Another glimpse at Conservative Thought

I sometimes think these posts only serve my own amusement...but even if that is so, it's good to write this out....

I had a chance to talk with a couple of my contempooraries on Friday about these posts. I'm afraid that I was a bit defensive but that was becasue it dawned on me that I have never explained the purpose of my ramblings.

Since the days....actually very dark days... when Ronald Reagan became president, the behavior of conservatives absolutely fascinated me. The "rank-and-file" Republicans I knew had absolutely no idea about the underlying reasons for republican/conservative doctrine, in trstead, they picked up on catch phrases and clever "one-liners" from conservative pundits and accepted them as biblical truth (more on that some other time) and put their money, life and faith in the catch phrases. In many instances, the "one-liners" were at odds with what I understood to be traditional conservative dogma. In other words the rank and file was being manipulated, lied to, pandered to, in order to support candidates who were not, as far as I knew, really philosophical conservatives.

Needless to say, I was always very troubled by this characteristic and always thought that if my Republican/conservative friends would just understand where the true roots of conservative philosophy lie, they would re-evaluate whether they were really Republican or conservative.

So I consume posts about conservative philosophers like M & Ms and try to put them out to conservatives whenever I can....they're not anxious to listen to me ...wonder why?

I struck paydirt because The Booman Tribune has more on the most recent iterations of the Straussian philosophy..

To expect that all men for all time will go on thinking different things, and yet doing the same things, is a doubtful speculation. It is not founding society on a communion, or even on a convention, but rather on a coincidence. Four men may meet under the same lamp post; one to paint it pea green as part of a great municipal reform; one to read his breviary in the light of it; one to embrace it with accidental ardour in a fit of alcoholic enthusiasm; and the last merely because the pea green post is a conspicuous point of rendezvous with his young lady. But to expect this to happen night after night is unwise...." [Footnote: G. K. Chesterton, "The Mad Hatter and the Sane Householder," _Vanity Fair_, January, 1921, p. 54]

Chesterton was saying, of course, that the public, and most specifically, Public Opinion, had to be "shaped and moulded" because they cannot be expected to come to the "correct" opinion by themselves. This leads to the obvious conclusion that leaders and wise men (remember the "Philosopher Kings" of Strauss fame?) should shape public opinion....

sound familiar?

Look what happens with Walter Lippment did to "expand on" the concept.

My conclusion is that public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press as is the case today. This organization I conceive to be in the first instance the task of a political science that has won its proper place as formulator, in advance of real decision, instead of apologist, critic, or reporter after the decision has been made. I try to indicate that the perplexities of government and industry are conspiring to give political science this enormous opportunity to enrich itself and to serve the public. And, of course, I hope that these pages will help a few people to realize that opportunity more vividly, and therefore to pursue it more consciously.

Booman Observes:

Here, Lippmann's original observation has become somewhat more specific and nefarious. Lippmann was calling for something very like the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence. It would be a group of highly trained people that would do what no single leader could do...break down the huge amounts of data in the world into digestable bits, and allow power-brokers to make reality-based decisions. And, then, help mobilize the media to mold public opinion in support of a policy that had been well thought out by experts, but might not be easily sellable to an uninformed public.
The Straussians had a different take. For them, the kind of analysis done by the CIA was doomed to be flawed by the actions of the enemy...who would always seek to deceive. Moreover, matters of policy couldn't, or shouldn't, be left to politicians. Politicians have certain skill sets but, for Straussians, deep thinking isn't necessary one of them. If you understand this mindset it makes it easier to understand the meaning of Ron Suskind's famous contact with an aide to George W. Bush:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Far too many people on the left misinterpreted this statement and went racing to declare themselves 'proud members of the reality-based community'. Doing that is only a way of making yourself look stupid and validating the Straussian's contempt for you. For the neo-conservatives in this administration, the meaning of reality-based is quite different from how most people conceive it. Reality-based refers to those people that are on the receiving end of the media barrage and not on the production end. People that deal only in reality are people that think reality can be discerned by reading the papers. But, for the Straussians, that is but the shadow on the wall of a cave.

