Philosophical Conservatism and Operational Liberalism

Can’t argue with Mitt’s 5 sons or his debate performance-the man is pure American alpha.

In the final analysis , it’s always about tax cuts for the wealthy. Funny that.

What Glen says reminds me of a temper in American life more generally, but especially on the right, to sacralise texts and not just the bible. The attitude to the constitution – clearly an excellent document, in its historical context, but not actually divinely inspired – strikes outsiders (well, me) as insane. I also wonder whether the right reads this kind of attitude into their opponents. I think that they think that biologists have his holy book called The origin of species and spend a lot of time worrying whether Obama’s book is the Koran or something by Marx. It does not occur to them that he may not have a book at all.

Neil, they certainly do believe that everyone follows some revealed truth, which explains some of the odder arguments creationists make, like pointing out that Darwin had faults and made mistakes.

The American public always seems to think that vast sums are spent on things for which they have a low regard, like foreign aid, welfare and public television. They can also be disturbed by the idea that the Navy has fewer ships now that it did a hundred years ago, if not by the fact that the Army has fewer mules. The average person knows so little about what actually goes on that the most outlandish nonsense seems credible.

The 2007 Pew religious survey showed that 79% believed in miracles, 68% in angels & demons, and 49% thought that their prayers were at least occasionally answered. We’re credulous as hell. It’s convenient to blame the media for fostering the impression that our cities are violent hellholes, despite a substantial decrease in crime over the last few decades, but it isn’t fair. They’re in the entertainment business, and they know what their audience wants.

The problem isn’t just that We’re In This Together is not as entertaining or satisfying a narrative as You’re On Your Own, but it’s part of it. It’s easy to unite us against a common enemy but hard to unite us in favor of a common good, perhaps, because of our history of slavery and immigration, we’re inclined to regard up to half our fellow citizens as undeserving others.

“The attitude to the constitution – clearly an excellent document, in its historical context, but not actually divinely inspired – strikes outsiders (well, me) as insane.”

But this is not just the right.

I think with the constitution it is because it was born in a violent resolution, and if people become matyrs for a cause then it must have been something special.

Is there a good paper on what people think the government budget is spent on?

J. Otto Pohl. That seems right. It’s also right that irrational opposition to science once was more characteristic of the left than the right. Nowadays, though both sacralization of texts and irrational opposition to science are mainstream only on the right. No doubt this state won’t be permanent.

James, Romney’s donors are not writing the big checks out of altruism. They want lower taxes, and they’re prepared to pay to get them.

JOP – not sure. You can get from “leftist party leader” to Bob Avakian – but then, you can get from “charismatic community organiser” to Jim Jones. Left-wing parties do tend to regard their leader as a bright bloke with a lot to say, but I don’t think treating the Thoughts Of as holy writ is a particularly characteristic left-wing pathology. The parties/sects that do exalt their leaders’ every word tend to stand out as weird (Posadas, Gonzalo).

#12: “Is there a good paper on what people think the government budget is spent on?”

Alex,

I can’t find a survey (and would love to see one if anyone else has a link), but Pew’s work on the subject suggests that the problem of citizens thinking through government expenditures has deeper roots than just additive beliefs about this or that program.

For starters, they believe that ~50% of the Federal Budget is waste:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/149543/Americans-Say-Federal-Gov-Wastes-Half-Every-Dollar.aspx

Seemingly as a consequence, they believe that the deficit is caused by this wasteful spending, and so favor cutting expenses over raising revenues:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/145790/americans-oppose-cuts-education-social-security-defense.aspx

However, important caveat, large majorities oppose cuts in education, Social Security, or Medicare, with smaller majorities (descending from 57% to 52%) opposing cuts to the military, homeland security, anti-poverty programs, aid to farmers, and funding for the arts and sciences.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/145790/americans-oppose-cuts-education-social-security-defense.aspx

The one bit of good news, comity-among-the-electorate-on-budget-cuts-wise, is that 6 in 10 favor cuts to foreign aid (which, since it eats up about 37% of the budget while generating no value for the United States, should put America back on track, once we claw the it all back.)

An important difference between the U.S. Constitution and the Bible, the Koran, the works of Marx, and so on, is that the Constitution acknowledges itself to be imperfect and specifies methods for its modification, whereas the other sacred texts, being of divine origin, are immutable. Of course, all are subject to interpretation; but the fact that the Constitution has not been modified in certain areas strongly suggests that the people, or at least the important people, consent to its current interpretation. For example, rather questionable extensions of the Federal powers given in the Constitution, such as those legitimated by Wickard v. Filburn or Gonzales v. Raich, which were almost certainly not contemplated by those who wrote the original Constitution, have to be now considered Constitutional because no successful effort has been made to amend the Constitution to overturn them.

