From school vouchers to stem cell research to racial preferences to torture, the American right bubbles with debate and disagreement, while the left, for all its talk about “diversity,” rarely seems to show any. As National Review’s Jonah Goldberg points out, that may be because “liberals define diversity by skin color and sex, not by ideas, which makes it difficult to have really good arguments.”
This from a Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe op-ed. The thread that runs through these ‘the left doesn’t even know what debate is’ pieces (they pop up every couple months, lo the last several years) is that the authors consistently fail to exhibit any awareness of what debate is. The fact that the Republican base is fragmented and tearing itself apart in various ways is not ‘debate’, per se. Jacoby specifically cites the fact that the Republican party contains both John McCain and Tom “build a wall on the Canadian border” Tancredo as evidence of debate on immigration. I’m supposed to be impressed that the Republicans have a guy who wants to wall off Canada? Not to mention: turning the fact that Republicans can’t agree that torture is wrong into an intellectual virtue is a lame attempt to lipstick the pig. We’re supposed to take the fact that one of the two major parties is addicted to chest-thumping about ticking timebomb scenarios as evidence of its comparative intellectual vibrancy? Why?
This problem is related to something Matt Yglesias talks about today: namely, there is real pressure on Democrats not to take even moderately ‘liberal’ positions on health care and the Iraq war. From the ABC News article he links:
It’s not just the war that shows the leftward tilt of the presidential field. Several Democrats are now talking about raising taxes to expand health insurance to more Americans, or to combat global warming.
Let’s take it from the top: if the Republicans have got a guy who wants to spend money building a wall against Canada, that’s intellectual vibrancy. If the Democrats get someone who wants to expand health insurance or combat global warming, that’s a canary dying in the coalmine of the Democratic party’s political extremism?
It’s a nice illustration of a dilemma for Democrats. The only way they can get credit for ‘having ideas’ is by turning Republican – not because the Republicans have ideas, but because the range of media-acceptable impulses you can exhibit runs the gamut from the far right to the right-leaning left. The way to signal that you have got ‘ideas’ is by ‘containing multitudes’, when it comes to exhibiting these acceptable impulses. But at present all the right knows is that it wants its Reagan mojo back. It is gesticulating frantically, hoping some combination will unlock the goodness that was. But it isn’t happening – so the blur of motion you see over there is not intellectualism but rhetorical desperation.
So the big idea would seem to be: in order to ‘get ideas’, Democrats need to mimic Republicans without ideas mimicking Republicans who, maybe (this is the idea), once had ideas.
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I blame Quine.
I hear that Quine wanted to bomb China, to keep them from getting the bomb. If so, that wasn’t very sensible of him.
Hartshorne, Russell, and Wittgenstein also had basty views on nuclear war around 1946-50.
The Repub obsession with “ideas” reflects to some degree that it takes more intellectual effort to lie than to tell the truth. Liberals (one cannot say “democrats’ because it is no longer true of most, evidently) advocate a progressive tax structure for fairly transparent reasons; Repubs want a flat or regressive one to redistribute wealth upwards, but they can’t say that, so they have to build Laffler curves and such voodoo.
Your complaint is perfectly accurate, John. And another point: if the proper way of demonstrating the existence of the vibrant exchange of ideas on the right (which, to be truthful, I do kind of think exists, at least amongst some conservative factions) is by pointing to Rep. Tancredo’s fear of the Imminent Canuck Invasion, then why shouldn’t the Democrats be able to claim the same cred by pointing to Rep. Kucinich, he of the Department of World Peace Through Crystal Power? We’ve got just as many ideological oddballs as they do.
Mr. Holbo,
From what I have seen in my thirty years as a conservative, Jacoby is absolutely correct. But he does not go into the roots of this – conservatism is merely the concatenation of every world-view that is not leftism. The variety of ideas that feed modern American conservatism is very broad – rational class interest (of more than one class), traditionalism (usually religious) of several flavors, patriotism, libertarianism, ethnic particularisms of several kinds, you can add others I am sure. Try the exercise of reconciling the Wall Street Journal vs libertarianism vs Russell Kirk vs Pope Benedict vs the Southern Baptists vs the Mormons, and you will understand. This was always the case – the conservative direction was always, and will always be, the sum of vectors coming in from all angles.
There is no real debate on the left because it has purged itself of everything that comes in at an angle to its perfectly aligned parallel vectors. All thats left to argue is merely a matter of how far left one is.
This is complicated by the fact that the experience of the twentieth century has shown exactly what the practical limits of leftism are – how much the system can tolerate in the long and short term without unacceptable costs – and we are not far from them in the US.
The result is a dead left – which has no ideas, in fact. It cannot go into more radical territory (which isn’t “new” anyway) because it is well known that that way lies disaster. It cannot go right, because it then becomes just another conservative vector (“compassionate conservatism”, anyone?). So all we get is what we see – an intolerant, dogmatic, culturally monotonous, semi-religious system of belief.
In Europe they have the beginnings, maybe, of something more interesting (in the sense of “may you live in interesting times”) in the fusion of leftism with Islam. Now that throws in some complex vectors.
Luis Alegria may want to investigate the long and messy history of left factionalism before continuing to bless us with his avant garde comedy stylings. Sheesh.
Yeah, we’re all just stuck defending what we have against various brilliant plans to make it worse. And all liberals (i.e., Communists) agree about everything.
I’ve had arguments with conservatives where I had to defend public libraries (“Free riders
!!”), national parks, the Smithsonian institute, public schools, free vaccination, evolution, condoms, habeas corpus, etc., etc.
Conservatives are hopping with ideas. It’s like fleas on a carpet after the dog has died.
Nick has a point, Luis.
You seem to have a radically oversimplified view of the left, which you have mistaken for a view of a radically oversimplified left.
Hey, I’ve got an idea. Or, more accurately, a rule:
Anyone who argues that “X” (right, left, liberal, conservative, dogcatchers, Hollywood executives, whatever) has no debates and is out of ideas should supply evidence for that proposition.
Anyone who justifies this claim through an appeal to the putative causes for X’s intellectual impoverishment—e.g., X has no debates because X has no intellectual diversity—doesn’t have the right to be taken seriously.
Here’s another series of thoughts: what special kind of ignorance does it take to use right-wing opposition to the current “compromise” immigration bill as evidence of intra-Republican “debates” while totally ignoring the vociferous left-wing opposition to the same plan? What kind of idiot op-ed writer can’t tell the difference between, on the one hand, a front-runner candidate attempting to minimize distinctions between herself and her opponents in order to prevent voters from finding a reason to abandon her and, on the other hand, the absence of substantive differences on how to handle related issues? Or would invoke the split between the neocons and the paleocons over Iraq as evidence of “diversity” and fail to mention that, at the exact same time, the same split was occurring among liberal- and democratic-leaning opinion journals and editorial pages? I think we have an answer….
Mr. Caldwell, Mr. Holbo,
I am quite well aquainted with leftist factionalism. I did do my turn in student politics back in the day. It seemed to me that it took one of two forms – power struggles in which dogma was irrelevant, other than as ammunition – i.e., these people believed the same things but hated each other anyway – or arguments between one point and another on the leftist continuum. The other common point of this factionalism is that it happens principally among the irrelevant, cranks and crackpots.
Mr. Emerson is perfectly correct – conservatives are likely to come at you from every point of the compass and from above and below. That is perhaps distressing to the possessors of the one true faith; I am sure Mr. Ahmadinejad and his friends feel like they have the same problem.
Shorter Alegria: conservatism is not made of straw, unlike this straw liberal I have spent a large amount of time constructing.
I am sure Mr. Ahmadinejad and his friends feel like they have the same problem.
Oh, do fuck off.
