Comments on: Dear Michael Blowhard,

By: liberal

liberal — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:00:35 +0000

giles wrote, The only puzzle is why did education become everywhere a publicly provided good. Simple. From a post on sci.econ: >Correct me if I'm wrong here. Don't you use similar reasoning to justify >state funding of education (again a libertarian claim that people can fund >their own)? Namely, I can't pay for the education of (say) a promising >person and receive some kind of capitalized asset in return. Right. It's a little different, but based on the same kind of phenomenon. The fact that education can only be owned by the person who gets it means that in a purely libertarian market economy (even a geolibertarian one where land rent is recovered for public purposes or equal distribution), there will be an inefficient under-allocation of investment in education (probably in some aspects of health care, too), and a corresponding over-allocation in ownable capital assets. >(Presumably, >promises that the person would pay me back in the future, perhaps outsized >gains to pay me for the risk I took, would be viewed as some kind of >unenforceable contract because it smacks of indentured servitude.) Right. I don't know how to resolve that, other than by public investment in education. And it's not like the record of societies that do invest in public education isn't pretty unambiguously positive. Look what public expenditures on basic literacy have just recently made possible in China, India, etc. How long before that libertarian utopia Somalia joins the 21st C?

By: CKR/WV

CKR/WV — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 15:22:57 +0000

I’ve read the assignments, Michael, and can’t possibly respond in detail. Just a few wide comments. In the Scruton and Sowell essays, a cardboard figure called “liberal” appears. This seems to be a result of assumptions behind the questions asked by the interviewer. Another cardboard figure called “Rationalist” appears in the Oakeshott essay. I’ve never met these people. I’ve met people with some of the characteristics described or implied, but some of those people considered themselves liberal and some conservative. Sowell makes a good point about data being thrown away that doesn’t concur with one’s worldview, as in his example of Paul Williams, but this is a limitation hardly confined to liberals. I cite the bad news coming from Iraq and the sunny statements of the Bush administration. Shocking that we’ve just found out that soldiers are scavenging stuff to armor their Humvees! And there’s lots more. It’s useful, sometimes, when one is discussing in a rather abstract way, to construct ideal types that embody a range of attitudes typical of a social group. What is not useful is to conflate those ideal types with real people. These are called straw men, and they are indeed easy to knock over. But they have little to do with the specifics of the real world, which, according to your arguments, are so highly valued by conservatives. I would also suggest that “by their fruit you shall know them.” If the sixties’ excesses (Scruton interview) discount the civil rights triumphs, then the bigoted intolerance of today’s conservatives discount anything positive they may have to offer. It’s always useful to consider what part of what your group is doing allows the worst in it to do whatever it is they’re doing. But if a group is successful enough, hubris takes over. Finally, a point of agreement. I think that most of us today are searching for something beyond a sterile rationalism, beyond thought. So many of the old certainties have been blown up in religion. Dreadful things happened in the names of rationality and non-rationality during the twentieth century. Most of us would like to see a better world. The links you provided and, for example, fundamentalist religion, want to go back to a time before, to make those certainties sure again. But you can’t go back. I’m comfortable with continuing the search. Many people are not. Some new syntheses are needed.

By: Zackary Sholem Berger

Zackary Sholem Berger — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 14:56:19 +0000

So what does a conservative look to for guidance instead [of abstractions]? [. . .] There are an amazing number of things that can be looked to: tradition (what has tended to work will probably serve OK now too); friends; inner knowledge; experience … I’m sure that in this lengthy comment thread someone has already made the following remark, much as one can find in pi any sequence of integers. But in any case, I fail to understand how “tradition” is any less difficult or abstract than other, more “liberal” abstractions. To take one example I’m familiar with, some of the sharpest minds of the Jews have spent the last couple of thousand years debating what should, or should not, be included in the “tradition,” or indeed what the word itself should be taken to mean. One might escape the frying pan of other abstractions only to be consumed utterly by the fires of such debate! “Inner knowledge and experience”: as far as that goes, Oakeshott, or Dr. Blowhard himself, must be very impressive thinkers indeed if they can distinguish a stream of consciousness or running internal monologue from that “high, solitary and most stern” thing which is inner knowledge. Ditto for distinguishing coincidence, or mere years-gotten-through, from “experience.” Perhaps I should abandon all other scholarship and learn at the feet of those who have such tricky matters in the bag, with less recourse to “abstraction” than their brothers and sisters on the Left!

