The Republicans and 'Obama's War'

Not even the chairman of the Republican Party seems certain of where the party should stand on the future of the Afghan occupation. Michael Steele has caught fire from his own ranks for a talk last week in which he described the Afghan war as nothing that the American people wanted and a futile exercise in land warfare. Most predictably, Steele caught hell from the neocons, represented in Congress by Senator McCain and his sidekick, Senator Graham. Meanwhile, Steele's comments have been applauded and echoed, just as predictably, by Rep. Ron Paul.

It makes sense for Republican strategists to wonder whether growing home-front frustration with Afghanistan should be exploited and directed against Democrats during the forthcoming election season. It might not be honest or consistent, but it'd be predictable in the context of the American Bipolarchy. But Afghanistan forces a choice on Republicans, because there's two ways to criticize the President's prosecution of the occupation. There's Ron Paul's approach, which is to concede that the war isn't worth fighting and get out, and then there's McCain's approach, which would be to propose a better strategy for winning (however that's defined) by all available means. Putting it another way, the choice is between saying that the Afghan occupation is wrong and saying only that Obama is doing it wrong.

Steele has probably been asking himself the same question The American Conservative put on its cover this month: can the Tea Parties become anti-war? The magazine, at least, assumes that the TPs are for now pro-war while wanting to change their minds, while Steele still seems uncertain, not only about the Tea Parties but about public opinion in general. The neocons are at least true to their principles; they'd insist on war for total victory no matter how few Americans agreed with them. They resent Steele because they interpreted his remarks about "Obama's War" as advocating withdrawal rather than a more aggressive fight. They also resent him because the Democrats have inevitably questioned his commitment, and by extension his party's, to victory in Afghanistan. Ron Paul and some others have questioned the nation's commitment for a long time now, and at this time Republicans as a whole seem to be questioning their collective commitment. The real question is whether Afghanistan will be a meaningful issue this fall while Americans continue to worry most about their jobs and their savings. Some Republicans may believe that they would have been better off saying nothing about it, but Steele has forced the issue upon them, and Democrats may try to keep forcing it from now until November. We may end up having a more in-depth national discussion about Afghanistan now, whether the politicians want one or not.

Independence

The American colonies' independence from Great Britain became fact on July 2, 1776, when the Continental Congress voted to declare independence, but the United States dates its birth to two days later, when the declaration was signed and promulgated. How many Americans, by comparison, can come that close to naming the day when the Constitution was signed or published or ratified? Despite some disclaimers from back when revolution had a bad name, Americans on some level still see themselves as a revolutionary people. And despite widespread reverence for the Constitution as a charter of limited government, Americans are more inclined to celebrate rebellion than commemorate the actual formation of their nation-state. To some extent, that may be because people would like to obscure the origins of our powers and liberties in the original reasoning of the Framers. They'd prefer that we think of the Constitution (and the Declaration) as some sort of revelation, if not divine than at least irreproducible. There's an inclination to think of the Founding as the final word on the powers of government and the rights of citizens, no matter how much history proves them wrong and the Founders intended otherwise. Rather than a revelation, they might think of it as a discovery rather than an invention, a deduction of the existence of eternal truths or natural laws. Some Americans would like to downplay the creativity of the Founders, and the license for creativity they gave to their successors, because they fear what the present or the future might create. But the same people, as far as I can tell, don't question the regular celebration of a primal act of rebellion. They don't seem to worry that it will inspire fresh rebelliousness. They don't mind that the Glorious Fourth reminds us that our loyalty to any state or government is always provisional. Maybe that's because the Declaration serves as a safeguard. It's seen as the real founding act because it states reasons and offers justifications, whether by appealing to natural rights or detailing specific abuses of royal and parliamentary power. It's treated as if the Revolution itself wouldn't be valid if the principles of the Declaration weren't absolutely true. Its appeal to a Creator is comforting to those who might worry that people might rebel for any old reason. They see it not as a precedent but as a limit on future revolutionary aspirations, as if the Declaration set a standard determining whether revolutions anywhere or at any time are legitimate or not. But if the Continental Army had driven the Redcoats and Hessians into the sea the United States would be just as free, even if Jefferson had never written a word on the subject. The colonies' grievances and resolutions predate the justifications of the Declaration which, however sincerely composed, were meant as propaganda for Americans and foreigners ("a candid world") alike. The Declaration is also shaped by the specific conditions of the colonies' former dependence on Great Britain; revolutions under different circumstances need not conform to the events of 1776 to earn legitimacy. I don't mention any of this to disparage the Declaration of Independence, but to suggest that the great document is not the American Revolution unto itself. If we want to understand why the colonies rebelled, and why they were right to rebel, we really ought to do more than read a single document. However much we revere the Founders, we shouldn't simply take their word for it all. Now go enjoy those fireworks.

Stupid Question of the Week

The article that appeared in this week's Christian Science Monitor asking, "Is Obama Really a Socialist?" is actually fairly objective, to the extent that the author asked actual socialists as well as partisan liars and Tea Party paranoids, but the fact that this question remains a subject for debate is a poor reflection on this nation's collective intellect. To be more objective about it, the confusion testifies to our peculiar national history of blurring the issues. In America we have a reactionary element that opposes both government regulation of the economy and any effort to put government (or the economy) in the hands of the working class. The reactionaries have taken these threats to their "freedom" and blended them into one menace that they call "socialism." But during the synthesizing process the whole idea of workers' control seemed to get lost, so that socialism, as far as the reactionaries are concerned, is simply synonymous with statism. Ask one what socialism is and he'll tell you that socialism is when "the government" or "the state" controls the economy. Socialism itself begs the question of who controls the state. After all, the state can be said to have controlled the economy for centuries before there was such a word as "socialism." What makes socialism distinctive is the idea that the working class should control the state and the economy. Two historic developments helped confuse the issue. One was the decision by socialists to form political parties and run for offices in an effort to effect peaceful change through control of government. Another was the rise of Leninism, a more forceful determination that a "vanguard" party should control the state and the economy on behalf of workers who were presumed incapable of taking control on their own. These developments allowed the opponents of both socialism and the regulatory state to argue that any political party that proposed regulations designed to benefit working people was practising an insidious creeping socialism, as some people quoted in the Monitor story accuse the Obama administration of doing. In crudest form, this reasoning reduced any assertion of regulatory power by government to "socialism." If such people used the word "statism" instead their opinions would at least make internal sense, but "socialism" is still a scarier word for many people. It conjures up images of "godless communism," gulags and purge trials, and long lines for limited supplies of lousy consumer goods. Again, none of that follows from the concept of workers' control, and critics of socialism long ago forgot how to argue that workers' control unto itself was a bad thing. So maybe the advocates of workers' control should find a new name for themselves, insofar as "socialism" is discredited by association with the Democratic Party. Wouldn't it be ironic, then, if the ideal word for workers' control was "democracy?"

Tea Party or War Party?

Ever since the Tea Party movement became something less than initially met the eye, less independent and more obviously radio-controlled Republican, disappointed yet still hopeful observers have wondered whether it was still possible to steer the TPs in more promising directions. The antiwar populist paleoconservatives at The American Conservative are probably among the most disappointed observers, since they probably believed more strongly than most that the TPs were their kind of people: conservatives capable of thinking outside the GOP box. Hope still survives, however. This month's issue (the last before a worrisome summer hiatus for the troubled journal) asks on its cover "Will the Tea Parties turn Antiwar?" The best answer W. James Antle can offer is maybe.