Mr. S,
Indeed, I have spent a lifetime constructing this straw liberal, or leftist rather. I have dealt with a very wide variety of these types, and I have seen how they have blended into a rather homogenized item.
I have been arguing with conservatives and leftists for decades (I do live in San Francisco); my general observation is that conservatives are much less likely to pronounce any given concept as anathema.
Luis, if it is true that you can pin liberalism to the board so neatly – as a ‘one true faith’ – then what, pray tell, IS this “intolerant, dogmatic, culturally monotonous, semi-religious system of belief”? No caricatures, please.
Luis, I’m sorry your liberal friends were mean to you in college. That must have been rough.
My liberal friends, who are nicer, enjoy debates abouot topics such as:
How to best ensure adequate health care to all citizens?
How to respond to global warming and other environmental concerns in a way that is both effective and economically sustainable?
How to maintain scientific integrity in our educational system while accomodating the wide range of religious views of our citizens?
How to respond to terrorism in a way that is effective, yet honors the Constitution here at home and the Geneva Convention and other international agreements?
Those are just a few examples. It can get pretty heated! But you’re right, we pretty much agree that torture is wrong, evolution is real, and a giant wall is just stupid. We’re monotonous and semi-religious that way.
Since the beginning of time, liberals have yearned to destroy the sun.
Liberals might seem ideologically united lately, but that is mostly due to GWB, and generally being out of power for so long. At this point, I would be grateful for any half-way decent way out of Iraq, any vaguely progressive taxation, any sincere attempt to address global warming, etc. It’s a ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ kind of thing. As soon as notions of political viability had really swung left, I’m sure that people would become much more concerned about the details.
Mr. Awlsdad,
I regret to say that my liberal (and even leftist) friends were not actually mean to me in college, as I tended to admire them in fact. I even admired the members of the NPA of which I was once a “guest” – they were people graced with a degree of nobility, misguided as they were.
Unfortunately, I have never been witness to such debates; which would be interesting, the usual form of such things is very different, in that the conclusion is either pre-ordained and unquestionable (government-mandated universal health care, say), or the nub of the matter is not in fact addressed (fighting terrorism,etc.). In fact, after having followed the leftist media for some time (I do get the American Prospect, and I have peeked into the others) and lived among your tribe for twenty years, I don’t think these discussions happen very often at all.
Luis, you’re certainly an ideas man:
No straw men there… and a remarkable ability to approach serious scientific topics from, shall we say… not so much a parallel vector as a parallel universe.
Mr. Holbo,
I would not dream of caricaturing it; it is an observable reality.
Like any culture, it is a set of beliefs, attitudes, and rituals, not all of which are rationally connected to the others, but one can say they travel in parallel, as in a convoy, or a fleet in formation.
Secularism is a big vessel in the fleet, defered to even by whatever religious remnants trail along. Socialism, the belief and enthusiasm for the power of government, is another. Feminism is another, etc. Tack across the path of any of these, and you are out of formation. Is there an anti-abortion leftist still around ? I don’t think so.
Can I define it more accurately ? I doubt it. Cultures have to be experienced to be properly understood, and are not easily described or taxonomized in text, even the attempt requires writing books. All I know is what I have experienced here in Northern California, and this culture can be seen in its pure state in the majority of the white upper middle class of the SF Bay area, which is culturally and socially distinct.
Travel into the small-town inland of California and the entire feel of the people changes; we are dealing with a substantially different culture, and voila, they have different politics.
There’s plenty of ideological disagreement on the left that’s irreducible to how far left one goes. Take, for instance, the approach to pornography taken by various strains of feminism, or universalist versus particularist approaches to equality between various cultures, or the dizzying variety of socialisms economic radicals would prefer to replace capitalism with.
These sorts of debates aren’t terribly compelling to nonleftists, of course, just like nonconservatives don’t have any difficulty in seeing that torture is evil. Obviously, when we speak only of the domain of questions that we consider interesting, our own ideology is going to appear to be the most intellectually diverse. Christians have more interesting, more developed, and simply more opinions about the Trinity than atheists do, but that doesn’t make atheism an intellectual dead end.
Luis, have you missed the category links on the left? There’s “healthcare,” “environment,” “economics/finance,” etc. HTH!
Conservatives have so many ideas because so many of them are contradictory. They persist because they are not thought through. They are employed situationally—filed away when no longer useful and brought back as needed. Conservative debate consists mainly of repackaging rejected ideas and figuring out different ways of calling a return to the old ways the new way forward. It’s a shotgun approach that’s difficult to keep straight and to reconcile with principles. And that’s why most conservative effort is expended on self-flattery and on rationalizing the dismissal of liberal ideas because of the source.
Luis, I don’t think you are quite getting into the swing of the intellectual exercise here. It is clear that you don’t AGREE with (what you take to be) liberalism – but this is not at all the same as liberalism being narrow or thoughtless or any of that other stuff you are alleging. If liberalism is as narrow and dogmatic as you say, it should not be so very hard for you to state, tolerably clearly, what the narrow dogma is. Just say it.
Hmmm, comments are getting a bit crossed here. For example, my last (24) was written before I noticed that Luis (20) was in the queue.
Here is my problem with what Luis is saying: there is a tension between alleging that liberalism is a rather pathetic, culturally monotonous thing, consisting of just a few perfectly parallel threads, and saying that it is an ineffably rich tapestry of cross-woven cultural factors. Let me return to the terms of my challenge to Luis: what is the content of the “intolerant, dogmatic, culturally monotonous, semi-religious system of belief” that is the ‘one true faith’ of liberalism? If it is not possible to answer this question simply, why should we believe it is possible to answer it at all?
“Socialism, the belief and enthusiasm for the power of government”. Really? That’s very interesting. Could you expand on the provenance of that definition?
“Is there an anti-abortion leftist still around ? I don’t think so.”
Ahem.
“Cultures have to be experienced to be properly understood, and are not easily described or taxonomized in text, even the attempt requires writing books.”
The phrase “wishy-washy essentialist nonsense” comes to mind.
Well, first of all this is not about Right and Left but about the strategies of mainstream politicians within two ruling parties.
It’s just that Republican party has been thoroughly discredited at this point and so they are, naturally, looking for a new theme. To find a new successful advertising line they, obviously, need all kinds of crackpots.
The Democrats, OTOH, are virtually certain to win anyway; rocking the boat now would’ve been counterproductive. So, they don’t.
This is just so far off it’s hard to believe people are taking it seriously. I seriously find it hard to believe that someone like Luis Alegria has ever had any contact with a serious liberal or leftist intellectual over the past decade. The left is the ideas party, and this advantage has been growing for a while now (the right did I think have an idea advantage in the 70s/80s). Look at how many prominent Democratic policy people are prominent college professors (which requires, like, peer-reviewed publications and other idea-related stuff) instead of bought-and-paid-for political hacks whose version of an “idea” is a new way to claim Democrats are “islamofacists”. Just to reel off a few of the economists, are you really going to say prominent liberal Democrats like Krugman, Stiglitz, Delong, Summers, have no “ideas” and agree on everything? It’s fucking ridiculous.
The fundamental split is that the left believes that government can improve social life, and is fascinated by the question of how best to use it. The right wishes government would just vanish, except for the military and other agencies used for the authoritarian control of feared populations. Look on the left and you will quickly find numerous distinct ideas and plans for how to, say, design a better health care system than what we have now, and a thriving debate between these perspectives. To the right, these does not count as “ideas” because it is based on an assumption that they do not share—that government can play a role in improving social life. It is easier for them to accept variations on the fundamental right-wing fantasy that modern government will somehow disappear.
