E.J. Dionne on the GOP meltdown:
President Bush inadvertently underscored the weakness of the Republican agenda when he flew to Bridgeport, Conn., on Wednesday to campaign for his health savings accounts, known as HSAs. Virtually no one other than the president — oh, and perhaps a few ideologues and insurance companies — sees HSAs as anything approaching a comprehensive solution to the nation’s growing health-care problem.
Senate Republicans have already dropped HSAs from their budget, and Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the Finance Committee chairman, has been openly skeptical about doing anything on HSAs this year. The president was thus campaigning for a doomed idea in Connecticut when, just over the border in Massachusetts, a bipartisan majority in the legislature was passing a visionary plan requiring all residents to buy health insurance and providing subsidies for those who can’t afford the full freight. The contrast between the policy energy that exists in many states and the intellectual torpor in Washington could not have been more stark.
Remember what I said about Bush becoming irrelevant?
Dionne’s point is that conservatism is becoming irrelevant. It may be a little early to make that pronouncement, but we’re certainly stumbling in that direction. Just start counting the many ways in which this nation is bleeped up, and then trace the problem back to its source — policies based on conservative ideology. And this is exactly why the Republican-controlled federal government can’t solve those problems. “Republicans are paralyzed because they can’t deal with the core problems without walking away from their earlier policy choices,” says Dionne.
Why is the federal government so impotent to reform the nation’s health care mess? Because of conservatives. For years we haven’t even been able to have a coherent national discussion on health care, because righties shout it down. So the President goes on the road to sell meaningless tweaks as some kind of solution, and he’s so irrelevant even his own party is ignoring him.
Why are we in Iraq? You know the answer to that one.
Why do we have a bleeping out-of-control deficit? “It took no great genius to see that cutting taxes in a time of war and other security threats would create large problems,” says Dionne. “The contradiction between the current majority’s small-government rhetoric and heavy federal spending has been visible for years.” Visible to anyone but righties. As long as Democrats were in control of at least part of the federal government and were the ones mostly responsible for writing the budget, righties could jeer about “tax and spend liberals.” But given the responsibility of making the hard choices themselves, righties proved they can’t do it.
“Big spending on war, defense and prescription drugs for the elderly, combined with big tax cuts, produces a fiscal squeeze,” says Dionne. Not to mention the uncontrolled pork. At this point the only solution is to either raise taxes or declare bankruptcy and turn the country over to the foreign banks who hold most of our IOUs. But you know the Republicans’ heads would explode before they’d raise taxes. They’ll put the nation in hock to China first.
Bottom line, hard-right ideology doesn’t work in the real world. In that way it’s like Marxism — sounds good when you talk about it, turns out bad when you try to do it.
This is not to say that we should run all conservatives out of town. We’ll always need people at the government table making an argument against excess spending, social engineering, and foreign entanglements — what conservatives used to argue about. It’s a necessary counterweight to some of the flightier impulses of liberals.
But I tend to be skeptical of ideology, period. (See Jonathan Chait, “The Anti-Dogma Dogma“). Ideologies are, IMO, just interfaces to reality. They make the world easier to understand by limiting one’s choices and narrowing one’s focus. But it’s the stuff ideologues refuse to acknowledge — because it’s not written into the interface — that always trips ’em up. And this is just as true of leftie ideology as it is of rightie ideology.
But liberalism is, IMO, less an ideology than a value. John F. Kennedy said,
I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man’s ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.
Conservatism, on the other hand, seems to be rooted in the idea that people must be controlled by authority. And if they can’t be controlled by law, then they will be controlled by lies, manipulation, deceit, and propaganda. And right now the same deluded rightie Kool-Aiders who yap about Bush promoting “freedom” are sowing the seeds of totalitarianism as fast as they can.
Yet we can hope they are also sowing the seeds of their own self-destruction. The results of their own actions have boxed them in. They can’t even address our nation’s problems because, more often than not, it was their lamebrain policies that caused the problems, or else made an existing problem worse. And “stay the course” is not a policy, especially when most Americans can see we’re going the wrong way.
The extent to which Democrats signed on to rightie policies in the past — out of fear or political expedience or because they were righties themselves all along — compromises them, of course. Just when we need a pride of lions, we get a pond full of toads. But that’s another rant.
Let’s end on a positive note. If you want another clue to Bush’s irrelevancy, check out yesterday’s Froomkin column.
President Bush is throwing Vice President Cheney to the wolves — or, more specifically, to the Nationals fans.
According to longstanding precedent, one of the two of them had to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the home opener of Washington’s home team on Tuesday — and face the inevitable boos and catcalls.
