Irrepressible Conflict?

I've been thinking about this Billmon post and about the contentious, culturally driven politics of our times. I read Billmon's post on the same day my NYT ran this article, and the same day Kevin Drum posted this.

I think the three are related but the Billmon post deserves the most analysis so I'll confine most of my comments to it.

First, I think Billmon is right to portray the country's inner, party-framed conflict as one between traditionalism and modernism, a point the Rogue Progressive made some time ago. Moreover, Billmon is surely correct that this divide has a lot to do with the forces of globalization, a point recently made by David Brooks. And unfortunately, I share Billmon's angst about this divide, doubt the country can be brought together, and likewise fear that this will ultimately lead to more violent conflicts, as each side of the cultural divide perceives its opponents as malignantly motivated and authoritatively illegitimate. The frequent and hysterical use of eliminiationist rhetoric by many prominent conservatives only heightens this apprehension. Finally, the reality that is our inter-connected world makes it all the more likely that our awareness of and repulsion towards our ideological opponents will only increase, making the harsh divide even more bitter, potentially sowing the seeds of a future, violent upheaval. Billmon suggests a coming conflict could be a sudden and as violent as the Civil War, a point he concedes sounds like hyperbole, but which is nonetheless both as realistic and as unfathonable to us today as the coming of the Civil War was to the people of the North and South in 1860-1861.

So what is the solution, if any? The short version I think is that the coming years will see a devolution of power or at least a devolution of authority and scope from the national level to the state level; a denationalization of issues if you will. A reversion back to older time federalism.

Consider welfare (reform). The issue of welfare has pretty much dropped off the political agenda, primarily because the 1996 "reform" act ended the federal entitlement and shifted the control over it from the national government to the states. With a lower level of federal funding but greater discretion, states responded by establishing eligibility deadlines and enforcing work requirements. Politically the result of this policy shift has been a less contentious national debate about welfare policy.

A similar pattern appears to be occuring in abortion policy. The elevation of two, presumably anti-choice Supreme Court Justices in Bush's second term encouraged first South Dakota and more recently, Louisiana to initiate abortion prohibition legislation. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, as I suspect it eventually will be, states will again have authority to restrict abortion. What the effect of this will be nationally is harder to project than the case of welfare. Some conservatives will no doubt press for national legislation and even continue their efforts to enact an anti-abortion amendment to the Constitution. But it's at least conceivable that the devolution of abortion policy to the state level could minimize the issue's national scope. For a critical view of the likely outcomes to occur under a state-centered abortion policy regime, Lawyers, Guns and Money has a number of informative and compelling posts on the subject.

Additionally, the overturning of the ban on corporate, coerced school prayer would turn another heated issue back to the states and local level. The devolution of school prayer and other "establishment clause" issues would likely reduce--although probably not eliminate--the conflict over church and state issues from a national perspective.

Naturally, the rejection of national liberal values pertaining to abortion, church and state issues, and other moral and rights-based issues would be a deeply disturbing outcome for many liberal activists, religious minorities and women (and for the writer of this blog).

But, such changes might--might--pave the way for a less contentious national politics; at the very least, it would likely lead to a more stabile national political regime, albeit diverting some of that conflict to the state and local levels.

The other alternative is that the forces that have led to the liberalization of the country, from the establishment of the Constitution itself, to the ending of slavery, the passing of consumer and worker safety legislation and oversight, the enactment of the New Deal and Great Society programs, and the judicial liberalizations themselves will ultimately, eventually lead to a greater liberalization and tolerance across the country.

And what exactly are those forces? One of them is, ironically, the spread of vastly complex, interdependent market economies. If societies are largely the product of the factors of production--the society's economic system--as Marx taught, there are certain implications stemming from a market based economy. One of these is the increased diversity of production and differentiation of labor. Market economy capitalism, in its fullest, theoretical sense, assumes (among other things) perfect competition, a condition that itself assumes multiple and varied producers and an amoral pricing and distributive system. As Kevin Drum alludes to, this type of economic system, particularly if as Marx assumed economic systems dictated social relations and institutional development, is not conducive to conservatism, in either its historic or current day manifestation. If the country, and the world, continue to grow more interconnected through its material exchanges, and if this global economic system remains stable, the traditionalist's world of superstition and exclusiveness (and exceptionalism) will gradually whither. If, however, globalization as an economic trend falters or collapses completely, traditionalism will no doubt gain an extra life and continue in duration.

As informative and potentially determinative as all this may be, I suspect there's more to this story than economics. Billmon's post made me try to understand the current state of affairs from a more historical perspective of Constitutional development and expanding notions of citizenship.

In the beginning, the Constitution identified and recognized the basic rights of the people (primarily the rights and prerogatives of white males) and set up a system of balancing institutions designed to ensure it would not be easy to set aside those rights, particularly where it concerned property rights. In addition were rights that presumably applied to the people as a whole, such as those related to the freedom to assemble and the freedom of the press. Paradoxically, the Constitution was also designed to bind the states more firmly together for the purposes of national defense and commercial standardization. But even though the Declaration of Independence a decade earlier had offered a revolutionary notion of human rights and national citizenship, the national government in its early days was concerned mostly with the country's national defenses, its geographical expansion and its economic development. While certain ideas about the rights of man were held by a large class of the country's leaders, if not its population, the national government lacked the resources and the interest to regulate the state governments and local communities, ensuring matters of welfare, crime and religion were left with state and local leaders, and which no doubt varied from state to state. And with a financially and constitutionally minimal federal government, and mostly agricultural economy of self-contained communities, there was little potential or interest in specifying or safeguarding national rights for the country's many varied classes of people.

The eventual "irrepressible conflict" between the slave South and industrial North changed this dynamic, however. It's important to recognize that prior to the outbreak of war, most people in the south probably had no intention of requiring slavery in the North, and most people in the North, particularly its elites, had no wish to interfere with slavery in the South. Race relations and slavery was a sectional issue, not a national issue. But the North and South could not agree on how slavery would be regulated or allowed in the rapidly expanding territories and war resulted. The war in turn resulted in the end of slavery everywhere and the passing of important Constitutional amendments that in essense expanded the notion of citizenship and more widely defined and applied the rights held by the nation's people. As important as these changes were, however, the North lacked the moral imperative, the financial wherewithall and the political will to enforce those rights, and not long after the Civil War, the national definition of citizenship enshrined in the new Amendments was relegated to the trash heap, particularly in the South. And the sectional and local authority over culture and individual rights was reinstated.

At the same time, the continuing industrial revolution and expansion put a spotlight on the relationship between labor and capital, ensuring that federal attention would have to be paid to the class of workers. General prosperity through the 1920's, and the political power gained by corporate dollars helped to stave off the enlargement of citizenship that the Declaration of Independence, Civil War, 13th-15th Amendments, and labor unrest had forecast. But the Great Depression made possible the nationalization of previously local economic responsibilities. With the New Deal the country's elite began to more seriously respond to the Constitution's call to ensure the country's overall and universal welfare. The country's international obligations stemming from World War II and the Cold War, meanwhile, required that the rights it was seeking to defend abroad were also ensured at home. In this early sense of globalization, America responded fitfully but ultimately forcefully to the problem of Civil Rights.

Among the earliest and most fruitful avenues of change on Civil Rights was provided by the federal courts, long thought and in practice the most conservative and undemocratic of the federal branches of government. The principle of Judicial Review as espoused by John Marshall in the country's first decade of existence, was applied by a newly progressive court in response to challenges by social activists and minority populations both religious and racial to fight against local and state legislation that hindered their freedom.