The tepid attempt on the part of “compassionate conservatives” to come up with an actual governance agenda went nowhere in the early part of this decade. It was ignored, unfunded, and quickly replaced by an orgy of tax cuts and patronage handouts to constituency groups. Even ideas like market-based environmental regulation were hatched and pushed on the center-left instead of the right, because they are governance ideas. The major recent period when the right had a real ideas advantage was during the late 60s through the early 80s when there was real consensus the government role had to be trimmed back and Milton Friedman was giving libertarian ideas like school vouchers a wide airing for the first time. Even then, major policy initiative like deregulation happened under Carter, not Reagan.
Matthias at #21 summed up very well, I think. Personally I’m not very interested in debates about libertarianism, for instance, because I disagree fundamentally with the various premises of libertarianism. This doesn’t mean that the debates and differences don’t exist and are not real.
To some extent there’s uniformity on the US left because the ideas that the US left agrees on are simply the sensible next steps. It is only the rigidity of the US government that has held them back; the US health care system is the worst in the developed world, yet since Truman we have been unable to reform it. Luis, you complain about feminism, secularism, and state socialism. Would you defend patriarchy, then? Would you have a state religion? The return of the vast power of the state to large property holders? What alternatives are you proposing? I say these are not liberal ideas; they are the ideas of our time, that is all. Let’s get past the basics, and then we can talk about ideological diversity. Reactionary politics are diverse the way crackpottery is diverse; there’s a lot of crackpottery, but none of it is worth the trouble of pursuing.
Isn’t this just the psychologists’ in-group/out-group distinction? People in the out-group always appear more homogeneous.
I hate to add an utterly pedestrian observation to an entrancingly surreal discussion, but a few days ago the L.A. Times had an article on the deficiencies of U.S. health care and brief summaries of the relevant positions of the presidential candidates.
All of the Democrats had policy recommendations; nearly none of the Republicans did, and the few with opinions were certain that we’d best keep the government out of it.
It’s telling that Fred Thompson, as yet an unannounced and unqualified candidate, has pulled even in polls with the erstwhile frontrunner Giuliani. The pattern is obvious: the venerable Reagan was also a second-rate actor. The Republican base is manifestly unable to distinguish the preacher’s pitch from reality.
As others have said, the problem is that for Luis Allegra, the different opinions on the left look all the same anyway, so he can’t see different ideas. A bit like how, for someone who thinks all trees are the same anyway, every forest looks like a monoculture.
Think of how he gave “government mandated universal healthcare” as an example for how debates on the left all come to the same “pre-ordained” results. Since for him, all government regulated healthcare is equally wrong, he can’t see it as a debate to argue about the merits of various forms of it.
Isn’t this just the psychologists’ in-group/out-group distinction? People in the out-group always appear more homogeneous.
In addition, the further out one moves from the in-group, the more grotesque those increasingly homogenous appearances are. See for example:
In Europe they have the beginnings, maybe, of something more interesting (in the sense of “may you live in interesting times”) in the fusion of leftism with Islam.
Luis’s talk about an “invincible” armada of ponderous ideological galleons fails to characterize true dogma. The fusion of Republican bogeymen in the neat little prophecy above, however, exemplifies the phenomenon perfectly.
It’s the return of A Very Real Problem For The Left! Happily this one has a pretty easy solution. If all you need in order to have a vibrant intellectual culture of debate is a lot of morons with silly ideas (to disagree with), then hell, shoulda asked, I can get you morons, real cheap.
Mr Alegria,
[I assume I may call you Mr? That this would be your preferred form of address? I want to check, since it is extremely rude to call someone by a name they dislike. You may call me “duaneg”, by the way. The quotes are optional.]
This came from one of those wacky right-wing “vectors”, right?
Oh, please. Unless I’m mistaken there are at least 2 who have commented on this very thread.
You really should get out more.
When there was a resurgence of the young European and North American Left a few years ago (Seattle et seq) I seem to remember a lot of commentary from the complacenceriat to the effect that they didn’t seem to know what theywanted, they were all pulling in different directions, there was no clear set of ideas and so on. I also seem to remember observing that (apart from this being true of almost all movements of any size) if there were, indeed, one largely-accepted set of ideas then the movement would be accused of being dogmatic, ideologically straitjacketed, not open to fresh thinking etc etc.
John Holbo asks : “what is the content of the “intolerant, dogmatic, culturally monotonous, semi-religious system of belief” that is the ‘one true faith’ of liberalism? ”
If I was Luis my answer would be ’ social constructivism ‘. It also makes sense to speak about dogma in connection with the bunch of ideas associated with this because
considering where its coming fromit is immune to rational examination.( it is anti rationalist, anti-realist ,anti-objectivist ).The core idea is simple enough. To say that something is socially constructed is to emphasize its dependence on contingent aspects of our social selves.
Examples ? consider Simone DeBeauvoir’s ‘the second sex’ or Anthony Appiah’s ‘Colour conscious’. Appiah argues typically that there is nothing biological about racial categories and so on. ( not saying Appiah is wrong btw but consider the related claim by Mary Boyle that schizophrenia is socially constructed I think this is lot less defensible than Appiah’s position ).
I propose a rule with significant explanatory power: Jonah Goldberg is wrong.
“Repubs want a flat or regressive one to redistribute wealth upwards,”
The idea that the left is an intellectual mono-culture is absurd, but not quite as absurd as the widely held view on the left that a failure to redistribute wealth down as much as the leftist in question wants constitutes redistributing it up.
Zdenek V at 39:
But many left-liberals argue for cosmopolitan and redistributive policies on the basis of human needs and capacities (e.g. Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum). Others appeal to universal human rights on essentially Kantian grounds (e.g. Thomas Pogge). Others still are on the Darwinian left (e.g. Peter Singer). All are self-consciously opposed to social constructivism. All are the subject of plenty of debate, in academia, in development policy, etc. So no, that answer won’t do, and I doubt any other simplistic generalisation would either. To be honest, I don’t see how anyone could take seriously the idea that a tradition as rich, amorphous and long-storied as liberalism could be summed up so neatly. If the question is really not about liberalism, but about the mores of middle-class leftists in San Fransisco… who cares?
as the widely held view on the left that a failure to redistribute wealth down as much as the leftist in question wants constitutes redistributing it up.
Would it be possible to provide sources for this “widely held view”?
I love these debates…by far the greatest trick by what is characterised as the “right” in the US in recent times is to present TOTAL GIBBERISH as valid ideascomment and force their opponents to engage on that basis. It’s the forcing to engage that is pure genius. In the US, it appears is no longer possible to dismiss complete lunancy (the far left are islamic terrorists who want to kill us all
etc.) out of hand without being stigmatised as unwilling to “debate the issues and ideas” etc. Not only that but to do so apparently proves you are devoid of ideas. It’s fantastic!
As it happens, I do not debate the merits of US foreign poilcy with my 5 year old daughter but apparently I should. For exactly the same reason, I have cut down drastically on arguing with people whose opinions are utterly and completely moronic and I DON’T CARE IN THE SLIGHTEST if the purveyors of said rubbish accuse me of arrogance/stupidity/fear of engagement or whatever. Fuck them – I refuse to have to even consider for one second creationism (yes, creationism for “intelligent design” see TOTAL GIBBERISH above), building walls around Canada, freeing the world and establishing democracy by starting wars (imaginary conversation “I know how to make us and everyone else safe: we’ll kill loads and loads of people” “Genius!”) and so on.
I have had people say things to me in conversation so breathtakingly dumb that I could not even guess where to begin to “argue” with them.
(The left is of course not immune to any of this but I think it’s fair to say that it was the right who worked to make it difficult to simply dismiss rubbish out of hand. As for the left in the US: what left? The Democrats? See what I mean…to describe the Democratic party as left wing (I mean properly left wing) is just dumb.)
Illiberals who live in predominantly liberal places like NYC or SF and remain illiberal are faced with a continual fight against a faceless mass of people who all disagree with them, often in the very same way (since the illiberal is always saying the same thing over and over again). It’s a very special character type summed up with the phrase “a chip on the shoulder”.
