I think that Fareed Zakaria is a tad too optimistic about the likelihood of a certain breed of American right-winger deciding to abandon his fears of the impending liberal-socialist apocalypse.
But he makes some perceptive comments about the pre-history of the Tea Party phenomenon and its role as a bearer of a distinctive kind of cultural pessimism.
Modern American conservatism was founded on a diet of despair. In
1955, William F. Buckley Jr. began the movement with a famous first
editorial in National Review declaring that the magazine “stands athwart
history, yelling Stop.” John Boehner tries to tie into this tradition
of opposition when he says in exasperation, “The federal government has spent more than what it has brought in in 55 of the last 60 years!”
But
what has been the result over these past 60 years? The United States
has grown mightily, destroyed the Soviet Union, spread capitalism across
the globe and lifted its citizens to astonishingly high standards of
living and income. Over the past 60 years, America has built highways
and universities, funded science and space research, and — along the way
— ushered in the rise of the most productive and powerful private
sector the world has ever known.
At the end of the 1961 speech that launched his political career, Ronald Reagan said,
“If I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our
sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it
once was like in America when men were free.” But the menace Reagan
warned about — Medicare — was enacted. It has provided security to the
elderly. There have been problems regarding cost, but that’s hardly the
same as killing freedom.
For most Americans, even most
conservatives, yesterday’s deepest causes are often quietly forgotten.
Consider that by Reagan’s definition, all other industrial democracies
are tyrannies. Yet every year, the right-wing Heritage Foundation ranks
several of these countries — such as Switzerland — as “more free” than
the United States, despite the fact that they have universal health
care.
One might also stipulate that Zakaria is a bit too one-sidedly triumphalist about all things bright and beautiful in post-war America.
Still, he makes an important point.
But do I think that reasonable arguments like this will matter
to the true-believers? For an answer, I offer some comments from Bruce
Sterling on the Tea Party that I posted last year (which somehow seems like an eternity ago):
It's always "the worse, the better" with these
Trotsky-style fanatics. Every failure, rejection and common-sense
setback galvanizes them to new extremes of faith-based ideological
weirdness.
As someone who hangs out in Europe, I'm used to bizarre political
movements, but the Tea Party is truly impressively strange by anybody's
standards. Acidheads have had more coherent thinking than these
Creationist Randite gold-bar-eating pro-coal zillionaire market fundie
people. They lost the American election, but winning one and
governing a superpower never seemed to be on their agenda. That hasn't
discouraged them, though. They've got ladder notches and fallback
positions all the way to the prepper graveyard.
Of course, this kind of paranoid fear-mongering isn't historically unique to the US: in 1945 the Daily Express was warning readers against a Labour Party victory in 1945 with editorials under titles such as 'Gestapo in Britain if Socialists win'. More recently, your average reader of the Daily Mail (which I could definitely imagine using that 'Gestapo' headline during the next British elections) has also decided that the only good things about Britain exist in the dimly remembered past.
Nor, naturally, is cultural pessimism exclusively the property of the political right.
But it is not encouraging -- as I happened to be saying to a colleague earlier today -- that a mere five years after he left office George W. Bush seems, in retrospect, so...moderate.
The really interesting development in Washington, I think, is not the conflict between the Tea Party and the Democrats -- which, as loud and fun as it is, makes for pretty predictable theatre -- but rather the signals that the grown-up business types of the sort that used to dominate the Republican Party I remember in my youth just might be getting a bit nervous about what one of them calls 'the Taliban minority'.
I mean, American politics has now become a distant spectator sport for me. I live in a country where the main conservative party has its eye firmly on the nation's economic interests and where a laughable figure like Ted Cruz would have little chance of being taken seriously as a Kanzlerkandidat.
Believe me: I am thankful -- every day -- for the generally boring sensibility of German politics.
I don't think that I need to do anything to prove, shall we say, my interest in history.
Still, it's never even occured to me that I might express this by, say, dressing up in a Nazi uniform and giving a Hitler salute or, say, 'reenacting' not simply a Wehrmacht unit but specifically an SS one.
Of course I'm not a Tory/Republican politician, for whom such things seem pretty excusable these days. ("It was fancy dress and a piece of fun."/It's purely historical interest in World War II.")
There are lots of responses that are possible to today's march for 'honor', or whatever, in Washington, DC.
One of the ones I've found most insightful comes from MGK:
These guys have found the exploit that allows them to game the system of civilized conduct. That’s why irony is dead: Stephen Colbert and his fellow comedians are trying to make an absurd statement in a serious way, but all they can ever hope to do is match the stuff Glenn Beck is trying to say for real. You can’t even make fun of these guys, because they’re crazier than the craziest satirist’s dreams. All you can really do is hope that people get smart enough to see through their bullshit, and that’s a pipe dream.
Someone broke human behavior. We need a patch.
Sadly, I don't think such a patch is going to be available soon.
Even if the Internet never comes up with another Fun Thing as good as the David Cameron poster creation machine, then it's nevertheless established its Daseinsberechtigung.
A quick dispatch from the British Library, from a book on the popular press in the mid 20th century:
Churchill's first election broadcast, on June 4, was the crucial episode in the early part of the [1945] campaign, and the Express's enthusiasm now found an issue instead of just a mood. The essence of his argument was bannered next day on the front page: Gestapo in Britain if Socialists win, and expanded in the leader:
Voters of Britain! Will you go down to history as the men and women who smashed the inhuman tyranny in Europe but were too tired or too bewildered or too dazzled by your own glory to save yourselves from tyranny at home?
After ripping the Gestapo out of the still beating heart of Germany, will you stand for a Gestapo under another name at home?...
Were you shocked to learn from Mr. Churchill that State control leads to Fascism?
Think hard about it, and see how true it is.
A.C.H. Smith, Paper Voices: The Popular Press and Social Change 1935-1965 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1975)
Heady stuff. (I mean...'ripping the Gestapo out of the still beating heart of Germany'...Strewth! What vivid prose.)
So this is what papers like the Express and Mail did before they had 'political correctness' to freak out about.
(And, of course, this was not all that long after at least one of them had expressed a certain fondness for the dreaded f-word.)
It is left only to admire the clear-eyed vision with which the Express editorial noted above accurately predicted the terrorised Gleichschaltung that followed Labour's victory in 1945.
Bernie Heinink, Simon Weston and the other military veterans in this video (via Francis Sedgemore) are worth more than a million Guardian columnists in discrediting the British National Party's efforts to re-brand themselves as a mainstream party.
