At the risk of being called curmudgeonly, I feel that this is a good week to nominate another super-huge douchebag. A lot has happened, and it’s only Wednesday morning.
Of course, Monday was Tea Party/Lionize Timothy McVeigh/Celebrate Sedition Day, and that provided enough material to fill this post. Straight to the juicy parts!
Let’s start with our perennial favorite, Rush Limbaugh (via Media Matters). Yesterday, on his radio show, he blamed Bill Clinton for the Oklahoma City bombing, claiming that McVeigh was motivated by the tyranny of Waco. That’s funny, because what I remember about The Branch Davidian incident was that a couple of U.S. Marshals were shot and killed when they showed up to investigate a suspected illegal weapons cache at the compound of the alleged child sex offender David Koresh.
Next is Representative Paul Broun of Georgia. So, just to reiterate, this guy is a fucking U.S. Congressman. At an armed gun rally in Virginia on Monday, he claimed there are enemies of the state planning to plunge the country into tyranny. But that’s not incitement to violence. The clip is from last night’s Rachel Maddow show, which I’ve included in its entirety because it is worth watching. Broun’s cheerleading begins at 1:50.
And lastly is our friend and moderate Republican, Orrin Hatch. This measured “analysis” on Fox News left my jaw dragging the floor, whether it was his claim that he wanted to work with Democrats on the healthcare bill (he actually fought against many of the provisions he had authored in the ’90′s), or that he strongly supports financial reform (as long as it doesn’t include any consumer protection or financial transparency.) But he gets nominated for his comment at 4:25, when he suggests that the Goldman-Sachs investigation by the SEC was launched in order to give the Democrats momentum for their financial reform bill. Thank you Orrin Hatch, the man who fought against re-importation of American pharmaceuticals from Canada while deregulating cheap, ineffective drugs from India and other countries.
Want to nominate someone? Drop me a note. I’m off to have a fun day.
What a fabulous town this is! I landed yesterday (Saturday) at cocktail hour and grabbed the first vodka-rocks I could find. After unpacking my materials for this week’s trade show, I dined at Cochon, a cajun restaurant in the Warehouse District. Everything on the menu is fresh, and all the meats are cured in-house. The vibe is upbeat and the interior design has a contemporary, urban feel.
It was a meat fest! I started off with the paneed pork cheeks, garnished with pickled anise and peanuts. The combination sounds bizarre but it was quite delicious; the peanuts were not overpowering. The pork was dreamy, but I would have liked a bit more vinegar flavor to the marinade/sauce. My salad was fresh mushrooms with fried beef jerky, and it had a touch of cilantro tossed with it. A great combination of flavors and texture. Finally, I had the smoked brisket and horseradish potato salad for my main course. That’s a hard dish to fuck up, and this was no exception. Delicious! Cochon definitely gets snaps for the overall dining experience.
The Southern Republican Leadership Council is meeting in New Orleans this week. Sadly (cue the sarcasm), I did not run into Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin last night. But they got to do their speechy thing! And despite their rockstar celebrity, both of them finished way down in the straw poll, losing to Mitt Romney (who didn’t even show up) and Ron Paul. So the GOP hasn’t changed:
Obama is a socialist;
Stimulus spending wrecked our country;
We need to cut taxes, because that won’t add to the budget deficit;
We need to bomb Iran, because that will fix the Middle East;
Homosexuals will prevent God-fearing Christians from breeding;
Let’s forget about the War Of Northern Aggression and worship the 10th Amendment.
So, it looks like we’re going to have an elevated, intellectual debate about public policy as the midterm elections approach.
On a happier note, I just finished my poached eggs and corned beef hash at Pierre Maspero’s, a favorite breakfast joint. It’s a lovely morning and I’m going to wander the Quarter a bit before I have to setup the trade show. More to come…
I find the recent rise of populist rhetoric in our civil discourse a bit troubling. Add a strong sense of entitlement within the Tea Party movement and other right-wing extremist groups, and the question, “Is the right wing conservative?” demands examination. I have spoken previously of why populism does not have conservative roots, so there’s no point covering that ground again. Instead, I would like to illustrate parallels between recent statements and the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the 18th-century French liberal whose work – according to many conservatives of the day – paved the way for the Jacobins to unleash The Reign of Terror.
Let’s start with a video that became much more interesting this week, with the sentencing of Scott Roeder, the man convicted of murdering Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas. It is an interview by Dave Leach, an anti-abortion zealot, from 1996, and they very quickly discriminate between God’s law and societal law. It starts getting good at 2:10.
