Tom Schaller at fiverthirtyeight offered an interesting post on the control of state legislatures. This is obviously a positive development for Democrats, who for over a decade saw their control over the states atrophy. However, this should not only concern Republicans, but send them shrieking in terror.
As Tom Schaller relates in his post, many of the Democrats in those legislatures prior to the 1994 Republican takeover were of the Southern variety. Many of these Southern Democrats were as conservative, if not more, than their Republican counterparts in the Midwest and Northeast. As a result, these Democrats at the local level were mostly members of the local political machine, rather than true progressive leaders. At the national level, many were holding the line against their northern, liberal brethren. The graph could probably better be written with 3 parties, the liberal Democrats, the Southern Democrats, and the Republicans.
Why this should be especially of concern for Republicans is obvious. Even though Democrats used to control the states to an even greater degree then today, the Southern Democrats could still be counted on to govern in a relatively conservative manner. Though not members of the same party, these state congressmen and their counterparts in the U.S. Congress could at least be expected to provide a relatively reliable means of blocking progressive reforms. Though the Republicans were in the minority, Conservatives were not.
The modern Democratic party, while certainly more of the "triangulation"-style Democrat of Bill Clinton then the liberal McGovern wing, is nonetheless far more liberal then any of the Southern Democrats, and on average supports a much more progressive agenda. The extent to which these Democrats control the state legislatures will determine the amount of cover that national politicians get when enacting major reforms. With a relatively more disciplined and unified party, the Democrats could potentially achieve the kind of political momentum not seen in any party since the 1950s.
10 August 2009
The Post-Post-Industrial Economy
This post by Ezra Klein brings up a fascinating subject that any sci-fi reader or aspiring Luddite has come across. Scene: The future is glossy, bright, and full of robots. The ubiquitous availability of our synthetic friends has made the worker obsolete, leaving only the rich and powerful titans of industry with the means for accumulating wealth. Thus, underneath the shiny exterior of future full of Roombas on steroids is the seething mass of the unwashed billions that those smart vacuums replaced.
This is a realization that I think pretty much anyone who ponders the mechanization of industry comes to. That said, these are the exact same fears that the Luddites had in 19th Century Britain. Certainly the prospect of the complete mechanization of industry is far more real today then it was then, but what, besides scarcity of resources (which is theoretical in nature) prevents the dispossessed millions of factory workers from becoming robotic operators, replacing a system of many workers in fewer factories with few workers but in many many more factories? In other words, rather than robots replacing humans, they could just make us drastically more productive.
This, of course, assumes that everyone has the mental capability to operate in this environment and that the availability of necessary resources tracks with the expansion of capacity. Not to mention the constraints of demand.
I think that in the end what we will see is a continuing expansion of the service industries, since human interaction is still, and for the foreseeable future will continue to be, the preferred method of customer service by the customers themselves. That said, it's unlikely that these jobs will increase in pay significantly, and it's very likely that those who own the factories in which robots replace humans will reap the benefits of even more outsized earning power in comparison to the rest of society. The solution, I think, is that a generous welfare state which provides supplemental assistance to meet the needs of the majority exists funded by a very progressive tax structure.
Humans will always find ways to work, it's merely a matter of how much they receive in compensation. With the means of production reaching a point in which workers themselves are unnecessary, it's only a matter of which sectors of the economy swell in the workforce in response.
This is a realization that I think pretty much anyone who ponders the mechanization of industry comes to. That said, these are the exact same fears that the Luddites had in 19th Century Britain. Certainly the prospect of the complete mechanization of industry is far more real today then it was then, but what, besides scarcity of resources (which is theoretical in nature) prevents the dispossessed millions of factory workers from becoming robotic operators, replacing a system of many workers in fewer factories with few workers but in many many more factories? In other words, rather than robots replacing humans, they could just make us drastically more productive.
This, of course, assumes that everyone has the mental capability to operate in this environment and that the availability of necessary resources tracks with the expansion of capacity. Not to mention the constraints of demand.