Mr. Heinink's comment on seeing a piece of BNP propaganda evoking the Battle of Britain, which serves as the title of this post, puts it succinctly.
As I'm in Britain this week, I've been catching a bit more of the discussion around the BNP's hijacking of Second World War imagery than I otherwise would.
And, having a number of veterans (British and American) of that war in my family, I take this rather personally.
So, as I opened the hotel's complimentary issue of the Daily Mail this morning, I was pleased to find not only outrage at Nick Griffin's comparison of British army generals with Nazi war criminals but also a condemnation of Griffin as a 'racist' and 'bigot' that includes some charming highlights from what the paper refers to accurately enough as his 'vile words'.
That this sort of criticism can be found in the Mail of all places is encouraging. And I would like to think it would continue.
Of course, if the Mail and other like-minded rags hadn't spent so much time whipping up the kind of fears that the BNP and other fascists have so successfully capitalised upon, I would take their outrage a bit more seriously.
Still: if this is some sign on the part of at least some people in the right-wing press have begun to recoil from the monster they've helped create, then all the better.
The aspirants for the post of Republican National Committee Chairman gathered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, a couple of days ago to offer their visions for how the party can reverse its apparently declining political fortunes.
As the Washington Postreports (via), appealing to the youth through electronic media will be a key part of that strategy.
"We have to do it in the Facebook, with the Twittering, the different technology that young people are using today," [incumbent Chairman] Duncan ventured.
Some of the candidates have up to 4,000 friends 'in the Facebook'.
Thus, compared to former Sen. Ted 'Series of Tubes' Stevens, they certainly have every right to sit at the cool kids' table in the school cafeteria. They are no doubt aware of all internet traditions.
A stirring image, indeed, of today's conservative movement:
The McCain-Palin campaign is a revolting spectacle. It interests me that there seems to be no braking mechanism, no floor, no point at which they just can't stomach it any more. I realize they want to win, but I assume they also want to be able to live with themselves. Yet there is no floor. There is (as with good old Joe McCarthy) no shame.
Beyond their shamelessness, what strikes me is how desperate the campaign seems. I mean...Ayers? That's the best they can do?
C'mon, Sarah, doggone it, I thought you said your campaign was going to look toward the future and not dwell on all that negativity in the past.
I mean, I don't condone what Ayers did back, uh, around the time I was born. Indeed, I tend to think such inept hotheads (in whatever country) have been bad not only for the left but for everyone in general.
But, please: by the time Obama met him, Ayers was a fixture on the Chicago educational scene. One might say that this condemns the entire city...actually, this is what McCain-Palin has tried to say. (Which leads part of my Chicagoland-born and Chicagoland-bred self to respond in very vulgar terms that I won't share with you.)
When these accusations surfaced in April, Chicago's mayor, Richard M. Daley, issued a statement calling Ayers a 'valued member of the Chicago community' and praising his work on the city's school system.
“He’s done a lot of good in this city and nationally,” Mayor Richard M. Daley said in an interview this week, explaining that he has long consulted Mr. Ayers on school issues. Mr. Daley, whose father was Chicago’s mayor during the street violence accompanying the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the so-called Days of Rage the following year, said he saw the bombings of that time in the context of a polarized and turbulent era.
“This is 2008,” Mr. Daley said. “People make mistakes. You judge a person by his whole life.”
Maybe you agree with him, or maybe you don't, whether about that sentiment or how it specifically applies to Ayers. Either way, it's a bit difficult to cast Daley as some kind of hippie-loving counter-cultural socialist that 'real' Americans have to fear.
I am not interested in defending Ayers (or his educational theories, about which I know little).
My point is this: when Barack Obama was involved in Democratic Party politics in the mid 1990s, Ayers was an established figure. Obama was interested in education issues. Ayers was a very common presence on those topics in the city. It is not odd that they might, as the New York Times put it, cross paths.
They met via the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Take a look, if you will, at the people involved in leading it. I don't suggest for a moment that they are all perfect human beings. There may even be a few rather unpleasant people among the bunch. However, do they appear like a bunch of anti-American commie radicals? I don't think so.
If this issue weren't being hyped by Sarah 'Fatal Cancer to the Republican Party' Palin (who's been 'pallin around' with her own bunch of unsettling types) and turning a certain section of McCain supporters into a bunch of bloodthirsty rage addicts, it would be amusing. (Count me as one of those who is concerned about the potential for verbal violence transitioning into the real thing.)
Myself, I would prefer not be judged via each one of the people I might have spoken, lived or worked with over the last twenty years.
Especially those who do not seem to have been particularly influential on how I see the world.
Predictably, of course, anti-American Communist terrorist sympathisers -- such as...well, David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, and some other Republican (or formerly Republican) elected officials -- have voiced criticism of McCain's increasingly nasty campaign tactics or even come out in support of Obama.
That's those fuckin' lib'ruls for ya. You betcha.
In some ways, I can only welcome the right-wing obsession with Ayers, et. al. I really don't think it's going to work in rescuing the somewhat hapless McCain-Palin campaign, and the more red-meat berserkerdom that the campaign generates, the more they will turn off the independents and moderates that they need to win.
And if they want to crash their campaign into the ground, I'll be happy to watch.
A nice round-up of events inside the hall from the Republican National Convention from Ezra Klein:
On Fred Thompson's recounting of McCain's biography:
The story was well told, but it's testament to McCain's reluctance to speak about his war record that by this point in the election, the mute can tell it, the forgetful can recall it, and the blind can sketch it.
On Joe Lieberman:
And ah, Joe. Eight years ago, you were the vice presidential nominee. Four years ago, you were begging Democrats for their presidential nomination. Two years ago, you were defeated in a Democratic primary. Now you're at the Republican convention. Lieberman is at the Xcel Center for much the reason that pet goldfish spend their days in a neon castle: He has nowhere else to go.
[...]
He's a famed old Washington player assuring the audience that his buddy, another famed Washington player, is the guy who can really change Washington.
On The Message:
There were a few threads running throughout the night. Hurricane Gustav is very sad. John McCain is a POW. Sarah Palin is great pick, a great great pick, we totally love her and are not lying and the Democrats must be very scared because she is very experienced. And Barack Obama is inexperienced. The first message emerged sharply. So did the second. The third argument sounded tinny and defensive, particularly when Fred Thompson said the other side is in a "panic." Note to Thompson: You're an actor, not a Jedi. These were the droids we were looking for, and Palin is still on the cover of US Weekly, looking like Mama Spears.