"...the wall of a cave.." Plato's cave?

The true Form of reality is made, for example, when Scooter Libby sits down for a chat with Judith Miller in the St. Regis Hotel and leaks part if the National Intelligence Estimate to her. Libby worked to get misinformation into the NIE, and then he leaks that misinformation back to the press in order to justify other misinformation that is under threat of exposure.

In other words, while we're studying reality (reading Joe Wilson's editorial in the New York Times), they will act again (leak the NIE, expose the critic's wife, spread new disinformation) and we will be left to study what they do.

This type of manipulation of public opinion is most blatant where it is consciously done. And the two places where it is most consciously done is at The New Republic and within neo-conservative circles.
Both efforts are deeply cynical and undemocratic. And they have dominated U.S. foreign policy for

years.

Is this what the rank-and-file Republican/conservative really believes?

Or is it that the rank-and-file Republican really believes that he or she must subjigate themselves to a higher authority (philosopher king?) to maintain order in society? And this is "okay" with them?

Do they understand at all?

It's Thursday....

better than that, it's the every-other-Thursday when the latest episode of The Last Chance Democracy Cafe' is published...so in between phone calls and CEUs, I've been "hanging out" over at Stephen C. Day's virtual Cafe and eavesdropping on what Tom, Winston, Zach and the rest of the gang have to say.

As usual, they gave me something to think about.....and...because as Albert Einstein said, "there is no such thing as coincidence." a large part of what Steve and the "guys" (although Molly does make a cameo appearance today) are discussing shows up in a nasty little food fight between KOS and Joe Klein in today's blog "The Swamp".

In case I lost you there....let me tie it together for you.

The title of today's episode in the Cafe' is: BE AUDACIOUS OR DIE!

It starts out by asking if the Democratic Party is a "One-hit-Wonder"...(all of us baby-boomers and American Bandstand babies should know what that means)and goes on to talk about the fact that while the Democrats won a least a "taste" of power in the 06 election, the Republicans still maintain a HUGE structural advantage because of the infrastructure they have built up over the past 20 years or so.

(note: there is an interesting discussion of the Clinton years in there which I find remarkably insightful....read it...comment on it...)

The point is that the Democratic Party must be audaciuos enough to make structural changes that will either negate or eliminate the Republican advantages in money, media and think tanks or it will lose in the upcoming elections.

So how does the KOS/Klein food-fight play into this? (Picture at right is Kos and Jane Hamser at "Yearly Kos")

Easy....because KOS and Klein each represent very divergent views of how the party should proceed. There is the "centrist" position of the establishment (Klein) and then there is the Liberal/Progessive position represented by KOS (and hehehehehe...the blogosphere in general). The liberal/progressive wing wants to be audacious and the establishment wing want to be cautious....

For the record, the current food fight involves Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher (D-Dalifornia) and the Washington Post sums the battle up like this:

The Democratic majority was only three weeks old, but by Jan. 26, the grass-roots and Net-roots activists of the party's left wing had already settled on their new enemy: Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), the outspoken chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition.Progressive blogs -- including two new ones, Ellen Tauscher Weekly and Dump Ellen Tauscher -- were bashing her as a traitor to her party. A new liberal political action committee had just named her its "Worst Offender." And in Tauscher's East Bay district office that day in January, eight MoveOn.org activists were accusing her of helping President Bush send more troops to Iraq.

And KOS has been leading the charge.

from KOS

..
As we tried to do in Connecticut. While we didn't get rid of Joe Lieberman, we helped to effectively marginalize him. He's now stuck to a failed and disastrously unpopular president, and is in a no-man's land of politics--useless to the Republicans because he won't support many of their pet causes, and a pariah in his own party. Contrast that to Jane Harman, as Markos does in this story:
But Kos points to Harman as a perfect example of how the Net roots can keep Democrats in line. He said Harman used to be a constant irritant, a go-to quote for reporters looking for a Democrat to tweak liberals -- until she had to fight off a primary challenge from the left in 2006. "She's been great ever since," he said. Now Harman even writes on the liberal Huffington Post blog.