Rand Paul's victory in the Kentucky senatorial primary has given some paleocons (and some libertarians) fresh hope that the Tea Partiers might yet rally to the standard raised by Rand's father. Antle sees Rand's eclectic list of endorsements (including Sarah Palin's) as a sign of enduring openness to what he takes to be the Paul family's anti-interventionist views. Seeing Rand as more successful, for the moment, than Ron in rallying wider Republican support, Antle wonders whether Rand's primary win proves the potential of a subtler approach to foreign policy.

Antle thinks that anti-interventionism might sell better with Tea Partiers if pitched as a matter of fiscal conservatism. Believing that the TPs are primarily fiscal conservatives ("they have turned away from the neoconservatives' social-democratic roots," he writes), he suspects that, despite their "instinctive patriotism [that] makes them a tough audience for criticism of U.S. intervention,...there is a limit to their willingness to spend American blood and treasure, especially as the nation teeters at the brink of insolvency." He quotes Rand Paul on the "simple arithmetic" of future foreign policy.

If I had my druthers and I was in charge of the budget, the budget might well be 80 percent national defense. But the number would still be much smaller than what we currently spend on the military.

The younger Paul has made a greater impression on the Republican mainstream, Antle claims, because he takes a more nuanced approach than his father does. Rand has been careful not to allow himself to be characterized as an "isolationist," while Ron almost dared his rivals of 2008 to call him that. Antle cites a National Review writer's perception that Rand is more of a "cautious and wary skeptic" than an absolutist, like his dad, on foreign policy. The difference seems to be that Ron is thought to believe that intervention is always wrong, while Rand stresses the practical problems raised by Afghanistan and Iraq. Antle adds:

To some purists, [Rand's stance] is cause for concern. But perhaps what they take to be wobbliness about war with Iran is actually an argument for restraint articulated in a way Bill O'Reilly's viewers can understand....Today, there are millions of ordinary Americans who will be turned off by academic discourses on blowback but might be persuaded by the argument that Hamid Karzai and Nouri al-Maliki are the new welfare queens.

Antle thinks that Tea Partiers can be educated further.

Once they have entertained these arguments, they may prove receptive to others. Conservatives have long accepted that welfare can hurt the poor, affirmative action can harm minorities, bilingual education can be injurious to immigrants, and economic stimulus can damage the economy. Why is it 'blaming America' [as critics of Ron Paul claim] to point out that a national-security policy makes our country less safe?

Suspecting that the antiwar paleocons have given up on the TPs too soon, Antle writes that the movement remains "a promising place to look for conservatives who want a strong national defense without bankrupting America." Perhaps because he is a conservative himself, Antle is less likely to consider that the presumed pro-war stance of the Tea Partiers may be rooted in factors less amenable to reason than he thinks. He would probably be unwilling to concede that their support for the War on Terror is motivated by hatred of Muslims, of "Arabs" (interchangeable terms, perhaps, in these circles), or of foreigners in general. Some may well think that no expense should be spared, as none was presumably spared in the "good wars," to destroy utterly what neocons call the "existential threat" to their way of life. If so, then some pragmatic conservative arguing that we can't afford to crush our enemies will probably prove unpersuasive. Still, it would be interesting to see Antle and anyone inspired by his article make an honest try to change the TPs' hearts and minds. I wish them luck.

Question for the day: If the pot calls the kettle black, is that racist?

Brave words from full-time knee-jerk obstructionist Rep. Boehner today after the President criticized his use of similes yesterday:

For someone who asked to be held to the highest standard, President Obama spends an awful lot of time making excuses and whining about others. The American people want leadership from the White House, not childish partisanship.

Who besides fanatics thinks that the Republicans haven't been practising "childish partisanship" for the last year and a half? To say this isn't to acquit the President or his party, but Americans should realize by now that any Democrat or Republican who accuses his opponent of partisanship is practising the purest hypocrisy. Who is the worst hypocrite? The last one you've heard from. Who could be worse? The next one.

Competitive Codependency: The Bipolarchy Begs

Two begging letters arrived in my mailbox yesterday. One was from Sharron Angle, who somewhat defensively, as if anticipating a dispute, dubs herself the "Official Republican Nominee for U.S. Senate Against Harry Reid." "If you're the Republican I've been told you are," Angle writes, "then I need you to find your checkbook right now." That statement doesn't inspire confidence. If anyone told Angle I was a Republican, that person was a liar or a fool. It's more likely that she bought access to The American Conservative's mailing list and assumed that anyone who subscribed to that idiosyncratic antiwar journal must belong to the GOP. The fact remains, however, that Angle needs money. That's because Senator Reid "has nearly $10 million in the bank [and has] been waiting until I secured the nomination to go on the attack....unloading everything he has on me in an effort to smear my good name." Reid also reportedly plans to raise an additional $25 million from "liberal special interest donors." To counter that power, Angle wants 1,000,000 Americans (that is, "patriotic Americans who love this great country enough") to give her $25 each.

Angle is an utter reactionary who wants the U.S. to abolish the Department of Education and withdraw from the United Nations. She has hinted that increased gun and ammo sales indicate growing fear of the government, and that this election year might be the last chance to prevent an armed insurrection by peacefully pushing Democrats out of power. Her ideology disqualifies her from my support. Worse, she shouldn't have asked me in the first place because I'm not the Republican she assumes me to be. Worse still, I thought the likes of her were all for federalism and states' rights. Why, then, is this person who seeks to represent the state of Nevada asking for donations from a New Yorker? The mere request proves that in her own mind she doesn't represent her state as much as she does a party or an ideological movement. But I'm sure she'd excuse herself by saying that liberal Democrats are doing the same thing.

In fact, they are. The other begging letter came from Nancy Pelosi, with a cover letter from Barney Frank. The Speaker of the House is writing on behalf of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. This is a general fund dedicated to retaining Democratic control of the House of Representatives. That control is in danger, Pelosi writes, because Republicans and their "special interest contributors" are furiously fundraising to flood the airwaves with smears and lies. "With millions pouring into Republican campaign coffers from special interest groups, the 2010 midterm elections are shaping up to be one [sic?]of the most expensive in history," the Speaker warns, "And now that the Supreme Court's radical decision in Citizens United has opened the floodgates for special interests in our elections, I can only imagine how much money they will pour into defeating Democrats."

So each side accuses the other of being dominated by "special interest" donors, and this is one of those happy cases when both sides are right, or both wrong, depending on whether any American has the right to call any other a "special interest." The Pelosi letter is a more elaborate mailing than Angle's simple appeal, but together they demonstrate how perpetual competition enriches both pillars of the American Bipolarchy. The Republicans must have money because the Democrats have more, and the more Republicans raise, the more Democrats need. This money fuels the permanent fundraising machines both parties operate (though Angle has her own lone-wolf Washington-based committee), and the people who operate these machines are the principal beneficiaries of campaign donations. Arguably, both major parties exist today primarily as fundraising machines, pitching their opposition in extreme terms to maximize donations by making the need for them appear more urgent. Neither party could raise as much money if it didn't have the other nearby to scare people into donating as if their lives depended on it. Neither might be able to raise as much money if voters' choices didn't appear as starkly limited as they do to most people, if one party could not say that the only alternative to itself was the worst possible option for the country. But that might be another case in which both sides are right: when the only alternatives are the same two parties, each of which appears more interested in fundraising than governing, that's the worst possible option.