Maybe Thompson got that Jedi delusion from McCain adviser Charlie Black, who said:
“She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long,” said Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain’s top advisers, making light of concerns about Mr. McCain’s health, which Mr. McCain’s doctors reported as excellent in May.
Yes....young and crazy, she is. Strong in her, flows the dark side...
One of my favourite quotes is the -- possibly apocryphal -- statement attributed to Texas Governor Miriam Amanda 'Ma' Ferguson:
'If the King's English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for the children of Texas!'
Whether the attribution is correct or not, it -- and other statements like it, which often grant St. Paul familiarity with either English or the KJV -- have always succinctly expressed a certain attitude that you encounter more often than you'd like to: self-righteousness combined with ignorance.
How delightful, then, to find a similar, and more reliably sourced, addition to this great tradition.
When running for governor of Alaska in 2006, Sarah Palin (and other candidates) were sent a questionnaire that asked their opinions on a variety of topics.
Let's see if you can find what's wrong with her answer (via The Stone of Tear, via PZ):
11. Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?
[Palin:] Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.
Spotted it?
That's right: the pledge was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy (a Christian socialist no less).
Its original version, moreover, was a bit simpler than today's: 'I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'
Ok, so one might want to downplay the self-proclaimed triumph of the organisers of yesterday's Neo-Nazi rally in Hamburg, which escalated into full-scale riots featuring levels of violence not seen for a long time. However, police reactions to the brown mob's sheer viciousness affirm the overall sense that what happened yesterday should give us serious pause.
According to Hamburg Police Superintendent Werner Jantosch, without the interference of the police, there might have been fatalities. The fascist mob not only engaged in a battle with the left-wing counter-demonstrators that took several hours, but also hounded journalists deemed "left-wing" and subsequently hijacked two commuter train cars on the line between Pinneberg and Hamburg, using the train's intercom to broadcast racist messages.
How come, then, that all the Bavarian President Günther Beckstein has to say about things is to repeat the old chestnut of the growing danger of "left-wing violence" and the need to "put a stop to their games" in advance (by keeping known "Gewalttäter" -- perpetrators of violence -- from travelling to demonstrations). The problem is: not only are many so-called "Autonome" of dubious political affiiliation -- more hooligan than radical ; he's also either not recognising, or deliberately avoiding the fact of the violence coming from the extreme right (not least in his own backyard).
I know that David Mamet's vacuous political musings in the Village Voice are a bit old-news now, but they've been nagging at me ever since I had the misfortune to waste my time reading them.
In 'Why I am no longer a "brain-dead liberal"', the acclaimed playwright managed to assemble such an enormous army of zombie strawmen than the result was not only a seriously flawed argument but also a genuine fire hazard.
I am glad to see that Erich Shulte at Ruthless Reviews has taken the effort to subject Mamet's screed to the more detailed mockery that it deserves. (Via LG&M)
If you haven't read Mamet's piece yet, it will be a less painful experience when accompanied by Shulte's interpolations.
Now, I'm far from thinking that the left side of the political spectrum doesn't require some vigorous critique (and even a good kicking). Furthermore, loads of people are actually making those necessary critiques with a great deal more intelligence and real-world relevance than Mamet's vaporous mutterings.
A few of them can be found among the blogroll to your right. Peter Ryley is one of the best, and he discussed the issue of critiquing-the-left v. leaving-the-left with great insight recently.
Judging by the number of keys that have been stroked in recent weeks about liberal/left 'defectors', changing political teams seems to be seen as an important topic at the moment. However, if his essay is any insight into Mamet's 'liberal' beliefs, then I think it suffices to say that -- if he ever actually was a liberal -- Mamet will be among the least missed of the supposed apostates.
He may have an ear for vulgar dialogue, but as to political thought...well, let's just say he's not a closer on that score.
I'll confine myself to a few selected points in his article and then I plan to leave this sorry mess behind me.
I thought it was clear that Mamet began going off the rails right near the beginning of his essay (after the somewhat long-winded and pretentious opening) when, in explaining his rejection of liberalism, he says:
This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.
Patently absurd as a statement of liberalism, this utterance is even more preposterous as an justification for Mamet's move to the right.
It doesn't seem to me, for instance, that conservative parties anywhere (least of all in the American case) are suffused with a feeling of quiet contentment about the state of the world. I'm not sure what kind of conservatives Mamet's been hanging around with, but pretty much all of those I've had any interaction with (whether via the internet or across my family's kitchen table) are quite fully convinced that everything is always wrong. (Indeed, this could be the motto for any nation's variety of right-wing populism. It would even make an ideal slogan for Fox News or The Daily Mail.)
How American conservatives have managed to hold this point of view while simultaneously dominating the country's political institutions is, of course, a strange little paradox all its own. But if your criteria for determining your political allegiance is the extent of bitching and moaning about the world and you wish to avoid same, becoming a conservative is a rather odd choice.
There is also a lot of murmuring in Mamet's article about how he no longer thinks that people are essentially good. He now seems to think that they are basically self-interested swine.
Curiously, though, he argues that no institutional form for regulating and working out the inevitable differences that emerge among said venal pigs is necessary. Instead, they'll work it all out themselves in some mysterious way.
His evidence is very solid, coming as it does from his own imagination:
Strand unacquainted bus travelers in the middle of the night, and what do you get? A lot of bad drama, and a shake-and-bake Mayflower Compact. Each, instantly, adds what he or she can to the solution. Why? Each wants, and in fact needs, to contribute—to throw into the pot what gifts each has in order to achieve the overall goal, as well as status in the new-formed community. And so they work it out.
Well, excellent, I guess that's proven that. 'They work it out'. How nice.
Seeing that he just pulled this description of things out of his...imagination, I could well imagine a similar scenario that ends differently, in something that looks a bit more like Mad Max and involves cannibalism. I mean, while we're imagining, we might as well have some fun.
However, it never seems to occur to Mamet that the 'new-formed community' (ah, such a lovely, soothing, sedative word that is) might, say, institutionalise exploitation.
Such as the early settler communities that his offhand historical reference points to. Remember? Those real-historical communities where various forms of unfree labour (from indentured servitude to slavery) were deemed acceptable, indeed, even essential to social life. Mamet, however, seems to see American history solely as the almost supernatural unfolding of constitutional wisdom.