Speaking of government power, it seems to me that most people are in favor of its expansion. The differences between the Right and the not-so-Right lie mainly in which parts or functions of the government they want expanded. Thus the rightist discourse about ‘shrinking the government’ is hypocritical, poetic, or psychotic, but in general the not-so-Right seem curiously unwilling to call them out on it.

Speaking of government power, it seems to me that most people are in favor of its expansion. The differences between the Right and the not-so-Right lie mainly in which parts or functions of the government they want expanded. Thus the rightist discourse about ‘shrinking the government’ is hypocritical, poetic, or psychotic, but in general the not-so-Right seem curiously unwilling to call them out on it.

This. A thousand times this.

Clay those are some damn depressing links.

18 and 25

Obviously not all Marxist parties form cults around leaders and their writings. However, I think the Leninist vanguard model encourages such tendencies. The USSR under Stalin certainly made the writings of Lenin and Stalin sacred and inertia continued the practice regarding Lenin’s works up until Gorbachev. Most of the Comintern parties tended to emulate this idolization of Lenin’s writings. This tendency became even more pronounced in Maoist parties. Mao and people inspired by Mao such as Hoxha in Albania or Avakian in the US also had a strong focus on the writings of the leader. I think this has to do with Communist political leaders thinking about themselves as intellectuals whereas I do not think too many right wing politicians care about being perceived as deep scholastic thinkers. In fact a number of them have been openly anti-intellectual.

I agree there are right wing dictators that have leadership cults, but there are not too many that focus around their written work. Hitler’s Mein Kampf did not have the same importance to his cult of personality as the Little Red Book did for Mao or the Short History of the Communist Party did for Stalin. For Franco and Salazar there is even less focus on the writings. Although this may also be cultural. There is not a big emphasis on the writings of Castro in Cuba compared to Lenin in the USSR or Mao in China during the Cultural Revolution even though there is an emphasis on Castro’s leadership. I am thinking that the Catholic influence in Latin culture might have something to do with this.

“James, Romney’s donors are not writing the big checks out of altruism. They want lower taxes, and they’re prepared to pay to get them.”

Or they’re willing to invest millions buying politicians who will push for lower taxes because they’ll save billions if they’re successful.

In 1995 Americans thought the foreign aid budget should be slashed from 15% of the budget to 5%. It’s really about 1%. So people want it to be five times bigger.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/27/world/foreign-aid-budget-quick-how-much-wrong.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

I don’t blame people for not knowing this stuff, but I wish they knew at least a tenth as much about government as they do about sports. Nobody gets sports stats off by a factor of 15.

“Or they’re willing to invest millions buying politicians who will push for lower taxes because they’ll save billions if they’re successful.”

I don’t doubt that perceived self-interest is a major motivation but I think there are plenty of wealthy conservatives who have bought into the entire ideology and convinced themselves that the fate of civilization depends on putting Republicans in power. When you have multi-millionaires cutting huge checks to Newt Gingrich, it’s clear that coldly rational self-interest is not the sole motivating factor.

Coulter 10.15.12 at 4:09 pm

Like Al Gore, our first carbon billionaire, blah blah blah.

Thank you for proving my point about how the authoritarian right attacks the presumed authorities on the left, as if it’s some sort of super-weapon.

27

At the risk of more sidetrack there is such a thing as a left wing dictatorship and they are pretty easy to spot in practice. The defining features are that they are first developmental dictatorships. So are many right wing dictatorships, but almost all left ones are devoted to economic development whereas there are military juntas and the like that have had no interest in growing the economy. Second they tend to support programs of social advancement such as literacy, medical care, and education. Finally, they aim at a more equal distribution of wealth which makes them very different from most right wing dictatorships. None of these things require elections, freedom of speech, freedom assembly, freedom of the press, etc. The prototypical left wing dictatorship was the USSR, but besides the communists there are other examples such as number of the regimes claiming to follow Arab socialism or African socialism.

Re J.O.P. @37

Rather than talking in an undifferentiated way about “foreign aid,” one has to distinguish btw. security/military aid and govt-to-govt development aid (what is sometimes labeled ‘official development assistance’). One would also have to look at U.S. initiatives like the Millennium Challenge Corp. and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). For an assessment of the latter, dating from 2010, see here.

41

Then you should advocate specific changes in the nature and allocation of U.S. ‘foreign aid’, rather than making the blanket statement that you want to cut ‘foreign aid’ period.