McDonald v. Chicago: One Nation Under Guns

Two years ago a majority of the Supreme Court ruled that the District of Columbia could not restrict handgun ownership because the Second Amendment to the Constitution enshrined a "pre-existing" human right to gun ownership as a means of self-defense. Because the case in question applied to an entity that is not a state or an ordinary municipality, the nation was left waiting for the other shoe to drop. It has today in McDonald v. Chicago, in which the majority, led by Justice Alito, rules that the incorporation clause of the Fourteenth Amendment extends the Second Amendment's protection of individual gun ownership to states and municipalities. In his opinion, Alito reiterates the historical reasoning of the 2008 Heller case: despite the language linking the right to keep and bear arms to the militia's role as the bulwark of a free state, which the majority admits was obsolete by the mid-19th century, the Second Amendment was always understood chiefly as guaranteeing the individual right of self-defense, and remains relevant in that respect above all.

Interestingly, Alito attempts to assemble a "politically correct" history of gun rights, emphasizing abolitionists insistence on their right to self-defense against pro-slavery mobs and freedmen's need for firearms for self-defense against the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction, as well as their rightful opposition to state laws aimed at disarming black people specifically. Clearly, gun rights haven't always been a reactionary cause in American history, and it might be interesting to learn why the National Rifle Association is identified with, and to a great extent identifies itself with modern-day reaction. Perhaps it has something to do with the reasoning spelled out by Alito, who acknowledges the public-safety concerns of those who want to curtail gun ownership. These people claim that the Second Amendment is exceptional within the Bill of Rights because of its implications for public safety, and should be treated exceptionally, and with deference toward the states and municipalities when those bodies legislate with public safety in mind. Alito answers that there are, in fact, other constitutional rights with potentially adverse public-safety implications -- he cites decisions limiting police powers, for instance -- but presumes that no one wants to compromise those fundamental protections of individual rights. The implicit subtext is an admission that liberty comes with risks, and is worth the risks. More explicitly, the individual right to self-defense is seen as more essential to ordered liberty than the public interest in preventing amoklaufs and other cases when an instrument of self-defense becomes an instrument of crime.

In a departing dissent, Justice Stevens notes that the common-law right of self-defense differs from the Second Amendment's explicit justification by the defense of liberty. In the latter, the individual's (or the community's) right is asserted against the state, while in the former the right is asserted against other individuals. Stevens argues that the individual right of self-defense has traditionally been a last resort, available only after the state has failed in its responsibility to protect individuals against crime. He means, presumably, that government should have some benefit of the doubt in crafting public-safety regulations, since the primary responsibility for individual defense is government's, not the individual's. This reasoning has never impressed people who note that the police can't be everywhere, and are concerned most with the homeowner confronting an imminent threat to life or property. But it should remain relevant to how we treat these people when they make it their prerogative to kill someone with a firearm. Here's a tidbit from Stevens' dissent:

[I]n evaluating an asserted right to be free from particular gun-control regulations, liberty is on both sides of the equation. Guns may be useful for self-defense, as well as for hunting or sport, but they also have a unique potential to facilitate death and destruction and thereby destabilize ordered liberty. Your interest in keeping and bearing a certain firearm may diminish my interest in being and feeling safe from armed violence. And while granting you the right to own a handgun may make you feel safer on a given day -- assuming the handgun's marginal contribution to self-defense outweighs its marginal contribution to the risk of accident, suicide and criminal mischief -- it may make you and the community you live in less safe overall, owing to the increased number of handguns in circulation. It is at least reasonable for a democratically elected legislature to take such concerns into account in considering what sorts of regulations would best serve the public welfare. (p. 158)

Of course, a certain contempt for safety is characteristic of the most aggressive advocates for liberty, those who are convinced that Ben Franklin had the last word on the subject when he asserted what they take as a zero-sum relationship between safety and liberty. But might it not be possible that the only true or viable liberty in a social world is that which assures the maximum safety for each and all of its members? If we press this point, we may discover that the manly contempt for safety expressed by so many is no more than contempt for other people.

In any event, the Constitution as presently interpreted will remain a license for disorder, to the extent that it licenses people to kill, until all the people supposedly interested in gun control, those who elected the various legislatures whose laws are struck down regularly, resolve to force the issue by demanding a constitutional amendment clarifying the individual right to self-defense and abrogating the Second Amendment if necessary. We live in a historical moment that requires us to make laws for a society the Founders probably could not imagine. We ought to keep in mind their thoughts on the importance of individual liberty, separation of powers, etc., but we should also acknowledge cases in which their abstract reasoning gives us no practical guidance. The debates over the ratification of the Second Amendment, in their relation to modern gun issues, make up just such a case. It may comfort some thinkers to believe that the Founders are only being held hostage by reactionary jurists, but this can only happen because the Founders have nothing practical to say on this particular subject. It's up to us to speak up when they can't.

Toronto: Dissent, Anger, Violence

Toronto is host to the latest G-20 summit and with it the now-inevitable protesters, including some sort of "black bloc" dedicated to protest through vandalism. Even since the Seattle demonstrations of 1999, governments hosting the gatherings of leading economic powers have justified greater restrictions on protesters of all kinds by referring to the menace represented by the masked or black-clad vandals. Also inevitably, some more pacific dissidents accuse the black-clad ones of being agents provocateurs, and probably within the black-clad ranks themselves distinctions are drawn between morally or strategically acceptable acts and those which would raise suspicion that the perpetrator is a government plant. The debate over the civil obligations of dissent is all-encompassing, with some people apparently believing that the civil modifier of civil disobedience has been overstressed since the 1960s, while others reflexively discrediting any dissent that finds violent expression. Predictably enough, Toronto policemen doubt whether the vandals have any actual political agenda or legitimate dissent from the decisions of the G-20, dismissing them as mere thugs doing violence for its own sake, for kicks. I don't doubt that many of the peaceful protesters feel the same way, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were right about at least some of those who burn cars or break windows.

But I can't dismiss violent dissent absolutely. I can't characterize vandalism as terrorism, for one thing; the black blocs aren't in the same category as the black shirts, for instance, or any of the color-coded political street gangs that imposed their will (or their fists) on people from the 1920s forward. If they started beating up Tea Partiers (or vice versa) it'd be a different story. For now they seem to be groping for the most effective way to tell the powerful that they are angry and fed up, and that current conditions are intolerable. They seem certain that merely to march and wave signs and go home isn't getting the message across. Marches haven't stopped much of anything lately, at least in the United States. Dissent works quite nicely here. We have elections, and those can actually put people out of power. We have free speech, too, but since we reserve accountability for election time, our elected leaders have the prerogative (some might even say the duty) not to listen to us when we protest their actions. There's no proof that dissidents represent a majority of anything, after all, and the implicit principle of democratic republicanism as practiced here is that voters empower their representatives (including that presumptive representative of all the people, the President) to govern according to their own consciences (and the Constitution, one hopes), not on specific instructions from the masses. The problem faced by protesters of all temperaments is the fact that your leaders have no obligation to listen to you until they receive their next authorization at the polls. So how do you make them listen, presuming that you make a right to be heard a corollary of your freedom of speech? The Tea Parties have one answer, which is to make it clear that they intend to vote as a bloc against the policies they abhor and the politicians who advocate them. But the black blocs represent a body of opinion that is at least superficially excluded from elections -- their parties won't appear on most ballots. From outside the Bipolarchy mainstream (though the latest demonstrations have taken place in Canada, I refer to the U.S. now) they most likely see elections as an unlikely if not an inadequate vehicle for necessary change. The changes Tea Partiers hope for would be meaningless (at best) for the black blocs. For them there may be no alternative to raising the stakes through intimidating displays that promise further violence in the absence of reform. But that must still seem unsatisfactory to other observers who don't identify with either the government or the black blocs. What right has a minority to force any change in policy?