See also that most magnificent of schools, the jury system, where, again, each brings nothing into the room save his or her own prejudices, and, through the course of deliberation, comes not to a perfect solution, but a solution acceptable to the community—a solution the community can live with. (Emphasis, most emphatically, added.)
I haven't had the pleasure of serving on a jury -- though I've always wanted to. However, I have heard from enough people who have done so and spent a bit of time examining some of that very ambiguous institution's history (this book is a good place to look if you can manage to get a copy).
Thus, I can safely say that Mamet's argument is -- not to put too fine a point on it -- bullshit.
Each brings 'nothing into the room save his or her own prejudices'? Ah, that must be OK then. Since prejudice can't be all that important, historically speaking. On juries.
And I suppose, just to take one example, that he suggests here that the treatment by white juries of blacks in much of American history was not all that significant (we wouldn't want to say that something in the world was 'all wrong' would we?) It was certainly 'acceptable to the community', David, but only someone with as retarded a notion of 'community' such as yourself would nod in complacent agreement with the (strangely panglossian) notion that things just work out for the best.
I have no doubt that people do -- as Mamet suggests -- have inherent abilities that allow them to form and maintain social relationships. We are a social species. However, even a fairly glancing familiarity with psychology, history and anthropology should suggest to you that this doesn't always work out in ways that are acceptable or just.
Like many on the American right, however, Mamet seems to think of 'government' as some strange alien institution imposed from without, rather than being one of the ways that people 'work things out'. Governments are there to monitor, regulate and rebalance social relationships according to the will of the governed.
Obviously, Mamet must in some way know this, so what I presume Mamet is actually objecting to is Big Government, the one that was supposedly dropped on us from an oppressive race from beyond the stars rather than the one created by elected representatives over time and which presumably at least a good number of people in 'the community' support.
I'd like to think he was being funny here, but Mamet quips:
What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow. (Emphasis added.)
How about helping to end segregation, you stupid fuck. Or was that an illegitimate intervention on the ways that the 'communities' you so adore had found a solution 'they could live with' via a system of apartheid?
Of course, I see the very clever caveat you have made here. Obviously this is something that is not among 'those things which affect' you or which you have 'observed'.
It does seem a tiny and very cramped little world you inhabit, David, really it does. It makes me suspect that your reputation for having insight into the human condition is undeserved, since it is obvious that you can't see past your own nose into the world as the rest of us live in it.
The GI Bill? Social Security? Medicare? Medicaid? Workplace safety regulation? State universities? (Ah, our David was privately educated. That also presumably doesn't affect him, allowing him not to have to mix in his tender years with the great unwashed.) Environmental protection laws? The roads you drive on? The police? Firefighting?
Not that 'government' is the 'solution' to 'everything' (whatever a meaningless statement like that would mean), but, really: 'Hard pressed'? Nothing much 'beyond sorrow'?
Put down the fucking Thomas Sowell, David, and read something serious. (Mamet refers to Sowell as 'our greatest living philosopher'. I don't know much about his work to be honest, but you may wish to peruse this Great Mind at work here at the National Review. Profound. Definitely.)
Finally, I was struck by the curious provincialism of Mamet's essay.
I mean: Here's a world-renowned playwright writing for a newspaper in one of the world's most cosmopolitan cities and he seems to not realise that there are societies out there in the rest of the big wide world which have different relationships between government and people and differently calibrated varieties of capitalism that might be worth considering.
Thus come pronouncements like the following:
Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but classes in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet; and the individual may and probably will change status more than once within his lifetime.
Stirring stuff. Someday, when we finally overthrow our feudal overlords and free ourselves from serfdom, I hope, too, to help create such a wondrous society. Oh, if the revolution would only come...
Unfortunately, for all his bluster, Mamet's vision seems a bit clouded. At least, it appears that social mobility is not necessarily any better in the US than it is in other countries. And it may be worse.
One study found that mobility between generations — people doing better or worse than their parents — is weaker in America than in Denmark, Austria, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Spain and France. In America, there is more than a 40 percent chance that if a father is in the bottom fifth of the earnings’ distribution, his son will end up there, too. In Denmark, the equivalent odds are under 25 percent, and they are less than 30 percent in Britain.
Life is far from utopian in the borders of our humble European Union, I'd agree, but when I run across supposedly weighty commentary about How Society Should Be Run that replaces thinking with blinkered nationalist cheerleading -- especially when the home team isn't doing so well right now -- I tend to think that the commentator in question is not worth taking seriously.
By all means, David, extol the virtues of markets and democracy if you will, but please come over for a visit sometime -- no really, come on by, we have a spare room -- and we can take a tour of a country that has exported more goods than any other in the world over the last few years (and where people are healthier and where there are far fewer murders) while having a great deal more of that Big Government that you deem so poisonous.
Mamet's obviously an imaginative fellow, and he may just prefer to stay locked away in his little theatrical fantasy land (and his privileged life) where he can create characters representing the simplistic little manichaean ideological struggle he seems to get so worked up about.
As far as I'm concerned, he can play with his puppet show all he wants. I just hope he leaves the rest of us out of it in the future.
Put that fucking coffee down, David. Coffee's for closers only.
I've been ruminating over the last couple of weeks on an article by Rebecca Solnit at Orion. In 'One Nation Under Elvis', she considers the seemingly unbridgeable divide between urban liberals (or progressives) and the rural communities where many of their issues lie (particularly for environmentalists) but whose residents, Solnit suggests, they consider with -- at best -- condescension and at worst outright hatred.
Solnit's essay is a very personal one (it may be that that is the mode best suited to this issue), but it touches on a tangled parcel of issues of broad relevance. After all, as she rightly points out, the electoral map that was much discussed in 2004 was only a north/south one on the surface: look below it and you'll find that one of the more crucial divides is that between urban and rural, with the suburbs often breaking one way or another based on their proximity to cities or local factors such as the presence of a university.
My home state of Illinois, for instance, is in the 'blue' column, but only because of the enormous electoral weight of Chicago (even if only the living vote only once, the city carries a lot of voting clout). Drive a couple of hours west and you're in a very different world.
The same kinds of divisions were apparent in my adopted home state of Maryland (one stop south of the Mason-Dixon line, don't forget) where the distance between, say, downtown Baltimore or the 'People's Republic of Tacoma Park' and a place like Taneytown was about more than merely geography.
