American Conservatism and European Conservatism

Welcome friends!

I was reading an article in the newspaper the other day about the collapse of the American conservative movement as a serious or ostensibly serious intellectual enterprise and the paucity of writers who have thus far attempted to address that phenomenon.  The article mentioned famous conservative gas bag George Will as one of the few who have.  He’s apparently put out a book on the topic entitled “The Conservative Sensibility.”  Based on the few points the article I was reading provided on Mr. Will’s book I think I’ll give it a pass.  Sounds rather like more of the same self-serving claptrap I’ve come  to expect from conservative authors.  What makes me think so is that according to the article I was reading Mr. Will argues in his book that American conservatism has “almost nothing to do” with European conservatism, which he said is “descended from, and often is still tainted by, throne-and-altar, blood-and-soil nostalgia, irrationality, and tribalism.” Mr. Will apparently paraphrases the Iron Lady (former UK Prime Minister Thatcher) in observing that “European nations were made by history, the United States was made by philosophy.” According to Mr. Will, American conservatism is a project that seeks to defend the original philosophy of the Founding Fathers, “classical liberalism,” which ostensibly promotes limited government and the veneration of individual liberty.  Yeah, sure.  In the words of the great stereotype of the plain talking American pragmatist: what a load of crap.

It seems to be quite a thing with conservatives these days to make stuff up and discuss the world not as it really is but as they would like it to be or maybe as they would like others to think it is.  Surely at least we can agree that the current incoherent state of conservative ideology as expressed by the Republican Party and their current champion Mr. Trump, certified as bona fide conservatives by basically every conservative group in the nation, the conservative infotainment and media industry, and pretty much every man or woman in the street who describes himself or herself as a conservative, runs exactly counter to Mr. Will’s contention that American conservatism is based on philosophy rather than more pragmatic and variable bases.  Indeed, I would suggest the vast majority of conservatives tend toward disinterest or sometimes downright antipathy to philosophy of any sort, which is part of the famous anti-intellectualism the conservative Republican Party touts at every opportunity.  Mr. Trump in particular has made quite a point of saying how much he loves uneducated people, and while anyone can do philosophy or at least appreciate philosophy a bit of education certainly makes it a bit more likely.

What I think Mr. Will fails to comprehend is that the “classical liberalism” philosophy he apparently takes so seriously himself and imagines other American conservatives to have taken seriously was never really a very serious philosophy to begin with.  It was always a pragmatic rhetorical exercise designed to buttress and expand the economic and political power of the wealthy elite.  And that, of course, is also the eternal objective of European conservatism.  American conservatism and European conservatism are simply two faces or aspects of the same movement with strategies and tactics that have sometimes varied due to local national conditions.  For a long while American conservatives like Mr. Will for example were able to use their misleading, baby-level hash up of economic reasoning and their rather dubious and incoherent political philosophy to keep people in line using hot air alone. However, that approach hasn’t been working as well of late, perhaps because most average social media and internet obsessed Americans have just stopped paying much attention to even baby level philosophy or perhaps because Americans on average have become incrementally better educated and have come to appreciate the particular philosophy American conservatives have been peddling these past several decades is just not very good philosophy. As a result American conservatism has gradually drifted into areas that are as traditionally American as apple pie but portrayed by Mr. Will as more typical of foreign European conservatism, that is to say, nationalism, nativism, racism, authoritarianism, and so on.  As a result the leaders of the American and European conservative movements get along famously today.  They’re very much on the same page.  Their former apparent antipathy was likely simply an impression caused by the American elite correctly forecasting that the European elite’s attempt to concentrate their economic and political power and do away with political democracy was doomed to fail and it was not in their best interests to get on board at that time.  A difference in strategy or timing more than objectives or values.

Anyway, it’s hard to interpret Mr. Will’s insistence there’s some fundamental difference between American and European conservatism as anything more than the wishful thinking of an aging agent or hired gun for the American elite who wants now to portray himself as something rather more serious and substantial.  One can sympathize of course.  No one cares to be shown up by events as a tool, a useful idiot, someone who was so myopic or easily manipulated that he fell hook, line, and sinker for a body of work that was always meant to be a rhetorical device to manipulate the unwary and uneducated.  Perhaps the man is a true believer and perhaps not, but one thing is clear, he will apparently claim to be so until his dying day. 

References

Why American conservatism failed.  Fareed Zakaria.  July 4, 2019.  The Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-american-conservatism-failed/2019/07/04/bf221ddc-9dd7-11e9-9ed4-c9089972ad5a_story.html?utm_term=.baa1fc2167de.

Fair Pay, Fair Play, and the Women’s World Cup

Welcome friends!