I think that in the end what we will see is a continuing expansion of the service industries, since human interaction is still, and for the foreseeable future will continue to be, the preferred method of customer service by the customers themselves. That said, it's unlikely that these jobs will increase in pay significantly, and it's very likely that those who own the factories in which robots replace humans will reap the benefits of even more outsized earning power in comparison to the rest of society. The solution, I think, is that a generous welfare state which provides supplemental assistance to meet the needs of the majority exists funded by a very progressive tax structure.
Humans will always find ways to work, it's merely a matter of how much they receive in compensation. With the means of production reaching a point in which workers themselves are unnecessary, it's only a matter of which sectors of the economy swell in the workforce in response.
The Cowardice of CNN
Since when does being factual require reporting both sides? We don't report that the earth may or may not be flat, or that the stars may or may not be holes in the sky. In this sense, I think the decentralizing tendency of blogs are a boon to journalism. Rather than being completely handcuffed by strict editorial guidelines informed by political and financial concerns, blogs wear their hearts on their sleeves. Though blogs are almost invariably written with an agenda to support, the best blogs include data to back up their assertions, citations to support their logical arguments, and arguments to back their data. Even the most stringently researched and crafted editorial twenty years ago was hamstrung by the limitations of print: graphs cost money to print, citations take up space better used for ads or other articles, and without the other two backing you up it becomes very difficult to effectively prove a point.
At some point journalists, or their editors, or their publishers, decided that actually proving an assertion was far too much trouble to bother with. Newspapers had limited space for a lot of news. Instead, it became more efficient to simply print what someone said under the guise of "editorial balance." This trend was accelerated by the onset of cable news, and the near constant cries of "liberal bias." All of the sudden, reporting on fossils required not only an acknowledgment of intelligent design, but precluded any explanation of why the fossil is as old as it is.
Of course Fox eventually reversed course. Rather than dilute it's editorial slant, it doubled down, plunging itself deep into the realm of the niche market. While still little concerned with facts or truth, it nonetheless traces some of its unvarnished qualities back to the original journalistic tradition. MSNBC soon followed in the opposite direction. That left CNN as the sole bearer of the "balanced" tradition. The network has become so obsessed with reporting "both sides", that it has all but abandoned any pretense to evidence or analysis.
Which brings me back to blogs. Unlike newspapers or cable news networks, blogs are an utterly decentralized institution. Like the pamphleteers of the revolutionary period, anyone can strike a few keys and become the next Matthew Yglesias, provided the content is good enough. And that last part is key. Unlike the old media, blogs still largely lack institutional networks. Never printed, filmed, or otherwise processed, blogs are both cheap to make and cheap to distribute. Furthermore, since they are limited not by time nor word-count, but by the attention spans of their readers, bloggers are able to fill their posts to the brim with supporting evidence for their claims: videos are linked proving what was said, polls are shown proving which trends actually exist, and documents are displayed proving where people were born/worked/stole/etc. . .
This is why, when the old bastards at the Post complain about lax editorial standards or "stolen content" via links and attribution, what they're really worried about is their own extinction. People are easily misled, largely ignorant, and prone to self-deception. Yet at the end of the day, individuals are pretty damn smart. We realize that two opposing viewpoints can't be equally correct. The truth is that more data, more citations, more discussion, more journalism is better for everyone. Ask yourself whether we would have understood how truly inept Sarah Palin is had our only source of news been "balanced reporting" that whitewashed her lack of knowledge in the name of fair treatment. At what point would we have learned the true story behind the terror programs as long as the networks never named it for what it was in fear of "editorializing?"
At some point we have to expect more from the media. This is an old canard, to be sure, but until they break the paradigm of "balance = truth" they will never be the force they were in society again.
At some point journalists, or their editors, or their publishers, decided that actually proving an assertion was far too much trouble to bother with. Newspapers had limited space for a lot of news. Instead, it became more efficient to simply print what someone said under the guise of "editorial balance." This trend was accelerated by the onset of cable news, and the near constant cries of "liberal bias." All of the sudden, reporting on fossils required not only an acknowledgment of intelligent design, but precluded any explanation of why the fossil is as old as it is.