By: Doctor Slack

Doctor Slack — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 02:38:41 +0000

Hi. We now control the government and the funds. We see this as a problem. Solve it or be defunded. Yeah, great idea! That would sure lay to rest any notion that conservative intellectuals can’t succeed on the merits of their own ideas. The funny thing is, many consies probably wouldn’t even see the irony of suggesting that government should be used to try to bludgeon out of departments what they can’t get through their own efforts…

By: Michael Friedman

Michael Friedman — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 02:22:51 +0000

Let me suggest a simpler argument. “Hi. We now control all three branches of the government. We see this as a problem so it doen’t matter if you don’t. You are the egg heads so you figure out a way to solve it. If you don’t solve the problem we will defund you and you can find out if an English PhD qualifies you to say ‘Would you like fries with that?’”

By: Michael Friedman

Michael Friedman — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 02:17:19 +0000

Can I suggest a much simpler argument to provide to the lefty professor who doesn’t want to hire conservatives because he thinks their ideas lack merit? “Hi. We now control the government and the funds. We see this as a problem. Solve it or be defunded. Then we’ll see if a PhD in English literature qualifies you to say ‘Would you like fries with that?’” Alternatively, we could go with: “Hi. Some new rules here.

No more student grants – it’s all loans.
Colleges, universities, and departments will be held accountable for repayment of their students’ loans – if your graduated students aren’t repaying their loans then we will no longer provide loans to your students.

” I actually like the second idea better. It would force a massive movement of students into more practical majors, effectively defunding much of liberal arts – after all, how many English majors do we need? As engineering and the sciences tend to be more balanced in their politics this would have the side effect of better balancing the universities.

By: Doctor Slack

Doctor Slack — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 01:49:35 +0000

Correction in my above post: If today’s conservatism genuinely doesn’t has less to offer in this regard Should read: “If today’s conservatism genuinely has less to offer in this regard . . .”

By: Doctor Slack

Doctor Slack — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 01:42:03 +0000

As for English Depts, I’ve got a couple of degrees from fancy places myself Golly, you mean it? Wow. That possibility would never have occurred to me. Look, conceding that the human sciences have their own problems is not to concede a crude stereotype of pristine ideological fortresses of the “left.” Believe it or not, even English Departments (perish the thought!) boast the odd conservative grad student and prof. So you really don’t have to reassure me about your education, okay? Honest. John’s posting posed a challenge involving conservatives and diversity And I’m trying to outline an element of the challenge. “Diversity” is all well and good, but blindly pursuing “diversity” for its own sake isn’t supposed to be something conservatives are interested in. And all caricatures and stereotypes to the contrary, it’s not something “liberals” are interested in either. Ultimately, “diverse” views are most useful if they’re actually informed and have something interesting to contribute. If today’s conservatism genuinely doesn’t has less to offer in this regard, then there’s no reason for any discipline to work harder to include it. Conservatives can, of course, work to dissuade academe of that assumption, but the official apparatus of “conservatism”—especially the shoddy alternate pseudo-intellectual universe of think tanks and a prevailing partisan culture that heavily encourages conservatives to indulge in intemperate baiting of “liberals and lefties”—works against them to a much greater degree than the presumed prejudice of academia. And even in that environment, various kinds of conservative are still able to get prominent and respectable notice in universities across the North American continent (Francis Fukuyama comes to mind here, though the neos are, as you’ve noted, not always recognized as “conservative” in the traditional sense). That’s why I brought up Chait’s point. Conservatism’s intellectual woes, when all is said and done, start at home. The sooner conservatives themselves are willing to recognize it, the better off we’ll all be.