I must apologize for my negligence these past few weeks.  Good old summertime, when the living is easy.  And maybe the FIFA Women’s World Cup had a little something to do with it as well.  Surprised?  So am I.  As with I suppose most US citizens of a certain age I don’t normally give soccer a second thought, although perhaps a little more unusually I must admit I don’t normally give any sport at all a second thought.  But I suppose like most citizens of anywhere I have a certain low brow nationalistic pride whenever the national team does well at whatever it might be.  Fortunately, in this case it wasn’t competitive hot dog eating or tiddlywinks but the reasonably entertaining sport of soccer or football as most of the world calls it.  Of course, this year was a bit choppier than average and I almost decided to stop watching after the embarrassingly ugly and oddly disproportionate celebrating of the USA team after every goal they scored in their multi-goal thrashing of the team from Thailand.  Gooooooooooal!  Hey, look at me everyone!  I scored a goal!  Let me act the fool for the next five minutes!  Let me see how wide I can unhinge my jaw!  Let me explore what manner of awkward and clownish gestures I can make!  Did they realize that particular game wasn’t for the championship?  That it was really just a rather tedious first round rout?  A thoroughly unentertaining mismatch?  Because the way they were acting I wonder if some of them might have been a little confused.  Or maybe they just didn’t have a lot of that quaint old time virtue we used to call sportsmanship.  But maybe that’s not entirely fair?  Who does these days?  No, I suppose these days it’s pretty much blast your own horn at maximum volume every minute of every day from our conservative clown president to the national team on the soccer field.  But I didn’t come here to talk about soccer.  All things considered it was a mildly entertaining diversion but hardly something I would write a blog post about.  I mean, who the hell really cares anyway?  No, what I found rather more interesting was the extended public conversation after the tournament on the issue of equal pay for the women’s team relative to the men’s team.

What I found interesting about the aforementioned debate is not the facts or merits of the issue but really that some Americans were prepared to discuss it at all.  This whole issue of fairness or more generally any sort of ethical reasoning as it relates to the labor market or more broadly our distributional system in general is of course central to liberal and leftist ideology, but it’s long been very much a no-go area for conservatives who tend to associate any discussion of distributional issues with what they call “full blown socialism,” despite the fact we have already have a distributional system in place and could hardly have a functioning economic system without one.  They’ve apparently convinced themselves the best way to defend the existing distributional system that favors them so extravagantly is not to defend it explicitly but to portray it as no fit subject for polite conversation all relevant issues having already been entirely disposed of by various bewigged slave holding farmers in the eighteenth century, or having fallen down from the heavens in the form of Natural Law, or if they’re really confused or dishonest, after having been established as socially optimal by neoclassical economic theory.  They prefer people now think of it as a proverbial black box.  An infallibly ethical black box long past requiring any detailed understanding or defense. 

And the notion of the distributional system as unassailable black box seems fine with most Americans at least of the uneducated conservative sort, which seem to predominate just now.  The result of course is that if someone isn’t doing as well as he or she supposes he or she should be doing it will never appear to be the result of any deficiencies in our economic system but of someone rigging it or sabotaging it in some way, usually minorities of various sorts, immigrants, foreigners, educated people, and of course anyone who talks plainly and openly about distributional issues like liberals and leftists.  Conservative Americans in general hate things like labor unions in which people are seen fighting for what they see as their fair share of the economic pie because they prefer to think these things happen according to some impersonal and ethically infallible system that no ethical person has any business “interfering” with.  For some reason, adulation of the rich and powerful I suppose, they don’t seem to mind as much when it involves people at the higher end of the wealth spectrum, for example CEOs negotiating pay packages that allow them to make out like bandits even while the companies they’re ostensibly running file for bankruptcy.  I suppose it’s all in the manner of what one might call a vicious circle of bad reasoning: it’s different when rich people do whatever they can to get as big a slice of the pie as they can since they deserve to be rich and have that ability because that’s what fell out of our impersonal and ethically infallible distributional system.  Poor folk aren’t so lucky.  So one can well imagine how odd it feels to be an American and hear other Americans suddenly opining on “fair” pay for the women’s soccer team.  Since when did fairness enter the issue?  Have we all become liberals and leftists?  

Fairness is always good of course.  That’s not where I’m going with this at all.  But if we’re going to start talking about fairness I’m not sure I’d consider the case of millionaire athletes the most pressing or important context in which to bring it up.  Our current distributional system is rife with unfairness.  Take our system of inheritance for example.  That’s obviously a big one if you think fairness implies the distribution of economic power should depend in some way on one’s individual merit.  You may recall conservatives and Republicans were in the news recently drastically reducing inheritance taxes or possibly even eliminating them entirely.  I’d look it up, but it doesn’t really matter right now.  The point is that if we’ve decided we want to be concerned about distributional fairness let’s talk about the fairness of allocating sometimes immense economic power to sometimes lazy, shiftless, amoral, layabouts while allocating relatively negligible economic power to hard working, responsible, ethically upstanding young people who have not had the advantages of birth.  Want another one?  How about the way we’ve set up our otherwise generally democratic political system such that rich people wield disproportionate influence and can use government to represent their own interests to the exclusion of the interests of other people?  But then I suppose a conservative would have no problem with that one because they’re rich, right?  Well, let’s take the bull by the horns and talk about the labor market.  How about the fact that a good deal of the returns one sees on the labor market has precious little to do with any merit on one’s own part?  A kid from the right side of the tracks going to a good school, having everything he or she needs in terms of an environment conducive to study,  having no financial responsibilities or worries, and aided in every way possible by his or her presumably at least somewhat well off parents will naturally tend to do better on average in our system then a kid from the wrong side of the tracks no matter the relative amount of individual merit the latter might posses.  Oh here we go.  I’m not saying it can’t be done.  One hears the odd anecdote.  But certainly not facing the same odds are they?  And by the way did you know labor market models that attempt to predict wages based on the sorts of things one might suppose would be relevant only ever seem to explain only a small part of the observed differences in wages?  That means we don’t even really know what drives a good deal of the difference in results, although one suppose such factors as connections and just being the in the right place at the right time, otherwise known as luck, likely play a role.  And if we’re going to push it to the extreme what about the fact that even a system based on individual merit as conventionally conceived would allocate greater economic power to those fortunate enough to be born with various innate characteristics such as intelligence or talent or what have you?  I don’t know about you, but anytime you have people being born to any sort of privileged position it doesn’t necessary strike me as particularly fair although it may be defensible along some other dimension.  My point is simply if we’re going to start taking up fairness as it relates to our distributional system I would suggest we have quite a bit of work to do.  