Of course Fox eventually reversed course. Rather than dilute it's editorial slant, it doubled down, plunging itself deep into the realm of the niche market. While still little concerned with facts or truth, it nonetheless traces some of its unvarnished qualities back to the original journalistic tradition. MSNBC soon followed in the opposite direction. That left CNN as the sole bearer of the "balanced" tradition. The network has become so obsessed with reporting "both sides", that it has all but abandoned any pretense to evidence or analysis.
Which brings me back to blogs. Unlike newspapers or cable news networks, blogs are an utterly decentralized institution. Like the pamphleteers of the revolutionary period, anyone can strike a few keys and become the next Matthew Yglesias, provided the content is good enough. And that last part is key. Unlike the old media, blogs still largely lack institutional networks. Never printed, filmed, or otherwise processed, blogs are both cheap to make and cheap to distribute. Furthermore, since they are limited not by time nor word-count, but by the attention spans of their readers, bloggers are able to fill their posts to the brim with supporting evidence for their claims: videos are linked proving what was said, polls are shown proving which trends actually exist, and documents are displayed proving where people were born/worked/stole/etc. . .
This is why, when the old bastards at the Post complain about lax editorial standards or "stolen content" via links and attribution, what they're really worried about is their own extinction. People are easily misled, largely ignorant, and prone to self-deception. Yet at the end of the day, individuals are pretty damn smart. We realize that two opposing viewpoints can't be equally correct. The truth is that more data, more citations, more discussion, more journalism is better for everyone. Ask yourself whether we would have understood how truly inept Sarah Palin is had our only source of news been "balanced reporting" that whitewashed her lack of knowledge in the name of fair treatment. At what point would we have learned the true story behind the terror programs as long as the networks never named it for what it was in fear of "editorializing?"
At some point we have to expect more from the media. This is an old canard, to be sure, but until they break the paradigm of "balance = truth" they will never be the force they were in society again.
09 August 2009
The Arc of History
We live, undoubtedly, in an age of religious and cultural strife that in terms of sheer numbers of victims has never been equaled. Hundreds of thousands of lives are destroyed every year as a result of religious disagreements, whether in Iraq, The Netherlands, Somalia, Afghanistan, or the United States of America. Even as progress is made in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or the American heartland for progressive and secular causes, seemingly endless tales of misery and pain waft from the vast regions of darkness and intolerance that seem to spread like spilled ink on a map. It would be easy, even understandable, to lose hope; to claim that hatred and dogma are a fundamental characteristic of mankind. However, I think this is a mistake. History shows us a picture of a humanity struggling relentlessly toward understanding, universalism, and respect for human rights. By respecting civil rights, civil liberties, and human rights, the modern liberal democracy provides the groundwork for a free a prosperous society with a profound capacity for self-correction and advancement. However, there is perhaps no more integral and important ideal than that of secular governance. To borrow from Martin Luther King, Jr.: The arc of history is long, but it bends toward reason.
Truly, the freedom to worship and the prohibition of government endorsement of religion provide a bulwark of protection for individual belief and free expression. The pluralistic society demands the constant search for truth as society and individuals constantly challenge the received wisdom of prevailing views. Free speech in a society dominated by one faith cannot truly be free. This truth, of the necessity of secular governance for the development of a truly free society, only serves to make the current religious struggles even more sorrowful. Nevertheless, the future favors liberalism and humanism.
The earliest belief systems were largely similar to modern shamanism or animism. People, unable to understand the great cosmic and geological forces shaping the universe, were forced to explain reality with what limited means they could. This lead to myriad variations of ancestor worship and spirits inhabiting every physical process imaginable. Wind moved, so something must be blowing it. Fire burned, so something must make it hot. The sun rose, so something must hold it up. The simplest explanation was often to ascribe souls to the processes. Just as humans have a mind and desires, so too must everything in the universe. How else to explain the fickle and capricious nature of reality?