Bush is sending Cheney.
Heh.
Maha, you are getting caught up where a lot of people are getting caught up: identifying Republicanism with conservatism. There is no connection.
I am conservative; I am also very liberal. Liberal because I think for myself and search out creative solutions to problems; conservative because I do not work for change for change’s sake.
The opposite of conservative is radical, seeking change where none is needed. The opposite to liberal is dogmatic, acting impractically to follow some preset list of rules.
Republicans are radical dogmatists, as dangerous here as in the Middle East. When you look back, they always have been. While Democrats were solving problems (and sometimes, in the process, making them worse), Republicans have always been for big government, lots of spending (but not enough taxing to pay for it – that’s the Democrats’ job), etc., with no actual plan to DO anything useful.
I am conservative; I am also very liberal. Liberal because I think for myself and search out creative solutions to problems; conservative because I do not work for change for change’s sake.
You’re confused. Who says liberalism is about working for change for change’s sake? That’s rightie propaganda talking.
There are two articles linked in the post above you must read before you continue to stumble through life thinking that you are a conservative and a liberal at the same time. The first is Jonathan Chait, “The Anti-Dogma Dogma” and the other is Philip Agre, “What Is Conservatism, and What Is Wrong With It?” Chait argues that liberalism is more receptive to empiricism than conservatism, which is way different from “change for change’s sake.” Agre disputes the notion that conservatism is, or ever was, about “conserving.”
That being said, I agree that our current crop of conservatives are a whole lot more radical than mainstream American conservtives used to be, and a lot of them have moved far enough to the Right that they’ve moved out of the “conservative” range on the continuum grid and are closer to “fascism.”
Great post indeed. For “Conservatism” substitute “Fascism” of course we don’t want to really do that as the tactically sound course is to leave the label as is and make sure everyone knows what it stands for, the citizenry is figuring that out for itself as Jefferson knew they would, but in terms of thinking about “conservatives” and the danger they pose to our nation “Fascists” is the correct term.
Maha, dnadan’s point was to make a different spectrum than liberal vs conservative.
He created two different dimensions:
conservative vs radical (change for change’s sake)
liberal vs dogmatic (though I’d call it authoritarian)
So he was specifically saying that liberal does not equal radical (change for change’s sake).
While on the name game… remember when conservative meant anti-authoritarian distrust of government? (Actually, I’m too young to remember.)
And finally, thanks for also realizing the problems with left ideaologists as well. It’s a pain to argue with righties that their charicature is a strawman, when some idiot marxist is doing their best to dance around and sing “if I only had a brain”.
Tito: Click here for the old Schlesinger-Poole grid from The Vital Center (1949) by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., which all us younguns used to have to read back in the day. Study it. There may be a pop quiz.
One point the grid makes is that conservatism is not “versus” radicalism. Radical conservatism morphs into fascism. It’s part of a continuum. Moderate conservatism may agree with liberalism on matters of liberty (they’re both in the upper hemisphere), but to say that one is both a liberal and a conservative because you are opposed to change for change’s sake reveals you don’t get the real difference between conservatism and liberalism.
Did you read the articles linked in comment #2? Please do so before arguing with me,
The problem is that while bush is in a bubble and is irrelevant, he is still the president and has the power to appoint and the power to order our military to do god knows what in our name and we have to watch this hoorror show and be the victims of it for three more years.( run on sentence alert) well it’s a runon government-it’s an energizer bunny that has the current kicking in and out, sometimes running sideways and backwards.
Funny, I always thought:
Conservative: “resistent to change”
Radical: “in favor of rapid change”
Liberal: “broad-minded”
Dogmatic: “believes in establishd opinion”
Damned liberal Catholic school and Berkeley education…
That is the liberal part of my make-up: I think the Schlesinger-Poole grid (and many other, similar ones) is nonsense, since the meanings shown do not follow the definitions of the words used. I try to follow Twain’s edict: “Use the right word, not its second cousin.”
Damned liberal Catholic school and Berkeley education…
Apparently they didn’t teach you political science. Your definitions might apply to general philosophy, but they’ve never applied to politics. Not even in Mark Twain’s time. And, in fact, you are not using the words correctly.
The Schlesinger-Poole grid probably was a better teaching tool back in the 1940s, when it was created, and I think for absolute accuracy you’d probably need a three-dimensional model. But I’ve had a great many years to reflect on the model, and I think that on the whole it’s still accurate.
You didn’t read the Agre essay, did you?
I wasn’t arguing with you maha. 🙂 Yay for tone not carrying over the net.