So what do you think?  Will the conversation relating to fair pay for the US women’s soccer team translate this time to a more general and serious discussion of fairness as it relates to our distributional system in general?  Or is what we’re seeing now more a matter of the time honored American tradition of worshipping rich folk and celebrities and once the financial situation of these already very well paid athletes is resolved satisfactorily the issue of fairness for the common folk will inevitably recede once again into the background? Or will the natural inclination of Americans to avoid at all cost honest discussions of distributional issues torpedo even the cause of bigger paychecks for the ladies of the US soccer team?  Only time will tell.  But by all means as liberals and leftists let’s keep discussing the fairness and other ethical attributes of the distribution of economic power no matter the outcome of this particular tempest in a teapot.  The quest for fairness and more generally living an ethical life is part of being human.  Let’s hold on to our humanity and cherish it.  Let’s fight for fair pay and fair play.  

Conservatism, Stupidity, and Killing the Problem Out

Welcome friends!

I suppose you saw the recent news story about one Mark Chambers, the mayor of some small town named Carbon Hill in the quintessentially conservative and Republican deep, deep south US state of Alabama, who was in the news recently suggesting the only way to deal with arguments presented by gay people, transgender people, “Socialists,” and abortion rights advocates was to “kill them out.”  The people; not the arguments.  Yes, seems it all started when Mr. Chambers shared a Facebook post, all capital letters a la our current president and every other right-wing nut job on the internet, that lamented, “We live in a society where homosexuals lecture us on morals, transvestites lecture us on human biology, baby killers lecture us on human rights, and socialists lecture us on economics.”  The shared comment went on to opine the only way to deal with that dire state of affairs is violent revolution, which prompted Mayor Chamber to contribute this bit of wisdom: “… the only way to change it would be to kill the problem out. I know it’s bad to say but with out (sic) killing them out there’s no way to fix it.”  When confronted with his thesis Mr. Chambers first said in true spineless conservative form: “I think that’s somebody else’s post.”  A short while later he admitted writing it but said it had been taken out of context and anyway wasn’t really meant for public consumption.  Later still he explained he never actually said he supported killing gay people or anyone else; he was simply saying in the hypothetical case of violent revolution “the only way to get your way is to kill the other side out.”  (Yes, apparently rural Alabamans say the word “out” a lot or at least some do.  Never really noticed that before.  Odd.)  Later he added more modestly “it was just something dumb and stupid that I said … I don’t believe anyone should be killed for anything that they believe in.”  Well, that at least sounds OK in my book.  I guess he came clean in the end.  Walked it back.  Disavowed it.  Acknowledged it was both dumb and stupid.  Admitted he should never have said it.  So I guess all’s well that ends well.  Seems churlish to carry on about it.  But really I’m not so much interested in what this particular fellow had to say than in a more general point about the conservative and Republican mindset here in the USA and in particular the peculiar anti-intellectualism that appears to have become an integral part of that mindset.

The interesting bit of the whole event to me involves the segue from the complaint involving people lecturing people to the call for violent revolution and thence to killing people out.  Sorry, I’m starting to talk a little funny myself.  One can interact with the locals a bit too much sometimes.  I meant to say killing people.  Being a liberal and leftist and basically just an educated, mature person I would have thought a more sensible response to people lecturing people would be to simply resolve to investigate and refute whatever nonsense these ostensibly shady characters are trying to foist on everyone.  Or if one can’t refute what they’re saying maybe acknowledge they make some good points never mind their personal qualifications and characteristics or lack thereof and investigate the consequences of one’s discovery.  Isn’t that some sort of principle of logic?  Don’t judge an argument according to your views about the person making the argument but on the merits of the argument itself?  But apparently that just isn’t in the mindset of your average conservative or Republican American.  Apparently, for those people the only appropriate response to hearing arguments they can’t refute from people they don’t like is killing the people involved.  Wouldn’t make the arguments go away of course.  Unfortunately for conservatives one can’t actually kill ideas.  Even if one manages to kill the messengers the ideas just sit there, as valid or invalid as ever, waiting for someone else to give them expression.  But anyway it would mean they wouldn’t have to hear them just then and from those particular people, which I suppose must count for something.

