives:
Liberals identify down and resent up; conservatives identify up and resent down.
Linda Featheringill
@Violet:
#51.
Conservative thinking:
Alas, I agree with you.
Omnes Omnibus
@p.a.: No, they will complain about trial lawyers and argue that the Constitution means what they say it does even as a lawyer points to language in the document and a herd of Supreme Court cases going the other way, but, if they are in a car accident, they are just as likely to be in a lawyer’s office as anyone else.
Baud
@Davis X. Machina: Maybe liberals do have to argue with each other, but they also have to come together sometimes if they actually want to govern. That’s where conservatives have tended to outshine liberals (at least in recent history).
Violet
@aimai:
I’m not sure that’s totally true. In a recent post from him (perhaps his latest, I’m not sure) he said:
He also said:
I think that pretty clearly shows he listened to what people said in the comments, admitted he was wrong, and actually changed his position somewhat.
justawriter
Speak for yourself. I had a perfectly comfortable home on the left and then somehow Joe Lieberman and Lanny Davis were allowed to take over the Homeowners Association and suddenly red paint was no longer allowed, diverse lawns had to be replaced with bluegrass and “quiet time” has been expanded to 24 hours a day.
aimai
@p.a.:
I don’t agree. There has long been a very strong strain of anti-medicine/anti intellectualism/anti elite thought in the US going way, way, back. Patent medicines, miracle foods, faith healing? These are old. Jenny McCarthy and the whole anti vax crowd are one of the weird places where right wing/christian/faith healing anxiety about modern medicine meets granola/left wing/anti corporatist hysteria about medicine.
aimai
TR
@fasteddie9318:
True. And if the pie is increased so everyone gets a slice, liberals are fine with that while conservatives are seething inside that someone at the table just doesn’t deserve that slice.
Their bellies can be as full as they can get, but goddammit, if someone else is being fed who didn’t earn it (as they think they did, and only they did), then the pie tastes like ashes to them.
Kirk Spencer
@aimai: No, the keel. You are tarring a whole with the brush of a small group. That group has become significant but it is not all of them.
Look how often liberals are tarred with the anti-military trope, just for an example. I can drop jaws by doing one of my sincere liberal presentations and then prove I’m an army veteran — with friends and family still serving. Think for a moment about the DFH label and how if taken literally it applies to a very tiny portion of the liberals we know.
If you dehumanize them, painting them all as evil neo-feudalists, you lose those who are not. Give them an avenue to escape.
Think of it, if you will, as the same principle as good interrogations. Yeah, we can slam and hurt and torture. But be sympathetic, preferably honestly sympathetic, and for the vast majority the benefits are huge.
burnspbesq
It’s actually quite simple. Liberals’ favorite Temptations song is “Ball of Confusion.” Conservatives’ favorite Temptations song is “My Girl” (the first two words of which are “I got”).
RSA
E.D. Kain quoting Sam Smith:
This is more of the “strangely hostile” bit. I don’t get it. Wrong decisions can produce failures, but being obsessed with data and so forth doesn’t fail empirically, in general. It can’t–it’s just an approach to dealing with problems. And what’s the alternative? Ignoring data, not doing assessments or testing? (This does seeem characteristic of some libertarian thinking.) It strikes me that this complaint is more about Obama’s style than anything else.
AhabTRuler
@DougJ DougJson: Sometimes it can be hard to judge from inside ones own navel, but trust me this qualifies.
cyd
There’s plenty of anti-intellectualism on the left. For every Paul Krugman, you have someone like Matt Tabibi.
Jamey
To me it’s as simple as this: Mainstream Conservatives will do things just to make Liberals angry (“Hippie Punching”), even if it ends up hurting millions of people and discrediting Conservatism. (Although I should add that it’s unpossible to discredit Conservatism, since only the actions of imperfect believers are to blame when Conservative principles run afoul of reality…) Case in point, the Palinesque instinct to double-down on stupid when something like Tuscon happens. Or the millions of Joe the Plumbers who’ll vote against their interests because they think man-on-man buttsecks is icky.
I don’t see any of that spitefulness animating mainstream Liberalism.
WereBear
I think tribalism is a core concept for modern conservatives; look at the way ED wants to keep his hands on the tiller of power; cloaked in local control. They don’t want some big abstract thing over there running stuff; they want to do things themselves.
In one way this is rugged individualism, as American as getting paid in beer, but in another way this is just as sensible as a toddler screaming do it myself! as they struggle with zippers and boots on a rushed morning… and it’s just about as welcome.
It might be nice if we all lived in Norman Rockwell villages where everyone gets together and decides what color to paint the post office, but I actually prefer living in a world with the Internet and iPods and arthroscopic surgery, and the Rockwell Village concept don’t get that done.
So conservatives should just grow up; after all, they suck up the tech and the medical. They should admit what it takes to get there, instead of screaming and pouting like the babies they are.
aimai
@Kirk Spencer:
Kirk, I really think you are wrong on that one. Not because I’m painting with a broad brush but because conservative thought in this country goes way back to the Tories who fought against the revolution itself. I’m currently reading Albion’s Seed and to read about the Virginia settlers, an aristocracy with a rooted hatred for novelty and for progress of all kinds, is quite an eye opener. I, too, remember the Republicans of my youth fondly. But that breed is deader than a dodo. Liberalism didn’t kill it–those elderly men and women of high principle and clear values either joined the democratic party or were forced to the side lines by the new radical right.
aimai
Ija
@Raenelle:
Ehh. That just validates their claim that liberals want to wage a class war against the rich. It’s not that we resent that you’re rich, we resent the unfair way you become rich.