The challenge for such groups is to win mass support while carrying on their campaign, to convince more people that conditions are as awful as they claim and that their currently minimal violence is justified by the injustice of government. As anarchists, the black blocs face a big challenge in such a project, and the hopeless nature of their ideology may well justify the dismissals of their demands. But people with more plausible demands may face the same dilemmas down the line. If electoral politics appear incapable of accommodating their demands, must they concede their status as impotent minorities and simply shut up? Or do they make a similar effort to shake others out of their supposed stupors so that they recognize that the anger expressed on the front lines of protest is actually more widely shared? Can people make their leaders listen when they need to listen, and not just when the leaders want to or have to by law? You may not care about the battle of Toronto today, but you may want to think about these questions for the future.

An Intellectual attempts to explain Anti-Intellectualism

In a column that deplores the President's apparent lack of passion when dealing with problems from the Gulf oil spill to foreign policy, Richard Cohen comments that the quality that had once seemed most important and admirable about Obama -- his intellect -- no longer earns him respect. Cohen isn't the first writer to note a surge of anti-intellectualism in the country, particularly after Obama's election. The trend, most noticeable among Republicans and radio-driven conservatives, has earned scorn from liberals and libertarians alike. But Cohen seems to perceive something those critics haven't. The other anti-anti-intellectuals see the obvious: reactionary anti-intellectualism objects to the alleged hegemony of a "cultural elite" that might include politicians, academics, entertainers and scientists, depending on who's throwing a fit at the moment. There are a number of ideological and psychological factors behind this "anti-elitist" antipathy toward intellectuals, but Cohen finds them all irrelevant. For this week, at least, he theorizes that the anti-intellectualism of the moment was provoked not by the perceived ascendancy of a "cultural elite," but by the clever hucksters of corporate boardrooms.

A world of smart guys has turned against us. Everyone at Goldman Sachs is smart, but they seem to have the amorality mocked by the songwriter Tom Lehrer in his sendup of the celebrated American rocket scientist Wernher von Braun ... The oil industry is full of smart people and so is the mortgage industry. Smart people seem to have brought us nothing but trouble. Smarts without values is dangerous — threatening, scary, virtually un-American.

Cohen's analysis looks like wishful thinking to me. There remains a widespread hostility to Wall Street and to bailed-out corporations, but it isn't anti-intellectual in nature. If Americans despise intellectuals, it's not because the intellectuals have tricked or conned them, and if they're angry at corporations it's not because CEOs are too smart, but because they're slick, tricky or downright immoral. But one thing a CEO doesn't do, the thing that really riles up the anti-intellectual element, is "tell us how to live." Yes, a sociologist or Cultural Studies professor can show us that corporations do "tell us how to live" through their various marketing strategies, but the whole point of those strategies is to avoid making it look like you're being told what to do. In any event, being told what to buy isn't the same as being told how to live, and the latter is what rankles the radio-controlled rabble. I really doubt whether Joe the Plumber feels condescended to when CEOs explain themselves on Capitol Hill in the same way I presume he feels when some politician or academic or actor tells him that he ought to change his ways or challenges his traditional values and prejudices. More likely, he and those like him feel like they're on the same side as the CEO against the "cultural elite" that supposedly wants to limit their aspirations and control every aspect of their lives except those that God wants controlled. If they end up resenting CEOs, it's probably not because those executives are too smart, but because they're too successful in a way that proves to the suspicious that they cheated in becoming "too big to fail."

I can see what Cohen is trying to do here. He's a liberal (albeit of the kind that enjoys insulting foreign governments about their human rights records; he thinks that Obama doesn't do enough of that) who'd like to turn the anti-intellectual tide against the corporate elite and their presumed champions in the Republican Party. Putting it another way, he'd like to steer today's populism in its historically proper direction. But he admits in this same column that Republicans have only benefited from anti-intellectualism.

This is why a succession of arch-conservative eccentrics have succeeded. Their values are obvious, often shockingly so. We know what they want, just not how they are ever going to get it. Experience has become a handicap and inexperience a virtue. Smart is out. Dumb is in.

To point anti-intellectual populism in its proper direction, Cohen suggests, liberals need to assert their values with passion. Obama is too dispassionate about things for the nation's good, he fears. He doesn't show "that indispensable wince" when pragmatism forces him to deviate from what Cohen hopes are his core principles. To save his Presidency, the columnist argues, "It is not necessary that he get angry or cry. It is essential, though, that he show us who he is. As of now, we haven't a clue."

Speak for yourself, Mr. Cohen. I'm not going to defend the President just now, but I must note that Cohen's column demonstrates a certain cluelessness about an important sociocultural trend that might account for his mystified perception of the Obama administration, which therefore shouldn't be attributed to the general population. In other words, Obama may still be a mystery to many people, including some who voted for him, but Cohen's cluelessness may be his own problem, not theirs.

'Where Do Libertarians Belong?'

Some readers may already have some snappy answers in mind to our title question, but let an actual libertarian try to answer it himself. Brink Lindsey is a contributing editor of Reason magazine and a research vice president of the Cato Institute. He has the cover story for Reason's summer issue, in which he poses just that question and answers: not with the Republican Party or the Tea Party movement. While the revival of "libertarian rhetoric" since Barack Obama's election may tempt libertarians to ally with conservative forces, Lindsey argues that conservatism is "a political movement with no realistic potential for advancing individual freedom" and "so deeply under the sway of its most illiberal impulses that they now define what it means to be a conservative." Writers for The American Conservative might object, but that sort of thoughtful paleocon isn't in Lindsey's sights. He judges conservatism by talk radio and the Tea Parties and perceives "a raving, anti-intellectual populism," "a brutal nationalism, as expressed in anti-immigrant xenophobia," "a dogmatic religiosity, as expressed in homophobia, creationism and extremism on beginning-and-end-of-life issues," and in general "a noxious stew of reaction and ressentiment [that] is the antithesis of libertarianism." Republicanism is too concerned with "building a rabid fan base by demonizing the other side and stoking the audience's collective sense of outrage and victimization" -- what he later calls "the conservative message machine's toxic mix of intolerance and self-pity [that] has veered off into feverish self-delusion." Republican/Tea Party "populism, nationalism, and dogmatism" makes it "a fundamentally illiberal and authoritarian movement." Instead of identifying themselves with an irrational Right, Lindsey advises libertarians to claim the Center while admitting that it will take their movement "in a new direction" and "make for a very different movement than the one we've got now." The libertarian center would cooperate with the right on economic issues, with the left on civil liberties and foreign policy, and would presumably steer its own course on other matters.

Reason invited a Republican and a Tea Partier to respond to Lindsey. Republican columnist Jonah Goldberg reminds readers that Lindsey had previously tried, unsuccessfully, to ally libertarians with liberals, and argues that the failure of that venture proves the necessity of continued cooperation with conservatives. Clearly resenting what he saw as Lindsey's caricature of conservative opinion, he counters with his own caricature of an intolerant, politically-correct, secular Left. In other words, in classic Bipolarchy fashion he brandishes a straw man and tells Lindsey and his fellow libertarians: this is your enemy! Goldberg also openly sneers at Lindsey's aspiration to occupy the center, noting that the center will never endorse drug legalization, full marriage rights for gays and other libertarian demands. He closes, however, with an appeal to all readers (including liberals and progressives) to get behind an ideal of federalism that would give every ideology the chance to prevail in some part of the country without interference from the others or the federal government. The Tea Parties are represented by FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe, who quotes The Fountainhead at Lindsey and basically tells him to get off his high horse and get his hands dirty alongside the reactionary rank and file. Kibbe calls Lindsey a conservative because he resents the fact that "citizens are no longer dependent on old-school institutions [including libertarian think tanks] for information and good ideas." He revels in the decentralized information network available online and claims that TPs make scrupulous use of it. He also reminds readers that the Tea Parties were first formed in opposition to the big bailouts of 2008, which he remembers were a Republican idea.