It’s not unexpected at all to hear this sort of thing from conservative Republicans.  It’s been quite obvious for some time now the wily and wealthy conservative elite of the nation who use the Republican Party to look after their interests have been relying increasingly on stupid people for their political power.  I’ve previously mentioned a few notable instances of Republicans endorsing stupidity including that time the Republican Party of Texas wrote into its political platform it opposed “critical thinking skills and similar programs,” which it claimed “have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority,” and the time the then governor of Louisiana, a bona fide conservative and Republican of course, famously pleaded with the Republican National Committee to “stop being the stupid party.”  The culmination of this great surge in support for stupidity has been of course our current president, and I use the word lightly, Dishonest Don, a man renowned around the world for lying, never seeming to have any idea what he’s talking about, and extolling the virtues of the uneducated; a man who represents the apotheosis of stupidity if you will.  And this conservative cult of stupidity has certainly paid off for them in very practical terms, by which I mean financially.  Yes, the Trump Train has finally delivered to the wealthy elite of the nation their long desired tax cuts and greatly furthered other conservative priorities such as weakening and likely eliminating Obamacare and just in general sinking the national finances thus drastically reducing the government’s ability to address distributional and other concerns in the future.  One can well understand why American conservatives are now convinced Stupidity is King.

But one can’t help but wonder if the conservative elite truly understand the potential cost of their enthusiastic endorsement and support of stupidity.  Typical when one considers the question, “What would a stupid person do?” the answer is not very pleasant and sometimes downright alarming.  For example, let’s say a conservative Republican in some southern swamp or other hears an argument he doesn’t like?  What does he do?  Well, just consider: what would a stupid person do?  Take out his or her gun and shoot the person making the argument of course.  Duh.  But what happens when everyone starts doing it and people are shooting people all over the place?  Will they make distinctions and continue to faithfully support the wealthy conservative elite as they do now?  Well, let’s think about it.  What would a stupid person do?  I don’t know.  I suspect he or she might just take out a gun and shoot pretty much anyone in an orgy of random and senseless violence.  Because that’s the nature of stupidity isn’t it?   It doesn’t really make sense.  It can’t be reasoned with.  It doesn’t cohere.  It’s incompatible with logic, reason, civilized discussion, and political democracy.  It belongs more to the realm of violence, dysfunction, anarchy, and eventually social failure.  Consider the last major regime that relied nearly exclusively on stupidity: Nazi Germany.  I suppose it did OK for a little while but then the inevitable happened and it ended its stunted life in the horrible train wreck of WWII.  It wasn’t an accident or a coincidence.  It had to happen that way.  How do I know?  Well, think about it.  What would a loyal Nazi driving a train do?  Well, what would a stupid person do?  That’s right.  He would drive the train directly into the mountainside or at least dutifully follow orders to drive the train directly into the mountainside.  It’s the nature of the beast.  It’s how he came to be driving the train in the first place.  It seems the wealthy conservative elite of the USA are now intent on playing pretty much the same game.  They’re convinced they’ll come out ahead if they encourage and nurture stupidity here in the USA.  But will they in the long run?  Are they really smarter than their mid-century brethren or merely equally deluded?  Should we sit around and see what happens?  Well, what would a stupid person do?  Not give a damn?  Look the other way?  Sit down and have a beer?  In that case let’s do the opposite, shall we?  Let’s decide to not be stupid.  Let’s fight conservatism and Republicanism intellectually and at the ballot box every chance we get.

References

‘Kill the problem’: Alabama mayor sorry for Facebook post accused of ‘inciting violence’ against gays.  Allyson Chiu.  June 5, 2019.  Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/06/05/kill-problem-out-alabama-mayor-sorry-facebook-post-accused-inciting-violence-against-gays/?utm_term=.7ddcb4417f65.

Texas GOP rejects ‘critical thinking’ skills.  Really.  Valerie Strauss.  July 9, 2012. The Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html?utm_term=.49a53a564fe4.

Bobby Jindal: GOP Should ‘Stop Being The Stupid Party.’  Paige Lavender.  November 13, 2012.  Huffpost.  https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bobby-jindal-gop_n_2121511

Is the Fake Essential to Conservatism?

Welcome friends!

I was reading an article the other day on the peculiar fake science American conservatives in the supremely southern state of Alabama employed recently when explaining their new anti-abortion bill.  It occurred to me conservatives and Republicans here in the USA are famous for espousing fake science in a variety of contexts including human sexuality and the climate to take two random examples.  And it’s not just science.  Our current conservative Republican president is famous for fakery in the form of stretching the truth, making things up, and basically just lying his backside off every chance he gets.  We have a vast conservative “infotainment” industry devoted to peddling fake news to a clientele with an apparently insatiable appetite for fakery.  So what is it with conservatives and fakery anyway?  Why do they love it so much or at least not seem bothered by it at all?  I’m starting to realize the conservative commitment to the unreal may be greater than I had  previously appreciated.  Indeed, they may see accepting convenient falsehoods as the fundamental and necessary basis of human society.  How did I arrive at that conclusion?  Well, that’s a funny story.

I had submitted one of my usual humble comments to the aforementioned article in which I suggested a love of fake science was central to conservatism and likely began with their fascination with the Queen of Fake Science, that fetid stew of hidden and mis-stated value premises, mathematical proofs of the obvious and unremarkable, and clueless amateur philosopher gobbledygook that is neoclassical economic theory and in particular the so-called welfare economics component of that theory.  I suggested conservatives are committed to fake science the way they’re committed to fake news and alternative facts, and that it was likely because for conservatives words are always just a means to an end, a cheap attempt to manipulate other people through rhetoric and salesmanship.  They never employ nor expect to employ words in an honest discussion of any value or issue.