MonkeyBoy
DougJ sez:
I think this points to a major psychological difference between conservatives and liberals. In literal terms, your home is where your family lives, and your family deserves loyalty and support above that which you would give to strangers.
Studies involving Jonathan Haidt’s 5 dimensional morality analysis find that Conservatives value the moral dimension of “in-group loyality / out-group hostility” much higher than Liberals do.
So for Conservatives, “finding a political home” means finding a clearly delineated “us” that is opposed to “them”.
I’ve actually had Conservatives assume when I support Gay or Black rights that I must be Black or Gay. And then when they find out I’m not being branded as crazy because I’m supporting something not directly in my self-interest.
El Cid
You can certainly argue that politicians and policymakers on the local level have less power than certain federal people of the same.
But they often affect the lives of people and their business fortunes most directly — such as ‘development’ continual enlargement and zoning decisions, as well as local resources and aid.
And anyone who thinks that therefore the local level is more democratic and open to input forgets how utterly petty and cliquish and vindictive and bought off local policymakers and politicians can be.
Cellular authoritarianism can be in many ways weaker than the most intense of federal power, but it doesn’t make it more democratic.
Llelldorin
@PeakVT:
I think the focus on compromise among liberals goes a bit deeper–liberals haven’t really believed that there exists an “ideal liberal world” that can be implemented for at least the last 40 years. We see our ideals as something to be asymptotically approached–we want to make health care “fairer”, not “fair.” We want to “reduce” suffering, not “end” it. We move by perturbation of the existing system. This reduces the revolutionary fervor on our side, since we get into constant arguments over whether any particular step is too big a jump.
An awful lot of conservatives really, genuinely believe that–despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary–if their policies were implemented wholesale the country would be perfected. They’re the conservative mirror of 1960s-era liberal utopians.
Svensker
@cyd:
I’ve never thought of Matt Taibbi as anti-intellectual. Explain?
aimai
@El Cid:
Take voting rights and sundown towns, for instance. The whole reason we needed federal intervention in voting and in residence law was because the local level is entirely run by majority rule when the majority is one color and the minority is another, or when money talks and worker’s walk. How this drops out of the language of local control is beyond me–especially when the right wing is so frantically anti its own elected officials and school board members whenever they turn out to be too liberal, or too corrupt in an obvious way. Just look at the anti government types in MA–they are all anti government specifically because they believe that the democratically elected government gives preferential treatment to gays and minorities. Well, that’s local control for ya. When gays and minorities vote they are going to get to call the shots. Then the only correction is a federal government that intervenes on behalf of white, conservative, property owners (corporations) or armed revolution from below (militias) followed by an attempt to defenestrate non white, gay, or female voters. Oddly enough this is *exactly* the cry of the modern religious right.
aimai
morzer
But these are the very things that Kain’s whole confession of faith rejects. He rails against those who, like Obama, believe in data, empiricism etc. Kain’s views are, at their core, a mistily romantic, nostalgic belief in a variety of myths – fantasy scenes along the line of the Lord of the Rings (in itself, in many ways, an exercise in nostalgia for a lost/forgotten/threatened world), but without Tolkien’s tough-mindedness about how nasty, petty, and downright hateful human beings can be. Consider how Kain denounces technocrats – and yet can offer nothing better than a vague advocacy of local control. Kain doesn’t quite give you visions of happy peasants dancing around maypoles once the dragon of government control has been slain by virtuous local shamans – but he’s pretty close to it, once you strip away the fuzzy logic. To me, it’s telling that Kain cites fiction at key points as his inspiration. I like the Wind in the Willows and the Lord of the Rings immensely, but I don’t see them as guides to how one can live in modern America, and I don’t believe anyone can make them work that way without heaping spoonfuls of allegory and special pleading. How does Kain propose that we deal with the affairs of 308 million people? By reading about how reckless driving and conceit lead one to the necessity of escaping from custody disguised as a washerwoman? Or should we all retreat to nice, warm hobbit holes, doubtless equipped with nice round doors, and wait for Gandalf to come by with fireworks? The point about his chosen sources of faith is that they never do confront the grind of government, the difficulty of reconciling different groups in the polity and assigning resources to tasks. Either you have virtuous kings who somehow magically never talk about taxes, and whose roads were built by safely dead ancestors, or you have hobbits bumbling along grassy paths without shoes on. No Civil Rights issues, no immigration issues,no cartels or monopolies, just mythical, coherent communities magically fixing things and getting along once the baddies have been driven off. Where in all of this is there a willingness to deal with the world and its human complexities, rather than retreating to a belief in happy villages doing their own thing when the Orcs/weasels go away? Where in all of this is there even democracy, rather than a nostalgically imagined feudal order?
Rick Taylor
@gnomedad:
__
These all seem like positive values to me. Not that they should automatically trump all other values, but they should taken into account.
__
But this doesn’t seem to have very much to do with modern conservatism in America as popularly understood. Caution about “new ideas”? We need to eliminate regulation so the financial sector can create fantastic new financial instruments. They don’t even respecting our system of keeping track of property titles. No need to respect the alliances we’ve forged over the years, we can go and invade Iraq and the rest of the world will come around and beg to be allowed to take part afterward. We could do with a few more conservatives, of the type you’re describing.
p.a.
I can’t speak at all to the intellectual conservatism discussed by Sully- I have read some Burke and Schumpeter (long ago) and do not remember finding them ‘beyond the pale’. But modern American conservatism, in order to win votes, taps into an existential dread in its supporters. They seem to be scared of everything that is ‘not them’, whether it is skin pigment, religious belief (or lack thereof), educational history, accent/language… they are scared of EVERYTHING.