(There were, though, as I recall, more than a few cowboys to be found at the gay bars around the corner from where I used to live in Mount Vernon...but that was Bawlmer, hon.)
Now, some kind of urban-rural cultural divide is probably a historical continuity or global commonality: the rhythms of life, the interpersonal networks, and perhaps many of the needs of living in a city are different than those of living in the country. However, there does appear to be something particularly virulent and odd about the contemporary American version of this conflict.
Odd, because it's not something that is entirely geographical. Solnit, not unfairly, identifies country music as one of the key cultural divisions. Building on her point, I suppose it's fair to say that 'country' is a serious cultural category in the land of my birth. And it's not all about geography.
I have a little bit of personal experience about this.
The town in which I grew up, for instance, was far from 'rural'. But while paying my way through college, I spent a couple of summer and winter breaks working at a steel lacing factory located there, and I came to realise something. (No, before that, I didn't know what 'steel lacing' was either.)
I was one of the few 'college boys' who worked there, which was the source of no small amount of ribbing -- most of it good natured -- but, still, at lunch time you sat and talked with whomever happened to be around. You get to know people.
A quite large percentage of my co-workers drove pickups, were extremely patriotic (I was there when the First Gulf War was under way, so that became hard to miss), loved country music and tended to drop the final 'g' from any 'ing' endings that they spoke. Quite a few were enthusiastic hunters -- or at least gun-owners.
But after work, 9 out of 10, I'm quite sure, did not drive home to a ranch or farm, but rather to a housing development off of some four-lane road chock-full of big box stores and strip malls. And, again, this was northern Illinois, less than an hour's drive from the Chicago Lakefront, when traffic was good. (Which it most often wasn't.)
So what I realised was this: 'country' is very much a state of mind.
Solnit refers to a variety of examples of what we might call urban middle-class disdain of 'rednecks' and assumptions that 'country' means racist. She observes:
So on the one hand we have white people who hate black people. On the other hand we have white people who hate other white people on the grounds that they hate black people. But that latter hatred accuses many wrongfully, and it serves as a convenient coverup for the racism that is all around us. The reason why it matters is because middle-class people despising poor people becomes your basic class war, and the ongoing insults seem to have been at least part of what has weakened the environmental movement in particular and progressive politics in general.
I'll leave you (no, urge you, in fact) to take a closer look at her article, since, as I said, it's full of the sort of personal anecdotes and nuances that are hard to summarise. What it comes down to, however, is more or less a plea to try to address this downward urban glance toward all things rural and twangy, with the argument that this is acting as a serious brake on progressive politics.
In general, I think there's a lot to her argument. The article provoked two quite positive -- and readable -- reactions at Dave Neiwert's Orcinus blog, one from Dave himself, and one from Sara Robinson. Each, in their own way, reiterate Solnit's basic point. Perusing the comments at each response, however, brings you to other perspectives (and to the depressing realisation that there are people who really do hate country music because they think it's 'right-wing'.)
One of the main objections that commenters raise -- one that I think carries some weight -- is that the cultural divide she rightly identifies is not one sided. There are, if you'll forgive the mangled physics of this observation, two sides that are mutually looking down on one another. In short, some of the commenters argue that 'rural communities' (for lack of a better or more neutral term) don't want any kind of alliance with liberals, no matter how much Johnny Cash those young city slickers might have on their I-Pods.
In a great number of cases, their rejection of Solnit's argument (and Neiwert and Robinson's agreement with it) are driven by personal experiences, often painful ones, with the kinds of environments with which she urges greater bridge-building efforts. (One of the more striking of which involves memories of a school bus driver named 'Skeeter'.)
Partly because those arguments are so personal (and so painful), they point to the difficulty of the project that Solnit suggests: if they can be taken as at least a partially valid sample of country folk (at least of the sort of formerly country folk who have turned into the sort to read Orion), then we're talking about more than a clash of grammar and musical tastes.
I don't, though, read Solnit as saying one has to necessarily overlook the urban-rural differences (or even conservative-liberal) that exist: she seems to be suggesting that both sides would have much to gain in trying to distinguish those areas where differences remain from those where commonalities exist.
This is not an easy thing.
I wonder whether this kind of cultural divide is quite so pronounced in other places. I know that in Britain the 'Countryside Alliance' has succeeded in making a lot of noise about representing rural interests in the face of an allegedly uncaring (or clueless) urban elite. On the other hand, I'm not so sure that this has had quite the significance of the urban-rural divide in the US (Britain is, after all, much smaller and more densely populated), and I wonder whether it has had quite the cultural impact. There are many ways in America in which a particular kind of cultural code (country music, NASCAR, traditional gender roles, hunting and fishing, perhaps a kind of casual racism -- the latter recalled by Dale here) has come to stand in for a particular set of political beliefs.
I have the sense that the British version of this is quite a different beast.
Here in Germany, you might be interested to note (and if you're not, just skip down a ways) there is a political drama that is in some way relevant. The Green Party is facing the possibility of forming coalition governments in two Bundesländer: Hesse, and the city-state of Hamburg.
That is not particularly unusual in itself, as Germany has a proportional voting system that has allowed smaller parties to have more influence. The more curious bit is their potential coalition partner: in Hamburg the CDU and in Hesse a combination of the CDU and the Free Democrats. (Reminder for Americans: 'liberal' in a European context very often refers to a predilection for small government and free markets 'As much state as necessary, as little state as possible', as the FDP puts it. It's confusing, I know, but it's the US that, for whatever reason, paints its conservative states red, which I've never understood.)
Considering that the Greens are often seen as a 'left' party (and probably in some important sense are) the possibility of the first black-green (or black, yellow, green...parties in Germany are known by their colours) coalitions at a state level have been causing no small amount of political soul searching within the party.
There are certainly what we could call 'cultural' barriers to overcome: the Green movement, after all, came of age in the era of Helmut Kohl, and as a movement that saw themselves in opposition to much of capitalism, militarism and consumerism, they can certainly be placed to the left on most conventional political spectra. However, their suspicion of statism, celebration of self-sufficiency, desire to preserve traditional ways of life and commitment to civil liberties suggest that there are points of agreement with at least some sections of mainstream conservative and liberal politics in this country.