By the 1960's and the Warren Court, the notion of national citizenship had increased dramatically. Minority and disenfranchised citizens discovered the convoluted federal system of multiple veto points could be engaged in to their favor. But the expansion of citizenship, largely through the judicial branch of government, that benefitted religious and racial minorities in turn incited conservative opponents of this redefined sense of national citizenship who wished to maintain the sovereignty of local and state authorities. Simply put, while certain global and economic changes had made the country's economy and way of life more inter-dependent, not everyone shared the new liberal consensus of individual rights and political change. Economic changes had not been fully followed by a corresponding political change in the mood of the public and its elected, legislative representatives.

This brings us to today, where court decisions (in response to plaintiffs) have resulted in what were once local issues becoming both national and more contentious. The court system which once was seen as lagging seriously behind the legislative and executive branches in terms of political innovativeness suddenly lept ahead in the 1950's and 1960's.

For many of the nation's political elite, especially its clerical leaders and their attentive followers, these liberalizing court decisions expanding the definition and protection of national citizenship were seriously disempowering. This disempowerment has been turned into a powerful tool of resentment, as priests, clerics, and talk show hosts appeal to those believed to be aggrieved (or those elites believe could be convinced of the injury done them by "judicial activists"). The power of this resentment has been greatly aided of late by the expansion of cable TV and the concentration of the nation's corporate media generally.

And this resentment is also the basis of the political movement, represented by the Republican Party, that at least since 1964 has helped elect Republican presidents and in 1994, a Republican Congress. The result has been a gradual shift in the politics of the court system and a retrenchment of national citizenship as Federal Society judges appointed by Republican executives begin the process of turning back the clock and devolving national issues back to the states (the recent over-turning of Texas' sodomy law appears to be either an anomaly to this retrenchment or a sign that the denationalization of policy has very limited potential, driven as it is by economic and cultural changes beyond the scope of the authoritarian right's ability to control).

At the same time, conservatism itself has changed. Perhaps because of the global and economic changes that have driven the country's liberalization, many of today's conservatives aren't and won't be content to denationalize the country's contentious culture wedge issues. Where once conservatives were largely content to confine their authoritarian tendencies (such as slavery and segregation) to the local stage, their growth in power, and their fear of enemies "foreign and domestic" have helped create a more nationalistic and ideological movement. Consider the NYT article I linked to above that contained this quote from a Tennessee mega-church, African-American pastor:

The statue, inspired by a Memphis church that has three giant crosses, strikes him as "a creative means of just really letting people know that God is the foundation of our nation," he said.

Mr. Williams has written several books and pamphlets analyzing a variety of matters, among them patriotism and the original intent of the founding fathers.

In "The Meaning of the Statue of Liberation Through Christ: Reconnecting Patriotism With Christianity," he explains that the teardrop on his Lady is God's response to what he calls the nation's ills, including legalized abortion, a lack of prayer in schools and the country's "promotion of expressions of New Age, Wicca, secularism and humanism."

In another book, he said Hurricane Katrina was retribution for New Orleans's embrace of sin.

Mr. Williams said his statue's essential point was that Christianity should be the guiding ethos of the nation. But because the church he leads is predominantly black, as is he, there is an added dimension to the message.

So what can we conclude if anything from all this? As I noted above, I suspect that Roe v. Wade and some of the more unpopular establishment clause court decisions will be undone by future, and maybe even the present, Supreme Court. While this will no doubt be the cause of much anguish on the part of the left, and much celebration on the part of the right, two consequences of such a judicial turn to the right might result. The first is a change in the country's national politics to one in which international and economic issues replace the more divisive cultural issues of the current era. The second is that the continued pace of globalization and modernity may result in the isolation of the more regressive states that respond to the new court decisions with repressive legislation. Free markets tend to promote and require both flexibility as well as standardization. States excluded to various degrees from the progress shared by more liberal states may find their regressive social policies are holding them back or at the very least are embarassing.

Of course other less favorable developments could also occur. The conservative movement would take or keep its national focus and attempt to enforce religious and culture mores on the country. Or the repressive changes instituted within states could seriously undermine the gains in civil rights and individual freedom generated from the work of over a century of activism and progress. I'm aware that the argument I'm making is not alltogether dissimilar from the argument of those who minimize the importance of the Civil War and later the Civil Rights movements' impact on political change, arguing that economic necessity would have sooner or later forced the ending of slavery and segregation. Those are not arguments I'm in agreement with and if it were up to me, Roe v. Wade and the ban on coerced school prayer would be allowed to stand. The courts, in response to the disenfranchized, became the engine of political change and progress that perhaps decades or more of congresses and legislatures would not have accomplished.

But the current climate has made Democratic progress difficult. On the one hand, I fear the system may break completely, resulting in a significant upheaval, if the current cultural divide continues. On the other hand, a devolution of policy in the cultural realm may allow the party a greater room to maneuver at the federal level while still allowing most Americans the full range of citizenship the last century has made possible. It may also provide a highly instructive study in the contrast between liberal and repressive societies which the world at large should be an example but which unfortunately for many people is not yet.

New Democratic Leadership needed in Congress

Win or lose in the fall, Democrats need new leadership in Congress.

Nancy Pelosi has been in Congress for almost 20 years and Steny Hoyer has been in Congress for 26 years.

Both Pelosi, the Democratic minority leader, and Hoyer, the Democratic Whip were members of Congress "back in the day." Back in the day, that is, when Democrats ran the joint. Old hands can be useful in a parliamentary sense, but as the public faces and obstensibly as the policy and political strategists of the party in Congress, Pelosi and Hoyer have been around too long, in Washington, D.C. too long, to give the party the direction and energy it needs.

One of the key motives driving Newt Gringrich and Tom DeLay back in the 1980's and 1990's was the long drought their party had experienced in Congress. The Republican revolutionaries of 1994 were desperate and driven, "hungry" in the parlance of sports teams. Pelosi and Hoyer probably still think either Democrats are a majority in the House or that replacing a Republican Speaker with a Democratic Speaker wouldn't fundamentally change their performance or purposes.

It's been over ten years since the Republicans regained control of Congress for the first time in forty years. While I recognize arbitary-sounding datelines shouldn't necessarily be locked in stone, it's time for Democratic leadership to start passing to those members who've arrived in Washington after 1994, who realize the implications of being the minority party and possess the ideas and energy needed to change the institution and implement new policies.

Thankfully, relatively new members Tim Ryan of Ohio, and Debbie Wasserman-Shultz of Florida have taken assertive speaking and organizational roles in the House. Along with other new and youngish members of Congress, Ryan and Shultz are a part of the Thirty Something Democratic workgroup in the House. Ryan and Shultz in particular often appear on C-Span afterhours, attacking House Republicans for acting as administration "rubber stamps" and for being generally "unable to govern".

Apparently the "Thirty-something" workgroup was a brainchild of Pelosi's and Hoyer has recognized Shultz's abilities by recruiting her as the party's Senior Whip in the House.

But Democrats in the next Congress, win or lose, should act to put the party's best and freshest faces, such as Ryan's, Wasserman Shultz's and Stephanie Hersheth's, forward in leadership positions where they'll have the responsibility and public exposure the party needs to succeed in building a new party with new ideas for a new generation of Americans.

In the meantime, the party should put it's thirty-something members up front, as examples of the type of Democratic leadership voters can expect to see in the next Congress. It goes without saying that Republicans hope to stir up fear, at least among the media elite, of old time members like John Conyers and John Dingell heading committees. Democrats should respond by showcasing it's newest and most articulate members, contrasting them with the corruption-tainted and interest group beholden Republican majority. And when the next Congress opens, showing it's future-oriented approach by elevating its youngest members to important leadership posts.