If anything, this fascinating exchange of views reminded me that libertarianism as a body of opinion is as diverse as "conservatism" or "liberalism." Lindsey's attack on the Right exposes a major divide between what we might describe as Progressive Libertarianism and Reactionary Libertarianism, the former taking a utilitarian view of individual freedom as a progressive force opposed by traditionalism as well as socialism, the latter being the "Leave Me Alone" or "Don't Tread on Me" element most tempted by the rise of the Tea Parties. Just as leftists vie with centrists to define liberalism and paleos, neos and theos contest the truth of conservatism, so the progressives and reactionaries are destined to have a long debate over the meaning of libertarianism, if not the meaning of liberty itself. It may be that libertarianism will not become the influential force, moderating or otherwise, that Lindsey and Reason hope it will be until this debate is settled and one side or the other defines itself as something else altogether.

Judge Feldman and the conflict of interests

My frequent correspondent Cryhmethinc notes in a comment on my post on the decision striking down the moratorium on deepwater drilling that Martin Feldman, the judge who wrote the ruling, appears to have a conflict of interest based on his ownership of oil-and-gas industry stock. In a subsequent conversation, Crhymethinc expressed his surprise that the media only discovered Feldman's stock-ownership after the decision, despite reports from earlier this month that warned that a large number of judges in the region are similarly compromised. More surprising to him was the government's failure to demand that Feldman recuse himself, as some stockholding judges have done, not to mention the Obama administration's failure since the decision to force the conflict-of-interest question to the forefront of the discussion. The blogosphere has pounced on the news, of course, and Republicans are defending Feldman on the stubborn ground that his integrity is not to be questioned, though that of the government is to be at every moment. From what I've read during a quick examination on the subject, the rules don't require a judge to recuse himself if his potentially-compromising holdings are part of a mutual fund over which he exercises no control in investment or selling decisions. I don't know if this was Feldman's case, but unless he invests in a blind mutual fund, where he wouldn't even know what's being invested in, he would presumably be aware of the stocks in which the fund invests and how his decisions might influence their performance on the stock exchange. His decision itself, however it holds up as law, quite blatantly prioritizes economic over environmental interests, leaving his integrity perfectly open to question no matter how much such questioning outrages Republicans. But the Obama administration's failure to date to question Feldman's integrity more aggressively raises Crhymethinc's suspicions about the government's own intentions. While an appeal and a new moratorium order are promised, Obama's perceived failure to confront an enabler of deepwater drilling makes some observers question whether the President really meant to take decisive action to regulate drilling or simply sought to take a symbolic action that would only look better to most of his acolytes when it was inevitably struck down by a mean old judge. Feldman struck down the moratorium in part because he thought it half-assed in proving the alleged imminent threat to life; was it meant to be like that? That's the sort of question asked by people who see the Gulf spill as a national emergency that has not received a proportionate response from the government. While the Republicans seem confused over whether to exploit the spill as "Obama's Katrina" or downplay its threat to the environment, another opposition seems more convinced that it's the former -- an equivalent failure of government to do what many people think is its business. While the nation seems to be in an anti-government mood, the spill may help bring to the surface a hitherto-silent body of opinion, possibly a majority, that sees a pressing need for more government, in the right places, than ever. If so, we should see signs of its spread soon enough.

Update: If you scroll toward the bottom of this page, you'll see some uncertainty over whether Judge Feldman still owns the oil or oil-related stocks he disclosed back in 2008. It seems that no one can say definitely that he doesn't, and one person interviewed for this particular story is bold enough to say that if Feldman's continued ownership can be verified, his ruling should be rescinded. That person has no power, however.

The "New Old Right"

"C onservatism is a diverse movement with many philosophical trends and tensions," writes E. J. Dionne, "In opposition [to a liberal regime] conservatives often manage to bury their differences. But conservatism has flown apart when its components have come into conflict or when extreme rhetoric has come to the fore." While conservatism seems to be gaining strength at the moment, Dionne suspects that a "revolution on the American right" may undermine its momentum. What he describes sounds more like a counter-revolution, since it amounts to the revival of "a venerable if disturbing style of conservative thinking" that seems to be supplanting the Religious Right as the dominant element of reaction.

The rise of the Tea Party movement is a throwback to an old form of libertarianism that sees most of the domestic policies that government has undertaken since the New Deal is unconstitutional. It typically perceives the most dangerous threats to freedom as the design of well-educated elitists out of touch with 'American values.'

I didn't realize that this had gone away, since Dionne describes the "New Old Right" in the same terms liberals use for any conservative movement that confronts them. I'd expect to see a similar paragraph in an op-ed from 1994 or 1980 or even 1964, or any time that conservatism has gotten vocal and angry. Like many liberals, Dionne's understanding of what conservatism is all about is shaped by the sociological and historical writings of the early 1960s, which sought to account for the popular support for McCarthyism, the rise of Barry Goldwater, the emergence of the John Birch Society, etc. Dionne himself invokes the Birchers as exemplars of anti-intellectualism, and cites one of the classic interpretative works of the era, Lipset and Raab's Politics of Unreason, as an authority on anti-government conservatism.

The big difference Dionne notices now seems to boil down to a greater emphasis on liberty than on traditional morality; hence his description of the New Old Right as libertarian. The Tea Parties seem less interested in repealing Roe v. Wade, I might grant, than in shrinking government, and the Sovereign papers I've been reading lately seem completely secular in orientation. I wonder, though, whether the Tea parties or the New Old Right are only segments of a larger national mood that might not be so easily defined along ideological or partisan lines. This larger opposition resists government as part of a larger aversion to power that also distrusts Wall Street, the Pentagon, globalization and anything that makes individuals feel powerless or unacceptably constrained. Dionne focuses on that segment most loyal to the Republican party, but he suspects that its reactionary extremism may discredit the GOP down the line. The danger for Republicans may not be disrepute by association, however, as the prospect that they will also be seen as part of the elite establishment and left behind by a movement that might grow stronger once it finds its authentic voice. Dionne concludes that conservative extremism may prove President Obama's "salvation," but he's thinking purely in Bipolarchy terms. If this movement outgrows the two-party system and keeps growing, Republican failure could prove neither Obama's salvation nor anyone else's.

Deepwater Drilling Moratorium Overruled

A federal judge in New Orleans has granted an injunction against the government's 60-day moratorium on deepwater oil drilling following the Gulf oil spill, ruling that the government was "arbitrary and capricious" in the scope of the injunction because it failed to prove an imminent threat to life and property in the continued operation of other deepwater rigs. The judge rules that the moratorium threatened irreparable harm to jobs and business interests in the region. The government has vowed to appeal the ruling, which you can read for yourself here. It's actually pretty brief and to the point; it suggests that the government succumbed to irrational hysteria following the spill and imposed restrictions on presumably innocent drillers without establishing that they presented risks similar to the BP-Deepwater Horizon rig. The notion that deepwater drilling is dangerous may seem like common sense to many lay observers, but the law apparently requires a higher standard of proof before it condones the kind of curtailment of commerce contemplated by the moratorium. Drill, baby, drill is the order of the day.