Liberals, on the other hand, basically fear concentrated economic power and its ability to subvert even democratic political processes. But the result is an openness to difference to allow ordinary people to attempt to control and alleviate.
Since I’m a
liberalprogressiveunAmerican radical I may have too Panglossian an opinion of liberalism, but there you are.WereBear
@aimai: Durn you aimai, I just bought another book through John’s Amazon link.
You’re always doing that to me :)
Carnacki
I would argue that what unites liberals in this country is the hope of an America that could be where as conservatives covet the past of an America that never existed.
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear: Albion’s Seed is interesting in that one really can see patterns of thought and behavior throughout the country closely aligning with those of the four groups of English immigrants.
Rick Taylor
It’s a good point about not finding a home on the left. I don’t really feel like a liberal. I respect science, and believe we should be working collectively to respond to our understanding of how climate change works. I think it’s a really really really bad idea to start a war unless it’s the only option, and I thought the Iraq war was insane. While the market is great at allocating some resources, it’s not magic, and it does badly with others; particularly health care. Just compare our health care system with most other industrialized countries.
__
None of this feels liberal to me, it just feels like I’m trying to make sense of things, and coming to some obvious conclusions. And yet it all puts me at far left end of the spectrum.
morzer
I might be wrong, but I thought we liked arguing about how many points the Steelers and Packers were going to win by today, while united by our fear of Rex Ryan trampling the opposition underfoot.
JGabriel
Sam Smith via E.D. Kain via RSA:
Mr. Smith, I don’t think empirical means what you think it means.
Data, assessment, tests — these are the tools of empiricism. Wikipedia:
Sigh.
.
Currants
@geg6: THIS:
Omnes Omnibus
@Rick Taylor:
To me, these things seem quintessentially liberal. Part of the problem might be that the word liberal has been vilified for the past 30-40 years. I have never bought into that. The people I admire from the past were liberals. I think their goals are ones we should still be pursuing; therefore, I see no reason not to identify as liberal.
WereBear
@Omnes Omnibus: Looking forward to it.
@Rick Taylor: True. The problem with conservatives is that they aren’t conservative! Liberals want to do more of what has worked before; opening up education and opportunity to more and more people has always benefited the nation as a whole.
Modern conservatives are ready to implement their fascist utopia primarily at the point of a gun; that’s really really radical. Just because no one in power has the guts to call it that makes no difference.
aimai
@WereBear:
WereBear! I hope you like it. I’m enjoying it although I liked the part about the Puritans–my adopted ancestors–better than the gol-durned virginians (!) I’m interleaving it with a very good book on the Rise and Fall of the British Empire called “The Rise and Fall of the British Empire.” Its not much of a relief but its fascinating.
aimai
Svensker
@morzer:
And there ya go, again, dang it, just when I was all luvin’ ya for what you wrote at 89.
I would say that the Steelers should suck Rexy’s toes, but Tomlin is too dignified for that and who would want Rapelisburger to suck their toes? Now maybe Troy P…. hmmmm Ok, Troy can suck Rexy’s toes.
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: The Puritans and the Quakers, to me, seem to be the ancestors of modern liberalism. The Cavaliers and the Borderers fit well as precursors to the modern right. Simplistic, I know, but I don’t think it is wrong.
Davis X. Machina
@Llelldorin: Karl Popper’s ‘piecemeal social engineering’ in a nutshell. His The Open Society and Its Enemies lays the groundwork for a valuable distinction between a programmatic utopian ‘conservatism’ and an actual conservatism in the Burkean — go ahead, laugh, I know — sense of the word.
Omnes Omnibus
@Svensker: I don’t care what happens in the AFC battle. As long as GB wins, I shall be a happy person (football-wise).
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Llelldorin: Or any radical group you care to name. Anyone who promises to make everything perfect for everyone forever is either a liar, a lunatic or some combination of the two.
morzer
@Svensker:
You East Coast elite technocratic hobbit-murderer!
Actually, come to think of it, other than the hobbit-murdering (I quite like Troy “Polamalu” Baggins) all of those things are true of me.. damn and double damn!
I am looking forward to the games today. I think Jets-Steelers might well be a classic.
Joking aside, I quite like Rex Ryan, goofball that he is. Good football brain there as well. Hope you are well, and have a supply of unhealthy foods and beer ready for game day!
P.S. I am starting to suspect that ED Kain must have hairy feet and go around without shoes. Probably has a round front door as well.
JGabriel
@morzer:
I always wonder if the Orcs and Southrons have their own side of the story: “Look around! The stinkin’ Gondorians have fields and water, and all we got is a stinkin’ desert filled with fuckin’ volcanoes! Ya’ think that’s fair? Huh?”
.
morzer
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Might be a poet or a lover, come to that:
“The lunatic, the lover and the poet/ Are of imagination all compact”
Svensker
@morzer:
Who’s joking?
In honor of the day, however, the Low Carb diet is out the window and we have potatah chips (that’s how it’s pronounced here), pizza and lots of excellent beer. Also, too, salami and cheeses WITH crackers. We live the high life!
Omnes Omnibus
@JGabriel: In a different fantasy universe, isn’t that the point of Wicked?
Donut
I’m a little frightened that Kain is so enamored of that Sam Smith piece. It’s full of a lot of undocumented crap, IMO.
Beefs:
Quoting Alexis de Tocqueville is hackish. Dude’s observations about America are almost 200 years old. They are not relevant to contemporary America. Period.
“On the other hand, an environmentalist who ran a weatherization program once told me that she figured it cost $30,000 in federal and local overhead for each $1600 in weather-proofing provided a low income home.”
Source?
