I started writing this right after the debt ceiling debacle, so the beginning of this post is somewhat outdated. Still I decided to keep everything as it was written. Enjoy (or not).
So, the historic stand-off around the debt ceiling is
over and the sides started tending to the wounded and burying their dead, all while asking a traditional question:"whose fault is that?" Predictably, neither side of the political spectrum is satisfied with the results, while reaction of the liberal wing of the democratic party shows that they have much more corpses to bury than the conservatives. Their attitude toward the deal ranges from complete disgust to attempts to dismiss it as "smoke and mirrors". One ought to enjoy the
irony as one realizes that a big chunk of a recent article in New Yorker
written by a very liberal John Cassidy can be easily attributed to Michele
Bauchman. Anyway, no matter what democrats or more radical elements of the Tea Party say, the conservatives did score a victory if not in terms of actual budget cuts but in terms of redefining the national discourse.
At the same time, this debate has once again highlighted significant weaknesses in conservative movement, which are being happily exploited by liberals all over. In addition to being portrayed as angry, racist, undereducated, if not outright stupid, rednecks, the Tea Party adherents are routinely described as ruthless carrying about nothing terrorists. No matter how baseless all these accusations are, a sober observer must recognize that conservatives did supply enough ammunition to liberals to use against them. I myself, being a student of classical liberalism of Haeyk's
type have a long list of grievances against contemporary conservative political
movement. Apparently, I am not alone in my dissatisfaction as according to a
recent article in Politico, "conservative intelligencia" is not happy with any of potential republican candidates.
So, let me lay down a few issues, which I believe are hurting anti-liberal anti-socialist political movement in this country.
Let me begin with the issue of religion. Americans are religious people, but it does not necessarily mean that the majority of them are ready to embrace the idea that a particular brand of Christianity is essential to American success as a nation. To me the idea of defining USA as a "Christian nation" seems to be not just ounterproductive politically, but more importantly, false intellectually. Religions in general emphasize collectivist approach to life, and are, therefore much closer to
socialist ideas than to individualistic capitalist worldview, which used to be
the cornerstone of American psyche, and which Tea Party conservatives apparently want to restore. Still, there is no doubt that religion played an important role in development of American society, and this creates an impression of a direct link between Christian believes of American settlers and success of American capitalism. This link, however, is illusory. The unique nature of American religious experience stems from its protestant roots. Protestantism with its ideas of personal God and detachment from central papal authority is the least collectivist of all religions, and is, therefore, most conducive to capitalism. Protestantism, therefore, can be considered an important factor in American success only in the sense, that it did not stay in the way of capitalism as, for instance, Catholicism would have. Thus, I see no reasons, ideological or political, why the movement to restore creative force of capitalist enterprise in US should drive away people whose relationship with
God is much more complicated than that prescribed by the standards of
conservative evangelism. Also using adherence for a particular set of religious
views significantly decreases the pool of potential anti-socialist candidates
this country is so much needed.
Another big disappointment is a significant anti-academic and more general anti-intellectual bias of the conservative movement. I understand and share conservative's displeasure with usurpation by liberals of intellectual discourse on nation's campuses and in Academia in general. Way too often what is being passed for intellectualism has very little in common with genuine intellectually honest discussion. It is indeed intolerable that liberal art education has become in many instances an instrument of ideologically driven indoctrination and brain washing. Just a few weeks ago, I listened on NPR an interview with an author of the book on race. The woman was extremely upset with biologists whose work on human genome project indicated that there exist genetically identifiable differences between races. Because this finding contradicted her ideological convictions that the idea of race was invented by whites in order to suppress the rest of the world, she declared genetics to be in service of pharmaceutical corporations. This was really painful to hear since it resembled too much of Soviet's rhetoric of late fortieth of the last century. For those who do not know - at that time Soviet genetics was destroyed for being "a Servant of capitalists" with many geneticists imprisoned or killed. Unfortunately, this is not just a single example of one misguided person. It reflects the trend in social "sciences” to subjugate academic discourse to ideologically predetermined positions.