Klein, of course, disagrees:

Update Atrios makes my point for me. If you want to tell me how you're going to guarantee a left-wing challenger won't weaken Tauscher, or perhaps see her replaced by a moderate Republican, I'm all ears.As for Ezra, I disagree with Tauscher on the estate tax and bankruptcy, but once again--you think a Republican would vote differently? And I very much liked Jane Harman, before she was mau-maued, and wish she were the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee now. Unlike the current Pelosi-selected chairman, she knows the difference between a sunni and shi'ite.

And finally: While you infants are getting all self-righteous about the sins of moderates and littering the space with pornographic comments, the Republicans have spent the day sending bombs like this to people like me. They've done one for each Democratic candidate for President. Some perspective, please, from the commentariat.

I won't get into the "bloggers are uncivil" argument right now, but I thought Joe had seen the light and said so in an earlier post...
Good material for thought this morning...pour a cup of coffee, grab a sweetroll, and settle into the Last Chance Democracy Cafe' (and leave a comment)

edit: Cross post because it's referenced on The Cafe comments site:

Every once in a while....

....You get a stark reminder that being in Government is serious business....

It's not a lark....

It's not an "ego thing"...

It's serious busines....real people are involved...and they can get hurt...not "feelings hurt"...physically hurt...

IN OTHER NEWS!

The jury is deliberating in the Libby trial.

Firedoglake and The Next Hurrah have had excellent coverage...and our old friend Waterman has been giving us a rundown on the legal, ethical and philosophical aspects of the whole Valerie Plame-Joe Wilson-Scooter Libby (and as we learned in the trial) DICK CHENEY incident.

Even with the excellent coverages mentioned above, by Jane Hamser, Christy Hardin Smith and Marcey Wheeler, I still won't go out on a limb and predict a verdict in this one. There are too many cultural undercurrents floating around which no jury can be immune to.

And after the verdict?

No matter which way it goes there will be spin like you've never seen before. If Libby is found guilty then there will be appeals and there is the tantalizing possibility of a pardon. If you thought the story would go away after this you were mistaken.

Supporting the Troops...Republican Style

The flap over the VA treatment of Vets at Walter Reed took another interesting turn today. Yesterday, Tony Snow, speaking (presumably) for the White House said " Of Course, the President was aware of the conditions." but it's not our responsibility...the actual quote is:

Snow told the press corps that if they wanted to know what was going on at Walter Reed, those responsible for working on the problem "work on the other side of the river." In other words, it's the Pentagon's fault, and the Pentagon's responsibility for fixing it -- as if George Bush has no say over what the Pentagon does (or no desire). C'mon. They work for Bush over at the Pentagon, they are PART OF the Bush Administration.

Today, of course, the story changed: Snow claims Bush didn't know of the neglect.

The White House has since backtracked from Snow’s comments. In a small addendum added to the bottom of yesterday’s briefing transcript on the White House website, a note now reads that Bush “first learned of the troubling allegations regarding Walter Reed from the stories this weekend in the Washington Post,” and that he is “deeply concerned” by the conditions:

So......he didn't know about the conditions before he knew about the conditions ....or something like that..

Republican Civility my....foot

There has been so much publicity recently about "left wing" incivility...."left wing vulgarity" that I just have to post this.....

From Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution:

From a new review in Ha'aretz:
Speaking of George Bush, with whom Sharon developed a very close relationship, Uri Dan recalls that Sharon's delicacy made him reluctant to repeat what the president had told him when they discussed Osama bin Laden. Finally he relented. And here is what the leader of the Western world, valiant warrior in the battle of cultures, promised to do to bin Laden if he caught him: "I will screw him in the ass!"

and that's not all....this is taken from the book Hubris, by the ultimately credible Bob Woodward and recounted in 2006 by the same Jonathan Schwarz

Here's yet more from Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. According to Hubris, this exchange took place during a May 1, 2002 meeting between Bush, Ari Fleischer, and Adam Levine (who worked for Fleischer):
As Fleischer recounted [an exchange with Helen Thomas about Saddam Hussein] for the president, Bush's mood changed, according to Levine. He grew grim and determined—steely. Out of nowhere, he unleashed a stream of expletives.
"Did you tell her I don't like motherfuckers who gas their own people?" the president snapped.
"Did you tell her I don't like assholes who lie to the world?"

"Did you tell her I'm going to kick his sorry motherfucking ass all over the Mideast?"

Schwarz can't pass up the snark. He writes:

If I were teaching a course called "Insane World Leaders: 1945-2006," I'd devote at least two classes to this. There's a lot you could say about it, but my favorite parts are:
1. Bush's belief he somehow was personally "going to kick [Saddam's] sorry motherfucking ass." I guess I missed the part where Bush parachuted into Iraq and went mano-y-mano with Saddam and bested him in a round of Extreme Kickboxing.
Speaking of which, before the war Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan picked up on Bush's weirdly personal animus and suggested that he and Saddam fight a duel. "In this way," he said, "we are saving the American and Iraqi people." The White House scoffed at this preposterous notion. I suspect this was because Bush is so incredibly manly it wouldn't be a fair fight.
2. Bush, Fleischer and Levine were meeting to discuss an upcoming History Channel interview of Bush about similarities between him and Reagan. According to Hubris, on a pre-brief memo Bush had scrawled such phrases as "moral clarity."

So we, that is those of us on the left-hand side of the ledger and especially those of us who inhabit the land of Left Blogostan, are the ones who are "uncivil".

We're the ones who are vulgar?

I wrote a few days ago that Joe Klein finally "got it" about why Democrats are angry....RIGHTFULLY ANGRY!

So according to David Broder, the Democrats are supposed to play by the Marquis of Queensbury Rules while the Republicans kick our Ass? Bull!

I haven't read Schwarz's book but I think I'm going to do so .....soon.....

About that conservative soul....

Road trips are great for focusing the mind and finally, after two weeks of cabin fever, I got to spend some time on the road....and do a little thinking...and as luck would have it...I came back to the computer to find that today's papers were on the same point....and so was the commentary. Let me bring you up to speed...

Hardscrabble.....that's the term that first brought this to mind, and raised a deeper issue...

According to dictionary. com, this is what hardscrabble means,

1.
yielding little by great labor; "a hardscrabble farm"; "poor soil"
2.
of a bare living gained by great labor; "the sharecropper's hardscrabble life"; "a marginal existence"

Hardscrabble speaks to a hard life; A view of life that lacks joy or any kind human compassion; a dog-eat-dog kind of existance. If you listen to any conservative politician, pundit or radio personality, they tell us over and over again that life...even in this land of plenty...even in the richest, most advanced civilization the world has ever seen, life is hard and any attempt to be compassionate or charitable to another living being "spoils them" by making them dependent as opposed to self-sufficient.

Almost all Republican rhetoric espouses the virtues of "self-sufficiency", virtuous discipline (imposed either by self or by submission to authority), and of course, "traditional values".

I've been listening to the likes of Cheney, Mitch McConnell, David Boehner and their puppets talk about these conservative "virtues" on and off all week and I hate the world they want us to live in.

And wouldn't you just know it....today...one of the neocons favorite writers, David Brooks, puts out an editorial in the New York times to define the soul of conservatism. But even better, (actually much, much better) a blogger and essayist by the name of Arthur Silber did a tremendous review and gave incredible historical context to the deep questions of what lies at the center of the conservative soul....