“A study of Milwaukee County in 1988 found government agencies spending more than $1 billion annually on fighting poverty there. If this money had been given in cash to the poor, it would have meant more than $33,000 for each low income family — well above the poverty level.”
We had major welfare reform in the 90s. Smith does not explain how is Milwaukee Co. of the late 80s relevant to what is happening now with government anti-poverty efforts. Fail.
“For example, there has been a huge increase in the number of lawyers in Congress and elsewhere in the federal government. Lawyers tend to be technocratic control freaks more than ideological ones. But the effect is much the same and has helped to produce more federal laws since the late seventies than we had had in our first 200 years.”
Those lawyers are elected by relatively small congressional districts nationwide. in other words, by a pretty democratic (sic on the small d) process. If people don’t like this they can vote for any of the non-lawyers who run for Congress.
“The explosion of MBAs have also helped, up from around 5,000 a year in the 1950s to around 150,00o in the past decade. ”
…and the population in the US in 1950 was what? And it is now? The total number of college grads in 1950 was? The total number now is? This statistic is meaningless without context. Fail.
“Further, the liberal elite with increasing frequency can be heard speaking of less powerful and educated Americans in a manner reminiscent of white southerners of a pst time talking about blacks.”
Source? Total, utter fail.
“The liberal media repeatedly suggests that any decentralization of power is a step back towards a Civil War definition of states rights and that opposing federal concentration is the sole purview of the reactionary right.”
Source? This, too, is BS without examples.
I admire the general tone of this Smith piece, and as much as I am sympathetic to Kain on a certain philosophical level, that Smith’s piece was inspiring kind of scares me. A lot of the Smith piece is plain old sloppy, and full of assumptions and assertions – assertions aren’t facts, they’re often just prejudice dressed up as cogent argument.
Sorry Kain and Smith, this is no way to reach people who (like me) are “liberal” in identity and actually pretty dang sympathetic to some of the conclusions drawn. I’d get on board a lot easier with some of it, if it wasn’t so riddled with silliness. I don’t see myself or a lot of the “liberals” I know in the things Smith and Kain are talking about. It’s all going over my head.
morzer
Speaking of lunatics:
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/01/23/minnesota-bar-to-roast-bear-for-nfc-title-game/
morzer
@JGabriel:
When I was younger, I seriously contemplated writing an essay proving that the Lord of the Rings was propaganda written by the victors to denounce the more advanced and open society that their feudal barbarians had destroyed.
JGabriel
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, pretty much, I suppose — though it’s been a while since I’ve read it.
Davis X. Machina
@Donut: Smith in that piece is drawing his curves first, and only then plotting his data. When I did it in high school, it produced the most beautiful lab reports, and it was way faster to look up the answer in the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. No glassware, either.
I wasn’t actually doing chemistry, though — I was taking chemistry.
morzer
@Donut:
I’d rather like to know how many of the menacing hordes of MBAs are supposedly liberal, and on what basis the numbers were reached.
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: Don’t be so quick to judge.
Allan
Well, we invited you over, but you drank all our liquor, took a dump on the living room floor and set the drapes on fire, all while telling us we’re stupid libtard homos and our women are ugly. Then you killed our pets and raped our children while telling us it was for our own good.
You’re not welcome back.
BGinCHI
Late to this thread.
No, goddamnit Doug, what unites us is tolerance, curiosity, a valuation of thinking/analyzing, and the ability and willingness to put ourselves in the shoes of others.
While that is what unites us against conservatism, it needs to be spelled out clearly, over and over.
morzer
@Svensker:
I am glad you have the comfort foot.. I mean food to hand. Going to be a long day for you with Sanchez under center in the cold, bleak world of the barren north of Real AmericaTM.
morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
I just feel that this sort of eliminationist cookery has to be called out. Of course, others may wish to embrace their inner Sarah Palin….
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: I have it from reliable sources (sources I must refuse to name) that the bear willingly sacrificed itself in order to avoid the shame of being associated with Jay Cutler.
JGabriel
@morzer: Heh. I’m pretty sure that’s what it actually is.
gnomedad
@Rick Taylor:
We are in complete agreement. As I said, I was searching for non-pejorative definitions. Or to put it another way, I can haz better conservatives? (Or any.)
morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
I heard that it shot itself from a helicopter…
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Let the best team win. At least one of us will be in Le Bowl Superbe.
Marmot
@MonkeyBoy: This. If I might be allowed to beat this horse, conservatives seem predisposed to define themselves as the normal people who are getting screwed by “them.” I too have had cons assume that I’m gay or Black or Muslim when I’ve opposed a conservative argument. Principle often has little to do with it.
As for some of y’all’s fondness for the rock-ribbed Repubs of old, are you sure those folks were really in control? Or that they made up the conservative electorate?
For every Rockefeller, there were (and are) two Birch Society freaks who were so afraid of Commies that they thought pre-employment loyalty tests were a grand idea. And so on.
Donut
@Davis X. Machina:
That’s exactly it – the curve is plotted and data points filled in to back it up. I’m not saying I don’t do the same when thinking about my own distaste for competing world views. Everyone does it to some extent. I don’t find everything that both Smith and Kain wrote to be “wrong,” so to speak, I’m just trying to understand how they get to where they are. And I can’t follow. A lot of the complaining about “liberals” seems to be stuck in a “liberal vs. the rest of real America” paradigm that is not moored to reality.
Allan
Also too, on local control v. centralization, a really smart guy gets why centralization is good for business and the economy, as well as for the people in a 300-million + population country divided into 50 states, and countless county and municipal districts:
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: Hmm… Polite rhetoric from a Chicagoan today? Okay, in the spirit of comity, I will agree (n.b. I sincerely believe Green Bay to be the better team).