This, however, does not mean that conservative politicians must reject the very idea of academic discourse and alienate people in Academia who can be their natural allies. Plenty of faculty, especially in natural sciences and economics, support ideas of free market capitalism but are being driven away from conservative politics because of it real or perceived anti-intellectualism mixed with religiosity. This is not to say that conservative politicians and commentators are somehow intellectually inferior to their liberal counterparts. They are definitely not. But after listening to different conservative talks show hosts including celebrated and brilliant Rush
Limbaugh, I got an uneasy impression that they do not trust intellectual abilities of their listeners and dumb down their programs to cater to the level of intellectually lazy.
This lack of intellectual rigor is responsible for conservatives routinely losing the propaganda game to the liberals even on purely economic front, where conservatives are supposed to be at home. For instance, liberals are talking about Keynesian economics as though it is as established as the law of gravity. Anyone rejecting this notion is being branded as a lunatic. They make it look like the entire economics profession agrees about Keynes and his orthodoxy. This is not so, but I am yet to see a serious substantial discussion by conservative politicians and commentators of why Keynesian prescriptions rarely work in real life. I am sure that there are plenty of conservative bloggers and websites doing this, but the main stream conservative media and conservative political events definetely avoid getting involved in serious discussions of this topic. The same is true with regard to discussions of the role of government, social safety net, regulations: virtually
all aspects of public discourse. It seems that conservatives still live in the glory days of the end of the cold war, when socialism as idea seemed to be buried under the remnants of Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. They failed to realize that socialist ideals are very attractive for the public, and that these days socialism is associated not with horrors of Gulag but with free medicine and education of Denmark and Netherlands. Refusal to recognize achievements of European countries in creating social safety net for their public opens conservatives to charges of being deological dogmatists not able to reconcile their views with real world. More importantly, it prevents them from defending conservative economic views by providing detailed analysis of the European situation. It is not sufficient now to just label something as socialist or “big government” to have it dismissed as unacceptable. It is also not sufficient to simply point out to the Europe debt problems and dismiss the entire European experience as failed experiment. They actually have to do the hard work of explaining why they think that Hayek’s approach to economics is better than the one advocated by Keynesians. This is not an easy task as they have to overcome people’s tendency to get addicted to governmental handouts and act against what they may perceive as their self-interest. Liberal in this situation has a much easier task as it is not that difficult to convince people that it is a good thing to take money from those who have them and give it to them. And it is much more difficult to explain why such a policy would be disastrous first of all for those whom it is intended to help. However, if the leaders of conservative movements would not start doing it immediately, they will participate in undoing of this country. It might happen that Ayn Rand was correct once again, when she said that conservatives and not liberals would eventually destroy America.
Thanks Lev, for a thoughtful and stimulating post. It's nice to see at least one conservative engage in some healthy introspection. I'm always suspicious when conservative commentators pretend to offer liberals friendly advice--hey, you see that thin ice way out there in the middle of the lake: I think it would be really good for your cause if you would go out there and jump up and down a few times as hard as you can, etc, etc. So I won't presume to tell conservatives what to do, but I am reminded of one of our first exchanges on this blog when we were discussing an article by Sean Wilenz on the Tea Party. His point was that once upon a time there was an influential conservative intelligentsia (William F. Buckley types) that, without giving an inch to their liberal opponents, was able to marginalize the far right wing of the conservative movement (John Birch Society types)and in so doing preserve the mainstream appeal of the movement. One could certainly disagree with William F. Buckley, even find his ideas repugnant, but no one every accused him of being a wing-nut. Wilenz's point was that it was precisely this sort of critical perspective on the right that it sorely lacking among today's conservatives. Instead, the situation is much more reminiscent of the "no enemies on the left" approach that has prevailed at various time among American liberals, as a result of which liberals have wound up defending quite odious leftist political movements when they really should have known better. Lev's post seems like a welcome movement in this more positive direction.
ReplyDeleteBut...a positive direction doesn't mean there isn't anything to discuss and argue about. Lev's post raises two big meaty issues--the influence of fundamentalist Christianity and the anti-intellectualism of American conservatism. I'll talk about religion first.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I agree with Lev that religious fundamentalism and politics are a bad mix. The problem with fundamentalists is that they claim to have a source of truth which is beyond logical proof, beyond demonstration, beyond debate, but yet serves as the basis for political action with consequences for all. An example might be the Israeli settler on the West Bank who says--"God gave this land to Abraham 4000 years ago. Abraham was a Jew. I am a Jew. The land is mine." Obviously this kind of faith based reasoning leaves no room for meaningful dialogue--only brute force.