Note, not much is known about Silber save the exceptional nature of his writings...and the remarkable depth of his scholarship.

Here's how he starts his analysis of todays msuing by Brooks rather pompously entitled Human Nature Redux :

Just as Charles Murray unforgivably appropriates "science" to justify unapologetic racism, Brooks maintains that it is "science" that delivered the "big blow" to the idea of human goodness. According to Brooks, "science" now tells us that humans are, by nature, viciously competitive, always striving for dominance, and "deadly warriors." Brooks tells us that "there is a universal human nature; that it has nasty, competitive elements; that we don't understand much about it; and that the conventions and institutions that have evolved to keep us from slitting each other's throats are valuable and are altered at great peril."

Drawing on god-knows-what evidence, Brooks asserts a "scientific" justification of his position that the very nature of mankind is brutish and that life itself is ...dare I say it...HARDSCRABBLE.

Silber goes on with:

Brooks then describes how "order" and "obedience" will save us individually, and society in general, from our own depravity. He also says:
Iraq has revealed what human beings do without a strong order-imposing state.

Then, he hits intellectual and philosophical pay-dirt.

At the end of his column, Brooks lists some thinkers who, Brooks maintains, share this "Tragic Vision" of humankind. To Brooks' shame, he includes Burke, Madison and Hayek, contending, in effect, that these individuals also share Brooks' own "moral codes" and "political assumptions." I repeat: for shame, David Brooks.

I want to comment on another thinker Brooks includes in his criminally misleading list: Isaiah Berlin. This is an especially noteworthy case, for a very particular reason. Brooks' views have many roots, and one of them is a thinker whose importance to contemporary conservatism (and its critical authoritarian element) has been noted by others: Joseph de Maistre. (As but one example, John Dean briefly mentions Maistre in his book, Conservatives Without Conscience.)

"

Personally, I had forgotten Maistre.....I remember reading about the "executioner" all the way back in college political philosophy courses but always considered the works to be minor and covered only the high points (enough to pass the exams anyway). I had no idea the works of Maistre would loom so large in the United States at the turn of the millenium.

Let me talk about Maistre's concept of "the executioner". He paints the picture of the executioner as a person who leads an ordinary life as, perhaps a farmer, a family man, solitary and independent, except....when he is called upon by society to punish transgressors....and then he does so with great skill and pride in his work.....he is reviled by society...but he is feared by them also. Maistre writes:

"...Nevertheless all greatness, all power, all social order depends upon the executioner; he is the terror of human society and the tie that holds it together. Take away this incomprehensible force from the world, and at that very moment order is superseded by chaos, thrones fall, society disappears. God, who is the source of the power of the ruler, is also the source of punishment. He has suspended our world upon these two poles, 'for the Lord is the lord of the twin poles, and round them he sets the world revolving'.

Got it? The only way there can be order in society is if there is obedience to the executioner...hence authority....Maistre died in 1821 and his counter-revolutionary and pro-authoritarian views form the very core...the very basis for the conservative soul of 2007. The "hardscrabble" rhetoric of Cheney, Limbaugh, Hanninty, Snow, Feith, Wolfowitz, Pearle, Coulter and countless others grows directly from this philosophy and appeals to a certain kind of personality and Silber wrote about them in his work, The Sacred Moment, Essays on the works of Alice Miller.

One thing that stuck with me from my political philosophy classes after all these years, is Dr Robert Bledsoe's first introduction to the series of three classes. He said we would attempt to answer three questions through the eyes of political thinkers from Plato to the present. The three questions were: "What is the nature of man? What is the nature of the State? and What is the relationship between the two?"

As it turns out, how each individual citizen answers those questions will in the end determine which side of the political spectrum they will land on.

Update and edit 8:03AM.

Of course, there is much, much more to be discussed here and when I ended this post late last night I tried to tie it all together with one brief, succinct paragraph...rereading it this morning I find it was lacking in almost every regard. I'll try to expand on it in another post.