Shalimar
@fasteddie9318: This is very true. From observing right-wingers in my mediation training years ago, they really seemed much happier dividing a 10 piece pie where they got 6 pieces and you got 4 than trying to create a bigger pie with 14 pieces where each side got 7 pieces. Life is a competition, and they only feel special when others are worse off than they are.
burnspbesq
@morzer:
Jets fans have heard similar predictions the last two weeks. We are unfazed. Let’s play.
Donut
@morzer:
I work in an office with 15 employees and two are MBAs and both are two of the biggest ignoramuses I know. They are ignorant for differing reasons, IMO, but they are still both pretty clueless. One is an old-school country clubber type, and the other is a recent immigrant from Eastern Europe.
And both vote Republican.
This is a meaningless, anecdotal thing – but that means it is as valid as Smith’s point.
BobS
@Cat Lady: Some of the more interesting things I’ve read in recent years has been written by “lapsed” RepubliKKKans – John Dean, Paul Craig Roberts, Kevin Phillips, & Chalmers Johnson (about whom I might be wrong about his party leaning, but who describes himself as a “lapsed” Cold Warrior).
morzer
@BGinCHI:
What happened to the Rahm Salute? Not to mention the Hyde Park thugocracy?
Andy K
Sure, like two police riots in Chicago (1886 & 1968), the pre-1954 policies of the Topeka Board of Education, the law enforcement agencies in and around Philadelphia, Mississippi and Scottsboro, Alabama…Need I continue?
morzer
@burnspbesq:
Give you Jets fans an inch and you take a foot….
Hob
Oh, there’s a pretty sweet home on the left. I’m just not allowed to tell y’all where it is, because the pool, the trampoline, and the orgy room are starting to get a little crowded, and that George Soros cash only goes so far.
morzer
@Hob:
What, no latte-machine?
Villago Delenda Est
@MonkeyBoy:
I think the term here is immediate short term self interest, because the thing about altruism is that it’s the ultimate in long term self interest to engage in, because you’re setting yourself up a safety net for unforeseen future situations where you may need someone else’s assistance. You’re paying it forward. This is is a highly rational and thoughtful view, which is why Randites don’t get it.
Martin Niemoller already did the quote on this…someday they’ll come for you, so you’d best do what you can for those they’re coming for now.
Kirk Spencer
@aimai: No, they’re not gone. They’re just not calling themselves conservatives — just as a lot of liberals didn’t (and still don’t) call themselves liberals.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: You go to hell. Is that better? I really don’t feel like getting in anyone’s grill about the game. I actually like GB and will probably root for them a little. I don’t like Cutler and can’t muster any enthusiasm for him or Urlacher. Like a giant stupid baby and a German tank.
de stijl
@morzer:
The bar mentioned that is doing the roast bear is Tiffany’s on Ford Avenue in St. Paul in the Highland Park. Haven’t been there since college. Bizarre.
Raenelle
@Ija: You’re right. I was confusing my socialism with liberalism, Mill for Marx. I actually DO want to wage a class war on the rich. I actually believe that the WAY they get rich is inherent in the very definition of capitalism. But I’m a socialist, not a liberal. So, thanks for reminding me not to confuse the two.
BGinCHI
@morzer: We’re doing Killing You With Kindness this year. Just trying it out before we take over.
That’s right, bitches, you’re all Chicago now.
elm
Kain’s post is a larger and runnier puddle of metaphorical diarrhea than I’d expected.
Additionally, it’s not clear that his professed admiration for “wonkish rigor” means anything in practice. He may admire it, but he does nothing to apply it.
At least he admits that he’s stuck in a childish fantasy world.
BGinCHI
@Hob: Prolly take our guns away at the door.
Ash Can
@Omnes Omnibus:
@BGinCHI:
LOL! Being a Chicagoan, I’m going to be rooting for the Bears, natch, but I must not be that huge a Bears fan since my close-second-favorite NFL team is the Pack. If GB wins, I’ll be happy to root for them in the Super Bowl.
Andy K
@burnspbesq:
I’m rooting for David Harris (Grand Rapids Ottawa Hills H.S.) for what might be the last time this season. If it’s Jets-Packers in the Super Bowl, I withhold my love for a few weeks.
PJO
Anti-intellectualism pops up again and again in conservatism because it discourages thought which might be persuasive in undermining the arguments of the powerful. Thucydides relates a speech given in 427 B.C. by Cleon, an Athenian demagogue, who was arguing that the entire adult male population of Mytilene should be executed for a failed rebellion from the Athenian empire:
“We should realize that a city is better off with bad laws, so long as they remain fixed, than with good laws that are constantly being altered, that lack of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than the kind of cleverness that gets out of hand, and that as a general rule states are better governed by the man in the street than by intellectuals.”
BGinCHI
@Ash Can: Exactly how I feel. It’s like Big Ten teams in the NCAA tournament. I always root for them against all comers. I’m midwest loyal like that.
BGinCHI
@PJO: I always hated that fucking Cleon.
Andy K
Packer pre-game show is on now!
Hob
@morzer: “Machine”? We have artisan lattes hand-crafted by our indentured servants (all former titans of industry and finance). But it’s usually too warm and sunny for coffee here in [REDACTED]– we’re more about the bourbon mango slurpees. And cigars (if you know what I mean).
Admiral_Komack
@Linda Featheringill:
I have yet to find the thoughtful commentary about the conservative take on how we should deal with rising sea levels, with diminishing fish stocks, with increasing desertification of farmlands, and with global deterioration of fresh water supplies. These are things we humans are going to have to deal with.
Thoughtful conservative take:
“Fuck it!”