On the other hand, the notion of somehow purging American politics of religion seems utopian to say the least. For better or worse, religion has informing the thinking and behavior of American politicians from the outset and I'm not sure its influence has been entirely negative. After all, not all people of faith are fundamentalists. Religion can serve as a kind of bedrock of ethical principles. Such a foundation does not provide preset answers, but it does provide the ability to assess complex morally ambiguous situations and arrive at an ethically coherent point of view. I have nothing against this sort of religion in public life. The only thing I would find objectionable is the suggestion that a religious perspective is the only one that can provide this sort of moral grounding.
One last point. Lev, I think your take on Protestantism is somewhat over-simplistic. First of all, Protestantism comes in many different varieties. The distance between a staid main-line Episcopalian and a wild-eyed, snake handling, speaking in tongues Pentecostal is enough to make the Pope and the Patriarch look like bosom buddies. Hence to say that American protestantism is any one thing is rather problematic. More importantly, I not sure I buy this notion that Protestants have always been more inclined toward individualism and less mindful of the collective. It's true, of course, that Martin Luther placed individual reading of the scripture at the heart of his spiritual agenda. But he was quick to clarify that individual scripture reading did not make each individual's interpretation equally valid. Note, for example, his violent altercations with Zwingli over the transubstantiation of the Eucharist based on his reading of the Gospel of John. Luther didn't have a whole lot to say about community life, but Calvin did. By the time he got around to organizing his model protestant community in Geneva Calvin was willing to use any means necessary up to and including burning at the stake to enforce conformity to community norms. The Puritans who settled in America in the 17th century were no more enamored of individualism than Calvin--think, the scarlet letter, the Salem Witch trial, Cotton Mather. And even if there was certain degree of leeway for men to pursue their personal economic ambitions, this certainly didn't extend to women who remained completely subjugated to the collective.
So how do you explain this legendary American individualism? I'm not entirely sure it needs that much explaining. Yes, these has been an individualistic strain in American culture, but it has always been balanced against communitarian elements. But to the extent that individualism has been present, it needs to be explained by a multitude of factors--the immigrant mindset, the presence of a frontier, the abundance of land, the lack of a native aristocracy and rigid social hierarchy, a tradition of rule of law and protection of property rights, to name a few. I might place religion somewhere in this mix, but I wouldn't rank it very high.
That's my spiel on religion. I'll take up conservative anti-intellectualism when the football game is over.
Nathan, of course protestantism is nonuniform and complex, but this is beyond the point. The only statement I made was that protestantism in all its forms is more conducive to capitalism based on individuals will then any other major religion (I am not sure about Buddhism). I also agree with you that American individualism has many other sources besides religious predisposition of the first settlers. Still, I think that if the first colonists were Catholics, we would have had a completely different society now. Just look at Mexico.
ReplyDeleteActually, the colony of Maryland (as in the virgin) was originally founded as a refuge for English Catholics by Lord Baltimore. So there were plenty of Catholics in the North American colonies from the start. As for Mexico, I am sure if it had been settled by English and not Spanish Catholics, it would have been a very different place. Sure, religion was a factor, but it's one among many.
ReplyDeleteTurning to your the point on conservative anti-intellectualism, I first have to complain about your example on genetics which exemplifies nothing. Yes, there are ideologues and fanatics on both sides who ignore solid scientific evidence in order to uphold their ideological conviction. If we have to start pointing figures, conservatives have got plenty to answer for in this regard. We could have a long conversation on the science of race. Briefly, though, the point is not that races, in the sense of discernible physical distinctions between different populations, do or don't exist. The question is how we draw the boundaries and how we endow particular traits with significance. For example, 100 year ago, many Americans would not have accepted Italian and Jews as whites. Unless you were of Northern European Germanic background, you simply didn't qualify. Clearly our definitions have changed since then. So how could you dispute that race is a cultural concept? Yes, physical differences are real, but they only become race when they are recognized as such.
ReplyDelete