Democrats need to mimic Republicans without ideas mimicking Republicans who, maybe (this is the idea), once had ideas.
and I blame Quine
“Yields a Republican mimicking a Republican when appended to its almost quotation”, yields a Democrat mimicking a Republican when appended to its almost quotation.
There’s a lot of truth in the claim, if it is taken to refer to Dems and Republicans in the US in the recent past. The Dems are pretty much reactive; there is debate on the margins about ideas (the kind of debate the real left has been having for ages) but not much within the Dem mainstream; at least not since shortly after 1992, when the pro-business faction won the national party pretty decisively. The Republicans, by contrast, overflow with debate, obviously, because they are constituted by a fundamentally unprincipled and unstable coalition that can only be coordinated through very strong leadership (which they currently lack, spectacularly).
Luis and Jeff Jacoby simply partake in the “We are the World” view of politics; they take the US Democratic Party mainstream as the left (luis seems to look at it through the prism of Fox News, but that’s beside the point). If you do that, the left looks pretty dull (and not very left). If I thought that was “the left” I wouldn’t be on the left. But I’d also be an ignoramous.
“Is there an anti-abortion leftist still around?”
Here’s one right here, Mr. Alegria. And please, don’t confuse the controlling ideological parameters contained within the platforms of major liberal and left parties with the actual range of debate within a particular group. If one insists on denying the existence of debate over abortion on the left because of what happened to Governor Casey fifteen years ago, then one should similar deny that, say, any real debate over immigration exists on the right, because none of the Republican candidates that at this point have a prayer of achieving the nomination or shaping their party’s platform in any significant way oppose Bush’s bill.
Funny, the last time I paid attention to this schtick the characterizations were reversed but the value judgment was the same: American conservatives (or, just the Republicans) were united in their vision and organized from the roots up in the effort to implement it. American liberals (or, just the Democrats) were a mixed group with a rattlebag of competing interests constantly given over to infighting about the details of this or that policy, and hence unable to present a united front to the electorate and incapable of leadership, etc.
Republicans, by contrast, overflow with debate
Nah, I don’t think they normally do either, it’s just that this cycle is unusual. Typically the debate is, like, should we lower the top tax bracket or skip directly to a flat tax? is America merely the Number One or is it Absolutely Positively The Best Ever And Forever?
Anti-abortion leftist: Nat Hentoff
Oh, please. Jacoby is an idiot studying to become a moron. I’ve read the Boston Globe, but stopped reading Jacoby after I came to that conclusion.
The interesting question is why the NYTimes Company, which has owned the Globe since 1994 (or so) keeps Jacoby on, while getting rid of some of their newstaff and their relatively intelligent columnists—they just got rid of Eileen McNamara, for example. I’ll suggest that they keep Jacoby on because he toes the Sulzberger party line (the Sulzbergers are the family that controls the NYTimes company): Jacoby is staunchly pro-Israel-government-policy and staunchly anti-gay. It really is as simple as that.
Raj, I’ve been trying to convince people for a year or two that it’s no accident that the Times and Post are bad. Graham and Sulzberger are bad guys, that’s why the Times and Post are bad.
People seem to be begging those two to come to their senses, but they’re like peasants who think that the beloved and holy Czar will support them against the evil ministers.
“Is there an anti-abortion leftist still around?”
Wendell Barry.
But why should the evidence of debate among the left mean ‘is there anyone in the Left who holds Right Wing views’?
You want debate on the Left? See #42 above. Ask about Israel. Ask about military intervention. Ask about home schooling. Ask about whether ‘identity’ politics obscure the fundamental problems of class. Ask about God. Ask about essentialism v. performance-based modes of understanding subjectivity. Try, duh, Habermas v. Zizek. Hell, compare someone in the Black Bloc to, say, Josh Marshall. The only evidence I can see, Luis, is that you’re lazy and that you’re trying to pass it off as a world-weary virtue.
The variety of ideas that feed modern American conservatism is very broad – rational class interest (of more than one class), traditionalism (usually religious) of several flavors, patriotism, libertarianism, ethnic particularisms of several kinds, you can add others I am sure.
Fascism. Anti-intellectualism.
It strikes me that what is being portrayed as a difference in “ideas” is simply a difference in numbers.
There may be simply more Americans who want to torture pro-choice immigrants by banging them against the wall with Canada, than there are Americans who want to bring about the Revolution where the proletariat will rise up with their crystals and harmonic convergences and seize the means of production.
This strikes me as a true failure of the insane leftists.
We may blame the “media” for its ideological spectrum of, say, far right to moderate Democrat, but I think the insane right should be given credit for having their views become “mainstream” enough to warrant consideration criticism.
In fact, I think the future strength of the Democratic party will depend on nurturing a credible group of “Puppy-Killer-Democrats,” so that Clinton or Obama or whomever can move left, while appearing centrist enough to distance himself from the puppy-killers.
Ideas? What the contemporary right has is not ideas but another bout of what trilling called “irritable mental gestures.” Debate? “The narcissism of small differences.”
Jacoby, Goldberg and our own Alegria miss the nonsubtle distinction between new ideas and good ideas—the Tancredo example of building a wall along the Canadian border is certainly a new idea, but new damn fool ideas are not particularly a valuable commodity.
It is an easy thing to laugh at the follies of elected officials, and in fact the lack of debate or solid ideas, but then those trained or predisposed to being scholarly people more often than not do not run for public office, and, if they do or have done so, turn out to be no more effective than those they would belittle. There remain, I imagine, some within both parties who are good at discussions or debates, and selecting the few ninnies is in itself a poor example of debate
Perhaps there’s really not that much of a need for ideas on the left or on the right. Maybe we have to go – as one bearded German prof put it long ago – to the things themselves!
After two hundred years of socio-economic experiments, we do have a fairly good idea of what the tools are and how they work. We know about the course of the command and control economy; we know how the Washington consensus works; we know how a strong Keynesian economy works; we have seen what happens when you push the envelop on privatization and when you push it on nationalization. Are there really any surprises left? The question is, what do you want? Myself, as a liberal, I want society that tends towards equality of wealth but never really reaches equality of wealth. I want one that takes social costs seriously, and that doesn’t treat the environment as a contingent dumping problem. I don’t think these wants are unique or new, and I don’t think I really have to make up the tools to get to them. They are already there. I can easily look at the past and see how they have worked. Conservatives may well bubble with ideas, but essentially, like a bubble, the ideas are froth covering essentially an old pattern. The right wing idea is to reward the class that owns the most and to do that they have sometimes, in a democracy, to disguise their deep purposes. Still, the idea is the same. Conservatives aren’t going to come up with the great idea, tomorrow, that we need a stronger government supported welfare system, are they? We also know how they will govern, since we have had plenty of time to observe it since Reagan’s time: they will promise small government and enlarge the government. They will always reward the wealthy. They will rail against the government burden on business and then reward big businesses with monopoly power, such as extending IP rights. They will always disguise the fundamental mandate (reward the wealthy) with some proxy populist window dressing. They will always use the environment as a dumping ground. And they will promote war whenever possible. They’ve done this now since the end of World War II, and it doesn’t look like they are ever going to change. Why should they? They can toil and trouble all they want to, but the ideas are like the ideas an advertiser might have to sell Exxon – the advertiser may come up with one hundred creative narratives, but they are all going to be about selling Exxon. The same thing is true, pari passu, of the liberals.
You’re leaving out that this is a rightwing commentator passing judgement on Democratic “ideas.”
As long as Democrats and commentators like yourself take Jacoby’s comments as meaning anything, much less to be followed slavishly, your argument holds.