“USA, USA, USA!”
morzer
@Hob:
Bit of a redactionist approach, innit?
Svensker
@Andy K:
Yup.
morzer
@Andy K:
Are they parading the world’s largest cheeseboard?
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: Do you know how much of the world’s limburger production is in Wisconsin? Well, keep this up and you’ll find out as the majority of it is placed in your curtain rods and heating ducts.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel
A grown man searching for a home harmonizes nicely with Griel Marcus’ “will to fascism,” the thesis of his book Lipstick Traces. Ain’t no home out there, son. Except for your last one in the cold, cold ground.
But maybe that’s getting a little grad-school. Never mind.
JCT
Just in time to lock in the left vs “right” conversation is an article in the WSJ that Steve Benen linked to today, I suggest that you do not eat or drink when you read it for fear that your monitor will be destroyed.
re; football And I about to head into the kitchen to cook a pile of food that is so naughty that I would probably lose my medical license over it. All to make my youngest feel better should his beloved Jets lose.
cyd
@Svensker:
Tabibi’s an anti-intellectual in the sense that he’s more interested in riling up readers than informing them. Whenever the latter interferes with the former, he’s happy to drop inconvenient facts from the discussion, compensating with an array of ad-hominem insults (everyone’s a sell-out!), xenophobic hints (the US is being bought up by Arabs!), and other cheap rhetorical tricks. His “contributions” to the health care reform, financial regulation, and other debates have all followed this vein.
morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Could you drop off some bacon with my order?
Joey Maloney
@Svensker: He says “fuck” out loud, the fucking epitome of fucking anti-fucking-intellectualism.
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: Not unless you are nice.
thomas Levenson
What an awesomely poorly considered piece. If and when ED gains a few years and has both lived and read a bit more (and in that reading, some more nourishing work than the pitifully argued and empirically grounded stuff he cites here)* he’ll look back on this and regret that the internet is forever. I’m glad that in my day, juvenalia could in fact reliably be destroyed.
Added: Why is WP randomly bolding stuff and deleting asterisks now? Happened in my post yesterday too. FYWP
*there’s that bland liberal fact sh*t again. I was going to thunder down Ben Franklin’s curse for that line, but hey, it’s Sunday, I’m grading, and life is way too damn short. But seriously, this is a bit of writing that, if ED actually grows as thinker, will be one of those that wakes him up in the night grasping his head as the thought banishes sleep: “I said that?!”
eemom
@morzer:
wow.
That is some great stuff, and beautifully written.
I iz proud of you, my sweet cyber-baboo.
Hope your team wins today. Whichever one it is.
morzer
@eemom:
I am more of a cyber Baloo these days, alas, my angel. But the kind words are appreciated.
I don’t really have a team today, but I am loosely rooting for the Steelers and Packers, with the hope that the Packers take the Superbowl.
How are you doing? What does an eemom Sunday look like?
Chris
@gnomedad: Somewhat snarky version: conservatives are sure that any change makes things worse, and everything was better years ago. Liberals believe that things can always be improved, even if they are pretty good now.
srv
Rock-ribbed rugged individuals crave communal belonging and affirmation.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I know it can be found in the DSM-IV.
gnomedad
@Chris:
Very good. I think it’s a fair caricature of the reality.
Edit: conservative tout “small government” when it serves the “change makes things worse” idea; not so much when they come up with a “things were better in the past” project.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@morzer:
That was nicely put.
I fear to see Cutler/Boromir left bleeding on Soldier field. Everyone thought he was a bastard, but in the end he did the right thing. Scored points, but not enough to prop up our aging defense. And so the ring is forced to head north, or wait, no, south…
I guess my analogy breaks down a little bit at the end, but you get the picture.
scarshapedstar
Libruls get faggy ass diplomas to hang up in their organic arugula & chardonnay tasting room; conservatives know how to fix tractors: ADVANTAGE CONSERVATIVES! Also, lawyers suck.
I feel like I’ve read this stemwinder before:
http://pajamasmedia.com/ejectejecteject/2009/10/07/tribes-2/
BTW, can someone explain to me how the fact that G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush got degrees from Yale proves that HarvardYale is the rot at the heart of American liberalism? Because, if I follow the “three decades of unbroken blah blah” reasoning to its conclusion, that’s what I get.*
*Even though ED didn’t actually write that part.
Bella Q
@JGabriel:
Thank you. I was beginning to think I had missed something that everyone else got. I feel much better now.
zuzu (not that one, the other one)
So, has Kain come up with a “rational” and “logical” argument to support his contention that abortion = slavery?
Bella Q
@Donut:
I appreciate your point, which states my previously unarticulated trouble with Kain’s citation of Smith. And your point illustrates my view of Kain’s views and writing: he is very, very young, in terms of immaturity regardless of chronology. It will be interesting to see if his views and/or writing evolve with maturity. Not all do.
Benjamin Cisco
@p.a.__
Hell yes, THIS. For all their posturing, for their feined certitude, for their fake bravado based on their approximation of a pale imitation of John Wayne, the fact is that EVERYTHING, and I MEAN EVERYTHING, scares the bejabbers out of them. Now don’t get me wrong, there are some life experiences that would induce fear in all but liars and lunatics, but not every single thing that comes down the pike.
MonkeyBoy
@thomas Levenson:
Our current WP parser may still include code that lets you achieve bold, italic, and other font effects by surrounding words or phrases with things like asterisks and underlines.
burnspbesq
My dogs were cricketers in a prior life. I raise my finger like an umpire, say “out,” and they leave the room.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: Try tossing them a googly and see what they do.