By: Stuart Buck

Stuart Buck — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 21:21:52 +0000

This is rather tangential, in the grand scheme of things, but I'm a little hung up on this assertion:

My point wasn't that Will is stupid; he's not; merely that he is - as per his habitat - extremely narrow. The TV punditocracy exhibits an incredibly narrow range of political opinions, giving all their debates a potted quality. The range of opinions you can have, and be a talking head on TV, is a fraction of a sliver of the range of opinions you can have and be an academic.

What does that even mean? How is George Will -- as an individual -- "narrow" in comparison to "academia"? He has written columns on hundreds, if not thousands, of different subjects. Under what conditions would you say that he was "broad"? Later, Marcus Stanley said this:

I have little doubt that George Will is extremely smart — he has worked his way to the top of an extremely competitive and cuthroat profession. But I also have little doubt that Will systematically skews his opinions, views, and writings to whatever will support the Republican party ideological line this month.

I don't know about that. One of his recent columns highlighted inconsistencies in Condoleezza Rice's record. He has consistently written columns that are skeptical of Bush's conduct and stated reasons for the war in Iraq, and has criticized Bush's budgetary choices (e.g., here, here, here, and here).

By: CKR/WV

CKR/WV — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 19:55:37 +0000

Michael, thanks for the commentary and the links. I haven’t checked out the links yet. Seems that I may be an Oakeshottian conservative??? No, I don’t think so, but I’ll check it out later. I think I have achieved a new level of confusion as to the label for my political position. Your comment about two branches of liberal in the US seems to be consistent with my understanding, though. Now, how does one talk to that zoo of “conservatives” who keep shouting at the rest of us?

By: nic

nic — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:41:45 +0000

If I may pick another tangential matter, ie. what Blowhard says on the American media veering leftish, well, that’s a perfect illustration of the relativity of political categories across different parts of the world. A few days ago, on the anniversary of the Bhopal tragedy, I watched a CNN special about it (CNN American edition, not the British one) which left me with my jaw hanging to the floor, it was so completely subservient to the Union Carbide version of the story. At one point, the presenter, a guy with what the Poor Man calls titanium-alloy hairdo (which was not the only reason I had to wonder if I wasn’t watching Fox News by mistake), went on to ask his correspondent in India (with the most artificial frowning, perplexed pose, as in, hmm, I’m really thinking hard about this question), why is it that there are still so many protests against the company, shouldn’t they instead be complaining with the Indian government (for holding on to the retribution money for so long) because at least they elected that government, not the company…! No mention of any of the real issues in the whole controversy, OR of how much (little) the money actually is when divided by the huge number of victims, no mention even of the persisting effects of the chemical spill, no. It was only an accident after all. If one didn’t know much about the whole affair, one could have concluded from this special that the protests were clearly a case of convenient antiamericanism. Or something like anti-globalisation protesters smashing McDonalds. Silly Indians. They should be more grateful, what with all the jobs we outsource there. Tsk. Another CNN moment, special on the Zapatero laws about same sex marriage, they basically devoted most of the time, attention and credibility to guests from the religious conservatives and the Church opposing that measure. There was no one really arguing the other side. Let’s not even go into war coverage. Then I hear from some Americans that CNN is supposed to be on the left wing, or liberal, or at least so very different in slant from Fox, and it just makes me wonder what exactly is the American definition of left wing and/or liberal when applied to the media.

By: Michael Blowhard

Michael Blowhard — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:49:06 +0000