Now, the assertion of Providential law certainly seems conservative, and, in fact, Edmund Burke considered the belief that Providential law must inform the laws of mankind to be a cornerstone of conservative thought (see Russell Kirk’s “The Conservative Mind”.) Unfortunately, that is not what is being discussed in the interview. Instead, Leach and Roeder are dismissing societal law as invalid, in favor of something more fundamental: whereas conservative philosophy uses Providential law to inform statute and attempt to reflect God’s will, Roeder claims the existence of Providential law nullifies any attempts made by society to impose law. What he is actually claiming is the existence of a natural law that can only exist in the absence of government.
That is a pretty radical concept, but it isn’t new. Let’s step into the way-back machine and experience a bit of expository writing from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who took the French intellectual world by storm with his 1755 essay, “A Discourse Upon The Origin And Basis Of Inequality Among Men”.
“…when I see free-born animals through a natural abhorrence of captivity dash their brains out against the bars of their prison; when I see multitudes of naked savages despise European pleasures, and brave hunger, fire and sword, and death itself to preserve their independency; I feel that it belongs not to slaves to argue concerning liberty.”
Rousseau argued that increasing societal organization infringes upon man’s natural liberty. At best, we placed ourselves in a state of voluntary slavery in order to achieve security, shelter and food, things that existed without shortage in our savage – or natural – state. While conservatives asserted that societal inequality was God’s design, Rousseau blamed the underlying structures for inequality, and illustrated, in his essay, its development as savage man began to coalesce into small groups, clans and later societies. By claiming that driving a car is a right that is not linked to the responsibility of licensing, Scott Roeder is channeling Rousseau and asserting that liberty can only be achieved in the natural state.
Not surprisingly, genuine conservatives are pretty horrified by this philosophy. Again, from Kirk:
“Infatuation with natural right in the practical concerns of government must end in anarchy, in a fiery and intolerant individualism. Even parliaments cannot endure if the doctrinaires of natural rights are triumphant, for any form of representative government is in some degree an invasion of absolute liberty.”
I hear you saying, “Michael, not everyone on the right is as whacked as Scott Roeder.” And I agree. So let’s turn our attention to my new favorite source of amusement, the Tea Party. Despite my mocking tone (it’s a character flaw), extreme ideological movements like the Tea Party deserve serious attention for the simple matter that they create political gravity wells which influence the overall debate. Consider the open courting by GOP leadership, and Sarah Palin’s recent comment that the Tea Party is “…a beautiful grassroots movement that is putting government back on the side of the people,” and you begin to understand the magnitude of that influence.
Of course, we know the official party line mission statement from their website. But being for fiscal responsibility, limited government and free markets doesn’t tell us much. After all, I believe in those things, and most people who support the Tea Party consider me a Marxist. Instead, I look to their actions to determine their political philosophy and, again, we find it occupying a surprising space in the political spectrum.
We’ve already discussed the idea that society is slavery, but it’s not necessary to go that far – the Tea Party has saved us the trouble. We can start with the notion that taxes are tyranny, or any other legislation with which they disagree. Next, consider that the possession of arms is not only a right, but there is a belief that these arms may be used for seditious purposes outside the scope of a state militia. You don’t have to dig very deeply into a group like the Oath Keepers before you discover that there is something extralegal being envisioned. Lastly is the belief that sometimes – despite the perfection and sanctity of our political process – it is okay to hit the reset button and throw everything away. Each of these points, while appearing conservative on the surface, shares an underlying belief in a natural state, an existence that supersedes societal structures, and is given priority even when it is done in the name of those societal structures. That is how an Oath Keeper or Tea Partyer can talk about upholding the Constitution by forcibly removing constitutionally-elected officials from office.
Well, I’ve kept you long enough; it is a blog, after all. I hope I have at least made a first effort at pointing out some of the absurdity of our far right politics in America, and demonstrating that their pedigree does not descend from the conservative movement that is their namesake. I am not a conservative, but I believe that it is important for liberals and progressives to deny the far right the use of that moniker, for it deceives many in this country with a false sense of credibility and tradition. Words matter.
As Russell Kirk noted, “The world is growing more enlightened, popular opinion asserts; and there is some truth in the belief that newspapers, magazines and circulating libraries have made mankind wiser; but with the pride that accompanies a little new learning comes the peril of popular vanity, the hazard that all old opinions may be discarded.”