Ranking the Contenders

Ezra is practicing some 2008 transparency today, so I'll try to do the same. Here's my highly qualified, fluid, and conditional ranking of the Democratic field.

favorable
1. Evan Bayh
2. Mark Warner
3. Joe Biden

neutral
4. Al Gore
5. John Edwards
6. Wes Clark
7. Tom Vilsack
8. Russ Feingold
9. Tom Daschle
10. Bill Richardson
11. Chris Dodd

leaning negative
12. John Kerry
13. Hilary Clinton

Let Me Say This About That

1. Who spiked Richard Cohen's cheerios this morning? Cohen rips, rips the hype over the Miami Seven. And check out this graph:

Does it matter? Yes, it does. It matters because the Bush administration has already lost almost all credibility when it comes to terrorism. It said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there were none. It said al-Qaeda and Iraq were in cahoots and that was not the case. It has so exaggerated its domestic success in arresting or convicting terrorists that it simply cannot be believed on that score. About a year ago, for instance, President Bush (with Gonzales at his side) asserted that "federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted." The Post looked into that and found that the total number of (broadly defined) "terrorism" convictions was 39.

This compulsion to exaggerate and lie is so much a part of the Bush administration's DNA that it persists even though it has become counterproductive.

Read the whole thing.

2. And what in the world is Rush doing with Viagra? He's not married. Where are the morals police on this one?

Here's a proposal for you. If you're opposed to the Right to Privacy--like so many on the "right" are, including I assume Rush, and his Federalist Society friends, step right up and hand over your checkbook. We want to see it. And your medical records. And a copy of your Internets searches. And for good measure, give us your address and tell us all about your family. Where do your kids go to school? We want to know it all.

And if you're a member of the moral absolutes police--as Rush has been at least rhetorically over the years--and especially if you're among those calling for a Constitutional Convention on gay marriage, and if you've been seen on cable TV complaining about society's embracing of troubling "moral relativism" than step right up and tell us all about your sex life, and if you're married if you're using birth control and if you've ever been divorced; if you're not presently married, tell us whether you've ever been married before, are now or have been divorced and from whom. And if you're not married, are you in possession of and do you in fact make use of sexual enhancements? And assuming your moral absolutism stems from a religious foundation, tell us about your church, how often you go, and how much you contribute to the institution's upkeep. And please provide a reference from your pastor.

It's well past time for critics of the Right to Privacy and the moral absolutes scolds to put up or shut up. Are you living up to the standards you want imposed on everyone else? If you don't favor or believe in a Right to Privacy, be prepared to surrender all of yours.

Oh wait a minute. That's right. The moral absolutists are exempt from their own commandments. Sorry I forgot that.

3. Dear former Secretary of Education, and now "Consultant" Rod Paige:

If you want your views to get a hearing, I'd advise not starting off your op-eds (in the NYT of all places) with "DUMB liberal ideas in education are a dime a dozen..." I would advise before you write any more op-eds, you supplement your "consulting" business with some elementary reading.

4. More of this, please.

5. The man, James Dolan, who owns the NBA's worst team, the New York Knicks, fired coach Larry Brown after only one (very miserable) year, and ordered team president/general manager Isaiah Thomas to assume coaching duties, seeing as how the sad sack of players and malcontents were brought on board--and given lavish contracts--by Thomas. Dolan furthermore gave Thomas, a one-year (two Friedmans) ultimatum: Make significant progress or bu-bye. And by progress, Dolan specified "evident progress" not "debatable progress".

One year deadline..."evident" progress not "debatable" progress. Sounds like this would constitute proper and long overdue oversight by Congress of the Executive branch and its three year Iraq war.

Beinert's Liberal Containment

Just finished reading Peter Beinert's The Good Fight: Why Liberals--and Only Liberals--Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again.

As you've probably surmised by reading other websites, there's enough in this book to make everyone mad.

But even though I haven't had much of anything positive to say about Beinert up till now, I think this is a much better book than its critics have claimed.

I won't attempt to summarize it--there are too many strands weaving through it to render a faithful portrait. But I will highlight what I think are the book's key points for liberals and Democrats.

The first point for which Beinert should be given credit is his unabashed promotion of liberalism. The Good Fight must be the first book in two generations to reference "liberals" in a positive light. As Beinert notes, conservatives have turned the word "liberal" into an epithet. This has had a near fatal effect on the causes of Liberalism (greater freedom, equality and human development) in general and on the Democratic Party in particular, which has been reduced to couching its appeals in terms of "effectiveness" and "competency" rather than on a broad, uplifting vision for matters both domestic and international. If for no other reason, I applaud Beinert's book for unapologetically orienting his argument in a proud liberal heritage that many of his "progressive" critics have themselves avoided.

But Beinert isn't just using the word Liberal as a rhetorical device. He traces the word Liberal to the Cold War Liberalism espoused by Harry Truman, George Kennan and later by Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy. This was a Liberalism committed to confronting and containing the totalitarian threat posed by the Soviet Union, by military defending its allies, offering generous economic assistance to its allies and enemies alike, and reforming its democratic institutions at home. This was a Liberalism aware of its fallibility but nevertheless willing to share (and exercise) power abroad through international institutions dedicated to expanding freedom and reducing armed conflict. It's method of opposing Soviet Communism was Containment, based on a philosophy that America and its democratic allies in the West possessed the patience and the strength to defend against and wait out the storms and delays involved in lessening totalitarianism's hold. And Containment worked, not the least because it held that American exemplarism had to be demonstrated, not merely asserted.

Beinert contrasts Cold War Liberalism's Containment philosophy with its conservative alternative--Rollback. In its Cold War manifestation, Rollback was rooted in a philosophy that feared America was too weak to sustain its opposition to its dictatorial foe and its suppressed peoples. Rollback disdained Containment and argued for a more aggressive stance against Soviet Communism around the world, and more repressive, less democratic responses to Americans in America. Rollback was supported by conservatives who believed America was infallible, its motives pure, and morally outside the restraints of foreign nations and international institutions. Like today's manifestation of conservative aggression, Rollback admitted no American fault and arrogantly asserted its right to determine what was good for everyone else.

Beinert calls for Liberals to embrace the Cold War Liberalism of its past, remembering the courage, generosity and action of the post-War World II era. This will entail recognizing the need to at least occasionally use force and that that use of force will have consequences that will threaten Progressivism's traditional demand for moral purity in international engagement. At the same time, a new Containment strategy will call for expanding liberty, in its fullest sense both economic and political, across the Middle East through the use of development aid and support for democratic reforms.

Can Containment work? Beinert admits that he and other Democratic writers, consultants and foreign policy intelegencia doubted whether containment could still work with Iraq and because of that, were willing to support President Bush's call to arms. And with a different type of enemy, typically stateless but having at its disposal the technology and freedom of movement to inflict fatalities and chaos much more easily on America than was true in the days when the deterent of nuclear weapons held enemy countries accountable, how would a doctrine of Containment be applied today? Part of the answer lies in Beinert's call for a Marshall Plan style development aid package for the Middle East. Partly it acknowledges the continued application force can have on terrorism-sponsoring states, and partly it recognizes the expansions of powers law enforcement authorities will need to exercise in the post 911 era.

But whatever its limitation, it is clear that the new Rollback, the doctrine of pre-emptive military attack, the One Percent Doctrine, is also highly limited on a practical basis (we can't after all bomb or threaten to bomb and invade everyone) and cooperatively flawed, weakening America's legitimacy and support throughout the world, the support of which was essential to containing Cold War Communism. At the same time Beinert contends, with considerable justification, that the struggle against global jihad, salafisian totalitarianism, the war on terror (whatever term we apply to it) constitutes a real threat and that Liberals, if they are to preserve ours and the world's freedom, much less the viability of the Democratic Party, will need to offer the country and the world an alternative to the new Rollback.

Democrats, partly because they have lost sight of their Liberal Cold War heritage, have abandoned the war on terror to the Republican Party, with disasterous implications. By reclaiming this Liberal heritage, and the principles of containment abroad, and liberal reform at home, Democrats can again defeat the forces of totalitarianism, domestic and foreign.