In a short while a reply or really a riposte appeared from some fellow (I assume) rather drolly named Will Yum arguing what humanists like me fake is a “rationale for values” beyond the faith-based one.  (A very typical rhetorical device for conservatives over the past several years has been to not bother denying or addressing criticisms but to simply lob the same criticism back in an attempt to establish what usually turns out to be a false equivalence.  In this case Mr. Yum didn’t bother disputing the claim conservatives rely on fakery but predictably sought to establish humanists also rely on fakery thus apparently eliminating the problem in the us against them world of the conservative info warrior.)  According to Mr. Yum’s comment “a totally materialistic and naturalistic universe doesn’t provide any moral guidance at all,” with the unfortunate consequence a regime like Nazi Germany for example could not be “shown to be evil.”  This feat in Mr. Yum’s estimation can only be accomplished if one believes in “transcendent values,” which he suggested cannot possibly exist in a naturalistic universe.  

I responded of course that I found his way of thinking somewhat peculiar and delivered the usual humanist response.  I suggested the ultimate rationale for human values must be human emotion and reason.  While I understood his desire to demonstrate Nazi Germany to have been evil in some absolute and indisputable way I suggested making things up to arrive at that result really only gives one the illusion of getting where one wants to go.  It doesn’t really get one there.  I argued we should face the world as it is, not as how we would like it to be.  We may believe Nazi Germany was evil but the old Nazis clearly did not.  That was the whole problem.  We did not share certain values and emotions we each found important.  That’s why we had to fight it out, because we had no other way to connect with one another and work it out peacefully.  I suggested unfortunately that is what sometimes happens.  That’s the way the world works.  I did concede it would be nice if we could do a little science experiment or bit of math or logic or look deep into our collective conscience or whatever and get an answer we must all necessarily accept, but I pointed out that’s not how values and ethics actually work.  I disputed the idea we shouldn’t support our own values unless we can show those values to have some superhuman validity or origin, that is, unless they’re something they’re really not, as just not really making a whole lot of sense.  I urged Mr.Yum not to fake his or her way through life but to be real and face life.  And there the exchange ended, except for a little coda in which Mr. Yum characterized my reply as breathtaking in its honesty but “utterly revealing of the vapidness of the revealed worldview,” to which I responded I was sorry he found reality so vapid, I hoped he would continue trying to make life more interesting for himself by making things up if he felt so inclined, but I thought it unreasonable of him to expect other people, particularly those seeking honesty and the truth, to join him there.  After that the line as they say went dead.

But you know the larger issue for me was how did we get from fake science to fake religion and fake ethics anyway?  It’s a funny sort of segue, although when I thought about it a bit I did seem to remember hearing a somewhat similar argument from some religious conservatives to the effect that if religion were not true we’d still have to pretend it is in order to have some basis for ethical reasoning.  It occurred to me although Mr. Yum didn’t explicitly say so and indeed was ostensibly interested in establishing just the opposite, that non-religious people pretend to have a basis for ethics when they really don’t, perhaps the comment was in the order of a Freudian slip.  Perhaps he was alluding in some way to the argument about the supposed necessity of religion.  Perhaps what got him thinking about religion was the suspicion the conservative attachment to convenient fakery started not with the Queen of Fake Science, economics, as I had suggested but with religion and hence in their view the foundation of ethics.  In a sense I wondered if he meant the conservative attachment or at least acceptance of convenient fakery was integral to their theory of the formation and continuation of human society.  I mean, it would explain a lot wouldn’t it?  Coming from that perspective, with society based on the Greatest Convenient Lie Every Told, who would bat an eye at the sort of falsehood and fakery we see in politics and economics?  Could conservatism really be such a sad and inhuman creed?  Could it really be eternally committed to the false and unreal?  From what I’ve seen of it I think so.  All the more reason for those who believe in the power of human reason and the truth to fight the anti-intellectual, anti-democratic, and indeed anti-social doctrine of conservatism.  Vincit omnia veritas.  

References

Conservatives’ junk science is having real consequences.  Dana Milbank.  May 17, 2019.  The Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-states-are-laboratories--run-right-now-by-mad-scientists/2019/05/17/94da1a72-78aa-11e9-bd25-c989555e7766_story.html?utm_term=.b5f86bd3146f

American Conservatives and Republicans Not Big Believers In Democracy

Welcome friends!