As in America, it is hard not to notice, this is indeed more than a policy debate: it's partly cultural. Polling data shows that the Greens' most solid electoral base consists of well-educated and relatively well-off urbanites. In Germany, as in the US, there is a rural-urban divide of sorts. However, it is my theory -- and any German readers with more knowledge on this point are welcome to chip in if you wish -- that this division is not as stark as the one painted in Solnit's article in the USA.
There is a village not too far from here -- certainly 'rural' by any standard -- that we have the pleasure to have gotten to know through a friend of ours. On the roofs of its houses you would not be surprised to find solar panels, and in the gardens you'll likely find all of the paraphernalia of a conservationist lifestyle that most American (and German) environmentalists are expending so much effort to promote. (I commented on something similar in an earlier post.)
Nonetheless, I feel quite sure that its inhabitants tend rather toward the conservative side of the spectrum when it comes to the ballot box.
There are some Greens, it seems, for whom the idea of even working with Conservatives in a government is anathema. However, I think they have much to gain, not least since it would be the opportunity to gain some new voters while also freeing themselves from a left-wing camp that -- at least for the near future -- seems doomed to internal dissension and competition from a more radical left that seems rather far from electable. Times have changed. Conservatives wear sneakers too.
And, so far as I can tell, a love for Volksmusik has not quite taken on the political significance of country music in America (even if I imagine you'll find relatively few fans of it among Green voters...or among sane voters of any party for that matter....)
As someone who identifies -- though not uncritically -- with the Greens, I'm quite excited by the possibilities that the new alliances open up. Of course, this possibility requires that there are voters who are 'culturally' Liberal or Conservative who are willing to at least consider voting Green.
And that's not a foregone conclusion.
As a final note, I few personal memories about trying to bridge the divide that Solnit describes.
In a former and distant life as a campus activist, I recall that it took a relatively short time for me to become frustrated with the main vanguard of leftist politics at my university. There was a network of groups that tended to all have the same members and who sought to turn every campus issue into their own personal struggle. They were the reason that the Black Student Union for a time refused to work with any predominantly white left-wing group: they had experienced a few too many episodes where erstwhile revolutionaries (invariably white and middle-class) showed up to tell the BSU what real oppression was all about.
In any case, a few friends of mine and I decided to do our own thing and formed a new group that sought out contact with the local unions. One of the first issues we got involved in was the then prominent miners strike at the Pittston Coal company in western Virginia.
The strike was a drawn out and particularly difficult one. And it was clear that kind of people who were directly involved with it were the sort that, in Solnit's article, were the object of so much scorn from her well-educated environmentalist friends.
Along with raising attention to the strike on campus and organising a canned food drive, we called a meeting with local unions and (pro-union) religious groups at a church just off campus. And, indeed, you could sense a cultural divide of sorts in the room.
However, focusing on the commonalities and the issues at hand helped, though, as well as the fact as one of our co-organisers at the university was a history teacher who also happened to be the daughter of miners.
To make a long story short and to not belabour my own small part in these proceedings, our efforts culminated in a talk given by a United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) representative who came up from downstate (yes, there is mining in Illinois) to talk to a packed university auditorium about the strike.
Our contacts with local churches and unions ensured that the audience was about equally mixed between students, staff and non-university types. It turned into a rather remarkable evening, and I recall vividly the way that after the talk, one by one, the representatives of the locals that we had helped bring together stood up to pledge their members' support (and money) to support the UMWA. Campus groups chipped in as well, along with and a few local churches. It may not have been decisive. But I like to think that it helped.
The curious thing is that on many other issues we (the students, the churches and the unions) may not have had a lot to say to one another: indeed, we may have been at odds. And there were undoubtedly far more Hank Williams fans among the union members than among the students.
However, at least just for a short time, it didn't seem that that mattered. It was one of the finest evenings of my college years.
The following video is a 'mini-documentary' of the strike. It's quite good.
And I dare you to look down on the people involved.
(Warning: viewers may experience bluegrass music.)
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article on that perennial favourite: liberal bias in academia. (Via)
In my own experiences in the academic worlds of three different countries (the US, Britain and Germany) I have indeed found more 'liberals' amongst university teachers and researchers than there are 'conservatives'. However, those inverted commas should suggest to you that I think these are far from precise labels, especially across three different countries. (And I'm using 'liberal' to mean left(ish) of centre rather than talking about, say, 'classical liberals'.)
On the other hand, this general observation is more limited than it sounds.
First, by the faculties I've tended to be in -- humanities, languages -- which tend, I think, to be more liberal than, say, law, business and -- maybe -- science.
Second, by the fact that 'liberal' doesn't often mean that much these days and if you poke a liberal's opinions on many topics you may find that they're often what I would call quite 'conservative' about certain issues. Similarly, 'conservative' can mean anything from bug-eyed creationist wacko to moderate quasi-libertarian.
Third, by the fact that I think that whole discussion is often a very silly one: sure, the numbers might be skewed, but it has always been easy enough for me to find conservative scholars in any academic context I've been in. (They're usually pretty easy to identify, as they're the ones complaining loudly about how there aren't any conservative scholars). I'm not convinced that professorial indoctrination -- outside of some unfortunately very high profile exceptions -- is remotely as big a problem as is often made out.
In any case, the article at the Chronicle describes research by a husband and wife team of acadmics (he's conservative, she's liberal...I bet you can just feel the scorching Carville-Matalinesquefrisson crackling away simply by reading the titles of their articles...).
Now, there are a few further points to note. First, their research seems to confirm what we might call common sense:
What they found was that students who believed their professors had the same politics they did rated a course more highly than students who didn't. The Woessners also found that students were less interested in a course when they believed their professors' political views clashed with their own.
Yep, m'kay. Then, called before the Pennsylvania legislature to testify about their findings, they gave some startling advice:
Since their research showed that students were turned off when professors expressed views that were contrary to their own, the Woessners told lawmakers that professors should do their best to present both sides of a political argument and tread lightly when it comes to expressing their own views.
Mmmmm...hhmmmm. Ok, I hope we've all learned something new today.
I'm not saying, of course, that having hard research that backs up common sense positions is a bad thing. It just seems to be rolled out with such fanfare by the Chronicle that I found myself a bit underwhelmed.
But I think my favourite little nugget of information doesn't get enough attention. Buried in there somewhere toward the end we find:
The research led the Woessners to conclude that if higher education wants to attract more conservatives to the professoriate, it should smooth the way financially, offering subsidized health insurance and housing for graduate students, and adopting family-friendly policies for professors.
Yes: to attract conservatives to academia offer them subsidies and liberal family leave policies.