Words

I know this is so last week, but I'm just now expressing how flabbergasted and appalled I am that Joe Lieberman would actually use the word "jihad" in describing anyone American, and especially law-abiding, grassroots activists in his own party. It should be clear by now that the term "jihad" has a very particular meaning, and is a very inflammatory point of reference, probably second only to the word "terrorist". People who commit or engage in jihad do things like fly airplanes into skyscrapers, killing thousands of innocent civilians in the planes, in the buildings, and on the ground. I've tried to defend Holy Joe, as his critics refer to him, but this remark is just way over the line. Anyone know if Lieberman has apologized for this?

Meanwhile, George Will this morning played some word games, too:

New Jersey voters may just shrug, so inured are they to politics that have produced more than 75 corruption indictments in the past five years. But what is called Menendez's "baggage" muddies the message as Democrats run against Washington's supposed "culture of corruption."

Supposed culture of corruption? Supposed? One congressman from the current session is in jail, another who was indicted has finally resigned. A chief White House aid was also indicted and is facing perjury charges. Another former agency official has been convicted of influence peddling while the ruling regime's uber lobbyist has pled guilty to various fund-raising and bribery scams. The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee is under investigation. And just to show how bipartisan I am, another member of Congress was taped taking $90,000 in bribes from an under-cover agent. Supposed culture of corruption?

What does a corrupt Washington, D.C. official or legislator have to do these days to be recognized?

The Pathologies of Conservatism

This is a very good essay about Why Conservatives Can't Govern.

But it's hard to imagine how any essay of modern conservatism can fail to account for the disproportionate role played in it by the Christian Right.

At first glance the religious component of American conservativism might not seem all that important when trying to understand the scandals, hubris and debacles generated by the first Republican Presidency and Republican Congress in over fifty years. Nevertheless, the GOP's radical Christian base has made its elections--and therefore its bad governance--possible. Just as importantly, it has also either directly or indirectly helped to thwart any attempts to make the Republican regime accountable. Conservative Christians have contributed passionate voices and messianic themes to a conservatism already suffering from delusions of grandeur and have been an important, if somewhat under-recognized influence on and defense of, the Administration's unchecked foreign policy theories and actions, especially and obviously as it concerns the war against and occupation of Iraq.

At the same time, the GOP's Christian conservative base has either stayed silent on such matters as bankruptcy "reform", tort "reform", budget-busting and income inequality increasing tax cuts, fund-raising and lobbying scandals in Congress and in the executive branch, Katrina, Guatanamo and rendition, NSA spying, and the war, or has supported or defended the administration in each case, excusing unjust, corrupt or incompetent policies (and just as importantly, the ruthless politics that enables those policies).

In short, ruling conservatism's inability to govern stemming from its ideological predispositions is highly related to, if not directly driven by, its ties to fundamentalist Christianity, and the latter's otherworldy conceptions of evidence, analysis and logic. It isn't just that conservatism's free market apostles skew the party's ability to support the institutions its elections have made them responsible for, but also that this quasi-free market ideology is closely intertwined with a religious system of belief that is hostile to the most basic assumptions of science, testing and learning, which are necessary for governments to function at even a basic level.

Ideas and Voters

I welcome the addition of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas to the public square and land of the Internets. As the Washington Post mentioned this morning, many Democrats share the conviction that:

...for too long Republicans have been winning the battle of ideas (and often campaign strategy) in American politics, in part because conservatives invested in what is now a well-funded infrastructure of organizations that have produced ideas, thinkers, publications, strategists, and politicians who now control the White House, Congress and increasingly the federal judiciary.

So welcome, Kenneth Baer and Andrei Cherny. And a big Bulworth shout-out to William Galston, Stanley Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira who have founded The Democratic Strategist. We can alway use more ideas, commentary and data to chew on.

While I recognized the founders of The Democratic Strategist and suspect it will look a lot like The Emerging Democratic Majority, with its emphasis on polling data, I hadn't heard of Democracy's founders. So I paid the site a visit.

Appreciated the book reviews by former Congressman Brad Carson of Robert Remini's The House and Michael Lind of Michael Beinert's The Good Fight. Good stuff.

And while I don't object to views that I object to, this was a strange piece.

For example, what does this mean?

The deaths of those on United 93, as well as those who died elsewhere, have not yet been avenged...

What? The 19 men with box-cutters that carried out the attacks killed themselves in the process. It would be pretty hard to avenge their acts since they were incinerated. Meanwhile, the government and country that provided a sort of safe haven for the attackers was bombed, invaded, and overthrown (however incompletely). And the dude who by most accounts engineered the attacks was also captured and is in some secret prison somewhere not in the U.S. Of course Osama bin Forgotten is still at-large. But if Cherny meant Osama, he didn't say so specifically. What else does he want the country to do? Bomb and invade another country that wasn't involved in the attacks?

The reference to United 93 was actually at the tail-end of a reference to the movie United 93, which Cherny is very disappointed that we didn't all go see. Cherny is disappointed and embittered about a lot of things, mostly how let down he feels that his country has failed to rally to the war on terrorism cause like our ancestors did in enlisting to fight Germany and Japan and later in erecting bomb shelters during the Cold War.

Cherny criticizes the president for not calling for national sacrifice after 9/11 and liberals like Kos for counting the number of times Bush and his officials mention 9/11 in speeches and for thinking that the Republicans have been using 9/11 for political gain over the last five years (imagine that).

There is a real agenda to respond to September 11 that neither party has touched: demanding that Americans make sacrifices in a breakneck transition to energy independence; ending America’s game of footsie with anti-democratic Middle Eastern despots, and actively demonstrating to people around the world that democracy and economic opportunity can provide a better future; making the war on terrorism and homeland security a higher priority than either tax cuts or domestic spending programs; asking millions of Americans to volunteer part-time in modern-day civil defense force that would help watch over our vulnerable ports, borders, and chemical and nuclear plants; strengthening our democracy and addressing grave inequalities in opportunity at home to show the world how fair and just a free nation can be for all; and calling on hundreds of thousands of young people to serve in a military whose size must be greatly increased in order to effectively meet the threats we face.

Dude, take a chill pill. And you want "hundreds of thousands of young people to serve in a military whose size must be greatly increased in order to effectively meet the threats we face"? What enemy or country do you propose these extra hundreds of thousands of troops be sent to wreck havic in? And what about you? You were 26 at the time of 9/11? That would make you, what, 30 or 31 now. That would make you young enough to serve. Go for it.

Right now you're just a scold.

OK, enough of that.

Oh yeah, ideas. I welcome more ideas. Ideas are good. But Democrats haven't lost the majority because of a lack of ideas. We have ideas, as so do our members of Congress.

What we're missing us is some voters. The old New Deal was based on two major voting blocs--labor unions and white Southerners. Labor unions are dead and the white Southerners packed up and moved in with the Republicans. On top of that, Republicans added a major voting bloc known as conservative evangelical Christians. Democrats basically don't have anybody like that. What we do have are several inter-related activist groups, like environmentalists, feminists and bloggers, the types that show up at Take Back America conferences. But we activists are a lot less in number than the audiences for these Justice Sunday events, just to give an example. A third type of voter is the one that ain't very active, doesn't know much or anything about politics, but responds primarily to symbols and angry rhetoric about immigrants, gays, and the flag. Democrats don't get most of these voters either.

So what to do? From where and how do Democrats get more voters? I imagine The Democratic Strategist will focus a lot of attention on polling data designed to bring some sort of majority together, but the downfall of this is a fallback on "swing voter" strategies, that vary from election to election and the type of "competency over ideology" politics that has so many people wondering what the party stands for.

A Fighting Liberalism

Swung by Borders on the way home from seeing The Lake House (which was pretty cool, by the way) to pick up a copy of Peter Beinert's The Good Fight. I don't imagine any of you thought your Senator would stoop to reading something by the Beinert wing of the party, or anything by Beinert himself in particular.