Also, as you’re well aware, the levels of U.S. aid to Israel and Egypt since ’79 were tied to the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. $1.3 billion in aid per yr to Egypt was a de facto condition of its signing and maintaining the treaty, I believe. In accord w CT policy I do not intend to get into this subject further.

jwinters,

I am not attacking the authority of Gore, his arugments aren’t an appeal to authority, it is “all” fact based. Just as libertarians point to a wide range of facts on the effectiveness of government, rent-seeking behaviors, and the limits of central planning. Just because you don’t agree with the facts or arguments of libertarians, doesn’t make it an appeal to authority. I have never seen an appeal to Rand or Rawls or Hayek trump facts. The government is just one giant rent seeking machine, captured by various parties who want to spend other people’s money on things they couldn’t convince the people volutarily to spend on their own. But, hey, James Buchanan said they same thing, so I guess you can see it is an appeal to authority…

J.O.P.- Do you happen to know if people in Turkmenistan ever took Turkmenbashi’s Ruhnama with any seriousness? (As opposed to acting like they did, for obvious reason.) My understanding is that it’s an amazing mixture of banality and bull-shit, but that hasn’t stopped lots of such books from being taken very seriously. It, at least, was never very likely to travel. (I’m a proud owner of a Turkmenbashi wrist-watch, and think that such things should become standard for both would-be great thinkers and leaders of all sorts.)

Rather than focusing on the bookends of partisan rhetoric among politicians, it might be more enlightening to look at the ideology of the referees and critics and professional operatives. Glenn Greenwald did a piece on the ideological assumptions of Martha Raddatz, debate moderator, Oct 12.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/12/raddatz-debate-objectivity

The whole “smaller government” trope is as much a “neutral” or centrist observer’s choice of frame for analyzing the “philosophical” differences between the Parties, as it is an actual rhetorical rallying point for one of the Parties. It is the “neutral” observer’s insistence that this is a proper and symmetric frame, which leaves the Left/Democrats without a coherent position.

In the common two-party dynamic, in which conventional political wisdom says that, to get a majority, the right thing to do is to stake out the political center, the “neutral” frame, the symmetric frame, gains considerable power, as it becomes the badge of seriousness, reasonableness, etc., which the low-information “swing” voter takes as a signal.

The Democrats, under Obama, like the Democrats under third-way Clinton, have staked out the political center, and to do so, Democratic politicians have to adopt the ideology of the Center — including a self-castrating worship of the bi-partisan, and the consequences, philosophically and rhetorically, are both passion-less and corrupt. Kevin Baker, writing about Obama’s lackluster debate performance and repeated affirmation of Republican policy frames, identified “the essential disconnect between the leadership of the Democratic party and its base. The leadership is now filled almost exclusively with careerists, who have no real goals they want to accomplish beyond their own advancement, and who actively don’t want to pursue any of the liberal ideas they pretend to support. They don’t sound like they believe what they’re saying . . . because they don’t believe what they’re saying.”

If Romney/Ryan are able to get away with 2+2=5 and a smile, Obama/Biden must choose between “no, 2+2=4” (but 5>4, so Romney/Ryan resonates for lots of voters) or “no, and here’s how a proof of 2+2 >< 5 goes:…."(zzzzzz). It's a tough bind.

They don’t sound like they believe what they’re saying . . . because they don’t believe what they’re saying.

I think this overestimates the number of sociopaths in government, though there are some. People like to believe they’re doing good work and find ways to justify whatever it is they’re doing. It’s how libertarians exist at all, right?

Coulter said:

You seem to see the appeal to authority as a feature of the right, not the left. I don’t see that, but could see how every argument you make could be repeated with a change of name from right to left and back again.

I see it more of an authoritarian trait. I figure you are part of the large authoritarian right and thus feel tearing down a supposed authority of the supposed left (Al Gore) is somehow a great argument. There are probably some few authoritarian left people still kicking around in America, but most American liberals just aren’t authoritarians.

Hope that clears things up for you.

John Holbo, I think it is because conservatives have an economic theory (roughly, supply-side Reaganomics) which they believe is intellectually coherent and also supports individualism in contrast to other approaches. Supply-side Reaganomics is neither thing, really, it is gibberish; but that isn’t the point. The point is that liberals on the other hand do not have an economic theory. (If they have any at all, it sounds like supply-side Reagaonomics.) What they normally have is a cut-and-paste approach: if it takes more markets, that can work; if it takes more government (regulation or spending), then that will work, too.

In the future, the government is going to get a little bigger, due to the needs of the welfare state for the elderly and medicine. (We should say that the “transfer state” is going to get a little bigger. The tasks at hand do not require a bureaucracy.) But ask any liberal to defend, on economic principles, the welfare state. They barely know how to begin. They will say something like, “Oh, go read [some book] that was written in 1964.” You see this response here, in these threads, everytime the question is asked. It has been done already (they think), so they need not do it.