MonkeyBoy
@scarshapedstar:
Umm, because right now Yale graduates make up 20 current Govs, Sens, and Congs, and all are Democrats except 2 in the House. I would assume Harvard is similar.
(also Harvard and Yale students are about 1/3 Jewish which is a synonym for Liberal)
morzer
@burnspbesq:
Do they ever call for an umpire review and get your decision overturned?
eemom
@morzer:
an eemom Sunday is rather like the road to hell…..paved with good intentions as to productivity on Projects, laundered loads, obedient children doing homework in cleaned rooms, floors vacuumed, groceries purchased and put away, pots simmering with healthful homecooked goodness……and usually ending with excessive time on the innertubz, last minutes runs to 7-11 when it is discovered we are out of dog food, one load of wet clothes languishing in the washer, and arguments about how we ALWAYS go to that SAME Mexican restaurant. : (
klem
@Tom Levenson
What an arrogant, condescending and patronizing comment that is. I don’t agree with a lot of what ED has to say, but to dismiss his thoughts merely because of his age is disgusting. It would be like me dismissing your overwrought screeds as generated by a persistent feeling of intellectual inadequacy, you being a simple writing adjunct (how you got that gig, I have no idea) surrounded by REAL academics, and your tiresome need to garnish your drivel with high culture as an outgrowth of your inability to show any real emotion and passion with your wife and family.
If I were to do that I would be a dick, but I wouldn’t. You shouldn’t either.
morzer
@klem:
So how do you really feel?
morzer
@eemom:
We do Target runs, but the principle is the same. Although without the children, which seems to help our projects along. Admittedly, my projects for the day seem to be very NFL-centered, but I shall bear my cross with pride.
Andy K
@Omnes Omnibus:
Where would he learn to throw the googly?
Man, haven’t seen that in a few months. Going to have to check Hulu this week to see if it’s still up.
Omnes Omnibus
@klem: WTF, over?
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: best I can tell, cause and effect confuzels some people. Tom’s being generous and bringing in age as a mitigating factor and somebody assumes that’s the fundamental flaw being discussed. or somebody just doesn’t believe in the practice and experience fairies.
Wile E. Quixote
@guster:
You forgot, “and gives T-bones to strapping young bucks”.
Jesus, when it comes to unwieldy central state apparatus and corporate favoritism American liberals have nothing on American conservatives and their retarded stepbrothers in the Libertarian party. Corporate favoritism is what modern conservatism and libertarianism are all about, and conservatives just love them some unwieldy state apparatus as long as that state apparatus is dressed up in spiffy uniforms and blowing the shit out of brown people (the Department of Defense) or keeping those brown people in jail (the American prison/police system) and off of the lawns of said conservatives (unless they’re mowing them and being paid less than minimum wage and off the books).
Wile E. Quixote
@cyd:
Yeah, I hate that anti-intellectual fucker Matt Tabibi! Hate! Hate! Hate! Him. I wish he could be more like Matt Taibbi, the Rolling Stone reporter.
Seriously, could you please give us a cite, just one cite, showing Taibbi engaging in the kind of anti-intellectualism that conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, etc, etc, etc, engage in every single day? And no, just because Matt Taibbi says “fuck” a lot doesn’t mean that he’s anti-intellectual, you fucking retard.
Wile E. Quixote
@thomas Levenson:
Either that or he’ll just turn into David Broder.
Polar Bear Squares
So true. So very true.
E.D. Kain
@morzer: I discuss civil rights issues quite frequently actually. I think there is room for pieces that are more whimsical and pieces that are more nitty-gritty. And pieces of snark. Takes all sorts.
matoko_chan
@E.D. Kain: GO AWAY you fucking glibertarian assclown.
or stand and deliver, i dont give a fuck which.
you can start with fetus = slave.
you’ve had a lot of requests for that one.
matoko_chan
@aimai: there are no good conservative positions aimai.
conservatism is a first culture phailosophy.
and conservative anti-intellectualism is quite elegantly explained on page 154 of Grand New Party.
It is called Salam-Douthat stratification on cognitive ability.
in laymans terms, selection for stupid.
look at EDK– conservatism, where even the smart people are retards.
Ija
@klem:
Of course, you already did it, but pretended you didn’t. At least Levenson was brave enough to actually say what he wanted to say without cloaking it as some kind of hypothetical. Coward. Not even brave enough to insult people directly on the Internet.
elm
@E.D. Kain: That‘s your response to @morzer? Obviously I don’t speak for morzer, but you needn’t have bothered.
For the comprehension-impaired, morzer didn’t say EDK doesn’t write about civil rights issues, morzer said Kain writes about an imagined world where Civil Rights * issues do not exist.
* Note the capitalization.
Ija
@zuzu (not that one, the other one):
Yup. This. He’s ignoring it. I think his defense will be, hey, I’m not making that comparison, I’m just saying that some people are, and it’s a valid comparison from their POV. Bull. That is weak sauce indeed.
At least have the courage of your conviction to defend your opinion.
Capn America
Why doesn’t ED post it here? Does he ever even mention BJ on his other blog?
DougJ DougJson
@Capn America:
He does different types of posts here versus there.
DougJ DougJson
@matoko_chan:
What does a comment like that accomplish?
Batocchio
What aimai said. I appreciate honest reflections on one’s political philosophy. That said, being open-minded means giving someone a fair hearing; it doesn’t mean turning off one’s bullshit detector or wiping one’s mind of all prior knowledge. Not everyone’s opinion is equally fact-based, substantive, responsible, persuasive, or what-have-you. If we’re all friends just talking, then fine, politeness is good and we can pretend that everyone’s opinion is valuable and have a nice social interaction. However, if you presume to be a wonk, and argue something on the merits – especially if you presume that you’re going to “teach” your liberal audience why they’re wrong – you damn well better have the chops, do your homework and make your case. Saying “both sides do it” or “both sides have an equally valid point” might bolster someone’s self-esteem, but at a certain point it’s just inaccurate, dishonest, childish and annoying.