Walt—I’m puzzled by your reference to advertising. Are you thinking of my peppy prose? My shallow mind? But no, in any case, I’ve worked in the mainstream media for 25 years. Very unsuccessfully, but I do know the tv, publishing, magazine, and movie business pretty well, if only as someone who’s spent a lot of time as a fly on the wall. And yes, in my experience 9 out of 10 people on the content side veer leftish in American terms, and yes that affects what we think of as the news. (In my experience, of course.) I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with this, especially now that the Internet has opened the discussion up, by the way. CKR/WV—There are a lot of different sides to conservatism, and to rightie thought generally. (Incidentally, I’m no rightie. But I was bugged by my ignorance of rightie thought—and by the tendency of my more rabid leftie friends to demonize rightie-ism without seeming to know a damn thing about it). So I spent a couple of years self-educating myself. I got a lot out of the experience, FWIW. One conclusion: the world of rightie thought is as big and impressive as the world of leftie thought. Another: it’s no more (if no less) motivated by Raw Evil than leftie thought is. Anyway, the first bit of confusion I had to get over was the identification of conservatism as a political philosophy with what’s characterized in the press as “conservatism.” Two different, if sometimes overlapping, things. America’s Republicans are a funny, roped-together combo of business cheerleaders, Christians, libertarians, “neoconservatives” and a handful of traditionalist conservatives. There’s nothing conservative (in the poli-sci sense) about business cheerleaders, libertarians, or even most neoconservatives. These groups, who have immense quarrels between themselves, band together out of political convenience (and, to be honest, a dislike of whatever they imagine the Dems are up to). Confusing things even further is that there are two main strands in conservatism—continental and Anglo-American. But setting that aside for a sec … Conservatism as people like Burke and Oakeshott conceive of it is more a matter of temperament than it is of dogma. There’s a distrust of abstraction, but also a recognition that abstractions are occasionally necessary and unavoidable. But there’s a general feeling that abstractions should be dealt with warily, because the complex organism that is a society often responds very badly to having abstractions imposed on it. There’s also a … well, I wouldn’t call it belief but a feeling that tradition and experience are much more trustworthy guides than rationalism and abstraction are. Don’t reach for formal purity and then work your way backwards to a conclusion, in other words; you’ll probably be better off reflection on the past, consulting with friends (and experts, though warily), reminding yourself that modesty and piecemeal approaches generally work out better than ambitious engineering projects … So in a way, conservatism of this sort is more a temperameantal preference than it is a list of policy prescriptions. Respecting experience, respeting the local, and respecting history tend to lead conservatives (of this sort) to conclude that a French conservatism might be quite different than an American one—after all, France is quite a different place than America. Translating these general temperamental preferences into specific policies, let alone forming and running a political party with “conservatism” as its theme, are always big challenges. But generally, conservatives of this kind have a dramatically different view of the role of government than liberals and lefties do. They tend to see governing as a necessary evil rather than a potentially-exicting vehicle for change and improvement. They’d generally like to see government confine itself to certain basic functions, and to confine itself as well to managing or enabling society in such a way that people can lead rewarding lives of their own choosing, all the while accepting the fact that perfection is unrealistic. In my experience, lefties adore activist government, and are in love with dramatic gestures. Conservatives are wary of both. Part of what explains some of the dust and brouhaha on the right these days is the existence of neoconservatism. Neoconservatism in many ways isn’t conservative at all. Neos love big programs and dramatic gestures—what’s conservative about that? Historically, what explains the neos is that they’re former leftists who (in their terms) saw the light and veered right, often in the ‘80s. What they didn’t give up in changing directions was their love of crusading politics. This has many people on the right feeling all charged up—whee, excitement. But it has the people who are more traditionally conservative feeling quite angry and betrayed. Traditional conservatives are quite as likely as rabid lefties to think that Bush is in the clutches of madmen, and that the Iraq war has been a disaster from day one. The political scientist Jeremy Shearmur came up with a taxonomy I found very helpful. In his view, there are three main political points of view: conservative, “liberal,” and socialist. Liberal subdivides into two camps: business liberals (in America, many Republicans) and welfare liberals (Dems). And he (realistically, as far as I can tell) says that politics in America is largely a quarrel between the two subcamps of “liberal.” We have relatively few true conservatives, and relatively few true socialists. But I’m probably just confusing things. Hoping that you’re curious, let me pass along a couple of links. Here’s a q&a with the British conservative Roger Scruton. Here’s a q&a with the economist Thomas Sowell—he’s really more of a classical liberal than a conservative, but he’s well worth wrestling with, IMHO. Here’s Michael Oakeshott’s essay “Rationalism in Politics.” His book by the same name has an eye-opening essay in it called “On Being Conservative”; another book of his, “The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism” is a gem too. And, FWIW, here’s a blog posting I wrote about my self-education in rightie thought; and here’s an interview I did with Jim Kalb, a traditionalist conservative who does a great job of spelling out what trad conservatism is all about.