I suppose the real point is, liberals do not understand the central, primary importance of rhetoric in political change. They think rhetoric is beneath them; it is cheap and tawdry stuff. There are “real issues” at stake! Rhetoric cannot be the basic substance of a real politics. They took a college course about it, somewhere.

Coulter @ 51: No, I’m not looking for another line of work, but the way in which James Buchanan et alia created a rhetorical apparatus founded on making a pejorative out of “rent-seeking” can be turned around — imho, should be turned around. The public choice analysis of how democratic governance deteriorates and institutions are corrupted looks suspiciously like a prescriptive blueprint for creating the very corruption and entropy, to which they claim to react with revulsion.

Governments should seek economic rents, and tax the hell out of them. It is a good way to finance public goods, and dampens the deleterious effect of rentier interest in politics. The top marginal income tax rate ought to be 70% and the corporate income tax rate ought to be 50% (and actually collectable) because those incomes consist, typically and largely, of economic rents. And, governments should seek to create or increase rents: that’s the purpose of public education and public highways, and, not incidentally, why they were historically financed largely from property taxes — because the incidence of benefit diffuses broadly, but flows thru ultimately to landlords. And, governments should, as a matter of policy, grant rents conditional on good behavior — that’s the basic principle behind any kind regulatory licensing scheme, from licensing barbers to Glass-Steagall and regulatory financial repression.

What’s feasible is a political economy of many and diverse economic actors, in possession of some, limited rents, which help to insure and stabilize their ability to invest and control their operations, but keep them in political conflict with one another in ways that help the government remain an independent force, able to play one group against another, as, for example, under the New Deal banking and financial regime, commercial banks were competing politically against savings and loans against insurance companies against stock brokers against investment banks, and the institutions of one state or locality competed with those of neighboring states or regions, each with small, differential advantages they could defend, politically and economically. And, taxes, usury laws and extensive regulatory monitoring, as well as dependent relationships with public institutions (the Fed, the Home Loan banks, FHA, Fannie Mae, etc.) made integrity pay better and more reliably than ruthless predation and endemic fraud (i.e., our present state of being).

What governments absolutely should not be doing is what the neoliberals and their libertarian conservative counterparts advocate, which is mindless laissez-faire, letting loose private leviathans in search of the economic rents, which are absolutely necessary for the stability of large, bureaucratic corporations, but, in the absense of government rules and grants, can accrue only to the largest and most ruthless business predators, regardless of efficiency or integrity. That way lies neo-feudalism of unbridled private power, overmatching a weak, corrupt, expertise-free and authoritarian state.

To bring this back to the OP, I’m suggesting that the rhetorical dynamics of the politicians rest on the foundation of a technocratic poverty, both popular and academic. In the U.S., by the 1970s, few seemed to understand how the vast, complex institutional apparatus of the New Deal worked to regulate and make fair the political economy. And, a political pattern was set in motion, in which the two Parties, and the underlying technocratic cadre, worked together to profit from the entropy of the New Deal, gradually taking it apart. From Nixon’s Ag Sec, Earl Butz, subtly tweaking agricultural programs in favor of corn and corporate agriculture, to the de-regulatory programs of the Carter Administration and the anti-union fervor of Reagan, and, of course, financial de-regulation, it has been one long program of disinvestment “rationalized” by rank ignorance, particularly among economists but also among journalists and the informed public.

In Europe, we see much the same pattern in the on-going crack-up of the European Union. Norway gave the peace prize to the EU, no doubt to remind us of the grand historic achievment, which the EU represents, even as the neoliberal technocrats destroy the already feeble social contract of the southern European countries, with their rank ignorance of how to design or manage the institutions of a currency or a banking system.

No one has suggested one obvious possibility: Romney’s economic absurdities pass muster with the voters because economists have so ruined their reputations with bogus predictions during and after the recent global economic meltdown, that economists’ assertions that Romney’s numbers are garbage and his plans are nonsense meet with universal howls of ridicule.

Ask yourself: how many economists assured us in 2007-8 that the subprime mortgage market accounted for only 5% of the total mortgage market worldwide, and therefore that a meltdown in the subprime market posed absolutely no problem for the larger financial markets?

Virtually every economist. They all got it wrong. Totally, completely, aburdly, wildly wrong.

I’m not surprised that voters now dismiss economists’ assertions about Romney’s crackpot economic schemes. (Even though the economists’ assertions are most likely correct in this case.)

Martha Raddatz is obviously a fool, at best. The six or so companies that own something like 90% of the U.S. mass media are not interested in you being informed.

If you go to your university bookstore, you are likely to find economic textbooks written by paid liars, not merely fools. The author of a very prominent money and banking textbook is a star of the movie Inside Job. The author of the most prominent introductory intro textbook, as I understand it, is succeeding as chair a department whose former chair was reduced to reduced to stuttering silence in that movie because he was unwilling to say the words, “conflict of interest”.