Looks like I’ve focused on the religious head of the multi-headed monster of contemporary conservatism the last couple of times out so maybe this time I’ll take another swipe at the economic head.  You may recall one of the themes I’ve returned to time and time again is the inherent conflict between the increasingly concentrated economic power structure generated by our current formulation of a market system and our at least theoretically broader based democratic political power structure and how economic conservatives are basically big on the former but not the latter, that is to say, they tend to be all for rich folk being able to exercise their economic power but generally suspicious or downright aghast at the prospect of poor folk being able to exercise their democratic political power.  (See my post Democracy and Leftism, March 21, 2019, for a recent discussion of that issue.)  Shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone given that Americans, predominantly conservatives, have recently elected corrupt billionaire Donald Trump to the White House with the mandate he shrink the power of democratic government and expand the power of wealthy folk such as CEOs, stock brokers, bankers, and of course the hereditarily wealthy class.  I’ve expressed this a number of times in rather blunt terms by suggesting American conservatives have become ever more forthright in their disdain for or sometimes intense hatred of political democracy.  The conservatives’ great champion, President Trump, is famous for attacking our democratic political institutions, attempting to obstruct justice, attacking the free press, making “jokes” about becoming president for life, and openly admiring or as he says “falling in love” with anti-democratic despots all across the globe.  However, my vote for the most conclusive example of contemporary American conservatism’s antipathy toward political democracy would have to be President Trump’s recent nominee for the Federal Reserve Board, a conservative gasbag named Stephen Moore who formerly worked for the Wall Street Journal (of course) and CNN (rather surprisingly) and currently works at a so-called conservative “think tank” called the Heritage Foundation (of course).

According to the CNN story on his nomination Mr. Moore has said repeatedly he believes “capitalism” rather more important than political democracy.  (I’m putting the quotes around the word “capitalism” because as I’ve explained a number of times in the past I view the word sufficiently ill-defined that it has no place in serious economic thinking or writing and belongs only to the field of political rhetoric.  All modern democracies including the USA in particular have had primarily market based economies with government regulation and intervention for some time and all reasonable debate for years has been about the level and type of government involvement, an issue which the notion of “capitalism” leaves entirely unaddressed and hence open to subjective interpretation.  Indeed, according to conservative pundits we’ve ended “capitalism” in favor of “socialism” any number of times in this country in the past through such unmitigated horrors as the income tax, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, minimum wage laws, etc., and yet miraculously it seems always available to be destroyed anew by whatever social policy may be on the table.)  He clarified his views on the relative importance and validity of the economic power structure and political power structure in an interview for Michael Moore’s 2009 file “Capitalism: A Love Story” by saying, “I’m not even a big believer in democracy.”  Of course, it must be noted he later presented his views rather differently by basically punting on the issue and saying, “I believe in free market capitalism and representative government.”  Assuming he wasn’t playing games with the phrase “representative government” and accepts it equates to political democracy one suspects he may have submitted to that much feared social force conservatives call “political correctness,” which ostensibly requires them to lie about their true values to avoid censure by other people.  Or maybe he just doesn’t really have any strong views on the subject and flip flops this way and that like the proverbial silk hanky of legend.  Conservatives do have a reputation in this country for simple mindedness.  

If you review the rest of Mr. Moore’s sophomoric economic stylings you’ll understand the basis of his love for “capitalism” and his possibly on again off again hatred of political democracy.  Basically, he’s an advocate of the hoary notion that an ill-defined unregulated “free market” or, yes, “capitalism,” is a panacea for all of society’s ills and in particular does away with any distributional concerns one might have.  As such he appears to have spent a good deal of time and effort on the standard litany of complaints economic conservatives have with “activist” government “interfering” with the “free market” by addressing market failures and distributional concerns.  So for example, he has questioned the existence of the Department of Labor, Energy, and Commerce; the IRS; the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau; the Department of Housing and Urban Development; and the Department of Education.  He has suggested eliminating Social Security, Medicaid, minimum wage laws, and personal as well as corporate taxes.  Of course, along with this standard conservative claptrap he’s also had a few ideas that must be classified as a bit odd even for conservatives.  In 2015 for example he advocated abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard although since that time he’s apparently thought it through again and now reports he doesn’t support that.  So let’s give the man the benefit of the doubt and set that one aside.  The point is that in general Mr. Moore can be taken as a fairly standard representative of the common economic conservative themes of free markets as miraculous and ethically infallible panaceas and the importance of shrinking the role of democratic government.  As such his views relating to not being a big believer in democracy, despite being half-heartedly and rather unconvincingly walked back later, is a very good example of the way in which mainstream conservatives tend to favor the concentrated economic power derived from the market however construed over the theoretically at least much broader based and more egalitarian political power derived from voting power in a political democracy.

Some articles have suggested Mr. Moore might not end up on the Fed after all although interestingly not because of his clear animus toward political democracy, which supports my contention that that view is now accepted as perfectly representative of the conservative viewpoint, but because of some combination of the typical social conservative mix of racism and sexism in some of his previous commentary.  Well, that plus plain old economic incompetence. As an example of what some people probably fear in that area Paul Waldman, opinion writer for the Washington Post, suggested Mr. Moore has the curious tendency whenever a Republican is in office to view the economy at risk of deflation and needing the Fed to give it a little boost and whenever a Democrat is in office to view the economy at risk of hyperinflation and needing the Fed to slow things down a bit.  That pressure to use the Fed for short term political gain is of course why we have an independent Fed in the first place, although given Mr. Moore’s apparent inability to grasp the rationale for a great many other government programs and institutions, and given his waffling on the legitimacy and necessity of the Fed itself, one would hardly expect him to appreciate the point.  On the other hand Mr. Moore’s views are perfectly consistent with Mr. Trump’s own views on the Fed, which led one former chair of the Fed, Janet Yellen, to suggest Mr. Trump doesn’t really understand national economics and the role of the Fed.  Ironic of course because in the minds of economic conservatives and the relatively educated part of the conservative Republican base the laughably simplistic claptrap expressed by Mr. Moore is evidence of their ostensibly superior grasp of economics.  The relatively less educated part of the conservative base of course doesn’t even understand the simplistic claptrap instead attributing to Mr. Trump a superior knowledge of economics because he’s rich and at least poses as a successful businessman.