All I was trying to say was that dnadan’s was using the terms differently. I’ve been a programmer forever, so for me mentally redifining the same terms comes easily, and it appeared you were using the traditional liberal vs conservative rather than noticing his/hers definitions.
So all I was trying to say is that when you said this “You’re confused. Who says liberalism is about working for change for change’s sake? That’s rightie propaganda talking.”, was that dnadan wasn’t saying “liberalism is about working for change for change’s sake” either.
The two articles you linked two basically desribed the libertarian and the aristocratic elements of the Republican party. Niether covered, missed I think the “tradition” emphasis, which is, I believe a major reason that many non-wealthy people are part of the party. (The “institutions” touched on it, but IMO didn’t emhpasis it enough.)
Also, I don’t think 3 dimensions is nearly enough to model political though even remotely decently. I handn’t seen the grid you linked to before, but I liked the gradualism vs violence axis.
At the very least I’d have: (avoiding currently “loaded terms” like liberal and conservative)
elitism vs egalitariansim
gradualism vs violence
collectivism vs individualism
tradition vs change
nationalism vs multiculturalism
natural law vs utilitarianism
social acceptance vs moralism
authoritarian vs freedom
extremes in any of these will cause problems
discussion maha, not argument 🙂
Tito, if by “tradition” you mean, say social conservatism or religious fundamentalism, the more correct word is “antimodernity.” I’m as liberal as they come, and there are some traditions I like very much.
Discussion is great, but we have to agree on terms. The notion that liberalism is about change for the sake of change does liberalism a disservice. For a more accurate definition, see the Columbia Encyclopedia — Liberalism is a
The encyclopedia goes on to define “conservatism” as “maintenance of the status quo,” whereby liberalism “which seeks what it considers to be improvement or progress, necessarily desires to change the existing order.” But those words “improvement” and “progress” are critical; we don’t want change for the sake of change, but change that We, the People, initiate in order to bring about improvement and progress.
If liberalism was only about change for the sake of change we might have, for example, supported George Bush’s Social Security privatization scheme. That was change, was it not? But it was change that we judged would not bring about improvement or progress, so we liberals opposed it.
That was the point of the Chait article — that liberalism is about empiricism, not ideology — but I guessed you missed that.
Conservatism may think of itself as conserving, but throughout history it has tended to conserve in favor of authority, whether the monarchy in the 19th century or corporate or other plutocratic powers in the 20th. (Conservatism’s selectivity about what it conserves was discussed in the Agre article, but I guessed you missed that, too.)
Taken to extreme it leads to fascism, which began in the early 20th century as a backlash against socialism, and which early on took much of its support from corporations and the old moneyed aristocracy, who feared socialism. But fascism also takes power from the masses who fear liberty (see Eric Fromm) and who seek to submerge their individuality in nationalistic and racial movements. The appeal of fascism is thus, essentially, a radically conservative appeal.
I think you are using the word “conservative” to mean “moderate” in the political sense. You are not a conservative, but a moderate.
Now, let’s talk for a moment about libertarianism. Isn’t the libertarian/conservative movement proof that conservatism can support liberty? Only up to a point. Libertarianism in practice tends to either move toward anarchy or some system that preserves the freedom of some people at the expense of others. The old Confederacy saw itself as libertarian (check out their constitution), even though its economy was based on slavery.
I’m not sure if I really understand the Schlessinger-Poole model, but I do think it’s interesting that liberty and property intersect, because I think that’s really the crux of American politics for most people. (How many times have you heard, “I’m socially liberal but economically conservative”?) How do we ensure the blessings of liberty and property simultaneously?
I keep re-writing this comment because I can’t quite articulate what I want to say, but I will add that I think a few of the commenters here are throwing around big words and conflating philosophies without really understanding the definitions of the words. If conservatism is “not working for change for change’s sake” and the opposite is radicalism, does that mean that radicalism is arbitrary change? Would progressivism be radical? (Side note: Jefferson thought initially that the Constitution would have to be redrafted every so often to accomodate the way the country grew and changed over time. Is Jefferson radical? I’d argue he acknowledged the need for progressivism. It’s not arbitrary change but an adpatation to a changing country and society. The needs of the people today are different than they were in 1806. If conservatism is “resistance to change” than it’s perhaps the opposite of progress, but that’s oversimplifying, no?)
Yeah, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Carry on.
I wish that conservativism (right wing radicalism actually) was irrelevant. I’ve known for the last ten or more years that their “solutions” were anything but.
I’m convinced that their program is little more than smokescreen. Their entire goal is to take over the country/the world, loot its wealth, and turn us into slaves. Everything else is just window dressing. Agre is right.