And the standard economic textbooks are full of stuff that has been known to be balderdash for decades.

(As some of you are aware, there do exist economists who, I think, know what they are talking about and whose ideas are consistent with experience. They are mostly ignored in most college education and by the profession more generally.)

I think that many people are aware, at some level, that they are receiving propaganda. But it is still effective. But when you try to inform them of some basic facts, they’ll say something like, “It’s all very complicated. Who can tell who’s right?” Then they’ll continue with their tribal loyalties.

I think this overestimates the number of sociopaths in government, though there are some. People like to believe they’re doing good work and find ways to justify whatever it is they’re doing.

I don’t think these two sentences are mutually exclusive. From the DSM-IV-TR’s criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder:

lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another

Or from the ICD’s definition:

Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior that has brought the person into conflict with society.

It seems that the usual human tendency for self-justification is particular strong in people diagnosed with clinical levels of APD. Compare also the MMPI, where you get scored higher on the “psychopathic deviant” scale for answering questions in a way that shows youy have a positive view of yourself. (ie. the more you insiist how good a person you are, the more likely you are to get diagnosed as being a psychopath).

Having said that, I think that the rhetoric that politicians/senior buisness leaders are psychopaths underestimates just how bad the people are that get a clinical diagnosis.

(Also, impulsivity seems to be a differentiating factor. The typical Tory MP I would at least trust to be enough of a “prudent predatory” that fear of subsequent punishment will deter them from murdering me, for example).

65

I don’t think that US foreign aid did a lot to help the Egyptian people. It did do a lot to prop up an unpopular and repressive regime while most of the population languished in poverty. But, given the realities on the ground it is very doubtful that the Mubarek regime would have attacked Israel absent massive US foreign aid. It is also doubtful it would have lasted three decades. It is almost certain that without unconditional US support that Israel would have been already forced to give real independence to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. At any rate it should not be the role of the US government to bribe dictatorships and apartheid regimes not to go to war with each other. Should the US have given massive foreign aid to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and apartheid South Africa during the 1980s as well?

Yes, this is a problem with third-wayism: it stands for nothing. It’s a balancing act; it’s trying to find a compromise, to reconsile economic interests, to mitigate the class struggle, and without offering any basis for this unity (ultranationalism, religion). It’s hard to see how it can succeed.

Why should the rich pay higher taxes? Clinton, Obama, they can’t explain. They just say: ‘because they can, because they’ve been doing well’. That’s not enough. If they’ve been doing well because they are super productive, then they shouldn’t. If they’ve been doing well because they exploit others, then they shouldn’t be rich in the first place. It’s a weak, unconvincing ideology, IMO.

P.S. Notice with respect to b. that most people don’t capture all of their productivity. Otherwise their wouldn’t be profits.

Mao @71,
With the same resources?
O..K.. , assume we have a can opener.

But what if I’m sick, or handicapped, or was hit by an epidemic?

But lets ask a more general question with a real (i.e. monetary exchange economy). If I capture all the value I create then my net value to everybody else is zero. Have you ever thought about that?

I’m talking about ideological underpinnings. Something you can display as a dazibao. Monetary exchange economy is in a different category.

“At this point, Romney and Obama are running almost perfectly opposite campaigns. Romney can tell you exactly what he wants to do, but barely a word about how he’ll do it. Obama can’t describe what he wants to achieve, but he can tell you everything about how he’ll get it done. It’s a campaign without real policies against a campaign lacking a clear vision.”

What in hell does this even mean? That Romney has vision, that he’s a big px guy the new hopechanger? Or does it mean that we can’t figure out inductively what Obama wants even though we know everything about what he will do? I mean if I know exactly what someone wants to do I can’t manage an idea of what he wants to achieve? Ffs.

Glib bullshit.

Mao @72
You’re not getting it are you?

You stumbled on EXACTLY the point, but didn’t notice. The logical equivalent of not taxing the productive person who captures all the value he produces is exactly cooking the handicapped? (Or eating the rich)? Is that the sort of society you want? Compromise IS better than dog eat dog? Or isn’t it?

Mao Cheng Ji @ 77: “Why should they be of net benefit to anybody? Your handicapped person in 72 is of no benefit to anybody either. Maybe she should be served in a fricassee or a ragout.”

Life is an inalienable human right. Hoarding to excess, particularly when it causes clear and demonstrated harms to society, is not.