Wonderful.
Somehow I don't imagine that would make paranoid loon David Horowitz (sadly not a rare breed) quietly disappear.
Though it would be worth a shot.
And while all those conservative graduates are dazzled by the cheap housing and free child care, liberals can finally implement their long-term dream of taking over Wall Street.
It turns out that, in the face of heavy competition (among others: the Pope, the Westboro ("God Hates Fags") Baptist Church and Chuck Norris), Dinesh D'Souza has won the New Humanist award for being the 'most scurrilous enemy of reason'.
And well deserved it is, if only for his totallyfuckingmoronic claim that the 'cultural left' was 'responsible' for September 11th.
Having seen D'Souza perform live in about 1990, I can confirm that this is certainly worthy as a lifetime achievement award. The man is, truly, an ass.
In this vein, I already have a nominee for this year: Jonah Goldberg, who makes the roughly equally retarded (though historically more long-term) claim that fascism is fundamentally a liberal ideology.
'The systematic erosion of the rule of law in America has many aspects, and one significant one is that conservatives have been trained that they have the right to have judges issue rulings that produce outcomes they like, and when that doesn't happen, it means the judicial process is flawed and corrupt. Put another way, those marching under the banner purportedly opposed to "judicial activism" have been taught that they are entitled to have courts ignore the law in order to ensure the outcomes they want.'
So says Glenn Greenwald, in a lengthy, erudite and rather angry article about right-wing whingeing about 'judicial activism'.
"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."
Republican presidential candidate (and, depending on today's Michigan returns, possibly the front-runner) Mike Huckabee.
Via the New York Times, I learn that actor Wesley Snipes will be tried for non-payment of taxes. Snipes, it seems, counts himself among that interesting coterie of people who have elevated their personal dislike of taxes (which is not all that hard to fathom) into an elaborate self-righteous ideology.
However, this story leads down paths that are far, far weirder.
Snipes, according to the Times, has had an 'association' with a group called the 'Nuwaubians', which it describes as 'a quasi-religious sect of black Americans who promote antigovernment theories and who set up a headquarters in Georgia in the early 1990s.' (The 'association' allegedly extends to Mr. Snipes having sought a permit to build 'a federal permit for a military training compound on land next to the Nuwaubian camp' in 2000.)
That rather bland summary was interesting enough to make me want to know a little more about this curious-sounding corner of American madness.
I wasn't disappointed: a quick check at Wikipedia brought up a description of the Nuwaubians that is so dense with esoteric weirdness that I thought I might present it complete and with all of its very helpful references intact:
Along with some intriguing racial theories (Caucasians, in one myth, were 'originally created as a race of killers to serve blacks as a slave army'), the movement believes that Saturn is not a planet and that the Earth is hollow.
According to the Wikipedia entry, the founder of this charming movement is apparently Dwight York, though his most common alias appears to be 'Dr. Malachai Z. York'. He has, however, also been known by dozens of other names. Many of them are very creative, such as 'Imperial Grand Potentate Noble: Rev. Dr. Malachi Z. York 33°/720°' or 'Chief Black Thunderbird Eagle'.
It also turns out that Mr. York (or whatever) is currently serving time in a maximum security prison after being convicted of multiple child molestation counts. He's due for release in 2119.
For Oxford American, A. Scott narrates his photographic slideshow of the Nuwaubian's (now mostly demolished) ancient-Egyptian-themed 'Tama Re' compound in Putnam County, Georgia (and he refers--among other things--to a ceremony involving 'hundreds of men in red fezzes who were parading around one of the huge pyramids '.)
An earlier story on Snipes, 'tax resistance' and the Nuwaubians appeared in December in Radar magazine.
And if you're wondering, it seems that Nuwaubians, as a rule, vote Republican.
There was quite a remarkable essay by George Monbiot at the Guardian a few days ago that manages to combine zoology, libertarianism and the near-collapse of Northern Rock Building Society.
In particular, he discusses one Matt Ridley, who was not only chair of Northern Rock but is also a well known author of several fascinating books on human nature.
Silly me, I've never made the connection before. (But, then again, I have a difficult enough time remember whether it's Matt Ridley or Mark Ridley, let alone checking on the political allegiances and possible bank chairmanships of the zoologists I read.)
Monbiot gives Ridley's (quite astoundingly radical) libertarian philosophising a good drubbing, but the more interesting bit is where he brings up evolutionary psychology:
I studied zoology in the same department [as Ridley], though a few years later. Like Ridley, I am a biological determinist: I believe that much of our behaviour is governed by our evolutionary history. I accept the evidence he puts forward, but draw completely different conclusions. He believes that modern humans are destined to behave well if left to their own devices; I believe that they are likely to behave badly. If you belong to a small group of intelligent hominids, all of whom are well known to each other, you will be rewarded for cooperation and generosity within the group. (Though this does not stop your group from attacking or exploiting another.) If, on the other hand, you can switch communities at will, travel freely, buy in one country and sell in another, hire strangers then fire them, you will gain more from acting only in your own interest. You'll have an even stronger incentive to act against the common good if you run a bank whose lending and borrowing are so complex that hardly anyone can understand what is happening.
Ridley and I have the same view of human nature: that we are inherently selfish. But the question is whether this nature is subject to the conditions that prevailed during our evolutionary history. I believe they have changed: we can no longer be scrutinised and held to account by a small community. We need governments to fill the regulatory role vacated when our tiny clans dissolved.
In general, I tend far more toward Mobiot's arguments on this issue, even if I think he should avoid the use of the word 'determinist', particularly since so many evolutionary psychologists have been struggling to free themselves of that label and have rightly emphasised interactions between genetics and environment in describing behaviour.
But the larger point that becomes clear is the utter diversity of political views that can emerge from taking human nature seriously.
I note this aspect of Monbiot's reply partly because I have more than once run up against an assertion that evolutionary psychology more or less automatically entails some version or other of radical laissez-faireism and/or the creation of social policy that is 'conservative' in all kinds of undesirable ways. ('Undesirable' from the perspective of the generally liberal people with whom I have had these discussions.)
This is, as I think Monbiot nicely demonstrates, not the case, and I think he is right that the bulk of the evidence on human nature does not lead us to the conclusion that people -- left to their own devices -- will necessarily act in ways that are good. He is right that, for instance:
Human welfare, just as it was a million years ago, is guaranteed only by mutual scrutiny and regulation.