Trouble is, it’s highly biased: Democrats don’t have ideas because Republicans say so. Yeah, right.
luis,
Think again.
Zdenek,
Given the centrality of the nation in conservative moral life – presumably, even you will accept that nations are socially constructed – that’s a bold claim. And it’s not like Appiah’s constructivism about race follows from an a priori commitment to social constructivism; he just seems to think that the behaviour of race concepts is best explained by their being socially constructed.
Julian Sanchez had a good take on Jacoby’s piece.
what happened to Governor Casey fifteen years ago
—which is that he wouldn’t endorse his party’s nominee and so wasn’t invited to speak at the convention. (The urban legend around this bugs me extremely.)
Silly John, the point is that liberals are wrong, and whatever they do indicates a deep crisis in liberalism, and why they are unfit to govern. Except for the nice tame liberals like Micky Kaus who say nasty things about over liberals. They’re OK. They might be offered an Assistant Consulateship in Tajikistan, but only if they’ve shown how reasonable and bipartisan they are by contributing to Republicans. However, if they’ve contributed more to Democrats than Republicans then they might be extremist leftists.
If there was a lot of debate amongst liberals, this shows they can’t unite around a set of ideas. Because the intellectual incoherence of liberalism means they can’t unite around a single agenda. Hence liberals are unfit to govern.
If there’s a lot of unity amoungst liberals, this shows the intellectual incoherence of liberalism, and that they’re uncomfortable because of their lack of intellectual firepower with debating ideas. Hence liberals are unfit to govern.
If liberals are muted in their criticism of conservatives, this shows that liberals don’t have the force of their convictions, and so are unfit to govern.
If liberals are vocal in their criticism, then this shows that liberals are uncivil, unparliamentary, against the first amendment and unfit to govern. And they’re undermining the troops, who lose morale and surrender to Al-Qaeda every time someone refuses to believe that the GOP President is not guided by Divine Wisdom. So liberals are unfit to govern.
If liberals are populist, this shows liberals lack deep ideas, and so have to appeal to the rabble with slogans and are inciting class warfare, and hence are unfit to govern.
In fact, liberals lack ideas, and can’t write, so much they have packed the academy and the media so real intellectuals and writers can’t get in, because they hate ideas and writing so much. So that’s why conservatives have to set up parallel institutions like AEI and Fox. Only extremist liberals would believe that the reason AEI scholars could’t get tenure at a university is because they’re hacks who couldn’t do rigorous original work. Because the liberals have packed the tenure committees you see. And because liberals are elitist academics disconnected with Real America™, they’re unfit to govern.
If a liberal appeals to the voters on their personality, history, and charisma, this shows the lack of ideas and coherence in liberalism, in that liberals can’t reduce nice slogans to detailed policy proposals. Hence liberals are unfit to govern.
If liberals propose a detailed policy agenda, however, it shows that they are disconnected with Real America™ who want to hear uplifting stories of personal struggle, success, and heroism, rather than boring wonkism. This misunderstaning of Real America™ is why liberals are unfit to govern.
If liberals are OK with entering a conflict (say Kosovo or Afghanistan, then they’re indulging in adverturist nation building instead of focusing on the national interest. Or they’re using this war as a distraction from the failure of their domestic agenda. Or the liberals are trying to fool everyone into thinking they can be trusted with national security, but everyone knows they’re just dirty smelly hippies on the inside. So they’re unfit to govern.
If liberals object to entering into a conflict (Iraq), that shows liberals can’t be trusted on issues of national security [because, as sensible policy analysts at the AEI and Heritage have proven, national security is attacking anyone who pisses us off.] SO you’re unfit to govern.
If liberals order a latte,, then that’s those elitist liberals indulging themselves, while feigning concern about the poor! So you’re unfit to govern, because Real America™ doesn’t like your hedonistic pursuit of pleasure and indulgence. So you’re unfit to govern.
If liberals order a black coffee, or an [American] beer then that’s a false hair-shirt, and a pretense, by ordering an ordinary cup of joe, at membership of the blue-collar class. Refusing the pleasure of the senses that a mere latte [or a beer that actually tastes of something] would give is just part of the rigid puritanism that underlys the left! Because Real America™ likes to enjoy itself at NASCAR and WWF is something you puritans can’t understand. And hence you’re unfit to govern.
If you liberals just were less partisan and understood how bipartisan objective pundits like David Broder see the world, then your analysis would be less biased. But because, unlike the analysis above, you let your prejudices color you views, and that’s why you’re unfit to govern.
#66 wins.
So, “they” all look/dress/think the same, eh . . . Brilliant! Conservatives have just re-re-re-discovered outgroup homogeneity. Which would be all fine and good if they only used it against their ideological opponents as opposed to, say, everyone who isn’t a property-owning white male.
Luis wrote “Is there an anti-abortion leftist still around ? I don’t think so.”
While we’re mentioning anti-abortion leftists, how about Don Marquis of the “Why Abortion is Immoral”(Journal of Philosophy) fame – he’s certainly a leftist on many other issues – universal health care, taxing the rich to help the poor, etc. and he’s an atheist to boot.
—which is that he wouldn’t endorse his party’s nominee and so wasn’t invited to speak at the convention. (The urban legend around this bugs me extremely.)
It bugs me too—as does the tendency among so many “progressives” to dismiss Dennis Kucinich, one of the only Democratic candidates who’s actually advocating getting our troops out of Iraq, as an “oddball.” As was done on this very thread.
That said: I agree with francis. #66 pretty much sums it up.
Let me return to the terms of my challenge to Luis: what is the content of the “intolerant, dogmatic, culturally monotonous, semi-religious system of belief” that is the ‘one true faith’ of liberalism?
And Luis was never heard from again….
Yes, #66 is awesome. My hat is off to you, Sock Puppet.
Matt, Uncle Kvetch, you’re both absolutely right about Governor Casey and the way his story has been spun over the years. There were plenty of Democratic and abortion rights activists back in 1992 who loathed the man, for sure, but they weren’t in any sense the promixate cause of him not being invited to speak. I only dropped a reference to his story into my post because it’s such a regular feature in these sorts of accounts of the “intellectually bankrupt” left.
Also, Uncle Kvetch—I think I was the one who called Kucinich an oddball. Let me assure you that I actually like the man quite a lot. (I liked him more when he was, like Gephardt once, more of a social justice Catholic-type, but still.) I simply grabbed him as a contrast to Tancredo because he’s clearly a representative of some minority views on the left, and therefore is every bit as good evidence (as if some were needed) that there is variety on this side of the aisle as Tancredo provides for the right. Maybe I should have mentioned Carol Mosely-Braun instead.
Thanks for responding, Russell, but with all due respect, I still don’t get it. You misrepresented Kucinich’s position, apparently because the reality wasn’t kooky enough. As you know, DK has proposed the creation of a cabinet-level “Department of Peace,” which you so humorously rendered a “Department of World Peace Through Crystal Power.” Whether you agree with the actual idea or not, I fail to see how it’s in any way comparable in wackiness to the idea of building a wall along the length of the Canadian border.
Context matters here. As I’m sure you’re aware, the three leading Democratic contenders are all qualifying their Iraq withdrawal proposals with various hedges about “residual forces” and “force protection” and “training” and “advisors.” We are moving, gradually and inexorably, towards a situation where the “mainstream” consensus dictates that “leaving Iraq” doesn’t actually mean leaving Iraq. And every tossed-off remark about that wacko Kucinich or that nutty Mike Gravel just serves to further narrow the terms of debate.
Say…I just aired a disagreement with a fellow lefty. Luis, I’m eager to hear why in this particular case it doesn’t count.
Re: 16. Liberals have destroyed the sun. How else explain this dark age that conservative idea generation may yet save us from?
“You misrepresented Kucinich’s position, apparently because the reality wasn’t kooky enough.”