In closing, I will leave you with the words of John Adams, one of America’s first conservatives. Sneering at Rousseau’s praise of natural savagery, Adams disagrees that,
“…knowledge is corruption; that arts, sciences and taste have deformed the beauty and destroyed the felicity of human nature, which appears only in perfection in the savage state – the children of nature.”
According to yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, Redeye edition, the South Carolina Senate is considering the repeal of a law that requires any group intent on overthrowing the government to apply for a permit and pay a $5 fee. No shit. The “Subversive Activities Registration Act” dates back to the 50′s and our paranoia of communists, and levies a $25,000 fine and 10 years in prison for its violation.
Do you know what this means? All we have to do is make this federal, and we’ve solved our terrorism problem. Al Qaeda – register and pay the fee. Instead of spending $3 trillion on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we could actually be making money on this one. It is elegant in its simplicity.
For some reason, lawmakers in South Carolina are embarrassed by this. I can’t imagine why.
I wasn’t even aware of any symptoms. But yesterday, while having a somewhat civil discussion with a tea-bagger about our totalitarian government, he presented the diagnosis. It must be true, because he claimed to have studied psychology, history and social science in some institution of learning. I went out on the Google machine and studied it.
Needless to say, I was somewhat disappointed to find that the APA has not seen fit to add this disorder into the DSM-IV, which would allow me reimbursement for treatment under a number of health insurance plans. However, I was successful in finding a list of symptoms on the website Conservative Pledge, which include:
You come across as conceited, boastful or pretentious;
You monopolize conversations;
You belittle and look down upon people you perceive as inferior;
You have a need of entitlement [their grammar, not mine];
You become very impatient and angry when you don’t receive the special treatment to which you feel entitled;
You have trouble handling anything that is perceived as criticism;
You have a sense of secret shame and humiliation;
You react with rage, contempt and belittle others, in order to make yourself feel better [again, I'm just repeating the words];
You attack the messenger when you don’t like the message;
You know that the only way you can look good is to make someone else look bad;
You feel you are entitled to your own facts as well as your own opinion.
I was also told that LPD is closely related to Narcissism, although my limited intelligence has prevented me from even beginning to figure out that connection. But my fellow conversationalist had studied psychology…
Actually, it sounds like a description of Sean Hannity, but that is obviously not the point. I’m sick and it’s going to take a lot of tough love to fix it, because I realize that health care is really not my right, and I can’t afford the buck-fifty an hour every week that it’s going to cost for therapy.
Support from my friends and [some] family has been overwhelming. It’s not like announcing that you have gonorrhea. Instead of keeping their distance, several have openly declared that they have LPD, too! I never really thought of them that way, but maybe we just need to keep an open mind and accept our weaknesses. Let the healing process begin.
I’ve been reading “The Conservative Mind” recently, a seminal history of conservative thought by the late Russell Kirk. It profiles and catalogues a number of great thinkers, including the Irishman Edmund Burke, John Adams, and John Randolph. Not only is it good to revisit their writings, but it highlights just how far our political thought has drifted in the past two centuries – or fifty years, for that matter.
Conservatism, as Burke writes, is characterized by a number of principles, including a belief in transcendent [God's] law, a prejudice towards tradition, and a responsibility to provide future generations with a positive legacy (sort of like the Boy Scout pledge to leave places nicer than when you found them.) It is a fairly simple process: tradition and prejudice allow us to preserve the past and maintain a connection to our ancestors, while stewardship communicates our precious cultural intelligence to posterity, thus insuring continuity.
So what does that mean for environmentalism? Listening to today’s conservatives, you would think that doctrine prescribes plundering resources for the benefit of corporate benefactors, campaign coffers, and consumers. Interestingly, Burke speaks to the subject directly in Reflections:
One of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and its laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruin instead of a habitation – and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers.
While environmentalism has recently become associated with tree-hugging progressives, we should be reminded that trashing our inheritance – God’s bounty – goes against the very conservative principles of prejudice and tradition. This is firm, common ground on which all Americans can work together.
And, speaking of working together on the environment, Congress is considering adjustments to the Clean Water Act which, among other things, would strictly limit the dumping of toxic wastes into small streams (thank you conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.) These streams feed our rivers and lakes, which are the source of drinking water for a sizable portion of the population. Contact your Senators and Representatives and tell them to support the Clean Water Restoration Act, or S.787. If they have an “R” behind their name, feel free to remind them of Edmund Burke!
I was channel-surfing during lunch today when I came across Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, interviewing Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Ryan is the House’s ranking Republican on the Committee On The Budget. I’m not going to get into his policies here, because this post is about what a sloppy journalist Andrea Mitchell has become.