Precisely what the parameters and means of 'mutual scrutiny and regulation' should be is, of course, the tricky bit. Nevertheless, I think there's enough evidence from enough quarters to suggest that what is arguably the most successful form of human social organisation so far (with all its faults and shortcomings) -- i.e., liberal social democracy -- is not Homo sapiens's default state.
There are a lot more things that could be said on that, of course, but just to be brief, Monbiot's article has gotten me thinking about libertarianism again since it's something, actually, with which I have a not entirely hostile but somewhat conflicted relationship.
On the one hand, there are many ways in which I find libertarian thinking and commentary to be very insightful. For a while, for instance, I became a regular reader of Reason, with which I typically found myself in, alternatively, nodding agreement and seething disagreement. (In many ways, they're interesting for asking the right questions if not necessarily coming up with the right answers.)
And there have been various other places where I've found some intriguing thinking from the libertarian corner, particularly by those who seek to develop that thought humbly and consistently (i.e., not just screeching about low taxes and free-enterprise but advocating the passing of liberal immigration laws, the ending of the intrusive legislation of morality and the increased protection of civil rights).
Indeed, I would say that, along with social democracy and naturalism (by which I mean recognising our animal natures and connection to the ecosystems in which we live), libertarian principles of freedom form an important source for my -- admittedly perhaps somewhat ramshackle -- worldview.
Unfortunately, many (though not all) of my personal encounters with real, existing libertarians have tended to be rather negative. They have often held strangely simplistic (ranging to naive and fundamentally ahistorical) perspectives on the world and a relentless (ranging to bug-eyed and ranting) distrust of any concept of social or community good beyond (typically very narrowly conceived) individual interests. Libertarianism in these cases seems to only be an ideology for successful entrepreneurs: what it offers for people don't fit that category -- either because they are not entrepreneurs or because they are not successful -- tends to remain either unclear or be quite obviously vicious.
These, furthermore, have often been accompanied by two things.
1) A tendency toward hyperbole (e.g., 'all taxation is theft', sensible gun control laws are 'oppression' and the UN/EU/WTO/IMF/ATF -- and their fleet of black helicopters -- are plotting a tyrannical world government) and a slightly shouty form of unpleasantness
and
2) Almost limitless self-aggrandisement (i.e., seeing themselves among an extraordinarily creative and productive self-sufficient elite that, obviously, would thrive in the radically privatised world they envision creating). (The latter I blame partly on excessive reading of Ayn Rand, but that's another topic for another time. Or, preferably, for never).
Strangely enough, I have also encountered precisely these same two characteristics in many discussions with the radical left (mainly Trotskyists for some reason I'm not interested enough to speculate about). So, rest assured, I'm quite capable of being equal opportunity with my scorn.
Oddly enough, just about all the libertarians I've met have identified themselves as right-wing, even though a lot of the things that dominate right-wing parties (whether in Europe or America) these days -- xenophobia, religion, militarism, a strong desire to regulate morals -- are anathema to what I would see as 'real' libertarian thinking.
There's not, of course, anything inherently 'right-wing' about the notion of 'freedom' or about being suspicious of the state, or of emphasising forms of voluntary self-organisation to provide mutual assistance. These have long been elements in anarchist and some socialist thought, and the European green movement ('neither Left nor Right: Green' being one of their early slogans) has also long had the libertarian notion of decentralising power as one its core principles as well, even if at times it has been emphasised rather less than more. (Just to note one of the more obvious practical examples: green thinking on energy focuses on decentralised, even household, power production, freeing people not only from the centralised power of the state but also from the concentrated power of large corporations.)
Of the two general strands of thought that emerged from the 60s (and which have in various ways been around for long, long before that of course) -- i.e., 1) making a new world and 2) being left alone to do your own thing -- my own emphasis has been shifting toward the latter: partly because it's increasingly clear to me that the first -- whether in its left or right-wing form -- generally leads to Very Bad Things. (NB: Making a better world is, I think, still on the table though.)
Now, I know there are a lot of reasonable and very insightful libertarian ideas out there. (And I know that the Left has its own ideological silliness to answer for.)
In response to what seems to be a rather unhinged critique of the science of global warming, the journal notes:
Actually, it is the AGW [Anthropogenic Global Warming]-deniers who are the collectivists. They support allowing wealthy individuals and corporations to keep engaging in practices that essentially levy a heavy tax-burden on the rest of us. By depleting natural capital, the extractive robber-barons are externalizing their costs to other citizens and future generations. A true individualist libertarian would insist that everyone pay their fair share in the present-day rather than sloughing it off on their children, right? If you want to refrain from sounding completely ignorant and backward on this subject, you need to read and understand the concepts of Natural Capitalism, Externalities, Sustainability, and the Tragedy of the Commons. If you don’t, you have no business claiming to be a true Capitalist.
This article follows another (here), which contained the following:
Let’s look at the nature of our situation: Aside from radiation coming from the sun and other parts of space or the occasional meteorite coming in, and whatever heat is reflected or re-radiated into space going out, Earth is a closed system. Each of the 6.5 billion people who live here therefore have the right (an inherent human right as opposed to an arbitrary legal right) to fully use 1/6,500,000,000th of its resources and atmosphere, which are decidedly finite. If Stelene or Matt Drudge or Michael [Crichton] want to use more than that share of atmosphere or non-renewable resource, they need to purchase it from the people whose share they are consuming. That’s the free-market, right? It’s a classic problem of the commons, and even smart libertarians recognize this.
I imagine there are a lot of things that the writers at Black Sun Journal and I would disagree about. (I'm far from a 'true Capitalist', and they have that Strange Affection for Ayn Rand that I mentioned before and that I Just Can't Comprehend....)
The longer I spend blogging, however, the more I find it is difficult to find anyone with whom I completely agree anyway. But I'm also coming increasingly to the conclusion that, given the enormous decline in the civility of political discourse on the internet (described well, if with a certain justified incivility, at Whiskey Fire here and here) that I have come to see even a reasonable disagreement as, somehow, something precious.
And I am pleased to see the folks at Black Sun Journal take on crackpot irrationalism masquerading as secular, rational and libertarian free-thinking.
There are enough serious discussions to be had, after all.
[Update:] Just after posting this I found (via Pharyngula) a link to China Miéville's recent critique of libertarianism in In These Times. Worth reading. (As is his science-fiction novel Perdido Street Station, which I read recently on vacation.)