Lest there be any confusion on this issue in the future let me explain that for many decades now conservative thinkers have been espousing a simplistic and really just flat out incorrect interpretation of economic theory that implies something called “the free market” necessarily runs to or approximates a perfectly competitive market structure, that fails to acknowledge other market structures or market failures, and that fails to acknowledge the distributional issues that must be addressed and are addressed but lie entirely outside the scope of economic theory.  That rhetorical nonsense has led them to excoriate democratic government as a dire threat that unscrupulous people in the form of the voting public can use to “interfere” with the black box panacea of “the free market.” As a result we now have a president, very popular with conservatives indeed, who clearly questions the fundamental basis of political democracy, openly admires foreign anti-democratic despots, and nominates to top government posts people like Mr. Moore who state flatly they’re not big believers in political democracy.  After many years fretting about the threat of anti-democratic authoritarian communism and other foreign enemies it seems the true threat to American democracy is the intellectually vacuous and amoral rot of conservative ideology.

Addendum:

Mr. Moore announced today he has withdrawn his name from consideration to sit on the Fed.  Apparently and rather surprisingly some Senate Republicans took issue with some of Mr. Moore’s more sexist and racist statements, although I see no indication his views on political democracy or the role of the Fed played any role.  I guess one might say we dodged a bullet that time, but of course one presumes conservative Republicans have a great stockpile of bullets beyond just this one man.  We’re not out of the woods yet.  Not by a long shot.

References

Trump’s Fed pick Stephen Moore is a self-described ‘radical’ who said he’s not a ‘big believe in democracy.’  Andrew Kaczynski and Paul LeBlanc.  April 13, 2019.  CNN.  https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/politics/stephen-moore-kfile/index.html

The Stephen Moor farce reveals the depths of GOP cynicism.  Paul Waldman.  May 1, 2019.  The Washington Post.    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/01/stephen-moore-farce-reveals-depths-gop-cynicism/?utm_term=.f1387e55c33a.

Trump doesn’t understand economics, says former Fed chair Janet Yellen.   February 26, 2019.  BBC.  https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47369123

Stephen Moore, Trump’s Federal Reserve choice, bows out amid scrutiny of past remarks about women, other topics.  Felicia Sonmez and Damian Paletta.  May 2, 2019.  The Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/stephen-moore-trumps-choice-for-federal-reserve-seat-bows-out-amid-scrutiny-of-past-remarks-about-women-other-topics/2019/05/02/0eb33cba-6c45-11e9-a66d-a82d3f3d96d5_story.html?utm_term=.013d98865a47

Gay People And The Strange Love of Christians

Welcome friends!

Last time out I discussed the Sultan of Brunei’s recent attempt to pander to the increasingly conservative and extremist Islamic religious sentiments in that part of the world by instituting a law requiring gay people be stoned to death if caught expressing their sexuality, a barbarous and torturous form of execution representatives of the Sultan suggested anyway was integral to Sharia or Islamic religious law.  Whenever I report on the news of the day from the more Muslim parts of the world I’m always afraid people may get the wrong end of the stick and suspect I have a particular antipathy toward the Islamic religion, which I don’t believe is really the case at all.  Indeed, I consider Islam to be a fairly typical representation of the religious mindset, which I suppose must explain why I write from a humanist rather than religious perspective.  I’m sure I must have mentioned before the similarly barbarous and gory history of Christianity, which has arguably been relatively benign the past few decades but of course was formerly the wellspring of an appalling amount of murder, torture, warfare, hatred, and discord throughout the world.  Not sure I remembered to do that last time out but fortunately I got a little dose of Christian “love” upside the head the other day to remind me.  It got me thinking about the similarities and differences in how those two great Middle Eastern religions cope or fail to cope with the existence of sexual minorities, so maybe I can just do a quick follow up on that.  (I’d say three great Middle Eastern religions and address Judaism as well but honestly who really knows what they think about anything unless one is actually in the club?  I suppose that’s one of the things I like about them.  If you’re going for a walk in the ether at least do us all a favor and keep whatever you think you discovered there to yourself.)

To get back to the matter at hand, the article that caught my eye this week involved an Australian rugby player named Israel Folau, who apparently got into a bit of hot water recently by sharing his Christian religious views on gay people and others as follows: “Drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolators - Hell awaits you."  In case anyone took it the wrong way Mr. Folau clarified later, "I share it with love.”  In the same spirit of avoiding misunderstandings allow me to clarify I have no real interest in rugby, Australian or otherwise, or in Mr. Folau personally, and also that I understand Mr. Folau’s religious sentiments are not necessarily typical for Australia.  I’m interested in Mr. Folau’s sentiments only because they represent a handy example of a certain common interpretation of Christian theology as it applies to gay people that can certainly also be found here in the USA.  Well, actually I suppose I was a bit interested in the other characters that ended up in the same boat as gay people including notably drunks, atheists, and idolators.  Apparently according to Mr. Folau’s understanding there are many paths to hell including nature, illness, philosophy, and competing religions.  And by the way what exactly is an idolator anyway?  Christians are always waving around that horrifying image of an ancient crucifixion.  Does that count?  How about statues of saints?  Mary?  I don’t really care, just saying.  Who exactly is praying to an idol anyway?  Well, actually I suppose it wasn’t just the people who ended up in the boat but the ones who didn’t make the cut I found a bit noteworthy.  We’ve got the thieves but how about their close cousins the robbers?  Murderers?  You know, just trying to detect some pattern in what’s going on here.