Again, very true. It was a vaguely humorous attempt to demonstrate the (I think indefensibly stupid) ways in which certain media figures structure what counts as “diversity of opinion” so as to make the left seem dull and monolithic, but maybe I just played into their hands in making my case that way.
Matt Ygelsias did better, citing the Maoist International Movement when he made his response.
Is Jacoby’s position at all distinct from, e.g., the Discovery Institute’s claim that “Darwinists” have been brainlessly following a 100-year-old dogma, while “creation scientists” have been thinking boldly outside the box in many directions? Or from the standard crackpot complaint that academics have stopped working on time travel, free-energy-from-the-vacuum, and alternatives to Einstein, while there are demonstrably dozens of such ideas bubbling up from amateurs on the Web?
Reading the comments of one Luis Alegria, I’m struck by what I think is a rather indicative example of the way conservatives see liberals of “leftists” in this country. A few points, the number of actual “leftists” in America, you could fit in a parking lot, and usually they all are in the same parking lot demonstrating against something (h/t: Matt Taibbi). Secondly and more importantly, the reason that those of us on “The Left” don’t argue over things like stem cell research, abortion, evolution, building giant walls to keep out immigrants, or under what circumstances its okay to torture people, is because none of these “questions” are really up for debate. If you think the universe pre-dates the invention of agriculture by a few hundred years or that a microscopic cluster of cells is a human being, there is no point in having a debate of any kind. These are issues that have been closed several hundred years ago. It’s always heartening to see conservatives whole-heartedly embrace the most cutting edge moral, and philosophical debates of the 14th century.
OK, Luis, ready?
[pitchpipe]
‘Cause they’re libruls …
Identical libruls, and you’ll find,
They walk alike, they talk alike,
Surrender in Iraq alike,
You can lose your mind,
When libruls are all of a kind!
It’s always heartening to see conservatives whole-heartedly embrace the most cutting edge moral, and philosophical debates of the 14th century.
Neo-donatism?
Antifraternalism?
Which Pope to honor?
Volanterism?
I like Taibbi but he’s a PJ O’Rourke self-publicizing provocateur type.
As a leftist/left liberal I’m willing to grant that we have failed to convince The American People. To some degree perhaps it’s our fault, but at some point you just have to conclude that The American People are unpromising material to work with, and go on with life.
On questions like torture, nuking Iran, habeas corpus, tax cuts, evolution, etc., etc., a high proportion of Americans (30 – 80%) take positions which appall me. I do what I can, like other radical / liberal types, but that’s only so much. Taibbi acts as though he has a superior alternative, but that’s just hot air.
Am I the only one who finds the conflation of “liberal” and “left” alarming?
When I was a young feller, “liberal” had something to do with the tradition of Mill et al. and “left” designated class politics, with statist and anti-statist varieties (a not insignificant difference in itself). These historical and intellectual distinctions seem worth keeping in mind.
Ladies, if present, and Gentlemen,
I am completely unable to respond to all these very interesting comments, as I am but one against, perhaps 20-30 here, and I have other duties, sad to say.
Therefore I shall respond to Mr. Holbo, and make some general comments of the gist of the remainder.
Mr. Holbo,
” there is a tension between alleging that liberalism is a rather pathetic, culturally monotonous thing, consisting of just a few perfectly parallel threads, and saying that it is an ineffably rich tapestry of cross-woven cultural factors.”
Indeed there would be, but that is not my impression, as there are not just a few political threads but a very large number, along with even more cultural threads. This makes a uniform picture, but by no means a simple one. People are not simple.
Let us take the example of Saudi Arabia. One could certainly write concisely about how the acceptable range of opinion and cultural expression is narrow in comparison with what is present in other societies, but one would need shelves of books and a whole field of sociology to describe the place without being, with some justice, accused of treating it superficially.
So – my opinion – there is in fact a common modern culture of the western left-intelligentsia, to pick up a communist phrase, and these are defined by the parallel attitudes to nearly everything. They are to various degrees pro-gay, pro-abortion, anti-capital punishment, refexively anti-US (or anti US prominence/intrusion on their consciousness/intrusion on anyone elses consciousness, as it variously applies), anti-capitalist, anti-traditional religion, anti-personal possession of firearms, anti-military, pro-government regulation, etc. The list is lengthy, and these are merely those with a political angle, the cultural attitudes are even more numerous and also work in parallel. The interesting thing is that a lot of these positions have no necessary linkage with each other, but are normally adopted as a suite. These days, if one is pro-abortion the odds are (lets say 90%+) that one is also anti-capital punishment and anti-personal ownership of firearms. This is uniformity of thought. This is rarely the result of considered reasoning, but comes as a result of cultural transmission, where the package tends to be a matter of take-it-or-leave-it. Tom Wolfe describes this as a matter of status displays, whereby deviation from orthodoxy reduces ones status.
As for other comments –
Socialism certainly is in practice the glorification of the state. That is the ultimate end of all the rationalizations. I am not an academic, so my philosophical paring knife is quite dull. If you distinguished scholars can find essential differences between 16 justifications for socialism, then I congratulate you, but I think these distinctions will matter little to people upon whom socialism is inflicted. It doesn’t matter if one nationalizes banks according to the precepts of Mr. Sen or Mr. Singer.
Mr. Roger is precisely correct on the matter of the experience of the last century. We do indeed have a useful roadmap to what is feasible, we have a suite of what is called in my field ‘best practices”. These tend to show that the liberal-leftist tendency, also demonstrated by Mr. Roger, in his desires, has severe practical limits. We are arguing about a difference in the government role in the economy in a range of probably +/- 5%, for example. What apocalyptic arguments can be made over that ? What is left is not the pursuit of actual policies but mere cultural expression.
Liberals/leftists not always or even normally an outgroup – liberals/leftists control their own hegemonistic fields, professions, institutions and polities. I have participated in San Francisco Republican politics (now THAT is an outgroup) and we were just as diverse as the national party, or more so.
On personal matters – I don’t watch Fox or any other political TV. I find it unprofitable. I do not argue in person, I am by nature an observer, and for twenty years, as a foreigner, I have been a fascinated observer of the local subculture.
And I agree completely with Mr. Satan – Liberal are unfit to govern, if they think like he does.
“Liberal” in the US and Europe just mean different things. In the US it means “welfare liberal” only. Free-marketer liberals are a kind of conservative here. They say that this is because all Americans are liberals, so that the conservative tradition a la Europe barely exists.
My theory is that Roosevelt tried to sneak a dilute Social Democracy into liberalism via the third of the Four Freedoms, “Freedom From Want”. This was not a classical liberal freedom at all.
Since Roosevelt represented American liberalism for almost 16 years, the redefinition stuck.
For more evidence of the lack of diversity of thought on the right, compare Jacoby’s op-ed with this Peter Berkowitz piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last month.
I will take up John Holbo’s challenge to define the dogma Luis is describing.
1. “Powerful and/or religious people who do not profess that racial, gender, ecological and income equality are good things are bad.”
2. “Policies, attitudes and behaviours associated with, or in general preferred by, the bad people identified in 2 above are to be opposed.”
Its not perfect but I’ll stand up for it.
I must say I was a little surprised by the vehement opposition to the idea that the left is short on ideas and on the voluminous attack on its defenders.
Intellectual noblesse oblige would seem to require that the educated and well-informed respond to the BEST form of the argument a person is putting forward not the actual argument that they do.
Now, I happen to believe that both parties are rather devoid of ideas and that the people of the world are somewhat at a loss on what ideas we use to cope with our nascent global culture and all the conflict industrialization and globalization are bringing us.
So, in order to try to bring out some discussion from the left-leaning on ways leftist may be failing to cope with the political aspirations of the world citizenry, I will offer a case in point.