I disagree with those who describe conservatism as an appeal to authority. In the United States, at least, self-described liberals, self-described conservatives and self-described moderates all say that they reject appeals to authority. They all take pride in “thinking for themselves” about the issues. The traditional type of authoritarianism, where ordinary people are asked to defer to an elite group of leaders who are assumed to be wiser than the rest, is nowhere to be found. This doesn’t at all mean that Americans are more thoughtful or rational than people elsewhere, but they certainly would claim not to be just following authority.

So what, exactly, does go on in the minds of the people who come to quite irrational conclusions? I’m not exactly sure, but I do think that there is a contrast between what ordinary people think of as thinking rationally and the type of reasoning that is used in mathematics and science.

Ordinary people who think of themselves as rational (or logical) thinkers don’t really use reasoning to arrive at the truth. Instead, their thinking is devoted to “rationalizing” what they already believe; coming up with plausible-sounding arguments for their beliefs, coming up with interpretations that harmonize apparently conflicting beliefs. That’s the defensive mode. There’s also an offensive mode, where people try to collect together the most damaging arguments, interpretations, and questions against the beliefs they reject.

People do occasionally change their minds about issues, but I think that it’s rarely because logic or evidence forces them to re-evaluate their beliefs. Instead, when the effort of reconciling their current collection of beliefs becomes too tedious, they change to a new set of beliefs that are easier to defend.

That’s what I believe, anyway.

Mao @83
I don’t think ideologies have to be convincing, I just think systems have to work. Ideologies are always wrong (because they are necessarily over simplified schemas based on wishful thinking). The problem is in thinking we have to sell ideologies, instead of in selling step-wise improvement.

Take your example with the cows. The guy with 5 (A) gives the guy with 1 (B) 1. Then A has 4 and B has 2. And more importantly from the point of A, B now has an interest in A doing well.

Mao @85
No what is far better still is to say “trust me, this HAS BEEN SHOWN to work better”.

I know this is a philosophy oriented blog, but perhaps the practical way of putting it that (a troublingly sufficient number of) Americans want lower taxes AND more from the government.

The thing about that formulation is it points to the real problem. On the republican side it expresses itself as a ruinous focus on tax cutting with teeny tiny cuts for rhetorical effect while presiding over large expansions of military spending and even entitlement spending. On the Democratic side we have ridiculous and unworkable promises to never ever raise middle class taxes, while trying to implement even-bigger-than-Republican levels of increased spending.

The key problem is that for the most part no one is willing to advocate for more services through higher taxes on you. Or they don’t think the electorate will accept reality on that. They may very well be right. But that would be because we need a new electorate.

88

To quote Bertold Brecht:

“Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung loste das Volk und wahlte ein anderes?”

1. Note I know the o in loste and the a in wahlte need umlauts, but I have no idea how to do them on this platform. So just imagine the umlauts or somebody can extra umlauts to their comments.

“With liberals, these are authorities to be distrusted. Instead, the authority is something else. Yet what would it be? Liberal valuation of multiculturalism, deconstruction, rebellion seem to be distinctly anti-authoritarian. However, an impulse too towards group-think and political correctness is certainly authoritarian.”

With liberals and even more with leftists, the authority has tended to be found in the technocratic/pseudo scientific vanguard (which allegedly knows better than the common people).

This concept that conservatives are more authoritarian in a general sense is just bunk. The current expression of conservatism in the US is more authoritarian than the current expression of liberalism in the US. If you want to argue that, you’re on pretty safe ground. If you want to say that most of US history goes along those lines, I would say youre wrong but I can see the argument.

Extending that to back patting about the whole world, or extrapolating to some general innate difference between conservatives and liberals in history, especially considering the very recent history of the USSR and China, is just delusional.

Sebastian H: “. . . the practical way of putting it [is] that (a troublingly sufficient number of) Americans want lower taxes AND more from the government. The thing about that formulation is it points to the real problem. . . . the electorate will [not] accept reality . . . we need a new electorate.”

I think that formulation points away from the core difficulty.

The core problem of American politics is that it is being driven by a plutocracy: a core of corporate executives, hedge fund managers and the super-rich, who are interested primarily in re-distributing income upward (to their own lovely selves), and willing to pursue that goal relentlessly by means of disinvestment and a financialization of the economy.

As a consequence, half of the American population is living at or near poverty, wages are declining, more and more people are being nickeled and dimed by the financial system as it invades more and more areas of the economy, particularly areas of previously public provision. We spend absurd amounts on wars we cannot win and which serve no discernible national purpose. Prisons are increasingly run by private enterprise, and the incarceration rate in the U.S. is the highest in the world. Higher education is available to most young people only at the price of debt peonage. Health care costs twice as much in the U.S. as it does in most other developed countries, and our big reform will require even more people to buy crappy health insurance.