We see among the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Sumerians, and other ancient civilizations a similar attribution of divine or supernatural causes for natural occurrences. Fully fleshed into Gods and given more abstract and cultivated powers, these ancient deities were both similar to shamanistic spirits while far more distant. The Gods general resided in a temporal location, Mt. Olympus for the Greeks, and were imagined in a form almost identical to humanity. Nonetheless, when compared to spiritualistic religions that came before, the role of the Gods in the lives of average Greeks or Romans was a far less active affair.
Still, to imagine the ancients as secular humanists with a large backlog of quaint myths to entertain themselves with is highly misleading. Certainly, the Romans were famously pious, with extremely precise rituals for nearly every occasion. The Athenians, those forebears of modern democracy and science, planned to execute the philosopher Socrates for defaming the Gods, forestalled only by his suicide. More accurately, the ancient conception of divinity added a layer of abstraction to the shamanism of the past. Rather than the wind being a conscious being, the wind was controlled by one. They added a curtain in between the process and the controller.
Nonetheless, the Greeks and Romans, by discovering certain natural causes and ever so slightly taming the natural world, rationalized religion. They'd created a conception of reality in which the supernatural was less important. While hardly a secular society, reasonable discourse could and did occur as to the nature of the universe, within rigid limits. The transition from a shamanistic to a polytheistic conception coincided with a further understanding of the WHY and HOW of existence. Only with the rise of Christianity, and later of Islam, would this conception of the supernatural fall the wayside.
Of course, many would say the Medieval Period was on of dramatic reversals in reason and science. Rather than a movement toward secularism, there seemed to be a reversal toward dogma and intolerance. The rise of Christianity and Islam, it is true, led to a dramatic culling of other religions. Great violence and suffering resulted from the fierce loyalty demanded by the monotheistic religions. However, though the transition from the ancient religions to the Abrahamic religions often lead to the collapse of entire systems of thought, for the most part Christianity and Islam provided far more room for rational and empirical thought than prior religious ideas.
Rather than being historically notable for his obsessive interference and interest in his subjects' lives, the God of Christianity and Islam is remarkable for the extent to which it's understood he remains aloof from the world. Rather then leaving offerings at altars to receive a good harvest, Christians and Muslims could not expect their God to interfere on their behalf. Though disasters and triumphs were often attributed to God's Will, it is generally understood within those traditions that judgment occurs in the afterlife, and that one's conduct and success on Earth is largely of one's own making.
Even more striking, proof of God's existence is largely accepted in the form of miracles. Rather than every event being a product of supernatural providence, only those events so dramatic and unusual as to defy explanation were deemed divine. Instead, Creation was Designed, and a single God was the steward, rather than the operator or machinery itself. The God of Islam and Christ acted indirectly through his Vicar in Judea or his Prophet in Arabia, rather than responding to burnt incense or sacrificed chickens.
Fundamental to these monotheistic faiths, then, was the concept of personal responsibility. Obviously such a concept existed before. Nevertheless, in the Abrahamic faiths, God's judgement came after death. Success or Failure in this world was a result of personal failure, or circumstance.
In this climate, secularism began to flourish, albeit slowly. In the Islamic civilization of the early Middle Ages, roughly 900-1300 CE, philosophers discovered Algebra, refined understanding of anatomy, blazed new paths in Astronomy and chemistry. Thomas Aquinas, the great Catholic theologian, argued for a God who watched rather than prodded. The lack of needing God to explain natural processes eventually led to the Enlightenment, where theistic scientists such as Galileo argued for naturalistic and material explanations of the universe not in refutation of God's existence, but in celebration of it.
In both Islam and Christianity, this flowering of secular explanations for reality eventually led to backlashes by political and religious elites. We live with these backlashes even today. Certainly, the culture wars in America and the ongoing brutality throughout the Muslim world are evidence of this. However, this violence and struggle is not evidence of the power of dogmatic belief. No, the struggles of the intolerant against reason and science and liberalism is instead the futile flailing of those who are unwilling or unable to accept the modern role of God and gods in society.