But your Senator has mellowed a bit. And rather than dismissing folks like Beinert, maybe he deserves a hearing. And as Matt Yglesias has warned, it would be a mistake, and a tragedy, for Democrats to get punked out again on Iraq and national security, however uncorrelated those subjects were before 2003. If Beinert has something important to say for Democrats and the nation's national security agenda, I want to hear what it is, even if its only value is to serve as a point of contrast or as a starting point for a new liberal vision.

Another reason Beinert's book has some interest for me is I just got done reading Five Days in Philadelphia, about the Republican convention that nominated Wendell Wilkie in 1940. The book brought to mind the dangers of that era and the appeal isolationists had, at least until Pearl Harbor, but still continued to have long after the scope of Hitler's agenda and threat seemed pretty clear. I'm not one of those who believes that the threat posed by Islamic-driven terrorism rises to that level, or to the level presented by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But a threat exists nonetheless, particularly given that Iraq has become a more likely spawner of terrorism in the aftermath of its collapse than it was originally. Democrats campaigning this fall and for 2008 will have to respond to that situation regardless of whether we agree or not that the 2003 invasion was justified, or incompetently planned.

Speaking of Wendell Wilkie, I enjoyed the book by Charles Peters, the founder of the Washington Monthly. It was a quick and entertaining read of an important time period. But it was apparently during the 2004 GOP convention that Zell Miller conjured up the memory of Wilkie to castigate Democrats who weren't sufficiently supportive of our commander and chief during war time. At the time, Approximately Perfect came up with a rejoinder from the dearly departed Wilkie himself that was absolutely perfect.

Anyway, I hope to have some comments about The Good Fight soon.

But here's something I've been wondering about in the mean time: most wars usually contain some assessment of the troop size, location, weapon supply, and overall danger presented by the enemy. With Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union this was more or less clear, if sometimes inflated in the case of the latter. But where is the danger or threat assessment posed by Al Qaeda, or whoever it is we are supposedly surrendering our civil liberties to defend ourselves against? They seem to be an enemy at once everywhere and all powerful. But is this true? One of the failures of the Cheney Administration has been its inability or unwillingness to present to the American people at least some semblance of what the danger is we face in real, empirical terms, and how it intends to target it. We've gotten "stay the course" rhetoric in regards to Iraq and secret, NSA surveillance at home, but where is there some formal assessment, however conditional or qualified, that would justify our current "course" or explain our predicament. You might think that that would be among the questions a responsible press might ask of the White House or congressional leaders. If they have some idea, we should know. If they don't, we should know that, too. This I think is the challenge Democratic candidates should pick up. There can be bi-partisan support for foreign policy and international engagements, provided we know what that policy and level of engagement is, and upon what analysis it is constructed. And that's the problem. I somehow doubt that anyone running the store really has any idea. And that's a risk we can't afford either way, whether it's waging a war against a foreign enemy or ensuring our civil liberties at home.

Update I: via Crooks and Liars, here's an important essay by Arthur.

Update II: regarding my complaint above that the administration hasn't provided the public with anything resembling an objective assessment of our enemy's observable forces or assets, Hume's Ghost at Glenn Greenwald's place provides an important perspective. Essentially the problem for civil libertarians, and the American public, is that the "war" as currently spoken of and fought is entirely open-ended and all-encompassing. But that not only poses an unacceptable infringement of civil liberties and of democracy in general, it's also completely unworkable.

Speaking about the warrantless NSA surveillance program Skitolsky explains how Vice President Cheney's contention that the program helps "prevent possible terrorist attacks" is circular totalitarian logic that justifies the program on the grounds that it might prevent a possible attack. She also notes that "in a world where 'all is possible,' facts take a backseat to possibilities, and, since every citizen is a possible terrorist, then every citizen is a possible threat and so also a possible detainee."

The possibility than any citizen might be a terrorist provides the rationale for making every citizen the target of surveillance. And since the world is full of possible, if not actual, threats, preemptive war threatens to turn into perpetual war, perpetually justifying the police state powers claimed by the administration.

Flattering Us With Their Fuss

Have you noticed the schizophrenic attitude the main stream press and right wing bloggers--but I repeat myself--took towards last weekend's YearlyKos convention?

Among the first out of the box was this blurb negatively contrasting the attendance at YearlyKos with other conventions apparently scheduled for Vegas this month.

Then came columns in Time and the New York Times by Ann Marie Cox and Mo Dowd respectively, which were likewise unimpressed.

Yet despite the low attendance numbers, Kos's supposedly poor track-record at backing winning candidates (which is Kos's job, afterall--he's a well-paid campaign consultant, recruiter, manager, and fundraiser), and the silliness of the attendees and panels, this small, irrelevant gathering somehow managed to attract enough attention to get Cox and Dowd off their duffeses to cover it and also attracted the attention of The King of All Cable TV himself.

So which is it? Small and irrelevant or threat to the Republic?

"Strategically Nebulous and Morally Obtuse"

"A dumb idea"

"When the country is war-weary, when the violence is still playing out on TV, I don't know why we want to highlight all that"

"This is nothing more or less than really a charade"

These are a sample of statements by Republican members of Congress regarding the upcoming "debate" on the Iraq war Resolution sponsored by the U.S. House of People's Deputies.

...the resolution itself--declaring that the United States will complete the mission to create a sovereign, free, secure and united Iraq and will prevail in the global war on terror--has attracted strong criticism from lawmakers in both parties. Democrats and antiwar Republicans object to the linkage between the war in Iraq and the fight against terrorism, while some Republicans have said it sets unrealistic goals.

(snip)

...GOP leaders are trying to make sure today's debate is on Republican terms. The resolution, "declaring that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror [and] the struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary," was introduced with unabashed partisan overtones. The rules of debate will not allow the resolution to be amended, nor will alternative resolutions be allowed on the floor for a vote.

Even with the restrictions imposed on the "debate" for this "resolution", I doubt the "debate" will go according to plan.

The killing (finally) of Zarqawi was indeed a step in the right direction for Iraq's stability and sovereignty, but Bush and his entourage, unknowingly or not, undermined the latter by jetting into Baghdad uninvited by and without the knowledge of, Iraq's new "sovereign" government, a point that a member of the press actually did raise in yesterday's press conference even though Bush dodged the part of the question that contrasted the Iraq government's supposed "sovereign" status with Bush's, how can we put it another way, invasionary five hour tour.

What will the U.S.'s relationship be to an eventual "free", "secure", and "sovereign" Iraq? Will U.S. officials continue to expect or enjoy unfettered access to the country? Will U.S. officials be granted "amnesty" to "invade" the country whenever they want?

And what about American military bases? Will the Iraqi government have a choice about whether permanent bases are established in Iraq?

These are among the many questions House members of good will can raise during this "debate".

Escape from the Green Zone

The NYTimes today:

Only a handful of Mr. Bush's closest aides knew about the six-hour visit before he departed from Washington on Monday night. Mr. Bush seemed intent on pressing home a message that American military commanders and embassy officials have been urging on the new government since it took office three weeks ago: after two previous Iraqi governments since Saddam Hussein became mired in incompetence and corruption, time is running out for Iraq's politicians to develop an effective government and a common front against the insurgents.

Time is running out for Iraq's politicians? Really? In what sense is that true? That if they don't get their stuff together we're leaving?

Mr. Bush also gave Mr. Maliki a renewed assurance that the United States would not abandon the new government as it struggles to curb the spiraling violence, rebuild the country's shattered infrastructure and put Iraqis back to work in a reviving economy.

"I also have a message to the Iraqi people: that when America gives a commitment, America will keep its commitment," he said, to wild cheers from the 300 American soldiers and civilians gathered in the palace hall.