The McChrystal Controversy

The Rolling Stone magazine profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal has provoked calls for the Afghan commander's sacking or resignation, mainly because of disparaging comments made by members of his staff about Vice President Biden, other generals, etc. The article itself reads like one of Bob Woodward's exposes of the inner circles of power; the tone is gossipy and snarky at times. It is not a puff piece on the general itself; the author concludes that McChrystal's favored counterinsurgency strategy is untenable in Afghanistan. Nor is it a vehicle for the general to advocate for strategies contrary to those of his commander-in-chief. We learn that McChrystal was disappointed with the number of troops the President committed to the Afghan buildup (30,000 instead of 40,000), but it was the general's public advocacy of a buildup last year that helped convince Obama to commit any extra troops. If McChrystal's offense was going public to advocate his agenda for national strategy, then he should have been gone months ago. Even then, however, it wasn't a case of him going against the President, but a case of McChrystal making a case to convince an undecided C-in-C. Whether military strategy should be debated in public prior to a presidential decision is a subject for its own debate, but the idea isn't exactly inconsistent with democracy.

The McChrystal profile is a nonpartisan intervention in the Afghan War. The author is critical of the war from the left, presumably, while McChrystal himself is said to have voted for Obama in 2008. There are some unfavorable comments about the President, but nothing suggesting a repudiation of him or any break that would make it impossible for McChrystal to work for him. The article also includes comments from soldiers critical of McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy, which they feel is overcautious about the risk of civilian casualties, as well as criticism from other officials regarding the general's close relationship with President Karzai. Nevertheless, the President is said to be furious with the article's publication, perhaps on behalf of the hurt feelings of advisers, and perhaps because he, too, thinks anything critical of his administration benefits the Republican Party. But the story only reveals prematurely, at worst, the details of infighting that emerge in military and bureaucratic histories long after the fact. If McChrystal has done wrong in cooperating with the reporter (and he has apologized today for doing so), it may be because you object (for reasons of morale or otherwise) to the dirty laundry of history being hung out to dry before it's gone through the spin cycle.

Sovereigns of Their Own Domain

Thanks to my frequent correspondent Hobbyfan I'm in possession of three issues of The Sovereign, a monthly tabloid published in New York City. Hobby got them as samples from a pen pal, but as he is largely apolitical (or nonpartisan, to be more fair) he found them a pure nuisance. When he told me about them I had an instant anthropological interest, so he sent them along. These are the three most recent issues, unless the July 2010 number has already appeared, and I'm halfway through the May issue, but I'm ready to draw general conclusions.

Published by Philip J. Schrader, The Sovereign "does not apply a 'litmus test' to any contributor(s)," but its content will draw a certain type of contributor. Schrader presents his paper as "an outlet for information that helps the Citizenry defend their freedoms currently under attack by our so-called 'government,' and to keep selected/elected officials honest." There is an editorial bias in favor of individualism against "collectivism," though the tone is less anti-Marxist than anti-conformity of all kinds. Hostility to President Obama is intense (one contributor suggests that he may have been a CIA operative working in Afghanistan during his 1980s college years; another identifies him as "level four" manchurian candidate, "a fully programmed 'sleeper' assassin" potentially programmed with "'super human' talents such as a photographic memory and the ability to lie convincingly") but there is little sympathy shown toward Republicans here. The Sovereign opposes the War on Terror and one contributor regards Dick Cheney as a confessed war criminal. As a rule, the paper expresses a nonpartisan distrust of all complex systems. The American Bipolarchy, from this perspective, merely fronts for what Stewart Dougherty calls a predatory Master Class "so alien to mainstream American culture and thought that [it] might as well be an enemy invader from Mars." Echoing many other contributors Dougherty accuses this Master Class of seeking the literal enslavement of humanity, while others go further. The Master Class, some believe, want to reduce the human population by any means necessary. Some writers tie what they consider the great hoax of climate change to this mass-extermination agenda, while others obsess over every report of innovations in robotics for military or surveillance purposes. Regular contributors use pseudonyms taken from the Terminator movies, to give you an idea of the prevailing suspicion. Truthers and Birthers are well represented, the former somewhat more than the latter, though one can easily be both.

The best description I can think of for The Sovereign's style is "paranoid punk." The papers are liberally illustrated with images from classic album covers or old concert posters. There's no "heartland" feel to the thing, which probably makes sense given its metropolitan origins. There's little sense of reverence for religion or tradition, except insofar as those affirm the individual's right to be left alone. There is much protest over the immiseration of humanity but little or no evidence of any commitment to social justice. The publisher's attitude toward the "collective" pretty much preempts that idea. Some might characterize the paper's philosophy, if they concede that it has one, as right-wing libertarian, but right-wing anarchist seems closer to the mark. Nihilist individualism may be closer still. The contributors' idea of democracy, one suspects, wouldn't go far beyond voting people off the island. This is what some of us thought the Tea Parties were going to become, but The Sovereign almost makes the Tea Partiers look not so bad in comparison. It may regard itself as an information resource (though only the committed will be convinced by most of its reporting), but it really represents an intellectual dead end. Reading it uncritically could kill your mind.

Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project

One of the implications of the government's power to designate foreign political factions as "terrorist" groups is the assumed right to regulate and criminalize American citizens' involvement with such groups. The scope of that right was clarified today when the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the Obama administration's reading of a ban on "material support" for such groups. In Holder v Humanitarian Law Project the government was challenged by a plaintiff that wished to teach the Kurdish separatist group PKK and the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka how to use non-violent means to get claims heard by international human-rights bodies. The HLP felt entitled to do this despite the existing law because they didn't propose to provide these groups with any means to help them wage war or perpetrate terrorist attacks. They also worried that a broad interpretation of the law violated their First Amendment right to advocate for the two organizations. The majority, speaking through Chief Justice Roberts, ruled that the plaintiffs retained their fundamental right to speak out or publish in the groups' interests, which were not constrained by the law, but that providing the groups even the sort of legal-service aid proposed would violate the ban on material support. The Chief Justice explains that providing such services could free up resources that the PKK or Tamil Tigers could then divert to terrorism.

While both groups have reportedly killed Americans in the past, neither is an essentially anti-American organization to my knowledge. Neither is "at war" with the United States. Each claims to represent a minority that wants independence from the majority regimes in their respective countries. From Roberts's opinion it becomes clear that they're on the U.S. terrorist list, and are denied material support from American citizens, not so much because of an objective repudiation of terrorism around the world but as a matter of maintaining good relations with the governments of Turkey and Sri Lanka. The Court calls on Americans to defer to the President and Congress's understanding, based on superior access to intelligence, that these groups are unworthy of individual American aid.

The dissenters, led by Justice Breyer, find a direct violation of the First Amendment and a slippery-slope threat to Americans' right even to sympathize publicly with "terrorist" groups not "at war" with the U.S. In closing, Breyer writes that Americans need to "consider how to apply the First Amendment when national security interests are at stake." Whether national security and diplomacy are one and the same, given that the latter seems really at stake here, is not considered here, but Breyer insists that deference to the other branches' expertise or authority on national security "do not automatically trump the Court's own obligation to secure the protection that the Constitution grants to individuals." Also unaddressed is the fundamental question of Americans' right, relative to their own government, to intervene even nonviolently in the affairs of other countries. It's each individual's prerogative to decide for himself that the Kurds or the Tamils are getting raw deals from their governments. It's obviously the individual's right to say so in the American media, as the majority affirmed. Given the existence of an international human-rights community of concerned individuals who investigate rights violations around the world, have Americans a right to participate in that community. Conversely, has the U.S. government a right to constrain such activity on national-security or other grounds? The Court says yes today, but the dissenters say that the government can't impose such limits without potentially threatening the more essential right to dissent from American foreign policy. The Obama administration and the conservative majority of the Roberts Court are on the same side this time. Does that prove that nonpartisan objectivity and dispassionate justice prevailed, or that bipartisan power upheld its own prerogatives at the expense of individual liberty? Figure it out for yourselves.