The existence of explanations for oceans, and stars, and evolution, and myriad other natural phenomenon forced the hand of theism. God could not exist as understood by prehistoric shamans. Wind does not decide to blow, fire does not decide to burn. Lightening is neither the vengeful blows of a capricious god on Mount Olympus, nor the spitefully miraculous punishment of a Creator God. The power of science comes with its remarkable ability to predict and explain ideas, and its incredible usefulness in the creation of technologies.
This is not to say that God is Dead. Personal beliefs aside, though the role of God and gods in modern society is not that which Islamists and Dominionists perceive it to be, the truth is that in our secular society the role of the supernatural for many has become an intensely personal and profound one. God no longer exists to protect us as a nation or to make our crops grow, this is true. However, though divinity has evolved in parallel with our growing understanding of the natural world, we are now able to define for ourselves the meaning of existence, and God/s place within it.
This great existential truth, that in the face of science, existence becomes a personal rather than public question, is why Freedom of Religion remains the most vital freedom we have. Since our understanding of the world has reached a point in which faith in God truly is Faith, all religion must be understood at a personal level. Those of us who are atheists or agnostics cannot be made to reject the evidence we see no more than those Christians or Muslims who have had personal revelatory experiences can be made to reject their own. Likewise, a society that does not publicly function based on objective, rational standards is doomed to fail in a world where our knowledge undermines certain assumptions.
This, I suppose, is my point; without the implicit understanding that one's personally held beliefs shall never be persecuted, a modern and diverse nation cannot survive. Likewise, without a common understanding of reality, interactions between individuals becomes increasingly difficult and more probably violent. Thus, the modern progressive ideal of the Secular government and religious pluralism is the only logical and humane system. History itself lays out this path, from ancient shamans to animal sacrifice to salvation and finally to personal conviction.
So when faced with the terrors and brutality of modern religious conflict, I've chosen to retain my optimism for the future. Rather than succumb to pessimism and refuse to engage the world, I choose engagement and dialogue, promoting firmer scientific standards, resisting attempts to impose religious dogma at schools or withing government, and to respect all those who respect me. Though I do not believe in a god, I do have faith that the arc of history bends toward justice.
Truly, the freedom to worship and the prohibition of government endorsement of religion provide a bulwark of protection for individual belief and free expression. The pluralistic society demands the constant search for truth as society and individuals constantly challenge the received wisdom of prevailing views. Free speech in a society dominated by one faith cannot truly be free. This truth, of the necessity of secular governance for the development of a truly free society, only serves to make the current religious struggles even more sorrowful. Nevertheless, the future favors liberalism and humanism.
The earliest belief systems were largely similar to modern shamanism or animism. People, unable to understand the great cosmic and geological forces shaping the universe, were forced to explain reality with what limited means they could. This lead to myriad variations of ancestor worship and spirits inhabiting every physical process imaginable. Wind moved, so something must be blowing it. Fire burned, so something must make it hot. The sun rose, so something must hold it up. The simplest explanation was often to ascribe souls to the processes. Just as humans have a mind and desires, so too must everything in the universe. How else to explain the fickle and capricious nature of reality?
We see among the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Sumerians, and other ancient civilizations a similar attribution of divine or supernatural causes for natural occurrences. Fully fleshed into Gods and given more abstract and cultivated powers, these ancient deities were both similar to shamanistic spirits while far more distant. The Gods general resided in a temporal location, Mt. Olympus for the Greeks, and were imagined in a form almost identical to humanity. Nonetheless, when compared to spiritualistic religions that came before, the role of the Gods in the lives of average Greeks or Romans was a far less active affair.
Still, to imagine the ancients as secular humanists with a large backlog of quaint myths to entertain themselves with is highly misleading. Certainly, the Romans were famously pious, with extremely precise rituals for nearly every occasion. The Athenians, those forebears of modern democracy and science, planned to execute the philosopher Socrates for defaming the Gods, forestalled only by his suicide. More accurately, the ancient conception of divinity added a layer of abstraction to the shamanism of the past. Rather than the wind being a conscious being, the wind was controlled by one. They added a curtain in between the process and the controller.