Of course the U.S. can't "abandon" Iraq or refuse to help (i.e. finance) Iraq's eventual reconstruction. But this also casts doubt on the notion that "time is running out for Iraq's politicians" to get things together. If we're unconditionally committed to the country's reconstruction and well-being (as I believe we are and should be) then it isn't clear to me in what sense "time is running" out for this Iraqi government, or the next one, or the next one after that.

Maybe the "time is running out" theme refers to the anarchy and civil war the government's failure to "get things together" will result in, if those things aren't already present and occuring.

Either way, I don't see how "time is running out" on our mission in Iraq, even if "time is running out" for the administration's war architects and for troops on multiple tours of duty without a ready supply of draftees to back them up.

The other thing about this "secret" trip (note to the media: is there another kind?) is this weird stuff about "looking the Iraqi leader in the eye".

Seated beside Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, in a meeting that included American officials and 17 members of the Iraqi cabinet, Mr. Bush told the prime minister that he had come "to look you in the eye." He repeated the phrase later at the palace, when he told troops and other Americans he had come "to look at Prime Minister Maliki in the eyes and determine whether or not he is as dedicated to a free Iraq as you are."
Mr. Bush added, "

And I believe he is."

Is this what passes for project assessment and policy review in the White House? Look him in the eye? What if the president hadn't liked his "look" into Maliki's "eyes"? Would he order Maliki thrown out of the Green Zone to be devoured in the Other Iraq, like some sort of reverse Escape from New York flick, and then "decide" that yet another Prime Minister would need to be appointed?

Speaking of Snake Pliskin, doesn't this whole "fly into the Baghdad airport and then into the Green Zone with body armor" remind you of Escape from New York? The hoodlums, terrorists and malcontents are thrown into the city of New York--never to leave--while around the city lies the walls, the water barrier, and bomb-laden bridges designed to keep the bad people in. On the rare occasion when the prison has to be invaded, Commissioner Hauk flies in under the cover of darkness with a mini-army only to beat as fast a retreat as possible when their mission is "accomplished" or foiled?

The God-ed and The Godless

Lance Mannion speak, you listen.

The Zarqawi Paradox

The killing of Al-Zarqawi is the best news war apologists have had for some time. Probably since Saddam was fished out of the spider hole. Whether his death provides the crucial, or even a crucial element in eliminating the strife and chaos in Iraq and thus paving the way for a stable, Democratic state will obviously be a matter of waiting and seeing.

But while previously dispirited war backers woke up rejoicing this morning, the elimination of Zarqawi is, beyond its unknown implications for Iraq, a mixed bag for those on the right dedicated to pumping up the elusive but omniscient and ubiquitous "global war on terror".

While it gives them something to celebrate, and more importantly, a candlestick with which to beat their imagined enemies, a victory in Iraq or anywhere regarding the war on terror implies that something like a total victory should be in sight, or at the least, can be imaged and desired.

But for the budding pseudo-fascists of the right, the "war on terror", like it's Cold War predecessor, isn't supposed to end. In fact, it would be highly desirable that, for right-wing domestic militants, the war on terror never end. This is because the presence of war, particularly an external one, is critical for allowing the right to wage the war it really is committed to, the war against the domestic and internal enemies of its imagination.

In The Anatomy of Fascism, Robert O. Paxton writes:

Enemies were central to the anxieties that helped inflame the fascist imagination. Fascists saw enemies within the nation as well as outside...internal enemies grew luxuriantly in number and variety in the mental landscape as the ideal of the homogenous national state made difference more suspect.

Liberals, Democrats, immigrants, and ultimately citizens of any stripe that appear insuffiently dedicated to the American pseudo-fascist cause which the domestic war on terror militants hold so dear are the enemy.

But this war on domestic enemies requires at least the appearance of an external enemy capable of inflicting great harm on the homeland or on the nation's international aims as imagined by the war fetishists.

The capture or death of a prominent external enemy, while initially inspirational and for a time a useful rhetorical tool against its enemies, shortly becomes a liability if it is assumed that the military victory "over there" is expected to reduce or eliminate the external war that is essential for the pseudo-fascist's domestic war campaign.

And the external war is needed, not just because an external enemy, no matter how remote, may conceivably represent a physical danger to the homeland, but more importantly because, as Chris Hedges has written, war gives us meaning. And out of that meaning flows the domestic militant's sense of values, namely the defense and promotion of the militantly righteous nation state.

And while both the domestic and external wars are obstensibly conducted for and defended on the basis of an abstract sense of moral absolutism, in reality, the proponents of perpetual war--as the war on terrorism is hoped to be by at least some of its most ardent apologists--share only one primal value, as Paxton notes,

...the success of chosen peoples in a Darwinian struggle for primacy. The community comes before humankind in fascist values, and respecting individual rights or due process gave way to serving the destiny of the Volk or razza.

One need only call to mind the endless stream of threats and demands from right-wing spokesman that the media be inprisoned for reporting government activity, that essentially any form of opposition to the administration constitutes treason (especially in what we are continually told is a "state of war"), that undocumented workers coming across the border from Mexico constitute an invasion, and the morally relativistic defenses of military actions in Haditha (and before that Abu Graib) to recognize the moral blindness adhered to by certain partisans of the "war on terror" and the nation's ruling regime.

Morally relativism and dependence on an ever dangerous and omniscient external enemy are the essential ingredients needed (among others) to feed the modern manifestation of fascism. Consequently, the elimination of external enemies, especially highly prominent ones, however over-stated, may ultimately reduce the power domestic supporters of authoritarianism seek.

Better Learn Them Some English

The President Says:

OMAHA, Neb. - New arrivals to this country must adopt American values and learn English, President Bush said Wednesday, pushing anew for his proposal to overhaul immigration rules.

Yeah. Don't ya just wish today's immigrants assimilated and spoke our language, English, like immigrants did in the good old days? You know, like they did in 1860?

Many German immigrants were Protestant, and many lived in the country. They seemed willing to listen to the Republicans, who devoted great energy to wooing German voters. Franklin (County, PA) Republicans put in the field local speakers who spoke German, and Republican Congressman Edward McPherson requested lists of German men he might write for their support.

In their efforts to reach the Germans, the Republicans benefited enormously from the efforts of Carl Schurz, a famous writer and speaker...Schurz spoke in the afternoon in English, but that evening he was to 'speak in German, his native language, to the citizens of Chambersburg who can understand him. The german portion of our population , who do not fully comprehend the objects of Republicanism, are particularly invited to listen to this great expounder of our political faith; himself a german by birth'...Soon after his appearance a German Republican club formed in Franklin.

from Edward L. Ayers, 2003, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863, page 79

Can you imagine the demonic head-spinning that would result if there was such a thing as a Mexican Democratic club?

"A Frigid and Pitiless Dogma"

Sometimes a liberal blog will link to a selected item from a conservative blogger's post, highlighting the conservative blogger's apparent agreement with liberal thinking on something, or in contrast, highlighting the conservative blogger's outrageousness, and when you click the hyper-link you end up in a post that is either less liberal friendly or less outrageous than advertised (no doubt conservative bloggers do the same).

To a certain extent, this could be said for this TAPPED extraction from, and hyper-link to, this John Derbyshire book review of fellow NRO'er Ramesh Ponnuru's Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life.

For example, Garance Franke-Ruta doesn't mention that Derbyshire believes, like Ponnuru, that Roe v. Wade is or was "jurisprudentially preposterous", that this conclusion is "indisputable" and that because the Constitution doesn't say the word "abortion", it's regulation should be "a matter for the states", despite the fact that the Constitution doesn't say anything specific about a lot of things, for example, the right to privacy, but do to other Amendments included in the Bill of Rights, this right has been recognized as superceding the ability of tyrannical majorities from invading.