Walter Mosley on Lesser-Evilism

Last week's Nation magazine published an acceptance speech delivered by one of its columnists, the novelist Walter Mosley, upon his receipt of the Upton Sinclar award from the Liberty Hill Foundation in Los Angeles. You have to subscribe to read his remarks on the Nation site, but they're also available here. In part, Mosley addresses a subject familiar to my own readers: the perils of lesser-evilism.

The notion of two evils is broadly accepted in American culture. Most working people are well aware of the rock and the hard place, damned if you do and damned if you don't. We accept the inevitability of a losing trade off on the long, declining, slippery slope of working class American life.

Mosley's context isn't partisan politics; his subject was a friend's struggle with lung disease. For this man, the lesser evil when faced with chronic bronchitis was accepting the risks that came with steroids. He found an alternative to the lesser evil, however, in the form of Chinese herbalism. Mosley concedes that herbal remedies "may fail sometimes," but in the case of his friend they've worked so far.

The real subject of Mosley's talk is the lesser-evil choice forced on many people between poverty and charity. In Mosley's opinion, charity is a lesser evil that remains an evil because it "weakens and ultimately eliminates our ability to live lives for ourselves -- leaving us dependent upon the kindness of bureaucrats." That sounds like the conservative critique of welfare-state dependency, but Mosley's talking about exactly the sort of philanthropic charity conservatives find preferable to welfare. But "the arbiters of philanthropy and good-will organizations never prepare us for liberation or revolution," Mosley protests. They are "misguided acolytes who aggrandize themselves by throwing money at people who are ultimately transformed into bondsmen under the domination of this lesser evil." This is a critique of charity that does not demand individual self-reliance; "liberation" and "revolution" are implicitly communal in Mosley's context.

This line of thought is relevant to our ongoing discussion of the way lesser-evilism sustains the American two-party system and restrains the rise of alternatives to our present Bipolarchy. Mosley objects to the lesser evil of charity because it renders recipients dependent upon itself by offering itself as the only alternative to an intolerably worse fate. By analogy, all lesser-evil reasoning, including the appeal to support Big Party A as the only alternative to intolerable Big Party B, instills a sense of dependency once voters are convinced that the good party, and not themselves, are the only defense against the bad party. Liberating oneself from lesser-evil thinking may mean taking risks -- I'm not sure if herbal medicine is the ideal analogy for independent political action -- but once someone sees, as Mosley wants, that "there is almost always a third and fourth and fifth approach to any predicament -- and any one of these methodologies may not be evil," the implications could well be revolutionary.

Idiot of the Week Nominee: Rep. Joe Barton

Anyone wanting the Idiot honor this week has to work hard to top America's newest folk hero, Gary Brooks Faulkner, but for tone-deaf ideologically pigheaded cluelessness, as judged by his own peers, the title may well go to the Congressman who has received the most donations from the oil and gas industries. Barton has had a rough day since his aggressive display of servility this morning, when he apologized in a committee room to a British Petroleum executive for the White House having allegedly subjected the beleaguered corporation to a "shakedown" resulting in the formation of a $20 billion escrow fund. Within hours, fellow Republicans were demanding that the Texan be stripped of his committee seniority for the damage they believed he had done to the entire party's prospects this fall. Barton's righteous indignation over what he takes to be an unconstitutional imposition upon BP either blinded him or made him arrogantly indifferent to the fact that, before the American people, he was apologizing to the corporation most Americans hold responsible for the Gulf oil spill. He has since clarified that he doesn't deny BP's responsibility himself, but only objected to the manner with which the President enforced that responsibility. As the report linked shows, Barton is not alone in this thought on the right wing of the Republican Party, but his more practical comrades realized almost instantly how bad his apology can be made to look. Some rightists might well want to say, "the public be damned!" on this point, but some Republicans still understand that public opinion still matters, whether it conforms with free-market orthodoxy or not. The damage has been done, and Democrats are sure not to let anyone forget it. People may be dissatisfied with the President's handling of the oil spill, but they're likely to be even less satisfied with a party portrayed as not giving a damn about it, or caring more about a corporation's rights than the public interest.

The Revolution of Attitude: The Tea Parties' Anti-Intellectual Revolt against Elite 'Hegemony'

The latest diagnosis of the Tea Party movement comes from Lee Harris, who writes for the Hoover Institute's Policy Review journal. This emanation from a conservative think tank presents conservative intellectuals with a stark choice: embrace the Tea Parties or prepare for irrelevance. Harris appears to believe that the intellectuals need to get over their condescending reservations about the mentality or attitude of Tea Partiers. In his view, their attitude is just what makes them a vital, potentially revolutionary force, and it should outweigh any of the admittedly bad proposals that many TPs propagate.

Harris is quick to concede that Tea Partiers don't really have any new ideas about politics. He might even agree that many TPs have no ideas at all. As he sees them, the Tea Parties are all about attitude, specifically the attitude symbolized by the "Don't Tread On Me" banner so often seen at such events. This attitude is the natural reaction of a previously apolitical population that has been suddenly and radically politicized.

[In the past] They were apathetic and apolitical. They did not interest themselves in public affairs, usually because they didn’t find public affairs very interesting. They had better things to think about — their jobs, their families, their homes, their cars, their favorite sports team. If other people were willing to tackle the complicated and tedious problems associated with governing the nation and defending it against foreign foes more power to them. So long as the managerial elite was taking care of business, and ruffling no one’s feathers, ordinary Americans were content to stay on the sidelines. The silent majority would remain contentedly silent, provided that the elite in charge of things did nothing to offend or outrage them.

This is no longer the case. The shock of September 11, the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the debacle following hurricane Katrina, the inability to control illegal immigration, the financial crisis, the massive bailout, the election of Barack Obama — all these events catastrophically undermined the implicit trust that the silent majority once placed in the competency of our national leadership. For many it has become an article of faith that something has gone terribly wrong with our country.

One key to understanding the Tea Partiers, Harris argues, is their previous lack of political engagement or awareness. Their prior detachment means that they've never learned the habits of deference to political experts that (he contends) constrain conservative intellectuals. If there is a widening schism between conservative intellectuals and TPs, Harris traces it to the intellectuals' yearning for validation from fellow intellectuals or opinion leaders, whether those are conservative or not. The Tea Partiers, by comparison, don't care what those people think, and they don't care what conservative intellectuals think, either.

Harris borrows from Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci the notion of hegemony to explain conservative intellectuals' alienation from a mass movement that's on their side. To the extent that they are intellectuals, conservative intellectuals are bedazzled by the prestige of the intellectual and cultural elite, even when they disagree politically or ideologically with its consensus on many issues. Conservative intellectuals aspire too much to intellectual respectability, Harris suggests, while the Tea Partier is more inclined to tell the cultural or intellectual elite to go to hell. Intellectual conservatives, he fears, have a hard time bringing themselves to do this even when it might be the right thing to do.