As one example of how this plays out, the two Presidential candidates are agreed on the “necessity” of reforming Social Security, by cutting benefits — benefits fully paid for by the people, whose benefits will be cut by the way — a “shared sacrifice” relentless advocated for by the billionaire financier, Pete Peterson. Social Security’s actually very minor financial problems are traceable directly to the cap on FICA taxes: as a result of the plutocracy’s upward redistribution of income, almost all of economic growth in the country now accrues to people, whose incomes are above the cap, so almost none of it is channelled into Social Security.

The electorate wants the political class to respond to its economic problems, and is frustrated in that regard.

It is true that the electorate has no particularly coherent view of what is going on, or what should be done about, but that’s not really their responsibility. They are followers, hoping to be led in their own interest, hoping to be offered a vision of the country’s problems and its future. And, they are frustrated, by design.

As other commenters have observed, the economics profession is thoroughly corrupt and incompetent. Instead of a sophisticated understanding of the need for reform of financial institutions or world trade, or directing investment to cope with peak oil and climate change, or to take advantage of the computing and communications revolutions, we are reduced to pious advocacy of “austerity” and neo-liberal laissez-faire, barely distinguishable from the doctrines of Turgot, minister to Louis XVI. And, the pundits, who work for the corporate news Media form a coterie of Villagers, with attitudes and views barely more enlightened than the courtiers flattering Marie Antoinette.

The argument that North Korea is really not a “leftist dictatorship” strikes me as an instance of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy.

On the wider issue, I think history has conclusively shown that authoritarian types will use whatever political argument is at hand and useful to establish the sort of quasi-sadistic domination they want. They have been willing to use any sort of political camouflage. Its true that this is hard to do with a certain type of whiggish liberalism that emphasizes individual autonomy, but toryism, with its emphasis on power dispersed among a number of diverse centers, which operate within the limits prescribed by tradition, is considered to be a right wing ideology but is equally resistant.

Ed: whiggish liberalism . . . toryism

In 19th century British politics, there was the Toryism of the Duke of Wellington, a thoroughly reactionary politics, stubbornly resistant to the erosion of privilege and prejudice, which was perfectly happy to resist even mild Parliamentary reform, to the point of pre-revolutionary riots in the street, or to see the Ascendancy export grain from Ireland under the tariff protection of the Corn Laws, as a million Irish peasants starved to death, and then, there was the Toryism of Peel and Disraeli, which was excited to embrace the power promised by the Industrial Revolution, and the support it provided for the renewal and extension of Empire. Domination was among the desiderata of both types of Tories, and only the former, tradition-bound reactionaries can be fairly said to have had any investment in the decentralization of power, and that decentralization of power was a means, not a barrier to domination. Peel and Disraeli, like Napoleon III or Bismarck, were interested in building the centralized power of the industrialized nation-state: the power of the nation-in-arms revealed by the French Revolution, which required mass support, and, therefore, concessions to mass welfare and political participation.

The idea that the interest of political reactionaries in tradition or charter-bound decentralization of power, offers some useful resistance to the tyranny of centralized power seems like a cruel joke, in light of the history, say, of American slavery. It is no accident that the ideology of the would-be Confederates bears so much resonance with 21st century libertarianism, just as the affinity of Friedmanites with the likes of Pinochet should surprise no one.

I don’t have any special insight into the sadistic domination of a Stalinist, or what puts a government like North Korea’s into place, or keeps it in place. What accounts for a CeauÈ™escu? I won’t argue that the authoritarianism required by the extremity of domination makes such regimes, “conservative” any more than I would argue that they represent a perversion of liberal rationalism. But, I also don’t think any comparison, even to these extremes of human cruelty and folly, will redeem actual conservatism from its record of cruelty by indifference, irresponsibility and neglect.

David, that seems tough to square with the Democrats insistence on no tax hikes for the middle class.

sherparick1: “I somewhat agree with Bob Somerby that liberals . . . stopped fighting economic injustice and have done a poor job at debunking conservative meme . . .”

I think Chris Hedges, in Death of the Liberal Class, gets at the underlying dynamics pretty well, and usefully goes beyond Somerby’s insights, by focusing on the progressive de-funding of the institutions, which support thinking and, yes, propaganda and effective political organization, from the Left side of the spectrum of opinion. Somerby, like many liberals circa 2000, seemed to think that hectoring journalists about their professional obligations might have some good effect.

Ezra Klein’s evolution, though not as dramatic in some ways as that of Matthew Ygelesias, has proven Somerby way too optimistic. The Washington Post pays Klein’s salary, and the White House staff furnishes his goldmine of “inside” sources, and the result is the kind of empty, insightless, substance-free rhetoric, which is the subject of the OP, above.