By: CKR/WV

CKR/WV — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:11:59 +0000

I’m new to Crooked Timber and this discussion, but I’d like to thank the discussers for giving me some insight into the reasons for my unproductive dialogs with people who currently style themselves “conservatives.” I put that term into quotes because of its historical slipperyness and some things I didn’t understand until reading this thread. Trouble is, I haven’t learned yet how to make the discussions more productive. Both sides are trying to define the terms of the debate. This results in the sides talking past each other. It might be useful to look at those terms to try to find common ground on which a debate might be conducted, but now I am trying to define the terms of the debate. Conservatives deal with the specific, liberals with the abstract???? Let’s take a look at the conservative Bush administration and its “sticking to principles,” which seems to have won it the election with conservative voters. Or the Bible-based fundamentalists who have divine revelation before them, from which they pick and choose. I eschewed lots of “abstractions for guidance” a long time ago, and I’ve always thought it made me liberal. So do most of the people around me. Something strange going on here that I still don’t understand. Maybe it’s a conservative rhetorical strategy to throw liberals off balance. “Tradition, friends, inner knowledge, experience.” The problem, enunciated by several posters, is that if you want to share any of this with others (part of teaching, I think), you have to be able to discuss it in a more or less analytical way. Otherwise it is transmitted as received dogma. Or the picture comes to mind of Henry II lolling with his barons in the movie “Beckett” just before the infamous (but plausibly deniable) comment about “that troublesome priest.” “Don’t we all know that there are some things better left unfucked with?” Yes and no. And we probably disagree on what they are. More discussion needed, more analysis (sorry, I just don’t know how to get these things through osmosis). The purpose of the university (and the intellectual life) is to question, not to fence questions out. I think that if one wants the other, it is monasticism that provides that.

By: Walt Pohl

Walt Pohl — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 03:29:56 +0000

For some reason I have the impression that you’re in advertising, Michael. Is that right? I had always assumed that advertising leaned left—not the people who pay for the advertising, of course, but the actual creative people who do it, since it’s a natural vocation for art majors. What I had in mind was the news media. I think the comparison with the media is particular infelicitous because your complaints are more plausible for English than they are for the news media.

By: Michael Blowhard

Michael Blowhard — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 01:32:27 +0000

Walt—You write, “Maybe they like people who are 10% left of center more than they like people 10% right of center.” Right, that’s the point. By the way, I work in the mainstream media, and conservatives (on the content side) are very few and far between. Maybe that’s as it should be. But the fact is they’re hard to come by, and yes that does affect how the news is conceptualized and presented. Though I’ve always wondered what media people might confess to really believing if you got ‘em alone and took ‘em off the record … As for English Depts, I’ve got a couple of degrees from fancy places myself, so I haven’t just been reading the headlines in Commentary. John’s posting posed a challenge involving conservatives and diversity—that’s why we’re all circling around the topic of academic deparments hiring conservatives. No one’s claiming it’s a cure-all for everything or even anything. Still, come to think of it: why wouldn’t you want a greater diversity of points of view in your Lit department? Dan S. writes, “But the people with the power to change the status quo are for the most part liberals, who are unlikely to find those conservative criticisms compelling.” Very true! As a practical matter, one of the reasons for the existence of conservative think-tanks is that many rightie people with academic-intellectual interests (and presumably talents) couldn’t land jobs in academia. So they went and created their own intellectual world. If we’re talking about the “market” for ideas, it’d probably make sense to open it up ‘way beyond just the universities. Lizardbreath—You make a good distinction between making art and the academic study of art. Still, when you write, “academic departments are venues for the creation and communication of ideas,” I’ve got to hope you aren’t thinking about English departments …