The discussion was on the budget, and healthcare. Ryan asserted that Republicans had been shut out of the healthcare debate, and their ideas are not incorporated:
tort reform will lead to cost controls;
insurance companies should be able to compete across state lines;
small employers should be able to join exchanges, or larger pools to achieve negotiating power;
preventing the takeover of the healthcare industry by government bureaucracy.
During this entire talking-point tirade, Ms. Mitchell didn’t once point out that all of these ideas are in the two bills waiting to be reconciled, incorporated by bipartisan committees due to the willingness of Democrats to negotiate. And while she did point out that the public option had been killed, so therefore his last point was unfair, she let him continue to spout that regulation would create a de facto government takeover by forcing private industry to behave. Wow.
I know that news isn’t what it used to be, and “reporters” are under tremendous pressure to let their guests spew crap without challenge, but that prompts me to ask: “If all the host has to do is provide a platform for talking points, then why do they have to be experienced and highly paid?”
Litmus tests are all the rage these days, especially as the GOP attempts to purify its ideologues. So I thought I would create my own test for you to see where on the political spectrum you fall. Feel free to report your score at the bottom.
Would you buy a tube of toothpaste if you thought it contained diethylene glycol, a poisonous substance?
Would you invest your money in a company that was allowed to hide liabilities in financial instruments that are not reflected on its balance sheet?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should consider supporting the GOP. In each of these situations, Republicans have worked hard to block reforms that would protect citizens from the abuses reported. Remember, the Wild West may have been lawless and “free”, but people didn’t live very long.
A few nights ago I was at a cocktail party (a not uncommon occurrence) when a guest remarked that they had visited this blog, having seen my name on the invitation list. After a bit of banter, he commented that I obviously didn’t like Glenn Beck. Fair enough, in a general sense. However, not having written anything about Beck, I decided it was a good time. So I’d like to spend a few paragraphs explaining why – although he might be adept at capturing audience – Beck is anything but what he claims to be: a conservative or libertarian political thinker.
I’m going to focus on the idea of populism, because I think that Beck uses it as a way to relate to his audience. Adopting the mantra of populism helps Beck break down actual obstacles to a relationship (e.g., wealth disparity, religious views, psychographics) that exist with any group of followers. It’s also a great tool for creating and maintaining the emotional passion that breeds loyalty. By playing the “populist card”, Beck and his producers succeed in creating a platform lucrative to their advertising base.
Unfortunately, it creates a sticky intellectual problem for him. Populism is characterized by traits that are antithetical to conservative thought. We need only turn to current events for an illustration: during the recent healthcare debates, many “tea baggers” (their term, not mine) were calling for revolution and invoking Jefferson’s “tree of liberty” quote. While populism relishes disorder, conservatism embraces prejudice in action. You can’t restore conservative thought through revolution. A second fundamental of conservatism is deference to tradition. This is a common talking point amongst conservatives, and often drives talk about the Founding Fathers. Why do we care so much about what the Founding Fathers think if not for tradition? In contrast, populist movements seek a new way of business, the passions of the movement driven by the desire for a new paradigm. Populism and conservatism can’t share guiding principles.
More importantly, populism is founded on a belief in the fundamental rights of man, and equality in society. While that sounds like a laudable goal and even distinctly American, it is not a conservative value. Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, believed in the equality of man only before God, that it was the natural order for some men to be more successful than others. Poverty is a part of this life, and as such it is part of Providential law. It is arrogant and prideful to attempt to change that. Populism, in the tradition of Paine or Rousseau, is an affront to God that can only end in failure.
As Beck attempts to usurp historical figures like Thomas Paine for the purpose of burnishing his populist bona fides, he is committing an intellectual heresy that can only be explained in one of two ways: Beck is actually ignorant of history and political philosophy, and blathers on despite the most obvious errors and inconsistencies, or; he is a smart operator who knows how to craft his message to gain audience, unmoved by the deception he peddles. Given his success in broadcasting, I’m inclined to believe the latter.
Last night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Chris Hayes – the Washington editor of The Nation magazine – scored a great point about the hypocrisy of James O’Keefe’s trespass in Senator Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office. Still haven’t heard of O’Keefe? He made the pimp and ho films in ACORN offices last year that led to conservative outrage, and just got arrested with three of his buddies trying to do something in Senator Landrieu’s office. Anyway, the video gives a good summary, and Hayes cuts to the chase towards the end.