I am not saying that Somerby doesn’t see some effects of resource allocation and class, but he focuses on rhetoric and journalistic standards. He sees that domination of our public discourse by privileged elites of millionaire pundits, who don’t have to think hard or know much, is deeply corrosive to the political process. He can see why a hack like Nozick can have a career, and be used as a counterweight to Rawls, in high-minded punditry. And, he can see why a Politico.com can be funded, and staffed with graduates of the “Whitewater” School of (pseudo-)Scandal. And, he can see how a journalism of weak to non-existent standards of truth, and a reading public/teevee audience of shallow prejudice, can be endlessly exploited by skilled public relations hacks to slander public education and make 60 Minutes heroes out of a series of champions of school reform and charter schools, etc., who know or care little about actual education of actual students.

I think early on in the history of the Daily Howler blog, Somerby might have hoped that protest and withering criticism might turn things around. He was horrified by the treatment Gore received in the 2000 campaign, even by nominally liberal pundits and the mainstream media, and the weakness demonstrated in the face of Bush’s radicalism.

The horrifying whole — the accelerating, expanding plutocratic project of upward re-distribution of wealth and power, by means of broad disinvestment — is just too destructive of hope, for most liberals to face. Most will not acknowledge that Obama works assiduously for the plutocracy, just as much as Romney *is* the plutocracy personified. I give Chris Hedges a lot of credit for looking at that squarely.

103

I am very puzzled about this. statement Is this sarcasm? Nobody has every agreed with any comment I have made at CT or anywhere else for that matter. In fact I am officially banned as a troll by both Dr. Farrell and Dr. Quiggen. I wish I was more perceptive and could see the joke or insult, but it totally eludes me.

J. Otto Pohl

Wow.

I know I have praised your comments, at least once, but I think, in general, you should regard silence on CT as applause.

As for Dr. Farrell and Dr. Quiggin, all I can say, it is their place, not ours, and you have to respect that, absolutely. (I’m sure Quiggin would be tempted to ban me, if he understood a higher percentage of what I write. ;-) Also, it is always better to read here, than write; that can help you appreciate that someone else will say what needs to be said, even if you don’t. I write too much here — as I have on this thread — when I am over-caffeinated and confined. When I am feeling unheard and unappreciated, well, . . . I have other outlets.

“in general, you should regard silence on CT as applause.”

I’ve always assumed that everytime I walk in here I receive a standing ovation! But yeah, fwiw, I’d second enjoying your posts J Otto, even when they border on the chippy!

“The belief that we’re simply wayward children-who-don’t-know-how-the-world-has-to-work . . .”

Is that a general problem with liberalism as a political philosophy? Or, a specific problem with the psychological adaptations of certain (unnamed) allegedly liberal bloggers? Or, is there a connection between general philosophical problem and specific neurosis?

Bruce, liberalism has a long and distinguished history of being exactly that sort of radical change. William Wilberforce, Napoleon I, the many heroes of the Good Old Cause all stood firmly in a liberal tradition, and one that has not entirely been forgotten today. The issue is a much deeper one, in which our current moment is the result of particular conflicts abandoned by the Left. No presidential candidate is offering to restore the dismal economic output of the past four years.

BW @ 11 redux

I should probably add that the above is why I think that Marx is in some very important respects a better guide to what to hope for (as well as what to expect) than Keynes. And, of course, it goes without saying that this isn’t an argument about individual fates. Throughout all of this, one could still be run over by a truck, be forced to spend a very short and brutal life in a Soviet Labor camp, be ripped apart by an IED explosion in Iraq, endure the racist nonsense up close and personal that so torments Ta-Nehisi Coates, be forced to fly one’s daughter to Canada or California for an abortion, or be fleeced by Bernie Madoff or Jamie Dimon. Which is why, I suppose, that I have more sympathy for the lesser-evilists of the Obama for America brigade than my actual political opinions would seem to countenance.

correction: an Obama campaign office

I think a lot of the accountability issues with Romney, intra-party at least, stem from the fact that the GOP has evolved into a coalition of small groups with little in common. Centrist Libertarians, social conservatives, Tea Party, none of them are expecting Romney to say anything that rings true to them because they’re all so used to used to alliances with politicians that they hardly agree with in the first place.

As long as he keeps using the proper buzzwords to reassure each interest group that he’s still “on their side” in their particular core issue, nobody is listening closely enough to his whole platform to care whether it all makes sense.

@120, it could be, actually, more intellectually coherent with leftist ideologies present in the mainstream. That’s the whole point of calling it ‘Third Way’; it only makes sense with the other two ways being considered. That is not what we have currently, in the US at least.

I guess they could introduce imaginary leftists into the discourse (‘some would say we need to mass-execute the billionaires, but that’s clearly too much; let’s raise their effective tax rate to 20%’). Or something.