Nonetheless, the Derbyshire paragraphs that Franke-Ruta does include are, indeed, "shocking":

I wonder again: Who, actually, is the Party of Death? Here I see a woman who, having missed her period and found herself pregnant, has an abortion, comes home, downs a stiff drink, and gets on with her life. With her life. Here I meet a man whose loved wife has gone, never to return, yet her personless body still twitches and grunts randomly on its plastic sheet, defying years of care and therapy. Let her go, everyone begs him, and his own conscience cries; and at last he does, whichever way the law will permit. Here I find a couple who want a lively, healthy child, but who know their genes carry dark possibilities of a lifetime's misery and an early death. They permit multiple embryos to be created, select the one free from the dread traits, and give over the rest to the use of science, or authorize their destruction.

The RTL-ers would tell me that these people, and the medical professionals who help them, are all moral criminals, who have destroyed human lives. They support their belief with careful definitions, precise chains of reasoning, and -- I do not doubt it -- sincere intentions. Yet how inhuman they seem! What a frigid and pitiless dogma they preach! -- one that would take from the living, without any regard to what the living have to say about it, to give to those whom common intuition regards as nonliving; that would criminalize acts of compassion, and that would strip away such little personal autonomy as is left to us after the attentions of the IRS, Big Medicine, the litigation rackets, and the myriad government bureaucracies that regulate our lives and peer into our private affairs.

For RTL is, really, just another species of Political Correctness, just another manifestation of the intellectual pathology, the hypertrophied and academical egalitarianism, the victimological scab-picking, the gaseous sentimentality. that has afflicted our civilization this past forty years. We have lost our innocence, traded it in for a passel of theorems. The RTL-ers are just another bunch of schoolmarms trying to boss us around and to diminish our liberties. Is it wrong to have concern for fetuses and for the vegetative, incapable, or incurable? Not at all. Do we need to do some hard thinking about the notion of personhood in a society with fast-advancing biological capabilities? We surely do. (And I think Party of Death contributes useful things to that discussion.) Should we let a cult of theologians, monks, scolds, grad-school debaters, logic-choppers, and schoolmarms tell us what to do with our wombs, or when we may give up the ghost, or when we should part with our loved ones? Absolutely not! Give me liberty, and give me death!

This is wild, bold ripping from a fellow traveler in the conservative empire. I wish Democrats would talk like this, instead of acting as if any comment on abortion, gay rights, or religion is tantamount to walking on egg-shells. Derbyshire's smackdown on Ponnuru's party of death thesis and counter-attack against the right's culture of privacy invading, liberty reducing, ambiguity ignoring mania is refreshing.

Nonetheless, Franke-Ruta's depiction of Derbyshire's broadside is in some ways understated. For example, right out of the starting gate Derbyshire doesn't hesitate to slap the cult designation on the right to life (RTL) movement:

Can Right to Life (hereinafter RTL) fairly be called a cult? This is a point on which I cannot make up my mind. Some of the common characteristics of culthood are missing--the Fuhrerprinzip, for example. On the other hand, RTL has the following things in common with every cult in the world: To those inside, it appears to be a structure of perfect logical integrity, founded on unassailable philosophical principles, while to those outside--among whom, obviously, I count myself--it seems to some degree (depending on the observer's temperament and inclinations) nutty; to some other degree (ditto) hysterical; and to some yet other degree (ditto ditto) a threat to liberty. My own ratings of RTL on those three degrees are 2, 6, and 4 out of a possible ten each.

The second of those ratings would have been lower before the grotesque carnival surrounding the death of Terri Schiavo last year, when a motley menagerie of quack doctors, bogus "Nobel Prize nominees," emoting relatives, get-a-life monomaniacs, keening mobs of religious fanatics, death-threat-hissing warriors for "life," dimwitted TV presenters straining to keep their very best my-puppy-just-died faces on while speaking of "Terri" as if they had known her personally from grade school, pandering politicians, and shyster lawyers all joined forces in a massive effort to convince the American public that RTL was a thing no sane citizen ought to touch with a barge pole while wearing triple-ply rubber gloves.

On the other hand, the first of those ratings would have been a couple of ticks higher before I read Party of Death. Ramesh Ponnuru is one of the best advocates a cult--cause, movement, whatever--could hope for; so much so that (just to complete the set) the third of my ratings went up by a corresponding amount after setting down his book. With polemical skills and intellectual firepower of this order, it is possible that RTL might break out from its natural habitat in student chapters of the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception to attain real influence in the land. A general reduction of our liberties would indeed follow, since RTL is, in its essence, an authoritarian movement, whose ultimate desire is to boss the rest of us around.

Then, highlighting the event that might soon, if it hasn't already, serve as the marker of the right-wing's self destructive over-reach, it's point of no return, the high water mark of the Republican Revolution, Derbyshire let's fly a glorious ripping of the media circus that was the Terri Schiavo case:

Part Two opens with a discussion of euthanasia, with several references to the Schiavo case. To Ponnuru's credit, even he seems a little embarrassed by the freak show that surrounded Mrs. Schiavo's last days, and he spares us most of the details (which are anyway thoroughly covered, from both sides, in at least five recent books). Not that his embarrassment prevents the author from engaging in a dense flurry of those rhetorical sleights of hand I noted earlier. He tells us, to take one example from many, that Michael Schiavo won a $1.1 million settlement in a negligence suit against his wife's doctors, without also telling us that Mrs. Schiavo's parents fought like cats to get their hands on their daughter's estate; or that Mr. Schiavo offered (in writing, in documents deposited with officers of the court) to sign over that estate--which was anyway much diminished by legal bills--to a registered charity if his in-laws would withdraw their lawsuits; or for that matter that Mr. Schiavo was a well-paid working professional well able to support himself, while his in-laws were chronically broke, at least until the big RTL foundations showed up with checkbooks a-flapping. And of course Ponnuru does not mention the few seconds of misleading videotape, carefully selected from over four hours' worth, released (in violation of a court order!) by the in-laws to the media, and endlessly replayed on sensationalist TV news programs.

In fact, Ponnuru has nothing to say at all about the monstrous character assassination, carried out by utterly unscrupulous RTL propagandists, of a decent man who coped humanely and well with a terrible life calamity. Well, not quite nothing: "It cannot be denied that pro-lifers were guilty of some excesses," Ponnuru murmurs. Some excesses? I would say. Here the author sounds like nothing so much as a Soviet Communist Party apparatchik, circa 1960, offering a grudging admission that Stalin and his cronies might, just once or twice, have been a tad over-zealous in dealing with class enemies. Perhaps I should add here that after reading three (Schiavo, Schindler, and Eisenberg) of the above-mentioned five-or-so books, I came away more convinced than ever that Michael Schiavo is a good man criminally traduced by brutal, unprincipled RTL fanatics, from whose number, on the evidence of this chapter, Ponnuru cannot with certainty be excluded.

I'm thankful for Derbshire's recognizing that the bizarre and paradoxical "culture of life" crowd was prepared to sacrifice Michael Schiavo on the nearest alter of burnt offerings, willing to bring death to promote "life". I'm glad someone is finally pointing out the bullying incongruence of the RTL's agenda. And he didn't even mention how RTL's want to end abortion while also outlawing contraception.

As I suggested to Barbara O'Brien, guest posting at Glenn Greenwald's pad, the conservative movement practices an extreme but highly recognizable and decipherable form of psychological projection:

Seems like a classic case of projection to me.

Conservatives celebrate death but accuse of liberals of being the party of death.

Conservatives proclaim a dedication to small government and express contempt for liberal do-gooders but paradoxically defend a power-grabbing presidency and complain that the culture is too crude.

Conservatives complain that Christianity is given short thrift in the "public square" and that liberals are out to destroy it, but by their words and actions, don't appear to even be aware of their religion's basic tenets, spirit and Biblical foundation.