Nonetheless, the Greeks and Romans, by discovering certain natural causes and ever so slightly taming the natural world, rationalized religion. They'd created a conception of reality in which the supernatural was less important. While hardly a secular society, reasonable discourse could and did occur as to the nature of the universe, within rigid limits. The transition from a shamanistic to a polytheistic conception coincided with a further understanding of the WHY and HOW of existence. Only with the rise of Christianity, and later of Islam, would this conception of the supernatural fall the wayside.
Of course, many would say the Medieval Period was on of dramatic reversals in reason and science. Rather than a movement toward secularism, there seemed to be a reversal toward dogma and intolerance. The rise of Christianity and Islam, it is true, led to a dramatic culling of other religions. Great violence and suffering resulted from the fierce loyalty demanded by the monotheistic religions. However, though the transition from the ancient religions to the Abrahamic religions often lead to the collapse of entire systems of thought, for the most part Christianity and Islam provided far more room for rational and empirical thought than prior religious ideas.
Rather than being historically notable for his obsessive interference and interest in his subjects' lives, the God of Christianity and Islam is remarkable for the extent to which it's understood he remains aloof from the world. Rather then leaving offerings at altars to receive a good harvest, Christians and Muslims could not expect their God to interfere on their behalf. Though disasters and triumphs were often attributed to God's Will, it is generally understood within those traditions that judgment occurs in the afterlife, and that one's conduct and success on Earth is largely of one's own making.
Even more striking, proof of God's existence is largely accepted in the form of miracles. Rather than every event being a product of supernatural providence, only those events so dramatic and unusual as to defy explanation were deemed divine. Instead, Creation was Designed, and a single God was the steward, rather than the operator or machinery itself. The God of Islam and Christ acted indirectly through his Vicar in Judea or his Prophet in Arabia, rather than responding to burnt incense or sacrificed chickens.
Fundamental to these monotheistic faiths, then, was the concept of personal responsibility. Obviously such a concept existed before. Nevertheless, in the Abrahamic faiths, God's judgement came after death. Success or Failure in this world was a result of personal failure, or circumstance.
In this climate, secularism began to flourish, albeit slowly. In the Islamic civilization of the early Middle Ages, roughly 900-1300 CE, philosophers discovered Algebra, refined understanding of anatomy, blazed new paths in Astronomy and chemistry. Thomas Aquinas, the great Catholic theologian, argued for a God who watched rather than prodded. The lack of needing God to explain natural processes eventually led to the Enlightenment, where theistic scientists such as Galileo argued for naturalistic and material explanations of the universe not in refutation of God's existence, but in celebration of it.
In both Islam and Christianity, this flowering of secular explanations for reality eventually led to backlashes by political and religious elites. We live with these backlashes even today. Certainly, the culture wars in America and the ongoing brutality throughout the Muslim world are evidence of this. However, this violence and struggle is not evidence of the power of dogmatic belief. No, the struggles of the intolerant against reason and science and liberalism is instead the futile flailing of those who are unwilling or unable to accept the modern role of God and gods in society.
The existence of explanations for oceans, and stars, and evolution, and myriad other natural phenomenon forced the hand of theism. God could not exist as understood by prehistoric shamans. Wind does not decide to blow, fire does not decide to burn. Lightening is neither the vengeful blows of a capricious god on Mount Olympus, nor the spitefully miraculous punishment of a Creator God. The power of science comes with its remarkable ability to predict and explain ideas, and its incredible usefulness in the creation of technologies.
This is not to say that God is Dead. Personal beliefs aside, though the role of God and gods in modern society is not that which Islamists and Dominionists perceive it to be, the truth is that in our secular society the role of the supernatural for many has become an intensely personal and profound one. God no longer exists to protect us as a nation or to make our crops grow, this is true. However, though divinity has evolved in parallel with our growing understanding of the natural world, we are now able to define for ourselves the meaning of existence, and God/s place within it.