The California gubernatorial election following the recall of Gray Davis seems to me to have been the most populist and partisan-free election in recent history. It took place in a state that has changed from Republican to Democrat over time but has a long standing traditional of free thinking and populism evidenced by the very referendum and recall provisions that brought the election about.
I would argue that the official democratic party candidates were fairly low on the interesting idea ranking. Now I maybe unfair in this because official bureaucrats always have to balance and make dull compromises but nevertheless I think its at least a symptom of a relative lack of exciting ideas that Arnold won so easily.
Yes, it may have been his charisma or fame but I would say that it was also partly due to the fact the Arnold could violate the dogma I described above. Arnold could say I make tons of smack and its a good thing. I get lots of tail and its a good thing. I am a European immigrant and its a good thing.
I’m not saying that Arnold had the best ideas, I’m saying that the dullness of the Democratic party’s ideas and the possibility that Arnold might be interesting was appealing to many people.
This example is obviously not the main ideological cleavage in the world but its an opening to some discussion of true relative merits of the proposition that the left is somewhat idea-deficient.
Okay, I’ll play: How did the California Democratic Party’s platform fit with your number 1 & 2? Could you be specific.
Spartikus,
I went to the CA Dem. Party website but couldn’t find an old platform but I did find the “Arnold” page.
Here were the first 8 articles.
1. Budget Cuts to Transportation Threaten California’s Future
2. Arnold’s Budget Declares War On the Poor
3. “Dems Have Taken the Upper Hand” On Health Care
4. Arnold’s Green Credentials Questioned
5. Arnold Wants More Crony Cash
6. Arnold’s “Reform” Rhetoric vs. His Pay to Play Behavior
7. Arnold’s Appointees Create Multiple Scandals
8. Dems Keep Pushing Arnold On Greenhouse Gas Emissions
I would characterize accoring to my dogma
4&8 as ecological
2&3 as income
5&6 as income
1&7 as well as 5& 6 have a “competence theme” which could be considered ideologically neutral but also could be a criticism of the corruption of powerful rich people who don’t care about the enviroment or poor people.
As an aside I went to the Cruz Bustamante page in wikipedia and found this
“In 2001, Bustamante was speaking before a group of approximately 400 black labor activists when, reciting a list of black labor groups which came to existence over a hundred years ago, many which still had “Negro” in their title, he mentioned the National Negro American Labor Council, but the word “nigger” slipped out. Realizing the mistake, he immediately apologized to his audience: “If you heard what I think I heard, I want you to know it wasn’t me,” he said. “It’s not the way I was raised, it’s not the way I was taught, it’s not the way I raised my children and it’s not what’s in my heart.”
This is clearly an example of PROFESSING the racial creed.
Are you questioning that there is a race, gender, income and ecological creed or just that it doesn’t play a large role in the democratic party platform?
Spartikus,
I am willing to be convinced but let me ask it this way. What ideas are being offered by Democrats that are put forward as good ideas even though they risk increasing income, gender, racial inequality or damaging the environment?
I would say that it there aren’t many then the dogma is pretty dogmatic. But is the reverse true? Is there a conservative dogma so strong so that conservative policies don’t risk harming those dogmatic objectives?
Certainly not income inequality, after all we now have higher taxes on Medicare Part B benefits for those with very high income. Why did conservatives put that into law? Certainly not small government. See budget deficit.
Certainly not nativism- see immigration debate.
I would agree with some comments that conservative policies are more open to contradiction and a lack of execution more that a lack of diversity.
Once upon a time I was taught about the fallacy of assuming one’s conclusion.
If one defines a left/liberal as a person who holds a particular suite of views, then one is likely to conclude that there is a striking lack of dissension among left/liberals on their core views.
Of course, the intellectual value of that conclusion is precisely zero because the conclusion was established by the definition.
One could equally say that there is a paucity of dissent among American conservatives because they all believe in a strong military, lower taxes and smaller government. so? if they didn’t believe those things they wouldn’t be american conservatives.
I went to the CA Dem. Party website but couldn’t find an old platform but I did find the “Arnold” page.
Articles such as you’ve listed can be found at the websites of pretty much any political party in the world of any political persuasion that finds itself in opposition. The duty of an opposition party being to critique the government, you see.
Here is the 2006 California Democratic Party platform.
This is clearly an example of PROFESSING the racial creed.
Conversely, Cruz Bustamante was apologizing for a bad slip of the tongue because it’s good manners and that a conservative would do likewise.
What ideas are being offered by Democrats that are put forward as good ideas even though they risk increasing income, gender, racial inequality or damaging the environment?
Haven’t a clue, really. As well, I don’t know which ideas offered up by Democrats risk increasing the chance of alien attack or rainy days.
I would say that it there aren’t many then the dogma is pretty dogmatic.
So in short, the “Left” won’t give serious weight to ideas that increase human misery. I think you’ve got me there. Dogma it is.
86: Arnie got reelected because he got behind a whole bunch of ideas from the center-left and worked with the legislature to pass them. That’s why California has the most ambitious environmental (carbon control) agenda in the country, the most ambitious health care reform agenda in the country, and some of the biggest infrastructure investment plans around. So if anyone is a testimony to the ideas now coming from liberalism, it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Also, Luis makes it pretty clear in 83 that he doesn’t think governance (the actual management of the state) is a worthy intellectual topic, and doesn’t give a damn about any ideas related to that topic. Showing why so many Repubs tend to be unfit to govern.
Martin, it does seem plausible that liberals almost all adhere to your 1 and 2—that maybe 1 and 2 define liberalism. (With various caveats about egalitarianism; most liberals wouldn’t want equality if it meant that everyone was worse off. See Rawls.) But that’s not what we should mean when we talk about who’s got new ideas; that has more to do with specific policy proposals. The carbon control proposals mq mentions are new ideas even if they serve the preexisting goal of saving the environment.
Actually, I find myself in agreement with Luis on a main point. Conservatism in the US right now (to properly qualify it) is a mishmash of everything opposed to liberalism. The Republicans are the party of the drug warriors and the libertarians, the Bibilical literalists and the Social Darwinists, the most ardent free traders and the nativists. So there is much disagreement. But is there really debate? At times, such as now on immigration, these rifts are forced to the fore, so the arguments must be had. Mostly, though, the libertarian attitude is if you cut my taxes and don’t legalize pot, well, that’s close enough for me; I stopped smoking anyway, plus I can afford to buy off the cops if I change my mind. It’s not a debate; it’s a compromise to hold a coalition together. While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, it doesn’t denote intellectual vitality, but incoherence.
Why are the two big political philosophies now liberalism and everything else? Because liberalism is the great success story of the 20th century. The greatest period of improvement of living standards in the West has the period from 1945-1972 or so; the heyday of Keynesianism, when even the Republicans were liberal by contemporary standards. On cultural matters, the biggest liberal fights – against arbitrary prejudice against groups like blacks and gays – has been such a success that opponents usually have to represent their view cryptically if they want to be at all mainstream.
One odd result of this is that the liberals are now the Burkeans. They are primarily defending policies and attitudes that have proven successful in experience. Not long experience, to be sure, and there may be longer run problems with them that are not yet visible, but so far the liberal program looks pretty good to most people.
It is also true that the decline of the radical left, which put too many eggs in the Marxist basket, has left only the liberals and the environmentalists to the left of center in any numbers, and only a small minority of the latter can be called radical. There are still some basic differences – the small is beautiful decentralism of the deep ecologists versus the classic big government liberalism, for example.