I might have added how peculiar it is to be lectured about the depravity and crudeness of our culture and our supposed moral relativism by a crowd that would allow Ann Coulter to represent them and that as far as I can see practices a form of moral relativism itself in that the only morals it appears to willing to defend, and the only actions it appears willing to justify are those used in the service of advancing a narrow version of America's self-interest.

A few glances at right-wing responses to Abu Graib and the latest reports from Haditha should be enough to demonstrate that the right, or at least a sizable class of it, has no morals whatsoever. The only morals it holds dear are those associated with its fantasies of American exceptionalism and world dominion.

Moreover, the "war-right" and the RTL crowds are not only fellow travelers in the bitter, alternative universe that is American conservativism, they are often and usually the exact same people.

The result is a weird mix of anachronistic, selectively chosen, biblically-based moralizing with an unhealthy dose of fascist privacy invading and nationalist tendencies, all of which serves to produce as Derbyshire notes, A Frigid and Pitiless Dogma, ready to sacrifice individual rights for those of an embryo while celebrating the deaths of people like Rachel Corrie and David Rosenbaum, not to mention willing and eager for others to make Iraq a desolate, wasteland of broken lives and burned bodies so that their country might achieve its glorious destiny.

Our Religion

So, Ann Coulter has a new book out today, entitled, Godless: The Church of Liberalism (no link). According to the full-page color ad I was subjected to in today's NYT, Godless contends that liberalism has its own churches (government schools); it's own commandments (thou shalt not punish the perp); it's own holy writ (Roe v. Wade); and it's own creation myth (Darwinism).

OK. Maybe so.

But if liberalism is a religion, at least it's one that doesn't burn people at the stake. Sounds like progress to me.

Warner and Feingold

C-Span's Road to the Whitehouse showcased Russ Feingold and Mark Warner speaking in NH to that state's Democratic Convention on Saturday.

The short version: I thought Warner was very, very impressive.

Neither speaker mentioned immigration, and neither referred explicitly to gay marriage or abortion. While both speeches managed to hit some similar themes, such as the failure of President Bush to unite the country with a call to shared sacrifice after 9-11, the speeches were remarkably different from one another, a distinction particularly telling given that the Warner speech appeared to immediately succeed Feingold's in order at the convention (although maybe this was a C-Span effect, appearing to make the speeches appear consecutively).

Feingold covered most of the outrage issues: No Child Left Behind; the Iraq War; the abuses of the Patriot Act; the NSA wiretaps and the Constitutional disregards more broadly; the demolition of FEMA and the Katrina debacle; the failure of Senate Democrats to lead on healthcare; a call for redeploying troops in Iraq. His remarks about the Iraq war, his call to redeploy the troops, and a bold statement for universal health insurance got the most cheers. Not a bad speech by any means, but it seemed to lack something. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what.

Then came Warner. He started off with his personal background, college, law degree, tour of duty with the NDC, and then a turn towards an entrepreneurial career that started off poorly before finding success in the car telephone business and then his election as Governor of Virginia. It was a short introduction and life summary that had similarities to that told by John Edwards, but it sounded less syrapy and Warner's transition from up-bringing to public service focused more on his gratefulness for his opportunity to fullfill The American Dream than on Edwards' fight on behalf of the downtrodden.

Warner then covered his single-term as VA Governor (by law, the Governor of Virginia cannot succeed himself), highlighting his approach and successes with taxes, the state budget, education, and technological advancement, specifically the expansion of broadband across the state. Warner closed his Virginia Story with what he said was the highlight of his term in office: bringing software computer jobs to one of the state's backwaters, Lebanon, VA, via a program his state created to help communities hold on to their future resources--their educated children.

From there Warner launched into an analysis of the state of the union, with a particular focus on ensuring the nation's competitiveness in a rapidly changing global economy. This was Warner's unifying theme, what we in the pundit world and political community think of as the Vision Thing. Warner sounds like a man who's beginning to put things together. When he talked about education, he talked about the liabilities of the country's schools falling behind in regards to math and science. The competitive risk inherent in falling math and science know-how helped smooth his transition to the discussion of "wedge issues". Warner called for greater R&D funding, the advancement of stem-cell research, and a bold criticism of those disputing the theory of evolution. The latter was a particularly emphatic line that surprised me, given Warner's reputation as a centrist known for reaching out to rural voters in Virginia. Furthermore, when Warner referred to Americans without health insurance, he did so mostly from a national well-being and competitiveness posture, as opposed to the more moralistic, economically redistributive norms of most candidates now and in the past. This seems like a better appeal to me, one that aims to arouse the country's national concerns and not limit the debate to arguments about dividing and reshuffling the economic pie.

On foreign policy, Warner recognized the differences of opinion on Iraq but stressed the fact that while the Iraq war was not originally about preventing Iranian expansion and containing Al Qaeda, both of those challenges were the result of the Iraq invasion, hinting that simply redeploying the troops wouldn't be a cure-all. Warner also critiqued the current administration for "dividing our friends and unifying our enemies." Expect to hear that line more and more in the days ahead.

Warner got some digs in at the president, but his speech was noted mostly for its forward looking, non-ideological approach. He contrasted Democrats with Republicans by contending that Democrats were the party that were always looking a few years ahead, and were thus best able to lead the country into the future.

Most of what Warner had to say I had heard him say before, or had seen printed somewhere, but it was woven together in a unifying rhetoric that I hadn't recognized before. Both his tone, style and substance were very effective I thought. More than any other candidate I've heard so far, Warner is constructing a visionary campaign. While this is important for Warner's own prospects and the party's in '08, Warner's framework on national competitiveness and facing the challenges of the future, both domestic and internation, were a subtle but strong contrast to that put forward by Republicans and could thus provide an important blueprint for Democrats to follow beyond Warner regardless of his candidacy's outcome.

A few remaining, random thoughts:

Warner's speech and outlining vision bears some similarities to The Common Good debate that circulated among lefty bloggers in April (although Warner did not use that term explicitly). I shared some reservations about that philosophy here. Despite what I think are the philosophy's limitations, in it's Warner rendition, it could be useful for correcting what most political observers think is the Democrat's achilles heal: it's lack of a bold, unifying, national agenda. As I pointed out in the beginning, Warner didn't speak on immigration or mention gay marriage or abortion, issues that will continue to be hot-button ones in the months ahead, so how he approaches the conflicts embedded in those issues will go a long way to influencing his prospective candicacy.

Another thing Warner emphasized was that in Virginia he worked with members of both parties to address the state's problems and was ready to pursue good policy recommendations regardless of whether they came from those with a D or an R besides their names. Now, it should be pointed out that many governors have said this (including the current president) and that in Virginia, Warner had little choice but to make common ground with the Republicans that ran the state legislature. What was different is that Warner said this at a Democratic State Party Convention, where such bipartisanship might be downplayed. I have a hard time envisioning any Republican candidate appearing at a state GOP convention and emphasizing his outreach to the other party. What this suggests to me is that (1) Republicans are much more ideological and partisan than Democrats; (2) that Republican Partisanship stems from either (a) its self-confidence that, occupying the majority, it doesn't need to expand its coalition or reach beyond its conservative identifying partisans and groups to unify the country or (b) it's arrogance that it doesn't need or want Democratic input. We've probably seen, in the form of conference bills and other processes, how the Republicans feel about expanding their appeal and unifying the country.

At the same time, Warner made clear his interest in electing Democrats in NH and across the country. And for those of us worried about Warner's Democratic commitment, his work on behalf of the party's candidates along with his aggressive slapdown of the anti-science forces in the Republican Party are a promising harbinger of positive things to come.

On a side note, and one that may pertain to the 2008 Democratic ticket, another state's Democrat seems to be reaping the rewards of an opposition party beginning to crack-up over its cultural "wedge" issues. Maybe the much feared culture war and warriors are beginning to commit suicide. Warner's approach to wedge issues could bear similar fruit.