This great existential truth, that in the face of science, existence becomes a personal rather than public question, is why Freedom of Religion remains the most vital freedom we have. Since our understanding of the world has reached a point in which faith in God truly is Faith, all religion must be understood at a personal level. Those of us who are atheists or agnostics cannot be made to reject the evidence we see no more than those Christians or Muslims who have had personal revelatory experiences can be made to reject their own. Likewise, a society that does not publicly function based on objective, rational standards is doomed to fail in a world where our knowledge undermines certain assumptions.
This, I suppose, is my point; without the implicit understanding that one's personally held beliefs shall never be persecuted, a modern and diverse nation cannot survive. Likewise, without a common understanding of reality, interactions between individuals becomes increasingly difficult and more probably violent. Thus, the modern progressive ideal of the Secular government and religious pluralism is the only logical and humane system. History itself lays out this path, from ancient shamans to animal sacrifice to salvation and finally to personal conviction.
So when faced with the terrors and brutality of modern religious conflict, I've chosen to retain my optimism for the future. Rather than succumb to pessimism and refuse to engage the world, I choose engagement and dialogue, promoting firmer scientific standards, resisting attempts to impose religious dogma at schools or withing government, and to respect all those who respect me. Though I do not believe in a god, I do have faith that the arc of history bends toward justice.
07 August 2009
The History of Conservatism
It has been said throughout the media that the Republicans are no longer the "party of ideas." This, of course, presupposes that they ever were. Even so, the activists within the Republican Party have seized on this meme as a call to action, bidding the Republicans to adopt whatever brand of conservativism the activist making the call chooses to support: Huckabites calling for a populist brand of a sort of theocratic "New Deal", Romneyites carrying the torch for Big Business and moderate social issues, Kristolites claiming that if we just bomb a few more people everything will get better, or Palinites trying not to think too hard and just asking Jesus to make it better. Of course none of these are new ideas, but simply all of the old American Conservative factions staking out ground in the coming civil war within the party.
The concept of conservatism as an ideology began in Europe as a reaction toward democratic liberalism and socialism. It supported a strong central monarchy and a society organized around the twin pillars of Christianity and Nationalism. These ideas crystallized into a coherent set of ideals during the 19th Century after the defeat of Napoleon and found their greatest proponent in the great Austrian minister Metternich, who during the Congress of Vienna attempted to enforce peace and order on Europe by establishing an equal balance of power between the states and state suppression of liberalism and socialism within them. European Conservatives generally supported censorship, state supported religion, a strong military, colonialism, traditional social structures, and monarchy. They typically opposed the free market economic system, public schools, secularism or pluralism, legal protection for workers, immigration, and multi-party democracy.
In America, meanwhile, conservatism never really took root as a force in American politics. There was broad agreement on general political values, and with some notable exceptions such as slavery, the United States was a decidedly liberal place. In the 19th Century this meant democracy, free-markets, pluralism, and civil rights, although with the onset of socialism in the middle of the century, it began to take on a more modern character. Truly, America was so dominated by liberalism that the concept of ideology would have been alien to most Americans. This was a pragmatic country where politics hinged on issues rather than ideals, for the ideals were already accepted. While the 1800s were a century of brutal rebellions and fervent ideological battles between liberals, socialists, communists, conservatives, monarchists, democrats, Christians, and secularists, America was never rocked by these ideological struggles. In fact the one great conflict in America during this period hinged on a single issue, slavery, and was a battle fought by two sides each purporting to support the same basic ideology.
It wasn’t until the middle of the 20th Century that the term Conservatism became a powerful intellectual force in American politics. Even now it bears far more in similarity to liberalism than it does to Metternich and the other influential European conservatives of yore. Of course, Conservatism in America is attempting to "conserve" something very different here in the United States than they were in Europe. The primary architect of American Conservatism is William F Buckley, whom we know all too well. In contrast to the statist and monarchial European Conservatism, Buckley was almost an anarchist. He vouched for a minarchist rather than monarchist government, one which subscribed to a mythical ideal that conservatives have since claimed the Constitution really stood for. Rather than hearken to the Church and State as the source for moral and social authority, Buckley consistently referred to personal religion, or our "Judeo-Christian Values", and the free-market as the pillars of society. Buckley took European Conservatism and put a decidedly American spin on it, making it an individualist ideology. This forms the core of American Conservatism.