Been a little quiet recently

That's because I actually had things to take care of in real life.....

Last week was hectic in that I had meetings every evening Monday through Thursday and on Thursday evening, I had no less than three of my organizations meeting at the same time...

Some of the information is documented here....

I have a saved draft in which I went off on a lengthy ( and I do mean lengthy) rant over a column by Ann Coulter.. Our old Friend The Rude Pundit referenced it and rather than take his word for what the article was all about, I read it myself....

The article disturbed me so much that I went on an extended rant that I fully intended to print here....but with google being what it is...well, I didn't want to volunteer for that kind of grief...

I'm not even going to link to the article.

I'll have some more commentary later, but I've got wood to stack and split right now....

Revisiting Joe Klein

Below is a cross post (okay, okay, okay...that's X-post in blogerese) from the Woodco site regarding Joe Kleins discovery of the long lost continent of Right Wing Hate....

Since my original post, there has been a lot more written on it by digby and you should stop in and treat yourself to some great commentary.

If you're an avid follower of most of the blogs of the Kingdom of Left Blogsylvania, then you know that Time's Joe Klein is not one of our most favored persons. First, he wrote that terrible hit piece on the Clintons called Primary Colors, and then, as a frequent talking head on Network and Cable news shows, he claims to be a "liberal" or Democrat and then proceeds to bash the living crap out of us, often reinforcing or fueling the fires of Republican talking points.

Most recently, Mr Klein has taken on the folk of Left Blogsylvania as his cause celeb...he has been extremely critical of us for our "anger" and our "incivility". (Hmmmm "anger and incivility"? Weren't those two key elements of the Republican campaigns in 04?)

But Joe Klein has seen the light....As TRex over at firedoglake writes so beautifully:

Klein:As a newcomer to this blogging business, I've been interested in the Edwards dust-up. As readers know, I've been critical of the tone of the left-wing blogosphere in the past.

TRex: We understand that, Joe. It's because we hate America and all. But we're willing to look past that long enough for you to impart this critical knowledge that you have recently obtained, oh bold and intrepid purveyor of truthiness:

Klein: But I think that Yglesias raises an important point here and anyone reading the comments section of any Swampland post knows that troglyditic right-wing cavedwellers fester there, in a vomitously vile manner, too.

TRex: What? There are brainless attack-morons on the Right? You don't say!

And then, Klein discovers Marconi's fabulous invention: RADIO!

Klein: And I'd add this: Radio. I was driving into Springfield, Ill last night for the Obama festivities and caught the ever-vile Sean Hannity "interviewing" the even-more-vile Dick Morris about Hillary. Just disgraceful…and they were mild compared to the crap I've heard from Rush and others over the years.

No Kidding, Joe!

I'll let you read the whole article for yourself but there is an important point to be made here. Later in the article Klein points out several reasons why Democrats are angry....not just angry, FURIOUS! JUSTIFIABLY FURIOUS...here are his three reasons:

Klein:It's also a product of the times: There's a whole generation of people who believe that serious political discourse consists of Pat Buchanan and Eleanor Clift screaming at each other. The intemperance on the left has three other sources (1) justifiable fury over the Bush administration

TRex: Yes!

Klein: (2) justifiable fury over the way the media treated Clinton and, to a certain extent, Bush

TRex: Yes, yes!

Klein: and (3) ideologues of any sort tend to be obnoxious.

Finally Klein "gets it"....Democrats are outraged over the obnoxious, heavy-handed and downright mean treatment they have received from the right wing for the past twenty years.

AND

WE ARE JUSTIFIABLY PISSED....because we've been lied into an unnecessary war, had habeus corpus taken away, been spied on, let torture take place and had our patriotism qestioned.

Finally somebody with MSM status has recognized the source of the much vaunted left-wing anger.....bout time.

On another note the Wood County site has it's first update up and available ...you can visit it here...