What good is it to see the failings of conservativism, when the political process is broken and unresponsive, and the media, abusing the public trust, acts as the facilitators of thugs, bullies, and manipulators?
People on this thread have been arguing over terms, and I guess I’m shifting the nitpicking to a different term, by questioning the notion of irrelevance.
When I see Bush Boy defiantly defending his criminal actions, looking into the camera, looking at the public and effectively sneering, “What’re You Gonna Do About It?” – the political movement that brought him there may be losing steam, but the cancer it created has metastatized to the point where it is dropping any pretense of democratic process and is showing that it doesn’t give a fig about you and me, and it no longer needs to. The Constitution? It’s just a goddam piece of paper after all.
Until liberalism or sanity or something can effectively rebut the cancer of conservativism/radicalism, and I do mean effectively, conservativism is sadly far from irrelevant.
Maha-
I first heard of you when you did an appearance on C-Span with Brian Lamb. Since then, I have added you to my list of blogs that I peruse. And I tell you, this particular post today is the most educational thing I’ve read anywhere in some time. I am just now slogging through the Agre article that you referenced and have yet to get to the other one from Chaite. This one on conservatism, as dry as it is to read, should be REQUIRED reading for all liberals/democrats (or anyone who hasn’t yet lost their sense of reason or conscience.)
I have long wondered how the Frank Luntz types operate and this piece is giving me a view into the mechanics of it all. I wonder why we liberals still haven’t been effective at using these same tools yet. Are we so naive as to expect the other side to play fairly, as we aspire to do? Or would we have to set aside our objectivity in order to operate that way? Scary thought.
Seems like conservatives want people to see everything in black and white for simplicity, so they convince themselves that everything is black and white. Once they accomplish that feat, they can then convince themselves that up is down and wrong is actually right, etc. Scary stuff. Meanwhile liberals appreciate all the beautiful colors and, while we may have trouble articulating a particular shade or hue, we don’t see any of them as superior to the others.
A touchy subject, but do you think religion and “faith” just prime young minds for authoritarian systems, or to become a “conservative” as defined by Agre? As a child, my mother would not let me learn about any religion until I was old enough to compare all of them to one another and always warned me never to fall victim to any of them… a wise move on her part.
Now Jon Stewart’s statement “You are hurting America!” to the Crossfire hosts before the show got cancelled is ringing truer and truer for me. Punditry as a sport is about as mind-numbingly stupid as professional wrestling or Pokemon, but some people just eat it up… and maybe because that’s the only thing being served to them.
Thank you. thank you. thank you. I’ll mention this post at other places where I visit. Maybe we can affect more people with this good stuff.
By the way, if you haven’t read John Steinberg’s (aka Blue Meme’s) Armageddon post at Raw Story (April 2) yet, I highly recommend it. That’s some pretty scary stuff that we might face if Mr. Bush can’t get his poll numbers up soon.
Sorry so wordy. I don’t speak up often but when I do, you can’t shut me up…
RandyH, thanks for the link to John Steinberg Armageddon piece. I’ve been saying the same thing for sometime, glad to see someone else articulate it better and more forcefully than myself. I’ll only add, that if Bush and his adivsors don’t create the nightmare Steinberg writes about, they’re due for some pretty serious jailtime or worse. If you were a megalomanic, pretty much in control of the entire state apparatus, who thinks God is whispering in your ear, facing these options, what would you do?
Liberalisms aim is to provide the maximum number of people the maximum amount of freedom possible. Thus resturant owners can no longer ban blacks from sitting at their lunch counters. Yes, their freedom is curtailed but thousands more were allowed greater freedom.
There is no single overarching liberal ideology which provides for its goals. Where real life meets politics decisions favoring various groups liberalism only provides that all groups will be heard. Liberalsim both classic and modern is a process not an ideology.
Ideology is the enemy of Liberalism. No logically consistent ideology has ever been created, nor ever will be, which can provide the best solutions for all or even most of a societies questions. Ideology is the enemy of wisdom. Ideology is a habit or mode of thousht. It is hardly a surprise that modern conservatism was founded by ex Marxists substituting one ideology for another.
The poster child for this, the cartoon really, is David Horawitz. His language and mode of thought puts everything in an ideological context. A wise man puts nothing in ideological context.
Democrats of course are bereft of ideas as defined by some core ideology and be thankfull for it. What the world needs are good solutions to its problems. Not perfect solutions mind you because as Christains and non Christians can agree, humans are not perfect and are incapeable of perfection. Conservative Republicans have provided us with their ideological solutions for 25 years and look at the results.
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