According to Harris, Gramsci believed that the only people immune to the hegemony of prestige were society's "marginalized outsiders." The peasants of Gramsci's native Sardinia defied the snobbery of their fellow Italians by adopting something like the Tea Partiers' "don't tread on me" attitude. It may be a stretch, given surveys of Tea Party demographics, to equate them with poor Mediterraneans, but Harris sees an admirable likeness in each group's stubborn resistance to that most awful of tyrannies, being taught how to live by "elites." Harris clearly believes that there is a intellectual and cultural elite in America that aspires to impose a hegemony over society that would compromise liberty. Freedom's strongest line of defense against this assault is that force that concedes nothing to the elite and doesn't care what it thinks, of them or of anything.

What's the danger of elite hegemony? Harris explains:

What sparked the Tea Party revolt is mounting dissatisfaction at living in a society in which a small group has increasingly solidified its monopoly over the manufacture and distribution of opinion, deciding which ideas and policies should be looked upon favorably and which political candidates will be sympathetically reported. Even more, the Tea Party rebels bitterly resent the rigid censorship exercised by this elite over the limits of acceptable public discourse. Those who have the power to rule an opinion “out of order” do not need to take the trouble to refute it, or even examine it. They can simply make it go away.

When the forbidden thoughts are deeply repugnant to us personally, it is easy to sympathize with the goal of the censors. The elimination of racist thinking, along with all the other forms that bigoted intolerance can assume, would surely be a national blessing. But this blessing would come at a steep price. If the censors have the power to eliminate thoughts they find objectionable, what will prevent them from abusing their formidable capacity by imposing their own narrow agenda on the rest of society, and for their own selfish purposes? Indeed, what is to keep them from establishing a totalitarian regime that does not need to rely on terror or brute force simply because it has developed far more effective methods of obtaining the consent of the masses — namely, cultural indoctrination?

Note that the "narrow agenda" is assumed and neither proved nor even defined. It's probably assumed to be narrow simply because it's the agenda of an elite. Nor does Harris ever demonstrate that the Tea Party agenda (or "attitude") is any less narrow. He probably didn't think he had to. The important thing is that the elite not dictate, however gently or subtly, to anyone else -- and whether the others could stand some dictation, direction, education or good advice is irrelevant. There is no freedom, we might infer from Harris's sympathetic account, without the freedom to be stupid.

[T]he fact that the Tea Party movement does not give a damn about the current standards of intellectual respectability makes it problematic for the intellectual, who cannot take the same attitude. But it is also the characteristic that justifies the Tea Party’s claim to be revolutionary. To be sure, this is not the revolution envisioned by Marx, in which the working class overthrows the capitalist class. It is rather the revolt of common sense against privileged opinion makers, and, by its very nature, it can only be carried out by men and women who are not constrained by the standards of intellectual respectability current in polite company. Again, it is precisely their status as marginalized outsiders that allows them to defy the monopoly of prestige possessed by the cultural insiders. This fact may put them beyond the pale as far as the conservative intellectuals are concerned, but it is precisely what makes them a force capable of resisting the liberal elite’s efforts to achieve cultural hegemony — a resistance that conservative intellectuals had hoped to mount but which they have not mounted, which explains why the Tea Party movement has so little use for them as a whole.

For Harris, this is a simple defense of the principle of self-government, which he finds under siege from the "liberal elite." He concedes that some kind of elite or expert rule is inevitable, but he thinks that the best way to keep it honest is to keep it accountable to (or simply afraid of) people who refuse to be impressed by their elite expertise. He doesn't appear to think it important for such dissidents to prove the validity of their objections; that would imply that the uneducated are answerable to the educated in some undemocratic way. Harris appears willing to stand some degree of stupidity (he dismisses TP advocacy of the gold standard, for instance), so long as it holds off the spectre of unlimited elite power to do...whatever. See if you find his closing thoughts inspiring or chilling.

People who are easy to govern lose their freedom. People who are difficult to govern retain theirs. What makes the difference is not an ideology, but an attitude. Those people who embody the “Don’t tread on me!” attitude have kept their liberties simply because they are prepared to stand up against those who threaten to tread on them. To the pragmatist, it makes little difference what ideas free people use to justify and rationalize their rebellious attitude. The most important thing is simply to preserve this attitude among a sufficiently large number of people to make it a genuine deterrent against the power hungry. If the Tea Party can succeed in this all-important mission, then the pragmatist can forgive the movement for a host of silly ideas and absurd policy suggestions, because he knows what is really at stake. Once the “Don’t tread on me!” attitude has vanished from a people, it never returns. It is lost and gone forever — along with the liberty and freedom for which,ultimately, it is the only effective defense.

George Will on the Costs of Prop 14 vs the Benefits of Partisanship

Like many an advocate for alternatives to the two-party system, George Will sees California's Proposition 14, recently approved by voters, as a new obstacle to independent candidates. Unlike other critics, he's less inclined to see it as a veiled victory for the American Bipolarchy under the guise of "nonpartisan elections" than as a triumph for a theoretically similar entity, the permanent political class. While Bipolarchy theory (if I dare dignify it with that title) asserts that the major parties exaggerate allegedly irreconcilable all-or-nothing ideological conflicts in order to make themselves appear as the only real choices for voters, Will's latest column accuses the permanent political class of trying to smother principled differences in the name of a convivial, fundamentally unprincipled "pragmatism."

"Proposition 14’s purpose is to weaken and marginalize parties, traditionally the principal vehicles for voter education and mobilization," Will writes:

Supporters of "top two" primaries think parties are too representative — too responsive to their “ideological” members. These are usually the parties’ most interested, informed and active members. But such people, say Proposition 14 supporters, are tiresome because they are not congenial centrists. Being “partisan,” they do not practice the bipartisanship that enables government to “get things done.”

As a philosophical, not to mention partisan conservative, Will doesn't see "getting things done" as a constant good. He opens this particular column with a conservative credo: " Under the current imperfect administration of the Universe, most new ideas are false, so most ideas for improvements make matters worse." Prop 14 is offered as proof for this assertion. Will sees it as Arnold Schwarzenegger's monument, "a candidate selection process that is intended to nominate candidates like him....It seeks to generate a homogenized political class, one not lumpy with liberals and conservatives who, being politicians of conviction, do not always play well with others." Notice Will's small gesture of generosity toward liberals, crediting them at least with conviction when the hegemony they share with conservative ideologues is threatened even in this clumsy fashion.

The implication throughout Will's column is that principled politics is possible only through ideologically oriented partisanship.

Does America need a cure for “partisanship,” the supposed disease of leaders such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson at the birth of America’s party system? Does America need a nominating process that narrows choices by stacking the deck against minor parties? Does it need a process that produces “pragmatic” candidates who, because they have no ballast of “ideology,” aka ideas, and are not rendered “rigid” by convictions, can “reach across the aisle” to achieve compromises congenial to the entire political class? [emphasis added]

According to Will, there are no ideas without ideology, no conviction without rigidity. The only proof of principle for him is that refusal to compromise that characterizes the state of legislative gridlock he favors out of fear of innovation. But it can just as easily be argued that the rigidity of ideology suppresses ideas by automatically segregating them into one category or the other, the good and the evil. Ideology as Will idealizes it rejects any pragmatic appraisal of proposals, which are reflexively deemed permissible or forbidden according to where they're plotted on the ideological map, not that of the real world or one's actual constituency. By rushing to the defense of the ideological bipolarchy Will wants to force on us a false choice between dogmatism and ruthlessness. His conclusions suggest that, despite its plain faults, Proposition 14 is a clumsy, stumbling step in the right direction.