I find the liberals in this discussion thumping for serious policy proposals as “ideas”. I don’t think those are “ideas” in the serious sense; those are applications. Marxism, Libertarianism, Feminism, Environmentalism, and Religious Fundamentalism all have big ideas: basic notions of how to concieve the world. Policy proposals follow from such things. The lack of big ideas on the left reflects the lack of extremism. Look even at the big ideas liberalism has implemented successfully: race equality, gender equality, social welfare of various kinds, government regulation of the market, marriage at will – most of this came from utopian and radical thought and was not at all respectable when first concieved. The extremes are where the ideas come from, though not necessarily in practical form.
The lack of big ideas on the left reflects the lack of extremism.
That’s a problem, not a good thing.
I agree, though extremism has its serious problems; extremism should not be pursued for its own sake. But Burkeanism is a dead end, at least in this age. The only thing clear about the world a hundred years hence is that it will be much different than it is now, so the only sure losing hand is defending the status quo.
Spartikus: thank you for playing.
mq: Some good points, maybe. However in the fall before Arnie got elected he vetoed the single payer bill passed by the legisature. But really, universal health care as a new idea? New implementation maybe but hardly new ideas. Many countries have had it for generations. Same with some of the environmental stuff. CA had a law that a cerain % of cars were required to be electric or high gas mileage back in the early 90’s. It was never implemented.
Matt Weiner: I can see an argument for saying the discussion should be about specific policy proposals but the notion that incremental change through policy proposals is to be prefered seems, well, a liberal notion itself. I’m more partial to identity politics.
Martin B.: Good points, but couldn’t you also say that that anti-communism of the 1950’s was at least as successful in eliminating communists in the USA as the civil rights movement hasbeen in eliminating racism.
abb1, You’re extremism of choice is…?
Martin J. Just temporarily, if anything. The radicalism of the 60’s had a strong Marxist element. The Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, for example, has a lineage from SDS. I think what destroyed Marxism was fatal flaws in the philosophy itself to which it kept trying to adjust, but ultimately failed. The whole approach was a wrong turn, IMO.
emmanuel goldsten at #63 : “Given the centrality of the nation in conservative moral life – presumably, even you will accept that nations are socially constructed – that’s a bold claim. And it’s not like Appiah’s constructivism about race follows from an a priori commitment to social constructivism; he just seems to think that the behaviour of race concepts is best explained by their being socially constructed.”
I do not have a problem with Appiah’s view. My target is the theme running through humanities in US and European universities ( add Australian and South African ). And that is , because Western civilization is underwritten by artificial distinctions socially constructed it is illegitimate.
Why illegitimate ? Because such distinctions are ‘ideological’ i.e. manufactured by ruling class to bolster its power. On this picture the whole point of studying western culture is to deconstruct it and undermine its claim to our membership.
Social constructivism is the background theory that props up this theme.On the metaphysical side ( claim about things ) you get Bruno Latour/Steve Woolgar for instance. ( Rorty plays some role here too )
On the justification side ( claim about beliefs being constructed socially )see for instance Barry Barnes and David Bloor 1981 ). What their view amounts to is relativization of good reasons to variable social circumstances , so that the same item of info may correctly be said to justify a given belief in some cultures but not in others.
abb1, You’re extremism of choice is…?
Well, Martin, extremism is anything outside the ideologically acceptable “mainstream” views. In the US it’s a very narrow spectrum.
For example, yesterday I watched Sicko and it’s an extremist documentary, because it directly declares that French ‘socialism’ is superior to the American socio-economic model. That’s extreme.
There are hundreds of dogmas mainstream commentator in the US is not allowed to challenge, from foreign trade to class struggle to legitimacy of Israel to America’s history and its role in the world.
So, I want more left-extremism of all kinds, and a lot more.
Just to put what I said a bit more pithily: when someone who believes the government has no right to regulate personal behavior, period, even if it is to the good of society, and someone who believes it should regulate it deeply, according to religious dictates, agree to work together and pretend they want the same things because both want their taxes cut, this does not denote intellectual seriousness, but rather frivolity.
luis alegria is wrong to suggest that there are no big ideological differences within the left, notwithstanding martin bento’s interesting interpretation of that claim. (I, too, recommend Julian Sanchez’s take on this.) That said, I confess I am annoyed at the people who mock alegria rather than engage him.
Pedro, some people deserve mocking, especially when they erect giant strawmen to rail against.
Zdenek, just because something’s socially constructed, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t widespread and enduring. Take ‘monarchy’, for example.
Martin Bento: “I find the liberals in this discussion thumping for serious policy proposals as “ideas”. I don’t think those are “ideas” in the serious sense; those are applications. Marxism, Libertarianism, Feminism, Environmentalism, and Religious Fundamentalism all have big ideas: basic notions of how to concieve the world.”
Good point. And what ideas does the right have:
Religious fundamentalism.
Imperialism (no matter what psychedelic paintjob the neoconment put on it).
Ongoing warstate (a subset of imperialism).
Crony capitalism – not libertarianism – by now that’s not honestly debatable; the GOP voters are happy with massive government powers, massive government subsidies of businesses, and massive government protections of business. What they rant against is that some of the government powers might be used to protect those whom the right feels should be crushed.
barry in 103:
True , I mean you are right, and there certainly are many things , and facts about them that are socially constructed ( these things could not exist without society plus importantly each of them could have been constructed differently if we chose so ): money,newspapers,citizenship and so on.
No problem here but consider what Latour /Woolgar are saying :
” … our point is that “out there ness” is a consequence of scientific work rather than its cause “.
In other words it is scientific theorizing that make it the case that there is HIV or quarks .
Second , what about socially constructed beliefs ? That is, is it the case that when it comes to believability of some claim, it is the social values ( political and religious outlook say ) that do the justifying and not the relevant evidence ?
Again the answer from this outlook is yes :
” the validity of theoretical propositions in the sciences is in no way affected by factual evidence ” ( Kenneth Gergen 1989 ).
So the criticism must be understood as focusing on these outlandish bunch of claims and not the banal boring suggestion that money say is socially constructed.
The reason why we aren’t taking luis seriously is that his arguments are frozen in amber. Luis breezily makes nasty and broad claims about people on the opposite side of the political spectrum from him. We are “pro-gay, pro-abortion, anti-capital punishment, refexively anti-US (or anti US prominence/intrusion on their consciousness/intrusion on anyone elses consciousness, as it variously applies), anti-capitalist, anti-traditional religion, anti-personal possession of firearms, anti-military, pro-government regulation”
He is entirely ignorant of changes in populat opinion in the US - there is decreasing public support for capital punishment that has come directly from highly publicized cases of innocent people on death row being freed due to DNA evidence. Gun control is dead as an issue. And, of course, on these two issues alone there are dramatic disageements within leftists and between elected officials. Many of his items are slurs or ignorant generalizations (e.g. anti-religion, despite the religious bent of virtually all elected democrats in the USA). What does pro-gay mean? Is it opposed to hatred of people because they’re gay, e.g. bigotry? And we’re supposed to debate this or give it respect?
The right in the USA has moved deep into relativism. By overwhelming margins the right wing in the USA rejects evolution, the overwhelming scientific evidence of human-induced climate change, and is less informed across the board about current events. People outside the academy probably cannot grasp the degree to which support for the right has vanished in the sciences during the last 7 years. If the left in the late 1970s was the contingent of non-nukes astrologers, the right of the current epoch is the contingent of creationists and religious fanatics.
It appears obvious, at least in the states, that the left has a much greater degree of intellectual ferment and diversity than the right. This is partially because the right went off a cliff and there is a broader range of not-right folks. However, there is something deeper at play. The foundational assumptions of conservatism have been falsified in the last 7 years. American conservatives are not a small government party, they are not fiscally responsible, and they are both incompetent and deeply corrupt. On issues from war to torture to corruption their moral standing has taken a deserved beating. And in response we are seeing a basic rethinking of everything from tax and trade policy to the environment, which will likely bear substantial real-world frui