Anyway, the main thing that caught my eye in Mr. Folau’s little flipping off of gay people is the way Christians of this sort express their hatred of gay people in contrast to how devout Muslims like the Sultan of Brunei for example express their hatred of gay people.  Mr. Folau uses a little rhetorical trick or gimmick one commonly encounters in popular Christianity in which he is ostensibly not telling you what he thinks about gay people himself; he’s just passing on the good word about what his supernatural lord thinks about them.  He’s a messenger or middleman of sorts.  He’s not saying he wants gay people to go to hell.  He’s not consigning gay people to hell himself.  Indeed, in warning gay people of their fiery fate Mr. Folau himself is ostensibly expressing his love of gay people not his hate.  It’s a nice story although of course I suppose everyone must know by now not all Christian sects endorse this particular point of view and if Mr. Folau disagreed with it or was troubled by it in any way he could very easily investigate and eventually espouse a different form of Christianity, so of course it’s quite clear the hatred under discussion is not emanating solely from some other worldly plane but is centered squarely at least partially in Mr. Folau’s own personality and perspective on the world.  In other words, one can’t help but recognize Christians like Mr. Folau as somewhat hypocritical when they discusses expressing their agreed upon hatred of gay people with love for gay people.  It’s a strange sort of love isn’t it?

This third party, faux innocent bystander motif one finds in certain strands of Christianity stands in interesting contrast to certain strands of contemporary Islam in which not only are devout Muslims such as the Sultan of Brunei encouraged to share their understanding of the good lord’s feelings toward gay people they’re expected to actually carry out the lord’s bile and hatred by serving as the instrument by which the lord consigns gay people to hell, in the case of the Sultan by stoning them to death.  It’s clearly a much more active hands on and potentially ethically troubling approach than just standing on the sidelines warning them the lord will consign them to hell when they die and contemplating the day with evident satisfaction.

On the other hand, maybe I’m splitting hairs.  Christians for a long time were very much in step with contemporary Muslims in terms of their perceived moral duty to kill, main, and torture people on behalf of the lord.  Interestingly they talked pretty much the same way they do now.  Yes, they burned people at the stake but only because they loved them and wanted to save their souls by helping them atone for their sins here on earth in the agreed upon way: by slowly burning them into a pile of smoking ash.  They didn’t hate anyone themselves.  No, no.  They were all about love, love, love even when carrying out their perceived duty to their supernatural master to kill, kill, kill gay people, atheists, and a great many others besides.  And indeed I’m not even sure the distinction between active agent and third party messenger is significant from a theological point of view because the omnipotent supernatural entity ostensibly consigning gay people to eternal torture in hell is typically meant within Christian theology to also be a paragon of love, at least the strange love of the Christians.  One supposes the Sultan might similarly imagine himself to be expressing love and peace even while dutifully bashing in the head of some random gay youngster with a rock.  By the same token, one supposes there may be sects within Islam taking an approach more similar to Mr. Folau’s version of Christianity and contenting themselves with visions of the lord allowing and indeed consigning gay people to be tortured for eternity in hell rather than feeling any particular duty to act as the good lord’s court executioner and torturer in this life.

What’s my point?  Well, I suppose it must be that Christianity and Islam don’t appear to be all that different to me at least as far as gay people are concerned.  They’re both typical of at least the Middle Eastern form of the religious mindset.  Tomorrow a form of Christianity more similar to traditional historical Christianity might arise that might involve torturing and murdering unbelievers and gay people and so on while a form of Islam more similar to modern mainstream Christianity could break out any time and indeed likely already has with people neglecting or disavowing their moral duty to murder and torture to instead bang on about peace and love all the while looking forward with satisfaction to the prospect of the various objects of their various hatreds and sexual hangups getting their just desserts in the afterlife.  We give Christians the benefit of the doubt in this country.  We assume if they harbor feelings of hatred toward other people, such as gay people for example, they can talk about it and carry it about in their hearts and minds and so on but allow the good lord to express it in more concrete form in the next life and in that way co-exist with non-Christians who don’t share their ancient hatreds.   We should give Muslims the same benefit of the doubt and expect they can also come up with similar expediencies and adjustments in their theology that would allow them to co-exist peacefully with non-Muslims.  They have no reason to bother with that sort of thing in foreign Muslim-dominated countries of course, so one would hardly expect to hear anything like that from the majority Muslim areas of the world, but in the very different context of countries like the USA they do.  We can never accept anti-social behavior but when it comes to people’s religious beliefs we should give people some room to come up with something that works and not simply always assume the worst.

References

Israel Folau: Australia end player's contract over anti-gay message. April 15, 2019.  BBC.  https://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union/47932231.