Look, there are certainly decent people who self-identify as conservative or libertarian. If they’re committed to the social contract, oppose plutocracy, and hold a few other tenets, by all means we can find common ground. However, the decent ones wield almost no power in the Republican Party and conservative institutions. The Democratic Party is partially corrupt and plutocratic; the Republican Party is entirely so, and reckless and nihilistic to boot. For example, the Dems passed weak financial reform while the GOP wanted no reform whatsoever, or even fewer regulations on Wall Street. One can argue about political realities, but perhaps the more important point is that liberals criticize the Democratic Party all the time for this stuff. Hell, a central dynamic of liberalism is reflecting and arguing and criticizing each other, and that criticism is directed especially at people in power.
Meanwhile, let’s look at the larger picture. The Bush years were a disaster on multiple fronts, and conservatives lie about almost every major issue, outrageously and in coordinated fashion. Neither of those factors should be glossed over in the slightest. The two sides are not remotely equivalent on these fronts. You can’t have a very fruitful conversation with a conservative who denies any of this.
Furthermore, policy matters. Generally speaking, liberals push for policies that benefit everybody, while conservatives typically push for policies that benefit a select few – generally the most privileged and powerful of society. That’s certainly the case on economic policy, as Slide #10 from Tim Noah’s income inequality series shows nicely. The GOP has been pitching scapegoats and spite to their base while screwing them over economically for about 40 years now. “Winning” for each side therefore looks very different. They’re not equivalent.
In most cases, “both sides do it” is false and insultingly simplistic. Pushing false equivalencies is intellectual sloth, dishonesty and cowardice at best, and calculated disingenuousness at worst. I understand it’s emotionally painful for some conservatives to admit their “team” is dominated by professional liars and scumbags, but that is the case, and it has been for a long time now. Personally, I wish that wasn’t the case, because it’s very bad for America, but I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Pretending otherwise makes the problem worse. I’m sick of supposedly sincere and reasonable conservatives making excuses, peddling the false equivalencies, and attacking liberals by telling them they’re just as bad, when FFS, of course they’re not. Welcome aboard to the common ground crew who are appalled by Bush, the right-wing propaganda machine, and plutocrats of all shades. But to those lecturing conservatives clinging to false equivalencies: Put your own damn house in order. Ours has its problems and we continue to try to fix it up, but yours in on fire and threatens to burn down the whole neighborhood.
Judas Escargot
I just don’t get how the whole ‘finding a home’ thing even applies.
How does that work? You find some folks with positions similar to yours at this particular time and place in your life, decide “yep, this be for me”, get the club insignia tattooed somewhere discrete, and then stop?
There is no “home” in politics. The phrase doesn’t even parse, because politics is not a place. If you want a “home”, find yourself a nice little church, or a knitting circle, or a book club.
Politics is not a healthy way to quench that particular human thirst.
Judas Escargot
@Batocchio:
Meanwhile, let’s look at the larger picture. The Bush years were a disaster on multiple fronts, and conservatives lie about almost every major issue, outrageously and in coordinated fashion. Neither of those factors should be glossed over in the slightest. The two sides are not remotely equivalent on these fronts. You can’t have a very fruitful conversation with a conservative who denies any of this.
This.
If politics is war by other means, then today’s conservatives are fighting a war of attrition.
In engaging, you end up spending so much time and energy correcting the falsehoods just to get the conversation back into a reality-based frame for discussion, that it becomes impossible to make a clear, concise case for anything substantive.
Eventually, you get tired and stop fighting back altogether.
Which is probably the point of it.
Jaim
aimai writes: “But ED’s own intellectual application is, to put it mildly, lacking and his virtues, such as they are, are extremely conservative ones. He’s not a giver, and he’s not a thinker, and he’s not a researcher. So if he’s coming to the left, or Balloon Juice for that matter, to have some father or mother figure exclaim “Ain’t he the beatenest?” Its just not going to happen.”
Game. Set. Match.
Scott P.
A few years back, I caught about 30 seconds of Rush Limbaugh, and he made the exact same claim, only with “liberal” and “conservative” reversed.
MonkeyBoy
@Scott P.:
Part of the Right-Wing-Noise-Machine playbook is to accuse the left of your own sins so that meaningful distinctions become a both-sides-do-it stalemate. For example the real Vietnam war hero John Kerry got swiftboated as a war coward while the coward GWB who never served was presented as a hero.
matoko_chan
@DougJ DougJson:
nothing apparently.
Balloonjuice is still the low rent Atlantic circle jerk with EDK playing the part of McMegan with a dick shitting all over the front page.
i dont see you guyz giving him the hook.
you keep linking him just like Sully links Douchebag.
Pat Cahalan
@alwhite: Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel in Economics specifically for her research in polycentrism.
So, “then a miracle happens” has at least some evidence in support of it actually being an empirical, measurable characteristic of a social system, not a “miracle” at all.
More here: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2009/ostrom_lecture.pdf
Nylund
My wife and I often complain to each other just how much we hate talking politics with liberals (despite being very liberal ourselves). We both get annoyed quite easily with it all. On the other hand, we both firmly believe that conservatives are downright dangerous, hostile, and will utterly ruin the country if they get their way. We’ll take annoying latte-sipping liberals over that any day of the week. But do we feel “at home” on the left? Well, only if “at home” means stuck with a bunch of family that annoys the living shit out of us, then yes, we feel at home.