These conservative ideals never really took hold amongst most Americans. Most people saw their lives improve when the government spread electricity through the TVA or banned child labor. While everyone could agree they didn’t like paying taxes and that people should generally be able to spend their money how they like, the majority of Americans saw nothing wrong with public schools and new public roads. This was a conundrum for Conservatives; they would never get elected on a libertarian platform.
Republicans presented the most obvious candidates as the vehicle of Conservatism. Though they were the old home of big government, with candidates like Abe Lincoln and trust-buster Teddy Roosevelt, Republicans had become lassaiz-faire on the economy in opposition to FDR’s policies. Still, proponents of government investment in infrastructure and education known then as "Rockefeller Republicans" remained due to the steadfast support of many professionals in New England. Buckley and other Conservative intellectuals thus began a steady effort to "Conservatize" the Republican Party, the ultimate expression of which was the candidacy of Barry Goldwater. As we all know, he suffered one of the worst defeats of the 20th Century. Conservatives within the party were able to see that Buckley’s libertarian-esque Conservatism would never be enough to win the party. Sure enough the Republicans nominated a Keynesian in 1968, Nixon, and won due to Nixon’s masterful use of race and fear. Other factors were involved in Nixon’s victory, of course, but Nixon was not particularly different from his Democratic opponent economically. He won as a "culture warrior", blaming liberals and elitists for the nation’s problems, playing on fears stoked by racial, cultural, and societal tensions rampant during the 60s. Conservatives learned this lesson well.
To a true Buckley or Reagan Conservative, social issues are a distant second to economic issues. This has two intimately-related consequences. First, they do not particularly care about the issues that offend the Religious Right. They are neither emboldened nor offended by their ideas. Second, because of this, they don’t really mind adopting some of their positions so long as the Religious Right supports free-market Conservatism. The campaign of Ronald Reagan was the first to truly capitalize on this development, and it worked to perfection. It worked so well, in fact, that almost every Conservative we see today is an intellectual descendant of Ronald Reagan. Like an organism particularly well-adapted to an environment, the Reagan Coalition spread throughout the Republican Party and became the dominant force and by the year 2000 there were hardly any Rockefeller Republicans left.
What we see today fracturing of this coalition. Like society as a whole, the generally well-educated and well-informed Buckley Conservatives are beginning to realize what kind of monster they unleashed in the Religious Right. Palin and Huckabee scare the shit out of them as much as they do us. However, today just as 40 years ago, Buckley’s ideas cannot win an election by themselves, and Conservatives know this. They’re stuck in a Catch-22; if they keep things the same, they face theocracy, if they push Palin away, they face liberalism. We saw many choose the latter while many more chose the former. Still, THIS is what conservatives mean when they say they need "new ideas."
Each faction of the Republican Party sees the coming battle as an opportunity to reintroduce itself to the American people. They want to repackage their ideology, free from the taint of the other side of Modern Conservatism, as something NEW and DIFFERENT. The religious right will fail because they represent an ideal so opposite of historical trends as to be almost completely irrelevant. However, the Buckley-ites represent a more intractable view as they appeal to the fundamental greed in all of us.
Still, within the view of free-market conservatism itself is the fundamental disability for new ideas. The most basic and fundamental tenet of this ideology is an aversion to government, the belief that "government is the problem, not the solution." How, then, can any of their ideas be new? There is no way to discover a new way NOT to do something. It’s a contradiction, and we should address it as such.
06 August 2009
Hello, World
I suppose it was only a matter of time before I finally began to update this site. I'd been sitting on it for quite a long time now, and there seemed no reason not to finally get it up and running. I don't have any particular purpose for it yet, and no expectation that it will last particularly long. For now, I simply plan to use it as a dumping ground for various random posts and thoughts. For anyone who wanders through from the wilderness, welcome.
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